What appeared only a rocky rise from afar is an awe-inspiring place from a closer view. A nearly circular isle of white stone is ringed by colossal statues at least five times my own height. I immediately recognize them as images of the gods—ten statues, one for each of them. And from the open mouth of each statue pours a fountain of water that runs down the stone, leaving a residue of iron and lichen before trickling to the ground where it washes into the sea.
It is not exactly a room or a hall. These statues would provide no cover at all from the elements, but they serve like a perimeter around a great room and in the center of this room is laid a table.
The table is large enough for an army to feast and laid upon it is a banquet fit for a magnificent harvest year. A whole tuna lies carved on one end, its carmine flesh sliced delicately and a half lemon placed over one eye, and at the other end of the table sits an entire roast pig on a silver platter, though its eyes are replaced with cherries rather than lemons.
I’d be salivating except for what lies in the center.
It’s not a fish.
It’s not a roast beast.
It’s a dead woman.
Gods, but I hope she’s dead. My heart speeds as I catch sight of her, and I swallow hard, looking in every direction before creeping forward to examine her.
She’s sprawled out across the table, her long silver-pale curls tangling between bunches of grapes and sweating pitchers of melon juice. Someone has laid a shell over each of her eyes, but no one bothered to lay anything over the jagged slash across her throat. From its gory center a dozen golden flowers—not yellow, but actual burnished gold—spring up, multiplying even as I watch them. They smell of honey and frankincense and they are the only thing that moves. Her chest is still, the breath plucked away already.
In one hand, wrapped around her fingers, are chains ofcabochon rubies, fat as hen eggs and cranberry red, just like the blood that drips from her throat and trickles down the side of the table.
She is terribly beautiful. So beautiful that I feel almost as if she can’t be real, but her pale skin—bluish in the extremities—tells a different story, and her beautifully stitched chiton is torn nearly to her hip and stained pink with watered blood.
Fighting sharp stings of fear, I hurry back to the nearest statue and duck behind it, crouching low to hide myself behind his great stone foot. This table must be laid for the gods, and this poor lady laid out with it. I dare not let them see me when they come. All thought of bluffing my way into their company evaporates with the very real dead woman on their table. That could be me… will be me… unless I can find another way, and the only way to do that will be to watch and wait for the right moment.
I shrink farther against the back side of the statue’s foot. How ironic that I should hide behind the image of he who I aim to destroy, but here I am, taking refuge in the shadow of Okeanos as I wait for the gods to arrive.
Chapter Fifteen
Though I watch all around me, the arrival of the first god still takes me by surprise. There’s a faint sound similar to someone opening a wine bottle and at the base of the statue of Aurelius, God of the Air, a man appears.
My fingers wrap tensely around the base of Okeanos’s statue, but I am very still, barely even breathing.
The statue of Aurelius is easy to recognize. He’s always depicted as a young man in a very short chiton, a crown of olive leaves on his head and three arrows in one hand. It’s only when the man appears that I realize I’ve seen the real Aurelius in the flesh before.
This man carries no arrows and the crown he wears is gold and glittering; his chiton is the color of wine and his chlamys worked with silver and gold thread in an olive leaf pattern, but it is the same man I met on the docks of Oke’sisland. The very same one who suggested I cut off my own finger and throw it in the sea. I can see now why Oke was so nervous about him.
My eyes keep passing over his face as if they are too afraid to latch on to his terrible beauty and hold there. I must force them to stay on him and force my shoulders straight. This is not my god. Nor is he the one I want dead. All I need from the God of the Air is to escape his notice.
Aurelius strides into the room from the base of the statue where he has materialized. He moves like a wounded lion, stalking with a slight hitch in his step, his lithe muscles flowing as he looks around him quickly and then hurries to the table. One hand rises and lingers just over the body of the dead woman and then he draws it back, swallowing visibly.
His eyes narrow as he looks around the room a second time, and my heart picks up speed. Will he see me hiding here?
To my relief, there’s a second pop and beneath the rough-hewn statue of Markanos, God of War, emerges a man dressed in continental armor—a muscle cuirass and flowing cape, crested galea and embossed greaves. A large ruby dangles from one ear. He’s older than we are, maybe twice the age of Aurelius—though if they are both gods, then they are ageless—with the barrel-chested look of a fit older man who has maintained his looks. His face is hewn from rock, his features almost ugly, yet they possess the grandeur of rough-cut mountain peaks. It’s a beauty hard to define, and impossible to reproduce.
He’s flanked by a pair of mortal men bearing swords. They’re both blindfolded, though they move at his back in perfect synchronization. Rethgar and Rothgar—the blind guardians of War. I am witnessing legends come to life.
A stab of fear shoots through me. If they find me spying, what pain may be visited on me by an angry war god? Surely they will not spare me.
My knees wobble as Markanos’s eyes flicker over my hiding place, but just like Aurelius he strides to the table, his eyes narrowing as they take in the dead woman.
“El’Dorian?” His words come out in a growl, but his face is troubled rather than furious.
One of my hands flies up to cover my mouth before I can stop it.
The dead woman is the Goddess of Love and Virginity. I steal a quick glance at her statue—the only one without water pouring from its open mouth. Its joyful expression looks nothing like the dead woman, and its hands are full of blooming flowers, where she has flowers growing in her death wound.
Three gods. Only seven more, a hysterical voice in my head says, and the child’s song begins to sing in my mind as Markanos’s hand drifts to the hilt of his sword.
Take your breath for Aurelius,
