The Godless

by Ben Peek

  “Those first men and women made the Five Kingdoms. It emerged two thousand years after the War of the Gods, a society of progression, restriction and, at times, genocide. The five who ruled did not believe they would one day be gods, but believed they were in fact gods. Any who rose with similar powers—like you or me—were given an ultimatum: to join or to die. Many were killed, but over the years, a number did join, and were sent out into the kingdoms, lords and ladies beneath the kings and queens of the pantheon. At its peak, the Five Kingdoms was the most powerful empire in the world, controlling just under half of it. It was poised to take the rest, and would have, had not that five turned on their creations. There are a number of theories about what brought about its end, but Aelyn claims that her brother’s madness put them in such a position that they could no longer claim to be divine, that they could not rule as gods when they had been exposed to be anything but … Still, such was their power that they burned continents of literature, turned cities to rubble and then disappeared. Only Aelyn dared to begin anew in Yeflam.”

  Beneath the wooden floor was the sound of a sharp scrape, a stool pulled back harshly. “Fo believes he is a god,” Ayae said, finally.

  “Fo believes he is on the evolutionary path to becoming a god,” Bau corrected. “All Keepers do. Aelyn is the closest to it, and when you meet her—”

  “But you just said they were false gods!”

  “I said the Immortals claimed to be false gods. In their youth, they claimed titles they were not ready to own. That affected us all and it is not until recently that we have sought to change that. We—the Keepers, that is—are here to do that. We are all that they were and more. We are the first evolutionary step toward omnipotence.”

  “Is that what Fo is doing down there?” Ayae found it difficult to believe that both these men were gods, that they possessed any of the qualities that would be required to occupy such a state in the world. “Is he trying to prove his godhood?”

  He leaned forward. “Fo is very dedicated to learning exactly what his power can do.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m dedicated.”

  “Just like Aelyn Meah? Both of you are so dedicated that all you’re trying to do is take the place of men and women who once ruled this part of the world.”

  “You do not know her.”

  “No, I’ve just met you.”

  “You met Qian before me.” He leaned back, shadows closing over his face like tiny hands. “Why did Qian pull you from a fire? Could it be he is looking to reclaim a part of this world, too? Is he jealous of the Enclave? That would explain why he thought the girl who smolders beneath her skin needs saving.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You do.” Even interrupting her, he did not raise his voice. “I feel it right now; Fo felt it when he saw you first. Qian—he would have felt it too.”

  Ayae bit back her words. Her fingers curled into the palm of her hand and pressed deep. She found Bau to be a cold figure, his words clinical and his manner precise. It was as if he viewed the world about him as a series of connections, of veins and bones so that with the right incision or the right break, he could heal or hurt anyone before him.

  “He can’t be trusted, you should know that,” Bau said. “No one trusts him any more, not even the Animal Lord, who is a brother to him. Until sixty years ago the man you know as Zaifyr, the man I know as Qian, was in a madhouse. Not just a madhouse, but the madhouse. One specially designed for him and built deep in the Broken Mountains. It was there that the other four Immortals used all their considerable power to lock him away. He had destroyed Asila, the kingdom he had created and ruled—no, more than that, he decimated an entire land. By the time the other four arrived to stop him, there was only destruction, and only further devastation followed when the others confronted him. It was of such a horror that in the aftermath, the Enclave made a law forbidding people like you and me from killing each other. All of us have agreed to it, bar Qian.”

  “I have seen what the Innocent can do,” she said. “Do you expect me to believe it was worse than that?”

  “You should ask him, not me.”

  “Then what,” she said slowly, each word sounded clearly, “is the point of telling me?”

  Bau chuckled, his smile a hint in the shadows. “You have quite the temper.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  Below her, a squeal burst out.

  “Fo bought mice the other day.” Rising, Bau approached the open window, the sound beneath fading.

  “It’s terrible.”

  “Sacrifices must be made for knowledge.”

  “I doubt—” Ayae’s voice cut off in a startled sound as a lamp flew toward her. It was unlit, and appeared suddenly. Twisting her body out of its way, she made no attempt to catch it and instead stared hard at Bau, who said, “Light it.”

  “With what?”

  “Your will.”

  “I did not come here to be like you,” she said. “I came here to find out how I can live an ordinary life.”

  “You cannot.” He spread his hands. “Why would you want to give this up?”

  Ayae shook her head and nudged the lamp with her foot. “You have no help for me, do you?”

  “I will help you learn control,” he said. “That is actually important.”

  A second series of squeals erupted below her.

  “Yes, such restraint must be,” she said, heading to the stairwell.

  Behind her, she heard Bau call out that he would see her tomorrow.

  No, he wouldn’t. A day with him and she regretted her decision not to leave Mireea, even as she realized how deeply she did not want to leave. But as more and more people learned that she was cursed, Ayae knew that she would be either pushed out of the city or into the companionship of the two men, and that either way her home would be gone.

  Leaving the stairwell, she saw Fo hunched over his worktable, a cage holding three brown mice next to him. Inside, the animals were scurrying around frantically, while his voice murmured “Be still,” and “Don’t fight,” like a chant onto the table before him. As she drew closer, Ayae saw that his hands were stained in blood. He had pinned a white mouse to the table, a syringe lying next to it. As she reached the door, he said, “It looks awful, does it not, child?”

  Before her, the empty, warm night beckoned. “It is,” she said.

  “A decade ago, Bau and I cured a plague in a fishing village on Leviathan’s Throat,” he said, his attention never leaving the mouse. “We were the only people who answered the call of the magistrate there, the only people who were interested in descriptions of blood that seeped through eye ducts, nails and any opening the human body has. A quarantine had been put in place, no one allowed in or out. Any who tried to leave were shot by archers hundreds of yards away. By the time we had arrived, fifteen of the villagers had lost their lives to arrows, while another twenty had died from the disease. The village population was just over a hundred—those outside were planning to burn it to the ground when the last inhabitant died.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Do you think,” he said, his disease-scarred eyes meeting her own, “that we found a cure by prayer?”

  “I’m sure you used all the books you own.”

  They were quick, cutting words that Faise would have known, punctuated at the end by the door slamming shut behind her.

  6.

  It would be another thirteen years before Zaifyr met Jae’le. Until then he lived in Kakar, the frozen mountains towering over the village and the sad form of Meihir haunting him.

  Yet, in the latter, he was curiously unaffected. He agreed with Meihir that she was cursed, that Hienka had punished her for abandoning her belief at the end. There was no other explanation for her withered spirit and its aimless wandering around the village and, after he failed to interest her in the rebuilding of Kakar, he let her fate fall from his mind. She would not leave the area where her bones lay, and it would be
years before he understood that she was no different in this way than the dead who followed her. She was waiting, just as they all were.

  Other issues claimed his attention. After the funeral pyre of their kin had smoldered low, the nineteen charmed men and women of Kakar found themselves in desperate need of skills that they did not have. Uneducated because of their curse, they did not know how to safely cut open ice and sink lines to catch fish, nor they did not know how to hunt the deer and bear that they had lived on since their birth. Their first attempts to do so relied upon their ability to fight but the bears, who had been white for centuries, were lost in the snow and moved much more quietly and quickly than any thought they would. The deer, likewise, could hear them miles away and their swift darting away was done more to taunt than in fear. As the winter deepened, the nineteen tried desperately to teach themselves skills from the memories they had of watching others work.

  In the end, however, they fell upon the skills they had been taught. In the cold, clear air, they left their quiet village and its dead and descended down the trails, to the foot of the mountains and the highways that cut a path through the snow. They hijacked and robbed before returning to the mountains, only to leave a week later, their stomachs sated, but a new hunger driving them. They cut down trees to block the road, then hid in the snow beneath white furs before emerging to speak to people who could not understand their native language. Zaifyr discovered a drawn sword was a language that was universal, and merchants and their mercenaries knew the language of robbery as well, if not better, than he and the remainder of his people did. Indeed, he suspected that the ease with which their first robberies took place had more to do with the familiarity that the guards had, than his own. They knew too that when they returned, months later, they would be better armed.

  But by then, Zaifyr had killed his first man.

  On that day he lay in the snow by the side of the road, his white bearskin cloak pulled around him, his gaze on where the horizon met the muddy road. In a week, the path would close due to the winter storms that had raged since Hienka’s death, storms that turned bitter and deadly in the coldest part of the year. Truthfully, Zaifyr did not know if he would see anyone now, but it did not matter. Kakar had enough to last the winter—and the year, should the winter prove to be long and terrible. There was no need for him to be out with another six, waiting, but he was bored, as were the others. On a whim, no more, they had walked down the mountain and set up beside the road, in the hope that they might find a little excitement.

  Ahead, a dead tree had been dragged over the road, just before the track began its winding climb that skirted the edge of the mountain range. Its position made it difficult for any driver to force his or her oxen into a sudden, hard run when they spotted Zaifyr and his friends. It was a good spot to sit and wait, but Zaifyr was careful not to use it all the time. If drivers knew where a robbery was to take place, they would simply alter their path and take detours through snowy fields and dead trees, adding a day or so to their journey, before returning to the road. Because of that, the robberies of the Children of Kakar looked without pattern.

  He was on the verge of giving up for the day when the wagon appeared. It was the first in a train of three, the flat backs covered in tarpaulin and snow, the drivers hunched at the front with guards that held crossbows beside them. There were half a dozen other guards on horses riding around the wagons, but they were spread out, a thin defensive line that he did not expect any real trouble from. Zaifyr made out the subtle shifts of his companions, each moving into position as the wagons drew closer.

  At the dead tree, three of the guards dismounted. It would take more to move it, Zaifyr knew. They themselves had not moved it far from where it fell, the weight of the heavy trunk causing the tree to topple out of the thin ground it had been living in. As the guards gathered, one man, taller than the rest, placed his booted foot against the bark.

  A crossbow bolt punched into the wood beside him.

  Rising from the snow, Zaifyr pushed back his cloak. Beneath it he wore white dyed leather armor and a short sword strapped to his waist. He cut a strange mark on the horizon, he knew, the color of his armor and skin allowing him to blend at a distance but for the shock of color in his hair. As he approached, a second and third bolt hit the wagons beneath the feet of the drivers.

  The lead driver, a thick, bald man, spat into the snow at his side as he dismounted. He spoke, but the words were foreign to Zaifyr.

  Smiling, Zaifyr spread his hands and said, “One last collection for the year.”

  Behind the wagon driver, the tall mercenary pulled out the bolt next to him. He was staring out into the snow, but the charm-laced man knew that his dark eyes would see nothing but white and winter-stripped trees of brown gray.

  The merchant turned to the tall man, who did not reply. With a shrug, he turned to the other drivers and barked a command, which saw the tarpaulins pulled back. As that happened the mercenary turned to the smaller man, his words making it clear that he held the man in contempt, and that he did not think they should pay. A few of the words made sense to Zaifyr as he spoke, the first relating to the crossbows, the second to the payment.

  Then, suddenly, the merchant cried out, “No!” The words emerged as the mercenary slammed a hand into his chest, sending him into Zaifyr. The charmed man deftly sidestepped and let the man fall into the snow as the mercenary’s sword thrust forward. Turning, he spun out of the way, feeling the blade catching the edge of his armor, his own sword coming to his hand. Using his heel to rotate, Zaifyr’s short sword parried a second strike and, in one quick thrust, hit the man’s leather chest causing him to step back, allowing Zaifyr to step forward and slash up and diagonally across his throat. Gasping, he sank to the ground, blood splashed across the snow.

  At his feet, the merchant cried out, rising to his knees, staring at the bolts that stuck out of the remaining guards and drivers.

  Zaifyr, his body cold, hammered his sword into the man’s neck from behind.

  And as he did, the cold that was in him grew colder, grew into a stillness, not yet terror but close. As the merchant fell to the ground, his pale haunt emerged, broken through by sunlight.

  7.

  Zaifyr did not remember how he returned to Kakar. Later, much later, as the pale moonlight filtered through his window, he believed that the others had laid him in the back of the wagon next to the dead merchant and his guards—they would not leave them by the road this time—and led all three and their oxen up the narrow track to the village. If they had spoken to him, he did not know. They must have. He doubted that they would have been silent. They would have probed, touched, followed his gaze and then talked quietly among themselves. Gilan, a thick-necked, hulking, brown-haired man, his charms tied to his hair and beard, would have taken control. He would have told the others in his quiet voice to place the bodies on the wagons next to his, would have made sure they were buried away from the highway. But for Zaifyr, there was no memory of that. There was only the merchant following him up to the camp, his drivers and guards strung out behind in pale, shadowed forms broken by sunlight.

  Gilan and the others believed that he was in shock and left him alone once he returned to the village. Freed from the cart, he found himself drifting along the hard, rocky ground until he reached the pelt-covered hut of his parents. It was his now, but in two years he had not made any changes. He slept in the same room as always, letting dust collect in others. As he drew closer to the cloth door, the haunt of Meihir paused and regarded not just him, but those that trailed behind him in a dull murmur of language neither could understand.

  “Zaifyr,” she said.

  His hand touched the heavy cloth.

  “What have you done?” she asked, approaching him.

  “I don’t know.” His voice was barely a whisper. “They are the spirits of men we killed down the mountain. I don’t know why they are here.”

  The murmur of the merchant and guards grew, the words un
identifiable.

  “The God of Death is no more.” Meihir’s attention wavered, the constant cold and hunger in her demanding. For the first time, Zaifyr watched her fight it. “The Wanderer is gone,” she said again.

  He had no response.

  “What else can you see?”

  Their words, he suspected, were complaints against hunger, cold and him. Zaifyr said, “Nothing.”

  “No birds, no animals?”

  Around him, others in the village were gathering. “There’s nothing but you and them,” he said. “Nothing but the dead.”

  “Look for them!”

  “There’s nothing!”

  She spoke again, but he shook his head, pulled back the cloth door and stepped inside, letting the heavy fabric fall behind him, though it did not muffle their voices.

  Meihir’s question lingered. Aided by the sight of the new dead patrolling between the village and the ravine where their bodies lay, the question was not allowed to slip his mind. He grew withdrawn from the others, spending more and more time in Meihir’s small, dirty hut, reading what he could find. It was not much. She owned a handful of books, kept no diary. There were many times where he sat and listened to her telling him how unfair her punishment was, how she did not deserve this curse. But he did learn. He learned about the Wanderer, about how he had stumbled onto the rocky shore of Kakar with the Leviathan’s help, an injured figure reliant on the giant god’s friendship, left crippled from an early battle that saw the destruction of his pantheon, with the gods Maika, Maita and Maina, the gods of ascension, rebirth and finality, being destroyed. Meihir did not know why anyone would want to attack the Wanderer’s pantheon, did not know why in the years after the first god fell he became a target, but she feared much, even if she could not explain it. Yet, what she did know in detail was the moments of the Wanderer as he was struck down by Heinka, as the Feral God had drawn on the lives of his believers to kill the other, in a seemingly suicidal attack before the might of the Leviathan. He learned about the gods, about the flow of magic and power that the witch had believed in, about how each power had been tethered by a god and how it would run wild through the world without them.