“Where are they buried?” Ashhur asked softly, breaking a long silence.
“Right beneath me,” Bardiya answered without raising his head.
“And where are your brothers and sisters?”
“I sent them away yesterday. I wished to be alone. With my parents, I mean.”
He felt Ashhur nod. “I understand. I felt the pain of his loss the moment his heart ceased to beat…just as I feel the loss of all my children when they depart this realm. There was a piece of me in each of them, and when that piece is ripped away, it aches.”
“I know, Your Grace. So you have told me.”
Ashhur removed his hand from Bardiya’s shoulder.
“Stand up, my child,” he said. “Please, I wish to know what transpired on that day.”
Bardiya glanced at his god, bemused.
“You do not already know?” he asked.
Ashhur lowered his eyes. “I do not.”
Grunting and pushing off the sand with his knuckles, Bardiya stood. He faced his god, the reason for his existence, and noticed again that Ashhur’s once awe-inspiring size seemed to have lessened. Now Bardiya was less than a foot shorter than he, a realization that caused that familiar panic to establish itself again in the recesses of his brain. In time, if he kept growing the way he always had, he would dwarf the deity.
“I assumed you knew about everything that happened in our Paradise, Your Grace,” he said.
Ashhur shook his head. “I feel much, but the specifics of any situation are lost to me. It is part of the price we paid to descend, to walk the land, and to create with our hands instead of our thoughts.” He placed his hand over Bardiya’s bare chest. “Now my power lies within each of you. It was a sacrifice we chose to make.”
“I see. I did not know.”
Ashhur sighed. “Please, my child, I must know what transpired.”
Bardiya told him of Davishon’s unsuccessful attempt on his life in the forest and Ethir’s successful assassination in the mangold grove. The god gave him his rapt attention the entire time, nodding whenever Bardiya’s ramblings wandered into contemplation, and then waving his divine hand to get him back on track.
Ashhur was quiet for a while after he finished his story, fist gripping his chin in concentration.
“They lie,” he finally said, mouth drawn inward, making his lips pucker.
“They lie about what, Your Grace?” asked Bardiya.
“The gods had no part in this attack. Celestia would never allow it. She has instructed her children to stay out of the affairs of Humankind.”
Bardiya grunted, noticing the far-off look in his god’s eyes when he mentioned the goddess.
“Yes, but what of your brother?” he asked. “I ran across Patrick more than two months ago, while he was on his way to the delta. He spoke of Karak’s people threatening harm to the populace of Haven and that he had been sent there by Jacob Eveningstar to warn them to submit. Could the murder of my parents be part of a larger plot against our Paradise? In the absence of the eastern deity, could the people of Neldar be going against the wishes of their god and his pact with you?”
Ashhur shook his head.
“It is not possible. Karak has returned to them, I have felt it. Whatever happens in the delta, it has nothing to do with us. Jacob is a good man, honest and strong. Yet he is also empathetic, and you must remember that my brother and I created him together. He sent Patrick east because he is concerned about the well-being of the people there.”
“And where is the First Man now? Why did he not head to the delta himself if he was so worried?”
“Jacob had…other matters to attend to in the north.”
“Such as?”
“It does not concern you at the moment.”
“Your Grace, it is entirely my concern. My parents are dead. The first children of Paradise have perished before their time.”
Ashhur shook his head. “Not the first.”
Bardiya’s mouth snapped shut.
“Martin Harrow, the kingling,” Ashhur continued without any prodding. “He was the first to perish. In Haven, at that accursed temple they constructed.”
Bowing his head, Bardiya said, “I apologize, Your Grace. I did not know.”
A great sigh escaped the god’s lips, like an agitated breeze gusting across the desert sand, rousing it. His golden eyes stared at the bright and cloudless sky above.
“There is much you do not know, my child,” he said. “Just as there is much I do not know. I do not know why the elves slaughtered my children.”
He paused, and the silence was frightening.
“And I do not know what my brother is thinking at this moment.”
He sounded so defeated when he said this that Bardiya’s panic overrode his god’s calming influence.
“What are we to do?” he asked, noting the quiver in his own voice.
“We move on,” replied Ashhur. “And we make preparations in the event that something is amiss. Jacob has long suggested that I send the remaining two kinglings to Mordeina, saying that we must finally choose a king.…Finally, I have listened.”
“Why?”
“Although I have created a paradise west of the Rigon, I fear that we will be woefully unprepared should another unexpected hardship come our way. If the elves truly wish us harm, for example. Like all children, my children require a leader, and there are some who feel I have been neglectful for waiting so long to give you one.”
“Do you mean the Wardens?”
“Yes.”
Bardiya shook his head. “Yet we have a ruler, Your Grace. We have you.”
Ashhur ran a hand through his hair, and his booming voice cracked.
“At one time I would have agreed with you. After all that has transpired since late summer, however, I am no longer certain.”
The doubt shown by an entity Bardiya had always believed infallible shook him to the core. He stumbled backward, his knees almost giving out. When another of his constant aches wracked his body, he leaned against the Black Spire to keep from falling. The surface, cool—almost cold—despite the day’s heat, fed his feelings of disorientation and disbelief.
“You are perfect,” he whispered.
Ashhur chuckled, and he sounded tired, so very tired.
“That, my child, I truly am not.”
Bardiya collapsed to his knees.
“Uncertainty is the way of the universe, Bardiya,” said Ashhur, concern showing in his eyes. “Nothing is forever, and none—not even I—can control the passage of time. Gods rise and fall, stars are born and die, life is given and taken away. Perfection is a concept, an ideal to be strived for that may never be achieved. That is what I have been trying to teach you, what I have been guiding you toward, so that when you reach Afram’s golden afterlife, you will be prepared for what lies beyond.”
Bardiya looked at first his god, then the Spire, and finally the desert sand into which his knees were sinking, beneath which his parents were now buried. He breathed in deeply, silencing the voice of his inner doubt, and willed his heart to slow its beat. He shut his senses off from the outside world and retreated inward, thinking of all the lessons he had been taught and hence taught to others, of the oneness he felt with the land, with his god, with nature itself. In that moment he understood that Ashhur was correct, that nothing was perfect. At least nothing physical was.
“But ideals,” he said, smiling, his panic receding. “In ideals we can find righteousness.”
“Yes, my child,” said Ashhur. “You are correct.”
Bardiya rose up, his knees cracking as he gradually stood.
“The ethics you have taught us—do you believe them?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Then all I ask of you is this, Your Grace: No matter what transpires, no matter what hardships may or may not befall Paradise, promise me that those ideals will not change. Promise me that violence will never permeate our hearts and minds, that love and forgiveness will alway
s reign above all else, even if adherence to those ideals might be the end of all you’ve created.”
Ashhur grabbed his hand, and he noticed it was only slightly larger than his own. “I cannot promise that.”
Bardiya pulled away. “Why is that?”
“As I said, circumstances change. Should it come to a choice between watching my children die or fighting to save them, I will fight.”
“And will you do the same for those in Haven?”
“No. They are not my children.”
“But you would fight to save me? Or Patrick? Or Isabel?”
“Yes.”
“All life is sacred. You told me that once.”
“And so it is.”
Bardiya felt his confidence grow. “You may believe things will change, but I never will, Your Grace. Your teachings are law to me and my people. Peace and harmony will never be ripped from the hearts and minds in this land, even if our blood is spilled across the prairie and desert both. If it comes to a choice between fighting and dying, we will choose dying.”
Ashhur smiled a sad smile and shook his head.
“Let us hope it does not come to that.”
“Let us hope. Also, I recognize no authority but yours. We will bow to no king.”
“Even if I decree it?”
“Be that as it may…no.”
Without another word, Ashhur bent down, kissed his fingertips, and touched the sand beneath which Bessus was buried. The ground seemed to moan under his feet. The god offered Bardiya a final look—Was it disapproval or calculation?—before he turned and walked away, disappearing over the same dune from which he had appeared. The sunlight seemed to capture his image, leaving a blackened blur on the precipice long after the deity had departed.
Bardiya stood there, his only companions the Black Spire and the spirits of the dead, and stared toward the east, toward Safeway, toward Haven. He knew in his heart that all he’d told his god was true, but it didn’t matter. He had just stood before his deity and dared to pretend he knew more about his god’s teachings than the god himself did. He felt fear crawl up his spine, and he fought it down. This was a test, he told himself. A test of his faith. A test of his understanding. Ashhur’s apparent disappointment was only a way of forcing Bardiya to prove his faithfulness.
Because the other possibility, of fulfilling his vow and disobeying one of his god’s orders, was even more terrifying.
CHAPTER
26
Night had fallen, which filled Geris with fear. Chilled to the bone, he slumped in the back of the carriage as it lumbered up the rough-hewn Gods’ Road. Ben Maryll lay beside him, peacefully snoring away. Geris both envied and hated him for it. The caravan had left Safeway more than two weeks ago, after Ashhur—with ample input from Ahaesarus and Judarius, surely—had decided that the lordship would be brought to a close and a king would be named. Ben had been excited by the news, and Geris felt he should be too, but his original nightmare had begun to return each night, and it just wouldn’t let him be.
The carriage hit a bump, vaulting him off the rough wooden slats. On landing, he jarred his elbow and let out a pained cry. The curtain at the front of the carriage was swept aside, and Ahaesarus poked his head through.
“What’s going on, boy?” the Warden asked. His blond hair looked like the tendrils of a phantasm in the eerie moonlight that seeped through the carriage’s thin canvas covering. “Why did you yelp?”
Geris rubbed his sore arm. “It’s nothing,” he replied. “Just hurt myself when the cart jostled.”
“Very well,” said Ahaesarus. “You shouldn’t be awake. Close your eyes and get some sleep. You won’t have that chance tomorrow, once we arrive in Mordeina.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ahaesarus disappeared back into the front of the carriage, taking his ghost-like halo of hair with him. Geris wrapped himself in his blanket once more, shivered against the cold, and closed his eyes. He wished he were in the carriage with his parents. They were traveling in a separate carriage along with his brothers and sisters. Mother always had a way of comforting him when he felt restless or frightened. She would gather him to her ample bosom, sing a sweet lullaby to him, and gently rock him until he drifted off. She smelled so lovely, like rosemary and sage with a dash of mint. He longed to be in her lap right then.
It was with her in mind that he finally fell asleep.
That sleep was far from peaceful, however. The nightmare returned, the demon chasing him through the shadows once again. He bolted through an empty forest, plunged into a freezing river, climbed a rocky slope, but still he could not lose the beast. His terror reached its apex. The backdrop of the dream rushed all around him, flashes of red and black, green and brown, mixing and twirling, spiraling all around him. He knelt down and screamed and screamed until his lungs burned, his head filled with nothing but his own wailing. That was when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.
Geris leapt up, the scream dying in his throat. The world had stopped spinning, and he found himself standing atop a weather-beaten crest, staring down at the twinkling fires that dotted the town below. The giant stone Ashhur stood before him, benevolent in gray, the moon dancing off his smooth, granite flesh. The stone god smiled, and the gravel that made up his cheeks grinded as it shifted. He noticed that the star carved into his chest, the symbol of Celestia, had been rubbed away so that it was barely visible. This made him smile.
The demon hissed behind him, then roared like a lion underwater. Geris jumped forward, wrapping his arms around the legs of the stone god. A stiff, cold hand brushed through his hair.
“Fear not, my child,” stone Ashhur said. “He does not wish to harm you.”
“He doesn’t?”
“No.”
Geris watched the demon stalk up the side of the cliff, like blackness within blackness, ringlets of shadow pluming from its thickly rendered form. It sat down across from him, gathering solidity with each passing moment. Before long the blackness had faded away like the shed skin of a snake, disappearing into the atmosphere with a barely detectable whoosh. Revealed beneath was a lion with yellow fur whose eyes shone with familiar, golden intensity.
“Sit,” stone Ashhur said, and Geris did. The stone god took a seat beside him.
“Why are you here?” Geris asked the demon. The lion dipped its head forward, staring at him intently. It seemed to blink in and out of reality, fading into a smoky apparition one instant, then returning to solidity the next. Thin wisps of shadow still thrashed around behind it.
“You are in grave danger,” the lion said.
Geris looked at stone Ashhur. “Is that true?”
The god’s granite visage nodded.
“What kind of danger?” he asked, turning back to the lion.
“The darkness follows you, for all is not as it seems. The family collapses from within. Witchcraft spoils the will of mere mortals, leaving dust in its wake.”
Geris shook his head. “You’re not making sense.”
“My messenger speaks the truth,” said stone Ashhur’s gritty voice. “He always has.”
“He does?” asked Geris, confused. “Then why is he always chasing me?”
“I chase you because you run,” the lion answered. “If you had stopped to listen, you would have known the truth sooner.”
It was all too much for him to take.
“Please,” he whispered. “Leave me alone. I just want to sleep.”
“There is no sleep for the Chosen One,” said the lion.
“Chosen one? Me?”
“Yes, you. The future king of humanity, the champion of its people.”
“But…I’m not special. It was Martin who was special. I’m just…me.”
“But you are special,” said stone Ashhur. “Those who aren’t special do not receive portentous visions.”
“Yours is the most important role to play,” said the lion. “The fate of Paradise lies in your hands.”
The lion inched forward and spraw
led out in front of him, its body shifting this way and that, becoming transparent, solidifying again. Geris stared at it, unable to form words.
“The family collapses from within,” the lion said once more.
“I don’t understand,” said Geris, frustration bringing an edge to his dream voice.
The lion sighed. “The lordship is not what it seems to be. There are two enemies in your midst, a witch and an imposter, unleashed upon this land by the lord of darkness who tries to control me. The witch is a whisperer of falsehoods. She thinks me her pet, a thing set upon this land to do her bidding, but I lurk in the shadows, the thing on the doorstep that is heard but never seen. I bow to none but my creator.”
“But you’re bowing now.”
And then it hit him. Geris stared up at stone Ashhur, who inclined his head in his boulder-crunching nod. Geris thought of his conversation with Ashhur—the real Ashhur—back in Safeway. The god hadn’t seemed surprised by his story of the shadow-lion, or by the accusations leveled against him. That could only mean that Ashhur himself had a hand in the visions.
“I understand.”
“Now think,” said the lion. “Think of the imposter. Is there any among you who is different now from before? Is there any who has become a new person altogether?”
Geris mulled it over, and realization struck him like a reed to the backside. He thought of a timid boy, a tubby weakling who had once been afraid of his own shadow. A boy who had emerged as a bastion of strength and cunning since Martin’s death. Although Geris had always bested him in the past, the rapidly improving Benjamin Maryll now won more than half the time, in everything from arithmetic to footraces, to reciting the names of the landmarks and towns. Geris glanced at the lion, the images in his mind projecting through his eyes and into the dreamscape, and the lion nodded.
“Ben.”
It made perfect sense. In his exhaustion, his weary mind could not fully explain why Ben had been constantly outdoing him of late. He almost kicked himself for not realizing it sooner.
“The boy that was once Benjamin Maryll is no more,” said the lion. “The imposter has taken his place.”
Dawn of Swords Page 39
