The Godspeaker Trilogy

by Karen Miller

  A terrible silence. The sharpstone slipped from his fingers to the ground. He knew already what Hano would say, he did not need to hear the words.

  My son . . . my son . . . and his beautiful mother . . .

  “Hekat is miscarried of a daughter, warlord. The child was not usual. You must return to the godhouse. So says Nagarak, high godspeaker of Et-Raklion.”

  With an anguished cry Raklion plunged his snakeblade into his thigh.

  “ Raklion !” Hano reached him as he slid from his campstool to the ground. Cradling him in desperate, loving arms his warleader shouted, “Godspeaker! Godspeaker! I need a godspeaker in the warlord’s tent!”

  The pain in his leg was nothing to the agony in his heart. He wept unrestrainedly, he wept like a child. Hano held him, Hano’s tears fell on his face. A godspeaker came and pulled the snakeblade from his flesh. His hot blood pumped freely, the godspeaker cursed and then she healed him.

  “Hano,” he whispered, when they were alone again and he lay still on his camp-bed. “I will ride to Nagarak at newsun. You will stay with the warhost, you will dance with them for Nogolor’s Eyes. You will do this for me, Hano. I am the warlord, it is my want.”

  Hano nodded, and smoothed the covering horsehair blanket. “Yes, Raklion.”

  He shifted a little. His leg was healed and still his body roared with pain. “This is not Hekat’s doing. She is godchosen, the light in my eyes. I am demonplagued, Hano. Demons know what the god intends for me, they seek to thwart its will.”

  Hano frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  He beckoned his friend closer, pressed cold lips against Hano’s ear. “The god desires me warlord of Mijak, Hano, and my son the warlord after me.”

  “ Warlord of Mijak ?” Hano jerked back, his eyes wide and fearful. “Raklion—”

  He closed his fingers round Hanochek’s wrist. “Breathe nothing of it beyond this tent. I would have to kill you, it would break my heart.”

  “I will say nothing,” Hano promised.

  Nodding, trusting, Raklion released his harsh grip. “As Mijak’s warlord I will make war on all demons and the men who worship them with dark deeds. The demons know this, they know my intent. So Hekat is struck down and my son with her, he is malformed in her belly, made female and dead. But they will not defeat me! The god will triumph, and so will I.”

  Hano looked down, his face was troubled. “Raklion, you cannot be certain Hekat is innocent.”

  “ I am certain ! If you love me, Hano, never question her again.” His brief rage guttered out, leaving him empty. “I must rest now, I must ride hard tomorrow.” His eyelids drifted closed. “Do not leave me, Hano. I would not be alone.”

  “I will not leave you, Raklion,” Hano’s voice said softly. “I am yours to command, and always will be.”

  After newsun sacrifice he rode for Et-Raklion. Highsun after highsun Raklion spared neither himself nor his stallion, the horse dropped dead within sight of its stable. Only his knife-dancer training saved him, even so he was bruised and scraped from the fall. Ignoring his horrified slaves he ran into the palace, to find Hekat. Another slave told him she was kept close in the godhouse, suspected by Nagarak of being a demon.

  He smashed that slave to the floor with his fist and ran up the Pinnacle Road as though he were demonstruck, deaf and blind to all other travelers, half-mad with fear and a trembling fury. In the godhouse the godspeakers stared. He ignored their inquiries and shoved them aside.

  “ She is not a demon !” he shouted at Nagarak in the high godspeaker’s private chamber. “You sexless man who has never known a woman, do you think I would not know if I fucked a demon ?”

  Nagarak’s face tightened. “I do not say she is a demon. I say she has deceived you with demons. With a demon’s help she tainted your seed so the child she carried was not only female but deformed.”

  “ No ! You are wrong !”

  “You mated with a barracks bitch,” said Nagarak, remorseless. “Warlord, I told you it was unwise.”

  “You told me the god would give me a son ! You said if I purged my sins on the scorpion wheel the past would be the past, I would be the future of Mijak. I would at last sire a living son!” Goaded beyond sense he took Nagarak’s shoulders in his hands and shook him. “I was purged, Nagarak! I gave myself into your smiting hands, three highsuns I begged for mercy while you wrote the god’s wrath in my suffering flesh! Where then is my promised son? How can it be that you let this happen ?”

  Nagarak struck himself free. “Do not blame me for this thwarting of the god!”

  “You are the high godspeaker, who else can I blame? The god has turned its face from you, why would that be? Is there a secret sin in your heart, Nagarak? Shall I bind you to the scorpion wheel and beat you until you scream for mercy?”

  Nagarak hissed like a snake, with fury. “No mere man may touch a godspeaker’s flesh! Only the god through the hand of its godspeakers may chastise one of its own!”

  “But you are high godspeaker, who chastises you?” demanded Raklion, nauseous with his terrible grief. “Who names your sin and metes out tasking? Power lies in your hands, you have no master save the god, yet only you can hear the god, you say, and what does that mean? It means I have your word to take and no-one else’s! I must trust you or be accused of sin and here am I, Et-Raklion’s warlord, chosen to be the warlord of Mijak, there are more seasons behind me than before and I have no living son !”

  He could not bear it. His heart was beaten to a pulp, he was a warrior and he was defeated, bludgeoned to his knees by this new disaster. His fists pounded the stone floor, skin tore, blood smeared.

  Nagarak stood over him. “You know I am sinless, Raklion. You know where the sin lies. Lust stopped your ears, you were blinded by flesh. You took this Hekat when I told you not to, how then can this be my fault?”

  Raklion pressed bloodied hands to his face. Was Nagarak right, had Hekat betrayed him? Had he been seduced by demons? He could not bring himself to believe it.

  “I love her, Nagarak,” he whispered, broken. “I loved her since I saw her, I had no choice. She danced for the god, she danced into my heart, I did not touch her, I turned my face from her, I obeyed the god and touched only Et-Nogolor’s Daughter. Yet that bitch is dead, the son I planted in her is dead, now Hekat spawns demon-flesh, how can this be? She was with me always till I rode to the border, you and your godspeakers were with her after. How did this happen? How did she deceive me, deceive you, to sport with demons?”

  “Warlord, you wrong me,” said Hekat from the doorway. “Your high godspeaker wrongs me. I consort with no demons. I am sinned against, not sinning.”

  Hekat . Raklion staggered to his feet and confronted her. Little more than two godmoons since last he’d seen her, and there was less flesh on her bones, her eyes were sunk in hollows, her belly was flat between her hips. Grief in her face, grief in her voice, the faintest tremor in her hands. She did not kneel, she stood before him, grief had not diminished her pride.

  Even though he loved her, he felt his anger stir. If she wept, if she begged, if she asked his forgiveness . . . “You are not summoned here, Hekat. You are not sent for.”

  “I had to come,” she said, not looking at Nagarak, looking only at him. She wore no fine wools, just an old linen training tunic and weathered sandals on her feet. “Nagarak condemns me, he curses me in his mouth. He tells you I consort with demons. He lies. My heart is filled with the god, there is no room in me for sin.”

  “So protest all demons,” said Nagarak, sneering.

  Now she looked at Nagarak, with pride and temper in her eyes. “Perhaps it is you who consorts with hell’s children.”

  Raklion struck her. “You will not say so, he is my high godspeaker! On your knees, you will kneel to me!”

  A thread of blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. She knelt, obedient, but did not take her eyes from his. “He did not want me in your bed, he thinks I am not godchosen. He does not know what we know
, warlord, he has not seen what you have seen.”

  No, but what was it he had seen? Who had hidden her from Nagarak’s sight in the tasking house? The god? Or a demon she served in its place? Who told him the truth here, Hekat or Nagarak?

  “What does she speak of?” Nagarak demanded.

  Hekat said, “I do not deceive you, Raklion. I suckle no demons. The child I miscarried was blighted in my womb but I did not blight it. The god strike me dead if that is not true.”

  The god did not strike her. Confused and wretched he examined her face for long heartbeats, searched over and over to discover the truth.

  “I do not lie,” she told him proudly. “I am the god’s servant. I spit on demons, they are enemies to me.”

  He could see no guile in her, he could hear no lies. She grieved as he grieved, how could he disbelieve her? He reached for her hands, and helped her to stand. “Then who?” he whispered. “Who stole from me another son? Who cursed your womb, who fouled my seed?”

  She laid her cool palm against his cheek. “Warlord, how can I tell you what the god has not revealed to me? Ask this instead: who in Et-Raklion hates and fears me? Who has the power to defy the god?”

  His reluctant gaze dragged slowly sideways, to fall upon his high godspeaker’s face.

  “You will not heed this barracks bitch!” Nagarak cried. “I am high godspeaker, I live in the god’s eye. I am tested by scorpions, I breathe and I breathe, they cannot kill me!”

  “Let them try to kill me,” said Hekat softly. “Put me in the pit, warlord. I will lie down with scorpions and get up with the god.”

  Put Hekat in the scorpion pit? Raklion struggled for air. In his mind’s eye he saw her like Et-Nogolor’s high godspeaker, like the godspeakers who had challenged with Nagarak so long ago, he saw her distorted in agony, bloated with venom, stung to a lingering, hideous death.

  “It is the god’s desire,” said Nagarak, nodding. “It will be done.”

  Raklion stared at him. “The god’s desire, Nagarak, or your own?”

  “You question my service to the god?”

  He could see in Nagarak’s slitted eyes how much the high godspeaker wanted scorpions to sting Hekat. “No. Not to the god.”

  “You think I seek to thwart you, warlord? Foolish man, you know that is not true. Those words are her words, her tongue drips poison.”

  Raklion shuddered, he looked from Nagarak to Hekat and back again. Never had Nagarak counseled him wrongly, he was a true servant of the god. Yet Hekat was also in the god’s eye. He had seen that, how could he doubt her?

  “Raklion,” said Nagarak, his voice less bladed. “This is the god’s business. Let the god decide it. Hekat must come with me, she must be prepared for the scorpion pit. Go into the shrine garden, pray there till lowsun. Then the scorpions will test her, and the god will show us the truth of her heart.”

  Raklion nodded, and watched Nagarak push Hekat from the chamber. She did not fight the high godspeaker, she did not look back. Her spine was straight, her head was high, she walked like a woman with nothing to fear.

  My endurance is ending. If she is false, god, my heart will break. Show me her heart, show me she is your chosen. Let me not be disappointed again.

  Nagarak gave Hekat to four silent godspeakers, who took her to a cold stone chamber far below the godhouse. Silently they stripped her naked and cleansed her in blood, they anointed her with sacred oils and clothed her in a plain wool robe.

  “Kneel,” they told her, pointing to the chamber’s scarlet godpost. “Pray until you are taken to the pit for testing. Prepare your sinning godspark for hell.”

  They left her and she was pleased to see them go. Nagarak’s slaves, though they wore no scarlet godbraid. Chained to each other by blind obedience.

  Fools. They see a lump of burning wood and think it is the sun.

  Flickered with candlelight, the godpost’s red scorpions looked alive. She stroked them with her fingers, caressed them with her lips. She missed the touch of her scorpion amulet, but when Nagarak came for her in the palace the god had told her to leave it behind.

  She wished Vortka was with her. She had not seen him since the miscarriage. Banishing regret, she turned her mind to the god.

  I am here, god, where you desire. Show me what I am to see. Tell me what I am to know. I was afraid, I was lost, you were lost to me. Now you are found, and I am found, and I am ready for what must come.

  Vortka was among the witnesses at the scorpion pit. Nagarak was there, and Raklion, and five other godspeakers she did not know. Nagarak stripped her of the plain godhouse robe, baring her skin to the chamber’s cool air.

  She did not look at Vortka, she did not need to look to feel his concern for her. Foolish Vortka, there was no need to worry. No need either for Nagarak to tell her what she must do. She walked to the pit’s edge and stared at the heaving, writhing mass of scorpions within. Black. Red. White. Green. Sliding and hissing, pincers slashing, jointed legs scuttling. Venom seeped from their upcurled tails.

  I am here, god. Show me your heart.

  Almost eagerly, she slid into the pit. The mass of scorpions parted for her, they closed over her head and sucked her down, like a fish in water she swam in scorpions. The moment she joined them they began to sting her, she tasted their venom on her tongue.

  There was no pain.

  Instead her body was drowned in pleasure, in waves of heat and searing light. She remembered honey on Yagji’s corncakes, her blood was honey, she wept with joy. The god was in her, the god was honey, sweet sweet venom, flowing through her veins. The god’s desire was pouring through her, she shuddered in ecstasy, she moaned with delight. There were no words but she heard the god. She knew its desires, she laughed to hear them.

  Yes, god. I will do that. Yes, god, I obey.

  And then she was rising, the scorpions raised her out of the pit. Sprawled on the stone floor of the chamber she stared into the witnesses’ looming faces, into Nagarak’s shock and Vortka’s relief. She stared at Raklion. He was smiling.

  “It is unheard of,” said one godspeaker, hushed. “Her skin is unmarked. Yet we saw the scorpions sting her, we saw the god testing her heart. What can this mean?”

  The five godspeakers and Vortka turned to Nagarak. He said nothing. Did he even realize his fingers plucked the welts on his face, where the god had tested him and left its marks?

  Raklion said, “It means she is untouched by demons. She is chosen by the god. She is Hekat, mother of my unborn son.” He sounded triumphant. There were tears on his cheeks.

  Still Nagarak said nothing.

  Raklion helped her to her feet. Smoothed his fingers over her scarred face, then clothed her nakedness in the godhouse robe.

  “It is done, and decided,” he said, his warm gaze resting on her face. “She will come with me. She will come into the palace and give me a son.”

  Yes. Yes. She would have a son. But the boy-child she birthed would not be his.

  He will be mine, he will belong to the god. He will serve the god’s purpose in this world.

  Nagarak said, “The god has spoken. It sees Hekat in its eye. She will go to the palace with the warlord, she will give him a son, for the god and for Mijak.”

  He sounded breathless. Subdued. His eyes were empty. His godbells were silent.

  “Come, Hekat,” said Raklion, and they left Nagarak behind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Much, much later, in the coldest darkness of the night, Hekat woke in the palace, curled up beside Raklion in his bed. Hidden in the god’s eye she dressed in her tunic and left him sleeping, gliding out of the palace to make her way back to the godhouse, and Vortka.

  He slept in the novice-quarters, where she had never been. The god guided her footsteps, she knew where to walk. Godspeakers were waking, the godhouse never slept, but they did not see her, they did not hear her or see her passing. She was air, she was shadow, she wore the night like a second skin.

  There were no loc
ks on godspeaker doors. She entered the novices’ sleeping chamber and crouched beside Vortka’s mat. Twenty other novices slept on, unaware. Candles burned along the walls, their dim light showed her Vortka’s face sunk far in dreams. Swiftly, silently, she peeled back his blanket. He was naked beneath it, his skin cruelly welted from his latest tasking. She took his blade in her warm hand and encouraged its attention. His breathing deepened, harshened, he responded eagerly to her touch. The other novices remained oblivious, their senses smothered by the god.

  When Vortka’s eyes flew open she pressed her other hand across his mouth and straddled him, holding him tight between her thighs. Then she leaned close to him until her breasts touched his chest.

  “When I was in the scorpion pit, the god poured its desires into my heart,” she whispered. “It told me things I did not know. Raklion warlord’s seed is salted, Vortka, the taint is in him . It is not in me. It was not in Et-Nogolor’s Daughter or any other woman he fucked to make a son. Raklion cannot sire a living child. But he is the warlord, a son must be born.”

  Vortka plucked at her pressing fingers. She eased her grip slightly, that he might speak. “Hekat, what are you doing? I am not a vessel, I cannot fuck you! The other novices, they will see us!”

  “They will see nothing, and you can fuck me if it is the god’s want,” she told him fiercely. “Do you doubt me, Vortka? Do you think I lie? Do you think you dreamed me in the scorpion pit, tested and untouched by the god itself?”

  She could feel him hard and ready beneath her. His eyes were clouded as Raklion’s clouded when he feasted his mouth on her nipples. She knew enough of fucking now to know Vortka desired her. It was all she needed of him, the rest of the business she could do herself.

  Vortka swallowed a tiny moan. “Hekat, you are sunstruck, we can’t, this is madness . . .”

  “What we do, we do for the god,” she said, and shifted upon him until he groaned. “It is not madness, we will not be found out. The god wants this, Vortka. We must obey.”