Tad Williams - Shadowrise

“So, then,” Sulepis said. “The fairies—or the Pariki, as we call them in Xand—were driven out of most of our lands long ago, even the high mountaintops and deep jungles in the south. But when they had roamed our lands in the earliest days the fairy-people had sometimes coupled with the gods themselves. Sometimes fairies coupled with mortals as well, and sometimes those couplings made children. So even long after the gods were gone and the fairies driven out, the heavenly blood survived in certain mortal families, unseen and unsensed sometimes for many generations. But the blood of the gods is a strong, strong thing, and it will always make itself known again.

“In my studies I learned that your northern Pariki, the Qar, had never been completely driven out, and in fact still held much of the northern-most part of the continent. More important, though, I learned that they had shared blood with one of the royal families of Eion, and that what was even more interesting was that the Qar who had done so also claimed direct descent from the god Habbili… the one you call Kupilas, I believe? Yes, Kupilas the Artificer. You can imagine my interest at learning there were mortals living in the north with the blood of Habbili himself flowing in their veins. You know the family I mean, Olin—don’tyou?”

The northerner bunched his hands into fists. “Does it amuse you to mock the curse of the Eddons? The grim trick the gods played on us?”

“Ah, but my dear Olin, that is where you are wrong!” chortled the autarch. Vash had never seen the god-king in such a strange mood, like a perverse child. “It is no curse at all, but the greatest gift imaginable!”

“Still you mock me!” Just the tone of Olin’s voice made the autarch’s Leopards loosen their daggers in their sheaths. Vash was very glad to see they weren’t planning to use muskets in such close quarters. The loudness of guns made him nervous, and he had once seen an undervizier’s head blown off in an accident when the Leopards were trooping. “You have me prisoner, Sulepis—is that not enough? Must you taunt me, too? Just kill me and have done with it.”

Vash had grown used to the way the autarch treated Olin as an amusement, how he took abuse and resistance from the northern king which would have had one of his own subjects tortured to death ages ago, but he was still surprised at the mildness of Sulepis’ reaction.

“It is a gift, Olin, even if you do not know it.”

“This gift, as you call it, likely killed my wife in childbirth. It made me throw my own infant son down a stairway, crippling him for life, and forced me many nights each year to hide myself away from my own family for fear I would hurt them again. In its grip I have even howled at the moon like your Xixian hyena-men! And that same curse that crawls through my veins, and in the veins of my children as well—and if the gods continue to hate us, will someday crawl like a poison through my grandchildren too—now grows stronger in me again with every hour as you drag me back to my home. Gods, it is like a fire inside me! I might have been Ludis Drakava’s captive as well, but at least in Hierosol I was free of it, may heaven curse you! Free of it! Now I can feel it again, burning in my heart and my limbs and my mind!”

It was all Vash could do not to turn and run away. How could anyone speak to the Living God on Earth like that and survive? But again, the autarch seemed barely to hear what Olin had said.

“Of course you can feel it,” Sulepis said. “That does not make it a curse. Your blood feels the call of destiny! You have the ichor of a god inside you but you have always tried to be nothing but an ordinary man, Olin Eddon. I, on the other hand, am not such a fool.”

“What does that mean?”the northern king demanded. “You said there is no such curse in your family, that your ancestors and you are no different than other men.”

“No different in blood, that is true. But there is a way in which I am nothing like any other man, Olin. I can see what none of the rest of you can see. And here is what I saw—your family’s blood gave you a way to bargain with the gods, but you didn’t understand that. You have never used this power… but I will.”

“What nonsense is this? You said yourself you do not have the blood.”

“Neither will you after it has leaked out of you on Midsummer’s Night,” the autarch said, grinning. “But it will help give me power over the gods themselves—in fact, your blood will make me into a god!”

King Olin fell silent then, his footsteps slowing until one of his guards had to take his elbow to make him move faster. The autarch, on the other hand, appeared to be enjoying the conversation: his long-boned face was lively and his eyes flashed like the golden plating on his costly battle armor. Earlier that year Vash had almost lost his head when he had been forced to tell the autarch they could not make his armor suit entirely from gold, that such weight would cripple even a god-king. He had learned then what was now becoming obvious to Olin—you could not reason with Sulepis the Golden One, you could only pray each morning that he would spare you for one more day.

“Come, Olin, do not look so offended!” the autarch said. “I told you long ago that I would regret ending our association—I truly have enjoyed our conversations—but that I needed you dead more than I needed you alive.”

“If you think to hear me beg ...” Olin began quietly.

“Not at all! I would be disappointed, to tell you the truth.” The autarch reached out his cup and a slave kneeling at his feet instantly filled it from a golden ewer. “Have some wine. You will not die today, so you might as well enjoy this fine afternoon. See, the sun is bright and strong!”

Olin shook his head. “You will pardon me if I do not drink with you.”

The autarch rolled his eyes. “As you wish. But if you change your mind do not hesitate to ask. I still have much of my story to tell you. Now, what was I saying… ?” He frowned, pretending to think, a playful gesture that made Vash feel ill in the pit of his stomach. Could it be true? Could the might of the heavenly gods really come to Sulepis—a madman who was already the greatest power on the earth?

“Ah, yes,” the autarch said. “I was speaking of your gift.”

Olin made a quiet sound, almost like a little sigh of pain.

“You know, of course, how your gift comes to you—the Qar woman Sanasu captured by your ancestor Kellick Eddon, the children that he fathered on her who became your ancestors. Oh, I have studied your family, Olin. The gift is strongest in those who show the sign of the Fireflower, the flame-colored hair sometimes called ‘Crooked’s Red’—or ‘Habbili’s Mark’ as it is called in my tongue. I suspect the gift runs in the blood of all of Kellick’s descendants, even those who do not bear the outward signs....”

“That is not so,” said Olin angrily. “My eldest son and my daughter have never been troubled by the curse.”

The autarch smiled with childlike pleasure. “What of your grandfather, the third Anglin? Everybody knows he had strange fits, prescient dreams, and that he once almost killed two of his servants with his bare hands although he was considered a very gentle man.”

“You truly have learned… a great deal about my family.”

“Your family has attracted much attention in certain circles, Olin Eddon.” The autarch leaned toward him. “You must know that even though your grandfather Anglin showed every sign of this… tincture of the blood… he was not one of the red Eddons, was he? He had the pale yellow hair of your ancient northern forebears, just as your daughter and eldest son.”

“You mock me. My daughter bears no taint,” Olin said tightly.