“You...” His mind flared with disbelief. “None of them, not even her, deserves that. Drop her and come home.”
“Yeavan protect me, but I cannot. I touched this child, Iulaja. Perhaps more of them can come to understand us.”
“They will never understand us. Never.”
Odd, how freedom can change its meaning. I had once wished for nothing but death by the hands of my Goddess, to be free of human shackles. There, floating close to my brother, I wished only to live that I might pass on her ways.
Iulaja misunderstood my hesitation. His hand touched my shoulder, and he said, “Come, brother.”
I pulled away. “I cannot.”
He floated nearby for long seconds, and then his anger flared, and he swam to one side. “Begone, fool yeavanni.”
I hugged Neera tight and swam away.
Long after I had left Iulaja, I heard his ever so faint words. “Begone, dear Khrentophar. May she hold you close to her heart.”
Prey to the Gods
Gwengyn moved quietly across the floor of his one-room home, pulling on his leggings and gathering up his quiver and bow as his wife slept fitfully in their bed. He stopped as he heard her moan, and when he turned, he saw her lying on her side, clutching her rounded belly. He wanted to stroke her sweaty brown hair from her brow, wanted to kiss her before he left, but she’d had so little sleep of late that any sleep—even tortured sleep such as this—was better than waking her now.
He was nearly ready to go when she opened her eyes. They were haunted and sunken.
“The same?” Gwengyn asked.
Her reply was to roll onto her back and to reach for his hand. He stepped closer, and she placed his hand over her pregnant belly. The unborn child moved, but it wasn’t the movement of a healthy child. The babe shivered violently. It felt unnatural, diseased, as it had for weeks now.
Kessa pressed her hands over his, preventing him from pulling away. “Time grows short. Slay a buck this day, Gwengyn, father of my daughter, for I won’t see another child die.”
Gwengyn met her fierce eyes with as much courage as he could muster. Ever since they’d known about the babe, he’d hunted on the day and night of the full moon, trying to make sacrifice to the gods that his child might live a prosperous life. But in this he had failed. On those days no deer came near his usual stands, and though many should be near, not once did he hear them rattling their horns as they fought in the forest. He’d resorted to stalking his prey, but the forest went deathly quiet, and what few deer he’d seen had been wary of him despite his stealth and skill in the hunt.
“I may not find one,” Gwengyn said at last. He didn’t say that the gods, Itekwa especially, might not want him to find a buck. There was no need to. They both knew the god was displeased with them.
“You’ll find one.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “He’ll hear you this time.”
“I know he will,” he said, smiling as bravely as he could for Kessa.
Slinging his quiver over his shoulder, bow in hand, Gwengyn strode through the doorway of their hut. Then, after speaking words of prayer to Itekwa, he ran toward the heart of the forest.
As the sun lowered behind white-capped mountains, Gwengyn stared at the tall buck rubbing his antlers against a young pine.
Five others he’d seen this day—five!—each with ten points or more, but none of his arrows had struck true. He’d called to Itekwa every time, asking him to guide his arrow true, but the arrows would always fly wide or fall short. Never had he shot as poorly as he had this day, the day he needed his marksmanship the most.
As the buck lowered its head down and nibbled among the pine needles, Gwengyn pulled an arrow from his quiver. The shaft trembled as he laid it to string. He raised the bow and sighted carefully, aiming for the great buck’s heart.
Six, Gwengyn thought as he drew the string to his ear. Six is a portentous sign.
After whispering his prayer, Gwengyn released both his breath and the gold-fletched arrow simultaneously. Sunlight flashed off the shaft as the arrow sped beneath the forest’s canopy, but it caught not the buck itself, but the tufted white hair of its tail.
Gwengyn stared. His heart beat madly. He shivered with fear for his unborn child.
The beast took a ground-swallowing leap away from the tree. Gwengyn reached for another arrow, but by the time he’d pulled one from the quiver on his back, the great antlered beast had bounded further up the ravine, and by the time his shaking hand put nock to string, it was gone, Gwengyn’s horror the only evidence it had ever been near.
Dear Kessa, what have I done?
His mouth was dry. His chest was beginning to feel tight. How could he have missed?
He slipped the unused arrow into his quiver and trudged over the ferns to search for the spent one. It was clear what would happen even if he were to hunt all night, even if he were to hunt for days. He would never slay a buck for his child. Itekwa had decided to take any child Gwengyn might attempt to father.
Gwengyn found the arrow angled low into the forest floor. When he bent to retrieve it, though, he caught movement from the corner of his eye, and when he rose, the arrow all but forgotten in his hands, he froze, afraid to make a sound, afraid even to breathe. On the craggy-barked spruce ahead of him rested a salamander. As he watched, its skin changed from the ruddy background of bark and dead needles to a mottled pattern of dandelion yellow and the blue of a clear deep lake. Gwengyn had seen a salamander once, but that had been two weeks travel south in the wide marshlands of their sister-tribe. Never had he seen one among the arid valleys of the mountains.
The salamander skittered up the tree and examined Gwengyn with one glittering eye. When Gwengyn came within three paces, the thing leapt into the air and a nearly transparent membrane of yellow skin snapped between forelegs and rear, allowing it to ride hidden currents far enough that Gwengyn lost sight of it.
Gwengyn chased after, confused but intensely curious. It was not idle curiosity but a burning need to see where the flying salamander would take him. He scrambled around trees, slipped on the angled slope, trying to regain sight of the salamander. An emerald green shape glided over a fallen tree. Gwengyn ran toward it, but pulled up short when he saw the two trees that barred his path. The trees were gnarled and slick-barked. They rested wearily against one another and the stony escarpment behind them. Between the trees hung dripping strands of diaphanous green moss. Wet, when there had been no rain.
Gwengyn approached, fingers and toes tingling as humid air filled his lungs. This place was spoken of among his people. It was the pathway to Hadha, the middle realm, the land of the gods. He knew that by finding this sacred place Itekwa had chosen him to die.
He stared at those trees for a long time, but in the end stepped forward, knowing that to wait would only delay the inevitable. Perhaps, he told himself as he passed between the trees, at the least he could petition for the life of his child.
The bright orange salamander scurried up a vine into a clump of the fluffy moss. The trees hid a narrow cleft in the mountainside. Gwengyn took this, glancing warily at the alarmingly different canopy above him. The trees had braided limbs, gnarled and incestuous, that went up and up and up. Only at the top did they spread their wide, heart-shaped leaves. The forest was alive with foreign smells and the bright colors of the flowers. Rain fell onto broad leaves and the moss-covered ground. The cold air caressed his face and hands, licked the back of his throat.
Eventually the trail split. Gwengyn halted there, unsure which to take until the salamander, now an angry red, flew to the right. Gwengyn followed, trusting the creature with purpose if nothing else. As he headed down a treacherous slope, however, he slipped and fell, sliding down the trail with growing speed despite his attempts to slow himself. His bow slipped from his grasp and the strap on his quiver broke. He scrabbled for both, but lost them as they skittered to a stop while his momentum kept him moving. Eventually he fell from an earthen lip into a clearing.
He coughed as bright pain blossomed along the right side of his chest and shoulder, which had taken the brunt of the fall. The pain all but vanished, however, when he saw what stood in the center of the clearing. A statue of Itekwa—a tall, muscular man with the antlers of a deer. The statue held an arrow made of a golden wood with a fine grain. The fletchings were blood red, and the arrowhead was made of beautiful black obsidian. Gwengyn had never seen the like. He had a nearly irresistible urge to pick it up, to feel its heft, but the deep-set eyes frowned down upon Gwengyn, and he left it where it lay.
Behind the statue, something brushed past the wall of ferns and tree trunks, setting a mossy vine to swaying. An arm reached up and ripped the swinging vine free from its anchor. It fell to the ground with a thump, interrupting the dance of a cloud of gnats. At a gap in the trees Gwengyn could see the silhouette of a man crouched, and a great rack of antlers dipped low to the ground. One tine glinted a golden yellow, and Gwengyn squinted, thinking the sun must have fallen across the antlers. A second tine glinted like beaten gold, and a third, and soon the entire velvety rack was lit faintly. He realized then it wasn’t the antlers themselves, but the dozens of fine chains that trailed among the tines like vines through bough and branch. Itekwa ducked and stepped into the clearing, setting the chains among his antlers to jingling.
Like a young boy with buck fever, Gwengyn felt himself shivering and found himself unable to stop it. He didn’t know what he’d thought would happen when he stood before the god, but not this. Not terror and wonder mixed. He had the undeniable urge to reach for his weapon, but his bow was gone, as were his arrows.
As the god had intended, Gwengyn realized.
Itekwa’s down-covered chest and arms were vaguely manlike, but his face was not. His black eyes were large and glistening. His face ended in more of a snout than a nose and mouth. And long ears, like those of a deer, sprouted near the base of his antlers. The god only had three digits on his hands and feet, each one thick and knobby. His ears swiveled about for long seconds before focusing on Gwengyn. Itekwa nodded toward the statue, shaking the gold and silver trinkets resting among his antlers. “So different,” he said.
Gwengyn looked between the statue and Itekwa, hypnotized by the god’s voice, which was lower than he thought a voice could go. A hollow sound—like the echoes left by a great curved horn—rang with each bass note from the god’s throat.
Itekwa strode beyond the statue to a path that Gwengyn hadn’t realized was there. Gwengyn followed, and they came to another clearing, this one with two-score stones forming a circle with one in the center. Itekwa reached the centermost, which had a fourth of its length broken off. The fallen piece rested in the grass next to the stocky base, and it was to this that Itekwa motioned one furry arm.
Gwengyn felt odd, moving to that stone and sitting on it, but the thought of refusing terrified him.
Itekwa shook his head and bowed low, the chains among his antlers tinkling. He squatted and raised his head to the sky and bellowed a long haroon. The sound sent shivers down Gwengyn’s spine. The hair along his thick forearms stood on end.
Itekwa, still squatting, turned and faced Gwengyn. “We’re never the same as you imagine.” Itekwa paused, but Gwengyn had no idea how to respond. “A voice lives in your throat. I know, for it fouls my name among the spruce, among the pine. Even in your home.”
Gwengyn nodded, seeing no point in hiding the truth. “I have been angry. My children...”
Itekwa smiled. “I have done the same, Gwengyn son of Callyn.” The bass sound of Itekwa’s voice echoed around the forest. “I have wrung my throat raw, raging against my god.”
Gwengyn shook his head, confused. “But you are a god.”
“You call me god, true.” That smile again, a lift of a dark lip. “Does that make me one?”
“We call you god because you are one.”
A heavy snort escaped Itekwa’s throat. It smelled of grass, and blood. “We shall see if you think so when this is done.”
“When what is done?” Gwengyn asked.
Itekwa stood and turned to the central stone. He stretched, making Gwengyn realize just how tall he was. He must have stood seven feet—nine or ten including his broad rack of antlers. A keening came from Itekwa, and he closed his almond-shaped eyes. With rhythmic gestures, his arms gathered air to his chest, adding arcane movements to a haunting voice. Gwengyn couldn’t say when it happened, but as Itekwa’s arms slowed and came to a stop, they held three items: a dagger, a great yew bow, and a quiver of arrows.
Itekwa bowed to the stone, the chains on his antlers jingling again, and he turned to Gwengyn and laid the items reverently in the grass at his feet.
“I don’t understand,” Gwengyn said.
“A desire to kill me has welled in your heart. Only embers remain now, but they can be stoked, can they not?”
“I...” Gwengyn swallowed. “I don’t understand.”
“You do.” Itekwa stalked several steps away and crouched down again. “You do.”
“I can’t kill you. You’re a—”
“God? So you say. But might you not be a god to a badger?”
“Perhaps, and they could never hope to kill me.”
“Yet a bear might consider you a god through lack of knowledge, and could kill you thrice over.”
Gwengyn looked at the bow. Beautiful honey-colored wood with bronze veins curved and recurved. The string looked to be of the finest gut string, though Gwengyn had no doubt it could hold the bow’s pull and more. A score of arrows lay in the quiver, of similar wood to the bow, with silvery feathers fletching the ends. The dagger was sheathed in tooled leather, and had a buckhorn grip. The purpose of their existence was now abundantly clear.
But why him? Why not one of the other men from the village? The thoughts raced through his mind, leading to one dreadful conclusion. Gwengyn raised himself from the broken altar stone. “You took my children.”
Itekwa backed away, a foul energy invigorating his steps. His broad mouth smiled, and this time, the teeth of a wolf were revealed.
Gwengyn felt his face flush. “Why? Do we not sacrifice every new moon?”
Itekwa’s eyes flashed with anger. “Who asked for sacrifices? Not I. Beheaded doe, eviscerated buck, burned wolf pelt. Figments, all. Humans imagine, and think it must be so.”
The moon harvest rituals were ingrained in Gwengyn’s mind, embedded as fact, but here was the god they were offered to, denying their bounty. “Why haven’t you told us, told the shaman in his smokings?”
“You seem to think our worlds close, related in intimate ways. They are not. Come, Gwengyn. I tire of this. Take up the bow, and let us begin”—the bow lay close in beautiful, curving grace—“for make no mistake, Gwengyn son of Callyn, I will take your third child if you fail.”
Gwengyn stared into Itekwa’s eyes, seeing him true for perhaps the first time. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again. What did he have to say to this charlatan who wore the trappings of a god?
Nothing, Gwengyn told himself.
He took a step toward the honey-yew bow, and as he knelt down to retrieve it, a feral grin spread across Itekwa’s face. The god’s eyes blinked twice, and he bounded away, into the wet forest, down a slope that ran away from the gateway that had brought Gwengyn here.
Any nervousness Gwengyn might have felt before had now vanished. He was intent on one thing only—the death of his god that he might save his child.
He snatched the dagger and tucked it under his belt before taking up the bow and quiver. In one fluid motion he slung the strap of the quiver over his shoulder, then nocked an arrow as he bulled into the undergrowth. He drew string to ear while sweeping the area for any sign of the god. Only the merest shade of doeskin brown gave him a hint of Itekwa’s leaping form, but he released the arrow. It sped true and was lost through a wide bush with purple flowers.
A moment later, a fearful cry echoed through the trees, sending birds fluttering to wing high above. The
yell, innocent and sad at first, turned into a ravening growl. A shiver rushed up Gwengyn’s spine when the sound stopped.
He nocked another arrow and shadowed Itekwa’s path, edging closer, hoping to catch the god if he thought to swing wide and take Gwengyn from behind. These cursed slopes, though. Gwengyn found himself slipping often, forcing him to hold the bow in one hand and grab at trees for balance with the other.
Another cry, growling and mewing mixed, echoed further up the valley. Gwengyn followed as quickly as he could, twisting his ankle in the process.
And then he saw the blood.
On a short fern, and again on a rock a few paces away, were viscous splatters of red. Gwengyn knelt and touched his finger to it, watching the forest about him closely as he did so. It smelled of sage and coriander and loam—a god’s blood, but blood just the same.
Gwengyn followed the trail it laid and came to a fallen tree. One of the squat trees of this foreign forest had collapsed, creating a shelter of sorts. Among the rotted leaves Gwengyn found his spent arrow, now broken in two. The head was missing, however. Itekwa must not have been able to dig it out.
Gwengyn followed the heavier trail of blood, which was easy against the verdant carpet. But then the trail thinned, and while the trees were smaller here, with thinner trunks, they were also more tightly packed. Gwengyn pushed his way through the undergrowth until he lost the trail completely. He scanned about warily. His initial surge of rage was wearing off, but it was replaced with a huntsman’s instincts.
He waited. He listened.
Above him, the canopy swayed in the wind.
He heard it then, ever so faintly... Lifting above the breeze was a soft metallic jingling.
Gwengyn surged forward, trying to get away, but he was too late. The jingling increased, and a weight crashed onto his back. His bow slipped from his grasp as Itekwa’s teeth bit into his shoulder. Gwengyn screamed and rolled forward, reaching high and finding only antlers. He grabbed them pulled down on the antlers, dropping his weight as he did so, sending the god tumbling off him.
Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories Page 24