by NS Dolkart
“Your companion?” the guard said. “Not yet.”
“Then you’d better,” Narky told him. “Holding me hostage won’t do you any good. If you want a chance at peace, you have to keep Magerion from finding out what’s happened.”
The guard shouted something, and his fellows gave chase. But even if they did catch him, Narky thought, it didn’t much matter. Their one chance to avoid catastrophe already lay dying on the cavern floor.
45
Partha
Belkos went to his death defiantly, spitting and ridiculing those who had condemned him. “I saved you from lives of slavery!” he yelled at the crowd, a disbelieving smile on his face. “I did what no one else was willing to do, and you’re executing me for it! Have you all turned upside-down? When the Ardismen come to enslave your children, will you throw flowers at them? Will you give them a welcoming feast? What’s the matter with you all?”
“Our God gave us a leader,” the old priestess answered him, “and you murdered him. Do not pretend that you have done some holy thing.”
She sounded so familiar, that priestess. Did Partha know her from somewhere?
Someone threw a rock at Belkos, and then suddenly everyone was doing it. Iona wailed and held her daughter back as the people stoned her husband and left him buried there under the rocks that had killed him. Partha watched too, horrified and yet relieved, suddenly emptied of the anxiety that had been pressing on her since that first awful vision. If Belkos was dead, that meant it was almost over. Almost over.
She couldn’t spot the Black Dragon among the crowd, but she knew this was his fault. He had connived and tricked them all into doing it, and now any minute he would appear and give Iona his mealy-mouthed apology. Partha was so sure of it that even when the stoning was long over and she was alone with her grieving daughter and granddaughter, she couldn’t remember if it had already happened or not.
“Grandma was right,” the young girl sobbed into Iona’s chest. “It’s Criton’s fault they killed him.”
Iona just shook her head and wept.
“It’s the She-wolf too,” Partha told them, but her daughter turned on her. Wait, no. Not her daughter – Iona was her daughter. What was the word she was looking for? It wasn’t “niece,” she didn’t think.
In any case, the girl pulled away from Iona and glared at her. “Bandu’s not even here! She hasn’t been here in weeks, remember? She took Vella and she disappeared.”
“Vella?” Partha asked. “Who’s Vella?”
That made the young one so angry that she screamed and ran from the tent. Oh – Dessa! That was her name! Dessa was furious for some reason.
“Don’t worry about her, Mother,” Iona said, her voice as dead as her husband. “She’ll come back.”
“If you say so, dear.”
Iona was always trustworthy, and this Iona was clearly the real one. Thank goodness she had returned! If only her husband hadn’t been killed by that horrible man and his horrible black wife. Iona deserved happiness, poor thing.
She was staring straight ahead, her eyes fixed on the tent pole. “I can’t believe he did it,” she said. “I can’t believe they took him from us.”
“They always wanted to take him,” Partha told her. “That Black Dragon–”
“The Black Dragon is dead,” Iona snapped. “Belkos murdered him, Mother, that’s why they stoned him. None of this is Criton’s fault.”
Her words baffled Partha – why would Iona lie about this, of all things? Belkos couldn’t have killed the Black Dragon, because the Black Dragon was supposed to apologize for all this! Or had he done it already, somehow? She was confused, far too confused. Just like that, all the anxiety came rushing back. Something was very wrong here, and she couldn’t see where she’d made the mistake. Were her visions lies too? Why would her God do that to her?
Tears sprung to Partha’s eyes. “I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she confessed, and the shame of it swept over her like a flood. “Help me, Iona. I don’t understand it. What’s happening to me?”
Iona’s eyes finally met hers, and they were full of knowledge and pain. “The same as with everyone,” she said, and nearly choked. “The whole world is going mad.”
“But I don’t want this! I hate this!”
“I know,” Iona said, and she put both arms around Partha and held her close. “Me too.”
46
Phaedra
It was like a bad dream: she had returned from the world of the elves just in time to watch her friend die. Criton was gone by the time they’d even bandaged his neck, slipping away into the world beyond. Moments ago she had thought that Olimande’s demise was the worst thing she would experience in her life, and it wasn’t even the worst thing she was experiencing today.
They buried Criton outside the cave, in a grave as deep as the rocky ground would allow. His kin and a huge crowd of human plainsmen all gathered to mourn the man they called the Black Dragon, piling stones atop his grave until the mound was nearly as tall as Criton had been. Little Delika was there, much to Phaedra’s surprise, and she threw herself weeping on the stones until one of the Dragon Touched men gently pulled her away. But still Bandu did not come.
Over the next few hours, the situation became clearer. Bandu was gone, having left Criton for reasons nobody knew or was willing to tell her. Goodweather was with her, as was the wife of another Dragon Touched man. Belkos, the cousin who had murdered Criton, was sentenced by his kinsman and stoned to death, after which a much smaller funeral was held. The murderer’s family cried and could not be comforted – they had lost two beloved family members in one day, and there was nobody close to them who hadn’t taken a hand in the second death.
Narky, now a prisoner, explained the situation that Phaedra’s arrival and Criton’s assassination had disrupted. Criton had died at a crucial moment, just as he was about to end the war the Dragon Touched had waged against Ardis. Magerion, the new king of Ardis, would take that murder as an omen from Ravennis, proving that their God wanted the war to go on until the Dragon Touched had been annihilated.
“Criton’s bastard cousin thought the Dragon Touched should burn Ardis down and build themselves a new city on its ruins,” Narky said. “If Magerion attacks them now, it’ll give them an excuse to try. This is going to end really badly.”
“Bandu needs to be told,” Phaedra said. “I don’t know what went on between her and Criton, but she’s the only one who can bring him back.”
“Bring him back?” Narky repeated. “That’s possible?”
“It’s possible,” Phaedra answered. “It’s also incredibly dangerous. We’d have to find an entrance to the underworld, which I don’t know how to do; then the journey down is its own trial, and beyond that, no one knows. There’ll almost certainly be a price for bringing him back, but I haven’t the faintest idea what it might be. As far as I know only one person has ever brought someone back from the underworld, and his story of how he did it changed depending on who asked. The nature of the place may even have changed since then, for all I know.”
“It has,” Narky said. “Ravennis has taken the underworld as His domain, where His worshippers are rewarded and His enemies punished. That’s the good news. If my God wants this peace as much as I thought He did, He’ll be very supportive of a quest to bring Criton back.”
“You don’t think this really is an omen then?”
“If it’s an omen, it’ll be from God Most High and not Ravennis. I could see the point of sacrificing Laarna, and then the Graceful Servant, but Ardis? I can’t see how that would benefit Ravennis at this point, and I think we can all agree that He’s not planning on beating God Most High in battle.”
Phaedra stopped him there. “The Graceful Servant is dead?”
Narky nodded. “I’m the high priest of Ravennis now. What did you think I was doing here?”
They had plenty of time to talk and catch up on each other’s news: the Dragon Touched had no intention of letting
Narky escape back to Ardis, but they clearly didn’t know what to do with him otherwise. For now, they seemed to have settled uneasily on the notion that he was an important guest whom nobody had anything to say to, and who for some reason could not be allowed to leave. There had already been some talk of executing him instead, but that seemed to be on hold for now. Hopefully the side of mercy would prevail.
Phaedra learned from Narky about all that had happened in Ardis and Anardis, about the fall of Magor and the rise of Magerion and Ravennis, about Narky’s marriage to Ptera and his acclimation to the role of high priest. In return, she told him of her travels with Hunter, and of all that had happened since they had last seen each other.
The Dragon Touched had no idea what to do with Phaedra, and did not seem particularly interested in detaining her, so it would be up to her to find Bandu when the time came. She conferred with Narky about how best to prepare Bandu for the underworld, should she choose to go. Narky kept wishing aloud that he could be more helpful – it seemed wrong that the high priest of Ravennis should have so little to contribute.
“Would you bless a token?” Phaedra asked. “For Bandu to take with her, as a symbol of your support?”
“I have this,” Narky said, reaching for the silver chain around his neck, but Phaedra stopped him.
“Not symbolizing Ravennis,” she said. “It’s Ravennis we’re trying to influence. I meant a token symbolizing you.”
She opened the bag that Psander had given her, and took out the two thin pieces of wood that had once been a crossbow bolt. Narky gasped when he saw them.
“I can’t bless that,” he said. “Where did you get that?”
“It’s what made you who you are,” Phaedra countered. “You wouldn’t be here without it. You wouldn’t even have worshipped Ravennis, and now you’re His high priest.”
Narky stared at the broken bolt for a long moment. Then he took it in his two hands and said, “Ravennis, as You know me, let this relic from my past stand for my presence as my friend journeys to meet You. Guide Bandu safely to You as if I were at her side, and return her safely to us, with Criton by her side. I ask this of You as Your servant, knowing that You are a God of Mercy as well as Fate, and that the Fates can bend if You so desire it. As I have asked, let it be so.”
When he handed the pieces back to Phaedra she took them reverently. “That was beautiful, Narky,” she said. “I had no idea you could compose such a prayer.”
“Well,” Narky said with a wry smile, “I’ve had practice.”
Phaedra smiled back. She had always had a soft spot for Narky. He wasn’t a fundamentally nice or decent person, but he wished he was, and so every gesture of kindness and generosity was a hard-earned victory, a triumph of intent over instinct. He had improved since she’d last seen him, and not just because he seemed more comfortable with himself. It was also good to see him more concerned about his wife in Ardis than about his own survival among the Dragon Touched. The craven boy she knew was outgrowing his past.
She had never asked him about the man he had killed with that crossbow bolt. As long as she didn’t know the details, she could relate to Narky as he was in the present, without burying who he was now underneath that sordid history. All she knew was that it had been murder.
She parted with Narky late in the afternoon and set out to find Bandu. She did not take directions from the Dragon Touched, but set out northward so as not to be caught between opposing armies should Narky’s assumptions turn out to be correct. She lay down to rest that night under a spell Psander had taught her to ward against rain, but the weather stayed thankfully dry, so she did not have to test it. In the morning, she set her tracing spell.
The major ingredient in the spell was the dirt that she and Hunter had collected with Atella in the area her map had indicated as somehow significant to Bandu. Phaedra wished she knew what that significance was, but the spell ought to function either way. She knelt, pulling dirt out of the bag by the handful. Thankfully, the soil quality was different here, and Bandu’s rich black dirt stood out against the ground as Phaedra formed the intricate design that her academic forbears had developed. The design was meant to represent a world crisscrossed by roads, and its purpose was to draw on the Traveler God’s power without alerting Him to the fact. The use of Bandu’s dirt to draw the design itself was a forced modification, since the classic spell would have required Phaedra to destroy an item belonging to the individual she wanted to track. Phaedra knew of no way to destroy dirt, and she hoped this would do. When she had finished the design, she removed her right shoe and stepped barefoot in the center.
The spell worked beautifully. Almost as soon as Phaedra’s toes had touched the ground, a second footprint, a left one, appeared on the ground in front of her. It was smaller than Phaedra’s print, and it was dark like the Tarphaean soil. Phaedra slipped her shoe back on and began to follow Bandu’s tracks.
The tracks went on and on, and it was hard not to worry about what awaited her at the end. What if Bandu refused to retrieve Criton? It worried Phaedra that they didn’t know why Bandu had left him. She and Narky had acted as if Bandu’s willingness to undertake the journey was a given, but was it? What if Criton had hurt her, or harmed their child? There were so many possibilities, so many potential reasons for Bandu to decide to let her husband stay dead.
And if she did refuse the journey that Phaedra suggested, did Phaedra dare to attempt it herself, given the risk that her failure and death might doom the entire world? If not, what right had she to ask Bandu to risk her own life?
There were other worries too – plenty of them. She worried that she hadn’t studied enough to prepare Bandu – or herself for that matter – for the trials that awaited below. She had let that list of failures dissuade her from reading any more of Psander’s materials on the subject – what if one of the scrolls she hadn’t read held some essential piece of knowledge, without which any attempt to breach the underworld was doomed?
For one thing, Phaedra didn’t even know how to find an entrance to the world below. The spell that Maira the wizard-king had used to reach his wife had clearly been much celebrated and publicized in wizarding circles in the years after his journey, but after so many had died using it, the wizarding council known as the Blasphemous Clairvoyants had restricted all access to it. The Clairvoyants had had their own seal, and Phaedra had dug through all of Psander’s books that bore it, but none had included Maira’s spell. She had some idea of how to develop a new spell, but that would carry its own risks.
After the second day of walking, Phaedra began rationing her food. It would have been easy to stop at one of the villages now allied with the Dragon Touched, but she did not know if her tracking spell could accommodate a detour. The footprints behind her always disappeared as soon as she had passed them, and she was afraid that straying from the path might cause the entire spell to dissipate.
Three days later, hungry and tired, she came to a woodcutter’s cottage. Outside it, a Dragon Touched woman about her age was busily clearing space for a garden, with an infant on the ground beside her contentedly eating dirt. The infant was Goodweather – no doubt about it. She had dark skin and tight curly hair, and her face, though much developed since the last time Phaedra had seen her, was unmistakable.
“Hello,” Phaedra said, and the woman jumped to her feet startled. “I’m looking for Bandu.”
“Why?”
“I need to speak with her,” Phaedra said. She felt she ought to save her news for when Bandu was present, and she wished the woman wouldn’t eye her so suspiciously. “I’m a friend,” she said.
“Yes, I see that,” the woman said, wiping the dirt off her hands. Of course she’d know Phaedra was a friend: she was clearly an islander, and she had asked for Bandu by name – Bandu didn’t have any enemies like that.
“Stay here,” the woman added, “I’ll bring out some food.” She scooped Goodweather up and went inside, and Phaedra was left outside to wonder. When she came back
with a bowl of vegetable soup in one hand and Goodweather in the other, Phaedra said, “I could have watched Goodweather out here, you know.”
“Oh, no need,” the young woman said, but she smiled tentatively and Phaedra could tell she was embarrassed about giving one of Bandu’s friends such a cool reception.
Phaedra took the soup gratefully. “Is Bandu out foraging?” she asked.
A nod.
Goodweather, oblivious to the tension between the adults, gave Phaedra a big smile. “Is that a tooth?” Phaedra asked.
“It broke through the gums a week ago. I’m sorry – I’m Vella.”
“Vella,” Phaedra repeated. “I’m Phaedra. Did you come here with Bandu to be Goodweather’s…?”
She had been about to say “nursemaid,” but she broke off. She had seen Bandu feed the baby herself without any trouble, and Vella was too young and thin to have recently had a baby and lost it, as Kelina once had. Yet she was acting just as possessive of Goodweather as Kelina had been of Phaedra, almost like a second mother.
She ate her soup in silence.
As she was finishing with it, Vella looked up past her shoulder and said, “Your friend Phaedra is here,” and Phaedra turned to see Bandu coming toward them, a pile of mushrooms in her skirt. She dropped these and ran to Phaedra, who rose to embrace her.
“I have bad news,” Phaedra said. “Criton is dead.”
Bandu let out a cry, looking horror-stricken. “He is dead?”
“His cousin Belkos killed him.”
“No,” Bandu said, “they are friends!”
“I know,” Phaedra said. “But listen, it’s worse than that. Criton was about to make peace with Ardis, to end their war. Belkos killed him before that could happen.”
Bandu did not weep; she only shook her head and looked sick. “They want to eat Narky,” she said nonsensically. “Vella, they kill him because they want to eat Narky, and Narky is Ardis.”