The Demigod Proving (3 page)

Teirn sighed. “I should have known we wouldn’t escape so easily.”

“We still might.”

“Not likely.”

They headed back down past the cheese wagon. The women descended a set of stairs and met them between the boardwalk and a column of wagons. Calla embraced both of them in turn, exclaiming pleasure at seeing them. Rashel nodded and kept her hands on her hips.

Wrend couldn’t greet Calla without feeling like she accepted him. Her pleasant smile and warm eyes reached out in amity. Her hair, as dark as Teirn’s, flowed down her shoulders and back. She had a thin face with eyes like black pearls. Her tanned skin bore no flaw. She looked like Teirn, only older and female.

As usual, Rashel wore her brown hair in a loose bun. Unlike Calla, she had an undistinguished face. And where Calla emanated acceptance, Rashel emitted a stern challenge, a demand that you prove yourself before she accept you. Each time he saw her, Wrend felt like he had to verify his abilities anew.

Both she and Calla stood a head shorter than Wrend and wore the standard mother’s clothing: a red skirt, split from the hips to the hem with a white skirt beneath; a white blouse with a laced bodice and the likeness of tree roots embroidered in gold up the center of their torsos; and sleeves that ended below the elbow.

“Have you finished your tasks for the day?” Rashel said.

“Of course, Mother,” Wrend said.

He addressed all of the Master’s hundreds of wives that way, since they all helped raise him and the other demigods. The Master preferred that none of his children knew exactly which mother had given birth to them. Only over time had Wrend concluded that Rashel was his mother.

“We thought,” Teirn said, “we would go take a look at the banquet square before they shut it off to the likes of us.”

 
“Well,” Rashel said, “that won’t be necessary. You’ll have an opportunity to see it later.”

Teirn grunted. “In about two years.”

“No,” Calla said. “The Master sent us to find you.” Her face became solemn. “Teirn, it’s time.”

Teirn’s brows knotted and his lips tightened. Calla returned his expression by raising her eyebrows. Wrend didn’t understand the sudden seriousness.

“Time for what?” he said to Rashel.

A message from the Master outside of the usual routine was an honor. That it came via Rashel reinforced Wrend’s notion that she’d borne him. In fact, whenever the Master had a certain task or specific information for Wrend, he sent Rashel. Except for Teirn, other children received messages via priests or a variety of mothers. For Wrend it was always Rashel. For Teirn it was always Calla.

It explained why they felt they held special status with the Master: everyone knew that the Master favored Calla and Rashel above all his other wives. It made sense for the children of favored wives to also be favored.

Rashel pursed her lips. “He wants you to sit at his right and left hands at the feast tonight.”

Wrend laughed. “He does not. Why would you even joke about that?”

“No,” Rashel said. “This is no joke.”

Her somber expression made Wrend pause. Why would the Master want him and Teirn at the places of highest honor, at the biggest feast of the year? Traditionally, demigods that the Master would sacrifice in coming weeks sat in those places. Novitiates didn’t even get to attend the banquet.

Wrend frowned at Teirn, who still glowered at Calla.

“Why does he want us there?” Teirn said.

Calla put a hand on his arm. “Wear your best clothes.”

“Be early,” Rashel said.

Calla nodded. “Arrive before anyone else, so that when everyone arrives they know who our god most loves.”

Wrend’s heart had started to pound. The mothers were serious. “Why does he want us to sit with him?”

Rashel raised her eyebrows. “He only indicated that today is a day he’s waited for since long before your births.”

Calla nodded. “He told me, ‘Tonight, it starts.’ Do you hear that, Teirn? It starts tonight.”

Teirn glared at her.

“What starts?” Wrend said to Calla. Then to Teirn, “What’s wrong?”

This summons made his heartbeat quicken, his legs and arms felt weak. Tonight would alter the course of his life. He could feel it. Everything would change in ways no demigod had seen before.

Teirn glanced at Wrend, then back at Calla, and started to turn away. “Come on, Wrend. We should go.”

But Calla’s fingers tightened on Teirn’s arm. “No. I think you need to come with me. To talk.”

Teirn yanked his arm away. “There’s nothing to say.”

He headed uphill, toward the cheese wagon and the forest beyond.

Wrend frowned at Rashel, spread his hands in a question, and mouthed,
What’s going on?

“Comb your hair,” she said. “I don’t want the back sticking up like usual.”

He grunted and headed after Teirn, up the lane lined by rows of wagons.

“Now’s the time, Teirn,” Calla said at their backs. “Don’t shirk your duty.”

“What’s going on?” Wrend said as he caught up.

“Bigger things than you know.”

“Well, tell me.” He looked back to see the mothers turn and head the opposite direction.

Teirn gave him a serious look. “You think this invitation is good, but it’s not. It’s abysmal. Disastrous.”

“Why?”

“Let’s get somewhere private, and I’ll tell you.”

Chapter 2: Laughter no more

It is inevitable that demigods will rise up against god from time to time. History has proven this; those with some divine power will always want more than is their right—and they will always seek to take it. When this happens, it is the meek and helpless who suffer most.

-Athanaric

As he wheeled through the sky on his draegon, Athanaric spotted the trouble from far away. He’d looked forward to this nursery visit for weeks, but now his joy disintegrated, replaced with fear for his pregnant wives, the new mothers, and his newborns.

His duties as god and king demanded most of his time, so he came to the nursery at the top of the Seraglio much less often than he liked. Yet, the newborns’ innocence reminded him of mankind’s goodness, and the toddlers’ enthusiasm renewed his hope. Best of all, these children lived in safety from him. He’d vowed not to kill any of them before they turned two years old.

But from high above he saw the signs. Not a single mother had children out for a stroll on the boardwalk around the field and lake. No pregnant wives enjoyed the unusually warm day. The serving girls didn’t wait on the porch, ready with platters of food for him.

Instead, dozens of paladins lay about the grass between the expansive building and the lake, on the steps to the nursery, and near the doors. All decapitated. Their swords and pikes lay at their sides. The bodies of three demigods lay near each other in the spring grass in front of the nursery steps. Blood flowed from recent wounds.

Athanaric steeled his heart and commanded his draegon to the ground near the three bloody men. The wind rushed in his hair and the draegon’s fur rippled as they descended. Athanaric hardly waited for his undead mount to settle down before jumping from the saddle and running toward the nursery. He glanced at the three demigods lying there in the grass, newly dead, wounds puncturing their bodies, and knew what had happened.

His children had turned on him.

The three dead demigods, Nathran, Tryle, and Stoct, had recently joined the list of Caretakers conspiring against him. He’d known about their imminent treachery, their desire to dethrone him. But he hadn’t expected them to act so soon.

He leapt up the stairs past them, to the nursery porch, toward doors gilded with the likeness of a many-armed and many-headed man. He grabbed the higher set of door handles, about five feet above the handles meant for most people, and shoved the doors open. He stepped into the foyer.

Here, his paladins had made a stand. Their bodies and limbs and heads lay in disorganized piles where they’d fallen in a struggle against his sons. For all of the carnage, not a drop of blood touched the floor or ceiling. Rather, the room bore the clinical smell of salt; when his priests embalmed the paladins, they drained the blood from the human bodies and filled the body cavities with nitrate to preserve them, to ensure that when Athanaric re-animated the bodies with the souls of dogs, they lived for hundreds of years.

Athanaric swallowed hard to suppress a cry. If his enemies remained nearby, he couldn’t let them know they’d touched his heart. He rushed past the bodies toward the doors at the foyer’s back, inlaid in gold with the symbol of a tree with expansive roots and branches bearing heavy fruit. Rocks of nitrate skittered away beneath his feet. He inadvertently kicked the hand of a paladin.

At the double doors he again closed his hands around the higher set of levered handles, about nine feet off the ground, at the level of his waist. After a moment of hesitation, he turned the handles down. They clicked. He cracked the door open—but not even enough to peer through.

Not a sound came from that place where hungry newborns had always cried and mothers had cooed in comfort, where he’d often heard the reckless laughter of toddlers. Now, he didn’t hear a single whimper. Not one shout for help or wail of pain.

Instead, silence.

Only silence.

His breath came short and shallow. Sweat gathered on his brow. His heart thundered.

He removed his fingers from the door handles. He couldn’t enter. He, god, couldn’t bring himself to look at the slaughter. For although he was god, he was also a husband of hundreds. A father of thousands.

He pulled the doors shut. They clicked, hollow and dead in the foyer.

He fell to his knees and knelt there with his forehead against the cold door, his chest constricting. He wished to hear the wail of an infant or the sob of a woman—anything to indicate that his traitorous children hadn’t acted so thoroughly.

But he heard nothing. Silence lay over the stillness, as if by stepping through the doors he would enter a painting.

His little ones. His beloved innocents. And his wives. His precious and pure wives. All murdered.

His breath caught. His hands and arms trembled. He clenched his teeth against the urge to weep, and instead reared his head back to scream. The rafters trembled at his voice. Rocks of nitrate vibrated on the ground.

Wester.

Wester and the other renegades had done this. His own sons who’d spent the last two years conspiring against him even as they worshiped, praised, and served him. He’d let them gain confidence and boldness as they whispered their sedition and recruited other traitors, so he could gather their names in preparation for a cleansing. They were fruitless boughs in the tree of his family, and would need pruning.

He’d had waited for the right moment to eradicate his kingdom of the unholy alliance, to not spook the renegades and let some escape, but had never dreamed they would strike at him in this manner. Had they also attacked elsewhere, at his hundreds of other children and wives lower in the canyon?

The thought lifted him to his feet. He turned from the doors and ran back past the paladins. Outside, he commanded his draegon, Cuchorack, to rise. The draegon snapped his wings open and stood. Sunlight shone through holes in the hairless wings, where the leather had decayed and fallen away. His black horns, turned down from the top of his head and extending past the end of his snout, glistened.