Chapter 21 Daesra
DAESRA
ALL I know is my attacker must have wings, because they’re rising quickly with me in tow, the pit dropping away as we soar high into the sky.
Perhaps one of the daemons got greedy after all, or maybe sprouted a sense of justice for their fallen leader from gods’ only know which crevice.
And yet, when I crane my neck to see who or what has caught me through the smoky haze, I find it’s worse than a daemon with a newfound sense of justice.
I’m nearly positive I’m looking at Vengeance herself.
The last of the Gentle Ones. I catch a glimpse of pure white eyes around black-slitted pupils and stained black lips as she tips her snaky head to look down at me.
She’s no doubt come to enact justice for the Crone, but I also imagine she’s here for herself—to avenge her sisters.
Another fucking bat-winged, woman-faced monster come to punish me. I know this is the last one, and yet they never seem to end. While I don’t entirely blame them, my sword appears readily in my hand. I don’t care if I fall back into the pit. I’ll take her bird’s legs with me.
“Stay your blade,” the Gentle One says in a cold, measured voice over the wind. “Save your strength. I will not harm you. Yet.”
She’s not snarling threats at me through her pointed teeth or even digging into my flesh with her talons, only hooking my belt. Even so—
“I find that hard to believe, since I can still taste your sister.” My own snarled words come out sounding far worse than I intended. “I mean her soul,” I add quickly, as if that’s much better. “And yet it’s her strength inside me that I should save?”
Her snakes hiss down at me, but she still doesn’t bare her own teeth, only maintains both a steady pace and tone. “Have you not heard that vengeance is a dish best served cold? I am not so impatient as Jealousy and Wrath… though I am aggrieved by their deaths.”
“Then what are you doing?” I burst out in frustration. I twist in her claws, sliding my belt along for a better angle from which to slash her, vaguely hoping the leather doesn’t part against her talons.
“Returning you to your mother and your sweet creature—if you don’t make me drop you.”
I gape up at her. “Why?”
“You’ll see. Patience, god. If you struggle, I might not be able to keep from hurting you.” This time, she smiles as if she’d welcome that.
Which gives me pause. I don’t trust her in the slightest. And yet she’s not hurting me.
And she continues not to hurt me as we soar over the peaks of hell with as much breathtaking speed as her sister plunged me into them.
I need to get back to Melé and Pogli as quickly as possible, and this is far faster than climbing out of the pit, trekking through valleys of serrated rock, and then swimming back across the Lake of Misery, since walking around it would take even longer.
So, while I don’t relax in her grip, and keep my sword ready in mine, I don’t struggle as she carries me over the vast terrain of the underworld.
AFTER WE FLY LOW ACROSS the lake, the Gentle One follows the obvious tracks where her sister attacked me, and then where Melé and Pogli must have continued on their own.
Pogli’s large footprints help distinguish Melé’s from the other shades that had gathered and then scattered during the commotion, until they shrink back to normal size with just one set of footprints alongside them.
After the Gentle One approaches some low dunes scattered with scraggly trees near the vanishing crescent of the bay, she abruptly drops me against a sandy hillside, where I go tumbling.
I roll to my feet in a storm of sand, my sword raised between me and the sky. Spitting, I spin in a circle—but she’s gone.
I hiss a curse through my teeth. I know they like to swoop out of nowhere, so she’s probably hidden herself to do just that. I keep turning warily, expecting claws to gouge into my back.
But she doesn’t return.
I still don’t move for a long moment, my mind spinning now.
Why the hell did she bring me back—no, beyond—where I was when her sister took me?
Practically at the gates—well, the gates to the gates—of Isha’s fortress on the coast?
Probably so she could strike me at the worst possible moment and ensure her vengeance is all the colder and sweeter.
Maybe she’s even gathering reinforcements.
That thought finally spurs me to move. I dash up the side of the dune, slipping in my haste, and crest it to find a copse of trees down the other side. Sure enough, Melé and Pogli have taken shelter within. I lunge even faster for them, sliding halfway down the slope in a wave of sand.
Pogli lets out a piercing whine. When Melé looks up and spots me, her face lights up like I’ve never seen in her afterlife.
I thank the gods—though that’s probably strange, coming from me—that she didn’t succumb to the lake in my absence.
She leaps up just as I skid to the bottom of the hill, and we crash into each other.
I lift her up in my arms and hug her fiercely, though I’m careful not to crush her.
She’s less careful with me, clutching my neck and pressing violent kisses into my cheek, crying all the while. “You’re alive, you’re alive!”
“I’m immortal, Mother,” I say, but I breathe the words into her hair as if I hadn’t been quite sure until now. “I’m here. How are you? Do you need anything? Are you in any danger?”
She shakes her head in answer to all of it, still clinging to me. But Pogli leaps against my legs, shrieking like a tiny daemon and nipping at my tunic, so I slip free of Melé to crouch down and ruffle his lion’s mane. I get my lips licked for the trouble.
I laugh, wiping my mouth. “Do you like me again, little fellow?”
He tries to bite my nose, which I choose to interpret as a yes.
Melé can’t seem to let go of me, her hand on my head, her fingers running through my hair, skipping carelessly around my horns, as if I might vanish again.
“I was so worried,” she gasps. “I didn’t want to move on without you, in case you came back.
But without you, I had to escape the lake.
” She smiles down at Pogli through her tears.
“He’s been protecting me. What happened? ”
I look up at her. “I had to escape a dreadful place myself—and I’m not the worse for it, thanks to you.”
She covers her mouth with her hand to stifle a sob. “I’m so glad.”
I’m glad she doesn’t ask for more details than that, but grimace at what I’m about to tell her.
“But Vengeance is out there—another Gentle One. She even brought me back here, oddly enough, but I don’t trust her motives.
So if you see her before I do, warn me.” I stand, dusting myself off, to squeeze her shoulder.
“We need to move. We’re almost to the fortress—and from the air I saw a bridge to it, out over the sea.
It’s close. Once we cross and reach the gatehouse tower, you’ll wait with Pogli until I’ve secured it.
After that, whatever happens to me, you and Pogli should get to the Blessed Isles.
” The judges had said the little chimera could go where he pleased, so his companionship—his protection, most importantly—shouldn’t be challenged. “I’ll find you there, if I can.”
She’s been nodding along until that part. “Wait, I don’t want to go without you!”
“I don’t know what will happen between me and Isha, but you shouldn’t be there when it does. Promise me.”
She looks away, clenching her jaw, but finally she nods once more. Realizing she can’t help me in this—a fight between two gods—as a mortal. Besides, she’s already helped me enough.
“All right, then,” I say. “Let’s go.”
We make our way across the dunes, eventually spilling out of them to face the wide expanse of gray beach limned in piles of reeking pale bone debris that have washed ashore. It’s difficult to believe anything was ever beautiful here.
It doesn’t escape me that even those destined for the Blessed Isles still have to cross such danger in order to reach their promised paradise.
Which means there’s only that much more chance for them to fail.
Giving their aether to the mill instead of reaping the benefits, even if they’re deserving of those benefits.
“Don’t bleed,” I murmur to Melé. “There are creatures under the sand and in the sea. And you—” I snap at Pogli, even as he goes to sniff a bone. “No sniffing. No chewing. No bones.”
He huffs at me, ruffling his wings, but he trots back over to my heels.
It’s not difficult to spot the beginning of the bridge.
A stone plinth rises more like a monolith from the center of the crescent beach, stairs circling up the outside of the wide base to the platform at the top, where the guide ropes of the bridge are anchored and the wooden planks begin their perilous march over the sea.
What looks like a gatehouse of a tower juts out from Isha’s fortress to meet them, but the path is still long and treacherous-looking.
And what awaits at the other end looks only like more washed-up bone, despite having the shape of a fortress and a halo of golden clouds beyond its pale towers.
We encounter no other shades as we cross the beach—or ghouls, for that matter—and make our way to the bridge’s great stone abutment.
The stairs are equally uneventful, only giving us a wider view of the beach and the dunes, the lake on one side and the misty plains on the other, and then the toothy dark mountains beyond.
I can’t even spot the pass between peaks at this distance, and smoke hides the Pit of Hell, though there’s a faint snaking glow of the River of Fire between the craggy peaks.
It’s hard to believe I was so recently there—which is fine, since I’d rather forget the experience.
I instruct Melé and Pogli to wait at the top of the stairs, hunkered down lower than the platform.