I hate myself more than you could ever hate me. You don’t really know me. True knowledge is required for true hate.
At last, when Unar and Ylly were mere paces from the Gate, Kirrik said, “Nameless commands no bone of the Old Gods, Frog. Somebody has let the secret slip. I shall have to take her before this body’s time.”
Whatever else Kirrik said, with her mouth wide and her throat vibrating, it made no sound. Her dark power coiled and struck at Unar. It felt like the first time Unar had heard Kirrik laugh with a vibration that was opposite to joy, seeming to form a tunnel to a time before trees; to draw from a formless but magnificent primordial rage. It smelled of old blood and sounded like the hiss of a chimera.
Unar had once wondered what such magic was useful for, and now that use became plain: It was intended to convey Kirrik’s soul from one body to the other.
Kirrik’s power rebounded from the bone amulet Unar wore around her neck. Marram’s amulet. They had guessed true. While Unar wore it, Kirrik couldn’t steal her body, could not displace her soul.
“Core Kirrik?” Frog asked Unar, her little face bent by rage. “No, you cannot be ’er, you cannot take ’er.” Kirrik’s tall body swayed, and Frog leaped towards Unar, beating at her with fierce fists. “I cannot serve you if you look like ’er. I hate ’er. I hate ’er!”
“I am Unar,” Unar said angrily, turning her shoulder to protect Ylly.
“I am still here, Frog,” Kirrik said from behind Frog, sounding shaken. “Very well, if you hate her so much, destroy her. We cannot use her anymore.”
Frog stepped back quickly, standing at Kirrik’s side again as if pretending she’d never left it, gripping the sorceress’s skirt in one hand like a much smaller child. “Gladly,” she seethed.
The lightning turned on Unar.
Unar was struck. No, Ylly was struck. Unar’s hair stood on end. Her teeth clenched and her muscles spasmed, but it was Ylly who was burning, dying. Unar flooded little Audblayin with desperate healing, reflecting the tiny goddess’s strength back into the blackened, breathless body until Ylly’s eyes opened, her skin unblemished and whole.
“Is that a slave’s child?” Frog’s expression was ferocious. “Have you bought your way back into Canopy with human lives? You would still rather serve this unholy Temple on your belly than be free?”
Another strike fell. Audblayin died again, and lived.
“Stop it,” Unar shouted. “Stop it, if you care so much for human life.”
More lightning. More burning. This time, a more powerful bolt, and Unar was dying, too, in too much pain to heal herself. She staggered. Fell to her knees. Something touched her, causing more agony. Another lightning strike? Blows from a sword? Was her head split?
No, it was a pair of wrinkled old hands. They were very like Hasbabsah’s, only as richly brown as the soil of the Garden; they belonged to a Canopian, not a colourless Understorian. And there was dirt from the Garden under the nails. Unar could sense the spores.
Servant Eilif. The burnt sticks that had been Unar’s fingers were returned to flesh and blood by the old woman’s skill. She has to love me to heal me. How could she love one who had wished to kill her? Unar tried to push Ylly into the curve of the other woman’s body.
Take her into the Garden, please. Heal her. Protect her.
Eilif’s arms began to close the circle.
But then the lightning fell again, and Eilif fell with it. Into the dark, before Unar could do more than snatch at her sleeve. Ylly floated. Unar gathered her. But Eilif was gone.
A half-formed thought, of branches like spears piercing Kirrik’s heart, entered Unar’s head, but she couldn’t concentrate on it for long enough to make it happen. The branch behind her was burning. Her clothes were burning.
Everything was burning.
Then it started to rain.
FIFTY-SEVEN
UNAR HEALED the child and held her.
“You have until the count of five to crawl back down where you belong,” boomed the thunder.
I forbid you to use Audblayin’s power in my realm, Odel had said. But he hadn’t said that it wouldn’t work. Only that he had forbidden it, and Ylly, who ruled this realm, could barely speak, and so could not forbid anything.
Soldiers covered their ears, but the sound was everywhere. Unar looked into Ylly’s eyes. The child goddess and her would-be protector curled up together a mere body length beyond Kirrik’s bare feet. Raindrops darkened the enemy’s black skirts. Kirrik’s fingernails cut into her palms. Frog had eyes only for her mistress and Aforis let the bone fall while they weren’t looking.
Unar watched the bone plummet, wondering if it would land on Eilif’s broken body. She looked at Ylly again. The child should have been terrified, but she reached out to pull a yellow leaf out of Unar’s hair.
“I want Mama,” she said.
Unar kissed her, pushed the warm little head whose wounds she had healed so recently, and in rapid succession, into her armpit, and craned her neck to try to see what Kirrik was staring at.
A woman stood at the far edge of the fighting, dressed in robes so luminously kingfisher-blue that Unar could hardly bear to look at them. Her skin was blue-black, but her eyes were as sky-pale as the gleaming silk she wore. Like most goddesses and gods, her hands were gloved and her feet booted. A high collar studded with sapphires stood up around her long neck, sheathing a head of grey and indigo hair twisted into ropes like rivers running down ironbark.
Bringer of Rain.
Audblayinland soldiers who had cowered at the sound of Ehkis’s first command straightened and looked at their opponents, giving them space, clearly expecting them to flee back to Understorey now that all the rules had been broken. A goddess had trespassed in another deity’s niche. It was unheard of. The Canopians couldn’t imagine that the enemy wouldn’t be as shocked as they were and obey the very voice of the storm. In the separation of combatants, Unar finally spotted the king of Audblayinland, a fat fighting man whose belly protruded through his vest. Spines from slaves he’d captured rattled on a chain around his neck.
“One,” the thunder rumbled. The blue-clad figure’s lips had not moved. Unar saw, with her magical sight and sense of smell, the connections between the woman, the sky, and every drop of rain that fell around them.
“Ehkis,” Unar whispered. She looked for Aurilon and spotted her, camouflaged, in the shadow of a bent branch.
“Put her to sleep, Frog,” Kirrik murmured above Unar’s head. “I will divert her.”
Then everything happened at once.
Aforis twisted away from Frog. He would have fallen, taking the leash and its holder down to Floor, if rain hadn’t seemingly solidified around him. Wind howled through the trees, lifting Aforis high into the sky. Unar watched him fly upwards, and then fall with the rain towards some distant part of the forest.
Ylly, after everything that had happened, finally started crying.