He swallowed and held his ground as the nothingness took on presence and he felt the regard of a vast intelligence that existed at once in multiple places, multiple times. She had seen the birth of creation. She would see it end.
“The Cycle turns,” she said.
He felt her cold hands on him, felt the spark of divinity within him answer to its original owner’s touch. She had taken her favorite form among many—a pale-skinned maiden with black hair that fell to her waist. The emptiness of the void yawned in her eyes. He looked at a point on her face below her eyes—he dared not look into those eyes lest he see his fate. The slash of her red lips against the paleness of her face struck him as obscene.
“I am come to pay my debt,” he said, and bowed his head. He found his form quaking. In her presence he experienced the frailties he had not felt since his ascension. The experience pleased him.
She ran a hand through his hair, put her forehead to his.
“Your debt is long overdue. Mere repayment is inadequate recompense. Surely you know this, Lessinor.”
He had not heard his birth name spoken in so long its pronouncement caused him to look up into his mother’s eyes … and regret it.
He saw there the oblivion of non-existence, the emptiness that awaited him. He had not wished to see it. He had wished it only to happen, one moment existence, one moment non-existence. He did not wish to know.
The frailties endemic to his one-time humanity resurfaced. His body shook. He did not wish to end. He did not wish to know what “end” meant. All that he had done, all that he had been, for nothing.
Or perhaps not. This time, he kept the hope from his face.
“Ah,” his mother said, and sighed with satisfaction. “You see it now, here, at the end of things.”
He nodded.
“Interest is due on your debt, my son.”
He nodded once more. He had expected as much and prepared. In the millennia in which he had been worshiped the faith of his followers had made him something greater than that which he had initially stolen from her. That she knew. But she did not know its scope, and that he had hidden some.
“I am come to pay that, as well … Lady.”
He could not bring himself to name her his mother. She had possessed a vessel to birth a herald, nothing more.
“I know,” she said, and drew him to her in an embrace. Her arms enfolded him, cooled him. She stroked his hair, cooed. He put his head on her shoulder and wept.
Only then did he realize that he was cooling, that his power was leeching away, that the void he had seen in her eyes was coming for him. He gripped her tighter, closed his eyes, but could not dismiss the image of the end that awaited him.
“Shh,” she hissed, and held him tightly.
He was sinking, disappearing in her vastness, entering the void. Non-existence yawned before him. He tried to speak, to rebel at the final moment, but could not escape her grasp.
Darkness closed in on him. He tried to enter the void with hope in his heart, recalling that he, the son of the Lady of Secrets, had kept a secret from—
EPILOGUE
9 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)
The ghosts of the past haunt my mind, specters of memory that manifest in sadness. I run an alehouse in Daerlun, now. It is a small thing but small things are all I find myself suited to now. My appearance startles no one in these days; most have seen creatures more exotic than me. I fill cups, tell jokes, hire bards, and try to brighten a few spirits in otherwise dark times. I call my place The Tenth Hell and the caravaneers and hireswords who stream through Daerlun seem to like the name.
The Tenth is my personal Hell, I tell them, and they think I am making a joke, given my horns and obvious fiendish lineage. But I do not mean it as a joke.
One hundred years have passed since Erevis Cale died. There have been other landmarks in my life since then, other tragedies, but his loss remains the most painful, the point that defines the “after” in my life. He sacrificed himself to save me when I did not merit saving. For that, I owe him what I am. And I owe it to him to be worthy of