The forest roared as though a thunderhead had turned to stone and fallen on it.
“She did it.” Frog’s small, frightened voice. “It is finished. Core Kirrik, she is finished. Please, let ’er go.”
Frog loves me.
Weight lifted. Small hands dragged at the blindfold. Unar had no energy for opening her eyes. Her body felt like it would stay limp, forever. She didn’t want to know what she had done.
“Let her go.” Kirrik’s voice was mocking. “Very well. Rest here awhile, Nameless.” No more pretence about calling Unar by her name. “Recover your strength. And have no fear for Audblayin, I will fetch her for you. You want to know where she is? Not long before you came to us, a slave and her child were sent from the Garden to the House of Epatut. That child is your reincarnated goddess. If only you poor fools had known.”
Impossible. Unar wheezed. She hadn’t the strength to lift her head.. Audblayin is not a goddess. Not this time. “Audblayin is young. Too young for you to find.”
He is a boy child. He must be a boy child, if I am to guard him. That’s why I was given the gift. That’s why Audblayin called to me, waking my powers in my parents’ home, before I knelt beneath the night-yew.
“Birth screams hold a powerful magic.” The mocking voice floated closer. “I heard them, in my future-searching, and I saw the mother’s face.”
No. It is what I am for.
“I would have known,” Unar mumbled into the bark. “I stood by the cradle of that slave child. Ylly. Baby Ylly. I would have felt the soul inside her!”
It’s what I was born to do.
“Would you? Your bones were sleeping. You were untrained in song-magic. I felt the power in the baby’s cries, but you who are deaf search only with your eyes.”
It’s why I killed Edax.
“Isin. Is it true? It can’t be true. You would have told me.”
Frog’s lips, kissing her cheek. Kissing Unar good-bye. Was she dying, after all? Would Aforis make a better tool for Kirrik to use? A better body for the Master to steal?
“You speak to the dead.” Frog sighed. “Well, the dead will answer you, this one time. It is true, Unar. Audblayin sleeps in the House of Epatut, child of a slave. Twice, our people have tried to take ’er, tossin’ ’er out a window, and twice she has floated out of our reach.”
“Someone,” Kirrik said, sounding aggrieved, “made a powerful gift to Odel in that slave child’s name. But it does not matter. We will bring her below. I will carry her in my own arms. This road now leads across all of Canopy. Audblayinland waits at the far end, and Ehkisland lies along the way.”
“The rain goddess first,” Sikakis suggested.
“Yes. Lest she recover quickly enough to fend us off. Then, we will take the Waker of Senses, while her soldiers scramble and her adepts do not know her. Frog, take the man-tool and wake every warrior who can be instantly useful to us. If you can manage that much without losing control of him.”
“Yes, Core Kirrik.”
“Fetch the goddess we already have, Sikakis. You are strong enough to carry her. She will get us through. No need to wake her.”
“Yes, Core Kirrik.”
“And you, Warmed One.” Kirrik’s breath was suddenly hot in Unar’s ear. She pulled the ear bone out of Unar’s grip. “If I thought I could get one more scrap of magic out of you without killing you, I would take you along. As it is, as I said, you must wait for me here. Resting. Recovering. Be mindful of the lanterns. Forgive me if I do not leave you the means to quench them.”
FIFTY-ONE
UNAR WISHED that Kirrik had killed her.
I was wrong about everything.
Edax died for nothing.
Audblayin’s Bodyguard will be a man, again, since she is born a woman. Not me.
Kirrik recognised Audblayin, baby Ylly, before I did.
I have no destiny.
Never before had she been able to see the selfishness of her own actions so clearly. She didn’t always behave in the way that the gods said a person was supposed to behave—showing kindness, consideration, obedience, humility. But the criticisms of her elders hadn’t touched her. Not while she did what was no more than necessary for her to meet her glorious fate.
Now that there was no glorious fate, she looked back on recent events as though examining the life of a stranger, and she could not love what she saw. Nobody could. No wonder Frog had chosen Kirrik.
No wonder Aoun had pushed her away.
Unar kept her eyes closed and covered her ears with her hands. She didn’t object when Sikakis dragged her by one leg off the path, to make room for the pounding bare feet of Understorian soldiers. They poured out of the dovecote as though emerging from another world, hundreds of heavy-breathers who smelled of decades of sleep.
“The Servant of Airak,” Frog panted, somewhere close by. “’E tried to kill the sleepers, too, Core Kirrik. Then ’e tried to wake the goddess. You should take control of ’im. ’E keeps gettin’ away from me, as if ’e hates ’imself more than I hate ’im.”
“Do you need more motivation than to save your own miserable life?” Kirrik said, and Unar knew from the cutting edge to her voice that she spoke to Aforis, not Frog. “I could claim a different god today. Your god. Whether he fell or not, I could use you up to find him. I could spend my men’s lives fetching him here.”
“The other Servants of Airak would kill you,” Aforis said, meeting malice with malice.
“Not if I put my soul inside your dead bones. I could walk right up to him. He would embrace me.”
“Pah! You cannot switch bodies and souls. That is the death god’s domain!”
“I could do it. But it would be wasteful. The time is right to take the others today, not Airak. Airak’s body is a young man’s; he is early in his cycle. I am patient. I can wait until age slows him.” And she petted Unar fondly with her foot as if imagining herself in the younger woman’s skin. “I can wait until his mind begins to decay. Will you obey me today, Servant of Airak?”
“I will.” Aforis sounded shaken.
“Lead the way, Sikakis,” Core Kirrik said.
When they had all gone, the branch beneath Unar stopped vibrating. Everything was still, even the wind.
No rain fell on Unar. Moisture seeped into her from the wet bark, but that was all. With her hands still over her ears, she heard her own pulse against the nothing noise of trapped air in her ears, or perhaps that was the flutter of feathers. Kirrik’s winged messengers came whatever the time; whatever the weather.
Time to roll off the edge. Time to fall. All the way to Floor, this time. No nets. No more thinking. No more thoughts.
Hands lifted her, gently. They peeled her palms away from her ears. Too big to be Frog’s hands, and Frog didn’t really care about Unar, anyway. Nobody did.
“Are you hurt?” Marram asked.
Unar opened her eyes. Marram’s fingers were covered in scars, like tiny teeth had torn into them, over and over.
“I’m hurt in my heart,” she said.
“Aside from the fact that Oos begged me to go after you, I knew you had not gone willingly.”