Jarah could hardly breathe. Her largest feeling was one of shock: Her vision swam and she found it hard to keep upright. Not only because the exhaustion she'd pushed through had returned, but because she couldn't seem to make herself steady. Slumping to one side, she stared at Lillah--Kimhan? No, she was Lillah--and let the tears slide down her cheeks.
"You're back. You're back. How did you…" Before any of the thousand questions could be answered, she felt something hard press against the nape of her neck. "I am sorry for your loss, Jarah," said Honu. "But I can't let you be with your girl." Jarah knew she couldn't move; if she did, Honu would blow a hole through her neck larger than a stone. She swallowed, the tears still fresh. "Why can't you let her be?" "She's the key. I originally thought it was the legend, but when it showed the Blade, I knew there were more pieces. After all, the map showed Kimhan as one of the things I needed." In a flash, Jarah remembered how little Kimhan had wanted the map to work. At first she thought it was because she really was afraid of the Blade. But it also must have shown Honu that Kimhan was important, too. "It's a sorry thing, I know, but it's necessary," said Honu, stepping around and taking the Blade out of Jarah's unresisting fingers. "But we have to stop the madness that reincarnation brings. People never stop to savor their lives, always assuming that they'll be able to make a better life than this one if they could just reincarnate." "People don't throw their lives away, Honu," said Jarah, her heart hammering so hard she almost couldn't hear her own voice. "You're wrong." "No, sadly, I'm not. By getting rid of this madness of Invoking gods and goddesses, of living our one lives and then moving out of the way, we will be restoring order to the way things ought to be. The gods should be in control, not us." Jarah glared at Honu, whose face was a rapture of zeal as she contemplated a hopeless future. How could people be expected to live if they had no hope for more? The smallest child, forced to be an Athakar and retrieve deadly toxins, often died before reaching more than ten or twelve years. Was that to be their entire fate, their whole existence? Fury began to build inside of her at the thought. "She has to go. If Kimhan dies by this--" and Honu raised the still-sheathed Blade "--it will finish the fracture that you began all those years ago. It will close off the return path from the AfterWorld to here; we will at last begin to usher people into a lasting, permanent peace." "No," said Jarah, her hands tightening as she summoned the final dregs of resolve. "It won't happen." "I'm sorry, Jarah," said Honu, shifting the gunbow to her shoulder. "It has to. This madness has gone on long enough." "On that we can agree," said Jarah, and she drove the needle into her leg. She had palmed the vial when scurrying on the ground, thinking to use it against Tenhaim. Now, however, she felt this was the better time to use it. Instantly, the exhaustion fled and rivers of energy began to course through her. With a leap she was off her knees and had already knocked the Blade free of Honu's unexpecting hands by the time the zealot had enough sense to throw a punch and block an attack. The two women didn't pause after that, exchanging blows and kicks with expert alacrity. Honu's training and Jarah's Infused strength were evenly matched, however, and neither woman was able to gain an upper hand. At last, Honu caught a hanging fist and spun Jarah around. She landed flat on her back, the air rushing from her lungs. As she hit the ground, the last of her ichor vials rolled free, bouncing its way free of the fight. Jarah saw stars and she couldn't find the air she needed. Honu dropped down on top of her, the vest she'd been wearing torn from the fight. "I'm done with you," she snarled, eyes alight with a frenzied fury. Fingers scrabbled over Jarah's throat, tearing shallow slices from her cheeks as Jarah desperately tried to fend off the zealot. Then a booted foot cracked against the side of Honu's face, sending her sprawling, semi-conscious, on the dirty cavern floor. "And to think," said Rihn through gritted teeth, "I used to think you were cute." Jarah blinked as she stared at the former fighter. "You…you thought she was attractive?" He gave an embarrassed shrug. "Well, yeah." "Huh." Rolling onto her elbows and knees, Jarah drew some deep breaths. Honu wasn't dead--despite the well-laced kick, Jarah could see Honu's chest rising and falling with a steady rhythm--but she wasn't likely to come at them in the next bit. She could actually catch her breath. "What took you so long?" "I…think Tenhaim broke some ribs," said Rihn, wincing as he spoke. "I'm sorry it took as long as it did. You seemed to be holding out pretty well, you know…" A scuffle and a yelp drew their attention to Lillah, who was still beside the pool. A furious and vindictive looking Tenhaim stood behind her, the Blade held against the girl's neck, breathing heavily. "Enough." And with that, he drew the Blade against Lillah's neck.
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The whiteness of the explosion of deific force in her memory seemed to travel through time; Jarah became of a brightness in the cavern that seemed to be emanating from her.
Consciousness streamed into her mind with a host of pains, aches, and heartbreaks. She had forgotten how she'd lost Lillah. She had forgotten that moment of terror as she saw her precious girl snatched away by a goddess and killed. How could she have lost that memory? But she knew, even as she asked herself the question, what had happened: Deicide. By killing that acolyte the way she had, she had broken the pact between Theopolis and the mortal realm, had fractured the path back to life from the AfterWorld. The Blade--whatever else it might be--was clearly a weapon designed for the killing of deities. Guilt washed over her. The dim memories and true knowledge of what she'd done crashed against each other. She had been carrying with her the understanding that it was her fault the world was broken: That much had been true. How and why she'd broken it, however, had never been anything that she could recognize. It had simply been a fact, like the slant of her eyes or the color of her hair--an unassailable reality of her guilt. Now, at least, she knew. The pain of losing her daughter threatened to pull her into an abyss of grief and sorrow from which she would, she knew, have no desire to swim away from. But a voice cut through her despair, pulling her back to full consciousness and life. It was Tenhaim. And he was laughing derisively. "That's it?" he asked. Jarah blinked as the whiteness of her memory receded and the cavern came back into focus. She lay on the ground, the Blade next to her--as well as her dropped weapons--the pain in her chest from where she'd been pierced now a fading ache. All of her hurts from the past few hours were no longer as present. The laugh returned, filled with malice and disbelief. "Your daughter died so you broke the world?" Whatever hesitation or contemplation had been plaguing Tenhaim before he threw the Blade was gone. He stood, hands on broad hips, laughing at Jarah--mocking her pain. "I would have hoped," he said, swaggering toward her, "to at least have seen some worthwhile reason for making this world a ragged shell of its past self. If you'd done it for, say, money or power, I could understand that. But a little girl?" He made a crude sound. "There's more sport in making a girl than having one, and you could've made another one if you hadn't been so drastic." The implications that he was making made her head swim and Jarah's heart began to pound more forcefully. "She was my daughter," said Jarah, her voice cracked and dry. Tenhaim stalked closer, stooping down to retrieve the Blade. "Yeah, I got that much. We all saw what happened." He shook his head and smirked. "I really didn't think it would be such a pathetic motivation, that's all. I'm disappointed in you, Jarah." Walking toward the pool while she tried to get up, Honu at her side to help her, Tenhaim continued, "But I guess I can't be too upset about that. I mean, the result is pretty clear. If you want to ruin everything for everyone, stab this stupid thing into the ichor of an Invoked goddess--or god, I'd assume." Jarah pulled away from Honu's assisting arm. "You killed my daughter," she hissed. Seeing the woman now, she was older than in Jarah's memory--no surprise, that--but she also understood something that she hadn't before: Honu, whose religion had always been irrelevant to Jarah, was part of the Terminus Cult. "Don't touch me." Jarah wished she had the energy to kill Honu right there, but though she no longer suffered the pain of her injuries, whatever had happened that had pulled the past out of her had drained all of her energy reserves. Jarah couldn't even regain her feet; she had to settle with resting on her knees. "This has been an incredible day. I'm glad I didn't kill you before," Tenhaim said as he stood at the lip of the pool. "Your memory there put a lot of pieces together for me that I didn't fully understand." He chuckled. "I was originally thinking that this pool was part of the bowels of the planet. Now I see that it's actually a vestige of the Breaking of the World--this is the ichor from Lythra that was caught up in the original blast that came from the Blade." He nodded when he saw her confused expression. "Oh, yes, I knew that there had been some sort of explosion. It rearranged some of the land, caused a massive earthquake…and even this place here." "What do you want with us now? Why don't you do what you were thinking of doing and be done with it?" asked Honu, her jaw set and her eyes fiery. Jarah drew in a breath. What was Honu trying to do? Get them killed sooner? The longer he mumbled to himself, the more time she had to regain her energy. Though, at the rate she was going, Jarah doubted she'd be able to do anything for some days. "I…I don't know," said Tenhaim. He had replaced the Blade into its sheath and then tucked it into his sash again. The guards stared at Jarah in distrust. Rihn lay in the same position, inert. "I like to savor rare moments, yes?" He drew a finger across his eye. "It's revenge…" He paused. "My eye." Jarah looked up at him, surprised at the awe in his voice. Then she saw what he realized--his eye was whole, returned. A scar still traced where her dagger had slit him, but it wasn't nearly as clear as it had been when she'd arrived in the cavern. Her injuries were gone, too, though still vestigial pains let her know where she'd been healed. Was it the Blade that had done that? Clearly, something about the Blade was special--but she already knew that. And if she were healed, and so was Tenhaim, then that might mean that Rihn… Before she knew what was happening, Tenhaim was on the ground. In his marveling over what happened to his face, he had drifted too close to Rihn, who now lashed out with his legs, toppled the large man to the cavern floor. The sound of Tenhaim's air rushing out of his lungs made Jarah smile, if only a little. Rihn was on the slumlord in a moment, punching and kicking and grappling for the Blade that was underneath Tenhaim's girth. The guards reacted instantly, jumping forward to stop Rihn's attack. Honu leveled her gunbow and triggered it, sending an explosive bolt toward the guard on the left. The man took the shot to the shoulder, spinning around and crying out in pain as he dropped to the ground. Rihn saw the charging guard and jumped free of Tenhaim, moving away from the slashing qiang. He stumbled back a few paces until he was even with Jarah. He bent down to help her to her feet. "You've looked better," he said, picking up one of the discarded butterfly swords while gently lifting her. "You're at about your best level," retorted Jarah. Her knees bent strangely and only Rihn's presence kept her from toppling. For his part, Tenhaim's guard had helped him to his feet. Blood trickled from a cut on his lip. "You have made a mistake, Rihn." "I'm not a man who makes solid choices, Tenahim." "Clearly." Tenhaim gestured at Kimhan, who was still bound and gagged on the floor. "Kill the girl." "No!" shouted Jarah, raising one hand as if that could stop the inevitable. It was happening again--her useless denial, the approaching death to a little girl whom she had promised to protect. The anger was strong, was hot, was galvanizing. Jarah stumbled forward, using her hands to keep herself upright as she sprinted forward. There wasn't anything in her body, yet she pushed herself onward. She had to…she couldn't fail again. Tenhaim easily intercepted her, wrapping a large arm around Jarah's waist and pinning her arms as he did so. Jarah tried to scream, but she'd done too much in running the few paces forward she had. It was over. "Bring the girl here," demanded the slumlord, wrenching Jarah about. "Let Jarah see the light leave Kimhan's eyes. I don't know why I kept that stupid Akathar for so long, but I can at least extract some pleasure from her death." Jarah struggled feebly. Behind her, she heard Rihn charge; effortlessly, Tenhaim kicked out, knocking Rihn down with a cough and a curse. "Don't insult me, Rihn. You may be a worthwhile teka, but you're not much of a fighter." "Honu," gurgled Rihn, "help!" The guard dragged the resisting Kimhan in front of Jarah. "Don't count on her, Rihn," Tenhaim said with a snort. "She's as eager for this girl to die as I am. Aren't you, Honu?" Jarah's mind whirled. Had she been right originally? Was Honu a traitor? Then she realized the truth: As a member of the Terminus Cult, Honu had only one reason for wanting the Blade, for being involved at all. The world wasn't broken enough. Anger at herself for having believed Honu at all, as well as fury for the past transgression, and now again for her failure to help--it was almost too much. She choked and writhed, a second wind giving her strength, Jarah kicked out. The action took the guard by surprise, who lurched off balance when Jarah struck her. With a shriek, she splashed into the pool where she promptly sank while struggling to tear off her armor. She failed. Tenhaim, also surprised, loosened his grip just enough that Jarah was able to stomp down on his booted foot hard enough to hear it crack. Shoving him off her with as much righteous anger as she could, Jarah snagged the Blade free from his sash as the slumlord fell, gripping his injured foot with one hand. Without hesitating, Jarah swiped at the ropes holding Kimhan, the Blade slicing through the hemp as easily as if it were thread. Jarah tugged the gag free from her mouth and then wrapped the little girl in a hug. "I promised you you'd be safe with me. I promised you." "Mama," said Kimhan, her voice choked with anxious tears. "You came. You came." Jarah held Kimhan at arm's length as if she were reading the girl's face. Now that she looked at her again, in light of the memories she'd had, Kimhan didn't just look like Lillah. She looked exactly like Lillah the moment that Lythra had tugged her into the sky. Jarah's heart stuttered. "Wait," she said, hesitant to believe despite wanting desperately to do so. "Wait, you're…you are my Lillah, aren't you?" Kimhan sniffed away some of her tears. "Yes, mama. I'm back." Many Years Ago Jarah looked her daughter in the eye and said, "Remember, child: The Gods are under our control." Lillah stared, her pale face tear- and sweat-streaked. She swallowed back her fear. "Yes, mama." Jarah smiled, her heart breaking. Lillah's bravery was strong, despite her few years. She was on her first birth. How many mothers could say that their child was truly their own? How had those seven years gone so quickly? Jarah still thought of Lillah as a babe, nestled against her breast and sleeping the emphatic sleep of the newborn. Lillah had been a bright, happy child, a streak of light in the darkness of a world falling apart. The Unraveling had happened; the End of Times. The end of the world. Lillah had been born in time to see that. That she would stand strong against that reality made Jarah's matronly heart swell with pride. Overhead, the sky--already a prism of dark colors, each clashing among violent black clouds--seemed to crumble. "There's another dead," she said, stepping out from beneath the rock, worry thick in her heart. Dying now meant she would never make it back to the world. They had too little time left. If the world broke, no one could ever return. That was the cold reality. The broken sky quivered, then began to realign itself. Wind tore about her and Lillah, nearly knocking them to the grass-covered hillside as it congealed into a solid form. "Lythra," Jarah whispered, shocked, the Goddess of Despair feeling an apt choice at this moment. "Who is controlling you?" She looked at token on her vial, clicking it through the options. Some of the sigils were gray, an indication that the deity was already in the mortal realm. One of them was blood-red. Her hand trembled. Lillah looked at her with fear and worry. "They killed Kurnos," she said to her daughter, her voice hoarse. "Don't you mean dismissed?" asked Lillah. She had learned much from her mother in their short years together. She knew enough that gods didn't die...usually. "Deicide," said Jarah. "The killing of the gods." "Who would kill the gods or goddesses?" asked Lillah, a streak of blood on her forehead congealing in the cut from when a piece of a boulder exploded beneath the theopolemic between Tlemnon and Anylla. They had been fortunate to escape to this place in the steppes--far enough from where most of the fighting was happening. Jarah glanced up at Lythra, who now had enough air to form three legs. This was no normal Invocation: There were multiple teka pulling the Goddess of Despair here. "Those who want to stop reincarnation, love. Those who think we deserve only one life, and a short one at that." Lillah's eyes diamonded with tears. "Why?" "That much, my love, I cannot understand myself." Jarah watched Lythra's claws shimmer into a windy reality. While she could only guess how many teka were operating together--and how much ichor they had claimed to be able to manifest Lythra this way--Jarah knew that the deities would remain for less time. The teka involved would likely die to keep Lythra there. That kind of devotion could only be found in one religion: The Terminus Cult. They were keen on stopping the constant recycling of souls. Only by keeping all of humanity in the AfterWorld--or so they believed--could peace ever be permanently attained. Fortunately for her, Jarah had a way to stop them… The earth to Jarah's left split with a gut-watering crack. Lillah almost fell. Jarah grabbed her daughter, steadying her. "Stay close to me," she said. Lillah nodded against her mother's side, eyes closed. About them, the wind howled. "I'm scared!" she shouted. "I know!" Jarah gave her a squeeze. "Stay strong for me. We'll find shelter--" Before she could finish her poor excuse for a promise, the crack that had opened near them surged. The ground roiled with what looked like maggots, all a fiery orange. They spasmed, pulverizing the stones nearby. It sounded like a pot of grease sizzling, only louder. Dust drifted up from each new abuse, only to whip away toward Lythra. The Goddess of Despair--where terror and grief intersected--had finished her formation. Jarah remembered then, the first thing she'd learned as a teka: When mortals fought, creation died. Someone had brought out Orgos, God of Rage, his size and power more than she had ever seen done. Whoever was fighting the Terminus Cult was equally committed. A guttural groan tore through the air, louder than the whirling wind or the crushing rocks. In a burst of sound that she felt more than heard, Jarah and Lillah slipped and tumbled over, landing in a painful heap on a stony precipice. Like a mound of writhing snakes, each a searing orange that turned and writhed on top of each other, Orgos rose to engage with his hated enemy, Lythra. Of course, he only hated her because the different teka insisted he did. The two would fight because they were forced to. There was nothing more powerful than fate or a teka, so far as a deity was concerned. Jarah reached about to the small of her back. There, tucked in tightly on her belt, was the Blade. If she could just find one of the teka Invoking the deities and spill their blood on that Blade, she would break the connection. It would liberate the gods and save the world. At least, that was the assumption. She had cornered more than one theologian to demand if her hypothesis was correct. Most thought she was right; some thought it would do nothing. A few thought it impossible--that the goddess or god would intervene to protect the teka. Some argued it would destroy the world, an idea that made Jarah laugh. With the Unraveling happening anyway, what did they stand to lose? Kill the teka, kill the god… Deicide. Jarah swallowed. She'd never done that before. Lythra reached out with one of Her right hands and grabbed Orgos. Her left claw sharpened and drove itself into Orgos' main mass. The Goddess of Despair wrenched her claw free--a two-pronged claw with a joint in the middle at least as tall as Jarah--tearing a gash in Orgos' writhing body. A spray of orange worms and the dark ichor of a god cascaded down, drenching the area with its viscous fluids. Jarah gasped and covered her head, the heat from the ichor burning at her flesh. In a panic, Jarah grabbed Lillah and hurled herself from the rocky precipice, leaving the verdure behind her to melt in the puddle of a God's blood. Not too far away, Jarah had crossed a shallow stream to get to where she thought she and Lillah might be safe. She returned to that same stream now, splashing in to quench the stinging pain. Her fur-lined hat slipped off her head. The thick fibers of the fur had caught a great deal of the scarring ichor, protecting much of her face. The large overskirt that went from shoulders to her knees likewise absorbed the danger. She had not put her hands back into their leather gloves after using her token--a mistake she now suffered for. The pain in her hands glowed, and she could swear she heard her skin hiss. A quick glance to Lillah showed that she was untouched; her mother had shielded her from the acidic blood. The water calmed the pain and washed the ichor away easily. Lillah was crying, clearly scared by what had just happened. Standing up from the stream, Jarah felt much of her outer clothing slough off, molting into the stream with a gurgle as the ichor choked in the water. She ignored it. The cold bite of the wind made her teeth chatter. "Don't worry, my sweet. We'll solve this. Come, they can't be far." As the theopolemic clashed, she and her daughter scurried to find one of the teka in control. Theomancy relied on proximity emotion. The teka had to be close. Out of the corner of her eye, Jarah saw Orgos lose another chunk of himself to Lythra's claws--her other five hands swung down in punishing arcs, smashing away more and more of Orgos' form. Lythra lunged at him, her two forefeet landing with an earth-trembling crash. Her human-like hands reached out, grasping. The large claw, each snap sending a miniature gale outward, thundered as it swung in. Orgos opened a hole in Himself, letting the claw pass through uninhibited. Not connecting with her target threw Lythra off balance, and she fell into Orgos' multi-tendril embrace. Hot pseudopodia, like flaming tongs of a whip, spun about the Goddess of Despair, catching themselves in her wind while melting her. The hole in Orgos' center sealed tightly, burning through her arm and sending the claw crashing toward the earth in a mist of dark ichor. The ground vibrated with the Goddess' pain and fury. Hands, each finger longer than a horse, grasped at Orgos' amorphous being, tearing away chunks in geysers of ichor. Not too far away, armies raged, cannon belched, gunarchers fletched, and soldiers' qiang pierced through ranks of enemies. On this hillock, only the howling of the wind, the mourning of the gods and the tremors of their power could be felt. Lillah tugged at her hand, pointing. "Momma! Look!" Jarah turned, staring in the indicated direction. There, nestled in a nearby valley, was a collection of people, dressed in acolytes' robes, standing in a circle. In the center was a large saucer, filled to the brim with ichor, which simmered as they Invoked the necessary emotions. They were controlling one of the deities. "Come on," said Jarah, scurrying forward with her daughter close by. "We can end this." Behind her, she heard Orgos rage. She spared a glimpse over one shoulder and saw a tendril the width and length of a tree formed off to one side, sweeping toward Lythra at a blinding speed. The goddess took the blow with one arm, the limb severing at the shoulder. The mass of whirling colors and wind from which the limbs came shuddered at the impact, and a gush of ichor spiraled away from the lost arm. This limb, too, dissolved in a gush of air upon striking the ground. Puddles of ichor hissed as they bubbled and eroded the battlefield, chewing at rock and grass with equal relish. Orgos' tendril, however, had not finished the attack without damage to it. Where the pseudopod had connected, a massive crack formed, shattering the length of the stiffened form. From each crack jetted more ichor, the dark fluid falling like rain. If she didn't end this quickly, she'd drown in an acidic flood. Redoubling her speed, she charged closer to the ditch where the acolytes huddled. Wind whipped her hair as she ran, making her shiver again; she ignored it--ignored where the ichor had melted through her clothing, leaving sensitive skin exposed, ignored the cold heat in her hands where she could almost feel scars forming. She had to stop it. She had to kill the teka in the act of Invoking a goddess or god. That was the only way. Her only hope. Lillah stumbled, skidding her knee on the ground and crying out. Jarah's momentum was enough that Lillah's hand tore free of her mother's, Jarah taking three large steps before being able to stop. It wasn't much. Only a moment or so. But Lillah's cry broke one of the teka's concentration--they were now almost in their midst, there was no way they couldn't see the would-be attackers as they came down the hill--and Jarah saw an instantaneous decision flicker over the female teka's face. The hand of a goddess--the palm bigger than an emperor's tent--stretched toward Lillah, the edges shimmering as air created the form. "No!" It was a worthless word shouted more to deny reality than stop what was about to happen. Jarah reached out, straining to get to her daughter. Lillah held her hands out. Their fingers almost touched. Then the hand closed around her and Jarah felt the air rush free of her lungs as her daughter was swept up into the mouth of a goddess. The swirling vortex that enveloped her little form soon bore Lillah from sight, the wind rushing past Jarah also freeing tears from them and robbing her mouth of air. She felt the pressure of suffocation pushing into her chest. Panic and despair--the delightful flavor that Lythra so relished--surging through her. Lillah disappeared from sight. Jarah dropped to the ground, her grief so sharp that she each body-wracking cry stabbed her heart. Lillah was gone. Dead. Stolen. As much as Lythra relished the despair rolling through Jarah's body, it was nothing compared to the surge of rage that Orgos suddenly received from the same source. Orgos lurched forward, unhinging his jaws. With a mouth large enough to swallow half a dozen horses, Orgos bit through Lythra's turbulent midsection, tearing the windy iteration of Lythra in half. Yet the goddess didn't disappear--her teka wouldn't dismiss her. That meant the teka who had ordered Lythra to kill Lillah were still trying to get the goddess to fight. They were nearby, just behind her… Without pausing to think, to consider, Jarah regained her feet, unsheathed the Blade--that familial heirloom about which she had heard so much--and dove at the hunkered teka. They were distracted, trying to get their goddess to obey when they died. The first lost her throat, the second was unseamed about the belly. The third lost a hand when he put it up to stop Jarah's bloody retribution, then was kicked into the ichor-holding saucer. His body instantly started to sizzle as he screamed and writhed in the torment of his body being dissolved. In a pique of fury, she drove the Blade deep into the man's chest, pinning him in the large saucer. Ichor splashed over her, over the Blade, over the man. She didn't care. The remaining three teka fell back, their concentration too shattered to matter to Lythra, who lay on the ground, hemorrhaging her ichor onto the steppes. Two began to run, their eyes wide with panic. "Come on!" said one to the final teka, a woman who stared at Jarah with contemplative eyes. The woman took a step back when her friend tugged on her sleeve. "Leave her, Honu. It's over. Let's go!" The woman called Honu, without breaking eye contact with Jarah, retreated a half dozen steps before turning and running away. Sobs overcame her exhaustion and pain, and Jarah sank to her knees, hot tears coursing down her now-scarred cheeks. A wordless scream of rage at the injustices of the world broke from her, a cry that seemed to echo and reverberate over the battlefield. A dim sense that she needed to protect herself, to wipe away the ichor, pushed its way forward. It was only then that she saw the Blade. Driven almost up to its hilt in the sternum of the dead teka, strings of blood and ichor swirled up its blade and handle. From wherever the ichor touched the green metal of the Blade, a light began to glow. The body, rapidly melting with a horrendous stench to accompany it, sank lower. Jarah swallowed, looking over at the corpse of a goddess as it, too, began to glow--no, almost burst--with the same quality of light. A loud crack, one that was powerful enough to make her think that the world had just broken in two, shattered the air. The Blade billowed out a bright light, and then Jarah could remember nothing else. "Blood and souls," shouted Jarah, "what are you doing here?"
"Don't swear around me," said Honu, who heaved the cumbersome weapon in her arms and pointed it at the remaining guards. "And how many of you want to get what he just received?" she asked, jerking her head toward the smoldering, bleeding corpse of Scar. One gritted his teeth. A couple of others shifted nervously. The rest remained stoic. "Were you expecting them to run?" asked Jarah as she got to her feet, picking up the closest butterfly sword as she did so. "I was hoping for that, yeah," said Honu. She ratcheted the grip on the weapon, and Jarah saw a new bolt of ammo drop into the barrel. "This thing hurts my shoulder." She pulled the lever and the gunbow thrummed. Whatever fired was faster than Jarah could see as one guard's head disappeared with an explosive sound. The remaining guards decided to run at that point. Jarah sagged in relief as she watched them go. Then she straightened and spun toward her. "You betrayed us." "Excuse me?" asked Honu, her expression one of complete surprise. "I would think a thank you would be better response to what I just did than accusations." "Tenhaim was already there when we arrived! He knew where we would go. You disappear, then the man who's hunting me shows up exactly where you knew I would be. Of course you betrayed us!" Honu made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. "My girl, that is entirely unbecoming of you. Tenhaim got the map and the legend when he raided my home. That's how he knew where you'd be." Rihn had been wrong, then? Well, so had Jarah; the explanation they'd invented had made sense at the time. But it didn't make sense that Honu would betray Jarah, Rihn, and Kimhan to their enemy only to rescue Jarah from the same. Jarah bit back the anger she felt at seeing Honu, resisting the feeling that she had been wronged somehow. "Oh. Well…" She paused, confusion returning. "Wait. How in the name of my ancestor's blood did you get here, then?" "I told you to stop swearing around me. And the answer is simple: I walked." "Where have you been?" Honu shrugged as she slung the gunbow over her shoulder. She had abandoned her earlier clothing, wearing now something more pragmatic--boots, leather pants, a tunic, and a vest, off of which dangled what Jarah could only assume were extra pieces of ammo for "After you abandoned me in the Underground--" "We had no idea where you were!" "--I made it to another safehouse. I kept this," and Honu patted the gunbow's stock affectionately, "that I, uh, borrowed from one of Tenhaim's men. Then I waited, watching the compound for when you'd return." "You knew we'd come back here?" Honu nodded. "The Blade was in the north, wasn't it?" Jarah gritted her teeth. "Yes. But it didn't quite go as smoothly as we had hoped." "Well, I realized after we had gone our separate ways that the map was telling me one additional thing." "Oh?" Honu pointed down. "This place." "What about it?" "It's where we can heal the Breaking of the World, Jarah." Jarah frowned. "Here?" "Come," said Honu, gesturing. "We need to find Kimhan. That's why you're here, I assume?" Jarah nodded, surprised at the woman's astute reading of the situation. "Good. We just need to get to Tenhaim's inner sanctum." Jarah rolled her eyes as she scooped up the remaining weapon she'd dropped and sheathed them both with an easy movement. "He would have a place he called his 'inner sanctum'. The guy's pretentious as--" Shouts from behind them cut her off. "Blood and souls," swore Jarah. "They went for reinforcements." "Let's go," said Honu, echoing Jarah's own thoughts. The fighters who had guarded this area had put themselves between the hallway and a narrow staircase. Without discussion, the two women descended the stairs as quickly as they could. Jarah kept her balance with her left hand on the tightly spiraling wall; Honu followed immediately after. "The Breaking of the World happened far to the north," said Honu by way of explanation. "Yeah, I'm aware of that," said Jarah, her breath sharper than she'd expected thanks to the ache in her side. "We established that." "The Breaking tore a rift in the world, much of which has healed over time. One place, however, it hasn't." "Let me guess," said Jarah as they reached the bottom of the stairwell. "That place is in Tenhaim's compound." "Precisely." "Convenient." "Purposeful. He built this place specifically so that he would be able to keep the world broken." The foot of the stairs led to a straightforward hallway, though this one was hewn from the living stone itself. Sconces lit this area, too, which Jarah thought fortuitous. The two women proceeded down the hallway side by side, their footsteps echoing. "So how do we fix the world?" "First," said Honu, her breath heavier from the exertion, "we need the Blade." "Tenhaim has it." Honu's lips tightened. "Okay, well…we also need Kimhan." "She's down here somewhere, under Tenhaim's guard." "And we need this place," finished Honu. "Which is underneath Tenhaim's compound. So I don't need you as much as I need Tenhaim, apparently." The hallway curved and turned, thoroughly confusing Jarah as they jogged. Soon she didn't know which way she was headed. Her only option was to continue forward and hope for the best. It was, she reflected, one of the worst plans she'd ever had to follow. Voices filtered toward them, ghostly in the echoes of the stone hallway. Jarah put her hand out and a finger to her lips. The two of them prowled forward, Honu making more noise than Jarah and eliciting more than one sharp glare from the latter. The hallway spilled out into a large cavern, the roof of which stretched up into a darkness that Jarah couldn't penetrate. A large pool took up a fair portion of the cavern, glowing an unsettling blue color and providing the only illumination. Yet it was enough to see that, in one sense, at least, Rihn had been right: Everything that Tenhaim needed was there in the compound. Rhin lay in a heap near the lip of the pool. Kimhan, bound tightly and gagged, was under guard by two of Tenhaim's fighters--a woman and a man, each of about equal size, both armed with qiang that they held level to her throat--and stared at the pool with naked terror on her face. And Tenhaim sat on a stone, his back to the women, casually tossing the sheathed Blade into the air and catching it by the handle. "You ladies took your time, you know," he said softly as he tossed the Blade again. He stood slowly, tucking the blade into the sash that ran across his expansive gut. He wore no shirt, the thickness of his arms and coarse carpet of hair on his chest easily visible. His boots, scuffed and worn, scraped the stone floor as he turned about to face Jarah and Honu. "When my guards let me know that you were here, that you had defeated those I'd assigned to keep this place safe…well, I knew that at the very least I had in some ways underestimated you." He stared at them. Jarah had expected a scowl or glower, some sort of menacing expression on his face. Instead, an emptiness tugged at the lines of his mouth and his entire mien was one of contemplation. For some reason, that made her even more worried than she had been upon entering the room. Fear made water of her knees and she could hardly hear for the sound of her heart pounding in her ears. Her hands, sweaty and shaking, grabbed the last two vials. With a movement more automatic than deliberate, she popped the token off the top of one, replacing it with a needle plunger, all while keeping her eyes fixed on Tenhaim. "You can do so if you wish, but remember, girl, I can siphon off whatever emotion you have." He gestured at the unconscious Rihn. "The man is a better teka than I had given him credit for. Maybe it's because he was fighting for something this time." He said this last piece more to himself than to Jarah. He returned his attention to the women, his eyes clicking over to Honu. "And I admire your resourcefulness." "Your magnanimity is touching," said Honu through a tightened jaw. "Winning does that for me," said Tenhaim, though his brow was still creased with worry. "But…well, it is hard for me to know how to feel." "We don't care about your feelings, Tenhaim," snapped Jarah. She was too far--much too far--from Kimhan. Rihn lay between the two, but the cavern was large and the distance too much for her to be able to conceive of any attack that wouldn't lead to Kimhan's immediate death. The guards could probably dispatch Rihn before Jarah got there, too. Her throwing arm was good, but not when hurling a butterfly sword. Maybe one of her throwing daggers could do some good, but, again, not from this distance. The guards were watching everything warily--any movement would be a sign that she was about to start something. It felt impossible. "Well, I suppose that doesn't surprise me," said Tenhaim lugubriously. His attitude shift made Jarah even more suspicious. She took a cautious step forward, trying to take advantage of Tenhaim's distraction. He didn't seem to notice as he said, "I have been thinking a lot about what it means to have you all here. To have finally decided what to do." He shook his head. "After so much effort, so much planning, so much pain…to have it all come to an end is…hard." Jarah shot Honu a questioning look. Honu, who had at some point unslung her gunbow and held it at the ready, shook her head: She didn't know what he was talking about either. They both took another step forward. "Maybe it is, in part, because there is still a question in my mind--many questions in my mind, really." He looked at Jarah directly as the teka closed more of the distance between them. He didn't react, so she took another. He still stared at her, almost as if his thoughts were more real than the danger he was in with a very unhappy teka and Honu coming closer. That made her worry spike. She kept glancing from Tenhaim to the guards, waiting for some agreed-upon signal to act, for the tension to break. Her spine tightened with the stress and she felt as though her shoulders would snap from the strain. "I think, Jarah, it is time that you told us what you know," said Tenhaim, his eyes focusing on her with a startling ferocity. "I'm not telling you anything," said Jarah, still unsure of what he was planning. "Yes," said Tenhaim in a voice that almost sounded…sad. "You will." In a blur of movement, he tore the Blade from its sheath on his waist and hurled it at Jarah. A sharp pain in her gut let her know that she'd been hit. Her air slipped from her lungs like a thief from a home and she sank to her knees. Nothing she did could bring back the air. "Tell us," said Tenhaim as he effortlessly dodged Honu's gunbow bolt, "how you Broke the World." The pain arced through her, making her writhe. Then, just as abruptly as if time had rewound itself, everything slid away--all of her worry, her pain, her concern, her distress--and the only thing in the world she wanted to do was remember. A tiny, almost impossible to hear part of her mind whispered, "You are back with the Blade! You may remember now." Jarah opened her mouth and began to speak. A direct attack against the compound was not likely to succeed: Not only was it painfully (and loudly) obvious that the place was being invaded, but she only had her three remaining vials, her butterfly swords, and a lot of anger. And Kinn was unavailable--having been Invoked so recently, she would have to remain in Theopolis for some time before being capable of returning, to say nothing of how much damage she'd sustained. Healing took time, as much in the Place of the Gods as in the place of death that Jarah called Gallhin.
Her mind raced as she sprinted toward the ruined side of the compound. To Tenhaim's credit, the wall that she and Tranast had knocked down already had a makeshift protection on it and the rubble had been cleared away. Cursing her blood for the ill luck, she paused and considered her options while trying to get her breath back. The planks of wood that covered the opening were put in solidly, not moving at all when she gave them a testing pull. Gritting her teeth, she felt about on her belt for whatever might come in handy. Little presented itself. She looked at the three vials--she could have sworn she'd had more, but maybe her memory was hazy--and rubbed the tokens on top, identifying the available gods on each one by feel alone. The Goddess of Apprehension might be an option, but the God of Admiration certainly wouldn't. And Anylla, the Goddess of Serenity was as useless to her as a rotten apple. Wanting to scream but knowing it pointless, Jarah started a jog about the compound, looking for a way in. In the distance, she could hear the screams of gods as they battled; she was wasting time. Moving along, one hand dragging on the wall, she at last found what looked like a sturdy enough crack in the brickwork that she could get a toehold. Hauling herself up quickly, forcing her tired limbs to move despite her own exhaustion. Once, the grip crumbled beneath her fingers, but not enough to send her down. Soon she was beneath the sloped awning of the roof. It took another few minutes for her to finally get to the top. Scouting out a potential path, all while remaining low so as to remain out of sight of the scrambling and terrified thugs in Tenhaim's employ, Jarah paused to catch her breath. She was almost there… A teeth-rattling crash broke over her as the wall--in the same section where she had broken through with Tranast--caved in beneath the forms of the dueling gods. "Well, now there's an opening," she said under her breath. Orgos had broken through with Vellit on top of him, leaving a smoldering hole in the compound's wall. The gods grappled but slowly, their ichor surging out of deep wounds. Tenhaim and Rihn were pushing the gods toward death--neither seemed willing to concede. The gods, as a result, moved lethargically, biting, punching, or otherwise battling though more like two fighters at the end of their stamina than fresh ones. Jarah wanted to watch, but the distraction was too good--Tenhaim's people scrambled, abandoning weapons, bumping into each other, and all searching out some form of shelter. Easing herself off the lip of the roof, Jarah alighted on an open windowsill and slid into the compound itself. The easy part completed, she set out for Kimhan. The girl was likely in the most secure place, which, according to the map that Honu had given her--or, more particularly, Rihn had provided and Honu had passed along--was beneath Tenhaim's quarters. From what she could tell, she needed to head to her right, as well as descend. A difficult proposition. She stood in an armory now, with only the moonlight giving her any help. Prowling forward, she passed rows of weapons--some of which she recognized by their shadowy shapes, others were foreign to her--until she arrived at the doorway. The sound of running people made it difficult to know if it were safe to leave. Peeking her head around the corner, she saw--much to her relief--that not only was the coast clear, but illuminated, too. Sconces of torchlight threw flickering shadows on the walls, allowing her to navigate the halls--of this section, at least--without much effort. She had to move quickly, yet the quieter she was, the better chance she had of making it to Kimhan. The tension made her grit her teeth and wish there were a God of Frustration into whom she could pour her emotion. Then again, if there were, Jarah would never have to stretch far into her emotional memory to Invoke him and she'd be pulling him from Theopolis on a regular basis. For that imaginary god's sake, she was glad he didn't exist. The hall floors were a dark hardwood, while yellow plaster coated the walls. Ornate pillars made of ochrewood punctuated the distance, while sliding doors opened into the sundry rooms she passed. Wall-scrolls interspersed the sconces. The entire place screamed an opulence that felt obscene after the end of the world. Jarah found her way to the ground floor without difficulty, taking the broad staircase that led down by following a straight line. The fact that the compound was an enormous square made it easy for her to feel confident in choosing a path--eventually, she'd find the place. The biggest concern was if she'd find the place in time. Jogging lightly on her feet, she skittered past a couple of running guards, hid just before being spotted by another set, and made it a point to avoid the exit to the inner courtyard, where the now-curious fighters gathered to watch the theopolemic resolve itself. For some time, Jarah had worried that she would have to do something drastic or terribly clever to get to Kimhan. She needn't have bothered; it was clear where the girl was, because the fighters who stood guard were staring resolutely at her when she arrived at the stairwell. "I'm looking for someone," she said, gripping a butterfly sword in her left hand and a vial in her right. "And I think you're in my way." She tried to make her words sound sincere and deadly, but the honest truth was, she didn't know what she was going to do against seven well-armed guards, none of whom looked like the type who were interested in abandoning their post because of one woman, even if she were a teka. "We were told to take you alive," said the closest man, a large fellow with a scar that shot down over his milky white eye. "You killed Master's brother, though. He was my friend." "Oh no," said Jarah softly enough that only she heard it. "So you'll be alive," said the man, putting out a hand to his fellow guards, gesturing for them to stand down. "But only in the most technical of senses." Jarah clicked the token, seeking the right emotion. Panic would be a good one, but there was no Goddess of Panic, either. That feeling faded when Scar reached up and brandished his arm. "You have nice muscles," she observed, her mouth dry. She took a gentle step to one side, not sure of what else to do. Scar grinned, then slammed his fist into his bicep. Confusion turned into dismay as Jarah realized he'd just injected ichor into his arm. "That was going to be my trick," she said as she took a hesitant step backward. Scar's veins blackened beneath his coppery skin. Dark rings formed around his eyes and his teeth turned black. With a guttural cry he lurched forward, far faster than a human had a right to move. Jarah dodged away from the attack more out of luck and instinct than any skill on her part. She landed hard on her side, both sword and vial skittering away in opposite directions. A movement from the corner of her eye made her thrash away, rolling free from a vicious punch that cracked the floor where Scar's fist landed. Using the momentum of the roll to pop onto her feet, Jarah whipped out her second sword. It wasn't enough against an Infused. That Tenhaim could employ a teka capable of Infusing ichor was, perhaps, the greatest testament to the man's power and money. What Tenhaim used for Scar's inspiration Jarah could never know, but she did understand that she was going to die--and soon--if she didn't think of something. Unfortunately for her, there wasn't anything that sprang to mind. She slashed forward, but the blade sparked against Scar's armor without doing much besides make some noise. She caught a glimpse of the smirks on the faces of Scar's fellow guards. Her best bet was to Invoke a deity, of course, and that would probably change their posture of scorn. However, at this particular moment, she was too desperately fighting for her life to be able to think of the right goddess or god to make a difference. A blur that proved to be a fist caught her in the side. Her light armor cracked--her ribs screamed but held--and all the air in her body flew out of her mouth with a spray of spit. Jarah crashed against the wall, the second sword likewise dropping from her nerveless fingers. The distinct crunching sound--and an accompanying hiss as the ichor ate into the sole of Scar's boot--let her know what he had done to her dropped vial. She only had two left, but her mind was still empty. She needed divine intervention and had no way of Invoking it. His joints creaking, Scar towered over her. Dark rivulets of sweat coursed down his tightly-muscled forearms. His ruined eye almost glowed with an unnatural light. A feral grin of his black teeth stretched across his face. "This ought to be fun," he said, fingers clawed and anxious. Then his chest burst outward, blood, bone, and armor spraying out from a suddenly-appearing hole. Ichor-laced blood boiled as it splattered on the wall behind Jarah and as it ate tiny holes through some of her clothes. Scar stumbled, then fell to his side, his face slowly losing its dark undertones as the ichor-laced blood poured out of him and onto the lacquered floor. Jarah blinked in surprise--as did the remaining six guards. Shifting her gaze from the gory mess next to her, Jarah looked up at the entrance to the hallway. Honu stood there, a smug smile on her face. Not for the first time, Jarah thanked her own blood for the headwrap. It kept most of her hair from blowing into her face as Kinn took them across the city. Riding in the palm of a goddess' hand, while the veins of the city pulsed with people reacting--usually by running away from the goddess--to their passage proved a greater thrill than she had anticipated. While she was able to tamp down the positive emotions, thus keeping her control over Kinn, Jarah quietly exulted at the feeling. To be above everyone, to see Gallhin in such a different light, was an incredible feeling. As they passed the pagoda near the center of the city, she marveled at what she saw. Who else could claim the same?
For his part, Rihn held onto Kinn's thumb with both arms, his face a mask of fear. His beard flapped in the wind, sometimes flying into his eyes. He didn't seem to care. The trip was brief--the plumage of white feathers that made up Kinn's legs coasted over the buildings with an easy smoothness that belied the goddess' domain--and the compound came into view more rapidly than Jarah had expected. Seeing Tenhaim's home again made her stomach tighten with fear and anger. The latter she pumped into the goddess, while the former went into her memories, to be tapped at a later time. She would never have gone back, but Kimhan had wormed her way into Jarah's heart. The girl deserved to be freed from the slumlord…that and Jarah had no problem with killing off Tenhaim. Not that she would have made it a point to do so had he left them alone, but now that he seemed intent on pursuing her, well…Jarah would rather be dead than hunted; if it meant some peace, killing him was what she was going to do. She still felt reluctant to do so: After all, the guard she'd slashed upon bursting into the city had only taken a superficial cut across the chest. Assuming he got some help, he would be fine. Probably. Jarah set the sense of worry about what it meant that she had abandoned her desires to limit death, focusing on the moment. They would have to move quickly--easier for her now, as the ride not only gave her some time to catch her breath, but the elation also wiped away the vestigial exhaustion--because soaring into the compound on the hand of a goddess was not the most subtle of approaches. Jarah turned to Rihn, some words of command ready on her lips… …only to have them drop, unsaid, as her mind registered what she saw. "Hold on!" she screamed, dropping flat on Kinn's palm. "I am!" shouted back Rihn. Then the collision happened. Hot tendrils of writhing heat whipped through the air as Orgos, God of Rage crashed into the floating form of Kinn, Goddess of Anger. The large, mechanical structures that Kinn used to keep herself airborne melted beneath the onslaught of Orgos. Made from undulating ropes of heat around an ever-shifting core that looked like a human skull, then a mouth, then a skull again, the God of Rage was a force of emotional energy that few people could maintain. It was hot, fast, and ephemeral. Yet Tenhaim controlled the god with a single-minded intensity that took Jarah by surprise. Also a surprise: That Orgos managed to leap onto Kinn with enough height that his teeth could reach her forearm. A massive burst of black ichor erupted from the sudden wound as the hand on which she and Rihn rode was abruptly severed from the rest of the goddess' body. Kinn's keening was high-pitched and omnipresent, it seemed, though Jarah was more worried about what would happen when they hit the ground to really notice it. Ichor dropped in massive puddles, the ichor burning and hissing as it struck the ground. A couple of people screamed as they dissolved beneath the goddess' blood. The goddess' hand fell from too far above the earth for Jarah to be comfortable. At the last moment, in an accidental spasm, the large feathers of Kinn's legs flicked out. The hand landed in them, the momentum shifting from a downward plummet to a sideways skid. Instead of splattering on the ground, they slid down the white plumage, stained black by the bleeding stump, and bumped their way across the street closest to the compound. The walls loomed in front of her. Jarah, unsure of what else she could do, curled more tightly into a ball. They crashed into the wall, breaking down the mortar and stones with a bone-rattling smash. The force of the collision curled Kinn's fingers into a kind of shelter, protecting her and Rihn from most of the falling detritus. Their impromptu sled shuddered to a stop. Dust drifted down, as well as bloody ichor. One drop landed on Jarah's already-injured shoulder, making her his and, despite being more than a little out of sorts, push herself and Rihn out from the tangled mess of pulverized divinity and ruined rock. "Let's never," said Rihn, his hands on his knees and his expression one of utter nausea, "do that again." "Um, Rihn?" "What?" "They know we're here." Rihn looked up to see some of his former comrades rushing toward them, qiang glinting in the moonlight. Behind them, Orgos took another massive bite out of Kinn, who wailed in pain. Jarah dismissed the deity. Orgos roared in fury at being cheated of his prey. "This is why we should have planned," Jarah said, unsheathing her butterfly swords and lowering herself into a fighting position, her shoulder screaming its own pain. "Where's the fun in that?" "Where's the fun in dying?" "You can come back as someone else?" Jarah clucked her tongue. "Not when the world's broken." "You gotta tell me about that," said Rihn, rearing back and throwing a vial--which one, Jarah couldn't tell--at the feet of the approaching fighters. "You know. When you remember." Jarah grunted as the dark swirls of an Invoked deity began to congeal in between them and the Tenhaim guards. Mechanical pillars burst out of the ground, their sundry cogs and wheels spinning furiously as the god grew. And grew. And grew. Jarah, like the guards themselves, stared in open mouthed awe. "Who is that?" she asked as the enormous head--easily the size of a person--rose from the puddle of spilled ichor. The head was shaped like a bronze helmet, save it was empty inside. The broad shoulders, their crenelated shape only adding to the sense that an entire building was somehow erupting, like an exhalation, from the ground, shifted as the god straightened on his multitudinous feet on the bottom of his shaft-like trunk. The guards turned and ran. "That's Vellit," said Rihn, as if it should have been obvious. And, on one hand, Vellit was obvious. "The God of Trust?" asked Jarah, incredulous. "You've never Invoked him?" "No!" "Can't say I'm surprised." Rihn grinned at her, then put a hand to his mouth. Spinning away, he promptly vomited into the rubble they had just extricated themselves from. A moment later, he said, wiping his lips with the back of his hand, "The guards are gone. What should we do now?" As if in response to the question, Orgos flung himself over the wall and crashed against Vellit. The God of Fury took the God of Trust by such surprise that they both tumbled to the ground, their enormous bodies crashing in the large space between the outer wall and the compound proper, though their landing was forceful enough to send shockwaves into Jarah's feet. Plumes of ichor, dirt, and dusty grass arched into the air before drifting back down like a lazy rainfall of filth. "Holy blood of my fathers!" swore Jarah. "Go find Kimhan!" shouted Rihn. "I'll handle this!" "Rihn…" He shot her a furious look. "We won't go anywhere if I can't beat Orgos, and if Tenhaim wants to win, he'll have to focus on me." He waved a hand. "Go! Find Kimhan!" "But--" "How do you think I Invoked Vellit, huh?" She stared at him uncomprehendingly. The two gods writhed on the ground, the metal of Vellit's body heating in white-hot streaks as Orgos struggled to get a grip on the God of Trust. The ground trembled again. Rihn waved his hands. "It's because I realized I had to trust you to fix this. To fix what you broke." He shook his head. "I don't always understand things, but I understand this much: If anyone can fix the world, it's you." He smiled as he began to run toward the combatting gods, reducing the distance between him and the deity so that he could better control Vellit. "I trust you, Jarah. Don't let me down." Then he was gone and Jarah found herself sprinting for all her battered body was worth, back into the compound. Back toward what very well might prove her death. To his credit, Rihn only asked "What? Why?" once before tossing her the weapons she'd left behind and leaping down from the wagon. Together, they began to knock over the tripods on which the torches quietly burned. The first guttered in a puddle of sand. The next extinguished before it hit the ground. The third and fourth found small patches of grass that the flames hungrily licked.
Shouts of dismay from the people in the queue spread as quickly as the fire, and the entire orderly line began to writhe and scatter. Some rushed toward the flames, others ran to the other side of the road. Jarah and Rihn pushed on, knocking over every torch they could. One man tried to stop her, snatching her left arm. He accidentally wrenched her wound. In a flash of pain-inspired anger, she punched the man in the stomach so hard that he vomited, dropping to the ground and holding his middle. "Sorry," she said, returning to her work. She didn't have time to worry about what she'd just done--besides, that had hurt. A minute later, the entire entry was a mass of confused people, panicking horses, and individual, discreet fires. The exhausted horse that had done them such service by hauling them to Gallhin from Nan tore away, the buckboard clattering behind it. Apparently, it wasn't used to being near wild fires. The two guards who were inspecting came running out, shouting out orders and angry demands about what was happening and who was responsible. Rihn didn't need Jarah's anxious gesture: He, too, took advantage of the crowd and bolted for the gate. One guard noticed them and shouted that they stop. They ignored him. Before the guard could do anything, the men who had been approaching from behind--Tenhaim's additional fighters, it seemed--came skidding to a stop in the chaos on the road. Jarah ran as hard as she could, gritting her teeth--which hurt in its own way--against the pain. The gate yawned in front of them, on the other side of the short bridge that connected Gallhin to the mainland, the city's streets visible through the opening. She just had to get in. It was only a few steps. She could make it. The stone bridge echoed beneath her feet. Exhaustion could wait until she was done. Jarah came closer. The portcullis grinned down at her, like a fang-filled smile. She could do it. She had to. Breath tight in her lungs, Jarah sprinted through the opening just as a handful of guards came rushing out to see what was going on. Without pausing, she unsheathed the butterfly swords, holding one in each hand. The first guard didn't know she was coming and fell down, a bright ribbon of blood stretching across his chest. He howled in pain. The second took the hilt to his face, dropping him before he had time to blink. Spinning, Jarah cracked both blades against the third guard's shield, the force of the strike bowling the man over. The fourth guard dropped her spear and let Jarah run past without challenging her. Jarah charged down the street as fast as possible, but she could feel her energy flagging. Rihn joined her, breath heavy. "See? Improvisation's the best way." Jarah didn't dignify that with an answer. They ran, taking different paths, sometimes with Jarah pointing the way, sometimes with Rihn making suggestions. No one stopped them, no one gave chase. It seemed, for the moment, they'd lost their pursuers. "Why…did…they…come?" asked Jarah through painful gasps. Her lungs felt like they were coated in broken glass. The taste of blood sat heavily in the back of her throat. No matter how hard she tried to breathe in, it never seemed to be enough. Her shoulder ached warmly--she was fairly certain the stab wound was bleeding again. Rihn shook his head. "I…think…they were on…their way…here…anyway." He gulped another couple of breaths. "They probably saw us…and decided to take us immediately…rather than wait…until we came to them." Jarah grimaced. That made sense, at least: Coincidences happened. Leaning against the wall of the alley they'd dodged into, she put her head against the stones, trying her best not to collapse. Exhaustion tugged at her in every conceivable way. Still, she knew that she wasn't done--not by a long shot. "If we hurry," she said after her breathing had somewhat returned to normal, "do you think we can get to the compound before Tenhaim?" Rihn shook his head. "I doubt it. That's on the southeastern edge of the island. We're here in the north--and we don't have horses." "They got delayed by the mess in front of the bridge." "I doubt that'll make a huge difference." "Then there's nothing we can do." He shook his head. "We can move quickly, since it's the two of us. Faster than when Kimhan is around, at least." "That doesn't make me feel any better." "It wasn't supposed to." Jarah wanted to weep for weariness. Swallowing back her frustration, she took a hesitant step. The break had been too brief; she didn't dare take a longer one. The world swam and swirled in her vision. "I don't think I can…I need more time." She gestured at her arm. "It's slowing me down." "What do you want to do, Jarah?" asked Rihn, his voice testy. "You're the brilliant teka here. We have to cover a couple of miles in less time than it takes horses to gallop there. Assuming the streets are clear--as they'll likely be, since there was just barely a sandstorm here--he'll be there in less than ten minutes." He flicked his fingers, though Jarah didn't know what that was supposed to mean. "At the most. He could get there even faster." Jarah slumped against the wall. "I can barely stand." "Well, I'm not going to carry you." "Why not?" she asked, but the question died almost as soon as she had formulated it. "Wait. Carry me." "No, I said I wouldn't--" "Not you." She fumbled onto the clasps on her belt. Precious few remained her--three, to be precise. But that would be enough, assuming that she had one with the right rune on the token. She pulled a vial free and began clicking through the options. "What are you doing?" asked Rihn, his confusion clear on his battered face. "Getting us a ride." "You're not going to Invoke a deity just to cover some distance!" Rihn hesitated. "Are you?" Jarah returned the first vial, then pulled out the second. "What you don't seem to understand, Rihn," she said, clicking through that selection as well. Inwardly, she cursed the fact that she couldn't ever manage to fit all thirty-two deities' runes on a single token. It would make her life much easier. "What you don't understand is that I'm not going to let Tenhaim have Kimhan. I'm just not." "Who uses a goddess to haul them across a city?" Rihn raised his hands in frustration. "It's just not done!" "But hauling them into the mortal realm so that they can fight for us is done, right? That's their only purpose?" "Sometimes a being only has one reason for existing." "You were carried by a goddess the other day!" Rihn pulled up, surprised. "What? I was?" Jarah nodded. "It's how I got you off the roof. When Kinn was busy frying Rall and his buddies." "You…you, what told her to put you down on the alley floor?" Jarah nodded again. "Huh." Rihn's grunt sounded impressed. "I wondered how you got me out of that." "Well?" She put back the second vial. That didn't have the right deity, either. "Are you going to help me?" "Help you do what?" asked Rihn, reaching to his own pouch of vials. He had three, as well. "Find Kinn." "The one before?" She didn't answer, flicking through the options on her last vial, tipping it so that she could catch some moonlight and read the rune. "Kinn…" Rihn snapped his fingers. "Wait, she's the Goddess of Anger." "I know." "You're angry?" Jarah snapped the token in place, then held it up, triumphant. With more effort than was strictly necessary, she shoved the plunger down, breaking the inner vial and throwing it to the ground. It crashed loudly. "I'm furious." Rihn stopped his story, taking a pull from a cup of water Jarah filled for him. "Talking is thirsty work," he said with a rueful smile.
"Your past is…colorful," said Rihn. "You bet." He shifted. "Now. What about you?" "What about me?" "That was the deal, wasn't it? That you would let me in on how you broke the world?" Jarah shifted, uncomfortable more with the idea of explaining herself than the feeling of her different injuries. In the distance, she could see the telltale signs of a pending sandstorm. It seemed to lower over Gillhan, visible only as a smudge on the horizon, like the wrath of an Invoked god. Though they might get high winds, she doubted that they would be too affected by the poor weather. "Well?" "It's not an easy story to tell." "Oh, I'm sorry. Did you think that mine was?" "That's not what I'm saying." "I think you've kept it quiet long enough." Jarah shook her head. "I can't remember." "Lies." "No, truly. I know that I was involved, my daughter, Lillah, was there. But more than that…" She trailed off, her mind thinking back to the Blade that Tenhaim had used to chop down the spear. How had she used it, when she'd wielded it? She couldn't remember, though it was close. It teased at her mind the way a stray hair can trick a tongue: She knew it was there, but not how to get it free. "I'm sorry…I really can't. It has to do with the Blade, that things were already Unraveling…" Rihn frowned but didn't say anything. Jarah shook her head. "No, it's gone. I can't…I can't recall. Something happened--something bad. Obviously. But what, precisely, I can't say." "Why is that, do you think?" Jarah stared at the barren landscape and sighed. "I wish I knew. One hypothesis is that the event was so scarring that my mind won't let me return to it. That it slides off it, like water from the back of a duck. Another thought--and Honu proposed this one--was that my soul has effaced it, being unwilling to carry a burden of so much guilt. I guess that's similar to the first one. The last is that it's simply an unexpected consequence for the person who breaks the world. There isn't exactly a lot of history about this ever happening before." "Just once," said Rihn softly. "What?" Jarah leaned forward. "Do you know something about the Breaking of the World that I don't?" Rihn gave her a skeptical look. "I doubt it. I mean, I never did it myself. I have mistakes, you know, as I just told you. But Unraveling the boundaries between the AfterWorld and our mortal realm so that no one can be reincarnated?" He whistled between his teeth. "No, that one's out of my range. Just a normal, vengeful murderer." "But you said that the Breaking of the World has happened before!" He shrugged a shoulder. "Old Nolasgruud legend that my father taught me. It was an attempted deicide on a grand scale: The teka of the time--and keep in mind, this was ages ago--all Invoked every god and goddess in an immense battlefield. There, they set about slaughtering the deities." Jarah felt her stomach clench at the idea. "H-how? You don't mean dismissed the deities, do you?" "No, not according to Father. He was adamant about it, actually: It wasn't that the deities were being injured to the point that they couldn't remain in the mortal realm and had to retreat to Theopolis. No, instead the teka were killed while controlling the deities." Jarah thought about that. Theopolemics were dangerous; surely there were times when the controllers were injured or killed in the course of a battle. "That was his explanation as to why there were only thirty-two deities: The rest were the victims of this first deicide." He paused and cocked his head. "Haven't you wondered why there isn't a goddess or god that relates to emotions, like jealousy or malaise? We have more emotions than a list of some three dozen." "I hadn't noticed, to be honest." Rihn shrugged. "It's a story, though, designed to explain something in our world: A myth, nothing more." "I'm still unsure how a dying teka can kill the deity, though," said Jarah. Rihn blew out a breath. "I think it had something to do with the teka killed each other, not just accidentally. They attacked one another while Invoking. Something like that." Jarah hummed as she pondered his words. There was a deep connection between the teka and the deity. The goddesses and gods were the proxies of the teka, and they were used to wage war against each other. But what if it happened the other way around? Would that really be enough to kill an immortal being? Jarah shifted, trying her best to ignore the aches and pains in her face and shoulder. "I guess it's a possibility." Rihn grunted. "Or a story." "That's why it's possible, Rihn." "Yeah. I guess." They fell into a contemplative silence, one broken only by the clatter of the horses' hooves and the rumbling lurches of the buckboard. The rest of their journey to the city was uneventful, if rushed. It took less time than their departure, but night was again commencing by the time they arrived at the city walls. Jarah had taken turns with Rihn so that both got some rest, but it wasn't enough for either. Her head felt like it was filled with bags of rice and her eyes felt coated with a fine layer of sand. She was simultaneously spoiling for a fight and hopeful that she wouldn't have to worry about doing anything else. Were it not for the fact that Kimhan needed her, Jarah would have found her closest safe house and slept for two days. Part of her wanted to anyway: After all, wouldn't that be a somewhat unexpected thing to do? Tenhaim knew they were coming. If they delayed, maybe he'd let his guard down? But, no. As tired as she was, Jarah knew that as soon as she put her head on her mat, she'd think about Kimhan. She'd worry about the girl, fret over what was happening to her. Jarah wouldn't be able to sleep anyway; may as well push forward. They arrived at the short bridge that led to the city walls. Before the Breaking of the World, the city was sealed each night at curfew--usually an hour or two after sunset. Now, however, the gate was open whenever the slumlord controlling it decided it should be open. In this case, people were moving through freely. Jarah wondered if Tenhaim had done something to gain control of the place. They'd been gone only a couple of days, but with the amount of upheaval, she was, in some ways, surprised that Gallhin was even standing. As they forced their weary horses into the queue--only a couple of dozen people deep--Jarah handed over the reins and began to ease herself off the bench. "Where are you going?" asked Rihn, his expression worried and alarmed. To her surprise, Jarah thought the expression much more charming than any of his previous attempts at charisma. Maybe it was because he was being honest this time. "To listen. We're running in blind, and I'm not a fan of that." "We can always improvise," he said, looking at the line of carts and people shifting slowly forward. "If something happens, that is." "Improvising is the result of a lack of a plan, not a plan in and of itself." "Well…" "I'll only be a few minutes. Besides, we need to see who's in charge of the gate to see what kind of papers they want." "Do we even have papers?" She sighed and shook her head. "Not that I know of." "So…" Rihn looked confused. "That's why I'm looking ahead." She detached her butterfly swords and set them on the seat. "I'll be back soon." She wondered, as she walked down the line, why Rihn cared so much. Granted, he and she had been through a lot in the past few days. She owed him her life--and the other way around, too. Was that enough to make for a relationship built on something other than potential mutual gain? He wasn't starting to like her as a person, was he? Thinking of her as a friend? That was not something that she needed--now, nor ever, so far as she could see--nor did it make sense to her. She certainly didn't have the impulse of changing their arrangement to anything other than business. He had little to offer her except his muscles and the occasional well-timed Invocation of a deity. Pushing aside the confusion inside of her, she walked slowly down the line. For about a third of a league, torches were planted every two dozen feet apart. They cast warm islands of light in the sea of blackness, and though they acted as a way for the travelers to know where to go, they also provided the guards with enough illumination that they could see threats coming from farther away than just their own noses. Sometimes the torches were neglected, but all of the ones that Jarah passed looked well maintained. For some reason, that made her uneasy. As she walked through the puddles of light, she listened to the conversations of tired and cranky travelers. One man, hauling an entire handcart laden with cabbages, groused loudly, "If they take much longer, my food'll wilt!" "What's the delay?" asked Jarah, twisting her face into a mask of honest concern. The man gave a start as he looked at her. "My blood and bones, woman, what happened to your face?" Jarah bit back the retort that formed in her mind (The same could be asked of you, old man) and dropped the confusion expression in favor of one of frustrated fear. "My husband wasn't happy with my cooking last night." "You ought to find a new husband," said the man. He was as wrinkled as a piece of parchment, with thin wisps of gray hair poking out from beneath his lower lip and his moustache drooped down past his chin in thin strands. He sucked on a tooth--he only had some ten or twelve, so far as Jarah could see--and regarded her carefully. "You don't deserve that kind of attention." "Oh, but it was my fault," she said, weaving the imaginary story together almost as quickly as she formed the words she spoke. "I was trying to do too many things around our campfire--get the kindling set up, prepare the dishes, and make sure that we had enough water for the horses. I got distracted and the rice pottage burned." "Crying wounds, girl! Does your man do anything?" "He protects me, of course." "But not from his own fists." Jarah looked away, hoping that the expression of hopeless submission might further pull the man's sympathies her way. "Justice can be cruel." "Sounds like your husband can be. Old Jeftha here--" and he tapped himself on the chest "--has seen his fair share of the world, girl, and I doubt there's been a time when justice looks the way you're describing." Jarah glanced up at the stalling line. "If you want the honesty, Jeftha, I'm hoping to get away from the man once we're inside the city. We live far away--there's nowhere I can run to when he gets drunken and wants to talk with his fists. But if I can slip away in Gallhin, I might get a chance to be my own woman." Jeftha sucked a tooth again. "You might not be wrong about that." "So that's why I asked what the delay was. I'm afraid that if it takes too long, I'll lose my nerve and stay with him." Jeftha nodded sagely. "I see, yes. Yes, that makes sense." He sighed, waving a hand. "I've been here for a good half hour. I think that the men up there believe that they have to investigate every stitch of cloth that comes through. They're checking the bottoms of wagons, under the skirts of the women--begging your pardon for the image. I'm saying that they're being thorough." "The line doesn't seem that long, though." "No, but it isn't moving much, either." "Any idea what I can do to get through sooner?" Jeftha shrugged. "Start a fire?" Jarah gave him a dubious expression. "There are a couple of guards--that's why it's such slow going. If they were out of the way, you could hurry in. Do you have wares?" "Just an old buckboard. We're hoping to find some work." Jeftha shrugged again. "I can't say much more beyond that. Either wait or find another way in. That's all there is." Jarah thanked him and worked her way back to Rihn. She explained the situation. "See? Now we can plan." Rihn glanced over his shoulder, then widened his eyes. "I don't think we have time for that after all." She followed his gaze, barely able to make out what was coming out of the haze behind them. The torches ruined her night-vision--making her wonder at the wisdom of them for the guards--but, squinting, she started to see the approaching shapes. "Blood of all the gods," she swore. Turning to Rihn, her eyes wide, Jarah grabbed his arm. "We need to make a fire." Theomancy Chapter 21
This is my third life. My first life was one of easy and simplicity. I was a woman born into a family of Greater Sowell's upper-class. I met a man, married, had some children, and pretty much lived what most would hope might be the best of lives. As far as living, it wasn't too bad. I had a lot of friends. My husband was caring and provided a lot for me. It wasn't until the children were all gone and we were settling into a life without our progeny that I found out how frequently he cheated on me. I could never get a full census out of him, but I'm thinking that he had, at least, seventeen paramours during our marriage. I remember that number, because that's how many times I cut him. That's also how many days I managed to keep him alive, chained and abused, in the basement of our mansion. The Greater Sowell society didn't much care for a murderess as part of their cliques, so I was shunned. Oh, and also killed. Capital punishment is normally reserved for the worst of criminals, and very rarely would a woman be executed. I can't say that I really thought about that when I was planning my vengeance. After all, I had to figure out how I was going to keep him alive once I started the bleeding. Despite me being a woman--and, when I was walking to the field where I was to die, I heard more than one woman say that she would have done the same, if not worse, had she been so humiliated as I had been by my husband's actions--I was sentenced to death by quartering. They tied a limb and my head to five separate horses, then sent all of them galloping away. I don't remember what that felt like. I was male when I was born again. This time I was part of the Nolasgruud vagrants, living with my caravan and making my way through the world. I learned young and quickly that those who wish to harm me won't hesitate; I applied that lesson to what I had to do whenever I had to. My father was the leader of our tribe, the Jalastor. As Jalastor, we learned that we ought to worship the gods, rather than control them. That--and many other reasons--meant that most peoples didn't trust us. We were never welcome in any of the townships we visited, and more than once we were blamed for some nobleman's poor behavior. The women of my tribe were particularly vulnerable: If a man abused any of them, the only law that could hold them guilty was the one that we Jalastor abided by. Since we moved so often, the local government refused to let us try those who had done crimes to us, while making it legal to abuse anyone of the Nolasgruud tribes. So you can imagine that, when I found out what had happened to my younger sister--a girl no more than fifteen at the time--I had a bit of a dilemma. I won't go into the details of his crime: Suffice to say, they were horrible enough that when I found the man who had violated Mayell, I had to decide whether or not to let him go. I had followed him into the woods where he was camping with his friends. They spent some time making crass jokes and swimming in the cool water. It was a hot day in the middle of summer, the kind where twilight seems to last longer than an afternoon. The sunlight sparkled off the river's curving form. Most of them lounged about nude or wearing little more than a loincloth. There were a total of seven of them, including two women who were clearly servants. They kept their eyes down and made it a point to stay in their tent until called for by one of the five men. As night descended, the girls turned in, saying that they needed their rest. The men stayed by the fire, roasting the fish they'd caught in their nets and drinking kumis. The man who hurt Mayell, Plyn as he was called, claimed that he was tired and was going to turn in early. Instead of heading toward his tent, he doubled around and approached the girls' tent instead. By this point, I was hiding in a nearby thicket, watching his every move. There was the possibility, I knew, that he could be heading this direction for benign purposes, but I didn't believe that to be true. I was correct in that. He held a short dagger--to this day I can't understand where he had been hiding it--and made as if to slit the back of the girls' tent. I decided that, if he would be willing to do this to his own servants, there was no reason to assume he would ever get justice for the rape of a Jalastor. Moving forward in the silent manner I had learned from my father, I grabbed him from behind, choking him. He struggled and made plenty of desperate grunts, but the girls didn't come out to see what strange creature made those noises in the darkness beyond their beds. I dragged Plyn, by now unconscious, deeper into the woods. There, to my surprise, was a mat already splayed out with stakes driven into the earth. From each stake came a rope--four in total. It didn't take much imagination to discover what Plyn had anticipated doing. Instead of putting the girl he'd aimed to abduct in that place, I put him there, with his mouth carefully gagged. When I began to carve into him, that's when I remembered my first life. The decision to continue, then, was easy enough. I knew which parts had hurt my husband the worst; I did the same for a second life. One thing that I did differently was that I didn't keep Plyn underground, as I had my husband. So I was only ten cuts deep when his cries drew attention I was attacked by Plyn's friends. They were drunk and confused, but I was too involved with my vengeance to defend myself well. They struck once, knocking me over, then stabbed me to death. As I bled out, I remember thinking that I should never forget the harsh lessons I'd learned as a Jalastor. I watched as Plyn died only moments before I departed for the AfterWorld myself. When I was born into this life, it was in the Dredstric Ward of Gallhin. You know the slums there, I'm certain. Well, surviving there was always an ordeal. I recalled my previous lives when I was only ten--it was the number, surprisingly enough, that triggered that. I had recently learned how to count and, with the help of some friends, discovered my age. When I understood what I had done in the past, it made me…well, uneasy is a mild way of phrasing it. More like nauseated and ashamed and embarrassed. I didn't want to be a murderer, even though I had died for that crime already. Twice. But not wanting to be a murderer didn't change the fact that I had to survive a world rapidly spinning toward the End of Times. You remember how it was before the Breaking of the World, don't you? Of course. You were…that's for your story, isn't it? In my case, despite learning how to be a teka--useful when you have a lot of emotional baggage to carry around, though overcoming my vestigial memories of being a Jalastor while training to become a teka was not one of the easiest things I had to do--and doing my best to avoid the darkness I had within, I ended up pushing hotflowers. I had a sister…have a sister…whose needs precluded a more honest--and less lucrative--kind of work. As a result, I fell in with Tenhaim. He liked the resourcefulness I showed when I almost got away with one of his shipments of hotflowers. Had he not been in an expansive mood, he probably would have murdered me outright. Instead, I had spent enough time planning the heist that he thought it worthwhile to keep me for my "unique talents", as he called them. I spent the final months before the End of Times learning how to be a fighter for Tenhaim. That I was a teka only helped me along more. But all things come to an end, you know? My end with Tenhaim happened only a few weeks ago: I saw my sister again. She had slipped out from my view as my work with Tenhaim escalated, leaving me to scrape together the money from his pay and the "perks" of working with him--which usually meant being free with my fingers whenever we took care of someone's debts. I got tired of roughing people up, so I requested to go onto guard duty. The day before I was switched over to the compound, Qina bumped into me on the streets. I had just finished ransacking a destitute hotflower-addict's home, carrying away some bedclothes that could fetch me some extra coin, and Qina's expression was one that still haunts me. She had struggled for a long time with a debilitating sickness in her gut--hence me needing to get as much money as possible. At one point, while I was away working a shipment for Tenhaim, Qina had disappeared from our small home. I hadn't had time to hunt her down. That was two months ago. "What are you doing here?" I asked her. "I could ask the same of you," she replied. "I thought you were sick." "I'm better," she said. "Thanks to Honu." "Who?" "Honu. She's an Underdweller with a lot of connections and was willing to help me out." I insisted that I meet Honu. On our way to Honu's above-ground dwelling, Qina asked me a question that I couldn't answer: "Why are you still doing this?" By that, of course, she meant working with Tenhaim, pushing hotflower addiction on the poor people of the city, acting as muscle for a slumlord whom I hated. I had only done so to help Qina, but with that need satisfied, I had plenty of reasons to abandon the slumlord. After I was able to thank her in person, Honu and I spoke more and more. It became clear that Honu knew something about Tenhaim, but needed help in learning more. It was an opportunity to do something that would rectify some of my past mistakes. If I could help take down Tenhaim, it might help me feel less guilty for the killings that I've done throughout my lives. Not only that, but being close to Tenhaim is worse than being out in the field, hurting in his name. There, it's abstract. Here, it's open: I've seen women pleading for their husbands' lives, only to be forced down to watch the butchery of their loved ones. He's cold, cruel, and heartless. I no longer want to be a part of that kind of world. It's too grim, too dark. I know that I have a monster inside of me--my previous lives are proof enough of that--but I don't want to go down the same paths that I did before. I've had my fill of that kind of existence. So I spied. I set about learning as much as I could while in the compound itself. I learned the rotation of the guards, the heights of the walls, the layout of the inner courtyard. And as I learned this, I began sending the information back to Honu. I guarded Kimhan, getting to know her at the same time. A week or so ago, Honu asked for a map of the compound, which I managed to smuggle out to her. Then you showed up. I guess you were the pawn in Honu's game, just like I was. She definitely used us both to get what she wanted…until Tenhaim caught up to her, I guess. Kimhan kidnapped--or rescued, however you want to say it--we were all dispatched into the streets to try to find you. I was…unaware of what Honu was planning. Your attack on the compound was a surprise to me. So when I was told what I was supposed to do, I immediately followed orders: I dispatched Olilli, Goddess of Aggression. Yes, I was the teka controlling the goddess that nearly killed you in that offal-lined workyard. I…I'm sorry about that. You may remember that Olilli was dismissed seconds before your Transt could impale her on his horns, yes? Well, I didn't want to lose the chance to Invoke her again, so I pulled her out when it was clear you were going to win. Again, I didn't know you had Kimhan with you, nor the danger that was around you. My goddess started fighting your god--a theopolemic that I wanted to win. When I saw you two in the alleyway immediately after, I realized my mistake. And my opportunity. If I could get you and Kimhan to safety, if I could extract you, then I could extract myself, too. Honu's desire to take down Tenhaim seemed like it was going to happen with you, because of you…and I wanted to be a part of that. Qina's question, "Why are you still doing this?" had rankled me since she'd asked it, as I said. With your arrival--when I understood what was actually going on--I knew that I couldn't simply turn you over. You were my chance at salvation. So I took it. Theomancy Chapter 20
The ride back was painful, bumpy, and passed Jarah in a dream of agony. Her shoulder hurt, but nothing more than she'd experienced before. The wound wasn't particularly deep, and a tight bandage and an immobilized arm would do more for it than anything short of injecting herself with ichor again. Her face ached constantly, and she felt certain that her nose was broken, if only with a fracture. It was nothing compared to Rihn, of course. No, the agony was less physical and more emotional. Losing Kimhan like this was more painful than any number of broken bones or ripped flesh. It was like losing Lillah again, but with the thorny reminder that Kimhan was still alive…and not with her. They spoke very little as Rihn kept the horse on a steady path. He said that he felt Paudra be syphoned away from him after they'd made it a good league from Nan. "That's why I picked the God of Distraction," Rihn had explained. "I knew that, of all the domains that would be hardest to defeat, it would be his." Jarah had nodded a painful agreement: After all, Paudra was a tricky god, one who could easily cause a distraction, thereby fueling off of others' distractions, which allowed him to cause further distractions. That it took Tenhaim as long as he did was a good sign, though it was even possible that Rihn was simply too far away from the god to keep him Invoked. If that were the case, Jarah hoped that Paudra gave Tenhaim plenty of grief before getting his men rallied to the point they could pursue. Ahead of them, somewhere in the growing brightness of a red-tipped morning, Kimhan was being whisked away. The idea sickened Jarah, forcing her back into her memories of what had just transpired. Questions wracked her: Why hadn't she acted sooner? Why hadn't she noticed the gaps in Lylen's story before it was too late? How was she supposed to survive this? One question, however, stirred as her stomach cramped with hunger. "How did you not fall asleep?" asked Jarah, shifting in order to make herself slightly more comfortable. "Huh?" "Back there. You drank the tea and ate the rice, yet you didn't fall asleep." "Neither did you." Rihn twitched the reins, keeping the horse moving at a brisk pace. They had a lot of distance to cover and it was clear he didn't want the animal to tire too much before they reached the city. His pragmatic decision was logical, though she wouldn't have had the patience to do so. The kidnappers had too large a head start for them to cut it, especially since they rode in a wagon, but Jarah would kill an entire herd of horses if it meant she got to Kimhan faster. She glanced behind them. Still no pursuers from behind. Small mercy. "I didn't eat anything." Rihn glanced at her, surprised. "Really? Why not?" Jarah shrugged. "The fire's eruption was my clue not to." "Oh, that's when I knew I was safe to eat it." "Why?" "That's an old Tenhaim trick: By throwing the right powder into the flames, it acted as a signal to the rest of the ambush. His sleeping concoction was also one of Tenhaim's versions. We guards have to build up an immunity to it, so that we can't be knocked out easily." Jarah blinked a couple of times. "You can do that?" "For some potions. Also, Lylen didn't know how to mix it very well. I bet, had you eaten it, you would have been drowsy, but not actually unconscious." He made a face. "Gave the rice a weird flavor, though." "You ate it readily enough." "I didn't want to arouse suspicion. Besides, it ended up working well for us, right?" Jarah gave him a blank stare. "I'm wounded and they captured Kimhan, plus they have the Blade and, most likely, Honu." "But we have the key for map, right? That much is good." "We don't need the map anymore, Rihn. They have all the pieces." "Well," said Rihn, doggedly attached to his optimism, "at least we know where we're going." "We do?" "The compound." Jarah scratched an itch on the back of her head, wincing as she did so. The jarring of the buckboard's wheels over the rutted dirt road made it difficult to feel comfortable under normal circumstances. With as much damage as she'd taken, it was downright miserable. "Why would he do something as obvious as take her to the compound?" "Because that's where we're going to look first." Jarah frowned, thinking. "He's willing to let us arrive at the compound before he does in order to, what, capture us again?" Rihn nodded. "Oh, yes. It wouldn't surprise me if Honu were there, too." "Everyone in one place, huh?" "Yeah. It makes it easier on him: He doesn't have to hunt us down." Rihn gestured southward, toward the city. "He wants us, too, Jarah. He thought he could snag us in Nan--almost did, too--but since we gave him the slip, he'll wait for us to come to him." "Then, we're headed into another trap." "Did you think it somehow wouldn't be? He has someone we want to save. He has, as you pointed out, everything that we needed. So we're not racing him back to the city so much as getting there with enough time for us to do a tiny bit of preparation." Jarah shot a look over her shoulder. Rihn was right about being pursued--at least, at this point. Jarah had genuinely expected some advanced riders, unencumbered by a wagon, to advance on them. She had been going over what she could do to stop them, which deity she could Invoke to get the fighters off of their trail. But no one was behind; Rihn had guessed correctly. "Like what?" He shrugged, flicking the reins to keep the horses from slowing down. "That was a part that I wanted you to figure out." Jarah sighed. "I'll work on it," she said. "How long can we keep up this speed?" "A couple of hours more, I'd guess, before the horses would need a break. I think I saw some supplies in the back. Do you want to check them?" Jarah did as requested, wincing at the jolting pain. There was a barrel of water--from which she quickly drank her fill--and some hardtack in a chest. The rest of the buckboard was filled with tools, an old tarp, and some frayed rope. "Was this Lylen's, do you think?" she asked as she brought forward the hardtack to munch on. "Probably. Looks like his lunch and something to drink…" He shook his head. "I almost feel bad for him." "I don't," said Jarah, trying hard not to taste what was essentially baked blandness. "He betrayed us." "Nah, he only did what he had to. Shedding blood, Jarah, Tenhaim was inside his home." "What do you think the villager said to him to get us inside?" "Probably something along the lines of 'These may be the people he's looking for' or something like that." Jarah nodded. "That makes sense." She took another bite. It was difficult to chew for many reasons, not the least of which was that her jaw hurt and she worried that maybe one of her teeth had been wiggled loose. "So tell me, Rihn: How did you get mixed up with Tenhaim in the first place? You seem to know a lot about him and how he thinks. Why is that?" Rihn took a long moment before answering. "That is a long story." "We have a lot of time, as I understand it." Rihn rubbed at his chin, wincing. "Okay," he said at last. "But if I'm going to tell mine, you'll have to share yours." Jarah thought for a time, then nodded. "All right. Mine goes like this…" |
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