by NS Dolkart
Phaedra fell to the rumbling ground, whispering her own prayer to God Most High as the wind whipped her clothes and hair, struck her with falling twigs and bark, and roared in her ears. She crawled through the thicket on all fours, still holding her staff, scrambling to get away from the great tree. She didn’t know precisely what would happen when the worlds combined, but she did know one thing: the Yarek would grow still bigger. The closer she was to it, the greater the chance that she’d be crushed or consumed.
She was supposed to help open the gate, to guide the Yarek’s efforts and keep the merger from becoming as violent as it otherwise might. But in that moment fear overtook her, and she focused all her efforts on escape. Just reach Narky, she thought. Just reach Narky.
She could feel it already: the breach, the fraying at the corners of existence. With a last effort, she pulled herself free of the vines and thorns, praying with all her being that it would be enough. The world darkened – the sky above was full of swirling clouds, the too-familiar mist of a gate opening. The mesh was coming apart, and it was terrifying.
All of Phaedra’s well-composed prayerspells vanished from her mind. “Let me live!” she cried, her voice hoarse, her very bones trembling. “Let me live!”
40
Raider Eleven
The final quake started in the twilight high above, but it traveled downward as it intensified, cracking trees from their trunks and hurling them in all directions. The elves fled their home, unwilling to risk having even Castle Goodweather over their heads, and made their way toward the godserf fortress. There was a chance that its defenses would come down during this final quake – if the walls themselves collapsed, the power trapped within them might return to either the elves or the Yarek, whichever of them thought to take it first.
So they ran through the woods as the world shook and the stars dropped flaming from the sky, shaken at last from their bindings. They struck the ground here and there, bouncing two or three times off the ground with the force of their descent, setting the forest alight. It was true what Raider Eleven had heard: they were indeed torches. What she hadn’t realized until this moment was that they were made not of dead wood but of living, writhing trees the size of her arm. The defeated Yarek had always been more than two pieces: its enemies had set its splinters aflame and made the monster light its own world.
They arrived at the wizard’s home just as the mists engulfed it. One of Raider Eleven’s more impulsive companions hurled his weapon into the mists where the walls had been, as if this last aggressive act could bring those walls down. The sickle never bounced back out again.
“Disgusting.”
Eleven felt her queen’s frustration in her bones, her blood, her bowels. The wizard had escaped them again somehow.
The thunder came not in claps now but in one long, continuous rending sound. The earth shook until all the dirt fell through it like a sieve, and all that remained were roots, shifting roots, twisting downward and carrying the elves along with them. The queen and her companions leapt from one to the next, making their way down to where the world did not shake anymore but grew, inexorably, toward something.
There was daylight below them, inexplicable daylight. Eleven looked up at her queen and smiled. The queen reached out a hand, granting her consort the honor of guiding her way. Raider Eleven took it gladly, and together they climbed down into a new world.
41
Narky
Narky watched Phaedra negotiate with the Yarek, his heart heavy. This is the end, he thought. I’ve failed my God, and now I might well outlive Him. Again.
“What’s she doing?” Dessa asked, watching Phaedra make use of Narky’s knife.
“Magic,” Narky answered. It was a vague, unhelpful answer, which was more or less what Dessa deserved, by Narky’s reckoning. Anyway, he didn’t really have a better one.
He wondered if the Yarek really would repent, or if it would only deceive Phaedra until it was fully unified and then resume the war against its ancient enemy. Probably the latter. Either way, Ravennis – and with Him, Narky’s place in the underworld – was likely doomed.
Narky’s God had defied God Most High – it was hard to come to another conclusion. He had sent Narky to kill Phaedra so that the Yarek might never get its chance to repent and the world might shatter, to His benefit. If the Yarek didn’t fool Phaedra, if it took her offer to heart and repented fully, God Most High would surely reward it by letting it consume Ravennis and His underworld, or at least reshape the underworld in its own image. Narky and his family had nothing to look forward to, besides the rest of their lives. And how short those would be!
How could God Most High give the Yarek this chance at repentance, the chance that by rights Ravennis deserved? Why shouldn’t Ravennis get the benefit of His master’s mercy, when He had done so much to make the world safe for God Most High’s worshippers? He had freed Salemis, struck down Bestillos through Narky’s hand, even used Narky to make peace between Ardis and the Dragon Touched! Didn’t He deserve the Lord Above’s mercy?
Not without asking. That was the key. And now that Ravennis had officially abandoned him, now that Narky was no longer high priest, what good would his own prayers do?
He would try anyway. He had prayed once for Phaedra to live, so long ago when she had been dying in the mountains. He had asked Ravennis to spare her, and He – or someone – had. If his prayers back then could save Phaedra, and through her the Yarek too, then maybe they could save Narky’s God.
Narky fell to his knees, his arms still bound, and began to pray. Dessa made confused noises and nudged him with her foot, but he ignored her. Do not turn Your wrath on Ravennis, he prayed to the Lord Above. If you are a God of Mercy, a God willing to forgive Your most ancient enemy, please have mercy on Your servants too, not only mortal but divine. Have mercy on Ravennis, who served You even when You were silent, and brought Your people out of the shadows. Spare the one who brought Your order to the World Below. Spare the God who spared me. Please.
Both his eyes were weeping, even the one he no longer saw through, that hadn’t cried in years. Narky blinked and opened his eyes, but the tear-blurred vision still came to him from only one side. What an odd thing, to heal the part of his eye that brought forth tears, and not the part that saw. Perhaps it was Ravennis’ work. Perhaps his God considered him a good spokesman.
He squeezed his eyes shut again and prayed with all his might for the Lord Above to spare the Lord Below. He prayed and prayed until the earth began to shake and he fell painfully on his side. His eyes opened then, as Dessa pulled him back to his knees.
“What’s that?” she cried.
The sky was opening. Through the swirling clouds, roots reached down, snaking toward the Yarek’s branches. Narky saw figures climbing down those roots, and his blood went cold. Elves. They were coming through.
As he watched, the figures shrank, sprouted wings, and flew away. They made a smaller vee than he had expected, and he kept watching the roots for more, but no more came. He didn’t know what to think about that.
And then, with a bang, the new Yarek’s branches met the old Yarek’s roots and the whole terrifying beast became one. The earth cracked and opened, and Narky watched Phaedra get hurled into the air as the trunk expanded outwards. Her figure was buffeted this way and that as the sky shook her, but at last she fell back down to earth.
Narky struggled to his feet and ran toward her. The earth was still rumbling and the sky shaking as the Yarek expanded – would they ever stop? – but Narky managed not to fall as he ran, arms bound, toward his friend. Oh Gods, he hadn’t even thought to pray for her safety too.
He got to her prone body and fell to his knees again. It was impossible to tell whether she was breathing or whether it was the trembling ground that made her back rise and fall.
“Phaedra!” he cried.
Slowly, painfully, his friend put her hands on the ground and lifted her head to look at him. “Narky,” she said. “You can…
take those bindings off.”
The ropes fell around him at her command. He reached out and tried to help her up, but the earth kept shaking and her legs kept wobbling, so instead he dragged her as far as he could before they both fell down again.
“Is anything broken?”
“I have no idea.”
He was going to ask her to move her legs on her own, but he was interrupted by a shriek. A crack had opened in the earth where Phaedra had been lying, and something was crawling out of it. Shapes began pouring from the hole, terrible shapes, shapes that couldn’t possibly have belonged to this world. An eight-legged badger scrabbled past him so close that it sprayed Narky with dirt on its way toward the forest. Lord save Ravennis – the underworld had cracked open.
Narky began to pray to God Most High again. He was probably too late, but he didn’t know what else to do. His words disappeared among the shrieks and the rumbling as he begged the Lord Above to save his God and reseal the underworld, to end this horror. Perhaps it made more sense to ask the Yarek for that, but Narky would never pray to the Yarek.
And then, finally, the last monster crawled out of the hole, and no other took its place. This one walked on two feet like a man but possessed not a single defining feature. It wandered off past Dessa, and Narky heard Phaedra murmur, “God Above, a lost soul. A real one.”
The air around them had quieted enough that he could hear her, but Narky wondered at the fact that he hadn’t been entirely deafened. Half the sounds he had perceived must not have been sounds at all.
Phaedra gasped, turning back toward the Yarek, and Narky followed her gaze. The words she had carved into the great tree, whatever they had meant, had disappeared during the Yarek’s expansion, but now they were coming back, glowing like a sunset and twisting up its trunk like a vine of letters.
“What does it mean?” Narky asked, though he thought he knew the answer.
“It means Illweather lost. The Yarek is repenting.”
Narky’s gaze drifted all the way up to where the Yarek’s tip should have been, but he could not find it – too many clouds had gathered above, and the Yarek pierced them like an arrow. Even its lower branches were barely visible.
“You think its top is in the heavens? The real heavens, where the Gods live?”
Phaedra struggled to a sitting position beside him. “I can’t imagine otherwise. Its roots cracked the underworld.”
Narky looked back down to the trunk. It wasn’t even swaying. “It doesn’t look like there’s a big battle going on up there.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Slowly, they both rose to their feet. “Your legs are all right?” Narky asked in wonder.
“No,” Phaedra said, “they’re uneven. But they’ll do.”
Narky ran to retrieve her staff, and together they walked back toward Dessa. “I prayed for God Most High to spare Ravennis. Do you think He listened?”
“I don’t know. But you’re alive, so that’s a good start. How’s your chest?”
“It feels fine. I don’t know if that means anything, though. Ravennis took His mark from me when He sent me after you.”
“Well,” Phaedra said, “don’t ask me, then. It’ll be a long time before I have any answers. I’ve only ever had questions, really, and I feel like I have more now than I did before.”
Narky couldn’t help but laugh. “Nothing new about that. If I said two and two were four, you’d still find questions to ask about it.”
Phaedra chuckled a bit and didn’t try to deny it.
“Is it all over?” Dessa asked when they reached her. “Is the world safe, Phaedra?”
Narky answered before Phaedra could. “The world is never safe,” he said. “But we’re still here.”
“So where do we go now?”
“I’m going back to Tarphae,” Phaedra said. “I have an idea that Hunter may have ended up there. If Silent Hall didn’t fall through those clouds, it must have gotten pulled through its own gate. At least, that’s what I hope. Will you come too, Narky?”
Narky shook his head. “Not a chance. I have a wife and a son in Ardis. I need to protect them, if I even can. If Ravennis is done ordering me around, I’m going home.”
42
Homecoming
All the way back to Ardis, Narky worried. Would Ptera and Grace still be there when he arrived? Would Ravennis protect them, despite Narky’s failure? For that matter, had Ravennis even survived the piercing of His underworld? Narky hadn’t seen any crow-angels flying around, trying to bring those monsters back.
He didn’t see any trace of them on his journey, or of the monsters either. They must have found hiding places for themselves, along with the elves who had come through the breach. Phaedra’s plan may have saved the world after all, but it certainly hadn’t made the place less frightening.
Not yet, anyway. If the Yarek was capable of repenting and making peace with God Most High, maybe it would be kinder to this world than the Gods had been. A good influence, just as the islanders had hoped when they planted it here. All one could do was hope.
He still avoided people on the way home – the fact that the world hadn’t ended didn’t mean that people would be kind to him, or that Mageris didn’t have a price on his head. If the priests of Ravennis had welcomed Ptera as their leader, he could have relied on her to shelter him from the king, but as it was, the most he could hope for was that she still lived.
When he neared Anardis, he risked stopping to ask someone for news. He dreaded the answer, and feared giving Mageris a lead into his whereabouts, but he had to know.
The news was better than he could have hoped. In her first act as high priestess, Ptera had insisted on expanding the church into Dragon Touched territory, to convert those plainsmen who had not entirely bought into Dragon Touched rule. If official doctrine held that Ravennis was a servant to God Most High, then those who did not fully take to the Dragon Touched religion might be persuaded to pray to the servant for intercession with His master. The Dragon Touched might find such prayers distasteful, but since they would not violate God Most High’s doctrine of supremacy, it would be hard to justify keeping the Church of Ravennis out. Once the church had its toehold, there was no saying how far it could expand.
Ptera had apparently spent two weeks negotiating with Kilion Highservant, high priest of God Most High, to establish a small church in Salemica, and then stayed there to navigate its tumultuous first days. She had taken Grace with her, of course, and so after the third week she had sent a messenger to the great temple in Ardis notifying the priests there that the work of establishing this new outpost was too much to accomplish while still fulfilling her duties as high priestess, and that regretfully she must resign and leave it to the priests of Ardis to choose her successor.
It was a brilliant maneuver, for all that the man who told Narky about it thought that Ptera must have been terribly unsuited to her position to begin with, if she had been so eager to give it up. Narky didn’t contradict him, yet he couldn’t help but grin as the man continued to talk. He was sure that when he left, the man must have told all his neighbors that the former High Priest of Ravennis, that infamous, foreign Black Priest, had gone entirely mad.
Ptera was alive! More than that, she had found a way to correct Narky’s error, pass the high priesthood over to Lepidos, and find asylum in Salemica for herself and Grace, all without losing the respect of her fellow priests or the Dragon Touched leadership. She hadn’t even had to give up her priestesshood! Narky said a heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving to Ravennis for his wife’s brilliance, for all that he didn’t know if his God was there to hear it anymore. He traveled eastward after that, and made a wide arc around Ardis on his way to Salemica.
Phaedra had given him some money to help his journey, kind heart as she had, so he was able to stay in relative comfort once he was outside of Ardisian territory. He was also able to exchange his tattered nightrobe for real clothes, though they didn’t fit perfectly and cost him most of w
hat he had left. At least he would not look like a madman when he saw his wife again.
It was in Arca that he heard of Criton’s force of axmen, and of their demise. Oh, that fool. He’d gotten himself killed, and of course he’d done it with unasked-for heroism. Phaedra had told him of her plan, and instead of trying to stop her as Narky had, he had focused his efforts on cutting down, himself, a monster that had defied the Gods. It was so typical of him, it made Narky cry.
He’d miss that man.
The high priest’s son, Malkon Highservant, had followed Criton to his death, provoking a major – if slow-moving – crisis. Unless Vella renounced her quiet life and returned to study with her father, the high priest would have no heir. People he met brought up that possibility hopefully, but if the woman really loved Bandu, Narky didn’t think there was much chance of her returning to the capital city for good. He didn’t know her, but he knew Bandu. She would never choose such a life.
At long last, Narky came to Salemica and found his way to Ptera’s new church, where his wife met him with endless kisses. “I thought for certain that you were going to your death,” she said. “The way you looked when you said Ravennis had told you to leave – I thought He must have asked you to sacrifice yourself somehow.”
“He did. But I failed, so here I am.”
Ptera had to step back and look at him through those bewitching, uneven eyes of hers. “I’ve never been so glad you failed at something,” she said.
“You’ll have to get used to me being a failure,” Narky told her. “I’m not a priest anymore, I’m not anything.”
“You’re a father,” Ptera said, “and you’re my husband, and you’re alive. That’s all the success I need from you.”
Vella and Bandu’s horse had wisely fled from the Yarek as soon as Bandu had dismounted, so the three of them had to stagger homeward on foot. Now that Goodweather was safe, now that the narrow clarity of emergencies had passed, Vella could feel how her first-ever flight had drained her. There was a horrible aching pain, a pain not quite anywhere in her body, for which she could find no relief. It felt like she had sprained her soul.