Heretic

Part Two

Chapter 4

The man standing over her was painted red, as though half his chest and face had been dipped in blood. Infant skulls hung from a cord around his neck, just above the ceremonial scar where his own heart had been pierced. Thick loops of oiled hair hung around his head, stretching down towards the bound woman like grasping tendrils. His eyes were wide, shockingly white against the black paint that surrounded them, and rapture shown in them as he sang. The woman screamed, struggling, but the leather straps were tied tight, cutting into the skin of her wrists and ankles, slick with blood.

The painted cleric unsheathed a knife, triangle-shaped and made of shiny black glass. The rising sun glinted on its razor-sharp edge. She shuddered at the sight of it, remembering how many times she’d seen it wet with the blood of one sacrifice or another. Cheers rose from all around her, from the hundreds of her tribal cousins gathered around the base of the hill. She remembered how she had cheered the same, dozens of times, deaf to the screams of the sacrifices. She screamed now, and they did not care.

“Please, Tuanto!” she cried at the cleric. He had helped her birth her children, had cleaned and sewn her wound when she’d sliced open by the claws of a jungle serpent. Three days ago, he’d talked cheerfully with her in the village square, proudly comparing the growth of their children. He looked cheerful now as well, teeth wide in a rictus grin, too white on his shadowed face.

He lowered the knife and she felt its point, cold, softly touching the skin beneath her breasts. He placed both hands over the hilt, lifted himself, and then thrust down with all his weight. She screamed and felt a sharp crunch, and then her vision was blurring and red pain covered everything. She was somewhere dark and cold with screaming bodiless voices churning all around her-

“Girl? What are you staring at, do you think that slab is going to perform some trick for your amusement?”

Vehx’s gruff voice cut through Ylla’s memory like a hot knife. No, not my memory, she reminded herself. She was eleven years old, she’d never had any children, she didn’t know any clerics with painted faces or baby skulls and she’d never been killed, except by that plague. Blinking, she realized she was standing stock still outside the ring of stones, the sacrificial slab before her. She shivered to see it, but Vehx was standing before her as well, reared up on his hind legs with his wings spread out, head tilted in confusion.

Ylla forced herself to smile as wide as she could, just like she had when Isaand had told her about how he’d brought her back to life and how she couldn’t go home or ever live in one place ever again. Her stomach roiled with nausea and her muscles were all tensed up and achy, and she had so many thoughts and feelings in her that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream. But she could smile. Someone had told her that if she kept smiling, it would trick her into thinking she was happy. She thought maybe it was her father, but maybe it was someone else’s father, some dead ghost she’d brushed up against in the Churn.

“Ah, good, you’ve come back down to earth to grace us with your presence.” Vehx took a leap and flapped his wings, thumping against her chest. She put her arms around him to let him curl up in the curve of her arms, the way he liked to be carried, and turned to follow Isaand and Taram. They were well away by now, moving past the ring of huts that bordered the stone circle, moving up a narrow path that winded up between two huge stones covered in moss.

The path was almost like a stairway, the stones sticking up like little pillars, almost as if they’d been carved. She hopped up them one at at time, dancing across the highest steps with a light touch of her toes. She smiled brightly at the passing villagers, but kept a wary look out for anyone with a painted face or ornate necklace or nicer clothes. She didn’t know what these lake-people’s clerics dressed like, but clerics were never hard to spot.

Amauro’s clerics had been women, as befitted a goddess, and they’d dressed in golden skirts of woven grass patterned with wolf’s paws in blue paint. Wolf skin cloaks covered their backs, with a hood made of the wolf’s head, so they could lower it over their faces and look fierce and strange. She’d never spoken to them, being an apostate, but she’d seen them many times, always walking between one village and the next, never staying for longer than a night, telling the wolf goddess’ will and overseeing her rituals.

Amauro had required sacrifices too. Once a month, when the golden moon was full and bright and the white moon was hidden, the villagers would build a pyre, slaughter their best goat or bull or urran, and roast it in the center of the village. The smell would waft through the village, reaching her wherever she slept, in some villager’s shed or camped out on the fields her parents were working. The smell had always made her hungry, and she’d wished Amauro would share her meal with them all, but even if she had there’d have been none for Ylla. She wasn’t one of the goddess’ faithful, nor a traveler under her protection.

Sometimes though, when times were bad, the rain would stop falling and the ground would begin to shake. Just a little bit, here and there, but the quakes got worse, until they began to tear rifts in the ground, and the clerics would come together, three or four of them, and decide what was too be done. When that happened, a beast was not enough, and they would pick a villager for the next sacrifice. They didn’t pick an elder like they did here in the lake. Instead, they would pick some child, whichever one was weak or lame or sickly, someone the tribe could do without. When they came to her village, Ylla had cried and feared that she would be chosen, but her mother had smiled and told her not to worry. The tribe snubbed them for their allegiance to another god, but here it protected them. Amauro’s sacrifice had to be one of their own. Ylla had been relieved, but when little Kenna from across the village had been chosen and burned, she’d cried again. She had been no friend of Ylla’s, she had no friends, but the simple-headed little girl had been nicer than most, not understanding why she should shun Ylla, and she had been sweet and innocent.

The path opened out onto a bridge made of rope and rough hewn slats of wood. The wood was all of different kinds, badly shaped, with more than a foot of empty air between each slat, and many of them were broken and left hanging as well. Her eyes grew wide as she looked down to see the lake softly flowing beneath. The water was so clear that she almost couldn’t see it, and so it looked like a straight drop to the sandy shore five or six hundred feet below. Even as she watched, a young girl and a boy half her age went running across the bridge with no concern for the height, giggling as they ran.

Isaand strode across it quickly enough, keeping his hands clenched on the ropes to either side, but Ylla couldn’t bring herself to step out over it. Taram turned and saw her fear, and grinned. “It’s okay, it’s not as bad as it looks. If you hold onto the rope, you can’t fall, and if you do, it’s just water, you’ll be fine.”

“I can’t swim,” Ylla said, forgetting to smile.

“Oh? Why not?” Taram looked as though she’d told him she couldn’t see colors. “Well it doesn’t matter, you’re not going to fall. Here, take my hand, I’ll help you across, and if you fall, I’ll jump in and pull you out.” She took his hand, which was warm and rough with callous, much bigger than hers, and took a tentative step out onto the first plank. It swung beneath her weight, and she quickly grabbed the rope railing with her other hand. “I jumped off the middle of the bridge, once, when Sadaa dared me too. It knocked my breath out, and my legs ached for days, but I survived it just fine.”

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“Aren’t you afraid to swim now? With the Lsetha around? It could be under us right now.” Ylla looked down, opening her Godseye a little, but she couldn’t see anything in the water but Maesa’s power rippling through the lake itself. The Lsetha had been hard to see though, except for Vehx.

“It’s got the whole lake to hunt in, it can’t be everywhere,” Taram said, but his voice was thick now, defensive. “What can we do? We have to go out, to catch fish. Besides, I’d go mad if I couldn’t swim in the lake. There’s nothing else to do here.”

“Could you… teach me how? To swim, I mean.”

“Sure, if Isaand says it’s okay. What is he to you, anyway? He doesn’t look like your father. You’re not a slave, are you?”

“No, that would be me,” Vehx quipped, though Taram couldn’t hear him.

“No, he’s just taking care of me. I had to leave my village. I’m his assistant now. See, I have bandages and ointments and things in this pouch,” Ylla said, letting go of the railing to pat the big leather sack hanging at her side. The plank beneath her swayed and vertigo gripped her hard, and she grabbed hold of it again as quick as she could-

Wind rushed by him, slapping against his skin as hard as tree branches, the sound like the roar of a lion in his ears. He couldn’t scream, his teeth clenched shut tight, but as his body turned over he saw the floor of the ravine far below, rushing up at him. Bones covered its shadowed floor, the bones of the other men and boys thrown down before him over the years. I’m going to die now, he thought, oddly calm, and then the ground reached up and smashed against him-

“Are you okay? Ylla, can you hear me?”

Someone was talking at her, but Ylla clung to the railing with both hands, Vehx crushed up between the rope and her chest, both feet planted firmly on the same plank. Taram was staring at her, disturbed, but Isaand hurried past him to kneel beside her. His weight made the bridge sway worse, and she let out a little whimper.

“It’s okay, Ylla, you’re okay,” Isaand whispered, putting his arms around her shoulder. He spoke quietly, so Taram couldn’t hear. “Is it the memories?”

“Yes.” Ylla felt ashamed. She’d tried to keep them to herself, but Vehx had noticed at once, weeks ago after they’d left Tzamet’s lands, and Isaand couldn’t help but notice the times when she trailed off in the middle of a sentence, going numb and staring at nothing, sometimes crying or shouting in some foreign tongue. “I was falling.”

“I know they’re scary, but remember, they aren’t real. They can’t hurt you,” Isaand said.

“Oh, they’re real all right,” Vehx said, his face against her cheek. It was soft and silky but Ylla felt like throwing him off the bridge, only she’d have to let go to do it. “They happened, and those that lived them died, just like you did.”

“Quiet, Vehx,” Isaand snarled, and the Sendra fell into a sullen silence. “They’re real, Ylla, yes, but they’ve already happened. They’re over and done with, and you’re fine. It’s just fear.”

“Fear doesn’t last,” Ylla muttered.

“That’s right. It’s just a little thing,” Isaand said. “Come here, I’ll carry you across.”

Ylla shook her head and let go, stepping into the middle of the bridge as calmly as she could. Vehx leapt away from her at once, off the bridge to glide away on his leathery wings. “You’re tired from helping Taram’s da. I can do it. We’re almost there.” She saw it was true. The end of the bridge was no more than fifteen feet away, opening onto a small island cliff just large enough for three small huts to sit together around a central firepit. Taram watched her anxiously.

“Szet knows that’s true,” Isaand muttered. “Alright, but we’ll go together. Let me take your hand, and you keep me walking straight, okay? You’re my assistant, remember.”

Ylla nodded, and took his hand, and began to walk across the bridge again, not looking down. Though her head was full of bad thoughts, she made herself smile.

Vehx swept away on the warm breeze, stewing with anger. He could not stand to be around those weaklings any longer, Isaand with his blind hypocrisy and the pup with her trembling heart. They could not even manage to cross a bridge without breaking out in tears. He was sick of their company, and sick already of this bleak land with its crippled gods and mindless, ignorant people.

He kept watch with his Godseye, looking in vain for any sign of the Sendra the lake-folk had named Lsetha. The beast had been magnificent, a slender serpent five hundred feet long, coiled with muscle and sleek power, invisible to the eyes of its prey. A body to be proud of, a hunter, no slinking carrion eater like the dull animal he was forced to inhabit.

His thoughts quickly turned to hunger, as they always did in this body. The lake below teemed with fish, but he had no skills to catch them, and his brain panicked at the thought of it, so he swept back inland. He landed near the center of the village and skittered past slack-jawed yokels to the high ground, where pillars of rock rose above the huts, their tops splattered with bird droppings. Climbing up, he found a nest of fat eggs and began to gorge himself on them one at a time.

A screech cut the air and a fat white bird swooped down to land on the nest, screaming at him. Hissing, he flung himself at it and grabbed hold with all four paws. Talons scratched at his skin but he twisted and sank his fangs into the birds neck, then gripped and tore it open in one motion. The bird flapped feebly as its lifeblood poured out, and he lapped it up, the taste hot and sweet.

These people were such fools, Isaand included, he thought to himself as he lay eating. The village spread out below him, the ring of stones humming with residual power. In his Godsight, the sacrificial altar in the middle was stained bright with death. Three times it had been used, he guessed, in as many months. And yet the power remained, just sitting there ready to be claimed, while the stones beneath his feet were crumbling, left with only the residual power of the island’s dying god. There was much he could tell them about this Ulm-Ethka, and the Sendra who so brazenly poached in their goddess’ waters. But why should he? What had humans ever done to earn his loyalty, to earn their gods mercy? Vehx was still young. He was not there when the gods convened and created the Fifth World. He was never asked if he consented to bind himself by their laws, he had been born into them. This Szet had the right idea, yet Vehx hated him too. He’d taken him from his lands, his solitude where he could hunt and kill as he pleased, and forced him out amongst these ingrate whelps who felt that the gods who’d made them had some responsibility to give them happiness.

Worse, the foolish gods seemed to agree. They were not all so weak, though. Szet was not the only Unbound. And if this Ratha girl spoke truly, there was another heretic nearby, serving a different god. Perhaps he would be less sanctimonious than Isaand. Vehx would prefer to be freed, but if that was not in the stars, maybe he could at least find a master who suited him better.