“No,” says Shara. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. Primitive thing … Because there, you see, I found him.” He reaches into his wrap and holds out a charm around his neck: the scale of Kolkan. “I meditated for years, hearing nothing. And finally, one day, I decided to meditate until I died, until I heard his whispering, for death was better than that bitter silence. … I almost starved to death. Maybe I did starve to death. But then I heard him, whispering in Bulikov. I heard Father Kolkan! He had never died! He had never been gone from this world! He had never been … been touched by your Kaj!” This last word is a savage growl: Shara glimpses yellow-and-brown teeth. “I had a vision: there was a whole part of Bulikov—the true Bulikov, the Divine City—that was free of your influence! Hidden from you, from everyone! And that was when I knew there was still hope for my people. There was light amidst the storm, salvation waiting for the holy and the dutiful. I could return, and free us all from captivity. It was just a matter of getting to him, of finding him, and freeing him. … Our father. Our lost father.”
“Just like old times,” says Vohannes. “Running to Daddy …”
Volka’s beatific joy vanishes. “Shut up!” he snarls. “Shut up! Shut your filthy traitor mouth!”
Vohannes is silent.
Volka watches him, trembling. “Your … Your tainted mouth! What has your mouth touched, you filthy whelp? What flesh has it touched? Women’s? Men’s? Children’s?”
Vohannes rolls his eyes. “How distasteful.”
“You knew you were malformed,” says Volka. “You always were, little Vo. There was always something wrong with you—a strain of imperfection that should have been weeded out.”
Vohannes, disinterested, sniffs and wipes his nose.
“Have you no excuse for yourself?”
“I was not aware,” says Vohannes, “that I needed any.”
“Father agreed with me. Did you know that? He once told me he wished you and Mother had died in your birth! He said it would have unburdened him of a weak-hearted wife and a weakling son.”
Vohannes swallows impassively. “This revelation,” he says, “does not surprise me in the least. Such a tender man, Daddy was.”
“You slight our father’s name just to make me hate you more, as if that could be possible.”
“I shit,” snaps Vohannes, “upon Father’s name, upon the Votrov name, and upon Kolkan’s name! And I am glad the Kaj never killed Kolkan, for now when the Saypuris slaughter him like all the other gods, I shall have a chance to climb up on his chin and shit inside his mouth!”
Volka stares at him, briefly taken aback. “You will not get that chance,” he whispers. “I will keep you alive, you and her, so Kolkan himself can come and judge you both, and lay down his edicts. You don’t even know, do you? He has been here, in Bulikov, tallying the sins of this place. He has been watching you. He has been waiting. He knows what you have done. I will raise the Seat of the World from its tomb. And when he emerges, you will know pain, little brother.”
Shara has decided she definitely knows this room, bereft of furniture and adornment: she remembers how the mhovost laughed at her, and how she flicked the candle into its chest, and the stairs of earth leading down. …
I know exactly where we are, she thinks, and where Kolkan is.
“He’s down in the Seat of the World, isn’t he?” she says aloud.
Volka looks at her like she just slapped him.
Vohannes frowns. “In that rotten old place?”
“No, no. Down underneath, where the real Seat is hidden, yards below us, where we are right now.” She shuts her eyes. The fumes from the rag have wrapped her brain in a fog, but she cannot stop the thought from thrashing up to her. “And the Divine were fond of using glass as storage space. … Ahanas hid prisoners in a windowpane, and even kept a small vacation spot in a glass sphere. Jukov stored the body of St. Kivrey in a glass bead. And when I was down there, in the Seat of the World, I looked for the famous stained glass I have always heard of … but all the windows were broken. All except one, in the Kolkashtani atrium. And I thought it was so curious, at the time, that it was whole, unbroken, yet blank.”
She opens her eyes. “That’s where the other gods jailed him, didn’t they? That’s where Kolkan has been imprisoned for the past three hundred years. A living god, chained within a pane of glass.”
*
“I don’t quite know everything that’s going on,” says Vohannes chipperly, “but this is pretty entertaining, isn’t it, Volka?”
“How do you mean to free him?” asks Shara.
Volka stares at her furiously, breath whistling in his nostrils.
“Unless,” says Shara, “it’s a simple Release miracle … one any priest would know.”
“Not any priest,” says Volka hoarsely.