How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic

by Emily Croy Barker

  “Carrion eaters, over the temple. They smell a feast,” he said. “Well, you must do exactly as I say. If I tell you to remain in a place, or to leave it, you must do so at once. I will give you a protection spell that will shield you from most direct attacks, but you must not engage Olenan yourself.”

  His hard, pale gaze dropped to the makeshift pouch, knotted from a strip of Nora’s ruined maran, that hung from her neck. “Then there is the timestone to consider. You will not let me safeguard it?”

  She put her hand over the pouch. “It feels as though it belongs to me,” she said.

  He gave a reluctant nod. “And I understand, I need to stay out of trouble,” Nora went on, “but what can I do that’s actually helpful?”

  “Against an opponent like Olenan? I cannot imagine,” Aruendiel said. “But you have surprised me before this. Truthfully, you are a more careful, conscientious magician—in some ways—than Olenan. She can be clumsy; she has always been more interested in having great power than in wielding it skillfully. Now—”

  He cocked his head as though listening, while his gaze swept the wrinkled surface of the floodwaters and the pale yellow flanks of the ravine. “Yes, she is still at the sanctuary. Using a fair amount of magic. She has chosen a highly defensible redoubt—upriver, underground, narrow entrance through a crevice. A battalion could not storm it.”

  Nora’s dismay must have showed in her face. Aruendiel unsheathed a quick, fierce grin. “You must remember, a fortress is always potentially a prison. I have locked her in with constraint spells and counterhexes. Fasguin Nock, Nusindr, even one of Turl’s. Puny, modern rubbish, but it will puzzle her long enough for us to pass her defenses. From what I can tell, she has not learned a single new spell in the past one hundred and thirty-six years.”

  “How will we get—?”

  “I hope you do not object to another swift change of shape? We will fly. Follow my lead, and let your wings move naturally. You will be tempted to flap them excessively, this first time, for fear of falling, but it is not necessary.”

  Nora turned to see the sleek gray hawk beside her fling itself upward, arching its wings, flaying the air. Without giving herself time to think, she opened her own wings and followed.

  It was much like going off the high dive, although she was moving up, not down—the same vertigo, the rush and speed, the escape into a new, liberating element where she moved as lightly and easily as thought. And then the recollection of diving boards faded, and she simply flew, pumping her wings, gliding. The flat, glittering expanse of water passed under her, then the leafy edge of the cliff.

  A flash of brown on a branch, an unwary sparrow—she could see the sunlight glinting on its streaky wings. She flashed downward, claws reaching for the fat warm meat.

  Her feet closed on air, as the sparrow fluttered away and disappeared among the leaves. She lifted again, with hunger that felt like anger driving her wingbeats, and scanned the trees for the sparrow. Stupid, fearful thing.

  A gray streak—the other hawk. Hunting the sparrow, too, she thought. But it flew straight at her with a scream, jostling her and then veering away, and then she remembered confusedly that they were on a different kind of hunt. She set herself after the other hawk, the exact nature of their prey somewhat vague to her.

  High above, the carrion birds were still drifting on the wind. She had a confused recollection that a human woman and man would be waiting at the end of their flight, and she wondered if it would be safer to keep flying. But she was bound to follow the other hawk, circling down into the cool shadows of the ravine, down to a perch on a rock next to the waterfall.

  Aruendiel’s scarred face looked stern. “We have no time for dawdling,” he said severely.

  With both hands, Nora grabbed the branch of a shrub growing out of the ravine wall; the rock underfoot was slippery. “I keep forgetting who I am, when we change. And I never was a bird before.” She could not entirely stop herself from smiling.

  Aruendiel’s eyebrows snapped, but his mouth softened, as though rediscovering that it was not, after all, a hawk’s scimitar beak. “Your memory must improve, or you will never be able to change your own shape. Will you open a door for us?”

  “A door?” Now Nora took in their surroundings through human eyes. The flood had rendered the exterior of the temple almost unrecognizable. The waterfall was a continuous white explosion. Below, the muddy stream churned and fretted; it had swallowed the path at the bottom of the ravine and the arched footbridge at the far end of the pool.

  Nora guessed at where the temple door stood behind the great wall of crashing water and made her request. The waterfall parted—with unexpected enthusiasm. Perhaps flooding had put it in a good mood. Through the gap in the streaming water, she could make out the twin seated statues of the goddess that flanked the entrance to the temple.

  As she watched, the statues rose from their stone thrones and stood at attention, their wide eyes unblinking in the spray. With a twist of his body, Aruendiel edged down from their rock, then held out a hand to help Nora. She gave the statues a dubious look. She had never liked dolls or toys that moved by themselves.

  “She knows we’re here.”

  “They cannot hurt you,” he said, “while our protection spell holds.”

  Apparently he was right. The statues remained motionless as he and Nora passed.

  The temple nave was shadowy, but a bluish, flickering light came from the far end of the sanctuary, showing them a path through the massed pillars. For a mad, reassuring instant, Nora thought of the cool glow of television glimpsed through a neighbor’s windows at night, and then that comforting illusion dissolved.

  She’d thought that she was at least somewhat prepared for what they might find, having seen the baron’s body in the river. But there was really no way to steel yourself for stepping over one slumped, quiet body after another, for the still hands and feet protruding like pale, heavy flowers, for the stickiness underfoot, for the ripe, metallic smell of blood hanging in the air.

  There was almost no sound except for the plink-plink-plink of liquid, like a dripping faucet, coming from somewhere in the temple.

  The sickly, wavering light made the corpses look as though they had been dead forever. Nora recognized most of them. Pilgrims, ganoi, even one of the Ghaki king’s emissaries. She found herself reciting names under her breath in a kind of horrified greeting.

  Aruendiel touched her arm. “There will be time for proper mourning later,” he said quietly. She hoped that he was right about that.

  They came into the heart of the sanctuary, and Olenan, sometimes called Sisoaneer, looked up to greet them.

  She was sitting on the floor beside the giant statue, her toes pointed, one thin arm draped over her knees in a graceful, contemplative way, as though she had been daydreaming. Her features were as fine and cool as marble. Her dark hair hung in secretive curtains around her face; her eyes, rimmed with purplish shadows, were bright and enormous.

  Her hand caressed the spotted fur of the Kavareen, her fingers buried in the loose scruff of its shoulders. Uncharacteristically, the Kavareen pressed itself to the floor as though to make itself as small as possible, tail glued to its side. Around its neck was a collar of blue fire, illuminating the cavernous space.

  Olenan followed Nora’s gaze to the Kavareen. “Your abomination attacked me,” she said reprovingly. “Foolish.” She smoothed her skirt. Her black gown was wrinkled and chalky, dust clinging where the cloth had been soaked and stained.

  Only now did Nora notice the downy gray feather drifting in the air near Olenan, moving perhaps a little faster than one would expect.

  “Greetings to you, apostate,” Olenan said. “And Aruendiel. I am surprised to see you both. Why are you here? I gave you a chance to flee, when you came out by the river.”

  Her tone was light, matter-of-fact, which did not obscure the threa
t behind her words. Nora eyed the wisp of pale gray, which seemed to have embarked on an irregular circuit around Olenan. Aruendiel’s binding spell would seem more reassuring if his token did not seem so fragile, she thought.

  Meanwhile, the wet-iron stink of blood still filled her nose. “How many people did you kill?” Nora asked, ignoring Aruendiel’s warning frown.

  “Everyone I could,” Olenan said. “There are a few others hiding here and there. They think I don’t know where they are.”

  “Lady, an Eoluthian substitution requires victims but not a massacre,” Aruendiel said, his lip curled.

  “It was my sacrifice. It was necessary.” Tilting her head, she looked from Aruendiel to Nora with an appraising air. “You don’t understand, do you? I am truly a goddess now. And it’s thanks to you.”

  A sharp, derisive syllable broke from Aruendiel’s throat. “Olenan, no more of this mad—”

  “I am not mad. I never was. I know what I am, and I am not human anymore.”

  The Kavareen snarled, a deep, aching note that startled Nora because she heard so much yearning in it, and she wondered whether Olenan knew that the Kavareen was also Hirizjahkinis. Olenan gave it another fond scratch behind the ears, and then stood up with a fluid motion.

  “You’re right,” she said. “The trivial spell that has kept this body alive doesn’t need so many deaths, not at the same time. An Eoluthian substitution, you said? Of course you would know what the books call it, Aruendiel. It’s not really important, though.

  “I started being a goddess long ago, but it was not complete until now. This time, I took what I needed, and then I kept taking. Those people died for my divinity. They died to glorify me. If you could hear how they cried for mercy, one after the other—” Her mouth twisted gently. “Only a goddess could bear such a sacrifice. That is how I know I am truly divine.”

  “No, that’s just insanity,” Nora said, wishing that sociopath translated more precisely into Ors. Megalomaniac. Serial killer. She remembered the hawk’s pure, unmediated, not quite innocent lust to fill its stomach. But that was hunger, and hunger could be sated.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” Olenan said. “I am alone, more than alone. Now and always. I took you to the mountaintop, but you don’t understand—you can’t understand—what it means to live there.”

  “And when we were there,” Nora said, “you told me that healing was the most important thing.”

  “Oh, it is!” Olenan’s eyebrows arched. “I will heal more people than ever before. They will come to worship me and be healed, thousands and thousands. Some of them I won’t even need to treat. Their faith will cure them.”

  “Olenan, you are mocking the true gods.” Aruendiel’s voice was calm, as though he were describing something as obvious as the weather. “They will not be pleased. They will act against you.”

  “It’s funny to hear you say that. I never thought you had much trust in the gods.”

  “Very little trust. I respect them, however.”

  “Then you should respect me.” Her voice rose suddenly. “I am one of the true gods. Maybe I’m the only one. It’s very hard, becoming a goddess. But I had to do it.”

  “What’s wrong with being human?” Nora asked.

  Olenan began to laugh, but in a disturbingly quiet manner, as though determined to keep the joke all to herself. “There’s nothing wrong with being human, not for most people. But ask him what’s wrong with being human.”

  Aruendiel raised a quizzical eyebrow. “The various laments of the human race, well-founded or not, fill a dozen dozen books.”

  “No! You know what I’m talking about. You know. Trying to live among ordinary men and women when you’re not one of them—when your power can fill the sky and the sea, when you live on and on without dying. Like a god but not a god. That will drive you mad, eventually.”

  “Very few magicians have such power,” Aruendiel said.

  “Some do. You do, now.”

  Aruendiel gave his head the barest shake, his eyes fixed on Olenan.

  “Ah, you used to be so young!” Olenan added suddenly, her voice lilting. “Do you know what a child you were, when I first knew you? You can’t imagine—well, now you can, since you have this one,” she said, glancing at Nora.

  “You were afraid of me, and repelled—yes, you were—but you were greedy, you were desperate, you wanted to learn what I could teach you.

  “And you did learn, and when you had learned enough, you went back and used your magic for little kings and princes, you fought their wars and did their bidding, you whored and schemed and spent your gold and plowed your lands as though you were an ordinary man. But you are not an ordinary man, you are a magician, and I never taught you the hardest lesson of magic.

  “You know it now, though. That you can’t live in the world. There is too much time in it.” She smiled. “All the things you love die or disappear, or what’s worse, you discover you don’t love them anymore.”

  The Kavareen’s tail twitched. Its whiskers trembled with a silent snarl.

  Nora found that she was dreading to hear what Aruendiel would say. She spoke up instead: “That might be true for you—”

  “I’m a goddess. I am free of such trivial things; they mean nothing to me now. But what will you do, Aruendiel? You’ve already started to hide yourself from the world. How long before you decide to leave it entirely?” Olenan’s brown gaze studied Aruendiel’s face with caressing attention. “You’ve already thought about it, haven’t you?”

  He took a deep breath, as though gathering strength. His eyes found Nora’s, then slid away. “Thought and action are two different things.” His voice was unexpectedly gentle. “Is that how you died, Olenan? You decided to leave the world behind?”

  “Why would you care? And I did not die, not really.” Olenan’s slim brows dove down, angry arrows, like a child’s drawing. “I am divine, I overcame it. Death has no power over me.”

  “As you say. But you chose it once, I think.”

  “Once. Just once. You will, too. You won’t be able to bear the loneliness. I was born before the Thaw; do you know that?” Her voice rose with what could have been either anger or yearning. “We wore furs all year round. When I was little, ice bulls ran past our house, like an earthquake. It’s now underwater, the valley where I grew up—a lake. No one else remembers. There is no one left but me. Is that what you want, Aruendiel? She’ll make it even worse, eventually.” A nod at Nora. “You’ll be alone even when she’s there, and then one day she’ll leave you. As you left me.”

  “I did come back, you know that,” Aruendiel said. “I looked for you.”

  “You didn’t look hard enough.”

  “No. I did not.” His voice held both a faint tinge of regret and a heavier finality, the bones of a shipwreck settling gently on the ocean floor.

  Olenan seemed to be waiting for him to say something else. Then she said, flinging the words: “I didn’t die because of you.”

  He nodded. “Good. How did you do it? I have wondered.” A crooked smile. “Magicians are not easy to kill.”

  She smiled at him. “You want to know so that you can do the same, is that it? Don’t deny it.”

  “I would like to know what happened to you. That’s all.”

  “It was simple enough. I let someone else do it. That’s how the old ones did it, my father’s friends, when they grew so tired they knew they’d come to the end.” Her thin face tightened for an instant, before she grinned. “But you’re right, it isn’t easy to kill me. Then or now. My power is too great, it protects me before I know it.

  “I found a way, that time. A couple of men, idiots and cruel. I let them make me very, very drunk. And I found some way to annoy them, I believe. I’m not sure. I don’t remember very much. I looked down, and I was naked and covered in blood. There was a knife—here.” She in
dicated a spot on her right side, just above the waist. “I wasn’t afraid. All I could think of was how much I hated them, brutes, the evil clods. I lay on the floor. I closed my eyes, cursing them with all my heart.

  “The next thing I knew, I was getting to my feet. The tavern was deserted. Two dead men were lying next to me.

  “It was the first time I knew I was a goddess. Not a magician, a goddess. My wound had healed.” Olenan touched her side again. “It opens when I need a new sacrifice, but it always heals.” A new thought struck her. “I wonder if it will still come back now, now that I’m completely divine, not human at all?”

  “You never told me anything about this,” Nora said, her voice prickly. It was a horrifying story, and Nora resented having to hear every piteous word. How was Aruendiel taking it? She was apprehensive about his chivalrous streak—also about something in the way he addressed Olenan, and the fact that they were having a conversation with Olenan instead of fighting her. Aruendiel’s face was drawn into somber lines but was otherwise unreadable.

  “You never asked,” Olenan said, kinking one corner of her mouth. “It’s not the worst thing that ever happened to me, child.”

  “Lady, I regret that you suffered these evils. They are unspeakable,” Aruendiel said with deep seriousness, and Nora’s heart sank a little.

  “It doesn’t give you the right to kill all these people,” Nora said, more for Aruendiel’s benefit than Olenan’s, in case he was feeling too much sympathy. He gave her a canny sideways glance.

  “I wouldn’t have killed them if you’d let me have my sacrifice,” Olenan said.

  “You’re already trapped, Olenan,” Aruendiel said. “Locked inside this temple with half a dozen spells to bind and blunt your magic.”

  Olenan looked up at the tiny gray plume, still circulating aloft on its oddly purposeful course. “Your magic won’t hold me,” she said. With an air of lazy curiosity, she reached for the feather; instantly it twirled upward. She gave a half shrug. “You put such trust in the spells you learned from books, Aruendiel, you always did. But you should know by now”—her voice hardened—“that I’m stronger than any spell of yours.”