Page 51 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
“Is that what you need?”
His manner was so quiet, so unassuming that it took her aback. “Tuer betrayed me. He took my Empire. He took my friend, my—my sister. And now he means for me to die. An army is the only thing that can save me.”
“Is it,” said the man. “I see.” He bent back over the book again, and continued writing.
“What are you writing?”
“The stories of the worlds. Endahr’s story is here, and your piece of it.”
“Then you know how it ends.”
“It has ended, and yet it is still being written. There are many paths that it could take. Many paths that you could take.”
Eda scrutinized him. “What god are you?”
He smiled. “I am not a god, child of the dust. Now. What path will you take? There is a task set for you. There is a story here, for you to follow. Will you follow it?”
“I follow the path I make for myself.”
The man lifted his shoulders and turned back to his book. “Think on it, Eda of Endahr.”
Eda woke alone in the holding cell, the incongruous scent of wildflowers lingering sweet on the air, to find the door ever so slightly ajar.
She didn’t know how it was possible, whether man or god had unlocked the door, but she also didn’t care. She slowly swung it open, peeking her head out to make sure she was alone before slipping through. The sea air wrapped around her, the burgeoning stars filled her up. She crept around the back of the stables, yanking a damp shirt and pair of trousers off a clothesline, and bolted up the hill.
She didn’t mean to go to the old family temple, but some instinct pulled her there.
It wasn’t much of a temple: a narrow doorway looking into a mound of grassy earth. There were symbols carved into the stone doorposts, but she didn’t stop to examine them as she darted inside, panting for breath. She hadn’t been back here since she was nine years old, when she’d met Tuer’s Shadow and bargained Niren’s life away.
A lantern and matches waited in a wall niche; she lit the lamp and raised it high.
Shadows slanted through the low-roofed chamber. She knelt in the dust beside the weathered stone figure at the back of the room.
What was she going todo? Gods gods gods.
Domin must not find her here, and she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Eda tilted her forehead against the stone figure. She screwed her eyes shut and saw Niren, lying dead on her pillow; the Emperor, taking his last rattling breaths; Rescarin, raising his bloody hands; an entire garrison of soldiers poisoned in their beds, burning and burning and burning. She saw herself, dragged onto a high wooden platform erected before the city gates, her head forced onto a block, the executioner’s blade raised high.
“Stop it!” she screamed at the statue. “STOP IT!”
But there was no answer.
She pounded her fists against the stone until blood burst from her knuckles. She screamed herself hoarse.
But when all the fight had gone out of her she was still alone in a temple that felt like a tomb.
An Empress who’d lost her Empire.
An outcast with nowhere to go.
Eda jerked up and away from the statue. She paced, as she’d done in the holding cell.
There was an ancient wooden chest stuffed into a hollow in the stone near the back of the temple. Eda hauled it out, opened it, lifted her lantern. The chest was filled with scrolls and books, crackly, crumbling pages bound in faded leather. She pulled one of the scrolls out, uncapped the end of its casing, and unrolled the yellowed parchment. At the top of the page, in shaky handwriting, were the wordsOf Tuer and Raiva and the Mountain of Sorrows.
Eda cursed, and let the parchment roll back up again. She had the sudden impulse to touch her lantern flame to the books and scrolls and burn them all to ashes, but something stayed her hand. She sat back on her heels, running her fingers over the edge of the chest; the wood was worn and smooth.
Ileem’s face rose unbidden in Eda’s mind, his eyes shining in the moonlight as he sat with her on the rooftop and told her about his time in the monastery on Halda. How the Haldans believed that Tuer was hidden somewhere in the mountains.
