Mother of Slag

by Timandra Whitecastle

  He had come here to find healing. He had come here, nearly drowning himself in the sea, because he believed that there were still priestesses of Neeze here, living in the shadows of their holy mountain, once the navel of the world.

  And instead—a tomb.

  Death upon death upon death.

  No sign of life.

  He started to edge back to the cave, his feet guiding him back to the place where he had last seen life, albeit a speechless creature of the deep. Did the gjalp know what was in the temple? Was that why they guarded it from the fishermen, to keep it undisturbed?

  He went over his memory of the encounter with the lady again and again, turning it in his mind’s eye, this way and that.

  He had been so sure of who the Ladies must have been and where they must have come from.

  The surprise and recognition on her masked face when he had spoken the name of his former friend.

  Talitha Cumi.

  But maybe he had been wrong? Maybe he had fooled himself into believing what he wanted to be true.

  And now he was stuck here—in no way ready or able to attempt a return to the Wards. His stay here remained his only option.

  Spirits low, and disgusted with his own poor judgement, he wandered back into the green space with the stilled fountain.

  That was when he heard it.

  The sound of metal scratching over stone. Distant.

  He held his breath and waited, straining his ears for more.

  Nothing.

  He moved forward, retracing his steps, and while he was deep in the bowels of the temple, he heard the sound again.

  Metal on rock.

  Closer this time.

  He picked up his pace, and headed towards the sound, but it was difficult to hear in the echoing passageways, filled with his own drumming heels and ragged breath.

  He stopped at the fork to master his breath, one hand on the damp walls.

  A torch flickered below him, a staircase led downward. A sign of life. And others followed.

  The ting, ting, ting of a pickaxe against stone.

  The ksh, ksh, ksh of a shovel.

  Someone was clearing rubble.

  The metal of the shovel clanged against rock occasionally, but now that he was much closer, he also heard the low grumble of a voice and then the tuneless hum that accompanied the hard work.

  He crept down the stairs, inching around the flickering light.

  Behind the bend of the staircase, the corridor opened onto a wider passage with intricate carvings along its stonework. A lone figure clad in skin-tight black clothing was hacking sullenly at the rubble of a caved-in wall. Beyond, a large door stood open, one in a set of two huge, beautifully crafted wooden doors, painted in blue and decorated with seashells and precious mother-of-pearl inlays.

  He remembered these! The place around him shifted as the recollection settled. He had been through these same doors before, so many years ago. The wide space beyond them led out to white stone steps leading into the turquoise waters of the bay. His eyes were drawn out across the blue water, as though someone had called his name out there.

  But there was nothing out there, not a fin among the waves.

  He tore away his gaze and fixed it on the lone worker.

  The figure was a woman, her dark hair bound in a loose knot on the top of her head that bobbed while she shoveled. The breeze that came in from the bay through the open door lifted the shorter hair at her nape. As she hacked down violently with the pick, Diaz’s skin crawled.

  In his reeling mind, a picture of Nora as she had been was laid across this strange woman, and for a moment his senses couldn’t tell the difference between the imagined and the real. And as he was caught off guard—something ancient and full of energy slipped into his mind, commanding his attention with the weight of an ocean pressing down on him. A sense of fullness, dragging him down. Of otherness. Of belonging. Of home. A sense that maybe here, in this temple, the dead gods were not as gone from the world as they were from everywhere else. Perhaps Neeze, the sea goddess, merely slept as her priestesses had always said, ready to be woken. He gasped, clutching his head, and stumbled back.

  For a second, it felt as though he was in the grip of the Living Blade again and about to lose his arm. But now, the immediacy was gone.

  He pressed himself against the cold wall, out of the cone of light, but he must have made a noise.

  The digger paused mid-hum, and turned, shovel held at the ready.

  “Lin?” The woman called out and her voice sounded young.

  He shrank back.

  She waited for a moment, then shrugged, and continued hacking at the stone.

  Diaz retreated into the shadows, deciding to figure out how to approach this young woman who was out there all on her own. But as he turned, he felt an icy chill creep into his legs and root him to the spot.

  Another woman appeared in front of him, her hand outstretched, holding him where he was.

  He looked into her eyes, and even though she had discarded her long billowing robes and face paint, he recognized the lady who had stood on the surface of the water opposite him.

  “You,” he breathed.

  “Me,” she said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  He saw a third woman in his peripheral vision edge towards him, appearing out of nowhere, blunt face grim.

  The young woman let her pick fall to her side. A patter of feet came near.

  “Lin? Mari? Who is that with you?”

  “A man.” The third woman answered with a gruff voice. She spat at his face, and hit his cheek. Diaz couldn’t move to wipe it away. It ran down his jaw in a wet drip.

  “We should kill him now,” she said to the lady he had recognized. “He will betray us.”

  “I’m not so sure.” The lady was the oldest of the three, her skin weathered and tanned, yet the lines around her eyes looked as though they came from a life of mirth. “The merfolk let him through.”

  “Who is he?” The young woman asked, shouldering the pick to lean in closer.

  “My name is Telen Diaz, and I—”

  “Whoa. His eyes are like the maids!”

  “Jeska, don’t point,” the lady said. “It’s rude.”

  The young woman called Jeska lowered her hand, but stepped up even closer and slowly walked around him, taking him in appreciatively.

  “What are you?”, she asked.

  “Jeska!”

  “What? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Him. Never seen anything like him.” The spitter corrected, pressing her lips together with distaste at the mere word. Her mouth moved as though she were gathering another gob to hawk at him. “Men aren’t welcome here.”

  “I am a half-wight.” Diaz chose to address the young woman. “I saw you at the ceremony at the Wards and knew you for priestesses of Neeze. I mean you no harm.”

  “You couldn’t harm us if you tried,” Spitter sneered.

  “Then it is good,” he spoke with his chin held as high as the unseen restriction would allow him, “that I do not wish to try. I used to know one of your order, Talitha Cumi, and I have come for aid.”

  “Talitha Cumi is dead,” the old lady said, straightening her shoulders. “She has been dead for a long time.”

  “Not that long.” Diaz would have shaken his head if he could. The memory of his blade entering his former friend’s chest, cutting into Talitha’s heart, washed over him with regret. And yet, if he hadn’t, she would have killed him with her bloodmagic, locking him in place as these ladies had now, a hand of ice placed over his beating heart, ready to crush it into silence.

  “Maybe time feels different for you wights?” The older lady shrugged the topic off. “Why are you here when you knew she wouldn’t be?”

  “I’m not sure. I have a feeling … I think something is drawing me here. It feels right to be here in exactly the same way that it has felt wrong to be anywhere else. My purpose lies here and I hope to find it.”


  “Have you always felt like this?”

  “No. I have been here before, decades ago, when this temple was still filled with life. And it was different then. I was different.”

  The three ladies shared a look.

  “No,” Spitter judged. “Neeze does not draw men.”

  “She used to, though,” the young woman called Jeska said. “I don’t see why men shouldn’t be allowed in the temple.”

  “We’ve been through this, Jeska. Men aren’t worthy of service to the goddess. Even if he had the calling from birth, his gift would never be as powerful as ours.”

  “The maids let him through, Mari,” the older lady pointed out. “The daughters of the sea would tear anyone to pieces who comes close to their holy place and is unworthy.”

  “Maybe they misjudged this time. We, too, are the guardians of this holy place, Lin, and I say we cannot allow this corruption.”

  “Er,” Jeska interrupted nervously. “Maybe he shouldn’t be listening in on this?”

  The older lady, Lin, flicked a hand in his direction and on top of the chill that rooted him to the spot, Diaz suddenly had the sensation of plunging underwater, his ears aching with a pressure that was not—could not—be there.

  He watched with discomfort, his heartbeat thundering against his eardrums, while the older two ladies argued. Lin kept her eyes on him, but frowned at whatever Mari said.

  To Diaz, the sounds no longer resolved into words, but into muffled melodies, like gjalp songs filled with sharp trills and mournful wails, as though he were hearing them from deep below the surface. But underneath all of the muddled quality, he heard a faint whisper that seemed to come from inside him.

  It was apparent from her gestures in his direction and her aggressive stance that the lady called Mari did not want him here.

  A finger jabbing the air forcefully.

  Under no circumstances.

  A cutting move with both forearms.

  Lin, on the other hand, seemed to argue with patience and a mild temper, and it was clear from her ramrod straight back that she had a steel core within her that would not budge just because Mari demanded she do so.

  Jeska kept staring over at him, licking her lips. It didn’t seem to be out of anxiety, but a gesture of contemplation.

  He wished he could turn his gaze away, but it was locked on the three women.

  Lin looked back at him, and when she spoke again, he understood her words once more.

  “Very well,” she said with a curt nod at Mari who glowered at him. “We are agreed. You can stay, but only outside. You may not enter the temple grounds unless one of us invites you to, and never at night time. Understood?”

  “Outside?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Lin snapped her fingers. His legs spasmed and twitched of their own accord, and he found himself marching towards the open twin doors.

  “Wait!” he cried out.

  “The bay area is quite large, although you maybe shouldn’t go into the water.” Lin flashed him a smile that never touched her eyes. “The mermaids might not like it. They can be quite territorial.”

  “And I doubt you can swim.” Mari grinned at him wickedly. “Especially not fast.”

  “I can’t drink the saltwater,” he said, “and there are no wells outside this temple.”

  “Which is why you will be allowed to fetch rainwater from a well once a day,” Jeska said quickly as Diaz walked over the threshold and onto the gleaming white marble stones of the bay area. “Right?”

  “But only if one of us accompanies you,” Mari amended.

  They both looked over at Lin.

  “So be it,” she said, nodding again.

  He was standing in the middle of the open space, the heavens towering above him, when whoever had been controlling him let him go. He stumbled and nearly fell.

  The doors were closing.

  “Wait, please! Lin. That’s your name, isn’t it? You saw me during the healing ceremony.” Diaz tried to keep any emotion out of his voice, to make light out of his next request. “Can you … is there any chance to heal my arm?”

  She met his gaze in the narrow gap between the doors and then glanced at the ruin of his right shoulder joint, the protruding collarbone sticking out under the taut skin.

  “We can heal some wounds and ailments, set bones, make sure the blood flows where it is meant to flow; we can soothe pain to a certain extent, but,” she shook her head once more, “I’m sorry. We cannot regrow limbs, Telen Diaz.”

  “See you tomorrow!” He heard Jeska’s voice one last time before the doors shut with finality.

  The scratch and click of the bolt being pulled into place left him standing alone, locked out.

  Like a dog.

  He rested his forehead against the wooden door and could make out the steady fall of Jeska’s pick once again, the scrape of the metal shovel on the stone.

  He turned and looked to the gray skies beyond the deep blue of the bay. The waters churned against the rock wall and the clouds were heavy with rain.

  Here he was, in the right place, but locked outside, all by himself, no shelter to be seen, before him only the ocean and the sky. His lungs still hated him for that diving stunt, every breath rattling with salt water, and he still had only one arm.

  “Fuck,” he sighed.

  Chapter 23

  The island of Nessa was shaped like an atoll, a crescent moon of land around the light blue eye of the bay. The main island on which the temple stood was topped by the Needle, a silent volcano, long extinguished, yet its violent past had formed a ring of broken land, descending from the volcano’s lonely heights along sharp ridgelines that embraced the clear, shallow water of the bay stretched out before Diaz. The temple had been built on the sheltered slopes of the Needle, on the inner side of the ring, and wormed its way through the rock in long tunnels and open wells. Little of it could be seen from outside, embedded as it was. A strategically well-chosen position. Easily defendable should need arise. Traditionally, the Holy Isle of Nessa had been regarded as the navel of the world, and as a child he had heard the stories of its legendary floating city surrounding the island. A wonder of the ancient wight world. The tribe of Water had resided here at the feet of the goddess Neeze, until the Blade had been wrought and the warrior Scyld came to wipe out the floating city along with thousands of wights in one fell blow. The goddess had retreated into the depths of her temple, to the center of the drowned world where her children, the gjalp, lived, and yet Scyld had followed, and struck Neeze down.

  Or maybe she hadn’t.

  Again and again, the stories of his childhood told of the follies of rebuilding Nessa, the repeated gathering of those chosen of Neeze, those born with the innate ability to manipulate water, at this place, and how again and again, it had been destroyed.

  Something had happened between the time he had visited last and now, for again the temple stood nearly empty, in ruins. And yet …

  There was definitely something here.

  Something that drew the gjalp.

  Something that drew him.

  Something that made the priestesses return yet again.

  In a different guise this time, as the Ladies, healers. But they were still recognizable as the priestesses of water, the bloodwitches of lore.

  He left the doors behind him and wandered along the wide promenade. The dried leaves of bygone autumns gathered beneath the lush green vegetation in ancient, raised flower beds seeded and gone wild. Tufts of weeds poked their heads between the slabs of white stone, and mounds of black-gray sand like charcoal heaps had been blown in around the feet of the benches. Those were the only signs of life. His eyes were sharp for the glint of broken glass or metal, but the flagstones simply reflected the sun’s brightness.

  He walked to the end of the promenade and stared down. The water outside the bay was much darker, and crashed in powerful waves against what looked like basalt rocks covered in mussels. His stomach rumbled.

  Well.


  Lin had said he’d be able to eat with them, but if Mari refused him, he could eat the mussels, though he pulled a face at the thought of climbing around on those rocks. And thus ended Master Diaz, he thought—slipping on kelp and banging his head before the waves took his unconscious body to his wet oblivion.

  He sighed.

  There was no way he’d be able to climb across those rocks and make it around the base of the volcano to the other side of the island. It would have been challenging even for him in full health and with both arms. Now it was impossible. He guessed the other side of the promenade wouldn’t reveal anything else, but would rather be a mirror image of what he had found here, but it wasn’t like he had anything else to do.

  He walked back, wading through the water lapping at the stone steps, on the lookout for a submerged vase or a bucket or anything he could use to save rainwater. His dependency on the Ladies’ goodwill irritated him, and if there was any way he could work around their imposed limitations he would gladly take it. As he splashed on, the weak sun warmed his skin. It felt good to be here. He sat down on one of the benches to have a think, ignoring a primal urge that wanted to get him up and moving, doing whatever he could instead of retiring once again to wallow in self-pity, ruminating on his life falling apart.

  But his body needed rest after the dive and the near-drowning and the exploration. His knees trembled slightly.

  So he sat, facing the island, and stared at the walls of the temple. The structure was a number of terraces, each level rising higher on the slope, right up to the steep staircase to the Most Holy—an altar dedicated to Neeze on the rim of the volcano crater, overlooking the open sea. Could he scale that first wall? Find handholds on the massive double doors, reach one of the windows and pull himself in? The temple was mostly empty, he knew. Abandoned to a small group of women. Would they even notice if he crept back in? Were they watching him out here? Were they enjoying his helplessness? His anger rose, and he fought it down, trying to focus on the wall, and whether he could climb it. If he managed, he could steal inside in the dark. Break into the kitchens and steal food. There were several fresh water fountains hidden in the depths of the temple. If he could access them … It was an idea. A possibility. But he should also have a backup plan that didn’t rely on him forcing entry to a place where he was clearly not wanted.