Joar nodded. His expression told her he had no interest in entering the cramped space. Teth’s face was unhappy, but he nodded.
She smiled at the two other women, despite sharp wariness that set her teeth on edge. Sword and sorcery—the pairing seemed the wisest choices for exploring a god’s realm. A strange echo of the past swept over her. The last time she’d ventured into such a place, her companions had been sword and scholar.
Oh, Eamon. How much you would have wanted to be here.
Ara shook off the sharp pang of his absence, his betrayal . . .
She stepped through the opening.
Behind her, Nimhea gave a sudden shout. Turning, Ara saw vines growing at impossible speed, separating her from her companions. She threw herself at the opening, tearing at the vines, but to no avail.
“Ara!” Teth called. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Ara replied, running her hands over the thick web of green where none had been a moment ago.
Through the vines she caught the glint of steel.
“We’ll cut through,” Nimhea said.
“No,” Ara told her after a moment’s hesitation “I think this means I’m meant to go alone.”
It wasn’t what she wanted, but what was required.
No sooner had the words left her lips than Nimhea began to shout again. Then all of her friends were shouting. Huntress howled.
“What’s wrong?” Ara called.
She tried to peer between the vines that had trapped her inside, but was startled to discover they were still growing, cutting her off from the outside world.
“Nimhea! Teth!”
Their voices were muffled, but it sounded like a struggle ensued outside the dome. Then she couldn’t hear them at all. Ara beat her fists against the green wall, desperate to get back to her friends. The vines were unyielding as iron.
“No!”
The only remaining openings in the dome were gaps in the ceiling where sunlight speared through, but they were just wide enough to fit her fingers between. She couldn’t even wedge Ironbranch into the gaps and use it for leverage.
Infuriated, Ara let out a cry and dropped to her knees on the dirt floor. She’d been willing to enter alone, but having her companions forced away and in peril where she could not help them, didn’t know what was happening to them, was too much.
She screamed again, but the vines had no pity.
Ara bowed her head, drawing deep breaths. Rage only served to give her a raw throat. She needed a solution.
Making herself slowly take in her surroundings, she saw what her anger and fear had masked. The dome wasn’t a vine-covered structure built of wood or earth; the vines were the structure. Woven together, twisting around one another, they had created this hollow.
“The Tangle,” Ara breathed. “I’m inside the Tangle.”
The hairs at the nape of her neck prickled. Though she’d been separated from her friends, she was still where she was supposed to be. She had to set her fears aside. There would be another way to reach her companions. There had to be.
But where could she go? There was nothing here but the prison of vines and a dirt floor.
A dirt floor with a hole in its center that Ara swore hadn’t been there a moment ago.
She crawled on her hands and knees to the edge of the hole, which proved to be more of an opening in the ground than a simple hole. Large roots had pushed dirt aside to create a passage that led into the earth. The roots crossed over one another, twisting together in ledges that weren’t exactly steps, but were obviously a way down. And there was nowhere else to go.
The only way out is through.
The passage was very dark. Ara could only see a few feet in front of her, but every few steps there came a shifting of earth in that space ahead and a brief rain of dirt and stone, after which a new shaft of sunlight appeared to encourage her forward. The passage spiraled down, down. The air was soft and cool. The scent of rich earth surrounded her.
How much time has passed? An hour? More? Ara wondered when the ground finally leveled off and she stepped into a broad cavern. What is happening to the others?
Her heart gave a painful wrench, but she forced herself to focus on the present, sensing that she would not be reunited with her friends until she’d faced whatever waited for her in this strange place.
Spears of sunlight entered the hollow through gaps between roots high above, rendering the space a patchwork of light and dark. She stayed still, listening. The only thing she heard was an occasional quiet susurration that she took for air moving through the cave. For all she could tell, the room was empty, but her instincts screamed that it was not.
The earth trembled beneath her feet for a moment, and the space grew a bit brighter. She turned to find more sunlight filtering from high above, but the passage that had brought her to this place was gone. Across the room she could make out a pile of rocks, and beyond that—
No. It can’t be.
But it was. The passage that Ara had traversed was now on the opposite side of the room.
She shook her head. What kind of sense did that make?
A scrabbling sound, coming from a corner cloaked by shadow, drew her gaze. Her mouth went dry with fear. She couldn’t see what was in the darkness and gave a little yelp, jumping back when a figure scuttled across the cavern. It was hunched over, dressed in rags, its long white hair tangled and matted. As quickly as it had appeared, it melted into shadow once more.
“Who’s there?” Ara called. She gripped Ironbranch tightly. Her pulse roared in her ears.
What is in here with me?
“Who’s there?” a creaking voice echoed. “Who’s there? Who’s who? Who? Who?”
“Come out where I can see you.” Ara slowly moved toward the voice, holding Ironbranch across her body in case anything leapt at her.
An earsplitting sound, half laugh, half cry, pierced the air, and all the hairs on Ara’s arms stood on end.
The figure dashed forward. Rather than running at her, it ran around her in circles.
“Someone’s here! Who’s someone? We’re someone! No! Not us! Not us? Someone else.”
She tried to follow the movement, turning in circles in an attempt to keep whoever it was in front of her so she couldn’t be attacked from behind, but her efforts were useless. The thing moved with inhuman speed. Her heart pounded and her lungs burned as she whipped around in circles.
“Stop!” Ara cried out, gasping for breath and stumbling from dizziness.
Whoever it was listened to her plea and slowed to a shuffle, finally stopping beneath a ray of sunlight.
“Why have you come to visit?” The voice was familiar, and curious rather than menacing. “No one visits us here.”
The figure lifted its head, and between the tangles of white hair Ara could make out a face. It was a face she knew.
“Ofrit,” Ara breathed, hardly believing it could be true. But it was.
A god stood before her. A god in ruins.
His features were the same, but the light of wisdom she’d seen in his eyes at the apothecary was now a frenetic gleam; his hair and beard that had been long and glimmered with starlight were dulled by grime. His dark skin was caked with gray mud.
“She knows our name.” Ofrit’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he shuddered. “The girl knows us.”
“Of course I know you,” Ara said gently, though her jaw clenched. She hadn’t known what to expect in this place, but she never would have anticipated this.
What had befallen the god to bring him to this wretched state? He bore almost no resemblance to the arrogant deity she’d met in Daefrit.
Ofrit snarled, but the sound wasn’t directed at her. “How can she know us when we don’t know ourself?”
He hissed. “Quiet!”
What can I do?
She reached back to memories of her previous encounter with the god. She’d had to prove her worthiness by passing the judgment of the butcher crows and then solve riddles to reach Ofrit’s Apothecary. Only then had she, Nimhea, and Eamon received the scrolls that revealed the remaining path of the Loresmith quest. And only after earning the blessing of Eni had Ara been taken to the Loresmith Forge.
Like the apothecary, this place belonged to Ofrit, who loved puzzles. So there must be a puzzle or several to solve. Would she be judged again? All Ara could do was explore the cave.
“I’ll be right back,” Ara told him, carefully stepping away. She didn’t know what to do about the frenetic deity, but hoped she could at least keep him calm.
“Careful!” Ofrit’s voice was shrill, each breath he drew rattled. “Mother is irritable today.”
He pointed at the pile of rocks on the far side of the space and did a little jig while cackling.
The pile of rocks began to move.
Ara’s throat closed.
What she’d taken for rocks was alive. And enormous.
As it moved, it passed through pockets of sunlight and glimmered in pale and deep purples.
It was an amethyst python. It had to be. The giant predator Lahvja had suggested might only be a myth was all too real, and it was here.
Her stomach lurched, and she thought she might vomit. The snake was massive; coil upon coil of thick muscle rustled as dry scales slid across one another, rising in a heap that was taller than Ara.
“See! See!” Ofrit dipped down and picked up a stone. With a gleeful cry, he hurled it at the giant snake.
“No!” Ara cried out as he scampered away and capered around the space.
To her relief the rock missed the python and hit the wall behind it. Nonetheless, at the movement and sound, the snake lifted its head and hissed in their direction.
“Senn’s teeth. That thing could eat a warhorse,” Ara hissed.
“Or you!” Ofrit giggled. “Or me!”
Somehow Ara doubted the god was in danger of being eaten, but she was another matter.
She shrank back, then tried to place herself in shadow between the spots of light.
“You can’t hide,” Ofrit said in a singsong voice. “She can smell you. She can see the heat of your body.”
Whatever hope Ara held that the darkness might cloak her from the snake evaporated along with her plans to search the cavern.
Ara stayed still for several minutes while Ofrit gibbered nonsense and sometimes sang.
The python showed no signs of moving toward them. Taking her eyes off the snake, Ara’s gaze moved to the relocated passage beyond it.
The only way out is through.
Her body drooped. “That’s the way out.”
“There’s a way out?” Ofrit keened. “Oh. Oh please. How we would love to get out.”
His face abruptly changed, anger flashing in his eyes. “There is no way out. She lies.”
“I’m not lying,” Ara shot back.
“Don’t listen to him,” Ofrit whimpered. “He wants to stay. He makes us stay.”
Tearing at his hair, then scratching his face, he snapped, “She lies. There is no other place. This is the only place. Our place.”
Ara swayed on her feet as she began to comprehend what her trial must be. Ofrit—the sad, frightened Ofrit—wanted to escape this place. She would have to get him out. But how?
To reach the passage, they’d be forced to pass the snake. Ofrit was too unpredictable for that.
Then what?
And what had happened to the god she’d met only a few weeks before? Who was this iteration of Ofrit? Maybe it wasn’t the god at all, but some kind of trick.
No.
Beneath the grime and the wildness, Ara could sense the god. She knew he didn’t belong here, but why couldn’t he free himself?
And they call me the mad one.
That was what Ofrit had said to Eni in Ofrit’s Apothecary.
Ofrit was a god of contradictions. The god of healers and assassins, of scholars and prodigies. Genius and madness.
In the old stories, that was what made Ofrit dangerous. His unpredictability. His great and terrible mind. His was a power that teetered between control and chaos.
In the far north, there was a kind of madness that came with the winter. The long darkness brought despair that crawled into one’s mind on spidery legs and nested, weaving webs that snared light and hope, keeping them away from one’s heart. The madness touched everyone, but some felt it more keenly and could become lost in it. That deeper madness used its webs to bind a person within themself, cutting them off and hemming them in until they believed they were utterly alone. Unreachable.
In this place, madness had taken control, and the god was lost in the vastness of his own mind. Cut off from his divine siblings, from his people, from the world. Ofrit himself was the puzzle.
I have to bring him back.
Ara seized Ofrit’s shoulders, trying to force him to look into her eyes. Upon touching him, her skin hummed and crackled with an inhuman energy. She dreaded taking physical hold of a god—how could it mean anything other than death?—but she knew it was the only chance she had to free him.
“Ofrit!”
He hissed at her, eyes rolling back into his head.
“Leave, leave, leave,” the god simpered. “You don’t belong here. This is my place. My place!”
Ara’s heart slammed against her ribs as she gripped him tighter and gave a hard shake.
“I am here for you! I am the Loresmith.”
She thought her eardrums would burst when he let out a keening wail, but she only held him tighter.
“I’m not ready,” Ofrit panted, looking anywhere but at Ara. “I will fail.”
“You are ready,” Ara said. “I’ve seen who you are. Brilliant and formidable. But you must be whole again.”
Ofrit became still.
“You’ve seen me,” he whispered.
Ara softened her voice. “I have. You showed me the immensity of the universe. I was and am still in awe of you. The Loresmith cannot defeat Vokk without your aid.”
Ofrit threw his head back and screamed. The sound tore through Ara’s body and felt as though it shattered her bones. But she did not let go. Lightning crackled along the god’s head and limbs, spreading over Ara’s skin, searing her inside and out. Her lungs were on fire. It was too much. She was mortal, unable to bear this kind of power. And yet she knew she could not let go. Not even if it cost her life.
The wretched old man began to blur, then change, until he vanished entirely, replaced by the Ofrit Ara knew from his trials in the Bone Forest. The dirt had been scrubbed away; the white hair was still wild, but it was clean and free of tangles. He gleamed with a god’s aura, and she felt power radiating from him.
“Ofrit,” Ara murmured. “You have been freed.”
“Very good, Loresmith.” Ofrit squinted at her. “Perhaps you won’t die after all.” He paused and winked at her. “You know the way out.”
Then he was gone, too.
12
Prince Liran woke to the same thought each morning.
Will today be the day?
The question circled his mind until he swatted it away like a pestering insect. He didn’t know how long he had to live, not because he was ill nor because he adhered to some sage belief about the inevitability of death.
No, his burden was one of the many belonging to an heir to the Vokkan emperor:
Forty-nine Lirans had lived and died before his birth, and twenty-one Zenars existed before his younger brother took on the name. It was the same for the hundreds of sons of Fauld the Ever-Living bearing other names. The Emperor of Vokk only tolerated his children so long as they served his purpose. They could become powerful, but not
too powerful. Their father never allowed his offspring to become potential threats to his rule. Fauld had been a father many times over, but never a grandfather.
No child of Fauld made it past the age of forty. While there was no proof that these untimely deaths were the fault of the emperor, Liran could find no other feasible explanation. He was also certain that he couldn’t be the first of Fauld’s sons to reach the same conclusion—but none had managed to avoid the ultimate outcome: their own demise.
Though history determined he would one day meet an untimely end by some machinations of his father, Liran wanted to escape that fate, and at long last he was in a position to do it.
Emperor Fauld only produced sons, a fact that Liran—and many others—found suspect. He didn’t want to speculate about what happened to the girls who must have been born over the centuries. They were a mystery, as were the women who bore Fauld’s children.
Liran had no memory of his mother, only a parade of nurses and tutors who raised him. Nor did he know who Zenar’s mother was, though it was plain that the same woman hadn’t birthed them. Their birthdays were only eight months apart. Both brothers had inherited their father’s formidable height, sharp cheekbones, and heavy-browed, piercing eyes, but that was where their similarities ended.
Liran had hair like dark honey and eyes that were a frosted blue. His skin was lighter in the winter but tanned deeply in the summer months. Not only was he tall, but he also had a broad chest and strong shoulders. His arms and legs were wrapped in thick rope-like muscles.
Zenar matched his brother’s height, but where Liran boasted bulk, the younger brother had long, slender limbs. His hair was the color of straw, his eyes a preternaturally bright green. His narrow face featured a pointed nose and full lips set in skin so pale as to appear translucent in certain light; skin that the sun turned an angry red within minutes of exposure. Liran sometimes wondered if Zenar’s sensitivity to the sun had driven him to a life in shadow or if his love of shadows had transformed sunlight into his enemy.
Tutors oversaw Liran’s education, and military officers undertook his martial instruction. Zenar followed a different path. Liran couldn’t be sure how Fauld knew his younger son had innate mystic talent, but the two brothers weren’t schooled together. Zenar never set foot in an armory or on a practice field. Instead, he was drawn into the wizards’ circle at an early age. Liran went without seeing his brother for days at a time. When he did, Zenar was distracted and often babbled about things that Liran didn’t understand. Things that sometimes frightened him.
Cast in Secrets and Shadow Page 12