The Crippled God

gestured with the cane. ‘There’s one man’s answer.’
    ‘I suppose,’ Cotillion mused, ‘we should be thankful that Draconus was chained up inside Dragnipur for all that time. If Rake hadn’t killed him …’
    ‘Every wayward child should spend a few hundred lifetimes dragging a wagon filled with bodies.’ Shadowthrone grunted. ‘Sounds like something my mother might say. “Only a hundred lifetimes, Kellan? Too weak to handle a thousand, are you? Why, your father …” Aagh! Not again!’
    Sechul Lath found himself lying on the ground. His eyes were closed, and he felt no desire to open them. Not yet, anyway.
    He heard footsteps, coming closer. Two sets, halting to stand on either side of him.
    ‘Oh my,’ said a woman’s voice on his left. ‘I suppose it had to happen, eventually. Still … tell me, brother, are you feeling anything?’
    ‘No,’ replied the man on his right. ‘Why, should I?’
    ‘Well, we are what was the best of him, and we shall live on.’
    ‘Do you think he can hear us, sister?’
    ‘I imagine so. Do you remember once, we sent a coin spinning?’
    ‘Long ago now.’
    ‘If I listen hard …’
    ‘Probably just your imagination, my love. Some games die with barely a whisper. And as for this new one – I want no part of it.’
    She made a sound, something like a laugh. ‘Is that wisdom I’m hearing?’
    ‘Look at our father,’ he said. ‘When he opens his eyes, when he climbs to his feet, there will be no going back.’
    ‘No, no going back. Ever again.’
    Sechul’s son sighed. ‘I think we should hunt down the Errant, beloved. In our father’s name, we should teach him about the lord’s push.’
    ‘Draconus will find him. You can be certain of that.’
    ‘But I want to be there when he does.’
    ‘Better we should be like this, brother. Come to welcome him before the gates of death. We could help him to his feet, reminding him that our father waits on the other side.’
    ‘We could guide him to the gate.’
    ‘Just so.’
    ‘And then give the Errant—’
    ‘A nudge.’
    His children laughed, and Sechul Lath found himself smiling. Son, daughter, what a fine gift you give me, before I am sent on my way .
    ‘Sister … I see a coin with two heads, both the Errant’s. Shall we send it spinning?’
    ‘Why not, brother? Prod and pull, ’tis the way of the gods.’
    When at last he opened his eyes, they were gone.
    And all was well.
    Where her draconic shadow slipped over the land below, the ground erupted in spumes of dust and stones. Fissures spread outward jagged and depthless. Hills slumped, collapsed, their cloak of plants withering, blackening. Where she passed, the earth died. Freedom was a gift, but freedom filled her with desperate rage, and such pain that the rush of air over her scales was agony.
    She had no doubt that she possessed a soul. She could see it deep inside, down a tunnel through cracked bedrock, down and ever down, to a crushed knot lying on the floor. There. That . And the screams that howled from it made the roots of the mountains shiver, made seas tremble. Made still the winds and lifeless the air itself.
    Before her birth, there had been the peace of unknowing, the oblivion of that which did not exist. She neither felt nor cared, because she simply wasn’t. Before the gods meddled, before they tore light from dark, life from death, before they raised their walls and uttered their foul words. This is, but this is not. There shall be magic in the worlds we have made, and by its power shall life rise and in looking upon its myriad faces, we shall see our own – we shall come to know who and what we are. Here, there is magic, but here, there is not .
    She could never give her face to the gods – they would not look, they would only turn away. She could awaken all the power of her voice to cry, I am here! See me! Acknowledge me – your one forgotten child! But it would achieve nothing. Because even the vision of the gods musthave a blind spot. And what will you find there? Only me. A crushed knot lying on the floor .
    Her living kin were hunting her now. She did not know how many, but it did not matter. They sought her annihilation. But … not yet. Leave me this freedom … to do something. To do a thing … a thing that does not destroy, but creates. Please, can I not be more than I am? Please. Do not find me .
    Below her, her flight made a bleeding scar in the earth, and where her eyes reached out, where they touched all