The Last Goddess

by C.E. Stalbaum

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

   

  Twelve years ago, following a failed assault on Tal Karoth, Nathan Rook had spent the better part of two weeks as a prisoner in a Darenthi war camp. And despite the fact the Republic Senate had signed onto the Eracles Accords some eighty years earlier—a treaty that ostensibly criminalized mistreatment of war prisoners—it was absolutely his most harrowing experience of the entire war. He hadn’t been tortured, exactly, at least not in the strung-up-on-a-rack type of way. Instead, he had endured the more conventional dehydration, starvation, and sleep deprivation, and he had never appreciated how effective those simple techniques could be until he had lived through them.

  And so, all things considered, his return trip to Haven was luxury by comparison. He was given ample food and water, and he was even allowed to sleep largely undisturbed in camp at night. The rest of the time he was on the back of a horse next to a Faceless, which, while not exactly ideal for stimulating conversation, at least gave him plenty of time for introspection.

  It was an activity he generally enjoyed and often regretted not having more time for. In this case, however, he might have rather been hungry. As the trip went on, he found it increasingly difficult to accept what had happened and rationalize the decisions he’d made during the last two weeks. He had gotten his people involved in this mess to satisfy his curiosity, and it had very nearly gotten them all killed.

  But he did take some solace in the fact that Bremen had stuck to his word and called off his assault on the monastery. The others were most likely alive and well, and possibly even plotting a poorly-conceived rescue attempt. That had been the whole point of turning himself in, after all. If it kept the others safe, then it was all worth it.

  Or so he told himself. Unfortunately, the words became less convincing with each repetition. It wasn’t a fear of pain or torture that made him waver during the long days of travel; it was the realization that he had just handed the Balorites a very powerful weapon. Any doubts he might have had about Lurien’s true identity or the power she’d bestowed upon him had vanished during his recovery from Bale’s assault.

  For the second time in his life, he should have been dead. Yet mere hours after being mortally wounded, Rook had awakened almost as good as new. He couldn’t explain it; he hadn’t felt anything strange at all when he’d fallen, just an all-encompassing darkness. He hadn’t expected to wake up ever again, and yet here he was. For a while he’d tried to convince himself that it was a trick, that Bremen or one of the other magi with him had used their own healing magic to keep him alive, but he knew first-hand the limitations of such spells. They might have been able to save his life, but it would have taken him weeks or even months to bounce back from such an injury even with the help of a master healer. No, his recovery was nothing short of miraculous.

  He simply didn’t understand it. With the exception of the wound he’d suffered at the Wall—a wound that had, in retrospect, healed remarkably quickly even with Selaste’s help—he hadn’t endured more than a scrape during the last five years. It was perfectly possible this power had been lying dormant inside him ever since Turesk and he’d never had cause to notice. But that still didn’t make it any easier for him to wrap his head around it.

  Was he immortal, then? Lurien hadn’t been, but then she hadn’t succumbed to any normal wound—she had explicitly sacrificed herself to keep him alive. Did that make a difference? Before that day she’d never been near a battlefield or suffered any serious injuries herself, so again he had nothing to compare it to.

  He wondered if there was a way for him to control this power somehow, but he didn’t feel any differently than he had the rest of his life. He wasn’t a mage; he had never touched the Fane and didn’t know any spells. It all seemed so…wrong. Shouldn’t a man know when he was carrying a goddess’s soul inside of him? It made him recall his early conversations with Selaste and the questions she’d been asking herself. What did it actually mean to carry divine power? What did it mean to be the Messiah?

  Eventually Rook decided to let the matter rest and give his mind a break. He was prisoner to a bunch of fanatics who wanted to take control of the Republic, and that should have been plenty to occupy his attention. His first priority had to be escape—or, failing that, to stay alive long enough for the others to try and mount a rescue.

  Bremen’s war band reached Haven after five days of travel, at which point they stuffed Rook into the back of a covered wagon before dragging him through the city gates. He was bound, blindfolded, and gagged by that point, so all he could really do was listen to the familiar sounds of the city as he was carried through it.

  Perhaps an hour or so later they came to a stop and the back of the wagon opened. An armored hand firmly yanked him out and marched him up a few steps before shoving him unceremoniously down on the floor.

  “You made excellent time, General,” a calm male voice said. “Welcome back.”

  “We have a great deal to talk about, Senator.”

  “Yes, we do. So this is the infamous Nathan Rook, is it? A pleasure to finally meet you. I have several colleagues in both the Senate and the Assembly who would absolutely love to be this close to you.”

  A hand grabbed onto Rook and removed his gag and blindfold, and he blinked against the sudden influx of light. In addition to Bremen, an old, well-dressed man stood nearby, presumably the other speaker, and a wiry, twenty something man with pasty skin and long red-blonde hair stood awkwardly in the corner. The man who had removed his gag remained close by. He was tall, muscular, and moved with the casual precision of a trained killer.

  “Senator Kord Veltar, if I’m not mistaken,” Rook said to the old man. “I have a number of associates who would love to be this close to you, too.”

  “No doubt,” Veltar replied softly, a thin smile on his lips. “You already know General Bremen, of course, but I suppose you’ve never had the chance to meet His Majesty?”

  The pasty man in the corner grunted. “Are you going to give him a tour while you’re at it? He’s a prisoner; he doesn’t need to know who we are.”

  The senator shrugged. “I figured you might want to speak with him. Or at least tell him what happened to his friend, that scavenger, Marek.”

  Prince Kastrius scoffed. “I’m not interested in petty banter. All I care about is whether or not he really carries Edeh’s soul.”

  Veltar glanced down to Rook. “It is an excellent question.”

  “He should be dead,” Bremen said flatly. “Bale’s spell should have burnt him to cinders, but he was back on his feet within hours.”

  “Indeed. It really is a shame Jonas didn’t survive to tell me about it,” the old man sneered. “But he has been known to be wrong on occasion—usually about very important things.”

  “Which is why you set all this up in the first place, isn’t it?” Rook asked sharply. He knew Bremen was still fuming about being betrayed, and Rook had taken every opportunity to keep pouring salt in that wound on the trip here. “You dedicated your life to finding the Kirshal, and when Bale let her go you thought he betrayed you. So you came back for revenge—and you duped these two into helping you.”

  “Yes, I did,” Veltar admitted flatly. “I used them to get to Bale and the secrets he was keeping, and now they are both about to benefit from it.”

  Rook knew his cheek twitched slightly. He had expected an outright denial or glib rationalization about why it was necessary, not the truth. And the worst part was, neither of the other men pressed him on it. Had they already come to grips with what had happened?

  “I examined the scrolls myself,” Bremen said. “Their collective knowledge is staggering.”

  “So was he right?” Kastrius asked, arms still folded tightly across his chest. “There really is a way to beat the Flensing?”

  The general nodded. “Yes…and so much more.”

  Rook tried not to wince as his stomach sank. So that was it, then—their rage had been quelled by po
wer. Veltar had given them exactly what he promised, and that meant they were going to let him get away with what he had done.

  It also meant Rook was in a lot of trouble.

  Kastrius smiled darkly. “Tell me.”

  “The general finally understands the weapon we now wield against the Empress,” Veltar said. “The secret to Consecration is only the beginning.”

  “We can turn her army against her,” Bremen told them, holding a scroll case in his hand. “The key to the Faceless—all of them—is right here.”

  “No…” Kastrius whispered, leaping up from his chair and grabbing the case. “You can’t be serious.”

  Veltar smiled widely and sat down in a plush chair. “I have already mastered the technique to control a single Faceless, but the Kirshane had the knowledge to control armies. Now that power is ours.”

  “It’s almost too perfect,” the prince whispered, his eyes wide as he examined the parchment.

  “When she gathers her forces at the center of the city the day after tomorrow, you, my prince, shall take full control of them,” Veltar went on. “In one clean, fell swoop, we can eliminate the Empress and the Assembly, as well as any others who dare to challenge the power of Abalor.”

  Almost as an afterthought, Kastrius glanced down to Rook.  “We still have to decide what to do with him.”

  “You could just let me go,” Rook suggested. “I wouldn’t complain.”

  “As calm as I would have expected,” Veltar mused. “On the surface, anyway. It’s tempting to have Gralis break your legs so we could test these miraculous healing powers for ourselves.”

  Rook didn’t give him the satisfaction of reacting, but it didn’t stop his breath from catching in his throat. The senator was probably just full of bluster, anyway.

  Probably.

  “His associates will undoubtedly come looking for him,” the prince said, “including your old disciple.”

   Veltar grunted. “I doubt she’ll even stay with them. But even if she does, she won’t remember anything that could be used against us.”

  “You forget that he’s an information broker by trade. They won’t need her memories to flush us out.”

  The senator shrugged and turned to Bremen. “He’s your responsibility, General. You wanted to bring him here, and you’re the one that let his allies go. Stick him somewhere out of the way, and we’ll figure out what to do with him after the celebration.”

  Bremen took a step forward and loomed over Rook. “Abalor has provided us with this gift. We should not waste it.”

  “I doubt his gift will go rotten in a few days,” Veltar muttered. “It will take time to figure out how to…extract whatever power is really inside him. Right now we need to focus our efforts on the celebration—our prince still needs considerable training, and we’re short on time.”

  “In the interim, you might as well find out if he knows anything of value,” Kastrius suggested. “He does still feel pain, right? If you can’t actually harm him permanently, it gives you an excellent motivational tool.”

  Bremen’s eyes narrowed, and this time Rook couldn’t help but flinch. Here he was staring into the face of the man who had haunted his dreams for many years—the man whose armies had destroyed his life—and now Rook was completely at his mercy. This definitely wasn’t going to be another Tal Karoth.

  It was going to be much, much worse.

  “Put him back in the wagon,” the general said coldly. “I’ll take it from there.”