Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2)(26)

… the heat of a smelting forge, flames licking tufa molds as her steady hands pour liquid gold into long, thin strips. Hammers ring around her as others work the four masks of the Watchers. What they do here is good and will ensure peace among the cities of the Meridian for centuries, if not millennia. Someone calls her name, and she turns. Not enough time to scream as a knife slits her throat. She falls, her blood mixing with the gold…

Through a dozen faces, a hundred scenarios. She is the dedicant made Sun Priest again and again. Enemies threaten her, and the Knives take them down. Some succeed, and she is imprisoned, deposed, executed. She catches a glimpse of herself hurling from the sky bridge into the open air, the waters impossibly far below.

A man stands, his back to her. Lightning flashes around him, and wind tears at his hair, his cloak. He stands high atop a mountain. No, not a mountain. A tower, smooth stone under his feet. He holds something in his hands. She knows this thing like she knows her own face, the curve of the cheeks and lips, the gloss of gold. He raises the Sun Priest’s mask to his face. She cries out, knowing she has to stop him. Knowing that if he succeeds, all is lost. Her heart thumps in her ears. The storm casts her words of warning away. She reaches for him, but he is too far, his figure a blur in the sheeting rain. She tries to run, but her legs, her body, will not move. She cannot see his face, does not recognize the set of his shoulders or his long black hair. He cocks his head, as if he hears her, and begins to turn. Another moment, and she will see his face, another second.

A mouth twists into a smile, speaks her name, and—

Naranpa screamed herself awake.

Into a room gone dark and cold, the fire in the hearth burned to nothing, the air still perfumed with rosemary and mint. She was on the floor, splayed out on her back, and she grasped the stool she had been perched on and pulled herself to sitting again. Her shoulder ached where she must have fallen and struck stone, and her head spun, her heart still pounding in her chest, her body still flooded with adrenaline.

The visions still tumbled in her mind, more emotion than memory. What had she seen, where had she been? Past or future, she wasn’t sure. Symbol or reality? The feelings were real enough: of attack, of betrayal and loss. She stifled a sob.

“Zataya?” she whispered, her voice trembling. But the witch was not there.

“Ochi?” she called instead, knowing there would be no answer. The scrying mirror was now clean of the blood she had poured on it. No, the blood she had fed it. Her blood. She shuddered and heaved it across the room as if it were a live snake. She listened for the shatter as it hit the floor, but none came.

While the mirror might have been clean, her arm was thick with blood. She stared, confused, until she realized the makeshift bandage had fallen off and her wound had bled freely for however long she had been… wherever she had been. Wincing and fighting nausea, she retied the bandage around her arm. I need a healer, she thought, darkly amused. But the only one I know appears to have abandoned me.

Her next thought was to find Denaochi, but she was having trouble thinking at all, still half caught in the wild visions she had seen and suffering from a loss of blood.

A minute to rest. That was all she needed. Just a moment to close her eyes and rid herself of the lingering images—the face of the man she could not quite remember, the driving rain, the terror of seeing the Sun Priest’s mask in his hands. She laid her head down on the floor, curled up her shivering body, and fell into a deep unconsciousness.



* * *



“Nara!” Rough hands shook her. Denaochi’s voice rang urgent in her ear. “Wake up! Nara!”

Her head lolled on her shoulders, and she blinked rainwater from her eyes. That face, the cruel smile, the mask.

“No!” she cried out, shoving her brother away. He fell back, tripping over the stool. His quick hands caught the edge of the table and halted his fall. Zataya stood, mouth opened in surprise, in front of the rekindled hearth.

“Where did you go?” Naranpa asked her accusingly.

“I could not wake you, so I went for help.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Denaochi asked, somewhere between concern and suspicion.

“Nothing. I just…” What to tell him? How much to tell either of them? “I must have hit my head. I’m fine now.” She held out her hands.

Denaochi heaved her to her feet, and she swayed. He grasped her arms, careful of the bandage, and helped her sit.

“Zataya said you came to her complaining of nightmares, and she gave you a tonic, but before you could take it, you collapsed.”

She looked to the witch, but her expression told her nothing. Why would she not want Denaochi to know about the mirror? Naranpa had said she had not told Denaochi about the details of her glowing palms or the other symptoms of possibly being god-touched, so was Zataya simply respecting her confidences? Or did she think it was dangerous for Denaochi to know? Her instincts told her it was wise to keep this from him, at least for now. At least until she understood it better. But the same instinct made her want to keep the details of her vision from Zataya, too.

What she really wanted was an afternoon in the celestial tower’s library and unfettered access to the knowledge there. Surely she could find something about the god-touched, and if not that specifically, something about the visions she had seen. The sun god in her radiant form with a fiery tail and deadly talons, fighting the crow and the jaguar, seemed plain enough. A vision plucked from her own worries. But the rest. The frozen companion named Ano, the murder in the forge. The memories were both intimate and entirely foreign.