Goddess Liv Savell (best autobiographies to read .TXT) 📖

was too flexible, too cunning, and changeful to understand a stone so rigid as granite or marble. He had simply manipulated the earth and water beneath these stones to raise them up, rather than command the rock itself. It would be simple enough to return the dirt and water back to their original places and let the boulders settle into their homes.

Enyo lifted her hands to the sky as though she were the supplicant rather than the God, but when she turned them over, pressed back towards the earth, it was Illygad that obeyed her. She pressed. And pressed. And pressed. She bore down on the earth, and it trembled. The stones groaned.  The soft limestone in this part of the wall started to tumble and break. Chest-sized chunks broke off and crashed down around them, but Enyo persisted.

A fissure opened up at her feet, but the Goddess only laughed at the trick and stomped her foot. “You won’t distract me like that!” Her arms trembled, burning with the effort of overpowering Illygad. But she did have this power. She had raised the very mountains on this ungrateful continent. It had been hers and would be again. “Back. You. Go!”

With a final grunt of effort, she shoved her hands down past her hips, past her thighs. She pressed down until her fingers buried in the earth below her. With an alarming squelch, the boulders sunk below the mud. One moment there, the next gone. Rhosan quivered a moment longer and then steadied.

The ridge of stone still stood, though incomplete, a jagged-edged cut open before them wide enough for the group to enter abreast. Framed in that rock border, Caerthleon’s walls were visible. They had their way in.

Enyo’s fingers fiddled with the hilt of Calamity, where it purred against her skin. She didn’t want to be rid of the blade, but the idea of fighting her own child with it… It wasn’t right. She could remember the feel of another Companion Weapon, eons ago, wielded against her, pressed to her flesh. Enyo released Calamity’s hilt.

Delyth had no weapon, and she needed to be able to face Mascen. Calamity could withstand a volcano.

She held up Calamity with a vague nod.

“Don’t forget our bargain, Ba’oto,” she growled, shoving Calamity into Delyth’s limp hand. “She’s a good blade. She’ll keep you sharp.” For a moment, Enyo swayed, uncertain if she should say something more. Should she wish Delyth good luck? Bless her? In the end, Enyo sort of nodded sagely. “Fight well.”

༄

Delyth took the blade but did not reply. Of course, she remembered the oath. But she did not intend to fulfill it.

Turning, the warrior strapped Calamity to its familiar position against her spine. She lifted Etienne so they might launch into the air, over the stone walls of Caerthleon and towards the tallest building housed within. Belatedly, Delyth thought she ought to feel something of the sword’s presence, some urge for blood or destruction. But there was nothing. Perhaps it was sated from its time with Enyo, or else her own darkness outweighed that of the sword.

She set Etienne down among the gilded crenelations atop what must have been a temple before Mascen had taken control of the city. He looked strangely small among them, his pale skin wan and his almost white hair standing on end.

Delyth turned away. The mage might appear frail, but he would do fine. Already, he stepped towards the edge of his perch, searching the streets below for signs of the Gods entering the city.

“Delyth,” he said, his voice halting her when she would have leaped back into the air. Mutely she looked back at him. “Stay safe.”

She turned and dropped from the ledge.

And landed in a cobblestone alley, tucking her wings in. They lay in gentle folds against the sword, familiar rather than uncomfortable.

The streets were empty, and still, they felt too close, hemming Delyth in, towering above her. It would be difficult to take flight here with her wingspan without clipping the rough sides of stone buildings or tangling herself in the lines strung overhead, draped with clothing. In all her life, Delyth had never been in a place where she could not easily get into the air. She took a deep breath, then another. She had to start forward, to find Mascen and rid this land of him. She had to free herself from a life of service to a carnal savage. But even with that motivation, even knowing the importance of her task, Delyth struggled to take that first step with all the rock staring down at her like the perpendicular bars of some lunatic’s prison.

But she did take that first step. She gained speed until she was jogging through the streets in that old, familiar pace that had been drilled into her during the long days of training at Glynfford. She could run like this all day.

At the first crossroads, Delyth placed her hand on the rune Etienne had made. “Which direction?”

“Left. The Gods have made it to the gate.”

Delyth put the rising sun over her left shoulder and flung herself further into the city.

❂

The sky above Caerthleon’s gate was still mostly grey in the light of early morning. Enyo could see nothing else behind it: not the tops of roofs or temple spires. The wall was too tall, rising fifty feet into the air, with no entrance but the seasoned oak gate before them.

A sparkling rocket sizzled upwards from some point Enyo could not see, trailing streamers of white and blue flame. The mage was in place, and thesegates were the only paltry barrier between the Gods and Mascen’s den.

Enyo pushed against one experimentally and listened to it groan, the wood of the crossbar petrified with age. Maoz’s hands came into view next to hers, blunt fingers square-tipped and calloused. Esha’s slender and shapely next to his. The gate crunched in protest as they heaved. Pale, ghost-hands braced on her free side, and Enyo knew Aryus had joined the breach.

With that last