She had Summoned a god.
Her fingers moved quickly across the tile, drawingzuvraionce more. The magic unspooling from her stoppered. Pain fled like a ghost. Exultation brought her to her feet right as the goddess entered the mortal plane.
By all that’s holy.She fell back on her knees. Like all Naaduir, Faragathe had been human before her elevation to the minor pantheon for her service to Lord Time of the all-powerful Elsar. It no longer showed.
Starlight wove through black hair that trailed long past the goddess’s ankles to float midair. Midnight-blue ribbons of sky slid over her twenty-foot body like an ever-shifting gown. Four eyes, sans iris and pupil, blinked on each bare shoulder and across her clavicles. Two more apiece slitted open on both high cheekbones, and the human two stared down at her. Eighteen eyes, holding an esophageal darkness.
One dark, blue-green foot touched the ground. Faragathe tilted her head, curved horns gleaming bone white. “You call me to cursed land.” For a melodious voice, it cut like a blade.
So, this is power.“I had little choice,” she said bitterly. “I’m not so powerful a magus to Summon you otherwise. But those damned Elsarian priests were right after all. A Summoning does leave a mark of incursion on the mortal plane.”
“So, you pulled me through.” Faragathe’s eyes narrowed as she took in the courtyard. “Great evil was done here. A god Summoned. Brutalized.”
“I don’t seek to do the same to you! I swear—” She screamed when the goddess hoisted her with a flick of her finger, inches from her unearthly blue-green face.
Faragathe waved a taloned hand, spinning her dangling body in a slow circle. “A mortal’s oath means as little as their life.” She grinned, baring sharp teeth. “You couldn’t hurt me if you tried. Now, what do youwant?”
For the first time, she wondered if she had made a mistake.What if she doesn’t care?The goddess’s many eyes were utterly blank. She had never seen anything so devoid of humanity.
“I ceased being human millennia ago,” Faragathe sniffed daintily, reading her thoughts. “Why? Do you seek to offer your body as a vessel? Keep it. I take no pleasure in walking this plane.”
“Because of what they did to you.” She trembled when the goddess stilled but kept speaking. “Faragathe, Devotee of Time.” She took a deep breath. “The Heretic Priestess.”
The goddess’s eyes flashed. “Youdare—”
“I’ve risked everything to come here tonight for this, foryou!” she screamed. “I spent years of my worthless, mortal life digging through ancient texts for how to Summonyou. The woman whose prophecies everyone ignored because Time granted them through dreams instead of the out-of-context flashes of the future accepted as canon by the Elsarian Order. The priestess who was mutilated and burned alive for saying what the Order didn’t like hearing. One of history’s most brilliant minds, ultimately proven right andstillall but written out of the Codices and every other religious text.”
Faragathe’s smile was tight. “A choice that the Order has since learned to regret. Fear is bred in the unconscious, in the nameless things that walk between death, sleep, and waking. Unlike some of the other Naaduir and even a few Elsar, my power doesn’t depend on human belief. Everyone inevitably comes to me.”
“I know. That’s why I wanted to offer you—” She jerked when the goddess planted her on her palm and leaned in. The words died in her throat.
She had been wrong. It wasn’t just starlight glistening in Faragathe’s hair but bone and tar. The eyes on her shoulders were voids into worlds with terrors beyond comprehension. Darkness crowded the courtyard, extinguishing the braziers, and within it seemed to be a universe with the goddess as its epicenter, amid others of horrific, larger—all those eyes—
She realized she was screaming when Faragathe laughed.
“Well, mortal? What can you possibly offerme?”
Mind. Where was her mind?
“Recognition,” she gurgled, a portion of her mind irrevocably altered. Her gaze shied from the goddess. “There was a time after your death when people heeded you. Now, they’re viewed as mad. Remind them of you once more. Shroud this land and bind it to you. Make the priests of the Elsarian Order return your name to the Codices. We have a capital, Edessa. A cesspit of the pretentiously religious, corrupt, and greedy. Destroy them, and history will never forget you again.”
“How quaint. So, this is about vengeance.”
“You see my mind.” She knelt on the goddess’s palm. “It’s about more than just that.”
Eighteen black, empty orbs swiveled toward her and watched. Faragathe’s brow pinched. “Yes,” she murmured. “A great deal more.”
A blur of wind and limestone and she found herself deposited on the ground.
“The Naaduir don’t grant wishes, mortal.” Faragathe sounded contemplative. “We accept what appeals to us and reject the rest.”
Her heart sank. “Please, at least—”
“We never made the same promises to humans that the Elsar did. We reached this state of minor godhood because we served them and not you. You have Summoned me, and your request was heard. There is no debt.”
A tear ran down her nose to drop on her bloodied palms. “I understand.”
Blue-green filled her vision. A finger the size of her arm tipped her chin.
