She understood now why she could hear the music in the waves. Understood why the gods had burdened her with this fate and why her mother had leapt into the sea—she’d known about their heritage. She’d known Rahn sensed her and Talia’s presence. She’d cast herself into the storm so Rahn would take her instead of Talia. And Rahn had. But she sensed Talia still, and was tormenting her mother because of it. Talia was part Wave, part sea god. She could never escape that.
The realization overwhelmed her, horrified her. It thrilled her somehow, too.
But there was still one more thing she had to know.
She was soaked through by the time she arrived at the Ruen-Dahr, breathless and shaking the water from her hair. She bolted past a confused Ahned, and nearly ran headlong into a man carrying a bucket of fresh plaster. She jerked sideways to avoid him, and dashed up the stairs to the room she hadn’t seen in weeks, praying they were still there, that they hadn’t been thrown out.
She tore through the gowns in her wardrobe and there they were—the clothes she had worn aboard the Lazy Jackal half a year ago, balled in the corner underneath a pair of dirty riding boots.
She pulled them out, scrabbling in the pockets of the baggy pants. The right one was empty, and her panic redoubled.
In the left pocket she found the piece of paper, crumpled and creased and stiff with seawater.
She crouched back on her heels, hardly daring to breathe, and unfolded it.
Her mother’s handwriting marched in front of her eyes, the words Talia had thought the ravings of a madwoman all at once perfectly clear:
The sea runs in my veins, as it does in yours, my darling girl. My father told me when I was young. We are the heritage of the sea god, we are Endain’s children, and so only we can strike the goddess down from her throne. Endain rode the Whale here, and we must ride it back again. The Whale will save us. We must take the Star from Rahn’s hand, we must turn her own power against her, we must set the dead free. The time has come. The nine hundred years are nearly ended, and when they are she will rise with her dead and fill all the world with shadows. I have felt it. I have heard it in the song of the Waves. We must stop her, before it is too late. We must return to our birthright. The sea made us, and the sea will take us back again. Come, my dearest Talia. I will be waiting for you there.
The paper tore between Talia’s fingers. She started to shake.
She left her room almost without realizing it, and her feet took her up to the library. The door was unlocked but the tower was empty, the hearth swept clean. She felt the power of the mirror room, dancing just behind her eyes—she could almost see the sparks of light glimmering where the door ought to be. She didn’t know the Words Wen had used to open it, but she realized she didn’t need them.
“I am Endain’s daughter,” she whispered to the air. “I belong here. Let me in.”
The wall shimmered and the door appeared. She stepped through.
With an effort she passed by mirror after mirror until she came to the last one. “What will happen if I do not go?” she asked. It seemed a question the mirror was meant to answer. She steeled herself for the things she didn’t want to see, and looked in.
The black glass wavered. She felt suddenly very cold.
Water pressed in all around her, but she could see nothing. Fire burned in her eyes; she knew it would never stop. Her fingers whispered past her harp strings and she played a lament for the bond laid on herself and her sisters, for the loss of the man she had loved, for the dead souls bound forever in the shadows that moved beyond her blind eyes.
The mirror twisted and changed, flashing images in quick succession. Talia once more saw her mother, screaming before Rahn’s throne, the pain twisting in and in and in. She heard the clank of chains, saw sparks fly from a hammer somewhere in the dark. She heard the Billow Maidens singing, and their music was danger and sorrow and pain never ending.
She saw the image from her dream, a wide black sea and the dead rising out of it, silent and screaming. They were bound in iron around their necks and wrists and ankles, all chained together in a grotesque, clanking horde. Rahn led them, riding on the back of a blue-and-silver serpent. Her woven crown was made of fire and human finger bones, and the Star gleamed from her hand. Behind her came the Billow Maidens, and they were collared in gold and bound with chains between them, like the dead.
No! Talia tried to scream, but the mirror wasn’t finished.
She blinked and saw the shore of the Ruen-Dahr, a lone figure standing with one arm outstretched. He held a sword that pulsed with the power of the Words. He trembled as he waited, and Talia knew him to be the guardian, the last defense for the land against the sea goddess.
But more than that: It was Wen. He looked solemn and strange; there were silver threads in his hair.
Rahn came toward him with the Waves and the dead at her back. She stepped from the sea onto the shore, and Wen did not waver. “Go back,” he said. “Go back to the deep.”
But the goddess laughed. “Whatever power was woven into this shore is ended now.” She lifted her hand and the Ruen-Dahr crumbled to dust behind him. But still he did not back down.
“Go back to the deep!”
Rahn smiled and raised the Star. “You cannot stop me.”
“But I will try anyway.” And he leapt at her with a fierce cry, the sword flashing before him.
Rahn shouted a Word Talia knew was Death, and raised the Star, knocking him backward against a jutting rock. Talia both heard and felt the snap of his bones as he fell limp and dead onto the shore.
Rahn trod over his lifeless body without a glance, her terrible army surging just behind.
Talia’s heart cried out, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away. The mirror wasn’t finished.
She saw Rahn striding across all the continents of the world, crowning herself queen, making the living worship her along with the dead. Rivers and forests were choked with shadows. Palaces were knocked down and rebuilt with human bones. All the gods remaining on Endahr crept out of their corners of the earth: Tuer and Raiva, Hahld and Ahdairon and Mahl. But they were not strong enough anymore to defeat her. Rahn killed them, one by one, and then clapped them in chains.
No more, Talia thought. Please, no more.
But the mirror changed again. She blinked and was astonished to see the throne room in Eddenahr, with its huge, arched hall, hidden fountains burbling in the alcoves, and jasmine twining through the window lattice. The two thrones on a dais in the center of the hall were made of bone and iron. Rahn sat in one of the thrones, the Star bright on her finger. In the other throne, Talia saw herself.
She was clothed in robes woven of sea glass and water, a coral crown on her head, strands of blue and green in her hair. Her skin was strange, speckled like river stones. Her mouth was twisted into a cruel smile.
And at her feet knelt the shadow of the Empress, gray and dead, bound in chains. “Please,” Eda moaned, weeping with pain, “let me free. Let me go.”
But Talia shook her head. “In life you tormented me, took from me everything I had ever known. Now you will be tormented until the end of time.”
“Please,” she begged. “Please!”
Talia waved her hand and a pair of dead guards came forward and dragged the Empress away.