The 13th God (The Cycle of Galand Book 8), page 28
"They all have a voice and they all have a name." Wessen hadn't spoken in some time and the sound of his words would have made Dante jump if his legs weren't dangling into nothing. "None of the others know this even though they were the ones that created them," the god went on. "But even the smallest little mouse has a name and he carries it inside him where it is safe. His name is what makes him brave—and if you think a mouse isn't brave, then you've never lived a life as a mouse.
"If you learn their name, then you can hear their voice. That's when you'll come to understand why each creature is the way they are, and it all fits together, one seamless piece even though it's made from millions and billions and trillions of tiny parts.
"Mortals have names, too. But most never learn what those names are. That's why most don't know why they are the way they are, or how to be brave, or how to fit together in one big whole. When you see one that does know their own name, though, they stand out like the sun."
During his monologue, they'd made a smooth landing on a rock and hoisted the boat onto their shoulders to bring it around to the launch on the other side.
"Do you think what he's saying is real?" Blays said.
"I think he's been tortured into madness," Dante said.
"Yeah, but if we do have secret names, he makes it sound like we ought to figure out what they are."
"Kelen did say he had learned things no other gods knew," Gladdic said musingly. "That wisdom was deemed lost forever. But perhaps Wessen is still speaking it—just in a place where no one will ever hear it."
The following jump went off without a hitch. As did the next several after that. When they were a bit past halfway to the Chained God, one of his shackles snapped tight, tugging him up and down through his stomach. He gasped, choking. After a few seconds he went silent, head lolling about as the rest of him convulsed on the chains.
Dante thought he must have fainted. But a moment after the chains went still, a soft, tremulous song floated out to meet them.
Their talismans couldn't translate any of it, but the tone made it obvious that it was a sad one. They made rockfall, lugged the onas around to their next launching point, and shoved off, drifting silently as Wessen continued to sing. Another minute later, he finished his song and nodded to himself.
"Do you think she remembers me?" he said to the darkness. "I still remember her. I remember her voice. I remember her laugh. I remember her laugh as bright as fresh-forged copper. I remember she used to make her own candles and she smelled like the beeswax she made the candles from. They were wary of her at first, the little ones, the way they're wary of everyone, but by the end, they started to let her learn their names.
"I bet that stopped the second I was gone." His tone had just shifted from sadness to venomous bitterness. "Was it worth it? To cast me into hell, and give up all the names of creation for all the rest of time? She knows what she did. What she lost. They're the ones who belong here, not me. Some day, one of the entities will find out I'm here, and I will speak to it—and it will listen. We will tear down all of it! All of it! And only when they're weeping at the ruins will we put them to their deaths."
The Chained God slumped, as if he'd just been racked by his bonds. "But I can't remember…her face. Everything else, I see it like it was yesterday. Why can't I see it? Even one last time? What has been done to me?"
The hair stood up on the back of Dante's neck. Hanging onto the onas, he and Blays crouched, readied, and launched. Their path was true and as they came to the next rock Kelen slowed them until they were hanging right beside it. He found a crag to grab hold of and brought them in.
They climbed up the rock until it flattened out enough to walk across, then carried the boat to their next launching spot. Dante and Blays bent their legs and propelled them into the void once more. They had settled into the rhythm of the process and though Kelen sometimes had to make minor adjustments to their course with his steering-stick, they were making steady progress. The impossibly huge figure of the god grew a little larger with each jump.
"What was I saying? What was I saying just a moment ago?" The god's voice, irritated and confused, became plaintive. "So much becomes black. Sometimes I fear years have gone by with no memory of them, like I've just woken from sleep so deep I can't remember any of my dreams. Maybe that's a blessing, to forget. What is there to remember here, except for pain, and tedium, and solitude?
"But I don't want to forget what came before. So much of it is already gone." Wessen shuddered on his chains. "What happens when I lose the last of it? Will I be anything more than meat on a hook? What if…I already am? What if I've already forgotten everything, including that I've forgotten, and this is no more than a few minutes back in the light before it's snuffed out again?
"That's what's happening, isn't it? I can—I can feel it. And I know that every time I return to the darkness, the darkness lasts a little longer than the time before. There will come a day when the darkness lasts so long that it becomes forever. Will I know it, when I'm having my last moments in the light? I think I will. Maybe I'll remember her face then. One last time."
After another couple of jumps, the crew of four closed to within a few hundred yards and Kelen had to stop at the next boulder to lay out a rock-hopping course that would bring them to the back of the god's head. Wessen had been quiet for several minutes but he began to sing again, the sound of it faltering in and out, like a man lying on his back in the street so drunk he doesn't even know that he's singing.
The next jump was their longest yet. By the end, they were drifting so slowly Dante didn't think they'd make it, but Kelen produced a thin rope with a hook from the bow, swung it in a circle over his head, and snagged the rock, pulling them home. When they came to the far side of the boulder, the Chained God was almost close enough to hit with a stone. Blood leaked from his lower back from the last time he'd been convulsed by his bonds, but his other wounds had already scabbed over.
They readied and leaped. Their path took them directly over a chain of neuma that penetrated Wessen's right thigh. It hummed, barely audible under the god's half-slurred singing.
"Sometimes the tedium gets even worse than the agony," Wessen said abruptly. "When the pain becomes too sharp, the mind, it goes somewhere else, becomes somewhere else. But when there is nothing, the mind becomes everything, picking and biting at itself, running in circles until it's exhausted, but still unable to stop itself, even though—because—there's nowhere else to go. And it goes on like that until you start to wish for the pain to come back so that it can take your mind away from you.
"I had almost forgotten how it felt to feel anything else. I had absolutely forgotten how good it feels to be angry, free of any self-pity." The Chained God lifted his head. "At last, I'm not alone—and I want to know how long you've been listening to me."
16
Floating through empty space, Dante and Blays swung about to look at each other. The expression on Blays' face mirrored Dante's own.
Dante bit the inside of his lip until he tasted blood. He didn't yet touch the nether. He could feel it stirring ahead of them, though.
"He knows," Dante whispered. "Be ready for the spear."
Blays nodded and ducked his head around the side of the onas, which had been blocking his view. Whatever he saw made him grimace. "What's the plan?"
"Try not to die?"
Before, the god's voice had been somewhat underwhelming. Even a little whiny at times.
Now, though, he filled it with the full force of divine command. "Stop conspiring and answer me!"
The words struck Dante's head like a mallet, dizzying him. He felt compelled to respond. "Ah…a few minutes, I suppose."
"By what right do you have to listen to me?"
"It wasn't really intentional," Blays said. "Don't worry, we won't tell anyone what you said."
The god was silent for a few moments. "You're not from this world. You are from Rale?"
Blays glanced at Dante, who shrugged. "Born and raised!" Blays said.
"Just one minute. How are you approaching me without an onas?"
"We have an onas."
"No you don't. I don't feel any—" Wessen threw back his head. "You are sneaking up on me somehow. I don't like this!"
"The trip was further than we expected," Dante said. "Only one of us knows how to wield the soma, and his powers became exhausted. We had to propel our vessel by other means."
"These sound like lies to me. And why are you approaching from my back? Come around where I can see you and look into your eyes."
There had been enough rocks to leap to where they were, but there weren't enough encircling the god for them to push themselves around to his front, and Dante found himself immediately ensnared by his own lies.
"That would be difficult," he said. "As I said, our sorcerer has—"
"No, it should be all right," Kelen said breezily. "I've been resting for hours now. I should have recovered more than enough of my powers to grant such a request."
Dante shrugged and pulled himself into the stern. Blays did the same and slapped the side of the onas. Kelen called to the soma and blue fairy-lights danced around them as the vessel lurched forward. After all of the stop-and-go rock-hopping they'd been up to before this, it felt like they were going violently fast.
The god kept his head hung as they circled around it, his long dark hair concealing his face. Only when Kelen cut the soma and they drifted to a stop directly in front of him—though still keeping their distance—did he lift his chin and shake the hair from his eyes.
His face was as gaunt as a dungeon captive's. His nose was narrow and sharp and there was something cruel to the shape of his lips. His eyes were deep-set and the irises were almost the same color as the pupils, a semi-metallic slate gray. His gaze was feverish and his eyes flickered with sporadic lights that didn't seem to be reflections, but coming from within.
"Humans." His voice bore a mild wonder. "I only got to look on you a few times after we created you. I never thought your kind would survive this long."
"My understanding is there have been at least a couple times when we almost didn't," Dante said, pointedly avoiding the fact that this was itself one of those times.
"You're mortals—and you're not surprised to look upon me?"
"In truth, we didn't know you existed until earlier today," Blays said. "And while we may be mortals, we happen to be extremely well-traveled ones. We recently had dealings with more than a few of your peers."
"Others. The others. You've seen the others."
"I can't recall offhand whether we spoke with every single one of them, but—"
"How are they?" The metallic shine of Wessen's eyes had dulled away, almost as if he'd suddenly gone blind. Yet he was staring at Blays with intense hunger.
"As it turns out, they vary tremendously. Some were quite kind, considering they could have smited us if they'd cared to. But others were real pricks."
"Are they all still alive?"
"Yep. Well, twelve of them are. I suppose I don't know how many there used to be."
"That would be all of them. All who stayed in the Realm, at least." The god continued to stare. Something churned within the dullness of his eyes. For an instant, it sharpened into a cohesive image—figures that Dante knew at once were gods, seated around a table heavy with drink and food, singing and laughing—and then it dispersed. "What business would you have with figures such as them?"
Blays hooked his thumb into his belt, which was usually a sign that he was deciding between telling the truth and spinning up a comically big-balled lie. "Well, while we were off battling our worst foe in a foreign land that was in the middle of a civil war, some giant idiot broke the seal on the sepulcher that had been imprisoning an evil and insanely powerful lich. Who very quickly built up a huge army of the undead and started slaughtering everyone in sight to build up even more undead.
"This was all somewhat alarming, so we tried to put a stop to it, but the 'insanely powerful lich' part of the deal proved to be something of a stumbling block. By the time he overran another kingdom and was talking about turning the entire world into his undead slaves, we realized things were pretty serious. So we found a way to travel to the realm of the gods in search of the only weapon powerful enough to kill the lich. Annoyingly, they didn't want to give us the weapon, even though by tradition they were supposed to let us try to win it. We tried to bargain for it, but that got sabotaged. So we stole it instead.
"Needless to say, that was an unpopular decision among some of them—especially the fellow we stole it from—and a lot of troubles ensued from there. In the end, though, they weren't quite clever enough to stop us—and we, er, might have had some help from some of the others—and we got away, spear in hand. A spear that was then used to kill the lich. So you could say our business with the gods was kind of complicated."
"That is quite the story," Wessen murmured. "Do you still have this mighty weapon? Or did you give it back?"
Blays shrugged. "Well, we still have some other business to wrap up, so we haven't had time to return it just yet—"
"You've been careful not to tell me what you're doing here yet. But you just did, didn't you? They gave you the spear—and they sent you here to kill me!"
He lunged forward on his chains. They ripped into him, drawing blood from a dozen points, but his face was wrenched with frenzy. A gigantic axe-blade-shaped wedge of nether appeared before his face. He lobbed it skyward and swung it straight down at them.
Dante yelled out and scrambled for the nether that he'd been keeping close all the while. White light glared from Gladdic's hand and blue light from Kelen's. They launched all they had within blinks of each other, the three powers shooting through the darkness. They rammed into the axe-head, punching holes in it, knocking chunks from it, but much remained, and Wessen reshaped it mid-flight, shrinking and smoothing it back into a deadly wedge.
Dante grabbed more nether. They would have just enough time to get off a second burst. He wasn't sure it would be enough. The Chained God packed together another attack, identical to the first, and threw it toward them.
Light seared from behind him. The onas rocked as Blays jumped into the prow, the Spear of Stars shining and holy in his hands.
"Stop this madness!" he shouted. "The gods weren't the ones who sent us here!"
The second wave of nether, ether, and soma plowed into the first of Wessen's attacks just twenty feet in front of the onas. A battered hunk of nether emerged from the cloud of sparks set off by the clash, still speeding toward them. Blays lowered the head of the spear and stabbed it into the lump of shadows. They burst apart with a purple flash, flying away from the spear but then jerking to a halt and reversing course as they were sucked back into it.
Across from them, the god's dull eyes, eyes like those of a statue, flashed with an image of a mound of corpses burning in fire. Blays flicked the tip of the spear and shot forth a javelin of the same nether the weapon had just absorbed. It streaked past the god's second attack toward his face.
Dante was reasonably sure the Spear of Stars could contend with the second axe-head of nether Wessen had thrown at them, along with the third one he was just now putting together, but he wasn't going to take any chances with a god. He rattled off a salvo of nether at the incoming wedge, chipping away at it. As Blays drove the spear into it, absorbing it, the javelin he'd launched struck Wessen in the face—he hadn't even bothered to try to block it. It opened a scratch in the god's cheek that welled with a single drop of blood.
Blays twirled the spear and slung the nether back at their foe. "Wessen! Come back to your senses! Wessen!"
The god had just thrown his third attack. He blinked. The latest batch of shadows he'd conjured stopped expanding, hanging before him in the air.
"My name," he said. "How long has it been since I heard my own name?"
His eyes glistened. When he blinked again, the dullness had been washed from his eyes, leaving them like gleaming hematite once more.
He didn't do anything about the last cleaver of shadows he'd flung at them, though, obliging Dante, Gladdic, and Kelen to hammer away at it before Blays punctured and dispersed it with the spear. Once the burst nether had all been sucked into the pulsing purestone, Blays planted the butt of the spear in the prow and straightened from his fighting crouch.
"You can probably kill us, if you want," Blays said. "But before you do, you should at least know the truth about why we're here."
"What else can be the truth?" Wessen said. "You carry the weapon of the gods. You could never have gotten here without their help. You are their pawn and their tool."
"We weren't sent by the gods," Blays said softly. "But we are here to kill you."
Hurt and surprise flashed across the god's face, as if his father had just said something unexpectedly cruel to him. "Why would you want to kill me? What have I ever done to you?"
"Nothing. This is about what the gods have done to us. They've betrayed us, just like they betrayed you."
The god narrowed his eyes. "You're not making any sense. If you're lying to me, know that I won't kill you right away. I'll keep you alive as long as possible, in as much pain as possible. And no one in all history knows more about that than me."
"I swear to you on the souls of my mother and father I won't tell you another lie. In fact, everything I told you before, about the lich and the spear and the gods, all of that was true. But I left something out. The reason Taim didn't want to let us have the spear is he wants our world to die. There's a flaw in his afterlifes, you see, and the only way to start over is to wipe out everyone on Rale, too. He hoped the lich would do that for him. But when we stabbed that hope to death, he had to come up with a new plan. So he set an entity on us instead—Nolost."
"Nolost." Wessen spoke the name as if he didn't recognize it. He scowled, blinking some, then his eyes went wide. "Nolost? He's sending Nolost against you?"
