The Godless by Ben Peek Page B

well as you do.”
    â€œAnd you know just as I do that he has no time for the laws.”
    Bau’s expression was sour. “A soldier was attacked by the Quor’lo. That was his blood you saw.”
    â€œAnd the Madman?”
    â€œLast I heard, he was chasing a Quor’lo down a hole.”
    Behind Fo, the snake began to move in discomfort. “What do you think he’s doing here, then?”
    â€œ He sent him, obviously.”
    â€œWhat if he came of his own accord? It is difficult to tell with him these days.”
    â€œAelyn would know,” Bau said, troubled. “She watches him, closely.”
    â€œAnd if she already knew?”
    Ayae—tearing her eyes from the shifting form of the snake, the mouse still visible in it—said, “Who are you talking about?”
    â€œYour savior,” Fo replied.
    Bau’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”
    She should leave. The thought was clear. She was out of her depth. She would gain nothing by being here, would learn nothing that they did not already think she should know. There were other ways, other people. Ayae took a step backward. As she took that first step Fo shook his head, his scarred eyes holding her. “If you have questions, ask, child. You need not fear the asking.”
    â€œYou are scaring her, Fo,” the other man said, rising from his seat. Shaking his head, he closed his warm hand around her arm gently. “Ignore his tone. Fo has a history with the man who saved you, though he is probably not even aware of it.”
    â€œZaifyr,” she whispered.
    â€œIs that the name he’s using?”
    â€œWho is he?”
    Bau guided her to a seat that was touched by the last of the morning’s sunlight. She could see the snake’s skin bulging, but worse, could see the outline of the soaked mouse. “A man, like you and me. But a man thousands of years old, older than either myself or Fo. A man who talks to the dead, as if they were his own.”
    â€œWhich he once said they were,” Fo added, his tone heavy with dislike.
    â€œHow do you know this?”
    Behind the hairless man, the sound of scratching began, the mouse’s frantic movements tearing through the snake’s skin. “Because,” he said, “a long time ago, my parents worshipped him as a god.”

 
    THE BOY WHO WAS DESTINED TO DIE

    The first god to die in my lifetime was Sei, the God of Light.
    Considered by many to be the Murderer, the first god to kill another, his death was not one seen, but one experienced. My family knew of it only when the sun fractured and plunged the world into darkness. For a week, no prayer or offering could abate it. When the sun did return, it did as you see it now, in three broken shards, a trio of emancipated prisoners pulling the corpse of their friend on a litter made from his or her bones. The moon, never seen before, was a new object, cold and dark and dead.
    It was a terrible sight, and many believed that we would have been better if darkness had never ended. If for nothing, we would have been blind to the famine that killed thousands, if not millions, in the decade that followed.
    â€”Qian, The Godless

 
    1.
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    Meihir, the Witch of Kakar, pushed her long fingers across the palm of the boy Zaifyr. Her rough nail ran through dirt, following the lines on his skin. Pushing hard at the base of his palm, she said that he would die at the age of twenty-nine.
    He was not yet five.
    Meihir, in contrast, was an ancient woman, the tiny bones braided into her hair yellow with age, the remains of a family long gone. For her age and her fragility in size, the witch wore the thick hide of a white bear as if it weighed nothing and spoke clearly and strongly, even when announcing the death of a child. On that day, as she foresaw the deaths of nineteen children in tragedies, her voice did not stumble once.
    In Mireea, Zaifyr watched the afternoon’s sun set before him, a