What Monstrous Gods by Rosamund Hodge

Author:Rosamund Hodge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

20

Once I’m a sorcerer, everything changes.

Now that I’m working “miracles,” Anabekha and Coldren look at me with new reverence, the prime minister with a new respect. Araunn smiles at me more easily, more gladly—only now do I see how worried he has been—while Varia remains as prickly as ever.

But she also teaches me.

To please the gods, you must reflect the gods.

There’s no secret ceremony. No easy way out. This is what Varia explains to me as the Royal Progress travels through the next three towns. Humans can love and forgive, but the gods can only know. And their knowledge is of two kinds only: this is mine, and this is not.

To put it more devoutly: the gods are holy and beautiful, and they love what is in accordance with their own particular holiness and beauty. Whatever is not—even if it is sacred to another god—they hate.

And so I am hateful to all the gods. Even if I had never learned sorcery, every part of me would still be hateful to them, except for whatever corner of my heart belonged to Mor-Iva. And that corner would be hateful to every god but Mor-Iva herself.

I want so badly to believe that Varia is lying. I grew up praying every night to all eight gods, and the thought that each of them hated seven of those prayers sends a dreadful, hollow pang through my stomach.

But when I remember Nin-Anna’s rejection and Im-Yara’s strange acceptance, I cannot doubt Varia’s teachings.

“A strange sort of judgment,” Ruven observes to me one night as I sit up in my bed practicing sorcery. “To condemn you not for your sins, but for the wrong perfection.”

“Your god would do the same,” I retort, twisting my hand. The glowing tendrils of power in the room shiver and curve in response. “Even though I’m the perfect apostate.”

“You are the worst apostate I’ve ever seen,” Ruven says wryly. “You know your gods are monstrous and you’ve turned against them, but still you can’t stop loving them.”

“Because they’re holy,” I tell him wearily, wishing the words didn’t feel so hollow in my mouth. “It’s not my fault you call holiness monstrosity.”

“Eight different kinds of holiness that all hate each other,” says Ruven. “That’s why the Magisterium says there is only one god. Because there is only one goodness.”

Those last words have a strangely rehearsed tone, like when I recited words from my childhood catechism.

“Is that what the monks taught you?” I ask, and then can’t resist adding, “When they were promising you’d be a hero?”

Ruven’s face goes very still. When he speaks again, his voice is cold and quiet.

“Let me tell you what your gods taught me when I was only a child. I was orphaned too young to know my parents, so the closest I ever had to a father was a monk named Brother Yaren. He worked in the infirmary, and he was kinder than anyone else in the monastery. For this, Nin-Anna forced her sainthood upon him. He never worshipped her, never used the power that she gave him—and yet he died of it.

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