Godfire

by Cara Witter

  Erich shook his head sadly. “You act as though you’re afraid of me, Ella. I saved you. Think of what might have happened if Lukos knew you were there.” He took another step closer, then another, as if approaching a frightened animal. As if he expected her to eat from his hand after what he’d said about her. “I know you’re hurt because I lied to you, but I love you.”

  He stopped, close enough that Daniella could see the thin scar along his jaw-line, faintly silver against his olive-tan skin, the one she used to trace absently while they lay together in bed.

  Erich inclined his face down towards her, so that a few strands of his deep black hair tickled her forehead. The wardrobe’s iron handles dug into her back. He wound a red curl around his finger, stroked it gently with his thumb. “What you heard me ask Lukos about in the chamber—That’s how much I love you, Ella. That’s how much I need you. Do you see what being away from you does to me?”

  Daniella pushed him away with what might was left in her. The idea that he thought it romantic that he wanted to turn her into a brainless puppet—it was too much. “Don’t touch me. Don’t . . . don’t even think about touching me.”

  “Tell me what to do to make this better.”

  There was no way he could make it better. But if she said that, he’d only be motivated to try other tactics. The Erich she had known had to be in there somewhere. Perhaps he could be reasoned with.

  “Erich,” she said. “That place, that chamber—I think the seal in the center is—”

  “The Chamber of Binding?” he asked. His face was open and earnest, as if he was thrilled to finally be able to share this with her.

  Daniella’s hands went numb at the confirmation of her suspicions. The dead body of the guard, the voice it had spoken with long ago, standing over the seal. It had been the voice of Maldorath himself.

  Even Erich couldn’t be cavalier about this.

  “If my father is using blood magic, killing off the Drim—this is bigger than you and me,” she said. “He could be working for the god. He could be trying to release Maldorath.”

  Erich’s smile continued.

  Gods. That was exactly what was happening, and Erich already knew.

  “How?” Daniella asked. “I know he’s your commanding officer, but how can you possibly support that? If my father is trying to—”

  “Your father,” Erich said, “is trying to unite the Five Lands, just like Maldorath meant to do. People resisted him and they resist now—because they don’t know what’s good for them. They want to worship dead gods, dulling their senses to the truth—that Maldorath is the one who had it right all along. He’s the only one who gave any of his power to the people. He’s the only one who gave a damn about us. But the other four won, so they must be in the right, yeah? When all they wanted was to preserve their own legacy at our expense.”

  “That’s not what the histories—” Daniella began.

  “The histories,” Erich said, “were all written by the Drim. The Chronicle, too. You’ve read so much, Ella.” He picked up a book from her nightstand. “So much knowledge and all of it lies.”

  She paused. He was right. It had all been written by the Drim, because they were the ones left to write the story after the gods went into the stones. He could counter her that way, no matter what she said. “You think it’s all lies,” Daniella said. “About the armies controlled by blood magic. People made to fight and die against their will, all to enslave others.”

  “All to bring them freedom,” Erich said. “Freedom from false worship. Freedom from tyranny. The gods were people once. Only Maldorath saw the truth—that their dividing up of the land was ridiculous. That allowing people to fight and squabble, separating them into pointless groups so they can argue across their artificial borders—that it’s all a distraction so no one notices that the gods aren’t worthy of worship. That we all could have been like them, if they’d only been willing to share.” He shook his head in disgust. “But only one of them did. Only Maldorath.”

  Daniella stared at him. “I can’t believe you think that,” she said. But it took her only a second to realize that wasn’t true. Erich demanded her affection, her forgiveness. He thought he could command her very soul—make her love him.

  That seemed like exactly the sort of person who would believe in the lies of a dark god.

  “You’ve lost your mind,” she said. “You’ve all lost your minds if you’re siding with Maldorath.”

  Erich shook his head at her, like he pitied her. “He had a different name once, you know. The Drim gave him that name.”

  That wasn’t exactly true. Maldorath had once been called something different, before he was given the name that—in the old tongue—roughly translated to “rotted blood.” His original name had been lost, because the Drim refused to write it down, refused to remember it.

  But it hadn’t been the Drim who gave him that new name. It was the Four themselves.

  If he believed the histories to be corrupted, she couldn’t counter him with knowledge. She had to know about the other things Lukos had said. She had to know what she was. Erich ran his fingers down the rough edges of the pages of the book. Daniella wanted to rip it from his hands, wanted to keep him from touching anything of hers, but she made herself stare into his eyes.

  “What did Lukos mean,” she said, “about me being a weapon?”

  Erich took the bait. “The year you were sick. What do you remember about it?”

  Daniella faltered. “I was eleven. I spent the year in bed, in an estate in the country. Adiante’s mother was there with me, and—”

  “It never happened.”

  She stared at him. “What?”

  Erich shook his head. “It never happened, Ella. You remember it, but it’s not real. Your father decided you were becoming too difficult, so you spent the year locked up in the dungeon. You’d still be there today if you hadn’t gone mad. You killed people. The men who were guarding you, the servants in the adjoining rooms, a noblewoman in the hall above you—people you couldn’t even reach or see, some people you’d never met. You killed them all and you don’t even remember it. Your father altered your memories to make it so.”

  Erich drew closer with each word. Daniella’s fingers scraped the wall behind her, but this was no rune wall. She couldn’t use it to escape.

  He was wrong. He had to be. Her father was cold, but he wouldn’t lock her up, especially not in the dungeon. She was his daughter, for the gods’ sakes.

  Erich gave her a rueful smile. “Fortunately, I happen to like weapons.”

  Bile rose in her throat.

  No. Erich was making things up. He was only trying to scare her. And yet something about his words seemed true, like something she’d learned long ago but forgotten. She had no picture of what had happened, but she remembered things, as if from some dim, recurring nightmare.

  The smell of blood and the screaming.

  Daniella’s head spun, and she worried she might black out, leaving herself at Erich’s mercy.

  “You’re lying,” she said. “You’re a fool, and you’ve always been lying.”

  Within the space of a heartbeat, his lip curled, and he threw the book against the wall not two feet from her head. Daniella gasped as pages broke free from the binding and fell with the whisper of leaves.

  His bursts of petulant anger were nothing new to her. Not that long ago, she would have done anything to assuage him, to please him. To make him love her again. It had happened enough times before she’d known the truth about his betrayal, when she thought things were going well in their relationship, that she could see it play before her as if it were theater. Daniella’s hands trembled against the linen of her dress, bunched in fists.

  Erich stared at the broken book, the scattered pages, as if unsure of how it had gotten there. Then he blinked, looked back up at Daniella. “We both know
how good it can be between us. I won’t hurt you if you don’t make me.”

  Her throat was so dry it ached. At that moment, she didn’t care what he threatened. “I won’t be with you again. Not ever.”

  His eyes narrowed, his cheek twitched. He stepped closer, too close, and she could smell his scent, familiar and earthy, cardamom and sweat. “I am the man you made me, Ella. Whatever you think I’ve become, whatever you despise in me, is because of you.”

  The pain in her chest was enough to choke her, this confirmation of fears she hadn’t even known to articulate until his words. More tears flowed, and the small bunches of skirt fell from her numb fists.

  Erich had been so sweet when she’d met him, and she was powerful somehow. Impossible to control.

  Whatever she was, had she done this to him?

  His fingers trailed along her neck; one of his hands was at her back now, pulling her in. She shook her head, turned her eyes away from his, wanting to look anywhere else, but he was too close.

  She saw black eyes open, a child’s dead body standing in a pool of blood. Only it was her standing there, controlled. Vacant. That’s what he had wanted, the craft he wanted to use against her.

  All lies, all of it, every memory and whisper and half-forgotten promise.

  Daniella’s eyelids felt slow and heavy as she closed them. Her muscles were oddly relaxed, as resigned to fate as her tone. “Even with you, I was alone.”

  The words were flat, dead the moment they passed her lips, but Erich reacted as if she had summoned up enough courage to slap him, to spit in his face, to scream and scream like she wanted to but never did. He gritted his teeth, his hand grabbing her roughly around her neck. “Fine,” he said, shoving her back against the wall. “If that’s how you want it. I have the key to your room; I know the guards who watch you when you sleep. I can come for you any time.”

  He released her and took a step toward the door.

  Daniella blinked. She’d expected him to beat her this time, to hit her until she was bloody, and the widening space between them came as a shock. Daniella felt her lip between her teeth and tasted blood.

  But she could see more clearly than she had in a long time—maybe ever, if he was right about her past, about her power, about her sickness.

  She had to get out of this castle, without anyone knowing, without leaving a trace. She had to get away from the lot of them, before one of them found a way to use any part of her—

  The daughter, the woman, or the weapon.

  Seventeen

  After nearly two weeks on the road with Nikaenor, Saara was ready to drown herself in the nearby gurgling brook and be done with it. It wasn’t that Nikaenor didn’t have his uses—he insisted on carrying the heavier pack, even though Saara was clearly in better physical shape, and he was adept at trapping dinner. Roasted bullfrog was far better and less chewy than Saara imagined, and the hill ants he cooked over their fire made a satisfying pop and tasted like hazelnuts. He did have an accent that sounded like he was speaking Sevairnese through a mouthful of choke cherries, and the unfortunate habit of staring at her like some kind of lovesick dog, but he hadn’t tried to touch her—not since she’d threatened him back at the inn.

  But the fact that she was here at all, wandering through the sloping hills and lowland marshes of Foroclae, eating critters for dinner that still resembled their living forms—she had no one to blame for that but her god. And herself, she supposed, for following the feeling that had started building in her sometime just before her boat reached Ithale, forcing her from the inn and out onto the open road.

  Now again her stomach was twisting, her muscles tightening, a restless feeling growing in her limbs, as if every piece of her was trying to deliver a message she couldn’t ignore.

  They were going the wrong way.

  Saara swore and stopped in her tracks, her feet sinking into the mud of this particularly soggy stretch of road. She’d give Foroclae this, though: she’d never imagined any place could be so thoroughly green. Plant life was almost as plentiful here as stone was at home in Tir Neren.

  “I think we need to be moving in that direction,” Saara said, pointing to the south.

  Nikaenor looked up at the sun, shielding his skin—which was now settling into a weathered tan after days of splotching like an angry tomato—and shook his head. “We left the river a few hours back,” he said. “It’ll head to the sea, and we’re walking away from it at the right angle. It’s just getting close to noon, is all. It’s easy to get turned around when the sun is high.”

  “We’re headed west toward Berlaith,” she said. “Now I want to go south instead.” Once she’d said it out loud, it should have sounded more ludicrous. But Nikaenor was nodding, as if he knew it, too.

  Saara was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t some blood mage controlling her, who’d happened to get a hold of some of Nikaenor’s blood as well. But why would the mage be marching her through the gods-damned swamp? And shouldn’t she forget entirely when she was doing things she was compelled to do? Saara didn’t know enough about blood magic to be sure.

  “I don’t want to go toward the sea,” Nikaenor muttered, though he already sounded resigned to it, which led Saara to believe that it was more of a complaint than an objection.

  Being afflicted with the same curse as him—or similar enough, it sounded like, if his god wanted him in pain—felt like Nerendal kicking her in the stomach after knocking her down. Saara shot him a look. “You live by the sea.”

  “I know,” Nikaenor said. “But she hates me.”

  Saara didn’t know what that meant, but she could guess. “Well, the sun hates me, but I still have to walk around under his light. Come on.” She turned to move through a patch of leafy shrubs that looked like they had more promise of growing on solid ground than the rest of the marsh.

  Nikaenor opened his mouth to speak, but stopped at the sound of horses from the west. They both paused, listening as the soft beat of hooves rose over the sounds of the buzzing hair flies and the gurgling of the nearby stream. Looking over the crest of the next hill, Saara could see just enough of those approaching.

  They were wearing uniforms of black and gold.

  “Soldiers,” Nikaenor said. “We need to get off the road.”

  “We’re just walking. Will they really—”

  “Yes.”

  If that was the reason for her southward premonition, at least this curse was finally proving useful. “This way it is, then,” she said. She took another step into the muck, and then immediately regretted it as water squelched through her leather boot.

  “No!” Nikaenor hissed. “We can’t walk through the swamp.”

  “You grew up next to the swamp,” Saara said. “Surely you know how to traverse it.”

  Nikaenor lurched toward her and stopped short, like he’d meant to grab her by the arm but then thought better of it. He beckoned her behind a copse of cypress trees that dripped their long strands of leaves along the road.

  “The swamp near Ithale is cursed,” Nikaenor whispered. “No one goes in it. And even if it wasn’t, there’s all kind of nasties in there to surprise you.”

  Saara muttered at him, paying attention to the sound of the approaching horses. “You think everything is cursed. That sounds like the kind of tale your parents told you to keep you from getting lost.”

  “No,” Nikaenor said. “It’s actually dangerous. And speaking as the person who’s been feeding us this whole time, I think we should at least wait for the next southward road.”

  For a moment Saara thought about leaving him behind, but the idea made her stomach turn, possibly because he was right. She wouldn’t fend for herself terribly well.

  Though she imagined she’d fare better than he would against the soldiers.

  There were three of them, approaching on horseback. Through the strands of cypre
ss, Saara could see that all three carried long swords. Three of them and only one of her, would make for a hard fight, but not an impossible one. And hopefully Nikaenor would at least serve as a distraction.

  “Besides,” Nikaenor whispered. “Didn’t you say that your god wanted you dead? Why are you doing what he tells you to if that’s so? Maybe he wanted you to go west because he wants you to come back to Tirostaar so he can kill you.”

  Saara frowned. “Maybe so. But I only let you come along because it seemed like the right thing to do. Are you planning to kill me? Perhaps I should sneak off in the night and leave you behind, then go to Mortiche, like your brother said.”

  Nikaenor shut his mouth. “Fine. Though now if you do that, I’ll know where you’re headed.”

  Saara rolled her eyes. She had no intention of abandoning him, only of making her point.

  They both fell silent as the soldiers neared. With so few of them moving at such slow speed, they were most likely messengers or a scouting party. Saara could hear Nikaenor muttering a prayer under his breath, and she shushed him, earning herself a hurt look. When the soldiers had passed, Saara turned to Nikaenor.

  “Mirilina isn’t going to keep soldiers away. She’s in the stone. And you don’t even know where it is, do you?”

  Nikaenor shrugged, swatting at a gnat that landed on his ear. “It doesn’t matter where she is. Her body might be in a stone, but she can still help us.”

  After the mess back in Tirostaar, Saara very much doubted that. “The gods don’t help anyone anymore. Least of all those they’ve cursed.”

  “I don’t know what Nerendal is like, but Mirilina wouldn’t abandon us.” Nikaenor motioned back toward the soldiers. “Especially now, when we need her more than ever.”

  “That’s my point,” Saara said, peering out through the cypress to make sure the soldiers were gone. She could see the flanks of their horses, and one soldier’s outstretched arm dragging through the leaves at the edge of the path as they traveled. “Foroclae lost the war. Mirilina couldn’t protect her people, even against a nation with no god.”