Idol of Glass

by Jane Kindred

  This moment called to Jak’s mind their first meeting, when Ra had arrived in Haethfalt—arrived in the world—wearing nothing but her skin, conjuring a cloak and boots of fur as she stumbled across the snow-blanketed moor toward shelter. Jak had found her and brought her home, finding her something to wear before the rest of the moundhold realized she was naked beneath the absurd cloak. Ra had dropped the cloak and stood waiting as if her nakedness were nothing.

  The wardrobe door closed and Jak turned and observed the dusky twill and flannel Ra had chosen, wishing she hadn’t dressed in something so pale and complementary against her skin. Ra, in Jak’s clothing, was perhaps more sensual than in her own dramatic creations.

  And Ra had murdered Ahr.

  “In the morning, then,” said Jak, and Ra’s face registered recognition that she’d been dismissed.

  Jak lay awake that night, tossing and kicking against the covers. It was important to be rested before setting out, but wishing for sleep, as always, only drove it away.

  Drifting off at last when the sky over the Anamnesis began to pale with false dawn, Jak dreamt of the steel-dark water of the river moving through its bed like oil. From this darkness climbed a creature smooth and black with it, a preternatural Shiva wearing nothing but the sludge. Carrying a thin wand of soft metal, she prowled toward Jak, climbing in through the window. Jak was paralyzed by her form, a beauty beyond description that made even Ra seem ordinary. Shiva struck the switch against her own hand and speckled her palm with blood. A red stripe appeared, a razor-fine gash that closed and faded to a ghostly white line as Jak watched.

  “She stood fast,” said Shiva. “Now you must.”

  Something had disturbed Ra’s sleep, but she couldn’t place it. The mild silver light of winter was high on her wall, reflected from the looking glass that hung beyond the bed. She sat up, surprised. It was long past her accustomed waking time. Her image greeted her through the heavy glass, and she avoided her own eyes. She hadn’t quite found a way to redeem that person, despite the punishment she’d accepted at Shiva’s hands.

  Rising onto her knees, she observed the evidence of that punishment. The marks made her ache for Shiva, but they didn’t absolve. She couldn’t repair Jak’s innocence, nor restore Ahr, whose absence was an ulcer in her heart. What a costly indulgence her raving had been.

  Ra put on the comforting clothes she’d borrowed from Jak—the shirt of dove gray had recalled to her Jak’s breasts once released from it for her pleasure—and wound her hair into a loose knot at her neck. It was time to check on Merit. Then she would find Jak.

  She’d pacified her own conscience with the brief dialogue they’d exchanged, and with her dubious “vetma” of the news of Kol, but she’d avoided a true accounting. She’d skirted around it out of fear, but she had no right, either, to the luxury of avoidance. The least she owed Jak was to acknowledge the wrongs she’d committed, without the self-serving assurances that she could never hurt Jak—for there was no strength left in that claim—or that she simply didn’t mean it. That was a child’s excuse.

  Before departing Rhyman and Ludtaht Ra, Jak would have Ra’s naked admission of guilt, and Ra would seek a means to atonement. Whatever Jak decreed, Ra would do. It could only be a drop of blood in the vast circulation of the Anamnesis, but Ra must at least make this offering.

  She descended the stairs and was drawn up short by the presence of Shiva, standing in the spot where Merit usually waited, dressed for cold weather in a long, sleek jacket of sturdy leather with matching pants tucked into heavy boots.

  “Shiva.” Ra let out a breath of relief and ran down to her. “Where have you been? I thought you’d left me again.”

  “I went for a walk.”

  Ra threw her arms around Shiva’s neck, but Shiva remained passive, and Ra drew back. “What is it? Is it Merit? Are you punishing me?”

  Shiva pulled on a pair of gloves, the same sable leather as her clothes. “Not everything is about you.” The icy tone stung her. It was the Shiva of her boyhood, and Ra had been demoted to the child. With a sigh, Shiva lifted Ra’s chin. “You’re being very self-indulgent, my dear.” Her punctuating kiss was a tactile reassurance that Ra’s fears were groundless. “You have focused on nothing but yourself since AhlZel. And that has been necessary. But now there are other matters to attend to, things that have nothing to do with you.” Shiva smoothed Ra’s hair with a calming, rhythmic motion, and Ra recognized Shiva was manipulating her through Meericry, pacifying with her touch so that Ra’s questions were quelled. But knowing it didn’t keep it from happening. “Your servant is unwell. His lungs are damaged.”

  “What?” Ra found it difficult to focus on her words.

  “I don’t know how long he’ll sleep, but perhaps it will do him good.” Shiva buttoned the wool-lined double breast of her coat and turned away from Ra, her boots marking the exodus with indisputable certainty.

  Tongue heavy with the opiate of Shiva’s, Ra managed to speak as Shiva headed into the courtyard. “Where are you going?”

  “To look after Jak.” Shiva never paused. “I left you plenty of time. And yet you managed to let Jak slip away.”

  “Jak?” Ra’s head was still thick. Jak’s departure must have happened in the night, the disturbance she hadn’t been able to place.

  But it was too late. Shiva had gone.

  Merit. Ra turned toward the Sapphire Room but paused at the gilded console table that defined the symmetry of the opposing staircases like the mantel of a fireplace. Jak had apparently returned the urn to its spot on the console in the night. She reached out to touch it. The lid, which should have been sealed, rattled. With a sense of dread, Ra removed the cover from the clay jar. The vessel was empty.

  “Ai, Jak.” Ra’s head began to throb with a familiar beat.

  Fifteen: Reparation

  Jak was beginning to believe this had been a terrible idea.

  With the memory of Ahr’s body slumped in the sidecar as he’d bled to death on the descent from Mount Winter, the thought of riding Geffn’s machine again had been too painful. Jak had decided to leave it behind and make the journey on foot.

  But the snow was already heavy on the high desert, mingling strangely with the ochre dust of the straggling desert floor. A few intrepid succulents still grew here before the perennial tree line began, demarcating highland from low, and these were draped in white. After ten days, Jak had barely conquered the steep incline toward the bluff.

  Keeping to the EldRud, which Jak had traveled twice by motorbike, had seemed the logical choice, but on foot, in winter, it turned out to be a perilous proposition. The road was no longer visible, and there were no recognizable markers to be sure of one’s direction. And worse, if Jak became disoriented and the journey compounded into weeks instead of days, there was no water source except the snow.

  The hint of stars was visible through the gauze of branches overhead as Jak lay gazing up, arms serving as a makeshift pillow. Jak had made camp for the night within a copse of cedar that had so far been protected from the snow. The trees in Jak’s line of vision moved and mourned in the wind, obscuring and revealing the starry dome that was a flattering copy of the one at Temple Ra.

  Jak considered going back and meeting up with the Filial. It would cost days, and there was no telling how the weather would turn. No, it would be better to persevere and use the sun for direction. It would only be a few days’ journey keeping to this route—at the most, a week. Jak could ration the water, and the increasing snow could be gathered when the water was gone. It was better to keep on toward home.

  But it was less than a day before Jak discovered the gravity of this mistake. The sky grew overcast and snow began to fall again before noon, and the optimistic gauge of the blithe winter sun overhead was obscured by a dense gray covering of cloud. Jak tried to use the breaks in the trees to keep to the road, but the trees themselves were inc
reasingly fewer as the day wore on, and Jak knew by frequent stumbling over rises in the snow that it wasn’t the smooth worn stone of EldRud that ran beneath, but the rocky ground of the surrounding bluff. In the urgency of an emotional need for home, Jak was making all the mistakes of a Deltan who’d never seen true winter.

  By nightfall, Jak’s predicament was worse. The unpleasant discovery of a hollow beneath the snow had yielded a twisted ankle, and it was swelling badly. Furious at the stupidity, but resigned, Jak found a suitable projection of rock to huddle under and call it a day. Beneath its protection, Jak erected a small makeshift tent and climbed inside within a cocoon of two blankets and the clothes from home. The ankle would be sore but should be usable by morning, and Jak would have to go slow.

  Morning, however, brought no relief to the sprain, and instead delivered an ice storm some hours before dawn. The tent was useless, weighted down by ice and battered by the wind. Jak pulled it overhead as a kind of hood, wrapped in the canvas and crouching against the rocks, and cursed into the wet chrysalis. This was idiotic from start to finish. Jak should have returned to Haethfalt as soon as the urn was delivered, or no later than the arrival of Ra, whom Jak should have avoided at all costs. Jak should have brought heavier clothes, and should have taken the motorbike, or followed the river on foot. Jak should have navigated more carefully.

  It was a useless litany of self-reproach, but it was something to focus on. It was better than thinking of the truth: that Jak wasn’t going to make it home.

  The storm’s duration was impossible to gauge. After some time, Jak slept, huddled against the stones. It was over when Jak roused, perhaps prompted by the silence, but the canvas and blankets were frozen, and there was a portentous lack of pain in the still-swollen ankle. Both feet, in boots not made for snow, were beyond feeling. Jak broke off an icicle from the edge of the tent canvas and sucked on it, too tired for self-castigation. Death by freezing was a mild way to go, or so they said. Warmth would come before the end. That would be pleasant.

  Jak wondered drowsily what waited in the in-between. Perhaps there would be some kind of communion with Ahr’s soul. Jak longed for that. It was a mystery, often debated among the philosophers of Mound RemPeta, what happened with one’s consciousness once consigned to the elements. Some claimed to recall vague dreams at the edge of reawakening, intense desires and aspirations that propelled their matter into a kind of chemical reaction, and propelled the spirit into its next incarnation to continue the journey.

  Perhaps the median held only emptiness, and the stored memory of one’s collected lives was nothing but a myth. Or perhaps some accident of chemistry set off the spark of the soul.

  It occurred to Jak that this would be a crushing blow to Ra. The thought was neither satisfying nor distressing. Ra had manipulated every element of her Meer-charmed life, companions as well as events, even plotting from the grave to have things her way despite the tide of life. Somehow, without a formal cremation, Ra had contained her integral self and brought it forth again from the netherworld. She was a cheat.

  A distant sound played at the edges of Jak’s consciousness, the melody of the median. It was like a forest strung with chimes between the trees—dangling bits of glass, or thin metal bells, enchantingly dissonant. Jak listened to it idly, mind numb like the frostbitten feet. It began to draw Jak away from the lure of oblivion and toward the cold and discomfort of the body, the way pain knocked clarity into the mind. Jak’s eyes opened. It wasn’t music at all, but the breaking of ice under boots. A figure was approaching through the webs of the frozen trees. For a moment, Jak thought it must be Ra, but it was the more alarming Meer who’d spawned her.

  Leather-gloved hands perched on her hips, Shiva shook her head with a sigh. “If you’re going to be stubborn, you ought to at least do so with a bit of common sense. You’re quite ridiculous.”

  Jak was at MeerShiva’s mercy. Exhausted, frozen and numb, Jak had been easy to hoist over the deceptively narrow shoulders. It was a terrifying prospect to be held aloft by a mad Meer, especially this one. Jak protested pointlessly and was soon silenced by the steady motion of Shiva’s nimble footsteps through the snow, or by Meeric deceit, or both. Jak slept and woke and slept again, silently gliding with the terrifying goddess over the boundless white grace.

  Light came once more, a morning, or perhaps just consciousness, and Jak lay prone in an unlikely cave, the source of light its narrow opening to the ground above. Beneath Jak lay a thick animal pelt, and another covered Jak’s bare flesh. The unnerving Meer was seated, legs curled beneath her, before a pleasant fire.

  “Fair Jak.” Her expression was unreadable. “You’re with us after all.”

  “Us?” Jak attempted to sit up, stunned into thinking better of it by a throbbing skull.

  “Us. Me. The greater world. You’re a resident of it yet, and not a collective drop of elements in—what was it you called it? The median?”

  Jak’s head rose, crossed arms forming a weak prop to see MeerShiva better. “What I called it? What do you call it?”

  “I?” Shiva laughed. “I call it nothing. I have had but one life. I know nothing of reincarnation, except that it apparently happens, as those I’ve thought lost keep reappearing from the dead in the most unnerving way. It’s quite extraordinary, really.” She glanced at her nails as though biding time with a dull guest at a party.

  One life? Jak was amazed at this claim. The ancient City of Always had been established by Shiva herself, and had been nothing but ruins—until Ra had resurrected it—for almost half a millennium. Could Shiva be so old without regeneration?

  “Old.” Shiva plucked the thought from Jak’s head. “Do I look old to you?” She tossed her hair in a haughty gesture, and her inhuman eyes narrowed. “I wonder what Ra sees in you, Jak na Fyn.”

  Jak curled away from her, uneasy at the turn this was taking. There was no telling what this woman—no, this feral Meer might do. Jak stopped the thought too late, realizing Shiva would still be listening. She was worse than Ra in this intrusive skill.

  Shiva laughed, a sound both beautiful and unsettling, chilling Jak to the bone as even the ice storm had not. “But you’re so loud.” Her words echoed what Ra had once said. “Keep your thoughts to yourself if you don’t wish to be overheard.” Shiva held up her hands, palm out, in a gesture of truce at Jak’s look of mistrust. “I have no intention of molesting you, Jak na Fyn.” When Jak flinched at this word and its baser connotations, Shiva sighed. “Now what have I said? You’re a very bristly person, Jak na Fyn. Like an offensive desert plant.”

  Jak eyed her around the selvage of the animal skin, wishing this unpleasant contact with her would end.

  “Do you think you own the word? One would think you were the only person in the world to have been misused.” Her voice was a low, sensual growl like a warning from a great cat, and Jak’s heart began to beat in a rhythm of fear. “Such terrible scars you have.” She unbuttoned her jacket and held it open, baring skin that was paler than Ra’s. “Don’t you see mine?”

  At the mention of scars, Jak’s fingertips went automatically to the cheek Ra had striped. There were no scars on Shiva’s skin. But the Meer obviously expected a response.

  Jak shrugged. “No, I don’t. Your skin is perfect.”

  “You do not look, FynNa.” Shiva rose and came close, crouching before the skin rug. “Look, you ordinary little fool. Is it perfect?”

  A web of terrible white lines bisected the marbling of her veins, mementos of deep gashes, blows and lacerations that hadn’t been visible before. Jak’s breath drew in sharply.

  “I was captured in the days when my kind were devoured as part of petition. We were insignificant charms. They took me by surprise and cut out my tongue that I couldn’t curse them. They were fools, for it meant I also couldn’t bless them. To punish me for robbing him of his vetma, the master of these men had me stripped and beaten with th
e lash until I couldn’t stand. He made me his slave, a laughingstock among his court: his captive savage, rendered powerless, for their amusement. Knowing I still possessed the Meeric strength to withstand such beatings, he allowed his courtiers to administer them repeatedly, for sport—for years. Though I wished for death, I could not die.”

  Shiva stared past Jak into the fire, her eyes a virulent green, but when she spoke again, it was in an offhand manner, as though the story she related was trivial. “My tongue grew back eventually. The Meer have that ability. When it was whole, I called up each man’s demon, the thing he feared most. My master I repaid with the same he’d given me. He lived to suffer much longer than Fyn’s husband did.”

  Jak had begun to weep without realizing it.

  Shiva clutched Jak’s jaw between her fingers and raised Jak’s head sharply from the skin rug. “Do you think I told you this to make you cry? I could have spared myself that recollection and toyed with you more cruelly than Ra had I merely wanted your tears. Look at me.” She held Jak’s eyes with hers, and something shifted deep within them, and Jak saw into her. It was like staring into the cataclysmic abyss of a volcano, and Jak was stunned into silence.

  “You and I are sisters,” said Shiva fiercely. “Birthed of the inhumanness of others. I was called Shiva the Terrible after I had my retribution. I was no victim. You must cease to be. The rabbit is no more.” She let go of Jak and threw off the skin covering, and Jak saw the rugs were made from the coats of rabbits sewn together. “Now, Jak na Fyn. What will you be?”

  Gasping at the unexpected feel of fire-warmed air against bare skin, Jak was tongue-tied, bewildered by the question.

  Shiva’s hand traced down Jak’s spine as though assessing the muscles within. “Will you be a man, as I made Ahr? Or shall I give you that which would validate your identity: the characteristics of neither sex?”