In the Shadow of the Gods

by Rachel Dunne

  CHAPTER 10

  It was, Keiro decided as his feet took him once more through the forest around Raturo, the third hardest thing he had ever done.

  The first twins, the first he’d had to bury—always, they would be the hardest. His first failure, and his first true taste of what the world was like when civility was peeled back by blind fear.

  There was the blinding, that had seemed such a good idea until the pain had brought him crashing down from his cloudlike grief. He could, he thought, have finished the blinding, appeased the Twins, if he hadn’t seen the young twins. He had been ready to do it, even through the pain. It had been harder than he would have guessed to put a stop to it, once his eye had seen.

  And so the twins. Walking away from them was hard, almost the hardest thing he had ever done. But they were safe, in the safest place they could be. Keiro could do nothing for them inside Mount Raturo that was not already being done.

  Keiro had been made for walking, and though it was hard to leave the living twins, visible hope, his feet were happy for the road.

  The exile hurt, to be sure, but he didn’t let himself dwell on it. He had walked all his life, and if the rest of his life was to be walking as well, then that was as it should be. He turned his one eye north, and went to the best place he had ever walked.

  Many preachers, after they ventured once more into the sun out of the darkness of Raturo, chose to go to the Tashat Mountains. The Highlanders, with their One God, were heathens who could be converted, shown the truth of the world. It was a good place to start, for it often taught preachers failure. That was an important lesson, for preachers by their nature would face it again and again. Keiro had found his own first failure among those snowy peaks, in the places where Fiateran blood and culture had hardly touched the deep-set Highlands ways. But he had also found his first success in the lovely, sprawling valleys scattered among the mountains.

  He hadn’t seen Felein for a long while—she, too, had been made for walking, and their paths rarely crossed. But he remembered her fondly, she with her faith already shaken by long mixing with Fiaterans. She had listened to him beneath the stars that were strung so beautifully above the mountain peaks, for she had a quick mind that wanted to learn all the world would give her. Her blood, too diluted by Fiateran stock, had none of the spark of magic that lurked in the Highlands, and so she was denied the Academy. “There are books there,” she’d said, with the same sort of reverence with which Keiro spoke of the Twins, “more books than there are stars. More books than anyone could read in a lifetime. In five lifetimes!” Books she would never see, because she had been deemed inferior.

  “When the Twins rise,” Keiro had told her, “it will be different. All will be equal under their rule. You will never be denied a thing that another is given. Without Metherra’s sun, in the darkness, no man is different from any other.”

  Her eyes had blazed with joy, but then the fire had died. “You can’t read in the darkness.”

  He’d thought it another failure, another in his growing count. But when he’d left the village a handful of nights later, another set of feet had left with him. “There’s a way,” Felein had said with confidence, the stars glowing in her eyes. “There has to be a way.” And so it was a success, after all.

  They welcomed him, the Highlanders of those little valley villages. They welcomed him same as they would any traveler, eager for news and trade and a face they had not seen a thousand times before. They stared, of course, at the raw socket of his lost eye, but it was healing, and he learned to wear the eyecloth crossed over the one eye only. They didn’t always listen to him, when he spoke of his gods trapped beneath the earth, but neither did they chase him from the village, throw rocks at him, beat him with clubs. It was, in all, the best place he could think of to spend the first few weeks of his exile.

  “God is good to us here,” Terron said, sipping the spiced drink the Highlanders called hacha. “Why should I ever want to leave this place to wander, reviled wherever I go?”

  “It’s not like that,” Keiro said, though the half lie made him uncomfortable. He preferred honesty when he spoke of his gods and his people, but Terron had already proved to be just as devoted to his own God, though increasingly curious about the Twins. “Fear is a strong motivator throughout the world, and we fear that which we do not understand. The world, generally, is a frightened place.”

  “Frightful, more like.”

  Keiro waved a hand to encompass the mountains that ringed them in all around and asked, “Have you never wondered what’s beyond your comfy peaks? There’s a whole world you’ve never seen, and places just as beautiful as this in their own ways.”

  “‘In their own ways,’” Terron repeated, smirking into his hacha. “That’s a kind way of tying a bow on a pile of shit.”

  The village was called Two Rivers, a small place. A gentle place, so far from the cruelty of the world, and close enough to the Academy that they were well educated. Terron, himself a failed mage, had greeted Keiro eagerly and immediately drawn him into a theistic debate. It was a good place; Keiro could not and would not argue that point. If he had not been made for walking, he might almost have been tempted to stay a great deal longer than a few days.

  “Don’t sneer at things you’ve never seen,” Keiro said, a gentle chiding in his voice. “For all you know, your heart could beat in time with the Great Ocean’s waves, or the crowded steps of Mercetta’s streets. There are things a man cannot know about himself until he has traveled beyond the circle of the places that make him feel content and safe. And, more, a man who does not know himself cannot truly begin to guess at what hands shape and guide our world.”

  “Ah, so you say because you have seen more water and hills and fields than I have, you know the face of God?”

  “Not at all,” Keiro said, taking a sip of his own bitter hacha. “I merely say that I have seen more water and hills and fields than you have, and I have heard all the myriad voices that whisper in places of beauty to those who will listen, and I know the voice that calls to my heart.”

  Terron’s eyes fixed on him, the gentle, friendly mockery replaced by something Keiro could not quite read. It was a long, quiet moment before Terron asked, “You claim you have heard your gods?”

  Keiro shrugged, hoping to banish the sharp suspicion in the other man’s eyes. “I claim only to be a very good listener.”

  Terron shook his head in flat denial, his mouth open to argue, and then his eyes went strangely distant, fixed on a place over Keiro’s shoulder. There was a crackling in the air, a dryness like the moments before a strike of lightning, and behind his missing eye Keiro saw again the eyes of all the babies he had let die.

  “Something’s wrong.” Terron rose so abruptly he bumped the table, their earthenware mugs of hacha trembling and tipping, spilling the spiced drink with a sharp scent of cloves. In the silence, laced with a nameless sudden fear, the sound of one of the mugs shattering against the ground was unspeakably loud.

  Two Rivers, small as it was, did not have much of a village square. The people gathered, when they needed to, in the green space behind the elder’s hut. That was where they found the crowd. Terron had told him, in their long talking, that though the Academy had cut away his power, he still had his senses, sharper for a mage than for the average man. Average a man as could be, even Keiro could feel the fear and anger, battling like live things in the air.

  There were as many of the villagers as Keiro had yet seen, more than he’d thought had lived in the small collection of huts, and it seemed as though all of them were shouting. Their target was a woman, wearing the same black robe as Keiro, and his stomach knotted.

  Terron touched a man’s arm, made himself be heard over the crowd’s fury. “What’s happening?”

  The man said only a single word, but it took all the color from Terron’s face: “Lethys.”

  Standing on his toes, Keiro tried to see above the heads of the villagers. Vaguely, he could make out
a form at the preacher’s feet. Nothing distinct, until a shift in the bodies revealed a hand, reaching from the huddled lump to clutch at the preacher’s robe. Using his elbows, stomping on feet, Keiro forced his way through the press of bodies. His hair stood on end, the invisible storm close to breaking.

  There was true fear in the preacher’s eyes, her face pale but hard. She clutched a staff in one hand, not so different from Keiro’s walking stick; her other hand rested on the matted hair of the man kneeling at her feet. His eyes were wide, almost entirely pupil, staring uncomprehendingly as his lips moved. He could have been shouting, but still his voice would have been lost in the crowd. There was an older woman, crumpled and sobbing, and a straining man being held back by others. And there was the shouting, too many voices to be words, no more than a primal scream shaped by many throats.

  Keiro stepped forward, into the half circle of space between the preacher and the mob, and hoped he would be heard over the shouting. “Sister, what happens?”

  Relief flooded her face for a brief moment, replaced just a quickly by horror, and then a blind hatred that mirrored the faces surrounding her. Clearly, over the shouting, he heard her spit, “Apostate.”

  Out of the pressing crowd, Keiro could start to hear individual voices. The old woman sobbing, “What’ve you done to ’im, what’ve you done?” The man fighting against those who held him, two words repeated again and again, “My son. My son.” In the incoherent shouting, occasionally one sound emerged, that name: “Lethys.” Each time, the man huddled at the preacher’s feet flinched, as though the word were a physical blow, but his lips never stopped moving.

  “Please,” Keiro said to the preacher, “I can help.” Behind his missing eye, the small eyes swam, wide and blank. “Please. Let me help you.”

  He would never know if the rock was aimed at him or the female preacher. It hit him, though, high on the shoulder, hard enough to spin him half around and send him stumbling. The preacher stepped back from him as he fell, letting him sprawl in a heap near the muttering man, and he saw the second rock fly over her head, a narrow miss. The third didn’t miss. It hit her arm, and her staff fell from numb fingers, and her other hand clenched in the man’s hair as she cried out in pain. The man’s lips stopped, opened wide in a long scream that made the tendons stand out stark on his neck, and somehow over it Keiro heard, “My son!” The preacher fell heavily near Keiro, borne down by the weight of a father’s fury and his fists, and all around they were shouting, “Lethys. Lethys. Lethys,” and through the battering fists the preacher shouted with bloody teeth, “Lethys, help me,” and the man’s hands danced in wild patterns. Lethys cried out as a light burst from his fingers, and the smell of burned meat came strong to Keiro’s nose. The preacher pushed the man off of her, and Keiro saw the hole that went through him, from one side of his chest to the other, the edges of the wound a deep black.

  In the Highlands, they told tales of the first mage, blessed by their God with powers beyond human reckoning. Garen Three-eye, who had stood atop a mountain and torn lightning from the sky.

  The older woman who had been sobbing now screamed, high and piercing, and there was a screaming in Keiro’s chest, too. For mages, using their powers to kill another brought a fate worse than death. The Academy had strict laws, and little sympathy.

  “Shield us,” the female preacher said thickly. Her lips were bleeding, one eye already swelling shut. Lethys, the mage, quickly began to weave shapes in the air, and a faint prickling shivered across Keiro’s skin. The crowd surged forward in fury, but they were halted by some kind of barrier that Keiro couldn’t see.

  The preacher rose slowly to her feet, using Lethys for support. When she stood, the mage clung to her robe as tears streamed down his cheeks, his wide eyes fixed on the dead man lying near his feet. His own father.

  The preacher reached into her robe, brought out a little jar, and from it scraped a black paste across the tongue Lethys eagerly stuck out. His eyes closed as he swayed on his knees, still clinging to the preacher as though he would tip over.

  It was all too much for Keiro to understand. “What have you done to him?” he asked softly.

  The preacher didn’t turn to look at him, just gently stroked Lethys’s hair as he swayed. “There are things you do not know, broth—” She stopped herself, amended: “Apostate.” She was quiet for a time, eyes on the ground, carefully avoiding the crowd battering against the shield Lethys had created. Her hand faltered against Lethys’s hair, and there was a different note in her voice when she spoke again. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t know this was his village . . .”

  “What has been done to him?” Keiro asked again.

  Briefly, her fingers tightened, clutching at hair. “He’s mine. I was given permission.” Her fingers loosened, straightened, smoothing once more. “He is helping me.” Finally she turned to face Keiro, and the look in her eyes did not match the hardness in her voice. “You should leave this place, apostate. I am bound to kill you on sight, for whatever your crimes might be. But . . . there has been enough death here today. I will say you were never here, if you leave now.”

  “Please, just tell me—”

  “Go, apostate. Go far from here. Go farther than anyone can ever find you.”

  Keiro could hardly breathe around the lump in his throat as he stepped from the shelter of Lethys’s protection. The crowd grabbed at him, hands and fists and feet, looking for anything on which to vent their fury. He knew he would have suffered worse than those few strikes if the preacher hadn’t drawn Lethys to his feet and begun to walk in the direction they had come. The shield stayed tight around them as they walked, though the villagers certainly tested it, with fists and rocks and their own angry bodies. They left Keiro standing alone, aching, near the sobbing and screaming woman, who crawled slowly to her dead husband. He could not stand to watch it.

  He turned away from the preacher and the mage; away from the villagers he had come to know in so short a time, their kindness peeled back in layers by one cruel act. The Highlands, a place that had mingled so deeply with Fiatera, a place that had still been shaped by the hands of the Parents, were no longer a good place for walking.

  “I’m sorry,” he said aloud, to Terron and the other villagers, to Lethys and his dead father, to all the dead twins, and the live ones inside Raturo. “I’m sorry,” he said as he left them behind.

  “You’ve a gentle heart,” Pelir had told him, and Keiro’s gentle heart could no longer bear this place. He would prepare the world for the young twins, and the Twins when they were freed from their prison, but Fiatera was too hard a place. Like Fratarro, he would find a corner of the world, a peaceful place, and quiet, and he would shape it for them. A place that was far from dead buried babies and their eyes that would not leave him. A place where he could hear the voices of his gods and know he had followed the right path. A place where, finally, his walking feet could rest.

  CHAPTER 11

  Joros found his mage talking to the children. That alone wasn’t enough to send his anger near to boiling over, for Anddyr could often be found with the young twins—broken things had a tendency to drift together. It was the day that had come before, combined with the fact that the little beasts were in his rooms, that made Joros kick the chair.

  It splintered against the wall, more force behind the kick than he’d intended, but Anddyr was the only one to flinch. The mage curled into a ball of fear, and the children turned to look at Joros with level eyes.

  “You should really learn to control your anger,” the boy said softly.

  Joros wanted to kick something else, but there was nothing near enough, and his foot was throbbing. He settled for grinding his teeth. “I have told you,” he said as levelly as he could, “that you are not to be in my rooms.” Dirrakara had chided him for being too harsh on the children, told him he’d regret it if he made them hate him. He’d been making an effort to hide his distaste, but the monsters didn’t make it easy.
r />   Avorra sneered at him—she was working on perfecting that expression. “If you let Anddyr go out sometimes, we wouldn’t have to come here.”

  “I have also told you that you are not to speak to Anddyr.”

  “But he’s so lonely.”

  Joros glared at the mage, who carefully avoided his eyes. “You’re not lonely, are you, Anddyr?”

  “No, cappo,” the mage said quickly.

  “See? Now please leave.”

  Avorra sneered again. “It’s not the truth if you say it when you’re scared.” She knelt down next to Anddyr and his eyes fixed on her face. “You’re lonely, aren’t you, Anddyr?” Her voice was a coo, startlingly close to Dirrakara’s mothering-voice. “Don’t you wish you could spend more time outside this room?”

  The mage’s eyes flicked from the girl to Joros to something he held in his lap. When he shifted, Joros got a clearer view of it: the lumpy, poorly made stuffed horse some preacher had given to Avorra when she was a baby. She’d carried it around everywhere until she’d discarded it a few months ago. He’d thought the stupid thing gone forever. And yet there it was, with his mage’s hands wrapped tightly around its yellow body.

  There was a story, one of the old stories preachers told of the times when the gods still walked the earth, of man’s first death. Patharro had come down to visit the first man, Beno, one of his earliest creations; the man had grown wrinkled and bony, centuries old, but he still had the energy of a young man. The Father spoke with him for a time, until he grew tired of Beno’s querulous nature; but when he went to leave, Beno followed after him, jabbing at Patharro with his heavy walking stick and demanding why the Father had not shaped him better—made his bones stronger, given him claws like a greatcat, made his eyes sharper, made his skin thicker, given him wings. Finally Patharro turned and tore the stick from Beno’s hands, using it to strike down the first man. Patharro had made it so that no man would ever grow so old as Beno, so that death would take everyone before they could ever grow so tiresome.