In the Shadow of the Rook (The Sons Incarnate Book 1)

by JDL Rosell

  Then it stopped, and he felt cold stone beneath him. And as the dying and all its pain rushed back, he didn’t care if it was a fine time or not. He just wanted it to end.

  As he thrashed and kicked and choked, feeling the life leak out of him and down his throat, he faintly noticed hands laid on him. But it was what came after that really made him pay attention.

  His throat trembled, and the pain ceased, and he felt it became whole again. He inhaled, and a gust of air rushed in. He could breathe.

  Erik stopped struggling and lay still. He felt it now, a soothing sensation cascading out from the hands, calming and reassuring as a strumming harp. Where they went, his flesh repaired and relaxed and smoothed back into place.

  “Yes, that’s better,” an unfamiliar male voice spoke. “Yes, yes, much better. A pretty face when there’s not blood on it.”

  Erik opened his eyes, and everything was blurry and indistinct for a moment.

  “Ah, that is what it should look like. Now see.”

  Erik blinked, and his vision righted, or he thought it did. He could see clear enough, it was true, but who leaned over him didn’t make sense.

  “Am I dreaming?” Then he realized he’d spoken and clutched his throat, hardly believing it truly was healed.

  The man—a too-familiar man—blinked. “What is dreaming?” he asked, with what seemed genuine curiosity.

  Erik stared at him, recognition finally coming to him. It made a certain sense. If this was a dream, then this was just the man to mend him.

  “I can’t seem to remember much,” the man said. “I can’t even remember who I am. You wouldn’t happen to know, would you? Oh, but why would you—we’ve only just met.”

  “I know who you are,” Erik said faintly, hand still to his throat.

  The man brightened. “Oh, you do? Be a good man, do tell already!”

  Erik swallowed. “You're…" The Lastborn. The Redeemer. The Second Son Incarnate. You're the Mother's champion, the world's defender, the broken moon above.

  You're a god.

  He tried again. "I think you're Er’Lothe.”

  Twenty-Five

  “Er’Lothe? Never heard of him.” The god looked troubled and lost in thought for a moment, then he smiled. “Oh, yes, that’s right, isn’t it? Silly of me to forget.”

  Erik stared up at him. He looked more a man who would wear a pince-nez on the tip of his nose and spend his days fretting among books rather than an incarnated god who had once saved the world. The murals had always depicted him as tall and lean, but he’d also had a manly jaw and fierce, smoldering eyes. This man wore all those features in decline. His chin was diminutive, his nose small and rounded, his eyes beady and recessed in his face. His hair was blonde, balding, and limp. His limbs seemed devoid of any sort of strength, and his skin was so sallow as to be sickly. If this was a dream, and Er’Lothe a figment of his imagination, then Erik had shown just how little he thought of Amodism.

  “Where are my manners?” The Lastborn held out his hand. “What’s your name, my goodman?”

  Erik still had his right hand on his throat, still amazed to be breathing. When he held it up, no blood stained it. A dream, he reminded himself. No matter how real it feels, it’s just a dream. He reached out and took the hand.

  He vibrated within, and something far away seemed to rattle loose. Erik blinked.

  “Erik, is it? A pleasure to meet you!” Er’Lothe halfway shook his hand and just about hauled him up from the floor. “It’s not much here, but I hope you’ll make yourself at home.”

  Erik stood there, feeling as if he’d forgotten something. But that’s the thing with forgetting—you never can remember what it was you forgot. But where had Er’Lothe gotten his name?

  “Thank you,” he muttered. “My… lord.” What did one call a god? Though it was hardly the most pressing question as he looked about the place Er’Lothe had made his home for an untold millennium, if this dream wasn’t actually a dream.

  The whole thing seemed half-forgotten itself. Walls weren’t walls in the normal sense, nor were floors strictly floors. They looked moth-eaten in spots, where an impenetrable twilight seeped through, and seemed structurally impossible. Yet there they were, gray stone half in existence and half not. Perhaps more unnerving was how the spots shifted, wandering this way and that, the stone blocks vaguely distorting with the holes. Erik looked down and jumped—one hole had almost crawled underfoot, and he didn’t like to think where it might lead to if he dropped through.

  Er’Lothe looked around with him and seemed troubled by their surroundings. “Yes,” he murmured. “It’s not quite right, is it… But I can’t seem to remember how…”

  The abysses constricted for a moment as Er’Lothe scrunched his face in thought, and Erik stepped away from any he could see. A moment later, the god sighed, and the black spots slowly edged out again and drifted along their crossing paths.

  Then Erik remembered his purpose in being there, and his jaw clenched. Of course I would have to come to him. Only Er’Lothe can make someone Recarnate. But it didn’t bode well to see the god in the shape he was in. What could he do to save him, when he couldn’t save himself from the ravages of time?

  He cleared his throat, trying to think of how to approach it. “I don’t think I have to remind you, but this is just your incarnated body. Why have you been stuck here all these years?”

  “Stuck here?” Er’Lothe seemed confused. “You mean to say, I can’t leave?”

  “Well, have you tried?”

  He pursed his lips. “I can’t remember.”

  Erik sighed and wanted to pace, but the little voids spiraling about discouraged the inclination. “Do you remember anything from long ago, then? When you weren’t here, I mean?”

  The Lastborn scrunched up his eyes. “Long ago… I forget what the phrase means. It implies time, and time is something that doesn’t idle here, my friend.”

  More riddles. Whatever he says, I fear there’s no time left at all. “What of Recarnation?” Erik asked bluntly. “Do you remember that?”

  “Recarnation. It has a familiar feel to it.” Er’Lothe worked his mouth around as if tasting the word. “Recarnation. Aha!” He snapped his fingers. “It’s a kind of flower, isn’t it?”

  “That’s a carnation,” Erik said glumly. “Recarnation is… It’s like what you are, I think. A person who doesn’t die, and they have magic—”

  “Now there’s a word!” the god suddenly cried, and Erik nearly jumped into a hole lingering too close. “Magic! How could I forget such a wonderful thing? Magic, magic, magic…” His enthusiasm wound down as his confusion increased. “Now, there was something I could do with that.”

  “But you just did!” Erik snapped. “You healed me, remember?”

  “That?” Er’Lothe looked quizzically at him. “All I did was help you remember yourself.”

  Erik felt his throat, whole and untorn. “I can tell you, you did a good deal more than a mnemonic trick.”

  Then a thought bubbled up, slowly occurring to him. “Can you help me keep remembering?”

  The god cocked his head. “What do you mean, keep remembering?”

  “Recarnates were said to be impossible to harm, that they could heal whatever wounds they sustained. And you just healed me by helping me remember. Could you teach me how to do that? How to help myself remember?” He tried not to think too closely on this reasoning, afraid he’d hear how insane it all sounded.

  “Help you remember…” Er’Lothe mulled on it a moment. “Yes, yes, I suppose I might do that.” Then he smiled, and something about it didn’t seem so bumbling or innocent. “But I will need something in return.”

  Erik felt his gut run cold. “What would that be?”

  The god’s smile widened. “To help me remember myself. I’ve lost something, that much I know, but I can’t figure out what. But I do know you can help me.” He gestured grandly, and with that grin plastered over his face, he looked like an actor bowing
after the final scene. “Your memories will help me.”

  Erik swallowed, hard. He didn’t like the feel of this task, didn’t like the idea of committing to help a god, or of his memories getting involved, whatever that meant. But what choice did he have? It was become Recarnate or wait for Oslef to find him.

  “I’ll help you.”

  “Good!” The Lastborn took a step closer, and the small voidlings about constricted as if in anticipation, or fear. “Then let us begin.”

  “How—?”

  But Er’Lothe’s hands had already darted out and seized hold of his head. His mind rang with a clatter like the tolling of great bells, and his hands clasped at his ears to keep them out, but the harsh noise rang through. It filled him, filled him and overfilled him, until he felt he would rattle apart.

  Something fell out, somewhere, but he could hardly remember what.

  Out of that sea of noise, an achingly familiar face flitted past. “You won’t always be with me,” her pale lips murmured, and Erik grasped for Ilyse’s image as she shook, shimmered, and disappeared. “I will!” he cried, or thought he did, but he couldn’t hear his own words. “I will be with you!” As if words could make his promises true, as if wishes could make her come back and believe him, he clung to that last view of her. To the beautiful, simple image of her sitting under the white estar blooms.

  “Is that it?” Er’Lothe’s voice boomed in his head, disappointed. “A girl three years dead? I had hoped for more, Erik. I thought you capable of more. The pursuit of ideas, not people, is life’s highest calling. Forget this woman. Let me take her, and you will never miss her.”

  But Erik wouldn’t let go, couldn’t, no more than a thirsty man could a full cup. He forgot the color of her hair, the shape of her chin, the sound of her voice. He even forgot her name. Every individual detail was lost to him, but he couldn’t let go of her.

  “Even now you hold on, when she is less than air to you? You bore me. Fine—chosen you have, and it gives you some strength, this… love. That love will be your ruin, I'm afraid, even if it's not for this girl. But we need not remember that...”

  Erik blinked, the vague images that had flashed before him gone. Now he saw the god before him again, and Er’Lothe’s face seemed… haler. Stronger. More like the images of stone, a certain hardness lent to his manner. He smiled, and it was not buffoonish as before, but sly. “I can’t remember exactly,” he said, “but surely you must be one of my finest creations.”

  Finest creations? “You mean…” Erik looked down at his hands, turned them over. They seemed the same to him: long, thin fingers, rough skin from formulae, the light copper of his father’s people. Ordinary hands. The same hands that strangled the Crow. Can they have changed? Can I have? The rest of him felt the same, if more whole than he’d been the past few weeks.

  “Yes, yes.” The god waved impatiently and half-turned away. “Your kind’s laggardly memory has always greatly tired me.” He frowned in thought. “Or so I seem to remember.”

  “Then I am free to go?” He’d supposedly gotten what he wanted, and as easily as asking for it. He was Recarnate, if this dream-god told the truth. Immortal, impervious to degradation and senescence, and adept at magic. So why did he just feel… himself? And could it come so cheaply?

  Though there did seem to be too much emptiness in him, a sort of hollowness of body, like he hadn’t had a meal in a long time. And there was a certain, nagging feeling in the corner of his mind, like he was on the verge of remembering a word but hadn’t the slightest idea which one. Still, small ills to pay for so great a boon.

  The Lastborn Son turned his back on him and crossed his arms. “Leave me,” he said shortly. “I remember things I must think over, and you will only prove a hindrance to thought.”

  Erik looked around and saw no exit, at least none beyond the voidlings, and he didn’t fancy trying to leave by those. “Should I leave by the door or the window?”

  Er’Lothe’s head whipped around, an angry gleam to his eye. “Ah, a jester, eh? And I thought you so very simple-minded before. My sincerest apologies, truly.”

  There seemed a touch too much of violence in his eyes, and Erik swallowed. Mouthing off to a god—didn’t resurrect my brain with the rest of me. “I’m sorry, my lord.” He topped it off with a sycophantic smile. It wouldn’t do to waste immortality now that he had it. “But if you could—”

  “If I could?” The god strode over to stand before him, a wild, bitter smile on his face, his eyes shining like stars around the edges. Then his hand, quick as a snake, thrust out and grabbed Erik’s forehead painfully. He stifled a gasp, but it was the feeling that came after that disturbed him more. His bones felt like they’d all gone to jelly.

  “I could unmake you just as I made you,” Er’Lothe whispered, and it was louder than the crash of thunder. “You are less than an ant to me, and far less useful. Yet you are the tool I have, and I must make good with even a cur like yourself.”

  Erik tried to agree, summoning up all the pathetic pleas he could think of, but his tongue was too heavy to form the words.

  “You are my herald, Erik," Er'Lothe said, sounding disgusted with his own words. "My herald, in the stead of my great followers of yore, barely remembered now even by me. Do not forget it, for you will one day soon answer for what you do for me. Your master.”

  Erik swallowed and, this time, succeeded to speak. “And what—what am I to do?” The words were reed thin in his ears.

  His eyes were squeezed shut against the pain, but he felt the god lean closer. “Tell them I’m coming,” he said softly, and the din in Erik’s head grew louder. “Make them ready for the return of their god.”

  Erik expected worse pain then, like when Vodrun had cobbled him back together. But suddenly he felt there was someone else in the room, though they were completely silent. And as the hand fell from his head, and Erik slowly opened his eyes, he saw who it was.

  Oslef, back in his man form, watched Erik with an unblinking stare, poised as if to leap.

  “Ah, my first herald,” Er’Lothe said, lightly clapping his hands together and walking over to him, suddenly seeming much more the scholar Erik had first met. “My little feral cat.”

  He put a hand on Oslef’s shoulder, and Erik cringed, expecting his old friend to attack, god or no. But though the Twice-Late Viscount’s lips curled up in a snarl and he glared hatefully at the hand, he made no further move.

  “That’s it,” the Lastborn said softly. “You know the leash when you feel it.”

  Oslef’s lips pulled back even further, and Erik saw his teeth were sharp and filed like daggers. But now, his gaze was back on Erik, that twisted smile on him. His heart thundered in his ears.

  Er’Lothe snapped his fingers and grinned at Erik. “It only just occurs to me! Of course you'd wind up here. You see, I’d forgotten my grand plan. It’s been, what, sixteen years since I set it in motion? No, longer than that...”

  Sixteen years? A cold feeling crept along his spine, like rain dripping down the back of his tunic.

  Er’Lothe gave Oslef a little shake to the man’s growling displeasure. “Still, it was simple, wasn’t it, my little pet? A little suggestion when your father came by for holy water, the seed of an idea planted in that fertile, curious mind. Enough curiosity to even give up his son, dear me.”

  Erik went numb from his feet to his hands to his heart. He worked out the words with a thick tongue. “You mean… it was you all along?”

  “Me, me, all me!” The god snapped again with pleasure. “And I have a good deal more planned, never you fear! Yes, grand plans indeed. We can’t let that bastard of my brother have all the fun!” He stopped as suddenly as he started and frowned slightly. “All that foolishness with corpses, that was your folk’s doing.” Then he winked, a sly smile back on his face. “But a little help from me, and no harm done, eh?”

  Erik suddenly had trouble breathing, like the air had thinned from the room. “Why me?”

  T
he Lastborn Son shrugged. “Convenience. The men your father sent through… I couldn’t do what I’ve done for you.” The god’s brow creased. “Their flesh wasn’t attuned to the influence of the Void, and it rattled them apart. I needed an ideal body, one that could be bred into my needs, to become the first of my ranks until such a time as I… remember.” He grimaced. “So much lost, yet it will return.”

  Erik couldn’t help slumping to his knees. All his life, drawn up into a god’s messy plan, and all of it had happened to him by chance. No, the devilish part of him thought. Because your father had to poke his finger at what he didn’t understand. Because he had to know. He couldn’t fight the voice, couldn’t reason with it, and its anger tortured and dominated his thoughts.

  Oslef started forward suddenly, snapping his jaws, but stopped just as quickly under Er’Lothe’s hand. The beast-like man shuddered from that hand, but he couldn’t free himself, and slumped to the ground like Erik, panting.

  Er’Lothe looked down with amusement at him. “As weak with love as you are,” he said to Erik. “I was surprised when he survived. There must have been something in his past that exposed him to voidic influences. Not near enough though, I’m afraid.” He sighed, then dragged a scrambling Oslef over to Erik and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I just had him scare you up here, stopped him from killing you so many times, touched on his memories of warmth for you to dampen the hate. I could unmake him, protect you, but… I find myself curious. How quick will you master what we can do? Quick enough to survive?” He smiled. “Consider this your final trial.”

  Erik looked up into the god’s face and saw no mercy there. “I hate you,” he whispered.

  Er’Lothe clucked his tongue. “Feelings are nothing, Erik, it’s time you learned that. The sooner you kill them, the better a tool you will be.”

  Then, without warning, Erik fell. The stone room fell away above him, and Er’Lothe peered down through a hole after him. Then it disappeared, and with it the last thing to see.