Alisiyad

by Sarah R. Suleski

  Alisiya was being untied from the post. She had her clothes back on, but they were too torn to really cover her very well. Her skin was covered in freshly flowering bruises, they had given her a solid beating, and Russ thought for a moment that he really was going to puke. He stood up, weary of crouching perilously on the narrow space, and made his way slowly back to the roof. Now, maybe, since the ritual was over Ricalli would tire of tormenting Alisiya . . . and turn his attention back to Russ. It wasn’t a fun thought.

  As soon as she was freed, Alisiya hung her head, her long thick hair hiding her face, and held her clothes together with her hands. Ricalli stood by, arms across his chest. Not a hair was out of place and he wasn’t breathing hard; Russ wondered if he’d even taken part in the “ritual,” when it had been himself Alisiya had offered her body to. It didn’t look like it. Maybe he just liked to watch.

  Russ stopped a few yards away from the altar, Fortya hovering behind him. He did feel very sorry for Alisiya, then; she looked so pitiful and beaten down hunched on the altar without a shred of dignity or power left to her. Whatever she’d done up to that point hardly seemed to matter, and he felt guilty again that he hadn’t stopped them.

  “I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I couldn’t—”

  “Don’t pity me!” Alisiya’s head snapped up and she glared at him; eyes white with anger. She wrinkled her nose as if she could smell waves of pity coming off him. “Don’t you dare pity me now. I don’t care what you think.”

  Russ just stared at her swollen face. She was bleeding from the mouth and had dark rings around her eyes. He couldn’t stop himself from feeling sorry, even if that humiliated her more. Shaking his head, he looked away.

  He eyed Ricalli warily. If the man — god, whatever he was — could blind him and haul him around like sack of potatoes he had little hope of getting away. He had to talk Ricalli into letting them go — fat chance of that. But there had to some way. There had always been a way to survive up till now.

  Suddenly, a man to Russ’s left fell down, gasping as if he was being choked. Russ gave him a strange look and edged away as the man started to retch on the roof. Then another man was seized with the same attack, and fell choking to the stones. Ricalli uncrossed his arms and looked around as more priests fell. Fortya inched closer to Russ, covering her mouth.

  “What is this?” Ricalli’s tone wavered on the edge of discomposure. Half a dozen men had fallen, one after the other, and the one who had fallen first was face down, motionless.

  Alisiya began to laugh. It was a bitter, insane laugh. She fixed a swollen eye on Ricalli and hissed, “This wasn’t in your plan?”

  Ricalli looked around at his fallen priests, annoyance spreading over his face. All the men who had fallen wore the black robes that Russ had guessed signified a higher order. The only men standing were the gray robed priests. He reached to cover Fortya’s eyes; she didn’t need to see the twisted horror of the dying men’s faces.

  “Stop this, instantly, or you will die,” Ricalli ordered. But Alisiya shook her head, grim satisfaction in her eyes as another priest stopped writhing. Ricalli strode up to her and slapped her across the face, snapping her head to the side. But that didn’t stop his high priests from dying.

  “I told you not to hurt her,” Russ couldn’t help but observe.

  Ricalli spun around. “You told me her father would set his big bad dogs on us, not that she could kill my priests without so much as touching them!”

  Russ stepped back. Should have kept your mouth shut, genius. “Well they touched her,” he muttered.

  Alisiya laughed. “My magic isn’t limited to my homeworld, it’s in me,” she thumped one fistful of tattered clothing to her chest. “The ones who touched me are dying, if anyone else touches me they will die the same way.”

  “Is that so.” Ricalli reached down and lifted her up roughly by the arm. Her legs gave out and he dragged her across the roof. Russ turned to stop him, but Fortya screeched something and dug her fingers into his arm. He shook her free, but in the time it took, Ricalli had made it halfway down the point.

  “You claimed to be the Goddess of Air and Sky,” Ricalli said mockingly, as his last high priest stopped choking and fell into a puddle of his own bile. “If that is so, command the air to carry you away to safety. Fly, Alisiya, fly!”

  With one strong arm he swept her over the edge of the roof, and flung her into the air. She disappeared from view.

  Ricalli stood for a moment, looking down, his long black hair dangling toward the ground below. Then he straightened and flung it over his shoulder, turning to return to the roof. He swept his gaze over the dead Ricallyn and sneered. “Clean up these bodies. You,” he pointed to one gray robed priest, and then five others, “take their black robes and put them on, you will be my new high priests. And you,” he signaled to another, “you will be the seventh, find Ozun’s robe and put it on.”

  The man said something, and Ricalli barked impatiently, “Well sew it, then.”

  He turned to Russ. “Otherworlders,” he spat, “I should have known you would have some tricks up your sleeves. Tell me, will you start killing people or can I trust you enough not to kill you right now, as well?”

  “If I could kill people like Alisiya did, you’d all be fucking dead right now,” Russ said evenly. He was still finding it hard to believe that Alisiya was dead. But he didn’t dare get close to the edge of the roof to look over and see. No one could survive a fall like that.

  “I believe you’ve already killed one of my priests.”

  “With a knife.”

  Ricalli looked him up and down, then said, “Keys are dangerous people to have around. You can’t lock them up or tie them down. But that’s a risk I’m willing to take, because I have great use for you; your kind are hard to find and even harder to catch. What will it take to keep you happy?”

  Russ looked at him in revulsion. Did he really think Russ would bargain with him after the way he’d twisted his promise to Alisiya?

  “Don’t stare like a halfwit,” Ricalli said shortly. “I have no patience for your moral repugnance. The impostor served you up for death, I fail to see why you waste your concern and outrage on her. Tell me what it will take to keep me from having to kill you.”

  “Let me go,” Russ stated the obvious.

  “Ha. I have plans for you. Not terrible ones, don’t panic. But I cannot discuss them here.” He jerked his head towards the Ricallyn, who were tending to their dead high priests by stripping off their robes. “What will it take for you to come inside of your own will and hear my demands?”

  Russ sighed, realizing how tired and beat out he was. Alisiya was dead, his life was hanging by a thread, he wasn’t in a mood to play mind games with Ricalli.

  “Alright. I want you to let that little girl go, along with her older sister, who’s in the dungeon right now. Let them both go, unharmed, alive, with some food. And I’m hungry too.” It was a wonder he had any appetite left, but then again, he was literally starving. He wasn’t eager for the taste of food, but he knew he’d be passing out from hunger sooner or later.

  Ricalli was silent for a moment, as if waiting for more. Russ shrugged. What else was there to ask for, besides to be let go? That was all he really wanted.

  “Very well,” Ricalli said brusquely. He turned and relayed the orders for releasing the girls to the guards. One of them asked a question, and he answered, “Leave her for the dogs.”

  Chapter 30 ~ Immense Power

  Russ shoved food into his mouth without really tasting it. Ricalli sat across from him silently, watching every movement. It turned his stomach, but he ate anyway, knowing rather than feeling that his hunger demanded it. There was bread, cold chicken, and some vegetables that he couldn’t really identify. He supposed it tasted good, washed down with cold water (he’d been offered wine but refused it, afraid of getting too relaxed) but he wasn’t in the mood to enjoy it.

  “I can tell that you dislike this world,” Ri
calli said, speaking for the first time since Russ had begun to eat. They were in a small, office-like room inside the temple. There was a glass cabinet with esoteric artwork inside it behind a desk, and there were book shelves on the wall, along with shelves of jars and other things Russ didn’t want to dwell on. Ricalli sat at the desk, and looked very out of place doing so. Russ suspected this enclave belonged to one of the dead high priests, perhaps Ozun, who had been the head of the order.

  He snorted in answer.

  “Then we have something in common.”

  “I don’t really think so.”

  “No.” Ricalli leaned his elbows on the desk. “No, we do. I have lived in this wretched place for thousands of years. You can’t even imagine the degree to which I hate it. Look at me, I was a real god once . . . now I’m reduced to settling the problems of my inept followers. If you think all these rituals and blood potions my offspring are obsessed with were my idea you’d be mistaken. I despise this all.”

  He sighed heavily, sitting back.

  “It’s all so dreary. Yes, yes, they call me the god of shadows and darkness. And that is my specialty, you might say — clouding the mind, obscuring the light, moving with the darkness. That isn’t dreary, far from it, there is a certain . . . a certain glamour in it. But it’s wasted on these people. You don’t know how many times I’ve entertained the thought of just wiping every last one of them from the face of the earth. But I don’t. Why? Well they are my offspring . . . .”

  He paused, as if trying to drum up another reason not to smite them, but then shrugged.

  “I am the only one of my kind left. Pure, no human blood. My brother and sister, my parents, uncles, aunts . . . grandparents . . . they’ve all faded away or left this world.”

  Russ guessed that Ricalli expected him to ask why he alone remained, but instead he mumbled around a drumstick, “I’m having a hard time being sympathetic.”

  “I don’t expect sympathy. Sympathy is for the weak, the human,” Ricalli looked down on him in distaste.

  “Well, that would be me.” Russ shrugged.

  “What I expect,” Ricalli said, leaning forward again, “is your cooperation. You are a Key. I want to get out of this world; more than that, I want to travel through all the worlds. I know they are out there. I want to see them all.”

  “You mean you want to rule them all, striking fear in the hearts of weakling humans everywhere.”

  “You haven’t been paying attention.” Ricalli shook his head. “I rule here. I strike fear in the hearts of weakling humans here. I’m tired of it. Unless you have ruled, you have no idea just how miserable it is.”

  “A real pain in the ass,” Russ supplemented.

  “Indeed. I want to travel to worlds where I am free from any responsibility, where I don’t have these idiots hanging around my neck, summoning me to settle every matter that arises. I killed the imposter because she annoyed me. I sentenced her to the Ritual of Osvira because I thought it would please my priests, who were ashamed of themselves for falling for her lies. I don’t really care about any of this.”

  “Obviously. All you care about is yourself.”

  Ricalli raised his eyebrows. “And why shouldn’t I? I am the only one I have known for these thousands of years. I am the only one who remains. I’ve watched as the generations go by, and humans get weaker and weaker, the blood of the gods thinning with each mating. When I was young, I was surrounded by half-gods who lived for hundreds of years, and back then I thought I cared about the people around me. . . . But they all drop away like flies sooner or later. What does it matter if you live for a hundred years or a thousand, you mortals will be dead and gone eventually, and I will remain, so why should I care?”

  “I dunno. Maybe you wouldn’t be so miserable. Maybe people would like you.”

  Ricalli just laughed.

  Russ looked at his empty plate, with only a few cleaned off chicken bones left, and asked, “Well if the other gods left, why haven’t you?”

  “The Gates are barred to me.”

  “And you think I can get you through one.” Russ thought it unlikely . . . the Gates were living creatures, if they didn’t want Ricalli to get through, he wouldn’t get through. He told him so.

  “It’s not that,” Ricalli said. “I am the son of the two gods, Auchai and Aldia. Brother and sister. How did your charming friend put it? We turned out ‘strange.’ Byzauki and Osvira and I. As children we were shunned by our half-human cousins, because we were the product of a forbidden union. Well, shunned by all except Erykumi, who was Zalisha and Thyvid’s bastard. We had that in common, the four of us were outcasts. But we showed the rest of them. Who are the Powers descended from? Us. The Ricallyn, Osviran, Byzaukyn, and our High Servants, the Erykumyn. Our children lived longer than our cousin’s children, we outlived our cousins. Our offspring have ruled over their offspring for thousands of years.”

  “I thought they were at war with each other. The Powers, I mean.”

  “Yes, because they’re idiots,” Ricalli’s tone changed abruptly. “And they’ve made this world unlivable. Yes, I know, it’s the Ricallyn who rule with an iron fist these days, but it’s all their faults. If the Byzaukyn and Osviran hadn’t gone at each other’s throats for so song, they wouldn’t have weakened themselves so the Ricallyn could beat them both. And the Ricallyn wouldn’t have been smart enough for that if I hadn’t still been here to guide them.”

  “I still don’t understand why you couldn’t leave.”

  “Do I have to spell it out for you? Inbred. My mother and father were brother and sister, something that should never have happened. All the others of my kind, Azmanvalli and Zalisha and their seven children, have the power to travel between worlds. They don’t even need Gates, they can be Gates if they choose. But I’m not. I have their immortality but not their extensive powers.”

  “I figured that part out,” Russ said, a little miffed at constantly being called stupid. “But where is your brother and sister? Didn’t you say they left?”

  “They’ve faded away,” Ricalli said grimly. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Oh.”

  “So,” Ricalli became businesslike again. “What do you say? Do you agree to transport me from world to world? I could make it profitable for you. As my servant you wouldn’t encounter the kind of difficulties with the natives that you did here.”

  “How do you know that? How do you know there aren’t more powerful gods in other worlds?”

  Ricalli smiled. “Gods only give you trouble if you get in their way, you would never have even encountered me had you not run into my people first. And I don’t care how powerful the god they follow, there isn’t a human or any other mortal creature that I could not handle.”

  Russ shifted uncomfortably in his chair, eyes trailing despite himself to a human skull resting on a shelf.

  “Well?” Ricalli prompted. “I don’t see that you have much of a choice in this. If you refuse I will just kill you.”

  “I’ll do it,” Russ turned back to him and surveyed him with eyes half closed, the best poker face he cold manage. “But on one condition.”

  “Oh?” One eyebrow went up.

  “The first world I want to go to is Alisiya. There’s someone waiting for me there and I promised her I’d come back.”

  “Alisiya . . . why is this world called that? Is Alisiya there? Does she rule it?”

  “Um, no. I mean I don’t think so. I didn’t seem like it.”

  “Then why is it named after her?”

  Russ shrugged. “Nostalgia? I mean, if you know about Leeton, you know he took a whole bunch of Adayzjians with him when he escaped this world. That’s where they settled, and they named it that.”

  “Yes, Leeton. I’d almost forgotten,” Ricalli sat back and put one hand to his chin. “I never got along with Alisiya. Well, I never got along with any of my aunts and uncles, but she was particularly unbearable. So it’s good that she isn’t there. But I don’t know i
f I want to go anywhere that this Leeton is. After all, I just killed his daughter.”

  “He’s only a man.”

  “You seemed sure that he’d be able to kill us all, a little while ago.”

  “I was just saying that to try and stop you,” Russ admitted. “You said yourself there isn’t a mortal creature you can’t handle.”

  “Yes. But why should I take the risk? You have to agree to my wishes, or I will just kill you. You’re not in a position to set conditions.” Ricalli’s eye glinted dangerously. But Russ wasn’t about to back down.

  “You asked before what it would take to keep me happy. Obviously you don’t want to travel all over the worlds with someone who’s pissed off at you, do you?”

  “You are already pissed off at me, as you put it.”

  Russ shrugged. “I don’t like what you did to Alisiya. But then I don’t like what she did to a lot of other people.”

  “And so you sat by and let her take her punishment.”

  Russ felt a stab of guilt and said, “That’s not what I meant. I just meant that even though she’d done things that were wrong . . . I didn’t want her to die . . . and stuff . . . .”

  “Well yes, but I fail to see what that has to do with me. She was a beautiful woman beset by evil men, I doubt that I will ever be a woman beset by evil men. You pitied her despite what she’d done, because it’s in your nature. That much was obvious to me when the first thing you asked for was the release of those scrawny, ill-kempt girls. I will never be a damsel in distress — which brings me back to the point that you think I’m a despicable monster and would do a happy dance if you got rid of me, yet I am proposing we spend a great deal of time together; the rest of your natural life. I’ll never make you ‘like’ me or ‘respect’ me or any of those pitiful human concerns. My objective is not to be friends with you, you are to be my slave and the reward you’ll get is staying alive.”