The Demigod Proving (7 page)

He paused to take a deep breath. Wrend’s heartbeat quickened, and his arms and legs weakened.

“I have a test for the two of you. I must prove one of you for an important task. More important than anything you’ve imagined.”

Questions barraged Wrend. He’d never heard of anything like this. Surely he and Teirn
were
the favorite sons. Surely they
were
unique.

The Master turned and motioned for them to follow. “It’s not safe, here, with cultists still loose. Come with me. We’ll go to safety. And we’ll have to prepare for the feast.”

“You’ll still hold it?” Wrend said. “Despite these seditionists?”

“Of course.” A steely hardness fell over the Master’s eyes as he looked over his shoulder. “They can’t defeat me in the least degree. I’ll move forward as always. Like the rivers flowing, my eternal purposes will never fail.”

He led them up the stairs to the side of the Chapel. Once into the forest, he had to push aside tree branches to get through. Wrend looked at Teirn with an expression of confusion, and Teirn returned the look with a shrug. They followed, moving among and around the tree trunks, having to practically jog to keep up with the Master’s long strides. Not far into the forest, the Master stopped and looked over his shoulder at them.

“Sons,” he said, his face grave, “you should consider yourselves under extreme scrutiny. Don’t make the slightest mistake.”

Wrend shivered at the words, and nodded.

He would obey the Master completely. He would.

The Master turned away and started forward, again. Wrend raised his eyebrow and met Teirn’s gaze. His brother looked at him with such solemnity that Wrend felt like a dead man.

Wrend leaned in close to him. “We still need to talk.”

Teirn nodded. “Yes. As soon as we can. I promise I’ll tell you. You deserve to know what’s going on.”

Chapter 7: Wearing human flesh

As I have learned, the human spirit is very often nothing more than a slave to the human body.

-Leenda

Leenda alternately wanted to cry or scream. It made no sense. Crying accomplished nothing, and screaming would only draw attention. Nevertheless, she had those urges. In fact, she had to repress them often.

She blamed it on her breasts. Things hadn’t started to go haywire with her emotions until her body had begun to develop four years before, at age eleven. Before then, she’d had her human body well in check. But puberty had unleashed a torrent of emotions inside her that threatened not only her, but everyone around her.

Deep in the Wall, she paused at the door to her room, and frowned. Cressa, her roommate, stopped next to her.

“I don’t understand,” said Cressa. “What’s the big problem?”

A third serving girl slid past them, having to turn sideways to make it by in the narrow hallway. Cressa’s skin, usually as pale as the white dress she wore, looked jaundiced in the light from the kerosene lamps. One hung above each door, spaced evenly down the entire length of the hallway to the right. The same light reflected harshly from the smooth stone walls and floor, and similar lanterns hung above the stairwell a little ways down the hall, to the left.

Leenda shrugged. She couldn’t share the reason for her annoyance, no matter how good a friend Cressa was.

“I just—,” said Leenda. “I just want to serve at Athanaric’s table, tonight.”

“We all do,” Cressa said. “It’s natural to want to serve at the highest station.”

Leenda gripped the levered handle of the door and clenched her teeth. “Instead, we’re stuck behind the counter, pulling bread out of the oven and shoveling potatoes into bowls.”

“Athanaric has need for all of us,” Cressa said. “It’s a blessing to even serve here in the Seraglio.”

“I know. It’s just—.” Leenda stopped herself. She couldn’t say it. Cressa wouldn’t believe it, anyway. “Ah, goat guts!”

Cressa frowned at her. In the yellow light, Cressa’s blond hair looked golden. Beautiful, by human standards. But by Leenda’s measure, the blond wasn’t nearly as beautiful as her own red hair.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever heard swear like that. Goat guts? Where did you get that?”

“Nowhere.”

“How come you won’t tell me any of your secrets?”

“I don’t have any secrets.”

“Yes you do. Everyone has secrets. Whether it’s what demigod they have a crush on, or what other serving girl they hate—.”

“Oh, you know who I hate.”

Another pair of serving girls approached them, heading toward the stairwell, and Cressa leaned in close to let them pass. As she did, she whispered to Leenda.

“It’s no secret that you hate Brentna. You could always ask her, you know. She’s scheduled to serve at Athanaric’s table, tonight.”

The serving girls didn’t even greet them as they passed by. Of course not. They were several years older. Leenda had to repress the urge to trip them.

She leaned closer to Cressa and whispered. “I would never do that. I won’t ask any favor from her.”

She’d already asked the three other serving girls waiting on Athanaric’s table if they would switch duties with her that night. They’d all turned her down—some more politely than others—and Brentna was her last option. Evil Brentna. Not really an option.

Rumor had it that Athanaric had invited both Wrend and Teirn to join him at the Reverencing. No one had ever heard of something like that happening, and the entire legion of serving girls chattered about what it possibly meant. Leenda had her own ideas, but hadn’t shared them with even Cressa, because Cressa would never believe her. Of course, Leenda had more information than anyone else. She’d gleaned it seventeen years before, prior to either of the demigods’ births.

She thought she knew what the evening could bring, and she needed to serve at that table. She’d worked seventeen years to be there. She could feel that tonight would turn the destiny of her mate.

She suppressed a scream by clenching her jaw, and tears came to her eyes.

“It just makes me so mad! Why couldn’t
I
be the one they chose to serve at that table?”

Cressa put a hand on her shoulder. “Leenda, you’ve only been here a year. They’re not going to give you the most important duty until you’re one of the most senior serving girls. Give it five years. You’ll be serving at Athanaric’s table then.”

“I can’t wait five years.”

A shout from the stairwell interrupted any more comforting words from Cressa. The voice echoed off of the stone walls from somewhere above, like an angel calling down from heaven. The acoustics in the Wall would ensure that even girls at the far end of the hallway, inside their rooms, would hear.

“Help in the courtyard! Quick! Everyone!”

Cressa gave Leenda a confused look. Together, they turned away from the door and strode toward the stairs. A doorway opened as they passed, and a brown-haired girl stuck her head out.

“What was that about?” she said.

“Not sure,” Leenda said.

The voice from above came again. “We need everyone’s help! Hurry!”

As Leenda and Cressa started to ascend the stairs, doors opened behind them, and serving girls began to pour into the hallway, chattering about what the emergency might be. Leenda hurried up the stairs, taking them two at a time, with Cressa close behind. The stairs opened up to a small foyer, where other serving girls already poured out of the Wall and into the brightness of the courtyard.

Leenda and Cressa joined the babbling flow of dresses and ponytails and stepped out into the small balcony at the top of a flight of six stairs. Exclamations of shock rippled up from the girls that had already entered the courtyard.

Leenda didn’t make it two steps out onto the balcony before stopping. Girls shoved past her, to hurry down the stairs, and in a moment they’d jostled her to one side. She had to grab onto a railing to keep from being knocked over and trampled, and there she stood. Her jaw hung loose.

Cressa continued on down the steps. “What in the name of demigod blood happened here?”

Leenda had passed through the courtyard only fifteen minutes before, and the scores of wagons had sat in rows and columns. Demigods had worked among them, singing in unison. There had been no sign that chaos would soon break loose.

Now, broken or crumbled wagons lay throughout the courtyard. To the right, one of them hung out of a hole it had punched in the second floor of one of the wooden buildings. Another swayed in the tops of trees in the courtyard’s back. Corpses of Caretakers, priests, and serving girls lay throughout the square, mangled and twisted, among bodies of kirana.

And in the center of it all sat the former body of her mate.

Cuchorack.

Only seventeen years before, that body had crackled with life. Its fur had flowed and shone a bright red, and those eyes had sparkled with intelligence. Now, entire swaths of hair had fallen from the body’s chest and legs, revealing leathery red skin. The eyes bore a dull hue. Even the horns had lost their luster.

It sat with laxness—more like a dog in how it tilted its head to one side, and crossed its forepaws. And the tail. No draegon would sit with its tail curled up around its body. A draegon would extend it out straight behind it, or curl it like a snake ready to strike.

She’d once lain next to that body at the end of each day. She’d flown alongside it through the mountains, hunting prey. With it as her companion, she’d built a lair far from human influence, and raised draegon pups.

She clenched her fists and jaw.

Athanaric had done this. The blame lay with him. He’d stripped the soul out of that body and replaced it with the soul of a dog. A dog! In that once majestic body! It was nearly as repulsive as what he’d done with the draegon soul—the soul of her mate.

“Come help!” Cressa said.

She stood next to the base of the stairs, looking up at Leenda. From the buildings along the sides of the courtyard, and from the other doors in the Wall, people began to flow. Other serving girls, priests, and demigods. A murmur of voices filled the area as people moved among the bodies, searching for wounded that could still be helped.

“Leenda!” Cressa said. “Are you coming?”

Leenda nodded and joined the waning flow of serving girls down the stairs, still only really noticing Cuchorack. At the bottom of the stairs, she didn’t plunge into the rubble like the other serving girls. She didn’t follow Cressa.

She stopped.

Enough was enough. For seventeen years she’d gone without her mate—for fifteen of them she’d lived in the body of a human, trying to find out which demigod was Cuchorack. The husk that now bore a dog’s soul was not him. It was merely a shell that had housed a noble soul—a soul that had been taken. Subsequently, she’d shed her own body and taken up that of a human in order to find her mate.

And she would find him. She’d worked hard to reach this point, and tonight she would have the opportunity to find him. If only she could serve at the table where Athanaric, Wrend, and Teirn would dine.

She would have to ask Brentna. She had no choice.

Cressa, kneeling twenty feet away, next to the arm of a priest sticking out from beneath the rubble of a wagon, looked up at her.