Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
I’m sick as a dog for at least a week. Fever, rash, vomiting—you name it, I experience it.
It’s dreadful. Worse than dreadful. No one else gets sick, at least, but I insist on Kina and the priestess leaving food and drink at the front of my room instead of coming in to take care of me.
The last thing I want is to be responsible for more people getting sick because they tended to me.
I should have guessed. God of Disease, right? Maybe touching him at any point gives you plague. Plague-lite. Something. It sucks.
I’m also trapped here in the swamp, because Kalos doesn’t want to go anywhere. He hasn’t emerged from his quarters. He hasn’t contacted the guards, the priestess, or anyone.
He can hide. I’m not in much of a mood to talk to him after being given a dose of plague.
In fact, I’m downright salty about that bout of sickness.
Did he really have to do that? I know he doesn’t care, but damn.
It was an absolutely miserable round of coughing, sneezing, fevers, and I learned the hard way that they don’t have real medicine here.
Kina brought a healer over, who’d wanted me to drink tea made from dung (no thank you) and prescribed leeches.
I think I’d rather have the plague.
After a few weeks, though, the sickness clears up. I’m able to walk around the temple complex and… well, that’s about it.
Because I can’t leave. Ever.
I need to refocus, put a positive spin on things. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, calming myself.
Other than the fact that I’m trapped with a disease god in a crumbling temple in a swamp…
it’s not that bad? Kina and Priestess Jemet refuse to leave my side, even when I worry I’ll infect them.
That’s what the god of disease wants, right?
But I’m the only one who gets sick. Jemet tends to me, making sure I have hot tea to drink and good things to eat.
As I’m starving all the time, I really appreciate the food.
It’s simple fare, but I’m perfectly happy with cheese, fruit, dried meat, some hard bread, and anything else they send my way.
I don’t think of myself as a picky eater, but I’m so ravenous all the time that picky has gone out the window entirely.
I eat constantly, shoving food in my face left and right.
Ever since I brushed my fingers against Kalos’s, I haven’t been able to eat enough to satisfy myself.
Both Kina and Jemet assure me it’s normal for an Anchor.
That we must fuel ourselves twice as much as a normal person because our Aspect is using part of our energy, our life force.
He’s like a great big parasite.
I’d be screwed if I had to take care of myself, but it’s not a problem.
There are always twenty attendants of various kinds at the temple.
There’s a woman who shows up to do the laundry for those of us living here.
There’s someone who comes by with food supplies every few days.
There are guards who patrol to ensure no one causes problems. Priestess Jemet is here, living in one of the smaller temples in the complex, and Kina shows up on a near-daily basis.
The doors to the main temple remain closed per my instructions, with a guard out front to ensure that the god’s Aspect is not bothered unless he comes out.
It worries me at first, but Jemet says he has no need for food and drink. “He is not mortal,” she reminds me. “He is divine. He does not exist as we do.”
Fair enough. I’d promised he’d be left alone, and I make sure I’m keeping that promise.
No one is to go in. If Lord Kalos wants anything, he simply has to come to the door.
I listen there occasionally, trying to hear footsteps.
What’s he doing in there? Meditating? Sleeping?
Pacing? Plotting to take over the world? I never hear anything, though.
Sometimes I think he’s gone, and I test the boundaries of my bond with him. The subtle tug as I approach the edges of the temple grounds tells me enough—he’s here. I’m still trapped with him. I’m just…doing my own thing, I guess.
It’s not what I expected when I agreed to Lachesis’s deal.
I thought I’d be cheerfully nursing someone, a bit like the care I did for my brother when he was ill.
Maybe living as a servant to some fussy god.
Instead, I’m in a swamp full of biting flies and old ruins, with people that see to my every need and would kill me in a heartbeat if Kalos snapped his fingers.
He doesn’t, though, because he just doesn’t give a shit.
About anything.
At least I have my goat. Dingle is happy and adorable and doesn’t mind that he must stay on a leash so a stray gator doesn’t snatch him from the cobblestones. He makes me smile even when I let depression slip over me.
Is this going to be the rest of my life?
It’s hard to be positive when you feel defeated before you began.
“Mistress?” Jemet stands in the doorway to my room. “Are you busy?”
“Am I ever busy?” I joke. Today I’m re-beading one of the offerings that was brought and left at the temple by pilgrims. It’s a pretty necklace in a variety of colors, and I’ve decided to make a pattern with the beads instead of the chaos of colors as it is right now.
Then, maybe I’ll attach a bell and put it on Dingle.
Gotta do something so I don’t lose my mind with boredom.
Jemet comes into my quarters, her skin gleaming with the sharp-smelling herbal oil we all practically bathe in to keep the swamp mosquitos away.
Dingle hippity-hops over to greet her, then prances back to me for scratches.
He starts chewing on the hem of my dress and I watch him, unable to muster the effort to push him away.
What does it matter if my dress is torn up? I live in a freaking swamp.
“I am concerned about you, Mistress,” Jemet says, sinking to the floor to sit beside me. “I fear my lord’s apathy is affecting you.”
Entirely possible. It’s also entirely possible that I’m depressed because I’ve left everything in my world behind to sit in a swamp with a goat and some servants.
I’m hungry all the time, and when I’m not hungry, I’m bored.
I worked three jobs back home and it never felt like there was enough time to do anything.
Now each day feels endlessly long, and going to sleep is the only thing that cheers me up.
Definitely feels like depression. I’ve been here a month now, though, and it feels like yesterday… and also like a million years. But I’m doing my duty, just as I promised.
“I’m fine,” I reassure Jemet. “It’s just that this has been a big change for me.” I put aside my beading project and pick up a wedge of goat cheese, shoving it between two slices of flatbread and making myself a sandwich. I take a bite and offer one to Dingle.
Jemet twists her hands in her lap, watching as I share my sandwich with the goat. “I thought so too, but I consulted the thread-spinner to see if she had any advice.”
“You did?” I ask between bites. “When was this?”
“While you were napping yesterday.” She looks even more worried, her hands pulling at each other constantly. “I went to the village and spoke with her and… I did not like what I found out, Mistress.”
Uh oh. I swallow a dry mouthful and give the rest of the meal to the goat, because something tells me I’m not going to like this answer.
The thread-spinner is the local wise woman they mentioned before, and while I don’t believe that she’s tapped into the future, I do know that the gods and the Fates are real, so I need to give things like that some consideration. “What is it?”
Jemet’s expression is stricken. “The priestess says that she has seen a change coming.”
Well, change isn’t necessarily bad. “What kind of change?”
“I asked her to pull your thread to view it, and she pulled two threads instead. That means there is another in the area, or there will be soon.”
It takes me a moment to realize what she’s saying. “Another…? You mean there’s another god? Around here?”
“The thread-spinner said she saw an army on the horizon.”
“…what?”