Chapter 29 #2
“One little boy died anyway. And his parents were angry that I couldn’t save him. They called the guard.”
“And the queen wouldn’t accept someone singing the blessings of the gods, even to save her own people,” I guessed numbly.
“She hung me in the central square,” Hiwa said. She pointed at another group of dusk-souls that hadn’t yet departed. “Also the boy’s parents. And the neighbors. Because they’d asked for my help in the first place.”
I pressed my hands to the sides of my head in horror. “All these people? Has she gone totally mad?”
Hiwa’s form dimmed. I sensed that it was hard for her to think about things outside of her own memories. It was a struggle to imagine a future she wouldn’t be a part of.
“Some of the nobles are saying that she’s made the gods curse us. She’s paranoid there will be another civil war. There was a food riot the week before I died, when a ship came into the harbor with oil to sell, but too expensive.”
“Drutalos and the others…?” I was almost afraid to ask.
“They went down south to wait for you. Drutalos was sure you’d come back and make the queen see reason before the growing season was over.”
This was enough talk of my departure from the Summerlands to make Taran finally interject, slashing his arm between us for emphasis.
“Is there not a single other person in your little coven of rebels who can sing the blessing for rain? Or assassinate one mortal tyrant? Haven’t you asked enough of her?”
In life, Hiwa would have blinked in surprise, but she was beyond that now.
“Won’t you go too?”
“I cannot imagine a sufficient bribe to go a second time.”
She barely frowned. “But Iona hasn’t even peeled her own fruit in years. You wouldn’t make her do it alone.”
Taran’s expression tightened. “You must have me confused with the poor dead fool she was going to marry.”
“I don’t think so,” Hiwa said, still serene.
To break off that line of inquiry, I touched her shoulder again.
“Can you come with me? I don’t want Death’s people to catch you again. And maybe Wesha would—maybe she’d let me bring you back too—” My thoughts spun for some solution.
“How many favors do you think the Maiden owes you? It’s alright, Iona. I won’t get caught. And I don’t even want to leave this place. It’s lovely here.”
She gently waved at the bare rock walls, seeing something that I couldn’t. After a pause where she looked into the distance, head cocked as though listening, she turned to point at the faint light in the opposite direction of the illusion of the white citadel.
“Though I could take you to the beach first. That’s where the Fallen caught me.”
“No,” Taran said before I could respond. “Absolutely not.”
I hadn’t expected him to suddenly change his mind, but it still made my stomach tense, his stark refusal to consider it.
“Should we send the crafter-priests back with her, at least?” I said, gesturing at the crowd. The few I’d cut loose were slowly going through and freeing the rest, but many of the peace-priests were still curled on the floor, insensible from the collision of their vows and today’s attack.
“Darling, I don’t care if you want to eat them for dinner,” Taran said.
He didn’t mean that—his eyes were tight with hurt. I pretended he hadn’t said it.
“Is the mortal world safer, or the City? What should we do with them?”
“Now you’re asking me what I think?” Taran asked, face still angry.
“I always did,” I said helplessly.
The flat line of his mouth pulled hard at that.
“Because you knew how I felt about you.”
I gave a pained laugh and looked at my feet. “I thought I knew, but when we met for the second time, you thought all the rebels deserved to die. I didn’t think you’d believe you once loved one of us.”
“Not ‘one of us.’ You.”
“And that’s why I couldn’t say anything,” I whispered. Because I wasn’t any different from the rest of them.
That made his face even darker, and he turned to look at the huddled crowd of priests, glaring like they’d done something to him. But after a moment, he shook it off and strode into their midst.
I didn’t know what he planned when he took a deep breath and stretched out one hand over their bodies, but then I felt it again.
That pull on my soul, the sensation of light and heat without any discernible source.
It made my hair stand on end and the background chorus of crying and prayers fall silent.
The muscles in Taran’s neck pulled taut, and my head started to ache the way it did when the pressure dropped in advance of a storm, but he didn’t lower his arm as the feeling grew without release.
Eventually, he cursed and dropped his hand.
“I can’t,” he said raggedly. “There’re too many of them, and their vows are too old.”
I couldn’t solve the puzzle of his words before he cast around and his gaze landed on a trio of trembling crafter-priests in tattered brown.
“Make a vow to me,” he demanded. “All of you. Smenos’s people—I got you out of the dungeons once already, you owe me.”
I shivered, and so did they, but the first one he’d addressed moved stiffly to her knees. An older woman, gray hair in neat braids, wide shoulders from forge work.
“What vow?” she asked, voice shaded with fear.
That nearly stumped Taran, who grimaced as though offended.
“I don’t know—I don’t care. Any vow. You’ll sing me a little song once a fortnight.”
They were taken aback, but after a moment, the first priestess pressed her hands together and nodded. “I vow that I will say a prayer of gratitude to you every morning, Stoneborn, for freeing me twice.”
At her words, and those of the next priest, and the next, as they all repeated the same vow, Taran closed his eyes and tipped his head back.
There was more to it than just the words.
I’d felt it before, at every sacrifice. At Ereban, before the riot.
A vow was a sacrifice, and sacrifice was power.
It crackled in the air and gilded the edge of Taran’s profile as he absorbed it.
It still staggered me, every time I was reminded that he wasn’t human. He didn’t look it now, his features lit from within, and his voice echoed like he was speaking from a high place when he turned to Genna’s priests.
“If I free you from your vows, will you swear to me instead? If you were mine, I wouldn’t let you be herded into the Underworld like stray cattle. I’d keep you safe. I won’t demand your obedience, just your loyalty—you can’t ever speak of what I’ve done here.”
“Yes,” said one priestess immediately. I recognized her from my ineffective lessons in calling Death’s blessing of fire.
The others were slower to respond. A few whispered to each other, and many expressions were full of doubt.
But eventually all of the priests got on their knees and began to recite vows to Taran ab Genna.
This time, when he stretched out his arm, I smelled ozone.
The dark cavern brightened, and so did the shapes of the priests.
It reminded me of watching a meteor shower, the flashes of light that passed between Taran and the kneeling priests.
One by one, then all at once. Bright light and heat.
It had to hurt—several priests cried out and clutched their chests, and one fell to the floor in shock.
Whatever was happening was reshaping their souls, and it frightened me like Marit’s deep waves or the pillars of stone the Allmother had created from the earth.
“You’re free,” Taran said, dropping his hand with a gesture like he was ripping something loose. Every mortal in the cavern inhaled in unison as the divine working reached a crescendo. “Go. Find boats on the shore, leave the Summerlands, never come back. I’ll tell Genna you’re dead.”
Taran had never looked less mortal than when he turned back to me, surrounded by his new priests.
The exhaustion had vanished from his posture, even the grime and blood from the sharp lines of his face.
His presence vibrated against my skin, and the green of his eyes shone from within.
No, it was all of him, like a candle in the dark.
Is this what I wanted?
How could I want anything other than Taran alive and strong, and all of these priests released from their vows? I would be a terrible, selfish person to want anything else.
“Oh,” Hiwa said softly. I’d nearly forgotten her in the spectacle, and now her form was a blur next to me.
She no longer had the capacity for new experiences, and this had shaken her.
Even I could barely begin to reckon with what this meant.
With what Taran was. He could have freed me from my vows at any time.
He could free every priest in the Summerlands.
My throat was abruptly full of tears, because he was beyond me again. “Take care of yourself, Hiwa. And give my love to Windilla and the others, if you see them.”
I walked through the crowd to Taran, and the other mortals respectfully parted to let me pass.
Taran must have seen my thoughts on my face, because his mouth tightened before I could speak. “Don’t ask me today, Iona. Not today. Let’s just find a way out.”
I nodded and batted at my tears with my dusty knuckles. I sniffed the rest back, trying to get myself under control.
It was still him, underneath this glowing shell. Because this must have always been there too.
I put a hand on his chest—for balance, and to reassure myself that he still had a beating heart—then pushed myself up on my good foot to kiss his unsmiling mouth.
There was a fine, well-hidden tremble to his lips when they met mine, and realizing how scared he was at once broke my heart and made me feel a tiny bit better, because me too, Taran, me too.
He exhaled and wrapped me in his embrace, a slow sway until the scent of lightning had faded and the Underworld fell back into darkness. I heard the priests begin to depart, seizing their lives back from the Stoneborn.
Taran didn’t have to do that. I would never have known to ask. He was better than he was trying to teach himself to be.
“What else?” he asked when I didn’t make a move to find the tunnel to the surface. “Is there a lost kitten down here? You want to besiege Death’s citadel? Find your betrothed and kiss him hello while I watch?”
“I don’t think I can walk back up. Can you carry me?”
Taran nodded in relief to hear a request he could grant, then dipped to gather my legs over one arm while I put mine around his neck.
I turned my face into his chest, wishing I could return to the moment when he was carrying me down the cliffs ahead of the fires, the last moment when I’d been able to feel only one thing about him.