“Especially at the end,” Arana said. “Where’s your wife?”
“Back in Sariah, or on her way,” he answered. “She wanted to stay. I shouted myself hoarse talking her out of it.
I stared down at my feet, wishing Mother had done the same.
“Where’s yours?” Rolen asked her.
“Dead,” she answered softly.
“I didn’t know,” Rolen said.
“Neither did I, until I went back to Whiterock.”
“Form a circle,” Greatmother Amira said gently.
We formed a circle.
Greatmother Amira took my hand in one of hers, and Rolen’s in the other.
“Joining hands should help to amplify our natural Craft,” Fiyera explained at Arana’s look of confusion. “It should help us to be heard more clearly.”
“I’ve never prayed for something so direct of Aemor before,” Rolen said, taking Fiyera’s outstretched hand. “How long do you think it will—?”
I had just taken Arana’s hand when his sudden silence came. His eyes were open, but he was still, save for the steady rise and fall of his chest.
“Rolen?” Arana asked, slipping her hand from mine to move toward him. “Rolen, what’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer. He looked almost as though he was falling asleep for the glazed expression on his face.
“Arana,” Greatmother Amira said, “you may want to step back.”
“Why?” Arana asked, concern growing in her voice. “What’s wrong with Rolen?”
“Rolen isn’t here right now.”
We all took several steps back. None of us had ever really seen it from the outside, but we knew it by sound. His eyes were glowing golden and the tenor of his voice had changed. He was an avatar.
“Aemor,” Arana whispered, and after a few seconds of floundering, she bowed deeply.
Aemor, through Rolen, didn’t seem to notice. “Mother?” he said with Rolen’s voice, and though his expression was searching, he remained completely stationary. “They’ve called us together, Mother, and not a moment too soon.”
We all looked at Greatmother Amira, but we could tell that the Worldmother had not manifested in her.
“So desperate are they that they call us here,” said Fiyera, beside me, and I jumped. Her eyes were a luminescent deep blue. “Our brother’s actions must have taken quite a toll.”
“I saw it firsthand,” Aemor answered, not missing a beat. “I watched those vile creatures he made come shambling up out of the waters. They’re an abomination.”
“I’m more concerned that he took our mother’s Light from them,” said Arana, and I stumbled back a few steps. “When did he gain such power?”
“There’s much our brother would hide from us,” Aemor answered, voice low.
I looked at Greatmother Amira, and she looked back at me, but neither of us had been possessed. I opened my mouth to ask if there was something I should do, though I doubted my own courage to speak in the presence of not one but three gods, when all of a sudden—
“Jealous, brother?”
The voice came out of me, but not from me, and at once I was overtaken. The incredible pressure of the Night Father’s presence expanded in me, in all directions at once. My body loosened, my breathing steadied. But in the back of my head, panic screamed.
All eyes in the room turned to me at once. I felt the Night Father pull the corner of my mouth into a smirk.
“You need not get so testy,” Umbrion said through me, and he set my feet to walking toward Rolen. “After all, I always was the one with ambition.”
“Ambition?” Aemor answered, anger rising in his voice. “You call this senseless slaughter ambition? This is not ambition, this is murder!”
“I call it coming to my full potential,” Umbrion said. He kept advancing toward Rolen. “I call it finding strength and purpose when I was provided with neither.”
“Does it make you feel strong?” Elwen asked through Fiyera, and Umbrion stopped, swiveling my head around to look at her. “Unmaking everything on this world, spitting on all Mother has given you?”
“What has Mother given me?” he asked, spinning me on my heel to address all three of them at once. They looked on in silence. “Well? Feel free to answer, siblings-mine. What has Mother given me?”
“Life,” said Lilline through Arana.
He spun me around again. Arana’s eyes were shining deep violet, and mine – black, I could only imagine – bored into them.
“What is life worth when you’re alone?” he snarled at her.
“You are not alone,” she answered.
“I have always been alone!” he bellowed back at her, but she did not flinch. “From the day of my making, I was alone! She wrought me from the shadow her Light cast! Do you not understand? I did not know her Light; I could not know her Light! I exist in diametric opposition to her Light!
“And then you came – all of you – burning and bathing in it, one with it – a part of something I could never understand, never have! Where were you when I was choking? When I was lost in the darkness that she forced me into?”
Their expressions had changed, Rolen’s most of all.
“Where were you?” he asked again, more desperately, as though he genuinely wanted their answer. “You knew, you saw, you were there! Where were you?”
And with a cold and terrible realization, I suddenly understood. I knew why Umbrion chose me as his Godspeaker. I knew why he called us alike. And my soul ached for him, and I felt the threat of tears burn in my eyes – mine or his, I didn’t know.
There came no answer to his question. I could feel my shoulders trembling, my heart hammering in the side of my neck.
“Fine,” he said, straightening. “I suppose I should not have expected an answer.”
There followed in me a great sensation of tearing, starting at my navel and ending in my skull. Unlike last time, when his presence had simply vanished, I could feel him screaming his way out of me. The pain was intense, but mercifully brief, and I collapsed onto the floor.
There! I am manifest!
My vision clouded. My mind screamed.
Our Godspeakers would force our hand, Mother, he continued, no longer with the aid of my voice. My vision was still swimming, pain pounding between my temples. Let us oblige them. Come out!
I lifted my head with a great concentration of will. The Night Father had manifested, caped in swirling twilight, arms open in defiance. He was advancing on Greatmother Amira, whose shoulders were set, and who had, I could tell, still not been possessed by the Worldmother.
Come out, Mother! he called. I know you’re watching! I can feel the venom of your gaze on me even now!
I wanted to shout something at him – anything – no, don’t, wait – but I still felt dizzy from the fading waves of pain. I struggled to pull myself to my feet.
Before he reached Greatmother Amira—
“Umbrion.”
I had never seen anything quite like what I saw when I looked back at Greatmother Amira. When Sol possessed her, not only did her eyes glow silver-white, but the whole of her body seemed illuminated. Threads of silver light circled her wrists and climbed up her arms like unearthly tattoos, and the very air around her vibrated, as though warped by heat.
“Why are you doing this?”
Umbrion stopped halfway between me and Greatmother Amira. The rags of twilight pooled at his feet and began to tint with red.
You know why I am doing this, he said. You have ALWAYS KNOWN!
The rigid lines of Greatmother Amira’s face softened; the silver of her eyes dimmed. For a moment, she was the most tragic creature in all of Andelan.
“I know,” she answered.
It was not the right response. Umbrion’s fury boiled over, and he screamed in rage and pain, and the living rock rumbled beneath his feet, and the wind of the monsoon howled to deafening volume—
—and in that great cataclysm of sound, the rock and mortar of the temple b
egan to crack, to crumble. Great slabs of stone were carried away as though they were no more substantial than paper, and the monsoon became more of a typhoon, screaming wind and rain and great flashes of lightning.
YOU KNEW! he roared at her as the temple came down around us. YOU ALWAYS KNEW! YOU KNEW AND YOU DID NOTHING! YOU HAD THE POWER TO CHANGE ME AND YOU LEFT ME TO THE ANGER AND THE PAIN AND THE LONELINESS!
Arana and Fiyera and Rolen were looking around at the unfolding cataclysm, but Greatmother Amira’s burning silver eyes were fixed on Umbrion.
“Because I loved you as you were,” she answered. “What right does a mother have to change her child?”
Still not the right answer, apparently. He screamed again. Four great bolts of lightning struck the ground behind me; the force of it rattled my bones and sent my ears ringing. I wrenched around—
“What are those?” demanded Aemor through Rolen.
Four figures, dark and terrible, standing toward the far end of what used to be the temple – all that remained was the stone foundation at this point – and robed in black. Gods, I could tell, but gods of what? Who were they? Where had they come from?
These are my children, Umbrion bellowed, and something cold grew in me. Children of hatred and war and madness and deceit. They will undo this world and everything on it!
A man with skin as white as bone; a woman with hair as dark as ink; a man with a smile that made my mind snarl in protest; a woman in heavy armor with a bloodied axe – these were his gods? This had been his plan from the start?
“Abomination,” said Elwen through Fiyera. “Abomination!”
“Umbrion,” said Sol through Greatmother Amira, heartbreak in every line of her face, “what have you done?”
I have done what you made inevitable!
“Umbrion,” said Lilline through Arana, “we will have to stop you.”
I do not fear you! he cried. A thousand ages of pain and darkness has made me stronger than you can possibly imagine!
I could see their hands as they began to glow with Craft. They advanced on Umbrion, and as I was just behind him, I scrambled away – I did not want to be near any great battle of the gods – but before I could even gather my bearings enough to stand—
“No!”
And all of a sudden, Mother was there in front of me, standing with her arms outstretched. She was staring at the other Godspeakers, but directly through Umbrion – and I suddenly remembered that, like Perenor, she couldn’t see him. She could only see the other Godspeakers.
“Don’t hurt him!” she begged the Godspeakers, but it was Umbrion whose attention she had truly ensnared. He circled her like carrion as she spoke, looking her up and down. “Please, don’t hurt him! He’s only a boy!”
Well, well, well, Umbrion said. The greatest playwrights in the land could not have planned it better. Yet another example of a mother who claims to love but only hurts!
No, no, no – was he – he wouldn’t—?
“Please don’t hurt him,” Mother said, blind to Umbrion’s presence and deaf to his words. She was speaking to the Godspeakers, assuming they were advancing on me. “Please, please!”
Isn’t her remorse pretty, Worldmother? Umbrion asked, looking back at Greatmother Amira. Isn’t it so easy after the fact? A lifetime of abuse and neglect, and now look how she weeps! Where were her tears when she left her son alone in his misery? Where were her pleas for his safety when he drowned in his own torment, when this world chained and imprisoned him like an animal?
“M-M-M-M-M-M-M—!” Curse my stutter! I couldn’t even tell her to leave, to run, to get away for her own safety! “M-M-M-M-M-M—!”
But her love comes too little, Umbrion said, raising one hand toward her, her concern too late!
Before I knew what I was doing, I scrambled to my feet and grabbed Umbrion by the forearm with both hands.
It may have been the most foolish thing I’d ever done, but it was a gesture that stopped him dead in his tracks. His too-dark eyes focused on me with needle-sharp intensity.
“Don’t,” I choked at him. “P-p-please.”
There was confusion on his face – hurt as well.
This woman sat by while you suffered, he said. Your whole life, she left you in your misery! And you would spare her?
“Yes,” I sobbed, tears pouring down my face. “Sh-sh-she’s f-f-f-family.”
“Silas,” Mother said behind me, unsure. Of course, she could only hear half the conversation.
He wrenched his arm out of my grip. The confusion hadn’t faded from his face; if anything, it had only intensified.
“D-d-d-do you n-not understand?” I stammered at him as the wind howled and the rain beat down. “W-w-w-will you n-n-not even t-t-try?”
My breath left me. For a few moments of deafening silence, he looked from me, to Aemor in Rolen, to Sol in Greatmother Amira.
And for an instant, one brief ephemera, the ghost of something like remorse whispered at the edges of his face.
“Brother,” said Aemor through Rolen—
—and like that, the moment shattered like so much glass.
I am betrayed by my own Godspeaker!
Fear rose in my chest. “N-n-n-n-n-n—”
I chose you because I thought you knew my pain!
I wanted to scream, I do, I do know your pain, but my voice was gone. It had been a small miracle that I’d spoken at all. I stood swaying in front of him, made heavy with rainwater, and my skin crawled under the mounting certainty and the end of all things.
And now you would choose your tormentor over me! he said, and though he was angry, I would have had to have been deaf not to hear the underpinnings of intense pain and betrayal. I who loved you when no one else did!
No mercy! he screamed, and CRACK—
I spun in time to see my mother’s body hit the floor – no, no, no—
No forgiveness! he roared, and BOOM—
“Mother!” screamed Aemor through Rolen.
I fell to my mother’s side, my head a screaming tangle of conflicting thoughts, and she wasn’t breathing, gods, Mother wasn’t breathing, her eyes were empty like Perenor’s—
Only vengeance!
I lifted my eyes, and through the blur of tears, I could see her—
Greatmother Amira, held by the neck in Umbrion’s hand, and the silver of her eyes was draining, and the very earth trembled, and in the sky, the clouds churned and boiled and split open, and I could see—
Through the wounds in the overcast, slashes of sunlight, white sunlight, but there was something moving in front of it, a great black shadow that swallowed the sun—
And the silver of Greatmother Amira’s eyes faded, and there was a tremendous and familiar sound of ripping flesh—
“No!”
“Mother!”
But she was in pieces on the floor, chunks of viscera and bone and blood, and Umbrion glowed white-hot with the strength of the devoured Worldmother, electric, pulsing with primal energy.
VENGEANCE.
Arana and Lilline vanished in a hiss of violet light. Fiyera and Elwen followed. Umbrion, the Night Father, the Sun Eater, turned to Aemor, still in Rolen, still standing, face full of horror.
Umbrion lifted his hand, but Rolen and Aemor were vanished before he could fell the blow.
Where they went, I didn’t know – I still don’t know – but it didn’t seem to matter to Umbrion. He turned forward and looked down at me, kneeling over my mother’s lifeless body, soaked with rain, shaking, utterly broken. He stared at me and I stared back at him.
I sat and I waited for that final blow. In that moment, death was a certainty. He would not spare me. I did not want him to. What was there left for me to live for?
But he hesitated when he saw me, and though his hand was still outstretched, there came no killing blow.
Perhaps he did love me, after all. I could see something very much like love in the shifting starlight of his eyes. And I think some part of me loved him. I think tha
t part of me still does, despite everything.
He clenched his hand and vanished.
And still I sat, drenched in rainwater, surrounded by corpses, in a surreal twilight of a swallowed sun. The sun, the sun, where had the sun gone? It was nothing but a ring of white light around a great, black shadow. What had Umbrion done to the sun?
Far beyond the edge of the temple, the ocean began to boil. Great shapes undulated, shifted in the twilight-blackened waters.
“Silas! Silas!”
The shapes emerged from the surface of the water. Heads, I could see, and horns as well, black scales and burning eyes. They came out of the deep, taller than the tallest buildings, shaking the earth as they moved. This was no vanguard – this, this was Umbrion’s true army, great leviathans.
“Silas!”
I was grabbed by the shoulder and wrenched around.
It was Soya, aghast, thunderstruck. I did not need to ask to know that she had seen everything – everything except that which might have exonerated me.
“What have you done?” she asked.
I stared at her. There would be no answer. My words were gone.
“How could you—” she began, but faltered. “Why did you—?”
And what could I say to her? She’d been outside the temple, no doubt, just like my mother. She’d seen it. She’d seen me break open the temple, summon down a typhoon, rip open Greatmother Amira. She had seen everything except Umbrion.
If it were me, I’d be thunderstruck, too.
A great pain in the back of my head – the heel of her sword, no doubt – and I collapsed atop my mother’s corpse.
Could this have been avoided?
The question eats at me as rot eats through flesh. I find myself looking over all these pages in piles around the room, going over these fateful events with great obsession, and wondering if there was anything I could have done, anything at all, that could have mitigated all this death and darkness.
The answer, despite how much I should wish to deny it, is yes. Yes, they could have been avoided.
Everything around me broke catastrophically, as though destiny was soldiering on without me, but that wasn’t true. I had one thing that offered me power, and I should have made use of it: I had understanding, and I had love.
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