Chapter 13 Daesra #2
She only nods jerkily as if she doesn’t quite believe me, her eyes fixed on the shadows ahead.
Her teeth are definitely chattering, and she shivers under my arm.
Briefly, I wonder if I could try to calm her with my influence, but I don’t want to risk disorienting her or otherwise overdoing it.
That’s if I can even calm anyone instead of pushing them to extremes.
I only managed with her earlier because I used my blood as an antidote against the river, not my power.
Instead, I pull her closer as we delve deeper into the temple.
Those shades that made it up the stairs before we arrived at the bottom must have already passed through, because there’s no one in the aisle ahead of us.
Pogli sticks to my other side, but he’s alert rather than terrified.
I hope that means these judges are less intimidating than Isha. They’ll be less powerful, to be sure.
When we finally reach the marble dais at the far back of the temple, the three figures raised upon it—crouched, seated, and standing, respectively—don’t even seem to notice us as we approach.
The first of the judges appears to be a startlingly beautiful young woman, except she’s naked and covered entirely in blood where she’s bent over the stone, resting on her haunches.
Her awkward state doesn’t seem to impede her as she sorts and combs through the long strands of flax laid out before her.
To her left at the center of the dais, a second woman in her middle years sits on a simple wooden chair with an already-dressed distaff pinched under her arm as she spins linen thread onto a drop spindle.
At least she’s clothed, and yet blood stains her white tunic from the waist down, as if she’d just given birth while calmly seated there, perhaps without interrupting her spinning.
The third and final woman stands at her other side, covered head to toe in a cowled white robe.
While it doesn’t have a drop of blood on it, blood is unfortunately running down her wrinkled cheeks like tears from the weeping, ragged slits where her eyes should be.
And yet that doesn’t seem to hinder her, either.
With one hand, she draws thread from a spool on the floor, while in the other she grips a wicked-looking scythe.
Not what I was expecting.
I clear my throat, unsure of what to say, when they all speak together in harmonizing voices. “We are the three who are as one, who know your birth, your life, and your death, and will determine your fate in Thanarus.”
“Very well, but—”
The young woman’s singsong voice rides over me. “We judge those who have dishonored their parents or betrayed their lovers. We leave them forever wanting.”
The woman in the middle says serenely, “We judge those who have lied in deviousness, thieved in avarice, or murdered in anger. We leave them forever inflamed.”
The old woman, her voice hard and flat: “We judge those who have killed in coldness, slaughtered innocents, or disrespected the gods. We leave them in ruins.”
Well. Shit.
I open my mouth to speak again, but the blood-soaked young woman’s eyes snap up to Melé, who stiffens like a statue alongside me.
“You honored your parents and were true to your lovers,” she says as she stretches a particular flaxen fiber between her fingers.
The middle woman spins a thread in her hands. “You never lied, thieved, or murdered in fervor.”
The old woman unwinds a length from the spool on the floor. “You never turned even a cold thought to the death of another, let alone to the slaughter of innocents, and you spent your life in worship of Sea. Sky already took his vengeance out upon you, and now they are both Horizon.”
She abruptly cuts the thread with her scythe, and together they chorus, “You can journey to the Blessed Isles.”
Melé sags against me in relief, and I squeeze her shoulder reassuringly. If either I or Horizon have anything to say about it, she’ll make it far beyond the Blessed Isles and back to the mortal realm, but it’s hardly the time to mention that.
I start to shuffle us away from the dais. “Then I suppose we’ll—”
The young woman cuts me off once more, pulling a distinctly silver strand through her fingers. “You have dishonored both your mortal and immortal parents and betrayed your lovers.”
The fibers that the middle woman spins turn from silver to bloodred. Daemonic red, perhaps. “You have lied, thieved, and murdered in extreme excess of emotion.”
The length of thread that the old woman unspools is also red. “You have killed in coldness, slaughtered innocents, and disrespected, defied, and disdained the gods. Many times.”
And yet, when she tries to chop my thread with the scythe—assuming it’s mine—the length turns from red to gold and merely bows around the blade. She tries again, but to no avail. Even though her eyes have apparently been gouged out, I sense her glare.
I give her a hard smile. “I certainly hope I’ve disrespected, defied, and disdained the god of this realm.”
“Many gods,” she snaps, her voice no longer quite as flat.
“I suppose I did desecrate a few temples way back when.”
“Many temples.”
I ignore Melé’s horrified look. I don’t care to elaborate on what I did to her temple until Sadaré found me there and shamed me into cleaning it.
I especially don’t want to tell her what the two of us did after that, since I’m pretty sure we defiled every surface of it, clean though it may have been.
Or that I would defile infinitely more temples with Sadaré, commit every blasphemy possible, as long as we could be together again.
Fierce, desperate yearning for her stabs through me at the thought, but I don’t let my voice waver.
“Does it count in my favor that I am a god now?”
The middle woman meets my eyes, her piercing gaze sending a ripple under my skin despite her calm demeanor. “Not here, where our judgment stands above all, save that of Isha Aggatar. You should never have come.”
I can’t help sighing, despite the tension in the air. “Yes, I’ve been hearing that a lot. But here I am, and I’m not leaving. In fact, I’ll just carry on—”
“If you belonged here, it would be in the Pit of Hell,” the old woman hisses, “but you aren’t welcome here, god. We forbid you passage.”
I raise my brows. “I’m afraid I don’t care. Since you already know I’m not very nice, I don’t need to warn you what I might do if you try to stop me.”
The young woman gives me a starkly white, crazed grin in her blood-coated face. “It won’t be us.”
A rustling comes from the darkness above, and a low hiss. Despite my godly vision, I can only make out three vague shapes looming in the shadows above each woman—hanging almost like bats except much, much larger. I hear the rustle again—like the soft scrape of leathery wings.
“Are we finished?” I ask, my eyes trained on the ceiling, every part of my body lit with a warning fire. Tugging Melé behind me, I start to sidle away.
Pogli chooses that moment to let out a low growl.
“Ah,” the three judges chime as one, looking at Pogli. “There is another.”
The old woman makes a cooing noise. “But he’s an exceptional little beast, so he can go where he pleases.” She even smiles at him through her bloody tears. The others nod in agreement, without any sorting or spinning or cutting at all.
I never thought I could resent Pogli—not for a moment, not even while stung by all the accusations and abuse I just received.
But then he, a brainless chimera, was just weighed next to me, a god, and he came out ahead.
At least the feeling doesn’t last long, because he puffs out his stout chest, fluffs his wings, and then trots after me with his mane bobbing around his round, flat face, looking as proud as can be.
Even his piggy tail tries its best to stand at attention.
Fine, I think. I am awful, and he is exceptional.
Yet I can barely spare him a twitch of my lips as I back toward the dimly lit doorway I’ve spotted to one side of the dais, keeping Melé behind me. “Then we’ll just be leaving now.”
All three judges only stare after me—the first of them still madly grinning, the second mildly disapproving, and the third lacking any expression upon her eyeless, withered face even as her head turns to follow me. I would have preferred a scowl, because this is somehow worse.
I was wrong on at least one count. They’re intimidating, indeed.
I have yet to see how powerful they are—they or the creatures hanging in the darkness above them—but I don’t wait around to find out before I shove Melé through the doorway, out into the relative brightness, even cheeriness, of the hellscape outside.
I imagine I’ll find out soon enough anyway.