Beyond the Shadowed Earth

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  “You’re still too weak,” Morin protested, hovering over his sister like a mother hen.

  But Tainir shook her head. “I have to try. It might already be too late, and he saved you, back there against the spirits. It’s the least we can do.”

  Tainir shut her eyes and put her hands on the ayrrah’s broken wing, a song spilling from her lips. Those golden sparks danced around her face as she sang, and the ayrrah’s wing knit itself back together, the blood fading from the feathers, the bones growing straight again.

  When Tainir finished singing, the ayrrah bowed his head to her, as if she were an Empress, and then he gathered his wings and leapt into the sky.

  Tainir crouched back on her heels, looking after him. “He’s gone to find the others.”

  “I hope he does,” said Eda, though she knew in her heart he would be searching for them the rest of his life.

  Morin gave a sharp nod, his eyes flicking to Eda and then away again. “What now?”

  Eda knew the answer to that, too. She hardened herself to it. “I continue on foot, alone. You two go back.”

  Morin and Tainir exchanged glances.

  Tainir shook her head. “We’re with you until the end, Eda. We’re not leaving you.”

  “You can’t just abandon us on a mountain peak miles and miles from civilization,” said Morin, trying for lightness.

  It was hard for Eda to look at him. She couldn’t stop thinking of his hands, gently spreading salve on her wounds in the flickering firelight. She forced herself to stop, to close herself off to him. “I can’t ask that of either of you. I won’t ask it.”

  Morin’s jaw went hard. “You’re not asking it, Your Majesty. We’re offering.”

  It hurt to hear him call her that, a rigid wall of formality suddenly between them.

  Tainir gripped Eda’s arm. “We’re not discussing this any further. The three of us are stronger together than we would be on our own. We’re coming with you. Now. Morin. Do you know where we are?”

  Morin glanced once at Eda, as if expecting her to protest further, but she didn’t.

  She was glad they were coming. She wouldn’t have been able to bear it if they’d agreed to her going on alone.

  Morin pulled the map out of his pack and unfolded it, tracing their journey along Tuer’s Rise with one finger. “The spirits knocked us a little off course, but I think we’re past the Singing Mountain here, which just leaves a day’s climb that way”—he pointed westward—“until we reach the end of our mother’s map.”

  Eda shivered. “And then?”

  “Then we’d better hope we find Tuer’s Mountain,” he said grimly. “And not tumble off the edge of the world.”

  It was strange, hiking up the mountains after so many days of flying over them. Strange and awful and slow. None of them had breath to spare for talking, so they climbed in silence, winding their miserable way up and up, over a treacherous path of snow and rock. The sky stretched wide above them—it seemed close enough to touch—and the air grew thin. Eda felt like something heavy was pressing against her chest; she couldn’t get a deep breath.

  Clouds gathered dark and fast, and snow came down in thick, smothering flakes. It grew worse the higher they climbed, until Eda couldn’t even see a foot in front of her. Morin had them all stop and put their climbing harnesses on, and then he tied the three of them together with a length of rope before they trudged on into the blinding snow: Morin in front, Eda in the middle, and Tainir behind. Eda was relieved to be tied to Morin with something as solid and tangible as the rope. She wished she could see him, walking just a pace in front of her, but it was enough to know he was there, that the storm wasn’t going to rip him away from her.

  “I should change into the snow leopard,” came Tainir’s voice, the wind whipping it strangely around them. “I could lead us.”

  “We can’t afford to have you weakened again,” Morin called back. “We can’t stop.”

  Eda knew that was true—they had to go on, had to hope they found shelter before they collapsed from exhaustion.

  Not half an hour later they stumbled into a cave on the side of the mountain. It was out of the wind, out of the snow: a miracle. And there was another miracle: a bundle of wood stacked neatly just inside the entrance.

  “The gods are watching out for us,” breathed Morin.

  Anger buzzed down Eda’s spine, but she didn’t say anything. Morin was right—there was no other explanation for the cave and wood to be there.

  Tainir built a fire, and the three of them crouched together around it, their clothes steaming. They drank melted snow and tea. There was no more food in Morin’s pack, and neither he nor Eda would even hear of Tainir going hunting.

  “I could go,” Morin offered.

  “Snow leopards are built for the cold,” Tainir argued. “You’d just get lost and tumble off the mountain.”

  “I’d rather go hungry than lose either one of you,” Eda interrupted.

  Morin jerked his gaze to hers and she was startled to find how much she meant it.

  “No hunting, then,” he said, and made more tea.

  Tainir changed the bandage on Morin’s shoulder while Eda poked at the fire and told herself it made more sense for Tainir to tend him, that it shouldn’t upset her.

  “Neat stitches,” said Tainir appreciatively.

  Morin caught Eda watching and held her gaze. “Not many people can boast of being stitched up by the Empress of Enduena herself.”

  “Former Empress,” Eda corrected.

  “Still.” He smiled at her, and it warmed her from the inside.

  Night fell somewhere beyond the snowstorm. Tainir sat in the cave’s entrance, her back to the fire. She whispered words out into the snow, the thread of her voice tangling with the wind. Gold sparks leapt from her fingers, and Eda thought the gods must be listening. The snow lessened. The wind grew less fierce.

  “The spirits are still out there,” said Eda as Morin settled beside her. “Still watching us. They’ll attack again, when Rudion tells them to.”

  “They won’t touch us. “Morin’s voice held an easy confidence. “At least, not until we reach the Mountain.”

  “You really think we’ll find it?”

  There was a sudden warmth on her knee, and Eda glanced down to find Morin’s hand there, his heat reaching even through the thick weave of her trousers.

  “The gods are leading us there like a hound on a leash. They brought us to this cave, didn’t they? It’s not an accident.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you scared, Eda?”

  At last she turned to face him. There were freckles around his eyes, and she wondered that she’d never noticed them before. “I’m terrified.”

  “Of failing?”

  “Of succeeding.”

  “Why?”

  She stared at his hand, lying so gently on her knee. “Because I don’t know if I have the strength for what comes after.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  She thought of Raiva, wandering in the dark. Of her Barons and Ileem and everything she would have to do to reclaim her throne. She thought of the solitude that would come with her return to power. The loneliness. “Oh Morin. You can’t help me.”

  And she moved away from him, forcing him to drop his hand, putting measured distance between them.

  He didn’t approach her again that night, didn’t attempt to pick up the threads of their conversation.

  Her heart cracked. She’d wanted him to.

  By the morning, the snow had stopped. The three of them trudged on up the mountain in an eerie hush, and Eda couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching them. Morin hadn’t spoken a word to her since they woke up. She tried to tell herself that’s what she wanted, but that was a lie. What she wanted was for him to take her arm, to walk beside her, a solid, steady presence. Peace. Strength. But she knew that was not what the gods had for her. That was not what she had for herself.

  Tainir kept up a c
onstant stream of ancient Words as they walked, gold glints pouring from her lips. Morin’s fingers went constantly to the horn on the cord at his throat. Eda knew he must feel vulnerable, without his ayrrah to call on anymore. She kept her own hand wrapped around the hilt of the Itan priestess’s dagger.

  As they climbed higher, lights began to flash in the distance, glimmering on and off in shades of blue and violet and green, like lamps lit and then instantly blown out. A jarring music rose on the wind, eerie and high and tangled with screams.

  Morin’s jaw tightened, and Tainir’s face blanched with fear; they saw the lights, heard the awful music, too.

  They went on, shoving through rock and snow, struggling ever upward. The wind tore at Eda’s hood, slipped under her collar and shot icy, grasping fingers down her neck.

  And then she looked up and Niren was peering at her from around a curve in the trail, the hem of her white gown whispering over bare toes.

  Eda screamed and stopped short.

  Instantly Morin’s hands were on her shoulders, his eyes frantically searching hers. “Are you hurt?”

  She pointed ahead of them, but Niren’s ghost had vanished. The lights winked on and off, the music and screaming jangled in her ears.

  “Who did you see?” Morin smoothed his thumbs over her cheeks, his touch tethering her to the mountain.

  “I saw my sister.” The words were ash in her throat.

  Morin nodded. “I’ve seen my mother around every turn in the trail for the last hour.”

  “I’ve been seeing Father,” said Tainir beside them, her voice cracking. “Their souls are waiting. They’ve nowhere to go.”

  Eda tried to breathe, tried to steel herself for what came next. “Then we must be close. We must be close to Tuer’s Mountain and the door to the Circle of the Dead.”

  Morin nodded, his hands still touching her face. “Let’s go find him. Let’s go find Tuer.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  A STRANGE MOOD SEEMED TO SEIZE ALL THREE of them. They climbed on, up and up, faster and faster. Eda understood now that every time Morin drew a sharp breath or Tainir’s jaw hardened, that they were seeing their dead, just as she was seeing hers: Niren, around nearly every bend in the trail. Her parents, flushed with fever. Rescarin, his fingerless hands dripping blood onto the snow. The Emperor, peering at her with sightless eyes, as poison dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

  The lights grew brighter on the mountain ahead, sparking to life and no longer winking out, like impossible, multicolored lanterns suspended in thin air. The music rose to a jangling cacophony, and Eda knew it for what it was: a thousand voices singing all at once, every one a different melody, every one adhering to a different time. It was beautiful, and it was horrible, and it seemed strange that it could be both at once.

  Night fell behind the clouds, darkness hemming in. There was no discussion of whether or not to make camp; Eda, Morin, and Tainir just kept desperately, frantically climbing.

  And then, without warning, they reached the top of the peak, stepping up into what felt like the sky itself, the music and the lights suddenly vanishing. The clouds had broken apart enough to show a sliver of stars, and the three of them stopped and stared, panting and shivering in the frigid wind.

  “There’s nothing here.” Tainir’s voice sounded deafening in the silence. “There’s … there’s nothing.”

  She was right. Beyond the peak there was no stretch of snowy mountain winding downward again. There was only a dark kind of blankness. Like they really had climbed all the way to the edge of the world.

  Eda shrugged out of her pack, letting it thud into the snow. She walked slowly toward the blankness, one hand outstretched. She’d only taken a dozen paces when she knocked against something cold and hard. She touched it with both hands, peering into the dark. Morin and Tainir crunched through the snow, coming up behind her.

  “Ice,” said Eda. “It’s a gods-damned wall of ice.”

  She dropped to the ground in a fit of laughter, her whole body shaking. She laughed until she cried, while Morin and Tainir stood staring at the translucent wall in sober, stoic silence.

  When Eda grew calm again, Morin flopped down beside her, hugging his knees to his chest.

  “We should make camp,” said Tainir. “Decide what to do in the morning.”

  They spread out their bedrolls and crouched on them miserably. There was no wood on the barren peak, and so no possibility of a fire. Tainir didn’t offer to go hunting, but Eda didn’t even really feel all that hungry. There was a hollowness inside of her, an ache. Nothing more.

  Tainir got up and paced toward the ice wall; the thread of her song whispered back to them on the wind.

  “The gods wouldn’t have brought us all this way only to fail now,” said Morin after a while.

  “Yes they would,” said Eda bitterly. “They’ve done worse.”

  Morin regarded her with a sudden intensity that made her uncomfortable. “Have you ever wondered if you’ve been looking at it all wrong? If it isn’t the gods who have done all of this to you?”

  “But the deal I made—”

  “Maybe it was never about that. Maybe your deal meant something different than you thought it did. Maybe it’s just been about you and the gods all along. Just you. No one and nothing else.”

  The thought shattered her, terrified her. She thought maybe he was right, and she didn’t know how to answer him.

  She watched Tainir walk back and forth in front of the ice wall, glittering gold pouring from her lips.

  “I can’t let go of my anger,” Eda said at last. “I–I don’t even want to.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  “And you don’t … think less of me for it?”

  A smile touched Morin’s lips. “You don’t strike me as the kind of person who cares what other people think.”

  “But I do.” She realized as she said it how much she cared. How much she had always cared. She’d never stopped being that nine-year-old child, screaming for a place in the world after her parents’ deaths. Longing for affection and meaning and simply to be noticed. Making a deal with the gods and clawing her way onto the throne, just so she could feel wanted. Needed. Necessary to others’ lives. And then it had become about control and she was always grasping to hold on to it, grasping and failing because it had never really been hers. All that she’d had was an illusion. An illusion she didn’t know if she could ever get back, even if she succeeded in plunging a mythical knife into Tuer’s heart.

  Morin studied her, reading more in her face than she could ever express. He reached out for her hand and she let him take it, let him clasp it so tightly in hers she could feel the faint echo of his pulse. This time, she didn’t pull away.

  “I feel like we’ve come to the end,” he said. “That whatever happens tomorrow will be the last thing that ever happens.”

  She looked back at Tainir, still singing to the ice wall. Suddenly she saw Niren’s face, pressed up behind the ice, all awful gray shadow and haunted dead eyes.

  Eda shuddered. “Morning can’t come soon enough.”

  Morin rubbed his thumb over her fingers. “Yet as long as it’s night, the end isn’t here. And no.” His eyes found hers. “I don’t think less of you. How could I? The gods called you, same as they called me. We’re both wrapped up in things beyond … well, beyond this Circle of the world.”

  Another tremor passed through her, and she laid her head on Morin’s shoulder, almost without meaning to. She fell asleep that way, her head tucked under his chin, their hands clasped tight together.

  In the morning, they tried to break through the ice.

  Weak, watery sunlight illuminated the peak, the ice wall shimmering and shining as it hadn’t done in the dark. It stretched out of sight to the right and the left, following the slope of the mountain, and up into the sky, never ending. It was massively thick, and its surface had dips and ripples, as if once it had been a flowing curtain of water that had frozen in an
instant. It smelled, strangely, of roses and smoke.

  They battered at the wall with their climbing spikes and hammers, throwing all their strength into it.

  But nothing happened, not a chip, not a dent.

  They couldn’t climb it without footholds; they couldn’t go around it. For a while they tried digging under it, but no matter how deep they went, the ice was still there, as if it ran all the way through the mountain.

  They went back to trying to break through it.

  Sweat pricked Eda’s shoulders and poured down her face. She cursed and threw her dagger; it hit the ice and bounced back, slicing her cheek. She touched the cut and her fingers came away sticky, red.

  Tainir and Morin stopped their own assault on the wall, looking over at her.

  Eda wiped the blood off and onto her trousers. “Is this it, then? How it ends? The gods mocking us so close to our goal?”

  Morin paced up to her, brushing one hesitant finger along Eda’s brow. Eda felt again that faint pulse of heat in her forehead.

  “Maybe you should appeal to Tuer,” Morin said. “You are gods-touched, after all. Maybe he’ll let you in, if you ask.”

  Eda swallowed another curse and stepped up to the wall. She looked at Tainir. At Morin. She could still feel his heartbeat, pulsing near hers, still feel his breath in her hair, the warmth of his arms when she’d woken up beside him, a crick in her neck from sleeping on his shoulder all night.

  “Say something,” said Morin.

  Tainir nodded. “A Word. A prayer.”

  Eda didn’t know any of the ancient Words, and prayers made her too angry. But she splayed both palms flat against the ice and shut her eyes. “Tuer,” she whispered. “Tuer, let me in.”

  Heat pulsed all at once from her forehead, blazing through her body, down her arms, into her hands. It seared into the ice wall and for one moment, two, nothing happened. And then the ice shattered with a horrific crack, the force of it knocking Eda backwards. She ducked her head under her arms to protect herself from the shards of ice flying out in all directions like deadly rain.