The Death of All Things

  She did not think about dead Moreva.

  Her final task for the evening was preparing the small chapel for a mourning ceremony. Neve, the senior priest, would be presiding; Idenna’s duties were only to consecrate the room and light the candles before making herself scarce. It was a simple duty, one she could perform in her sleep.

  Dusk was falling, the sunset gleaming blue and gold through the chapel windows. Idenna dipped a candle in the altar flame, using it to light the others one at a time.

  Awake, Idenna Beravnis.

  She spun around, the flame flickering out at the sudden breeze. She was alone, but she had felt a definite presence next to her. And that had been Moreva’s voice.

  This is a sacred place, she told herself. Here, the dead stay down as they should.

  There was no motion from the stairs behind her, leading up to the altar, no sound from the empty mourner-benches. No sign of anything at all, living or dead.

  Idenna allowed herself a small sigh and turned to light the candle again. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror atop the altar and nearly dropped the candle in the fire.

  Moreva was standing behind her.

  She whirled, clenching the candle like a weapon, to find that there was no one there.

  * * *

  Idenna retired to bed at her usual time, forcing herself to return her book to her nightstand and avoid the temptation to wait out the night by reading. She had often read past her bedtime when she was small, hurriedly covering the lamp whenever she heard her father’s footsteps near her door—but that had been years ago. She shook off the memory and turned to blow out the lamp, allowing herself only a brief hesitation.

  She awoke not to noise, nor to movement, but to the scent of white tea wafting through the room. A silhouette stood at her door.

  “I have a job for you,” he said.

  She lit the lamp, wishing she had bought some juniper branches on her way home. The notion had crossed her mind, but doing so would have felt as though she were acknowledging something.

  “I don’t take jobs from the dead,” she snapped.

  “You have only yourself to blame for that series of events.” The way the shadows danced across his face made him look hawk-like, predatory, an unexpected impression from Moreva’s boyish features. Though nearly her father’s age, he had worn his years much more lightly.

  “I did what was necessary to let my father rest.” Anger rose to her throat again, choking off further reproof. Moreva knew very well what he had done, and even at the last, he had offered nothing but excuses.

  “Your father was resting already,” he said. “Fate ties us each with our own strand, awaiting shining Rivni and his scythe to return us to our natural state. The body is a temporary thing—”

  “—for we are born of starlight and earth, a mixture which by nature cannot last,” Idenna finished. “Do you truly mean to lecture a Rivni-priest on the Strictures?”

  He chuckled. “Do you mean to lecture the dead on the nature of death?”

  “You earned your fate!” The words burst from her before she could consider whether it was wise to provoke him. Wise, not wise, what does it matter now? The only one who would miss you is gone.

  He stepped forward, far more quickly and fluidly than was natural, and was in front of her before she could blink.

  “I was going to earn it back,” he said. “I needed money. I needed time.” His eyes, in this light, were hardly recognizable as Moreva’s, which had been a piercing bright green. Now they were black, with no trace of either white or iris.

  Was it the light?

  “So you swindled him out of his fortune and stole his life! No apology, no remorse—”

  “I did not make his choices for him!” The words were almost a snarl; he drew himself up to his full height—then, just as suddenly, he calmed. “We light our own fires, viyane. It is time you took up your torch.”

  Dear one, in her father’s tongue. He was the only one who had ever called her that.

  Idenna closed her eyes for a moment, letting the emotion pass. When she opened them again, she said, “You aren’t Moreva.”

  He smiled.

  “What are you, some sort of spirit possessing his form?”

  “I am Moreva,” he said. “After a fashion. At the moment, we are, for lack of a better term, sharing.”

  Was it her imagination, or were the dark pits of his eyes growing?

  “It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement,” he said. “He gets to cling to a semblance of life for now—your sort always want that, regardless of whether it actually benefits you.”

  “And what do you get?”

  His smile widened, too much; it looked feral and wrong. “I get the chance to talk to you, Idenna Beravnis.”

  “Why?” The word came out in a whisper, and she loathed herself for it. “What are you?”

  He extended a hand, one long finger a hairsbreadth away from her face. “I’ll give you a hint,” he said, and brushed the finger against her forehead.

  Idenna had almost drowned once, as a child. She’d fallen in the river while playing and the current had swept her away before her friends could reach her. She remembered the crush of the rapids, the waves cresting relentlessly over her head until all there was to breathe was water.

  The sensation crashed into her like drowning; she had no sight, no air. She was not sure if the room around her was gone or if it was she who had left. In her ears echoed a choir, a chant—one she had performed at the temple a thousand times, but sounding like no human voice imaginable.

  Bright spots began pulsing in her vision, different colors and sizes; they seemed to form a tapestry across an unimaginable distance. She could sense each and every one of them—their lives, their emotions, their deaths. She knew when all of them would meet their end—

  The chant reached a crescendo. Her vision flared bright, and then there was darkness.

  When Idenna opened her eyes again, she was on the floor. Moreva’s silhouette was standing above her.

  “You—” she gasped, once she’d gotten her breath.

  “It’s overwhelming the first time,” said Rivni, shining Rivni in Acanthus Moreva’s body. “One adapts.”

  “Rivni,” she said. She didn’t know if there was a proper obeisance to make to a god clad in flesh—anyway, she couldn’t have moved if she wanted to.

  “Your people call me by that name,” he agreed, offering her a hand. “There have been others, eons worth. In the end, they all mean Death.”

  Idenna took his hand. It was cool, smooth, like marble. He pulled her up effortlessly; it felt as though she were floating to her feet.

  She took a deep breath, dressing herself in her usual composure as if putting on a robe. Even if she couldn’t make sense of what was going on, there was no need to seem like a fool.

  “In the old tales,” she said dryly, “you all just send visions.”

  Death-Rivni-Moreva flung his head back and laughed, the sound making the walls shake. Idenna was too disquieted to spare a thought for her neighbors.

  “Unfortunately,” he said, sobering as quickly as he’d been amused, “we have our own rules to follow.”

  “Why are you here?” she asked, meeting his eerie black gaze. “And why in Moreva’s form?”

  “I told you,” he said. “To speak to you.”

  “Why?”

  “You killed me.” He laid a hand across the red line of thread on his chest. “It was unanticipated.”

  A weft of doubt curled through Idenna’s mind; yes, that vision had seemed fairly conclusive, but a death unanticipated by Rivni could not be. Perhaps he was a spirit after all, possessing Moreva’s form to lead her astray. Or perhaps it was simply dead Moreva, seeking vengeance.

  “Rivni sees all fates,” she countered.

  “Yes,” he agreed, tilting his head to the left, unnaturally far. “I see all fates, viyane, except Acanthus Moreva’s, and except yours. Your thread gleams, and yet I cannot gr
asp it; you killed this man unbidden. It was not part of the pattern, and that tells me one thing.”

  As ludicrous as the notion was, a chill stole over Idenna. A death Rivni could not foresee would have been blasphemy—had it not been impossible.

  “And what is that?” she asked, keeping her voice steady.

  He regarded the wall clock in the corner, staying silent so long that she was tempted to repeat the question. She did not; she knew he had heard her. Rivni, spirit, dead Moreva—it would not benefit her to antagonize any of them. The steady ticking of the clock filled the room, though it was only the press of her own thoughts that made it deafening.

  “It is time,” he said. “Time to awaken once more. I have been Death for more millennia than you can imagine, yet I was not the first, and I will not be the last.”

  “I have no skill with riddles.”

  “Because you have always done as you were told.” He extended a hand out, as if to touch her forehead again, then stopped. “Schooling, priesthood, dutiful daughter, day-to-day life repeating and repeating as if you had modeled it after that clock—”

  “Until I killed Acanthus Moreva,” she said, unmoved by his critical tone. She knew what her life had been, and she didn’t see why it should be an object of reproach. She had always, always done her duty.

  “Until you killed Acanthus Moreva,” he agreed. “One moment of fury in a life regulated by routine. You say your prayers; you repeat the words and do your duty and keep the dead in their place. Do you feel it, I wonder?”

  “Is that not enough?” she demanded, anger flashing through her tone. She was no mystic. Her faith may not have been as deep as that of some of the others, as Tirya with her visions or Neve with the prayers tattooed on her arms—but she had done her duty. Why couldn’t he haunt one of them? “I followed your path, as my father wanted.”

  “I do not mind,” he said. “But it cannot be easy to live while stitching your feelings down.”

  “I am no corpse.” She could not quite hold back the venom from the words. Was haunting her not enough? He had to mock her as well?

  He made a noncommittal gesture. “Moreva’s death was a beacon, Idenna Beravnis. You caused a death I did not plan. Your fate has been decided.”

  Idenna glanced away, at his elongated silhouette cast upon the wall by the lamp. It was less unsettling than looking at his face, so familiar and yet completely alien. She realized her hand was knotted in her nightgown and made herself unclench it.

  “If you’re here to kill me, you could have done that the first night and saved us both a lot of trouble,” she grumbled. She knew she should be afraid, but she had always expected Rivni to claim her one day; she just hadn’t expected he’d do it personally. She had no remaining relations, no close friends, and no further unfinished business—save, perhaps, for making sure someone found Palka. She feared neither death nor Death.

  “Equanimity,” he said, regarding her through half-lowered eyelids. On someone else, the expression might have appeared lazy. “Surprising.”

  “Are you…reading my thoughts?”

  He laughed. “I am not my magic-attuned sister; I do not possess the power. Your demeanor speaks clearly enough.”

  She supposed that was some sort of accomplishment.

  “I am not here to kill you,” he said. “Not exactly.”

  “What does that—”

  “Your soul.” He held out a hand expectantly, as though she could set it in his palm. “It is already in motion. If you planned the death of Acanthus Moreva and I did not, that means it is time. You will agree to unite; I will fade into the background; you will be scythe-bearing Rivni in the tower; it will fall to you to claim the mortal souls.”

  Idenna opened her mouth and closed it again three times before she arrived at a reply she considered suitably non-inane.

  “You want me,” she said, very slowly, “to…become Rivni.”

  “I told you,” he said. “I was not the first. I will not be the last.”

  “Impossible. The Strictures—”

  “The Strictures are made by mortal hands. Subject to certain…omissions.”

  She let that be, for now. “So we unite, and you leave behind Moreva’s corpse—”

  “I leave behind Moreva.”

  He stressed the word enough that it was clear he was trying to make a distinction.

  “Moreva,” Idenna repeated flatly.

  “Alive,” he said. “It is how things work.”

  She spun on her heel, paced a few steps toward the wall, and stared at the painting there—a landscape that had hung in that same spot as long as she could remember.

  “I refuse,” she said.

  “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the—”

  “Do you know what it took to kill him?” she demanded, spinning to face him again.

  “A knife,” he said, with something like humor. “Probably a sharp one.”

  “You’re asking me to return to life the man who caused my father’s death.”

  “I am asking you,” he said, “to fix what has gone awry. If you seek justice, you’re talking to the wrong god.”

  Idenna took a deep breath. “Get out.”

  He extended a hand. “If you believe in me as you’ve preached over these years—”

  “Get. Out.”

  Rivni regarded her a moment more, then turned to the door. “I will be waiting,” he said, and faded into the shadows.

  * * *

  She could not sleep.

  She made a cup of tea—green tea, not white—and sat at the kitchen table, thinking.

  It could not have been Rivni. It must have been Rivni.

  Palka meowed, rubbing up against her legs, and Idenna absently let a hand drift down to scratch the cat’s head. Outside the window, the fog was still thick, swirling in face-like patterns—no, that was only her imagination.

  Becoming Rivni. Impossible—wasn’t it? But that vision, that feeling of those life-lights surrounding her…it sounded like ravings from a wild-haired mystic on a street corner, but it had felt real.

  If she allowed that becoming Rivni was possible, that would be one thing. But allowing Moreva to return to life?

  Palka jumped up into her lap, which Idenna normally discouraged when she was in the kitchen—the habit tended to lead to the theft of whatever was on her plate. She reached down to push the cat away, but was met with a paw pushing back against her hand.

  “The stitchings will fail.”

  Startled, Idenna looked down. Palka was sitting upright, eyeing her expectantly.

  That had been Moreva’s voice.

  “The stitchings will fail. The dead will rise. Those meant to die will live five hundred years. Those meant to live to ninety will collapse in the streets. Chaos. Destruction—”

  Idenna leapt to her feet, tossing Palka to the floor. “You leave my cat be!”

  Palka glanced over her shoulder, sneezed, and shook herself, then headed off to the living room with the offended dignity only a cat could muster.

  Idenna reached for her cup of tea, more to have something to hold onto than to drink—and nearly dropped it on the floor.

  Her green tea had turned to white, a delicate floral aroma wafting up at her.

  * * *

  Rivni was right. Within days, the stitchings had grown harder. Priests long accomplished in such matters needed their work checked two, three, four times. The temple of Rivni in Irdall heard similar tales from their brethren across the continent. The stitchings were not taking as easily as they had, and no one save Idenna knew why.

  She said nothing. Even had she wanted to, she knew the politics of the temple. Her words would be dismissed as raving; no one spoke to Rivni directly, nor any of the gods. Not since the era of myth.

  Other tales, too, spread: sightings of spirits and haunts and strange shapes in the fog. Some could be dismissed as superstition. Others seemed more plausible. The temple attempted to keep the latter sort of stories under wr
aps. No sense in causing a panic.

  Idenna no longer slept well. Her dreams dwelled on that brief fragment of Rivni’s consciousness he’d shown her, each new glimpse connected to the last like the facet on a gem. Of dead Moreva, she saw nothing, though often she felt something watching her.

  She had begun to smell of white tea. Palka avoided her, as though the cat could sense the encroachment of death.

  I will not let Moreva live. I will not let Moreva live. She chanted it in her head like a refrain, whenever she sensed her resolve beginning to waver.

  Two weeks after Rivni’s last visit, she stayed late at the temple. She lit the taper candles in the chapel and waited by the altar, keeping her gaze on the carved marble ceiling above her and not on the mirror.

  “In the old tales,” she said out loud, “there are bargains.”

  “I am not a vengeful hedgewitch.” Motion in the mirror caught her eye; dead Moreva’s body was standing behind her. Despite the passage of time, the corpse seemed to be as pristine as it had been when she’d stitched it down.

  She turned. “Then stop this.”

  “You mistake me,” he said. The pools of shadow filling his eye sockets had grown. “I could not stop this, even if I wished. It is not under my control.”

  “You’re a god.”

  “Would you be able to stop a hurricane, if the people of Irdall wished? It is the same.”

  “The world is dying.”

  “Yes,” he said, trailing a finger idly along the row of candles.

  He did not speak further. Idenna suspected he was trying to leave her to think. How could she think, when every time she closed her eyes, she saw her father sprawled dead on the floor, blood leaking from the hole in his skull? How could she think, when dead Moreva still walked, taunting her at every turn?

  He had not apologized. He had equivocated, pleaded, but he had not apologized. I didn’t kill him, he’d said, more than once, as though that made a difference. It was true, but only in the most technical terms.