“Then who was it meant for?” Esbat asked, but she looked at me when she said it. Morainn followed her eyes, a slight frown wrinkling the bridge of her nose, extending the waxy scar tissue that covered one of her eyes.
“The gods, perhaps? We can only guess,” Gannet answered. Everyone considered this for a moment in silence. I moved to sit beside my mother, our knees touching as I, too, regarded the text. I wished for the gown I had worn in Ambar, the one embroidered with the characters that had identified me as Theba, that told the parts of the goddess’s story that had come before me. I was sure they were here, too, that their trail would, perhaps, reveal the way to the man whose mortal life she had sullied.
As I considered Theba’s corruption of the love between Shran and Jemae, a thought occurred to me. “Where was Jemae laid to rest?” I glanced sidelong at my mother. If anyone here would have the answer, it would be her.
My mother’s brows crept toward her hairline at the question.
“I’m not sure. She was always a figure cast in the shadows of her husband and sons,” my mother returned quietly, commanding everyone’s attention in an instant. “She began her life that way, and I expect she ended it that way, too. It was common among the First People, who numbered few in his time, to arrange marriages for their children almost upon conception. Families schemed to prolong their gifted lines, their lives unnaturally long and their abilities unique to an ancient time. Shran’s mother was the daughter of one such house, as was Jemae’s.
“A fortune-teller laid her hands upon each woman’s belly and spoke of the fish-little ones within, hands reaching for each other before they had even been born. She claimed that they would weather the ages together, that more than the bonds of blood and marriage would unite them.
“As is the way of fortune-tellers, of course, she could not say what or why. But it is also the way of those who elicit the attentions of such folk to believe without reason, and both mothers carried her words in their hearts. Jemae and Shran shared a birthing day, which was considered doubly lucky, and a formal betrothal was arranged for their eighteenth year. Jemae passes largely out of history until their marrying day.”
My mother’s silence stretched long enough to indicate the short tale’s conclusion, but already I was dwelling on what she hadn’t said. It had never occurred to me before how unfair it was, and Morainn’s snort confirmed that she felt the same. We had so many of Shran’s stories, but so few of his bride, who had been so wronged by the life they had shared. But it was his life we remembered, Shran’s histories that we told.
I reached out to stroke the pages again, turning and turning.
“What would Jemae’s name look like, written this way?” I asked.
We had already pored over the text, noting every mention of Shran and finding little to recommend him, let alone reveal the location of his tomb. It was Gannet who answered me now. He strode forward, dipping his fingers swiftly in his long-neglected cup of tea and tracing the outline of a relatively simple character on the smooth surface of the table. It would require careful reading to spot.
Even as I studied the symbol he’d traced on the table, Gannet thumbed through the pages, landing upon one we had visited earlier. There was Jemae’s name in a large, florid script. He circled the table, observing from a different angle.
“Look, curled into her name, here,” he said, pointing. I leaned forward. We all did.
“From mild depths loveliness springs,” he recited, and my eyes followed his tracing finger in the air, on the page, the unfamiliar characters suddenly taking on the countenance of water lilies. I felt it had always been this way with the book: where at one moment there were only scribbles and mystery, the next, sense could spring from chaos. When he continued, my breath caught in my throat.
“Where I have bathed in love, let me forever rest.”
“There used to be a river north of the city,” Esbat announced. I saw another map in her mind, different than the one we’d been studying the day before. She must have uncovered something new. “Jemae was fond of swimming there. Perhaps she is there, or Shran. Or both.”
I was standing and Gannet, too. We knew we didn’t have the time to waste.
“Go,” my mother said, reaching for her cup, her grimace of worry disguised when she lifted it to her lips to drain it. “Please be careful.”
She looked small to me then, diminished, and when I picked up the book, I laid a hand tentatively against her shoulder. It was a touch that might once have comforted me, and the reversal of the gesture left me with a strangely heavy heart. Gannet and I hadn’t gone more than a few steps outside the chamber before I felt Morainn behind me. I stopped, catching his sleeve between my fingers and arresting his progress, too.
“There are icons with the imposter,” she said. “Why would they follow her? They must know she isn’t Theba.”
“You said she made promises she couldn’t keep,” Gannet answered, a cold edge in his voice. “We’re just as susceptible to hope as anyone else.”
Morainn’s lips parted in surprise, her eyes wide with it.
“You never used to be.” Her gaze slid from her brother to me, and the brow above her sighted eye cocked in interest. I flushed. “I’m going to have a chat with your brother. I was told he has an interest in Ambarian battle tactics. I may be able to help with that.”
She was moving in the opposite direction before I could ask if she meant herself, or the guards she had brought with her. Or both.
“Do you think that Ji found what we’re seeking?” Gannet asked once we were above ground, moving toward the increasingly armed perimeter that surrounded the palace. “That she used it?”
I shrugged. “There are icons for every god I know in stories. If she had, I would think we’d have stories of the god, but no icon.”
We passed a line of pikes, their tips coated in oil that would either poison, or burn. I didn’t stop to determine which.
“Maybe not,” Gannet countered, his imagination dark. “If you kill a god, will they ever have been? Will their worship be undone, as well?”
I considered his words as we passed under an archway, a discreet vessel of fire oil fixed to the ancient keystone. When struck with a flaming arrow or other projectile, it would carry that fire to whoever was unlucky enough to be passing this way. Our forces had been at work, then. I hoped it would be enough.
“I’m more worried that if she never found it, we won’t, either,” I replied, lowering my voice to a whisper as we moved into the ruins. It was an hour’s walk, at least, to the city’s northern edge, and without having to creep for fear of discovery. It was too slow, too much of what little time we had left eaten up in silence and worry.
Finally, the ruins around us began to thin, the lower and lesser buildings of the city’s outer edges having given up their shape and substance to the sand long ago. We were more exposed, but there was nothing to be done for it. I had trouble even here separating the two worlds that wavered before me. I saw the phantoms of once-bright market tent fabrics flapping, heard the creak of the carts of tea vendors, my nostrils flaring at the long-absent scents of horse and camel traders.
And the water. I heard the splash of boats and the thump of sandals against a muddy bank. Gannet had drawn close to me the fewer buildings there were to disguise us, and I touched a hand to his arm, wishing that I could share what I saw. He soaked up my disappointment instead, for rather than the sloping bank of the river that had once run here, swift and blue-green with life, there was bare rock, the sweep of a dune. We couldn’t even see the ancient bed, and there was nothing that resembled a structure, temple, tomb, or otherwise.
“We’ve wasted hours,” I moaned, shading my eyes against the sun, regretting the distance it had made toward the horizon. “If there’s anything here, I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking.”
Gannet moved behind me, searching my pack and recovering the book. He turned to the page we had read, hands tracing the wild characters.
/> “Depths,” he murmured. “Was there something under the water, perhaps?”
“Even if there was, how would we get to it?” I threw up my hands, the wind catching my sleeve, lifting the sand at my feet in an artful dance. My mouth went dry. “I have a very dangerous idea.”
“How dangerous?”
“We’re very likely to be seen.”
Gannet cast around, lips flat with concern. “That could happen at any moment anyway.”
It wasn’t a rousing endorsement, but it was enough.
“Stand back, then. And you’ll want to close your eyes, I think.”
I took my own advice, eyes roving behind my eyelids, feeling the grains of sand against my calves, my scalp, beneath my nails. I brushed them away with my mind, feeling them lift and scatter. I pushed out, my hands following the path my mind was making, parting the sands ahead of us like a plow. Creating a path. A sandstorm. A way down, a way back into time. The sound was like nothing I had ever heard before, a thunderclap but smooth, like tearing a great sheaf of parchment and scattering the continent-sized scraps to the wind.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the layers of stone, what had once been sediment lining the river’s bottom, and I saw, too, the regular shape of many interlocking stone plates near the ancient river’s deepest point. Boats would not have run afoul there, and only the bravest swimmers would have sought entry by this way.
I grinned at Gannet, giddy as a fool who has just demonstrated a new trick. We clasped hands and moved cautiously forward into the riverbed, each of us eyeing the wall of sand pushed precariously up on either side. But even as we considered this danger, I became aware of another. Voices, thoughts, hurried feet. We slid the last few lengths into the bed and onto our bellies. Gannet flattened himself next to me, length to length, but I hardly noticed his touch. My heart was pounding, and I thought I felt a vibration in the stone, in the sand underfoot, in response.
But it wasn’t me.
Several minutes passed before a shadow lengthened above us, then many shadows, moving quickly.
“You’re certain you saw someone?”
“Absolutely certain.”
Low voices, urgent. I perceived their darting thoughts as I would the movements of scurrying mice wanting a hole to hide in. And behind them, a longer shadow, a broader mind, guarded. This voice was low, too, but with the mellow cadence of the aged.
“You cannot hide, Gannet. You cannot hide her from me.”
I looked up. Framed against the bleak horizon, I could not see her face at first, only her narrow form, swathed in a great cloth to guard against the sun. It was Najat, the Dreamer, the icon from Jhosch. I could not read her, could not see if she meant us good or ill, only rose slowly when Gannet did, waiting. Behind her, several Ambarian soldiers wavered, weapons raised but frightened eyes betraying their lack of desire to use them against us. They recognized Gannet, and me they guessed at, fearing and hoping that they were wrong.
“Najat.” Gannet’s voice was measured, the note of caution so slight I might have been the only one to discern it.
“How lucky to find you both together,” Najat replied. At first I thought she raised a hand in friendship, or some ritual greeting, but she held it palm open and facing us, closing each finger until she’d formed a fist. Gannet slumped instantly, and I only just managed to break his fall with my own body, catching him in a limp swoon. I strained, Theba’s strength little interested in this task, and cast a furious look at Najat. I felt the fire call.
She shook her head.
“If you want him to wake again you’ll do just as I say. Kill me, or attempt to flee with him, and he’ll sleep until the day he dies,” she said, voice funeral-quiet. “I have seen his dreams, and yours, too. Do as I say and I’ll return him to you.”
Embers roasted in my belly, and I grunted with the effort of keeping Gannet from sliding to the ground. Measured eyes never leaving my face, Najat motioned for the soldiers to approach and relieve me of my burden. I considered fighting, leaving little more than oil-stink smudges of ash to mark the places their living bodies last stood, but I believed Najat. I had seen enough during my time with the icons in Jhosch to know that each possessed skills, different but no less terrible, than my own.
I allowed the soldiers to lift Gannet between them, touching him carefully first, feeling the warmth of his skin, the shallow but steady intake of his breath. I didn’t look back at the riverbed but shut my eyes briefly, willing just a little of the sand to obscure our discovery.
My eyes cut to Najat when they opened, brutal as a blade’s edge. “You know me and still you serve her?”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.” Najat beckoned with her hands. There was no malice in her voice. She did not enjoy this task but felt it necessary. “I am ready to die. Ready to never come back. She can give me that, can give it to us all.”
Najat couldn’t hide much from me, and she wasn’t trying. She had precious few details to share, besides, but her faith in the imposter’s promise was a blaze to rival my own. And she wanted it, wanted to die, wanted it more than I thought I had ever wanted anything. This made her dangerous.
“We want the same thing. Help me, not her,” I pleaded. I wasn’t sure that I had the whole story, yet, or enough of Ji’s to rewrite my own the way that I wished. But Najat was not a madwoman.
“She wants to talk with you before she kills you,” she said, ignoring my plea. “She sent us ahead for you, when I saw your dreams.”
She guided our small group a little way back into the ruins, but only far enough in to provide cover. We weren’t headed into the city, but around.
“It doesn’t matter what she wants. Theba won’t allow the imposter to succeed,” I continued. The Dread Goddess was coiled hot and low, bristling. I had already known she would not let me die easily, and if there were even a chance that it meant her end, too…she’d set the whole world aflame before she’d let the executioner near. For Theba, there was no other way to die but execution. No quiet exit, no final sleep. Only blood and smoke and screams.
“Theba cannot be allowed to possess what we seek,” Najat answered, her dreamy tone edged with regret. “The one I serve may be mad, but at least she is mortal.”
My heart hammered. I saw the imposter in Najat’s mind, hunched in shadow, wound in silks. I wanted her face, wanted to see it burned away to bone.
No. Not me. Theba.
I shook my head, studying Gannet’s limp form, heart fretting over the clumsy slope of his shoulders in sleep, the loose knees, the dragging boots.
“So am I,” I insisted weakly, feeling my resolve singing at the edges.
“We both know that isn’t true.”
“Well, whatever I am, I won’t be with you long. My family still controls this city.”
“No one controls this city.”
As if in response, there was the sound of tumbling stone, and Najat and the soldiers dropped, weapons steady. After a moment’s hesitation, I joined them, realizing that it would be worse to be seen by my allies than it would be to find my own way out of this. Perhaps Najat was the only one who could wake Gannet, perhaps not. It was lucky for her that my uncertainty was a leash, my love ensuring I showed restraint.
I saw the brief glint of a weapon from a vantage point deeper within the city, high in a window of what I could see-and-not-see had once been a lavish, many-terraced social hall of some kind. The kind of women that Ji had witnessed opening their veins in the temple had come and gone there, forever ago and never again. It was likely a scout there now, one of my brother’s, and there was no way to know if we had been seen or not. We were crouched in rubble, upturned street before us, a low wall alongside that provided a little shade from the blistering glare of the sun.
Najat must have seen the scout, as well, or suspected, for our pace quickened. Rather than continue down the once-broad avenue that would have led us beyond the city walls, she turned back into the ruins, raising a hand to shield her eyes so th
at she could study the stonework on the weathered faces of what had once been homes, shops, houses for worship, for drink, for misdeeds. The soldiers who supported Gannet between them were looking, too, and I took the opportunity to draw just a little bit closer to him, brushing his dragging ankle with mine.
I sensed his thoughts, his consciousness, but he was deep within himself. His mind was night-quiet, dark but for formless musings. I saw his inner self circling one of the flames, his back to me, pale hair unbound. I thought of reaching out to him, but there was a wrongness to his posture, the feeling that even an attempt to rouse him would snuff those lights, one and all.
Najat’s gifts were not mine, and I felt an unfamiliar thrill of fear. Theba stretched her senses into mine, eager to meet this adversary, and I fought her. I needed answers, which meant I needed Najat alive, and Gannet, too.
“In here,” Najat said as she gestured for me to precede her within an imposing ruin, the stone black with age, the roof of sand-blasted stones sagging under what seemed the weight of the whole sky and sun above. I struggled to see it as it had been, but there was nothing to see. The place felt as insubstantial as a breath, though more than capable of crushing the life out of us.
“If we aren’t careful in there, it will come crashing down around us,” I said, hesitating. Najat’s eyes seemed to shrug, daring me. Not ready to die, Theba?
My lips pressed to a thin line and the flash of anger I felt between them, like a smear of color, or blood from a bitten tongue.
“Do you know what happened in this city, many ages ago? They tried to kill gods then, too. It didn’t work. I’ve seen it,” I lied, or rather, offered the half-truths that I had. “I’ve had visions of Re’Kether as it was. A rebellion against the tyranny of gods. If you want to end it, I am closer than anyone else alive to finding out how.”
Najat studied me, and on an impulse, I took a swift step closer and pressed my hand against her cheek, sharing the flashes of the visions that remained with me, the muted colors of the past. She gasped but didn’t move away.
The Dread Goddess--Book of Icons--Volume Two Page 19