by S E Wendel
“Leave him be,” said Themin.
His siblings retreated reluctantly, allowing Ean into the inner rings of the temple. Between the layers of columns, Ean spied all of Themin’s Host gathered. Even Anona, snow still clinging to her eyelashes.
Dea too had come.
He groaned inwardly. Much as his mother could appreciate the newly forged chaos of the world, she no doubt loathed the collateral. The man who called himself the King of the Midlands had been a favorite of Dea’s.
To avoid his mother’s dark scowl, Ean let his eyes roam the palisades. He looked for but didn’t expect a friendly face. Well, there was Adain, an amused smile playing at his lips, a stark contrast to his twin’s thunderous frown. But then, there was little in this life or the next that didn’t amuse Adain.
By the time he reached the center of the temple, where the Seat rested, all the Host had gathered.
Themin stood just behind it, his gaze weary. Long gray hair tumbled over his Father’s shoulders, and his hands still bore scars from claiming stardust to add to the mortals. Long robes that captured all colors of the sunset swirled about Themin. Finally, he looked at Ean, one eye the blue of the sky, the other brown like the earth.
Ean tried to ignore how the branded handprints prickled on his chest under those eyes. But the prickling pain had become nothing to him over the eons, and the Host would be disappointed if they thought they could introduce him to any new hurt. For was he not cursed to feel all manner of agony, suffering, and aching, forever and always? What could they do to him that Themin had not?
The Host hushed when Themin opened his lipless mouth to speak. “Ean, you know Fate is something even we should not tempt. The stars have spoken, yet you defied Them.”
Yes, Ean knew. He just failed to care. Why should he? The stars were cold, cruel things. He’d begged them for a word, a whisper, anything that would help him break his curse. But they said nothing.
Ean began to wonder if they spoke at all.
“I am merely answering your summons, Father,” he said.
“You know the dangers of meddling in their world!”
Ean turned a harsh smile onto Ma’an. “You did not seem to mind these dangers when you guided Dunstan Gilcriss’s sword into his brother’s heart. Tell me, what did the stars say about you bringing about two hundred years of war?”
Ma’an blanched. “How could you know that?”
“I may have been in exile, but there is little you do that I do not know about, Brother Mountain.”
How could any of the Host not have known? When Ma’an guided Dunstan’s hand that day, the world shifted, the sky cracked, the earth shook. Ironic that, in trying to save his precious Highlands, Ma’an had doomed them all over again, this time to a slow, whittling death from the south.
“The stars speak Their will, but we all know They can be mercurial. Uncertain. I did not defy Them—I only tipped the balance in favor of one of the fates They saw. Much as my Brother Mountain did two hundred years ago,” Ean said. Was this their best argument? He’d had a thousand years to think, to wait, to plan.
“He cannot do this,” Tamea said, stepping forward. “He cannot change so much. He must be punished.”
Ean’s smile was a knife blade. “Punish me, Sister Forest? Indeed. Shall you curse me?”
“I never should have let her live!” Tamea howled. “I should have taken the one fated to die that night, not let her life be traded. I thought you had changed—I thought you finally understood. How could you?”
Ean lifted his shoulders in a shrug. Truthfully, he shouldn’t antagonize Tamea so. If any of the Host understood the damnation in Ean’s soul, it was Tamea. The harbinger of death walked hand-in-hand with war. Tamea knew pain, knew suffering. But she also knew compassion. She led the mortals to something better, to peace. This seemed enough to spare her from an unhappiness as complete as Ean’s. She did not have an emptiness inside of her so bottomless it ate away at the very seams of herself.
“If it would put your minds at ease, I was asked to do it.”
A cry went up from the Host. Dea demanded an explanation.
“Summon the mortal, if you do not believe me.”
Themin sighed, and the world held its breath. He waved his hand.
Along the outermost circle of columns appeared two figures. Both weren’t quite as opaque as the rest of the Host, their presence filmy. Two women approached Themin. The taller was Mithria—or, rather, a projection of her. Her heart-shaped face flickered like sunlight through leaves, never quite settling. The other was a mortal soul without a bodily shell, the one who’d provided Ean with the needed nexus to change Fate.
Themin asked the mortal woman her name.
“Adena Courtnay,” she said, looking about the Host with an unbelieving, dreamy gaze.
“We should not be here,” Mithria said, her voice like a breeze through soft rolling hills. “She should be at rest.”
“What is the meaning of this?” Dea said, advancing on Mithria and the mortal.
The woman took a shuddering step back. Mithria placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and glared at Dea.
“This woman,” Ean said, “asked me to take the life of the man who caused her so much suffering.”
“Mortals pray to us all the time,” Dea spat, as if such prayers were a nuisance, as if they weren’t the very essence of the Host’s immorality.
“I do not have to defend myself to you, mother, who shifted the balance of power for a mere blood oath. That Midland whoreson gave you but a finger and you laid the world at his feet. All I did was help strike down one man—you opened an entire city to his hordes. And that’s just the most recent of your favors.”
Dea snorted. “I guided them to the trapdoor into Dannawey, yes. But Larn was fated to take that city. The Midlands is fated to take the north.”
“And he was fated to fall in battle. I just changed which one. You aided him in life by blood, and I took it away by blood. Her blood.”
The Host turned to look at Adena Courtnay. She was so slight, so fragile. Her being wavered, growing more translucent with the effort of staying in a place she wasn’t meant to be. Ean regarded her with aloofness, for he couldn’t afford to let the Host see what this mortal meant to him. She was everything. Her lonely voice in the cold night had beckoned him, had promised him salvation. He’d heard her and stayed with her through those long nights. To the end.
“She offered herself as payment for the bargain, and I did what she asked of me,” he said, his eyes finding hers. Even now, he could barely look upon her; each time he did, a throb went through him. It was a new, painful sensation, unlike any pain he’d ever known. It was expectation, ringed with hope.
“Yes,” she whispered, “you did.”
“I will not apologize for enacting justice. You all know what kind of man Larn of the Midlands was.”
“It does not matter what he did,” Dea said. “What matters is what you have done and what you have changed.”
“The mortal world is a better place without him.” All looked at Ceralia in surprise, including Ean. He hadn’t imagined she would speak to him, let alone for him.
Dea sneered. “What a weak heart you have. It is the mortals’ lot to suffer.”
“And who is to blame for that?” said Balan.
Ean rolled his eyes. They were headed for an argument almost as old as time itself.
“It is done now.” Themin’s voice was quiet as the dawn, but all heard. “We cannot change what has happened. But Fate may yet try to correct itself.”
Oh, yes. It would. Which was why Ean’s exile had come to an end. It was time the mortals relearned his face.
“Can nothing be done?” Tamea asked, her gaze still hot and hateful on Ean.
“No. Not yet. We will have to watch for now.” Themin turned to Mithria. “Return your charge. I regret that she had to be woken from her peace.” And he took Mithria’s hand in his own, his gaze softening. The Host marked it, none more so tha
n Ceralia, but said nothing.
Her robes crinkling like leaves underfoot, Mithria led the mortal away, their forms evaporating into the waning sun.
With the two gone, and Themin’s words final, the Host turned away from the Seat. Some gathered together, their whispers malignant. For the first time in an eon, Tamea and Dea were united in something. Just as rare, Ma’an and Balan grumbled together rather than about each other. Others, like Anona, readied to return to their domain.
But Ean knew he wasn’t dismissed. His Father waved him over, and he went, if begrudgingly.
Ean followed Themin to the edge of the temple, where the mountain fell off in a sheer cliff, the sea crashing on rocks far, far below. White gulls cawed and circled, their nests the only other homes on the Seat.
“You surprise me, Ean,” said Themin quietly, his dark gray hair shimmering like starlight.
“I did not think you could be surprised, Father,” replied Ean. His breastplate shone in the fading day, flashing gold as each individual ray disappeared in a sparkle of light upon the great plates of metal.
“I would have thought you liked the old arrangement.”
“I grow tired of the northern wars,” Ean said.
“It is in your nature to be capricious.” Themin sighed. “You know the Lowlanders were not supposed to win.”
“Perhaps I like the doomed.”
Even though he claimed to be surprised by his son’s actions, Ean doubted he’d actually surprised Themin. The mortals believed Themin knew everything—past, present, future—and so he did. It made Ean wonder why Themin had allowed him to succeed thus far.
“This course you have set in motion will cause great, terrible things,” said Themin.
“I am the god of great and terrible things.”
“Perhaps. But I hope, my son, that you can live with the consequences. They will be the end of us.”
Ean grinned. Of course, he knew. He knew what would happen when he put that sword in Ennis Courtnay’s hand and allowed the Lowlanders to win. And he awaited his new fate with a smile.
