Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt Read Free Book Online

point I had noticed that while everyone had been rousted from their compartments, there were no individual searches taking place and the general ambience had become more relaxedas the Goddess was not found within the carriages. There seemed only a small chance that the jade figurine would be found upon my person, and I must confess that I was intrigued by this search for a goddess, even more than I was interested in her physical charm.
    “Does your Goddess regularly take … ah … unscheduled journeys?”
    “Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant does not leave the city ever,” said theofficer firmly. “Only Yuddra-Pikgnil the Darkness may leave the city.”
    I confess that a slight frown may have moved across my brow at this point. Discussing godlets with their priests is often fraught with difficulty, and this search for a goddess who had not left, or who possibly had, but under a different name, was very much in keeping with the tradition of godlets who did not at all correspondto their priesthood’s teachings or texts.
    “I’m not sure I follow,” I said. “You are searching a hundred leagues from Shrivet for a goddess who does not leave the city ever, and there is another goddess who does leave the city but you are not searching for her?”
    “They are the twin Goddesses of Day and Night,” said the officer. “Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant may not leave the city, and Yuddra-Pikgnilthe Darkness may not enter, save at certain festivals. A week ago, the temple was discovered to be empty, thewarders slain, the bounds broken, and Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant was no longer housed there.”
    “So it is Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant you are looking for?”
    “We seek the Goddess in both aspects,” said the officer. “For it may be the doing of Yuddra-Pikgnil the Darkness that has unhousedPikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant, in their eternal struggle for the souls of the people of our city.”
    “I see,” I said, though to be accurate, the only thing I saw was yet another idiotic priest, a member of a hierarchy that was preserving their authority by drawing upon the power of an imprisoned extra-dimensional intrusion that had become anthropomorphized by long association with mortals. Yes, unlikethe great majority of the deluded people who populate this world, I do not think of them as gods or godlets. Indeed, it has been theorized that should a mortal here be somehow introduced to some other plane of existence, there they too would have the powers and attributes seen here as godlike. But I speak to those who know far more than I, if indeed you are as I believe you to be, agents of thatancient treaty—ah, you are a barbarian, Sir Knight, to so interrupt civilized discourse in the interest of what you like to call the bare facts. I will continue.
    Suffice to say that after some show of searching and questioning, the priestly soldiers departed and the Cartway continued. Shortly after the cries of the mahouts had ceased and the mokleks had stretched out to their full shamble, ourconveyance traveling at a remarkable speed only slightly slower than a battlemount’s lope, I felt a stirring in my coat pocket. Reaching in, I withdrew the jade figurine and set it upon the seat at my side, whereupon a few moments later it once again became an alluring woman, or rather goddess, though this time she kept her radiance dimmed tothe extent that she merely glowed with the luster onefinds inside the better kind of oyster shell, one likely to provide a pearl.
    “So, you are a runaway goddess, to wit, one Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant,” I said conversationally as she rearranged her rhuskin, not for modesty, I might add, but rather to show off those beautiful limbs to even greater advantage.
    “Don’t be silly,” she said. “I am, of course, Yuddra-Pikgnil the Darkness. But you cancall me Yuddra.”
    “I am slightly confused,” I replied. “The priest-officer said that it was your, ahem, counterpart—”
    “Sister,” corrected Yuddra. “You might