Ruthless Gods Read online

  “Then it shall be done,” he said.

  She wondered if there were others from her monastery still here. There was no way for her to save them all, she realized with horror. There was no way for her to do anything. She only had scraps of a power that was killing her; she couldn’t even convince him to let both Kostya and Żaneta go free. She couldn’t even find Malachiasz behind the monster.

  Despair chewed at her edges. She shouldn’t have come down here.

  She stepped closer, moving cautiously. She had nothing left to lose. “You have my name,” she said, “or, at least, a part of it. I know yours, Chelvyanik Sterevyani, I know you. Do you want it back?”

  “No,” he said, frowning. The heaving changes in his features were roiling more chaotically than before, as if a storm were raging within him. A cluster of eyes flickered open along his neck, closing again a few seconds later.

  She shushed him, pressing her finger over his lips. He went rigid, one hand slipping back against the altar to steady himself as she shifted closer. Her other hand settled on his hip, sliding up to his waist, his bare skin hot to the touch.

  His gaze was darkness, but there was an odd, confused look on his face that made it easier for her to continue. To trail her finger over his parted lips, the flash of fangs and iron teeth just visible, a reminder that this was not something she should be doing. This was not how he would be saved.

  But maybe he wouldn’t be. And she would die here. And thus would kiss him one more time before the inevitable came to pass. He had crashed far past the point of no return and she didn’t even know what she would be saving.

  His other hand—tipped by the iron claws that could so easily tear her to pieces—glanced against her cheek, her neck. Her hand slid back into his tangled hair.

  Then she yanked his face down to hers and kissed him hard.

  He made a sound that was a cross between surprise and want, taking a shaky step back that knocked him into the altar. He clutched at the back of her head, a hand sliding down her side to pull her closer. She was bleeding from those stupid iron spikes that broke his skin, and his claws were digging into her back, and this was certain heresy.

  But what did it matter? The gods had left her anyway.

  He kissed her back with a terrifying desperation that made her think maybe—maybe—he could be saved.

  His hands slid down her body, drawing a heat that made her gasp against his mouth. He drew back only long enough to sweep her up, turning to deposit her on the altar, knocking over the chalice and spilling blood everywhere. She was level with him, catching his hips between her knees. He diverted his attention to her neck and her breath left her in a rush. She leaned back on her hands, sliding on the blood covering the altar. His sharp teeth grazed against the sensitive skin of her throat and her entire body reacted, jolting against him.

  And she let herself fall. Her calculations never quite accounted for the way he always made her feel like there were stars in her blood. Even here.

  Her bloody hands clutched at his face as she kissed his forehead, the bridge of his sharp nose, his cheek, trailing back until finally, finally, she wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered, “Malachiasz, please.”

  He stiffened, hands that had been unusually careful suddenly going taut, claws piercing her sides. She gasped in pain, wrenched her eyes shut as they flooded with tears.

  But she held him still; she nudged her nose against his cheek. “Your name is Malachiasz Czechowicz,” she said, pain choking her voice as his own hiss of distress plunged ten daggers farther into her body. “You’re the stupidest boy I’ve ever met. You’re the Black Vulture, but you’re more than that. You’re infuriating and gentle and too godsdamned clever for your own good. Please, Malachiasz, please remember.”

  There was silence. Nothing but the sound of his breath, heavy against her. Nothing but the blood dripping down her sides, her head dizzy as she lost too much too fast.

  She cried out as he yanked his hands from her, dislodging his claws from her flesh. He stumbled away.

  His eyes were the palest blue and his expression was one of sheer horror.

  “Nadya,” he whispered.

  Yes, gods, please, let this work.

  His hand caught hers. Bloodstained, pale fingers with perfectly normal fingernails. He caught her face between his hands, eyes tracking over her in disbelief.

  “You’re here,” he whispered, thumb stroking her cheek. He blinked, realizing just where here was. He stared at the bloody altar in bewilderment, a rattling breath escaping him in a rush.

  “Nadya?” His voice sounded confused, like he didn’t know how he had ended up here.

  She reached up, clasping her hands over his. “Dozleyena, Malachiasz.”

  He shuddered, eyes closing at his name. He mouthed the shape of it to himself. His hands were trembling.

  Creeping black decay inched over his cheekbone. An eye flickered open at his temple. Blood leaked out of the corners of his eyes and when he opened them they were onyx black. His head twitched once, a slow, bitter smile pulling at his lips.

  “No,” he murmured. “Not enough.” He pulled away from her sharply, claws growing out swiftly from his nail beds as he regarded her.

  “You have something else that does not belong to you, little Kalyazi,” he said, cool fingers against her cheek. Then his palm was over her face and it was like her soul was being pulled from her body. She choked, scrabbling at his forearm, digging her fingernails into his skin, trying to wrench his hand away, but he was too strong and she had lost too much blood.

  Something snapped in her chest. A sob broke from her, a rush of power that was not hers leaving her as he took back the thread of magic she had stolen.

  He pulled his hand away, fingertips blackened.

  “My curiosity has been sated,” he remarked dispassionately. “Your death is your own, towy dżimyka.”

  He walked away and left her bleeding out on the altar.

  13

  SEREFIN MELESKI

  Svoyatovi Ivan Moroshkin: A cleric of Devonya, where Ivan’s arrows fell, fire consumed.

  —Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

  Serefin felt like he had been walking for days without ceasing. Everything ached and he could no longer see out of his left eye. He finally gave up and sat underneath a large tree, closing his eyes.

  What is happening to me?

  He had lived his whole life in perfect normalcy. His own blood magic was the oddest part about it, but that was a perfectly benign thing in Tranavia. Everyone could use blood magic if they really wished to.

  But this … was more than he could bear. Suddenly the thought of being too much like his father felt uncomfortably close to the truth. Maybe madness was a fate he could never escape.

  It took him longer than he liked to admit he was totally alone. If this was real, then where were the others? Where was he?

  All the frustration and anger he had felt at Ostyia and Kacper were so very small now. He should have left it alone; Ostyia only ever wanted to help, it wasn’t her fault that he was such a wreck. And Kacper … he … Kacper deserved better.

  Panic threatened to swallow him. But Serefin had dealt with horrors, and he would deal with this. Yet his fear was that it wasn’t true and it would break him.

  He closed his bad eye. He was still in the forest.

  “Well, shit,” Serefin said.

  He stood up and tried to figure out which direction was east, giving up after only a few minutes of frustrated gazing into the abyss of forest where everything appeared the same and there were no markers of direction.

  I have not survived this long only to die in a forest, he thought bitterly.

  “Of course not.”

  He nearly jumped out of his skin at the thin, reedy voice that sounded beside him. The voice he was used to hearing in his head sounding very much outside. Slowly he turned, terrified of what he would see.

  The figure standing beside him was tall and robed in black but for
the jaw bones tied in a string around its neck. If it was human, Serefin couldn’t tell; its head was the skull of a deer, moss hanging from broken antlers, blackened pits for eyes and nothing more. A spider crawled from one eye socket to the next before setting at building a web in the great cold expanse. The figure stank of grave rot.

  The skull tipped up as if gazing at the canopy of leaves above. “I grew so tired of Tranavian forests,” it remarked.

  Serefin choked out a gasp. He wasn’t in Tranavia anymore? How was that possible?

  “It won’t be too much of a stretch to assume you are at fault for why I am here?” Dimly, Serefin was aware of how casually he spoke to a—a god?

  The being had long, spindly fingers tipped with ragged, beaten claws. It pressed a hand over its chest. “Me? Dear boy, you walked here on your own two feet.”

  “You aren’t particularly … awe-inspiring for a god,” he said, ignoring that impossible revelation. Weren’t the gods supposed to burn out mortals’ eyes at mere sight? Wasn’t it a whole thing for the Kalyazi that their gods could never be shown in pictures because their true forms were too beautiful for mortals to handle? Maybe Serefin was making that up.

  “Not a god. Once a maybe, now an after, between an essence for change and for chaos and for the dead that wait below the surface.”

  A chill of fear rippled down Serefin’s spine. If this was going to be like talking to Pelageya he wanted nothing to do with it.

  “A god would be different, of course, you’re right. Ever shifting, ever changing; never staying in the here, the now, but in the future and the past and somewhere else, somewhere different all at once. A sight to kill a mortal like yourself. Well…” The being paused and Serefin could feel those gaping black expanses considering him. “Maybe not like yourself. Burn one eye out and keep the other, but no one walks out unscathed. No one walks away clean.”

  “I don’t understand,” Serefin said desperately.

  “Are you ready to cooperate? Ready to do as I ask for I ask so very very little from you?”

  Serefin scowled.

  “Ah, so no. Due time, I understand. I can be patient, far more patient than a boy of only a few years stumbling through this world thinking he knows everything. I can outlast you, child. I have outlasted so many others.”

  “I might be more inclined to consider if I knew what I was being asked to do.”

  “Presumptuous.”

  “So they say.”

  The being crooked a hand at Serefin. “Come.” It began to walk deeper into the forest.

  * * *

  Serefin was nearing collapse. How much time had passed? The forest remained dark, dawn no nearer to the horizon.

  His one regret, he decided, was that he was probably going to die here and he had left things such a mess with Ostyia and Kacper. He desperately wished they were here. Kacper complaining how this was a terrible idea and Ostyia trying to pull him away. He had been so cruel to them. Too much like his father and he did not want to become that. Anything, anything but that.

  “Where are we going?” he asked hoarsely, jogging to catch up to the looming figure, gasping from the effort. “And will you ever tell me your name?”

  The figure stopped, turning to Serefin, who had stepped too close. The feeling of mad, eldritch loneliness was so choking he had to retreat a few steps as it clawed up his chest and nestled between his ribs, hammering away at his heart. Alien and dark.

  “Are you ready to cooperate?” it asked, its reedy voice pleasant.

  “No.”

  The figure turned without another word and kept walking.

  “You can’t make me follow you,” Serefin said petulantly.

  But the figure was doing exactly that. He let out a panicked laugh, trying to force himself to stillness and finding he was incapable.

  “What do you know, Tranavian, about Kalyazin’s clerics?”

  Serefin stumbled after the god that was not, apparently, a god. He only knew as much as any Tranavian. All but one cleric had been killed by the time he was sent out to the front, the Kalyazi only hanging on by the skin of their teeth.

  And while he could say fairly confidently that he knew Nadya, he had no idea how her power worked. The skill she had shown during the duel against Felicíja was like no blood magic Serefin had ever seen. And she had used it within Tranavia, where supposedly the gods did not have access. Didn’t clerics have to pray for their power? It occurred to him he hadn’t seen the girl cast any magic since that night in the Vulture’s cathedral. What did that mean? And what about the blackened scar on her palm?

  Serefin knew blood magic. He never needed to understand any other path.

  In hindsight, he had allowed Nadya a lot of freedom considering what she had potentially done to his country. Except there had been no signs of divine judgment, so he had never acted on any desire to see her punished for tearing down the veil that had supposedly existed.

  It didn’t really do much for her point that her gods were all-powerful beings. If they really had such power, wouldn’t something have happened? Wouldn’t Tranavia have been punished for its supposed transgressions?

  Nadya couldn’t quite argue with him when he brought it up.

  The being merely laughed when Serefin brought it up now. Its laugh was a grating, terrible sound. “Your paltry lives are a twitch in their eyes, nothing more. That cleric did many things when she came to Tranavia; you have yet to see the ramifications of any of them. But they will come, in time.

  “It’s clear you know nothing of Kalyazin’s clerics. A pity. Though, what good would that knowledge do you? Except, perhaps, understanding how to deal with the oncoming storm.”

  Serefin sighed. He was so tired. If he walked any more he was going to collapse. Maybe that was the being’s intent, but Serefin wasn’t going to bend so willingly. He wasn’t going to agree to anything blindly.

  “What is it you think you will wrench from me, boy? A story? An explanation? I owe you no answers. I owe you nothing. You owe me everything. Your father would still be alive if not for me. You would still be dead if not for me.”

  Serefin froze, coming to a standstill.

  The being turned back to him.

  They appeared to be standing underneath the exact same tree as before. Huge and vast, unreal in its size, with shriveled brown leaves still clinging to the branches as the bitterly cold wind whipped around them. Serefin’s stomach dropped.

  “Ah, didn’t you know? Of course not. Tranavian, I forget. Do you think most people would survive what your father did to you? Do you think most people live with a scar like that?”

  Scar? He had no scar except the one that cut across his eye.

  The being snapped its fingers. “Right, right, right. So little your kind sees. So little they know. Like children, staggering through the world, playing with forces they do not understand. You are stubborn, but you will break. You are already breaking.”

  Serefin closed his eyes. His shaking hand trailed up over his chest, fingers catching against raised, smooth skin across his throat, the aftermath of a knife parting his flesh. He didn’t remember what had happened after Żaneta had shoved him down into the darkness. That was probably for the best; he didn’t want to remember how he died. But he hadn’t realized, he hadn’t noticed.

  How had he not noticed this?

  Had everyone around him been politely ignoring it?

  “Your kind created the Vultures, fascinating constructs, but that’s not what you are. You, dear boy, are something else entirely, and I have made it so. I will tell you what I want, in no simple terms, for you will break and I will have to put you back together again and truly that is so very exhausting. I hardly want to be picking up after a child who can’t keep himself together.

  “Oh, oh, wait, that’s the other one. So hard to keep track of you all, you all look the same. He will be for another, but you, you are mine. And I have dragged this game out long enough.”

  Serefin slumped down the side of the
tree.

  “Have you not put the pieces together yet? Have you not figured it out? You are very clever and yet not clever enough by far.”

  The god—not a god—tilted his head and Serefin could’ve sworn that hellish skull face was grinning.

  “I want revenge.”

  interlude iii

  THE BLACK VULTURE

  If being unmade was violence, being remade was horror. The screams of the Salt Mines, inconsequential before, dug underneath his bones, raking their claws through him and leaving him half-formed and so very broken.

  This was … worse, somehow, than before. He didn’t want this. He had worked so hard for oblivion, for this raw, dark power, and he could feel it slipping away.

  And as much as he did not want it to go, as much as he welcomed the silence, he could feel her hands in his hair, her mouth on his skin. She had wrenched open the door and yanked him back into a semblance of something he did not think he could be anymore. She was maddening and powerful—too powerful. He had been caught in her fire before and there was nothing left to keep him from burning up completely this time.

  There were flickers, pieces of him waking up, and he tried to shove them back down, but he didn’t know how to stop this.

  His fingers scrabbled against bones in the wall as his legs gave out, his body revolting. The quiet chanting that always crept along the depths of the mines became agonizing. He dragged himself back up, shoving his shoulder into the doorway to the bone chapel.

  She was lying in a pool of blood—too much blood. He could smell it, sharp and metallic and hers.

  His hands were shaking.

  His hands were bleeding.

  He needed to move closer, but he couldn’t confront the possibility that he had done the impossible. Not when he was on the precipice of coherency. Not when he nearly had it; it was in his grasp.

  His name was …

  His name …

  It was there, just out of reach, and he couldn’t fight toward it. He didn’t want it. But he did he did. How could it be possible to want something and to hate it so much?