Song of Ashes

25: In Extremis

Sarka floated back to her makeshift bed and sat down there as if in a dream. She was so tired that her awareness occupied only a small corner of her skull; the rest of her head was now empty. Exhaustion had eaten away everything she was.

Sarka was nothing if not a pragmatist. She knew she could not afford to waste time being tired, being scared. She knew she could not afford it, but she did not know her alternative.

Part of the problem was the dearth of facts. She had grown up in a world ruled by the memory of a goddess, but absent of the goddess herself, absent of prayer, absent of any real instruction in religion at all. The rumors that the goddess's Beloved would give chase to any who fled the continent had seemed ludicrous to her, an untutored heathen. How could she have credited this fantastical instance of divine punishment when her entire life had been an undeserved divine punishment?

Now she sat alone, her throat aching from the murderous grip of an apparition with guts of fire-Kogoren's fire. And the memories of what had happened to her were the only thing that seemed clear in her fragmented, debilitated mind. She knew her tormentor was one of the Beloved, one of Kogoren's harem.

Weakly, Sarka lifted her head and let it drop again so her skull thudded against the wall. Think. Think.

One of Kogoren's consorts. That meant that once, this creature had been human. Not yet old enough to make a husband to a human woman, he would have been selected by rite and brought to the temple on the Queen's Crest, a holy mountain that people said was now nothing more than a gaping crater-if the stories were to be believed. Kogoren's wrath had begun there, crumbling and melting the peak in a retributory conflagration.

Sarka, of course, had never seen Queen's Crest, neither in its glory nor in its decay, but she knew there had been a temple there before the Cataclysm, where Kogoren's priests sacrificed a new stripling to her every year.

Sarka realized she had closed her eyes. She snapped them open and shook herself to keep awake. Her every limb was heavy.

If the creature was one of Kogoren's Beloved, he must have had a name once. A life. He must have had a family, friends, occupations. Talents. Passions. He must have had aspirations of his own before he had been chosen. In the end, he had been a king-a king among hundreds or thousands of others, but still a king.

Could that have fulfilled the baser longings he must have had for the human life that was torn from him when he was sacrificed?

"Who were you?" Sarka murmured. "Who were you before they took your life from you?"

Of course, no answer came. Perhaps her tormentor came only when night had fallen and all those around her were asleep.

Sarka could see the bright blue sky through a porthole. She imagined the sun shining out there, fully risen now and reflecting fragmented slices of light on the choppy sea.

Again, Sarka realized she was drifting into sleep. The shock of teetering on the brink woke her, and she sat up straight, trembling with adrenaline. Energized by the fear, she refocused the distant corner of her mind that still served her on solving the insurmountable challenge of beating one of the Beloved.

She could not best this creature in strength; she could not fight him physically. He had powers of many kinds-to watch her unseen, to materialize out of nowhere, to paralyze her body and keep her from her sleep, to touch her when she could not lay a hand on him. She remembered how her scratching nails had passed right through the spectral fingers that strangled her.

The only weapon she had against this creature was her mind. And a poor weapon it was. Not only was she ill-equipped with knowledge, the exhaustion was making it difficult even to think.

Think. Think. Be rational. I cannot kill him. I cannot turn him away. He has no pity. He belongs to her. His faith to her rules his mind. Kogoren is his queen, his goddess, his wife.

Sarka could not suppress a soft exhalation of amusement. The thought of a wife, to her, was fundamentally incompatible with the thought of Kogoren. There was nothing soft, nothing loving about the goddess Kogoren. And considering the bloody annual rite, her endless line of husbands, and the way she had dealt with her people when she thought herself betrayed, Sarka pictured Kogoren as a lady of war: wrathful, vengeful, and without the capacity for mercy.

She realized that this Beloved, this twisted creature, must not know Kogoren's love. How could he? To be one of a thousand...to be her favorite for a year, then to be pushed aside in favor of a newer toy.

How her greed must have wounded them all. Or was it a relief for them to be freed of her favors?

Kogoren called these creatures her Beloved...but did they love her?