Chapter 42 Rasha
Rasha
Langzu – Kluehnn’s den northeast of Bian
How could mortals all be content with the bargains their ancestors made?
Of course they wouldn’t be. Mortals are discontent, contrary creatures, always disagreeing with one another.
Where there is order, some always feel compelled to create chaos.
Someone says the world is round? There will always be someone willing to squint at the horizon and say it must be flat.
So in each realm, a resistance to the god pact arose, a faction whose sole purpose was to break it.
I sat on the rock next to the crow, watching the sky deepen into night, my arms around my legs, my chin resting on my knees.
“The gods used to wander the surface before the Shattering. They used to come up, become a part of our stories, and then disappear below again. After the Shattering, they came to the surface in greater numbers.”
“I can’t say I know exactly what happened,” the crow said. “I wasn’t there. I was born in Albanore, before it was restored. I’ve only shifted a few times since then. My parents forbade it. So the history of the gods, even just the feeling of being a god – I don’t know it well.”
“What happened to your parents?” I thought I knew the answer already, but some part of me needed to hear it, to know for sure.
“The first two times I shifted, nothing bad happened, so I thought I could do it again. I wanted to swim in the Bay of Barexi, to see what lay at the bottom. So I shifted into a shark. I found ruins, the remains of artifacts, twisted pieces of old, dark wood. I spent all afternoon there. And when I returned home, my parents were both dead. Godkillers. My luck had run out, and they’d found my parents instead of me. ”
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry” felt like a lie. I was a godkiller; I’d killed gods just like the crow’s parents. So instead, I made my own confession. “My parents died when I was young as well. One from illness, the other one from walking into the barrier. My sister cared for me.”
The crow cocked his head. “And is she still alive?”
The bond was a constant thing in the back of my mind, a subtle tug, a string glued to the inside of my skull. I felt it, following it southward. I couldn’t be sure how far it stretched. “She is. Somewhere. Far from here, I think.”
He didn’t ask me any other questions about her, and I felt an odd swell of gratitude for that small courtesy. I couldn’t explain, didn’t want to. I traced a circle on my shin, aware suddenly that I’d forgotten my robe.
“There are many of us,” the crow said. “More than Kluehnn thinks there are. I don’t think he understands how many shapeshifters have eluded his godkillers, simply by refusing to change, by taking the shapes of animals. If he makes war upon us, he will find we are not so easily killed.”
“You’re trusting me with too much.” If I told this to anyone else in the den, they would tell Kluehnn, and he would readjust his plans. He’d have an advantage.
The crow blinked. “I’m trusting you with what I think you can handle.”
There had to be another way, one that didn’t burden me like this. “If I can find a path to Unterra, a way to funnel the gods back there, would you agree to be shut away from the surface? Surely there must be at least one still open.”
“I think I could get the other gods to agree to that. Please understand: we’ve lived in hiding for centuries. We are generations from our parents. Our stories are different from yours; they say Kluehnn drove us from Unterra.”
I still felt that defensive urge to say he was wrong, that the gods flooded the surface in a bid to subdue the mortals.
But what did I know, in the end? Everything the converts had been ordered to excise from the archives told a different story.
Was Kluehnn protecting us – or himself? Now that was true blasphemy, but I held the thought, examining it in all its ugliness.
I couldn’t say it was untrue, not without knowing more.
In the end, he’d still given me a place to exist, to live, to work. He’d given me the friends I held dearer now than any family, who had survived with me through the trials. He’d given me food, shelter, water.
I would be dead if it were not for my faith. I would have had no meaning without it. I held these two thoughts together, weighing them, feeling the unease of the opposing feelings they conjured. Suspicion and doubt, love and trust.
The crow hopped a little closer, feet scraping against stone. “Would Kluehnn agree, if you found a path and we brokered such a deal?”
I cast him an annoyed glance. “I already said he would.”
He polished his beak against the rock. “If he does not agree, I should tell you – we have ways to make him think twice about continuing this pointless war. If he throws the bulk of the godkillers against the forces we are assembling, he may win, but we will make you pay dearly for it.” He reached beneath one wing with his beak, pulled out a small piece of blue chalk. “Take this.”
I didn’t extend my hand. “What would you have me do with it?”
“If there is a time the den might be vulnerable, mark the stone above the latrine ditch, the largest one. We will see it. We won’t kill anyone, I promise you.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“What do you know of gods and promises?”
“If you break one, you die.” It was in all the old stories, this limitation, as it often came into play in the games between mortals and gods.
“But you could be a willing sacrifice.” In spite of that, I unfurled my fingers.
The bird dropped the chalk into my palm, and I stretched my legs, slipping it into a pocket.
It felt like a piece of hot iron against my thigh.
“May we meet again, Rasha.” The crow leapt into the air. I watched it go, marking the direction it flew in, trying to keep my gaze surreptitious. North, further into the mountains. When it had disappeared into the night sky, I picked up my crutch and hobbled back down toward the den.
The workers would have retired from the archives by now, but I still had to close the shutters, blow out the lamps, and make sure everything was in order before I went back to my room. Menial work.
At this time of day, the tunnels were warmer than the air outside; returning to them felt like returning to an embrace.
In spite of the chalk in my pocket, I couldn’t quite imagine turning against Kluehnn, against the people I’d been raised among.
Even if no one would be hurt. Yet I’d still taken the chalk. Just in case, I told myself.
Someone was waiting for me in the archives when I returned. His hand was bandaged, his armor scratched with three deep furrows, but he was here, and he was alive.
“Naatar,” I gasped out, breathless. My gaze darted around the room. “Khatuya, is she—”
“She’s alive.” Naatar lifted a man from the ground by the collar. It took me a moment to process who it was. His black-ticked fur blended into the walls, and I didn’t recognize him at a glance, not when he was wearing a gray godkiller’s robe. My robe.
Mull.
“This convert stole your robe,” Naatar was saying. “He was arriving here from deeper in the den. I don’t know where he’d been or what he used this robe to get access to. He must be punished by Kluehnn.”
I could feel everything fraying at the edges.
I hadn’t realized how cloistered the space was that I’d built with Mull.
In it, I’d felt safe to question things I’d been told were true, to dig into the precepts and how they might have formed, to learn things of our history that were being forcibly removed.
And now all of that was violated, my two worlds clashing in a way that could only end in bloodshed.
“I let him borrow the robe,” I said, before I could think of anything else.
“Borrow it?” The scales on Naatar’s forehead puckered as his brow lifted.
“He’s helping me.”
“Helping you do what?”
I didn’t know what I could tell Naatar and what I couldn’t.
When we’d been out in the wilds of Langzu together, he’d always been the one to step in between Khatuya and me, to stop our fights before they could really start.
It meant I didn’t actually know where he stood.
Did his opinions align with mine, or with Khatuya’s?
Did he also think questioning was blasphemy?
Or did he see more nuance in our place in the den, in Kluehnn’s place in our world?
If I wanted Mull to live, I had to take a chance.
And I surprised myself by wanting him to live.
“He’s helping me find the truth. I’ve found pages.
They’re not just sorting things here in the archives, they’re removing pages from the books.
I think they’re replacing them. There are probably other crates in here with new pages, fresh ones, with other information.
Things are being hidden from us.” I couldn’t bear to say what lurked in my mind – that Kluehnn was hiding things from us.
Naatar was injured. He could have been killed. If those claws had dug just a little deeper… He was frowning, his black topknot swaying as he shook his head. “You’ve gone mad.”
It would have sounded crazy to me, before I’d met the crow, before I’d uncovered these secret histories, but now I wondered if there was a way to make peace, and I felt small again, wishing and hoping that Hakara wouldn’t go diving in the sea.
Did that make me weak?
Naatar was still holding Mull, who shook in his grip, an autumn leaf shivering in the wind.
“The truth is what Kluehnn tells us it is.” His voice turned pleading, and this was what stabbed a thorn into my heart.
“Put your head down, keep to your work. Kluehnn has always favored you. He will return you to your place, he will give you a new blade. You can fight with your cohort again.” Just as it used to be.
“Kluehnn has given us everything; is it too much to ask us to trust him?”
The doubt flared. “So… what? Someone does something kind for you and it means they are beyond reproach?”
I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking it too. I’d once saved Naatar’s life. During our second trial, I’d killed another neophyte to save him. I’d betrayed another neophyte. What did he owe me for that?
He took a half-step closer, Mull dragged along in his grip. His lip trembled – with anger or fear, I wasn’t sure. “He is a god. The one true god. The god who has changed and is changing the surface of the world. Who is changing us.”
My voice was small, the howl of an injured cub. “What if I didn’t want to be changed?”
He stared at me, and I stared back – I wasn’t sure for how long. When he leaned in, I could smell his breath. “No. Someone who does something kind for you is not beyond reproach. But they certainly deserve better than this sneaking around.” He let go of Mull, who stumbled back.
“Don’t tell Khatuya,” I begged him. “She wouldn’t understand. Please.”
He didn’t even acknowledge my words, storming out of the archives as though fleeing his fate.