“In deposing a tyrant?” Just asked. Could this creature truly attempt to fault him for that?
“In dabbling in mortal affairs and mortal lives, like they are expendable in a war between yourself and an imaginary foe.”
“My foes are not imaginary.”
“And yet, if not the Mother, then who?”
“I did not say that the Mother was not involved!” Just shouted. “I simply pointed to the flaw in your argument.”
“And I, the flaw in yours. What war is there to be fought, if you have no proof as to the existence of your enemies? At this point, what war are you fighting? A war against me? A war against nature? A war against the birthright itself?
“I fight against Fate, and against my mother.”
“And for what reason? You know as well as I, that Death will come to be, that its aspect is a natural and necessary force, and that eventually, it will reemerge no matter what you do to stop it, and no matter what those two do to make it happen.”
“Death is not necessary, and it is not natural.”
The heckler scoffed. “It is not necessary? Death, is not necessary? By the gods, man, you have truly lost your mind. How can you claim that such a thing should not exist? How can you make such brash claims?”
Just clenched his jaw. “Cut your chatter. I do not need to hear it.”
“I will not. You make claims as brazen as that, as foolish as that, and then you beg me to stop speaking? I shall do no such thing.”
“I have never claimed that death should not exist. I claim only that there need not be a god to represent it! To bring havoc and pain upon the lives of innocents. To force it, to embody it!”
“Oh.” The heckler’s word was like a pin through fabric, precise and grating. “Then perhaps you have a point. After all, why need there be a god of anything? Why Justice, why Life, why Mystic, or Fate? Why any of you, at all? For what reason do you exist? What role could you possibly serve?”
“And what is your role here?” Just asked.
“Is that not obvious? To make certain that you are not your mother’s next victim. You once had compassion. You once had sympathy. Where has it gone? Today, with Atep Rin, you were almost your old self. Why is that? For once, there was humor thriving beneath your condescension.”
“You speak to me of compassion while wearing Silt’s flesh? There is as little compassion in forcing me to see his face as there was in the man himself.”
The heckler’s smile vanished. “I wear this flesh to remind you of your crimes.”
“He was not one of my crimes.”
“He was.”
“I had no hand in his death.”
“That is true,” the shadow admitted, a sly smile creeping onto its lips. “And perhaps that is not the reason. Perhaps I do not disguise myself… Perhaps it is you who are disguised.”
“Oh,” Just drawled, “and what is that supposed to mean, demon?”
The creature’s smile broadened. “You forget yourself… You lose hours… You lose memories… Are you really even Just? Perhaps I wear this flesh because it is yours. Perhaps I wear this flesh because you are Silt… What was it you said on that fateful night?” The visage threw his arms wide as he stepped forward. An image of a faded marble hall circled outward from the shadows surrounding the figure. The visage of Silt stood once more on the dais of the Mother’s temple, looking exactly the same as he had on the night he had died.
“‘I am no longer an apprentice to an unworthy master,’” the heckler quoted. “‘I have ascended. I am Silt, the God of Punishment – the only true form of justice. After tonight, I shall wear the title. I will be Just.’” The heckler bowed his head as cheers rose from the imaginary crowd, and another shadowy figure appeared behind the boy. It was an illusion of Just’s own self, approaching Silt with a drawn blade held behind his back. It looked so very real, but it was not.
“That is not how it happened,” Just stated calmly. “I let him speak until the end. It was not I who killed him.”
But the shadow didn’t answer, he simply continued the ruse. The illusion of Just reached Silt’s side, and the blade lifted in its hand. It hovered above Silt’s back, and then it plummeted, driving down toward the traitor’s spine.
“It was Galina who killed him,” Just said. “Not I.”
Disguised as Silt, the heckler’s smile cocked. And the image of Silt twisted as it grabbed the blade from the fake Just’s hand right before it struck, and then drove it back and into the illusionary Just’s neck. Just’s imposter screamed, and the heckler twisted the blade as blood spurted from the illusion’s neck. And then the imaginary Justice fell to the marble floor. Just saw its blood – his own blood, presumably – pooling on the dais, dripping onto the heartstone beneath. The imposter’s lips trembled, the voice unheard as the heckler laughed. The blade vanished, and then the crowd, and then the marble dais, until only the heckler and imposter remained, Just’s illusion staring up at Silt’s shadow, his hand gripping Silt’s leg.
“You see?” the heckler said, motioning to the dying imposter. He felt energy flash as the heckler stumbled back. The imposter was gone, leaving nothing but a crimson pool beneath the heckler’s feet. And then blood swirled upward around Silt’s legs. It climbed to his knees, a torrent of it mixing with the creature’s flesh. It covered him in every place – joined the image of Silt in every available surface – replacing the gray color of death by red blood. As the blood merged with the image of Silt, it solidified, changing Silt’s features. The hair shortened to an inch above the scalp. The face lost the roundness of youth, turning gaunt. The chin strengthened.
Finally, the heckler turned, his face deadpan, the eyes an emerald green. “You see,” the heckler repeated from behind an image of Just’s own face. “I wear Silt’s flesh, because you wear mine.”
Just stood silently. The croaking frogs and chirping crickets went unheard. The chill wind that nibbled at his ears went unfelt. Everything but his own face staring back at him went unseen.
And then he laughed. “I think not,” Just stated, calm and resolute. “That was quite the show, but do you truly think I do not know my own memories? Do you really think that I would believe that my apprentice and I had been merged as one? That the pathetic little fool managed to kill me, and then capture my essence as his own? The Call has not touched me, but it has perhaps, touched you. Now begone demon, let me return to my life.”
The heckler’s deadpan shattered as the shadows collapsed. The image reformed, once again taking Silt’s silhouette. The heckler smiled. “Then what else am I?” the creature asked, “if not you? What else am I, if you are not Silt, and I am not Justice?”
“Oh, begone,” Just sighed. “Please, just leave me be.”
“I cannot leave yet,” the apparition said.
“No,” Just drawled as he rolled his eyes. “Of course not, that would be too convenient for me.” Stepping past the shadowy Silt, Just continued his route into Vale.
“So…” it asked, “why are we here?”
“What? You do not know?” Just mocked. “I thought you knew everything?”
The shadow said nothing.
“Ah, praise Mother, it finally shuts up.”
“You know-” the shadow began.
“I don’t know, and I do not care,” Just interrupted.
The heckler waited. When Just calmed, it continued. “In that case, you should know by now, that I will never shut up, for I refuse to do so until you agree with me.”
Just arched a brow. “And I will never agree with you.”
“Precisely. For if you do, I suspect your agreement will force a change in my opinion.”
Just reached the shadowy heckler at the edge of the small hamlet and shuffled past it. The blank eyes followed him, unreadable as ever, before the entire image collapsed into a drifting cloud, dissipating into the real shadows. Though the body was gone, he knew the heckler was not. It rarely left his side. It was obsessed with him, and although he knew
the scenario it had orchestrated to be false – he knew that he had not killed Silt, nor had Silt killed him – the idea that another soul might have merged with his own seemed tenable. He knew himself too well to believe he was mad, and this heckler was too persistent.
If the heckler was a spirit, there were plenty of dead with reason to haunt him, Silt among them, but there were only four – dead or alive – that had the knowledge the heckler possessed. The same four his life seemed to revolve around. The same four who had existed before he had himself; Fate, Death, Whore, and Thought.
If Death, then she has lurked within me for a thousand years, beneath the gaze of Mother and the Fatereader. But then, what of the Call? Would it stem from me, a poison that creeps out from my very soul to infect the ones I love? That would certainly be a fitting vengeance for the death I gave her.
As he approached the scar that called to him, he felt the familiar residues. Birthright, wrapped around the fabric of existence, where that fabric had been torn away and reshaped to form a gateway to another world. He stepped past the sign with the inkpot and into the ruins of the scribe’s home. There was no visible scar where the portal had stood, the residues lurked in that ethereal realm where the magic lived, that place underneath the layers of the tangible world. They pulled at the blood nodes beneath his flesh. They sang in desperate need. The residues desired his touch, desired his magic, to fill the void the portal had left in the world’s soul.
But this wound was not a tangible thing, it was of the birthright, and he knew better than to meddle with it. Portal magic was nasty stuff, a skill too open to mistakes for his taste.
“Demon,” he said aloud, “you are oddly quiet.”
For a moment longer, the heckler was silent, and yet Just knew the creature was present. He felt the shadows shift in the birthright’s realm – a shadow like the creature itself, moving in that unseen place – felt them swirl around the puckered scar of the sealed portal, twisting and prodding at the spell’s heart. The residues stirred at the heckler’s intrusion, following in the wake of its prodding. Somehow his critic was examining the wound from within the birthright’s own plane… as if it too, were a thing of the birthright.
And there is a thought, Just noted. Perhaps my pest is not a spirit, but the birthright made manifest…
The heckler spoke without a body, in a voice that came from every direction and none. “Your mother’s?” it asked. There was a shade of humor in the heckler’s question.
Just puzzled at that, but outwardly, he shrugged as if it did not bother him. “It is too crude. She and her predecessors knew better. They would not have left those… holes.” He felt the things hum in that other plane, and wondered if the blood nodes could fill them. If he opened himself to the magic, would it drain into those holes with the pressure of one of Sybil’s theoretical vacuums? Would the nodes rip from his blood – tear loose the birthright’s source from within his flesh – to stopper those endless pits? Does Mother’s cherished Absence live in that wound?
He did not wish to find out.
“And it is not her scent,” the heckler said.
Just frowned. His heckler was right, the residues held an ancient scent, the flavors of the practitioner’s aura were somewhat close to Mother’s, but not quite the same. They were… darker. Pungent with the smell of fungus. And deceit. Whatever creature had cut this hole was a foul one. But… something else about it seemed very odd, as well… The scent was layered, not in the way of complexity, not in the way of intricacy and depth, but… but in the way of a crowd. In the same way as all those times years ago, when all the members of his family had been crammed into a single room. Like two gods forced into the same spot. One aspect… nestled within another; the inner layer scented of deceit and confusion, the outer layer like his mother’s, yet earthy and dark in a way hers was not. It was perhaps… one god, with two aspects, yet two aspects opposed one against the other. It made no sense.
“You recognize it, no?” the heckler asked.
Just scanned his memory, searching through the auras and aspects he’d known in his life. He knew only one god with two aspects, and that was the Mother, but hers did not feel like this. They were seamless; two faces of the same whole. United.
“No,” Just said.
The shadows shifted underfoot as they pulled together upon the wound. They coalesced into the form of a skinny boy with thick, brow length hair. The heckler spoke with the boy’s mouth. “And now?”
“The boy who almost killed Trin Cavahl. The one I have seen through Cyleste’s eyes.”
“Yes,” the figure agreed. “All the threads are pulling together.”
“What do you mean?”
The creature smiled, but did not answer.
Just stared at the gaping wound behind his heckler. He had not been close enough to feel the boy’s aura. Perhaps the shadow was correct, maybe this was exactly who had cut this hole… but he didn’t think so. If that boy, why only a single scar? Would he not have needed two portals, one to get here from the East, and another to return? Two aspects, Just wondered. Someone else had done this… and tried to frame the boy. And now that boy was with Trin Cavahl.
“All the threads are pulling together,” Just said, mimicking his heckler’s inflection. “But none of them mine…” Yet the heckler was right. The merchant in particular, was a powerful thread, one who seemed to weave between events and people. At least those of note. She had met with Wilt, with Null, with this Taehrn Andren who threatened Cyleste, and even with Dydal… She had something to do with this, but how did it all tie together?
“Are any of them yours?” The heckler stepped closer, still disguised as the boy. He was half a foot shorter than Just, and the black, empty eyes stared up into his own. “You told the rapist that the merchant is a favored servant, but that is not true. Then you send Cyleste to collect Trin, and this boy follows in her wake. It is not coincidence.”
The heckler had followed this track many times. Despite its words, it did not know everything, and this business with the merchant was one gap it seemed intent on filling. It was Just’s turn to smile. “Perhaps it is,” Just said.
The boy stepped back and turned to study the residues. “No. No, it is not. You tell Wilt that she is yours and then you send him to retrieve a book you could have had within the hour had you gone to retrieve it yourself. Then you punish Wilt when he fails, though the failure was no fault of his own doing… You have seen something… You tie these threads yourself.”
He wasn’t, but he wished it were true. The thing was correct about one thing. This convergence was not a coincidence. Trin Cavahl and Wilt Bakehmin both tied back to the same locus, back to the Whore.
“Unless…” the figure continued. “Unless you sent Wilt as a test. Because there are two options…” The heckler turned, the face of the boy mired in fog. The shadows swirled, leaving a blank and unrecognizable face; a featureless silhouette. “Oh, that was very clever. You collect Trin Cavahl on the chance that it is she who is important and not the book. On the chance that she, not it, would lead you to the Mother.”
Just smiled, but offered no words.
“Ha!” the shadow laughed. “I am right, but what do you do with Trin now? Dydal appeared when Wilt touched the text. It was the book that was important…” the shade’s words trailed to mumbling. The featureless face turned to the side, staring at nothing.
Just relished this. Too many times had this cretin mocked him, and for once, it was his turn to string the demon along. “Unless…” Just offered.
The shadow’s hand shimmered soundlessly; he got the impression the thing had snapped its fingers. “Unless Wilt spoke true. And both he and the merchant are agents of the Whore.”
Damn, Just frowned. The thing is too quick.
“Or someone else. But where does that place the boy…” the shadow said.
A great question. Stepping out of the ruin, and away from the portal’s scar, Just opened himself to the birthright. He sifted t
hrough the strings that marked his true agents and found his Trellish Grand. His thought was to ask Cyleste what she knew of the boy, but as he exited the broken home, a figure at the end of the walkway stopped him.
“You talk to yourself now?” Kalec Rin asked. Big and stern as ever, and with his father’s low cheekbones, the man reminded him of Walter.
“Kalec Rin.” The twist of guilt he felt whenever he met a Rin poked at Just’s nerves. “Funny, I have just seen Atep.”
“Atep?” Kalec’s expressionless face became suddenly mottled, the left corner of his lip downturned and his brow twitching. “Is she well?”
“As well as one who has lost her son can be.” Just flicked his hand to the ruin behind him. “Do you know what has happened here?”
Kalec’s face darkened. “Her son? You mean she… and that he… Where is she?”
“Dekahn,” Just drawled. He spoke as if he did not care, but he truly did. He was sorry for Planner’s loss, even if he hadn’t been the cause of it. “What happened here?” he repeated.
The Young Smith blinked as his eyes scanned the remains of the fire. “Dydal,” he stated. “You have just missed him.”
“Big-mouthed fool!” A muffled voice hissed from within the ruins.
Just let his eyes drift to where the apparition stood. The thing was still there, staring out of the halved and blackened remains of the home’s door frame. Its blank eyes rested on Kalec, but Kalec seemed unperturbed. Like everyone else, it was clear that he could not see or hear the demon.
Just ignored it, returning his gaze to Kalec. “Dydal? What does he have to do with this?”
Kalec shrugged. “He was here, and it was he who made that…” his hand motioned in the direction of the residues “…that thing.”
But Dydal is smarter than that, Just wondered. He knows better. “You are certain?”
“I would not mistake his face.”
Then I have missed something. Dydal does not make mistakes. There is a motive here that I have not grasped. And my heckler has seen the truth of it.
Just turned to the shadowy figure leaning in the doorway. “You have spoken to Dydal,” he accused.
Death's Merchant: Common Among Gods - Book One Page 84