The little girl grinned. “You already know.”
I swallowed and looked around. The day was beautiful and crisp, kept from being too hot by the marine layer of fog hovering just offshore. The air had a fresh salty sweetness that always eluded major port cities like the Capital or Kishna-Farriga. Overhead, seagulls cried out, hyperventilating in excitement over the uncovered fish. Everything around me seemed real if I ignored the hovering tidal wave hanging over my head.
I set my teeth against each other and looked back at the girl. “Why?” If she was who I thought, then I didn’t need to be more specific. I needed no qualifiers with my goddess.
“Isn’t it funny how short questions have long answers?”
“Give me the short version anyway.”
“There’s a war. It’s a very old war, it’s a very bad one, and it’s one that we must win at all costs.”
“A war? Against who?” I’d have heard if Quur was involved in an old, long war. “You don’t mean the vané, do you?”
“No, I mean the demons.”
“Demons? But…” I blinked. “The gods won that war. We won that war. That’s the whole reason that demons have to follow our commands when we summon them.” It felt odd, too, to treat this like something that happened a few years ago, maybe a generation at most. If there had ever been a war with demons, it was so old and distant that it had become the stuff of myths.
But I thought of Xaltorath. I thought of an Emperor who primarily existed to banish demons or show up when a demon managed to summon up enough of its ilk to create a rampaging Hellmarch. The people of Marakor and Jorat likely didn’t have any trouble believing we were still at war with demons.
She gave me a pitying look. “No, we didn’t win. Everyone lost. It wasn’t an end to the war, just a pause, an armistice, while both sides retreated to their shelters and recovered from wounds so dire it’s taken us millennia to catch our breath.” She sighed. “And now we’re ready to start the whole thing all over again, except this time we have nowhere to retreat.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared out at the sea. “How am I involved in this?”
“Big waves start from small ripples. Avalanches begin with a single pebble.”
My breath hitched. “I’m—I’m your pebble?”
“Yes. Also, you volunteered.”
I stood there trying to remember if, somehow, I might have. Had I? Finally, I said, “I don’t remember volunteering.”
“Of course you don’t. You hadn’t been born yet.”
“Hadn’t been born—” I stopped myself from raising my voice. “And if I don’t want to be your ‘pebble’? You’re the Goddess of Luck. Don’t you have servants to fetch your dinner or kill your enemies? I don’t want to be your hero. Those stories never end well. The peasant boy done good slays the monster, wins the princess, and only then finds out he’s married to a stuck-up spoiled brat who thinks she’s better than him. Or he gets so wrapped up in his own majesty that he raises taxes to put up gold statues of himself while his people starve. The chosen ones—like Emperor Kandor—end up rotting and dead on the Manol Jungle floor, stuck full of vané arrows. No thanks.”
The little girl tossed the seashell over her shoulder. It shattered against the rocks. “So walk away.” Her voice did not sound particularly childlike, but then it hadn’t for some time.
I twirled around and spread out my arms to take in the beach, the island, the sea. “Is that really an option?”
“It is. They’ll bring in a ship. You could sneak out.” The little girl smiled, her eyes sad. “Do you think I wouldn’t give you a choice?”
“You haven’t so far.”
“So I control your own decisions? I forced you to free those slaves on The Misery? How interesting. I had no idea I had so much power over you.” She bent down to pick up another shell. “Choose to disbelieve me if you wish, but you can walk away. If you want. Go buy that inn, drink ale, play with bar wenches. Leave all those people behind you. Maybe you can hide from your enemies if you abandon your friends.”
I angrily kicked a few rocks. “Damn it. That’s playing dirty.”
“The truth usually does.” The little girl walked over and looked up at me with wide violet-colored eyes. “I picked you because of sentimentality, because of nostalgia, but not because you are indispensable. I could choose another. Walk away, if you want. Surdyeh’s stories would say that I’m giving you a gift. You say it’s a curse. I’ll tell you something not one in a thousand would-be-heroes ever realize: it’s both, and always will be. Good luck and bad luck. Joy and pain. They will always be there. It won’t be better if you follow me. A hero who has never had a bad thing happen to him isn’t a hero—he’s just spoiled.”
“So, this is what? A character-building exercise?”
“What do you think life is? Everyone gets their share of pain, whether they follow me or not.”
“Oh, really? It wasn’t until I turned away from you that my life went to shit.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Your attitude did. Look around. Are you the gaeshed sex slave of some slobbering merchant? The castrated musician of a Kishna-Farrigan lord? Owned, however briefly, by dear old Relos Var? Becoming a slave saved your life. You were convinced you were cursed, and so that is all you saw. You turned your back on the good fortune, on the lucky breaks that came your way.”
“What about Miya?”
“She doesn’t need rescuing.” She put her hand in mine. It was small and warm. “No matter what happens, no matter what chains you wear, you decide if you are free. No one else.”
“Excuse me while I allow my gaesh to argue otherwise.”
She rolled her eyes. “Your gaesh is nothing. You will always be free to decide how you react to the world. If you are always free to act, even if it’s to decide on your own death by defying a gaesh, then you are free. You may not have a lot of options, but you still have the freedom to choose.”
“What are you saying? I should stop being so whiny?”
She grinned. “Yes.”
“Ah, well then.” I crouched down, looked at the seashells, then up at the dark wave. “Can I really leave all this behind? Make a new life for myself?”
She squeezed my fingers. “No.”
“But you just said—”
“You can walk away. I didn’t lie. You have that choice. But choices are rarely clean creatures without entanglements and complications. Just because you decide to run, don’t expect your enemies won’t chase, or that they will believe you have no interest in hindering them.”
“Why do I even have enemies?” I pressed. “I’m sixteen. Faris is the only enemy I’ve earned. What right do these other people have to want me dead?”
She almost smiled. Almost. “Do you realize you’re on the verge of telling me how unfair this all is?”
“It IS!”
“Okay. I’ll tell Relos Var and all the others to stop picking on you. I’m sure he’ll listen to me, since we’re such good friends.”
“You’re a goddess.”