The Kingdom of Gods (58 page)

Enefa’s coming shattered the universe they had built. They recovered, and welcomed her, and built it again — newer, better. They grew strong together. But for most of that time, Nahadoth and Itempas remained closer to each other than to their younger sister. And she, in the way of gods, grew lonely.

So she tried to love me. But because she was a god and I merely a godling, our first lovemaking nearly destroyed me. I tried again — I have always been hardheaded, as the Maro say — and would have kept trying if Enefa, in her wisdom, had not finally realized the truth: a godling cannot be a god. I was not enough for her. If she was ever to have something of her own, she would have to win one of her brothers away from the other.

She succeeded, many centuries later, with Nahadoth. This was one of the events that led to the Gods’ War.

But in the meantime, she did not wholly spurn me. She was not a sentimental lover, but a practical one, and I was the best of the
god-children she had yet produced. I would have been honored, when she decided to make a child from my seed —

— if the existence of that child had not almost killed me.

So she took steps to save both of us. First she tended to me, as I lay disintegrating within the conflagration of my own unwanted maturity. A touch, a reweaving of memory, a whisper:
forget.
As the knowledge that I was a father vanished, so, too, did the danger, and I was cured.

Then she took the child away. I do not know where; some other realm. She sealed the child into this place so that it — he — Kahl — could grow up in safety and health. But he could not escape, and he was alone there, because keeping the secret from me meant keeping Kahl unknown to the other gods.

Perhaps Enefa visited him to prevent the madness that comes of isolation. Or perhaps she ignored and observed him while he cried for her, one of her endless experiments. Or perhaps she took him as a new lover. No way to know, now that she is dead. I am just father enough to wonder.

Still, because the
fact
of Kahl’s existence did not change, this has led to our current problem. Her delicate chains in my mind, the heavy bars on Kahl’s prison: both were loosened when Enefa died in Tempa’s trembling hands. Those protections held, however, until Yeine claimed the remnant of Enefa’s body and soul for her own. This “killed” Enefa at last. The chains were broken, the bars snapped. Then Kahl, son of death and mischief, Lord of Retribution, was loosed upon the realms to do as he would. And it was only a matter of time before my memory returned.

Just as well, I suppose, that I am already dying.

I
DID NOT FEEL AT ALL WELL WHEN
I
WOKE.

I lay in a bed, somewhere in the new palace. It was nighttime, and the walls glowed, though far more strangely than they had in Sky. Here the dark swirls in the stone reduced the light, though the flecks of white within each indeed gleamed like tiny stars. Beautiful, but dim. Someone had hung lanterns from looping protrusions on the walls, which seemed to have been created for that purpose. I almost laughed at this, because it meant that after two thousand years, the Arameri would now have to use candles to see by, like everyone else.

I didn’t laugh because something had been shoved down my throat. With some effort I groped about my face and found some sort of tube in my mouth, held in place with bandages. I tried to tug it loose and gagged quite unpleasantly.

“Stop that.” Deka’s hand came into my view, pushing mine away. “Be still, and I’ll remove it.”

I will not describe what the removal felt like. Suffice it to say that if I had still been a god, I would have cursed Deka to three hells for putting that thing in me. Though only the nicer hells, since he’d meant well.

Afterward, as I sat panting and trying to forget the fear that I might die choking on my own vomit, Deka moved to the edge of the bed beside me. He rubbed my back gently and slowly. A warning. “Feel better?”

“Yes.” My voice was rough, and my throat dry and sore, but that would fade. I was more troubled by the awful weakness in every limb and joint. I looked at one of my hands and was stunned: the skin was dry and loose, more wrinkled than smooth. “What …”

“You needed nourishment.” He sounded very tired. “Your body had begun to devour itself. One of my scriveners came up with this. I think it saved your life.”

“Saved —”

And then I remembered. Kahl. My —

forget

My mind shied away from both the thought and my mother’s warning, though it was too late for either. The knowledge was free, the damage done.

“Mirror.” I whispered it, hoarse.

One appeared nearby: full-length, on a wheeled wooden pivot stand. I had no idea how it had been conjured. But when Deka got up and tilted it toward me, I forgot the mystery of the mirror. I stared at myself for a long, long time.

“It could have been much worse,” Deka said, while I sat there. “We — the scriveners — didn’t know what was wrong with you. Our warning-scripts led us to you. Then Lord Itempas revived and told us what needed to be done. I was able to design a negation-script to work in tandem with a loop-interrupt …” He trailed off. I wasn’t listening, anyway. It had worked; that was all
that mattered. “We stopped the age acceleration. Then we repaired what we could. Three of your ribs were broken, your sternum was cracked, one lung punctured. There was some bruising to your heart, a dislocated shoulder …”

He stopped again when I reached out to touch the mirror.

My face was still handsome, at least, though no longer boyishly pretty. This was not my doing. My body was growing how it wanted now, and I could have ended up pudgy and bald. I’d gone gray mostly at the temples, though there was plenty threaded through the rest of my hair, which was long again, tangling into knots on the sheets behind me. The shape of my face was not so different, just softer. Temans tended to age well in that respect. The texture of my skin, however, was thicker, dryer, weathered, even though it had seen little of the outdoors. There were deep-set lines around my mouth, finer ones at the corners of my eyes, and I was looking decidedly grizzled, though thankfully someone had shaved me. If I kept my mouth shut and dressed right, I might be able to do “distinguished.”

When I lowered my hand, it took more effort to move. Slower reflexes, softer muscles. I was skinny again, though not nearly as bad as after the last mortaling. The food tube had kept me in healthy flesh, but it was definitely weaker, less resilient flesh.

“I’m too old for you now,” I said, very softly.

Deka pushed aside the mirror, saying nothing. That silence hurt, because I took it to mean he agreed with me. Not that I blamed him. But then Deka lay down beside me and pulled me to lie with him, draping an arm across my chest. “You need to rest.”

I closed my eyes and tried to turn away from him, but he
wouldn’t let me, and I was too tired to struggle. All I could do was turn my face away.

“Aren’t you too old to sulk, too?”

I ignored him and sulked anyway. It wasn’t fair. I had wanted so much to make him mine.

Deka sighed, nuzzling the back of my neck. “I’m too tired to talk sense into you, Sieh. Stop being stupid and go to sleep. There’s a lot going on right now, and I could use your help.”

He was the strong one, young and brilliant, with a bright future. I was nothing. Just a fallen god and a terrible father. (Even to think this hurt, grinding agony throughout my body like a headache with serrated teeth. I bit my lip and focused on loneliness and self-pity instead, which was better.)

But I was still tired. Deka’s arm, draped over my chest, made me feel safe. And though it was an illusion, doomed like all things mortal, I resolved to enjoy it while I could, and slept again.

When I woke next, it was morning. Sunlight shone through the walls; the bedroom was illuminated in shades of white and green. Deka was gone from beside me. Glee was in the room instead, sitting beside the bed in a big chair.

“I knew it was a mistake to trust you,” she said.

I was feeling stronger, and my temper, at least, had not mellowed with age. I sat up, creaky, stiff, and glared at her. “Good morning to you, too.”

She looked as tired as Deka, her clothing more disheveled than I had ever seen it, though still neat by the standards of average mortals. But when the daughter of Itempas wears unmatched clothing with her blouse half undone at the top, she
might as well be a beggar from the Ancestors’ Village. She had, as perhaps a final concession to exhaustion, bottled her thunderstorm of hair rather than style it with her usual careless confidence: a tie pulled it into a fluffy bun at the nape of her neck. It did not suit her.

“All you had to do,” she said tightly, “was shout Yeine’s name. It was twilight; she would have heard you. She and Naha would have come and dealt with Kahl, and that would have been that.”

I flinched, because she was right. It was the sort of thing a mortal would have thought to do. “Well, where the hells were you?” This was a weak riposte. Her failure did not negate mine.

“
I
am not a god. I didn’t know he’d been attacked.” She sighed, lifting a hand to rub her eyes. Her frustration was so palpable that the very air tasted bitter. “Father didn’t use his sphere to summon me until Kahl was long gone. His first thought, upon returning to life, was of
you
.”

If I had still been a child, I would have felt a small and petty pleasure at this hint of her jealousy. But my body was older now; I could no longer be childish. I just felt sad.

“I’m sorry,” I said. She only nodded, bleak.

Because I felt stronger, I took in more of my surroundings this time. We were in the bedchamber of an apartment. I could see another room beyond the doorway, brighter lit; there must have been windows. The walls and floors were bare of personal touches, though I glimpsed clothes hanging neatly in a large closet across the room. Some of them were the ones Morad had given me before we’d left Sky. Apparently Deka had told the servants I was living with him.

Pushing aside the covers, I got to my feet, slowly and carefully, as my knees hurt. I was naked, too, which was unfortunate as I seemed to have sprouted hair from an astonishing variety of body parts. Glee would just have to endure, I decided, and made my way to the closet to dress.

“Did Dekarta explain what has happened?” Glee had composed herself; she sounded brisk and professional again.

“Aside from me taking a great flying leap toward death? No.” All my clothes had been made for a younger man. They would look ridiculous on me now. I sighed and pulled on the most boring of what I found and wished for shoes that might somehow ease the ache in my knees.

Something flickered at the edge of my vision. I turned, startled, and saw a pair of boots sitting on the floor. Each had good, stiff leather about the ankles, and when I picked one up, I saw it had thick padding in the sole.

I turned to Glee and held up the boot in wordless query.

“Echo,” she said. “The palace’s walls listen.”

“I … see.” I did not.

She looked fleetingly amused. “Ask for something — or even think of it with enough longing — and it appears. The palace seems to clean itself as well, and it even rearranges furniture and decor. No one knows why. Some remnant of the Lady’s power, perhaps, or some property that has been permanently built in.” She paused. “If it is permanent, there will be little need for servants here, going forward.”

And little need for the age-old divisions between highbloods and low, among Arameri family members. I smiled down at the boot. How like Yeine.

“Where is Deka?” I asked.

“He left this morning. Shahar has kept him busy since Kahl’s attack. He and the scriveners have been setting up all manner of defensive magics, internal gates, and even scripts that can move the palace, though not with any great speed. When he hasn’t been here, tending you, he’s been working.”

I paused in the middle of pulling on pants. “How long have I been, er, incapacitated?”

“Almost two weeks.”

More of my life slept away. I sighed and resumed dressing.

“Morad has been busy organizing the palace’s operations and preparing sufficient living quarters for the highbloods,” Glee continued. “Ramina has even put the courtiers to work. Remath has begun transferring power to Shahar, which requires endless paperwork and meetings with the military, the nobles, the Order …” She shook her head and sighed. “And since none of those are permitted to come here, the palace’s gates and message spheres have seen heavy use. Only Remath’s orders keep Shahar here, and no doubt if Deka were not First Scrivener and essential to making the palace ready, she would have him visiting fifty thousand kingdoms as her proxy.”