“You! I accept! With delight! An excellent tribute. None finer.”
“Me?! You don’t need me. You just said—”
“Does a king need friends?” Orholam asked.
“What? What?” Dazen knew how Gavin would’ve answered, but he also knew it would be wrong.
“Does a father need his children?” Orholam asked. “Does a mother need the babe in her arms?”
“Of course not. But . . . yes? Not need need, but that’s totally different. What are You saying?”
Dazen thought of his own father and what it had done to Andross to think he didn’t need his children. He thought of his mother, who’d been so broken by her own loss. And he thought of Kip, and what he himself must have done to Kip, thinking the boy didn’t need need Dazen to stand in as his father.
Dazen said, “I see what You’re saying, though it’s not exactly an apt meta—”
“Perfectly apt. Will you come be My son?”
What?! Dazen couldn’t wrap his head around that. It didn’t make sense.
But what was perfectly clear was the ruin he’d left everywhere in his wake. He could see in color sharper and more jagged than all his memories. He could remember sliding the dagger home into ribs, over and over, until he was numbed to the deed.
And he’d done it thousands of times. Thousands.
He’d known the Freeing was wrong, and he’d done it anyway.
Gavin knew what he was. Orholam had to know it, too, or he wasn’t Orholam.
A wave of self-loathing crested over him, a tide of blood guilt as unending as the blood river coursing past his knees. Gavin didn’t deserve acceptance, forgiveness, or anything soft and good, certainly not love, certainly not from Orholam Himself.
He sucked in a breath, and it was heavy with the stench of fresh blood. It was time to end this. “You gave me a chance, before. Not one—hundreds. Every voice that cried out and told me what my conscience had already shouted at me was another. You even put me in chains, but I saw myself as an emperor in chains, but never a slave. I could never see myself as a wretch, wretched as I was. ‘I wouldn’t give trash even to a beggar,’ You said. And You’re right. You want me? Fine. I’m yours. But not as a son. I don’t deserve that. That’s not a punishment. Let me pay for all those deaths with all my remaining life. Let me be Your slave.”
“No,” Orholam said. “If I wished to rob humans of their will, would the world be so full of trouble? No. Slavery is what happens when men act on their desire to be gods, and slavery shows what kind of gods you’d be. How about a son who strives to be the best son he can be?”
“Then I swear to honor and obey You with all my strength.”
“Really?”
“I’m Yours. To spend as You will.”
Dazen looked up and saw eyes harder than a hurricane sky. And he was reminded that all the temporal power of even the greatest emperor was but an intimation and premonition of the power and passion he beheld here.
“Accomplish something with me, would You?” Dazen asked.
“Conditions? Already?” Orholam asked, and His voice was soft as stone.
“None except Your nature.” Dazen could only pray it was true, that he wasn’t as wrong about that as he had been about so much else. With a trembling hand, he touched Orholam’s foot.
“First, then,” Orholam said, “you’ve brought something detestable into My presence. You cast away nine boon stones to make the leap here, but you kept one.”
“What?!”
“Give Me the black boon stone.”
Gavin gulped. “Whatever do You mean?”
But he knew what He meant.
Orholam pointed a very pointy finger at Gavin.
No. Not at Gavin. At his eye.
Mother Dark herself. The black seed crystal that had become his eye. Orholam wanted that for tribute?
“I’m . . . uh, You don’t want that,” Gavin said. He swallowed.
“I want you to give it to Me.”
“Give me some time and I’ll . . . I’ll devise a more fitting gift.” He was a coward.
“No, you won’t.”
“Do You think I’m lying, or that I won’t be able to make a fitting gift? On second thought, don’t answer that,” Gavin said with a weak grin.
But Orholam didn’t smile this time. “Is this what your obedience looks like?”
“I’ll die. Don’t You know what You’re asking?! I have nothing left—and You’d demand . . .” But Gavin had fought enough. He was tired.
His hands slumped down into the blood.
Maybe he’d see Sevastian now. Maybe he’d see Karris.
He’d sent Orholam rivers of blood—unasked for, he knew now, as his heart had always known. It was only right that Orholam should demand his own blood in return.
He sighed, and with his breath went out all defensiveness, all hope that he could deceive his way out of this one.
The old Gavin finally, finally breathed his last, and died.
Dazen sank into the stones and bent back his head to stare into eyes that blazed with judgment hotter than the noonday sun.
Orholam was nothing if not fast. He braced Dazen’s forehead with a hand, knotting his hair between His fingers to keep his head in place. Dazen could feel the evil eye twist and buck in his skull of its own accord, as if it were a living thing and it knew what was coming—
Then Orholam’s hand stabbed into his face, and it felt like his hand went into Dazen’s flesh whole, through and into his head.
It clamped down on the eye and wrenched.
Dazen gagged at the pain. Agony shot from eye to brain, down his neck and down his spine, everywhere through his chest and radiating through every limb. As Orholam twisted His clenched fist, as if drawing out a parasitic worm, Dazen’s body bucked of its own accord. Every muscle clenched. He gagged, and his hands flew up to fight off his persecutor—
But he willed them be still. He flung his hands out and willed them stay spread as wide as if he were nailed in place.
Something gave within him, tore.
Orholam’s fist turned over and over, like He was coiling rope around His hand. At the same time, like a wet cloth to a fevered man, Orholam’s other hand was cool on Dazen’s forehead. It was the only comfort in a world of suffering.
And then Orholam ripped the thing out of Dazen’s left eye socket and threw it on the ground.
Dazen gagged and gasped and coughed, breathing fresh air for the first time in eternity. He sank to his haunches, almost fell—but then his one good eye caught sight of the black Thing.
It twisted on the ground like a legged serpent made entirely of thorns. Every surface was a shard of obsidian, curled in hooks and barbs. And it lived.
Shocked from being torn free and flung down to the ground, it twisted its form together now, at once like a lion crouching to pounce and a snake coiling to strike. Baleful eyes, unblinking, blacker than the gathering night, stared primordial nyxian hatred at Dazen. It had been created to kill him if he removed it, and from his knees, gasping still, breathless, frozen with horror, there was no way Dazen could defend himself before it attacked.
The Thing lunged at his face—
And things happened so fast Dazen could scarcely comprehend them. Orholam flashed suddenly colossal. He was the giant from Dazen’s dream, immense beyond belief. And Dazen saw the fury in His sun-bright eyes, and a fist the size of the tower itself came crashing down in judgment.