Beyond the Shadowed Earth

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  For a moment, Eda’s eyes were drawn to the city gates, where the shadow-god stood, his piercing gaze meeting hers. Words echoed suddenly in her ears, and she knew that, at long last, the god was speaking to her: Fulfill your vow. Honor your oath.

  She opened her mouth to reply, but Tuer’s Shadow melted into dust motes swirling in the sunlight, and she was left to wonder if he’d been there at all.

  “Your Imperial Majesty?”

  She jumped, realizing Ileem was looking at her expectantly, realizing there was more to do. How long had she been staring after the god?

  She drew a sharp breath, and turned to her Barons. “Perhaps Rescarin’s biggest sin is that he did not reduce Evalla’s army, as he swore to all of us he did. He’s swelled its ranks with mercenaries instead, planning not only to depose me, but to get rid of all of you as well. He planned to march on the city next week. He planned to execute you, one by one.” Eda had no idea if that last bit was true, but it had the desired effect.

  Baron Lohnin drew his dagger and rushed at Rescarin, pinning him up against the wall beside the gate. “You traitorous bastard!”

  “Lohnin, please,” said Eda calmly. “Justice will be meted out in due time. For now—” She met Rescarin’s eyes. “For now, take him away and throw him into the dungeon. We’ll figure out what to do with him later.”

  Rescarin swore, batting Lohnin’s dagger aside and lunging at her.

  But the very guard who had taken Eda off her horse seized him by either arm and dragged him away.

  Eda crossed to where Domin stood, a little apart from the others. She gave him her most brilliant smile. “You are to be commended, Baron Domin, for bringing proof just when it was needed. My loyal subject. My most faithful servant.”

  She wasn’t a fool. She knew Domin had been the one to steal those documents from her and take them to Rescarin—which is why he knew how and where to find them again. She knew he had been playing at double-crossing her this whole time, and that he knew that she knew it. But that just gave her one more hold over him. “To reward you for your loyalty, I’m giving you the Governorship of Evalla in Rescarin’s stead. You command two provinces now, Domin.”

  Fear sparked in Domin’s eyes. He understood she was telling him she owned him, that one more misstep and she wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of him.

  Domin bowed, very low. “What is your first task for me as Baron of Evalla, Your Imperial Majesty?”

  “Take five hundred guards and see to it that the mercenaries Rescarin hired are sent away and Evalla’s army is truly reduced. If he owes them money, you have my permission to take it from Evalla’s treasury. See they are compensated immediately.” She worked the ring off the littlest finger on her right hand, and offered it to Domin. “This is as good as my presence. Show it to Evalla’s steward, and he will follow your every order.”

  Domin took the ring, and bowed again. “Thank you, Your Imperial Majesty.” He strode from the courtyard with new confidence.

  “As for the rest of you.” Eda turned her full attention to the remaining two Barons, who stood eyeing her with new respect. Ambassador Oadem looked bewildered, and Eda thought she saw a spark of admiration in Liahstorion’s eyes. “There will be no more undermining my rule, my words, my decisions. You are to govern your provinces, bring me accurate and timely reports, and offer council if and when I request it. That is the sum and total of your duties in Eddenahr. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Your Imperial Majesty,” they said in unison, none of them quite daring to meet her gaze.

  She issued a few more sharp commands, dismissing the army and sending everyone else away. For a moment she staggered where she stood, and Ileem caught her arm. “Go and see her,” he said gently. “Go and see your friend.”

  Eda shut the door to the little bedchamber so she and Niren could be alone. There was no change. Niren was gray and still, more shadow than not. Eda smoothed the hair back from Niren’s brow. She drew out a jar of ashes and oil and, opening it, smeared part across her friend’s forehead and part across her own, as if Niren were a memorial stone Eda had come to petition beside.

  “I’m not letting you go,” Eda whispered. “I’m going to save you. I swear it.” She kissed the mixture on Niren’s forehead; flakes of ashes stuck to her lips, and the oil was bitter.

  She left Niren and went to the stables, surprising the attendants there by saddling a horse herself—not Naia, who needed to rest from the last two days. Eda didn’t wait for her guard to finish readying his own mount—she rode away alone, urging her horse as fast as it could run.

  Hot wind rushed past Eda’s ears; the desert blurred before her. Still she craved more speed, every pulse of her heart crying out Please be in time, please be in time.

  She pulled up to the temple site in a blur of heat and dust. The masons and builders were back at work, unloading the stone from the wagons, stirring vats of mortar, hauling the stone up the temple steps with ropes and pulleys. The walls were already a little taller than when Eda and Ileem had been there last.

  Eda swung down off her horse, and climbed the steps, weaving her way through the workers. Her body felt on the cusp of unraveling; she wondered what bound her together, if it was hope or fear or something else entirely.

  She paced through the unfinished temple until she came to the place where the altar to Tuer would be, in the inner chamber. There was nothing there now besides a shard of broken glass, a mirror that reflected the blinding heat of the sun. Eda frowned and brushed the glass away. She knelt on the stone floor. She hadn’t wiped off the ashes and oil from her oblation in Niren’s chamber, and the oil, warm from her ride, dripped down her face like tears.

  Eda stripped her sleeve and drew her dagger, staring for a moment at her left hand. Marks of previous petitions marred her, the worst one being the recent cut in her palm. She unlatched her gold arm cuff, and without further deliberation, sliced her blade across the middle of her forearm. The pain was sharp and swift, and the blood welled.

  She let the blood drip on the stone until red obscured the dust before the absent altar. “Send her back to me,” said Eda. “Send her back. The temple will be finished, just like I promised. The people will turn to you. You have no cause to take her, now. I’m fulfilling my oath. I’m honoring my vow. Honor yours. Send her back. Please.”

  There came no answer, no ghosts, no gods, but it seemed like the world held its breath, a great hush resounding through the temple. And then a gust of wind ripped past her, tearing at her hair and drying the oil on her face. It smelled like roses, like fire. She blinked, and the blood on the stone was gone.

  Eda stood, sheathing her dagger, cinching her arm cuff back on over her wound. She had done her part. Tuer had heard her.

  Now it was time for him to relinquish his hold on Niren. To return to Eda the price of her vow.

  Chapter Thirteen

  EDA POINTED HER HORSE BACK TOWARD THE PALACE. The heat of the day was overwhelming, and she longed to be back inside, to have a languorous soak in her marble bath, to be clean for the first time in what felt like a very long time. But most of all she wanted to be back at Niren’s side. She wanted to be there when her friend awoke, and if she didn’t wake, if the gods took her despite everything—

  Well, then Eda would make them pay.

  A rider came toward her across the plain, and her heart seized up when she recognized Ileem. He had changed, since the gate, into a bright yellow robe that flowed around him like liquid light, with a matching headscarf sewn with diamonds that flashed and danced. He was bright as the sun, and she realized how much she wanted him always shining in her sky.

  A strange hopeful eagerness welled up inside her as he reined in his mount next to hers. But his dark eyes were serious, almost angry. “You went to the temple alone, didn’t you? You called the gods alone. Why didn’t you wait for me? I would have invoked Rudion for you.”

  Something went tight and hard in her chest. “I was invoking the gods long before you
came, Ileem Emohri. It’s my vow in question. My friend’s life hanging in the balance. It had to be me, and it had to be alone. You couldn’t do it for me. Not this time.”

  His expression softened, and he looked suddenly stricken. He reached out to tuck a loose strand of Eda’s hair behind her ear, caressing her cheek as he drew his hand away again. “Forgive me. I understand that my bond with Rudion is different from yours. That it must be. Did he come to you? Did he speak to you?”

  The scorching wind dragged dry fingers across Eda’s face. “He accepted my offering. I hope it will be enough.”

  “The gods have favored us since Raiva’s Well. They will not forsake your friend, not now.”

  She studied him, and asked the question that was gnawing at her. “Where did you get the vial?”

  “Rudion gave it to me, the night of my arrival. He said to keep it close, that I would have need of it. I didn’t know what it was until … until our ride to Raiva’s Well.”

  “And you don’t despise me, even though—”

  He smiled at her, soft and sad. “I don’t despise you, even though. I know it was Rudion guiding your hand. It’s how he allowed you to take the crown. It’s how he punished the Emperor for his crimes.”

  The knot inside her eased, and she found she didn’t feel the heat as much as she had a moment ago.

  Once more Ileem’s hand found her face. He stroked her cheek and she shut her eyes, leaning into him. “You kept your promise,” she told him. “Helped me destroy Rescarin. Enabled temple construction to resume.”

  “So I did, with the aid of my god.”

  “Our god,” she corrected gently.

  “Our god.”

  She opened her eyes to find Ileem’s face a breath away from hers, his dark gaze piercing through her. “Might I ask for an amendment to the peace treaty between our two nations, Your Imperial Majesty?”

  A thrill went through her. She brushed her fingers along the line of his jaw. “You may.”

  He cupped both his hands around her face, drawing her close as their mounts shifted underneath them.

  The gold specs in his irises seemed to dance; his breath was laced with the scent of cardamom tea.

  “Will you be my wife, Eda of Enduena?” he asked.

  She closed the remaining distance between them with a kiss, and let that be his answer.

  Later, much later, she sat at the window in her bedchamber, staring out at the white stars. She tried to examine her joy about Ileem but she couldn’t quite make sense of it. How could she be happy when Niren lay still as death in her bed?

  There had been no change in her when Eda arrived back at the palace—none at all.

  “What were you expecting?” the palace physician had asked Eda with a quizzical frown. “A miraculous recovery?”

  Beneath her arm cuff, her wound itched and ached. Yes. That’s exactly what she expected.

  The night stared back at her, empty, blank. She swore at the stars.

  She rose and put on her favorite dressing gown, the deep green one with the white embroidery. If she couldn’t sleep, there was no reason Rescarin should.

  She left her rooms by the respectable route, collecting her guard from the corridor. She made her way confidently through the palace, across the courtyard, and down a set of narrow, dirty stairs to the lower level. To the prison.

  She hadn’t been down here in over a year, not since she’d paid a similar visit to her erstwhile rival. Even thinking about Talia made Eda’s lip curl in disgust, though she was far away in Ryn and wasn’t Eda’s problem anymore.

  Eda came to the first locked gate and barked at the guard who kept it to let her through. He did, bowing hastily, and ordered the guard beyond to escort her to Baron Rescarin’s cell.

  Eda was pleased to find that Rescarin had been installed in the darkest, dingiest cell possible at the very back of the prison. She grabbed a torch from the wall and brought it near the cell door, illuminating the interior. She was pretty sure there was a dead rat in one corner. The whole place smelled awful, like human waste and mold and fear.

  Rescarin had been curled up on the narrow stone shelf that served as a bed on the back wall, but he scrambled to his feet at her arrival, tripping over himself and landing in a heap on the grimy floor.

  Eda sneered down at him, in the safety of her torch and the bars between them. “Oh Rescarin, look at you. You’re not bearing up at all as well as I thought you would.”

  He didn’t seem affected by her jibe, a kind of wan humor in his eyes. “I underestimated you, Eda. I hadn’t thought you’d ensnare that Denlahn jackal to do your dirty work for you.”

  “I rather like my Denlahn jackal. We’re to be married, you know.”

  Rescarin gave a bark of laughter. “Are you?”

  “At the Festival of Uerc.”

  His grin stretched to his ears. “I never thought our little Bastard Empress would lose her heart to anyone, let alone a foreigner. An enemy.”

  “You’re the one who wanted peace with them. And he suits me.”

  Rescarin shook his head like she was some kind of witless child. “You have known him, what, a week? And you fancy yourself in love? You don’t know anything about him.”

  “I know enough. And what’s it to you, anyway? You’ll be dead soon.”

  “That’s rather tiresome. I’d hoped you had some sort of ridiculously elaborate banishment planned for me, like you had for that other courtier—what was her name? I don’t remember. She was forgettable.”

  “Shut up. I didn’t come down here to listen to you prattling.”

  His eyes met hers with a sudden, deadly seriousness. “Then why did you come? To make yourself feel powerful? Empires rise and fall, Eda. I would take care for yours.”

  “I’m disbanding your mercenaries. There’s no other threat to me.”

  He laughed again, his eyebrows tilting upward. “You’ll regret that, I think.”

  “I’ve won, Rescarin. I would think you would show a little more respect to the person who holds your very life in her hands.”

  “I’m not afraid of you, Eda. I know you put on a good show, but the truth is, you’re still that scared little girl who would rather sit in a room with her parents’ dead bodies than do anything to fight for the province she claimed to love so much.”

  “I was nine!” she screamed. “You took everything from me, and I swore to myself that one day I would take everything back. One day, I would repay you for everything you did that night. Everything you stole. Now I can.”

  Rescarin shrugged. “Then kill me, if you like. Afterward you’ll have nothing left to hate, and no one to blame for your failures but yourself.”

  His words were calculated, and hit their mark. They bit deep. Eda hated that he knew it. She would never stop hating him.

  “Perhaps I won’t kill you,” she said quietly. “But I can certainly make you regret being alive.”

  She wheeled on the prison guard. “Cut his fingers off. All of them. Send word when it’s done.”

  “What’s wrong, Your Imperial Majesty?” called Rescarin. “You don’t have the stomach to see it done?”

  She turned for one last look at the man she had hated since childhood. “You mistake me, Rescarin. I’m afraid if I stay any longer, I’ll kill you myself.”

  She dreamed of climbing down into Raiva’s Well, down and down, but no matter how far she went, she could never seem to reach the bottom. Then she was in the sacred pool in the mountain, the water lapping up over her waist. But she looked down and saw it wasn’t water at all—it was blood. Rescarin laughed at her, reaching for her with scarlet hands, and the goddess Raiva turned her face away.

  Far away, someone was weeping. A great darkness came into view, a god in chains. His head was bowed, his shoulders shaking, and she knew it was the god who wept. She stepped up to him. “What is wrong, my lord?”

  But he didn’t answer.

  The room filled up with blood, and Eda woke, gasping, to a sharp rap
on her door.

  She jerked upright in bed, heart pounding wildly. A glance at the window told her she’d slept late—well past midmorning.

  The palace physician stood there, her eyes wide with shock. “She’s awake. Your Imperial Majesty, the Marquess is awake.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  EDA DIDN’T STOP FOR ANY OF HER usual morning rituals. She stepped from her bed, grabbed a fresh silk dressing gown and shrugged into it as she brushed past the physician.

  Out in the corridor, she ran. For the first time in her life she didn’t care who saw her or what impression she made. Nothing mattered but reaching Niren’s side as quickly as possible, to see for herself that her friend had truly rejoined the land of the living.

  She burst into Niren’s chambers, pushing past the gaggle of attendants and a few exceptionally nosy courtiers who had come to gape. She spared a backwards glance at her guard. “Get them out of here.”

  “Your Imperial Majesty?”

  “Get them all out!”

  And then she flung open the bedroom door to find Niren sitting up in bed, warm color in her cheeks.

  Eda’s heart wrenched. Tears pressed against her eyes. She stared at Niren, disbelieving.

  She shut the door, and settled into the chair by Niren’s bedside.