Jay Lake - Endurance

But even then, the Dancing Mistress had introduced me to the boy-priest Septio, who would later father my child. And Mother Iron, that chthonic force who seemed to me to perhaps be the soul of Copper Downs. Like Desire, a larger being wrapped in a smaller body. A woman sees a goddess much as a fish sees the fingers that drop food into its bowl-with no notion of the vastness looming beyond.

I did not deny the divine. For the love of all that was holy, I held regular conversations with the divine. I had made a god.

Desire had been something more. She was to the godhood of the Lily Goddess or Blackblood or Choybalsan or Endurance as they were to my personhood. It occurred to me just then how very odd it was that I had been on a first-name basis with four different gods and goddesses, when most of the priestesses in the Temple of the Silver Lily prayed all their lives for the simplest visitation from Her.

Still, the titanics were so far beyond human experience. Their roots were back in the deepest time, before cities and farms and the very tongues of men. To see a titanic manifest…

The sheer thought boggled me. I risked sainthood if anyone knew of this. If these visitations continued, I risked my own sanity.

I needed counsel from deeper in time. Previously I’d rejected the Factor’s ghost, when contemplating how to move against Blackblood with the Eyes of the Hills in my possession. But he was the oldest person I could talk to in this city. Erio was tied to his tomb in the High Hills, so far as I knew, and besides was only a whispering voice in the shadows. I had known the Factor in life, at least a little, and held power over him in death, as it had been me who pushed him through the black door in his guise as the Duke.

Further, when I’d last seen the Factor, he’d been standing with Mother Iron. I knew she was much older than any of us. Possibly older than Copper Downs itself. Deeper in time, indeed.

A titanic had touched the city. A goddess had died. I still had my worries, but I strongly desired wisdom as to the meaning of these signs and portents.

If Surali and her plots had brought about the death of Marya through some illicit alliance with the pardine Revanchists, that signified very ill indeed for the Lily Goddess. And the Bittern Court would little concern itself with my goddess’ fall. Quite the opposite, regardless of the consequences. No, I could not send the Selistani embassy home. I needed to stop them here.

Thank the goddess I now carried the Eyes of the Hills. Surali and the Revanchists could not seal whatever bargain they’d made without these, I was confident.

My thoughts were circling again. I slipped into an alley and located an entrance to Below.

I strode through an echoing gallery I had visited only a few times. This was not among my usual precincts, from the years when I ran beneath the streets of the city nightly. Coldfire gleamed in abundance on rough-chiseled walls, and I could see wide, irregular pillars holding up the roof atop which this part of the city squatted.

One of the old copper-mine galleries, before those ancients had delved deeper and opened tunnels into the darkest places as they played out their seams. Not that any place beneath the stones wasn’t dark enough to drive any thoughtful woman to the edge of terror.

I listened, as one does Below. Water dripped in a dozen places or more. The air seemed to breathe slightly. No footfalls, no clink of metal, no shallower breathing of meaty lungs. That didn’t rule out ghosts, avatars, or the other supernatural detritus that clung to the underside of this city like currants in a scone.

But then, it was ghosts and avatars I’d been searching for.

Long experience suggested that calling out names was an invitation to unpleasantness. So I headed toward the machines that bulked oily and rusted in the spaces beneath the Temple of Endurance. The Factor or Mother Iron either one could find me far more easily than I could find them.

And right then, to their perceptions, I must have reeked of the scent of divine magic. Even without the touch of Desire, the Eyes of the Hills would draw them like a fire on the ocean at night.

Traveling Below was very much a matter of listening, smelling, and thinking with senses other than the eyes. There was a lesson to be drawn from that process, which was surely part of the reason the Dancing Mistress had taken me Below in the first instance. I walked with lids half shut, hearing how my careful, soft footfalls echoed in the velvety darkness beyond the pallid, witchy glow of the coldfire. The damp, luminescent moss clung mucky to my fingers. I knew that in the complete, natural darkness of Below my eyes would soon enough invent terrors of their own if I did not give them soft shadows to see around the corners of.

When something sparked beyond the pale shell of my coldfire, my heart lurched. I’d been expecting a visitor, wanting one, but still…

Mother Iron’s eyes as always resembled distant furnaces, fires banked on a hillside at dusk. I had never seen her face, only her cowl, but I still felt as if I could reach past the hem of her garment and touch another world. Relaxing my pace, I slowed to meet her.

The Factor’s ghost was not about. This surprised me slightly. They’d been together the last time I’d seen them. Others moved through this place, but the usual practice was to avoid if possible, or pass quickly and quietly if not. Only those of us who had business here met on purpose.

“Greetings, Mother Iron,” I said as politely as I could. The Dancing Mistress had made it very clear to me that this was one of the old, great powers of Copper Downs, for all that she kept herself cloaked and damped down to nearly a cinder.

“Green.” Her voice carried that same rustiness I had always associated with Mother Iron, a sense of something vast breathing from far away. And hot, as well.

“I had hoped to meet you here.” I could not decide if I was a supplicant, a petitioner, or even in some strange way a peer to her. Mother Iron always moved to her own will, and seemed utterly indifferent to whoever and whatever surrounded her.

“You bear the weight of history.”

My right hand strayed to my belly. For one odd moment, I thought she meant the child. Then I realized she must be referring to the Eyes of the Hills.

“History threatens to return and weigh upon us all, Mother Iron.”

She huffed. A sigh? I waited, to see what else she might say. Speaking with her was something like playing the traveler’s game. Finally: “That price was already paid. More than once.”

“I would not know what was paid before, Mother Iron. I only know what is balanced in the scales this day. And this day I have a problem older than the time in which it comes to me.”

“Older time comes for you. The elder days of Copper Downs seek to return.”

That made some sense. Erio was stirring for reasons beyond the latest problems in the succession of seats on the Interim Council. Of course, that kingly ghost could have been yapping his head off for centuries and I would not have known the difference. Somehow I suspected that Ilona would have understood, and mentioned it. “I have taken these gems from a fool, who would have used them to bribe greater fools. But they are not of this city.”

She rumbled again: “That price was already paid.”

Softly, I said, “I know. And Desire rises here. Her daughter Marya is slain.”

“Another power from an older time. Only the oldest wisdoms can save this city from its oldest threats.”

With that nearly pointless advice, she turned away and vanished between one step and the next. Whether it was only the darkness swallowing her and the black cowl she wore, or a more ghostly disappearance, I could not say. Most of the time, ordinary folk in ordinary bodies were sadly outnumbered Below.