The Dread Goddess--Book of Icons--Volume Two Read online

  “What should I expect?” I asked, trying to keep the tremor I felt in my gut out of my voice. The captor who had tormented me in darkness had seemed formless; it had known all, seen all, spared nothing. What would I see in the light?

  “Adah is fairness and justice. Many of your stories feature the god.”

  “Yes, but an icon is not a god,” I insisted. “Is he young or old? Kind or cruel? What are his gifts?”

  This line of questioning didn’t seem to make Antares any more comfortable.

  “Adah wears many faces. He is what the observer needs to see to trust in his law.”

  That sentiment was hardly a comfort to me. An icon who could change his face, or at least one’s perception of it? My powers were dangerous, but manipulation was not among them. Theba preferred a more expedient route to domination.

  “And what do you see when you look at Adah?”

  “What does it matter?” Antares shifted his weight, his mind cloudy. For him, I understood, it didn’t matter. Still, there was the impression of an elderly man, imperious in expression, broad of shoulder, with a warrior’s build that had not gone soft with age but stony.

  My curiosity was quelled as we drew near the glowing outline of a mammoth door. It was as broad as two men and as tall, too, dwarfing even Antares. Characters akin to those in my books and embroidered on my clothing in Jhosch were stamped into the wood and inlaid with a dark metal I did not recognize. I started as Antares took my hand, placing it upon a symbol that looked to me like the rib cage of an animal, feather bones vaulted above an empty space where a live heart should have been. My shock at his touch was nothing compared to my wonder as the symbol began to glow, spidery light spreading from my fingertips, girded by the glow that illuminated the door’s edges. The wood rippled like a curtain, parting, all the symbols on its surface suffused with light now, indistinct. For a moment, I saw many doors: the chapel arch of the palace in Jarl, the rock face that had obscured our home in exile, the curtain that had promised little privacy on the barge, and the mirror in whose depths I had been tested. All these places and the corridor where I stood with Antares were flooded then, with a brightness that belied my suspicion that we were underground.

  Without needing to be urged on by Antares, I stepped forward into the light.

  I was in a grove, greener even than what I had imagined I would find in Ambar in the spring. Saplings dotted the perimeter, and beyond them stood trees larger around than even many linked arms could circle. The scents of earth and the spice of flowers tickled my nose, the perfume stirred by my steps, my long skirt setting the blossoms of plants growing underfoot into a quiet dance. Antares was not with me now, but neither was I alone. Before me I saw several tomes abandoned among cushions and rough-wrought stools. This was clearly a place of teaching. Only one person remained: a man, sturdy as a tree himself, his face wood-grained with age but promising many seasons more of strength. It was not the same man I had seen in Antares’s mind, but there was a similar gravity to his countenance. I knew him without knowing him, as Paivi had promised I would in time with all the icons. This was Adah, and for me he would never have any other name.

  “Theba,” he said. I recognized the voice I had heard in my cell, though now there was a touch of human warmth amongst the tenor notes. I liked it no better and feared him more. Still, something in me stirred to be called by him, toward him.

  “I knew that you would come, in time,” he continued, coming no closer to me, though the details of his appearance seemed to grow in definition. For all the lines of his face, his hair was thick, and corded muscles graced his bare arms, which were crossed over a plainly clad chest. “We must talk of what comes next.”

  I was outraged, and for a moment I was not sure from where the feelings had come. Then I knew: from Theba. The idea that he could order me to do anything surged like blood down a blade length, but the wound was my own. I could not imagine doing anything more, for good or ill, and was prepared to hear no charge. Adah understood me. There was nothing paternal in his attention, and neither was the hand he laid upon my cheek a sentimental touch. If anything, I felt like a stone or a lump of gold, my chin cupped in weights and measures.

  “You were fond of games once, but I can see that you would prefer a story now. They must all have ends, you know.” He released my chin and gestured broadly at the grove where we stood. “I have the power to bring you here but not to compel you. Neither can I keep you.”

  I realized as he spoke that what I had taken to be the grove was, in fact, Adah’s mind. He had the strength to transport me here without touching me, or even my immediate awareness. What I perceived was not real. Another of his gifts, it seemed, and just as dangerous as a changeable face.

  “It is a great power,” I said carefully, marveling though I did not want to. If I wished it, could I return to the corridor with Antares?

  “It is no power when compared with the kind that can sunder worlds,” Adah said, and there was no wonder in his voice, only observation. “I can only imagine worlds in this place.”

  For a moment, I considered arguing with him, affirming that I, too, preferred to imagine instead of destroy. I liked to tell stories, to fashion the flesh of them for my listeners, not to scorch their ears for hearing what I said, their eyes for seeing what I did. But I’d proven an aptitude for the latter, and that felt like all that mattered now.

  “In the beginning there were no gods and no people, either,” Adah continued. “Only shadows and dust, earth and air, our world a wheeling orb in the dark.”

  As Adah spoke, the grove grew blurry and dark, the trees stretching thin as wicks, burnt black. I could not see myself nor Adah, either. I was shocked by his power to manipulate my perception, and jealous, too. But this was a story I had not heard before, so I listened.

  “But there were some things that stirred, without names or voices, and they recognized each other as living things. Out of the clay, they dug their own bodies. These were the First People, and among them, there were those who saw temperament in the black winds, the still rock, in the inky pools that reflected back the endless night. They saw light and gathered it to them, and they knew that if they could but fix the lights in the sky, their whole world would brighten and their understanding, too.

  “The only way that the First People could reach the sky was to stand, one on the shoulders of another and another and another. It was not easy, and it was dangerous, too, for the lights grew so hot and bright that many of the First People burned up, the ash from their bodies raining down upon the others and the earth, whole mountains of ash that turned to stone in time. They seeded the world with their wanting. They made the stars above and the world below.”

  I felt Adah’s gaze narrow although I could not see his face, could see nothing but the sweeping world imagined by his narrative. When he spoke, it was as though he whispered in my ear, but how close he was I could not know. I did not feel the limits of my own body in this place.

  “You have seen the great city of Jhosch and the mountain that houses it, the chain that divides the world. It was their sacrifice that built it, as all great things require sacrifice. Pinned in the sky were the lights of fervor and willfulness, of mourning, sorrow, and ill deeds, the midnight vigils that were the virtues of young women, the hope of new mothers, the covetousness and calculation and all the things that were in the First People. The gods began as ideas lost in the act of sacrifice. They were created as the world was created.”

  It was then Adah shared with me, as Paivi once had, his understanding of a great passage of time, the changing face of the world and those who occupied it. Tragedy and joy were no more than colors on a palette. Indifferent as a star himself, he did not share in the terrors or tenderness of mortals, and so neither could I. But Adah, this Adah, had not known a mortal life, and I had lived too much of mine to keep from weeping and reveling, even though I knew these things were not for me.

  “Theba,” he said, and it was as though he spoke two n
ames, the goddess’s and mine, braided black as my hair paired with shadow. “Imagine what our world would be if the First People had not finished what they started.”

  We were sitting together in a room now. It was well lit with smokeless braziers but windowless, and it was much more like the sort of chamber I would have expected behind the great doors than the grove that had greeted me. The walls were painted with many scenes, faceless figures, whose bodies betrayed patterns of long suffering or pleasure. Their lack of features seemed to me to be shyness and not a fault in the artist’s rendering. Naked, ink-limbed, they did not want to be observed.

  “They would live in a paradise of ideas, without gods or wars to plague them.” Even as I said it, I knew that I really didn’t believe it. I had expected a charge from Adah, but the only thing he demanded of me was my attention to his words.

  “You have always been a force to be reckoned with, Theba.” Like a needle sterilized in flame, the name threaded through me, new wounds made to heal the old. I had started something, Adah claimed. And so, I must finish it. “That you are here now shows me that your life will be as much of a surprise to me as all your deaths were. I am not asking you to make a sacrifice. I know that you already have.”

  One of the figures on the wall was a mother suckling a babe, a curtain of hair disguising her face, her full breast eclipsing the face of the child. I was reminded of something my mother had said in the cave when I was tested in Jhosch, that my birth had been the first of many steps I would take away from her. I had chosen to leave with the caravan in Jarl. I suspected now that I would have left my family even if it hadn’t been demanded of me. My name did not matter, but the nature of my heart did.

  “Where are we? And why are you here and not with the other icons in the city?”

  Adah was taken aback by the question. I didn’t know what he wanted from me, but I knew I wanted answers from him.

  “We’re in the wood beyond Zhaeha. Not so far from the city, but far enough.”

  So, I hadn’t entirely lost my way. He continued without acknowledging my light nod.

  “And I am surprised you have to ask—I am judge, jury, and executioner. Icon and man alike prefer that I keep my distance until I am needed, and it is my preference, as well. So, I choose to live where they prefer not to go.”

  “But why?” I had survived the crossing, even if I could not remember it completely. “Are you the only thing to fear out here?”

  Adah’s smile was brittle.

  “There is nothing to fear from the fairness of the law,” he said, and I couldn’t be sure if he was joking or not. I expected not. “The people of Ambar are suspicious people, and I encourage their rumors. Still, there are wild things in this world that cannot be tamed, not by me, not even by you. They must dwell somewhere. Why not here?”

  It wasn’t any kind of answer. Perhaps Gannet had honed his conversational skills with Adah.

  “All icons come to know Zhaeha, in time,” Adah continued, watching me carefully. “In fact, I believe you’ve been here before. Were you not tested?”

  My brow furrowed. I remembered the strange trial I had endured in the palace, the hallucinations of the mountain, of Paivi.

  “Was I transported?”

  Adah waved his hands in a gesture that neither affirmed nor denied the question. I sensed that it wasn’t so simple, which didn’t surprise me. I struggled to arrange what I understood in my mind and not to throw my own arms up in frustration.

  “So, what next? You said you won’t ask me to make a sacrifice, but that’s exactly what the opera promised.”

  I shuddered at the memory of the opera, at the idea of Theba realized in her full aspect. Not an icon, but a goddess. Gannet had said he didn’t know how it would be done, that no icon had ever attempted such a thing, but it was clear they believed that it could be. And they meant for it to be me.

  Adah scrutinized me, only taking his eyes off me when he moved to pour wine from a jeweled decanter recovered from a clever compartment built into the side of the cushioned bench where he sat. I did not take the proffered cup.

  “You want to avoid more war, but there is always war. Someone has taken your place at the head of the Ambarian Army. They believe that she is the one responsible for the murders in the palace and revere her for her cleansing flame.”

  More than surprised, I was indignant, too, and a hot fist seized my heart. Theba would not like someone else to have her spoils. Even as I opened my mouth to ask of whom Adah was speaking, he raised the hand that held his cup of wine, three fingers opened in a gesture to quiet me.

  “I don’t know who she is.”

  “But how can they not tell the difference?”

  It seemed foolish to point out to him the many differences between my appearance and that of most Ambarian women I had seen. Where my skin was threaded with all the tawny gold of sunset, theirs was cold as a cloud. Their eyes wore many shades of gray, green, and blue, where mine were dark as wet stone. Still Adah smiled, thin and without amusement, perhaps guessing what I thought, perhaps reading me.

  “How many met your eyes? How many were brave enough to look into the face of the Dread Goddess?”

  He was not wrong, and even if there were some among them who might have questioned this usurper, who would have dared to provoke Theba’s wrath if they were wrong? I looked at the figure of the woman in relief on the wall again, at the babe, whose eyes I imagined would have followed her face with every nourishing pull on her breast, memorizing the contours of devotion. “So I must stop her?”

  “You must do nothing,” Adah returned, following my gaze. “But there is unrest in Aleyn. The peace promised by your departure was short-lived. And now the Ambarians know that what they need to exorcise Theba lies in Aleyn, in the ruins of Re’Kether. There will be no negotiations this time.”

  It should have been a revelation, to learn that my people resisted still. But I was not surprised. I resisted, too.

  “What do the Ambarians need? What is in the ruins?”

  Again, Adah studied me. “A weapon. And they know because I told them.”

  I sucked in a breath. “Why would you do that?”

  “I finish what I start, Theba,” he said, for the first time something akin to a challenge in his tone. He was thinking of the story of the First People, of what I had begun in Jhosch—what I had run from. “You might think I’m not giving you much of a choice now, but there’s always a choice. You can pursue them, if you wish, or there will always be a bed for you here. Not the cell, now that you have returned to yourself. You could always teach the young. Perhaps you would learn something.”

  His mention of young icons stirred a memory in me, and it wasn’t mine. How I had not noticed the familiarity in his voice before was the fault of weariness, of how he had befuddled me in the grove. I recognized his voice as one that I had heard only once before and briefly, in the thrall of Gannet’s mind. A dark room, a young boy, and a grieving mother. In Gannet’s memories, in his wildness tamed before he could even begin to know it.

  “Don’t you want to put a mask on me?”

  Adah’s eyes narrowed in shrewd surprise. He might have thought that he knew me, but he didn’t know about us. I might have run from Gannet, but he was not gone. He could never be gone from me.

  “There is nothing I could do to disguise you, Theba. I would be foolish to try.” The heat of the braziers flushed my cheeks as Gannet’s hands had, along with the feathery touch of his breath. Adah rose and ash stirred. I did not taste Gannet’s kiss then, only the fire I had started in the great hall, bitter soot and satisfaction. “But if you’re interested in burdens, you may accompany Antares on his next task. It is south, and you can decide on the road if you wish to keep going or not.”

  “What is it?” I asked, wary.

  “An icon has been born in a village south of here. Two, actually. After a fashion,” Adah answered, eyes leveled on me in keen interest to gauge my response to his next words. His observation wa
s cold, and I could penetrate nothing beneath his superficial curiosity. “With Jaken and Shasa dead, Alber has returned to us, in one vessel, this time.”

  The sickness I felt at his words had no root in Theba and was every bit my own.

  “I’ll go,” I said quietly. The figures on the walls did not move but seemed to crowd me, to make demands where Adah would not. I imagined the mother who suckled the babe with my own mother’s face. Even during war, even as a young girl, my troubles had never been more than misremembering the names of Shran’s sons or the number of nights he passed dreaming of Jemae before she joined him in his bed. Deeds had been of less interest to me than stories, but Theba had taken from me any chance to live without questioning how her presence would taint my actions. She had done more than that already. In Jhosch, I had welcomed her, and I was not so foolish as to think she would be easy to be rid of. I could cut off my hands and still she would find a way to use me to ruin; she had given me an appetite for ruin.

  Adah didn’t comment, nor did anything about his posture betray his response to my decision to leave. He was a god of balance as well as of justice and would make no judgment until he had seen this thing, whatever it was, to its end. He looked toward the great door where, no doubt, Antares waited.

  “You’ll need to bring the mother.”

  His words drove my gaze again to the woman on the wall. I knew in an instant that she, like the mothers of so many icons before her, had been blinded, that Antares himself had done such things. In Adah’s mind, I saw a low fire, treated wood burning hot, herbs boiled in water whose scent was meant to calm those awaiting the blinding bath. I imagined that Antares regarded these things with brute necessity, that a small part of him was sorrier for the nurses who must be blinded, and not for the mothers who went willingly for a few months more with their children. There were other measures for those who could not, or would not, let go of a treasured son or daughter. For them, I was sure Antares felt no more pity than he would have for a foundered horse.