Page 105 of The Lost Reliquary
He… they… smile patiently. “Will that do? I’ll admit my most significant abilities lean more toward perception than such tangibles as fire and lightning, but the world bends to my will as much as it does for any other divinity.”
I don’t fight. Strong as I am, I won’t break free. And the grim absurdity of the situation is rising, as if the world is filling with some invisible, vicious liquid, threatening to float me like a pickle in a jar. I can barely breathe. Moments ago, there was a singular truth that burned at the center of my universe: that Tempestra-Innara was the only living divinity. Now, Rion’s demonstration has extinguished that flame, leaving behind a befuddling dark.
A god… another deity…
A sour taste rises in the back of my throat, my fingers tingling distantly.
If he… they…whateversenses my growing panic, he is polite enough not to mention it. Which makes me wonder if I am handling this gut punch of knowledge better or worse than folks usually do.
“So, uh, Rion… Osiron. Whisperer?” I seriously might puke. “I… I’m gonna be honest. I don’t quite know how to address you.”
An amused sigh. “I have lived so long as a man that the designations of the divine feel overly formal. If continuing to know me as Rion makes this easier for you, then… please.”
“Okay.” I flex my hands into fists. Release. “Now what?”
“I imagine you have questions.”
“Oh, a few.”
“Then let’s make you comfortable.” Rion drums his fingers.
My bonds release, the stone and mosaic pieces snapping back into place like a loosed bowstring, no sign that they were ever disturbed at all.
Rion notes my bewildered examinations of the floor. “As I said, the world bends to divine will. But temporarily, and it much prefers its mundane state.” He folds his hands on the table. “So… questions?”
About a hundred flutter fitfully through my thoughts, but one—one rises above the others. And it’s a doozy. “If you’re a high and mighty god, then what the hell do you needmefor?”
He laughs. “A question with many answers. But you already know why: to help kill my dear sister.”
“That answers exactly fuck all—”
Rion holds up a hand. “It will make more sense if I start at the beginning, when Avery arrived with his strange story about a young woman he met in the woods. One who was Chosen but didn’t speak or behave like it. Later, I sensed you almost as soon as you and Nolan stepped foot in the city. Tempestra’s children—here, for the first time in decades. But, oddly, in secret. An intriguing situation, to say the least. Even more so when I began to speak with you, got to know you.” There’s an uncomfortable, quiet moment where it feels as if Rion can see through my flesh and bones, into some buried part of me that even I haven’t uncovered yet. “A pair with a mission, that much was obvious, as well as what it was. But some of the things you said to me… and when you helped Hiram…” He stops. “I started to understand what Avery had conveyed.”
“That you knew who Nolan and I were doesn’t answer my question.”
“Doesn’t it? To me, your divinity radiates like the heat of a hearth, wafts through the air like a perfume. Especially here, where there is a marked absence of it.”
I glance at Avery, and the masked followers. “You’re saying Tempestra-Innara can do the same?”
He nods.
Okay, that explains why Emmaus, despite being under the orders of a god, was not blessed by one. If the gods could sense the divinely giftedchildren of their siblings, Osiron sending one as an assassin would have been as good as sashaying into the Cathedral and announcing they were still alive.
“Avery… your buddies in the cloaks… are any of them your Chosen?”
This time he shakes his head. “I’ve never ‘blessed’ followers in the way my siblings did. You couldn’t know this, of course, but that was the core of our initial falling out. The stories say I tried to steal their power. In truth, I tried to stop them spreading it around.” A scowl appears. “They became so enamored of their Chosen’s affection, so glutted with the devotion that a bit of their blood bought, that they surrounded themselves with armies of their blessed. Then someone realized that divinity trickled down. Blood and flesh became commodities. There were even periods where a ritual was made of it. Try to imagine it: dozens, sometimes hundreds of a god’s devotees gathered to set upon a corpse. Tearing it apart by hand, consuming that divinely infused flesh, reveling in the temporary elation of it.”
Honestly not something I wanted to picture. “Gross.”
Rion gives me a look of agreement. “Weird times, let me tell you. I was ‘dead’ by then, of course. Turned on by my siblings for counseling restraint. They learned eventually, of course. When they built empires around themselves—great, grand things that grew and grew until they were all pressed up against each other… when those armies of the blessed turned on each other, devasting the land and giving rise to such horrors as the Renderers… they learned.”
I scoff. “You don’t seem to have qualms about working with those ‘horrors.’?”
He shrugs. “They have their uses. And they only knew what they needed to.”
For the first time in a while, I feel as if I understand something—the Renderers knew they were dealing with heretics, but not a hidden god. I scan the room again, at how few followers are present. “How many of the folks involved with your plans know who they are really working for?”
“A special few. My Chosen, in a way, I suppose.”
