04c Dreams of Fire and Gods: Gods (9 page)

K
OREH
lived with his family for several years. How many, he couldn’t say exactly. But he’d witnessed so many snowfalls and spring thaws and harvests that he’d begun to lose count of them. It was a peaceful life and one full of joy, playing with his sisters—Rügind and the twins, Rös and Rösnem—going fishing with Emik, and doing repairs around the farm with his father. Some days, he helped his mother in the kitchen or around the cottage. She didn’t actually need the help, but he enjoyed spending time with her.

Work on the farm wasn’t at all strenuous. Koreh’s mother and father labored in the kitchen or in the fields because they liked to keep busy. But there was never too much work for one person to handle. His father never returned from the pasture exhausted, and his mother never seemed stressed by her baking. Koreh and Emik helped when they were asked but had few chores and plenty of time for fishing or skinny-dipping or building tree houses. Koreh made dolls for Rügind and played hide-and-seek with Rös and Rösnem.

The snow came, and they built snowmen. The spring and summer came, and they picked flowers. In fall, they picked apples and roasted
kanun
seeds. The years flew by, but the children remained the same. Rügind was always four years old. For her and all of Koreh’s siblings, the time spent here had already grown longer than the time they’d lived in the world of mortal men. Their memory of that life was beginning to dim. Even for Koreh, it was growing increasingly difficult to recall his previous life in Dasak.

Except for Sael. Sael’s face came to him at night in his dreams, and Koreh often woke screaming from reliving that moment when Sael slipped from his grasp and slid into the chasm. One night, his mother heard him and came into his room. She set the candle she’d been carrying on the table beside him and sat on his bed, brushing his damp hair off his sweating brow.

“I missed you so much when we were separated,” she said softly. “The girls—especially Rügind—were so young, they hardly remember living in Dasak at all. But your father and I and Emik…. We remembered. And we missed you more than I can ever say. But I knew you’d come eventually.” She smiled at him, her eyes shining with undisguised affection. “One day, your
nimen
will join you here, and we’ll welcome him into our family. You know this. You just need to be patient.”

Koreh could only nod unhappily and try to calm his panicked gasping. Eventually, his mother kissed him goodnight and went back to her room, leaving the burning candle by his bedside to comfort him. Koreh lay there in the warm glow of the candlelight, feeling desperately lonely and longing for the feel of Sael in his arms once more. Not someday, but now.

More years passed by and the pain of Sael’s absence only grew sharper over time. Koreh remembered Chya—who had never returned for him—saying that time passed differently here than it did in Dasak. A month in Bashyeh might be no more than a day in Dasak. Koreh had now been here years, if not decades. He was beginning to lose track. But a decade in Bashyeh might be less than a year in Dasak.

One day, as he and his younger brother sat by the stream fishing, Koreh was gazing into the water, not really looking at anything in particular, as he thought about this. How old was Sael now? Just a year or two older than the last time they’d been together? If so, Koreh might have to endure centuries of loneliness before Sael reached old age!

The thought was unbearable.

He watched as a large trout swam lazily against the current, moving closer to the pool where he’d dropped his baited fishing hook. The pool itself was out of the main current, and the water there was nearly still, reflecting the dark canopy of leaves over the river. There was a bright patch of blue sky in the reflection and to Koreh’s surprise, something moved across it, blocking out the sky. He glanced up, but the sky above him was still unobscured, cloudless and bright. Koreh looked down into the water and felt a chill come over him as he saw the outline of a human head and shoulders in the water… and eyes looking back at him.

Sael
. He mouthed the name but couldn’t make a sound, as if his vocal chords were frozen. The image of Sael in the water appeared to be just as startled as he was. Sael opened his mouth as if to say something, but the trout chose that moment to swim across the pool and nibble at the bait on Koreh’s hook. Sael’s face dissolved in the ripples it left in its wake.

Koreh was still staring into the stream, his mouth hanging open in shock, when Emik plucked the head off a
mannet
flower and tossed it at him. Koreh flinched as the ball of bright red petals bounced off his cheek and made a halfhearted attempt to swat it away, but he couldn’t tear his eyes off the streambed.

“What are you looking at?” Emik asked impatiently.

“I don’t know. It looked like… a face. Someone I know.”

Emik set his fishing pole down and crawled closer to peer down from the grassy bank at the water a few feet below them. “It’s just a trout.”

“I know what the fish is,” Koreh replied, irritated. The damned thing had swum right across the vision and destroyed it. Now the trout was regarding Koreh’s baited hook with suspicion, as if debating whether or not to take another nibble.

Koreh pulled his line up out of the water before the fish could make up its mind.

“What did you do that for?” Emik protested. “He’s a big one!”

Koreh didn’t care about the trout. He needed to get out of there, preferably without Emik trailing along after him. The vision of Sael gazing up at him, looking just as shocked as Koreh felt, had shaken him to the core. In the years Koreh had been living with his family, he’d thought of Sael every day, but to suddenly see his face like that….

“I’m done for the day,” he announced, winding the twine around his fishing pole and removing the bait and tossing it into the stream for the trout to gulp down without endangering itself. “I’m going back to see if Da wants help in the field.”

He knew his little brother hated working in the field, so he wasn’t surprised when Emik made a rude noise and replied, “I’ll stay here and catch that trout you were too dumb to catch.”

Koreh left the river and followed the path through the forest back to the farm. There was a hill between the woods and the pasture, and he climbed it, lost in thought while a gentle breeze tousled his hair and brought the sound of singing to his ears. It was a man’s deep voice—his father’s—singing a song of laboring hard in the fields from cockcrow ’til evening. That life was almost forgotten by Koreh’s family now. His father sang the songs because he enjoyed them, but they no longer held much meaning for him.

Kiishya was high in the sky, forcing Koreh to squint as he looked up. That was why he didn’t immediately recognize what appeared at the top of the hill. It was large and black, and when Koreh shaded his eyes with his forearm, the shape resolved itself into a beautiful jet-black stallion. The horse looked down at him with large brown eyes that seemed somehow familiar, but it made no move to approach him.

Koreh took a few more steps, and suddenly he knew why the horse looked so familiar. He felt another chill run through his body and stopped moving.

“Sek?” he asked, his voice faint and breathless.

The horse turned and walked away from him down the opposite side of the hill.

Koreh forced himself to move, scrambling up the hill in an attempt to catch the horse. But when he reached the top and looked down upon the fields and pastures between him and the cottage, he could find no trace of the animal.

“Sek!”

His father looked up from where he was packing hay into the wooden press he used for making bales and waved at his son, but the horse had disappeared.

Koreh waved back at his da, still remembering how the man used to come home each night in Dasak weary and exhausted. He was a moderate-sized man, little taller than Koreh was now, and very lean. Even though working in the fields had put some muscle on his thin frame, he’d never been suited to a life of hard labor. Here, at last, Koreh’s father seemed content, his handsome face full of laughter and his body overflowing with energy. He was never too tired to wrestle with Emik or take his wife’s hand in a dance around the fire.

Koreh adored him, as he adored everyone in his family. Seeing them made whole and happy at last warmed him more than he could ever express. If it weren’t for missing Sael so much, he would have been content to stay there forever with the people he loved.

But the restlessness inside him was growing and wouldn’t allow him to settle in. The day was fast approaching, he knew, when he would be forced to leave.

M
ARIK
’
S
men hadn’t mourned her disappearance for long. Her Sight had given them a powerful advantage over other bands of outlaws in Old Mat’zovya, but from what Donegh could overhear while he hid in the shadows, they had already given her up for dead. Her men speculated about rival bands kidnapping and killing her—or worse. She had many enemies. Or perhaps someone had finally decided to collect that tempting bounty on her head. Perhaps the emperor himself had sent an assassin.

Donegh found that last particularly amusing.

A burly, unpleasant man named Kessikh had stepped into her place. He wasn’t particularly bright or possessed of any great leadership abilities, but the others feared him. When he sat his broad backside upon Marik’s ornately carved wooden seat—of the sort reserved for royal
ömem
—no one dared object.

Except Marik, who was seething over it.

“Kill that arrogant bastard!” she ordered Donegh when he reported back to her. They’d moved back to the cellar for safety while Marik recovered from the pain of the separation. “If I’m to help you, I need my men. It’s been hard enough keeping them under control without disappearing for days. I know Kessikh. Now that he’s had a taste of power, he’ll be impossible!”

Thuna clucked at her. “We do need your men—all of them. Surely there’s a way to put him in his place without killing him.”

“Fine!” Marik snapped. She turned to stab a finger at Donegh. “Just get his ass off my high seat!”

Donegh smiled. All of this sitting around had been getting on his nerves. He’d been itching for a fight. “Leave him to me.”

As an assassin, he’d been trained to be cautious. He would never have attacked a man in a room full of people but waited until the man was alone. But he wasn’t going for a quick, silent kill this time.

He was going for drama.

He waited until Kessikh was holding court, planning to ambush travelers along the road to Mat’zovya. It wasn’t a particularly good plan.

“You’re ’xpecting us to just… sit there an’ ’ope somebody happens along?” one of the men asked incredulously.

Kessikh literally growled at him like a dog. It suited his appearance—ugly and gnarled, his jowls covered in bristles and his face scarred from countless fights. “You ’oping they’ll jus’ walk in ’ere an’ ’and it to you?”

“Marik knew—”

“Marik’s dead!”

“What if she ain’t? What if she’s workin’ for another gang?”

“An’ leave all ’er men behind? Everythin’ she’s worked to build?”

“Now that’s the most intelligent thing you’ve said all evening,” Donegh said.

The room was suddenly silent. All eyes turned to see Donegh step forward out of the shadows. But Kessikh didn’t remain silent for long. He leapt to his feet and shouted, “We’ve got an intruder! Kill ’im!”

The man to Donegh’s right lunged for him. He didn’t have a weapon—just his bare hands. Apparently he was stupid enough to think he could grab the youth and restrain him. Donegh was almost disappointed he didn’t have to use his new Taaweh abilities. He simply ducked under the man’s arm and used it as a lever to flip him over his shoulder. The outlaw crashed into two of his companions coming in on Donegh’s left, sending all three down in a heap of arms and legs.

Then Donegh did use his new abilities, diving into the floor to the bafflement of everyone in the room. He reappeared directly in front of Kessikh. The huge man jumped to his feet and froze, seemingly uncertain whether to attack or flee.

“That was easy,” Donegh said. “Getting your ass off the high seat, I mean.”

Kessikh roared and drew a vicious-looking curved blade from its scabbard, swinging it across Donegh’s stomach in the same motion. Except that Donegh’s stomach wasn’t there anymore. Donegh had hopped backward, dropping off the dais the seat was placed on and rolling over backward. He drew two small daggers as he rolled and slashed outward when his head came up again. Two men who’d thought to tackle him found their forearms sliced open.

There were perhaps thirty men in the room, and Donegh was kept busy, dodging, kicking, and rolling between them—and occasionally disappearing. Once he’d drawn his daggers, all weapons came out, though not a one came any closer to touching him than Kessikh’s blade had. He attempted not to do any serious damage to his opponents, since the goal wasn’t to incapacitate them before the job was done. One man did end up with a stab wound in the leg from one of his less coordinated companions.

It was delightful fun.

But at last Donegh heard Marik’s voice in his head saying
Enough! End it
.

He dove into the floor again and appeared behind Kessikh, who was still standing on the dais, searching the crowd for the assassin. Donegh wrapped his arms around Kessikh’s midsection, slid one dagger up under his throat and the other down to prick his ample belly. “Drop your blade!” Donegh hissed in his ear. “Or we’ll find out what you ate for your last meal!”

The blade clattered to the wooden floor.

At the sound, the others turned and saw the position Donegh held Kessikh in. For a long moment, nobody moved or made a sound. Then a woman’s voice said, “How
dare
you claim my chair?”

The crowd parted and Marik stepped forward, her disturbing, glowing eyes trained directly upon Kessikh.

“What—?” Kessikh gasped. “What’s ’appened to your
eyes
?”