Bayla stared at him, and he saw the realization spread over her face.
“Our time here is stolen and will come again. These people . . . they deserve to finish their natural lives. They deserve it more than we do. This is their world. These are their lives. We exist for them and because of them.” He attempted a smile and tried to make his voice light. “Besides, you have never seen Liyana when she is angry. She would not like to go through the trouble of saving her emperor only to have him die again here.”
“You truly trust her,” Bayla said.
Korbyn watched the lake. “Yes, I do.” Beside him, in his lover’s arms, his body died.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Liyana was in the desert. She rotated slowly, scanning the horizon. To the east she saw a tamar tree with branches that stretched seemingly for miles. To the west she saw rock hills. It was day. The sun was directly above her. There were no shadows.
She felt no heat. The wind caressed her skin and touched her hair. She wore braids and her ceremony dress, even though she’d lost this dress in the emperor’s camp.
“Jarlath!” she called.
There were no birds or creatures of any kind. She tried to expand her soul to sense others. . . . But she felt no excess magic, nor did she feel the familiar swirl that was her goddess.
She heard no answer.
“I’m dead,” she said out loud. The words tasted strange in her mouth. She didn’t feel dead. She rubbed the fabric of her skirt between her fingers and thumb. The skirt felt real, and it felt as soft as it had on the morning of her ceremony, without any of the rips or stains.
She walked toward the tamar tree. Around her, sand swirled in the air. She stared at the flecks of sand. Each glinted in the sun like a tiny jewel. Ruby, emerald, sapphire. She touched the glittering air, and she thought she heard the sound of laughter. It tinkled like broken glass and then dissolved. She inhaled the scent of milk and honey carried on the light breeze. Under her feet the sand felt warm, as if it had been heated but not scorched by the midday sun. Her feet, she noticed, wore the same beautiful shoes, tattered from her journey.
“Hello?” she called. “Jarlath? Pia? Fennik? I know you’re here!” In fact, thousands of souls should have been there—all the deities who weren’t in the desert plus all the dead from prior generations, including Jarlath. And Mulaf.
Mulaf sat on a rock with his face in his hands.
She halted. He had not been there an instant before. Staring at him, she wondered if she should speak to him. He hadn’t noticed her. Stepping softly, she backed away.
“He can’t hurt you here,” Pia said. “I will not let him.”
Liyana pivoted. Standing next to her, Pia smiled. She looked as beautiful as she had on the day that Liyana had met her, perhaps more beautiful. She seemed to glow with a soft light, like the aftereffect of staring at the sun. Her eyes did not focus on Liyana but instead seemed to drink in the entire desert. “You still cannot see,” Liyana said. “I’d have thought . . .” She trailed off because Pia was smiling with a joy that lit her like a flame. Behind her, the sky rippled with amber, rose, and purple light before it returned to brilliant blue.
“I could always see,” Pia said. “Just not with my eyes.” She reached with a surety of what she would find, and she touched Liyana’s face. “You, however, are blind. Like Oyri was. She needed true blindness before she could see beyond our clan.”
“I can see him,” Liyana said. “He wants to kill the gods.”
“Gods cannot die,” Pia said with her familiar conviction. Liyana had missed that certainty, even as she wanted to shake Pia and yell that this man was dangerous. Pia continued to smile, and her unseeing eyes sparkled like opals.
“But he could trap them here,” Liyana said. “He planned to destroy the mountains and bury the lake in the rubble. Without the lake the deities cannot leave the Dreaming, and magic dies in the world.”
“He cannot destroy anything from within the Dreaming, and I will not let his soul leave.”
Liyana knelt in front of him. Mulaf did not seem to know she was there. She waved his hand in front of his face. He did not respond. He looked as if he was staring directly through her. Tears ran down his face, curving into rivulets in his wrinkles. “He doesn’t see me.”
“He sees her,” Pia said.
Liyana turned but saw no one, only desert stretching on and on.
“His lost love, the Cat Clan vessel who sacrificed herself, his reason for everything that followed,” Pia said. “I found her, and we have been awaiting his arrival. Thank you for delivering him to us.”
“But he could find a way to leave—”
“He won’t,” Pia said. “Not now that he has found her. Besides, as I said, I will not let him.” She smiled again, and the glow around her brightened. She skipped around Mulaf and dropped into the sand next to him. She patted his shoulder, and he started. “Mulaf and I will become friends.” Liyana thought her smile had a sharpness to it, as if she were a cat with a mouse.
Another voice spoke. “Here, you are as strong as your soul.” Fennik walked toward them. He looked as he had on the day she’d met him, dressed in his clan’s traditional body paint and loincloth. He had his bow and arrows strapped to his back, and he held a waterskin as if he had been on a hunt. “Pia’s soul is very strong. She will contain him.”
Pia beamed at Fennik. He planted a kiss on the top of her head. Reaching up, she looped her hand into his, and his hand enveloped hers. Their smiles at each other seemed to exclude all else. Pia had never smiled that fiercely when she was alive.
Here, she was not ephemeral.
“Fennik . . .” Liyana searched for the right words.
“The rules of the living world do not apply here. You should see the horses!” Fennik swept his arm open. Behind him, across the sands, a herd of horses ran. Their jewel-like hides gleamed in the sun, and their manes and tails streamed in the wind. “I am in the process of creating my own herd.” He smiled at her, and Liyana thought he exuded light too, a leak around him that blurred the air. The horses vanished like smoke. “You will love it here, Liyana. Release your worries. You have finished your task.”
“Nothing is finished!” Liyana said. “The sky serpents are attacking the clans and the empire’s army. They will destroy everyone! I must find Jarlath. His people need him more than ever, and I cannot leave until I know my clan will be safe.” A horrible thought occurred to her. “Jarlath’s soul
“Right here,” Raan said with a wave. She was perched on a rock near Pia as if she’d been there the entire time. Lush grasses ringed her rock, and purple flowers grew beside her. The blossoms swayed in the wind, and the grasses were bright green, incongruous with the sand all around. “Glad you finally remembered me. I was beginning to feel unloved.”
Liyana felt a tightness in her chest loosen. At least Raan was whole. “Don’t tell me you forgive me, too, and that the Dreaming is happy meadows and bubbling brooks and that you’ve released your anger at your death and embraced eternity?”
“Of course not,” Raan said. “But I can torment him until I feel better, so that helps.” Raan punched Mulaf in his shoulder. He flinched, but he did not look at her. His eyes were fixed on an empty patch of desert. “He can see his lost love, but he can’t talk to her or touch her. We won’t let him—and truth be told, neither will she. She has watched him through the years and hates what he has done in her name.”
Liyana studied the empty desert and tried to imagine what he saw, a woman he’d loved and lost so long ago. In the distance the dunes seemed to rise and fall, undulating like water—a trick of the light, or a trick of the Dreaming.
“Do you remember the stories of the Cat Clan? How they suffered tragedy after tragedy until they were extinct? He caused those tragedies, as revenge for her death,” Raan said. “We will make sure he does not find
