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For a long moment she lay there, too weary to get up—but the mess of blood and flesh made her stomach lurch. She rolled off him, barely feeling the small cuts from his outspread wings, too worn out even to vomit over the mess. When she was able to sit up, she found that the stone he’d taken to wearing was stuck to her bloody chest, with the remains of the cord on which it had hung. Claw must’ve cut the string, she thought vaguely. Groping, she seized cord and stone and hurled them away from her.
They struck a tree; the stone shattered. Beneath her, the ground lurched, rolled, then sank. Before her appeared an arch and pool of oozing, dripping muck, their shifting colors making her dizzy. In the spot where pond and arch met, a hunched figure straightened. The face changed without letup, no part of it ever still, from unmatched eyes to the overall shape.
Horrible as she looked in Daine’s dreams, the physical reality of Uusoae was much, much worse. The girl’s hands and feet scrabbled in the dirt as she tried to get away from the Queen of Chaos, but her muscles were as soft as butter. Trembling, Daine covered her eyes. It didn’t help. The Chaos queen was in her mind. Her constant shifts of body and face pulled at Daine’s belly and ears and heart.
“You dared to interfere,” the creature muttered, her breath scented richly with flowers and long-dead meat. “For my creature, and my plan —” Hard, sharp, gluey, oozing, pulpy, twining hands seized Daine’s wrists.
The girl shrieked at the horror of that touch. Her scream went on, and on —
And ended, as if cut off by shears. They were nowhere, in a flat, dead space where there was no sound, no light, and no up or down. Mercifully, Daine could no longer feel Uusoae’s touch. She only wished that she could no longer see the goddess, but her vision was crystal clear, even without light.
“It is as we said, Father Universe, Mother Flame,” boomed a deep voice. Mithros Sun Lord stood nearby. A huge black man with short-cropped hair, he wore gold armor over a kilted white tunic. In one hand he bore a gold spear with a blade that shone white-hot. “In defiance of the ban you laid upon her, she entered the mortal realms and made an alliance with one who influenced mortal lives. She did it to gain the upper hand against us, her brothers and sisters. Are your bans to be set aside lightly by her, or by any of us?”
Uusoae released Daine, and stepped away. The girl huddled in the space where she sat, teeth chattering, her many wounds bleeding and stinging.
Below, light blazed, all the colors of fire, stars, and the moon. “Uusoae, I am disappointed.” The voice was somehow female and somehow the essence of light and heat. Daine heard it in her bones. “So soon after the last time, as well.”
Overhead, the blackness moved. “It is her nature to strive, to overset, to imagine all as being different.” This voice was male, a distillation of darkness and emptiness. “Still, to follow one’s nature is no excuse to openly defy one’s parents. Return to the confines of your own realm, Uusoae. There you will be confined in a cage of dead matter and starfire until your mother and I feel better about you.”
“How long will that be?” demanded the ruler of Chaos.
A weight settled over Daine’s shoulders; folds of black cloth wrapped around her. She looked up into Gainel’s shadowy eyes. He smiled and gave her shoulder a gentle pat.
“Until the next star is born, my daughter,” Mother Flame told Uusoae firmly. “Rule your subjects from your cage, and think on the consequences of your behavior.”
As one, the great powers—parents of gods and Chaos—spoke: “It is done.”
Uusoae vanished. So, too, did that infinite blackness, and the ultimate light. Daine knelt on pale marble in the center of a vast courtyard rimmed with graceful columns and dotted with fountains. Half of the sky overhead was dark and blazed with stars; the other half showed daylight, with a sun just past noon.
Mithros sank into a backless golden chair with a sigh, and gave his spear to a young, brown-skinned boy in a blue tunic. Beside the Sun Lord a black cat slumbered in a silver chair. The Great Goddess tried to shoo it away, but the cat refused to take the hint. At last the goddess moved the animal. Set on the marble court, the cat sniffed audibly and trotted over to Daine.
She held out a hand for it to smell. It did so, examined her with bright purple eyes, then sat in front of her and began to wash. All around them, gods settled into chairs, or onto fountain rims and benches.
Silver bloomed on either side of the cat: The badger and Broad Foot appeared. The duckmole still looked thin and worn, but there was amusement in his small eyes as he nodded to her.
“I think you’ll be glad to know the Sorrows have returned to their kennels, all three of them,” he informed her. “The mortal realms are rid of them, for now.”
Gold-streak unwrapped itself from around the badger’s neck and rolled over to Daine. “Miss you,” it said, and trickled up her thighs to nestle in her lap.
Her eyes stung. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Leaf and Jelly are dead,” she told her first darking, the spy that Ozorne had set on her. “They were so brave.”
“I know,” Gold-streak replied. “They had freedom. They had choosing. They chose you. All darkings know. We never forget.”
Sniffing, she wiped her eyes with a finger, and the Dream King’s coat began to slide. Gainel, still behind Daine, resettled the garment around her shoulders. There was much less pain from that change than she had felt when he originally put the garment on her. Peeking under the coat’s lapel, the girl saw that her injuries were mending themselves.
—You will have scars,— Gainel said, —but those are signs of battles fought bravely.—
“I don’t hardly feel brave,” she whispered. “I feel sad, and I feel tired.”
“Brother, there are things to deal with.” Looking at the speaker, Daine gulped and thrust herself backward, colliding with Gainel’s
legs. It was a serpent far larger than the one that had killed Rikash: Kidunka, the world snake, the first child born of Universe and Flame. “Her, for one.” The serpent pointed its large, blunt nose at Daine.
Eyes—gods’ eyes—turned to her. Daine wished very, very strongly that she could just sink into the marble floor.
“Leave be!” Sarra came from somewhere in the crowd to kneel and wrap her arms around her daughter. “You’re frightening her!”
“What is there to deal with?” Weiryn demanded, joining his mate and child.
“She must choose,” said the Great Mother Goddess, fixing emerald eyes on Daine.
“Choose what?” asked the girl. “I don’t understand.”
Mithros met her eyes with his. Daine quivered, but refused to look away. He was a god, the greatest of those who ruled two-leggers, but he was no Chaos queen. Her supply of awed terror was used up for today.
At last Mithros shook his head. “You are god-born, Veralidaine Sarrasri. Wherever the Godborn go, whatever they do, trouble—disorder —”
—Change,— interrupted Gainel.
Mithros glared at his brother, and went on. “All those things follow. We cannot have that, particularly not on the scale on which you seem to create it. We must then limit the area of your influence.
“Either you now return to the mortal realms to live out your life, or you stay here, a lesser goddess. Once you decide, you will never be able to change your mind. You will never again cross between the realms.”
Choose? she thought, numb. Choose between Ma, who never should have died, and Numair? Her father, whom she barely knew, or Queen Thayet, King Jonathan, Onua?
But I could be a goddess. I could do magic like Ma does. I could visit Broad Foot’s home. And Kit—seeing her won’t be a trouble, since she can go where she likes.
What of Cloud, and Zek the marmoset, and Spots and Onua’s Tahoi? Was she going to leave the Long Lake wolf pack behind? Confused, Daine buried her head in Sarra’s shoulder. What of Alanna the Lioness, and Maura of Dunlath? Could she spend their lives watching them from the Divine Realms, without ever being with them?
