Godspeaker

by Tessa Crowley

  Though he denied it in the end, I knew Umbrion’s pain – better, perhaps, than any thinking creature in Andelan. I knew the shame and the fear and the unworthiness that ate away at him. And if I had been born a shade darker, a touch stronger, perhaps my hands would have been just as bloody as now are his.

  I’m not trying to excuse what he did. There is no excuse. I’m just saying that I am aware – painfully, acutely aware – that things could have been different. I could have just talked to him. I should have talked to him. I should have been the love he needed. I nearly was.

  I have prayed to him. During these last few days, I have written until my hand refused to move or my heart refused to remember, and I have laid down in my cot and prayed to him. I have told him that I understand, begged him to come speak to me, offered every sweet word of love and comfort I could think of.

  If he has heard me, he has not deigned to respond. And regretting, perhaps, is pointless – but what else is left to do?

  Fivedays ago,I awoke in this prison cell.

  Even through the thick walls and the living rock beyond them, I could hear the clash and clamor of battle.

  I knew where I was. I had been here once before. The jail far beneath Silverwatch.

  There was only me this time, in a cell with thick bars at the far end of the row. I was alone, and far on the other end of the long hallway I could see one of two guards hurry up the steps leading into the castle.

  My head was pounding in pain, and it took me a while to climb back up out of the fog of my memory, to remember what happened.

  Over the course of several minutes, memories came back to me one by one, each more venomous than the one before. The moot, the summoning, the gods, the sun. How many had we lost? What had happened?

  “When does it stop?”

  I looked up. Soya was standing on the other side of the barred door, looking down on me with a set expression. She was in her battle armor, a helmet under her arm, a sword in her hand painted black with blood. She looked like she was out of breath.

  “Tell me,” she said, voice hard. “Tell me when the assault stops.”

  I did not know what assault she meant, but I could guess. I saw the great leviathans lurching out of the deep, tall as mountains. I wondered how many he had made.

  “Tell me!” she cried suddenly, rushing at the bars. They clattered against her plate armor and I sprang backward in the cot on which I was sitting. “Our line cannot hold forever! Tell me how many there are! Are we fighting for nothing? Should we flee and hide or stand and defend what we have? What path will save the most lives? Tell me!”

  I swallowed hard. Even if I’d had my voice – which I decidedly did not – I had no answer for her. I knew nothing.

  She threw her helmet to the floor in rage; it hit the stone with a mighty, reverberating clang. She turned back to me, eyes afire with fury.

  “Everyone is dying, Silas!” she screamed at me. “The combined armies of Avenos, Stormhold, Whiterock, Sariah, Onanwa – they are not enough! Their numbers are too many and our supplies are too low! Have you lost all loyalty to your own people?”

  All that answered her was the echo of her own voice. She bared her teeth at me.

  “Don’t look at me like that!” she snapped. “How do you have the nerve to feign such innocence? I saw you! I was there, Silas! I watched you, I saw what you did – to Greatmother Amira, to your own mother! I watched you break open the clouds and black out the sun!”

  And how could I have ever hoped to argue with such conviction? With a voice or without, there was nothing to be said to such anger.

  “And still you would try to convince me of your innocence? That you knew nothing, did nothing?”

  There were angry tears rimming her eyes. I wanted to comfort her, but I dared not move.

  “My father is dead thanks to you,” she whispered. I swallowed the heart that had lodged itself in my throat. “He died defending this city from the scourge of your master. And now I am left to lead a falling city in a losing battle and you will not help? Why will you not help?”

  I wondered for a while if I deserved this viciousness, but quickly decided that such things were not productive to think about.

  When Soya’s breath evened, she said, “They call for your death.”

  I looked back up at her.

  “Those that are left to call for it, at least,” she continued. “They no longer seem to care for whatever vengeance the Night Father may have in store. They would see your head separated from your shoulders.”

  At this point, I was all but deadened to any outside stimulus. The immediate and present threat that my best friend would see me executed hit me like raindrops hit glass. I was no longer sure what my life was worth, in any case. What did it matter?

  “I do not yet know if I will oblige them,” she said. “But the longer you refuse to help the more tempting it feels.”

  She turned on her plate heel and stormed back down the long, long hallway leading out of the jail. I watched her until she vanished, listened until her the sound faded from earshot.

  I sat down against the bars. My cell was spartan. A cot, a bucket, a blanket, a pile of dirty parchments and charcoal.

  I stared at the parchments for some time. One way or another, I knew I would be dead soon. Perhaps I should make the most of the time I had left.

  I picked up the parchments and I set to writing.

  Threedays ago, I received a second visitor.

  I lifted my head from writing – my pile of written papers was nearly knee-high by that point – when I heard the footsteps. They were not as heavy as Soya’s, nor with the same purpose, and when I lifted my eyes, it took my heavy, addled mind a moment to recognize her.

  “They say they will execute you in two days.”

  She was familiar, of course, but somehow completely different. It had been less than a season since I’d last seen her, but there was a weariness in her eyes and a sadness in the lines and furrows of her face that made Lady Queen Roslin seem like a different person entirely.

  I wondered if bowing would be inappropriate. In any case, I was too hungry and fatigued to try standing. I had already arrived at the conclusion that I would not speak again for so long as I drew breath – which, apparently, wouldn’t be much longer – so still I said nothing.

  “They advised me not to go down here,” she told me. Her voice was strangely neutral, almost detached, like she was narrating someone else’s life. “They said it was too dangerous, that you are a demon in Andel form.”

  The Lady Queen looked back toward the two guards at the very far end of the hallway.

  “They’re afraid to approach you,” she said. “They say you are a lesser god, like Umbrion – that all who come too close to you find death.”

  Erroneous conclusions, but sound deduction. I looked down the hallway at the guards. Over the last few days I’d noticed that they would occasionally look back at me, as though expecting me to lash out at any moment. I was mostly surprised they had any guards at all to spare. The sounds of battle above my head had not abated. I could only imagine how desperate things were in the world above my prison.

  When I looked back I saw her eyes burn with tears. Her fists clenched at her sides. Her shoulders set.

  “They said I should not approach you, but I had to. I wanted to look into the eyes of the man who killed my wife.”

  The words should have stung more, but I was swallowed almost entirely by a dreadful, gnawing numbness. There was nothing in me left to hurt.

  So I looked up at her, and she looked into my eyes, and I hoped that she found whatever answers she was looking for.

  “It’s strange,” she said, voice drawn taut, “you don’t look like a killer.”

  I wondered what it was I did look like. Nothing good, assuredly. I hadn’t eaten in over two days – food was reserved for refugees and families, not for me – nor bathed, nor really slept.

  “She liked you,” the Lady Queen continued. “She fo
und you charming, intelligent. She looked forward to having you on her Council.”

  In my mind’s eye, I could see her, Queen Nerisa, dark-haired and bright-eyed, strong and beautiful and confident. I am sure that was what the Lady Queen wanted – she wanted me to remember her with perfect clarity, wanted me to hurt from the guilt.

  She could not have known that I was already dead from it.

  “And now she’s dead,” the Lady Queen said. “And the kingdom she spent her entire life building from nothing is crumbling to dust.

  “The sun is swallowed in the sky, great black leviathans come up from the oceans in endless numbers, and everyone is dying, dying without the Worldmother’s Light. My wife is dead, and dead in vain. And you killed her.”

  She was silent a moment. I could detect a subtle, pervasive trembling in her. She gripped the bars of my cell tightly with both hands.

  “And I want to hate you for it, but I can’t.”

  My hands wrung around the nub of charcoal.

  “I want to hate you for killing her, hate you for undoing everything she ever worked for, hate you for dooming your own people and I can’t, I can’t do it, because I hear her voice in my head telling me – she always told me, my love, there is never a point to hatred. But what else is left but the hatred? Hatred, and the memory of the woman I loved – she is dead now, dead, and I can’t even manage to hate you for killing her—!”

  She turned away, covering her face with both hands. I wanted to offer her words of comfort, but there were no words left in me. I lowered my eyes to the floor of my cell, respectfully averting my gaze while she collected herself.

  “Two days, they say,” she said, voice shaking. “Two days – such as they are in this evil, unending twilight. Two days and you’ll be dead. And it won’t make anything better. Even justice offers no comfort.

  “If it was our spirits your master was trying to break,” she said, “he has accomplished his goal.”

  She departed from whence she came, leaving me alone with my papers and my thoughts and my solitude.

  And there was nothing else for me to do, so I kept writing.

  Yesterday, I had one last visitor – one I did not expect. All the ages of this world could have passed and I never would have expected to see her.

  “Silas?”

  By then I was over halfway finished with this little narrative. I was lost in my thoughts and my papers, and when I looked up, I thought perhaps that I’d slid into a dream.

  But there she was – my grandmother, tall and graceful as ever, worse for wear but still standing, eyes underlined with dark smudges that betrayed her careful poise.

  I stared at her in astonishment but didn’t answer.

  “I’d ask how they’re treating you, but the question seems redundant.” She looked briefly around my cell. “What are you writing?”

  I didn’t answer, of course. I still couldn’t, and likely never again would, speak.

  “Not speaking?” she asked. Surprisingly, I found no judgment in her voice. “Can’t say I blame you.”

  She came toward my cell door and sat down on the floor so that she was just on the other side. The cell was small enough that I likely could have reached out and touched her if I so wanted – but circumstances as they were, I didn’t feel any particular inclination.

  “I heard that your mother is dead,” she said, voice neutral.

  She paused as though waiting for a response, then seemed to think better of it and carried on.

  “I heard that you killed her.”

  When I still did not answer, she sighed.

  “I’ll be honest, Silas,” Grandmother continued, “I don’t know what or who to believe. Soya calls you traitor and can barely speak of you without sobbing. But I am told Perenor believed in you to the last. Accounts of your loyalties are numerous and varied – and they are all pointless.”

  I looked to her. She looked back at me. I saw my own exhaustion in her eyes, my own despair and brokenness and lack.

  “What does your motivation matter now? What does anything matter now? What is done is done. I would not spend my last moments trying to make sense of this tragedy. I would rather do what I can to stopper your suffering.”

  I’ll admit, it wasn’t what I was expecting her to say. There must have been some surprise on my face, because she smiled sadly at me and leaned her forehead against the bar of my cell.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” she said. “I know it may be hard for you to believe, Silas, but I have never wanted you to suffer.”

  That was indeed hard for me to believe.

  “Looking back...”

  She drifted off a moment. Some great and soft tragedy settled into the lines of her face.

  “I remember when you were little,” she said. “You couldn’t have been more than 50 seasons old. You had built your first spyglass. You brought it to your mother and I, and you were so excited. You went on and on about how you had used glass and refraction to make distant objects larger, and I remembered thinking to myself, Gods, my grandson is a genius! What a boon he’ll be to House Olen!”

  She laughed, and I nearly laughed with her.

  “I had Perenor, who was strong and fierce and loyal, and I had you, who was quick and sharp and careful, and I thought between the two of you, House Olen will change Andelan for the better.

  “But things didn’t turn out that way, did they, Silas?”

  No, indeed. I fussed with my piece of charcoal and watched her in silence.

  “You withdrew,” she said. “I thought it was just a phase for a time. I thought you’d grow out of your shyness. But seasons came and went and you never did. If anything, your fears intensified. And I came to realize that you never would be what I wanted you to be. You could not. What is a politician who can’t speak in public? What is a diplomat who can’t be in a crowded room?

  “And somewhere along the line, I started to resent you.”

  That I was willing to believe. I rubbed my thumb along the tip of my piece of charcoal and stared into my lap.

  “And I was cruel to you,” she went on. “And I treated you unfairly. Not because of anything you’d done, but because of how upset I was at the situation. I had so many high hopes for you and I had to watch them crash and burn. I’m not trying to excuse it, Silas, just explain it.

  “But you must understand,” she said, “you must understand, Silas, that I never wanted you to change. I didn’t want you to be anything other than what you were. I loved you, Silas, and I still love you, for exactly what you are. I just – at some point, I...”

  And even though it would have been nice to hear this 100 seasons ago, even though it felt like too little and too late, it was nice. In a cold, sweet, aching way, it was nice.

  “And that’s why I’m going to stand for your crimes,” she said, and at once I sat up straight. “I am still the matriarch of your house, and I can still declare myself responsible for your actions under Imlandranian law. If they want to execute someone, they can execute me.”

  I sat forward, moving to scoot across the papers toward her, but she held out a hand.

  “No, Silas, don’t,” she said. “It’s all right. What does it matter now? What does any of it matter? House Olen is forfeit. Our sun is swallowed, our world plunged into an endless twilight. What does my life matter now?

  “If you would doom this world, then you would only bring it quicker. But if there is any hope left at all, it is in you.

  “Besides...”

  She reached through the bars and put her hand on my hair, and she smiled at me, and it was nothing but pain.

  “If I have a choice in it, I would die like Perenor,” she said. “Like your mother. Defending something I love. That is the strongest Craft there is.”

  And tears blurred my vision, though I thought I’d long run out of them. And I curled up against my grandmother’s chest, though the bars tried to keep us apart.

  And in the back of my head, I knew what I had to do.

/>   Today, I will die.

  In less than an hour, the guards will come and reluctantly release me, my crimes paid for on the head of my grandmother. They will be too scared to approach me too closely. They will hope that I go up into the city and try to leave. They will hope that I will die in the fray.

  But I will not die in the fray. I will walk through the battle and his demons will not harm me; they will never harm me.

  I will know where he is. I will sense him, feel him, as I always feel him. I will walk until I find him, even if it is halfway across Andelan.

  I will find him, and I will pay the same price paid by my brother, my mother, my grandmother. I cannot kill him – nothing can kill him – but I can give everything in me to bind him. The binding Craft will be little more than threads to him, but I know it will hold him, stop him, end this terrible assault. I know the demons will stop their attack.

  This sundering will end when I bind him for the same reason Umbrion did not kill me back in Andwelum. It will end for the same reason Perenor saved Avenos. It will end for the same reason my grandmother saved me. There is power in love, and power in sacrifice.

  Soya, I’ve left these pages for you. If you made it this far, I can only hope that they gave you what you wanted, whether it was answers or closure or justification for your feelings. I hope you rule your father’s city with the strength and grace of which I know you are capable. I hope this darkness has not broken Andelan. I hope you can rebuild.

  Hold out the night, Soya. The siege will break tomorrow.

  I hear the guards coming now; I have to go.

  Goodbye.

  I could feel you draw nearer. I could have stopped you, of course, but I let you come.

  When you appeared, it was to the sound of crunching gravel under your feet. And little bird, how you ached. Not just in body from all the miles you walked to meet me, but in spirit. You were in so much pain.

  And in our little alcove by the water, we stood staring at one another. And I told you to leave, and I warned you of my wrath, and you should have run, but you stayed. You stumbled toward me and you kissed me.