The Godless, page 19
“I would very much like that, General, if it is not an inconvenience.”
The man flashed a grin. “Not at all. It would be of benefit to me. I want to understand better what it is you do.”
“You are only going to investigate rumors, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then if you’d like I can come with you: we can investigate those rumors together. Perhaps we can learn from each other.”
“I didn’t want to stop your investigations.”
“I think, General, that we can help each other. No more deaths have come to my attention and I have ways of learning if they do.”
Merros Dulver looked at him with hard eyes. His face was calm, but the mind inside his skull was likely working to understand all the possibilities.
“Meet me in the morning, at the royal stables, as the sun rises.”
“I’ll be there, General.”
“Please, by the gods, call me Merros.”
“Merros. Call me Darsken.”
“I’ll see you at sunrise, Darsken.”
The man turned and walked away.
Darsken watched him as he moved into the night and wondered if he was making a mistake. He had heard many stories about General Dulver. Most of them were favorable. He was a man who held the ear of the Empress and the First Advisor. He was very powerful though seemingly without full measure of just how much political clout he held. Either he was naive to a fault, or simply did not care what others thought of him. In any event, Darsken liked him. Perhaps he even liked him enough to learn from him. Time would tell.
Swech
Rooftop to rooftop Swech followed her prey. He remained oblivious to her, which was as she planned it.
The gods watched over her. At one point, as she dropped down fifteen feet to a lower roof, her foot slipped to the side and she came close to falling from her perch and landing much further below. She managed to maintain her balance, and fully blamed the gods for their kindness.
She worked twice as hard to prove herself worthy of their blessings. When her target reached the intersection of Market Way and the Imperial Gardens, her fingers captured the wet tile at the corner of the building where she stood and she descended nimbly into the alleyway.
There was no light here. There were torches nearby but nothing at the spot where she moved. That was just as well. She preferred not being seen.
The man she followed was young and cocky. He moved with the sort of easy grace that belonged to youth, though she had seen plenty who carry themselves with the same abandon. It was almost a trait among her people, but here? Among the Fellein? The strut was less a common thing.
He bristled with weapons. The man carried no less than a dozen daggers and moved from spot to spot with the confidence of a master warrior.
She stood perfectly still as her target passed by, and then moved to follow him, to shadow his movements.
He remained oblivious to her.
Another fifteen paces down the street and he turned to the left, exactly as she had expected. She’d followed him for several days now and he rarely broke from his routine. He caught her from the corner of his eye and turned sharply to look at her.
“Who are you?” The words were out of his mouth in a soft purr, and his eyes narrowed.
The blade in her hand cut his throat before he could ask anything else.
Dark eyes grew wide, and his mouth gaped as he tried to draw in a breath past the bleeding, hissing wound under his jaw. His need to strut bled across the ground.
Swech stepped back into the darkness and watched as her target died slowly. No one came to his aid. No one entered the area, though there were people only a dozen paces away.
When he was dead, and she knew he would not struggle, Swech caught the dead man’s wrists and pulled him deeper into the alley. A single gesture from her and Hotches slid out of the shadows with Laowan. The two men worked quickly to secure the corpse and move it away from the area. Swech nodded to them and moved on. Her part in the task was finished.
Jo’Hedee would mark the body.
The gods sought confusion. Someone in the city of Canhoon was killing people and disfiguring them. The gods wished that trend to continue, and so Swech did as the gods asked.
The dead seemed to have no complaints about the situation. Even if they did, they were not her concern.
Merros…
She needed only concern herself with the gods and their wishes.
Three more of her people moved nearby. Most of them were subtle and quiet. One of them wore the flesh of a Fellein and had for several years. It was that one who slipped into the alleyway and rested near where Swech stood.
“My king.”
“It has been too long.” She smiled and spoke softly to her friend.
“As the gods would will it.” Swech nodded. “Still, I have missed you, Swech.”
“And I have missed you. We are together for the moment.”
“The gods have not spoken to me in some time, not directly.”
Swech nodded and moved closer. Her hand moved up and touched the smooth face, felt the flesh that was as unfamiliar now as the last time they’d seen each other, before the war ended.
The god wanted the contact and the end result was a soft, wondrous smile on the other. “Oh. Oh, at last.”
Swech had suffered the Great Silence along with all of the other Sa’ba Taalor. She had felt the vast emptiness that swallowed her serenity. She had felt that same joy when the voices of the Daxar Taalor came back to her, but unlike her companion she had not waited years for the silence to be stripped away.
“Your faith is rewarded. The gods have not abandoned you.”
Desperate fingers clenched at her wrist and held her hand close to a face that would never truly belong to her companion. Swech had worn another’s body at one time, had lived for months in another life, as if wearing a suit that did not quite fit properly.
“What must I do next?” The eyes that looked her way were dark and lovely, but as false as the face that held them.
“You must listen to the gods, as always. You must lead, as you have done for the last few years.”
The face that looked at her nodded softly and the lips that kissed her fingertips smiled warmly.
“Yes. Oh, I hear them, Swech. I hear the gods again after so very long.”
Swech smiled back.
The gods were kind. They always had been.
Hrothrun
Trigan Garth would have been disappointed, perhaps. Or merely amused. He had warned her, after all. Taking Deillor back to the gods was a fool’s quest in his eyes. She did not feel the same. The gods were gods and the dead belonged to the Daxar Taalor and always had. She understood that even if he did not want to. He was better than some, Trigan, but he was also not as wise as he felt he was.
Four days of riding passed before Hrothrun decided to risk the storms. She rode along the odd contours of the Blasted Lands and considered them for a long while before making her decision. It was not fear, exactly. As with most of the Sa’ba Taalor, fear was very close to an unknown concept. The gods spoke to them, schooled them in what was right and what was wrong, and taught that fear was a wasted emotion. It was wise to be cautious, but foolish to be afraid.
So why then, had she waited so long before coming back to the gods? If it wasn’t fear, what was it that kept her away? The gods had not betrayed her; they had merely grown silent. As she understood it, those who returned to the Seven Forges were embraced by the gods anew, returned to their good graces as if nothing had ever happened.
Ah, but something had happened, hadn’t it? The Great Silence. The loss of the certainty brought by having the gods with you at all times was removed, and much as she wanted to dispute the notion, there was an odd comfort in that silence, at least during the times when being alone didn’t bring with it a freezing, crippling doubt.
The silence had been horrifying when it wasn’t liberating. There was peace to be found in that quiet.
There was guilt in having the gods listening in to every thought, wasn’t there? What if they heard something in her mind that they did not like? Would there be punishment?
There never had been, not in her entire life, but what if that changed? What if they knew that she’d felt fear during several of the battles with the Fellein? Would that merit being outcast, or worse? Better, perhaps not to risk it.
Still, Deillor would want to be seen and claimed by his gods.
And so, with Deillor in her thoughts, Hrothrun returned to her people, walking into the Blasted Lands without any further hesitation.
It was an odd sensation. From outside, the storms raged and there was little to no breeze, merely a thickening in the air, a deep and abiding sense of pressure. When she walked forward, however, the pressure eased almost immediately and was replaced by howling winds and a bitter cold that she could not escape. Her entire life, since she was deemed old enough to defend herself, Hrothrun, like all of her people, had moved into the Blasted Lands to hunt. The cold was familiar, the winds were familiar. The sounds and scents of the endless storm were ingrained within her. Moving back into that storm brought with it a deep sense of familiarity that was comfortable, even if it was not necessarily welcome.
The storm roared around her and she bowed into it, fighting to keep her footing even as the horse that carried Deillor fought for a moment, wanting little more than to flee the area.
Within twenty minutes she surrendered to the inevitable and released the horses. She could fight them, kill them or let them go, and in the end it was easier to carry the corpse of her friend than it was to fight two animals that wanted to flee.
Wheklam called for her. She saw the great mountain, the plumes of black, volcanic smoke spitting from its crown, and heard the roaring winds howling around the sides of the god’s heart. Deillor’s dead weight pressed at her shoulders and neck, tried to bend her and force her to her knees, but she’d have none of it. The only weight that mattered was the crushing guilt that nearly consumed her as she looked at the god she had walked away from.
Tears burned at her eyes, slid past the inner eyelid that shielded her from the sand, ash and ice.
“I come for you, Wheklam. I bow to you. I beg you, take me back.” The words were lost to the wind but she did not care. They did not need to be heard by ears for the god to know of them. At least she hoped that was still the case. The storms continued to rage and she walked, ignoring all but the shadow of Wheklam.
Wheklam waited and likely grew impatient, and so she moved faster.
Breaking free of the raging storms was easy. She merely walked through them until the gods freed her from their grasp. The winds faded to a whisper, and the wall of sands that had assaulted her vanished with it.
She set down the dead man she had been carrying and sighed her relief.
Wheklam was above her. She could see up to the crown of the great mountain, could make out the form of another pilgrim scaling the rugged heights, doubtless seeking the war god’s attention.
She rolled her shoulders and took a deep breath before reaching for Deillor’s weight. If he was to be offered to Wheklam, he must first be carried to the very pinnacle of the mountain.
Her hands had only briefly touched the dead flesh before the pain came upon her and brought a scream of surprise to her lips.
Deillor’s body shifted, pulled and warped before her eyes, even as her fingers and toes began to twist and change. The pain moved quickly from there, reached her wrists, her knees, her spine. Bones grew and shifted and Hrothrun let out a sound that was both a cry of pain and a warped giggle.
She had been seen, by Wheklam, it seemed, and likely by the other gods as well. She had been judged and found wanting, but that judgement was not truly unexpected. She had known even when she started her quest that there was a price for defying the gods.
Still, the pain was so much larger than she had expected. It hit her like a hundred hammer blows, concentrated first in her bones and joints and then across muscles and nerve endings.
The sounds coming from her mouth continued and her mind grew foggy, even as she wept-cackled and fell to her hands and feet. Clothing split and fell away, and weapons she’d carried for years were discarded, even as her nails thickened into heavy claws and her teeth grew longer and wickedly sharp.
The pain faded away, replaced by a deep, gnawing hunger. Beside her the dead man shook his head and stood, towering over the height he had known in his previous life.
The Sa’ba Taalor were the chosen of the gods. Those who failed in their life were punished, and the punishment was considered fitting by gods and gray skins alike.
For five years the Blasted Lands had ceased to exist but they had returned. How then could the Pra-Moresh, the scavengers and hunters of the Blasted Lands, not return with them?
Her name no longer mattered. She remembered it, but it was a faint whisper in comparison to the raging hunger that tore at her guts and fueled a nearly blinding anger.
Beside her, the male of her kind moved and giggled, sliding back into the endless tempest as the scent of live prey caught his attention. Had she kept words, she’d have remembered the word horse, but like all sentient thought, that was a thing of the past.
For now all that mattered was that the male was correct, there was meat to be found in the distance and she intended to find it.
Had Swech seen what had occurred, she would have nodded her satisfaction.
The gods were just, after all, and merciful in their own ways.
CHAPTER TEN
Desh Krohan
“You’re a fickle woman, Majesty.” He spoke without worry. The Empress was not the vindictive sort, despite the numerous promises she had made to see him suffer.
“I’m not fickle. I’m tired. As you wish, Desh. You may send in your suitors. I make no promises to care but I will at least entertain the notion.”
Her agreeing made the entire affair less pleasant, of course. Nachia Krous was not the sort who gave up fights easily, but she might lie about her decision to stop a proper debate. “Listen, it’s not that I don’t want you to find a spouse and have a baby, but you’re actually making me nervous now.”
“Of course I am.” Nachia smiled.
“I really hate it when you grow agreeable.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Desh. Either I agree to your foolish conditions, or I don’t. If I change my mind it merely means that you’ve worn me down.”
“Mountains wear down after ages, Majesty, but I’ve yet to see proof of the same happening to you.” He moved closer to the large table in front of her, where she had a very detailed map of Fellein and the surrounding Seven Forges laid out. There was a figure on horseback that rested approximately where Merros Dulver and his entourage of soldiers rode from the city.
“Are you worried about him?”
“Of course I am. I didn’t want him going in the first place.”
“I expect he felt the same way about your last excursion from the city.”
“I know he did. That’s why I let him win this argument.” She sighed and shifted on her throne. “You know, Desh, I know what you did to this damnable chair, I’m going to have it burned.”
“The enchantments placed on the throne are there to keep you safe.”
“And humbled.”
“Humble goes along with safe.” He waved her arguments aside. Long ago he’d enchanted two thrones, one in the Summer City and one in the palace. They were identical enchantments designed to protect the reigning Emperor or Empress, and also to cause them discomfort. Nothing too severe of course, but enough to make sitting on the throne an uncomfortable experience. It was best to make certain that no one grew complacent.
The only problem with that was simply that Nachia knew about it. He’d told her long ago, before there was much chance of her ever becoming the Empress.
“Just the same, I should have the damned thing destroyed.”
“Or you could try a new cushion.”
She sighed and rose from her seat.
“What is happening out there, Desh? Why are there storms surrounding the Seven Forges?”
“Because their gods wanted them, apparently.”
“Can’t you stop them?”
“No, Majesty. I am no match for a god, and certainly not for seven of them.”
“We have people out there whose main agenda is to open negotiations with the seven kingdoms. How are they supposed to get past this new obstacle?”
“Well, technically it’s not new. It’s just showing up again. We’ve had people traverse the Blasted Lands before, and while I’m not certain, it seems there are fewer of them to deal with this time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s a narrow strip of storm surrounding each of the forges. How bad could it be?”
“Desh, every report coming in so far says that if you look around in the storm you can see all seven of the forges, no matter which of the areas is entered.”
“Well then, that could be an obstacle to consider.”
“Yes, exactly the problem. Now, what are you going to do about it?”
“Not a solitary thing. As I’ve already said, I’m no match for seven gods putting up obstacles.”
“But–”
“Honestly, Nachia, sometimes I don’t think you hear a single word I say. I’m barely allowed to use the sorcery I have. There are laws put in place to prevent me from using most of my more powerful spells, and even without those laws, I can’t do much of anything without being drained by the end of even the simplest incantations. I’ve told you a thousand times, magic has a price.” He sounded testy, and he didn’t want to sound that way, but after having the same conversation a dozen or more times, he had grown very tired of the situation.
“Well then, work some sort of magic with your Sisters and a few more wizards. Work together to make things go the way you’d like them to, but fix this.”
“It’s not a bird I can pull from the sleeve of my robes. I can’t use a deck of cards to create an illusion here, Majesty. This is a power the likes of which I can never outdo. This is the work of gods, Nachia. Gods!” He leaned in closer to her, stared hard at her eyes, and despite himself felt his temper flaring.
