THE GODDESS of wind and leaves had the face of a starved child.
Up close, her large eyes looked sunken. Her brown cheeks were thin. Her black hair, thick and straight, blew to one side in a strong gust nobody else could feel, exposing the nape of a reedy neck.
She stood before the mountain of cooked monster flesh, considering it for a moment. Then, with a flick of her wrist, a gust of wind that everyone could feel blasted the abomination off the branch road.
Imeris watched it fall in silence. She should have felt relief. Orin’s creature was dead. All distractions were past. She was not a Hunter anymore. It was time to hunt Kirrik, the true quarry, at last.
Yet the goddess must pronounce a terrible judgement on Leaper, the boy who had been so determined to go one way only, up into the sun, and stay there. He had always been a talker, chattering away even while the children were on the toilet, so that Ylly and Imeris had impersonated him by making fart sounds between words, and Youngest-Mother had listened, bemused, for hours while he described the battles of ants and tarantulas.
He had nothing to say now.
Ulellin turned away from the char mark where the creature had died, towards the platform where five of the six surviving Hunters stood: Imeris still gripping the bone sword with the leopard-carved hilt that Anahah had made for her, Oniwak holding his crossbow limply at his side, Eeriez with poison knives, Ibbin with his dagger, and Owun with his fiddle, the cloud of stinging insects dispersed.
Daggad came out of the Temple. Imeris was reassured to see him walking unaided and with normal skin and symmetry; she’d imagined him becoming contaminated by Sorros, the pair of them fusing into the creature’s final, much-diminished incarnation. She beckoned, and he circled the seething goddess, joining Imeris and the others.
“The smith?” she asked him out of the corner of her mouth.
“Tied a rope to ’im and threw ’im out the window,” Daggad said under his breath. “Figured if ’e fell below the barrier, ’e might escape the—”
“Silence,” the goddess Ulellin said with all the fierceness and sibilance of the wind.
The six Hunters knelt before her, instinctively, in unison. Imeris peeked up through her eyelashes. On top of the Temple, Leaper remained kneeling. He had not moved, had hardly breathed, since Ulellin had taken the relic. Imeris was so afraid for him.
She could do nothing.
“Holy One,” Oniwak said with his head bowed. “The Hunt is complete. One who walks in the grace of Airak begs your forgiveness for trespassing in your Temple. Permit us to return to the court of my master, the king of Airakland, he who called this Hunt, to have him formally dissolve it.”
“Your master?” Ulellin asked derisively, striding closer to him. “A mortal who believes his will is more important than the inviolable laws of goddesses and gods?”
“The king of Airakland sought to defend his people, Holy One,” Oniwak said carefully without rising.
“And the Skywatcher of Airak who has dared to call lightning in my domain, was he acting under the Hunt’s compulsion, under the orders of your master, the king of Airakland?”
“No.” Oniwak raised his eyes to Leaper. “One who walks in the grace of Airak has never seen that adept before. He’s no part of the Hunt.”
“He is part of it,” Imeris and Daggad objected at the same time. They looked at one another.
“We employed him,” Imeris said.
“We brought ’im into the compact,” Daggad said, pressing his knuckles harder into the wooden platform.
“If you did, you should’ve known better,” Oniwak said, volume rising. “Hunters don’t employ mercenaries. We aren’t merchants, to buy protection. We’re warriors chosen by Ilan’s compass for the skills—”
“The creature is dead,” Daggad observed cuttingly. “Killed by lightnin’, not by your skills.”
“The Hunt was never meant to oppose rogue goddesses,” Imeris said, turning her head to the other side where she could glare at Oniwak. “Mortal hunters might have a chance against ordinary demons—”
“SILENCE,” Ulellin said again.
Imeris looked hopelessly up at Leaper. She found him looking equally hopelessly back down at her. He had been so proud of his idea. Of his ability to help her. To save her.
Now he was going to die for her. And Oldest-Father had charged her with his protection. But what could she do? Try to kill the goddess? The same wind that had carried the remains of the creature away would knock her a thousand body lengths down to Floor before she was permitted to disobey Ulellin.
“Will you sentence one who walks in the grace of Airak—no, one who serves him, for make no mistake, I am his Skywatcher, Oniwak!—to death, Holy One?” Leaper called, his voice enviably steady.
Ulellin turned her back on the Hunters. Fists on hips, she lifted her chin haughtily in Leaper’s direction.
“Kill Leaper the Skywatcher? No! There’s no need.” Imeris’s heart raced at this pronouncement. Ulellin elaborated with increasing malice. “The wind spoke to me of your path. I doom you, by my power, to wander far from home until your mate, your true love, your heart’s desire, grows to love another more than you. Only then will you be permitted to return.” She looked at the relic in her hand, gripping it tighter as though the sight of it stirred her to unimaginable rage. “A much more fitting punishment than mere falling.”
She thrust the relic at Oniwak’s face.
“Holy One—” Oniwak began hesitantly.
“Take this to Airakland at once,” she spat. “Place it into the hands of the Lord of Lightning and no other. Don’t stop to rest until you’ve crossed my border, lest I change my mind about sparing you.”
“Yes, Holy One. Thank you, Holy One.”
Imeris, frozen in dismay by the horror of the wind goddess’s prophecy, was slow to stand. Daggad tugged her elbow to get her to rise.
“Come on, woman,” he said gruffly. “We dare not go back inta the Temple. But remember that Sorros ’as ’is spines. No doubt ’e will untangle ’imself and make ’is way ’ome to Gannak. We must go with Oniwak. This way, to Ilanland.”
She stood but didn’t take a step until Leaper climbed down from the roof of the Temple and stood beside her. They embraced.
“That was close,” Leaper said, a tremor in his voice that hadn’t been there when he’d so boldly demanded that the goddess address his fate.
“What do you mean?” Imeris cried. “Did you not hear what she said?”
“One who walks in the grace of Airak heard her perfectly.” Leaper shrugged. He grinned. “So I won’t leave the forest. Who cares? So what?” He hunched a little, as if realising the goddess might still be within earshot, but there was no sign of her. Daggad waved his hand to indicate she’d floated back up into the foliage. Leaper stood straighter and threw out his chest. “I did it. I killed Orin’s creature. It worked. Get me a lantern as we go. I’ll send a message to Ilanland. A crowd of grateful citizens will meet us at the border. They’ll carry us on their shoulders to the monument tree.”
Imeris, Leaper, and Daggad lagged behind the other Hunters. Every few minutes, Oniwak looked suspiciously over his shoulder at them.
“Woman, I don’t like having you at my back,” he said at last.
“You shot at me,” Imeris reminded him.
“You were transforming into the creature.”
“Also, the last time we spoke, you said you would kill me if you saw me again.”
“He’s run out of bolts,” Ibbin piped up helpfully. “Walk with us.”
“It makes it less obvious,” Eeriez said drily, “how many we have lost.”
Imeris shared a glance with Daggad. He nodded. They dragged themselves tiredly across the intervening space. Leaper looked longingly at Tyran’s Talon, secured by rope to Oniwak’s weapons belt.
As they started off again along a branch road, a light rain began to fall.
* * *
THE BLACK-ETCHED white walls of the monument tree ran with rainwater.
“’Ow,” Daggad grumbled, standing where the curving wooden wall sheltered the great entryway lanterns, squeezing out his long tail of straight black hair, “are we supposed to celebrate properly in the wet?”
Imeris tried to make out the place, across the lake, where the legend of her Hunt was written, but she couldn’t see it through the screen of the downpour.
“Ehkis is crying,” she said. “Her Lakekeeper is dead.”
“She’ll have a new one by now,” Leaper said, sighing. “Let’s just hope Airak hasn’t declared me fallen and chosen a new Skywatcher to fill my place.”
His prediction about the crowd came true. People who had followed them, cheering and pressing food and drinks upon them, now ran ahead down the paths that encircled the lake. They returned with fisherwomen and child divers at their head, urging the Hunters to take shelter around cooking fires. The fires were sheltered from the rain by upturned boats set onto forked posts that formed the fisherfolks’ cramped little houses.
Imeris refused their wine. Refusal didn’t help her to stay awake. Within minutes of sitting down at someone’s fireside, she fell asleep, Leaper on one side of her, Daggad and his great sword and shield on the other, the black mark of his freedom on his drowsy lower lip.
When she woke, it was night. Fresh leaves smouldering on the fire kept the mosquitoes away. She felt safe and comfortable enough to stay motionless for a long time, enjoying the ability to do nothing, then realised that the forked posts were used for smoking fish in times of abundance and the lingering smell reminded her of Oldest-Father and home.
After that, it occurred to her that someone else by the fireside was awake. Two someones. A fat, curious-eyed, scarf-wrapped young woman in the fancy orange robes of a silk merchant, and an angry, frowning, brown-shirt-and-trouser-clad out-of-nicher with her hair in two untidy braids.
“Godfinder,” Imeris said, startled, sitting forwards suddenly and causing the sleeping mountain that was Daggad to shift and moan.
“Congratulations,” Unar said. “You survived.”
“Did you doubt it?”
“The odds were against you.”
“Did you come to see for yourself whether I needed healing? Again?”
“I’d like to pretend that’s why.” Unar waved vaguely in a northeasterly direction. “I was busy finding the new incarnation of Oxor. Again. These careless deities don’t live long, for all their Bodyguards and barricades.”
It was Imeris’s turn to frown.
“Irrafahath did his duty,” she said. “More than most of them, including—”
“Including Bernreb?”
“I was going to say Aurilon.” Imeris picked up a twig to fidget with.
“Will you go back to Aurilon,” Unar asked, “once you’ve seen the king of Airakland? Do you think finishing the Hunt will have surprised Odel’s Bodyguard? She’d expect nothing less from you.”
I will go to Aurilon after I have seen the king, Imeris thought, but not to become her student.
What she said was, “Godfinder, this is a fortuitous meeting. You are well informed. I must have word from Gannak. I must know if Sorros the smith is safe.”
“As to that,” the other woman said, who had been silent so far, “I drew up the coil of rope that Daggad left behind.” She pulled a green coil out from under layers of shining orange fabric. Her hands looked strangely familiar. Imeris stared into the pleasant features and bright eyes, abruptly recognising Anahah.
“I thought you could not take the shape of another person,” she said, taking the coil of rope. “I thought you were afraid to do harm by altering yourself at this late stage.”
Anahah looked mildly offended.
“This is my shape.” His voice was the same, after all. “This is my shape while I’m bearing a child in this body, in any case. You went to so much trouble to slay the beast, should I be ungrateful and walk about in Bodyguard’s clothing in broad daylight with my green skin showing?”
“You let my father die. I have nothing to say to you.”
“Don’t say anything, then. But listen when I say this is the rope that Daggad dangled Sorros from, out of Ulellin’s emergent into Understorey. The knots were secure. The smith couldn’t have freed himself from it without human wit and human dexterity. He hasn’t gone back to Gannak as the last remnant of a demon, but as his own man.”
Imeris fastened it to her harness.
“I made him a promise,” she said.
“What promise?” Unar asked.
“We have to catch Kirrik. Trap her soul forever. So that my sister will give Sorros and his wife another child.”
“It can’t be done,” Unar said flatly. Anahah and Imeris both gazed at her, taken aback by her vehemence.
“You make pronouncements like a king or god,” Anahah said, seeming amused.
“How can you be sure?” Imeris wanted to know. “The last time Oniwak spoke of a soul cage, you said nothing.”
“Kirrik turned my little sister against me.” Unar’s lip curled. “She killed Eilif, the Servant of Audblayin who was my teacher. She has killed the goddess Ehkis twice in my lifetime, and it’s because of her that I … that I … I have magical gifts more powerful than you can imagine, Imeris. Yes, I’ve healed your broken bones, grown dwellings, trained birds to speak, but I also cut down Airak’s emergent. Don’t you think, if there was a way of trapping dangerous souls like Kirrik’s, I would have found it?”
“Powerful you may be, Godfinder,” Imeris said, “but you trained your birds to speak because you were not taught to read. There may be information in ancient writings or the memories of goddesses or gods—”
“Oh, do deities share their knowledge with you?” Unar’s eyes snapped back into focus on Imeris’s face. “Has your sister, Audblayin, explained why your amulet offends her? Did you speak the name of that relic”—she flung a finger in Oniwak’s direction—“in front of Ulellin? You did not. And you must not.” Unar took a deep breath. It rattled as she let it out slowly, calming herself. “She would kill you for knowing it. Any of them would. I should never have told Aforis where it was.”
“I will never fear Audblayin,” Imeris said stubbornly, but this time the shared glance was between Unar and Anahah, and Imeris felt herself excluded from what they knew about the ruthlessness of immortals. “I will speak with her. I will try.”
Anahah tried to hide his smile, but Unar caught it.
“Encouraging her, Anahah?” she admonished him. “Haven’t you got enough problems of your own? Wanted a child so badly you thought you’d go ahead alone, and now look at you. Where are you going to go? Who do you know with young children? Anyone?”
Anahah’s smile vanished.
“No,” he admitted.
“You could shelter him at your farm, Godfinder,” Imeris said smartly, “if you are so concerned about the unborn child.”
“No,” Unar squawked.
“You must be concerned. You served Audblayin, whose domain is new life.”
“I live by myself. I like it that way.”
“Leaper lived with you,” Imeris reminded her.
“Not for long, and I’ve never taken care of a newborn.”
“What?” Imeris said with mock outrage. “What about me? You were there, too. My three fathers, my three mothers, and you.”
“I was sleeping.”
“I thought,” Anahah confessed, “that if I didn’t know what to do, I could transform into some animal with strong mothering instincts. It would be like transforming into territorial animals when I fight.”
“What, and leave whole broods of newborn creatures motherless?” Imeris said.
“That would lead Orin straight to you,” Unar said, “and besides, animals are no fit mothers for babes. They raise human children only in conveniently long-ago legends.” She swallowed hard then, and looked at Imeris. “What I mean is—”
“Come to the Gate of the Garden with me, Anahah.” Imeris did not know why those words had left her lips. She was angry with Anahah. Helping him again would only get her into more trouble. “My sister will not turn you away.”
“Will she not?” Unar said with exasperation. “Her own Servants turned her away when she was little more than a year old! How do you think she came to be raised in Understorey with you? Besides, he’s no innocent. He can’t enter the Garden any more than you or I can.”
“I was having a good dream,” Leaper groaned, yawning and turning over. He rubbed his eyes. “You three are noisy.”
“I’m not staying,” Unar said, rising to her feet.
“Nor am I,” Anahah said, doing the same.
Imeris realised the rain had stopped.
“You heard about the curse?” she asked Unar. “You heard about the curse that Ulellin placed on Leaper?”
“What curse?” the Godfinder asked sharply.
“No curse,” Leaper lied. “Don’t be ridiculous, Issi. Just the chattering of a goddess with no power in my niche. If I ever talk about leaving the forest, you’ve got permission to slap me till I come to my senses.”