Gunmetal Magic: A Novel in the World of Kate Daniels

with the draugr, but you didn’t. You could’ve let the Pack join us. It’s in your best interests to win.”
    “No. It’s in my best interests to regain my godhood.” The Jackal padded over and lay down next to me, a hill of fur and darkness. “Do you know how godhood begins?”
    “No.”
    “With a myth.” The Jackal sighed. “It begins with a legend told by the fire. A story of magical deeds and glorious victory over evil. I was there when it began for me, over six thousand years ago. I remember.”
    “Who were you?” I asked.
    “A tribal chief,” he said. “I had a wife and many children. Once I saved a litter of jackal pups from a flood and they followed me everywhere I went. They brought others of theirkind to the settlement. I was never bitten. I cut my leg while hunting and the pack licked it. It was a true gift.”
    Pieces clicked in my head. “You were a shapeshifter?”
    “I was a First,” he said. “The first recipient of the gift, its power undiluted within me. We, the humans, were different then. We were magic. It flowed through us, through our blood, through our bones. We were born soaked in it.”
    “How did you become a god?”
    The Jackal shrugged. “Those memories are murky. My deeds were told in front of the evening fires, my victories, my adventures. They kept me alive. My descendants made me a shrine of bone and stone and prayed for my guidance. My tribe prospered and the more they prayed, the more power I gained, until finally I came to be again.”
    “Just like that?”
    “Just like that. People plead for help to things that are more powerful. They beg the sky for rain year after year, they make a shrine to a mage who once brought about rain or to an engineer who irrigated their fields decades ago, and if they pray hard enough, their new deity comes to life and grows in power.”
    The Jackal gazed at the river. “This new age, it has a saying, ‘History is written by the victors.’ It is true. Look at the story of Apep. Set, who was there with us fighting as valiantly as any one of us, became the visage of darkness. Bastet was diminished to a vermin killer. And I? I became the tender of corpses, revered, worshipped, but hardly as powerful. Even my brother Sobek, the lord of crocodiles, was more feared than I was. I hate him for that and Sobek reviles me for my knowledge and the reverence it brought. When the time of my people came to its sunset, the Greeks came. They jeered at us. They called me the Barker. The joke was on them—I endured through their time and then through the Romans, but I’ve never forgotten the insult.”
    He fell silent.
    “The Pack,” I prompted.
    “Let me tell you how my new myth will go,” the Jackal said. “In the new age of magic, when it was young, a vile serpent emerged, threatening the sanity of all people. Mighty God Inepu and his faceless retainers battled him, and slewhim, and triumphed. All those who do not wish to be devoured by the serpent of madness give thanks to the mighty Inepu. Ask for his blessing. Ask for his wisdom. Offer your prayers to him so he may shield you with his might. He is the mighty warrior, the awe-inspiring slayer.”
    “That is an ambitious plan.” So I was to be a faceless minion and he was to become a warrior god.
    The Jackal looked at me. “Don’t mock me, pup. Godhood is like a drug; once you taste it, there is no turning back.”
    “I still don’t understand why you won’t let the Pack assist.”
    “Because they are led by a First,” the Jackal said.
    “Curran?”
    The Jackal nodded. “It is how I began, as a First. What is more impressive, a jackal or a lion? Which would you fear more? To whom would you offer your prayers?”
    I blinked. “You’re afraid Curran will steal your godhood?”
    “Afraid is a strong word. I fear nothing.” The Jackal laid his head on his front paws and twitched his ear.
    “Except being forgotten,” I said.
    “There is that.”
    “And how does my body fit into your scheme? Wouldn’t you be changing gender?”
    “I don’t care,” he said. “A god or a goddess, as long as I grow in power.”
    “One small problem,” I told him. “For this plan to work, Apep has to resurrect, and we’ve got his scale.”
    “The scale isn’t necessary to his resurrection.”
    “What? So we’ve done all of this for nothing?”
    The Jackal raised his head. “Of course not. The scale is his armor. Without it, he will be easier to kill. He will be