No. It isn’t cold. It isn’t cold here.
He struggled to bring himself back, anchor firmly in reality, in the cave that was growing warmer by the second, the feel of his body sweating under his jacket, beads of moisture sliding down his neck.
Here, right here.
He winced, once again aware that he was lying on his side in the bottom of the canoe, his hands tied. The air didn’t sting anymore, though the gas was surely thicker above the water, the haze of it tinged blue and green with the glow of lanterns. He was breathing without effort, but he was weak, nauseous, his arms numb and tingling from the binding.
“Jia,” he whispered.
He could feel her in the darkness. She was somewhere close, sitting in one of the other canoes, no longer the fierce and respected hunter, but a captive of her own people. He felt the strength of emotion burning its way through her, swinging from helplessness to anger, always returning to some fierce resolve to meet her punishment with honor.
I didn’t want to be her. I wanted to be me.
He closed his eyes. She’d sacrificed herself, betrayed the Oracle, for a moment that hadn’t even been hers. She’d been in his arms, the tiny pink bud of her clitoris slick and smooth under his fingers, her breath catching sweetly as he kissed her, used her.
He had no excuse. The gas had played its part effectively enough, but he supposed he’d allowed that. He certainly didn’t fight the vision of Lauren when it came, too desperate to believe she was actually there, when he’d known it was Jia, with her dark eyes and mysterious tattoos, pressed against him, her brave and honest heart placed in his hands.
You are beautiful.
What had he told her? What had he said? Something needlessly abrupt and idiotic, he was certain. The haziness came and went, blurring everything, but he knew that he had hurt her.
I wanted to be me.
“Hold on, darling,” he murmured, hoping that she could feel him say the words. “I’ll get you out of here, if only so that you can appreciate how awkward Admirals look when they apologize.”
Harsh air swirled over the canoe, thick and cloying.
He clenched his teeth, hearing the sound of ice cracking in the black water around him, wind gusting over the crest of the waves, a terrible silence where chaos had been. He stared up and saw empty swirls of foam painted across the rock, everything swept away, as if there had never been a ship, a wife or a daughter.
He shook his head, tears blurring his vision.
Catch me, Papa!
His girl was in the water, just underneath him. So close. He could tip the canoe with his weight—
Look at me! See me, Tristan.
Jia.
He blinked and caught a likeness of her carved into the stone, then another. Statues of women appeared from the swirl of thick air, their slender bodies kneeling at great altars, their hair beaded and bejeweled. They seemed to stare down at the passing canoes, their expressions changing from interest to suspicion as the lanterns cast shadows beneath them.
The woman steering the canoe began to paddle, leading the group into a larger passage. Here the ceiling rose to form an arching corridor, its walls painted with a dancing menagerie of gods, angels, demons and mortals. Billowing clouds parted, giving way to winged figures, haloed by streams of chipped sunlight and faded blue sky. The horizon darkened, merging with a starlit meadow where women danced around a pillar of fire, wearing only flowered garlands, their breasts and hips glowing with flames.
Tristan drew a sharp breath through his teeth, seeing their eyes shining at him in the dim light, their lips made to look glossed and sensual, their expressions rosy with desire.
The paintings expanded, traveling beyond waterfalls that poured into deep pools, men swimming with fishtails for legs, surrounded by voyeuristic nymphs watching from the safety of their lily pads. Lakes turned into green valleys, shadowed forests spreading for a group of red centaurs pursuing a woman up a mountain trail, the tips of their horns shining black.
The corridor opened onto a vast and flooded hall, with sets of massive columns rising up from the water on either side of the canoe. Glass lanterns hung from the ceiling, casting emerald shadows over a dozen classical statues frozen inside their hollowed niches.
Most were women, but some were men, holding tablets in their finely sculpted hands or raising their arms to launch into great philosophical oration, their robes gently draped around them. They had the look of devoted scholars, not cultists, without a single religious artifact, spear or long bow between them. He wondered fleetingly if he was the only one who saw the irony in that.
The hallway merged into an even greater space, an enormous cavern towering vertically into the darkness. A stone town had been carved around its edges, with squared façades cut into the rock above the water. Steps and walkways ran between the buildings, crossing in front of glowing windows and pillared balconies. Firelight crackled from large copper basins marking the paths, mixing the hot glow of flames with the deep blue and green of the lanterns, the colors unnaturally bright against the darkness.
Women appeared at the water’s edge, dressed in suede skirts and lacings, with beaded hair and tattooed symbols running down their backs. They stared at him, surprised as he passed.
He heard laughter in the distance, the play of children echoing from somewhere he couldn’t see.
His guards, two women no older than twenty, began whispering to each other in quick, concise statements. One of them moved in preparation, sliding her hands underneath him to help him sit upright.
It seemed they’d reached their destination.
Around the canoe, the water reacquired its strange glow, the luminous plants of the outer chambers hugging the walls of the vast pool beneath them. They had been cultivated here, he realized, planted and farmed along with muscles, fish and eels.
A flash of silver bodies streamed under the surface, darting this way and that, swelling to a busy cloud then disappearing.
The canoe drifted toward a line of small docks, each offering narrow wooden ladders and plank walkways dotted with lanterns. Ropes and nets hung from old posts, fishing tables and troughs waiting for use. Tristan swept his gaze to the edge of the planking, focused on a stone path that led up the sheer face of the cavern.
Sitting on its own cliff above the city, the Temple beckoned with burning cauldrons and fiery columns, its pediments adorned with lush reliefs and ornate cornice molding, its apex crested by winged figures, their hands reaching for a stone heaven devoid of sun or stars.
He drew a shallow, sickened breath, feeling its immensity looming over him, the power of the Oracle in her own domain.
“Arthur,” he murmured, “you have no idea.”
The women ushered him forward and he stumbled along the path they indicated, sweating under his clothes, his sight hopelessly blurred. Ghosts called from the water, whispering his name in familiar voices.
He glanced across the dock to see Jia, flanked by other hunters in a canoe, heading for a different chamber. She didn’t look at him, her face purposely angled away, but he could feel her vulnerability, her frustration.
Her wrists were bound in her lap.
“Where are they taking you?” he demanded, struggling to keep up as one of the women began to paddle the small craft faster. “Jia!”
She didn’t answer. His guards were joined by others, grabbing him roughly, pushing him down onto his knees. He fought to remain upright, focusing on Jia for as long as he could, unable to do anything but watch her drift away.
The Union
Jia sat in a shadowed cell, her back resting against the cool stone. A dripping, half-melted candle burned from a niche in the corner, its gold light flickering over the narrow span of the walls, with no cot, blanket or chair to fill the space between. It was a place for the condemned, for women who defied the Oracle and were never seen again.
She looked down at her hands, bound wrist to wrist, her curled fingers forming a dark heart. Tristan. He was c
lose, in one of the great chambers of the Temple, his emotions too strong to ignore. He was calling to her through the bond, determined to find her, save her, and…what?
Nothing made sense anymore. Perhaps, if she had the gift of sight, she would see the point in the future where her world pieced itself back together again, where she was valued because of her skill, and the demands of the Oracle and the priestesses ensured a life that was better for all.
But divination was not her gift. Like most in her generation, she was not affected by the Divine Spirit in the old way. She could form empathic bonds and use the energy of the life around her, yet she could see nothing but the present, and perhaps she had never even seen that.
Until now, she had lived with a singular focus, never questioning why her mother, buried long ago, had spent most of her life in the darkness, with prayers and scrolls and rituals that made no sense, no difference in the tides, or the storms, or the way of life on the reef. Jia had proven her skill early and hunted alone for so many years that the caves and their mysteries had settled into the dark-half of her existence, the night she slept through, with its changing moon and faraway stars, a dream faded by the break of dawn.
She had grown up with women who wanted no part of the reef, or the outside air, harvesters who worked in the moon pools and took care of the Oracle’s young daughters, frightened by the prospect of fighting heavy waves in a canoe or seeing a black lizard up close. Until now, she had never wondered how lacking their lives had been.
And it wasn’t just the lower classes that lived in the dark, not just harvesters and laborers, but also the dedicated scholars who studied in the Temple. They knew the names of the great women in history, the cures for terrible illnesses and ailments, and the complicated mathematical principals that applied to the movement of stars they rarely saw, escorted, like children, by hunters twice a year.
The Oracle’s followers had become a society of fugitives, harboring a religion that now seemed to serve no function. What good were the Oracle’s predictions, if the outside world knew nothing of them? And when was the last time she had actually issued one? Jia couldn’t remember.
Before Tristan, she had thought they were preserving a strong society, where women were free from the wars and the domination of men. But they had merely exchanged one form of domination for another, and lost something precious in the process.
She closed her eyes, remembering the feel of Tristan’s arms around her, his desire shimmering hot in the bond between them, his pain more than she could bear. He loved deeply, and with such incredible purity. He was not as the Oracle had described, not a cruel master, but an old soul, his hurts and passions glowing like fire-gilded embers in the darkness.
She released a slow breath through her teeth, trying to imagine him living on the island, absorbing its quiet, listening to the wind or watching the tides, standing at the crest of the cliffs, or diving along the richest part of the reef, where the fish slipped like jewels between nooks in the coral. In this vivid and fleeting dream, it was her name on his lips, her body he stroked and kissed with such hunger, the bond between them as strong as that between a husband and a wife.
A wife.
Jia had no interest in glass houses or big dresses with silken bows, but to be loved like that… The thought of it settled in her heart, an ache that refused to be quiet.
The metal lock on the cell clicked, releasing with a hard screech. The door swung open to the corridor.
Jia glared into the open space, seeing the outline of three priestesses appear in the glow of candlelight. They moved into the cell, gliding in the mysterious way of their order, glittering with jeweled collars and belts, and skirts as transparent as flowing fish tails. They regarded her with painted gazes, delicate masks of dark kohl streaked with green and blue.
“Rejoice, for you have not fallen far,” the first one said, a coy smile playing on her lips. The light from the candle played in her eyes and through the golden beads in her hair, adding ghostly movement, as if she burned in some unseen dimension.
“It seems far enough,” Jia replied in the ancient tongue. “Have you come to end it?”
“End it?”
“I have heard the stories. Those who are condemned are executed without ritual, without honor being given to their names.”
“The fate of some, but not you, not tonight. We bring great gifts, for you are to be elevated in your status.”
Jia shook her head, confused. “Elevated?”
“You will bear the next Dini, the first in a thousand years.”
“There was no mating.”
“There will be.”
“You will bring Tristan here?”
“Not in a cell. It will be done at the high altar, tonight.”
“But he does not want it.”
The priestess smiled again, gliding closer, her stride long and catlike. “Do you really believe that?”
Jia hesitated, listening for a moment to his call through the bond, the strength of emotion growing as he sought her response. “He is concerned, because I tried to help him, because he knows that I—” Want him.
“Yes.”
“But that is not love.”
“Where do such things begin, in the heart of a man? It is not for us to say, and perhaps he does not even realize it himself, but it was his decision to seek the Oracle. He did this for a reason.”
“It is his duty.”
“No.”
“He wants to speak of treaties.”
“He came alone.”
“For diplomacy.”
“For truth. And that is what he will find.” She gestured toward the corridor. “Now come. Tonight, you will be adorned with gold and rubies, your skin oiled and your hair shining, a worthy offering before the gods.”
“He will be released afterward?”
“It is not his destiny to leave this place.”
Jia felt her heart sink. “You plan to kill him.”
“He will join his lost wife and child.”
“I won’t let you.”
“The decision will be his, not yours.”
“He will not choose to die.”
“The Oracle is persuasive.”
Jia shook her head. “She has no power over him.”
“You still do not understand.” The priestess turned toward the door, indicating that she should be followed without question. “She has all the power she needs over him. She has you.”
Tristan knelt along a carved rock floor, his breathing a hoarse echo from the walls. The guards cut away the bindings securing his wrists, urging him to raise his arms as they removed his jacket and sweat-sodden shirt, inexplicably changing from sentinels to servants.
He winced, scanning the chamber around him. It was small, its pillars winding and delicate, framing a narrow stone pool at its center. Gas wafted toward the ceiling from its base, released from stone vents carved into the floor, sulfurous threads rising from openmouthed dragons and birds.
Torches blazed from the walls, their bright flames tinged violet with the acidic taint in the air, popping tiny sparks and dancing light over the smooth black surface of the pool. He stared at the open flames for a moment, their strange color, and their distance from the vents, speaking volumes about the volatile nature of the ‘Divine Spirit’.
Pushing up from the floor, he rubbed the feeling back into his wrists and approached the pool, watching his reflection appear in its dark mirror. He looked different from this angle, harsher, his eyes shadowed and the hollows of his cheeks wane. His chest and arms glistened with sweat, great scars spread over the muscle of his right bicep, trailing down in pale, ragged lines from his ribcage to his hip.
“You carry a map of war with you.”
He looked up to see an old woman standing at the opposite edge of the water, her small body hunched against a gnarled cane. She was wrapped in thick robes, oblivious to the heat, her silver hair beaded and flowing over her shoulders, and her face hard-creased by the weight of
years. Her eyes set on him, shining black orbs with a fierce strength peering out from their depths.
She dropped her gaze to the pool. “You are a creature of war, of destiny, delivering life to some and death to others. And you have paid a terrible price. The scars along the skin are nothing compared to what lies beneath. A wife gone, a child.”
“Where is Jia?”
“So, she has caught your attention.”
“Isn’t that what you sent her to do?”
“She is a beautiful woman.”
“She’s much more than that.”
The Oracle regarded him with interest, her eyes widening. “You feel her through the Hunter’s Gift, through the bond.”
“If that’s what you call it.”
“And you are reaching for her.”
“In my own way, I think so.”
The old woman raised a thin silver eyebrow. “Then you have become accustomed to the Divine Spirit. Your body and mind are under your control and you grow stronger. It would be impossible for you to communicate through the bond otherwise. We have no record of a man who could.”
“You might, if you let a few more of us in here.”
She dismissed this with a grizzled chuckle. “Many men have stood where you are. They lived among us once, as ambassadors and philosophers. Always, they distracted us from the loyalty we owe our sacred purpose. Always, they brought their aggression and their bias with them, and you are no exception. You would demand that we welcome men here, but would you also demand that the famous monasteries of New Europa admit women to their ranks of holy men?”
Tristan took a second to follow her logic, then shook his head. “Monks must choose a monastic life.”
“And you think that Jia would choose to live differently.”
“She might.”
“Choose to live with you, in your world?”
Tristan held the old woman’s gaze, feeling her black eyes staring through him. “I didn’t say that.”
“Of course not. You have no world. Your world is at the bottom of the sea. You have nothing to offer anyone, do you?”
The Admiral Page 6