“The god who stayed behind?” I ask. Someone here who remembered the old skills, who knew how to maintain the same tech that powers our engines, would seem like a god. “Your divinity sounds a lot like a mechanic to me, Nimh. Can you get me to them?”
“I …” She glances down at the cat like he might have the answer. “I am not familiar with the word mechanic,” she says eventually.
“That’s all right,” I say. “All I need is an introduction.”
Maybe, just maybe, what Nimh’s people call magic, I might call a miracle.
NINE
NIMH
I am that divinity you seek. But I can no more put you back in the sky than I can sprout wings.
The words are there, as bright and clear in my mind as if I had spoken them aloud—but I hold them back, ill at ease. North’s dark eyes are lit with hope, and I can’t bring myself to extinguish it. “The Divine One lives at the temple,” I say instead. “I will take you there when the storm passes.”
Which I hope very much will be soon, as I am due to preside over the Feast of the Dying tonight.
North grins at me, and my ribs seem to squeeze in response, as though that smile were a tangible thing, an embrace. I shiver, and I turn away.
Though he’s recognized something of his own people in the ruins of our shared ancestors, this underground marketplace wasn’t what I brought North here to see. The dim light scattered around us shows the edge of one of the pools, and I gesture him forward, clearing my throat. “Come, look here.”
I murmur a word of caution, for the ground here is treacherous, then crouch at the water’s edge. North is careful to keep a distance between us, enough that I don’t feel that little edge of panic at his closeness.
“What am I looking at?” North asks, eyes sweeping across the water’s surface.
I reach out with my spearstaff, so that the more concentrated light magic at its tip illuminates the pool. “Look down into the water—do you see?”
North leans forward. It’s still shallow here, only a few feet deep. Nestled in the muck at the bottom of the marsh, gazing up through the water as if seeking the sky far above, is a stone face.
The cloudlander’s breath catches, and his eyes widen as they fix on the staring gaze of the stone head, its features painted blue-green with algae. Finally, he looks up, scanning our surroundings until his eyes fall on a block of stone that stands not far away. “It was a statue—that pedestal in the center of the arcade, that’s where it must have stood.”
I ease back, unable to fight the smile that wants to answer his. His delight at finding these pieces of our shared ancient past reminds me how I used to feel, exploring these plains and the tunnels beneath them.
He heaves a long sigh, pushing back a lock of his wavy hair and looking around again at the darkened ruins. As he contemplates the ancient city, I find his face even more compelling than the one in the water. Everything is new to him—his wonder is like that one feels in a dream.
“This is incredible,” he murmurs, looking back and catching me staring. “Thank you. Do you know who it is? The statue?”
My smile fades in spite of myself. I can’t put off the reason I brought him here any longer. I rise and move back toward the center of the marketplace, and the empty plinth that used to hold the statue. Years have brought back the layers of grime and dirt I once cleared away as a child, but I know where to look. Reaching into my chatelaine, I draw out the reagents for Spirit’s Breath and scatter them across the stone.
“What is it?” North whispers, voice hushed as if in deference to my magic—the magic he doesn’t believe in.
I can’t help a sidelong smile. “Do they not value patience in the cloudlands?” Focusing my will, I stretch out my hands and guide the energies within me down my arms and into my palms. Then, hovering a breath above the surface of the stone, I let my palms spread outward.
For a moment, nothing happens—then, gradually, the bits of old, dead lichen begin to shrivel and flake away, the Spirit’s Breath spell burrowing through the dirt and organic detritus down to the metal that lies beneath.
North mutters something under his breath and leans closer, as if trying to figure out the trick. A tiny part of me revels in being able to show him my empty palms, even as the last of the debris falls away.
He’s watching me with narrowed eyes, but, impatient, I tilt my head to indicate the plinth again. He blinks, looking down at the metal plaque that had been hiding behind the years of grime. With his attention on it, I’m free to watch him, so intently I’m half-afraid he’ll sense the weight of my gaze.
He draws a breath of surprise at the engraved lettering there—the lettering of the ancients, unreadable now to my people, except a very small handful of scholars. I am one of them—the long years I have waited to manifest have offered all the opportunities for study that I could wish. I used to wonder if I could discover my purpose if I searched hard enough. Now I know that I waited for a reason.
These words are in the language of the gods.
“Akra Chuki,” he reads without hesitation, voice slowed only by a hushed reverence for being in the presence of such an ancient piece of writing. “Honored Lord and Guardian of Peace.”
My heart is pounding, my body tingling. I cannot move, for fear I’ll discover I imagined it—that he can’t read the ancient writing after all, that I only want it to be true so badly that my mind conjured the moment like the mirage of water a dying man sees in the desert.
When I say nothing, North looks up at me with a smile that fades when he sees my face. “Nimh?”
“You …” I have to stop, breathe, summon my voice. “You really are one of them. A cloudlander.”
Divine, I think, although I do not say that aloud.
North’s head tilts, a hint of confusion on his face. “Ye-es. I told you I was.”
I manage another breath. “You read the ancient writing,” I explain, gesturing to the plaque, which gleams as brightly now in the sun as it did the day it was engraved, thanks to the spell. “North—I know you do not understand, but to me, for my people … this is unheard-of. Unprecedented.”
Important beyond anything that has happened in centuries.
A little of his confusion clears, and he says with a small laugh that warms his voice, “You’re just as big a shock to me, you know. There’s not supposed to be anybody left down here.”
His laughter makes me wish I could respond. I want to preserve this ease—this feeling between us—for as long as I am able.
Because soon he will know what I know: That he was sent here. That our meeting was destiny.
That he may be divine.
It is a selfish thing, to keep the truth from him. It will hurt him more later, when we reach the temple outskirts and there’s no more hiding my identity. It’s selfish—and it’s all I have.
“The storm may have moved on,” I say finally, keeping my voice even. “We ought to continue our journey, if it is safe. There is a festival at the temple tonight—you will like it, I think.”
North falls into step with me easily as we head back toward the tunnels, although there’s something in his voice that isn’t quite right. “You said your god lives there, right? The guy who understands the sky-steel and the mist, and how they power your shield stones?”