Page 56 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
“Who is,” Lady Rinar corrected gently. “The souls of the dead cannot reach paradise—that land which dwells beyond the Circles of the world—on their own. Every century or so, the gods choose a mortal to be the Bearer of Souls—they are the one who gathers the dead and brings them through the other Circles to their final rest.”
“I am a devotee of the gods. I have never heard that before.”
“It is a Haldan tradition—my son wrote of it to me in his letters.”
“How does the Bearer of Souls pass through the Circles?” Eda asked, a horrible suspicion unfolding inside of her.
Lady Rinar reached out one quavery hand and brushed her fingers gently across Eda’s forehead. “I believe the gods mark the Bearer somehow, but it’s been a long time since my son wrote of it tome.” She dropped her hand. “I’m afraid I don’t quite remember.”
Eda crawled onto her pallet that night, the awful suspicion growing. Had the gods chosen her to be the Bearer of Souls? Was that the reason for the ghosts she’d seen back in Eddenahr, for the visions she kept having even now? Was that what Tuer wanted from her, not the temple she’d struggled so long and hard to build?
Is that why he’d taken Niren and driven Ileem to betray her?
She dreamed she was standing on a green hill pressed up against an iron sky. A shadow passed over the sun, slowly devouring its light. The world seemed to stretch out from her, out and out, so that she could see beyond the shadowed earth to the Circles of Death and Time. A host of dead souls, clothed in gray, marched between the Circles, and Niren stood before them all. She looked straight into Eda’s eyes. “Help us,” she said. “You’re the only one who can.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
EDA HAD NEVER REALIZED BEFORE HOW MUCHshe thrived on activity. There was nothing todoonboard the steamer but sit on her pallet or stand at the rail or eat slop stew and stale biscuits in the mess hall and pine for her luxurious cabin on the upper deck.
She spoke with Lady Rinar sometimes, but the old woman grew weaker and weaker as the voyage wore on. Soon she couldn’t stand at the rail or even sit on the bench. Before a month had passed Lady Rinar couldn’t leave her pallet bed anymore. Tears leaked continually from her eyes, her lips moving always in prayer to the gods pleading that her body would sustain her for one last glimpse of her son.
Eda sat with her as often as she could bear it, but she hated the old woman’s unshakeable faith in gods who didn’t hear her. She hated the sound of Lady Rinar’s breath, rattling in broken lungs, the way her skin shrank against her bones, the way her nails yellowed and her hair fell off in matted white clumps. But most of all, Eda hated the way Lady Rinar’s dying reminded her of the Emperor’s, of how his suffering, the unraveling of his spirit from his body, was her doing. An empty vial of poison for a crown on her head.
Two months into the voyage, Eda sat with Lady Rinar in the hush before dawn, half dozing over the old woman’s paper-thin body. All at once Lady Rinar’s eyes flew open and she seized Eda’s hands with a sudden, desperate urgency.
“Hold me back!” Lady Rinar rasped. “Don’t send me into the dark. The Bearer is trapped and cannot get through. I don’t want to go to the shadows. Don’t let me go! Hold me back!” Her body convulsed and she gave one last sharp cry before growing wholly, irrevocably still.
The ship rocked beneath Eda’s feet, and she stared with horror at the husk of Lady Rinar. The gods were cruel. She had died far from her home, far from her son.
Eda jerked upright, stumbling through the steerage cabin to call for the steward.
Out on the deck, the wind was whipping, icy and wild. Eda leaned against the railing, and the freezing metal seared through her clothes down to her skin. The steward had sent two sailors down to steerage. They had unceremoniously wrapped Lady Rinar in sailcloth, then hauled her outside and hefted her over the rail, surrendering her to the sea. The waves had swallowed her whole, erasing her from existence as if she’d never lived at all. The sailors had uttered no benediction, just gone back to their duties on the upper deck as if they’d completed a routine chore. They didn’t seem to care that they’d sent Lady Rinar’s body to the fathomless depths, to be devoured by monsters, by time.
Eda hadn’t moved since they’d gone. She just stood staring out into the fathomless sea, wrestling with her rage, her grief for this woman she barely knew. Was this how Eda would end? Alone and forgotten, with no one to mourn her?
She shuddered with more than cold and rubbed her arms to try and get some heat in them.
A wave broke against the side of the ship, drenching her arms and face; it tasted of salt and bitterness.
Would that she had the power of a goddess—she would break the world in half. She would bend it to her will, make it take the shape that she wished.
Clouds knotted tight and dark over the sun. Beneath the ship, the waves grew wild,angry,lashing the steamer, seeking to tear it to pieces.
And then the sea began to boil.
Eda gasped. A high, piercing wail echoed on the wind, an inhuman screeching that caused her to let go of the rail and clap her hands over her ears.
The world shook.
There came a resoundingcracklike some enormous piece of wood splitting in two.
The sea stopped boiling, but the waves rose high, and music seared the air: voices tangled up in an ethereal melody that made her want to weep and shout and leap into the sea all at once.
But then the music calmed, became a lament instead of a lure.
Something flashed out among the waves, a bright light that was immediately extinguished.
And then, impossibly, a chariot rose from the depths, filled with shadows and pulled by nine luminous horses. The chariot shot through the sky and disappeared in the clouds. Eda hardly had time to wonder about it before something else rose from the waves: a huge white bird with shining wings, carrying something in its talons. She had a glimpse of dark hair, a silver tail, and then the bird too was lost in the clouds.
