Giya's Betrayal: Book Three of the Firebird's Daughter series Read online

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  As his head broke the surface of the water, Ordan clawed at the membrane covering his face, inhaling deeply as he felt the air filling his lungs again. While this method of travel was fascinating in its own right, he hoped to never have to do it again.

  “Better now?” Batal smirked at him as she used her hands to cover the gills embedded in the sides of her neck. Ordan knew the gesture meant she was switching from breathing through her gills underwater to breathing through her nose and mouth “above the surface” as she had put it. She had explained that to him, it often felt like she couldn’t get quite enough air to breathe when she was on the surface, so she empathized with his discomfort at having had to use the membrane again to travel to the fountain on the north side of the Nohoyo city. Since it was the quickest way for them to get where they were going, he had consented to the often suffocating membrane so he could travel with her and Sabbah.

  There hadn’t been a great deal of time to understand exactly who his traveling companions were, but Ordan knew there was no ill will between them. There were times when Sabbah felt jealous of Batal, and moments when Batal felt some sort of guilt towards him in return, so he knew there was a history between them, but there were also times when Batal felt anger towards Sabbah as well. And especially distrust. When she had awakened after he had used the Tear on her, she had been both extremely frightened and overwhelmed with anger to find Sabbah there. But when he remained sitting where he was, instead of attacking her, as she had expected, she had remained calm while Ordan had explained it had been Sabbah who had saved her.

  Apparently, the “saving” had been a mutual thing between them, as Sabbah had told her it was only because she had used the Tear that he was still alive. He’d been extremely close to death, with no way to save himself, when the energy wave caused by the Tear’s magic had washed through him, providing him with strength he’d thought he would never feel again.

  “Is there anyone else here?” Sabbah asked him as the older man surfaced next to him.

  “I don’t see anyone yet,” Batal answered.

  “No …” Ordan replied slowly. “But there is someone else here,” he said, giving Batal a look he knew she would interpret to mean someone was here hiding.

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  More strangers? Oh why wouldn’t they all just go away!? Sina lamented. She’d had enough of this terrible, terrible day and was absolutely sick of being scared. I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! I just can’t do this anymore! she screamed. And then she screamed out loud, unghosting as she dug her hands into the grass and dirt on either side of her.

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  “Get back!” Sabbah shouted, standing in the fountain, raising his hands, as if to attack.

  “Wait!” Ordan shouted at him, raising a hand, then looking at Batal to warn her off as well. “She’s just scared. Leave her alone!” But he could see smoke rising from where the girl was sitting, unmoving. And he could smell grass burning.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” he said quietly. “We’re just passing through. We’ll be leaving soon. It’s all right. You’re safe,” he kept up the monologue, getting a better feel for the emotions she was experiencing. She had been scared before, but now she was terrified, and he had a feeling it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that they had intruded on her. Something had just happened that she hadn’t expected, and she … didn’t want … didn’t want it to be true.

  “We can help you,” Ordan told her, “or we can leave. But there are going to be more people here soon. What do you want us to do?”

  Silence. She was beginning to calm down, though, he could feel it.

  “I think…” Batal began. But Ordan held up a single finger, shaking it back and forth, warning her to remain quiet.

  “Too much has happened to you today, hasn’t it?” he asked in a quiet voice. “My name is Ordan. Batal and Sabbah are with me. We aren’t here to hurt anyone.

  “You’re strangers,” she sobbed. “Why are there so many strangers here?” she asked, trying to be brave, but failing terribly. She just wanted to go home.

  “That’s not your fault,” Ordan told her. “The sun is dying. We’re trying to help so Sov doesn’t crash into the planet.”

  “But all those strangers were killing everyone!” she shouted, her anger spiking again.

  “We’re not here to hurt anyone,” Ordan told her. “Come on, we have some food, are you hungry? We can share a little something to eat while we learn about each other and you can tell us what happened. Is that all right?”

  Silence. But he could feel her need to believe him. Her need to be safe.

  “Come on,” he said again, climbing out of the fountain. “Let me help you up.” By the time he finished talking, he was standing near her, but careful not to tower over her. He saw her hands shaking as she tried to uncurl her fists, and the small bits of burnt grass clinging to her hands. He saw as Batal noticed the same things he did and shook her head, warning him not to touch her hands. He extended his hands anyway. Trust had to start somewhere, and he could feel no malice coming from her, just a terrible mixture of fatigue, confusion, fear, and sadness.

  He had to lean over further to take her hands when she put her hands out. She just wasn’t going to be able to find the courage to do more than she had already done. “What’s your name” he asked, as he gently helped her to stand up.

  “Sina,” she said quietly. “I think I am a Fire Tender now,” she told him, then broke into sobs, as she fell into his arms.

  Chapter Eighteen – Nohoyo’s New Goddess

  “You’re keeping a secret from me,” Jarles said, walking beside Chared. It was still hard to believe he was talking to his mother’s brother. How was it possible she had never spoken of her brother to him? True, he’d been a small child when she’d died, but he really thought someone would have mentioned the fact that he had an uncle at some point in his life. At the very least, he would have thought Maw’ki would have told him. Although he supposed it was possible she hadn’t known. He only had about a thousand questions he wanted to ask him, but there really wasn’t time right now. It had taken him too long to recover from his … death, and then it had taken him a while to gather up the courage to speak to him, uncertain where to even begin.

  Chared knew there certainly were many things he was keeping from Jarles, but he knew also exactly what he wanted to know. He just didn’t want to tell him. Jarles might decide he was the one to blame for what had happened and he would lose the chance to have any kind of relationship with him at all. He shook his head at the irony; he had been trying to get close to him for a long time so that he might use him for his own ends, and now … now he just wanted to help him. But if Jarles knew who he’d been, and what he had done, there really wasn’t much of a chance the two of them would have a relationship at all. “You want to know why Giya killed you.”

  “She didn’t,” Savaar interjected, flatly, with utter certainty.

  “You still have the potential,” Ceirat told Jarles, touching his arm.

  “Potential?” Jarles echoed. “For what?” He knew she and Honsa were somehow connected and could speak mind-to-mind, along with other things, but he hadn’t had time to learn enough about her to understand what she was talking about.

  “You are still a god,” Nieva told him, still in her owl form, riding on Ceirat’s shoulder. Jarles would have preferred that those words would have come out of anyone else’s mouth, instead of Nieva’s. There was just something incredibly wise, or mystic, or something about her that he found both amazing, and frightening. Hearing her say it made him wince, as if it was somehow more true because she’d said so.

  “The seas can be still be yours,” Ceirat explained. “But not right now. You are blocked from them and they are blocked from you.”

  “What?” he asked, confused. “Do you mean I can’t even go swimming, or take a walk in the sea?” He knew he was overreacting, but this whole situation was really
beginning to irritate him. He distinctly remembered drowning and dying, only to find out he’d been on dry land the whole time. He’d been thrown into bodies of water all over the world since he’d been very young, courtesy of the one god on this whole planet he’d never wanted anything to do with, and now that she was gone, he had actually died by drowning. It really was rather insane.

  “Not as you did before,” Chared answered him.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Savaar scoffed. “I have been in the sea with him! He was there for weeks, under water. There’s nothing you can say that will make me believe you.”

  “Can you call the water to you Jarles?” Chared asked him.

  “No,” Jarles replied, swallowing in a throat suddenly too tight and too dry. He had tried shortly after he’d awakened, desperate to understand what had happened to him. He’d been shocked when the water had not risen to meet him. Devastated, really. He wasn’t at all sure how to move forward without the bone-deep assurance that he was still who he had been.

  The quiet swish-swish of sand while everyone was walking was the only sound that could be heard for the next several moments while they continued towards their goal, all lost in their own thoughts.

  “I’m not a god,” Jarles finally filled the quiet space around him. “At least, Giya wasn’t sure,” he amended. “She said we would have to wait and see, and that I may even have unexpected powers of some sort, but she didn’t say what kind.”

  “Siri Ventus is sure,” Nieva told him. Damn her! Jarles cursed to himself. If she was an adult, he would have told her to keep her thoughts to herself, but she wasn’t. She was an adorable child, no matter which form she was in, and had proven invaluable several times already. It was impossible to dismiss her words as wishful thinking.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jarles returned, softly. When no one spoke, he continued. “I don’t need to be a god, and I don’t need to control the seas,” he told them. “In fact,” he said, chuckling as the realization hit him, “I have tried to avoid being the Sea God my entire life! And now …” he shrugged with a forced smile on his face, “I can just be the Sea God of the Sands!”

  “It’s not funny,” Ceirat told him.

  “Sure it is!” he disagreed. “Come on!” he said, gesturing widely, “I have my whole life ahead of me and now I can do whatever I want, without having to shoulder an immense burden I never wanted in the first place.”

  “You just didn’t want to have to do what someone else told you to do,” Nieva corrected, and he would have sworn she was scowling at him.

  “Tell me you didn’t love being under water, and feeling the life of every living creature all around you,” Savaar challenged him.

  “Of course I did!” Jarles assured him. “But now I can do it on my own terms, and I don’t ever have to worry about some goddess tearing me to pieces. I’m free! It will be fun!” he smiled again, starting to see the possibilities of a life exactly as he was describing.

  “But Giya betrayed you,” Shio put in. “Aren’t you angry?”

  “Absolutely not,” Jarles assured her, and the rest of them. “I trust her completely. She did what she did for a very good reason, and not because she was trying to punish me, or …” he turned to look at Savaar, “kill me. It was an unfortunate, unforeseen consequence. That’s all.” When nobody replied, he asked, “Do you really think she is going to kill me the next time she sees me?”

  “No,” Chared said with conviction. “It was an accident, and she will be pleased to see you.”

  “And how is anyone ever supposed to trust anything you say?” Savaar asked him. “You were always Amphedia’s puppet, and killed many people in her name. Nobody will probably ever know all the things you did in her name.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Savaar,” Chared agreed, surprising him. “Obeying your mother, and finding ways to please her was the whole of my life for most of my life. I can’t say that I’m sorry for the things I did, nor can I ask you to trust me any further than you have. All I know is that I knew how to bring Jarles back to life, and I did it. If you want me to leave this company, I will. But I want some answers from Giya myself, and we’re headed in the same direction,” he reasoned. “Besides, if I’m with you, then you can keep an eye on me to make sure I don’t do anything to hurt anyone. If you make me leave …”

  “You’ve made your point,” Savaar glowered at him. “And no, I don’t trust you. But I am glad you’re all right,” he said, clasping Jarles on the shoulder.

  “We’re almost there,” Honsa spoke up. “There are four people there, instead of three,” he said, looking meaningfully at Nieva. She nodded at him in return, then flew ahead to find out who was waiting for them.

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  It was getting harder and harder to maintain her patience with everyone traveling at such a sedate pace, Shio thought to herself. At the very least, Savaar should let her and a couple of the others travel ahead, so they would be able to see what was happening in the city. There was absolutely no point in all of them putting themselves at risk if it could be avoided. She couldn’t imagine what he was thinking, having all of them walk, of all things, through the desert, especially when so many of them had worked so hard to raise the level of the water beneath the sands. She was pleased at how well that particular plan was working, and was probably the only reason they hadn’t all fried to death by now. Still, the sun was ridiculously hot and it was coming apart. They had come here to find Denit, and that’s exactly what they should be doing. But Savaar wouldn’t hear of it. Undoubtedly Jarles’ death had shaken him more than he even realized.

  It really was kind of odd, she reflected, how she and the rest of them were following Savaar around, even though they had finished their task. Of course, with Amphedia no longer even on the planet, there wasn’t anyone here to kill them, put them back to sleep, or otherwise tell them to do something other than to follow Savaar around. She sighed, reminding herself this entire situation wasn’t just Savaar’s fight, it belonged to all of them. The only problem was that they weren’t doing anything. And they could be if they went ahead. There didn’t seem to be any point in being held back just because a few humans were unable to travel at the same speed the rest of them did. Maybe Savaar had just lost his nerve. Or maybe, just maybe, he had other plans for them which he hadn’t yet shared with them, she reconsidered, trying very, very hard to be patient.

  She wondered, too, if Denit had come to accept her role as the Sun Goddess yet. If so, there really wasn’t any need for any of them to be here. Denit had run away in total disbelief when she had told her of Lumas’ plans. When Shio had last seen her, Denit had been pretty shaken up, believing all the gods wanted her dead because she believed she was “broken” inside. Of all the lifetimes she had lived, she thought this one might be shaping up to be the most-exciting ever. She hadn’t usually spent much time with humans, nor often above the surface. Nor had she known this part of the world even existed. So, perhaps, a little more patience was in order after all.

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  While her silence seemed to indicate a willingness for Shio to go along with Savaar’s decisions, Kani could tell by her body language that she was becoming impatient. Flexing the fingers of his left hand – fingers which had been missing for years, but were now back in place thanks to the amazing power of the sound wave created by Batal’s Tear – Kani completely understood her desire to keep moving forward. Unlike Savaar, the rest of them hadn’t been reborn – or, rather, reanimated - as humans very often, so were finding it difficult to be as personally invested with the other people around them as he was. Or to even care who they should or should not trust. He, personally, hadn’t used a human body in many years, and found it cumbersome.

  Nor were all of them the “True” children of Amphedia. It seemed as though she had awakened everyone, regardless of whether they had ever taken human form or not. He knew for certain Umi, who was created entirely of water while in her natural environment, was more than rea
dy to return to the sea. And even though Ashika felt better now than he had in many years, he would probably become suicidal if they didn’t do something pretty soon. Most of those who had already left had been Bahari, and not human at all. He was very surprised to see Iruka still with them, since this was the first time that he knew of that he had taken full human form, instead of mostly dolphin. If he was being honest with himself, Kani knew he wouldn’t mind being in human form so much, and getting a chance to really know the others, if he was free to return to his natural crab body from time to time. If Amphedia wasn’t going to be returning, they all might have a chance to do exactly that. And that, of course, was the true crux of the problem – in human form, they were much more vulnerable and much more likely to be maimed or killed by other humans, let alone if Amphedia returned. All he knew for sure was that if Savaar and the others didn’t get moving in meaningful way fairly soon, he was going to have to leave, or lose his mind. Being in human form was difficult enough, without feeling like he was as useless as his lost claw.

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