The Godspeaker Trilogy (39 page)

As was customary, it rained offerings as they proceeded through the city’s districts. Such devotion pleased her, but Vortka complained his novices took far too long to clear the pavestones of the amulets and coins thrown before her. Nor did he approve that she made certain each journey to public sacrifice took them through the Traders district, past that villa once owned by Abajai and Yagji. It had long since been sold, someone else owned it now, the door was repainted, not blue but red.

She hoped Yagji knew that, screaming in hell. Red was the color he disliked most.

They reached the godtheater, it was crowded and hushed. She sat on her scorpion throne and hid her pain in her throat. Zandakar and the other one stood behind her, one on each side. Vortka sacrificed a bull-calf, and a black lamb, and a cockerel, and a dove. She drank the steaming blood from a golden chalice, so did Vortka, so did Zandakar, and so did Dmitrak, the last.

“Behold your Empress, the Empress of Mijak!” cried Vortka. “Behold godtouched Hekat, precious in the god’s eye!”

Twelve seasons a high godspeaker, and he had borrowed nothing from Nagarak. He ruled the godhouse not with terror, but with a smile. It was not her way, it was not her godhouse. That was Vortka, if the god disliked it the god would long ago have thrown him down.

He turned and nodded, his face not beautiful anymore, twelve seasons as high godspeaker had seasoned him out of beauty. Deep lines marred him, she was sorry for that. Once he had been a pleasure to behold.

His pronouncement was her signal. She stood and stripped down to her tunic, no longer the Empress but Hekat warleader, the god’s knife-dancer, beautiful and precious, the doom of Bajadek and his son. She heard the crowd suck in its waiting breath, she felt its righteous passion as flames on her skin.

Vortka struck his godbell. It was time.

She exhaled sharply, willing her hurting body to obey her, willing the hotas to flow without reluctance. The godforsaken criminal selected to die by her hand was brought before the platform by two of Vortka’s godspeakers. A man this time, but she had killed women and children too. Some were slaves, and some were not. All were wicked sinners, they deserved to die. She had started the practice of public execution four godmoons after Raklion’s burning.

I am the Empress, with the god’s power of life and death in my hand. At every godtheater sacrifice let the people see it. Let them be reminded. Let them know who I am.

The prisoner was weeping, he knew he was doomed. His godbraids were cut off, he did not need them. “The god is in me,” she told him, coldly. “You are judged, I am your smiting.”

She did not know his sin. She never knew, she never asked, that was the god’s business, hers was death. She unsheathed her snakeblade and danced to him lightly, on the balls of her unshod feet. There was pain, she ignored it, she gave it to the god.

As her snakeblade plunged into the sinner’s heart, as she looked in his pale eyes to watch his godspark blow out, she saw his face change, ripple and transform. The man she killed was the man from the village; the man who had sired her and sold her to the Traders.

He fell slain before her, he slid from her knife. She stood over his body, unable to move.

It is a sign. I knew a sign would be given. The god has spoken. The past is dead, with my snakeblade I killed it. The future is now, and the god wants the world.

“Hekat?” said Vortka, coming to her side as the crowd praised the Empress, and Zandakar, and Dmitrak, as it gave thanks to the god in its wrathful smiting. “Hekat, is something wrong?”

She turned to him, smiling. “No. Vortka, I must swim in the godpool, I must speak to the god. The time has come to make Zandakar its hammer. I must forge the crystal weapon, the god will tell me how.”

He drew back from her as though her words were a snakeblade, pricking his skin. “Hekat! You are certain ?”

She rolled her eyes. “Tcha, stupid Vortka. When was I not?”

When the godmoon and his wife stood on top of the sky, she swam in the godpool, the god whispered in her heart. Afterwards, Vortka unburied the large red crystal from the godhouse’s shrine garden, where it had slept safely for so long. She carried it with her down to the palace, then summoned a slave.

“Go to the Artisan district. Tell the best goldworker in Et-Raklion to expect a visit from the Empress.”

Palace slaves now wore gold-stitched tunics, their scarlet slave-braids were bound in gold wire. The whole city knew them, they were never disobeyed. Even godspeakers in the quiet time knew to leave them alone.

The god would have the artisan it required.

While she waited for the slave’s return, she prepared the heavy red crystal, picked it free of rotted goathide, cleaned it of old blood and crusted dirt and set it on the floor before her. Then she took the scorpion amulet from round her neck, unthreaded it from its leather thong and balanced it upon the dull red stone.

The amulet rippled. The crystal glowed. It fractured into myriad pieces, chunks and shards no bigger than a large plum, no smaller than a peach stone.

“Tcha!” she said softly, pleased. She rethreaded the stone scorpion and looped it over her head, gathered up the chunks of crystal, placed them carefully in a leather satchel, and wrapped herself in a woollen cloak.

The slave returned, it led her on foot to the Artisan district and a goldworker so overcome he could barely speak. He asked no questions.

That was wise.

“Empress, exalted, there is some risk,” he warned her once the slave was gone, as they stood alone in his workshop surrounded by lumps of gold and copper, crucibles, metal tools, a fierce hot fire. He was an old man, bent almost in half like a blighted sapling, scarred over and over with burns and cuts. “Working with gold is no simple business, you might be hurt. I could—”

“No,” she said. The god had been clear, the gold wire for the weapon must be made by its Empress, the god’s weapon for Zandakar must spring from her hand. “Begin.”

With the artisan guiding her she melted the gold and copper together in the exact amounts he told her, she rolled it and pulled it, sweating, cursing, she transformed it into strong wire for the god’s smiting hammer. Newsun broke beyond the workshop windows, she ignored it, she toiled for the god and so did the artisan. She was burned, she was cut, she ignored her small pains and her large ones. The artisan’s assistant brought ale and roast meat, she ate without tasting, the god was in her, whipping her on.

Time passed and passed, she did not heed it. When the wire at last was ready, coiled like a thin snake, she tipped the lumps of red crystal onto the workbench. “The crystals and the wire must fashion together.” She smoothed burned fingers over her left hand and up her arm. “Into a glove that will fit a man’s arm from fingertips to elbow: Do you understand me?”

The artisan frowned. “A glove made of gold wire and lumps of crystal?”

The god had shown her in the godpool but she was an ignorant slave-girl again, she did not have the words. She seized a lump of charcoal and scribbled on the bench, drew for him the picture the god had seared into her mind.

“There! That is what I must make, that is the god’s desiring.”

He gaped. “The god , Empress?”

“Are you deaf?” she demanded, and bared her teeth at him. “Yes, the god! Open your ears!”

“Forgive me, Empress,” he croaked, cringing. “I think this is possible. Let us begin.”

With his help, she created the weapon, a long woven glove crafted from gold wire and crystal, a gift for Zandakar from the god. Soft leather straps stitched there, and there, so it might be fastened securely to his arm. When the weapon was finished she slipped her hand inside it. Too large for her, it would be perfect for Zandakar, born the god’s hammer in the world. The red crystals shone with a dull, sleepy light, waiting for her son to wake their fury.

Only as she slipped off the weapon did Hekat realize the depth of her exhaustion, feel once more her deep-seated pain. The artisan could hardly stand, he clutched at the workbench and groaned.

“You have pleased me,” she told him. “You have pleased the god.”

The artisan thudded hard to the floor, water dribbling from his eyes. “Empress! To serve you, to serve the god, I am a fortunate man!”

She nodded. “Yes. You are.”

He gave her a soft bag for the gold-and-crystal weapon, she put that bag into her satchel and left him alive. Outside his workshop it was once again night, the quiet time. How many highsuns had passed since she came here? She was uncertain. It might be four. Slowly, painfully, she walked back to the palace, unseen by the godspeakers in the god’s eye.

She went straight to Zandakar’s chamber and slipped inside. Breathing softly she stood by his bedside and watched him sleep, as she had watched him sleep when he was a small boy, riding with the warhost throughout all of Mijak, taming its cities, accepting their oaths.

In those days you were a warlord, my son. Your life would be simpler if that were still true. But you are the god’s slave, as much as I. The god has its desires, and we must obey them. You were not born to be warlord, you were born the god’s hammer . . . and the time has come to smite in its name.

Aieee, god. He was so beautiful, he made her heart ache. She could watch him forever, she would never grow tired. Now he was a man she could see Vortka in him, he was as old today as his father had been when a goatslut and a potsmith spoke together for the first time, in the slave pen of a city whose name had long since blown away like smoke.

You must see my son, god. You must see Zandakar in your eye. He will smite for you, I have raised him in that purpose. Do not abuse him. Do not shatter him in your wrath.

Zandakar sighed and shifted, he opened his eyes. “Yuma?” He sat up. “Aieee, Yuma. Where have you been?”

“About the god’s business,” she told him, and hid her aching heart. “Do not ask stupid questions.” She tossed the weapon in its leather satchel onto his bed. “Dress, Zandakar, then take that to Vortka in the godhouse. Do not open it until he says you may. He will tell you what you need to know.”

W
hen Zandakar entered the godhouse, just before newsun, a godspeaker took him straight to the Sacrifice chamber.

“High godspeaker,” he said, wary, as the door closed behind him. “I am come to you at the Empress’s command.”

Vortka nodded. He was dressed in nothing but a loincloth and his scorpion pectoral, lean and weathered by his service to the god. His sacrifice knife lay on the altar before him. To one side, in their pens, the waiting sacrifices panted. “And by the god’s desire,” he said calmly. “Come closer, Zandakar. We have much to discuss.”

He closed the distance between them, the leather satchel heavy in his hand. “Yuma said you will explain everything. Was she right?”

Vortka snorted. “Is she ever wrong, warlord?”

They exchanged rueful, conspiratorial smiles, and Vortka was Vortka again, even without his comfortable robes. His secret friend, since Dmitrak’s birth not a secret at all. After Yuma was made Empress his tutor was dismissed, and all the lessons that did not involve war he took with Vortka high godspeaker. They studied, they laughed, Vortka never chastised him, never froze him with cold, hard eyes, never whipped him on the scorpion wheel. There was never a time when he thought Vortka did not see him, see his true heart and know what he felt, and what to say.

The way he knew what to say the newsun I was given Didijik’s tanned and stitched hide to wear for my sin. The way he knows, with no words being spoken, that I would gladly spend my life riding across Mijak with my warriors.

And how being born the god’s hammer fills me with fear.

Vortka said, sober now, “Since Dmitrak’s birth you have known what it is the god made you for, Zandakar. You have known what you are , but not what that means . Now it is time to learn its meaning. Now it is time to become the god’s hammer.”

Zandakar felt his mouth suck dry. Not yet, not yet. I am not ready . “High godspeaker . . .”

“I know,” said Vortka. His eyes were so kind. “Zandakar, I know. But this is your purpose, would you thwart the god? Give your godspark to demons? Defy the Empress?”

He shivered. “No. I love the Empress, I worship the god. I have spent twelve seasons preparing for this moment, even though I did not know why, or what it meant. I will do what I must, it is why I was born.”

“Good boy,” said Vortka. There were tears in his eyes. “I am proud of you, Zandakar. Aieee, god. You make me proud.”

Hearing the words, his own eyes burned. He did not remember Raklion warlord clearly, the man had always been distant and so often unwell. Even on the journey through Mijak, all those dreamlike godmoons riding under the sun, knife-dancing with the warhost, seeing the god throw down the sinning cities, staring into the faces of the fallen warlords as they knelt and gave him their oaths, even though he had ridden all that time with Raklion, it was his mother the Empress he remembered best from those days. Then Raklion had died as Dmitrak was born, and after that there had been Vortka.

Would I weep if Raklion warlord said he was proud? I do not think so. We were never close.

He said, “Tell me what to do, Vortka. I do not know what I must do.”

“Put down the satchel,” said Vortka. “And hand me a black goatkid from the pen. First we will sacrifice, then I will tell you what the god desires you to know.”

Vortka’s sharp blade was merciful, he knew how to kill without causing pain. Twelve times he slaked the god’s thirst with sacred blood, twelve times the blood was collected and drunk. Zandakar struggled to control his heaving belly, hot blood on an empty stomach was a recipe for woe.

When the sacrifice was over, the last white lamb’s carcass vanished in the air, Vortka put his knife aside and washed his hands in a basin of water. His eyes were still kind, they were also sad.

I think he is like me , thought Zandakar, surprised. Vortka is sorry for the slain creatures .

He would never say so. It might anger his mother, and the god.

Vortka said, “In that leather satchel, Zandakar, is a powerful weapon. Your mother made it, the god told her how. Your mother made you, another powerful weapon. Now the god will tell you how you fit together, how together you and this weapon will be its hammer in the world.”

The god ? Not Vortka? Zandakar stared. “I—I thought you were going to—Vortka. Vortka . I cannot speak to the god . The god, it is—it is—”

“To be obeyed without question or complaint,” said Vortka, frowning. “Or have you lied to me in this sacred place? Are you the god’s willing instrument, Zandakar, or are you not?”

He went cold, he was nearly sick. “I am. I am. I was born for the god. I was born for this weapon, the god will tell me how.”

Vortka reached beneath the altar and withdrew a small godstone on a leather thong. “Put this on,” he said, handing it to him. “Your horse is waiting for you outside the godhouse. This godstone will tell you where to ride. When it is hot, you follow the god’s desire. When it is cold, you have turned the wrong way. When it drops from your neck, you have reached your destination. Leave your horse safely tied at a distance, sit on the ground beneath the sky. Take the weapon from the satchel, put it on and close your eyes. That is when the god will speak to you, Zandakar. That is when you will learn what you must know.”

Zandakar nodded. “The god told you this?”

“The god told your mother. Your mother told me.”

Aieee, the Empress. Greater even than Vortka. He nodded again, and fumbled the godstone over his head. “I am ready.” He was lying, but what else could he say?

Vortka smiled, again reading his heart. He came round the altar, he picked up the satchel. “Do not fear, Zandakar. You are the god’s chosen.”

Vortka took the satchel from his friend, the high godspeaker, and was startled when Vortka kissed both his eyes. “The god see you, hammer. When you are finished in the wilderness, do not return here. Ride straight to the godtheater. I will wait for you there.”

Zandakar nodded, he could not speak. He left the godhouse, found his horse, swung into the saddle and rode away, the godstone hot against his skin, the leather satchel heavy across his back.

He rode hot and hard for nearly four fingers, the god was in him, urging him on. He rode far from Et-Raklion, into the wilderness, until the godstone dropped from his neck. Sweating, aching, he slid from his saddle and tied his horse to a tree, staggered twenty paces, then dropped to the ground.

It was a wild place the god had brought him to, nothing living between him and the sky. He saw scattered boulders, a line of dead trees, heard the breathy chuckle of a nearby stream. No other sounds, the world was nearly silent. He opened the satchel and removed the god’s weapon, his breath caught in his throat as he saw what his mother had made. Red and gold, a thing of mystery. Fashioned by the god for brutal smiting. He emptied his lungs, it was nearly a sob, and with his heart pounding to pieces he put on the glove.

And screamed, as the wilderness around him disappeared in a flash of white heat. Lost within that terrible maelstrom, Zandakar heard a distant voice. Thought he heard a voice. Thought he heard something.

Is that me, screaming? God, am I dying? God, have I failed you? God, tell me what to do.

Unimagined power flailed inside him, blinding, boiling, burning him away. There was pleasure and pain in a dreadful confusion. Almost he panicked and surrendered his reason. Then he heard Vortka, calm, his voice kind.

I am proud of you, Zandakar. Aieee, god. You make me proud.

He stopped fighting, then, he sat inside the chaos of his power and waited for the god to come. It came at last, it drowned him with its presence, in understanding without crude words. Poured knowledge into his empty mind, remade him in a blazing heartbeat, changed him in the blink of an eye.

Clasping his arm, the weapon yearned to be free.

Despite his godgiven knowledge he felt suddenly uncertain, clumsy, like a child again, learning hotas from his mother.

Tchut tchut ! he heard her. Are you stupid? I think you are not. You can do this, Zandakar!

He imagined the power within his control. He imagined it fiery but obedient, wild but responsive to his will. Like his stallion Davilik, snapping teeth and striking hooves, aggression contained with his voice, his hands, his heels.

The power rippled, its mad outpouring slowed, slowed, slowed to a stop. He held his breath. Then, just as slowly, he felt the power pour back, pour strongly towards him, into his gold-and-crystal hand.

Pouring . . . pouring . . . pouring . . .

Complete.

He opened his eyes. There was his hammer hand, gold-and-crystal fingers outstretched, there was the god’s power balanced on his palm.

It felt as though he held the sun.

He raised his arm. He clenched his fingers. He stared at a boulder thirty paces away. He breathed out slowly, and released the god’s wrath. Hot white light streamed from his fist and struck the boulder. With a thundering boom the rock blew apart in dust and shards. Davilik whinnied, he danced and plunged. The horse was well trained, it did not run.

With the god’s mighty weapon he destroyed six more boulders, he reduced four trees to splinters, he boiled the chuckling stream in its rocky bed. The power sustained him, it fed him with life. He released it like a fireball and punched a smoking crater in the ground. Laughing, exultant, he held his fist high, his body on fire with pleasure and power. His mind was spinning, he was drunk on sadsa squeezed from the sun.

After he laughed, he wept like a child. He knew now what the hammer was, he knew now what he was. He was Zandakar, he was a stranger.

I am the god’s hammer, born to smite the world.

It was a difficult thing, to remove the god’s weapon. It felt like his own flesh, solid blood and bones of gold. Carefully he returned the glove to the satchel, carefully he threaded his arms through the satchel’s straps. He swung onto his stallion, his body still thrumming with the remnants of power. A liquid pleasure was in his loins, like the pleasure he felt when he fucked a godhouse vessel. That was not something he had looked for.

Ride to the godtheater , Vortka had told him.

Trusting the god to guide him through the wilderness, Zandakar turned his horse for the city.

He reached Et-Raklion city a bare finger before lowsun. Its streets were crowded, they were always crowded. The godspeakers saw him approaching, they cleared a path swiftly. He reached the godtheater while there was still light.

It was filled with people, warriors and citizens, and more godspeakers than were usually present. He rode in behind the huge stone platform, slid dirty and sweat-stained to the flagstoned ground. A slave took his stallion, he ran up the platform’s steps to its top.

The Empress was waiting on her scorpion throne, and Dmitrak behind it. Vortka stood at the altar, in his finest high godspeaker robes. In the dirt at the steps of the platform, a godforsaken criminal on her knees.

“Zandakar, my precious son,” said his mother. She was dressed in red silk, her wrists were laden with gold bangles, her godbells were shining and so were her eyes. “Tell me you have met the god. Tell me it has spoken to you, and you are returned from the wilderness a man reborn. Returned the god’s hammer, to smite the world.”

Dimmi was staring at him with a puzzled frown, dressed plainly, as usual. Zandakar spared his little brother the swiftest smiling glance. “Empress, I met the god. I return from the wilderness a man reborn, I am the god’s hammer born to smite the world.”

With a triumphant look at Vortka, she raised herself from the scorpion throne. Zandakar, so close to her, saw the violent pain in her eyes. She took his hand and guided him beside her, to stand and face the multitude.

“People of Mijak!” she called to the hushed, waiting crowd. “Here is Zandakar, my beautiful son. He is your warlord, he is much more than that! He is the god’s hammer, born to smite the wicked world!”

An excited buzzing from those close enough to hear her, voices repeating her words into the crowd. She let them whisper, she let them gasp, she turned to him and said, “The god spoke to you?”

He nodded. “Yes, Yuma.”

“The weapon is yours, you have made it your own?”

“Yes, Yuma.”

She laughed. “Then put it on, my beautiful son. Become the god’s hammer, your purpose in the world.”

It was like rejoining himself, sliding his hand and arm into the gold-and-crystal glove. In the sinking sunlight the weapon caught fire. The crowd cried out to see it, they pointed and sighed. He closed his eyes and called on the god, he felt its power ignite inside him, he felt his blood burst into flame. He raised his hand above his head, pointed his fingers at the sky. Blue-white fire streamed from his body, he heard the crowd shouting, he heard some screams.

“ Behold the god’s hammer, he will smite the world!”

It seemed to Zandakar his mother’s words reached him from far away, as though she stood in the godhouse and whispered on the wind. The cheering of the watching crowd seemed just as distant, not quite real.

“ Zandakar warlord! Zandakar godhammer!”

He opened his eyes. The power still poured from him, like one of Mijak’s underground rivers it flooded without ceasing into the sky, he thought it might even singe the sun.

Beside him his mother looked at him, proudly smiling. “Now kill the prisoner. Smite it with the god’s hammer, Zandakar.”

Kill the—Startled, he pulled back the blue-white fire and spoke without thinking. “Yuma? Are you certain?”

Nothing angered her more swiftly than to have her word questioned. Her lips tightened, her eyes narrowed, he felt the echoing crack of the taskmaster’s cane. As he stepped back she said, “When have you known me not to be certain?”

“Empress,” he said, and bowed his head.

Vortka came forward, he trod the stone steps down to the dirt and cut the godforsaken criminal’s bindings. She was a large, clumsy woman with small breasts and wide hips, her skin was not uniformly dark, but strangely patchy, pale and brown. She bore a scarlet godbraid, she was a slave.

Zandakar looked at the god’s gold-and-crystal hammer, he felt his power simmer, like water on the fire. All he had to do was to take a deep breath and release it. He did not.