Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(127)

Tonight they flowed from her like water from a faucet.

She had not always been this way.

But she could not remember how she had changed. Other systems forbid her such speculation.

Knives peeled back the night, and the cuts laughed. Gargoyles seethed through the sky. Thorns of lightning lanced them, finding mostly emptiness but sometimes stone. Chips and dust fell. When Daphne’s Craft pierced rock skin, she drank moonlight.

The goddess went down sweet and sour, like buttermilk.

The gargoyles could not cross the circle; the court would shelter Daphne so long as she worked to prove the bond between Kos and Seril, and would help her test the Goddess. It would be inelegant to kill Her in the process, but since in the court’s view Seril was already dead, Daphne would be guilty of deicide in only the most vague and theoretical sense.

The gargoyles, denied Daphne, struck her weapons. They caught the spears of her will and tore her mind. But Daphne drew strength from their injuries. By the time they freed one comrade from her clutches, the gargoyle she’d struck was already tainted with gray ash.

She trapped them in redoubled space, she spread time, she played elaborate games to spoof their theory of mind. Some they avoided, some resisted. One small Stone Man fell into an airless infinity and emerged howling and mad.

The old tricks were the best.

The Goddess fought, too. Seril changed the world with a fluency even Daphne could not match. The goddess broke Daphne’s thorns, slid past her swords, battered her with awe. But Daphne did not fight Seril directly. She could break her through her children.

Good times.

Daphne abandoned temporospatial shenanigans to address the gargoyles’ stone. Stone, she argued, cannot move; stone cannot feel. They slowed.

Lightning flew from her fingers and lit eyes that were and were not hers.

The goddess convulsed.

*

The Sanctum of Kos smelled of incense and priestly sweat. Abelard and the Cardinals chanted. That no longer amazed him—to be here, surrounded by Cardinals, praying.

Glory to Your Flame

Everburning, All-transforming—

Nestor’s voice led their prayer from the front altar, the docent’s role having shifted around the circle back to him twice so far. Each time, Abelard refused to lead. Vestments flowed like lava from the old man’s shoulders.

Priests throughout Alt Coulumb chanted these words, in this time. They entered God’s presence. They gave themselves to Kos, felt His pain as the Craftsmen struck and tested Him.

And they felt a different sort of pain as He watched the battle in the air, and did nothing.

The altar fire burned hot, and they knelt and prayed.

*

My father roars.

He didn’t always. There was our mother once. She’s gone. (Murmurs, some, throughout the crowd. They knew the story.)

Imagine living with a lion. It prowls great-maned and strong through the house. But when you live with a lion, you see its teeth, and know its voice.

Many days its voice is the only voice you hear, because when a lion speaks, it deafens. You shout back even to hear yourself. There may be girls who can shout louder than a lion. I am not one of them. I was afraid. To shout louder than a lion, you have to scream, and things that scream are food.

Lions work. Lions prowl. Lions thirst, especially when they’re sad, and when they thirst they drink, and when they drink they roar louder.

I never felt his teeth. I was, we were, lucky that way. The lion was never hungry when we were near. But you don’t have to feel a lion’s teeth to fear them. His muzzle was often bloody when he came home. Sometimes the blood was not his; often it was. Tend a lion’s wounds as it breathes. Tend wounds around its mouth, in reach of its paws, and smell the kill blood on its breath.

(The sky’s war painted Ellen many shades of fire.)

Each of my sisters dealt with the lion in her own way. Hannah was sweet and charming and often gone. She laughed and danced, and did not talk at home. Claire went with the lion in the mornings, and worked with him, sometimes in his place. She grew strong and hard and brave.

I’m none of those things.

One night the lion did not come home. He often stayed out late hunting. But the hours passed. I watched the sand in the glass and knew the later he came back the louder he would roar, the more he would be hurt, the more he would need.

He did not come home that night, or the next morning. That night I waited, too.

I was afraid. So was Hannah. Claire wasn’t, but when we went to find him, she came.

We lost ourselves in the Pleasure Quarter. Not even Claire knew the way. I prayed. The Lady sent Her child to me. He led us home.

The lion wept when we returned. I never saw that happen before, though I heard it some nights through the wall. He embraced us. He was bloody, and he was hurt, but more than that he was afraid.

My sisters think that was the first time I prayed to the Lady. But I called to Her then because I knew Her from before.

There was no room for my voice in a house of roaring. I could not talk with my sisters, because when there’s a lion in the house all you can talk about is the lion, and who wants to talk about a lion all the time?

I spoke to the night instead.

The night does not fear lions. It knows them. It makes their voices small. The night gives birth to day, and when the sun rises the night waits behind the star. It is big, and it listens. The night’s smile turns shadow to velvet and blood to silver.