The Scarred God

by Neil Beynon

  ‘Why Meyr?’ asked Akyar, putting his hand to the god’s cheek.

  The god looked at him, confused. ‘Akyar …?’

  ‘Long story,’ said Vedic. ‘Hopefully, we’ll tell it to you when we get out of here. Please just tell me where the boy is.’

  Pan nodded as if some statement of great import had been imparted. ‘Ah, good work … You’re buying time by disrupting the sacrifice. I understand. He’s in the next chamber. Grab him and get out. You’re risking everything.’

  Akyar looked almost apologetic as he dropped his friend’s hand and ran from the room.

  ‘Akyar, wait!’ Unable to stop the Tream, Vedic turned to Anya. ‘Stay with Pan. Don’t let him cry out.’

  Anya looked at Pan.

  The god smiled, faintly. ‘So, Anya, what is the news with you?’

  The Tream did not listen.

  Akyar had already kicked the door in as Vedic left Pan’s cell and followed him into the boy’s. Meyr sat by the window, where he’d been looking out at the cavern beyond. His silver hair was matted and dirty, falling in metallic-looking dreads. His dirt-caked face was a picture of shock at the sudden intrusion, a look that changed to a smile as he recognised Akyar.

  Vedic was surprised to find he was smiling at the reunion. He forced it away. He was getting soft. There was no time for feelings. They had only got him into trouble, and he no longer trusted his own emotions.

  ‘I knew you’d come,’ said Meyr, embracing his mentor.

  ‘Of course, my prince,’ said Akyar, with a soft smile.

  ‘Your father would have come himself if the elders would’ve let him.’

  Meyr nodded and his face fell.

  ‘Mother …?’ he whispered.

  ‘Safe now,’ said Akyar, his own face no longer smiling.

  ‘She hurt her,’ said Meyr, hugging himself. ‘I couldn’t stop her. I tried.’

  ‘I know,’ said Akyar, hugging the boy. ‘It wasn’t your fault. She’s safe now.’

  ‘Akyar,’ said Vedic, glancing out the window. This was wrong; he could feel it in his bones as sure as he had been able, once upon a time, to read the breaking point upon the battlefield. ‘We have no time.’

  The vizier nodded and picked up Meyr. The floor was vibrating and the bed rattling as they bundled themselves out of the room and into the corridor. Anya was already waiting there, Pan stood next to her, his arm over her shoulder. She had not bothered to draw her weapon.

  Someone was coming.

  ‘I know,’ she hissed. ‘Just move.’

  There was a moaning coming from the walls of the palace now – it sounded like a banshee working up to a full scream. They moved as fast as they could to the stairs and down towards the door. At the foot of the steps, they saw the Morrigan standing in front of the entrance.

  ‘Oh no,’ said the woodsman.

  Vedic drew his sword and stepped forward between his companions and the goddess. The Morrigan watched him as a child might watch an errant spider before crushing it underfoot.

  ‘She really is quite plain,’ said the Morrigan. ‘Not at all like her mother. I’m surprised you kept her with you. She must be such a disappointment.’

  ‘You do not need to do this,’ said Vedic. ‘Cernubus does not mean you well. He killed Bacchus.’

  The Morrigan flinched. ‘And he would have killed Pan. I stopped that.’

  ‘And what of Danu?’

  ‘What of her?’

  ‘She is your sister,’ said Vedic, swinging his sword in lazy arcs.

  ‘She is the cause of all of this,’ hissed the Morrigan.

  Vedic moved forward, cautiously. If he could just move her away from the group …

  ‘You can’t escape,’ said the Morrigan, stepping forward. ‘You’re going to die. Then you’ll be mine anyway. You’ll beg and you’ll plead, and eventually you’ll do my bidding in order to stave off that final confrontation with all your ghosts. An eternity with those you wronged.’

  ‘We both know that isn’t true,’ said Vedic, tracking the goddess with his weapon. ‘I’ve looked into the void.’

  ‘The Mnemosyne doesn’t lie … Perhaps your understanding has merely changed.’

  The woodsman stepped back, extending his sword in a Tream defensive pose, daring the goddess to attack with the faint ghost of a smile on his lips. The Morrigan stared at him, her eyes narrowing. He felt very aware of everything in that moment – the stone underfoot, the faint smell of wood smoke and feathers mingled with other scents, the flecks of gold in the Morrigan’s night eyes.

  ‘I see you’ve left a path of destruction through my land to rival the ones you left in the land of the living,’ said the Morrigan, stepping forward.

  ‘Why change the habits of a lifetime?’

  ‘You should not be here,’ she said, the rage threatening to break loose. Vedic feared what would happen if she lost control. ‘You were thrown through the portal. You no longer belong in this world.’

  ‘I hung on,’ he said.

  She stared at him. She sniffed. It was like she was unpeeling him and looking inside with the interest of one of the mages of Delgasia.

  ‘And now you’re no longer afraid,’ she said, stepping towards him. The goddess spat to one side. ‘No longer evil. Just brave and honourable.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ said Vedic, as she sprang at him.

  Vedic dodged her and swung, but the magic struck him clean in the chest, and had he still been human, he would have died. The magic knocked him clean across the hall into the wall. The woodsman felt like he had been crushed by a tree. He bled from his mouth, and his head was throbbing in time with his heart. He pushed himself to his feet and picked up his blade, but Pan was already stepping forward.

  ‘Enough, sister,’ said Pan.

  ‘You?’ she whispered. ‘I kept you safe when they abandoned you, and the hunter wanted your head and heart in his box.’

  ‘To fight Cernubus would not have been that much more of a leap. You still could.’ Pan held out his hand to the goddess.

  The Morrigan let magic build in her hands. ‘Are you strong enough to fight, little goat?’

  Pan exploded into motion, his remaining power burning from him like an oil-soaked torch lit by a spark. The gods collided in a maelstrom of magic that shook the entire palace from ground to ceiling.

  Run, said Pan’s voice in Vedic’s mind.

  Anya had already seen the opportunity to get them away from the Morrigan, the woodsman was pleased to see as she took Meyr from Akyar and ran out of the palace. Akyar stared at the duel. The vizier’s desire to get Meyr out and to help Pan were at odds with each other.

  The woodsman grabbed the Tream by the shoulders and made him look him in the face. ‘We must go.’

  Akyar looked at him blankly. He turned to look back at the duel.

  Vedic hit him, hard.

  Akyar flushed angry, glaring at him.

  ‘He would not want you here,’ said Vedic, not unkindly. ‘What about the boy?’

  Akyar regained his calm and nodded. They ran out of the entrance together, leaving the gods bouncing off and through walls in their battle. Vedic wondered how Pan could hold on. He did not expect to see him again.

  Pan and Anu fought.

  Anu tried to run after her prisoners, and Pan blocked her, flying at her with all the strength he could muster. He wrapped her in a bear hug and clung on as she carried him, tumbling end over end. They slammed into the walls of the palace, cracking them and eventually shattering the front wall entirely as they burst out into Golgotha.

  Sprawling in the dust, they clambered to their feet, facing each other, like Shaanti warriors of old – although their weapons were not steel but the magic they were harnessing from all around them. Pan was not confident. Anu cast her incantation at him, the spell hotter than the suns, glowing brighter than the day, and it took a cold close to the temperature of the void to render the cant useless.

  Pan followed up with an ancient spe
ll of binding that he thought she might not know. Anu defended with ease. They fought as they had sparred in youth, knowing each other’s tics and tendencies almost as well as their own. They resorted to physical fighting in an attempt to break the deadlock. Pan was forced to parry a series of sweeping roundhouses and side-kicks before he had the presence of mind to step into one of the Morrigan’s kicks. Seizing her leg, he used one of Anya’s tricks and caught the god by surprise, pulling her to the ground and into a leg lock. He added his own twist by sending a second binding spell into the hold. Anu strained against it.

  ‘Do not deceive yourself,’ she said, probing the spell. ‘Danu deserves everything she gets.’

  ‘She is trying to save all of us.’

  ‘Not all of us.’

  Pan could not reply. He missed Bres too. The trickster god did not have many true kin, but Bres was one of them.

  ‘That was a long time ago,’ he replied, struggling to hold her.

  ‘Perhaps we have lived too long, then.’

  Pan had no answer – his grip was slipping. He needed to hold on longer: the others would barely have made it into the caves by now. He looked around for a weapon to help.

  ‘Everyone faces me sometime,’ said Anu.

  The Morrigan was free. All was fury.

  The tunnels still smelt of dead dog.

  Anya stared at the carcass in the Trivium. He was healing. The wounds they had inflicted were almost gone, his severed heads regrowing from the stumps of his neck, and the creature would start breathing again soon.

  ‘Leave it,’ said Akyar, taking back Meyr. ‘We must press on.’

  ‘He will come after us again,’ said Anya.

  ‘But not today,’ replied Vedic.

  ‘We don’t know that.’

  Anya noted neither Vedic nor Akyar replied.

  ‘Go on ahead. I will be along in a moment,’ she said, and drew her sword.

  Akyar hesitated, frowning at her. His duty to Meyr won out, and he ran towards the Cave of Shadows. Vedic did not look at her, but he squeezed her shoulder as he passed.

  Anya ignored the triumphant voice of her mother in her head, knowing it was her own mind and not her mother’s ghost haunting her. She cut each of Kerberos’s new heads off in turn and threw the severed heads into the tunnel from which no one returns.

  ‘Regrow those.’

  Anya followed Vedic into the Cave of Shadows. The cave was an open stack of rock that led up to the surface of the forest and whose phosphor-layered walls looked almost organic in the damp murk. Akyar was hugging Meyr in the centre of the cave. A gust of wind came down, whispering like many voices were trapped in the walls. Vedic stumbled to a halt, his sword falling from his hand and clattering on the stone. Everything smelt faintly of pine and iron, as if blood and forest were at war with each other.

  ‘What was that?’ she asked.

  There was an explosion in the distance that shook the whole cave hard enough to throw her into a wall, where the air was driven from her lungs. She swore.

  Anya sat up and saw Vedic had been thrown on all fours. His eyes wore that desperate, mad expression he had had at the lakes, and Akyar was clutching Meyr safe under him.

  ‘What was that?’ asked the vizier.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Anya. She looked at Meyr, peeping out from Akyar’s cloak. Looking up at Akyar: ‘What is wrong with Vedic?’

  Akyar looked wide-eyed at her. ‘Ghosts?’

  The gust rattled through the cavern before the Tream could say more. Anya had hoped the legend had been exaggerating, or perhaps the stories of ghosts were a metaphor, but like everything else in this gods-forsaken place, the myth seemed to be real.

  ‘How long until they get here?’ she asked Vedic.

  ‘They are here already,’ he replied.

  The second gust rattled through, and it seemed as if the wind itself were speaking, though she couldn’t make out the words.

  She stood. ‘We need to climb.’

  Akyar nodded.

  The third gust didn’t end. The wind screamed around them, sending cold across their already-weary limbs, shaking at their backs and stopping them from climbing the rock. The voices started: a cacophony of cries, a multitude of mouths shrieking as one and making their ears burn with pain. The words were an incomprehensible storm of nonsense that threatened to drive them all as mad as Vedic.

  ‘What?’ screamed the woodsman.

  ‘Don’t talk to them,’ snapped Anya. ‘It’s a trick.’

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Akyar.

  Anya could have struck him in that moment for not listening to her. Even if they were the dead, they had been driven mad by tarrying so long in Golgotha and did not wish any of them well.

  ‘Not you, tree-walker, or the witch-warrior’s whelp,’ said the ghost voices.

  Vedic stood up. The effort cost him. Anya could see his hands clenching white at the knuckles.

  He looked resigned to his fate. ‘You seek me, then.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Anya asked. ‘You seek the woodsman?’

  ‘Is that what you’re calling yourself these days, Laos?’

  A single voice spoke this time, thick with an accent that seemed familiar and yet alien to Anya. The voice was of one she half remembered. Anya heard the intake of breath from Vedic over the wind.

  ‘Laos is dead. I am Vedic. Now, what do you want?’

  The chorus spoke this time. ‘If Laos is dead, then he belongs with us.’

  The wind drove back through the cave and whirled around Vedic, whipping up what was left of his hair and threatening to pick him up into the air.

  ‘What do you want of me?’

  ‘We want to know what you have learned. We want to know why we should let you go from this place, why you of all people should be allowed more chances.’

  ‘Who are you to question me?’ hissed Vedic.

  ‘I demand an answer,’ said a solitary voice. The voice sounded like it came from the space in front of Vedic, and the effect was immediate. Vedic’s face fell; his eyes looked down; and for a long while, he did not speak, his head bowed as if someone had landed on him from a great height and he was trying to remain on his feet.

  ‘Is that you, betrayer?’ The woodsman spoke in quiet tones that barely contained his violence. Anya had never heard that level of fury in anyone.

  ‘That’s no way to talk to an old friend, Laos, or is it Vedic these days? I never thought I’d see you take a clan name. How can I have betrayed you? You claim to be Vedic, and I know no such person.’

  ‘You betrayed me,’ said Vedic, bending to pick up his sword.

  ‘You betrayed yourself, Laos, when you began to think yourself more powerful than I.’

  ‘I served you faithfully.’

  ‘It wasn’t me you served,’ said the unseen accuser. ‘That was always the problem.’

  ‘No,’ said Vedic, sheathing his weapon. ‘It was always you, and you betrayed me.’

  Why is Laos such a familiar name? asked Anya of herself. There was no answer, not even that snide version of her mother’s voice.

  ‘I knew you’d betray me in the end, and I was right. Here you are, consorting with the enemy.’

  ‘We want to know what he has learned,’ protested the chorus.

  ‘All right,’ answered the unseen attacker. ‘Tell me, Vedic. What have you learned?’

  ‘Go to hell,’ said Vedic.

  Anya closed her eyes and whispered, ‘Wrong answer.’

  The voices screamed again and again. Vedic was lifted into the air, shaken and pulled, but he would not scream out or beg. The noise was so intense Anya found herself on her knees, clutching at her ears. Akyar and Meyr were also prone, defeated by the sheer volume of the attack.

  ‘Tell them!’ she yelled at Vedic.

  ‘I can’t!’ he responded, swinging in the grip of the ghosts. ‘I have learned nothing. There is no reason to let me go save to defeat a god. Gods! I’d throw myself down into the void if I thought
there was anything better waiting for me, but there isn’t. There is no afterlife, no chance for me to earn anything, there is just this one life, and mine hangs on magic I do not understand.’

  A sigh went up from the ghosts as the wind subsided. Vedic dropped to the floor with a thud.

  ‘It’s true, then,’ said the singular voice – he sounded pleased. ‘You are broken … I shall enjoy watching you fall.’

  ‘I fell a long time ago,’ said Vedic. ‘You remember, you pushed me.’

  ‘You pushed yourself, Laos,’ said the voice. ‘I am remembered for all time in relation to the things you have done; why should you be any different? I’ll be seeing you soon, but first … a parting gift.’

  There was an upgust of wind that left the unseen attacker whispering in Anya’s ears.

  ‘Anya, remember the monster under your bed? You’re walking with him. The Kurah warriors have nothing on the beast that rides with you, or does he ride you? Is that why you put up with him?’

  ‘Go to the void,’ hissed Anya.

  There was, on the last of the wind, a gust of laughter that echoed in the chamber, but it gave none of them anything to smile about. The ghosts were gone, leaving only the soft glow of the rock. Anya blinked and turned to look at Vedic. He would not meet her gaze.

  ‘You’re not a monster, Vedic, or Laos, or whatever in Golgotha is actually your name,’ said Anya. ‘Whatever you were once, you’re not a monster now. You’re the forestal who came back for me, and the man who saved Meyr.’

  ‘No,’ Vedic replied, looking at her now. ‘He was right. Don’t forget it.’

  The Morrigan slammed Pan back through the wall to her palace.

  The two gods lay, covered in dust, in the main hall. On the dais sat the Crow Throne, where Anu, the Morrigan, oversaw the long and never-ending journey through Golgotha. She will kill me now, thought Pan.

  Anu did not.

  The Morrigan got to her feet, dragging Pan by his arm to the foot of the throne and pulling out a rope that felt metallic as she began to try to bind him.

  Anu could not kill him. Pan reflected that this had been so close to their arguments when they were both young that it hurt more than his wounds. Anu had never been able to bring herself to really hurt the tricksters: they were what she really cared about. If you spent so much time near the dark, you had to take the light from where you could. The god’s sympathy was tempered by the fact that he knew if this continued much longer, the hunter, Cernubus, would appear, and he really would be in trouble. Pan needed a way out – he was almost trapped.