And that’s whose prisoner we are? asked Vansen. His head was beginning to hurt from all this think-talking. Why have I never heard of them—of any of them?

“You have,” said Barrick. He sounded as though he had a mouthful of something bitter. “You know them all, Captain—Sva, the Void, and Zo, her mate, the First Light. All the rattling nonsense the priests talked…and it’s all real.” He seemed on the verge of tears again. “All of it! The gods are real and they will destroy us all, for not believing. We can no longer pretend it isn’t true.”

They will not destroy us, said Gyir, and although your kind and mine may well destroy each other, it will not be the gods’ doing. But he did not sound as certain as he had before, and Vansen wondered suddenly if it was really true that the True Speech could not lie. They are all gone from the earth now, long gone. Only a few of their lesser children like this crippled demigod remain.

Vansen had to take a breath, pained by such sacrilege from an inhuman creature—the gods gone? I still do not understand you. Sva and Zo? I have heard of them, but what of Perin and the Trigon? What of the gods we know, at whose temples we worship?

They are all one family, said Gyir. One family and one blood. And long before your folk or mine had even thought to clothe ourselves, they were spilling that blood.

“It’s pointless,” protested Barrick, putting his hands over his ears as though he could block out the soundless words that way. “This talking—any of this! It changes nothing.” His face reddened and seemed to crumple. The boy was crying again, rocking in place. “I thought it was all priest’s lies. Instead, I am being p-p-punished…punished for my miserable, flyblown, shit-stained pride!”

Vansen clambered to his feet and hurried to the prince’s side. “Your Highness, it is not your fault…”

“Leave me alone!” the boy shrieked. “Do not speak to me of things you know nothing about! What could you know of a curse like mine?” He threw himself down on his stomach and banged his forehead against the stone, like a man in a terrible hurry to pray.

“Prince Barrick…! Barrick, get up…” Vansen put his arms around the boy’s chest and tried to lift him, but the prince fought his way loose, and as he did so struck Vansen hard in the face.

Barrick did not even seem to notice. “No! Don’t you touch me!” he groaned. “I am filthy! On fire!” A froth of spittle hung at the corners of the boy’s mouth and on his lower lip. “The gods have chosen me for this suffering, this curse…!”

Vansen hesitated only a moment, then drew back and slapped the prince full in the face. Barrick stumbled and fell to his knees, shocked into silence. His hand slowly came up to his cheek. He drew it away and stared at it as though expecting to see blood, although Vansen had hit him only with his open hand. “You…you struck me!”