Heart of the Volcano

  Caught between love and duty, can she make an impossible choice?

  Five years ago, Aera was called away from everything she had ever known: her home, family, and Coram, the boy she was growing to love. She was given no choice. As the only living lava-shifter—able to transform her body into molten rock—she is destined to serve the volcano god as his fire priestess. Now, before she takes her ordained role, she must face her final test. Execute a criminal sentenced to death for the most unforgivable of all sins. Blasphemy.

  She’s shocked to discover it’s no anonymous law-breaker waiting chained at the center of the labyrinth. It’s Coram. For the crime of being a gargoyle, a winged stone-shifter. A gift akin to hers…except his gift is unsanctioned by the temple, his powers proclaimed unholy.

  If she refuses the test she will betray her god and condemn her family to dishonor. To pass it she must kill the boy she used to love…the man she still does.

  Warning: Contains violence, tears, self-sacrifice, a little bit of I-can’t-bear-to-leave-you-but-I-have-to sex, and a heroine whose touch melts the hero—um, literally.

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  Heart of the Volcano

  Copyright © 2009 by Imogen Howson

  ISBN: 978-1-60504-668-6

  Edited by Angela James

  Cover by Scott Carpenter

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: September 2009

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  Heart of the Volcano

  Imogen Howson

  Dedication

  To Michelle, who said Angie would like it. And to Angie, who did.

  And to Phil, because if it weren’t for his support, super childcare abilities and willingness to order pizzas for dinner, I might not be writing at all.

  Chapter One

  As Aera walked down to the entrance of the labyrinth, she descended into shadow. Walls rose on either side, cutting out the distant crash of the ocean and the glitter of sunlight blazing from the white sand of the desert. Before her the entrance itself gaped onto darkness. The cold of it touched her skin, as if, in the blistering midsummer of the desert lands, it somehow breathed out a far-off winter.

  Handprints marked the grey stone pillars at either side: narrow, delicate handprints, their surfaces smooth as glass, melted into the stone. There was little space left between them, but enough for Aera to slide her hands onto the unmarked stone as a hundred newly made fire-priestesses had done before her.

  She did so now, pausing on the threshold, the wintry breath of the labyrinth raising goose bumps on her outstretched arms, the gesture a promise to herself. I, too, will leave my mark on these pillars. I, too, will bear the god’s name.

  Not yet. That was for later, when she would come back out of the labyrinth into the chill of early morning, out onto the sand when it stretched pale and colourless in the grey light before dawn. When she had passed the test. When she had taken up her birthright.

  She let her hands drop, leaving the stone’s rough, dusty surface unchanged, and glanced back up the shadowed channel she’d walked down. The priests waited, watching her. Ten years back the previous fire-priestess elect had broken at this point, fled back up into the glare of the sun, sobbing, saying that she could not do it, she was unworthy, not clean enough. Although the story of that girl had been told as a horror and a warning ever since, Aera did not know her name. It had been as completely forgotten as if it, like the girl’s body, had been consumed, scoured through by liquid fire, clean after death if not before.

  One of the two high priests, the older one, who’d taken Aera from her home five years ago, gave her the briefest of nods. Go on, the gesture said, as clear as words. You know your duty. You know what to do.

  She did know. She left the doorway, tribute to a hundred other girls’ courage, a hundred other girls’ callings, and made the first step down into the labyrinth beyond the doorway.

  She would come out a priestess herself, the hundred and first fire-priestess, handmaiden of the god, consecrated by blood and fire. Or she would not come out at all.

  The door grated shut behind her. It was automatic, of course, a piece of clever clockwork, and she’d known to expect it, but all the same she jumped a little, feeling the dark walls close her in.

  This close to the surface, a small amount of light seeped through vents to reflect in silver gleams on the walls. But in front of Aera, stairs led downwards into complete darkness, and, despite her training, despite knowing every step of what she had to do, she found herself hesitating at the top of the steps, the silence suddenly ringing in her ears.

  She took a breath of the cool underground air, willing her heartbeat to steady. She could not lose her way. This was not a maze, with false trails and dead ends, but a true labyrinth, formed of one path repeatedly curling back on itself until it was trapped at its own centre, forced into a shape like an eye staring, blind, up at the empty sky.

  She’d walked it before, hundreds of times over the last five years. Even now, on this day of her final test, this day to which all her training had led, as she took her first steps down into the blackness her body fell into long-accustomed habits, her breathing slowing, her steps taking on a measured rhythm.

  She no longer needed the trance-state that triggered her gift, but it was a comfort to let herself descend towards it as she descended the labyrinth steps, feeling the familiar calm like a succession of waves wash over and through her. It didn’t matter that she’d never taken this test before, never used her gift in the purpose for which it was made. She’d been trained for it, ever since, at fifteen, the priests had discovered the proof of her calling and taken her from her home. Her gift was the mark of the god’s possession: this was her birthright, she could carry out his will.

  Following the smooth outermost curve of the labyrinth, Aera’s fingers came to a ridge that ran from floor to ceiling: the outline of the only other door in the labyrinth walls. Heat pulsed through it, stinging against her skin. Here was the entrance to the holy place, the volcano itself, cradling the lake of fire whose power ran in every fire-priestess’s veins. This door was neither entrance nor exit, but one of a pair that, raised, turned the passage between into a sluice, a channel opening straight into the molten rock at the heart of the volcano. Once it was open, lava would race into the labyrinth, blazing crimson silk threading through every whorl, flooding the passages before reaching the centre and being forced upwards in sprays and fountains, the eye of the labyrinth weeping liquid fire.

  At the feel of heat against her hand, Aera’s entranced calm seemed to ripple, turning into a shiver, the precursor to the releasing of her gift. Against the blackness of the door, light bloomed, a hand-shaped incandescence. It reflected in the silver metal of the bracelet on her wrist, then seeped under it, spread until her whole arm glowed, lighting upwards, where the door stretched into darkness, and downwards onto her bare feet.

  Her arm, at first pale as candle wax against the dark stone, seemed to catch colour from the heat she felt now under her skin, raci
ng through her veins: turning the colour of marigolds, of sunset, of watch fires on the horizon. Her fingers, spread against the door, shimmered, flared—no longer flesh but molten rock, the living lava of her gift. Reflections leapt in the gleaming surface of her bracelets, of the door. If they had not been made of the same unmelting coldsteel that lined the labyrinth walls, they would be already surrendering to her touch, dripping from her like boiling honey.

  The shimmer, the feel of the lava taking her, rose through her limbs. She felt her muscles change, her bones, a sensation like stepping into the hot water of the volcano-heated springs. She glanced down and saw her body glowing through the pale woven-coldsteel fabric of the long sleeveless tunic she wore, a naked flame sheathed in frosted glass.

  In a moment the lava would take her completely, she would become the form she was meant to wear. Her head swam with the colour, with the heat, the power. In that form, she would be able to dive into the volcano itself and come out unscathed, stand in its rain of fire and feel it like nothing more than a warm fountain splashing over her. She alone would be able to survive the labyrinth when the lava was released into it. Now, every time she changed, she no longer felt as if she were taking on the god’s power, but as if it were her own power, as if she alone chose when and how to wield it…

  Oh. Blasphemy.

  The thought broke over her like icy salt water, a wave from the darkest depths of the ocean. She could not reverse the change so fast, but although she stayed flaming, glowing, in her head the fiery glory went cold cracked black, lava turned back to dead, unmoving stone.

  I shouldn’t even think it. I am his fire-maiden, his servant, nothing more, nothing more. I know—I’ve always known—this power is his, not mine. It’s been his since they found me, since he put his mark on me, since it was written in the rocks before I was born.

  The glow was fading now, sinking away as if she were hollow, and cracked, as if it were slipping down through her skin to disappear in the dark emptiness inside. In spite of the heat that still beat through the door she found herself shivering. It was sin to resist the gift, sin to try to hide the mark, sin to balk, as that nameless girl had done, at any of the many steps of the calling. But the worst sin, the very worst sin of all, was to set yourself up as equal to the god, to think you were as wise, or as merciful, or as powerful, to act as if you could choose anything to do with your gift.

  It was why they killed the bearers of the unholy gifts, blasphemers by their very natures, who dared to wield powers forbidden by god and temple. Even her own gift, if when it had manifested it had done so in an unsanctioned way, in a way that indicated she was trying to keep it under her own control—that too would have been blasphemy, and she too would have died.

  Here…in this holy place, to be tempted to blasphemy here.

  In place of the lava, guilt rose through her. And with the guilt, for the first time: fear.

  She hadn’t thought before of failure, of not being able to do what she must to pass the test. But now, with a locked door behind her, the two parts of the test waiting, and her gift the only way through, the only way out…what if, after all, she was unworthy? What if, when it came to it, the gift was withdrawn from her? What if she stood there, at the eye of the labyrinth, hearing the roar of a thousand tons of molten rock coming towards her, and found herself trapped in her human form, unable to change, unable to carry out the execution or to save herself, unable to do anything but burn? What if, in the end, she was nothing but another sacrifice?

  You should be willing. If that is his will, that you become a sacrifice, not a priestess, you should be willing. You should be glad.

  There was nothing but a glowing edge left around her hand now. She stood, shivering, the returning darkness pressing against her eyes, so thick it felt like something physical, as if the labyrinth were filled with cold sand, as if soon it would bear down on her so hard, so heavily that she would neither be able to see nor move. I’m going to fail. When it comes to it, I’m going to freeze. I’m going to burn.

  You should be glad. If that’s his will. Your family—you’ve already saved them, it doesn’t matter what happens to you now.

  Her family…

  Growing up, she’d always known how they were despised, mocked. They’d been the only bloodline in the whole city to have given the volcano no priest, no priestess or fire-priestess, no fire-maiden nor servant nor even sacrifice in the whole of the last hundred years. By the time she was born, they had sunk right to the bottom of the lowest caste, lower even than those families who’d had the curse of an unholy gift-bearer born into them. As long as the unholy ones were given up for burning as soon as the gift showed itself, a family could regain its lost favour with the temple.

  But if none of your children showed a single fire gift—even the lesser gifts that would mark them as only fire-maidens rather than prospective fire-priestesses—if they could not sink deep enough into a trance to walk over the volcano ember-beds, if they showed no birthmarks that marked them as temple servants or as sacrifices… If the god never touched you at all then both you and your whole bloodline were utterly unworthy, fit to do nothing more than clean the latrines and worship at the very perimeter of the temple courtyards.

  That was how her family had been, throughout her childhood, all the time she was growing up. At school the ostracism came with her and Coram, the charcoal-burner’s son, had been the only child who treated her with anything other than contempt. And that was what she’d saved them from when, on the night of her fifteenth birthday, she’d woken screaming, blazing, her bed turning to ash around her, nearly burning them all while they slept. As soon as the blaze was out and she was standing, shocked and shaking, in the sodden black-charred pit that was all that was left of their house, her mother had knelt, sobbing, palms out to the sullen glow of the volcano against the sky, saying nothing but thank you, thank you.

  They’d had a new house within days, built by willing hands from all over the city, honourable work offered to her father and brothers, two marriage offers for her elder, almost-too-old sister. And Aera was gone, serving her first months at the temple, overawed, dizzy with accomplishment and joy, at first not even caring that from then on she’d see them no more than twice a year until her final test, when she would become the fire-priestess and see them no more at all.

  With the memories, the thoughts, she felt the shivering fall from her, a worn-out garment, something she could no longer remember fitting. This test is mine. I have accomplished everything they threw at me in the last five years. I will not fail this last challenge. I will become the fire-priestess, and my family will live in honour forever.

  The last of the glow dissolved, and she stood once again in unrelieved darkness. The power had not cooled, though, nor vanished—it had only sunk to lie deep within her, the smoulder of a banked-down fire, an abeyant power.

  She would complete the test. She would become the form she was meant to be. She would perform the execution. Then, in the dawn, when the roar of the lava came to blast the body clean, she would stand unscathed in it, let it bear her up towards the paling stars, fulfilled at last, the fire-priestess, ready to serve the volcano-god forever.

  She left the door behind and walked on, letting the path take her farther down, a spiral drawing her into the endless darkness underground.

  She knew it would take an hour, walking slowly in the dark, to reach the eye of the labyrinth. Her path was marked, like times on a sundial, by the six coldsteel portcullises that, one after another, she would have to raise before she reached the centre. But, as ever, after just a few minutes, and past the first portcullis, hearing its mechanism go into action, rattling it down behind her, she found herself losing track of time. She began to feel as if she’d walked all night, as if she’d been too slow, as if any moment now the door would rise and the lava come pouring in to fill the darkness with a blaze of heat and light. A twinge of panic gripped the top of her spine, a tiny cold claw that raised the hairs on her skin.r />
  She reached, an impulse-driven gesture, for the trance that would keep her walking in a state of unbroken calm, unmindful of anything until she reached her destination—then checked, the tiny claw tightening, quivering through her nerves. If she forgot again, if in her trance-state she let the lava take over, let the insane heat fill her head, let the thoughts she dare not think come rising to sweep over her…

  She must think of something, in this long silent walk through the dark. Not her family, not any more—they’d been dead to her from the moment she’d stepped through the labyrinth door. Let them live in her reflected glory, let them be happy…let them not come into my mind.

  And not her old life, nothing that would make her look back.

  She should have known better. Even the phrase, the thought, was a trap. My old life… Despite herself, despite not meaning to, despite knowing it was exactly what she shouldn’t do, she did look back.

  Amongst the grimness, the dusty white glare that was her memory of life in the lowest caste, there were moments that lay like pools of shadow, of deep, still water, oases amongst the dust. Coram, standing up for her against the others. “My father says, even if it is their fault that they’ve not been blessed, they deserve our pity. And I say—” ten years old, bristling with anger, he’d clenched his fists as he stood in front of her, “—whatever her family did, it’s not her fault and I’ll punch anyone who calls her dirty again!”

  Coram, at twelve, at her side as they explored the night-time roofs of the city, holding his breath with excitement as they peered over into the courtyard of the palace, watching where the princes would sit in the shade of the palm trees.

  Then Coram, his face that night when she’d burned her house down, when her gift had shown. His face when he knew she’d be leaving.

  He’d said nothing, and nor had she. There was nothing to be said. No friendship promises that could be made, no vows to meet again. She could not even say she would not forget him. She would forget him. She would forget him because she must.