The girl-eagle sighed. “Here I was thinking that, just once, it would be nice if you fought a battle yourself, without getting others to do your dirty work.” She was thinking hard. She would have to be fast now, faster than she’d ever been in her life.
“I am not the one who gets my little animal friends killed by the hundreds for defending me,” he taunted her.
Any anger that had clouded her mind vanished. “I made my peace with that—and with them—three years ago. Fight, damn you!”
“I won’t soil my claws.” He sneered. “I was the Emperor Mage of Carthak—”
“Oh, please,” she retorted, glancing back. The other immortals were coming on fast. “That’s finished, and by your own acts did you finish it!”
“How dare you judge me?” he snarled. “You’re a common-born bastard, a camp follower’s brat who spreads her legs for any passing man—just like her mother.”
To her own surprise—and quite clearly, to his—Daine laughed. “And you’re as ignorant as you are evil,” she retorted. “I’m done listening to you!”
Wheeling to face the immortals behind her, she changed, as quickly as thought. A giant strangling-snake, she dropped across two apes who flew close together, wrapping her tail around one throat, and her first three feet of length around the other. To her surprise, two small, blobby forms dropped past. Spreading themselves like kites, they steered until they fell onto the faces of both Stormwings. Leaf and Jelly had stolen a ride on Daine’s back.
The Stormwings tried to scream; instead they only pulled darking bodies into their throats. Daine couldn’t wait or watch. In one burst of strength, she squeezed, and heard dull snaps as both of her victims’ necks broke.
Agony burned her side: The third winged ape wielded a sword. Daine fell away, forcing herself into raven form as she dropped. The cut was long, but shallow; with a grimace she made herself ignore the pain. If she didn’t bleed too much, she would be fine. She would have to be fine.
Plummeting, she remembered the feel of wind under feathers and the loud calls of raven flock-mates. The wind caught her outspread wings and carried her aloft.
There was a crash: The smothered Stormwings dropped into the woods. Leaf and Jelly fell away from their victims, gliding flat until they latched onto the naked limbs of a tall, long-dead tree. Daine swooped to get them, as Ozorne screamed a word.
The two darkings flared crimson, and exploded. Pulling her wings in, stretching her body, she banked, murder in her heart. The last winged ape was forgotten. There was no one bird that she drew on, but many, as Daine shaped angled wings to give her speed, a ripping beak and talons to match for combat, a starling’s talent for quick, midair dodges. She stayed as large as she dared: She would need size to fight this battle. Hurtling through the winds, she came at Ozorne.
He lashed her with Stormwing fire. She barrel-rolled, spinning away from his bolts without losing a feather’s worth of speed. Behind her, something grunted: The sword-wielding ape fought to catch up. She would have to deal with him: He was quicker than he had a right to be. Twisting herself until the air flowed over and under her just right, she emptied her large bird’s bowels squarely into his face.
The ape’s furious howl was choked and wet. Daine chanced a look back. He clawed at his throat, his sword falling to the earth. The silly clunch inhaled, she thought coldly, before she fixed her attention on Ozorne once more.
He burned her twice with crimson bolts, or tried to. She bent away from both and picked up her speed. He was sweating; she could smell it, a bitter combination of man oils and metal tang that spread through the air.
On the ground, the forest came to an end; they had reached the coast, far beyond the point where Yamani ships had landed the Tortallan force. Below, the sea battered the feet of high, rocky cliffs. The cliff thermals would help her along; she was beginning to tire, a little.
But if Daine was tiring, so was Ozorne. It cost him to fly. She could see it in his laboring wings and loss of speed. Twice he spun to throw flame at her. Ducking it easily, she gained altitude and circled to his left. He knew she was not directly behind him, an easy target. Forced to keep turning in order to see her, Ozorne lost momentum. Daine closed the gap. Once she was close enough, she changed again, and dropped onto his back, her wild-cat’s forepaws hooked over his shoulders.
Razor-edged feathers cut into her fur; she clamped her jaws on the back of his neck and bit, hard. Ozorne howled and writhed, falling. Daine bit harder. There was naked flesh on his back, too, where she put her rear claws to use. Red fire raced all over his skin, burning her paws and mouth. She hung on as long as she could, but in the end, she lost control over her shape and dropped off, while Ozorne spun and fell, bleeding heavily.
She strained, trying to regain her wings, but her mind was as exhausted as her body. She couldn’t remember how winged creatures felt to her. I can’t die! she thought frantically. Not whilst he’s alive!
Her back struck a soft, feathered platform that slowed her fall. Gulls had come to her rescue, crowding together so that their outstretched wings overlapped, forming a platform of feather, skin, and bone. They sank to the ground, and drew away from her. She dropped an inch or two, striking thick, springy grass.
“Thank you,” she whispered, rolling to her knees. “If I survive this, I will owe you and your kinfolk until the end of time.”
She looked up. Ozorne’s fall, like her long tumble in the Divine Realms, had been slowed and broken by a tree. He neared the ground, using his magic to cushion his own drop. When he landed, he was scant yards away. For a moment he stood, gasping, sweat-drenched hair in his eyes, bleeding from deep gouges and scrapes.
Daine forced herself to change, dredging up one last droplet of magic to arm herself. Her skin rippled, grew fur, developed patterns, changed again to human skin. “Like a Chaos thing myself,” she mumbled, getting to her knees, and shuddered.
Ozorne shook his hair out of his eyes and grinned, lips peeling mirthlessly from his steel teeth. “What is Chaos to you?” he sneered, panting as he walked toward her.
“If you’re for it, then I’m against it,” she retorted, keeping her own face down.
“Then you’re in trouble,” he informed her. “With my help, Uusoae has the strength to defeat the gods at last. She has promised that I will be king of the world.”
“And how long will that last? She’ll only eat the world, too, when she’s done with the gods.” Daine thought she had something—her fingers and toenails were cooperating, at least. Driving up from the ground—she had to strike before he got those wing blades of his up—she launched herself at him with a scream of raw fury, finger-claws raking at his eyes, knees drawn up to her chest so that the claws on her feet could dig into his gut.
She knocked him back. Intertwined, they rolled down a slope, the girl ripping all the meat from him that her talons could reach, keeping her head down so that he couldn’t fasten his metal teeth in her throat. He clawed at her with his own feet, tried to cut her with his wings, but it was hard for him to bend his metal flesh, harder still to grip a head cushioned by thick, long curls in his jaws. He screamed something.
A force lifted her up and knocked her yards away. She landed on her back, the wind knocked from her lungs. Trying to fill them again, Daine felt her claws turn back into toes and fingernails. As surely as she knew her name, she was certain that there were no more shape changes left in her. Perhaps if she had not lost so much blood, or flown so hard and so fast, or had kept her shapes to those of whole animals instead of using parts from many . . .
The sound of metal scraping rock woke her from a weary half-trance. She gasped, and coughed, found the air to roll over, and got on her hands and knees. He was coming for her, panting and exhausted himself, bleeding and triumphant.
“So here you are, without your precious friends,” he mocked. “There is no one to save you: no human, no animal—no magic. Don’t try to deny it,” he said when she looked up at him. “Stormwing magic
isn’t good for much, but we can tell when someone is ready to die—when all her weapons are stripped from her.”
Daine hung her head. At the edge of her vision the badger’s heavy silver claw—the one thing that managed to stay with her through every shape change that she had ever worked—swung on its chain. The end of the claw was sharp; she knew that very well.
She let her curls fall forward, masking her actions. He was still a few yards away. With her right hand, she felt the chain until she found the catch. With her left, she groped for a rock. He would see that; let him.
A flick of a fingernail opened the catch. The chain ran off her neck and through the wire binding of the claw, pooling on the ground like water, Daine straightened, claw tucked into her right hand, a rock visible in her left. She hurled the stone at Ozorne. The weakness in her arm was terrifying; still, her aim at least was good. He threw up a magical shield, but it was barely visible. When the rock struck, the shield’s pale red fires rippled and broke; the stone thumped his chest.
“I’m not the only one that’s out of magic,” she cried hoarsely. Manipulating the claw, she positioned it so that it thrust between the fingers of her fist, pointing out and down. “You couldn’t light a candle, could you?”
He smiled, lifting a razor-edged wing as he approached. “I don’t need magic to handle you now, Veralidaine. All I need is this. Why don’t you just bare your throat, and make it easy on yourself?”
Come on, she thought, watching through her curtain of hair. And I have to make sure he never gets up from this. Just one . . . more . . . step . . .
He took it, bringing him within wing reach—or arm’s reach. She threw herself forward, with no grace or coordination of muscle. Grabbing the upper edge of his open wing with one hand, feeling its bite in her palm, Daine slashed forward with the claw.
Ozorne screamed a doomed beast’s scream as the badger’s talon bit into his neck, and tore. Daine yanked the claw sideways, across his windpipe, through the veins on the opposite side. His blood sprayed, drenching them both; he thrashed like a mad thing. She dug the claw into his belly and dragged it down.
At last he was still.
For a long moment she lay there, too weary to get up—but the mess of blood and flesh made her stomach lurch. She rolled off him, barely feeling the small cuts from his outspread wings, too worn out even to vomit over the mess. When she was able to sit up, she found that the stone he’d taken to wearing was stuck to her bloody chest, with the remains of the cord on which it had hung. Claw must’ve cut the string, she thought vaguely. Groping, she seized cord and stone and hurled them away from her.
They struck a tree; the stone shattered. Beneath her, the ground lurched, rolled, then sank. Before her appeared an arch and pool of oozing, dripping muck, their shifting colors making her dizzy. In the spot where pond and arch met, a hunched figure straightened. The face changed without letup, no part of it ever still, from unmatched eyes to the overall shape.
Horrible as she looked in Daine’s dreams, the physical reality of Uusoae was much, much worse. The girl’s hands and feet scrabbled in the dirt as she tried to get away from the Queen of Chaos, but her muscles were as soft as butter. Trembling, Daine covered her eyes. It didn’t help. The Chaos queen was in her mind. Her constant shifts of body and face pulled at Daine’s belly and ears and heart.
“You dared to interfere,” the creature muttered, her breath scented richly with flowers and long-dead meat. “For my creature, and my plan —” Hard, sharp, gluey, oozing, pulpy, twining hands seized Daine’s wrists.
The girl shrieked at the horror of that touch. Her scream went on, and on —
And ended, as if cut off by shears. They were nowhere, in a flat, dead space where there was no sound, no light, and no up or down. Mercifully, Daine could no longer feel Uusoae’s touch. She only wished that she could no longer see the goddess, but her vision was crystal clear, even without light.
“It is as we said, Father Universe, Mother Flame,” boomed a deep voice. Mithros Sun Lord stood nearby. A huge black man with short-cropped hair, he wore gold armor over a kilted white tunic. In one hand he bore a gold spear with a blade that shone white-hot. “In defiance of the ban you laid upon her, she entered the mortal realms and made an alliance with one who influenced mortal lives. She did it to gain the upper hand against us, her brothers and sisters. Are your bans to be set aside lightly by her, or by any of us?”
Uusoae released Daine, and stepped away. The girl huddled in the space where she sat, teeth chattering, her many wounds bleeding and stinging.
Below, light blazed, all the colors of fire, stars, and the moon. “Uusoae, I am disappointed.” The voice was somehow female and somehow the essence of light and heat. Daine heard it in her bones. “So soon after the last time, as well.”
Overhead, the blackness moved. “It is her nature to strive, to overset, to imagine all as being different.” This voice was male, a distillation of darkness and emptiness. “Still, to follow one’s nature is no excuse to openly defy one’s parents. Return to the confines of your own realm, Uusoae. There you will be confined in a cage of dead matter and starfire until your mother and I feel better about you.”
“How long will that be?” demanded the ruler of Chaos.
A weight settled over Daine’s shoulders; folds of black cloth wrapped around her. She looked up into Gainel’s shadowy eyes. He smiled and gave her shoulder a gentle pat.
“Until the next star is born, my daughter,” Mother Flame told Uusoae firmly. “Rule your subjects from your cage, and think on the consequences of your behavior.”
As one, the great powers—parents of gods and Chaos—spoke: “It is done.”
Uusoae vanished. So, too, did that infinite blackness, and the ultimate light. Daine knelt on pale marble in the center of a vast courtyard rimmed with graceful columns and dotted with fountains. Half of the sky overhead was dark and blazed with stars; the other half showed daylight, with a sun just past noon.
Mithros sank into a backless golden chair with a sigh, and gave his spear to a young, brown-skinned boy in a blue tunic. Beside the Sun Lord a black cat slumbered in a silver chair. The Great Goddess tried to shoo it away, but the cat refused to take the hint. At last the goddess moved the animal. Set on the marble court, the cat sniffed audibly and trotted over to Daine.
She held out a hand for it to smell. It did so, examined her with bright purple eyes, then sat in front of her and began to wash. All around them, gods settled into chairs, or onto fountain rims and benches.
Silver bloomed on either side of the cat: The badger and Broad Foot appeared. The duckmole still looked thin and worn, but there was amusement in his small eyes as he nodded to her.
“I think you’ll be glad to know the Sorrows have returned to their kennels, all three of them,” he informed her. “The mortal realms are rid of them, for now.”
Gold-streak unwrapped itself from around the badger’s neck and rolled over to Daine. “Miss you,” it said, and trickled up her thighs to nestle in her lap.
Her eyes stung. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Leaf and Jelly are dead,” she told her first darking, the spy that Ozorne had set on her. “They were so brave.”
“I know,” Gold-streak replied. “They had freedom. They had choosing. They chose you. All darkings know. We never forget.”
Sniffing, she wiped her eyes with a finger, and the Dream King’s coat began to slide. Gainel, still behind Daine, resettled the garment around her shoulders. There was much less pain from that change than she had felt when he originally put the garment on her. Peeking under the coat’s lapel, the girl saw that her injuries were mending themselves.
—You will have scars,— Gainel said, —but those are signs of battles fought bravely.—
“I don’t hardly feel brave,” she whispered. “I feel sad, and I feel tired.”
“Brother, there are things to deal with.” Looking at the speaker, Daine gulped and thrust herself backward, colliding with Gainel’s
legs. It was a serpent far larger than the one that had killed Rikash: Kidunka, the world snake, the first child born of Universe and Flame. “Her, for one.” The serpent pointed its large, blunt nose at Daine.
Eyes—gods’ eyes—turned to her. Daine wished very, very strongly that she could just sink into the marble floor.
“Leave be!” Sarra came from somewhere in the crowd to kneel and wrap her arms around her daughter. “You’re frightening her!”
“What is there to deal with?” Weiryn demanded, joining his mate and child.
“She must choose,” said the Great Mother Goddess, fixing emerald eyes on Daine.
“Choose what?” asked the girl. “I don’t understand.”
Mithros met her eyes with his. Daine quivered, but refused to look away. He was a god, the greatest of those who ruled two-leggers, but he was no Chaos queen. Her supply of awed terror was used up for today.
At last Mithros shook his head. “You are god-born, Veralidaine Sarrasri. Wherever the Godborn go, whatever they do, trouble—disorder —”
—Change,— interrupted Gainel.
Mithros glared at his brother, and went on. “All those things follow. We cannot have that, particularly not on the scale on which you seem to create it. We must then limit the area of your influence.
“Either you now return to the mortal realms to live out your life, or you stay here, a lesser goddess. Once you decide, you will never be able to change your mind. You will never again cross between the realms.”
Choose? she thought, numb. Choose between Ma, who never should have died, and Numair? Her father, whom she barely knew, or Queen Thayet, King Jonathan, Onua?
But I could be a goddess. I could do magic like Ma does. I could visit Broad Foot’s home. And Kit—seeing her won’t be a trouble, since she can go where she likes.
What of Cloud, and Zek the marmoset, and Spots and Onua’s Tahoi? Was she going to leave the Long Lake wolf pack behind? Confused, Daine buried her head in Sarra’s shoulder. What of Alanna the Lioness, and Maura of Dunlath? Could she spend their lives watching them from the Divine Realms, without ever being with them?
The Realms of the Gods Page 18