The Last Mortal Bond

44

It was simple enough for Kaden to lever the limp body of Long Fist over the edge of the cliff, into the roiling river below. It should have been easier to run without the Urghul chieftain across his shoulders. Long Fist had been a tall man, and strong, but his flesh had been made of honest weight. Carrying him had been no different, in its way, from lifting stones, or lugging buckets of water, and though Kaden’s frame had grown weak during his year back in Annur, his muscles and bones remembered the feel of such physical work. Nothing, however, had prepared him to carry the weight of a god lodged inside his mind.

The thought was too large, too bright to stare directly at, and so Kaden tried to put it aside. Il Tornja’s soldiers weren’t far behind; Triste had vanished somewhere ahead. If he didn’t reach the kenta before the Annurians, they were all dead. The god was silent-maybe baffled, maybe preparing a stronger, more deadly strike against the man who carried him-and yet even silent, even insubstantial, the alien weight bore down on Kaden until he felt he might collapse.

Just get to the kenta, he told himself, staggering after Triste’s footsteps. Get to the kenta. You can face what you’ve done when you’re safe on the other side.

Canyon gave way to ledge, ledge to ramp, ramp to rough-hewn steps, worn almost smooth by centuries of wind and rain. Who had built them, or when, or why, Kaden had no idea. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that they offered a way out, a way free, and so he followed them down, down, as they flanked the soaring sandstone wall, a hundred steps, two hundred, and then he was there at the bottom, in a maze of ancient buildings the size of a modest town.

The whole thing was built on a long, rocky shelf only a little higher than the river itself. Debris from the floodline marked the lowest stones of the buildings that were still standing. Most of those by the river had been washed away; several teetered out over the current, as though caught in the act of crumbling. Everything was built of huge sandstone blocks, evidently quarried from the local cliffs. The heavy clay that had once cemented them together, chinking the gaps, had mostly crumbled away, rotting the foundations, leaving huge holes in the walls.

Triste’s footsteps led straight down the central avenue, but Kaden hesitated, some sense honed in the glacial cold of the Bone Mountains pricking the skin along the back of his neck. Something was wrong about this place. He ran his eyes over the fallen facades and gaping entryways. Obelisks and great plinths lay shattered and askew, toppled either by the river’s seasonal rush or their own unrelenting weight. In recessed grottoes carved into the canyon wall stood a series of blocks that looked like altars, though no text remained to name the gods for whom they had been built. The old stones were strange, unexpected, but it wasn’t the stones that had set Kaden’s mind on edge.

Behind him, he could just make out the sound of the Annurian soldiers, boots clattering over the ledges above, shouts echoing off the cliffs. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, exhaled, then opened them again. The whole exercise took precious moments, and he still couldn’t say what it was about the ancient buildings that had given him pause.

More looking does not mean more seeing. The quiet voice was Scial Nin’s, conjured from the depths of his memory.

Swallowing his misgivings, Kaden stumbled into a run once more, following Triste’s tracks between the ruined buildings. She couldn’t know where the kenta was, but her footsteps showed no sign of hesitation. If anything, she was running faster, panicking, trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and the soldiers behind. Trying to escape from me, too, Kaden realized. The sheathed belt knife slapped against his thigh as he ran, a reminder of the violence with which he’d threatened the girl.

“Triste,” he called, pausing for a moment to listen for her response. Stopping now was a risk. Calling out was a risk. On the other hand, if she overshot the kenta, there would be no time to double back.

“Triste!” he shouted again.

There was no reply but the echo of his own voice, thin and hollow above the raging of the river. Somewhere in the vast labyrinth of his own mind, Meshkent stirred. There were no words, but Kaden could feel the god’s urgency, his rage. Thoughts and emotions that were not Kaden’s own pressed out, testing, searching for a way free.

“No,” he murmured, shoving away all other concerns to focus on the prison he had made. The walls were there, solid and strong, but even in the short time since Long Fist’s death, the god had begun to wear down the barriers. It was an assault as wordless and violent as the river’s flow, and Kaden could feel that, like the river, it would never rest. Meshkent was inside him now, the impossible current of the divine carving into his own walls, searching for a freedom as wide as the sea. “No,” Kaden said again, taking a heartbeat to fortify himself, to buttress those invisible walls, then hurling himself into motion once more.

He rounded the next corner at a run, and for a few steps into the small plaza he kept running, his legs going through their motions even as his mind struggled to parse the sight: there were armed men in the open square, dozens of them, their bows half drawn, their blades naked in their hands. They wore no uniforms, but something about their deployment, both the organization and the way they stood, whispered the same word over and over: soldiers. Annurian soldiers. Kaden stumbled to a halt, his mind scrambling to make sense of the scene, to come up with another plan, eyes scanning for some escape.

“Hello, Kaden.” The man who spoke sat on a wide block of fallen stone, half reclining on one elbow, a booted foot propped up on the stone. Unlike the soldiers around him, who looked ready to fight, to kill, this man seemed like he ought to be playing the harp, or eating ripe papaya from a porcelain bowl.

No, Kaden realized, his bones going cold, not a man.

Though he’d never seen the creature in person, he knew that face, had studied it back in the Temple of Ciena what seemed like years ago. Triste’s mother had made the painting. But she didn’t get it right, he thought bleakly. Not quite. The courtesan had captured the sharp eyes and the casual smile that bordered on a smirk, she’d inked in the same amusement and disdain, but she had missed the emptiness behind it all. She had painted Ran il Tornja, the human general, without ever realizing that the mind behind that face was alien and inimical, that it was Csestriim.

“Run,” the general said, smiling, waving a lazy hand.

In truth, Kaden had been about to do just that, but the single syllable brought him up short, triggering some primitive wariness.

Il Tornja’s smile widened, as though he’d expected that precise response. “Or don’t. It doesn’t really matter.”

Kaden felt Meshkent go dangerously still inside his mind, an animal trapped in the back of a cage. While the Csestriim studied him, Kaden piled layers of his own thought on top of the god’s cell, heaping on his terrors and regrets, his confusion and stillborn hopes, any scraps of self to hide the mind he carried inside. He had no idea what il Tornja could see with those inhuman eyes, but one thing was clear-the Csestriim could not be allowed to catch even a glimpse of the god.

“You weren’t-” Kaden began.

Il Tornja cut him off, finishing the sentence with a grin. “Chasing along behind you? No. Chasing is tiring, especially in this heat. It’s so much more effective just to go to the right place at the start.”

“How did you know we’d come here?”

The kenarang pursed his lips as though considering the question, then shook his head. He almost looked regretful. “I could tell you something about patterns and probabilities, but it wouldn’t mean much. Like trying to explain mathematics to an ant.” He shrugged, as though that settled the question. “Anyway, you’re here. More importantly, she’s here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

Triste.

The girl slumped between a pair of soldiers, hair falling forward over her face, chin lolling against her chest. There was no sign of violence, but something had knocked her unconscious.

“Not the most hospitable greeting,” il Tornja said, as though reading Kaden’s thoughts, “but from what I hear, she’s pretty dangerous. I didn’t want to end up a smear of blood and flesh like those poor people back in the Jasmine Court.” He cocked his head to the side. “You were there for that, right? Was it as bad as people say?”

Panic surged inside Kaden, a rabid dog hurling itself against its chain. The vaniate beckoned, but he couldn’t trust himself inside the trance. Instead he seized the panic, choked it until it stopped squirming, until he could think. Facts tumbled over him like cold rain: Triste wasn’t dead. Maybe Kiel was wrong. Maybe il Tornja didn’t know about the goddess. Maybe he didn’t want to kill her. Maybe they could escape. She could wake up. Ciena could fight her way free the way she’d done before. It wasn’t over. It wasn’t over. It couldn’t all be over.

Il Tornja drummed his fingers against the stone and smiled. “Anyway, it was a good lesson, and I owe it to you: always have a leach on your side.” He pointed lazily.

Kaden followed the gesture to an old man, bent and balding, who stood half a dozen paces from the kenarang. Kaden hadn’t noticed him at first, surrounded as he was by soldiers with their weapons drawn.

“Everyone thinks that leaches are insane,” il Tornja continued, shaking his head. “It’s not fair, really. They just see the world … differently from you or me.”

“You and I do not share a view of the world,” Kaden said, surprised that his own voice came out steady.

The general raised his brows. “Oh, I’m not so sure about that! Those monks who trained you, those Shin-I think they’re really on to something. I’ll bet, if we sat down, you’d find that you and I see eye to eye about a lot more than you realize.” He winked, held Kaden’s gaze a moment, then turned his attention back to the old man. “Roshin, though, he’s a little different. Loyal, though, and that’s important to me.”

Roshin. Kaden struggled to make sense of the name. Who would name a son after one of the most hated creatures in recorded history? The world had mostly forgotten the Csestriim, but it remembered the Atmani, remembered the horror they had wrought, the devastation. Across two continents and beyond, the names were still spoken with loathing.

The truth resolved so suddenly, so violently, it felt like a leather belt whipped across Kaden’s naked brain. Some part of his mind buried deep beneath all rational thought made out the pattern: Roshin wasn’t named for the Atmani. He was the Atmani.

Il Tornja had leaned forward slightly, as though eager to watch the understanding play out in Kaden’s eyes. “You see?”

Before Kaden could respond, however, the soldiers behind him clattered into the courtyard. Sweat streamed down their faces. A handful of men toward the back doubled over, hands on their knees, chests heaving. They snapped to attention quickly enough, however, when the man leading them hammered his fist against his heart and barked out a salute.

“Sir!”

Il Tornja nodded casually. “Sarkiin. Good work.” He scanned the men behind, then his eyes narrowed. “Where’s the third? The one who was with them?”

It didn’t seem possible, but Sarkiin went even more rigid. His eyes were fixed on empty air half a pace in front of him. He looked like a man readying himself to die.

“Gone, sir. Over the cliff just above and into the river.”

If il Tornja was angry, it didn’t show. Of course, Kaden reminded himself, he’s not capable of anger, not really.

“Interesting,” he said finally, shifting his attention from his lieutenant and back to Kaden. “Who was he?”

Kaden scrambled for a plausible lie, one this immortal creature might believe. “Ishien,” he said after a heartbeat. “He came with me to find Triste. Before she could do more damage.”

“And why,” the kenarang asked, “did he decide to leap into a river knowing he could not possibly survive the current?”

“He died,” Kaden said, hewing as close as he could to the truth. “I tried to hide the body.”

“Sarkiin?” il Tornja asked.

The soldier nodded brusquely. “The man was injured, sir. Badly. I am surprised he made it as far as he did.”

“Describe him.”

Kaden tensed. It was impossible to say just how much the Annurian soldiers had seen. They’d been miles off during the entire chase, but if one of them had a long lens, if they’d managed to find a line of sight somewhere in that canyon …

“Tall,” Sarkiin replied. “Couldn’t make out much more.”

“His race?”

The soldier shook his head slowly. “The light was wrong, sir. We only caught a couple of glimpses and couldn’t make out much more than shapes.”

“Send a team downstream. The body may have washed up in an eddy, or caught on a snag.” Il Tornja paused; his eyes went distant for a quarter heartbeat, then refocused on Kaden. “You tell an interesting story, and this is only the start of it.”

“Not really,” Kaden replied. “We came to find Triste. We found her. Then you came.”

“Triste,” the kenarang said, his voice brimming with a mirth he couldn’t feel. “Is that what you call her?”

“It is her name,” Kaden replied.

“Names,” il Tornja mused, “are even easier to put on and take off than faces.” He glanced over his shoulder at Triste. She hadn’t woken, hadn’t even moved. “I will speak with her first.” He pointed to the shell of an old temple. “There.”

That Triste was alive at all was puzzling. Il Tornja knew about the goddess in the girl. It was the only explanation for the fact that he had abandoned his war with the Urghul to come here, chasing her to the very edge of the empire. He knew he had Ciena in his grasp, yet he held back.…

Because he doesn’t know, Kaden realized, that awful hope slicing him up inside. He doesn’t know he has us both.

As far as il Tornja was aware, he’d captured half his quarry, but only half. Meshkent was still out there, and if the Csestriim wanted to trap the Lord of Pain, he would need bait. Which meant that Triste was safe, at least for the moment. The moment the kenarang understood that he had won the game, however, when he realized that he had both gods in his hands-at that moment it was over.

Meshkent raged silently in the locked corner of Kaden’s mind.

“I don’t know about you,” il Tornja said, turning his attention back to Kaden, “but I find this all very exciting.”

* * *

Kaden studied the eddy. He was bound at the elbows, wrists, and waist, tied to a huge stone behind him, but he was free, at least, to look, to watch the river play out its elegant violence half a dozen feet below him. As an acolyte in the Bone Mountains he had spent hours studying the eddies of the mountain streams. It was the sort of inscrutable exercise the monks might have assigned, but the truth was, Kaden had enjoyed it. There was something relentless in the twisting currents of those small rivers, so much inevitability in their onrushing course. The eddies offered the only reprieve. Kaden had never quite understood why the current would pause, slow down, double back on itself, but the whole retrograde motion seemed, in some odd way, like a type of forgiveness, the river escaping, if only momentarily, from its own ineluctable nature.

It was a lie, of course.

The water might pause, but it would empty into the sea all the same. The world was built from a thousand examples of such inevitability. Thrown stones fell unerringly to earth. Flesh left unfrozen would always go to rot. The days would grow short, then long, then short again. Without those truths, the whole framework of reality would tremble and break apart. You could forget for a while, caught in the eddy’s beguiling spiral, that the world’s current raged all around. That it could not be denied.

Submit, Meshkent whispered inside his mind, the voice quiet but ripe with fury. You risk everything if you do not. Submit.

It was impossible to be certain how much the god understood of what was happening. Kaden had tried to respond to the commands, to explain the bare outline of their situation, while at the same time keeping that other, divine mind buried so deep that even he himself could barely hear it.

Give yourself to me, the god grated again, then fell silent.

Kaden weighed the possibilities. Meshkent could fight-he’d shown that much already when still wearing the flesh of Long Fist. The crucial question was: how well? A single monk with a knife and the element of surprise had nearly killed the shaman and the god inside him-would have killed him if Kaden hadn’t taken the Lord of Pain into himself. Meshkent was strong, but his strength was his weakness; even now, he seemed incapable of imagining failure, or conceiving a world that did not end in his own victory. And why would he be? Kaden thought wearily. What setback had Meshkent encountered that could serve as a model for his own destruction?

Submit to me, the god growled.

Kaden shook his head as he stared into the slowly circling eddy.

No.

* * *

It was well past midnight when he finally heard boots approaching over broken stone.

“Go,” il Tornja said to the soldiers who had been standing guard. “I’ll talk with our new friend alone.”

After the others had retreated beyond earshot, the kenarang stepped in front of Kaden, set his lantern down on a low wall, and half sat, half leaned beside it, arms crossed over his chest.

“So…,” he said, nodding genially, as though they were old companions sitting down to dinner after a long time apart.

“Where is Triste?” Kaden asked. “What did you do to her?”

“What did I do to her?” il Tornja asked, touching a finger to his chest as though perplexed. “It looked an awful lot like she was fleeing from you.”

“She was terrified,” Kaden said, brushing aside the truth. “Confused. I didn’t knock her unconscious or drug her. I didn’t tie her up.”

“Actually,” il Tornja replied, drumming his fingers on the stone, “you did. You let the poor girl secure your return to the palace, then you threw her inside that ridiculous prison of yours. All things being equal, I’d say she has a lot more reason to hate you than me.”

Kaden shook his head. “She knows who you are. So do I.”

Il Tornja raised his brows. “And who am I?”

“Csestriim,” Kaden said, locking eyes with the man. “The general who led the war to destroy humanity. The architect of the genocide against your own children. The murderer of gods.”

“Oh,” the kenarang replied, waving a lazy hand, “that.”

Kaden hesitated, uncertain how to respond. He wasn’t sure what he had expected. Denial maybe. Defiance. Almost anything but this jocular indifference.

“The thing is,” il Tornja continued, “you can make anything sound bad if you pick the right words: genocide, murder-that sort of thing. You slap a word on something you don’t like, and it excuses you from having to think about it any further.”

“What is there to think about? Kiel told me how you killed the gods-Akalla and Korin. He explained it all to me, how after you murdered them a whole part of what we are-the reverence for the natural world and the heavens-just … went away. I know the whole story. You’ve been searching all these thousands of years to find a way to destroy more gods, older gods, to annihilate our race.…”

“Sure. Of course. But did he tell you why?”

Kaden stared. “Because you hate us…,” he began, realizing his mistake as soon as the word left his mouth.

Il Tornja shook his head. “Don’t be dense. The word means nothing to me, and you know it.” He sighed ostentatiously. “I have been trying, all these years, to fix something that is broken.”

“We are not broken.”

“Oh?”

“We are different. Not every living creature needs to be like the Csestriim.”

“Of course not. Kettral aren’t Csestriim. Dogs aren’t Csestriim.” He paused to wag a finger at Kaden. “But you … you were Csestriim once, before the new gods broke you.”

“It is no breakage to feel love, loyalty, joy.…”

“Those are just the chains,” il Tornja said impatiently. “The new gods broke you, made you weak so they could enslave you, and then, in the greatest insult of all, your new masters made you worship them. Look at the temples you’ve built: to Ciena and Eira, Heqet and Whoever. Listen to your prayers, ‘Please, goddess, give me joy. Please, lord, spare me pain.’” The general shook his head. “I expected better from you, Kaden. You, at least, had the chance to understand.”

Kaden took a slow breath, tried to steady his thoughts. “What chance?”

“The Shin!” il Tornja exclaimed. “You studied with the Shin. You weren’t there long enough, obviously, but you must have at least glimpsed the truth. You must have seen at least a piece of the beauty of a life lived free, unenslaved by all those brutish passions.”

Kaden hesitated. Whatever twisted game the Csestriim was playing, his words hit close to the truth. Kaden had, in those long years at Ashk’lan, come to cherish the freedom from his own human weakness, from all the relentless need. It was an imperfect freedom, of course. Even the Shin still looked out at the world through the dirty window of the self, but the absolute emptiness of the vaniate suggested something greater. A life more pure, more clear.

“Let’s be frank with each other,” il Tornja said, settling back against the wall. “You know there’s a goddess locked inside the girl, and so do I.”

Kaden blinked, tried to keep his thoughts from showing in his eyes.

“You’ve been brainwashed and blinded like the rest of your kind, twisted all around by the shape of your own brain,” il Tornja went on, “but you’re not an idiot, Kaden. You know I wouldn’t have left the northern front, wouldn’t have come all the way down here just to chase a leach.” He raised his brows, waiting for Kaden’s response.

“What do you want from her?” Kaden asked finally.

“I want to kill her!” il Tornja said brightly. “I’m going to kill her.”

Deep inside Kaden’s mind, Meshkent twisted, writhed, hurled himself against walls that were not walls. In the early iconography, the Lord of Pain had been depicted as a tiger, or giant cat, and it felt as though a tiger were slavering, pacing, growling inside Kaden’s brain. Just keeping company with Meshkent had been enough to unsettle whatever equilibrium Kaden had won among the Shin; having the divine inside of him was worse. He felt infected by the god’s presence, disturbed, as though Meshkent were a huge stone thrown into the still lake of his thought. Fighting back the god, keeping him caged, was battle enough. Doing that while guarding his face before il Tornja proved nearly impossible.

“What are you waiting for?” Kaden asked, voice tight.

Il Tornja sighed. “I need her.”

“For what?”

“For bait.”

So, Kaden realized. I was right. There was no satisfaction in the thought.

“You think you can lure Meshkent to her,” he said, shaking his own head this time, forcing a measure of scorn into his voice. “You really think a god would be that stupid?”

Il Tornja just smiled. “Of course I do. You’re forgetting that I’ve fought them before.”

“You lost,” Kaden pointed out.

The kenarang shrugged. “The battle is not the war. I have Ciena now. Meshkent will come. Then I’ll kill them both.”

Kaden gritted his teeth. “Are you trying to frighten me?”

“What could be frightening,” il Tornja replied, “about a world without suffering? What’s frightening about a world without pain or hate? Without people being dragged around by the clanking chains of their lust? What’s frightening about a world in which no one needs to weep over a child’s grave?”

“We would not be what we are,” Kaden said. Even to his own ears, the answer rang hollow.

“Surely the Shin taught you something. Surely you learned you can be better than your self.”

“Why do you care?” Kaden asked, desperate for the conversation’s end.

Submit, Meshkent whispered. Submit, and I will rip out his lying throat.

The pressure inside Kaden’s mind was almost unbearable, but he could still hear his own baffled reply: He’s not lying. However tortured il Tornja’s version of the truth, it was truth. Meshkent’s province was pain. That was his only gift. What kind of man would submit to such a master? In this much, at the very least, the Csestriim was correct-the young gods came, and they made men and women into slaves.

“Why do I care?” il Tornja asked, cocking his head to the side. “Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to help me.”

“Help you? How?”

“You could start by telling me the truth. How did you know that Triste would be here? How did you find her? You have no ak’hanath.…”

“She told me,” Kaden said simply. “When she was still in prison. She told me where she’d go if she escaped.”

Il Tornja stared at him, that gaze measuring, weighing. Then he burst out laughing. “I’ll tell you, Kaden-it’s amazing. You’d think, after all these centuries, that I’d get used to just how stupid people can be, but I just … I’m still surprised.” He composed his features. “I’ll admit it. It’s a weakness. Now. Tell me how Meshkent escaped.”

The question landed like a slap. Kaden’s stomach seized inside him.

“I don’t know who-”

“Of course you do. You didn’t arrive here with some lone Ishien soldier, as you claimed. You came with Long Fist, the Urghul chief, and you know as well as I do that that name, that flesh, is just a mask. He came with you to find his consort. You arrived through one kenta and you attempted to flee through another.”

Kaden realized he was shaking his head. “You’re wrong,” he whispered.

“No,” il Tornja replied patiently. “I am not.”

“You’re guessing because you’re desperate.”

Even as Kaden spoke, however, he was remembering the stones board, remembering Kiel playing out the kenarang’s games. Even the most basic moves had been utterly opaque, following a logic beyond anything Kaden understood.

“I’m neither guessing,” il Tornja said, “nor am I desperate. I am, however, vexed.”

“You can’t be. You don’t have the capacity for anger.”

The general waved away the objection. “A figure of speech. The point remains-you came here with Long Fist. He is not dead, as you claimed. If the river had killed him, we would know, the world would know. He is alive. He survived. You spent time with him. You can tell me what he wants, how he thinks.”

“You think you can turn me to your side the way you turned my sister.”

“Of course not. You and Adare are nothing alike. She conspired with me because she genuinely thought I’d help her save Annur, save the people of Annur. You don’t care about the people of Annur.”

“I do…”

“Of course you don’t. Not really. You are free to help me in a way she never was. You can help me willingly.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because,” il Tornja said, smiling wide, his teeth moon-bright in the lamplight, “you know that I am right.”

Kaden took a long, shuddering breath. Meshkent raged inside him. His own mind was a maelstrom. The vaniate beckoned, the only calm in the chaos. He turned his face away. “Kiel told me that you’d lie.”

“Kiel,” il Tornja said, shaking his head. “Of course he did.”

“This face, this argument, all these human gestures … none of it is true. You’re doing it so I won’t see what you really are. What you really want.”

It was barely convincing, but it was all he had, the only resistance he could summon. For the first time, however, il Tornja’s face went serious, still. He studied Kaden for a long time, then stood abruptly, turned away, and approached the river, walking to the very edge of the low cliff fronting the current.

The water was black in the lamplight. It looked cold, bottomless. For a long time, the Csestriim just stared into the moving depths. When he finally turned back, Kaden found himself looking into the face of a creature he did not know. The jocular, indifferent Annurian general was gone, scrubbed utterly away. This creature wore his face, the flesh hadn’t changed, but the eyes were impossibly cold, hard. They were formed like a man’s eyes, but the thought that moved behind them was unknowable as the river at night.

Kaden had faced gods, had spoken with the lords of all pleasure and pain, and yet there had been something in those immortal spirits that he recognized, a posture of feeling and thought, a core of emotion that he shared even with the divine. This, the emptiness in that stare, the distance of it … the sight made Kaden’s heart fold inside of him. It was all he could do to keep from crying out.

“I thought to spare you from the full truth,” il Tornja said. “It was a mistake.”

Meshkent howled inside Kaden’s mind.

This time, the Csestriim’s smile was the smile of a skull.