16: BLACK LOTUS

Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Three days since a woman finally became emperor

When everyone had finished cleaning or dealing with various minor emergencies, Kihrin settled down on a seat at the bar next to Star. “Hey there. My name is Kihrin. What’s your name? And would you mind introducing me to the lovely woman who’s been monopolizing your attention all evening?”

Star stared at him for a second before making a face. “Keep calling me Star. I don’t mind.”

“I’m Dorna,” the old woman said. She looked Kihrin up and down. “Huh.”

Kihrin had no idea what that meant.

Janel sat down next to Kihrin, so close their thighs touched. He was ridiculously aware of their thighs touching. Every nerve of that leg felt alive. Every time he came anywhere near Janel, the air between them felt charged.

A second later, Ninavis walked behind the bar, grabbed a bottle of aris, and began pouring a glass for everyone.

“Water for me. We’ve all been drinking fit for a wedding or a wake tonight.” Dorna pointed to the group. “You all should start drinking water too, you hear me?”

“Yes, Mother,” Star said.

“So this absent friend of yours—” Kihrin said.

Janel kneaded her knuckles into her temples. “We’re waiting on a wizard who knows how to open gates. I don’t expect him to use the front door.”

“And he was supposed to be here by now?”

“Yes, but—” Janel paused as Brother Qown arrived, taking a seat next to Dorna.

Brother Qown pushed away the aris. “Do you have tea?”

“I’ve a pot of coffee in the back.”

“Even better,” Brother Qown said.

“Qown, any word from Thurvishar?” Janel asked.

“Thurvishar?” Kihrin blinked in surprise. “You’re expecting Thurvishar D’Lorus?”¹ He had mixed feelings about the Lord Heir of House D’Lorus. Thurvishar had worked for the evil necromancer Gadrith D’Lorus, but only because he’d been gaeshed as a child. With the gaesh removed, Thurvishar had proved himself more willing to help Kihrin than assist Gadrith’s other associates—including Relos Var.² Plus, Thurvishar was indeed a damn powerful wizard. Powerful enough to be able to open a gate on his own, no Gatestone required.

“I told you we know all the same people, didn’t I?”

“Who’s Thurvishar D’Lorus?” Dorna asked. “Besides no-good royalty scum.” She glanced over at Kihrin. “No offense.”

Kihrin shrugged. “Oh no. I’m with you.”

“I’ve been leaving messages,” Qown said. “Nothing yet. Oh, thank you, Ninavis.” He reached for the coffee.

“Wait, you can communicate with Thurvishar? How?” Kihrin looked past Star and Dorna to address him.

Brother Qown bit his lip. “It’s—”

“Do not say it’s complicated,” Kihrin said.

Brother Qown swallowed. “My Cornerstone, Worldhearth, allows me to see through heat sources at a great distance. That’s one way we know Morios hasn’t started attacking Atrine yet—I’ve been checking through a lantern in the city. I can also, uh … I can also cast spells through to any location I see, which is how I leave messages.”

Kihrin whistled. Any Royal House in the Capital would give a dozen favorite sons and daughters to have that ability.³ Hell, Teraeth would be a very happy little assassin to have that ability too. Kihrin almost felt jealous—the Stone of Shackles had been an artifact you hoped to never use. Brother Qown’s Cornerstone seemed a lot more helpful on a day-to-day level.

“Have you checked on Atrine recently?” Janel asked.

The priest nodded. “Just before dinner. Still nothing.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way. The three of us were just—” Janel looked around the bar. “We were in the middle of something earlier. Dorna, Ninavis—” She looked at Star. “Uh—”

“Star,” he replied.

“Right. I know I’m being rude, but could you let us have a bit of space—”

“Oh no you don’t,” Dorna said. “I haven’t seen either you or Qown here since the Great Tournament, and you know how that went. It’s been years. We’ve got some catching up to do. I’m staying right here.” She crossed her arms over her chest for emphasis.

“Same,” Ninavis said.

Kihrin chuckled. “I guess that makes it your turn to narrate, Janel.”

Janel’s Turn. The Afterlife.

There’s a part of this story that none of you—not even Brother Qown—have heard before.

Let me tell what happened after we left Mereina and our shelter.

The storms passed. Mare Dorna, Brother Qown, and I were now joined by Sir Baramon (who had insisted a journey would be good for his constitution). We’d started out for the capital of Jorat, Atrine. I’d insisted. I knew the army marched to Mereina, but I felt obligated to report on the disaster to Duke Xun. Ninavis and the townsfolk had agreed to go back and keep watch over Mereina—and see if the witch-smoke had dissipated.

Tempers were frayed by the time we made camp. We’d given most of the food to Ninavis and the townsfolk. The unseasonal ice and snow had played havoc with the native wildlife, for whom this should have been spring. Dorna foraged for herbs and plants, edible if flash-frozen. I found myself pining for someone with a bow and a keen hunting sense. Dorna’s efforts hadn’t provided us with more than a few handfuls of roots and berries.

Yet going to bed hungry never made it any harder for me to cross the Second Veil, when I closed my eyes.⁴

I opened them again to find myself on a small hillock overlooking a town. My heart wailed at its resemblance to Coldwater—more azhocks, perhaps, but still the same communal cooking areas, the same horse yards and cellar homes.

The same dead trapped inside.

Demons roared in the distance. I unsheathed my sword, knowing what the night’s work would be.

Then Thaena’s elephants filled the air with trumpet sounds once more.

I grinned and changed tactics. Instead of wading into battle, I herded the demons straight toward the Death Goddess’s glowing war elephants. I stayed away from the arrow fire this time, cutting down any stragglers who assumed I posed less of a threat than the Hunt.

I looked for him. The whole time, I scanned the tree line, examining the elephants to catch a glimpse of the Manol vané man in green and gold. The one I’d warned about Relos Var.⁵ The one who’d saved my life.

But he wasn’t there.

Disappointed, I funneled my anger into its natural outlet: killing demons.

These demons—all young, foolish, green—didn’t understand the Afterlife forest had become their charnel house. They had been promised power and their slaughtered victims’ fear. No one had warned they could still be prey themselves.

As the last demon fell, I flicked violet gore off my sword and watched the elephants trumpet their victory. They hadn’t acknowledged my presence. Considering the alternative—becoming their victim—that pleased me enough.

No sign of my nameless Manol vané, though.

“Who are you looking for?”

I spun around.

He stood behind me, leaning against a dead tree trunk. He wore the same outfit I’d seen on him last and had his arms crossed over his chest. This time, his daggers stayed at his belt.

He’d suffered a chest wound, as though he’d been stabbed, but he didn’t seem to notice the injury.

“It’s you…?” I said intelligently as I walked toward him. I hadn’t heard or felt his approach, and for a moment, I felt suspicion. Could this be Xaltorath? Was it possible she’d known about our previous meeting? Did she impersonate him even now?

No, I told myself. She didn’t know. And if she did, she wouldn’t have dared approach me so close to where Thaena herself might appear. This was real. Or at least, as real as the Afterlife could be. His green eyes held me, and he smelled of blood and musk and the deep, wide sea.

“Who else would I be?”

“Never mind,” I said and I …

Well, no sense being coy about it. I kissed him.

It was stupid. I’m aware just how stupid. I hadn’t asked his leave; I still held my sword. If he’d decided to take my movement as an impending attack, the fault would have been my own. Even if he hadn’t, it’s uncouth to make such an overture without certain discussions. I had let my desire override my sense.

I felt him flinch. He’d started to reach for his weapons, his instinct to assume a trap. I had no excuse at all. He stopped himself.

“You remember me?” He looked at me as if I were a miracle.

“Of course I remember you. You saved my life.”

He stepped back, looking strangely disappointed.⁶

Then someone cleared their throat behind us.

He inhaled. I turned around and saw …

Thaena.

Thaena, Goddess of Death, stood right behind us.

Like her statues, she was dark-skinned, clad in white silk. Roses and skulls circled her hips, crowned her shimmering hair. Her identity was clear. It’s not just how she looked: beauty personified in obsidian, bone, and crimson. Her aura, her dread demeanor, her aspect proclaiming she endured as the absolute and the inevitable. In her eyes, all found their final judgment, their sins and graces laid bare before her quicksilver gaze.

I went down to my knees and lowered my head, prostrating myself before her. Behind me, I heard the Manol vané man step away. His movements smacked of guilt—the manner of a man caught red-handed—and I found myself wondering if Thaena herself held this man’s thudajé. I’d heard many a joke about Thaena’s marriage bed as a euphemism for dying. It had never occurred to me there might be some reality behind the humor. Had I just been caught taking liberties with Thaena’s lover?

Then I heard a scuff of shoe, a swish of fabric, the hiss of metal slicing through air.

What? No!

A lifetime spent surviving Xaltorath’s unsubtle and abrupt “lessons” had made certain instincts irrevocable.

I rolled to the side as Thaena’s sword slammed down into the ground where I had been.

“Mother, no!” the Manol vané screamed.

“Not a lover, then,” I said as I rolled to the side.

Son wasn’t necessarily an improvement.

She carried a blade in each hand and moved them with blurring speed. She approached steadily, relentlessly—a tiger walking, slow and sure, toward a prey too wounded to escape. And though she never ran, she closed on me in an instant, arriving in eye blinks without ever seeming to rush or hurry.

“Please! Stop!” I shouted as I tried to dodge away. I felt the blow as her sword connected with my shield, vibrating up the metal. “I’m not your enemy!”

My arm felt numb from the strike.

“No?” Thaena stepped toward me. “Then why did Xaltorath spare you? Why did she choose you to survive the Lonezh Canton’s Hellmarch?⁷ What reason other than you have pledged yourself to her?”

My protest froze in my throat. Tears sprang to my eyes. “I don’t know why she spared me.”

“Yes, you do.”

She kept swinging.

I saw her son scramble away, and I ducked under her swings. Then she opened a thin, shallow gash along my thigh, cutting straight through the armor.

My strength did me no favors here. My ability to strike an enemy’s weapon away, or even break it, meant nothing against a god. The utter futility manifested in every swing, every dodge, every near miss or not-so-near miss. Cuts crisscrossed my armor, razor marks made by an enemy with no need to hurry an inevitable outcome.

I never landed a single blow on her.

I never came close.

I tossed my sword and shield aside and went back down to my knees.

I felt cold metal across my neck as the two blades came to a stop against my skin.

“I don’t know why,” I repeated. “She asked me if I wanted her protection. She didn’t look like a demon. She looked like a beautiful woman. So I said yes. But I never submitted to her. She once—” I didn’t quite dare swallow, aware of Thaena’s stare the whole time, a single motion capable of ending my existence. “She once claimed my mother—my real mother—made a deal with her to protect me. I didn’t believe her then, and I don’t believe her now; Xaltorath loves to lie.”

“Yes. Yes, she does. Look at me.” The blades nudged my chin upward.

I felt her voice in my bones as much as heard it. I dared not deny the order.

I looked up. Our eyes met.

Looking into Thaena’s eyes meant staring into the mirror of every past sin I’d ever committed, every wrong, every hurt. Those eyes saw all. Every shameful deed or deed of which I should have been ashamed. Those eyes said, I have seen all you’ve done. You can hide your sins from all others, even from yourself, but not from me. Never from me.

I found a kind of comfort to it.

I know that sounds odd, but there can be comfort in ripping the scab off a wound. Pain, yes, but relief. Finally, this is out in the open. Finally, I have confessed my sins. Finally, someone knows.

I didn’t see her drop the swords or put them away, but they vanished. She took my face in her hands as she continued looking into my eyes, examining my features.

“Who is your lord?” she asked me. “Who owns your thudajé?”

“The Markreev of Stav—” I began to answer.

“No,” she corrected.

I shuddered as I realized the truth in that single, simple word. Supposedly, I owed my thudajé to the Markreev of Stavira, Aroth Malkoessian. Supposedly, I knew my place, gave him my loyalty. Yet in truth, I’d had none for him since the day he’d decided to place his son’s ambitions over my house’s honor. So who was left? Xun, Duke of Jorat? Possibly Duke Xun. But I hadn’t seen the man in years; it’s difficult to be loyal to someone who is only a name.

Then I realized the obvious answer.

“You,” I said. “The Eight. You have always had my thudajé.”

Her gaze continued to trap mine, judging and righteous, but her hands shifted their position until they cradled my cheeks. She bent over and kissed me on the forehead before letting me go. “I was wrong about you.”

“Wrong?” Was that good or bad? Did she mean she shouldn’t have spared my life?

She turned away, releasing me from her gaze. I felt like I had been held up on strings, freed to slump against the ground and regain my breath. I sought out the vané man for some explanation, but he stared at me as if he’d never seen me before.

“I have a bad habit of writing off people as lost causes too soon,” Thaena explained. “I assumed that once Xaltorath had her claws in you, you would be lost to us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Mother didn’t believe me,” the Manol vané interjected at last, “when I told her you aren’t a demon yet.”

Thaena spread her hands. “In my defense, it is unprecedented. Demons devour or demons infect. Demons do not show mercy.”

I raised my head. “I wouldn’t call it mercy.”

That stare again from those mirror eyes. “No, I can see why you wouldn’t.” She held out her hands, benediction or apology. “I was wrong about you,” she said again, “and therefore, you haven’t received aid that might have served you. So now I owe you a boon. What do you want? Ask me a favor, and if it is in my power to grant, I will do so.”

My heart beat so fast I could hear nothing else but its rushing in my ears. A boon from the Goddess of Death. I could’ve asked for enough metal to restore my family seat, to buy back the liens owed to the Markreev of Stavira, to regain my vassals’ loyalty in Tolamer. I could’ve asked for the death of Oreth, the man who had forced me from my own home, or for Thaena to Return my grandfather. I could’ve asked to see my parents again …

I shut my eyes in pain. No. I couldn’t. “If it is in my power to grant” didn’t include Returning my parents or even seeing them. My parents’ souls lay beyond the reach of gods.

It’s not easy, in our dual and intertwined worlds, for someone to truly die, but it can be done. Demons most easily bring this true death to others.⁸

But in any case, I could only make one request and still live with myself after.

“Then I ask this: put a stop to Relos Var.”

Thaena blinked at me. Then she chuckled and turned to her son. “What have you been telling her?”

“It’s not me,” he protested. “She found out about the wizard all on her own.”

“Please,” I said, standing to my feet. “I know Relos Var is plotting ill in Jorat. He has a witch and a dragon giving him aid, and I don’t know his goals, but they cannot be good.”

“Oh, you don’t need to convince me,” Thaena said. “I know better than anyone just what he’s capable of doing. Unfortunately, you have named a boon not in my power to grant.”⁹

I felt faint.

I had assumed Relos Var to be strong. Strong enough, anyway. But strong enough to dwell beyond the gods’ judgment? I stared in shock.

“Indeed, stopping Relos Var is a topic that much preoccupies myself and my brethren in the Eight,” Thaena admitted. “So instead of helping you, it will be the reverse.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand.” She did something with her hands. Nothing flowery, but one second her hands were empty, and the next she held a spear. A golden spear, beautiful and shining. She offered it to me.

Mind you, spears aren’t my preferred weapon.

I couldn’t remember any occasion where I’d ever used one. I’d practiced with swords or maces for the greater part, which isn’t the same thing at all.

However, when a god hands you a weapon, you take it. You don’t ask for a different style.

The metal felt warm in my hands. The long, barbed spear was decorated along the shaft with sun symbols. It was light and well balanced. Without being told, I knew every inch was magical.

“Her name is Khoreval,” Thaena explained. “An old friend owned her. If I’m correct, then she’s one of the few weapons in the whole world that may be able to slay a dragon. I regret I cannot give you the weapon itself.”

I looked up at the goddess, meeting her smile with my own. “Is that so?” Then her words sank in. “What do you mean, you cannot give me the weapon? It’s right here.”

“No child, this is but a seeming. The real Khoreval is kept hidden behind many locks in the palace of Azhen Kaen, Duke of Yor, who is Relos Var’s champion.”

“That does complicate matters.”¹⁰

“So it seems I’m giving you a quest rather than granting you a boon. Recover this spear in the Living World. If the spear is capable of slaying dragons, then you have an opportunity to remove one of Relos Var’s greatest weapons—Aeyan’arric.”

“Mother, that’s reckless. Even the Brotherhood have never been able to infiltrate the Ice Demesne—”

She raised a hand. He fell silent.

I smiled at him, flattered at his concern for my safety. “Your son isn’t wrong, you know. I haven’t the slightest idea how I would infiltrate such a camp. I’m not a thief or a spy.”

Thaena tilted her head in my direction. “When you reach Atrine, look for a man named Mithros. He runs a mercenary company of free riders. He’ll be only too glad to counsel you in how to best tackle this problem.”

“Mother, you can’t ask her to do this.”

Thaena gave him a look to make a thousand elephants stampede.

“It’s too dangerous,” he insisted. “Relos Var will destroy her, assuming Duke Kaen doesn’t do it first. There’s no way Relos Var won’t know who she is. There’s no disguising her. No pretending she’s someone else.”

“Yes,” Thaena agreed, her voice soft and dangerous. “I’m counting on that. I’m counting on that very thing. I know he won’t hurt her. He loves to turn our families against us. She’ll be irresistible to him.”¹¹

“It’s not your decision,” I scolded the vané, who seemed rather surprised at my interruption. “It’s mine.”

“You don’t know the risks—”

“What risks would matter? That he controls people and forces capable of killing thousands? I already know. That he has magic and power beyond my ability to fathom? I knew that when Thaena herself told me she can’t defeat him. I know it’s dangerous. Does that matter when so many lives are at stake?”

He scowled. “Why must you be so stubborn?”

“Why must you think I can’t decide my own path?”

He drew himself up. “I didn’t say that.”

“Just who do you think I am?” I gestured to the Death Goddess, his mother. “She has my thudajé, but don’t think I have handed you my reins. I have not.”

“Teraeth, she has made up her mind.”

I paused. “His name is Teraeth?”

“Yes.”

I chewed on my lower lip while regarding Teraeth. He seemed young enough. Not much older than myself.

I turned back to Thaena. “Is he claimed yet? He’s lovely.”

She blinked again, looking once more surprised, while Teraeth stared at me in mute shock. Then Thaena smiled. “Why … what are you offering for him?”

“Well, you do still owe me a boon.”

“A very good point.”

“Mother!” Teraeth’s scandalized tone banished any possible doubts I might have had about their relationship. He was mortified. His mother was embarrassing him.

Perfect. Adorable.

Oh, I wanted him.

I spun the illusionary Khoreval in my hands. “I think I will be fetching a great many souls for you before I’m done, great lord, and I shall begin tonight.” I had no idea what courtship rites existed for gods, or the offspring of gods, but by my people’s customs, I had stated my intentions. I didn’t worry about his father—Thaena’s idorrá rose greater than anyone she might have taken to her bed. My bargaining for her son would be with her.

“Mother, you cannot mean to sell me.” His tone teased, but something sharper than laughter laced the edges. Something darker. Doubt. A question lurked in that statement, an ugly question.

“Am I not Justice?” Thaena answered. “Would you not deserve it if I did?”

And suddenly she didn’t laugh or smile. This had become serious, and I didn’t understand why.

Teraeth glanced at me, and those beautiful green eyes filled to overflowing with regret and guilt.

“What’s going on here? What do I need to understand to make this clear to me?”

Thaena and Teraeth stared at each other for another heartbeat before he shuddered and looked away. Then Thaena turned to me. “We don’t always escape the sins of past lifetimes. But if you like my son and you win his heart, then he’s yours and you’ll find no protest from me. In the meantime, good hunting, my child.”

“Teraeth?”

He looked up from where he’d been staring at the ground. “Yes?”

I tipped my head to him. “We’ll see each other again.”

Teraeth’s smile turned wry. “Don’t I have a say in that?”

“Always. Until then—” I saluted Thaena and strode into the woods, searching for demons.