Page 14 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
“Do you think you’ll sign a treaty?” Niren asked. “Is there any possibility you’d consider marrying him?”
“Gods’ hearts, no! I’ll do just enough to appease them and then send the Denlahns home.”
“Meeting them doesn’t change your mind about war?”
Eda looked at the illuminated manuscript again, not able to tear her eyes away from that image of Tuer.Hadit changed her mind? It was easier, certainly, to think of sending a ship filled with soldiers across the sea to conquer a land she’d never seen, a people she’d never encountered. She’d always considered it part of her vow—expanding the Empire, building temples in every province, compelling all the world to return to the gods. But as Ileem’s own vow proved, Denlahn was not the backwards, godsless nation Eda had always thought… . Perhaps war wasn’t the answer. Perhaps it never had been.
The light from the glass dome ceiling grew suddenly dim—a cloud must have passed over the sun. But when Eda glanced out the window, the sky was clear, sunlight refracting off the spired towers, heat shimmering in waves above the rooftops. She repressed a shudder. Why had it grown so dark?
She left Niren and went over to the window for a closer view. If she squinted just right she thought she could see a crack splintering through the air, a host of winged spirits flying toward the sun. But then she blinked, and there was nothing.
She turned and stifled a scream.
Shadow Niren hovered at real Niren’s shoulder, limp hair brushing her living counterpart’s smooth skin, the marks of Tuer’s fingers glowing like live coals on her brow.
The sun was at its zenith by the time Eda rode out of the city, a single guard on horseback accompanying her. Sweat ran into her eyes and pricked at the back of her neck. Heat spiraled up from the ground in waves, yesterday’s rain all but forgotten. Eda swiped a hand across her forehead and nudged her red mare, Naia, toward the mountains that marched across the desert like a scattering of jagged spearheads. She’d have to hurry if she wanted to get to the sacred pool and back before nightfall.
Good thing Naia was the fastest horse in the Empire—she’d won the races at the Festival of Uerc a few years back. Eda kicked the mare into a run, not sparing a backward glance for the mounted guard a few paces behind her. She leaned into the wind, letting it wrap around her, trying not to think about her vision, trying to squelch the horror of seeing Niren’s ghost, of those telltale marks left by Tuer’s fingerprints. The gods were taunting her. Showing her what would happen if she failed.
But she wasn’t going to fail. She refused to fail.
Eda spat a curse into the wind and urged Naia even faster.
An hour later, Eda and her guard reached the foot of the mountain, where an ancient stone stair wound upward, out of sight. Eda swung off her mount and handed the guard her reins. “Wait here,” she told him, five steps up before he could object to her going alone.
It was cooler in the shadow of the mountain, a little breeze fanning her face and bringing with it the scent of sagebrush and wild jasmine. The climb wasn’t difficult, but it took another half hour before she reached the top of the stair, where a small courtyard led to an ancient shrine built into the side of the mountain. The stones were weathered and overgrown with vines, the images carved into the pillars so worn they were unrecognizable.
Long ago, the shrine had been dedicated to the river god Hahld, built as it was around an underground spring. Eda could hear it now, burbling from inside the mountain: the sacred pool. It was a common place for petitioners and pilgrims to come and seek the gods, even after the old Emperor had abolished religious practices. In centuries past, Enduenan royalty had bathed there the morning of their coronation—Eda had revived that tradition. The pool had been as freezing as the godless void, and when she’d stepped from the water, a weathered old priest had blessed her.
There weren’t any young priests, not anymore. That was one of the things she was working on changing, one of the ways she was serving the gods and fulfilling her vow. She had started an informal school for future priests and priestesses, setting a handful of young men and women to study ancient library texts for hours every day so they’d be well versed in sacred duties and traditions.
The gods just had to give her the chance to finish the temple, and then she could put them to work in earnest.
Eda crossed the courtyard and stepped between two worn pillars, descending a few shallow steps to the edge of the pool. Dark water lapped over her sandals, washing the dust from her feet with icy, whispering fingers. She peered across the pool to the other side of the shrine. “I would speak with you.” Her voice echoed strangely, bouncing off the walls and the surface of the water and wobbling back to her. She drew her dagger and slashed it across her palm, pain sharp and sudden, blood hot and wet. “I would speak with Tuer. Or Hahld, if Tuer cannot come.” She trembled at the names of the gods—did that brief glimpse of Tuer yesterday and Ileem’s recounting his vision make her think he would just appear at her command?
She squeezed her hand together, blood dripping into the water, and waited. Her toes grew numb; the stale, damp air seemed to choke her breath away.
A light flared in the dark, and the priest who had presided over her coronation peered at her across the pool, his face lined and spotted with age, his hair limp and ragged. He wore robes in the ancient style, wound about his torso and hanging loose to the ground, girded with a length of leather cord. He lived up here all alone, a hermit and caretaker of the sacred pool. She couldn’t begin to guess his age, and he had no name that she had ever heard of.
“Tuer is not here, child.” In stark contrast to his frail appearance, the priest’s voice was strong as the mountain. “Nor Hahld either. They are both of them bound, far away: one in stone, and one in water. What do you want with them?”
Eda wiped her palm on the thigh of her loose riding trousers and waded into the water. It lapped up to her shins, then her knees and her waist, soaking her trousers, washing over her bare midriff and the bottom edge of her beaded silk top. She stopped in the center of the pool, ignoring the cold and the pain in her hand, her feet sinking ankle-deep in shifting sand and mounds of long-forgotten petitioners’ coins. “I want Tuer to tell me that a few missing stones won’t cost my friend’s life. I want him to tell me that the vision I saw today will not come to pass.”
The priest studied her in the wavering light of his candle. “What does Tuer care for a little girl who plays at being Empress?”
Rage coursed through her, but she hadn’t come to let this wretched priest make her into a fool. “Tuer made a deal with me.”
“Impossible. Tuer has not been seen in this Circle of the world for millennia.”
Her anger burned. “Isaw him.” As had Ileem.
“You saw his Shadow, perhaps, a sliver of himself. But the god is gone, child, chained in his mountain far away. If you wish to speak with him, you will have to find him.”
“If you won’t help me, old man, I’m not going to waste any more time.” Eda turned in disgust and started sloshing back through the pool. Her palm pulsed with pain.
“Something burns inside you that was never meant to be there,” said the priest quietly. “You can feel it, can’t you?”
She jerked around again, heart unaccountably pounding. “What are you talking about?”
