Alisiyad Chapter 30 ~ Immense Power

Russ shoved food into his mouth without really tasting it.  Ricalli sat across from him silently, watching every movement.  It turned his stomach, but he ate anyway, knowing rather than feeling that his hunger demanded it.  There was bread, cold chicken, and some vegetables that he couldn’t really identify.  He supposed it tasted good, washed down with cold water (he’d been offered wine but refused it, afraid of getting too relaxed) but he wasn’t in the mood to enjoy it.

“I can tell that you dislike this world,” Ricalli said, speaking for the first time since Russ had begun to eat.  They were in a small, office-like room inside the temple.  There was a glass cabinet with esoteric artwork inside it behind a desk, and there were book shelves on the wall, along with shelves of jars and other things Russ didn’t want to dwell on.  Ricalli sat at the desk, and looked very out of place doing so.  Russ suspected this enclave belonged to one of the dead high priests, perhaps Ozun, who had been the head of the order.

He snorted in answer.

“Then we have something in common.”

“I don’t really think so.”

“No.”  Ricalli leaned his elbows on the desk.  “No, we do.  I have lived in this wretched place for thousands of years.  You can’t even imagine the degree to which I hate it.  Look at me, I was a real god once . . . now I’m reduced to settling the problems of my inept followers.  If you think all these rituals and blood potions my offspring are obsessed with were my idea you’d be mistaken.  I despise this all.”

He sighed heavily, sitting back.

“It’s all so dreary.  Yes, yes, they call me the god of shadows and darkness.  And that is my specialty, you might say — clouding the mind, obscuring the light, moving with the darkness.  That isn’t dreary, far from it, there is a certain . . . a certain glamour in it.  But it’s wasted on these people.  You don’t know how many times I’ve entertained the thought of just wiping every last one of them from the face of the earth.  But I don’t.  Why?  Well they are my offspring . . . .”

He paused, as if trying to drum up another reason not to smite them, but then shrugged.

“I am the only one of my kind left.  Pure, no human blood.  My brother and sister, my parents, uncles, aunts . . . grandparents . . . they’ve all faded away or left this world.”

Russ guessed that Ricalli expected him to ask why he alone remained, but instead he mumbled around a drumstick, “I’m having a hard time being sympathetic.”

“I don’t expect sympathy.  Sympathy is for the weak, the human,” Ricalli looked down on him in distaste.

“Well, that would be me.”  Russ shrugged.

“What I expect,” Ricalli said, leaning forward again, “is your cooperation.  You are a Key.  I want to get out of this world; more than that, I want to travel through all the worlds.  I know they are out there.  I want to see them all.”

“You mean you want to rule them all, striking fear in the hearts of weakling humans everywhere.”

“You haven’t been paying attention.”  Ricalli shook his head.  “I rule here.  I strike fear in the hearts of weakling humans here.  I’m tired of it.  Unless you have ruled, you have no idea just how miserable it is.”

“A real pain in the ass,” Russ supplemented.

“Indeed.  I want to travel to worlds where I am free from any responsibility, where I don’t have these idiots hanging around my neck, summoning me to settle every matter that arises.  I killed the imposter because she annoyed me.  I sentenced her to the Ritual of Osvira because I thought it would please my priests, who were ashamed of themselves for falling for her lies.  I don’t really care about any of this.”

“Obviously.  All you care about is yourself.”

Ricalli raised his eyebrows.  “And why shouldn’t I?  I am the only one I have known for these thousands of years.  I am the only one who remains.  I’ve watched as the generations go by, and humans get weaker and weaker, the blood of the gods thinning with each mating.  When I was young, I was surrounded by half-gods who lived for hundreds of years, and back then I thought I cared about the people around me. . . .  But they all drop away like flies sooner or later.  What does it matter if you live for a hundred years or a thousand, you mortals will be dead and gone eventually, and I will remain, so why should I care?”

“I dunno.  Maybe you wouldn’t be so miserable.  Maybe people would like you.”

Ricalli just laughed.

Russ looked at his empty plate, with only a few cleaned off chicken bones left, and asked, “Well if the other gods left, why haven’t you?”

“The Gates are barred to me.”

“And you think I can get you through one.”  Russ thought it unlikely . . . the Gates were living creatures, if they didn’t want Ricalli to get through, he wouldn’t get through.  He told him so.

“It’s not that,” Ricalli said.  “I am the son of the two gods, Auchai and Aldia.  Brother and sister.  How did your charming friend put it?  We turned out ‘strange.’  Byzauki and Osvira and I.  As children we were shunned by our half-human cousins, because we were the product of a forbidden union.  Well, shunned by all except Erykumi, who was Zalisha and Thyvid’s bastard.  We had that in common, the four of us were outcasts.  But we showed the rest of them.  Who are the Powers descended from?  Us.  The Ricallyn, Osviran, Byzaukyn, and our High Servants, the Erykumyn.  Our children lived longer than our cousin’s children, we outlived our cousins.  Our offspring have ruled over their offspring for thousands of years.”

“I thought they were at war with each other.  The Powers, I mean.”

“Yes, because they’re idiots,” Ricalli’s tone changed abruptly.  “And they’ve made this world unlivable.  Yes, I know, it’s the Ricallyn who rule with an iron fist these days, but it’s all their faults.  If the Byzaukyn and Osviran hadn’t gone at each other’s throats for so song, they wouldn’t have weakened themselves so the Ricallyn could beat them both.  And the Ricallyn wouldn’t have been smart enough for that if I hadn’t still been here to guide them.”

“I still don’t understand why you couldn’t leave.”

“Do I have to spell it out for you?  Inbred.  My mother and father were brother and sister, something that should never have happened.  All the others of my kind, Azmanvalli and Zalisha and their seven children, have the power to travel between worlds.  They don’t even need Gates, they can be Gates if they choose.  But I’m not.  I have their immortality but not their extensive powers.”

“I figured that part out,” Russ said, a little miffed at constantly being called stupid.  “But where is your brother and sister?  Didn’t you say they left?”

“They’ve faded away,” Ricalli said grimly.  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh.”

“So,” Ricalli became businesslike again.  “What do you say?  Do you agree to transport me from world to world?  I could make it profitable for you.  As my servant you wouldn’t encounter the kind of difficulties with the natives that you did here.”

“How do you know that?  How do you know there aren’t more powerful gods in other worlds?”

Ricalli smiled.  “Gods only give you trouble if you get in their way, you would never have even encountered me had you not run into my people first.  And I don’t care how powerful the god they follow, there isn’t a human or any other mortal creature that I could not handle.”

Russ shifted uncomfortably in his chair, eyes trailing despite himself to a human skull resting on a shelf.

“Well?” Ricalli prompted.  “I don’t see that you have much of a choice in this.  If you refuse I will just kill you.”

“I’ll do it,” Russ turned back to him and surveyed him with eyes half closed, the best poker face he cold manage.  “But on one condition.”

“Oh?”  One eyebrow went up.

“The first world I want to go to is Alisiya.  There’s someone waiting for me there and I promised her I’d come back.”

“Alisiya . . . why is this world called that?  Is Alisiya there?  Does she rule it?”

“Um, no.  I mean I don’t think so.  I didn’t seem like it.”

“Then why is it named after her?”

Russ shrugged.  “Nostalgia?  I mean, if you know about Leeton, you know he took a whole bunch of Adayzjians with him when he escaped this world.  That’s where they settled, and they named it that.”

“Yes, Leeton.  I’d almost forgotten,” Ricalli sat back and put one hand to his chin.  “I never got along with Alisiya.  Well, I never got along with any of my aunts and uncles, but she was particularly unbearable.  So it’s good that she isn’t there.  But I don’t know if I want to go anywhere that this Leeton is.  After all, I just killed his daughter.”

“He’s only a man.”

“You seemed sure that he’d be able to kill us all, a little while ago.”

“I was just saying that to try and stop you,” Russ admitted.  “You said yourself there isn’t a mortal creature you can’t handle.”

“Yes.  But why should I take the risk?  You have to agree to my wishes, or I will just kill you.  You’re not in a position to set conditions.” Ricalli’s eye glinted dangerously.  But Russ wasn’t about to back down.

“You asked before what it would take to keep me happy.  Obviously you don’t want to travel all over the worlds with someone who’s pissed off at you, do you?”

“You are already pissed off at me, as you put it.”

Russ shrugged.  “I don’t like what you did to Alisiya.  But then I don’t like what she did to a lot of other people.”

“And so you sat by and let her take her punishment.”

Russ felt a stab of guilt and said, “That’s not what I meant.  I just meant that even though she’d done things that were wrong . . . I didn’t want her to die . . . and stuff . . . .”

“Well yes, but I fail to see what that has to do with me.  She was a beautiful woman beset by evil men, I doubt that I will ever be a woman beset by evil men.  You pitied her despite what she’d done, because it’s in your nature.  That much was obvious to me when the first thing you asked for was the release of those scrawny, ill-kempt girls.  I will never be a damsel in distress — which brings me back to the point that you think I’m a despicable monster and would do a happy dance if you got rid of me, yet I am proposing we spend a great deal of time together; the rest of your natural life.  I’ll never make you ‘like’ me or ‘respect’ me or any of those pitiful human concerns.  My objective is not to be friends with you, you are to be my slave and the reward you’ll get is staying alive.”

Russ sat through the little speech, wanting to interrupt a few times but holding his tongue.  When Ricalli was finally done, he replied, “You asked me before what it would take to keep me happy.  We’re not going to be ‘friends’ but if you want to keep me happy, so I won’t make every step of our travels as fuckin’ miserable as I possibly can, you’ll let me take you to Alisiya first.”

“Who is this person you are so eager to return to?”

Russ was silent.  He didn’t want to tell Ricalli about Liseli.  He wasn’t planning on them meeting, he was planning on either leaving a discombobulated Ricalli behind to be lost forever in the Edgeworld, or letting the Gate do whatever she wanted to with him.  He took a breath to steady himself, reminding himself that Ricalli wouldn’t actually be getting to meet Liseli, so it couldn’t hurt to answer the question.

“Her name is Liseli.  She’s my . . . .”  He hesitated.  ‘Girlfriend’ seemed too weak a word.

“Your woman,” Ricalli supplied.  “There will plenty of women in other worlds.  I don’t plan on hauling her along everywhere we go.”

Russ gritted his teeth.  “I promised her I’d come back.”

“And what are you going to do when it’s time to leave again?  I don’t plan on staying in any one world for too long.  Your life will be too short for much lingering, I want to travel as far as I can before I’m stuck in some world waiting for another Key to come my way.”

“I suppose,” Russ said slowly, “I’ll have to tell her goodbye for good.  But I promised I would come back, this time.”

Ricalli eyed him darkly, as if he could see through the lie, and could tell that Russ didn’t plan on saying goodbye to Liseli ever again.  “I won’t take your woman with us, that’s one too many frail humans for me to look after.  I said I’m sick of being responsible for all these tiresome people.  You’ll be enough as an annoyance as is, necessary as you are.”

Russ fixed his gaze on the desktop and shrugged.  “I promised.”

“I don’t like the idea of going anywhere near this Leeton and his dogs,” Ricalli said firmly.  “It will be too much trouble just to let you have a tender goodbye with your sweetheart.”  He said the words “tender” and “sweetheart” as if they tasted bad.

Russ said nothing, and silence lingered between them.

“Is she pretty?  Is she good in bed?”

Russ looked up, wanting to strangle Ricalli.  Before he could spit something out, though, Ricalli finished, “Because the worlds are full of pretty young women with legs easily spread, I’m sure.  You’ll be kept more than happy.  After all, one woman must get tiresome to be around, not to mention old and worn out, after a while.”

“Don’t.  Talk.  About.  Her,” Russ managed through gritted teeth.  He wanted to jump over the desk and throttle Ricalli, but was kept in his seat by the knowledge that the god could cave his head in with one punch.

Ricalli just laughed.  “I won’t.  We won’t talk about her ever again, I don’t care.  I—”

Suddenly the door burst open so hard it slammed into the wall and shuddered back, crooked on its hinges.  The glass doors on the cabinet behind Ricalli flew apart; the panes shattered and the latch shot out to strike him in the back.  The god jumped, in a very un-godlike manner, covering his head as glass rained down on his back.

Russ leapt backwards in his chair as a desk drawer came hurtling towards him.  He moved his elbow into its path just before it socked him in the stomach, then jerked his throbbing arm away with a curse.  The jars on the shelves shot their lids off like rockets, denting the walls and desk as they landed.  One lid collided with Russ’s hand as he lifted it to shield his face; it hurt like hell and left a bleeding wound between his knuckles.

Then all was still, except for the noise of a lid spinning like a wobbly top on the floor.

“What was that?” Russ cradled his hand against his chest and looked around warily.  Ricalli stood up and moved out from behind the desk, shaking bits of glass from his hair.

“A god . . . or a Key,” he responded slowly, moving toward the door.  “It would have to be a Key of immense power, though, to do something like this.”

“Leeton,” Russ said, filled with sudden certainty.

Ricalli turned and looked at him as if he didn’t comprehend.

“Leeton,” Russ repeated.  “It has to be him.  He’s here.”

He paused; Ricalli turned back to the door.

“And I think he knows what you did to his daughter . . . .”