Chapter 38 Rasha
Rasha
Langzu – Kluehnn’s den northeast of Bian
I have seen a terrible thing with my own eyes, and I know not what it means.
A wall of black smoke has emerged from the barrier on one side of our realm, and it is traveling across the land, enveloping everything in its wake.
I ride ahead of it on a series of horses, as each tires and cannot continue any longer.
No one knows what the wall is doing – if it is swallowing our land and people whole, or if this is the promised restoration from Kluehnn.
I have slept in fitful starts, dreaming of it running me down.
Yet dream must soon become truth, because the closer I draw to the southern border and the barrier that exists there, the more I understand: there is nowhere left to run.
I massaged my leg, trying not to hiss in pain each time I moved my hand over the spot Kluehnn had stung me.
Each time I stepped on the leg, the wound burned like the first day I’d received it.
I shifted on my cushion, glancing out the archives window over the foothills below.
Everyone had left for dinner and I’d smuggled some persimmons and dried fish from the kitchen.
“Read more,” I commanded Mull. I leaned back against the wall and took a bite from a persimmon.
I’d cast my robe off and it pooled on the floor.
The setting sun cast a pleasant warmth across my bare shoulders.
Mull sat cross-legged across from me, a sheaf of loose papers in his hands. He lifted it so the fading light from the window fell onto the paper.
I scowled, pushing his hands down. “Use a lantern if you need to. No need to draw attention.”
“Attention from who?” He peered out into the wilds. “We’re up the side of a mountain.”
I wasn’t going to tell him that there were shapeshifting gods nearby. I wasn’t going to throw my lot in with them, and if they got a hold of those pages, I knew who Kluehnn would blame. It was my job to guard the archives, after all. “Read,” I repeated.
He cleared his throat and began to translate into Kashani.
That had been my idea. There were fewer converts in this den who spoke Kashani, so it gave me one more small, insulating layer against being caught.
I listened to the cadence of his voice as I finished the persimmon, watching the sun descend into the horizon.
These pages spoke of a dalliance Barexi had with a mortal, a scholar of great renown.
She had been the one to end their relationship, as she knew Barexi would live many long years that she would not.
I stopped him. “Is that what it says? Specifically? ‘Many long years’?”
“It’s as close a translation as I can manage. Why?”
“Why not say ‘immortal’? The gods cannot be killed except by godkilling blades. Did those blades exist back then, too?”
The gaze he cast me was filled with a fraying patience.
I had so many questions; I couldn’t seem to help from speaking them aloud.
A memory surfaced – me following on Hakara’s heels, asking her about the diving, how she practiced her breathing, what she saw under the water.
Her exasperated sighs as she told me it didn’t matter, that if she did her job right, I’d never have to see what lay under the ocean’s surface.
I’d held my tongue but had kicked a rock, sullenly. My toe ached in remembrance.
“I don’t know the answers to the questions any more than you do. I’ve never seen these pages before. I’m learning along with you,” Mull responded for perhaps the fifth time.
I picked up a piece of dried fish from the basket between us, setting it between my teeth to chew. The rich, salty flavor of it leached across my tongue. I waved a hand at him. “Continue.”
He kept reading, describing a child the woman bore, his doe-bright eyes and the small two-pronged antlers at his brow.
This wasn’t the first accounting he had read to me of mortals and gods mixing.
Their children had some god traits, some mortal ones.
I found it endlessly fascinating, that this was, at one time, just accepted.
That gods sometimes roamed the surface and loved mortals, that some of their children lived and died under the warmth of the outer sun.
Some gods took their children back to Unterra with them, and so far, the stories didn’t say what happened to them.
“Does this section mention the Shattering?”
He flipped through the pages. “No, not this one.”
There were more mentions of the gods on the surface after the Shattering, and that was what really made me think.
The crow I’d spoken to said the gods had been driven from their homes.
Was this the catalyst for that exodus? Everything I’d been taught said that Kluehnn had enacted the Shattering, had made it so that the realms could be restored one at a time.
I shifted and winced. My leg had grown stiff; it froze in place.
I tried to stand, to stretch it out. Even grasping at the wall, I nearly lost my balance.
Sweat beaded at my forehead, the pain suddenly so sharp that it made my throat clench; the persimmon I’d just ate felt like a bad idea all around.
I wasn’t sure how I’d managed the climb up the mountain to talk to the crow after I’d first been injured.
Shock, perhaps. Or maybe that climb had made it all worse.
A warm palm grasped my arm. Mull. “Bone or flesh?” he said, his voice quiet.
“Flesh,” I said from between gritted teeth.
He gestured to my leg. “May I?”
I nodded. He took my calf in his hands as I grabbed for my crutch, pulling my leg slowly straight.
His fingers found the indentation on my thigh where Kluehnn had stung and then bitten me, pressing to work out the knots.
“I don’t know much, if anything, about medicine, but I had a friend…
have a friend. She had spasms. Sometimes this would help. ”
Slowly, my jaw unclenched, my shoulders loosening as the pain dissipated.
“Who hurt you?” Mull asked. “Did it happen during one of your missions to kill a god?”
“It was Kluehnn.” I wiped the sweat from my brow. “His aspect.”
Mull said nothing, only worked his hands over the wound one more time. Outside, the wind picked up, the sun a sliver between two hills. He still had his hands on my leg when he finally spoke again. “Is that who you follow? A god who hurts you?”
I jerked away. “It was my own fault. I’d failed him. He punished me.” I’d placed myself at his mercy when I’d taken Millani’s hand and followed her, so many years ago. If this was what he chose to do with me, then I deserved it. Didn’t I?
He took the sheaf of loose papers, stacking them and placing them back into the crate. “It just… it doesn’t feel right.”
“Is that so?” I bit back. “Then who have you worshiped?”
He shrugged, the fur on his neck standing briefly on end before settling. “I’ve never really been devout.”
Oh, of course. He was a noble, one of the clans, at the top of Langzu’s government and society.
That always afforded a person certain privileges.
“You don’t know what it’s like. Kluehnn runs this realm, he runs every realm, he is the one true god and the rulers of every realm have never said anything otherwise.
The rulers continue to live in whatever system they’ve built and they live comfortably.
It’s the people at the bottom who must be devout, because they have to be in order to survive.
It feels like the only option.” The words poured out of me, hot oil onto a fire.
I wasn’t sure why I was saying it, except that it felt true.
“How grand, that you can afford not to care too much. Empires are built on such foundations – people not caring. It was the same in Kashan, it is the same here. So don’t speak to me of who I worship and why as if you know a better way. ”
He kept putting away the papers, though by his hunched shoulders and twitching ears, I could tell I’d given him something to think about.
“I’m going outside to get some air and stretch the leg. Finish up here. You can have the rest of the food.” I swept away from the window, leaving Mull to complete his task.
Naatar and Khatuya were still gone. Each time I returned to our room, I felt their absence.
It was too quiet when I tried to sleep, my breathing echoing off the stone walls.
I hadn’t realized how much comfort I’d taken from them until I was alone, with only Mull to keep me company.
I tested my leg off the crutch as I made my way up the tunnels.
It still hurt when I put weight on it, but it hurt a little bit less.
I was letting myself become too familiar with the convert, too comfortable.
He’d arrived here under false pretenses – not a prisoner, but a noble, in search of answers.
Well, now he was altered. I didn’t know what that meant for his clan prospects. Probably nothing good.
For now, our goals aligned.
The horizon was a light blue by the time I emerged, the firmament dark and pricked with stars.
A breeze tugged at my loose hair, whispering over the wound where my horn had once been, the flesh sore.
I’d have to start moving soon without the crutch, if I wanted to regain my status as a godkiller, if I wanted to be sent with Khatuya and Naatar on their next mission.
I could do it, but it meant moving so much slower.
Being left behind was unbearable, wondering what they were going through, wondering how much weaker they were without me and if they would make it back alive.
My thoughts wheeled away to the documents Mull had read to me.
If the increase of gods on the surface coincided with the Shattering, then it aligned with what the crow had told me about the gods being driven from their homes rather than launching an assault on the surface.
Unless the Shattering had ruined their home and they’d sought to replace it with ours.
There were too many possibilities, too many things I still didn’t know.
I took a lantern from a hook near the entrance and passed guards who nodded at me in acknowledgment, though they no longer bent at the waist. I was something between – not a godkiller, not a convert, not even an acolyte.
Until Kluehnn restored me or cast me down, I existed in a strange space.
Yet I couldn’t bring myself to push aside my questions, to devote myself fully to earning back my place.
The climb was hard, my leg giving way several times, though I caught myself with my crutch. Finally, when I was halfway up the peak, the crow found me. I’d had to come farther this time, and I’d paid for it.
It watched me from a rock as I leaned on my crutch, breathing hard. My leg was on fire. I rotated my ankle just to be sure I still could. There was only one way out that I could see – one way that would ensure the safety of my cohort as well as my own.
Kluehnn had decided he was the one true god, that he was the only one who should be worshiped.
It was blasphemy to speak to other gods – but what if it was only blasphemous because Kluehnn could think of no positive outcome?
The gods now had all been born on the surface.
What if things had changed? “I want to make peace,” I said.
My words seemed to fill the air, louder than I’d intended them.
“If the gods are organizing against Kluehnn, that can only mean an all-out battle. There would be losses on both sides. If we found a way to send you back to Unterra, would you take it and promise never to return?”
The crow bobbed its head. “That’s a start, but only a start. If we can come to an agreement – you and me – what then? My people will listen to me. Will yours?”
“If we can write a treaty that allows Kluehnn the surface, he will reward me, I’m sure of it.
The dens can kill all the gods, but only at great cost to ourselves.
” Khatuya and Naatar were out there, under this same sky, hopefully still alive and on their way home.
“He cares about us – his converts, his altered, his godkillers. Kluehnn, above all else, still loves his people.”
The crow regarded me with its black eyes and said nothing.