Page 91 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
She bowed to the goddess, tightened her grip on the godkiller, and stepped into the Tree.
Chapter Forty
EDA STOOD BEFORE AN IRON GATE INa high stone wall, illuminated only by the knife in her hand. Behind and on either side of her was a horrid nothingness that she knew somehow would swallow her whole if she stepped into it, no matter how much Starlight flowed through her veins.
There was only one way to go.
Eda pushed on the gate. It creaked open, and she went into the earthen passageway beyond, the godkiller casting eerie shadows on the floor and walls. There seemed to be no ceiling, but neither was there any sky—just that same hungry nothingness, kept uneasily at bay by the gate and the passage.
In the darkness ahead of her, someone was weeping, the anguished cries of the utterly hopeless. Eda set her jaw against the noise—she was not about to let Sorrow consume her, not now when she was so close to her goal.
She hurried down the passageway, her footsteps echoing on the hard-packed earth. Eyes watched her from the wall above; she thought she heard the whir of feathers, the clack of claws. Another voice joined in the weeping, somewhere ahead—a man’s voice, brittle and broken.
She went faster, running past the openings to several new passages that branched off the main one.
And then she saw Niren just ahead, the hem of her silver gown whispering over the stone.
Eda cried out and ran to catch her.
“Niren!” Eda stumbled into an alcove that she recognized with confusion as Niren’s sitting room, back in the palace. Rain poured outside the window, and Niren sat at a carved ebony table, sipping tea. The air was rich with moisture and the scent of cardamom.
Contentment settled over Eda—Niren was here, alive, well. Tuer’s Mountain was nothing more than a bad dream.
And yet there was anger in Niren’s eyes. She rose from the table, her hands shaking. She was holding a silver chain that dragged along behind her on the ground—a chain made of sorrow. Without a word, she paced toward Eda and hung the chain around her neck.
Then both Niren and the room wavered, disappeared, and Eda was standing alone in the dark of Tuer’s Mountain, something scrabbling in the blackness behind her.
The chain was heavy and bitterly cold, and no matter how hard she tried, Eda couldn’t seem to shrug it off. She started running again, as fast as she could with the chain weighing her down.
Behind her, wings scraped stone. Beaks clacked. Something gave an awful shriek. Talons grasped her shoulders, digging down to bone. She yelped and slashed blindly above her with the godkiller, and whatever creature had grabbed her let go again.
She glanced back as she ran to see a mass of dark carrion birds filling the passage. They had long necks and blood red, featherless heads. Their black wings oozed shadow that pooled hissing on the floor and they watched her with cruel, sneering eyes.
And then she slammed hard into a packed earthen wall—the abrupt dead end to the passageway. She fell backward, all the wind knocked out of her.
The carrion birds crept toward her, claws clacking on the ground.“A labyrinth,”they hissed all together.“She did not know. She did not count the turnings. She’s caught like a rat in Tuer’s maze. Her sorrow will taste so sweet. So sweet.”
Eda scrabbled to her feet again, and raised the knife high as she barreled back the way she came.
The carrion birds screamed, flapping their awful wings and flinging themselves away from the godkiller’s light.
She ran, trying not to feel the icy sorrow of the chain that seemed to be sinking into her soul. She turned right at the first passage she came to, then left into the next one. The birds had spoken truly: she had not counted the turnings. She didn’t know which passages might lead her back out, and which ones led to the center of the labyrinth, where she was sure Tuer was waiting.
All she could do was keep running.
Suddenly, her surroundings shifted a second time, and she found herself in the palace dungeon. Rescarin lay on the floor of his cell, cradling his fingerless hands against his chest as his forehead poured with sweat, with fever. Eda hated the guards for not doing a better job tending his wounds. She hated herself for her careless order to mutilate him. But even more than that she hated that she cared that he was dead. That his death washer fault.
Rescarin forced his trembling body upright, a silver chain in his bloodied palms. He draped it around her shoulders and was gone, the dungeon fading with him.
The darkness was deeper than before, the chains too heavy to allow her to run. So she walked, as quickly as she could, down another passage and then another. She felt the weight of Tuer’s Mountain, the weight of Tuer’s sorrow. Behind her came the scrape and clack of the carrion birds.
She wasn’t surprised when her surroundings shifted a third time and she stepped out onto a terrace that overlooked the palace rose garden. She was glad to get out of the dark, away from the carrion birds, if only for a few moments. It was a fierce, hot day, the sun high in the sky, and the Emperor was lounging in a woven reed chair, a pair of attendants holding an awning over his head. He was younger than she’d ever seen him, not yet twenty, and she was surprised to find him almost strikingly handsome. His dark hair curled slightly over his ears, and his beard was neatly trimmed. A shrewdness shone from his eyes, and a lazy smile curled on his lips.
He beckoned her over. Eda went, and sat at his feet on a thick orange cushion.
“Your aspirations do you credit, my dear. I always admired you, you know. I wished you were mine. I would have instructed you. Groomed you. Taught you how to rule the Empire and not lose it.” He gave her an admonishing glance.
“It’s not likeyouheld onto it,” Eda grumbled.
