The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(349)
I sighed and wished she would go away, though that was pointless. Lil came and went as she pleased, and nothing short of a war could dislodge her when she took an interest in something. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “I didn’t think you cared about anything but food, Lil.”
She shrugged with one painfully bony shoulder, her ragged hair brushing the cloth of her gown with a sound like dry grass. “This realm changed while we were away. Its taste has grown richer, its flavors more complex. I find myself changing to suit.” Then to my surprise, she came around the table and put her hand on mine. “You were always kind to me, Sieh. Be well, if you can.”
She vanished as well, leaving me even more perplexed than before. I shook my head to myself, not really noticing that I was alone with Ahad until he spoke.
“Questions?” he asked. The cheroot hung between his fingers, on the brink of dropping a column of ash onto the carpet.
I considered all the swirling winds that blew around me and shook my head.
“Good,” he said, and waved a hand. (This flung ash everywhere.) Another pouch appeared on the table. Frowning, I picked it up and found it heavy with coins.
“You gave me money yesterday.”
He shrugged. “Funny thing, employment. If you keep doing it, you keep getting paid.”
I glowered at him. “I take it I passed Glee’s test, then.”
“Yes. So pay that mortal girl’s family for room and board, buy some decent clothing, and for demons’ sake, eat and sleep so you stop looking like all hells. I need you to be able to blend in, or at least not frighten people.” He paused, leaning back in his chair and taking a deep draw from the cheroot. “Given the quality of your work today, I can see that I’ll be making good use of you in the future. That is, by the way, the standard salary we offer to the Arms of Night’s top performers.” He gave me a small, malicious smile.
If the day hadn’t already been so strange, I would have marveled at his praise, laced with insults as it was. Instead I merely nodded and slipped the pouch into my shirt, where pickpockets wouldn’t be able to get at it easily.
“Well, get out, then,” he said, and I left.
I was five years older, several centuries chastened, and more hated than ever by my siblings, including the one I’d apparently forgotten. As first days on the job went… well. I was still alive. It remained to be seen whether this was a good thing.
BOOK THREE
Three Legs in the Afternoon
I DRIFT THROUGH DREAMING. Since I am not mortal, there are no nightmares. I never find myself naked in front of a crowd, because that would never bother me. (I would waggle my genitals at them, just to see the shock on their faces.) Most of what I dream is memory, probably because I have so many of them.
Images of parents and children. Nahadoth, shaped like some sort of great star-flecked beast, lies curled in a nest of ebon sparks. This is in the days before mortals. I am a tiny thing half hidden in the nest’s glimmers. An infant. I huddle against her for comfort and protection, mewling like a new kitten, and she strokes me and whispers my name possessively—
Shahar again. The Matriarch, not the girl I know. She is younger than in my last dream, in her twenties perhaps, and she sits in a window with an infant at her breast. Her chin is propped on her fist; she pays little attention to the babe as it sucks. Mortal, this child. Fully human. Another human child sits in a basket behind her—twins—tended by a girl in priest’s robes. Shahar wears robes, too, though hers are finer. She is high ranking. She has borne children as her faith demands, but soon she will abandon them, when her lord needs her. Her eyes are ever on the horizon, waiting for dawn—
Enefa, in the fullest glory of her power. All her experiments, all the tests and failures, have reached the pinnacle of success at last. Merging life and death, light and dark, order and chaos, she brings mortal life to the universe, transforming it forever. She has been giving birth for the past billion years. Her belly is an earth of endless vastness and fecundity, rippling as it churns forth life after life after life. We who have already been born gaze upon this geysering wonder in worshipful adoration. I come to her, bringing an offering of love, because life needs that to thrive. She devours it greedily and arches, crying out in agony and triumph as another species bursts forth. Magnificent. She gropes for my hand because her brothers have gone off somewhere, probably together, but that’s all right. I am the oldest of her god-children, a man grown. I am there for her when she needs me. Even if she does not need me very often—
Myself. How strange. I sit on a bed in the first Sky, in mortal flesh, confined to it by mad Itempas and my dead mother’s power. This is in the early years, I can tell, when I fought my chains at every turn. My flesh still bears the red weals of a whip, and I am older than I like, weakened by the damage. A young man. Yet I sit beside a longer, larger form whose back is to me. Male, adult, naked. Mortal: black hair a tangled mass. Sickly white skin. Ahad, who had no name back then. He is weeping, I know the way shoulders shake during sobs, and I—I do not remember what I have done to him, but there is guilt as well as despair in my eyes—