As A God

by T. G. Shepherd

  “The first?” Anem’s voice went soft, coaxing, from very far away.

  “The first to die. I know where she lies buried.”

  “How? How do you know this?”

  Sequa stripped off her veils sharply, her skin suddenly crawling as though covered in creeping insects. Lungs shuddered through deep breathes, bile rising sour in her throat. Twice she had come to this city and twice Ressen forced her to a place of revelation about herself. She would rather not have known how simple it would be to toss love aside for power and even less to know how close to her bones lay her first and best skill, death.

  She understood him, her shadowy opponent. She knew him now. He lurked like some diseased hallucination at the edges of her sight, enticing and repellent both, her nightmare mirror.

  But she could see him or at least the shape of his shadow on the wall. She had his scent as true as any tracking dog running down an escaped slave. She could turn this hunt on its head, run him to ground. If she could convince Anem and the rest of what she knew.

  That part at least would be easy.

  She met Anem’s eyes with physical effort. “Because it is where I would have left her.”

  She took them to the Temple, walking barefaced but head down, staring at the ground before each footstep. In the Temple, the Shadow and the Voice joined them. The rest of the curious and disapproving crowd Anem excused forcefully back to their duties. Sequa stood slack near the back wall, still bare-faced, and ignored them.

  Would it be better or worse to be wrong? Better for her, not to feel so painfully akin to this monster; worse to have to fight for a different understanding. What she suspected now looked so clear, so pristine.

  “Sequa, what is happening here?” The Shadow asked without rancor but with some anxiety. Sequa’s preoccupation had grown so paramount that the Shadow asked her question several times without answer. It took a sharp “Sequa” from Anem to break into her miserable reverie.

  The main doors had been pulled shut behind them, leaving the five of them alone in the chamber. The God looked down through the vine-threaded, lattice roof, mellow and soft. It could not be much past midday, a thousand Measures of fear and pain in a few hours of life.

  “Sorrow, most Holy. Sorrow happens here.” Being deliberately abstruse and difficult, she deserved the cold, hard looks and gestures she got from everyone but the Shadow. Even the Voice had lost his perpetual grin of indulgent amusement with her.

  The avatar of the Goddess seemed more concerned for Sequa’s apparently obvious anguish. Despite herself, Sequa felt touched and heartened. Reminded of her duty she took a deep breath to steel herself as she stepped up close to the back of the altar. Her nimble fingers felt for the pivot, the keystone, that the crafter would have built into the great white marble block. Finding it, she looked up her audience, variously confused, bemused and annoyed.

  Anem and Parri had slipped off their veils when they entered the temple; the Shadow and the Voice already uncovered. Suddenly, she wanted her mask back, as though saying these words would be less terrible from that blank surface rather than her own wrecked features.

  It would be equally terrible no matter what she looked like.

  Softly she explained again what she had said to Anem and Parri in the alley. Then she continued with what she had been unwilling to tell them so far from being able to prove it.

  “You came late to these murders, in the middle, not the beginning. Before the deaths of air and fire, came the killings in earth. We found one today. There will be two more you’ll never find but by extraordinary luck. Save for one. The first to die.”

  She tucked her fingers into the hole made by taking out the keystone and pulled. The side of the altar slid out smoothly, pivoting on a clever hinge. She dropped to one knee and looked inside the cavity revealed, where the willing sacrifice would have gone to the Empty in thanks at the altar’s consecration. An errant beam of Godslight slipped over her shoulder to illuminate the interior.

  Then she sat back on her rump and clasped her arms around her knees in silence. Anem stepped around the altar, knelt—and swore, viciously and fluently. The rest of them boiled around the sides to look as well.

  The old sacrifice lay in ashes and desiccated bone on the floor…underneath the partially mummified body of a young woman, dressed in the simple sheath of a supplicant at the temple.

  Redolent with rot and ancient dirt, she lay on her side, facing them, the brown and cracked skin drawn down and down over the bones of her skull. Her eyes, grey, sunken pits endlessly staring. Strands of dark hair still hung from the scalp. Her robe, what tatters remained, mottled with noisome stains.

  Her hands were the greatest horror. Palms up, the skin and flesh flowered out from the fingers in shreds. She had died clawing at the stone that imprisoned her till it ripped meat from the bone.

  “Why—” The Shadow choked to a halt, tears on her face, then started again as though each word had to be torn bodily from her chest. “Why did she not scream? Someone would have heard her. Someone would have…”

  Chin on her knees, Sequa blurted the obvious truth rather than the comforting lie then cursed herself to have chosen honesty now, of all times. “He would have cut out her tongue first. And this stone is too thick for anyone to have heard her pounding on it.”

  “Well, then smell then —”

  “When would there be no incense burning in here? No flowers? Dry and cool in there, nothing living to feed upon the rotting flesh. There is drainage for air and…liquids… both, for it is sacrifice meant to be grounded to earth, after all.”

  Parri broke in on the anguished silence that came with that revelation. “She wears temple robes? Why did no one miss her?”

  The Shadow wept still, from the hitch in her speech. “I know who… a Measure ago, one season earlier than now… an acolyte child of a good family here in the city. Devout enough but unhappy with the strictures of temple life. I gave her leave to go home, to speak with her family about her calling. When she never returned, I thought I had my answer. We left it there, you see, not to shame her. No shame in not wanting to live this life. We thought her safe, safe, safe at home. We thought her safe.” Her anguished wail became muffled; the Voice pulled her against his chest to comfort.

  “Why didn’t her family come asking after her?” Parri sounded half-angry, half-confused.

  Sequa answered him, swiftly, once more without really thinking about it. “He would have taken her on her way back to the temple, her choice made. Her family would think her returned wholehearted to her devotions. Then brought her here and…started his collection. It would have been a Darkest Night, the Feathers covered in clouds, when the altar room lay empty with certainty, and he had time to do his work.” She dropped her head to her knees. “He saw her as a holy gift, child of the temple, chance given to his purpose. Easy prey.”

  “We will have to inform her family,” said the Voice gently.

  “No!” She shouted, unthinking. Sequa found herself standing, hands clenched, all but screaming at the holy man. “Do you think they will thank you to learn their daughter died here, in blackness, in agony and fear? When they thought her safe and well? Will it comfort them or her? No.”

  Taken aback, he stared her down from those clean, blue eyes, his power overwhelming, towering like a wall of stone about to collapse on her head. She walked a thin line here.

  “Do you suggest we lie to them, then?”

  “They need to know she is dead, yes. Even tell them this monster killed her a Measure gone. But do not show them the body. Tell them she lies in the temple and will not be moved, that you buried her privately when you found the body. Tell them you sanctified her life and death both when you found her.”

  Sequa’s silver eyes burned like quick-fire when she looked at them, made brighter for the black smudges and bruised flesh surrounding them. “And then make it true.”

  The avatars exchanged meaningful glances, nodding in sudden understanding. Anem stared at
them with a frown.

  The Voice explained. “Why do you think there is a way into these altars, Commander? It is meant that the sacrifice be renewed from time to time. Though this is not my temple, so really, I have no right to proclaim anything”—a sidelong glance at the Shadow for approval and he continued—“and normally it would be in times of great stress, war or disaster, I can see no reason that we should not take something worthy from all this pain and suffering. We will look to the ceremonies of re-dedication and make this poor child’s death something beyond pure horror.

  On her feet now, Anem’s voice dropped down onto Sequa’s head like a hailstone, cold and solid. “Why, Sequa? You knew she would be here, now you will tell me why she is here.”

  She closed her eyes and saw the broken fingers of the corpse still as clearly. “Think about it. Four dead by air, one more to come by fire—but it started here in earth, in the Empty’s darkness. Four dead in three elements, and soon the fourth, the last and greatest all that is left.” Her voice had taken on the sing-song cadence of the catechisms, fitting and perverse at once. “Four dead by water to come, for the Lady, the Great Good Goddess. Four times four times four times four, power piling on power. Why?” She pushed herself shakily to her feet, staggering as though roaring drunk and leaned her forearms against the cool top of the altar. “Death by the symbols of the Gods, by the bones of the world, by the signs of power, by the primal elements. If you would be as a God is, you must do as a God does.”

  She coughed bright blood onto the fruit and ash on the altar top, staining the water in the offering bowl pink.

  But her voice rang clear.

  “Gods kill.”

  Then all that morning’s grim work came full upon her, and she sighed and went into the blackness behind her eyes—hoping not to dream forever.

  Chapter 8

  She woke on the narrow, hard bed in her lodgings, content for a moment before she realized someone must have brought her, unconscious, from the Temple. She sat up sharply. The covering on the window hung slightly askew, a tiny sliver of light in the pitch-dark room. Full night, the Goddess already set. The strains of the long day lingered in her body and mind; she felt sick, weak, and empty of anything good or pure or holy.

  She wished she had never woken up.

  Falling back onto the rough cloth over the rushes, Sequa covered her face with the blanket. Warm from her body heat, she could smell smoke and oil, dirt and rot. Retching, she rose and staggered over to the washing bowl by memory. She hadn’t refilled her water jug leaving only a bare fingertip of tepid liquid. Not nearly enough to wash away the stench of fire and death. Still wearing her tunic. At least whoever had brought her here had not stripped her. She flung the soiled thing onto the bedspread.

  The air felt blessedly cold as it ghosted over her skin, after so much flame.

  Then she startled. The window cover had not moved. No wind outside.

  He was in the room.

  She did not acknowledge his presence, but he moved forward cloaked in shadow to stand near the foot of the bed. Her new sticks lay not a body length from her, against the near wall. No matter what he could or could not do in the open, no matter his speed, the space hindered him.

  She could strike first without doubt.

  Sequa turned and looked directly at the man, the monster, she had been hunting through Ressen for six Turns now.

  A hulking, misshapen mass moved through the sliver of light from the window. His silhouette was oddly proportioned, hunched and bulky as though he wore some sort of sweeping cloak.

  Into the empty dark, Sequa spoke, her grating voice almost gentle. “My death breaks your pattern.”

  “I could have killed you as you slept.”

  His voice sounded sweet, calm, deep, like pure, clean water in a desert. Nearly as intoxicating as the Voice himself. He moved one arm in an unconscious tick; she sensed it from the movement of the air. The motion whistled delicately.

  On her next breath, she could smell her own arousal as moisture beaded on the crisp, light hair around her sex. Jesan had been her first and only lover. She had kissed the Voice of the God of her own volition and been fondled against her will by other men. But she had lain with no man but her husband her whole life.

  “I hunt you,” Sequa said as though to remind herself.

  “You will not stop me. You can’t.” He chuckled in fond indulgence and her attraction twisted with the contempt. She stepped toward her weapons.

  His hands touched her shoulders before she could finish the motion. Wrong, wrong, no one bested her speed. Then she landed on the rough, scratchy surface of the bed, the blanket bunched uncomfortably under her head. His hands bore down on her shoulders, tiny pinpricks of pain. Blood scent joined the smells in the room.

  “Ah, my love,” he breathed tenderly into her ear. “I became so afraid when I saw you, afraid your foolish ignorance would bring my plans to ruin but oh! You have walked the path behind me this whole time, confused by the ants that cloud your vision, deceived by the gods themselves. I am so glad I have not had to kill you—your death would break the pattern, and I cannot risk it.”

  His body pressed her down into the rushes, settling as naturally as a blanket. Indeed, she felt covered in softness and warmth. The edges of her arms, her legs brushed up against a light, delicate fringe running along his own limbs, the source of the rustling from earlier. What kind of strange clothing did he wear?

  None. She had started to sweat, even in the cool night air, and it pooled and slid greasily between them where their naked bodies joined. Sequa jerked under him, hips thrusting against his stomach, half in protest and half in remembrance of that sublime feeling, the moment when Jesan’s big body would descend over top of hers.

  It had been too long. She could stay the need with other exertions, but it had been to long for them too. She had not had a serious fight since before coming to the city; for all the sparring with the Guards, the nights on the Roof, they could not challenge her. No one in the city could but Cur and other risks held her back when she fought him.

  The hard, silken length of his cock pressed into the flat, hard muscle of her stomach.

  Sequa grabbed him by the shoulders, her fingers digging into a mass of something downy she could not identify and hurled him bodily off her and the bed entirely. Strong for her size, now she became all muscle and rage and terror. He felt lighter than a man should. She rolled up off the bed. Her enemy stood between her and the doorway. Still naked, she dove for the window, ripping aside the curtain and placing a hand in the windowsill.

  “Sister.” That light, sweet voice seethed through the air behind her, bringing the scent of blood and new mown hay and hot dirt. “Stay.”

  She looked over her shoulder as he stepped into the weak illumination of the new-born Goddess.

  Naked, his manhood erect and rampant against pale skin, his arms swept out as though to greet her with an embrace. The fringe revealed itself.

  Feathers. Dappled, complex. Unutterably beautiful.

  He had the wings of a bird laid along the structure of his arms, a mosaic of flesh and pinions that disturbed the eye the longer you gazed upon it, as though some unruly child had pinned a pigeon’s wings onto the limbs of a monkey.

  Sequa staggered against the wall, her breath taken by shock and revulsion. Attraction. Need.

  He smiled then, as sweetly as he spoke and held out a hand to her. His face held nothing but planes and angles, nose like a beak and a line of white when he showed his teeth. “Come, come.” His voice whispered, winding itself into her ears with gentle but irresistible force. “You wish this as devoutly as I do. Come.”

  She reached out her own hand in a daze, feeling drunk and clumsy. Her strong, callused fingers slid across his palm, and she saw the gleam of his dark talons for the first time. The thin scratches they gouged into her flesh renewed the smell of blood and sent a shiver of desire down her spine.

  “Ah, you are beautiful, in your broken strength,”
he murmured into her ear; when had she approached him so closely, chest to chest, her nipples as hard as his manhood? His free hand slid across her scars with a quickening touch. “There is nothing more perfect than symmetry marred by experience.”

  She laid her smooth cheek against his shoulder and sighed that he called her beautiful.

  When he put her on her back against the rough fabric this time, she smiled and opened for him like a night-blooming flower.

  ~ * ~

  The God bludgeoned His way into her room to reveal, empty now of anything but her belongings and herself. Sequa sat up, shaking her head, feeling as stiff and sore as she had when she lay down to sleep. Her thoughts filled chaotically with dreams of pain and shame, desire and submission.

  Brushing her palm over her face, she felt a stinging across the skin. Holding her hands out in front of her, she could see thin, smooth scratches marching from the base of her fingers up over her wrists to her forearms. Looking down, more gouges showed on her thighs, hips, stomach, chest. Cuts as though with the sharpest of knives. On the surface of the bedspread lay tacky pools and lines of browning liquid.

  Blood scent lay sweet and thick over the languid salt reek of pleasure.

  In the bright, warm Godslight, Sequa felt her skin coat with ice, felt it creep up over her face, cover her nostrils, her eyes until it encased her utterly. She fell to her side, choking silently, fingers scrabbling at the blankets…

  …as they had scrabbled and clutched in the pale eye of the Goddess, his light frame molded over hers, each angle and plane a perfect match. Sister, he called her, over and over, whimpering it in his pleasure.

  Anem’s order to put by her steel saved her life then; she would have fallen on her blade in that instant rather than remember his touch on her skin, his mouth on her breasts lapping at her blood. Stop the heart that beat still on Jesan’s hand… her ring.