Golden Son

“You taught me once, Lorn. I’m a better man for it. But now it’s my turn to teach you. Men can change. Sometimes they have to fall. Sometimes they have to leap.” I pat his knee and gain my feet. “Before you die, you’ll realize it was a mistake to kill Tactus, because you never gave him the chance to believe he was a good man.”

I find Ragnar lying on the ground in the freezer unit, at home in the bitter chill. His shirt is off, so I see the frightening angles of his tattooed body. Runes everywhere. Protection over his back. Malice over hands. Mother over his throat. Father over his feet. Sister behind his ears. The mysterious skull marks of Stained upon his face.

“Ragnar,” I say, sitting. “Not much for company, are you?”

He shakes his head, the white ponytail curls on the floor. Eyes like stains of pitch stare at me, measuring. Second eyes, tattoos on the backs of his eyelids, are strange, pupils like those of a dragon or a snake, so that when he blinks, his animal soul sees into the world around.

I sit watching him, wondering how to say what I want to say. Obsidians are the most alien of the Colors.

“By offering me stains, you are bound to me. What does that mean to you?”

“It means I obey.”

“Unconditionally?” He does not answer. “If I asked you to kill your sister or your brother?”

“Are you asking me this?”

“It is a hypothetical.” He does not understand the notion when I explain it.

“Why plan?” he asks. “You plan. You decide. I do or I do not, there is no plan.” He considers his next words carefully. “Mortals who plan die a thousand times. We who obey die but once.”

“What is it that you want?” I ask. He doesn’t stir. “I’m speaking to you, Stained.”

“Want.” He chuckles. “What iswant?” The derision in his voice comes from a deeper place than our godless realm. He’s alien here, because we grow his kind in worlds of ice and monsters and ancient gods. We get what we pay for. “You name it, so you think I know it. Want.”

“Don’t play games with me and I won’t play them with you, Ragnar.” I wait a long moment. “Must I repeat myself?”

“Gold plans. Gold wants,” he rumbles slowly. Time between each sentence. “Wanting is your heartbeat. We of the Allmother do not want. We obey.”

“On your knees?” He says nothing in reply, so I continue. “You once wore shackles, Ragnar. Now the shackles don’t weigh you down. So … what do you want?” He doesn’t respond. Is it petulance? “Surely you want something.”

“You struck off the shackles of others and seek to bind me with the shackles like your own. Yourwants. Yourdreams. I do not want.” He says it again. “I do not dream. I amStained. Destined by Allmother Death to deliver her promise.” His face shows me nothing, but I feel petulance in the man. “Did you not know?”

I examine him warily. “You make yourself look dumber than you really are.”

“Good.” He sits up swiftly, before I even have time to move back. Bloodydamn, he’s fast. He takes out a knife and very quickly cuts his palm. “When I offered stains, I bound myself to you. Forever. Till nothing.”

I know this is their way. And I know what horrors he went through to gain the title of Stained. He is not a man of half oaths or half measures. To be an Obsidian is to know misery. To be a Stained is to be misery. And it is to angle themselves one way in life—to serve their Golden gods, like myself, if they are so lucky. We take their strong. We leave their weak. We send Violets with tech to make lightning shows on hillsides. We sow famine, then descend with food. We send plagues, then bless them with Yellows to heal their sick and cure their blind. We have Carvers seed monsters in their oceans and griffins and dragons in their mountains. And when we are displeased, we destroy their cities with bombardments from orbit. We make ourselves their gods. And then we bring them into our world to serve our greedy aims. We want. They obey. How could Ragnar ever be what I need him to be?

“What if I wanted you to be free?”

He flinches back. Eyes expressing a deep fear. “Freedom drowns.”

“Then learn to swim.” I set a hand on his massive shoulder. Muscles like rocks beneath the skin. “One brother to the other.”

“We are not brothers, Sunborn,” he says, his voice wavering. “You are master. Do you not understand? I obey. You command.”