Zaifyr was in a room, not a field, when he took a painful, shuddering watery breath.
‘He’s here.’ Se’Saera knelt above him. He could see her beautiful face, her green eyes, and he could feel sharp edges, like teeth against his skin. At the same time, he could see her in Heüala, her massive, multi-headed form engaged in a battle with Queila Meina and Steel. Around her were the colourless souls of ancient killers. And he could see her in the fields of paradise, a young girl with dark wings unfolding from her back. ‘Don’t suffer for nothing,’ the girl in the field said. ‘He cannot return to Heüala,’ the young woman in the room said. ‘All is lost if he does.’
‘The battle has begun.’ The blond man appeared behind the god. ‘Are you sure it is wise to stay here with him? There are stone giants attacking the edges of Ranan. They will be able to reach us here if we do not ride out to them.’
‘My Faithful have been warned. They know what to expect in the streets.’ Gently, she rolled Zaifyr onto his side. ‘But in the end, what happens in the streets of Ranan is a consequence of what happens here, of whether he lives or dies.’
‘It is not how I am used to fighting a war.’
Behind them, a door opened.
‘General Waalstan has been returned,’ a man’s voice said. ‘He lies below us, before the altar. Do you wish for me to take the field?’
‘No, Aela,’ Se’Saera said. ‘Have your soldiers protect the cathedral. If our enemies reach the centre of Ranan, they will try to take the cathedral, and you will be needed here.’
‘Will they reach us?’
‘I see that they do and that they do not. Everything rests on these moments.’
In the field, Zaifyr felt a cold hand on his shoulder. He could see Se’Saera’s wings spread and could see her mouth move, but he could not hear what she said.
Then, everything was still.
It was as if the world took a breath, held it, and then released it.
Zaifyr felt himself being helped from the floor. His body was weak, his limbs without strength. It was a debilitation he expected after being dead, but his weakness went further, to such an extent that he felt as if he had been hollowed. Around him, the morning’s sun lit the room brightly, and along the face of the man who held him, scars burned like hot wires. Aela Ren, Zaifyr realized, wanting to pull away, but unable.
Around him, the world took shape with every step the Innocent took. Damaged walls let the sun in fully to shine through the broken floor. In one of the rooms below, amidst shattered furniture, lay the still form of his brother, Jae’le.
‘He fought well,’ Ren said, a strange note of sadness in his voice. ‘But the years had changed him too much.’
A broken sword lay near him, but it was the countless wounds across his thin body that drew Zaifyr’s eye. They were concentrated around his chest and his stomach, but they ran up his neck, to his face. No single wound had been fatal, Zaifyr knew. It was the combined wounds that killed him.
Come,’ the Innocent said, moving towards to door. ‘You are wanted downstairs.’
Darkness engulfed Zaifyr.
It was just the hall. Just the loss of the sun. But he felt as if he was all of existence in the darkness, as if he had been stripped down to his grief. He knew the rest of his family would be revealed to him and he could not let their deaths grow inside him until they consumed him. He had to prepare himself. He took a step, but it was not a step taken with the aid of Aela Ren. It was a step that did not take him forwards. He felt icy water around him. The pain in his chest returned. Salt water spilled from his mouth. There was a pressure on his head. He wanted to swim upwards, but he could not. He could not move. He was on the verge of panic when a light appeared next to him and revealed that he was inside a sphere. It was not a small sphere and he was in the centre of it. Around him colours began to illuminate in vibrant reds, greens and blues. They were like giant waves suspended in the air above him. Within each of them were dozens of variations of colour, each of them a strand, and each of them cross-stitched, hatched and woven back and forth through the suspended waves, binding them together in a whole.
Before his gaze, the waves began to move, to pulse and shift. From waves came canopies, as if he were in a forest, not an ocean. From canopies came twists, as if he was watching someone stitching. As if what he saw could be held. It was then that Zaifyr realized that he was not alone, but his company was not human, or conscious in any way he would have recognized. Instead, they were thoughts, ideas, concepts, each of them personified into a presence that shaped the light, that split it into strands and gave it movement, as if they were a breath. Slowly, Zaifyr drifted towards the colour, his broken boots finding a purchase that he could not see. When he touched the strands, he felt grief, his grief, and he realized how important it was to acknowledge life, to be part of a culture, a society. His grief was not just for him, but for others who had lost as well. Death was not singular, but communal. With that recognition, he saw the consciousness that he had first sensed when he entered the sphere, and he named it: the Wanderer, the God of Death. Beyond him, Zaifyr sensed others, others whose thoughts were kin to the strange and alien thoughts closest to him, the thoughts that belonged to gods who were dead, who were dying, and who were alive.
He stepped out of the stairwell at the bottom of the broken cathedral, still in the grasp of Aela Ren.
Ayae lay there. Her neck was bent at a strange angle, and the ground was black with soot, but it was her eyes, her brown eyes, that appeared to linger on him, to ask him why he hadn’t been there with her.
Not far from her lay soldiers. There was no common uniform to suggest that a certain force had attacked, but Zaifyr saw the black-and-red armour of the First Queen of Ooila, and the mix of styles and type, from leather, to plate, to chain, that typified mercenaries. Many he didn’t recognize, but the scarred-faced white man next to a black woman was familiar. Captain Kal Essa, of the Brotherhood. He had been at Mireea. His spiked mace was broken, and it appeared that the Ooilan soldier had tried to protect him after it shattered, but to no avail. Just beyond them lay Aned Heast, his head split open. Another man, a man in the clothes of a tribesman from the Plateau, lay dead behind him.
Zaifyr’s numbness grew as Aela Ren led him through the carnage of dead soldiers. He carried Zaifyr to a gathering of men and women at the front of the cathedral, where the doors were broken. There, he could hear voices, but the words made little sense to him. He closed his eyes, expecting it to be the voices of the dead, of the people he knew, but he was startled to realized that it was not.
He could no longer hear the dead.
‘Se’Saera,’ Ren said, as the two drew closer to her. ‘He is here.’
Neither could he feel the god’s presence digging into his skin.
‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘The battle has been won and lost. There are a few loose ends. A witch, a few soldiers. Nothing important.’ Behind her, Zaifyr could see his sister, Aelyn. She had fallen to her knees beside Eidan’s body. ‘All my enemies are dead but for you, Qian. You are all that lives.’
An old Saan warrior carried a body up the stairs and laid it out, next to Eidan. Tinh Tu. The Saan muttered to himself over her, then kicked her. The movement caught Aelyn’s attention and she rose, suddenly angry, but was stopped by another man Zaifyr knew, the saboteur Bueralan. His tattooed arm reached out and fell onto her shoulder. Behind him, crouched a tall, thin figure in a hooded cloak. ‘Get out of here, Dvir,’ Bueralan Le said. ‘Before she kills you.’
Aelyn jerked out of his grasp and turned to Se’Saera. ‘What are you going do with my last brother?’ she asked.
The god smiled. ‘I am going to return him to his prison.’