The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 25
"Is he swimming?" Blays said.
"He's…" Dante trailed off: for Kelen was now doing something with the soma, blue fairy-lights spinning slowly about him, and it was clear that whatever it was that he was doing, Dante didn't have the faintest idea what it was.
So he stopped talking and watched. Kelen still looked to be slowing down, but the rate was much more gradual. After a few seconds of tracking his progress, Dante thought he'd make it.
A few more after that, though, it was obvious that while he might have the distance, his trajectory was off. He was going to sail to the left of it. Kelen was already reacting to this, though, tossing out more soma. The blue light blinked in agitation, then went out. Kelen struggled his limbs—he was too far away now for Dante to see exactly what he was doing—and shot out a new round of soma.
The blue light was a lot more excited than it had been before, zagging around on Kelen's left side. He kept sailing straight forward. One of the fairy-lights blazed bright and popped. All at once, nearly all of the others went out too, as if a great gust of wind had just blown open the shutters behind an altar full of candles, snuffing them. As the last of them died away, Kelen tumbled toward his right.
He had just enough time to straighten himself out before he half landed, half crashed into the island-like spur of rock. Which Dante suddenly realized was actually an island. He had no clue if all of Pholos was like this, but the part they were in was mostly nothing but empty space.
And they were, apparently, intending to sail across it.
Kelen gathered himself and started fussing with the onas. Dante glanced back at the rock wall where the portal had been. He thought some of the lights upon it were twinkling brighter than before, but he couldn't be sure.
After a couple of very long minutes, Kelen shoved the onas off from the island. It drifted forward, wobbling, then slowly veered to the side. It rolled to its left, or perhaps more accurately to port, threatening to capsize—if such a thing was possible—yet Kelen was able to wrestle it back out to level. After a little more fussing about, he straightened course, making way for the platform.
Red light fell across the ground in front of Dante. Behind them, a small circle of neuma rippled on the stone wall, growing wider before his eyes.
He cupped his hands to his mouth. "Hurry! They're opening the portal!"
His voice seemed to die on the air. Kelen gave no sign of having heard him. Dante pointed his finger skyward and shot forth a flare of ether. Kelen didn't acknowledge it, but he must have seen it.
Blays drew the rod from his belt. "If they start coming through that thing, what's our move? Stand and fight?"
"What's the alternative?" Dante gathered the shadows. "Fling ourselves into the abyss?"
"Well, yes. Exactly that."
Dante couldn't decide if that was a real option or a completely insane one. He backed a step closer to the ledge. Soma glowed around the onas; it was gathering speed. The circle of neuma on the wall was now an arm's length across.
As Kelen neared, he didn't slow down. Instead, he waved his arms to his left. "Move!"
Dante walked briskly across the platform until Kelen waved his hands above his head for them to stop. The circle of neuma grew like a cancer, already twelve feet in diameter. Kelen carried straight on, a course that would bring him crashing into the platform fifty feet to their left—yet as he made his approach, he slewed the onas hard to port. The vessel banked with far more agility than it had shown to that point.
Kelen leveled it out, running it parallel to the ledge of rock from just two feet away. "Get ready to jump!"
When it came within twenty feet of them, Dante dropped into a light jog. The portal was still expanding, nearing completion. Gladdic traipsed at the rear and was the first to be overtaken by the onas. He turned toward the ledge and leaped. Kelen stood, snatching at Gladdic's robes and pulling him down into the vessel. Blays was next: he leaned over the edge, and rather than jumping, gently collapsed into the onas in a way that required far more agility than it looked.
It swept alongside Dante. He threw himself toward it—forgetting that he was lighter on his feet than he was used to. He passed high over the vessel, kicking his feet as if that might somehow slow him down. Blays had just gotten settled, and sprung upwards, grabbing the heel of Dante's boot while snagging his own toes on the gunwale. Gladdic fell forward, clinging to Blays' leg. Blays contracted his body, drawing Dante down with him into the onas.
"Did we make it?" Blays said. "I can't—"
They were all tossed to the side as Kelen heaved the vessel about. Soma flickered in their wake. Dante righted himself and turned around. The portal had expanded to its full size, its red light glaring across the platform. Yet it was several more seconds before the first of the Hypatians spilled through it, falling into defensive crouches, hands wreathed in blue. They glanced about themselves, but Kelen had extinguished the soma, and the onas glided silently through the darkness.
The Hypatians looked around in confusion, calling out questions to each other, falling into quick arguments. At last one of the enemy spotted the onas and called out angrily, prompting a blue volley from the Hypatian sorcerers. They were distant enough that Dante, Gladdic, and Kelen were able to bat it down before it grew close enough to threaten them, though, and the Hypatians' second volley fared even worse. There wasn't a third.
The onas creaked softly as it sailed through the nonexistent waters. They were nearing a house-sized boulder hanging in the nothing like something in the Mists and Kelen steered the onas away from it by leaning on a long stick jutting up from the bow.
"Are we safe yet?" Blays said.
"There is no safety in Pholos," Kelen said. "Though this may be the most safe we will be while we're here. Still, be on the watch for the lurkers."
"What do they look like?"
"You will know them when you see them."
"Now that you've confirmed we've reached Pholos," Dante said, "do you mind finally telling us what the hell we're doing here?"
Kelen smiled thinly. "Killing a god."
The three outlanders looked at each other.
"You're telling us there's a god here?" Blays said. "And that we're going to…ah…kill it?"
"That's why I didn't tell you earlier. If you knew what we had to do here, you would have walked away from Olastar and not looked back."
"Wrong," Dante said. "As insane as it would have sounded—as it does sound—we wouldn't have had any choice but to press on."
Kelen shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe you would have convinced yourself that it would suddenly be a better option to go try something else. More important than that, though, I didn't bother to tell you about Pholos because I never thought we'd make it this far."
Dante peered into the distance, but he couldn't see what lay ahead of them other than rocks and more darkness. "So how are we going to kill him?"
"I wouldn't know that. You're the ones who've fought gods before, not me."
"Fighting a god is a much different thing than killing one."
"You're not listening to me. I haven't done either of those things. Any advice I tried to give you would be worse than the advice you could give yourself."
"I have a suggestion," Blays said. "I get out my spear, and then I stab him with it."
"Let us pray it is that simple," Gladdic said.
"We're talking about killing a god. Are you sure we should be praying about this?"
"The spear could be enough," Dante said. "It was enough to slay the White Lich, after all. But why is there even a god here in the first place?"
Kelen motioned to their dim surroundings, the hunks of rock suspended in midair. "My world—my former world—is not a natural one. Its outer shell is little more than a reflection of the many lands it links to. Its interior is bent and warped against the laws of creation in ways that allow the portals to exist and for new ones to be created. Breaking the laws of the gods requires the power of a god. The Chained God."
"If it's that unnatural, why create it in the first place?"
"Because once the gods began to create the other worlds—even the afterlifes—they discovered only they had the power to travel and move things between these places, and it was painful and dangerous for them to try. Everyone else—and everything else—was stuck where they were. To allow for safe movement from one place to another, they had to create Olastar."
"But then they discovered that the creation of Olastar required them to sacrifice one of themselves."
"Then you know the story."
"Not at all. That's just the logic that follows from what you've told us."
Kelen nodded. "That is just what happened. At least, that is what our stories tell us, if we really think we can remember the events of a time so distant."
"Who was chosen?" Dante said. "And how did they choose him?"
"When the gods made Olastar, they quickly discovered it was unstable. They tried everything they could to stop it from collapsing. Nothing worked. They discussed letting it fall apart, and walking away from their great plans, but they couldn't bear to let go of what they were building. In the end, after everything else was exhausted, they found themselves staring at the cold truth: the only thing with the power to keep Olastar intact was one of them.
"At first, they tried to get one of their own to volunteer. But they all understood the cost—if anything, they underestimated it. Only one choice remained to them. The only question was who would be sacrificed. So they came together and drew lots. There are two different stories about what happened next. The first is that the lots were fair. You can guess the second version of the story."
"I'd still rather hear it," Dante said.
"I know," Kelen said, though with a slight smile. "In the second story, obviously the lots were rigged. Taim wasn't about to let himself be sacrificed by a stroke of bad luck, and none of the others were any keener about it. I've got deep doubts that we can know the real story, given how much of the maneuvering was in secret. Whatever the truth of the matter, it's said that there was once a god by the name of Wessen. Wessen was the half-brother of Gashen, but while Wessen's mother was carrying him, she refused to repay the debt she owed to one of the Old Spirits, who then cursed her for it. Gashen had been born healthy and strong, but when Wessen was born, it was obvious that something was wrong with him."
The onas had been passing through a region of open air, but it now approached a field of scattered stones. Most were quite a bit smaller than the ones they'd been seeing previously, but they were still more than large enough to hull the onas—Dante wondered vaguely if that would even make it "sink"—and some of them were drifting about, threatening to cross paths with them.
Kelen paused to thread the ship through the thickest part of the rockstorm. As they passed a bed-sized stone, Dante thought he saw something move across its surface. But when he lit it with a bit of ether, there was nothing there.
"Wessen was born small and sickly," Kelen went on once they were through the worst of it. "And unhappy. He didn't talk much. He gave few signs of what he wanted to claim as his realms when he came of age. Some feared he would become the lord of plagues and sickness, or of madmen and malcontents. There were rumors he performed strange experiments on animals, trying to warp them into grotesque, mixed-up shapes, so that he could release them into the world and make it as ugly for everyone else to look at as it did to him.
"None of those fears came to pass. Instead, when the day of his age came, Wessen thought for a moment, and then announced that he would like to be the lord of poetry, and of wandering alone in the wilderness, and of the things carried on the wind. This was unusual—gods, as you well know, are expected to claim loftier domains, like Phannon and the sea, or Gashen and war—but everyone was relieved enough that they had no objections.
"Things became much better after that. Not perfectly quiet; if there's one thing the gods are powerless to stop, it's their own bickering and scheming. But the times were normal enough. Still, Wessen never truly became one of them."
"That's why they sacrificed him?" Blays said. "Because he was a weirdo?"
Kelen snorted. "They might have chosen him anyway, for that very reason. But that wasn't the reason. Supposedly Carvahal's plan was to arrange for Taim to draw the bad lot and then install Gashen as the new head of the Celeset. He probably also had a plan within that plan to then blame his own crimes on Gashen and take over for himself. But this is all rumor and speculation.
"What actually happened—or what is said to have happened—would have been shameful even if it had been committed by a lowly mortal. Silidus had taken notice of Wessen. Her moods, like the moon she rules, go through phases, and she decided that Wessen was much more interesting and intelligent than they had thought of him, a sensitive being who surely kept special insights secret to himself. And she decided that even if they were secret, he still might share them, if only someone finally befriended him."
"Once this idea took root in her head, she would sometimes join him on his walks through the wilderness. She asked him questions. About himself and what he thought about things. The kinds of questions he hadn't been asked out of kindness since he'd been a child. Wessen enjoyed her company, and soon spoke more and more openly. Silidus was right: he did have insights, things that none of the others knew. Unfortunately, none of those insights are known to us, so don't bother to ask.
"Unfortunately, also, for Wessen, Simm was watching them. And Simm had been lusting after Silidus for a long time."
"Simm lusts after everyone," Blays said.
Kelen shrugged one shoulder. "Do men like that care? Silidus was supposed to be his. So he saw her and Wessen together and he thought they were becoming romantically involved. He was wrong—Silidus was secretly seeing someone else entirely—but the thought of it consumed him. When it came time to set the lots, Carvahal put his scheme in place, but he didn't have any idea that Simm had a scheme of his own.
"They drew their lots. Wessen chose, but of course there was no choice at all. He was doomed to become the Binder of Pholos. Sensitive as he was to the hidden ways of things, he tell that something was off, and he insisted that he'd been cheated. He argued with such passion that it's said that several of the gods believed him. Not that it mattered one bit—no one was going to take up his cause when it meant they'd have to do the whole thing over and there was a chance they might be sacrificed instead.
"When words failed to convince them, and they came for him, he fought back. And he fought with such wildness and spirit that it finally erased all doubts that he wasn't truly one of them. But there was only one of him. They subdued him, and they brought him here, to Pholos, where they bound him so that his strength could be employed to stop Pholos from wrenching itself apart. That was ages ago. Before your own world even existed. He's served here ever since, suffering for it all the while."
"Suffering?" Blays said. "From being alone all this time? Or from getting wrenched around?"
"Both, and more. Like I told you, the structure of Olastar is unnatural. Pholos most of all."
Blays tipped back his head at the void surrounding them. "Now that you mention it, sailing across empty nothing is a little strange."
"The same warping of the world that allows for the portals creates cracks in its core. The cracks aren't stable. They're getting bigger every moment. As they grow, pollutants seep through them. Especially from the Becoming. Something about how this matter enters Pholos, through these cracks, corrupts it, and as it builds and builds, it starts to dissolve the fibers of this place. If nothing was done, the fabric would eventually fly apart, and all of Wessen's strength could do nothing to stop it. Instead, it must be cleansed."
The onas was veering a little off course and Kelen exerted some soma to push it back in the right direction. As he spent his sorcery, Dante tried to watch how he did it, ever mindful of the possibility of the position they'd be left in if anything happened to their guide, but it was like Kelen was drawing it out of thin air.
"That's what I was looking for when we first stepped through. The arad. The debris," Kelen said. "Once there's more than a little of it, the cleansing can come at any time. But it always comes eventually."
"But you believe we have time to reach Wessen before the next one," Gladdic said.
"We should have plenty of time—if nothing slows us down on the way."
Dante stared at another floating rock as they slipped past it. "What exactly is this cleansing? If we happen to get caught in it, how do we survive?"
"We don't. That's the other reason they needed a god in the core: a god is the only thing capable of surviving the storm. As to what it is, it's both neuma and soma. A terrible surge of both that froths across Pholos and doesn't stop until all of the arad has been pulverized. Even after the worst of the storm is over, it leaves a storm of burning rocks in its wake that have been churned up by the blast of sorcery." He turned around to give them a significant look. "Here's one thing to help you understand Gothon. When the arad is pulverized, it leaves behind a residue. That residue is the key ingredient in dalax."
"That explains a few things about why the doorways to Pholos are so heavily guarded!"
"And coveted. Obviously places that can't produce their own dalax have to buy it from those who can. There are more than a few suppliers, so the price is rarely able to climb beyond all reason, but it can happen. We have fewer wars than your world. But when we do have one, it's usually over control of a source of the dalax."
"Why can't people without a doorway use the wildways to reach Pholos and gather the residue?"
"They can try. But it's a near death sentence for anyone who isn't a sorcerer. Whoever you send can only bring back as much as they can carry, too. Trying to use pack animals just gets you killed, they make too much noise. It's something that's possible, but the results are so poor it would be the end of your kingdom if you had to rely on it."
"It's not possible to create new doorways between Gothon and Pholos, is it?"
