It wasn’t real. It was too horrible to be real. Every prayer I knew to the good god bubbled to the top of my mind. I tried to form the words, but Soldier’s Boy slept on, his mouth closed, oblivious to my terror. I tried to close my eyes, to block out the sight of the old god, to make him a dream. I could not. My eyes were not open. I did not know how I was seeing him. I struggled desperately to lift an arm and put it across my eyes, but my body did not belong to Nevare. Soldier’s Boy slumbered on. I could not look away from the old god’s piercing gaze. It was horrid to experience such terror, and to feel at the same time the slow and steady breathing of deep sleep and the calm heartbeat of a man contentedly at rest. Soldier’s Boy could sleep but Nevare could not flee from the god in the tree above me. A whimper tried to escape me; it could not. I tried to look away; I could not.

“Why do they always do that?” Orandula asked rhetorically. “Why do men think that if they cannot see a thing, it goes away or stops existing? I should think any sane creature would want to keep its eyes fixed on something as dangerous as me!” He opened his arm-wings and rattled the pinions at me menacingly, and the whimper inside me tried to be a scream. His smile grew broader. “Yet, without exception, when I pay a visit such as this, men try to avert their eyes from me. It’s useless, Nevare. Look on me. You are mine, you know. Neither your good god nor your forest magic will dispute my claim. You took that which was intended for me. Your life is forfeit. You owe me a death in payment. Look at me, Nevare Burvelle!” When he commanded me to look on him, a strange thing happened. A chill calm welled up in me, just like the cool air over the water within a deep well. I recognized something in him, or perhaps something in my situation. Inevitability. I still feared him with a heart-stopping intensity but I knew I could not escape him. Struggle was pointless. The calm of despair filled me. I could look on the god I had cheated. I found a voice to speak to him, one that did not use my lips or tongue or lungs. I met his gaze, even though it was like pressing my palm against the tip of a sword.

“A death? You demand a death? You had a hundred deaths, a glut of deaths. How many did I bury at the end of the summer? Strong soldiers, little children. Strangers. Enemies of mine. Friends. Buel Hitch. Carsina.” My voice broke on the name of my former fiancée.

Orandula laughed like a crow cawing. “You tell me what I took, not what you gave me. You gave me nothing! You stole from me, Nevare Burvelle.”

“All I did was free a suffering bird from its impalement on a sacrificial carousel. I lifted it from the hook and released it. How is that so great a trespass that I must pay for it with my life? Or my death.”

“You wronged me, man. The bird was mine, both its life and its death. Who were you to say it should not suffer? Who were you to pick it free and put life back into it and let it fly away?”

“I put life back into it?”

“Hah!” His exclamation was a harsh croak. “There speaks a man! First you will pretend you did not know how grave a thing you did. Then you will deny you did it. Then you will say—”

“It’s not fair!”

“Of course. Exactly that. And then finally, each and every one will claim—”

If I had had lungs, I would have drawn a breath. I invoked the strength of the words with the full force of my fear. “I am a follower of the good god. I was dedicated to him as a soldier son when I was born, and I was raised in his teachings. You have no power over me!” The last I uttered with conviction. Or attempted to. My words were drowned in the caws of his laughter.

“Oh, yes, the final denial. I can’t be your god; you already have a god. You keep him in your pouch and let him out on occasions such as this. Calling on your good god is so much more effective than, say, pissing yourself in terror. Or at least it has a bit more dignity.” He spread his tail feathers and leaned back, rocking so hard with laughter that the big branch shook. I looked up at him, unable to avert my eyes. He took his time getting his hilarity under control. Finally, he stopped laughing, and wiped his feathered arm across his eyes. He leaned forward, turning his bird’s head sideways to look at me more closely. “Call him,” he suggested to me. “Shout for the good god to come and rescue you. I want to see what happens. Go ahead. Yell for help, man. It’s the only thing you haven’t done yet.”

I couldn’t do it. I wanted to. I wanted desperately to be able to cry out to some benign presence that would sweep in and rescue me. It wasn’t a lack of faith in the good god’s existence. I think I feared to call on my god lest he come to me, and find me lacking and unworthy. I knew in my heart, as most men do, that I’d never really given myself fully to his service. I do not speak of the way that a priest resigns his life to the service of a god, but rather to how a man suspends his own judgment and desires and relies on what he has been told the good god desires of him. Always, I had held back from that commitment. I had always believed, I discovered, that when I was an old man I could become devout and make up for my heedless youth. Age would be a good time to practice self-discipline and charity and patience. When I was old, I would give generous alms and spend hours in meditation while watching the sweet smoke of my daily offerings rise to the good god. When I was old, and my blood no longer bubbled with ambition and lust and wild curiosity, then I could settle down and be content in my good god.

Foolishly, I had believed that I would always have the opportunity to be a better man, later. Obviously, a man’s life could end at any time. A fall down the stairs, a chill or a fever, a stray bullet; youth was no armor against such fates. A man could lose his life by accident, at any moment. Some part of me, perhaps, had known that, but I’d never believed it at a gut level.

And I’d certainly never considered that at any moment, an old god could materialize and demand my life of me.

I didn’t merit the good god’s intervention and, worse, I feared his judgment. The old gods, I knew, had been able to plunge men into endless torment or perpetual labor, and often did solely for their own amusement. Such anguish on a whim suddenly seemed preferable to facing a just banishment.

My cry of supplication died in me unuttered. I looked up at Orandula, the old god of balances, and felt myself quiver with resignation and then grow still. The feathers on his head quirked up in surprise.

“What? No shrieks for rescue? No pleas for mercy? Eh. Not very amusing for me. You’re a bad bargain, Nevare. Looks like half of you is the most I can get, and it isn’t even the interesting half. Yet, being as I am the god of balances, something in that appeals to me.”

“Do what you will to me!” I hissed at him, weary already of teetering on that brink.

He fluttered his feathers up, gaining almost a third in size as he did so. “Oh, I shall,” he muttered as he eased them down. He leisurely groomed two wing plumes, pulling them through his beak and then settling them into order. For a moment, he seemed to have forgotten me. Then he pierced me with his stare again. “At my leisure. When I decide to take what you owe me, then I’ll come for it, and you’ll pay me.”

“Which do I owe you?” I was suddenly moved to ask him. “My death? Or my life?”

He yawned, his pointed tongue wagging in his mouth as he did so. “Whichever I please, of course. I am the god of balances, you know. I can choose from either end of the scales.” He cocked a head at me. “Tell me, Nevare. Which do you think an old god such as me would find most pleasing? To demand your death of you? Or insist that you pay me with your life?”

I didn’t know the answer and I didn’t wish to give him any ideas. My fears toiled and rumbled inside me. Which did I most fear? What did he mean when he said those words? That he would kill me and I’d become nothing? Or that he’d take me in death and keep me as his plaything? What if he demanded my life from me, and I became a puppet of the old god? All paths seemed dark. I stared up at him hopelessly.