Michael Stackpole: Chartomancy

They orbited in a circle much as the Zodiac girded the heavens. Below, as if it were the hub of the circle, lay the Dark Sea and beyond it Ixyll, from which he could feel a trickling thrill of wild magic. Once he had desired to go there and now, were he willing to open his mind, he could know most of its secrets. That wealth of knowledge would have been a treasure trove to him at one time, and now it seemed almost trivial-both because of the ease with which it could be gathered and the sense that whatever was happening there had little or no bearing on his existence.

He caught a light sound from behind and spun. A tiny woman stood there with arms wrapped around herself in a fleshy cloak that became a black silk robe, belted and trimmed in ivory. He did not need the flying bats embroidered on the breasts to recognize her, for he’d seen her sharp features and wide eyes on statues in temples from Helosunde to Ummummorar.

He dropped to a knee and bowed to her.

Her high-pitched, gay laughter reminded him that she was his sister the bat, goddess of Wisdom.

“Have you finally learned to respect your elders, Wentiko?”

“I have always respected you, Tsiwen.”

“So you have, little brother, so you have.” She smiled at him and he rose. “Jaidanxan has been quiet without you.”

He shook his head. “I’ve not been gone long, have I? Only twenty-three years.”

“You have been gone far longer than that.” She gestured off to the darkest of the floating palaces. “Grija was always against your decision to incarnate in mortal form. He thought you would be another disaster, so he delayed your return.”

Jorim tried to remember anything that might pertain to what she was saying, but couldn’t. “Perhaps he thwarts me still.”

“You’d not be here if he were.” She smiled carefully and came to join him at the balcony’s edge. “When you first chose to be born of a mortal, you chose a human-a bold choice. You brought them a gift of magic, and those you call the Amentzutl took to it well. You decided to share magic with others, those to whom you were born this time. You had come to love men and Grija found support among some here to visit you and offer you a bargain.”

Jorim arched an eyebrow. “He convinced me to divest myself of much of myself-my divine nature-and leave it in the land of the Amentzutl.”

“You remember.”

“No, I have just benefited from wisdom.”

Tsiwen laughed and Jorim caught fleeting memories of winging his way through the night with her in eons past. “Wisdom had eluded you when you agreed to the bargain because the portion of you that you retained had become overly human. When your body died, your spirit became his to play with, and he did. He often withheld incarnation, or let you be born into a situation where you could never find your essence again.”

“I’ve had more than one incarnation?” Jorim shivered. “And I have been gone from Jaidanxan since I was Tetcomchoa?”

“Things you will remember as you let slip your grasp on who you have been most recently.”

Jorim shook his head. “It’s not time for that yet. I have friends and family back there.”

“I know.” She gestured with a hand toward the center of the balcony and a hole opened in it. It filled with water that roiled, then cleared. “You’ll want to know how they fare.”

He approached the hole cautiously. Dread coiled in his belly, bringing with it echoes of the pain he’d felt upon death. Though many claimed the transition from life to death is painless, they are mortals who have no knowledge of it. The ripping of the spirit from the physical eclipses the most acute pain, for it is felt in the soul even more sharply than the body.

Preparing himself, he looked down. It was nighttime at Nemehyan. His body had been wrapped in a white mourning robe with the Naleni dragon embroidered on it in black. He lay atop the city’s largest pyramid and people hiked up the steps, passed by him, and down again, a long line of them. Members of the Stormwolf expedition mixed freely with the Amentzutl.

Anaeda Gryst, Nauana, and Shimik were closest to his body. The two women spoke with those who passed by. Though they wore brave expressions, he could feel their loss. Anaeda would reach out and squeeze Nauana’s shoulder or caress her hair from time to time, and that seemed enough to keep his lover from dissolving into tears.

Even so distant, he could feel Nauana’s pain. He had touched her essence, and she had touched him. The pain of separation gnawed through her, and joined with the frustration in Jorim. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but his body no longer responded to him.

I am a god. How can this be prevented?

Shimik, by way of contrast, appeared calm and even happy. The Fenn sat near his head but did not seem the least bit disturbed. He just chattered to himself as he often did, and spoke to Jorim as if he were still there. More important, the last time he’d seen Shimik, the Fenn had been white. Now his fur was darkening, and the flesh of his hands and feet was taking on a golden hue.

Shimik looked up to the heavens and smiled. He held his hands up. “Jrima, Jrima, Shimik comma.”

Nauana reached down and pulled the Fenn into her arms.

Jorim looked at his sister. “They believe I am dead.”

“They saw you die.” She smiled easily. “Your death was truly spectacular. You accepted death so they would not know it. Grija was expecting to gorge on the Amentzutl and instead you gave him offal.”

“I gave him his own creations.”

“No.”

“But I saw him there. The Amentzutl Zoloa is Grija.”

“Oh, that’s true. He was stalking that killing ground, devouring souls.”

“And I would have devoured them all had our brother not interfered. I love how desperate people pray to me, begging me not to take them. So piquant.” Wearing a grey robe, Grija materialized on the other side of the hole, tall and slender, with short dark hair, black eyes, and sharpened teeth. “You know you would still be my plaything, except that those you saved prayed fervently for you.”

Jorim shook his head as Grija’s expression soured. “Prayers of thanks were never to your taste, were they?”

“No, but no matter. I would have allowed you to come home this time.”

“So gracious. What makes this time different from any other?”

The death god walked to the balcony’s edge and pointed down below the circle of palaces. “Look there.”

Jorim nodded. “The Dark Sea.”

“Deeper.”

Jorim moved to the balcony edge and studied its depths. The dark water did not so much clear as his vision just pierced fathoms. There, over a mile deep, a stone glowed with opalescent fury. Energy pulsed within it, at first slowly, then in a frenzy. He sensed it was a heartbeat, one which pounded without rhyme, reason, or purpose, but that this had not always been the case. Nor shall it be.

“I see.”

Grija snarled. “Let go your humanity, Wentiko; matters here are too critical for you to be trapped with small thinking. That is Nessagafel. He awakens.”

“Nessagafel is a Viruk word.” Jorim shook his head. “I don’t know it.”

“You once did. Everyone did.” Tsiwen hugged arms around herself and seemed to shrink. “The world knew it and trembled.”

Grija lifted his head and sniffed. “Nessagafel is the tenth god, or the first god, depending on how you wish to reckon things. He incarnated through the Viruk and built their empire. He grew powerful and sought to enslave all of us. We had to destroy him, and we did.”

“You killed him?”

Grija nodded. “Chado and Quun tore him apart. That’s why, in the human Zodiac, they share prey.”

“But if he’s dead, how is he coming back? Why did you let him out of your realm?”