by Bec McMaster
“It’s not a prison,” Draco corrected. “It’s a death penalty. If you are sentenced to the Abyss, then you die there.”
“There’s no reason for him to go there.” Unless…. That chill was creeping through her again. “Who is with him?”
Because it suddenly made sense.
Marduk wasn’t a fool—as often as she called him one, he’d shown a shrewdness even she had to admire. He wasn’t the sort of male to storm into battle without her, either.
Something had drawn him away.
Or someone.
“He’s bound to Ishtar,” she said breathlessly. “And Ishtar is the greatest Chaos-wielder born within generations. But she’s always protected. One of the Zini stays at her side, always.” Goddess’s breath. It all made sense now. “If Amadea captures Marduk, then Ishtar will come for him. She won’t realize she’s in danger until it’s too late. She loves her brother, and she would try to rescue him. Amadea would finally get her alone.”
Horror filled Andromeda’s eyes. “With Ishtar’s powers, such a Chaos-wielder would be virtually unstoppable.”
They both turned to Draco.
“It’s not Marduk behind all of this,” Solveig told him. “And I will tell you the whole truth of the matter, I promise. But I need to go. He’s in trouble. Who was with him?”
Draco’s eyes narrowed. “He was seen heading into the mountains with the blonde girl.”
A blonde girl? Solveig’s heart skipped a beat. “Elin?”
“The drekling,” he replied.
“Goddess’s mercy. Elin’s the killer. Elin’s the one with the queen inside her.”
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Marduk asked, lifting the torch and staring into the hollow mouth of the cave.
Dusk settled over the mountains with a rosy caress. Soon it would be night, and visibility was already dropping. Shadows loomed.
“This is where the Zilittu worship the goddess,” Elin replied. “There’s a well of pure Chaos magic in the center of the cave. It’s a holy place that only their Chaos practitioners are allowed to enter.”
“You know a lot about this place.” He cut a look toward her.
“As I said, dreki talk.”
“And the key?”
“Hidden deep inside the heart of the Abyss.” She plucked a thin strip of cloak that was tangled in a bramble outside the cave. “This is Andri’s. He must already be here.” Her startled eyes met his. “If he gets to the key….”
“Then we are doomed.”
“Doomed?”
Marduk watched her very carefully. “We suspect my mother’s wraith survived her death. She’s possessed one of our party. Andri, perhaps. If she gets her hands on that key, then she will ruin us all.”
Elin sucked in a sharp gasp. “The queen is alive? And in Andri?”
“All the evidence seems to point to him.” But he couldn’t take his eyes off her face. “Klara warned us to look for personality changes. And my cousin has been quiet of late. You’d have to have noticed? I thought he was courting you, and then suddenly, he wasn’t.”
“Oh, my goodness,” she whispered in horror. “It all makes a terrible sense. He was so… so cruel to me. We have to stop her!”
He took a deep breath and stepped inside the cave, waving the torch. Cobwebs seared away from the flames. Nobody had been in here for a while, by the look of it.
Relax. Marduk closed his eyes and swallowed. The walls won’t cave in.
It had to be a cave.
“What’s wrong?” Elin whispered. “Are you afraid of the dark?”
“No.”
“Surely you’re not afraid of being underground?”
“I’m fine.”
He opened himself up, trying to search for the bond within him, the one that linked him to Ishtar. “Are you there?”
Only silence answered him, but he could sense her attention focusing upon him. She was somewhere far to the north.
“Whatever happens next,” he told her, “I don’t want you to come for me. No matter what you feel or hear. Stay away.”
“Marduk?” she whispered in his head.
“Find Solveig. She’ll protect you. Just stay far away from me. Promise?”
There was no answer.
Taking a deep breath, he entered the cave.
Someone had painstakingly carved Sumerian letters in the walls. He trailed his fingers over several of them, wishing he’d paid more attention to his tutors.
“They say, ‘Treachery is a rot that eats away at a clan. Those who deal it, must be silenced,’” Elin read.
Marduk’s steps began to slow. “I suppose your father taught you to read Sumerian?”
She laughed under her breath. “My father taught me many things, yes.”
“You’re lucky,” he murmured, “to have a father that loves you so much. Mine did too, and I miss him every day. I wish I’d been there when my mother died. I wish I could have looked her in the eye and wished her to Hel.”
Silence answered him, and then…. “That’s not a very nice thing to say. She did give you life, after all. She chose to let you live when Ishtar’s Chaos-warped form was revealed. You must have loved her once.”
Marduk ducked beneath a lintel and eased down a small flight of stairs, into a circular chamber.
There was nothing in front of him but a dead end.
No sign of Andri.
His heart started to race. Maybe that was a good thing, because it left him free to confront his mother, without any potential hostages.
Chaos-warped form.
He turned to face her, certain now. “Did I love my mother? How does one love a monster?”
Elin hovered in the archway, a mere slip of shadows with a hint of smoldering green in her eyes. “Even a monster deserves to be loved.”
“I asked your father once for help with my Sumerian, and he told me it wasn’t a language he was fluent in.”
She paused.
“And Andri can’t have come this way. There’s no sign of footprints in the dust, no break in the cobwebs.” He tilted his head toward the thin strip of wool she held. “Solveig found Andri’s cloak in Klara’s hut. I noticed then that it was missing a piece. You slipped up.”
“You’re right,” she purred. Taking the stairs one by one, she sauntered toward him, her shadow seeming to stretch across the floor. “The Loremaster of the clan doesn’t speak very good Sumerian. And Andri no longer has his cloak. I stole it from his room.”
He stared at her face. Her cheeks looked almost gaunt in the torchlight. She didn’t look like Elin. There was something almost vulpine about her expression, but the look in her eyes was familiar. Oh, so familiar.
“Mother.” Even breathing the word felt like he gave life to a ghost. “It was you. All along it was you.”
“I was hoping you’d be more surprised. I was looking forward to seeing the shock on your face.”
He breathed the fire in his veins as he watched her advance.
He was dreki, and even if she had managed to wield Chaos, she wasn’t impervious to his flames. “Maybe I just wanted to get you alone.”
“No matter.” Elin laughed, her voice turning smoky. “One last little spell, Marduk, in order to save my soul into the necklace I wore. And poor little Elin couldn’t help but put it on. It was so pretty, you see, and she’d never worn anything like it.
“I was wondering how long it would take you. You’re so pathetic, all of you.” Running her hands down her hips, she gave him a girlish smile. “All I have to do is bat these pretty blonde lashes and every dreki in the vicinity thinks I’m some precious virgin who needs to be protected. It’s been almost too easy.”
“What have you done with Andri?” he demanded, because his hopes of finding his cousin here were vanishing.
“I didn’t kill the little bitch, if that’s what you’re wondering. He’d guessed, and so he had to be dealt with.”
That little conversation Andri had wanted to have with him
…. “Where is he?”
Elin drew a dagger from the sheath at her hip, light sparkling deep within the heart of the ruby in its hilt. She kissed the ruby. “You were the one who gave me the perfect idea to dispose of Andri. I found this locked away in a little chamber beneath Draco’s tower. The third beacon of Chaos magic you could sense.”
The heat drained out of his face.
“Draco doesn’t strike me as the kind of king to keep one trick up his sleeve. If he had one of the kunuk la’atzu knives, then he was bound to have the other,” she said. “They were a matched set, created thousands of years ago in Sumer in order to worship the goddess, my mother once told me. The old king had them locked away in his vault. And so, I just had to find the other one.”
Marduk stared at that restless sparkling light within the ruby in horror. Andri? “What did you do with his body?”
She merely smiled. “Someone will find it. One day.”
“And the key?”
“I was lying, Marduk.” She kept advancing. “I can do that now, you realize, because I don’t have any dreki magic. The key’s not here. I already have it secreted away elsewhere. I do have to thank you for delivering it directly into my hands. Now I have exactly what I need to deliver my vengeance upon all who ruined me. War is coming, Marduk, and I have new friends now. New allies. Together we will destroy everything the Zini and the Zilittu built.”
Marduk steeled himself. Solveig would have discovered him missing by now. He had to keep Amadea talking. If there was anything he knew about his mother, it was that she liked to gloat. “What have you done with Elin?”
And then mentally, he sent a spear of thought arching toward the keep. “Solveig?”
“That’s not the question you should be asking.” Elin snapped her fingers and suddenly a trio of torches of the walls flared to life, though they burned a sickly green. Chaos magic. “The question you should be asking is, what do I intend to do with you? This is the yawning Abyss of Zilittu. This is where they send their enemies to die. It seems fitting to bury you here. Alive.”
He lunged to the side—or tried to. His boots seemed to be stuck to the floor.
Marduk fell to his hands and knees. The torch hit the tiled floor in front of him, and suddenly his palms were glued to the floor too.
What the hell was she doing to him?
“Ah, ah, ah, Marduk. Traitors must be punished.” His mother knelt down to see his face. “That’s something my father taught me. Traitors must be crushed. They must be forgotten.”
In desperation, he sent a sweep of fire flaring toward her from the flickering torch.
It vanished as it came within a foot of her skirts. Amadea’s laughter died down. “Oh, Marduk.” She swept her palm over the floor in front of her. Dust parted, revealing a tiny set of brass runes chiseled into the floor. “Sumerian is the mother tongue,” she chided, pointing to the first word. “It is what the Goddess spoke when she wove Chaos into the world. And this ring here—” her palm slid across the floor revealing a curving line of words “—circles you entirely. It’s a void of magic. The moment you stepped over this line—albeit unknowingly—you became defenseless.”
He had to reach her. “Solveig!”
There was no answer. Only silence. Maybe it was the ring of spell work on the floor surrounding him.
She couldn’t hear him.
“Goodbye, my treacherous son. You will be the first of my children to die.” His mother pushed to her feet, brushing the dust from her skirts. “Though I assure you that you won’t be the last.”
“No—"
She spoke a word he didn’t understand.
The floor vanished beneath him.
He was suddenly kneeling on nothing; only a thin web of Chaos magic lay interlaced beneath his feet.
His stomach plunged into the abyss far below.
“Solveig!” he screamed as he plummeted into the darkness.
Reaching desperately for his dreki, he tried to claw at the air around him.
His wings…. His wings wouldn’t work. There was some strange weight settling over his mortal skin, trapping the dreki within him. Marduk screamed as the abyss swallowed him whole.
And then the earth rushed up to capture him in its gaping maw.
He slammed into solid rock, screaming as his shoulder popped from its socket and several ribs shattered. Tumbling over uneven ground, he finally fetched up against something hard and angular.
The torch landed beside him, still burning.
Goddess’s mercy. Every inch of him felt ablaze with pain. There was no air in his lungs. No movement in his right leg. Nothing but darkness and pain and the silent groaning of the earth as the torchlight flickered… and died.
A slim figure slipped from the cave, tugging her hood over her blonde hair.
Solveig waited until the last possible moment and then stepped out from behind her tree, pressing the edge of her blade against the drekling’s throat.
Elin froze.
Solveig smiled, letting the wolf slip its leash for a moment. “I finally figured it out. An uprising within the Zini court. Hints of malicious Chaos magic lingering. Both Marduk and Ishtar searching for any trace of its practitioner, and yet all Ishtar could find was a shattered emerald necklace that once belonged to the evil bitch who spawned the Zini king and his siblings.”
Elin blinked at her, giving a good approximation of innocence. “What are you talking about?”
Solveig stepped forward, pressing the cold iron directly against the girl’s carotid. She grabbed Elin by the throat. “I know who you are. Or who is inhabiting this body. Where is Marduk? Where is your son?”
Innocence sloughed away. “Well, well, you are smarter than the average dreki warrior. The rest of them don’t have a clue. Be careful, Solveig. Nobody knows we’re here. There could be all manner of surprises in store for you.”
“Nobody?” Solveig laughed, and right on cue, someone called her name. It echoed through the forest. “Did you think I came alone? Draco has entire hordes of his guards scouring these woods.”
“Does he?” The woman who was now Amadea actually smiled. “It’s a shame they’ll be too late.”
“I’ll cut your throat,” she promised. “Even you won’t survive a second time.”
“And kill the girl? You’ll break poor Andri’s heart. He’s still besotted with her. And she’s still in here. Still screaming on the inside, trying to get out.”
A heartbeat ticked out.
Another.
Solveig made herself smile again. “You assume I care about the girl?” Shoving the queen backward, she slammed her against the cave wall. “The guards aren’t here yet. Nobody will witness this. Andri’s heart might break, but who will ever suspect I killed poor Elin?”
“What a pity I didn’t take you. Wearing your skin would have suited me very well.” Amadea slid a finger down Solveig’s cheek. “But then, it would have been slightly awkward for one to inhabit the body of one’s son’s mate. Especially when you’re falling in love with him. You haven’t asked, Solveig. You haven’t asked what I’ve done with Marduk.” She pitched her voice higher in mimicry. “Where is Marduk? Where is your son?” She laughed as she reached up and caressed the hand that gripped her throat. “More to the point, you should have asked: What have you done to him?”
A little frisson of doubt worked its way through her. “You haven’t killed him.”
“Haven’t I?”
Despite the fact she held the knife, she was startled to realize Amadea was pushing toward her and she was giving ground. “I would know.”
“In your bones?” Amadea asked with a dreamy smile. “In your skin? In your heart?” Another laugh. “I’ve seen you mooning over him—crawling at his feet for him. What a joke you are, Solveig. What a disappointment. You call yourself a queen in the making, and yet you beg for the merest snippet of my son’s attention.”
She gets inside your head, Marduk had said quietly, and she makes you believe all t
he worst fears you have about yourself.
But two could play that game.
“Do you know what truly is pathetic?” Solveig mused. “You birthed four children into this world, and every single one of them hates you. My father always said your husband was an honorable man. King Reynar was a giant among dreki, revered far and wide for his strength of will, his loyalty, and his empathy. Did you hold them in your arms, Amadea, and know they would love him more than they would ever love you? Did you kiss their brows as you placed them in their cradles, desperate to try and bind them to your side before his influence could seduce them? You looked at them and you were alone, weren’t you? Just as you are now. Your brother’s dead. You died. And you’re trapped inside a body without access to dreki magic. How that must gall. You’re alone and unloved and that is how you will die. A second time.”
“Do you want to know a little secret, Solveig?” Amadea leaned toward her, all smiles and teeth. “I never said I was alone. I’ve found some new friends. And one of them is very intent on meeting you again.”
Suddenly, Solveig realized the woods were quiet. Not a single bird chirped. Not a single rodent scurried in the undergrowth. The shouts she’d heard from Draco’s soldiers were eerily silenced.
Elin stared over Solveig’s shoulder. “Kill her.”
“With pleasure,” said the sweetest, most melodic voice she’d ever heard.
And then the hiss of an arrow filled the air, and pain exploded through Solveig’s back.
21
There was nothing more than silence. Nothing but the earth pressing in upon him. Marduk tried to summon Fire, but it was as though his dreki magics were completely muted. The walls were as smooth as diamonds, without a single handhold to be found.
And he was injured.
Think, damn it.
He hobbled one way and then another, his boots crunching over bones. He’d found them earlier, and their existence made him feel ill.
He was standing on top of a mountain of bones.
Nobody was coming to find him.
Nobody would hear him calling for help.