by Jane Kindred
“She will,” Ra promised, one eye underlined by a stroke of red.
Shiva waved him away. “Don’t cry in front of me. I am not moved by you.”
Steeling herself like a sculpture of ice, she looked past him once more. “Jak na Fyn. Ahr Naiahn.” She commanded their attention, and they came to her. “Ahr Naiahn. You wished to know how Ra was accountable to you, what punishment she suffered on your behalf.”
“I don’t need to—”
“Silence.” Shiva’s word was instantly manifest, and Ahr stared mutely up at her. “She was bound amid the blood from her lashing, and I left her, taking myself from her as she had taken you from herself and the others who loved you. It was an absence that nearly returned her to the madness from which I’d brought her.”
Ahr looked down at her feet, for once displaying due humility. Perhaps the young Meer could learn to control her blood in time.
“You are a gift she didn’t deserve. I gave because I couldn’t bear her loneliness. Meerity is a place of unbearable isolation, and she had known enough of it.” When Ahr raised her head, solemn and reverent, Shiva dismissed her with a nod of her chin.
Ahr pulled her scarf about her throat against the biting wind, lacking the adornment of Meeric tresses to keep her warm. “MeerShiva.” She paused before she took her leave. “I am honored to have your blood.”
The corner of Shiva’s mouth twitched. “You had better be.” Shiva turned her attention on the ordinary one. “Jak na Fyn. You have tasted Meeric blood.”
Jak looked puzzled for a moment before realization dawned. “Ahr’s tears.”
“Do you know what it means to taste the blood of a Meer?”
Jak shivered, more easily affected by the elements than the others, but perhaps not shivering from cold. “Not really.”
“It won’t transform you. Meerity isn’t so easily achieved. But it has tied you to Ahr forever.”
Jak considered this and nodded. “I was already.”
Shiva pondered the unusual falender who had captured the hearts of two Meer. “I can give you my own blood. I can give you Meerity if you want it.”
Jak’s hesitation was only fleeting. “I don’t.”
Shiva raised a curious eyebrow. “You’ve now refused my vetmas twice. I may become offended.” She took Jak’s wrist and pressed the pulse beneath her thumb. “Then a long life. And plenty of time to think about it.”
Finished with her leave-taking, she turned toward the shadows of AhlZel without bothering to give them an explanation. She owed them none.
Hraethe’s eyes followed her, but he made no attempt to challenge her or to follow. So be it. Let him make his own bed.
Ra stopped when they reached the outskirts of the mounds, and Jak and Ahr stopped with him, the wheel and the counterbalance. It had begun to snow in a light scattering of white crystals on the silver air. He looked up at it as it fell, the first thing Ra had seen on taking a breath in the world that would lead her to Jak, and through Jak to Ahr. He had an affinity for it now, and it almost made him weep. Rhyman would be warm and bustling compared to this. His Rhyman. Ludtaht Ra waited for him.
Hraethe caught up with them, and Ra gave him a questioning look. “You’re returning to Rhyman?”
“I am sworn to hold you up, meneut.”
“And you have, my dearest friend.” Ra linked Hraethe’s arm in his as they walked. “But your presence in Rhyman will be harder to explain than my own.”
Merit had come to serve him as a litter-bearer some thirty-five years past, nothing but a drop in the river of Meeric time, and had never let him down—no, not even once. He’d prevented Ra from letting Ahr disappear into the sea of unmarked commoners. Without Merit, Ra would have let her go, never having touched her but for the communion of their eyes. He would never have known her name, nor seen her again after knowing such bliss. Without Merit, there would never have been the brief flower of RaNa. Ra would have remained an empty idol, dead to the world. He would have dissipated into the anonymity of the elements, decomposed on the steps of Ludtaht Ra and lost forever without Merit. But this was no longer Merit. It was MeerHraethe.
Ra stopped and turned to him. “You have never failed me.” He clasped his hand over Hraethe’s. “But I am not your lord any longer. And I think your place is no longer with me.” Ra kissed him, and Hraethe’s eyes dripped red as they embraced. “You no longer belong to me. I release you.”
Ahr threw her arms around Hraethe from behind, clinging to him, and he turned and took the vetma of her kiss, lifting her off the ground and holding her against him.
“It’s not good-bye,” she promised when he put her down.
“No.” He looked off in the distance after the shadow that compelled him, already distracted from their presence. “But I am summoned to the service of the Queen of the Beginning and the End.” He turned and embraced Jak. “Keep up with your Deltan.”
“I just now realized,” said Jak. “You’ve been speaking perfect Mole.”
Hraethe shrugged amiably. “All languages are understood by the Meer.”
Jak took his hand and gave it a formal, highland shake. “Durrh masseh ahnmat.”
Hraethe gave Jak a wry smile. “Through we meet again?”
Jak grinned. “I’ll practice.”
Shiva had long since disappeared into the swirl of white. Hraethe turned, forgetting them, and pursued his mistress.
Ra watched him go before turning back to Jak and Ahr. “I haven’t told you everything. Why I must return to Rhyman.”
“The solicitors,” said Ahr. “The former templars—they were gaining power at In’La before I left. Have they moved against our court?”
“I don’t know. But they will soon.” Ra sighed. “Pike obtained physical proof of my existence. He was hired by a consortium of solicitors from the courts of both Rhyman and In’La who wish to turn the Delta into a single great power ruled by the elite. With the evidence of my return, they’ll have a powerful edge.”
Jak was frowning at him. “But what do you intend to do? Surely you can’t just march into Rhyman and command them to worship you?”
Ra smiled. “I don’t want to be worshipped. I want to serve as Rhyman’s protector. I don’t expect it to be easy. And I don’t doubt it will be dangerous. Which is why—”
“Don’t even say it.” Ahr glared hotly at him. “You will not go without us. Now I’ve spoken, so you’re just going to have to deal with it.”
Ra laughed and kissed her cheek, not daring to do more lest he distract himself. “So I am. But it’s going to be difficult enough for them to accept one Meer, let alone two. There’s also Pearl to think of.”
“Pearl is one more reason for me to go. And I’m far less conspicuous.”
“Except for those damn blue eyes of yours,” Jak cut in. “Don’t you think someone will recognize you?”
Ahr rolled the one visible indigo eye in response. “Who would expect to see Ahr Naiahn resurrected as a twenty-year-old woman? I’ll do as I did with Pike if need be, and claim to be Naiahn’s daughter.” Ahr bit her lip and glanced at Ra at having evoked the betrayal.
“We have no debt between us, lif.” Ra touched her cheek. “That is finished.”
“Then it’s settled,” said Jak with a wry look, moving in between them and taking their hands as if to put a stop to their burgeoning desire before anyone got carried away. “We’re going. The three of us. Whatever waits for us in Rhyman, we’ll deal with it together.”
Thirty-four: Harmony
Ume knelt beside Pearl on the priceless tile of a Meeric temple while he drew with fantastic speed and precision. The resplendent platinum hair hung in a braid over his shoulder, grown long since they’d last seen him in Szofl, and the peculiar pink satin ribbons woven into his wrists fluttered with the motions of his hands like birds or butterflies perched on his arms. As Cree
watched them from the bench seat in the nearby window alcove, her heart swelled. In her wildest dreams, she’d never imagined such a scene: her family—Meeric temple notwithstanding.
They’d stayed on at Ludtaht Ra, not knowing where else to go. Hraethe’s fate was uncertain. Though Pearl could have reopened the portal to the realm under the hill to bring him out, they didn’t dare risk losing Pearl to the Hidden Folk again. The temple staff knew him—and probably knew he was Meer—and gave no indication that Cree and Ume were unwelcome. How long they might continue to be welcome if Hraethe remained absent, Cree wasn’t sure. But Pearl was at home here.
She hardly knew what to do with the realization that Pearl didn’t hate her. They were shy around each other still, but the moment he’d put the truth together and flung himself into her arms, Cree’s fears had shattered like the Meeric glass at her feet. She was his mother, and Pearl had clearly ached for one his whole life. It made her ashamed that fear had kept her from looking for him after learning he was alive. She’d believed it without question when the Hidden Folk had told her Pearl would despise her if he ever met her. It had fit the narrative of her fear. The Hidden folk were full of shit.
Ume glanced up at her and smiled. Murmuring something to Pearl, who nodded distractedly, intent on his drawing, Ume came to join her.
“He enters something of a trance state when he draws.” She snuggled next to Cree on the bench. “I think I was annoying him.”
Cree pulled Ume close against her shoulder and kissed her hair. “I can’t believe he’s here. I can’t believe we’re here. I’m just sorry it took us so long.”
“You promised. No beating yourself up. Pearl adores you.”
“Well, I don’t know about adores. But he doesn’t hate me. That’s a start.”
Ume shrugged mysteriously. “You should see what he’s drawing right now.”
“Why? What’s he drawing?”
“You’ll see.”
As if conjured by Ume’s words, Pearl sat back and brushed the pastel dust from his paper, nodding in satisfaction, and rose to bring the drawing to them.
He held it out to Cree and smiled shyly. “For you.” He almost never spoke, though Ume had said he could when he chose. His voice was like the whisper of a butterfly’s wing.
“For me?” Cree took the drawing and studied it. It was a drawing of her, sleeves rolled up as she worked the docks at In’La years ago, before the Expurgation. She must have been twenty. He’d captured the moment as perfectly as if he’d been there—the breeze off the river catching her hair, the little lump of the cigar and tinderbox she’d kept in her vest pocket.
She swallowed against a similar lump in her throat, touched that he’d looked into the past to see her and had drawn her with such care, despite her role at that very moment in time in bringing about the death of his own father. “Thank you, Pearl. It’s lovely.”
As Pearl returned to his pastels, Cree set the picture carefully on the bench beside her, but something in the image caught her eye, making her gasp. The scene had shifted, like the images in a zoetrope being spun. The Cree in the drawing moved a crate aside and took a step back with a look of pleasant surprise. Against the wall of a carriage house facing the dock, what appeared to be a young man in rags and bare feet huddled in sleep, face covered by a shock of stunning tawny-port hair. But it wasn’t a young man. It was Ume, disguised as Cillian, on the day they’d met.
Ume’s figure in the drawing opened her eyes, revealing the liquid amber that had grabbed Cree’s heart and never let go. Words formed a caption at the bottom in a little scrolling line of ink as the drawn Cree folded her arms and stared down at Ume with a look of amusement: “Unless you plan to be loaded onto the barge, I suggest you get on your feet, sir.”
On the bench beside her, Ume curled her arm around Cree’s. “You see? He adores you. Just as I’ve done since that very moment.”
Pleased that his drawing had made Cree happy, Pearl took out his box of charcoal as another vision flowed toward him within the Meeric Anamnesis. This drawing he rendered in shades of black and gray, the shadows on a vast plain of white. He’d never touched snow, but he could feel the delicate fall of it as it scattered and danced out of the sky like the firefly lights that followed him when he’d been under the hill.
The first drawing he’d done of Ra had been her awakening in the snow, born of her own will, to seek Ahr, who’d been lost to her. She’d taken a circuitous route—one that had brought her to the mirrored cage in Soth In’La where Pearl had lived his whole life, releasing him to partake of a world that theretofore had existed for him only in his visions in the glass. Her route had also taken her to unspeakable madness.
But there was no sign of the darkness that had leached from her into the river of Meeric consciousness to poison him in far-off Gundoumu Arazi. This Ra was clear-eyed and confident, with his loves beside him, made whole. MeerRa of Rhyman was coming home.
Epilogue: Quickening and Fire
It was bitterly cold at the top of Munt Zelfaal. He stood at the ice-covered gates—how like his love—and recalled his first sight of them, and the awesome anticipation of what he’d come to do. She’d infuriated him from the very start, humiliating him and commanding him like a dog. Now she expected him to follow her like a serf. He’d possessed a soth of his own once, and it had been impressive in his brief reign of less than a century. He was Meer, not some curtseying courtier. She thought he’d jump at her command—“you come when I call”—and yet he did, and knowing this made him angrier.
He stormed Ludtaht Shiva, blasting in with the ice and snow that invaded the unprotected arches. It was an idiotic design of naked arrogance. She left her temple open and vulnerable to the elements as though she ruled over some balmy soth of the Delta. It gave the correct impression of her, however: a frigid, thoughtless hollow.
“Shiva!” he bellowed from the entry. The halls echoed as though untouched for centuries, not a sign of life within. It was hardly surprising. He wouldn’t expect her to emanate any. He advanced on her throne room, but it was empty as a tomb. “You try my patience!” She was probably waiting in the very room where she’d first summoned him, arrogantly, as then, expecting to be serviced. He went there, still remembering the way, but it was cold and abandoned. “Damn you!” he roared. “I am tired of games!”
Her private chamber was the only place he hadn’t tried. If he didn’t find her there, he would leave. He was sick of this. He’d had enough.
A curtain of red silk hung over the arch. Hraethe moved the silk aside and found more layers of curtain, folding over one another like the folds of the goddess’s red sanctum. He tore at them, not in the mood for a labyrinth.
Her bed was a voluptuous obscenity, a bed of blood-red velvet. Hraethe stopped, the curse on his lips suspended by the sight of her pressed overflowing into a red bodice to match the bed, surrounded by vulgar layers of voile that were her dress and not the bedside curtains. She reclined in an excessive pile of cushions, her hair an equal luxury against her body, disappearing against the hue of the bedding as it snaked away from her head. He hadn’t seen her wear it down since that first time.
Shiva’s fingers played at the top of the bodice. “And so he comes.”
“I didn’t come here to service you again.”
A ruby eyebrow lifted in amusement. “Then why did you?”
“I want to know, once and for all, what you want from me. Why you bound me.”
She sighed and focused on the ceiling. “You can be exceedingly simple, MeerHraethe. I didn’t bind you at all.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t bind me?” Hraethe curled his hand around the bedpost, unwilling to accept this. Why would he have come if she hadn’t bound him? Of course she had. She’d said so. “You bit my tongue and gave me your blood, and took my voice. What was that for if not to bind me?”
“I needed you to stay put an
d not to utter anything that would keep me from my task, even after you woke.” With a sigh, Shiva stretched her arm above her head in the sea of pillows, still speaking to the ceiling. “You drank of my history.”
“Your history?”
“It has given you knowledge you didn’t possess before. That is how you knew of the Permanence. But apparently, it didn’t give you everything.” She turned her gaze on him, fierce and compelling. “Do you want to know what transgression you committed last night?”
He suspected he wasn’t going to like the answer, but he gave her a curt nod, trying to maintain an air of cool indifference. “For once, you deign to offer an explanation. Do tell.”
Shiva seized the hem of her gown and tore the fabric to her hip, showing him a mark he’d never noticed before. If Shiva didn’t want something to be seen, it wasn’t. It appeared to be a brand, like one that would mark cattle, a hieroglyph from the ancient Delta.
“It’s the mark of Lord Einskis. He gave it to all his dogs.”
“His…” Hraethe raised his eyes to hers and saw the warning in them. This time he heeded it.
“The first time you came to Soth AhlZel, I told you the ancient custom of Meercatching was real. Meer were caught and consumed for their vetmas. I was difficult to catch. It became a challenge for Lord Einskis. Every hunting party he sent out after me I struck down with a word. So he devised a way to circumvent my curses. He used an arrow tipped with poison, and while I was sickened with it, he cut out my tongue. That is the history you drank.”
“Meershivá.” Hraethe swallowed, the sensation of the paralysis in his tongue a vivid memory. The blood in his veins spiked with fury at the long-dead Lord Einskis, livid that anyone would dare to touch Shiva with such malice. “And I provoked you.” He shook his head, dispelling the anger lest it seem directed at her. “I’m surprised you allowed me to live.”