The Demigod Proving (20 page)

“You’re one of his favorite wives, and I’m your son. That’s why I’m one of his favorites. Calla is his other favorite wife, and Teirn is her son. That’s why he and I are out here—outside the Seraglio, being tested. That’s why one of us will become his heir.”

“I admit,” she said, “that I did have a child during the time when you were born. It would please me if you were my son.”

This was all of the admission he would get out of her. But it was enough. He nearly leaned over to embrace her, but her horse moved aside to go around a bush.

“You don’t know this,” she said, “but I’ve had six children. I’ve never known for certain who they were, but I think that Athanaric has killed three of them, already.” A strain touched the corners of her eyes.

It had never even occurred to him that he had any full siblings. He felt a sting at their loss, and curiosity at who they were.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She glared. “The point is you’re important not only because you may be my son. Teirn isn’t important only because he’s Calla’s son. We’ve both had children who’ve been killed. You’re important for other reasons.”

“You can’t hint at it and not tell me.”

She shook her head and pulled her reigns. Her horse veered back toward the road.

“I’ve said too much. So have you. Resign yourself to your fate, and find a way to win this proving. It would be for the best.”

By then, she’d turned her back to him.

He watched her ride to the road and the group of mothers, where Calla laughed with several of them. Rashel didn’t go to Calla, but stayed on the opposite side of the cluster.

He looked up at the foggy mountainside, at the vague shapes of rocks in the mist. This proving was already driving him mad. He couldn’t take the secrecy and pretending. He needed to go to the Master, to try and get the Master to tell him the point of the proving. Then, he could plead for release from the test.

That was it. That was what he would do. And he would do it at the first opportunity.

Unfortunately, that opportunity would not come for days; the Master was out hunting apostates.

Chapter 23: Weakening god

The highest purpose of a demigod is to ease the burdens of others. I cannot expect any demigod to do this except I offer an appropriate example.

-Athanaric

The people of Archer’s Gate had laid Athanaric’s children—their demigods—out in the village center, near the statue where they worshiped daily. Over four hundred men, women, and children knelt around Athanaric on the grass and in the dirt, watching his reaction. Some wept for their fallen servants.

The people had done their best to make the demigods presentable. They’d spread fine red silk over the ground and laid the demigods on it. They’d washed away the blood, covered the fatal wounds, and dressed the demigods in fine white clothes. In death, the Caretakers looked at peace. Spring flowers of every color, picked and placed by children, surrounded each of the dead demigods, filling the air with sweetness.

Athanaric stood at the feet of his slain children. Their heads rested on the silk near the stone altar, a three-foot high rectangle of white stone, smooth from centuries of worship and daily cleaning. On that altar, demigods—including the most recent—had led the people in worship for generations. Behind the altar, a full-size statue of Athanaric stood with hands out-stretched, face serene, benevolent, giving.

He did not feel any of those things, now. He couldn’t even look up at the people who knelt all around him and the statue. He didn’t want them to see his sorrow. His weakness.

“Tell me, again,” he said. “What you know?”

The priest of Archer's Gate knelt by Athanaric’s side. He cleared his throat.

“The morning after the caravan passed through, none of the demigods emerged from their chambers in the synagogue. When we investigated, we found Ailyssia dead in her bed, with no sign of a struggle. We found Nathcott and Tyl dead in Nathcott’s chambers. From the mess in the room, it was obvious they’d died fighting.”

Athanaric nodded. He tried to blot out the sound of weeping, but couldn’t. These three demigods had been the servants of these people. Now, these people had no demigods to serve them.

Ailyssia had always loved children. At eight, she’d carried around a little doll of wood and cloth, pretending to nurse it, to change its clothes. It had always bothered Athanaric that she, of all his daughters, never had the chance to bear her own children. Of course, no demigods could. He castrated the men and sterilized the girls when they became Caretakers, and any who abused their procreative powers before then died; their having children would only lead to chaos. But Ailyssia had cared for the little ones around her, those of the people, with particular joy.

Nathcott had excelled at farming. Tyl delighted in whipping his brothers in wrestling matches. Both of them had served the people faithfully. The people loved them.

And now, the people in this village, just thirty miles south of the Seraglio, had no demigods to help with their farms, to bless their children, or strengthen their seeds.

Athanaric looked out over the crowd, at the dirty faces of humble desert farmers bowed low, at the young faces lifted in innocent disrespect to their god. What would they do, now, without demigods to help them tend their farms, dig irrigation ditches, build structures, judge disputes, lead the worshiping, or perform any of the other tasks assigned to Caretakers?

Wester and his gang of thugs had done this. The day before, the second day out from the Seraglio, Athanaric had gone to another village, where the demigods spoke of fighting off three rogue demigods in masks. Then, later the previous evening, he’d gone to a second village where two demigods had died—and a third nearly had—at the hand of the same masked attackers.

The cultists were thinning the ranks of his children to weaken him. He’d hurt them too badly in the Seraglio; they no longer had the strength of numbers to rebel openly. So they would kill his children, weaken his nation a few demigods at a time.

He needed to find Wester. He needed to wipe the heretics off of the face of the earth. He could not rest easy until then.

He motioned at his children, and spoke to the priest. “Bury them with proper respect.”

He wanted to stay and help with the funeral, but needed to get back to his caravan. He wanted to counsel with his priests and chief demigods regarding the course to take.

“I’ll send word when I know how soon I can get new demigods here, to serve you and the people of this area.”

“Yes, lord,” the priest said. He still knelt on the ground.

Athanaric turned to go, and as he did, his gaze swept across the crowd. Most kept their faces down, but some looked up, their eyes desperate and afraid. Children looked at him with mouths and eyes wide.

These people depended on these demigods to survive. They leaned on them for so many things. And now, they had no help.

He couldn’t leave them. Not like this. It simply made his heart ache too much.

“Before I leave,” he said, “does anyone need healing?”

Sighs of relief washed through the crowd. The people looked at and murmured to each other in amazement at this blessing: their god would stay with them. With grateful eyes, they brought their children and elderly forward. He healed them all with Thew Ichor.

And, yet unable to leave, he inquired about their farms and houses, and if they needed aid in any fashion.

He stayed through the day and into the night, rendering what service he could, doing the job that his children would have done if they lived.

And all the while, he yearned for release, and looked forward to the day when one of his sons could inherit his duty.

He would speak with them as soon as he could.

Chapter 24: A disgrace to draegons everywhere

Children left on their own inevitably turn into little monsters.

-Cuchorack (when he was a draegon)

Leenda stood in the mouth of the draegon’s lair for a long time, letting the draft at her back diminish the cave’s rotten stench. Since her last visit more than a year before, her son had become a slob. A goat-gutted slob.

Sunlight bounced in through the wide entrance, illuminating all parts of the cave except for the deepest corners. Bones littered the floor, jumbled against the wall, or mixed with piles of treasure. On the pedestal of dirt and rocks in the cavern’s rear, instead of a nest of trees and branches, her son had formed a nest of ribcages from mountain goats, antelope, and grizzly bears. The animals’ pelts lay draped over the edges and lined the nest’s middle. No respectable draegon would use bones like that. It was barbaric. Civilized draegons might stack bones in the corner, place skulls like gems among the golden coins, or stash skeletons in a separate room, but they would never use ribs for a nest. It was simply in poor taste.

What more, blood stained the jagged walls, mounds of gold, and even the ceiling. How in the name of the scaella could Krack have gotten blood on the ceiling? Didn’t he know to kill his prey outside of the den?

No. He’d always lived in squalor. She’d just never really noticed. She’d been too focused on saving Cuchorack.

Krack had turned nineteen years old, lived nineteen winters. Leenda grated that she’d thought of his age in human terms: years as opposed to winters. In his fifth winter, two winters after Athanaric had stolen Cuchorack and the winter Leenda assumed the body of a human, Krack had started living with a greatly aged draegon named Weicketable. While she had functioned as Krack’s guardian, her frail body had kept her from caring for him properly. He’d practically raised himself.

No wonder he’d become so sloppy.

Leenda had come to him as often as she could. During those first years, when she’d lived as a child in the lower valleys of Locaran, she hadn’t come at all. But once she became mobile, around age three, she’d come to check on him once or twice a year. Over time, Weicketable had grown frailer and less able to raise or discipline him.

Taking a deep breath and shuddering at the reek of the cave, she stepped forward. Krack was probably out hunting, but a sweaty smell lingered with the stench of raw meat. He most likely hadn’t taken a bath in years.

Coins of every metal and type lay scattered around the cavern, mixed with treasures: jewelry, gemstones, plates, armor, goblets, weapons, and even raw precious metals—nuggets of gold or silver. Anything vaguely shiny, whether crafted by humans, draegons, scaella, or any other creature, could lay somewhere in the treasure. As she always did when she walked among the piles of skeletons and mounds of treasure, she felt small.

She hadn’t always, though. When she’d been a draegon—inhabited a draegon’s body; she was still a draegon even in a human body—she’d towered over these plies. They’d seemed small and inadequate then, hardly enough for two draegons to share. Cuchorack had always teased her about coveting gold with unreasonable determination.

Now the piles seemed so grand. So magnificent. And she felt so small. As she examined a mound of silver coins while walking, she kicked a wolf skull and started in surprise as it skittered across the floor. The sound of her breathing echoed off of the ceiling. She resisted the urge to wait outside.