The Cedna (Tales of Blood & Light Book 2) (33 page)

I
lost
track of the days that passed. My shattered heart could never be put back together again. If Onatos was dead, I wanted no more of this world.

Dead.
The Entilan mage had said he was
dead.

If Onatos was dead, why did this phantom ung-aneraq still pull on my heart? If Onatos was dead, I had killed him.

Dead?

I lay in what had been Siomar’s berth, since Jaasir was in mine. Skeleton Woman had lied to me. What did she care for Onatos Amar? What did she care for saving a life? She was the Hinge, and the Hinge sought only to satisfy itself. I should have known better. She had never meant to save him when she’d told me how to kill Malvyna Entila. She had wanted Onatos’s bloodlight, too, and so she had taken it.

All this time while I had been fretting over why he did not come to me, the obvious answer had been staring me in the face. The one answer I had never considered. He was dead. My magic had killed him as it had killed Malvyna.

Perhaps a sennight passed. Perhaps a moon. I didn’t care. I barely ate, only dragging myself to the galley to suck on a lemon or sip water when my aching throat would let me swallow.

Vilanov and the crew abandoned me. I was not surprised. Cold loathing had been mounting in their eyes since Murana; the word lurked unspoken on their tongues:
witch, witch, witch
. The Vhimsantese hated women of magic.

One evening I went to my own cabin and found Jaasir Amar, not only awake, but also up and out of bed, dressed in his tattered black clothing, boots laced, all business.

“You said you would bring my father,” he said accusingly, looking up from where he sat hunched over ink and paper at the small table near the round window. “You brought no one. You’ve been sick for days. I had to bring you water to keep you alive.”

“Perhaps I had the same illness you had,” I said wanly. “I looked after you; you looked after me. We’re even now.”

“You will never atone for robbing a boy of his father. Two boys,” he added. “Laith had it worse than I did after Onatos disappeared.”

I could have defended myself, but I saw no use in it. I saw no use in anything. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, my throat tight but my eyes dry. “I’m sorry.”

I ran out of the cabin, too ashamed to tell him his father was dead. He would blame me, and he would be right to do so.

I paced the deck alone, fists clenched, heart sluggish. I had only one choice, one duty left. I had to return to Gante, to the Hinge.

As though my resolution summoned them through the evening dark, two figures approached. Boots fell on the hollow wood of the Queenstown dock. One set of steps rang out, long and certain, the other set, light and even. I could hear their breathing below me.

A
nd
so
, the impasse arrives on a pair of footsteps, one set firm and full of southern power, the other set so light as to barely leave a trace.

Laith and Leila. Onatos’s children, together.
He would be so pleased
.

I blink and haul my unruly mind to the present.

My daughter has come to kill me. She is Gantean.

Long-fingered hands push damp strands of hair from my face, almost tenderly. I want to go back into my dreams. I want to pretend those fingers belong to Onatos. I have only ever wanted his hands soothing me into sleep. Such a small, simple thing. I want to be worthy of his love. I never have been. Never.

The hands pull away. “She’s awake,” Laith says.

I sit up. Three faces stare at me.

“Where is the fourth?” I ask, befuddled. In my dream, Onatos had four children.

“Fourth what?” Laith asks.

“Ghilene Entila. Onatos’s fourth child.”

Leila gasps, but Laith already knew; I can tell from his face.

“Where is he?” Laith demands, his voice a knife that tries to slit my throat. He wants my secrets. He wants me to explain what happened to Onatos.

The blade of Laith’s voice is like blackstone in my hands. I strike it, badly, so that it shatters and falls away.

“How did you do that?” he yelps. “No one’s ever broken one of my compulsions!”

I answer him with a low chuckle.

“Do you still call yourself the Cedna of Gante?” Such loathing in Leila’s words! I want to crawl to her and beg her forgiveness. For losing her. For abandoning Gante. For whatever crimes she puts at my feet.

I am guilty of them all.

“I am the Cedna. There will be no other.”

“You abandoned us,” she says in a voice that could have been Ikselian’s, it is so laced with disapproval. “You left your people alone and unprotected, and we died because of it. Now the Hinge is breaking apart because you do not feed it. You are breaking the world.”

What does she mean? I’ve been feeding the Hinge my whole damned life. I’ve fed it so much I have nothing left to give. Doesn’t she understand? I do not have the power to break the world. The world has always been broken. The Cedna was made in an attempt to seal the shattered cracks. An impossible task.

“We will go there,” she says.

“Where?” I ask.

“To the Hinge. To Gante. You know what we must do.” She clutches an anbuaq necklace—that carved ring of bone surrounding a glittering red crystal that sends dread shivering up my spine. This is the anbuaq the Ganteans used to make a Cedna. She means to go through with it, this Gantean girl, this girl of mine. So small and delicate. She looks so kind, but inside her beats a heart as cold as the tundra. She means to take me to the Hinge and do what a Gantean would do.

Tunixajiq.

“I have named no successor,” I warn her. “If you kill me, do you know what will happen?”

She would truly kill her own blood-mother?

Leila gives a curt nod. “I will become the next Cedna. I have been told the ritual.”

“There is no ritual for making a Cedna if I have named no successor.”

Leila glares at me. “They devised a way. Before they were all murdered by Entilan raiders, the Elders found a way. I know this way. I know what to do, and I will serve as the next Cedna.”

The lack of fear in her voice tells me she does not understand the burden. There is nothing for a Cedna but death. Death, the enduring sun that shines upon her days, the moon that changes throughout her nights. Everywhere she goes: death and blood. Everything she tastes: blood and ash.

I cannot do this to my daughter. She will never understand my gift. My girl, the child of my love for Onatos, is not made for this darkness. She loves. It shows in her eyes, in the carriage of her body. I saw her with her children; I saw her with her prince; I saw her with her heartbroken sorrow when he turned to another, but she has risen above it as I could not. My girl is made for life and light. That she offers herself so willingly to carry the Cedna’s burdens only demonstrates that she knows nothing of the task.

Everything comes clear to me as I study my beautiful girl. The path opens. “To Gante then,” I say. “Let us waste no time.”

A
s
I commandeer
the crewless
Firebrand
with my magic, Laith and Jaasir argue over whether Jaasir should come with us when we disembark on Gante. Jaasir wants to, but Laith says he is unfit for the rough travel.

Leila settles the matter. Her grim face shocks me as she says, “He will come.” Does she mean to use him as the ritual sacrifice? Her own blood-brother? Why does it surprise me that Leila is Gantean to the core? Of course she has to use
someone
if she truly means to make a large-scale ritual. Such magic requires the lifeblood of another. Even so.

I occupy myself with getting us to the island. The sea pitches and resists me the closer we get to Gante, so I have to train all my powers on guiding the ship safely to land.

Soon the white horizon of Gante fills the sky. Though this journey is a kind of homecoming, the stark, forbidding landscape stirs no feeling from my numbness. The coast sparkles with snow, the sky is mired in an endless twilight, and the sun never rises enough to make an impact.

Soon, Onatos. Soon I’ll be with you. I’ll leave this broken world behind.

We disembark on a Kaluq beach, the southernmost one called Uva Araq, Snowcat Cove, because of its clawlike curve.

“You have been to the Hinge?” I ask Leila as we set out on the inland road that leads away from the shore.

She looks at me without expression. She has not sought me out as we traveled, not shown any curiosity for her blood-mother. “Of course. I am Iksraqtaq.”

Her words hit me like a fist in the gut. I should not envy my own daughter her certainty, her sense of belonging, but I do. I do. She has been given the rights and the rituals that I have been denied.

“I am Ikniq,” I tell her, a sense of dread penetrating my apathy. “You must burn my body after you have drained my blood.”

“I am not sure you are worthy of such rites. I am not sure any Ikniqs would call you a clanswoman, if any Ikniqs even still exist.”

Her words chill me to the bone.

W
e march
onto Gante’s barren tundra, Leila leading, Laith walking beside her. Jaasir lurches with fatigue. Laith uses his magestone to keep us warm, melting down a perfect path through the snow to make our walk almost pleasant. He and Leila speak in quiet voices.

She tells him how to navigate on Gante and about sunwalkers, whose innate Gantean magic allowed them to dead reckon even in blizzard conditions. She tells him about the ritual she plans for us at the Hinge, though she doesn’t tell him everything. Not the important parts. Not the gruesome parts. Not the part about killing his brother.

As we approach the Hinge, the terrain becomes colder, icier, treacherous. It was not always like this. In my youth the Hinge was easily accessible; the surrounding landscape was Gantean-lush. Back then purple saxifrage made a thick springy bed for a quarter-league around the Hinge. Warm vapors from underground made an unlikely oasis in the frozen tundra.

Now there is nothing but ice. I am sure Leila blames me for this change.

A dark slash in the snow-coated granite marks the entry to the Hinge’s cavern. It takes focused restraint to stop myself from dashing through it to finish this whole farce immediately.

I must go consenting to the sacrifice, but I am not absolved. I do not want to die hated by my own child. I remember the carefree ease Laith and Leila had in my dream.

They both so clearly love their magic. They have never fully felt its cost. They see only the fire, never the ash.

I place a hand on Leila’s arm. “I loved him. I always loved him, through everything.”

Laith gazes at me appraisingly. “You mean Onatos Amar? You mean our father?”

I nod. My throat constricts; I cannot speak. I enter the cavern first, stepping into pure blackness, good practice for the bravery I’ll need to finish this.

When Laith and Leila enter, his magestone lights the cavern. Jaasir comes behind them.

The crystals loom around us, glittering in the magelight, spinning their colors everywhere. Red, opal, green, blue, pink, white, black. Seven crystal spires rise from the abyss and twist into arcs to form the walls of the cavern.

I cannot falter now.

Two more steps.
Then you can rest.

I stand on the edge above the abyss. Leila remains unconcerned; she does not see how I teeter there. I cannot resist turning to her one last time. I will spare her the killing, the blood, the darkness, all the burdens I have borne. I will take away this great, dark power forever.

Magic costs more than it is worth. They can learn to live without it.

I glance down into the abyss, a crack of pure blackness, unrelenting.

I am not afraid; black is my color. It has been with me all along.

I fix my gaze on my daughter’s face. Her mouth opens as she finally understands what I mean to do.

I lean into the emptiness.

I fall.

W
hat happens when you die
? There is a magic in it; I see that. The tiny particles of my body loosen and separate from their tight collection. Going out, into others, into the air, the earth, the water, the stones. It’s like burning: the fire changes the substance it runs through, leaving loose ash as the only remnant.

I turn to ash on the air: disparate and grey and light enough to float.

I fall like ash.

I have made enough errors to tear down the world. The fabric is torn inside me, a wound, unlacquered, unscabbed. Broken.

I think of my wan mother and her sorrows. I think of my precious, distant daughter. Mothers and daughters overlap in ways they cannot see. A mother’s concerns find themselves in her daughter, no matter how far she wanders. As I step into death, I see my own mother’s life, the image of it, right beside mine. We are a body and its reflection. And there, on the other side, my daughter’s life hovers, a mirror behind a mirror. The outlines are all the same, but distorted and reversed and changed by the repetition. My mother’s life was colored by her love for a man. So too was mine, and so will be my daughter’s. Our stories extend beyond us, and death takes everything but our stories. They endure.

The bliss of it, the joy of this surrender. Better than any ecstasy. At last, I am a true Cedna, loving the call of my duty, consenting to the sacrifice.

I wish I could tell my daughter how happy I am. Onatos’s face stares at me from hers. Her mouth is lush, like his.

Please
, I whisper.
Be happy.

Death is as soft as gentle snow.

It has the feeling of falling, like love.