“Caleb, put it on. We don’t have time to argue.”
Seeing. Not. Seeing.
“Cowards!”
“Caleb,” Teo said. “Do it.”
Stitches strained, burst. The shark’s tooth burned blue.
“He died centuries ago. A sacrifice. This is the only way to pass through that shell. You must carry a god within you.”
“You could have told me before.”
“I hoped to avoid this conversation.”
“Excellent job you’ve done.”
“I have set this city and all our souls at risk out of respect for your reluctance to shed blood,” Temoc said. “Do not balk at a millennia-old death.”
“My reluctance?”
“Caleb,” Teo whispered. “Can we have this conversation when we’re on the other side?”
“Put it on.”
“Fine,” Caleb said, and grabbed the stole.
Temoc stiffened. Teo swore.
Caleb froze with his hand on the leather. He had let go of Temoc’s wrist.
The amulet’s glow guttered and died.
Silence fell over the crowd. A hundred thousand eyes fixed at once on Caleb, Teo, and Temoc. Caleb’s half of the link had failed, but Temoc’s had not—and so the crowd looked upon them, and saw something greater. An immense impossible presence filled the space where they stood.
Couatl screamed overhead, and their wings beat closer. Green light flickered about the serpents’ claws: weapons of Craft, building, burning.
Caleb grabbed Temoc’s wrist, but panic gripped his mind, and he could not blur them to insignificance again.
The burly men and broad women nearby had stopped shouting. Balam curled his massive hands into fists. He saw, they all saw, a target for their rage. He took a step toward them, and another.
The Wardens dove to attack. The green light in their Couatls’ claws sharpened to barbed spears.
Caleb grabbed the god-bearer, wrapped it around his neck, and dove into the blue. Teo and Temoc followed.
42
Imagine a cerulean field that stretches to the farthest star. Plummet through that field. Close your eyes. Forget them. Forget the body that falls, and leave only the sense of falling.
He could not see Teo, or Temoc. Were they near? What did that term mean? Between any two points stretched infinity. Could one infinity be larger than another?
He fell, but he was not alone. Another mind woke within his, powerful and still. Caleb gibbered at empty time, endless space. The stranger did not.
Let me in, the stranger whispered.
At first Caleb shrank from the voice, fleeing across forever. The stranger did not need to pursue. All space and time were equal before it.
You will fall, screaming, through ten thousand ages until your mind breaks and body crumbles, and nothing will endure but a scream. Listen and you can hear them, cries that outlast the throats that gave them voice.
Listen, and let me in.
Caleb heard: high-pitched and low, screams of women and men and children, unending.
He opened his mind.
Sensation pierced him, charring synapses, wiring his body to an engine of pain. He remembered he had lungs, for they spasmed in agony; his flesh shriveled and his mind burst and he was—
Was golden sunlight on the tip of a blade descending, a knife’s edge drawn over flesh, a spurt of blood and a relieved sigh from upturned faces. Red droplets fell in rain, as a dragon vomited up the sun. The people wept and prayed and interned his corpse in soil to decay and be reborn in wriggling worm and fruitful seed, in the first brave green spear that pressed through the hard earth and swelled into corn.
He was gathered, he was burned, he was beaten and pounded into thin flat bread. Teeth tore him and he became flesh once more, breathing, sighing, loving in a million bodies until the dragon swallowed the sky, the raven stole the sun, and he lay again upon the altar. He writhed in drugged futile struggle against his chains; in his eyes he gathered the world, concentrated its wasted pieces into a perfect image of the universe—and in his death that world grew again from corn.
Death and rebirth became him, a cycle of time stretching back past Dresediel Lex to the Quechal homeland sunk below the sea, and further still, to men and women weeping over a grave in a trackless wilderness, bedraggled creatures with bedraggled gods, haunted by ghosts of language and ceremony.
Time was a ring, the cosmos a cycle. Space itself was curved, the Craftsmen claimed.
Spinning in emptiness, he gave his blood to the world, and the world cracked open to receive him.
Caleb struck the gravel hard and skidded. Rocks tore his shirt and the skin of his back. The impact jarred, the gravel stung, but the pressure and pain were gloriously real. He laughed in relief. The shark’s-tooth pendant fell beside him. He slid it into his pocket, patted the pocket, and stood, turning back toward the Canter’s Shell.
Teo fell into him out of the blue.
She was limp, and heavy, and made no sound. He staggered beneath her weight.
He set her back on her heels. She trembled, eyes closed, and did not move. Her chest rose and fell. Quechal symbols glowed from the god-bearer draped across her shoulders. Her lips moved, and she whispered in High Quechaclass="underline" praise the mother who bears the twins, praise the father risen in the corn, praise the twins who die and rise again, on and on.
“Teo,” he said. She did not respond. He touched her cheek.
Her eyes flew open, and they burned. No trace remained of her pupils and iris. To stare into her was to stare into the sun. She chanted, louder. “Praise the mother and the father. Praise the mother who bears the twins. Praise the father risen in corn.”
He tore the god-bearer from her neck, but she did not wake. The leather coiled on the ground, and twitched as if alive.
Temoc stepped out of the Canter’s Shell, and approached Caleb. Walking over gravel, he made no sound. He regarded Teo as if appraising her for purchase. “She was not ready to host a god. Without scars, without training, the experience can overwhelm.”
“Wasn’t ready? You knew this wasn’t safe for her. You knew, and let her come anyway.”
“She insisted on accompanying us, though she knew the dangers. She claimed she could open the pyramid. She may still serve that purpose.”
Caleb looked back at Teo, and closed his eyes. A twitching ruby spider spirit hunched in her heart, preening with each repeated syllable of her prayer. A small god, feeding.
Caleb opened his scars. The spider in Teo’s body twitched as if it could smell him.
He bent to her ear and whispered in High Quechaclass="underline" “I cast you out.”
The spider twitched. Teo spoke, and he heard another voice, like brushing cobwebs, paired with hers: “By whose authority?”
“My own.” His words were ragged with rage. “Leave her, or I will break your legs. I will blunt your fangs and blind all your eyes and you will die.”
The spider wavered, as if about to fight, then faded into darkness.
Teo stopped her prayers. Her eyes closed.
Caleb waited.
When she opened her eyes again, they were dark, and human.
“Hi,” she said.
He hugged her, and she embraced him weakly in return. “I appreciate the sentiment,” she said, “but I don’t swing that way.”
“You’re back.”
“Did I leave?” She stepped forward, swayed, and almost fell. He grabbed her by the arm, and she recovered her balance.
She shot her cuffs and straightened the shoulders of her jacket. Her hat had rolled to the ground, and she knelt to retrieve it. “I’ve never felt anything like that. The King in Red has been inside my soul once or twice, but … I lived a thousand years. I could hear time.”