As A God

by T. G. Shepherd

  The shattering laugh sounded a third time. “Do not make offerings thou does not truly understand, bright sister. But hearten thyself. That one such as thine has found thy way to my table is the first sign promised, that in time I will be able to lay down this long burden of mine. If thou doth walk the right path to its appointed end.”

  “And there is a chance I will not?”

  “Always. Nothing is written, bright sister. Thou may falter and fail at my very threshold as the breath in thy lungs congeals, break thy neck upon the stairs in ascendance, be stabbed in the streets by a footpad for thy coin. Or thou might go from here and complete a destiny that frees me from my servitude. The Empty grants all such visions.”

  Sequa opened her mouth to speak again only to find her tongue seemed bound to the roof of her mouth. The dry dust rose around her, slipping down her throat, her nose, in choking clouds. The dust of desolation and despair, the rotted remains of those who had come with questions and still held them trapped in the venomed air of the chamber. Her throat convulsed, trying to expel the fragments of death clogging it.

  Through it came the dead and broken voice of the avatar of the Empty, now touched with something like triumph.

  “It be not thy fate to usurp me, bright sister, for thou art more and more than a simple mouthpiece for divinity. As thou came to me without fear and spoke to me in courtesy, take now from me this gift. As the Empty is in all earth and shadow, so I am also with thee. I will grant to thee what succour can be provided of the darkness. My throne is not thine but my power I can lend, a sip of the draught.

  “Think kindly of me, when what truth still lurks above is revealed to thee. Think also on this riddle, before we meet again, as we will on one path or another.

  “What lies always in the center of a circle?”

  In the darkness her haunting laugh sounded a fourth time.

  And in Sequa’s mouth lay the flavors of blood and mud, metal and ancient fruit.

  ~ * ~

  On the rooftop, the Voice and the Shadow sat on separate benches in the gloom of a Dark Night. Since they had come, reluctant and uncertain, to this decision they had barely been able to speak to each other. As the hours ticked by and the altar did not open miraculously again, each grew sadder, colder, and more grief-stricken. The threatening rain spattered them for a little while and then went back to merely threat. The Voice slumped over like a drunkard, barely able to summon the strength to breath in the God-less darkness.

  In time, he could sense his patron yawning and stretching, readying Himself to rise, though the whole sky still cloaked itself in clouds. On a normal morning, he would have gone down and welcomed worshipers to the temple, sung bright songs of praise and thanks, spoken words of joy for the God risen again to bless them.

  Thick and dull and empty, he did not know if he could ever sing again. Still, he rose, turned, and held out a hand to the Shadow.

  “It is done, sister. She is gone to the dust with all the others.”

  The Shadow looked up at him and the sky had brightened just enough for him to see the tears on her cheeks.

  And then the fear.

  “From dust she has returned.”

  Sequa’s voice slithered through the air from behind him…but not hers alone. It rang with the smashing of pottery, of breakwaters cracking, of wildfire roaring through a forest, of a club crushing bone to jelly.

  The Voice of the God spun around.

  Behind him against the Dark had risen a darker shadow, edges flaring and flapping like the wings of a bird. The figure dropped into a feral crouch, such as they had both seen her take many times, edges of her dark cloak drawing inward to make a smooth bundle of energy, ready to fly in any direction.

  Behind him, The Voice of the God heard the Shadow scrape and fumble for a coldlight lantern, uncover the bowl and rise to hold the light up between them both and the thing on the top of the altar.

  In the eerie, thin illumination, Sequa’s face looked smooth and regular, all its blasted symmetry returned to it. The high, sharp cheekbones made a frame for a chin pointed as a dagger, thin, angular nose straight and true as a talon. All planes and angles, like something carved laboriously from the most recalcitrant stone that would take no softness.

  Her eyes were a smooth, shining black, gemstones set in her face.

  Then she moved, flowing off the stone top of the altar with inexorable menace. The light flashed on her face, now broken again, and her eyes returned to their dark and silver. She stepped up to the avatars, every bone and muscle and sinew palpably ready for violence.

  “You sent me down to her to die.” Her face might have returned to its normal horror but her voice still encompassed the lilt of death and decay. The air swirling around her smelt of wet earth, rotting apples, and old blood.

  “Yes,” coughed the Voice, gasping, unable to draw a full breath. “We thought she would…convert you, take you to her court. We hoped—”

  Sequa’s hand closed around his throat and lifted him—impossibly—in the air, feet dangling. Even at the full length of her arm she could not have lifted him that far, nor held his writhing form so still.

  “You hoped the Heart of the Empty beat in my chest. Or that the Heart would stop my own pulse. Living death or rotting in darkness, the choices you left to me.”

  The Shadow clutched desperately at Sequa’s arm, useless as an infant against an armored man. “He can’t breathe, Champion. Sequa, please.”

  The small woman turned her head with a precise motion, like a bird. “That is my design, Shadow. I told him, after he last tried to kill me, that attempted murder caused no impediment to my regard. And that is true. But only the first time is free of consequence.”

  Sequa flung the avatar of the God into the stone benches with a contemptuous twitch of her arm. He landed hard, sobbing for air, but struggled to his knees immediately, staring at her. Sequa’s eyes never left the other woman.

  “You, Shadow, still had one attempt freely given. I do not blame you. But if the Voice of the God speaks to me again, I will not be responsible for the outcome.”

  The tall man jerked as though struck, vitality draining from his face in the meager light.

  The timbre of her voice changed again, and what little the Shadow could see of her face seemed to stutter between smooth and scarred and mummified with each beat of her heart. The chitinous black eyes that replaced the silver in each flash held nothing human, or mortal, or Sequa.

  “For all your machinations, this one is returned. You chose the correct emissary, if only by accident. She spoke with courtesy to the Heart of the Empty, shared my table, shared her council. I honor her sacrifices, blood and pain shed for those who ridicule and abuse her. How familiar.”

  The corroded melody of the new voice made the Shadow clutch at her ears, trying ineffectually to block out the sound. With a sweet smile through rotted teeth, the avatar of darkness continued. “I can offer no direct aid against the monster hunting in this city—in that quest you failed—and now your unwitting sacrifice is returned. So in the end, I did aid you. I gave you back the only weapon your wild mage has ever tried to take from you. The weapon you nearly threw away. Think on that, brother, sister. Think on that most perfect failure. And think also that I need not have returned her to you at all.”

  She drew her cloak around her again. Her aura of menace and power drew back as well, down and down into the stones of the Temple, the stones of the city.

  Sequa alone shared the roof with them.

  She fled without another word, down onto the Shadow’s balcony. They heard her again a few moments later—she would have retrieved her gear in that interlude—and then the sounds ceased.

  The Voice of the God rose shakily to stand next to the Shadow, coughing and retching still. “Wha…what have we done?”

  “The will of the Gods, my brother.” The Shadow clamped a hand over her mouth as though holding back vomit. “Oh, so I pray.”

  ~ * ~

  Third and
last night of the Lady’s next Fullness. Sequa had barely slept or eaten for that whole time. She’d crossed the length and breadth of the city hundreds of time, under the eye of the Goddess, in Godslight, above the roof, below, near the Temple, across the curtain wall. She had not returned to the Shadow’s rooms, nor spoken to the clerics stationed each day at every entrance and vantage point she might use to leave the Iron Quarters. Twice she had heard the Voice singing from the main altar, songs of supplication and forgiveness, and twice she had pretended it meant nothing to her.

  Since she had come back to herself on the roof of the Temple, heard the echo of another’s words using her throat, seen the death she had nearly delivered to the Voice of the God, she had been driven beyond anything she previously knew. Unless she snatched a few fitful hours of sleep her rooms stayed empty save for an impatient and bored Cur. When not sparring until she vomited with Krif and the other former Children in the Iron Guard, she ran the streets, Under Roof or above it, listening, watching as the great city died around her.

  Merchants closed shops; taverns and hostels were all but empty. Wagon trains and itinerant traders left in droves and were not replaced. The ceaseless, restless energy of Ressen drew down and in, huddling like a frightened child hiding from bullies.

  The outside clerics had all fled, those that lived; two more had died from the trauma. Terriance had made ominous pronouncements about not withholding the tales of the collective madness and death in Ressen and having the ear of the King before being all but shoved from the gates by the Shadow herself.

  Nothing. Not sight nor sound of him, the wild mage who stalked her as he tortured the city. He had her ring still, she could tell. It had been clear in her head since she had walked up impossible stairs from death and darkness, every step silent and heavy. She had thanked the Heart of the Empty as prettily as she could when she became aware of that gift. The skeins and whorls of magic now slid over her mind like a slick of cooking oil in a cup of water. Had she always known and not known? Or was this new gift from the whole cloth of her conversation with a dead woman?

  Nothing else showed itself, though. Only a flutter she alone could feel. Just the wind of her own passage, silent footsteps on wood and stone, catching the scent on the breeze as though following a basket of pastries through a maze. None of the other watchers in the night could feel it and most did not believe she did. Cur certainly could not.

  Anem had mobilized her guards and Sequa had taken up a nodding acquaintance with many of them. They were everywhere. That they watched her, too, was unspoken.

  Without actually calling a curfew and warning the killer, Anem simply made it uncomfortable to be on the streets at any time of day. The streets and roofs grew increasingly desolate.

  Sequa emerged from Anem’s private passage to the curtain wall after Godset on that third night to the Voice of the God clearly waiting for her. He lounged against the far wall, looking out over the city. Since the door opened as silently as she walked, she turned to go back.

  “Peace, Sequa,” The Voice of the God spoke without looking at her, because of course he had known she was there the moment she appeared.

  “I am peaceful,” she returned softly.

  “You look slow. Tired.”

  “It will take time to replace lost blood. Longer to replace lost trust.”

  He turned toward her, his face calm and set, but something about his eyes she had long learned to interpret. It felt homey and familiar, that instant hit of irritation at her bloody mindedness. She smiled with her whole face, just to be extra insulting.

  “I would be in harmony with you, warrior. I would…ask forgiveness. The Shadow counsels patience, that I wait until this ordeal is ended, but this is my truth now, and I can hardly hold it close. I crave a return to what we had before.”

  Sequa walked past him, pulling her mask down and cloak tight around her leather and scale mail armor as she did so; her best set needed the airing. He fell in step with her, and it would have been the work of a moment to lose him. The buildings on the outer edge of the wall were close enough she could have made the leap in a heartbeat and been gone.

  “And what,” she muttered softly into the gathering darkness, “were we before you sent me to my un-death?”

  “Your friend.”

  The automatic negation died unborn, cut off stillborn as untrue. He exerted himself this night. She managed to hold back any words at all, enough to assuage her pride. In that moment’s pause, while she fought for control, Sequa noticed again, profoundly, how wrong the city felt.

  Nothing moved when the darkness should have been broken by furtive steps and soft voices. Ressen, finally, perceived its true peril. The silver and grey and black landscape around her seemed like some fresco painted on a wall. They might have been alone here; even the night guards had been pulled inside their shelters.

  She could leave now. She could take Cur and release him back into the wild like some trapped animal and just be gone. Let the road take her far away from this holy and benighted place.

  “You could have done that Turns ago,” offered the Voice of the God mildly.

  No point in even being upset about it anymore, when he did that, but she still made a disgusted sound.

  “Blaming me for His gift is like being angry at you for being a born dancer.”

  It took every ounce of her will not to spin and look at him. She managed to breathe deep, once, twice before looking over her shoulder at the Voice of the God.

  “Did it ever occur to you what that meant? When you pulled me from the crowd as dancer? Not as freak. Killer. Champion. Runner. As Dancer. It felt…”

  “Like a blessing? I am the Voice of the Great Good God in the air of this world. I know exactly what it meant. Do you”—he countered, his voice now sharper and more commanding—“realize what it meant that you responded as a dancer? I knew your heart, fire and death, and you conceived a harvest dance unlike any I have ever seen. We train them too much, the proper dancers. They leave no room for the Gods to speak, so bound are they in traditions and omens.”

  “Oh. You used me.”

  “As you use me. As you use Cur, and the Shadow, and Anem and that meaningless mess on your face. It’s part of the game, Sequa.”

  “Game?” She choked on the word. “I play no game, Holiest. I—”

  His aura failed now, or he let it die here in the Fullness of the Goddess. She felt herself still cloaked in the Empty’s shadows, which added to the power. He could compel nothing from her.

  And so she spoke the truth she had so longed to tell him. Because neither he nor the God bullied her soul.

  “I died out there.” Spoken flatly in her harsh voice even she heard the power of the words. “Out in the forest, on the Run. I made… I made so many mistakes after leaving here. Innocents died at the hands of men hunting me, and I let it drive me into the hands of killers lying in wait. Master Rat, he sent them to kill me. I fought and I lost and I died.”

  She gulped the air like a landed fish for a moment.

  “They dragged me back to their camp still breathing, my skull mushy as an over-ripe melon, and they diced for the chance to rape me while my blood still ran hot. A corpse breathing, and we all knew it. When I moved a little, one of them crucified me to the ground with my own blades.”

  Turning her hands upward, she stripped off one fingerless glove and showed him the thick ridges in the center of her palm.

  She saw him reach out and she shied away sharply. He dropped his fingers to the wall and clutched the stone as though it held him to the ground.

  “The provenance of the Hawk is blood. My blades came from his gifting. I used that gift to pull free, to drag myself into the bushes, to hide like a broken toy. I lay in the dirt and closed my eyes to go to my Goddess…and awoke on a bed of moss and leaves, covered in a blanket, my wounds healed—even my teeth missing returned!—alone. By some miracle restored to life, given a chance to finish the Run. Oh, Holy, I have died once already. I never wish
to do it again. How could you, whom I trusted, and I trust no one and nothing! How could you send me to die alone in the dirt and darkness?”

  The words wrenched from her hung in the air between them as though made of fire.

  He moved so smoothly and with so little warning he caught her by surprise, when no one surprised her. He kissed her this time, lightly, sweetly, like a courting boy the first time alone with his beloved. She could smell peaches in the empty, stone darkness, the scent of the trees trained against the wall at home. Under those branches, Jesan had kissed her so…back when she had been a slave, and unblemished and so happy. She did not know she had been happy until they ripped it away from her.

  “Hmm.” The Voice no longer held her shoulders, one hand laid against her smooth cheek their only contact. “As I thought. Faithful, to the end.”

  “You tested me?” Sequa’s voice, unnaturally high and breathless, sounded like her younger self. He dragged truth from the past by main force.

  “No, I indulged myself. You think people are afraid of you? I am the living Avatar of the Father of All But Himself! You think anyone will come to my bed peaceful and undaunted? And here you stand, all fury and blood and lie after lie. You have no awe of me, and yet you respect me. You see a man touched by the God, not the God himself. You see a man.”

  His voice dropped to nearly a whisper, so soft she could not be he meant her to hear it. “And you are another man’s wife. My dancer afire.”

  Sequa would have wept.

  Her vision became clouded, her senses occluded, by the nearness of this man she truly desired. Or perhaps the lingering effect of the sorcery caused her moment of blindness. It took a full heartbeat for her to see and hear and know that he stooped upon them from the black sky above. An evil shadow obscured the Feathers.

  Another heartbeat and she remembered with shattering force a man with wings like a bird. Another heartbeat to react, hands flashing to her weapons.

  A fourth heartbeat to know she moved too late.