In the Shadow of the Volcano

by Imogen Howson

find it out, I know they will. And I…" she dropped her gaze again, "…I don't have the courage to wait—or to bear what they'll do to me when they find out I knew and didn't give myself up."

  He crossed the room, just a shadow amongst shadows, and came to sit next to her. "What makes you so sure you'll be found out?"

  "Oh, Arach." Exhaustion and misery made her voice slump as her body had slumped. "They always find out. Always. Aera, Coram, that boy who was a cat-shifter and who tried to hide it—"

  He leaned forward, taking her hand and turning her so she had to look into his face. "Come on, now. Aera burned your whole house down. They could hardly have missed it. Not all the gifts are so hard to conceal. Are you telling me yours is as difficult to hide as Aera's was?"

  For an instant memory glowed against the shadows, bright as the last embers of the fire. Their house in flames. Aera like a beacon in the night. The almost-tangible wave of awe that had rippled through the crowd of people who'd come to help.

  "I— No. But that shifter boy—"

  "They found him out, yes. He was, what, thirteen? He never had a chance to learn to hide it. You have. You've managed it for three years. No one knows. No one has to know."

  "You know."

  "I know you've been hiding something, I know you're afraid. And tonight I knew you were giving yourself up. But I don't know what the gift is."

  For the first time the question came to her, piercing the fatigue, bringing her head up to stare at him. "How can you know all that and not know what it is? How did you find out? How—"

  She stopped. Not all the gifts are so hard to conceal, he'd said. She'd been thinking only of the wholly physical ones, but there were others too. Gifts of the mind. The power to move things without touching them. The power to read thoughts.

  His eyes held hers, his gaze steady, waiting for her to speak. She didn't finish the question she'd been going to ask. Instead, on a breath of dawning horror, she said, "What can you do?"

  "I see the future," her husband said.

  "Oh gods." The horror swept over her. A horror that was instinct-driven, that she'd grown up with, horror of the demon-borne gifts and the sin that brought them upon people. That's not permitted. What he can do—the god forbids it. Her very skin shrank from where it touched his, and as if he sensed the shrinking, he let her hand go.

  She was on her feet without noticing how she'd got there, both hands up against the neckline of her dress, cold skin against cold skin, trying to breathe, her thoughts fragmenting. Unclean. Unholy. Did he know when we married? Did he know?

  "How long?"

  "I can't tell."

  "Arach."

  "I mean it. I can't tell. I'm not sure. The visions—they come in dreams. For years I had no way of telling them from others, from dreams that were only dreams. Sometimes something would happen and it seemed to me I'd dreamt of it before. But it's easy to forget a dream, easy to dismiss it as nothing. Especially when that's what you want it to be." He looked up at her. "I never asked for this, Eleria."

  There was a plea in his eyes, but she couldn't acknowledge it, couldn't respond. Her husband, the man she'd lived with, lain with, he'd let himself become unclean, done something so bad it had let the demons inhabit him long enough to leave their power behind.

  She forced the question out, not wanting to hear the answer but having to know, needing the truth. "What did you do? What did you do to let it happen?"

  "Nothing."

  "You know that's not true! Don't lie to me—"

  "I don't lie to you." The words fell heavily between them. It was the truth, and she knew it. He'd never lied to her.

  "I'm sorry," she said, her voice a whisper. "But Arach, there must be something. There must be."

  "As there is for you?"

  His voice was a challenge. He expected her to say, as he had said, that she'd done nothing. He really believed that. Despite everything they'd known their whole lives, everything the priests said, he believed that the demon-gifts had come upon them from nowhere, that they had done nothing to deserve it.

  But she could not believe that. What she believed lay like a weight upon her, bowing her head. "Yes."

  "What? Gods, Eleria, what do you think you've done to bring this upon yourself?"

  She didn't look up. She spoke to the floor, unable to look into his eyes as she did so. "I come from bad stock. I, myself, I don't know what I've done. But my family…"

  "What? What are you talking about?"

  "I don't know what I did. But I must have done something. And all I can think…" She spread her hands, a helpless gesture. "All I can think is that I'm just bad all through. My family, for years we gave nothing to the god. None of us showed any of the holy gifts, none of us became temple servants or even sacrifices. Aera was the only one in generations, and we thought that was enough, we thought that would make us holy. But she…she was just one, the only one, and even she failed in the end. And all the rest of us…"

  "Eleria—"

  She still couldn't look up at him, speaking from the accumulated shame of years. "Your father paid so much for me. I was supposed to give you children. And still, just nothing, after all these years. And now, one of the demon-gifts. You got a bad bargain, from a worthless family. No children. No holy gifts. Just this, the—the worst—"

  "Stop this." The anger was back in his voice. "Have I ever given you reason to think I reproached you for our childlessness? Do you think I blame you for something neither of us can help?"

  "I blame myself—"

  "You always did. I know. And for more than our childlessness." He paused a moment. "I know what things were like for you before Aera's gift came on her, I know you've carried that shame all your life. You think you deserve misfortune—"

  "The demon-gifts aren't just misfortune—"

  His voice rose over hers. "Stop. Think. What if they are? What if they are just misfortune?" He stood in one swift movement and came to her, putting his hand under her chin to raise her face to his. "Eleria, I swear to you, I've done nothing to bring this upon myself. And you and I both, we've spent our lives obeying the temple, giving money, sacrifices. You gave up your own sister. I saw my sister taken as a maenad. I don't believe I deserve this. I don't believe you do either."

  His words seemed to unlock something in her head, and for an instant it was as if shutters were tilting within her, showing the world from another side. A side where maybe the gifts—all the gifts—were nothing but chance, nothing to do with sin, nothing to do with what you'd done wrong, what penalty you deserved.

  She'd thought it—briefly—of Coram. But as swiftly as the thought had come she'd dismissed it, terrified of falling into the trap of blasphemy.

  But what Arach was saying… It didn't sound like blasphemy. It sounded like truth.

  She looked into his eyes, and for the first time the thought came to her, clear and strong, impossible to dismiss. I can believe it of him. I can believe he did nothing to deserve the demon-gifts. Reading the future…what harm did it do, after all? And Arach would never use it for an ill purpose.

  But for me… Her gift rose up in her mind's eye, and a shudder went through her so hard that she felt Arach's body jolt as it reached him.

  "Dear girl, what is it?"

  "You don't know," she said. "You haven't seen my gift. You don't know." The shudder took her again, turning her stomach over with fear, fear of herself, and disgust that was harder to bear than the fear.

  "Then show me."

  She should have known that was coming. Would have known, if she'd stopped to think. But it came like a blow all the same. She stared up at him, aghast.

  "Arach, I can't."

  "You can't? Why not?"

  "I mean I— Don't make me. I can't bear you to see. It's not like your gift. Not like any of the gifts."

  "So?"

  "I'm ashamed." It came out as a whisper. "Ashamed for you to see it. You—if you do…"

  "You've never understood, have you?" His face
was grim, and the words were an accusation.

  "Understood what?"

  "That I love you." That came out like an accusation, too. His eyes as they stared down into hers were hard. "Beyond what you think you're supposed to give me—a willing bed-partner, a quiverful of sons. Beyond what your family were, beyond the childlessness, beyond whatever this damned gift is that nearly took you from me. There's nothing, Eleria, nothing about you that could disgust me. Why can't you hear that?"

  She couldn't answer him. The words were lovely, and he spoke them with enough force that she knew he believed them, but at the same time… He thinks they're true, but they're not, not for me. All this time he's loved something I'm not. If I show him what I really am—it'll be over, then. I'll see the horror in his face as he saw it in mine. But his horror won't go, not when he sees the gift I wield, and I can't bear it, I can't bear to kill his love for me…

  But then it came to her, with a cold insistence that chilled her all the way through to her bones. He wouldn't let her go, putting himself in danger, because he loved her.

  If he loves me no longer…

  She moved through the cold, through the dread, to draw away from him, then stood and moved to the table, took a taper from the bunch they kept in a small clay pot and bent to light it at the fire. When she touched it to the lamp on the table the oil lit with a splutter and a glow spread, lighting Arach's face.

  She moved to the clear space at the centre of the room, her limbs heavy, forcing herself to do this the way she'd forced herself to leave the house earlier that morning. "Here." Her voice