“No. This is not a place for mortals,” Vi said softly. “Go back with them to Risen, and show them what you know of the Archives.” Vi suspected Deneya had learned much when she’d gone to procure the Flame.
Deneya searched her face and Vi tried to silently encourage her agreement. This was the only way she would get back to Risen. Vi was out of negotiated trips.
What Deneya did once there was up to her. She could try to flee. Or she could tell them about a passage into the Archives, only to have an ambush waiting.
“All right.” It seemed Deneya was smart enough to figure those things out. She stepped forward, awkwardly hovering before Vi. “Be careful saving the world, I guess.”
Vi nodded her head. “All will be light.”
With the box in hand, Vi sat on the railing of theStormfrostand swung her legs into the rowboat with ease.
“Lower me,” Vi commanded, and the pirates followed her orders. As soon as the rowboat met the water, Vi glanced at each of the ropes holding it. Withjuth calt, she destroyed each one. Then, she envisioned the glyph forkot sorrein the water behind her. She pushed it forward and the skiff moved over the waves toward the isle of the elfin’ra.
A group of men and women had collected on the beach. They’d likely been drawn over by the sight of theStormfrostin the distance. In Vi’s world, this meeting might have been the moment Adela crawled into bed with the elfin’ra. Perhaps even in this world, the pirate queen would’ve allied herself had it not been for Vi sending Adela away.
The skiff beached itself and Vi released her mental hold on the glyph. The elfin’ra surrounded her in a semicircle. They whispered under their breaths, but none made any motion to attack. They all watched as Vi stood and stepped onto the sand and surf of an island that had been surrounded by an impenetrable barrier for thousands of years.
Finally, a man stepped forward. Vi recognized him from her vision and assumed him to be some sort of high priest of Raspian.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I am here to meet with your lord,” she said to him. “I have brought you the ashes of the Flame of Yargen so that you may summon him. And so that we might once and for all bring an end to the vortex.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The high priestled her down a beach path that quickly became gravely as it meandered between boulders and then buildings. The isle on the whole was smaller than Vi had expected. Yet she wasn’t surprised by its size. No,shewas surprised; but the goddess who was taking over her mind and body was not.
“Why would Yargen come to us?” the high priest asked casually. He was merely curious, not disbelieving.
“Because this world is held in balance by him and—” Vi almost saidme“—Yargen. Due to the actions of man, it has been thrown dangerously out of order. I have been working to correct it for thousands of years.”
“You?” The man looked her up and down with his red eyes. “You are her Champion?”
“I am.” There were murmurs at the admission behind her.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t slay you here and now and use your blood to summon my lord?” The man grinned wickedly at her. “That way he might usher in a new age of darkness without the burden of Yargen’s strongest warrior.”
“Because you cannot kill me,” Vi said lightly. Part of her was amused at the idea of them trying, though Vi couldn’t tell if that was her own feeling or the goddess’s. “And because I bring you the ashes willingly.”
“I say we kill her now,” a woman shouted behind her.
A man clearly agreed because he lunged for her. Vi turned her head and thought,juth calt. He seized and fell to the ground. Another woman screamed and rushed over to him, shaking him as a trickle of blood came out of his pasty lips.
“Foolish,” the priest sighed, as if the man’s death was little more than a frustrating inconvenience. Vi sympathized with the sentiment. “Please, no more of that,” he said to the group behind them. All of the others nodded in unison. “Our lord will need your blood fresh for his glorious return. To waste your life is to go against his will.”
They crossed into a desolate city square. More people were beginning to follow them as they marched through the cobblestone streets. The elfin’ra on the whole were an emaciated people with hungry eyes.
“Why do you worship Raspian?”
“I’m surprised you would ask.” The man glanced at her.
“I admit to being curious.”
“Very well… On Meru, there were once temples for both Raspian and Yargen. But after her last victory that ushered in this age of light, Yargen cast Raspian’s temple out to sea on a lone island.” Vi wondered where that isle might be. Perhaps it was Salvidia. “Unlike all the other times they had done battle, this past time she sealed him off in an unnatural way and ruled that none should worship him.”
“There were those who worshiped him before?” Vi tried to imagine a time when worshipers of Yargen and Raspian lived side-by-side. Thanks to the goddess, she had hazy visions of such a thing occurring on ancient Meru.
“Oh yes. What is light without the darkness? Or darkness without the light? I do not revere Yargen.” He scrunched his nose in a scowl, accentuating the point. “But I understand her role. I merely choose to relish the darkness. I choose the chaos his beast makes in our world. We all choose this because we believe that in nothingness exists true equality.”
