“You need to sleep,” said Jumoke, “to heal. In the morning, if you can stand without wobbling, maybe then you can leave.”
Too tired to argue, Akachi said, “Wake me when the sun rises.”
“Of course, Pastor.”
“You’re not going to wake me, are you.”
“Of course not, Pastor.”
“You’re a terrible acolyte.”
“That,” said the boy, “is why the Bishop sent me with you.”
Akachi heard the grin in the lad’s voice.
Jumoke helped him back to his chambers and into a change of clothes. Tutting and muttering like Akachi’s grandmother, he made sure the blanket was tucked in just right before puttering about tidying.
Akachi fell asleep before the boy left the room.
He dreamed. The ruffle of wind through his feathers. The stench of smoke and ash. Following the curve of the Grey Wall separating the Growers from the Crafters, he flew to the Northern Cathedral. Grower districts passed by beneath, all the same yet all different.
Within the cathedral he found the halls, long and empty, haunted by the ghosts of fallen nahual. Stairs disappeared into the deepest bowels of the earth.
Akachi hesitated at the top of the steps.
I remember these.
They led to the underworld.
It felt different this time, thinner and less real. There was a truth here, but not the truth of his previous journey.
Can there be more than one truth?
That seemed wrong. Truth was an absolute. It was stone, like Bastion. Truth was the word of the gods, not subject to the whims and foibles of mortals.
Truth and untruth.
Right and wrong.
Good and evil.
The Book left no room for doubt.
Last time, confronted with these stairs, he’d immediately headed down. This time, a lurking fear, like murky water of an unknown depth, filled him. No dead and forgotten gods would bear mute witness to his travels. But to ignore such a vision would be foolish.
Akachi’s missing fingers itched. He scratched at the stumps.
Even in my dreams.
Decision made, he descended the winding stair.
Dream, or vision? Pactonal manipulation, or sending of the gods?
The thought haunted him. How could he know which this was?
When he passed by the ancient library, the first of the cathedral’s basements, he recognized where he was.
Reaching the second basement, the dispensary where the narcotics for the cathedral’s nahualli were prepared and stored, Akachi paused. The thought of all those sorcerous tools quickened his heart. Foku. Ameslari. Jainkoei to open his soul to the will of his god. His ruined hand shook.
He wanted all of it.
Cloud Serpent healed me of weakness, cleansed me of such base needs.
Breathing deep, Akachi slowed his heart.
He had devoured the last of his jainkoei as he lay dying on the altar.
I’ll need more.
That was common sense. As a nahualli, a sorcerous priest, narcotics were the path to power, the tools with which he thinned the veil between realities.
I have prey to hunt.
Desiring the narcotics needed to complete his task wasn’t weakness. It was logic. It was sense.
Leaving the stairs, Akachi headed toward the dispensary.
Bishop Zalika stood waiting.
She held a staff in her right hand. Large as she was, it stood a full head taller. The top, a carved eagle’s talon, clutched a misshapen red stone. The rock pulsated like a beating heart.
“Long ago,” said Zalika, “when the world was young and alive, The Lord, Father Death, had a brother.” Her words were the dry rumble of desert thunder.
This is no pactonal sending.
This wasn’t the Bishop. Something spoke through his memory of the woman.
“The brother was The Fifth Sun,” Zalika recited. She stared at nothing, made no sign she knew Akachi was there. “The Movement. Naui Olin. He Who Goes Forth Shining. Father of the Day. Lord of Eagles. Flint Tongue.”
How many times had Akachi wondered at the lack of a sun god?
This is Cloud Serpent! He speaks to me once again!
To be so blessed tore Akachi’s heart with joy.
“The Fifth Sun was loved and worshipped by all,” intoned Zalika.
“I’ve read the Book many times,” said Akachi. “I’ve seen no mention of this god.”
“The Lord, god of rot and ruin, dwelling forever in the dark of the underworld, grew jealous of his brother,” continued Zalika, as if she hadn’t heard him speak. “The two argued and fought. Father Death murdered his brother, cut his heart out.”
“Was this removed from the Book?” Akachi asked. Some of the older copies had material no longer included. “Or do you quote Loa blasphemy?”
Still not making eye contact, she hefted the staff with its pulsating stone. “Father Death mounted the bloodstone heart in the claws of an eagle as mockery and created the Staff of the Fifth Sun. The staff was bequeathed to his highest nahual, a soulless katle, as a gift. She used it to control the weather. Though she brought countless seasons of bounty, she also turned the staff against any who challenged her.” The Bishop droned on, lacking the usual loathing she bore for Akachi. “Every use further angered the sun. Godless, abandoned, the sun raged, striving to burn this world free of life. Day by day, year by year, the world died. The katle was murdered, assassinated, and the staff disappeared from the memory of man. It was hidden away, far out where nothing mattered, where no one would look for it.”
She’s speaking for me, not to me.
He was here, in the cathedral basement, and yet he wasn’t. A dream that was both less and more.
“It’s in the Northern Cathedral,” said Akachi, understanding.
“Bring the staff to the place of eternal night,” she said, staring vacantly at nothing.
A riddle? The place of eternal night?
It was so unlike Zalika, who spoke in blunt barbs of dislike.
In the Temple of Revelations, Sin Eater’s greatest church in the Priests’ Ring, nahual were forbidden false light of any kind. The temple, a reverse pyramid sunk into Bastion’s floor, had twelve basements. The dark of the lowest level was said to reveal the sins of even the most holy man. Only Sin Eater’s High Priest could enter, as such soul-deep revelations would break a less devout mortal.
Was that what she meant? He’d never heard of it being referred to as ‘The place of eternal night.’
“Is that from the Book of the Invisibles?” Akachi asked.
“The Queen’s Heart must die.”
Mother Death, the Queen of Bastion. Nuru, the street-sorcerer, was her Heart.
“The Destroyer seeks the end of all,” said Zalika. “The final blasphemy, the murder of an entire pantheon.”
Akachi reeled. Cloud Serpent had told him that Efra, Smoking Mirror’s Heart, would bring about the fall of Bastion, that humanity would die because of her. The Lord of the Hunt wanted Mother Death’s Heart thrown from the wall and the Queen banished, but Akachi had thought that Efra and Smoking Mirror were the real threat.
“Has something changed?” asked Akachi. “I don’t understand. I thought—”
Zalika lifted the staff and brought the heel down hard. It rang like stone on stone.
Akachi woke to the stench of ash and burnt meat. Rising, he went to the church’s entrance. While hardly invigorated, he no longer staggered with exhaustion. Everything ached, a dull heat throbbed through his limbs like the threat of infection.