Toombs told her to be there at 5:00. p.m. if she wanted to ship out with him. Jack skipped her after school self defense class (guess she'd never know why the Imam let her take it, he clearly didn't like it), and got there at 3:00. The ship was there. She breathed easier. Not much longer on this planet.
It was killing her. The warm and gregarious child who had arrived was disappearing, as if some hungry void was slowly sucking the life from her veins. But Toombs was nowhere around, and something about the man guarding his ship made her stay away.
It was beastly hot. A small Hermetic Universalist temple stood near by. What the hell, she'd been feeling especially rebellious against the Imam's cloying monotheism. Even though he'd never know, never see her again, the urge to oppose him one last time was strong. She stomped into the blessed coolness, stared unseeing at a statue of a woman sitting on a throne between two pillars, a closed book on her lap, a bow at her feet. A woman came out from behind the statue. A priestess, probably. No one else wore robes like that..
"Welcome," the priestess said.
"Hi," Jack said. She wanted to say "fuck you," but thought it might be bad luck to say it to a holy woman. They looked at each other for a moment.
"Something to drink?" the priestess finally offered.
Jack was suddenly aware of how thirsty she was. "Yeah. Thanks."
The priestess gestured her to a stone seat in front of a stone table, disappeared for a moment. She came back a moment later bearing two ornately carved cups full a strange liquid that was sweet and grainy, with a hint of mint. Jack took a big swallow. Something about the cup was strange; it seemed just as full when she put it down.
The priestess smiled at her. "Got some time?"
"Nothin' but."
"Ever play with tarot cards?" She handed Jack a deck. Jack eyed it suspiciously before riffling through it, remembering some card tricks.
"You're pretty good at stacking the deck," the woman noted wryly. Jack flushed, shamed at being caught; pleased with the praise.
"Bet you are too," Jack replied finally, her eyes even.
"Touche. I shuffle, you cut?"
"What's the game?"
"Ask a question. Let's see what the veiled one has to say. Let's keep it simple. Something that can be answered with a yes, no, or maybe."
Thinking made Jack was sullen again. She wanted to ask about Riddick. She wanted to talk about Riddick. She wanted Riddick. But everything was just too complicated. "Should I blow this fuckin' planet?"
The priestess ignored the language, took the cards, shuffled them a few times. Handed them back. "Cut." Jack did. The priestess paused.
"The rules. Right side up means yes, reversed means no. First card representing the forces that are passing away. Middle card is you. That counts double. Last card is what is coming into being."
She threw the first card down. "Death, reversed. Interesting. Death says don't go.
"Death is walking away from you. Given your age, I'd say that was a good thing. You brushed death, and it spared you."
Jack picked up the card. It showed a skeleton armored in silver and black, on a pale horse. Bodies scattered in front of him. Behind him, twin towers framing a setting sun. Setting suns, dead bodies. She'd been there before.
Death walking away. Riddick walking away. Telling her not to go after him. She knew that already. Her eyes started to sting. "Next card," she ordered, curtly. The woman smiled, threw it down.
"Eight of Swords, reversed." The card showed a woman, bound, barefoot, and blindfolded, standing among standing swords, a trickle of water at her feet. "That's a no. You do this, you become a means to someone else's ends, separated from your allies, a prisoner, thrown to the wolves to lighten the load.
"Swords are masculine. Swords are knowledge. Swords are language. Swords are destruction. The healer's scalpel, the killer's blade."
Jack stared, unsettled. Said nothing.
"Last card of all that ends this strange and eventful history," the priestess said, and she threw down a third card. "The Sun. Reversed."
Jack fingered the card. A baby on a horse, pale, like the one Death rode. With sunflowers in his hair, and a glorious late morning sun behind him, rising behind yet more sun flowers. The priestess laid her fingers lightly on Jack's wrist.
"And we have unanimity. The Sun. Rebirth. Triumph. Renewal. If you go, rebirth may come, but not in its ideal form. You'll be a torch guttering in the dark places. A hard destiny."
Jack pulled her hand back, awkwardly. Not the answer she wanted, but she didn't believe, so it didn't matter. And she still had some time. "Okay, should I stay?"
The priestess quirked an eyebrow. "You like to pay chicken with gods, child? They don't much like it when you try to trap them in contradiction." Nonetheless, she handed the cards to Jack to shuffle this time.
The first card was the Five of Cups. A robed figure in a posture of grief, gazing at three cups spilling their red and green contents on the ground, two cups upright behind him. "Sorrow. Orpheus at the edge of the underworld.
"Orpheus was the half human son of the Sun god. He was a musician who could play so beautifully he could make the rocks weep. After his wife died, bitten by a serpent, he went alive into the underworld to beg the queen of Hell, Persephone, to return her to him. He played so beautifully that Persephone agreed, on the condition that he not look back until they'd made it back to the light of the world.
"Only Orpheus couldn't bear it, and turned around to look before the right time. She slid back into the underworld, back into the arms of death."
The priestess eyed Jack closely, wanting her to understand. "Cups are female. Cups are blood. They hold the waters of life. The Grail. The Cauldron of Ceridwen, where all life goes, all life returns. What binds us to one another.
"Cups are poison. Death by water. Swords and Cups showing up one after the other, like they just did, hint of death by cuts; life bleeding away on the sands . . ." she tapped the Cups on the card spilling their contents towards a river.
"Child, you have bled. Some part of you spilled on the sands, sacrificed. We will all be sacrificed to the tomb, the womb, for the continuation of life. It is the nature of life to end. But your sacrifice was terribly young.
"This is what's passing. What set you up. It says you should stay. But it acknowledges that it will hurts.
Jack felt like she was being ripped apart. Bleeding on the sands of a nightmare planet. Alive because someone had gone into the underworld for her . . . and she didn't know why. She was no one's Eurydice.
"And this is who you are," the priestess said softly, throwing down the next card
And strangely, since she had shuffled, the card was the Sun, again, not reversed this time. "Interesting. You are the Sun. Specifically, the rebirth of the Sun. If you stay, you become who you are. Your best destiny. Not the Sun, guttering in the dark places. But the Sun reborn.
Jack was very still. Felt like the words meant more than she knew. The woman eyed her, threw the last card.
And it was Death again. The priestess met her eyes, steadily. There was no way she could have stacked the deck, Jack thought slightly hysterical. She'd shuffled.
Later, Jack wasn't sure if the voice came from her or from deep within the statue behind her. "You have been, and will be, the Sun in Darkness. You were chosen to be the sacrifice, your blood spilled on the ground. But Death stayed his hand, chose another. Saved you for another day.
"You were redeemed from the night at great price. Do not squander these years, child. You are the handmaiden of Death; some day, you will stand between the firelight and the darkness; between life and death, at the threshold."
The priestess seemed to come back to the world. "That day is not today. If you choose the first path," and she pulled the bound woman out of the deck, uncannily aware of where she was. "If you reject the mercy offered, it will make you strong; it will burn away the softness you loath. The wolves will scar you and shatter you and rip you apart. You will be given to the Devil, chained underground. But you will be made strong by your enemies. If you stay on the path, if you board that chariot and sail through the gates of twilight, you will be strong; a fitting Spear Maiden of the Sun if you reach the gates of hell. If you reach them, they will not prevail against you. But the danger is that you will burn to ash before you get there.
"If you go back to the path you were set upon, if you accept the mercy offered, your time in the light will not will not last. Some night Death will come for you. The dragon will eat your flesh; the wolf will drink your blood. The danger is that you will be too soft when you reach the gates of hell to prevail against them. It will take great discipline to be ready. But even if you die, in the morning you may be reborn. You will be the Spear Maiden of Sun, and your blood will redeem the world.
"Be ready. Any questions?"
Jack blinked at the time. She was supposed to meet Toombs now. How had this taken so long? "Yeah . . . I'm supposed to be shipping out to find . . ." she fingered the Death card. . . to find a friend." She swallowed. "Are you saying I should stay?"
The woman smiled sadly. "Jack. I'd say that light and death are competing for you. Let them fight it out for a while. Your destiny will come for you. Stay. Wait. And here." She shyly handed Jack a computer chip. "In case you ever want to know more about the old stories." She stroked Jack's hand, and Jack knew with utter certainty that she should not go. And that she was done being in this temple; its dim coolness was cloying. She left quickly.
As she left, it might have occurred to her that she'd never told the woman her name had she not run straight into Toombs. "Hey kid," he hailed, warmly. "Right on time. Let's go."
She took a deep breath. "I've changed my mind. But thank you." She looked down, suddenly actually shy.
Toombs fought a surge of irritation. Damn. He had the feeling that Riddick wasn't dead, and she knew something. Even had the feeling that roughing her up might lure him out. Even if that was a bust, she'd be worth something on certain markets that had a fascination with the supposed innocence of New Meccan girls.
"But darlin' – can I change your mind?" he asked, as seductively as he knew how. He stroked down her face, with a look that made her insides cramp.
Sudden illumination. That was not a look a good man gives a fourteen year old girl. Thus, this was not a good man. She shook her head, looking down, her shyness all artifice again. "I'll be back," he promised. Yeah, she thought. You will be. And I'll be ready. I'm going to like being the handmaiden of death.
Toombs read her look correctly. He thought about just throwing her over his shoulder.
The priestess came out of the temple, watched them closely, one hand concealed. Toombs decided not to risk such an interested witness. Riddick was probably dead; almost impossible to believe that he wouldn't have killed this kid; that he would have squired her to one of the safest places in the galaxy. Far away from any possible safety for him. There were fatter targets.
Jack went back to the Imam, changed subtly. The urge to run started to fade. She started taking advantage of her life on New Mecca. Took school seriously. Took every self defense class she could, including sword fighting from some crazy anachronists. She took what she could of target shooting – New Mecca prohibited weapons that did not bring the user within arms reach of death, for some reason, so those were limited.
In her spare time, she read books about heroes; books about monsters; books about ambush tactics. Riddick's reality started to melt away; just another character in some classic story, like Beowulf or Buffy. The Imam never said his name, and it was increasingly easy to forget she ever had a life before this one. Except at night, when the dreams would come, or when she was alone, or when she looked at the sky, or heard footsteps behind her, or the sound of wings above her.
The Imam was forever telling her she should be grateful to god; that her very name was "God is Gracious." She decided she'd worn that name too long. The priestess told her she was the Sun. She checked out all the names that meant Sun, and liked "Kyra" best.
Ace of Swords. Potential. Riddick's past.
He was just a kid in a juvenile detention center, charged with murder, likely doomed to a penal colony for the remainder of his short days.
Until someone had offered him a different choice. The chance to walk in the world. The chance to be a better killer.
They wanted him. They told him he had a destiny. They told him he could be a hero. He'd believed them, with the grandiosity of youth. And they did train him to be an even better killer. A slayer. And a tracker, a pilot, a commando. Made him part of an elite unit. It was intoxicating.
The woman who recruited him said she was a healer. He didn't believe it, but it seemed a harmless illusion to indulge. And she knew more ways to kill than he did. He paid attention.
She wasn't really in charge; they had military officers training them, directing them, dispatching them around the galaxy. The missions were wonderful; and for the first, and nearly only time, the people he was around didn't buzz in his head. Instead, they were warm, steady presences. Good in a fight. Something like family.
The healer was in charge of recruitment. She brought him along often, especially to prisons. Local ones they could go in official, with a large escort. While he grumbled, he liked the uniform; all black and silver. More distant prisons they had to sneak into and break out of. He got serious about studying prison schematics, psychology, command structures. There was always a soft spot. Usually right at the top.
She had to touch people to be sure they were suitable. Touching in prison was dangerous. He stayed close.