The Godspeaker Trilogy (20 page)

She looked at the healed knife-cut. “No. It is nothing.”

“It has left a scar.” Vortka smiled, a quick twist of his lips. “Warriors like scars, so the healers tell me.”

The other warriors certainly did, they boasted with their scars as they boasted with their tongues. Scars were unimportant, they did not impress the god. “It is nothing, I told you. Vortka, has something happened?”

He did not answer. The new scorpion shell bound to his brow was brown, and larger than the black one it replaced. There were blue beads in his godbraids, they were not there before, and tiny stone scorpions dangled from his ears. His novice robe looked too large for his bowed shoulders. Something was troubling him.

She said, “Have you heard how Raklion is faring? We were told his belly had a gripe, I do not believe that. He was well when I saw him.”

The look Vortka gave her was almost unfriendly. “The god has not told you? Aieee, perhaps you are not so special after all.”

His fingers held tightly to his knees. He was frightened, he was worried, she could read him like the simplest clay tablet. She sat up straighter, so her breasts came out of the water. That did not matter, she was not a woman to him. “Why would you say that? How have I hurt you, that you would use your tongue as a knife? Do you think I need another scar?”

“I should not have come here,” he said, shaking his head. “I am not supposed to know these things. This is not my business.”

She felt a shiver run through her blood. Her scorpion amulet glowed against her skin. “Vortka? Tell me. What is it you are not supposed to know?”

He rocked a little on the bath-stool. His eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Why did I come here? If it is known I heard words not spoken for my hearing I—”

“ Vortka !” She wrapped her fingers round his wrist. “The god has sent you, that is why you came. You are its messenger. What has happened ?”

They were alone but still he looked in the bath-house’s four empty corners. “Et-Nogolor’s Daughter is dead and the warlord’s son with her. She cut the baby’s throat at birth, then stabbed herself in the heart.”

“Why would she do that? Was she demonstruck?”

“I do not know, Hekat. I do not want to know.”

Beyond the bath-house walls the sounds of warrior carousing filled the ageing night. Hekat felt the air around her turn to syrup. All the muscles on the inside of her body softened, lengthened, a flush of heat rushed across her wet skin. A chiming sounded in her head, it was the god, the god was speaking, telling her Mijak’s future. Her future.

Precious, beautiful, your time is come.

Languid, thrumming, she released Vortka’s wrist. “When did this happen?”

“Three lowsuns ago.”

The night she and the others returned from the wilderness. The night she spoke with Raklion in his palace. “And what of the warlord? Has this made him sick, is the gripe in his godspark instead of his belly?”

Vortka shivered. “Raklion warlord is in the godhouse, Hekat. He prays to the god on the scorpion wheel.”

“ Prays ?” she echoed, and leapt out of her tub. “No-one prays on the scorpion wheel, Vortka.” She snatched a towel and scrubbed away the soap and water. “It is an instrument of punishment, it is for the vilest sinners in the god’s eye! The lowest slave in these barracks knows of the godhouse scorpion wheel! How is Raklion bound upon it? He is the warlord, chosen by the god!”

“I am only a novice, Hekat, I do not know the nature of Raklion’s sin. I am not meant to know this much!” Vortka’s voice was broken, he was nearly undone. “I am wicked to be telling you what I know. But I am afraid. Raklion is tasked by Nagarak himself, I fear for his life.”

Roughly Hekat pulled on her clean loincloth and tunic, and belted her snakeblade round her waist. “Nagarak will not destroy the warlord. I will save him, it is the god’s want.”

Vortka stood and plucked at her arm. “Hekat, you cannot enter the godhouse. You cannot meddle in Nagarak’s business. If you are discovered . . .”

Her godbraids were soaked, and heavy with purpose. “I am the god’s shadow, I dwell in its eye. I glide through the air, hidden from the world. I am safe from your godspeakers, Vortka. Even that Nagarak.”

She left distressed Vortka in the bath-house and ran lightly through the darkness, unseen and obedient to the god. Its truth was in her, it had told her its desires.

I am coming, Raklion warlord. Precious and beautiful, this is my time.

Raklion wept. The god had written so deep in his flesh its words would never vanish. It had written on his bones as though they were clay tablets, and breathed on them like a baking fire. It had read his heart, it knew his remorse.

All I want now is to know your desire. Give me your answer, god, show me the path I must tread with my feet. Am I to be the warlord of Mijak?

“Raklion!” a sweet voice whispered. “No more weeping. You have soaked the god with your tears of blood, you have wept enough. The god needs your strength, warlord, not your tears.”

He forced apart his swollen eyelids. A single torch guttered in the stinking chamber, throwing just enough light to show him who spoke. “Hekat?” he said, his voice a rasp. “Are you here? Or is this a dream born of fever and pain?”

Her scars were golden in the torchlight. “No dream, Raklion. I am sent by the god.”

He sighed then, almost moaning, as her fingertips pressed against his brow. There was healing in her, his pain retreated. Or was that only his fevered mind, brought by Nagarak to the brink of breaking? He longed to touch her but he was bound to the wheel. He smiled instead, though it hurt his bitten, swollen lip. “Thank you, knife-dancer. Now you must go. If Nagarak returns . . .”

She shrugged. “If he returns he will not see me. Warlord, why are you bound to this scorpion wheel? Why are you beaten like a common slave?”

“To the god all men are slaves, little Hekat. I am here to weep for my sins.” Cold air rattled in and out of his chest. “How long has it been, Hekat? How long have I been bound here? Do you know?”

“I am told three highsuns.”

Three highsuns of weeping in this windowless chamber. No food, scant water. Three highsuns of screaming his sorrow to the god. No wonder his throat was raw. No wonder his wrists and ankles felt cut to the bone.

Three highsuns since his son had died.

Something in her words disturbed him. After a moment, he knew what it was. “Told? Who told you?”

“The god told me, Raklion.” Her tone said he should have known that without asking. “It tells me many things. It tells me things it keeps from Nagarak. He is high godspeaker, he is not the god.”

She spoke in riddles, he could not unriddle them. “Please. You must leave me. I do not want you punished for seeking me out.”

When Hekat smiled, her scars were forgotten. “Foolish Raklion. How can I be punished? I live for the god.”

“I live for it too, yet you see me bound here. I have no son . . .” His voice cracked, and though he thought he had wept himself empty his eyes stung with fresh tears. After three days in this terrible place it was easy to believe his sonless state would never change. “Et-Nogolor’s Daughter is dead, she will never bear me one.”

Hekat shrugged. “She was never meant to, warlord.”

If he had been free he would have struck her, beautiful Hekat with her wicked tongue. “What would you know of this, it is warlord’s business! You are nothing, a runaway slave. The Daughter was my future, she was the future of Et-Raklion. Her blood was pure, she was the child of warlords. What do you know, a runaway slave from the savage north?”

Hekat smiled again. His words had not hurt her. “I know all the things the god has told me.”

“The god does not speak to runaway slaves!”

She stood before him, lithe and strong and clothed in pride. “I am not a runaway slave. I am Hekat, knife-dancer of Et-Raklion, slayer of Bajadek, precious to the god.”

“How are you precious?” he demanded, the pain in his heart burning hotter than in his flesh. “Why are you precious? You have a wicked tongue, you do not seem precious to me!”

She leaned so close her breath caressed his skin. Her blue eyes were depthless, he fell into them unresisting. “I will be precious to you, as I am to the god,” she whispered. “The god desires I bear you a son.”

R
aklion stared at Hekat dumbly, struck beyond words. “I am meant for you. I will be yours. It is my purpose, warlord,” she added, frowning at his disbelief. “It is why I came to Et-Raklion, why you saw me, why the god saved me from Abajai and Yagji. You must know this. The god has told you, if only in dreams. It is why you desire me. Why your eyes eat me whenever we meet. I will be a great warlord’s mother. The god had told me this, so it will be.”

He rolled his head on the iron scorpion wheel. “No, Hekat. You are mistaken. Only a woman of warlord bloodlines is fit to birth a warlord’s son.”

“Tcha!” she said, and bared her teeth. “If that was true your son plowed in the Daughter’s field would be living, and all the sons you plowed before that. I am meant to birth the next warlord. Would you desire me if this was not so?”

She was a temptress, he must not listen. “I never said I desired you.”

She laughed at him. “Do I have eyes? Has the god struck me blind? You desire me, Raklion. It is the god’s want. That is why I am precious and beautiful.”

Snared in the extremities of physical distress, still he felt a throb in his blood. He wanted her naked, he wanted her lush. He wanted her long legs wrapped around him.

“And what of your wants, Hekat knife-dancer?” His voice was thickened, and slurred with many things. “Do you desire me?”

“I desire the god’s desire,” she said, her face a shadow among the shadows. “Whatever the god wants, I want it also.”

His eyelids were heavy, he could not stop them closing. In the fresh darkness he breathed in and breathed out and tried to fathom the god’s true purpose. Tried to imagine what Nagarak would say, the warlord taking a warrior to wife.

His eyes flew open. “The god talks to men with the tongues of its godspeakers. No godspeaker has talked to me of you. How can this be the god’s true desire?”

“Godspeakers are also men,” said Hekat. Her eyes in the torchlight were flat with contempt. “Men are imperfect. Men are swayed from the god’s desires by petty wantings of their own. This is known too, Raklion warlord. We saw the god strike down a lying godspeaker, you and I. Do not doubt what the god does in this place. Could I stand with you in the heart of its godhouse if I was not precious in its eye?”

Could she? He would not have said so. Et-Raklion’s godhouse was teeming with godspeakers, they were everywhere underfoot. How could she stand here with him if not by the god’s want?

The god desires I bear you a son.

She rested her hand on his naked shoulder. If there was pity in her for his sufferings he could not see it in her face. She was still, remote, some sacred thing housed in flawed human flesh.

“Raklion warlord, you are bound to the scorpion wheel. For three hard highsuns you have wept to the god and bled your sins from your heart and bones. You are cleansed now, it is time to rise. Et-Raklion needs you for the dark days ahead.”

Dark days . She sounded so certain. “What do you know of Et-Raklion’s future?” he demanded. “What has the god told you, Hekat?”

Her eyes drifted closed. “It tells me Mijak will be reborn in blood and fire. It will rise to greatness in the world. You must not fear, you are Raklion warlord, seen and chosen by the god. You will be Mijak’s warlord, the god has told me.”

Her words struck him so hard he felt his heart stop beating. Before he could speak again the tasking chamber door pushed open and Nagarak entered. He did not see Hekat or sense her presence. She was blind to him in the god’s hiding eye. She pressed a finger to her lips, desiring silence. Raklion said nothing, he was obedient.

She knows the secret of my heart. How could she know this and not be from the god?

“Warlord,” said Nagarak, halting before the scorpion wheel. “The god has heard you weeping, it has seen you in its smiting eye. Your sins are purged. Return to your life outside this godhouse and serve the god in its desires.”

Raklion swallowed hot, relieved tears. As Nagarak released him from the scorpion wheel, as he cut the blood-slicked leather thongs at ankle and wrist, Raklion said, “Do you go now to the scorpion pit?”

Nagarak nodded. “Yes. I go to ask the god’s desire. I go to ask if you must rule all Mijak as its warlord. If I am to be its one true godspeaker.”

Raklion’s gaze slipped sideways to rest on Hekat’s secret, watchful face. He could see her smiling, he could hear her breathing, but Nagarak was deaf and blind. To Nagarak, they were alone.

The god has sent her. She is sent by the god. She has already answered Nagarak’s question.

“The god will not smite you in the scorpion pit, Nagarak,” Raklion said. “It will tell you I am to be warlord of Mijak.”

Nagarak frowned. “You cannot say so, warlord. I am high godspeaker, I cannot say it. No man can know the god’s desire before the god tells a godspeaker in its time.”

So Nagarak said. But there in the shadows stood the knife-dancer Hekat, and she had said a different thing. She stood in the shadows and Nagarak did not see her.

Who do I believe now? Who knows the god best, Hekat or Nagarak?

“Come with me, Raklion,” said Nagarak. “I will heal you before I go to the pit.”

It was a terrible thing, to slide free of the scorpion wheel. Raklion heard his pained breath sobbing, he felt his head swim and his knees buckle after so long spent suffering for his sins. Nagarak’s smiting arm slipped round his shoulders, Nagarak’s strength kept him from falling.

“When I beat you,” said Nagarak, “I was obeying the god. I took no pleasure from your weeping.”

Nagarak, expressing regret? For a moment Raklion thought he must be fever-dreaming, that Hekat did not stand close by and unseen in the shadows, that he remained bound to the scorpion wheel awaiting further sorrow.

Nagarak said, “If I must die in the scorpion pit I would not have any misunderstandings left behind me.”

Raklion shifted a little, and took more weight upon his feet. He was desperate to lie down. “The smiting hand was not yours, Nagarak, it was the god’s. You were its instrument, I understand. And you will not die in the scorpion pit.”

This time Nagarak did not chide him. “That is my desire, I confess it freely.” He cleared his throat. “But a man’s desires are nothing to the god. Its desires are not the desires of men.”

Raklion looked at watching Hekat. “I believe the god desires peace in Mijak. I believe it desires an end to strife, to squabbling warlords, to untrue godspeakers. I believe it will tell you this in its scorpions’ whispers. Now, heal me I beg you, Nagarak high godspeaker, and let that be an end to my sorrow.”

As Nagarak helped him from the chamber he resisted the urge to turn back to Hekat. The god had seen her into this place, it would see her safely out again.

If it did not, her words were lies and she would be justly punished.

But if she does not lie . . . if Nagarak is spared in the scorpion pit and tells me in his own words what Hekat has told me, these terrible three highsuns will be as labor. I will birth a Mijak made new.

Hekat left the godhouse as she had entered it, deep in the god’s eye, invisible to mortal men. Vortka waited for her on the Pinnacle Road, chilled in the deep cold that came before newsun.

“Tchut tchut, Vortka! What do you do here?” she whispered, as he took her hands in his. Voices carried on the cool night air. “This is the quiet time, the godmoon should not see you!”

His fingers released her, and folded into his sleeves. His teeth were chattering. “I wanted to be sure you were unseen and unharmed.”

“I am both, Vortka. The god hides me in its eye,” she said, impatient. “It does not hide you, you will be seen. You will be smitten. I have witnessed what the godspeakers do to men who break the quiet time. You are stupid , go away!”

His solemn face broke into a smile. “You are worried for me.”

It was one thing to call him friend in the silence of her mind. That did not mean she meant to shout it from her tongue, or wished to see him smile like that or say out loud things best left unspoken.

“Tcha! Who wastes worry on stupid rocks?”

His smile faded. “Did you see the warlord?”

“Yes, I saw him. I told him what the god wants, he will do it. He has no choice, and neither do I. What the god desires the god must receive.”

Vortka nodded. “It desires you to lie with the warlord. It desires you to bear him a son. Raklion will become the warlord of Mijak and the son you bear will follow him to glory.”

Astonished, Hekat felt her mouth fall open. Then she stepped close to Vortka, her snakeblade in hand, and pricked its sharp tip into his throat. “ How do you know this ?”

He did not push her hand away. “Aieee, Hekat. How do you think? I asked the god for answers, the god revealed its plan to me.”

“The god, or a demon seeking mischief in the world?”

“A demon cannot know the god’s secret heart.”

Still she kept her snakeblade to his throat. “A man cannot know its secret heart, Vortka!”

“A godtouched man knows whatever the god desires it to know,” said Vortka. “I too am godtouched, Hekat, do you seek to deny it? Do you seek to thwart the god from jealousy or spite?”

Jealousy? Spite? How dare he say so! She snatched back her snakeblade and slapped his face. “I think you are jealous,” she hissed. “I can stand before Nagarak, he does not see me. Nagarak will always see you. You must ask the god to tell you its desires, the god comes to me unbidden, I never ask and still I know what it wants.”

“You think that matters to the god?” said Vortka, scornful. “The god cares only that we serve. I am its instrument, Hekat, no less than you. Accept it, or the god will smite you.”

That was true. She sheathed her snakeblade. “You are its instrument, Vortka, I accept it, but I must be careful. No man is perfect. All men are weak.”

“I am not a man,” said Vortka, touching his face where her hand had struck him. “I am a godspeaker.”

“Tcha!” she scoffed. “You were a man before you were a godspeaker. Little more than a boy. Sold to slavery for being unwanted.”

“And you were a girl sold for the same reason,” he said, glaring. “That is the past, it does not matter. Now I breathe for the god, Hekat. I will not betray you, I will never hurt you. You need not guard yourself from me . Why do you attack me? I thought we were friends. I thought you trusted me.”

“I can trust no-one,” she told him coldly. “I am precious and godtouched, I can have no friends.”

His face twisted with anger. “You ungrateful brat! I have kept your bloodsoaked secrets and told lies for your sake in the godhouse. I come to you when the god’s will moves me and I tell you things it wants you to know. Things it does not whisper unasked in your heart. Even though I am put in danger, even though I would be tasked to mindless screaming if any godspeaker was to learn what I did. You are a stunted woman, Hekat. You have a mean spirit. That is your sorrow, it is not mine. Deny our friendship, I cannot stop you. But I am equal to you in the god’s eye and you will respect that.”

She felt a pricking, a sting of discomfort. There was water standing in Vortka’s eyes. Scuffing her sandaled toe in the dirt she muttered, “I said I accepted you are the god’s instrument. Did I not say I accepted that? There is no need to sharpen your tongue on me. You are not so precious you can sharpen your tongue on me.”

“Is that so?” he said, and turned away.

She let him walk five paces, then called, “Wait! Vortka, wait!”

He stopped, but did not turn back. “What?”

Mindful of their voices carrying, she took four paces to be near him again. “Nagarak prepares for the scorpion pit. He will ask the god if it wants Raklion as Mijak’s warlord. You must be there to witness the god’s answer. Whoever witnesses Nagarak’s testing, those godspeakers will be seen by him as special. Soon enough Nagarak will be my enemy. He will work against me. You must work for me, in the godhouse. You must trust me in this, I speak the truth.”

It showed in his face that he did not want to trust her, his feelings were hurt. He was stupid, stupid . What were his feelings, compared to the god?

“ Vortka ,” she said, and took his robe in her fist. “This is what the god wants. You cannot refuse.”

He plucked her fingers free, turned on his heel and stalked away up the Pinnacle Road. She watched until the darkness swallowed him, until he was a memory in her eye. Around her neck the scorpion dangled, and it was hot with the god’s displeasure.

He is my instrument, you handled him roughly.

So said the god to her, deep in her heart.

Bathed in the godmoon’s thin light she dropped to her knees, bruising them on stones scattered in the road. Her snakeblade glinted, it thirsted for her blood. If she refused its spilling, demons would take her. The power in her scorpion amulet would drain away, leaving her empty.

I did not mean to disrespect you, god. I did not mean to disrespect your instrument.

She pulled down her linen tunic, exposing her left breast to the night. Her snakeblade bit keenly. Dark blood welled. Pain rose like a hot wind from The Anvil, scouring away sin.

Three times her blade bit, and after that the god was slaked. The fresh wounds healed, no need for a godstone. It was the god who healed her, who sealed her flesh.

I am Hekat, beautiful and precious. Chosen. Godtouched. Filled with the god.

How could Nagarak stand against her? How could any man stand against her?

Though her wounds were healed, wet blood still stained her skin. She dragged her fingers through it and touched them to the scorpion amulet. The stone pulsed and flared into life. She laughed to feel it, the god throbbing in her bones. Its presence soothed her, eased the prickly hurt of harsh words with Vortka.

I am Hekat, precious and beautiful. The god loves me, I will give it the world.

Et-Raklion godhouse’s scorpion chamber had four bare walls, a bare ceiling, and a pit in the center of its stone floor. It had an altar at one end, but that was all. No lavish decoration was needed here, no godposts, no friezes, no mosaics, no elaborately wrought torch-holders. The god was here, and that was enough.