The Throne of the Gods

Chapter 1

1

Voran clung to the edge of the world with the tips of his fingers. It bucked under him like an angry colt. He closed his eyes, but that only made the cosmos itself spin sideways, at the same moment as the hard muscle of his palms cramped.

He opened his eyes, focusing on the grain of the brownish-grey rock in front of his face. There were flecks of pink there. Pink, like the upturned palm of Sabíana as he reached down to kiss it.

Focus!

Digging his fingers into the rock as though he could will it to become clay, he strained his shoulders, lifting himself inch by inch over the final hurdle, onto a flat ledge. Leading with his right shoulder, scraping his body over the wet moss on the tip of the ledge, he pushed with his feet, scrabbling up the rock face until he flipped over his shoulder, landing with a squelching thud onto his back. A wet cold creeped up from his back to his shoulders and down his legs. His eyes still closed, he reached out with his fingers. Cold water stung them.

A voice called out from behind him.

“How dare you reveal the land’s beauty now? Now, when the grass and the rocks will be defiled with blood!”

Voran’s head spun with a fierce sense of having been in this place once before. He turned over onto his knees, careful not to fall. He now realized where he was.

How did I get here?

The Fang of the Giant, this place was called. It was the tallest tor in Karila, a land of tors. Voran had been here once before, a long time ago, when he still had hope for the reclamation of his land from the demonic power that had presided over its fall. That was a time when he had still carried Tarin’s blade, which he had hoped to pledge to the service of Rogned, prince of Karila. But Rogned, like nearly everyone Voran knew, had fallen to treachery. How long had it been? Fifteen years?

Except . . . there stood Rogned. His shoulder-length black hair whipped across his face by the wind, Rogned peered over the edge of the Fang, his shoulders tense. It was exactly the same pose, the same wind, the same . . . everything.

Pummeled forward by an internal compulsion stronger than his own will, Voran found himself reenacting the scene, just as it had occurred so many years ago.

“Rogned!” he heard himself call out, barely audible in the ripping sound of the wind.

Rogned turned. The sharp lines of his cheekbones, the deep set of his dark eyes, with their slightly oversized whites—he looked exactly the same.

“I was hoping you’d follow, Voran,” said Rogned. “I wasn’t sure you’d believed me.”

The memory washed over Voran, pulling from his mouth the same words he spoke to Rogned fifteen years ago:

“Have you finally lost your mind? I know you craftsmen are impulsive, but this?”

“It’s halfway to the Heights,” said Rogned. Inspiration rose from him like the steam from his mouth in the frigid air.

Voran scrunched his eyes shut, balling his hands into fists and knuckling his eyelids. It wasn’t real. This had all happened already, and he had no desire to relive this part of his life. Rogned was the younger brother of Karakul, one of several to die in the ill-fated embassy to Karila led by Otchigen. Voran had made a promise to himself that nothing would ever happen to Rogned. It had proved to be a false promise, in a life full of them.

“Quickly, Voran,” said Rogned. “This may be our only chance.”

Voran felt his face go hot at the sight—so familiar, and still so shocking—of Rogned’s knife, which he had pulled out of his boot in a smooth motion, clearly much rehearsed. The fool had thought that committing suicide would force an encounter with a Palymi he had seen his dreams.

“Rogned!” Voran’s hands shook, in spite of himself. “You’re mad. Just because of a few dreams? You can’t force an encounter with the Heights. High Beings come to you in their own time.”

Voran knew what would come next—the eldritch light in Rogned’s eyes, the swift passage of the knife over his exposed wrist, the angry spurt of blood.

Except . . .

Rogned stood in place, then smiled. His face . . . twisted.

Voran’s stomach churned with mixed fear and disgust.

An all-too-familiar voice issued from the still-liquid features of the changing face before him.

“You were wrong, of course, my rat. You can force an encounter with the Heights. Rogned only proved it.”

The Raven, having completed his transformation, stood before Voran with an expression of smug self-satisfaction, his hands held loosely at his sides, palms-out, his head c****d to the side slightly, like a trained bird gauging the reaction of its master to a newly learned trick.

Voran sagged into the ground and leaned back, no longer caring about the plunge, thousands of feet deep. He closed his eyes and let himself fall.

As he expected, he snapped awake, just as his back thumped against the now familiar wall of rock looming over him, slightly curved, like the cupped hand of a motherly giant. Once again, Voran was swathed in furs against the mountain winter. Once again, his eyes alighted on the young, handsome features of the Raven—not the demonic overlord of Vasyllia, but the strange trickster who had abducted him from the Heart of the World and dropped him in the middle of a foreign mountain range. The Raven beamed cherubically from within a king’s assortment of woolen clothes and furs.

They had trudged through knee-high snows and skirted around crevasses, each a mile deep, for about a week now. Voran was finding it difficult to distinguish the days, not only because of the never-ending panorama of grey peaks and white snows that blinded him with the sun during all hours of the day, but because his nights were filled with variations on the kind of vivid dream that he had just escaped from. Sometimes he woke up to the thought that he wasn’t sure which was real—this world or the dreams.

But this was the first time that the Raven had appeared in one of them.

Voran considered that realization. It should probably have worried him more than it did. But he was finding it difficult to muster the strength for anything other than the simmering fury at his heart—a rage that came up roaring at the slightest remembrance of what happened in the Heart of the World.

“Are you ever going to tell me where we’re going?” asked Voran, mainly to provide some contrast with the constant shriek of wind in his ears.

“I’ve told you,” said the Raven, as he made a tent shape from the improbably dry logs that always seemed to appear out of nowhere. “We’re going to storm the Heights of Aer.”

He said it with the same inflection as one might say, “We’re going to have dinner.”

Voran shook his head and leaned his head back against the rock face.

Images that usually had the good grace to wait behind his eyelids now crowded into his waking mind—the dead body of his nephew, Antomír, the face of Sabíana as she realized that she had been healed by Voran, the three Powers opening veiled curtains of water that were doors to other places and times, the Harbinger revealing the true name of the god Voran had worshiped as the Creator, who had turned out to be nothing more than an aspect of Vasyllia’s eternal enemy, the Raven. The same Raven who now conjured fire from his fingertips to light a campfire thousands of feet above ground, in an unknown wasteland of rock and ice.

Voran realized, a bit distantly, that his fingers were digging into his knees painfully, that his entire body was like a tightly strung bow, that his teeth were carving out holes in one another from the grinding.

“I must say I’m impressed with your calmness, Voran,” teased the Raven. “Naturally, I’ve never been human, but I imagine I’d be a little bit more tense if I were in your place.”

“Don’t mistake calmness for serenity, Raven.”

“Ah. Good. Saving your energy for the times ahead, yes?”

“Something like that.”

In fact, it took a nearly constant force of will to prevent his chest from exploding from anger, to stop the feral curse that lay curled up, waiting, at the back of his throat. There were no words in Vasylli, or probably in the tongue of any race, to express the depth of his anger at the Powers who had toyed with him for two decades, who had stood by and watched as his entire world, everything he held dear, collapsed in a heap of lies and futility.

He remembered the face of the boy, also named Voran, whom he had seen in his travels with Tarin. He was a pockmarked child, damaged by war, and he had broken Voran’s heart, so many long years ago. The boy—not a boy anymore, he reminded himself— was probably dead of disease or the sword by now. And all for what?

To distract himself, he spoke aloud again.

“Are you real, Raven? Or are you some sort of sickness in my mind?”

The Raven chuckled.

“You should try to expand your mind a bit. Why does it have to be one or the other?”

Voran felt himself, almost without control, burst into sudden motion. With both hands he grabbed one of the burning logs by its unlit end and attacked the Raven, showering him with blows that raised a cloud of sparks dancing around the spinning ice crystals that glittered in the pale sunlight.

The Raven cringed under the blows as though he were nothing but flesh and bone. Voran felt the dull thudding of the wood against something like flesh. It enraged him, even as it poured a rich elation into his chest—warm like fresh mead. There was great pleasure in beating the Raven.

Something chuckled inside Voran’s mind, something that was not his own thought. He recoiled, dropping the log. It fell into snow and hissed. Through the cloud thrown up by the log, Voran saw that the Raven’s face was bloody, the bruises already forming. The chuckling in Voran’s head echoed, then attached itself to the lips of the Raven. The wounds closed up, right before Voran’s eyes, in a parody of quick healing.

“Good, good,” hissed the Raven in the ancient voice of his hungry, formless self. It was obscene and unsettling, coming out of the mouth of a seemingly young man. “You see? I only want what you want. Pleasure at power. Imagine what I can give you when we take the Heights together.”

Voran heaved, as if to vomit, but nothing came out. In that moment, he remembered that he had not eaten in days.

“Raven!” His voice was jagged, dried out by lack of food and the frigid air. “I don’t pretend to know what your goal is. But don’t you think it’s time we stopped playing and spoke honestly to each other? If the Harbinger killed you, how are you here?”

The young man’s voice returned. “You don’t even know what you’re asking, do you, my rat? But very well. Some straight talk.”

He settled into his furs, like a bird ruffling its feathers. The likeness only made Voran’s stomach churn with more disgust.

“You have to understand. The Harbinger, as you know him”—he mouthed the name with distaste, as though he had belched up some old undigested bits of beef—“he likes a bit of pageantry. Smoke and mirrors, you know? The shining white sword cleaving through my neck, separating my head from my body, and so on and so forth.”

The image of the young-faced, golden-robed Harbinger holding up the shriveled head of the Raven flashed before Voran. He nodded.

“It didn’t occur to you to wonder how that was even possible? After all, you’ve probably been told that I’m formless. The Great Changer, and all that. Hungering for physical form and possessing the bodies of lesser beings. Yes?”

Voran felt another brick in the edifice of his worldview crack.

“So why the decapitation, you ask? How the decapitation? I have no head, no body. Not even any hands with which to take the fruit.”

Another image—the Raven scrambling up a cone-shaped rock, his taloned hands reaching for the last fruit on the burning trees, the one hope for the Living Water to continue to flow.

“Think about it! I had no physical form. You had expelled me from your body, thank you very much.” The Raven’s expression barely differed from that of a pouting child. “I could have taken the fruit while I possessed Antomír, it is true. But that’s my great weakness, isn’t it? An overweening sense of poetic justice. I really, really wanted you to pick the fruit.”

Voran’s head felt thick, his thoughts congealing like bad molasses. The Raven had nearly succeeded. If not for Khaidu, that wondrous Gumira child, he probably would have.

“So what are you saying, Raven?”

“The Harbinger didn’t actually kill me. He couldn’t. I had no body to kill.”

“You’re lying. I just beat the marrow out of your bones.”

“Oh.” A smile stretched the young man’s face past human capacity, until it seemed the edges of his mouth would tear from the strain. “You wouldn’t believe how flexible the human mind is! Just push a few levers and you can convince someone that they are drinking the best wine. Even if you reveal the truth to them: it’s actually the piss of a cow. But they won’t believe you. They’re sure of what they tasted.”

“An illusion, then. Fine. But what about the Harbinger? I find it hard to believe that you fooled the Powers.”

“Do you? And what other great wisdom do you have concerning the essence of the gods?”

Voran had a strange sensation, as though he saw himself from the vantage point of heaven, a tiny speck on a mountain range that reached as far as the eye could see. He felt utterly, cosmically insignificant.

“Yes, exactly,” said the Raven. “You are in no position to judge. Only to listen.”

Voran took a deep breath. He nodded once, curt.

The Raven smiled, clearly enjoying himself.

“I mean, naturally I don’t always tell the truth. Spinning half-truths is so much more fun. And sometimes I can’t even untangle them, they get so complicated! Haha! But since we are to be partners in rebellion, I will give you some of the truth. Enough to prevent your tiny little skull from exploding.”

He waved, and a rabbit hopped out of nowhere into their field of vision. The Raven put out his hand, inviting. The rabbit, its nose sniffing frantically, extended its long-eared head close, curious. The Raven’s hand contorted in a way no human could, twisting the head of the rabbit right off its body in a split second. Voran yelped in surprise.

“So . . . did my hand twist the head of the rabbit off?”

Making a claw out of his other hand, the Raven plunged his fingernails into the fur of the mangled corpse. He pulled. The skin peeled off like an orange rind.

“Did my nails pull off this hide?”

He threw the skinned carcass down at Voran’s feet, gesturing impatiently at him. In his shock, Voran didn’t understand what was expected of him. Then he understood, to the curdling of his own blood. The Raven expected him to dress the rabbit for cooking.

“I don’t actually have any fingers or nails, though. I’m a spirit in a world of forms. Formless, but definitely alive. It would of course be very disturbing to your puny mind if I showed what I actually look like. You have no frame of reference for it, for the power that throbs in me more intensely than the heart that beats in your chest. So I clothe it in an image that you can not only see, but also feel with your hands. Is that real? Is that not real?”

The Raven shrugged comically, like a storyteller does during a market-day spectacle.

“All you need to understand is that my will to live, to inhabit a form, is just as real as your desire for revenge. And so, we join forces toward our common goal.”

Having dressed it, Voran held the skewered rabbit over the fire. It looked real enough. The juices hissed as they dripped into the flames.

“You still haven’t explained how you fooled the Harbinger,” said Voran. “I’ve felt the power of the Palymi’s blade. It can sever spirit as well as flesh—I’m sure of it.”

The Raven’s eyes flashed black fire for a moment, and the entire sky seemed to go dark. Then he smiled again, though the threat still lurked behind his eyes.

“There’s a hidden art that I mastered, many eons ago. In cases of extreme need, I can divide my self—my essence, if you will—into several places at once.”

“The flask, you mean?” Voran remembered the strange, alluring nature of the thing that had looked like his old flask of Living Water, but had been another illusion—a kind of trapdoor leading out to this land of endless mountains. “Why do I sense that you’re only telling me part of the truth?”

The Raven adopted an expression of aggrieved shock.

“Spare me,” Voran said. “I’ll fill your story out, shall I? You were, in fact, dying. Your spirit essence oozing out of the wound inflicted by the Harbinger’s sword. But since you had been inside me, possessing me, a part of you remained there. It’s probably still there, now. And that means . . .”

Voran looked sharply at the Raven, who watched him, unblinking.

“I’m all that’s keeping you alive.”

The Raven slitted his eyes closed and growled.

“And I think there’s more to it. Shall I?” Voran twisted the rabbit over the fire, enjoying the smell of roasted flesh. His mouth watered. “You have very little actual power left. Enough to conjure up vivid dreams and to appear before me in this”—Voran waved vaguely at the Raven, dismissive—“pathetic guise. But certainly not enough to do what’s necessary.”

The Raven’s eyes closed a fraction, his expression growing more pleased.

“Whatever do you mean, my rat?”

“You can’t just transport us directly to the Heights, can you?”

The Raven’s silence, which stretched out a long time, was eloquence itself.

“So how are going to . . . what expression do you keep using? Storm the Heights?”

The Raven leaned toward Voran, cupping his hand over his mouth conspiratorially. Voran almost laughed aloud. It was as though the Raven only had an outside idea of what human expression was like, and his attempts were theatrical and exaggerated.

“Rogned,” whispered the Raven.

Voran tensed.

“He’s dead, Raven. Hanged by his own men.”

“His body is, sure. But don’t you realize that the Heights are beyond the material world? Closer to spirit than matter, in fact.”

“Wait. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

The Raven stood up and raised his hands in triumph. “And the penny drops! Yes. Rogned’s body might have been hanged on the gallows by Yarpolk of Nebesta. But his spirit waits for you, even now, in the Heights of Aer. He traveled the forbidden road to the Heights, unlike all others who are fated to languish in the Realm of the Dead. And I will teach you to do the same, but in your body.”

Voran stood up, barely able to suppress the excitement coursing through him.

“How? And be specific, you pathetic excuse for a god.”

The Raven, it seemed, chose to ignore the slight.

“You know the story of the Children of the Priest-King?”

Voran shook his head.

“Oh, it’s a good one! But very long. I’ll give you the short version.

There once was a family. A very, very messed-up family. Cross-cultural marriages, magic fountains of water, prophecies, that sort of thing. The important thing is this: Four children of that family, called, for our purposes, the Children of the Priest-King, did what no other human beings ever did. They crossed through the Realm of the Dead and came as far as any human being in his body can: the gate of the Garden of Aer. At that first gate (there are, of course, seven), the Heights deigned to listen to their request, since they had braved dangers no human being ever has. And so on, and so forth.”

“The point, Raven?”

“Ah! It was because of them that a Palymi was placed at the gate to the Garden. A Palymi with a flaming sword.”

Voran gasped. “You can’t be serious.”

The Raven laughed and slapped his knee. “Yes! Rogned told you, didn’t he? The Palymi who spoke through his sculpting. And you know what that Palymi did? He opened the gate for Rogned. That gate remains open to this day.”

“How do you know?”

The young face assumed an expression so ancient, so knowing, that Voran stiffened. He really should try to remember who he was dealing with. Not a flippant young man, but the oldest, most ancient malice the Realms had ever known. A demonic force that had toppled an entire civilization. And now all that was left of it was lodged somewhere inside Voran’s mind, manifesting as this . . . illusion.

Or at least that’s what Voran hoped it was.

The Raven’s voice assumed a chant-like quality, and Voran realized that the demon was quoting from some ancient lore, far beyond the knowledge of man and beast.

“And just beyond the gate is the center of all the Realms. A sea the size of an ocean, with an island anchored at its center. Upon that island stands the world-oak, its boughs entwined with Gamayun’s tower, that reaches up into the Sea of Time. At the base of that oak stands a throne. Whoever sits in that throne calls upon himself the might of the Powers, to do his bidding for one day and one hour and one minute. Behold, it is called the Throne of the Gods.”

The Raven turned back to Voran, and his eyes glowed. “And you will sit on that throne, Voran, son of Otchigen, and the Most High himself will bow to the footstool of your feet.”

Voran couldn’t help it. His heart leapt at the prospect.