Karni saw the light at the crossroads and thought it was the sun. It was bright as the dawn, honey golden in hue, and it suffused the entire street, lighting up the entire neighborhood and that part of the city. But as it came closer, she saw it surely was something else, for it was moving along the street. She saw the mob around her stop, reacting to the light, and then, as if with a single hive mind, every one of them turned to face it. This was no more eerie than anything else about their strange behavior until now, but there was something different about it. A sound rose from their open slack mouths. A sound like a groan or a sigh. An inhuman, incomprehensible sound that was like no word in any human language that she knew. But its meaning was clear. The mob was angry—and scared.
The light continued down the street, coming toward her. Now she could see it a little more clearly. She raised one tired arm, the sword still held in her fist, dripping blood, to shield her eyes from the full glare of the light, and by doing this, she was able to make out the source. It looked like . . . a boy! A human boy, a mere child, walking down the street. Aside from his glow, he looked perfectly ordinary, unlike any of the crazed mob who had been attacking Karni and Adran these past hours. Except for the radiance—that bright, golden sunlight—emanating from every part of his body.
Not perfectly ordinary, however, were his companions. Behind him came a group of animals—dogs. A crowd of ragtag canines of all sizes, colors, ages, breeds.
The dogs followed the boy who glowed like sunlight, filling the street with their numbers; there were hundreds of them, perhaps a thousand or more. Many of the dogs at the rear of the pack were limping, some visibly struggling to walk, others collapsing and lying down on the street, unable to take another step, but still trying to crawl bravely, pulling themselves forward inch by inch, as if they were determined to be loyal to their little human master to the very end. Karni sensed that there had been more dogs, that many had been hurt or killed and had fallen along the way, and these were now all that remained.
It was one of the strangest sights she had ever seen—a boy who shone like sunshine walking down a city street with a thousand dogs following loyally at his heel. But then stranger yet, the mob, as one, began shambling toward the boy.
Slowly, by degrees, they picked up speed, eventually breaking into a loping run, their limbs still flailing, their mouths open, heads jerking in every direction, bodies spasming. The sound from their throats grew louder, too, becoming an angry growl.
She was startled when the dogs began to shout.
“Protect! Protect!”
She gasped and covered her mouth. She had seen it with her own eyes and heard it with her own ears, but she couldn’t believe it. Dogs shouting! While humans growled incoherently.
She turned to Adran. He was staring at the street with a peculiar expression on his face—not the surprise or shock that she knew must be visible on her own face.
It was pride.
“Kern . . .” he said softly.
The word pierced her heart.
“Protect! Protect!” the dogs called out again, and she saw them swarm forward, tails raised and stiff, eyes shining and alert, muzzles parted to reveal their fangs. Many of them were bloody from earlier fights, and she realized that the boy and his pack must have fought their way across the city to reach this place.
Karni thought, then, of Jeel Ma’s words: If he were my son, I would not think twice, but he is not my son . . .
Just as it seemed the mob and the pack of dogs would meet in a bloodbath, the boy stopped in the middle of the street. The maniacs were charging toward him, murder in their eyes, while he was unarmed and defenseless; yet still he stood there calmly, gazing at them without fear.
That is what it means to be a god or a demigod, Jeel Ma had said. All this power, and yet when the time comes, we must use it in service of our devotees; otherwise, what use are we as gods?
“Kern,” said Adran proudly. “My son.”
The dogs began surging forward, snapping their jaws, waving their tails, ready to attack the oncoming mob, to fight tooth and claw, to lay down their lives to protect their beloved leader. But the boy raised his arms, and they suddenly went still. He raised his head, and they fell back, retreating behind him.
Karni saw the dogs slink down till their bellies touched the street, lowering their heads till their muzzles touched their forepaws. They lay flat on the street, like dogs who had been commanded by their master. Their tails went down, their jaws closed, and they obediently waited and stared at the oncoming mob.
The maniacs roared with fury, running full tilt now at the boy. From Karni’s point of view, it was like watching a tidal wave about to wash over a tiny snail. In another moment or two, they would reach him and surely engulf him with their fury, tearing him apart with their hands and teeth, ripping his little body to shreds, devouring him.
The boy spoke a single word.
“Enough!”
The word echoed like the voice of thunder, booming not only through the street, but throughout the city, the entire valley, resonating off the Krushan hills yojanas away. It reverberated in Karni’s chest, striking the center of her pain, her guilt, her shame. It brought a smile across Adran’s face. It made the woman standing far behind the pack of dogs and watching gasp with awe and grin with amazement. It made every single person in that great metropolis stop whatever they were doing and look in the direction from where the sound had come.
More powerful than the word and the voice was the light from the boy. Now it was bursting forth in an unrestrained explosion brighter than the flare of the brightest sunlight on the hottest summer day.
It blazed forth from the boy’s every pore like the purest power itself, the power that created and destroyed universes, that made and rebuilt worlds, that ended and began creation. Like the flames of the sun. The destructive power of an exploding star. The brilliance of a solar flare.
For an instant, all Hastinaga was as bright as day.
Karni and Adran and the woman trailing behind the dogs were all forced to shut their eyes to protect themselves from the glare. Even the dogs lying in the street shut their eyes.
Only the ones afflicted by the devil’s poison dared to stare, transfixed, gazing at the boy exploding with radiance like a sun in fury. They stared and felt the pure, intrusive energy of the light filling the cells of their bodies, purging them of the poison that they had been infected with, cleansing them.
Then the light faded—
And the boy returned to being a boy again.
The dogs rose to their feet, wagged their tails once, and became mere dogs again.
And the infected blinked and became human once more.
And with an explosion of emotion in her breast, Karni learned for the first time in years that the child she had placed in a basket and put into the loving arms of Goddess Jeel was still alive. Still alive and right here, in the very city where she herself lived.