THE GODS ONCE WALKED AMONG mortals, charmed by their childlike ways, their lives as ephemeral as dew on grass. Most enchanting, however, was a mortal’s ability to surprise. A god might bless a mortal, yet never know how the seed of such a gift might grow. Sometimes a frail human might glow with song, a pure melody shuddering from the throat, expressing a longing the god of music had never known, with an intensity that made the god, despite her eternal years, listen with wonder. And a mortal might suffer beneath a gift, extra eyes popping out all over the skin like weeping boils, such that the god of foresight could not help but laugh as she had not done since the birth of the god of delight.
Gradually, the gods left their realm, or left it for a time, drawn to a jewel of an island on the sea, its beaches dusted with pink sand, its inland lakes brimming with fresh water and fish brilliantly scaled. A city was raised on hilltops. The god of the sea carved a gentle bay from the coast into a natural harbor. Mortals chiseled marble statues in honor of the gods, and the gods were pleased, because worship was a relatively new pleasure. For certain gods, fear was equally pleasing.
The city was called Ethin, the word in the gods’ language for the exhalation of praise.
A mortal’s life is as fluttering and uncertain as a bird that flies into a lamplit hall filled with joy and argument, and then dives out a window into the unseeing night. A few of the one hundred gods came closer to certain mortals, enchanted by their beautiful brevity, their supple skin, their strangely warm mouths, their odd ways, their stumbling yet earnest efforts, their brilliance. Sometimes the gods would argue among themselves over a mortal. One might accuse another of blessing a claimed favorite. And a mortal might reveal a grace or intelligence marked by no god, causing the pantheon of the hundred to murmur among themselves, entertained—even, occasionally, concerned—that some mortals possessed skills due to no one but themselves, to human luck or labor.
One day, a mortal gave the gods the greatest surprise of all: a baby. The child radiated divinity. There could be no doubt that god-blood lurked inside her, though no god dared claim her as their child. She captured the love of most of the gods, who charmed sunbeams to her cradle, and cushioned her every tumble, and painted her skin with glorious colors to bear the sign of their favor.
Even the god of death stayed his heavy hand.
The god of foresight smiled her cruel smile. Death will come to the girl anyway, she said.
She will never lose a drop of blood, decreed the god of luck. She will never suffer disease, Luck said, nor the corrosion of age.
So may it be, said the god of foresight, who visited the girl in the night, and drew a blanket over her sleeping face until her breath grew slight, then smothered, and the small body was as cold as clay.
No god likes to be wrong, especially not this god.
I said it would be so, she told the mourning pantheon, and hear me yet. There will be more of her kind, to our everlasting misery.
The god of truth grew grim. His brother-sister god, the moon, whose great eye saw the dealings of the mortals’ nights, shrank to a narrow crescent smile. The moon knew the sweet and salt of mortal flesh. This god had tasted mortal savor, and the incandescence of human love. Though sister-brother moon saw no reason to tell tales on fellow gods—at least, not when it was to no apparent advantage, and not when the moon sinned as other gods sinned—the moon knew that the god of foresight’s words rang with truth.
Once tempted to taste a mortal kiss, many gods could not resist. Soon the bellies of mortals and gods alike swelled with hybrid fruit. Half-godlings slipped into the world.
They had gifts of their own—weaker but unpredictable, spectacular, subtle. The gods fought among themselves to protect the half-gods, or make them pawns in games against their god-kin. Most consternating, however, was that the little half-gods looked no different from humans. Sometimes divinity did not shine from them as with the gods’ first half-child, but rather sank deep, undetected, like underground water.
Nor did all half-gods bear allegiance to the gods, or even fellowship toward humans. Mortals who suffered the devious machinations of half-gods begged for protection from them. Some half-gods, resentful of being chits in immortal games, bucked the authority of their undying parents. They stole secrets. They played games of their own. They thwarted the will of the gods and wrought unhappiness.
They will kill one of us, said the god of foresight.
Impossible, said the pantheon. But the god of death, their monarch, craved the god of discovery’s aid.
Identify them, Death commanded.
Discovery ferreted out all the half-godlings and marked them with a sign on their brows that mortals and gods alike could see. For a time, there was calm, and the power of surprise was no longer a half-god’s domain. For a time, all was well.
But a god took pity upon the half-ones. A god who had enjoyed the chaos they caused, who had chuckled with the god of games and wrought his own mischief in the chaos.
And it was this god who undid them all.
“Do you enjoy what you read?”
The voice startled me out of my reverie, out of the world the book painted in my mind: the birth of Ethin with its sequined waters; the extravagant beauty of the gods, some of whom looked vaguely human, and others alien, with rose-colored skin or a snakelike form. Misty Death, who could coalesce into a solid weight greater than stone. The shifting Moon: sometimes a male, sometimes a female, sometimes invisible to all.
I glanced up from the unfinished book, my pulse high because I had been startled, but I wasn’t truly afraid, not even when I saw who had spoken. I would twist his memory easily enough.
It was the Lord Protector.
He was sitting in a chair beside me, the Elysium bird on his shoulder. It called to me, its cry echoing in the empty library. The Lord Protector smiled. His face was resolutely plain, features so smooth and unremarkable that I found I had a hard time looking in his face. “Well?” he said. “It is impolite not to answer a question.”
“No.”
“Mend your words, child. After all, this is my book. Surely you do not wish to offend me. Why doesn’t the story please you?”
Because he had made no move to hurt me and I was confident I could make him misremember me long enough to escape, I told him the truth. “Something bad is about to happen.”
“Oh, yes. Something is. Tell me, little one, what is the appropriate punishment for someone who sneaks, who lies, who steals?”
Warm with my power, proud of using it, I said, “I didn’t steal.”
“Shall we put you in a barrel studded with nails and have you dragged by horses through the streets?”
I paused, staring. Expression mild, he waited for an answer.
“I am a councilman,” I told him quickly, my voice high. “I have been your favored assistant for years. You were glad to see me when you entered the library.”
“Or put your hands in the fire until the skin crackles and the flesh cooks off the bone? A punishment most worthy for a thief.”
My heart beat hard and fast. I tried using magic again. “This book was always an ordinary book.”
“It is too bad your foreigner is gone. I could take her from you. I could squeeze her body down to a pin. I would carry the pin with me always, and drive it through the tongues of liars.”
I scraped my chair back, leaping to my feet. The bird shrieked. “I left already.” The words spilled out of my mouth in a tangled stutter. “The library was empty when you arrived.”
“Sit,” he said, “or I will show no mercy in how I chastise you.”
I sat. Fear crawled over my skin.
“A sneak may be a sneak,” he said. “A liar a liar, a thief a thief, and yet still show courtesy.”
“I—” I faltered, unsure what he wanted.
“Your name.”
“Nirrim.”
He waited.
“Nirrim,” I said, “my lord.”
“Ah,” he said. “Better.”
“May I”—the glass pot wobbled in my hand as I lifted it—“pour you some tea?”
He lifted his brows. I still could not quite tell the color of his hooded eyes. “How unexpected.” He accepted a cup and sipped. “It tastes like I imagine you do.” He drank deeply, and I tried not to show my relief. “It tastes like something else, too, but what?” He drained the cup.
I lowered the pot to the table, waiting.
“Poison.” He licked his lips. “Good try, my child, but poison is no way to kill a god.”