I climbed all the way to the top, mind numbed by the unrelieved white of the walls. Three floors, four, five, more, my foot aching by the end. The ramp terminated at a room that took up the entirety of the top floor under the slate tiles of the roof. The ceiling soared stories above me, illuminated by the huge window in the opposite wall. But my eyes were drawn inexorably to the goddess on the giant throne built into the structure of the building.
Immortals could take many forms. More or less human, according to their will, and Wesha was supposed to be more. Unique among the Stoneborn, Wesha was half-mortal, the result of one of Genna’s many indiscretions with mortal lovers. The songs about Wesha described her as a beautiful girl with olive skin and hair that flowed through all the colors of the sunrise—black at the roots, then fading through gold and rose hues to white at the tips. Her features were supposed to be delicate and sad, her eyes like the sky before dawn. This much was true.
It was her size that threw me: Wesha was agiant, perhaps fifty feet tall. Her back was bent to scrape under the ceiling, and her knees were folded to brush the walls. She strained at the confines of the room, far too big to have walked up the ramp behind me. Either she’d taken a different form then, or this tower had been built around her.
She didn’t move at all as I entered the room. I couldn’t see the rise and fall of her breathing, and her eyes didn’t track me, instead gazing fixedly at the distant horizon as though she was a part of the walls of this place too. There was lichen growing in the folds of her ruined wedding gown and an abandoned bird’s nest in the crook of her elbow, as though she hadn’t budged from this spot since the day she married Death, more than three hundred years ago.
I realized I was staring—and lucky that Wesha hadn’t already blasted me for my impertinence in arriving uninvited and goggling at her. I made the deepest genuflection my bad foot would allow, then hurried to pull a bench from along the wall into the center of the room, gritting my teeth at the loud scrape across the tile. She didn’t acknowledge me by even a flicker of her starry eyes.
My heart was pounding harder, and my plan seemed much thinner than the day I devised it, but what else could I do now?
I set out the relics I brought with me and sat down with my ten-stringed kithara in my lap. It wasn’t something Drutalos hadrecovered from Ereban; it was my own instrument, made for my hands out of wood, sinew, and horn on the day I was brought into Wesha’s service as a small child.
Her presence throbbed in my ears like the silence of the tower, making me more reluctant to begin. I had tuned the instrument down below, and Wesha would surely rather hear me play than babble nervously, but it had been years since I had sung in Wesha’s honor and just tried to make it beautiful.
I tried anyway. First, I picked out the notes of the melody the priests used to call us in for morning prayers. When I was sure my fingers weren’t trembling and my mouth wasn’t dry, I added my voice to it, making an offering of myself to my patron goddess.
I sang Wesha’s hymns. I sang the great epics. I sang lullabies and work songs and instructional tales. I chanted the words that Wesha’s priests used to deliver babies, to wither cancers, and to ease the dying toward the Underworld. I sang children’s songs. I sang the wordless melody that Taran whistled when he was in a good mood. There was no change in the eternal midlight of the Gates of Dawn to mark the passage of time, but hours must have unraveled with the lift of my voice and the ripple of the strings. Without any encouragement, I sang as long as my voice held out and my fingers could still hold a pick. Slowly, slowly, Wesha’s head turned. My eyes didn’t track the movement, but by the time I was no longer certain my voice could catch the high notes, Wesha was looking at me instead of the horizon. My hands fell still on the strings under the force of her regard, my small and fragile body freezing like a rabbit in this unfriendly place. I had the full attention of one of the Stoneborn.
She spoke in a voice as lovely as copper bells, her words even more jarring for it.
“Well, you’ve buttered me up sufficiently. What do you want?” Wesha asked.
5
“Goddess,” I croaked.“They say you can see all the way to the mortal world from your window. I am Iona ter Wesha, called Iona Night-Singer. Do you know me?”
Wesha watched me unblinking, giving no response either way. But I hadn’t answered her question yet.
“I am the only one of your priests left living. I came to ask for a boon.” I’d practiced that announcement in my head, but I’d imagined myself with a lot more dignity, not rasping and bedraggled.
There was an ironic twist to Wesha’s mouth when she deigned to speak to me again. “You’re not one of mine. No matter what you’re wearing. I’d know if you owed me your obedience.”
“No,” I admitted. “But I was in Ereban three years ago to swear my vows when Death massacred your priests.”
It was cool in the marble room, and the fog outside obscured the sun, but I sweated at the memory of midsummer. Crowded in with the other acolytes at the rear of the temple, our vestments a riot of varied colors and symbols. All of us nervous to endure the presence of the god of flame, the mood shifting darker as the day dragged on. The sacrificial fire in front of Death’s altar had been stoked until it reached the painted ceiling of the temple, and the air was thick with the smell of burning meat as Death demandedmore,again, another, or I’ll burn the wheat that grows in the field.When every animal in the pens had been offered, Death’s lion mask had turned toward Elantia’s small form where she trembled next to him, and the pinched expression on our high priestess’s face had turned to horror. An echo of that panic coursed through me now, making me shudder.
“So, why should I give you a boon?” Wesha asked, tone idle.
“Did you see it? The war? Death scorched the world to ashes before he died, but we won. He’s dead. I avenged your priests—and you, goddess.”
Wesha shrugged, looking almost uncomfortable. “Is that what mortals say I want now? Revenge? I never told you to go to war.”
I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. She was the goddess of mercy, of course she didn’t want revenge. “Death took…everything from us. We sacrificed to all the gods for their blessings, but it was never enough for him. People went hungry to put food on his altars. Our country should have been rich, but his priests took more tithes than the queen and the other temples together. And at Ereban, the last sacrifice was the queen’s own daughter. She was fourteen, and she went willingly, but…I couldn’t allow it. I know your forgiveness is infinite, Maiden, but you’re also the patron of children. I knew you’d want me to stop it.”
I opened my damp eyes wide, imploring her to say I’d been right. If she couldn’t abide marrying him, how could I be expected to watch his priests bend a living child over his altar?
“Sounds as though you solved that problem on your own,” she replied in a dry tone. “No more sacrifices. No more death-priests. No more priests at all, including mine. You thought I’d be pleased?”
“I—your husband is dead,” I stuttered. I would have thought she’d be pleased after three hundred years. “You’re free.”
“Napeth is one of the Stoneborn. Do you mortals still fear death and worship with fire? Then the Allmother will rebuild himfrom the stone of the Mountain, and I’ll face him on this side of the ocean now. Meanwhile, I’m stillstuckhere.” She turned her head as though preparing to stare out her window again, but then, remembering that I was still there, fixed her attention on me once more. “I’m not sure you’ve improved things at all, mortal girl.”
“Death’s still…he’s alive?” I steadied myself. None of us, not even Taran, had spoken of killing him. We’d only imagined stripping his power by defeating his priests and denying him sacrifices—not that there had been any other way to stop the war. At Taran’s insistence, we’d sent messengers under a white flag to ask for terms, but none had ever returned.
“Of course he’s alive. He’s Stoneborn. Though probably unhappy to hear of his demise at the hands of mere mortals,” Wesha said, lips curling with some satisfaction at the thought. She picked delicately at the fraying gold embroidery on her wedding gown, expression growing distant. “Anyway. Your boon. Everyone always wants something from me—get on with it, then.”
Anxiety made my voice squeaky, but it was hard not to bristle at how put out Wesha sounded at my presence. “Maiden, I have followed your commands since I was six years old, honored you with the working of my entire life. I only beg one favor.”
