Soth AhlZel was a monument to Ra’s failing. Why in all Meerity had Shiva returned to this abomination? The ancient city rose above her in all its twisted madness. Ra lowered her eyes as she approached the temple, trying not to see the gargoyle mounted at its peak like a figurehead on the prow of a ship. The life-sized shape of a woman stood with legs planted firmly apart and arms braced back against the temple dome as though it were a real woman in a possessive pose over the temple itself. The face was her own.
Perched still and seemingly empty in the morning light, Ludtaht Shiva was thick with the invisible emanations of Shiva herself. Ra avoided the altar room. Mercifully, Shiva wasn’t there but somewhere deeper in the maze of her temple, and Ra was spared facing the place where she’d taken Ahr’s life. Shiva’s blood in her veins seemed to glow red-hot as she came closer, desiring its mistress. By the time Ra reached the divining pool, it burned like acid beneath her skin.
She stopped at the arch of the room that contained the pool from which she’d drawn pieces of her own soul, like fine tatting unraveling in her madness. From which she’d somehow conjured the dead soul of RaNa. The water in the pool was the color of rubies, and Shiva lay beside it.
She was still warm, but her pulse was faint.
Ra carried her to the blood-red chamber into which she’d often disappeared in Ra’s boyhood in the life before, but to which Ra had never been admitted. It was like the web of a spider, carnelian drapes of translucent silk strung in swags like predatory arms across the vaults of the ceiling, down the walls, shrouding the bed. Ra had brought this room back without knowing it, one of the unmistakable vibrations of Shiva she couldn’t have suppressed if she’d wanted to.
Like the gargoyles that perched on Shiva’s towers, there was a touch of the grotesque here. Paintings hung amid the blood-colored drapes portraying the ancients’ idea of the underworld, a menagerie of beautiful creatures locked in perpetual torment—on the points of spikes driven through them, latticeworks of bonds cutting through their skin, and ravagings at the hands of demons. The columns at the arch of the room were similarly etched in images of transcendent beauty among instruments of unspeakable torment.
Ra stretched Shiva’s body on the dark bed behind voile curtains so red they were almost black. It was a peculiar contrast to the colors of Ludtaht Shiva. Her temple was an immaculate tomb, almost puritanically white, with touches of green so pale as to be mistaken at first glance for more of the same. It was as though she’d hidden her secret self here at the center of a labyrinth of indifferent ice.
Shiva’s right arm was raw and terrifying, pooled into a mass of exposed muscle and bone below the elbow. As Ra placed it carefully against the stomach of the leather vest, Shiva gave evidence that she was still alive with an inhuman shrill of pain.
Ra let the arm lie. “Meershivá. What have you done?” She turned Shiva’s face toward her, but Shiva tossed her head, unseeing.
Among the drapes, Shiva’s skin took on a vermillion shade as though scalded. Ra touched the fabric, feeling caught in her web. She had to do something about the devastated arm, for Shiva was growing weaker, but Ra could no longer conjure wholeness with a word, bound as she was by Shiva’s.
But Shiva had given Ra her blood. Ra would have to give it back to her.
In the absence of her Meeric ability, Ra had taken a dagger from Merit’s study for protection before leaving Ludtaht Ra. She removed it now from the sheath at her side. Clasping the ruined hand, her knuckles between the wreckage of Shiva’s, Ra plunged the narrow shaft of the dagger between the bones of her own hand. The black blade thrust through the joined pair to the other side of Shiva’s, impaling them together.
Gasping against the pain, Ra pressed her arm to the bed so that the blood poured out of her hand and into Shiva’s.
Shiva jolted upright with a shriek of surprise, her other hand flying at Ra’s face, but Ra grabbed the swinging wrist and pressed both arms back against the pillows. Only such extreme shock and blood loss could have allowed Ra to overpower her.
Ra’s blood flowed from the dagger and seemed to burn into the red and white that was left of Shiva’s arm. Shiva convulsed beneath her, but something was happening where their hands were locked together. The wet mess of Shiva’s raw, uncovered tissue began to dissipate and red muscle began to restore itself over the seared bone.
As Shiva struggled against her, a pale, translucent skin swam up from the devastated elbow and engulfed the naked arm, pressing through the clenched fingers and terminating in the fine, strong cuticles of the nails that were the hallmark of Shiva’s deceptively graceful hands.
Blood still seeped from either side of the skewered pair once the hand was whole. Ra grasped the handle of her blade and tore it out with a shout. Their hands remained clenched together for a moment longer, this time from the quickening strength of Shiva’s grip. When she released Ra, a mark of raw, twisted flesh graced both their palms.
Shiva’s eyes were gaining instant clarity as Ra, dizzy, dropped onto the red gossamer folds of the bed.
A strangled scream woke him, trapped in his throat. Merit sat up, throwing off the layers of sapphire silk. Shiva. He couldn’t voice the cry. His tongue felt like a lifeless lump of clay in his mouth. She’d given him poison—her poison—and stolen his voice.
Sapphire light poured over him through the jeweled window. The profusion of blue masked the darker hue of blood. It had flowed out of him like the Anamnesis itself from the ducts of his eyes: the violent tears of a god. But he was an ordinary man.
Yet in one moment, in one poison green gaze, he had ceased to be Merit, the aging, faithful servant, and had tumbled from the parapet of memory into his divine past as MeerHraethe, ruler of Soth Szofl, and consort—for a fleeting instant—to MeerShiva. She had looked on him, and torn him from his blissful forgetting of the life he’d lived before—torn forth the dead god he’d hidden within himself into shocked and unwilling resurrection.
Merit swung his bare feet over the side of the sapphire-silk bed and ran his hand along the bedspread as if he’d find her there among the folds. He was alone. No ruby-haired demon goddess lay curled beside him as he’d dreamt. MeerShiva had led him to this room and bewitched him into sleep so she could slip away from him once more.
His cock quickened at the thought of her porcelain flesh, a living statue he’d once copulated with for a single night—over four centuries ago in that ancient, divine history—but whose taste and scent lingered on him as though that union were but an hour past.
That single night with her had driven him mad with longing. She’d sent him away and he’d lost himself in it, destroying his subjects—and himself. The fire that had finally ended his suffering had released him, purified. Hraethe was forgotten in the incarnation of simple Merit the palanquin bearer, whose golden hair had grayed and thinned over time, and whose body had aged as a mortal man’s should.
And yet, now… He studied his reflection in the onyx mirror over the bureau. His eyes were clear and crisp as brandy, his hair, long and thick, had been restored to its youthful bronze-gold, and his body was the firm, hale form of a young man in the prime of life.
He deliberately refused to think of himself as MeerHraethe, the name Shiva had spoken before the cataract of tears had begun, the name so similar in Deltan cadence to the name he bore in this life that he’d refused at first to hear it. He had been Meer. There was no denying that. He could no longer be Merit, who already seemed a thousand years away. But if he let the name of Meer into his consciousness, he might let madness in with it. Though perhaps he already had.
Hraethe unbuttoned the black waistcoat of his customary uniform, now stiff with dried blood, and breathed deeply into his lungs, watching the firm chest rise in the mirror. Merit’s lungs had been failing. He’d tried to keep it from his friends and staff, but he’d felt mortality taking him, that long-ago fever that had taken his wife, Nalise, ever weakening him. But now his lungs were strong.
Blood stained his face in violent lines beneath his eyes, as though someone had gouged them out. He hadn’t been one for weeping when his blood had last been Meer. It was alarming to see such evidence, despite the knowledge that it was only the evidence of tears. He needed a bath.
As if his thoughts already had the power to conjure, a servant appeared at the arched entrance of the Sapphire Room. To his credit, the fellow managed to confine his surprise to a brief widening of the eyes before inclining his head in respect as though nothing were amiss.
“Meneut.” Merit’s staff had insisted on calling him “lord” when he’d been installed as interim prelate, though it always made him uncomfortable. “Shall I draw a bath for you?”
Hraethe nodded, and the servant bowed and preceded him to the bathing chamber. As in the days of MeerRa, the bath had been kept constantly replenished with steaming water while he slept. Hraethe wondered whether this had resumed because of Ra’s return—Ra. He’d almost forgotten her in his self-absorption. Ra had returned to him at last. But she’d also taken Ahr from him—just punishment, Hraethe supposed, though Ra would never admit it, for Merit’s part in the death of RaNa.
Hraethe felt the blood begin to run from his eyes once more, and he swatted it away in anger. He could feel madness and magic in it.
The bath was ready, and the attendant retreated. Hraethe unlaced his pants and let them fall onto the garnet tile, and once more his body quickened, as if Meeric blood bid his cock to rise of its own will. Glad of the attendant’s exit, he stepped into the bath and let the heat punish his skin.
Ra wasn’t in the temple. Hraethe simply knew, as he knew Shiva was not. His blood told him. And Jak was gone as well. It was a different knowledge—a sense of the living and breathing souls within the open-air corridors of Ludtaht Ra—that told him Jak had left. He was sorry for that; they’d become friends. But Ra’s presence had driven Jak away.
Hraethe submerged his head and washed away the evidence of his un-ordinary tears, resurfacing with the scent of amber and myrrh clinging to his cheeks instead, the holy oils meant for divine skin, which his attendant had sprinkled into the bath. The attendant had known—of course, must have known. How could “Merit’s” change be explained if not by Meeric magic?
With a sigh, Ume poked at her breakfast. Uncertain what to do or where to go, she and Cree had lingered at Ludtaht Ra with the blessing of the staff. Finding Pearl had seemed possible before they’d arrived. Now they were floundering, tumbled back to the beginning with no direction, and she was afraid Cree had lost faith.
Ume glanced across the table, wishing there was something she could do to bring back the hopeful light in Cree’s chestnut eyes. It was pointless to try to assure her that the Hidden Folk were treating Pearl well. They didn’t mean well, and both Cree and Ume knew it.
She opened her mouth to try to say something, anything—and then it stayed open in a perfect “O” of shock. Merit stood in the archway to the dining nook. Only it wasn’t Merit. It couldn’t be. It was a young man with brandy-wine eyes and deep golden hair of a length that could only be described as Meeric.
Pausing with her fork halfway to her mouth, Cree wrinkled her nose at Ume. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Merit,” Ume breathed. “I think.”
Cree turned, and then looked back at Ume, wide-eyed. “Impossible,” she whispered. “That’s not the man we saw sleeping.” All the same, they both rose, instinctively bowing in his majestic presence.
He gestured for them to sit, and came forward into the room to take Ume’s hand, pressing it warmly. She’d only met Merit once, but she was certain it was he, however improbable. She waited for him to say something, but he remained silent.
“Lord Minister Merit?” she asked finally. “It is you?”
He nodded and opened his mouth soundlessly, his hand against his throat.
“You can’t speak?”
He nodded again.
Ume realized she was being impolite. “UtMerit, may I present my husband, Cree Silva.”
“Her wife,” Cree corrected as she shook Merit’s hand. Out of habit, and for safety’s sake, Cree always used “husband” and the masculine pronoun around those they didn’t know well. Apparently, Merit’s extraordinary transformation had made him the sort of man whose recognition of Cree as a woman mattered. Cree was even blushing, which was a rare event. Ume filed away her amusement for later. It wasn’t often she had something like this to hold over Cree.
Merit placed his hand on his chest in a gesture of respect and bowed toward Cree, then took a pad and pencil from his coat pocket. Something was already written on the pad, and he handed it to Ume, who read aloud for Cree’s benefit.
“My apologies for being unable to greet you properly. I’m sure you have questions. I have many myself. But you came here seeking Ahr. I’m so sorry you had to find out the sad news. Is there anything I can help you with?”
Ume looked up. “I know you shared a long history with Ahr. We’re very sorry for your loss.” Merit bowed his head in acceptance. “When I was here last, I’m not sure whether you remember—I asked you about Pearl.”
The brandy-wine eyes sharpened, and Merit took back the pad and wrote: Where is he? Where’s Pearl?
Ume let out a breath of relief. “You remember him. Thank the gods. I think you were under some kind of forgetfulness charm.” Merit nodded vigorously. “After I left here, I found him. He’d been taken by a Meerhunter.” Merit’s face went white, and Ume touched his hand in reassurance. “He hadn’t harmed him. He wanted…someone else.”
Merit wrote emphatically, underlining it: Ra.
“I’m afraid so. I convinced the Meerhunter to let him go.” Ume didn’t add that she’d done so by giving up Ra’s whereabouts. “But before we could bring him home, he was injured, and—” She hadn’t thought about how this was going to sound. “The Hidden Folk took custody of him. It’s a term the falenders use, folklore, or so we thought, until the Hidden Folk brought us to the realm they call ‘under the hill’. They claim to be related to the Meer in some way, and they’re unable to dwell in our realm.”
A sudden recognition seemed to spark behind Merit’s eyes. The Permanence, he wrote. They shall not have him.
By the time Ra became cognizant of the room around her, Shiva had lit a fire in the great obsidian fireplace of her chambers and altered both their garments to simple black woolen pants and dark, high-necked sweaters. The ruby-haired Meer padded barefoot across the red-rock tile of Zelfaal’s quarries and the thick fleece of mountain qirhu, dyed in pigment the color of black wine.
Ra sat up in the multitude of ruby-colored pillows.
Shiva bent to kiss her. “You continue to surprise me. I bind your power, and yet you work magic.”
“I didn’t mean to disobey you.”
Shiva laughed. “You could hardly disobey me. My word is your law.” She held out the cleaned dagger in its sheath. “You were resourceful. This is a Meer-hewn knife.”
Ra took it and fastened it to her belt. “Meer hewn? I wonder how Merit came by it?”
Shiva shrugged. “Walking boots for each of us.” She handed Ra the pair of glossy black leather boots that coalesced into her hands as she spoke, while another rose up over her own legs.
Ra drew the boots onto her stockinged feet. “Where are we walking?”
“You have words to finish with Jak na Fyn. Coat,” she added in a Meeric aside, drawing the heavy wool garment about her and beginning to fasten it before it had fully formed. “Would you not agree?”
Ra sighed. “Yes, MeerShiva. If Jak will listen.”
“Whether Jak will listen is not your concern.” Shiva pulled a scarf and gloves from her pockets. Even her conjuring had hidden layers, taking into account her every intention, regardless of what she revealed to those around her. “That is for Jak to decide.”
Ra still didn’t know why Shiva had come to Soth AhlZel or what had happened to her. “Your hand,” she began, but Shiva held the gloved hand up to silence her.
“Also not your concern.” She smiled at Ra’s crestfallen look and caressed Ra’s cheek. “You did well, and I’m touched that you came to me. I would have healed eventually, but you’ve saved me a great deal of misery in the process. I’m not sure anyone has ever done that for me. As for my reasons, all in good time.”