Chapter 35 Hakara
Hakara
Pizgonia – Gorina, City of a Hundred Moons
How is Kluehnn able to maintain himself in more than one body while other gods do not?
If one aspect of Kluehnn dies, another takes its place, yet if a god dies, they are truly dead.
Is this some magic the other gods do not know?
Or if they know it, are they simply not skilled enough to enact it?
Or, and this is the one that terrifies me, is it so abhorrent a process that no one else will undertake it even under pain of death?
I should burn this paper.
It seemed we hadn’t found the resistance; instead, the resistance had found us.
I watched Thassir and Velenor talking in the corner, unsure of what to say or whether I should interrupt, feeling a little like I was party to a conversation I shouldn’t have been able to hear.
Two elder gods, catching up. It felt more than a bit mad.
Velenor reached out to touch his feathers. “That’s different.”
He shrugged his wing away. “It doesn’t matter. Lithuas told me you were dead.”
“She told me you were dead too. That she’d let me live as long as I didn’t interfere with her plans or Kluehnn’s. So I went south, to where his influence wasn’t quite as strong.”
“But it’s growing.”
“Yes. Once Langzu is restored, he’ll focus all his attention on us.”
Dashu had his sword in hand again, gazing at it as though it had been made anew. He’d known it was valuable. He hadn’t known it had been forged by an elder god.
I tapped my foot, wondering if or when they’d get to the real issue.
“Have you been well?” Thassir asked.
“Well enough. I’m not leading the Godless here, nor am I a part of that resistance movement.
I’m outside of it, in a manner of speaking.
They think of me as a folk hero, one who supposedly passes her knowledge down to the next generation.
So I’ve existed here for hundreds of years, always veiled.
They know me as Agashu Indaya, the veiled rogue. ”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I stalked toward them.
“Lithuas is here.” I locked gazes with Thassir.
“He knows. And if you were part of this blood pact he’s mentioned, you’ll be able to sense her too when she uses magic.
She’s been infiltrating the resistance movements of each of the realms, subverting them to find corestones.
And Kluehnn uses these to enact restoration.
We have the two of you now, here in one place.
We have filters that can protect mortals from aether.
There is an army of gods waiting for Thassir to lead them.
If we take out Lithuas, we disrupt Kluehnn’s plans and have a real chance to strike back. ”
Velenor shook her head, and my heart dropped, a sick feeling in my belly. “I can protect the Godless from Lithuas. But please, leave her be and go back to Langzu.”
I didn’t know what to do except shout. “She has murdered countless people! I’ll grant that you may be able to protect this realm from Lithuas and Kluehnn, but you cannot protect all of them.
What do you think is going to happen? You have some pretty little side agreement with Lithuas, and then Pizgonia is the only realm left among a sea of restoration? How do you think this ends?”
Velenor didn’t meet my anger with her own. Her large, dark eyes regarded me with the patience of a mother with an overwrought child. “I understand that is the truth. But in the end, Lithuas is not who you think she is.”
“A murderer?”
She let the air between us cool, her breath a winter breeze. “She took a wrong turn and doesn’t know how to walk her way back. Have you never made mistakes, not been the person you should have been? She thinks she is doing what’s right. Did you know that when she spared my life, she wept?”
“She did not weep when she spared mine,” Thassir said beneath his breath.
“Nioanen” – he flinched at the use of his real name – “your relationship with her was different to mine. But she and I – we were once as close as sisters. I will fight for her life. I cannot do anything else, even if it means losing mine.”
Only words, yet it felt like she’d stabbed me clean in the heart. Rasha. The bond in my mind tugged, the citrus-fresh feel of it making me ache. All I’d wanted was to cocoon her into a safe place, to keep her from suffering. Even now I could feel that instinct tug at me – that need to protect her.
No. This was different. It had to be different. “If we kill Lithuas, we don’t just delay Kluehnn’s plans, we bring them to a halt. He’ll have to find another way to obtain the corestones. I’m going to try, even if you won’t help me.”
I turned to Thassir. He stood by the wall, near that cracked painting, and I could see now, this close, that it was a painting of Nioanen in his full glory, his golden wings spread, Zayyel in his hands.
He claimed not to be that god anymore, but I didn’t know what to believe.
The seven elder gods had ruled Unterra together, not separately.
He’d known Lithuas for far longer than he’d known me.
“And what about you?” I could feel myself teetering, needing desperately for him to be on my side.
“Would you stand in my way as well, now that you know Velenor’s mind? ”
He opened his mouth and hesitated. “I…”
I’d needed him to be unequivocally on my side, to bolster my certainty, and instead he hesitated.
It was all I needed to know. I whirled, grabbed one of the lanterns, and stalked deeper into the ruins, keenly feeling the stretch of both my bonds, with him and my sister.
I’d let myself be swayed by hope – that was my mistake.
Dashu was right, as were all the stories children told one another in each unrestored realm.
The gods were selfish, they were cruel, they were unkind.
Lithuas had set this all in motion. Thassir had let it all happen.
And even Velenor held herself apart from the Godless, doing meaningless work so she could tell herself she was making a difference.
What would make a difference was putting an end to Lithuas. Yet Velenor didn’t want to, and Thassir hesitated.
Carved reliefs flashed past, mosaics of tile, depictions of historical events long gone, from a world that no longer existed.
I couldn’t win this fight without Thassir, and even though we’d found ourselves circling one another, trying to understand the path forward, I still couldn’t quite trust him.
There were things he wasn’t telling me, and I held the bone-deep suspicion that he’d always hold his ties to the other gods above any ties he held to mortals. To me.
He could have stood against Kluehnn, if only he’d tried.
He could have tried.