Aihara Na swooped before her. “I was betrayed. An acolyte under my tutelage opened the Well for them. One I thought was gifted. He’s no longer with us.”
“Show me.”
“I’m afraid... there isn’t much left of him to show.”
“Not him!” Nesilia boomed. She knew the fate of the one named Kai, fed on by the very body she now inhabited. “Show me the Well.”
“I… Yes, of course. Right this way.”
Aihara Na led her across the hall, splotches of blood from her battle with Kazimir still staining the floor. Nesilia had trusted Aihara Na’s strength, but it was obvious now she should have left the Ancient One with help. Freydis was a far more worthy second, fighting the upyr without fear or hesitation.
They descended the stairs, passed the training room. Nesilia peered in. Rows of her slaves stood, younger than the last batch she’d left Aihara Na with before sailing North. Their arms were gashed from blooding, learning how to draw on the magic of Elsewhere. With the last bar guai having shattered in the Citadel, they’d be forced to do so unaided.
“I’ve been training a new generation of mystics,” Aihara Na said. “The intrusion was a minor setback, but these new ones... they are truly gifted. Plucked from their homes throughout the city.”
“They don’t look it,” Nesilia said. They looked sallow, exhausted. Unworthy.
“Most mystics train for years. We don’t have the luxury of time or even bar guais, but they will prove worthy of you, I swear it. We are to serve.”
Nesilia couldn’t manage more than a grunt of acknowledgment. She wasn’t impressed. After the God Feud, the remaining power of the gods was claimed by some mortals, bound within the Well of Wisdom and Elsewhere. But it was clear now, the Mystic Order was useless.
“I must ask, what happened to your former host?” Aihara Na said.
“Thanks to you, breaking open the Citadel and freeing my pets cost much. The upyr were waiting, informed because you failed to keep the Well safe. Thanks to you, the bastard princess Sora lives, and I am this.” She spread her arms and gestured to her pale, new body. "Thanks to you—”
Aihara Na dared to interrupt. “Then let me redeem myself. Let me hunt Sora down. She will join us, or she will perish.”
“And tell me, Ancient One. What use would I have for you if I had her?”
“I… You…”
“It’s no matter,” Nesilia said with a hand wave. “She will fall with the rest. She’s made her choice. Not a soul will ever know what she truly is. She’ll die… forgotten.”
They stopped in front of the tall stone doors on the bottommost level beyond which harbored the Well of Wisdom. Aihara Na positioned herself before them and spoke an enchantment. The doors shook, inscriptions on them glowing blue, then peeled open.
“What is it you wish to see?” Aihara Na asked.
Nesilia ignored her, pushing past. She stepped in, and the plants growing up the entry and around the waters wilted and blackened. An upyr was a corruption of its power, made by mortals long ago who didn’t know how to handle it. Made after Nesilia was buried. When Iam left the mortals to their own devices—to war, and Cullings, and death.
She almost pitied the mortals. They, too, suffering his neglect when all they needed was a guide.
“Nesilia, your new body,” Aihara Na said. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be here. Perhaps I can help you see what you must.”
“I see everything,” Nesilia snapped. “Including your uselessness. The wianu are free. The cursed ones are destroyed. The mortals have weakened themselves beyond repair, and Iam right along with them. It’s time to bring them to their knees.”
She raised her head and glanced back at Aihara Na. Her wraithlike face wrinkled in confusion, truly showing her age.
“How?” she asked. “You said we needed to gather forces and eliminate threats quietly.”
“My forces are all around us, can’t you see? In the pubs where they drink and screw like rabbits. In the streets where they stew in their own filth. In you.”
“What?”
Nesilia sneered. She raised her arm over the water and bit down on the wrist, learning the trick from Sigrid’s memory of her fallen Maker. She opened the veins, feeling the pain but not stopped by it. Sigrid’s consciousness roused and screamed out, but she was far beyond. Lost to Nowhere.
Her tainted upyr blood poured out into the water, but it wasn’t enough.
“No, you mustn’t!” Aihara Na cried out. “That much will—”
Nesilia raised her free hand and smacked the mystic across the face. Her nebulous body couldn’t resist the touch of an upyr, and she flew into the wall.
Then, Nesilia bit into the other wrist, tearing more flesh and muscle and draining into the Well before she immersed herself fully. The power of the waters kept her wounds from healing, and the cursed blood continued to flow. The waters went red, then black.
“We damned you all to Elsewhere, but it was Iam who deceived,” she spoke. “Deceived me! Join me and my pets, and we’ll take back what was once ours.”
She raised a bloody fist into the air, then drove it down, displacing the waters, and cracking open the bottom of the Well.
“No!” Aihara Na shouted again, but the shockwave held her back. “You promised me!”
“You shouldn’t have failed me,” Nesilia said. “You won’t again.”
She closed her eyes. She peered into Elsewhere.
“Elsewhere is empty.”
She heard Kazimir's words echo in Sigrid’s memory, but he was wrong. They were there but waiting.
She threw her arms open, and the water and her blood became one, circling her, flowing back into her veins as they healed. The ground beneath the Well continued to rupture, deep into the earth. Ages-old stone throughout the chamber shifted and freed.
“Damned men. Fallen gods. Be free,” Nesilia said. “Serve me and the realm that was yours shall be ours again.”
Spirits teemed forth from the rupture, beings trapped in Elsewhere. They weren’t physical in this realm, but that didn’t matter. As Aihara Na protested, one dove into her chest, her arms and legs twisting in unnatural ways as she was possessed.
Nesilia moved with the others, back to the gates of the Red Tower. She watched as they swarmed out over the city, laughing and screeching with glee. Free of the realm Iam built to contain them—the floodgates of Elsewhere were broken.
The wianu shook the lake’s water in approval. Dakel un Ghastrin, Kazimir's rival extended up from the waters and wrapped its tentacles up the tower. Using them as a ramp, Nesilia climbed to the top of the structure where she could see all.
Horrified screams rang out across Yaolin as the spirits found unwilling hosts. They took over warriors, farmers, peddlers, everyone who, under Nesilia, wouldn’t need to claw for a living. Cultists, hiding or locked away in Glass prisons howled with glee as possession came for them.
With her upyr eyes, she could see it all clearly: even Governor Philippi Nantby on the terrace of his mansion, fleeing a spirit of Elsewhere, only to trip and fall to his death. His wife wasn’t so lucky.
“Now what?” a voice spoke behind her. It was reminiscent of Aihara Na but was deeper, more resonant, lilting with rage. Her eyes were milky white; her ethereal form, brighter and refreshed.
“Will you now kill me, too?” the spirit inhabiting Aihara Na asked.
“No, Bliss,” Nesilia said. “Iam’s lies corrupted you as it did many. It’s time we buried our squabbles, and see this realm to its former glory.”
“I’ll settle for destroying the ones who took my forest from me.”
Nesilia didn’t answer. She just turned to look to the west, toward Yarrington and the seat of Iam, the screams of terror continuing to echo, and she grinned.
Book Six
Word of Truth
Prologue
Freydis couldn’t help but admire the ingenuity of dwarves. Their subterranean cities were absolute marvels, and Balonhearth, the Heart of
the North, home of Lord Cragrock, King of the Three Kingdoms, was no exception. Though she had to admit, she preferred seeing these places crumbling and filled with dead dwarves.
They were cowards, the lot of them. Humans drove them away, and instead of fighting back, they hid from the elements in their caverns, hoarding gold. Her people could have dug into the Drav Cra and escaped the bitter cold, but they didn’t. They braved it, let it harden them.
The dwarves, on the other hand, grew soft and fat. They barely posed a threat as Freydis snuck through their city, right to the door of King Cragrock himself. She’d only needed to strangle a few guards, though she’d prepared to slaughter anyone in her way.
So, this is why they cower in their holes during our raids, she realized.
She stopped at the door. Ashes from a clanbreaker guard filled the hall after she’d incinerated him. A gust of magic wind and they spread to appear only like dust. A bandage wrapped her hand where she’d drawn the blood to cast him down, so she didn’t leave a trail.
Those were Nesilia’s instructions. She would not disobey them. She wasn’t like the charlatan Redstar, or even Bliss, who questioned Nesilia’s every motive. She loved the goddess, and the goddess loved her, and every day she breathed as Arch Warlock would be a tribute to that love.
It took no effort to undo the lock and enter the Iron Bank’s antechamber. Gold towers shadowed her. Gold and jewel-encrusted dishware, a helmet, and armor that surely didn’t fit the king’s bulbous form any longer. She poked a chalice, expecting it to be heavier, and the thing wobbled. She didn’t even bother to stop it. It toppled off its display table and clanked along the stone floor.
Nobody shouted for her head.
And dwarves claim to have legendary hearing, she scoffed to herself.
Riches beyond measure could have been hers, but she pressed on.
Freydis cracked her neck, then lifted her freshly bandaged hand to the lock on King Cragrock’s quarters. Ever since Nesilia breached Elsewhere, magic had come easier to Freydis. She no longer called to Elsewhere with her sacrifice, it reached out to her.
As she’d done at the iron bars, a tingle ran up her back as a vine extended from her palm, slithering its way into the lock and then growing to break it open. It barely made a sound.
Slinking in, she rooted the vine in the rock floor to jam the door. Then she looked around. The King slept on his back in an oversized bed, snoring as loud as a dire wolf with too many layers of fur blankets. The winged crown sat upon his head, drooping forward over his eyes.
Men and their crowns. They can’t even sleep without them.
The room was simple, unlike the chamber outside with untold treasures. Useless trinkets. Toys. In the Drav Cra, these things meant nothing, but that was why dwarves hid. Their greed was outdone only by the Kingdom of Glass, whose time was swiftly coming to an end.
Freydis strolled around the edge of the room, running her finger over the smooth walls.
“King Cragrock the Fat,” she said, not even looking his way.
The King startled awake, and before he could shout for guards, Freydis extended her arm and vines grew around his wrists, ankles, and mouth. Her hold on them was weak, but with her other hand, she used a knife to deepen her cuts and strengthen her bond with Elsewhere.
Freydis said. “I’ve been longing to meet you. We don’t get to deal with you rich southern dwarves much.”
He yelled into the vine, voice muffled. His eyes were wide with terror.
“What was that?” she asked. “I can’t hear you?”
The vine fell from his mouth, but she shot forward as he again tried to scream and seized his throat with her bloody hand. His windpipe closed in her crushing grip.
“Now, I’m going to release you so we can have a little chat,” Freydis said. “But if you call for help, the next vines will fill your throat. Nod if you understand me.”
He didn’t move. She leaned over and stared right into his eyes.
“Nod!” she hissed.
This time, he listened.
She grinned and released his neck, leaving him gasping for air. He hacked and coughed, unable to cover his disgusting mouth with his limbs bound.
“W… w… who?” he stammered, sounding anything but kingly.
“So eloquent,” she said. “I am the Arch Warlock of the Drav Cra, Freydis,” she said. “But who I am, is unimportant. I serve the will of Nesilia, once the Buried Goddess. Now she has returned to free this world.”
“Returned? That be impossible.”
“I assure you, it is not. Ask your son. He had the privilege of meeting her at the White Bridge.”
“Bah, my son spent too much time with humans,” he said, voice gaining strength again. “He returned tellin their fibs of goddesses and evil beins. But they only want to use us for war. Gold or soldiers, it’s all the Glass Kingdom ever asks for.”
“He saw the truth. She is here, King. And she will wipe the children of Iam from the face of Pantego once and for all. But she is a generous Goddess. She has no quarrel with the dwarves or any of the children of Muengor.”
Cragrock yanked at the vines, then cleared his throat. “Then what’s yer business here?”
“To make you an offer.” She turned away and continued skirting the room. “My Goddess is willing to forgive your people’s intrusion at White Bridge. She will not touch the head of another dwarf so long as your people remain locked within their holes during the war to come. It’s quite simple. Stay out of her affairs, and soon the dwarves will deal with wicked men no longer.”
She whipped around, pointing her bloody dagger at the King.
“But if so much as a single one of your banners fights beside them. Whether it be your son or some vagrant dwarves who think men deserve your help, Nesilia will send her armies here after Yarrington falls, and she will bury the dwarves in their mountains.” She slit her hand, and another vine grew, extending over his neck. “You will all suffocate in darkness, as she did for so very long.”
The lump in the dwarf’s throat bobbed under his gray, wiry beard as he eyed the vine.
“So, King Cragrock,” Freydis said, clenching her fist and urging the vine to tighten. “You tell me. What do you desire?”
The Traitor
Rand and Sigrid sat together on the docks along Autla’s Inlet, on the grimy end of Dockside if there could be a distinction. Spring was in full swing, and with the thawing waters, came the familiar stench of mercantilism. Rand loved all the blending of smells. Fresh fish, saltwater, and spices carried on trading vessels from regions all over Pantego. Languages and dialects ebbed and flowed, chaotic, but so beautiful, too.
He liked to try to decipher the words. If not the words themselves, at least the accents, and then guess where each person was from.
Their feet danged from the docks, not yet long enough to reach the water lapping up at the old, gray wood, cracked and soggy-looking. Their father had lent them his fishing rod. Rand knew it was just to keep them busy while he worked his loading job down the harbor. Mother would be at home prepping supper, with or without their success. But it felt good to be out and about. Maybe they’d even catch something they could eat.
But Rand was never any good at it. Two years older than his sister, and she was the one teaching him. Even turned away, he could feel her watching his hands with hawkish focus.
“Rand, ye hooked one!” Sigrid said.
He was so concerned with all the ships, coming and going, he didn’t move until she shook him by the shoulders. She was strong for her diminutive stature. Her hair, like a red mop, plopped down over her head, making her face seem small and squat.
“Rand!”
He snapped to attention, but by the time he did, the fish was gone.
“Iam’s gold-coated shog!” Sigrid swore as she threw her hands up in frustration.
“Sigrid!” Rand scolded.
“What? Daddy says it all the time.”
“A lady shouldn’t… Not if ye ever
wanna get out of this rotten place.”
She grinned. “I ain’t no lady.” Then her attention returned to the fishing line. “And ye clearly ain’t no man. Ye couldn’t feed a stray cat, let alone all of us.”
“Oh yeah? Ye try it.” Rand reeled in the line and shoved the fishing rod against her arm.
She gladly took it, lacing it with another worm they’d dug up behind old man Gunter’s mussel shack. Rand had nearly retched when he put the last one on, but she didn’t even flinch. His brave, fearless sister.
“Don’t ye worry big brother, I’ll keep ye fed when we grow up,” she said as she cast the line.
“It’s just so boring. Maybe out there, sailin round on a big ship, it’d be more fun.”
“We have everything we need right here,” Sigrid said, taking in a deep breath.
“Maybe ye do.”
“Ye and yer big plans,” she groaned.
Rand rolled his eyes. Shouts drew his attention as a ship from all the way in the Black Sands arrived. He knew by the gray-skinned crew zipping around, working the sharply angled sail and the ropes as if it were second nature. He guessed they were from Latiapur, the Black Sands capital city. He’d heard about their giant gold palace and frothing waves.
And they were only half as impressive as the proud Shieldsman who rode up to greet them. Sir Clorus the Courageous, Rand recognized. He knew all of the Shieldsmen who frequented Dockside; all of the peerless warriors who traveled Pantego, fighting wars and keeping peace.
The man’s armor gleamed like a pearl. His steed was white as freshly-fallen snow, tufts of fur billowing around its massive hooves. Standing beside the dockhands, the beast’s back stood as tall as any of them.
Now, there was a dream Rand could get behind. A Shieldsman of the Glass Kingdom; the best of the best in the army led by Sir Uriah Davies and the great King Liam.
Sigrid shrieked. Rand instinctually grabbed her by the arm, fearing she was going to fall in. Instead, he noticed that something was pulling on the line and the fishing rod bent.
The Nesilia's War Trilogy: (Buried Goddess Saga Box Set: Books 4-6) Page 111