The Godless (33 page)

The taste of blood in the back of Bueralan's mouth grew as Waalstan drew his sword.

“Brothers and sisters, we make a sacrifice now, on the eve of our war. It is a sacrifice not to her, not to She who has given us so much, but a sacrifice to us from Her. We make it with the eight stallions that she sent with us, that she blessed for this moment, that she gave, to reinforce the faith that moves us.”

With one swift move, he drove his sword into the neck of the horse.

Bueralan expected it to cry out, but it was silent, even when the Faithful's general withdrew his sword and drove it into the ground. Even then, the horse did not fall. The killing blow bled profusely and, after a moment, the greasy taste of blood in Bueralan's mouth grew stronger, as if his own blood threatened to spill out of his mouth. Yet he knew immediately that what he was not tasting was either the meat, or his own blood, but the magic in the air, the display of power that was unlike anything the saboteur had ever felt. Raw, and without finesse, it washed over him, over the camp around him, and over the entire army as General Ekar Waalstan sank to his knees before the still standing horse.

There, he cupped his hands, and drank.

As all the Faithful did.

 

BLOOD TIES

There were five of us, five to form a family, five to fight and squabble, to love and hate. Jae'le and myself were the oldest, and Aelyn and Eidan, the youngest. The middle sibling was Tinh Tu, quiet, dangerous Tinh Tu. She was the connective tissue for us, the bridge for generations, the mediator for our arguments, our fights. We required her to be that, for we were the children of the gods. We had come to claim what our parents had left. We came to claim land, to claim people, to claim minds—and, like so many children of a worthy inheritance, we did not plan to take what was ours in terms of equity.

—Qian,
The Godless

 

1.

 

From the roof of The Pale House, Heast's view of Mireea was of that of a misshapen scar connected to the stone line of Ger's Spine. Throughout it, the streets, houses and markets were divided by the tissue of heavy wooden gates. After months of work, the gates rose across the skyline in blocks of shadow, complete with a busy network of builders and soldiers. Secured into place, they tightened, checked and rechecked, before reporting to him.

And it was in one of those reports, closest to the Spine itself, that he learned that the Leeran Army had begun to make its way up the mountain.

 

2.

 

Feeling ill, and pressed against the black bars of his cage in an attempt to stretch out as much as he could, Bueralan watched the Leeran Army as if he had not seen it before.

After the ritual with the white horse, the soldiers who had drunk from it—who had drunk more blood than he believed could be in a beast—had butchered the remains of the animal, mincing it in the remaining blood before putting it into the feed of their animals. The power of the ritual had continued to hang over the long, sprawling camp of the army. The beasts had eaten the meal in eerie silence, watched by their silent owners, their hands stroking their necks, holding the bags for the most part, but at times bringing it to the mouths much like a parent to a child. The camp's silence kept until the morning, when the buzz of insects announced the return of a sense of normality, but just the sense of it. The morning's sun rose and a strangeness—connected, he knew, with the blood magic he had been witness to—gripped Bueralan as he gazed at the soldiers around him, seeing the discipline that was at their core, but now with a darker edge. He watched dogs vomit blood only to lick it up, horses shift awkwardly, pigs lie panting, and soldiers offer food and items to each other without words, their understanding and knowledge of each other an intangible part of their world, reaching such an extent that he watched a young man and woman begin to file each other's teeth, a damaged courtship ritual. He'd been left to his own devices once the ritual had begun, Dural had left him, and since then it had been as if he did not exist. Even his greasy, bloodstained plate remained on the wooden slats of the wagon.

It was that plate that moved first when the cart lurched, lodging itself in one of Waalstan's blank books.

Bueralan was not a man who avoided blood magic philosophically, though he had no talent for it himself. The witches of his homeland promised much when a mother came to them with a new pregnancy, and though he had little time for the politics of rebirth, the women who held tiny bottles of kept souls were not without power. At a young age he had broken his arm—he had, like most children, been adventurous when he should not have been—and his mother had taken him to a witch who had cut open her thumb and, after smearing blood across his arm, mended the bone in one of the most painful moments of his young life. It was not until he was older that he realized his mother had allowed the pain to be caused deliberately, to instill in him a sense of personal self-preservation.

Yet, he had never seen blood magic on the scale that he had seen it the night before. He had never seen it so raw, as if it were a child's fist, smashing across an arrangement of toys. If he had been able to step outside his cage, to follow Dural to the white horse, Bueralan knew that he would have. The knowledge that he would have drunk the horse's blood appalled him, yet, he did not believe that General Waalstan was the originator of the power. It would be easy to fall back upon the assertion that the unknown man was a warlock, that he held the Leeran Army—and indeed, the Leeran nation—in his thrall, but Bueralan believed that the man had no more power other than the one he exerted from rank. Waalstan was as much a victim of last night's magic as he was, though admittedly a much more willing one. As Bueralan's stomach began to rebel beneath the hot day and rough journey, he remembered how he had seen Waalstan rise at first light, his body coated in a thin sheen of sweat; for a moment, Bueralan had thought he was confused by what he saw before him, that as he stood before thousands of men and women, he did not recognize a single one of them, nor the land he stood upon, and the direction he was marching. It did not last long, for the hunch of Waalstan's shoulders had straightened as he took a second and third step, and the ease he held himself returned, but Bueralan thought he had glimpsed an important revelation in regards to the general.

It was the
She
of Waalstan's speech that Bueralan returned to as the cart made its rough way across the ground, drawing closer to the Spine of Ger, his body uncomfortable against the warming bars, the meal from the night before sitting worse and worse in his stomach. Pushing it aside, he focused on the nameless figure who was the cause of such inspiration, who had sent the white horses to be slaughtered. She could be a witch, perhaps, or one of the men and women who had woken to find that what had been contained within the bodies of the gods had found its way into her own. Both would be rare, but neither would be unheard of, especially the latter. No “cursed” figure intent on violence and conquest had emerged in Bueralan's lifetime, but he had grown up in Ooila, where the Five Queens modeled their power after the Five Kingdoms, after the men and women who had conquered much of this part of the world, believing they were gods.

Before him, the cart hit a ditch. His stomach heaved and he reached for the bars on either side of him, hearing a voice as he did.

“I am afraid, mother.”

A man's voice, but a voice he did not recognize, a voice that did not come from around him. The cart pulled itself slowly out of the ditch, rocking his cage as it did.

“You have no need to be afraid.” It was a woman's voice, strong and confident. “We are not people who fear death, for whom the unknown is but darkness. We are watched and cared for, soldier. We are known and held. We are loved, like no other human has been loved. You must never forget this as you approach battle. You must wear it proudly. You must wear it without doubt.”

There was no reply and, in an attempt to still his protesting stomach, Bueralan lowered his head between his knees and breathed deeply and slowly.

 

3.

 

After taking the birds to Reila, Ayae and Zaifyr had returned to Illaan's house to wait and watch for whoever had been in it. They did the same the next day, but after picking up the cages, cleaning the bedroom and watching Zaifyr read from various books, it became clear to Ayae that no one would. Uncomfortable in the house and with Zaifyr—the sight of him reading blended with her memory of better times with Illaan—she suggested that they leave. With nothing new to report to Heast, they returned to the beer garden of Red Moon
and sat in the empty, hot square, listening to the sound of the city and discussing what they had seen distractedly. It was, she thought, as if her discomfort had spread to all around her, and she left early.

When Ayae returned the next day, she found the charm-laced man already in the garden, but this time he was not alone. With him was Reila. The small, old Healer had her hair pinned back by a simple clip made from silver and jade. In front of her was a small package.

“One of our birds?” Ayae asked, taking a seat from the table next to theirs and placing it between the two. “You have news?”

“She hasn't said,” Zaifyr replied. “We were discussing the news, the new news.”

Reila's fingers threaded between each other. “The Leeran Army has been spotted.”

“The lady was asking me my opinion of that,” he said. “I told her that I was just paid to be here, nothing more.”

The elderly woman nodded slightly, her left hand untangling itself to touch the wrapped form in front of her. “It is a bird,” she said. “One of the birds that you brought from Illaan's house, but I have nothing to say beyond that. I am still analyzing it—the solutions take time, I am afraid. But it is a time that I may not have. I was going to ask Zaifyr if he may take it to Fo, to ask him his opinion.”

He was silent for a moment, the woman before him clearly uncomfortable. She looked to Ayae, who had no answer.

“It's okay,” he said, finally.

“No, I—”

“I'll do it.” Zaifyr's smile was faint, tired. “But understand: it is the only favor a humble mercenary will give.”

After Reila had left, Ayae reached for the bird. It had been wrapped in a green cloth, twine circling around it to secure it shut. As she drew it to her, she said, “She came to me earlier about you. She's desperate.”

“They're all desperate.”

She glanced at him, surprised by the sadness in his tone.

“This is how it begins,” he said, rising. “People work on your sympathy and you are asked for favors. You are manipulated emotionally or intellectually, or that's the intention; you can see when it's happening most of the time. But even when you do it remains flattery, a tip to your ego, because you have more power than they. In the end, you do it because of that. You solve their problem. But a new one arises, and another, and they ask again and again and eventually—because you tire of doing it for free all the time—you ask a small token from them to somehow even out the equation. It's then that your relationship changes, that the power you have alters how you appear to them and they appear to you.

“Some days, I imagine it is how the gods found themselves to be gods, to be worshipped, and why they became distant like they did.”

She thought about his words as the two made their way along the cobbled streets. A sense of urgency had emerged from the soldiers on the Spine and the gates mapped across the city. She felt it around her as she walked, felt it melt into Zaifyr's words and emerge into a feeling that, if she had been the kind to do so, she might have called a premonition: one that spoke to her of pain, of power, of a tangible part of the world being altered forever.

They passed beneath the gate of the Spine's Keep without speaking and made their way up to the tower where Fo and Bau lived. As they made their way through the large hall, it slowly dawned on Ayae how quiet it was, how both their steps appeared to echo, and how the glass shades of the lamps were the only gaze that watched them as they pushed open the door and crossed the wall to their tower.

Transferring the bird to her left hand, Ayae knocked.

Fo's scarred eyes did not reveal surprise when he saw her, though when his gaze drifted over her shoulder, the muscles in his hairless face hardened; but he greeted them both—Zaifyr as Qian—and stepped back. Inside, his benches were empty of animals and the flowing test tubes, cages and burners had been packed into boxes that were stacked upon the ground.

“You're leaving?” she asked.

“With the news of the morning, my work is done,” the Keeper said. “Both Bau and I will be expected home soon. Won't you, Madman?”

Zaifyr was running his fingers along the edge of the bench. “I'm really not at the beck and call of another like a dog,” he said. “Speaking of which, we have a request.”

“About this bird,” Ayae added quickly, hoping to distract from his words. “It was found in Sergeant Illaan Alahn's house, after he fell ill.”

She failed.

“I am not a dog,” Fo replied, crossing his arms.

“Aren't all you Keepers Aelyn's dogs?” When the other man did not reply, Zaifyr continued. “I have never met you, Fo, but I know her and the kind of men she keeps about her. And I can see what has died on your bench.” He ran his fingers together, rubbing away the dust he had collected. “Snakes and mice.”

“But not dogs,” the Keeper growled. “Nor a bird.”

“Aren't you curious about the bird?”

The bald man did not turn his attention to the wrapped body in Ayae's hand. “There is not much to be gained from the dead.”

Zaifyr brushed off the insult with a shrug. Ayae, trying to defuse the situation, did not know what to do: she had not expected Zaifyr to be so antagonistic.