by M. C. Planck
Christopher had no magic left, save for the one high-ranking spell for the gate. He could convert it into healing and hurt the demon, but then they would have to wait twenty-four hours for their spells to recharge before they could go home. That did not seem likely to end well.
The monster opened its mouth to roar, and Alaine shot it with the grenade launcher, straight down its throat. It hiccupped twice and then exploded from the inside out.
“Here is close enough,” she said. “Open the way.”
He chanted while she stabbed the dead demon with the royal sword. He could hear wings beating behind him, getting closer, but the gate could not be hurried. Alaine raised the grenade launcher and began firing into the distance.
The rift opened. Richard and Lalania sprinted through. Christopher spent precious seconds lifting Maggie’s body before following. Alaine came through last.
Instantly, he shut the gate behind them.
“You could have let one through,” Alaine complained. “We could have taken one more. I still have the launcher.”
Richard was not amused. “Bloodthirsty much?”
They were standing in the beech wood where Christopher had fought the hjerne-spica. Christopher decided to have it cut down and turned into a parking lot. He had developed an aversion to the place.
“I don’t even have a message spell,” he said. “We’ll have to walk.”
Halfway to the city, a kind farmer paused his wagon, silently offering them a ride without taking his pipe out of his mouth. The party looked a sight, covered in blood of different colors, dirt, decayed moss, various burn marks, and carrying two naked bodies. The old man shrugged silently as if adventurers were too common to remark on. He spoke only to his mules, telling them to get along now with amiable authority.
Christopher wrapped his magic cloak around Maggie, trying not to notice all the scrapes, burns, and broken bones her body had suffered. He did run his thumb over her eyes, checking. The lack of black should have been comforting. Instead, the dry, lifeless corneas stabbed at his heart. She had never seemed truly dead to him until that moment.
Alaine stretched out on the load of straw, relaxing. “A good trip. The huldrene were profitable, and we bagged a bevinget at the end.”
“You don’t regret the loss of Hordur’s tael?” Richard asked.
“Of course. And yet his destruction is prize enough to make me smile for many years.”
“Speaking of profit,” Lalania said while trying to clean her boots with a handful of the farmer’s straw, “what you captured in that sword does not belong to you alone.” The straw started smoking after coming into contact with a green discoloration on her boot, and she threw it overboard. The farmer frowned around his pipe. Lalania stripped her boots off and considered tossing them, too.
Alaine took the contaminated boot from the bard and inspected it. She shrugged and handed it back, dismissing it as no longer dangerous. “True enough. Yet there are debts to be paid.”
“You can take my share,” Richard said. “And his. But Ell earned hers.”
“And he?” Alaine pointed to Kennet, where he mumbled and shivered in the wagon. “As a company he is entitled to a single share to our many, and yet that alone will make him a minor lord. Is this also your desire?”
Lalania began looking around for something to cover the naked man. “That’s up to Christopher. He disburses his company’s portion.”
“Don’t we get to deduct the price of the jeep as an expense?” Richard asked.
Christopher’s heart punched him in the chest. He put his hand on his favorite accountant’s cold body and tried not to weep.
“Such picayune details are beneath our dignity,” Alaine replied. She held her hand below the pommel of the great sword and whispered. A tangerine-sized ball of purple flowed into her hand.
The elf handed the treasure to the bard. Lalania stared at it, eyes wide. At the last minute, she turned to Christopher. “May I?” Technically, she still worked for him without a share or salary.
Christopher could think of nothing less important right now. He shrugged, utterly indifferent.
She swallowed the tael, hiding it behind her hand. “To think I have eclipsed the Skald without ever even holding her rank.”
“My share also goes to the Directorate,” Alaine said. “Technically, I should turn over these as well, but as I said some details are too small to obsess over.” The elf displayed the two large dull purple daggers that Hordur’s puppet had fought with. “They are adamantine, so we elves would only be discomfited by them. You might appreciate them as souvenirs.”
“Go on,” Richard said to Lalania as he took one. “We’ll have a matching set to remind us of our first date.”
Lalania took the other one, admiring it. It was harder than steel and sharper than a razor. “What makes you think I want to be reminded? The service was terrible, and the ambience left much to be desired.”
The wagon rattled up to the city gates. The guard leapt into action, summoning a proper carriage and finding clothes for Kennet. They still called Christopher “Lord,” which was nice. It had been less than a day, but he had already come to think of Krellyan as the ruler.
He had slept only through force of will. The royal suite felt like a stranger’s room. Maggie’s body lay on a couch, covered by a velvet cloak, and for once he was glad of the cold.
He washed, dressed, and ate like an automaton, waiting for the moment when his spells would recharge. He slipped into the meditative trance instantly, seeking the relief of abstraction. When he opened his eyes, his room was full of people.
Lalania bowed. “Forgive us,” she said, “but we have become very much attached to the Lady Mary in the short while we were privileged to know her.”
Most of his court had crowded in. Alaine was not there, but then she wasn’t really his. Faren and Krellyan were looking at him more than at the body. Gregor, Torme, and Fae stood silently in the rear. Richard was behind Lalania, half his attention on her instead, but even half of his formidable intellect was like a physical pressure.
They were here for him despite Lalania’s words. They were worried about him.
“It will work,” he told them. “There’s no one left to oppose me.”
“A concept that boggles the mind,” Krellyan said with a shake of his head. “Divine avatars are occasionally defeated on our plane. This is an inconvenience to the god in question. Yet to destroy one on its own plane is a true death. To dissolve one into the void is incomprehensible. To do so to an Elder god defies description.”
Richard smiled wickedly. “The Mouth is still where I left it. I think I need a new employer now. And as I understand the color scheme, there are at least two more you could do without.”
“More than that,” Krellyan said. “The Elders have their hosts of aspects, and the list of mortals who have ascended to demi-godhood is as long as the myths of our bards.”
“Richard Falconer, god-killer for hire. I like it.” He grinned at his own wit. “Ironically, it’s not even the first time I’ve held the title. I wrote a book once that was denounced in much the same terms.”
“Merely to jest of deicide makes my knees tremble,” Krellyan said. “Surely we are not so exalted. Lady Mary will return, and we will go back to our lives, reaping wheat and brewing beer. The sun will rise and fall, and time will work its will upon our fates. As it always has. As it always shall.”
Christopher found the Saint’s words comforting. He could think of nothing more appealing than growing old with Maggie. Watching the children they would have play with Karl’s. Teaching the kingdom how to live a better life, fueled by science and magic and the one quality that Maggie had that always eluded him. Patience.
Lalania handed him a silver vial. In it he found a nugget of tael, not the vast sums he had been used to dealing in, but still enough to power a spell. He said the words and touched her cold, white corpse.
Nothing happened.
He bent his head t
o her in grief. Dimly, he heard Saint Krellyan repeating the spell. Through a fog he perceived its failure, the shock through the assembled company, and voices raised in consternation.
A terrible suspicion bloomed in his mind, and he lifted his gaze, heavy and dreadful as a basilisk, to where Richard stood.
“I didn’t see you kill him.”
The words hung in the air, silencing all else.
Lalania spoke. “I did. I saw it. I saw everything.”
Her words washed off him without effect. Christopher stood, his sword hanging loose and ready at his side. “How do I know you are not Hordur in disguise?”
Richard scratched his chin. “I am uncertain myself. How would I know I am not?”
“There is only one test,” Christopher said, dredging from his memories. They felt old and deep, as if from the bottom of a vast gloomy pit. “I cut your head off and measure the tael that comes out.”
Lalania stepped in front of Richard, tears running down her face. “No. I saw. I saw.”
Richard put his hand on her shoulder, comfortingly. “Okay. That’s fair. As long as you put it back on afterward, obviously.”
It was such a Richard answer that Christopher felt his anger slide away. Hordur, ancient and cruel, could never have responded to a threat with a logical proposal.
“No,” Christopher said. “I know who is to blame.” He walked through the crowd, oblivious at their parting before him. Down the winding stairs and into the throne room, the castle suddenly empty before him, servants and soldiers hiding in doorways and alcoves at his approach.
Entering the great hall, he threw aside a spell. The doors sprung to life at his command and barred themselves, leaving him alone in front of the throne. He summoned Marcius, but this time he used the gate spell. He applied the syllables he had omitted before, and this time the target of his spell was compelled to step across the threshold as soon as it opened.
Marcius stood before him, in the flesh, unarmed save for a short oaken baton.
27
FAVORS
Christopher drew his sword and charged it. The blade shimmered with power, equal now to the royal sword. Sufficient to cut stone or steel or the skin of any supernatural creature otherwise immune to mere reality.
“I did what you wanted. I killed. And killed. And killed. A hjerne-spica. an entire nest. a god. I gave away my throne, raising up my own replacement. I surrendered my special status, summoning a man capable and willing of opening gates to Earth. I did everything you asked, and you still. Won’t. LET. ME. GO.”
He was shouting at the end, his words echoing in the great stone hall.
“No,” Marcius admitted. “We will never let you go. The Formian Queen was only half-wrong. It is our taint lain across your fate. When I saw you in the court of the Bright Lady, I saw into your mind. I saw . . . possibilities. I took your life in hand and cast it like dice across the future.”
Christopher raised the sword to strike, but it would not be enough.
“Why? At least tell me why.”
“Tell you?” Marcius said, and his voice was as sharp as the sword. “How can I tell you a hundred thousand years of experience? I have memories. So many memories. I remember watching my daughters taken by local warlords, my farm instruments dangling from my helpless hands. I remember hammering plows into swords, raising armies, marching on castles. I remember hanging tyrants from battlements. I remember the pain of loss and the thrill of victory and the stabbing truth that one cannot replace the other.”
Marcius looked around the room, his anger still fierce but not aimed at Christopher. “And in those memories, I have green skin, scaly and thick. Or brown fur and clawed hands. Or pink and soft, or black or gray or yellow. I have tails and wings and extra arms and carapaces and hooves. It took me so many years to understand I could not have been all of those things. That I could not have lived all those lives. For eons I searched for the real one, for the memory of my first and mortal life before ascension. For the real memory of the real child I lost, the real injustice that set my life on a path of violence in the service of justice.”
The room fell silent. Even in the depths of his rage, Christopher could not turn off his analytical mind. He answered the unspoken question. “You did not find it.”
“No,” Marcius agreed. “I could not find what did not exist. There was no real memory because there was no real me. I am a construct, a puppet made from whole cloth. I exist to give voice and power to your injustice. But I am not justice. I am a tool. A tool in the form of a living body that exists only to destroy life.”
Christopher still held his glowing sword with its threatening light. “Sometimes killing is necessary.”
“True. But not something you would have known five years ago. Not as you know it now.”
“What has any of this to do with me? What has it to do with my wife?”
Marcius spoke conversationally. “There are real gods, raised up from mortality by the feast of souls. A surprising number of humans, although your kind has not been here terribly long. Other beings of other races. The Ur-Mother of the Formians. The ulvenmen’s terrible demon-dog, who ironically is as trapped here as they are. No elves, obviously. No dragons or hjerne-spica, although the distinction becomes admittedly blurred there. Many of them have their own planes. Most serve their flock, doling out spells and recruiting new worshippers. Some wander the world for adventure, immortal and nigh-unkillable. My fellow aspects of the Bright Lady all have real histories. Imagine my divine grief at discovering I alone was fake.”
If anything could penetrate Christopher’s blanket of anger, it was disgust. “So you want to die. Want to see what death is all about. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Etc. Etc. Etc.” It was so self-pityingly Gothic, it made his lip curl.
“That is not a desire I am capable of expressing.” Marcius looked at him again. “Self-destruction is outside my design parameters.”
“And yet,” Christopher said.
“Any yet,” Marcius agreed softly.
“You asked me for a favor,” Christopher said. “You promised me one in return. Tell me how to save my wife.”
Marcius shrugged apologetically. “Hordur yet endures. What you did would have obliterated any lesser being, yet the Six are different. Normally deities travel from their own plane to yours via a spell that creates a projection. The destruction of that copy is expensive but not fatal. The countermeasure is to destroy them on their own plane, where you can strike at their real body. Some number of gods have already passed this way. The problem is that Hel is not the originating plane for Hordur. The Six all maintain home planes, exactly as any other divine being, and yet they are not actually on those planes. They merely visit them, as other gods merely visit Prime. This is a fact known to no one other than the Six. I can only tell you this because you already know. I am not even sure I knew it before this moment.”
“So I go somewhere else, and kill him again,” Christopher snarled. “Wheels within wheels.”
“Yes. I cannot tell you where to go because I do not know. I cannot tell you how to kill an Elder because I do not know. I can only say you must pass through all the elemental planes, earth and water and air and fire, to the true and hidden abode of the gods.”
Marcius stepped forward, holding the baton in one hand as an offering, not a threat. “And I can tell you that no mortal can open the way to that place.”
“You are a god of Travel,” Christopher reminded him. “You promised me a pebble to bridge the gap. You can open that door.”
“Self-destruction is outside my design parameters.” The god whispered the words in agony this time, as if he had broached too close to an open flame and been burned.
Christopher wasn’t going to kill Marcius no matter how annoyed he was. He was not a butcher for hire. “You don’t need a favor from me to die,” Christopher said. “Just turn your back on an elf for five minutes.”
“Those elves,” Marcius said, almost as an aside, “k
now half as much as they think they do. And yet they are not wrong.” He raised the baton and lightly tapped Christopher on the chest. “To slay a god is not lightly done, even when you have tricked him into presenting his true body and not a projection. To haul one through a gate and chop off its head leaves yet a corpse that can be raised, the same as any other. Short of the Mouth of Dissolution, only one method exhausts the possibility of revival.”
“I don’t care,” Christopher said, but the god ignored him.
“A fact you do not seem to know: revival has its limits. Twentyone, to be exact. No being can be recalled more than twenty-one times.”
Christopher cursed under his breath. It turned out he did care. Somebody needed to convince Major Kennet to stop dying heroic deaths before he ran out of return tickets.
Marcius had more stray facts to offer. “I am not always manifest in my armor and sword. I have another function, after the battle, when I get to wield the rod of life. Well, a rod of life. It’s not singular. You could make one, although it’s absurdly expensive.” Even in extremis the White had to tell the whole truth. Marcius prodded Christopher again with the wooden baton.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Christopher stated, shrugging off his annoyance. The rage was still there, underneath, but he was saving it for Hordur.
“You know we are not allowed to lie,” the god gently remonstrated. He stepped forward again, as close as a lover, his voice gentle and intimate. “There are other facts you do not know, other questions you should be asking. Why does Hordur single you out? What prompts an Elder God to dispatch a demon to your home? When did you become a foe worthy of the attention of the Six? Who whispers in Hordur’s ear, bragging of your exploits and promises of more to come? How does Hordur even know your name?”