Gods old and dark

by Holly Lisle

  But she turned and saw the tears in his eyes, and that cut her. Not that he cried, but that he could cry, while she could not.

  "I love you," he whispered.

  "Show me, then," she said. "Love me as if I were the woman I was when we met."

  He did—and she pretended to love him back, to give him that, at least. He was a skilled lover, and if her emotions had been stripped away, physical sensation remained. She did not have to pretend too much, and at the end, for a few moments, she did not have to pretend at all.

  But then it was over, and he lay spent and smiling on the soft sheets beside her, and she smiled and said the things that lovers say, and meant them not at all.

  "You look tired," she told him, and he laughed.

  "I just woke up."

  "You still look tired."

  He rolled onto his side and draped an arm over her. "I haven't been sleeping well. I worry about you when you're not here. And you were gone a long time this time. I slept hardly at all while you were away."

  Molly kissed her fingertip and pressed it to his lips. "Then close your eyes and let me hold you. Sleep again. The world will wait—your imal and all its business will not collapse if just once you let the sun rise to the middle of the sky before you get out of bed. Just this once."

  He smiled and, trusting, rolled over and spooned against her and relaxed.

  For just an instant it was there again—her love. It filled her, and the power of it hit her so hard it almost took her breath away. Her love for him filled her up like sunlight from the inside, warming and exciting and comforting her. Her eyes filled with tears as she felt—and as she fought to hold on to—the feeling. Maybe it wasn't hopeless after all. Maybe she didn't have to lose everything. She felt human. Whole.

  And then it was gone, as if her love were a bulb that had brightened one final time before it burned out. Molly lay there with her arms around Seolar, and she could feel a tear on her right cheek, and she could not understand why it was there. She could remember. But she could not comprehend.

  He was asleep.

  She worked her right arm out from under him carefully, so as not to wake him, and quickly found a robe and put it on. She slipped out of the bedchamber into the anteroom. The guards were there, of course. They were always there.

  She nodded to the three of them.

  "Vodi," they said, and bowed.

  She pointed to the one she knew vaguely and said, "Fetch Birra, and have him meet me in the workroom. Tell him this is on my order as Vodi. Have him bring silver with him from the treasury—pure silver, unworked."

  The guard nodded and ran from the room. Molly turned away from the other two. She could not look at them knowing what she was going to do to their imallin. She could not meet their eyes.

  She found paper, envelope, and sealing wax on the little escritoire in the anteroom, sat down, and began to write.

  I love you, Seo. I love you with everything in me—but everything in me is fading, and I cannot bear to face the day when I look at your face and remember what we once had, and feel nothing. I cannot stay here. While I still care about you—while we still share the pain of our parting—I have to leave.

  I know love still awaits you, Seo. But not with me. Find happiness, and know that your world and your people will be as safe as I can make them. It's time for me to do my duty. You have done yours all your life, and for that you deserve a better reward than I can be.

  And perhaps Lauren is right, and someday I will find my way back to being real. Perhaps I can create my own soul. But not if our worlds die and I have done nothing to stop it. I don't know if God or gods could love a destroyer, but duty does not permit such questions. Duty demands only that we fulfill it or fail. I do not intend to fail.

  Wear the ring I leave for you. Never take it off.

  This is my promise to you, that no matter where I am, a part of me will always be with you, and I will always watch over you, and if it is within my power to do so, I will keep you safe.

  Good-bye, Seo. We will not meet again, I think. Or if we do, I will be someone else. I'm sorry. Whatever happens, I will always know that once I loved, and was loved in return. Without you, love would have passed me by.

  Molly

  She sat in the chair for a moment, wondering if perhaps it might be better to say nothing, to just leave and not come back. But then he would not know. He would be left wondering about her and worrying needlessly. He would lose sleep; fear would wear him away. He was a good man; he deserved far better than that.

  She placed her note in the sand tray and scattered sand across it to dry the ink. When she was sure it would not blur to unreadability, she took it out, folded it, placed it in an envelope, and sealed the envelope with wax, using her thumb to mark the seal.

  She thought about handing the envelope to one of the guards, but she did not want Seo to have to read what she had written in front of anyone. So she held her breath and slipped back into the room just long enough to leave the note on the bed beside him.

  She looked at him lying there, asleep and for the moment at peace. Then she looked at the marks of herself—the person she had been—scattered around the room. The twelve-string guitar hung on the wall by the backless, armless guitar stool; the tab paper; the oil painting half finished on the easel over next to the balcony; her clothing, neatly folded.

  She was not just walking away from Seolar. She was walking away from herself, too. From the woman who had found a measure of happiness in Oria that she had not even been able to imagine in her own world. From the woman who loved to play guitar and write songs, loved to paint, loved to read. From the woman who had loved. From the woman who had dreamed.

  Duty called and Molly responded, knowing that she might never find that other woman again.

  Copper House

  Birra waited for Molly outside the door of the safe room, a large bar of silver in one hand. He handed it to her and said, "I'm pleased to see you again, Vodi. We worried greatly while you were gone." Which was Birra's way of saying "Where the hell were you and why weren't you here?"

  Molly took the silver without a word and brushed past him into the safe room and out of the influence of copper, which bound her away from magic. She felt the power of the universe flowing into her again, and she took a deep breath.

  "Vodi?"

  "Things are not good," she told Birra. He was Seolar's second in command, a veyâr of honor and forthrightness. She had known him from the beginning of her contact with the veyâr, and she respected him. More, she trusted him to do what had to be done.

  She lay the bar of silver on the floor and sat cross-legged before it, and rested her fingertips on it. It burned her when she touched it—she was bound to life through gold, and silver was gold's antithesis. But silver channeled through the core of the broken Vodi necklace that coiled inside of her. She thought she would be able to tolerate the contact. She poured her magic and her will into the silver, fashioning from a small part of it two rings, both of them heavy and smooth and featureless. One she created to fit Seolar's hand; one she created to fit her own.

  She held them together and stared through their centers, and spun a simple binding between them. Lauren would have been able to do something bigger, better, more useful. Lauren would have been able to fashion the rings in such a way that she could hear and see everything the other wearer was doing, Molly thought. Molly had no such talent with gateweaving, which was what she was using to bind the rings—and the very nature of silver limited what it would permit her to do. She could only bind the rings with a rudimentary spell that would allow her to connect with Seolar. To find him, wherever he was. As long as she could find him, though, she could open a small gate between the two of them—one big enough that she could check on him.

  She could have used gold for the rings—she would have been able to work more comfortably with gold, and she would have been able to wear gold without pain. But the chaotic nature of gold would have eventually subverted the natur
e of the rings, and at the moment when she most needed to find him, they would work against her and betray her. So she would suffer silver and its constraints.

  She rose and handed the bar of silver and the ring she'd made for Seolar to Birra. "Put the ring on the envelope and press it into the seal. I've explained everything to him."

  Birra took the ring and stared at her with bottomless eyes. "You're leaving."

  "Things are getting bad, Birra. I…have to be else where."

  "Why?"

  She smiled at him and stared into his eyes, letting the hollowness inside her show through. "I'm not a good person to be around right now, Birra. And that is only going to get worse." She rested a hand on his shoulder, a familiarity that would not have been tolerable had she been a true part of the veyâr world she inhabited, but useful to her for emphasizing how different she was from what he was, and by extension, how different she was from Seolar, for whom Birra would have moved the world. She dropped her voice low and narrowed her eyes and said, "Make him understand that he's better off without me. Help him get over me. If you have to, find him someone who can love him the way he deserves to be loved. I charge you with that."

  CHAPTER 13

  Night Watch Control Hub, Barâd Island, Oria

  AT HIS POST BEHIND and to the right of Aril, Rekkathav was wishing the breakfast would end so that he might go back to his sandbox and sleep, when rrôn exploded into the long hall through the doors at the end.

  The armed guards standing at attention along the walls died together and all at once, engulfed in flame, screaming. The guests at the table screamed, too, and dove beneath it—Rekkathav could see them huddling together, clinging to each other when they had been bickering only the instant before about trade rights and treaties.

  The great hall had always seemed ludicrously outsized to Rekkathav, until more than two dozen rrôn lined the walls to either side of the long banquet table. Then he realized to whose scale it had been built—the rrôn clearly belonged there. One of the intruders, blood-red with black wings, black legs and talons, and a black face, said, "We are come to stand witness to the challenge for Mastery."

  It had happened faster than Rekkathav could have believed; in just a few breaths, the guards were dead, and Aril sat under the aim of two dozen and more weapons. The Master of the Night Watch rose to his feet, filled with a cold, mad hunger for the deaths of all those before him, and pulled into himself magic to cast a spell against everyone in the room—planning, Rekkathav realized, to destroy everyone there save himself alone.

  But then a rrôn, black as the guts of the earth itself, yet iridescent and shimmering as if he were encrusted with jewels everywhere sunlight touched him, strode into the long hall, wings half unfurled, rilles straight out around his face like giant, glittering fans.

  "Don't try that, Aril," he said. "There are traditions to be followed. A ritual to be played out. You cannot win this by cheating; you can only face me in the arena, with your second behind you and mine behind me. Your most powerful supporters are all dead; I saw to that before we came in here. Mine, however, will swear their allegiance to you if you successfully defend your title against me."

  Who are you that I cannot read you, that I could not sense you? Who are you to come here this way, to challenge me, Aril, under whose Mastery the Night Watch prospers?

  "I'm Baanraak," the black rrôn said, and Rekkathav could not suppress his own hiss of dismay. Even he, newly banded, still alive, a dark god only in name until he should survive his first death and reincarnation—even he had heard of Baanraak.

  Aril seemed to have heard of a different Baanraak than Rekkathav had, however, for his tone was condescending. The quitter? Ah. I see how you have survived so long now—you're very good at sneaking and hiding yourself and skulking in shadows. Unfortunately, those talents won't be worth much in the arena. Come—let us go and get this over with so I can get back to my breakfast with my subjects before the meal is completely ruined.

  Rekkathav wondered if Aril thought his confidence would unnerve his opponent. Baanraak didn't seem unnerved. He simply laughed. "Oh, let's," he said. "Breakfast is a fine idea; I haven't had keth in some years now, and you lads are so very tasty."

  Aril turned to Rekkathav. You are my second. We'll go to the arena now.

  He stepped away from the table and walked down the long row of rrôn. Rekkathav skittered behind him, his many knees quaking. Beneath the table, the regional lords and masters of the many local realms shivered in silence. But the room was full of rrôn dark gods, headed up by the past Master who had been a creature of myth and nightmare for centuries. It was as if the Tide-Eater, the monstrosity used to frighten children among his people, had suddenly crashed through the door with all the adults still in the room.

  The ranks of the rrôn folded in behind Aril and Rekkathav as they marched to the door. The beasts dwarfed the two of them, stalking along to either side—a silent, deadly escort. Baanraak stepped out into the High Hall of Masters and waited, and when Aril came even with him, the ranks of the rrôn parted to let him into their midst. He walked beside Aril. Baanraak was observing the ritual of challenge in every way—except, perhaps, in killing off Aril's staff of dark-lord masters first. Rekkathav could certainly see the advantage in doing such a thing—from a tactical standpoint, if not from the personal one that made him an almost certain next target—but he wasn't aware of any other Masters who had purged the Hub staff before taking office. History said that sort of thing usually came afterwards.

  History also said that the losers' seconds received the hero's choice once the challenge itself had been resolved; they could die by their own hand, in which event their resurrection rings might be tossed into a random gate, sending them to banishment, or they could die at the hand of the champion, in which case they were destroyed.

  Rekkathav, still on his first life, did not find either outcome acceptable.

  Pray I win, then, Aril told him.

  They marched down the High Hall of Masters to the arena doors at the south end. Two more rrôn held the massive doors open, and inside, Rekkathav could see even more rrôn, lined along the back and sides of the huge domed room, waiting silently.

  In the arena, there would be Aril. There would be him. And there would be a wall of rrôn. Aril would have no supporters present because they were all dead. He would have no one save Rekkathav to validate his claim of Mastery should he defeat the massive, ancient Baanraak in a fight. And should Aril win—and Rekkathav would wager on the Master over the would-be usurper for sheer skill and viciousness—why then would the rrôn, who already controlled the Hub, relinquish that control and hand it back to Aril?

  You're thinking along the right lines, another voice said inside his head, and Rekkathav realized that Baanraak spoke to him. The question you've so far failed to ask, however, is "How do I get out of this alive?" Because there is a way.

  Rekkathav waited, not daring to ask what it might be.

  Walk away from him now, Baanraak said. Declare your loyalty to me, and I'll let you live. Your Master won't survive—I can assure both of you of that. He'll not be around to grant you any rewards—or punish you for any disloyalties.

  Rekkathav had always thought himself a coward. He'd hoped that by the time he was ready to become the new Master of the Night Watch, some uncertain but surely very distant number of years ahead, he would have found a way to counteract his cowardice. Or that at least he would have gathered sufficient power over those who were brave that his own weakness might not be an issue. But marching onto the cold stone floor of the arena, hearing the clicking of claws and talons echoing from the hard surfaces all around him, he found one mad streak of courage in him. He said aloud, "I will not leave the Master to stand alone."

  He didn't know where that had come from. But it seemed to him the right decision.

  The Master looked sidelong at Rekkathav, but kept his thoughts to himself.

  They took their places in the arena—Aril and Rekkatha
v in the gold end, Baanraak and the red rrôn with the black points in the white end. Rekkathav's job was to put a shield in place around Aril and hold it until the count. Baanraak's second would do the same thing for Baanraak.

  Rekkathav was good at shields. He knew he could keep a strong, solid shield around Aril; could keep him safe until the end of the count. Then Aril would be on his own, and Aril would make his casts, deciding both Rekkathav's fate and his own. Rekkathav drew in energy—still using live energy because he could not yet handle the magic of death without pain. He took a deep breath; this would probably be his last day for that. If he survived at all past this day, it would almost certainly be as one of the dark gods—and odds were that he would not survive at all.