“No,” Rashel said. “This is no joke.”
Her somber expression made Wrend pause. Why would the Master want him and Teirn at the places of highest honor, at the biggest feast of the year? Traditionally, demigods that the Master would sacrifice in coming weeks sat in those places. Novitiates didn’t even get to attend the banquet.
Wrend frowned at Teirn, who still glowered at Calla.
“Why does he want us there?” Teirn said.
Calla put a hand on his arm. “Wear your best clothes.”
“Be early,” Rashel said.
Calla nodded. “Arrive before anyone else, so that when everyone arrives they know who our god most loves.”
Wrend’s heart had started to pound. The mothers were serious. “Why does he want us to sit with him?”
Rashel raised her eyebrows. “He only indicated that today is a day he’s waited for since long before your births.”
Calla nodded. “He told me, ‘Tonight, it starts.’ Do you hear that, Teirn? It starts tonight.”
Teirn glared at her.
“What starts?” Wrend said to Calla. Then to Teirn, “What’s wrong?”
This summons made his heartbeat quicken, his legs and arms felt weak. Tonight would alter the course of his life. He could feel it. Everything would change in ways no demigod had seen before.
Teirn glanced at Wrend, then back at Calla, and started to turn away. “Come on, Wrend. We should go.”
But Calla’s fingers tightened on Teirn’s arm. “No. I think you need to come with me. To talk.”
Teirn yanked his arm away. “There’s nothing to say.”
He headed uphill, toward the cheese wagon and the forest beyond.
Wrend frowned at Rashel, spread his hands in a question, and mouthed, What’s going on?
“Comb your hair,” she said. “I don’t want the back sticking up like usual.”
He grunted and headed after Teirn, up the lane lined by rows of wagons.
“Now’s the time, Teirn,” Calla said at their backs. “Don’t shirk your duty.”
“What’s going on?” Wrend said as he caught up.
“Bigger things than you know.”
“Well, tell me.” He looked back to see the mothers turn and head the opposite direction.
Teirn gave him a serious look. “You think this invitation is good, but it’s not. It’s abysmal. Disastrous.”
“Why?”
“Let’s get somewhere private, and I’ll tell you.”
Chapter 2: Laughter no more
It is inevitable that demigods will rise up against god from time to time. History has proven this; those with some divine power will always want more than is their right—and they will always seek to take it. When this happens, it is the meek and helpless who suffer most.
-Athanaric
As he wheeled through the sky on his draegon, Athanaric spotted the trouble from far away. He’d looked forward to this nursery visit for weeks, but now his joy disintegrated, replaced with fear for his pregnant wives, the new mothers, and his newborns.
His duties as god and king demanded most of his time, so he came to the nursery at the top of the Seraglio much less often than he liked. Yet, the newborns’ innocence reminded him of mankind’s goodness, and the toddlers’ enthusiasm renewed his hope. Best of all, these children lived in safety from him. He’d vowed not to kill any of them before they turned two years old.
But from high above he saw the signs. Not a single mother had children out for a stroll on the boardwalk around the field and lake. No pregnant wives enjoyed the unusually warm day. The serving girls didn’t wait on the porch, ready with platters of food for him.
Instead, dozens of paladins lay about the grass between the expansive building and the lake, on the steps to the nursery, and near the doors. All decapitated. Their swords and pikes lay at their sides. The bodies of three demigods lay near each other in the spring grass in front of the nursery steps. Blood flowed from recent wounds.
Athanaric steeled his heart and commanded his draegon to the ground near the three bloody men. The wind rushed in his hair and the draegon’s fur rippled as they descended. Athanaric hardly waited for his undead mount to settle down before jumping from the saddle and running toward the nursery. He glanced at the three demigods lying there in the grass, newly dead, wounds puncturing their bodies, and knew what had happened.
His children had turned on him.
The three dead demigods, Nathran, Tryle, and Stoct, had recently joined the list of Caretakers conspiring against him. He’d known about their imminent treachery, their desire to dethrone him. But he hadn’t expected them to act so soon.
He leapt up the stairs past them, to the nursery porch, toward doors gilded with the likeness of a many-armed and many-headed man. He grabbed the higher set of door handles, about five feet above the handles meant for most people, and shoved the doors open. He stepped into the foyer.
Here, his paladins had made a stand. Their bodies and limbs and heads lay in disorganized piles where they’d fallen in a struggle against his sons. For all of the carnage, not a drop of blood touched the floor or ceiling. Rather, the room bore the clinical smell of salt; when his priests embalmed the paladins, they drained the blood from the human bodies and filled the body cavities with nitrate to preserve them, to ensure that when Athanaric re-animated the bodies with the souls of dogs, they lived for hundreds of years.
Athanaric swallowed hard to suppress a cry. If his enemies remained nearby, he couldn’t let them know they’d touched his heart. He rushed past the bodies toward the doors at the foyer’s back, inlaid in gold with the symbol of a tree with expansive roots and branches bearing heavy fruit. Rocks of nitrate skittered away beneath his feet. He inadvertently kicked the hand of a paladin.
At the double doors he again closed his hands around the higher set of levered handles, about nine feet off the ground, at the level of his waist. After a moment of hesitation, he turned the handles down. They clicked. He cracked the door open—but not even enough to peer through.
Not a sound came from that place where hungry newborns had always cried and mothers had cooed in comfort, where he’d often heard the reckless laughter of toddlers. Now, he didn’t hear a single whimper. Not one shout for help or wail of pain.
Instead, silence.
Only silence.
His breath came short and shallow. Sweat gathered on his brow. His heart thundered.
He removed his fingers from the door handles. He couldn’t enter. He, god, couldn’t bring himself to look at the slaughter. For although he was god, he was also a husband of hundreds. A father of thousands.
He pulled the doors shut. They clicked, hollow and dead in the foyer.
He fell to his knees and knelt there with his forehead against the cold door, his chest constricting. He wished to hear the wail of an infant or the sob of a woman—anything to indicate that his traitorous children hadn’t acted so thoroughly.
But he heard nothing. Silence lay over the stillness, as if by stepping through the doors he would enter a painting.
His little ones. His beloved innocents. And his wives. His precious and pure wives. All murdered.
His breath caught. His hands and arms trembled. He clenched his teeth against the urge to weep, and instead reared his head back to scream. The rafters trembled at his voice. Rocks of nitrate vibrated on the ground.
Wester.
Wester and the other renegades had done this. His own sons who’d spent the last two years conspiring against him even as they worshiped, praised, and served him. He’d let them gain confidence and boldness as they whispered their sedition and recruited other traitors, so he could gather their names in preparation for a cleansing. They were fruitless boughs in the tree of his family, and would need pruning.
He’d had waited for the right moment to eradicate his kingdom of the unholy alliance, to not spook the renegades and let some escape, but had never dreamed they would strike at him in this manner. Had th
ey also attacked elsewhere, at his hundreds of other children and wives lower in the canyon?
The thought lifted him to his feet. He turned from the doors and ran back past the paladins. Outside, he commanded his draegon, Cuchorack, to rise. The draegon snapped his wings open and stood. Sunlight shone through holes in the hairless wings, where the leather had decayed and fallen away. His black horns, turned down from the top of his head and extending past the end of his snout, glistened.
Athanaric swung up onto the saddle on the shoulders, between the wings and the serpentine neck. He grabbed handfuls of red fur, tightened his legs, and ordered the draegon to take him to the Courtyard of the Wall.
He would wait no longer.
The time had come to cleanse his kingdom of treacherous children.
As the draegon wheeled into the sky, a memory came, as clear as if it had happened one day past, and not two millennia before. The vision assaulted him every few years, in moments when he didn’t expect it, like a vision triggered by some small detail. Perhaps today, the glint of the sunlight on the wooden stairs leading up to the porch triggered the memory.
On that day two thousand years before, he’d entered the Divine Palace and found that his brothers had killed Fedron, the sibling who’d taught him in secret to use Ichor. He’d found his ten brothers standing over Fedron’s broken and still body. They’d looked at him apologetically, and said it had to be so.
Fedron. The brother who’d loved him most.
In the subsequent years he’d found revenge against them all, until only he remained to bring the land peace.
And now, his children had broken the peace again.
He turned the draegon westward, toward the Courtyard of the Wall.
Chapter 3: Unexpected attention
The only way to free a people is to enlighten their minds, to teach them how their world could be if they understood the lies they’ve learned from the cradle. For this reason, those in power always silence those who speak the truth.
-Wester
Attending the Reverencing should have excited Teirn like it excited Wrend. Wondering at his brother’s unusual seriousness, Wrend followed Teirn up past the wagons and buildings, toward the trees that bordered the top of the courtyard. Beyond a thirty-yard expanse of open flagstone, the stone narrowed into a path that wound among pines and firs. To the right, along the back of the courtyard, other paths also led up into the canyon.
“What’s the problem?” Wrend said as they approached the trees. “What has you so worked up?”
Teirn looked back, his lips narrow and thin. “I’ve wanted to tell you for years.”
“What?” Wrend said. “Tell me.”
Teirn started to respond, but a voice called them from behind. They halted and turned.
Rashel and Calla had disappeared among the wagons, but an older demigod, a Caretaker probably in his forties, jumped down from the end of the boardwalk and approached them.
Like all male demigods older than twenty, he wore plain pants, a white button shirt, and a black vest. Golden thread decorated the shoulders of the vest and sleeves of the shirt in intertwining branches with broad leaves and heavy fruit. Wrend’s shirt bore similar embroidery, but without the fruit. At age twenty, when he passed from the status of Novitiate and became a fruitful bough in the Parable, he would earn the fruit-bearing design. He would also swap his white bracers for red ones, like those that extended halfway up this Caretaker’s forearm, covering the cuffs of the shirt.
Wrend recognized the Caretaker’s face, but didn’t know his name; most Caretakers spent so little time in the Seraglio that Wrend couldn’t hope to know any of the three hundred very well.
The Caretaker waved and called for them to wait. He moved past the last wagon and through the open space with the confidence only a Caretaker could possess. As he approached, he held out his hand in greeting, and as they met he closed his left hand around Wrend’s left bracers. Wrend returned the gesture, wondering what his brother could possibly want.
“I’m Wester,” he said. “I know that you’re Wrend and you’re Teirn. How are your studies?”
The greeting roused suspicion in Wrend. Teirn furrowed his brow and frowned.
“Has the Master taught you how to use Ichor, yet?” Wester said.
“No,” Wrend said. “We can harvest it, but not use it.”
Just talking about Ichor made Wrend focus on his discernment. As with all his senses, discernment was always there; but he didn’t recognize it unless he consciously thought about it. As he did, he saw waves emanating out from his stomach. They weren’t strong waves, since he hadn’t eaten in several hours, but he saw them clearly: green, measured, small.
However, saw wasn’t the right word, for he didn’t see the waves with his eyes. Felt also wasn’t the right word, for he didn’t feel them with his body or mind. He discerned them, and could therefore harvest them back into his body.
“Of course,” Wester said. He smiled and leaned in close. “Most of us don’t actually wait until the Master teaches us—“
A roar from overhead interrupted him. Wrend looked to the sky, searching for the source, but not finding it. He knew the roar. He’d heard it many times. It belonged to the Master’s undead draegon, Cuchorack. But as far as Wrend knew, the Master had never brought Cuchorack to the Courtyard of the Wall. The draegon’s size simply made it too much of a threat to the buildings and ground.
The singing of the demigods throughout the courtyard faltered and died. Serving girls on the boardwalk dropped to their knees. A lone priest near the back of the wagons also knelt—so did the few other dozen people that Wrend could see scattered among the wagons. All of them turned their attention toward the sky above the forest, to where Wrend couldn’t see because he stood so close to the trees.
Wrend descended to one knee and rested his elbows on the other. Teirn and Wester joined him.
Throughout the courtyard, no one moved or spoke.
Cuchorack roared again. Wrend’s chest vibrated at the deepness of the sound—so much closer than before. The draegon descended into the back of the courtyard to Wrend’s left. It landed with its wings spread wide, yet slammed into the ground like a boulder falling from the sky. A tremor ran up Wrend’s legs. Where the draegon landed, the red and blue pavers buckled and shifted, rippled.
Wrend had seen Cuchorack many times, but never like this, in this place. Its posture bore a threat, a warning of imminent suffering. The threat shone in Cuchorack’s black eyes and glistened along its sharpened horns as it reared back onto its two hind legs, letting its forelegs hang down in front of its hairy body, and cast a shadow over the courtyard by snapping its wings open.
It extended its slender neck high, tilted its snout skyward, and roared. The noise filled the otherwise silent courtyard as if Cuchorack’s body had grown to fill the space. Its head reached well above the tallest trees behind it, and its horns curved down past its chin whiskers. Its tail curled up, reaching almost to the base of its neck.
Straps around Cuchorack’s shoulders and chest secured a saddle onto its back. In the saddle sat the greater source of Wrend’s awe: the Master; god and father, Athanaric.
At eighteen feet tall, the Master sat on the draegon as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Like always, he wore all black—except for the intricate pattern of golden tree roots covering the front, sides, and back of his shirt. With every move of the draegon, he adjusted his weight and held onto the reigns with a grace that bespoke his two thousand years. His every motion conveyed dominance and control. Everywhere his gaze passed, his children, priests, and servants shuddered.
Athanaric looked over the courtyard, his jaw set in anger. It meant something important that he’d brought Cuchorack to the Courtyard of the Wall on the day of the Reverencing.
It could only mean one thing.
Wrend bit his lip. The Master had come to kill a demigod. Wrend looked over the courtyard, trying to remember which Novitiates—demigods younger than
age twenty—were there.
Who would the Master kill this time?
From his position near the trees, Wrend could only see a few dozen people, though he knew that perhaps a hundred knelt out among the wagons. Toward the Master, a pair of female Caretakers knelt along with a priest. Down between the wagons and the boardwalk, a handful of male and female Caretakers knelt and bowed their heads. On the boardwalk, a gaggle of serving girls trembled. No doubt other priests, serving girls, and Caretakers knelt throughout in the courtyard, among the wagons, but Wrend couldn’t recall seeing any other Novitiates in the past hour.
That could only mean one thing. The Master had come for either Wrend or Teirn.
A tingle ran along his arms and down his legs. He cast his mind over the recent day, looking for something he’d done to merit death; even favorite sons could fall from grace. But he found nothing. He’d done nothing wrong. He hadn’t even taken any cheese.
Teirn. The Master had come for Teirn.
Wrend reached over and placed a hand on Teirn’s shoulder. His brother’s eyes bored into his. A shared knowledge of impending death passed between them.
What could Teirn have possibly done?
The Master motioned for the draegon to let him down. The creature obeyed by dropping forward to all four paws, again sending tremors through the ground. With a flapping noise, it folded its wings against its weasel-like body and lowered its tail. The Master lifted one leg over the shoulders and saddle, and slid to the flagstone. His eyes swung back and forth over the courtyard and wagons.
Wrend held his breath.
The Master leapt forward.
Chapter 4: A lesson in Ichor
The extent of what can be done with Ichor far surpasses the comprehension of the average demigod. What limits them is their imagination.
-Pyter
The Master leapt forward, toward the center of the courtyard and into the midst of the wagons.
The Demigod Proving Page 2
