Shada
reason to wait. Underground would be no brighter in daylight.
The opening in the rocks was smaller than Shada had envisioned when the Lady described it. She left her dignity behind as she wriggled through like a worm. The men could not pass her a torch until she was inside, so her entry was like crawling into the womb of night.
Inside, the air was still, and every scrap of noise resounded from every surface. As a soldier had warned, she found herself on a treacherous slope. Under her feet were rocks of all sizes, some of which moved or tumbled. Down the slope, regular folds of shadow showed where the staircase emerged from the rubble.
The descent needed all her attention, so she turned to say her goodbyes. To her relief, Nor had pushed his way to the front. His face filled the opening.
“I won’t be long, I hope,” she said.
He smiled. “Go on. We’ll be watching for you.”
It seemed he had forgiven their misunderstanding, though Shada doubted she would ever forgive herself. What lay ahead of her dwarfed all else in importance.
Clambering down toward the stairs, she slipped and fell a few times, saving herself by fingerholds from a bone-breaking tumble. Fine, slippery dust covered the rocks, reminding her of the gritty dirt on her skin. She wondered if Nor was still watching.
The stairs proved crude and uneven. They were also small, built for legs and feet smaller than hers. This made walking oddly laborious.
As she descended, noises came from the murk overhead. Things chirped. Once in a while, something larger shifted cautiously. This cave could have hidden openings.
The stairway ended in a stone wall of large, ungainly stone blocks with a doorway so low she had to duck through it. To either side, handholds led up to a small platform above the doorway, with slot-shaped windows cut into the wall.
Following the Lady’s instructions, she chose the straightest path: through the doorway. On the other side, the air changed as the space around her grew. The walls and ceiling were too far away for torchlight to reach. “Lady, are you here?” she asked, her voice alarmingly loud.
No answer. Fighting panic, she clung to one thought: the only thing worse than taking one more step forward would be going back and telling the others she had been too scared to go on.
She took a step then another and another. A second wall emerged from the gloom, this one with no visible openings.
She followed it to the left. Soon, she realized it was curving away from her.
It kept curving, and she followed. Her terror matured into horror. If the wall made a full circle, she would have no idea when she had passed her starting point or what to do next.
A faint glow appeared. Her old eyes in the world above would never have seen it. But it grew.
It grew until she reached its source, a doorway in the wall twice as wide as the last one, with more handholds and a platform. Through it, the glow was bright enough that she barely needed her torch. Close in front of her stood another wall, parallel to the last one, with a doorway off to her left.
Through that doorway was another parallel wall with another doorway. This pattern repeated several times.
The illumination was bright as day. Passing the last barrier, she staggered back with a cry, shielding her eyes from the light.
When her eyes adjusted, she saw a gateway as tall and broad as a Ronian temple. On the other side was perhaps the brightest day creation had ever known.
Sun-bleached land met a blue sky in a flat line, like a floor meeting a wall. The breath of this unknown world touched her as the gateway sighed warm air.
Putting her torch aside, she stepped over the threshold. Baked sand crackled under her feet, and she shivered in the heat of a new sun.
The flat horizon stretched all around, appearing to fall away in every direction. Coming from the close confines of the cave, it was dizzying, as if she might fall in any direction and roll forever down a mountain with no bottom.
She sank closer to the hard, dry ground. From this safer stance, she noticed breaks in the shining horizon. Objects rose here and there, columns of enormously varied dimensions with round or pointed tops. Their colors also varied greatly. Some were dark like little pits of night.
She focused on one of the closest. It was wide and gray, and a swath of ground around its base was dark. The dark patch shone in the sun, stretching and receding.
The object was a gateway, as were all the rest. The darkness at its base was water, surging in waves from the world on the other side.
“Hello!” Shada called. Her voice disappeared in all that space. “Lady, are you here?”
The breeze was the only answer. “Of course you’re not,” she said.
Some of the gateways appeared close enough to reach on foot before the sun cooked her. She wondered what waited through that watery one. A lake to sit and relax by? A raging sea to drown in?
She walked away from her gateway and into open country, far enough that her gateway shrank almost to the size of the others. Turning slowly, she realized she could leave the crusade behind and never come back. A universe of worlds to choose from.
Some might kill her. Some might be paradises. Somewhere out there, one might offer her a home. Whatever happened, it would be because of her own choices. She would be free. The service into which she had been forced, which had driven her to risk her life, would be a distant memory.
But she would be alone. The Lady needed her. The crusade needed her. And she needed them.
Nor had said something about true freedom—it was the ability to dislike what you were called to do even as you did it. Everyone was obligated to others. Your life was not your own, not completely.
She had taken a few steps back toward her gateway when a dark point on the horizon caught her eye. It moved and grew. When she looked straight at it, it swam in front of her eyes. Hoping to see it more clearly, she focused on another, larger shape near it.
This larger shape demanded her attention. She realized it was actually far away, farther than the speck. It appeared massive because it was.
It was immense. She was surprised she had missed it before now. It was a tower-shaped structure overlooking the desert.
Her skin crawled. It was something out of antiquity. It had to be. Humans could not build such things without the gods.
Meanwhile, the moving point had divided into many points. They were still growing.
“Oh, no.”
She ran for the gateway, but searing pain stopped her. Something burned in her throat, in her ears, on her skin. She bent as the feeling ran up her body.
Something poured out of her mouth and ears. It came off her skin too—the grit and filth she had felt since waking rose like steam and gathered, humming, in the air.
The Lady formed in front of her. The humming congealed into words. “Hello, Caretaker.”
Shada coughed and spat.
“We haven’t much time,” the Lady continued. “Someone is riding this way.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know, child.”
“But you’ve been here before! You led us here!”
The Lady stared at her, eyes blank.
Shada heard the hostility in her tone. “I’m sorry. I’m scared. You’re right, we should go back.”
“We will. But first, I must congratulate you.”
“Why? What did I do?”
“You’ve done so well, Shada. Caidfell held many trials, but you survived them all. Your latest victory came just now.”
“Do you mean… all the terrible things that happened on Caidfell… did you make them happen?”
“Not at all. But when you defied me in the prison, I stopped offering my guidance for a while. You had resisted the Goddess’s will so often that I wondered if I had chosen the wrong caretaker. I needed to know how devoted you were, if you would give up without my help.
“You didn’t. Not only that, but you entered this new planet by yourself. Finally, given all these gateways to choose from and all the worlds behind them, you chose to stay with Huire’s crusade.”
“That’s why you made me come here alone.” Shada’s mouth went dry. “Arumin was right. It was all a test. Everything.”
“You’re not the only one who’s been tested,” the Lady said. “Recent circumstances have tried us both.”
Shada glanced at the approaching figures. They had little time to argue.
“I don’t believe you,” she told the Lady.
The Lady’s humming rose in pitch. “Be very clear, Shada. What do you mean?”
“I don’t believe you planned any of this. You admitted the Goddess hasn’t spoken to you.” Her face burned. “You’re not in control. You might remember the general route we’re to take, but when it comes to knowing what Huire wants, you’re as lost as me. You just won’t admit it.”
The Lady’s voice wavered. “You lied to me, child. You told me you had repented for your defiance.”
“I considered it. But you’ve convinced me I shouldn’t. Since we’re both lost, why can’t we work together? We could do the Goddess’s will—together.”
The Lady paused. “What has changed in you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Something I feared has come to pass. The admiration of others has gone to your head. Perhaps those visions you received inflated your self-importance.”
“What? No.”
The Lady loomed closer. “Perhaps that crystalline man in your visions was a demon sent to corrupt you.”
“My visions stopped! I don’t even know if he’s real.”
“Perhaps he sensed your potential for pride.”
“No, it’s nothing like that. I just—”
Shada jumped as the Lady reached for her. “What are you doing?” she gasped.
“I am a piece of the Goddess,” said the Lady. Her voice had lost all emotion.
“I know that,” Shada cried.
The Lady reached again and again. Each motion was slow enough to let Shada dodge it. The Lady drove her backward. “You believe you are my equal.”
“No!”
The next hand swung a hair faster and knocked Shada down. She scrambled to her feet as the Lady reached again.
“Stay away!” Shada cried. “Who are you?”
“I am who I say I am.”
“Please. Those riders will be here soon. If I don’t leave now, they’ll catch me.”
“Then they will catch you.”
“I’ve got to go back to my friends.”
“‘Friends’? You are too close to them.”
There was nothing else to say. Shada turned to go.
The Lady swooped down on her with terrible speed. She struck the backs of Shada’s knees like a solid object. Shada fell, barely catching herself with her hands, but the Lady swept those from under her.
Her cheek hit the ground. Dust filled her mouth. The great cloud that was the Lady funneled down her throat. Shada snapped her mouth shut, but the Lady flowed into her nostrils and wrenched her jaw open.
Once she had mostly hidden inside Shada’s body, the Lady spread across Shada’s face and into her ears, all one filmy surface.
From inside Shada’s ears, the Lady spoke. “You have forced me to do this.”
Thrashing, Shada reached into her mouth, but there was nothing to grab or pull.
The Lady said, “If only I’d known what you were like. I had hoped for a guardian and companion.”
Shada could still speak, barely. “No, you didn’t. You wanted a slave.”
Then she could not breathe. The Lady formed a solid lump that blocked her throat like dried tar.
“Doing this also hurts me,” said the Lady.
Shada rolled on the ground. Faces appeared to her, especially her father’s. She saw him comfortable in the Temple’s care, eating the apples she had given him. Thinking of her often but not grieving, she hoped.
“Killing can gratify when the cause is righteous. I learned that when I held that man in the fire to save you. But I want you to live.”
Shada could hardly listen. Her world was a storm of spots and colors and need.
“That man wasn’t the first. But I’ve only killed out of necessity. And I won’t give up on you, Shada. If you wish to continue with me, to do my bidding, cross your arms over your chest.”
She released a little air into Shada’s lungs. “Let us pray together.”
The ground shook as the riders approached. Shada crossed her arms and brought her face to the ground. She didn’t understand any of this. If the riders killed her, the Lady would be alone on a strange planet. What could the Lady desire so badly as to risk that? She had nothing to gain except…
With her face pressed against the cracked dirt, Shada gurgled, “I’ll obey you.”
Air rushed into her lungs like a mythical flood. Each breath was vast, stretching her chest. Her hands fell to the ground, limp.
“Goddess Huire,” said the Lady, “come into us and strengthen us. Forgive us, and me most of all. For though your mercy is endless, mine is not.”
Mounted soldiers surrounded them in a flurry. The men carried large guns and rode on tall beasts with hooves and swishing tails. There were many of them. Ranks of legs reached back as far as Shada could see. One man dismounted and approached her.
Shada had fallen to the ground as a free woman. She rose a slave, captive to her latest master, this one the most dreadful and powerful of all.
She stumbled. The man saw and ran to her.
His cheerful blue uniform was layered and ornate, something a soldier wore in a parade, not in the field. He smiled handsomely and spoke, but she couldn’t understand a word.
She replied hoarsely in her own language. “My name is Shada.”
His smile never faltered. “Welcome, Shada,” he said, speaking perfect Ronian.
Stunned, she said nothing. The language was spoken across many worlds and called by many names. But here, beyond known space…
“What god do you worship, Shada?” The man asked the question as if it was perfectly normal.
The Lady spoke in her ear. “You must remain as anonymous as possible. Say you worship no god. Answer quickly.”
The man noticed her hesitation. “You must tell the truth.”
“None.”
His face froze. A murmur ran around the circle of riders. “Remarkable. Where do you come from that you know no gods?”
“Don’t mention Ronia,” came the whisper.
“A place not worth speaking of,” she told him. “It is far away and doomed.”
If her evasiveness bothered him, he did not show it. His smile returned, faint but warm. “You’ve traveled a long way, plainly. But your journey is over.” He spoke to the others. “Make our new friend comfortable.”
Her insides tightened. A pair of men dismounted and strode past the others. They wore all black, and their slitted eyes shone a wicked shade of yellow.
The uniformed man turned back, his smile burning like the sun above the desert. “I’m glad you’ve come, Shada. You’ve entered a realm of splendor and power. We have only one god.” He pointed to his head. He offered her his hand. “You will soon count this as the luckiest day of your life.”
To continue the quest, read The Kingdom and the Power, book 3 of the Liturgy of Worlds, on sale here:
https://books2read.com/thekingdomandthepower
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