The question thrummed inside him. Half a year ago, he would have thrown his life away if he could. He had been so beaten down by his failure to save Bands that he couldn’t see worth anywhere he looked, least of all within himself. But Mirolah had revitalized him. She’d reminded him that every moment was precious, even if you failed. Especially when you failed. She had reawakened his love of life and of humanity. She had loved him.
And then Zilok had killed her. She’d died, and he refused to let her gift die with her. Medophae wasn’t going to quit this time. He wasn’t going to quit ever again.
Amarion needed him. Humankind needed him, and he would do everything he could to help them. He would wield Oedandus for the benefit of people like Mirolah.
“Why?” he repeated her question. “Why live? Because I’m the shield,” he said, seeing Mirolah in that tiny room in Gnedrin’s Post, shouting at him, breaking through his self-absorption and making him re-engage with his own life, re-engage with the purpose that had been given to him. He had the power to change history, and that meant he was obligated to use it.
In a different memory flash, Medophae saw Bands standing calmly next to him. She gave him that slight nod and that quiet smile, like she used to do, like she had done a thousand times when he made a decision she liked.
“Because humans are an experiment to Tarithalius, an affront to Avakketh, and an annoyance to Saraphazia,” he continued. “But not to me.”
The goddess watched him carefully, but didn’t say anything. White clouds continued to rush by them.
“Because the gods act like selfish children. If I don’t protect humans, no one will.”
“Do you see yourself as a god?”
“No. But I can fight them. The gods are responsible to those they look after. They’re responsible for their actions, even if they don’t think they are.”
She narrowed her eyes again, and he saw anger in that hawkish face, but her smile never faded. “So you wish for more life to fight the gods?”
“No. To protect humankind. I have no wish to fight, but I will.”
That wry smile returned, as if she didn’t believe that he didn’t like to fight. Medophae held her gaze.
“Your body is dying of coral poisoning on the floor of a hut that no one will find,” she said. “You say you want to help humankind, but you can barely help yourself.”
“Then I push until I drop.”
“If you survive, how will you help them all? There are so many.”
“One person at a time.”
“And the gods?”
“I will fight them if I need to.”
“I meant will you help them, too, if they need you?”
“Help the gods?”
“Yes.”
“They don’t need my help.”
“Are you certain?”
The question caught him off balance, and the thought confused him. Why would the gods need help? They could do whatever they wished. Nothing governed them except their own wild emotions. They were like raging rivers or rampant fires. They would crush or drown or burn without a care as to who was killed. He’d spent his life fighting with Oedandus inside himself and fighting the other gods outside himself. It had never occurred to Medophae to try to help them. With the exception of Tarithalius’s random bursts of benevolence and Saraphazia’s self-serving assistance in killing Dervon, Medophae had never once approved of anything a god had done.
“What do you think of love?” the goddess asked.
“Love? What do you mean?”
“Did you know that the gods don’t love?”
“What?”
“Love isn’t natural. Tarithalius created it as an experiment for humans, and in the beginning, it only existed in humans, but it leaked out into the greater world. Little Thalius is the weakest of the gods, but in a way, he may also be the strongest, to make such a subtle thing. That spark he created changed the world, the other races—even the gods—forever. It transformed Oedandus. His love of his human woman was the beginning of his fall.”
“Love didn’t kill Oedandus,” Medophae said, feeling the old rage rise inside him, which was curious. That rage belonged to Oedandus, or at least Medophae had thought. “Dervon, White Tuana, and Zetu the Ancient ganged up on Oedandus to destroy him.”
“A human. And a god,” she continued, seemingly talking to herself now. “It was the most unlikely thing.”
“Which goddess are you?”
She ignored the question. Instead, she said, “I believe in you, Medophae Roloiron, son of Jarissa Chandura and King Jarod Madis Roloiron, great-grandson of Oedandus the Binder. I believe in what you say, and in what you want to do.”
“Who are you?” he repeated.
“There will always be those who need your help; it pleases me that you see this. I will give you two gifts, Medophae. One is the vitality you crave to continue your crusade. The other is knowledge, and that you must put to work yourself. Take my gifts and wield your power for those in need. Gods and mortals alike.”
He looked at her hands, but she held nothing there.
“What gifts?”
“Remember your stories.”
“I know a thousand stories!”
She smiled like a mother smiles at an impatient child. “Go back to the beginning. Oedandus was the first god ever to fall in love, and love was why he brought your people to this island. Remember that story. Remember the stories that followed.”
“How is that going to help me?”
“Go back, Medophae....”
The rainbow colors of her gown trailed away into the rushing clouds like paint in a river. She went with them, the wind stretching her body. Her colors mixed with the white clouds, then she was gone.
Medophae continued to fall. The rushing white whipped past him, and yellow sunlight suddenly ripped open the clouds and revealed the ocean and the tiny island of Dandere far below. He rushed toward it.
He clenched his fist as he plunged into the canopy of trees. The roof of his little hut was right below him. He struck it and—
The dream ended.
Medophae gasped, opening his eyes to the flagstone floor of the hut. He was facedown, and the bowl was overturned next to him just where he had dropped it. The sun was high in the sky outside. He was weak from hunger, and his cheek felt bruised from where it had lain against the stone. He suspected he had slept the rest of the day and night since he had fallen. But his wounds no longer burned. His vision was no longer blurry, and his muscles worked the way they should. His fever was gone. He had survived the poison.
He sat up and groaned. The rainbow woman’s words rang in his head. She’d said to remember the old stories about Oedandus forming this island kingdom.
The first stories he’d heard about Oedandus were from the island’s holy men, doctrine that had been handed down through the generations and were as dry as a bone. Most of those stories had faded in his memory.
But Bands had told different stories about Oedandus, not tales twisted to themes of morality, but simple stories. He remembered Bands’s first counsel to him, the exact words she had used:
The artifacts of the gods are best left for the gods....
She had said that right after she had saved his life on the top of Dandere’s volcano. Then she had told him the story of how Oedandus had colonized this island out in the middle of the True Ocean, far away from Amarion. Saraphazia tried to stop him. She didn’t want any other creatures traveling over her ocean; she didn’t want them filling up the islands on her waters. So Oedandus made an artifact that allowed him to control her whales. He brought his colonists to Dandere on the backs of those enthralled whales as Saraphazia raged around him.
Medophae levered himself to his feet. He was weak with hunger, but not crippled by poison any more. He limped to the door and, by the time he got to it, his stiff muscles started to loosen up. He went outside and climbed on top of the tiled roof, using his good hand and his right elbow. When he stood atop it, he could s
ee that volcano. In the distance, above the trees, rose Mount Thengir, the dormant volcano that had formed the entire island of Dandere. Religious leaders said Oedandus had gone into the volcano when he left his people and rumbled there still, deep beneath the earth. Well, that wasn’t true, but Oedandus had gone to the top of the volcano at least once...
Because that was where he had left the artifact that could control Saraphazia’s whales.
21
Medophae
From the top of the hut, Medophae spied the short sword he’d taken yesterday from the sailor. It lay discarded on the meandering path to the hut. He hadn’t even remembered carrying it this far, let alone dropping it. He climbed down, retrieved it, and went back into the hut.
First, he drank from the waterbox until he had filled his belly. He also found strips of dried goat meat and stale bread in the box beneath the cot, weeks’ worth of food stored for the coming winter. Everything was either in wax-treated bags or wax-sealed pots. Medophae ate his fill, then packed one of the bags with as much food as it could carry.
He pulled the waterskins from the wall and filled them at the waterbox, then slung them over his shoulder.
When he’d first awoken here, he’d thought Zilok had created this hut, but the more he looked around, the more he was certain the spirit had found this place...or killed the previous inhabitants. There were too many incidentals of everyday living for it to have been spawned from a quick threadweaving. There were stains on the walls, used pots hanging by the stove. This place had been lived-in.
Medophae shook the thought out of his mind. He couldn’t worry about Zilok’s atrocities right now. Time was short, and if he couldn’t get off this island soon, there would be no more Wildmane and, worse still, no more need for a Wildmane.
He smirked, realizing he’d just thought of himself as Wildmane. He had always hated the dramatic moniker created by Thedore Stok, the famous bard from the Age of Awakening. But in this moment when he was truly just Medophae again, the name suddenly felt right. Oedandus was a god who had been nearly destroyed. Medophae was a mortal man. Wildmane was the union of them both, a mortal who wanted to protect humanity, combined with a god who actually could.
An aberration. A mistake...
And hopefully exactly what was needed.
He slipped the short sword crudely into his belt, left the hut, and started uphill.
Mount Thengir was in the center of the island, and that was where Medophae was going. He set a swift pace, remembering the days of his youth when he ran all over this island with his mother.
He followed an animal track south, walking swiftly for more than an hour before he came to the ocean on the southern side of the island, where there were more cliffs than beaches. The smells and sights evoked memories he’d nearly forgotten, memories from a childhood lost a millennium and a half ago.
He came upon an outcropping where the forest pulled back. There was a half circle of trees bordering a rocky shelf, and Medophae felt a chill. Was this just random chance? Or had his feet unerringly guided him to this place? The trees were different, closer to the shore than they had been so long ago, but the shelf was the same. No. This was definitely the spot.
The water pulled back, then the waves curled forward and smashed underneath the rock shelf upon which he stood.
“Huskpincers,” he murmured.
A huskpincer was a shelled creature about the size of his forearm, with a long, lashing tail tipped with a pincer. They didn’t exist on the Inland Ocean; he had only ever seen them around the island of Dandere.
A huskpincer fed by floating in the water, gripping a rock face with its pincer, and waiting for food to come in on the tide. Catching a huskpincer was tricky, but relatively easy once you knew the trick. It required levering a piece of wood into the pincer. The huskpincer would squeeze the wood, and you could coil the tail around your arm while it did, then pluck the thing out of the water. His mother had taught him and his brother how to catch them.
Medophae watched the water and soon saw the shadows of the creatures floating just below the surface, waiting as the next wave to roll in. Medophae adjusted his pack, and looked to the west. That’s where his father’s city, the capital city Oedan, had been. It had been Medophae’s city, too, until he was eight years old. That was where his father, brother, and sister had died.
He paused there, looking at the waves and the huskpincers. He hadn’t thought about his mother or father, his brother or sister, in centuries. They were from another life, one so long ago that it had faded.
His father, King Jarod Madis Roloiron, had been a calm man. Medophae remembered his father as a good king and a good man. There was no question his father couldn’t answer. The king spent time in his throne room with the Dandenes who came to him with problems, and no matter what they brought him, he always sent them away with answers. Sometimes they were direct answers: Do this. Do that. But most of the time they were not.
Medophae remembered the day he understood that his father didn’t actually give answers to his supplicants, not most of the time. He pushed them to come up with their own answers. Father would ask questions. Sometimes it was just one question, sometimes it was a series, and the supplicants would give him answers. By the time they were done talking, they had answered their own question. They would leave, bearing their own wisdom and a deep satisfaction. Medophae had been seven when he’d understood what was happening there. He’d never forgotten that lesson.
Medophae’s father was steady like bedrock, but Medophae’s mother... She was full of fire and passion. The people saw her as a holy woman, sent by Oedandus himself. They said she hadn’t been born on Dandere which, as a child, Medophae thought was silly. Back then, he’d thought Dandere was the entire world; he couldn’t conceive of people coming from anywhere else. He thought they meant she had come from the far east of the island.
But Mother had come from Amarion. She hadn’t told him that story when he was little, when the island was still safe. Only after the disaster did she tell him everything. Mother had flown to Dandere on the back of a great green dragon, fell in love with Medophae’s father, and decided to stay.
While Father had striven to give his people the confidence to solve their own problems, Mother wanted to experience everything. Medophae grew up following Mother and his older brother everywhere while she carried his little sister on her back. She took them around the island, through the woods to her favorite places, which were also often dangerous. Mother and Father had arguments about that. There were places Father said weren’t safe for children.
Mother scoffed at his fears, ignored him, and prevailed on every single argument save one. Father forbid her to go to the top of Mount Thengir. For some reason, she listened to him on that point, never taking the children to the top of the volcano. The volcano was sacred to Father and the people of Dandere. He wasn’t afraid of it, but rather reverent, and while Mother didn’t respect fear, she did respect reverence.
He watched the huskpincer shadows beneath the shimmering water, floating at the end of their tail tethers. Getting them was dangerous work, so Mother had enjoyed it.
He thought back to that day, the last fateful day they had been here, and it returned as clear as if he was living it again.
Medophae had just snagged his third huskpincer when he surfaced to find Mother watching the sky. A greasy cloud hovered over the capital city of Oedan.
“That’s not normal,” she whispered.
“It’s just a cloud,” Medophae said, but even as he said it, he wasn’t sure. He’d never seen a cloud that dark, that oily. It was like the clouds that brought the ice storms, except those clouds covered the entire sky, horizon to horizon. This was so small, almost like...a creature.
He tossed the huskpincer back into the water and pulled himself onto the rock shelf next to her. “Let’s go. We need to get back home.”
“No,” she said, blocking him with an arm. She was more serious than Medophae had ever seen her. “Wa
it.”
A tentacled monster fell from the greasy cloud. It looked like a ball of giant maggots and wormlike tentacles.
“Mother!”
“By Thalius...” she murmured. Everyone else swore by Oedandus, but not Mother.
Strangely, she looked away from the palace toward the volcano.
“We have to go help!” he insisted.
He’d never seen such indecision in his mother before. She didn’t answer him, just kept that one arm on him, as if to keep him still, or maybe to steady herself. Her brow furrowed in thought.
“Mother—”
“Quiet, Medin.”
“You always say to overcome our fears. We have to—”
“I also tell you to use your brain. We can’t fight that thing. But there is someone who can.”
“Who?”
“Come. We must run faster than we’ve ever run before. And we must hope that we are lucky today.” Unbelievably, she turned away from the city and ran into the forest.
He leapt to follow her and called out. “Mother! We’re running away from it!” He had become a strong runner during the many days of trying to keep up with Mother on these daily jaunts, and he prided himself that he could match her stride for stride now.
But as Mother’s fear drove her, he realized she had been holding back on their runs. She leapt over fallen limbs and dodged trees like some hero from the legends she told him. His eight-year-old legs couldn’t keep up, and she slowly left him behind.
He pushed, striving to make himself stronger, to make his legs longer. He growled and leapt over a fallen tree, rolled underneath the low branches and sprinted forward. His legs burned, and his saliva tasted like copper.
He barely had her in sight, and he was about to call out to her when she vanished into the foliage. His heart hammered, and he grunted, suddenly realizing he had no breath to call out. He plunged after her into the same dense thatch.
The thatch gave way to a wide meadow that stopped at a cliff face, and his mother skidded to a halt. They had run all the way to the side of the volcano.
Threads of Amarion Page 17