She Who Rides the Storm (The Gods-Touched Duology)
She Who Rides the Storm: Chapter 9

Mateo stared at the dark hole in the ground. He shifted to the side to try to let a little light down into it and accidentally bumped against his father, crouched next to him. It was early morning, the sun barely peeking over the horizon in the north, the two brother moons, Castor and Jaxom, ghostly and skeletal in the sky. Baskets were laid out in a grid behind Mateo and his father, each numbered and brimming with rock.

“We’re not even sure Patenga made it this far north,” Mateo whispered.

“Positive attitude, Mateo. We don’t know much about Patenga at all, but we can’t be choosy. Not very many shapeshifters even had burials—only the ones who let themselves die on purpose and could plan their own honors.” Tual Montanne—Mateo had always thought his father’s name sounded a bit like fancy cheese—gave the ladder propped up against the side of the hole an exploratory shake, grimacing when bits of rock pattered down into the darkness below. Dust stained Tual’s hide boots despite the carpets that had been arranged around the tomb entrance. “It does look very dirty down there, doesn’t it?” Mateo’s father said. “You’re always talking about how you like the hands-on parts of your studies, but I can’t agree with you on this one.”

Mateo sat back on his heels, checking his set of charcoals, his sheaf of vellum, and the little hand mirror stuffed into the satchel he always carried on excursions like this. “I’d love nothing more than to spend all afternoon down there taking notes on pre-Common-era burials, but you dragged me up here without giving me a chance to do the proper research. This tomb wasn’t even on the list of most promising sites to find…” His mind went an awful gray, the words suddenly gone. “To find…”

It took a moment before Tual looked at him, filling the empty space between them with a solemn frown. “Is it affecting your mind now too?”

“Just because I forget one word does not mean wasting sickness has finally come to finish me off.” Anger flushed through Mateo, and he stood up, pretending to check the buttons on his coat, the buckles on his shoes, making sure everything was in order. Checking things was easier than staring down into that hole, a maw of what would probably be just another disappointment. Forgetting the name of one obscure Basist compound—even if it was the compound he and his father had been searching for; what was it called?—was just because of the heat.

Mateo rubbed a hand through his hair, tipping his wide-brimmed hat back on his head. The moment he’d ridden up to these gods-forsaken ocean cliffs, his brain had clouded over, as if ignorance and stupidity were in the air itself. He bristled at the feeling of Tual’s eyes still on him, taking a step back from the hole as if maybe that would give him a better view. He was fine. Fine. Mateo had never been exactly sprightly, but there hadn’t been any episodes lately—no fainting or bleeding from his ears or any of those first-stage symptoms in more than six months. Father said his studies at the university in Rentara had been good for him. They were, too.

It was just that wasting sickness tended to go quick once you were past the first stage, and it usually set in out of nowhere. Your very life force started draining. You faded—magic first, then your energy, your muscles, skin, teeth, and hair, your very thoughts, scrubbing out of existence until you were gone. A terrifying affliction that had only just appeared in the last decade but had recently taken hold in the Devoted seclusions. Which meant Mateo had what should be a Devoted affliction.

The anger in his gut boiled.

Tual was already turning to climb down the ladder. “We can’t afford to spend time in dusty old books anymore. Devoted are dying left and right. The Warlord is desperate. I am desperate. I don’t want to lose you, son.” He knocked his own hat back from his head, so that it hung from the cord around his neck. “Patenga is linked to the earliest mention of shapeshifting either of us has found. I only came across his name after a deep dive into some old texts over the border. It’s a miracle this tomb is here and intact.”

It was a miracle the man had allowed himself to die. Even more of one that some later shapeshifter or even Patenga’s own subjects hadn’t raided the tomb. Not for gold or jewels, but to stop him coming back. Most people now shuddered at the thought of disturbing a shapeshifter’s body, as if going near would wake it back up.

There were enough stories of that being the case that Mateo wasn’t sure what to believe. He was, however, fairly certain that no amount of magic could bring a skeleton back to life.

Mateo squinted out across the water, ocean wind blowing him back a step. “I still can’t believe you asked for funding without telling me.”

“The Warlord would fund a sandbox in the Taluth Desert at this point if I told her it might help me find a cure to wasting sickness. And this lead on a caprenum sample is not the only reason I dragged you out here. We have to plan out your future, too, not just the present.”

Caprenum. The word settled inside Mateo, filling the empty space in his brain where it was supposed to be. Caprenum. The missing ingredient to his father’s wasting sickness medicine. Shapeshifters had always kept at least one piece nearby, as if it were the key to their soul. Every shapeshifter tomb they’d found had images of the metal prominently displayed like a spoil of war, a trophy, a weapon even. The depictions were always defaced, scratched out. Burned. As if the subjects who had survived saw caprenum itself as the reason for their sorrow.

None of it made much sense to Mateo—all records of what made the medicinal compound so important to shapeshifters had been destroyed—but he and his father knew how to follow patterns, and caprenum definitely made one.

Mateo held the ladder steady as it wobbled under his father’s weight. “I still don’t understand why you won’t just try to make it yourself. Why can’t we research that instead of scouring the depths of every hole in the Commonwealth for treasure?”

Tual looked up at him from the ladder, squinting into the sun. “Basists had been brewing remedies for thousands of years by the time they came up with caprenum. You really think I can reinvent a complicated medicinal compound that probably took years of expert research? The only sample I ever had was long used up before I realized how scarce it is. I don’t have a teacher. We don’t even have sky-cursed books Basists wrote. It was all destroyed.” After going down a few rungs, Tual looked back up at Mateo. “Maybe I could figure it out if I had years. A lifetime.” He blinked and then continued his descent into the darkness. “You don’t have years, Mateo. And the Warlord’s patience with us isn’t going to cover years of experiments. As it is, the only reason we’re still alive is because I’ve managed to reduce the number of deaths in the seclusions. She doesn’t have much time either. Soon provincial governors will realize there’s a pandemic killing off Devoted. The Warlord is using some political trouble to cover up the fact that she’s coming out here to inspect our findings.” His voice had begun to echo. “I have a good feeling about this tomb, Mateo. We’re going to find some caprenum, use it to cure you, and then we can finally disappear.”

“If she lets us.”

“It’s not up to her. I have plans, and not all of them are to do with caprenum.”

A fresh surge of anger flushed in Mateo’s belly. At his father and his plans—Father always had plans—but even more at the fact that they had to go grubbing in old tombs to find the compound at all. Basists had done a lot of good before shapeshifters had ruined everything. But only Basists could become shapeshifters. They’d figured out how to do… something. Something so horrible it had been stricken from all histories and records, even the name of their god chiseled from every temple, every monument, burned from every book.

Mateo paced back and forth, trying to redirect his anger so it wouldn’t touch his father, but it was hard. Everything was hard.

One of the few living Basists in the Commonwealth, Mateo didn’t need a Devoted to hunt him down and kill him as they had all the others. His own magic was doing it just fine.

“Are you going to hold the ladder or not?” Tual called from below.

Mateo went onto his knees, gripping the rough beams to hold them steady until the ladder stopped shaking, his father safe on the ground. He turned and started down himself, hunching his shoulders as he went through the hole to keep his coat from brushing against anything too nasty. It was new.

The musty air closed in over Mateo’s head, morning heat bleeding away as he descended into the cleared chamber. Excitement, hope, rose in him with each rung he descended. Maybe his father was right. Maybe this was a completely undisturbed shapeshifter tomb with a whole host of old records showing them exactly how to cure every disease from a cold to a rusty spear through the gut. Maybe it really would be Patenga down here, and his bones would be clutching the last living sample of caprenum.

Tual swore as Mateo stepped off the ladder, something metal tumbling to the ground next to him. The sunlight from overhead came down in a solid beam to form a hard circle of light at the base of the ladder, and Tual had somehow kicked over the huge mirror stand at the bottom, meant to redirect the light deeper into the tomb. Biting back a laugh, Mateo knelt to help his father set it right, the light catching on his father’s short beard and the underside of his nose.

Once it was on the stand, Mateo stepped back to let his father reposition it and looked around. The chamber was at least thirty strides tall and about as wide from what he could tell. The beam of light danced across some carvings on the wall across from him, hitting a doorway cut into the stone. Mateo’s eyes narrowed, the light jerking this way and that, so his eyes couldn’t quite take in—

“What in the nameless god’s blasted beard do you think you are doing?” a voice growled from the darkness beyond the doorway. Mateo’s heart hiccuped in his chest as a shadow lurched toward him like a thing come back from the dead.

Tual stepped away from the mirror, sliding between Mateo and the shape with a smile plastered across his face. “Hello? I didn’t realize anyone would be down here at this hour, but I’m glad to have a tour guide. Tual Montanne, the Warlord’s aukincer, at your service. I wrote to say I’d arrive today.”

The shape paused just outside the beam of light, seeming larger than life. Dangerous, like the shapeshifter who was supposedly buried here so deep in the rock. Mateo’s heart didn’t slow as the shape seemed to analyze them, its tongue silent. His legs began to feel weak, his head spinning. Not now, he begged. Please don’t faint now. I didn’t even try to use my magic.

“I’m afraid you have the advantage of us.” Tual gave a little flourishing bow before turning back to the mirror, wrenching it into place. “You are…?”

The beam of light slid across the shape, revealing a face worth drawing, if only for the sheer silenbahk trollness of it. The man’s eyebrows were heavy and scrunched, a day’s growth of beard scrubby across his cheeks and chin, his body like a potato-filled sack that could have been muscle or not.

“I’m Brellan Van, the director of this dig.” As Director Van put a hand up to block the sudden light, painting shadows across his face, Mateo caught a glimpse of a house mark carved into his tooth, though not which one. A servant who had risen high, it seemed. “The Warlord can’t just send whomever she likes to trample—”

“Sky-cursed government officials. They never ask for permission, do they?” Tual’s smile could have lit a candle. Mateo hid a grin. His father could smooth a charging parchwolf’s hackles, given the opportunity. It was the only reason the Warlord hadn’t impaled the two of them with her sword the first time they entered her court, spouting aukincer theories and whispering about Basist magic. She didn’t know, of course. Nobody knew what Mateo and Tual were, or they’d already be dead. How his father had managed to pull it off with all that Devoted aurasight stuff no one was supposed to know about, Mateo wasn’t sure. All he knew was no Devoted had looked at him twice except to sneer at his skinny arms.

“It’s dangerous down here,” Director Van snarled. “The traps in this room alone injured three men. We’ve just barely disabled the pressure plates in the connecting hallway, and we’re still analyzing soil samples to know what to expect farther down. You could have died.”

The well of hope inside Mateo seemed to expand. Traps? Pre-Commonwealth high khonins didn’t put traps in their tombs; they just had them filled in to protect valuables they were too selfish to pass on. Traps meant this place was something special.

“I don’t believe I read about traps in the initial reports.” Tual shot Mateo an excited look. “Now, don’t worry about us, you won’t even know we’re here. My son knows how meticulous this kind of work is—he’s studying archeology at the university in Rentara and was so pleased to have the opportunity to see a master at work.”

The director moved toward the mirror to fix the angle of the beam of light, but Tual didn’t make way, forcing Van to go around him. “You could have killed me, taking away my light just now. I’ve been working since the sun came up to map out the room beyond the antechamber, and I’ve identified only three potential trouble spots yet, but I’m sure there are more. And that’s without workers muddying the air, moving the mirrors, moving the wrong dirt.” He grumbled to himself before fixing Mateo with a nasty glare. “I don’t need an amateur putting us all in danger. So if you don’t mind, I’d rather you both left and broke your necks on the way out.”

Mateo wasn’t sure if he should laugh at the director or run, the ire cascading off him somewhere between comical and a physical assault. But there was something else strange about this man, something that waited in the dark, a bit of reflected sunlight not enough to lay him bare.

“We’re only here to do some drawings, cataloguing. Satisfy the purse holders…” Tual squeezed Mateo’s shoulder as he spoke, an invitation. “Just give us a moment to look around. I promise we won’t touch a thing.”

“You expect me to stand here and watch you.…”

Mateo turned away from the director, tuning out his voice. His muscles still felt oddly weak, as if one of his attacks had come and gone. He breathed in deep, opening his mind to the stone around them. Echoes came back to him from the cavern walls, but he couldn’t tell what kind of stone they were made from. It was… a combination. A tortured recipe of elements that shouldn’t have been able to go together. Mateo’s brow furrowed, the mixture unlike any Basist work he’d ever seen. He could feel that the hallway extended another twenty strides and that there were a few rooms to either side of it. The floor underneath them, however… Mateo looked down at his new boots, their toes already scuffed. There was something under the floor, but he couldn’t see, as if the stone itself was blocking his power.

He threw his mind out again, and it snagged on a square of ground in the far corner of the room, far from where any light touched. Something about it wasn’t normal. Not even Basist. It was wrong. Wrong like shapeshifters.

The tiny effort of extending his mind left Mateo’s hands shaking, his body suddenly too heavy and his head too light. A flare of anger burst up inside him when the nameless god’s magic drained before he could get a better look at the odd catch in the floor. Why did his magic have to be corrupted? Mateo deserved the nameless god’s power at his fingertips. He deserved to know the oaths, the history, the learning, that had all been lost because of the first Warlord’s hunger for power. A life spent searching for the nameless god, trying to clear him of all the blame that had been laid at his feet, and somehow it was Mateo who was dying.

It wasn’t fair.

Tual’s hand on Mateo’s shoulder tightened. It was his cue. Cutting Director Van’s grumbling off, Mateo found himself a smile and stepped forward to play his part. “I’m very pleased to see a real dig. I see you’re using the Veli method to map the tomb and the places artifacts are found?” He pointed up toward where the numbered baskets sat above on the surface. “Was anything of interest found over here?”

“No. The real work’s back in these rooms we uncovered.” Director Van suddenly seemed wary, watching closely as Mateo pulled out his hand mirror. Sliding it into the beam of light reflected from the large mirror, Mateo angled it toward the place where his mind had snagged. There wasn’t anything there, the ground completely cleared.

“You won’t mind if we look, then?” Mateo started toward the corner. The snag was back in his mind, drawing him to one of the many identical stone blocks lining the floor in the corner. Mateo knelt down and smoothed his hands across the floor, the sense of wrong tearing little holes in his thoughts. His fingers found something hard lodged between two of the blocks. Digging at the thing—a rock, a nail?—Mateo gritted his teeth as the rough stone blocks scraped at his fingers, when—

Suddenly the ground wasn’t there.

It happened too fast for Mateo to process: one second he was kneeling, the next he was falling, and then he was suspended in the air, caught by his new coat’s stiff collar. Heart and lungs flapping in a panic, Mateo tried to stay still even as his body wanted to flail for something to grab hold of.

Light beamed down into the hole, his father’s voice choking out from immediately above him. “Don’t move, son!” Tual, somehow, had caught him. He always did.

The light fell on the ground immediately beneath Mateo, dust kicked up by the trapdoor he’d fallen through diffusing the mirrorlight. There was a carving, something huge that took up the entire wall next to Mateo—

Tual gasped. He’d seen it too. “Help me!” he called. “I can’t hold him.”

Twisting, Mateo jabbed his little hand mirror into the light beaming down into the hold, redirecting it to slice across the huge figure at the center of the carving.

The thing was covered in dark green paint that had peeled and cracked. Its gargantuan face was scaled, with a lizard’s bulbous eyes and long snout. Fangs dripped from its jaw, and claws jutted from its fingertips. The carving’s chest, arms, and hands were human, but its feet were furry and clawed like a parchwolf’s.

“Ready, one… two…” Stitches popped on Mateo’s sleeves as hands jerked him up through the open trapdoor and rolled him onto his side.

“Son.” Tual’s voice was frantic, the darkness closing in around Mateo. “Son, are you all right?”

“Blasted outsiders breaking things and… what is down there?” Van’s growl seemed to diffuse along with the light, filling the cavern with an odd mix of anger and curiosity as he peered into the hole.

Gasping for breath, Mateo scrambled back to the opening and dipped his mirror into the chamber to get another look at the figure on the wall. Carvings at the figure’s feet were depictions of waves or stones or…

Mateo gulped. They were humans. Hundreds of them, tiny and kneeling at the creature’s feet. Their heads were bowed, their arms extended upward. Half were painted white, half a deep, bruised purple.

Patenga. A shapeshifter, a soul stealer from long before the first Warlord had begun unseating the horde of tyrannical shapeshifter kings who infested the land. Mateo goggled at the intact relief—a shapeshifter wearing an unnatural form—that was completely whole. Not defaced or destroyed by angry subjects or Devoted.

Mateo pulled his head away from the hole and rolled onto his back, breaths shuddering in and out of him. His fingers itched for his charcoals; the art style was like none he’d ever seen before.

“Leave the back rooms,” Van’s voice rang out. “Hey! Get over here! All of you!” Accompanied by the scuttling sound of feet on stone. “I need lines down, buckets, brushes.…”

Tual’s hand found Mateo’s shoulder again as he and the director stared down into the hole, a single ray of light on Patenga’s face. With every tomb they’d discovered over the years, Mateo’s hope to live past nineteen had risen and then been dashed to pieces when they didn’t find anything. And when hope was gone, Mateo found himself dashing other things to pieces as well, wishing everything he broke would persuade the world how unfair it was that he had the same sickness Devoted suffered from when Mateo himself hadn’t made a single oath to Calsta.

But now Mateo felt that fragile hope in his chest turn solid.

Tual dipped his own mirror into the opening as workers rushed to the hole, depositing equipment all around them. “Mateo, you need to see this.”

Mateo rolled over and looked down into the hole once again. Tual had moved the light up the shapeshifter’s arm, the thin beam touching Patenga’s hand.

“That’s it, son,” his father whispered.

High above his head, Patenga held a caprenum sword.

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