Prologue Her #2
There. A mighty oval courtyard hollowed into the center of the mountain.
It opened to the sky, milky moonlight accompanying braziers that roared awake at her entrance.
Avoiding the mess of collapsed columns, she ran to the shattered altar at the center, split down the middle by an unnaturally large handprint.
There had once been a god here. Chained for centuries by magi and Seers alike and twisted into an abomination that had been trapped in a man’s body so that Ur Dinyé could win its wars.
But that had been during the time of the Scourgemaster, a time of monsters, prophecies, and men with honor.
This was a new age. And yet, it needed a monster too.
She knew this to be debridement not death, but the arbiters of history took such umbrage to change.
They needed their compartmentalizations of time and firm delineations of how the dust had settled.
To stop it from happening again, they would argue, but knowledge of the past had never stopped its repetition.
Blood did.
Two minutes.
Dagger. She sliced both palms open. Safsher, she drew the Urdish rune for “Sword” atop the altar. Tuhig for “Void.” Zefis for “Weave.” Sweat slid down her temples, stung her eyes. Her strained gasps were a preliminary death rattle as the agony in her chest pulled tight.
“Soon.” Something caressed her neck. A fingertip? The past clawing for blood. She flinched. “You will join us soon.”
Faster. She bit straight through her lip and drew. Khon, frazam, layk, sayag. Blood, End, Unity, Shadow, and finally, Sleep. Nibas.
And she was out of time.
Thick iron welled at the back of her throat. She choked. Blood sprayed from her lips to coat the altar, smudging her desperate runes. SHIT.
She collapsed. The temple screamed in glee, a thousand voices grasping through death and time to claim her for their own. Blood seeped up from the courtyard’s tile, reaching inky fingers for her. A new ghost. A new scream. She tried standing but her limbs no longer worked.
It can’t be for nothing! She silently pleaded with herself as the blood neared. Stand up! Stand—
Blue-green flames roared from the altar and spread to fence her from the dead. Dazed, she watched the fire climb toward the sky and coalesce into a wall. The voices vanished.
She’s here.
She had Summoned a god.
Her fingers moved quickly across the tile, drawing zuvrai once more. The magic unspooling from her stoppered. Pain fled like a ghost. Exultation brought her to her feet right as the goddess entered the mortal plane.
By all that’s holy. She fell back on her knees. Like all Naaduir, Faragathe had been human before her elevation to the minor pantheon for her service to Lord Time of the all-powerful Elsar. It no longer showed.
Starlight wove through black hair that trailed long past the goddess’s ankles to float midair.
Midnight-blue ribbons of sky slid over her twenty-foot body like an ever-shifting gown.
Four eyes, sans iris and pupil, blinked on each bare shoulder and across her clavicles.
Two more apiece slitted open on both high cheekbones, and the human two stared down at her.
Eighteen eyes, holding an esophageal darkness.
One dark, blue-green foot touched the ground. Faragathe tilted her head, curved horns gleaming bone white. “You call me to cursed land.” For a melodious voice, it cut like a blade.
So, this is power. “I had little choice,” she said bitterly. “I’m not so powerful a magus to Summon you otherwise. But those damned Elsarian priests were right after all. A Summoning does leave a mark of incursion on the mortal plane.”
“So, you pulled me through.” Faragathe’s eyes narrowed as she took in the courtyard. “Great evil was done here. A god Summoned. Brutalized.”
“I don’t seek to do the same to you! I swear—” She screamed when the goddess hoisted her with a flick of her finger, inches from her unearthly blue-green face.
Faragathe waved a taloned hand, spinning her dangling body in a slow circle. “A mortal’s oath means as little as their life.” She grinned, baring sharp teeth. “You couldn’t hurt me if you tried. Now, what do you want?”
For the first time, she wondered if she had made a mistake. What if she doesn’t care? The goddess’s many eyes were utterly blank. She had never seen anything so devoid of humanity.
“I ceased being human millennia ago,” Faragathe sniffed daintily, reading her thoughts. “Why? Do you seek to offer your body as a vessel? Keep it. I take no pleasure in walking this plane.”
“Because of what they did to you.” She trembled when the goddess stilled but kept speaking. “Faragathe, Devotee of Time.” She took a deep breath. “The Heretic Priestess.”
The goddess’s eyes flashed. “You dare—”
“I’ve risked everything to come here tonight for this, for you!
” she screamed. “I spent years of my worthless, mortal life digging through ancient texts for how to Summon you. The woman whose prophecies everyone ignored because Time granted them through dreams instead of the out-of-context flashes of the future accepted as canon by the Elsarian Order. The priestess who was mutilated and burned alive for saying what the Order didn’t like hearing.
One of history’s most brilliant minds, ultimately proven right and still all but written out of the Codices and every other religious text. ”
Faragathe’s smile was tight. “A choice that the Order has since learned to regret. Fear is bred in the unconscious, in the nameless things that walk between death, sleep, and waking. Unlike some of the other Naaduir and even a few Elsar, my power doesn’t depend on human belief. Everyone inevitably comes to me.”
“I know. That’s why I wanted to offer you—” She jerked when the goddess planted her on her palm and leaned in. The words died in her throat.
She had been wrong. It wasn’t just starlight glistening in Faragathe’s hair but bone and tar.
The eyes on her shoulders were voids into worlds with terrors beyond comprehension.
Darkness crowded the courtyard, extinguishing the braziers, and within it seemed to be a universe with the goddess as its epicenter, amid others of horrific, larger—all those eyes—
She realized she was screaming when Faragathe laughed.
“Well, mortal? What can you possibly offer me?”
Mind. Where was her mind?
“Recognition,” she gurgled, a portion of her mind irrevocably altered.
Her gaze shied from the goddess. “There was a time after your death when people heeded you. Now, they’re viewed as mad.
Remind them of you once more. Shroud this land and bind it to you.
Make the priests of the Elsarian Order return your name to the Codices.
We have a capital, Edessa. A cesspit of the pretentiously religious, corrupt, and greedy.
Destroy them, and history will never forget you again. ”
“How quaint. So, this is about vengeance.”
“You see my mind.” She knelt on the goddess’s palm. “It’s about more than just that.”
Eighteen black, empty orbs swiveled toward her and watched. Faragathe’s brow pinched. “Yes,” she murmured. “A great deal more.”
A blur of wind and limestone and she found herself deposited on the ground.
“The Naaduir don’t grant wishes, mortal.” Faragathe sounded contemplative. “We accept what appeals to us and reject the rest.”
Her heart sank. “Please, at least—”
“We never made the same promises to humans that the Elsar did. We reached this state of minor godhood because we served them and not you. You have Summoned me, and your request was heard. There is no debt.”
A tear ran down her nose to drop on her bloodied palms. “I understand.”
Blue-green filled her vision. A finger the size of her arm tipped her chin.
“But in this, I will hear you.”
Her head shot up. To her horror, she realized that she was sobbing. “You will?”
“Violence may be the sinew of authority, mortal. But power, true power, lies in the shadows.” Faragathe trailed a hand over the ruins they stood in, the remainder of a place that had once shaped the nation.
“Let them see it,” she said to the night sky.
“Let it drive them mad. I will stand behind you.”
Blood rushed in her ears, warmth spilling through hollows that life had carved in her chest and left to fester. So, this is joy. She bowed low. “My goddess,” her voice cracked, “from this day forth, I bind myself to you and only you.”
For the first time, something almost sad flickered in Faragathe’s many eyes. “Very well, mortal. To ancient history.”
She squeezed her still-bleeding palms. The blood spattered on the ground in a silent vow. “To ancient history.”