The Gods of Men

by Barbara Kloss

  With a sigh, he pulled his hand away and approached the pond. The water lay still and dark, like a piece of polished skal. Moss-covered roots snarled along its banks, gnarled and twisted as they dipped into the black water like snakes. He reached the pond’s rim and crouched before it, his boots depressing the mossy earth.

  “You are keeping secrets from me,” he said quietly, watching the still waters.

  What had it seen? Or, more importantly, whom?

  Rasmin frowned, stood, and just as he was beginning to turn, he felt a pull from deeper within the woods, in the direction of a place he had not visited in a very long time.

  Wary, he followed the pull, letting it draw him beyond the lake, deeper into the woods, where a natural escarpment stretched for miles in either direction. That, too, had not always been there. The back of his mind tingled, and his eyes narrowed on the place where a curtain of ivy swayed as if pushed by a breeze.

  He approached, then pressed a hand to the patch that’d moved, and he pushed it aside. A small tunnel lay beyond, a natural crack in rock. Pale green light shone ahead. He ducked inside and let the curtain fall behind him.

  The tunnel was narrow and small, but it’d been designed so that only those who knew where it was could find it. Still, Rasmin barely squeezed through a few tighter places, eventually emerging on the other side where a small clearing lay, surrounded by a natural rock wall that hid it from the world.

  Rasmin stopped in his tracks.

  At the center of the clearing, a dozen paces away, stood the tree where they had buried him.

  Azir Mubarék. The one who had almost destroyed this world with the help of his Liagé all those years ago.

  The tree had split down the center, each half folded open like the pages of a book. An unnatural blackness coated the bark, spilling onto the ground like pitch, and a foulness clung to the air. Something sour, something spoiled.

  Something dark.

  Rasmin had seen this kind of power before, a long, long time ago. With growing trepidation, he walked forward and stopped at the edge, boots grazing the black. Slowly, he pressed his fingertips into the stained earth.

  A cloaked figure, fingers clawing the earth. A flash of light, a blood-piercing scream.

  Ink leaked from the tree.

  And then…

  Fire.

  His fingertips seared, and he pulled them away with a gasp. Where he’d touched the power, his skin burned red. It’d taken a dozen Liagé to bind Azir inside the earth, and even then, they’d struggled. He remembered. He’d been one of them.

  And someone had set Azir’s spirit free.

  Only a necromancer had this kind of power—a zindev, the Liagé called it—someone with power over the dead. The same type of power, he suspected, had been used at Reichen and Durnsten. The same type of power used on Iza, his inquisitor. And it was of a strength Rasmin had never seen.

  He’d wondered how many men were in the legion that’d been attacking Corinth’s villages, but now he wondered if the legion was composed of men at all.

  A breeze whispered, and the treetops creaked and groaned. Rasmin looked up. In a whirl of his cloak, he Changed and took flight, exploding through the trees and into a gray sky.

  A shockwave of white ripped through Sable. Something screamed. The sound was inhuman, a shrieking chord of madness and pain and nightmares. The world fell silent, the light vanished, and the stench faded to a memory.

  Panting, Sable lowered her arm.

  The thing was gone, and a strange silvery light pulsed behind her.

  Wards.

  They glowed from a free-standing pillar, the symbol pulsing from stone like a beating heart, humming faintly with power. It was then she noticed the ruins, illuminated by the soft wardlight. A ring of broken pillars, save the one, encircled her, situated as if they’d once supported a ceiling between them. There was no ceiling now, only open sky. She had no idea what it’d been intended for, or why it was here, in the middle of nowhere, and her luck at stumbling into it was such that she thought she might start believing in the gods.

  She remembered Jos.

  By the light of the wards and snow, Sable scrambled up the snowy embankment, following the tracks she’d left from her tumble. Her fingers were numb with cold, and she slipped a few times before clambering over the edge. There, she stopped short, heart pounding.

  An inky silhouette stood a few paces away, its back to her, but even in the night, she knew what it was. A Silent.

  Were the gods determined to destroy her?

  The Silent crouched and bent over a body. Jos’s body.

  Sable hesitated, uncertain of what she should do. She could slip away. She’d already done more for Jos than he deserved, but she remembered how Ventus had controlled the shades. What if this Silent permitted Jos to change, only to use Jos’s remarkable senses to find her?

  Or…

  She could kill the Silent. Jos had already proven they could be killed, and this Silent hadn’t spotted her yet. She had the benefit of surprise, and she had one of Jos’s daggers. She’d snagged it off of his belt when she’d been supporting him.

  Sable slipped the blade free and crept toward them.

  “I know you’re there.”

  The Silent’s deep voice stopped her halfway to her goal. “You can talk,” she said, stunned. It wasn’t her best response, but in all her time living in The Wilds, not once had she heard a Silent actually speak. After all, it was how they’d earned their name.

  “And here I heard you were clever,” the Silent said. “There’s still time for him, but we must hurry. Come. Help me with him.”

  A dozen questions pushed for voice, all of them in a tangle. “You want to help us.”

  The Silent placed a hand on Jos’s forehead. “Yes. Unlike the others, I don’t work for Ventus.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “I don’t see that you have much choice.” The Silent pulled his hand back and his cowl turned to her. She couldn’t see the face within the shadows, but she didn’t need to. She knew what it looked like.

  “Every moment you stand there is a moment lost to darkness,” the Silent continued. “I can’t carry him on my own. Neither can you. And he’ll come for you if he turns. You know this, healer.”

  Sable hesitated, weighing her options, and then distant howls echoed in the night. Shades. Many of them.

  Jos let out a soft moan, his body suddenly restless as if responding to their call. Sable shoved the dagger in her belt, rushed forward, and grabbed Jos’s boots. Together, she and the Silent carried Jos’s body through the snow and trees. The howling persisted, but, curiously, it never drew nearer. The Silent didn’t seem concerned. He walked steadily on, a splotch of ink in the night.

  “You don’t fear them?” she asked.

  “I don’t believe in fear. To fear a thing only gives it power over you.”

  “It also keeps you alive.”

  “A man imprisoned is also alive. But that does not mean he lives.”

  One particular howl pierced the air, and Jos kicked so hard that Sable dropped his boots. The Silent waited while she picked them up, and they trudged on. Soon, through the trees, golden light flickered from a candle standing in a window with a small house attached. The Silent directed them up a narrow pathway, flattened somewhat by previous footprints. They staggered up a short stair and through the front door, and a blast of warmth enveloped her, smelling of woodsmoke and spices.

  “By the stove,” the Silent said.

  Together, they set Jos on the floor before the woodstove. She snagged a pillow from a nearby chair to prop up Jos’s head. His sword she unhooked from his belt and lay on the floor beside him.

  “I’ll be right back,” the Silent said, retreating through a small doorway.

  Sable stared after him a moment, then glanced about the small yet tidy room. What sort of cruel joke were the gods playing on her?

  With a sigh, Sable knelt beside Jos. His pale skin was a w
axy yellow, his sharp features hollow, and his body twitched erratically. As a healer, she’d seen sickness take many forms. She’d seen it cut down the strongest of men. It didn’t discriminate. Mortality made men equals.

  She pulled Jos’s lids open. Bloodshot eyes rolled restlessly, and she lifted his shirt. A black, tar-like substance filled the three gashes, and the stain webbed all the way to his heart. Disappointment pricked her. Jos would not recover from this.

  She sat back on her heels, slipped the dagger from her belt, and set it on the floor just as the Silent returned. The low light caught his face, and Sable stifled a gasp.

  Pink and bubbly scar tissue disfigured one side of his face, and the lids on that eye had melted together. If he noticed Sable staring, he didn’t say. He rounded the chair and uncorked a vial of blue liquid, and the smell of camphor filled the room. Lastrava oil. Tolya had tucked away a small vial of it. It had taken her five years to brew.

  “Who are you?” Sable asked.

  “My name’s Tallyn.”

  The name gave her pause. Was he the one Tolya had told her to seek out?

  The Silent—Tallyn—knelt beside Jos and held up the vial.

  “You should save that,” she said, gesturing at the wound. “He’s too far gone.”

  Tallyn dumped the contents over the cuts anyway. The cuts foamed white, and Jos arched his back with a hiss.

  “I’ll need you to hold him down,” Tallyn said, pulling a smaller ampoule from his robes. Only a few drops glistened inside, tinted like nightglass. Sable had never seen it before.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  His one black eye fixed on her, ancient and fathomless. “It’s what makes shades shades. It can also unmake them, if administered at the right time.” Sable wondered at his words when he said, “Hurry. Our window is closing.”

  She climbed onto Jos, squeezed his legs between hers, and gripped his shoulders tight. Tallyn tilted the vial over the wound. Drops fell.

  One.

  Jos screamed, his neck arched.

  Two.

  He bucked. Sable squeezed her thighs to hold him steady.

  Three.

  His body shuddered; his eyes snapped open. Pinpricked pupils fixed on Sable, and his teeth bared with a snarl. Insanity writhed inside of him, clawing for release.

  “Fight it, Jos,” she demanded, feeling the sudden need to say his name. Remind him of who he was. “Do you hear me? Fight it.”

  Sable squeezed him harder, digging her nails into his shoulders, eyes locked on his. Refusing to look away. Refusing to let him go. The seconds passed, teetering on the edge of insanity. The light in his eyes dimmed, and corruption clouded the blue.

  Jos was losing.

  Suddenly, he was Mikael. He was Tolya. He was every life Sable hadn’t saved, every person she had failed—one more cruel reminder of the life she had unwittingly stolen.

  “Damnit, Jos,” Sable growled. “You didn’t come all this way to quit now! Fight back!” She slapped him hard across his face.

  He blinked, and the moment froze: the snarl, his body, the battle.

  The blue in his eyes swirled with confusion, his head slumped to the side, and his eyes closed to unconsciousness.

  17

  Sable made one last stitch, tied the knot, and cut the string with Jos’s dagger.

  “He’s fortunate in you,” Tallyn said, rounding the chair.

  She doubted Jos would agree.

  Tallyn watched her as she picked up the rag and wrung it over Jos’s neatly stitched wounds. She’d made thirty-five stitches in total, over the deepest parts. It helped her some, focusing on a simple task, using her hands in a way that was familiar to her, when the rest of her world had turned to chaos. Black and red flecks flushed onto the towel Sable had laid beneath him. The stain on Jos’s skin had receded, but the cuts remained black, like three lines of ink.

  “How long will he sleep?” she asked.

  “That depends on him,” Tallyn replied. “Days. Weeks, perhaps. It’s been a long time since I’ve reversed the effects. Even so, I haven’t done it often.”

  “And I’ve never done it with someone so far gone. Where did you get the cure?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. “It was given to me by someone who no longer lives. I’ve been saving it for the right occasion.”

  “Did Tolya give it to you?”

  He searched her, and sadness squeezed his eye. “So she is gone.”

  Sable glanced away. “Yes.”

  Silence settled, expanded, and then he said, “Tolya didn’t give me this antidote.” He held something out to her. “Here. Take it. It’ll help.”

  In his hands was a mug that smelled wondrously of peppermint, cinnamon, and leander. Sable grabbed it and took a slow sip. The tea warmed her from the inside out, and the leander tingled on her tongue. Already, her muscles began to unknot themselves. “Tolya never mentioned you,” she said quietly. “Not until… just before.”

  Tallyn sat in the chair. “She wouldn’t. She was a great keeper of secrets.”

  Sable couldn’t argue that. Tolya had been a vault.

  “She used to visit often,” he continued, “giving me salves for my scars. They still burn. But after you arrived, she visited less. She wasn’t comfortable leaving you alone.”

  Sable allowed herself to look at him then—really look at him—and he angled his face to let her see the breadth of his affliction. Scar tissue shone grotesquely in the candlelight, completely disfiguring one side of his face, making him look otherwordly. She could only imagine the pain they’d caused. The scars didn’t stop at his neck, either, and she wondered how much of his body suffered this same fate.

  “How did it happen?” she asked quietly.

  He reached out his hand. Like his face, it was bubbly and pink, but swaths of it were smooth, like brush strokes of normal skin. In those places, the skin was painted in glyphs.

  Her eyes narrowed on his hand, on him. “You don’t serve Ventus?”

  “Take it,” he said, urging his hand closer. “I’ll show you.”

  “Show me what?”

  “The truth.”

  She eyed him, holding her tea close.

  “I am on your side, Sable,” he said in earnest. “I can show you the past. That way, you may draw your own conclusions.”

  “You mean… share your memories?” She didn’t know much about the power Ventus possessed, but Ventus had been able to push words into her mind. It wasn’t too farfetched, she imagined, for someone to push images.

  Tallyn merely turned over his hand.

  Habit made her leery, but Tolya had trusted him, whoever he was. And if he’d meant her harm, he would’ve capitalized on that by now. Sable set down her mug and took his hand. His fingers were surprisingly warm as they wrapped around hers.

  Her world flashed.

  Her body squeezed, as if the world were collapsing all around her, but before she could cry out, the pressure vanished. She gasped for breath and staggered forward, coming to the quick realization that she was no longer in Tallyn’s room.

  On second thought, this power was very different from Ventus’s.

  She was standing in a great domed chamber. There were no windows, only decorative alcoves filled with burning candles, but their flames did little to chase away the shadows. At the center of the chamber sat a stone altar with a naked body stretched upon it. Robed men hunched over the body, holding little black knives and carving glyphs into the pasty white skin. Frantic, Sable looked for some place to hide.

  “It’s all right,” Tallyn said, startling her.

  He appeared beside her, and she pressed a hand to her chest to still her leaping heart.

  “They can’t see us,” he said. “Go on. Look.”

  She looked back at the robed figures, who didn’t seem to notice their audience. They worked steadily on, dipping blades in bowls of black ink before carving glyphs upon the dead body.

  Sable could not fathom this kind of power
.

  “What is this place?” she whispered, fearing she might still be overheard.

  “A memory.” Tallyn nodded for her to go on ahead.

  She hesitated, and then a robed figured walked through her from behind. She jumped, surprised, but the newcomer walked on and approached the table. This figure was a head taller than the rest, his shoulders broad, and he walked with a surety of purpose. The kind only leaders bore, as if he were used to the world shifting beneath his feet.

  “That’s Azir Mubarék,” Tallyn said behind her, nodding gravely at the newcomer.

  A chill breathed over Sable’s skin.

  Azir Mubarék.

  It wasn’t a name spoken often, because the man signified a time of desperation and fear the world would rather forget. It’d been a time when the Five Provinces had been one land with different religions, each with individual identities and gods. But one man had challenged all of that: Azir Mubarék—High Sceptor of the Liagé, ruler of the Sol Velor, Asorai’s supposed chosen and destroyer of gods. He and his followers had brought war to what was now known as the Provinces, wanting to establish their god and their ways above all others, and they had executed anyone who opposed him.

  And there he was.

  Strangely, Sable found herself expecting… more.

  “How… is this possible?” Sable asked, looking down at her hand, touching it, but it was substantial.

  “Through the Shah.”

  The Shah. A power possessed only by Sol Velorian prophets, given them by their Maker.

  “You’re Liagé?” Sable asked.

  “Not… exactly,” he replied. “I’m Sol Velorian, but I wasn’t born with Liagé power. You see, under Azir’s rule, the Liagé dwindled beyond repair. He pushed them too far, too fast, and many of them perished. He grew desperate, as men do, fearing the Maker had failed him, and that desperation drove him to create his own miracles. To seek other ways to strengthen his movement—one of which was creating us.”

  Sable glanced back at the body upon the altar. Azir stood over it, analyzing the markings his Liagé had drawn. He picked up a pale hand, then spoke to the man in front. She couldn’t hear his words, but his deep voice rumbled.