The Kingdom of Gods

Shahar, her eyes soft and full of a tenderness I’d never expected to see as I taught her everything I knew of pleasure. Deka, still a child, blushing shyly and mo0emdidving close to me whenever he could —

Distraction. A reminder. I had sworn an oath.

“I remember what your world was like then,” I said softly. “I remember when Darre infants starved in their cribs because enemies burned your forests. I remember rivers with water tinted red, fields that bloomed greener and richer because the soil had soaked up so much blood. Is that really what you want to return to?”

She came over, gazing up at the statue’s face rather than at me. “Were you the one who made the Walking Death?”

I twitched in surprise and sudden unease.

“It seems like the sort of disease you would create,” she said with brutal softness. “Tricksy. There hasn’t been an outbreak since Yeine-ennu’s day, but I’ve read the accounts. It lurks for weeks before the symptoms appear, spreading far and wide in the meantime. At its height, the victims of the disease seem more alive than ever, but their minds are dead, burned away by the fever. They walk, but only to carry death to new victims.”

I could not look at her, for shame. But when she spoke again, I was surprised to hear compassion in her voice.

“No mortals should have as much power as the Arameri had when they owned you,” she said. “No mortals should have as much power as they have now: the laws, the scriveners, their army, all their pet nobles, the wealth they’ve claimed from peoples destroyed or exploited. Even the history taught to our children in the White Hall schools glorifies them and denigrates everyone else. All civilization, every bit of it, is made to keep the Arameri strong. That is how they’ve survived after losing you. That is why the only solution is to destroy everything they’ve built. Good and bad, all of it is tainted. Only by starting fresh can we truly be free again.”

At this, however, I could only smile.

“Start fresh?” I asked. I looked up at the statue of myself. Its blank eyes. I imagined them green, like my own. Like those of Shinda, Itempas’s dead demon son.

“For that,” I said, “you would have to go further back than the Bright. Remember what caused it, after all — the Gods’ War, which was what put me and the other Enefadeh under the Arameri’s control in the first place. And remember what caused that: our bickering. Our love affairs gone horribly, horribly wrong.” Usein grew silent behind me, in surprise. “To really start fresh, you need to get rid of the gods, not just the Arameri. Then burn every book that mentions us. Smash every statue, including this pretty one here. Raise your children to be ignorant of the world’s creation or our existence; let them come up with stories of their own to explain it all. For that matter, kill any child who even thinks about magic — because that is how deeply we have tainted mortalkind, Usein Darr.” I turned to her and reached out. This time when I put my hand on her swollen belly, she did not draw her knife; she flinched. I smiled. “We’re in your blood. Because of us, you know all the wonders and horrors of possibility. And someday, if you don’t kill yourselves, if we don’t kill you, you might become us. So how fresh of a start do you really want?”

Her jaw twitched, the muscles flexing once. I felt her fight for something — courage, maybe. Resolve. Beneath my fingers, her child shifted, pressing briefly against my hand. I felt its shiny new soul thrum in concert with my own for a moment. His soul, alas for her poor husband.

After a moment, Usein drew a deep breath. “You wish to know our plans.”

“Among other things, yes.”

She nodded. “Come, then. I’ll show you.”

Sar-enna-nem is a pyramid; only the topmost hall of it held prayer space and statues. The next levels down held much more interesting things.

Like masks.

We stood in a gallery of sorts. Our escort had left us at Usein’s unseen signal, though her glowering husband had brought an oddly shaped stool so that she could sit. She watched while I strolled about, looking at each mask in turn. The masks lined every shelf; they were set into the walls between the shelves; they were artfully positioned on display tables in front of the shelves. I even glimpsed a few attached to the ceiling. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, every size and color and configuration, though they had some commonalities. All of them were oval shaped, as a base. All had open eyeholes and sealed mouths. All of them were beautiful, and powerful in ways that had nothing to do with magic.

I stopped at one of the tables, gazing down at a mask that made something inside me sing in response. There, on the table, was Childhood: smooth, fat cheeks; a mischievously grinning mouth; great wide eyes; broad forehead waiting to be filled with knowledge. Subtle inlays and painting around the mouth had been applied, some of it realistic and some pure abstraction. Geometric designs and laugh lines. Somehow, it hinted that the mask’s grin could have been simple joy or sadistic cruelty, or joy in cruelty. The eyes could have been alight with the pleasure of learning or aghast at all the evils mortals inflict on their young. I touched its stiff lips. Just wood and paint. And yet.