The road was composed of ribbons of starlight. It rose up away from the world into the vast emptiness beyond, ancient as the distant suns that cast it, winding out of sight in every direction through the darkness. The horse raced across the plane of the star system, sure of its direction, heading outward, away from the warmth and the light. There was only a single world in this system worth mentioning. Further out were dead worlds, small and frozen and dark, hidden from the sun's blessed light by a massive cloud of gas and minute particles, things that the small star's gravity kept in place but failed to condense into something more substantial. The light refracted off ice and rock, glittering like billions of tiny diamonds in the dark, they twinkled in every color imaginable.
The horse followed the road up and over the cloud, its massive hooves momentarily disturbing the gas and sending thousands of swirling eddies through the cloud. Perhaps it's passing would start what the sun's birth could not. Perhaps someday the world, Eridonta, would have a twin. The horse, huge and black as pitch, gave a shake of its enormous head. It pushed ahead, soundless in the great vacuum, though the sheer weight of its steps would crack the sky in any given world.
The rider, a colossal figure in silver plate armor, watched as the frozen worlds, dwarf planets with hardly a claim to the name, passed them by on their trip out of the system. Eridon, the star rapidly fading away behind him, was a small system, largely isolated from the others in the area by its size and the difficulty of reaching it by conventional means. Several black holes and star nurseries in its galactic neighborhood kept Eridon and its lone inhabited world safe. He sighed as they left the system behind and spilled into the inky black of interstellar space. The road here was brighter by nature of being the only thing for hundreds of thousands of kilometers. The sigh produced no sound, but he felt it all the same.
She will be there, he thought. Seven hundred years of searching and she'd been in the same place all along. How must she have suffered? Don't think of that now, he told himself. She lives, that is the only thing that matters.
Gravity tugged at horse and rider, the enormity of it drew the starlight road toward utter nothing. The black hole yawned against the backdrop of space, invisible except by its total lack of visibility. The rider steered his mount away from it. As they were, black holes were of minimal concern, but he had places to be and contending with Gravity would only slow them down. Light blazed in the distance, a cloud of gas and dust that looked vaguely like a winged creature half a lightyear long, striped with hues of blue, red and green, brilliant teal blending into deep violet and swirling into a maelstrom of orange and yellow. Its huge beak emerged from an amorphous mass to glare balefully into the void. The rider kept his distance again, giving the nebula a wide berth. There were an unusual number of stars being born lately, another sign that the Balance was changed. Light struggled against the rising tide of Darkness.
Another star came into view, much further ahead. It was tiny in the vast nothing, a cold white point in the black, larger than the background stars but only slightly, although it was much closer. The rider made his way toward it, sweeping around a pocket of small black holes and riding over a band of small, icy meteorites. The star's gravity pulled his mount inward, away from interstellar space and into the system. The worlds here showed signs of the distant conflict. A large, rocky world wobbled erratically in its orbit. Flung outward by a battle centuries before, it was still settling into its new place. Several gas giants were blown apart, their atmospheres and upper layers still swirling around small, dense cores that were slowing while they drew their planetary bodies back to them like a freezing man desperately reaching for a blanket. The inner asteroid belt was a graveyard of blasted rock, shards of ice and derelict ships. The rider headed for the second world from the star. The debris of its implosion still littered the inner system. The ride was dangerous, even for one such as him. He let the horse have its head, nudging it slightly with his thighs, though it knew their destination. They leaped over streams of ejected plasma and soared under an expanding wave of heavy metals and radiation. Nearly there, he thought. The world was surrounded by more wreckage, great satellites and the tattered corpse of a space station two miles wide. It drifted aimlessly now, assaulted by constant solar storms and the occasionally comet strike. The world's single moon was cracked along its equator, spilling hundreds of tons of rock and dust into space as the world's gravity slowly tore it apart.
Elistar. Once a bright and verdant world, a place where mortals created no end of marvels and honored the gods with their success, was a dark, frozen husk. He orbited the world once and then patted his mount on the neck. They made their descent, transitioning from a realm above mortal reach into the purely physical one they inhabited. The cold reached him first, sliding through his armor and reaching deep to his bones. He shivered as they moved through Elistar's thin atmosphere. Wind swept across the icy landscape, howling through the crumbling remains of great cities. Skyscrapers loomed in the dark, frozen as they teetered and draped in huge icicles. Cracked and broken roads ran like black veins across the cityscapes.
The rider and his mount settled to the ground outside one of the cities, high in the shattered mountains. He ignored the chill and the wind, searching in the dark for a cavern. It was easy to spot, dark and huge against the snow-covered rock. He left the horse outside and ventured in. The cave floor sloped downward, into the bowels of this dead world, and cold blue fires burned in sconces on the walls. He followed the faint light, twisting and turning on the path as it wound its way under the mountains. Figures moved in the darkened tunnels branching off in each direction. He ignored them. Pitiful, dead things that served only one master. The only living creature left in this world. They kept their distance as he passed, and the path led him at last to a set of stairs. He followed them down and the cavern opened into a massive subterranean complex. A frozen lake stretched across it, the surface smooth and slick. In the center, a massive throne was erected. It towered over everything, built of jagged stalactites and blocks of ice. A woman lounged, surrounded by grey-skinned men in tattered clothes and rusted bits of armor. They stiffened at the sight of him but bowed as he approached.
"Dithregar," the woman said. "I have been expecting you." She was a crone, bent and stooped with gnarled fingers and wrinkled features. She could have appeared any way she chose, of course, but even in the early days she'd picked this form. Her hair, gray and stringy, was pulled away from her face and she stared at him with narrowed, yellow eyes. She had a hawkish face and her sly grin revealed a mouth full of blackened teeth. Dithregar bowed when he reached the foot of her dais.
"Ishan," he said. "You sent for me. I came. What is it you want?" He was proud that his voice didn't quiver, that his hands didn't shake with excitement.
"It is what you want, dear Dithregar," she replied. She waved her hand and the dead men at her right shuffled aside to reveal a large block of ice. It stood taller than an average man, and twice as wide, cut neatly in a rectangle. In the center, eyes closed and hands before her as if to shield herself, was Emari. She was just as he recalled her, auburn hair and golden skin, with soft features and long, slender limbs. Small and alone, frozen in time. He caught himself two steps from her and looked up at Ishan. She was a devious creature, this goddess of despair. She wore an unreadable expression now.
"Why have you kept her all this time?" He demanded.
"I didn't," Ishan replied. "We only just recently found her. She was frozen in one of the mountain lakes. I believe one of the last battles was fought there. I had my people cut her free and brought her here."
"Is she alive?"
"We are very difficult to kill, Dithregar. I imagine with time and warmth she will be just as lively as ever."
"Then I will take her," he said and took another step. Thirty rusted swords snapped up to impede him. Dithregar turned toward Ishan again. "What is this?"
"A bit of a change, I'm afraid," Ishan said. "You see, the dead are unfit company. It has been too long since I conversed with any of my own kind. I think I will keep Emari here. You may visit, of course. Stay if you like."
"This is ridiculous, Ishan, even for you. Even if you could melt this ice here, Emari would loathe this place. Nothing grows, nothing lives. Let me take her, the worlds have grieved her loss long enough."
Ishan tapped her pointy chin with one long fingernail. "Grieved, have they? That's funny, I haven't felt anything. Such widespread despair should certainly have drawn my attention."
"The mortals loved Emari," Dithregar said.
"Oh, they love the Harvest because it feeds them, but do they know Emari? Do they know how she loved to run through the forests and lie on the riverbanks? Do they know how she soared across thousands of worlds? Do they know they haven't starved these five hundred years because you've given them plenty of long, warm seasons?"
"What do you want?"
"I want them to grieve, Dithregar. Show me a world that despairs Emari's loss the way you do, and I will free her from this block of ice. You can bring her back to the warm suns and green fields she loves."
Dithregar looked at Emari again. Her face looked so peaceful, even distorted by layers of ice. Ishan was right. The mortals didn't know Emari was gone. He'd made their seasons mild, given them plenty of time to work the fields and reap the rewards. They gave thanks for a good harvest, but they had never missed the goddess that granted it. None among them grieved for poor Emari. Not yet. But they would. He closed his eyes, recalled the last time he'd seen her. They weren't far from where he stood, fighting a battle they would likely lose. Chaos roared around them. Mortals fought and died, gods slew gods, and Emari sheltered a small field of mountain flowers she'd grown to love while fire raged all over the world and the star erupted. She'd told him how she loved him. He'd scolded her for growing so attached to some flowers.
"Fine," he said at last. "Watch the heavens. There is a world not far from here. They will grieve, and I will return for her." He turned to leave and then paused. "Ishan, if you're planning something here just know that I'm coming back. If you betray me in this, I will kill you."
"Of course," she said. "I will be here when you return, and Emari will be safe."
Dithregar nodded and left the cavern behind. He returned to the surface and swung up onto his horse. Moments later they left Elistar behind, riding once more on a road made of light.
*
Ishan watched Dithregar leave. When her slaves reported him galloping off across the sky she returned to her throne. Emari remained, frozen in time, but as she sat the entire block began to shudder and collapse. It shrunk down, spasming as Emari transformed into a short, thin man with long, narrow mustaches and dark, twinkling eyes. He grinned up at her, running a hand through his black hair and pulling it back from his face.
"That was well done," he said, giggling.
"If he comes back to kill me, I'm going to tell him this was your idea," Ishan said.
"Patience, my dear. It's just a bit of fun at his expense. You'll get some hard-earned attention from the mortals and our mutual friend will get another world to grind beneath his boot."
"Our friend, Nendaal? You mean our master. He hasn't been a friend in a very long time."
The god of deceit frowned at her. "That isn't very nice," he said. "If you're having second thoughts..."
"Oh, shut up," she snapped. "I chose my side long ago. He has my support in this. Just do your part, and make sure Dithregar doesn't come back here looking for poor Emari. How can he be so naive? She's been dead for five centuries."
"Has she?" Nendaal asked. "I don't recall seeing her fall. Perhaps she does still live somewhere."
"You were hiding during the entire battle," Ishan replied. "You didn't see anything."
"Did you see her die?" He asked, tilting his head to taunt her. Ishan shook her head. She hadn't seen Emari die. To her knowledge, no one knew where the goddess of the harvest fell or when. But five hundred years of absence was a long time, even for a god. Likely whatever brought her down also perished in the fight that left Elistar a shadow of itself. So many gone for nothing. "I should go," Nendaal continued. "I have many strings left to pull in this show."
"Please," she said. "Be gone with you and remember what I said. If he comes for me, you'll wish you'd never thought up this insanity."
"Of course, Ishan. Despair not!" He giggled at his own joke. "I'll be back when I'm finished."
"Take your time," she said. If she never saw the trickster again it would be too soon. He bowed with a flourish and left the same way as Dithregar, leaving her alone once more with the cold and the dead.