The Ever Cruel Kingdom

by Rin Chupeco

  There was something mounted on the altar. In any other situation, the device would have thrilled my mechanika-loving heart. Small interlocking gears held it together, each piece so precisely machined that it fit perfectly against the rest. Why was it here, in a clear position of importance?

  I took a step toward it and immediately had my answer. I reeled back from the heavy concentration of patterns I could feel emanating from within. This was the barrier Odessa and I had sensed earlier, the one we could not push through.

  “What do the instructions in The Ages of Aeon say about this?” Noelle asked Vanya.

  “Something about unlocking the Gates of Life and Death, I believe.”

  “Wait.” It felt like the solution was there, hovering at the tip of my tongue, if only I could pull myself together enough to think. I knew nothing about the Gates of Death, but I was familiar enough with the Gates of Life. Nyx, my ancestor, had described her attempts to resurrect a bird using that very term, though she had not been specific as to the process.

  But I had failed because Nyx possessed the Gate of Death, like Odessa. It was her sacrificed twin who could command the Gate of Life, and so it must be that ability I wielded. Hadn’t I used it to close the portal that brought us back to the Golden City?

  I came to these conclusions the instant Odessa did. We turned to each other, our eyes shining.

  “The four trials we needed to pass to make it this far,” I breathed. “Water, Air, Terra, Fire—”

  “Five,” Odessa pointed out. “We needed a Catseye’s aether-gate to purge the cinnabar.”

  “Five trials. A group with varying gates could pass these tests, but if the traps’ creator wanted to ensure that only a goddess could overcome them all—”

  “The Gates of Life and Death—”

  “But not one without the other, so they would have failed to—”

  “Unless they had received the gifts, which meant they were aware of the ritual—”

  “They’re doing it again,” Lisette complained.

  Odessa and I blinked at each other, realized she was right, and giggled at the same time. “We know what we have to do,” I said. “Or we think we do, at least. We’re going to open this box.”

  “With what?” Lan asked.

  “Us. Just us.” My grip on Odessa’s hand tightened. “Brace yourselves. We don’t know what’s inside it.”

  This was the knowledge that Nyx had lacked. Like Odessa, she had taken in the galla’s gifts, which was how she was able to bring dead things back to life, or a form of it, in the same way Odessa had been able to resurrect her Devoted. That was the Gate of Death. Without it, I could not revive whales, but without my Gate of Life, the people Odessa brought back were only a different kind of dead.

  I channeled all five gates. Then I channeled their respective patterns all at once, too. Fire, then Water. Air. Terra. Aether. I’d tried that in the past once, out of curiosity, but none of the patterns had ever worked.

  Odessa watched me carefully, then did the same—only differently. It was like she was creating a mirror image of what I had done, channeling from the opposite direction.

  Together, we funneled our combined energies into the odd contraption.

  For a few seconds, nothing happened. And then it began to glow. As we looked on, lines formed along its surface, blue and green and amber and red and white blending together as it shuddered, like something within was desperately trying to break free.

  It exploded.

  We all dove to the floor as a bright light illuminated the cave. I braced myself for anything, everything—earthquakes, fires, the walls collapsing. There was only silence.

  I lifted my head.

  And found myself staring straight into Inanna’s immortality.

  It was a simple gray stone, smooth but without any artificial polish. There was nothing else to distinguish it from any other rock I’d ever seen.

  All this trouble, for something so . . . plain?

  “It’s a rock,” Arjun said, his voice next to my ear and stating the obvious, as always.

  Odessa’s disappointment mirrored my own. “That’s it?” She sounded incredulous, if a bit muffled from her position on the floor. She was half buried under Lan, who, in a moment of unnecessary heroism, had thrown herself over my twin in a bid to protect her. “We went through all this trouble, and that’s it?”

  “Let’s take a closer look.” I poked Arjun in the ribs because he, too, in a moment of unnecessary heroism, had thrown himself over me. He grunted and moved, and I sprang to my feet. “At the very least, this should be the last of the tests.”

  “It’s a rock,” Arjun said.

  “You’ve mentioned that, yes.”

  “It’s a damn rock. Did we just nearly kill ourselves over a damned rock?”

  “I have to agree with him on this one,” Lan said. “Have we considered the possibility that an enterprising thief may have swapped this out for the real thing eons ago? That’s what I would have done.”

  “I’d almost forgotten that you used to steal things,” Odessa said, a little more admiringly than one would expect.

  I drew nearer, peered down. It still didn’t look like anything special. “Vanya, does the book say anything about how to harness it?”

  “Not that I’ve found, Your Holiness. I don’t think anyone who’s ever lived, excepting Inanna herself, knew the process.”

  “Figures, I guess. No one’s ever gotten this far.” Very lightly, I touched it with the tip of my finger.

  Pain exploded through me. At the same time, visions spilled into my head, too quickly and too furiously for me to try to shut them out.

  A woman with my hair and my eyes, smiling at me.

  The same woman calling out to me for help, as the darkness curled up around her, sliding over her mouth, silencing and suffocating, until she was swallowed up by a—

  A stone cradled in my shaking hands, the glow weak and flickering. What have I done, I whispered. What have I—

  I was on the ground, cradled in Arjun’s arms. I blinked, the cave coming back into focus.

  “What happened?” Arjun’s face was gray with worry.

  “The stone kept the Cruel Kingdom in balance,” I croaked. The words spilled out in a jumbled rush, desperate to be said. “When Inanna stole it, it required something else in exchange. So she sacrificed Ereshkigal. The rituals were created to pacify Ereshkigal. If she couldn’t get Inanna, she would take her descendants instead. We must return the stone to the Cruel Kingdom and restore the balance, so we can free her soul.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  “A sacrifice.” I hiccuped, on the verge of crying, though I don’t know why. “One final sacrifice.”

  “Take a deep breath,” Arjun said sternly. “You can tell us everything when we get out of here.”

  “Knowing how even touching this stone affected Her Holiness, how shall we be intending to bring it out of the shrine?” Sonfei asked.

  “I have an idea.” A new voice sounded from the cavern entrance, just before the inner chamber, and a curse issued from Arjun’s lips before I’d even registered that the voice belonged to Lord Arrenley. “Perhaps it can leave the shrine under my care.”

  “That is true,” Janella sang out, stepping out from behind the nobleman. “There are so many options, if you care to think about it.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Arjun and the Betrayal

  WE WERE SO GODDESSDAMNED SCREWED. Arrenley had brought reinforcements at least three times our number, and they barred the only way out of the shrine. I’d never trusted Janella from the moment she first arrived, not to mention her history with Lan and Odessa, but this was a new low. Odessa looked stunned; the Catseye, furious beyond belief.

  “Does Asteria know you’re here betraying her?” Lan snapped, drawing her sword. “Or are you simply looking out for yourself, as you’ve always done?”

  “She and Latona were being obstinate,” Janella said with a small shru
g. “I’ve found some of Latona’s council more amenable to an alliance, however.”

  “You’ve done your job, Vanya,” Arrenley said. “Now take the stone and bring it to me.”

  I threw a furious glance at the lordling. “So this was all an act?” I’d done my best not to murder him the hundred and eighty times I could have whenever he’d acted the fool, because Haidee had said to trust him. And all this time he’d been planning on betraying her!

  But the boy was shaking his head, taking a step back rather than toward his father. “I was never in your employ, Father! I sought Haidee out of my own volition!”

  “Has the desert heat addled your brains, boy? We prepared for this. You were to present the book to them, to lead us to this—”

  “He’s lying!” Vanya’s confused, horrified anger couldn’t be a performance. “We discussed nothing! I tried to convince you to forge an alliance with Haidee and her people, but you called me a fool and refused to broach the topic again.”

  “You are a fool,” Janella drawled. “Your father is giving you a chance to return to him, without Latona ever knowing of your betrayal. And you’re too much of a twit to take it.”

  Vanya paled. “I made my choice. I’m not giving you anything.”

  “We don’t want a fight,” Arrenley said, threatening just that.

  “Neither do we, but we’re leaving. You’ll be returning to the Golden City empty-handed.” I aimed my Howler at them. I could feel sparks in the air as dozens of people’s gates opened at the same time, until we were all training weapons at each other.

  There was no alternative. The only option was to fight our way through Arrenley’s men, or . . .

  I cast a quick look at the ceiling. How far underground were we, exactly? The stone-hewn stairs had made for a long descent. . . .

  “I’m almost impressed,” Haidee said curtly. She’d recovered somewhat, had sat up beside me. “What happened to Tamera and the others?”

  Janella smiled. “There’s a battle being waged above our heads at this moment, Your Holiness. Your desert nomads fight well, but it’s only a matter of time before we gain the upper hand. We must thank you; I’d been puzzling out how to breach the entrance to the shrine without losing any more men, and you were kind enough to do that for us, along with dismantling the other traps we’ve encountered here. The only real difficulty was that fascinating river of mercury, but I brought enough Windshifters to compensate.”

  “How did you know we were here?”

  “Your clans have very impressive rigs, Your Holiness. They leave unusual patterns of Fire in their wake—very easy to spot. My scouts avoided the patrols you put out and followed some distance behind.” She grinned. “Lord Arrenley knew of this temple for years. His men had mapped out this side of the desert, but they could never figure out a way inside. Nor did he know what it contained. What a pleasant shock, to learn where Inanna’s immortality had been lying all this time. We are most appreciative of this new information.”

  Vanya had gone still. “You let me take the book. You let me leave. You thought the goddesses would succeed where you couldn’t.”

  “Miss Janella and I came to see the advantages of mutual cooperation shortly after our lieges’ fight. Did you really believe I would foolishly leave the book unguarded in my study shortly after finding it in your room? I knew you were far too enamored of the goddess for your own good.” Arrenley turned, admiring the cave paintings. “It would come as a shock to her, to learn her ancestors were not as fervently worshiped as she believes. Most books that survived the Breaking portray Aeon as a utopia, where no one wanted for anything. That was not always the reality.”

  “A utopia where all you had to do was kill a goddess every now and then,” Haidee said.

  Arrenley nodded at Sonfei. “He looks old enough to have known that.”

  “I know now, standing before the truth written on these walls,” Sonfei said. “But I never knew then. I never knew that the goddesses had always been twins. Aeon had always been bountiful, but in cycles. A few decades of peace and prosperity, followed by a gradual decline. Crops failing. Earthquakes. An excess of rain in one area, and an excess of drought in others. But it would always recover before the worst could happen. I didn’t know it was because of the sacrifices. Until the Breaking.”

  “Aeon, as my father told me, had an unquenchable appetite for goddesses. The Devoted soon learned to use that for their own interests instead.” Arrenley shrugged. “Power is a bad habit. Goddesses like your mother, Haidee, thought the best of people when it was easier for them to be the worst. Why work when a deity’s blood can replenish the land and seas? It was a contest among some of the Devoted, I’m told, to see what they could destroy in their greed and gluttony, before the death of a goddess made things right again.”

  “You are horrible,” Odessa whispered.

  “It was not I who made the world, Your Holiness. I only live in it.”

  “Right,” I said, not bothering to hide my disgust. “Poor you, only living in a world where you’d give up your own son for immortality. Unfortunate that there’s only one stone, and neither of you look like you’re used to divvying up the spoils.”

  “There are other ways to share,” Janella said smoothly. “Hand over the stone and you shall see for yourself.”

  “Can we?” Lisette muttered. “Hand over the stone? Or touch it, even?”

  I bent down and snatched the stone that had previously fallen from Haidee’s grasp, before she could muster a protest. Whatever it had done to her had no effect on me.

  “I overheard Lord Vanya talking about the verses on these walls; may I offer an opinion?” Nobody answered her, but Janella continued on anyway. “My mother’s hypothesis, you understand. If Ereshkigal had to suffer the eternal darkness of the Cruel Kingdom, then she was determined that the twin who had betrayed her share the same fate. Once she had realized her sister’s soul was more important than her lover’s life, Inanna attempted to make amends, only to learn that it could not be unmade; the only way to undo Ereshkigal’s corruption was to forfeit both the stone and her own life.”

  She chuckled, without mirth. “Inanna was a coward. Of course she would hide the stone, would hope instead that one day, one of her own bloodline would find the courage she never had, to stop her sister’s malice. Of course she would demand more from her descendants than she herself would ever give. The true deception is believing that the goddesses are better than us simply because of the nature of their birth.”

  “We are wasting time,” Lord Arrenley said, and gunfire rang out.

  Noelle, who had shoved both Lan and Odessa to one side, fell down with a grunt—she’d been hit. Oda toppled over as well, but the rest of the fireshots dissolved against a barrier that Odessa had quickly erected. The goddess’s eyes were shining so brightly her pupils were no longer visible. The air before us blurred and whirred, churning up dust as more projectiles glanced off it, mimicking the Golden City’s protective dome.

  “You will submit to us sooner or later,” Lord Arrenley said. “We outnumber you, and the only way out of this shrine is through us.”

  “Then through you it shall be,” Lan said, grim satisfaction in her voice. She was crouched over Oda, a hand pressed to his forehead. Noelle had already sat up with a grimace, cradling an injured shoulder, but otherwise appeared all right. “You could have waited for us to leave this shrine to ambush us. I think neither of you wanted to risk it. You couldn’t predict what the goddesses were going to do with anything they found.”

  “Clever as always, Lady Tianlan,” Janella mocked.

  “I saw it,” Haidee whispered.

  “Don’t try to talk,” I warned, trying not to let my own hands shake as I touched her face. “You went on a hell of a ride back there. Don’t think too much about—”

  “But I can’t not think about it. I saw everything. That stone isn’t just Inanna’s immortality—it held all her knowledge. I know how to enter the Cruel Kingdom. I saw Eres
hkigal. She was—” Her grip on my arm tightened. “She’s dying!” she cried out, in pain. “She’s been dying every day for an eternity. And the only way to bring Aeon back is to find someone to take her place.”

  The ground shook. I thought it was Arrenley and Janella’s doing at first, but they looked just as confused as everyone else.

  Haidee clutched at me. “We have to leave,” she said in a panic, staring over my shoulder. I’d never seen her so afraid before. “We have to leave right now. They’re coming.”

  “What’s coming?”

  But the shadows lengthening along the cave floor answered my question. The altar was visibly shaking; as we watched, it split down the middle as cracks appeared underneath the stone ground, widening into crevasses. We all scrambled back as a fresh sinkhole appeared before our eyes, leading down into an impenetrable blackness.

  And then, to my horror, a large, bony hand reached up from within that dark pit, followed by another. The creature that slowly pulled itself out was one of unspeakable horror: a rotting corpse, strands of hair hanging sparsely against a decomposing face, weathered skin stretched tight from malice and cruelty. What few teeth it had left were brown and broken, its skeletal jaw pockmarked with bits of blackened flesh. Its eyes were gone, but within those black sockets something malevolent peered out.

  And it wasn’t alone.

  “We have to go!” Sonfei yelped as galla slithered out from the new chasm, an army of them skittering across the wall, up into the ceiling. Odessa’s barriers flickered, weakened as she turned to face the new threat. One of Arrenley’s men fired another shot directly at her. Lan lunged forward, and her cry of pain was loud as she took the hit in her goddess’s stead.

  “No!” Odessa screamed, the sound loud in the cavern, and Noelle rushed over to the fallen Catseye’s side. “She’s breathing,” the girl reported, though the obvious fear overriding her usual composure spoke volumes. “Scatter projectile. It hit her arms and stomach, but nothing fatal. She’s bleeding badly, though, and we’ll have to move her quickly. Odessa—”