by M. M. Perry
As she finished speaking a wind, flowing contrary to the prevailing gusts, blew across them all. It smelled of lavender and lilies. In the blink of an eye, Issa was beside Timta, as if she had always been standing there. Her impossible beauty outshone even her mother’s.
“He left me moments ago. I’m sure he knows now that I was distracting him from all this. He pretty much said as much, though much of what he said was an inarticulate scream. I did manage to make out of few of the terrible things he plans to do to me, the ‘traitor of all the sons and daughters,’” Issa smirked. “He’s a fool to think I care.”
Timta looked past the group to the dragons. She knew their presence was a welcome if unexpected opportunity she should not waste.
“We can help each other, old ones. Though our history had been one of grief and blood, first when you killed my brothers and sisters, wiping out more than I wish to count, later when we drove you to the brink of extinction, this can be a new start. We took mercy on you then, when we had you in our power, and allowed a few to live, for we are not evil beings. Blood has answered for blood. Let the debt be even. We should be friends.”
The dragons did not laugh at the claim that they had been destroyed nor refute Timta’s assertion that they had survived because she and her fellow gods had allowed the dragons to live. They simply stared down at Timta stoically.
Cass found it curious that Timta was claiming the gods had preserved the dragons.
Surely, she thought, Timta knows they tried to eradicate the dragons to the last one. What, she wondered, is she playing at?
Cass believed events had unfolded as the dragons had recounted them. The dragons had no reason to deceive Cass and the rest when they had spoken about being indestructible. At least, Cass could think of no reasons they would. It was then she realized the danger the knowledge she and the group she traveled with possessed. The gods did not know that the dragons could not be destroyed, but merely temporarily expelled from creation. Cass wondered at the trust the dragons had afforded them by revealing this secret—and Cass was certain it was meant to be a secret, or the dragons would be laughing in Timta’s face at the suggestion they were so easily dealt with.
Cass thought she saw the center dragon, the one that had learned speech and that she had come to think of as The Ambassador, incline its head slightly in her direction. She didn’t have time to wonder what that might portend before she felt a pressure building in her head, as if every head cold she had ever had all came home to roost at once, and then found that she could not move.
“Demigod,” a voice in her head boomed, “remember your debt to us.”
Cass felt a tickle under her nose. She touched at it and pulled away her fingers to find them tinged with blood. She tried to wipe away the rest of the trickle that remained on her upper lip surreptitiously, but both Selina and Gunnarr saw it. They looked away from her and to each other. When their eyes met something was silently communicated between them that Cass could not understand.
“Allies,” Ambassador finally said aloud, its voice rumbling across the plains.
Both Timta and Issa looked shocked—Issa actually taking a small step back away from the dragons. It was clear to Cass that they did not know or suspect that the dragons could speak. She wondered if the gods had ever even made an attempt to speak to them. Timta and Issa rallied and disguised their discomfiture. They were in front of humans; they had no intention of appearing weak or uncertain.
“Allies,” Timta agreed.
Timta turned to Cass and stretched out her hand.
“The Sun Stone, my daughter.”
Cass reached into her pocket and pulled out the amber gem, she hoped for the last time given all the trouble it had caused her since she’d had it in her possession, and dropped it into Timta’s outstretched palm. Timta cradled it there for a moment, smiling beatifically down at it. Then she disappeared. The dragons immediately reared their heads up to their full height, still well below Timta’s statue’s knee, and looked up towards the top of the statue. Everyone followed their gaze. Cass soon wished she hadn’t, because a moment after she spotted Timta’s flowing gown up there a blinding light, centered on Timta, blasted out from her and covered everything on the plains in a light so bright it was as impenetrable as the deepest dark. Cass covered her eyes except she could still see the light through her hands. After a few moments the light receded and she began to see flashing red stars against the inside of her eyelids. She opened her eyes and blinked furiously, tears streaming her cheeks, trying to force them to stay open in the still painfully bright, but dimming, glare.
Cass half expected to see that all the statues on the plains had disappeared, or that they’d be yelling to each other in relief at being freed from their long captivity, making huge, land-devouring strides across the Plains that would shake the earth with tremors as far away as Chulpe. She quickly reminded herself that was a stupid assumption, seeing how Timta was walking around just fine here in the flesh right in front of her own statue. She wiped at her nose again. Another drop of blood had trickled out. She looked around at the group and found that her memories still stubbornly refused to return to her. Gunnarr was still a guy she had met for the first time just a few days ago.
Timta reappeared at the base of the statue and with her appearance Cass felt an invisible, electric energy fill the air. The dragons must have felt it as well, as they seemed suddenly on edge, their scales undulating all up and down their bodies. One by one figures began popping into existence all around the group. Cass could only guess they were gods—the Gods, she corrected herself, the original, Old Gods. A tall, dark-haired man with what looked to be reptilian eyes actually hissed when he noticed Issa.
“You!” he shouted.
“Not now, Natan,” Timta said, stepping between Natan and Issa. “She has undone what she wrought. She was tricked as much as we all were, and I have seen her punished during all the long years we have been trapped. Now it is time to forgive her…” Timta took a dramatic pause as she looked around at the gathering gods, “and tend to the rest of our children. Let us meet at the river. What we must speak of is not meant for mortal ears and lesser beings.”
“And the dragons? What of them, Timta? What manner of mischief have you been up to while we were trapped? Why should we trust you? It is most suspicious that of all of us, only you managed to escape from bondage. How do we know this is not another of that vile trickster’s traps, with you his new whore, as your daughter was before you.”
The woman who spoke had sharp features and gently curled hair. She slid beside Natan as though that was her natural place.
“The dragons are now our allies. You will find that this, and many other things, have changed while you were locked away insensate, Freesus. Another thing that has changed is my patience with your insolence. You will find I no longer have any.”
Timta held forward the Sun Stone for all assembled to see and as she did so, she grew in power and stature, standing twice as tall as she had before, the electric feeling in the air taking physical, visible form around her as coruscating lines of power flowed out from the stone, up her arm, and pulsed in waves around her body. Cass was unsure if it was illusion or reality, but it seemed not to matter as it had an immediate effect on the gods around them—they fell still and silent.
“Now is not the time for bickering between ourselves,” Timta said, her voice loud, booming out across the plains. She lowered the stone and, doing so, shrank back to her normal dimensions. The pulsating energy of the stone receded back inside of it. “We can tear each other’s throats out, or we can teach our children a lesson they will never forget. You choose. Any and all ready, willing and able to meet out punishment to our children should convene at The River by nightfall. If any should instead choose to join their children and take up arms against me, enjoy your brief freedom while you can, for the dragons fly with me.”
As if to enhance her point, the dragons roared at the sky as one. Great gouts of white flame b
urst from their mouths and streamed far up into the sky. The heat of it, even directed away from them, curled all the hair on Cass’ arms and chapped her cheeks. It lit up the mid-day sky, outshining even the sun until the flames ceased. The dragons looked down at the group of gods. The point had been well driven home.
One by one the gods vanished until only Issa and Timta were left—to where, Cass hadn’t the slightest idea. Issa bowed deeply to Timta, and remained in that position, unmoving, until Timta placed her hand on her daughter’s head. Issa straightened, smiled briefly at her mother, and then she vanished as well. Timta turned to Cass then.
“I know you have been waiting long for this, too long and with too much suffering, but you must believe me when I say I could not help you. There are powers at play greater than you can imagine, and immutable rules older than the world we stand on that I could not break or bend despite how it broke my heart to watch you suffer from afar. But do not think I was powerless, nor that I left you unprotected. I set in motion those things that I could, events that lead you to meeting this Djinn, and from there to the dragons. Without them, Oshia would have struck you down before you had the chance to hand over the stone rather than let me take ownership of it. If he had had even an inkling of who you really are, daughter, he never would have taken you into his temple. He would have suspected, rightly so, that you were my agent in all this, a ruse to recover my previous glory. I know I have put you through more than any mother would wish on her child, and I may never be able to repay the debt I now owe you. But I will make the attempt. First, I give you this.”
Timta raised her hand and placed it on Cass’ brow, and Cass felt something surge inside of her. It felt not unlike blood rushing to a numb limb, only inside her brain. As the disturbing but not entirely unpleasant feeling flowed, prickling, through her head, memories seeped in after it. Almost as quickly as it started, it was done. She was Cass and now she knew who that was. She was a little surprised it was so simple. She had imagined that if and when she managed to remove the magics that locked her memories away, they would come back in chunks—that to remember a lifetime’s worth of events at once would be too overpowering for her mind to cope with. Instead, it simply felt normal. As normal as opening one’s eyes after a long sleep and seeing the world around them again. Her old, regained memories integrated with the ones she’d made since this latest journey began seamlessly. She looked around and smiled at everyone.
“Hey guys,” she said. When no one immediately said anything, she realized they had no way of knowing what had just passed between her and Timta. “Good to see you again. Don’t some of you owe me money?”
Everyone rushed forward to embrace her. Cass laughed joyously as the people she now remembered as her family crushed her in the most massive hug she’d ever been a part of.
“‘Hey guys,’” Nat said, “That’s all we get? ‘Hey guys?’ I was hoping for something more along the lines of, ‘YOU! I REMEMBER YOU! AND YOU! I REMEMBER YOU TOO!’ But no. It’s just, ‘Hey guys.’ Like nothing happened at all.”
They continued joking and laughing for a while before Cass noticed Patch wasn’t with the group around her. He was quite a ways off, leaning against the base of Timta’s statue. She pulled away from everyone and walked over to him, motioning for everyone else to wait behind.
“You’re a part of this, too,” Cass said, as she sidled up next to him, leaning against the base, her shoulder lightly brushing Patch’s.
“I didn’t come along with you out of friendship, or charity, or goodwill. I didn’t come here for you at all. I came here for me. So I think it’s best, perhaps, if I don’t join in on the reunion. That would be… tacky.”
He looked steadily at Cass, unashamed of his actions or of his lack of desire to celebrate with her. When she continued to stare back with only friendship and empathy in her eyes, he looked down and away from her. He fastidiously flicked a blade of grass off his hirsute arm.
“You’ve long since paid your blood debt. But you still stuck around,” Cass said.
“I wanted to see the dragons. I wasn’t sure I was going to live much longer after that bite the husk gave me. Their bites have a way of going bad, fast. And even if the bite hadn’t got me, I wouldn’t have survived on my own in those woods for very long. That place is just too damned dangerous. I came back to you lot out of self-preservation. You shouldn’t be thanking me. Up until Suman found out my secret I was working for the guy who wants to kill you, gut your friends, and then wear their entrails. I’m not your friend, human. I’m not any human’s friend. So don’t thank me.”
Patch pushed away from the wall and headed across the field.
“There are harpies out there. Maybe you want an escort?” Cass called after him.
“I’m pretty sure that when these beasties landed,” Patch said gesturing at the dragons, “every harpy in the Plains decided it was well past migration time.”
“At least tell me where you are going,” Cass called again.
Patch stopped and turned. He shrugged, a disappointed look on his face.
“I used to think my brothers were crazy, or worse, simply lazy, settling down in the woods surrounding Urgana, giving up on the search for our sisters. Now I know why they stopped. All the search brings is pain, grief, and sadness. I’m going home.”
Patch turned back around and kept walking. Cass started to follow but stopped when she felt a familiar hand settle on her shoulder. She turned into Gunnarr and pressed herself taught against him in one smooth motion. She breathed in the scent of him deeply. She looked up into his face and started to open her mouth to tell him how much she loved him, how she was sorry for all she’d put him through, how she’d never be apart from him again, but she was interrupted by Timta’s cool voice before she got a word out.
“Cassandra, you may ask one boon of me for your part in bringing the gem back to me,” Timta said. “I wish I could offer you more, but there are rules even gods must not break.”
Cass rolled her eyes at the interruption. Timta was clearly in a hurry and she wanted Cass to know it, her voice brimming with impatience.
“Gods,” she said, irritated. “Our real reunion might have to wait a bit. Is that okay?”
Gunnarr pouted in an exaggerated manner, then sighed. “Well, I suppose I’ve waited this long. And I’m not sure the ‘real reunion’ I had in mind is fit for public consumption anyway. Yes, of course it’s okay.”
After a quick brush of lips with Gunnarr, Cass turned and plastered a fake smile on her face as she walked up to Timta. Cass was not pleased at all with how she had been used as a pawn in Timta’s game. Though Timta might be one of the more benevolent gods, Cass thought, she was still willing to do some pretty immoral things to get what she wanted. What she’d put Cass and her friends through was not something that would be quickly forgiven, and certainly never forgotten.
“Actually, I do have a request. It has to do with Midassa and a certain contract he has with someone I care for,” Cass began.
“Cass,” Manfred pleaded. He walked up to her and touched her arm. “Think before you choose. Suman is dead already. But my people suffer still, and may forever. You now have it in your power to end that suffering. You could return us to the way we were before we ascended to what we are now, before we bargained away half our people. You have the chance to save an entire people. Surely that outweighs the suffering, no matter how severe, of one man.”
“Manfred,” Cass said, “We owe this to Suman. Or at the very least, I owe it to him. And I don’t think this boon is what was hinted at on those tattered pages of your prophecy. Why would they need so many pages just to say, ‘And they were given a boon, and lo, their people were freed.’ Did you imagine that the next several pages were filled with author and contributor credits?”
Manfred frowned.
“This is not a joking matter.”
“I understand, and I am not trying to make light of your people’s suffering. The gods are a right bunch of bastard
s and have handed out short sticks all around. We’re on the same page on that. But you see that this seems highly unlikely to be the heart of the prophecy, right?”
Timta held up her hand.
“It matters not. I cannot do what either of you mean to ask. I cannot break a contract with a god. In either of these cases.”
Timta looked down at Manfred.
“Your people made a deal with Apsos. Even if I could unbind what he wrought, he is my brother and a powerful ally that I will need in the war to come. I would not risk losing his support. Midassa on the other hand,” Timta looked back up at Cass, “well him… I’m not so concerned with keeping in his good graces. Nevertheless, I cannot break a contract between him, or any god, and a mortal or once-mortal.”
“I’m sure you can,” Cass said, vexed. “You just choose not to.”
For the first time since they had met Timta, the group saw her calm face flush in anger.
“You are impertinent, child.”
“It’s true, isn’t it? You could do something if you wanted to. He’s a new god, after all. Aren’t they supposed to be lesser than you? Aren’t you supposed to be punishing them anyway? What good is having a boon from an Old God if I can’t get what I need out of it?”
Timta sighed. “I tell you girl that we cannot break each other’s contracts. Even gods must not change certain things or reality would dissolve into churning chaos. One of those things is our contracts with our servants. If we promise immortality to a servant, they must receive it, and no other god can break that contract. I am sorry to disappoint you, truly I am, but that is how reality works.”
Cass crossed her arms and frowned. Timta’s face softened.
“There is, of course, a rather large loophole that could be exploited,” Timta said finally, grinning, “if you have the stomach for it.
