Idol of Blood Read Online Free Page A

one?
    â€œPearl,” he said aloud, forgetting he didn’t have to, and put his hand to his sore throat. Pearl, wrote the ink.
    Pearl. That’s a fancy name.
    Pearl shrugged. It was his name. Where are you?
    The ink seemed uncertain, moving and shifting before settling at last into more words. Inside the mirror, it wrote, and a moment later, like an afterthought, adding an “s” to the end of “mirror”. An unpleasant sensation rippled through Pearl, like the dreams he often had of being still inside his box. Was this another Meerchild? Had someone else made one as the Master had, from stolen Meeric seed? Pearl dropped the plum, feeling ill. He couldn’t let that happen. It was wrong. He couldn’t leave someone else to be kept in a box of mirrors.
    Pearl wrote swiftly, his hand erratic and unsteady with emotion. This isn’t, you aren’t, not Ra? Are you? It wasn’t a rational question. He’d just seen Ra in his mind’s pictures. It couldn’t be Ra. He knew where Ra was. But the Master had tried to keep Ra in his box after she’d set Pearl free.
    The ink didn’t move again for a long while, and Pearl’s heart began to pound with fear and anxiety. What should he do? He had to do something.
    No, not Ra, the ink wrote at last . I don’t think.
    Relief washed through him, but it was short lived. He still had to do something. There was still a Meerchild somewhere being held against its will. I’ll find you , he promised. He’d spoken, so it was true.

Three: Expulsion
    Words drifted past her like the vacant sound of petitioners’ vetmas , mere purling on the Anamnesis.
    â€œShe’s not well. Can’t this wait until morning?” Jak’s words, anxious whispers, bobbed along the surface.
    They’d been together in Rhyman, but they weren’t in Rhyman now. What was it Ra had gone to Rhyman to do? Her mind was like mist curling, doubling back. There had been something…the temple. Yes, she had lived in a temple once, the object of adulation. She remembered flowers thrown at her feet—when had that been?—and flowers grew in spring. Spring was coming to the highlands. It would be time soon for planting, sacrifices for prosperity…or, no, they didn’t sacrifice to her any longer, did they?
    â€œNot well?” Reluctant, uncomfortable words skipped along after Jak’s. “The Meer are always well. Apparently, they don’t even die like proper people.”
    Once, the Meer had been abundant, the flowering of imagination blooming up from the reeds of the river. In those days, one made one’s petitions before the Meer—and then devoured him. Like eating a magic calf, ingesting Meerflesh would assure one’s wishes were granted. That had been before Ra’s time—had it? How old was she? A little girl had asked her that once. A little girl with eyes like ink.
    â€œI beg to differ with you, Peta. They do die. Don’t they.”
    Someone died . Ra drew a strand of hair through her fingers, watching it, watching the room through it. Ai, that was terrible. Blood and bits of something like melon burst across the steps. She pulled another black strand beside the first and wondered that it wasn’t gray. She was old.
    No, she was an infant. Remember the snow? How white, like the center of the sun. Her toes were cold in it, purpling at the tips, and her eyes were opened for the first time under a darkening Haethfalt sky, and there was a man, beautiful. No, a woman. Neither. The gray eyes had looked at Ra and lit up for a brief moment in surprise and delight at the appearance of the goddess. And then the look was gone and the eyes pretended to frown, pretended not to like her, not to desire her.
    What if Ra had been taken there in the snow? That would have been lovely. Cold. Ra was a virgin. But, no, this was a woman, wasn’t it? No phallus to stand erect and admit desire, no phallus