‘Down on the floor, skinbag!’ Reichis snarled, leaping into the room, his fur transformed to pure black with red stripes. Ishak followed just as quickly, mimicking Reichis’s words, which sounded even more disturbing coming from the jaws of a hyena.
The sight of the god took me aback. You couldn’t call him a boy, not any more. He stood as tall as me, though he can’t have weighed half as much. He wasn’t just thin … He was distended. He looked as through someone had aged him by stretching his limbs on a rack until his entire body relented, giving up years of life in mere hours. Yet when he saw Reichis and Ishak, he laughed as joyously as any child. ‘They’re beautiful!’
His innocent mirth was contradicted by the rows upon rows of black sigils inscribed into the skin of his torso that made me clench the dice even tighter. He fell into embarrassed silence when he caught my stare. Awkwardly, and with obvious effort, he pulled his own plain white robes over his still-bleeding body.
I decided it was best to start with something simple. ‘How old are you?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he replied.
Nephenia stepped closer, peering at his robes where the blood was already seeping through. ‘Do you know when you were born?’
‘Almost a year ago,’ he replied, then seemed to reconsider. ‘Though possibly when the world began.’
‘You’re going to have to pick one or the other,’ I said.
A faint, almost forgiving smile came to his weary face. ‘Because if I’m a child, caught up in the machinations of others, you will refuse to kill me, no matter the consequences my existence brings upon the world.’ His eyes went to my closed fist. ‘Yet if I am truly God, you’ll roll those dice my people crafted from the ruins of the first baojara tree to bind me, then wrap the scourge made from its bark around my neck and strangle me without a second thought.’ He shook his head. ‘No, my friend, I will not free you from the burden of your own conscience quite so easily. Besides, does not the queen you serve claim to be both a twelve-year-old girl and the embodiment of her people’s two-thousand-year-old royal lineage? Why is she allowed such a paradox and not I?’
Reichis looked up at me. ‘Well, I don’t know if this kid’s a god or not, but he’s already puttin’ me in a killin’ mood. Can we just throttle him and get it over with?’
‘There’s a third option,’ I said, keeping a careful grip on the dice and the scourge as I approached him. The god looked nothing so much as a sickly, emaciated young man incapable of harming anyone, but I wasn’t fooled. ‘You could heal my friend and promise to leave this place, go wherever it is gods go when they’re not meddling in human affairs. Do that and we’ll call it square.’
That seemed to amuse him, though I noticed he stepped back. ‘You begin with the Way of Water, do you not?’ He gestured to the little desk covered in books and marked-up pieces of paper. ‘My attendants require that I read extensively about the affairs of this world. I find the Argosi most intriguing.’
‘Why does a god need books to learn about anything?’ Nephenia asked.
‘Why not?’ was his reply.
‘If you know the Argosi ways,’ I began, my hand clenching the scourge tighter, ‘then you know that when the Way of Water fails, it’s not long before we get to the Way of Thunder. So I suggest you take the deal.’
He tried to hide it, but I could tell he was genuinely afraid of what I might do. ‘This friend of yours,’ he said, ‘your threats imply her life is of greater consequence to you than those of all the others that might be lost should war come. Who is this virtuous paragon of whom you speak?’
‘Her name is Ferius Parfax,’ I replied, more angrily than I intended because I wasn’t sure if he was screwing with me. ‘While you and I are standing here, one of your so-called miracles is killing her!’
He looked confused. ‘Such a dastardly conjuration hardly sounds like a miracle.’
‘The malediction,’ Nephenia explained. ‘A band of your Faithful cast it upon her.’
‘Ah,’ said the god, ‘I understand now, though that is not our word for the ritual. To us it is a form of consecration, meant to—’
I cut him off. ‘I don’t care what name you give it. Can you put a stop to it or not?’
‘There is a way, I suppose,’ he replied. ‘Yes, I can save this Ferius Parfax’s life, or rather, we can save her life.’
‘How?’
He pointed to the scourge in my right hand. ‘You have merely to wrap that around my neck, twist it very tight, and keep hold until I asphyxiate.’
‘Killing you is the only way?’
He nodded. Long, unnaturally thin fingers reached up to pull at the neck of his robes, revealing the tops of the markings etched into his skin. ‘What you call the malediction is not one of my miracles, though its power comes from me, even as mine comes from the sacred words upon my flesh. I am both the vessel and the wine, so to speak.’
‘Is that what it means to be a god then?’ Nephenia asked. ‘To be nothing more than a … a collection of miraculous events?’
He shrugged, seemingly unconcerned by that contradiction, but I saw the gesture for what it was: a boyish evasion.
‘He doesn’t know,’ I said. His words from yesterday came back to me and I decided to voice my speculations. ‘His handlers tell him he’s a god, but he has no memory or conception of becoming one. They give him lessons in Berabesq theology, tell him what to believe, but he senses something is missing. That’s why he spoke to me, an outsider, because he thinks this strange connection between us might uncover the truth of who or what he is.’
Something I hadn’t noticed before caught my attention: a small wooden-floored area in the opposite corner of the room, with a single prayer disc about a foot in diameter. The sight of it made me chuckle.
‘Why do you laugh?’ he asked.
I pointed to the wooden kneeling disc. ‘Who do you pray to?’
‘I pray for wisdom.’
‘Yes, but wisdom from whom?’
He considered my question, then walked to a different corner of the room, occupied by two chairs and a small hexagonal table upon which rested a shujan board with all its pieces. ‘Play with me?’
An innocuous request, but I became distinctly aware of the scourge in my hand. It was vibrating like the tail of a rattlesnake, almost begging me to strike first. The ‘helpless kid caught in unfortunate circumstances’ act was all well and good, but this guy’s very existence threatened an entire continent, not to mention Ferius.
If I do it now, I thought, feeling the strange comforting roughness of the rope in my hand, if I just … forget myself for a moment and do the job I was sent to do, this will all be over. All the confusion, the danger of armies slaughtering each other on the battlefield, the fear of what will happen to the queen if the wrong side wins, the uncertainty of what will happen to the Berabesq if they lose. Ferius growing weaker every day until, like my mother, she just … stops.
‘What are you doing?’ the boy asked.
It took me a moment to formulate a reply. ‘Praying for wisdom, I suppose.’
He gestured once again to the two chairs. Unsure of what to do, I looked to Nephenia, but she was now nose-deep inside one of the books we’d seen the Asabli holding for their Arcanists. Ishak and Reichis were sniffing around the room, probably in search of loot.
Maybe Nephenia can find a way to stop the malediction in one of those books, I thought.
I placed the scourge and the dice on the floor a few feet from the table, then sat down on one of the chairs. God took the other.
‘You said you were praying just now,’ he said. ‘May I ask to whom?’
‘I don’t know. No one, I suppose. I’m not very religious.’
The boy leaned forward over the shujan board and whispered conspiratorially. ‘Neither am I.’
When I didn’t say anything, he leaned back and asked, ‘Was that not funny? I was trying to make a joke.’
‘Tell him it was lame,’ Reichis said. The squirrel cat was sniffing every
thing in the room except the Berabesq god. ‘And ask him where he keeps his sapphires.’
‘What did your squirrel cat say?’ the boy asked.
‘Don’t you know?’ Nephenia asked, looking up from another of the leather-bound tomes. ‘You’re supposed to be the six-faced god of Berabesq. You’ve been speaking to Kellen through his thoughts. Surely a deity sees inside the minds of mere mortals?’
‘I …’ He hesitated, brow furrowing in confusion. ‘I’m not sure how it all works.’
‘How what works?’ I asked.
This, he said, speaking inside my head. It is not one of my miracles.
‘Do you communicate in such a manner with anyone else?’ I asked.
‘Only one other.’
‘Who?’
His young brow furrowed. ‘I am not sure. He … advises me.’
‘Like a vizier?’
He laughed then. ‘Oh, my viziers advise me too. They advise me on when to wake, when to sleep. They tell me what to eat and drink, which medicines to consume no matter how foul the taste …’
‘Medicines? What does a god need with medicine?’
He sidestepped the question. ‘Let us return to our earlier conundrum. You asked to whom a god prays, and I asked to whom you were praying when you sought wisdom.’
‘Yes, but in my case I wasn’t really looking outside myself for the answer.’
‘Because whatever answer exists, it awaits inside you, yes?’
I nodded.
He spread his hands. ‘Then perhaps it is the same with me. The wisdom I seek, the god to whom I pray –’ he tapped his chest – ‘awaits in here.’
Ishak looked over and barked twice. Reichis grunted in agreement. ‘The hyena says if this guy doesn’t stop with the philosophical claptrap pretty soon, he’s going chew his head off.’
I decided not to relay that piece of information to the god. ‘Why am I here?’ I asked. Before he could speak, I held up a hand. ‘No more clever prevarications. No more metaphysical pronouncements. Just the simple truth.’
For once he gave a straight answer, though it wasn’t one that reassured me. ‘I need you to help me decide whether or not I am God, and if I am, whether it is better that I live or that I die.’
‘And how precisely are we to do that?’
He pointed to the shadowblack lines around my left eye. ‘Those markings. They have a meaning, do they not?’
I was about to make a joke about how what they mean is that everyone and their dog is allowed to attack me without provocation, but then I finally understood why I was here. ‘The enigmatism,’ I breathed. ‘The shadowblack ability to see inside the secrets of others. That’s why you wanted me to come. That’s why you haven’t just blasted me out of existence already – because I’m an enigmatist.’
He didn’t speak, but by then I didn’t need him to.
‘You believe that with my shadowblack I can see inside you and reveal whether you’re really a god!’
‘Can you do that?’ Nephenia asked, looking up from yet another of the books. ‘How does it work?’
‘I … It’s complicated. The enigmatism isn’t something I can turn on and off like a glow-glass lantern. It requires finding exactly the right questions to ask.’
The boy gestured to the shujan board between us. ‘I have found that a good game of shujan always produces many fascinating questions. Shall we play?’
50
The Game
I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed those games of shujan with Keliesh on the road to the Berabesq capital until I found myself playing against a god.
‘I find there is a rhythm to shujan that liberates the mind,’ he said, moving one of the pieces. ‘Though the number of potential moves is mathematically finite, there are still so many as to give one the sense that anything is possible.’
The variation of the game we played involved each controlling one of the six sides of the board. Either of us could play the pieces of the other four sides, but because we could only move one piece on each turn, and such moves could simply be reversed by the other player on their next turn, it made more sense to focus on our respective armies. We’d agreed that with each turn we had the right to pose the other a question.
‘What is your name?’ I asked, moving one of my camels forward. While not the most pressing issue, this felt like a reasonable place to begin.
‘The warrior,’ he replied, then added, ‘the gardener. The clockmaker, the penitent, the hea—’
‘Your real name.’
‘I don’t know. Everyone in the temple calls me God.’
‘You mentioned another voice you hear in your head. Who is he? What does he call you?’
‘It’s not your turn.’ The boy moved an archer. ‘What name would you like to call me?’
Though it sounded like an idle question, I had the strange sense that it was a kind of test.
I don’t want to call you anything, I thought. I don’t want you to exist. I don’t want for there to be gods who sit there choosing the destinies of others. What right does any god have to decide my fate?
‘And yet,’ the boy said aloud in response to my unspoken words, ‘now it is a god asking you to choose his fate.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘You still haven’t answered my question.’
I stared down at the board, pondering my next move. He’d been wrong about the game allowing for nearly infinite moves. That was true at first, but the instant you made your opening gambit, you started down a path that would progressively allow fewer and fewer choices until at last there would be only one.
‘Shujan,’ I said at last. ‘I would like to call you Shujan.’
A smile lit up his face. ‘Shujan! Yes! I love it!’ He reached across the game board and took my hand in his. ‘Thank you, Kellen!’
He seemed so delighted I felt awkward, as if there was something I was supposed to do now to seal his happiness. I changed our grip so that we were now shaking hands and said, ‘Nice to meet you, Shujan.’
He shook my hand vigorously in reply. ‘Nice to meet you, Kellen!’
Then he took his hand away, and all the mirth was gone. ‘It is your turn to ask a question.’
‘You made it rain yesterday,’ I said, moving my camel again. In shujan, the usual strategy is to get as many of your pieces in play as possible to encircle your opponent, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. ‘What else can you do?’
‘When I was merely a babe in swaddling clothes and the viziers presented me to my people from the balcony of this spire, I brought down rain that made a hundred thousand flowers rise up from arid grounds around the city. On the next, I revealed to all who watched the movements of the sun and stars. I once made all sound in these lands, from the roaring of the wind to the flutter of butterfly wings, fade away so that all present knew a moment of pure, silent reflection. I have healed the sick and caused bitter enemies to beg each other’s forgiveness.’
Five miracles, each one corresponding to one of the six faces of the Berabesq god: the gardener, the clockmaker, the hermit, the healer, the penitent. That left only one remaining: the warrior.
He said the malediction wasn’t one of his miracles, so what is the sixth?
The answer, I realised then, was obvious. It’s the one the Arcanists are still inscribing onto his flesh. The miracle that will unite all the Berabesq sects into a single army that would march across the continent.
I quieted that thought in hopes of keeping it from the young man sitting across from me.
‘How did you discover you could work these miracles of yours?’ I asked.
Shujan shook his head. Not my turn. After he moved one of his chariots two spaces, he asked, ‘Regardless of my true nature, you believe me to be a threat to all that you love. Why have you not killed me?’
‘Because I …’ I trailed off. I really wasn’t sure what was holding me back. I’d killed before and for less noble reasons than preventing a war. And while Shujan might look like an innocent, I’d been t
he victim of enough illusions in my life to distrust such naive notions. For all I knew, he could be a demon masquerading as a boy. Why wasn’t I just coiling the Baojara Scourge around his neck and doing the job I was sent to do?
‘I don’t like being controlled,’ I said finally. ‘And killing you without knowing the truth feels too much like …’
‘An act of submission?’ he suggested.
I nodded.
‘Interesting. Perhaps we are getting close to something.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘Move your next piece.’
I looked down at the board. It was still early in the game, but he’d made a mistake with his chariot. In shujan, a chariot can’t be removed from the board, but it can be ‘mounted’. I placed my eagle upon it. Now, though the eagle couldn’t attack, it could move with the chariot and was immune to being removed by one of his pieces.
Yeah, it’s a pretty weird game when you think about it.
‘How did you know the things you could do?’ I asked. ‘The rain, the healings?’
‘It’s in the markings,’ Nephenia said, confirming my earlier suspicion as she brought one of the leather-bound books over. ‘The Arcanists are literally inscribing miracles into his flesh.’
‘Like spells?’
She shook her head. ‘There’s no Jan’Tep spell that can do the kinds of things he’s done. The scale is too big. The laws of physics just don’t work that way, which is why I can’t figure out how any of this is possible.’
‘The shadowblack,’ I said suddenly, my fingers instinctively reaching up to the winding lines on my own face. ‘When I was at the Ebony Abbey, they said the shadowblack creates a kind of opening into other ethereal planes, where the laws that govern matter, energy and life work differently, allowing those alternate rules to momentarily seep through into our universe.’
‘But that still requires a will to guide it,’ Nephenia said. She pointed at Shujan. ‘He was just a baby when he performed his first miracle. He couldn’t have caused it himself.’
‘How do you decide when to bring forth your “miracles”?’ I asked him.
Shujan stared down at the game from which I’d given him his name. ‘There is … another voice, one who speaks inside my mind. When the viziers bring me out to stand before my people, he helps me bring forth my gifts that I might bestow them upon others.’
Spellslinger 6: Crownbreaker Page 28
