Elemental by Tam Chronin

Author:Tam Chronin [Chronin, Tam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-11-18T22:00:00+00:00

Part Thirteen

The original six gods painted in the halls had all been pale except for one. It was something I’d been keenly aware of since I had dark skin and black hair, and my eyes were a bright shade of brown. Some of the younger gods had been painted darker as well, but the shadowy figure of the goddess of chaos had been the darkest of them all.

When I saw the woman in the middle of the room, my first thought was that this had to be that goddess. Her skin was a much deeper shade of brown than mine was, and her hair was a shade blacker than night. Her eyes were solid black, making the light reflecting upon them seem like stars glowing from deep within her.

She didn’t look how I imagined a goddess would, though. She was tiny, for one. Hunched over with a twisted foot, leaning heavily upon a thick staff, she looked more like a beggar than one of the gods. Then again, I’d thought the same when I saw Garatara standing in the middle of the road.

“Come here and sit down,” she said, sounding like both and invitation and a command. “I brought you here because I don’t know what to do with you, child. Something’s got to be done.”

I approached and sat politely on the floor, waiting for her to join me in silence.

“It took you long enough to get here,” she complained as she lowered herself to the floor. There was a cadence, a rhythm, to her words, and they were said in a melodic, almost sing-song manner. “You’re more patient than I was expecting. Well, patient, or just stubborn. I can’t tell which, yet.”

“I’ve been told both, by different people,” I shrugged. “I’m not sure which I am, myself.”

She smiled just a touch. “That does not help me in the least to decide what I am going to do with you.”

“Why would you need to do anything?”

She didn’t answer. She just looked me over thoughtfully, starting to frown as time passed. Finally she nodded as if she had come to some sort of conclusion. “I am who you think I am. Yda, she who is the mistress of the void. She who creates and destroys. She who is the darkness, she who shames the light. I am Chaos, mother of all, mother of none.”

I suppressed a shiver. “I’m surprised you told me your name.”

“You have to call me something,” Yda smiled slightly once again, and I wondered if that was as far as she ever would smile. “Mortals have this need to name things, and Nalia would have told you eventually.”

I never would, Nalia said. I wouldn’t risk summoning her. Inviting chaos is never without risk.

"Well spoken, sister," Yda said, startling me by replying to the voice I thought only I could hear. "Teach this boy, this vessel of yours, to fear me as you fear me. As all of you have always feared me."

"Why?" I asked, the word coming out without thought.

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