“But of course, that is just me arguing with the past. That kind of acceptance is not what my peers attained. Instead, a man named Silt was born – a cousin of mine. A son of the Farmer. He was a persuasive man, and he fed on the insecurities of my generation. He gave a voice to the things they had all been feeling, convinced them that they were oppressed. That those who had achieved godhood were intentionally keeping the others weak, which for a pantheon of gods, who had proven that anything could be accomplished if you could only reason the how, was an absurd concept – but again, I’m arguing rather than telling.
“Now Silt, he was Just’s apprentice – a kind of ward that we gods would take under our wing, to teach the birthright and warn of the dangers. But Just was always a very hands-on man, and those who he took as apprentices were required to serve in his Legion. He named them his Grand, his First, his Second, and on down the line depending on how many apprentices he had.”
“So, the woman we met, Cyleste, she is godkind as well?”
“No, she is just a mortal. If you know anything of the Legion’s structure, the ranks have remained the same, but now they are no longer his apprentices, they are simply mortal servants. At the time though, Silt, he was Just’s Second, which meant that he was Just’s executioner. As such, it was his job to enact punishment on any that Just condemned. Before Silt, Just had been his own executioner, or would give the task to a mortal servant. For some reason, the killing had never affected Just, and he believed it fine to pass the task over to Silt.
“It was only mortals that Silt had to kill, but somehow – perhaps because of the sheer number of beheadings he was required to undertake – he began to feel the Call’s stirrings. He was gaining pleasure from it. And power. As much power as those gods who had undergone their honing and could-”
“Their honing?” Null interrupted.
“Ah, yes. The birthright changes in godkind who attain an aspect. It becomes more precise, more refined, and also more powerful, yet it comes with certain restrictions. We called it honing.”
“What sort of restrictions?”
“Well… you know that magic can come from need… Well, there are other forces which can suppress it in the same fashion. The honing is one of those forces… It… I… Well, it is easier to describe the example than it is to describe the thing itself. For anything more than the most basic of tasks, I cannot use the birthright unless there is a considerable need, or unless it is in the service of my aspect, and it is the same for every god. Just cannot use his magic unless he believes his actions to be just, I have heard it said that Alchemist can only use the birthright in the testing of a theory, or the pursuit of a solution… For myself, it requires a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Yes, a plan. A course of action that I seek to take. It is… why they call me Planner.” The queen chuckled. “I am, however, luckier than most. It is far easier to convince the birthright to succumb to my needs, to make it believe that I have a plan, than it is for say, Mason, to convince her gift she is acting in the pursuit of constructing some grand edifice. I know for a fact, that it has put her at a disadvantage on many an occasion. It is lucky for her then, that need can sometimes override the honing.”
“But… but I do not have such restrictions.”
“No, and that is why we call it the honing. Because the restriction comes with the development of an aspect. It comes with godhood.
“Anyway, as I was saying… Silt came to see the killing as an alternate route to godhood, and he began to spread that message along with his discontentment with the older generations. Personally, I believe the Call’s madness had made him paranoid, and that is what caused him to do what he did, but he began to foment a revolution. As he traveled the land dispensing Just’s justice, he would stop in the different cities and speak to the younglings. One day he came to Vigil to speak with my sister Eve.
“He told her all about his discoveries, about the power of death and this new path to godhood. He did everything he could to sway her into joining his revolution. Eve was older than I, but like my brother Kalec, she had not yet earned an aspect and title.”
“He handpicked those who weren’t gods?”
“Yes, though Eve was one of the first he went to because… well, I don’t know why exactly. I never asked her. Regardless, Silt and Eve were familiar with one another, and he believed that she would join his cause, and bring Kalec along with her. Now of course, that is not what happened. Eve was always a rather… let’s say ‘thoughtful’ woman. It took her weeks, if not months, to make a decision, and when Silt approached her with the idea of rebellion, the decision overwhelmed her. Rightfully, she took Silt’s words to my father, and before Silt left Vigil, my father pulled him aside.
“I don’t know what was said between them, they spoke in private, and my father never said anything about it, but Silt did not leave with the scowl we had all expected. He seemed indifferent to the tongue lashing we believed had happened, as I am certain happened, since my father would not have entertained Silt’s perversions, not even for a moment.
“But of course, it was only about three months after that meeting that my father fell into madness. I do not know what caused it, but it was most certainly the Blood Call. It came on quickly, and without much warning, which is odd for the Call, but not unheard of. He began speaking in tongues, and became very forgetful. Then, one day, he went truly mad. He killed one of the human laborers who worked with him. When Kalec tried to restrain him, my father screamed curses, promising that Kalec would be next. We all gathered to see what was wrong, and at that moment, he broke from Kalec’s grasp.
“With his favored hammer, he split open Kalec’s jaw before throwing himself out the door and into the city. Even with his jaw shattered, Kalec raced after him. I myself, skipped to Settin, looking for Just, the only person I thought capable of helping, but he was away, in the south somewhere attending to his duties. However, Silt was there, and in my panic, I told him everything that had happened.”
The queen stopped and licked her lips. Her cheeks looked numb and pale, her eyelids fluttering. When she continued, her voice was devastating.
“I don’t know what Kalec saw that day in Vigil. He will not tell me, and every time I ask, he tells me that he loves me too much to burden me with such gore. But I saw the city after my father’s rampage, and it was so repulsive that I could not believe that it was my father who had done it. It would be like you looking out that window today, seeing Dekahn as it is now, in ruin and smelling of death, and then having me tell you that it was Mycah who had done it all.
“I couldn’t accept it, none of us could, except Kalec who had witnessed it himself, but our denial did not change the fact. My father had used the birthright to tear the city apart.” The queen’s voice broke as her lips trembled. “Oh gods, there was this habit my father had, where he would inspect all his ingots in the warehouse, stacking them properly by type and weight, verifying each and every night to be certain everything was in its proper place. By the time I returned to Vigil, he had organized his victims in a similar fashion.
“Even that could not convince me that it was my father, but deep down I knew. And that small piece of me, that piece which had accepted what had happened, was glad to learn that he was dead. You see, after I told Silt of what had occurred in my father’s forge, he went immediately to Vigil, but he did not try to restrain my father as Kalec had. Instead, Silt snuck up behind him as he counted the dead, and murdered him.
“In retrospect, Kalec had gotten lucky. When he tried to stop my father a second time, he was simply knocked unconscious instead of added to my father’s collection. I tell myself that my father spared him, that in that moment when he stood over his favored son, that a piece of himself returned to clarity, and that clarity was enough to make him turn away, and spare him. I once voiced such a thought to Kalec, and he simply scowled, without offering any words. I am almost glad that he will not tell me what really happened in that second conf
rontation, because it allows me to think that my father might still have had some humanity left in him.”
Hoping to console her, Null placed a hand on Tepa’s knee. For a moment, the queen smiled before she continued blinking the tears from her eyes.
“I am sorry, Queen,” Null said. “I should not have asked you to relive this. I didn’t know.”
“Oh, don’t be foolish, girl,” Tepa said, wiping her eyes with the hem of her dress. “These things are hard to relive, but they are things you must know if you have any hope of surviving this world. If anything, I should have told you all of this sooner… There is much I should have done sooner…”
The queen shook her head, her eyes looking determined. “Regardless,” Tepa continued. “That, unfortunately, is not the end of the story. After my father’s death, we did our best to return to normal, but after such an event, how could one possibly do so? Kalec, Eve, and myself, as well as some of our other brothers and sisters, took it upon ourselves to rebuild Vigil, or at least do what we could. We cleared away the dead, rebuilt the homes, but even so, the city and its people were never the same. And of course, neither was the pantheon.
“In the month that followed, Silt became something of a hero for the younglings. By killing the Butcher of Vigil, he had proven true his message of ‘power from death.’ After all, if he, a barely known godling of middling success, could kill a god as powerful as my father, then there must be truth to his theories.
“It was about two weeks after my father’s death that Tabetha approached me. I knew her somewhat, from my own short and failed apprenticeship to her mother, Mason, a few years before, but we were never close. Other than a few choice moments where she accused me of stealing her mother away from her, she seemed a normal woman, though there were some unusual rumors… rumors which after her mad ravings last night, I’m inclined to believe.”
“What rumors?” Null asked.
“That she had not only been intimate with Silt in the past, but had a child with him years before.
“She gave me much the same speech that Silt had given to Eve. She told me that to be truly powerful, we must cast our elders from the pantheon. It made little sense to me, and to be quite honest, it confused me that she would try to convince me of such a thing, especially since I considered myself among those gods they wanted to shove aside. In my grief, I didn’t think much of her words. She did not say it as bluntly as I have, instead, she said it in very roundabout language, so I didn’t understand what exactly it was they were after.
“It wasn’t until the end of that month that all of it clicked for me. There had been strange rumors of disappearances among some of the other families, of godlings who had inexplicably gone missing. Some of the first to vanish were Mystic’s twin daughters, Tin and Iri. They vanished without a whisper of where they had gone, and sometime after, so did Mystic and Rift. I don’t know where the people who vanished went. I don’t know if they had joined Silt, or if they were his victims, but on the last day of that month, on the night that the Mother called all of us to her temple to discuss what had occurred, the first of them were found dead.
“It was that night that I finally realized what Silt and his followers had been planning. They wanted much more than to be given the chance at godhood, they wanted to clean the rolls, so to speak. Any god with an aspect they wanted was to be removed, so that the young might have a fair chance at them. For them, that meant those gods had to die, which was all the better, because death meant greater strength for the victor. It was Just’s aspect that Silt himself coveted, and that night, he made an attempt for it. He failed, he died, but his movement did not end with his life.
“Earlier that day, Mystic and Rift had found their deceased children. As is probably true, they reasoned that it was Silt or one of his followers that killed them. From her words last night, I am beginning to suspect that it was in fact, Tabetha that killed their daughters.”
The queen frowned at Null. “Which, by the way, begs the question… how did you know what Rift looked like? And Dydal and Silt, for that matter?”
“Pardon?”
“Last night, you used those illusions to scare Tabetha away. You made three men appear; Silt, Rift, and Dydal. How did you know what they looked like, and how did you know that those three, in particular, would frighten her?”
“I… I didn’t,” Null said. “Those three men were in the courtyard last night. They were coming out of the library when we came out of the dormitories. Didn’t you see them?”
Rin Tepa frowned. “Well… I saw a man carrying a book, and then another shape following him, but I was so worried for Erin’s fate that I did not pay much attention to them. The moment we entered the courtyard, I… I felt my son’s aura fade, and skipped to the throne hall in the hopes of saving him. I… You say it was those three who stole the book?”
“No, just the one… the bearded one with light skin.”
“Rift,” the queen said.
“Yes, well he had the book and looked to be fleeing from the owl man.”
“Yes, the man with the owl mask is Dydal. That, Null, is the High Cleric of Trel.”
“Him?” Gods, the man nearly killed me.
“Yes, though he’s playing a dangerous game, of late…” Rin Tepa tapped her fingers on her chair in a sign of irritation. “And the third man? What of him?”
“Well…” Null paused, as she tried to order events. “The first man, Rift, he threw a ball of flame at the masked man, which ricocheted away. It came right toward where you and I were standing, and the third man saved me, with a barrier like those I have seen Mycah create. When I looked back, you were gone. I was certain you had fled the ball of fire.”
The queen’s face fell into a contemplative frown. “If I had not seen those illusions for myself, I would not believe you,” she stated. “In fact, I am still uncertain that the man who saved you was Silt. I myself saw Silt die, but then again, Just made the same claim… How could it be that he has been returned to life? Death is final, it has always been so… It seems impossible.”
“Do you think… do you think that he could have been reborn?”
The queen glared at her. “Reborn?”
“Yes, like in Mycah’s spellbook, where the author believes of the god of Death will be reborn.”
The queen laughed. “Gods, I had nearly forgotten about all that. No, Null. I do not think such things are possible. Rathervian is a fool. A monster. He tore my family apart for reasons I’ve never really understood. If rebirth of some long dead god is his reason, then he’s more blood-addled than I thought possible.”
Again, the queen shook her head. “But this is off point. I should finish my story of then before we speak of now. Silt died that night – or at least I thought he had – but his death was not enough for Mystic and her husband. They swore an oath of vengeance against every godling that had joined Silt’s cause. Somehow, Rift – a mortal – had become godkind, a priest to be specific. As I’ve said already, I do not know how he became godkind, but their desire for vengeance got out of hand quickly. Mystic trained her husband in the birthright, specifically teaching him all the ways she knew to kill. And they kept their oath. Between the two of them, I’d estimate they have killed at least one hundred of our kind. All of them younglings. All of them related through at least one of Mystic’s siblings.
“That their victims were family mattered nothing to the two, and sadly, they were far from the only killers in the months that followed Silt’s death. The younglings who believed in Silt’s teachings continued to murder their peers. Those of us who were sane did what we could to stay safe, but with so many mad family members, it was difficult to know who to trust. For those that killed, the Blood Call was just over the horizon. It was when the madness began to show in more and more people – that madness you saw in Tabetha – that we knew what we were facing. The Mother had a name for it. She seemed even, to be familiar with it, but she never explained how. All we had was a name, and its symptoms, b
ut the madness tore the pantheon apart.
“For myself, I returned to Vigil with Kalec and Eve. We went back to our work, and did our best to rebuild Vigil, but as I said, it was not the same place. When the others began killing one another, we did the best we could to rally our own family, the Rin family, but it was a difficult ordeal. When the Farmer announced that he was renouncing Dekahn – and a people, which because of the rot, he had essentially destroyed by that time – Kalec, Eve, and I made a decision. Those in our family who still lived, we sent across the sea with the Farmer.
“Farmer forced them to make a promise. Any who left, could not return here to Trel, nor could they communicate with the people who remained. I suspect they have kept that promise, for I have yet to hear from any of those who left, not even so much as to know where it is they went. I often dream that there is a paradise, somewhere across the sea, where our family lives on, united and whole like the days before we knew of the Call. But in my worst moments, I am certain that dream is nothing more than a fantasy.
“Perhaps I should have gone with them, but Eve, Kalec, and I, the three of us were much too stubborn to give up on my father’s city. We still loved him, and we were determined that ‘Butcher’ should not have been his only legacy. We spent about fifty years in Vigil before the others left, and only about another five after that, before we realized that we were fighting an unwinnable war to keep our city safe. It had rotted from within.
“As I said, the people did not recover from my father’s massacre. At first, they hated him and many left. Those that scorned his name, most of them came here to Dekahn, to live under the Farmer’s rule. When he left, they elected a man named Lock to be their ruler, and this man had a new idea. Lock did indeed worship the Whore as I have told you, but he had also, some very pernicious ideas about the gods. Under his tutelage, the Atheists were born, a group devoted to the worship of independence. While Lock was devoted to the Mother, they did not want a god to be their ruler, not after my father’s betrayal and Farmer’s destruction of the Fields, and their only uniting tenant was that they would be mortals who ruled themselves.
Death's Merchant: Common Among Gods - Book One Page 82