Servant: The Dark God Book 1 (31 page)

He opened his eyes.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You will die tonight if we do not change the course of what’s happening.” She pressed her hand to his chest again as she had done at first. “This isn’t come-backs. Some herbs can heighten the effect. But there was nothing in those small cakes. If there had been, I would be feeling the effects by now.”

“Effects,” repeated Talen. Something about that struck him funny and he giggled.

River stood and addressed Nettle. “Keep him awake. Use whatever it requires, but do not let him sleep.” She moved to the table and began unraveling her weaving of Da’s hair.

Nettle first tried to make Talen talk. When that failed, he began with slapping, pinching, and poking. But Talen didn’t care. He just wanted to close his eyes.

The next moment a searing pain ran up Talen’s arm. He cracked an eye and saw Nettle standing there with a stick from the fire. “Are you trying to roast me!”

“Aha,” said Nettle. “It’s fire that will keep him awake.”

But he was wrong. Talen’s eyes drooped close again.

Nettle burned his other arm.

“Aagh!” Talen said and almost came out of the tub.

“You can’t sleep,” Nettle said.

“Put your tortures away,” said Talen.

“No,” Nettle said and poked him with the burning stick again.

“Goh,” Talen said. “You and that sleth girl can perform your depredations after I’ve rested.”

But then River finished braiding Da’s hair and tied what she’d been weaving to Talen’s arm precisely where Da had tied that godsweed charm.

“I’ll give it a few minutes,” she said. It sounded like she was trying to reassure herself.

“There’s no virtue in hair,” said Talen.

“There isn’t?” asked River.

“I’ve never heard of it,” said Talen.

“What about Atra’s hair?”

“She’s given me up,” said Talen.

River made him relate the whole story of what happened at the glass master’s until Talen realized all she was doing was trying to keep him talking so he’d stay awake.

“I’m going to sleep,” he said. “Burn me if you like. I don’t care.”

River put her hand to his chest again. She looked desperate. She took him by the head then, her two hands clasping the back of his skull. “You need to help me,” she said.

“I can’t get up,” he said. “You’ll have to kill her yourself.”

“Talen,” said River. “I can’t stop the flow. You’re bleeding Fire. Your days are rolling off you like smoke. You must help me.”

“Fire?” asked Talen.

River glanced at Nettle and Sugar then faced Talen. She’d decided something. He could see that by the set of her brow.

“You’ve been multiplied,” she said. “Da began your awakening, but it’s all gone wrong. You need to close it off.”

That made no sense to Talen. Only dreadmen and Divines could do that. Then through the fog of his mind he began to feel at the edges of a horrible idea.

“You’re going to feel an intrusion,” said River. “Fight it. Push with all your might. You’re leaking through a thousand holes. You’ve got to close every last one of them.”

Suddenly he felt something enter him. It was crushing, and he gasped.

Push!
A voice in his mind said.

He’d been caught once in a tumble of earth, and this was what it had felt like. A panic began to rise in him.

He could feel her. He could feel River in him. The weight of her presence began to bear down, and it terrified him.

Talen tried to flee, but she was everywhere. A crush of sand.

Fight me, you fool.

He struggled against her.

Fight!

“I don’t know how!” he shouted.

All about him the sand of her presence pushed at him, coming in through his ears, his nose, his mouth. She stole the very air he breathed.

Talen lashed out, and in one part he felt her recede.

Was it his imagination?

He tried to push her again, but whatever he’d done fell to pieces and River’s presence swallowed him. He was trapped, pinned, a man drowning under a ton of grain.

His panic rose to a pitch, then he did something—he couldn’t explain it—he pushed, and he found he could breathe again. He pushed again. And she moved further.

That’s it! Fight!

River rushed at him with renewed force, but he held his space and withstood her. He did not know how long he struggled, managing only to keep her far enough away to breathe. Then he closed a small rent in his fabric.

Another
, she said.

But there were so many.

Close another!

Talen was so tired, but he fought. He fought and lost track of time. It was only him and the suffocating sand of his sister.

After what seemed like hours, he found himself facing the last hole, one rent in his fabric that separated him from the rest of creation. It was like trying to stop a river with his hand. Talen fought to no effect.

“I can’t do it,” he said and did not know if he’d spoken this aloud or just in his mind.

You will!
River said.
Mother didn’t save you only to have Father kill you with his reckless ways.

It’s just one hole.

Close it!

Talen mustered the last of his strength and tried to close the rent. And to his surprise he felt it narrow and then shut up tight as boiled leather.

He slumped in the tub. Tired. He was deathly tired. And thirsty. But the ragged edge of his weariness was dulled.

Talen opened his eyes. Most of the water had sloshed out of the trough to the floor. River’s tunic and pants were soaked all down the front. She slumped alongside the trough, and heaved a sob of relief.

Nettle and the girl stood behind her, their faces slack with confusion and shock. Talen started to say something to Nettle, but his exhaustion overwhelmed him, and he closed his eyes.

* * *

Talen woke and found himself in River’s bed. Someone had slipped small heated sacks of grain under the covers next to him to keep him warm.

He could see through the shutters that it was still dark outside. On the floor beside the bed stood a jug of water. Talen slowly sat up. His head swam, and he clutched it until the dizziness passed. He grabbed the jug and took a long drink.

When he finished, River stood in the doorway.

They were caught, all of them. In a black web of slethery. “I don’t know that I want to hear it,” said Talen.

“It’s too late for that,” said River. She walked in and sat beside him on the bed. “How do you feel?”

“Awful,” said Talen. “But not as bad as before.”

Nettle came to the doorway. “So he’s not dead yet? There goes my wager.”

“Ha,” said Talen.

Nettle grinned.

“Are you well enough to travel?” asked River.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. We have to leave tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ke has come and gone since you slept. They’re holding Da in Whitecliff.”

“The Council?”

“He’s been accused of being sleth.”

Talen recoiled.

“Talen,” said River. “I need you to listen to me, and I need you to be calm.”

He waited.

She took a breath, then said, “You know how Mother died.”

Talen nodded. She’d died in the pox plague year. Died of stress and worry.

“You think you know: laid into the ground, she was, without a blemish upon her. Perfect and whole, broken with grief for her little boy who was covered with the ugly rash, all blisters and pus. This is what you think, but grief did not break her, brother. Grief could not have broken that woman, not in a million years.”

She paused.

“It was love that broke her. Your little body was consumed with sores. Da called every healer he knew; we tried every herb known to have any effect. We danced and sacrificed to the ancestors. But the disease only grew. And so Mother and Da did what any loving parents would do. They gave their days to make you whole.”

Surely, she was talking about a Divine’s gift. “They went to the temple?” he said.

River shook her head, and dread washed over him.

“You were broken in body and soul. Da could not see how to heal you and steeled himself to losing you. He had given up. After all, many families lose one here or there. But Mother would not give up. She saw possibilities invisible to him. You struggled a week, then two. Everyone marveled at your spirit. But then Da discovered one night it was more than your tenacity keeping you alive. He caught Mother pouring her life into you. Her Fire flowed through you and held you together. And when you finally vanquished the disease, she was spent. A whole lifetime spent in two weeks.”

River smiled, but her eyes glistened in the dim candlelight.

“She died in the morning the day after your fever broke, holding your hand.”

Talen could not speak.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He nodded. But it just couldn’t be.

“Your veins, brother, run, in very fact, with our mother’s Fire.”

“But—”

“Shush,” said River. “Mother said that parts of you, parts of your very weave were . . . twisted. Most of that she was able to heal. But as she delved into the fiber of your being, she found other parts that defied her knowledge. Parts she said were complex, beautiful, unlike anything she’d ever encountered. There are things about you she could not change. Things she dared not change.”

He glanced at Nettle, but his expression was unreadable. Then the sleth girl came and stood in the doorway.

River said, “At the end, she was half mad with the effort. She kept telling us she needed to find the flaw. She thought you were perfect. We’ve all been waiting to see what you would become, to see what gifts the wisterwives had bestowed.”

Talen felt lost. It was all too much. Wisterwives, sleth, weaves. “Nobody’s seen a wisterwife,” said Talen.

“They are elusive, but Mother and Da found the charm.”

“The charm? You mean that odd necklace she used to make me wear?”

“The very same. Legs has it now. Mother gave it to Purity when he was born, thinking it might still have some virtue.”

“It was yours?” the girl asked in confusion.

River nodded. “Mother woke early one morning to find the shutters to her room open and the mosquitoes buzzing about her face. The charm was lying on the chair inside the Creator’s wreath. Something had taken the wreath from above the door to the house and brought it inside. Mother looked out the window. A troop of ferrets stood about the yard gazing at her, still as stone. They stood for some time, considering her in silence like wise little men. And then, just before the light broke above the hills, the little creatures turned and disappeared into the forest. Mother conceived Talen with that charm about her neck, and he wore it for the first few years of his life. But when Legs was born, she thought it had a better purpose.”

Talen had heard about the ferrets, but not the charm.

“But my mother said it was given to us,” said the girl.

“It was, but not by a wisterwife,” said River. “She probably didn’t want to repeat the story. Such encounters are special, and should be treated so.”

Talen said, “Did Mother see the wisterwife?”

“No, but how else do you explain the curious charm, the ferrets, and the wreath?”

Talen wondered. Wisterwives were said to bestow great blessings upon humans. Some said they served the Divines. Others said they served none but themselves.

It puzzled him that his family hadn’t said anything about this. Of course, a wisterwife’s charm was a rare and precious thing because it gave fertility and health. He supposed if people knew the source of that necklace, they would have stolen it. Perhaps that was the reason for the silence. Or perhaps it was something else.

“Regret has servants as well” said Talen. “How do you know it was a blessing? How do you know it even has anything to do with me?”

“I don’t,” said River. “I am trusting Mother’s judgment.”

“I might not manifest anything at all,” said Talen. “Maybe those changes were already in the bloodline. Traits can sometimes skip generations.”

“That’s true,” said River. “But the differences in your weave were exceptional.” She shook her head. “And they needed exceptional care. Da was reckless. I have no idea how much of your life you’ve lost. Nor whether you’ve burned yourself to the core.”

River’s description of his “weave” bothered him. “You talk as if I’m some piece of wrought jewelry.”

“We all are, Talen. Every living thing is a weave of one kind or another.”

“So what was different about me?”

“I don’t know. Mother died and took her secrets with her. But there’s this: Fire can be eaten only very slowly, and so it must be given only very slowly. To do otherwise is to risk the life of the person you’re giving it to. How she transferred a lifetime of Fire in the space of only a few days is beyond us. It should have killed you. Your exhibition tonight should have killed you. You were pouring forth quantities of Fire that would have killed ten men had they tried to tap into it. The amounts of Fire you’re able to handle is astonishing. And then there’s this: the band Da put upon you should have only had the slightest effect. It’s as if you’ve amplified its effect.”

“You’re talking about that godsweed charm, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said River.

“That was a weave?”

“Yes.”

Talen thought about it. If it was a weave, then it was a living thing on some level. He looked at Nettle and the girl who were both standing aside with grim faces.

Talen looked down at the floor. “Who made the weave?”

“Da.”

The only ones that used the lore were the Divines or sleth. And Da wasn’t a divine. Mother and Da had been using lore for years. These hatchlings hadn’t subverted anyone here. And suddenly a number of things that had always puzzled him suddenly made horrible sense. Harboring the hatchlings, for one. Da’s dislike of the Divines, for another. His demonstrations of uncanny strength when there was nobody but a son to see them, his odd lack of sickness.

Talen thought of Ke. His brother was strong as stone and just as unmovable. Yet, at other times he was lively as a cat. Talen remembered once a few years ago spying Ke upon a cliff in the distance. One moment he was standing on a ledge, and then next he was moving, leaping and scrabbling up the rock like a mountain goat. Talen knew that cliff. He’d asked Ke how he’d done it, and Ke had said he had a rope. And that Da was pulling him up. It seemed plausible and Talen had dismissed what he’d seen. But now it made sense. Ke hadn’t used a rope. He’d jumped, just as Talen had jumped and scrabbled up that elm earlier today.