“Just as I thought!” I shout at the heavens, at the stone, at everything. I fall to my haunches, panting. “Just as I thought.”
Fingers till my sweat soaked hair. I expect Meridiana and turn to find Theriss. Her teeth are a white arc, smile bright against her blue skin. “You must have a god’s bollocks.”
“Well, I have a lot to prove.”
Meridiana, still on her back and winded, offers a derisive sound.
The ground shakes again. This time it’s less immediate, but more sustained. “I think we should go.” I hit my feet and haul Meridiana up.
We run the wet riverbed to avoid shifting sand and tangled scrub. A shockwave hits as we reach a flooded oxbow, throwing us into standing water where panicked fish leap.
Sound deafens us even as the shaking subsides. Maeve’s pyramid raises into the sky above the cloud of destruction, creating an eclipse. A tracery of light pours from the seams in its stones and pieces move like a puzzle. It alters to a low flat shape like a star, a low hulled ship, and rises.
Bolts of light arc from the arena’s ruin. Each strike turns a portion of the vessel to an insubstantial flicker. It darts forward; the beams wrap it like a hand. Energy drags back and the object whines with the sound of metal worlds orbiting against each other.
We hunch, claw at our ears. One point of the ship raises high, the whole thing tipped like a sinking caravel.
It slides to the debris with a death shriek both machine and animal. Light rises, envelopes the whole wreckage in a bubble that swells until the surface shimmers and we can feel the heat even at this distance.
This is probably the end. Meridiana’s hand slips into mine; I hold her tight.
The bubble tears.
Heat dissipates; whatever generated inside moves over us in a static-charged breeze. Light blazes like a solar flare burning through my eyes to the back of my brain. I should be blind for life, but as water gurgles up at my knees, sight returns. Freya’s gift? Or something more?
Water jets up in a geyser. We stumble for the bank, already fighting a swirling current.
“To the barge!” shouts Theriss.
The river spills its banks but with a lapping current. I have no idea how strong it might get.
Crispinus, hunched, pokes a finger out at the landscape. Trees raise from the sand, fan-fronned with lithe swaying trunks. They don’t sprout; it isn’t like Etain’s kingdom. They surface.
The sand shifts beneath my feet and I realize they’re not raising; sand evaporates like dew. My muscles ache; I give up fighting the slip and rush of uncertain footing, fall to my back and let the land take me where it will. The others follow suit. We drift on semi-solid waves, up swells and down long slopes, rolling into a shallow pool at the foot of a lush, shady oasis. Orange star-shaped flowers waft us with an odor of nectar. The chirp and trill of living things relieves a barren stillness.
We struggle to our feet, Meridiana smacking herself off and hissing like a wet cat. We’re all up save Theriss, who lays on her back in the rippling pool, eyes closed, hair fanned by the content undulation of her serpents. Droplets fleck her face; tears or water? She’d disembowel me for asking, but by her aura I think I know the answer. Her tail waves lazily in the flow, its point drawing lines in the plant-rich dirt beneath.
Between the canopy of two trees, the portal appears.
When Theriss’ eyes snap open they rest squarely on me, and her expression makes me afraid of breaking the news.
“You’re supposed to come back with me.”
She sits up and tips a slender chin at Crispinus. “What about him?”
Good question. I thought he would die, no offense intended, or evaporate, or turn on us.
Crispinus stares at my hand. “I can only travel through celestial gates if my soul is placed in a vessel. A specific sort of object.”
He’s watching my ring. “Why is that?”
“Certain parts of me have to go...undetected.”
“Of course they do.” Theriss sizes him up through narrowed eyes. “Halkor called you a thief.”
“He wasn’t wrong.”
“You need my ring to pass through the portal?”
Crispinus nods.
“Meridiana.” I call to her and we move away from the other two, into a grove of trees beside the portal. “I don’t know if we should allow him to come with us.”
I was trying to be circumspect, at least to the point of good manners. Meridiana turns and stares down Crispinus without trying to hide it. “Deception,” she murmurs. “But not deceit. In fact, he’s otherwise so open I think I could seduce him off a cliff.”
“So…”
She tsks. “I think if he were truly a danger, at least one beyond the Gardener’s abilities, he wouldn’t need us to get inside. And he survived Maeve. He’s useful.”
She declares this like it’s his sole value, and she has otherwise finished with him. I laugh. “Through the portal it is. Andraste told me to keep the ring a while longer; let’s hope this is the sort of thing she had in mind.”
“Who knows?” Meridiana’s tail whips. “Everyone speaks in riddles. It’s exhausting.”
“Except Finna?” I whisper as we walk back.
She licks her lips and flushes midnight purple. “Mm.”
I nod to Theriss and Crispinus. “We’ll all go through.”
“No, there’s something I need to do before I go.” Theriss slithers back.
“Meridiana?” I want to hear she’s good with accompanying Crispinus alone.
She examines her nails. “I was done here hours ago.”
“Perfect.” I grasp the ring. My father’s ring, the ring that saved my mother and sister; the gift of a mystical benefactor. My hand stays.
A ring Mordenn longs for. I meet Crispinus’ eyes. What do I feel? The Artifacts have given me a lot of incredible gifts, but none of them can help me now. This choice is mine.
I tug the ring free and slap into his palm.
I guess I assumed he would hold it, store it in his armor. Crispinus slides the gold band onto his pointer finger like they were created together. The ruby catches fire. He approaches the portal and sticks in an arm, testing. It passes beyond the red swirl. For the first time his lips twitch in something like a smile. “Meridiana,” he says, waving an arm at the gateway, “after you, goddess of the lower depths.”
She purrs and pinks, throwing me a coy look. “Since you put it that way…”
Meridiana slips through the portal, tail reaching out to my cheek like a finger. Her version of goodbye. Crispinus follows, and they disappear together.
I hope again I made the right choice.
-The Valley of Yraleth-
“Tell me what we’re doing,” I say, trying to keep pace with Theriss.
She greets this with a lift of her chin. “I don’t need your help.”
“I don’t remember saying you did. But I’m offering, if you want it.”
Her body ripples, a movement of hesitation. “Come if you want but stay beside me and stay quiet.”
“Really throwing up the obstacles, huh?”
“Obnoxious,” she hisses, setting off again.
We pass over rolling hills, once dunes now green and capped with sand like melting snow. Wind wicks it away in warm breaths dampened by the river.
“Maeve buried your lands like this?” I ask. Really, I’m dying to know about Theriss, and I don’t think she’ll answer more personal questions.
“Not exactly. Her temple sucked life from my world like a parasite. And this sand?” She flicks it with the point of her tail. “The glazed bones of countless dead. Millions, ground against the cliffs, and beneath her will.”
“Halkor said she settled on his world for a time. What made her choose here?”
“Maeve settled here; her temple allowed her to move between other worlds. I don’t know what it is about Lysperia; our shamans think twin suns and our place in the heavens made it possible for her to create the juncture. I don�
��t know if that’s true. I only know we’ve spent a thousand years hiding in the warrens and being hunted by unghul. Enslaved.”
“I can’t believe you survived that long underground.”
“We didn’t. Our young must be laid, tended, and hatched in the sun. It became fatal for lamia to fall pregnant. Or heartbreaking, if she chose not to risk the above-ground. We’re long-lived; that’s all that’s saved us.”
We move down into a valley, a chain of small pools stretching out to the horizon like blue pearls. I hardly see it, trying to grasp the protracted horror of knowing your people are dead a thousand years before the end. “Your survivors are going to be fucking overjoyed when you tell them you’ve defeated Maeve and broken her curse.”
“I wasn’t cursed by Maeve; I was cursed by our shamans and driven out by my den.” She sniffs, and her chin raises in a familiar gesture, stubborn pride. “I did what was right; I refused to consider submitting to Maeve’s rule. Sabotaging my people’s efforts at spineless diplomacy…” She spits the word. “I have no regrets.”
She has some regrets. I can feel them. But I know what she means.
“How did you come to be here?” Theriss asks. We’ve reached a rise of small hills where sand and scrub make the going slow; I’m impressed by the deftness of her body, an easy side-sway with so much power.
“The short version of a very long story is, I entered a cursed temple to win its artifacts and castrate a handful of men before I feed them their bollocks.”
Theriss grins, forked tongue licking the point of one incisor in a hypnotizing motion. “And these artifacts are creatures like me?”
“Well...all female. But varied.”
“All female?”
“Uh huh.”
“And they just...fight alongside you?”
“They do. But each of you has a gift. One that we share after we…” Why is this so weird? “After we bond.”
“Bond.” She stops moving and stares at me. “You mean mate.”
“I don’t...not mean that?”
“You go around the universe mating for magical powers.”
“No! Well, not like that. No one is doing anything they don’t want to. I’m a bastard, but I’m not a monster.”
“Hm.”
“And I can share with them the gifts I’ve been given.”
Her brows jump. “Make them stronger?”
“Exactly.”
She bursts into laughter, serpents bobbing. “You’re gross.”
“Hey!”
“I’m teasing. Mostly. I don’t want to admit I’m a little curious. Wait!” She laughs again. “Is this just a story you tell so females will let you bed them?”
“No!” Gods, she’s ruthless. “You’re giving me a lot of credit for brains I don’t have.”
“We’ll see.” I can hear gears turn in her brain. “What do I get, if I agree?”
“Well...you saw my neat column of flame trick.”
“Fire?”
“Some, yeah.”
Theriss catches herself and smooths her expression. “Go on.”
“Healing. Perception. Poison resistance which…”
Her face scrunches. “Nah.”
“Yeah, didn’t think so. Seems like gilding the lily.”
“What else?”
“Speed. Animal strength.”
“Gods of the waters, you’ve been with six creatures!”
“You’re really good at setting this in the worst light…”
Theriss smirks, pleased at getting under my skin. “What do you get if I lay with you?”
“I don’t get to decide. It’s whatever inherent–” I stop. Her black scales ripple with laughter. “Oh. You’re testing me.”
“If you haven’t been paying attention…”
“Maybe I’ve just been so impressed that it’s hard to choose.”
“Oooh. Quick; very quick.” She winks. “Shall I show you my talent?”
“Absolutely.”
Theriss circles me on a gentle shush of grass and remaining sand. She brushes my back and a serpent dances at my ear when she whispers against it. “There’s a reason my people don’t rely on armor.”
“Which is…?”
“I’ll close my eyes,” she explains. “Draw your blade and try to hit me.”
“I’m not going to try and hit you.”
“Don’t worry; try is all you’ll do.” She inhales, drawing a breath through small flared nostrils. I remember how she moved, dodged Maeve’s attacks like she knew they were coming, and suddenly, I believe her. “Move anywhere you like. Stand perfectly still.” A serpent covers each of her ears, muting them.
I back away, to throw her off, coming in close when I’ve circled behind. My swing is timid.
Theriss bows and weaves. I don’t even come close.
High, low. She dodges my next two blows.
I crouch, creep to her flank. This time I swing with all I have. She’s an arm’s length away before my sword finishes its arc, laughing at me.
“Maeve’s aura interfered a little, but out here, away from her?” Theriss winks. “I’ll always know where you are. Where, how far, how fast.”
“How?”
She rests a finger in front of her ear, pointing out a tiny pit in her skin. “I have them all over my body. I can feel your pure, unfiltered body heat. Like an image of you in my thoughts.”
“That’s fucking incredible.”
“It is. Too bad I’m probably not sharing it with you.”
“Aww. Come on! You already admitted you’re curious. You could dodge faster; use fire. You’ll change your mind.”
“Hm.”
We push deeper into the desert, quiet for awhile. Something’s changed between us, and I feel comfortable, more at ease. “You still haven’t told me what we’re doing.”
“We aren’t doing anything. I am going to see about my family.”
“And I’m going with you…”
“No, you’re going to wait. If I’m caught inside these lands I’ll be tortured, segmented, and killed. They would show you mercy.”
“Great!”
“You’d be executed at once.”
Less great.
Theriss laughs at my expression. “My fate was sealed long ago. They probably wouldn’t kill you. You don’t look like any of Maeve’s soldiers. In fact…” She stops and looks me over. “You don’t look like anyone I’ve seen before, not exactly. That would make you a novelty. A distraction.”
“Distraction how?”
“You’ll see.”
We crest the last rise; here the sand is all but gone. A city trails the river bank, ochre brick villas and dappled river stone minarets capped with gold tips, spires reaching heavenward. The gold is tarnished, corners worn down.
“Surprised?” Theriss sees the disbelief on my face.
“Well...yes and no. You mentioned the warrens and living below ground. I assumed…”
“We’re not savages.” She’s always busting me down.
The area below us is a fertile green bowl between high slopes, where the river must flood sometimes. “No easy way to breach it, is there?”
“Nowhere but the river. If we had more regular patrols there’d be no cresting this lip without a bolt in my gut.” She hurries down the other side and into a trench between low palms and reeds.
We move through a swampy finger in the overflow. Theriss is silent, listening. Her scales are flat and tight, drawn down like armor. I wonder if I should entirely trust what she said about my being safe here.
Sounds reach us over the low splash of my feet and the tear of tangled greenery; voices, far off. Theriss rises an embankment I could never climb and peers between a cluster of ferns. She nods. “They’re coming back out into the city.” Her voice holds a note of triumph, but not happiness.
The trench bends away from the city and the basin, toward the river and into a jungle. Water bubbles out here and there at the top of the sloped bank, natural springs
that feed clean blue water streaming below. Humid air wicks beneath my armor, leaving me damp but feeling clean after our exertion in the arena.
We pass under a canopy of trees hung with objects; a dried bundle of purple flowers, a carved ring of wood, a thumb-sized clay vessel. There are more things, clanking in the breeze like dull but soothing wind chime. The place holds an herbal aroma; I have the striking recollection of my mother’s lavender drying in the apothecary hut behind our winter garden. This brings the shockwave remembrance of the smell anointing her skin, not for healing but in preparation for her death, and the death of the babe she carried.
Premonition wracks me.
Theriss stops at a bower gate of dried, gnarled swamp wood held together with blooming vines. “Wait here.”
“Wait; what if something-”
“Here,” she snaps, pointing to a high spot in the stream’s flow. “Shout if anyone comes and otherwise stay put.” She doesn’t wait for an answer, which is probably best for our diplomatic relations.
I crouch low and wait, sure I’d never hear one of her people coming, not with the gift they possess.
The green-floral scent lingers, poking that strange drop of dread cold in my chest. It’s this place, the temple as a whole, and a confused passage of time. It leaves me anxious and feeling made of mud when I need to be made of lightning.
For a split second I close my eyes, feel the breeze on my face and fall into the lull of a wild place.
A sound on the air vibrates inside my ears, small and indistinguishable, but it pricks my instincts.
A cry, long, low and muted.
To hell with this. I lean my back against the sticks, slide over the threshold and lean around the overgrowth.
Theriss crouches beside a girl on her hands and tail, inside a shallow pool ringed with stones where water flows in one side and out in a timid gurgle. The girl resembles Theriss; I haven’t seen more of her people, but I feel like the similarity is more than racial. Maybe it’s the way Theriss strokes the girls wet tangle of black hair, its serpents dangling weakly.
Her body tightens, raises in a sharp arc, and she sobs through gritted teeth. Her taut belly writhes, scales rippling like black water.
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