The Secret of the Golden Gods Omnibus Edition

by Pedro Urvi

  “As long as I live, the right is mine, not yours.”

  “And what was the plan? For the Five to pretend they were retiring to their eternal rest in their funerary temples, and instead of dying, becoming rejuvenated? It is a good plan, I cannot deny that, but it is very inconvenient for me.”

  Gar was surprised that Asu should know all this.

  “Whatever I decide to do is my prerogative as High King. I have nothing to explain.”

  Asu made a face. “You see, Father … the time when that was true is past. Just like your own time and that of your reign.”

  “How dare you speak like that!”

  “How dare you conspire with the other High Kings behind the back of your own heir, of your own house? To develop technology with them for your own personal benefit?”

  Gar jabbed his finger at him. “Be very careful with what you say and insinuate! I am not prepared to tolerate any more insolence!”

  At the gesture, Asu’s soldiers lit their fiery swords and activated the shields on their arms.

  Gar gaped at them in amazement. “Lower your weapons immediately! I am your King! You owe your loyalty to me! To me and not to him!”

  But the soldiers did not heed their king’s order.

  “You see, Father, they are now loyal to me, not you. I know that for someone as archaic as you are this is hard to understand, but allow me to explain. I am the future and you are the past, a past that is about to disappear forever, and they are betting on the future. I cannot blame them.”

  “This is treason. Have you gone out of your mind?”

  “Me?” Asu shook his head. “Who is experimenting with secret technology so as to live and reign eternally? Who is making deals with the enemy?”

  “Think carefully about what you are doing, Asu. I am within my rights, I am the High King of my House. You owe me respect and obedience. Whatever course my actions or decisions may take. Without either doubting or judging.”

  “You have taught me to trust nobody, to be stronger than everybody else. You have made me who I am.”

  “I am your Father, your King. You must obey my command.”

  “I am sorry, dear Father, I have obeyed you all my life. From now on I shall only obey myself.”

  “Think it over. There is still time. I will forget this has happened. I will forgive you this error in judgment.”

  Asu laughed. “My dear Father, you have never forgiven anybody for anything in your long existence. And you are not going to begin now. You will not let me ruin your precious plans now that I know what they are.”

  “You have always been a stupid, vain young man, but I never imagined you would go so far as this.”

  “Your words hurt me, Father,” Asu said with a theatrical gesture, as if he had been stabbed in the heart. Then he grinned broadly. “Luckily I have been immune to your spite for a long time.”

  “Lower your weapons!” Gar ordered.

  The Soldiers kept their eyes fixed on him. They did not obey.

  He clenched his fists and stared at them. “I will order you one last time: lower your weapons and take my son prisoner, or else you will all die here today.”

  “Take me prisoner? Why would they do that? You do not understand, you decrepit old man, you are the past. A new era is beginning, an era in which the House of Fire will rule supreme. I will rule over all the Houses, over all the Golden.”

  “You are insane!”

  “No, Father, I am a visionary.”

  “Do not do it, Asu, I am your father!”

  “Kill him!”

  At Asu’s order the thirty soldiers hurled themselves on Gar. Instantly the High King waved his hand and raised two spheres to protect himself: the first one of fire, the second of solid lava. The first soldiers attacked his defenses with their fiery swords. Gar spun round and launched a wave of fire which spread out from his body to the walls of the chamber. The attack caught the soldiers who were nearest. Some managed to defend themselves with their shields while several others fell dead, consumed by the wave of flames. The soldiers furthest away leapt to avoid being hit.

  Iradu was about to intervene, but Asu stopped him. The Prince raised a protective sphere and gestured to his Champion to do the same. Iradu, a natural warrior, was not pleased with the order. He had devoted his life to training for moments like this. Protecting himself and waiting was not what he wished for, least of all when his men were dying. He would have preferred to attack, but Asu would not let him. The wave passed over them, but their protective spheres held.

  Gar, on top of the altar, his arms stretched out wide and his eyes like burning coals, surrounded by his flaming spheres, was the personification of a god of fire.

  “You will all die for this treachery!” he shouted.

  The Soldiers used their Power to create an explosion on the ground and propel themselves to the high dome of the chamber. From that height they sent fiery spears and javelins against Gar’s defenses. The High King felt the impacts, but his defenses held. In reply he sent a huge ball of fire, which burst against the soldiers before him. They fell to the floor amid flames, their soldier shields insufficient against the King’s power. The soldiers beside and behind Gar leapt on him. They stabbed the protective spheres with their fiery swords, striking them again and again with all their might, trying to destroy his protection. Turning to face the attack at his back, Gar waved his arms and formed a colossal fiery bird. The soldiers hurled balls and missiles of fire at the enormous shadow, but it was immune to fire. Gar laughed, and his smile was full of satisfaction. He gave the order, and the bird flew at the soldiers. On contact it burst into a mass of flames. The soldiers were reduced to ashes.

  “All together, attack!” Asu shouted.

  The attacks on Gar multiplied, but the High King sent much of his reserves of Power to reinforce the spheres, and the soldiers could not penetrate them, either with physical blows or with the use of their own Power of Fire. Gar raised his arms to the ceiling and brought them down as he intoned the words of a spell. The floor of the chamber became the crater of an erupting volcano. Asu reinforced his own sphere and passed some of his own Power to reinforce Iradu’s. The soldiers kept battering at the King’s defenses with all their strength and Power. Gar raised his arms and sent Power to the volcano. A moment later it erupted with a tremendous explosion.

  The soldiers were consumed by the eruption. When it was over, only Gar, Asu and Iradu remained standing.

  Gar looked at Asu with utter disdain. “Did you really think they could overcome me? I am not as decrepit as you might think.”

  Asu smiled. “I knew they would not. That was not their purpose. Iradu, it is your turn.”

  The Champion nodded and leapt on Gar. The impulse and speed left a wake of fire behind him. Iradu’s sword came down on the spheres and a flame burst out from the impact. The strength of the attack was such that Gar was forced to take half a step back into the sarcophagus. At once he sent more Power to strengthen his spheres. Iradu battered them with his sword of fire and shield, without pause, with all the force of his huge body. With every attack Gar’s defenses weakened more and more, and he was beginning to feel the blows on his weak and shriveled body.

  “It hurts, does it not, Father? Your ancient body will not stand up to the punishment.”

  “Iradu, I am your Lord, not him! You are the Champion of my House, my Champion!”

  Iradu stopped his attack. He looked at his King. Then he turned to look at Asu.

  “I am sorry, your Majesty. He is more powerful. Abdicate now and I will protect your life.”

  “Abdicate? In his favor?”

  “I promise you will not die. I will protect you with my life,”

  The High King fixed his eyes on his son’s. He recognized in them an unfathomable greed, a disproportionate ambition, which bordered on insanity.

  He bent his head. “I cannot do that. He will destroy us all.”

  Iradu sighed. He looked at Asu and the Prince nodded. The Cham
pion lifted his sword of fire and brought it down.

  The High King closed his eyes and concentrated. While Iradu attacked ceaselessly with sword and shield and sent fiery missiles and balls of fire against the spheres, Gar used practically all his remaining reserves of power to conjure an ally. Before Iradu there rose a Fire Elemental.

  “Beware!” Asu warned him.

  Iradu turned toward the being of fire. It had a slightly humanoid shape, thin and over six feet tall. Its whole body was burning, face, body and limbs; it was a living flame. The creature struck Iradu with its fiery arm, and the Champion covered himself with his shield. The flames licked his face. He took a step back. The Elemental moved toward him at amazing speed. He threw himself into the attack.

  Asu smiled ironically at his father. “Alone at last.”

  Gar shook his head. “You are insane.”

  “Just like you. Otherwise, why do you wish to live forever? Have you not lived and reigned enough already? Nearly a thousand years, Well, I think you have, but of course you do not. Which of us is the insane one here?”

  “Would you have respected Iradu’s offer?”

  Asu glanced at his Champion, who was fighting furiously against the Fire Elemental.

  “No. I would have killed you both. I would be sorry about Iradu, but it is not my fault if he has a weakness which I cannot allow. I cannot leave loose ends. What I am planning is too important.”

  Gar shook his bent head. “To crown yourself High King of all the Golden.”

  “Exactly, Father,”

  “You will never succeed. You are insane.”

  “We shall see,” Asu said, and joined his palms before him. A red flash ran through his whole body. A ray of fire issued from his hands and attacked Gar’s spheres. He kept up the fiery beam and increased its intensity little by little, trying to penetrate the spheres at one single spot.

  Gar reacted. On the verge of consuming his last reserves of Power, he invoked a great storm of fire. The sky of the chamber vanished behind clouds black as smoke, with thunder and lightning beginning to form inside them. Asu looked up with a superior smile and sent more Power to his protective sphere. The storm broke with a tremendous roar, and heavy fire began to rain down over the whole chamber. Burning lightning zigzagged down to attack Asu and Iradu. Without losing control the Prince kept up the beam, strengthening his sphere against his Father’s fire at the same time. His defense held, unlike that of Iradu, who could barely manage to defend himself from the storm and the Elemental. He was holding his shield over his head and deflecting the Spirit’s blows with his sword.

  “Your spheres are not holding,” Asu said to his father. “They are about to fall.”

  “They will hold,” Gar said furiously.

  “I am afraid not, my dear Father. Your reserves of Power are empty. That was the purpose of the attacks. To leave you without any Power.”

  “I disown you!”

  And with this last cry of rage, his protective spheres cracked. Asu’s fiery beam penetrated them and struck the High King in the chest. It pierced him from chest to back. Gar, his eyes staring wide, moaned in pain, raised his hands to his chest and fell to his knees inside the sarcophagus.

  “I… I curse you…” he said, and with a last cry of rage, he died on his knees, on top of the sarcophagus.

  Asu turned to Iradu, who was on the floor, badly wounded. Half his body was burnt from the Fire Elemental’s attacks. The creature was on top of the defeated Champion, its arms raised for the coup de grâce. Asu was about to attack when the creature was consumed before his eyes. Without its creator it could no longer exist.

  “Priest!” Asu called.

  The Priest came into the chamber and bowed.

  “Prepare him for the final journey.”

  “As you wish, your Highness.”

  “You will watch over him for all eternity. Nobody must disturb his rest.”

  The Priest nodded. “Of course. That is my mission. No one will disturb him.”

  Asu laughed in satisfaction, and his laughter echoed against the walls of the chamber. And as he laughed in great guffaws, his communication disc flashed. When he picked it up and activated it, it projected an image to his right. Blurred at first, it became clearer very quickly. A chamber very similar to the one he was in took shape. The floor was covered with dead Golden soldiers. In the center, inside a sarcophagus on top of a brown altar, lay another of the Five High Kings: dead.

  “Here is proof,” a voice said.

  Asu’s eyes gleamed in triumph. He used his Power on the disc and sent the same image in return: that of his father inside the sarcophagus, dead.

  “Here is proof,” he said with deep satisfaction.

  The disc flashed again, then went out.

  A moment later it flashed again. He smiled broadly. The image that appeared might have been a copy of what they had just seen. He half-closed his eyes to make sure it was indeed another image. This floor too was covered with dead Golden soldiers, and on the royal sarcophagus, on top of a white altar, lay another of the Five Kings: dead.

  “Here is proof,” another voice said.

  Asu clenched his fist hard in a sign of victory and power. He sent back the image of his dead father.

  “Here is proof,” he said, and put away the disc. Filled with uncontrollable joy, he yelled as if he had lost his reason. But no, he had not lost it; nothing could be further from the truth. He had succeeded in the first part of his plan for absolute domination. Three of the High Kings had been betrayed by their heirs and had died in their underground chambers, and now his destiny was just a single step away.

  “It will all be mine!” he cried, raising one fist with the Claw injecting the life from a disc into his wrist. “Mine!”

  Chapter 30

  There was a lump in Ikai’s throat as he gazed at Idana, lying on the bed badly wounded. Two Senoca apothecaries and a medicine-woman of the People of the Highlands were tending to her. She was writhing in pain from the severe burns she had sustained. One of the survivors of her group had found her alive. They were doing all they could to prevent her suffering, but it was an impossible task.

  “Ikai…” she called out.

  One of the apothecaries motioned him to come close, and he knelt beside her.

  “I’m here, Idana,” he said, and stroked her cheek.

  “You came…” she said with a grimace of joy, though half her face and head were burnt.

  “I told you I’d come with reinforcements.”

  “They’ve come? Did you persuade them to fight beside us?”

  He nodded. “They’re outside. They’ve come to fight with us. And Kyra will come soon with the People of the Steppes, and after her Albana with the People of the Trees. Even the men and women of the People of the West, the ones who’d been locked up in the pods, even they’re going to come. They are all joining the Senoca.”

  “Oh… I’d like so much to see that… all united…”

  “You will,” he said, and kissed her forehead.

  “Did… did I do well?”

  “Well? You did something wonderful!”

  “Did I?” she said, and writhed in pain.

  “Everybody’s saying so. Idana: the slave who confronted the army of Gods. Idana, who faced the Gods and didn’t bend the knee. Who showed the courage in the hearts of Men, who didn’t give in. Who didn’t surrender her people’s freedom. Everybody’s saying it. Everybody’s cheering you.”

  “But so many have died… did I do the right thing?”

  He nodded firmly. “You did what was right. I couldn’t have done it any better myself. You tried to negotiate, then when there was no other option you fought. It was the right thing.”

  “Thank you…”

  “And there’s more. You killed a God-Lord and several hundred God-Warriors. Nobody has ever done anything like that before. And the news is spreading all over, from race to race. They’re all talking about it, and it fills them with hope. Because it means that
the Gods can die at the hands of men. And that discovery gives them wings to rise up and fight. And they owe all that to you. To the Apothecary who stood up to the Gods.”

  She tried to smile, but the pain returned and her face contracted.

  “Besides, you managed to gain time for us. The army of the Gods stopped when they crossed the forests, and it hasn’t moved in two days. It seems their Lords need to rest so as to recover the Power spent.”

  “Then I did it.”

  “Yes, you did, and you gained us the time we needed so that everybody could get here.”

  “Promise me you’ll show them to me,” she said, with a grimace of pain.

  “Show who, Idana?”

  “The other Peoples of Men. I’d so love to see them…”

  “I promise.”

  His eyes filled with tears, Ikai left the tent. Lurama, matriarch of the People of the Highlands, and Burdin, their Warrior Chief, were waiting for him, wrapped in their typical bear-skins. Thirty thousand Warriors were camped behind them.

  “How is she?” Lurama asked.

  “Not well…”

  “I’m sorry…”

  He dried the tears from his eyes with the sleeve of his tunic. “She’s a great woman.”

  “She must be, to stand up to the Gods,” Burdin said, “to have managed to kill them.” He looked pleasantly surprised.

  “I’d like to thank you for answering my call.”

  Lurama nodded. “I told you that when the day came you could count on the People of the Highlands, and we always honor our word.”

  “We told you we’d come, and here we are,” Burdin said. “We have a blood debt with you. You gave us our freedom, and we haven’t forgotten that.”

  “Thank you anyway. It’s going to be very hard. Many won’t make it.”

  “It is the price that has to be paid for freedom,” Lurama said, “and we’ll gladly pay it. They’ll never take it away from us again.”

  “We’ll fight to the end,” Burdin said.