Empire of Dust (26 page)

“But the water, no matter how clear, remained cursed.” Gideon's voice drops, and Jacob is surprised to hear a note of sorrow. “The water instilled its drinkers with a terrible, unquenchable thirst. A hunger for the divine.”

Now Jacob's throat is as dry as kindling, rough from thirst. He feels a hunger clawing in his guts, in every muscle of his body. He never knew emptiness could bring such pain, but pain is what he feels as his need overpowers him. His hunger, with nothing to turn to, sinks its teeth into his soul. He no longer feels human.

“The villagers began to hunt for something that would satiate their hunger.” Gideon's level voice brings Jacob back to himself, and the hunger vanishes as suddenly as it came.

Now Jacob can once again concentrate on his surroundings, and he sees that he is still on a cliff, but it's higher than the one before, and the village below is harder to make out. From here, he looks down at black figures moving among the reddish-brown of baked clay houses and the yellow of thatched roofs.

Jacob feels his stomach clench. “Those shadows... Are those...?”

Gideon nods gravely. “Yes, those are villagers.”

“But they seem to have grown bigger...as large as their homes.” He squints, half wishing he could see more clearly, half wishing there was nothing to see at all. “And they don't move like humans.”

“Watch,” Gideon instructs.

As Jacob looks, the black figures surround a tall pulse of light that seems human in form, but nearly twice the size of any person Jacob has ever seen. In the center of the light, he can make out the figure of a woman with long black hair. By some trick of this strange dream, he can see the silver irises of her shining eyes even from this great distance.

The light surrounding the woman flickers like stars behind clouds, then vanishes completely. From somewhere far, far below, Jacob hears the thread of a scream, and then crunches and slurps.

He squeezes his eyes shut and puts his hands over his ears. “Make it stop,” he moans.

And suddenly, it does. Jacob is just a disembodied thought in the dark, but before he panics, Gideon's voice floats around him and Jacob clings to it like a drowning man gripping a rope. “The gods never meant for humans to drink from the Fountain of Youth, and so humans cannot stomach the water without giving up their humanity. Over time, those who drink repeatedly from the fountain are not healed—they are turned into creatures that must live on the divine spark within others. They become terrible monsters. They become...Spirit Eaters. And so,” Gideon continues, “the war between gods and their creation began.”

Slowly, light begins to brighten the dark around Jacob the Thought. Something solid appears—a cave wall for Jacob the Stick Figure to cling to.

“In the war, most of the gods were consumed, and the few that survived fled the mortal realm, never to return.”

Sparks of light appear around Jacob. And as before, within the light he can make out glowing humanlike figures. They begin to rise upward, away from the earth, fleeing into the sky. Jacob marvels. It is like a shower of shooting stars—only in reverse. The lights stream by him and past him and away.

“Though many fled, at least two gods remained: Riel the Snake and his brother, Brehan of the Earth.”

As Gideon talks, two radiant beings stride toward the spring, their long capes made from dragon wings billowing behind them and their silver eyes gleaming. They extend their arms, chanting and praying as black clouds gather and lightning crashes around them. The air is green and smells fresh and sweet. The storm increases in intensity, and the scene in front of Jacob blurs until he cannot tell if there are two gods at the fountain, or three. He tries to blink water away from his eyes, but since he is not really there, the water does not clear.

Suddenly, a lightning bolt hits the spring, throwing the gods far away. The rain stops. The clouds scuttle away, revealing blue sky.

When Jacob looks back at the brother gods, he sees they have changed. Light no longer surrounds them. And though they are tall, they are no taller than any soldier in the Macedonian army. When they open their eyes, Jacob notices that their irises are no longer the silver of divinity. One god has emerald eyes, the other sky-blue. They stumble back toward the spring, fall to their knees, and search, their hands patting the ground. But there is no water there. Only scorched dust.

A low burn begins to prick at Jacob's muscles. From somewhere deep inside him, he realizes that he is again growing aware of his body—his flesh and blood body, not the two-dimensional lines of the Jacob on the cave wall. Solid ground appears beneath his feet, and once again there is
down
and
up
, and Jacob the man. The pricking continues, growing in intensity as Gideon speaks again.

“Though the Spirit Eaters were defeated, the very act of drying the Fountain splintered the last gods' magic. Riel and Brehan were forced to remain trapped in the mortal world, as they were no longer true gods, but somewhere between mortal and immortal, each carrying but a strain of his former divine power. And from these two gods—and their relationships with mortal women—Blood Magic came to humanity.”

Jacob stands perfectly still, afraid to breathe, terrified of what Gideon will say next. Has Tim mentioned anything? Has Gideon brought him here and drugged him to render him powerless...to kill him?

But then the story begins to sink in. Blood Magic is inherited from the last two gods. How can this be bad? Confusion overwhelms him as forcibly as the experience of the flood.

Gideon seems unaware of Jacob's rising panic. “The descendants of Riel possess what is called Snake Blood,” he explains, “and those of Brehan are Earth Blood. Snake Blood is a magic of the mind, Earth Blood a magic of the body. At the height of their powers, those who possess Snake Blood can enter the mind of an animal—or another human—sometimes even taking over the other's form entirely. As for Earth Blood, the greatest wielders of it can have near divine strength. They may melt metal, cause the earth to quake, heal wounds, and even bring life back to the fatally injured.”

Jacob gasps as his lungs expand. It's almost as though he'd been holding his breath since he drank the elixir, but that was unlikely, as entire ages seemed to have passed in front of him. But as he looks at the body of the goat, the blood still dripping from its throat, not yet congealed, he realizes the entire experience must have lasted two or three minutes, no more. A shiver traces its way up Jacob's neck as if an icy finger caressed him.

Those with Earth Blood can melt metal. Heal wounds. Bring life back to the fatally injured. Now there is no doubt.
He
healed the festering wound Diodotus had given him in the Macedonian training pit—not Kat.
He
melted Cyn's chains. And
he
saved Kat's life on the battlefield, with a single kiss. Without him, Bastian's sword thrust would have killed her.

His stomach heaves, and he vomits.

“Here.” The tall figure of Gideon leans over him, holding out a goatskin. Jacob accepts it and slurps the cool, pure water noisily.

“Many react to the elixir that way,” the High Lord says. “And though you might feel weary, it should clear up in a day or two.”

Jacob hopes he's right, even if he knows it wasn't the elixir that made his stomach turn.
Do you know?
he wants to ask.
Do you know that I am Earth Blood?
But that question would be the beginning of the end.

Instead he asks, “Why show this to me?” He rubs his throbbing forehead. “How does this pertain to the Lords' affairs?”

“It pertains to us,” Gideon replies, “because though the Spirit Eaters retreated into the depths of the earth, they did not, in fact, die out.”

Horror chills Jacob's bones as those words sink in. The Spirit Eaters. The terrible monsters who fought the gods...

“And though the last gods obliterated the fountain,” Gideon goes on, “it was not completely destroyed. From somewhere deep within the earth, the fountain's waters seep out of the rock walls of a cave in the Eastern Mountains.”

Jacob tries to control the trembling in his body. “These Spirit Eaters—they still exist?” He remembers the black figures surrounding the light—remembers their devastating, unquenchable hunger—and revulsion fills him.

“Yes,” Gideon says matter-of-factly. “Though it is a great secret, one that has been protected for many centuries. The village that once surrounded the fountain no longer exists. Their descendants, the Hunor, moved to the bottom of the mountain to try and contain the beasts and to prevent anyone else from drinking. Living so near the fountain, they remain stronger than the average man and are said to be able to see into the future and spot the turning points in a man's life. Now, people sometimes think that the Hunor are the Spirit Eaters—but they are wrong. They are only the monsters' keepers.”

Gideon loosens his helmet strap and removes the helmet crowned with enormous notched ram horns curling back on themselves so as to be circular. He runs a large hand over his closely cropped hair.

“For hundreds of years, the Hunor have made sure that the Spirit Eaters' hunger is satiated with the flesh of magic creatures,” he says. “A Pegasus, a siren, a hellion, a soothsayer, or a bearer of Blood Magic will ease the hunger enough to keep the Spirit Eaters isolated to their mountain. If they do not have magic to feed on, then they will turn to mortals, though the mortal souls are but a grain of wheat compared to the feast that is the soul of a centaur.”

Gideon's head glistens in the torchlight as the hypnotizing voice continues. “The first Lord, Lord Aesario, and his four brothers were from Hunor. You—and every Aesarian—wear their symbols over your heart—the five flames, along with the crescent moon, which represents the swallowing up of magic.”

Jacob's hand lightly touches his breastplate over the scar. He had undergone the branding ritual in front of Pella's elite—with Kat watching—and wasn't permitted to cry out or flinch despite the excruciating pain.

Gideon continues, “Those Lords left the village to seek out souls brave enough to do what must be done.”

“And what must be done?” Jacob all but whispers. The darkness of the cave seems to close around him. He wonders if he is going to faint and breathes deeply to steady himself.

“We must search the world for magic and bring the wielders of it to the monsters. For if we do not, the Spirit Eaters will leave their mountains and devour the world.”

He looks at Jacob, and each word rings with resounding weight. “This is the true reason behind our brotherhood. In order to seek out magic and roam unfettered across the known world, we had to become the best fighting force ever, acquiring warriors from all nations, bringing law and order to lawless lands. To insinuate our way into positions of power as advisors, ministers, counselors, and generals. Then, having proved our usefulness, we decreed magic a great evil and were permitted to take magic wielders away.”

Jacob realizes there is a horrifying logic to it. “We tell people we burn them in secret,” he says, looking at the dancing flames—blue and red and gold—of the nearest torch. “But that's not true, is it? We embalm them to take back to the Eastern Mountains...” He recalls the quickly hardening mud he was asked to lather across Cynane's body.

“To feed them to the Spirit Eaters, yes. They need to eat magic flesh while it is still alive. They must drink magic blood fresh from a beating heart and still flowing with vigor.”

Jacob shudders, knowing this should, by all the Lords believe, be his own fate. To be alive as monsters feast on his flesh, snap his bones, and suck out the marrow.

“Is there no way the Lords—as strong as we are now,” he begins, his voice cracking and his throat dry as ashes, “could destroy the Spirit Eaters, High Lord? Why should we—who are, as you say, the greatest fighting force in the world—remain at the beck and call of monsters?”

A wave of something like sadness washes over Gideon's face. Is it a trick of the light and shadow in this cave, or has he really aged noticeably in the three weeks since taking over the position from High Lord Mordecai? There are gray hairs near his temples that Jacob never saw before, and the lines around his mouth seem deeper, harsher.

“In the past, there were those of us who tried. The Spirit Eaters, having drunk so long from the Fountain, are immortal, Jacob, or nearly so. Every attempt to eradicate them resulted in the loss of thousands of human lives. And so we sacrifice the few to save the multitudes.”

Jacob looks at the cave wall and discovers that the few stick figures Gideon drew seem to have multiplied and now cover one entire wall. If he had never left Erissa for the Blood Tournament, if he had never tried to make himself someone Kat could be proud of, right now he'd be helping his father stoke the kiln and lift out the pots, the breeze in his hair, the sun on his face. His little brothers would be chasing each other around the kiln, his mother calling them to come in for fresh baked bread. He would never know of these horrors or how strange the world is. He might never have learned what he truly is. He wonders if his father knows. If his father is magic, too. One of his parents must be. Did they hide it for his protection? He has so much to ask them now.

He is not sure how to feel about it all. Happy that he has come so far and seen so much, proven himself time and again? Sad that he has lost not only Kat but his innocence? He puts his fingers gently on the drawings as if hoping they will give him the answer.

Gideon follows his gaze.

“We have been, perhaps, too successful in finding magic wielders and magical beings,” Gideon says. He reaches out a blood-smeared finger and touches the figure of a winged horse. A thoughtful, almost wistful look, passes over his face, but it leaves quickly, and his demeanor is as stern as ever. “It has become increasingly more difficult to find them.”