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At the base of the staircase, Kanat pauses to glance over his shoulder. Squints as if he senses my presence. A smile curls my mouth because he would never dare ask, nor confront me.
Above all, Kanat is a cockroach. He’s clawed his way from a common Feyal birthright. No noble lord birthed him. His half-bred status?a byproduct of an Ithydeir mother and a human father?caused upheaval among the elite elders when they had no choice but to induct him after he’d passed the annual Elder Rites. An enigma time has not revealed other than one explanation: Kanat was a prodigy. He’s labored more than any elder to excel, challenged himself with the most powerful of the nation’s bones?save for the ones Aydon and I carry.
It is no surprise to learn of this secret shrine in the deep pits beneath the Citadel. A shrine and an unmarked tomb where skeletons slumber in the body-sized gaps in the walls. No coffins. No crypts. These are not honored dead. Our Ithydeir race would never leave corpses unburied unless...
While Kanat fetches a skeleton and prepares his altar in the center of the chamber, I drift to the far side of the room where the other remains are housed. As if sensing my chill, the elder shoots his head, long braid swinging to the left. When his eyes flick in my direction, I hold my breath, strengthening my power. Annoyed, I stiffen my jaw. Eager for the challenge, part of me yearns for him to confirm my presence with bone powder. One simple chant. But I’d rather learn his plans for Isla’s blood.
Elder Kanat returns to his preparation while I examine the skeletons. Tensing, I seethe, understanding why they are unmarked, but I do not break my shadow shield. Refter bones. He’s not communicating with the spirits of the ancestors. He’s using black Nether-magic to communicate with the gods!
Glaring and strengthening my shadow force, I face the altar when Kanat wipes Isla’s blood upon a skull. Fire ignites the candle wicks protruding from the skull eyes and mouth. Black magic and enduring truth. One spark, and the altar will flame from the oil baptizing it. On the edge of the altar is a pouch Kanat fetches. I lift a brow, curious until he sheds his robe, his outer tunic, his underclothes until he is naked as a mole rat. Fitting. However, I didn’t expect his limbs and torso to be lean. Not with all the consorts he feeds upon which should fatten him.
He tips the bone pouch into his hand, then smears his skin with the powder. Protection from the fire. Kanat retrieves something from his carmine robe and scatters it upon the skeleton: a few strands of silver and flame hair. No doubt confiscated when he’d invaded her chambers.
I’ll kill the knave with my bare bony hand!
Kneeling before the altar, Kanat crosses his arms over his chest, closes his eyes, and opens his mouth to recite:
“Gods supreme beyond the world of Nether
Heed my prayers and offering unstained
Grant to me your power of aether
And the secrets of the isle-bride explained...”
He sets the altar on fire. It ignites into a towering inferno, harnessed by god power. At once, their spirits gush into the chamber, surrounding it. Their collective power shakes the cavern walls and upsets the skeletons. Bones crash and topple to the floor, but they hardly matter compared to the gods’ presence. My stomach churns. For while I may be able to hide from Kanat, I cannot hide from the gods.
Until another invades my being and eclipses me in his supremacy, which transcends all the lower gods. Yes, lower. The Highest angyl Goddess and the demon God are not present. Aryahn Kryach and one other are High Gods.
As much as it pains me, I bite any smart remarks, remind myself I’m here for my bride, and muster a wincing,Thank you.
Kryach sniggers in my mind.It’s been fifty years since you last spoke those words to me, Allysteir. Rest assured, you won’t wait long before you speak them again.
I don’t respond. Not when Kanat arches his neck, braid spilling like corded ink along his spine. Reverent, with tears in his eyes and arms crossed over his chest, he gazes at the spirits of the lower gods and opens his mouth to beseech them, “Infinite spirits and prime forces, is she the one?”
My breath surges from my nostrils. The Mallyach-Ender.
Bathed in the omnipotent flames of the still-burning inferno, Morrygna, the Goddess of Doom,?responsible for sending her large-breasted Ban-Sythe ghosts to haunt laundry-washing mothers with their mournful dirges?drifts toward the elder. Other than Aryahn Kryach, the Feyal-Ithydeir and humans bring their gifts to her shrine most. Bless her with offerings of bird bones, owl eyes, raven wings, seeds, and cups of breast milk.
I roll my eyes at Kryach’s internal lewdness, considering his annual mating with her upon the Night of Masks in the dead of winter. Her floor-length hair of fateful crow wings rivulets in mid-air as she hovers over the elder in nothing but a dark and tattered robe open to her luxurious dark flesh marked with runes?silver and luminescent as the moon.
“Kanat, son of Caoymhe,” Morrygna cites his Feyal-mother’s name, her eyes of burning starlight causing the elder to shrink. “You bring us the blood of ruin. Of doom.”
When the goddess casts her dark and silver smoke of the contrasting faces of the moon into an unbreakable circle, my gut clenches. My throat turns dry as winter bones from the mirror she creates. It casts a vision of my bride. Naked and bound with ropes woven over her breasts and lower regions with her back on a cold, stone altar. Her hair splays all around her head like a halo of hellfire and Isle-light. Thunder pounds in my ears from the blood between her thighs staining the altar in a sacrifice.
Morrygna shifts the smoke in the mirror to the image of Kanat standing above my bride with a scyan in hand.
Steady, Allysteir,Kryach coos in my mind when I’m on the verge of snarling. Of roaring when Kanat leans in to kiss my bride while scrawling her sex blood over her flesh in black magic symbols as she trembles, as tears glisten upon her cheeks. Not once does she whimper, nor beg. Rage clouds my vision when he brings the scyan to slit her throat and spill her blood like she’s nothing more than a ripe lamb.
The vision disappears.
The lower gods nod in assent as Morrygna permeates the room with her smoke and addresses Kanat, “If you wish to spare your world the downfall to come from our wrath and take your place amongst our Isles, then you will perform everything as you have seen. On the Nyche na Maysc, you must sacrifice the Nether-marked one to the lower gods when her mortal blood flows. You will then be worthy of a celestial seat.”
The Night of Masks. Less than a year away.
What did she mean by Nether-marked one?
Aryahn Kryach says nothing. Does nothing. He observes his lover Goddess of Doom plot to rob him of my bride. Of his bride soul according to the Curse.Why Isla?
