“I–well, only in the evenings or for special events for some time now.”
“Did you ever feel any different while wearing it? Did you ever…” I trailed off, gaze flicking up to meet my wife’s once more, “hear voices?”
A heavy silence descended upon the room. I was well aware of the blow I’d inflicted upon them. Nascha had become obsessed with the research of a journal that had belonged to a madman, aformer Patriarch of her House driven insane by the voices inside his head. She’d ordered me to lead the charge on discovering what had happened to him. And yet, here I was, appearing to have gone down the same mysterious path as Eximius. Isla, for her part, looked more unsettled than I’d hoped.
“Milo,” Nascha began slowly. I could already hear the concern in her tone, the pity. She frowned as she reached for me, but I pulled back and shook my head.
“I’m not going mad, grandmother,” I told her. “I’m not insane. I never heard a voice in my head that wasn’t my own or Isla’s until I touched that necklace. It spoke to me. But it doesn’t speak to me now, not when there’s distance between us, not when I’m not touching it.”
Isla glanced down at the jewel hanging around her neck and seemed to fight the urge to rip it off.
“I never…” she started, perplexed. “Milo, I’ve never heard anything.”
“No,” I said, nodding. “I know. Grandmother?”
Nascha shook her head, still watching me with wide eyes.
“Never,” she breathed.
“I think it’s only men,” I announced, viewing this as a confirmation of my suspicions. “Or perhaps even only men of our line, or men in line to inherit the House. I’m not sure how he…howitdecides, but I think that’s who Eximius was hearing. I think that’s why it transitions from woman to woman in our House, because they are unaffected. Well, perhaps notentirelyunaffected.”
I let my gaze trail back to Nascha who jolted.
“You think…” she started, unable to finish the thought.
“The only women in this city who have ever lived past a hundred were wearing that necklace when they did,” I announced, finally speaking aloud the results of mine and Olympia’s tireless search through more genealogy records andcrumbling diaries than I ever wanted to view. “So maybe there is a god inside it. At least, there’ssomethingdivine about it, something…magical. I alternate between the desire to find out what that is and the revulsion to the idea of touching it myself and hearing that voice again.”
“What does it say?” Nascha breathed out in a rushed whisper. “You say it’s a he? What does he tell you?”
I frowned at her enthusiasm. From my perspective, this wasn’t a positive development. This artefact was dangerous. It drove men mad and affected the life expectancies of the women who wore it. It needed to be studied to discover if it was having any other impacts on us, on our bodies, on our minds, that we simply weren’t aware of.
“He begs to be freed,” I informed her. “He offers me things, tries to bribe me, so that I will let him out.”
Her eyes widened and lips popped open in surprise.
“Interesting,” she muttered, turning away and pacing toward her window.
“Now would be the time to share all of the information you’ve been keeping from us for decades, grandmother,” I snapped. My tone was not the gentle kindness I usually reserved for my grandmother. It did not hold the respect due to her position because, frankly, I was tired of being yanked around by her inability to share. “I’ve done what you asked. I’ve found what drove Eximius mad. Do your part and tell me what you know.”
“I’ve tried, hafid,” she barked back, her own gaze narrowing to a glare as she lifted her chin and faced me. “On many, many occasions, I have tried to tell you about the gods but you have chosen not to hear me, to dismiss me. You think religion is my weakness, Milo, but it’s yours. You’ve already dismissed the very idea of divinity outright so much so that it has become your blind spot.”
I balked, my anger dissipating somewhat. She was right. Religion had never made any sense to me. Worshipping deities we couldn’t see, didn’t have any evidence of even existing, and killing each other over what we perceived was their will had always seemed the height of stupidity. Maybe there had been signs. Maybe I’d missed certain miracles or acts of the divine because I’d dismissed them as circumstance. Academically, it was difficult to justify faith and yet I could see the effect it had on our society, on our origins and the very shaping of who we were. What was the likelihood that something so ingrained in our very culture had always been patently false? I’d always believed myself a scholar, a man who rose above the lie of religion, but maybe I’d attributed too much of the gods to the priests. Maybe it was the men and women who twisted the gods to fit their own schemes who I’d always doubted and not necessarily divinity itself. I’d always believed there couldn’t be gods because a divine being wouldn’t allow us to do all the horrible, unspeakable things we did to one another. But perhaps it was freedom of a different sort to make our own choices, however awful they might be.
“The old gods,” I said slowly, quietly. “How do you know them?”
Nascha’s gaze remained on mine for a moment longer before she stepped aside and strode to her closet. I watched her reach behind a host of hanging dresses and heard the distinct click of a switch being flipped. I glanced back at Isla who still sat on the edge of my grandmother’s bed. Her wide eyes found mine and I frowned, wondering if I should have waited to have this conversation with Nascha until we were alone. It was too late now.
The doors at the end of the closet slid open to reveal a set of three drawers and a glass case set above them. Within the glass case sat two of the oldest books I’d ever seen and a bit of raisedvelvet with an impression that formed a familiar oval. I looked back at the amulet hanging around Isla’s neck and knew it had belonged there at some point.
“Eximius built this,” Nascha told me, reaching up to unlatch the lock on the glass with a key I’d never noticed she wore around her neck, hidden beneath the collars of her matronly dresses. “There’s a note inside one of the books claiming he found them in a forgotten trunk. He believes they belonged to the Founder of our House, to Vasilis himself. One of them, actually, it appears Vasilis wrote.”
I was stepping forward before I made the conscious decision to do so. Books from that long ago were unheard of. So much of our knowledge had been lost in fires, in fighting, or simply to age alone. I’d never read anything from the Founding, never held pages in my hand Vasilis himself had touched. I was practically salivating by the time I reached the glass and looked down at the titles.Fight the Lightwas the first. It had a subtitle which readWeapons for Use Against Lemnus and His Geist.I couldn’t breathe as I considered that title and what it might mean. My eyes slid to the cover of the next book and I nearly collapsed when I read its title.Origins: A Historical Account for the True Gods and Their Chosen.
“I don’t think I need to tell you to be careful,” Nascha said slowly and I looked over to find her watching me. “Those books are over two thousand years old, hafid.”
I nodded wildly.
“Yes,” I agreed, unable to form any other word but that. “Yes.”
