by Rin Chupeco
“And there will be consequences! Repercussions that extend beyond what you can even begin to imagine!”
“Maybe if you hadn’t lied to me about everything, I would have believed you! You lied about my father, about my sister! Why should I trust what you say now?”
Latona’s voice softened. “Whether you wish it or not, I am still your mother. I only want what’s best for you, even if you don’t understand.”
“And what about me?” Odessa stepped forward, and her hood fell to her shoulders.
Audible gasps of amazement from the soldiers. Latona’s eyes threatened to start out of her head; she grew pale, her hair leaching color. “Impossible,” she whispered. “A mirage. You’re nothing but a mirage. Odessa died years ago.”
“You’re wrong.” Odessa’s voice trembled, but she took her place beside Haidee, taking her sister’s hand. “I lived. I grew up on the other side of the world. I survived the Breaking. Haidee found me. My—I always believed you were dead.”
“Impossible!” Latona shouted. “What are these illusions you use against me, Haidee? Do you truly hate me, to hurt me this way?”
“No!” Haidee looked alarmed. “Mother, this is neither a mirage nor an illusion. This is Odessa, my twin. She was separated from us. She came from the city of Aranth, was raised among other survivors! They live in constant night just as we do in perpetual day, and she—”
“Aranth? How dare you.” Latona’s rage was frightening to behold. The sands before her churned, erupted into fire. Balls of flames leaped from her hands. “Aranth? How dare you say his name. How dare you say his name.”
I’d been in enough incanta fights to know what was coming. So did Lan. We grabbed Haidee and Odessa and dragged them away. Latona’s fireballs were aimed at Odessa, so Lan all but tucked the girl underneath her arm, dodging the flames thrown their way until they skidded to safety behind a large sand dune, Noelle following close behind.
The rest of the Golden army, fortunately, had horrible aim. I slid us down behind a second knoll, Haidee still protesting, as more shots flew past us. I let go of her and lifted my Howler, trying to will Fire patterns in faster. Despite their imprecision, the soldiers had more firepower and better weapons, and it was only a matter of time before one of them got lucky. Even as that thought crossed my mind, they were already pushing one of the large cannons forward, stacked to overflowing with glowfires.
“I wasn’t in danger!” Haidee yelped at me. “She won’t hurt me, no matter how angry she gets!”
“Might be, but can you really trust her flunkies not to hit you, even by accident? Your mother is on a rampage.” I glanced up at the sky, where bright sizzles of light gathered around the army, crackling with the promise of more violence. One of those bright balls of energy struck the sand nearby, and it felt like every hair on my skin stood on end from the impact.
“Lightning,” Lan called out to us. “We’ve seen more than our share of that where we come from.”
Haidee lashed out with an arm, and a giant wall of hardened sand rose up, a shield from the army’s volleys and the older goddess’s wrath. “She’s never done this before,” she said, sounding uncertain for the first time since returning. “She’s always kept her composure. I’ve only seen her lose her temper once.”
“Seeing Odessa unhinged her brain.” I shifted my Howler, opening the fire-gate in my eyes again.
“Don’t you dare, Arjun.”
“Of course not. But you better figure out how to calm her down before this whole place goes to hell in a kettle.”
“Your mirages hold no water!” Latona was gone. In her place was a madwoman. Her hair flew around her, sticking straight out of her head as she wove more and more incanta, the air steeped in their potency. “Odessa died at the Breaking!”
“Mother!” Haidee shouted. “Stop it!”
Lightning raked the ground before us, but Haidee’s sand walls took the brunt. Several more bolts struck a couple of the army’s rigs, setting them alight. The older goddess didn’t seem to care; it was as if she were fighting an invisible monster the rest of us couldn’t see, and we were all targets for her fury.
A cannon fired. A giant fireball hurtled toward the hill where Odessa, Lan, and Noelle had taken shelter. Haidee gestured, and a fresh wall shot out of the sand, breaking apart when the glowfire hit it, but stopping the attack.
“Odessa!” I heard Lan cry out, and saw the other twin rising to her feet, mimicking the combination of patterns that swirled around Latona. She clapped her hands together just as another arc of lightning crackled toward us, and her own lightning met it halfway. Both fizzled out in midair; the energy from the collision made my teeth hurt. There was too much of it everywhere.
Latona lowered her arms, rationality returning as she stared at her other daughter, as if finally seeing her for the first time. “It can’t be you.” The words came out slowly, fearful.
Odessa stared back, looking like she’d seen a mirage of her own. “You look exactly like Mother.”
The Sun Goddess drew back. “Don’t ever say that. She’s not your mother!”
“Mother, listen!” The sand wall crumbled, and Haidee rose. “Everything we knew was a lie. Odessa’s alive, and so is Asteria!”
A sudden rumbling noise made us all look up. I thought it was a fresh assault from the older Sun Goddess, but Latona’s expression was also one of genuine shock.
Dark clouds were spreading rapidly overhead; the rumblings grew louder.
A figure blurred into view in between us and the army; a human-shaped form bound in a cloak of gray, features obscured by a hood. I drew in a sharp breath. It was a mirage. More than that, it was a mirage of a Devoted, one of the many dead servants of the goddesses that wandered the Skeleton Coast. I swore I could feel its gaze on us.
One of the soldiers fired a desperate shot at it. The cloak fluttered, and the flames stopped in mid-flight, settled instead against its gloved hand. The fire changed color, glowed a deep and unearthly blue before disappearing in a quick puff of blue smoke.
A Firesmoker. The undead Devoted was a damn Firesmoker.
A Firesmoker who could channel blue flames.
Just like me.
My mother had once led the Devoted, Mother Salla had told me. And Firesmokers with blue fire were rare as hell.
I didn’t want to think about it.
I aimed my Howler.
The ground to the right of the figure exploded, kicking up grit and dust, but the mirage didn’t move. I shot at the sand to its left next, with the same results. It said nothing, didn’t retaliate. I couldn’t see its face, but I know when I’m being stared at.
“Who the hell are you?” I didn’t want to know what was behind that hood, whether or not whatever face was behind that cowl might resemble mine, or if death and rot had stripped that away. I didn’t want to admit that those blue flames had shaken me, thrown me off guard. I didn’t want to have anything in common with this creature.
The mirage didn’t bother with a response. Its shoulders arched and its head tilted back, as if seeking some strange benediction from above.
There was a hissing noise that sounded like it came from everywhere at once.
There were three seconds of hushed, fearful silence.
And then water swept down from the sky; it fell like fine mist, and then like a raging river. I cupped my hand and stared, astonished, at the clear liquid collecting in my palm.
“Rain,” Noelle said. “It’s raining.”
Nothing could have prepared the Golden army for this. However rigid their training had been, it was clearly not enough. Many fell to their knees, staring up with mouths agape, while others scrambled away, back toward the safety of the dome.
I couldn’t blame them. I’d never seen the sky weep before.
A peculiar howling echoed across the desert, and I didn’t think it had come from the rain or from any of us present.
“Let’s get out of here,” I growled at Haidee. On the heels
of the rain and that mournful howl was a familiar, welcome sight: heading straight at us, a rig painted with the colors of the Oryx clan.
Haidee hesitated. “Mother—”
“Won’t listen. You’re dumping a lot of painful realities onto her lap all at once, and she’s in no shape to deal with any of them.”
The rains finally snapped Latona out of her rage. Her hair was now wet and plastered to the sides of her face, the water soaking through her robes. She looked down at her hands, the patterns around her fading, then up at the dark clouds overhead. “What have you done, Haidee?” she cried out, but the rest of her words were lost amid the howling winds.
The rig screeched to a halt beside us, Faraji’s ugly mug grinning from behind the wheel. “Let’s go!” Mother Salla roared from the backseat, her own Howler already trained on the few soldiers who still held their ground. Some of them were working frantically at the cannons, trying to set off a second round of glowfire.
Odessa’s eyes glowed, an almost sickly green. Thick brown vines emerged from the ground around the cannons, wrapping themselves tightly around the weapons until every surface was covered in a seething mass of leaves and thorns. The glowfires faded, and the men scrambled away from the heavy artillery like the metal had come alive.
“How’d you know we were here?” I panted as I helped the girls in.
“A conversation for later!” Mother Salla’s tone was all I needed to know I was in trouble. “Get your butt in here, young man! You’ve got some explaining to do yourself!” Her eyes widened as she took in both Haidee and Odessa, but she pursed her lips with obvious effort and said nothing other than, “Faraji, floor it!”
He stomped down on the gas, and the rig spun, tore out at high speed. I could see the soldiers attempting to shoot at us again, but if they were close enough to hit us that meant I was close enough to hit them. I aimed my Howler. I fired.
The nearest cannon blew up, and abruptly water wasn’t the only thing raining down on them, as men and women tried to scamper out of the unexpected hail of machinery bits. I saw Latona with her fists clenched, a look of utter despair on her face.
“What are we going to do now?” Odessa asked.
Haidee looked at her twin, and I saw in their faces mirror images of despair.
They thought they’d saved the world. Hell, we all did. The rains were the clearest signs that something had changed. That was something to be happy about, right?
So why wasn’t the uneasy feeling in my gut going away?
I remembered the galla trying to claw their way out of the portal, reaching for us.
Odessa was right. This was only the beginning.
“I don’t know,” Haidee whispered. “I really don’t.”
The rain fell harder.
Chapter Two
Lan at the Oryx Lair
“WE TRAVELED HALFWAY AROUND THE world only to find more rain,” I groused, and Odessa, despite the gravity of our situation, couldn’t completely rein in a giggle.
This storm wasn’t as bad as the ones we often weathered in Aranth—I doubt anything else would be, excepting the acid rainfalls a few hundred miles northeast of the city—but most of the Oryx clan was transfixed by the sight. A couple actually wept openly. It was a sobering thought, that something I had always taken for granted was a rare, precious commodity to them, one that made all the difference between life and death.
It seemed even more inconceivable to me that anyone could have survived living in the dry, arid climate on this side of the world until now. The rain did little to stave off the heat, and the moisture clung to the air, my hair sticking to my skin in the most uncomfortable ways. I had already shrugged off my heavy woolen cloak and armor and stripped down to a sleeveless tunic, but I was still drenched in sweat. Odessa had done the same, and it was hard not to notice the softness of her curves, revealed by the absence of multiple layers of clothing. Arjun and Haidee, both apparently used to the insufferable heat, barely looked discomfited despite wearing more. Much to my irritation, Noelle was similarly unruffled, like she was incapable of perspiration altogether.
While the goddess Latona and her army had lacked hospitality, the clan mistress of the Oryx had, at least, opened her home to us. One of her charges, a pretty girl named Millie with goggles pushed up over her forehead, offered us small bowls of soothing tea as we sat on rocks sanded down for makeshift seating. The place was surprisingly spacious, with small rooms carved out within for privacy, and rudimentary utensils for cooking and cleaning.
I didn’t sit for long. And then I couldn’t stop pacing. I couldn’t stop thinking. It was roughly sixty strides from the cave entrance to its deepest end, marking it approximately 120 feet long. There were twenty Oryx clan members in total, including Arjun, eleven of whom could use elemental gates. I spotted three vehicles outside the lair. Twenty-four Howlers leaned against the wall. Four fire pits. Seventeen cots. It made Aranth look like luxury.
I needed more information than I had. How large was this desert? Where did the Oryx find sustenance? Should Latona decide to mount an attack, how defensible was this cave? Not very, was my opinion. Its only real asset was that it was camouflaged so well against the sand; under a sustained attack by the goddess’s army, though, we wouldn’t last an hour.
“Lan?” Odessa reached for me as I stalked past.
“I don’t know how well I can protect you in these sunlands.” It was different in Aranth. I knew the lay of the land by heart, knew all the possible vulnerabilities to fortify.
“You should talk to Arjun. And Mother Salla. You worry too much.”
I looked at Noelle. “Tell me we should be more worried. Or are you as calm as she is?”
“Being lulled to sleep, even as we speak,” my friend said drolly. “It’s not likely that Latona will be sending anyone after us just yet. Not when that puts her daughter—her daughters—in harm’s way.”
Leave it to Noelle to take the rational route. In the meantime, I felt like I wanted to claw out of my own skin. Good Mother, it was hot!
“How does she do it?” Odessa asked softly. She was watching Haidee. Like me, her sister was never one to sit still for long, and she was everywhere: first inspecting the stone walls on the other end of the cave with a critical eye, then looking through the clan’s meager utensils, and now surrounding herself with some of Arjun’s brothers and sisters and gesturing at one of their pots, explaining animatedly how they could improve their cooking time using some new improvement she was proposing while they listened, entranced. “They have even fewer resources than we do. She’s only just met Arjun’s siblings. They’ve been raised to despise goddesses. How can she be so . . . trusting? Optimistic? Some of them like her, already. I can tell. I envy how easy it is for her to be so . . .”
“You’re just as lovable.”
Odessa smiled at me, shook her head. “And you’re biased.” She gazed back at her sister again, a look of wonder on her face. “I have a sister,” she whispered, sounding almost disbelieving.
“What is this?” Haidee asked, tapping on the wall. “It could help me figure out the rate of thermal conduction needed to speed up your cooking time.”
“A cave?” Kadmos offered helpfully.
Haidee folded her arms and scowled at him. “I know what a cave is. What I want to know is what kind of stone these are made of. And how you were able to carve out a lair of this size for yourselves without any available heavy tools. Did you use awls? Special automata?”
The boy grinned. “Dunno about the rock type, but our clan’s been blessed with plenty of Acidsmiths. Imogen and Salome melted the rocks and smoothed down the walls for the tunnels. They scour off the grime and clean out any mold we find several times a year. Keeps things neat and tidy. Don’t you guys have Acidsmiths in the city?”
“Not a lot of them. Our mechanika had to improvise a lot.” She glanced curiously at me.
“Where we’re from?” I shook my head, still trying to towel off my neck. The heat was g
oing to murder me long before anything else could. “None who could actually use their abilities. There aren’t enough stable Earth patterns where we’re from to channel with. I’m guessing you don’t have any Icewrights or Mistshapers or Seasingers out here, either.” It hadn’t stopped raining since we’d arrived at the Oryx’s hideout, and a good number of Arjun’s clanmates still mobbed the cave’s entrance, gawking at the water gushing down. Every conceivable container capable of holding liquid, even unused pots and pans and bowls, had been dragged outside and left to collect. Now, they watched the water gather with something bordering on reverence.
“We need to find more jars,” one of the girls, Derra, fretted. “What if the rain stops? What if it never happens again?”
“Can I help?” Haidee offered.
Derra froze, slight panic on her face. Likable as Haidee was, Arjun’s clan clearly wasn’t comfortable having one, much less two, goddesses in their territory. None of them had been outright hostile, despite Arjun’s admission that they had been raised to treat them as enemies. But most did look at the girls like they were live powder kegs apt to explode at any moment.
“We’re going to help,” Arjun said bluntly, laying a hand on the goddess’s shoulder. Haidee leaned back into his touch. His meaning was clear: Arjun wasn’t seeking approval for his support of Haidee, so much as he was declaring it.
“I can help too,” Odessa offered softly. “Where I come from, we deal with water all the time.”
“Arjun said it’s constantly raining on the other side of the world,” Kadmos said. He was the friendliest so far, and the words sounded like a tentative peace offering spoken on behalf of the rest. “With ice. I’ve never seen ice before.”
“You’re not missing out on much. Every few months large blocks of ice would drift toward our city, and we had to blast them away before they got too close.” I yanked at my collar, and scowled. The heat was another thing I didn’t have a plan for, and it was bothering me more than I wanted it to. I’d had no idea I was capable of sweating this much, or how uncomfortable that would be.