Page 76 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
“She’s singing to the cliff,” said Morin, “asking it to guard us from the spirits as we sleep, strengthening the ropes with the old Words of Power.”
“Where did she learn to do that?”
“She said the wind taught her, when she was small. I think perhaps she’s spoken with the wind gods, Mahl and Ahdairon, although she’s never told me as much.”
Eda thought of the Itan priestesses and suppressed a shudder. She studied Morin in the moonlight, the planes of his face swathed in silver, and thought he looked like the chiseled image of a young god. Some impulse made her want to reach out for him, touch his face, pull him close.
But then she thought of Ileem, crushing the orange under one knee, promising his fealty as he plotted her downfall, and she hated herself. Instead she turned to Tainir, who continued to sing to the mountain, ancient magic flowing out of her.
When Tainir finished, all three of them settled down into their hammocks. Eda pulled her hat down over her ears and tried not to feel the wind ripping past the cliff, making her hammock sway in an extremely horrifying manner. At the moment, she feared the fall more than the looming shadows.
“I’m never going to sleep up here,” Eda muttered, without really meaning to. Her head was pointed toward Morin’s hammock, but she couldn’t see him—all she could see was the blur of darkness below her, concealing the plummeting drop.
“We just need another story,” said Morin. “Tainir, tell us about Raiva going to find Tuer.”
Eda shut her eyes, her body pressing up against the cliffside.
“Raiva went into the mountain,” came Tainir’s voice. “It was dark and stank of shadows. She called Tuer’s name, but he didn’t answer. She walked and walked and walked, ever deeper into the mountain, and she came to a door. It was locked, but it opened for her, because she was bathed in Starlight from the beginning, and there is almost no power greater than that.
“She went looking for Tuer beyond the door in the Circle of the Dead, where lost souls moaned and cried, for many of the race of mankind had died since Tuer slew Tahn, centuries ago. Raiva knelt by one of these souls, a young woman with shining hair, and she touched her forehead, imbuing her with Starlight.
“‘Go,’ Raiva told the young woman. ‘Gather the others. Bring them on to the One, who will give them rest.’
“And the young woman kissed the hem of Raiva’s gown and went and did as the goddess instructed her. She was the first Bearer of Souls.”
Eda shifted uncomfortably. Though she’d realized she did in fact mean to try and fix the tears in the world when she found Tuer—she still didn’t want to be the Bearer of Souls. She didn’t want to be bound to the Circles and the gods in such an inescapable way—she couldn’t think of a worse fate.
“Raiva did not forget her,” Tainir went on. “When the first Bearer had gone about her task a hundred years, Raiva herself bore her beyond the Circles of the world and brought her to her own rest.
“On Raiva went and came to another door and another. She passed through both of them and found Tuer, chained and weeping in the Circle of Sorrow.”
Eda’s heart seized. “She found him?”
“Yes. But she couldn’t free him, though she tried for a century. Because Tuer had trapped himself there. Tuer had forged his own chains and bound himself to Sorrow, to atone for his crimes. So he couldn’t see Raiva. He didn’t even know she was there. He thought he was alone.
“And there he is still. Raiva goes as often as she can to see him, but she despairs that he will ever be free. She despairs, because she has the power to do so many things, but not to save him. Never to save him.”
Tainir lapsed into silence and Eda rebuked the tears that pressed suddenly behind her eyes. She tried to hold on to the fact that she hated Tuer. That he’d sent Rudion to take everything from her. That he deserved to die.
But she couldn’t deny the stark understanding of everything he’d done, and everything she’d done, and how they were nearly the same. She thought of how she’d wanted to touch Morin’s face, to pull him close. She couldn’t do that to him. Couldn’t entangle him in her web, so that he would lose himself like Raiva in the dark of Tuer’s Mountain. Morin was good, and she was not. He couldn’t help her. Not that way.
But she was still on the side of the cliff, held up by a few lengths of rope, trusting her life to him.
“How can you sleep,” she said, “knowing you might fall in the night?”
“The stakes are deep and the rope is strong,” Tainir returned. “And we fear death.Ifear it, more than my ancestors ever did. Because the doors are shut. There is no Soul Bearer now to guide me to paradise.”
Eda could almost feel the bands of the gods’ fate closing around her. She swallowed. “That is not very comforting.”
She heard the quiet thread of Morin’s laughter in the dark. “What Tainir means is, we won’t let you fall.”
Somehow, Eda slept, and when she woke the next morning she was still secure against the cliff face. Darkness roiled behind them. She thought she could see the outline of shadowy figures, the flash of white swords.
Morin and Tainir packed up in a hurry, hanging in their harnesses from the rock. Eda clung to Morin as he helped her out of her hammock. It was freezing on the cliff, but his proximity made her flush with heat. “I dreamed that you were searching for me,” she told him. “That you were calling my name in the dark.”
He looked at her intently, opening his mouth to say something. But the ayrrah arrived in a rush of wings, and in another few moments Eda, Morin, and Tainir were all hurtling on into the silver sky, away from the grasping shadows.
The spirits loomed large behind them, close enough for Eda to make out dark wings, the glint of talons, the bleached white of their swords. The stench of them choked Eda’s breath away.
