“I can take us away once, maybe twice,” he said, and then looked ashamed. “I don’t have a god’s strength, or even…” He looked toward where Glee had fallen. I hoped Ahad had managed to catch her. “But anywhere in the mortal realm, Kahl will find us. Even if he doesn’t—”
We all paused to look up. High above, the clouds had begun to boil and twist in a way that had nothing to do with weather patterns. Would the great storm stop there in the sky, once It reached the place from which It had been summoned? Or would It simply plow through and leave a void where the earth had been?
Back to Echo, then. Deka and I could join with Shahar again, attempt to control what we had done only by instinct before… but even as I thought this, I dismissed it. Too much discord between Shahar and Deka now; we might just make things worse. I leaned my head on Itempas’s broad shoulder, sighing. I was tired. It would be easier, so much easier, if I could just lie down now and rest.
But as I thought this, suddenly I knew what could be done.
I lifted my head. “Tempa.” He had already stopped, probably to catch his breath, though he would never admit such a thing. He turned his ear toward me to indicate that he was listening. “How long does it take you to return to life when you die?”
“The time varies between ten and fifty minutes.” He did not ask why I wanted to know. “Longer if the circumstances that caused me to die remain present—I revive, then die again immediately.”
“Where do you go?” He frowned. It was hard to make my voice work at this volume. “While you’re dead. Where do you go?”
He shook his head. “Oblivion.”
“Not the heavens? Not the hells?”
“No. I am not dead. But I am not alive, either. I hover between.”
I wriggled to get down, and he set me on my feet. I nearly fell at once; the circulation in my legs had been cut off by his arms, and I hadn’t even felt it. Deka helped me to sit on a rough piece of what—I think—had once been a part of the Garden of the Hundred Thousand. Groaning, I massaged one of my legs, nodding irritably for Deka to take the other, which he did.
“I need you to die,” I said to Tempa, who lifted an eyebrow. “Just for a while.” And then, using as few words as I could to save my voice, I told them my plan.
Deka’s hands tightened on my calf. He made no protest, however, for which I was painfully grateful. He trusted me. And if he helped me, I would be able to pull my biggest trick ever.
My last trick.
“Please,” I said to Tempa.
He said nothing for a long moment. Then he sighed, inclining his head, and took off his coat, handing it to me.
Then, as coolly as though he did such things every day, he looked around, spying a thin, fine extrusion jutting up from the pile. A piece of the Wind Harp: it was a wickedly sharp spear perhaps four feet long, angled straight up in the air. Tempa examined it, flicked away a scrap of faded cloth that had wrapped around its tip, and yanked it to the side, jostling loose a good bit of rubble while he positioned it to his liking. When he’d gotten it to about a forty-five degree angle, he nodded in satisfaction—and fell forward onto it, sliding down its shaft until friction or bone or gods knew what stopped him short. Deka cried out, leaping to his feet, though it was too late and he’d known it was going to happen anyhow. He protested because that was just the kind of man he was.
I reached up to take Deka’s hand, and he turned to me, his face still writ in lines of horror. How had an Arameri been born with a soul as perfect as his? I was so glad I’d lived to see it, and to know him.
He proved his worth again when grim determination replaced horror in his eyes. He helped me to my feet, handing me Tempa’s coat, which I put on. The wind had risen to a gale, and I was a skinny, frail old man.
We both looked up then, startled, as a sound like wailing horns filled the sky and the clouds tore apart. Above us, filling the sky, a new and terrible god appeared: the Maelstrom. What we saw was not Its true self, of course, which was vaster than all existence, let alone a single world. Like everything that entered the mortal realm, It had shaped an approximation of Itself: churning clouds, the sun stretched into glowing candy, a string of floating pieces of worlds and shattered moons trailing in Its wake. In Its boiling surface, we could see ourselves and the world around us, a reflection distorted and magnified. Our faces screamed; our bodies broke and bled. The imminent future.
Deka turned his back to me and crouched. Speech was no longer possible now. Soon our ears would rupture, which would be a blessing, because otherwise the roar would destroy our sanity. I climbed onto Deka’s back, pressing my face into his neck so that I could breathe his scent one last time. Ignoring my sentimentality, he closed his eyes and murmured something. I felt the markings on his back grow hot and then cold against my chest.
Gods do not fly. Flying requires wings and is inefficient in any case. We leap, and then stick to the air. Anyone can do it; most mortals just haven’t learned how. There’s a trick to it, see.
Deka’s first leap took us nearly into the Maelstrom. I groaned and clung to him as the thunder of the storm above us grew so great that I lost the feeling in my hands, nearly lost my grip entirely. But then, somehow, Deka corrected his error, arcing down now toward the gods’ battle.
Which was not over. There was a flash of darkness, and we passed through a space of coldness: Nahadoth. Then warm air, redolent of spores and rotting leaves: Yeine. Both still alive, and still fighting—and winning, I was glad to see. They had dissipated their forms, corralling Kahl in a thickening sphere of combined power so savage that I urged Deka to stop well away, which he did. At the center of this sphere was Kahl, raging, blurring, but contained. The God Mask had made him one of them, temporarily, but no false god could challenge two of the Three for long. To win, Kahl would have to make his transformation permanent. To do that, he would need strength he didn’t have.
Which was why I, his father, offered that to him now. I closed my eyes and, with everything that I was, sent my presence through the ethers of this world and every other.
The swirling, searing forms of Yeine and Nahadoth stopped, startled. Kahl spun within the shell that held him, and I thought that his eyes marked me from within the mask.
Come, I said, though I had no idea whether he could hear my voice. I prayed it, shaping my thoughts around fury, to make sure. My poor Hymn, whom I’d never been able to bless. All the dead of Sky-in-Shadow. Glee and Ahad. And he wanted Itempas, my father? No. It was not difficult to summon a craving for vengeance in my own heart. Then, carefully, I masked this with sorrow. That wasn’t hard to dredge up either.
Come, I said again. You need power, don’t you? I told you to accept your nature. Enefa threw you in a hole somewhere, left you forgotten and forsaken, for me. You cannot forgive me for that. Come, then, and kill me. That should give you the strength you need.
Within his glimmering prison, Kahl stared at me—but I knew I’d baited the trap well. He was Vengeance, and I was the source of his oldest and deepest pain. He could no more resist me than I could a ball of string.
He hissed and flexed what remained of his power, a miniature Maelstrom straining to break free. Then I felt the unstable surge of his elontid nature, amplifying the God Mask and waxing powerful enough that the shell Naha and Yeine had woven around him cracked into smoking fragments. Then he came for me.
This was my gift to him, father to son. The least I could offer, and far less than I should have done.
My Deka; he never wavered, not even when the outermost edges of Kahl’s blurring rage struck and began to shred his skin. We both screamed as our bones snapped, but Deka did not drop me. Not even when Kahl wrapped his arms around both of us, tearing us apart by sheer proximity, in an embrace that he’d probably intended as a parody of love. Perhaps there was even a bit of real love in it. Vengeance was nothing if not predictable.