She took the Undying Man by the hands and dragged him away from the monster on the seat.
He looked up at her through a glaze of pain. “I knew you would come,” he said.
“What?” Stella asked. “You brought me here.”
“The Most High. He’d not miss such an important nexus. Claims to be disinterested, but he’s always there, interfering. Thank
him, by the way.”
“Huh,” Stella replied, unable to think of anything more sensible.
A glance at the suddenly quiescent figure on the chair gained her nothing. With its lack of discernible face, there was no
way she could tell how the Daughter was reacting to the presence of the Most High.
“Your father asks you to give up this selfishness,” she told Umu. “Take yourself back to the void, he begs. There is much
work for you to do there.”
“You won’t unmake me,” Umu said confidently. “Not your own daughter.”
“No,” said Stella. “He won’t. He will not raise a hand against you.”
The stalks quivered, the nearest, Stella supposed, the body she inhabited could come to a smile.
“He will have his champion do it instead,” Stella added.
“What?” said the god, the voice strained.
Kannwar nodded to Stella and dragged himself to his feet. “I will not fail you,” he said.
The Father spoke the words into her mind just before she said them; and oh, she so enjoyed saying them. She knew how badly
they would hurt the one who had so hurt her. Her revenge.
“You are not his champion,” she said. “I am.”
The door at the top of the last stair was barely visible in the smoke-filled haze. Everyone wheezed and whistled, trying to
draw breath. Poor Arathé still whimpered from the after-effects of the magical activity in the room above them: she had stood
and screamed when Umu had begun to draw on her power. Duon had gone milky-white, while Noetos and Anomer clung to each other,
unable to move.
Something dreadful was being shaped in the Tower of Farsight.
Eventually the fisherman drew himself up, wiped his mouth and beckoned them up the stair. Hands supporting each other, under
elbows, resting on shoulders, in the small of the back, the companions struggled to the landing. The sound of stone crashing
onto a wooden floor came echoing up the tower from far below.
“I don’t want to go in there,” Cylene said, coughing as she eyed the door.
“Aye.” Sauxa rubbed at his left cheek. “Somethin’ weighty in there. Best I can describe it.”
“We have to go in,” Anomer said, but Lenares could see his whole body leaning away from the door.
“No,” Cylene moaned, and Lenares knew her sister had come to the end of herself. Shaking uncontrollably, no colour in her
face. “I can’t.”
Lenares reached out her hand, touching her on the arm, and Cylene shrieked. Her body was rigid with fear for a moment, then
she pulled away from Lenares’ touch, breathed a low “sorry” and ran back down the stair, sobbing as she went.
“Cylene!” Noetos called after her. He made to follow.
Cyclamere grabbed his arm. “Too much,” the swords-man said. “We’ve asked too much of her. She knows what it is like to have
an evil god inside her. Which of us would not flee had we her knowledge?”
“But she’ll burn,” Noetos said desperately as the sound of feet on stone faded into silence.
“My lord,” Cyclamere said after too long a moment, “we’ve come this far. We must go on.”
The numbers told Lenares the fisherman was about to fling the swordmaster’s arm aside and run after Cylene. The numbers were
never wrong, but as she watched, they changed.
“Aye,” he said, and turned to Lenares.
“You and I,” he said. “We must face the gods.”
His face was as blank as a stone wall, but his numbers told her which sister he would prefer beside him. Lenares inclined
her head, strode quickly to the door—
don’t think about it
—set a hand to the latch and pushed.
The problem with the Most High
, Deorc thinks,
is that because he holds himself aloof from the world, no one factors him into any conflict. So when he appears, all calculations
are rendered moot.
Umu, he can see, is terrified. The Father made her thousands of years ago in an unparalleled act of intervention in the affairs
of the world, and he can unmake her the same way. Can thrust her back into the void. Can even make it so she no longer exists.
Has never existed.
Her red-edged thoughts leak to him. Deorc realises he is beginning to lose his sense of self, beginning to be absorbed into
her. He huddles there, not knowing exactly where
there
is, as her thoughts and memories wash over him, leach through him.
A single image flicks through her—through his—brain. She and Keppia, sullen and defeated both, stare at each other across
a sandy space, while between them stands a figure of light. A throne behind him, barely discernible. The House of the Gods,
Deorc realises; though, he supposes, at that time more appropriately called the House of the God. He is seeing the truce between
the two armies of creation. Not only humankind: other creatures fought in each army, according to kinship and disposition.
The cause of the conflict has long been forgotten. Ancient history—though Deorc suspects Umu knows exactly what lies behind
it. The war was prosecuted for a thousand years and more, and the world bled because of it.
So the Most High had despaired of his creation. He presented Umu and Keppia with a stark future. He was, he told them, prepared
to wipe the world clean of life. There were other worlds, he said, where sentients lived together cooperatively. He would
start anew here, with two people, and rebuild. Keppia and Umu were the chosen people.
In Umu’s memory, Keppia was the one to plead for mercy. It was Keppia’s plan to anoint himself and Umu as gods, truce-keepers,
forsaking earthly life for a role in the heavens. Umu went along with this reluctantly, keeping her reservations to herself.
So she remembers.
It happened so long ago that she now completely believes her memory. But Deorc can see the stamp of self-deception all over
it. It was Umu who pleaded for the lives of her family and friends, for all of creation. Begging, persuading, promising, until
the Most High assented to the plan.
Thus
, he said,
I give you more power over your own futures.
He was well satisfied.
Deorc wonders if this hasn’t been the god’s plan all along.
The Most High raised up two large thrones, one either side of his, and vested great power in them. He seated Umu and Keppia
on those thrones and, as he spoke to them of statecraft, the power began to work in them, beginning the long transformation
from human to god.
Deorc tries to project a thought towards Umu, desperate to exploit this knowledge. To unsettle her at the least.
You are a fool
, he shouts at her.
You have been manipulated from the very start!
She hears nothing more, perhaps, than a faint whisper. Perhaps she hears nothing at all. Whichever, it does nothing to interrupt
her endeavours: she is fashioning a spear of light, drawn directly from the magic of the void. A spear imbued with a magical
tip, spell-shaped to cut through anything in its path.
“If I am safe from your hands,” she says in Deorc’s voice, addressing the Most High, “then I shall make an end of these tools
of yours. And then we shall agree to a new pact, in which I assume your role and power while you fade away. I see your mind.
It is what you want, what every part of you cries out for. You want to rest from your labours. I can grant your wish.”
She hefts the spear, holding it in an invisible hand. The sort of hand Deorc desired for himself.
The door opens.
The door opened and in came her friends.
Noetos first, sword in one hand, huanu stone in the other. Lenares beside him, her head barely reaching his shoulder, her
large eyes open in what looked like fascination. The remainder of Stella’s former companions shuffled in with various degrees
of reluctance, spreading to the left and right of the cosmographer and the fisherman, fighting the wish of their bodies to
shelter behind those in front. For all the world like a choir of nervous children on the first night of Midwinter celebrations.
Stella almost laughed, and the god inside her chuckled at the image.
Kannwar stiffened. Ah, he’d obviously written her friends out of this drama. Set traps below, no doubt, which would explain
the smoke billowing into the room through the half-open door. The traps had worked too, Stella observed: Bregor and Consina
were missing, as was Cylene.
The fisherman will be devastated.
Yet there he stood, his eyes burning, obviously having elected to continue.
And now it comes
, the Most High said, his voice sorrowful.
I have lived long enough
, she muttered to him.
I have seen all my closest friends into the grave. I am prepared for an ending.
I am sorry, Stella, but there is something else I must tell you. There is a chance that the manner of your death may rip you
entirely from the world and the void between.
I will cease to exist?
Her chest began to burn.
Silent assent.
Can you tell me… What can I…
She gave up. To be told details of the future would be to shape it, to potentially change the desired outcome.
You needn’t have told me
, she whispered.
I am having enough trouble being brave.
So
, said the voice,
am I.
“Can’t keep you away,” the Destroyer said, nodding to Noetos. “Are you here for me or for Umu?”
“Both,” said the fisherman, and strode forward brandishing the huanu stone.
* * *
Umu can barely contain her delight. The spear remains unthrown, and as the god’s thoughts cascade through his brain, Deorc
can see why.
To become anchored in the world she needs a body. Deorc’s will not do: it is sustained entirely by magic, and is unpleasant
both to look upon and live within. Umu intends to move out as soon as she can.
When Stella entered the room, the Daughter rejoiced—she was perfect. Immortal, beautiful, powerful. Umu desired her with an
intensity that made his own desire seem trivial, until the presence of the Most High burgeoned within the woman.
Now other bodies line the wall, each one a possible candidate for possession. Arathé would be the easiest to take, having
an already-open channel to Deorc’s mind. Moderately gifted, yet badly blemished. Unattractive. By no means a worthy vessel,
but might do as a transitional place to gather strength for her next leap.
Duon is equally problematic. Umu desires a woman’s body, and Duon is most emphatically a man and too old. She sets him aside
in her thoughts.
With that dreadful thing in his hand, Noetos is untouchable. She moves on quickly with a shudder.
His son, though, is another matter. Young, handsome, talented, yet to come into his full strength. Rightful heir to a dukedom.
She built her earthly power base all those years ago from far less.
Ah, but there stands Lenares. One of twins. Her sister is likely beyond Umu’s grasp, unless she can be freed from Keppia’s
accursed conduit without it killing her anew. Lenares, though, is exquisite. Such a mind! God-touched. And the prospect of
a very intimate revenge for those days of humiliating captivity cannot be discounted. A close second to Stella perhaps.
But at that moment the presence of the Most High that has been glowing hotly within Stella vanishes. Frightened of the huanu
stone, no doubt. Umu thrusts her debate aside and pounces.
She takes an instant to flick through Deorc’s dying brain and retrieve the memory she is looking for: how to fashion a spike.
The making that had taken him days takes her seconds. She drops the spear, lifts the spike and slams it into Stella’s mind.
The Falthan queen stumbles at the impact.
Umu sees Noetos coming at her and forces the channel between her and Stella wide open.
Deorc sees his doom approaching. Umu is going to let him back into his broken body and mind just in time to be struck by the
huanu stone. He tries to ready himself for vigorous movement, tries to assemble some sort of defence, but knows he will be
too late.
Umu cackles in triumph as she pours herself out of his mind and into that of the Falthan queen. Full possession.
Deorc of Jasweyah hauls himself back into the wreckage of his mind, pausing for the merest moment to grab the tattered outliers
of his thoughts. He is too late. The stone is coming.
The Most High disappeared.
A pain like the bite of a scorpion took her in the back of her head. A moment later her mind exploded in fire as something
black and hot forced its way through the channel and into her brain.
She retreated to the place he had prepared for her, sobbing in fear and regret—how could she not?—as the brutal Daughter took
her mind in taloned fingers, tore it apart—gone forever—and reshaped it, like a vulture invading a nest.
The impact was fearsome and irrevocable. Stella did not have to feign her stagger. Into the path of Noetos and his stone.
Stella seized control of her body back from Umu, the Most High’s strength underlining her own. At the same time the Most High
seared the channel back to Deorc, closing it. The goddess screamed, dimly aware she had been out-thought. Trapped by her own
desires. Stella hooked a foot around Noetos’s leg and brought him crashing down on top of her. Two bodies, four minds, falling
to the floor.
Three deaths to come.
She took his arm firmly in her own and guided the huanu stone down onto her chest, between her breasts. The sudden pain was
intolerable, worse than a sword through the heart. Welcome.
Someone, somewhere in the room, began screaming.
In full possession of her bleeding brain, Stella looked into the eyes of the frightened man atop her, the huanu stone wedged
between them. He clearly believed he had failed. That he was killing the wrong person.
“Don’t be alarmed,” she whispered as the magic began to drain out of her. White water-magic, black, corrupted throne-magic
and gold creator-magic, vanishing into the void in three distinct but intertwined streams. “This is right. This is what the
stone is for.”