Of course it could. It always has been.
He turned then to the other figure that lay beside her. His father’s beard had far more gray than he remembered, but otherwise it was the face he knew so well, one he had loved and hated in almost equal measure. Olin, too, seemed dead, but Barrick could sense a tiny pulse still throbbing beneath his ear. Was there anything left of him inside this near-corpse, or had the god burned it away while he occupied him? Was anything left besides barely breathing meat… ?
A tremendous splash startled him from his confusion. The monstrous, beautiful youth had waded into the middle of the silver sea to snatch up a handful of Xixian soldiers who had been trying to swim to safety. The god held the tiny, thrashing figures close to his beaming face.
“DO YOU LIKE THE TASTE OF HEAVENLY BLOOD?” Zosim boomed. “IT IS A HEADY NECTAR FOR MORTALS. DO YOU HOPE IT WILL CHANGE YOU? LET US SEE!”
Even as he spoke, the shrieks of the terrified Xixians altered as they began to stretch and lose their human forms. Barbs of the silvery blood, stretching and growing inside them like thornbushes, began to pierce their flesh. Their eyes bulged with terror and their limbs flailed, but they could not escape what was already inside them. Tendrils of twining silver sprung out of them like vines, lifting them up into the air until they dangled on thorns of their own solidified and shiny blood, like the larder of a butcher bird.
Vansen stared helplessly at the dying Xixians as if he would never move again.
“You must get Qinnitan and my father away from here,” Barrick told him. “Take the boat and cross. Lie still. Hope the god doesn’t see you.”
Now Ferras Vansen turned to look at him, his face pale, his eyes full of the horrors he had seen. “What will you do, Prince Barrick?”
“Whatever I must.” He could not help laughing at the idiocy of his own words—what on earth could he do against a god? “Take the girl first—I’ll protect my father. Go. Hurry!”
As Vansen staggered off with Qinnitan’s limp body in his arms, a huge shadow passed over Barrick’s head. He turned, raising his sword, but it was only the god stepping back onto the island. The Trickster was headed toward the autarch and his remaining men, who had just reached the makeshift camp where they had first come up onto the island.
“The cannon, curse you!” Sulepis shouted at his minions. “Kill that thing!”
“OH, YES, SHOW ME WHAT MEN HAVE LEARNED TO DO WHILE I SLEPT!” cried the god, laughing again. “CROOKED THE ARTIFICER SEEMS TO HAVE TAUGHT YOU CREATURES WELL!”
But even though the autarch’s men tried to do as he ordered, their cannon had never been meant to fire so high in the air. At its greatest elevation it still did not point higher than the god’s knee. Zosim had now grown taller than the famous statues of the Three Brothers in the center of the great Trigonate temple in Syan. The cannon roared, but because the god was moving, the great cannonball hissed past and crashed against the far cavern wall, sending a shower of stone down onto the fleeing Xixians, killing many of them.
The autarch and his guards ran toward the tunnel that led back from the island to the Maze, but before they could reach it, the gigantic Zosim stepped past them and snatched up the cannon that had just been fired. He crushed the great bronze gun into a shapeless mass and then shoved it into the crevice like a bung into a barrel, leaving the autarch and his soldiers with nowhere to go.
“SCATTER, ANTS!” Zosim called down to them, laughing, then began plucking up the nearest of the soldiers, deforming them into ghastly, inhuman shapes even as they screeched and wept in his hands.
Barrick raced across the rocky crest of the island toward the huge figure, his fairy sword gripped tightly in his hand. Vansen was shouting behind him, but he knew the god must be stopped here. In a short time, Zosim would run out of victims, and his thoughts would turn to the castle above.
“Just take my father and the girl!” Barrick called to Vansen. “There is nothing else you can do here.”
“I can’t leave you!”
“For the love of the gods, man, why not?”
“Your sister told me not to do it! And I promised!”
Vansen’s words kindled something in Barrick, a small train of thoughts that nevertheless stopped him in mid-stride. It’s true… I am both. Qar and man. The blood in me ... it is her blood, too. Briony. I remember… !
His walk became a run, as though he could really make a difference—as if he, a mortal, could actually fight against a god.
A pair of unnatural shapes dropped from Zosim’s gigantic hand and landed on the stony ground before him—two Xixian soldiers who had been squeezed by the god until they looked like crabs made of melted brown candle wax. They scuttled toward him. Most horrible of all were the helpless, miserable expressions Barrick could still see on their warped faces.
“AND WHERE ARE YOU, LITTLE AUTARCH?” crooned the god, sifting with his immense fingers through the pile of squirming, screaming Leopards and priests he had made. Zosim picked one up and examined it, but shook his massive, fiery head. The thrashing creature in his hand puffed into flames and began to melt and run through the god’s fingers like warm grease. He picked up a particularly fat figure—it might have been the Xixian high priest—and popped it like a grape, then licked his blazing fingertips, grinning. “SPLENDID! IT TASTES LIKE WORSHIP!”
“Face one who is not afraid of you!” Barrick scrambled up the slope toward the monstrous being crouched beside a pile of shrieking captives. “Turn, Trickster. My ancestor defeated you and his blood still runs strong!”
But before Barrick could even swing his sword, Zosim darted out a hand like baking-hot marble and snatched him up. The pain was so fierce that it was all Barrick could do not to scream like a terrified child, but his skin didn’t seem to burn: Zosim clearly did not want to lose this entertaining moment so quickly. Zosim lifted Barrick closer, his face as big as a house. “ANCESTOR, YOU SAY? AND WHO WAS THAT? SOME MORTAL WHO PISSED IN THE CORNER OF ONE OF MY TEMPLES? SOME VILLAGE LOUT WHO USED MY NAME AS A CURSE, THEN COWERED THE REST OF HIS LIFE IN TERROR I MIGHT HEAR OF IT?”
“No,” Barrick said, struggling in the creature’s grip. “No, you piece of filth. Kupilas was my ancestor—Crooked, who beat you and bound you!”
“TRULY?” Zosim seemed pleased. He lifted Barrick closer, took a deep sniff of him, each nostril as wide as an arrow port. “AH, YOU DO STINK OF HIM. HOW AMUSING! SO HIS BLOOD STILL CREEPS AND CRAWLS THE EARTH IN MORTAL FLESH! BUT CROOKED IS DEAD, AND I AM FREE. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT, LITTLE ANT?”
“This!” said Barrick, and used both hands to thrust his sword as deep into the monster’s hand as he could. With a rumble of surprise and discomfort, Zosim shook Barrick free and let him fall. The landing knocked the breath from him and for a moment Barrick could only lie on the stones, gasping, but he had the small satisfaction of knowing he had annoyed his gigantic enemy.
“THAT WAS A NASTY TRICK, LITTLE ANT. YES, THIS IS A REAL BODY MADE FROM THE DUST AND CLAY OF THIS WORLD. I CAN FEEL THINGS—AND I FELT THAT, YOU LITTLE MORTAL MOUSE TURD.” Zosim lifted his foot, ready to crush him. Helpless, Barrick could only look up at the shadowy shape, big as boat being winched up into dry dock. “BUT SOON THE REST OF MY ESSENCE WILL HAVE CROSSED THE VOID AND FILLED THIS BODY,” the god rumbled, swaying a little as he waited to bring his foot down. “WHEN THAT HAS HAPPENED, EVEN WHITEFIRE, THE SUN LORD HIMSELF, COULD NOT HURT ME ...”