The secret can’t last. The gods--departed, feral!
Panic strikes in myriad ways. Many who are of means leave their trades. They cloister themselves inside their homes with their families and servants to escape the unpredictability of the streets. Others wander openly, drinking and singing, then turn to blows or mournful sobs.
What can the city guard do, but break up the larger groups and hope they head to their homes? Their authority weakens daily.
Syna stands and watches from the viewing-window of Eotrene’s tower. She sighs. This can’t last.
Days of grasping for answers have yielded nothing. She feels like a dulled instrument, less and less an Unfolder than yet another Tawnian without direction. She’s labored her entire life never to turn her gaze from her god. She feels off. Last night she caught herself staring down into her bath, wondering if the fishscale reflection of the water lapping at her ankles was an echo of the ocean’s. Later she wondered if the thought made any sense.
She found sleep after many restless hours. But even with the shutters closed, she stirred with the morning sun, conditioned by years of an Unfolder’s routine.
And so she finds herself once again in Eotrene’s tower. The she-wasp peered from these slatted windows for decades, unseen. But today, here is a mortal watching a civilization in its death throes. Are other cities in such bedlam?
She studies Eotrene’s engravings for a moment, finds some comfort but no answers. For a moment she eyes the velour-draped shelf but stays her curiosity. Let a god have her secrets.
When she parts the tapestry to leave, she cries out in surprise.
“Apologies,” says Governor Gholand. He grips the curtain’s edge with his hands, carefully, as if testing a pan’s heat. “Mind if I?”
Syna shrugs and turns back into Eotrene’s dwelling-place. The governor follows.
“My second time in the tower.” He gives Syna a tired smile. “Amazing to see these quarters. The same as any other room!”
“Does seeing them bring you any understanding?”
“I’m humbled, to have had a god so ascetic. But no. I only feel her absence more. I feel wayward. As if the world has already reached its end and I’m only waiting for myself to realize it.”
Syna peers through the shattered windowframe. “You speak for the city. Listen to the clamor, they’re aimless.”
He nods wearily. “Makes me think of the stories. About before. Much as I hate to.”
There are only whispers of what life was like before the gods, lifetimes back. War and cruelty, spoils and slaughter. Bloodshed sworn along whatever lines humans could invent to divide themselves from one another. The gods were forced to forbid torture first, of all things.
She remembers she wept, as a child, when she first heard this. How lost was humanity, once?
The gods brought wonderful things with them. Medicine, philosophy, seemingly endless knowledge. The she-wasp herself designed the massive dome capping her tower, and similar domes now dot the realm.
“I’m wholly selfish, Governor," she says with a sad smile. “I picture the people losing what we have, falling back into depravity, and it’s almost a comfort. An escape from thinking about what I’ve lost.”
“A friend.”
“I could lose a friend. She was more, but I know not what. I’ll have to study the void she’s left behind.”
They fall into silence for a moment.
“Listen!” Gholand says, perking up. “What’s happening out there? Can you see?”
Syna furrows her brow. He is right. Even at this height, the din outside is growing...
Then they hear the humming of wings.
~~~
Gholand supports the much older Unfolder as they make their way down the many spiraling stairs. They step out into the tiny Courtyard of the God at the tower’s base and continue to the governor’s hearing-room across the way. From its windows, they can see most of the city.
The humming echoes, rebounds. They strain for its source.
Then the she-wasp emerges.
Eotrene flies low over the city and lands on the tower, her head toward the ground. She hops across its surface, crawling and leaping in haphazard bursts. Syna turns away, but she has to look at the people congregated in the streets, at her people.
She wishes she hadn’t.
The pain from their eyes mirrors hers. Their god is debasing herself, a holy form not meant for casual eyes paraded in the light of day. A form made even more perverse by its human attributes, not purely animal like the bodies of most of the gods.
Primordial might, tempered with presence? No. Today, the god is untempered, bestial. Syna can’t deny that this is Eotrene. But Eotrene is not here.
A call resonates through the air, high and piercing. Syna can see the people glance about. Is Eotrene shrieking so? But no--another form descends upon the she-wasp, a Being which must have followed her from the nearby saddles. Another god, in the form of an osprey.
The God of Knowing.
It’s a scramble, a fight of instinct. Limbs and talons flail and strike. They deal blows too quick for Syna’s eyes.
The she-wasp plants herself on the osprey’s side, sending the pair into a maple seed’s fall. Her mandibles rip through flesh and tear feathers free. But her stinger is blocked by the osprey’s curled wing. Its venom gathers in a thick, useless bead the color of amber.
The way she moves doesn’t make sense. Syna can’t reconcile it with the god she has known. This creature flails like a marionette, herky-jerky. When Eotrene killed Kovial she was purposeful; no movement was wasted, every feint was steeped in intent.
But this Eotrene, the one in the sky above...
No, no, Syna tells herself, this can’t be the god she has spoken to so many times, the one with a voice like milk, the one who has dealt justice with wisdom. The one who took up the weakening Kovial’s slack, who brought Tawn to glory and saw it flourish, while helping Syna to understand her own self.
The frenzied beast in the melee above is Eotrene, and yet can’t be. Is and yet isn’t...
Syna’s thoughts rise to an unbearable pitch. They deafen.
As the God of Knowing and the god of Tawn plummet, the osprey strikes at Eotrene to match her strikes, to beak his way through her hard lower-carapace. But his body is held firm; there is little that he can do but nip to no result.
Those watching in the streets run for better points of vantage. They strain over one another. The gods are about to strike the ground!
By Syna’s side, Gholand chokes softly.
A booming crunch of stone sounds as the two gods land hard against the railing of Tawn’s city wall, near the east gate. The she-wasp takes the brunt of the blow. They knock the topmost stones free as they fall to the other side, out of the city’s view.
Syna cranes her neck as if she might peer over the wall, so far away. She can see nothing. Only a cloud of earth is kicked up by the unseen impact. But from behind the gate Syna can hear cries of unearthly pain and ferocity from animal throats; the sounds of a mortal struggle. Who can tell which sounds come from which god? They are all so alien, so unhinged.
A shout of surprise from Tawn’s gathered masses as the God of Knowing emerges from the billowing cloud and leaps backward onto the wall. More railing-stones fall beneath his talons as he snaps twice at something unseen and takes flight. He rises until he can barely be seen in the evening sky.
From behind the wall--nothing.
The people watching are still, like a painting.
Slowly, Eotrene rises into view. A colorless ichor drains from a gash in her lower chest. There the flesh is a dark olive tone, like a human’s--not the hard orange chitin of her carapace.
Her right legs are curved around the wound, stiff, like the leg of a wounded dog. She rises aimlessly and turns without clear direction, save for her vertical climb.
Eventually, Eotrene finds her way to her tower. Perhaps some part of her recognizes it, feels drawn to it. She faces the
edifice with a single mind as she flies. The she-wasp passes her viewing-window and then rises further. She circles the massive dome which she herself designed and continues into the empty air above it.
A blur of brown and white streaks through the sky, and the she-wasp is gone, snatched from the air. The dome of the tower is shattered like ceramic.
After a long moment, Syna remembers to breathe. Her ears ring with the sound of the impact, so close.
The God of Knowing emerges from the debris and perches at the edge of the broken tower window. Its torn body paints the stone around it a brilliant red. Amidst the ruin it has created, it raises its beak to the sky, wide and dripping with pale gore.
Tawn is silent. Syna watches them. Do they think that the city’s new god has arrived? She holds no such hope.
She wants to turn from the window, to sink down against the stone, to mourn. Here, stark and inescapable before her, is a death. Not a single death, like Kovial’s. No--something which will take the gods from this world, while also, cruelly, leaving them here.
In the death of this one god is mirrored the death of the gods themselves.
The God of Knowing surveys the land around it. It nips at its talons and lower feathers, at its wounds. Then it takes wing and glides over the city, past the west gate and through the valley beyond it. Its silhouette fades from sight against the setting sun.
And with that, the dam breaks.
A low, keening lament comes over the citizenry. Grief, too keen and fresh for words. Syna turns from the window and retches, but her empty stomach can produce nothing.
Without thinking, she steps out of the hearing-room, leaving the stunned governor behind. She finds herself in the streets, in the clamor. There is pain here. She takes it in. It mingles with her own.
After a long while, she blinks and comes back to herself. She sees where the force of habit has taken her.
She stands near her Unfolder’s dais.
It’s as holy a place as there is in the city, save for Eotrene’s tower. Here Syna has delivered her homilies, fresh with the afterglow of her meetings with Eotrene. The dais still has some power, she can tell: nobody sits on the goldenrod platform as they wail.
But she hangs her head. These people are lost in pain and trauma, and she with them. What function can an Unfolder possibly serve here, now? Who is she, without the god she serves? She can’t bring the gods back into the lives of these people; her only value comes from relaying their will to them--
She lifts her head in surprise.
A thought resurges, from days before. The idea of speaking for gods, making her words theirs. A betrayal of her Unfoldership. Evil, shameful.
Here in this crowd are the same pained eyes the governor showed her, in his hearing-room. The same desperate fear which led him to beg her for understanding. The same fear which led that old woman in the paddies to craft her own object of guidance, that faded stitch of long-dead Kovial, as she held fast to the god of her upbringing.
Look out at the city, Unfolder. See the roofs, that earthy umber. Our vantage gives us sight they ever lack.
Syna can never have her god back for herself, it is true. But she can do something for this miserable throng. She still has her authority, though she feels it waning. And now is not the time for an Unfolder’s stillness.
This time she’ll do it. Swallow back the horror of it and speak for a god.
Reeling, but forcing herself to walk, she approaches the platform. A young woman comes forward to help her Unfolder up, twin babies bundled behind her back. Syna steps up and turns to thank her, but is struck silent by the girl’s betrayed eyes.
She walks to the center of her dais and raises her arms heavenward in the traditional gesture. Ceremony is important at a time like this.
The square begins to fill. Some call for their friends and family. Others exit in disgust and look back at their Unfolder with resentment. Still, by the end, far more are here than have ever attended one of her homilies.
The air is filled with dread expectation.
Syna lowers her tired arms and speaks.
“I see the tumult here, and the loss of hope. I confess that it saddens my heart. On this day, the gods have seen fit to give us a gift--one we scarcely deserve.”
She meets their eyes, one by one. They may not remember all of her words, thinking of this day, but they will remember that she saw them.
“The signs were always there for those willing to see. Eotrene prepared me well for them and spoke of them often. But first, I must ask you a question: Artisans--when you take on an apprentice, do you continue to direct them after they meet or surpass your skill?”
She waits, and before long she sees heads shake in response. No, no you don’t.
“Fathers and mothers--do you bathe and feed your children, after they are old enough to have children of their own?”
This time there is a greater response, and some small laughter.
She nods her head in agreement. “No, that’s not the way of things, is it?”
No longer able to meet the eyes of these children who so trust her, she looks past them instead. She has reached the crux of her address. The principles that she will have to teach, again and again, without the slightest hint that she has ever believed anything else.
“Tawn,” she continues, “the gods never meant to rule us forever. We have become as apprentices, now masters. As children, now grown. What we saw earlier was not our patron god, nor the God of Knowing. Because the wisdom of the gods, their strength, all that they once offered us--they have laid that mantle onto us, onto the people they served.”
She pauses. She lets the people take this in, lets her words gain power through the silence which follows them.
For a moment, she nearly believes the theology that she invents. All the better. Believing what she says will give her words power. Tawn’s Unfolder will lose the gods forever, but the city won’t. These people won’t.
She raises her hands again, signaling her final words. “People of Tawn: The gods have left their bodies behind to do as beasts do. But still they watch us, from their astral lands. They want to see how we’ll use their gift! We’re to rule ourselves now, not to receive guidance through holy veils.”
Finished, she lowers herself to the ground and closes her eyes. She listens to the murmur of the crowd around her.
She will be accountable for this, perhaps, in another life, one where the gods rule in their true form. She’ll accept their judgment. It is theirs to give, after all. For now, her only thoughts are for these people.
In these first moments, there’s no motion to destroy her for heresy, either from the crowd or from the heavens themselves. She lets her shoulders relax.
~~~
As the seasons wear on, Syna’s words spread. Many who have the means journey to meet this great Unfolder. Syna gives her homily time and again, and finds to her relief that she believes it each time that she gives it. Believes it just enough.
Only afterward come the tears, the furtive attempts at penance, the desperate supplication in the night. She welcomes the guilt, as long as it leaves her face before the next homily.
“Is all of this true?” Gholand asks once. “Did Eotrene prepare you for this time? You seemed as lost as I was.”
“It is as I said,” she can only reply.
Only one other ever questions her: a dark-haired man in the robes of the tribunal. A visiting dignitary who has come to see the esteemed Unfolder of Tawn, who lies dying.
He speaks earnestly. “I was a child when my god went feral. On that day, I felt only fear. But months later, when I came to this city to hear your address in person, I... well, I felt more. Our new mantle of wisdom.”
His voice cracks. “Only now, I’m not so sure. In my work, I’ve learned that a man who wants desperately to believe something is easily convinced.” He leans in and speaks low. “Unfolder, I know why you did what you did. But please tell me: Are we really nothing more than men, as I now belie
ve?”
At that moment, the façade falls, just a little. She meets the young man’s eyes for some time, and then casts hers downward. “Just men, yes. But find beauty in that.”
Looking both wounded and reassured, he gives Unfolder Syna a curt nod, and leaves.
At once, she feels a great peace fall over her. Perhaps her final words are behind her--it is said that this brings a calm acceptance to a person. Or maybe she feels peace because she no longer holds the weight of a heavy secret. Maybe when she has left this world, that magistrate will feel a greater weight on his shoulders.
She lays back and enjoys the feeling, relieved to be soon leaving this messy business of Unfolding behind.
Just men, she thinks. But perhaps that’s enough.
~~~
As an appendage of the gods, Unfolders are not usually afforded a formal elegy and procession. However, Syna being who she was, Tawn’s officials veer from the custom just a little by reading over her body her esteemed homily, which by now holds little of the original wording. Still, they do not flaunt the rules so far as to mark her gravesite.
Outside, members of once-rival lineages centuries forgotten sing canticles in honor of the Great Unfolder and drink themselves into oblivion, which prompts only more happy song.
Above them, the dome of the former patron god’s tower is nearly complete, redesigned by the realm’s top drafters. Theirs is a variation on Eotrene’s pattern, with refinements intended to honor the original construction while reflecting the developing knowledge and aesthetic of the realm. A great lantern stands on top, and while this version lacks stone buttresses to support it, the designers have assured the governor, entering into his silver years himself, that the dome will not fall.
He takes their word for it.
___
Copyright 2021 Dustin Steinacker
Dustin Steinacker is a science fiction and fantasy writer who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he finally has the reading porch of his dreams. His short fiction has appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show and Compelling Science Fiction, and he is the 2018 winner of the James White Award.
The Patron God of Tawn Page 2
