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

T
he
last traces
of that old nightfire dream stuck in my head like cobwebs. Mother slept beside me, as withered as Skeleton Woman, a pale imitation of who she had been when she’d told such stories. No more the vibrant beam in her twilight eyes. No more the fire catching the golden lights in her hair. No more the earnest ring in her voice as she explained ancient mysteries.

She was inert to the footfalls coming through the tunnel beyond our dreary chamber. She lay as though dead, as she had for a sennight, ever since the Elders had used her for another ritual.

The stone door to our cavern rolled open with an ominous grating. Mother did not lift her head. I drew into the cave’s darkest corner where flame could not penetrate. There I cowered, hoping the two Elders would take no notice of me. Ikselian’s sealskin boots whispered on the stone floor. Only a few winters older than my mother, Ikselian was the youngest of the Elders. I hated her. She scolded and criticized and braided my hair so tightly my eyes leaked and I’d have to bite hard on my cheek to distract myself from the pain. She was broad in shoulder and hip despite the fact that she had never borne a child for the tiguat. I had no doubt she could see me lurking in the darkness.

Drasuq stooped behind the woman, as thin as a ghost. For a moment he seemed to fade and then glitter, like a bloodlight wraith in Yaqi, the Spirit Layer. I blinked to be certain I was still squarely in Ijiq, the usual reality. My senses, confused from years of sharing my mother’s disjointed mind, sometimes misled me.

“Miseliq,” Ikselian said, leaning over Mother in the cot. “Get up.”

Mother sat up and pulled a worn sealskin over her shoulders, rocking to and fro. Her unbound auburn hair fell limply over her sun-starved face. An instinctive reach showed me what she saw as she wandered the maze of her mind: the day she’d met my father, her favorite daydream. That day long ago she’d hidden on the Nitaaraq shore and watched as the Lethemian lord, Ronin Entila, crested the horizon, glittering like a foreign god as he crossed the ice floe.

“Ronin, my Ronin,” my mother murmured.

Ikselian snorted. “Ronin Entila is dead, Miseliq. You killed him yourself. Do you not remember?”

Finally Mother came out of her trance, lifting her eyes—the deep, dark color of the sky at dusk, what Ganteans called taaqsiraq—to meet Ikselian’s uncompromising stare. “I never wanted to do it. He made me do it. He made me—I never wanted—”

“Quiet!” snapped Ikselian. “Enough with your self-indulgence.”

“No, no!” Mother tightened both arms around her chest. “I never wanted to hurt him!”

Ikselian rolled her eyes and stepped back to make room for Drasuq. The man hooked his gnarled hands beneath my mother’s arms and hauled her to her feet. “Come now, Miseliq,” he urged in a gentler tone than Ikselian’s. “We must ritual to support the Hinge. You must come with us. Remember what you are.”

A moan caught in Mother’s throat. The same sound lodged in mine.

Mother was not the first Cedna to come to such a sorry state. Gantean rituals wasted a Cedna, forcing her into a life that swept from one extreme to another. The frenzied, frenetic thrill of ritual’s power was followed a brutal aftermath, the crash of exhaustion from the bloodletting.

I crouched deeper into my shadows, but Ikselian left my mother’s side. She yanked me into the circle of light cast by her lantern.

“Miseliq!” Ikselian turned back to Mother.

Mother made no response, having returned to her daydream. Her thoughts flowed clearly in my mind: Ronin Entila’s elegant fingers caressed her collarbones. His soft southern mouth, tasting of elderberry wine, claimed hers.

Ikselian smacked Mother even as she continued to pinch my arm in her other hand. Mother wept great, racking sobs that shook her body.

“She is a useless creature,” Ikselian said, scowling at my mother’s pitiful behavior. “We must do as we’ve planned.”

Dread coursed through my veins. The Cedna’s knowing senses throbbed just out of my reach—though everyone knew I was the successor, my mother, even crazed and delirious as she was, remained Cedna in truth. I could not use the Cedna’s powers.

Drasuq wound thick leather binds around my mother’s arms.

Ikselian shoved me into the corner. “You stay here,” she said.

Animal panic rose inside me. I launched myself at the cavern’s exit, only to be caught and restrained by a figure I had not seen standing in the tunnel beyond: Atanurat, Ikselian’s favorite, a youth of about my age whose shiny hair and broad chest made all the unmated girls giggle. He was often tasked with guarding me when they took Mother away for rituals. He had all the favorable qualities of a Gantean man: clear, sun-toasted skin, relentlessly black hair worn in several heavy braids that tumbled down his back, and muscles.

I loathed Atanurat on principle, for the Elders trusted him as they had never trusted me.

Ikselian gave Atanurat a curt nod and disappeared down the hall after Drasuq and my mother.

Atanurat’s left hand flashed in a familiar gesture, the hand sign against bad luck. As always, he refused to meet my gaze, as though my bright red hair and unlikely green eyes could be a catching illness that would taint his pure Gantean features if he looked too closely.

“Are they going to ritual?” I asked as he pulled me back into the dim cavern.

“A bad spirit lives inside your mother,” he said. “I think they plan … to purge it. For good.” He gave me a sidewise glance before averting his eyes again. “You must not go into her mind right now.”

Atanurat was one of the few clanspeople who knew that I had the ability to share minds with my mother, an odd consequence of the rogue magic she had performed when naming me her successor. For my whole life, I had intimately known her loves and hates, her memories, her dreams, her fears. We had shared so much for so long I barely recognized the secret spaces that belonged only to me.

I had no intention of following Atanurat’s advice. I reached out, searching for the familiar touch of my mother’s mind.

And found it.

Anxious sweat broke out across my forehead despite the night’s chill. My stomach plummeted. She was terrified.

She hated the rituals. The Elders forced her to give blood too often, draining the life from her body to assuage the hunger of the Hinge. Despite the extra rituals, the Hinge continued to falter, overtaxed by the sayantaq Lethemian mages who paid no price for their spellwork.

The Elders had no solution to the problem except to do what they had always done: bloodletting after bloodletting. Their approach wasn’t working. No matter how much blood they fed our Hinge, it was never enough. We teetered on the edge of disaster. The Hinge maintained our magic, which we needed to survive on our inhospitable island. My mother’s broken body and mind were a testament to our mounting desperation.

Mother’s terror washed over me again. What were they doing to her this time? The taste of blood filled my mouth—how Mother hated that coppery tang when they made her drink. I whirled and darted for the tunnel again, this time catching Atanurat by surprise.

I made it out into the tunnel and ran as fast as I could to the outside. Atanurat’s soft footfalls padded behind me.

Mother’s fear surged again, an unexpected knife in my mind that set my feet in motion towards the beach. I picked down to the shore, a lodestone drawn to iron.

I stumbled into the pebbly sand. In the distance all nine Elders carried torches or lanterns that lit a wide circle around my mother. Drasuq’s leather bound her from wrists to upper arms. Her hair flew in wild locks that tickled her cheeks and neck. Her panic was mirrored in my own rising heartbeat.

Ikselian held her by one arm, while Verusuq, an Elder of grim reputation, clutched the other. His meaty fingers dug into her; I felt them with Mother’s own senses.

The Kaluq lands stretched bleak and barren in every direction. Mother and the Elders stood about two hundred spans in front of me.

I froze as the entire party, Elders and my mother, plunged into the frigid waters, facing out to sea. The chill my mother felt coursed up my own legs.

“Wait!” Atanurat whispered, catching up and grabbing my shoulder to prevent me from continuing down the beach. “You’re not supposed to go there.”

I flung his touch away. He scrabbled forward, lunging and knocking me down.

“Get off me!” I spat.

He only wrestled me deeper into the sand.

My mother’s mind completely engulfed my own. She screamed from afar, and I heard it in my head as if my own voice made the sound. Verusuq pushed her to her knees as Drasuq and Ikselian hoisted torches overhead. Someone dragged her deeper into the water. The remaining Elders chanted the prayer for dying, resonating in eerie harmony.

Mother quieted. Her silence frightened me more than her cries.

The surf lapped at her skirt, cold and biting. I shook as Atanurat pinned me down.

Whatever they were doing at the water’s edge, it was no Gantean ritual. The wrongness of it beat at me like a harsh wind.

A low, mournful wail wavered over the strand, source unknown.

T
he
most mysterious
and dangerous of the Cedna’s powers is her ability to command the ocean waters. My mother, to my knowledge, had only once made use of this power—to disastrous result—but I could sense its potential in her mind, a dark, shadowy bulk that lurked in unlit corners like a sleeping monster.

Beware secrets that do not long for release
, my mother’s voice whispered in my head as I stood on the beach, probing that black place for help.
Persistent darkness has good reason for preferring the shadows.

Didn’t she feel it, too, the temptation of that dark bulwark of water just waiting for her command? Why didn’t she call a furious wave to knock down Ikselian and Verusuq who held her pinned? I reached into Yaqi
,
but I could not touch the power. It belonged only to the Cedna.

I waited with breath held for Mother to scream down her oceanic fury over the Elders. But she simply knelt, head hanging like a poppet’s, hands glowing in the moonlight as the Elders finished their prayers.

“Turn away,” Atanurat whispered, his cold fingers clutching my shoulders. “You should not watch this.”

The wind picked up Drasuq’s words and carried them over the black sea. “Miseliq Ikniq, Cedna of the Iksraqtaq, we sentence you to death by drowning for the following crimes.”

I doubled over, clutching my belly as I heaved up my dinner stew.

Ikselian spoke the first transgression, an old one: “Consorting with our southern enemy.”

Verusuq called out, “Choosing your blood-daughter as the next Cedna against ancient Gantean tradition.” Rage tainted his voice.

Drasuq voiced the final, most recent crime. “You have lost your grip on your mind. Your blood is tainted beyond any cure and no longer satisfies our Hinge. You must give up your life so the new Cedna may take your place.”

From my vantage point, I could see Mother shaking. Once a tall woman, she now appeared shrunken, a mere shell of the lively, dancing beauty who’d told stories a lifetime ago in the Ikniq camp.

They should have killed her slowly, by bleeding her out. A Cedna’s lifeblood was meant to soak deep into Gantean soil as the strongest fuel that fed our magic. Her blood should run down through the earth, into channels that carried it to the hungry crystals of the Hinge. Instead, Ikselian and Verusuq pushed her beneath the cold Gantean sea.

It might as well have been my own body flailing against the bindings and writhing beneath the water. I fought and shook beneath Atanurat’s restraining hands, convulsing with Mother’s need for air. Blackness washed over us. A few more jerks, and Mother’s body ceased to move. Still they held her down, even when her limbs had gone limp and flaccid, even when she floated without will in the water’s drift.

I knew the moment she died. The wall that I had sensed in her—that wide expanse of untouched power—loomed shockingly into my own mind, huge and terrifying. It was mine. The water hungered inside me in a forceful throb. I screamed with renewed strength and threw Atanurat off, running towards the others. A sudden spat of waves pummeled the shore, knocking the Elders to their knees in the water. A beast roared inside me, and something dark and awful breached in the sea beyond the shallows, sending water raining into the air.

“Stop!” shrieked Ikselian. She plunged through the water to my side, grabbing me and shaking me as hard as she could. “Call it off! Stop!”

An inhuman sound spewed from my throat.

“You cannot control it!” Ikselian screamed. “You do not have the skill. You’ll overset the Hinge! Call it off! Shut the door! Close it, now, before you ruin us all!”

With an enormous surge of effort, I forced the black tide in my mind to recede. Tentacles recoiled and curled inward. I heaved heavy chains across a door in my mind, binding it, sealing it, locking in the terror that thrashed behind the barrier.

I coughed and gasped as though I had been the one drowned.

Ikselian pinched my arm. “Idiot girl.” She herded me back up the beach. “Do not meddle in magic you cannot handle.”

My mind went empty; my bones felt as hollow as a bird’s. My mother was dead.

The Elders filed behind us as we walked back to the summer tents above the beach. “The Cedna has died. She must be made again! The Cedna has died. She must be made again!” they cried, nine voices echoing into the night.

They roused the clanspeople, who emerged carrying seal oil candles that lit their faces with ghostly hollows.

A large audience gathered, everyone chanting. We passed them by, treading a well worn path through the Kaluq camp and beyond. Only a small group followed us on the journey, the nine Elders and one old man. It was nearly sunrise when we arrived at the black granite face and stepped into the dark slash that marked Gante’s most sacred place. The Hinge.

“Come,” Ikselian said as she pushed me into the narrow cavern. By the light of Ikselian’s seal oil lantern, I saw the malevolent glitter of colored crystal walls: blood red, opal indigo, rose pink, moon white, emerald green, sapphire blue, and night black. “The Cedna is dead. She must be made anew.”

Only one ritual remained for me to become Cedna in my own right; I had to face Skeleton Woman, here in her dwelling place, and have her accept my blood through her crystals.

Ikselian pushed me towards an edge in the cavern’s floor. Beyond, a gaping abyss descended, lined with all the crystal colors that danced in the low light. Legend said Skeleton Woman’s bones rested at the bottom of this chasm.

Ikselian drew a necklace from her tunic, a circle of bone cradling a bright red Hinge spall, an anbuaq made from the crystal of these walls, a charm imbued with potent magic.

The nine Elders entered the cavern, spreading out along the glittering walls, their torches illuminating a rainbow of sparking colors. The last Elder brought the old man with him. This one would give his lifeblood for the ritual.

Ikselian pulled a carved flask from her belt and held it out to me.

I peeled the skin back from its spout. An earthy, pungent aroma rose—pujoanuki tea. I shoved the flask back at her.

“I do not need it,” I hissed. The tea was a strong purgative to cast out impurities from the blood.

“You are tainted,” Ikselian said. “Your blood has the sayantaq stain. If we had any choice, we’d pick a different girl to serve as Cedna, but your mother’s crimes will continue to haunt us. She picked you as the successor, and we cannot undo her choice. But you will cleanse before we ritual. I will offer no more filthy blood to the Hinge.”

She pressed the flask back into my hands. I quelled the urge to toss the liquid into her face.

“I am not unclean,” I bit out. “I’ve never left the island.”

She glared down on me, anger seething behind those dark eyes. “Your father’s blood runs in your veins.” She caught the long tail of my braid and yanked my head back, pushing the flask to my lips.

I swallowed, gagging on the bitter juice.
Someday I will get my revenge on you, Ikselian Kaluq.

Drasuq murmured a chant as he brought the man to be sacrificed towards the edge of the cavern’s abyss. The others joined in, their voices rising and falling in a dissonant hum. The old man knelt, offering his throat willingly, a good Gantean to the end.

The tea writhed in my stomach. I squeezed my eyes closed because I could not bear to watch when they cut his throat. They would let the blood flow down into that chasm. To be so near the edge of the world frightened me.

My heaves began—the pujoanuki worked fast. The brew was so strong, and it set upon me so violently that I had no choice but to crouch and purge, over and over again, though little remained in my stomach. A storm moved through my body and left me too weak to fight. I never even felt the slice of Ikselian’s ulio upon my arm, though I watched my flesh part and my blood well from the wound onto the special red anbuaq that Ikselian held to catch the drops.

As my blood hit the red crystal of the anbuaq, a white figure rose up from dark chasm, though I did not think the others could see her. She was an old, round woman with long plaits like grey bones that fell past her hips. She was illuminated by a soft, white bloodlight, the ethereal substance that gives us all life. She was Skeleton Woman, the voice of the Cedna’s arcane knowledge, the face of my power in Yaqi. Sometimes she had spoken when I was inside Mother’s mind.

We do not love you,
Skeleton Woman whispered.
They call you Cedna, but will you serve? We do not love you. You will learn to see the flavor of hate and smell the color of blackness. You were not made for the light, child. Why do you fight your destiny? No Cedna escapes the shadows.

I made a mewling, fearful sound that I quickly stifled.

You are a world-breaker. Beware black bloodlight. You draw those with power and brightness to you, as gravity sucks in starlight. Take care you do not swallow everything. Take care you do not break this fragile world, girl.

I shivered as a hand dragged me up from the trance. I clawed out and felt flesh give beneath fingernails. I blinked blurrily into Ikselian’s face, where anger and astonishment warred. She pressed a palm against the scratches I had left on her cheek.

“Well?” she asked, pitching her voice low to quell its tremble.

I drew myself up to my full height to stand above her. “I am your Cedna,” I said. “Skeleton Woman has spoken to me.”

Ikselian looked as if she might argue, but Drasuq put a restraining arm on her shoulder.

He gave me a grave look. “Let it be known. The Cedna is made again.” He waved at the other Elders, and they migrated towards the cave’s exit. Drasuq pushed the old man’s lifeless body over the edge.

It made no sound, as though the chasm had no bottom.

Ikselian and Drasuq hovered outside the Hinge’s chamber until all the others had departed to walk back to the Kaluq camp.

“What did She say to you?” Drasuq asked.

I did not like the words Skeleton Woman had given me, so I lied, “She is angry. She says you have forsaken the Cedna and all she represents.”

Ikselian flinched. Drasuq stooped even lower. They ought to be concerned. They had led the Elders into profanity; my mother’s lifeblood ought to have fed the Hinge.

“I am the Cedna now. Skeleton Woman said you must obey me as the ruler of the Iksraqtaq.”

Ikselian stepped forward, one hand still pressing her wound. “The Cedna does not rule,” she said. “She is the balance that pays for magic. She serves.”