The Kingdom of Gods

Kahl leaned over me, adding pressure to my lungs. Through watering eyes I saw his: narrow, deep-set slashes in the plane of his face, like Teman eyes. Like mine, though far colder. And they were green, too, like mine.

— like Enefa’s —

“Are you afraid?” He cocked his head as if genuinely curious, then leaned closer. I could almost hear my ribs groan, on the brink. But when I forced my face back up, muscles straining, throat bulging, I forgot all about my ribs. Because now Kahl was close enough that I could see his eyes clearly, and when his pupils flickered into narrow, deadly slits —

— eyes like Enefa’s no no EYES LIKE MINE —

I tried to scream.

“It’s far too late for you to care about me, Father,” he said.

The word fell into my mind like poison, and the veil on my memory shredded into tatters.

Kahl vanished then, and I do not remember what happened after that. There was a lot of pain.

But when I finally awoke, I was thirty years older.

BOOK FOUR

No Legs at Midnight

HERE IS WHAT happened.

In the beginning there were three gods. Nahadoth and Itempas came first, enemies and then lovers, and they were happy for all the endless aeons of their existence.

Enefa’s coming shattered the universe they had built. They recovered, and welcomed her, and built it again — newer, better. They grew strong together. But for most of that time, Nahadoth and Itempas remained closer to each other than to their younger sister. And she, in the way of gods, grew lonely.

So she tried to love me. But because she was a god and I merely a godling, our first lovemaking nearly destroyed me. I tried again — I have always been hardheaded, as the Maro say — and would have kept trying if Enefa, in her wisdom, had not finally realized the truth: a godling cannot be a god. I was not enough for her. If she was ever to have something of her own, she would have to win odersayne of her brothers away from the other.

She succeeded, many centuries later, with Nahadoth. This was one of the events that led to the Gods’ War.

But in the meantime, she did not wholly spurn me. She was not a sentimental lover, but a practical one, and I was the best of the god-children she had yet produced. I would have been honored, when she decided to make a child from my seed —

— if the existence of that child had not almost killed me.

So she took steps to save both of us. First she tended to me, as I lay disintegrating within the conflagration of my own unwanted maturity. A touch, a reweaving of memory, a whisper: forget. As the knowledge that I was a father vanished, so, too, did the danger, and I was cured.

Then she took the child away. I do not know where; some other realm. She sealed the child into this place so that it — he — Kahl — could grow up in safety and health. But he could not escape, and he was alone there, because keeping the secret from me meant keeping Kahl unknown to the other gods.

Perhaps Enefa visited him to prevent the madness that comes of isolation. Or perhaps she ignored and observed him while he cried for her, one of her endless experiments. Or perhaps she took him as a new lover. No way to know, now that she is dead. I am just father enough to wonder.

Still, because the fact of Kahl’s existence did not change, this has led to our current problem. Her delicate chains in my mind, the heavy bars on Kahl’s prison: both were loosened when Enefa died in Tempa’s trembling hands. Those protections held, however, until Yeine claimed the remnant of Enefa’s body and soul for her own. This “killed” Enefa at last. The chains were broken, the bars snapped. Then Kahl, son of death and mischief, Lord of Retribution, was loosed upon the realms to do as he would. And it was only a matter of time before my memory returned.

Just as well, I suppose, that I am already dying.

19

I DID NOT FEEL AT ALL WELL WHEN I WOKE.

I lay in a bed, somewhere in the new palace. It was nighttime, and the walls glowed, though far more strangely than they had in Sky. Here the dark swirls in the stone reduced the light, though the flecks of white within each indeed gleamed like tiny stars. Beautiful, but dim. Someone had hung lanterns from looping protrusions on the walls, which seemed to have been created for that purpose. I almost laughed at this, because it meant that after two thousand years, the Arameri would now have to use candles to see by, like everyone else.

I didn’t laugh because something had been shoved down my throat. With some effort I groped about my face and found some sort of tube in my mouth, held in place with bandages. I tried to tug it loose and gagged quite unpleasantly.

“Stop that.” Deka’s hand came into my view, pushing mine aw he it .ght="0em"ay. “Be still, and I’ll remove it.”