Page 23 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
The shadow-god circled round her, and she felt a strong, cold wind breathing through her hair, across her skin.
“It is not enough,” said the god. “I need to be sure of you. I will honor any promise I make, but there is no surety that you will honor yours. I require something more.”
She felt a tightness in her chest, disappointment crushing her. “I have nothing else to offer.”
“There must be something,” said Tuer. “There always is. Something precious to you.”
Laughter rang suddenly outside the temple, and Eda peered through a crack in the stones to see her friend Niren playing with her two younger sisters at the base of the hill. Eda realized what the god wanted: Niren, with her laughing dark eyes and serious face, her mischief and good sense.
The dark cold of Tuer’s Shadow blazed beside her, and Eda turned to look at him. “I won’t forsake my promise. I will serve the gods all my life.”
Tuer’s eyes bored into hers. “And yet I still require an earnest.”
One last glance through the crack in the stone, as Niren and her sisters passed out of sight. Eda knew what her answer would be. She screwed her eyes shut, saw her parents, lying dead in their bedrooms: her mother’s dark hair splayed across the pillow; her father’s ashen face and vacant eyes. The Barons dragging her from the house, shoving her into a carriage that hurtled her away from her childhood home. The regent, Rescarin, taking her father’s place as Count of Evalla, forever to command her fate.
She opened her eyes again. Tuer’s Shadow stood before her, dark and cold and strong, and Eda was suddenly afraid. “The Empire for my life in service,” she whispered. She dug her nails into her palms. “With Niren’s life as earnest. But it won’t come to that.”
She felt rather than saw Tuer’s smile. His Shadow seemed to grow darker, gathering more substance. He stretched out one dark hand and touched Eda’s forehead. Light burned through her, searing white-hot, and she gasped and sank to her knees. Stars wheeled before her eyes. She saw a god weeping in a dark room, bound with chains. She felt iron close around her heart, sealing her promise. Her forehead pulsed with faint heat.
“Take care, child of the dust,” said Tuer. “The gods will have their payment.”
A sudden wind tore through the temple—it smelled of honey and roses and fire.
When Eda opened her eyes, Tuer’s Shadow was gone.
Chapter Nine
EDA SWEPT INTONIREN’S SUITE,TERROR MAKINGher head spin. The palace physician was waiting for her, a middle-aged woman with silvering hair and a healer’s sigil pinned to her emerald-green sash. She hovered in front of the doorway to Niren’s bedroom, blocking her from view.
The illuminated manuscript Niren had been copying still lay on Niren’s drawing table, open to the page of Tuer’s petitioner, hands outstretched to the god of the mountain. The illustration seemed to bob and dance in the lantern light.
Eda stood still, bracing herself for the worst.
“The Marquess is dying, Your Imperial Majesty,” said the physician. “I’m afraid she hasn’t much time left.”
“Surely you can do something for her.” Eda stared at Niren’s manuscript, that cold, tight knot of fear in her chest making it hard to breathe.
“The Marquess isn’t responding to any treatment. I’m doing everything I can for her, but—I fear it won’t be long.”
Eda stared at the doorway to the bedroom, wondering how awful Niren must look if the physician felt the need to forestall her in this way. “How long?” The words choked her.
The physician shook her head. “Two days. Perhaps three, if the gods are kind.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Anger flooded Eda like an ocean tide. “Get out.”
“Your Imperial Majesty?”
“The gods are never kind.” Eda clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms, the fingers on her left hand pressing into the wound she’d made at the sacred pool, hardly scabbed. She felt the skin break anew, the blood drip warm. It hurt, and the pain grounded her. “GET OUT!”
The physician bowed low, and quit the room.
Eda burst into Niren’s bedchamber, unprepared for the stark horror of the form laying in the bed.
Gray. Niren looked so gray. Everything about her was drained of life, her body still between cream sheets, her dark hair a stain on the pillow. Her face was shrunken, and veins showed blue and spidery on her hands. The marks on her forehead where Tuer’s Shadow had touched her were purple-black bruises. There was little difference, now, between Shadow Niren and the real one.
Eda collapsed to her knees beside the bed, folding Niren’s hand in her own. All at once she was crying like she hadn’t in nearly a decade. Tears poured down her face, soaking through the thin sheets.
She had learned long ago that crying gained her nothing but pity and scorn, so she’d stopped crying, even behind closed doors. Now she’d given in and she felt horribly weak. That made her angry.
