Page 110 of Silver & Gold

On one of his journeys here, he’d glimpsed the river into the underworld. But Kasha, goddess of mysteries and the arcane, had appeared before him in all her dark splendor. Cloaked in shadows, with a raven upon her shoulder, she had blocked his view. She had told him to go back.

He had begged her not to send him back—begged and begged. He dreamed it sometimes, that moment, when he’d fallen to his knees before her heartless refusal, begging, Please. Don’t. Often, that dream would morph her into Kahzir. Just as cold. Just as cruel. With Raider on his knees.

He had never forgiven Kasha. In that moment, when she had forced him to return to Kahzir, when no other god had intervened, he had hated her. He had hated all the gods. But he had obeyed. He had turned his back to her as she had required.

But he had kept his back to her ever since.

She didn’t appear before him this time.

This time, when Raider glimpsed the river through the murky dark, he knew he could enter it. He would feel the cool embrace of the water. He would float along it among the other dead, to Hasa, where the death goddess would weigh his soul upon her golden scales.

This time, he didn’t want that.

He knew he would have to return to Kahzir. To pain. To horror. But he wanted to—because only by facing all that did he have any chance of getting back to Seth.

And he would choose Seth. Every time. Always.

When Raider turned away from the river to follow the bright line of pain back to his body, he found Kasha where she’d always been. At his back.

The goddess of the arcane mysteries wore her long dark robes, as before. Perched on her shoulder amid her dark hair was her raven. The skin around her eyes was black as though with heavy kohl, but her eyes themselves were icy pale.

For a moment, Raider thought she would once again refuse to let him pass, ever denying him what he wanted.

But Kasha bent down and pressed her lips to his forehead. Then she was gone. And Raider followed that bright line.

***

His whole body seized, bowing up as the current tore through every nerve and organ, jolting him back to life.

The pain was so intense that when Raider collapsed he couldn’t even draw breath to scream. He choked in what air he could.

He couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel anything but the burning along his nerves and the twitching of his muscles.

Then he could see, and what he saw was Kahzir, just as he had so often seen him. Looming. Blocking the bright arcane light. His face half shadowed, his eyes colder than even Kasha’s could be, his thin lips moving.

Then he could hear, and what heard was that cool, arrogant voice saying, “Good.”

Then he saw, in the shadows, another. In the past, that other had stayed back, present but removed. He might hand Kahzir an instrument, might tend to the equipment.

This time, light reflected on that shadowed figure, catching at the crystalline orb hanging against his dark robes. This time, Fadesh stepped forward into the arcane light beside Kahzir.

Kahzir’s lips twitched in annoyance.

Enough feeling had returned to Raider’s body that he could perceive the collar around his neck and the bindings around his wrists and ankles. He pulled against the straps, but either they were very strong or he was very weak.

“Seth,” he gasped.

Kahzir chuckled. “Fadesh tells me you and Seth are lovers. How ironic that you should love someone I sent your way. It is only right, then, that I should take him away from you again.”

Raider yanked against his bonds. Kahzir’s hand, scarred so long ago by Raider in his first horror at the quicksilver, descended. That hand held his face to the side while Kahzir’s other jabbed the needle into his neck and injected the burning drug into his vein.

“You were always so difficult,” Kahzir sighed. “Always fighting. You won’t be fighting this. I don’t know what you injected yourself with, but it won’t matter. Ten more years I’ve had to refine my craft. I’ve not wasted that time. Oh, all the subjects I had at the Arcanum, working in the surgery. The freedom I had to experiment. My drugs are near perfection. I tell you this now because, soon, you won’t be yourself. You’ll think what I tell you to think. You’ll do what I tell you to do. You belong to me, Shashem. And when I let you enter the river of death, you’ll go in my chains.

“I’ll make use of you soon. When the drug is working fully, when your mind is reconditioned, you will help me secure the Gold, even expand it. You are so much finer than clay. You are my greatest work, far greater than even the Alchemist’s Stone.”

Beside Kahzir, Fadesh scowled and clutched with a golden hand—gold from the Alchemist—at the crystalline orb hanging from his neck. Fine gold chains wrapped around it, making for it a cage and a noose.

“You belittle me, even now. Look what I’ve accomplished! I have the power of the djinn, the power of life. I am your equal, your partner—”