Idol of Blood (20 page)

Twenty-Three: Malignancy

The moorland was a dense marsh. There would be no crop at all when the storm had ended. Jak didn't want to think what this meant for the mounds themselves. Some across the way had already collapsed. Only aboveground barns, sheds and stables, for those who had them, were habitable now. Two smaller moundholds had come for shelter, sharing the barn with the RemPetans, their few qirhu and a handful of other livestock.

Geffn appeared at the top of the ladder, joining Jak in the dry loft. “Here we are again.” He attempted a smile, but it faded at the soft sound of Mell's weeping from the corner of the loft she and Keiren occupied.

Keiren looked up at Geffn and Jak leaning together with interlocked arms for comfort. “Despite this mess, it's good to have you back.” He rubbed Mell's arm as he held her at his side. Jak nodded in acknowledgment. “Good to see you two have mended things,” he added. “A man needs his mate in times of trouble.”

Geffn spoke before Jak could answer. “A man needs his friends in times of trouble. Jak and I have formally divorced.” Jak glanced at him, grateful he hadn't misunderstood the morning.

Keiren raised his brow. “Divorced? But she—”

“Shut up, Keir,” Mell interrupted, rubbing her sleeve against her damp cheeks. “And stop insulting Jak with pronouns.”

Keiren looked abashed. “Well, anyway,” he mumbled. “It's good to see that you're…friendly again.”

Jak suppressed an urge to laugh, and Geffn turned his head toward the tiny loft window to hide his smile. His expression changed as he peered through the glass. “Well, holy sooth.”

“What is it?” Jak peered around him, worried that something worse had befallen the settlement.

A lone individual stood before the deluged mound, bending down at the hobnail window—Jak's bedroom window—drenched in the downpour.

Ahr
. The word was almost foreign, hadn't been in Jak's head in three-quarters of a year. Jak felt a sudden, devastating pain between the ribs. “Ahr!” Foolishly, Jak beat on the pane before scrambling to the ladder and climbing down.

Outside, Ahr turned and straightened at the sound of Jak splashing through the sodden muck behind him.
Jak
, he mouthed before it was possible to hear him. Jak dashed over the ruined ground and fell on him, arms thrown around him. Ahr returned the embrace and they stood molded together, silent and unmoving in the wash of the storm.

When they parted, Jak observed the cold streams of water snaking over Ahr's smooth olive cheeks and dripping from his sable hair into his infinite night-sky-blue eyes, and felt such kindred with him it was impossible to speak. He hovered, as Jak had never really noticed, between the boundaries of sex, as gender-ambiguous in many respects as Jak. He was stoically controlled and outwardly dispassionate as Jak was. He was beautiful. Jak loved him. How could Jak have forgotten him?

When they'd shared that single night of awkward intimacy between them, Jak had perhaps consciously begun to put him into that void. His desire had been disarming. Jak had let him close to the thin skin and then bolted, the helpless rabbit of childhood dominating then. Ra, whatever else she'd done, had allowed Jak to step away from the inner portrayal of the self as prey, and others as predator.

This wasn't the time to confess to Ahr that Jak's love for him wasn't fraternal, but Jak would soon, would make up for the distance wedged between them.

“The mounds.” Ahr looked around him with a helpless gesture. “It's terrible.”

Jak nodded. There was nothing more to say.

“I went home first. Mound Ahr is still solid.” Ironically, Ahr's impractical insistence on building his mound half aboveground had proofed it against the worst disaster in Haethfalt history. “I saw that Ra had been there.” Ahr's eyes seemed to deepen. “Is she with you?”

Jak's chest felt weighted with lead. There was something vaguely disturbing in Ahr's face as he spoke of Ra, but more immediately disturbing was the awful thing Jak had to tell him.

Ra was drunk on the blood of sacrifice, yet she demanded more. She'd made families in her peopling of
Soth
AhlZel, mothers with infants. “Bring me the suckling children,” she commanded. “Full of sweet milk from the breast.”

For the first time, her obedient thralls faltered.

“It grows late,” said her manservant. “Have they not satisfied you,
meneut
?”

She turned a deadly eye on him, and his heart stopped for an instant by the sheer force of her gaze. “Must I slit your throat? I can make a hundred like you.”

He bowed silently.

“Bring—me—the—
infants
!”

A child in the worshipful throng began to cry as its mother tried to hide it, and the woman looked up wretchedly at the unquestionable Meer. Ra stretched out her golden arm, dripping with gore, and the woman cried out.

“Give it to me,” said Ra. “Or I will have you disemboweled and fed to a pack of feral dogs.”

The woman, impossibly, turned and fled, and the crowd parted in terrified confusion to let her through.

“I will tear your eyes from your head!” screamed Ra, rising to her feet. “I will feed them to the dogs myself!”

Chaos had broken out among the throng. Mothers were fleeing, stumbling over one another, and those who hadn't stopped them saw they too must flee. Ra's temple servants were joining in the mutiny of cowardice. All but the blue Merit. He stood beside her, fist to his heart as Merit had stood to bid her good-bye on the humble steps at Rhyman.

She paused in her fury as a brief moment of the terror of sanity descended on her. She had drunk blood and dined on human sacrifice. She was fatally stricken with madness. There was no hope of escaping it. She was a plague worse than that which MeerHraethe had released on his own
soth
. How she hated these moments when she knew herself.

Blue Merit was watching her with loyalty and compassion. Her subjects were escaping on screams of terror, and only he remained in the marbled jade hall. Ra twisted her fingers into his hair and dashed his head against the altar, laughing as the skull splintered. She battered the head repeatedly into the stone. Pink brain matter and red-jagged splinters of bone were flying from it.
Pink like the crushed head of my RaNa.

Ahr stood once more before her, the dark eyes of liquid ink regarding her unblinking, and Ra screamed like a great cat. She dropped the unrecognizable corpse and flew at the perfumed body, unveiled and flat chested, as Ahr had never been. Ahr's substance dissolved in her hands, and Ra fell to the floor crouched on all fours. She ripped her nails across the tile, cutting a razor's gash into it, and shrieked into the empty air.

The courtyard too had emptied, and Ra ran in her golden paint into the river of the street. She scaled the wall of the temple as though it were a low rock, and stood atop the image of herself she'd placed there. Her feet were on her double's breasts.

“It's mine!” she screamed. “
Soth
AhlZel is mine!”

The streets were deserted. She could find no one. Ra leapt from the statue to the row of gargoyles on a building beside her and ran, descending through windows in search of prey and finding nothing. She traversed her city by its roofs. There was not another soul in AhlZel.

Ra hissed in fury, spittle flecking her cheeks amid the rain. She didn't need them. She would make more. She returned to the temple, her gold coat untouched by the thunderous rain, and plunged both arms into the black pool of her conjuring.

This body was ponderous, difficult to form, but at last she drew it out and stretched it on the tile. The lungs didn't rise when she ordered it, and the eyes didn't blink. This was immaterial. She dragged RaNa with her like a poorly stuffed doll and ascended her throne once more.

“
Mene na
,” she said, satisfied. “She's mine.”

The visions that had plagued Pearl for days had now become a black hole threatening to swallow him. He vomited blood, as if he could expel the toxin from his veins. But he couldn't escape it. Ra's disease had spilled into the Meeric flow. At times, it was difficult for him to distinguish between her emotions and his own. MeerRa seemed unstuck in time—one moment, the young boy raised alone in a temple, ignored by his Meeric mother; the next, a madwoman holding the conjured corpse of her child. Though he'd ached to belong to someone, to have a mother of his own, he began to be glad he hadn't, if motherhood meant madness and cruelty.

There was Ume, of course. She tried to tend to him in his illness, her kind concern so maternal and comforting it made his heart hurt, but he couldn't afford to allow her to hover near him as she pleased. He could no longer trust himself around her, yet he couldn't dismiss her either. His conflicting needs were tearing him in two.

He burned his drawings, terrified of what he'd seen and terrified Pike would discover them, but found himself drawing the same images again in a sort of trance, no matter how many times he tried to destroy them. He knew Ume watched him closely and must know these drawings existed. When the vitriol in his blood was strong, he didn't care, leaving them in plain view on the vanity when he knew she would be tidying up after him. And then he would be ashamed that she'd seen the darkness in him, becoming obsessed with the fear that she would change her mind and tell Pike after all, terrified by the images she saw. And then the dark, rage-filled thoughts would return and paint Ume's violent end in his vision.

The only respite from this savage buffeting of conflict in his head was in the ordinary
vetmas
he granted. When he drew the desires of someone besides himself, he felt safe and calm, and he drew with purpose. But afterward, the darkness seemed to hold on to him with ever-sharper claws.

Twenty-Four: Catastasis

“Ra isn't here.”

Ahr blinked at Jak, trying in vain to brush the water out of his eyes as it continued to pour. How could Ra not be here? Ra had driven him here on the scent of her sovereignty. She'd nearly driven him mad. And now, if he must go somewhere else, what of Jak? Jak was too real at this moment to dismiss.

Beads of rain poised on Jak's dusting of freckles and on the points of pale ash-bark hair. He wanted to kiss the damp lips, purple with cold. He wanted to touch Jak's skin, despite the offense of it. But he needed, must have, Ra. He couldn't think of whether Ra wanted him. Ra couldn't want him, but still her blood sang to him. He was dizzy with need.

“Where is she? Why isn't she here?”

“I thought you dreaded being near Ra.”

Ahr looked down at his feet, inches deep in water. “I do. But some things are inevitable. I—
meerrá
. I'm lying.” He pressed his hand to his mouth a moment before going on. “She's done something to me,” he tried to explain. “I'm not myself. I
am
, but…” Ahr raised his eyes and gave Jak a helpless shrug. “I don't know how to make sense.”

Jak nodded and swallowed. “I see.” It was Jak's turn to look down at the water. “Ahr. Ra is mad.”

Of course Ra was mad. She was Meer. She had always been mad. But Jak's voice said that this was something else. Something terrible.

The beat of Ahr's heart began to falter. “What has she done?”

“She attacked me.” Jak flinched, as if Ahr might attack, and then hurried on. “But it was only a moment; she didn't know me. I could have borne it if only she'd stayed.” The pallid face was twisted with guilt.

Ahr gripped Jak's shoulders. “Where did she go?”

“To Mount Winter.”

Munt Zelfaal. Ahr looked up at the dark, clouded mountain behind Jak's head. “You didn't try to go after her.” He let go of Jak with a jerk and began wading away from the mound.

“I—Ahr—”

“You should be ashamed,” Ahr snapped, plowing through the marshy ground.

“I was afraid!” Jak called after him, splashing through the water to catch up. “Of that, Ahr, I am ashamed. I was a coward.”

Ahr paused and looked at Jak's disconsolate gray eyes. Below them was a thin, white scar across one cheek. He took Jak's hand and continued walking. “I'm sorry.”

Jak hesitated as they passed the barn. “Where are we going?”

“To Zelfaal. To Winter, to find Ra.”

“Wait.” Jak tugged against his grip. “If we do this, we shouldn't do it like this, unprepared. We need to think.”

“How long do you need to think, Jak? How much time has already been wasted?”

Jak swiped at the dripping hair over one eye and stared at him for a moment. “There's something Ra left that could help us. It was a gift to Geffn, but I think he'd be amenable to our taking it.” Jak pointed at the rear of the barn. Ahr squinted. Under the eaves rested a black and silver machine, In'Lan whimsy by the look of it.

“Ra conjured that?” Ahr stepped toward it, letting go of Jak's hand. He circled the motorbike, putting his hand on its smooth haunch. “In the time I knew Ra,” he mused, “I never saw him conjure. He blessed me in other ways.” He was silent a moment. “Until Ra reappeared in Haethfalt, I never had an inkling of what the Meer could do. But this…” He shook his head, crouching beside the machine to inspect it more closely. “Even after all I've seen her do, this is fantastic.” He looked up at Jak. “I was an unbeliever. I'm converted.”

Geffn approached from the barn over the wet ground, eyeing them with an unreadable expression. “Planning a trip?”

Ahr glanced from one to the other, wondering how Jak expected to enlist Geffn's aid in this.

“We're going after her,” said Jak.

“No.
No
.” Geffn put out his arm before the bike. “Jak, think! I thought you'd given up this idea.”

“We won't bring her back.” Ahr made a sound of protest at this promise, but Jak continued. “She isn't Haethfalt's problem. If we can find her and bring her back to reason, we'll take her home to Rhyman. Merit will take care of her.”

Ahr silenced his objections. Merit—yes, Merit would care for her. This was the answer.

Geffn's eyes were full of concern. “She tried to kill you, Jak. Please reconsider.”

Jak's head shook. “A Meer doesn't try to kill and fail. I can't believe she would do it. There must still be some
ra
in Ra.” Ahr could see Jak understood and meant the Deltan of it.

He was startled when Geffn drew Jak into his arms. “Sooth be with you.” It was a farewell of potential finality. Geffn smoothed the wet hair from Jak's face and kissed the damp lips in unprecedented intimacy before turning his attention on Ahr. “The machine is yours. If you can manage it.”

Ahr shrugged. “I think I can. I've handled a bike once or twice, working in the Delta. Not quite this fancy, but the locomotion looks the same. We'll take good care of it.”

“Don't be polite,” said Geffn. “Sooth knows how you're going to get it to the mountain at all, but I don't expect to see it back in one piece. Take care of yourselves instead.” He slipped out of his waterproofed over-jacket and put it around Jak's shoulders. “Don't sacrifice yourselves to her.”

The bike turned out to be surprisingly steady in the mud and slick puddles, as though built for unfriendly terrain. Ahr quickly got the hang of it, and Jak held on behind him, head ducked against Ahr's back to avoid the splatter the machine tossed up. It was odd and pleasant to hold on to Ahr this way. What a waste of time Jak's fears and resistance had been for so long, when Ahr had been just a mound away. It felt right, like a homecoming, to feel his form and his warmth so close.

Ahr found the continuation of the same ancient road that had brought Jak and Ra from Rhyman—
EldRud
, he called it—among the rocky glens beneath the mountain. Once Ahr pointed it out, its vague outline was visible beyond the mounds where it had been separated from the desert by years of domestic cultivation. Ahr seemed certain Ra had taken this route. If the road remained passable to the top, he said, it would lead to the ruins of the first Meericality. Beyond this likelihood, Ahr seemed to have an unshakable sense of Ra's direction, as though he were a compass, and Ra true north.

It took them only half the day through the unstopping rain to reach the end of their journey by bike. They'd risen into a gray swell of low clouds, coming upon a gorge that separated them from the peak beyond.

Ahr patted the bike as they dismounted and looked into the clouded depths. “This is where we part.” He turned to Jak as he leaned back against it. “Geffn was certainly generous. I've never seen him so amiable. I thought the two of you—”

“We had sex,” Jak blurted, cheeks blooming with heat. “This morning. I thought you should know.”

“I see. So you've reconciled?”

“No.” Jak fidgeted after the presumptuous confession. “We've made peace. I missed him. It was more of a good-bye.”

Ahr nodded. “I also,” he began. “Merit and I…” He paused once more, and Jak couldn't hide an expression of surprise. “He's meant so much to me. And he desired me. I needed—”

“Ahr, there's no need to explain.” Jak rubbed a hand against his rain-soaked shoulder. “Surely you don't think I have any reservations about gender. If you gave each other pleasure, if you shared love, what could be wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” said Ahr. “Nothing.” He sighed as though a weight had lifted from his shoulders, and turned toward the gorge. “We've gotten over that. Now how do we get over this?”

A single span of ancient-looking stone stretched into the fog, with evidence of it at the other end of the gorge. Unless the stones could dangle of their own accord over open air, the span must be unbroken. Still, it was less than inviting.

“Either we climb along this relic,” said Jak, “or we go around.”

Ahr shook his head. “Around? How do we know there is any ‘around'?”

Jak studied the uncertain route, trying to see what became of it farther out, but in the mist, it was impossible. “No one has touched this stone in almost half a millennium.”

“Except for Ra,” said Ahr. “Not even the Meer can fly. So it's held up under the weight of human traverse recently,” he added, as though trying to reassure himself.

Jak's heart sank at the thought of that weight. After all, the stones couldn't have been much strained. “All right. Let's see if it will support the weight of two more.” Taking hold of the ancient arm of the bridge, Jak stepped down onto the lip of stone at its bottom. It was slick with water, but at least it hadn't been wet for long; no moss had grown on it. Hugging the top of the rail, Jak inched along, swallowed up into the soggy gray. Only the drip of water on masonry was audible, as if everything else had ceased to exist.

“Jak?” Ahr's voice, disembodied, pierced the veil.

“Wait, Ahr. Wait until I've crossed.”

“No,” Ahr protested. “What if you—?”

“If the stone gives way, it will take both of us, instead of one. Just wait for my word.” The unnerving thought occurred to Jak that the rain itself was adding extra weight. The rains had come after Ra's disappearance, so it would have been dry when Ra crossed here.

Ahr's anxious voice came again from farther away, but there were more immediate things to worry about. Jak had reached a portion of the balustrade that had suffered more erosion than the stone at the end of the bridge. The lip that had been serving as a foothold disappeared, and Jak's foot met empty air. It was a costly misstep. Jak slid down, knuckles bashing against the stone, and held on to the rail with one hand, the width of it stretching Jak's arm as though it were being pulled from its socket.

The reality of the open stretch that lay below, though hidden from view, was dizzying. Jak was dislodging small bits of rubble in the struggle to regain the rail, but there was no report below to indicate any stones had reached the bottom. Jak struggled up and over the top of the railing, and clung tightly to the old stone in an attempt to still the panic, breath wild but slowing.

Through the wet shroud, the lower rim of the balustrade reappeared some yards away. It was reachable, if only this portion could be managed. Jak made a desperate effort, arm over arm, climbing sideways toward the wavering image of safety. The actual spot where the bottom ledge began again was uncertain, but Jak labored onward, rewarded at last with a hard surface underfoot. It was an absurd relief, no matter how insubstantial the foothold.

Jak made the mistake of looking down at the indistinct blue-gray and the hint of pebbled rock below it. It was impossible to tell how much wider this gorge was, how much bridge railing remained to cross. Jak pressed a cheek to the wet stone and tried to steady the growing vertigo. Stopping here certainly wouldn't accomplish the feat. Jak strained to continue.

When the hint of solid ground appeared through the bank of cloud, Jak doubled the effort, falling at last onto the muddy bank of the ravine. It registered now that Ahr had called out some time ago. Jak stood and shouted to him through cupped hands. The emptiness of mist answered. How far had Jak come? Possibly too far for sound to carry.

Climbing farther up the ridge to see if the opposite side of the gorge could be spotted from a greater elevation, Jak saw only white. The bank of clouds covered the mountain completely at this height. Winter's peak, however, concealed from them when they'd stood below, was clear here, and Jak was met with a stunning site. From a protective crag of rock, the spears of immense towers jutted forth above the highest point of Winter.

There should be no city here. The ancient City of Always had stood here once, but for centuries had been only the dust of ruins dubbed the “City of End”. Mountain hikers had seen the ruins and reported that only the wall still stood. Jak turned toward the vague outline of the bridge support rising out of the whiteness.

“Ahr!” The sound echoed over the confounding expanse, throwing Ahr's name back multifold until it overlapped upon itself, and Jak heard what had only been a subconscious recognition until now:
Ahr—Ra-Ahr—Ra-Ahr
. They were a palindrome of sound, two mirrored cries over a line of symmetry.

Jak looked once more to the impossible city. As once before, when Ra's memories had first begun to return upon meeting Ahr, Jak felt intrusive, had stumbled into something ancient and preordained and incomprehensible—something terrifyingly vast. Jak's fate had clumsily intertwined with two who had a ponderous destiny between them.

There was a sound on the ancient stone below, a clatter of falling rock against the indeterminate plunge of the gorge. Jak stumbled down the laddered stone that remained of the end—or perhaps the beginning—of
EldRud
. Where was Ahr? Had he heard Jak's shouting? Jak grasped the support near the ravine's edge, half considering going back, though the prospect wasn't pleasant. The stone gave an ominous rock beneath Jak's hand. This piece would surely give way under any more stress.

“Ahr!” cried Jak once more, heart hammering.

This time a weak voice answered. “Here!” The sound was close. “Here, Jak.”

Short-lived relief washed over Jak. “Ahr—your bag.” Jak hoped he'd understand. “Do you have rope?” There was another painful stretch of silence. “Ahr?”

“Yes,” came the reply at last.

“The support is weak,” Jak shouted.

“I've gathered!” His voice came more strongly, as though his hold had shifted for the better. “There's a break here—bottom's crumbling out—slow going.”

Jak wiped at the unending drizzle. Ahr was only a few yards from the cliff side. It was the spot where Jak had faltered. “If you tie something of weight to the rope and throw it here…”