Chapter The End of the Beginning The Gods Show Up
THE END OF THE BEGINNING
The Gods Show Up
“Will you tell again, my lord, how you killed the god your father and became ruler of the skies?” asked Lady Ninell.
“I caught him by surprise,” said the Emperor, far above them all. “He believed I would welcome him. We fought on a battlefield of broken stones, in the heart of hell. We wielded blades, not enchantment. He was strong. I wanted to know who was stronger. I wanted to know if I could do it.”
Silence followed. Wearily, the Emperor looked out of the great throne room windows at his land, captured under disrupted light by their broken moon.
“If I’d realized how it would feel, to be a god alone… Maybe I wouldn’t have done it.”
Time of Lies, ANONYMOUS
MARIUS
The Last Hope gazed across the blasted plain that had once been fields and woods, and was now only darkness stretching outside the city walls. The young god-emperor stalked the battlefield, Longing for Revenge flashing like red lightning held in his hand.
The god’s father came to meet him. Through the blackened trees he came, and though all was darkness the shadow that trailed at his heels was a pale void.
He was the god’s father, not Marius’s father. All sign of weakness, infirmity or age had departed from him. He no longer had eyes. In the space where eyes should have been were openings to a furnace. He was the abyss made flesh. He was everything Marius’s father had ever wanted to be.
If there was any part of the duke still in him, he must be so happy, Marius thought.
The charred earth fractured beneath the gods’ feet as if they walked on fragile black mirrors, spiderweb-shaped cracks fanning out under their heels, a crater forming to give them an arena.
The sky was screaming, the air warping, the world splintering in an effort to contain divinity.
As if through a glass darkly, the mortals witnessed the battle of the gods.
But Marius saw and heard more than most.
The Great God was physically bigger, more imposing, as his father had always been, as Marius himself was.
Key was tall enough, but not built along the same massive lines.
Marius wondered if Key took after his mother, or if insufficient food growing up in the gutter had made him less towering and more lean than he would otherwise have been.
Did divine children resemble their parents? Could divine creatures starve and suffer as mortals did? In Marius’s head his father’s voice rang, seven years ago. I know you feel it too. Divine wrath.
The god’s voice, in contrast, was soothing. “I don’t want to fight you, son.”
“Great news!” said Key, still the godless gutter ruffian Marius remembered, even with the holy sword blazing in his hand. “Then just die. Thanks.”
He brought the sword around. The god held him off with his great sword, then engaged again, getting in a hit that turned Key’s bronze breastplate to bronze dust. When Key danced back, too swift to be followed, the Great God managed to lock blades again, strained against him, then disengaged.
Key’s evil scarlet gaze followed the movement.
The sword hummed and thrummed in its sweep through the air, and Marius saw Key’s seemingly involuntary step back.
Beside Marius, Lady Rahela made an urgent noise of distress deep within her throat.
Shining Goddess preserve them all. The Once and Forever Emperor, his coming foretold in legend, was a coward.
Key whirled and their weapons clashed again, striking sparks that fell like hot, red rain across the field of battle.
When Key leaped back, his father thundered forward in pursuit.
Everywhere the Great God’s feet touched, the earth cracked as though made of fragile black glass.
These monstrous gods could break Marius’s land apart without even trying.
Key rolled across the fracturing earth and tried to hamstring the Great God his father. That vicious little guttersnipe, not even fighting honourably in a divine battle. Rahela screamed encouragement until her voice went hoarse.
What a generous heart this woman had. Affection to spare for all the countless men to whom she was betrothed.
The Great God’s greatsword swept towards Key again.
Key set his teeth, stood firm and parried the blow.
Longing for Revenge lit in his hand like a silverthorn branch set aflame.
As Key swung, Marius saw the blaze of the Emperor’s sword quench the glow of the moon, the sparkle of stars, and even the light in the Great God’s eyes.
RAE
Marius wasn’t thoughtful enough to provide running commentary on the battle of the gods, but standing beside him Rae could read his tells. She knew when the battle was going well for Key, and when badly.
Everything goes to hell when the gods show up.
In the rippling chaos of the elements, Rae couldn’t make out everything, but having a favourite character meant she was trained to watch for even a glimpse of him in a scene. She kept her attention fixed on Key.
The Great God aimed his blade, with horrible precision, directly for the scar that ran along Key’s throat. Every mortal eye, from the wastes to the palace and city walls, saw Key’s violent flinch.
“Craven,” muttered one of the raiders behind them.
Rae turned to give him a venomous look. The raider recoiled, but not from shame. The look on the raider’s face only said Rae was a madwoman.
When you were hurt and showed the wound, nobody ever forgave you. The Great God had led the God-Child up the Mountain of Truth, laid him upon a stone slab and cut the child’s throat with his shining axe, and some part of Key remembered. And they blamed Key for flinching.
The Great God didn’t flinch. He had nothing to flinch about. He never felt any of the pain he inflicted.
Others thought that was strength. Rae knew better.
The Great God seized the opportunity of Key’s hesitation to lock them both in combat, body to body, with the Great God’s sheer size bearing Key inexorably down. Key fought the inevitable, fought past the point of inevitability. He should have been down ten times, but he wouldn’t go.
Until he did, falling to earth with a muffled cry. Rae saw the blood spread dark against Key’s black clothes, saw the red crackle of enchantment and realized the god had slipped a long thin orichal knife between his son’s ribs.
On one knee, Key waited, the shadow of his father’s blade on his neck. Then the Great God let the blade fall, its point hitting the earth, as he knelt too. A collective bewildered murmur drifted to the clouds.
The Great God clasped the back of his son’s neck like a beast snagging its pup by the scruff. Key leaned his forehead against the Great God’s, and the Great God stroked Key’s wild hair to tameness.
The god’s murmur came like thunder. “My calf.”
Key turned his face slightly from the fatherly embrace, so Rae saw the vicious triumphant curl of his smile, and his eye gleaming red.
He will love someone truly one day, the Great God had told her from the mirror.
Key had cared about her, even when she got him killed.
In every version of the story, that didn’t change.
Key would do anything, forgive anything, suffer anything, for someone he loved, hoping to be loved back.
Key knew all these tricks he wouldn’t learn until later in the original books.
The Great God had taught his son. The Great God had taken his son in his arms, when Rae turned Key away.
Laughing, his voice ringing to the sky so everyone in the city could hear, the Emperor said, “Welcome home, Dad. Did you have fun burning everything down?”
MARIUS
The Great God and the Emperor were in on this dark scheme together. They had been all along. The battle had been only a god’s game for his vicious child, as a father might throw a son a ball.
“I mastered the situation. As I will master all the world, my calf,” replied the Great God, tenderly. “And give it to you, on a string. You are my doorway, opening to the ways of all flesh. My firstborn, my sweet prince.”
Key’s laughter was slightly wet, a tinge of blood on his sharp teeth, and entirely sinister.
The Great God whispered one more thing in his son’s ear. Even Marius, for all his Valerius hearing, could not make out what was said. With that whispered secret, the Great God lifted his son from his knees and waved benevolently to those crowding the double ring of walls beyond.
His voice rolled across the plain like kindly thunder. “Glad tidings, good people. My wayward child has returned to me, and I have returned to you all. Fear not! Order will be restored.”
Faint at first, then gathering in strength and conviction, rang the sound from the walls. Louder and louder it came, so Marius was forced to hear and to believe.
The people of Eyam were cheering for the Great God. The city welcomed their divine father back with open hearts. The god would tell them what to do.
He must have made some involuntary movement of protest. Divine attention fell upon Marius. “Ah,” said the Great God. “The bastard seed.”
Marius uttered his first words to a divinity in tones of icy outrage. “I beg your pardon?”
“The line of Valerius,” explained the Great God.
“Your ancestors had to breed with mortals occasionally to survive. A vile thought. Bound to result in thin, sullied blood. But your flaws are not your fault, my boy, and you are the chosen of your line. You live in the time of the Emperor, and you shall have the honour of leading his armies, and standing at the Emperor’s right hand.
Have you not always known it was your destiny to serve?
Accept your fate, Valerius. Do your duty. ”
The Emperor shot Marius a wickedly amused glance, which Marius chose to ignore. He concentrated on Eric’s remembered voice. Do only what you truly believe is right.
Marius drew Starving for Blood, and levelled his blade in the direction of his enemy.
“It seems,” said Marius Valerius. “I must kill a god.”
RAE