Godspeaker

by Tessa Crowley

  When we left our room and made our way down the steps, those who had gathered to throw us out were now lined up along the walls of the lower room, staring and silent all.

  I could see Perenor’s hand clench and unclench around his staff and Soya frowned. We slowed. As we moved, they parted around us, as reeds part for the current.

  Their faces were so full of fear. Not anger, not hatred, just fear. A part of me wanted to reason with them, to assure them that I was no threat. Another part of me didn’t want to frighten them further by saying anything at all.

  But there was a guilt in me, low and roiling, that ate away at my voice. They were scared of me, and it didn’t matter that their fear wasn’t my fault. My presence was fearful to them, and I had no right to anything less.

  So instead of saying anything, I kept my head down and I prayed that the heartbreak wasn’t evident on my face.

  We walked all evening and through the night. We made camp come the morning, tucked into the little dells in the sand so as to be out of sight to anyone who might also be travelling the Long Road.

  The Wastes seemed endless, and progress was a hard thing to judge. We stopped at little towns where we could, little ramshackle ones not so different from Oberine, and we picked up supplies where we needed them. But for the most part, the journey felt like the same three days on permanent loop.

  On the seventh or eighth night, we were cooking a haunch of goat we’d bought the day before. We had set up a camp on a dune and had finished building the fire when I noticed something dart out of the corner of my eye, between the tallgrass that had just started to dapple the dunes. It only lasted a moment, and when I turned my head to look, it was gone, but I could have sworn—

  “Is s-s-s-someone out there?”

  “Yes,” Perenor answered at once, and I looked back at him, startled. “I think so, at least. Hooded black cloak?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “They’ve been following us,” he said as he rotated the haunch on the makeshift spit over the fire. “I think they’ve been following us for a while now, since we left Oberine.”

  I tried not to be nervous – there was plenty else that should have, by all rights, made me far more nervous – but I couldn’t quite fight it down. “Wh-wh-who—?”

  “Don’t know,” Perenor replied. “I’ve tried to confront them more than once, but they’re always gone before I get there.”

  His answer certainly didn’t sate my anxiety.

  “I won’t let them near you,” Perenor said, which surprised me so much that, for a moment, I forgot to be afraid.

  “Wh-what?”

  “I won’t,” he said again. “I don’t know what they’re planning, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll protect you.”

  The surprise only intensified. “You w-w-will?”

  He slowly turned the spit, not answering.

  “You were r-r-ready to s-skewer me back in Ellorian,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t have skewered you.”

  “You had y-y-your staff to m-m-my throat,” I said. “I had to b-b-break your n-nose to get you off.”

  Instinctively, he reached up to touch his nose. It had been healing slowly.

  “I wouldn’t have skewered you,” he repeated, sounding testier the second time around. “I was just upset, not thinking clearly. Now I know.”

  “And n-n-now you’re m-my k-keeper?” I asked. “Now you s-s-suddenly feel a p-p-protective instinct wh-where none had b-b-been before?”

  “Like you said,” Perenor answered, “it’s not fun if you’re really in danger. You’re my brother.”

  The answer surprised me. He looked up at me, I searched his face for some hint of sarcasm but found none.

  “I s-s-suppose I’m just n-n-not used to s-seeing true b-b-brotherly affection,” I said after a moment.

  “Well, I’ve never really seen yours, either. I suppose we both know now that it doesn’t mean it was never there at all.”

  Perenor looked back at the haunch of goat, giving it the sort of intense scrutiny one only gives roasting meat when one is avoiding giving scrutiny to other things. I rolled my tongue behind my lips.

  “Is th-th-that wh-why you c-came?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “That brotherly affection never mattered quite so much.”

  I supposed that was true, although I couldn’t help but feel some bitterness about all the nights I’d spent crying in my room over my grandmother’s callousness or the cruelty of strangers. It wasn’t life or death, but it would have been nice to have had a brother during those times, too.

  “Besides,” Perenor continued, “you need someone on your side besides a mass-murdering deity.”

  And that was vastly oversimplifying the matter, and it wasn’t even really a joke, but for some reason I laughed anyway, and Perenor smirked and took the haunch off the fire.

  “I’ll keep an eye on our follower,” he said as he started to carve. “You’ll be fine.”

  It was about ten days’ travel from Ellorian to the next city of any substance, and it was ten days of wind and sand and not much else.

  We travelled only by night, and when dawn came we set up camp and slept through the daylight. And when I dreamt, I dreamt of Umbrion – Umbrion and his starlight, his intensity, the echoes of his electric touch on my skin. I hated myself for finding respite in those dreams. He’d killed the queen and broken Ellorian, but in a life that had become screaming chaos and uncertainty, dreaming of him kept me grounded.

  Still, I didn’t tell Perenor or Soya of the dreams, which was just as well. I doubt it would have accomplished anything. They wouldn’t really understand the context, anyway.

  When we at last saw the end of those seemingly endless sand dunes, the weight it lifted from us was tremendous. A mind could only handle so many miles of uninterrupted desert, and when the sand finally gave way into hills and tallgrass and dappled forests, the simple fact that the scenery had changed did wonders to lift our spirits.

  “We shouldn’t be far from Annolum,” Soya said, wiping her brow with her sleeve (night though it was, the dry season remained suffocatingly hot). “It should be right on the edge of the dunes.”

  “There,” Perenor said suddenly, pointing to a low hill in the distance. I almost couldn’t make it out through the shroud of trees – low and squat and wooden, flickering with dull orange lamplight, still necessary even in the light of near-dawn.

  “That’s it, thank the gods,” Soya sighed. “That means we’re a fourth of the way to Avenos.”

  “Sol’s Light, a fourth,” Perenor groaned, adjusting his grip on his staff – which had become more of a walking stick lately than anything else – and began walking toward the city. “It feels like we’ve been walking for ten seasons already.”

  “It’s longer on foot,” Soya agreed. “I’ve only ever made the journey by carriage.”

  I was looking forward to sleeping on something that wasn’t sand, and that anticipation kept the last half-league from feeling too long.

  Oberine hadn’t been all that impressive – though perhaps I wasn’t a good judge, having been born and raised in the capitol – but Annolum was somehow even less impressive. It was a proper city by size, but the buildings were all aging and rickety, made from weather-beaten wood; the roofs were dull tin, and even the ground was dry and cracked and thoroughly unspectacular.

  I could tell that the weathered little city was only just waking up. The air was cool and still; the sun, not yet risen, had turned the sky a distinctive shade of dark blue; and behind the shuttered windows and doors, we heard the sounds of morning, of boiling tea and sizzling meats and sleepy, muted conversation.

  “Wait outside, Si,” Soya said as we came upon the only building that could have possibly been the inn (the Burning Book, by the sign). “Just until we pay for the room.”

  I nodded. After what had happened in Oberine, it was the only sound thing for us to do.

  “I’ll fetch you once we’ve paid,” Perenor said, and
they pushed through the door.

  I breathed out long and low. There were no benches, so I leaned against the outer wall of the inn to placate my aching legs. As I waited, I looked up and down the street (such that it was; there was no paving, just a stripe of barren ground carved naturally out of the brush). I wiped a few beads of sweat from my brow. I drank a bit of water. I was halfway to shutting my eyes when I noticed them.

  Three of them, hooded in black, sweeping down the street toward me in silence.

  At first I couldn’t even be sure where it was they were headed, but as they came closer, it grew apparent that there was nothing else besides me for them to move for. And by the time I realized that, it was too late.

  The one in the middle unsheathed a blade with a soft sound of metal on a wooden scabbard. I took in a breath, and before my mind could tell me to run or shout or dive for the door, her hand was on my shoulder, and the tip of her blade was to my throat.

  “Orina!” said the one on the left. “Her orders were for him to be taken alive!”

  I knew at once that they must have been the ones following me, although any further deductions I might have arrived at were impeded slightly by the presence of a blade pressed into my throat. All at once, my heartbeat was stuttering against my ribcage.

  “And what is it you think she means to do with him once she gets him?” the woman, Orina, countered. I could smell tea and honey on her breath. Before I could gain my bearings, she used her grip on my shoulder to drag me abruptly around the side of the inn, to the narrow alley between it and what looked like a smithy. My feet stumbled the whole way until I was slammed into the wall.

  “She just wants him to herself,” Orina continued, leaning in dangerously close, “but she’s not the only one who’d taste vengeance.”

  The very tip of the blade pierced my skin and I grit my teeth in pain. Punching my brother in the nose was one thing, but this was a knife. If I was newly mortal, one wrong move could send it slashing open my throat, and who knows what would happen then? My mind raced for a way to extricate – if I screamed, would anyone hear? Would my face have them fighting against me?

  “It’s not yours to say what she wants,” said the one to the left, as a hot line of blood sluiced down my throat. “And it’s not yours to disobey her commands.”

  Perhaps I could reason with them – of course, that predicated me being able to speak, and I doubted I could under the circumstances. My heart beat faster and faster, and my fingertips tingled.

  “My husband was in there, Godspeaker.”

  Her breath was hot on my face. The tingling in my fingertips moved up my hands, my wrists.

  “My daughter,” she continued, “scion to her house. She was barely a hundred seasons old.”

  It wasn’t tingling anymore, it was a burning. And my vision was starting to darken – not from fear, or at least I didn’t think so – and it wasn’t until I saw – it wasn’t my vision that was darkening, it was the sky. A great stain of swallowing darkness engulfing the sky over my head and – oh, no. No, no, no.

  “What…” said the one on the left, also seeing the darkness rippling outward over his head.

  I knew what this was. I’d felt it before. And it was far more dangerous than any sword to my throat.

  “I saw her swallowed up in that great break,” Orina snarled at me, and the blade pressed deeper, and my heels scrabbled at the dry earth. The tremendous black stain was growing ever larger. “She fell into jets of steam so hot that her flesh melted off her bones.”

  “Orina,” said her other cohort, seeing what the first saw.

  “You bring death to these lands, traitor,” my attacker snarled. “Your evil brought so much loss. You stole the Worldmother’s Light and left us breakable! You should have anticipated that someone would try to break you!”

  She pulled back her sword and swung it high, but before she could land the blow—

  CRACK!

  The sound was so loud that the living rock under our feet trembled as though in fear, and my attackers went falling back all at once. I was white-hot, blinded and deafened, and lightning began to surge in my veins.

  Hold fast, little bird, came his voice in my head, and no, no, please no, not again answered him, but I don’t think he heard me, because I knew at once that he was inside of me again. I could feel him under my skin, cold and clear and brutal. No, no, no, no, I begged him, not sure if he could hear.

  He lifted my eyes to look at them as they struggled to pick themselves up off the ground. Not again, Umbrion, please don’t hurt them, not again.

  “So,” he said with my voice, “the little mongrels are rising up against me?”

  They were scrambling up to their knees. He lifted my hand and pressed it to the shallow wound on my neck. When he drew back my fingers and saw the blood, I felt his rage boil. The cut sealed itself up with a hiss of Craft, and he rounded on my attackers.

  “T-traitor,” Orina snarled, and with one dismissive gesture of my hand, all three of them went flying back with a force that was so sudden and so tremendous that when they crashed into the wall of the inn, the entire building thundered with the sound of it.

  “You speak of loss?” he said, and he moved my feet so that I walked toward them. Ripples of shadow Craft followed my footsteps, swirling and hissing at my heels the same as it held them against the wall. “You speak of vengeance? What know you of loss when nothing you have was earned? What know you of vengeance when you have never felt real pain?”

  He was choking them. No, no, no, stop it, I begged him, but he didn’t hear me. Umbrion lifted my hand and channeled his Craft through me. My attacker began sliding up the wall, choking and spitting and kicking.

  “How dare you such presumptuousness? Everything I am is so utterly beyond your comprehension, and still you dare to pass judgment?”

  “Silas!” It was Soya, several yards away.

  If Umbrion heard her, he paid her no acknowledgment. He pulled my attacker higher and higher, lifting her off the wall until she was dangling in midair, thrashing and trying to scream through the tendrils of Craft around her throat.

  “You know nothing,” he said, and the woman started to scream. Blood peppered my chest and face. He was ripping her open, slowly, excruciatingly, and I could see individual bones snap, see strings of sinew tear as she was torn apart, piece by bloody piece. “You are nothing.”

  “Sol’s Light!” one of her cohorts screamed. The gash of gore grew higher and higher up her body until it reached her ribs, until her screaming turned to hideous gurgling, to sputtering, and then to silence. Ribbons of viscera scattered, splattering in the dust.

  “I fear your vengeance like the night-cat fears the field mouse.”

  He lifted my eyes to the other two. One was trembling, paralyzed by fear. The other had his eyes shut tight, muttering prayers.

  He tugged the corner of my mouth into a smirk at the sight of it.

  “My mother cannot save you,” he told them.

  “Silas!” It was Perenor, closer. Footsteps were echoing as they came running toward the mouth of the alley.

  “Nothing can save you,” he continued.

  With the other two, at least, he was fast – so fast that I couldn’t quite see what was happening despite the fact that my eyes were transfixed on them. In one instant, they were whole; in the next, with a terrible, visceral sound, they were piles of bone and meat, and I was coated head-to-toe in blood.

  A hand on my shoulder. I was wrenched around, and just as abruptly as he appeared, he was gone, leaving me alone in my skin and staring at Perenor.

  “Silas, what—”

  His mouth was open. His gaze moved from me, to the piles of viscera in the dirt.

  In my head it was a constant stream of no, no, no, no, no, no.

  I felt fragile and nauseous and small and there were no words in me. People up and down the street were poking their heads out windows and doors. The sky was clearing, and the rumble of thunder was replaced by
an eerie stillness, punctuated by muttered words and soft gasps.

  “Is he still here?” Perenor managed at last.

  I shook my head. There was no point trying to speak.

  “I – I—” Soya, behind him, looked nauseous. “The bath house—”

  “We can’t take him to a public bath house, look at him!”

  “Where then?” Soya demanded. “Sol’s Light—” She turned from the bodies and covered her mouth with her hand.

  “I saw signs of a spring—” Perenor moved to the far end of the alley and peered out between the buildings, over the thornbushes and bramble. “To the north.”

  “Fine,” Soya said. Her voice was wan, shaking. She was pale as beach sand and her shoulders were starting to tremble. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  “Silas, come. Hurry. Can you walk?”

  I stared down at my legs. I wasn’t sure. The scent of blood was choking, oppressive – I felt bile rising in my throat and it took everything in me to keep it down.

  “Hurry,” he said when I didn’t answer, moving forward and grabbing me by one blood-slicked arm. He pulled me forward and I nearly lost my foot, but his grip held me study. “Come on. Don’t look at the blood. Let’s go now; we can’t stay.”

  I found myself leaning on him heavily as I stumbled my way out of the ally, relying on his guidance, as I was all but blind from the blood and tears on my face.

  Blood, as it turns out, is not an easy thing to work out of clothes or hair.

  “We’ll have to burn these,” Perenor told me.

  I didn’t answer. The springs were near blistering, but somehow they were not nearly hot enough. The blood of four strangers was caked underneath my fingernails, matted in my hair, burrowed in all the little crevices of my body. I would not feel clean until I scrubbed it all off. I might not feel clean even when I had, or ever again.

  “We have a few changes of clothes,” he said, “but we’ll probably have to buy a new cloak before we head out next.”