He could see wretched survivors, brokenhearted, wandering listlessly through streets strewn with rubble. Men with bodies tangled with scars. Malnourished women with flat dugs and exposed ribs. Children who were little more than skeletons so weak they could not lift their own heads. Sores covering everyone and fever, like the fever he had, roasting people from within. All of them would turn red eyes toward what was left of Wentokikun and wonder why he did not save them. He had promised them a better life, and all he had given them was the miseries mankind had known from time before remembering.
They will devour my nation as they do my flesh. Cyron tried to lift his left arm, but could not. Angry pain pulsed through him, warning him to remain still. He accepted the warning, hunkering down against pillows. He cried silently at the pain, for himself, for his nation. His right hand tangled in the sheets and he hung on so he would not scream.
The pain, slowly, incrementally, subsided.
Which allowed him again to feel the maggots feasting on him.
Cyron roared and threw back the bedclothes. He swung his legs out of bed and stood quickly. A wave of blackness washed over him, but he grabbed a handful of sheets and remained upright. He staggered from his bedchamber to the outer room, then barked his shin against a low table. He caught the doorjamb and again avoided falling, then stepped to the corner where his armor and swords rested in their stand.
The door slid open to his left, silhouetting a servant. Cyron raised his left arm, displaying the leather wrapping it and the thongs securing them. “Yes, yes, quickly, come here. Help me get this off. Now, help me.”
As the man approached, Cyron reached down for the dagger he would use to cut the maggots from his flesh. As his fingers closed on the hilt, he glanced up and saw the man had drawn a short sword and had raised it above his head.
“Die, tyrant!”
Cyron’s left arm rose and intercepted the blow. The sword stroke carried through the leather and snapped the heavier of the bones. Had it not been for the leather, it would have cut cleanly through the limb. The blade, slightly impeded, just lodged in the second bone.
Curiously, the sword harmed none of the maggots.
Screaming in pain, Cyron twisted and drove the dagger into the assassin. He pierced the man’s body right below the breastbone, puncturing his heart. So fierce was the Prince’s frenzied blow that it lifted the Helosundian from his feet and pitched him over onto the low table. It collapsed beneath him.
Cyron staggered back and broke through the paper-paneled wall. The sword’s hilt caught on a stout piece of wood and ripped the blade free. The Prince screamed again, then felt a jagged piece of wood stab into his back as he hit the floor.
He looked down and saw his robe tented over his right breast. He laughed.
An assassin can’t kill me. How odd that enemies from without cannot stop me, but my own home will be my death.
Chapter Fifty-seven
3rd day, Month of the Hawk, Year of the Rat
Last Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court
163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty
737th year since the Cataclysm
Jaidanxan (The Ninth Heaven)
He had the sensation that he was floating, light and ethereal, as if he had no body at all. Then he realized that he really had no physical sensation—the illusion of floating was because he felt nothing. He had no physical self; he was only being.
And this was the correct way of things.
Jorim did not will his eyes to open, but rather willed that which surrounded him into existence. Slowly it came—at first a blur of colors. He heard muted sounds and recognized them before he saw anything. They were the songs of birds he’d heard the world over, all singing in concert—though he was fairly certain the diverse species had never heard each other sing in the real world.
In the mortal world.
He acknowledged himself to be Tetcomchoa and Wentiko, as well as other names in scripts he’d never seen, comprising sounds his throat never could have produced. The moment he made that judgment, he knew it was wrong. He no longer had a throat. He was no longer a man.
He had no reason to cling to the name Jorim, but he did because it labeled his most recent existence. Those memories burned hottest in his mind. He was not through with them and felt he had left some things undone. He needed to finish them, but had a sense of grander things that also demanded his attention.
His surroundings focused loosely as if he were viewing them through a translucent silk veil. He reached out to brush it aside and instead found himself raking it to shreds with a taloned paw. He turned the paw and studied it—golden leather flesh on the inside, black scales over the back, and hard gold talons in which he caught a distorted reflection of himself.
He willed his paw into a hand and recognized it as Jorim’s hand. With it he drew aside the tattered veil and stepped through into a magnificent room. Cool white marble stretched out beneath his feet, flowing down in broad steps through a forest of columns. The steps opened onto a balcony and he flew there in an instant. The balcony overlooked a vista more beautiful than anything he had ever seen before.
The whole of the world lay as a distant carpet, green with jungle, gold with desert, and blue with water. Clouds floated above it, casting shadows and playfully shifting shapes. Above them floated small hunks of rock, which he instantly realized were not small at all, but mountains that had been ripped from the earth like teeth torn from a jaw. Jungle still clung to them, snow decorated them, and streaming water poured off to congeal below as clouds. Each one of them was the palace of a god, so there would be nine, and he stood on one of them.
They orbited in a circle much as the Zodiac girded the heavens. Below, as if it were the hub of the circle, lay the Dark Sea and beyond it Ixyll, from which he could feel a trickling thrill of wild magic. Once he had desired to go there and now, were he willing to open his mind, he could know most of its secrets. That wealth of knowledge would have been a treasure trove to him at one time, and now it seemed almost trivial—both because of the ease with which it could be gathered and the sense that whatever was happening there had little or no bearing on his existence.
He caught a light sound from behind and spun. A tiny woman stood there with arms wrapped around herself in a fleshy cloak that became a black silk robe, belted and trimmed in ivory. He did not need the flying bats embroidered on the breasts to recognize her, for he’d seen her sharp features and wide eyes on statues in temples from Helosunde to Ummummorar.
He dropped to a knee and bowed to her.
Her high-pitched, gay laughter reminded him that she was his sister the bat, goddess of Wisdom.
“Have you finally learned to respect your elders, Wentiko?”
“I have always respected you, Tsiwen.”
“So you have, little brother, so you have.” She smiled at him and he rose. “Jaidanxan has been quiet without you.”
He shook his head. “I’ve not been gone long, have I? Only twenty-three years.”
“You have been gone far longer than that.” She gestured off to the darkest of the floating palaces. “Grija was always against your decision to incarnate in mortal form. He thought you would be another disaster, so he delayed your return.”
Jorim tried to remember anything that might pertain to what she was saying, but couldn’t. “Perhaps he thwarts me still.”
“You’d not be here if he were.” She smiled carefully and came to join him at the balcony’s edge. “When you first chose to be born of a mortal, you chose a human—a bold choice. You brought them a gift of magic, and those you call the Amentzutl took to it well. You decided to share magic with others, those to whom you were born this time. You had come to love men and Grija found support among some here to visit you and offer you a bargain.”
Jorim arched an eyebrow. “He convinced me to divest myself of much of myself—my divine nature—and leave it in the land of the Amentzutl.”
“You remember.”
“No, I h
ave just benefited from wisdom.”
Tsiwen laughed and Jorim caught fleeting memories of winging his way through the night with her in eons past. “Wisdom had eluded you when you agreed to the bargain because the portion of you that you retained had become overly human. When your body died, your spirit became his to play with, and he did. He often withheld incarnation, or let you be born into a situation where you could never find your essence again.”
“I’ve had more than one incarnation?” Jorim shivered. “And I have been gone from Jaidanxan since I was Tetcomchoa?”
“Things you will remember as you let slip your grasp on who you have been most recently.”
Jorim shook his head. “It’s not time for that yet. I have friends and family back there.”
“I know.” She gestured with a hand toward the center of the balcony and a hole opened in it. It filled with water that roiled, then cleared. “You’ll want to know how they fare.”
He approached the hole cautiously. Dread coiled in his belly, bringing with it echoes of the pain he’d felt upon death. Though many claimed the transition from life to death is painless, they are mortals who have no knowledge of it. The ripping of the spirit from the physical eclipses the most acute pain, for it is felt in the soul even more sharply than the body.
Preparing himself, he looked down. It was nighttime at Nemehyan. His body had been wrapped in a white mourning robe with the Naleni dragon embroidered on it in black. He lay atop the city’s largest pyramid and people hiked up the steps, passed by him, and down again, a long line of them. Members of the Stormwolf expedition mixed freely with the Amentzutl.
Anaeda Gryst, Nauana, and Shimik were closest to his body. The two women spoke with those who passed by. Though they wore brave expressions, he could feel their loss. Anaeda would reach out and squeeze Nauana’s shoulder or caress her hair from time to time, and that seemed enough to keep his lover from dissolving into tears.
Even so distant, he could feel Nauana’s pain. He had touched her essence, and she had touched him. The pain of separation gnawed through her, and joined with the frustration in Jorim. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but his body no longer responded to him.
I am a god. How can this be prevented?
Shimik, by way of contrast, appeared calm and even happy. The Fenn sat near his head but did not seem the least bit disturbed. He just chattered to himself as he often did, and spoke to Jorim as if he were still there. More important, the last time he’d seen Shimik, the Fenn had been white. Now his fur was darkening, and the flesh of his hands and feet was taking on a golden hue.
Shimik looked up to the heavens and smiled. He held his hands up. “Jrima, Jrima, Shimik comma.”
Nauana reached down and pulled the Fenn into her arms.
Jorim looked at his sister. “They believe I am dead.”
“They saw you die.” She smiled easily. “Your death was truly spectacular. You accepted death so they would not know it. Grija was expecting to gorge on the Amentzutl and instead you gave him offal.”
“I gave him his own creations.”
“No.”
“But I saw him there. The Amentzutl Zoloa is Grija.”
“Oh, that’s true. He was stalking that killing ground, devouring souls.”
“And I would have devoured them all had our brother not interfered. I love how desperate people pray to me, begging me not to take them. So piquant.” Wearing a grey robe, Grija materialized on the other side of the hole, tall and slender, with short dark hair, black eyes, and sharpened teeth. “You know you would still be my plaything, except that those you saved prayed fervently for you.”
Jorim shook his head as Grija’s expression soured. “Prayers of thanks were never to your taste, were they?”
“No, but no matter. I would have allowed you to come home this time.”
“So gracious. What makes this time different from any other?”
The death god walked to the balcony’s edge and pointed down below the circle of palaces. “Look there.”
Jorim nodded. “The Dark Sea.”
“Deeper.”
Jorim moved to the balcony edge and studied its depths. The dark water did not so much clear as his vision just pierced fathoms. There, over a mile deep, a stone glowed with opalescent fury. Energy pulsed within it, at first slowly, then in a frenzy. He sensed it was a heartbeat, one which pounded without rhyme, reason, or purpose, but that this had not always been the case. Nor shall it be.
“I see.”
Grija snarled. “Let go your humanity, Wentiko; matters here are too critical for you to be trapped with small thinking. That is Nessagafel. He awakens.”
“Nessagafel is a Viruk word.” Jorim shook his head. “I don’t know it.”
“You once did. Everyone did.” Tsiwen hugged arms around herself and seemed to shrink. “The world knew it and trembled.”
Grija lifted his head and sniffed. “Nessagafel is the tenth god, or the first god, depending on how you wish to reckon things. He incarnated through the Viruk and built their empire. He grew powerful and sought to enslave all of us. We had to destroy him, and we did.”
“You killed him?”
Grija nodded. “Chado and Quun tore him apart. That’s why, in the human Zodiac, they share prey.”
“But if he’s dead, how is he coming back? Why did you let him out of your realm?”
“I didn’t.” Grija’s nostrils flared. “Something happened. Someone else defied me and escaped, and Nessagafel slipped out as well. Now he seeks to regain his power and when he does, he will kill all of us.”
Jorim nodded slowly. “How do we stop him?”
“Nessagafel is yet anchored in my realm, so the one who escaped me is the key. She is dead, but she is not dead. When she is mine again, the portal will close and he will be trapped. However, she is beyond my reach, but not yours.”
“Who is it?”
“Your human sister, Nirati.” The god of Death smiled coldly. “Kill her again, Wentiko, or everything that is known will perish.”
Chapter Fifty-eight
3rd day, Month of the Hawk, Year of the Rat
Last Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court
163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty
737th year since the Cataclysm
Tsatol Deraelkun, County of Faeut
Erumvirine
The door to my chamber slid open. I barely heard the gasp, more because Pasuram Derael kept his voice politely hushed than a problem with the ear that had been sewn back on. I turned slowly toward the door and gave him and his father an abbreviated bow.
The count, whose pale and painfully slender body could have benefited from shadows to cloak it, regarded me carefully. “The physician said you would not be out of bed for days.”
Urardsa finished rewrapping a loop of bandage around my chest. “His thread is slender, but still strong.”
I glanced at the Gloon. “And still a tangle?”
“In places.”
I shook my head, then turned to my host. “You know what I am. Mystics are blessed or cursed with life beyond our years. We tend to heal more quickly than others.” I coughed and winced, but they were polite enough to let that escape notice.
Pasuram guided his father’s wheeled chair into my chamber. This task was not easy since the young man had taken an arrow through his thigh and his father had a long, thick, leather-wrapped package lying across his lap. I did not offer to help the son, as I would not have dishonored him in front of his father. All three of us men were locked in mutual denial of our weakness and, truth be told, Pasuram was the strongest of us.
The Gloon just crouched in a corner and watched.
The count waited in the center of the chamber while his son fetched both of us chairs. Pasuram sat beside his father, with his left leg stretched out, and I sat facing the older man. Pasuram had placed the chair close enough that I could hear, and I nodded thanks, since it would be my severed ear and not his father’s soft whisper which would
make listening difficult.
“Jaecaiserr Moraven Tolo, I have known you since I was very young. I anticipated having this talk with you many times, for once I heard the story I will tell you, I knew it was for you that this package was meant. There could be no other, but my instructions were very specific, and until yesterday I could not be faithful to the duty charged me.”
I considered his words carefully, nodding slowly, and allowed him to catch his breath.
“What I will tell you now has been handed down through the Derael family for two hundred seventy years, parent to child, husband to wife, in a duty considered as sacred as warding this pass. What I have here in my lap has lain in the museum for that time, save twice when danger threatened and we could not chance it being taken as plunder.”
The count’s grey eyes flicked toward his son. “I recently told Pasuram what you will hear and he, too, thought immediately of you.”
I bowed my head toward the both of them. “What you are telling me is an honor. To be held in such high regard is more than most xidantzu can imagine.”
“But you are more than most xidantzu, Master Tolo.” The count smiled and the effort taxed him mightily. “Long ago a man came to Deraelkun. He appeared here, just appeared, without having been admitted, and he bore this package. He called himself Ryn Anturasi and begged of my ancestor a favor which, he promised, would be returned. ‘Grant this, and Tsatol Deraelkun will not fall.’ I believe the favor has been repaid through your action yesterday.”
I shook my head. “You know the kwajiin will be back, this time with far more warriors and a far smarter general. Deraelkun may yet fall.”
Jarys Derael coughed. “We have ever known it would, jaecaiserr. We merely sought to prolong the time until then.”
“For your enemies, the time to take it shall seem an eternity.”
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