“Yes, I vow it,” I gasped immediately. For the second time in a day, the power of a divine oath took hold of me and lurched through my skin, but more potent this time. Tears pricked my eyes and I wavered even on my knees. My soul shifted its tuning to ring with this new purpose.
She had not even asked for anything in return. She could have asked me for anything at all, and I would have promised it. When I remained on my knees, staring mutely up at her, she gave me an upraised eyebrow as if to say,You’re still here?
“Can you—can you help me find him?” I asked, even though Iknew I was pressing my luck. Maybe this was the catch. I knew very little about the Underworld. Maybe she thought I’d wander for centuries and never find him.
Her expression brightened. “Oh, sure. I will. I’ll help you. You’ll just have to help me too. I don’t have much power left, with all my priests dead. We’ll need a sacrifice.”
With that, there was a clap of sound as the giantess disappeared. In her place was the same immortal, shrunken down to almost my size. She swung her bare legs at the lip of her enormous seat once, twice, before jumping down and landing lightly on the floor.
I was more cautious than ever when she skipped to where I still knelt. It was even more unnerving at close range, how human-but-not she appeared. I couldn’t see the dot of a pupil in her starry eyes or the ends of her long hair where it bled into white light. But she smiled at me, the expression of a seventeen-year-old girl with an exciting secret.
“Up, up,” she said, hauling me to my feet before pointing across the room to a pristine altar built into the wall. “You’ll find everything you need in the rooms down below. Hurry up, I’ll get started.”
Wesha clasped her hands together and began to sing the melody that commenced every day’s ritual sacrifice in her temple, lovely voice clear and eager.
My stomach tightened in apprehension, but there was nothing I could think to do but comply. It was a very familiar task. I rushed two stories down to one of her storerooms, pulling it apart to look for charcoal, oil, and wine among the heaps of treasure deposited by the recently dead. It didn’t take long—whoever had organized this place thought just like the priests who raised me.
Wesha was still singing when I returned to prepare the altar. As she watched, I laid out the components of the ritual—everything except for the sacrifice. I spread the charcoal so that it would burnlong and evenly, then set the lamps and wine where the priest would normally stand. I’d done this chore at least three mornings a week as a child. Larger sacrifices like sheep and cows would have been made at Ereban, but women would bring doves and chickens to the little temples in every city to give thanks for an easy birth or a child’s quick recovery from illness. A bolt of cloth on a baby’s first birthday. Portions of food or wine thereafter. I had never performed the actual sacrifice though—that was reserved for sworn priests.
Wesha finished a verse and beamed at me. “You’ll have to light it too. I assume Taran taught you how?”
I had flint and tinder in my pack, but every temple kept a flame kindled from Death’s altar at Ereban.
“Should I—Death’s blessing of flame?” It felt sacrilegious to pray to her dreadful husband in front of her.
“Yes, get on with it,” Wesha said impatiently.
I hesitantly sang that blessing, and the lamps and altar took flame in seconds.
Nodding in satisfaction, the goddess began to sing again. After a moment, I sang along with her, just as I had all my life. We called upon all the gods to witness. We acknowledged their power and the frailty of mortals. I hadn’t done this in three years, but it was carved into my very bones. By the end of the song, the altar was blazing in a field of white-hot coals as wide and deep as a marriage bed. Sweat trickled down my back.
I looked fearfully at the goddess, noticing, for the first time, that Wesha’s bare feet were dirty and covered in sand. She had to be able to leave the tower to walk the beach, at least. She was very different than I’d thought.
“The altar is ready,” I said in a careful voice.
This was as far as I knew how to do. Acolytes didn’t touch the sacrifices. Worse—I didn’t know what Wesha wanted sacrificed, orto whom. There were no women waiting for us with grass cages full of anxious birds.
Wait. There was one bird nearby, waiting for me to return, and my vows wouldn’t let me sacrifice her.
Oh, I was an idiot to think I could conceal anything from Wesha. Was this the price she’d ask me to pay?
The gods liked these little tests with no correct answers. I knew a lot of stories that ended that way—the mortal chose wrong, and then there was one less impertinent priestess in the world after her goddess turned her into a mushroom.
What would I do if Wesha asked me to bring her the bird goddess? I supposed I’d run for the boats, and then I would find out exactly where the bars on Wesha’s prison lay.
“Yours? Or Taran’s?” she asked, reaching for one of the stone knives on my belt and unsheathing it.
“I’ve had these for years,” I whispered. The style was exclusive to priests of Wesha—made not of metal but hand-chipped rainbow obsidian, passed down through generations of maiden-priests. They were too fragile for ordinary use, but we used them in surgery. A symbol of Wesha’s cult as much as the white dress. My legs trembled to bolt at the sight of the blade in her dainty hand.
“What did you bring that is precious to you?” Wesha asked, examining the knife.
I glanced down at the band Taran put on my finger at our betrothal, but she shook her head. “You can keep your ring. What else?”
I looked next at my kithara, and Wesha nodded.
“That will work. Throw it into the fire,” she said.
My knees went soggy with relief. The kithara was dear to me, but it was the smallest part of what I would have given for Taran. I had been willing to serve Wesha in this tower for the length of her immortal life—what were a few pieces of wood and gut to that? Iretrieved the instrument and brought it to the altar, beginning to feel the lassitude of hope after fear.
