Awi launched herself into the air, nearly overturning the boat, and I marked her flying off in the same direction she’d previously indicated. I was ironically gratified to see that the bird was telling the truth about which direction the Painted Tower lay in—the epics had taught me that the gods might keep their promises, but they frequently lied, and the way they fulfilled their promises was often worse than betrayal would have been.
When sailors approachland, they see the peaks of mountains before they see the shore. But that was not how I first saw Wesha’s tower at the intersection of the worlds. Everything emerged all at once from the gray mists: the Mountain crouchingover the wide cavern mouth of the Underworld, and to the left of that entrance, the single harbor, and beyond that, the Painted Tower.
I aimed for a shallow beach, barely visible through the wreckage of the ships that crowded the shore. I was restored enough to row my little boat into an open space between two larger ships, but this shore was infamous and terrifying, the boundary between the mortal world and the undying one.
When our rebellion began in earnest, most of the surviving priests boarded boats and sailed here, called by their gods to travel up the Mountain to the Summerlands. By the end of the war, the only people still singing the blessings of the gods had been death-priests, trying to kill us, and my dwindling group of acolytes, trying to keep the queen’s army alive. I knew sworn priests could not disobey the commands of their patron gods, but it was hard not to feel like they’d abandoned us—the acolytes who had not yet given our vows. I saw no sign of their retreat now.
Some of the boats in the harbor looked like they had just docked, and some of them were no more than piles of scrap lumber that the sea was slowly reclaiming. As I approached, other boats sailed in without pilots, and their passengers stepped onto the pebbled shore.
The dead.
However they’d looked in life, they now gleamed in the phosphorescent green of foxfire, shuffling like sleepwalkers and clutching a few precious possessions to their chests as tribute for Wesha. They went slowly toward the mouth of the Underworld, heads tilted as though listening to instructions whispered over the roar of the sea behind me. I splayed my palms together with fingers spread, making the sign of the Maiden’s star out of lingering superstition.
There were no birds besides Awi, and none of the smell of rot that might be expected from thousands of funeral boats. Somewherebetween my world and this shore, the mortal bodies of the dead had vanished, and only their spirits had come here. The dusk-souls were hazy memories of the people they’d been in life, faces flickering between old and young, grieving and serene as they moved inexorably toward the dark mouth of the cave at the end of the beach. It was considered very bad luck to see them in the mortal world: their passing drained the life out of everything they touched, and their presence meant a body had gone untended for days, with no surviving friends or family to launch a funeral boat.
I jumped out as soon as I reached land, forgetting that my left foot wouldn’t hold my weight after so many days at sea. I hoped the Maiden wasn’t looking out her window just then as her last priestess fell face-first onto the beach. I spat out gravel and Awi honk-laughed at me in her original guise as a seagull.
After I dusted myself off, I walked along the shore, completely ignored by the dusk-souls. I saw pristine skiffs with prayers painted in gold along the hulls and rough rafts made of bound driftwood. Some were loaded with treasure, and some were empty. Despite a few minutes searching, I didn’t find Taran’s funeral barge, which had been little more than a few boards roped together. All I’d owned to send with him had been my scarf and my love.
I had to wipe my eyes. I hadn’t actually expected him to be waiting for me on the shore—I just wished he were.
Put down your hair, nightingale. The Maiden likes pretty things, and you want her to like you.
I didn’t need Taran here to conjure his advice. I could even picture the face he’d make, seeing me robed and veiled like the high priestess of Wesha.
Jealous of a goddess, my love?I said back to him, deep in my heart. If I wanted my patron goddess to hear me, better to look the part of her faithful worshipper.
Her home was tall and slender, jutting into the misty sky like a piece of white bone, surrounded by ruined gardens and decaying outbuildings. It was called the Painted Tower after its former condition—the story went that Genna had a beautiful home built for her daughter as a wedding gift, but Death stripped it before his exile across the sea, turning it into a wretched prison. There were soot marks instead of frescoes now, the underlying white marble stained and pitted by the green-black moss of the sea and pierced only by a single window at the very top. The rest were crudely bricked up.
I thought someone might challenge me as I approached, but the beach was quiet and empty, and the front door to the tower was open. I could feel the Maiden’s presence though, like an electric charge that lifted the hair on the back of my neck. The tower didn’t seem vacant, just…quiet. She was here.
“So, what did you bring her?” Awi asked, peering with interest at my full pack.
While my eyes adjusted to the unlit gloom of the interior, I crouched in the foyer of polished rose granite and displayed the slightly dingy golden relics of Ereban for the bird’s inspection.
“That’s it?” she asked, apparently disappointed. “You know she’s got rooms full of that stuff here.”
“Well, there’s also me. Her last priestess.” Surely that had to mean something to her.
“You? What do you do?”
“I sing?”
A resigned sigh escaped her yellow beak. “Really? I guess that’s something…but you’re lucky that Wesha isn’t just beautiful but merciful too. I’ll wait outside.”
She spread her wings as though leaving, but I grabbed her by the back of the neck before she could take flight.
“Oh, no you don’t.” If the bird goddess had a history with Wesha, I wasn’t answering for it alone. “Come in so I can ask for you to be released.”
“You don’t want to bring me in front of Wesha! She has no respect for the Allmother’s laws, and she hates the other gods for trapping her here.”
I frowned, having never heard that about the Maiden, but I looked down at the cowl neck of my white wool dress in compromise.
“Can you be a hummingbird? You can hide in here,” I said, gesturing at the loose fabric.
Awi made a squawking scoff. “You can’t hide anything with your bony tits. Just remember to be precise about what you ask the Maiden for.” With that, she launched into the air, out the door, and up out of sight.
She hadn’t been great company, but my mood dipped as soon as I was alone again. The tower was an uncomfortable house for my poor goddess—lonely and forbidding, with all the softening touches of a home charred away. No rugs, no wall murals, no cushions on the stone benches. The proportions were not human ones: the ceilings were too high, and the ramp leading up the inside wall was too wide. I found full storerooms overflowing off the central pillar, but no priests to tend them. I’d half hoped there might be someone lingering here who’d escaped Death’s massacre at Ereban, but everything was silent.
