Page 57 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
For a moment, Eda thought that whatever had happened was finished, that all was well and calm again. But something angry muttered in the iron sky. Cracks splintered through the air, like lightning made of shadow. Darkness seeped through the cracks, a formless nothing that resolved itself into hundreds of … she could only call them spirits. They had dark wings and jagged teeth and wicked swords. Looking at them made her feel like a thousand fire ants had burrowed beneath her skin and were eating her, eating her through muscle, down to bone.
Eda scrambled back from the rail, shrieking and falling, covering her head with her arms.
And then—
The whisper of a touch on her shoulder. A glimpse of movement, passing around the curve of the ship. Eda got to her feet and followed.
The sky still crawled with those winged spirits, but she kept her eyes straight ahead, stopping as she saw who waited for her beneath the shelter of the upper deck.
He was less solid than he’d been in the ballroom; she could see through him to the waves that lapped silver beyond the ship.
But she knew the form of the god who had betrayed her. For an instant he turned, and his shining eyes met hers. “Come,” he said. And then he stepped through the railing and out onto the sea, vanishing into the spray.
Eda followed the god.
She expected to hit the railing or plummet sickeningly into the icy waves, but instead she found herself stepping through a doorway into an ancient stone temple, open to a star-swept sky. Leaves rattled brittle over the flagstones, and in the midst of the temple, a white flame burned on a marble plinth, though there was no wood or oil to feed it.
It took her a moment to see the four gods.
Raiva Eda knew; she stood tall and solemn in a stone archway, her hand on the pillar. Another deity came toward Raiva, a rippling form of feathers and wind, rain and lightning tangled together in yellow hair: the wind goddess, Ahdairon.
Mahl, the wind god, stood in the center of the temple. His skin was dark as obsidian, his hair white as cloud. He was crowned with lightning, and his cloak was made of eagle feathers woven together with rain.
The fourth figure was more monster than god: he had the head of a lion and the twisted spine of a sea dragon. Tendrils of ragged weeds hung from his shoulders, and his mane was knotted with broken pieces of coral. At first Eda thought he must be the sea god, Aigir, but looking closer she saw he wore no Star on his finger—he was Hahld then, the river god. He stood apart from the other three, at the far end of the ruined temple, as if he was ashamed.
There was no sign of Tuer’s Shadow.
“What are we to do?” said Raiva.
Eda didn’t know where the rest of the nine gods were, or even if they still lived, but she understood that in their absence Raiva was their leader. Perhaps even their queen.
The goddess of the trees turned from the archway, and Ahdairon, Mahl, and Hahld looked toward her. “The Immortal Tree is no more. The Billow Maidens will bear the Dead of the sea as far as they can, but in the end they will be like all the rest: left to wander in the darkness, eaten slowly by death itself.”
“We cannot help them,” said Mahl. “The world is broken. The Circles sealed. The spirits we trapped in the void long ago begin to break free. Soon the Words we bound them with will not hold them; soon all will be lost.”
“Then we bind them again,” said Ahdairon, “and we find a way to unlock the Circles.”
Hahld shook his lion’s head. “It cannot be done. I was trapped for centuries by just one of those spirits—none can withstand all of them.”
Lightning crackled from Mahl’s crown. “Then it is to be war.”
Raiva strode to the center of the temple, her gown dragging over the stone. “A war we cannot win. We four are not enough against the fathomless spirits, honed for centuries in darkness.”
“If we could free Tuer,” suggested Ahdairon.
Darkness clouded Raiva’s face. “There is no help to be found in the god of the mountain. He made his choice long ago. He chose to leave us and loose his Shadow, and in so doing, break the world.”
Ahdairon bowed her head.
“There is nothing we can do,” Raiva went on, her voice the barest thread in the dark, “but watch, and wait, and hope that when the world unravels we are able to gather as many souls as we can and bear them through the shattered remains of the Circles to the One.”
“That is not our purpose,” said Mahl.
Raiva shimmered with sudden light, her sorrow so strong Eda could almost taste it. “And yet it is the only purpose remaining to us.”
Eda shook herself as if from a daze and walked farther into the temple, meaning to catch Raiva’s sleeve, to demand more answers. But in the darkness, where the starlight did not touch, loomed the Shadow she had followed here.
He turned toward her, becoming more solid than she had ever seen him. Dark wings grew from his shoulders, folded now against his back. There was a white sword at his side and a fiery crown glimmering on his head that burned but did not consume him.
