Chapter Thirty-Seven
It was one of the most miserable nights I could ever remember having. The rain did eventually taper off and die down. But that left us shivering in the cold desert air in clothes that were soaked. Poor Dagger kept wheezing.
As soon as the sun came up, we both undressed and laid our clothes out in the sun so they could dry. I’d never been so grateful for sunlight before. It warmed us up and made me feel human again.
After our things were dry, we got dressed and started packing our bags.
I glanced up at Zain, and when he noticed me looking, he quickly shoved something into a bag.
“What’s that?” I asked. He wasn’t usually cagey like that around me.
“Nothing.”
It wasn’t nothing. “What is it?”
“It doesn’t matter, Basileia. Let it go.”
Now I was concerned. When he called me by my actual name like that, it meant something was wrong.
I used my battle-favored ability to yank the bag out of his hands before he could stop me.
The thought that kept running through my head was, has he somehow betrayed me again?
My heart ricocheted around inside my chest as I threw the flap open and searched. Something smooth and soft greeted my fingertips. I grabbed hold of it, pulled, and saw . . .
The dress he had bought for me in Sagaris. “I told Dione to burn this.”
He took the bag out of my hands and closed it. “I asked her to give it to me and she did.”
I turned around so that he wouldn’t see me smile. Nothing had been wrong. He had just been embarrassed that he’d been caught with the dress. Maybe he wanted to remember our good times, too.
And perhaps he was more sentimental than I’d given him credit for.
He put Dagger back into his tunic, looping the sides shut so that the dog would stay put.
We finished packing and headed down the opposite side of the rock wall. The side we’d come up on had essentially created a new, shallow river. Zain said it wouldn’t stay—it would eventually dissipate.
“Dry riverbeds are good places to camp but not when there are flash floods.”
We had to carry our bags ourselves as our horses were long gone. I hoped that they had outrun the rains and floods and that they were safe and would find civilization.
Zain didn’t seem as concerned as I was about the nature of that storm. It had felt otherworldly.
Especially that voice.
I asked him what he thought the voice was. He shrugged. We were both stumped.
“The thing I keep thinking about was when it said ‘you’ll never win.’ Every dream I have of Invara, she always says the same thing. ‘Win.’ What am I supposed to be winning?” I wondered aloud.
“I think gods are unreliable messengers.”
“So you think another god was telling us to let go and untie the rope?”
“What else could it have been? If I had to place a bet, it would be on the goddess of discord being behind all of this. We are on her lands and she hates our gods.”
“Does that mean it’s specifically directed at us for worshipping Invara and Eramis, or does she do this to anyone in her desert? Do you think the Daemonian guards are safe?”
He came to a stop and closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he said, “I can’t tell if they’re still back there.”
What if they’d been washed away because they hadn’t known what to do like Zain had? “How did you learn about those floods?”
“I’ve lived in several towns on the edge of the Wastelands. I’ve seen those floods wash away entire villages. The sheer power of it, the level of destruction—it’s not something you ever forget.”
I certainly wouldn’t. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to sleep out here. What if it happens again?”
“We’ll have warning.”
“What if it rains somewhere we can’t see and the flash floods reach us without warning?”
“Given how strange last night was,” he said, “I don’t think we can take anything for granted. We should probably plan to sleep on rocks that are high.”
That made me feel slightly better. I’d never been in a situation like last night, where I was trapped by the elements. There hadn’t been an option to fight my way out. People in my life kept reminding me that this would be the case—that I couldn’t resolve everything in life with a sword.
I had felt so helpless in the face of that water, and I hated that feeling.
“I don’t know if I thanked you last night, but thank you for rescuing me,” he said, cutting into my thoughts.
“You rescued me first by getting me to safety, so I supposed I owed you one.”
He grinned. “I think we make a good team.”
“I think so, too.”
That lifted my spirits a bit. It was one thing I had accomplished during that storm.
Yes, you protected someone and you did it without a sword.
Lia had told me once that she had often heard voices in her head that she later discovered were her goddess communicating with her.
If this is you, Invara, find a different way. You’re going to make me angry with my sister.
Zain and I continued on and I thought about how, instead of reaching the cave today, we had at least one extra day of travel since we were walking instead of riding.
It didn’t help matters that we were both exhausted and worn out.
He mentioned possibly finding somewhere to stop to take a short nap to reenergize ourselves when we came upon what looked like a large bird claw sticking out of the ground.
“What do you think that is?” he asked.
“Something we probably shouldn’t be bothering,” I said, and I scanned the horizon, feeling uneasy.
“Whatever it is, it’s dead. It’s lying under several feet of sand.” He went over and tugged on the foot. He moved it a little, but not enough. “Could you grab this?”
“Why?”
“I’m curious.”
I took the bags off my shoulders and went over to the claw. It was larger than my hand. How big was this bird? I pulled, and then pulled again, and on my third try, the creature popped out.
It was not a bird.
“What in the name of Invara . . .” It had died recently; there was hardly any decomposition on the body. It had a lion’s head in the front, with a lion’s padded feet and claws. Where its tail should’ve been, there was a snake, and that part of the body was covered in scales and the birdlike feet.
Then in the middle of the body, there was a goat’s head.
There was a long, deep gash beneath the lion’s head, old enough that the blood had dried. Someone had killed this beast.
“A chimera,” Zain said. “The goddess of discord’s sacred beast.”
I supposed that made sense—the monster in front of me was such a chaotic mess. Dagger stuck his head out over the tunic to investigate the situation and then went right back down.
“I remember reading stories about these. I never thought they were real.” Zain actually sounded excited, while I wanted to get away from the body before it started to smell.
Or somehow resurrected itself. “The stories say that the goddess of discord took Invara’s sacred animal, the lion, Eramis’s animal, the snake, and her own, the goat.
She forced them to merge into one beast as a reminder to everyone what Invara and Eramis did to her. ”
“That wasn’t their fault. Eramis didn’t agree to the betrothal.”
“I don’t think the goddess of discord cares.”
“Does she have a name? That’s a mouthful to say.”
“She does,” he said, “but no one knows what it is. To know a god’s true name is to have power over them and she would never permit that to happen.”
I supposed that was why using aspects involved speaking the goddess’s name.
“What does a chimera do?” I asked.
“The lion’s teeth and claws are razor sharp and can cut through anything, including bone.
The snake has a venom that is a thousand times worse than any venom that exists in the world.
The goat head is in the middle of the body because the goddess of discord still stands between Invara and Eramis. And the goat breathes fire.”
I walked around the chimera to the opposite side, and that was when I noticed the goat’s head had been burned. “Did it catch its own head on fire?”
Zain joined me and saw what I did. “Someone took its horns as a trophy. To prove they killed a chimera, which is impressive. Then it looks like either they burned the goat or maybe it has some kind of internal fail-safe where it shoots fire out of its head if something happens to it? I don’t know.”
“Wait. Did you just say ‘a chimera’? Are you telling me there’s more than one?”
“I didn’t even think they were real. Just creatures from someone’s imagination.
But why would there be only one? It stands to reason that they mate and reproduce just like every other animal.
The stories say that they prefer the Wastelands, although I would have thought they’d be much farther east.”
“If we’re taking a vote, I vote that we keep walking.” I did not want to stay with the dead monster, especially if it was not alone. What if something came looking for it?
“Wait for one minute,” he said. He pulled out a long dagger and started hacking off the birdlike feet.
“What are you doing?”
“I remember reading something about how the claws from the back legs of a chimera can be ground up to be aphrodisiacs.”
“You do not need the help,” I said.
“It’s not for me. I’ll sell it to some sad man who doesn’t have a woman as beautiful as you.” He finished with the claws, cutting the feet into threes with a claw at the end of each one, and then put them into a bag.
“Or maybe you should give it to some woman who doesn’t have a man as handsome as you.” I’d meant it to be a retort—the assumption that only men might need sexual stimulation annoyed me, but this only served to make his smile wider.
“I knew you liked me, illora.”
What was it he had said? Oh, yes. “It’s just an objective fact. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“I might believe you except I remember in excruciating detail what happened when I undressed you and you threw yourself at me.”
My skin flushed, but thankfully I’d had enough sun exposure that it didn’t really show. I wished that I could object and say that wasn’t what occurred, but that would have been a lie, so I didn’t say it.
“Is this where you threaten me to behave and remind me that you are undefeated in your fights?” he asked. “Because I’m not sure that counts when you walk away from fights you know you can’t win.”
I came to a stop, my mouth open, as he continued walking east.
That . . . that . . . that was entirely untrue!
I would never walk away from a fight.
Before I could tell him so, we heard what sounded like a distant roar.
“Thunder?” I asked. “Another flood?”
“I think that’s another chimera. Maybe this one’s mate. We should leave.”
He started running and I followed, easily catching up to him. “But I thought you said there weren’t any monsters in the desert! No hydras that would eat us!”
“You can be smug about this later, my illora. Right now, let’s run.”