Chapter Two: In Which Maral Dreams of the Toadstool

Maral didn't remember falling off Boo-Boo, but she must have because she awoke in snow. Excited cries, the words muffled by distance, flitted in and out of her mind. She raised her aching head and tried to look around, but her angry, melon-sized cheek kept her one eye sealed. She heard herself say something but forgot what it was as she spoke. It sounded like a whimper, and she realized she was crying.

The voices circled her, and she caught hers and Jaliqui's names. A boy's she almost recognized said, "You're . . . you're safe now, Maral-Husun!"

That was good enough for Maral. She went back to sleep.

She awoke again, this time on a mattress. A crisp, earthy smell that reminded her of an eastern forest the horde had once passed through filled her nostrils. Her eyelid felt as if it was filled with broken glass, but she managed to raise it enough to see the bald, cadaverous face of Youta peering down upon her.

Not a pleasant sight. Some of the more superstitious of the clan thought the foreign priest truly was undead, and when viewed in the medicine yurt's dim candlelight flickering shadows across his craggy features, she could hardly blame them. He looked sunken and leathery enough to be a hundred, though oddly enough he still had a full set of yellow teeth. They gave his stretched grins an unnatural vitality.

"Ah! Look who's awake!" he said in his peculiar rasp. He pulled away a gnarled hand, and she saw he had been rubbing a green ointment on her cheek. Jungso stepped into view, slightly stooped as always.

In the weeks since his recovery, her half-brother had grown distant and irritable, his eyes taking on a wide, bottled-passion aspect that Mother An-Zan claimed meant he was one with the spirit world.

But now Jungso seemed almost like his old self. He smiled wearily at her, concern etched in his young face. She thought she spotted a pinch of guilt in there too, as well she should: this was at least half his fault. But she was too tired to berate him. And besides, there was a more immediate worry.

She was almost afraid to ask. "Jaliqui . . . ?"

"She'll be fine," Jungso said, nodding to Maral's left. "The poison was meant to numb, not kill. She's got a nasty knock on the head, though. So do you. A 'bruised brain,' Youta here says." He gently brushed her cheek, but stopped when she cringed.

He continued, "We encountered some of the . . . natives after you two left. I guess you must have run across them too." He shook his head. "Abominations. I have skirmishers driving them away. They won't give us much trouble."

Maral couldn't help herself. "They wouldn't give us any trouble if we weren't here."

Her half-brother made a pained grimace, though she could tell he was more annoyed than shamed. "I know this must all seem foolish to you, little sister, but we won't be in this country much longer. Youta here has helped divine my dreams. The Tower should only be a few days from here."

Maral closed her eye with disgust. She wanted to slap him. He'd nearly lost his two eldest siblings, and he didn't care. He was still going through with dragging the horde through this cursed and frozen bogland.

When she didn't say anything, Jungso told her to get some rest and that they could talk later. Youta added cheerfully, "A little sleep, a little soup and you two'll be back in the saddle in no time."

After they left, she heard a chuckle from the bed next to hers.

"If I only had a cock . . ." said a voice weakly.

Maral joined with a laugh that hurt her cheek. "Oh, Jaliqui, I'm so glad you're safe."

"Me too, little sister. Is . . . is Boo-Boo alive? What happened?"

Maral told her everything--except the part where she threw up. Speaking of what she'd done made her feel ill all over again. A vision of fingers tumbling from the fat man's hand flashed in her head. She'd half sliced off his head, and he had fallen dead in the snow.

As if reading her mind, Jaliqui asked, "So, how did your first kill feel?"

"Nauseous. I don't know why. He deserved it."

"Idiots like Baidar would say it's because women have weak hearts, but I've seen a dozen brave men shake and vomit after their first battle. I almost did too. It's a revulsion in the blood. Most people have it. You'll get used to it, though." She paused before adding, "And no more of this, 'Boo-hoo, I have one eye' bullshit, all right? You're no longer a cute little mascot. You're a warrior of the Husun Clan. And . . . I'm proud of you."

Maral blinked away a tear. Hearing that made everything worthwhile.

From the gentle shine through the beaded curtain door, she knew it wasn't too late in the day, and sure enough, others came to visit. Mother An-Zan cooed over them both, telling how worried she'd been, and what were they thinking, going out without an escort? Jaliqui's best friend, Chambui, filled the yurt with chatter and laughter, lingering for so long that Maral nearly shouted at the falconress to go away.

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Shiggi showed up last to stammer and shuffle his feet. Maral wasn't exactly thrilled at this weird admirer seeing her bedridden and with half her face a bruise, but she was too dead tired to protest. His scouts had been the one to find them, apparently, and he probably expected her to grovel with gratitude. Instead she closed her eye and pretended to fall asleep. Anyway, Jaliqui was amiable enough to the boy. Probably. She didn't remember him leaving.

The dream returned with new intensity.

She was on a crowded street along the bottom of a vast canyon of mirrors. A red-haired women in a white dress was gripping her tiny hand tight and leading her through the throng of a frightened mob when the air suddenly split with an unending ghostly wail. People screamed and called out frenzied prayers. Weeping, eyes goggling, Maral stumbled after the women on plump toddler legs.

As they moved with the crowd, she realized, as she always did at this point, that the surrounding cliff faces were in fact impossible spires of glass and iron, each as broad as a spear throw and as tall as the clouds. Between the towers she spotted a silver bird, stiff-winged but venting smoke from its tail. The heavy thum of its flight echoed over the wailing.

The women led her to a great stone temple with a  gray granite dome. Through the massive open oak doors laid darkness blurred with candlelight twinkling. The woman ushered her in, past a vestibule of carved beasts in the shapes of men.

Every night she saw this. Every morning she forgot. She fought to act, to change the pattern, but her movements remained as fixed as the stars.

The temple was a dim, choking swelter. Wealthy merchants knelt beside beggars, and all together they swamped the scented candles with the acidic musk of scared humanity. Though muffled, the wailing still sang through the stone.

The woman pulled Maral  down to one of the mats and embraced her with pale, freckled arms.

"Oh, Bitti, pray! Empty your heart and pray for deliverance!"

And so Maral did. On the far wall of the great candlelit chamber hung a white marble statue twice as tall as the tallest man. It was of a woman, naked and spreadeagle. Nails pierced her hands and feet, yet she gazed down with serenity at the worshiping multitude.

"Oh, Inanna, you Crucified Maid, who died in Hell that we might live," said a red robed man who stood at Inanna's feet, his hands raised in supplication. "Hear us now in our time of tribulation. Spare our lives or, if that is not in your divine plan, gather our spirits to your eternal bosom."

But the statue did not reply, and the wailing mocked the priest. Though none of this was real, knowing what came next gave Maral that same leaden dread she felt night after night.

"Mommy, I'm scared," her small voice said.

"I am too, Bitti. But prayer is all we have."

"But what if Inanna doesn't save us. What if--?"

Her mother kissed her head. "Then you will live again. And you must remember!"

Maral heard the distant BOOM, and a heartbeat later a spiteful god kicked in the temple's left wall. Smoke. Rubble. Fire. Blood. Screams. The other walls splintered and leaned, and Inanna popped off her nails and crushed a dozen of her congregation as she shattered against the flagstones.

And as she had done before, Maral watched the domed ceiling bob as if afloat before buckling and falling. Her mother hugged her fiercely .

Maral cried inside to awake, but knew first she must endure this final suffering. Rocks like hammers battered her until her imagination ran mad and she saw herself as a ruptured wine-skin leaking across broken stone.

Her face was a numb ruin. Her ears roared with ocean waves. She smelled smoke and burned flesh, and her breaths came with bloody coughs. Her mother was a warm, wet blanket crushed around her, which was probably the only reason she hadn't been killed outright.

A slab of the roof left her trapped in a sort of slanted, rubble-cave that nothing bigger than a cat could escape, but she could still see out with her remaining eye.

And so she looked, as she knew she must, and saw the red-streaked sky silhouetting the marvelous spires which now were but charred iron skeletons listing like drunkards. But beyond that devastation, down and to the horizon, stood the source of this evil.

It was as beautiful as it was twisted, like the mockery of a sunset. The great, glowing cloud, imbued with the yellow fires of hell, billowed as it swelled. Smoke rings as wide as the city encircled it. A thick fiery stalk attached it to the ravaged earth.

It looked like a toadstool.

Maral's eye darkened, and though she felt the six year old's mortal terror, she knew she would awake soon. And this time, she would remember.