When the Goddess Wakes

by Howard Andrew Jones

  “She’s getting away,” N’lahr said, staring into the distance, his delivery detached. His dark eyes were glazed and strange. “Already she’s healing the damage, and she could return, but she fears the other, even in his weaker state.”

  “The other?” M’vai prompted. She walked toward the commander.

  But N’lahr didn’t answer. He continued his trancelike pronouncements. “She is confused; angry. Her children’s experiments dared to use her own power against her. She will heal. She will regain her other energies first.…” N’lahr paused, blinking. “She’s dimly aware of me. I dare not pry further.”

  “How can you know what she thinks?” Rylin asked.

  “Because of an accident, I’m linked to a hearthstone,” N’lahr said. “And that means I’m linked to her.”

  “What’s this ‘other’; you mentioned?” Thelar asked. His eyes somberly followed Tesra as she joined the aspirants to look on the remains of their friend.

  “I can’t be sure,” N’lahr answered. “But she thinks of the chaos spirits not as a them, but a single entity, one she knows.”

  “Interesting,” Cerai said. “The shaping tool was better than I’d even dreamed, although it was the chaos spirits that really turned the corner.” Only a minute or two earlier her face had been ruined tissue and exposed bone; now her beauty was unmarred. At their stunned regard, she smiled. “I told you I’ve built the land up. I’m tied to it in more ways than one. But the Goddess pulled some of the energy out, and when she tore into my realm she weakened its border. I’m going to have to start repairs soon, before it begins to destabilize.”

  “You put yourself back together,” N’lahr said. “Can you do anything for Tivissa?”

  Cerai looked over at the group of mourners. “That’s beyond even me, I’m afraid. My physical well-being is part of this realm. Hers wasn’t. It’s too bad she didn’t get out of the way.”

  N’lahr’s answering look was stern, but he changed the subject. “Will the weapon we sent Kyrkenall and Elenai after be more powerful than the shaping tool you already possess?”

  “I think so. It’s supposed to channel chaos energy. If someone else were using the weapon while I used the shaping tool, and we were distracting her with chaos spirits, we’d be sure to beat her.” Her gaze shifted speculatively to Rylin. “We have only one trapped chaos spirit left. We’ll need more. Many more.”

  And she apparently meant him to be involved in capturing them, an idea that honestly terrified him. While Rylin tried to come to grips with the necessity of the concept, he stared out at the landscape, noting that the deity’s line of departure had varied from the line of her arrival. As a result, two avenues of white stone, straight and even and twenty feet wide, stretched through to the edge of Cerai’s lands. The Goddess had wrought those changes without obvious effort, in the realm Cerai had claimed to be reinforced against magical calamity. Astounding. And yet … they had hurt the Goddess. With a little more effort, they really might be able to bring her down.

  But then there was a good chance they had caught the Goddess off guard, and that when she returned she wouldn’t underestimate them.

  N’lahr was already contemplating the next moves. “Can we predict how long it will take for the Goddess to search out other hearthstones?”

  “It can’t take too long,” Thelar said. “There weren’t that many we didn’t find, surely.”

  “And I have a great many of those,” Cerai said. “But there are probably others, in the shifts or deep in the Naor or kobalin holdings. Given that it took her several days to arrive here, and that any undiscovered by us are likely quite remote, we might have several weeks. There’s no real way to know for certain. Suppose there’s only four or five hidden in the Naor realms? If that’s the case, we may have no more than a week.”

  “How easy are these spirits to catch?” Rylin asked. “Can you really find more in just a few days?”

  “I’m not going to find them,” Cerai said, her gaze bright and piercing. “You’re going to find them. With that ko’aye you’re so friendly with. You’ll need them to fly out into the void because that’s where the chaos spirits roam.”

  “Why can’t you seek them?” N’lahr asked.

  Cerai answered without hesitation. “I have to repair the realm. And besides, I don’t think the ko’aye want anything to do with me.”

  On the surface, her explanation made a great deal of sense, but something she’d said only a short while ago had Rylin wondering. Might she be reluctant to leave her realm because away from here she wasn’t indestructible?

  Cerai pressed on. “Rylin, why don’t I explain the magical theory to Thelar. He can go with you. You go convince your ko’aye.”

  Rylin turned to N’lahr for confirmation, and found him unmoving. “Commander?” he prompted, alarmed.

  N’lahr nodded as if with great effort, then looked up at him. “Yes. Go seek the ko’aye. Thelar, we need the spirits. The rest of you—come with me.”

  The feathered serpents proved just as amenable to the venture as Rylin had anticipated, and within a half hour he was helping them don the equipment they’d left under the tree they claimed. Varama had cunningly designed the saddles so that a ko’aye might pull an emergency release to free them, but they were far easier for someone without claws to secure. Rylin told Drusa and Lelanc to meet him back at the fortress, then rode back on his borrowed horse.

  N’lahr was waiting outside the stables, and walked with him into the stall. He then curtly ordered Cerai’s stablemen to go and turned to Rylin. “I’m as reluctant to send you away as you are to leave, but these spirits proved a powerful weapon and you have the most field experience.”

  Rylin supposed that was true. “I know you have other long-term plans. But you probably can’t share them.”

  “I dare not speak them aloud. Trust me that they’re well under way.”

  “If we fight the Goddess here, Cerai will be able to do whatever she wants with the leftover energy.”

  “I’m aware of the challenge,” N’lahr said.

  “And what about you?”

  “I may not have much time left, but I’m leaving detailed plans after me.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean. I don’t like what’s happening to me. But it’s not your lookout. We have to stop a goddess.”

  He didn’t say whether he meant the giant deity or the one whose people called her that, and Rylin guessed N’lahr meant both.

  “Understood.”

  “I’m glad. Be alert for communications.”

  He nodded once to that, though he didn’t know what it meant. He expected it would become clear in time.

  Finally, the commander offered his hand. “It has been a pleasure serving with you.”

  To Rylin, those words might as well have been the toll of a funeral bell. The commander had just confirmed that he did not expect to be alive upon Rylin’s return. And so when Rylin clasped N’lahr’s arm and felt those firm fingers tighten below his elbow he wished he had better words to explain the depth of his appreciation. He spoke with sincerity. “It has been a privilege and honor to serve under you, sir.”

  The cry of ko’aye rang outside. Neither had wanted to enter the courtyard, and had promised to land beyond the central gate.

  N’lahr released his arm. “Get out there and find those chaos spirits.”

  17

  In the Wasteland

  The sunset stretched their shadows across the sands and bathed the surrounding sky in ochre and orange.

  Elenai rode at Kyrkenall’s side through the parched landscape. A mile to her right she glimpsed one of Cerai’s soldiers before he passed behind a dune, and knew that a mile beyond him another rode, on out to six miles distant, all in parallel. She had arranged the men to her left in the same fashion, hoping that one on either side might spot the plateau she’d described to them in the midst of the dune sea.

  So far no one had seen a thing. Cera
i had promised each warrior was sensitive to magical energies, and that she’d told them the kind of thing they sought. Upon arrival, Elenai had supplemented that instruction with information of her own.

  While the mountains loomed in the distance, Elenai saw nothing that definitely resembled the peak from her vision.

  The heat of the day finally faded, and was but a memory shortly after the sun vanished beyond a distant ridge. Soon she was wrapping a blanket over her shoulders, wishing she had gloves. So far at least the horses seemed untroubled by the conditions.

  Again and again she returned to her memory of the vision. She had expected things to work out before this, for all of her previous insights had come true almost immediately.

  Kyrkenall raised his wineskin to his lips. “Thirsty?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Kyrkenall knew her well enough to guess what troubled her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find it.”

  “You say that. But what do I do in the mean time? Keep traveling and hope for the best?”

  “You’re overthinking this. We just search as we would even if we didn’t know we’re meant to find the thing. It’s really all we can do now.”

  While she appreciated his supportive tone, it didn’t ease her worries.

  She ordered the soldiers closer so they could see one another by moonlight, and when they reached a region with larger dunes that more regularly blocked line of sight, she ordered them closer yet.

  As the hours passed, they used the stars to hold true to a course partly shaped by detours around the mounded sand. She searched intermittently with her magical senses, restoring them with her borrowed hearthstone shard. The artifact made her vaguely uncomfortable, as though she were riding through an open field where she knew archers were hidden. Worried that the shard’s use might be sensed by the Goddess herself, she kept to its shallows, lest she be detected and enveloped like a tiny fish consumed by a monster surging from the river depths.

  At midnight she called in the troops to share a meal. Cerai’s men didn’t seem entirely familiar with picketing horses, much less starting fires, so she and Kyrkenall managed, the archer again demonstrating his dexterity by striking a blaze to life in a matter of moments, using half the wood scraps they’d packed.

  Without the warmth of a horse beneath her the desert proved even colder, and Elenai sat gratefully beside the fire. The nearby dune might as well have been a mountain of ice, for it radiated great frigid waves.

  Kyrkenall chewed placidly on some smoked trout and Elenai envied his calm. Wasn’t he worried about Kalandra, or N’lahr, or the others left with Cerai? Maybe he set store in the thought Rialla would appear, and they’d be able to tell her to go back and fix everything, saving the world and erasing much of Elenai’s life in the process.

  Detesting her self-pity, she returned her attention to Cerai’s soldiers, wolfing down their dried rations and crackers. They traded turns beside the little fire, sitting closer in upon one another than humans would have.

  “So all of you have found hearthstones before?” she asked.

  They looked up at her almost simultaneously. Though not entirely identical, they resembled one another; large, broad men with short dark hair and bright eyes. They were clean-shaven and dressed in white long-sleeved shirts and pants. Each answered with a loud yes that overlapped the replies of his companions.

  “How many hearthstones did you have to find before you were rewarded by the goddess?”

  They talked over themselves, saying several numbers, until one in their center held up his hands and shouted for silence. “The goddess named me as commander, and I will answer.” He checked to see if the others would quiet before facing Elenai. “Those who came needed only one. Later she gave the award for two. And sometimes she gave the reward for those who had helped others find the stones.” Somehow Cerai had not only managed to convince these kobalin to be altered voluntarily, but to bring her hearthstones to make it happen.

  “Our goddess is Altenerai,” the lead soldier said. “Like you. Why are you not gods?”

  Kyrkenall grinned. “Maybe we are.”

  Three of the soldiers stared fixedly at him while others muttered doubtfully among themselves.

  The leader grunted. “Do you have powers of making? Where are your followers, and the things you have made?”

  “We aren’t gods,” Elenai said quietly. “Are you sure Cerai is?”

  All those sets of eyes widened at nearly the same moment, and each of the men chattered similar things about creation and change and power until the leader once more held up his hand.

  “It may be you do not understand, though you have seen,” he said. “We came to her as monsters, and she made us wonderful.”

  “Wonderful,” several of the men repeated.

  “She came to a waste, and she made it into a place of bounties.”

  “Bounties,” all of the soldiers repeated. Elenai wondered if this was improvisation or a prayer to Cerai that these men had said before.

  “She sees farther than all others. She plans better than all others. She leads and guides us and shows us the way.”

  “The way,” the soldiers sighed.

  “Looks like they know a goddess when they see one,” Kyrkenall said lightly. “And I guess that settles the whole question about my divinity. No one’s ever invented a prayer to me.”

  “I bet there’ve been plenty of curses, though,” Elenai said.

  Kyrkenall chuckled.

  Elenai wished her own spirits were as bright. She looked over at Cerai’s soldiers and feared their loyalty was as absolute as it seemed. And she wondered, again, at the mind of the woman who encouraged others to think her a god.

  She reminded the soldiers what they were looking for, and they ably repeated exactly what Cerai had told them. She wasn’t sure whether they knew or cared about the reasons for the search. They were simply acting to please their goddess.

  While she suspected the horses had been engineered in a similar way by Cerai’s magic, even they were reluctant to get moving after the meal. They probably thought they were through for the night. Lyria clearly did, and looked sidelong at Kyrkenall and flicked her ears, as if she couldn’t believe he was seriously saddling her again.

  They rode off under the bright moon, each of Cerai’s men no more than a hundred yards out.

  “They remind me of Ortok,” she told Kyrkenall wistfully.

  “Well, they’re kobalin. Sort of.”

  She couldn’t help remembering the last time they’d seen their huge, black-furred friend, when he’d stayed behind to challenge a group of kobalin warriors to buy time for her and Kyrkenall to escape. “Do you think Ortok won the challenge?”

  “We can’t know what odds he was against.” Kyrkenall shifted in his saddle. “I’m rooting for him, but … you have to remember, as long as he’s alive, he’s planning to kill N’lahr.”

  “I know. But surely we can find a way to stop that.”

  “That would be nice. But you’ve probably figured out that some people aren’t reasonable, even if you love them. Especially if they’re kobalin.”

  “How can you be so calm?” Her question came explosively, surprising even her. She hadn’t realized how frustrated he’d made her.

  “There’s nothing more I can do, Elenai,” he said simply. “There’s nothing more you can do until we find this tool, or Rialla finds us. Worrying about it just makes for misery. It’s like riding into battle. At some point you commit, and do your best. If you overthink every step, then you’re going to end up dead or wishing you were.”

  “I’m not sure I recognize this new, even-tempered Kyrkenall.”

  “I’m the same, I swear,” he protested. “But cold weather sure makes you grumpy.”

  The hours dragged and fatigue pulled at her, just like the chill. Eventually Kyrkenall rode closer. “We’re not going to be able to stay in the wastes. It’s time to turn back.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise and she sho
ok her head, no.

  Kyrkenall explained further. “We need to pull back to the desert rim. If we head to the edge now we ought to make it just as the air’s heating up, some time after nine bells.”

  “We have to press on. My vision—”

  “Right. Your vision probably assumes you’re not acting like a crazy person.”

  “I’ve been in deserts before,” she insisted.

  “You haven’t been in this desert. This isn’t like anything Arappa can throw at you. There’s no way we’ll get any rest sleeping in the heat of midday. We’ll just degrade our ability to perform, and the horses will suffer worse than us. We have to get out, get rest, then search again this evening.”

  Elenai let out a long, low breath. He was right, and she dearly wished he wasn’t.

  “We’ll leave a different direction from the way we came, then come back in from a different one yet, so we can search more ground.” Kyrkenall was trying to make the best of the situation.

  “And if the Goddess comes to Cerai’s stronghold while we’re asleep?”

  “This isn’t going to be a fast search and I don’t think success lies right beyond the next horizon.”

  “I’m afraid it won’t lie over any horizon,” she said softly.

  He gave her a wry look. “I know you’re drawing on the hearthstone to keep your own energy levels up, but the rest of us aren’t.”

  “I know. I’d use it more, maybe to shield us from the heat, but every time I open the thing I’m afraid the Goddess is going to notice. I swear I can sense her in the stone.”

  “Fabulous. Something else to worry about.”

  “Lots of somethings.” Elenai signaled to the soldiers, and they turned their mounts. Kyrkenall took the lead, guiding them northeast.

  “This will get us into a decent spot with some grazing and shade, and fresh water.”

  “Is there any part of the realms you don’t know?” she asked.

  He was a moment answering, and did so finally with flat affect that effectively brought an end to their conversation. “I got to know everywhere pretty well while I was looking for Kalandra.”