Song of the Earth: Book Four of the Firebird's Daughter series Read online

  Song of the Earth

  Book Four of the Firebird’s Daughter Series

  By Kyrja

  Dedication

  For me, because I want to know what happens.

  Text Copyright @2019, Kyrja

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Cover Design: SelfPubBookCovers.com/blinkblanc

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – Denit’s Discovery

  Chapter Two – Out of Balance

  Chapter Three – Rot and Poison

  Chapter Four – Secret Plans

  Chapter Five – Sea God Returns

  Chapter Six – Missed Opportunity

  Chapter Seven – Nieva Knows

  Chapter Eight – Jonath’s Blade

  Chapter Nine – Memories and Nightmares

  Chapter Ten – Outside of Time

  Chapter Eleven – Three is Better

  Chapter Twelve – Ancient History

  Chapter Thirteen – P’onyem Returns

  Chapter Fourteen – Capture and Release

  Chapter Fifteen – Giya’s Apprentice

  Chapter Sixteen – The Beast Place

  Chapter Seventeen – Sabbah’s Betrayal

  Chapter Eighteen – Yakuza Sings

  Chapter Nineteen – Qoraa’s Journal

  Chapter Twenty – Water Dragon

  Chapter Twenty-One – Memories and Accusations

  Chapter Twenty-Two – War in Bila

  Chapter Twenty-Three – Death and Hiding

  Chapter Twenty-Four – Traveling within the Song

  Chapter Twenty-Five – Palace Death Spell

  Chapter Twenty-Six – Fixing Time

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – Symbols and Stones

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – Splitting Time

  Chapter Twenty-Nine – Not Yet Time

  Chapter Thirty – Giya’s Confession

  Chapter Thirty-One – Chared’s Sacrifice

  Chapter Thirty-Two – Step by Step

  Chapter Thirty-Three – Sea God Rising

  Chapter Thirty-Four – Tyran’s Choice

  Chapter Thirty-Five – Death and Rebirth

  Chapter Thirty-Six - Badala

  Chapter Thirty-Seven – Portals through Time

  Chapter Thirty-Eight – Sharing the Moon

  Glossary

  People

  Chapter One – Denit’s Discovery

  Denit looked up at the sun and grimaced. It wasn’t where she knew it should be. Oh, it certainly looked like it was exactly where it should be overhead, but not here, on the ground, standing on the planet. Not only that, she could see it moving west with her own two (mostly) human eyes. She had been right then; time moved differently in this part of the world. She sighed, shaking her head. She had a feeling in her very bones that she wasn’t going to like the answers she was going to have to find, but she knew that if anyone would have them, it would be the woman sitting on the rock across the barren field from her. She had hoped for a joyous reunion once she saw Giya again, but it was all too obvious that wasn’t going to be the case.

  With every fiber in her being, Denit knew Giya was aware of her arrival, and yet she sat there, facing away from her, her shoulders slumped, giving the appearance she was staring off into the distance. She should have been standing there, her hands tucked into the sleeves of her robes, with a smile on her face. Too, there was an air about her of being unkempt. Never, in the hundreds of years she had known the Earth Goddess, had Giya ever had a single hair out of place. Denit felt her mouth turn down in a frown and her muscles tense as a feeling of foreboding washed through her.

  Delaying wasn’t going to get her the answers she sought, but still she hesitated. Much, she supposed, as any human woman would do when greeting their mother when it was obvious the mother wasn’t as eager to see them as they were to see their mother. At least, she consoled herself, she wasn’t concerned that she had done something to displease Giya. She almost wished that was the case, so that she could simply throw herself at her mother’s feet and beg forgiveness. She felt a small smile steal across her face at the image her thoughts invoked, then shook her head. No, there was something wrong with Giya, which meant something far worse than a simple family disagreement.

  When she finally willed herself to take the first step, she was surprised to hear the crunching of the sand and gravel beneath her boots. So surprised, she paused to look around her. She’d been so intent on finding Giya, she hadn’t truly looked at her surroundings. In her celestial form, she’d been over this part of the world every single day for months now. It had, in fact, been the obvious strangeness in the growth patterns of the trees and other vegetation which had drawn her attention. But once she’d seen Giya, she hadn’t paid attention to where she was at all. Swallowing in a suddenly-dry throat, she was shocked to see that it looked as if every living thing had been destroyed. The ground was bare, and where she knew a thriving forest had grown just a short time ago, there was nothing but a few scattered stumps of once-proud trees strewn about. Even they were cracked and shattered, with nothing to tell the story of what had happened to the trunks, branches, and leaves. Not even the dead or dying leaves which should have fallen or been stripped from the trees if they had been felled by humans. Not a single twig nor blade of grass lay between her and Giya, who remained staring off into the distance.

  Shaking off the dread she felt crawling up her spine, she walked purposefully across the bare ground, noticing it was more sand than soil, until she was no more than five strides away from the Earth Goddess. And still Giya had not responded nor even looked up.

  Although the word “Mother” was on her tongue and in her heart, Denit found herself calling the Earth Goddess by the name she had always called her. “Giya,” she said gently, wanting to reach out to touch her, but curling her hands into balls so she did not, “I am here. Will you talk to me?”

  “Youni said you would come,” she replied, still not turning towards Denit.

  “Who is Youni and how would she know I was coming if I hadn’t decided until just now?”

  Denit wasn’t expecting silence, but when Giya didn’t answer right away, she waited, convinced more than ever there was something terribly wrong with her. Thinking about the repercussions for the entire planet and all the people on it if there truly was something wrong with the Earth Goddess, Denit felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She was unable to control the look of fear she knew flashed across her face, though, when Giya finally turned her head to look at her.

  Much of the flesh of her face was sunken, with the skin completely wasted away from beneath her right eye, leaving the entire, milky eyeball exposed. Was she blind in that eye? How was that possible? Her face looked positively skeletal, as if her flesh was melting away from the skull beneath it. Her limp, graying hair hung in strings, and her lips were cracked with evidence of dried blood in three places on her bottom lip.

  “Youni is the rooster,” Giya said, stretching out her hand to point, revealing an arm that was far too thin with dried and peeling skin loosely wrapped around the bones. Her hand was blistered and bruised with swollen knuckles.

  Taking a knee beside her, Denit took Giya’s hand in her own, feeling how cold the skin was to her touch. Seeking out her eyes, she asked, “Giya, please, tell me what has happened to you.” She noticed the hitch in her voice, but was unable to still her racing heart. She was
terrified. She watched as the goddess closed her eyes while taking a deep, steadying breath and it seemed to Denit that she even tried to smile when she opened her eyes and tried to speak. But it was obviously too much of an effort. Giya closed her eyes again, shaking her head back and forth with small, jerking motions.

  Denit wanted to gather her up in her arms and take her far from here, to help her to heal, but she had a feeling it wasn’t going to be that easy. Something was holding her here, she was sure of it, or she would have already left. Giya was the planet and the planet was her, but more than that, Giya took grave responsibility for her people. All of the people. They were what fueled the joy in her every movement and moved her to create a perfect balance throughout the smallest detail of life.

  “… turtle …” she heard Giya whisper. She waited for more, watching as Giya’s thin chest rose and fell several times, laboring to simply keep breathing. Denit watched her lips, in case she tried to say something, but didn’t have the breath to say it out loud. All the while her heart was screaming at her that Giya couldn’t – absolutely could not – be dying. It was impossible. She had seen the entirety of the planet day after day and knew that if Giya was as near to death as her physical body seemed to be, then the planet itself would be nearly empty of life.

  “Don’t worry,” she heard a voice behind her say. Denit spun around, coming quickly to her feet, ready to unleash a surge of energy if necessary, but kept it in check when she saw a young girl standing there. She didn’t come any closer, but kept talking. “She’ll be all right again before long. It’s just the wasting time.”

  “Wasting time?” Denit felt her face crumple into a puzzled frown. “Who are you?” she asked, watching the girl closely. She couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen years old, Denit was sure. She was thin, but in a way that was healthy, not gaunt and shrunken as Giya was. That bothered Denit. Deeply. There was more here than met the eye. Something dangerous for a goddess to be affected, but not a mortal.

  “Oh!” the girl giggled nervously. “My name is Sina.”

  “Do you live here?” Denit asked, purposefully trying to ease the muscles of her face so she wasn’t scowling at the girl.

  “I do now,” she answered, shrugging.

  “What is this “wasting time?” Denit asked, feeling impatience growing within her. She hadn’t ever been one for guessing games, and she had a feeling this girl was playing with her. She automatically scolded herself for her thoughts though, reminding herself that every situation didn’t call for anger. Drawing an uneasy breath, and wondering why she felt so off-balance, she stole a glance back at Giya. Only to discover she was gone. No – her robes were still there, but they had fallen to the ground in a heap. Snatching them up from the ground, as if she expected to find her mother hiding underneath them, she clasped them to her chest, confirming what she had already known – Giya was gone. There was nothing at all to indicate she had ever been sitting on the rock. No pile of bones or disturbed soil. Nothing.

  When she turned back around to confront the girl, Denit discovered that she, too, had vanished.

  “This is insane!” she shouted. There was nowhere for either one of them to be hiding. There were no trees, bushes, undergrowth; nothing. She was standing in the middle of a field of dirt with dozens of broken tree stumps and one rock.

  “Fine!” she yelled, throwing Giya’s robes to the ground. “It’s a trick then. They were never here. Someone is going to pay for this,” she growled. That’s when she saw the rooster come out from behind the rock. She was tempted to kill it on the spot to satisfy her anger, but Giya had said a rooster had told her she was coming. Denit shook her head. No matter the “interesting” and overlong childhood she’d had, and all the events that had transpired since, there were still times when she would have preferred to be nothing more than a simple, human woman. This “god” business was tiring. If her suspicion was right, then it was the rooster who had lured her here for one reason or another. And that rooster wasn’t likely to be a simple chicken.

  “Fine!” she said again, only this time under her breath. Let the games begin. She purposefully walked away from the rooster, not bothering to decide which direction to go in, other than away from it. She was a goddess after all, and wasn’t likely to be able to be hurt or killed very easily. And just to make sure … Denit ignited the power within her, instantly turning to flame, then kept walking, daring the rooster to follow her.

  * * * * * * * *

  Sina had nearly unghosted when the Sun Goddess set herself on fire. She hadn’t been expecting that! In fact, she still had her hand over her heart, trying to catch her breath. She hadn’t been that frightened in a long, long time. For a brief moment, she wondered if Ozahm would be a match for her or not. But then she realized that it didn’t really matter which of them “won” the coming battle. Either way, she would be released from this “time bubble” and would get on with her life. At least she hoped so. She had a lot of catching up to do, and was eager to find out if she was, indeed, the last living Fire Tender unaffected by Denit’s “gift.” Ozahm had told her all the others had lost their ability to drain life from one living thing to another when Denit had transformed into the Sun Goddess. She had every intention of testing his theory on the “strangers” who had come to her homeland, Nohoyo, and had killed her mother when they had destroyed her peaceful life.

  Chapter Two – Out of Balance

  “All right,” Drena said, leaning across the table to touch Jonath’s hand, “we’ve been here for three days. Can we leave now?”

  He did his best not to smile at her, knowing it would only aggravate her, but he couldn’t help himself. No matter what he said, she would be angry. Even if he stood up right this very moment and left without touching the food on his plate, agreeing to whatever she wanted, he knew she would still be angry. She was filled with fear and trying her best not to be. He’d been surprised she had even agreed to come to the City by the Sea at all. And yet, she knew as much as he did that if they were ever going to make sense of what had happened, they had to come back here. To the place they had last seen each other before he had died.

  “Gah!” she exclaimed when she saw his smile, throwing up her hands in disgust. “Will you never be happy until we go there?” she hissed under her breath, her eyes afire as she practically growled at him.

  “Drena …” he started, then trailed off. Shaking his head, he knew it would gain him nothing to remind her they had both agreed what they had to do in order to go forward. He had even suggested they never come back here, that they should just live out their lives without ever going back to anywhere they had been before. Before. Before they had both died. They needed nothing but each other. They didn’t need to be reminded of who they had been, he had argued. They could live their lives as any other two people in love would do. But even he had known the suggestion was an empty offer. They had created a child before he had died. They both needed to know what had happened.

  “I was wrong,” she said quietly, looking anywhere but at him, with her arms crossed in front of her. “I don’t need to see that place again. We can find out some other way.”

  Doing his best not to sigh, Jonath simply looked at her, waiting. She had always been like this – passionate. Fiery. Ready to take on the world if anyone gave the slightest hint they were trying to take her choices from her. It was something he absolutely loved about her, her amazing spirit and the driving need to make the world a better place. She often took off a bigger bite than she could chew though, so he had learned how to weather the storm.

  “Where would you like to go then?” he asked quietly, picking up his spoon, hoping the soup he had ordered was still warm enough to be palatable. He wasn’t altogether certain they would be able to leave the city any time soon, in any case. They would need supplies and that would mean they would either have to find work, or they would have to steal. Again. It wasn’t something he was looking forward to; sooner or later they would get caught and then wha
t would happen to their fine plans of starting a new life together? Coming back from the dead was a lot harder than what most people would think it would be. He frowned as he swallowed another spoonful of soup. It would have tasted a lot better warm. With some crusty bread. And some dark beer to chase it.

  When he looked up again, he could see she was torn between wanting to tear his head off for daring to suggest they leave, and wanting to cry for feeling so lost. He’d seen that look many times over the past couple of months and took comfort in the fact they were in a public place. She wasn’t likely to do either with other people watching.

  Laying the spoon down next to the bowl, he leaned towards her. “They’re not going to just let us in there, you know. If you really want to go, we’re going to have figure out a way to sneak in.” With the set of her jaw and the way she cut her eyes at him, he knew he had struck just the right cord. Laying his hand on the table between them, palm up to invite her to take it, he said “You know it’s possible, probably even likely, that being there again won’t give us any more answers than we have right now.”

  “I know,” she sighed, sad again, reaching out to take the offered hand. “But there has to be some reason we were brought back, doesn’t there?”

  “We’ve discussed this, Drena. Unless we start asking people if Amphedia’s heir was ever born, we may never know. We don’t even know if you lived long enough for the baby to be born.”

  “We can’t go around asking those kinds of questions!” she hissed under her breath, releasing his hand again.

  “I know that’s what you think, yes. And you know I don’t feel the same way you do. So how about if we go to the Temple of Life and just look around. Who knows? Maybe they put up a new statue or something that will give us a clue. And if not, then we can talk about it some more. We don’t have to go to …” he paused, “that place until you’re ready. Or,” he shrugged, “until you’re ready to go somewhere else. “