The Godless (20 page)

“Nothing that I care to share, brother.”

 

A SMALL KINDNESS

The last?

The last of the gods to die was the Leviathan.

She died from despair, it is said; she killed herself from the trauma of witnessing so many of her brothers and sisters at war.

Her death was witnessed by only a few, but widely reported. It was said that she sank into the ocean, turning the water black and raising the sea level permanently. For a century, only the descendants of her holy men and women traveled upon the blood of the last god. It was said that only they knew how to navigate the vast graveyard of her rot and decay safely.

—Qian,
The Godless

 

1.

 

Though he was not given to ill omens, the morning the exiled Baron of Kein and Dark left Mireea, a deep certainty settled in him that he would not return to the city. It was a feeling that he alone had, he knew, for the lightness and ease that had settled into Dark the evening before remained, and their spirits were high as the Spine shrank behind them, despite the presence of Samuel Orlan. It was the presence of the old man that was the cause of much of Bueralan's concern. The weight of his reputation and presence sat awkwardly with the subtlety required for the job at hand—try as he might, the saboteur had not come to the view that the presence of the cartographer was a gain—and he considered briefly taking a new road with Dark and leaving the Spine to whatever fate lay at its feet after the Keepers and the Leeran Army had finished with it.

“I appreciate you allowing me to come.”

Bueralan's heels nudged his horse's flanks and he glanced at the cartographer beside him, the thought still in his head. “That pony looks older than the sky.”

Orlan rubbed the ancient, gray beast's neck. “You'll hurt her feelings, Baron. Age does not stop one from being useful.”

“You have to stop calling me that.” It was the third time since they had met in the early hours of the morning, outside the stables. “And age does stop a man from running his fastest.”

“If we have to run,” the other replied, meeting his gaze, “then we have larger problems than an old pony.”

Bueralan grunted, said nothing.

Orlan continued: “Still, I thank you for the opportunity, and the chance to meet your friends.” He turned in his saddle, taking in all of Dark but Aerala, who rode at the front of the column as a lone sentry to guard against the raiders that had no doubt peppered the mountain with bolt-holes that the Mireean soldiers had not found. “Usually mercenary groups are linked through a heritage—which makes sense, given that most are armies who have lost wars or are soldiers loyal to generals who have fallen out of favor. But not so Dark, I have noticed. You are a more modern group, a more eclectic collection—a reflection of the changes in our world I think. Your two sisters, Aerala and Liaya, are from the City of Marble Palaces, are they not?”

“I met them in a different city,” Bueralan replied guardedly.

“I imagine you did,” the cartographer replied. “Men of your color are not welcome in that part of the world. But I would argue that that is where they are from, the sharpness of their
r
s and
e
s, you see. What is more, it appears that Liaya is a trained alchemist, if I am to believe the bags I see on her horse, the herbs I smell and the clink of glass when the ground becomes uneven.”

“I did not to ask for credentials,” Bueralan replied. “Perhaps I should have you interview anyone I take on next?”

“It costs a fortune to enter the alchemist colleges there,” the other continued, without rising to the bait. “Only the wealthy can even begin to dream to sit the entrance exams.”

“People don't like questions about their past, Orlan.”

“But it is so rich!” Turning, the cartographer focused on Kae, who rode next to Zean, his back as straight as the twin swords strapped to the side of his horse. “Here is a man from the Melian Isles who is missing two fingers on his left hand. If I was a betting man, I would say he had removed them himself fourteen years ago, one of the few soldiers to leave the ruins of Samar owned by a militant group who, adhering to the last words of the goddess Aeisha, took a vow of silence.”

The aforementioned man smiled faintly. “Very astute, cartographer.”

The other man inclined his head. “Next to him is a man from Ilatte.” Zean looked as if he had fallen asleep on his brown mount, but Bueralan knew otherwise. “No real surprises there, given that Ilatte has long been the occupied territory of the Ooila, seized during the reign of the Five Queens three hundred years ago and held since then. It is quite common for young men and women upon their birth to be taken away from their parents by nobles from Ooila and raised with one of their children as a blood brother or sister, a bodyguard and whipping post, where he or she is told that their soul will be taken into the family after a life of servitude. And you, my dear, exiled B—”

“What is your point?” interrupted Bueralan.

“What you saw this morning was an old man on an old pony.” Beneath him, as if it knew it was the focus of conversation, the pony flicked its ears. “It would be a mistake to continue to think of me in that fashion. I am not a killer, it is true. Nor do I run fast. But I am a man who has seen more of the world than any of you here present. I have seen it without a sword and I have
survived
every moment.”

“Well, I thank you for the lesson,” the saboteur said evenly. “But—”

“Wait, wait,” interrupted Ruk from behind Zean and Kae. “Now wait just a moment.”

Bueralan frowned. “What?”

“The old man didn't say where I was from.”

Lips straightening—it was not a
game
—Bueralan turned to Orlan who, spreading his hands out, said, “I have no idea where you are from, sir. Was your mother a whore?”

“
And
a fine woman,” Ruk replied hotly.

The others laughed and, despite his reservations, Bueralan allowed his horse to continue along the trail to Leera, its path unchanged.

 

2.

 

Zaifyr's second descent into the mineshaft was worse.

He had focused on the light that burned dimly like a piece of the sun the first time, allowing it to navigate the unknown as if he were in a dream, the dark cold around him a murky promise of threat from the Quor'lo that he could ignore with the light. This time he had no globes. He was alone, having instead broken through the seal the two old men had placed over the mine entrance. Minutes before he dropped into the shaft, with the two suns warming his back, Zaifyr crouched and picked the lock securing the heavy wooden covering in place. He could have lifted it or broken it, if he were honest with himself; he certainly could have spared himself the fumbling and inaccurate pushes and twists of a skill he had not used in centuries, but he wanted to keep his second trip a secret.

His failure to quickly pop the lock spoke of a distraction in his mind, a loss of focus that would become even more apparent the moment he let go of the rotting wooden ladder he clung to. The cold, murky water was a shock, but the sudden appearance of haunts, swarming around him as he submerged was more so. Tiny and spectral, each a faint burning glow, they swarmed around him, the haunts of insects trying to catch his eye in the filthy water. Focusing on his downward strokes, Zaifyr pushed them from his mind, succeeding only as the murky dark closed over him and his hands navigated the filthy tunnel to the second ladder.

The reprieve did not last long. Out of nowhere a drowned haunt appeared in a white burn of melted, waterlogged skin, crying out in a waterlogged voice.

Zaifyr emerged with a mouthful of awful water, the haunt beneath him, its voice trapped beneath the fetid surface.

Pulling himself out, he sat on the edge of the hole and tried to regain his focus and shut out the haunt from his vision. It was Jae'le's fault. The mix of concern and chiding brought back memories, both good and bad, and undid much of the self-control he had relearned while being locked up. He had been able to command his sight, but now he was forced to wait trying to gather his focus neatly and concisely, as a fisher might drew together nets of fish. It was also why, when he stepped through the green-lit crack thinking he had done just that, he was assaulted by layers of haunts. They were a thick, burning glow: generations of men and women packed tightly together, their individual limbs merging and overlapping with others, their bodies morphing into each and every one of them in an awful tapestry of loss and sin.

Zaifyr closed his eyes.

He had not seen the sheer mass of haunts the first time he entered the City of Ger because of his focus. He needed to return to that if he did not want to be overwhelmed. He knew, from past experiences, that if he allowed that to happen, it would take him weeks, perhaps even months, to get to the point where he would not hear their entreaties to him. The solution was to focus on one of the dead, to focus his attention and power on that one so that it would overwhelm the others, and leave him with but one haunt that he could rebuild a fuller concentration around, before dismissing it from his sight.

At first he struggled to distinguish the voices, the whispering complaints of cold and hunger blurring so that it took him time to identify one that was different, that had an inflection, a sound that he could separate from the others. He had not struggled to find that edge of a voice for years and he had to return to his earliest memories on how to pick up an inflection, how to search for the roll of a vowel in a haunt's voice, an accent that they had carried in life and, now, in death. The voice he found was that of a woman. She paused between whispering the word cold and the word hunger, as if another thought persisted, as if she were trying to find a way to articulate the two constants in her world.

He opened his eyes.

She was not tall. She was white, dark-haired and no taller than his chest. In appearance, she was the same age as he and the fleeting thought that he may have lost his mortality when she lost her life occurred to him. But the design of the linen gown was not one that he recognized and he put the thought and the haunt from his mind. With the sound of the river the only noise echoing around him, Zaifyr began walking down the street, in control of his sight once again but for the haunt that stood in the middle of the square, the figure he allowed himself to see to anchor his reality, to push the thoughts of the man he called his brother from his mind.

Jae'le would worry if he knew what he had done.

He would say—

“Cold,” she whispered, and paused, before saying, “hungry.”

He would say that Zaifyr had to be careful, that he should not answer the dead, that to do so would bring him to madness again.

It had been a hundred years since he had last talked to the dead. He had reached a peace with them, an understanding that they were part of the world and that he could do nothing for them. The tower in which he had been imprisoned had been small, a tall, narrow construction twice his height and long enough for him to lie in. It had been made by hand, made from the tainted dirt and poisoned river that ran in the valley behind the Eakar Mountains. Linae, the Goddess of Fertility, had done that in her death. The horror of a god's demise had been revealed as the land, the water, the trees, the animals, and the people all followed her into her dark embrace. So scarred was the land that, even though no trace of Linae remained, no person or community had returned to it.

For a thousand years, the spirits who had died alongside her had been his companions. For a thousand years, he had their presence to teach him that his power was one of abuse, and that if he wished to leave his narrow, crooked tower, he would have to put it aside.

“A wise choice, brother,” Jae'le had said when, finally, the crude door opened. He offered his hand. “The living are more important than the dead.”

Outside, the midday's sun had lanced painfully into Zaifyr's eyes. Placing his hand against the wall, he rose slowly, stiffly.

“Brother?”

His eyes were weeping now.

“Brother, do you understand what I am saying?”

Jae'le stood alone, dark and faceless. Despite all of what Zaifyr had thought and done to arrive at this moment, he thought of the word
jailer
involuntarily and said, “Yes.”

“I do not need to close the door, do I?”

“I would not…” His voice hoarse with disuse and he swallowed dryly. “I would not let you.”

That was not what his brother wanted to hear.

Ahead, the river crashed over the ledge, toward the violently lit Temple of Ger and the still water at the bottom. Behind him, though he had not turned once nor indicated for her to follow him, was the haunt from the city.

 

3.

 

Ayae stood before an empty leather pack and felt hollow.

The feeling had not come to her until she returned to her own home. In the dark, Ayae could only see the outlines of the damage that had been done to her house, and once she closed the door, she felt a slow crumbling inside her. It was not sudden, not as if the floor beneath her had given away, but rather it was gradual, a brick here, a piece of mortar there, and she thought to stop it by going to bed. But then she had woken, she had reached across the empty expanse of the bed for Illaan and, touching nothing, allowed herself a moment to rationalize his behavior, to approve of his treatment of her. She could understand it just as she could understand the damage done to her property, just as she could understand the cold looks the neighbors gave her. She could. She
could
 … but only for a moment. She felt the walls of herself continue to collapse. She knew that rationalizing Illaan's behavior was a betrayal of herself, an admission that she was not strong enough, not old enough, to hold the curse that had been dropped on her, but yet …