by Ben Peek
‘There is still my sister,’ he said to her.
‘Aelyn Meah?’
‘Yes.’
‘You would go to war with her, even though she stands beside the new god?’
‘That is not what I mean,’ Jae’le said. ‘My sister knew that Zaifyr could not die. I do not believe she thought to kill him in Yeflam. Rather, I think she thought to die herself. I cannot assure you of this entirely, but Eidan tells me that Aelyn had been off centre for some time. It could be true that she thought to free herself from an influence she did not control. Tinh Tu tells me that she could control our sister. With enough time, she believes Kaqua could, as well. Aelyn will never admit to needing help, but by then we will know if she does or does not.’
His words were still in Ayae’s mind when she was summoned by Muriel Wagan and Lian Alahn to a meeting later that day. The sky was clear when the messenger found her, but each step to the tent felt as if it was being taken through the muddy roads that greeted her departure. She felt nothing but frustration. It was, she admitted later to Caeli, a frustration that had been building for a while. Perhaps it was because of Jae’le’s visit, because they had been talking about him so much, but Ayae could hear Zaifyr’s words, from nearly a year ago. ‘People work on your sympathy and you are asked for favours,’ he had said. It had been shortly after her powers emerged. ‘You are manipulated emotionally or intellectually.’ He had been speaking of his own experiences, and of how he had come to view himself as a god. Shortly afterwards, Ayae had agreed to help Muriel Wagan and, in hindsight, realized her actions had been a rejection of his cynicism. But now, removed from her home, from the house she loved in Mireea, from the world she had crafted for herself, she could see the truth in his words. She was asked, she was manipulated, she was pushed and prodded. She felt as if her kindness was constantly taken advantage of, that the exchange was one-sided, and endless.
Inside, the large tent held more than just the Lady of the Ghosts and Lian Alahn and their two guards. A table dominated the middle of the room, its surface taken up by a flat and uninspired map of the continent, detailing the shore of Yeflam, the Mountains of Ger, the Plateau, Leera and the Kingdoms of Faaisha. There were markers on it, some made in ink, others made from small models of soldiers and buildings, but her attention skipped past the map quickly, to the men and women around it. Miat Dvir and his wife Vyla were closest to her. Xrie stood opposite them, while Captain Mills and Captain Oake, the white-haired soldier who was second to Xrie, stood on either side of him. Lastly, the Captain of the Brotherhood, Kal Essa, stood at the back of the table. Of all of them, she thought that he looked the least happy to be there.
‘Ayae.’ Muriel Wagan approached her and took her hand. ‘Thank you for coming so swiftly.’
She was not asked immediately. At first, the Lady of the Ghosts said that she and Alahn had reached a consensus and decided to support Miat Dvir and the Saan and form a coalition against the Leerans. It would not be easy, Ayae was told. The Innocent would soon land on the Leeran shore with Se’Saera. He would join with the creatures that had attacked Yeflam. Alahn pointed to the map and explained how General Waalstan’s forces appeared to be well dug in throughout Faaisha and gaining ground. He said that they planned to contact the Lords of Faaisha and try to coordinate their forces. Once he had finished speaking, Muriel Wagan took up the thread again, and said, ‘We would like for you to accompany our forces. For you to help them.’
‘No,’ Ayae said, simply.
The silence that followed was no more than a pause.
‘You are not being asked,’ Lian Alahn said, first. ‘You are being given an order.’
‘I am not a soldier.’ Ayae crossed her arms, aware that as she did, she gave the impression of being defensive. ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘Jae’le and his brother and sister are planning to head into the Mountains of Ger. I will be going with them.’
‘Has Jae’le found Zaifyr, then?’ Xrie asked. His question was followed, almost instantly, by Vyla Dvir, who said, ‘Should they not accompany us?’
She took both questions. ‘He has,’ she said curtly. ‘As for accompanying you, I don’t think so. More than that, I don’t think you would want that.’ Ayae forced herself to straighten her arms. ‘If Jae’le wanted to do so, he could take command of your forces within hours.’
‘My husband,’ Vyla said, after Miat whispered to her, ‘does not think that is likely.’
‘That is because you do not know who he is, not truly.’
‘The Saan are loyal.’
‘Ayae is right,’ the Lady of the Ghosts said. She held up a hand to silence the others. ‘It would be foolish for us to believe that Jae’le, or Eidan, would do anything that we ask. They are joined by their sister Tinh Tu now, and if I am to believe what I have been told about her, we should treat her as we treat them: with the utmost respect and at arm’s length.’ She turned from the people around the table to face Ayae. ‘But you are not like them. You are not flooded with centuries of power. You are a woman raised on the back of Ger. You are someone who shares our hopes and desires, and it would be of great reassurance to me if you accompanied us into Leera. You would be a great help to our soldiers. To all our soldiers.’
‘You are asking too much,’ Caeli said, before Ayae could reply. The guard left her position in the far shadows of the tent to stand beside her. ‘She is not a sword, or knife, or a bow. You cannot point her in a direction and expect her to solve whatever is there.’
‘You overstep yourself.’ Alahn left the table, a cold anger in his voice. ‘Is this how you allow your employees to act, Lady Wagan?’
‘Caeli?’ the Lady of the Ghosts said.
‘She is my friend,’ the other woman said. ‘If I must make a choice between my friend and my work, then I will make that choice, My Lady. But you have forgotten something very important: Ayae is not a soldier. She does not know our formations. She does not know how to command troops. She does not know how to read the landscape of a battlefield and react to it. Xrie does. So do Miat Dvir, Fyra Mills and Kal Essa. So do the soldiers under their command. You will need that more than you will need her when our forces come against the Innocent. What Captain Essa said to you before you sent for Ayae was right. She will not win a battle against a seasoned army. You should heed his advice.’
‘His advice,’ Alahn said stiffly, ‘is simply to replace Ayae with Aned Heast.’
‘You don’t quote me right,’ Essa said firmly. ‘I said our priority should be to reach out to the Captain of Refuge.’
‘Have we not captains enough to make decisions with?’ Vyla Dvir said, the words that Miat Dvir whispered to her. ‘We know the reputation of Captain Heast, even in the Saan, but it has been many years since Refuge has ridden into battle. We have no idea what kind of force he will have with him. It may be no better than his most recent battle – which, my husband would like to remind you, was a loss.’
‘My uncle knows better than that,’ Xrie said. He had remained silent while the others talked, his dark gaze flicking to those around the room, before he settled on Ayae. Now, he turned back to the map on the table. ‘Caeli is correct. Ayae is not a solution to our problems, no more than I am. It does not diminish us greatly if she will not fight beside us. Indeed, it highlights the necessity for us to establish contact with the Faaishan marshals and the Captain of Refuge. We should revisit that topic now. The letters we had planned to alert the marshals to our presence in Faaisha will have to change, after all.’
Shortly after that, Lady Wagan dismissed her. Ayae left the tent with a sense of relief but, as she walked along the dirt paths, she was surprised by how much she felt that a constraint had been removed from her. The feeling persisted throughout the day, but that night she began to doubt what she said. Maybe, Ayae told herself, as news broke of the plan to invade Leera, as soldiers prepared to march within a week, she should have agreed. Yes, she admitted, she had become tired of being asked, of feeling as if she was being used, but the
men and women she saw before her would be in battle against the Innocent. It awakened in her an old fear, but it was not a fear unique to her, she knew. Yes, she had Sooia, she had her childhood memories. But all the soldiers would have heard stories about him. She said as much to Caeli, one night, before they fell asleep.
‘Do you think you would make a difference, when so many others haven’t?’ Ayae heard the guard shrug beneath her blanket. ‘I was serious when I told them that you would not.’
‘But what if I could?’
‘You cannot make the impossible happen. You are better off going with Jae’le and the others. Whatever they find, it will catch Se’Saera’s attention. When that happens, they will need all the help they can get.’
As a cart emerged on the muddy road before her, Ayae recalled Caeli’s words. At its front was Jae’le, and beside him, Tinh Tu. A large white raven sat between the two of them. In the back, Ayae could see Eidan and a series of blankets and supplies, all carefully arranged to cover Zaifyr’s body.
‘It’s time,’ Caeli said.
Ayae reached down for her pack and for her sword. ‘Keep yourself safe with Eilona Wagan.’ When Caeli had told Ayae about her new duty, she had been unable to keep a thin strand of disgust out of her voice. ‘You take care, all right?’
‘You too,’ the other woman said, before she hugged her, and walked with her to the cart that would take her back home.
7.
‘Is it such a burden you carry, Taela?’ In the darkness, Se’Saera’s voice came to Bueralan without a sense of direction. ‘Long ago,’ she said, ‘a woman told me that the greatest gift of her body was to bear life. The woman who told me this was named Estalia. She was, for a long time, a favourite of mine. She was one of the people who found me. In her youth she lost two children but bore a third. It was after the latter that she spoke of childbirth to me, for her son, her only son, was born ill. You could see the illness upon him immediately. He struggled to move: he could not turn himself, nor could he straighten his limbs properly. Estalia came to me to ask for help, but I could do little for him. I wanted to, but I simply could not undo what had been done. I remember looking at him in the cradle where he lay, thinking how, through no fault of his own, he was such a flawed creation. Humanity had been designed to be weak, I thought. It was my parents’ intention. They wanted it so, though I cannot tell you the reasons for it. Perhaps it was fear. Or compromise. Or perhaps, of all their creations, it was only humans that thrived so well. Fate was something that they sought to control, but which was independent of them. I still have no answers for why they allowed humans to be so weak, but on the day that Estalia stood before me with her child, I promised her that I would do away with humanity’s weakness. I would give their souls a vessel of strength. You bear the first of those, Taela. You are the mother of my promise. Is it so hard to be grateful for that?’
There was an oppressive nature to the darkness, a sensation that left Bueralan feeling, for the first time in his life, claustrophobic. He wanted to push it away, to break out, but for all that he was left with the sensation of being surrounded, he could find nothing to press against. It surprised him, then, when he heard Taela’s voice so clearly:
‘There should be a hell for you.’
‘It would be only how I wanted it to be. Do you not understand that already?’
As if it were a cloth, the darkness slipped from Bueralan, and he found himself standing in Gtara. Beside him stood Ren and Orlan, while before him stood Zilt. Out of the four of them, it was only the blond man who was unconcerned by what had happened. He held Bueralan’s gaze, and in his eyes the saboteur thought he saw a darkness akin to what had just washed over him.
‘Do not think of me as a cruel being, Taela,’ Se’Saera said, her voice receding from Bueralan, yet still audible to him. ‘I am not. It is your mistake to think that. I simply am, I simply exist, and it is from me that all words and acts will soon take their definition. Until then, I know I will have to bear the languages that have grown in the absence of my parents – but it is that very language that gives you such a problem.’
He could see the god now. She stood in the slave pen, her white robes unstained. In her hands she held the remains of the dagger Taela had thrust into her.
Bueralan began to move towards her. His legs felt wobbly, and he saw that the experience of the darkness had left many of the god-touched men and women likewise confused, but each step he took saw the certainty return to them. Ahead of him, Taela lay against one of the poles that had been wrapped with barbed wire, her hands folded over her stomach. There was blood there, he saw, blood over her hands and shirt, and he thought briefly that the child within her had been killed. That Zean had been killed. A thin thread of relief mixed with his concern for Taela, but it became clear when he reached her that the blood came from her hands: that the knife Se’Saera held was but the hilt of it, for the blade had shattered and shards of metal had buried themselves in Taela’s hands and arms.
Tears streaked Taela’s face, but it was anger, not pain, that was the cause.
‘How would you like to be thought of, then?’ It was Aelyn Meah who spoke as Bueralan knelt before Taela. The Keeper’s voice was rough, as if it had not been used for months. ‘You raped this woman, did you not?’
‘I gave her a child.’
Don’t move, he told Taela. Don’t move. His hands took hers, unfolded them, revealing shards of metal throughout.
‘You did not answer my question,’ the Keeper of the Divine said. ‘How do you wish for us to think of you?’
‘I am a creator. I am certainty. I am absoluteness.’ Cloth was pressed into his hand. Bueralan turned, expecting to find Orlan, but found Kaze instead. ‘You will see that soon enough. It will be after this child is born. You will look at him and you will see all that I offer you. You, Aelyn, will bow to me on that day. I have seen that. It is why I have spared you.’
‘You have not spared me for that.’
Gently, Bueralan pulled out the first shard of metal from Taela’s hand. He did it as carefully as he could, but he knew that tendons would be severed, that the extent of her injuries would leave her crippled for months, if not forever, if they did not find a healer.
‘You cannot see fate,’ Se’Saera said. ‘You cannot know anything of what will come to pass.’
‘I know my family is coming,’ Aelyn Meah said.
‘Yes,’ the god said, and in her voice Bueralan heard an uncertainty that reminded him of the half-formed being he had seen, one that embodied both confidence and doubt. ‘Yes, they are.’
8.
Zaifyr felt as if he was drowning.
He knew that he was not. He could no longer take a breath, could no longer use his lungs, but that did not stop the sensation. He felt the pressure within his chest as if it was real, as if it rose and fell with a breath he no longer took. It was, he decided, as if the ocean had lodged its tides and swells within his lungs and cursed him to feel its every change. At its worst, he would taste blood in the back of his throat, and with that blood he would taste salt, as well. It was when he experienced all three that he struggled the most, because it was then that the memories of his body would return most strongly. He had to remind himself that they were an echo of what had once been real. They were simply memories of his self, of his long, long life, before it had ended. Before Leviathan’s Blood took what had been, ultimately, his mortal form.
He remembered little of what had happened before or after he hit the ocean. His last memory was of his decision not to kill his sister, Aelyn. But in the aftermath, there was an emptiness defined by the ocean’s breath inside him, a chill in his very soul that he could not escape. The phantom sensations of his body were made worse by the sight of his physical body, which he saw first upon returning to awareness. He floated before him, his bones bent at odd angles, his clothes torn, his charms broken, his flesh ripped. It was nothing like the time he had awoken in Mireea and stared down at his body.
; Then, Zaifyr had been alive, his soul anchored in the spirits of other dead men and women. A line had eventually developed between him and his body, as if it was the chain of an anchor that he could use to mark the way back to the surface. His real danger had been when he used the cord to return to his body. The dead around him had also seen it as a way for them to return to flesh, and they had threatened to swarm him. Now, the dead simply ignored him and focused on their own remains, lost in their own confusion.
Death had not welcomed Zaifyr any differently to any other man or woman. Like them, he felt confused, prone to moments of panic, sadness and anger. Unlike them, his sensations were also coupled with a sense of failure. He had been unable to help the dead. He had been unable to free them from the torture that they, and now he, endured. Whenever Zaifyr felt that, he felt a strong sense of injustice. The God of Death’s power was within him . . . but, no matter how much he wanted to shout that, or argue it, he felt another part of him say that for all his power he had just been another mortal. He could not help himself and he could not help the dead around him. Why, then, should death be any different for him?
It shouldn’t, of course.
It was after one such conversation with himself that the Captain of Wayfair, Lor Jix, appeared before him.
Zaifyr did not know how long had passed before the ancient dead found him. Nor did he know where the haunted captain had been. Time revealed itself poorly within the depths of the black ocean, but he suspected that Jix had waited and watched him until his mental state was better. Of course, it may have also been that, after Se’Saera had been named, a terrible event had befallen Lor Jix and his crew, which was why they had disappeared in the battle on Nale, just as the new god had as well.
‘No,’ the ancient dead said in his awful, waterlogged voice when Zaifyr asked. ‘It is as I said to you: I am bound differently now.’
They talked without words, without mouths moving. ‘How so?’ he asked.