“Did you find out any more about those damned lilies?” I asked him.
“Just a scrap from a poem that doesn’t translate at all well, or mean much that I could tell. It compares a new corpse to a freshly cut flower, and goes on about how both are beautiful in Nematos’s eyes.”
“Anything else?”
“The scansion was atrocious, even in the original.”
“We’ll call that a dead end, then. Heh. There’s probably a joke in there, but I’m just to worn out to see it.”
Jessep muttered something that sounded like ‘small mercies’ which I chose to ignore.
I finished my port and sighed. “I’m back to bed, lad.”
“Do you need to see a physicker?”
“So he can charge me money to tell me not to fall from high places? No, thank you. Rest is all I need.”
Sleep was a long time coming, though, and when it finally did, dreams of the Eye robbed my sleep of any rest.
THE ELDERLY JUST DON’T heal as quickly. This truth, however unpleasant, was one I could not choose to ignore the next day. It hurt to breathe, and I began to suspect I had ribs that were cracked rather than bruised. Just getting up to use the chamber pot was an exercise in determination. The cracked tooth was having its own fun as well; my jaw had started to swell, and I definitely felt a fever coming on.
Jessep became worried enough that he summoned a physicker despite my dire threats. The old goat poked and prodded, then slathered a poultice on my back and bound my torso in wide strips of linen. That little bastard Jessep tricked me by putting milk of the poppy in a glass of wine. Within a few minutes I became a smiling, blithering idiot. I distinctly remember the physicker telling me he was going to pull my tooth, and me replying ‘pull my finger while you’re at it.’ Everything after that is just a pink-tinged, hazy blur.
Between the fever and the milk of the poppy, I spent a long time in that hazy place. I remember Jessep feeding me broth at one point, and changing my sweat-sodden shift at another, and him holding me up to give me water several times. But I also distinctly remember my grandam hobbling in to the room to scream at me about unwashed carrots, so in hindsight I have decided to view everything that happened during that period with extreme skepticism.
WHEN THE FEVER FINALLY broke, I had no idea what hour or even what day it was. My little cell is windowless, lit by two oil lamps that Jessep attends to daily. They were both turned low, which usually would have meant it was night. With me being sick, the lad likely kept them low unless he was tending me.
I tried to call for him, but my throat was too dry. All that came out was a weak croak.
“There is water in the vessel next to your head,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. It came from the far corner of the room. With difficulty, I lifted my head enough to look.
His appearance was savage. His curly hair was matted and thick, hanging in clumps nearly to the floor. His beard wasn’t much better. He had a powerful, muscular frame, unadorned by any clothing or markings of any sort, except for a thick iron collar around his neck that wept rust. Even in the low lamplight, his bronze skin glowed. And of course, like all the gods, the pupils of his eyes were two bright stars.
“Nematos,” I croaked.
“When you violated my temple, I thought you just a mortal priest. I was going to dispatch you, as I did your slave outside. But you are more than that, are you not? More than human. And yet you are less than a god.”
I struggled to sit up, but gave up once I had my weight supported by one elbow. It was enough to be able to get to the water, and my thirst was terrible. Most of it spilled down my front, but enough got to my mouth to make a difference. I let the jug fall and turned back to him, panting a little.
“Sorry, I’ve had a nasty bastard of a fever. Are you real, or another figment of my imagination? Because if you’re a figment, you can tell my grandam that those fucking carrots can go scrub themselves.”
He tilted his head and stared at me intently, the way a wild animal will regard something when they can’t decide if it’s a danger, or an opportunity.
“And if I am real?” he asked.
“Well then it sounds an awful lot as though you’ve just murdered my acolyte. In which case, when I get done with you, there won’t be much left besides a damp stain.”
In a fraction of a moment he was crouched over me, the tip of an obsidian, stiletto-like blade pressed against the wattles of my neck. He poked just hard enough to draw a drop of blood, which he then licked from the blade. After a moment, he spat it out with a look of disgust.
“Eye-touched, but not remade. Even those the Eye rejected had the strength to take what they could, and become lords of the eleven hells. You are no pure thing, not even purely mortal, and are unworthy of my blade.” He stood abruptly, and turned to go.
“Nematos.”
He paused, but did not turn.
“I’m going to take that blade of yours and cut your heart out with it.”
A low chuckle was his reply, and it echoed in my ears even after he had disappeared.
Weak as I was, it was easier for me to crawl out of my cell than try to stand. Not that there was anything about it that I would call easy.
I found the lad just in front of the main door. Heart-stabbed. Clutching a night lily. A look of surprise still on his face. I wondered if there were fifteen other newly-made corpses in the city that night. I wondered if Kluge was one of them. Or Bath, since he’d also made an appearance at the tower.
I put my head down on the cold marble floor and let out a sigh.
THERE HAD BEEN FIFTEEN of us that set out to explore Godhead. Three died in the desert. Four succumbed to Godhead’s traps. Eight had been in the chamber when the Eye suddenly woke.
Seven of them were still there, or at least the dusty bones of them.
I don’t know what all the Eye conjured up to test us. They all appeared simultaneously. I know that Brugun had his head ripped off almost instantaneously by a thing that seemed all blue-black tentacles, but the rest, I didn’t see. I was too busy being speared by my own nemesis.
I’d killed the ur-ghrol that had suddenly appeared before me when the Eye opened. It was equal parts rage and horror at what it had done to me with its spear that gave me the strength to do it, to take the long knife I carried at my hip, almost as an afterthought, and shove it into its leering, open mouth and out the back of its head.
Oh, it had killed me as well, sure as shit. There was no recovering from the wound it had dealt me, not in the heart of the Deadlands, three day’s walk from the ship even if I’d had two functioning legs.
I did not have two functioning legs. I had a shattered hip and life-blood spurting out of me in time with the beating of my heart.
So I lay there in a spreading pool of my own blood, writhing in agony, and the Eye speared the marrow of my soul with its intent, and an echo of the sound of creation itself swelled around me. And at that moment I stood on a metaphysical precipice: Go back, and die just like all the others. Go forward, and become a god. The god of forgetting, to be precise.
And because I was a stubborn fucker even in my youth, I’d chosen to do neither.
I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG it took me to get to the restricted section and unlock the gate. It wasn’t swift. My hands shook enough to make opening the secret compartment that held the Hymns a chore.
Being a god, or an almost-god, came with strange restrictions. As the god of forgetting, I could make anyone and anything forget. I could make you forget what you had for lunch, or the color of your mother’s eyes. I could make your mother forget you were born. I could make steel forget it had been forged, and fall to pieces. I could probably make the sun forget to rise, if I tried.
But I could not make myself forget anything, not permanently. Not without making a record of remembrance, at least.
The Hymns were a record of what it was to be a god. Every page was a power I had stripped from myself and deposited into the book. Every line was a
rejection of what the Eye had tried to force upon me.
I sat down there in the restricted section, and opened the Hymns to the first page, and began to read.
By the time I got to the end, there was only the barest fragment of old man Lhiewyn left.
IT WOULD DO NO GOOD to try to explain godhood. No language is truly equipped for such an undertaking. I rose up from Lagna’s temple and scanned the planes for my quarry – and found that Nematos hadn’t yet even left the Street of the Gods. I could see something had snared him there, but I could not, even in my elevated state, see what. It didn’t matter. With something less than a thought, I appeared before him.
“You,” he grunted.
“Me,” I agreed.
“Is this maze of your making? I have had enough of cages.”
“It isn’t my work, but speaking of cages, who let you out of yours, dog?” I asked him in my most pleasant voice. “Or did you gnaw your way out by yourself?”
“I broke my own chains, and those set to watch had already fled.”
I gave a tsk. “Gods. Irresponsible fucks, each and all.”
“I was chained, and now I am free. The old gods are all but gone, and I will be the last, presiding over a world made into a grave. You new-made, half-formed thing, with the stench of mortality still clinging to you – how could you hope to stop me?”
“Like this.” And I told his muscles to forget how to move and his eyes to forget how to see. Then I plucked the knife from his hand and shoved it into his chest.
“I am the last god,” I told him. “I am the god of forgetting, and no one will remember you except me. And to be honest, I'll forget you soon enough. Then it will be as if you never were at all.”
He tried to say something, but the blood pouring out of his mouth got in the way. When the light in his eyes had faded completely, I let him go. He flopped back onto the cobbles with a muted thud.
“Every damned murderer I’ve ever met has been a stupid son of a bitch,” I told his corpse. “Why should their god be any different?”
With the beating of his heart stilled, all those sounds that only gods could hear clearly came to claim my attention once more; whisperings of new life from the secret recesses of the earth, and the plaintive wail of dying, distant stars. Birthings and dyings great and small. A bat’s flight and a cat’s stalking footfall. Somewhere, not far off, a promise being broken. A thousand thousand more, the symphony of existence.
Slowly I damped out the music of the universe. Slowly not because of any regret at losing it once more, but because there was no way to do it quickly. You cannot stuff the infinite into a box. You have to fold it carefully.
I turned away from it all, and that dread horn that I first heard in Godhead faded from my soul. I was, finally, just Lhiewyn. Old, dead-legged, and very tired. And once I refilled the Hymns, I could be easy with it.
“We are more alike than we are different,” Bath said.
He was sitting on the steps of his temple, hands between his knees. He'd probably been there the whole time. Sneaky little shit. His shaved head shone coppery in the starlight, and his robes were blacker than coal, and they flowed around him like ink in a slow, unseen current. He was smiling slightly, which pulled at the stitches that sewed his mouth shut. Not the most pleasant thing to behold.
I grunted. “Well, not to rub it in, god of secrets, but while I might have a diminishing number of teeth, I can still open my mouth to clean them. It's the little differences that make all the difference, I find. Why the hells are you here?”
“You manifested your true form right on the Street of the Gods. I came to watch the show.”
I curled my lip. “That's not my true form. This shambles in front of you is. That's the problem with all you lot; you forgot where you came from.”
“Some, perhaps. For myself, I chose to accept a different set of consequences in exchange for a different, better situation.”
“You mean the Eye took you, and you let it work its will on you.”
“And what did fighting the Eye gain you, Lhiewyn det Sardeth?”
“A shattered body and free will.”
“Was it worth it?”
I looked down at the cooling meat of his brother. Had the Eye not taken him five thousand years ago and more, would he still have been a homicidal maniac? No way of telling. But once he’d become a god, he had been locked into the role the Eye had chosen for him. I looked back up at Bath.
“Was it worth it? Yes. If being a god is such a treat, why have almost all of them fled, here at the end of the age?”
Bath only shook his head.
“I’ll leave this one here. He’s your kin, you decide what to do with the remains. And thanks so much for your help, by the way.”
“It's not my place to interfere in the disagreements of the elevated.”
“Now I know why you keep your mouth sewn shut. You're a horrible liar.”
“I said it wasn't my place. I did not say I always know my place. And anyway, I did trap him here for you. And I discouraged onlookers and passersby.”
“Out of concern for their welfare, or a reflexive desire for secrecy?”
He squinted one eye as he thought about it, two cold stars briefly dimming to one. “A little of both,” he finally admitted. “But I was serious when I said that you and I are not so different.”
“You hoard secrets. I'm the caretaker for the single greatest body of knowledge in the world, open to all. Not that the happily ignorant little shits avail themselves of it much. Anyway, I can't say I see the resemblance.”
“I am the god of secrets. You are, whether you like it or not, the god of forgetting, and we follow many of the same tracks and pathways. Most importantly, Sage Lhiewyn, I know your greatest secret.”
“If Jessep gave out my beef stew recipe I'll have his balls in a vice.”
Bath gestured to the cooling meat in the middle of the road. “You lied to him. Your greatest secret is that you alone, among all creatures, will always remember everything. I do not envy you.”
“Yes, well. That's what wine is for, isn't it.” That, and the Hymns.
“The age is ending. Most of us are gone. You said so yourself. Why do you remain?”
“You’re the god of secrets. You tell me.”
He grinned, which looked as horrible as you might imagine, and disappeared. In his place was a bottle of wine. I hobbled over to it. Gol-Shen ’47, from the label. There was a scrap of paper tied to the neck with a piece of twine. In spidery letters was his reply:
Because someone must make sure the door stays shut.
I grunted, picked the bottle up, and hobbled my way home.
I WASN’T QUITE DONE with being an almost-god. Not yet. With difficulty, I knelt by the boy and ripped the night lily from his hands, casting it into the forgetting. Then I placed a palm on the awful wound, and let an echo of the Eye rumble its way back into my aged flesh.
The little bastard was a thorn in my side, but he was my acolyte, and probably the only person in the city that’d put up with me on a daily basis. He was the closest thing I’d ever have to a son, and I’d be damned if I was going to let some shit-stain of a god end his life.
And so I told the wound that had pierced his heart to forget that it had been made. I told his violated flesh to forget it had been violated, and I told his stopped heart to forget it had ever stopped beating. Finally, and most taxingly, I chased down his fleeing spirit, dragged it back to the mortal plane, and told it to forget it had ever left his flesh.
It was not an easy task, and my body paid the price, as it did every time I’d used the power of the Eye without accepting the transformation to godhood. Eyes a little weaker, joints that much more stiff. So be it.
After a moment, Jessep gave out a huge gasp and sat bolt-upright, eyes wild.
“Easy, lad. You’re all right.”
“He was- I was-”
“He’s finished. It’s over.”
“How?”
&
nbsp; “You’ll have to ask Bath about that one, lad. Apparently those two had a history. Who knew?”
He was in no condition to question me. I helped him to bed for once, as best I could. And then I spent the rest of the night drinking Bath’s wine and refilling the Hymns once again.
By daybreak I was drunk, and empty, and decrepit.
And human.
FROM THE AUTHOR
I hope you have enjoyed The Last God. Lhiewyn and Jessep are incredibly fun to write about, and there will definitely be further adventures.
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Thanks so much for reading!
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The Last God Page 10