The Godless (11 page)

“But then I am not from here, just like you.” His bloodstained hands spread out before him and he paused. “I'm Bau.”

“The Healer.”

“Most of the time,” he agreed. “Some days, a life is beyond mine to save.”

“Today?”

“No, not today. Despite my distaste for this city, not today. Come, let us find you a chair and me a change of clothes and some water to wash myself.”

Bau pushed the door to the tower open with a touch of weariness, the smell of dried flowers and chemicals washing over them. The first thing that Ayae noticed was that beneath the windows were rows of cages, most no larger than what could be held in two hands—though three, sitting on the ground, would have required two people to lift them. Although the sunlight washed over the old wooden tables placed there, each cage had a cloth draped over it, plunging the inside into darkness and keeping its contents from her sight. Around the cages were glass tubes, burners, pipes and beakers, each connected in an elaborate skeleton that, at the end, in a small pot, was the cause of the chemical smell that was so strong in the room. It was there that the hairless figure of Fo stood with a steel rod in his hand, gently stirring what he had created.

“You're late,” he said, absently.

“And you have a guest.” Bau turned to Ayae. “A moment, please. I need to clean myself up.”

She nodded and was left alone with Fo, who regarded her intently with his scarred eyes, his right hand absently stirring. Finally, with a faint smile creasing his lips, he said, “It's good to see you today. I thought that we may have to chase you, come the evening.”

“I came here to talk.”

“Good.” Lifting the metal rod out of the beaker, he tapped it on the side. “The God Ir knew every organ in every living creature. It was said that he had never had an original form, that he had shifted and changed to mirror whatever creature he came upon. He did this, or so his followers said, so that he could learn how better to kill the things he saw. It was this that made him so appealing to those who killed for a living, be they hunters of animals, or of men and women. It was said that they respected his knowledge and paid homage to it in their own work.”

Gently, the Keeper lifted one of the black cloths off the cage next to him. In it, twisted upon itself in a coil of dark, earth brown, was a brown snake. Still—impossibly so, Ayae thought—the thick creature watched the hairless man as he pulled a small mouse out from beneath a table. He dropped it into his beaker, then lifted the soaking, squirming creature out and placed it through the bars of the snake's cage.

A moment later, it was gone.

“Knowledge,” Fo said, as the snake settled back into stillness. “Awful things are done in its name.”

Unsure what to say, Ayae was saved by the return of Bau who smiled slightly at her. “We might have a problem,” he said, changing the subject.

“Did they find it?” Fo asked.

“In a way.” In a fresh white robe, the handsome man lowered himself into a chair. “
He
was there.”

Fo turned slowly from his snake, regarding the other man intently. “You didn't try to fight him, did you?”

“Do I look like a fool?”

“You look like a man who moments ago was covered in blood.”

“I know the laws as well as you do.”

“And you know just as I do that he has no time for the laws.”

Bau's expression was sour. “A soldier was attacked by the Quor'lo. That was his blood you saw.”

“And the Madman?”

“Last I heard, he was chasing a Quor'lo down a hole.”

Behind Fo, the snake began to move in discomfort. “What do you think he's doing here, then?”

“
He
sent him, obviously.”

“What if he came of his own accord? It is difficult to tell with him these days.”

“Aelyn would know,” Bau said, troubled. “She watches him, closely.”

“And if she already knew?”

Ayae—tearing her eyes from the shifting form of the snake, the mouse still visible in it—said, “Who are you talking about?”

“Your savior,” Fo replied.

Bau's eyebrows rose. “Really?”

She should leave. The thought was clear. She was out of her depth. She would gain nothing by being here, would learn nothing that they did not already think she should know. There were other ways, other people. Ayae took a step backward. As she took that first step Fo shook his head, his scarred eyes holding her. “If you have questions, ask, child. You need not fear the asking.”

“You are scaring her, Fo,” the other man said, rising from his seat. Shaking his head, he closed his warm hand around her arm gently. “Ignore his tone. Fo has a history with the man who saved you, though he is probably not even aware of it.”

“Zaifyr,” she whispered.

“Is that the name he's using?”

“Who is he?”

Bau guided her to a seat that was touched by the last of the morning's sunlight. She could see the snake's skin bulging, but worse, could see the outline of the soaked mouse. “A man, like you and me. But a man thousands of years old, older than either myself or Fo. A man who talks to the dead, as if they were his own.”

“Which he once said they were,” Fo added, his tone heavy with dislike.

“How do you know this?”

Behind the hairless man, the sound of scratching began, the mouse's frantic movements tearing through the snake's skin. “Because,” he said, “a long time ago, my parents worshipped him as a god.”

 

THE BOY WHO WAS DESTINED TO DIE

The first god to die in my lifetime was Sei, the God of Light.

Considered by many to be the Murderer, the first god to kill another, his death was not one seen, but one experienced. My family knew of it only when the sun fractured and plunged the world into darkness. For a week, no prayer or offering could abate it. When the sun did return, it did as you see it now, in three broken shards, a trio of emancipated prisoners pulling the corpse of their friend on a litter made from his or her bones. The moon, never seen before, was a new object, cold and dark and dead.

It was a terrible sight, and many believed that we would have been better if darkness had never ended. If for nothing, we would have been blind to the famine that killed thousands, if not millions, in the decade that followed.

—Qian,
The Godless

 

1.

 

Meihir, the Witch of Kakar, pushed her long fingers across the palm of the boy Zaifyr. Her rough nail ran through dirt, following the lines on his skin. Pushing hard at the base of his palm, she said that he would die at the age of twenty-nine.

He was not yet five.

Meihir, in contrast, was an ancient woman, the tiny bones braided into her hair yellow with age, the remains of a family long gone. For her age and her fragility in size, the witch wore the thick hide of a white bear as if it weighed nothing and spoke clearly and strongly, even when announcing the death of a child. On that day, as she foresaw the deaths of nineteen children in tragedies, her voice did not stumble once.

In Mireea, Zaifyr watched the afternoon's sun set before him, a brown bottle of beer slick with moisture in his hand. In the mountains of his childhood, the newly broken sun had resulted in cold, sleeting storms year round while stone bears—crafted by Hienka, the Feral God—roamed the valleys and roads. Hienka had made them before his hibernation, told Zaifyr's ancestors that the bears would care for them. It was only because of them that the years after Sei's death had taken less of a toll on them, and the villages thanked their god daily for his kindness until ten years after Meihir told the young they would die.

“I'm going to report to Heast. You coming?”

Bueralan. Earlier, after they had crawled out of the foul shaft.

“No.” Zaifyr flicked dirty water off his hands, drawn out of his hair. “I'm not planning to go anywhere.”

The saboteur eased to the ground next to him, dropping axes and leather jerkin as he did. The hole they had crawled out of lay behind the pair, the soldiers spread out wide around them, as if they were afraid to step closer. “You think we smell?”

“I don't smell a thing.”

“Me neither.”

With half a grin, Zaifyr pulled a copper chain from a pile of charms beside him and wound it around his left wrist. After Meihir's prophecy his family had wrapped charms around him, each one painstakingly made and blessed with all of the small magic they had. His mother assembled the chain he tied around his wrist, his grandfather melted and beat the pieces through his hair, his father made the studs for his ears and his grandmother engraved tiny blessings on each, some no more than a letter, others a word. In this, he was no different than the other children of Kakar who had been promised an early death. Nineteen was the most any witch had proclaimed and soon the charmed children were friends, isolated by the other children who did not play with them, and by the men and women who refused to teach them skills that the village survived on. There was only one blacksmith in Kakar, and Zaifyr, though he had shown an interest in the trade early on, could not be that. His father's pale green eyes had not blinked when he told him that.
You can hunt and track and marry one of five girls, girls you know by charms threaded through their hair and on their body. But no, son, you cannot follow my footsteps.

You are a fighter,
his father said when, with tears in his eyes, he had asked what he could be.
Keep your sword straight and make sure it doesn't drop. Fight until you cannot fight no more.

As the afternoon's sun sank, liquid orange and melting over the Spine of Ger, Zaifyr saw all three of the new suns rising over Kakar eclipse, hidden behind a huge and terrifying darkness. Over ten thousand years ago, but he could still remember it. The town of his birth had organized the charmed children to walk to Hienka's cave hours after the midday darkness, fearing that the decade of famine that had etched across the world would return to them, only this time without the protection of a slumbering god. A god that they had never seen awake, that had never strode among them, but which had left its guardians to ensure that it was worshipped.

The thin figure of Meihir led them up a narrow trail, her bent figure a frail question none behind her could ask.

There were more questions when they found the stone bears, thirty-seven in number, sitting in rows before the cave.

Zaifyr and the other children had moved cautiously through their ranks after she entered the dark, empty mouth of the cave. He knew the bears, just as everyone did, for they padded paths from village to village, impossibly alive and unpredictable; but now their violent mouths were closed and they were still, returned to their original stone. Tentatively, he reached out, not the first to do so, but not the last, a skinny youth that neither set the lead nor followed. When he touched the side of one he jumped back immediately, thinking that it would turn its solid bulk toward him, but nothing happened. Zaifyr's thin hands reached out again, and again the stone bear did not move.

Inside the cave Hienka, his slumbering god, was gone.

 

2.

 

Axes strapped to his waist and leather jerkin chafing from damp, Bueralan knocked and pushed open the door to Heast's office. He found the gray-haired Captain of the Spine inside, seated before Sergeant Illaan Alahn, the weak light of the afternoon a shroud around each. “I was told you would be here later.” Heast sniffed. “Promised actually.”

“I didn't want to deprive you.” Humor exhausted, Bueralan was silent while he pulled a seat into place, easing himself down next to Illaan. “My men and I will leave in the morning. The only question is: do we head down to Yeflam or to Leera?”

Heast's pale gaze did not waver, but it was Illaan who spoke. “I was just explaining the city you found. We didn't think you could access it from there.”

“You already had,” Bueralan said.

“Yes,” Heast replied before his sergeant. “However, we don't want too many people to know about it. I'm sure you can understand why.”

“What else don't you want to know?”

Heast's smile was thin. “You mean, what else don't I want you to know?”

“An army with a warlock general, a Quor'lo, Keepers. Next there will be a god standing in this city.”

“It would be in keeping with the way my cards have been dealt,” the captain said dryly. “Am I keeping much from you? Probably. But anything relevant to your work? No. I really don't know anything about the army approaching us outside what you have already been told. Now, how did the Keeper react to the Quor'lo?”

“Showed a lot of interest.”

Heast grunted, unimpressed.

“He did heal your soldier,” Bueralan said.

“First decent thing he's done since he got here.” The captain's fingers steepled in front of him. “For the most part he and Fo spend their time locked in a tower, having animals delivered to them. They have the staff in the Keep buy them from the market. The same staff collect the corpses a few days later.”

“What are they doing?”

“Playing, would be my guess.” Heast's hands parted, his left hand touching a collection of organized reports on his desk. “In Yeflam, they were known for certain incidents relating to diseases. The latest was a small outbreak of a skin disease in one of the cities, Xeq, I believe. From what I understand, Fo released the initial carrier in the body of a rat, trying to see just how toxic a mix that the rodent could carry that would affect the human population. After the disease had spread enough to cause a panic, a quarantine was placed while Bau worked to heal those within. They were not subtle about the situation reportedly, and there was a lot of backlash. Times are changing in Yeflam. People aren't looking for gods any more. No one wants an infallible, almost god-like figure to rule them. The Traders Union has recognized that, and they are using Fo and Bau's exploits against the other Keepers. When Lady Wagan's request for help with the situation here arrived, it was, sadly, at the wrong time. None of us expected a Keeper to be sent, but politics have graced us.”