Idol of Glass

by Jane Kindred

  Jak let go of Merit’s hands and lifted the urn from the canvas bag that had protected it, holding it out to Merit. “Ahr is with me.”

  Merit’s face drained of color as he took the jar, and he fell back into his chair and clutched the vessel to his chest. “Nai. Nai Ahr.” He looked past Jak as though he expected to see someone else. “MeerRa?” When Jak’s head shook, Merit set the urn on his desk with a tender stroke and put his head in his hands. Jak knelt beside him, one arm stretched over his shoulder, and Merit leaned against Jak’s support and shook with tears he couldn’t contain. Jak held him, unable to do the same.

  When Merit quieted, Jak withdrew and attempted to explain the worst of it. The room had drained of the sun’s orange color, and a servant had come to light a fire on the hearth. Waiting until the servant left, Jak stood before it, warming hands that didn’t need warming.

  “Merit.” Jak couldn’t bear to look up at him. “Ahr died at the hands of Ra.”

  Merit rose and came to the hearth, shaking his head with a quizzical lift of his brow.

  Jak looked at him, eyes telling more than language could. “Ra.” Jak pointed violently at the urn on the desk. “Ra killed him.” Merit looked back at the urn, frowning, and Jak put a hand on his shoulder. “Ra killed him.” Jak made a striking gesture with the other hand. “Ra killed Ahr.”

  Merit stared into the fire as Jak’s hand fell from his shoulder. As a former litter-bearer to the Meer, he still had the strong, proud build, though like many with his fair coloring, his hair was already mostly white. Despite that outward evidence of aging, he had the bearing of a man not long past his prime. Yet now, in an instant, he seemed to age before Jak’s eyes, drooping as though he were old and frail.

  “Meneut,” Merit whispered. “Kesuth?” Jak knew this word meant “why”.

  Instead of the room Jak had occupied on the previous visit, Merit had quietly and without mention had Ahr’s room made up for Jak in the midst of his own mourning. Though he was acting prelate of Rhyman, it seemed Lord Minister Merit would always be the unassuming and devoted servant at heart. Jak had wanted to ask after Pearl, wondering why he wasn’t about, and how Merit was going to break the news to him, but there hadn’t seemed to be the right moment. The boy had known such a hard life, and he’d taken to Ahr instantly when Ra brought him to the temple after rescuing him from that horrid cage at Soth In’La. Jak supposed one more night of letting Pearl believe his friend would still be coming back to him was only a kindness.

  One of Pearl’s drawings hung over the bureau at the end of the bed, a magnificent rendering of the courtyard arch of the temple with the garden in bloom. Jak examined it closely, amazed at the detail. Pearl had made a special inscription for Ahr at the bottom, and Jak leaned closer to read it: Forget Pearl when you look on this. It seemed an odd way to sign a drawing. Whoever this “Pearl” was, she must have given the drawing to Ahr as a parting memento, signed ironically. Jak smiled fondly, knowing Merit and Ahr had ended up as lovers. Perhaps Ahr had been breaking hearts among the young women of Rhyman who’d hoped for his attentions. And who could blame anyone for falling for Ahr? Jak had, after all.

  In the morning, Merit breakfasted in his room. Jak didn’t see him until almost noon, while preparing to depart, when Merit appeared at the arch of Jak’s room just as Jak had finished packing up.

  “Midt Jak. Ludtaht Ra,” he said, indicating the temple. “Ludtaht Ra ischtene. Kasischmene, ischaht Jak.”

  Jak’s head shook. “I don’t—”

  “Ludtaht Ra ischtene ludt.” Merit took Jak’s bag and put it in the wardrobe.

  Jak searched his eyes. Ludt was “place”. He’d said “your place”. Was he asking Jak to stay? Merit was bereaved, as Jak was, and his eyes were full of need. Jak was now the only link Merit had with the two he’d loved and lost twice over. Temple Ra offered a respite, as it had offered to Ahr, and Jak was tired.

  With a sigh, Jak closed the wardrobe with the bag inside. There were so few Deltan words Jak knew, but it was important to make sure Merit understood. AhlZel, that terrible city on the mountain—its name meant “always”.

  Jak patted the ebony cabinet. “Nai ahlzel.” Hopefully, the words made sense.

  “Nai ahlzel,” Merit agreed. “Durrh zelfaal?” he offered.

  “Durrh zelfaal.” Jak nodded. “Until winter.”

  At first, only the pain was available to Ra in the darkness and silence of Shiva’s tower, the blood of her punishment for her crimes against Jak hardening on her lacerations. The pain throbbed with a life of its own, and Ra could think of nothing else, but as light rose and fell at the thin crack of the door—mornings and evenings, days and nights—the pain became less important than the isolation. She was without Ahr, without Jak, to which she’d become resigned. But suddenly, to be without Shiva seemed unbearable.

  Ra wept in desolation, knowing this loneliness was nothing to what Jak must now be feeling. She had robbed Jak of Ahr, as well as of herself, and it was the more cruel for having pierced Jak’s exterior and laid bare the hidden pain her lover had been content to deny. Ra wished Shiva would have killed her instead of this, and hated herself for her own self-pity.

  Tears were only more self-indulgence, and Ra let them dry like wounds upon her cheeks, surrendering herself to the punishment Shiva had devised. It was the emptiness of the grave, and it was what Ra deserved.

  Ra had suffered this before, lying in the ground after the Expurgation. The god whom Ra had been in that life was dragged from his bed by the templars who were sworn to protect him, dashed against the steps of his temple until his brain ceased to function and his heart ceased to beat. The other Meer destroyed during that great purge had been left to rot in the warm Deltan streets without the purification of fire—or even the dignity of a pauper’s burial—their essences lost to the elements so they would never return.

  But Merit had buried MeerRa and his daughter, RaNa, beside him. Merit…and Ahr. It was unfathomable that Ahr had participated in this last kindness toward her Meer after stirring up the hatred of Rhyman against him, but after Ra’s return, Merit had sworn it was so. Perhaps it was for RaNa that Ahr had done it, her child who had been taken from her breast at only twenty days old because of Ra’s foolish admission of paternity. He’d spoken, and his words had gone forth as a cancerous greed within the templars’ hearts.

  Nonetheless, the kindness Ra’s faithful servant had done in interring Ra’s corpse had been crueler than Merit could have understood. The Meeric flow couldn’t be silenced, even in death. It had maintained a kind of consciousness in the parts that had been Ra, knowledge and awareness flowing into Ra’s remains, memory and longing flowing out. And Ra’s longing had been for Ahr. A longing so great it had burned within his corpse, sparking the spontaneous combustion that had been Ra’s renaissance. But it had also burned away Ra’s memory, leaving her empty when she arrived in the new-fallen snow of Haethfalt—the distant highland hideaway where Ahr had fled memories of his own. Unconsciously, she’d remade herself in Ahr’s image, as if coming back a woman could make Ahr understand her at last.

  That understanding, now, was never to be. Ra had seen to that.

  Beneath her, Shiva’s bed of heather withered and died, its mistress no longer near enough for her will to maintain it. Where had she gone? In the life before, MeerShiva had been the terrifying, distant mother to the young god, Ra. But this Shiva seemed someone else, no connection to that cold, malevolent presence that had dominated his childhood. It was Ra, of course, who was someone else. In this life, she’d given birth to herself. Shiva was no longer Ra’s mother. But she’d become important, a lifeline in the empty sea of Ra’s existence.

  They were connected now in the strain of madness Shiva had given Ra with her own blood, connected in the vengeance they’d visited together upon Jak’s tormenter. Ra could no longer conceive of existence without Shiva. Shiva was the only one who coul
d understand her, who could truly know her, the only other Meer in existence.

  Something about this nagged at Ra, something—or someone—she was forgetting, but her thoughts were growing muddled. Only Shiva was important. Without Shiva, Ra was nothing, shriveling and dying like the forgotten heather.

  How long Ra lay alone in the abandoned tower, she couldn’t be certain, but this punishment had at last exceeded even the endurance of the Meer. With nothing left in her to weep, she rested her cheek against the dried weeds, dehydrated and near delirium, and whispered Shiva’s name. Shivashivashiva—it became a soft breeze, and Ra forgot the meaning of it and drifted away.

  “MeerRa.” The silken voice accompanied silken arms lifting her. Shiva had come for her. Ra’s mouth still moved with the repeated name, though her own voice had failed her. “Madness, MeerRa, like anything else, can be shaped by will. You had a choice in exercising its manifestation.” Shiva released Ra’s bonds as she spoke. “A lesson I learned far too late and for which I paid dearly.”

  Ra tried to put her arms around the unbearable object of her comfort, but her limbs were no longer in her control. Without speaking, Shiva conjured away the shreds of Ra’s garments, washing her cuts with something cool and soothing, and covered her in a silken sheet that smelled of lavender. Water trickled between Ra’s lips, delivered from Shiva’s own mouth, and Shiva slowly revived her.

  Her head against the once-more fragrant ground, Ra opened her eyes at last when Shiva moved away from her, fearing the Meer had left her again. “MeerShiva,” she managed, too weak to raise her head, but Shiva was only sitting beside her. “It isn’t enough.”

  “Of course not,” said Shiva. “But it’s all you can bear.” Now dressed in a more customary garment of pale green, her hair free from its restraints, Shiva reclined, propped on one elbow, regarding Ra with curiosity. “You’re pleased to see me.”

  “I thought you wouldn’t come back to me.”

  Shiva shrugged. “I considered it. But you called to me.”

  “Yes, MeerShiva.”

  “Not a vetma. You wanted me.”

  “Yes, MeerShiva.”

  “You are a curious creature, MeerRa.” Shiva lifted a lock of Ra’s dark hair from the heather and threaded it through her fingers. “You nearly destroy yourself granting vetmas—some to the very mortal who orchestrated your demise. Yet you feel greater remorse for having taken that mortal’s life than you would have felt for your own destruction. You sought to take my life once, and yet you beseech me to punish you for your crimes. I leave you bloodied and half-dead, and yet you yearn for my return.” The cool green eyes regarded her. “You were once my son. But you are not my daughter.” Leaning over her, Shiva placed a kiss on Ra’s parched lips.

  Nine: Apprehension

  Dawn’s light always woke Ume at sea. A night owl by nature, on land, she could sleep like the dead, but there was something about the way the whole ocean seemed to wake in the first glow of half-light—pinks and golds on the water, and the change in color of the sea itself from the ineffable gray depths to the vibrant turquoise and aquamarine of the open water—that Ume couldn’t resist. It was chilly this morning, though. She wrapped the headdress that doubled as a scarf tighter around her neck—this one was the color of the pre-dawn sea, with beads of opal decorating the hem—and leaned against the rail to watch the sun make its late-autumn debut.

  “Good morning, Maiden Sky.”

  Ume stiffened at the address from behind her. Only one person besides Cree knew her by that name on this voyage. She’d done her best to avoid Pike, and except for a nod in her direction from the dining hall one evening, he’d stayed out of her way.

  She turned and gave him a swift up-and-down with her eyes—a silent indictment of the inferior cut of his suit and the slicked-down, side-parted salt-and-pepper hair he’d tried to style like his fellow travelers—to put him in his place. “Pike.”

  “Ah, I see we’re dispensing with formalities.” He approached the rail, and Ume pushed away from it, turning to go, but he laid his hand on her arm. “No need to be unfriendly.”

  Ume resisted the urge to yank her arm away in disgust. Other early risers were about, and she didn’t want to make a scene. “There is every need to be unfriendly.” She used the excuse of tightening her scarf to move her arm, covering her mouth with the cloth as if to keep him out. “We are not friends.”

  “Yet we share a common interest. You’ve avoided me since your ‘husband’ let you know I was on board, but I thought it only polite to inquire about our mutual friend.” Pike smiled at her scowl. “After all the trouble you took to procure him, I thought surely the boy would be traveling with you. Or did he give you the slip?”

  “You’re a repulsive swine. I did not procure him. He’s not a thing. I liberated him from you. And it’s none of your business where he is.”

  Pike shrugged, watching the horizon. “There’s no reason to be so defensive. He’s not my bounty. We made a fair deal, and I’ll stick by it. I’m a man of my word.” He dug in his pocket for his ubiquitous tobacco tin, and Ume seized the opportunity to take leave of him, but his next words stopped her in her tracks. “Only so long, of course, as the boy is without words of his own.”

  Digging her nails into her palms, Ume turned back. He was grinning that arrogant Meerhunter’s grin, knowing she’d have no choice but to take his bait, as he pinched a wad of tobacco from his can.

  “You know very well he can’t speak.”

  “I know he won’t speak. Long as it stays that way, he’s nothing to me. But I acquired old Nesre’s bag of tricks after his untimely demise, and if he speaks, I’ll know it. And I’ll be honor-bound to do my job in that regard. It’s one thing for him to draw his little magic pictures, dangerous enough, but manageable. But once he’s opened his mouth, you’d be wise to seek my services. His kind has no loyalty to their keepers. Either way, though, he’ll be fair game.”

  Ume turned on her heel and hurried into the salon, closing the door on him. He wasn’t aware that Pearl had spoken to her before. If he had been, he’d never have let Pearl go. Whether that meant his talk of Nesre’s “bag of tricks” was hot air or whether he simply hadn’t used them yet, she couldn’t be sure. But she knew Nesre had kept an “apothecary” of Meeric relics.

  Her stomach churned against a roll of the sea at the memory of one of the relics Nesre had shown her—an eye preserved in Meeric aqueous humor—that had allowed him to spy on Pearl within his mirrored cage. It wasn’t much of a leap to imagine there might have been some other vile thing Nesre had procured that would allow him to hear the utterances of the Meer. For the first time, Ume was almost glad Pearl was under the hill, and out of reach of the likes of Pike.

  “What did he say to you, damn him?” Cree came toward her brusquely from the other end of the salon, black fury in her eyes as she gazed past Ume through the glass at Pike on the deck. “I’ll toss his ass overboard.”

  Ume dropped her hand, realizing she’d been holding it against her mouth in dismay, and pressed her back against the glass door to keep Cree from it. “Don’t, love. Let it be.”

  “Did he insult you?” Cree touched Ume’s cheek with concern, even as she yanked on the door handle with the other hand as if she’d pull Ume with it out of the way. “Did he touch you?”

  “No, love. It’s nothing like that.” Ume grasped Cree’s hand and drew her focus away from Pike with a soothing stroke of her thumb against Cree’s palm and a concentrated communication with her eyes. “Don’t give him any attention. It’s what he wants.”

  Cree’s eyes settled on her, the outrage calming with Ume’s touch. “He did something. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

  “I was seeing a ghost. Something Nesre showed me. I’d forgotten it, and Pike said something that reminded me. But Pike himself is harmless.”

  “What ghost?” Cree’s look was guarded no
w with wary recognition, having grown used to sharing Ume with the memory of Alya.

  Nesre had a…a talisman he used to spy on—” Ume broke off. Hearing this would be more painful for Cree than the present threat she was trying to distract her from.

  “Pearl.” Cree gave her a tight nod. “Go on.”

  Ume sighed. “Pearl couldn’t see outside the glass, and no one could see in—except Nesre. He had an eye.”

  “An eye?” Cree blinked hers, puzzled.

  “Alya’s eye.” Ume hadn’t meant to say it with such a hard edge, but bitter anger propelled the rest. “One that escaped being pulverized by the blows to his head, apparently.” Ume had been standing right beside him on the steps of the temple when the iron club was swung, both of them dragged from MeerAlya’s bed after he’d blessed her with his divine embrace. He’d been reaching for her as the blow fell, confused, smiling, still half in Meeric regenerative sleep after the expenditure of magic he’d used in giving the people of Soth In’La the blessing they’d asked for.

  Pieces of his brain had spattered her face.

  Cree’s fingers closed around hers. She’d been in the crowd before the temple and had watched it happen. “Oh, sweetheart.”

  “He kept pieces of him, Cree. Not just his seed. Everything he thought he could make use of.” Like a carcass after a hunt. A shudder went through her, and she hoped Cree would assume it was more ghosts from the past, and not the present realization: that Pike would like nothing more than to add a few more of Nesre’s “relics” to his bag.

  Ten: Absolution

  To give Ra time to regain her strength, Shiva granted her once more the gift of forgetting. With such a ponderous preoccupation of guilt, even a Meer would find it difficult to regenerate. For a time, Ra knew only that she’d been mad, and that Shiva had restored her. And had come to her in her loneliness when she’d called.