Before me, in the near distance, loomed the hulking, squared-off pyramid of Sar-enna-nem. My destination, I guessed, since Ahad did not strike me as the subtle type.
My arrival had not gone unnoticed, however. I glanced down from the wall on which I stood to find an old woman and a boy-child of four or five years staring up at me. Amid the crowded street, they alone had stopped; between them was a rickety-looking cart bearing a few tired-looking vegetables and fruits. Ah, yes, the end of the market day. I sat down on the wall, dangling my feet over it and wondering how the hell I was supposed to get down, since it was a good ten feet high and I now had to worry about breaking bones. Damn Ahad.
“Hey, there,” I said in Senmite. “You know whether this wall runs all the way to Sar-enna-nem?”
The boy frowned, but the old woman merely looked thoughtful. “All things in Arrebaia lead to Sar-enna-nem,” she said. “But you may have trouble getting in. Foreigners are more welcome in the city than they used to be, but they are barred from the temple by declaration of our ennu.”
“Temple?”
“Sar-enna-nem,” said the boy, his expression suddenly scornful. “You don’t know anything, do you?”
He spoke with the thickest accent I’d heard in centuries, his Senmite inflected by the gulping river flow of the Darren tongue. The woman’s Senmite bore only a trace of this. She had learned Senmite early, probably before she’d learned Darre. The boy had done it the other way around. I glanced up as a pack of children near the boy’s age ran past, shrieking as children always seem to. They were shrieking in Darre.
“I know a lot of things,” I said to the boy, “but not everything. I know Sar-enna-nem used to be a temple, long ago, back before the Arameri made the world over. So it’s a temple again?” I grinned, delighted. “Whose?”
“All the gods’, of course!” The boy put his hands on his hips, having clearly decided I was an idiot. “If you don’t like that, you can leave!”
The old woman sighed. “Hush, boy. I didn’t raise you to be rude to guests.”
“He’s a Teman, Beba! Wigyi from school says you can’t trust those eyes of theirs.”
Before I could retort, the old woman’s hand shot out and cuffed the boy. I winced in sympathy at his yelp, but really, a smart child would’ve known better.
“We will discuss proper comportment for a young man when we get home,” she added, and the boy looked chastened at last. Then she focused on me again. “If you didn’t know the temple is a temple again, then I doubt you’ve come looking to pray. What is it that you really want here, stranger?”
“Well, I was looking for your ennu — or his daughter Usein, rather.” I had vague memories of someone mentioning a Baron Darr. “Where might she be found?”
The old woman narrowed her eyes at me for a long moment before answering. There was an attentiveness in her posture, and I noted the way she shifted her stance back, just a little. She moved her right hand to her hip, too, for easy access to the knife that was almost surely sheathed at the small of her back. Not all of Darr’s women were warriors, but this one had been, no doubt about it.
I flashed her my broadest, most innocent smile, hoping she would dismiss me as harmless. She didn’t relax — my smile didn’t work as well as it had when I’d been a boy — but her lips did twitch in an almost-smile.
“You want the Raringa,” she said, nodding westward. The word meant something like “seat of warriors” in one of the older High Northern trade tongues. Where the warriors’ council met, no doubt, to advise the young ennu-to-be on her dangerous course of action. I looked around and spotted a low, dome-shaped building not far from Sar-enna-nem. Not nearly so majestic, but then the Darre were not much like the Amn. They judged their leaders by standards other than appearance.
“Anything else?” the old woman asked. “The size and armament of her guard contingent, maybe?”
I rolled my eyes at this, but then paused as a new thought occurred to me. “Yes,” I said. “Say something in Darre for me.”
Her eyebrows shot toward her hairline, but she said in that tongue, “It’s a shame you’re mad, pretty foreign boy, because otherwise you might sire interesting daughters. Though perhaps you’re just a very stupid assassin, in which case it’s better if someone kills you before you breed.”
I grinned, climbing to my feet and dusting grass off my pants. “Thanks much, Auntie,” I said in Darre, which made both her and the boy gape. The language had changed some since I’d last spoken it; it sounded more like Mencheyev now, and they’d lengthened their vowels and fricatives. I probably still sounded a little strange to them, and I would definitely have to watch my slang, but already I could do a passable imitation of a native speaker. I gave them both a flourishing bow that was probably long out of fashion, then winked and sauntered off toward the Raringa.
I was not the only foreigner about, I saw as I came onto the wide paved plaza that led into the building. Knots of people milled about the area: some locals, others wearing fancy attire from their own lands. Diplomats, perhaps — ah, yes, come a-courting the new power in the region, feeling out the woman who would soon hold its reins. Maybe they were even coming to probe the possibility of an alliance — discreetly, of course. Darr was still very small, and the Arameri were still the Arameri. But it had escaped no one’s notice that the world was changing, and this was one of the epicenters of transformation.
Luck favored me as I approached the gates, for the guards there were men. Doubtless because so many of the foreigners hailed from lands ruled by men; a bit of unspoken diplomacy to make them more comfortable. But in Darr, men became guards if they were not handsome enough to marry well or clever enough to serve in some more respected profession, like hunting or forestry. So the pair who watched the Raringa’s gates did not notice what smarter men might have, such as my Teman face but lack of Teman hair cabling or the fact that I wore plain clothing. They simply looked me over to be certain I had no obvious weapons, then nodded me onward.
Mortals notice that which stands out, so I didn’t. It was simple enough to match my gait and posture to that of other foreigners heading toward this or that meeting, or aides moving in and out of the Raringa’s vaulted main doors. The place was not large and had clearly been designed in days when Darr had been a simpler society and its people could just walk in and talk to their leaders. So I found the main council chamber through the biggest set of doors. And I figured out which one of the women seated on the council dais was Usein Darr by the simple fact that her presence practically filled the building.
Not that she was a large woman, even by Darren standards. She sat cross-legged on a low, unadorned divan at the farthest end of the council circle, her head above theirs as they all slouched or reclined on piles of cushioning. If not for that, she would not have been visible at all, hidden by their taller frames. Several feet of long, defiantly straight hair draped her shoulders, night-black, some of it gathered atop her head in an elaborate series of looped and knotted braids; the rest hung free. Her face was a thing of high umber planes and glacial, unadorned slopes: beautiful by any standard, though no Amn would ever have admitted it. And strong, which meant that she was beautiful by Darren standards as well.
The council dais had a gallery of curved benches around it, for the comfort of any spectators who chose to sit through the proceedings. A handful of others, mostly Darre, sat here. I chose an unoccupied bench and settled onto it, watching for a while. Usein said little but nodded now and again as the members of the council each took their turn to talk. She’d propped her hands on her knees in such a way that her elbows jutted out, which I thought was an overly aggressive posture until I belatedly noticed the swell of her belly above her folded legs: she was well into a pregnancy.
I quickly grew bored as I realized that the matter Usein and her councillors were discussing so intently was whether to clear a section of forest to allow coffee growing. Thrilling. I supposed it had been too much to hope that they would discuss t
heir war plans in public. Since I was still tired and just a little hungover, I fell asleep.
Someone shook me an uncountable time later, pulling me from a hazy dream dominated by a woman’s bulging belly. Naturally I thought I was still dreaming when I opened my eyes to find another belly hovering in front of me, and naturally I put out a hand to stroke it. I have always found pregnancy fascinating. When mortal women permit, I hover near them, listening for the moment when the child’s soul ignites out of nothingness and begins to resonate with mine. The creation of souls is a mystery that we gods endlessly debate. When Nahadoth was born, his soul was fully formed even though no mother ever carried him within her body. Did the Maelstrom give it to him? But only things with souls can bestow souls, or so we have come to believe over the aeons. Does this mean It has a soul? And if so, where did Its soul come from?
All irrelevant questions, because an instant after my hand touched Usein Darr’s belly, her knife touched the skin beneath my eye. I came very much awake.
“My apologies, Usein-ennu,” I said, lifting my hand very carefully. I tried to lift my eyes, too, to focus on her, but it was the knife that dominated my attention. She had been much faster than Hymn, which I supposed was not surprising. I seemed to attract women who were good with a blade.
“Just Usein,” she said in Darre. A rude thing to do to an obvious foreigner, and unnecessary, since her knife made its own silent point. “My father is in poor health, but he may live years more, despite the ill wishes of others.” Her eyes narrowed. “I imagine women in Tema are no happier to have strangers pawing them, so I see no reason to excuse your behavior.”
Swallowing, I finally forced my gaze upward to her face. “My apologies,” I said again, also in Darre. One of her eyebrows lifted. “Would you excuse me if I said I’d been dreaming about a woman like you?”
Her lips twitched, considering a smile. “Are you a father already, little boy? You should be at home knitting blankets to warm your babies, if so.”
“Not a father and never a father, actually, not that any woman would want children who took after me.” (My own smile faltered as I remembered Shahar; then I pushed her out of my mind.) “Congratulations on your conception. May your delivery be swift and your daughter strong.”
She shrugged, after a moment taking her knife from my skin. She did not sheathe it, however — a warning. “This babe will be what it is. Probably another son, given that my husband seems to produce nothing else.” With a sigh, she put her free hand on her hip. “I noticed you during our council session, pretty boy, and came over to find out more about you. Especially as Temans don’t bother coming here anymore; they’ve made their allegiance to the Arameri clear. So, are you a spy?”
Casting an uneasy glance at her still-naked blade, I considered several lies — then decided the truth was so outrageous that she might believe it more readily. “I’m a godling, sent by an organization of godlings based in Shadow. We think you might be trying to destroy the world. Could you, perhaps, stop?”
She did not react quite as I’d expected. Instead of gaping at me, or laughing, she gazed at me in solemn silence for a long, taut moment. I couldn’t read her face at all.
Then she sheathed her knife. “Come with me.”
We went to Sar-enna-nem.
Night had fallen while I napped, the moon rising high and full over the branching stone streets. I had only a few moments to glimpse this before Usein Darr and I — accompanied by two sharp-eyed women and a handsome young man who’d greeted Usein with a kiss and me with a threatening look — stepped inside the temple. One of the guardswomen was pregnant, too, though not overtly so because she was stocky and heavyset. Her child’s soul had grown, though, so I knew.
The instant I crossed the threshold, I knew why Usein had brought me here. Magic and faith danced along my skin like raindrops on a pond’s surface. I closed my eyes and reveled in it, soaking it in as I walked over the glimmering mosaic stones, letting my reawakened sense of the world steer my feet. It had been months since I’d last felt the world fully. Listening now, I heard songs that had last been sung before the Gods’ War, echoing from Sar-enna-nem’s ceiling arches. I licked my lips and tasted the spiced wine that had once been used for offerings, tinged with occasional drops of blood. I put out my hands, stroking the air of the place, and shivered as it returned the caress.
Illusions and memories; all I had left. I savored them as best I could.
There had been only a few people in the temple when we’d entered: a man in priest garb, a portly woman carrying two fretting babes, a few worshippers kneeling in a prayer area, and a few unobtrusive guards. I navigated around these and between the small marble statues that stood on plinths all about the chamber, letting resonance guide me. When I opened my eyes, the statue at which I’d stopped gazed back at me with uncharacteristic solemnity on its finely wrought features. I reached up to touch its small, cheeky face, and sighed for my lost beauty.
There was no surprise in Usein Darr’s voice. “I thought so. Welcome to Darr, Lord Sieh. Though I heard you stopped involving yourself in mortal affairs after T’vril Arameri’s death.”
“I had, yes.” I turned away from the statue of myself and put one hand on my hip, adopting the same pose. “Circumstances have forced my hand, however.”
“And now you help the Arameri who once enslaved you?” She did not, to her credit, laugh.
“No. I’m not doing this for them.”
“For the Dark Lord, then? Or my exalted predecessor, Yeine-ennu?”
I shook my head and sighed. “No, just me. And a few other godlings and mortals who would rather not see a return to the chaos of the time before the Gods’ War.”
“Some would call that time ‘freedom.’ I would think you would call it so, given what happened after.”
I nodded slowly and sighed. This was a mistake. Glee should never have sent me on a mission like this. I wasn’t going to be able to do a very good job of negotiating with Usein, because I didn’t really disagree with her goals. I didn’t care if the mortal realm descended back into strife and struggle. All I cared about was —
Shahar, her eyes soft and full of a tenderness I’d never expected to see as I taught her everything I knew of pleasure. Deka, still a child, blushing shyly and moving close to me whenever he could —
Distraction. A reminder. I had sworn an oath.
“I remember what your world was like then,” I said softly. “I remember when Darre infants starved in their cribs because enemies burned your forests. I remember rivers with water tinted red, fields that bloomed greener and richer because the soil had soaked up so much blood. Is that really what you want to return to?”
She came over, gazing up at the statue’s face rather than at me. “Were you the one who made the Walking Death?”
I twitched in surprise and sudden unease.
“It seems like the sort of disease you would create,” she said with brutal softness. “Tricksy. There hasn’t been an outbreak since Yeine-ennu’s day, but I’ve read the accounts. It lurks for weeks before the symptoms appear, spreading far and wide in the meantime. At its height, the victims of the disease seem more alive than ever, but their minds are dead, burned away by the fever. They walk, but only to carry death to new victims.”
I could not look at her, for shame. But when she spoke again, I was surprised to hear compassion in her voice.
“No mortals should have as much power as the Arameri had when they owned you,” she said. “No mortals should have as much power as they have now: the laws, the scriveners, their army, all their pet nobles, the wealth they’ve claimed from peoples destroyed or exploited. Even the history taught to our children in the White Hall schools glorifies them and denigrates everyone else. All civilization, every bit of it, is made to keep the Arameri strong. That is how they’ve survived after losing you. That is why the only solution is to destroy everything they’ve built. Good and bad, all of it is tainted. Only by starting fresh can we truly be fr
ee again.”
At this, however, I could only smile.
“Start fresh?” I asked. I looked up at the statue of myself. Its blank eyes. I imagined them green, like my own. Like those of Shinda, Itempas’s dead demon son.
“For that,” I said, “you would have to go further back than the Bright. Remember what caused it, after all — the Gods’ War, which was what put me and the other Enefadeh under the Arameri’s control in the first place. And remember what caused that: our bickering. Our love affairs gone horribly, horribly wrong.” Usein grew silent behind me, in surprise. “To really start fresh, you need to get rid of the gods, not just the Arameri. Then burn every book that mentions us. Smash every statue, including this pretty one here. Raise your children to be ignorant of the world’s creation or our existence; let them come up with stories of their own to explain it all. For that matter, kill any child who even thinks about magic — because that is how deeply we have tainted mortalkind, Usein Darr.” I turned to her and reached out. This time when I put my hand on her swollen belly, she did not draw her knife; she flinched. I smiled. “We’re in your blood. Because of us, you know all the wonders and horrors of possibility. And someday, if you don’t kill yourselves, if we don’t kill you, you might become us. So how fresh of a start do you really want?”
Her jaw twitched, the muscles flexing once. I felt her fight for something — courage, maybe. Resolve. Beneath my fingers, her child shifted, pressing briefly against my hand. I felt its shiny new soul thrum in concert with my own for a moment. His soul, alas for her poor husband.
After a moment, Usein drew a deep breath. “You wish to know our plans.”