Chapter Eighteen Samira
EIGHTEEN SAMIRA
The king’s room was expansive, located down the hall behind his throne, within the mountain.
An enormous four-poster bed, a fireplace, bookshelves, and a sitting area made up the suite, just about as large as my queen’s room in Ashorah.
Wolfskin rugs covered the stone floor, leading to a desk littered with papers, feather quills, and small figurines.
Rade gestured for me to sit in one of the large chairs in front of the fire, its wooden arms and legs thick like tree roots, while he went to his desk.
Velka dropped into the seat across from me, exhausted. I wondered how many trips she’d made. I’d only done the one and it had drained me.
Keir remained standing beside the door like a sentry and didn’t take his eyes off me. I fought to keep my spine straight under his blazing stare.
Rade rummaged through his desk, papers rustling. He finally found what he was looking for and sat in the chair beside mine, figurines held between his fingers. He offered one to me. It was small, about the size of a thumb, but it was sturdy. When I turned it over, I gasped.
Decorative metal armor, slitted eyes, and curling feline smile. Shaya.
“How do you have this?” I asked, examining it from every angle, as if it would stop being Shaya if I just turned it the right way.
The Kaldfolk were heretics. Monsters who had turned away from the gods.
Had one of the Seven stolen this when they’d snatched me from Ashorah?
But why? What would a figurine mean to heathens—
“The Seven Monarchs,” the king began. “All holy, all sacred, but only two of them are Uncreated, existent since before the dawn of time.” He placed another figurine in my hand.
She was beautiful, a laurel wrapped around her head, one of those leaves serving as a patch over her missing right eye. Twin braids hung down to her navel, slightly lifting off her body, like they were floating in a breeze.
“Ketet, the Mother, Goddess of Earth and Sea,” I murmured.
But… but the Kaldfolk were heretics. That was one of the first things I’d ever learned in Khada Palace.
King Zaid had fought and beaten back heretics.
He’d been charged with that mission by the gods themselves.
I’d even seen evidence of that heretic magic today, when Rade had turned Finan into a puppet.
But I was holding renderings of Ketet and Shaya in my hands, whittled out of wood, which meant the carvings could not be Ashoran. Every statue we had was molded out of clay or carved from stone. More durable, longer lasting, like the gods deserved.
No, these couldn’t have been taken from the palace.
These were Kaldfolk statues.
“Ketet and Shaya,” Rade said with a nod. “Life and death. They have existed since the beginning and will exist after the end. Which makes your father one of the most important deities we have. I’m sure you know their story well.”
The exact same doctrine we had in Ashorah…
Rade waited for my response. I swallowed hard and said in a hoarse voice, “Ketet and Shaya used to rule together as husband and wife. Ketet gave life in this realm and Shaya watched over it in the next.”
Rade nodded. “Until Ketet’s love for humans began to overshadow her love for Shaya.
She plucked out her right eye, wrapped it in fire, and placed it in the sky to create Phadar, God of the Sun.
” His voice was soothing as I listened to the familiar story.
“Human life was sustained longer because of him, weakening the Underworld.”
I stared, breathless. “We believe the same in Ashorah.”
“You sound surprised,” Keir said, and I couldn’t miss the accusatory tone.
“Hush, Keir,” Velka murmured.
“What do you know of the War of the Ancients?” asked Rade, drawing my attention back to him.
“The War of the Ancients,” I repeated blankly. “Is that what the Shroud is? Left over from the war?”
“Not exactly.” Rade’s gaze dipped to the Shaya figurine.
“Ketet and Phadar were bound together by their love of humans, a love Shaya could not understand. While they work to keep us alive, Shaya works to kill us. Fundamentally opposing forces. He watched his wife slowly fall in love with the sun god. Shaya was losing his realm and his lover at the same time. The death god grew vengeful.”
I had heard the story of Shaya’s wrath countless times from the Gods-Chosen herself.
“He gave up half his soul to create the moon goddess, Ayeen,” I said, “to fight against Phadar’s light.
And then he gave up the other half of his soul to create the jinn, led by his son, Athar.
The tricksters worked to lead humans to an early death, which started the war. ”
“No,” Rade said. “That was not enough to start a war. Phadar lengthened lifespans, the jinn shortened them. When the balance started to tip, one of the gods would send a Gods-Chosen to restore it. The world remained in equilibrium. But Shaya’s magic corrupted the earth, infecting every living thing.
Humans, animals, plants. It twisted them until they were monsters, little more than mindless beasts fighting over territory and food.
He had changed the beings that Ketet loved so dearly, and that was not balance. She wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “What does the War of the Ancients have to do with the Shroud?”
“You know that Ketet and Phadar’s children and their children’s children fought Shaya until they managed to lock him—and most of his monsters—in the Underworld and seal the Gate.
Except for jinn and Shifters, who got stuck on this side of the Gate, their powers significantly dampened.
Jinn couldn’t cause the same havoc they had before, and Shifters were no longer slaves to their animal halves.
Shifters don’t serve Shaya anymore, but the jinn are part of Shaya’s soul.
They continue to work for him, help him.
And what does someone in prison want more than anything else? ”
A chill stole over me. “Freedom.”
Rade nodded darkly. “The jinn offer Shaya a foothold in our realm. And he has been using that to his advantage since he was imprisoned.”
“Are you saying the Shroud is jinn’s dark magic working to free Shaya?”
“Worse,” Velka answered. She licked her lips nervously, yellow eyes troubled. “The Shroud is a bleeding wound. But instead of blood, it’s leaking the Underworld.”
My heart stopped in my chest. “What?”
“We’re not entirely sure how it’s happening,” Rade said, “but we think it’s the equivalent of banging on a door enough that it cracks open. The Underworld is seeping into our realm.”
Holy gods. “How is that possible?”
“Shaya has always been powerful,” Velka reasoned. “If he can never leave the Underworld, he might have just thought to move it. As an Uncreated, he’s probably one of the only gods who could actually manage such a thing.”
Move the Underworld? Move it here?
Ketet and the other Seven Monarchs had imprisoned Shaya because of his greed for human souls. If the Underworld crossed over into this realm…
My blood turned to ice. “Why have I never heard of this in Ashorah?” If anyone should know about Shaya’s realm bleeding into ours, it should have been his Gods-Chosen.
They exchanged a look that I couldn’t decipher.
Rade said, “It started slow. No one even knew what the Shroud was until it was too late. And it isn’t fully the Underworld.
At least not yet. It’s seeping in bit by bit.
First its darkness, then its creatures. By the time we realized what it was, it was already too big to fight back.
” He scratched at his beard. “Some of the Kaldfolk refused to believe it was happening. Some cannot resist its call. You saw what happened today.”
I thought of that first woman’s wide, shiny eyes. Finan sitting stubbornly in his chair. My own temptation to draw closer. I swallowed past the dryness in my throat.
“Over the last two decades,” Rade said, “the Shroud has sped up. As it claims more land, more people, it grows stronger and it—it thinks.”
I stilled. “What do you mean?”
“I have my people watching it constantly,” he replied.
“We monitor it. It doesn’t continuously spread.
It… it’s like it strategizes. Decides which town to take and when.
It should have continued north, to the coast, where all settlements had already been evacuated.
But it seemed to know that, and instead it turned east. After we began work on the tunnel through the Frozen Sands a few years ago, its movements grew even more erratic.
For now, Netherridge, the village we just evacuated, seems to have sated it, and it isn’t spreading farther. But that won’t last long.”
The Underworld was Shaya. Shaya was the Underworld. If the Shroud was the claw of the Underworld reaching into this realm, it made sense that it was as sentient as its ruler, even if it appeared to the naked eye to be just a writhing wall of night. A shudder worked through me.
“Even with all its pauses, our experts estimate we’ve got six months until all of Kaldfold will be swallowed. By then, the rate at which it moves will be so fast that it could take Ashorah in less than a year.”
My fingers tightened around Shaya’s figurine, a splinter digging into my skin. I’d only just learned about the Shroud. It had never been spoken of in Ashorah. Did my queen know of it? Or was she just as ignorant as I had been? I licked my dry lips. “What happens to people in the Shroud?”
Rade’s eyes dropped to his lap.
“It twists them,” Keir answered in a low voice. “Not right away. But living creatures are not meant to encounter the Underworld. Its darkness infests a person, and once it claims them…” He shook his head, eyes haunted.