Текст книги "Queen of rot and pain"
Автор книги: Liv Zander
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 15 страниц)
Chapter 24
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Ada
Three gods stared at me as though they’d witnessed lightning for the first time, all while a rush of energy drove the coldness from my bones. It tingled in my fingertips, the roots of my hair, beneath my toenails. What was happening?
‘Mistress.’
A jolt went through me at a woman’s whisper, her voice utterly unfamiliar. “Who said that?”
Enosh lifted a brow at me. “Who said what?”
‘Mistress, my mistress,’ came in a cacophony of different voices from all around me, as though hundreds of people whispered in unison. ‘Mistress. Let me come to you, my mistress.’
‘Mistress.’ A man.
‘Mistress.’ A girl.
‘Mistress. Mistress. Mistress.’
“Oh my god.” I swallowed a gulp of saliva that had pooled beneath my tongue and wiggled off Enosh’s arms, all while sweat pearled on my forehead. “Something’s… something’s not right—”
A billion thoughts flitted through my mind. Pictures of strange lands, the resonance of words I’d never heard before but understood nonetheless, how the sun and moon danced in a pattern through night and day… It all came to me, pouring into my head until my temples throbbed.
Worse was the pounding panic.
The one that didn’t belong to me.
At least… I didn’t think so, for it came not from within me, but right over there. From the mortal man. The rush of blood in his veins trembled the space between us, every change in his body like a language I understood.
The hot blood pumping through his arteries, that one clogged vein in his left leg that tore with hairline cracks, how the hairs at the nape of his neck lifted, growing, stretching, changing. I felt it all, and my brain tumbled inside my skull at the potential explanation for this madness.
I stared from one god to another.
They stared right back.
Eilam slowly tilted his head. “What… is… she?”
Exactly! What was I?
Alive, yes, with a heartbeat that quickened with every passing second and breasts that suddenly ached like they had in Elderfalls. A realization that brought a spark of joy to my core, but the confusion of this lingered.
In a movement too quick for me to dodge, Enosh gripped my waist, fell to his knees, and pressed his ear against my chest. There, he listened to the beat of my heart, presumably, only to stare up at me from wide eyes two beats later.
“A heart shaped to perfection, not a single out-of-tune beat.” A tremble hushed over his bottom lip before he added, “I believe she is… like us.”
Like them.
I swallowed more saliva as though I’d forgotten in death to do that regularly. And did that not explain how I sensed the strong beat of the boy’s heart, how his inhales scraped on the snot in his nostrils, and how his eyes still felt puffy from all the crying?
‘Mistress.’
I flinched.
Yes, and that.
Eilam let out a hissing snarl. “Another atrocity.”
“Do you truly believe we have created an immortal? A goddess in her own right?” Yarin eyed me up and down, a slow stroll of green eyes from tip to toe. “Presume there is only one way to find out.”
His left hand gripped my hair at the back of my head until my scalp burned. The right one suddenly held a golden, tooled knife, which glistened in the light of the hearth’s flame as it came toward my face.
“No!” Enosh shouted, reaching for the blade.
He needn’t have to.
On reflex, I shoved Yarin’s chest.
The God of Whispers flew across the room, hit the wall with a groan, then collapsed to the ground. Pieces of daub cracked from the wall, only to shatter into a puff of white dust until Yarin fanned a hand before his face and… giggled?
“I believe you are right, brother,” he said and struggled himself up, brushing the dust off his breeches, but it was a lost cause. “Oh, I commiserate with you already. Good luck putting this one in chains.”
Enosh frowned.
No doubt he might have considered it for a moment when I’d refused him my answer, but I might as well be above those things now and opened my hand.
“I need a knife.” It shaped right there in my palm, plain and a bit… crooked. “Thank you?”
“My love,” Enosh all but exhaled the words, “I did not put that there.”
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Cautious excitement pooled in my belly. Taking a steadying breath, I clasped the knife and brought it to my other hand. One cut across my palm, the blade so sharp it didn’t so much hurt as it burned. Blood percolated in the narrow wound, but not a single drop rose to the surface.
Because it closed too quickly.
Oh. My. God.
I was like them.
Terrible and cruel.
Beautiful and kind.
Perfect.
Exhilaration, fear, and confounded shock rushed through me. Until the ground shook, and a water jug stuttered off a wooden stand before it shattered on the ground with a splash. Only fear remained then, and I scurried into Enosh’s arms.
Had I done that?
Beside me, Yarin staggered over the shaking floor as if on sea-legs, laughing more heartily each time he banged his head on a beam or cupboard. “Enosh, get your hysterics under control.”
“It is not me, but her,” my husband snarled, then he wrapped me in the calming embrace of his arms. “Little one, you ought to calm your nerves before you accidentally bury us beneath a wave of bone dust.”
Everything shook harder.
I startled.
No, not me.
The boy did. With a cry.
That didn’t calm my nerves in the slightest, driving my pulse until wood moaned somewhere. “Get me away from here!”
Enosh lifted me into his arms and hurried out the door, passing an Arne charred to bones before the house, then lifted me onto the horse before he mounted behind me and clutched me to him. “Shh… calm, little one, or bone will rip the ground open and pull the world into darkness.”
“Interesting.” Yarin paced before us in the snow, right underneath some dormant maples near the village where he had shaped us daybeds. “What about the mortals’ thoughts near us? How much longer until that lazy bastard shows up with the wood? She’ll be a good girl and not tell anyone of what I’ve done with her. What if I’m the only one touching myself like this? Do you hear them?”
“God’s bones, no!” And if Yarin did, then no wonder he was the maddest of the lot of them. “Only the dead calling me mistress, but it’s never-ending.”
“Only Enosh’s powers are yours to yield, then. Good. A goddess yielding the power of all three would be disturbing indeed.”
“In time, their voices will be nothing to you but the constant patter of rain on a roof,” Enosh said where he slouched beside me with a smile on his face, one leg draped over my legs and one arm behind his head for support. “Nonetheless, this is… I am still quite stunned, truly.”
“Indeed. A woman undying for us to have for eternity.” Yarin opened his palm, letting sand form there that moved like the waves in the ocean as a tiny wooden boat drifted on the rolling motion as though it calmed him. “I have a strong inclination to go looking for a bride to kill and resurrect. So many problems solved at once. If only it did not require… Eilam.” Who had disappeared once more, leaving nothing behind but the echo of a growl. “Oh, this must vex him like nothing before. Where to now, brother? The temple?”
Enosh sighed. “I have given Eilam my word to abandon my vow for revenge and not let it take another life. In exchange, he agreed to never take her breath again.”
“A fool’s deal.”
“Quite so, but I had not anticipated my wife to turn immortal.” Enosh tossed himself up, plucked me from where I sat, and lowered himself back down with me draped over him. “None of us have. Our brother wants me… peaceful.”
Yarin let the sand drift from his hand, but it never reached the snow and simply vanished instead along with the boat. “A shame. I would have loved to witness whatever you had planned for the high priest.”
My shoulders slouched.
Why?
This was good, was it not?
I took Enosh’s hand and placed it onto my belly. Resurrected into a goddess capable of growing our child, what else was there to want? And with Enosh forced to abandon his goal for revenge…? Nothing.
Except…
I tilted my head back and looked up at him. “What of my father?”
“I shall try to find him while I ride about the lands once more.” Yet his long exhale let my head sink lower, right along with my hope of ever seeing Pa again. “Eilam also demanded that I open the Pale Court to all mortals again and ride the lands to spread rot.”
That lured a snort from me. “As if that is for him to demand. You promised me that a long time ago. And we still need that cradle!”
“Is that so?” A smug grin came to his lips, fingers clasping my chin to keep my gaze on his. “I daresay, wife, my promise came with certain… contingencies. Come to think, do you not owe me an answer?”
“I do.”
I lifted my head, letting my lips search for his. They came together in an unhurried kiss as we pressed against each other in this moment of complete peace, where the world finally left us alone. Until the ground shook once more, nothing but a tremble at first, but branches moaned louder as our kiss turned heated with need.
“That is disgusting!”
Enosh and I broke the kiss, looked over at his brother, and found the god wrinkling his nose at a near-skeletal arm that pulled itself through the snow with the tips of its fingers.
“The dead must think you at great risk, little one,” Enosh scoffed, but his hopeful stare betrayed the tension in him, the waiting for words I’d once refused. “Tell me, little goddess, what had you shake the ground just now, hmm?”
I brushed my lips over his, not in a kiss but a mingling of our breaths as I stroked my fingers through those heavy black strands of his. “And if I still won’t tell you? You can no longer make me.”
“Once again, you have not been listening, Ada, for I have never wanted to make you.”
A moment of silent understanding passed between us, nothing but quiet and invisible flutters amongst two people who had fallen in love unbidden.
I nodded, letting my thumb stroke over his bottom lip only to feel its tremble. “I love you.”
Snow fell from the branches of the maple as the tree trembled down into its roots, giving a moan that must have shaken the entire world for just one second.
“And I love you,” Enosh said. “Will love you until time ceases to exist. I shall search for your father as I ride the lands, and I will find a way to bring him home.”
How?
I’d only ever been to the high temple once as a young girl, but its high walls had left a lasting impression. It would be difficult for Enosh to gain access to the temple peacefully, and impossible to get Pa out alive.
And that was not the only problem.
“They will hunt you down, Enosh.” Call upon every house sworn to protect the faith, quickly overwhelming my husband by sheer numbers. “Trap and torture you for who knows how long until you manage to free yourself. As long as the temples stand and the priests live, you won’t be safe.”
We wouldn’t be safe.
His lips pressed into a thin line, hard and ungiving against my own as he kissed me. “There is always the God of Whispers to aid me.”
“Have you not listened, brother?” Yarin asked. “I will look for a woman to wed and kill. Oh, our love will eclipse even the sun. As such, I ought not to tempt Eilam’s wrath by aiding you, for I shall need him for my woman’s resurrection.”
“You will also need me.”
“A conundrum indeed.” Yarin sunk his face into his palm. “I would have preferred sisters. Less eager to quarrel for dominance. Prettier to look at, too, to be certain.”
Which meant Enosh would be on his own against two hundred years of hatred. “What if I ride the lands with you? I could…” do the killing, “…help you.”
“I would never allow it,” he said as though he could keep me from doing it anyway. “These lands are dangerous, and immortality offers no protection from pain. On the contrary.”
Focusing on the age-old bone scattered across the lands, I let it drift together. Then, with one sudden blast, I let it clash against the maple, felling the tree with enough skill that the trunk split, groaning until it hit the ground and shook the daybeds.
“I can protect myself now.” Just like Enosh had told me that he’d been created knowing his duty and how to yield his powers, I knew it as well. Felt it deep inside me. “That rabbit hopping through the snow earlier…? I made that.”
I made that.
That word brought a smile to my face.
“Adorable.” A kiss to my head. “But the answer is still no. The high priests have gone through much trouble to prepare for a confrontation with me. I shall secure the lands so you may enjoy them… eventually. Until I can guarantee your safety, you will remain at the Pale Court or move about safer lands, if that is what you take issue with.”
The issue was that this still hadn’t ended.
It would go on, and on, and on.
And I was tired of all this suffering.
His. Mine. Everyone’s.
So tired.
I turned onto my side so I may look into my husband’s calm gray eyes and stroked the rough whiskers along his jawline. “Do you think it’s truly growing? Our baby?”
“I have no doubt, but only time will tell,” he said and, when I sensed the corners of my mouth droop, he smiled and let his forehead drift down against mine, his next word a familiar whisper. “Patience.”
Something eternity would surely teach me at some point. “As long as people pray to Helfa, our child might as well grow several inches each time they trap you somewhere. I don’t want them to hurt you, Enosh.”
He pressed a kiss to my forehead, then another, taking his time before he said, “Never lose faith that I will return to you. Always and forever, I’ll return to my Ada, the midwife from Hemdale.”
His Ada.
My heart fluttered.
“You sacrificed yourself for me once before. I won’t allow it a second time.” Would not let this world rip us apart ever again. “Let’s ride for the high temple. Together. You will spread rot and open the Pale Court like Eilam wants in any case. And if that isn’t enough for your brother, what can he do to me now? You might have promised him to abandon your revenge, but I made no such promise.”
“Ada’s crusade,” he mused, and a smug grin tugged on the side of his mouth for just a second before he shook his head. “I presume my brother ought to have placed more care into his words, but the answer is no. I will not let you.”
“I asked neither question nor permission.”
“Headstrong, obstinate little goddess.” He made a disgruntled sound at the back of his throat and pinched the bridge of his nose as though he’d just realized that no bone chain would ever not dissolve at my command. “Ah, Adelaide, my love for you might yet make me a liar.”
“My love for you might yet make me a monster.”
“We are all monsters in someone’s story, little one,” he said, then finally gave his nod of approval, “except in our own.”
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Chapter 25
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Ada
I rode my dead horse toward the stone archway of the small temple we’d found in the forest, my beast’s hide a patchy mix between chestnut and brown, and its rump in dire need of a tail. Alas, I hadn’t inherited my husband’s creativity.
“No! Helfa, oh please!” The young priest scooted his arse over the ground, letting his threadbare black robes rip as he frantically made the sign of Helfa. “Please, I beg of you, please spare—”
With a flick of my hand, I drove a bone dagger into his belly. He gasped at first but screamed shortly after when I commanded the blade to cut upwards into his lungs. His scream lodged in time with the severing of an artery. Warm and thick, his blood speckled the back of my hand.
A hand Enosh took into his as he rode up beside me. He lowered his lips to my hand, frowned, then wiped the blood off with the sleeve of his raven jacket.
“How finely tooled your dagger was.” His lips pressed an ardent kiss to the back of my hand, then Enosh sat straight, letting our fingers intertwine. “Still, a spike through the neck is less messy.”
“Enosh, I’m a midwife.” I had worse bodily expulsions on me. “A spike through the neck is too fast, too painless. Did I ever say a word? No. You have your way, and I have mine.”
“Quite so.” Just then, he sent a volley of bone spikes into the necks of three other priests who’d tried to make a run for it, turning the temple grounds silent at once. “If memory serves, then the high temple should come into view at the end of this forest.”
For two days, we’d cantered across the lands without stopping, killing every soldier and priest on sight. Temples, we’d torn down together, sending blasts of bone dust into the structures from two sides at once.
With the rising sun flickering through the pines and the last rays of the moon disappearing behind a chain of hills ahead, we willed our mounts toward the edge of the forest. And there it was, the high temple. It had grown over the years, spanning several stone buildings clustered into nothing but a fortress.
Enosh stopped his horse and pointed at the bailey rigged with what looked like massive crossbows mounted on iron blocks. Bolts sat in the grooves, large enough to kill a bear. Several fires crackled on torches along the battlements, where archers overlooked the valley below. Walls of wooden spikes, arranged in several rows to the left and right, lined the pathway heading for the massive gate.
“To catch corpses,” Enosh said, looked behind him at our quiet army of the dead, then smacked his tongue. “It will take time to breech this and gain access to the interior of the temple.”
“They sure built this to keep a god out.” Yet one thing, they had not planned for. “But not a mere woman.”
Dutiful and obedient.
Worthless and insignificant.
Enosh frowned at the plain dress I’d bartered from an herb witch in exchange for a mortar and pestle shaped of bone. Not a single embellishment on my woolen dress gave me away as more than a woman, and certainly, not more than Enosh’s mortal wife.
In that lay my power.
The humor of it didn’t escape me.
“You have anticipated this, have you not?”
“I’ve seen the temple as a child and knew that it wouldn’t be easy for you to get in there. You’ll be shot and set ablaze before you even reach the gate.” I pressed a hand to my belly, circling a bodice reinforced with ribs of bone, the inside of the train that fanned out at the hips lined with bone chips. “Putting Pa at risk the moment you step out of this forest.”
Enosh’s hand curled tighter around mine, and his jawline hardened. He didn’t want me to go in there, but what could he do to stop me?
Nothing.
“This is the fastest, easiest way for one of us to get inside,” I said after a moment of brittle silence. “Perhaps I can negotiate my father’s release. Or at least find out where they keep him. If anything, it’ll draw their attention away from the gate. I’ll fight them from the inside, and you’ll fight from the outside.”
His heavy sigh puffed into the frigid air until he brought my hand to his mouth for another kiss. “One scream. One billow of smoke. If I sense a single mortal in there draw a weapon, I shall let death overrun this place even while they set me ablaze.”
“Sounds fair,” I said, willing my horse back into a walk. “If I leave you anything to kill, that is.”
Enosh’s hand held mine until the growing distance ripped our fingers apart. I rode toward the gate alone, a woman whose worth was determined only by the marriage she’d struck and the child she carried in her belly.
The two soldiers standing guard exchanged a look, then one of them approached with wariness in each of his slow steps. “Turn around, wretch. The high temple is closed for pilgrims until the King of Flesh and Bone has been recaptured. High Priest Dekalon’s order.”
When the other soldier tilted his head this way and that, taking too much interest in my dead horse, I dismounted and commanded it to turn and trot off. “From what I’ve heard, High Priest Dekalon asked for me. Is he here at the temple?”
“Aye, he is,” the first soldier said, my pulse quickening with excitement. “What would he want with you?”
“Bring me to him.” Of course, they chuckled at my words, the audacity of a woman making such a demand. But only until I said, “I am Adelaide, wife of the King of Flesh and Bone.”
Both choked on their amusement, stared at me wide-eyed, then lowered their short pikes. One soldier glanced behind me, likely searching the horizon for signs of Enosh before he looked up at the battlement that had fallen into commotion.
“You see anything up there?” he shouted.
A metal helmet reflected the first rays of the sun from where it poked out from the barbican to the left of the gate. “Empty and quiet. Not a sign of him.”
“I came alone.” I took a taunting step backward. “Of course, if you don’t want to admit me, I might as well turn around and—”
“Open the gate!” the first soldier shouted as he quickly rounded me, bringing the metal point of his pike close to my spine. “You’ll walk straight up that corridor without making a fuss.”
A corridor that opened up to the squeak of heavy oaken doors on damp hinges, letting out an unexpected whiff of pine, so intense it scraped my throat. White marble lined the inside all around, woven with specks of gray and polished to a shine.
I breathed in too deeply, sensing my ribcage expand until the pike’s point scraped at my dress, letting me shift forward into my first step. Dimness swallowed me whole, the corridor nothing but one poorly-lit straight line, with only a handful of golden fire basins lining it with great distance between them.
Strange.
Behind me, the door creaked shut, sending a shudder across my entire body. Only nerves. In five minutes, I had done what might have taken Enosh hours—accessing the temple so I may bring death to the heart of Helfa.
Ignoring the soldier’s spiteful remarks, I walked along the corridor, counting the furrows in the marble across the floor and even the walls. Amber in color, they reminded me of honey, yet appeared as solid and polished as the surrounding stone. Precious glass, perhaps.
I extended my mind, letting it brush along the flesh and bone of nearby mortals. At least a hundred with considerable weight strapped to their aching muscles and calluses on their hands. Soldiers.
However, I couldn’t sense Pa.
Nothing that would single him out, anyway.
Where was he?
“This way. Turn!” When the corridor parted, the soldier shoved me to the right, where it all slowly opened into some sort of round chamber. “Stand on the Sun of Helfa while you wait for the high priest, you bitch, and don’t dare make a single move.”
I positioned myself on the golden emblem set into the stone at the center of this high-vaulted chamber, right across from the wide dais with a golden chair sitting atop. The same amber-colored lines veined along the wall, pouring down to the ground where they came together at the gilded edge of the Sun of Helfa.
A glance over my shoulder confirmed that the other soldier had not followed. Unfortunate, considering how the bone beneath my dress quivered with the urge to shape into a dagger just for—
Someone was coming.
I didn’t so much hear the footsteps as I sensed the motion in the man’s knees, the strain along the muscles on the left and right of his spine as he approached.
He stepped out from behind a gilded metal screen of some sort that crowned the dais, rounded the golden chair, then stood at the edge of the first step. The way he stared down at me over his hook nose let the fire in the basin beside him reflect off his bald head, the man dressed in the white robes of the high priest.
“What a curious scenario…” He eyed me for another moment, then sunk into the red velvet of his chair. “Weeks of searching for the midwife from Hemdale called Adelaide, only for her to knock on my door? Light of hair, blue eyes…” His gaze trailed down my legs, then found mine again. “How do I know it is indeed you? Certainly, Enosh would not have allowed his wife to step before me, considering how eagerly he protected her.”
“Obedience was never my virtue,” I said. “Where is my father?”
His lips pursed, noisily sucking little gulps of air as his throat narrowed to the width of a grass halm, undoubtedly believing me now. “Why have you come?”
The vibrations of many soles pounding the ground drummed along my senses. He’d called in soldiers. Good. Would’ve been a shame if there was nothing to kill in this chamber but an old man and the soldier behind me.
I widened my stance so my dress would better hide how the bone chips shaped into small daggers beneath it. “Like I said, I came for my father.”
“And wherever might your husband be? The lords of the realm have their soldiers observe each path toward the high temple with cages full of doves in their tents. That none of them reached here with a message would mean you have truly come alone, leaving your husband and his army of corpses behind.”
It also meant that I had to make this quick and hurry to find Pa. They hadn’t spotted us in the forest, but the temple was likely sending doves out this very moment, commanding said soldiers to come here. A force we may be able to take on, but only together.
“Or it might mean that they’re already dead.” I grinned as I prepared a dagger just for him, the handle maybe or maybe not tooled with vines, but I sure tried my best. “I came to negotiate—something my husband has little interest in. Therefore, I came alone, but I will leave here with my father.”
The echoes of boots slapping the marble resonated in the corridor. Sure enough, a wave of soldiers marched into the vast chamber. I counted around sixty. Dressed in mail armor and white tabards embroidered with the Sun of Helfa, they surrounded me with their hands on the pommels of their swords.
High Priest Dekalon leaned back in his chair and let his hands steeple before his chest. “Or perhaps you won’t leave at all.”
One after another, I gingerly shifted the daggers where they levitated above the ground, aiming them upward in the direction of sixty-one necks and one stomach. “Bring me my father. Let me leave here with him unharmed, and I will convince my husband to spare your soul.”
“Would you listen to this woman?” His chuckle held more arrogance that Enosh’s ever had. “You have a great many demands.”
“My husband said the same.”
A moment of stiff silence passed between us, then his pout took on the gut-roiling sway of a smile. “I am afraid I cannot agree to this. See, dear Adelaide, your father never stepped a foot into this temple, and instead, suffocated on his own blood on his way here. It is my understanding that the priests left him by the wayside. Unfortunate.”
Suffocated on his own blood.
Left him by the wayside.
My heart shattered.
A sob built at the back of my throat, pressing painfully against my esophagus the harder I tried to contain it. An old man who’d never done anybody any wrong, and they’d just… left him without even a burial, wicked wayward mortals.
Beneath my dress, sixty-two bone daggers shook and trembled out of aim at the rage in my core, the utter disgust I held for these… monsters so sickening that—
No. I had to remain calm before the ground trembled, giving away what I was.
Except… everything remained still aside from the bone I carried on me, and that realization caused cold sweat to break out along my spine. My gaze flicked around the chamber, everything in here encased in polished marble.
Not a single speck of bone.
I took a deep breath, no matter how the sharp bite of pine irritated my airway. All the more reason to find my bearings and end this once and for all. No matter how meticulously they might have kept the bone out, I was about to make more available, anyway.
“My husband was right.” Sixty-one daggers waited patiently for my command. The last one I slowly reshaped in the grip of my closed palm. “You’re a terribly dreadful kind, full of wickedness and depravity.”
The high priest grinned. “Capture her, and chain her to—”
Bone daggers cut through the wool of my dress, whistled through the air, then embedded themselves into the throats of soldiers. A cacophony of thuds and clanks resonated the chamber as they collapsed onto the marble.
I climbed the dais, gripped the high priest by his robe, and pulled him from his chair. “I won’t ever wear a chain again, be it shaped of bone, iron, or the scrutiny of mortals.”
His lips parted and clenched shut several times before he managed another word. “Adelaide, let me—”
“You do not get to call me that, mortal, for I am the Queen of Rot and Pain.” One stab, and I drove my dagger between two ribs and into his lungs, so he may suffocate on his own blood like Pa had. “Kind enough to allow you a quick death, right before I tear down your damn temple and bury your bones beneath the rubble with the rest of you traitors.”
Ransacked by trembles, he stared down at his blood-drenched robes, then lifted his stuttering hand onto the metal ring of the fire basin beside him until his flesh sizzled. “May H-Helfa save… save y-your soul.”
He pulled on the metal.
The basin tipped.
Clank.
Coals rolled from it and skipped down the dais. They scattered across the chamber, over the amber glass—
Whoosh!
A massive flame shot toward the ceiling, so potent I let go of High Priest Dekalon. He rolled down the dais, his body coming to a stop near the emblem as fire broke out all around him. It followed the amber lines, spread out in all directions from there, climbed the walls—
No, no, no…
I stumbled back as panic gripped my heart and squeezed the battering organ. That wasn’t glass; it was pine pitch, dried into the furrows of the marble to set the entire temple aflame.
And me with it.
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