7. Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Raven
I was in a tunnel at the edge of the glass plains awaiting the party of Vaharilarans when the Threads inside the Mother’s Womb spasmed and trembled.
The Mother was giving birth. My awareness was seized by the gods, torn from my body and brought into the Mother’s Womb where she heaved and shuddered. My vision was of dizzying green, of Threads vibrating so fast, they defied a clear picture.
I reached out my hands for the tunnel wall, trying to ground myself in my body. I forced my eyes open, but my vision had been hijacked. I could not tear it away from the Rebirth.
I opened my mouth to speak—I must warn the others—but no sound came out. Or, if it did, I could not hear it. I heard only whistling in my ears like wind at high speed. I forced my hand to sign a warning.
“Brace yourselves.”
The vibration swept outward from the Mother’s Womb like a wave. I watched it fly towards me with the feeling of a child about to be swallowed. I remembered almost nothing of my early life, but I did remember walking the beaches of the southern Salt Sea. The hungry way the ocean climbed the sand, eager, pawing for more ground. I watched it once during a storm and thought of it when I survived my first sandstorm in Los. Those moments were the Mother at her most powerful, but they were nothing to the explosion that began as she birthed a god.
The immense noise of shattering glass overwhelmed the whistling in my ears as the tunnel I stood inside cracked open. Sand poured through the gaps. I could not see it, but I felt it tickling my skin.
I must climb up to the surface now or else I’d be buried alive. But I could not move my body in any substantial way. My consciousness had left it to inhabit the mountain. My Sight was fixated on a single object that was rising rapidly in the liquid fire that roiled inside the Mother’s Womb.
I knew what would come next. The Mother’s Womb would burst open and her liquid fire would pour out. The egg would be thrust skyward and crack open and spill a god out into our world.
A god I’d promised Tanead wouldn’t be born yet.
“She’s coming,” I signed, in case Tanead and his party were still with me.
The Mother’s Womb exploded. The peak of the mountain was blown away and liquid fire erupted from the hole, searing the sides of the mountain, rolling down to consume.
I tracked the vibration from the explosion as it traveled through the Threads. I was ready when it reached me, but even so, I was thrown down to lie in the rising sand.
Yes, hissed the deep voice in my mind. Come, little one. Set me free.
My vision, still hijacked, tracked the shake as it reached the River of Madness. I was with it as it raced to Havard, Vaharilar’s capital. It split the Crust beneath the Palace of the Suns. I wondered if the Mother had chosen her target as an act of vengeance.
The deep voice exhaled, a long breath out. Green light—not Threads, but a sort of fog—leaked from the crack in the Crust below Havard.
Then, as if I were a puppet whose strings had been tugged, my vision flew back along the crack until it reached the Mother’s Womb once more. I traveled nauseatingly quickly; my stomach clenched and roiled. My head felt as if it would burst open like the mountain. I was nothing but a puppet of the gods, a witness to the Rebirth. I ought to feel honored, but the sensations overwhelmed my body. I took deep breaths. I tried to wiggle my own fingers, to remind myself where I really was. In a collapsing tunnel beneath the shattered glass plains.
But all I could see before me was the egg. It had been ejected from the Womb and landed violently on the mountainside. There was a tear in the soft, leathery surface.
For long moments I watched it. A heartbeat that was not my own thrummed in my ears.
A claw appeared first. Though the Threads of the mountain still vibrated, the dragon Asherah’s Threads were crisp and clearer than any I’d ever seen before. She kicked at the shell and the fracture in it widened.
Time disappeared for me as her head emerged from the gap she’d made. The dragon’s double eyelids blinked for the first time. Her snout poked out into the world. Her head swept back and forth to see it.
The first dragon in a thousand cycles had been born. I shuddered with ecstasy and terror.
Where is my Chosen? The dragon’s plaintive question entered my mind. I knew she meant Tanead, her Rider. He should be there to greet her. She should not be alone in this world. A Rider was a dragon’s mother, father, and friend. Because of me, Asherah had no one.
Patience, the deep voice boomed. But it was not talking to me.
I’ve already waited so long.
Not so long as me, the deep voice said, and it sounded cold as the ice storms of the north.
The energy of the baby dragon seemed to shudder and shrink in response. Her head dipped back into her shell before she peeked out again.
The wait is almost over, the deep voice soothed. My Chosen comes to me. Your Chosen will come to you. We must work together this time. Remember what they did to us when we did not.
I remember, the baby dragon said, and oh, the rage those words contained.
As abruptly as the vision had taken me, I was released. I lay shuddering in a pile of growing sand. My fingers were ice as I hugged myself, rocking. I took deep, shaky breaths.
I was not on the mountainside, I reminded myself. I was not beneath the Palace of the Suns. I was in a tunnel beneath the glass plains, and I was alone. Tanead’s party was no longer with me. Had they abandoned me to drown in sand for my betrayal or had they only saved themselves out of practicality?
I remembered that the Vaharilaran party had been nearby. There was a Slayer with them.
It was the thought of him that crystallized my thoughts back into cohesion. He might still be up there. But he could not make it out of this alive. He must die today, a sacrifice (and an apology) to Asherah.
He might be dead already. Perhaps Tanead and his party had attacked the Vaharilarans during the quake. Tanead would kill me, too, when he saw me. I was a little surprised he hadn’t slit my throat while I was lost in my vision.
Maybe he was dead. Gods, who would Asherah Bond then?
All my well-laid plans had turned to shit. I was alone in a collapsing tunnel, days away from the first Reborn, who had no Rider to Bond. And the damned Slayer might still be alive.
I must find out what was going on.
With reluctance, I closed my eyes to see the Threads around me. I feared being hijacked again, but the gods allowed my mind to stay in my body as I tracked a path out. I unwrapped my face wrap and tossed the thing away. It was soiled with sweat and sand.
I made for the tunnel exit on shaky legs, disturbed by the heaviness of my muscles. I felt I’d run for half a day. I must’ve held everything tense throughout my vision. I yearned for water, but I’d lost my jug.
I peeked my head above the surface. The Rebirth had forever altered the land. The red sands were the same as always, ever-shifting, but the glass plains were fractured. Sand had flooded in to fill the spaces between glass islands. Shards of glass stood upright, piercing the sky, which was the most disturbing sight of all. The eclipse had come to mark Asherah’s birth and all the sky was red as blood.
I heard shouts and grunts and words, too far away to make out. I crept forward, keeping my body low and using the chaotic landscape to hide me. The sands here were hungry. If I stepped wrong, they’d swallow my leg and pull me down. But in the Threadworld, I could see where it was safe to step.
I slowed as I passed close to a pair of Vaharilarans. It was the two easterners—the woman and the one who’d ridden badly. They huddled together on an island of glass, whispering. The man frowned while the woman punctuated her words with animated hand gestures. I considered killing them, but in truth, I didn't care enough to bother. It was the Slayer I was after. I crept on until I could see him.
The Slayer was fighting Tanead. There was an injured Vaharilaran with them, but he had fallen. The members of Tanead’s party that I could see were dead, Sonja and Loyce among them. I was sorry for that.
Tanead and the Slayer whirled in a dance, but the Slayer was the only one with weapons. Tanead fought with fists while the Slayer used Tanead’s own scimitar against him.
I felt for the daggers at my waist to reassure myself they were still there. I was not sure I had the skill to take the Slayer on alone—not when he and his guard had killed so many of our party already. He must be very skilled. But I could surprise him and get Tanead back his blade. Together, we’d have a chance. Maybe the effort would even convince Tanead to forgive me, though I doubted it. Not when Loyce had died and Asherah had been born. I’d need an exit plan in place in case he tried to kill me, after. I closed my eyes to assess the landscape and found a path I could use for a quick retreat, if needed. I took deep breaths to calm my racing heart.
I felt as though the door to my cell had just been opened, releasing me to finally experience freedom. My muscles shook with tiredness but I demanded they stop.
Pain means you’re alive. Yes, and I’d never felt so alive before. I felt, in fact, like my life was about to begin.
I fixed my eyes on the Slayer giant above. The movements of his dance with Tanead were beautiful and deadly. Prince Caelan was a gilded monster, but he would bleed red like the rest of us.