The Demigod Proving (17 page)

Could he trust Wrend and Teirn? He’d found them both with Wester, and Wrend had made a willful attempt to choose a different way to conquer Hasuke. If any other son had done that, Athanaric would’ve killed him; but since he had so much riding on the boy, he would let him live a little longer, see if the mistakes had been flukes. So much depended—or might depend—on the boy, that he’d resisted the repeated urge to slaughter him. Any other child would be dead, already, culled in an effort to eradicate unfruitful boughs.

But Athanaric had lost enough children that day—because of these rebels. These renegades. First, they’d struck at his Novitiates, killing the youngest. Now, they’d tried to poison his Caretakers. They wanted to break his back, weaken him by killing those he most loved.

He needed to hunt the apostates down and eradicate them.

He shuddered at the scene that had surrounded him only a minute before. So many bodies flailing out of control. Such laughter cut short. Puke spewing everywhere. Moaning and shouting in pain. Hundreds more could have died than did—and would have if they hadn’t been his children and used the divine Ichor. It reminded him of the times of chaos, back before he’d established order. Poison had killed often in those days. Entire villages, the target of some god’s wrath in his war with another god, had been wiped out.

Only a minute before, when he’d realized what was happening, he’d thought a demigod must have administered the poison, probably one of those he suspected of being a rebel. However, that son had fallen ill to the poison, as well. In fact, he still lay near the performance platforms, groaning and clutching his stomach. A few of his sisters sat next to him, trying to comfort him. Had it been him? Would he risk killing himself? Or had it been someone else? Maybe a serving girl or priest?

Perhaps the redhead.

She’d run past the tables as the poison had set in. The priests who’d chased her now lay motionless in the exit toward the forest side of the area, in the stone archway. Several serving girls and the Mistress stood over them, trying to revive them as they wept and looked over the area with wide eyes. They must have found the redhead poisoning the food and tried to accost her. Well, if they couldn’t catch her, he would. He could track her, and she’d pay for her crimes.

Teirn had sat up and started to try and wipe vomit from his face, but was just smearing it everywhere. Wrend was looking around in a daze. They would be fine, so Athanaric grabbed half a dozen turnips—about the only food around not covered in slime—stepped over the dogs, and headed down the length of the table. He chewed as he walked, harvesting the Spirit Ichor created by his raw vegetables, and nodded down at the demigods who made eye contact with him.

As he approached the Mistress, she fell to her knees and averted her eyes. The serving girls did the same.

“That girl who ran out of here,” he said. “Who was she, and why was she running from you?”

“Dear god,” the Mistress said. “Her name is Leenda. Earlier this evening she injured these three serving girls and threatened to harm them more.” She gestured at the girls.

They were pretty things, no older than seventeen or eighteen. Had their mothers offered them to him as a wife, he might have chosen any of them.

“Why did she threaten you?”

The tallest one, with blonde curls, glanced up at him and averted her eyes. “She said she needed to serve at your table tonight. She didn’t say why. Then she shoved me and held me down. And she hit my friends. She moved so fast we couldn’t even see her do it, but we’ve got the bruises to show for it.”

That made little sense. Why would Leenda need to serve at his table in order to administer the poison? Perhaps she’d had other plans interrupted by the priests and Mistress. He had no idea what those plans could have been—a girl like that could do nothing to him from up close, unless she’d planned to give him a different poison while the vomiting distracted him. The frogweed hadn't affected him because he had eaten nothing cooked in the kitchen. Tonight he was eating raw vegetables, to replenish his Spirit Ichor.

He let the turnips drop from his hands. No need for unnecessary risks. They hit the ground and rolled away.

With a gracious smile, he praised the serving girls and Mistress, asked them to help clean up the mess, and headed out of the courtyard through the stone archway. To the right, a stone wall stretched for several hundred feet, surrounding the courtyard. Burning braziers hung along the length, providing a soft but adequate light against the night. On the left side of the path, the manicured ground sloped upward, covered in bushes that would soon bud. Up past them, trees loomed as the canyon wall grew steeper and steeper.

He bent low, putting his face close to the stones, and took several steps up the path, examining the ground for signs of the girl’s passage, and sniffing to determine her scent.

He soon found the light footprints of slippers, spaced far apart because of running strides. No one else would’ve seen the footprints on the film of dust that covered the path, so faint in the dim light. He, however, had exceptional eyesight. He’d spent hundreds of years applying Thew Ichor to his eyes, which had gradually improved his vision so that now he could see better than any bird of prey. He could tell the color of a person’s eyes from a quarter mile away, count the needles on a pine branch on the next mountain over, and even see the spirits lifting out of dead bodies.

Many pairs of footprints covered the path, most of them heading into the courtyard. But the slipper-print led out. Further on, he found an identical one. He leaned close to it and sniffed; he’d also spent hundreds of years improving his smell. A dozen dogs combined had a poorer sense of smell than him.

He straightened, startled at the distinctive scent.

Could that be right? All people had a certain smell to them. Some more unique than others. Also, every animal smelled different, with all dogs having a similar smell, and all cats giving off a different aroma. It came not only from the make-up of their bodies, but also the composition of their souls. When Athanaric concentrated, he could smell when a person or a dog had passed by. He could also smell a paladin—the unique mixture of a rotting human inhabited by the soul of a dog.

But this—this was something he’d only smelled once before, in one of his sons.

He leaned over, bringing his face close to the ground and footprint, and took a deep breath through his nose. The scent had a tangy flare to it, mixed with a musky throbbing. He could not doubt it.

The girl was a draegon wearing a human body.

Frowning, he continued on down the path, following the footprint and scent. The sounds of the crowd at the feast grew quieter and the footprints grew further and further apart. Unnaturally so. No normal human could take strides like this. Ten feet. Twelve. Fourteen. Seventeen. Then the last print turned to the left, up toward the mountain. He paused and looked up into the trees. A raccoon moved in the branches about half a mile up. Almost overhead, a slice of yellow moon smiled down.

It was as if she’d run in preparation to fly away.

Could she do that? Could a draegon wearing a human body somehow fly, or had she simply taken a great leap up the mountain using Thew and Flux Ichor?

He couldn’t follow her. Not with her using Ichor to go faster and further. He still hadn’t replenished his stores of Flux and Thew Ichor since exhausting them during the fight in the Courtyard of the Wall, and when torturing Ricken. No, he couldn’t chase this draegon girl, not while she used Ichor and he had little.

But how could she use Ichor in the first place? Only his children—direct descendants of Pyter—could use the power.

The answer was obvious. Of course she could use Ichor: she had the soul of a draegon, and those creatures had used Ichor long before Pyter had arisen from the ranks of humans as god.

He stood there for a minute, focusing on his senses. He cocked his head to one side and listened to the sounds coming down the mountain, out of the forest. It took a great deal of concentration to filter out the noise from the courtyard behind him, but he could do it. The chatter or scrambling of small animals punctuated the murmur of trees rustling in the breeze that lay over the forest. Here and there, something large moved through the underbrush. But he couldn’t hear a person running or leaping. She’d already gone too far.

He stayed there for a time. Even after he’d given up hope of finding her, he looked up into the forest, wondering what it all meant and where it would leave him. Maybe she wasn’t a renegade. Maybe he recognized her smell, had met her as a draegon, before. The last draegons he’d encountered were Cuchorack’s mate and pup. He couldn’t remember their smells well enough to know if this was one of them.

But wouldn’t that be interesting if it was.

So much was happening. The rebels had murdered his little ones and wives, then poisoned his Caretakers. Wester still roamed free, and more demigods had probably allied with him. Surely some priests and some followers. His two sons—his potential heirs—had begun their proving. Hasuke had become available for the taking. Not to mention that Rashel had become distant in the past two months, and Calla had started to press him to teach her how to use Ichor—as if she could even learn.

And now this draegon-girl.

Just that morning, his only problem had been taking care of the cultists when he got around to it. Now the tranquility of his life had shattered, and the peace of his people could fail. But he had to maintain it. That was paramount. That was why he lived: for the peace and comfort of his people until such a time that he would choose to lay down his own life.

Hopefully one of his sons would prove worthy, and the time of his rest wasn’t too far distant.

Regardless, he knew that a time of bloodshed had come.

Part II: In the pleasant garden

Chapter 20: Seeing forever

The first time you leave the Seraglio, you understand what an injustice it is that you’ve lived there your entire life.

-Wester

Wrend needed to talk with Naresh.

He came to the conclusion in the morning as he sat atop his blood bay mare with thousands of other people in the Courtyard of the Wall. Ahead, in the front of the courtyard, Caretakers sat on horses in columns. Priests or serving girls sat atop or in the backs of wagons.

Since the battle the day before, servants had cleaned up the courtyard and procured new wagons and supplies, which made Wrend wonder why the Master even bothered having the demigods do it all in the first place, since apparently he had the servants and resources to have other people do it much more quickly. Maybe he just wanted his children to make themselves useful, and learn the value of hard work.

The Master sat atop his draegon at the front of the courtyard, wearing his usual black outfit with the lattice of tree roots embroidered on the front. He’d spent ten minutes decrying the cultists and vowing to punish them. Wrend had a hard time paying attention because, behind the Master, the gates stood open; Wrend had seen few glimpses of the city beyond and found himself watching the buildings and street outside the Seraglio more than actually listening to the Master.

“We will not . . .” the Master said. He paused and shook his head as if to clear his emotions. “We will not be cowed by the cowardly acts of our foes. They can try to kill the body—and they may even succeed—but that is all they can do. They have no power over our souls, save that which we give them. And we will give them none.”

Teirn sat on his own horse next to Wrend. He leaned close and lowered his voice.

“Still, I’d rather not have my body killed.”