Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2)(25)

Zataya chewed at her bottom lip.

“What is it?” Naranpa asked.

“There’s a way the grandmothers have to test for such things.”

“What things?”

“Those who are god-touched.”

“Is that what you think has happened?” Naranpa knew the term in passing, a name the ancients had for people who possessed unusual powers that were attributed to a brush with divinity. But that was before the formation of the Watchers, before they had done what they could to rid the world of such superstitions.

“It’s possible. The sorcery was a powerful working. It may have left its mark.”

“But god-touched?” She could not keep the skepticism out of her voice. “From your blood?”

“Not just my blood,” she corrected. “Salt and smoke, too.”

She remembered the salt the witch had placed under her tongue and the acrid white smoke that had enveloped her.

Zataya said, “Those were rare things, precious things, but your brother said do all I could, so I did. The salt comes from the far northern shores of a lake in a place they call the Graveyard of the Gods. They say it is the sweat of a god.”

“I know the place. Where the sun god bled the gold that made the Sun Priest’s mask. We are taught as much as dedicants.” Taught that they were just stories, legends passed down for generations that explained away the natural phenomena of their world, but a shiver trickled down her spine nonetheless. “And the smoke?”

“God bones, ground to white dust.”

“From the Graveyard?” She rubbed her hand over the back of her head, where it suddenly tingled. “And you think using these… god parts has given me some lasting…?” Lasting what, exactly? Powers sounded fanciful. But what else would one call what she did?

“There is one way to find out.” Zataya reached across the table and pulled forth a mirror that had been half buried under a bouquet of dried wild onion. Naranpa recognized the scrying mirror, the one Zataya had used to see the Crow God Reborn’s return and predict the Sun Priest’s death.

“The mirror can tell you if I’m god-touched?”

“It is a gateway into the shadow world, and within the shadows, you can see many things. Past, present, future. It is said that the greatest sorcerers may even travel small distances through the shadow world.”

She had never heard that. “How does it work?” But she already knew. She had seen Zataya use it before.

Blood and desire. Well, she had a body full of blood, and her desire was strong. Faith was her struggle, and more than that, a reluctance to cross the line into the taboo. Everything she had learned over the last twenty years had schooled her against the practice of magic, but what choice did she have if she wanted to understand what was happening to her?

Zataya produced a small obsidian knife.

“No stingray spine this time?” Naranpa asked dryly, her tongue throbbing in remembered sympathy.

Zataya grasped Naranpa’s arm and pressed the blade into the flesh just below her inner elbow. Naranpa hissed at the pain, but it passed quickly, and Zataya pinched at the wound to draw blood to the surface. When there was enough, she turned Naranpa’s arm over and let the warm liquid drip onto the mirror’s milky surface.

Skies! Naranpa thought. Am I really doing this? Apparently, she believed in it enough to give her blood to the endeavor. If it was folly, what had she to lose but self-respect? And if it was real, the gain might be unimaginable. If Iktan could see me now. How have you come to this, Sun Priest?

Former Sun Priest—and that came to her in Iktan’s droll voice, accurate enough to make her swallow back a flood of conflicting emotions.

“Go ahead,” Zataya said, after she had spread Naranpa’s blood across the opaque surface and given her a rag to staunch the bleeding. “Ask it what you want to see.”

Naranpa looked into the mirror, her silhouette now more smears of red than shadow. She thought to ask a dozen different things. How had she survived? Who was the Crow God Reborn, and did he hunt her even now, or was his thirst for vengeance slaked? Could she trust her brother? Was magic even real? But what came from her mouth was a surprise, even to her: “Who am I?”

The effect was immediate. It felt as if something or someone had grasped her head with two hands and was dragging her down. She shouted out, alarmed, but the grip only tightened, and down into the shadow world she tumbled.



* * *



The screams of leviathans reverberate through the air, the vibrations shaking Naranpa’s bones. Talons reach for her eyes, and she pivots, snaking her long tail around to strike the great black bird that threatens her. It falls back, injured, but another creature comes for her, this one a feline with slavering jaws and razored teeth. It leaps skyward, trying to catch her. Its claws rip golden scales from her throat, and…

… she wakes from an unplanned sleep, head snapping up. She stifles a panicked cry. She has dozed off. Oh, great gods, what has she done? She is supposed to stand watch. Her eyes shoot to the bags. There they sit, still fat with gold, and here are Ano’s arms around her still. They huddled together for warmth in this forbidden place, the last two left. Her breath puffs before her, white mist. But Ano’s does not. Dread fills her belly. She turns. Ano is tucked against her, skin frosted white, lifeless eyes staring. She screams into…