Blood of the Volcano: Sequel to Heart of the Volcano

by Imogen Howson

  “What is it?” Philos’s voice came out of the darkness.

  She couldn’t see him at all, which made it seem as if it were not really him speaking, as if it were only her imagination giving him a voice. As if, if she spoke back, it would not really be him listening.

  “There’s too much space.” Even saying it into the darkness, into nothing, it sounded stupid. She felt her face burn.

  Across the room, his feet scuffed against the stone, and when he next spoke his voice came from farther down, as if he’d lowered himself to sit on the floor of the cave. “You normally sleep with the others? You share a room?”

  “Mm.” She made it a grunt rather than a word, hating to give away even so little, disconcerted that already her breathing had slowed to a normal rhythm, already the panic had fallen easily from her.

  “And here we’ve left you severely to yourself. I’m sorry.” A breath of laughter came through the dark. “I’d offer to move closer, but I think that would not help.”

  She stiffened. It sounded like a joke—it must be a joke. It was stupid to remember suddenly how his hands had felt on her arms.

  “Besides—” his voice carried on, unchanged, “—I’d be afraid to.”

  This time it was she who almost laughed, a catch of breath that took her by surprise. “I’m chained more than you’d need to chain a dragon-thing. You can’t possibly be afraid of me.”

  “You’d be surprised.” She could hear the smile in his voice, but oddly enough she didn’t mind. He might not be truly afraid of her, but he remembered her in her maenad form. Unlike the others, he knew the terror she wielded. He hadn’t called her little one, hadn’t treated her as a joke, as if she could never be a threat.

  She shifted on the pile of blankets, easing herself into a new position to avoid the chill bite of the chains.

  “Are you all right?”

  She grimaced, invisible in the dark. “I was more comfortable when I was tied up with bits of your tunic.”

  “Well, if there were any oath we could hold you to…”

  “I’d have the freedom of your whole camp, yes, yes, I’m sure.” She settled into her new position, hesitating over speech. This cosy chat in the dark felt too intimate for safety. Already I’m all…tangled, confused, and it’s his fault. But if she made him go, he’d leave her alone in the huge dark and silence…

  What harm can it do, after all, to talk a little? She found the corners of her lips curling in a smile. “What if I told you there is an oath…?” she asked him.

  “I’d ask why you thought I was stupid enough to believe you.”

  She gave another breath of laughter. “You did the first time.”

  “Yes. Well, I learned, didn’t I? Now, if you’d like to tell me, now you’re fed and rested, when you’re likely to change…”

  Pain caught at her, the sudden rake of claws through her chest. Never. Never again. Oh gods, what am I to do? I don’t want to go back, but if I have to live the rest of my life without power… I can’t bear it. I can’t live that way.

  She shook her head, not speaking, forgetting he couldn’t see her.

  But he seemed to know anyway. “Maya? What’s wrong?”

  What would it matter, if she told him? What difference would it make? They couldn’t make her any more a prisoner.

  He’ll not fear me anymore, but I no longer care whether he fears me or not.

  And saying it, saying the words, telling someone… If she did, it would no longer weigh so heavily on her, no longer feel like a secret wound, bleeding invisibly inside, unnoticed and unstanched.

  “I can’t change,” she said.

  “What?”

  Damn him, making her say it again. “I can’t change into a maenad,” she said, her voice hard, sharp-edged. “I can’t change. It’s left me.”

  Across the cave, he shifted, the soft edge of a blanket making a brushing sound on the stone. “How? Because you’re outside the temple? Away from the volcano?”

  She pushed herself to a sitting position, huddling her knees tight against her belly, blankets wrapped round her. It hurt to say it. It hurt, and it wasn’t feeling any better. She just felt exposed, raw, furious with him for not instantly understanding. “The ritual. The ritual does it. Once it—the change, once it’s gone, I—we—can’t change again till we’ve had the ritual.”

  “What? The priests change you? It’s not—the power, it doesn’t happen by itself?”

  “Of course it doesn’t happen by itself. It’s from the god.”

  “From the god.”

  “Yes.” She could hear in his tone that he wanted to question that, and she suddenly remembered what he’d said before, how he’d tried to make her believe the god was unfair. She went stiff with apprehension. I’ve lost my power. Don’t try to take my god from me as well.

  He didn’t say anything like that. Instead, hesitating over the words as if he was trying to make them make sense, he said, “But all the…holy…gifts, they’re from the god too. Aren’t they?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But they stay with the wielder.”

  “Well, ours are different.”

  “Different indeed.” He shifted again. “How do they—the priests—do it? You said a ritual?”

  Now she stiffened not with apprehension, but with outrage. “How dare you? How can I tell you about the ritual? Is nothing sacred to you outlaws?”

  Silence, stretching between them, as taut as a canopy of black silk.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at length. “I know not to ask that kind of question. But I hadn’t known that any gift could be bestowed by the priests like that, withheld from the one who bears it—”

  It was not until now that the words he’d used registered fully in her mind. “It’s not bestowed by the priests. It’s from the god, the god. The volcano’s blood—does not the name itself tell you who provides it?”

  “Volcano’s blood?”

  “The vessel of the god’s power. How he transmits it to us—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what volcano’s blood is.”

  That caught her. Her eyes went wide in shock. She should never have said so much, never told him anything of the ritual. It was so long ago, she couldn’t remember if she’d known it before she began going for the rituals, but she’d thought it was common knowledge, she’d thought everyone must know that much.

  “It comes from the volcano.” She was unwilling to give him any more information but more unwilling to leave him thinking her power was from the priests alone. “It’s the god’s own substance, part of his life-force, distilled into a form his servants can stand.”

  “A drug?”

  “No. No, you fool, everything you say shows you’re not even trying to listen to me.”

  “I am listening to you. The priests put you through a ritual. They administer some substance to you. For all I know your power is from the god. But it’s controlled by the priests.”

  “No. No. How dare you—stop saying that.”

  But this time he didn’t pause or apologise.

  “Clearly it is. They do—something—that makes the power fall on you. You don’t summon it yourself, you can’t get it back once it’s gone. Did you even get a choice? Did they draw you by lot?”

  For a moment she could hardly speak. “It’s—it’s an honour,” she said when she could manage to get the furious tangle of words out. “I came every month for three years, hoping and praying. It doesn’t take with everyone, some girls come every month of every year till they’re past the age I am, hoping it will work, hoping the god’s madness will descend on them. When he chooses you, picks you as worthy, makes you into his own… You, how can you understand? You talk of choice—you have no idea how much I chose this.”

  “Why? If it’s something they do to you, how can you want it? How can you call it power when it’s their power imposed on you?”

  “You’re not listening. It’s not their power, it’s t
he god’s.”

  “But they’re doing it to you. Maya, think, think how it is for everyone else’s gifts. The god may give them, but after that they’re theirs, they don’t fade or disappear, no one can take them away. With you, you didn’t get your power till you’d gone through the ritual—whatever it is, it’s controlled by the priests. You’ve been using it for years, but it’s gone and you can’t get it back, you can’t do anything—”

  “I know! I know, I don’t care, it’s worth it—”

  “Maya.” The anger left his voice, draining away like boiling water from a cracked pot, leaving it empty, cold as grief. “How can you say it’s worth it, after what losing it did to you?”

  The cold, the echo of loss in his voice, seemed to reach through the darkness to her. After what it did to me. Oh gods. She clutched her arms across her stomach, fighting the hollowness of loss, of despair. How does he know what it’s like?

  Something caught at her. How…? How could he know what it was like?

  “What? After what losing my power did to me? What? What did it do?”

  The silence stretched out between them, but this time it was weighted with knowledge. He knew something. This wasn’t just a good guess, this was based on something he knew.

  “What?” she said again, the word vibrating against the silence, making it thrum and quiver.

  “I heard you. In the desert.”

  In the… Oh. Shame swept through her, making her stomach turn over in a sickening plunge.

  He’d heard her. He’d heard her on the verge of tears, pleading, helpless, to the god she’d just claimed had favoured her above all those other girls. All this time, he’d known she was lying.

  And he’d been lying too.

  Her fingers curled, digging her nails into her hands. “Did you enjoy it? Fooling me, pretending—was it fun? Did it make you feel better, powerful, after I’d found you and caught you and nearly killed you, to know I was helpless and to pretend to be scared, to go along with the little girl’s make-believe?”

  It took him a minute to reply. “No, Maya, it didn’t make me feel better. Part of my gift—another part of my gift—is that I can feel what other people are feeling. It can be…quite painful.”

  Her whole body tightened against the knowledge, gripped by sudden instinctive terror. My mind. He did invade my mind. Not to control, but enough to see, enough that it’s as if he touched me, invaded—

  “I don’t do it on purpose.” His voice came through the dark. “It…happens. It’s not something I seek out. And I can’t read thoughts, it’s just waves of…anger or confusion…or grief.”

  “Grief.”

  “Yes. I felt it within you, but I didn’t know why. Feelings by themselves make no sense. Then I heard you praying.”

  He sounded apologetic, and she waited for him to apologise in words so she could throw them back in his face. But he didn’t. He stopped speaking and the silence rolled out between them once more, dead and dark and cold like the ocean at night.

  “Why? If it wasn’t to make you feel better—why?”

  He sighed. “To make you feel better.”

  “That makes no sense.” Her voice rose, shrill and out of control. “Why, when I’d— We were enemies, why, why would you—”

  His voice slid across hers, quietening it, as if it pulled the darkness with it. “Why did you save me from the spider poison?”

  She swallowed, forced her voice to sound calm. “I don’t know.”

  “Try.”

  “I…I don’t know. I didn’t intend to, but I couldn’t just—I shouldn’t have, I shouldn’t have saved you, but I—”

  “Pity?” His voice was disembodied, part of the darkness again. “Compassion? Kindness for someone who was wrong, misguided, even evil, but who’d fought as best they could and, whatever they deserved, did not deserve that?”

  “I suppose. I…oh.”

  “You were brave. And—” for a moment laughter crept into his voice, “—terrifying. You were doing what you believed the god wanted, and it wasn’t your fault you failed. Then you were sick, and weaker, and my prisoner, and I could not bear to humiliate you further. I—look, I’m sorry, I know you cannot hear this, but I don’t see how the god you’ve served for years would inflict that on you.”

  “He owns me, whatever he chooses to do is good…” But the words came out flat, without the fire she’d meant to put in them. Worse, her voice cracked on the last word, and she realised to her horror that tears were stinging in her eyes.

  “Maya?”

  She couldn’t answer. She put up her hand to rub her eyes, and the chain she’d forgotten came too, clinking and banging, cold against her arm.

  “Maya?”

  She took in a breath to answer him, but it came unsteadily, like a sob, too loud in the quiet of the cave.

  “Oh hell. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This is why I—” He broke off, and she heard the rustle of him getting to his feet, then the soft sound of his footsteps coming towards her. He knelt beside her, and she jerked away, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. I can’t let him know I’m crying. I won’t. I—

  He put his hand on her shoulder. Another breath like a sob escaped her, and she fought against the next, terrified that any moment she would start really crying, revealing the weakness she’d hidden for ten years, disgracing herself and her maenad calling forever, so he’d never look at her in the same way again.

  “Before I left the city,” he said, “the first time, when I was sixteen, I kept thinking the god would take my powers away. I thought if I was good, if I sacrificed at the temple and obeyed my parents and gave to the poor…I thought he’d take away the unholy powers, give me something holy instead. And when he didn’t—when I realised he wasn’t going to and I had to run—I got to safety and I cried my eyes out. Every day for months.”

  “I’m not crying. I don’t cry.”

  His hand didn’t move. “I didn’t say you were. But if you wanted to, ever, you’d not be alone. There are… You haven’t met everyone yet, but there are people here who’d understand better what this is like for you—”

  “Other people whose gifts are controlled by the priests?” She gave the phrase a twist, mocking him, showing she didn’t believe him when he’d said it, but he answered her as if it were a real question.

  “Not in the same way.”

  “I—” She meant to say something else combative, but the words that came were different ones, unbidden, unconsidered. “I can’t stand it, the powerlessness, after all this time. I—” Another sob shook her, made the words break off.

  His hand moved over her back until his arm was round her. “Oh gods, Maya, don’t hurt so much.” There was the smallest crack in his voice, a sound as if he were in pain too.

  “I can’t help it.”

  “I know. I know.”

  She bent her head, trying to even out her breathing so she wouldn’t sob again, and the movement brought her face close to his shoulder, where she could feel the slight heat coming off his body, smell his skin, clean now of blood and sweat, smelling of nothing but warmth. In the dark she turned her face into it, not touching, just leaning closer, breathing in his warmth.

  His own breathing changed a little, an almost imperceptible picking up of speed. “I can’t help. I can’t understand how it is for you. I don’t know what to do to help.” But his voice sounded unfocused, as if he were speaking half at random, not thinking clearly.

  She was suddenly very aware of his arm around her shoulders, of his knee close to her thigh, of the quick warmth of his breathing just above her head, a feeling as if, in those parts of her body, sensation had been heightened, as if her skin had become twice as sensitive as usual.

  Her breathing was coming slightly faster too, and she could feel her heart beating. She’d been touched thousands of times, but nothing had felt like this. Nothing could. Living the life of a sworn virgin—it was easy for maenads. The volcano’s blood changed all desire into just one, th
e desire to chase and kill. She’d never known anything else. Until now, with the volcano’s blood gone completely from her body, a body that was, for the first time, feeling the way a normal woman would.

  It wouldn’t matter if he were someone else, someone who hadn’t tried to comfort her, who hadn’t shown her any kindness, whose voice she’d never heard shake with fear because she’d been in danger. But for her body to be wakening like this and for it to be Philos’s arm that was around her…

  It was terrifying. Terrifying in a completely different way from anything she’d experienced before. Whatever she was feeling, she shouldn’t be feeling it, especially not about the condemned criminal who’d captured her and who she was supposed to kill. And if she was feeling it, she should at least want not to.

  She didn’t want not to. She didn’t care. For the first time she didn’t care what she should or shouldn’t.

  And he…? He should never have given her the oath he’d given her that morning, the oath not to use his power against her. Should probably not have come to comfort her. Should not have touched her. Did he, too, feel as if he stood on the edge of quicksand, watching the rules he’d lived by, the lines he must not cross, shifting and changing? Was this just pity, just comfort? Or did that catch in his breath, the heat trembling in the air between them, did it mean that he, like her, was caught in fear that felt like the first exquisite touch of madness?

  His arm tightened, pulling her farther into the side of his body. She let herself lean into him, a tiny bit, hardly enough for him to notice, the movement invisible in the dark. It was as if she weren’t really doing anything, as if it didn’t really count. It wasn’t like before, when she’d had the freedom to go, and known she had to. She was caught now. That choice had been taken from her. Whatever she did now, she couldn’t…really…be blamed for it.

  His breath tickled the hair at her hairline, blew warm onto her skin. His mouth must be closer to her face. Was it just comfort, for him? Pity? Or if she tipped her head up towards him now, if she leaned in farther, would he bend his head to hers, would his other arm come round her to drag her close against him?

  “Maya…” he said, another breath at her hairline. And suddenly she was sure he wasn’t just comforting her anymore. This—this thing that she’d first felt when he pulled her away from the cliff, held her so hard it hurt, his voice shaking—it wasn’t comfort or compassion. This was something else, something that had been forbidden her ever since she first became a maenad.