Still, he reminded himself, what a display in her final hour! What stunning brutality and rage! If she had only turned her energy to more worthwhile pursuits. If only she were not so blinded by lust, perhaps she could have been partner to him.
At the same time, had she not defiled him and taken his eye, causing him pain beyond measure, he likely would not have undergone his transition. It might well have been years before he could challenge Adrash...
Challenge Adrash . His lips puckered at this new thought.
Smoke poured from his left eye socket. For a moment, light leaked from the crack of his closed right eyelid. Though one eye was closed and the other absent altogether, he saw his surroundings with perfect clarity. He leaned on the window frame, angling his face to the sky in order to see the leading point of the Needle. Through concentration, he caused the image to bloom, take on detail. His perceptions quickened. The night breeze stilled on his skin, the sounds of the city became a warbling moan, and the three spheres slowed almost to a halt.
All at once they seemed but fragile things. Rickety baskets. Toys.
This new perspective rocked him back on his heels.
Challenge Adrash, he thought again. Is this truly what I intend?
He examined this new goal, which had announced itself in his mind fully formed. As if he had been planning it all along. As though it were the only goal.
Searching, he found no other ambitions or enmities—a development as shocking as any he had experienced, for after years of internal dispute amongst his peers he had built up a long list of men and women whose actions had offended him.
As a scholar, he was honor-bound to punish them.
As an ascendant god, however, he felt no such obligation. He no more shared the concerns of the outbound mage than those of the average dockhand. Even Shav, whose act of betrayal Pol had lifted from Ebn’s mind, was not so much forgiven as forgotten.
And when all of his earthly cares had been washed away—when all but one opponent was beneath him? What was he to do then?
He stretched, and the shadow of great wings unfolded from his arms, reaching beyond the walls of his apartment. He sensed he had become a thing of light and smoke, standing on the edge of a great precipice, waiting for the slightest breeze to carry him out over the world.
He opened his right eye and vaporized the wall underneath the open window.
Only one step to carry him into the night.
He did not pause to reflect on his life, his accomplishments. He would not mourn the life of one elderman mage, but set his mind to the only appropriate task for a being of his station.
Yes. He would challenge Adrash.
‡
The night held him.
His wings grew hundreds of feet wide, and the black silhouettes of birds and dragons danced upon his naked flesh. A portion of the alchemical ink had gathered at his scalp, covering it like a helm. With a twist of his neck, a thousand fine tendrils erupted and were caught by the wind, whipping around his head before lying in a tapering point between his shoulder blades.
He freed his arms from the shadowstuff of the wings, which continued to beat of their own accord. A simple thought, almost a whim, produced a staff of frozen fire in his hands. Under his fingers its texture was solid, but it weighed nothing. The smallest desire turned it into a gracefully recurved bow, and on his thigh appeared a quiver of golden arrows. He called into being an ax, a longsword, form-fitting armor of glowing plates, each item weightless but diamond-hard.
Laughing, he returned the gleaming items to whence they had come. Mere extensions of his magical will, they would be of no use in orbit. Adrash would not be fooled by toys. Pol had spoken truly to Ebn. He had touched the mind of the god, and it was old beyond comprehension.
An intellect like that would know strength from bluster.
How ridiculous, to think only a short while ago he had plotted to bring knives and a target into orbit. The tools of children, a useless task of revenge. Truly, he had been no better than Ebn. Had Shav not betrayed him by leaving, Pol would still be embroiled in the petty task of killing her. He might never have achieved godhood at all. Surely, the quarterstock deserved as much thanks for his unintended assistance as Ebn, but it was not in the nature of gods to express gratitude to mortals.
Pol rose higher. The wind pulled smoke from his left eye, forming a long streak behind him. Like a fish caught on a line, the golden beam of light from his right pulled him ever upward. His chest inflated slower and slower, drawing increasingly thin air into his lungs. Soon, even the wind stopped. He did not become cold, nor did he fight for breath. He burst from the bubble of Jeroun’s atmosphere, shedding his wings in thin streamers of shadow.
It seemed perfectly natural to stop breathing, as he no longer felt the need to draw in air. The void sustained him, warmed him as though he were lying naked in the sun. Having been exposed to the void due to accident several times in his life, knowing the intense burn of its touch, he marveled at his lack of fear.
Could he be so sure of his own power? Might not the effects of his transformation wear off, leaving him to die in orbit?
He let such worries fall away. He would not doubt the evidence of his own senses.
As he pushed himself toward the moon, he instinctively cast a dampening spell to push all thought deep within himself. He closed his mind as if it were a safe, and then turned the key in its lock.
He had entered Adrash’s abode. It was only a matter of time before the god found him, no doubt, but Pol would not make it an easy task.
‡
He flew at speeds far beyond the means of an outbound mage, yet the effort took minimal concentration. He was neither taxed nor famished by it, and soon—as though he had woken from a dream—the cratered wall of the moon was before him. A vast ocean of frozen iron, as pale as bone. Lifeless as the void itself.
Pol shuddered when a force passed through him. He shivered as though he had been doused in ice-cold water, and his vision spun. The moon pulled at his body, trying to draw him forward. She whispered to him without words how sweet it would be to give in, to open himself to the void and embrace his fate. A ridiculous proposition, yet he wavered before her immensity, caught in her charisma. How delightful to spiral out of control, let her embrace him as lover. How wonderful to give in to the goddess Noeja.
He nearly let go. He nearly fell. But just before the temptation overcame him, he wondered: Noeja? How is it that I know this name?
The force lessened, allowing Pol a moment to gather his wits. The moon still touched him, and for the first time he sensed her personality, frigid beyond the void itself, disdainful of all life. She breathed in and out, expanding and contracting like a glacier in its trough. Relentlessly, she sucked the marrow from Pol’s soul. Instead of longing to be closer to her, he now fought the urge to run away. His fear slowly grew, doubled, tripled. He fought to find calm, and came up empty. He too would be empty, a shell, if he stayed any longer.
Fly! he told himself. Never come back!
But still he wondered: Noeja? Who has given me this name?
The act of questioning was in itself an act of defiance—proof that he would not flee, but instead challenge the force which sought to coerce him—and in response he felt a measure of heat enter his body, easing the cold weight of his fear enough that it could be weathered. He shivered like a bone-chilled man before a fire.
Tell me! he projected into the void. Who has given me your name?
It began as a pressure behind his eyelids. It became the drumming of hooves on a baked plain. It became the ocean pounding upon the shore. It became the subterranean rumble of the earth’s plates grinding together. Finally, it resolved into words: