“Right then,” the sergeant said. He scanned the remaining guards. “Follow me. We’ll be guarding the platform. Mostly for show, mind you. So stand up straight, and for Er’si’s glorious tits, don’t fart when they bring out the goddess.”
54
I followed the group of sober guards toward the rug leading to the dais, trying to figure out what the bloody gods was going on.
I saw some priests moving about on the dais, but no Orathar. No high priest.
It had to be a different high priest. Someone they called the high priest but wasn’t actually.
I’d never heard of this city hidden beyond a mountain. They lived apart from everyone else. So maybe they’d formed their own Order.
That had to be it.
Nothing else made sense.
And what did he mean by goddess? Was this another play after all? One for the king and queen? Perhaps what we’d seen earlier was only a public rehearsal.
“What are we going to do?” Vi asked.
We were far back enough away from the others, and there was sufficient noise that I replied. “We’ll get through the ceremony, and then get out of here.”
“What happened to other guards? The ones Alva… you know.”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“What if their bodies turn up somewhere?” Sienna asked. “They’ll see they are missing their uniforms and assume impostors are about.”
“So long as we don’t stand out there’s no reason for anyone to suspect us of anything. So let’s stop whispering to each other and not stand out.”
I picked up the pace to merge back in with the others.
We reached the plush silver carpet and lined up, taking positions along either side of it.
The young guard who’d gotten a spear for Vi was directly across from us, standing at a stiff attention.
I was about to scold Vi and Sienna to stand to attention as well, but the sergeant beat me to it.
“Come on lads, you can do better than that.” He placed one hand on Vi’s lower back, one on her shoulder, and pushed, straightening her body up.
She let out a little growl, which thankfully the sergeant simply laughed at. “If you’re hungover, you should’ve gone with the others to watch the kiddos.”
Sienna straightened next to me, and the guard nodded at her. “That’s a lad. Teach me to judge someone for not wearing boots.” He laughed.
He glanced at the young guard across from us, made a sound in his throat that might have been interpreted as approval, then shifted his appraisal to me. “Now here is a guard. If only the rest of my scraggly squad were as professional as you.”
He nodded sharply to himself then walked up and down the line, making sure everyone was standing at full attention.
With the helmet I wore, it made it easy to look around, at least at things in my field of view.
So I used the opportunity to study the priests on the dais.
They were setting up something that I couldn’t quite make out. It looked like a crystal globe on a pedestal.
Was that a voice-thrower?
It would make sense since we were in a coliseum.
There had to be at least a thousand people around us.
The king and queen were sitting on their thrones, looking over everything with mild disinterest.
Despite what I’d told Sienna and Vi, I was worried about the dead guards being discovered. Was more worried about what had happened to the bodies. And who had caused that mess. The only thing I could come up with was that it had been Alva—which seemed unlikely—or Trin.
Though I couldn’t think of a reason either of them would go to that extent to cover up the blood.
I wondered where Trin was. Had she seen us getting dragged into this?
If it hadn’t been her who’d gotten rid of the corpses, had she gone back to the warden’s? Had she been able to enthrall him? And if so, what had she found out?
Several pairs of guards walked the coliseum perimeter, perhaps on the lookout for us.
The drunk or hungover—or smart—guards stood at lax attention near the gate off to the side of the dais, watching the children play.
The priests finished setting up the voice-thrower, and one of them now pulled out a scroll. He looked over it for several moments, then nodded.
And then nothing else happened for a while.
The priests appeared to be waiting for something, standing there watching the coliseum entrance with great eagerness.
The guards on the other hand looked listless.
People in the stands chatted, the noise combining into a dull roar like that of a river.
Those up on the royal platform continued their feast, and the king and queen looked more bored than ever.
I shifted uncomfortably.
The sergeant paced up and down the line of guards, still carrying his helm rather than wearing it.
Looked like whatever this was, wasn’t starting as soon as he’d thought.
I glanced toward the one he’d called Commander Vossi, the one guard who’d seen us and was still alive and uninjured.
She watched the children absently, still seeming relaxed.
Of course. She couldn’t recognize us through our helmets.
Vi let out a growl of annoyance, but thankfully didn’t say anything.
The young guard across from us didn’t let her form falter as time wore on. Unlike the rest of us.
Finally a horn blew from above the entrance to the coliseum—loud, but not like the one we’d heard this morning—and all eyes turned in that direction.
A few moments later a horse-drawn carriage entered the arena.
It was a hulking thing, made of white and black metal with elaborate filigrees—a delicate contrast to its sheer bulk—decorating it, its surfaces polished to a high shine.
It was one I’d seen before. Or at least one like it.
It was the type of carriage favored by the Order of Priests. The ones high-ranking members used.
My stomach started knotting in anticipation.
Could Orathar really be in this unknown city?
The high priest himself?
If so, why?
Four massive horses pulled the carriage toward us. In front of them marched a group of Honor Guard knights—not just for show, but an elite, highly trained group of warriors specially chosen to guard members of the Order.
The procession stopped only a few paces away from the end of the rolled-out carpet, and the knights formed up beside the carriage door and stood at attention.
The door opened, and a priestess stepped out. She was nude except for the paint covering her body.
No. It couldn’t be.
Two things struck me.
One, and least surprising, was that her skin was painted to mimic what Erisi was supposed to have looked like. Like the woman we’d seen on stage earlier whose facial features bore a resemblance to those of Erisi’s statue.
But this wasn’t that woman.
Which brought me to the second and most surprising—no, impossible—realization: I recognized her. She was a queen.
A queen of a kingdom I knew very well.
The woman… was Lyra. My dead wife.
55
My heart was pounding in my chest, my ears ringing, my vision going fuzzy.
How could this be? It couldn’t be her. I must be mistaken, must be seeing things.
The knights knelt as Lyra, who I’d thought dead, who was dead, exited and stepped down from the carriage steps onto the carpet leading up to the dais.
Around us the other guards went to their knees, and I felt Vi’s hand grasp mine, pulling me down to my own.
The other guards lowered their heads as the naked goddess incarnate walked by.
But I couldn’t help but watch her go, the markings of Erisi on her flesh. Vibrant reds and blues, the streaks of white on her arms, the streaks of black across her eyes. The goddess of war, and love, and victory.
The g
oddess above all others.
Erisi, the Victor. The one whose likeness stood tall above the city just outside this coliseum.
I watched her face, thinking at any moment she would turn to look at me, recognize me even through my helmet.
But she passed by, not even glancing my way.
She approached the dais slowly, regally, taking her time.
Without thinking, I Pulled. But there was no magic coming from her, no more than came off any mage. She was alive. And real—not a summon or other trickery.
But there was a bigger source of magic. One I was very familiar with.
On the dais, coming from the hands of one of the priests, from the scroll he held, was an extraordinary amount of magic.
I recognized its intensity, its unique colors. It was the spell we’d pursued these past days and nights. The one Trin was after.
The Breaker had delivered it here after all.
And then my attention was drawn away from that as I heard the unmistakable clink of the skulls.
A sound that never before had set my heart racing, but which now caused that already overworked organ to pound even harder, caused my Pulling to suddenly and uncontrollably cease.
The sound of the skulls of the six god generals of Aera’s six armies, the ones Erisi is said to have defeated.
I turned my head, fighting against the muscles of my neck, which didn’t seem to want me to look.
But I did look. And I saw him. I saw Orathar. I saw the high priest himself stepping out of the carriage. The man I’d sworn to kill, the man who’d marked me and exiled me from my own kingdom, the man who—I’d thought—had killed my wife.
He was adorned in the artifacts of the Six Gods. Vordathal’s giant spiked metal pauldrons on his shoulders; the black Sword of Agormonn on his belt; the Shield of Sorothar on his back, just poking out behind his head, which was unhelmed, but wearing the Crown of Felethena; the Amulet of Wvearse around his neck.
On the other side of his belt, opposite the black sword, was the Scepter of Qosonan, and next to this, the six skulls, shrunken and cast in an iron that never rusts.
They clinked together as he walked, and I stared in horror up at a god.
He paid no mind to any of the soldiers as he strode down the carpet after the nude goddess.
After he passed, the soldiers stood up in a wave, and again Vi had to pull me to my feet.
None of this made any sense.
What was this city that I’d never been to, never even heard of?
What was this ceremony?
It was no mere play, not with that spell here.
What had Trin said? The spell’s name had Erisi in it.
Yes, and I had thought it meant nothing. Erisi was famous of course, and it wasn’t uncommon for things to be named after her.
I stood in shock, watching as my wife, my living wife, ascended to the dais.
The priests there, who would normally never even slightly bow their heads to anyone, not even a king, fell to their knees and pressed their foreheads to the carpeted dais as my wife, the goddess incarnate, looked down upon them.
She stopped at the pedestal with the voice-thrower globe on it and then turned, facing outward to the coliseum, facing the approaching high priest.
Orathar continued his measured pace, and as he reached the steps, my wife turned to the king and queen, who while above her were on their knees in front of their thrones. She held out her hands to the sides. “Your Majesties,” she said, her voice carrying as the globe picked it up and amplified it out to us all.
Then she spun slowly, arms still held out. “My children. Thank you for coming to my rebirth. Thank you for believing and staying true, even after so long.”
The crowd roared, the cheer so loud it made my eardrums crackle.
Orathar walked up beside her, taking her hand in his and holding it up in the air.
The crowd fell silent, and as one, all in the coliseum stadium went to their knees, bowing their heads.
It was now so quiet I could hear birds somewhere in the distance.
Someone coughed.
Someone else was crying. In joy or fear, I did not know.
Despite the sergeant’s warning, someone farted and there was a brief spat of nervous laughter.
It did not carry far.
Then Orathar spoke.
“Today you are witnessing something historic. Something legendary. As you all too well know, the gods have long been absent from this world. Have left us to fight and destroy each other. But today, finally, that will change. We will restore the world to its former glory, put an end to the petty wars of men. Today, we shall bring back the greatest of all gods. Today, Erisi lives.”
The roar of approval made my vision shake, my skull rattle. I couldn’t understand what was going on. How could this be happening?
Bringing back the gods? That’s what this was?
“Let us not delay any longer. We’ve all waited so long for this. Let us begin this ceremony of rebirth and usher in a new era, one of peace and prosperity.
“An era of the eternal reign of Erisi, the Victor.”
More cheers, louder somehow, and I felt as though I might go to my knees as my body filled with rage at this man with delusions of the gods, his ignorant reverence of them and what he thought they would do for the world.
There were stories, whispers really. Rumors and legends about ways to reincarnate the gods. But those were just that, stories and legends. The gods were dead. There was no way to bring them back.
So I had believed.
It wouldn’t be the first time I had been wrong.
I looked at my wife, standing there naked before the masses, her body painted, looking now so much like the goddess herself, and I wondered, why her?
While I loved her, while she was special to me, she wasn’t actually special.
Was she?
She had no Inclination, no gifts. She had worked for her powers as a mage, not been given them by birth.
So why then had Orathar chosen her?
Had I had it wrong all along?
I thought because I was a Dark, he’d feared me, thought this was why he’d organized my exile and taken my kingdom.
But seeing him like this—with all his artifacts of the gods, artifacts so blindingly powerful that if I were to Pull to see the colors of magic, those coming off him would wash away everything else to insignificance—I realized the Dark were nothing to him.
I was nothing.
I’d thought he’d feared me becoming a Dread, feared what I was capable of.
But now I had to wonder. Had it been my wife all along that he’d been after? Had it not been fear of what I was capable of, but lust for what she was?
Had I simply been collateral damage?
56
“Now we shall begin,” Orathar said, and turned to the other priests, who were no longer kneeling, though who kept their heads bowed. He said something to them which wasn’t amplified, and seven of them moved to surround my wife, the goddess incarnate, in a circle.
The one with the scroll—the scroll we’d pursued here all the way from Silaris—began reading from it, and soon they all took it up in a chant.
Magic visible to the naked eye appeared from the scroll itself, flowing into the one reading from it, then out to the others in the circle, one to the next. As they held their hands out to my wife, this magic flowed from them and into her, and the vibrant paints across her flesh began to glow.
They were really doing it.
The whispers and legends were true.
They were bringing back something which had long been dead, which had long been absent from our world—not without good reason.
The gods had ruined the world, made us mortals slaves to their fickle whims. No one wanted them back.
Or so I’d believed.
I had to stop this. I couldn’t just stand idly by and let it happen.
But how could I stop it?
What could I do to sto
p this?
Though I saw no obvious Breakers, I knew they would have them everywhere.
And even without them, the priests were themselves powerful mages, matched only, perhaps, by wizards.
They claimed to have a connection to the gods. Said it was that connection which gave power to the members of their order.
An order which was apparently seeking to bring disorder to the world. One that was going to bring chaos and war.
How could all these people here allow it?
Didn’t they realize what this would mean? A ruler with absolute, incontestable power. One who could do as she pleased. One who no one, not even the Wizards Guild—not even the divines—could stop.
The princess Elaria was long dead, and through all the long history, she’d been the only one to defeat them, though far from the only to try. And one like her could never exist again, not in a world poisoned by magic, one where its people were fundamentally altered by it. That was the curse of magic. It gave us power, but it also made us slaves, puppets to the gods. And it was in our blood now, in our very essence.
If I didn’t stop this, if I allowed them to bring the gods back into the world, everything Elaria worked for—both the person and the place—would be for naught.
I felt a hand on my wrist. I looked down and saw that I had begun to step out of line.
Vi pulled me back.
No one was paying attention to us however.
All eyes were on the dais, on the immense amount of magic being poured into the avatar, being poured into my wife.
Lyra.
My heart ached, and I yearned to go to her. To save her from this.
To save us all.
She was floating now, half her height off the ground, and still, more magic was flowing into her.
The paint on her body was no longer paint at all, but pure magic, just like the goddess Erisi. It was blindingly bright, though drew your eyes, made you want to look at it, made you want to look at her, for she was a symbol of perfection, and what better a sight for the last image you’d ever lay eyes on.
Her golden hair floated around her, sparkling in the late-day sun.
“Stop,” Vi said, and I realized I was still pulling at her.
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