The Black Palace
Page 26
“Don’t annoy me with that, Hava. You yourself have been forgiven for treachery against me. The only difference between me and you is that the fates favor you disproportionately. That witch was not wrong about that. You have been lucky. The fates might well favor you above all others.”
Hava said, “My enemy wants something in here nonetheless, and she will surely be less powerful without it than with it. And I might be more so. Besides, you talk of danger, as if I have not flung myself into it a dozen times this very night.”
“You are not listening to me, Hava. Even after you die in there, that cave would not be safe for you. I do not think you would ever escape.”
Hava did not like hearing that. It for some reason humbled her more quickly than any other warning or threat from Seph or the witches. But she did not consider herself any less wrong: she had to go in there and take what her enemy desired. She had come so close to losing so many times tonight that she had to accept the idea of victory being balanced like a broom on a clothesline, ready to tip either way with the briefest breath, or with mere timing. She had no other real plan.
Hava breathed deeply. The air kept coming coldly from the cave. She checked Shamir’s globe at her breast, and dear Nachash who clung to her leg, thankfully unharmed by the witch’s sewing, probably due to his sly dodging. She told her friends to stay behind and to do whatever they needed to in order to keep themselves safe if anything happened.
She asked Seph whether she needed a new glass bottle to hold herself in, whether she had grown weary in holding her shape together on her own.
Seph said, “I need nothing else while I stand here. It fills me, and I have no strain. This place is an air pocket for me in a whole flooded world. But it is dangerous. Do not take any fire in there with you.”
It had only then occurred to Hava that she should in fact take a torch with her to light her way. What had she planned to do? Feel blindly along the walls for treasure? She considered disobeying the warning only because it was suddenly good sense to do so. But she said, “Why not?”
“I do not know. But that place will find it cruel. I just know it.”
Hava decided that risking a torch would probably not give her a better chance at what dangers she would encounter in there than simply feeling her way through the blind darkness, so she said, “Very well. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” Seph said. “Perhaps for all time.”
Then Hava walked forward into the cave.
Chapter 19
Hava was quickly chilled in the cave, and the air came at her softly yet never ceased. In many places the floor felt smooth, worn. But as she edged blindly to one wall, and later the other, she stumbled over stone, and the walls were mostly rough against her hand, probably cutting her fingers or palms a little, though she could not see for sure in the darkness. So she tried her best to keep to the center of the tunnel and to move forward. She shuffled as she did, and when her toes found trouble among the stones, she would change her path and follow the curves of the cave. She had expected nothing but silence in the utter dark, but the air made noise, and she heard squeaks and clicks, maybe of crickets, maybe of bats. Sometimes the sound of thin water would trickle down a nearby wall as she passed along. At times she nearly called out, and thought better of it, but still she would hum deeply to herself. She did not know exactly why. The low sound she made did not help her navigate through the dark, but it felt natural in this place, and it kept her less frightened of the unknown things that could eat her.
She could tell that her path descended, and in places the tunnel would drop so sharply that she had to place a hand on the floor and sidestep down it, feeling with her feet each time to make sure there was still ground to be found under her with each next step. She had to go to all fours in other places and boulder down backwards until the floor leveled again. And though the chilled air felt damp on her clammy skin, the layer of dry dirt—or sand—on the floor of the cave seemed to help her gain traction. It was slow going. No doubt she would have gone at tenfold speed had she brought light with her, but she had to have patience. Darkness demanded patience.
With so much attention to her path, she had lost track of time. She had only a vague sense of distance and direction, feeling that she had gone rather deep into the mountain. And the darkness was thick, and there was no light, and she could see nothing ahead, and nothing behind her. Yet she kept going. And time was strange. And as she went, the darkness was thick, and there was no light, and she could see nothing ahead, and nothing behind her. Yet she kept going. And time was strange. And as she went, the darkness was thick, and there was no light, and she could see nothing ahead, and nothing behind her. Yet she kept going. And time was strange. And as she went, the darkness was thick, and there was no light, and she could see nothing ahead, and nothing behind her. Yet she kept going. And time was strange.
And now the path had begun ascending more frequently.
And her vision though seeming to be utterly black had been filled with what seemed like sparks, or globs, probably in her eyeballs rather than floating in the cave around her. And she grew accustomed to such things, so when she perceived a glow far above and ahead of her, she did not think that it was real. But it grew stronger, and it remained fixed in space no matter where she turned her head. The light was amorphous and gray and green, like a cloud behind black trees in a moonless night sky, somehow reflecting light that was not there.
Hava climbed toward it. After having been blind for so far, the glowing of the gloom seemed almost bright to her, though surely in the presence of real light it would have been imperceptible. It seemed to radiate from over the edge of an upper ridge. And she perceived that she was climbing up the foot of a rocky hill, a small mountain inside of a mountain, and the sounds of her footfalls and her low humming did not seem insulated by anything near her anymore, and the walls of the cave had widened away beyond her ability to stumble out and reach them, and the ceiling was beyond her knowing, as if she were suddenly an insect in a temple.
Close to the edge of the ridge, she lowered herself to a crawl. She wanted to peek over the ridge and see the source of the light, and see what awaited her there, and she wanted to remain unseen as she did. Lying flat on the inclining stone floor, she slowly raised her eyes above the brim of the ridge. Luminous moss decorated the rocks in daubs, and the path continued down to a bowl-shaped courtyard within this limitless cavern. Scattered in this glowing courtyard and clinging to the far cave walls were hundreds of long, plated millipedes that moved so slowly that they could have been as old as land. And on a great boulder that had fallen away from the ceiling ages ago, in the center of the courtyard, there sat the shape of a woman. If, as a scabby-kneed child, Hava had ever snuck into the private and sacred throne room of some empress in the middle of her empire, this would have been the feeling. Hava was not meant to be here.
But she could not stop looking at the shape of the woman who sat bent on the boulder. It was a carven statue, but she could not be sure that she was right about that. Maybe it lived. The statue was no larger than herself, but from this distance, in this weird green glow, in this place, she could not be sure of proportion. It might have been colossal.
She waited and observed, but the woman did not move. Hava grew confident enough to move forward, but only safe enough to do so in a crawl. She worked her way down the ridge, down the path, down into the bowl valley of this great and hollow mountain. As she went, she passed patches of the moss, and up close it looked slick like small bubbles, and it did not seem to actually glow when she looked directly at it, but when she turned her eyes slightly away, it was bright, and that seemed quite strange to her. And the armored millipedes made no sound as they moved their many legs and feelers ever so slowly. They were huge, at least as long as Hava’s arms, and she wanted to touch one, but she thought somehow that she would be disrespectful to do so. And when she looked at the woman on the boulder, the moss seemed to glow around her at its brightest. The place was indeed as
sacred as it was ancient.
And as she crawled nearer, the woman seemed larger, and larger. There was no distinct moment in which Hava realized that the woman was a giantess, and that she was burying her face in her hands in sadness, and that she was breathing slowly, but she realized these things nonetheless. The woman was vast and old.
Hava wanted to call out to her, but she dare not speak first. Keeping herself at a distance from the woman, yet close enough to be low under her boulder, close enough to be small beneath the heights of her great shoulders, Hava stopped. She was on her hands and knees, and she waited, and she watched.
At great length, after long waiting, almost too long, the woman spoke. She did not lift her face, but her voice was the resounding voice of a multitude. She said, “You are not the witch who beleaguers me, for I do not know your name. Speak, girl, and tell it.”
Hava knew better than to give her name to someone or something she did not know, something so much greater than she was, so much more enormous. Or at least she should not give her name until the last need. She said instead, “I do not yet have any name of renown. It is a small name, fit for a small girl, which I am before you. And I am no witch.”
“Yet you must have strong hands for one so small if you have moved the golel set by one older than you. And you must have large pride for one so small if you have come into my old home to insult me. I know even the names of the enemies who have promised to break me open and take my years, yet I am not permitted to know your name.” The giantess lifted her face from her hands. She was old, and she was sad, and her face was strong in the ways that have long faded from the world. She looked down at Hava directly with her own eyes, tired but steady. “Before you strike at me, know that my name is Gróa, and know that you are rude.”
“Hava. My name is Hava.” She rushed the words, and it was all she could think to say in the face of old, sad Gróa. She could not yet muster the courage to say more, to correct Gróa’s wrong guesses, or to say more about how she knew of her, for Hava’s voice nearly cracked by giving only her own name. This was the Gróa who had chained Ashurbanipal. This was the Gróa of whom she had heard such terrible things. This was the Gróa whom Hava herself had wronged once already and whom Hava had threatened in her ignorance. Now that she was facing her, Hava was deeply afraid. And even had she not had any previous reasons to fear her, Hava nonetheless would have been deeply afraid.
“Ah, you do have a name. Hava. It is one you have taken from your distant grandmother, though you would not know her. And that is a shame. Know at least that she was a keen woman, young Hava bat Hava.”
Hava’s curiosity at this overcame her fear of speaking more, for there was no way this giantess could know who Hava’s family had been. Even if Gróa could see Hava’s thoughts, she could not know any such thing, for Hava herself never knew her own family. “No,” she finally said. “I am an orphan. Twice now I have been orphaned, in a way. I had no mother, and I had no grandmother. I was raised as a servant to Ziggurat, a Witch of Endor, who was a foster mother to me. I lived with her in the House of Limestone. It is a place far from here, I think, but I do not truly know where I am.”
“We all had a mother, young one, except for Hava. Even Ziggurat had a mother, for I knew her a short time ago. Even I had a mother, once, a long time ago. But maybe you did not. Who is to know? For you are something quite strange. Those born as slaves do not have the courage to break the door that Gróa has set, and challenge her in her own home, in the heart of the Mountain in Two, and throw her down from her seat, and steal her station as the eldest of the Three Dread Sisters.” Gróa’s countenance had grown heavy and dangerous at these words.
Hava grew more frightened. She could not quite speak, though if she could have, she would have told Gróa that no, she had not come to fight her, or to supplant her. She would have at that moment pleaded for forgiveness, begged for it. She would have promised that she had meant no insult. She would have groveled. She had not even known what she was going to find in the cave, and now she regretted having come in at all. Seph might have been right. Hava might never escape this place, this Mountain in Two.
Gróa snuffed, and though it was not much, it was so different from her sadness and her anger that it could have been a laugh. “I see from your face that you are not well informed. I guessed as much.”
Hava wondered at this change in tone. It was lower now, more distant. Still, Hava did not speak for herself.
Gróa returned her face to her hands, and she spoke ever so slowly. “You are no messenger either, and La Voisin needs no scout to know who sits here, for she knows whom she has cornered in waiting. So scurry away while you can, little girl, and waste away your short years in other places. You found a door that another had opened, I know not how, and you wandered in. And in your curiosity and your ignorance, you found enormity. On other nights, it would have been your doom. But these nights I have other thoughts to tend to, for the wheels of the world tire of me, and I of them. So go away, you little thing, and tell nothing.” She breathed a deep sigh. “I will speak no more.”
At that, a fire was kindled in Hava’s heart. It overcame her. She realized that Gróa thought even less of her than she did an enemy, even less of her than she would a potential threat, even less of her than a trespasser. Hava appeared so insignificant that Gróa could muster nothing more than utter dismissive disdain for her, a bug not even worth the effort to squash. And Hava’s heart grew hot at this. Hava could appreciate true kindness. And Hava could find care for those who served her; she would have them as friends. She could find great mercy for those who were helpless and repentant before her. But for those greater than she, for those who lorded it over her, Hava was driven to something else, something of fierceness. Those who stood high against her deserved her wrath. Those who scoffed at her from above deserved apocalypse.
Hava stood where she had previously knelt. She was glad her fear had stayed her tongue moments ago and had kept her from groveling and begging for forgiveness, for now she was of a different mind, and now she was blind to such fear. She spoke, saying, “Listen to me, Gróa, and be set aright. The one who broke your door stands now before you. I hold Shamir, and with him I could sunder the mountain you call your home. I could sunder even you, as mighty as you are, if I had a mind to do so. Your eyes are weaker than the one who stands before you, for you do not see your own danger. Others I have outside your cave who serve me, and more yet than they in the days to come. The nine women who were your guards lie lifeless beside the creek, and they are chickens now, and those who defeated them are beaten or subservient to me. I have one only left to kill, the very witch you named—La Voisin—and though I did not come here to challenge you, Gróa, you would put your years of wisdom to good use if you held in higher regard she who stands before you, lest in your blindness and in my wrath you earn a place among my enemies.”
Gróa lifted her face.
Hava breathed heavily and stood tall. She did not fear Gróa’s gaze any longer. She met it. She met it with all the foolhardy boldness of one who believes in the unshaking truth of her own words.
“My night hags,” Gróa said. “They are chickens?”
Hava was taken aback for a moment. She had expected threat, or attack, or at least anger. She refocused for a moment longer and said, “Yes, Gróa, they are chickens now.”
“And Hafurtann, Buck-Tooth, my goat,” she said. “How is he?”
Hava thought for a moment about the goat she had seen outside the cave. “Your goat is tethered to a tree and is standing on its roots over the water.”
“He likes to do that. But how is he? Did La Voisin harm him too?”
“I am not sure,” Hava said. “He glows like fire from his mouth, and he breathes smoke, though he did not seem to be in pain.”
“No, those are the souls I put in him. That is normal.”
Hava thought about that for a moment. How many souls were kept in that goat, she wondered, and which ones. She had heard of thi
s before, though it seemed ages ago now. She said of the goat, “In that case, he is not harmed. And I will not let them harm him.”
“So you would be the bane of La Voisin, would you? She would meet her doom by the hand of an orphaned servant who is younger even than a tree?” Gróa was pondering this with something other than sadness for a moment. “And the Shamir, you hold it now, here, as you speak?”
Hava closed her hand around Shamir’s globe and lifted it away from her chest, brandishing it before her face. “Yes, I hold him here.”
“Do you know, young one, that it is with the very weapon you hold that La Voisin threatened me? She did not yet have it at the time, but she was going to crack me apart with it. And though I wronged her not, I thought of letting her do it.” She seemed to wander slowly in her thoughts. “I have not wronged many for a while, but always it is a wrong to the ambitious to have what they have not, to wear a crown of years greater than any of the stations of all who envy it. And, yet, it has lost all gladness for me.”
“Shamir is not a weapon,” Hava said. “Though he can be dangerous. Shamir is just a little worm, actually. He is alive, and he is little.” Hava said, now turning the end of her necklace and looking at his globe. “And he sleeps a lot.”
“I need no instruction from you, young one. I know what it is. It is older than I, if you can believe that, though I thought it lost or in the keeping of men since Solomon ben David. Now that I hear myself speak of it, it brings back old memories. It is one of the last living remnants of the Leviathan, the Dragon of Void, the Worm of Chaos, the Face of the Deep Himself, who was finally slain in battle by Yahweh, mightiest of the Elohim, their great chieftain, and my great uncle. With all likelihood, the one you hold is indeed the very last, and none other. Does that delight you to know? Does that make you glad for yourself?”