“We will precede you, Goddess,” she says wryly.
The fanfare is going to kill me. Tora and Huna step in front of me. In a whisper, the granddaughter inquires of her grandmother, “Do we announce her? Do we have the sentries announce her?”
I answer before Huna gets the chance. “Don’t say anything. Part the tent flaps for me to pass through, and we’ll be on our way.”
My freedom is so close I can almost taste it. If I’m stuck in this tent for a second longer than necessary, I might turn feral and cause some real destruction among these people.
Perhaps Huna can sense my unrest, because she accepts my suggestion with a nod. She and Tora step through to the exterior. As they draw the curtained tent flaps back, the murmurs from beyond the wooden fence die to a hush.
I tuck my short hair neatly behind my ears, ignoring the twist in my gut as I glimpse hundreds of bodies beyond that gap in the tent.
Relax, Anjeni. You’re a goddess. You’re their goddess.
I square my shoulders, take a deep breath, and step into the full light of day for the first time in weeks.
Jaws drop. Eyes bulge. I meet a few of the stares in turn, my face impassive. I’m as arrogant as I possibly can be, looking down upon the worshippers for three, four, five breaths. Then, I pivot and cross around to the back of the tent.
Huna and Tora follow, clumsily, Huna hissing under her breath. “Goddess, what are you doing?”
There’s no way I can wade through that crowd. The butterflies in my stomach will erupt out of my mouth before I get more than five yards into their midst. Even as I sidle out of view, my knees half-buckle and I catch myself in a jarring step.
Anyway, the hill with the Eternity Gate is behind us. It’s much more efficient to hop the wooden fence in the back and go straight there.
The remnants of my battle with the demon monster cut black across the valley before me. The Eternity Gate overlooks it, a familiar edifice in the unfamiliar terrain.
The land around the Gate is littered with spots of pale brown and objects that glint in the light. I’m already over the fence, but I pause to squint at these strange ornaments.
“Goddess,” says Huna from behind me. I turn. She’s too old to hop a fence, low though it may be, and too dignified to climb astride over it. Worshippers are crowding around the edges of the enclosure, mostly children trying to get a better glimpse of the goddess.
“You may stay,” I tell her with a tip of my head. I look to Tora.
She glances at her grandmother apologetically and swings her legs over the fence—quite dainty in her long skirt.
I proceed, uncaring whether Tora gets nerve enough to stick close to me. I’m out. The wind rustles through the tall grasses as I stride barefoot down the stony hill. I don’t even care about the rocks. There’s no one to stop me from getting to the Gate this time, no one to keep me shut inside.
Tora does follow, but at a distance of ten or more feet. She can’t walk as fast in her skirt as I can in my pants.
The ornaments on the hillside come into focus the closer I get. They are small packets similar to those left outside my tent, more offerings, but at the God’s Arch. I pick one up to examine its contents. A gold bracelet slips from the scrap of cloth into my palm. I dangle its glittering links aloft in the sunlight, guilt and wonder warring within me.
“This has to stop,” I say to Tora as she joins me. “Your people can’t keep giving away their most precious belongings.”
“Our lives and our freedom are most precious, Goddess,” she replies, her brown eyes searching mine for understanding. “You have spared us. How else can we repay you?”
Shame floods through me. I wrap the bracelet in its packet again, but I hesitate to replace it on the ground. The crowd watches from a distance. I cannot reject an offering.
In discontent, I continue my climb toward the Eternity Gate. The rugged earth bites into my callused feet. I nearly trip over a jutting stone. “If it’s an offering the people want to give, they can remove the rocks from this hill,” I say, half-joking and half-serious.
“I will tell Cosi,” says Tora demurely.
I spare her a glance over my shoulder. Impulsively I ask, “Do you love him?”
She blushes but does not answer.
“Huna says he is inconstant. Is that true?”
“Please, Goddess,” says Tora. “Please, I do not wish to speak of it. Baba and Cosi do not get along.”
Her loyalty is split between the two, in other words, and it pains her to discuss the situation. But I’m pretty sure that goddesses are supposed to meddle in mortal affairs. “I think you should marry him,” I say.
The rosy color of her cheeks betrays her feelings, though she refuses to answer aloud. I pick my way over the last few yards to the Gate, my breath short from the exertion up the incline.
Nostalgia strikes a chord within me. The weathered stones, warm from the sun’s rays, retain no remnants of that pulsing energy that possessed them on the morning of my birthday. They are not as worn as in my time, either: the writing patterned over their surface cuts deeper.
“Do you know what this says?” I ask Tora.
She shakes her head.
Suspicion lances through me. “You can read, can’t you?”
She bites her lower lip and looks to my tent perched on the other hill. “Not that language, Goddess. What does it say?”
“I don’t know.” She jerks in surprise, meeting my gaze. “No one knows. I suppose, if it’s been here for thousands of years, the language of its first users must be long dead. Too bad.” I trace the pattern of a character with one finger. If I could activate the Gate and step back through this instant, would I?
Tricked out in my awesome death-paint and my manly red shirt? Absolutely I would.
But where would that leave all these refugees and the offerings they have made in good faith? Etricos still has a long way to go to establish his sovereign nation.
“Cosi is coming,” says Tora, “with Dima and Aitana and those others who bear the spark.”
“Dima bears the spark?” I ask sharply.
She frowns. “No. He guards Aitana and the others. Our enemies hunt the spark-bearers first and foremost.”
A grunt twists up from my throat. Mr. High-and-Mighty can sit on his laurels back in camp, for all I care. “Have there been any more demons since I came?”
“No. Only scouts near the river,” says Tora. “Dima took care of them before they could return to their master to report.”
“I see.” I shouldn’t be annoyed, but I am. I was sick, so of course it’s good that someone else could watch out for the safety of the encampment, but why Demetrios?
I mean, aside from the whole “capable warrior” swagger he has going on.
“Who is their master?” I ask. She regards me with open astonishment. “We only ever called them the demon hordes where I come from, Tora. Who is their master?”
“The Bulokai—the tribesmen that summoned them from the netherworld, and Agoros the Fifth, the present leader of the Bulokai.”
In my native time, Helenia dominates the international discourse in our corner of the world. I don’t recall any of our neighboring countries tracing their roots to a people known as the Bulokai. “I guess Etricos wipes them out,” I remark off-hand. Tora starts, a troubled furrow between her brows as she fixes her attention on the approaching group. Some of the worshipping crowd has followed as far as the valley basin, but only Etricos’s chosen candidates mount the steep incline toward the Eternity Gate. The spark-bearers straggle out in a broken line as they come, the younger, slower members toward the back. Etricos and Demetrios lead the way.
Aitana, to her credit, pauses in her ascent to wait for the smallest of the group to catch up.
I plant myself directly between the two pillars of the arch as they approach, my hands outstretched to each column. Etricos has brought me seven souls from out of his hundreds. Seven meager souls, ranging in age from five to twenty
, their faces and hands washed but their clothing tattered at the edges.
Tora descends eight steps to meet her betrothed. He draws her to him with a possessive arm, his eyes flitting upward to where I observe him, as though to say, “I have loaned her briefly to you, and now I claim her as my own again.”
He doesn’t need to play the macho games here. I’d officiate their wedding myself if I thought it would stick in their culture.
“Goddess Anjeni,” he says with a formal bow of his head, “I, Etricos of the Helenai, have brought you those of the Helenai who bear the sacred spark, according to your request.”
“The Helenai,” I repeat, fixed upon his wording. “Do all the people in your encampment belong to the Helenai?”
He blinks. I recognize that reaction as a politician caught in a scheme.
I pin him with a stern gaze. “Etricos, I need you to bring me all who bear the spark, not just those among the Helenai.”
“We are here that you may choose a priestess, Goddess,” he replies. Meaning he wants my priestess to come from among his own tribesmen and not from the other tribes that join his encampment daily.
And it finally registers that the seven he has brought me are all female. “Are there no men among the Helenai who bear the spark?” I ask in confusion. Magic is a trait shared among the sexes in my time.
“No,” he says, his voice hushed. Hardness infuses it as he continues. “Does the goddess prefer a priest to a priestess?”
I’m embarrassing him in front of his tribesmen. “No. I prefer a priestess. I only wondered whether the men of the Helenai could bear the spark.”
“It is possible,” he says. His tight-lipped answer leaves me to draw my own conclusions: the Helenai men who bore the spark have already died. As warriors they would be singled out first by the enemy. The spark is easier to hide among women, who do not serve on the front lines in battle.
Tragedy has plagued this people, and now they pin their hopes on the magic borne by a false and foolish goddess in their midst. But for their sake, I must play my part.
I settle cross-legged on the ground beneath the arch, training my attention upon the girls Etricos has brought me. “All right, spark-bearers. Show me your power.”
Aitana carries the youngest in her arms, but she lowers the child to the ground and urges her forward. Shyly the girl approaches, her hands aloft. Uncertainty clouds her dark eyes, but she manages to produce a crackling spray of magic between her fingers. She lacks the control to pass the candle test except by chance, but she will grow into her power as she ages.
And I hate that I’m mentally deferring to the evaluation methods of my despised magic tutors. There’s not even a candle in sight, yet that’s my first instinct upon seeing the erratic sparks.
“Very good,” I tell the girl. She retreats, hiding behind Aitana’s legs.
The rest of the candidates come from youngest to oldest. They have hardly more control than the first. Without the fundamentals to focus their minds, they can only muddle with their sparks of magic. Aitana is the last and the strongest. She can center her power on the tip of her finger in a single flame, but not for more than a few breaths.
As it winks out, she looks not to me for approval, but to Etricos and Demetrios. There’s no question where she seeks favor.
I, with my elbow propped on one knee and my chin cradled in my hand, contemplate the small group before me. Having only come into my power a mere two weeks ago, I shouldn’t be so critical. I expected more, though. I expected at least someone to shoot a burst of power into the air or something. Not a soul in this group has progressed past the first awakening stage.
Etricos clears his throat. “Goddess Anjeni, which of these shall you take as your priestess?”
His attention flits towards Aitana, the strongest of the group. She is the obvious choice.
Call me petty, but I don’t want to give her the honor. “They are all my priestesses,” I reply, rising to my feet.
The fourth fundamental of magic is that it divides upon the user’s will and understanding. Command and it shall be done.
I raise both hands, four fingers aloft on my left and three on my right. “Seven bearers of the sacred spark,” I say. “Seven priestesses.”
Sparks rocket upward from each of my raised fingers, like firecrackers shot into the sky: seven balls of flame burst in succession high above. My power divided is smaller and more controlled than when I try to produce a single manifestation, but the crowd in the valley below gasps and ducks nonetheless. The spark-bearers, too, fall away in apprehension. I keep my gaze fixed on Etricos, who stares back at me.
Faint amusement tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Be it as you wish, Goddess Anjeni. Will you return to your tent?”
“No,” I say, much to his chagrin. “I remain here for today. You may return to your people, if that is your desire.”
He tips his head in acknowledgement and, Tora’s hand tightly clasped in his, pauses only to whisper a command to his brother before he descends the hill with his betrothed. Demetrios remains behind, the guard I did not request.
“Goddess, what do you wish of us?” Aitana asks. The youngest still clings to her uncertainly.
“Collect the offerings on the hillside,” I say. “They are sacred and should not be left to the elements.” My stance between the pillars and the memory of candle tests has pulled another issue to the forefront of my thoughts. “If you find a small silver item, flat and polished and about this big”—I gesture roughly three inches long by an inch-and-a-half wide with my fingers—“bring it directly to me. It is mine.”
Unless I’m vastly mistaken, I came through the Eternity Gate with my lighter in my pocket. It was not among the clothing returned to me during my illness. Most likely it fell free as I tumbled down the hillside, or in my ensuing battle with the demon champion.
I may not need it anymore, but if it’s here I want it back.
Chapter Twelve
“Magic is like a volcano. It builds up in pressure and then bursts. You are the volcano.”
My collection of priestesses looks up at me with mirror-image blank expressions. They huddle together just below the Eternity Gate, with Demetrios off to one side, his arms folded and his attention divided between us and the crowds in the valley’s basin.
I demonstrate what I’m talking about, the buildup of pressure, the release in a fiery ball that shoots into the air.
What a liberating discovery, this connection between the theoretical and the practical sides of magic. I’m itching to experiment with all the fundamentals, all the intermediates, all the superlatives I thought I had memorized in vain. My pupils need to start at the beginning, though. They need to start with that very first fundamental.
Magic is like a volcano. None of this river rubbish.
“Try it,” I urge.
They do. And, one by one, they fail. Repeatedly. Even Aitana’s flame sputters and dies in the same breath that she creates it. I single her out, leaning in for more pointed instruction.
“Force it out. Shove it through the gap. It’s a beast in a cage, so let it free.”
Mere embers spit from her fingertip. Her breath quickens as panic sets into her eyes.
I fling out my arms. “What is wrong?”
“I don’t understand, Goddess,” she says in trembling voice. “The volcano, the beast—they’re not here within me.” She dissolves into tears upon this admission, burying her face into her hands. From the side, Demetrios takes a concerned step forward.
“Back off,” I snap, holding up my palm to arrest his movement. The last thing I need is the diligent lover comforting and coddling his favorite in her failure.
“Aitana,” I say, and I kneel in front of her so that we’re at the same eye level. I pry her hands away from her eyes. “Look at me, Aitana.”
She ventures to meet my steely gaze, but she averts her attention just as quickly.
“Look at me,” I say again. The hopelessness that dances a
cross her face triggers a harrowing guilt within me.
I know that despair—not from my apathetic teenage years, but from when I was a child struggling against an unresponsive spark, desperate to please my parents, to please my teachers, desperate to measure up to my phenomenal younger sister. It never worked. I urged and pled, prayed and sobbed, and all for nothing. The memory ricochets through my mind, still painful after a decade of smothering indifference.
I’m doing to Aitana exactly what my tutors did to me, demanding the impossible and getting frustrated when it does not occur.
But in her case, this is a matter of life and death. Her people are on the verge of extinction, and only magic will save them, for they have no stronger weapon against the demon hordes.
And she’s not my sister. Same name, but completely different person. She’s not my sister.
I release her wrists and back away. She chances to look at me again, uncertainty warring upon her face, tears tumbling down her cheeks and a sob in her throat.
We’re not the same. There’s a reason I couldn’t manifest magic for all the years I studied it. I’m not the same as other magic users. Either I don’t interpret my power in the same way, or it doesn’t respond to me as it does to others. Telling her she’s like a volcano is as effective as telling me I’m like a riverbed. It will never work.
Well, crap.
There’s got to be a way around this. That first fundamental has been the bane of my existence, a dam that kept me from progressing through all the practical applications. I don’t want to teach it.
But my little class is in shambles. The younger girls huddle together, breathless as they wait upon my judgement. Aitana trembles in fear and misery. Demetrios looks ready to snatch the whole group away from my charge and lead them back down the hillside to safety.
“Close your eyes, all of you,” I say, training my voice to a calmer timbre. “Interlace your fingers, with your forefingers pointed to the sky. Breathe in and out. Empty your mind.”
I wait for them to comply, strolling along their line as their tension slowly ebbs. Only my youngest pupil fidgets. The others gradually relax, their breaths becoming smooth.
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