Page 42 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
Eda and Ileem wandered together to the edge of the hill, where Eda put her hand on one of the ancient pillars that had stood through centuries of time and war and peered out into the desert. Stars glittered in the black sky. Somewhere, an owl called to its mate.
“My god came to me, in the night,” said Ileem softly beside her.
Eda pressed her fingernails against the stone so hard a few broke off, leaving her with rough, jagged edges. “He did not come to me.”
“He told me that Niren is safe. That she is honored. That her death was not in vain.”
From the corner of her eye, Eda saw Shadow Niren flicker into view beyond another pillar. Anger hardened into stone. “Did he take her? Did Tuer take her?”
“Eda—”
“Did he?” She wheeled on him, not heeding the tears running down her cheeks.
Ileem glanced away. “Yes.”
She could barely choke out her next question: “Because of me?”
He put one hand on her arm. “The temple isn’t what he wanted. It didn’t fulfill your vow.”
Eda shook him off. “That doesn’t make anysense,” she said viciously. “I built the temple forhim.What does he want? Why won’t he speak with me himself?”
Ileem looked at her intently. “Have you sought him, Eda? Truly sought him? Ask him to come to you. Ask him to give you his mark. He’ll come.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
Ileem brushed his fingers across her brow, and she longed to lean against him, to shut her eyes against the horror that was eating her up from the inside, to wake to a safer, better world.
“Honor the gods. Honor your friend. And keep asking until he does. But I’ve lingered too long. It’s unlucky to speak with my bride the night before our wedding.”
“Please stay,” Eda whispered. “Please don’t leave me alone.”
He kissed her gently on the cheek. “After tomorrow, we will never be parted.”
And then he walked away, leaving Eda on the hilltop, alone with her sorrow and her ghosts and a thousand wheeling stars.
Chapter Eighteen
SHE PASSED THE REMAINDER OF THE NIGHTin the new temple, kneeling before Tuer’s altar. She sacrificed a goat, as she had the night before her coronation. She smeared her forehead with blood and ashes and oil. She pleaded with Tuer to come to her, to tell her what he wanted from her, to tell her why he took Niren. She slammed her fists against the stone. She screamed. She wept.
But Tuer did not come.
Two hours before dawn, a guard came to bring her back to her chambers, where an army of attendants were waiting to prepare her for the ceremony. Eda allowed herself to be bathed and dressed, sat quietly while her eyes were painted with kohl and her hair swept up in the previously discussed arrangement. Sapphires were hung about her neck and threaded through her ears. A gold cuff engraved with the ancient Denlahn phrase “loved of the gods” was fitted onto her ear, a wedding present from Ileem. Her skin was painted with gold-flecked oil to make her gleam. Jasmine essence was dabbed at her throat and behind her ears.
One of the attendants pressed a mug of cardamom tea into her hands and made her drink it, then proceeded to feed her orange slices and strips of honeyed flatbread like she was a parrot. She wouldn’t have thought to eat, otherwise.
Last of all came the veil, a shimmering, gossamer gold that was draped over her hair and her face, hanging to her knees in front and her heels in the back.
The attendants ushered her from her chambers and outside the palace, where a quartet of guards handed her into a palanquin and hoisted it onto their shoulders. They carried her up the long, steep path to the Place of Kings just as dawn showed over the horizon and with it a dark mass of boiling clouds.
A wind whipped up, smelling strongly of rain, and the air seemed to crackle with power. The guards grunted, bending their heads into the wind and tightening their grips on the palanquin.
At the top, a second army of attendants waited. Eda tried not to let her eyes wander to Niren’s grave as they folded back her veil, touched up her cosmetics, smoothed her dress, and rubbed out invisible specs of dust. One of them fed Eda strawberries while another cursed in frustration that no one had brought rain canopies.
Thunder growled in the distance as Eda stood there, lonely in the sea of people. The sun rose behind the clouds, a riot of color against the dark. The elephant arrived, lumbering over the brow of the hill. Its hide was painted with blue and gold whorls, and it wore a headdress of tinkling bells. The elephant keeper spoke a word to the beast and it dropped to its knees in a cloud of dust. Attendants slid a set of steps up to it, and what seemed like a hundred different arms helped Eda climb them. She settled herself in the high saddle, one final attendant climbing up with her and folding the veil back over her head before scampering down again.
And then it was time.
Bells sounded from down in the city, and bright silver trumpets pierced through the roar of the rising wind.
