PROLOGUE
“Blessing from the Goddess?” The little girl’s voice wobbles with apprehension. She is eight or nine years of age with coppery hair pulled into a topknot, mimicking the style of the women of the Sisterhood. Perhaps she is an aspirant. She bends her body at an awkward angle, in a sort of half curtsey, her little limbs stuttering either from holding the position or from nervousness.
I touch my thumb to her hairline and trace it across her forehead. Blessing bestowed.
There are others, so many others, waiting for their chances. The temple seethes with them—a swarm of busy insects climbing over themselves, reaching for me, yearning, hoping. Precisely what they believe a brush of my skin against their skin will accomplish, I do not know.
No, that is not true. I understand who they believe me to be. And though it pains me, I answer to the name they have given me, the Goddess Awoken, just as I did the previous moniker of the Queen Who Sleeps. I sleep no more; instead I walk among them offering their faith a rare embodiment.
Beside me stands the new queen of my people. Jasminda’s calm and placid exterior masks the swirling doubt that has yet to abate. I do not know the cause, but her constant uncertainty is a pinprick needling my side. She asked to accompany me today, to better understand the people whom she is to rule.
I abdicated the throne I never wanted in the first place nearly as soon as I was free. She and Jaqros will share it now. It is better this way.
Have you seen enough, Jasminda? I call to her using my Song.
She looks up sharply, tearing her attention away from the retreating figure of the little worshipper.
You do this every day? Her inner voice is incredulous, though the only external indication is a slight widening of her eyes.
The people come every day. So I do, as well.
It must be exhausting. She scans the vast temple interior. White marble stretches out around us. Every inch is filled with people—my followers. There is no seating; the crowd stands facing the raised dais where we loom above them, surrounded by blue-robed members of the Sisterhood.
Before I awoke and left my prison in the World Between to return to my body here in the Living World, the worshippers would drag their blankets and mattresses to one of many temples erected around the country and sleep, hoping to have their dreams graced by me. The Sisterhood would preach words attributed to me, words I never said, and tell tales of deeds I never did. But their belief gave them hope and peace and joy. I watched over them, spoke to those I could in dreams, guided them when possible, and withstood the aching loneliness and solitude.
And the followers did not question what they were told. Centuries passed, and my life, my own existence, faded into myth and, even worse, ideology.
It does not tire me, I tell Jasminda. We all do what we must.
These people, the descendants of those I knew and loved, are all that are left for me. If I did not become the goddess they expected, what else would I do in this new world? Who else would I be?
I am no longer a girl called Oola who ran across this land when it was little more than wilderness. I am no longer the woman whose people made her queen so she could stop a war she was responsible for starting when I gave my twin brother, Eero, a taste of my power and it drove him mad. Turned him into a despot—the True Father. Caused him to rend our land in two, separate our people, and reign with terror for five centuries. But there is no one left who remembers who I was.
It is almost as if I have been erased.
The woman I was before is no more. These people only see the goddess they have made me. Perhaps some hint of the truth remains in Eero’s mind, somewhere inside the madness. He corrodes in the palace dungeon, not speaking, not eating, while the people he tormented burn him in effigy and curse his name.
Meanwhile, I repent and mold myself into an idol, a version of myself that bears little resemblance to reality.
The crowd teems and pulses, and my senses skate over them. I recognize a few individuals whose dreams I visited, back when I had no control over where I went and with whom I spoke. The hope and expectation in their hearts slice through me.
With my Song, I extend my awareness beyond these walls. The city bristles with people. The press of so many consciousnesses in such proximity is unnerving. In my youth, there were not so many alive in the entire land as there are in these ten square kilometers.
The gathered throng ripples and spits out another devotee. An elderly man seeking a blessing steps up to the dais. He greets Queen Jasminda with a stiff bow before turning to me. The worshippers hum with a hopeful anxiety. Their emotions press against me, thick as the crowd itself.
My Earthsong-fueled awareness narrows to a fine point. I block out the swarm of bodies, even the seeker before me and the girl-queen next to me. There is someone here quite unlike the others. Malice pulses through his pores. Bitter hatred twists his energy. I cannot locate him in the crowd; I merely feel the strong sense of malevolence. Drawing deeply from my connection to Earthsong, I focus my inner Song until the man’s intentions come into clearer resolution, so clear it’s almost like hearing his thoughts.
I snap back into my physical senses and look at Jasminda beside me. Her brow is already furrowed. Her weaker Song may have picked up on the danger, but she is slow to process it and appears confused.
“Queen Jasminda is leaving now,” I announce to the Sisters nearby, punctuating the statement by pushing a sense of alarm into them. The Royal Guardsmen assigned to Jasminda rush out of the shadows and surround her, whisking her off down the aisle of the temple before she can even protest. I give an extra mental nudge of anxiety to the guards, and they take off at a near run. It is impolitic to make them pick up the queen and haul her away bodily at such a pace, but there is no time to waste.
The old man still stands before me, his perplexed expression mirroring Jasminda’s from a moment ago. Hundreds of people fill the building, but it would be impossible to get them all out in time. Their last moments should not be spent in a panic. So I do not tell them what is coming. Instead, I lean forward and press my thumb against the man’s forehead, bestowing my blessing, for what it is worth.
It turns out to be worth very little. Only a heartbeat later, the bomb planted in the temple explodes.
CHAPTER ONE
Look to the beginning to find the end. The venerated matriarchs who held us in their wombs and nurtured us in their bodies could not bear to let us falter. To them we dedicate our praise, for they were First. What shall be Last is still unknown, but the journey of the seeker is not yet ended. May she uncover the truth before the end of things.
—THE AYALYA
Tai Summerhawk stalked through the streets of Portside, adjusting to the feel of solid ground under his feet after so many weeks at sea. The stench of horse dung mixed with diesel exhaust and a hint of sewage assaulted his nostrils. He longed for the equally foul, but far more familiar, odor of the selakki oil that filled his ship.
His first mate, Mik, matched his stride, his eyes constantly roving, searching for threats, as was the man’s habit. The last time Tai had been in Portside, he’d nearly been killed.
The silence between them was not the comfortable kind, but Tai relished the break in his friend’s constant haranguing. He’d almost rather have to fight a cutthroat or angry dockworker than listen to any more of Mik’s admonitions on how foolish this trip was.