The Demigod Proving (51 page)

“Let me go!” she shouted. “He betrayed you.”

“He’s my brother.”

That seemed like a sufficient explanation. Even to his own surprise, he felt no anger toward his brother. How could he? They were both caught in the same situation.

Rashel struggled against him for a moment, screaming and pulling, trying to twist her wrists free. Wrend just looked at her, keeping his face neutral, holding her tight.

“You have to forget it,” he said. “Let it go.”

Still in his grip, she lunged at him, screaming, trying to bite his face, but he pushed her away and held her there. Her entire body succumbed to a spasm for a few seconds, and she collapsed against him, weeping again.

“He was your father,” she said. “He was your father.”

He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. He looked over her shoulder at the cultist, and forced himself to stare at the split head and the oozing brains and fluids. Rashel’s trembling body seemed to speak to his soul, and for one terrible moment, he believed her. He believed that he’d killed his own father.

And Teirn was there, touching his shoulder and drawing his attention.

“She’s right, you know,” he said. Resignation filled his face. “I betrayed you. You should hate me and kill me. I can’t go back to the Master again, anyway. Not having failed.”

“No!” Wrend said it more sharply than he’d intended. But it communicated the fierceness he felt. “We go back together. We take this man's head back together, and we tell the Master that we did it together. We give no indication who won.”

It might not work. Even if it did, the Master would eventually choose between them. He would pit them against each other until they couldn’t plea a tie. Wrend couldn’t serve two masters—the Master and his brother. Not indefinitely.

But he could for now, until he came up with a better plan.

“We go back together,” he said again.

He looked down at the body. At the man who’d supposedly sired him. Could he ever know for sure? But even if this man had sired him—but if so, how could he use Ichor?—the Master had raised him and loved him as his son. The Master: god
and
father. Perhaps not of his body, but of his mind and soul.

No, not his soul. His soul had come from a draegon.

Was he the Master’s at all? In any way, shape, or form?

The very thought made his knees weaken again. He couldn’t fathom not being the Master’s son.

He tightened his grip on Rashel, trying to still her shaking. Her weeping broke his heart. Had the Master known about any of it? For the last seventeen years, Rashel had obviously remembered her illicit lover. Maybe she’d pined after him all that time, and now as he’d become a heretic she’d thought to betray the Master? The thought made Wrend indignant.

“We all go back,” he said again.

His mind told him that the Master had to know about his wife’s unfaithfulness, but his heart feared the consequence of that action. He couldn’t handle all of this. It was too much for him. But he couldn’t shake any of it—his brother’s and mother’s betrayals. This test. The possibility that he could become god.

If it happened, he would do things right. He wouldn’t create situations such as this, when the hearts of his children would ache, and those who believed differently would die. He would be better than the Master.

The thought shamed him. He couldn’t think like that. The Master was god, his will was law. Wrend had to obey with humility.

Did that mean he could try to delay the eventual choosing between him and Teirn? Or was that, too, trying to thwart the Master’s will?

“It’s done, demigod Wrend.”

Wrend opened his eyes with a start, not realizing that he’d closed them. The paladins had returned, and he hadn’t heard them gathering around. The front-most one, in a red mask, had spoken to him. He held a bloody sword, and his eyes were as hollow and empty as ever.

“It’s done?” Wrend said.

The paladin nodded. “Yes. They’re all dead.”

Wrend did not respond. He looked around, at the paladins, his brother, and his mother—who still sobbed into his chest. Then he steeled his heart and released Rashel. He turned to the body of the leader and drew his sacrificial knife. He would use it to remove the head.

“Very well,” he said. “Then we can leave this place.”

Even so, he knew the place would never leave him.

Only when he next encountered Leenda, just a few hours later, could he focus his thoughts on something else.

Chapter 66: Parting and joining

When it’s hard to know what to do, you wish for a guide, for someone who can open up the gates of the future and show you the unforeseen results of your action. When such a time is upon you, do not stay frozen in indecision. Make the best choice you can. Whatever you learn from the experience, remember it. Keep it for later use.

-Krack

As Krack descended onto the dirt road about five miles north of the caravan, small animals scattered away: prairie dogs, deer, lizards. A cloud of dust rose from his paws as he landed. Leenda slid from his shoulders to the ground. She sneezed from the goat-gutted dust, and squinted up at him as he stood on his hind legs and gave her a long look. His head blocked the sun, giving him a bright halo. The sky was clear and deep. A slight wind blew.

“When will you come to the lair?” he said.

She shrugged. “When this is over.”

When she’d exhausted all possibilities for convincing Wrend to go with her.

“I don’t plan on going anywhere. You’re welcome to come. We can find you a draegon body.”

She smiled, unsure if he gave the invitation out of sheer obligation. Only a few hours before, he’d said he didn’t want her to come with him.

“Thank you.”

He spread his wings wide and lifted into the air. The wind blew more dust around her. It swirled, and she held her breath as he banked eastward. He wouldn’t fly far. Draegons were simply too huge, so the flying generally only lasted a few miles. But he certainly wanted to get away fast.

He soared away from the road toward the nearest hills. When he’d disappeared over them, she turned south and started to walk along the road. With Ichor, she could’ve moved at a decent clip, but she wanted to reserve that for an emergency; anything could happen when she reached the caravan. It would’ve been good to have some fresh vegetables to harvest some Spirit Ichor, but those had been hard to come by in recent weeks. So she settled for harvesting the Flux from her walking.

Of course, the prickly pear cacti she walked past bore fruit. Maybe eating that would produce Spirit Ichor. She only thought about it for a moment before rejecting the idea. She simply didn’t want to expend the effort to harvest the fruit. She just wanted to walk, to try and get Krack out of her mind.

She found the land beautiful in a stark way. The red dirt stretched in every direction, but prickly pear cacti, blossoming red, spotted the land. Saguaro cacti, as tall as trees and in the distance looking like men standing with their arms raised up, grew in clumps, as if they held little meetings to determine what they should do with their afternoon. Yellow mule’s ears and stemless woollybase nestled at the bottom of the cacti, swaying in the gentle spring wind. Rocks, ranging from huge boulders to small stones, peppered the landscape with dirty white, burnt red, and smoky black.

As she walked further away from where Krack had left her, more animals appeared. Deer grazed in the distance. Prairie dogs chattered from the side of the road. Goldfinches twittered and played, and hawks soared above it all, circling in the air, periodically diving for some unseen prey.

Leenda enjoyed it—as much as she could, anyway. She also kept waiting—hoping—for Krack to come back. But he never did.

She walked through the afternoon and into early evening, until the sun angled low in the west, casting long shadows over the road and making the rocks practically glow.

Just as she began to wonder if Krack had let her down too soon, she crested a hill. The caravan spread out before her, just outside of a town. Workers erected tents, and wagons clustered near them. People moved about, hurrying to get camp set up for the night.

But something was missing. It only took her a moment to realize what.

The troops. The paladins. All twenty thousand of them. Usually they lined up on the fringes of the wives and demigods and all their priests and serving girls, but she couldn’t see them anywhere. They simply weren’t around. And Athanaric, who usually moved among the workers, didn’t loom over anyone. He’d taken the troops somewhere. Had he taken Wrend with him?

Frowning, she sat on a rock next to the road and watched the camp go up. She’d avoided thinking of what she would do upon reaching the camp, and now she really had no idea. So she just sat there on the side of the road, hoping no one came by. She made and discarded a dozen plans, finding she simply didn’t have the heart for any of them, and concluding that coming here had probably been a bad idea in the first place.

But all of her thinking didn’t matter, anyway, because just as the sun touched the western horizon, horses rode up the road behind her. She turned to watch them ascend the hill.

Three horses came up at a trot. Behind them, rows and columns of paladins jogged. She couldn’t make out the identity of the riders, for the sun had already descended far enough that it cast that side of the hill in shadows and turned the riders into black shapes. So, she stood to face them. She waited on the side of the road and tapped her discernment.

Near the top of the hill, perhaps thirty feet away from her, they rose into the sunlight, and Leenda caught her breath. Wrend rode at their front, his back straight and his face forward, consumed in thought. He didn’t look to either side, and didn’t notice her. She cringed at the mangled head hanging by a rope from the back of his saddle and bouncing up and down with the horse’s trot. Teirn and Rashel rode behind him, both looking like they’d had the worst day of their lives.

“Wrend!” she called, too excited to worry about the others around.

He rode past her. Teirn gave her a curious look, but said nothing. Rashel’s eyes widened with recognition.

“Wrend!” she called again.

Maybe he’d seen her, and chosen to ignore her. The thought made her heart flutter. Had he already decided to reject her?

So it seemed, for he continued riding.

“Wrend!”

This time it was Rashel who called his name, with such sharpness that finally he looked back at her as she pulled up on her reins and stopped her horse. Teirn did the same.

“What?” he said. Leenda had never heard him use such a harsh tone.

Rashel pointed at Leenda, and Wrend’s eyes followed. Only then, already ten yards past Leenda, did he stop. He turned his horse around and rode up to her, frowning and shaking his head. The paladins stopped on the road and stood at attention, in their straight rows and columns. One or two looked at her.

“Leenda?” Wrend said.

She couldn’t read the emotions in his voice, but thought she heard relief there. She nodded.

“I’ve come for you.” She had no idea what else to say. “Come away with me.”

He shook his head and glanced down at the severed head.