The Gilded Ones Read online

  It’s a massacre.

  Terror knifing my heart, I turn to Father. He and two other villagers are engaged in combat with a deathshriek, pushing the creature back with swords and pitchforks. He doesn’t see the other deathshriek racing toward him, bloodlust in its eyes. He doesn’t see its claws unsheathing, reaching for him.

  “NOOOO!” The desperate cry erupts from my chest before I can quiet it, so powerful it seems as if it’s layered with something else. Something deeper. “STOP, PLEASE! Leave my father alone! Please, just leave us alone!”

  The deathshrieks whirl toward me, eyes deep black with rage. Time seems suspended as their leader moves forward. Closer, then closer still, until—

  “STOP!” I shout, my voice even more powerful than before.

  The deathshriek abruptly stiffens, life draining from its eyes. For a moment, it almost seems a husk—an empty vessel, rather than a living being. The other deathshrieks are the same: frozen statues in the late-afternoon light.

  Silence descends upon the village. My heart pounds in my ears. Louder. Louder. Then…

  Movement.

  The lead deathshriek turns and staggers toward the forest, the others following behind it. The mist swiftly withdraws behind them, almost seeming to trail in their footsteps. In less than a minute, they’re gone.

  I’m drunk with relief, floating, as if I’m only barely connected to my skin. A hazy feeling is taking over now, making my entire body feel as light as thistledown.

  I glide toward Father, a glazed smile on my face. He’s still standing where he was, but he doesn’t seem to feel as relieved as I do. His face is pale, his body slick with sweat. He almost looks…terrified.

  “Father?” I ask, reaching for him.

  To my surprise, he recoils. “Foul demon!” he shouts. “What have you done with my daughter?”

  “Father?” I repeat. I take another step toward him, confused when he once more recoils.

  “Don’t you dare call me that, beast!” he hisses.

  The other men have gathered around him now. The women have begun to spill out of the houses, Elfriede among them. There’s an expression on her face, one I’ve never seen there before. Fear.

  “Your eyes, Deka. What’s happened to your eyes?” she whispers, horrified.

  Her words melt a bit of the haze surrounding me. My eyes? I turn to Father, about to ask what the men are saying, but he nods to something behind me. When I look, there’s Ionas, a sword gleaming in his hand. I frown at him, confused. Has he come to protect me, as he did earlier today?

  “Ionas?” I ask.

  He thrusts the sword into my stomach. The pain is so sharp, so exquisite, I barely notice the blood spilling into my hands.

  It’s red…so very red at first, but then the color begins to change, to glimmer. Within moments, the red has turned to gold—the very same gold now racing across my skin.

  Okai cloud my vision as the blood in my veins slows to a trickle. The only thing that remains moving is that gold, pouring into my hands like a river, slowly gliding over my skin.

  “As I always suspected,” a faraway voice says. When I look up, Elder Durkas is looming over me. His expression is dark with satisfaction. “She’s impure,” he declares.

  That’s the last thing I hear before I die.

  It’s dark when I wake, and strangely quiet. The noise and crowds of the village square have disappeared, replaced by shadows, cold, and silence. Where am I? I glance around, my breath coming in short, labored spurts, and discover I’m in what looks like a cellar, with neatly stacked casks of oil lined against dark stone walls. I try to rise, but something stops me: rough-hewn iron shackles, one set for my feet and a matching pair for my wrists. I tug and twist, breaths heavier and heavier now, but the shackles still don’t move. They’ve been hammered into the wall behind me. A scream builds in my throat.

  “You’re awake.” Ionas’s voice slices through my panic. He’s standing in the darkness, examining me with the cold intensity he usually reserves for beggars and lepers. The expression is so harsh, I jerk back, frightened.

  “Ionas,” I say, tugging at the manacles. “What’s happening? Why am I here?”

  Ionas’s mouth turns down with disgust. “You see me?” he asks. Then he adds, as if to himself, “Of course you can.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say, sitting up. “Why am I here? Why am I chained?”

  Ionas lights a torch. The brightness is so overwhelming, I have to shield my eyes. “You can see me in complete darkness, and you dare to ask why you’re here?”

  “I don’t understand,” I repeat. “My head, everything is all confused.”

  “How can you not remem—”

  “Don’t speak to it,” a cold voice commands.

  Father rises from the corner, a harsh expression on his face. A pillar concealed him before, but there he is now, clear as day, despite the shadows cloaking his corner. Why can I see him so clearly? Ionas only lit one torch. A fearful twinge shoots through my stomach as I remember Ionas’s words: You can see me in complete darkness….

  Father nods curtly to Ionas. “Summon the others.”

  Ionas hurries up the stairs, leaving Father, a wraithlike figure in the darkness. His eyes burn with a strange emotion as he approaches. Anger? Disgust?

  “Father?” I whisper, but he doesn’t reply as he crouches before me, his eyes flicking over my body until they land on my stomach. There’s a jagged hole in my dress, revealing a stretch of unmarked skin. I cover it self-consciously, something niggling at me.

  What am I forgetting?

  “Not even a scar,” Father observes in a strange, removed sort of way. He has something clutched in his hand: Mother’s necklace.

  He must have taken it from my neck as I slept.

  A tear slides down my cheek.

  “Father?” I say. “Father, what is this? Why am I here?”

  I reach out to him, then stop. There’s a harsh, forbidding expression on his face. A simmering disgust. Why won’t he answer me? Why won’t he look at me? I would give anything for him to embrace me and tell me how foolish I am for being so frightened, his sweet, silly girl.

  He does none of these things, only looks into my eyes with that awful, removed disgust. “It would have been better if you had just died,” he spits.

  And then I remember.

  I remember the Ritual of Purity, the deathshriek leader’s approach—how cold those black eyes were as they met mine. Then the jatu and the village men’s counterattack. Blood on snow. Father in danger. And that voice emerging from me…that awful, inhuman voice…followed by the look in Father’s eyes as he commanded Ionas to cut me down. The look that I understood only when I saw the golden blood dripping down my belly.

  “No…,” I whisper, sobs racking my body. I can almost feel the jagged edge of the sword again, feel the darkness descending upon me.

  I rock back and forth, so deep in my horror, I barely notice the footsteps echoing down the stairs, barely see the figures approaching. Only after they’ve been standing before me for some minutes do I look up, discover Elder Durkas reading fervently from the Infinite Wisdoms, a bandaged Elder Olam and the village elders standing silently beside him. There are only five of them now. I wonder about the others, and the image of two elders’ spines shattering under the sweep of deathshriek claws blisters through my mind and my stomach lurches.

  I double over, vomit pungent on my tongue. Elder Durkas steps forward, his eyes filled with disgust. “To think, we sheltered such a creature in our midst.”

  His words jolt through me. I surge to my knees, holding my hands out to him. “Elder Durkas,” I plead, “please, this is a mistake! I’m not impure! I am not!”

  Guilt surges inside me, a horrific reminder: My skin tingled when the deathshrieks came, and when they left, it was only because I to
ld them to.

  Because I commanded them to.

  Elder Durkas ignores me and turns to the other men. “Who will purify this demon and rid our village of her abomination?”

  His words terrify me. I begin begging again. “Please, Elder Durkas, please!”

  But the elder says nothing, only turns to Father, who glances at me. There’s an expression in his eyes, an uncertainty.

  “Remember, that is not your daughter,” Elder Durkas reminds him. “She may look human now, but that is the demon that has possessed her—the demon that called deathshrieks to our door and killed our families.”

  Called the deathshrieks? The words splinter, choking me with horror. “I didn’t!” I protest. “I didn’t call the deathshrieks.”

  You made them leave, however….The reminder slithers through my mind, and I force it away.

  Elder Durkas ignores me, continues talking to Father. “You brought her impurity into this village. It is your duty to cleanse her.”

  To my horror, Father nods grimly, then steps forward and holds out his hand. Ionas places a sword inside it.

  When it gleams, its blade reflecting the dim light, my fear explodes. I scramble against the wall. “Father, no! Please, no!”

  But Father ignores my pleas and approaches until he’s standing just before me, the tip of the sword resting on my neck. It’s cold, so icy cold….I look up at Father, trying to see any hint of the man who once carried me on his shoulders and saved the creamiest portions of milk because he knew I liked them best.

  “Father, please, don’t do this,” I beg, tears pouring down my cheeks. “I’m your daughter. I’m Deka, your Deka, remember?”

  For a moment, something seems to spark in his eyes. Regret…

  “Cleanse her or the jatu will come for you and the rest of your family,” Elder Durkas hisses.

  Father’s eyes shutter. His lips thin into a tight, grim line. “I cleanse you in the name of Oyomo,” he declares, raising the sword.

  “Father, no—”

  The blade slices through my neck.

  * * *

  I’m a demon.

  I know it the moment I open my eyes. I’m still chained in the cellar, but my body is whole again. Not a single scar or blemish marks my skin—not even the portion of my neck where Father beheaded me. I touch it, a whimper wrenching from deep inside me when I feel the skin there, once more silky smooth under my fingers. It’s as if I’ve been completely reborn. Even my childhood scars are gone.

  I hurriedly kneel, bowing my head in prayer. Please don’t abandon me, Infinite Father, I beg. Please purify me of whatever evil has taken hold. Please, please, please…

  “Your prayers won’t reach him,” Elder Olam says from the corner. It’s his turn to watch me, it seems. Unlike the others, he does so with fascination rather than disgust. “He’s already rejected you from his Afterlands twice.”

  His words are like an arrow piercing my heart. “Because I’m a demon,” I whisper, horror and disgust an acrid bitterness in my mouth.

  “Indeed.” Elder Olam doesn’t bother to prettify his answer.

  He doesn’t have to. What kind of cursed creature doesn’t die from a beheading? Even deathshrieks topple when their heads are cleaved from their bodies. I close my eyes against the memory, try to breathe out my rising panic.

  “Where’s Father?” I ask.

  The Elder shrugs. “He took to his bed.”

  Something about his tone makes me stiffen. “When?”

  “Five days ago, when the fibers of your neck stretched their way back to your body and reattached.”

  Vomit rises to my throat again, and I retch loudly, emptying my stomach. There isn’t much left in it now but water and bile. Once I’m finished, I wipe my lips, mentally push back frenzied thoughts and acid guilt.

  All those years, Father endured being sneered at and excluded—for me. For the promise that I would one day be proven and show everyone I belonged in the village. But I am exactly what they said I was, only worse—so, so much worse. And now look what I’ve done.

  Elder Olam continues watching me. “Your friend Elfriede is pure, in the event you were wondering,” he says. “We are watching her, nevertheless. She spent a great deal of time with you. You never know how such associations can taint a person.”

  The words chill me to my core. “She is innocent,” I whisper, horrified. I’m the one who heard the deathshrieks. Who commanded them…“Elfriede has nothing to do with this.”

  Elder Olam shrugs. “Perhaps. Time will tell, I suppose….”

  The callousness of his answer is terrifying, but I can’t dwell on that now.

  “Father,” I remind him. “What is his condition?”

  Elder Olam shrugs again, unconcerned. “He won’t survive for long. Not if you remain undying,” he adds pointedly.

  I flinch, shame and guilt roiling in my belly. Now I understand why Elder Olam is here—why the others made sure he took Father’s place. He’s good at making people see his way. Before he became head of the village, he was a very successful trader. He had a way of making his patrons believe that they wanted what he wanted.

  He doesn’t have to do so with me. I look down at my veins, stomach lurching as they shimmer, the gold glittering inside them, demonic essence forever marking me impure. I want to rip them out, want to dig so deeply I empty them.

  Suddenly, I think of the villagers, huddled in their homes, and Father, on his sickbed. And even Elfriede. Distinctly now, I remember the fear in her eyes when she looked at me. The disgust. What happens when the demon in me rises again? What happens if it decides to lash out? To attack the village? To call more deathshrieks?

  All those dead villagers scattered in the snow…

  My breath shallows, and I try to breathe, surrender myself to Oyomo’s grace. Elder Durkas told us it was always around us, there if we only reached for it—if only we submitted ourselves to His will.

  I will submit. I will do anything to cleanse myself of my impurity, of my sins.

  I look up at Elder Olam. “Kill me,” I whisper, the tears sliding down my cheeks. “I know you must know how. I am an abomination in the eyes of Oyomo. I am an abomination.”

  A grim smile slices Elder Olam’s lips. Victory. “They say fire is cleansing for the spirit,” he murmurs, taking a torch from the wall and staring meaningfully at the flames.

  Another scream rises, but I swallow it down. It’ll be all right, I tell myself. All I have to do is submit, subject myself to the flames, and perhaps then Oyomo will forgive me for my impurity.

  Even as I think this, I know it’s a lie. Fire won’t kill me. Perhaps nothing ever will. Even then I have to try—have to submit and bear the pain until Oyomo gives me His grace again. Or until He grants me the mercy of death.

  * * *

  Click. Click. Click.

  A sharp, insistent tapping penetrates my ears.

  When I blearily open my eyes, there’s a woman sitting before me. She’s small and delicate, and dark robes cover her from head to toe. Even stranger, her hands are covered by white, bonelike armored gloves—gauntlets. They have sharpened claws at the end, and they glow dimly in the darkness of the cellar. It almost looks as if she has ghostly white hands. White Hands…Perhaps that’s what I’ll call her.

  When she notices me watching her, White Hands stops drumming her fingers. Her wooden half mask gleams under her hood, a gnarled, frightening demon caught midroar. I blink. For just a moment, I thought it was a war mask, but only men wear those. Is she really a nightmare? A fever dream? Please let her be a dream. Please, no more pain—no more blood.

  Gold, coiling across the floor like a river—

  Tiny daggers bite into my chin and neck. “No, no, you will not ignore me, alaki,” White Hands says in a lilting, heavily accented voice.

  I jer
k away from her gauntlets, gasping. This isn’t a dream; she’s really here! The scents of ice and fir trees waft from her cloak, chasing away the ever-present stench of burning flesh, melting fat, charred bone. As I inhale deeply, savoring the smell, White Hands abruptly crouches, her eyes boring into mine. Fear shivers over me.

  They’re dark—so very, very dark—those eyes. The last time I saw eyes so dark was on a deathshriek, but they didn’t have whites surrounding their pupils.

  White Hands is human. Terrifyingly so.

  “You are awake. Good,” she murmurs. “Are you lucid?”

  I blink back at her.

  White Hands slaps me so sharply, my head jerks back from the blow. I touch my cheek, shocked, until she grips my chin with those claws again. “Are. You. Lucid. Alaki?”

  There it is, that word again. A-la-key. I pronounce it silently in my mind, focusing on its strange, forbidding edges as I sit up. “Yes,” I rasp, licking my lips. My voice is a raw nerve, my tongue drier than our lake bed in midsummer. I haven’t spoken in days…or has it been weeks? Months? How long have I been here? My memories blend in an orgy of blood and terror—of gold, shimmering on the cobblestone floor as the sword slices down, tearing past reattaching muscles, reconnecting tendons…

  The elders bring out buckets, gold-lust in their eyes. They’re going to dismember me again, going to rip me apart to harvest the gold that flows in my veins. A scream pours out, shrill, unhinged. It mixes with my prayers. Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to sin. I didn’t know about the impurity in my blood. Please forgive me.

  Then the icy sweetness of the knife, slicing through my tongue—

  White Hands snaps her claws. “No, do not drift off again.” She rummages in her cloak and unearths a small glass vial, which she wafts under my nose.

  An acrid smell sears my nostrils, and I jerk upright, blinking wildly as the memories flee back to their hidden corners. White Hands moves forward with the vial again, but I quickly turn my head away.