 
### REVENGE TO THE TENNTH POWER  
(MAMMYTH #1)

By Jack Chaucer

Copyright Jack Chaucer 2018

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover art by Jeanine Henning

Discover other titles by Jack Chaucer:

Queens are Wild

Streaks of Blue (Nikki #1)

Nikki Blue: Source of Trouble (Nikki #2)

Nikki White: Polar Extremes (Nikki #3)

The Password Is Wishpers

Freeway and the Vin Numbers

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

1. BLOOD BOIL

2. THE VULTURE

3. DEATH SCREAM

4. ALL MEN ARE EVIL

5. NERA'S COUNSEL

6. ARROWS & ALLIES

7. ROYAL REVEAL

8. GRACELESS, YOUR GRACE

9. TOMB OF THE LIVING

10. MORE OF A MAN

11. THE DYING & THE DEAD

12. CLOSET IN THE WOODS

13. FORTUNE TELLER

14. ONE GOOD REASON

15. RUTT HUTT

16. FIREBALL

17. RAINING BOULDERS

18. CHANNELING THE DEAD

19. WHITE WIDOW

20. A TERRIBLE POET

21. THE HYDRA

22. DOOMED

23. NEAR KISS

24. A SWORD THROUGH THE HEART

25. HER STAGE

26. THE UNDERWORLD

27. VIEW FROM THE NINTH SPIRE

28. THE WAIT

29. NO MORE KINGS & QUEENS

30. YOU BETTER NOT FUXING DIE

31. THE MONUMENT

32. MAMMYTH O

EPILOGUE

About the author

For Wilma,

goddess of love, revenge and baked goods

**PROLOGUE**

The second time Antero ever laid eyes on Tenn, she appeared far too alone, young and beautiful to sing for the rag-tag regulars of a back-country shit cave like the Tomb of the Living.

For one thing, singing in public was banned for all low-born throughout the kingdom, even in the forgotten, guano-encrusted bowels of Mount Mammyth. King Ryzthar, and the monarchs who preceded him, understood well the power of song and its potential to plant the seeds of rebellion among the rabble.

Most performers here gripped an instrument, like Antero's friend Zakk, who could unlock any sound he desired with his pilfering fingers and sawing bow thrusts across a fiddle.

Tenn, however, had nothing in her hands, which she balled into fists against the sides of her green-and-silver tunic. Her eyelids slammed shut even tighter, but for some reason, every wayward soul in the Tomb gazed at this tall, slender girl — whose long, brown hair cascaded into glowing whorls of gold in the torch light — with open anticipation and respectful silence.

Antero nearly laughed in disbelief into the void, but then her voice smacked him. It was too low and haunting; shockingly vulgar and treasonous.

" _Fux the king..._

I will never be queen

Because of what you did to her

And what you did to me

On the day I flowered

I had already been devoured

Heart, body and soul

I have boiled your depraved priests,

leaving them to rot, a feast for Strix,

but my anger remains unquenched

So I will scorch your royal corpse

With my blood-red rage

Until the whole realm is my stage"

Zakk, burly, blonde and bearded, quaffed some ale and flashed Antero a toothy smile as he watched his friend fall for her like a rock into a ravine.

So restrained was her voice in the first chorus that Antero's jaw dropped for her second — the same exact words, unleashed with the fury of a thousand flaming arrows. Every one hit its mark and burned true.

Her final echo seemed to travel through time itself — "age" after "age" after "age" — rocking the cave with its power.

And when Tenn finally opened her eyes amid the flickering flames, the sea-green flash of allure and pain made Antero realize he had met her once before, much higher up on the mountain.

Somehow she had brought him back to consciousness, only to fear him when he woke; when he had foolishly laughed at her strange response to his simple question.

"All men are evil," she concluded, before she ran away.

ONE YEAR EARLIER

**CHAPTER 1 — BLOOD BOIL**

The king had named her Marinde, but her mother preferred to call her Tenn, as in higher than The Nine immortals who overlooked the rugged wilderness of Mammyth, a mountainous kingdom dominated by a 14,000-foot summit that stretched out along eight rocky ridges like the tentacles of an octopus.

She was five years old the last time her mother called her Tenn. No one had used that name for her since.

She could recall that Brinsma was beautiful and sad, but the fine features of her face and the sound of her voice were as obscured to Tenn's memory now as the cloud-shrouded peak that loomed over the temple.

Protected from the west winds of Aurai by a massive rock wall that seemed to disappear as it rose to meet the 10,000-foot plateau upon which King Ryzthar sat his throne, the Temple of the Seers of The Nine, at about 8,000 feet, had only protected Tenn from the elements. Not from the high cleric. Not from his eight priests and their acolytes. Not even from her own blood, which last night had betrayed her from the very place where they had murdered her innocence so many times before.

Nine years with the Seers of The Nine had been her punishment for being the daughter of a discarded queen.

And now that she had flowered at age 14, it was time to die — a human sacrifice to The Nine: all-powerful Mammyth; the hermaphrodite god's sons, Freyr (life) and Arus (death); Nera, wife of Freyr; Ione, barren wife of Arus; Agan, son of Freyr and Nera; Strix, the chameleon beast begot by the scandalous union of Arus and Nera; Aurai, the four winds; and Aron, scavenger of the dead.

The king had ordered the girl's future sacrifice on the same wretched night Tenn's mother met her fate, and now they would finally reunite in the underworld, ruled by Arus.

Eight priests, robed in black, all of whom had taken their turns with Tenn over the years, chanted their twisted prayers as they led the girl toward the stake. Two rings of red-robed acolytes surrounded the proceedings in the foreground while the high cleric, Volz Yth, remained high — staring down from his large, circular window in the temple's ninth and highest spire. He had never touched her; only burned her with his eyes, leering endlessly and savoring every "purifying" encounter she was forced to endure with his underlings. He usually pleasured himself as well, sickening Tenn to the point where she had yearned for this moment — every second of every day. Death seemed to be her only hope, and now it was here, at twelve bells on a cloudy summer's day.

Tenn had requested to be left unbound because she wanted to die. She would not run. She had even volunteered to light the pyre herself.

"Please, I beg you, hand me the torch as soon as your prayers are done," she had told Volz Ein, the lead priest. He simply nodded, almost regretfully, like he would miss her.

"No doubt you will," she whispered to herself when he had turned to lead the procession.

The three winds of Aurai left unblocked by the cliff above them swirled as the priests covered their heads with their black hoods and encircled Tenn from a safe distance. She was actually at the center of four circles — one ring of tinder and logs, one ring of priests and two rings of acolytes. The ancient order's green-robed novices, deemed too young and unworthy to witness a human sacrifice to The Nine, remained cloistered inside the temple.

Tenn, wearing her usual dirty gray robe for the occasion, stumbled over some sticks, spun around and then backed up against the hard, thick wooden stake. As the metallic bells began their shrill gong from the temple's eighth spire, she took a deep breath of thin alpine air and peered around at her executioners. When she exhaled, the winds seemed to still and Volz Ein approached. The torch, already lit by one of his underlings, quickly consumed Tenn's vision once she gazed at the licking flames. Her heart suddenly raced as the priest passed her the torch and retreated to his circle.

The chanting had long stopped.

The heat of the torch singed her face.

The dry wood surrounding her seemed to hunger for her downward thrust.

The clang of the twelfth and final bell had expired.

"Any last words?"

The unmistakably nasal, mocking voice of her very first rapist, priest Volz Zin, seemed to echo off the rocks behind her. Tenn couldn't see him, just like that first time, but she could feel where he was.

Tenn hissed. The taste of burnt bile filled her mouth as she slammed the torch into the tinder and shouted, "Tenn is higher than The Nine, you wretched, evil swine!"

Her hysterical shriek that followed drowned out the collective gasps of the eight who encircled her. She watched them lower their hoods, and then she stood firm against the stake in awe as the flames shockingly drew away from her feet, snaking across the dirt in eight sizzling spokes toward the alarmed priests. They each retreated a few steps and the flames died out at their bare feet.

The ensuing eerie silence, quickly knifed by screams of agony in every direction, jarred Tenn to tears. She had braced for a horrible and liberating death, but now she was very much alive and shivering uncontrollably, as she felt the heat leave her body instead of consuming it.

She dropped to one knee and continued to tremble, but she kept her head up enough to see the priests desperately clawing at their necks and ripping at their robes. When they all fell to the ground and writhed like overturned beetles, the two rings of acolytes behind them backed away, but Tenn could still see the terror in their eyes, even through the rippling heat waves.

She struggled to make sense of it all. Perhaps her blood had not betrayed her after all. And perhaps she had just boiled theirs, cooking their disgusting bodies from the inside out.

Though the stench of burning flesh nearly made her wretch, Tenn forced herself to stand up and think about the unthinkable: an opportunity to escape.

She looked back one last time and, no longer sensing the sting of his stare, her eyes flicked upward, to the ninth spire. The massive window was empty. The high cleric must be scrambling down the long, spiral stairs to get to her.

Tenn thought of her mother for one beautiful second, laughed out loud for the first time in her memory and then discovered what it was like to run as fast as she could.

How she'd descend a mountain that would soon drop off rapidly from the current plateau, she didn't have a clue, but at least it wasn't time to die yet.

Instead, it was time for this high-born girl to get as low and out of sight as Mammyth would allow.

**CHAPTER 2 — THE VULTURE**

Hagema felt the pull of gold, but not nearly enough pull from her supposedly manly fellow rock climbers.

"Did you two dawdling fux stop to talk again?" she yelled down from the top of Ass Head, the pinnacle of a rocky headwall that apparently looked like the head of an ass to some lackwit shepherd who'd craned his neck from Aron's Ravine centuries ago.

"Zakk's slower than a pregnant ox today... and he's sweating ale again!" Antero's voice rose up, muffled some by the cliff.

A rope-and-knots expert, Hagema gave the line a tug and made sure it was still secure around the boulder next to her. Then she walked back to the edge of the cliff and barked, "Move it! You know we can't be up here long."

Low-born were not permitted this far up Mount Mammyth per orders of the king, and prospecting for gold at 6,000 feet could get a low-born thrown to his or her death. This brazen trio of gold enthusiasts, however, had proved before that the king's soldiers rarely patrolled the mountain's steepest routes, preferring to stick to the wider trails that did not require ropes and rock-climbing skills.

Antero and Zakk finally hoisted themselves up and joined Hagema on Ass Head moments later. She gave a mocking clap before helping them unclip from the rope.

"My ancient 40-year-old mother climbs faster than you two," the stocky 22-year-old redhead said, quickly coiling up the rope.

"The bigger the fux, the harder," gruff-voiced Zakk replied with a grin, visibly winded as the 18-year-old wrung the sweat out of his long, blond ponytail.

"The hardest," 17-year-old Antero added, jerking his thumb into his own bare chest before taking a drag from his water skin. He hadn't bothered to put his long, matted and tangled brown hair into a ponytail, so he looked like a talking mop.

"No time to drink and fux around up here," Hagema snapped, donning the coil like a garment and charging ahead toward a small stand of pine trees. "Our new stream of gold is this way."

"She better be right," Antero told Zakk before following her along the narrow, dirt path.

The three loggers by trade hoped to retire early if they could pillage enough high-altitude gold from the rocky pockets of Mammyth, and by extension, King Ryzthar. With the winds of Aurai blowing favorably on a summer's day and some low clouds helping to obscure their ascent up the ravine's rocky rim, Hagema, Antero and Zakk knew it was the right day to try their luck. They had left the backside of the mountain before first light, traversed through the forest to the east side of Mammyth and methodically climbed out of the imposing bowl of rock.

A far less populated kingdom than the flatter Ibelynth across the Sea of Freyr, the untamed vastness of Mammyth offered a certain protection to those bold enough to take risks.

Still, one random royal patrol in the wrong place at the wrong time could lead to a fight to the death. Swords were too cumbersome for Hagema and her younger friends on the demanding climb, so they sheathed daggers around their waists in case of a confrontation. In three previous trips up into forbidden elevations, the trio had come away with zero gold and zero run-ins with the king's soldiers, so they considered themselves fortunate enough to keep looking at least.

Other prospectors had told stories of finding gold, particularly on the more dangerous east side of the mountain where Ryzthar's castle and the temple loomed, but no one had actually showed off the gold in the caves Antero, Hagema and Zakk frequented, likely out of fear of getting stabbed and robbed.

Ione's Stream, named after the goddess of ice, flowed down the alpine ridge and pooled in a flatter, wooded area just to the southwest of Ass Head. That's where Hagema and her cohorts began chiseling away at the rocks and crevices along the sides of the pool with small iron picks.

The sun goddess Nera, high in the sky now, had begun burning a hole through the cloud layer and adding to the sweat on Antero's back as he toiled.

"Remind me why we don't do this in the winter," he muttered.

"Because this is all ice in the winter, you stone head," Hagema replied, causing Zakk to crack up.

"I know. I just like to hear you get worked up," Antero said.

"How about you focus on finding me some gold instead so I can buy me a proper girlfriend," Hagema said in between scrapes of rock.

The boys laughed. "My sister likes you," Zakk said, referring to his 15-year-old sister, Toree.

"Not in that way," Hagema corrected him. "She's too young anyway, though I do like that red streak in her hair. Red heads are special."

"You're special, all right," Antero ribbed her.

"Speaking of red streaks, do you see what I see flowing down toward us?" Zakk asked, wading through shallow water to get a better look at a more elevated pool. "I'm serious."

Antero and Hagema joined him next to the small waterfall between pools and cupped the water. Sure enough, there was a reddish tint.

"Red? We want gold!" Hagema said, swatting the water away in disgust.

"I know, but this is fuxing strange," Zakk said.

"Tastes like blood," Antero noted after cupping some water with his hands and drinking it.

"Are you crazy? Don't be drinking it then," Hagema warned. "Ione probably cursed this stream."

"Why would she do that?" Antero wondered.

"Because she probably sees what we're doing up here and goddesses don't like low-born, cave-carousing, forest-dwelling grubs like us," Hagema pointed out.

"Um... guys," Zakk said, gazing and then pointing up toward the sky.

"Holy...

"Mammyth," Hagema finished Antero's thought.

"Let's get the fux out of here," Zakk huffed, stuffing tools back in his belt.

"This is worse than a royal patrol," Antero said. "Any ideas?"

"It's too late," Hagema spat. "It spotted us."

Strix, taking the form of a massive black-and-gray vulture with a blood-hued beak, banked left and began swooping toward them. When its orange-yellow eyes fixed on the three targets and blackened, Antero shouted, "Run! Three different directions!"

"There's basically two!" Hagema shot back. "The third is leaping off Ass Head to our deaths!"

"You two go that way and I'll lure him up here," Antero said, pointing and then scrambling up the jagged rocks to a higher elevation.

"That's suicide!" Hagema screamed at his backside.

Zakk yanked on her arm and dragged her until she reluctantly followed.

The beast shrieked overhead, spinning Hagema and Zakk back around just in time to see it pluck Antero off the ridge with ease.

"No, you fuxing buzzard!" Hagema shouted. "Bring him back here!"

Antero could barely breathe as the vulture's gnarled claws painfully squeezed his ribs like a vise. Strix circled low one time to show off his trophy to Antero's cursing friends, and then soared through the air.

Antero felt a paralyzing chill as he got dragged into a cloud. Then he lost consciousness when his compressed lungs seized up.

**CHAPTER 3 — DEATH SCREAM**

Volz Yth's hands shook much harder than usual on the slow ride up to Ryzthar's castle. He tried to convince his mind it was just the vibration of the ox-pulled cart along the stone-carpeted Passage to the Gods.

The views were breathtaking off to his right as Nera chased away the clouds, but the high cleric's eyes were closed, and his ears still burned from the shriek of that witch-blood girl, followed by the ensuing screams of death — his entire circle of priests claimed by Aron and his death lord, Arus, in the blink of Freyr's eye.

The sun goddess warmed Volz Yth even now, as the cart crested the ridge and leveled off at about 10,000 feet. The high cleric finally opened his eyes, gasped for air and saw the castle straight ahead. Mounted on a bed of rocks, it soared 200 feet with high stone walls, two watch towers and four balconies on each side that could be closed against the weather. Mammyth Tower rose above all in the center, but even that was dwarfed by the rock-domed summit 4,000 feet up — a holy place reserved only for immortals.

A phalanx of red-plated soldiers nodded in deference to Volz Yth as he stepped down from the cart with the help of his driver, Aco. A loyal servant for more than a decade, the young man bowed and seemed visibly shaken as he handed his master off to the king's guard.

The high cleric nodded to Aco and shuddered through an exhale before following his silent escort squad up the smooth slab that served as a ramp. They marched through the portal of a rock-wall outer perimeter and beneath a giant marble statue of Mammyth — personified as half man on the right side, half woman on the left and topped by a nine-pointed crown of gold. The statue's sandaled feet seemed to make the high cleric hunch as he trudged under the ornate outcropping and into the castle's main entrance.

Waiting up on an east-facing balcony, King Ryzthar stroked his beard and stared beyond his mountains, beyond the Sea of Freyr, all the way to the blurry outline of Ibelynth's coast. He had been informed of the high cleric's visit, but not the reason. Volz Yth wanted to deliver the news in person.

Some part of Ryzthar already knew the reason — the same part that tormented him with nightmares of Brinsma gouging out his eyes and chopping off pieces of his body as he watched from above, as if pinned to the ceiling.

He flinched at the memory of seeing his own beating heart — freshly carved out of his chest — splashing into the boiling water. Her laugh, which used to fill him with joy and contentedness when he courted her so long ago, had changed to all the wrong notes, haunting him to the point of screams.

Ola, his current young queen, shook him until he woke, but Ryzthar never really woke. The night always followed him around, as it did now, even as he gazed into the bluest of skies on the sunniest of summer days.

"Your grace, the high cleric, Volz Yth," announced his most trusted guard, Bazel, stirring the king from his self-induced fog and spinning him around on the balcony.

"Indeed," Ryzthar replied, nodding as Volz Yth bent the knee. "We're good."

Bazel and another guard retreated into the castle proper, and the salt-and-pepper-haired king motioned for the high priest to join him by the balcony's stone wall, which came up to their waists.

Ryzthar and Volz Yth both stood about six-foot-three, not counting their nine-pointed gold crown and black-cone hat, respectively, but the burdens they carried at this moment seemed to shrink their normally imposing figures.

"I can tell from your dour face the news is..."

"She escaped," Yth interrupted with a gasp, like he still couldn't believe it himself. "Your daughter."

"Former daughter ... from a former queen... a very dead queen," Ryzthar corrected him forcefully, as if trying to drown out the impossible news and cast away his own demons all at once.

The high cleric bowed his head as a strong gust buffeted their lofty perch.

"How?" the king demanded, his unrelenting green eyes fixed on Volz Yth's tired, somber visage.

"Some kind of black magic, I suspect," he mumbled.

"Speak up to your king!" Ryzthar shouted.

The high priest straightened, his amber eyes alarmed, his large nostrils flaring on his bulbous nose.

"She killed them all!" he countered sharply, emotionally, with a sweeping hand gesture. "Your former daughter, fresh with menstrual blood, used blood magic to boil the blood of all eight of my priests in the whip of Strix's tail! The sacrifice you ordered nine years ago has born poison fruit — not the favor of the gods!"

Ryzthar had patiently let him speak his piece. Then he pounced, choking the high priest with both hands at his neck, pushing him against the balcony wall and threatening to shove him over the edge. The jagged rocks waited 150 feet below.

"You blame me for offering a sacrifice to the gods when it was you and your Seers who fuxed it up?! Nine grown men and all of your worthless underlings can't handle a waif of a girl?!"

The high priest's eyes turned frantic as his airway continued to be cut off by Ryzthar's firm grip.

"I should throw you to Aurai right now and let the winds take you to Arus so you can rejoin the rest of your useless priests in the underworld!" the king shouted.

Ryzthar gave him one last hard squeeze and dropped him on his side of the wall. Then he stepped back and watched as Volz Yth gasped and rolled around, pathetically low, pathetically human.

"I'm going up there now!" the king declared, pointing toward the summit. "Fux your rules, cleric!"

He began to step right over Volz Yth, but the high priest reached up with one hand and tripped the king, causing him to stumble and fall to one knee.

Ryzthar screamed and the two guards burst through the door in an instant, their eyes wide at the sight before them.

"Stand him up!" Ryzthar ordered as he slowly stood back up himself.

The guards yanked the cleric up and each held an arm. Ryzthar snarled at Volz Yth and then punched him hard in the gut. The priest doubled over in pain.

"I will go up there or you will go down. Understood?" the king seethed, gesturing toward the rocks below.

Volz Yth slowly got his breath back and tried to respond. The king waited for his answer.

"No mortal... but the high cleric... is permitted... up there," Volz Yth huffed in between shuddered breaths. "You would curse yourself... and your realm?"

The king laughed and spat at his feet.

"I am already fuxing cursed! The gods bewitched me into falling for Ola, only to have two more daughters and still no male heir! Brinsma has haunted me since the night I had her stoned to death, and now her daughter uses sorcery to escape you and your feeble order of wisdom-less priests. You are no mystical high seer! You are low and unfit to return to the Temple of the Nine. Eight seers are already with Arus. Might as well make it a full set and start over. I wash my hands of his kind, guards. Throw him over the wall!"

Volz Yth hissed and struggled like a cornered animal, but the guards made short work of heaving him off the balcony. The soldiers then stepped aside as Ryzthar surged forward and leaned over the wall to have a look.

The high cleric's death scream echoed off the rocks long after his face smashed into them.

**CHAPTER 4 — ALL MEN ARE EVIL**

Her hands, elbows, knees and feet were scraped and bloodied, but Tenn had managed not to fall off the mountain as she descended uneven rocks and thorny shrubs that ripped and shredded her dirty gray shift. Her left nipple and right hip were now exposed to the world, but so far no one had caught her from behind and no one had startled her from below.

Tenn's pace quickened as the ledges became less scary and the air thickened slightly on a warm afternoon. Though it seemed like she had made good progress, in reality she had only dropped from about 8,000 feet to 7,200 feet over the precarious terrain. There were many trails and preferred routes on this mountain and its sister peaks, but Tenn didn't know any of them. Regardless, the pains of this journey felt like a rush of adrenaline compared to what she had endured at the temple. Tenn forced her mind to forget about that and focus on being as sure-footed as possible.

Indeed she was so focused on looking down in front of her that she didn't even notice the beast just twenty yards to the left of her, toying with some prey on a rocky outcropping.

Strix's vulture head rotated, its right eye fixed on the girl. The sudden screech that erupted from its curved beak froze Tenn's body and wrenched her neck with a 90-degree pull. She had never heard a sound like that, and the huge and hideous buzzard staring back at her did not seem real.

Until it screeched again.

She trembled as her stare-down with the beast continued, but for some reason, she did not look away. Whatever happened back at the scene of what was supposed to be her death had given her strength — the kind she had never known before. And the ensuing escape, with its intoxicating rush of proper pain and wind-fueled freedom, had nurtured that power even more.

Tenn quickly made up her mind and her legs followed. She didn't run away. She ran toward the beast, intent on shooing it off the cliff.

"You're even uglier than the priests!" she shouted as she sprinted toward it.

But then Tenn skidded on some loose stones and stopped completely when Strix morphed before her eyes. Suddenly she was surrounded by nine snarling gray-and-white wolves. The saliva slowly dripped off their fangs and she felt more than a moment of doubt. Had The Nine come back to claim her life after all?

That thought steeled her yet again.

"I will not go back!" she screamed, quivering as her eyes scanned each yellow-eyed wolf in her vision. She could feel the hot breath of the ones behind her and quaked even more. "I'll leap off that ledge first!"

Of course, she'd have to break through the ring of wolves to even get the chance.

When the wolves growled and all took a step toward her, she crouched and did her best to look menacing just like them. Then she pounced at the two wolves standing most in the way of the ledge, but there was nothing to grab or tackle when she hit the ground hard. Her forearms burned, but her eyes rejoiced when she looked up to see Strix, back in vulture form, shrieking above her and flying away.

Still in shock from the sensory overload of the bizarre encounter, Tenn didn't trust her eyes at first when she realized there was a man lying still on the edge of the ledge, just ten feet away, clad only in dirty breeches and leather hiking boots.

Warily, she padded across the rocks to stand over him. Long and pale, lifeless and bloodied, he had a nasty gash zigzagging across his bare chest.

Tenn knelt down and, despite her rightful fear of men, slowly reached out to touch his muscular arm. It felt cold and she recoiled. He seemed too young, maybe even too handsome, to be dead. She hesitantly extended her hand a second time, hovering over the bloody wound and then searching for his heart. When she brushed his skin with her palm, the man's eyelids fluttered and his mouth opened to suck for air.

Tenn sprung backward like she had rousted a snake, and then instinctively covered her exposed breast with her hand.

Her heart raced as the young man with the long, sandy-brown hair tried to sit up and regain normal breathing.

Antero groaned from his injuries and struggled through blurred vision to make sense of the scene around him. He was only a few feet from plummeting to his death, so he rolled away from the edge and his wounds stung from the sudden movement. As he gingerly shifted position, he sensed someone else move away from him. Slowly, he focused on a tall, thin, bloodied young girl, partly covered in rags. She backed away even more as he became aware of how nearly naked she was.

He coughed and tried to speak, but his throat was so dry. He recalled Ione's Stream and wished for a gulp of cold water, but then he remembered the blood, and Hagema and Zakk, and their shocked faces as the grotesque vulture seized him, squeezed him and stole off with him.

"Who are you?" he finally managed to ask the timid girl with the dazzling sea-green eyes.

She looked so out of place, maybe even lost, this high up Mammyth, but then again, perhaps so did he.

Though she was half-turned to flee, the girl still looked him in the eyes as she tried to form a reply.

"I'm, I'm... I'm in a lot of trouble," she stammered.

Antero was so incredulous at that answer that he laughed and paid for it with searing pain, causing him to groan again.

The girl shook her head and began walking away.

Antero stood up too fast, felt woozy and dropped back down on one knee.

"Wait," he pleaded, reaching out to her.

She stopped and turned around once more.

"All men are evil," Antero heard her say, this time with no stammer. "I must go."

Stunned, he watched her run back toward the ridge line and disappear into the mountain.

**CHAPTER 5 — NERA'S COUNSEL**

The Passage to the Gods could only ferry the king so far. At 12,800 feet, Ryzthar had to leave the snorting, laboring oxen behind and climb the summit dome himself, one rock at a time, like any other mortal.

He told his soldiers to stay behind with the cart — only a king could hope to meet with The Nine, and even his presence, he feared, would be taken as a brash and desperate affront to the immortals. High clerics always had forbid monarchs from appealing to the gods directly. That was their role. But Ryzthar had no high cleric or any of his eight immediate possible successors to worry about at the moment. They were all dead. So in the interim, before the temple elected a new top tier of seers, he aimed to seek an audience with The Nine himself and beg for counsel.

With an oak-hewn staff in his right hand and a wineskin latched to the belt around his black-bear robe, the stubborn king ascended into the increasingly brisk gales and thickening clouds. It may be summer down at the lower elevations, but the goddess Ione usually defended the summit with wild or wintry weather. Hurricane-force winds, thunderstorms, ice storms, snow storms, dense fog and even hail the size of human heads — any or all of these could be awaiting the intrepid monarch.

Ryzthar, a husky man but still relatively fit at thirty-five years old in a realm where forty-five was considered knocking on Arus' gate, stared into the swirling gray and gasped for as much of the thin air as his lungs could hold. Then he took a quick drag of red wine to boost his courage and resumed climbing.

In less than an hour, he stood within 100 feet of the summit, but he could not see it. The gray-and-white howl blasted his face. Even when he did open his eyes, the black spots crowded his vision — his exertion in the high altitude was bringing on a migraine and unrelenting wooziness. The buffeting wind intermittently carried pellets of ice, stinging his face and crystallizing his beard.

The king then stumbled on an uneven rock, dropped his staff and fell, banging his right shoulder into the base of a boulder. As he rubbed the painful bruise, the boulder seemed to give off heat, warming him.

Slowly, he stood back up and placed both hands on the rock, which was as high as his chest. The warmth pleasured his hands, and soon radiated and tingled through the rest of his body.

"What is this?" he asked as the winds of Aurai whipped against him from ever-changing directions.

"Stone," a young woman's voice answered.

Ryzthar kept one hand on the boulder as he turned to find the source of the voice, but all he could see were the clouds and the damn black spots eating away at his field of vision.

"Who speaks to me?" the king shouted, again placing both hands on the boulder and rubbing it.

"Nera," the goddess announced.

The king quickly dropped to both knees, his hands still attached to the boulder.

"Nera... beautiful sun goddess, may I see you?" Ryzthar asked, his voice crackling with anticipation.

"No," she replied. "Ione has dressed me today and, for once, I am grateful. What brings a troubled king up so far? To catch sight of me naked?"

The king paused to weigh her words, delivered in a saucy, mocking tone that made the monarch shiver.

"Not at all, Nera. You say I am troubled. Why do you speak to me this way, beautiful sun goddess?"

"You sound troubled, King Ryzthar," she replied. "Do you grieve your queen?"

"My queen is very mu-mu-much alive," he yammered. "Ola is..."

"Do you take me for a fool? The very goddess who lights your kingdom and your brother's kingdom across the sea? The goddess who feeds your subjects and feeds you?"

"No, great Nera, I beg your pardon," the king said, his head bowed by the blasts of wind and his own stupidity in the presence of an all-knowing immortal. "I see now that it is Brinsma of whom you speak."

"Do you grieve her?" the goddess asked a second time.

Ryzthar again paused, cursing at himself for this high-altitude gamble; this avoidable predicament.

"No, I don't," he admitted, not wanting to cross Nera again. "She didn't revere the gods. She practiced black magic... witchcraft! Surely you don't take her side, beautiful sun goddess?"

"You called Brinsma beautiful many, many times... and yet you had her stoned to death. Is she still beautiful, King Ryzthar? Beautiful like me?"

The trick questions and the waves of heat now crashing through him from the stone made him sweat underneath his bear robe. He snatched his hands off the rock and wrung them fretfully, unable to stop the burning and itching.

"This was a mistake," he mumbled.

Nera heard him just fine despite the four-pronged howl of Aurai.

"What was?" she ridiculed him. "Coming up here? Killing your queen over your lust for another? Casting away your first-born daughter, Marinde, so she could be turned into a sexual play toy for the depraved creatures who make a mockery of the beautiful, ancient temple... a temple dedicated to us?"

"Please stop!" Ryzthar shouted into the unrelenting gale.

"Yes, that's right. That's what your daughter screamed. When you were cozy in your castle, did you hear her cries from her underworld cell?"

Ryzthar looked down at his fallen staff and cursed himself loudly yet again.

"I want to thank you," Nera said.

"Why?" he pleaded, gazing up again into the clouds, desperate for hope.

"For killing Volz Yth... he was such a disgrace to Mammyth, to all the gods really," she said. "Rather, thank your guards for that. They killed him. You couldn't quite finish the job."

"I could have," Ryzthar protested. "I let them finish him off. That's their job."

"And what is your job, your grace?" Nera toyed with him.

The king scowled at her tone.

"To rule this pile of rocks and keep you immortals happy," he shouted at the stone. "A fuxing impossible task."

"So jaded," she said. "So ungrateful. So hopelessly incapable."

Ryzthar shook his head and spat at the ground.

"Oh do fux off then. You think it's easy being a mere mortal? I don't need your immortal superiority ox shit!"

Nera laughed, her echo bouncing from boulder to boulder, up and down the summit cone.

The king, rattled by fear and anger, began to twitch.

"Still think I'm beautiful?" she asked. "No... now we've arrived at some truth."

Ryzthar searched his shaken soul for some words, some courage.

"The truth is I should have believed in bloody witchcraft instead of you and your kind, goddess. Then maybe Brinsma would still be alive and I wouldn't be up here acting like a simpering fool right now."

"Believe whatever you want to believe and say whatever you want to say to suit your purpose... just like you always do," the goddess said.

"The truth is betrayal and murder and abandonment of one's heir, no matter the sex, are some heavy stones. Do take care not to get crushed."

"Is that a threat?" he snapped.

Nera's voice suddenly cranked up in speed and force to match the pummeling winds.

"You should be troubled, King Ryzthar. My son, Agan, appeared to your queen before her death and agreed to watch over your daughter. He watched and watched while you forgot and forgot about her, your own royal blood. He could not truly help her until the seers commenced with your sacrifice — we did not accept your sacrifice of her to us. That was another of your mistakes, and a very grave one indeed. Royal blood mixed with witch's blood pooled with the powers of the blood god himself and backed by his mother, the goddess of the sun — Marinde is someone else now. Someone far more powerful, and she barely knows it yet.

"So if you came up here to ease your troubled mind, you came to the wrong place. And if you came up here for counsel, here it is: best stay out of my light or she will find you sooner."

**CHAPTER 6 — ARROWS & ALLIES**

Tenn's knowledge of the vast mountain essentially dead-ended at the east-facing temple plateau, so her frantic descent into the unknown had taken her from the outstretched hand of a wounded stranger, down a ridge flanked by steep ledges and into a dark forest of pine that put her spine on edge.

The initial adrenaline of defying death, embracing freedom and fresh air, and finding a young man as vulnerable as her — at least until he woke up — had been replaced by the pain in her scarred, bare feet, the hunger in her gut and the fear of what might jump out at her from behind the next tree.

After washing up in a frothy, swift-moving brook and cupping her hands to her mouth to quench her thirst, Tenn spied a more worn trail with a floor of soft pine needles. Her instinct told her not to take this path, but her feet won out and her mood improved. With rocks and underbrush no longer jabbing at her heels, ankles and toes, the girl tripled her speed.

The problem was she had no idea what she would eat or where she should spend the night, never mind an ultimate destination. Her mother was long dead, her father could have received word of her violent escape by now and ordered a hunting party, and she knew no friend or ally. She was just a high-born prisoner on the run, a streak of gray-and-dried-blood tatters with sweat-soaked hair that still reeked of the smoke that should have been her funeral pyre.

Two hours later and about 1,700 feet lower, Tenn ducked for cover as two men forked onto her path leading an ox cart full of food and other supplies — no doubt headed for the king, temple or some high-born hamlet above the tree line proud of its beautiful vista. This was her best chance to try to grab something to eat, but what if she got caught?

Tenn hid behind a thick-trunked tree about twenty-five feet away and watched the two oxen slowly pull the long, wooden cart along the path. It was loaded with stacks of freshly butchered pork and venison, as well as straw baskets full of fruits, vegetables and loaves of bread. She did not see any salt fish from the Sea of Freyr, but she could smell it. Her mouth watered, her stomach growled and her aching feet moved her closer to the cart before her brain could override them.

Feeling bold with the men and the oxen facing up the trail now, Tenn lurched out of the trees and reached for the nearest basket of bread. The cart was just slow enough for her to grab a full loaf off the top of the stack with both hands and freeze for a second as the rest of the cart went past her. Then she crouched in place, not wanting to risk making a sound by running. The end of the cart was beyond her by fifteen feet, but one of the men turned to the other and his peripheral vision caught sight of her — a filthy girl squatting with a stolen loaf of bread in the middle of the path.

"Hey, halt! A fuxing thief!" he yelled as the other man turned around now and the cart jerked to a stop.

Tenn began to run straight down the path, away from the men, but the first man was fast and he tackled her in less than a minute. She held the bread to cover her exposed breast as he flipped her over, and the second man soon hovered over both of them with an iron cleaver in his hand.

"What have we here?" the taller of the two asked as the first man got off her and stood up to have a better look. Tenn froze in place, trembling on the pine needles. The predatory looks in their eyes made her feel helpless all over again, even though she was outside the temple now.

"All men are evil," she muttered, her teeth suddenly chattering, even on this summer day. She still clutched the loaf of rye bread like she was willing to die for it, and glanced with panicked eyes from one man to the other, trying not to dwell on the cleaver.

"And all women are thieves and whores," the one with the cleaver said. "But some are better at it than others. You're not so good at thieving, are you?"

"I hope you're better at whoring then," the shorter, stockier man said. "You can keep the bread in exchange for your hand," he added, nodding at his buddy's cleaver, "but you owe us both a fuxing good time for making us stop the cart and delaying our delivery. That's called fair trade. Understood?"

Tears began rolling down Tenn's cheeks, but she refused to whimper or cry. She tried to think, to move, but she simply felt paralyzed... and so, so hungry.

So she ignored them and took a big bite of the loaf. The men laughed when her breast became exposed, but she sat up and chewed ravenously. The act of eating also helped break her out of her temporarily paralysis.

"We'll take that vigorous bite as a yes," the cleaver man said with a lustful grin.

"And we appreciate you delighting our eyes with a little taste of what's to come," the other man added with a chuckle.

"Who said this was going to be a long, boring fuxing trip up today?"

"I did. I fuxing stand corrected."

As they carried on like two roosters clucking over a hen, Tenn continued to chomp and chew and stew. She had never wanted to be a motherless prisoner or a fire-reversing murderer of priests or a bread thief or the butt of ox handlers' jokes, and yet here she was. And now she was expected to get on all fours again and take it from behind two more times? Two rapes for a loaf of bread? Oh, and her hand would get chopped off after that. Fair trade in the Kingdom of Ryzthar.

She would not submit this time, she determined. She would fight both men to the death for a loaf of rye and to resume her freedom.

Then an arrow whizzed from out of the trees and struck the man with the cleaver in his right arm. The butchering tool fell harmlessly to the ground as he cried out and doubled over.

The other man unsheathed a dagger from his belt holder and waved it around, searching for the person who fired the arrow. His eyes darted in every direction as Tenn remained sitting, watching and chewing her bread. She peered around with a hint of hope.

"Who fired on the king's supply guard?" the dagger man screamed. "Come out and show yourself, coward, and accept your justice!"

A young woman with black hair, a black tunic and a black arrow pointed straight at the dagger man stepped out from behind a tree.

"I did," she said. "Why go hunting when you did all the work for me?"

The dagger man stepped toward her.

"Take another step and I'll rip this one through your heart!" the woman warned in a strong and sure voice. "You won't be raping anybody today so get back on your cart and go. In exchange for letting you live, please leave the entire basket of bread and one deer behind. Fair trade. Understood?"

"Go fux yourself!" the cleaver man said in between groans as he righted himself and began tugging at the arrow in his arm.

"Very well," the woman replied calmly.

She fired a second arrow through the cleaver man's chest and he fell to the ground. Horrified, the dagger man charged at the woman. She didn't have another arrow ready in time and started running down the path away from Tenn.

Sensing an almost-electric energy building inside her, Tenn stood up and unleashed it with an exaggerated stomp of her right foot into the ground. A streak of fire spread quickly along the path until the flame engulfed the dagger man up to his shins. He screamed in agony, briefly high-stepping before he keeled over, the flames consuming him and eventually crisping him.

Winded and wide-eyed, the woman in black soon stood over the burned body in amazement.

"How?" she asked as Tenn followed the flame she created and extinguished it with each step.

"I thank the gods and I thank you for saving me," Tenn said.

"You command fire and yet you need saving?"

"My powers are new to me and unpredictable, so I envy your skill with that bow and arrow," Tenn said, holding out her hand and offering the shorter, wiry woman a chunk of rye bread.

"No, you eat it. You look like you haven't eaten... or washed... in weeks," she replied. "My name is Jett."

Tenn nodded, smiled and stared into her chocolate-brown eyes. There was something different about Jett — perhaps the potential for trust, Tenn sensed.

"I'm Tenn," she finally replied.

Jett, who carried herself like she was at least a couple of years older than Tenn, smiled back and tilted her head slightly.

"Intriguing name for an intriguing girl," she said, her pale face pinking at the cheeks. "I think we better get you a few more provisions off that cart and get us both the fux out of here. Killing the king's supply guards could cost us both our heads."

Tenn nodded. "I was already in trouble before all of that. Now I really need to hide."

"What did you do?"

"I burned some other asshole rapists to death," Tenn said matter-of-factly.

That raised Jett's sleek, black eyebrows. They locked eyes again.

"I'm glad you're on my side... I am on your side, right?" Jett asked.

Tenn couldn't believe her ears. Someone wanted to be on her side?

"I haven't had anyone on my side since my mother was killed many years ago. If you want to be on my side, I accept you with open arms," Tenn said, literally opening her arms.

Jett beamed and hugged her tight. Then she said, "Let's stock up and head further down the mountain. If you want to get low and out of sight, I know plenty of deep, dark places."

**CHAPTER 7 — ROYAL REVEAL**

Tenn awoke screaming and thrashing around on the cave floor, nearly rolling into the small campfire, but Jett grabbed her in time and wrapped her up in a strong embrace. They stayed like that until Tenn's breathing returned to normal.

"So... do you want to talk about what happened to you?" Jett finally asked her in a soft, tender voice that caught Tenn off guard. She shifted to face her, but it took a while before she allowed herself to gaze into Jett's fire-lit eyes through hay-tangled hair.

"They destroyed me," Tenn whispered, fighting tears until there was no use. Down they came.

Jett gently wiped them with two brushes of her fingers.

"Who? How?" she asked.

"The nasty priests... at the temple," Tenn replied, her eyes still alarmed, like she hadn't fully emerged from her nightmare yet.

Jett nodded, though she could not relate to this high-born girl's experience. She was low-born and had never been half-way up the mountain, much less within sight of the Temple of the Seers of The Nine.

"Were you dreaming of them just now?" Jett asked.

Tenn nodded. "They haunt me... even after I escaped... even after I watched some of them die, boiling from the inside out, which was still too good for them."

"Fux them then. They're gone now," Jett said, her hard-edged voice back like when they met. "I'd never let them hurt you again, even if they were alive."

Tenn forced a smile through sobs. "I was just a little girl... and they took turns..."

"You don't have to tell me if..."

"I must... tell someone... or I will explode... from the shame and the filth and the pain and the anger," Tenn gasped.

This time, Jett just let her tears fall and her words flow.

"They all did it the same way... one thrust for every god... Aron, Aurai, Strix, Agan, Ione, Nera, Arus, Freyr... the fuxing groan as they came... and then one last ram for Mammyth... ripping me apart so I could never heal.... Such a fool. I felt so happy when I realized they couldn't kill me... that I was capable of killing them instead... so happy and free running down the mountain... but the joke is on me... because I can never escape the torture I endured. It will always scar my brain, my heart, my body.... I will never sleep with a clear head or without fear of waking up just like you found me tonight."

Now a tear streaked Jett's cheek, too.

"I am so sorry, Tenn. You deserve so much better."

"And you are the first person who has cared enough to hold me like that... to listen to me.... You also deserve better... to know the truth, because I am putting you in danger."

"What do you mean?"

"I am... was... the king's daughter," Tenn said, studying Jett's stunned face.

"Not possible. Here? In a shitty little cave with me?" Jett gasped, her hand on her chest. "You're royal blood?"

"I am."

After Tenn told her the whole story, Jett pulled her close for another embrace.

"I now believe in my heart I was meant to find you," she whispered in the younger girl's ear. "I know it. And I will slay it, this pain you feel. I promise."

SIX MONTHS LATER

**CHAPTER 8 — GRACELESS, YOUR GRACE**

Queen Ola kissed her two young daughters and whisked them down the long hall so she could have a word with the king.

"Why have you been avoiding me like a low-born with the plague?" she asked, her blue eyes boring a hole into Ryzthar's back.

He clenched his mug of ale and spun around to face her instead of the roaring brazier. It was the middle of winter, and the isolation of the castle had only worsened his pangs of dread and the endless mental replays of his vexing encounter with Nera.

"I have a lot on my mind," the king replied, barely restrained.

"I think we should try again... tonight," said Ola, a twenty-six-year-old blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty who did her best to fight the misery, but the losing battle was taking its toll, aging her too fast and making her heart beat irregularly, especially when she was around the king.

"I'm not in the mood," Ryzthar grumbled, not looking her in the eyes.

"You blame me for no male heir and yet you don't do your part to try," she replied sharply.

"I have tried. We have tried. It doesn't matter."

"Why do you speak like this?"

"Because the gods have cursed me. Freyr... god of life and fertility... just fertile enough to grant me three children, all daughters. And Nera and her fuxing son, Agan... don't get me started."

"Such a harsh and bitter tongue," Ola interjected with a gasp. "And you wonder why you're cursed?"

"Actually, I've been cursed since the day I back-handed Brinsma and traveled to Nine View to fux you!" Ryzthar snapped.

Ola scowled as he ranted.

"I traded the most beautiful woman in the kingdom for the second-most beautiful woman in the kingdom because I couldn't stand to be around that first witch..."

"And now you can't stand to be around me... your second prize," she seethed.

"Two women, three daughters between the two of you... one queen is dead and haunting me; one daughter escaped death and is out there somewhere plotting against me — with The Nine on her bloody side — and now the queen who is alive is torturing me with her presence and demands!" the king shouted before draining the rest of his ale and tossing the mug down the hall. It bounced off the sprawling red rush and onto the hardwood floor, echoing as Ola's labored breaths turned into sobs.

Two servants, who simultaneously responded to the disturbance through open doors at opposite ends of the massive room, spun right back around and exited upon taking in the uncomfortable scene.

The queen backed away from the king, but she still glared at him and held her hand to her racing, careening heart.

"Am I next then? And our daughters... are they next?" she asked.

"If I thought I could stand another queen in my life, who knows? But I absolutely fuxing couldn't, so you are safe and they are safe."

"Such a comfort... thank you, your grace," Ola mocked him.

"One torments from the underworld at night and the other to my face during the day — how much can one man take?" the king asked the high, distant ceiling with his arms outstretched.

"Why don't you kill yourself then and spare the rest of us?!" Ola snarled.

Ryzthar smiled and then grimaced, his guts roiling inside him.

"Get out of my sight, woman, before I have you sent some place where your wretched, treasonous voice will never be heard again!" he barked.

Ola flicked her furious eyes from the king's venomous glare to the crooked index finger that pointed toward the far door. She straightened, sucked in some thin, stale air and fired off a parting shot with a low growl.

"You certainly are graceless, your grace. You deserve yourself... and no one else."

SIX MONTHS LATER

**CHAPTER 9 — TOMB OF THE LIVING**

The second time Antero ever laid eyes on Tenn, she appeared far too alone, young and beautiful to sing for the rag-tag regulars of a back-country shit cave like the Tomb of the Living.

For one thing, singing in public was banned for all low-born throughout the kingdom, even in the forgotten, guano-crusted bowels of Mount Mammyth. King Ryzthar, and the monarchs who preceded him, understood well the power of song and its potential to plant the seeds of rebellion among the rabble.

Most performers here gripped an instrument, like Antero's friend Zakk, who could unlock any sound he desired on a fiddle with his pilfering fingers and sawing bow thrusts.

Tenn, however, had nothing in her hands, which she balled into fists against the sides of her green-and-silver tunic. Her eyelids slammed shut even tighter, but for some reason, every wayward soul in the Tomb gazed at this tall, thin girl — whose long, brown hair spilled into glowing whorls of gold in the torch light — with open anticipation and respectful silence.

Antero nearly laughed in disbelief into the void, but then her voice smacked him. It was too low and haunting; shockingly vulgar and treasonous.

" _Fux the king..._

I will never be queen

Because of what you did to her

And what you did to me

On the day I flowered

I had already been devoured

Heart, body and soul

I have boiled your depraved priests,

leaving them to rot, a feast for Strix,

but my anger remains unquenched

So I will scorch your royal corpse

With my blood-red rage

Until the whole realm is my stage"

Zakk, burly, blonde and bearded, quaffed some ale and flashed Antero a toothy smile as he watched his friend fall for her like a rock into a ravine.

So restrained was her voice in the first chorus that Antero's jaw dropped for her second — the same exact words, unleashed with the fury of a thousand flaming arrows. Every one hit its mark and burned true.

Her final echo seemed to travel through time itself — "age" after "age" after "age" — rocking the cave with its power.

And when Tenn finally opened her eyes amid the flickering flames, the sea-green flash of allure and pain made Antero realize he had met her once before, much higher up on the mountain.

Somehow she had brought him back to consciousness, only to fear him when he woke; when he had foolishly laughed at her strange response to his simple question.

"All men are evil," she concluded, before she ran away.

As applause reverberated around him, Antero watched a tough-looking, raven-haired young woman hop up on the elevated wooden stage. She embraced the drained performer and led her by the hand down a passageway in one of the deepest, most hideaway-friendly caves in the kingdom.

Antero's stunned look earned him a slap on the back from Zakk. Two seconds later, Hagema stood at the bottom of the long stairway entrance to the cave and spotted their table. She halted a bar wench in mid-stride, flirted, paid for a drink and joined them, ale mug in hand.

"Am I too late?" she asked, her short red hair more curly than usual.

"Yes, but not too late to see the enchanted look on Antero's face after Tenn's memorable performance," Zakk laughed until he coughed.

"Aw, he's in love," Hagema cooed.

"Just stop," Antero protested. "Though I will admit she is beautiful. And she can sing. But I can't believe she just threatened the king in front of all these people. Pure suicide."

"Damn it! That takes real ox balls! I would've been here sooner if this hellhole wasn't in the middle of fuxing nowhere!" Hagema ranted.

"How many times has she pulled this not-so-little stunt and lived to sing again?" Antero asked Zakk.

"Three or four I guess. Always in a different cave. I never told you this because I didn't think you'd believe me and then you'd never show up to see her, but the first time she sang, my sister Toree and Tenn's girlfriend, Jett..."

"Stop. She has a girlfriend?" Hagema asked, her eyes bugging out.

"Must be the Arus-cloaked one who just dragged her off stage," Antero followed up.

"Yes and yes," Zakk confirmed, pleasing Hagema and disappointing Antero all in one shot. "Can I finish my story now?"

Hagema and Antero nodded and drank.

"The first time she sang, Toree and Jett begged me to accompany her on fiddle because Tenn was scared shitless to be up there performing alone. Well, I played my fiddle just fine for the first trip through the chorus, but that second trip, when she really lets loose like she did tonight, the fiddle fuxing ignited in my hands and I had to drop it!"

"What?!!" Hagema and Antero gasped.

"And she just kept on singing like all of that was normal... well, I giant-stepped the fux away and a bar wench doused my fiddle, first with ale... that didn't help!" Zack shouted over the rising din of other nearby cave revelers.

"Idiot," Hagema laughed.

"The wench finally doused it with water, but no use. My fiddle was roasted like a chicken on a spit!"

"So she's a witch or fire mage or something?" Hagema asked, her cheeks getting more rosy by the sip.

"Jett told me who she is, but she'll fire an arrow through my heart if I tell a soul!" Zakk replied.

"A big man like you, scared of a girl?" Antero taunted him.

"That girl has killed more men than either of us. Pretty easy to do when we've killed zero between us, I know, but she's a true hunter, thief and sharpshooter."

"But not a better rock climber, logger or gold prospector," Hagema boasted.

"Did you find some gold you didn't tell us about?" Antero queried while swatting her arm.

"Just fuxing with ya," she replied with a grin.

"Well, as long as we're sharing stories about this strange, treason-tongued girl, I have one, too, that I never told you about," Antero said.

"Still so many secrets between us," Hagema hissed playfully as Zakk leaned in closer.

"I met her once before... high up on the mountain," Antero said.

"No shit? You were up there without us?" Hagema asked, visibly offended.

"Surely you remember last summer... when a certain winged beast flew off with me?"

"From Ione's bloody stream?" Zakk said.

"I almost died that day I was so fuxing pissed," Hagema pounded the table.

"Yes. Well, I'm quite certain that very same girl who sang tonight saw me on a ledge way up the mountain. I woke up in wicked pain from this fuxing gash," Antero said, yanking the neckline of his black shirt down to show the top part of the scar across his chest. "And she was there looking down at me. I think she had just chased off the beast and done something to heal me. It was really intense and weird, but I felt a strong connection to her."

"Then what happened?" Hagema asked, grabbing Antero by the shoulders.

"My big mouth happened," he replied. "I asked her who she was... and she didn't want to tell me. She just said she was in trouble.... Well, I was half out of it, and for some reason, I thought it was a ridiculous answer... like her name was actually Trouble... and I laughed."

"You laughed?!" Hagema slapped him. "At the girl who helped bring you back to life? What a fool!"

"Take it easy on him," Zakk chided her.

"Yeah, I went from being a snack for Strix to trying to have a conversation with a girl who... I just remembered the best part... she was wearing these ripped-up rags and one of her breasts was bare to the world, so she was covering it with her hand."

"No wonder you couldn't function," Hagema ribbed him.

"Yeah, it all makes sense now," Zakk added.

"Anyway, the rest of the story is short... she kept backing away from me and told me, 'All men are evil.' Then she bolted. I was too weak to stand up at that point, never mind chase her."

"Wow. Now we all know why you're still single," Hagema laughed.

Antero frowned and shook his long locks, but Zakk smiled and offered a surprise opportunity.

"Well... how'd you like a second crack at Trouble... ha... at Tenn right now? My sister and Jett have told me she wants to talk to some climbing experts who know the best routes up Mammyth."

"That's us! I'm in!" Hagema pounced, and then stared in disbelief at Antero as he pondered it longer than she expected.

"So this was a trap?" he asked. "You didn't just want us to see her sing tonight? She's serious about what she sang and she wants us to aid in her suicidal rebellion in some way?"

"I don't know about her plans," Zakk said. "You'd have to ask her yourself."

"I'm not sure any of us should be talking to her," Antero said. "I don't want to be the one standing next to her when the king's soldiers show up to cut out her tongue and chop off her head... in that order."

"But it sounds like she may have saved your life," Hagema said. "The least you... we... could do is thank her for that and listen to what she has to say."

"You do recall she told me all men are evil?" Antero pointed out.

"That was a year ago," Zakk replied. "I get the feeling she's been working through some of her anger issues."

Antero laughed. "She still seemed pretty angry on stage tonight. And you just told us she nearly burned you alive when you tried to play fiddle next to her."

"That is true," he nodded.

Hagema stood up.

"Where are you going?" Antero asked.

"I see Toree over there," she said, pointing across the cave. "I'm going to talk to her about meeting Tenn. Are you two evil pussies coming with me or not?"

**CHAPTER 10 — MORE OF A MAN**

Hagema couldn't decide whom to stare at more — the mysterious, goth-edged Jett or Zakk's spritely sister Toree, with strawberry-blonde hair down to her ass. So far, there was no sign of Tenn in this cramped, torch-lit room 30 feet off one of the dozens of passageways snaking off from the main part of the Tomb.

Toree introduced Antero to Jett, who eyed him warily.

"Wasn't she amazing?" Toree asked Antero. "My brother and I have seen her a bunch of times..."

"She is, but how long does she think she'll get away with crooning about regicide?" Antero asked.

"Well I hope she sings at least one more time because I got here too late tonight," Hagema said.

Jett cleared her throat. "Look, this girl has been through hell. I suggested that she sing to get out some of her pain. It's part of her healing process. If the king doesn't like it, fux him."

Toree clapped, Zakk and Hagema smiled, and Antero shook his head.

"I admire your boldness, her boldness... I just hope it doesn't get her tongue cut out in front of all her fans one of these nights. It's not like this cave is completely off the map."

Jett nodded. "What you say makes sense. But this girl can handle herself. I helped her in a certain situation one time and she returned the favor in a most powerful way. She's not... your average cave dweller."

"She's high-born, isn't she?" Antero asked.

"What makes you say that?" Jett shot back suspiciously.

"I think she may have saved my life once... much higher up the mountain," he replied.

That raised Jett's eyebrows. "Really? How?"

"It's a long story. Perhaps we could meet her and then I'll know for sure if that's her," Antero suggested.

"You could be a spy for the king for all I know," Jett snapped.

"He's not," Zakk said.

"Definitely not," Hagema added with a chuckle.

"Low-born for sure," Toree added.

Antero smirked. Jett was not moved. Antero tried a new tack.

"She once told me, 'All men are evil.'"

Jett's stare softened and she nodded slightly. "That's definitely her. Now I believe you.... Here's the situation. Tenn wants to talk to you guys about the best routes up the mountain because she says she's ready to do what she needs to do."

"Kill the king?" Antero asked.

"Maybe."

"Does she have an army?" Hagema asked.

"No," Jett replied. "She doesn't want an army. She'd prefer to do it all by herself if she gets her way, but I won't let her. Powerful or not, she's quite damaged and she's still a fifteen-year-old girl. She needs mountaineering advice... and maybe a small team to help her get up to the Temple of the Seers of The Nine. That's her first objective. Then the king."

An awkward silence followed, their faces half-lit, half-shadows from the flickering wall torch.

"Does she have some possible claim to the throne or is she just a witch that likes to play with fire?" Antero asked.

"I'm impressed with your tough questions tonight," Hagema pointed out. "You're not usually this..."

"Strix almost devoured me for lunch a year ago. I'd rather not squander a second chance at life, even a low-born life, unless there's a good reason."

"Understandable," Hagema said with a nod.

Antero sighed and turned back toward Jett.

"I know you told Zakk who she is and threatened to put an arrow through his heart if he told a soul, but I think Hagema and I also deserve to know who would be risking our lives for if we help her in this plot."

"It may sound like just a mad lyric in a mad song, but she really is the king's daughter," Jett said, exhaling with relief that she could finally share the burden with others who seemed trustworthy. "Her real name is Marinde. The king killed her mother, Queen Brinsma, when she was five years old and sent her to the temple to be raped by the priests until she became a woman. They were supposed to sacrifice her to the gods by burning her at the stake last summer, but she... somehow... fried the priests instead. And then she escaped."

Antero's eyes opened wide. "That's when I saw her! She was barely wearing those rags and running down the mountain.... No wonder why she thinks all men are evil. Her fuxing father. The pedophile priests."

"And let's not forget you," Zakk added with a slap on his back.

Toree gasped while Hagema's laugh echoed all around them.

"Ha, ha... tell Tenn we'll help her," Antero told Jett. "And we'll prove to her that at least three men in this kingdom are not evil."

"Three men? I see two here."

"He must be talking about me," Hagema said, raising her hand. "Antero knows I'm more of a man than these two will ever be."

Jett's sudden smile made the torch look dim.

**CHAPTER 11 — THE DYING AND THE DEAD**

Jett led them all to another nearby room, where Tenn had been pacing. She stopped in mid-stride and her eyes locked on Antero as they all entered and encircled her.

"It was you that day," Antero told her, mesmerized for a moment by how much stronger and more beautiful she looked compared to a year ago. "Did you bring me back to life after that beast flew off with me?"

"If I did, thank the gods, not me. I didn't know what I was doing that day. I was just trying to stay alive and get down the mountain as fast as I could."

Antero nodded and pondered that for a moment. "And now you want us to help you go back up there?"

Jett reached for Tenn's hand and held it tight.

"Yes," Tenn said. "It's been a year. I can't keep hiding out in caves and singing about what needs to be done. It's time to face my true fate, one way or the other. At the very least, I could use some advice on how to get back up the east side of the mountain fast and reach the temple... undetected if possible."

Hagema opened her mouth to offer assistance, but the screams from the main part of the cave filled all of their ears, and Jett was the first to bolt out of the room and toward the sound.

The six of them returned to the Tomb of the Living proper just in time to see the dying and dead scattered all over the floor. Red-plated soldiers were slashing and stabbing everything that moved, blood spurting in every direction. The low-born still upright were stumbling toward distant passageways at the far end of the cave. The main entrance was no longer an option as an exit; not with at least eight sword-wielding soldiers standing in the way and fanning out, deeper with every swing.

Tenn yanked Jett backward and stepped in front of all of them. Then she shrieked so loud that Antero's ears literally went deaf for at least ten seconds.

The soldiers actually halted their savagery, turned and looked at her — standing with her unarmored entourage at the mouth of the passageway.

When Antero's ears recovered, the only sound he heard was the moaning of those dying on the floor.

The leader of the soldiers stepped forward. Tenn took a step forward, too, and Jett joined her. Antero, Zakk, Hagema and Toree remained a step behind, still stunned by the carnage in front of them and Tenn's shriek that sounded like nothing they had ever heard.

"Who sings in this shit hole in defiance of the king?" the lead soldier shouted. "Who dares to spew treason among these cave rats? If it is one of you, declare yourself now and meet your fate. Arus is waiting."

"I sang tonight in defiance of the king!" Tenn screamed, angry and trembling.

"No, it was me!" Jett shouted even louder.

Tenn backhanded her on the shoulder, but the lead soldier just ignored their squabbling and prepared to take them all out. Blood-soaked sword raised, he charged and his men flanked him.

With an immortal-fueled wrath coiling inside her, Tenn triggered the spring with a hissing curse, "Arus indeed."

Then she stomped the ground, rumbling the walls all around them and collapsing the cave floor right in front of the advancing soldiers. Down they went, a flailing row of red and silver, plunging into a black crevasse about three-feet wide by at least fifteen feet deep.

Tenn and her stunned allies lurched toward the edge of the jagged hole to have a look at the mangled pileup of plate and steel. The girl then drowned out the soldiers' screams of pain and protest with a command of her own: "Fux the king, and all who kill and rape in his name! Arus is waiting for YOU! He just needs a little heat!"

Tenn outstretched her arms and made a summoning motion with the fingers on both of her hands. Suddenly, the numerous torches on the walls of the cave simultaneously flew out of their holders and dropped into the crevasse, lighting Ryzthar's men ablaze.

"Our climb begins now!" Tenn declared to her awestruck allies before leaping across the fire pit of death and sprinting toward fresh air.

Jett glanced at the others through the smoke and rasped, "I told you she can handle herself." Then she sprang after Tenn.

Antero, Zakk, Hagema and Toree immediately raised their dropped jaws and they, too, made the leap, leaving the Tomb of the Living to the dying and the dead.

**CHAPTER 12 — CLOSET IN THE WOODS**

Tenn awoke on a bed of hay in a small wooden shack. The early morning light was piercing through a tiny, open window that fought to breathe among a wall smothered in hunting paraphernalia. She rubbed her smoke-stung eyes and suddenly remembered the night before.

"What am I doing here?" she asked loudly, stirring Jett and Toree in their hay beds next to her. It was unlikely a fourth person could fit in the claustrophobic cabin.

Her left eye still covered by stray strands of black hair, Jett sat up and leaned closer to Tenn.

"Do you remember passing out? After, you know..." Jett asked as Toree's blue eyes fluttered more open now.

"No... why are we here? We're supposed to be climbing the mountain right now," Tenn said, her patience quickly used up.

Jett began to form a word, but then Tenn burst into tears. "I killed them all!"

Toree and Jett shot each other an alarmed look as Tenn stood up and almost fell back down just as fast. Jett caught her, held her tight and lowered her to the hay again.

"What's wrong with me?" Tenn asked through sobs.

"You killed a bunch of the king's blood-thirsty soldiers, we got the hell out of the smoky cave and then you collapsed," Jett explained.

Toree grabbed Tenn's arm. "You saved us from being carved up like all of the other..."

Jett's sharp look stopped Toree right there, but it was too late. Tenn remembered all of it now... the mangled, lifeless bodies of some of the low-born folks who had cheered her song just moments before. Her face turned pale and full of torment as she wrestled with the pain, guilt and anger all at once.

"They died because I sang... because of what I sang about," Tenn shuddered. "I should've at least gone back and tried to save them."

"That was not possible," Jett quickly countered, holding her hand extremely tight. "There was no clean air to breathe in that cave with the smoke. We had to get out."

"But I started the fire."

"How did you make those torches fly?... and that hole open up?"

Jett scowled at Toree again to make her stop. "Sorry," she mouthed.

"Tenn, look at me," Jett said, shaking her by the shoulders until she did. "None of this is your fault. The king sent those men. They were the ones murdering people... and you... you dealt with them before they got us, too."

"But I should've saved the good ones dying on the floor," Tenn protested. "I'm a blood mage. I know it. I helped that man last summer... where is he anyway? And the others?"

Jett shook her head and ignored the questions. "I'm sure you did, but that was different. His body was intact. You can't save someone when blood is pouring out of their body or their head is missing."

"How do you know?" Tenn shot back.

Jett squinted and mulled that for a second. "OK, clearly I'm still not totally used to fighting alongside a fire-and-blood-bending sorceress. But have you considered that you may have overdone it with your magic last night as it was? Maybe that's why you passed out right after we got out of the cave."

Tenn snarled at her own weakness.

"Fux!" she shouted. "Why can't I be strong and stay strong?"

"You are strong," Toree assured her.

"Look what you've been through in your short life and you're still here, ready to take on the king!" Jett added.

Then Tenn exhaled and glanced around, admiring all of the quivers, bows, arrows, knives and other equipment, some of it hanging from wooden pegs on the walls.

"You've never brought me here before. Where are we?" she asked Jett.

"My hunting shack in Deepflood. I had hoped never to bring your royal-born self to this little closet in the woods, but last night's chaos didn't leave us much choice. Lovely isn't it?"

"One notch above your outhouse, but about the same size," Toree quipped with a sly smile.

Tenn wasn't amused and started to get up again.

"I'm fuxing done with being held prisoner in dungeons, and hiding out in caves and closets waiting to find some courage. That's over! It's time for me to go kill the king!" she declared, breaking free from Jett's grasp and crashing into the wall next to the door.

Jett sprang up to hold her against that wall. "You're not going to do that alone. Do you understand? Antero..."

"That's his name," Tenn interjected.

"Antero, Zakk and Hagema trekked to Stone Valley to get climbing equipment, weapons and provisions last night while you recovered," Jett said. "They should be back very soon. Then we'll all go up the mountain together. In the meantime, you better get more rest. We're all in grave danger and we need you at full strength."

Slowly, Tenn nodded and cooled off. "I'm sorry I've dragged you both into this. I never wanted any of it."

"We know that," Jett said, holding her hand again as Toree stood up to put her arm around Tenn's shoulder.

"There is no need to apologize. We saw with our own eyes what King Ryzthar is all about last night," Toree added.

"Your song is truth and I'm glad you sang the fux out of it!" Jett yelled, loud enough for the world outside the cabin to hear it. "And when the others get here to join us, we'll leave this shack and go on the hunt of our lives."

**CHAPTER 13 — FORTUNE TELLER**

Reunited and all wearing light-green tunics and packs that Hagema had purchased in Stone Valley, the camouflaged group of six set out in single file from Jett's little cabin on the south side of the mountain and traversed to the east. They followed game trails and bushwhacked when necessary to stay off the more well-worn paths through the Skywood.

At Hagema's suggestion, they avoided the ups and downs of ridges and ravines for now, remaining at a low elevation and moving fast to get to Aron's Ravine on the east side. That's where the real, direct ascent would begin — a road-less-traveled, ropes-up-the-rocks, black-ops climb toward the temple, and ultimately, the castle.

Tenn, benefitting from another hour of rest at Jett's behest, marched in leather boots over roots and through a carpet of ferns at a quick and steady pace. She followed Jett closely as she trekked behind Hagema and Antero. Toree and Zakk trailed Tenn in that order. There was no talking, just a lot of breathing and thinking.

Tenn pictured the exterior of the temple in her mind and embraced the thought of ripping it apart one spire at a time. She figured Volz Yth would've selected eight new priests by now. Little did she know, he was dead, too. There would be a new Nine awaiting her, but some of those faces would be painfully familiar as well. For now, Tenn kept that wretched door at 8,000 feet closed in her brain. She wasn't ready to go back inside yet. Too much pain and shame and rage lied beyond. She would deal with that upon her return — this time not so young, not so weak. And not so alone.

Suddenly, the six hikers were not alone either. Hagema signaled for everyone to slow down and crouch, but it was too late. An old woman in a weather-beaten, gray cloak had stepped from behind a boulder and approached them as they bunched up on the game trail.

"What brings you through the Skywood today, travelers?" she asked, her voice lower than expected for a small woman.

"Who asks?" replied Hagema, who seemed thrilled to be taller than someone, even if by a couple of inches.

"Just an old fortune teller... happy to have the east at my back," she said. "My name is Verza."

There was something about her that raised the hairs on Tenn's arms. She stepped toward the woman to study her more closely. Her hazel eyes locked on Tenn and did not let go.

"Would you tell me my fortune?" Tenn asked.

"Aye... for two silvers," the old woman replied.

"Whoa... steep," Antero winced.

Hagema wanted to protest the waste of time, but she bit down hard on her tongue recalling the fire and fury Tenn unleashed in the Tomb of the Not So Living.

"I'd pay you in gold if I could, Verza, but everything I had was taken from me at a very young age," Tenn told the woman.

"Too much information," Jett advised with raised eyebrows and a tug of Tenn's arm.

"You have nothing to fear from me, a lonely old woman," she said, glancing at Jett and then staring at Tenn.

"Unlike them, you are high-born," the woman said. "You speak of gold and have the eyes of a goddess."

"She's quite the flatterer," quipped Zakk, who was more than twice the woman's size.

"That's how they lure you in," Jett pinched Tenn in the ass.

"Ow!" she recoiled. "I want to hear my fortune. Can someone give her two silvers? I'll pay you back when... the time is right."

Jett shook her head at Tenn's insistence, but Antero reluctantly stepped forward and paid the woman.

She nodded at him, and Tenn told Antero, "Thank you. I owe you two silvers."

The old woman placed the silvers in a pocket of her cloak and said, "Your hands."

Tenn offered her palms and the woman grabbed them forcefully before closing her eyes. Not for long. Her eyes popped back open and stared at Tenn like she had seen something extraordinary for the first time in her long life. Tenn's allies watched her suspiciously.

"The Nine flow through you... through your blood, but there is even more strength that I cannot understand," the old woman said, breathing heavy for some reason. "You must ascend. Your powers will increase the closer you get to the source."

"The source of what?" Hagema interjected.

"Of her pain... of those who favor her vengeance," the woman replied. "The deepest well. The deepest cave. They are shallow compared to you."

Tenn exhaled, relieved to be affirmed by this stranger.

"We are on the right path then," she said.

The woman nodded, but her wrinkled, mottled face turned more grim.

"What is it?" Tenn asked.

"There is death ahead," she warned.

"And there is death behind. We must face it," Tenn said.

"There is death ahead, I'm afraid... for at least one of you," the old woman persisted.

Tenn and her allies all looked around at each other, weighing her words.

"The fortune was almost worth it... until that last bit," Antero pointed out. "Can you take that part back?"

"I have never unsaid a vision. I tell the truth as I feel it, and Mammyth has chosen to reveal to me that this young woman is a force," the old woman said, nodding toward Tenn. "She will draw opposing forces to her. Proceed with caution to the east. I wish you safe travels," she added with a bow, and then began walking away.

"Thank you," Tenn said softly, before turning to gaze at each of her hiking partners. "If any of you want to abandon this mission given what she just said, I urge you to do so."

As the others mulled the risk, Jett quickly said, "I'll take my chances," and pulled Tenn along with her down the game trail.

Tenn never looked back. Jett was the one person she truly needed. She just felt guilty about dragging the others along with her now.

They soon followed her anyway.

**CHAPTER 14 — ONE GOOD REASON**

Antero finished relieving himself next to a pine tree, stooped down to run his hands through the cool waters of a brook and then rejoined the others in the small, uninhabited cave. They had found it hollowed into the low end of a ridge that separated the south side of the mountain from the east. Jett was cooking the two rabbits she had put arrows through earlier that morning.

The smell of grilled rabbit made Antero's mouth water as he walked through the smoke and sat on the cave floor between Zakk and Hagema.

"Wish we could just cook out in the open," Toree said, rubbing her eyes.

"Not after what the fortune teller said," Jett replied, brooding as she turned the meat.

"Two silvers gone and now she's got us worried about who's gonna die," Antero said.

Tenn lifted her gaze from the fire to the heat waves that obscured Antero's face. That freaked her out, so she shifted to the right a little to see his real visage. He stared back at her briefly and then looked away.

"I will pay you back," Tenn told him.

"It's not the money..."

"Of course it is, you cheap bastard," Hagema interjected, drawing a chuckle from Tenn and laughter from everyone else but Antero.

"No, it's not," he protested, playfully punching Hagema's shoulder. "How can any of us trust the word of a stranger who proclaims herself a teller of the future and gets paid for it. She holds your hands and just spouts off whatever scary or flattering thing she can think of in that moment. It's not an honest way to put food in your gut, like hunting or logging or ironwork..."

"Or gold prospecting," Hagema added.

"Yeah," Antero agreed with a nod.

"Is that honest?" Hagema asked him. "The king doesn't want us low-born up above the tree-line chiseling and panning for gold."

"We take the risk, we get to keep the gold."

"If we ever find any," Zakk pointed out.

"Here's some honest rabbit for your gut from an honest hunter," Jett said, handing Antero and the others each a chunk of meat.

"Thank you," Antero said, noticing for the first time that Jett's left pinky finger was missing. Her eyes lingered on him, noticing that he noticed.

"How did you lose it?" he asked.

She sat back down by the fire and chewed a piece of meat first.

"Got caught stealing arrows when I was a kid," she finally said. "Asshole chopped my fuxing finger off."

Everybody else gasped, grimaced or both.

"How old was ya?" Zakk asked in between bites.

"Seven or eight, I guess," Jett said.

Antero took a swig from his water skin and swirled it around in his mouth as Jett kept talking.

"He told me he'd chop my fuxing head off if he caught me doing it again."

"Did it happen again?" Toree asked, her blue eyes sparkling near the flames.

"Yes," Jett replied with a mischievous grin.

"How are we not talking to a stump-necked cook then?" Zakk asked with a laugh.

"Because Tenn here slammed my head back on my stump with a stomp of her foot," Jett quipped.

Tenn gasped as the others cracked up.

"I didn't even know you then," she told Jett. "And I had zero powers to help myself back then, much less anyone else."

"Just fuxing with you all," Jett said with a smile and a dazzle in her eyes that made Antero stare. "I still have a head because that child-maiming fool never caught me again. He taught me all I needed to know about this kingdom — you better be stealthy and fast... and realize that your next mistake could be your last."

"And you haven't made a mistake since," Hagema declared like she had known Jett for years, even though they had just met at the Tomb of the Living.

Jett didn't respond right away, and that unnerved Tenn. She cleared her throat.

"None of you should have to risk dying for me and what I need to do," she said.

"I never said..." Jett started.

"But you're thinking it and I don't blame you, especially after the fortune teller's warning," Tenn said. "Believe me, I've asked the gods to give me the power to fly up to the temple myself, but so far gravity has overruled them. I must climb the mountain. I am willing to do that myself and do so without the fear of losing one of you in the process."

Jett grabbed her by both shoulders. "I won't let you do that. After all you've endured; after I was fortunate enough to meet you in the forest and help you on your escape last summer. How could I not be here for you when you need me the most? Especially now that we know they're hunting for you. You cannot do this alone."

Tenn felt a little unsteady as the danger of the situation truly sank in. There was a prideful part of her that thought her anger and new powers would be enough to exact revenge and seize the kingdom. But the grisly collateral damage to low-born supporters at the Tomb of the Living and the conviction in the old woman's voice haunted her.

"I believe the old woman because my mother's mother was a fortune teller," Tenn said. "And my mother once told me before she died that her mother had warned her not to marry my... the king. She warned her it would end badly for my mother."

The only sound was the wood popping in the fire as Tenn paused to wipe a tear from her left eye.

"So I must ask you each of you right now to give me one good reason why you want to risk your life to help me. If your answer isn't good enough, I will send you back to your villages... to anywhere but by my side," she said, staring at each one of them in turn.

Jett grabbed one of Tenn's hands with both of hers. "I love you," she said. "So I'm going."

Tenn smiled through more tears and nodded. "I love you, too."

Antero cleared his throat.

"Well, I can't top what Jett said," he began with a grin, "but I want to help you after what you did for me up on the mountain last summer.... And I would love to call you my... I know you don't want to be called queen, so I'll say my 'ruler'... some day soon. Let me help you get justice for the crimes committed against you and your mother."

Tenn exhaled and smiled at him. "Thank you, Antero."

He nodded as Zakk slapped him on the back. "We're like brothers, so I'm in. I say fux any king who would kill the queen and put his lovely young daughter through the hell you've suffered. As a fellow musician, I can tell when someone plays or sings from the heart. When you sing, Tenn, it's like the whole space around you and everyone in it gets branded... hotter than this fire. I've got your back on this mission. It would be a crime not to help you."

"Thank you for your powerful words, Zakk," she said with a nod.

"And I go where my big brother goes," Toree said firmly. "I, too, was abused by a despicable person when I was younger. I will not bend the knee for a king who would send his young, innocent daughter to a temple full of perverts and rapists. I want to help you overthrow him and serve him justice."

Tenn nodded and felt stronger in her resolve. "Thank you for that, Toree."

Fueled with inspiration, Hagema jumped up and began speaking like someone was chasing after her.

"After listening to all of you, I want to run up this mountain right now! You need me because I can tame this bitch-mound of rocks with my ropes and vertical expertise," she declared to laughter all around. "I'm also an expert at getting Antero and Zakk to move their dawdling asses. Lastly, I'm very, very greedy. So I'm absolutely willing to help your grace, Tenn, as long as you let me join your high-born club and prospect for gold whenever and wherever I like when you take over this realm, which you will. How's that for one reason?"

Tenn smiled and sprang up to give Hagema a hug.

"Perfect," she said before releasing the exuberant, fire-kissed woman and addressing the group. "You are like finding gold to me. I suddenly feel rich with strength and courage because of all of you. Never think of yourselves as low-born cave and forest dwellers again. You are the best people I've met in this kingdom and I would be lucky to lead you if I ever get the chance."

**CHAPTER 15 — RUTT HUTT**

They avoided the more populated villages of Thorpe and Crystal Falls, left the towering pines of the Skywood behind them and bushwhacked into Aron's Ravine by late afternoon. For all of that hiking, Tenn and her allies were still only up about 3,200 feet, but at least they had avoided any other run-ins with the king's soldiers and were finally on the east side of the mountain. Now the group needed to make camp for the night to rest and prepare for the steep, grueling ascent toward the temple.

It was late afternoon by the time the rocky slabs of the ravine began to wall them in from the left side. Zakk now led the way because he knew the route to Rutt Hutt, a rustic outpost where his older friend, Oraz, lived and likely would be sympathetic to their cause.

As they approached the hamlet of stone huts and adjacent caves, Zakk signaled for them to slow down and observe. Huddled together, they peered out from either side of a double-trunked tree and saw five men with shovels digging into the earth in a small graveyard just to the southwest of the tiny village. The metallic clang of spades striking rocks and dirt echoed off the ravine wall, but it did not distract from the silent, somber scene straight ahead.

Tenn sensed the heaviness in the men's arms, in their hearts and doubled over. Jett put an arm across her back and leaned over with her.

"What's wrong?" she whispered.

"I feel what we are seeing and I fear it," Tenn whispered back.

When Oraz looked up from his toiling to wipe the sweat from his brow, Zakk recognized him and started walking through the tall grasses toward the grove where the men were digging. Slowly, the others followed, with Jett holding Tenn's hand in the rear of the procession.

"Oraz," Zakk said with a hearty wave, right before he saw the five bodies wrapped in white sheets at the base of an oak tree. His gut ached at the sight and he froze in place.

Oraz, wearing a black tunic despite the summer heat, dropped his shovel and walked to meet Zakk. They shared an extended, emotional embrace as the five hikers and four other shovelers watched on either side.

"What happened here?" Zakk asked as the grim-faced audience slowly gathered closer to the two men.

Oraz, who appeared to be about thirty-five or forty with his shaggy, graying hair, was much shorter than Zakk and exacerbated that with his hunched posture. But his determined face, penetrating hazel eyes and spirited voice commanded attention. Tenn, who normally could not look strange men in the eyes upon first meeting them, found herself staring at him and getting swept downstream as he talked in fiery spurts.

"Where to begin, you know... where to end?... this is a horrible fuxing day... they're all gone... all gone, and we never got to say goodbye... we men get back from Thorpe... heard the tales of horror there thinking they'd never hit a fuxing ox-dung place like this and we were wrong.... The king's butchers slashed through here and we don't even know why. Our wives are dead — stabbed to death til the blood drained from their bodies — and our daughters are gone without a trace. Aldrick and Elsing here... each have two daughters missing. As far as we know, our sons are still out cutting trees in the Skywood, but who knows?"

While the others gasped, Tenn dropped to her knees. She had never felt pity for men before, but now she did and she blamed herself. She wanted to say something, but her shuddered breaths overtook her instead and knocked her face into the grass. Jett and Toree rushed to either side of her as Hagema and the men huddled around them.

"I'm sorry... I've described too much and upset her," Oraz said breathlessly. "What brings you all here to Rutt Hutt anyway?"

Zakk pulled Oraz and his men aside to explain the mission while the others tried to comfort Tenn. She was inconsolable for several minutes before standing up with assistance from Jett and Toree. Antero and Hagema took a step back to give Tenn some room to fume. Her voice dropped into the growl she used when she sang, and Antero swore he felt the ground tremor below him as she seethed through every word.

"He's hunting for me and not finding me, but in the fuxing meantime he's capturing every other girl in the kingdom and killing their mothers as they fight to hold onto them! My yearlong cowardice comes at a price that is now ripping me apart! Everyone would've been far better off if those priests really had burned me at the stake!"

There was a split second when everyone else was at a loss for words, and Tenn stormed off away from the graveyard.

"Tenn, wait!" Toree yelled.

"No!" Tenn shouted back. "I beg you. I need a moment alone!"

Toree froze and let her go. Then she pivoted toward Jett, Hagema and Antero.

"Any suggestions?" she asked.

"When she's like that, just do what she says," Jett said, her voice tightening with her own rage. "And be grateful you're not the king."

**CHAPTER 16 — FIREBALL**

Tenn, it turns out, didn't need a moment alone. She needed several hours. While the others helped Oraz and the men of Rutt Hutt finish digging the graves, burying their wives and beseeching Aron for their safe passage to Arus in the underworld, Tenn scaled a large boulder on the ravine floor and sat on top of it with her eyes closed until the first star looked down on her.

Earlier, Jett and Antero each had made separate attempts to talk to her and draw her back to the village. They told her it was unsafe for her to be out there alone. She ignored them, so they left. Tenn was tired of having nervous breakdowns in front of her friends. She couldn't handle the guilt that was piling up on her. She needed to sit on top of something heavy under the tangerine sky and feel a light summer breeze slowly dry the tears on her cheeks. She also realized she needed to be stronger at all times, not just when the pain and rage inside her morphed into immortal sorcery that she could barely control.

Eventually, a wave of peace finally washed over Tenn amid the steady chirp of crickets and the random flicker of lightning bugs that greeted her eyes when they opened.

For the first time, she felt her power well up inside her with a normal heartbeat and a true sense of purpose. She simply wanted the king to know she was coming to confront him and that his time was just about up. The madness needed to be replaced with justice and she was the one to do it.

Tenn stood up on the boulder, steadily raised her right hand, felt a jolt of energy surge up from below and then released it in a throwing motion toward the head wall of the ravine. Her hand throbbed with heat, and her eyes locked on the fire ball as it soared over the cliff and up toward the summit. She tried not to act surprised. She knew the gods were on her side in this. There was nothing to fear but time — each passing second, more people were at risk of dying by the sword or being captured in her name.

With that, she jumped the six feet or so to the ground, crumpled a bit and then stood back up to find Jett and Antero staring at her from just a few yards away.

"How long have you been here this time?" she asked them.

"Long enough to watch you chuck a fireball toward the heavens like it was nothing... like it was something you do all the time for fun," Jett replied.

Tenn shook her head.

"That's the first time I've ever done that and I didn't do it for fun. That was a message for the king that I'm coming for him."

Antero gazed at Tenn like he was seeing her for the first time all over again. Only this time, she was not a girl; not a woman either.

"You are a goddess," he said.

Tenn appreciated his awe-struck stare and heard trust, not superficial flattery, in the confident tone of his voice. In that moment of clarity, she knew she was not talking to an evil man.

"I may look like a goddess to you, but know that I will always feel less than human for as long as I breathe. That's not your fault, Antero. That's the fault of those who I've already served justice to and those who will feel it soon. Now I'd like to go express my belated condolences to Zakk's grieving friends, have something to eat and make a plan to scale the rest of this mountain as fast as possible."

**CHAPTER 17 — RAINING BOULDERS**

King Ryzthar had largely heeded Nera's warning to only show his face outside the castle at night. On this warm, summer evening, he was gazing up at the stars from his balcony and lamenting his fate when a glowing ball of light penetrated his field of vision from below, not above.

The light continued to grow in size until he realized with a heart-stopping pang of dread that it was hurtling in his direction. Seconds later, the king ducked and gasped as the comet raced over the castle at otherworldly speed, its heat singing his skin beneath his light, red robe.

The eerie whooshing sound hadn't even faded before the fire ball exploded into the mountain somewhere up near the summit, rocking the castle with the blunt force of its impact and knocking the king to the floor. Basel and another guard burst onto the balcony, propped Ryzthar up and all three rushed to the edge to stare up at what little they could see of Mammyth.

Ten beats later, the boulders began to fall — bouncing down from the summit cone and thundering over the rocky overhang that protected the castle.

His guards tried to yank him inside, but the king screamed at them to stop. He wanted to watch as the boulders rained, one and two at a time, not all that far from Ryzthar's outstretched, trembling finger.

"This... is a s-s-sign," he yammered, before trailing off into mad mumbles of "bad sign, cursed sign, wicked sign."

"Your grace!" Ola's voice shrieked from within the castle.

"Keep her away!" the king ordered.

The other guard happily retreated; Bazel remained, one hand gripping the top of his helmet with maximum tension and his well-chiseled face visibly terrified, like he expected the mountain to crumble apart all around them at any moment.

Indeed, the boulders continued to fly past Ryzthar and Bazel for what seemed like an eternity.

Yet even when the rock fall finally ended and the castle still felt solid beneath him, the king's heart did not relent in its pummeling of his chest.

"Comets fly up from the ground and boulders rain down the mountain on a cloudless night," he ranted to himself. "Yet here I still stand. Arus is toying with me... testing me."

Ryzthar then suddenly snapped out of his hypnotic trance, and turned to Bazel with wild eyes and spit foaming in his mouth.

"Make sure the queen is stripped bare and ready for me!" he declared. "This may well be my last chance to sire a male heir before the Strix-fuxing god of darkness bashes me into the underworld forever."

**CHAPTER 18 — CHANNELING THE DEAD**

Antero and Jett bowed their heads and watched as Tenn knelt in front of the five graves. Gray stones and brilliant wild flowers marked where the bodies of five women now would reside for eternity, and Tenn had said she needed a moment in their presence before joining everyone by the campfire.

"They have something to say," Tenn said afterward, while walking in the twilight with Antero and Jett back toward the hamlet.

"What do you mean?" Jett asked, holding her hand.

"I don't know," she replied.

Antero and Jett exchanged confused looks, but Tenn picked up her pace and soon stood near the roaring fire, feeling the heat and the stare of all eyes on her.

Tenn looked first at Oraz, and then his four comrades. Hagema, Zakk and Toree gazed at Tenn and wondered what this mysterious young woman would do next.

"I will avenge the deaths of your wives," she told the men of Rutt Hutt. "They did not deserve to die like this and I am sorry for your loss. I will make sure King Ryzthar's reign ends very soon. He will suffer as you have suffered, as I have suffered. I also will do everything in my power to get your daughters back to you."

Oraz did not blink as he got up from his wooden chair and stood closer to Tenn.

"With bold words such as these, I can tell you are no ordinary young woman," he said. "Who are you?"

"My name is Tenn," she replied. "I am the daughter of the king, an unwanted tie that has been nothing but a curse, to me and to him. He wants to kill me, just as he killed my mother, Queen Brinsma, ten years ago. But he stands no chance against me... because the gods have abandoned him. Their powers flow through me now."

Oraz, normally a talkative person, had no words. In fact, Tenn looked around at a circle of silent, awestruck faces. Then she knelt again, practically putting her face in the dirt as she clung to two small rocks on the rim of the blaze.

The heat of the stones burned her hands, but she did not release her grasp. Soon, that heat flowed into her body, warming her completely and reducing the pain.

Her ears could hear the gasps as the images of the five women appeared above the diminished flames. Oraz and his four grieving friends quickly knelt as well before their wives, but they looked up while Tenn continued to look down.

"Let this young woman lead you," Oraz heard his wife, Savya, say in full voice as her face, much younger and more beautiful than at the time of her death, continued to stare back at him. The faces of the other four women, two on either side of Savya, echoed her words so each sentence sounded like a chorus. "She is going to the Temple of the Seers of the Nine. There she will find our daughters still alive."

Tears streaming down his cheeks, Oraz stood back up and pleaded with his wife.

"Won't Arus let you come back to us? We just buried you. Please, Savya, come back to us."

"What is dead is dead, and what is alive is alive," the women echoed to their husbands. "The gods cannot raise us from the underworld."

"How then are we seeing you, hearing you now?" Oraz shouted.

"Tenn is how," they said. "Tenn is higher than The Nine."

When Tenn heard that, she looked up. The faces of the five women disappeared to the cries of Oraz and his men, but the face of Queen Brinsma appeared over the flames. Now it was Tenn's turn to gasp and cry, in front of the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. Arus had restored what Ryzthar had destroyed, and Tenn's heart filled with joy at the sight of her mother after all these years.

"Tenn, you are higher than The Nine," Brinsma said, her voice sweet and powerful, and no longer forgotten to her daughter. "You have suffered, far worse than I suffered. But now you truly are Tenn, my beautiful daughter, a grown woman. Use your powers and set things right. Do what needs to be done with the king as you see fit. And beware, he has a brother across the sea who is even worse. Serve justice to those who think they are strong and never let your powers poison you. Killing is dangerous, no matter the cause. Be well, my child. After all of this time since I walked in your world in the light of Nera, I have shown you that love can never be destroyed and can never be buried."

When Brinsma's face disappeared and the flames of the campfire regained their full intensity, Tenn stood up and choked back her tears.

Suddenly, this was the happiest night of her life, and she wanted to show everyone that radiance when she turned to look at each of them. She smiled so beautifully, even peacefully, with the glow of a thousand campfires.

Tenn's growing band of allies drew strength from her and revered her like a goddess, bowing in front of her. She basked in that reverence for a moment, and then focused on the mission that loomed like Mammyth itself.

"We've got a mountain to climb at sunrise," she said. "Hagema, Jett and Antero will come with me, up the rock wall, the most direct route. Zakk and Toree will travel with you, Oraz, and your men on a less steep route. You should recruit any reinforcements sympathetic to our cause that you find along the way. We will rendezvous with your party near the temple... when I am done with what I must do there."

Antero raised his hand and Tenn nodded.

"Is it wise, just the four of us taking the direct route?" he asked. "And you sound like you're planning to go into the temple alone. Is that true?"

"Yes, that's true.... And it can be just three of us going straight up if you want to go with them instead," she replied.

"It's not that, but..."

"I want to get to the temple as fast as possible with as few of us as possible," Tenn interjected.

"Who are we to question you after what we've seen here tonight?" Hagema pointed out, glaring at Antero.

"I value your questions, but this is the way forward," Tenn told the group. "And we must all be prepared for sacrifice, even death, in the hours head."

**CHAPTER 19 — WHITE WIDOW**

After the two hiking parties completed their supply checks, and exchanged embraces and best wishes for a safe rendezvous at the temple, they set out in different directions at a first light dimmed by misty fog on the ravine floor.

Hagema led Tenn, Jett and Antero along a meandering, medium-grade trail that soon smacked into the base of the White Widow head wall. Marked by veins of dazzling quartz, the most vertical rock face out of Aron's Ravine also was named for the survivors of those who had plummeted to their deaths on the ascent. This route was more steep than the one Hagema, Antero and Zakk had climbed up to Ass Head the summer before.

Hagema had climbed White Widow twice, Antero once, but neither was eager to do it again, especially with two novice climbers in tow. Tenn had insisted on this route nonetheless, so Hagema gazed upward as far as she could see until the rock disappeared into the clouds.

"We might be doing this twenty feet at a time until we get better visibility," she told them.

"These clouds will burn off as Nera rises," Tenn said.

"You can predict the weather now, too?" Jett ribbed her.

Tenn smiled, happy to be grounded by this small group of intrepid adventurers. "I am so ready to climb."

Hagema turned back toward her and looked serious for a change. "I'm glad you're so eager, but I'm fuxing scared to death I'm going to get you killed before you can even go deal with the king." Then she pointed up. "This route is not for beginners. Do you understand?"

"I know. You told me. Lead me. I will climb it. And Jett's even stronger than I am."

"True, but I don't throw fireballs, channel the dead and shit like that," her sidekick quipped.

Hagema and Antero exchanged skeptical looks, and checked their ropes again.

"We saw that," Jett said. "Don't underestimate us."

"We won't... along as you do as we say and don't underestimate this rock face," Antero replied.

"Agreed," Jett said as Tenn nodded next to her.

"Up we go then," Hagema said. "I will lead, followed by Tenn, then Jett, then Antero. Fog or not, we'll be climbing in short bursts because this will be very physical and you'll need to rest a lot in between sections. Pick your hand-holds and toe-holds carefully. Don't rush it. Then double-check that the rope is secure around you every time you rest. This rock is very hard, not crumbly, but the mist might have something to say about that and the vertical grade is ridiculous, especially for two..."

"Enough with the pep talk," Antero interrupted as he stretched his long, muscular arms and back. "Just don't look down, ladies. Let's go!"

"He's usually the talkative one," Hagema mumbled as she began to scale the first section. "Everything is fuxing upside down today."

"Good, then we should be up this wicked widow in no time," Jett said, watching the shortest climber of the bunch quickly attack the wall.

Hagema followed one web of holds almost diagonally across to a small ledge about 30 feet up. Her face barely visible through the mist, she grimaced while hammering a hole-centered iron spike into the rock to secure the rope. She then tested the line with a tug of her hand and waved with the other hand for Tenn to follow.

"Go get it, your grace," Jett said, before giving Tenn a hot and breathy kiss on the cheek.

Tenn immediately blushed. "Don't distract me."

"Just trying to get your blood pumping," Jett said with a wink.

"It worked," Tenn said, springing up the rock and replaying in her mind Hagema's route as she methodically searched for holds.

Antero eyed Jett with more than a pang of envy as she watched Tenn climb. "Have you two ever...?" he whispered.

Tilting her head slightly, Jett's dark eyes turned toward him and sparkled at the question. "Have we ever what?"

Antero just smiled and looked back up at Tenn, who was faring better than he expected, almost halfway to Hagema by now.

"She's all mine, boy," Jett told his profile. "All men are evil."

Antero heard a hint of playfulness in her voice and dared to look back at her. She licked her lips. He laughed.

"We'll see about that," he said with a tug of the rope around his waist.

"Oooh... I love a battle," Jett cooed before she walked closer to the rock wall and cheered Tenn as she reached the narrow ledge upon which Hagema was perched. "Now that's how you tame a bitch!"

"Don't let the low clouds fool you, Jett. There's a whole lot of bitch left to tame," Antero pointed out.

"You're all wrong, boy. I'm the bitch that can't be tamed," Jett scoffed as she pulled herself up with plenty of strength to spare. "King Fux-thar, here we come!"

**CHAPTER 20 — A TERRIBLE POET**

An hour later, the clouds had burned off as Tenn predicted, and the quartet of climbers had made it about a quarter of the way up the 1,200-foot head wall. Their arms were burning from the strength required, and they had stripped their clothing down to undergarments because of the heat and sweat.

"We'll be the naked climbing club before long," Hagema predicted cheerfully as they all guzzled water on a slightly wider ledge 280 feet up.

"Fine with me," Antero said with a grin.

"Maybe he should lead. He gets to look up at the rest of us," Jett said, wringing sweat from her hair.

"The best climber always leads," Hagema boasted.

"We're still alive. We follow Hagema," Tenn declared, visibly winded, flushed and a bit woozy as she squatted with her back against the rock.

Up the redhead went again, the rope trailing behind her, tethered to Tenn's waist belt. As she adjusted her long, slick ponytail, Tenn envied Hagema's more efficient short hair and her fearless skills on such a frightening ascent. Tenn had stopped looking down a hundred feet ago. It was simply too much.

Ten minutes later, however, with Jett hoisting herself up toward Hagema and Tenn, they all were forced to look down as a volley of arrows pelted the rocks just below them.

"Archers!" Antero shouted.

"Fux!" Jett cried out, when one arrow struck the back of her left thigh.

"Where are they shooting from?!" Hagema yelled.

Antero spotted an elevated section of trees up against the opposite wall of the ravine. "Must be from over there," he screamed, pointing.

All heads swiveled that way just as the second volley of arrows whizzed toward the exposed climbers.

Tenn absorbed their incoming energy and used it. "Aurai and Agan, together," she commanded.

"What?" Hagema asked next to her.

She had her answer when the arrows veered away from White Widow, ignited into flames and looped back toward the men who sent them.

"Holy..." Hagema gasped as the arrows streaked back across the ravine and erupted into the stand of trees, setting them ablaze. The archers' cries echoed through Aron's bowl as they flailed and flapped out of high branches, plummeting into death spirals like baby birds who had left the nest too soon.

"I may sux at climbing, but at least I'm good at burning things," Tenn deadpanned.

"I'm just fuxing glad you're on my side," Hagema told her, before shouting, "Resume climbing!... And forget what I said earlier about not rushing it!"

"You also forget I've got an arrow in my ass!" Jett screamed.

"Wait there. I'll pull it out!" Antero yelled up at her.

Scaling the rock with renewed urgency, Antero still selected his holds carefully on this particularly steep section until he reached a secure spot just to Jett's left. Her gray underwear had soaked red from the blood and her limbs were shaking from holding her position for so long.

"Just rip it out. I can't hold on for much longer," she told him.

"It's gonna..."

"Just do...

Antero used what little leverage he had to yank the arrow out of her ass with his right hand as she was screaming at him.

"Fux youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Jett swore in agony at the top of her lungs across the ravine.

The blood cascaded out of the wound and down her bare leg, a gruesome enough sight that Antero preferred to stare at Jett's enraged face instead.

"Sorry about that, but at least it's out. Now could you keep it down or more of the king's men will be firing at us at any moment," he advised.

"Thank you and fux off!" she said, barely quieter this time.

"Listen. You have to climb up to them as fast as you can now. I can't wrap a rag around your leg to staunch the bleeding with one hand. Can you make it the fifteen feet?"

"I bloody better!" she shouted again, forcing her quaking limbs back into action.

When they all reunited on the ledge, Tenn shimmied over next to Jett and placed her right hand on the wound. Within seconds, the blood began to dry and scab where the arrow had sliced through her skin.

"I fuxing love you," Jett said, facing the rock, a rare tear trickling down her cheek.

Tenn straightened up, keeping her hand pressed on the wound. "You took an arrow in the ass for me... I'll never forget that. I love you."

Tenn kissed the back of Jett's neck as Antero and Hagema finished preparing the ropes for the next section. Antero saw the kiss, bit his tongue for a second and then released it.

"Don't forget to love your evil arrow remover, too," he said. "I charge extra for doing that on a rope at high altitude."

The scantily clad young women looked over at him and smiled. Antero's heart nearly stopped at the double stare, and he could almost hear an envious Zakk cursing his good fortune from somewhere else on Mammyth.

"I seem to recall healing you at a much higher altitude last summer... for free," Tenn said.

"Ah, good point," Antero replied. "We're even then."

"No, I still owe you two silvers for paying that fortune teller in the Skywood," Tenn said.

Antero liked the way the conversation was headed until Hagema cleared her throat. "Can we get on with this climb before the creepy old oracle's warning comes true? Turning back arrows and setting them ablaze is ridiculously amazing, but I'd hate to survive that only to see us all fall off the wall because Antero talked too much again and we lost focus."

Antero tried to look as aghast as possible at Hagema, while Tenn and Jett scooted back into position to follow their lead climber.

"Thank you, Hagema," Tenn said, patting her on the back. "What would we do without you?"

"Fly into the abyss and give Arus a kiss," she said with a wink and a leap up the rock face as the ladies laughed.

Antero wasn't as impressed. "You're a terrible poet!"

"That's better than a dead one," Hagema hollered back.

**CHAPTER 21 — THE HYDRA**

It took about four-and-a-half hours, but Hagema finally planted her boots on solid ground atop Aron's Ravine and did a little dance. The others were too weary to notice, so she shouted encouragement down to them while securing the rope to a spike one last time.

"One section to go! Finish strong!" she yelled.

Tenn was too dehydrated, cramped and weak to finish the wall. She clung to Antero's bare, sweat-soaked neck and back as he labored from hold to hold and wondered how he was going to find the strength to complete the remaining 20 vertical feet to the top. Jett, barely hanging on herself, watched them all from below and sucked in the thinning air for oxygen. It would take every last bit of her considerable mental toughness to make sure all four of them cleared the White Widow.

"Good thing you're light," Antero managed to say in between gasps for air. "Even though it feels like I'm carrying an ox right now."

"Should I take that as a complement?" Tenn muttered as her eyes fluttered open.

Antero was too tired to conjure up a clever answer.

Tenn couldn't believe they were still climbing. Then she realized she wasn't climbing at all. She vaguely remembered Antero strapping her to his back and Jett tying a rope around both of them, but she also had been having trouble separating reality from illusions due to her severe exhaustion.

"How much further?" she asked before lifting her head.

"Almost there," he huffed into the rocks while reaching diagonally for his next hand hold. "Hagema's on top."

Tenn looked up higher and smiled until she saw Strix, in his vulture form, descending toward their position. Then her eyes drifted back to the top of the wall, where Hagema's face was not alone. She was leaning over the cliff and looking down at them with a big grin, but there were red-helmeted soldiers peering down on either side of her as well. Was that a mirage, too?

"How does she not know they are there?" Tenn mumbled into Antero's ear.

"Who? What?" he asked distractedly.

"Up there. Next to Hagema..."

As soon as Antero stopped and looked up, they heard Hagema's scream and watched her go flying off the edge.

Tenn cried out for her while Antero instinctively unsheathed the dagger from his waist belt and slashed the lead on the rope that connected them to Hagema. She could've taken them all down with her.

"Nooooooooo!!!!" Jett shrieked as Hagema plunged past them all in the blink of an eye.

"Strix! Save her!" Tenn commanded the beast, which loomed closer above them now and appeared to want to land on top of the cliff.

But Strix did not make any move to go save Hagema, whose death scream already had been swallowed and silenced by the vast ravine below.

The buzzard's huge, oval, unearthly eyes — a soup of colors now that looked like a swirling storm on some distant planet — just stared at her as the arrows began raining from the top of the wall.

"Fux!!!!!" Antero yelled as one arrow impaled itself in his extended right forearm. The pain was too much and he released his hold, leaving him and Tenn hanging by just his left hand and two toe holds.

She felt so helpless strapped to his back until she remembered her mother's face, her voice, her words. "Strix, I am Tenn! Save us from the king!" she shouted up at the beast.

In an instant, the hideous vulture blew apart and swirled into a massive black cloud that blocked out Nera and expanded outward, well beyond the edge of the cliff.

The zip of arrows soon was replaced by the shouts and cries of what sounded like dozens of soldiers. They had reason to panic under the rotating black cloud as it rapidly morphed into a ghastly, winged, ten-headed hydra. Forked tongues lashed out between the fangs of horned serpent mouths in every direction as the beast descended, encircled the soldiers and began constricting.

Antero, Tenn and Jett froze against the rock wall and listened with hope as the shape-shifting monster squeezed in on the entire company of red-plated warriors.

The black-and-ash-hued hydra swooped down — three, four and five heads at a time — to slurp, bite and crunch the king's flailing warriors to death by the bunches. No sword or segment of armor stood in the way of Strix's gruesome, all-consuming meal.

The piercing shrieks of agony filled Tenn's ears and eventually reminded her of more of her mother's words from the night before: "Killing is dangerous, no matter the cause."

"Enough!" she shouted.

Sated from its feast, Strix slowly reverted to its black cloud form and released a ten-second torrent of crimson rain down into the ravine before literally disappearing into thin air.

Suddenly, all of the dying screams Antero, Tenn and Jett had just heard were a memory. Nera shined brightly again and the light alpine breeze of Aurai whistled through the rocks, caressing their tear-soaked faces.

"I can't believe she's gone," Antero shuddered through gritted teeth, an arrow still stuck in his arm. "I have to finish this, one arm or not."

"I will heal you at the top," Tenn said, trying to sound strong despite her severely weakened state.

"There is no healing after watching your friend since childhood — my big sister really — get thrown off a cliff to her death," he said.

"I'm so sorry for your loss... our loss," she said softly. "I do understand when healing seems impossible."

Fueled by rage and sorrow, and despite a young woman on his back and an arrow in his arm, Antero took over as lead climber. Terrifyingly aware there was no longer a rope securing him from the top, he somehow gripped and toed his way up and onto the cliff's edge, where a smiling, red-cheeked Hagema had been alive and dancing just minutes before.

Antero quickly cut Tenn loose from his back, and together they secured the rope for Jett's final push. Fighting tears, they cheered on Jett until she at last hurdled Aron's elusive rim and crashed into three of their four waiting arms. Antero kept his arrow-torn right arm away from any contact.

"This is the worst climb of my life and the best one all rolled into one," Antero said. "You two just scaled White Widow. Amazing."

Jett and Tenn hugged, kissed and fell to the ground.

Antero let his eyes linger on them for a moment, and then scanned the ridge that led up toward the temple. He was relieved to see nothing but more mountain.

"I can't believe you got that beast to wipe them all out," he said, looking back down at Tenn, whose pale face and drained energy belied her increasingly immense powers.

"And I can't believe you finished that wall with me on your back and an arrow sticking out of your arm," she said. "Help me up with your left arm one last time and I swear I'll stop the bleeding in your right one."

Antero pulled her up.

"But Jett is going to have to get the arrow out. I can't handle that part of it," Tenn quickly added.

"I did pull an arrow out of your ass, after all," Antero reminded a still-winded Jett.

Jett exhaled and smiled. "Fair enough," she said, forcing herself back on her feet. "Though I must warn you, I'm far better at putting arrows into people than pulling them out."

Antero braced himself, shook his head and said, "Doesn't matter. I want to feel as much pain as possible... for Hagema."

**CHAPTER 22 — DOOMED**

King Ryzthar stared into the roaring brazier that warmed the temple's long, rectangular prayer chamber and considered saying a prayer of his own. But to whom? It seemed Nera had turned all of the gods against him, and his own castle no longer felt safe after the close call with the fireball.

Volz Nazolith, the high cleric who had succeeded Volz Yth after his demise at the castle, cleared his throat. Apparently, even The Seers of The Nine had a limit when it came to patience.

Ryzthar turned around and scanned the nine faces gazing back at him from around the long table. There was a seat for him at the opposite end from Volz Nazolith, but the king chose to stand. His rear end was still sore from the bumpy ox-cart ride down from the castle.

"How many girls do you have in the underworld cells right now?" he asked, his stare directed at the high cleric, whose cone-shaped black hat distinguished him from the hatless, black-robed priests.

Volz Nazolith, with his dark eyes darting rapidly but the rest of him very still, seemed either reluctant to answer or was struggling with the math.

"We are... over capacity, your grace," he finally replied.

"What does that mean?" the king asked, moving away from the fire and closer to the table.

"More than 100. Less than 150," Volz Nazolith said.

"And none of them are my daughter?" the king snapped.

"We have studied each one of them, your grace. We have questioned them. So far, your soldiers have not delivered Marinde back here," the high cleric said firmly.

"I don't even remember what she looks like... that's how long it's been since I've laid eyes on her," Ryzthar rasped with bitterness and a hint of regret.

"But surely all of you remember her. She was here for nearly a decade. I climbed to the top of Mammyth despite your former high cleric's warnings and Nera herself spoke to me. She told me many of you knew her quite well... intimately well. If I find out she's here right now and you've been protecting her, I'll have all of you catapulted off the mountain together like black rain. I know how to make a goddamn sacrifice to The Nine and not fux it up!"

The high cleric's dark, probing eyes no longer darted in every direction. Now they bore a hole right into Ryzthar's raving-mad visage while the other eight heads at the table bowed.

"I do remember your daughter, your grace, and I assure you she's not within these temple walls or in the underworld cells," Volz Nazolith said, his voice far more restrained than that of his monarch.

"She probably altered her appearance," Ryzthar persisted. "She may have cut her hair to look like a boy."

"That's why we have accepted some of the boys your soldiers have brought to us, your grace, but still, Marinde is not among them."

"And how do you know for certain?" the king continued as he walked over to loom above the high cleric.

"The unique shade of her eyes... the resemblance to her mother... no girl or boy here comes close," Volz Nazolith answered, tailoring his words to barb the king while still meeting his mad stare.

Ryzthar stewed over those words as he plodded back toward the fire.

"Do you want to go down to the underworld cells and see for yourself, your grace?" he heard the high cleric ask behind him. "None of us here would protect a girl who murdered eight of the most holy men..."

"Oh spare me that!" the king snarled as he whipped his head back around. "You fuxing priests are less holy than I am.... My men are rounding up more... low-born, high-born and everything in between. If you know the ones you have in the cells are not her, then turn them loose and make room for a new wave. I'll be back in nine moons and your answer better be different then... or there will be nine new faces staring back at me that night. Do you understand?"

The eight priests nodded, but Volz Nazolith's oval head, crowned by his black cone, did not budge.

"We can only answer you based on those your soldiers bring to us, your grace," he said.

"Then you would be wise to spend the rest of your days and nights in this very room praying to The Nine that she turns up at your door," Ryzthar declared. "And if she doesn't, then you will have shown yourselves to be useless and out of favor with the very gods you cling to."

Volz Nazolith remained stoic in expression but turned his tongue loose on the king.

"I must say, I fear the day or night she turns up at this temple, your grace. We were all there at her sacrifice. The gods did not accept our offering in the most punishing of terms, and only the gods could have aided her in her escape. So when you accuse us of trying to hide her or protect her from you, this could not be further from Mammyth's divine truth. The truth is we are the ones who will need protection from her, and I fear the gods won't be listening to our prayers in this room or any other that lies within the boundaries of your cursed kingdom."

King Ryzthar surged with anger, stormed back toward the high cleric and heaved him over in his chair. Volz Nazolith, his black cone hat now unceremoniously separated from his head and lying several feet away on the hardwood floor, cried out as the other priests gasped in terror around the table.

"Then you better get used to sudden and terrible falls... all of you!" the king warned.

A knock at the door froze everyone in place.

"What is it?!!" Ryzthar barked.

The response was inaudible through the heavy oak door.

"Just enter and tell me already!" the king shouted.

Bazel entered, his eyes popping open at the sight of the high cleric dumped over in his chair, sans hat, and no one making a move to remedy his situation.

"Look at me, not him!" Ryzthar ordered. "You have news?"

Volz Nazolith shifted on the floor.

"Stay down there where you belong, low cleric!" the king commanded.

Bazel struggled to form a word.

"Out with it!" Ryzthar yelled.

"There are several disturbing reports from further down the mountain, your grace," Bazel finally replied.

"What now?"

"We've lost soldiers at a cave on the backside of the mountain, some archers in Aron's Ravine and... an entire company of our men just above that ravine," Bazel said, beads of sweat on his brow.

The king grimaced and exhaled. His shoulders slumped slightly.

"They're all dead?" he asked more softly.

"I'm afraid so, your grace."

"How?"

"Sorcery, it is feared," Bazel said. "A young woman... traveling in a small group... creating chasms in the ground in front of her feet, burying and torching soldiers alive... returning arrows in mid-flight, setting them ablaze and turning them on our archers..."

He looked at the king as if seeking permission to go on.

"All of it, Bazel," Ryzthar waved him on.

"Strix was seen... in the form of a winged, ten-headed hydra... encircling and consuming an entire company of our most seasoned fighters just a couple of hours ago."

The king clutched his chest, as if suffering heart pains. Basel leaned toward him, then hesitated to touch his lord.

Ryzthar quickly shook it off and stood back up.

"Now is that all?" he asked, making no effort to hide the dread in his voice.

"Yes, your grace."

"Clearly, my daughter is responsible for this... and she's headed this way," the king reasoned.

"Shall we..." Bazel began.

"No more soldiers will die from her black magic if I have anything to say about it," he declared loudly, causing his guard to back up a step. "I will wait for her here in this lair of wicked priests and confront her myself. This is where she was violated and nearly sacrificed. This is where she will begin to seek her vengeance. But she is still my blood after all. I will not run scared from my own daughter."

Bazel seemed stunned, but nodded anyway. "As you wish, your grace," he said, leaving the room and closing the door.

Ryzthar then turned back toward the silent, morbid table of priests.

"Get up," he finally told Volz Nazolith.

The high cleric rolled away from his overturned chair, brushed himself off, stood up, set the chair upright, collected his cone hat, secured it to his head and sat back down at end of the table.

"I've changed my mind about the prisoners. Keep them all here," Ryzthar instructed. "Perhaps we can use those girls to bargain with her... Mammyth knows, very unlikely, but..."

The nine Seers of The Nine nodded unconvincingly, and the king shook his head and scowled at what they must be thinking in that moment.

"I know you believe I'm doomed. Well, you're fuxing doomed right along with me, you useless, perverted priests," Ryzthar seethed. "I guess we deserve each other. The power of a kingdom cloistered in a single prayer room with no one to hear our prayers. How wretchedly poetic.... Any desperate pearls of wisdom to offer in this godforsaken moment from any one of you vile, black creatures?"

Volz Nazolith cleared his throat.

"I'll check the scrolls and the histories in our library to be sure, your grace, but I don't believe Strix has taken the form of a ten-headed hydra ever before," he said. "If your daughter truly can wield that beast to do her bidding, then this room, this temple, may well be our tomb."

"What a monster you and your predecessors have created," Ryzthar sneered.

Silence suddenly reigned. No one dared to preach on the hypocrisy of the king's remark.

**CHAPTER 23 — NEAR KISS**

Tenn, Jett and Antero made camp that night under the stars at 7,200 feet. Despite their grief over Hagema, various arrow wounds and sheer exhaustion, the relative ease of walking up the ridge versus rope climbing out of the ravine had spurred their progress before nightfall.

The temple was less than an hour's climb away, and they decided against starting a fire. They didn't want to attract any more attention than they already had received. No other soldiers had crossed their path since the ambush at the top of the ravine and Antero continued to be stunned by that.

"Something is not right," he said. "The king must know those soldiers never returned by now. Why didn't he send more of his men?"

"Maybe he's afraid," Jett said, tearing off a piece of ox jerky with her teeth and chewing it while all three sat on a long, smooth slab of rock. "Fux, this stuff is disgusting."

"Why did you bring it then?" Antero asked.

"Because it's cheap, easy to carry, doesn't require a fire and gives me energy," Jett said.

Antero didn't even hear her, his mind still mired in Hagema's demise and the bizarre aftermath.

"It must be a trap," he finally said, lightly tapping the rag covering his injured right forearm with the fingers on his left hand.

"It doesn't matter," Tenn said, laying back to look up at the countless stars.

"Why not?" Antero asked.

"Because I'm going to the temple tomorrow morning either way."

"What if he's got it surrounded with 500 men and he's just waiting for you to show up?" Antero persisted.

"Then I will deal with them."

"You can't go alone," Jett said, finally done chewing.

"Three against 500 isn't going to help either," Antero pointed out. "We should wait until Zakk, Toree and Oraz get here with reinforcements."

"The two of you will meet up with them somewhere between here and there, but I'm going to the temple alone. That's not up for discussion," Tenn said.

Jett and Antero glanced at each other, stood up and loomed over her.

"You're both blocking my view of the heavens," Tenn said.

They didn't budge.

"No one else is dying on this mission," Tenn said. "If you doubt my power, my decision, keep standing there."

Jett dropped down to smother her with a kiss, which Tenn struggled to resist for about two seconds, smiled and then surrendered. The kiss lasted long enough that Antero wondered if they remembered he was still there.

When Jett finally released her and rolled over next to her, Tenn's eyes were locked on Antero. He was still standing there, apparently doubting her power and her decision.

She stood up to face him. She was nearly as tall and still in her smallclothes. Now Jett was lying back on the rock and gazing up at the two of them. Her smile grew as she watched Tenn move right up to Antero, a man, something that would have been unthinkable not so long ago.

"If you think I'm not powerful enough to go to the temple alone tomorrow, kiss me right now," Tenn dared him.

Antero froze. Tenn leaned forward, tilted her head and raised her chin, threatening to kiss his lips first. Those ocean-wave eyes of hers remained open, ready to drown him at the slightest move. Somehow, he held still, an iron statue in the summer-night alpine wind.

And then he cracked.

Tenn slapped him on the cheek a split-second after their lips touched. His jaw dropped. She stepped back, but her glare remained on him.

Jett sat up, completely riveted by the two of them.

"You couldn't save Hagema," he said. "What makes you think you can save yourself?"

Tenn's face softened, even reddened slightly.

"I'm sorry... for her... for you... for slapping you," she said, looking down now.

Antero, his cheek still stinging, exhaled and looked at her. He had to remind himself that despite her brutal childhood and her growing powers, she was still just 15.

"Did it ever occur to you that I desperately want to go with you and seek vengeance for what happened to my friend today? I owe her that," he said.

Tenn desperately wanted to grab his hand and to hug him and to heal his sadness, but she held back.

"I don't blame you," she said. "But I know what must happen."

"How do you know?" Jett asked, standing up now.

"I feel it, and I will not be able to feel it if the people I... care about... are next to me and in danger. I will be distracted, just as I was with Hagema. I was weak and distracted..."

"You were climbing White Widow for the first time. How could you not be?" Antero pointed out.

Tenn shook her head and solidified her resolve.

"I must be strong and focused tomorrow. I must be me. Tenn. Alone against the world... just as I was when I was jailed and assaulted in the temple for all of those years. It's the only way. I promise... or we will all be slaughtered... or thrown to our deaths like Hagema."

Tenn teared up as soon as those last words were out of her mouth. Antero and Jett soon fought them as well.

After a long, emotional moment of silence, Jett stepped closer to Antero and commanded his attention.

"Do you doubt this young woman who throws fireballs and orders hideous, shape-shifting monsters to devour soldiers?" she asked. "Very soon, she will be your ruler, my ruler... and the kingdom will be better off for it. Don't fux this up for your own selfish reasons, even if they are legitimate.... Don't let Hagema die for nothing."

He bit his tongue and nodded, then exhaled deeply and walked away in the starlight.

Tenn lurched forward to pursue him, but Jett grabbed her arm firmly.

"Let him go," she said. "He just wants some time alone. It's not easy to watch your friend die like that in front of your eyes with no way to help."

"I know. If he hadn't cut the rope in that second, we'd all be dead at the bottom of the ravine," Tenn acknowledged.

"On top of that, it's not easy for a man to yield to a woman in this fuxed-up kingdom," Jett continued.

"You're telling me this?" Tenn gasped.

"Then why the fux did you test him like that with your luscious lips in his face?" Jett asked, her wild eyes sparkling and her complicit smile growing. "You shocked me when you did that."

Tenn bowed her head and thought about it for a moment.

"I don't know," she said, looking Jett in the eyes again and failing to thwart her own smile. "It's the first time I've ever done something like that. I have no idea where it came from."

Jett laughed, grabbed her by the shoulders and put her lips within a tongue's length of Tenn's suddenly open mouth.

"You!" Tenn realized. "Your brave, wonderful, in-your-face influence, of course.... But he's a man."

Jett gave her a quick kiss, stepped back and smirked.

"I noticed you didn't say evil man," she said.

Tenn shrugged her shoulders. "Because he's not. He's proven that already."

"Ah... well then, how did his lips feel?" Jett persisted playfully.

"I... don't really remember. I guess I was too busy slapping him."

"Would you kiss him again? For real?"

"Would you be jealous?" Tenn turned it around on her.

"Only if I was excluded," Jett deadpanned.

Tenn gasped and they both laughed. Then the younger girl's face turned more serious."

"I would never exclude you from anything, Jett. The truth is I don't trust being alone with a man, even him. I may never be able to do that. And I would not be here right now if it weren't for you and your strength. In the last year, you have helped me heal as much as I can heal."

"You are excluding me tomorrow though," Jett felt compelled to note.

"That's different."

"I know. I will not try to sway you like Antero did. I trust you know what you're doing."

"I hope I make good on your trust," Tenn said.

Jett hugged her tightly.

"You will," she reassured her while stroking her hair. "Just remember your mother and your song of revenge, beautiful girl. This is your time now. It's your realm. Your stage."

**CHAPTER 24 — A SWORD THROUGH THE HEART**

When Tenn crested the plateau alone, wearing her favorite green-and-silver tunic she had packed in her hiking sack just for this occasion, she nearly stumbled in her brown leather boots at the sight. Antero had been right. There were hundreds of soldiers, armed and plated, waiting for her about fifty yards away. Bells began ringing from the highest spires of the temple as she stepped into view on a breezy and mostly sunny morning.

When she took a few more steps, the soldiers parted to the left and right, leaving a clear path toward an open temple door in the distance. This was not the entrance she had expected to make. Doubts began to creep into her mind, but she pushed them aside as best she could until one soldier stepped in front of her just before she was about to part the red sea of helmets and swords.

He was tall, young and confident as he looked Tenn in the eyes.

"Who are you?" Bazel asked.

"I am Tenn," she said firmly. "The king named me Marinde, but I have rejected that name, just as he rejected me after he had my mother stoned to death.... Does that answer your question?"

She could see his face and his eyes had softened just a bit, and she drew strength from that. Then she glanced up at the face looking back at her from so high above. It was not a high cleric wearing a black hat in the ninth-spire window. It was a man with a golden crown. She couldn't make out his facial features from her position so far below, but his nine-pointed accessory sparkled in the eastern sun.

"I see the king is here," Tenn said.

"He is," Bazel confirmed. "He has ordered that the temple door be opened to you upon your return. The high cleric, priests and acolytes are assembled and waiting for you in the amphitheater."

"Why?" she asked.

"The king understands you may want to speak with them."

"Does he? Just speak with them?"

"Shall I escort you?" Bazel asked, extending an arm.

"This is not my wedding day," Tenn said with venom in her voice. "You can lower your arm because I do not want an escort. I left this temple alone and I shall return to it alone."

Bazel reluctantly lowered his arm.

"Does the king plan to join us in the theater this morning?" Tenn asked.

"He did not say."

"Am I walking into a trap?" she asked.

Bazel remained stoic. "Have we raised a sword against you so far?"

"I feel that you would like to run yours right through me at this very moment," Tenn said, studying his blue eyes.

He looked away.

"You don't deny it," she said.

He remained silent.

"In short order, you will be throwing down that sword of yours and so will they," Tenn said, sweeping her right hand toward the other soldiers.

Now Bazel glared at her. "Never," he said.

"I don't need an army to hide behind," Tenn said. "So I won't be needing any of you. You will be free to start a new life, somewhere else."

She could feel the anger writhing inside her father's most trusted guard. She waited for his response.

"I will die for my king today if I must," he snarled. "And I certainly won't be taking orders from his bastard daughter."

"Thank you for your honesty," she replied, but internally she was savoring his insult so close to the temple. She could feel a power she had never known stirring and coursing through her entire being. She sensed it was her mother's strength, combined with her own... but now there was something well beyond that. Something new. The winds of Aurai picked up and blew strands of her hair across her face. She felt alive and beautiful and loved by something far greater than all of the combined might these sword-wielding humans could muster.

"And just to be clear, I am no bastard daughter, soldier," she finally and calmly corrected him. "I am the first and only daughter of the rightful queen, Brinsma. I have returned to this long-ago sacred ground to serve justice to your murderous king and his hell-pit of viper priests."

Bazel scowled and spat at her feet. "You speak treason, witch. I should cut out your tongue, feed it to you and have you stoned to death just like your mother."

Tenn smiled and stepped closer to him. They were virtually the same height. Bazel's eyes gave him away, and she knew what was coming well before he drew his sword and stabbed her through the heart.

The cheers of the soldiers quickly turned to gasps and groans, however.

Tenn simply did not flinch as the blood spurted and poured out of Bazel, his armor useless to stop it. The confusion and hurt and defeat on his face fell with him to the ground. His eyes remained open as the life drained out of him; a young woman looming and staring down at him; his favorite sword still knifing through her unstained tunic and out her back to no effect.

"Killing is dangerous, no matter the cause," were the last words he heard.

Tenn then lifted her arms toward rising Nera and slowly turned around to show all of the panic-stricken soldiers. Yes, she had been impaled with one of their pointy weapons, and she had absorbed it with a smile as her would-be murderer lied in a pool of his own blood.

"What kind of black-magic fuxing witch... ?!!" she heard one soldier cry out above the din before they all were silenced by Strix shrieking overhead.

All eyes turned upward, including Tenn's, though she was looking in a different direction: at the ninth-spire window. She watched the king's horror-stricken reaction to his first sight of the monster — a ten-headed serpent with wings — the kind of macabre creature that only could be birthed in the darkest layers of the underworld. Yet there it was, slithering and flying all at once, in broad daylight. She enjoyed observing the king cringe as Strix cast its massive shadow over the plateau. She owned the king's terror as the beast buzzed the temple's highest spire and one of its tongues lashed out, pulverizing the glass and showering the cowering monarch with thousands of shards.

"Tenn is higher than The Nine," she whispered before lowering her gaze.

No other soldiers dared to step in her path as she walked toward the open temple door.

**CHAPTER 25 — HER STAGE**

Despite the bronze pommel of Bazel's sword still protruding from her chest and the blade still pointing out her back as if to suggest she should turn around, Tenn marched without hesitation through the torch-lit corridor of The Nine Sacred Statues and entered the beckoning double doors of the amphitheater.

As Bazel had told her before his demise, they had been waiting for her. Dozens of rows of sitting green-robed novices and red-robed acolytes rose at a steep grade, surrounding the top-middle row of black-robed seers. All nine were present, including the high cleric, Volz Nazolith, with his black hat. The king must've kicked him out of his perch, she thought. Where was Ryzthar now? Her eyes quickly scanned the room. There was no sign of him yet.

The gleaming black stage was empty, so she walked up the steps and took it. When she faced them, the loud gasps and incredulous expressions did not distract her from what she wanted to say.

"Look upon me once again!" Tenn declared in a booming voice while nodding to the sword through her heart. "This is how a queen's daughter gets treated in your former kingdom!"

Murmurs of protest began to stir, but she balled her fists tighter and continued.

"I was imprisoned in this temple from the age of five until I bled into womanhood. In your underworld cells, I was raped and forgotten and raped again... and again... and again. Last summer, just outside these walls, I was sentenced to death — a human sacrifice to The Nine — and burned at the stake. But I lived. Today, just outside these walls, a member of the king's guard drove his sword through my heart for all of you to see. He is dead and yet here I still stand."

The murmurs had retreated back into silence. Her command of the theater was complete.

"What do you have to say for yourselves? What, if given the chance, would you pray and chant about from this day forward?" she challenged them.

Some eyes, the low-ranking innocent ones, continued to stare at her. Other eyes, the ones who had seen her naked and bleeding, looked down or away. No mouths opened until the high cleric stood up at the top of the theater.

"Eight of our priests died because of your blood magic, woman!" Volz Nazolith charged, the acoustics of the theater carrying less weight to his voice than Tenn's from the stage. "Our late high cleric, Volz Yth, died at the hands of your father and his guards after a disagreement at the castle. Your father later confessed he had climbed into the forbidden area of this sacred mountain, cursing us all. So do not presume to interrogate all of us when you and your blood line have plenty to answer for!"

Tenn waited for his echo to fade, but the murmurs swelled again to replace it. Her justice-starved voice easily carried above it all.

"Perverted words from a perverted order of priests! How expected and disappointing. The truth is I should be dead. I would not be standing here alive in front of you with a sword through my heart if not for The Nine you claim to follow. So let them judge you now! I call out to them, just as you did Volz Nazolith, every time you and your sick predecessors, and all of the guilty present here today, thrust themselves into me... Aron, Aurai, Strix, Agan, Ione, Nera, Arus, Freyr and Mammyth! Yes shameful priests, it is time to feed you monsters to THE MONSTER!"

The temple rocked with the sound of the hydra landing just outside. Silent looks of panic around the theater soon erupted into screams of terror as nine of the ten serpent heads stretched down the corridor and squeezed through the open double doors. They moved in a tight bundle at first, but then spread out and loomed over every section of seats. One head remained outside to keep an eye on the soldiers, who had retreated from the beast as it touched down.

Back inside the theater, the men in robes cried out for help and desperately climbed over each other like bees in a honeycomb, but there was no escape and there was no honey — only venomous stings with every tongue lash; only pain with every fang bite; only death with every crushing swallow. Nine serpent heads rooted the rot out of the temple in a matter of minutes as Tenn stood center stage, her eyes never turning away.

In the end, after the slithery tentacles had exited the theater and rejoined the hydra anchored outside, only twelve trembling, green-robed novices remained. They were kneeling with their hands covering their heads, more or less huddled in the same area, a few rows up from the stage and to the left of Tenn.

"You must be new," she told them. "I do not remember any of you and the gods have found you innocent. You are free to go now and share what happened here today."

Slowly they managed to stand up, bowed to Tenn in gratitude and then shuffled out of the theater as fast as their shell-shocked bodies would allow.

Tenn marveled at the suddenly empty theater and exhaled for a moment, but then she sensed his presence. The faint smile on her face swiftly switched to a scowl.

King Ryzthar entered the stage from her right side.

Tenn turned and their eyes briefly met. He quickly glanced down at the sword running through her and then back up, meeting her stare again as he dropped to his knees. The crown appeared to wobble on his head from the sudden impact.

As he stretched out his arms and interlocked his fingers in front of him like a beggar seeking a spare coin, Tenn realized she had no recollection of him from her early childhood. He might as well have been a complete stranger in a robe of red and gold.

"D-d-daughter," he yammered.

"Do not call me that!" Tenn commanded.

"I see now..."

She cut him off.

"You hid in the ninth spire while your guard stabbed me through the heart. You peeped through a window at the side of the stage while your priests assembled in front of me and charged me with the murder of eight of their kind — the same people who kept me prisoner for a decade, raped me countless times and attempted to execute me per your royal decree.... Only now do you find the courage to appear on stage and kneel before me and The Nine?"

The king's lips quivered, but no sound came out of them.

"What do you see now?" she snapped.

"I see your infinite power... and my many mistakes," Ryzthar finally replied, his voice trailing off as the tears trickled down his royally flushed cheeks.

Remembering her mother, her violent death and their stolen relationship, Tenn was not moved at all. Soon, her anger and emotions swirled into something beyond her 15 years. When she opened her mouth, Brinsma's powerful and haunting voice filled the vacuous theater. What sounded sweet to Tenn's ears instantly burned to the depths of the king's tortured soul.

"What you see now is your end," Queen Brinsma declared, speaking through her sword-impaled daughter. "This first-born daughter you named Marinde is now Tenn, the most powerful ruler this kingdom has ever known. She has suffered far worse than I ever did, murderous king. Now your fate rests in her hands. No begging or crying will undo what has been done to her. Stand up, coward, and accept your punishment."

Slowly, the quaking king did as his murdered wife commanded.

Tenn's own voice returned for her next sentence.

"Lead me down to the underworld cells, your grace," she ordered, pointing toward the exit.

"You're not going to execute me?" a visibly stunned Ryzthar asked loudly.

Tenn savored his powerless echo for a moment before answering.

"Trust me that Arus rejects you... just as The Nine rejected your sacrifice of me. Death, in whatever gruesome manner I might have entertained on this stage, would be far too merciful for your kind."

**CHAPTER 26 — THE UNDERWORLD**

For Tenn, the disturbing chill of returning to the long, dank dungeon beneath the temple quickly was replaced by the thrill of watching all of the beaming young faces — mostly teenage girls — as Ryzthar unlocked their cells and set them free.

Soon, Tenn faced them, dozens and dozens jammed together in the torch-lit tunnel, as the emasculated king stood by her side. She knew their awestruck eyes were magnetized by the sword through her heart. A petite blonde girl in rags, no more than thirteen, asked the questions on everyone's mind. "What happened to you... how are you not dead?"

"It's a long story, beautiful girl... hopefully a far worse story than your own... and Mammyth only knows how I am still alive," Tenn replied. "What is your name?"

"Corinne," the rosy-cheeked girl said, feeling shy all of a sudden.

"Equally beautiful," Tenn said, smiling at her. "Young people of Mammyth, I am Tenn. I am sorry that I did not get here sooner to set you free. I am sorry if your mothers and fathers were killed or injured trying to prevent your capture by the former king's soldiers. I am sorry for any abuse you may have suffered in this place because of me. All of you were brought here because this man standing before you was hunting for me, his own daughter, and did not know what I looked like. How sad is that? Today marks a pathetic end to this king's reign."

Ryzthar hung his head so low, his crown seemed ready to tumble to the cold, dirt floor. The eyes of a new generation bore a hole right through him, and the unrelenting voice of his estranged daughter filled that hole with sadness and regret.

"I spent nine years in these cells. I once thought I would be here until the day I died. Thank The Nine, I escaped. Now it is your turn to regain your freedom. We will mourn those we have lost, but for now, rejoice in your new chance at life. Please take the passage back up to main level of the temple and gather in the theater. I will join you very soon and we shall leave this hellish place together. Go now."

Corinne and some of the other girls looked back at Tenn and Ryzthar as they began walking slowly, but eventually all of the young people left the dungeon and returned to higher ground.

Then Tenn silently led Ryzthar through a block of empty cells toward the far end of the dungeon.

Tenn stopped at the first cell on the left and touched the iron bars. Ryzthar stood next to her, his eyes popping open at the sight of a five-year-old girl — Marinde; he remembered her face now — wearing dirty rags and bleeding from her partially exposed privates. She was sobbing, terrified, alone.

Ryzthar clutched his chest and heard whimpering to his right. In the cell across the way, it was Marinde again, a year older, looking even worse.

"Walk... and see," Tenn told him.

Ryzthar shuddered through an exhale and stumbled forward into a haunting passage of time: he was flanked by Marinde at seven years old on the left and eight on the right; nine on the left and ten on the right; eleven on the left and twelve on the right; thirteen on the left and fourteen on the right. She was progressively more beautiful and more scarred in every way, with each passing cell.

The images seemed so real they made the king's knees buckle until he broke down on the grimy ground. He took his crown off, but still clutched it in his trembling hands for a long, pensive moment.

"I'm over here," he heard Tenn say in between his sobs.

He looked up but did not see her, so he pushed himself up off the floor, felt the heat of the torches ensconced on the wall to either side of him and then staggered between a final pair of larger cells.

Tenn stared back at the king from the locked cell on the left, the iron bars all around her as she leaned against a small wooden table. Her long brown hair spilled over her green-and-silver tunic. Ryzthar felt one second of relief that it was really her in the present tense, and she was fully clothed and seemed well, but then his eyes sunk to the sword running through her. It was too much. He had to look away.

"Get in!" she ordered the king, pointing to the cell behind him, which also contained a small wooden table in the center.

Ryzthar exhaled and did as he was told. Seconds after he entered the cell, a gust of Aurai flickered the torch lights all along the tunnel and slammed the iron-bar door behind him.

The king turned back toward Tenn and groaned. Still holding his crown in his right hand, his left hand gripped a bar and tested the door. For the first time in his privileged life, Ryzthar was now a prisoner.

"Marinde, I am a sitting king and your father," he pleaded loudly, with bulging eyes and bulging veins in his neck.

The daggers in her glare made him look away again.

"You are wrong on three counts," she said. "First, Marinde, as you claim to have known her, died in that very cell many years ago. Second, you lost any claim to be her father when you killed her mother and sent her to this temple to be defiled and burned at the stake. And third, if you want to be a sitting king, then go sit... on that table behind you."

"Do I have a choice?" he protested.

"Did Marinde have a choice when the priests _consumed_ her innocence _on that very table_?"

Ryzthar coughed and sputtered, first backing into the wood and then avoiding the table like it was 1,000 degrees. The shame and guilt crushing down on him proved too much.

He finally flung his crown away, cringing as it clanged off the bars and landed upside down in the far corner of the cell.

"Such a blood betrayal of the queen and her daughter... and all for what?" Tenn asked him. "Do you have a male heir now?"

Ryzthar shook his head. "Ola bore me two more daughters," he said softly.

"You say that like daughters... women... are a curse worse than death!" she snapped. "Who gave birth to you, wretched man?"

"Some women are a curse worse than death! Your mother drove me mad! She bitched and ranted, and chanted black-magic threats..."

"She stood up to you, so you had her silenced with stones and started over. A new queen and two more daughters. Any regrets?"

He exhaled with resignation. Eying her slumped and defeated father, Tenn then wrestled with the piece of Marinde still inside her.

"I truthfully don't remember you at all," she said. "As a father... or a king."

Ryzthar looked up at her through two sets of bars, surprised she finally didn't speak of her former self in the third person.

"How does it feel, father... king... to be so inconsequential?" Tenn continued. "I was five when you sent me here. I should remember something. Did you ever hold me... even as a baby?"

"Of... of course," he stammered.

"Don't lie," she seethed, "on top of everything else."

Chastened, he looked down again and bit his tongue.

Tenn paused and reflected for a long moment.

"I used to think that all men were evil," she said. "But I've learned in the year since I escaped this place that it's not true. There are good men out there in this kingdom. Sadly, you and the others I have dealt justice to today are not among them."

Tenn walked over to the door of her cell, exhaled deeply and it opened. Seconds later, her eyes blazed green and yellow in the torch light as she loomed outside Ryzthar's cell.

"I do remember one thing," she said slowly, thoughtfully. "You apparently had given me a gold necklace with a medallion bearing the face of Freyr, the god of life."

Ryzthar's heavy, delayed nod only underscored his feigned attempt at recollection.

"Volz Zin, a man who claimed to be a priest and follower of The Nine, ripped it off my neck before he raped me for the first time. He said I needed to be purified.... Imagine that. A child, with royal blood no less, needed to be purified by the prick of a sick pedophile!... That was the day your Marinde died, your grace."

Ryzthar sank to his knees and then fell prostrate before her. He grabbed the bars near her boots and blubbered into the dirt that soiled his red-and-gold robe.

"Welcome to the underworld, prisoner," Tenn said with steel in her voice as sharp as the blade through her heart. "Now you can feel powerless and forgotten... just as Marinde did for all of those days, weeks, months and years. It will still be a better fate than what she suffered; what her mother suffered."

She started to walk away.

"Wait!... How long will you keep me here?!!" Ryzthar cried out.

Tenn turned and stared for a long moment at his abandoned crown in the corner, its nine points overturned in the grime.

"Mammyth only knows."

**CHAPTER 27 — VIEW FROM THE NINTH SPIRE**

After Tenn found and huddled for a long, tear-filled moment with the daughters of Oraz and his men, she led all of the former captives out of the theater for a tour of the massive temple. Without a wicked priest in sight, the architectural tribute to The Nine was a beautiful sight to behold: high ceilings, grand columns, mythical statues, fancy rushes, crackling braziers, oak-hewn furniture and spacious rooms.

These were the parts of the temple Tenn had never been allowed to see in all of her years here.

Then she led the scores of girls and a few long-haired boys up the towering spiral stairway — another previously forbidden area for anyone not wearing a black robe. But on this day, a sword-impaled young woman in a green-and-silver tunic blazed a trail for her rag-covered followers up the nine spires so they could enjoy the view Mammyth provided from each of the nine circular windows.

When Tenn reached the open window in the ninth spire and looked out through a few remaining shards of glass at the king's army she would soon disband, she reflected on how far she had come since Volz Yth had stared down at her from that same window before her would-be execution. Then her eyes followed the flight of Strix, circling once again, until she noticed a large group of people — not wearing any armor — who had gathered on the ridge overlooking the temple's plateau.

She smiled knowing Jett, Antero, Zakk, Toree, Oraz and the others were among them. She sighed knowing Hagema was not.

The excited chatter and laughs of the girls and boys all along the spiral stairway below brought her back to the wonderful scene all around her.

Then she reached out to Corinne to guide her gingerly around the broken glass and pull her close to her side. The petite blonde girl who had been brave enough to ask her about the sword through her heart down in the dungeon also became her closest companion on the temple tour.

"Do you see all those people up there along the ridge?" Tenn asked the girl while pointing out the window.

"Yes... yes I do, My Wounded Hero," Corinne replied, her brilliant blue eyes dancing with life.

Tenn tried not to laugh, though it was hard getting used to Corinne's new nickname for her.

"I'm going to ask two of them to pull this sword out of my heart when I get to see them again," Tenn said.

Corinne looked up at her and seemed puzzled.

"Won't that hurt?" she asked.

"Should I walk around like this forever?"

"No, but I can't picture you without it," Corinne pointed out.

Tenn nodded and smiled. "Neither can I, but I must say I'm looking forward to it."

"Which two people will pull it out?" the girl asked.

"My Two Wounded Heroes."

**CHAPTER 28 — THE WAIT**

Antero and Jett had reunited with Zakk, Toree and Oraz — as well as more than 100 sympathizers, many of whom were frantically hoping to find their stolen daughters and sons alive — within view of the temple.

Zakk remained in denial that Hagema had perished, but he tried to stay strong and focused on the seemingly impossible situation in front of them: hundreds of armed soldiers surrounding the temple and no sign of a girl named Tenn, who had a really good voice and some strange powers.

"And you're sure that hideous beast is on our side, right?" Zakk asked Antero as Strix, still in hydra form, flew overhead and then banked back toward the temple.

"We wouldn't be talking to each other right now if it wasn't," he replied.

"She's been in there too long," Jett said, chewing on the finger nail of the pinky that was still intact. "What if it's a siege or something?"

"How can it be a siege? The temple belongs to the king and priests," Antero said. "I told Tenn this was a trap."

"And nobody could talk her out of going in there alone?" Zakk asked.

"I tried," Antero said, shaking his head.

Jett laughed.

"What?" he snapped.

"Either kiss her or don't next time. You were too wishy-washy," Jett said with a impish grin. "When I kiss that girl, I make sure she knows I'm kissing her."

"Fux off," Antero huffed.

Zakk chuckled. "I can see I missed a lot."

"Missed what?" Toree asked, walking up to her brother.

"It seems Jett and Antero have been fighting over our favorite cave singer," Zakk said.

"She hates men," Toree pointed out.

"I'm the exception," Antero said.

"Or... you're not a man," Jett jabbed.

"After all I did to get your asses up White Widow..."

"Relax. Just teasing," she quickly added.

Antero threatened to slap her wounded ass. Jett dodged, whistled and playfully circled back to gnash her teeth at the air above his wounded forearm. And then they all laughed.

That's when Toree pointed toward the temple: Tenn had finally emerged through the front door, flanked by a horde of fellow young people.

**CHAPTER 29 — NO MORE KINGS AND QUEENS**

As soon as Tenn and her young escapees stepped outside the temple, the soldiers began to form a semi-circle around them. Swords drawn, the warriors' eyes darted warily between Tenn and Strix, who was hydra-buzzing the ninth spire once again, this time without Ryzthar in the window.

"Your king's reign has ended," she declared to immediate hisses and jeers. "He's now locked up in the underworld cells where he belongs."

"You will die for this, sorceress usurper!" one soldier shouted, leading a charge straight at Tenn.

He didn't make it far. Ten feet before he attempted to run a second sword through her, Tenn willed a wall of flames to erupt from the ground, forcing most of the soldiers to retreat. A few, like the one who led the charge, did not stop and ignited, limbs flailing and roasting. Strix then shrieked and zoomed in low, just a few feet above all of their heads, to push the soldiers who weren't on fire back even further.

The children ducked and trembled all around Tenn at the sight of the hydra and its ten serpent mouths licking the air and blocking the sun.

"Don't be afraid!" Tenn shouted to them. "The gods are with us now."

When the flaming, screaming soldiers had been burned to silence and their shaken comrades had retreated sufficiently, Tenn called on Ione, goddess of ice, to cool the flames once again. The fire disappeared in an instant, but the smoke and smell remained. Corinne squinted her eyes, pinched her nose with one hand and held Tenn's hand tight with the other.

"Soldiers, drop all of your weapons and descend this mountain!" Tenn declared. "I rule this kingdom now and as you can see with your own eyes, I won't be needing an army. This is your final chance to surrender or I will let the flying beast have its fill!"

Strix shrieked its approval above the ridge where Tenn's friends where, quickly turned and whizzed back overhead in a matter of seconds to drive home the point. The ten horned heads, ten blood-thirsty mouths and twenty predatory eyes proved too grotesque and intimidating for even the bravest of the king's defenders to stick around.

The soldiers dropped their swords and daggers to the ground, and began running away from the temple unarmed and surprisingly free, just as Tenn had done a year ago.

The girls and boys all around Tenn could not believe their eyes.

"Queen! You are our queen!" they began to shout with relief and glee.

Tenn raised the hand that was not holding Corinne's hand and shook her head vigorously. They quieted down very quickly.

"I am Tenn," she said loud enough for her own mother to hear, wherever she was. "No more kings and queens. Just call me Tenn."

The cheery sound of their young voices echoing her name filled her ears and healed her Tenn times more powerfully than some angry song in a dark cave.

**CHAPTER 30 — YOU BETTER NOT FUXING DIE**

Instead of two armies sprinting to close the distance between them and skewer each other with sharp blades, Tenn rejoiced at the sight of scores of men and women scrambling down the ridge and running to embrace their freed girls and boys.

Even Oraz, not exactly the most nimble man, seemed to find another gear as he, Aldrick, Elsing and the others from Rutt Hutt could be seen running in the second wave of joyous parents before picking up and whirling their daughters around in the air.

Tenn smiled and suddenly wondered if she would ever have a daughter.

Moments later, her eyes spotted Jett, Antero, Zakk and Toree striding toward her steadily, but in no particular hurry compared to the others. Tenn's heart, still impaled by the sword, started beating faster anyway.

When Jett and Antero finally got close enough to notice the sword sticking out of her tunic, they sprinted toward her with expressions of horror.

"Who put a sword through you?!" Jett cried out.

"How are you standing there?!" Antero shouted.

"Just pull this thing out of me," Tenn said as Zakk and Toree also circled her now with looks of alarm. "It has given me strength in dealing with the former soldiers and priests and king, but I have no idea what happens when you pull it out."

"Are you sure you want us to pull it out?" Jett asked.

"I'm not walking around like this for the rest of my life, however brief that may be, so please... do the honors, Jett... and you, too, Antero... together."

Jett and Antero glanced at each other with pained expressions. Zakk accepted the worried embrace of his younger sister and held her tight.

"If I don't survive this, I pass my reign on to Jett," Tenn commanded, stepping toward them with arms out to her sides and her eyes closed.

"I don't want to be in charge, so you better not fuxing die on me, girl," Jett said, grabbing the pommel.

Antero hesitated. Tenn opened her eyes and stared at him; she sensed he felt it was another trick, like the kiss that wasn't.

"If I survive this, I will forever be in your debt; you will forever be in my heart. It has to be both of you. I know it."

Antero exhaled and nodded. Tenn closed her eyes again and braced herself. He put his hand on top of Jett's hand, and together they pulled.

The sword slid out cleanly and no blood spilled, but Tenn immediately weakened her rigid stance and began to collapse. Jett held the sword while Antero swooped down to catch her in his arms.

Tenn's eyes remained closed.

"Wake up! Don't leave us, Tenn!" Antero pleaded, shaking her and putting his ear to her chest.

The silence sliced through his own heart.

Tears filling his eyes, Antero shook his head. Jett's scream traveled for miles on the hot winds of Aurai.

**CHAPTER 31 — THE MONUMENT**

"We're not leaving here until we build a tribute to Hagema," Zakk thundered, his long hair whipping around in the strong gusts.

"Agreed," Antero said.

So they set to work on the ridge overlooking the temple, gathering rocks for the biggest cairn they could make, one that would not get buried by the snows of winter.

Jett remained a hundred feet below them, sitting in the lengthening shadows of the temple, holding her friend's head in her lap and hoping she would wake up. Toree stood next to them and appeared to be praying to Nera as she began to sink toward the western horizon behind the mountain.

"Do you think she'll wake up?" Zakk asked.

"She's too young to die," Antero replied.

"So was Hagema."

The silence that followed lasted nearly an hour, enough time for the cairn to reach 10 feet. They had taken turns stepping on a nearby boulder to build it well over their heads.

After they stepped back to admire the massive rock pile, Zakk ended up holding Antero close as he broke down.

When the final rays of Nera cast hues of red and pink on the cairn's pinnacle, Antero felt compelled to step forward and place his hands on the rocks. The warmth immediately radiated through his body and limbs.

"When I rise tomorrow, take her to the highest place, lay her down on a rock as she was when she was born," a female voice said. "The two who will heal her must be bare as well."

Antero, his eyes not blinking and his breath not flowing, spun around to look at Zakk. Equally stunned, he shrugged his broad shoulders.

"That wasn't me," he said.

Antero smiled and finally exhaled. "Thank the gods for that."

"Hey... uh... did she say what I think she said?" Zakk asked awkwardly.

"Um... I'm glad you heard it, too."

"Why?"

"Because Jett won't like it... and definitely won't believe it."

"If it'll wake up Tenn, I'm pretty sure Jett will be on board," Zakk said.

"Let's go plan a summit ascent then," Antero said.

"Let's not. That all sounds very weird to me. Toree and I will be content limiting our climb to the castle and checking that out for now. Quite a coup for a couple of low-born, cave-dwelling siblings such as ourselves.... And I'd wager the voice wants the two people who pulled out the sword to... you know... do the... uh... healing."

Antero's face suddenly matched the colors on top of Hagema's monument.

**CHAPTER 32 — MAMMYTH O**

Antero did not tell Jett the whole story on the hike to the castle, on the ox-cart ride up The Passage to the Gods or as he was hauling Tenn on his back up the summit dome.

When they finally reached the top of Mount Mammyth and Antero placed Tenn's still-lifeless, still-clothed body on the flattest, smoothest rock he could find, he stretched, exhaled and looked as far as the 14,000-foot view would allow: what seemed like hundreds of miles in every direction. It truly was a rare day. The summit was stripped of its usual clouds, and now it was Tenn's turn.

Antero could feel the burn on his face, and it wasn't from Nera's rays. It was from the memory of her words. Now Jett's unrelenting glare added to the heat.

"Well? We brought her to the top like you said."

Antero deferred his revelation, kneeling next to Tenn and listening again for a heartbeat. There was none. Her body had felt cold all the way up to the top and, as he gripped her hand now, that had not changed.

When he stood back up and became woozy from the high altitude, Jett had her hands on her hips. "The voice told you to bring her up here and that was it? She'd just come back to life?"

"No... there was more to it," he finally admitted.

"Out with it," she snapped.

"I didn't think you'd believe me so I wanted to make sure we got her up here first."

"This better be good."

Antero squinted and tried not to look uncomfortable. "The voice said we had to lay her down on a rock as she was when she was born... and that the two of us had to be _bare_ as well. We are the two who are supposed to heal her."

Jett pondered that for a second and her mouth dropped. "Naked? All of us?"

"Use your imagination," Antero added.

Jett's eyes lit up and she smiled. "Why didn't you say so earlier?"

"It's all very weird... you and her and me... is she alive? Not alive?"

"I'm willing if you are," Jett said. "I miss her. I want her back. And we'll show her the pleasure side of it... the side the priests never showed her all those years. It makes perfect sense to me."

"It would be better if she actually agreed to it," Antero pointed out. "I don't want to be just like those priests."

Jett beamed at him. "You know what? You're one of the good ones, Antero. I'll vouch for you if she wakes up and slaps you."

"Thank you. At this point, I would be relieved if she woke up and slapped me. At least she'd be truly alive."

"I hope she slaps me even harder," Jett added with a chuckle.

"So... you two never...," Antero pried, suddenly feeling like he had asked Jett something similar once before, perhaps at the base of White Widow.

"No. We only kissed and hugged. But she really wasn't ready for more than that."

"And now she is?" he asked, looking at her, defenseless on the rock.

"Hopefully, she'll wake up and we can ask her. But for now, go ahead and kiss her like you mean it," Jett ribbed him. "She can't get out of it this time."

He smiled, tried to breathe and took off his sweat-soaked shirt. Jett whipped hers off to match him, her perky breasts suddenly exposed to Nera and the entire kingdom. Antero struggled to pull his eyes away from her bare, toned upper half.

"Just get on with it already," she chided him. "We need to bring this girl back to life before the king's army finds out we've got no leader and comes back to chop off our heads!"

"Well, when you put it like that," he quipped, urgently stripping off his hiking breeches and boots.

Jett laughed and soon they were both standing naked, flicking their eyes at each other and then down at Tenn.

"You should really be the one to take off her tunic," Antero advised. "That all-men-are-evil thing... if she wakes up and finds me stripping her bare, she might instinctively boil my blood or fireball me off the mountain."

Jett nodded. "I'm impressed you can still think logically and ogle my lusty body at the same time."

Antero laughed and then watched as stark-naked Jett carefully removed Tenn's tunic and underclothes. The young girl's pale, raw beauty made his body ache. Then he felt the stone beneath his feet grow warmer.

"Do you feel that?" he asked Jett, who stood up and rubbed her knees, which had just made contact with the rock.

"Yes, the heat... the tingling," she replied before pouncing next to Tenn as she noticed her eyelids flutter open. "She's waking up! The naked thing is working!"

That's when Antero realized with considerable embarrassment that Tenn was coming out of her haze just in time to see him standing over her naked.

"What... is happening?" a wild-eyed Tenn asked in between coughs.

Jett kissed her on the forehead.

"The gods told us to bring you up here to heal you! You're alive!"

"Na-nak-ed?" Tenn sputtered, trying to sit up and avoid eye contact with Antero.

"Definitely _not_ our idea," Antero assured her as he and Tenn automatically attempted to cover what they could with their hands. Jett, on the other hand, didn't seem to mind her bare essentials exposed. She was too busy beaming at her revived friend.

"Nera spoke to me about how to bring you back to life after we pulled the sword out of you," Antero continued, focusing on Tenn's questioning eyes now. "She just warmed the rock beneath us before you woke up."

"I still feel it," Tenn realized. "Warmth all over. Inside and out.... What now?"

"What now?" Jett repeated, suddenly glancing at Antero for guidance.

He bit his tongue and blanched. Jett rolled her eyes at his uselessness.

"Well, you're alive so you're back in charge... of me, of Antero, of this entire fuxing kingdom," Jett finally answered her.

"Good. Kiss me then," Tenn commanded.

"Who? Me?" Jett gasped with a grin.

"Both of you. Please lay me back down. I'm feeling... really _weird_ ," she said in a winded voice as Jett helped her recline again on the smooth stone.

" _Weird?_ " Jett parroted.

"In what way?" Antero asked.

"In a really _good_ way," Tenn gasped. "Like I've woken up from a nightmare and gone straight into a gorgeous dream... a dream in which I would like both of you to kiss me... all over... _right now_."

"That's a command from the ruler of this kingdom, Antero," Jett reminded him.

Antero didn't hesitate anymore, rushing to Tenn's side. "I'm just so glad you're _alive_ ," he said, kissing her on the lips with soft reverence.

She grabbed his face with both hands and easily overmatched him with a passion she never knew she had. Jett, meanwhile, covered the girl with wet kisses everywhere else.

Tenn then pushed Antero back for a moment to gaze into his hungry, innocent, soulful blue eyes. Her dam broke amid an ocean of possibilities. Sensing a beautiful pressure expanding inside of her, she whispered, "Show me what this is supposed to feel like."

Antero, smiling like he had found something more precious than gold, finally let go of all that was holding him back.

They kept at it, the three of them, until Tenn finally erupted — wave after wave, free and unleashed — shaking Mammyth from top to bottom with an unrelenting earthquake of primal pleasure.

EPILOGUE

One of the highlights of Tenn's triumphant return to the castle where she had come into the world was meeting her two much younger half-sisters, Jenna and Lyla, for the first time. With no mother and an imprisoned, disowned father, Tenn embraced the little girls and the chance to get to know her new family members.

Tenn found Ola refreshingly amenable to taking off her queenly crown and accepting her husband's fate, and insisted that she and the girls remain at the expansive castle for as long as they wished. Ola accepted for the summer, but she was relieved to find out she could descend to her high-born native village to escape the harsh, isolating winter for the first time in years.

Fittingly, ten days after Tenn conquered Ryzthar, his soldiers and the Seers of The Nine, she invited all of her subjects who wanted to make the climb up to the castle to attend a raucous celebration — not a coronation — in the lavish, high-ceilinged ballroom. She particularly encouraged low-born folks to join in the revelry. Tenn wanted them to know there would be no more travel restrictions in Mammyth like there had been for centuries.

Even more important to her personally, she decreed that everyone had the right to sing whenever and wherever they wanted. Tenn's favorite people did not disappoint.

Accompanied by a beaming, wild-haired Zakk on fiddle, Jett, Antero and Toree kicked off the party by joining arm in arm and belting out an original song they had secretly plotted just for the occasion.

This time, it was Tenn's turn to listen.

" _She fed the monsters_

To the serpents

And the king to his cage

We're free to sing

And search for gold

Low-born, high-born,

Young and old

So grab your ale

And do not fail

To drink nine times

For The Nine

And ten times

For Tenn

Oh fux, we lost count

No worries, no worries

Just start over again!"

The beautiful smile on Tenn's face could not be contained.

Even later, when Antero told her the former king's brother had gotten word of her coup and was weighing whether to march his army over from the neighboring kingdom of Ibelynth, her smile still did not waver.

Tenn, happily lost in her new lover's eyes as Jett caroused with revelers on the opposite side of the room, embraced Antero with all of her strength and rejoiced that no sword could create distance between them.

"If he's evil like his brother, he's the one who should be worried. Not me. Not you," she said. "In case you haven't noticed, evil men don't fare well in Mammyth anymore."

"Oh, I've noticed."

She sensed he was struggling with something beyond all of that, however. Tenn pulled back just enough to take him all in — to appreciate Antero, the man.

"What is it? What do you want to ask me?"

"I'm still trying to figure out who you are... what you are," he replied. "You were a girl. I laughed at you like a fool. I lost you. You were a courageous singer, full of pain and anger. I found you again. You were a woman, a sorceress, an army of one, a jailer of the king. You walked up to us, victorious, with a sword through your heart, and then you died in my arms. I lost you again."

He paused as she brushed a tear from his cheek and replaced it with a kiss.

"Yet here you are... alive in front of me... the most beautiful and confusing wonder I've ever known," Antero added, his watery eyes lost in her gentle sea now. "Who are you?"

"I'm... no longer in a lot of trouble and the ox-ass of your joke," she quipped, referring to her mysterious answer to that same question a year ago.

"Clever," he smirked.

"I am Tenn... a free woman and a fiery goddess," she decided.

He smiled and nodded approvingly. "Goddess of what, exactly?"

"For those who betray me, the goddess of revenge.... But I prefer to be the goddess of love."

THE END

About the author

Jack Chaucer works as a novelist by day and a newspaper editor by night. He lives in Litchfield, Connecticut, with his wife and twin 7-year-olds.

Follow Jack Chaucer at...

queensarewild.wordpress.com,

facebook.com/jackchaucerbooks, @JackChaucer,

goodreads.com/author/show/6445477.Jack_Chaucer

and chaucersaucer22 on Instagram
