Page 102 of Dark Destiny: The Turning Of The Loom

Khiann sat and looked around.

Every wall had shelves, and on every shelf were small figures, packed tightly together. The biggest were the size of a hand. The smaller ones were just the size of a palm. Some were made from stone, most were carved from wood, some were polished, and some were rough, standing in rows like a crowd of spectators in a procession. Men in robes. Women in simple garb and elegant dresses, with hair braided or loose. Children. Soldiers. Even some animals.

"These are our people," Esag said quietly. "Everyone I could remember. Five thousand years of carving. I wasn't good at first, so I discarded many of the originals, but not before I made new, better ones. I didn't want to forget their faces."

He went to a shelf near the back, took down two figures, and handed them to Khiann.

"Yaeni and Navohn," Esag said. "Your mother and father."

A man with a kind smile and sharp eyes. A woman, slender and dark-haired, wearing a flowing dress, her chin tilted up. There was something about the set of her mouth that was familiar. Not because he remembered her, but because he saw it in the mirror.

He did not remember either of them, but as he held the two small carved figures in his hands, his throat closed and his vision blurred, and he had to bend his head over them for a moment.

These figurines were all he would ever have of them.

Gods were meant to live forever, and his mother and father would have been alive if not for Mortdh's rabid ambition to wed Annani so he could claim Ahn's throne.

She had told him that Mortdh had never loved her, never even desired her. He had wanted her only as a steppingstone to power and would have eliminated her as soon as she was of no further use to him.

He had no reason to doubt her account. The proof was that Mortdh's grandsons had defected from their father's organization and joined Annani's clan because they knew her cause was just and their father's was not.

Esag sat on a stool across from Khiann, picked up a piece of wood and a knife, and got to work.

"Those are for you," Esag said without looking up. "I will carve others." He turned the wood over in his hands. "But you did not come here to see my carvings, now, did you?"

"No."

"Trouble in paradise?" Esag lifted his head and smiled. "Annani is spectacular, but she is also a handful. Always has been."

"I love that about her." Khiann set the figures on the bench beside him. "I love everything about her. How strong-minded she is. How decisive. How loving, how kind, and how patient." He grimaced. "To a point."

"What did you do to try her patience?"

"Nothing." Khiann looked at the figures of his parents, then at the floor between his feet. "And that is the problem. Annani wants us to be a couple in every sense of the word. She has been waiting patiently for five thousand years, and she is done waiting, but I do not remember how to please a woman." He forced himself to go on. "The instinct is there, but instinct alone is not enough. I need the details, and I have none of them. I had to learn how to kiss her without nicking her with my fangs."

"That is an important skill," Esag said. "One of the first an immortal has to learn in that area. How did you do with the kissing?"

"Fine, I hope. She is not complaining or asking for more, so I guess my kisses are at least satisfactory." He took a deep breath and forced himself to say the most embarrassing part. "Not everything is functioning as it should." He looked down at his lap, then back up. "I get hard, but it does not last. I might be ignorant about sex, but I know that a male cannot do anything with a limp noodle."

Esag did not laugh or even smile. He put down the knife.

"Everything should be functioning fine," he said. "You are a god, and your body is nearly rebuilt. Even though I am not a physician, I wager there is nothing wrong with you. The problem is in here." He tapped his own temple. "You are anxious, and when things get heated between you and your mate, the anxiety kicks in because you are afraid of doing something wrong and displeasing her, and it causes deflation."

Khiann grimaced. "How do I fix that?"

Esag got up, went to a small cold box under his workbench, opened it, and came back with two bottles. He knocked the caps off against the edge of the bench and handed one over.

"This will help. It did when we were young, and it should now." He laughed under his breath and sat back down. "I keep forgetting that you are still twenty. It is only I who am ancient."

Khiann drank.

It was foul. Bitter and faintly metallic, but he swallowed anyway because Esag was gulping his own.

"This is terrible." He set the bottle down next to the figurines of his parents.

"It is the only beer in the world strong enough to affect gods and immortals. Everything else they make now is subpar." Esag drank again and sighed. "Nothing in this day and age comes close to what they poured in Ninkasi's tavern. They just don't make beer like that anymore."

They drank in silence for a moment, the faces of their dead watching them from the shelves.