The Kingdom of Gods (57 page)

All this was in Deka’s eyes as he gazed up at me. I do not know what he saw in mine. Whatever it was, though, he nodded once. Then he rose, never taking his hands off me, and turned me gently to face the pillar. When he spoke into my ear, the words were gods’ language. That made me believe them, and trust him, because they could be nothing but true.

“I’ll never hurt you,” he said, and proved it.

Shahar left sometime during what followed. Not immediately. She stayed for a long while, in fact, listening to my groans and watching while I stopped caring about her, or even being aware of her presence. Perhaps she even lingered after I pulled her little brother to the floor and made a proper altar of it, wringing sweat and tears and songs of praise from him, and blessing him with pleasure in return. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Deka was my only world, my only god. Yes, I used him, but he wanted me to. I would worship him forever.

I was exhausted afterward. Deka wasn’t tired at all, the bastard. He sat up awhile, using the floor to idly trace the outlines of sigils that he intended to draw into the new palace’s substance as part of its first layer of arcane protection. Apparently teams of soldiers and scriveners had already begun exploring the palace and mapping its wonders. He told me about this while I lay in a stupor. It was as though he’d gorged himself on my vitality, leaving me little better than a husk. Then it occurred to me that during our lovemaking, it had been he who’d drawn us out of the world and back; his kisses, not mine, had woven our souls together. He was still one-eighth of a god. I was all mortal.

If this was how mortals usually felt when a god was done with them, I felt fresh guilt for all my past dalliances.

Eventually I recovered, however, and told Deka that I needed to leave. All the highbloods were selecting apartments in the uppermost central spirals of the palace — the old pattern from Sky. It would be easy for me to find him later. There was an uncomfortable moment when Deka gave me a long and silent perusal before replying, but whatever he saw in my face satisfied him. He nodded and rose to get dressed himself.

“Be careful,” was all he said. “My sister may be dangerous now.”

I thought that was probably true.

I found Itempas less than a half hour before sunset. As I’d suspected, he’d taken up residence on the wide central platform where we’d first arrived, which had become a meadow of bobbing sea grass in the meantime. This palace had not been configured
to exalt him; nevertheless, the highest center point of anything was a natural place for him to settle.

He stood facing the sun, his legs braced apart and arms folded, unmoving, though he must have sensed my approach. The grass whispered against my pant legs as I walked, and I saw that the grass nearest Itempas had turned white. Typical.

I did not see Nahadoth or Yeine or feel their presence nearby. They had abandoned him again.

“Want to be alone?” I asked, stopping behind him. The sun had almost touched the sea in the distance. He could count the remaining moments of his godhood on one hand. Maybe two.

“No,” he said, so I sat down in the grass, watching him.

“I’ve decided that I want to remain mortal,” I said. “At least until … you know. Close to. Ah. The end. Then the three of you can try to change me back.” Unspoken was the fact that I might change my mind again then and choose to die with Deka. It was a choice that not every god got to make. I was very fortunate.

He nodded. “We felt your decision.”

I grimaced. “How unromantic. And here I was thinking that was an orgasm.”

He ignored my irreverence out of long habit. “Your love for those two has been clear to all of us since your transformation into mortal, Sieh. Only you have resisted this knowledge.”

I hated it when he got sanctimonious, so I changed the subject. “Thanks for trying, by the way. To help me.”

He sighed gently. “I wonder, sometimes, why you think so little of me. Then I remember.”

“Yes. Well.” I shrugged, uncomfortable. “Is Glee coming to fetch you?” Unspoken:
when you are mortal again?

“Yes.”

“She really loves you, you know.”

He turned, just enough so that I could see his face. “Yes.”

I was babbling, and he had noticed. Annoyed, I stopped talking. The silence collected around us, comfortable. In the old days, I had only ever liked being quiet around him. With anyone else, the urge to fill the silence with chatter or movement was overwhelming. He had never needed to command me to be still. Around him, I just wanted to.

We watched the sun inch toward the horizon. “Thank you,” he said suddenly, surprising me.

“Hmm?”

“For coming here.”

At this, I sighed and shifted and rubbed a hand over my hair. Finally I got up, coming to stand beside him. I could feel the radiant warmth of his presence, skin tightening even from a foot away. He could blaze with the fire and light of every sun in existence, but most times he kept the furnace banked so that others could be near him. His version of a friendly invitation — because naturally he would never, ever just
say
he was lonely, the fool.

And somehow, I had never, ever noticed that he did this. What did that make me? His twice-fool son, I supposed.

So I stayed there beside him while we watched the last curve of the sun flatten into an oblong, then puddle against the edge of the world, and finally melt away. The instant this happened, Itempas gasped, and I felt a sudden swift wave of heat, as of something rushing away. What remained in its wake was
human, ordinary, just a middle-aged man in plain clothes and worn boots (brown again, ha ha!) with too much hair for practicality. And when he toppled backward like an old broken tree, unconscious in the aftermath of godhood, it was I who caught him, and eased him to the floor, and cradled his head in my lap.

“Stupid old man,” I whispered. But I stroked his hair while he slumbered.

Would that things could have ended there.

A moment after I’d settled down with Itempas, I felt a presence behind me and did not turn. Let Glee think what she would of me with her father. I was tired of hating him. “Make him decorate his hair,” I said, more to make conversation than anything else. “If he’s going to wear his hair in a Teman style, he ought to do it right.”

“So,” said Kahl, and I went rigid with shock. His voice was soft, regretful. “You have forgiven him.”

What —

Before the thought could form, he was in front of me, on Itempas’s other side, with one hand poised in a way that made no sense to me — until he plunged it down, and too late I remembered that Glee had been protecting him from this very thing.

By that point, Kahl’s hand was up to the wrist in Itempas’s chest.

Itempas jerked awake, rigid, his face a rictus of agony. I did not waste time screaming denial. Denial was for mortals. Instead I grabbed Kahl’s arm with all my strength, trying to keep him from doing what I
knew
he was about to do. But I was
just a mortal, and he was a godling, and not only did he rip Itempas’s heart out in a blur of splattering red, but he also threw me across the platform in the process. I rolled to a halt amid the salt-sweet stench of bruised sea grass, barely three feet from the edge. There were steps wending around the platform, but if I’d missed those, it was a long way — several hundred feet — to the base of the palace.

Dazed, I struggled upright and discovered that my arm was dislocated. As I finished screaming from this, I looked up and found Kahl standing between me and Itempas’s corpse. The heart was in his hand, dripping; his expression was implacable.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ve been hunting him for years now. His demon daughter is good at hiding. I knew that if I watched
you
, however, I would eventually get my chance.”

“What —” Hard to think around pain. If mortals could do it, I could, damn it. I ground my teeth and spoke through them. “What in the infinite hells is
wrong
with you? You know that won’t kill him. And now Naha and Yeine will be after you.” I was not a god anymore. I could not call them with my thoughts. What could I do, as a mortal, facing the god of vengeance in the moment of his triumph? Nothing. Nothing.

“Let them come.” So familiar, that arrogance. Where had I seen it before? “They haven’t found me yet. I can complete the mask now and take it back from Usein.” He lifted Itempas’s heart, peering intently at it, and for the first time I saw him smile in unreserved pleasure. His lips drew back, showing a hint of canine —

— sharp teeth, so much like —

“Only a spark left. Just enough, though.”

I understood then, or thought I did. What Kahl had sought was not Itempas’s mere blood or flesh, but the pure bright power of the god of light. As a mortal, Itempas had none, and in his true form he was too powerful. Only now, in the space between mortality and immortality, was Itempas both vulnerable and valuable — and I, powerless, was no sufficient guardian. Glee had been right not to trust me with him, though not for the reasons she feared.

“You’re going to take the mask from Usein?” I struggled to sit up, holding my arm. “But I thought …”

No. Oh, no. I had been so wrong.

A mask that conferred the power of gods. But Kahl had never meant for a mortal to wear it.

“You can’t.” I could not even imagine it. Once upon a time, there were three gods who had created all the realms. Less than three and it would all end.
More
than three and — “You can’t! If the power doesn’t rip you apart —”

“Are you concerned?” Kahl lowered the heart, his smile fading. There was anger in him now; all his earlier reticence and sadness had vanished. He had accepted his nature at last, waxing powerful in the moment of his triumph. Even if I had been my old self, I would have felt fear. One did not challenge the elontid at such times. “Do you care about me, Sieh?”

“I care about
living
, you demonshitting fool! What you’re planning …” It was a nightmare that no godling would admit dreaming. The Maelstrom had given birth to three gods down the course of eternity. Who knew if — or when — it might
suddenly belch forth another? What we thought of as the universe, the collection of realities and embodiments that had been born from the Three’s warring and loving and infinitely careful craft, was too delicate to survive the onslaught of a Fourth. The Three themselves would endure, and adapt, and build a new universe that would incorporate the new one’s power. But everything of the old existence — including godlings and the entire mortal realm — would be gone.

There was a blur and suddenly Kahl was before me. To be more precise, his foot was on my chest, and I was on the ground being crushed beneath it. With my good hand I scrabbled for his booted foot but could gain no purchase on the fine, god-conjured leather. The only reason I could still breathe at all was the soil beneath my back: my torso had sunk into it rather than simply collapsing.

Kahl leaned over me, adding pressure to my lungs. Through watering eyes I saw his: narrow, deep-set slashes in the plane of his face, like Teman eyes. Like mine, though far colder. And they were green, too, like mine.

— like Enefa’s —

“Are you afraid?” He cocked his head as if genuinely curious, then leaned closer. I could almost hear my ribs groan, on the brink. But when I forced my face back up, muscles straining, throat bulging, I forgot all about my ribs. Because now Kahl was close enough that I could see his eyes clearly, and when his pupils flickered into narrow, deadly slits —

— eyes like Enefa’s no no EYES LIKE MINE —

I tried to scream.

“It’s far too late for you to care about me, Father,” he said.

The word fell into my mind like poison, and the veil on my memory shredded into tatters.

Kahl vanished then, and I do not remember what happened after that. There was a lot of pain.

But when I finally awoke, I was thirty years older.

H
ERE IS WHAT
happened.

In the beginning there were three gods. Nahadoth and Itempas came first, enemies and then lovers, and they were happy for all the endless aeons of their existence.