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You don’t have to do anything else, Ivy, Julita says, although she can’t possibly know the full reasons for my hesitation.No one would blame you.
I exhale in a rush. “I would.”
Girding myself, I raise my chin and march up the steps into the temple.
Some part of me expects a lightning bolt to careen out of the sky and strike me dead before I cross the threshold. But of course that’s not how the riven usually die.
The gods rely on mortals to carry out the actual executions. Out there where I was just standing, with a rope coiled tight around a neck.
I swallow thickly and propel myself across the polished marble floor. The thrum of divine power deepens, crawling through my veins.
I pass magically lit sconces and carved scenes of the godlen emerging from the sea, sky, and earth. Then I step from the entry hall into the vast worship room.
The rasp of my boots echoes off the ceiling arcing above my head, as high as the dome over the college’s ballroom. Lingering rays of sunlight streak in through divine scenes captured in stained glass across its surface.
The multicolored glow beams down over the nine sculptures arranged in their alcoves around the room, each decorated with symbols of their strengths, both artful and real.
Elox, the peaceful healer, bows his head of wispy curls over a sleeping lamb cast in marble. Someone has laid a spread of cut willow branches and lavender around his stone feet.
Sabrelle, the domineering warrior, stares fiercely from beneath her helm as she brandishes a spear. A carved hunting hound stands by her side amid a scattering of dried bloodfruit, a favored snack of soldiers.
My gaze snags on Kosmel next. The godlen of chance and trickery peers across the room with a sly smile curving his thin lips, a crow perched on one shoulder and a rat nestled against his opposite forearm. Dice lie around his booted feet.
I’ve heard that people weighing the risks of a particular decision will roll one under his watch and take guidance from the numbers turning up odd or even.
I have the urge to walk up to him and study him more closely, as if I’ll find answers in a devout’s stone rendition. With an itch of discomfort, the memory rises up of the unsettling voice that came to me while I lay dying.
If any of the godlen would not just look the other way but outright encourage my monstrous magic, it’d be the guider of gamblers and protector of rascals, wouldn’t it?
Or maybe that voice had nothing to do with the gods. Maybe I did imagine it, and I aimed the backlash of my magic at Esmae myself.
Maybe it was the gift of some mortal figure I hadn’t realized was watching over me.
I’m not sure any of those options are exactlygood.
I yank my eyes away and hurry to the thick column in the center of the room. It contains a spiral staircase that winds all the way up into the central spire, the tower of the All-Giver.
At least I don’t have to worry about the Great God glaring down on me, since the One who is all things was offended enough by the first batch of scourge sorcerers to abandon our continent centuries ago in the midst of the Great Retribution.
Having now experienced the venom of scourge sorcery firsthand, I kind of understand.
I climb the stairs as quickly as my legs will go. With every step, the taint of magic in the air thickens.
It’s not only the temple’s, but an energy that’s more erratic and searing as well, radiating down from above.
To my frustration, my own power stirs in my chest in answer. It starts to niggle at my innards with its familiar demands.
I could launch myself right to the top of the tower in an instant. I could crush whoever’s working their brutal sorcery up there without even seeing them.
I set my jaw and march on up. Ineedto see.
I need to know what’s actually happening before I can be sure of stopping it properly.
And I won’t lower myself to the same stinking depths Wendos and his allies have, not caring what or who they sacrifice to get what they want.
When I reach the first windows showing the increasingly dim light of the impending evening outside, I know I’ve emerged beyond the level of the temple’s main roof. I push my burning calves onward, breathing in a slow, steady rhythm.
There are platforms at periodic intervals now. The flat spans of stone floor hold markings of ash, wax, and other fragments that suggest the clerics conduct occasional rituals up here.
