Chapter 16 #2
It took me a moment to realize why Taran’s hand on the stone had thrown me so much—it was the first time I’d seen him do something that a mortal, or even one of the Fallen, could not.
No song, no other god’s blessings. Just one small, shifting rock, moving at his will.
The first proof I’d seen that he was really one of the Stoneborn.
He and Marit cleared the path, moving large boulders like they were sacks of grain, and soon we were mounted again and moving toward the citadel of Smenos Shipwright, though my sense of uneasiness didn’t lift.
Awi went back to hiding in my hood as we crossed a final switchback and the citadel came into sight.
“Something is wrong,” she declared in her tiny piping voice as we surveyed the collection of buildings. “Where is everyone?”
From my position on the horse, I couldn’t turn around to look at Taran for an answer, but I wondered that myself.
Smenos’s palace was vast, a red stone structure carved directly into the Mountain behind it, but his workshops were bigger.
They were a small city of three-storied white stucco and timber buildings that filled the valley and crowded around a stream obstructed by several water mills.
I saw dozens of open forges, kilns, and worktables—but they were all empty.
There were no lamps lit in the windows, and the chimneys were cold and still. Not a single soul was visible.
Smenos was famous for calling back all his master artisans at the sunset of their years to cross the sea and preserve their knowledge for future generations.
There should have been hundreds of priests here, not to mention the lesser immortals who supported the Shipwright in his work—gods of metal, patrons of the professions, spirits of old bridges and great monuments.
“Hello?” Marit called as we approached the central courtyard. “Is anyone home?”
No one immediately answered, but we dismounted and gazed at the forbidding stone face of the palace.
It had been carved in stages, with some of the earliest pillars showing marks of mortal chisels, while the highest and newest decorations, far above our heads, were ornate scenes of battle from the Great War.
Some of it had crumbled. There was rubble in the courtyard and the smell of stone dust. The potted olive trees by the front stairs were withering from neglect, and their leaves had not been swept away.
“How long has it been like this?” I asked Taran, whose face was drawn as he surveyed the dark windows around us.
“It wasn’t like this a few months ago,” he said curtly.
“Should we knock on the front door?” Marit wondered out loud, but as he said it, the polished bronze gates of the palace spread open, and one immortal exited, while another, a smaller shadow, waited in the darkness inside.
There was a certain gravity I’d felt around Lixnea—the weight of her power, her age.
I’d felt it even more strongly in Death’s presence, like a deep vibration in the soles of my feet.
I felt it a little around Marit, but from Taran only if I looked very hard.
It was the same for Smenos, when I recognized him.
Every idol of Smenos depicted him with one of his tools in his hands—a hammer, a chisel, a protractor—yet today the god’s arms hung empty and slack at his side as he descended the stairs.
His skin was the flawless, cool black of wrought iron, and his build was powerful under the simple leather apron he wore, but no divine presence accompanied his arrival.
Aside from the metallic glint in his eyes, he could simply have been a tall, strong man.
From Taran’s expression, he recognized the void of Smenos’s power immediately, and he couldn’t explain it any more than I could. Smenos had died and been reborn, very recently.
The Shipwright didn’t bother to greet us.
“Did Genna send you?” he asked in a quavering voice. “Go and tell her it’s too late.”
Marit shot Taran a wide-eyed look, as confused as I was. Smenos’s reputation was as an exacting, stern master—and the being standing here had the same unsteady posture as Marit the night I met him.
“Too late for what?” Taran asked, sketching a short bow. “I’m afraid Genna didn’t send me or even know that she ought to come.”
The crafter god’s mouth pulled back in a rictus of a smile.
“You have a reputation as a liar, Taran ab Genna. Was she afraid to come and see what’s become of her peace? I’ll go to the City tomorrow and show her. You should leave.”
Taran didn’t let his calm expression slip, though I saw his jaw tighten.
“I happen to be telling the truth. I heard a rumor that you were building ships again, and as a Stoneborn, I felt compelled to come ask why.”
“A Stoneborn?” Smenos looked among our group. “Do I have two Stoneborn at my doorstep, or one Stoneborn and another jumped-up Fallen with pretensions of power?”
“Another?” Taran said. He frowned, then asked in a more gentle voice. “What happened to you, Smenos? I swear by all the gods that Genna didn’t send me. What are you talking about?”
“If Genna doesn’t know, perhaps you could ask your bitch sister,” Smenos said bitterly.
“Wesha and I have not really been on speaking terms for the past few centuries,” Taran replied, eyebrows coming together in confusion. It took him longer to ask the question than I wanted, and when he did, it was in a rougher, lower voice. “What did Wesha do? I heard that you argued.”
Smenos’s big shoulders bunched as he gestured around his desolate lands. “What did you expect? Aren’t you the one who gave her the stone knives in the first place?”
“Not for this,” Taran said, shaking his head with his face full of dawning dismay. “Smenos, nobody would have wanted this.”
According to the Moon, he’d given his sister the stone daggers that could kill a god only to drive Death away from her prison.
But it seemed that Wesha had turned them on another of the Stoneborn.
I slowly, unobtrusively reached for my hood, planning to wring Awi’s feathered neck—she must have known!
—but the little bird climbed around the back of my hood, burrowing into my hair.
“Genna asked if I would go to Wesha and beg her to let one ship pass. Me. You. Anyone. We’re shrinking by bits, starving slow and quiet.
The mortals have to be reminded of what we owe to each other.
I thought Wesha would listen to me—I never lifted a hand against that girl, not even when the Summerlands were aflame because she wouldn’t choose a husband.
” Smenos turned and looked up the stairs, face grief-stricken.
“My wife found me stumbling down the Mountain a month ago.”
“Why would Wesha do that?” I cried, forgetting that I was only there as a priestess to someone Smenos had called a jumped-up Fallen.
If Smenos had died, thousands of years of knowledge had died with him. I couldn’t even imagine a city without his brown-smocked priests presiding over half the shops and smithies.
And where were all his priests?
The crafter god’s mouth trembled with anger. “Wesha doesn’t care if the entire world cracks and falls into the sea, so long as she gets her freedom.” He took a deep breath and gestured roughly at his palace. “You can come in, I suppose.”
He turned abruptly and headed back up the stone stairs, ignoring the smaller figure who stood in the doorway. Wirrea, I assumed. She was a minor goddess, the Huntress.
Smenos and his wife were famously ill-suited.
Perhaps their match had made sense at the dawn of time, when tools were made of leather and bone, but Smenos’s cult had become one of the largest and the Huntress’s followers had dwindled as our country turned toward cultivation.
The crafter god was said to be an indifferent husband to his wild bride, who made scandals and distracted his priests.
I frowned at Taran’s back as we approached Wirrea. That didn’t excuse him for getting involved with her.
The Huntress had the long, narrow skull and slender limbs of a deer, with the dappled, white-spotted fall of brown hair over her shoulders to match, but her large, green-gold eyes were set in the front of her face, and the teeth cutting into her full lower lip were sharp.
She was predator and prey both, sizing up Marit and Taran as they came to the doorway.
“Taran ab Genna, back so soon.” She spoke in a low, dangerous purr, heedless of her husband’s grief-stricken presence just a few feet inside. “Do you want something again? Or is it Genna this time? You’re such a lovely guest when Genna wants something from us.”
Taran’s face was guarded as he stopped in front of her, but he stoically allowed Wirrea to press her hips against his and rub a pointed nose across his throat.
“You’re in a remarkably good mood for someone whose husband just died, Huntress,” Taran said with a curled lip. “But no, I came only because Marit wished to get reacquainted with the other Stoneborn.”
In response, Wirrea smirked and pulled Taran into the palace after her, one clawed hand tight around his wrist.
“Are you staying for dinner, then? I’ll have to arrange something grander than I’d planned. I thought we’d have only one guest at our table,” she cooed.
“Who else is here?” Marit asked, trailing behind them and oblivious to the mood.
The Huntress glanced over her shoulder, her eyes sparkling with malevolence. “Another Stoneborn, one who knows a few things about Wesha’s betrayals.”
My stomach sank, because somehow I could feel the answer already.
“Death is our guest tonight,” the goddess announced, and even Taran’s step faltered for a moment as the unlit stone halls swallowed us up.