I had been warned of this. At the temple of the dragon, the warrior Jin had told me of the devious spirits that haunted the world beyond death, luring the unwary into certain doom. He had described them as less than gods, but what was a god to a man who lived in the shadow of an ancient dragon who refused all those who would worship her? A god, to Jin, would have been something beyond imagining. The thing calling itself Svilsara’s god was far beneath his acknowledgement.
And what was a god to one such as me? The Ascended, hungry for blood and willing to destroy their thousand-year reign to obtain it? Their master, who could not prevent the destruction of the city, and yet thought it right to rule over it afterward? The gods of my people were hunters and wanderers, warriors and magic-workers, and the great beasts that roamed the vast icy plains of the world beyond. I could not imagine any of them here in the desert, so far from the place of my birth.
The god of Svilsara still wore Khalim’s face, his long-limbed form, and his well-worn clothing. I could not look him in the eye. My arm was strong and my aim was true, I knew, but I could not grasp my harpoon or lift it to my shoulder. Even if I had managed that, I could not throw it at someone who looked like Khalim.
His bare feet crossed the burning rock with no indication of pain. From his shadow, I could see him approach Bran and untie the tether around his neck. Bran snorted, tossing his head, but he neither fled nor attacked this stranger. Perhaps now, after he had refused the illusory food and barely flicked an ear at the appearance of the serpent, the glamor of this petty god was affecting him.
“You’ve been traveling for a long time, haven’t you?” the man who was not Khalim said. “When was the last time you saw me?”
I answered against my will, the words harsh against a tongue dry as dust. “Two years.”
“Two years,” he echoed. “Your wandering could be over, you know. You could live with me in the city, in the house in the garden. No one would ever separate us again.”
I swallowed an imaginary obstruction in my throat. My skin was burning, and I was badly in need of water. I had already spent hours under the desert sun. My belongings lay on the stone, a few steps away, but I could not move.
“Come with me,” Khalim’s voice said.
I managed the barest shake of my head, a weak, wavering refusal. I convinced myself that it was the magic worked by Svilsara’s god that had robbed me of my ability to speak and act, but the conviction did not last. By all evidence, he did not have that power. There were only illusions.
Still, the illusions alone held power that I could not resist. I knew that this was not Khalim, that he wandered the paths of gods and spirits while the body he had once inhabited remained in Phyreios, but I could neither turn away from the empty image of him nor remove it from my sight by any act of aggression. My harpoon dangled from my hand, as useless as the arm that carried it.
I heard his footsteps upon the burning surface of the sacrificial stone. With my eyes lowered, the world was limited to three bands of color, lying parallel atop each other: the red of the stone, the pale yellow of the desert sand, and a thin line of the terrible, fathomless blue of the cloudless sky. He approached me slowly, like one would a frightened animal. First his feet entered my field of vision, then the rest of his body. I turned my head away and closed my eyes before I could see his face.
“I know you don’t trust the city,” he said, and he sounded exactly like Khalim, as straightforward as he was gentle. “But I think you’d come to like it. It could be home.”
He paused, standing beside me, and reached out a hand. His fingers brushed against mine. “I could call it home,” he said, “if you were there.”
How easy it would have been at that moment to forget my quest. I looked up, then, against my better judgment. I would find some flaw in the man-serpent’s imitation of Khalim’s face, I thought, and that would break the spell.
I could find none. All was exactly as I remembered it, from his soft dark eyes to the gentle downward slope of his nose—a trait from his mother, as I had recently learned. Stubble shaded his jaw, and his dark hair shone in the sunlight.
Of course there wouldn’t be any flaw in the imitation that I could notice. The god of Svilsara had never met Khalim, and had never visited Phyreios or the village of Nagara. The only image he had to work with was what lay within my own memory. By some trick of magic, he had looked into my mind. The thought made my skin crawl as if covered in skittering insects.
I knew this was an illusion. Khalim was not here. But as I looked at him, I understood why the ancestors of Svilsara’s elders had taken the serpent’s bargain, exchanging their health and freedom, and those of their children and their children’s children, for the shallow image of prosperity. It must have been a difficult life they’d led before they had found this god, under the merciless sun with no neighbors to help them when a well went dry, all while the wind blew stinging dust into their eyes and against their blistered skin. I was no leader of men, but I could imagine I would have done the same, had I been offered a way to relieve the suffering of those who trusted me to protect them.
Svilsara’s god was offering me the same choice. A relief of pain, in exchange for the real world, where the sun burned and the dust scratched at my throat, and I had not seen Khalim for two years.
A stronger man than I would not have hesitated to reject the comforting lie. Even though I knew that the man who stood before me was an illusion, and my only value to the creature in his guise was whatever power could be extracted from my blood. If I agreed, and followed the false Khalim back to Svilsara, how long would I live in the house in the garden before either the god or his cultists slew me in my sleep? Would I be allowed a day, a week, a month of the promised ignorant bliss before they took my life?
The illusion smiled with Khalim’s mouth, and I almost forgot the threat.
I looked away, the sun reflecting on the vastness of white dust making my eyes ache—or, perhaps, it was grief from within rather than light from without causing them pain. “Do you promise me that?” I asked, more to the shimmering air than to the figure beside me. “A home in the city, and my love exactly as I remember him?”
“All of it and more,” he said. I could hear the smile I could not see. His fingers brushed my hand again.
“Lead the way, then,” I said. “I will follow.”
He moved across the stone, bare feet stirring the dust. An invisible hand gripped my chest, and I struggled to breathe, taking painful gasps that I struggled to conceal. My face was a mask, betraying nothing.
I heard Bran’s harness rattle as he tossed his head. I picked up my harpoon. As numb and awkward as my hands felt, they gripped the weapon with practiced, unthinking ease. It rested lightly against my fingers, like a bird ready to fly from my hand. Energy shivered up my arm.
I took two shaky steps toward the pile of my belongings and looked up. Bran regarded me with one dark eye, his ears flattened. Though I was not a steppe archer, the companion he had been bred to serve, he could sense my anxiety. I prayed to whomever might be listening that the god of Svilsara could not do the same.
In Khalim’s guise, he made his way to the pillar with its iron ring, where I and hundreds of sacrifices before me had been tethered by faith more than rope. He was barely a stone’s throw away. Even with his back turned, the resemblance was enough to root me to the spot where I stood.
I had once told Khalim that I would follow him anywhere. If I did not know that his appearance here was a lie, if I had not seen him wander the strange landscape of the world beyond and had no contact with the god wearing his face before he appeared, I would have walked across the desert to Svilsara at his heels, heedless of the wind and my growing thirst.
If I followed this image of Khalim, I would never see the real one again. I might not even live through the night.
The image turned to me, smiling expectantly.
“I’ll follow in just a moment,” I said. “We need water for the journey.” I gestured to the half-full skin at my feet.
He nodded, turning away to reach for Bran’s halter.
I closed my eyes and took a breath, letting the dust burn my throat. Then, while Khalim’s—the god’s—hair hid his face, I lifted the harpoon to my shoulder and threw it.
A sound like thunder shattered the desert stillness. The sky briefly darkened, as though the sun had blinked like an enormous, burning eye. Bran reared back, his hooves striking at empty air. When they met the stone again, he backed away, his eyes rolling and his nostrils flared.
At his feet lay a crumpled body wearing Khalim’s clothes.
My harpoon returned to my hand, and my fingers wrapped around it, ready for another throw should this god prove stronger than I had hoped. I approached the body, trying not to look at it. I do not know if I could have managed another attack, should one have been necessary.
Khalim’s face turned to me for one terrible moment. I could not look away. Even in sorrow and betrayal, he was beautiful.
“Eske?” he whispered, and then he was gone, replaced by the face of the strange black-robed man with his wide, serpentlike mouth. Even that image did not last. The face cracked and crumbled away into sand. Black smoke spiraled up from his robes as they, too, dissipated into the air. ‘
He was gone. The god of Svilsara was dead, as much as a god can die, and all his works would soon follow. In the city, Fenin and her attendants would see each other and themselves for the first time, and look with unclouded eyes upon what little of their home was not a lie. There would be grief, but worse would be the confusion—having lived so long in the illusion, none of them could have any hope of explaining what had become of them.
It was a cruel thing I had done.
But as the wind took up the last of the dusty remains of the god, I could not think of the people of Svilsara, lost and alone in an unforgiving landscape. I fell to my knees and wept, for myself and for Khalim. I knew that he was far away, safe from the machinations of this god and this place, but I could not shake the feeling that I had just done him terrible, irrevocable harm.
Back to Chapter XXXVI: The Sacrificial Stone
Forward to Chapter XXXVIII: Svilsara, As It Always Was
Well, sometimes the solution to your problems is violence. Maybe not this time, though. Thanks for reading!
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