Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

  Ruslan was talking, and he hadn’t been paying attention. He was out of practice. Even when he had been lying to Nadya, he hadn’t been, not really. He’d hid pieces of the truth from her but found it near impossible to hide everything else. She brought out the anxious, messy parts of him that he tried his very hardest to conceal from the world.

  He had to stop thinking about her.

  “Come again?” he asked, tone flat.

  Ruslan moved to the desk, sitting behind it. Malachiasz remained standing. He wasn’t going to sit before the boy like a student being tested. He moved to a bookshelf behind his chair. Ruslan tensed. He was resistant, which was curious. Had he thought that he might be Chyrnog’s vessel? Had the god ever spoken to his followers?

  “Why would I speak to maggots?”

  I’m sure they would appreciate knowing you think of them thus, Malachiasz returned. Though he didn’t think they would particularly care. It took a certain type to be dedicated to a dead entropy god, he figured.

  “I’m sure you have questions,” Ruslan said.

  “Why, because I’m Tranavian?” Malachiasz replied. But he did have questions. What he knew about the Kalyazi gods from his years of study had never lined up with what Nadya had told him; though Nadya seemed to be working off dubious information at best for someone who could literally talk to them. “Don’t bother with the base pantheon. Too tedious. I understand all of that. If you have more, give me more, go deeper.”

  Ruslan lifted an eyebrow, a smile tugging at his lips. “You mean the old gods.”

  Oh good. Chyrnog had friends.

  “There is much of the world we don’t understand,” Ruslan said. “Much has been destroyed in this ceaseless war. A wealth of knowledge burned because it dances too close to what one mortal council decided is heresy.”

  Malachiasz turned, leaning back against the bookshelf.

  “Worship of the fallen gods is heresy. Worship of the old gods is worse.”

  “But aren’t they all your gods?” That was what Malachiasz didn’t understand. This line drawing between deities. “Or is it rather about where they came from?”

  “Do we know the genesis of the gods?” Ruslan asked, raising his brows.

  Malachiasz thought of the pages upon pages of spells in his study in Grazyk. Of draining the blood from so many veins. Of it pouring from Serefin’s throat as he died and gave Malachiasz a key element to so many interlocking pieces of power. About the copper taste as he’d drunk it.

  He did not remember much after that.

  “I should say it’s easier to guess at the current pantheon,” Malachiasz said, treading carefully.

  “And that is why we welcome Chyrnog’s return. One of the ancient powers. A true god. No ascension. No time before consciousness. He has always been, and we have always been made to be ground under his heel.”

  Malachiasz made a thoughtful noise.

  Ruslan’s expression darkened. He gazed over Malachiasz’s shoulder at the bookshelf. “There was a war,” he murmured. “Not here, but there, yet it spilled over all the same.”

  “How does a god of entropy lose a war?”

  Ruslan’s eyes narrowed. Malachiasz was being obvious, but he hadn’t shown himself resistant to Chyrnog’s will in front of this boy, so there was little risk.

  “When the divine war spilled over, there were mortals drawn into the battles. Old clerics turned saints. Our magic always comes from the gods, but not always from sanctioned divine sources.” His hand ghosted over the ring on his index finger. It was absolutely a relic.

  “Why do you have the girl, then?” Malachiasz asked, distracted.

  Ruslan waved a hand. “Olya? Because Olya went from being a terrible witch to one with actual power in a matter of months and I want to know how.”

  Idly, Malachiasz considered how he had killed the goddess of magic. How there had already been new avenues of magic springing forth, but with her death and Nadya’s meddling, something had broken and all the rules they had lived by and fought for were ashes. Their new reality was one where magic was not so carefully bound—how would they survive it?

  Well, he supposed they wouldn’t, if Chyrnog had his way.

  “Apologies for the diversion, about the clerics?”

  Ruslan didn’t seem perturbed. “There were four, Innokentiy Tamarkin, Milyena Shishova, Lev Milekhin, and Sofka Greshneva.” He got up, raking both hands through his hair, leaving it standing on end as he nudged Malachiasz out of the way, reaching for a thin volume on the bookshelf. He handed it to Malachiasz, something feverish in his gaze. “The Books of Innokentiy are all we really have that tells us anything about what happened. Four clerics who, by some means or another, lost contact with their patron gods. There are more volumes, but they’ve been lost. One of my order is chasing rumors of more in Komyazalov, but nothing yet. They were the ones who turned the tide against Chyrnog. They were the ones who accomplished the impossible.”

  Malachiasz opened the book and skimmed through the pages. “Well, we won’t have to worry about that now, will we? We no longer live in the time of the clerics.”

  Ruslan grinned. “Exactly.”

  Ruslan was a fanatic driven by the desire to understand the past, but he had cracked, fissuring so that he could only look back. Everything would be made right if it were made to be like it had been before it all went wrong.

  “Of course,” the boy said, “telling you this voids your brother’s life.”

  Fear jolted down Malachiasz’s spine. “What?”

  Ruslan’s fingers danced across the ring on his finger. “Did you not feel it? I suppose not. You wouldn’t, if you were truly Chyrnog’s vessel. You wouldn’t be able to feel his power on you. But I know now that you are as you say, but I also know that your brother disobeyed Chyrnog’s will, and for that he must die. It’s fine. I won’t make you watch. Unless you want to?” He glanced over his shoulder at Malachiasz, lifting a dark eyebrow.

  Malachiasz realized with a startling clarity that he did not want Serefin to die. He had lived for so long with the idea that he was wholly unwanted, that there was no family, that he had come from the Vultures and there was never anything else for him. Finding that there was someone, even if that someone was Serefin, it meant something. And he was not willing to use Serefin as a sacrifice for his own pride.

  “I’m doing what you want,” Malachiasz said. “Leave him.”

  Ruslan chuckled. “Absolutely not.” The ring on his finger glowed with a sickly light.

  21

  NADEZHDA LAPTEVA

  When a battlefield was flooded, Svoyatova Nyura Zlobina, a cleric of Omunitsa, molded the water to drown an army.

  —Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

  It was like surfacing from underneath an icy river. Nadya couldn’t get warm no matter how hard she tried, even when a mug of near-boiling tea was pressed into her hands. Her back hurt—she was quite done with being stabbed. And Parijahan’s, and then Rashid’s, embrace, warm as they were, couldn’t quite chase the cold from her bones.

  Katya had entered the room, taken one look at Nadya, and sighed, relief rippling across her taut shoulders. “You are far too much trouble.”

  “So I’ve been told.” Nadya sat at the edge of the bed, a blanket snug around her shoulders. Lying down was too much like death.

  “What happened?”

  Nadya felt different, lighter, like something had been taken away from her. Had something else taken its place? “The gods are speaking to me again.”

  Katya lifted an eyebrow. “What changed?”

  “Chyrnog woke up.”

  Katya’s face paled and she immediately sat down on a nearby chair. “Oh.”

  “We have to stop him, bind him. It’s the only way.”

  Katya opened her mouth, only to press her lips tight and shake her head. Nadya didn’t know how, either. That was their next step. Maybe Komyazalov would work out. If any place had that kind of esoteric knowledge, it would be the capital of Kalyazin.r />
  The tsarevna tugged on a dark curl. “All right,” she said very softly. “I’ll talk to Viktor. Make sure the city is still standing, though it seems like we fought off the witches.”

  “Zlatana will still devour the city,” Zvezdan said.

  No hard feelings about earlier, then?

  “I’m curious to see what you plan on doing.”

  Are any of you aligned with Chyrnog?

  “Aligned would be a simple description of a complicated relationship. Zlatana has always been fond of him, as has Cvjetko.”

  What of Velyos?

  “Velyos does what he likes, when he likes, with whomever he likes.”

  That sounded right. Nadya gestured beside her and Parijahan sighed and sat down. “What were you planning with Malachiasz?”

  Parijahan flinched.

  Nadya didn’t want to touch the thread but she knew that desperation, that hunger. Why hadn’t that magic broken when he died? The implication that it could have survived was troubling.

  Would she look for him? If she survived this, if he did? If their paths weren’t set in opposition to each other, which she had a bad feeling they were?

  No, she decided. Whatever they had was over. She couldn’t hope for anything more, not after what he had done. Not after what she had done, either.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Parj? I got pieces but my Paalmideshi isn’t very good yet.” She had been trying to learn with Parijahan, but it was slow going. The language didn’t have much in common with Kalyazi like Tranavian did and Nadya wasn’t grasping it as easily.

  “A great deal,” she said, falsely cheerful. “And … and it’s not that I didn’t trust you or Rashid. I just…” She buried her face in her hands.

  “Maybe start at the beginning?” Nadya suggested.

  “I can’t exactly lay out Akola’s history in succinct terms,” Parijahan replied sarcastically. She glanced at Nadya, considering. “But you do know more about the technicalities of magic than you let on.”

  Nadya smiled wanly. “And that’s what this is about?”

  Parijahan scooted back on the bed so she could draw her knees up to her chest. “That’s what everything is about. The changes in magic have been happening for far longer than the night in the Grazyk. I remember eavesdropping on a meeting between my brother, Arman, and a group of mages from the southern dunes. They were talking about how the stars were changing, which is … impossible.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  “He left to join the mages. He’s long gone.” There was pain in her voice, wrapped in a careful shroud. She didn’t talk about this; she never talked about this. Nadya could understand that.

  “You have magic, don’t you?” That would explain Parijahan’s fear. It would explain why she would hide it and tell no one, surrounded as she was by people consistently ruining the world because of magic. Nadya looked to Rashid. “You both do.”

  Parijahan chewed on her lower lip. Rashid lifted an eyebrow.

  “It’s complicated,” Parijahan said. “I don’t have magic in the way that you and Malachiasz and Rashid do. But I was born under a bleeding star. So, there’s something. And being a mage in Akola isn’t like it is here or in Tranavia. In Tranavia, it’s banal. Here, it’s revered.”

  “Well,” Nadya said.

  Parijahan waved a hand. “In former Paalmidesh, you’re a tool. A weapon. In Rashnit, you’re cursed. In Tahbni, you’re akin to a god.”

  “And in Yanzin Zadar?” Nadya asked.

  “You hide it away in hopes that you won’t get sold to a Travash in a different part of the country,” Rashid said softly.

  Ah. That also explained a great deal.

  “You didn’t come to Kalyazin to avenge your sister, then,” Nadya said.

  Parijahan’s steely gray gaze was firmly locked with Rashid’s. “No, not entirely,” she said softly. “There’s research happening in Akola. Research to get further with magic, do more, and my family would not be a Travash left in the dark.”

  Rashid’s face had gone gray.

  “I’ll never know if Arman went to the mages willingly. But—” Parijahan broke off, swallowing hard. “He told me what our Travash mages were doing to him. ‘Asking of him,’ they always put it, so politely, but he didn’t have a choice.”

  Nadya felt dizzy. “That makes it a bit surprising you were so close with Malachiasz, considering.”

  Parijahan shrugged, not denying it. But they had both looked away, fully knowing what Malachiasz had done to other people in his pursuit of power.

  “The court mages were going to take Rashid. I never would have seen him again. It was selfish. My family kept me hidden away because of the stars I was born under. There was a chamber underneath the throne, below the council room, and they would put me in there, lock me up in the dark, so I could influence decisions to be made in their favor. Because things happen around me. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. I can’t control it, ultimately a very useless kind of magic. In Akola, they talk about how the gods of the North are vicious and mad and so wrapped up in this war that they don’t notice mortals the way the Akolan gods do.”

  “What are the Akolan gods like?” Nadya asked, trying to wrap her mind around locking a child in the dark so that the power she had no control over might work. Was it worse than isolating a child in the mountains to prepare her for war? She supposed not.

  “It’s hard to explain. What I’ve witnessed here isn’t similar. They care about the collective, while you have gods who attach to individuals. But I thought that by coming here, I would be safe. I wasn’t attached so the gods here wouldn’t care.”

  Nadya could see where this was going. “And then you ran into me.”

  Parijahan shrugged. “I was curious. And I did want revenge. To make Tranavia suffer.”

  “Do you still?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Nadya could relate. “What changed?”

  “My family wants me back. My father is dying, so the Travasha have to bid for the throne. I’m next in line for the Siroosi household, and with my influence…”

  “Oh,” Nadya said softly.

  Parijahan nodded. “I wanted Malachiasz to help me get out of it, as it were. But he wanted me to go back and tell them I was abdicating. I don’t think he understood that the second I cross the border into Akola, that’s it. I’m there until I die.”

  Rashid sighed. “Would that be so bad?”

  Parijahan tilted her head back, releasing an uneasy breath. “That’s what I had such a hard time explaining to Malachiasz. I don’t want the Travash. Give it to someone who wants it, who wants to rule. I don’t. I’ve never wanted it.”

  “What do you want?”

  Parijahan glanced at Rashid.

  “I care about Akola, I do. I don’t want to rule it. But I do want to help. And I don’t think I can help there until what is happening here has settled. Everything is about to spill over in Akola. When my father dies there won’t be a careful process to choose the next ruling Travash. We’re on the verge of a civil war.”

  Nadya lifted an eyebrow at Rashid and he groaned. He held out his forearm and she watched as flowers burst from his skin. She sighed.

  “And you still don’t know what you can do? Have you talked to Ostyia yet?”

  “There hasn’t been time, what with you dying and all,” he replied.

  Nadya winced.

  “You have different gods, though, because there are so many gods spread out so far,” she said, and her voice wavered a little at offering knowledge she was confident in when she was confident in so little these days. “That’s one of the dangers we deal with now, that these fallen gods might decide it would be more beneficial to latch onto someplace already being watched over by a different god. Cause a war.”

  “But who knows, what has happened here might very well be happening there, too,” Parijahan said.

  Nadya closed her eyes. “Is there more?” She didn’t know if she could take mu
ch more.

  “A bit, but later. You’ve been through a lot.”

  “We all have.”

  “Yes, well, not all of us have literally died on top of it.”

  Who knew I would one day have so much in common with two Tranavians? Nadya rubbed her face with her hands. “There’s no time to rest,” she said quietly.

  This was going to spiral out of control faster than they were ready for. She doubted the attack on the city was the only one of its kind happening in Kalyazin. There would be more, in other places less prepared. More forests would stretch past their borders and devour, more monsters would come out of their darkened corners to consume.

  She didn’t know how to stop an old god. She didn’t know what Myesta and Alena had given her. She didn’t know, still, what she was, though she was on the cusp of answers. It was terrifying, it was thrilling.

  She had died.

  Nadya moved to stand, only to be gently shoved back down by Parijahan.

  “No,” she said. “This nightmare will still be spinning when you wake up. Rest.” Her palm pressed against the side of Nadya’s face and she leaned into its warmth. Rashid slipped out of the room.

  “Everything … hurts,” Nadya murmured.

  “That’s how life is,” Parijahan said. She kissed the top of her head. “Nadya, I am so glad you’re all right.”

  “Bit of an overstatement, I think.”

  “You’re alive. That’s enough.”

  * * *

  There was no staying to aid with the aftermath. Nadya refused to even stay long enough to heal. They didn’t have time to waste. Things had become all the more desperate now that they knew what they were up against. To the capital they went.

  “Let me know if you need to rest and I’ll get Katya to stop,” Ostyia said to Nadya, moving her horse up next to hers. She glanced sidelong at Nadya. “I cannot believe I’m about to say this, but I’m glad you’re alive.”