Chapter 37 Hakara
Hakara
Pizgonia – Gorina, City of a Hundred Moons, in the Godless hideout
The construction of the anchor between Pizgonia and Langzu happened so long ago that disputing how exactly it was built has become a bit of a hobby amongst scholars.
The pieces have so often been replaced that nothing of the original remains, so any clues that might have been apparent there are now lost. Some think that surveyors must have had some advance notice from Kluehnn that the Shattering would occur, that they determined where the Sanguine Sea would be divided and placed the anchor before the Shattering.
Others think that the builders used large whales to carry the chains through, as these creatures are capable of moving through the barrier.
And yet others suppose the involvement of gods in its construction, though these suppositions are quickly hushed by scholars who are wary of drawing Kluehnn’s ire.
I found myself in the depths of the ruins, my cheek pressed to the cold stone of one of the walls as I tried to cool my temper.
I didn’t know what I should do next. Gather Dashu and Alifra, try to find Lithuas?
See if Talie would join our plans? She’d been born to this world at least; she didn’t have the same misguided loyalty to Lithuas that the elder gods did.
The relief I’d set my cheek against was too distorted at this angle for me to understand it, but I caught a glimpse of a hand holding something just above the ground. Carved rays extended from it.
I frowned and pulled away, rubbing the indentations it had left on my face. The lantern swung as I lifted it to the relief, metal creaking. The top and bottom of the lantern were decorated with geometric patterns that cast triangles and dots along the floor.
Carved shapes of people dressed in strange clothing covered the wall. One knelt, something held in her hand. A glowing stone. When I moved in closer, holding the lantern flush with the wall, I could see flecks of old paint clinging to it.
Multiple colors.
A corestone. She was either burying it or uncovering it – I couldn’t be sure which.
Another panel stretched next to this one.
With hesitant steps, I followed the passage.
A scorpion, feeling the vibration of my footsteps, skittered away.
The next panel showed the woman holding the corestone high.
I hurried to the panel after that. In this one, she brought it to a man with antlers. He reached for it.
In the next, the god had the stone at his lips. He was swallowing it. Just the way I’d done. I pressed a hand to my belly, feeling a slight tingle in response. I didn’t quite understand. Was this how gods used corestones? Was that how Kluehnn had planned to use them?
I took another step and found chunks of stone at my feet, the floor littered with dust. When I lifted the lantern to the panel, I found only a gouged-out piece of rock.
This wasn’t the work of an earthquake or some odd accident.
Someone had deliberately destroyed this panel. And the next one. And the next.
“I hope you don’t mind that I followed you.” A rich voice echoed from the tunnel walls.
I whirled to find Velenor behind me. I’d been so immersed in the reliefs that I couldn’t be sure how long she’d been standing there. She was an elder god. They probably had ways of sneaking around I didn’t know about.
“What if I said I did? Wouldn’t really matter, would it?”
She gave a little shrug, trailing a hand along the stone. “These things are more complicated than you would like to think. People and gods are not who they seem to be at first glance.”
I crossed my arms. “Let me say again – Lithuas has murdered countless people.”
She stopped just short of me. “And Nioanen has not.”
Was she trying to make some comparison between them? I didn’t want to kill Nioanen, did I? “I’ve been working with him. If I don’t trust him completely, it’s only because he hasn’t shown himself worthy of trust.”
“Worthy.” She let the word sit in her mouth. “But he cannot ever prove that to you, can he?”
“Killing Lithuas would go a long way,” I muttered.
She was right, though. He couldn’t erase his past, even if he’d so desperately tried.
But I didn’t owe him my trust either. I stared at the panel in front of me.
The corestone at the god’s lips, the rays of light shining from his mouth.
“Whatever pact you all made, it has to do with this, doesn’t it? ”
“A blood pact binds everyone involved, and if the ones who make it are powerful enough, they can bind others as well, against their will. I could speak of our pact, but if I did, all the surviving elder gods would die.” She opened her mouth and then closed it, shook her head. “That is all I can say.”
I dug around in the ashes of my anger, found the embers cooled. “What was he like? Nioanen? I’ve only known him as Thassir, and he is stubborn and terrible and sometimes… he is kind.” I’d said too much. I could hear it in my voice, the way my tone went suddenly gentle.
“He was not so different then, though he was much warmer, more welcoming – at least on a surface level.” Her finger found one of the god’s antlers, and she traced the branching points.
A short laugh escaped from her mouth. “There were so many rumors flying around in those days – it was a game to us, who was doing what and who was sleeping with whom. So many gods vied to find a place in Nioanen’s bed, which only made him more reluctant to take a lover.
Not that he held himself completely apart, but those he did choose were not discreet.
He garnered a reputation he did not want.
None of us thought he would ever partner with anyone, not for any real length of time, except he did finally find his way toward Irael.
Irael had loved him for over a hundred years, but it took Nioanen longer to realize they’d always been more than friends. ”
It felt like someone had struck a large drum right next to me, the vibration of it filling my bones. I remembered his raven-dark eyes, the despair that had settled around him like a blanket. “He said he lost everything.”
“They had a son. They hid. I don’t know when Lithuas and Nioanen found one another again, but it must have been after the Shattering and after Kluehnn created his godkillers and after those godkillers hunted down Nioanen and his family.
I assume they are dead – he would never have left them otherwise. He is nothing if not devoted.”
I thought of his cats, the way he’d focused all that devotion on them – something he could control.
Until we’d met and I’d unintentionally jolted him from his solitude.
How strange, to be him, to realize that even his cats were half of them gods, waiting for him to spring back to glorious life.
I wasn’t even him and I felt the desperate weight of it.
I didn’t want to understand him, to give him any grace for what he’d done.
“Gods have fallen in love with mortals in the past.” Velenor’s tone was too casual.
A bitter laugh escaped my lips before I could stop it.
I shouldn’t be speaking this way to one of the seven elder gods.
They seemed to be popping up everywhere these days, though, so perhaps I could be forgiven.
“And how many mortals have fallen in love with gods? Oh, I imagine a great many have thought they were in love.” I eyed her lithe form, her liquid eyes, her skin as dark and smooth as onyx, flecks like freckles glittering on its surface.
“I’m certain you make it easy to fall, looking the way you do.
But really – how could mortals love those who are so distant, who hold themselves so superior, who will protect their own over the countless lives of the mortals?
We must be like chaff to you.” I couldn’t quite understand how mortals ever worshiped the gods, how they ever cared about them.
She turned the full force of her doe-eyed gaze on me, and it took my breath away.
The strong shape of her jaw, the curve of her lips – I couldn’t look away.
“We are not superior,” she said, her voice soft.
“I am just as broken as any mortal. As is Thassir.” Delicate fingers touched my cheek.
“As are you. Sometimes we need others to heal. We don’t have to do it all alone. ”
I wished I hadn’t spent my anger so frivolously before, when I needed it now, my heart yearning to turn my face into her touch, to give over some of my burdens to someone more powerful than I was. To give in to blind trust.
Her brows lowered slightly as she touched me. And then the air filled with the scent of the ocean, sending me back to the chilly, silent mornings of my youth. I breathed in without thinking. Just a small taste against the back of my tongue, a sip. The corestone in my belly burned into life.
She jerked away, her eyes wide. “You should be dead.”
“I’ve been told that a lot,” I said, trying for lightness.
It was as though she hadn’t even heard me. “He must have done something to it. You shouldn’t be alive.”
I’d never felt so keen a sense of dread as I did then.
It wasn’t the creeping sort of dread, but the sharp and cutting kind, a knife wedged into the gaps of my spine.
What exactly had Thassir done? I thought of his mouth pressed to mine, the thickness of the aether that poured past my tongue.
I’d been dying, yes, but he hadn’t thought to ask my permission for whatever magic he’d enacted to save my life – he couldn’t even tell me what he’d done.
The sounds of clashing metal carried through the tunnel. A shout. Both of us whirled, running back the way we’d come without stopping for discussion.
We’d been followed.