If the myths were true, that meant her mother was down in Rahn’s Hall right now, dancing before the goddess’s throne, enduring a torment Talia couldn’t imagine, though she had felt a sliver of it in her dreams. The memory of it crashed through her again, terror and pain fracturing every part of her.
She clamped her jaw shut to keep from screaming and shoved the dream away.
The dead don’t feel, she told herself stubbornly. The dead know nothing, when they’re gone.
Most people believed in paradise, a place beyond the circles of the world where there was no more sorrow or pain. It was the last remnant of religion in everyday society, and Talia wanted desperately to think of her mother there, at peace.
But if the stories were true and paradise existed, why not Rahn’s Hall? Why not a place where souls were trapped and tormented by a wicked queen, unable to move on, unable to find rest?
Because it was too awful to think about. Because how could Talia go on, make a new life here, steal kisses with boys in stables if she really, truly believed that? How could she resign her mother to such a fate?
It’s not true, she screamed inside her head. It’s not true, it can’t be true!
She forced herself to breathe, in and out, in and out. She couldn’t stop shaking.
She tried to think rationally.
The stories said the Immortal Tree had lain dead on the earth for three hundred years. The inhabitants of Ryn claimed it had been here, underneath the very stones of the Ruen-Dahr itself.
Wen had said the chained door under the garden was an old temple to the Tree.
That, at least, she could investigate.
Maybe the myths would stop haunting her, if she could prove once and for all there was no truth to them. Lay all this to rest.
She told herself she didn’t hear the music anymore, spooling up from the sea, twisting into her and not letting go.
But she did.
She stole Ahned’s keys from their hook in the kitchen tea cupboard, then went out into the garden and hopped over the iron gate. She followed the path down the hill to the stone door, rain spattering cold on her face.
The door stood just as she remembered it, crossed with chains and secured in the center with a heavy iron lock. She tried the keys, one by one, but none of them fit. The wind whispered past her ears, and she dropped the key ring, running her fingers over the rough metal lock. If she hit it with something heavy enough, in just the right place, maybe she could break it open.
Thunder muttered in the distance. The rain bit colder.
She scanned the path, and her eyes landed on a large, vaguely square-shaped rock jutting partway out of the sand.
That would do.
She dug it out of the ground, sand grinding under her fingernails and scraping against her skin. She pulled the stone free and hefted it up, eyeing the lock. She threw it against the iron, yelping in surprise as it slipped from her hands and landed with a thud back in the sand. She grabbed it again and slammed it against the lock, this time keeping hold of it. The iron didn’t yield.
Again and again Talia rammed the stone into the iron, sweat prickling between her shoulder blades despite the wind and spitting rain.
The stone slid and smashed her fingers against the door and she cried out, swallowing back a curse. She cradled her hand against her chest and waited for the pain to fade. She’d scraped the first finger of her right hand, just above the ring; spots of blood showed bright against her brown skin.
This wasn’t working.
Desperate now, she eyed the door again, tracing the lines of the chains to where they ran into the hill. Those would be easier to break. She swung the rock at the metal links again and again. Gulls shrieked overhead and thunder growled louder among the knotted clouds. Her muscles strained.
Please, she thought, readying for another strike. Please. I need to get in there. I need to know if the stories are true, why they’re calling to me. I need to know if my mother—
She bashed the stone once more against the iron.
The chain broke, springing free.
She stepped back, panting, and let the rock slide to the ground.
Now to actually open the door.
She traced the stone with her fingers, touching the carvings and looking for some kind of opening mechanism, but there wasn’t one.
So she leaned her shoulder into the door and shoved, as hard as she could.
The stone creaked. She pushed again, and it slid slowly sideways along a hidden groove in the ground. Dust rose choking into the air and she coughed, eyes blearing.
When it cleared, she took a deep breath and stepped across the threshold of the ancient temple.
A set of stairs led down from the door into the darkness and she followed them, her footsteps raising more dust as she went. She came to a dim archway and stopped to dig in her pockets for the candles and matches she’d brought from the library. She struck a match against the stone, then touched the flame to the wick. She held the candle high.
Through the arch lay a stone chamber, pillars carved into the walls, niches cut between them. What looked like a shrine rested in the center of the ancient room, dust and cobwebs clinging to the edges of a marble obelisk.
It smelled like deep earth down here, of flowers and honey and something else she couldn’t name. But it was a fierce scent, wild and strong and good.
She paced around the chamber, shining the light of her candle at the walls, wincing as hot wax dripped onto her skin. There were dozens of old books piled into the niches, several silver goblets that still smelled of wine, a handful of little caskets filled with a curious assortment of earrings and cloak pins.
At the back of the room she found what once must have been a fountain—a statue of Blaidor kneeling over an empty basin, weeping for the husband the gods had killed. Talia brushed her fingers over the figure’s stone head and went on.
On the other side of the room she found a glass jar containing some odd substance that pulsed with a faint golden light. It was warm to the touch, and smelled like fresh roses. She peered at the words cut into the stone just beneath the jar. It was a lengthy inscription, most of it worn away long ago. But she made out the phrase Star-light, and her mouth went dry. She set the jar down again in a hurry.
Could it be light from one of the Stars? Impossible. But she couldn’t explain how else the substance in the glass could be glowing by itself, shut up for countless years down here in the dark.
She turned away, and went at last to the shrine in the middle of the quiet chamber.
The white marble obelisk ran from floor to ceiling, inscriptions carved into every surface. Partway up the pillar a hollow was cut into the stone, and a small glass-and-iron casket, bound in iron, rested inside. Talia touched the glass and jerked quickly away again at the sudden heat—it was much warmer than the pulsing jar.
She lifted her candle to illuminate the words cut into the marble.
There were many old-fashioned phrases and mythical references that she recognized from the book she’d read in the library and the stories her mother had told her so long ago.
May the gods remember us in our sorrow.
The Tree lies here in honor, once so disgraced.