The Godless

by Ben Peek

  She was dead.

  Just as he promised, she was dead.

  Zaifyr’s will leashed her panic, stopping her thoughts before they overwhelmed him. It was the same expression of power he had used to flesh out the haunts in his hotel room. But the result was different. Her awareness formed an undefined tether, threatening to bond her to his being and trap him in her. A witch and the dead felt the same, a warlock and his blood rites, the bonding of the living to the dead. If she were dead, then he was alive: and he applied pressure over her being, bent her will until he felt calm, controlled, and could look about the room.

  All were dead.

  The haunts of mercenaries and healers lingered over the prone, empty forms of their bodies, lying in beds and on the ground, while half a dozen had fallen at the door of the ward.

  It was clear to Zaifyr that he had lost time after he had fallen, that the separation of his spirit from his body had not taken place quickly. He was not yet sure how it had happened; it was a new experience for him, one he did not feel comfortable with. It did not feel right. The world had a faint gray taint to it, as if it were slowly being petrified. Is this what the gods felt as they died? The slow, torturous death? Did that mean he was dying, that their power over him had rendered him a death centuries in length?

  Forcing the haunt of the assassin to move out of the ward he entered the hallway, and found more bodies there.

  None had made it out of the hospital, thankfully. Instead, a bar lay on the floor, the last of the mercenaries to reach it attempting to barricade the door, to stop anyone from entering.

  The door opened.

  He said—

  Fo.

  He said, “Saet, did you not think I would notice you in Mireea? You have done too much for me to walk down a street unnoticed. No, don’t speak. I don’t want to hear your defense. You are a paid assassin. You need no excuse. But did you truly think I would not smell my own poison on Illaan Alahn’s birds? And then, later, on him? That old healer here knows. When I went into her hospital to look at the sergeant, I thought she would attack me, that she would order the soldiers in their beds to pick up their weapons. It wasn’t until I stood beside him that I could understand her fury. Then to have the evidence presented to me by another shortly after by the Madman himself!”

  The door closed behind the Keeper. Slowly, he made his way down the hall, pausing at each body, turning each over, running his scarred hands over each, before rising and continuing.

  “The Enclave sent us here to learn about the Leerans, that is all.” Fo’s hand fell heavily onto her shoulder, his fingers digging painfully into her skin. “But who, I imagine, will believe that back home? I think that is what offends me the most, right now, that I will be blamed for assassination plans I consider beneath me. After all, if I had wanted Illaan Alahn dead, I would not have given a poison that lingers. Nor would I have ordered assassination attempts on the Captain and Lady of the Spine, much less the Madman. I can only imagine that the money that was offered to you by the Benan Le’ta to enrage his rival and frame me was of such an amount that your common sense was abandoned.”

  It was clear that Fo could not sense Zaifyr or any of the dead. If so, he would have noticed how the latter lingered around him, their chilled presence drawn by his power and the heat of him.

  “Do you feel the cold in your shoulder?” She nodded beneath his scarred gaze, unable to do anything but. “Good. I have a simple task for you, Saet, one that will serve to remind the Traders Union of what will await them when I return to Yeflam.”

  “I will—”

  “You will die.” Beneath Fo’s fingers, Zaifyr could feel the bones of her shoulder fracture. “The plague you unleash here will leave nothing but the gods’ chosen to return to Yeflam, a plague that will ravage the men and women who believe that I could be framed so easily.”

  He approached Zaifyr’s fallen body, the expressionless calm of his face breaking, a slight smile emerging across his pale features. “Now, this is a gift, Madman. Are you dead?” The Keeper’s fingers pressed down on his neck, feeling the pulse. “Not quite, but it is a shallow coil that ties you to this world and it will break soon enough.”

  Zaifyr could not return to his body.

  He searched deep within himself, pulled his awareness from the assassin’s haunt, separated all parts of his being forcibly, harshly, the actions disorientating, damaging to his awareness—

  —and which resulted in his awareness in another.

  A man, a young man, a mercenary. A chill seeped into his arm, where it had been broken and rebroken, before being set.

  “Your eyes are open, but you do not see. How apt.” Fo rose. “Can you hear me, Madman? I have often wondered if the gods could understand us as they die. If they could hear our words and rage at what we said. Now, I ask, do you? I did not plan this, but I will not walk from it, either. The sounds of Asila have never left me. If, when I return home, Aelyn seeks to punish me for what has happened here, then so be it. I will gladly own the price for your death.”

  2.

  It was not until late in the day that news of the outbreak reached Ayae. By then, she had returned to her house, to the quiet of it, to the stillness that lay at its core. She sat down, feeling not the moral responsibility of documents that she held upon herself. Zaifyr was not there. He had left her a note and she believed that he had made good on his earlier words, and left the city, the result of which left her feeling oddly weighted as if she had lost a part of herself and she drifted into a restless sleep.

  She was woken by her neighbors talking and the story of the outbreak that none would bring to her.

  She made her way quickly through the dimly lit streets, the crowds thickening as she reached the hospital. It was a terrible parody of the people who had usually swarmed around them for the markets, complete with members of the Mireean Guard and wooden barriers around long lamps, closing off the path that led to the building but leaving it in a burnished light—a bubble tainted by fire and smoke. The guards did not help her though: they stopped all from approaching, but their gaze never fell from the closed door of the building.

  Queila Meina stood at the back of the crowd, her arms folded across the chest of her clean, dark stained leather. Beside her stood Bael and Maalen, large, silent shadows, the hilts of their weapons flared against the wall behind.

  “Do you know what has happened?” Ayae asked, approaching.

  “No.” The mercenary’s voice was cold, her gaze on the hospital. “We know only the story that has been spread around: that a guard approached the building and found patients at the door, who had died trying to barricade it shut. No one knows if he died before he alerted others or if he is still alive. Based upon the look of the Healer and the frustration she feels at Lieutenant Mills for not allowing her to pass, I suspect that he did.”

  “I heard it was a Keeper who found it,” Bael said. “That he entered after dismissing the guards at the door.”

  “Did you speak to one of the guards?”

  “No.”

  “Then we still know nothing,” Meina coldly continued. “Not even how our men fare.”

  She had begun to say, “I’ll ask—” when another voice spoke over her. It was a voice that she knew well, one that was casual in tone, but not intent, and whose inflection revealed not just a lack of care on his part, but a purposeful baiting. “They’re dead,” said Bau, not pausing in his walk past any of them. “Why trouble yourself over questions you already know the answer to, Captain?”

  “You should hope you are wrong, Keeper.”

  He turned. “Little Flame,” he said blandly. “You best remind your friend who she talks to.”

  “I know who you are,” the Captain of Steel said.

  “She knows,” Ayae told him. “Do you need an introduction to her?”

  Bau’s smile was fleeting, a quick cut between his lips before he continued to make his way to the side of Lieutenant Mills and Reila. Both stood at the front of the
crowd, and neither made an indication of greeting as the Keeper stepped through the barricade.

  “I only left there this morning,” Meina said quietly. “Only this morning.”

  “Let me ask.” Before she could respond, Ayae pushed through the crowd, following the path left by Bau. As she did she heard Reila’s voice, rising with each step she took. “You go in and you retrieve your companion.” Gone was the fatigue, the tiredness; gone also was any semblance of compromise, of peace. “You bring him out here right now! I will not tolerate what he has done!”

  “Consider your words, please,” Bau replied with the same inoffensive blandness. “If you are accusing—”

  “You know very well I speak with authority,” she returned. “If I find that you charlatans have been respon—”

  “Charlatans?” Cracks in his voice appeared, fractures of contempt revealed. “We are both diplomats from a city you hope to find refuge in, and both of us are children of the gods, with more knowledge than you have obtained in your entire life!”

  “Ma’am,” said Lieutenant Mills, her leather-clad hand on Reila’s shoulder. “Fo has emerged.”

  In contrast to his companion the Keeper Fo, who had moments before gently closed the door to the hospital behind him, was a figure that radiated certainty. His scarred eyes appraised the scene as the path drew him closer to not just Reila, but the crowd that had formed. The crowd, Ayae thought, that had no love for him or Bau.

  Or her.

  “They’re dead,” Fo said, speaking to the crowd as much as he did to Reila. “Your staff. The patients. You can go in, if you wish—the risk is minimal. There is only one man alive in there and the disease but lingers docile in him.”

  Illaan?

  The thought was unbidden, unwanted.

  “What have you done?” asked the elderly healer.

  The Keeper’s quiet, half laugh was clear to all. “You seek to blame me for this? When the only man who lives in there is a man that both Bau and I warned you against?”

  “Zaifyr,” Ayae whispered.

  “His real name is Qian. A name that anyone who has studied history will find in the corners. He is death—”

  “You know he would not kill.” Behind her, Meina and her two uncles approached, their shadows falling across her own. “What have you done to him?”

  “You have no right to ask anything of me, child.” Fo’s scarred gaze met hers evenly. “You made your alliances.”

  She had taken one step when the horn sounded. One step, her hands beginning to burn. One step, responding to Fo’s smile. One step, her warming hands falling to the hilts of both her new swords. One step, but that was all before a horn released in a lone, urgent note across Mireea, a deep call that resonated through all who stood before the hospital.

  “Positions!” Lieutenant Mills’ voice rang out before a second step could be taken. “All to defensive positions!”

  The Faithful had arrived.

  3.

  “To understand why the concept of a child was frightening to the gods, you first have to understand how they lived,” said Mother Estalia. “In our post-divine world, we no longer ask that question. We have stopped asking how gods saw us, what our purpose was, how we are part of their plan. Instead, we ask, what existed before them? A foolish question, especially since the answer that is put forth by philosophers and alchemists and astrologers … is nothing. They write in countless books that before a large, cataclysmic event, there was absence. There was nothing. Life, these men and women argue, was born out of whatever this event was, the force of it awakening a spark that over millennia allowed for the creation of all life. It is the wrong question and the wrong answer, but it is an understandable mistake, born from watching the world around us and its growth.”

  She had begun speaking on the rocky shoreline before the broken Temple of Ger, though Bueralan had not asked her to do so.

  He had not spoken to her, or to anyone else, since they had begun the narrow, treacherous walk along the red-lit river. No one had asked if they were going in the right direction, but the temple was easily visible. Instead, he remained quiet, fearing that if he lost his concentration, he might stumble. The muscles in his legs already ached not just from the journey, but from having to balance himself against the slippery wall with chained hands. He was keenly aware that misstep he took, every strain on his body, saw his ability to escape gradually slip away.

  And so he was silent as he weighed his options.

  “The truth, however, is that time is not linear,” she continued. “While you and I experience it as a concept that has a beginning, middle and end, that structure is merely a product of our life, of mortality, and the time that we have constructed to measure it. When, in discussing the world, we begin at the ‘start’ we do so in a flawed position, for the ‘beginning’ of anything is a construct, a narrative distinction that you and I have been taught to recognize as a social one. For the gods, however, that concept of time does not—and did not, for some—exist.

  “It is not disagreed that the divine experienced time differently than you and I. Earlier histories report stories of the gods being slow to react to prayers, of intervening on disasters decades after the fact; of curses put on dead men and women for failings long gone; of rewarding success that had turned into disaster. Eventually, it was agreed that the way by which we could understand how a god saw us, was by understanding that they existed in a singular moment that was defined by the past, the present and the future, and all its possible outcomes and permutations. One priest wrote that all elements of time were merged together in a constant awareness for a god, with no sense of causality.”

  The climb down the jagged wall had been just as difficult for Bueralan. His fingers, without the strength to hold his weight, slipped multiple times. For all but the last, he was able to judge where he landed, ending on a narrow ledge or a small path. For the last of these falls, he misjudged the direction and ended in a two-foot drop that saw him arrive at the base in a dirty, injured mess, his knuckles skinned, his shoulder bruised and a mix of both on the left side of his head.

  “It is difficult to find many people who hold this awareness of the world, now. There are a few, the surviving servants of the gods, and one of the new immortals.” Mother Estalia stood beside the decaying corpse of the Quor’lo as if it were a talisman, a truth. “The latter theorized that the gods were dying, that they had been dying for thousands of years while they fought, while they were alive and while they were dead. He offered a frightening vision of gods who saw multiple strands of time, who were always dying, always alive, always in war, always at peace.

  “But he did not know about the child.”

  She paused as, across the lake, the four silent priests rose from the water like strange newborns to the fissure that ran down the temple.

  “Very few outside the gods knew about the child. She was the creation of the Goddess of Fertility, of Linae. It was perhaps fitting that a god who fashioned herself as a woman gave birth, but she did not do it in the way that you or I understand. Rather than use her own form, she dug into the earth and created a womb from soil, from mineral, from blood, from bone, and infused it with part of her life. She gave a part of her divinity to the ground, so that it would pulse, breathe and incubate the child she had created, though she would be unable to explain why. Perhaps the reason for it is as simple as her death, for she made the womb as she experienced her death at the hands of the Sun God, Sei. Or, perhaps the reason is different, and if so it is lost to us now.

  “For Sei, who would be called the Murderer by us, the reasons were written down. He told his priests that he struck Linae because that was what he had always done. Everything existed as one and once the child was born—and the child always existed—he killed Linae. He had always done so. He would always do so. There had never been a time when he did not kill Linae. It was, he said, a truth.”

  She turned to Bueralan, but there was no kindness in her gaze, only dedication, commitm
ent and an obvious, belief.

  “It was fate, a single, unalterable fate,” she said. “With the child, all other time was lost. No more would there be multiple strands, multiple outcomes, and with it, the gods lost their self-determination, their freedom. They no longer saw possibilities, they saw facts, and the gods feared it.”

  4.

  “Runner, find Lieutenant Mills and have her report to me.” On the roof of The Pale House, a boy and a girl stood attentively behind the Captain of the Spine. Heast’s copper-and-silver eyepiece ran along the wall, pausing like a scavenger on debris, on oil that lay slick on the stonework, on the dead. “Runner, inform Captain Meina that Steel will be reinforcing the Sixth. She will also be taking command from the fallen Sergeant Pael. Then find Sergeant Eran from the Eighth and inform him that he is to support Steel and the Sixth if the fighting continues. Also—”

  He stopped, his mirrored gaze falling from the Spine, and into the dark that pooled around the fighting. He could not say why he ran his gaze to the edge of the trees and had stopped speaking, other than instinct. There was nothing but languid darkness. Nothing until— “Runner, my previous order is altered. Inform Captain Meina that she will need to prepare for catapults.”

  5.

  “That story.” Bueralan stopped speaking as he stretched his back, attempting to ease the cramped muscles and only partly succeeding. “The witches from my home bottle the souls of the dead, for a price. You sound just like them when they say that the family will want to pay a prosperous pregnant woman to drink it, to ensure that their kin’s next life is good.”

  “Are you accusing me of lying?” Mother Estalia did not appear bothered. “I have just explained to you one of the great mysteries of the world. I explained to you why the gods went to war, as explained to me—”