The Hidden Goddess (48 page)

Emily rolled up to her feet. With an angry cry, she kicked over the bucket of rusty-smelling water; it rattled and spun across the stone floor.

“Kick all you like, there isn’t any way out,” Mrs. Blotgate said. “This is the Temple of Itztlacoliuhqui, the Goddess of Obsidian Knives.”

At the far side of the room were two tall doors made of hundreds of human bones arranged in decorative patterns. The doors were lit by torches that made the skulls seem as if they were moving. Emily did not go over to these doors, she could feel something terrible behind them, something that waited. She went the other direction instead, where the walls were tenebrous and indistinct, and she could feel even colder air rushing up from dark caverns too dark to see into.

“I wouldn’t go over
there
,” Lieutenant Utisz called, his voice ragged as sandpaper. “Bad things over there.”

Shivering, feeling the eyes of bad things on her back, Emily returned to the light. She rubbed the puckered stump of her wrist with her good hand. They’d even taken her prosthetic.

Mrs. Blotgate, still kneeling in the center of the room, watched Emily pace.

“Miss Edwards, do you know just exactly how hard it is to bring a man back from the dead?”

Emily did not favor her with a reply.

“You wouldn’t think it,” Mrs. Blotgate continued, “but reclaiming one pitiful human life from the oceans of eternity is a task to challenge even a goddess.”

“Maybe that’s a hint,” Emily snapped. “That there are some things even a goddess shouldn’t mess around with.”

Mrs. Blotgate went on, as if Emily hadn’t spoken.

“Every human man has thirteen unique aspects, each aspect finding its natural seat in one individual organ. When he dies, those aspects are scattered, seeking rebirth. A man is never reborn whole, Miss Edwards. He is reborn in pieces. Finding these pieces of Xiuhunel has been the Temple’s primary employment for almost four hundred years. But now, we have all of him.” She touched a golden cage that hung from the necklace around her throat. It contained a dried heart, Emily noticed with disgust. Other golden cages were spaced along the necklace, each one containing a different piece of desiccated flesh.

“I guess one of the aspects is two-timing you,” Emily noted. “You’ve only got twelve there.”

“Aren’t you a clever little saucebox?” Mrs. Blotgate hissed, annoyance finally getting the better of her. “For someone who’s already dead.”

“I’m not dead yet, you vile bitch,” Emily snarled. “And I’m clever enough to know that destroying the world, just to bring back one man, is proof that your Goddess is as dumb as a sackful of hammers.”

Mrs. Blotgate cringed, as if anticipating vengeance to rain down upon them all. When it did not, she leveled an acid gaze on Emily. “Clearly, Miss Edwards, you’ve got a lot to learn about love.”

“Not from you,” Emily said.

At that moment, the earth rumbled around them, like a great black beast growling low in its chest. The bones of the door rattled, the floor beneath them seemed to ripple. Mrs. Blotgate closed her eyes, releasing a long sigh.

“The Black Glass Goddess summons me,” she said, rising swiftly. “I am to have the honor of being her last vessel.”

Utisz made a noise of desperate protest, and was at her side in two long strides.

“You?” he murmured, grabbing her slender hands. “No … not you! Please! Her vessels always die, burned up by the force of the Goddess’ spirit …”

She trailed a hand along his cheek, silencing him.

“In the world remade, there will be power enough to preserve this body, to preserve all who are faithful to her.” She smiled. “You will join me there soon, dear boy. Do not fear, you will be remembered in her service.”

Utisz turned her palm, pressed his lips against it fervently.

“Mrs. Blotgate,” he said in a choked voice. He might have said something more, had the woman not pressed her mouth against his in a deep, attenuated kiss.

At that moment the doors of bone opened, swinging wide on hinges that creaked with a low groaning. Without looking at him again, she passed beyond them into the darkness.

Utisz watched her go, his eyes heavy with longing.

“Let me guess,” Emily said. “You were a cadet at the Erebus Academy. I hear she takes a new one every year.”

Utisz turned slowly. He smiled at Emily, a tight, strange smile. Then, with a furious motion of his clenched fist, he made the knotted cord around her throat slide tight. Emily coughed, sputtering as she fell to her knees. He came to stand over her, watching as she squirmed helplessly at his feet.

“You are nobody, and soon you will be nothing,” he rasped. She could barely hear his voice over the blood rushing in her ears. He moved his fist another fraction, making the cord around her throat tighten again. Darkness sparkled behind Emily’s eyeballs, darkness and pain, and it felt as if the cord around her throat would slice her head from her body.

“The Black Glass Goddess may be my divine mistress,” he said, “but Alcmene Blotgate is the only woman I have ever loved. The only woman who has ever loved me.”

Initiate
, a voice commanded, a voice old and ancient. It reverberated in thought and in fact, like a million screams screamed all at once.

With a flick of his wrist, Utisz slackened the hold, but did not release it.

Bring her
.

The Calendar Chamber seemed to have no walls, it extended so far around and above them. All around, brazen tripods belched thick dizzy smoke into the air. But the floor
had captured Emily’s attention first. It was a vast circular pattern carved into the slick black stone, and in the channels of the pattern ran Black Exunge, bubbling and stinking. She walked over the channels carefully, acutely aware that her feet were bare and even the tiniest touch of Black Exunge could fatally transform her.

We have been told you understand true love
.

The Goddess’ words, resonating in her mind, drew Emily’s eyes toward the center of the room, where a slender shaft of sunlight illuminated a deep, bowl-shaped pit. At the edge of the pit knelt a woman in a skirt of embroidered red silk.

Emily recognized her immediately. It was Alcmene Blotgate’s body, of course … but that was not whom Emily recognized. This thing kneeling at the edge of the pit was not Alcmene Blotgate. It was not even human. Power and sorrow rose from it, smoldering from sinuously carved shoulders. It was the Goddess of Obsidian Knives.

Emily squinted through the drifting smoke, looking into the pit. There, protruding from the pit’s earthen sides was the thick gnarled root through which Zeno’s spirit had escaped. And there was the mound of flesh that she recognized from her Cassandras. The thing Zeno had been thrown onto to die. The thing that could transmute Black Exunge into chrysohaeme—the engine of apocalypse. A pile of slick, healthy flesh in her vision, now it was gray and sickly, like a pile of badly cured leather.

It was not always as you see it now
, the Goddess said.
Before we grew it, and loved it, and nurtured it, it was very small. A mere cluster of cells on the tip of a sharp knife, slid between the ribs of a traitor
.

… A black blade, sliding between Stanton’s ribs
, Emily remembered.

A little piece of his liver. The organ that gives a burned Warlock his most unique abilities. The ability to channel chrysohaeme—and the ability to transmute Exunge. We did not need his service. We did not need his soul. We needed only this
.

“Then
that’s
the thirteenth organ,” Emily said. “The thirteenth piece of Xiuhunel.”

It is the most important piece. The one we will use to reunite all the others
.

“You’re not going to reunite anything,” Emily said with relish. “Zeno has broken it. He’s broken your engine of apocalypse and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

The Goddess rose in a dark blur, teeth flashing white behind the sneering mask with its huge curving fangs of yellow ivory. She was huge, her edges shimmering and indistinct.

Credomancers
, she growled, the low resonance of her voice making the pile of leathery flesh behind her shudder.
Always trying to believe inconvenient things into being untrue
.

“I’m not a credomancer,” Emily said, her voice trembling despite her best efforts to control it. “I know what the truth is.”

Indeed
. Emily felt the Goddess trying to push into her mind, to explore her soft places.
You are the vessel of Ososolyeh. You see the truth through her eyes
.

“I see that your Liver is dying,” Emily said. “That is all the truth I need.”

But it is not all the truth there is. It is gravely injured, but it can be healed. It can be healed by the blood of the man from whom it was taken. The blood of my beloved consort’s last rebirth. The blood of the Thirteenth Incarnation
.

At that moment, a voice rang through the great Calendar Chamber.

“Itztlacoliuhqui, Misery of Humankind, Goddess of Black Glass. Let me enter!” Stanton’s voice echoed through the Calendar Chamber, resonating off the cold vitreous walls. “I have come to destroy you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Thirteenth Incarnation

Stanton materialized before the teocalli, seeming to form from the resonant syllables of the words he had spoken. His form glittered, half opaque; he was nothing more than an illusion, Emily realized. To truly enter this place, he would have to obtain her express permission …

Destroy us?
The Goddess trilled amusement as she regarded Stanton’s spectral form.
On our own hallowed ground? You have grown more powerful since last we saw you, but no less foolish
.

“Let me enter,” Stanton repeated.

“Don’t do it, it’s a trap!” Emily screamed. “The Liver … it’s yours! Zeno almost killed it, but now they need your blood …”

A flick of Utisz’ wrist, and the knotted cord around her throat tightened like a hangman’s noose. She staggered forward, choking. Seizing her, Utisz twisted her arm behind her back and forced her to the ground, slamming her head hard against the cold slick stone. He placed a knee on her neck, pinning her immobile.

Stanton did not look at Emily. His ghostly eyes remained fixed on the Goddess’ impassive mask.

“Let me enter,” he said a third time.

Enter then
, she commanded diffidently, and Stanton’s ghostlike image became heavy and solid, magic flying away from him like smoke from a blown candle.

“Fool,” Emily rasped, her face still pressed against the cold stone. Utisz had released the ligature around her throat to allow
her to continue breathing, but his knee pressed heavily on the back of her neck. “Oh, Mr. Stanton, you damn fool.”

Kneel
, the Goddess commanded.

Stanton dropped to his knees heavily, as if his long legs had been kicked out from under him.

Bow
, she commanded.

Stanton lowered himself in a deep, slow bow. He let his forehead rest against the stone at her feet for a long time. She did not command him to rise, but after a while he did, kneeling stiffly, staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched.

“Why did you come?” Emily moaned, despair washing over her.

“Because I love you,” he said very softly. “And because I have to save the world.”

“You could have saved the world if you’d stayed away!”

Nothing could have saved your world
, the Goddess said.
This is destiny. This is fate
. She paused, gently running her fingers through Stanton’s hair.
This is true love conquering all
.

Then, in a movement of dark smoke and obsidian sheen too quick for the eye to comprehend, the Goddess flayed the shirt from Stanton’s body. Strips of cloth fluttered to the ground around him; he was not even scratched. Emily sucked in air involuntarily. On Stanton’s slender white chest, over the place where his heart was, blazed a garish red birthmark. A birthmark in the shape of a woman’s outstretched hand.

The mark of our claim. Did you never see it?
The Goddess traced a glass-knife finger over the birthmark.
How did this truth escape you? The truth that he could never be yours? He was always ours. From the time he was born and from all the times he died before
.

“I am not yours!” Stanton’s face twisted with angry confusion. “I am not Xiuhunel, or even a piece of him! I’m nobody … I ran from you!”

“Would she have let you come back if you were nobody?” Emily said softly, the words catching in pain as Utisz twisted her arm harder.

“Let her up, you sadistic bastard,” Stanton hissed.

Utisz made no move to comply. Instead, he twisted Emily’s arm further—slowly.

“Stop it!” Stanton shouted. “Please!”

Emily clenched her jaw to refuse Utisz the satisfaction of her pain, but it was no use. First she whimpered, then she begged. Then she screamed.

Stop
.

The word resounded through the Temple, ringing off the walls of black glass, making the ground shake and the braziers clatter. But this time, it was not the Goddess who spoke. It was Stanton.