Page 6 of Alien God

That means that every Sionnachan I knew, everyone I fought to protect from Skalla’s rage, is dead now.

Maerwynne kept speaking, and I fought to focus on his words through a clutching haze of grief.

“The current council members are gods I do not know. They are named Aelfsige, Beorht, and Paega.”

I inhaled and pushed my pain away. I watched Maerwynne expectantly, waiting for him to name the rest of the council.

He didn’t.

“Only three?” I asked, startled. I could not ever remember a time that there were less than seven gods on the council. Only three? How is that possible?

“Several newly mated gods have applied to join the council. None of them have been successful. I do not know what has happened to them since then.”

“Wonderful,” I muttered. “You’re telling me that since I’ve been asleep, everything has started to fall apart.”

“There is some hope,” Maerwynne said, though I heard little of that hope in his tone of voice. “There is apparently a cure for the star-darkness. Rúnwebbe told me she’d heard whispers of one stone sky god who found his mate. His star map returned.”

“Have you confirmed this?” I asked sharply.

Maerwynne’s wings shuffled.

“No,” he said. “He was one of the recent applicants to the council. I have heard no news of him since then.”

I grunted, dragging my fingertips through my hair. My head was beginning to ache.

“So, what are you doing wasting your time here with me, Maerwynne? You should be out there finding your mate. Before...”

Before all your stars go dark and you have no hope of finding her at all.

“That is my goal,” he said, his voice hardening with determination. “I will find her. And then I will apply to join the council and find out what is going on in there.”

We both turned to look at the gates once more, neither of us speaking aloud the ominous truth that lingered under Maerwynne’s declaration. The truth that he could go entirely star-dark, or mate-mad, before he ever found her.

“There is one more thing I must tell you, before I go,” Maerwynne said. “I fear I should have started with this news, but I knew you’d want to leave immediately once I told you, and you would not stay to hear the other things I had to say.”

“What is it?” My heart rate increased, every sense focused on Maerwynne and whatever truth he’d left until now to tell me.

“Rúnwebbe told me that a fourth race has achieved star travel.”

I did not think Maerwynne could have shocked me any more than he’d already done. But he had. The only ones who could travel the cosmos were stone sky gods, our uneasy allies the warlords of Riverdark, and our enemies the Tvarvatra.

“Who are they?” I hissed.

“Rúnwebbe calls them human,” Maerwynne replied. “Like the Tvarvatra, they do not travel with their own power but rather in machines. They are weak, but they are clever. They can use their machines to kill. And they are thieves. They plunder the worlds they find.”

“So why wait to tell me that?” It was important information, certainly, but it seemed less pressing than Skalla’s rampage, the star-darkness, and the disturbingly cloistered council. I did not see why such news would make me leave here with haste.

“Because, Wylfrael,” Maerwynne said gravely, his wings drawing around him like a scarlet shield, perhaps to protect himself from the explosive fury I felt at his next words. “These humans have landed on your world. They have invaded Sionnach.”

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