Goddess by Liv Savell (books for 6 year olds to read themselves txt) 📗

at one point, didn’t it? Perhaps one of them carved out a place here.”

“You mean like a temple?” Meirin’s voice sharpened. 

“Something like that.” Etienne didn’t think it much looked like a temple, but the writings about it had suggested as much. If the Old Gods were returning to another temple, perhaps they were still searching out their own kind.

Delyth seemed impatient with this speculation, speeding up so that she reached the tower before the others. She made a full circuit of the building, her wings pulling tight in one of her few displays of concern.

“What is it?” Etienne asked, peering past her at the stone. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it.

“There isn’t any door.”

Meirin shifted her weight, looking up the length of the tower. “Is it not supposed to be entered? Perhaps that is for the best… What would we do if the Old Gods were there? It’s not as if Etienne’s magic is ready, and while I’m a good fighter, three Gods versus you, me and Delyth?” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t bet on us.”

“They’re not here,” Delyth said without hesitation, though Etienne knew she had not done the tracking spell since that morning. Her impatience made him uneasy. Perhaps the run-in with the bandits that morning had disturbed her more than he had realized.

Perhaps she was just hurting.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to check.”

Delyth just shook her head. “They would have had to turn around. We haven’t covered enough distance to catch up with them.”

“Then how do we know they even went in there? And if they did go in, why should we? We just want to get Gethin and your friend back, correct?” Meirin gestured with a bit of irritation to the tower.

Etienne turned to Delyth. For all that his curiosity tugged him towards the old structure, he didn’t have a good answer to Meirin’s questions, and he expected that Delyth would agree with the clan warrior.

Instead, she gripped her forearm, over the place where she usually traced the tracking rune, seeming to consider the idea for a long moment. When she did answer, it was without bothering to turn to them. “My— Enyo’s blood was spilled here.”

Etienne stilled. That was the first sure sign of Enyo they had come across since leaving the Mynydd Gwyllt.

Delyth was still staring at the tower, her stoic face hardening into determined lines. “If getting inside will tell us what Enyo has been up to, then we need to enter.”

Looking between Delyth and Etienne, Meirin’s expression softened, and she nodded. “Very well. It doesn’t make much sense to have built a monument like this and not have a way in. Let’s check again; perhaps the door was sealed off with the departure of the Old Gods? If so, we might be able to reopen it and gain access.” Slowly Meirin started her own trek around the base of the tower.

Etienne followed the two women a little distractedly, his gaze tracing the line of the tower up instead of remaining on its base. How had they moved the granite here? How had they lifted it so high? It seemed to him that the thing could have only been built with the work of hundreds of bodies and copious magic.

There was a flicker of something at the base of the structure—white against dark stone. Movement perhaps? Etienne took a step closer, his brow furrowing beneath a messy lock of hair. There couldn’t be anyone outside the tower, could there? Delyth had checked its entire perimeter just moments before.

“Come here!” Meirin was at the opposite side of the tower, standing over a pile of shrubbery and pointing downwards. “It’s a plaque.”

Etienne blinked and shook his head. Maybe the months of travel were finally starting to get to him if he was seeing things in broad daylight. He stepped a little ways from the tower, staring down at the glint of metal Meirin pointed out. It was surrounded by gouges in the earth, the brush flung aside as though someone had ripped it up in a fury. He almost smiled.

Enyo.

The scholar leaned closer to peer at the inscription:

Alive as you but without breath

As cold alive as in death

Never a thirst, though I always drink

Dressed in mail, but never a clink.

More clues that this was a place of death, either of worship or otherwise. Etienne hummed, thinking. Perhaps the people of Rhosan had once worshipped death itself as a living thing—a God? Though it was interesting that they had chosen to portray the deity as being unable to breathe. Perhaps they worshipped an animated corpse? The mail was hardly surprising. Of course, even Thloegr’s Death God would be a war—

“It’s a fish.”

Etienne looked up at Meirin, blinking. “What?”

She shrugged, nodding towards the plaque. “Something cold, that drinks, doesn’t breathe, and wears armor? A fish.”

Etienne blinked, looking from her to the metal plague and seeing it suddenly for what it was: a riddle. He shifted. “Alright, but why?” His voice sounded defensive even to him.

“Death is odd sometimes. It often doesn’t make sense. I don’t know why there is a riddle, but there is, and the answer is a fish.” Meirin turned to watch as Delyth walked away, studying the tower more thoroughly this time.“There are balconies.” She pointed out the seemingly obvious. “Can you carry us up there, Delyth? Or take a line up there and tie it off? Then Etienne and I could climb up.” She glanced at the mage’s arms and then away with a wry smile.

Delyth didn’t look up at the tower’s top, but rather down, towards its base. She touched something there, then glanced at her hand. “I found the fish.”

Behind her, the tower was opening.

“I think this was an altar,” Etienne said, standing before a cylindrical pillar in the center of the tower’s main room. It was waist-high and lined with crude drawings of men and animals.

“An Altar? Like where Enyo had her—ugh— artifact?” Meirin stepped away from one of the