The Nightborn by Isabel Cooper (howl and other poems TXT) 📗

able to destroy without effort, even completely by accident. He had a second to wonder if the Sentinels ever sparred using their swords, and if so, how any of them survived.

Then the voice was in his head again, still with the sense of shouting from a long way off or over other noise.

Are you still hers?

In shock, he looked to Branwyn, utterly confused that the sword would pick that moment to ask about their affairs, and that either Yathana or Branwyn would have chosen the language of possession.

You didn’t have the choice. Now you do. Are you hers? The sword went on, and as the white things crawled over the rim of the pit, Zelen realized that he’d heard the pronoun wrong: not hers but Hers. No mortal woman, not even Branwyn, was the subject of discussion here.

Once he’d worked that out, the answer was easy. “Of course.”

Say your full name. Hold on as well as you can.

Not understanding, not needing to understand, Zelen began, “Zelen Sienatav Catalzin Verengir—” and it felt as though he should go on, say more, but first there was no more to say and then there was no him to say it with.

It was as though Yathana had pulled aside a set of drapes, spilling radiant midday light into the dark room that had been Zelen’s entire being. The speck that remained of his consciousness cringed, but marveled too: pain was only a small part of what he sensed, even of the fraction that any mortal could have put into words.

There was a presence and a pattern.

They emerged from each other and became each other again. Maybe they were never different. Was a flame different from the fire?

They were flame and fire. They were blood, tears, seed, and sweat, purification and destruction and birth, all the tides of rage and pain and desire that ran bone-deep in most mortal life.

Letar was the name he knew. Any name or gender seemed inadequate in the face of that flood, though—a lantern to contain a midsummer bonfire—even if the being overwhelming him had once put on both. There were traces of that self in the presence, as there were flashes of the features Zelen had seen on stained-glass windows, but traces were all they were.

The pattern was all that lived, from Branwyn to the moss on the outside of the wall to a scuttling creature far beneath the ocean. Zelen couldn’t approach that understanding, but he sensed for a second the depth of the god’s knowledge. It encompassed all lives—their choices, their changes, their deaths, all winding around one another and shaping each other, even from leagues and years away.

There was a beauty to that pattern that would’ve blinded any mortal. There was, within and around Zelen, an utterly shattering love for that creation and each part of it, for every bit of life that did the best it could in its own way and thus took part in the great, ever-shifting splendor of the world. The god could only make a few adjustments, minor in the scheme of things, but they did what they could to heal, to protect, and to shelter at the end. They always, eternally, loved.

With that love came hatred, unbounded and implacable, for whatever would harm any part of that creation—whether a segment that turned against the whole or a force from outside. Life could make many choices. Most balanced. Some did not. Some splintered the beings who’d made them, destroyed their better selves, and rotted their surroundings. For those decisions, for those threats, there was no mercy.

In that awareness, Gedomir and Hanyi were scabbed wounds, loathsome but already closing.

The rift was different. The rift was abomination.

The god didn’t use Zelen’s vision to view it. He doubted his eyes could’ve handled such use. Instead he was an anchor, an opening, a lens. He felt awareness move through him, or around him, in the direction of the pit, and knew the dim echo of anger that could split the world in half.

If there had been words, they would’ve been in a voice like the crackle of flames and the gush of blood, even-toned but with each syllable carrying a mountain of hatred.

That should not be would have been the closest a mortal could come.

It was speech, thought, and action all at once.

* * *

The rift wavered.

Branwyn wasn’t sure what that meant. Her initial response was to take a step back and raise her sword, or Zelen’s sword—not Yathana, but a decent blade for all that—in case the hole was growing again. She nearly grabbed Zelen’s shoulder to pull him backwards as well.

A finger’s width away, her hand stopped, as if she’d reached unknowingly for new-forged steel and felt the heat. This sensation wasn’t quite heat, though, or pain. Branwyn couldn’t name it. She knew it was nothing to meddle with.

The tendrils acted then. One whipped down toward Branwyn, while another lashed at Zelen’s head. Branwyn lunged, striking the white filament out of the air in front of Zelen. It fell smoking to the floor. The other one snapped across her right shoulder and down her side, leaving a long trail of stinging venom.

She choked off a scream, wanting neither to distract Zelen nor to give the creatures in the pit any satisfaction.

In pain, she reverted to the routines she’d practiced: strike and retreat. Branwyn’s weight fell back onto her rear foot, her shoulders rose, and she turned again to the rift, ready for the next enemy to emerge.

The hole in the world was shrinking.

Gray-orange light above a small part of the rift lost the gray. The orange then deepened to red, then winked out, leaving solid stone behind it. The change spread from there, one patch of radiance shifting and shrinking at a time, forcing the remaining tendrils backwards, closing the gap.

She dared to glance at Zelen for more than the second she’d spared to establish his whereabouts before. He was standing perfectly still, holding Yathana before him in a trembling grip, although he