Page 102 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth

There came a time when perhaps her mind wandered away from her body and she dreamt, if dream it was, of a wide green land. Of shadows shining bright under a brilliant sky. Of rest, release, joy.

But she didn’t know what joy was. She had never felt it. It didn’t exist.

She thought she saw an old wrinkled man, his lips bloated from poison, step onto the shores of the green land and grow whole and young again. He ran through the grass like a newborn lamb, wobbly and rejoicing.

She saw a man and woman who had perhaps once been precious to her. They sat together on the shore, the woman laying her head on the man’s shoulder.

Nine shining figures and a host of shadows came to the green shore. All of them radiated something that she didn’t understand. Something that was the opposite of sorrow.

And then she was drawn back into her body and she knew herself, knew that she sat chained in the god Tuer’s place, and that he was dead, and she would never be free.

She wept, for her sorrow, and for the world’s. She would never stop weeping.

All the grief of all the world poured through her, eating her, but never consuming her.

Darkness. Pain. Weeping. Sorrow.

My life in service, in exchange for being made Empress.

My life in service.

My life.

My life.

A voice, strong as a storm: “It is too much for her. The sorrow has swallowed the Starlight.” A sudden vision of the wind god Mahl, his white hair crowned with lightning.

Another voice, gentle as the rain through the trees, the wind goddess, Ahdairon, all rippling feathers and yellow hair: “Not all of it. There is a little left. It is enough, I think, to save her.”

Save her.

Save her.

She was falling from a cliff, feathers in her hair. The world was a blur of gray and green, stone and trees.

A ship rocked beneath her. Nausea climbed up her throat. Rock, rock, rock.

A scarred man, writing in a book, ink flowing thick and dark from his pen.

Do not fear the sorrow, little Empress. It may yet save you.

A girl, sitting all night between her parents’ bodies, so stiff on their tables of stone, so cold and blank and empty.

A man, pulling her away from her home, stuffing her into a room in the palace, a room far too big for her and far too empty.

Loneliness, eating away at her.

Slipping into the stable, saddling a horse, riding and riding and riding until her house appeared, stark against the horizon.

A temple in a hill, beating her fist against the stone, blood dripping down her knuckles.

The god.

Her deal.

My life in service.

My life.