Solis

by Kat Ross

  “I think there’s a gate that way,” she said, pointing to the forest below. “But I don’t know how far it is.”

  Kallisto nodded. “We shall follow your lead then. I have no desire to stay here any longer than necessary.”

  It took nearly an hour to descend the steep mountainside because of Charis’s ankle. Cyrene and Megaera took turns helping her through the worst parts. Finally, they reached the relative shelter of the woods. Cyrene argued that they should try to make a litter, but Charis stubbornly refused.

  “You’re worse than a wet nurse,” she grumbled. “It’s just a little swollen.”

  Cyrene’s almond eyes narrowed, but she let it go. After a brief rest, the party set off into the trees with Nazafareen in front, following an invisible thread of talismanic power. Even the injured Maenads kept a wary eye on the dense woods around them, but Javid walked with his head down. He looked haunted by dark reveries of his own. Only Herodotus had a spring in his step. He examined every leaf and blade of grass with intense interest, as though cataloguing them all.

  Nazafareen’s thoughts turned to the Valkirin. Somehow they’d found her, but it didn’t make any sense. The daēva had been inside one of the temple buildings. It seemed a horrendous risk to take, even for an assassin. And how could they possibly know she would be there? If the Valkirin had been following her, why wait until she was surrounded by a huge crowd of people and soldiers? Why not attack her in the street?

  Plus, he had looked distinctly surprised when she severed his elemental magic. As if he didn’t know what she was.

  Then there was the matter of the talismans she’d sensed inside the building. What were they for? She supposed they could be magical objects the Pythia had seized as heretical. That did make a sort of sense. But thinking back, it seemed as if the Valkirin himself was wearing one. She tried to summon a clear memory of the moment, but it eluded her.

  After some hours, it became obvious the injured members of their party needed rest. They made camp near a small lake with a spring-fed inlet. Cyrene slipped away to scout the perimeter while Kallisto took out a flint and started a small fire with some dry twigs.

  “Do you think that’s wise?” Rhea asked. She lay with her head propped on her cloak. “What if someone sees the smoke?”

  “I want a cup of hot tea, but since we have neither tea nor cups, I can at least warm my feet,” Kallisto replied tartly. “If the demons of the underworld find us, it will still be worth it.”

  Rhea grunted. “I’ll admit, it’s not how I imagined it,” she said. “There are no harpies or gorgons. And where is the ferryman to help the dead cross the River Styx?”

  “The Dominion has many rivers,” Nazafareen said. Her memories from that time were hazy, but she did remember the woman in white and the things she’d said. “They lead to a place called the Cold Sea, where boats carry the dead to the other side. I don’t know what waits for them there.”

  “Did you see them?”

  “No, the dead are invisible to the living.”

  They fell silent. Nazafareen knew the Maenads were thinking of their fallen sisters. Herodotus bowed his head.

  Then Megaera began to sing, a low, mournful dirge. One by one, the others joined in. They sang of Adeia and Alcippe, praising their bravery and welcoming them home to the father. Javid watched silently from his seat on a fallen log.

  The song ended as it had begun, with their voices fading to silence. Everyone sat and quietly watched the fire until Cyrene returned some time later to say she’d found no signs of life for a league around. Nazafareen gathered her courage and went over to Javid.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Like a rabbit that jumped out of the stewpot just before it came to a boil,” he replied flatly.

  Nazafareen rubbed her stump. “I’m so sorry for all that’s happened.”

  Javid sighed. “I don’t blame you.”

  Her chin jerked up in surprise. “You don’t?”

  “Well, I do, but I blame the Pythia more.” He glanced at her through singed lashes. “Are you a daēva…Nazafareen?”

  He must have heard the others use her real name.

  “No, that much was the truth. I’m as human as you.”

  His expression conveyed extreme skepticism.

  “All right, part daēva. Some distant ancestor, I don’t know who. And I do have this thing.” She paused. “I can break magic.”

  His brown eyes studied her. “Like you did with the chimera?”

  “I didn’t ask for it. I don’t even want it.” She kicked at a tuft of grass. “I just want to be left alone, but everything I do seems to make things worse.”

  “I know the feeling.” He glanced at the Maenads and lowered his voice. “How did you meet them?”

  “Charis—the little feisty one with the sprained ankle—she gave me the message for Herodotus. He’s Kallisto’s husband. Then after you got arrested, I went back to our old alley. Those same thugs who’d tried to kill him found me, and they were going to turn me in to the Pythia, but Charis showed up and beat them to a pulp. She brought me to this farmhouse they have outside the city. I told them I’d help break out Herodotus, but only if we rescued you too.”

  “Keep talking. I might be starting to forgive you.”

  Nazafareen’s smile died. “I attended your trial. We had a plan…. Well, it doesn’t matter now. You know how that turned out. I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out of the dungeons sooner. Was it really bad in there?”

  He tilted his head. “Oh no, they were lovely. The décor was a little damp and grimy for my taste, but the Polemarch gave me foot massages every night after supper.”

  Nazafareen forced a laugh. “Did they…torture you or anything?”

  “Only with bad food and tedious company,” he said lightly.

  “Well, I should have left you there then.”

  Javid gave her a half-hearted kick.

  “So you didn’t try to bribe the guards to get me out?” he asked.

  “No.” She flushed. “Frankly, it didn’t occur to me. Who would betray the Polemarch for any amount of gold? He’d have their heads.” She paused. “Or worse.”

  “Of course,” Javid murmured.

  “Listen, you silly man, there’s more,” Nazafareen whispered. “Kallisto thinks the Avas Vatras are coming back for revenge or something. And the Maenads are the only ones who can save us because they’re impervious to fire.”

  “Uh-huh.” Javid nodded slowly. “Nazafareen, do you know what the word Maenad means?”

  She shook her head.

  “Raving ones. They’re crazy women who drink a lot of wine and dance and have sex with strangers.” He raised his palms. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against any of those things. In fact, it sounds like fun. But they’re not exactly reliable.”

  “You don’t know them. They’re not like that. I trust Kallisto, and Herodotus too.”

  He made a tipping motion with his hand. “Been worshipping at the temple of the grape? No worries, we’ve all gone there once or twice—”

  “I’m serious. You should warn the Guild when you get to Samarqand. The king too. I mean, the Kiln isn’t that far away from the mortal cities. You’d be the first ones to get fried.” She tried for a sizzling sound but it came out as a raspberry.

  Javid made a show of brushing imaginary spit from his shoulder.

  “Give me some proof and I’ll tell them anything you like. But I’m in big enough trouble already.”

  She eyed his charred coat. “Don’t you want to get rid of that thing? It’s a wreck.”

  “This?” He laughed and fingered the blackened collar. “It’s my good luck charm. I’d marry it, if only it knew how to cook.”

  Nazafareen studied him. “I missed you, you oaf.”

  “Now, now. I’m a gentleman of refinement. You’ve only seen me at my worst. And you, poor creature, have yet to see actual civilization. Delphi is a bunch of mud huts compared to Samarqand.” He winked at he
r. “Let me tell you about the King’s palace. It’s called the Rock of Ariamazes and it was the only thing left standing after the Vatras marched through. A thousand years ago, they say the Rock sat on the shore of the Austral Ocean. But a great drought caused the water to retreat all the way to Susa….”

  They spent the next hour talking and laughing together like old times. Nazafareen told him some of her true story—all of it that she knew, at least.

  “I feel like a child sometimes,” she confessed.

  “And with a child’s temper,” he observed.

  She sighed. “That too. Everything is new and strange. Although I do remember the words for most things. And I remember how to fight. That I remember.”

  Javid stifled a yawn. “Perhaps you can find the words of a spell to restore it. Magic is practiced openly in Samarqand.”

  She leaned forward eagerly. “Have you heard of such a spell?”

  “No, I know little about the uses of spell dust beyond navigational purposes. You’d need to find an alchemist, but they’re terribly expensive.”

  “Oh.” She rolled up in her cloak, hiding her disappointment. “Well, I suppose we should get some rest.”

  He mumbled something, but it was swallowed by another enormous yawn. Javid curled up beside her and soon both were fast sleep.

  When it was Nazafareen’s turn to keep watch, she took up her post on Javid’s log and stared into the embers of the fire. Save for the soft breath of her companions, the Dominion was perfectly still. She could feel the tug of the gate, if that’s what it was. She hoped so. For all Rhea’s talk of gorgons and harpies, Nazafareen knew other things—real things of flesh and blood—roamed the Dominion. The Shepherds, for instance. She’d seen them that day at the lake with the Valkirin army. Great hounds with lolling tongues and sharp teeth. Darius had told her a little about them. Perhaps understandably, they viewed the living as interlopers who didn’t belong in the underworld.

  Nazafareen stiffened as she felt a presence behind her. Kallisto sat gracefully on the log, tucking her skirts between her knees.

  “About before—” Nazafareen began, embarrassment flaming her cheeks.

  “That is not what I wish to speak of.” Kallisto smiled at her. “It’s said Breakers have the temper of a bear with its paw stuck in a beehive.”

  Nazafareen’s lips curved in a wry grin. “And a toothache to boot.”

  Kallisto laughed.

  “Who told you about Breakers?”

  “A very wise woman. A Marakai.”

  Nazafareen perked up. “What else did she know about them?”

  “Only that they are very rare, and their blood is a mix of human and daēva.”

  “Oh.” Nazafareen sighed. “I knew that already.”

  They were silent for a moment. Nazafareen eyed Kallisto’s staff. The coiled vines and leaves around the shaft seemed to shiver as though brushed by a faint breeze. She wondered what other secrets the woman kept.

  “Your staff does more than compel the truth,” Nazafareen observed.

  “It has several uses.” Kallisto held her hands out to the dying warmth of the fire.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “The staff is passed down to whoever leads our order.”

  “Was it a gift from Dionysius?”

  Kallisto smiled. “No. The Vatras, ironically enough.”

  “The Vatras?”

  “They were not always evil. Once, the making of talismans was their special talent. No new ones have been forged since they were defeated. A talisman requires fire, which you of all people ought to know.”

  Nazafareen’s brow furrowed. “So your staff is over a thousand years old?”

  “Yes. That’s what makes talismans so precious. Most have been lost or damaged, but a few remain.”

  Nazafareen thought of the lumen crystal at House Dessarian. She’d always assumed the other daēvas didn’t use them because they could see so well in the dark, but now she understood the gift Tethys had made by offering her the use of one. Had Nazafareen carelessly broken it, it couldn’t have been replaced.

  “I have a talisman too,” she said. “Though I’m not sure exactly what it does.”

  She took out the cuff. Its power was dampened in the Dominion and she didn’t fear handling it. Kallisto looked at it curiously but made no move to touch it.

  “What does it do?”

  “The cuff has a match. It belongs to a daēva named Darius. Once it joined us in a way I don’t fully understand.”

  Kallisto studied her until Nazafareen grew uncomfortable and dropped her eyes. The twilit woods leaned close around them.

  “You care deeply for him.”

  “Yes,” Nazafareen admitted.

  “And yet you left him behind?”

  “I had to.”

  Kallisto gave her a look of sympathy. “Perhaps your paths will cross again someday.”

  “This was forged in the land I came from,” Nazafareen explained, turning the cuff in her hand so it caught the firelight. “The Empire. Our worlds are like…two houses. The walls never touch directly but there’s an alley between them, and that alley is the Dominion. The land of the dead.”

  “And your world is reached through the gates as well?”

  “Yes, exactly! Anyway, the cuff. I don’t remember wearing it. But its power was extinguished in Nocturne.” She frowned. “Why would that be? Other talismans seemed to work.”

  Kallisto slowly shook her head. “I cannot say.”

  “My breaking magic didn’t work there either. Only in Solis.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know enough about talismans to help you. But it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that your talent is tied to fire. It is…different from the other elements.”

  “I sensed talismans at the temple,” Nazafareen admitted. “Well, not in the temple itself, but the building behind it. I don’t know what they were.”

  Kallisto gave her a sharp look. “Talismans, eh?”

  “Maybe they were items seized by the Pythia.”

  “Perhaps.” She thought for a while and seemed to reach a decision about something. “I must go to Sakhet-ra-katme—the one who told me about Breakers. She is the oldest living Marakai and she will have answers to some of these riddles.”

  “How old is that?” Nazafareen wondered aloud.

  “Very old indeed. When I was named the head of our order, I made a pilgrimage to Sakhet-ra-katme. She taught me to speak with birds. We used to communicate regularly, but I haven’t heard from her for some years now.” Kallisto shrugged. “Sakhet views time differently than we do. A decade in mortal years might pass in the blink of an eye, or seem a century. But she knows much about the talismans—more than she admitted, I think.”

  Nazafareen sensed from her subtle inflection that she wasn’t talking about objects anymore.

  “You mean the three daēvas?”

  “It is possible Sakhet remembers them. Yes, she is that old, child.”

  Nazafareen gave her a sidelong look. She’d never had a chance to ask about what happened just before Adrian arrived at the farm. She didn’t remember all Kallisto had seen, but one phrase stood out.

  “You said a wolf stalks the Marakai. What does that mean?”

  “I saw a child in great danger.” Her eyes hardened, the fine lines at their corners deepening. “I think she can only be one of the talismans. Sakhet will help us find her, so that we may protect her from those who would do her harm.”

  “You mean the Vatras?”

  Kallisto stared into the coals. “Yes,” she said softly. “It has begun.”

  “But if this girl is so powerful, why does she need protection?” Nazafareen asked. “And wouldn’t the Marakai keep her safe? She’s one of their own, after all.”

  Kallisto raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you would care to ask Sakhet yourself,” she said dryly. “But it is the sacred duty of the Maenads to seek out the talismans when portents come of the Vatras’ return. There will be strife and war a
mong mortals and daēvas alike, and we will be at our weakest when the beast comes to the door. That was foretold by my predecessor and every vision she had came to pass.” She sighed. “If I knew who the others were—the Valkirin or the Danai—I would send word to them as well. The talismans must be united, not scattered and weak. But Sakhet-ra-katme is the only daēva who knows and trusts me.”

  She gave Nazafareen a long look. “Do you wish to come with us? Sakhet might know more about your powers. And a Breaker would be a valuable addition to our party.”

  “You would still take me after….?” Nazafareen swallowed. “I’m not sure I’m safe.”

  “Safe.” Kallisto gave a low laugh. “Well, perhaps you are not. But little in this world is safe anymore. And your heart is true. My staff confirmed it.” She patted Nazafareen’s knee. “You needn’t decide now.”

  “And the Pythia? How does she fit into all this?”

  “I don’t know,” Kallisto admitted. “She spins her own web and I fear we have not seen the full shape of it yet.”

  Nazafareen hesitated. If Sakhet-ra-Katme was the oldest living Marakai, surely she had powers beyond imagining. It was just what she’d hoped for, yet her heart was divided. Did Darius seek her out? If so, could she let him wander Solis alone while she went haring off to the Isles of the Marakai?

  But how would I ever find him? No, better to do what I set out to do and then return to Nocturne. And the Maenads will fight the Pythia. She is my enemy too now.

  “I shall come with you,” she said firmly.

  Kallisto gave her hand a small squeeze. “Herodotus will be pleased. He likes you, child.”

  Nazafareen smiled. “Have you asked him what was in that scroll the Pythia wanted so badly?”

  The head of the Maenads gave the fire a poke. Sparks drifted into the air like a swarm of fireflies. “We shall discuss that when we get to Samarqand.”

  They set out again a few hours later. Charis’s ankle was badly swollen and she had to hop along with Cyrene and Megaera holding her up, which put her in a terrible temper. Javid walked alongside Herodotus, the two speaking together quietly. As before, Nazafareen took the lead. The forest gave way to rolling grasslands and finally, to a small hollow where they found the gate.