As A God

by T. G. Shepherd

  Instinct driving her, Sequa dropped to one knee against the curtain wall of the building and drew the edges of her cloak tightly against her body, making an absence of light in the midst of illumination.

  Breathing deep, she tasted old dirt, dried apples, and ancient wine.

  Oh. Now she knew why the Voice had insisted she stay. She brought the Empty’s earth to this open place of flame, water and air.

  Convocation. All Four stood witness now.

  The Voice’s words had blended into a sweet, smooth litany of enticement. The clerics followed it like sheep, melting slowly from their angry clots to an even mass of agreement.

  Save for Terriance, the mouthpiece of the King. In a way, his persistence was perversely admirable.

  “I did not come here to be tricked and coerced like some simpering child. It is wrong even for you, Most Holy, to ride your power on us this way.”

  The Shadow spoke gently in her reproach. “We are Their servants, brother, not Their captains. They lay hands upon us when it is Their will and not a heartbeat before.”

  “I have seen you call this power to your own needs, Most Holy. Though why—”

  She could bear this disrespect no longer. Sequa spoke from the darkness of her hood, her voice like the cry of some carrion animal in the night. “You know nothing of the weight of the Gods, cleric.”

  Rounding on her furiously, Terriance all but shrieked “Be silent, you freak.”

  Sequa felt it come upon her again, as it had that night upon the roof when she laid bare her suspicions about the monster haunting them. Felt her body contract, grow solid and still, but carrying a swirl of the void as she rose from her crouch.

  “Freak? I am, cleric. I am unique. Of all here, I am the only one who knows what it feels like to bear the touch of all four of the Gods.”

  A collective gasp for her blasphemy sounded forced and false, and she trampled over it delicately. She took one gliding step forward, and the whole chaotic mess of them took a full step back; another step and they all backed as one again. The Voice and the Shadow shared a glance, seeing her purpose. Symbolically at least, she had turned the confrontation into a dance.

  “The Goddess lays herself on the heart in slips and steps, in the ecstasy of motion. It is easier to bear Her, in the sense that drawing a knife from your flesh is easier than drawing a pike.”

  The thing within her reached out to The Voice, plucked upon the strings of his power. He relaxed utterly, letting her need pull his gifts. His truth, His eloquence flowed into the air, reft already with power. Breathing felt like sucking hot water into her lungs.

  Sequa stopped moving forward and twitched back her cloak enough to show the ends of her sticks jutting from behind her shoulder. Purpose built for war and death and very beautiful.

  “The Great Hawk mistrusts our frail, mortal minds. He knows to speak plainly. His attention is like being lashed. Thin strips and stripes of pain, bearable in small doses. His gifts are concrete, solid, limited. But very useful.”

  In total disregard for all law, Sequa flipped her hood down and revealed her face. The spell of her charisma and the God’s borrowed power muted the horrified reaction into something small and silent. Just a purely physical cringe across every virgin countenance. She turned her gaze up, bearing her true face to the God as He sank in the west.

  “The Father of All… the God is pitiless, as the truth has no pity, no shade from the burning light, from that plight. And He will burn you as surely as any fire, char down to the bone if that is what He thinks serves His justice.”

  All words now, the conveyance of truth and lie both. Looking straight at the Avatars, she nodded so imperceptibly no one unfamiliar with her would have seen it.

  “The Empty…is the most unlike herself, itself. The Empty, at least, has never hurt me. I have eaten the fruit of the Empty’s bounty, and I live. There are none here who can say the same.”

  She opened her mouth to speak—and felt the power gathered about her like a cloak twitch aside. Whipping around, she saw the same shocked and horrified look on the Shadow and the Voice’s faces. Something from outside their sphere had grabbed the power she had been lent, she had borrowed, and pulled.

  Sequa raised her hands as though she could draw it all back, a rope burning through her grasp. The Voice cried out as though he could summon its return, like calling a disobedient dog. The Shadow shifted in her place, as though dancing a few steps.

  And above came the hunting cry of a hawk.

  Blue to silver to grey and they all knew they had failed.

  She had made this possible, they had made it possible, by calling Convocation.

  The attack struck like watching paper catch flame, licking brown and orange across the surface, smooth and inexorable. The wave of holy ravishment started at the far end of the roof and slid from face to bloody face, body to writhing body. Clerics fell like trees axed down at the base. The few left standing all looked frozen between awe and horror; save Anem who turned fast and started for the Shadow.

  It struck the older woman before Anem could reach her though, blood starting from mouth and nose even as she fell prostrate.

  Sequa felt no urge to move, to run, even to help, once she knew all was lost. She stood lethargic, there at the trestle, and waited for the tide to strike her. Would it sweep her before it or break upon the anvil of her will? The porous rock of the roof would be stained bright red forever now.

  Her idle curiosity faltered when her vision went red and hot and the floor rose up to meet her. Once more, she fell down and down, into a pool of her own red blood.

  Chapter 9

  At some point she was simply not unconscious any longer. Still blind, her eyelashes met with a sticky resistance from the very skin itself. Even that slight effort sent savage stabs of weariness from her head all the way down her body. Then someone brushed a damp cloth across her face.

  “My apologies, Champion,” sang out the Voice of the God, dulcet silver and gold rippling the air. “Not cleaned as thoroughly as you should have been.” Some hand—well, his likely—continued to brush the damp over her eyes.

  Then the wiping had been over for some time when he spoke again. “You really could open your eyes anytime now. The last of the dried blood is gone,” he said wryly.

  “Must I?” Whispering took more out of her than that final push in the great temple at Seahome where she had been all but dead on her feet.

  “I would prefer that you did, yes.”

  Convincing herself it was from sheer, cussed arrogance, she kept her eyes shut for a fair bit longer, though really she had to gather her strength for the arduous task of flicking up her eyelids. At some point again—really she hadn’t decided to do it—her eyes opened. Now all her energy went to the dual impossibilities of focusing and turning her head to look at the Voice. Less a turn than a flop and he still a dancing blur, but something of a start.

  That enticing voice grew warm on a chuckle. “You look like a newborn pup, blind and weepy.”

  “Did you volunteer to nurse me just to mock me?” she snapped. Memory of the Voice beginning to crumple to the ground next to the Shadow intruded; he had been struck by that wave as well. Torn between sheepish and peevish, Sequa grimaced and would have begged his forgiveness, but he spoke first.

  “Forgive my light tone, Champion. I suppose I try to deny how close to death you came. You lost more blood than anyone, I think, and remained the least tended for the longest time.” His face became a little clearer now, looking stern and serious. “I have only been awake a little while myself, and I was most wroth when I heard how the temple servants had disregarded you.”

  Even giving grave news, his lovely voice mesmerized her, sending a little shiver down her spine. Seduction indeed.

  “I was last?” she murmured.

  “Yes, and it struck you hard—as hard as myself and the Shadow, harder even for neither of us bled from our very eyes—which is why I think the servants so disregarded you. That a sca
rred and steel-handed former slave would be slapped down by the Gods as hard as their Chosen sat ill upon them.”

  A crimson veil slipped over her vision in memory. Blood and the sound of bodies striking the floor.

  “What do you like?” The Voice asked gently if abruptly.

  A sensation of warmth as of Godslight on her face, and for the first time the full aura of the living avatar of the Father laid full upon her by the Voice’s own will.

  Mouth agape, Sequa stared. He smiled benignly, with every impression of settling in to wait until she answered. It might be a long interval. She literally could not think of anything to say, no lie, no truth. Nothing.

  Her head flopped back onto the pillow in sudden exhaustion, but her mouth still gawped open. How? Why? Not even the Shadow, not even Anem—the closest she had to peers in this city—could wring honesty from her.

  That question went above and beyond honesty though.

  What did she like?

  Had that thought ever even occurred to her before?

  She closed her mouth and looked into the darkness behind her eyes.

  Strip away the armor and the weapons, the hard skills and soft deceptions. Pare off the veneers of society and slavery, of ownership and machination. Before she had known what Sequa was, had she ever known who Sequa had started out to be?

  So, what did she like?

  The words came slowly, but they tumbled from her lips with inevitable weight; the first drops of the raging torrent freed by the warming air of spring.

  “I like…the feel of…a…man’s lips on my face. His tongue on my belly. His fingers…inside me, pressing hard. More even that than his manhood there.” She felt no shame or discomfort though she had never spoken with such carnality even to herself. Physical pleasure came bound heart and mind and soul to Jesan and Jesan alone; they had never had to speak at all.

  “Pleasures of the flesh are noble and worthy but fairly common-place. Universal, so to speak. What of you, in that cold, hard mind of yours? What of your favorite foods? Colors? Clothes? Do you like the sound of the flute or the drum more? What do you like?”

  Simple words and kindly spoken. But they dropped on her face like stones raining from a great height. Each gentle phrase had the weight of power behind it; had he made some special effort here and now? Or had she reached the tipping point of her own strange resistance to him?

  Perhaps it came with the lingering touch of the Truth of the God? The strange attack they had just endured? Or just blood loss?

  “I like… ” To dance she had thought to say. Had meant to say. Not specifically an untruth. But less true than what emerged. “I like to kill.”

  That perfect truth had never passed her lips before. Now her soul stripped itself bare. Flensed down to bone and bedrock by a few simple words.

  “Ah. At last.” The Voice—his voice—was still beautiful and gentle and thoughtful. “Now, I had wondered, when I met you, and you lied and lied and lied again to my very face, how that could be possible. I had heard the tales of your Summer Dance, those Measures ago, of how the God so indiscriminately bestowed His sign upon you. But I am the living avatar of the Father of All But Himself, His Breath made flesh. He is justice eternal; He is truth perfected. No one lies to Him.”

  Hard, calloused fingers touched her face then, tipping it gently to the side, then tapping on her closed lids in invitation. She opened them to find him gazing at her with his usual friendly affability.

  Well, at least he was not angry.

  “No one lies to me.”

  Well, perhaps not very angry.

  The Voice of the God leaned in close. His sparkling blue eyes went flat and cold, the eyes of a hunting bird stooping on its prey. Set in that gentle, humorous face, it had horrific effect. Sequa suddenly had trouble breathing, her bowels clenched and her stomach knotted. It had never occurred to her before just how much tall, golden-haired, male equaled The God. Jesan had been her conduit to the High Father, transmuting bald justice through his own love into something that accepted even her prevarications. It had made His judgements seem wise and amiable.

  Here and now came the God with even just the barest hint of His righteous wrath and unmade her. A quivering child, huddled against her Father’s punishment.

  Against all history and desire and pride, Sequa started to cry.

  “Stop that noise,” ordered the Voice. Her sobs hiccoughed to a halt in response. It seemed she fell full under whatever influence he exerted now. Dully, Sequa wondered how he intended to use that power.

  “I will wring the truth from you like water from a cloth if I have to, wring you dry and broken. Tell me now. Who are you?”

  For the next turn of the glass, The God—through His Avatar—pulled honesties from her that she had not even known herself. She felt no distress. It seemed impersonal as listening to someone else being interrogated for some minor offense, boring and tedious.

  And then she would hear her own voice relay some horrific detail of her life at Home, some commonplace humiliation during her Runner training, some cold choice from the lost Measures before she had returned here to Ressen. Impossible actions and horrible consequences to make the heart cringe and quail, beating with shame and wailing with regret. The whole wretched story staked her soul out in the open to parch and blow away.

  Sometimes his relentless questioning would stop on a moment of purity, or nobility, of love. Some rough kindness or companionship. The Voice lingered on those, it seemed to her, probing harder there as if searching for a weak point.

  Of the miracle in the forest—her life forfeit returned to her—she did not speak. Not a lie—but a withholding of all truth. A fierce satisfaction came in being able to deny him even that little.

  In time, he ceased his questions and rose from his seat. With his own hands he feed her some soft fruits from a tray, pressed a skin of water to her lips, straightened her coverlet and patted the pillow into a better shape.

  Drained, exhausted, dully unable to care any longer, Sequa turned her face to the wall and slept almost at once.

  ~ * ~

  The Voice shut the door to the bedroom firmly, leaned his back to the cool stone wall, slid slowly to the floor as his legs went limp. The power of the God that had flooded him faded, leaving him drooling and trembling with his hands over his face.

  In time, the confusion and ecstasy decreased enough that he could lever himself painfully to his feet and stagger over to the wide window set in the far wall. A table and two padded chairs nestled before it. The Shadow sat in one, looking out at her Goddess as She dipped Her last curtsey against the brightening sky. They both smiled sympathetically as he flopped, boneless, into the other chair, gulping the cool night breeze to keep himself from vomiting.

  The Shadow, as his only true peer in the world, could understand the absolution and destruction of the divine favor. Though he began to think that he might have just left the presence of another of their ilk.

  “The longest I have ever held the God on my tongue, by nearly a full turn of the glass,” he whispered in time, through fingers clenched again over his face. “The hardest I have ever worked for the truth.”

  “Was it worth it? I wish almost I had been there. It would be interesting to hear the truth from those lips for once.”

  “Hmmph. I think you have likely heard more truth than anyone but her husband and his father. She seems to hold you in great esteem.” He raised his head and smiled wryly at her. She was older than he—though not by as much as people thought—but at the moment he looked ancient and haggard beyond telling. The God knocked on the door of the horizon, which helped. He had never tried to call the power to his mouth at the Lady’s height before.

  “Oh. Then?”

  “Yes. In full ceremony before all the needed witnesses, with divine blessing complete. That broken, scarred, murderous bastard is royal by marriage. She out-ranks this city, save for you and I and Anem.”

  “The Commander suspected it.”

 
“It is mostly fully confirmed now.” He faded again, the patterns of light and dark bursting against his eyes. A buzzing noise rose and fell in his ears.

  The Shadow laughed a little. “Enough gossip. What of the rest?”

  “Hmmm? Oh. Oddly, with that I had less success.”

  “She still managed to lie to you?” Shock and horror rang through the Shadow’s soft voice.

  “I don’t… no, not lie. She told me…such truths, in all. What you suspected, what the Commander could say from their shared paths, what we could guess from the life of a Child and a Runner’s training. It…horrible.” He reached out a hand to the sourfruit-colored sky, as though he could draw the light of his God into his skin by touching it. “But not all horrible.

  “We owe much to the Kimerian, Shadow. Without them, I could not guess what monster would now lie sleeping in your anteroom.”

  “Monster?”

  “I think only the love of that family kept her from being our…sister…reborn. The son of the house seems to be one of those men who cannot see any darkness or evil in the woman he loves… and rather than pervert that gift, she struggled to throw off her darkness in response. If the disaster had struck them even a few Measures earlier, if they had been separated before she became fully sure of herself and secure in his love…”

  They both looked at the closed door, deep in the dawning shadows, and shuddered.

  “The space of a breath, the beat of a heart,” whispered the Shadow. “The edge of a knife, the fall of a tear. On such slim foundations grew something so strong the God himself could almost not draw truth from it.”

  “Think of what evil would have spread in her wake, with but a moment’s frailty to turn her from as she is now to what she might have been.”

  “She could still turn.”

  “Yes. The absence of light lies hard on that head. The shadows fall darker and darker around her. It would be better for her and perhaps for us all if she had never come to Ressen. Even now, she might throw away the hard path of love and devotion for the easy slide to perfect evil.”