Chapter 348 - The Body Politic part 6

The sky was dark with clouds, the moon a faint glow on the shoulder of Mount Asharoth, but Penthos was a carnival of torches. The shimmering lights radiated from the base of the mountain like fiery spokes. In the further darkness, beyond the city proper, were dimly glowing patches, which marked the handful of satellite villages that had sprung up around the city while I was away. This web of glinting lights would have looked surprisingly familiar to any modern day human, if he or she could hop into a time machine and set the dial for 25,000 A.D..

We met our escort at the foot of the mountain—that was the errand Zenzele had sent Eris on earlier—and proceeded towards the city, wending our way through a corridor of pine trees and strangely shaped outcrops of gray stone. We called the trail the Path of the Guardians, as the stones had the appearance of brooding figures. Bhorg had come out with the escort to meet us, and walked at my side as we entered the district of the blood drinkers. We needed the escort to part the crowds that were sure to gather around us, like metal fillings drawn to a magnet. Bhorg wanted to see how I was getting along. We had become close during our travels through Eastern Europe. I had great respect for the hulking barbarian.

"It seems the union was successful," the big blood drinker said, eyeing me curiously. His massive stone hammer, as ever, sat propped across his shoulder. "You are able to move and feel as you did before?"

"Not as before," I confessed. "This new body feels very strange to me. My limbs do not always move as I intend them to move."

"You're much shorter as well," Bhorg said, and I saw the corner of his mouth twitch ever so slightly upwards.

"That is true," I said, looking blandly ahead.

The captain of the guard was a powerful blood drinker called Rayna. She pressed ahead of us into the swelling crowd, pushing back the curious with the shaft of her spear, ordering them to make way for the Mother and the Father. She had a lean and muscular physique and plaited gold hair. I remembered her vaguely from before. She was one of Zenzele's blood children, and fiercely loyal to my soul mate.

The blood drinkers of Penthos moved obediently aside at her brusque commands, but they did not disperse. They were too curious, too astounded by my renewal. They stared and murmured in disbelief as I strode through the crowd. Only the previous night, I had been a disembodied head, gaping vacuously at them as I was bore through the city.

"The prophecy is true!" they gasped. "He is whole again! The Father has been reborn!"

Their voices fluttered around us like swarming insects. I ignored the susurrations of the crowd, concentrating instead on the movements of my body. I could not falter before my people. It was paramount that their confidence in me be upheld, that they have no uncertainties.

Strange to think of them as "my people", this vast and diverse city-state, but that is what they were. They belonged to me and I to them. It was almost as though they had become an extension of my being: the armies my fists, the temple my heart, the traffic winding through the avenues the lifeblood surging through my veins. My surrender to the God King had very nearly killed this wondrous superorganism. But that crisis was past. Asharoth would live. Time now to regroup, and to heal the injuries that had been visited on the collective psyche of my people. And the only way to do that was to be seen, to be strong, and to lead them once again-- the Divided God reborn!

I make it sound so simple, and myself so noble! The truth was far from simple, and I was only pretending at nobility. I was no king. I was not even a very good warrior. I was just a simple hunter-gatherer trying to avert the annihilation of a world I held very dear to my heart.

Ancestors, I did not even know my way around the city anymore! It had grown exponentially in my absence. If not for my retinue, whom I was following through the streets, it would have taken me half the night to find the Temple of the Bloodletters.

I stared around like a tourist on holiday as I followed Zenzele and the others through the narrow, maze-like avenues. The crowds had thickened around us, pressing in on all sides. I tried to acknowledge their cries of adoration, and stopped every so often to return a trembling caress or wave my hand over the head of some kneeling supplicant (the benediction of a pretender). All the while I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and prayed to my ancestors I did not stumble in front of my subjects.

"You must feel like a stranger here after being away for so long," Zenzele said. She could see right to my soul! It is a wonder she does not grow weary of me.

Well, in fact she does grow weary of me. It is why she slips away from time to time, like an actor from the stage, to wander the world in solitude—or in the company of some fresh immortal lover—until she begins to forget me, and that forgetfulness makes novelties of all my tiresome habits. It is quite possible, I think, to love someone forever, but much easier to love them from afar.

I nodded discreetly. I wanted to ask her how so many could even be fed, and not just the blood drinkers but the mortals as well. There were so many people now! But I did not wish to appear unwise, and so I kept my questions to myself. Later tonight, when the council assembled, I could patch the holes in my knowledge in the guise of taking their reports.

The crowd around us grew denser, their supplications rising, by virtue of sheer numbers, to a deafening volume. "Father! Father!" they cried. "Bless us! Heal us! Redeem us!" A tall, skeletally thin immortal begged me to restore him to wholeness. He had lost an arm. An Uroboran Master had torn it from his shoulder during battle. He gestured plaintively at the mangled socket as he begged me to make him whole again. I think he believed I could wave a hand and make a new arm sprout magically from the tattered hollow, but I had no such miracles to offer, and he was far too weak a blood drinker to enjoin the flesh of another immortal. I could do nothing for him, so I pretended I did not see him until we had passed him in the crowd. A mortal female held out her child, imploring me to consecrate the baby. "Please, Lord," she cried, "bless my boy that he might grow strong and brave--!" I would have done it, too, but the jostling horde consumed the pair the instant I took notice of them. A female blood drinker demanded that I return her son to her, or tell her where he had fallen. "He went to Uroboros last spring to rescue you from the wall and he never came back!" she yowled, elbowing her way to the front of the mob. "Please, Lord, tell me what became of him! Better yet, bring him back to me! Raise him from the dead!" Her loss stabbed at my heart, and I turned to console her, but Rayna drove the woman away before I could reach her.

So much death! So much pain! I had to remind myself that I was not responsible for the woman's loss. It was not I who had stolen away her son. If not for Khronos, I would have been content to live among the Tanti forever, looking after their children, gossiping with Valas about our neighbors' sex lives… perhaps I might have even taken a lover of my own (or two or three). It was Khronos who meant to rule the world. Not I. I was swept into this conflict as helplessly as everyone else. My only duty was to help these men and women battle for their freedom, and for the freedom and security of their children and their children's children. That responsibility was burden enough.

I felt buffeted by their zeal, their need, their pain. Zenzele saw and drew closer to me, curling an arm protectively around my shoulders. The crowd was getting too boisterous. Zenzele signaled to Bhorg, who waved Rayna to action. The golden haired warrior crouched, then leapt over the horde. Gone to fetch more guards. We pushed into an alley that was too narrow for the crowds to drive in at us, winning a moment of respite, and then the mob closed around us again, their cries rattling my skull, their hands darting in to touch my person, or snatch at my hair or my clothing.

"Perhaps we should return to the Aerie," I said to Zenzele.

Her eyes flashed and her lips curled back from her teeth, exposing her fangs.

A mortal woman, eyes blank with zeal, lunged at me, bare breasts squashed together in her hands. "Take me, Lord!" she cried. "Put your holy seed inside of me!"

Zenzele knocked the woman aside with a sweep of her foot, but a dozen more took her place, offering me their devotion, their flesh, their blood, pleading for absolution, healing, immortality.

"You might be right," Zenzele snarled.

"I've never seen them so agitated," Eris said.

Bhorg pointed. "Rayna returns! She has fetched more guards."

Reinforcements arrived. They shoved their way through the throng and surrounded us, then turned outwards and pressed the crowd back, clearing a rough circle around us. Moments later, Neolas and his priests—his abuellas—pushed through from ahead, opening a path to the temple.

"Father!" Neolas hailed. The priests of Penthos had taken to painting their faces red from their mouths down to their necks and his teeth flashed brilliantly as he spoke. The blood priest was an old acquaintance. One of my own blood children, actually, like his older brother Hammon. "You honor us with your presence tonight. Won't you join us at the temple?"

The presence of the abuellas had a palliative effect on the crowd. They were quieting, giving us some space.

I bowed to Neolas. "Lead the way, my friend."

As we walked:

"It is good to see you in one piece, Father."

"I hear I have you to thank for the preservation of our cause."

"The prophecy?" A sly grin. "Some wounds only faith can endure. We did what we had to do. Fortunately, our divinations have proven true."

"Fortunately."

"Men would rather have hope than truth, my maker. And when they have both…" He gestured to the cheering crowd.

I nodded. It was a maxim I needed to embrace. I have always valued the bald truth over a lie, whether it be agreeable or unpleasant, but the unadorned truth often had rough edges. Though I did not like the taste of religion—it smacked too much of spiritual bondage-- I acknowledged the need for myths and the mendacities that accompanied them. Our coalition might have crumbled when I fell to the God King if Neolas and his priests hadn't softened the blow with promises of renewal.

For the greater good, I thought.

Presently we arrived at the Temple of the Bloodletters.

Do not imagine it some vast cathedral, for the temple was no Saint Peter's Basilica. In form it was much like the prehistoric monument now called Stonehenge, a ring of blue dolerite megaliths encircled by modest earthworks. It was here the mortal denizens of Penthos came to trade their blood for a drop of the Strix. The temple was also used when a mortal "gave up the sun" and was made into a blood drinker. The Temple of the Bloodletters stood in the center of a sprawling complex of trading stalls and smaller shrines. There as well, in the surrounding market, blood could be bartered for goods, and the mortals who came to engage in trade could pay tribute to a pantheon of regional deities, the gods they had revered before they came to live in Asharoth. In Asharoth, blood was the coin of the realm, and the religion of the Mother and Father was all-inclusive.

Inside the stone circles, the abuellas tended to the faithful. Some assisted mortals in their blood offerings, helping them to open their veins or directing the flow of blood into sacred vessels. Others kept an accounting of the blood tributes or administered the healing kiss to injured mortals. Still others sermonized to those who had come for religious instruction. I eavesdropped on one of the teaching abuellas and was glad to hear they were still promoting a philosophy of equality and self-determination. It would be so easy for the blood gods of Asharoth to slip into a lifestyle of decadence and cruelty, just like their Uroboran counterparts. To become degenerate and brutal oppressors. And then I was ashamed that I should fear such a thing. I should have more faith in Zenzele, and in the stewards that we'd chosen to help us run this city.

Of course, the smell of mortal blood made a quick muddle of my philosophical musings. It was overpowering, that smell, like an invisible fog. It permeated the temple grounds, soaked into the earth, soaked into the stone. Neolas was leading us toward a central dais. I could no longer make sense of his words, so distracted was I by the aroma of blood, and by the sudden violent spasms that tied my guts in knots. But he was smiling, and his words had a soothing cadence, so I allowed him to lead me onwards.

The congregants who had come to worship, both mortal and immortal alike, gaped as I mounted the stone pulpit at the heart of the temple. I turned and sat where I was directed to sit, a low stone bench, and Zenzele took her place beside me. A large container, heavy and sloshing with blood, was placed in my hands.

"Drink, Father," Neolas said.

I drank, and fell back into that space that yawns within all blood drinkers when we take nourishment. It is like a bottomless chasm at the center of our soul, a thoughtless, timeless continuum where there is only pleasure and satiation, the blood and the tongue that tastes it. The blood was as thick as syrup and fresh enough to still be warm. I could feel that warmth radiating out from the core of my being in slow, orgasmic waves, wending through my veins to the very tips of my fingers and toes before turning and flowing back to my heart, which shuddered but did not beat, not as a mortal man's heart beats. When the Strix had absorbed all the blood that I had drank, my heart would cease its idiot juddering and lie inert in my breast until the next feeding, as cold and black as obsidian. It was a transient thing, those life-like convulsions, as illusory as the sensation of plummeting through timelessness. I drank, feeling the blood wash through me, filling me up, healing me from the inside out, reinvigorating every cell of my being.

Neolas took the empty vessel and I smacked my lips groggily, slowly returning to myself. I looked at the mortals who had gathered at the foot of the dais. Mortals encircled the entire temple now, a wall of living flesh. The priests and my guards were holding them in check, but only barely. I felt that I should address them in some way, to play the role they'd chosen to allot me. Thest. The Divided God. The Father. They strained forward, hungry to connect with something greater than themselves, yearning for transcendence. I did not believe I was superior to them in any way. Do not think that! Quite the opposite, in fact. I merely recognized their need. I shared their desires. I loved them and I wanted to please them.

I rose. Holding my arms out to my sides, I let my cloak fall back from my shoulders. "This flesh I surrendered for my child," I called out.

Seeing that I meant to address them, the crowd fell silent. Hundreds of eyes swiveled in my direction, swollen, shining, raw with emotion. Many of them had let their mouths drop open, as if they meant to devour my words from the air.

"It was love, and only love, that moved me to surrender to our enemy, to submit to the false god Khronos," I shouted. "But love is also a selfish thing. I could not bear the thought of losing my son."

I felt warmth trickle down my cheeks and swabbed it with my fingertips. My tears were black marbled with red, a mix of mortal and immortal blood. I held out my hands so they could see the tears on them, the blood that I wept for Ilio, my son.

"I passed into the underworld for that love, and offered my throat to the god of death. Khronos promised he would spare the life of my son if I kneeled before him, if I surrendered myself over to him. But he reneged on that promise! He never intended to keep it at all! I may be an imperfect god, maybe even a foolish god, but the god of Uroboros is a god of lies!"

Zenzele gazed up at me sympathetically. They all did, gathered around the dais, my friends, my allies, my lovers. Bhorg. Eris. Usus. Tapas. Irema. Neolas. Irema wept with me for her father, her dark eyes glistening.

"Khronos murdered my son!" I cried hoarsely.

The crowd answered my anguish with love, their combined voices breaking over me like an ocean wave. I stood and let their sympathy wash over me, let it wash me clean of my pain and rage, and then I took my dagger from its sheath and held it up for them to see.

Raising my voice, I called out, "This I promise you all, as you have spilled your blood to deliver me from the kingdom of the dead, so shall I spill my holy blood for you." Neolas, realizing what I planned to do, hurried forward with an empty vessel. "Never again shall I spend my blood for selfish purpose, but only for the good of those who have sworn their lives to our cause!" I gashed open my wrist, sawing my flesh to the bone so that a goodly amount of blood gushed out before the Strix repaired the injury. Neolas caught the blood that drizzled out, swinging the vessel to and fro as I gesticulated. "This is my promise and my atonement," I proclaimed. "By this act, I consecrate my flesh and blood to all the people of Penthos. We shall defeat our common enemy, the God King of Uroboros, who would see your children and your children's children in bondage for all time!"

The injury had healed over. I gashed myself again and again. My blood rained down and Neolas caught it.

"This is my blood," I said, watching the dark fluid patter down into the vessel. "Drink it so that our spirits might be co-mingled." I looked up, turning in a circle so that I could meet as many eyes as possible, touch as many hearts as possible. I slashed my wrist again. Again. "This is my covenant with you. My flesh for your flesh. My blood for your blood. From this night forth, you are all my blood children."

Their response was deafening.