Jay Lake - Green

Goddess, I prayed, a mercy on us all.

I opened my eyes to see the divine Endurance standing over me, much as the ox had once done in my father’s fields. Just beyond his front legs was a terrible roil of spark and flame and fur and claw. Pardines exploded under the stabbing bolts of lightning, flesh and blood and pelt shredding in arcs leading away from the violence.

My eyes were driven toward blindness from the glare, much as my ears had been from the noise. I capped my hand over my brows and tried to look only at feet.

That was bad enough. They clawed, fought, climbed. Skinless’ great muscled legs passed my view. Lightning flashed and glared off the blood slicks on the cobbles. My whole body felt a bruising from the ripping electrick bolt, the buffeting of the wounded air.

Then there was no more. The lightning had stopped, along with everything else. Even in my deafness, I could sense that a hush had descended. I crawled out from beneath the ox, and with my right hand on his flank, got to my feet.

Carnage. Dead pardines everywhere. Skinless lay shattered, still as any anatomist’s worktable project. Only Endurance and I stood.

The Dancing Mistress lay before me, coiled with Federo. She’d managed to bang his head into the cobbles sufficiently for reason to leave him. With his thoughts fled, the lightning had ceased.

It was indeed Federo. The aspect of the god had drained away.

The Rectifier loped up to me. He had a slender stone knife in his hand. I saw his triangular mouth flex as he said something to me that I could not yet hear; then he bent over to slice off Federo’s fingers.

I launched myself at him, slipping on a slick of blood. Though my attack was wild, and he far, far larger, I took the Rectifier in the side of the leg and staggered him two paces away from Federo with the corpse yet unmutilated.

He whirled on me with the knife held low, then pulled his blow when he realized who his attacker was. The Rectifier bent, the knucklebones in his fur jiggling. He asked me a question. This time I heard his voice as if from a long, hollow tube.

Pointing at my ears, I tried to say, “Leave them be. I will see to them.”

The Rectifier stood his ground, then tossed his head toward Federo. The meaning was clear enough. You go first, then, and good luck to you.

I looked to Endurance, then stepped over to my two fallen. The Dancing Mistress still breathed, though her ears were torn off and her face was a burned mess. I could not see that Federo still breathed.

The god had definitely left him. Where was Choybalsan? For a moment, I did not care.

Kneeling beside them, I wept to see their wounds. All of us seemed set one against the other as a matter of bloody, violent course.

The shake of Endurance’s head, the clop-clop of his bell, brought me back. I turned to look up at my first friend in life, and I knew where the god had gone.

The ox was surrounded by the avatars and sendings from Below. Lightning danced in Endurance’s eyes, illuminating a knowing squint I had never before seen.

Patience. I had called a god of patience. Who had no voice to rally armies and suborn priests. Who had no hands to direct the lightnings he might pull down from heaven. Who could stand quietly and watch over the angry spirit within him, centuries of human power and pardine loss compressed to the rumble of a ruminant’s complex gut.

I had placed the greatest threat seen for generations into the tulpa born of my father’s ox.

Even better, I had slain no gods.

Laughter bubbled up inside me. It roiled like the tide through rocks, spilling out through every part of my body, my soul, my voice. I fell beside the Dancing Mistress and Federo as the waves broke into tears. This could not be what the Goddess had meant for me, for all of us.

I slumped to a seat on the cobbles of the road and cried. My heart flooded into the world, tear by tear, sob by sob, and left nothing within my chest except a hollow beating. Finally I looked at the Dancing Mistress. Her eyes were open now. The left was filmy with the lightning burns that had scarred her face. The right looked at me with a tired curiosity.

I stared back at her and smiled, mouthing, I think we won.

The Rectifier knelt beside me again. “Can I take his fingers now?” the big pardine asked, tugging at my shoulder. “He is no longer using them.”

“No!” I shouted. “Let Federo die decently.”

“Death is never decent, human. We reclaim what is ours.”

The Dancing Mistress’ burned hand shot up to grasp the Rectifier’s wrist. Her fingers were tight in his fur, shaking the stone knife he still held.

The Rectifier said something in the sibilant language of their people. She spat an answer, then turned to me. “I was… wrong. Do not… allow him…”

“Do not allow him what?”

“Do not let him… take it… back…”

Her eyes closed again as her hand fell to her side. I reached out to touch her lips-still breathing.

Thank you, Goddess.

When I looked up again, the Rectifier was slicing off Federo’s fingers. “No!” I shouted. I scrambled to my feet and tried to hit him, but he knocked me away and continued cutting. I scrambled around in the street among the bodies until I found a dropped spear. Hefting it, I ran toward the Rectifier.

This time he jumped up and grabbed the head as I rushed him. He was fast. I knew that, often as I’d sparred with the Dancing Mistress.

The Rectifier snapped the weapon out of my hands. I had to let go to avoid breaking my wrists. Then he came for me claws out. This time he was fighting for real.

“What are you taking back?” I shouted. I needed to change this game, for sparring with him would surely kill me.

He circled. His legs were nearly twice as long as mine, so matching me step for step, he covered twice as much ground. I received no answer.

I looked around for another weapon as I backed farther away. The Rectifier moved faster than I could track him, and launched a disemboweling kick. Sliding sideways to avoid the blow, I tripped and lost my balance. I went sprawling.

He rushed for a feet-down leap, as I had with Choybalsan in the tent. The dropped spear poked against my side. I rolled and grabbed it. The Rectifier overran where I had been, then spun on his heel to come back at me. I rolled again and turned the spear point-up.

He veered off once more.

Water dripped on my face. I scrambled to my feet, swatting it away. A sending from the Goddess. I circled back around the bodies of the Dancing Mistress and Federo.

The Rectifier wasn’t going to let me take the time I needed. He came back again with a wide-handed swipe as he danced past me. No more crushing leaps to the chest. His claws took furrows of flesh out of my upper right arm.

The rush of pain nearly made me drop the spear.

Like Septio and the rest of Blackblood’s priests, I knew what to do with pain. Shifting more of the weight of the weapon to my off hand, I used my right for balance. I thought I was about where I needed to be.

I was moving slowly. Too terribly slow. The Rectifier continued to dance like a leaf on a wind. He blurred in and out of my peripheral vision, moving behind me faster than I could turn, appearing on one side then the other.

“I take back what your people stole from mine,” he said calmly.

Another open-handed attack. I parried with the spear and nearly lost the weapon once more.

He spun past me. His voice boomed behind me. “What the Dancing Mistress swore to help bring me to.”

I snapped the spear butt backwards and ducked low. He sailed over my head, cursing as he struck the shaft and set it spinning loose from my grip. The Rectifier lost control of his leap in the same blow and landed hard on his belly. I jumped on his back, feet between his shoulders, and forced his jaw to the stone.