The Gilded Ones #3

Chapter 22

All that remains of the cottage I once called home is a shell.

Oh, most of the thatched roof and the walls, though blackened and crumbled, are still standing. But the entire back of the cottage is missing. Not consumed, as the rest of the village presumably was, by the vales, but broken by a fallen tree, whose bare branches protrude through the tiny quarters like grotesquely skeletal arms. I see them clearly from my position at what was once the front door. It has been chopped down to kindling, axe marks stark against the splintered wood. It’s the same with most of the furnishings—the ones that remain, that is. Most have been carted away, or are now in pieces on the floor. I ignore the debris as I step inside, keeping my eyes firmly focused on that tree, on those skeletal branches, which are still growing despite the fact that the tree they sprang from is broken and dying.

It’s a metaphor, surely. But one I choose not to unravel. I choose not to think anything at all. Instead, I will focus on those branches. Perhaps, if I stare at them long enough, I can ignore the missing furniture, the fact that every decoration, every item of value we ever had in this house, is gone.

And that, likely, includes Mother’s things. Especially the ones that carry her scent.

“Wha happened here?” Britta walks in after me, eyes wide. “It doesn’t look like the vales swept through this place.”

“It wasn’t the vales.” Keita picks a broken plate off the floor and sighs. “The entire place has been ransacked.”

“It was Elder Durkas,” I say, suddenly wishing I still had my hands on him so I could throw him in the lake all over again. “Whenever someone brings disgrace on the village, he leads the villagers in casting them out. Destroying their memory. No doubt the moment the jatu came to take Father, everything here was fair game.” Including the items we came looking for.

Britta must understand the implication of what I’m saying, because she looks at me again, worried. “So how do we find your mother’s things?”

“We don’t,” Belcalis says grimly. “Look around you. It’s winter. The village has been almost completely destroyed. If the survivors haven’t already stolen all the things that would have had her scent on them, the cold and damp will have.”

“Maybe we don’t need her scent.” When I turn to Britta, confused, her worry has gone, replaced by excitement. She rushes to explain. “Lamin said ye just need something that provokes a strong enough memory. An’ anything here can do that. The whole reason we came to Irfut is because of how deeply yer tied to this place. All the strongest emotions ye have around yer mother are here.

“So maybe, ye don’t need her scent; ye just need to remember her presence. An’ this place is the best place for ye to do so. Ye just have to try, Deka.”

Try….I nod.

But when I look around—take in the devastation surrounding me, I’m suddenly so heavy, I can’t remain standing a moment longer. I walk leadenly over to the hearth, where a single bench remains, its legs rickety and half broken. Mother used to place me on that bench when she was working. And then, as I grew older, I used to stand on it so I could help her in the kitchen.

Now it’s all that’s left. All that’s left of Mother. All that’s left of home. The place that I lived in for sixteen years of my life. It’s an empty shell now. Just like everything else around me.

Tears slide down my cheeks and I wipe them away.

A hand presses on my shoulder. Belcalis’s.

There’s sympathy in her gaze. “I’m sorry, Deka. I know this must be distressing for you.”

Distressing.No word has ever felt so inadequate.

Distressing is when you stub your toe, or stumble in weapons practice and fall on your arse. This, what I’m experiencing, is devastation.

My entire family is gone. As is my home. And now there’s no going back, ever.

Not that there ever was.

I think of everything I’ve learned about myself over the past few years—my abilities, the truth of my origins. No wonder the villagers destroyed this place the moment they could. I never belonged here. I was always an outsider, a pretender. That’s why I can’t reconstruct the memory of Mother’s scent even here, in the cottage where she birthed me. Why I can’t even picture her face, hear her voice.

Because I never was hers to begin with. I never was her true daughter.

If I was, I would at least know her scent. Recreate it from memory. I wouldn’t need things like clothes or this awful place to remember it. To find her body.

I brush away my tears, then shrug Belcalis’s hand off my shoulder. “I’m fine,” I whisper, looking down. “Everything is fine.”

“Except that’s not true, is it?” she says, not letting go of me. She comes closer, kneels at my feet, her midnight eyes burning into mine. “You may not be human, Deka. You may not even be alaki. But you can still feel pain. You can still feel anger. And it’s all right—both emotions are appropriate, given the circumstances. This was your home, and they tainted it.”

“Was it really?” I turn from her with a bitter laugh. “Was it ever truly my home, or was I just there, this thing that insinuated itself into their lives?”

I can see it now, the life my parents would have had if I had never been born. They would have remained as they were, happy. They could have perhaps even had more children—the son Father actually wanted.

But they never got those things, because I came along, and now they’re both dead and their home is destroyed. Elder Durkas was right: this was my fault. It’s always been my fault.

More bitter laughter wrenches from my throat. I swallow it down, then return my gaze to Belcalis. “I must seem in a dire mood indeed if you’re the one talking to me about feelings.”

“I feel.”

When my eyebrows lift at this proclamation, Belcalis gives me a wry smile. “Sometimes I feel all sorts of emotions. And sometimes”—she beckons to me and I lean in closer—“I even feel joy. Imagine that.”

I laugh despite myself. “A shocking notion.”

“Indeed,” Belcalis says loftily. “But the point is, it’s all right to feel. And it’s all right to be overwhelmed when you finally give your biggest tormentor his comeuppance, only to find your home destroyed by him.”

I blink, startled by this concise assessment. Trust Belcalis to cut to the heart of the matter. But I don’t want to give her credit so easily. I sniff. “I’ll take your word for it,” I say. Then I glance around at my other companions, who are huddled around me, as if to protect me from the barrage of my own emotions.

Except they can’t do that. No one can—or should—do that, not even me. If there’s one thing I know from bitter experience, it’s that if I hoard my feelings, if I let them circle and circle in the back of my mind, they will eventually consume me.

“It’s strange,” I admit finally, rising. “This was my home. And now it’s not. And I don’t have anywhere else to go. And that makes me angry. And it makes me sad. And it makes me a thousand other things. I have no home to return to.”

I say the words out loud again, as if testing them.

“Neither do I.” To my surprise, Belcalis shrugs in agreement.

“Me neither,” Keita says.

Li glances away when I turn, waiting for his reply. But then he shrugs. “Well, don’t look at me. I’m certain my family would take me back.”

“Of course they would,” I snort. Of our little group, Li is the most spoiled.

“But alone,” he warns direly. “And…eventually. If I begged and pleaded enough.”

“An’ that’s assuming they don’t behead ye first,” Britta sniffs.

“There is that,” Li acknowledges with another easy shrug.

Britta humphs. “Well, I’m certain yer all welcome back to Golma with me. It’ll be cold, but yer all welcome. Me family’s very inviting. Salt of the soil, through and through.”

“I’d rather cast myself on a pyre,” Li mutters under his breath. When Britta glares at him, he shrugs again. “What, I hate the cold. Do you not feel how miserable it is right now?”

As the pair continue glaring at each other, Keita walks over, puts his arm around my shoulder. I sink into his touch, burrowing my head into his neck. “Home is where you are, Deka,” he says. “It’s where all of you are, even you”—he directs this last comment at Li, who grunts, pretending to be offended.

Then Keita returns his attention to me. “I know you’re sad, but once this is done, we’ll find a home—a much better place, where we can all live together peacefully.”

He and all my friends, that is.

The thought is a sobering reminder. If this ends in our victory, I’ll be a god, and gods do not reside with mortals. At least, not truly.

I don’t say this out loud, and Keita doesn’t acknowledge it, but we both know it is the eventuality. If we succeed, we’ll soon part ways for different planes entirely. And if we don’t, we’ll still part ways, albeit in a different manner.

“That sounds like a dream,” I say, nodding. Then I wait a few more moments, savoring Keita’s touch, before finally, I pull back. “All right, that’s enough sentimentality. Time to do what we came here for. We need to search the entire house for traces of Mother. Anything that might be sentimental enough to spur a strong response.”

Belcalis nods. “There’s sure to be something,” she says in what almost seems like a hopeful tone. “Look at the way they ransacked this place—it’s shoddy, shoddy work. They’re sure to have missed something.”

“That’s precisely what I’m hoping,” I say as I walk into the kitchen, where Mother, like most Oteran women, spent most of her time. If there’s any bit of her remaining in this house, it’ll be either there or in the room she and Father shared. But I don’t have the strength to go up there just at this moment—not given how emotionally vulnerable I am.

The moment I fully enter the kitchen, however, I notice it, the strangeness. It’s been niggling at me all this time, but I couldn’t put my finger on it before.

“I can’t remember her,” I say, puzzled.

“Wha’s that?” Britta has followed me, and she seems confused by my words.

“Mother, I can’t picture her.” I frown. “I’m here, I should be having memories of her—and I am, but it’s strange. It’s like I—”

I stop, suddenly chilled to my bones.

The air has shifted. “The Idugu,” I gasp, immediately recognizing the heavy oiliness settling over my skin. “They’re here.”

“Get us out, Deka!” Keita rushes toward me. “Create a door!”

But when I try to sink into the combat state, a strange force clamps over my body, an invisible vise I can’t see, even though it’s taken firm grasp of me.

“No, no, Deka,” a familiar voice says, tsking. When I turn my head slowly but painfully to the door, a shadowy figure is flickering there.

Okot. I recognize Anok’s counterpart immediately.

Of the four Idugu, the male gods that are the Gilded Ones’ counterparts, only he has Anok’s midnight-dark skin, as well as those deceptively kind eyes. Deceptively, because unlike the goddess I considered my only ally among the Gilded Ones, Okot is not kind. Not even near it. He is a monster that shapes itself as a deity. One that uses others to do his bidding and feeds off the pain and blood of innocents. The Merciless One, he calls himself.

“Do not struggle,” the god continues, floating into the room like he’s the essence of a being rather than an actual person. “It will do you no good.”

The farther he drifts in, the more my friends back away, their slow but horrified movements telling me that he’s chosen to make himself visible to them, a first for any of the Idugu. Unlike the Gilded Ones, the male gods thrive on secrecy and deception, a side effect of their years of being imprisoned by their counterparts. They rarely allow themselves to be seen and for centuries even convinced most of the jatu, their own sons, that they were a singular god called Oyomo instead of the four complements to the Gilded Ones.

The nearer Okot approaches, the larger he becomes, although the edges of his silhouette are strangely faded, tatters rather than a firm outline. He seems downright haggard, his body faded like the crystal trees back in the pathways.

He must be even more starved than he was when last I met him. But then, creating shadow vales takes power. Perhaps much more power than the gods have recovered from all the sacrifices the priests have thrown into the vales for them.

“I may be diminished,” Okot says, as if catching my thoughts, “but I still have enough strength to hold you, to keep you here forever.” His eyes glitter with the force of a thousand dying stars, a testament to his power.

I swiftly look away, unnerved. “It was you, wasn’t it?” I hiss. “You took Mother’s memories!”

“Indeed. I took every trace of her from this house. You won’t find what you’re looking for here.”

His words send a chill through me. So he knows exactly why we’re here.

“Why?” I ask. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

If it was my death, he’d have already sent me back to his temple via a door.

Okot moves closer so suddenly, we’re face to face before I can even blink. I glance away again as a small thunderstorm suddenly lashes against me, a thunderstorm that I know his anger has unconsciously created. Like all gods, Okot manifests his emotions in all sorts of strange and unpredictable ways.

“Anok has been imprisoned by our sisters,” he announces, his voice reverberating through my body. “They’re draining her. Siphoning away all the sustenance from her being. It’s only a matter of time now before she dissipates.”

“As do you as well.” Now I understand.

Like all the Oteran god pairs, Anok and Okot are connected. Two sides of one coin. What happens to one will eventually happen to the other. If Anok is being drained by her imprisonment, Okot is as well, which means it’s only a matter of time before the other Idugu turn on him.

The Oteran gods are like birds of prey: the slightest sign of weakness and they strike, even against their own.

Okot inclines his head, agreeing with my assessment. “Indeed. If the gods fall, Anok and I will be the first to do so. And even if they do not, we’re both still vulnerable. Which is why I’ve come to offer you a deal.”

“An’ why would we ever believe anythin’ ye say?” Britta hisses, braving a step forward.

One glance from Okot and she’s frozen in place. “We?” he repeats softly. “There is no we, Britta of Golma. Any offer I make is for Deka and Deka alone. It does not include you.”

“Then it is not an offer I would ever consider,” I reply, my will turning to iron.

Every time I’m tempted to forget that the gods view mortals—even semi-immortals—as less than insects, I’m swiftly reminded of the fact.

Okot can threaten me all he wants, even try to manipulate me the way all the other gods do. But I will not allow him to touch Britta, nor any of my other companions. I close my eyes, sinking deeper into the combat state. If I can just connect to the Greater Divinity…If I can just enhance my power a little…

When I try to inhale the primal force, Okot abruptly glides back, a cloud forming around his brow. Whatever emotion it’s expressing is not one I can readily identify. Not that I care to. Now that I’m deeper in the combat state, I can see that the vise Okot wrapped around me is loosening, perhaps due to his inattention.

“It seems I have erred,” the god says, almost to himself. “Your bonds to these…mortals are much stronger than I knew.”

“Stronger than you can ever imagine,” I snap, still stealthily inhaling. I’m not yet able to connect to the Greater Divinity, but if I keep trying, it’s only a matter of time. The vise is loosening every second. All I need is a few moments more…

“But then, your kind don’t understand what it is to love,” I snarl, trying to keep him talking.

“And yet I love Anok.” As I still, startled by this sudden confession, Okot cocks his head, a strangely human gesture. “I despise her in equal measure, given how she betrayed me, but I love her still. I love her even though she betrayed me.”

When the Gilded Ones locked the Idugu behind the veil that became their prison, Okot, the only of his brothers who had not played with human lives, begged Anok to free him. I saw that moment when I used the blood on my knife to peer into the gods’ memories. I also saw how she declined and left him in that prison, believing, as her sisters did, that he was too volatile to be trusted.

That’s why Okot is always so angry. Of all the Idugu, he’s the only one who, initially, did not deserve the fate that befell him.

That has, of course, long changed. Okot is now just as guilty as his brothers, if not more so.

His eyes try to pierce mine, but I steadfastly look away. “The emotions,” he says, sounding almost confused. “I cannot untangle them, and I do not know why.”

I humph. “Because she’s you,” I reply bluntly. “What greater narcissism is there than in loving and hating your own self?”

“And yet, because she is also herself,” Okot replies, almost wonderingly. “Together or apart, Anok and I…we are…”

“I’m not here to hear about you and Anok,” I snap, pushing steadily against the vise. It’s nearly loose enough to break free of now. If I can just get a little bit freer, touch that thread of divinity that’s just out of reach…

“Indeed.”

I gasp as Okot suddenly reappears in front of me. So close now, our noses are almost touching. I can see the white of his eyes out of the corner of mine.

“You’re here for your kelai. But, as I told you, I’ve erased every true memory of your mother, wiped it all from existence, so you cannot use it to your advantage.”

As despair roils through me, Okot continues with a sly, almost calculating tone, “I could, however, just tell you where your kelai is, so you don’t have to go sniffing across the continents. In fact, I could take you there, show you for yourself. That is what you want, is it not?”

I look up at him. “And if it is?”

“Then all you have to do is say the word and I’ll take you there.”

“But why?” The question rises again.

Why is Okot offering to take me to my kelai? Why hasn’t he just killed me and taken it himself? I’m here, he has me, and yet…

My eyes widen. “You can’t just take it, can you?” When Okot stills, blinking for just one second, I know I’m correct. The Gilded Ones were willing to kill me so they would force my kelai to emerge, but Okot, for some reason, is not, which means: “This is a proximity thing, isn’t it?” I gasp. “If you kill me, my kelai will attempt to rush back to me. But you don’t want that to happen, which means it must be in an undesirable location, perhaps one closer to the Gilded Ones. And you don’t want them snatching it before you do.”

Okot turns away, and I know I have him. I laugh. “Wait, am I correct? The place you last stored my kelai truly was near the Gilded Ones?” Mother told me the Idugu moved it periodically, but never in a million years did I think they’d be stupid enough to leave it in a place where their counterparts could access it.

And yet, that very much seems to be the case.

If Okot were human, muscles would be grinding in his jaw. Instead, thunderclouds smash across his brow as he dourly inclines his head. “I will admit, your kelai is in an undesirable place. But I can help you get to it. For a price.”

“And what price is that?” I’d almost forgotten we were haggling.

“Amnesty.”

When I frown at him, he continues: “My brothers and Anok’s sisters will soon turn on us both. Have already turned on us, as you’ve seen with Anok. Now that we are weaker, we are prey to our siblings. But if you assume your divinity and become a deity once more, you can spare us when you end the others. Allow us to live. And in return, we will bring your mother back. We will give you back everything you have lost.”

As Okot speaks, the cottage suddenly changes around us, the back wall repairing, the furnishings returning to their original places. Color seeps into the leached wood as Mother walks out of the kitchen, a plate in hand and a smile on her face. She’s talking to someone, and when I focus on the image, shocked, it’s me, only it’s not me as I am now. This me wears the flowing robes of an adult woman, a half mask to hide the top portion of her face. She is smiling as she rushes to embrace Mother.

“Mother,” Other Me says, “how happy I am to see you.”

“And you,” Mother replies, her voice so loving, my heart pangs just hearing it.

“Mother,” I whisper, everything in me yearning for her, stretching toward her. If I move just a step closer, I can breathe in her scent, fall into her arms the way I used to when I was a child.

Blue lights flash in the distance, a yawning darkness around them, but I don’t pay any attention, just as I don’t truly feel the accompanying wrongness. All I see is Mother.

“It’s not real, Deka!” Keita’s voice suddenly sounds far away, and when I turn, he’s no longer there. None of my friends are. The only thing around me now is the house as it once was, with Other Me and Mother.

And yet I hear Keita’s voice. “He’s trying to trick you, Deka. Don’t fall for it.”

Fall for what?It seems so real…. Except for those blue lights, that wrongness, everything feels real, the house, Mother, Other Me…

I turn once more to the scene unfolding before my eyes. Once upon a time, it would have been my fondest wish, this cozy domesticity. To be the woman embracing Mother, all the while cloaked in the robes and mask of a proper Oteran woman, a husband at home, no doubt, waiting for her.

Except that’s not my dream any longer. It hasn’t been in a long, long time.

This house, this version of me, they’re nightmares. Specters of a world I never wish to return to.

A cold rage fills me as I glance back at Okot. He’s there just in front of me, his body becoming more and more solid the more I look at it. “It’s a strange thing, seeing what others think you want,” I say quietly. “Most times, it says much more about them than it does about you.

“You, for instance, think I want to be that girl, the one in the mask and robes of a wife. Except I tired of ornamental masks long ago. And I prefer armor to robes now.”

“And what of your mother?” Okot sounds almost desperate as I stare up at him.

He’s realized now that his cheap little illusion isn’t working, that I’m not going to fall for the web he’s spun.

“Reanimation is against the natural order,” I say simply. And even if it weren’t, I doubt Mother would want to return to the life Okot has prescribed for her.

“I am a god,” Okot snaps. “I am the natural order.”

There it is. The arrogance he’s only barely managed to hold back. He truly believes I should want the things he’s offering me. Except I’ve had a taste of other gods. I’ve seen that true deities serve the natural order instead of themselves. What Okot is proposing to me is an abomination, and I want no part of that.

So I return my attention to him. “I will be as well when I become the Singular once more. So no, I don’t need you to bring my mother back. And even if I wished for that, she doesn’t, and I would never force such perversion on her.”

“You are assuming you have the choice.” Okot’s voice is suddenly the rumble of an awakening volcano, and those clouds flash so fiercely over his brow, they almost obscure it. Darkness wavers behind him, that abyss I’ve only seen glimpses of.

I look him dead in the eye, too far gone to fear his threats any longer. “I’m not the one who came begging to be saved,” I snarl back, wriggling against his vise, which has somehow become tighter again. “I hope that when the others discover your treachery, they devour you to the very last drop.”

Glaciers form around Okot’s head, a crown of icy determination. “You will not bargain with me?” he asks, suddenly every inch the remote, unfathomable deity he presents himself to be.

“Not even if you were the last god in all of Otera.”

“Then you leave me no choice.”

Okot gestures, and the cottage vanishes. Darkness descends, the one I’ve been glimpsing all this while.

And inside that darkness, lights.