Immortal Progeny (Fragile Gods Book 1) Read online

  Immortal Progeny

  by Philippa Ballantine

  Book One: Fragile Gods

  A Prelude for Children

  The priests and priestesses brought the three sisters from the God Void with the care of people handling raw flame. They stood them in the square of the city of Penance, and all the representatives of the gods crowded around to stare at the children. None of them dared to touch the girls—at least not yet—since it was uncertain exactly what they might be.

  Three identical short figures, with the same straw-colored hair, stood with their heads bent and their hands locked together in a small circle. It was impossible to say if their faces were similar since that hair provided a knotty, dirty veil behind which nothing else was visible. One thing was for certain: They were shaking from the cold wind cutting through the square.

  Isobah, guardsman and representative of the goddess Mariki, watched all this unfold from his spot in the crowd surrounding the girls. He judged them to be of an age when someone should have been protecting them from the gaze of the high and mighty of Rahvas. One glance through the crowd told him no parent was likely to emerge to save them; the eyes of the clergy gleamed with a variety of emotions: avarice, delight and fear.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Isobah saw they locked the gates leading into the square so there were only those from the temples present; the citizens of Penance would not be able to see whatever came next. The heavy silence of the crowd did not bode well either, and he wished the children would at least bolt away from the regard of the priests and priestesses who pressed around them.

  The girls—who looked so tiny against the looming adults—in their ragged clothes did nothing to protest their innocence. Perhaps, Isobah thought, if they looked up with pleading, childish gazes some of the heartless in the crowd would find their compassion finally and prevent whatever was about to come.

  Isobah stepped back among the mass of people until he found his own wife and child once more. He was painfully aware they were just as vulnerable as the three girls. The crowd, for all its supposed holiness, could still turn feral—anything could happen in the next few tense moments. Any one of the priests could conceal a knife ready to plunge into their enemies—and there on the sacred ground of the unique city, nearly everyone was an enemy.

  "Father, do you think those little girls might be gods?" At his side, Nyennoh slipped his hand into Isobah's and tried to peer around the few people between him and the chosen. At his age, curiosity overwhelmed fear. His brown eyes were wide in his face, with not a jot of worry apparent.

  Isobah felt a deep stab of fear Nyennoh was there for this unexpected development. A journey to Penance to view the annual Congress of Temples was supposed to be a treat for the boy, yet in an instant it appeared they were swept up into a historic—but dangerous—moment.

  "No one has come from the God Void in generations," Kiya reminded them, her voice low and calm, "and they do not look divine." A slight frown marred her face, even as she spoke reassuringly to their son. She had the hood of her sky-blue temple robes up around her face, the color making her beautiful dark skin stand out in relief. Among the press of the crowd, she fumbled for Isobah's other hand and gave it a squeeze. They had been married long enough he knew the signs. Despite her rank in the priesthood of Mariki, she was afraid, and that made a chill run up his spine. His wife was braver than he, more fearless in the face of nearly every challenge they encountered for their goddess. It was she who repelled the Rainbow Queen's soldiers from the Skykeeper's chamber only last summer, yet something about the current situation was different.

  The hushed conversations around the still silent girls seemed reach some kind of climax, and the guardsman knew his moment of choice was coming.

  Kiya's eyes locked with his, and Isobah saw there the same determination in his own heart. They might be married, with a seven-year-old boy made of their love, but there was nothing higher in the world than their devotion to their goddess. Isobah knew he had a job to do, and he could not stand back in the crowd to do it.

  Wrapping her cloak around their son, Kiya gave him a little nod. They didn't need words to communicate their roles; she would protect the child; he would save the rest.

  Kissing Kiya on the cheek, Isobah squeezed Nyennoh's fingertips before turning on his heel. After collecting his faith around him as best he could, Isobah shouldered his way between the people who belonged to other, lesser deities, and managed to secure a spot at the outer ring of the circle.

  He felt the lack of his weapons deeply at that moment, but none was supposed to bring them to the congress, even if it was one of the most dangerous places in Rahvas. It was certain others were not so honorable. Isobah glanced around the faces of those near him and tried to judge their mood, but each of them was of different races and gods, and trained in the art of deception. They kept their emotions deeply hidden, and he could read little from them.

  The guardsman did not need to be a priest to taste the hunger in the air. No god had come from the Void in five generations, and the stories said when one did, it was on the wings of fire and magnificence; there had never been child gods, nor any that looked more like beggars than deities.

  Genuine pity immediately gripped him. If they were gods, they were poor ones, cast out into the world before their time. Up close, he thought they looked to be only five years old, but in an age of starvation and deprivation, they could be older. Drawing nearer, Isobah heard the faintest whispering between them. It was more an impression than actual words, meant to be shared between the three girls, but no further. He strained his ears to catch what they were saying, but no one else in the crowd commented on it. Surely, he could not be the only one who heard it?

  Penance seemed like a strange place to come for some whispered and dangerous conversation. The city stood on a table-top mountain: the closest place any living being could get to the God Void. It was a pitiless location, populated by conniving people bent on gaining the upper hand for their gods. If there was a worse place for three young children to stumble into, Isobah could not imagine one.

  He had the sudden urge to gather them up and run for it, but he knew he would not get more than two steps before he was struck down by the weapons of a hundred gods in the hands of their priests. Kiya often called him too cautious, too slow to act, but it was not the time to change his nature. If he wanted to help the girls, he had to keep his head.

  Isobah watched as the crowd parted, and the Arbiter came down the steps from the collection of finger temples that were the focus of Penance. The congress was nearly over. The children chose a most inopportune moment to supposedly walk from the Void; only another day or two and there would have been merely pilgrims in Penance—instead, they stumbled into a pit of swamp vipers, made up of representatives from every one of the warring temples.

  With his crooked back, the Arbiter looked as old as the mountain itself. He was cloaked in a strangely dilapidated form of temple robes, made of strips of many colors and fabrics. Since he was not much taller than the children, he did not have to bend down to examine them. They did not so much as turn to acknowledge him as he poked his narrow nose in their direction. It seemed as if he might actually be sniffing them.

  The Arbiter straightened, glancing around the expectant faces, and Isobah had the strange sensation the old man was looking for advice from the crowd. It was obvious he had no idea what to say.

  Isobah wondered if the children could be something to do with the Zoekers, who had no faith, no god, and were always trying to disprove the theists' beliefs. If that were the case, they were far more impressive and organized than he'd ever given them credit for.

&n
bsp; "Who found them?" The Arbiter's voice was thin, reedy, and yet carried clear as a bell through the people.

  A tall, broadly built woman with violet-trimmed robes came forward. She was a sister of Quccha, Brother-Rain, and she was too young to have so much attention directed at her. She flinched from the combined stares of the priests and priestesses, but managed to stammer out, "A group of penitents was coming up the south road, more than fifty of them. I and my sisters were with them."

  "So you vouch they came from the Void?" The Arbiter fixed her with a look Isobah was glad was not aimed in his direction.

  "On the god's honor," she said without hesitation. "And you may question the rest of us..."

  He waved her away. "I can smell the Void on them as well as the rest of you can." His hand reached out, almost but not quite touching the head of one girl. It was as close to blasphemy as the old man was willing to go, though, because he snatched it back just as quickly. “They show no sign of the pestilent chimera?”

  One of the priests, grabbed the closest child and yanked on her ragged clothes. The tearing sound made Isobah’s ears, and he clenched his teeth together as hard as he could to avoid crying out. The child’s arms, legs and naked back were exposed. The skin was smooth and unblemished. She had no tacked on skin or change in flesh tone to reveal a chimeric addition. The Rainbow Queen was called that because of her patchwork of skin, but necrotic madness had taken control of her and driven her mad. These children were not that at all.

  The Arbiter peered at her, his face folding into a cruel version of relief. "Well then, the only question that remains is what is to be done to them?"

  To have a little girl exposed to so many adult eyes like that was uncalled for. Isobah was about to lurch forward when another voice entered the fray.

  "One at least should be mine?" The voice grated on Isobah's ears, but then everything about Gentian, Stonekeeper of the goddess Serey, rubbed him the wrong way. “Take their memories and see what we can make of them.”

  He had to work hard to keep the anger from his face as she pushed her way through the crowd. She was a short, round woman with red hair nearly shaved to nothing, but still displaying a hint of white at the temple. At her side stood her homunculus: a mass of stitched-together flesh a foot taller than any of the mortals around it. Its head was ill-made, a bare covering of stolen meat stretched over a skull, but then, a creation like that was not made for durability. Isobah's Keeper did not make homunculi, and therefore did not participate in the yearly battle for the right to build their finger temple a little further into the Void.

  Standing so close to the stinking mountain of once-dead muscle, Isobah felt pride and gratitude to his goddess and her choices. Still, the homunculus was the reason Gentian dared to claim one of the strange children for her own. Its looming bulk was enough to push Gentian's claim as valid.

  The flutter of an argument ran through the circle of priests like birds taking flight from a predator, but none protested loudly enough for their voices to be picked out. The Wavekeeper of Kneda, whose homunculus was defeated by Gentian's the day before, stepped forward and pointed a finger at the circle of girls. "They are not gods, since they wear no raiment nor carry any of the signs. Perhaps they are merely half-wits who wandered into the Void and were spared to bring us something else. Progeny parts..."

  People in the crowd nodded to each other, the tension running away from them as they perhaps realized it was the kind of compromise they could live with. "Yes, that makes sense." Isobah heard the whispers around him, even as his gut screwed itself into a tight knot.

  "Let Gentian keep one, then," the Wavekeeper said, his smile that of some deadly sea creature, "but send the others to Damnation, to the slavers. Let them grow the two girls for parts and see what we can make of them in the future."

  Three priests of Gentian’s moved forward and placed their hands on the top of the girls’ heads. Isobah shifted uncomfortably. This was sometimes done to heretic children when their god was destroyed. Impossible to do in adults, it did at least prevent massacres of children.

  One of the three looked up. Her knotted hair fell to one side and her eyes locked with Isobah's. They were pure grey in color, very human, and awash with fear. These were not gods; they were just children, like Nyennoh had once been, Isobah realized.

  Still he watched as the priests muttered in the incantation, pressing the thumbs onto the girls’ foreheads. Their eyes rolled back in their heads and they swayed on their feet. This day would be lost to them, and the priests could say whatever they liked to them.

  The smart thing to do would have been to walk away, go back to his family, and let the congress have its way with the three girls. Yet, his goddess had not chosen him as her guardsman for his rational thoughts, she chose him for his bravery—and sometimes bravery meant doing the right thing even when it was not the cleverest thing. Isobah knew he would not have been the man Kiya loved if he merely stood in place.

  "Mariki disagrees on their fate," he said the words and followed up with action, moving forward free of the crowd, singling himself out for notice. "These are just children, nothing more, and their parents should be found before they are condemned to a life in the pits, or," —here he turned and stared directly at Gentian—"with the Stonekeeper."

  She folded her hands in the sleeves of her robe. "You should be silent, guardsman. Your Keeper elected not to participate in the competition of this congress, and thus she has no voice here."

  Isobah glanced into the crowd, which so far made no move to take hold of him. Among their number he saw Sauos, the banner man of his goddess. The look on his face was set and stern, but Isobah noticed he managed to position himself close by just in case. It was only a small comfort, but it was something.

  "We may not have built any homunculi, but in Penance every deity has a voice." Isobah turned to the crowd, and they began to nod in unison. It was the one thing still held sacred amongst all the warring temples. "And Mariki's will not be silenced by anyone from earth to sun."

  Gentian stood like a small, angry statue, glaring at him, perhaps judging the mood of those around. "We are the winners of this year's competition," she said finally. "And your Keeper should really have built a homunculus, instead of sending a pitiful guardsman to defend what remains of her honor."

  The creation at her side lurched suddenly to life. Isobah was not caught by surprise; he watched Gentian for the last three years, and though she was of the Earth, she was anything but slow and thoughtful. He slipped back from the homunculus, dodging under its massive swing easily enough.

  "A competition for the children, then!" The Arbiter's voice rose thin and reedy above the sudden cheers of the crowd. They were ready to be entertained after far too much thinking, Isobah realized.

  The guardsman had no time to decide how he felt about the particular turn of events because the homunculus came at him, and he had nothing with which to defend himself.

  He heard his name called and caught a glimpse of Sauos to the right tossing the banner to him. The egg-blue fabric fluttered uselessly, but the spear it was attached to was sturdy when he wrapped his fingers around it.

  As the homunculus swung again, Isobah deflected the blow, though the power of the blow took him down to one knee. The crowd around him was not allowing much room to move, and to survive the ferocity of the creation's attack, the guardsman needed to manoeuver. He caught a glimpse of the three children; one pulled back tight against the grinning Gentian, the second held tight by the Arbiter, but the third remained where she was placed, watching the battle unfurl around her. Isobah saw that same baffled look in Nyennoh's eyes.

  It was a moment of distraction and weakness that cost him dearly. The homunculus arched back and threw out one of its massive feet. The blow was enough to break even the stout spear of his goddess in half, but it saved his ribs from being crushed. Isobah had the breath knocked out from him, and found nowhere to roll away from the homunculus as it pinned him to the ground with one m
assive foot.

  He was only able to see a slice of what was going on. He heard the wail of a child—the first from any of the sisters—and then the surge of cries from the crowd of priests and priestesses. Some of them were delighted at his fall, others apparently horrified and calling out for mercy. None of that mattered to Isobah because he saw his family from that position. Even as the crushing weight of the homunculus bore down on him, his eyes locked on Kiya and Nyennoh.

  She was guiding their son away from the tumult. Tears ran down her cheeks, but then Isobah saw his wife push Nyennoh away from her deep into the crowd. They were well-matched, he and she; for she could not let an injustice happen either.

  Isobah couldn't look away as Kiya turned her beautiful face to the sky and spread her arms out wide so her cloak hung from her fingertips like wings. He wasn't surprised when a thousand gleaming insects leapt from within her clothing into the air. For an instant, it produced shining halo around her body, lending her the appearance of a devotional altar image of Mother-Sky.

  No priestess was supposed to bring progeny into Penance, but somehow Kiya knew they would be needed. She was always more prepared than he. The little bejeweled creations of emerald and sapphire sprang into the crowd, biting, stinging, perhaps poisoning as they went.

  Trapped beneath the homunculus, through the pain, Isobah smiled. He recalled her words: It is the smallest things people are most afraid of. The wolf has nothing on the terror one buzzing insect can cause.

  Everyone around Kiya began to run in blind panic, but Isobah, pinned in place like a collected insect, could only watch as his wife strode towards him, a calm eye in the center of the storm.

  In one of the strangest moments of his life, everything seemed to slow down. He observed in a strange dispassionate way the track of tears on his wife's cheek, the flutter of her cloak around her as she strode towards the children.

  Isobah stretched out his hand towards her, almost catching hold of her clothing as she passed him, for it was not her husband she set her eyes upon. While her progeny darted around, causing mayhem, Kiya snatched up one of the girls, and then she ran. Her lithe figure bobbed and weaved between the chaos the crowd had devolved into.