The Valley of the Gods Page 8

  With a groan, he sat up straight. They were doing this all wrong. He could sense that in his bones. He was Acharsis, the son of Ekillos, the god of knowledge. Even with all that divine wisdom now gone, he still had a sense as to how this journey should be going. Nahkt had tried to explain it to them, but had been undone by his own weaknesses. Impatience. Bitterness. Fear.

  Acharsis leaned his head back against the wizened trunk. He’d never seen such trees. They were massive, their trunks twisted like rags that had been tightly wrung to dry. Their branches snaked out overhead, and from each hung a delicate lantern that shone with a soft golden light, each tinted a different color. It was perhaps a hundred yards to the next tree, and then a hundred more to the third. A single line of them that receded into oblivion. A trail of lanterns. A path, perhaps, to where they wanted to go, but Acharsis couldn’t be sure.

  Brute force would get them killed. Almost had. Their talents had seen them this far, but their next obstacle would defeat them. If Jarek even woke up.

  Acharsis closed his eyes and pressed his thumb against his brow. He felt a deep yearning for Annara’s company. Her calm, focused presence by his side. His ache for her was piercing, but he forced himself to set it aside.

  Think.

  They were and were not physically present here. They could be killed if they believed themselves capable of being wounded. Nekuul’s netherworld was both a stone’s throw away and infinitely far. The farther they moved from Amubastis, the darker the netherworld became.

  Truths. Intellectually apprehended, but not viscerally believed. Acharsis opened his eyes and studied the palm of his hand. It was his hand. The familiar seams, nicks, calluses, the length of his fingers and width of his palm. Impossible to believe that it wasn’t. A paradox of the netherworld. One that perhaps a living being could not solve. That only death could answer.

  Acharsis curled his hand into a fist. He both was and was not here. Yet that wasn’t quite right; if he wasn’t here, then where was he? No. He imagined a shatranj board in his mind, and moved a piece decisively forward. He was here, all of him, but his presence obeyed different laws. He could be invulnerable if he simply understood how to withhold himself from harm.

  This world was malleable. The geography was an illusion. They could command it with conviction. Could will themselves to be the center of this universe. Acharsis stretched out his hand once more. Could he touch Nekuul’s realm from where he sat? He stared fixedly at the dark. Nothing but air. He dropped his hand into his lap.

  Despair sought to well up within him. It had been his idea to come here. To bring his companions into this land. It was his responsibility to get them out.

  “Think, you fool,” he whispered to himself. Could they fall alongside the line of trees, crossing the netherworld at a much greater speed? That would be a step in the right direction, but it still placed them in a passive position, allowing the world around them to dictate their path.

  No. They had to punch through. They had to end this journey.

  There was a fundamental illusion at play that he’d failed to pierce. If geography was an illusion, he should be able to cross directly to Nekuul’s realm.

  Therein lay the paradox. Something about that statement was wrong. Think!

  Acharsis ground his knuckles into his forehead. Once, he’d thought himself so wise, so smart, the sharpest blade in the River Cities armory, capable of talking circles around the other demigods. Now here he sat, dull as lard, lumpen as a tree stump, as capable of thought as a tortoise was of flight. Fool. Old, hoary, decrepit fool.

  Start from the beginning. How did a soul know which underworld to end up in? Did a Maganian who died in Rekkidu enter Nekuul’s realm? No. Their faith would transport them to the Fields of Reflection, and then ultimately down here. Faith. Faith was the motive force. A soul was a soul was a soul, but what it believed set it apart from its brothers and sisters. It didn’t have to cross from Nekuul’s realm to the Maganian netherworld. Did it? No. It would simply enter the correct realm as a matter of course.

  Acharsis sat up, excitement quickening his pulse. The answer lay hidden within those surmises. The soul didn’t cross the realm. The realm appeared around it. The realm was malleable; it obeyed the dictates of the soul’s faith, even as the soul’s faith in turn determined how that soul would be treated within the realm.

  Could one say that the soul was the master of the netherworld, then? An unknowing master, whose very faith allowed it to be subjugated?

  Despite knowing that geography was an illusion, Acharsis had still been thinking in terms of traveling from one land to the next, just as he’d traveled from the River Cities to Magan, as if the netherworlds were located physically beneath their respective lands. No. One did not travel across the netherworld. One’s faith brought one’s netherworld to you.

  Acharsis scrambled to his feet and stared out into the darkness. Nekuul’s realm wasn’t out there. There was nothing out there. Nekuul’s realm was waiting to appear around him, like a dog waiting for the whistle. To travel forward, to walk, to run, to fall - that was a waste of time, like a child thrashing in a pool of water but failing to swim forward.

  Had Nahkt understood this? Failed to communicate it? No. Nahkt had been a prisoner of his own faith. As wise as he’d been, he’d thought within his faith’s strictures, even as he’d hinted as to the true nature of death.

  Acharsis almost called out to his friends, but then stopped. Jarek was still badly wounded. He knelt by his friend’s side. Perhaps it wasn’t his body that was wounded, but his soul; and being Jarek, his soul could take damage that would have destroyed his body long ago. But how to heal him of these wounds?

  Acharsis rubbed at his chin. If he was right and the soul was the master of death, then it could choose to be injured or healed as it believed fit. The question was: how to convince Jarek of this truth? It wasn’t intuitive, and while Jarek on some level had chosen - or accepted - his injuries, he wouldn’t be able to simply will them away until he truly believed he was in control.

  But how to convince him?

  Acharsis sat back on his heels, lips pursed. He’d have to be shown. A demonstration that would engender faith.

  His pulse picked up once more, and Acharsis smiled. How physical his soul! How inlaid his responses to fear, that even here in the netherworld he should simulate the pounding of blood in his ears, the tightness of his stomach, the tingling of his skin!

  He stood. I am not flesh. I have no pulse, no stomach, no skin. This is a true illusion.

  The words rang within him like the tolling of a gong, and he felt himself grow calm. But still his heart beat within him. Still he breathed. Was it possible to relinquish the vagaries of life without dying first?

  Acharsis took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled. A long, controlled exhalation. I don’t need to breathe. I won’t inhale. He forced his lips shut, and waited. The need to breathe grew within him. The tightness in his lungs. The tugging at his throat. No. This is an illusion. Fight it.

  He lasted a hundred beats of his heart before he finally gasped for breath, sucking in deep lungful’s. “Damn it!” he hissed.

  Patterns established from birth were ingrained in his soul. He’d have to take another approach. Acharsis drew his knife. It felt so real in his hand. He held it up and a wild determination seized him. Don’t think, don’t analyze. Act before your body can understand!

  He plunged the knife into the side of his neck.

  Pain fountained within him, a wild, scalding, screaming black and red agony as the knife sank to the hilt.

  Acharsis bottled down his scream and fell to the ground. He grunted as his body convulsed, blood spraying from the wound.

  I’ve killed myself I’ve killed myself I’ve—

  Shaking, shivering, he forced himself to sit cross-legged. He wanted to tear out the knife, clamp his hand to his torn throat, but instead he forced his hand onto his lap. Blood was gushing from the wound, down his side, his life pouring out
—

  No.

  “I am not flesh.” The words were a cracked whisper. “I am not dying.”

  Fear beat at the walls of his mind, self-ridicule, a primal desire to clamp his hand to the wound.

  Instinct caused him to focus on his breath. His windpipe was not torn. A slow breath in. A slow breath out. A paradox, to attempt to ignore the physicality of his wound by focusing on the physicality of his own breathing. Slow breath in. Slow breath out. Blood was still pumping out with each beat of his heart, a thunderous roar in his ears, the pain in his neck overwhelming.

  Be as you were. As you are. Your body is your mind. The breath is your pattern, the path that shall lead you back to wholeness. You are not breathing, but in that pretense you can guide yourself back to before the wound.

  His pulse began to slow. He felt light headed. He wanted to lie down. Breathe in. Breathe out. Your body is a construct, an illusion whose reality is upheld by your faith in its primacy. Step forward. Acknowledge that blind faith, and in doing so, master it.

  The blood ceased to flow from his neck. He felt his throat grow tight, constricting the knife blade, which was slowly squeezed out and fell to the ground by his side.

  Acharsis straightened his spine. Deepened his inhalations. Slowed his exhalations. Strength slowly stole back into his frame. His pulse slowed. His thoughts grew sharper.

  Finally, he opened his eyes and raised his hand to his neck. The wound was gone. Blinking, he looked down at himself. So was the blood. He sat unharmed. A thrill, a shock of exhilaration ran through him. He laughed, relief flooding his soul, and at the sound of his laughter the others stirred.

  “Acharsis?” Kish pushed herself up onto an arm. “What is it?”

  “He’s going mad,” muttered Sisu. “Why else laugh down here?”

  “It’s time to wake Jarek,” said Acharsis. “Come on. Enough lying around.”

  “Wake up…? Lying around?” Kish sat all the way up. “You are mad. We’re not waking him up till he heals.”

  “He’ll never heal down here,” said Acharsis. “Trust me. I know what I’m talking about. We’ll sit by his side for eternity if we don’t show him otherwise. Jarek!”

  “Stop!” hissed Kish, but Acharsis ignored her. He shook his friend’s shoulder. “Jarek! I know you can hear me. Wake up.”

  Jarek moaned. He turned his head from one side to the other, then scrunched up his face as pain washed through him. Acharsis waited, feeling both pity and impatience.

  “Where are we?” groaned Jarek, opening his eyes at last.

  “Shh,” said Kish. “You need to rest. Go back to sleep—”

  “Jarek,” cut in Acharsis. “We need to get moving. Heal your wounds and get up.”

  “Heal…?” Jarek laid a forearm over his eyes and grimaced. “May Alok crush your rocks in his palm, Acharsis.”

  “No, I’m serious. Nahkt was mostly right. But I won’t waste your time trying to convince you. Watch this instead.”

  Sisu crawled around the trunk to sit by Kish’s side. The three of them regarded him as he sat back and lifted his handless arm.

  Acharsis closed his eyes. The stump was without pain, had been ever since it had healed immediately within the Maganian cube. But it was, if he was correct, a choice he was making down here. So he pictured his hand, so familiar he could almost see it, thought of how it had changed over the years, the skin on its back growing wrinkled, textured, the thick black hairs that crept up from his wrist to fade away even as they fanned up the side. The fishhook scar in his thumb. The white crescents at the base of his nails. Their color, the seams, the way his pointing finger turned inward slightly.

  Nothing.

  Acharsis dug deeper. He clenched the image of his hand, tried to feel the sinews in his forearm tighten. Get back here, he commanded. You’re mine.

  Still nothing.

  Acharsis gritted his teeth. His body was a construct. A system of patterns held together by his faith in them, a faith born from a life of inhabiting his body. He’d had his hand since birth. It was part of him, part of that system. His pattern was incomplete without it. Be yourself, he thought. Your truest self.

  He focused on the beating of his heart. The exterior world faded away. The slow drumbeat drowned out the world. His body. His vitality. His essence. He felt himself warm up, felt a flood of heat wash through him, tingles following immediately thereafter.

  Your truest self.

  He heard Kish gasp. Opened his eyes, and saw his left hand. It emerged seamlessly from his wrist, with no sign of violence or scarification.

  But more. It was the hand of his twenty-year-old self. Strong and dexterous, the fingers long and nimble.

  “How…?” Sisu was leaning forward. “Is that what you looked like…?”

  Acharsis reached up to touch his face. Gone were the wrinkles, the sagging skin. His nose was straighter, less swollen by age. His beard thicker. He leaped to his feet and looked down at himself. Gone was his slight paunch. His legs were muscled, and when he hiked up his shirt he saw that the hairs that snarled up to his belly were black as ebon, his torso slender and defined.

  Acharsis laughed, and jumped backward onto his hands, a move he’d not done in twenty years. He balanced on his palms, then gave a hoot as he raised his left so that he balanced only on one hand, his body taking his weight with ease.

  “You see?!” He grinned at the others, his thick locks falling about his face. “We are the masters of our selves down here. We are soul stuff! Only we can injure ourselves, only we can decide how we appear!”

  “By Alok,” whispered Jarek, eyes so wide he looked almost comical. “But how…?”

  Acharsis flipped back onto his feet and with a laugh tumbled forward to end before them in a crouch. “By the nine dead gods and the flatulence of all crapulent goats, I’ve missed this. Oh! Youth!”

  “Acharsis!” Jarek levered himself up onto one elbow with a grunt of pain. “Focus, damnit! How?”

  “All right. This is what our dearly twice-departed Nahkt tried to explain but was inherently unable to: everything is an illusion down here, right? Blah blah blah. But what that means is that our souls project a form whose shape is dictated by our faith in it. If you believe yourself to be fifty years old, then that is how you will appear. It’s a false ‘choice’, one that is limited by your subservience to habit. So. The way to change that, to gain control of yourself down here, is to inhabit that habit, to immerse yourself in that process of becoming.”

  He paused, grinning. “I’m sorry. It’s so easy to be infuriatingly mystical about this stuff. Let me try again. Close your eyes. Now. Certain physical realities have been etched in stone since you were born. Let’s call them our base truths. Breathing. Heartbeat. So on. Those I don’t think we can change down here unless we actually die. They’re too ingrained. But the more recent changes, like our age, and especially our wounds? They are radical changes from our perceived sense of how we should be.”

  Acharsis waggled his head from side to side. “It’s hard to explain. Focus on your breath. In and out. Now, use that as your foundation. Your guide to your true self. Visualize, feel who you are. Who you understand yourself to be. It’s an intrinsic truth. Being wounded is a violation of that, and if you can return to that sense of wholeness, your injuries… well. They’ll fade away.”

  Acharsis watched them. Kish was frowning, Sisu biting his lower lip. Jarek pushed himself up with extreme effort so that he was sitting cross-legged, his large hands resting in his lap.

  “Breathe in, breathe out.” Acharsis spoke more quietly now. “Imagine your body filled with light. Whole. Healthy. Vibrant. You. Return to that. Be that. Reject all else.”

  Jarek lowered his chin, his breath slow. His fingers flexed. Time passed, and then slowly the bite marks on his cheeks began to close. Acharsis saw them disappear from his arms, and then the grisly wound in his thigh also healed over, the muscle smoothing out, even the fabric of his clothing mending itself so that soon the
son of Alok sat before him uninjured.

  The changes didn’t halt there. The deep lines chiseled into Jarek’s face filled out, the lines between his brows disappearing, his few gray hairs fading away. His body, already powerful, thickened with more muscle, and in a matter of moments he looked to be in his early thirties, striking, handsome, and burning with vitality.

  “Alok be blessed,” whispered Jarek, his voice less gravelly and deep. He clenched his hand into a fist so that the knuckles whitened, and then looked over at Kish with a broad smile.

  Kish, Acharsis noted, did not seem dismayed by the change. She was staring at him with an open look of amazement, and then suddenly she blushed furiously and sat up straighter.

  “It’s fine,” grinned Acharsis. “We can all appreciate how you’d want some privacy with him. Given how good he looks, I wouldn’t mind some myself.”

  Jarek climbed smoothly to his feet, smiling still, and then scooped up the Sky Hammer from where it lay by his side and hurled it straight up into the air.

  “Used to be a signature move of his,” confided Acharsis to Sisu.

  The hammer flew up, almost impossibly high, slowed, turned, and then dropped like a meteor. Jarek snatched it from the air just before it crashed into the ground, and laughed, a deep, rich sound of pure joy. He reached out to Kish, cupping her head, and pulled her into a deep and passionate kiss.

  “Yep,” said Acharsis. “Welcome to the netherworld. Making young couples fall ever more deeply in love since the sun was torn out from the sky by a thousand screaming souls.”

  Sisu also rose to his feet. “Is this… ability… to change yourself unique to Magan?”

  “I don’t know,” said Acharsis. “My own faith lies with Nekuul. Will it trip me up in her realm? Constrain my ability to envision myself as I see and feel fit? Perhaps. But having experienced this, I’m hopeful that we won’t be as helpless ever again, no matter where we go.”