In the Shadow of the Gods

by Rachel Dunne

  For all that Mount Raturo was enormous, it only had the one central path up and down the mountain, so it was exceptionally hard to avoid running into other preachers. And for all that their numbers swelled year after year, the Fallen were still a small group, rattling around inside Raturo like a handful of peas in a communal cookpot. All considered, it wasn’t necessarily surprising that Dirrakara should cross his path; though Joros cursed it as another minor annoyance, she had the strangest effect on his ability to breathe.

  She flashed him a sly grin, her hair curling like fire around her face. Joros gave her as much of a smile as he ever gave, a tight curving of the corners of his mouth. Dirrakara swept her arms wide and said, “Why, if it isn’t some of my favorite people.”

  Honestly, Joros didn’t know what she expected. A hug from the children, most likely, but that would be a ridiculous thing to expect and he couldn’t bring himself to think so lowly of her. Avorra and Etarro didn’t like being touched, and that topped the very short list of things Joros agreed with them on. So Dirrakara stood with her arms spread and a smile plastered on her face until she realized they weren’t getting her anywhere. She hastily cleared her throat and crouched down in front of the twins; Etarro flinched slightly, and she noticed it, of course, her eyes going all mothery. She’d tried so hard to fill Verteira’s place, for the children who’d never known a mother. They’d gotten along well enough without one so far, and they hadn’t shown any sign of wanting that to change. Joros knew it hurt her every time they rebuffed her, but she kept trying. He saw her hold back the hand that tried to reach out and brush at Etarro’s hair, and instead she put that smile back on her face. “What are you two doing with Cappo Joros, hmm?”

  They glanced at each other, briefly at Joros, and then at the floor. They didn’t seem inclined to answer, and so Joros did it for them: “They’re showing me something they found.”

  Dirrakara looked up at him with eyebrows raised. “Is that so?” She looked back to the twins, though she still spoke to Joros. “And what have they found?”

  Joros shrugged. “You know children.”

  Still not looking at him, she nodded. “I do. And I’m still wondering what they’re doing with you.”

  He bristled at that, though he did his best to hide it. Usually he found Dirrakara’s perspicacity and boldness refreshing, but not always. She’d come to know him well in the five years he’d served the Ventallo, better than anyone else could claim to know him. He was still trying to decide whether that meant he should marry her or kill her. “Perhaps I’m taking an interest in their lives. They’re finally of an age where they can almost speak in coherent sentences. One day soon they might even say something interesting. It would be a shame if I missed such a groundbreaking event.”

  She smirked, eyes flicking playfully up to him. “It would be, wouldn’t it?” She rose and stepped smoothly around the children, resting her hand lightly against Joros’s arm. Her eyes were the deepest green he’d ever seen. “I have a present for you, once you’re done with them. Come find me.” She leaned in tantalizingly close, lips just brushing against his jaw, and then moved away, smirking again as she strode up the path behind him. Joros watched her until, from the corner of his eye, he saw Avorra trying to slip away. He set the twins marching forward again, and they went without grumbling now, resigned.

  They took him all the way to Raturo’s floor, where the wide space gave a perfect view of the great arch that led into the Ventallo’s chambers. It was hard to notice anything besides the two falling gods, but the twins didn’t even seem to notice their stone counterparts, walking instead to the two tunnel mouths leading farther down. There was the path leading to the Cavern of the Falls, which Joros had to visit fairly frequently for ceremonial reasons, and the other path led down to the sorts of rooms necessary to keep a large place full of many people fed and clothed and clean. Kitchens, baths, storerooms; the kinds of places Joros had managed to avoid, save when he needed cleaning. The children took the latter path, of course, strolling deep into the mountain’s foot, going lower even than the Cavern of the Falls reached. It was darker there, below where most of the mountain lived, far removed from the labored gasps of life crawling through Raturo’s tunnels.

  The storeroom they took him to was near freezing, cold enough for his breath to make a cloud before his face. It was full of meat, carcasses hanging from the ceiling, dark pools of frozen blood dotting the floor. They wove through the room to a back corner, pushed aside a hanging pig, and knelt down before a pile of bones, shaved of their flesh. As the twins began to root through the bones, Joros felt a strange twisting in his stomach. The children were unsettling enough on their own, but there was something especially troubling about the casual carelessness with which they dug through bones and flesh and blood.

  The storage room began to slowly grow brighter.

  Through the tunnel they revealed, tight to the floor and barely big enough for a full-sized man to fit through, daylight stretched its fingers.

  There were a great number of things Joros hated, and the children being right was most certainly one of them.

  “See?” Avorra said with a grin that was half superiority and half disdain. “Told you it was morning.”

  Joros stepped forward and took the smile off her face with the flat of his hand. The twins gaped up at him with matching expressions of shock, Avorra’s hand slowly rising to touch her reddening cheek. It took a great effort of will for Joros not to raise his hand again; he even managed to keep his voice low, calm and deadly, as he told them, “You will never come here again. You will never speak of this place.” He glared at them a moment longer, letting them soak in his anger. “Go. Now.”

  They went.

  When he was sure they were gone, Joros turned to regard the tunnel. He would ask the right questions to the right people; he was confident he would know within the week who had thought of making a tunnel to discard refuse, who had been too lazy to drag carcasses up through the mountain to the gate. There would be proper punishments. But the tunnel . . . he wasn’t sure what to do about the tunnel itself.

  Carefully he rearranged the bones in front of the tunnel mouth, the sunlight fracturing against the far wall, dimming piece by piece until the storeroom was once again near dark, lit only by a single candle. There were always candles scattered throughout the mountain, since there was no other way of tracking time in the darkness. The initiates were constantly replacing them, precisely trimming and lighting them. Joros found himself staring at the flame much too long and shook himself, making his way from the storeroom and back up the path through the mountain. Not all problems had an immediate solution; this one would take some more thought.

  He thought about ignoring Dirrakara’s earlier invitation, of going instead to his own room and attending to his shadowseeker business. But Dirrakara was a nightmare when she was angry, and taking a bit of time now to make sure he didn’t have to deal with her bitter anger for a week was an easy enough choice to make.

  He entered her room without knocking; after so long, there wasn’t any point in knocking anymore. She was at her worktable, where she was often to be found these days, wearing only a simple linen shift. Her discarded robe was a crumpled pile on the floor, likely cast aside in a flash of inspiration—she’d often complained that the robe’s sleeves weren’t made for rolling and just got in her way. A soft crunching sound filled the room, pestle grinding seeds to powder, holding all her bright-eyed attention. Joros almost didn’t see her manservant, Haro, standing dutifully nearby in case she needed anything; the man was so innocuous he might as well have been a wall. Haro noticed Joros before Dirrakara did, but the man never did anything without his mistress’s command.

  Joros didn’t like catching her like this—focused, forehead wrinkled, her thoughts swirling behind her eyes. She was useful, and a good enough companion, but he didn’t always like to be reminded that she was more as well; that she had ambitions of her own beyond the ones he’d aligned her for
. It reminded him that he didn’t know her nearly as well as she knew him.

  Absorbed in her work, she didn’t even notice him staring, waiting. Finally he cleared his throat and she looked up from grinding seeds, smiling broadly. “There you are. I was starting to worry you’d forgotten about me.” Joros shrugged noncommittally and dropped into the room’s single chair. She had piles of cushions scattered around that she swore were more comfortable, but he’d persuaded her to have Haro find him a chair. “How are the children?”

  That earned another shrug. “No smarter than they’ve ever been.”

  “What did they have to show you?”

  “They found a storeroom full of string. Just piles and piles of balls of string.”

  She laughed at that; her face always lit up when she talked of the children. “I’m sure they had a tale of why the string was so important, didn’t they?”

  “Something about spider eggs. I told you, they’re still idiots.”

  She threw a shelled nut at him with a snort. He threw it back to her, knowing better than to eat anything that came off her worktable. “Strange, that they would want to show you of all people.”

  “I was just the first poor fool they stumbled across. They would have shown anyone they could find. You said you had something for me?”

  It took a moment for her to answer—she was likely balancing whether or not to pursue the topic. “I do,” she said after a beat, smiling again. “Haro, would you?” The manservant bowed slightly and drifted into the adjoining room. Dirrakara wiped her hands against the front of her shift as she walked around the worktable and came to stand behind Joros, her hands resting lightly against his shoulders. It made him slightly edgy, the touch combined with not being able to see her. Her breath tickled against his ear, and her hair tumbled down over his chest, and a slow shiver worked its way up his spine. Joros could feel her smile against his cheek as Haro returned and she said, “Here he is. Your present.”

  Haro dragged in the tallest man Joros had ever seen—stick thin and wearing soiled clothing, and there was a burlap sack over his head that muffled his cries somewhat, though not nearly enough. “Help me please help me I’ll do anything please please please.” A mindless gibbering that set Joros’s teeth on edge.

  Haro set a foot to the back of the tall man’s knee, toppling him like a tree. He certainly fell with an impressive crash. “Please help please please I didn’t do anything help me.” His wrists were tied behind his back, but it was more complicated than that—strips of cloth were woven between his fingers, twisting and immobilizing them. That was a strange thing. “What’s happening help me oh please please let me go.” Haro knelt on the tall man’s back, keeping him pressed to the floor.

  Joros twisted around to face Dirrakara, eyebrows raised. “What is this?”

  “This is Anddyr.” She walked to stand at Joros’s side, and he saw she held a hand-sized earthenware jar. “And this is skura.” The jar’s lid came away with a twist, and a sharp, pungent smell filled Joros’s nose. The jar was full of a thick black paste that looked as unappetizing as it smelled. “We’re going to see what happens when the two mix. Give me your hand.”

  Joros hesitated; there was something distinctly eerie behind her eyes, and he had a healthy amount of mistrust for her even when she wasn’t showing him tied-up men. She kept looking at him expectantly, though, and he finally held his hand out to her. For that kindness, she jabbed a knife into his palm.

  “Bloody fecking hells!” he bellowed, and yanked his hand back. She managed to catch some of his blood in the jar, not that he could have done much to keep it from her. “Twins’ bones, woman, you could have asked.” She ignored him, eyes intent as she mixed his blood into the black paste with the tip of her little knife. “What is this?” he demanded again.

  “Watch,” she said, and went to kneel at the man’s head, the jar held in one hand, the knife in the other.

  Haro pulled off the burlap sack, revealing greasy black hair around a pale face and pale eyes, the latter of which were panic-wide as he continued his steady stream of pleading. Haro reached around the tall man’s head, pressing thick fingers against his cheeks until the wailing stopped and his mouth popped open. Joros winced as Dirrakara put the knife into his open mouth. She drew it out, the black paste wiped off on his tongue, and Haro let go of his face. The wailing flared again, and Dirrakara watched him intently, fluttered a hand at Haro until the servant rose from the tall man’s back. Joros watched, too, not sure what he was looking for. “Please help me help please help help—” The tall man’s pleading ended with a strangled noise, and his pupils grew rapidly wider, the black eclipsing the pale blue. He stared at nothing, jaw slack, the sudden absence of his words making the silence greater. Joros was about to fill the long silence when the tall man began to shriek. It was a raw, nightmare sound, and his lanky body convulsed along the floor, great spasms that jerked his limbs in every direction.

  Joros was half out of his seat before Dirrakara reached a hand toward him, not taking her eyes from the tall man. “Wait,” she said breathlessly, and the man gave a final shudder as he fell silent and lay still on the floor.

  “What in all the hells did you do to him?” Joros demanded, and the tall man’s head snapped up with unsettling speed, those wide-pupiled eyes fixing on Joros.

  Dirrakara grinned like a proud mother, rested one hand on the tall man’s greasy curls. “I’ve made him yours.”

  That set off a twinge in Joros’s gut; it sounded just like one of the spooky things the damned boy-twin would say. “I don’t understand.” He hated admitting that, hated her a little for bringing him to say it.

  She deftly untied the ropes and cloth that bound the tall man’s hands, letting his arms flop to his sides as he continued staring disconcertingly at Joros. Dirrakara rose and knelt beside Joros, reaching out to wrap her fingers around his wrist. He resisted, not at all convinced she wouldn’t stab him again; there was enough blood dripping into his lap that he didn’t need her help adding more. “Anddyr, love,” she cooed, “the cappo is hurt. Won’t you help him?”

  The tall man rose, taking a long time to gather his long limbs beneath him. Once he got to hands and knees, he wavered as if a gentle breeze would topple him back over. He crawled until he knelt before Joros, who tried to shy away as the tall man reached out, but between Dirrakara, the tall man, and the damned chair, he was blocked in. Long fingers touched his bleeding hand, and the tall man fluttered the fingers of his other hand, weaving them haphazardly in the air as though he were at a loom that was trying very hard to dodge his touch. A coolness flowed from his fingers onto Joros’s hand and, amazingly, the blood stopped oozing. Beneath a film of red, he watched the sides of the shallow puncture knit themselves together, and the pain faded almost entirely.

  Joros had seen a mage only once before, and that man had called fire from the sky.

  “What is this?” he asked once more, and this time his voice was a whisper.

  Dirrakara was beaming, one hand on Joros’s shoulder and one on the mage’s. “This is what I’ve been working on for years. You must understand why I had to keep it such a secret. Uniro was firm on that. I’m calling it skura,” she said, and pressed the jar into Joros’s hand. “He’ll need it three times a day, at least, to keep him calm. Less, as time goes on—just enough to keep control over him. The most . . . significant effects will be apparent over the next few weeks. After that, it’s simply a matter of keeping him in the proper state.”

  Joros examined the jar so she wouldn’t see his face. He had to clear his throat twice, swallowing the faint taste of bile, before he could speak. “How does it work?”

  Her shrug was purposely casual. “I’ve been developing the recipe for years. There are a few ingredients that react most curiously with Highlands blood. Docility, susceptibility to suggestion, acute attention . . . really, qualities anyone could hope for in an assistant. There are side effects, of course—hallucinations, a period of uselessness after
dosing, as you can see, but I think I’ve almost perfected the recipe.”

  “And the blood?”

  Another shrug, and she wouldn’t meet his eyes, though a smile played on her lips. “Necessary. Anddyr is yours now, attuned to you.”

  “Like a seekstone?”

  “Something like. More a reminder that leaving you or your valuable blood would destroy him.” Joros waited, letting the silence stretch until she hurried to fill it. “The skura will change the way his mind works over time, I believe. All my testing has suggested it. If he tries to stop taking it, he’ll drive himself mad. He won’t leave you for fear of it, and it will teach him . . . restraint, in dealing with you.”

  “He’s dangerous, then?”

  “Of course, love. That’s the point. But that’s what the skura is for. It will keep him controlled and safe as a kitten. Look at him.”

  The mage still knelt before Joros, a vacant smile on his face, hands folded docilely in his lap. His eyes flickered at any slight movement Joros made, but he otherwise seemed the consummate simpleton.

  “He’ll be the first of many mages to join our ranks,” Dirrakara said, pride burning in her voice.