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

  “Ha!” he heard himself crow aloud. And then he giggled, delighted with the fact that not only could he feel the rising waters beneath the sands, but he could also call it to himself because he had been born a Diviner. Feeling his cheeks lift as he called the water to the surface, he laughed out loud when he saw the wetness spreading, darkening the sand as it rushed to the surface at his command. With a grin of satisfaction, he reached out to feel the moisture, reveling in the dampness, even as the water continued to flow in small rivets, spreading itself into a larger, darker stain on the ground beside him. Pressing the damp granules against his lips, Chared felt his body shiver involuntarily, screaming out its demand for liquid, now that it was near.

  Digging a small indentation in the sand allowed the water to pool until it was deep enough for him to dip his hand into the puddle he’d created. Chared felt his body relax as he slurped handful after handful, then used his wet hands to rub the water over his arms, neck, and face. Feeling satisfied, he commanded the water to stop flowing with a gesture of his hand. Sitting with his hands draped over the knees of his outstretched legs, he only regretted he didn’t have a skin or container of some sort to carry with him, then laughed again, as he realized he had no need of anything to carry water in, since he was a Diviner.

  “That’s right!” he called out loud. “I am a Diviner! I can call water any time I want to!” Smirking to himself, he thought he might feel sorry for anyone who hadn’t been born a Diviner. Then he felt his face freeze as he remembered something Giya had told him.

  He’d been with Oculis and Batal, discussing how they would proceed with their newly formed alliance, when Giya had walked in with Savaar and Jarles. She had insisted they all work together, because Sov was out of control. She had surprised all of them during their brief encounter by being so forthright in telling them that Denit must replace Sov, and that Lumas had asked for her help. She had positively frightened Oculis by forcing him to turn into an owl and then returning him to his human form again, all against his will. But the worst part for Chared, personally, was when Giya had revealed to everyone that she had created his mother, P’onyem, because a stranger from Bila had come to the city by the sea. He’d been too furious at the time to have really understood what the Earth Goddess had divulged by telling him that.

  At the time she’d told him, he had been too distracted to understand. He’d been filled with rage because he hadn’t wanted to believe he’d allowed himself to lay on that stone tablet for twenty years – twenty years! – sustained by his own magic, and not, after all, nourished by Amphedia, the Storm Goddess. He only just now was beginning to understand what else Giya had told him. She had specifically, and purposefully, created his mother so that he would be born! What did that really mean? He felt himself go numb as he considered why Giya would want him to be born. What purpose did he serve in her plans? He could feel his thoughts clouding, bouncing from one half-formed thought to the next, with no resolution and no way to determine the truth. He felt like his head might explode if he didn’t find a way to calm himself.

  He closed his eyes, breathing deeply to slow his out-of-control thoughts, silencing a small voice insistent on asking if he was sure he was still sane. And in that moment, all the scattered thoughts, ravings, and pieces of lore he’d known for the whole of his life came together in such a way that he could almost see the answer in front of him. Like that time, not so long ago, when Kaya had created lines in the air that everyone could see, only this was more. So much more, and it made such sense, it practically seemed beautiful.

  The reason all the Tuq’deb men who could feel the water beneath the sands eventually went insane – without exception – was because Giya had poisoned the water somehow. It was amazingly beautiful, and certainly a simple enough thing for her to do. And the fascinating thing was that she had used the very water that Amphedia had stolen from her to enact her revenge. Chared could feel himself smiling like a mad man. He wanted to laugh out loud and shout his new understanding to everyone who would listen to him. Sure, it was terrible, and she really never should have done it, but this world, this planet, and everything on it was Giya’s. Everything belonged to her, not to Amphedia or Siri Ventus. And certainly not to Sov, nor even Lumas, though they each had a hand in the creation of it. Giya was the heart and breath of this world, and when Amphedia had the nerve to steal the waters of the world away from her, she must have been absolutely furious.

  Quickly reviewing the lore and all he knew of what had happened, he realized that nobody really should have been surprised that Giya would make sure that the heir Amphedia so desperately needed was of her own making. She had somehow poisoned the water, or imbued it magically, so that when the males who could call it drank it, they began their slow march towards death. It was brilliant! None of them would ever father Amphedia’s heir. None of them. Only the man that Giya had spent generations creating would ever have had the chance to father the long-awaited “Savior” of the Puj’hom people who lived by the sea. Jarles was the only Tuq’deb man that Giya would have saved from the slow death of insanity.

  By her own admission, Giya had created both P’onyem and Denit, who in turn gave birth to Drena and Jonath. Drena’s father had been Oculis, who was the long-time companion of the Goddess of Air. Chared couldn’t help but to wonder what bargain Giya had made with Siri Ventus to ensure that union was consummated. And there was Kerr – Jonath’s father. He was a true son of Amphedia. Had Giya purposefully chosen him to father the savior’s father? There were so many questions Chared wanted to ask Giya, now that he understood what had happened. And why.

  Giya didn’t trust Amphedia, and she wanted the waters of the world returned to her own care. So over the long years, she had created Jarles – who hated Amphedia even more than Giya did. Chared shook his head, amazed. He knew he should be furious for all the lives wasted to the insanity that overcame all the Tuq’deb men who could feel the waters beneath the sands, but he only felt elated at having finally being able to understand so much that had eluded him.

  P’onyem had been created by Giya and had probably been given to human parents to raise. Chared had never questioned who his mother’s parents had been, since many dessert children were raised by people other than their natural mother and father. Very few children had what were thought of as “grandparents,” given that so many young men went to the city by the sea, regardless of whether they could feel the water beneath the sands or not. Chared had given virtually no thought to who his mother’s parents might be, who his own father might be, nor even who may have fathered his sister. Although family structures among the Tuq’deb were often different than those among the Puj’hom, in that those who lived by the sea often included aunts, uncles, and grandparents, such concerns had almost never crossed Chared’s mind. His own attention had been completely captivated by Amphedia, and how he might best serve her. All that had mattered to him was blind obedience. He was her representative. Her instrument. Her tool. Perhaps, he considered, in the end, he’d truly been nothing more than her slave. A willing one, but a slave nonetheless.

  When he was younger, he had wondered, albeit not very often, why so few young women seemed compelled to go to the city to live. Even those who felt the water seemed reluctant. As a young man, he’d assumed most girls were simply not as curious or adventurous as their male counterparts.

  As he’d grown older and became thoroughly integrated into the Blue Dolphin order, he began to understand better why they might be hesitant to come. He had raped a good many of them himself, although he remembered precious little of those days. Between the drugs he’d been fed, and the sincere belief he was obeying a sacred edict to create the “savior,” he had given very little thought to the actual act of sex itself, or how the women would feel about what he was doing to them. Were they not sacred vessels, hoping to bear the savior as well? The only time Chared had truly felt personal pleasure during sex was when he was pleasing another man.

  Attempting to create the pro
phesized child was a sacred duty; one he bore with as much dignity and solemnity as befitted a priest of his order. He enjoyed the experience no more or less than his morning prayers or any other task he was assigned. Indeed, because he not only could sense the water beneath the sands, but could call it to him, he was tasked with performing the Impregnation Ritual more often than most. Rarely, though, had he been present during the Determining Ceremony when children were presented to the High Priest and High Priestess to ascertain whether they were the savior or had the potential to be the future mother or father of the savior. No more than a handful of times had Chared wondered how many children he may have fathered. No one would have told him if he would have asked, so there hadn’t been any point in doing so.

  But now that he knew his own parentage was so extreme, he wondered what that would mean to his own offspring. With a smile on his face, Chared stood up. He was going south. To Nohoyo. He was going to find Giya and make her tell him the truth.

  Chapter Four – Ahadi

  With his head bowed, kneeling – kneeling! - at the feet of the being he most-despised in all the universe, Ozahm felt his gorge rise until he could taste vomit in the back of his throat. It was only through long practice that he was able to keep his fists from clenching and his teeth from grinding together. The other Ahadi would feel his rising emotions, but would be unable to discern whether he was nervous, angry, or simply impatient, as long as he was able to maintain a steady heart rate. Unfortunately, he’d had plenty of practice at keeping his true feelings under control, while he had shadowed Giya for hundreds of years. The personification of his bitter enemy, he had longed for the opportunity to do to her what Lumas had done to him.

  Death, rot, disease – these were all a natural part of the order of the universe. These things, these actions were all necessary for life to transform, for the evolution of every species. Plant, animal, sprite, demon, or deity; regardless if one possessed sentience or not, the old must perish in order for the new to evolve, grow, and flourish. Ozahm was intimately familiar with how deeply entwined death and dying must always be with life so it would always continue. But Lumas, in her arrogance, had nearly destroyed him when he had been carrying out his sacred duty. That she had done so hundreds of years – perhaps even thousands of years - past, on a planet far removed from this place and time was of no consequence to Ozahm. She was evil, and he knew it.

  She had arrived in all her splendor as the Goddess of Beauty at the behest of some of her devoted subjects when they’d cried out to her in terror, begging her to save them from his vengeance. And yes, oh yes, it had most-certainly been vengeance he had wrought upon them. And how could he not have? Before humans had evolved, he’d done his part to keep order throughout the entirety of the planet by sowing pockets of rot where an overabundance of one plant threatened to overtake another, by introducing disease into one species of animal when drought conditions threatened extinction of another species, and he was always, always there to ease the dying onto their next journey once life’s spark had been extinguished. It was his duty. His had been the most-beautiful work of balance, no matter that few ever understood his role, and fewer still had thanked him for it. He had truly taken great joy as the Lord of Death.

  Until humans had reared their nasty, self-centered presence, destroying everything around them in their rush to claim all space and living things as their own. He had watched in terror as they dug and rooted, as they learned to build and destroy, and as they learned to harm and kill each other in ignorance and in greed. No small space had been left untouched by their vile touch. The air, the earth, the water – everything had been uprooted, polluted, and destroyed. They had ignored his warnings; dismissing the changing weather patterns, the extinction of whole speeches of plant and animal life, and even the shifting of land masses as irrelevant. He’d known he should have acted much more forcefully long before he’d covered the planet with rapid-growing vines, but had stayed his hand out of hope. There had been those who had worked against the others, who had understood – and he’d wanted desperately to believe those few would be enough to make a difference. It had taken him too long to understand that humans were a pestilence, and not at all the blessing he’d first imagined. And so he had taken action to eliminate them so that balance would be restored. It had been his duty, and so he’d done it.

  Ozahm knew that if he was honest with himself, he would have to admit that while he hadn’t truly meant any malice, once he’d breathed forth his justice upon the human race, he’d felt relief and even joy as each life had been extinguished. He’d been shocked then, when he’d felt the first touch of his own death racing towards him, carried on the very vines he’d been spewing forth from his mouth. The leaves had dried and crumpled in an instant, and the vines themselves had stiffened and splintered, crackling apart as if they’d been dead for years, instead of barely a moment in time. And then he’d felt her presence engulfing him, as if he’d been a single flower standing alone in a vast field, plucked and mangled, instead of a powerful deity in his own right.

  He’d known nothing for quite some time, or so he supposed. It seemed a very long time that he’d drifted in and out of consciousness, not even truly aware of being aware. In those few moments of consciousness, he would barely have the time to remember who he was before he was swallowed by darkness and ignorance all over again. Eventually, though, the moments of memory grew longer, and a pattern emerged. He came to understand he was trapped inside of Lumas and those times when he could remember who he was came when she was resting. He understood, too, that he was being influenced by her, transforming into something that was less and less of himself and more of her. He thought he should be terrified and, perhaps, even angry, but realized that when he felt these things, he grew confused and remembered less and less why he should be angry. He often wondered if Lumas even knew she had not quite destroyed him entirely, and if she did, if she had failed to do so on purpose, or simply didn’t know he still lived deep within her. He wondered, too, if his own existence would continue as long as she lived, or if he would eventually perish, consumed by her body as if nothing more than an interesting morsel of sustenance – an insignificant source of a moment’s worth of energy to fuel the body of his enemy.

  He remembered moments of railing against Lumas, screaming until his throat was raw, and he remembered moments of immense bliss, when he forgot everything except feeling pleasure beyond anything he’d ever known. But mostly, he remembered feeling suffocated, laughing at the irony of wishing that he, the Lord of Death, could simply die. He began to dread awakening. But then the time came when he realized he was no longer losing consciousness. He was awake, and trapped in the dark. He was immobile, conscious, and unable to see or feel anything other than the fact he was awake and aware. It was the worst experience of his very long life. He squirmed, he screamed, he bit and punched and kicked, hoping for some kind of response – even pain would have been preferable to the nothingness his life had become.

  It had taken him years to comprehend what had happened to him after that, but eventually he grew to understand that Lumas had taken parts of herself to construct beings – human-shaped beings - to watch over that part of her that she had invested in the planet Sov had made. When she had done that, she had unwittingly (or so he assumed) used his own body as fodder for her creation.

  The experience of having been absorbed within Lumas’ body had changed him in many ways – some he would never be able to identify because he was unable to remember all he’d been – but much was still the same. Balance, it seemed, remained his primary focus as it had been before. But in his role as an “Ahadi,” the most-important of his duties was to ensure that Giya was kept safe at all costs. As before, his own role was to be undertaken unseen; in silence and in secret. He’d never been told that Lumas would perish if Giya died, but he’d long assumed it must be so – why else would a goddess need to be kept safe? Of course, he’d been a god once and he had certainly been harmed beyond any measur
e he’d ever thought might be possible.

  As the Lord of Death, he had even tried to consider that his own death may very well be simply the cycle of life, albeit in a fashion he’d never considered possible. Lumas had just been a larger, more-capable predator than he’d been. The analogy did not nothing, however, to diminish his rage, nor his desire for revenge against the Goddess of Beauty. Nor, truth to be told, had his observations of Giya given him reason to soften his stance towards his unwitting target. If she had been a benign entity, he might have been able to let go his fury at having been bested by her celestial counterpart. But it was all too obvious she possessed much of the same disregard her “other self” held for the balance so necessary for a thriving world. Ozahm had grown to despise Giya over the years, even as he spent his life keeping her safe.

  Because he often followed her all over the planet as her unseen shadow, he was privy to secrets none other than he and the other Ahadi possessed. Because of the magical enchantment Lumas held over them, though, none of them were able to act in any way to counter any of the insane plans Giya had set in motion. It was sometimes maddening to do nothing more than to stand by and watch the atrocities Lumas and Giya perpetuated against the humans who worshipped them. Not to mention the other gods of this world.