In the Shadow of the Gods (11 page)

“Yes,” he said in his scratchy voice, and after a beat added a whispered, “cappo.” The title meant
master,
in the Old Tongue. He wondered where the mage had learned to use it.

“Good, Anddyr. Excellent.” He didn't know if this had been enough to save him from the mage's fiery wrath, but it felt a start. “There's something we should do, if we're to be true allies.” Joros rose and found a pair of attuned seekstones, one of the old magics lost to time. They seemed a simple enough
thing, allowing the holder of one stone to see through the eyes of the one who held the other. Easy to use, yet apparently impossible to reproduce; in the centuries of history covered by the ancient tomes carefully stored in the bowels of the mountain, none had ever been able to create a new seekstone. Luckily, those long-ago Fallen who'd had the trick of making the seekstones had thought far enough ahead to fill a literal vault with the things, so there was no shortage; still, the knowledge would have been nice.

Joros hesitated, not sure how this would go. He held a small knife in one hand, sharp-tipped, not unlike the one Dirrakara had stuck in that same hand earlier. “Anddyr,” he said softly, “I need your blood.” The mage's brows knit, but he showed no other reaction. “Give me your hand,” Joros tried instead, and the mage promptly stuck out his hand. Useful, that. Joros pierced the pad of Anddyr's thumb with the knife, pressed his thumb briefly to each seekstone—a smear of blood to spark the magic, the red dissipating into both stones with a swirl. The magics of those original Fallen seemed to rely heavily on blood.

Stringing one stone on a leather thong, Joros passed it to Anddyr and, still using the pleasant tone, commanded, “Put that around your neck, and cast a spell so it stays there.” Joros narrowed his eyes briefly. “Something so complicated even you can't undo it.” The mage did as he was told, muttering and waving his fingers around, and by the end of it Joros couldn't pull the seekstone from around his neck no matter how much force he put behind it; nearly strangled the mage trying.

Perhaps there was some value in Dirrakara's gift . . . He wouldn't say he was thankful for being a part of her experimenting, but the mage might have some use, and there was a
simple way to put him to the test. He rose, and the mage stumbled along dutifully in his wake.

Deep within the mountain, the impressionability still proved useful enough; at a word, the mage was scrambling to move the pile of bones until he knelt before the tunnel mouth, gaping like a fish in the faint wash of sunlight.

“Anddyr,” Joros said, speaking slowly as he would to a child, “seal up this tunnel.”

The mage's brow furrowed, eyes staring hard at the tunnel. Finally he raised his hands and began moving his fingers. It was like watching him weave on an invisible loom. The Highlanders guarded the secrets of their magic jealously, so Joros had no idea whether the finger-waving was actually doing anything, or if the mage might just be playing him for a fool. He jumped as a loud grinding noise filled the storeroom, chains clanking and carcasses shaking as they jolted on their hooks. The rock itself seemed to melt, flowing down like mud to cover the tunnel opening, and then the room slowly settled back into silence. The mage looked up to Joros, face hopeful. “Like that?”

“How did you do that?” Joros demanded.

The mage flinched, trying to curl in on himself. “It's a simple merging,” he whimpered. “Like calls to like.”

Joros glared distrustfully down at the mage—true, Anddyr had done exactly as he'd asked, but Joros hadn't really expected it—until those words bumped up against something in Joros's brain and set off a small cascade of ideas. A single, shining thought dropped into place.

For the first time in many years, Joros laughed.

A
ll of Keiro's life had been walking.

Walking with his father, from town to town to town, looking for work, any work that would put coin in their pockets or food in their bellies. Walking the same roads and same towns even after his father died, until he'd realized his feet could walk him where he pleased instead.

Walking alone, more often than not, though there were companions, for minutes or hours or days, as long as their feet happened to walk the same roads. A tinker, who had taught him how to put an edge back on a knife so dull it couldn't cut soup. A scribe, who'd patiently taught him his letters. A mercenary, who'd taught him all the bawdy songs she knew, just to watch Keiro's cheeks flame red. A carpenter, who'd taught him how to make the best sort of walking stick, one that could be used as a weapon if it came to it on the long lonely roads. And then there was the preacher, who'd taught him his life's true path.

Pelir, his name was, and they'd met the same way it always
went. Feet coming together on the dusty road, pleasantries exchanged, conversation started. He was an old man, Pelir, wearing a black hooded robe that dragged around his feet, so that the hem was swirled brown and red with dirt, and he wore a black cloth bound about his eyes. Keiro thought he was blind, but the old man laughed at that. “I'm not brave enough, boy, or learned enough, not yet,” he'd said, and Keiro hadn't understood. But the road had kept them together, and Pelir had spoken of his gods, the ones trapped beneath the earth, and Keiro had listened, and learned, and began to understand.

They had walked together, all the way to the foot of Mount Raturo, where Pelir had told him he must make the rest of the journey alone. A stone door had opened at his touch, and closed after him before Keiro could do more than gape. Then Keiro had walked alone again for a time, the long and twisting journey up the mountain, armed with the ancient words to send the Sentinels back to their sleep, with naught but the cold and the whistling air for company. His feet and his sturdy walking stick had brought him safely to the top, and Pelir had been waiting for him within.

Walking, then, the twisting halls of hollow Raturo, learning from all who would teach, learning all he could, until they sent him back out into the world with a black robe and a small seekstone strung around his neck.

Walking as a preacher, with Fratarro's gentle heart and Sororra's unyielding purpose held close. Walking, again, the same paths he'd walked with his father, though it was different now, more different than he could have imagined.

He'd gotten used to the scorn and the mockery, the petty cruelty, had even come to accept the blind hatred. “They are
who they are,” he would tell himself on the long road out of town, “shaped as they have been shaped. It is not their fault.” It didn't make the jeers and the beatings any easier, but it made the too-rare spark of understanding, of recognition, that much more precious.

He would never, though, get used to the drownings.

The first one he'd seen had sent him walking farther than he'd ever walked before or since, to the edges of the Northern Wastes, as far as he could get from Mount Raturo and all those within. He'd gone as far as he could, trying to escape one faith that could drive a village to drown two innocent babes for the crime of being born together, and another faith that couldn't stop it. But he had walked back, eventually, because he believed still—and more, he believed that the drownings could be stopped. That the Long Night would come, that he could help bring it about, and that no more twins would be drowned thereafter.

But still the sun rose, and still twins were born, and still they were drowned by the heartless followers of the Parents. And still, staring eyes danced in his memories, eyes too big for such tiny faces, eyes full of terror and innocence.

His feet took him home now, as was his habit after a drowning. By his count, it had been nearly two years since he'd last set his feet inside the mountain—he preferred the open places, where a man could always walk toward the horizon and never touch it. His heart was heavy, though, like a stone dragging down a fishing net, and there was a comfort to home. His feet took him through the trees and the fields and the wild places, far from the kind of people who could kill an infant and call it holy. Through the farmlands where preachers lived a simple
life, tending the flocks and fields that kept Raturo's storerooms stocked. He heard them call out as he passed, greet him in the name of the Twins. It would have been welcoming, another time. Now, though, he only wished to be done with walking for a time. He finally reached the only place he could name home, Mount Raturo, and he began the climb with Sororra's Eyes watching him, and all the babies' eyes haunting him.

The mountain knew him, remembered Keiro's scent and the blood he'd shed on his first ascent, but it took long hours of climbing to find a door that would open to his touch. The doors were keyed to ranking, and Keiro was a preacher of no great repute: a preacher who couldn't bear the darker side of that which he preached, who crumbled inside at the sight of tiny pale bodies bobbing in the water. It was a wonder the Sentinels had ever let him pass to begin with. “You've a gentle heart,” Pelir had said, but he'd said it sadly, the night before he sent Keiro back out into the world with his new black robe and his black eyecloth. Keiro hadn't understood the sadness in that then.

The halls of Raturo were dark, dark as they always were, with lights the barest glimmer. Keiro's feet knew the way to his old teacher's room, and he watched them take it, unable to lift his eyes for the shame and the grief that swirled within him. He didn't knock at the door, but simply entered; Pelir turned his cloth-bound eyes up as Keiro stepped into the room and knelt before the blinded man. Leathery, unshaking hands rested on his head as Pelir murmured a greeting, a blessing, and it was the simple kindness as much as anything else that broke Keiro.

More tears still for the dead babes, for all the staring eyes he could never forget, for all the tiny twins he'd laid to rest over
all his walking years, and through the tears he managed to say, “I will do it, brother. I will make the sacrifice.” He didn't know he meant to say the words, but there was a rightness to them. It was a small thing, after all, and a fitting punishment for all the babes he hadn't saved. Perhaps he would finally stop seeing their eyes, staring with a simple grief that was harder to bear than recrimination would have been.

Things moved quickly, then, in the sacred halls of Mount Raturo. No one could fault the disciples of the Twins for being ill-prepared. With Pelir at his side, and as many preachers as could hear the shouted news trailing behind, Keiro made his way down and down to the deepest parts of Raturo.

The Ventallo were waiting in their black robes with Sororra's Eyes blazing over their hearts, as many of them as could be found or bothered to attend. Seven sets of their feet, Keiro counted, and it was more than enough. Uniro himself was there, Delcerro Uniro with his thin neck and shaking hands, who had lasted as Uniro longer than any had expected. Keiro supposed it was an honor, but still his eyes stayed on his feet. He couldn't seem to bring himself to look at anything else.

The assembled Ventallo parted, making way for Keiro to walk through their ranks and into the cold chamber beyond. The ghost lights flickered there in the big cavern, their icy light making the air seem even colder. The others followed after him, the Ventallo and Pelir and all the others who had come to bear witness. They walked until they came to the edge of the frozen lake, and then Keiro walked on alone, watching his feet take him across the ice. They stopped before the Icefall, water long ago frozen midtumble, and Keiro reached out to wrap his fingers around a cold spine. It came away with a snap that
echoed throughout the cavern, the sound of a bone shattering. He carried it before him in his two hands, as the youngest midwife had carried the girl-child, and he knelt before the black robes and held it up for their inspection.

“I dedicate myself to the Twins,” he said simply. He couldn't remember the worlds Pelir had used, years ago, but he didn't think it mattered. “I am theirs, and they shall guide me through the dark.”

“Let it be so,” Uniro said in his high, querulous voice.

Finally Keiro turned up his face, looking into the dark heights of the cavern, and he raised up the icicle, and with a sigh of relief brought its tip down into his right eye.

For a moment, a moment only, there was joy. Never again would he have to see the sad bodies floating in rivers, never again see the sun shining its torment down on the little graves. He was free, finally, of the staring eyes.

And then came the pain.

Through the thrashing and the screaming and the streaming blood, through the hands trying to hold him still, through Pelir's sonorous voice beseeching Fratarro, through it all, somehow, Keiro's eye opened, the one eye, the one he had left. It opened, and he saw something he had never thought to see.

Standing there, nearly hidden among the swirling black robes, were two children, a boy and a girl, holding hands firmly as they stared back at him. Two children that were mirror images of each other. Twins. Alive and grown and old enough to walk, to talk, to look back at him with comprehension. A woman knelt before them, put her hands on their shoulders, tried to shield Keiro from their sight. They were real, as real as Keiro, as real as life. And the tears burst from him then, one
eye sobbing blood, as he washed his conscience clean, wiped away the guilt and the staring eyes and the tiny graves. For here they stood redeemed, all the drowned babes through all his walking years.

“Finish it, brother,” one of the Ventallo rumbled.

“No,” Keiro gasped out, a smile breaking across his face. “Don't you see?”

“We see,” the man said sternly. Squinting with his one eye, Keiro saw that his face was sharp and unforgiving, uncompromising. “
You
should not. You've been given to the gods. Finish it.”

They didn't see, none of them. Living twins! They meant that it was possible, all of it. The Long Night, and a time when there would be no more drownings, no more tiny hand-dug graves. They meant that Keiro could bear the sight of the world for a while longer, knowing that it would change. They meant that he would need his sight, to guide them, the beautiful living twins, to their destiny, to the salvation of all.

And looking at the twins with his one eye, he heard the fluttering of a voice again, no louder than the blood leaking from his empty socket:
Find me
.

“No,” Keiro said again, not to the whispered voice but to the hands that held the bloody icicle out to him, to those who wanted to take his eye that had, finally, seen living twins.

They took his seekstone, cutting him off from the mountain, but they let him keep his robe and his eyecloth and his walking stick. Those were, really, the only possessions he'd ever valued. They let him keep his title, too, though they argued heatedly over it. He was a preacher still, a Fraro of the Fallen. They took him to the very top of Mount Raturo and pushed him still
bleeding out into the waist-deep snow that blanketed the peak.

“Away,” the hard-faced Ventallo intoned formally, filling the doorway he'd thrown Keiro from. “Be gone from this place. Apostate.” In all the arguing, Keiro remembered, this man, this man he didn't even know, had called for his death. For dishonoring the gods. Because he was blind to the truth. And half blind, sprawled in the snow, banished, Keiro let out a little laugh. “You are given a chance,” the Ventallo continued. “A hope of redemption. It's more than you deserve, but there it is. You may use our words still, and spread our teachings, and pray that the gods forgive you. Should we see your face again, it shall mean your death.” He stepped back, into Raturo, and the mountain closed shut, swallowing him whole, and leaving Keiro so very alone.

His hands were cold, near frozen, but he managed to tie the eyecloth around his face, hoping it would slow the bleeding if nothing else. Behind his blind eye, he saw still the faces of the dead babes, all the drowned children he'd laid in the earth; but in front of his good eye, all he could see were the faces of the living twins. His redemption.

Perhaps he could not stand at their sides, lead them to the glory they were meant for. But he could prepare the world for them, as best he could.

Keiro used his walking stick to lever himself to his feet, and he began the descent, down the steep slopes of Mount Raturo. He had a long way to walk.