Leviathan's Blood

by Ben Peek

  ‘Linae, the Goddess of Fertility, wept when she realized such a thing had been born of her. She came to the edge of the ocean to ask the Leviathan what she should do. It had not been her will that had made the child inside her. She had the appearance of a woman in the state of pregnancy, but her body was an illusion. A symbol. But her body had manifested a real pregnancy, had allowed for a birth so rare all had thought it impossible. I remember well the day the Leviathan met her. The ocean was rough, the waves high, and the paths we knew arduous to sail. I do not know what the two spoke about, or who called the other gods, but soon all were at Eakar. They talked for days and nights until five years had passed.

  ‘It was on the last day of those five years that the war began.

  ‘My crew and I arrived at the long docks of Eakar that day. Our hold was heavy with food for the people who lived there. In the distance, you could see the outlines of the tallest gods, and of the tallest, Ger. None of us paid it any special mind, except that after Sei, the God of Light, struck Linae, they were all gone. It was a week before we noticed, however, for the light that struck down Linae was so powerful that those who had stood on the deck of Wayfair were temporarily blinded. On the day our sight returned, we saw that the high mountain peaks had been broken and sat like a dented crown.

  ‘In the wake of that destruction, my crew and I joined the Eakarian people who lived in the coastal cities and rode to the centre of the mountains. Many died on this journey. The ground had become so septic that the hooves of our mounts were eaten away. Streams ate at our skin. A poor man dipped his hands in before we realized, and I can still remember his screams. Within hours, the food and water we had brought turned foul. Many times did we consider turning around, but each day brought new horrors, new deaths, and we could not go back. Eventually, we found the ruined paths to the floor of the basin where the gods had stood. Nothing lived. The bones of human and animal were stripped of flesh. Trees were splintered. But of all the horrors we had seen, the worst was Linae, who in her pain had dug beneath the soil. She had been burned terribly, and her swollen belly was cracked and weeping.’

  Zaifyr watched the child intently as Jix spoke. The anger that had erupted in her so suddenly had turned into something more while the ancient dead spoke; it had left the betrayal that she had felt and had become, now, an offence. She had told Zaifyr that Linae had not given birth to her from a womb, but that she had been born in the soil, in the earth, and that her birth had been the work of fate. She was its last strand. She was destiny. She had accepted that because of her birth from the soil, some of the gods had been afraid of her – she was to replace them, after all – but she had been certain that the War of the Gods was one of love. To hear that it was one that took place because each and every one saw her as an abomination struck deeply at her.

  ‘I asked the Leviathan what had happened.’ Lor Jix’s voice was unrelenting in its retelling of history. ‘We mortals thought to stop the war. Only the most foolish had believed that it would serve us well. But for days I lay upon bed, my senses destroyed by the pain of the Leviathan’s reply. I could not speak except while I dreamed, and it fell to my crew to record the words. I lay like this for a decade while my crew fed me and washed me like a babe until her words were complete.

  ‘At the end, I understood that the fate that everyone was following was recreating our understanding of the world and that the gods had not gone to war for dominion of it, but had gone to war to destroy it. What we mortals saw was suicide, an attempt by the gods to remove themselves from this point of fate, to deny its creation. By their acts they did this.’ The ghost took a step towards the child. ‘Once I had heard it all,’ he said, ‘the Leviathan gave me a task. She would drown me for it. She would load my ship with riches beyond count, and then she would sink it and drown all my crew on board. She told me that. She told me my task would deny me paradise and she would curse me to complete silence until the day I could stand on the artificial continent. On that day, she told me, I would be able to speak against the abomination, the remains of this piece of fate, and strike out against the last of its form.’

  5.

  ‘I have underestimated you,’ Ayae heard the child say.

  She pushed through the crowd with her heavy hands, her murmured apologies following as people parted before her. They were reluctant, but she persisted, and soon she could see Zaifyr. At his side was a ghost, unlike any she had seen before: he was not like the ghosts Zaifyr had made in Mireea, or the haunts that she had seen. No, this ghost – this being known as Lor Jix – wore his age. It was in the tatters of his robes, in the creases in his boots. The years that had passed, the years that he had been forced to watch, to know that he was watching, were as much a part of the cold, pale, insubstantial flesh that made up his being as the earth was now in hers.

  Yet, for all that Lor Jix was a terrifying figure, the child was anything but afraid of him. It was clear that she was furious, that a rage was threatening to consume her. ‘What you say changes nothing,’ she said as Ayae stepped through the last line of men and women. ‘I will have what is mine.’

  A woman behind Ayae gasped and she looked up. The sky had begun to bulge, as if it were a mother’s stomach and an infant’s hand or foot had pressed against it.

  Yet, rather than rising and falling, the force behind the sky continued to press outward. It revealed itself first as a large, shapeless black mass that was more a shadow than anything defined. But with each push it began to split the sky, began to tear it open. Around Ayae, people raised their hands skywards, and their voices turned into shouts – ‘What is—’ ‘Don’t look, don’t look—’ ‘—my hand, take my—’ ‘The Keepers! The Keepers must—’ – and then their voices turned into screams as the black mass began to take on form, as if exposure to the sky cooled its seething black mass and rendered it into a nightmare for all to see. Thick claws defined themselves first. They wrapped around the edges of the torn sky, grasping onto what surely could not be grasped and used it as a leverage by which a misshapen head could push itself out. It thrust itself into the sky in a horrific parody of birth, looking both wet and newborn, with steam rising from it. Once it was in the sky, its blunt, brutal head began to take shape. So did the huge black teeth. The teeth that were revealed when the creature took a breath. A breath that showed a long, split tongue – a tongue that trailed rising wisps of black smoke, as if it could not be rendered solid.

  ‘Guard!’ Xrie’s cry reached over the noise. ‘Shields raised!’

  The Yeflam Guard lifted their shields, making an upraised, interlocking defence. But as the shields rose, the people beneath panicked even more. Their shouts turned to cries and they began to flee, began to push over others, elbowing over guards. They did so until they found that the men and women they pushed through were not substantial, but rather cold, and were multiplying around them at an ever-increasing rate. The ground started to groan and Ayae found her gaze on Eidan as the stone beneath him began to vibrate the most. It did so in a way that was similar to the way the sky had just bulged, and she wondered if another creature was being birthed into the world—

  ‘No!’

  A huge burst of wind rushed over the crowd, flattening all but a handful.

  ‘You will not do this here.’ Ayae, still standing, standing behind Zaifyr, Lor Jix, the child and Eidan, watched Aelyn step between them. ‘You will not bring this war to Yeflam.’

  ‘War is already here,’ the child said.

  ‘But it will not happen here.’

  ‘Look at your brother. He knows that there is no peace. I thought he might be like you when I first spoke with him. I thought he might see reason. That he might see truth. But no.’ In the sky, the creature had pulled itself further and further out into the emptiness. It was truly massive, its body of such size and length that it obscured the midday’s sun across Nale. ‘But I think that I made a mistake before that. A mistake that Eidan allowed me to make. He led me to think that you and he were reasonable.
But I think it is Qian who knows reason. He knows what stolen divinity is in him. He knows what I will do to take it back. So does the bitter ghost he has conjured up. That is why his ghost tells lies. He wants them repeated all across this false country – repeated until it is dragged to the ocean’s floor.’

  ‘You forget,’ Zaifyr said, his voice calm. ‘I do not stand here alone.’

  ‘In terms of power, you are very much alone.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have my family. My brother—’

  ‘Jae’le.’ The child laughed suddenly, as if it were a primal exaltation. ‘You do not know, do you? After all this time, you do not know what he gave up.’

  ‘That is enough,’ Jae’le said. He did not shout, did not cry out, but his voice carried in the silence as if he had. A moment later, he stepped from behind Ayae, his cloak of green feathers folded over his left arm, over the hilt of his sword. ‘You have said your piece, child.’

  ‘You have kept secrets,’ she said. ‘You have not told them what you were forced to give up when you made that tower.’

  ‘I gave it willingly.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I did,’ he said. ‘Now look around you.’

  On either side of the child emerged the Keepers of the Enclave. ‘They are not your allies,’ she said, but as she spoke, Ayae could see the restraint that the child had been forced to adopt, the sudden halt on her anger. ‘They may stand by you here, but they will not follow you. When they no longer fear you, they will only fear me.’

  ‘You’re so young,’ Jae’le said.

  Then darkness fell over Nale.

  In blind panic, Ayae thought that he had done it, that he had somehow plunged the world into night.

  But the darkness was not simply an assault on her sight, Ayae realized. She could feel it run over her. Within moments, it pushed into and through her as if it was a hard blade, the edges of it notched and broken. She felt herself catch on it, felt it rip into her hard skin; but more, she felt it tear into her being, into the very concept of who she was. She felt herself begin to split and her identity fracture. She began to think that Ayae was not truly a person but a construct, one made in the world where she lived, one built from her experiences. Underneath that she was nothing but a spirit, an unquantified, undefined spirit that held no central beliefs or ideals. She felt the blade separating the two and she tried to recall her name. As she did, the darkness left abruptly and the midday’s sun suddenly burst out around her. She saw her body, whole and unharmed, and she saw that where the child had been standing, the long, tapered end of the black creature’s body was disappearing – not into Nale, not down into Leviathan’s Blood. No, it plunged into the nothingness out of which it had pulled itself and as it did, it took the child and her priests with her.

  ‘Find her, godling,’ Lor Jix said. His awful voice offered no comfort in the silence. ‘Pray she has not left this stone nation. Pray she is found and destroyed. Once she is named, I will be bound differently to this world.’

  And then he too was gone.

  6.

  Zaifyr ran his hand through his hair, his fingers tangling with the charms, his breath ragged. He had felt – he had felt himself being split as the dark shadow passed through him, as the child escaped. He had seen her, cradled in its claws, her priests around her. He had felt its teeth and claws. But he had thought, as it passed through him, that for all it had torn the sky open, for all that he felt himself being prised open, the creature had not been here completely. It had been somewhere else. It had been a step outside the world, just a fraction elsewhere. Find her, godling. Lor Jix’s words repeated themselves in his mind, an urgent chant, the start of a sequence of events that would not end until the child’s body had been destroyed. That would take all of them. All his family. All the Keepers of the Divine. It would not be done alone, or even with half of them, he knew. He would need all of them. He would need them to hunt and find her. It had been the threat of fighting all of them that had driven her away – not the threat of him, or Lor Jix, or his family. Even as he realized that, the child’s words about Jae’le returned. You have not told them what you were forced to give up when you made that tower. Her words, then the ancient dead’s. Find her. Repeating in his head until he heard his sister.

  ‘Xrie,’ Aelyn said. ‘Clear Nale.’

  ‘Guard!’ A ripple of protest sounded throughout the crowd. Xrie shouted over them. ‘Form them into an orderly line! Show them care, but be firm!’

  Another voice tried to carry over Xrie’s, but the Yeflam Guard followed his orders, and soon the shields that had so recently been used to protect were being used gently to help disperse the crowd.

  ‘I think the citizens of Yeflam have questions that need answering, Lady Meah,’ Lian Alahn shouted a second time, trying again to stop the crowd. ‘We all heard the words that this child spoke to you. She spoke to you as if she was an old friend. I think – and I do not think that I will be alone in this – that an explanation is in order.’ His voice reached a small group of men and women around him and they turned to him, stopping the guard. ‘What agreement did you make with Leera, Lady Meah?’ he said, trying to project his voice to those who were still leaving. ‘We have wanted only peace, but what have we traded for it?’

  ‘You would do best, Mister Alahn, to remember where your loyalties lie,’ Aelyn replied in a cold voice. ‘Xrie, please continue.’

  The leader of the Traders’ Union yelled in protest twice more but, Zaifyr noted, the conviction of each shout lessened, and by the third, Lian Alahn had joined the crowds directed out of the square. At the tail of the crowd, he saw the ground revealed behind the politician, the litter a series of small indiscretions that grew in size until a lone glass cylinder could be seen lying on the ground, broken at the base and surrounded by red-and-white stones.

  ‘Jae’le,’ he said, finally. ‘Was she—’

  ‘—right?’ His brother had stood next to him patiently, waiting for him to speak. ‘No ordinary tower would have held you.’

  The sun had been in Zaifyr’s eyes when he stepped out of the tower. He had reached up with his free hand to wipe away the tears, using his other hand to balance himself against the frame. Jae’le had spoken to him, but it was only when the glare had truly faded from his eyes that Zaifyr had seen the thinness in his brother. I have given up food, he had said, and Zaifyr had believed him. It had been presented to him as an act of kinship, an action of love and solidarity, a mirror to his incarceration in the tower. Yet, when the two had returned to Jae’le’s twisting home among the trees, his brother had still not eaten. He had fruit and vegetables for Zaifyr and the newly charm-laced man was thankful. His brother ate meat and, for a while, Zaifyr assumed that Jae’le was eating it privately, to spare Zaifyr the sight of it. But it was not until months had passed, and Jae’le had still eaten and drunk nothing, that it had occurred to Zaifyr that a deep, fundamental change to his brother had taken place.

  ‘We made the tower with our hands,’ Jae’le said now. ‘We made the bricks from poisoned water and tainted dirt in the Broken Mountains. We shaped them as best we could, but it was Aelyn and Tinh Tu and I who laid them, not Eidan. He held you while we built. But even had his hands been free, he could not have built a door strong enough to hold you. He would not have built a wall that you could not pull apart. No, brother, we could never leave you in an ordinary tower. It had to live and breathe, it had to be able to combat both you and the dead.’

  ‘You went back to give it life, didn’t you?’ Eidan said. He crossed the stones that separated the three of them, Anguish perched on his shoulder. ‘That is why I did not feel it at the time.’

  Jae’le nodded once.

  ‘You took a great risk.’ Aelyn left her Keepers a handful of paces behind as she drew next to them. ‘He could have awoken.’

  ‘He could have,’ Jae’le agreed.

  ‘How do you give a tower life?’ Ayae said from beside Zaifyr. ‘I was told that only a god can cre
ate life.’

  ‘There is life in the soil and in the water,’ Jae’le said. ‘It had only to be woven together and bound again, piece by piece.’

  ‘How long did that take?’

  ‘A decade.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe a year more.’

  ‘How is it that no one noticed?’

  Zaifyr felt a sudden deep and profound sense of shame before his brother spoke. ‘We did not look,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, though I hid myself as well,’ Jae’le said. ‘I am not the beacon our sister is in the land she made. Nor am I like others.’ His free arm waved across the Keepers and the Enclave. ‘I do not reek of the cold, I do not feel like steel, I do not have the earth in my voice. When my power awoke in me, the gods walked the earth still, and their servants were everywhere. I learned to hide who I was long before I celebrated it. When I gave up a portion of my power, I gave up little anyone would notice.’

  ‘But someone did,’ Aelyn said, the bitterness unhidden in her voice.

  ‘Aelyn,’ Zaifyr began.

  ‘No,’ she said, and in the word he heard a finality, an end that she had been driven to. ‘Look what you have done, Qian. Look what both of you have done. If you had both listened to me and not pushed this trial, we would have more time to deal with this child god.’

  ‘Where is my sister?’ Jae’le said. ‘She would not be this weak figure before me. She would be cruel and hard. She would advocate that we must strike before the child is named.’

  ‘Her name does not matter. We have known about the child for a long time, brother. We have had our plans for many years.’ A frustrated sigh escaped her. ‘Do you think I do not feel those teeth on me? She wishes to devour us to rebuild herself. It could not be tolerated – but it could not be fought as you and Qian once fought, brother. You could not grab this creature by the neck and wring it like a poor animal. She is much more than that. That is why we sent Fo and Bau to Mireea. They were to watch. They were to learn.’