“And so you have completed this one,” Tosin said from somewhere above her. “The Goddess will be pleased.”
“And when your body is burned on the altar, sister, your sins will be purified. You will be able to go to Her.” There it was, the joy and lightheartedness she was used to hearing in her brother’s voice. So much of him seemed the same, and yet was different.
She hoped, she prayed, that at least his habit of keeping a dagger hidden in his usual spot had not changed.
“Get her up,” Tosin snapped.
Hands gripped her shoulders. That’s when Akanni snatched at the rim of her brother’s right boot. Crouched as he was, he couldn’t pull away fast enough as her fingers curled around the hilt. Twirling the weapon easily in her hand with the ability three years of daily training had taught her, she drove it up and into the soft, giving flesh of her brother’s belly.
He screamed.
Something warm and slick poured over her hands as she worked the knife back and forth. Getting her legs underneath her, she surged upward, throwing his body off her. He fell over, clutching at his guts as they spilled into the dirt.
“Guard!” Tosin bellowed, even as the flap of the tent was already drawing open.
In that instant, the pain, the anger, the fury Akanni had worked to contain exploded outward. Fire swept through her entire body. She let it consume her, then let it flow. White flame erupted from her skin. The guards and the soldier from before, having rushed for her with weapons drawn, recoiled. Fear took their faces and lit their eyes. Their swords crashed to the ground as they turned and fled, leaving Tosin to his fate.
The white flame ate away everything it touched. The pillows, the rugs, the posts that held the tent in place. Soon, it would all come crashing in, but not before she finished what she was here to do.
She faced Tosin, who cowered where he had leapt back into his bath, as if the water would save him. She stalked toward him, through the flame. It licked at her skin, harmless.
Tosin shrank in on himself as she drew near, the whole of him shaking enough to send ripples racing through the dirtied water.
“W-what . . . what is this?” His voice cracked in terror. He glanced about, for possible escape, his straggly black hair whipping about, but there was nowhere to go. All was flame and ember and ash. “What are you?”
“This . . . is rhakah,” Akanni said.
The disbelief on his face pleased her.
“She came to me, in the dead of the night. Me, of all to be chosen, a nonbeliever. I was tired, starving, and weeping where your soldiers had tied me in the cold to sleep, certain I was going to die.” Akanni had never been more certain of anything in her life. The cold was crushing. Near starving, her body was failing. She had failed. There was nothing left. “I wanted to die.” She had welcomed death. Prayed for it. And as she lay there, the life slowly seeping from her, she heard it.
“My child,” a voice whispered in the darkness. “My daughter. My love. Hear me.”
“A-Amma?” Akanni whispered, certain she was near the gates to the Garden, and her mother had come to take her the rest of the way.
“I am all and nothing. I began before, and I will end after.” The words echoed around Akanni, sweet and low. The voice’s edge danced against her mind like a blade. “I have heard your prayers, and I come for you, wayward child.”
The darkness parted and light filled the void, then coalesced into a single orb, bright and shining. The moon, Akanni realized, just as the lights of stars sparked to life around it. The sky stretched over her, clear and bright.
“This will not be your last night, if you but promise me . . .”
“P-promise . . . ?” Akanni continued to shiver.
“Promise me you will end them. The heshen. Blasphemers, who do foul deeds in my name. Who plot against my people. Promise me, lost one, and I will give you what you want most.”
A spear erupted from the ground before her. It jutted into the air, and on its spike, Tosin’s head, bloated and discolored in death, gazed at her.
“Promise me,” the voice repeated. “Harden your heart, for it will be tested. Whatever it takes, do this thing. Be strong, like stone, and I will make you the mountain.”
Akanni saw the face of her mother in those stars above Tosin’s rotted head, and the faces of her father and brother. Then all began to fade into the Deep’s black.
“Promise me . . .” the voice whispered, flaking away.
“I—I . . . I promise,” Akanni gasped.
A feeling like fire filled her arms and gathered in her palms. Light sprang forth from her fingers. It engulfed everything around her, white hot. She wanted to scream, but she could not. Nor could she move. So, she lay there, as the light brightened, until it consumed her.
“When I awoke,” Akanni said as she stared into Tosin’s terrified face, “I realized what had happened. That I should be dead. But She spared me, for this moment.”
The flame began to creep toward Tosin where Akanni’s will had held it back. He whirled and splashed, scrambling to try to get away, but the fire took him. His screams ended in cracked yowls as his tongue burned. Flesh peeled from muscle. What water remained in the tub bubbled and thickened red.
Akanni turned, indifferent, as the remains of the tent continued to falter around her, burned to nothing. She approached another spot where the fire had held back at her bidding.
Clutching his stomach with red-licked fingers, sweat prickling his ashen brown face, Seth gazed up at her in a mix of wonder and confusion. Coughs wracked his body, and blood dappled his lips. “H-how . . .”
“I am the mountain.”
The last of the tent’s trappings fell away. Tosin’s camp flickered into view, the fires all around the hill still lit, almost mirroring the stars above. Soldiers who had come, looking to try to help, surrounded her. Those same brown faces that had watched with scorn as she was marched up here now twisted in shock and fear. The boy-guard was not among them. She wondered if he’d run. Several of them did now, racing down into the camp. They would not get far.
Kneeling, Akanni pressed her hands into her brother’s blood where it spilled across the ashy sands. He’d fallen still, finally, their mother’s eyes staring at nothing. Carefully she tilled the blood and the earth, making the mark of the Goddess. Then, with fingers crusted with clay, she pressed them to her face.
Three lines beneath each eye. Two dots above each brow. Then she stroked her thumb from the line of her hair, down the center of her face, and to the tip of her nose.
Standing, her legs trembled but held. She turned to face the camp, now in a full panic, as she allowed the fires to consume the corpse behind her.
“Well done, my child.” The familiar voice rose in her ears, sizzling with power. “Take what is yours.”