‘Mortals are born in pain,’ Se’Saera said. ‘My parents wanted that for you, for all of you. The pain was to be divine.’
She stood before Zaifyr twice, on a still field and in a dark room. In the latter, she appeared as a young and beautiful woman, but in the former, she was a child whose wings unfolded from her back.
‘I have wondered,’ the new god continued, speaking both in the field and in the room, one voice echoing the other. ‘I have wondered why they made birth painful. It is such a necessary part of mortality that you might think they would make it pleasurable for the mother and the child. But it is not. It is painful, as if it must teach you a lesson, but what, exactly? I travel with a woman who was the servant of Linae, my mother. Do you know what she told me when I asked her that question?’
Zaifyr could not answer her, could not find a voice to speak. In the dark room, the light was growing, as if the still sun of the second world was seeping into the first. He could see the windows and the light – was it the morning, the midday, or the afternoon’s? – revealed not just the size and shape of the room, but the people in it, as well.
‘Zaifyr,’ Se’Saera said, standing above him. ‘Don’t you wish to know?’
A blond man stood beside Se’Saera, black leather strips wrapped around his body. He stared at him with anger, though Zaifyr had never seen him before.
‘Zaifyr?’
A deformed woman crouched further back.
‘Leave him be, abomination.’ Lor Jix stepped in front of Zaifyr, stepped between him and the god in the still world. In the sunlit room, no one moved. ‘Why don’t you tell us what have you done to the paradises that the gods promised us?’
‘I have done nothing,’ she replied. ‘All the doors of Heüala opened onto this field. They have done so as long as I have existed.’
‘Do not lie to me. The Leviathan spoke of a world of endless oceans. A world those loyal to her would share. This is not that promise.’
‘No, it is not.’ In the bright room, Se’Saera smiled. When she spoke on the still grassland, the humour was not evident. ‘I can see more of the world now. More of what was, what is, and what will be. When the Wanderer was here, when the gods left pieces of themselves with him to be put inside the houses of Heüala, you could open a door to what they promised. You would see oceans and another would see castles that rose high into the sky and chariots that took you to the sun, to palaces made of light. But in truth, it was an illusion. You sat as you do now.’
‘It was all symbols,’ Sonen said, still lying on the ground. ‘All metaphor and simile for your soul, for the part of you that cannot die.’
‘Even this grass is not real,’ the god said. ‘But I could not abide the emptiness, so I made the sun shine over a field.’
‘You speak in lies,’ Lor Jix said, grinding the words out in anger.
‘Do you not want to know why they did it?’ The Captain of Wayfair did not respond. ‘There are a finite number of souls in the world,’ she said. ‘It was the first thing I learned when I became aware. At that time, there were souls stretched throughout paradise, waiting to be reborn. More were being punished beside the River of the Dead. The number of both was greater than you can imagine, but it was still a number. It had a beginning and an end. And each one of them was power, stored for my parents, waiting their return.’ In the sunlit room the god laughed in delight. ‘The first thing I did was to let everyone go through the turn, to take hold of the wheel and return, to live again. I thought that they had been left for me. I thought that they were my parents’ gift. Now, of course – now I see differently.’
‘The gods create—’ the ancient dead began.
‘—and the mortals decide,’ Se’Saera finished. ‘That is why birth is painful. The lives of mortals must be staggered, no matter if they are human or not. Even after I released them, there was no wave of births. There was the usual trickle, the souls of mortals caught in safeguards and filters my parents made. They are nearly empty now, though. Soon children will become rarer and rarer.’
‘But this sedation of the afterlife, this robbing of all desire?’ Jix had lost his bitterness. ‘Why would they do this to us?’
‘Did you not lead an army of the dead to attack Heüala? Ask yourself, at what point do the living become a threat to the gods and their plans?’
He did not reply.
‘Step aside for me, Captain,’ the god said, a note of kindness in her voice. ‘I could make you do it, but I will offer you a choice, instead. I will offer it to you because my parents have lied to you. My mother, the Leviathan, took your soul and trapped it for thousands of years, all because she was afraid of me. My father, the Wanderer, ensured that your crew would be trapped in his staff because he was afraid of what I would become. Their acts are no different to those of all my parents. They have broken their world. They have left it in tatters. They wanted to leave nothing alive but those that had been infected with their power. They sought to keep control of their world by keeping all the dead here, in Heüala. They wanted to keep fate splintered so that they could continue to make the world in the images they so desired. They wanted to deny a single fate. They wanted to deny me and, in doing so, deny you. But it has not worked. I have sent the souls back into the world. I have let them go to grow without them. I have let them make designs that break the plans of my parents. They have given me choices. They have given me the chance to repair the world. That is what is at stake here. If you step aside, I will be able to remake this world. I will create real rewards and real punishments for those who are loyal to me. Let me return Zaifyr to his body and put an end to the horrors my parents have created.’
‘No.’ Black water burst from Zaifyr’s mouth as he struggled to speak, the word incoherent as he tried to deny what Se’Saera said, to tell Jix of the laughter that mingled with her words, to tell him that he could not trust the new god, just as he could not trust the old ones. He opened his mouth to speak again, but in the sunlit room Se’Saera placed her hand on his mouth, and nothing emerged in the still grassland. No. You must deny her. She has used us. You heard her. She has done just as her parents did. She has left the dead in purgatory after they have done what she wanted. You must not trust her.
The Captain of Wayfair, the priest whose faith in his god saw him accept a curse for over ten thousand years, stepped aside.