In the Shadow of the Gods

by Rachel Dunne

  “Gods, he’s bleeding!”

  There was a flurry, snow and hands and warmth. Peeling back the layers of his clothes, the layers of his self, to set the cold Northern wind against his flesh and all the wounds piercing it. Too much. It was more than a man could take. Scal closed his eyes, and there was a hope in him that beyond the snows, in whatever kind of life followed this one, he might find Parro Kerrus and Iveran, Brennon and little Jari, and that things could be made different than they were.

  CHAPTER 31

  Alone atop a little hill, Keiro watched the full moon crawl slowly up the sky. If he’d thought three days of waiting had been unbearable, he would laugh at his past self now. Thirty days, and every piece of his being had been straining forward toward this night.

  He sat smiling, for though there was a need ready to burst within him, an unbearable sort of desperation, he could be no less than ecstatic on this night. It was in the air that washed over his skin, a touch of coolness in the breeze to calm and comfort. It was in the short grass he sat on, tickling against his bare buttocks, for his breechclout had finally fallen apart and the replacement he had made from woven grass had been a horrendous failure. It was in the stars, certainly, the white points flickering far off and the two red points watching low at his back. Mostly, of course, it was in the moon, the moon that had summoned him here. He watched it rise achingly slow, and there was a song in his heart that his voice could not give life to.

  Finally, with the moon at its highest, proudest place in the sky, the first of the creatures Yaket had called Starborn appeared at the crest of the tallest hill, and it began its song.

  It was not the same song it had been before. It was different in many small ways, but no less beautiful for them. To Keiro, it sounded like walking, each note a step along a wondrous, looping path. The other voices joined in slowly and faded out again, fellow travelers coming and going, beginnings and endings. This was a song of passage, of the impermanence of people and things and places. It was a song of one winding life and all the other lives it touched on its way down the road. There was walking in the singing, and then there was stopping, for feet could only carry for so long. Always, there was an end to walking. There was only the one voice, the first voice, singing of the stillness, singing an end as the other Starborn left the hill, their glowing scales dimming, fading into the darkness. One voice singing, and as the moon slipped from its apex, across the distance between the big hill and Keiro’s, two red stars shone, a mirror to the Eyes at his back. The voice faded away, the song ending, the walk over, but the grounded stars remained, the scattered points of white light and the two red eyes, locked on him across the expanse. There was a whisper in the wind that caressed his bare skin, and with pounding heart Keiro rose to his feet.

  Walking had always been so easy. An effortless thing, easier than drawing breath. Walking was the thing he had been born to do. Yet his feet felt heavy now, each step a fight, the grass twining around his ankles to drag him back. He had a thought, briefly, that perhaps he should turn away, face the Eyes that were among the stars and not their red counterparts on earth, cross the Plains back to Yaket’s tales and Poret’s arms. That was as unthinkable, though, as not walking. His feet knew his path, and his heart.

  It seemed to take a long time to reach the top of the highest hill, though truly the moon had hardly moved in the sky. The Starborn still waited for him, red eyes watching intently. Against the black sky, with its scattered flecks of glowing white scales, Keiro could certainly see why Yaket called them Starborn. To the rest of the world, to all those who thought them long dead, ancient history, older than the oldest stories, they would have been called mravigi.

  For a long time atop that high hill, they simply looked at one another, Keiro and Fratarro’s ancient creation. Then the Starborn turned and began to descend the hill, its tail flicking in what Keiro thought to be a beckoning sort of way. He would have followed even without that. There was a patch of scrub brush a few lengths down the hill, spare, thorny branches that picked at his skin as he wove through them after the thickscaled creature. Its white scales had dimmed now, little more than a faint glow leading him forward through the night.

  Even with the moon at its brightest, Keiro almost tumbled into the hole. He caught himself as the Starborn’s forked tail tip slipped over the hole’s lip into darkness. Even among the desolate Plains, underground would have been safest for them, though it made him ache to think of the high-soaring mravigi trapped so far away from the stars. They had not been made for tunneling, or for hiding. Nor had Keiro, but he had been made for following. He sat at the edge of the hole, feet dangling into the open air beyond, and didn’t give it a second thought. He pushed away from the ground, and the thorns let him slip away.

  His heels hit the ground first, and then his knees, and then his head. It was not the landing he would have chosen, but the tunnel was dug at an angle. Shaking his head to clear it, Keiro saw the Starborn watching him. It glowed again, dimly, just enough that he could make out the curve of walls and ceiling. A space big enough for the broad-chested creature to pass through comfortably on four legs, belly low to the ground, though it was not so easy for Keiro on hands and knees. His back scraped against the top of the tunnel, his forehead finding protruding roots in time to save his back from them, and his knees throbbed from the awkward landing, scraped raw by the rough-packed floor as he crawled. He could see the deep gouges left by claws, the marks of the digging for which they must have been so ill-suited. Pelir had told him that Fratarro had given his children wings so that they could fly among the stars. There was no sign of wings on the creature he followed, not even stumps where once they might have been. He couldn’t imagine the Starborn passing through this tunnel with bulky wings.

  At first he thought the thrumming was just the pain in his head from so many impacts. But he could feel it, feel the vibrations in his palms and in his shoulders when they rested too long against the walls. He thought, then, that it was the scared pounding of his heart, the knowledge of so much earth pressing around him, held back only by time and hope. It was a sound, though, distinct in his ears and in his bones. It was a sound like to drive him mad with its constancy and its mystery. Gradually it seemed to grow louder, as the tunnel angled ever downward. He had no idea how long he’d been crawling, following behind the faint glow of the mravigi. Sometimes there were other tunnels, gaping empty holes that blew warm air against his sides as he passed, but his guide never turned, and so neither did Keiro.

  He would never have noticed the light had he been aboveground, had his eyes not been straining in the darkness. It was little more than the gentle glow of the Starborn that led him, but it was more, faintly more. The difference between one star and four on a no-moon night. Insignificant, unless it was all the light there was. The thrumming was louder, a low rumble that clenched around his lungs.

  Keiro felt the space before he saw that the tunnel had opened up around him. For a moment he thought they had come full circle, passed back into the open night on the Plains. Only there was no moon here, just a hundred thousand stars punctuated, every so often, by two points of red. Their voices murmured, their claws scraped against the stone and earth, their bodies pressed against one another—the thrumming was loudest here, the sound of so many foreign creatures together in one space.

  “Home,” a voice said softly, a whisper in his ear, the same voice that had named him the son of gods. The Starborn stood beside him, its eyes steady on his own, waiting. It didn’t need to lead him farther; Keiro’s feet knew the way now, and his heart. He started across the vast chamber, the false stars of the watching mravigi shining above and all around, watching. His feet moved with surety now, the steps coming as easily as they always had. All his life, every step, and there had been so many, had drawn him to this place beneath the hill.

  A massive mravigi lay upon the floor, three times the size of the one who had led Keiro, all its scales white and bright as the moon. The red eyes watched him
like drops of blood on snow, eyes nearly as large as Keiro’s palm. More astonishing than the mravigi’s size, even, or the white scales, were the jointed wings folded tightly against its sides.

  Keiro hardly had time to dwell on the wondrous creature, for what sat beyond it filled him with even more awe. His legs crumpled, the strength sapped from him by awe, and his good eye wept shameless tears as he looked upon his fallen gods.

  They were burned, their skin charred black and patterned with cracks as all the old stories said, so that they were almost a part of the darkness that encased them. Sororra sat with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, head bowed so her brow rested upon her arms, a mound of contained sorrow. Hard iron, nearly as dark as her burned flesh, circled at wrist and ankle, and heavy chains snaked deep into the ground. Next to her leaned her brother, his slack face a mirror of hers save for the deep lines that pain, and not fire, had etched into his face. His mouth hung open wide enough to reveal the startling redness within, and the tips of white teeth. He looked almost peaceful in sleep, or in undying death—whatever horror the Parents had condemned him to. Almost peaceful, save for one thing. And thus did Fratarro shatter upon the bones of the earth . . .

  It was raw flesh where his limbs had been torn away, red and sickly and dripping ichor. One leg was gone at the hip, the other halfway to the knee, and he sat in a pool of his own blood. No right arm, but his left was there, the sinewy stitching that held it to his shoulder rough and unpracticed, blood oozing around the edges. It ended in a ragged, ichorous stump, no hand to make it complete . . . . and a shard of ebon pierced his immortal heart . . .

  Fully as long as the arm he had, the spiny shard went clean through him, pinning him against the wall he leaned on. Ichor dripped slow and steady from the wound, tracing familiar patterns down the burned crags of his chest and stomach and groin.

  His Bound Gods, the fallen Twins . . . found, at long last.

  “Thank you,” he said, soft, a choked whisper. At his side the mravigi bowed, and even the white-winged beast inclined its noble head.

  “Be welcome here, Godson,” the one at his side murmured.

  Keiro gazed at them, his beloved gods, more than he had ever hoped to find in all his wandering. “How?” he asked, and didn’t know how to end the question.

  “They fell here, long ago, broken and bound. We found them, and did what we could, those of us who were left. We have all waited a very long time.” There were words unspoken as the Starborn’s eyes fixed to Keiro’s face, open and expectant. Waited, those eyes said, for you.

  It was, suddenly, very hard for Keiro to breathe.

  There was a touch, gentle, at Keiro’s knee. Looking down, dimly visible in the faint starlight glow of the mravigi, one of the Starborn sat, no bigger than Keiro’s hand and the color of smoke. It stood with one foot pressed to Keiro’s knee, its head stretched up toward him, and tiny, translucent wings spread for balance.

  Wonderingly Keiro leaned down, fingertips brushing against the soft scales between the mravigi’s small eyes. The little creature pushed back, eyes flickering shut in catlike contentment. Among all the wonders of this night, it was this one that gave him a moment to collect his thoughts, to gather his breath.

  The moment was not to last. Keiro lifted his head to gaze once more upon his gods, fingers lightly trailing down the little Starborn’s spine. A red glow, brighter than the eyes of the mravigi, bright than stars on a moonless night, suffused the chamber. It was a sudden thing, as though a curtain had dropped away to reveal a thousand hidden candles. It was Sororra, ancient head rising from her crossed arms, and black-burned lids lifting from red eyes.

  “Cazi likes you,” a voice murmured, soft yet piercing, and the red light redoubled as Fratarro, too, opened his eyes. A smile split his face, wiping away the lines of pain.

  Keiro fell forward with a cry that held no words, a sound of shock and joy and wonder and countless emotions beyond naming, a sound born of more than he had ever before felt in all his life. His forehead pressed against the warm stone, and beneath his clapsed hands his heart beat at a frantic pace.

  “Rise, Keiro,” said Fratarro’s gentle voice. “You have found us. Rise, and see where your long patience has brought you.”

  Shaking, with tears streaming from his one eye, Keiro rose and faced his gods.

  They were glorious, beautiful and terrifying, their faces matched, though the lines of Sororra’s face were hard where her brother’s were soft, and it was anger and not pain that was carved deep into her charred flesh.

  Never in his life—standing before his living gods who towered above him, beneath the benevolent smile of Fratarro, who had suffered so greatly, in this enormous space beneath the earth—had Keiro felt so small.

  “Be welcome here, fraro,” Sororra said, and it sounded almost like a growl. There was an old story that said that Sororra’s first words spoken, after Patharro had sent his children among the humans, had created winter.

  “It’s not that she’s hateful or hostile,” Pelir had told him so long ago. “Merely . . . distant, sometimes. And who can blame her? She suffered under the Parents even before they cast her out. They made her as she is, and then hated and denied what they had made of her. Who are we to say that she should be so easy to trust, or to love?”

  Keiro pressed his fist to his forehead, between the good eye and the bad. “I am honored beyond words, my lady,” he said. He knew that wasn’t the right honorific, but what title did one give a god? “And my lord,” he added quickly, bowing to poor Fratarro.

  “We knew the faithful would one day find us,” the god said.

  “And you are the first among the faithful,” Sororra said, her voice an echo of her brother’s, though harder.

  “The most faithful. Son of gods, my children have named you.”

  “Your collection grows, brother.”

  Keiro’s head was reeling, the words hardly sticking in his brain. He wanted to kneel again, to cower, to prostrate himself and blubber devotions. He wanted to flee, scramble his way back up the twisting tunnel to the cool night air, to sit beneath the bright moon and not have to think for a time. He wanted to pinch his arm, to wake from this strange dream next to Poret, sleeping among the plainswalkers, and yet if this was a dream, he wanted never to wake. He wanted to glory in the sight of his gods, bound and unseen for centuries, found finally, but he could hardly bear to look at them, the smoldering fury and the raw painful love and the horror of all that had been done to them.

  “We are in need of help,” Sororra said bluntly. “My brother must be made whole again.”

  “I . . . I will help in any way I can,” Keiro stammered. It was his life’s goal, his purpose. It was a strange thing, though, to actually be faced with that purpose. Such distant goals, held for so long, made real and solid in the blink of one eye.

  Fratarro smiled at him, the smile that was so gentle and full of understanding that it was like to break Keiro’s heart, but even as the god opened his mouth to speak, his eyelids fell, closing shut the bright glow of his eyes. Sororra’s head returned to her arms, and the starlight glow was once more all that filled the carvern.

  “What’s happened?” Keiro asked, and he could hear the panic in his own voice.

  “They sleep, Godson,” said the Starborn at his side. “Be easy. They have little power left to them. It is all they can do, sometimes, to wake.” The creature folded its legs, setting its belly to the floor. “Sit. Rest. They shall return.”

  Hesitant, still feeling the touches of panic, Keiro sat beside the mravigi. The small one, the Starborn with wings whom Fratarro had called Cazi, scurried into his lap. He had small claws, but sharp, and he hooked them into Keiro’s arm. A cry of surprise more than pain burst from Keiro as the Starborn scrambled up his arm to finally perch on his shoulder, snuffling curiously at Keiro’s hair. That pulled another surprised noise from Keiro, though this one was a laugh.

  “How often do they wake?” Keiro a
sked.

  His Starborn guide lifted its head to regard him, and the small mravigi nestled on his shoulder. “They wake when they are able. It is no easy thing, to fight the bonds placed on them. They shall—”

  The sudden brightness cut off the Starborn’s words, the red glow bursting like the sun over mountains. Fratarro, eyes wide to the ceiling, his mouth open not in a smile but in the last breath drawn before a scream. The lines of pain that suffused his face were not smoothed away, but carved doubly deep. Sororra’s eyes flew open, too, and for a moment, the space it took for a star to die, their faces were as a mirror. Fury and pain eternal, released from the place they’d been held tightly down. Fratarro’s back arched, straining against the shard pierced through his chest, and the drawn breath burst from him in a scream, a sound that shook the earth, sent clods of dirt falling through the air. The mravigi began to scream, too, high voices raised in an echo of pain. Tiny claws dug into Keiro’s shoulder. The stars began to flicker out, the mravigi going dark. Keiro saw Sororra move to her brother, hold his one arm that ended in raw flesh, the ichor flowing now down his arm in an unrestrained stream. “My hand!” he heard Fratarro shout, but no other words followed. Just a mindless screaming, an animal’s dying wail. Before the last of the starlight died, Keiro saw Sororra hold her brother, straining against the chains that bound her, and he saw the white Starborn rise from its place at their feet, its enormous wings spread wide. Then all the star-specks were gone in a rush of scurrying claws, and all the red eyes, and it was only the darkness and the screaming, the small creature clinging to Keiro’s neck, and the faint sound of flapping wings.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Living in the cold reaches of the upper Midwest with her beast of a dog, RACHEL DUNNE has developed a great fondness for indoor activities. This, her first novel, was a semifinalist for the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award before being picked up for publishing. For as long as snow continues falling in Wisconsin, she promises to keep writing.