Chapter 61 Mullayne #2
Kluehnn flowed into the cave, his presence pushing Mull back and away from the door.
The aspect let out a low, harsh laugh. “Did you think you might escape? Jump on whoever came to serve your food? You’re no warrior, Mullayne Reisun.
” With a snort, it went to one of the hanging bodies.
It didn’t move with the same urgency as before, the edge of its hunger sated.
Mull touched a finger to the end of the sharpened bone at his waist as he watched Kluehnn latch onto the arm of the nearest dead god.
The aspect paused, drawing back, shimmering blood on its lips. “You’re a clever man. Should I keep you alive, do you think, or should I kill you? I can never trust you to be loyal to me, even though you cave beneath the slightest pressure. And clever men are always dangerous.”
Mull edged closer to the door, not daring to look at it.
In the end, his cleverness hadn’t made him better than anyone else.
He’d aimed it toward selfish desires, convinced that his pursuits were helpful to everyone.
He was making mining more efficient, he was uncovering hidden histories, he was searching for a cure for Imeah.
He’d been blind to the larger world – no wonder Sheuan had thought through the implications of the filters before he had.
And this was where it had all gotten him – his pride, his selfishness, his gods-damned cleverness.
He had to remake himself. If he had grown fat off his cleverness, the profits of his workshop, then this den was his chrysalis, and he would emerge changed. Cleverness was nothing without wisdom, and the wisdom he’d gained was hard-earned.
If he escaped. He needed to escape.
Kluehnn returned to eating and Mull took a sliding step toward the door. One more step, and he could reach out and take the handle. He had to be careful. He’d seen the aspect move, knew that it was much, much quicker than he was, even in his altered form.
Kluehnn froze, all eyes pivoting to focus on Mull, and then on the door. Everything sharpened, the sound of his own breathing harsh in his ears.
They moved at the same time.
Mull pulled the shattered bone free and reached for the door. Kluehnn’s footsteps thundered across the stone floor, a terrible mix of clicking hooves and slapping hands.
The door opened. His shard of bone had kept it from latching.
But Kluehnn was there, towering over him, trying to get between him and the way out. Mull stabbed at the creature blindly. The shard of bone sank into one of its eyes, and the aspect screamed. One clawed hand still made it around Mull’s guard, seizing the top of the door, trying to push it closed.
A thought drifted to the front of Mull’s mind.
He had to remake himself.
All those carved messages in the tomb – written in stone and not on malleable paper, like the books he’d been instructed to mark.
The etchings could not be changed. Tolemne didn’t stay down in Unterra after returning there.
He came back to the surface. He buried his family after he’d returned, not before.
I cannot survive up here. I must go back.
So he’d gone back to Unterra and become someone else.
The claw in the wall, the pact between the elder gods. Tolemne had carved that into the stone. If all the gods were bound by it, then Kluehnn shouldn’t have been able to speak the truth of it without dying. The seeds, he’d said. Unless he wasn’t a god at all.
Mull leaned close as he pulled at the door, his whisper barely audible past his strained breathing. “You say you are the one true god. But that isn’t true, is it, Tolemne?”
The aspect recoiled, its hand slipping from the door. Mull yanked it open, slipped out, and slammed it shut.
The aspect howled, the sound muted by the metal door. Mull ran.
No one stopped him; they stopped those who were going deeper into the den, not those who were going up. He caught confused glances, hand lifting a moment too late.
He had to dodge one set of hands before bursting into the light of day. There were altered in the rocks. They would skewer him with crossbow bolts. But he couldn’t stop himself from running. At least he’d die under an open sky.
The beat of wings sounded next to his ear. A bird landed on his shoulder, claws digging into his fur. “Keep running,” a hoarse voice said. “We’ll get you out.”
And then the crow was flowing from his shoulder, changing into an enormous gray wolf with raised hackles and teeth as long as Mull’s fingers. It loped alongside him as two other birds fell from the sky, shifting into wolves that ran up the mountainside.
Shouts and screams echoed from the rocks. The whimper of an injured animal.
“Get on my back,” the giant wolf growled.
It felt like a dream, stranger than the ones Mull usually had, which generally involved books and tea and the solitude of quiet places. He seized the fur around the wolf’s shoulders and pulled himself onto the creature’s back.
It darted away from the den and up into the mountains.
Mull had the presence of mind to press himself flat, to become a smaller target.
A bolt whizzed above his head. Every moment felt etched into memory, as though his mind wanted to make sure that if these were his last seconds, he’d understand each detail of them.
The roughness of the wolf’s fur beneath his fingertips, the rasp of his breath in his throat, the wind lashing tears from his eyes.
Kluehnn was Tolemne. He was Tolemne. The thought ran circles in his mind. There was so much he still didn’t understand. What had happened to the man? How was he still alive, his consciousness split into aspects? What had he done when he’d gone back to Unterra?
If Tolemne had gone to Unterra to plead with the gods, and none of them answered except Kluehnn, that meant that none of the gods had offered him help. The only one who’d helped Tolemne had been himself.
They stopped at last in a valley between two mountains, a small, verdant spot watered by the morning mists.
A camp had been erected here, tents lined up in neat rows.
People and animals began to emerge from the tents to greet them.
The people seemed to shine with an inner light, skin and fur glowing in the late-afternoon sun.
Gods. Two other wolves emerged from the mountains, one stopping to lick at a bolt that nestled in its side. Mull slid from his mount’s back.
The wolf turned its head, brown eyes meeting Mull’s. “Your friend Rasha spoke of you. She said you had information, that you’d been to the depths of the den.”
Mull tried to set his thoughts straight, unsure of where to begin. “I do. There’s another path to Unterra in there. Irael’s Path. You could go back. You could—”
A voice emerged from among the gods. “No. They could not.”
Mull’s heart seemed to thud to a stop, the air crystallizing in his lungs. He knew that voice.
Imeah stepped from between the gods. She didn’t walk with a cane. She stood tall, her black hair loose. “I made my way back, darling,” she said, her lips curving into a smile.
He wasn’t sure when he’d moved, but then he was holding her, their heads resting on one another’s shoulders, their breathing aligned. “You’re well. You’re well.”
“It’s not what it seems,” she said, her arms still wrapped around his back. “And I have so much more to tell you – about what happened when you left me, where I went, where I have to go. But know this: the gods cannot go back to Unterra.”
He wanted to say he didn’t care, but he couldn’t be the same person he’d once been. “Tell me then. What does it mean? What must we do?”
She finally pulled away, her hands on his shoulders. “The Unanointed stopped restoration. They brought the gods out from hiding. It means the real war is beginning.”