by Logan Jacobs
I dismounted and stood in front of him. Then I held out my wounded arm to him as I watched the life drain from his wideset, furious eyes and said, “That, my friend, is ichor.”
I did not know whether I was truly a god. But it could not hurt for the enemies of Qaar’endoth to think so. And even if I was not Qaar’endoth himself, it seemed evident that he must favor me. When it came to empowering me to fight, at least. Surely, a benign god would not have allowed all his faithful followers to be destroyed in this way? Would not have cut short the lives of all the people I had ever known and loved? Given the choice, I would have gladly died to protect my friends. So why had Qaar’endoth instead chosen to spare me, forcing me to continue alone?
Yet Father Ludo had not questioned the day’s course of events or railed against them. He had simply accepted them as the manifestation of Aurelana’s prophecy. I remembered every word of it.
“The faithful will perish, save for the strongest of them all, and that one will be the vessel of Qaar’endoth. And the vessel shall be multiplied with each proof of fealty. And from the alliance of the faithless shall come the age of Qaar’endoth.”
If I was really now the vessel of Qaar’endoth, and that was what had enabled me to wield the Sword of Saint Polliver without burning, then the first sentence had already come true. But the rest of the prophecy still made no sense to me. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was going to fucking annihilate the bastards who had killed my friends.
I retrieved the belt and scabbard from where they had been flung during the fight, buckled it around my waist, wiped the blood off my sword on one of the dead man’s cloaks, and sheathed the relic.
“Thank you, Saint Polliver,” I said. “I promise you, this is just the beginning of the great things we’ll be able to accomplish together. I will make sure that you will not be embarrassed to be seen in my company.”
It was time for me to return to the barracks that I had been mysteriously removed from against my will. I owed the other novices that much. I would witness what had become of them and hope against hope that maybe there was someone there that I could still help.
And I would destroy any of Thorvinius’ minions that I found.
I steeled myself when I crossed the threshold of my sleeping bay, already knowing what I would find. My own skewered body near the door, with my face contorted into a grimace, was the easy part.
The hard part was Simon’s body next to me, where he had gone down fighting with his back to mine, and I prayed to Qaar’endoth with every shred of my being that his other self was curled up in a hollow log somewhere or crouched on a rooftop, poised to drop a rock onto any passersby.
The hard part was the rest of my fellow novices’ bodies littering their beds and crowding the aisleway.
The hard part was turning them over and brushing hair aside and lifting chins until I had identified all twenty faces.
The hard part was to know what I would find in the female novice barracks.
The hardest part was finding Simon’s second body last of all, buried beneath a pile of Thorvinius’ men that he must have dragged into death with him.
I gave a wordless scream that scraped my throat raw. If there were any attackers left within a mile, they surely would have heard it. I wanted them to hear it. I wanted them to come running. Every one of them. Every creature that had ever sacrificed an innocent life to Thorvinius, the All-Consuming. But no one did.
The nearest invader’s body had faintly grayish skin with a slimy toad-like texture. His features were like those of a gargoyle. I grabbed his head between my hands, braced my boot against his muscular shoulder, and screamed again with effort as I ripped it off his neck. I carried the head back toward the door, paused to retrieve the spear from my other self’s guts, and brought both objects outside to the center of the courtyard.
There I drove the butt of the spear into the ground and impaled the hideous head atop the point. I circled it, staring out at the buildings that surrounded the courtyard, searching them for any sign of movement.
“You missed one!” I yelled. “You failed in your mission! I am still alive! Come back and get me, you fucking cowards!”
No answering twang of an arrow, no telltale rustle of a curtain.
I pointed at the head. “That will be you! That will be every single one of you! Thorvinius will never devour another temple. I will feed him his own slaves for his last meal! Do you hear me?”
I had almost given up when the reply roared out. “Thorvinius hears you! Thorvinius will answer you!”
From between the surrounding buildings, ten warriors in total rushed out. That was a lot for me to handle without another self, more than I had ever fought at once before, but remembering clever Simon and red-haired Meryn, both so full of joy and life, ignited overwhelming rage in my veins.
The first to reach me was armored in what looked like violet dragon scales and swinging a huge axe. Once I found a suitable chink in his armor for my dagger, the axe was mine.
I used it to cleave one of his fellows in half lengthwise from skull to groin, and another sideways at the waist.
While I was busy lopping someone else’s head off, one of the Thorvinians managed to sink his knife into my side. Pain erupted, but not the same kind of pain as when a vital organ had been hit. By now I was familiar with the different sensations associated with most categories and subcategories of both survivable and mortal wounds and this one scored low on my list of present worries. I ripped the knife back out of my body and demonstrated a much more effective placement on its owner’s.
Once all ten lay dead, I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Thorvinius, feed me more slaves!”
But I was met only with echoes.
Throughout the complex, there was no more movement. I knew that some of the attackers not killed by me or other order members had already fled, but that had only gained them a stay of execution. They would have nowhere to go except back to their temple, where they believed safety lay, and sooner or later, I would meet them there.
There was just one more thing I had to do before I left the only home I had ever really known. I needed to visit the most sacred place in the temple, its shrine, and kneel before Qaar’endoth’s altar one last time. Whatever he wanted from me, whatever reason he had had for doing this to me, I was going to need every ounce of help I could get from him. What the bull commander had said was true. There was only one of me, not even the usual two, and Thorvinius’ temple was unmatched in military might. The force that I had encountered today was only a fraction of his army of slaves.
I walked across the complex toward the shrine. On the way there, I passed by the priests’ quarters and the vestals’, and a glance inside each sufficed to confirm that there were no survivors. I knelt before each building to pray for safe passage to the Fairlands for all who had dwelled there. I knew that some of the ordained members of the temple would choose to spend their eternities engaging in intellectual conversation, tending beautiful gardens, and playing tranquil music, but I also knew that a lot of them were going to head straight for the warriors’ corner to join in some carousing.
The shrine was at the center of a well-groomed maze of hedges. We arranged it that way so that anyone paying a visit to the shrine would have the chance, with each twist and turn of greenery, to inhale more of nature and exhale more of the trivial and mundane preoccupations of daily life. Every member of the temple had memorized the labyrinth, so navigating it helped us shift into a more primal and instinctive frame of mind by the time we reached the shrine. It reminded us that we knew the way to Qaar’endoth by heart.
I wondered if, after I left, the hedges would grow rampant and seal the passageways so that no more humans or humanoids could access the shrine. Only the squirrels and birds would find a sanctuary in it then.
But for now, my way remained clear. In fact, more clear than it should have been. Some hedges had been trampled over or hacked through. Someone had been here before me, someone who did
not know the maze by heart.
I was on the alert, prepared for an enemy to spring out of the bushes, but whoever had damaged the hedges seemed to be gone along with the rest of the army, so I reached the shrine without incident.
The shrine was in the shape of a rotunda, carved out of an ivory horn, with twelve pillars supporting the dome. Bands of inlaid mother-of-pearl wound their way up the pillars. In the center of the shrine was an altar of horn, its surface being of pearl. Behind the altar was stationed an onyx statue of Qaar’endoth in one of his most famous incarnations, The Visitant. Winged, gleaming black, faceless, naked but sexless, his arms crossed over his broad chest and ending in scythe-like talons. A real work of art. Overall intimidating as fuck.
At first I thought the statue was gone, but then I realized that it had been knocked over and was lying on its side. The wrongness of that felt worse than a stab to the gut. I crouched and examined the statue. Probably the Thorvinians had attempted to destroy it, but it did not look as though it had sustained a single scratch. The statue was not easy for one man to maneuver alone, without the use of any kind of lever. It weighed probably close to five hundred pounds.
“Qaar’endoth, give me strength,” I grunted as I attempted to lift him by the shoulder, then the head, then the wing. It was hard to figure out an angle where I could get the right kind of leverage, and the stab wound in my side bled more when I lifted, but eventually I settled on an asymmetrical grip involving the bottom fringe of one wing, and the juncture where his neck met his opposite shoulder. By straining as hard as I could from a squatting position and forcing my own shoulder further and further down the statue’s back as I rose, I finally managed to tip his center of gravity into a vertical position. In fact, I tipped a little too far, and had to wrap my arms around him to keep him from toppling over the other way. But then I was done. Once more, Qaar’endoth was stably positioned where he belonged.
The blood was pounding in my head, and the stab wound in my side was blazing with pain again. I felt slightly dizzy. So for an instant, I thought I might be hallucinating when I saw myself standing on the other side of Qaar’endoth, looking straight at me with a slight smile. But no. I was really back.
“About fucking time,” I grumbled. “I could have really used my help just a minute ago.”
“Come on now, Vander,” I answered myself. “Do you really think it’s just a big fucking coincidence that this is the moment I returned to my side? What changed? What is the only thing that just changed?”
“The statue,” I said. “I restored Qaar’endoth.”
“Yes. This shrine is the heart of the temple. If I am really Qaar’endoth in some way, or even just a conduit for him, the altar statue is the physical locus of my power.”
“So when I lost myself-- that was because the statue was downed?”
“Yes. I suppose it must have been.”
“What if….”
“Oh, I know.”
“What if I put up another statue at another temple?” I said in unison with myself. “What if I claim another altar for Qaar’endoth? What if I create another locus for my power?”
Both my hearts were racing, envisioning a third heart beating in sync with them.
“The vessel shall be multiplied with each proof of fealty,” I whispered. “Maybe each altar is considered a proof? And grants me another body?”
“Fuck yeah,” I continued from my other mouth. “Thorvinius’ followers will rue the day their mothers spread their legs for their fathers.”
“Thorvinius will fucking rue the day he warped himself into being out of the infinite matter of the cosmos.”
I high-fived myself.
I both knelt before the altar and prayed in unison,
“Qaar’endoth give me strength. Qaar’endoth smite them through me. Qaar’endoth avenge thyself. Qaar’endoth grant my friends passage swift and sure to the most favored regions of the Fairlands.”
I was no longer sure whether I was addressing the onyx Visitant or myself beside me, but it did not matter. Both could hear me.
I both stood up, descended from the shrine, and started making my way out of the maze, side by side.
My vengeance against a god had only just begun.
Chapter Three
I had to figure out what supplies I would need for my journey, but first I had to figure out what the first destination on that journey would be. The final stop, of course, would be Thorvinius’ temple. It was two thousand miles to the east of Qaar’endoth’s temple. That was far enough away that we had not guessed they could be a threat, although his order was infamous for its bloodthirsty doctrines, and it seemed that the ambitions of the current high priest stretched beyond those of his predecessors.
Before I became strong enough to vanquish him and the rest of his accursed order, I would need to gather more forces. If my hypothesis were true that erecting a statue of Qaar’endoth at an altar granted me another self, then that was the key. But how could I gain more temples? No other order would willingly replace its god with mine upon request. Would I need to destroy all the inhabitants of another temple as the Thorvinians had destroyed all the inhabitants of mine? Some temples were peace-loving and did not deserve that kind of hostility.
But there were others, like the Thorvinians, who inflicted misery upon the surrounding populaces. Orders that extorted insupportable taxes from the already-starving peasantry or forced them to live under oppressive and unjust laws, such as ones that forcibly separated children from their families to be raised in the temple for purposes of indoctrination. That dictated who must marry whom. That assigned people to professions not of their choosing and confiscated their earnings to be spent as the temple saw fit. And that executed any who dared to speak their minds in opposition to their overlords.
Yes, I had heard of plenty of orders that I would not mind destroying.
The other option was building more temples. A statue had a better chance of remaining whole and in place at its altar if the worshippers who attended it had elected to follow that god of their own free will, of course. I could seek converts to Qaar’endoth’s order to populate and fortify complexes like the one where I had grown up. I could nurture his power, and mine, in an organic and long-lasting manner. But that would take time.
Meanwhile, Thorvinius’ forces would continue to pillage the countryside. I couldn’t let that continue to happen.
“Saint Polliver, what is my next move?” I asked as I held the blade erect in front of me and examined its mirrored surface. The saint gave me no sign, so I lowered the blade and set it to the whetstone again.
“Well,” I said from behind me, “Aurelana is the one who got me into this mess in the first place.”
“Aurelana did not destroy the temple.”
“You know what I mean. She’s the one who put it in my head that I am somehow Qaar’endoth, or can become him. She’s the one who’s telling me to multiply vessels by giving proofs of fealty.”
“Aurelana is dead. It is too late for her to explain herself. Oracles are always shit at explaining themselves, anyway.”
“Better than nothing, no? So let’s ask another oracle. The nearest temple is Nillibet’s. The goddess of chastity and baking. Her oracle, Meline, is quite well-reviewed. We can ask her to help interpret what Aurelana said, and maybe she’ll throw in a prophecy of her own for free.” My other self walked off to scavenge for more useful traveling supplies.
I considered. Nillibet’s temple was only a day’s ride, or two days’ walk, away. I supposed that was a reasonable plan that would not take too much time or effort. There were no male priests allowed in Nillibet’s order, and her vestals were known for being as generous with their delicious pastries as they were stingy with their sexual favors. At the very least I could stock up on pies for the road.
I only hoped that Thorvinius’ army was traveling in a different direction and had not gotten there first. I wondered if they would return to their own temple for further orders now that
I had slain their commander, or if his second would simply assume control. And how fast could they move? Their forces seemed to be composed of infantry only. No Thorvinians that I had seen were mounted although a few of them had appeared to have quadruped anatomy themselves.
Our temple did not stable any horses currently, although it had in past generations, because Father Ludo claimed that traveling on foot was more conducive to humility, contemplation, and so forth. I think perhaps part of his motivations for this practice was that he did not want to make it easy for the friskier of the novices, priests, and vestals to reach any towns or cities where they could get into any real trouble. Nillibet’s temple was the only other site of civilization that one could sneak back and forth from on foot before one’s absence became evident, and no one was likely to get into any worse trouble there than developing dental cavities.
However, I was already facing much worse trouble than that, and buying myself a couple of fast, reliable steeds as soon as possible might help me outrun it. I had also heard rumors that inns and other places of lodging that were not religious sometimes required travelers in need to bribe them before they would offer them any hospitality. This seemed like bad manners to me, but Qaar’endoth did have plenty of gems to spare.
So with a quick prayer of forgiveness, I had scooped up a few handfuls of the many that the invaders had dislodged from the sanctum floor and tucked them away into two pouches, one worn on each of my waists. Qaar’endoth understood that I was funding his work, and besides, once I had rid the land of Thorvinius, I would return here and restore the temple to its former glory. Fixing the material damage wouldn’t require anything except money to bribe masons and artisans, and although I had to admit I was a little unclear on how the whole concept of money really worked, I was confident that if making money was something that every layperson had to do, then I could figure out how to do it too. The only thing that could not be replaced was the people who had lived here.
As I finished sharpening Saint Polliver’s sword, my other self returned to the courtyard and deposited a huge pile of miscellaneous items I had gathered at my feet, pulled out a bandage, and wrapped my side. Then I proceeded to help myself sort the rest of the goods into two equal piles. I had brought a cloak for each of me and boots that were newer and sturdier than my current pairs. I had also brought chain mail tunics. Most of these things had only minimal bloodstains from the Thorvinians who had worn them originally. My deceased enemies had also bequeathed me a sword, an axe, and a couple of conveniently concealable daggers.