by H. M. Long
The second lake was half a day further on, long and narrow and capped by a waterfall. The windblown tail of white vanished into a lush evergreen canopy, where it joined a river and snaked away toward a single, familiar peak.
I stepped out onto the rocky shore of the third lake at sunset and tremulously lowered my pack. There before me stretched the landscape from my vision. Lush green meadows crept around huge boulders towards lapping waves. Aspen and birch, pine and spruce flanked me, while in the north-east the great mountain rose.
My heart hammered against my ribs and I battled the urge to run, to scour every corner of the lake in search of Omaskat. I couldn’t afford to be rash, not here. I unfastened my shield from my pack and pulled my axe from the leather loop at my belt. Then I settled my shoulders and drew a deep, preparatory breath.
“Eang, Eang,” I murmured to the wind, “I’m here.”
Leaving my pack behind, I cautiously approached the edge of the lake. Pebbles ground beneath my boots and flowers waved among the soft grasses, transitioning from grey to white the closer I came to the lake. At the shore itself I crouched, keeping one eye on my surroundings as I set down my axe and dipped my fingers in the cool, opaque water.
There was power here. It clung to my fingers and hummed through my bones, even after I shook the water away. It reminded me of what I’d felt in Lathian’s temple, radiating from beneath the stone floor, but this was different. Fuller. More whole.
Furthermore, unlike the other two white lakes I’d passed, nothing grew within a pace of this one’s perimeter. Instead, the grasses and flowers ended in sunbaked rock. No birds or insects skimmed the surface. The natural world cradled this lake, but it did not dare touch it.
I swept my surroundings with another wary look, then sat back into my heels. I reached out towards the lake again, but this time with the remnant of the High Halls’ amber honey. I kept the memory soft, gentle – unobtrusive enough that Eang’s Fire did not react.
The air above the lake rippled and faltered. The swelling white light I’d seen in the High Halls, the one that had dominated the north and left it faded, materialized between me, the lake, and the looming, imperious peak of the highest mountain. The light was vague here, visible only to that stretch of my will, but it was undeniably present.
My nerves fluttered. I withdrew to the rim of grass and rustling wildflowers and waited, adjusting my axe and letting the solidity of its haft root me in the real world. Eventually my honeyed sight closed over and the valley returned to its natural, Waking World state. But I knew that there was nothing natural about this lake.
As I processed this, my gaze compulsively swept again for danger. And this time, it found movement.
An Arpa legionnaire inched from the forest to the south. I had one moment to turn, one moment to see the bow in his hands before he drew the string back.
An arrow slammed into my shield, inches from my face. I fell back a step, dropping low and covering as much of my body as possible.
My mind staggered up to speed. My attacker was definitely an Arpa legionary, though his gear looked battered and worn. But before I could decide if he was Polinus’s or not, another arrow struck the stones at my feet, its clatter disconcertingly loud in the peace of the high alpine lake.
Three more archers appeared, with more shadows moving behind them among the trees. My muscles sang with tension. I could take a few of them down with Eang’s Fire, but likely not before one of their arrows found its mark. And what if Estavius and Nisien were among their ranks? What if, in my Algatt clothing, they didn’t recognize me yet?
“Polinus!” I shouted. “Stand down!”
Another arrow flew past my head and I dropped an inch lower. My eyes darted to my own bow, fastened to my pack a dozen feet away.
I darted forward, crouching over my pack with the shield between me and my assailants. Another arrow slammed into the wood, this one so hard I heard the wood crack. I had to move. But there was little cover between me and the trees. The only destination I had was a boulder, a further ten paces away.
I shoved my axe back through its loop, seized my pack and bolted. Two more arrows whisked past me as I hurled the pack into cover and threw myself after it.
I dropped my shield and snatched at the bindings of my bow. It came free with painstaking slowness, but I’d had the sense to leave it strung. I pulled three arrows from the quiver inside my pack, fanned them between my fingers as I’d been taught, and nocked the first.
I came onto one knee and listened, sheltered behind my boulder with the placid white lake at my back. A warm breeze whisked across my cheeks and I heard the churr of insects, but there was no thrum of bowstrings or clatter of arrows.
A being materialized to my left, dark and abyssal and vaguely human. I drew and loosed my arrow instantly and nocked a second, but my shot went right through them.
I threw Eang’s Fire next in a sudden, sharp scream. The being staggered back, leaving me gasping against the boulder. But I’d barely dragged in two breaths before it surged forward again, shreds of ebony coalescing into features of starlight and shadow right in front of me.
Styga, the God of the Old World that I’d met on the mountainside, leant down until my eyes were full of them. The freckles they’d made in imitation of me looked like smears of true night sky, brushed over its nose, cheekbones and up around the curve of its eyes.
“You,” they loomed. “How dare you!”
“I’m here to kill Omaskat,” I panted. “You do not want to kill me.”
“Oh, I very much do,” they countered, sinking down into something like a crouch amid the grass and stones. “But that does not seem prudent.”
I became aware of the crunch of boots. Legionaries came into sight, legionaries with a feline head on their shields, just like the shield in my vision in Souldern. These men were rugged and worn, their skin darkened by the sun and their gear a mismatched collection of Arpa and Algatt. It was their eyes, however, that caught my attention.
It was a subtle thing, more of a lack than an addition. These men’s gazes held none of the blues or greens prevalent among the Arpa I knew. But nor were there browns. Instead, the overly dilated pupils of every Arpa here were rimmed with various shades of grey and black.
Like the flowers back in Souldern, when Ashaklon attacked. And, I realized, with dawning horror, the flowers that fluttered in the grasses around us now. However their condition had come to be, these men must be under the sway of the Old World’s gods.
My heart was already pounding, but now the sound of rushing blood became all I could hear. Situations like this were the very reason no infant, no person, was left undevoted to a god. Eang’s power would likely still protect me, but the Arpa gods should have protected these men, too. Unless their god was… involved?
My thoughts moved more and more quickly. I scanned their faces of the legionaries, eyes darting from one helmeted face to the next. Nisien was not there. Neither was Estavius, nor anyone else I recognized. These were not Polinus’s men.
Only one other party of Arpa was here in these mountains. The ones that had butchered and driven out the Algatt.
My gaze flicked away from them, the horror of this realization wrapping around my throat. These men, these hands, had murdered children and instigated the destruction of Eangen. But at whose bidding? Styga’s?
I considered running, using Eang’s Fire to scatter Styga and their men. But where would a fight leave me? Injured and running, while I needed to be at this lake. I couldn’t afford to leave with more legionaries on my tail, let alone these grey-eyed butchers and a vengeful god.
I didn’t risk standing up, but I sat forward and rested my forearms on my knees in feigned nonchalance. I could only hope that Styga didn’t hear the blood thundering in my ears. “I’m here to kill Omaskat. Are you and your dogs going to let me do that?”
In answer, Styga gave a breathy, muffled laugh and raised a hand to the Arpa. The men’s shields, spears and swords lowered, tho
ugh the legionaries’ grey eyes remained blank and unaffected.
“How like your mistress you sound, Eangi.” The god themselves retreated and gave a mocking half-bow. “Yes, we will. Follow me.”
* * *
Patterns of light and shadow played off worn pathways as I entered the Arpa camp. It was tucked deep into the forest on the southern side of the valley, dozens of tents of Arpa canvas and Algatt hides fanning out around the ruins of an ancient structure. Eight weather-worn stone pillars vanished into the treetops, evenly spaced and smeared with lichen. I eyed these, wondering what they’d been, as Styga led me to the central tent.
A man stood beside its rolled and fastened flap. He wore no armor, but his bearing was one of unquestioned authority. His lean frame was clad in a knee-length tunic of burnt red edged with dark yellow, sleeveless and cinched at the waist by an Algatt belt. An Arpa sword with a round, dark wooden pommel had been affixed, but his shoes were Algatt-made – simple leather, tied around the ankle. His eyes were grey like his men’s, but he considered me with a keen, self-aware gaze as I stopped a few paces away.
Styga went forward to meet him and the two of them conferred in Arpa. I couldn’t understand, but I kept one eye on them while I lowered my pack and evaluated the rest of the camp. Legionaries were everywhere, moving about their daily business between trees, pillars and tents. I counted at least a hundred – with thirty currently armed and armored – but given the size of the camp there were likely more.
Grey-eyed and silent, they washed and mended clothing, tended cooking pots and sharpened weapons. The steady clunk-crack-clatter of someone chopping wood drifted through the air, but there was no singing, no conversation. Not even a cough.
Through the trees I saw several mountain goats being butchered, limp bodies strung up while shirtless, blood-spattered hunters separated skin from meat in precise, measured cuts. Memory of the Algatt’s swinging, blinded bodies surged into my mind, and my stomach flipped.
Swallowing bile, I glanced back towards Styga and the singular, self-aware commander.
“Eangi, you are welcome to join us,” Styga said, their less than corporeal body turning in a fluid twist. “This is Commander Telios.”
The name sunk into my memory, buffeting aside thoughts of butchered Algatt until I found Nisien’s voice in an abandoned Eangen village. Had he not called his former commanding officer Telios? The zealot of Lathian who hadn’t permitted worship of Oulden?
There was a chance that Telios was a common Arpa name, but recent events hadn’t bolstered my faith in coincidence.
Fear for Nisien wedged itself into my chest, vague and insubstantial but present. Polinus and his men were actively searching for the very company I now found myself in. If my instincts proved true, and Telios was who I thought he was, my own reunion with Quentis was only one of my pending concerns. What would happen when Nisien arrived and saw his old commander?
And if Telios was a zealot of Lathian, was it the Arpa’s chief god who had stolen the color from these men’s eyes?
“Styga tells me that you encountered another group of Arpa in the mountains,” the grey-eyed man said, inclining his chin to me. “And that you are an ally. What is your name?”
My skin felt too warm in the afternoon light, my tension turning into a deep, nerve-fraying disquiet. “Hessa, of the Eangi.”
Telios nodded and stood aside, gesturing for me to precede him into his tent. I rested a hand on the head of my axe and complied, but Styga did not follow. Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw them evaporate into thin air.
“Sit, if you like.” Telios gestured to several stools, positioned around a crude table. Sunlight filled the worn canvas, revealing the rest of the tent to be populated by a cot, a stack of Algatt crates – full of gear and supplies – and a low altar.
The altar, however, was neither Arpa nor Algatt. Like the pillars outside, this was weatherworn and ancient. The tent had been constructed around it, and Telios had placed an idol of Lathian on its pocked stone surface. A bowl lay before it and when I drew closer, I caught the scent of Arpa incense. It invaded my nostrils and crept through my chest, reminding me of Quentis and my visit to Lathian’s temple in the High Halls.
“Does your god mind occupying someone else’s altar?” I inquired. I wasn’t sure who this altar might once have belonged to, but it was certainly not Lathian.
Telios came to stand at my shoulder, one hand clasping the other behind his back. He smelled of the incense too: incense, woodsmoke and mountain air. “Why should he? Lathian belongs on every altar, in every land, even one as old and forgotten as this.”
That image, and the placid dogmatism with which he painted it, irked me. “Who did it belong to?”
Telios gave a half-shrug. “The god in the lake. Though they have slept for so long, I doubt the worshipers who built this place even understood what they prayed to. And it was, as you can see, abandoned. This entire valley was, when we discovered it. I tore the vines from this altar myself.”
The god in the lake. Omaskat’s god.
“Now…” Telios adjusted his stance to consider me. His stance was solid as a hundred-year oak while his knees and shoulders remained loose, bespeaking an enviable agility and grace. But he stood just an inch too close, and the way he kept his hands behind his back made me stiffen. “These other Arpa, who are they and why are they here?”
“Commander Polinus, from the Ilia Gates,” I said. There was no point in hiding this, not when Polinus and his men were already on their way. “Searching for you.”
Telios’s grey eyes narrowed, but at Polinus’s name rather than the thought of being sought after. “Athiliu’s dog? Well, that is unexpected, but it does not matter. They will find us soon enough, and Polinus and I can… work the matter out.”
“What is there to work out?” I tried to bite my tongue, but my indignation came scathing and swift. “You should not be here. This is not your land, and what you’ve done – you’ve nearly destroyed the north.”
“It is painful to adjust a broken bone, but if it heals badly, what use will it be?” Telios moved towards the table, where he picked up a leather cylinder. He uncapped it and withdrew a scroll like I had seen Quentis carrying at the Ilia Gates. “Come. Let me explain.”
I remained where I was as he spread the parchment out, but even from this angle I could see a lattice of careful lines, interrupted by Arpa runes – like the ones Quentis had used in his wards.
“It’s a map,” the man explained unnecessarily. He turned the scroll towards me and weighted it down with a bronze statuette of an eagle, a whetstone, and two small containers. “This is the Pasidon, and this is the path my men and I took north, through the Headwaters. Do you recognize it?”
So, they had come through the Headwaters rather than Eangen, just as Nisien theorized so long ago in Souldern.
I approached the table. Telios followed the path he and his men had taken with one finger, departing an Arpa fortress east of the Pasidon and heading north through the wilderness, across the Headwaters and into the Algatt Mountains.
If I overlaid the Eangen map I had once seen with the Pasidon as a reference point, the map was familiar. But Eangen was so small, and the area Telios indicated occupied only the top third of the parchment. More lands spread out below, Souldern and other northern provinces merging with entirely new mountains, rivers, marshes, seas and artfully rendered settlements.
“This is the Empire?” I asked, indicating the last two-thirds of the page.
The captain nodded but didn’t speak, leaving me to my observations.
I gazed at Eangen, perched between a range of ornate mountains and the bold Arpa wall. Glancing at the mountains again, I noted a small lake marked with indecipherable symbols. “We are… here?”
Again, he nodded.
My eyes roamed further north. Above the mountains, where I expected to find blank space, I instead saw notations in Arpa and several sketched landmarks. They looked to be more recent addi
tions, drawn in a different hand than the rest of the map.
“You crossed the mountains?” I did not intend for the words to come out as an accusation, but they did.
“Yes.” The lines around the captain’s eyes deepened, though I couldn’t tell whether it was in irritation or mirth. He indicated one of the chairs and took the other himself. “Would you like to know what we found?”
I cautiously sat.
“You’ve met Styga,” the commander stated, his fingers resting on the lower half of the map. There, next to his thumb, I saw a depiction of Lathian’s domed temple. “And, I hear, Ashaklon. They are Gods of the Old World, as you northerners call them. But just as Eang rose among the Gods of the New World and became their leader, Styga and Ashaklon also bow to one greater than they. The greatest of their generation.”
“Who is that?” I prompted.
“Lathian,” the man said with reverence.
My stomach dropped. Lathian? Quentis’s god, the Arpa’s God of Gods – he was the master of the Gods of the Old World?
Telios continued to speak. “Two years ago, I received a vision from him. A divine purpose. Lathian told me to go north, beyond the mountains, and there I would find… him. There I would release him – sever the chains that have bound his physical form for millennia and turn his whisper in the Empire’s ears into a roar.”
My disembodied visit to the temple in the Arpa capital with Quentis rushed back to me. Even across the tent, the familiar features of the idol on the altar stood out clearly – gravely handsome and kind.
My blood chilled. If Quentis’s god was powerful enough to rule the Arpa Pantheon and subdue Ried while supposedly bound, how could Eang and her dwindling allies ever hope to defeat him once he was free?
“So I gathered men – other zealots, like myself – and went north, unofficially,” Telios continued. He spoke companionably, if passionately, as if we were old acquaintances. “We slipped through the mountains and there… there in the Hinterlands, we found a tomb, a tomb with many seals. All but seven of those seals were broken, and once we stood there – my men and I – I sensed him.”