Chapter 13 Daesra
DAESRA
GETTING JUDGED, it turns out, involves another fucking line.
But this one sprawls chaotically in front of the Temple of Judgment, which isn’t as effective of a pinch point as the ferry dock.
At least there are fewer shades in general, though it hardly looks like it.
The dark mouth of the temple opens wide atop a flight of stone stairs, its white columns grinning like teeth in a gaping maw ready to devour the milling crowd, while the black fangs of the mountain peaks bared against the gloomy sky beyond are no more welcoming.
And yet the pass between them is our next destination, after making it through the temple.
The next pair of jaws waiting to grind up souls.
What irony that one has to stand around waiting impatiently to be sentenced and then journey so far to receive punishment—or to get their due either way, even if the Blessed Isles await.
But I doubt the isles will be the destination for many of the shades that Melé, Pogli, and I pass as we begin to push our way through the flock.
Half of them look too shrinking and meek to make it far, while the other half skulk around already looking guilty or posture aggressively as if they can fight the inevitable.
Better for them to fall to a sharp, clean blade right here than go through all this to—what—fade to madness or forgetfulness or to burn in hellfire until they drift away like so much smoke?
The thought makes me wince, because I sound far too much like Isha when he was trying to convince me to consume the blood farmers’ souls.
And yet, even he doesn’t hold such a view, because this is his godsdamned realm and these are his tedious lines and his shitty mill, not to mention he was trying to grind down my very soul at the time.
So perhaps the idea shouldn’t cross my mind.
The denizens of hell don’t view me in a much better light than I do them, starting to grumble quietly at first, and then to shout far more loudly as we cut deeper through them, just like those in the ferry line—except this is a tumultuous crowd surrounding us.
“Hey, you have to wait until you’re summoned!” a man snarls. “There’s an order to things!”
“Doesn’t look like it to me,” I say, otherwise disregarding him.
This time, I’m highly aware of Melé at my back, holding on to me and using me as a shield, and not only out of concern for her safety.
I’m concerned by what I might have to do just to get us to the front of the temple intact—and her witnessing it.
I grit my teeth as someone’s shoulder slams into me, a deliberate move to slow our progress.
Even though I try to muffle it, the call rises inside of me, waiting to be released.
The urge to either unleash their fears or their violence, or to sate the hunger in me, aching to consume them all where they stand.
The hunger I can manage—I hope. I’m simply lacking aether here, because whenever or however I use my divine abilities, I have no means of replenishing it as happens naturally in the mortal realm.
So I’m not a thoughtless monster, just a famished one.
There must be some source of it here that I can reach—or consume—that doesn’t involve mortal souls.
On the other hand, I’m afraid that the urge to unleash fear and violence is all my own. Echoing what’s inside of me.
When another shade tries to push me, his hand only bouncing off my shoulder, I glance back at Melé.
Her eyes dart around at the jostling shades, but she’s also shooting me worried looks.
Perhaps like Pogli would be if he weren’t underfoot, nearly tripping me once again.
And yet, I have to do something. We can’t continue like this.
We either have to turn back or move forward.
But I can’t turn back. I can’t leave Sadaré alone with Isha any longer than I must.
Somewhere, Isha is probably laughing at me, caught as I am between monstrous haste and consideration for my soul—or for how the two most important women in my life might perceive my soul by the end.
Laughing. I stop in my tracks so suddenly that Melé bumps into my back. The brawnier and braver around us close in, jeering and shoving, perhaps thinking I’m faltering and now’s the time to reclaim their space by expelling us entirely.
I only smile at them.
They all start smiling back at me, no longer jostling—looking almost perplexed as they do.
First one, and then another, starts to chuckle, as if I’ve said something amusing.
A guffaw bursts out from behind me, and then in front of me.
Then from all around me. The sound swells and swells until the entire crowd is roaring with laughter.
So much so that they can barely stand upright, especially when I shove them out of our way as I carry on toward the base of the temple.
They’re quite easy to get by now. Pogli barks at a few laughing shades, lunging out with his tail waggling as if they might want to play with him, before he decides against it and ducks back alongside me.
“Did you—?” Melé starts, following close behind me, staring around in shock.
“No, they were hit as one by spontaneous laughter, completely by coincidence,” I say as I maneuver around an entire family that looks as though they died in a fire. Ouch. At least they’re laughing now.
She pinches my arm like she would have when—when she was my mother. “Don’t use that tone of voice with me.”
Gods, she really sounds like my mother now. But at least there’s a gleam in her eyes instead of fear, and the sight eases a tension I didn’t know was in my chest.
I can’t help smiling at the crowd falling over themselves and each other in absolute hysterics. This was by far the better solution. Making them laugh required much less of me than fear had, actually—an important thing to consider now that I’m tired and hungry. And it took far less than when I—
Once more I abruptly halt, but not because I’ve had a brilliant thought.
Godsdamnit. It can’t be.
When the particular group in front of me—some still scarred by human bite marks and the rents of fingernails—catches sight of me standing nearly in their midst, they keep laughing. Because they have to. But one of them points—the one, in fact, who said he’d pay for Sadaré instead of our wine.
“Oh gods, it’s the daemon who killed us!”
The rest of them find this uproarious, and someone manages to choke out, “It is him!”
“I’m a god, not a daemon, and you killed yourselves,” I say, trying to quickly push through them, but Melé stops in surprise. I snatch her arm to hurry her along.
“Still, you’re a bastard!”
“The too many parents I have, both divine and mortal, would disagree,” I say tightly, rushing her ahead of me.
I must have drawn attention to her, because a woman, smiling in a deranged fashion, cries, “Is this—your mother? Does she know—you made us—tear each other to pieces?” She can barely speak through her fits of laughter.
“We should kill him!” another one squeals before doubling over. “If only we could!”
Finally we break free of them, and I keep us moving at a clipped pace until we reach the temple stairs. Pogli only trots along, oblivious to what was said, but Melé won’t look at me.
“Is that true?” she asks in a low, horrified murmur, her face leeched of its rosier tones.
I turn away from her to start up the steps, mostly as an excuse to not have to see her expression anymore.
“I told you not to give me too much credit before you knew better.” My tone is flippant, but I feel that hole in my chest sink a little deeper, reminding me too well of the abyss at the bottom of the maze.
Sadaré, I chant, I need to get to Sadaré, and she’ll make this better. She’ll make me better. I just need to rescue her before the hole inside me grows too deep for her to pull me out.
I feel a bit like a sailor gouging chunks out of his already-leaking boat while somehow hoping to make it to shore. Or, worse, one who comes upon another boat and yet isn’t allowed to board because he’s too violent and crazed to save, better left to the bottom of the sea.
For a moment that stretches tighter and tighter as I mount the steps, Melé doesn’t follow me. But then she clutches the folds of her muddy tunic and marches up after me. Relief, as sickly as it is, slams into me.
“You also told me not to get to know you better,” she mutters under her breath, probably imagining I can’t hear. At least she sounds more frustrated than repulsed.
I take a deep breath when I reach the top of the stairs, and not because I’m winded—well, not entirely—but because I’m not a mortal sailor at risk of drowning. I’m a god. One who is really adept at swimming, besides. I can’t face these judges as anything less.
Columns rise to either side of me, supporting the peaked marble roof high overhead.
Between them, shadows lurk in the depths of the temple, save for where a torch-lined central aisle leads the way inside.
I wait for Melé to catch up. She still won’t meet my gaze, only clutches her arms as if against a sudden chill.
Pogli freezes and sniffs the air warily.
The torches nearest us gutter before flaring back to life, just as an eerie, disembodied voice floats out from the temple. “Approach, god.”
My skin prickles despite myself, and Melé and I glance at each other warily.
I shrug and say loudly, “It would be a shame to come all this way and not get judged, wouldn’t it, Melé?”
“Yes, a shame,” she says through clenched teeth—perhaps to keep them from chattering.
I surprise myself by throwing an arm around her shoulders before we start between the torch-lined columns. “You have me here with you… which is either a good thing or a bad thing… but either way I won’t let anything horrible happen to you.”