Page 90 of Jailer to the Death God
Macha’s sly grin shifts into a glare.
“I don’t understand why you can’t see it. How similar we are, the two of us. Your domain is death, and mine is war. The two are intimately linked. If you weren’t so stubborn, the two of us could share Annwn. Think of what we could do! Why, you have an entire ready-made army at your disposal, brother. An army of the dead! We could overrun the entire mortal plane—or any of the other gods’ realms.”
Alarm sparks in my heart, drowning my amusement. “You are speaking of a war that would destroy the universe.”
“I’m tired of mortal wars. They’re so—little. I need something bigger, Arawn. I’m so dreadfully bored. Aren’t you?”
“No. I was at peace before my summoning, and now I feel—awake. As if my true existence has just begun.”
She straightens on the throne, staring at me. “All because of that mortal? She’s nothing but milk-skin and bone-sticks, brother.”
“This isn’t about what she looks like,” I growl. “Though I happen to find her beautiful. This is about who she is. Beauty of soul. Something you do not possess, if you ever did.”
I hold her gaze, and suddenly I see deeper into Macha’s nature than I ever have.
She isn’t just bored, as she says. She is hollow. Empty. Barren and aching—a vast, seared wasteland, an expanse void of pity or passion. A ravening wilderness.
“What happened to you?” The question breaks from me before I can stop it.
Her eyes and face go instantly, blankly dead. So muchnothingstares out at me from those eyes that I feel a crawling horror, a dread beyond death. I want to scream. I, the god of death, am momentarily terrified.
“The bitch-princess of Yurstin collected some of my blood once.” Macha’s voice is as hollow as her gaze. “I thought it was merely bloodplay during sex. But she kept some, and paid someone to spell a knife with it. When she said she was leaving me, I attacked her, and she grazed me with the knife’s edge. Barely a scratch, but you know what a godsblood knife does to one of our kind. Instant annihilation if it pierces anything vital. Even a brush with our skin sends us into immediate unconsciousness.”
She drags her fingernails down her own face, opening deep grooves. She doesn’t seem to notice the pain.
“I was blown back into my realm, where I lay unconscious for several years of mortal time. When I finally recovered and woke, I was—different. Something had been taken from me by that knife. I’d lost who I was. I went to wreak my vengeance on my ex-lover, but she had protected herself too well. It took some thought and planning to devise this scheme and take her life. I wanted to get into her palace and watch her die—to let her see my face so she would know who killed her. But she had some ancient ritual laid about the place, so I could not enter. I still can’t. But no matter—she isn’t there anymore. She’s here.”
“You don’t merely crave excitement and an undead army,” I say slowly. “When you’re the ruler of Annwn, you will be able to reach the souls beyond the Furnace. You want that power, so you can find your old lover and tell her of your great vengeance.”
“Now you understand.” Macha smiles at me, brightly, falsely. “I must look her in the eyes and tell her how many people I killed just to secure her doom. I must tell her the dreadful fate of her adopted kingdom. And I must ensure that she suffers exquisite torture for eternity. I want all of these things,andI crave a war to end the worlds.”
She tips back her head with an exultant, almost orgasmic sigh, and her body shudders. “That would be perfection. And I want you, Arawn. You and I could bring a cataclysm of ruin upon the universe, then rise as Queen and King of a new age. We will make our own race of gods, design new creatures to populate new worlds. Then I will be full again.” White fingers clutch her chest, spastic and clawed, while her eyes gleam with a manic brightness. “Then I will be—something. Not this echoing void, Arawn, not this endlessnothing.”
My chest tightens. I think I pity her.
My sister may not realize it, but she and Vale are similar in one key respect. They have both experienced great loss.
The difference is how they responded to it.
“This is not how you reclaim yourself, Macha,” I tell her. “Wreckage and ruin, vengeance and violence—it can be satisfying when wrought upon those who have truly wronged you. But your princess of Yurstin made a fair choice, one that was hers to make. She did not hurt you until you attacked her. And you have slaughtered far too many innocents on your way to avenge the wound she gave you. No wonder none of it satisfies. It is unjust, unruly, and unforgivable.”
Macha rises from the throne, slamming her black staff on the ground. Her dark eyes flash suddenly scarlet.
“Always the judge,” she sneers. “Arawn the Just, the Great Balancer and Decider of Eternal Fates. You have always thought yourself better than the rest of us. That’s why we hate you, you know. We can feel the judgment rolling off you in sickening waves.”
“I am better than you, but not for the reasons I once thought,” I reply. “And what I am does not absolve you of responsibility. If our sibling gods would think less of their own glory and pleasure, and more about the needs of the humans—”
“I am sosickof humans.” Her upper lip hitches in a snarl. “Frail, mewling, faithless, paltry creatures. They disgust me. And you reek of humanity, Arawn. You reek of the slime from your whore’s sloppy gash. You smell like her ever-rotting flesh, like her plague-spotted tongue.”
A tremor of thunderous rage races through me. My bond with Vale tugs at me, growing stronger with every passing second, but I stand firm.
“Leave my realm, Macha,” I say.
She smirks, lying back on her throne again. “Why don’t you make me?”
I had thought myself weaker than her. And I am weaker than usual, suppressed by the summoning ritual and its added effects. But I’ve seen inside the goddess of war, and I know the emptiness that lies where her strength used to be.
Gods draw power from many places—our realms, the stars, the darkness, our intrinsic nature, the fulfillment of our assigned roles in the universe.
