Chapter 28
Taran probably wished he’d never taught me to ride a horse, because I took both of them.
I unhitched the chariot and rode one while the other trailed behind us, unhappy to be racing toward smoke and noise instead of away from it, but too well trained to buck or stray.
I didn’t dare leave a horse for Taran. I didn’t know how long Wesha’s blessing would incapacitate him, and if he caught me before I made it to the City, I was certain he’d drag me off even if I fought back.
I wasn’t certain I had the heart to injure him, but if I did, I knew I wouldn’t be able to forgive either of us.
As it was, I was so angry at him that I could barely breathe.
It wasn’t a battle, when I reached the City.
It was a reaping. The buildings were aflame, and death-priests were methodically stalking through the City, calling their lord’s fire on every other living being, mortal and immortal alike.
The war Death had calmly predicted—the one the other Stoneborn refused to consider—had begun.
I’d spent the ride considering what I would do when I reached the battle, but I discarded all my plans.
I’d thought that perhaps I would rally defenders at some wall where we might hold off long enough for Skyfather or the Peace-Queen to rescue their people, but there was no defense possible against an assault that had already spread in every direction. This had begun hours ago.
Still, I had to save someone, or I might as well have sat with Taran in the meadow and pretended not to see the smoke. I slapped the reins of the horse to propel me into the City as ringing filled my ears and metal flooded my mouth.
For the second time in my life, I ran straight at Death.
In the far distance, in Skyfather’s sector, the winged lion was leaping from roof to roof, his maw belching fire as his claws scored through slate and tile to expose the interiors of palaces that held priests at their tasks.
If the Allmother was dead, her last work had been to re-create her murderer in golden perfection.
Where were the other Stoneborn? Genna? Diopater?
Even Marit? The only one I saw was Death.
He was smaller than he’d been at Smenos’s palace and less bright, nearly shrunken to the size of a mortal beast, but still deadly to any creature he encountered.
He dug priests out of their homes like the roots of an unwanted vine, sapping the divine power of the other Stoneborn with each screaming mortal death.
I sucked in a breath to prepare for singing vengeance.
When I reached the first blazing structures, a pair of red-robed death-priests turned their heads at my approach, raising their hands almost languidly to call flame.
Gracefully, ceremonially. I sang faster.
These two must have spent generations here in the City, counting the sacrifices that arrived in Death’s storerooms and mingling with the other mortals they’d just turned on.
Today their lord had commanded them to set the City on fire, and they’d obeyed.
If they’d been here as long as I suspected, these priests had probably never killed someone before today, but I had.
They died surprised, with Death’s blessing of fire abruptly cut off when the Maiden’s power paralyzed the breath in their lungs.
They fell clutching their throats, grasping uselessly at their chests while their lips turned blue and their bodies slowly failed for want of air.
Taran had never liked that song. He said it was cruel.
With my own chest heaving, I pulled up the horse to stare down at the still-twitching bodies of the death-priests, trying to recall when I might have used that blessing in surgery.
Or even who taught it to me and for what original purpose.
All I could remember was being a small child, when my mother led me by the hand into the vast painted halls of the temple at Ereban and left me there.
The Maiden loves your singing so much that you are going to live here with her priests. You’ll wear beautiful white dresses and always have plenty to eat, and someday people will bring their babies for you to bless.
I swallowed bile and rode to the tents where we’d housed Smenos’s former priests, only to find them collapsed and empty.
Death had probably come here first, attacked those who had no patron who might arrive to defend them.
The elderly craftsmen were vanished, and there were footprints in the thick, weedless lawn, flanked by scorch marks down to bare earth where the grass had died.
Either they’d just been taken, or whatever had happened to the Allmother had affected the ability of the Summerlands to keep the City static and pristine.
I followed the tracks, hoping for the former, but found only more flames as I went deeper into the City.
As I approached Genna’s barracks, there were signs that some priests had tried to fight back—the roofs were damp and smoldering, and there were puddles of water on the tile.
The priests of some other god might have made a stand here before the battle moved to their part of the City, might have tried to protect the helpless peace-priests.
But there were also bodies in the street. Wearing gold cloth. Wearing purple. A rainbow of clerical dresses blotted with blood or pulled up to cover the faces of mortals who’d strangled on smoke or died under sacrificial knives. Dozens of them.
Once again, I was too late. I’d come as fast as I could, but I was too late.
I slowed the horse and dismounted, walking numbly toward the first group of survivors I encountered. Peace-priests were pulling the wounded and dead out of the basement tunnels, singing to stanch wounds or soothe lungs filled with soot.
Amid the crowd of saffron-clad bodies, my heart lightened for a moment to recognize Elantia—half her hair scorched away from the side of her skull and blisters down one cheek, but alive—until I saw who she carried out.
Burns could quickly render victims unrecognizable, but it must have been smoke that killed Teuta ter Genna, because her lovely dark eyes were open and sightless in her untouched face.
Teuta had often gone to the royal palace before the rebellion, trusted to advise on everything from marriages to foreign trade.
My stomach twisted as I imagined her arrival in the Summerlands with all the other peace-priests, the first familiar sight to a frightened young girl who remembered dying on Death’s altar.
Teuta would have been the only person to remember Elantia’s life before she belonged to Genna, just like she had been the only person who remembered me before I belonged to the rebellion.
Being a high priestess still meant something to the people here, because Elantia had the help of the other high priest I’d met in Genna’s kitchens. Together they laid Teuta down apart from the other dead. Elantia dropped to her knees, crying raggedly, and I stumbled to kneel next to her.
Teuta should have been on her way home. She should have been presiding over weddings, she should have been bouncing her first grandchild on her knee, she shouldn’t even have been here in the first place.
“She tried to stop them from taking us. Tried to barricade the doors. But the dusk-souls came right through the wood, dragged people out anyway,” Elantia sobbed.
Teuta’s arms were burned—not just her palms, but wrists and biceps, charred all the way through the skin. Injuries from a dusk-soul’s touch. They must have scorched the grass too, by the crafter-priests’ tents.
An army of the dead had nearly destroyed the world in the Great War, and Death was building it up again.
How was I supposed to do this alone, when it had taken all the Stoneborn together and Wesha’s sacrifice to stop him the last time?
I could kill death-priests and Fallen, but how was I supposed to stop the dead?
“Where did the dusk-souls go?” I asked Elantia.
The girl loudly sniffled back tears. “I don’t know. I ran and hid until the smoke got too bad.”
The expression of horrified guilt on her face was far too familiar to me. She would start by asking why the other peace-priests had died, then end by wondering why she still lived.
I grabbed her uninjured shoulder hard and tried to reassure her, despite knowing that nothing I said would really matter. “No, you did the right thing. You did what I told you to do. None of you could fight back. It was Genna’s responsibility to protect you.”
And where all the gods had failed, there was still me.
I scanned the wreckage of the City. I hadn’t seen any of the former crafter-priests among the dead. They had to have been taken by the dusk-souls too, all herded away to serve as sacrifices.
I still had one of Taran’s knives, and I took it out to tremble in a fist that was already tired from clutching the reins—I wasn’t good enough with Diopater’s blessings to call rain or with Genna’s to heal smoke inhalation, but I could still account for any Fallen or death-priests that I found while searching for the captives.
I closed Teuta’s eyes and stood, prepared to follow the trail of scorched earth to its source.
As though summoned by my intentions, a small shape fluttered down from the sky, nervous sparrow wings fluttering with agitation. I was so on edge that I nearly set her feathers on fire again.
“What are you doing?” Awi trilled reproachfully.
“What are you doing? Have you been here the whole time? Did you see where the priests were taken?”
I hadn’t seen the little bird goddess since returning to the City, and she was no more helpful than ever. She ignored my questions to shriek insults instead.
“You idiot. Death’s still here! He’ll find you, he’ll find me! Get out, then get me out of here.”
“You are the last person I was worried about,” I said, trying to snatch her as she dove at my head.