The God-Touched Man

by Melissa McShane

  “Your opinion is irrelevant,” Lord Sethemba said. “Of course Dalanine wants us to forget its duplicity. They benefitted from how Santerre stood as a buffer between them and the Despot. How much suffering did your people do, pale?”

  “If you want me to apologize for not having been tortured and killed in the cause of Santerran independence, I’m afraid I cannot oblige you.”

  “Flippancy. I should have expected that.”

  “Stop,” Ayane said, and there was such fury in her voice Piercy forgot what he was going to say. “I’ve done everything you asked. I put my life in danger for the sake of Santerre’s independence. I wanted your approval because I loved and honored you, and you were the best man I knew. But you’re dead now, Father, and I am what’s left of the Sethemba line, I am the one who decides where my honor lies. You can’t compel my obedience. I’ve given my word, and I won’t take it back, and if you were the man I remember you wouldn’t try to make me.” She took a deep breath, and added, “You taught me I shouldn’t rate my life any higher than anyone else’s, that I should always be willing to sacrifice myself for what mattered. You have no idea what I’ve given up for my country. And I’m done justifying myself to you.”

  Kinfe Sethemba’s hands closed into fists. “Disrespectful,” he said, “disobedient child. Has peace weakened you so much? Or is it the company you keep?”

  The look on Ayane’s face was more than Piercy could bear. “You will not speak to her that way, sir,” he said coldly, “or you and I will have more than words.”

  “Piercy—”

  “You dare challenge me?” Lord Sethemba shouted. “What right—” He glanced at Ayane, then at Piercy, and his eyes went wide. “How dare you!” he shouted, and rushed at Piercy so quickly he had no time to do more than bring up his hands to defend himself before Lord Sethemba swung one of those heavy fists at his face. He felt the briefest touch, like a feather brushing his cheek, and Lord Sethemba exploded into stone dust that swirled in the air, a twisting mass of gray. Spinning through the air, it settled nearby, gradually reforming into the statue of Kinfe Sethemba, his fists clenched and his face scowling furiously.

  Piercy and Ayane stared at each other. “I’m sorry,” Piercy said.

  “It’s not your fault,” Ayane said, her voice once more dull and quiet. She went to her father’s statue and once again laid her hand along his cheek. “It was a stupid idea, anyway. It’s not as if he had anything to return to.”

  “It was a natural impulse, Ayane.”

  Ayane’s hand fell to her side. “Where do we go?”

  “I…think the exit is this way.”

  “Then let’s hurry. I want to leave this place.”

  “Agreed.” Piercy set off in the direction the hilt indicated. He hoped.

  They walked in silence for a while, ignoring the statues they passed, even though Libekan faces gave way to men and women whose features were completely unfamiliar to Piercy. He had to quicken his pace to keep up with Ayane, who walked as if trying to conquer the ground she trod on. After a while, she said, “I’m sorry for what he said to you.”

  “Think nothing of it. He was only trying to protect you.”

  “He…does love me, you know. He just couldn’t see past your face. You have to understand—”

  “You need not apologize for him. He was a great warrior who did great things and I think holding his frailties against him would make mock of what he achieved.”

  Ayane finally looked at him. “He was a bigot and a reactionary,” she said. “If he’d lived, he would have made Cyrah one, too, and Santerre would have stayed backward and isolated for a generation or more.” Her voice was flat, as emotionless as her face, and she might as well have been telling him the weather was fine. Piercy didn’t reach out to her. It would have been like comforting a wall, and she didn’t want his embrace even if he could touch her.

  The hilt grew ever warmer as they progressed, though nothing else about their surroundings changed. Piercy’s anxiety grew as well. How long had it taken to rouse Ayane? How much time had they lost over Lord Sethemba? Was Dolobeka still alive, still fighting the Witch? He was stubborn enough, and strong enough, that he might be able to keep her from performing whatever spell would crack open the Underworld and release its spirits. The hilt cooled somewhat, and he corrected his path. There was no point giving up before they’d even left the Underworld. They would be in time. They had to be.

  The hilt gave off a pulse of heat that made him gasp and drop the thing to the ground. He expected it to sear a mark into the tall grass, but it just lay there, mostly concealed by green blades. Piercy looked around. There were few spirits here, but aside from that he could see nothing unusual about the place the hilt had led them to. “I see no exit,” he said.

  “Neither do I. I’d sort of thought I’d be able to see it, what with being a spirit, but there’s just nothing.”

  Piercy bent and gingerly touched the hilt. It was back to being hot/cold and inert again, so he picked it up and said, “Unless Cath has led us astray, which I doubt, we are in the correct place. We need only find the exit, though I realize as I speak those words I have made it sound as if it is as easy as whistling for it.”

  “Well, what happens to spirits when they move on to the Golden Hills?”

  “I think this exit is different from that passage.” Piercy inhaled deeply and smelled nothing but grass and fresh air, waved his free hand and felt only a breeze. “I cannot believe this is impossible. Cath said the hilt would lead me to the exit.”

  “Which it did, we hope. He didn’t say anything about using the exit?”

  “No.” But memory was niggling at his mind. “He didn’t say ‘hilt,’ he said the sword would lead me back to the living world. I wonder….” He changed his grip on the hilt, holding it as if it still had a blade, and slashed at the air in front of him.

  For just a moment, an insubstantial blade glimmered, then a line opened in the air like a membrane being cut open, and a dark, stinking wind blew from whatever black space lay beyond. Piercy reflexively reached out for Ayane’s hand and withdrew quickly as his hand passed through hers with just the faintest feathery brush against his skin. “Stay close,” he said. “This passage is said to be full of dangers.”

  “Dangers to you, or to me?”

  “I have no idea. Let us move quickly and hope we do not have to learn the answer to that question.”

  He had to hold the sides of the slit open so he could enter, unwilling to let it touch him more than that. Ayane ducked through ahead of him; cursing mentally, he hurried after her. Behind him, the slit sealed and was gone.

  They stood in near-darkness, the walls of the passage closing in on them. The smell of wet, warm stone filled the air, thick enough to taste, a banquet carved of marble for some long-dead king’s grave goods. The walls glistened wetly, and the faint sound of water dripping came to Piercy from far away. They were alone in the passage.

  “This doesn’t—” Ayane began.

  “If you are about to say ‘this doesn’t look so bad,’ I beg of you to reconsider bringing us ill luck,” Piercy said. “I think we have yet to see the true nature of this place.”

  “I think we should run,” Ayane said.

  Piercy nodded and took off, with Ayane close at his side. The floor was as wet as the walls, and slick, making Piercy slide once or twice before he learned the trick of putting down his feet lightly, touching the floor as little as possible. That suited him. They ran in silence for a time, until Ayane said, “Is it getting brighter?”

  “I think it is,” Piercy said. Pale mist gathered along the ceiling and walls, glowing faintly, enough to show that the walls were a deep red like dried blood. It was only his imagination that they pulsed slightly, like living tissue. “I think I preferred running in darkness.”

  The mist grew, spilled over the walls and puddled on the floor, and began to grow upward like cloudy stalagmites. Man-shaped stalagmites, Piercy noted, then gave all his at
tention to running. The story said Alvor had had to fight his way free of Cath’s route from the Underworld; it didn’t say what he’d fought. Piercy gripped the hilt more tightly. If he was fortunate, the invisible blade that had cut its way into this place was still there, ready to face whatever came after them.

  The mists shifted. “You can’t leave,” Evon said, startling Piercy so badly he nearly dropped the hilt. His friend had a pleasant smile on his face and a sword in his hand and looked entirely solid. “The Underworld keeps its souls.”

  “The dead ones, yes, but I am living,” Piercy said, then shook his head and ran past. Foolish, to talk to what had to be a figment of his memory, drawn into being by the Underworld.

  “Don’t ignore me,” Evon said, emerging from the mist and slashing at him with his sword. Evon doesn’t know how to use a sword, Piercy thought, bringing the hilt up reflexively. Evon’s sword caught on something about a foot from the hilt that gleamed in the mists’ light. Piercy shoved hard, knocking Evon off balance, then brought the invisible blade around to skewer him. He vanished without a cry of pain, with no sound at all.

  Piercy stopped, breathing heavily. “Come on!” Ayane shouted. She was several feet ahead of him now and seemed not to notice the figures forming out of the mists.

  “Stay with me!” he shouted, and ran forward only to be intercepted by Tedoratis. He swung at her head and kept going. More people, men and women living and dead, came at him, all armed, even his own mother, who’d never wielded anything more deadly than a carving knife in her life. He ran past Tedoratis and Kerensa and his father and his sister Edolie and dozens of women whose faces he remembered and whose names he’d forgotten, slashing and stabbing, desperately trying to keep them at bay. He knew in his heart if they wounded him, he’d carry that injury for a very long time.

  “Piercy,” Ayane said, “look!”

  He had no attention to spare for looking at anything, because Evon was back, and he’d learned to use a sword. Parrying and thrusting, he forced Piercy back a step, then two. Piercy could hear Ayane screaming at him, begging him to follow her, but he was so tired he couldn’t go any farther.

  “Piercy!” Ayane screamed. “It’s pulling me apart!”

  Piercy shoved Evon back far enough he could spare a glance for Ayane. There was natural light ahead, dim and watery, but sunlight nonetheless, and in that light he could see her spirit body quivering as if several things had hold of it and were pulling it in different directions. Terror gave him new strength, and he slashed at Evon’s head, separating it from his body, and as the mist flowed away he ran forward, beating about him with the sword.

  Ayane was caught spread-eagled in a shimmer of air, like a sheet of webbing. The exit lay just beyond her; he could faintly see a wintry landscape through a membrane like the one they’d entered by. Piercy tried to grab her hand, but his passed through hers just as before. Ayane screamed again. Desperate, Piercy slashed the air beside her, imagining the invisible blade parting the strands of spider’s silk, and she sagged, then used her free hand to claw at whatever held her on her other side. Piercy slashed again, helping her, until she fell to a crouch and drew a deep, sobbing breath.

  “We can’t stop!” Piercy said. “Stand up!”

  “What will happen to me when I leave?” Ayane said.

  “I don’t know. But it has to be better than staying here. You are no coward, Ayane.”

  She shook her head. “Open it, then.”

  Piercy thrust the invisible blade into the barrier and sliced downward, then held the membrane open for Ayane to pass through. He climbed out hurriedly and shivered as the wintry cold struck him, chilling his damp skin. Behind him, the cut sealed with an unpleasant sucking sound.

  He turned to speak to Ayane. She was gone.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Ayane!” Piercy shouted. The small clearing, surrounded by pines weighed down by snow, was empty. He heard nothing except his own breathing and the high, thin wail of a terrified hare, cut off mid-cry. The clearing was unmarked except for his own footsteps, which began a few paces behind him exactly as if he’d walked through a cut in reality. There was nothing to show in what direction the door to the Underworld lay.

  He cursed and brought the hilt up again. Blue light glimmered along the edge of the insubstantial blade, then vanished. He swung the sword, slashing the air, and felt a tug, some invisible hand gripping the blade and pulling it away from him. Piercy turned and pointed the sword in that direction. The invisible hand tugged again. It might be his desperate imagination, or it might be Cath’s guidance once more, but Piercy had run out of options. He slogged through the snow in the direction the sword led.

  The sword didn’t care about obstacles. Piercy had to force a path through the pines, afraid to go too far off course, because the tugging only came at irregular intervals and with irregular strength. It was as if whoever or whatever was guiding him didn’t have its full attention on Piercy. How long could a broken sword, even one made with the God’s own blood, maintain its magical attraction to the Underworld?

  He shoved harder, tried slashing the branches with the insubstantial edge and succeeded only in throwing himself off balance. Ayane had to have returned to her body. She was fighting the Witch now, and if Dolobeka were dead, she was fighting alone. Piercy was sweating, and his whole body ached. If he was too late—

  He saw the light before he reached the edge of the trees, a white witchlight too cold and pure for the moon’s radiance. He slowed, fear for Ayane’s safety tempered by caution. He could hear no sounds of fighting, which could mean anything, and rushing in might disrupt whatever plan Ayane had. Concealing himself behind a tree, he moved a branch so he could see the door of the Underworld.

  White light illuminated the clearing, casting bleak shadows over the ground and making the Witch, who paced back and forth in front of the now freestanding door, look bent and misshapen. Piercy could hear her muttering, though too quietly for him to make out words. The door cast no shadow, just canted a bit in the snow as if someone had wedged it there. The Witch was the only thing moving in the clearing. Piercy saw Dolobeka lying in a heap off to one side, at the base of a tree, and there, near where the Witch paced—

  Ayane’s eyes were still open, sightless, and her body was twisted the way it had fallen when the Witch killed her. She couldn’t be dead still. Cath had promised. Piercy wanted to throw open the door, march back into the Underworld and demand her return. He closed his eyes briefly. This was not the time for his personal crisis. Ayane’s spirit was here somewhere. But it wouldn’t matter where she was unless the Witch was dead.

  He dropped the hilt into his coat pocket and drew the stick from his belt, holding it tightly in his right hand, then stepped away from the shelter of the tree and walked at a normal pace toward the Witch. There was too much snow for him to launch himself at her, screaming, as he wanted to do, and she would see him coming well before he had a chance to attack. He couldn’t count on force. He would have to rely on charm.

  The Witch didn’t notice him until he was halfway across the clearing. Her muttering had grown louder, and though Piercy still couldn’t make out her words, the pattern of her pauses told him she was carrying on a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. Then she saw him. Her hands flew up, and Piercy tensed, preparing to dodge whatever spell she might fling at him, but instead she looked surprised, and curious. “I thought I broke you,” she said. “I remember. You wouldn’t accept it when I said I wouldn’t marry you.”

  “That was wrong of me,” Piercy said, taking another careful step. “I have mastered my disappointment at your refusal. Forgive me for being so importunate.”

  The Witch laughed, a mad, merry sound that sent a chill through him. “You’re so funny,” she said. “You’re funny and handsome, for a thing. I might have married you if Alvor hadn’t asked first.”

  “Well, who am I to challenge Dalanine’s greatest hero for your hand?” Could that be true? I wonder if Kerensa k
nows about this. Two more steps. He was ten feet away. “I wish you both great joy.”

  “You should.” The Witch’s brow furrowed. “You smell of death. Why is that?”

  “I don’t know. What does death smell like?” Nine feet. Eight.

  The Witch wrinkled her nose. “Like sour stone. Like rat claws on a wooden beam. Like the ashes of sunlight. You reek of it.” Sheer fury distorted her face. “You’re one of his! Cath will—” She raised her hands higher. “Frigo!”

  Piercy was already moving before the first syllable left her lips. He dove to the right, curling his body around the stick, rolled, and came to his feet. The snow slid under him, he took a few running steps—and a dark shape roared, sped past him, and bore the Witch to the ground. Dolobeka’s face was covered in blood, and he favored his left side, but he pinned the Witch and throttled her with his right hand.

  “Lord Dolobeka! You must move!” Piercy shouted, but the enraged Santerran was too far gone to hear him. Piercy cursed and jammed the stick into his belt again, dropped to his knees and tried to tear Dolobeka’s hands from the Witch’s throat. The Witch was laughing and seemed unaffected by his hand choking her.

  Piercy elbowed Dolobeka in the ribs, making him cry out in pain, more than could be explained by a simple blow. Ruthlessly Piercy slammed into the man’s broken ribs again and finally forced him away from the Witch.

  “Traitor,” Dolobeka shouted, and punched Piercy in the chest. Piercy fell backward, coughing for air. “You mean to spare her life!”

  Piercy didn’t bother responding. The Witch sat up, prodding her throat, still laughing. Piercy snatched the stick from his belt and dove at her, slipped on the snow and went to his knees. The stick slid from his fingers. Shouting in terror, Piercy made a grab for it and barely caught it by the tip; it swung from his fingers and the head grazed the snow beside him.

  The Witch regarded him curiously. “You may not break, but you will certainly burn,” she said. “Forva.”