The Hidden Goddess Read online

  Praise for

  The Native Star

  “M. K. Hobson dazzles! The Native Star is an awesome mash-up of magic and steam-age technology—call it witchpunk. This debut novel puts a new shine on the Gilded Age.”

  —C. C. FMINLAY

  “Splendid! In The Native Star, M. K. Hobson gives us a Reconstruction-era America, beautifully drawn and filled with the energy of a young nation—and magic! Her heroine, Emily Edwards, is outspoken, brash, loving, and true; a delight to spend time with. Could there be a sequel, please?”

  —MADELEINE ROBINS

  BY M. K. HOBSON

  The Hidden Goddess

  The Native Star

  The Hidden Goddess is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Spectra Mass Market Original

  Copyright © 2011 by Mary Hobson

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Spectra, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52639-7

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  Cover illustration by David Stevenson

  v3.1

  For Dan

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To everyone who helped make this book a reality (and you know who you are), I offer my humblest gratitude. Special thanks go to Sara Mueller, a brilliant writer and good friend, whose ideas about the mechanics of earth magic inspired many of Emily’s magical experiences.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One - The Message in the Steam

  Chapter Two - An Unexpected Gift

  Chapter Three - Bottle of Memories

  Chapter Four - Dmitri

  Chapter Five - Dreadnought

  Chapter Six - Treachery

  Chapter Seven - The Bad Investment

  Chapter Eight - Chaos and Disorder

  Chapter Nine - Mrs. Blotgate

  Chapter Ten - Creature of Filth

  Chapter Eleven - Light and Sweet

  Chapter Twelve - Return to the Institute

  Chapter Thirteen - Red Hand, Gold-Colored Eye

  Chapter Fourteen - Bitter and Dark

  Chapter Fifteen - The Black Carriage

  Chapter Sixteen - Pelmeni with Smetana

  Chapter Seventeen - The Plan

  Chapter Eighteen - The Talleyrand Maneuver

  Chapter Nineteen - The Ruined Woman

  Chapter Twenty - Dawn and Darkness

  Chapter Twenty-One - The Dragon’s Eye

  Chapter Twenty-Two - A June Apocalypse

  Chapter Twenty-Three - The Thirteenth Incarnation

  Chapter Twenty-Four - The Goddess’ Triumph

  Chapter Twenty-Five - Lyakhov’s Anodyne

  Chapter Twenty-Six - Gifts and Decisions

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Sunday, June 15, 1876

  Mexico City

  Naked, Lieutenant Utisz stood on a frost-rimed block of black obsidian before two tall doors made of intricately arranged human bones. A red-robed Temple acolyte knelt before him, washing his bare abdomen with a flaccid sponge, dipping it in ice water that smelled of blood.

  It will be an honor to serve my country.

  Utisz tried to conjure the conviction with which he’d spoken these words to General Blotgate, and willed himself not to shiver.

  The lieutenant was in a small anteroom that echoed with the sound of water rushing through deep unseen channels. The Purification Crypt, it had been called by the attendant who had escorted him from the steamy heat of jungle summer into the frigid depths of this cavernous necropolis. The attendant had explained that all who would enter the Calendar Chamber must be ritually cleansed then anointed with bitter oils. And then the attendant had relieved him of his uniform, from epaulettes to skivvies.

  Utisz clenched his jaw. Apprehension beat against his neologism—the magical ward behind which his emotions were locked. He regarded his own fear with dispassionate distance, as if listening to the far-off screams of a woman being chased by men who would brutalize her. Dissecting it, he decided that it was attributable merely to the coldness of the sponge (now passing over his genitals, damn it!), the disorientation of having been led into this place blindfolded, and a lingering fear of the dark—gained at the orphanage—that he’d never been able to entirely root from his psyche. None of it was pertinent to the task at hand.

  The task at hand lay behind the two tall doors of polished bone. In the Calendar Chamber, where she waited—Itztlacoliuhqui, the Black Glass Goddess, the Goddess of Obsidian Knives.

  Lieutenant Utisz closed his eyes, ignoring the servile hands traveling (less disturbingly, now) over his calves.

  I am sure you have heard rumors about the recent … unpleasantness … at the credomancers’ Institute in New York?

  He remembered the words, spoken by General Oppenheimer Blotgate, Director of the Erebus Academy—the highest-ranking magical practitioner in the United States military. A man rarely seen and never spoken to. This in itself had been enough to make an invitation to his rosewood-paneled office unsettling. But adding to Utisz’ disquiet had been his inability to imagine any professional matter on which the General might conceivably summon him. He’d only just graduated as a second lieutenant, and hadn’t even received a posting yet. Utisz had been left to conclude that he was being called to discuss matters of a more personal nature. Word around the barracks was that the General had never once taken exception to his wife’s serial indiscretions with much younger men—she had a renowned fondness for cadets—but it would be just his luck if he was the first to be called on the carpet.

  So when the General had commenced the interview by asking about unpleasantness and credomancers, Utisz had been extremely relieved, if no less puzzled.

  “I heard that Captain John Caul was killed” had been his crisp response. Back ramrod straight, eyes unwaveringly forward. “Murdered, sir.”

  “A profound tragedy,” General Blotgate confirmed solemnly, light catching on the thick-seamed scar that ran from his ear to his shoulder. His voice was a low, crackling rasp. “He was extremely well regarded by the President. Grant kept trying to promote him, and Caul kept convincing him not to. He could have had the command of all the Army’s magical divisions—but Caul was a soldier. A man of action. He preferred to operate independently, with a small hand-picked unit of the finest Maelstroms.”

  “His murder will be avenged,” the lieutenant said, guessing that was the ultimate aim of the General’s impromptu eulogy. But if it was, the General didn’t notice the young officer’s cleverness.

  “Captain Caul was a true patriot,” he continued. “Sadly, there is a fine line between patriotism and paranoia.”

  Blotgate reached into a carved box on his desk and withdrew a cigar. He did not hurry in lighting it, but rather left Utisz standing while he pierced it, clipped it, and lit it with snapped fingers and a guttural command summoning flame.

  “Son, have you ever heard of the Temple of Itztlacoliuhqui?”

  “A sect devoted to the worship of an Aztec goddess, sir. It is said that they seek to destroy the world in a great blood-apocalypse called temamauhti.”

  “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Blotgate waved the cigar dismissively. “Why would anyone want to destroy the worl
d? A misapprehension spread—with the best of intentions, no doubt—by Captain Caul. The truth is, the Temple seeks to remake the world, with themselves and a select group of allies in positions of leadership. We intend that the United States play a key role in that future leadership.”

  He tapped ash.

  “Captain Caul’s death has provided me with the opportunity to instruct the President on the true nature of the Temple’s intentions. I must say, it took some doing to dislodge the misinformation Caul had hammered into Grant’s thick old skull.” Blotgate paused, half smiling, as if recalling a pleasant memory. It made Utisz wonder just how much convincing the President had required, and how precisely Blotgate had gone about it. “In any case, I am pleased to say that the President has finally relinquished his stubbornness. I have been given approval to proceed with a course of action I have advocated since before the war—a formal military alliance with the Temple of Itztlacoliuhqui.”

  The General took in a mouthful of smoke and rolled it over his tongue. It was as if he was waiting for a round of applause. But his air of self-satisfaction dispersed as quickly as the smoke, replaced with a bitter frown.

  “Of course, we should have embarked on this course a decade ago,” he said. “The delay has given our enemies time to work against us.”

  “Enemies, sir?”

  “Captain Caul was not the only opponent of the Temple’s plans for the great remaking,” Blotgate said. “There is also a group of Russian scientists called the Sini Mira. They have created a poison called Volos’ Anodyne. Our intelligence indicates that it is a truly monstrous and inelegant weapon, designed to pollute the global mantic well at its very source, rendering the working of such an immense magic—indeed, of any magic at all—utterly impossible.” The General peered at Utisz through a veil of haze. “I am sure you agree that such arrogant foreign interference in our national destiny, and in the magical destiny of all mankind, must be swiftly and thoroughly curtailed.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “I kind of thought you would,” the General said. “And to do that, we have to get the acorn.”

  “Acorn, sir?”

  “Of course it’s not the acorn we want, rather the redskin Witch inside it.” The General leaned back in his chair, savoring the lieutenant’s confusion. “The formula for the poison was hidden long ago, and we believe she knows where it is. But for some blasted reason the stupid squaw shed her human body and transferred her spirit into an acorn. And now she and the acorn are under the protection of the credomancers at their Institute in New York.”

  “Credomancers.” Utisz frowned. “A mongrel horde of Jews and foreigners and other undesirables. Why their tampering with the minds of patriotic Americans continues to be allowed by our elected officials, I shall never understand.” Utisz, realizing suddenly that he had not been given permission to speak freely, reddened slightly. “Sir.”

  “Indeed,” Blotgate allowed. “There are many things I do not understand either, Lieutenant. But as men of magic—and officers of the United States Army—sometimes we must accept what we cannot understand.” General Blotgate rolled the cigar between thumb and forefinger, contemplating it.

  “But what I will not accept, Lieutenant”—the General released each word as if he were dropping it into a pond, letting it fall to the murky bottom—“is that a project that has the capacity to shift the balance of global power, and thrust this great country into the position of world dominance that it is destined to occupy, should be threatened by an Indian in a nut.”

  He emphatically ground his cigar into a large brass ashtray.

  “Before his death, Captain Caul was overseeing a secret project to stockpile huge amounts of chrysohaeme. He had convinced the President that this arsenal of refined magic was necessary to defend the United States against temamauhti. Now that the President has come to recognize how he was misguided, he has agreed that the arsenal should be put to a far more important use. It will be delivered to the Temple to aid them in their great work.”

  After this, the General did not speak again for a long time. Instead, he rested his elbows on his desk, clasped his hands together, and stared at Utisz. He stared so long that the lieutenant began to feel very uncomfortable. Heat crept up under his collar. He felt, strangely, as if he should fall to his knees and beg for mercy. He did not know why.

  “It is my understanding that you have not received a posting yet, Lieutenant,” the General finally said.

  “I have not, sir,” Utisz managed, his throat bone dry.

  “Then it’s your lucky day,” the General said. “I am appointing you Army liaison to the Temple of Itztlacoliuhqui. You will be given command of a squadron. You and your men will deliver the chrysohaeme Caul stockpiled—as well as the bulk of the Army’s reserves of Black Exunge—to the Temple. Once the delivery has been made, you will stay to serve the Black Glass Goddess in whatever capacity she requires. Do you understand the vital importance of this mission?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “And do you accept it?”

  “Yes, sir!” Utisz had ignored the soft, predatory tone of the question. He had lifted his chin resolutely. “It will be an honor to serve my country.”

  An honor to serve my country.

  Lieutenant Utisz shivered with remembered pride, and from the feather-light touch of the Temple acolyte. He recognized the places where the bitter oil was being touched to his ice-washed skin: The brachial arteries along the inside of his arms. The femoral arteries along the inside of his legs. And finally on his throat, the carotis communis. The bleeding places.

  “She will receive you now,” the attendant said, after the Temple servant had silently gathered his things and bowed his way backward into the shadows. The doors of bone grated open; there was only gaping blackness beyond.

  The attendant escorted Utisz through a close unlit corridor into an enormous room that seemed to expand around them as they entered it. It was like emerging into a winter night of deepest stillness and chill, all the stars blotted out by an angry hand.

  The floor was deeply channeled in an intricate circular design that Utisz recognized as the ancient Aztec calendar for which the room was named. Black Exunge ran in these deep channels, outlining the vast pattern in bubbling stink. Mold-frosted leaves of diviners’ sage smoldered over white-glowing charcoal in a hundred brazen tripods, thickening the air with narcotic clouds of smoke. Light from a high aperture in the domed ceiling sliced downward through the blue-silver haze, illuminating a deep, bowl-shaped pit in the calendar’s great center.

  The pit was deep and unlined. Thick hairy roots extended from the crumbling soil of its sides, piercing the surface of a whale-size reddish-brown lump that glistened like clotted blood. Half submerged in a bitter soup of Exunge, the thing shuddered and spasmed irregularly, making obscene plopping noises.

  Lieutenant Utisz could not take his eyes off it. It was so arresting, indeed, that he hardly noticed the approach of a very fat man, his hands extended in jocular welcome.

  “The High Priest of her sacred splendor,” the attendant whispered in Utisz’ ear. Only the hissing sibilance allowed the lieutenant to tear his gaze away from the mound of throbbing flesh. “Her tonalpoulque, keeper of her consecrated calendar.”

  The High Priest wore a plain, ill-fitting black suit—a shoddy background to the lavish ceremonial torque he wore around his neck. It was an extravagant, gaudy ornament; beads of gold and jade big as walnuts were strung through with brilliant, iridescent plumes. Twelve pendants were spaced along the necklace’s length, each pendant a golden cage—and in each cage, a bit of dried human flesh. Most of the bits were utterly indistinguishable, but Utisz recognized some of them—a shriveled section of leathery intestine, a whole desiccated brain (which rattled in its golden cage like a little nut), and a small, hard heart.

  “Thank you for coming, Lieutenant.” The High Priest caught Utisz’ hand, pumping it with gusto. “I am Selig Heusler. I trust your journey was comfortable?”

/>   Utisz appreciated plain speaking and plain dealing. The words, spoken to him rather than above him, made him take an immediate liking to the High Priest, feathers and flesh-bits notwithstanding. “Yes, sir, th-thank you. I would p-present you with my papers, but …” Utisz clenched his teeth to stop their chattering, and spread his hands to highlight his nakedness.

  “No need. Your men have already been hard at work unloading your government’s tribute of chrysohaeme and Black Exunge.” Here, Heusler leaned in close to murmur in Utisz’ ear, “They’ll all have to be killed, I’m afraid. They cannot be allowed to leave; with temamauhti so close, the Temple’s location must remain a closely guarded secret.”

  Utisz blinked once or twice. But before he could even form words of protest, Heusler laid a hand on his arm to guide him toward a pyramid at the far end of the room. It was constructed entirely of human skulls, and blanketed in heavy, sparkling frost. “Come, let us make haste, for she is expecting you …”

  As they passed the huge lump of flesh spasming in the pit, Utisz slowed for a closer look.

  “The Liver,” Heusler said, seeing the direction of the young man’s gaze. “Incredible, isn’t it? That, Lieutenant, is the engine that will power the Remaking. If the Indian in the nut doesn’t stop us first.”

  “I have come with a plan,” Lieutenant Utisz said, the words tumbling out on a silvery cloud. “The acorn—I know how we can retrieve it.”

  Heusler lifted his eyebrows in astonishment. “Do you? How quickly you work! You shall distinguish yourself in her service, I can see.”

  “Dreadnought Stanton is the key,” Utisz said.

  “Dreadnought Stanton?” Heusler’s brow knit suspiciously. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Surely you’ve heard he is to be made Sophos—Master of the credomancers’ Institute. He will be Invested on Midsummer’s Eve. Once Stanton assumes formal control of the Institute, the Indian in the nut will be under his protection.”