A sharp rap on her knuckles, and she saw Suranna spit blood, her mouth contorted into an ‘o’ of disbelief. The goddess staggered, and fell, clutching her face.
“No!” Nora commanded. She stood over Suranna, both hands reinforced with metal from the Blade. As she raised a fist for another hit, she saw Suranna flinch. Another coil of gold shot across Nora’s mind, willing her to go to the Cauldron. She shook her head to free herself of the slag queen’s influence.
Suranan had raised an arm to protect her precious face from another punch, so Nora placed a low blow just below the ribcage. Suranna reached out, winded, and tried to wrap her fingers around Nora’s neck. Heat flowed from those fingertips, scorching Nora’s throat. But her fists rose and fell without conscious thought. Like a smith hammering the glowing corded rods into a sword, lost in the rhythm of his work.
“I remember what you’ve done, Mother,” she panted while she pounded. The warmth of Suranna’s snaking presence under her skin began to fade. Darkness pressed around Nora’s vision, and the roar of the Blade flushed through her entire being.
“I’ve seen you mistreat those who wanted to love you.”
Compulsion became fury. Suranna’s hands scrabbled for purchase. Her spell slipped free with a sigh.
“You don’t deserve an easy death.”
Again and again and again, Nora pummeled the fallen goddess, until her knuckles were raw, and Suranna had fallen into a heap, and even then she continued beating her with the knotted-tight butt of her fists.
Finally, when even the Blade had fallen silent, and all she heard was the rush of her blood in her ears and the ring of her own breath loud in the room, she ceased, relented. She sat back on her heels and rocked herself, finding a measure of comfort in knowing that this was how a god dies. In the fury of their children.
She had destroyed something so completely, and she wept at the beauty.
She rose and stalked over to the sarcophagus, placing one bloody hand over the swirling vortex. She had to close the gap, fill the hole. The sarcophagus was made for only one person to lie in. And she was one person. But she also carried many inside of her. An insane god’s first creation and his last creation finally together in the same place. This was balance.
We don’t want to die. Not now.
Nora cocked her head and listened for the Blade to say more, but it withdrew into the corners of her mind and was silent. She understood. She had to make a choice.
Movement from the bed drew her eye.
The boy had slept and was now waking, his pudgy arms stretching high and his legs kicking out against the nest of blankets his mother had made for him, nudging his sleeping sister.
Nora stared at the children for a long time.
Child of Destiny.
Fire God reborn.
We should kill them. Her priestesses can say all they want, but if there is no Shinar reborn, their cult will die soon, and the world will be a safer place.
“I don’t kill children.”
You killed the little girl in Arrun. You killed the children in the fort. You killed—
“I don’t kill children on purpose. Especially not twins.”
No one will ever know.
The boy blinked his black eyes at her. She couldn’t predict the future, but she had to make a choice about its shape.
She reached for a blanket.
Chapter 40
The earth trembled once more with the groaning, shifting crumble of marble as a shelf of the high walls fell into the nearly deserted plaza with a resounding boom.
A cloud of white dust rolled over Diaz and Bashan and the handful of men in the shaded corner, mercifully shrouding the dismembered dead.
Coughs and splutters abounded. The warrior holding his sword point at Diaz’s face was wheezing hard, tears streaming down his grimy face from the sting. It would be no problem to disarm him now, Diaz thought dispassionately, and turn his own sword against him.
Diaz was tired and thirsty, his legs shaky from blood loss, but he slowly pushed himself up against the rock and tried to peer into the dry cloud.
Nora had been gone for hours, and Bashan’s strange connection to her as a former wielder died as soon as she closed the wall behind her on her way in. There was no way of knowing what was happening down there. So there had been nothing much left to do but wait and see.
Another boom, a series of them, far below the ground, like a thunderstorm was raging in the depths of the earth.
Finally, a lone female figure emerged from the dust, wrapped in a shawl of some kind, covered in white flakes as though she had walked through a snowstorm, except her forearms which were stained dark red.
His heart beat faster.
“It’s Nora!”
“Bloody Nora,” Bashan muttered sullenly.
But Diaz didn’t want to listen. He ran up to her and swept her off her feet with a whoop of joy.
“Careful,” she said, beaming, and handing him a makeshift bag with something heavy in it. “Here. This is yours.”
He took it from her and grasped her hand.
“Is it over?” he asked.
“It’s over,” she said. “Your unfinished business and mine.”
“I should have been there with you.”
“No. It was better this way.” A flicker of a grimace crossed Nora’s face. It was quickly replaced with concern. “Are you hurt? Did I…?”
He touched his bandaged chest wound.
“A scratch. It’ll heal.”
They walked hand in hand to where Bashan sat fanning himself.
“Well I hope you’re happy now,” he said. “You destroyed everything. Did you really have to bring down the temple? Couldn’t you stop one moment to think about what other people might want?”
“Here’s the deal, Bashan,” Nora cut him short. “I’ll give you and your men a headstart while we wait here. But as soon as I leave the last ravine behind me, I’m going to level this whole plateau. Shinar will cease to exist. The stain of the Fire God’s temple will be wiped from the face of this earth. If you are still around, you’ll go down with it. Understood?”
“Absolutely. There will be a reckoning, though,” Bashan said, rising to leave. “Don’t fool yourself that your actions here today won’t have consequences.”
“Thank you for your sage advice, my lord.” She gave him a mock bow, and he shuffled off, grumbling.
She and Diaz watched in silence as Bashan and his men made their way down the ravine, stumbling and leaning on one another.
“Do you think that was wise?” Diaz asked her.
She shrugged. “Probably not. But we’ll deal with it when the time comes.”
He nodded.
Then frowned. “Something in this bag just moved?”
“You’ll be surprised what else it can do,” she answered.
He lifted a flap of the blanket, and his eyes widened. “Are these …?”
“Our future?” She smiled at his shocked expression, and hooked her arm under his. “Yes.”
Nora looked up at the cerulean skies above the lip of the red stone.
Here she was, under the cooling desert stone. Here, on this vantage point where her lover was poised so elegantly, she was tempted to believe that the gods had once existed, and had walked the earth just as she did now, and out there, on the horizon were endless possibilities. An unfinished world to come.
She stood with Diaz at the brink of evening in the lingering heat of the day, and knew exactly why she was here.
She was here because she wanted to be.
Acknowledgements
While writing this book I often “joked” that it didn’t want to be born … It certainly felt that way to me. I scrapped it entirely three times; each time thinking: this is the last first draft. (Narrator’s voice: it was not the last first draft.) Mostly, it wasn’t so much that what I had written was bad, the story just wasn’t coming together. And I think it wasn’t coming together because at the time my life was unr
aveling …
So. Eventually I had a working manuscript that had been beta read and approved. I had worked through the copyedits, and I was figuring out when to publish the book. Success! And then … I scrapped the first part and re-wrote. Again. Two months away from my release date.
To say that I felt like I was putting down the train tracks while I could hear the train whistling round the corner is a total cliché, of course, but … that’s definitely what it felt like.
In the end, though, this book has been born! You are holding it in your hands and your mind, and you and I, we met among the pages. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please consider leaving a review online somewhere, or recommend it to your IRL friends who might like it.
Only one name goes on the cover of a finished book, and that is mine. However, this book was midwife-d into the world with the help of the following people to whom I am deeply indebted:
Harry Dewulf, my story editor, who reminded me to breathe, to write, and helped me up every time I fell (and then kept me on my feet).
My first copyeditor Kira Rubenthaler of Bookfly Designs, who has her hands full with new babies and still sent me so much love.
My current copyeditor, Mike Myers, senior editor at Grimdark Magazine, who jumped into the ring with me and pushed me hard, but the bloody scrapes were worth it. We hammered this book into shape. (Thank you!)
The extraordinary Tommy Arnold who never lost faith and produced the stunning artwork that is on the cover of this book.
James T Egan, also of Bookfly Design, who always does a phenomenal job on the title design, but when I saw this cover complete for the first time—it took my breath away.
Kristen Superstardrifter who beta-read and cheerleader-ed … along with all those other readers who contacted me via email or Twitter to ask when Book 3 was coming??? Some days I got up just because I knew you were waiting for this book.
My writer friends in the Terrible Ten Slack group for the inspiration and words of (marketing) wisdom; especially my fellow witches Taya, Laura & Baird who not only doubled doubled, toiled and troubled, but commiserated when I needed to vent.
Special thanks go to Benedict Patrick, Josiah Bancroft, David Benem & Phil Tucker, the Critfaced podcast D&D crew, who make sure I laugh until my cheeks hurt at least once a month.
And last—but most certainly not least—my family. You stuck with me through the darkness.
This chapter is ended. We turn the page and carry on.
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