“You should not go yet. You do not know who this person is.”
Loy turned his head to greet Quill as the man stepped up to the railing beside him. The buildings onshore passed at a slow pace, the filth laden on the shutters and doorways visible even from here. They had not yet cleared the river’s mouth and entered the bay, but it would not be long before they docked in Trel’s harbor.
Quill wanted him to wait, to go with him to rendezvous with Kindrel and discuss matters before Loy set off into the city, but Loy refused. That aura was too strong, too defined. He had run through his conversation with Fate a thousand times, and the moment he had felt this aura, he had realized the piece of the puzzle he’d been missing all along. In Dekahn, when Fate had told him that he must complete his task, she had not said that he must do it then. She had not said that he must complete it right that moment. And in Lane, when Scryer Fate had said that Loy would not find the Mother without accepting her deal, he had assumed that meant he would not find her until after he had completed the task, but now, as he felt that aura beckoning in the distance, he realized the truth. He needed the Mother to complete his task.
“I have come too far to wait any longer,” Loy said. Though he said the words, he knew the statement for an excuse. He was restless, he did want to have this matter with Fate settled so that she might restore the birthright and make him a god, but in reality, his reason for avoiding Kindrel was shame.
Loy had not told Quill that his access to the birthright had been reduced to a trickle. It was too embarrassing to speak of, especially with Quill, a man who had been born a mortal and become a god. It was bad enough that Loy had been born godkind and still could not achieve the same status as the man, but the man did not need to know, that now, Loy never would. Quill might be better, but he did not need to know it as fact.
“It is foolish,” Quill said. “You do not know who this person is. It might be the Mother, but that might be worse than if it were Just. She is not the noble creature you believe her to be.”
Quill was probably right. He’d been right about everything else since Loy had come to this land, but what else could Loy do? The alternative was to remain as he was, without the birthright and without any chance of ever becoming a god. He would fall into the ranks of the blighted, becoming to his kin, one barely worthy of being distinguished from a mortal – which was to say, as he cleaned up their filth, his siblings would no longer acknowledge his presence as they would a mortal servant.
“No, Quill, don’t you see? It is exactly as you said, it is exactly as Just said. Fate’s deal is never what one expects. Well, she was giving me the pieces right then, wasn’t she? Fate did not say that I would not find the Mother before completing the task, she said that I would not find her unless I accepted the deal. Who else but the Mother would know the identity of the man in her son’s shadow? This has been my fate all along.”
Quill shook his head in slow wonder. “Loy. You are being foolish. There are other ways to accomplish Fate’s task than to rush in and hope this person is not a threat. Come with me to meet Kindrel and we will devise a plan. There is no reason to rush into this. Do not risk your life for such petty rewards.”
“Petty?” Loy glared at him. He was tired of repeating this conversation. He had already made his decision, but Quill simply would not leave it alone. “It is the pinnacle achievement for my kind.”
“But it will not make you happy.”
“What do you know of it?”
Quill shrugged. “I have been both mortal and god. I am no happier now for the birthright than I was as a mortal. Do you know why? Because it is not the source of my happiness, that happiness comes from the same things I could have had before. In fact, there is only one thing godhood has ever given me that I would not have otherwise had, and that is more time to spend with those I love, time that you already have.”
“You do not understand.”
“I do understand. It is you who does not. You have placed godhood on a pedestal and made of it an object of worship, but you err in your need for it. Godhood will not fill the holes of your life. It will not make you happy when you were not happy before. It will not make you wise.”
“But it will make me strong,” Loy said, “and well loved.”
Quill laughed. “And what do those things matter? You came here with a cause and a belief. You came here believing in your father’s foolish system of generational superiority. Godhood might bring you respect in Lendal, but it will not bring you love and happiness, because now you know all that for a lie. Will you even go back now, knowing what you know? And tell me, if not, what will you do with your strength? The truths you have learned have stolen your fervor and your cause, but what good is strength without a purpose? Without a cause to apply it to?”
“Strength is the purpose.”
Quill lifted his hand, and with his eyes closed, squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Then go. Find your fate.” Quill turned and paced toward the hatch. Though he spoke his final words in a mumble, Loy heard them clearly. “Let us hope it is all that you have imagined.”
Slayer had followed the ship, still too afraid to approach her dear Silt, but certain that she must stay near him. It had taken her back to Trel, back to where she needed to be. Grandfather was here in the city. Mother’s father. Tyrena’s father.
She had loved Dydal. He was kind where Mother wasn’t. Where Tyrena had never paid any attention to Tabetha, Grandfather had. Even when she had told her mother the truth, about Silt and the child they’d had together, Tyrena had scorned her, but Dydal had been kind to her.
Grandfather had asked her to forgive the Alchemist and Tabetha wanted to, but Slayer could not. They did not understand the desire. They did not understand how the blood talked, and when Tabetha had refused to give up her ways, her mother had left without her. They all had. Even Grandfather.
She remembered his disgust, remembered the way he had looked at her when he told her they were leaving. He’d wanted her to go with them. He’d wanted to cage her, to keep her separate until the killing thoughts had gone away. But she was Slayer. She could not go. Grandfather had been upset, but she could not leave. Not until her son had been avenged.
Fate wanted her to kill Dydal. But now there was another way. Grandfather was here, but so was the Alchemist. After all this waiting, she could finally feel Sybil’s aura. Tabetha had known that she would come back eventually, known that she could not abandon her university forever. It had only been a matter of patience, and here the god was. The fiend that had killed her child.
Slayer did not have to kill Grandfather. She did not have to appease Fate. Instead, she could kill the one she had waited for, and then she could accept her Grandfather’s offer. And she could leave. Leave Trel. Leave the angry whispers which told her to hunt. Dydal could save her from the sadness. From the anger. From the guilt of a hundred dead friends and a thousand mewling young ones.
Slayer had to kill the Alchemist.
Had to kill her in the same spot that Sybil had killed her own son.
And she was already there. In the Temple. Waiting to die.
The aura drew Loy through the streets as night fell. Trel seemed a different city in the moonlight. Surfaces that had disgusted him during the day took on an odd light, a light with enough shadow to hide the filth in the alleys and grime on the buildings, but enough glimmer to make the polished stones of the city glow.
Or perhaps Loy was just in the only nice part of the city, for the smell of shit was gone too, and so was the rabble.
Either way, he could not enjoy it. Despite Quill’s protests, Loy had left the moment the ship had docked. He was already regretting his choice, for with each step the aura grew stronger, and with each step, he was reminded of the places and people who had humiliated him in this land. He suspected that Quill might have been right, and that he marched not to godhood, but to death. There was only one thing that drove him on, a sense that this was the way things were supposed to be, that this m
oment, this exact one, was predetermined. That it was fated. And that gave him comfort.
His path took him to the Mother’s Temple, or rather to the raised plaza that was all that remained of the temple. And of course, it must be so.
With golden hair that draped down her back, she faced away from the stairs he entered by, kneeling with her head down and eyes closed before the temple’s cracked marble dais.
When he saw her, he knew she was not mortal, or even an ordinary god, for her skin was a vibrant pink which glowed in the moonlight. More so, her aura was fascinating. Flavored by the scent of leaves and grass, of fresh growth and newborn babes, her aura was a constant force, the flavors demanding and consistent, yet pulsing like the rhythm of a beating heart. While her chest was still, the aura breathed like it sustained her, like it was what sustained everything, like it sustained the whole of existence.
And when she stood and turned, and he saw her round, golden eyes, he knew that he’d been right. He had done it. This was her. He had found the Mother.
“You…” Loy tried, but he could not speak fluently; his excitement strangling his tongue.
“Yes?”
“You are her,” Loy managed.
She took a step forward, holding a hand above her eyes as though to shield them from a harsh light. Her expression seemed confused, or perhaps nervous, like her eyes saw something that her brain knew to be impossible.
“Silt?” she asked, and she asked it tentatively, like a foot testing the waters of a pond.
Loy frowned. It was the same person Just thought him to be, the same supposed brother that Kindrel had claimed he looked like.
“No,” Loy said. “No, my name is Loy. I am forty-third son of Order. I am… your grandson.”
The woman squinted, her face tilting to one side. “Order? Is that a title? I have… never heard it…” She took another step closer, leaning toward him for a better look. “Loy, you say? Like a type of shovel? And you look like Silt… Are you one of Nikom’s children?”
Loy smiled. For a moment, he had thought this woman ignorant, like all those he had met in Dekahn. “I am his son,” he said. “Your grandson.”
“Grandson? You… you think I’m Mother. I’m sorry… but I am not her.”
“But your aura… it smells of creation. You must be her.”
“No, I’m-” the woman paused, looking perplexed. “Aura? What is an aura?”
Loy’s heart sank. This woman had to be the Mother. He had come too far, and her aspect was too strong, too specific. She was a creator, which meant she had to be the creator… and yet, how could she not know what an aura was? His mind clung to something she had said. She had not said ‘the Mother,’ she had simply said ‘Mother.’ This woman, she was one of the First Generation.
“Who are you?” Loy asked.
“I suppose that I am your aunt,” the woman said. “My name is Sybil.”
Loy’s eyelids flared. “The Alchemist?” He had come in search of the Mother, but perhaps he had found something better. This aunt was said to know everything there was to know of the birthright. According to Father, it was she that had discovered and kept the birthright’s most powerful secrets. She had studied the blood nodes, she knew where the birthright came from and how the aspects worked. She was the example Father pointed to as the reason a Second could never be as great as a First. If anything Father had ever said was true – if anyone could cure the illness which kept Loy from the birthright – it was she.
Awestruck, Loy stepped forward and bowed. “Aunt Alchemist,” he said, “as forty-third son of Order and a humble Second, I place myself at your mercy.”
“Uhm… what?”
Loy sighed, still bent level with the tiles underfoot. In his excitement, he had forgotten the things he had learned and regressed back into the old courtesies. Scryer Fate had known Lendal’s formalities, but she was an outlier. And how could Sybil not be confused? Considering the evidence, it seemed that Lendish propriety was something Loy’s father had made up with all the rest.
A hand brushed Loy’s shoulder and he looked up to find the Alchemist standing over him. She did not seem to care that his statement must have been unusual. Instead, her touch was gentle and her gaze inquisitive. As her eyebrows tensed and released, he realized that she was studying him.
“There is something…” She paused, as if trailing away in thought. When she began again, she seemed more focused. “You said you’re Nikom’s son?”
Loy nodded.
“Then you must be from this Lendal which Sailor described. Can you tell me of it?”
Loy straightened slowly, no longer comforted by this woman’s touch. She had colluded with that defiler. For her to help him, Loy would have to tell her of his failures, but what if she told his vile niece of Loy’s shame? “You have… spoken to Niece Kindrel?”
“A short while ago, yes…” Again, she let the affirmation trail away as her eyes stared into his. Without warning, she reached out her hand, held his jaw, and leaned forward to examine him as one would a horse. She paused, humming quietly to herself, until finally, she blinked and smiled. “Are you aware that you are honing?” she asked.
As soon as she said it, she shook her head and scoffed. “Well of course you must know. How could you not notice? I remember when Galina’s aspect honed and she could barely light a candle, and what a time that was… after all, how do you cater to a role such as Mystic without first knowing what you shall become, let alone what it would mean?” Again, she laughed. “I recall that Just and I had bets on when she would finally work the puzzle out. Sadly, I’ll admit that he had more faith in her than I. But back then I can’t say that I understood her obsession with those candles and trinkets and such, they just seemed so… mundane, so… lacking in reason and logic. But that’s the wonder, is it not? She tried for months to return to her old habits, hoping the birthright would return if only she went back to being a child. But of course, it was only when she gave in to the fear that the birthright would never come back that she sank her effort into the same new hobby that had triggered the change in the first place, and found her path to godhood.”
Loy’s chest felt light. “What are you saying?” he asked, breathless.
“I am saying that you’ve done something to trigger your aspect. You are nearly a god, that is, if you can figure out what it was that’s triggered the hon–”
The blow took them both from the right, tossing Loy into the air then rolling him across the tiles with a limb-jarring thump. His head slammed into the floor, sending a shooting pain through his skull that fogged his eyes. As his gaze refocused he saw what had struck him – or rather who. A madwoman – the madwoman, the same woman he had seen in Dekahn – crouched atop the Alchemist’s limp form, her knees pinning the god’s arms to the tiles, her fists slamming again and again into Sybil’s nose.
Beneath her, Aunt Alchemist seemed dazed, her eyes blinking and flinching with each blow, her eyebrows scrunched together like she did not understand what was happening to her or why. A sticky swath of blood pooled in Sybil’s hair above her right ear.
“You,” the madwoman raved. “It was you! You took him! You killed him!”
Sybil’s arms reached fruitlessly to break free of the woman’s knees and protect her face, but even still, her efforts seemed automatic, an instinctive response rather than a focused effort.
Loy jumped to his feet, as stunned as Sybil seemed herself, but quicker to respond. He did not think, he simply acted, reaching deep within himself in an effort to force the birthright to respond. He had to restrain this woman, else she do to Sybil what she had done to those poor souls in Dekahn.
“Stop!” Loy shouted, releasing what power he could. But nothing happened. The birthright raged within him, just as before, but again, nothing came except for pain. There was a solid wall between the magic and his intent; his birthright might as well not exist. He tried his legs instead. He ran to the woman, planted his foot, and kicked her as hard as he could.
The kick did not seem to faze her and Loy panicked. “Stop, you monster. Do you not know who this is?”
The madwoman paused, her fists unclenching as her head tilted to an awkward angle. She studied him, her eyes as lost as Sybil’s, her mouth gaping. “Silt?” she asked. “Is it you?”
“No,” Loy shouted. “What are you doing?”
For a moment, the woman’s mouth worked silently. At last, she spoke, her voice a strange mix of cooing love and deranged grief. “I am stopping her, Silt. I am avenging our son. This is the one who took him! This is the one who killed our Gemm!”
Beneath the blood running from her nose and forehead, Sybil paled. “Gemm?” she said. “You were… you were his mother?”
Loy barely heard her, but the madwoman seemed to hear it perfectly. Her gaze shot back to Sybil, boring into her like the stare alone was capable of striking the Alchemist down. “I am his mother,” the woman shrieked. “I am still his mother, even though you took him away!” The woman struck Sybil again, the blow punctuating her words. “He wanted to be like you!” Sybil’s head ricocheted into the stones, spraying the cobbles with a fine red mist.
Loy grabbed the woman’s arms, wrapping his own about hers to hold her back; if he could not restrain her with the birthright, he would do it the common way. “Stop. You will kill her.”
The woman’s arms tensed beneath his, fighting to break free. He pulled her back, onto her feet and off of Sybil, the madwoman scratching and biting. As he did so, her defiance gave out, and she sagged back into his arms with a whimper. Loy glanced at Sybil and the sight terrified him. Though her eyes were open, her chest lie completely still; she was not breathing.
The madwoman’s sobs rose to a whine. “How can you take her side?” the madwoman moaned. “He was your son, too.”
“I am not who you think,” Loy said, his grip relaxing in his desperation to check on Sybil. “I have no son with you.”
It was the worst thing he could have said. Her defiance returned in a flaring spark. Her arms whipped out hard, the blood nodes in his own flesh singing with the power expelled from hers. He had underestimated her, she was not just mad, she was godkind. How could he not have seen it?
Death's Merchant: Common Among Gods - Book One Page 112