by Fiona Patton
In the cami garden, Brax was the first to shake off the effects of the past. Blinking the rain from his eyes, he stared down at Graize for a long moment, wondering why, after six long years of dreaming about this moment, it felt so hollow. Maybe because his enemy lay so pale and still on the sodden ground. Maybe because Hisar, barely able to drag Himself forward and catch Graize up in His arms, looked so distraught. Maybe because Brax’s own confused sensibilities kept insisting that this was a tragedy rather than a triumph. He glanced over at Spar.
His kardos sat beside them, heedless of the mud, hands in his lap, blue eyes flickering from white to black to white again. Blood, trickling from his right nostril, struggled to make headway down his upper lip before being washed away by the rain. A dispassionate part of Brax’s mind noted that it was the same color as the blood washing down Graize’s temple. Feeling as if his body were acting of its own accord, he watched his hands cut a strip of cloth from the bottom of his cloak and bind it around the other man’s head. Then he turned.
“Spar.”
His kardos ignored him.
“Spar.”
“What?”
Brax paused, unsure of what to say now that he had some small amount of the other’s attention.
“You’re bleeding.”
Spar’s hand came up, smeared a line of red across his cheek, then he shrugged as the rain washed it away. “Hisar needed power,” he said distantly, dropping his hand back into his lap. “It took me by surprise.”
Brax gave a soft bark of laughter. “That wasn’t the only thing, yeah?”
Spar glanced up, his gaze still misted by prophecy. “What do you mean?”
“All of this.” Brax gestured. “You didn’t see it. Graize didn’t see it. That’s . . . pretty amazing for two such powerful seers, don’t you think?”
Spar’s eyes cleared slightly as Brax’s half-amused, half-accusing tone of voice cut through his reverie as little else could have. He scowled. “I knew Hisar had a plan, but I don’t think even He knew all the details. That’s the trick to blinding seers; you make decisions at the last moment. You know that.”
“Hm.” Brax looked unconvinced but dropped the subject. “So now what?” he asked, wiping his hands ineffectively on his cuirass.
His expression wan, Spar just shrugged. “I don’t know. Ask Hisar. Like I said, it was His plan.”
Brax turned. “Hisar.”
The young God blinked rapidly, His seeming fading to a pale, nearly translucent gold. For a moment, Brax could almost see the cami wall right through Him.
“It hurt,” the young God whimpered. “It hurt so much. I was whole and then I was shattered into bits.” As He continued to fade, Graize began to slide from His arms, and with a concerted effort, He forced His physical seeming to steady.
Beside them, Spar closed his eyes briefly, his face paling to a sickly gray.
“And then I attacked him,” Hisar continued so softly that they could barely hear Him. “Why did I do that, Spar?”
“I don’t know,” the youth answered wearily. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“It felt like I was being torn into a million tiny pieces and the only thing those pieces could feel was hunger.” The young God swallowed reflexively, His seeming growing gaunt and thin with the motion. “I was so hungry and so angry. I just wanted to feed and it felt like he could feed me, but he wouldn’t and so I attacked him.
“And now I can’t feel him on the inside at all,” He added, His voice young and frightened and muted by the sound of the rain pelting against the garden all around them. “Did I lose him, Spar? Did I lose his oaths when I attacked him?”
His voice was close to panic and, with a slight groan, Spar forced himself to straighten. Closing his eyes, he pressed his hand against his chest, and Hisar shuddered as a renewed trickle of power passed between them.
“I can feel our lien,” the youth answered. “And far away, I can feel his.” He opened his eyes. “Just barely.”
“So he’s not . . . dead?”
“No.”
“And his oaths are still there?”
“Reach for them Yourself. You’ll see that they are.”
“He feels so cold.” Hisar blinked rapidly again as if trying to hold back tears. “He feels . . .” He glanced down suddenly, His expression confused. “How can I feel him physically, on the outside?” He asked, staring, wide-eyed, at the red bead hanging from Spar’s neck. “How can I do that?”
“Because You’re pulling power to stay in the physical,” Spar answered weakly. “A lot of power,” he added.
“I could never do that before.”
“Yeah, well, I guess you never really needed to before.”
“But I can’t feel it. How can I pull power if I can’t feel it? If I can’t feel him?”
“Because You’re pulling it from me, not from him.”
“Oh.”
Reaching over, Spar pried Graize’s left eyelid up. “He’s pretty far away,” he noted. “His eyes have gone all white. That’s probably why You can’t feel him.” He straightened. “He’s run into prophecy.”
“But where into prophecy?” Hisar insisted. “He hasn’t got a dark place like you have.”
“I dunno, then. Someplace safe, I guess.” Spar sat back with a squelch of mud. “Did he ever have a safe place?”
“Like the shed on my site?”
“Yeah, like that.”
Hisar shrugged. “He had lots of safe places. On the plains, at Cvet Tower, even in the wild lands. He was only ever not safe here where he was born.”
“I mean, did he ever have a safe place in prophecy?” Spar expanded, ignoring the revelation. “Maybe not as fully made as my dark place, but like it?”
“I dunno.” The young God’s expression grew sad, then hardened as his gray eyes cleared. “Wait. He had that place in the Gurney-Dag Mountains where he built a kind of a cloak-net thing to fight the muting effect. That cave with the Petchan seer, Dar-Sayer. I couldn’t get to him there.” His shoulders slumped. “I guess he could have used the cloak and gone there. Maybe.” A thread of pain feathered across His face. “He said he wouldn’t be gone from Me, but he went where I couldn’t reach him. Has he gone there again, Spar? Back to where I can’t go? Why would he go there again? Why would he be gone from Me again?”
His voice sounded so hurt that Spar instinctively placed a hand on His shoulder. Hisar’s seeming grew immediately stronger while Spar’s features paled and, his own expression alarmed, Brax drew them apart as gently as he could. His lien with Estavia tingled against Spar’s arm, and both he and Hisar blinked up at him as if they’d forgotten he was there.
“Because he’s scared,” Brax answered with as much sympathy in his voice as he could manage. “Because everyone runs when they’re scared.”
“You don’t,” Hisar replied.
“Only because I was trained not to. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”
“Oh.” The young God pulled Graize tighter into His arms. “What was he scared of, Brax?” He asked quietly. “Me?”
Brax searched Hisar’s face for a long moment, then shrugged. “Probably,” he answered. “You were pretty scary.”
“I didn’t mean to be.”
“You should tell him that.”
“How? He’s gone from Me. And he won’t listen to me anyway,” He said sadly.
“So, go find him and make him listen.” Brax swiped at his face with an impatient grimace. “But not here,” he added. “It’s pouring rain and we’re about to be attacked by Volinsk. We need to get Graize under cover and see to his wounds.” He craned his neck around. “The cami’s the closest,” he suggested. “Feridun’ll be down here any moment. He can help us get him inside.”
Spar shook his head. “It won’t do. We need somewhere quiet where we can try to reach his mind and bring it back to his body.”
“A cami’s not quiet?”
The youth frowned. “I meant quiet of any God noise. I
t’s a Havo-Cami. Graize’ll feel the Hearth God and his mind won’t come back there. It won’t feel safe enough. We need someplace safe; someplace that doesn’t have any God noise in it.”
“Gerek-Hisar?
“Too many people.”
“A hostel?”
“Again, too many people.”
Hisar looked up. “We need My temple,” He stated.
Brax’s brows drew down. “Your temple’s a hole in the ground,” he reminded Him, but when Hisar threw him a scowl equal in strength to Spar’s infamous dockside glare, he threw up his hands. “All right, we need Your temple.” Straightening, he glanced over at Spar. “It’ll be tricky,” he observed. “It’s a long way to carry a body . . . an unconscious, injured body . . .” he amended as Hisar’s scowl deepened, “. . . in the rain, through a marketplace filled with panicking people.”
“And across the Halic,” Spar agreed. “Even if we could hire a boat, the whole area may be closed off by now. Are you absolutely sure that no place else will do, Hisar?”
The young God nodded vehemently, His expression growing more confident. “I don’t have enough strength here. There’s no tower symbols here or anything. I need to be at My own site. There’re symbols there and offerings. Not from sworn people, maybe, but they’re still offerings. And the people who made them are still . . . mine. They’ve made a connection with Me, a link. They’ll bring Me strength. I can reach him if I have enough strength. I can feel it.” He chewed at His lip in a very human gesture. “If we had to, we could ask Incasa or Havo for help again, I guess. Maybe. They might help us again. If we asked,” He added in an uncertain tone.
“They might,” Spar agreed with equal reluctance.
“Then it’s settled,” Brax interjected. “Whatever else we do when we get there, we make for the Halic.” Reaching down, he lifted Graize from Hisar’s arms. A faint moan escaped from the other man’s lips as he hoisted him over one shoulder. “If nothing else, we can bind his wounds properly in a taproom and wait until the rain lets up before we head across. There’ll be little enough God noise there.”
He turned as Feridun emerged from the kitchen at a run. “We’re done here, Ghazi. Take the troop and reinforce Gerek-Hisar.”
His eyes wide, the older man looked about to protest, then jerked his head silently. As he returned inside, Brax headed for the gate.
Spar and Hisar were left sitting in the rain staring uncertainly at nothing until finally, the young God glanced over at the youth with a bleak expression.
“Should I stop being physical now so I stop pulling power from you?” He asked in a hesitant tone.
Spar regarded Hisar thoughtfully, sensing another question behind His words. “Are you scared of not being physical?” he asked after a moment.
Hisar looked away. “If I stop being physical, I might . . .” He swallowed again. “Shatter again,” He whispered. “Do you think I might?”
“I don’t know. I guess You better keep pulling power from me for a little while longer, at least until we get to Your temple site and all those tower symbols, yeah?”
“Will you be all right if I do?”
“All right?”
“I mean, you won’t run from me, too, will you?”
Spar gave a weak snort. “No. I’m not scared of you.”
Hisar’s eyes narrowed with reluctant pique. “You didn’t think I was scary?” He demanded, His voice less of a whisper now. “Even Brax thought I was scary.”
“I’m your First Priest. You’ve never been scary to me.” Spar rose with visible effort and tugged Hisar to His feet. “So, C’mon. We make for the Halic like Brax said.”
“But . . .”
“Just follow Brax and it’ll be all right, Hisar, really. Things are always all right when we follow Brax, Yeah?”
The image of two young lifters pelting down Liman Caddesi swirled about him as Spar tucked Hisar’s shoulder under one arm, and he ignored it with a determined expression. He was nearly an adult now. The past didn’t scare him any more than Hisar did, and neither one of them was going to control his actions. Slowly, he led Hisar toward the garden gate.
Brax had made it to the far edge of the marketplace by the time they caught up with him, the sight of his sword and leather cuirass opening a path through the crowds and keeping the curious at bay. When they reached the Halic, they found the boat-master who’d brought Spar across the water huddled beneath a nearby wharf, trying to keep a clay pipe alight.
“Incasa,” she said sourly in answer to the youth’s questioning expression. Tapping the pipe bowl empty, she emerged with a grimace, one eyebrow raised at the sight of Brax’s burden. “He dead?” she asked.
Brax shook his head. “Just hurt.” As Graize began to twitch and shudder in his arms, he shifted him with a grunt. “And heavy.”
“What about Him?” she added, gesturing at Hisar who all but hung off Spar’s arm.
“Hurting.”
“And also heavy,” Spar added in a tired voice.
Tucking the pipe away safely, she gestured with her chin. “Get ’em both aboard as quick as you can, then you can help me cast off. Keep ’em toward the middle,” she added as Brax set Graize into the boat as gently as he was able. He shifted slightly as Spar helped Hisar take His place behind them, and she nodded. “Take hold of that line there, Delin, and pull it free when I say. You got it?”
Spar nodded.
“Good. Then let’s get going. I’d like to get home some time today.”
“Me, too,” Brax muttered.
They cast off into the waves.
Once again, the spirits snatched Graize into the air, their desperate shrieking tearing at his mind as sharply as their claws tore at his body. He felt the icy blast of power that had protected him in the past hovering in the wings, but older now, he recognized its source as Incasa and, with a snarl, he knocked it aside. He would not be some God’s pawn. He controlled his own destiny.
Once again he fought the spirits of the wild lands, but without the added strength offered by Incasa, he found himself weakening under their onslaught. Bleeding power from a dozen wounds at once, he fell out of prophecy and into the swirling maelstrom of the past.
Havo’s channel of calm was still in place, but it had narrowed dramatically, making this crossing much more difficult. The waves were high, slapping across the barge and threatening to flip it over, and the rain, which had begun to drive down like a thousand needles, scored their hands and faces. As they passed the heavy barge that labored to pull the sea chain across the Halic before the enemy fleet arrived, Spar glanced over at Hisar.
The young God sat huddled behind Graize, impotently clenching and unclenching one fist into the back of his abayos’ jacket as Graize struggled in the throes of some inner conflict. Finally, Spar gently untangled Hisar’s hand, laying it in His lap and covering it with his own. The memory of a mass of spirits swarmed across his mind when they touched, and he banished it with a scowl.
“Quit it!” he snarled and, responding instinctively to the command in his voice, Hisar relaxed a little.
In front of him, Spar watched Brax move to better support his old enemy, one arm across his back, the other across his chest, and the ghost of another memory swirled across Spar’s mind: a confectionary shop wall, an angry, drunken man, and the feel of Brax’s arms holding him secure. It left a trail of disquiet rather than comfort in its wake and he shivered, recognizing its meaning: the past was going to play itself out on this gray, stormy day, whether he liked it or not. It had already begun in the gardens of Havo-Cami with their fight on Liman Caddesi, and Graize looked like he was reliving the attack that had sent him hurling into the wild lands.
Except that things were different now, he considered. This wasn’t the past. Hisar was a God now, nearly as powerful as the rest of Them, and Graize was one of His sworn. They were bound together by oaths of power and obligation, oaths that demanded a response when he was in danger or in pain. No wonder Hisar was so upset. Hi
s lien with Graize must be constantly pulling at Him to run to the rescue, but Graize himself was blocking Him.
Laying his hand against his chest, Spar felt his own lien with Hisar tingle against his fingertips. As much as he’d fought against giving oaths of any kind to any God, now, only nine months after giving them to Hisar, he was finding it hard to remember living without them. He wondered how Graize could have spent those same nine months ignoring his.
The boat fetched up on the opposite shore as the alarm bell atop Lazim-Hisar changed from alarm tones just long enough to toll noon. As Brax hoisted Graize back onto his shoulder, Spar helped Hisar from the boat. Once the young God’s feet touched the pebbled beach of His temple site, He grew visibly more substantial. A rumble of thunder sounded overhead, and He straightened, casting a nervous glance up the strait.
The boat-master chuckled. “You couldn’t see that far even in good weather, Hisarin-Delin,” she noted. “Don’t fret. Our fleet will soon put paid to those filthy invaders long before they get this far.”
The young God ducked His head in embarrassment. “I just like to see things for myself, that’s all,” He muttered.
Despite his burden, Brax gave an amused snort. “Typical seer.”
Hisar frowned at him. “I’m not a seer,” He retorted, indignation bringing his voice renewed strength.
Brax just shrugged. “You can see the future, can’t you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then you’re a seer.”
“Maybe. But I’m not typical.”
Brax rolled his eyes. “You’re right; you’re not typical. You’re a God.” He headed up the slope. As Spar made to follow, Hisar turned back to the boat-master.
“Um. Thank you,” He said awkwardly.
She inclined her head. “You’re welcome, Young One.” She eyed Him critically. “Accept the strength of Your people to bring You success, and their weakness to bring you wisdom.”
Hisar blinked at her unfamiliar phrasing. “How will weakness bring Me wisdom?” He asked with a confused air.