Perhaps all he witnessed here was but hallucination, the creation of a hen’bara-induced fever.
Yet the clarity was almost painful, the vision so brutally… strange… that he believed it to be true, or at the very least the product of what his mind could comprehend, could give shape to-statues and wounds, storms and bleeding, an eternal sea of stars and worlds…
A moment’s concentration and he was turning about once more. To face that endless progression.
And then he was moving towards the nearest giant.
It was naught but torso and head, its limbs shorn off and spinning in its wake.
The mass burgeoned swiftly before him, too fast, too huge. Sudden panic gripped Heboric. He could see into that body, as if the world within the jade was scaled to his own. The evidence of that was terrible-and horrifying.
Figures. Bodies like his own. Humans, thousands upon thousands, all trapped within the statue. Trapped… and screaming, their faces twisted in terror.
A multitude of those faces suddenly swung to him. Mouths opened in silent cries-of warning, or hunger, or fear-there was no way to tell. If they screamed, no sound reached him.
Heboric added his own silent shriek and desperately willed himself to one side, out of the statue’s path. For he thought he understood, now-they were prisoners, ensnared within the stone flesh, trapped in some unknown torment.
Then he was past, flung about in the turbulent wake of the broken body’s passage. Spinning end over end, he caught a flash of more jade, directly in front of him.
A hand.
A finger, plunging down as if to crush him.
He screamed as it struck.
He felt no contact, but the blackness simply vanished, and the sea was emerald green, cold as death.
And Heboric found himself amidst a crowd of writhing, howling figures.
The sound was deafening. There was no room to move-his limbs were trapped against him. He could not breathe.
A prisoner.
There were voices roaring through his skull. Too many, in languages he could not recognize, much less comprehend. Like storm-waves crashing on a shore, the sound hammered through him, surging and falling, the rhythm quickening as a faint reddish gleam began to stain the green. He could not turn, but did not need to, to know that the wound was moments from swallowing them all.
Then a string of words reached through the tumult, close as if whispered in his ear, and he understood them.
‘You came from there. What shall we find, Handless One? What lies beyond the gash?’
Then another voice spoke, louder, more imperious: ‘What god now owns your hands, old man? Tell me! Even their ghosts are not here-who is holding on to you? Tell me!’
‘There are no gods,’ a third voice cut in, this one female.
‘So you say!’ came yet another, filled with spite. ‘In your empty, barren, miserable world!’
‘Gods are born of belief, and belief is dead. We murdered it, with our vast intelligence. You were too primitive-’
‘Killing gods is not hard. The easiest murder of all. Nor is it a measure of intelligence. Not even of civilization. Indeed, the indifference with which such death-blows are delivered is its own form of ignorance.’
‘More like forgetfulness. After all, it’s not the gods that are important, it is the stepping outside of oneself that gifts a mortal with virtue-’
‘Kneel before Order? You blind fool-’
‘Order? I was speaking of compassion-’
‘Fine, then go ahead! Step outside yourself, Leandris! No, better yet. Step outside.’
‘Only the new one can do that, Cassa. And he’d better be quick about it.’
Twisting, Heboric managed to look down, to catch a glimpse of his left forearm, the wrist, the hand-that was not there. A god. A god has taken them. I was blind to that-the jade’s ghost hands made me blind to that-
He tilted his head back, as the screams and shrieks suddenly rose higher, deafening, mind-numbing. The world turned red, the red of blood-
Something tugged on his arms. Hard. Once. Twice.
Darkness.
Heboric opened his eyes. Saw above him the colourless canvas of his tent. The air was cold.
A barely human sound escaped him, and he rolled onto his side beneath the blankets, curling tight into a ball. Shivers thrummed through him.
A god. A god has found me. But which god?
It was night, perhaps only a bell from dawn. The camp outside was silent, barring the distant, sorrow-filled howls of desert wolves.
After a while, Heboric stirred once more. The dung fire was out. No lanterns had been lit. He drew aside the blankets and slowly sat up. Then stared down at his hands, disbelieving.
They remained ghostly, but the otataral was gone. The power of the jade remained, pulsing dully. Yet now there were slashes of black through it. Lurid-almost liquid-barbs banded the backs of his hands, then tracked upward, shifting angle as they continued up his forearms.
His tattoos had been transformed.
And, in this deepest darkness, he could see. Unhumanly sharp, every detail crisp as if it was day outside.
His head snapped round at a sound and a motion-but it was simply a rhizan, alighting light as a leaf on the tent roof. A rhizan? On the tent roof? Heboric’s stomach rumbled in sudden hunger.
He looked down at his tattoos once more. I have found a new god. Not that I was seeking one. And I know who. What.
Bitterness filled him. ‘In need of a Destriant, Treach? So you simply… took one. Stole from him his own life. Granted, not much of a life, but still, I owned it. Is this how you recruit followers? Servants? By the Abyss, Treach, you have a lot to learn about mortals.’
The anger faded. There had been gifts, after all. An exchange of sorts. He was no longer blind. Even more extraordinary, he could actually hear the sounds of neighbours sleeping in their tents and yurts.
And there, faint on the near-motionless air… the smell of… violence. But it was distant. The blood had been spilled some time earlier in the night. Some domestic dispute, probably. He would have to teach himself to filter out much of what his newly enlivened senses told him.
Heboric grunted under his breath, then scowled. ‘All right, Treach. It seems we both have some learning to do. But first… something to eat. And drink.’
When he rose from his sleeping mat, the motion was startlingly fluid, though it was some time before Heboric finally noted the absence of aches, twinges, and the dull throb of his joints.
He was far too busy filling his belly.
Forgotten, the mysteries of the jade giants, the innumerable imprisoned souls within them, the ragged wound in the Abyss.
Forgotten, as well, that faint blood-scented tremor of distant violence…
The burgeoning of some senses perforce took away from others. Leaving him blissfully unaware of his newfound singlemindedness. Two truths he had long known did not, for some time, emerge to trouble him.
No gifts were truly clean in the giving.
And nature ever strives for balance. But balance was not a simple notion. Redress was not simply found in the physical world. A far grimmer equilibrium had occurred… between the past and the present.
Felisin Younger’s eyes fluttered open. She had slept, but upon awakening discovered that the pain had not gone away, and the horror of what he had done to her remained as well, though it had grown strangely cold in her mind.
Into her limited range of vision, close to the sand, a serpent slipped into view directly in front of her face. Then she realized what had awoken her-there were more snakes, slithering over her body. Scores of them.