The GodSpill Read online

  Medophae stood, and Lawdon reached out to shake his hand. They exchanged introductions, seemingly satisfied with the other’s manner.

  “Do I have you to thank for saving my daughter?” Lawdon asked.

  Medophae shot Mirolah a wry smile. “Actually, no. She saved me.”

  Lawdon smirked. “Good. That’s good.” He pointed a gnarled finger at Mirolah. “There’s a story here,” he said. “Or I’m a Sunrider.”

  “If you had all evening,” Mirolah said. “I could barely cover it.”

  “As it happens, I do. So you can do your best,” he said with finality.

  Their expressions were as varied as the colors of autumn when Mirolah finished the tale of her travels. The dishes lay scattered all about the table, covered with half-eaten rolls and stripped chicken bones. Lawdon sat back in his chair, puffing on his pipe. She felt his emotions flow into her, and he stewed. He had never known Mirolah to be dishonest, yet it was obvious he did not swallow the tale. He kept glancing at Medophae, as though he must be the reason that his foster daughter had become the biggest liar in Amarion.

  Mirolah could feel Tiffienne’s worry. Her foster mother actually did believe Mirolah, and it scared her that there were evils greater than the Sunriders.

  Mirolah closed her eyes and forced herself not to “read” her family. She didn’t want to invade their privacy, but she couldn’t stop all of it.

  She could feel that Casra had an instant crush on Medophae. She absently toyed with her fork, stealing furtive glances beneath her eyelashes.

  Locke was thoughtful, tense, but not angry like Lawdon.

  Cisly was scared, and also furious. She didn’t want to be in this room. She was planning to marry soon. A farmer’s boy had courted her for half a year. She wanted the world to stay just the way it was. She didn’t want to hear that there were darklings and threadweavers and godlike Sunriders. She didn’t want her sister to be one responsible for “The Wave,” which was what travelers were calling the day the GodSpill returned.

  Mi’Gan had fallen asleep in Medophae’s lap.

  When Mirolah had started, she had asked that all questions wait until the end, as any tangent of the story could take hours to explain. Now that she had finished, she sat back and spread her hands wide.

  “And that’s it,” she said. “We stopped here first because I needed to know that you were okay.”

  “Us?” Tiffienne said. “Well, that’s funny, isn’t it?”

  “I had to know what the magistrate did to you.”

  “He knew what was good for him, and he left us alone,” Lawdon said. “He wasn’t the most popular man when the town heard what he did to you. Been a lot of grumbling from a lot of people since he ‘killed’ you.”

  Mirolah smiled. “I don’t think I’ll feel too badly for him.”

  Lawdon grunted. He took his pipe from his mouth and pointed the end at Medophae. “So you’re Wildmane,” he said bluntly, like it was a statement of the ridiculous rather than a question.

  “Well, sir,” Medophae said. “That’s what the poet Thedore Stok once called me. But I never liked it.”

  “Wildmane isn’t real,” Lawdon said.

  Tiffienne shot her husband an angry glance. “Lawdon, don’t be rude.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that bucket of—”

  “Lawdon!” Tiffienne kept him from saying the final word.

  “Look,” he said, annoyed that Tiffienne was trying to manage him. “I’ve seen enough swordsmen in my day to know you’re probably good with that blade you’re wearing. And I’m sure you’re good at impressing young women—”

  “Lawdon,” Mirolah interrupted. “Daddy—”

  “Everyone needs to stop interrupting me,” Lawdon growled. “If he’s a man, he can speak for himself. Now, it’s easy to lie to a young girl. But sit there and lie to me, sir,” he sarcastically echoed Medophae’s honorific. “Lie to my face and make me trust you.”

  Mirolah’s stomach clenched. Perhaps telling them the truth had been a mistake. She glanced at Medophae, but he was unruffled, as always. The man seemed to have three faces: royal, playful, or enraged-and-ready-to-kill. He had his royal face on now.

  “Are you suggesting I do something Wildmane can do? In order to prove it to you?” Medophae asked.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Sir—” he began.

  “And stop calling me sir,” Lawdon said. “I make tiles for a living. I’m not some lord from Buravar. My name is Lawdon. Don’t try to pull down my pants with flattery.”

  “Lawdon!” Tiffienne gasped.

  Medophae said, “No.”

  Lawdon raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

  “No, sir.”

  Lawdon darkened to purple.

  “I’m not going to do something to prove to you that I’m Wildmane,” Medophae said. “Oedandus isn’t a parlor trick.”

  “Then you admit you’re lying to my daughter,” Lawdon said.

  “I doubt I could lie to her if I wanted to. You want the truth?”

  “If you’re capable,” Lawdon said. Tiffienne put a hand to her mouth, but kept herself from saying anything.

  Medophae suppressed a smile. Mirolah doubted anyone else saw it, but she knew him well enough now to see the signs. She suddenly realized he was actually enjoying this. Medophae liked Lawdon and his straightforward protectiveness.

  “What I am,” Medophae said, “is a man from the island of Dandere. I came to Amarion and was infused with the remains of the god Oedandus. I can summon a sword of my god’s rage in my hand. I can summon the strength to rip the roof off this house. I could cut my own throat with this knife.” He picked up the steak knife from the table. “And Oedandus would heal the wound.” He paused, setting the knife gently back down. “But I can’t make you trust me. Not with a parlor trick.”

  “That’s rubbish,” Lawdon said. He opened his mouth to say something, but instead forced his pipe between his teeth. A tense silence settled over the table.

  Cisly stood up and started collecting plates.

  Locke spoke up. “Mirolah, what you’ve told us sounds... Well, it sounds like you’re making it up. And not just the part about Wildmane. It makes us worry that... Well, that...”

  “That I’m not right in the head?” Mirolah said.

  Locke held her hands up helplessly.

  “I don’t understand what I’m hearing from all of you,” Tiffienne blurted. She gestured angrily at Lawdon and Mirolah’s sisters. “Our girl comes back from the dead, and you treat her like this!”

  Lawdon glared at Medophae, not giving any ground. Medophae held her foster father’s gaze, appearing serious.

  “Promise me you won’t be afraid,” Mirolah said softly.

  That drew Lawdon’s attention. “What?”

  “I love you,” she said. “I don’t want you to hate me.”

  “Hate you?” Tiffienne seemed stunned. “That you could even think that... Dear girl, we love you,” Tiffienne said.

  “What do you mean?” Lawdon asked.

  “Watch.” She let out a breath, and opened the bright bridge to her threadweaver sight. She felt the GodSpill in the wooden walls and floor, in the table, in the bodies of her beloved family.

  She pulled a few small threads.

  The dirty plates rose into the air and floated across the table, depositing uneaten food upon the great platter and stacking themselves neatly in front of Cisly’s empty seat.

  Cisly screamed and dropped the two dishes she had been carrying. Mirolah caught them, and they floated back to stack on top of the others.

  “Oh goodness,” Tiffienne breathed. There were several other gasps. Mirolah picked up on all of their emotions, and she was relieved to know that each one of them was more awed than afraid. All save Cisly.

  “By the gods...” Lawdon mumbled, his pipe slipping from his mouth and clattering on the floor.

  “Every bit of it is true,” Mirolah said.

 
4

  Mirolah

  After Mirolah’s display, Lawdon relented on his interrogation of Medophae, and he charmed the rest of the family. Dederi asked for a story, and Medophae obliged. He sat at the hearth, and the girls gathered around at his feet as he told a story about Vlacar the Paladin and his search for the goddess Natra. Mirolah had seen Medophae as a gruff protector, a furious warrior, even a grudging patient. It shouldn’t surprise her to see him slip into the role of entertainer so easily, but it did. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen, listening to his rich voice rise and dip to the suspense of the story.

  She felt Lawdon approach from behind, and he touched her on the shoulder.

  “Can we...” he nodded toward the back door, which led to the tile yard, “talk?”

  “Of course.”

  They left the house and stepped into the well-tiled back yard. The two open bays of Lawdon’s workshop stood off to the left, like dark caves. Two neat stacks of wood stood on the left side of the workshop, and more than a dozen pillars of tiles, also neatly stacked, stood in rows.

  The stars were bright above, and the crescent moon cast a slippery sheen of silver over everything. Three cobble birds had gathered on the far fence. Their square-ish heads swiveled to check the sky every now and then, but always refocused on her. They spoke to her, cooing softly, in a language she didn’t understand. A few squirrels had gathered behind them on the roof. They chittered and scooted nervously to the edge, looking down at her.

  Lawdon paused in the yard, packing a pinch of tobacco into his pipe, then set it between his teeth and lit it. “I’m not good with words,” he said. “But I’ve got something to say, and I want you to hear me.”

  “Of course.”

  “I wasn’t always a tile maker. Back before I met Tiffienne, I traveled around a lot. Fell in with some bad people, time to time.” He cleared his throats. “Anyway, there’s people out there, Mirolah, who can make lies seem real. They’d tell you the sun was the moon, and you’d want to believe ’em. This Medophae is one of them. He uses fancy words to dance around the truth. When I’m around him, I want to trust him for no reason, want to believe what he says without no proof as to why. That’s dangerous. I see everyone, including Tiffienne, doing the same. All you have to do is take one look in there, with all of them gathered around him, to see what I mean. It isn’t right, what he does. And I refuse to believe one word that comes out of his mouth. I feel like if I believe even one of his words, I’ll believe ’em all. And I just want to warn you, because you don’t seem to see—”

  “It’s a glamour,” she said.

  “What?”

  “It’s the aura of his god around him. It does that to people. He can’t help it.”

  That silenced him for a moment. He chewed on his pipe. “I feel like you’ve been taken in by him, Mira. I feel like you can’t see what he really is.”

  “Honestly, it’s amazing that you picked up on his glamour without knowing what a glamour is. I admire that you sensed it and don’t trust it. But if you can’t trust him, can you at least trust me?”

  “Not if you’ve been taken in by him.”

  “I haven’t. Can you trust me?”

  He sighed, puffed on his pipe and let the smoke leak out the side of his mouth.

  “I saw it all,” she said. “The fiery sword. The healing of wounds. It’s real.”

  He shook his head. “I...” he started. “Maybe I just don’t want to believe any of this nonsense. You went away, and then the whole world changed. I felt it. Everybody felt it. They’re calling it ‘The Wave’ in Buravar. It was like someone poured water all over me and inside me, but there wasn’t anything to be seen. Things changed since, a thousand small things. The grass was still green, but...greener, you know? The sky bluer. It even seemed easier for me to make tiles I’ve made the same way for years, like the tiles knew what I wanted them to be, and cooperated more than...before.” He frowned. “But I talked to Old Man Baelin and his daughter who work the fields.... I talked with some of the other farmers. They say that since The Wave came, everything has been growing like mad. The harvest just came in, and some crops grew back in just a few days. Giller Black, best hunter in Rith, says the forests are chock-full of animals now, not like before. He says he can’t walk three paces without stumbling across something new and strange, something he never saw in the forest before. He says sometimes he’s afraid to go out there. Imagine that. Giller Black afraid of the forest.”

  Mirolah knew very well that there were things to fear in the lands now, and maybe even in the forests around Rith. She could not blame Giller Black for being wary. A darkling would happily turn the tables and hunt him.

  “And you...” He paused, searching for the right words. He shook his head and plowed forward. “You claim you did this? You made The Wave?” he asked softly, turned to look at her. He puffed his pipe, lighting the bottom of his face in orange.

  “This is the way the lands used to be.”

  “During the time of the rot bringers—?” he stopped, glanced at her. “I’m sorry. The, uh, the threadweavers?”

  She put a hand on his arm. “It’s okay. It’s a lot to think about. But no, the Age of Ascendance was when the threadweavers ruled and created their vast cities. That was different, and what brought about the GodSpill Wars and eventually the Devastation Years. I’m talking about before, during the Age of Awakening.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Before Daylan’s Fountain even existed in the first place, the lands were filled with GodSpill like now, but learning to harness it, to be a threadweaver, took many years of study.”

  Inside, Medophae’s voice rose to a powerful boom as he punctuated his story. The girls screamed with delight.

  “You want to know the truth?” she said. “I’m a little scared myself. I’m not the girl I was when I left. I sometimes have a hard time remembering what it was like to be that girl.”

  “What’s different?” he asked.

  She nodded to the cobble birds on the fence. “Do you see those?”

  He squinted. “The birds?”

  “They don’t come out at night,” she said.

  “I’ll be skewered,” he whispered. “You’re right. That’s the oddest damned thing....”

  “They’re here to see me,” she said. “I think. But I don’t know why. And there are some squirrels up on the roof, too. I think they’re here for the same reason. And a weasel behind that stack of tiles.” She pointed. “And a few rats over by the wood stack.”

  Lawdon tensed, looking around like a person in a dark forest who suddenly sees dozens of eyes gleaming back at him. “How do you know? I see the birds, but...”

  “I feel them. They speak in a language I feel like I should know. And they think I should know it, too. The cobble birds coo as though I should understand. The squirrels chitter.”

  Lawdon let out a breath. “How do you...feel ’em?”

  “Threadweavers can make a bridge to the tapestry the gods created.”

  “Tapestry?”

  “The gods created the world. They did it by weaving together an incredibly complex tapestry. You’re part of that tapestry. Your body is made of threads, some so small you can’t even imagine them. They’re woven into each other, making up your body, and also woven into the air around you. You’re connected to the ground.” She pointed down, then to the roof. “To the squirrels, the tiles on the roof. Everything. It’s all woven together, and I can see the threads. It’s where the name ‘threadweaver’ comes from. So the fact that there are tiles that block my normal eyes from seeing the rats doesn’t stop me from seeing them with my threadweaver vision.”

  She admired him so much; she always had. She knew how difficult it was to have one’s life turned upside down, to be told that everything you knew might not be right.

  Finally, he sighed. “I’m not going to pretend to understand what you just said. But I came out her to warn you, and now you’ve heard me. If you’
re sure this Medophae is the one you want, then I’m not going to make trouble. I just want to make sure you know what you’re getting into. You’re a grown woman. You can make your own choices.”

  “I love you, Lawdon.” She put her arms around him and hugged him tight. “Father...” she said more softly.

  He patted her on the back. “You’ll stay with us for a while, won’t you? You and your young man?”

  “I would like to. For a few days, at least.”

  He released her. “Well then, let’s get you set up. We don’t have an extra room, but for now, we’ll just curtain off the living room.”

  Mirolah knew the routine. They’d had guests before. And now she was the guest. More than anything else, it drew a line between her and the girl she had been. This was no longer her home; she was a visitor. The knowledge was bittersweet.

  They returned to the living room to find that Tiffienne had already cordoned off the northern side of the living room with a rope, and a sheet hung down from it. Fresh hay lay evenly under two soft blankets. Mirolah smiled.

  Medophae had just finished his tale, and Tiffienne ushered Mirolah’s sisters upstairs amidst loud complaints from Casra and Shera. They, of course, weren’t tired in the least and wanted another story.

  “I’m sure he’s had enough of the likes of you, fawning all over him with your big doe eyes,” Tiffienne said. “Off to bed with you!”

  The girls protested that she was so unfair as they reluctantly ascended the steps. Lawdon and Tiffienne retired shortly thereafter, leaving Mirolah and Medophae alone in their little half room.

  A lone candle burned, sitting on a chair taken from the dinner table, and Tiffienne had laid out one of Mirolah’s old nightgowns on the bed.

  Medophae pulled off his loose shirt and folded it, set it on the floor. She pulled her own shirt over her head and tossed it on top of his.

  “This seems familiar,” he said. He looked left and right, as though checking for intruders. “Are you sure it’s safe?”