His mother’s balcony overlooked the city at twilight, a darkening sky greeting them over rooftops stretched for two leagues in every direction. From here he could see the red tents of the jongleur’s quarter, the stalls and broad streets of the markets, the torches of his mother’s patrols as they moved like mousers through every quarter of the city. The contours of Konghom were neat and precise, a city built to a plan and older than the hills that sculpted the rises and falls between its districts, sliced neatly in half by the towering shadows of the Divide. He could see it, here, as clear as when he’d first drawn near it as a child. A barrier that swallowed the sky, reaching up into the heavens to black out half the world. Mother had built her balcony facing it directly, staring into death, as sure as she’d built the rest of the city square upon the line it drew across all of their lands.
“It is beautiful,” his mother said, “is it not?”
He pivoted back to her. “It is death,” he said. “You taught me that, as soon as I could walk.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling as she came to rest beside him, gripping the balcony and gazing out over the city, into the Divide.
“Tell me what you saw,” she said after a moment.
Once again ubax aragti set his heart racing. He couldn’t be sure there was no danger, here, in returning home before he was summoned.
“I met a man who could change his face,” he said. “I swore myself to his service, and watched him spin lies and work the threads of power, until he was at the heart of governance in New Sarresant, across the seas.”
“He changed his face?” she asked.
“Yes. Not as a jongleur would, but a true change, from man to woman, from elder to youth. Nights he slept as Fei Zan; days he went as Anselm Voren, Bétrice Caille, and a score of others, pretending to oppose his own plans, to ingratiate himself among his enemies.”
“A Fox, then,” his mother said, and he bowed his head in reverence. Of course she would know; she knew all things. “A Fox,” she continued, “when the Divide still stands. This has not happened before.”
The words put a chill on his skin in spite of the summer heat.
“Was I right to bring this to you?” he asked.
She gave no answer, staring into the Divide, her iron staff leaned against the marble railing, her swollen belly propped against the stone.
He remained beside her, and silence stretched on. When he’d had his eye taken and been sent away, there had been no provision for return, save for a summons he’d been told he would know, if it came. Twice, he’d been sure it would manifest as faith; the first when he’d found tisa irinti growing wild across the sea, and again during Reyne d’Agarre’s revolution. What other purpose for his mother to send her sons abroad than to watch and deliver news of discoveries, great events, and similar portents? Yet both times he’d talked himself into remaining, sure that a sorceress would have clearer means of making her intent known, even across two oceans. With Voren he could wait no longer, sure it had to be the sign he had waited for. But now, in the face of the Kandake’s silence, he felt a growing dread. He feared death, and the Divide was an omen for it, here in the place that had been his home as a child.
“One of them has weakened,” his mother said abruptly. “The Regnant, or the Veil.”
He recognized the Veil—one of the Goddesses worshipped in Sarresant, and the other nations of the north. “What does this mean, Mother?”
“A chance, for us, if my sister agrees.”
A sister? He’d never heard her mention a sister; the very idea of the ancient Kandake having a sister was strange, like a mountain or river come to life, suddenly human.
“You did well, Omera,” his mother said. “I am pleased you returned home.”
Before he could process his relief, she shot a hand to touch his cheek again, this time burning with fire.
He felt heat spread quickly, the bones in his skull igniting at her touch. He yelped, but the sound died before it could grow into a scream, and the heat went with it.
She withdrew her hand, and he blinked.
His eye. She had regrown his eye.
“Mother … I …”
She showed him a wistful look, then returned to staring into the Divide.
“You must practice your war-magic, my son,” she said. “You and all your brothers, in the weeks we have remaining. One of them has weakened, the God or the Goddess. It may well mean a chance for us, when we are reunited. But first it will mean war, great and terrible, and we must be prepared to face it, when it comes.”
Tears came, and he blinked again. Pain lingered in his head. He’d made the demand, but never expected her to acquiesce. The eye was meant to be an offering, a reminder of the service he owed her. And now he’d been vindicated, his choice to return a fulfillment of the promises he’d made, and the love he’d always hoped to earn.
“Go, and rest,” his mother said. “Leave me to consider what you have brought.”
He bowed, and went.
EPILOGUE
LIN
Adrift among the Columns
The Infinite Plane
One wrong decision, one snap judgment, and she’d damned herself for an eternity.
It had made sense. The brute—the giant, Paendurion—had been overconfident and stupid. Glass shards in his back secured her place at the Lord’s side. One of the treacherous Three, slain at her hand, breaking untold cycles of pain and suffering. Then in the moment of her victory, she’d touched the light, reasoning it would be the means to escape the House of the Veil. It was not.
Columns of blue energy stretched as far as she could see in every direction, and she floated between them, empty and weightless. No need to eat here, or to sleep. If time passed at all, she had no means to discern it; even counting the columns had fallen by the wayside when she’d passed twelve thousand. Changing her course was a thing done by the barest fractions of degrees, as though she were a ship the size of the world with a rudder the size of a stone. In the first days—if there were such a thing as days here—she’d strained to avoid the columns, with their crackling surges of blue sparks and light. After enough time had passed she welcomed her first collision, hoping it meant death, and release.
Another of the columns loomed in front of her now, and she hung limp as her body propelled itself toward it.
She could feel her limbs, her legs and torso, though they might as well have been as distant as the world itself. Had she been able to move she would have long since gouged her own eyes, choked herself, anything to feel something other than endless waste and boredom.
Blue energy crackled around her, and vision shifted.
A chamber. Empty. A table, set with fruit, beneath a silver fixture overhead. The warmth of a fire, burning in the hearth. Long wood tables, set and ready to receive their guests.
It faded, and she returned to floating.
She was long past caring where she’d been, or what manner of object these particular blue sparks had lived behind, this time. It was all the same. Countless thousands, countless millions, stretched forever, as though the entire world was painted from the terminal points of each of these columns of light, each one corresponding to some object, somewhere, in the physical world. The first one was supposed to have killed her; instead it showed her a child’s toy, a wooden soldier, left forgotten in a field of mud and snow.
She veered away from the columns ahead, pushing with what was left of her will to adjust her course. Some days she spent hours colliding with every column, tasting life again in fleeting moments of connection. Today she wanted nothing. Emptiness, bleakness, madness. Eventually she would lose her wits here, if she hadn’t already. But how could she tell? Her Lord had been meant to provide for her, his faithful servant, who had attached herself to his greatest enemy. She alone had recognized the girl, Sarine, for what she was. She alone had performed the great service, assaulting Paendurion with her shards of glass. Why had the Lord abandoned her to this unchanging hell? Why had she been f
orgotten?
Anger blinded her for a moment, blurring the columns ahead with simmering rage.
No. Wait. Not rage.
There was something there.
Suddenly all her despair melted at the prospect of something—anything—new. The columns stretching in front of her were blurred, that much she could see easily. A distortion, like a gray sphere, floating on its own path, bending the light behind it to make a traveling eclipse around its edge. Floating away from her, on a perpendicular course, tracing a line in front of her.
It was moving fast. Too fast. If she veered around to follow, she’d never catch it, only trail behind, watching and wondering what it meant. She had to hit it. Had to collide.
All her will bent her course, shifting each degree with agonizing slowness. The sphere hadn’t reacted to her, if it was a thing with a will of its own, continuing on at its same, steady pace. She was no mathematician, to calculate angles with precision, but she knew enough of ballistics from soldiering. She would miss. By a fraction of a hair, but she would miss.
She exerted herself, waking parts of her mind long since resigned to death. This was her chance. Anything new might kill her, or perhaps even offer an escape. Force of will. That was the way. She was magi of the Great and Noble House of the Ox. Strength was her gift, and she would not die like this, wasted and forgotten. She forced her course to change. One more degree. More speed.
Yes.
She would make it.
Relief washed over her. It had to be a way out, whether through death, madness, or passage from this place. Hope was poison, when it soured, but for a bare fraction she allowed herself to feel it, bright and golden, as she drifted toward the edges of the gray sphere.
They touched, and something dormant rekindled in her mind.
She was the Veil.
She’d been divested of a body, resigned to the failure that had cost her any hope of rebirth. The girl, Sarine, as improbable as it was, had gained control. The kaas had been her weakness, since Zi’s death forced a change in plans, and without a body, even her will could do nothing here, in the space behind realities. It should have meant a slow death, bleeding her mind and memories into the void. A crueler end than she’d suspected Sarine capable of delivering. The girl was weak. Too weak to take her place.
Yet now, something had changed.
A body.
She examined the creature who had come into contact with the gray sphere that had been her mind. Thoughts flared inside its shell; good. Not a dead thing, and not a beast. Human. A woman, even, though she would not have been above taking hold of a man, ill as the fit might have been.
She paused to examine herself. Was this a figment of madness? A dream, meant to cruelly wake the parts of her she’d already consigned to death?
No. A body. A thinking body. A woman, here among the columns of the Infinite Plane.
She forced herself inside the woman’s mind, purging it clean of thoughts that were not hers. She’d had enough of sharing a body with Sarine. This one she expunged, eradicating all traces of the original soul until nothing remained. Nothing save her will. Her consciousness found its way into new limbs, flexing fingers with instincts almost forgotten, feeling the strength of legs and muscles in her back, her chest, her arms and neck.
She was alive.
Laughter filled her ears; a strange voice, but hers now.
So much effort to be reborn. Her pact with the Regnant; her plans with Zi. And now it was done. No more prison. She was free.
She drew on the blue sparks of Life, boring a hole into a forest glade, where cold sunlight spilled over snow-covered boughs of needles and leaves. Faster, perhaps, if she took the time to traverse the spaces on the Plane, but she relished the thought of walking on her own, of learning the intricacies of this body, of remembering what it was to be the Veil.
She stepped through, and sealed the bore behind her.
EPILOGUE
THE REGNANT
Death’s Seat
The Starfield and the Strands
All his assurances had turned to dust.
He’d known not to trust her, and still his soft heart had broken, seeing her trapped in her champions’ prison. The Master had cautioned him, though he’d loved her then, and loved her still, in spite of her betrayals.
But then, if love could sustain the world, there would be no need for him, or his work.
Darkness shrouded his seat. Below, he could see his champions, gathering to receive his summons, marshaling their armies, setting aside the bitter rivalry between their Great and Noble Houses to become a single force, with a single purpose. The fault lines would linger, as they always did. But if the need was great enough, even the deepest hate would bend in service to a higher law.
“Great Lord,” a voice intoned. One he’d been listening for. One he’d managed to place on her side of the Divide.
He willed his senses down into the world. Difficult to sustain, through the shadow, but he had less need to conserve himself now.
“Speak,” he said. Here in the Seat his voice was soft, the same old rasp he’d grown accustomed to, after so many years alone. His servant would hear it as a thunderclap, delivered from darkness given form.
“Great Lord,” the servant said. “Great Lord, I have failed you.”
He said nothing. The truth would come.
“I tried, my lord,” the servant said. The voice was heavy with pain and age, the weight of the self-inflicted wounds needed to bridge the chasm between Life and Death. “I aided her every way I could. But … the moment of ascension … it came, and by the servants’ accounts … Paendurion … he vanished.”
“He vanished?”
“Yes, Great Lord. I beg your forgiveness. This servant is without worth or honor.”
A great blow, if Paendurion had secured his place again. But enough had changed that it wouldn’t matter. They no longer obeyed the Master’s rule, with the reborn girl in her mistress’s seat. One tactician could be met by a dozen; one warrior overrun by a legion.
“Be at ease,” he said. “And come to me. I have need of your service, Master Fei Zan, as my champion of Fox.”
Tears and whimpering, protestations of the servant’s unworth; he ignored it, channeling Death to bind the man to his service. A simple thread of gold stood in the way; he erased it, replacing it with the true bond of loyalty, of sacrifice in service to a higher cause.
One Fox, as champion, but it would not be enough. He would need a dozen, a hundred, to infiltrate the girl’s ranks. Every advisor, every confidant and general must be suspect. Every flank checked by Ox and Crane, every supply line pillaged by Dragon, Heron, and Crab. This was what the girl’s defiance would bring. Total war, absent the Master’s constraints of three against three.
He was ready. The world ached for release, for the torpor Death would bring, after sixteen unbroken cycles of Life. Total war risked unmaking creation, but so, too, would inaction against the treachery of the Veil’s betrayal. He was Regnant to the Master’s throne, and the Master’s precepts were clear. It was wisdom, though he doubted every step.
Take heart, the kaas thought to him. It will be worth the price, when all is done.
“I want to believe it,” he said. “But none can see all ends.”
Uncertainty. The great gift of creation.
“A mistake, perhaps.”
Yes. But whose?
He left the conversation there, closing the part of his mind that reached beyond the shadow. The kaas’s insights would keep. For now, the greater part of his attention was needed along the border, preparing all the souls in his keeping for the days to come.
The story continues in …
Chains of the Earth
Book THREE of the Ascension Cycle
Coming in OCTOBER 2019
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Two down, one to go!
As always, first thanks goes to my agent, Sam Morgan. This book wouldn’t be in your hands without his efforts. A rela
ted round of thanks to Krystyna Lopez for handling foreign rights. Keep her in your thoughts if you read this book in anything other than English.
Brit Hvide continues to be my navigator for this series. One of my advance readers for Blood of the Gods remarked, “either you’ve gotten better or your editor has.” I like to think at least some of the credit is mine, but who am I kidding? Thank you, Brit.
The rest of the Orbit staff also deserves many thanks and praises. James Long, my UK editor, has done fantastic work on my behalf. Ellen Wright, Gleni Bartels, Bradley Englert, Nivia Evans, and everyone else involved—thank you.
More thanks to my parents, Don and Mary Mealing, and my three daughters, Aurie, Jamie, and Evangeline. Sometimes writing requires outpourings of love, and I’ve never lacked for it. I love you all, more than I can say.
My wife, Lindsay Mealing, deserves all the rest of the credit. She listened to me read every chapter of this book aloud, helping me forge and reforge the story until it was right. Nothing in my life would be what it is without her.
extras
meet the author
Photo Credit: Vakker Portraits
DAVID MEALING grew up adoring all things fantasy. He studied philosophy, politics, and economics at the University of Oxford, where he taught himself to write by building worlds and stories for pen-and-paper RPGs. He lives in Utah with his wife and three daughters and aspires to one day own a ranch in the middle of nowhere.
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Blood of the Gods Page 73