“He has, in most ways, shown you kindness. There is another who has known you, seen you, damaged you. A god who would have been your undoing. If,” he added with a nod, “I hadn’t found you interesting.”
“Which god? How will I know? How can I keep Lula safe?”
“She goes by many names and many faces. She has been there, beside you, a lifetime ago. She has watched you, hungered for your bones. She sent you here. You already know her, Brogan Gauge, and by her appearance as Mat Davis.”
Lightning again, a blast, hard enough to rock me off my foundation.
“Mad Mat, Mat Davis is a god?”
“An illusion a god wears, yes.”
“He…shesent those creatures, those monsters who attacked us all those years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Because I can sense god power? Not very damn good at it if I didn’t sense it in the god who wanted us dead.”
“She does not want you dead. You are useful to her as a tethered spirit. Lula is useful to her as athrawn. If she had wanted you dead that first time, years ago, you would be so.”
“But now?” My thoughts juttered, still shaking from this revelation. Too many memories rising sharp and hot, too much anger for any of it to make sense, for any one thing except rage to lift above the roar.
I was mad as hell.
“She wanted the book to send me here. Tricked me into touching it.”
“Yes. You would once again be a tethered spirit. Bound to Lula. Bound to the old road.”
As he said it, the gold light grew and grew and rose into the sky, until there was no silver twilight. There was only the road beneath us, concrete, sun-baked and faded, the sky watered down to a dusty blue. I could not feel the ground, could not hear the soles of my boot and brace falling on the road as we walked.
This might be the real world, the solid world. But I was not solid within it.
Tethered spirit once again.
“I will not give you a choice in this, Brogan Gauge. There are too many knots and too many strings attached to your fate. And so, this will not be of your free will, but of mine.”
He stopped, and I found I couldn’t take another step. He appeared in front of me again, skin a thin wax spread over bone, endless blackness filling his eyes.
He was terrifying, but the tourist trap T-shirt distracted a bit.
“Give me the weapon you carry.”
It took a moment to understand what he was asking for. “The letter opener?”
“The dagger of Carnwennan is not a letter opener, just as Excalibur is not a toothpick. This dagger can injure gods, as very few earthly weapons can.”
He stuck out his hand, palm up, and crooked two fingers in a “gimme” motion.
I twisted my hand back to my waistband, where I’d last put the dagger. I didn’t expect it to be there because I was not really alive, not really physical, and therefore a physical letter opener—dagger—should not have hitched a ride to this spirit space.
My hand closed around the white hilt. I drew it and settled it onto Death’s palm.
“Exactly.” He ran his finger along the edge. He didn’t bleed, the nick from the dagger so shallow, it was more like a paper cut.
The dagger pulsed, gold, silver, copper, black, then gold again.
“Before it would have injured a god,” he said. “Now, it will undo a god.” His voice dropped into a low growl. “Delightful.”
He tossed the dagger to me. I fumbled it twice before catching it. It didn’t feel any different.
