It took Ceres a moment to realize that there were two strange things about the place she was walking through. Well, stranger than a patch of countryside in the middle of a cavern complex was in the first place.
One strange thing was the way the visions of the past seemed to have stopped. In the caverns above, they had flickered in and out of existence, showing the final attack by the Ancient Ones on the sorcerers home. Here, the world didnt seem to be caught halfway between two points. Here, it was as peaceful as it was fixed, without the constant shifts that the rest of the place experienced.
The second strange thing was the dome of light that rose up in the heart of it all, shining golden against the greenery of the rest of it. It was the size of a large house, or the tent of some nomad lord, yet it seemed to be composed almost entirely of energy. Looking at it, she thought at first the dome might have been a shield or a wall, but somehow Ceres knew it was more than that. It was a living place, a home.
It was also, she guessed, the place where whatever she sought might be found. For almost the first time since shed set foot in the sorcerers home, Ceres dared to feel a flicker of hope. Perhaps this was the place where she would recover her powers.
Perhaps she would be able to help save Haylon after all.
CHAPTER THREE
As she sailed in the direction of Felldusts Bone Coast, Jeva suffered the strangest sensation of her life: she worried that she was going to die.
It was a new sensation for her. It wasnt something that her people were used to experiencing. It certainly wasnt something that shed ever wanted. It probably amounted to a kind of heresy, floating along, seeing the possibility of joining with the waiting dead and actually worrying about it. Her kind embraced death, even welcomed it as a chance to finally be one with the great wash of their ancestors. They did not fear the risk of it.
Yet that was exactly what Jeva was feeling now, as she saw the faint line of Felldusts shore appearing on the horizon. She feared the thought of being cut down for what she had to say. She feared being sent to join those ancestors, rather than being able to help on Haylon. She wondered what had changed.
The answer to that was easy enough: Thanos.
Jeva found herself thinking of him as she sailed toward land, watching the seabirds that gathered in floating flocks as they waited for their next chance at food. Before she had met him, she had been well, perhaps not the same as all her people, because most of them didnt feel the need to wander all the way to Port Leeward and beyond. Even so, she had felt the same as them, been the same as them. She certainly didnt feel fear.
It wasnt fear for herself, exactly, although she knew perfectly well that her own life was at stake. She was more worried about what would happen to those left on Haylon if she didnt make it back; to Thanos.
That was another kind of heresy. The living didnt matter except as far as they were useful to fulfill the wishes of the dead. If a whole island of people died at the hands of an invader, that was a glorious honor for them, not something to treat as an impending disaster. All that mattered in life was fulfilling the wishes of the dead and achieving an end for oneself that was suitably glorious. The speakers of the dead had made that clear. Jeva had even heard the whispers of the dead herself, when the smoke rose from the seeing pyres.
She sailed on, ignoring that, feeling the pull of the waves against the tiller as she kept her small boat on course for her home. Now she found herself hearing other voices, arguing for compassion, for saving Haylon, for helping Thanos.
She had seen him risk his own life to help others for no good reason that Jeva could see. When she had been tied to a Felldust ship like a figurehead, waiting to be flayed, he had come to rescue her. When they had fought side by side, his shield had been her shield in a way never seen with her people.
She had seen in Thanos something to admire. Maybe more than admire. She had seen someone who was in the world to do the best that they could there, not just to find the most perfect way of exiting it. The new voices Jeva was hearing told her that this was the way she ought to live, and that going to help Haylon was a part of it.
The trouble was that Jeva knew these only came from within herself. She shouldnt have been listening to them so strongly. Her people certainly wouldnt.
Whats left of them, Jeva said, the wind carrying her words away.
Her tribes village was gone. Now she was going to go to another gathering place and ask another clutch of her people for their lives. Jeva looked up at the way the wind billowed the small sail of her boat, out at the play of foam over the ocean; anything to keep from thinking about what she would have to do to make that happen. Even so, the words came up, as inescapable as the end of life.
She would have to claim to speak for the dead.
It had taken the words of the dead to get them to Delos, although Jeva and Thanos had not claimed to speak for them with that. But Jeva couldnt just leave this to the speakers with this. There was too much of a chance that they would say no, and then what would happen?
The death of her friend. She couldnt allow that. Even if it meant doing the unthinkable.
Jeva guided her boat closer to shore, working her way in between the rocks and the wrecks that had foundered on them. This wasnt the beach nearest her old home, but a place a little further along the coast, in another of the great gathering places. They had still managed to pick the wrecks clean, though. Jeva smiled at that, taking a little pride in it.
Boats came out onto the water to meet her. Mostly, these were light things, canoes with outriggers, designed to intercept what was obviously not one of the Bone Folks craft. If Jeva had not obviously been one of them, she might have found herself fighting for her life then. Instead, they crowded around, laughing and joking the way they never did around strangers.
A beautiful boat, sister. How many men did you kill for it?
Kill? another said. They probably went to the dead at the sight of her from fear!
Theyd go to the dead at the sight of your ugliness, Jeva shot back, and the men laughed with her. It was how things were done here.
How things were done mattered. Her people might seem strange to outsiders, but they had their own rules, their own standards of behavior. Now, Jeva was going to go to them, and if she claimed to speak for the dead, then she would be breaking the most fundamental of those rules. She could be cut off from the communion of the dead for breaking it, slain without her ashes being mingled with the pyres to be consumed.
She brought her boat in to the shoreline, jumping from it and pulling it up onto the beach. There were more of her folk waiting there. A girl ran to her with a funerary urn, offering her a pinch of the villages ashes. Jeva took it, tasting it. Symbolically, she was one of the village now, a part of their communion with their ancestors.
Welcome, priestess, one of the men on the beach said. He was an old man with papery skin, but he still deferred to Jeva because of the markings that proclaimed she had undergone the rites. What brings a speaker of the dead to our shores?
Jeva stood there, considering her answer. It would have been so easy then to claim that she spoke for those who were gone. She had seen her share of visions; when shed been a girl, there were those who had thought that she would be a great speaker for the dead. One of the older speakers had proclaimed as much, saying that she would speak words that would shake her whole people.