I buried deeper under the woven blankets piled atop me, licking my dry lips. “Cha’ri, come to bed,” I whispered. “I’m cold.”
“I don’t want to sleep,” he murmured. “I’m afraid that if I do, you will be gone when I wake.” He lifted his head then and stood, kneeling down next to our bed. He touched my forehead gently. “You mortals are so very fragile,” he whispered. “I am afraid…”
I reached for his hand, wrapping my fingers around it. I felt him flinch, and I knew I must still be burning hot to the touch. “Cha’ri, I’ll be fine,” I reassured him. “I’ve been sick before. This is nothing. I’ll be well in a few days, you’ll see. I’m not fragile,” I insisted. “I’m tougher than I look.”
He smiled at that, chuckling softly. “Tough, indeed.” His face sobered again. “But there will be a next time, Taki. Another sickness…and in time, age.” He looked away, swallowing hard. “I cannot think what it will be like to go on without you, Taki. I have never had something that I could not bear to lose.”
I sucked in a breath, squeezing his hand tighter. I felt achy and tired, my skin hot and sensitive with fever, but I knew that I couldn’t go back to sleep with him so distraught. “Cha’ri, you have always known what I am,” I said gently. “There was never a future where you wouldn’t lose me, one day. But after all, where do we go, when it is over? Surely there is a place where we can be together again, in the realm of the gods and the spirits.” I bit my lip. “And I am healthy, Cha’ri, and young. There is no reason to think that we won’t have many years together, still.’
He shook his head. “When you are gone, Taki…” His voice was choked, as if he could hardly bear to speak of it. “There is an afterlife, and I think that you need not fear it. But it is…different…from the realm of the gods. Apart from it. When you are gone from this life, Taki…I will never see you again.”
For a moment I couldn’t speak. I felt as if the air had been knocked from me, my heart suddenly aching with a dull, throbbing pain. I had believed, always, that we would be together for all of eternity.
My fingers wrapped tightly around his. I couldn’t bear to let him go. “I never thought…” I swallowed hard, awash with a sudden grief. “I would rather die and cease to exist than spend an eternity wanting you, and never seeing you again.” The reality of it struck me, that we would both exist, in some way, separated forever. The pain of it was beyond imagining, and the terror of it settled on me, chilling me to the bone more thoroughly than the fever had.
“There is a way,” he said softly, his voice so quiet that I almost didn’t hear him at first. “A way that we could never be parted.”
I felt my heart leap in my chest, a sudden hope springing up, and I clung tightly to it. “How? Why haven’t you told me about this before?”
“Because it is forbidden.” He looked at me then, and I saw that his face had gone pale, his eyes dark and shadowed. “To love you, and you me, that is not forbidden, although many of the gods frown upon it. For us to spend your mortal life together, that is not forbidden. But to share immortality with one born mortal…” he shuddered. “There can be only one fate for the one foolish enough to do so, and for the one who tasted of it.”
I didn’t need him to tell me what the punishment was. It was clear from the way he said it. “Death,” I said softly.
“Death,” he echoed, still staring into the flames.
I sat up then, the heavy blankets falling into my lap. He turned to face me again, his eyes dark and miserable, and I leaned forward, cupping his face in both hands. “If there is a way, Whcha’ri, a chance to be with you forever, then I want it. No matter the danger, no matter the price.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re ill, fevered.” I saw the glint of tears in his eyes, shining in the firelight. For all our intimacies, it was the most human I had ever seen him. “You cannot know what you would be promising. Taki, we would have to leave. We could not stay here, where we are known, where the spirits are close by. We would have to run, and we could never stop. Never have a home, never stay anywhere for very long. There will be no children, no family except you and I.”
“I don’t care,” I insisted.
“You cannot fathom what an eternity means.” He searched my face, his voice barely a whisper. “Thousands of years, Taki, if we are not caught. If we survive. Lifetimes upon lifetimes. Over and over again, everyone you know will age and wither and die and pass into the grave, and only you and I will remain. We will watch the world change and change and change again, until there is nothing left that is familiar. You will be a stranger in a strange land, for all of your years. You will never again have a home.”
“I will have you,” I whispered. “You are my home.” I leaned forward, pressing my lips to his. His were cool and soft beneath mine, dry and hot from the fever, and I felt him hesitate for only a second before his hand gripped the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair as he pulled me towards him breathlessly. I could taste salt as tears slid down his face and over my lips.
When he pulled back, I saw him search my face once more. “There is no taking this back, Taki,” he said. “If we do this, we are damned, and we cannot undo it.”
“I don’t care,” I said softly. “I love you, Whcha’ri. If I am damned for it, then I am damned.”
He came closer to me then, kneeling by the edge of the bed, and he took both my hands in his. “We have never been married,” he said softly. “Not in the ways of your people. They would never have accepted me.”
“Then marry me,” I whispered. “Marry me, and we will live forever.”
He laughed quietly. “I don’t know your words.”
I sat up fully then, slipping from the bed so that I knelt next to him on the dirt floor, next to the flickering fire. It cast our shadows on the lodge wall as I threaded my fingers through his. “Repeat after me,” I said softly. “Whcha’ri, I ask that you be my husband, that you give me the work of your hands, the protection of your body, and the fidelity of your spirit. I ask that you honor me as your wife, that you cherish me as the other half of your soul, and care for me as you would your own self, for as long as we may live. Will you do this?”
“I will,” he breathed, and I could feel tears welling up in my own eyes, my heart pounding in my chest. “Takwa’ay-chi, I ask that you be my wife, that you give me the work of your hands, the…” he hesitated, trying to remember the unfamiliar vows.
“The protection of your body,” I whispered, stifling a giggle. I felt giddy, as if I were floating in a dream. I could be dreaming, I supposed. Perhaps this was all the imaginings of my feverish mind.
“The protection of your body,” he continued, gripping my hands tightly. I could feel the faint tremor in his. “and the fidelity of your spirit. I ask that you honor me as your husband, that you cherish me as the other half of your soul, and care for me as you would your own self, for as long as we may live. Will you do this?”
“I will,” I whispered. “I will.”
“Then in the eyes of the gods and the spirits, we are husband and wife,” he said. “And may they turn their faces away, so that they do not see what I do next.” He hesitated. “Taki, are you sure?”
I didn’t let go of his hands. We were teetering on the edge of a cliff, and I knew that I could pull us back from the brink, but I would not. We would go over it together, whatever the cost.
“I am sure.”
“I have never done this. I am not even entirely sure that it will work. But I will try.” He breathed in, a long, slow breath, and I felt the air shimmer around us. “I bind myself to you, Takwa’ay-chi, for all of time. For as long as I draw breath, so shall you, and only by your own hand or by that of another immortal may you cease to live. This is a vow that cannot be broken, and a thing that cannot be undone. Do you choose this of your own free will, Takwa’ay-chi?”
“I do,” I said, my voice strong and sure. “I bind myself to you, Whcha’ri, for all of time.”
He pulled me to him, his mouth hard on mine, and when my lips parted, I felt him breathe into me. I breathed in, and for a moment, I felt the world spin around me. I was dizzy, floating, my senses tingling. Colors swirled behind my tightly closed eyes, and I could suddenly hear the crackle of the fire louder than ever, smell the damp wood and the dirt clinging to the corners of it, the burnt ash beneath it. I could smell Whcha’ri, the musk of his skin and the fear that clung to him, and I could taste him in my mouth. He tasted like the river, like fresh water and the silt of the riverbed, like the sweet flesh of a fresh-caught fish and the sulfuric, bitter taste of a still pond. I could feel it flowing over my skin, cold ripples through my body, filling my lungs until for a moment I thought I could not breathe at all, and I would die here. It would consume me, and I would lose him anyway, and be damned for all eternity.
Then warmth broke over me, dispelling the cold water, and I came to myself on the floor of the lodge, gasping and blinking as the darkness cleared from my vision. I looked up at Whcha’ri, his face white as bone, and when our eyes met, we both knew that I had changed.
He touched my forehead, cool and dry, and swallowed hard, his face haunted with the knowledge of what we had just done.
“The fever is gone,” he whispered. “It will never return.”
30
Ravenna
I heard the sound of the door creaking, and opened my eyes. A tall man was standing there, dressed in black pants and a black linen shirt, his hair tied away from his face. His eyes were a bright green, and I thought of Toven with a sudden ache that startled me.
“Takwa’ay-chi,” he said, my name sounding stilted and wrong in his accent. I flinched at its use, after having been forbidden to say it for so long. But now, it didn’t matter anymore. The thing we had feared had already happened.
“You are in the realm of the gods,” he continued, “and tomorrow you will stand trial, along with Whcha’ri, your conspirator and lover. You will stand before the gods and receive the just punishment for your crimes.”
“I thought it was a trial, not a sentencing,” I snapped, unable to stop myself from speaking. After all, what did it matter now? We were already guilty. Nothing I could say or do could make it worse.
“Your sentencing, then,” he said, inclining his head. “There is no need for legal argument, the evidence of your crimes lies in your very continued existence, Takawa’ay-chi. Your lover cannot deny what he has done.”
I wanted to retort, wanted to say something, but I could think of nothing at all. The mention of Kavi sent a crushing pain through my heart, and I sagged against the wall, fighting back tears. I wouldn’t cry in front of this man, I would not! I wouldn’t show that weakness. But it was one thing to be reconciled to my own fate, and another altogether to try to reconcile what would happen to Kavi.
“How long have I been here?” I asked. I wanted to know that, at least—how much time had passed since we had left Isa behind.
“Time is irrelevant here,” the man said. “It both exists eternally and not at all.”
I glared at him. “You know what I mean. How much time has passed where I’m from.”
“Does it matter? There is no one left there who you matter to.”
My heart stopped at that. Did that mean they had Isa now, too? I didn’t dare ask. If they did, there was nothing I could do. But it was equally possible that this man simply had no idea who Isa was, in which case, I should say nothing at all. I didn’t want to draw attention to his existence, if they’d forgotten about him.
I should have said no, I thought as the man nodded to me and left, a satisfied smile on his face that I longed to slap away. I should have never let Kavi give me immortality. But then we would have had a hundred years less together, perhaps, possibly more than that. He had said he never regretted it, and for myself, I couldn’t regret it either. I would suffer anything for what we had had together. But the guilt for Kavi weighed heavily on me, and as I leaned back and closed my eyes, I felt the tears begin to slide down my cheeks.
---
Somehow, I slept. I was awoken by the sound of the door slamming open, and the sound of heavy footfalls entering the room. My eyes felt thick and heavy, and my head ached from hours of crying. I knew my face was probably puffy. I certainly wasn’t going to look my best this morning, but did it really matter? There would be no changing the outcome.
The man from the day—night?—before had entered the room first, with two tall, muscular men behind him. They similarly wore all black, and looked startlingly similar—pale skin, short dark hair. When they came closer, I saw their eyes were entirely black.
I stood, careful of the chains, and did my best to keep my expression composed, although my heart was pounding in my chest. Will I see Kavi? I wondered, as one of the two black-eyed men approached with a glowing key. I will be brave, I told myself. No matter what, I will not cry, I will not beg. I will be brave.
The shackles fell away from my wrists and the black-eyed man took my elbow as he produced a new pair of manacles. “Hold out your hands,” he said loudly, and then whispered in my ear as he leaned closer: “You’re a pretty one, not like most of the prisoners here lately. Maybe I’ll ask for you, before they do whatever it is they have planned. Maybe in front of your lover, as part of his punishment. They’d like that, I’m sure. I’d have to try to make sure it wasn’t too good for you, of course.”
“I don’t think that’d be very difficult,” I hissed, lifting my chin.
“Don’t be so sure, girl. You ever been with a demon?” He chuckled in his throat, deep and raspy as he clamped the manacles around my wrists, a touch tighter than I thought was probably necessary.
I didn’t bother answering, although it gave me a bit of a start. I glanced at the other black-eyed man, and shuddered. It made sense, I supposed, that the gods used demons as their muscle—a bit predictable really, if you asked me.
“Come on, girl,” he snapped, shoving me in the back. The manacles around my wrists glowed yellow, and I flinched.
“Don’t move fast enough, they’ll burn ya,” he said cheerfully, noticing. “Refuse an order, they’ll burn ya. If we just don’t like your attitude…”
“They’ll burn me. Got it.” The metal turned an iridescent orange, and I immediately regretted saying it.
“Don’t get cute, girl. I don’t like it, he don’t like it, and they especially don’t like it. Keep yer mouth shut, nod and keep a humble look on that pretty face, and maybe it won’t go worse for you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to say it won’t go badly for me?”
“Oh girl.” The demon shook his head as he pushed the next door open, poking me in the shoulder to usher me through it. “There’s no more good for you, in this world or the next.”
---
I stopped dead in my tracks when we passed through the final door, into the room where the “trial” would be held. It was a long, cavernous space, the floor entirely made of marble, with a tall chair on a raised dais at the far end, made of ornately carved wood inlaid with gold, and a slightly lower one next to it of the same ornate design, done in silver. I remembered Toven telling me about this room.
When they passed the sentence, she broke free of the guards holding her, and fell on the floor, begging Torde to reconsider, begging him to ask the Fates to look at their looms. As long as I live, I can never forget it: what her hair looked like as she lay on that floor, like blood on the marble as they pulled her away…
I shivered, even as the manacles around my wrists glowed red-hot for a second. I bit back a cry of pain as it momentarily seared into my skin and then stopped, cooling again.
“The next one’ll last longer. Move it, girl.” He thumped me in the small of the back again, and I moved, walking slowly down the long room, the marble cold against my bare feet.
There was a large man sitting in the wooden chair, with shoulder-length hair that was a dark iron-grey color, and a carefully trimmed beard of the same. He wore a purp
le Grecian-style robe over a cream colored tunic and trousers that looked like silk. Next to him in the smaller chair sat a beautiful woman who must have been his wife, who appeared to be perhaps in her late thirties, although I was sure she was millennia older. She had elaborately styled blonde hair held up by a golden circlet of leaves and vines, and wore a cascading dress of cream and gold, gathered at one shoulder. I grimaced.
“They really try extra hard here to rub the whole “gods” thing in, don’t they? I mean…do they really enjoy looking like they’re straight out of the Odyssey?”
The demon glanced down at me, and for a moment I thought he was going to burn me again, but I saw the slightest hint of a smile toying at his lips. I’d amused him, that couldn’t be all bad. It might, at the very least, save me some pain.
“Torde does, yes,” he said under his breath. “You’ll see not all of them are quite so…devoted to the old aesthetic, so to speak. Of course, you won’t be around long enough to take much of it in.” He grinned maliciously down at me, and my heart sank again. So much for camaraderie with my jailor.
There were men and women lined up on either side of the floor just below the dais—other gods and goddesses, I suspected. I remembered that Toven had said they were all mostly scattered now, and I wondered if they had all been called back for this, to see one of their own made an example of. I looked at their faces as I passed, and saw the full gamut of emotion. Some looked angry—whether at the situation or at me for bringing one of their own down, I didn’t know. One, an exceptionally handsome ebony-skinned man with close-cropped dark hair wore an expression that bordered on pain, and as I passed a woman dressed in dark blue robes, she touched my hand, and I saw to my shock that tears shimmered in her brown eyes. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, close enough to me that no one else could here. “If you were to come to us, I would see that you were not punished harshly.”
Pursued by the Gods Page 18
