'Then the gods are spiteful,' she said, 'that they should make us pay for their ineptitude. They should have made certain of their enemy the first time.'
((Even gods make mistakes)) the Xhiang Xhi replied. ((Your people have a story, of the Grey Moth and the Skein of Lament, that attests to your belief in that))
'And where are the gods now?' Lucia cried.
((To that I have no answer)) it said. ((Their ways are beyond me, just as mine are beyond you. All things are transient, all things dwarfed by matters of greater scale. Perhaps your war is beneath contempt in the eyes of such beings. Perhaps the acts you commit in the name of your gods go unnoticed. Or perhaps they watch your every move, and they wait for reasons of their own. I do not know. The gods do not interfere unless they must))
Lucia bit down on her frustration. Anger was an emotion that was almost foreign to her, but she felt it now. So many had died to bring her to this point, the culmination of her purpose, and now she learned that all their strife was to correct an error of judgement made by the gods themselves, and that the gods might not even be present to see them.
No. She would not believe that. When she was a child, the moon sisters themselves had sent their children to save her from the shin-shin. More than once she knew Kaiku had been spurred by the Emperor of the gods into actions she would not otherwise have committed.
And yet… what if the moon sisters were merely spirits that had no connection with the goddesses of the moon at all? It was entirely possible that they had saved Lucia for reasons of their own. Spirits were capricious in general, and the Children of the Moons were insane by human standards. What if Kaiku's dreams were only that: dreams, evoked by faith?
The gods don't control. They're more subtle than that. They use avatars and omens, to bend the will of their faithful to do their work. There's no predestination, no destiny. We all have our choices to make. It's us who have to fight our battles.
Her own words, spoken to her friend Flen back when he was still alive. And there was the crux: avatars, omens, subtlety. Never allowing certainty, never allowing their believers to know for sure, never providing anything that could not be accounted for in other ways, as coincidence or delusion. Heart's blood, did they purposefully shroud themselves? Did they enjoy the torment of anxiety and bewilderment that their inconclusiveness caused in their followers? Was it better to be like the Tkiurathi, to worship no gods at all but the memories of their distinguished ancestors?
Or were the gods like distant parents, allowing their children to make their own mistakes and solve their own problems? Teaching them that they could not rely on anyone but themselves, intervening with only a guiding nudge here and there? Even when there was everything at stake?
But then, thought Lucia with a vertiginous plunge as her perspective shifted, perhaps theirs was not the only world that the gods ministered. Perhaps they were only a tiny, insignificant mote among the stars, one of uncountable cultures, each one squalling for attention in the emptiness.
The cruelty of that drove her to her knees.
((You can never know, Lucia)) said the Xhiang Xhi. ((One way or another, certainty would destroy you))
She stared at the wet grass of the tuffet.
'Tell me,' she said eventually. 'What hope is there?'
((There is hope)) the spirit replied. ((For Aricarat's plans have gone against him in some ways. He did not expect the Sisters. He did not expect you))
'But we are Aberrants. We came from the blight he created. A disease of the land, that kills crops and twists children in the womb.'
((The blight is not a disease of the land. It is a catalyst of change. Aricarat does not want to kill all life on the planet; he needs you still, and will for a long time yet, until he is entirely restored. People and plants and animals will die, but some will adapt and survive and recover. He is changing the flora of Saramyr, and he is changing your people))
'Changing us?'
((Changing you so that you can live in the new world he will make. So that you can breathe the air that is poison to you now. The Sisters can already do it to a limited degree. Over time, the change will accelerate. More of you will be born Aberrant. As the air turns more hostile, only those Aberrants who can breathe it well will survive, and their children will inherit that ability. Eventually, only the Saramyr will remain: the blight will be what saves you. All other countries will die, and the witchstones there will be excavated at leisure. By your people))
Lucia closed her eyes, and saw the images as the spirit spoke. A tear ran from the edge of one eye.
'Then how does that offer hope?' she asked.
((You offer hope. The Sisters offer hope. He did not know what he was unlocking when he meddled with your kind. His interference has provoked changes that would not have otherwise occurred for millions of years, if ever))
'Then what are we?'
((You are the next stage. You have torn the veil of ascendancy: the divide between the base world of the physical and the world beyond the senses. In the eyes of the gods, it is the line that marks the end of your infancy. You achieve this in one way, the Sisters in another. It matters nothing. Beyond that point, you are no longer as you were. You are the first of the true transcendents of humanity))
'Cailin was right,' Lucia whispered. 'All this time, she was right.'
((Indeed)) the spirit replied. ((I would have ensured safe passage for you and the Sisters, though I extended no such courtesy to those who had not breached the veil. One of you fell, however, and I could not prevent that))
She raised her head. 'What about the Weavers?'
The Xhiang Xhi seemed to recede in her vision, melting into the mist. ((They are not as you are. Their abilities come from their Masks. From Aricarat))
'But if Aricarat created the Aberrants, then why were the Weavers killing them?' Lucia protested. She did not want to believe any of this, and was fighting to find holes in the spirit's logic.
But the Xhiang Xhi was relentless. ((It was necessary, to safeguard their rise to power, to prevent beings such as you and the Sisters from existing. They failed at that, in the end. They will stop killing Aberrants in time, and begin breeding them selectively instead))
'How do you know this?' she cried.
((Because it is the only course of action that makes sense)) the spirit replied, and she was defeated. She could not argue with such an entity, something older than recorded history, which dwarfed her understanding so completely that she was fighting to assimilate even the limited snatches of information it fed to her. She dared not think of how much it was not telling, how much lay outside her experience. Maybe, if she knew, she would be as sorrowful as it was. Perhaps ignorance was better. How small they all were, in the final analysis.
She got to her feet, dishevelled and haggard, and stared into the mist at the vague and swaying shape of the Xhiang Xhi.
'I beg you,' she said. 'Help us. Help us stop all this coming to pass.'
She felt the Xhiang Xhi regarding her, there in its chill and gloomy dell.
((I will help you)) it said. Then, after a pause of moments that felt like hours: ((But there is a price)) It was dusk when Lucia emerged from the tunnel.
Nobody noticed her at first. They had sunk into grief, and sat wearily on the forest floor beneath the unwavering gaze of the shadow-beast that hunkered atop the hillock. Most of them had fallen into an exhausted slumber, for here, in the presence of the great spirit, the nightmares were held at bay.
Kaiku awoke to the touch of Tsata's hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him. Sometime over the past hours, she had cried herself to sleep with her head on his thigh where he sat. She raised herself, brushing her hair back behind one ear, and followed his eyes to where Lucia stood.