“So Idrian stories that talk about skeletal armies aren’t just fabrications?”

He chuckled. “Oh, they are. If you wanted to Awaken a skeleton, you’d have to arrange all the bones together in their correct places. That’s a lot of work for something that will take upwards of fifty or a hundred Breaths to Awaken. Intact corpses make far more sense economically, even if the Breath sticks to them so well that it becomes impossible to recover. Still, I’ve seen some very interesting things done with skeletons which have been Awakened.

“Anyway, Type Three entities—regular Awakened objects—are different. BioChroma doesn’t stick to them very well at all. The result is that they require quite a bit of Investiture—often well over a hundred Breaths—to Awaken them. The benefit of this, of course, is that the Breath can be drawn back out again. This has allowed for quite a bit more experimentation, and that has resulted in a more comprehensive understanding of Awakening techniques.”

“You mean the Commands?” Vivenna asked.

“Right,” Vasher said. “As you’ve seen, most basic Commands work easily. If the Command is something the object could do, and you state it in a simple way, the Command will usually work.”

“I tried some simple Commands,” she said. “On the rope. They didn’t work.”

“Those may have sounded simple, but they weren’t. Simple Commands are only two words long. Grab something. Hold something. Move up. Move down. Twist around. Even some two-word Commands can be more complicated, and it takes practice visualizing—or, well, imagining. Well, using your mind to—”

“I understand that part,” she said. “Like flexing a muscle.”

He nodded. “The Command ‘Protect me,’ though only two words, is extremely complicated. So are others, like Fetch something. You have to give the right impulse to the object. This area is where you really begin to understand how little we know. There are probably thousands of Commands we don’t know. The more words you add, the more complicated the mental component becomes, which is why discovering a new Command can take years of study.”

“Like the discovery of a new Command to make Lifeless,” she said thoughtfully. “Three hundred years ago, those who had the one-Breath Command could make their Lifeless much more cheaply than those who didn’t. That disparity started the Manywar.”

“Yes,” Vasher said. “Or, at least, that was part of what caused the war. It’s not really important. The thing to understand is that we’re still children when it comes to Awakening. It doesn’t help that a lot of people who learn new, valuable Commands never share them, and probably die with the knowledge.”

Vivenna nodded, noticing how his lesson grew more relaxed and conversational as he got into the topic. His expertise surprised her.

He sits on the floor, she thought, eating a dry piece of squid, not having shaven in weeks and wearing clothing that looks like it’s about to fall off. Yet he talks like a scholar giving a lecture. He carries a sword that leaks black smoke and causes people to kill each other, yet he works so hard to stop a war. Who is this man?

She glanced to the side, to where Nightblood sat leaning against the wall. Perhaps it was the discussion of the technical aspects of BioChroma, or perhaps it was simply her growing suspicion. She was beginning to understand what wasn’t right about the sword.

“What is a Type Four BioChromatic entity?” Vivenna asked, glancing back at Vasher.

He fell silent.

“Type One is a human body with sentience,” Vivenna said. “Type Two is a human body without sentience. Type three is an Awakened object like a rope—an object with no sentience. Is there a way to create an Awakened object with sentience? Like a Returned, but inside of something other than a human body?”

Vasher stood. “We’ve covered enough for one day.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“And I’m not going to,” he said. “And I advise you never to ask it again. Understand?” He glanced at her, and she felt a chill at the harshness in his voice.

“All right,” she said, though she didn’t glance away.

He snorted to himself, then reached into his large pack, yanking something out. “Here,” he said. “I brought you something.”

He tossed a long, cloth-wrapped object to the floor. Vivenna stood, walking over to pull the cloth off. Inside was a thin, well-polished dueling blade.

“I don’t know how to use one of these,” she said.

“Then learn,” he replied. “If you know how to fight, you’ll be far less annoying to have around. I won’t have to keep pulling you out of trouble all the time.”

She flushed. “One time.”

“It’ll happen again,” he said.

She hesitantly picked up the sheathed sword, surprised at how light it was.

“Let’s go,” Vasher said. “I’ve got another group for us to visit.”

47

Lightsong tried not to think about his dreams. He tried not to think about T’Telir in flames. Of people dying. Of the world, essentially, ending.

He stood on the second story of his palace, looking over the Court of Gods. The second story was essentially a covered roof, open on all sides. Wind blew through his hair. The sun was close to setting. Already, torches were arrayed on the lawn. It was so perfect. The palaces set in a circle, lit by torches and lanterns matching the colors of the nearest building.

Some of the palaces were dark; the buildings that currently held no gods.

What would happen if too many others Returned before we killed ourselves? he thought idly. Would they build more palaces? As far as he knew, there had always been enough space.

At the head of the court sat the God King’s palace, tall and black. It had obviously been built so that it would dominate even the extravagant mansions of the others, and it threw a wide, warped shadow across the back wall.

Perfect. So perfect. The torches were arranged in patterns he could only see by standing atop a building. The grass was kept manicured, and the massive wall tapestries were replaced often so that they showed no wear, stains, or fading.

The people put forth such effort for their gods. Why? Sometimes it baf-ed him. But what to think of other faiths, ones with no visible gods, only incorporeal imaginings or wishes? Surely those ‘gods’ did even less for their people than the Hallandren court, yet they still were worshipped.

Lightsong shook his head. Meeting with Allmother had reminded him of days he hadn’t thought of in a long time. Calmseer. She had been his mentor when he’d first Returned. Blushweaver was jealous of his memories of her, but she didn’t understand the truth. Nor could he, really, explain it. Calmseer had come closer to being a divinity than any Returned Lightsong had known. She’d cared for her followers much as Allmother now tried to do, but there had been genuine concern in Calmseer’s regard. She hadn’t helped the people because she feared that they would stop worshiping, and she had no arrogance of presumed superiority.

Real kindness. Real love. Real mercy.

Yet even Calmseer had felt inadequate. She had often said she felt guilty because she couldn’t live up to what people expected. How could she? How could anyone? In the end, he suspected this was what drove her to answer a petition. There had only been one way, in her estimation, to be the goddess everyone demanded she be. And that was to give up her life.

They push us into it, Lightsong thought. They craft all of this splendor and luxury, they give us whatever we desire, then they subtly poke at us. Be a god. Prophesy. Maintain our illusion for us.

Die. Die so that we can keep believing.

He usually stayed off his roof. He preferred to be down below, where the limited perspective made it so much easier to ignore the larger view. So much easier to focus on simple things, like his life in the moment.

“Your Grace?” Llarimar asked quietly, approaching.

Lightsong didn’t reply.

“Are you all right, Your Grace?”

“No man should be this important,” Lightsong said.

“Your Grace?” Llarimar asked, walking up beside him.

“It does strange things to you. We weren’t built for it.”

“You’re a god, Your Grace. You were built for it.”

“No,” he said. “I’m no god.”

“Excuse me, but you don’t really get to choose. We worship you, and that makes you our god.” Llarimar spoke the words in his usual calm fashion. Didn’t the man ever get upset?

“You’re not helping.”

“I apologize, Your Grace. But perhaps you should stop arguing about the same old things.”

Lightsong shook his head. “This is something different today. I’m not sure what to do.”

“You mean about Allmother’s Commands?”

Lightsong nodded. “I thought I had it figured out, Scoot. I can’t keep up with all of the things Blushweaver is plotting—I’ve never been good at details.”

Llarimar didn’t respond.

“I was going to give it up,” Lightsong said. “Allmother was doing a fantastic job of standing up for herself. I figured that if I gave her my Commands, then she’d know what to do. She’d understand if it’s better to support Blushweaver or oppose her.”

“You could still just let her,” Llarimar said. “You gave her your Commands too.”

“I know,” Lightsong said.

They fell silent.

So it comes down to this, he thought. The first of us who changes those Commands takes control of all twenty thousand. The other will be locked out.

What did he choose? Did he sit back and let history happen, or did he jump in and make a mess of it?

Whoever you are, he thought, whatever is out there that sent me back, why couldn’t you just let me be? I’d already lived one life. I’d already made my choices. Why did you have to send me back?

He’d tried everything, and yet people still looked to him. He knew for a fact that he was one of the most popular Returned, visited by more petitioners and given more art than almost anyone else. Honestly, he thought. What is wrong with these people? Were they so in need of something to worship that they chose him rather than worry that their religion might be false?

Allmother claimed that some did think that. She worried about the perceived lack of faith among the common people. Lightsong wasn’t certain he agreed with her. He knew of the theories—that the gods who lived the longest were the weak ones because the system encouraged the best to sacrifice themselves quickly. However, the same number of petitioners came to him now as when he first started. Plus, too few gods were chosen on a whole for that to be statistically valid.

Or was he just distracting himself with irrelevant details? He leaned on the railing, looking out over the green and its glowing pavilions.

This could be the crowning moment for him. He could finally prove himself to be an indolent wastrel. It was perfect. If he did nothing, then Allmother would be forced to take up the armies and resist Blushweaver.

Was that what he wanted? Allmother kept herself isolated from the other gods. She didn’t attend many court assemblies and didn’t listen to the debates. Blushweaver was intimately involved. She knew every god and goddess well. She understood the issues, and she was very clever. Of all of the gods, only she had begun taking steps to secure their armies.