As her vision cleared, the gray became a stormy sky above her and the green a cluster of bushes and small trees, their leaves bedecked in jewels of rain droplets. She lay in the mud, saturated to the skin, with a lone snail sheltering under a leaf to keep her company. More shivers racked her, and she sneezed. The exhalation made her cry out, and tears of pain joined the rain sliding down her cheeks.
Her memories were hardly more than blurry images and remnants of emotion—mostly fear. Two, though, emerged clear as the water droplets decorating the surrounding foliage: Azarion kneeling at the edge of the battlefield, his face red and blistered; and the goddess he worshipped, vast and powerful, her quicksilver visage both terrifying and glorious to behold.
“Agna,” she whispered, and the thunder answered with a distant rumble.
She held up a trembling hand, surprised to see that, except for streaks of mud and a few broken fingernails, it was unchanged. Agna had been merciful to her handmaiden. Gilene had been sure when she walked into the arena alone, she would die. When she became the goddess’s avatar, that certainty hadn’t wavered. She was, after all, a frail human holding the power of a deity inside her for a brief time. That her body didn’t burst and her bones didn’t shatter from acting as Agna’s vessel was nothing short of extraordinary.
She still felt as if she’d been trampled by a team of oxen and then run over by the wagon they pulled, but she was alive. Not for long if she stayed here, wet, cold, and hiding under a clump of bushes.
Standing was a grueling affair, accomplished with a slow ascension from her side to all fours, then to her knees, and finally to her feet, where she yawed from side to side like the ships that docked at Manoret. She embraced the trunk of a young tree next to her with the zeal of a lover and took in her surroundings.
Nothing looked familiar, but with the cobwebs clouding her mind and a veil of rain covering the landscape, she could easily be standing in her brother’s garden and not recognize it. How she had even gotten here was a mystery.
She wiped more rainwater from her eyes. A muddy road stretched not far from where she stood, leading toward a cluster of buildings in the distance, their rooftops almost indiscernible in the steady deluge. A town or village. Shelter.
She glanced down at herself. The frock she wore was tattered and stained, with burn holes dotting the skirt and sleeves. Mud caked her entire back and right side, and somehow she’d lost oneshoe. Agna might have carried her handmaiden from the ruin of Kraelag, but she hadn’t exactly dropped her into the lap of luxury.
Gilene plucked at her soiled skirt and took a cautious step away from the tree, then another, until she tottered onto the road.
She made it a dozen steps before she fell. Weak, disoriented, and sick to her stomach, she didn’t move. Hours might have passed as she lay there and let the rain wash over her. She slept, only opening her eyes at the sound of a donkey’s bray and the rolling of wagon wheels.
A face, solemn and pretty, hovered over her. “My gods, Gilene?”
Gilene blinked. She knew this face. The free trader’s niece. Halani of the soothing hands and magical potions that stopped pain. She smiled, drifting away on welcome warmth as Halani lifted her head out of the mud.
“Uncle, come quick! Help me!”
She woke briefly when someone held a cup to her lips. “Drink,” they said, spilling a trickle of cold water into her mouth. She winced as she swallowed, certain glass splinters lined her throat. She fell back against a pillow, exhausted by that small effort, and fell asleep.
Images plagued her dreams. A bear trapped in a cage, Kraelag swallowed up in an inferno of god-fire, Azarion’s desolate gaze as she bade him farewell. These and more flashed through her mind’s eye, wraiths no more substantial than the ghosts of Midrigar, and just as miserable.
The next time she wakened, the sky above her was domed, painted, and familiar. She’d been here before, in similar circumstances.
“How do you feel, Gilene?”
Gilene sought the source of the voice and discovered Halani sitting cross-legged next to her feet. “Halani?” The word came out as a croak, but the other girl smiled, pleased.
“You remember me. That’s good.” She tucked away the ball of yarn she’d been winding and stood. “Don’t say anything else. You’ve been down with fever and a cough for almost a week. I’ve a warm pot of tea waiting for just this moment. I’ll be right back.”
Good as her word, she returned with a cup filled nearly to the brim with tea flavored with herbs and honey. She helped Gilene sit up and propped the pillows behind her so she could drink. “Do you need help holding the cup?”
Gilene shook her head, determined to hold her trembling hands steady and manage the cup herself. Why fate had determined that this particular woman would end up being her nurse, not once but twice, she couldn’t fathom. “I’m sorry you’re playing nursemaid again. I promise I didn’t plan it that way.” She sipped the tea, closing her eyes in delight at the flavor.
Halani laughed. “I physic everyone in this caravan, Gilene. One more makes no difference.” She brushed a hand across Gilene’s arm. “Besides, I’m so pleased to see you again, even if it was under such strange circumstances.”
That was putting it lightly. Gilene sipped more of her tea before speaking. “Where did you find me?”
“On the trade road outside Wellspring Holt. What happened to you?”
That was an answer requiring more energy and discretion than Gilene currently possessed. She handed the cup back to Halani. “I will tell you,” she said as she slumped back under the blankets. Her eyelids felt weighted with stones, and the trader woman faded in her vision. “I promise.”
It was a promise easier made than kept, and the story she told was as much fabrication as truth. “I ended up a Flower of Spring, taken by the slavers and separated from Valdan. I don’t knowwhere he is now, or if he’s dead or alive.” Tears welled in her eyes, honest ones that made that particular lie sincere.
Halani’s mother, Asil, patted her shoulder in sympathy. “But you got out of the city before it burned! Did you see it burn?”
“Wait, Mama,” Halani said. “In good time.”
Gilene smiled. The childlike Asil remained as sweet-natured and enthusiastic as ever. “Another tithed woman knew of a way out of the catacombs. We managed to overpower our guard and escape.” Applause greeted Gilene’s statement. “I still have no idea how I ended up outside Wellspring Holt.” That was partly true. Her memories after she told Azarion goodbye were a blank wall.
