Amber and Blood - Margaret Weis [109]
She held up the blood-stained shoe for him to see.
“So why do I have a blister?” she demanded. “I know I am a god. I know this body is not real, I could leap off this cliff and plummet onto the rocks below and no harm would come to me. I know that, but still”—she bit her lip—“my foot hurts. As much as I would like to say it doesn’t really, it really does!”
“Takhisis had to convince you that you were human, Mina,” said Valthonis. “She lied to you in order to enslave you. If you knew the truth, that you were a god, she feared you would become her rival. You had to be made to believe you were human and thus you had to feel pain. You had to know illness and grief. You had to experience love and joy and sorrow. She took cruel pleasure in making you believe you were mortal. She thought it made you weak.”
“It does!” flashed Mina, and the amber eyes glittered in anger. “And I hate it. When I take my place among the pantheon, I cannot show weakness. I must teach myself to forget what I have been.”
“I am not so sure,” said Valthonis, and he knelt down before her and regarded her intently. “You say the gods play at being mortal. They do not ‘play’ at it. By taking an aspect of mortality, a god tries to feel what mortals feel. The gods try to understand mortals in order to help and guide them or, in some cases, to coerce and terrorize them. But they are gods, Mina, and try as they might, they cannot truly understand. You alone know the pain of mortality, Mina.”
She thought this over. “You are right,” she said at last, thoughtful. “Perhaps that is why I am able to wield such power over mortals.”
“Is that what you want? To wield power over them?”
“Of course! Isn’t it what all we all want?” Mina frowned. “I saw the gods at work that day in Solace. I saw the blood spilled and the bodies stacked up in front of the altars. If mortals will fight and die for their faith, why should they not go to their deaths singing my name as well as another?”
She slipped her shoe back on her foot and stood up and started walking. She seemed bound to try to convince herself that she felt nothing and tried to walk normally, but she could not stand it. Wincing in pain, she came to a halt.
“You were a god,” she said. “Do you remember anything of what you were? Do you remember the moment before creation? Does your mind yet encompass the vastness of eternity? Do you see to the limits of heaven?”
“No,” Valthonis answered. “My mind is that of a mortal. I see the horizon and sometimes not that, if the clouds obscure it. I am glad for this. I think it would be too terrible to bear otherwise.”
“It is,” said Mina softly.
She yanked off both her shoes and threw them off the side of the cliff. She started walking barefoot, stepping gingerly on the path, and almost immediately cut her foot on a sharp pebble. She gasped and came up short. She clenched her fists in frustration.
“I am a god!” she cried. “I have no feet!”
She stared at her bare toes, as if willing them to disappear.
Her toes remained, wriggling and digging into the dust.
Mina moaned and sank down, crouched down, huddled into herself.
“How can I be a god if I will always be a mortal? How can I walk among the stars when I have blisters on my feet? I don’t know how to be a god, Father! I know only how to be human …”
Valthonis put his arms around her and lifted her up. “You need walk no farther, daughter. We are here,” he said.
Mina stared at him, bewildered. “Where?”
“Home,” he replied.
In the center of a smooth-sided, bowl-shaped valley, nineteen pillars stood silent watch around a circular pool of shining black, fire-blasted obsidian. Sixteen pillars stood together. Three pillars stood apart. One of these was black jet, one red granite, the other white jade. Five of the remaining pillars were of white marble. Five were of black marble. Six were made of marble of an indeterminate color.
Once twenty-one pillars had guarded the pool. Two of them had toppled to the ground. One, a black pillar, had shattered in the fall. Nothing remained