The Lightning God's Wife: a short story

THE LIGHTNING GOD’S WIFE

a short story of the Glimmer Lands in the world of MASTER
OF CROWS

BY

GRACE DRAVEN

The Lightning God’s Wife - Copyright © 2014 by
Grace Draven.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means,
including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods,
without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial
uses permitted by copyright law.

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s
imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric
purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses,
companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

This short story is dedicated to Lori Cecilia Snow
Stevenson—that friend of mine who lives in God.  Wait for me at the gate.

Many thanks to Lora Gasway, one of my trusted editors, who
rode in and saved the day – as usual.

The Storm

Martise woke to the banging of a window shutter against the
wall. A rush of humid air, still thick with the day's heat, purled into the
bedchamber. She slid out of bed and padded to the open window. Shadows pooled
on the balcony floor, and in the distance, a tide of black clouds roiled toward
Neith. Lightning ruptured the darkness, illuminating swathes of rain that fell
in sheets on the dusty plains.

She closed her eyes in a silent prayer of thanks. A storm
was coming—this time of its own accord instead of wrenched into submission by
the heretic mage still asleep in the bed behind her.  Given half a chance, he’d
do it again if necessary.  The last deluge had provided a much-needed drink of
water for the thirsty orange trees in Silhara’s beloved grove, but it was only
one drink, and the drought had returned in full force within the week.

More lightning split the rain-gravid clouds, and thunder
rumbled in response.  The rustle of sheets alerted Martise that Silhara was
awake.  She didn’t startle when a pair of arms slid around her waist and drew
her back against a lithe body still warm with sleep.

They stood together in silence, watching the storm.  Another
gust of wind whirled into the room, this time damp and cool.  It buffeted
Martise’s face and spun strands of Silhara’s long hair so that it whipped over
her shoulders and fluttered against her arms.

Martise caught a stray lock, letting it slide through her
fingers.  “Will you try and trap this one?”

Silhara shifted behind her.  “No.  It’s coming at us
straighter than a crossbow bolt.”  His raspy voice was even rougher than usual
with the dregs of slumber.  “Though I might sacrifice Gurn as a bribe if it
turns at the last moment.”

Martise smiled, then squinted as a shock of lightning
flooded the night sky.  “You’d give up your only loyal servant for a bit of
rain?”  Her question was only half-teasing.  Her lover was a mercurial
creature—sour-tempered as well.  While she thought he’d raze a village to the
ground without blinking if that meant saving Gurn from some threat, a small
doubt still remained.

A flutter of breath tickled the top of her head as Silhara
rubbed his chin into her hair.  “A piss-poor servant.  He calls me a horse’s
ass regularly, Martise.  Maybe one day I’ll tell you the story of how he threw
me down the well when we argued over trimming Gnat’s hooves.”

Martise turned in his embrace so she could see Silhara’s
face.  Flashes of lightning lit his features briefly, revealing his high
cheekbones and thin mouth, the black eyes that watched her with faint
amusement.  “And what did you do as retribution?”

He ran a hand down her back.  “Dangled him off this balcony
by his hair.”

Gurn’s pate was as smooth and shiny as a polished antylus
ball.  Martise frowned.  “He doesn’t have hair.”

Silhara cocked an eyebrow, and his lips curved up a little
at the corners.  “Not on his head.”

She gasped and flinched at the image his words evoked.  Poor
Gurn.  Of course throwing his master down a well probably didn’t elevate him in
Silhara’s affections.

She’d never understand the relationship between the two. 
They were master and servant yet acted as brothers—arguing, bickering, and
sometimes physically brawling with each other.  Gurn’s respect for Silhara was
obvious, but he was neither intimidated by nor obsequious toward the powerful
mage.  In turn, Silhara treated Gurn as his peer.  It wasn’t so much that one
worked for the other but that they worked together, lived together, and fought
with each other as equals.

She turned in Silhara’s arms to face the window once more. 
The night sky was a frothing mass of blackness occasionally broken by jagged
strands of bright silver.  The storm blotted out the stars except for the
nacreous one that always hovered above Neith both day and night.  Its dull
light pulsed steadily, like the beat of a heart.

Martise looked away from the star—Corruption’s blot on the
sky.  Far better that she admire something more natural, even if more violent,
like the storm.  “I’ve always enjoyed the time right before the storm strikes,
when the air is cool and smells of the coming rain.”

“As long as it rains on the grove, I’ll be content.” 
Silhara’s slender fingers played with the folds of her shift.

She hoped he would be content.  The last time a storm turned
away from Neith, Silhara had exploded from the fortress in a rage and then
proceeded to scare the life out of her and Gurn by forcing nature’s fury onto
Neith with spellwork.  Controlling weather was lethal sorcery.  He’d been lucky
to walk away from that endeavor alive instead of being reduced to a smoking
husk.

Martise hugged his arms harder to her waist and was rewarded
by an even more enveloping embrace.  She leaned her head back against Silhara’s
chest.  “The blessing of Revida.  She’s withheld it long enough.”

“Who’s Revida?”

Martise smiled.  Silhara was a master spellworker; she was
more widely read.  “A goddess of the Glimmer South.  Once a human who became
the wife of the lightning god Atagartis.”

A disdainful snort sounded behind her.  “No accounting for
bad judgment there.  She would have been better off marrying a farmer or even a
king with the blood running too thick through the royal staff.”

His sarcasm made her chuckle.  “You wouldn’t marry a goddess
if she wanted you?”

Another snort.  “I’ve no interest in any deity—worshipping
them, swiving them, or marrying them.  Useless lot who wouldn’t recognize a
sincere prayer if it ran them over with a dung cart.”

This time Martise laughed outright and pivoted to face him. 
She looped her arms around his neck.  His was an aesthetic face, harsh and
unforgiving, yet it softened a little as he stared down at her, a glint of
amusement flitting through his gaze.

“Tell me of this foolish Revida,” he said.

“Don’t you want to go back to bed?”

His hands traced the curves of her waist and hips before
sliding up the length of her back.  Unlike her, he was naked, and his arousal
was obvious as he held her close to him.  “Not yet,” he said.  “I want to see
what the storm will do.  In the meantime, tell me your Glimming tale.”

_____________________________________________________________________

Revida’s eyesight wasn’t what it once was, but old age had
suddenly chosen to wreak havoc on her vision by making her hallucinate.  That
or what she stared at now was real.

Two small children raced toward her across the parched
landscape—a young boy pulling frantically on a little girl as they struggled to
outrun the nebulous wall of darkness bearing down on them.  It flared over the
plains, churning up powdery dirt and debris until the black wall turned brown. 
Had she not seen its transformation, Revida might have mistaken it for a dust
storm.

But this was no storm.  Whatever seethed and roiled behind
the fleeing children was built of shadow and smelled of power.  Despite the
sun’s punishing heat, chills pebbled the skin on Revida’s arm, and she gasped
as a colossal face, twisted with hatred, coalesced within the dark wall.

The children looked back and screamed in unison. The girl
stumbled and fell, nearly yanking the boy off his feet.

Revida abandoned the cave in which she sheltered and ran to
the children.  She scooped the girl into her arms and grabbed the boy’s hand.

“Run!” she shouted over the howling leviathan pursuing
them.  Age had made her slower, but terror turned her fleet.  They barreled
into the cave’s cool dimness.  Revida set the crying girl down and made for the
remains of the previous night’s fire.  She plunged her hands into the pile of
cold ash and soot, coming away with black hands.  The boy watched her for a
moment, then mimicked her actions.

She returned to the cave’s entrance.  The shrieking darkness
was almost upon them.  The face had disappeared, replaced by a pair of twisting
silhouettes that grappled each other for dominance.  Revida sketched a sigil at
the entrance with soot-blackened fingers.  The boy did the same, drawing the
complicated protection symbols with the practiced ease of a skilled sorcerer.

Revida sketched the last line of her sigil just as the
shadow wall struck.  The impact threw her and the boy back into the cave’s
interior and showered everything in tiny bits of stone shrapnel and dust. 
Sprawled on her back, Revida shielded her head with her arms as the ground
beneath her shook.

Her ears rang from the enraged shrieking just outside the
cave.  Whatever threw itself against their sanctuary couldn’t cross the sigil
barrier.  It beat against the symbols’ invisible bulwark, inhuman screams and growls
punctuating every strike.

Aching and dizzy, Revida clambered to her feet.  The boiling
shadows blocking the entrance also blotted out the light, turning the cave into
a crypt.  Revida reached blindly into the darkness. 

“Boy, are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here,” a thin voice answered back.

“And the girl?”

“She’s with me.”

Revida sat down.  She couldn’t see half an arm’s length in
front of her, and until whatever foul thing lurking outside the cave decided to
leave, she could do nothing more than wait.  The children sheltering with her
huddled nearby, safe—at least as safe as anyone could be with an enraged demon
pounding on their sigil door.

As quickly as the attack began, it stopped.  The howling
ceased, and the shadows dissipated.  Sunlight flooded the opening, illuminating
the interior space with weak light.  Revida found the boy and girl holding each
other.  Emaciated and ragged, they both squinted at the bright sunlight outside
and then at Revida.

“I think it’s over,” she said.

With those words, the boy jumped to his feet and sprinted
outside, the girl close on his heels.

“Wait!”  Revida tried to grab the little girl but missed. 
Cursing the children’s antics and her own creaking bones, she followed them out
of the cave’s sanctuary.

The shadow cloud was gone, leaving behind only a merciless
blue sky, trenched earth, and a prone figure not far from the cave.  The
children hovered over him, both pleading in shaking voices for him to wake up.

Revida drew closer and heard the boy command in a
surprisingly powerful voice “Father, open your eyes.”

She crouched beside him.  A man sprawled on the ground, so
caked in dirt and grit he looked more golem than human.  Revida couldn’t make
out much of his features and none of his hair color.  Like the children who claimed
him as their parent, he was thin and dressed in rags held together by prayer
and stubborn thread.  The girl clasped his hand in both of hers, and the boy
gripped his shoulder with a white-knuckled hand.

“This is your father?”  Revida flattened her palm against
the man’s chest.

The boy nodded.  “He was trying to save us from Sumarimis.”

An icy whip snapped up the length of Revida’s spine. 
Sumarimis.  The Bitter Dark.  She’d admonish the boy for spilling tall tales
except she’d seen the blackness hurtling across the plains herself.  Why a
creator god would chase two small children into a cave was beyond her.  Equally
surprising was that her sigil had kept the god out of the cave.

Revida glanced briefly at the boy, eyes narrowed.  She
hadn’t been the only one who’d drawn sigils.

She turned her attention back to the unconscious man whose
heart beat strong and sure under her hand.  “He’s alive.”  The children grinned
at each other.  Revida addressed the boy.  “Is she your sister?”  When he
nodded again, she said “Keep an eye on her.  I’ll tend to your father.”

The man groaned a little while Revida ran her hands over
him, checking for injuries.  She didn’t find any broken bones or open wounds,
but the skin that shone through his torn clothing was crisscrossed with livid
red score marks, as if he’d been branded by a fiery lash.

She patted his dirty cheek, leaving a sooty handprint. 
“Wake up.  You’ll have to stand and walk.”  He’d suffer to do so, but he
couldn’t stay out here in the blistering sun, and she wasn’t strong enough to
carry or drag him.

He opened his eyes, and Revida started.  They were strange
eyes, the irises so pale a blue, they were almost transparent against the
whites.  His pupils were pinpoints of darkness that shrank even further under
the sun’s light.  He blinked twice, focused his gaze on her and smiled.