The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3)

by Igor Ljubuncic

  Sonya heard her breath come out in a fast, angry sniff. Pacmad was laying blame on her for things outside her realm of control. She could not influence how the division commanders would respond to Pacmad’s messages. She still did not know who led the Northern Army. She was powerless to make any difference outside Somar. Why would Pacmad insist on something like this, unless he wanted to make her fret?

  Maybe he is playing a game, she hoped. Trying to scare her so she would not focus on other affairs and, that way, lose control of the court. Yes, that was it. If he really wanted her punished, she would have known by now. Whenever he was displeased, he was not shy with his kicks and punches. So, he must be trying to unnerve her.

  She could not let him. Which made the necessity of a quick Eracian victory all the more urgent. She watched him saunter out of the throne hall, several of his warriors at his tail. Pacmad was ruthless and utterly smart, almost a genius, but she would best him yet.

  With the catastrophic threat of the viceroy’s identity hanging above her neck like a sharp ax blade, Sonya went about being a loyal Eracian citizen and plotting the downfall of the invaders. Such a difficult challenge, but one worth the station of the soon-to-be queen of the realm.

  CHAPTER 49

  Tanid sat in front of the fire, watching the flames dance. If he let his eyes unfocus, the orange and yellow tongues became dancers and birds and lizards, any manner of wild things that his mind could conceive. And that made him wonder.

  What preceded his own kind? Who had made the gods?

  But the blaze had no answers, only its warm depths that left him deeply curious.

  The god looked up at the sky, clear, the color of sable peppered with silver frost. The stars looked hazy in the cold, but they were every bit unchanged as the day he had first glimpsed them. Small and big, the bright, shiny ones, the splotches of gray that marked the eastern corner of the firmament, they all remained timeless. He was a deity, but the world was beyond him.

  Perhaps it was divine nature to create, seeking an answer to your own existence. Maybe it was the reason why they had created humanity, trying to unravel the mystery of their own creation through man’s actions. It was only Damian who had dared explore that crucial question to the limit. But several thousands of years later, Tanid was still as clueless as ever.

  Maybe he should leave the Old Land, he thought. Maybe he should seek answers elsewhere. Humanity had begun here, but it had taken on a life of its own, spread everywhere, become something else. To their astonishment, the gods had learned they no longer controlled their own creation. They had learned that the power of belief was a double-edged weapon, one that sustained them and one that could unmake them.

  When you create, he mused, you give away of yourself. When you create life, yours becomes unnecessary. A bitter lesson.

  He should have been wiser back then. He should have seen the warnings. But when you had immortality at your own side, time lost its meaning. He should have realized that making humans so short-lived would make faith equally vulnerable. The godly timelessness became an idea that mankind could undo every time a new generation was born.

  Tanid did not quite recall the days before the war. Mostly, he remembered his arrogance and stupor. It was only many years later that he had opened his eyes and glared at the alien world, so changed, a world that no longer belonged to his kind, a world that had faraway places and strange nations that had never seen a deity in their lives and never spared a moment of worship for their creators. They had turned to other forces, to nature, to water and fire, to spirits, seeking strength and guidance in the mysteries of the world. Tanid and his kin could only stare in horror at seeing reality forget and abandon them.

  Yes, he should leave the Old Land. He should venture past its marked borders, visit the Wild Islands, seek help from people who had no personal interest in his kind. They might see the threat the White Witch posed as more than just an ancient, unfinished feud or an exaggerated bedtime story. They might understand the mortal danger.

  It was more difficult with the people of these lands, the realms. They worshipped him, but they no longer knew why. For them, the story of the Age of Sorrow did not exist. It was a fable, a myth, not even that. Apart from a few patriarchs, perhaps, humans no longer believed the gods were among them. And if they did, Tanid was not quite sure how they might react to this revelation. It frightened him as much as imbued him with hope.

  Above all, though, he knew he must not make the same mistake as in the old times. He must not let faith be his only instrument of power. But how? He was not really sure.

  Humans worshipped him in a hundred different ways. When they prayed for male children, for warm summers and luck with dice, when they lusted after their neighbors’ wives and went to battle, they prayed to their gods and goddesses, and their energy made him stronger, more powerful. Only just as easily, they might forget him, and he would become a weak thing that even some street urchin could destroy. He had to find a way to detach his own existence from their lives, from their beings. He had to figure out how to tie his divine life to the greater powers that made the world. He glanced at the fire again. The answer hid inside the flickering orange wisps. In the stars, and the wind, and all the other forces that made him just as vulnerable as these short-lived creatures sharing the fire with him.

  His mind went back to the Womb, the birthplace of his kind.

  Who had built that?

  Partially hidden in the shadows, Brother Clemens was preaching to the mass of followers, hundreds of shiny white eyes locked on the priest, faces rapt with concentration. Tanid was jubilant at their expression of love and dedication. Each new man who bent his heart to his cause gave him that much more of a chance in a war against Calemore.

  Only he was restless, and worried. I can make the wind blow more slowly, but I never made the wind.

  How could a god overcome his own weakness? Perhaps one could not. He almost envied Damian’s son. He was immortal, he was immensely powerful, and he was not at the mercy of those who followed him, in person or as an ideal retold from father to son through generations. And yet, the witch wanted to be one of them. Did he know something Tanid missed? Or was he just as deluded about the grandeur of divine existence as they had all been before Elia’s death?

  Maybe Calemore was responding to his inner nature, just as powerless to change his own fate as Tanid. Part of him was probably asking the same question, in some other distant corner of the world where he massed his army of death. Maybe.

  Tanid was only half listening, but the words filtered through his anxiety. Clemens was trying to retell an old story about the gods and goddesses. It was pure fiction, he knew. Nothing of the sort had ever happened. Throughout time, humans had filled in the vast gaps in their knowledge and made a new truth. Tanid let the priest talk. He had a solid grip on the audience, and that suited the god just fine.

  I must harness the world to my side, he swore. I must.

  He frowned at the last passage from the holy brother. “There is more to that story,” he interjected gently. The eyes all turned toward him, glazed and eager.

  “Please continue, Your Holiness,” Clemens said, stepping back deferentially.

  Tanid climbed onto the wooden crate that served as the podium and stared at the crowd, the details dwindling into the darkness around him. Magic, why does magic exist? he asked himself, questions rising from the dark depths of his soul. Where does magic come from?

  “There was a great war once between the gods,” Tanid corrected. “In times past, not all gods and goddesses were united in their cause. The strife almost broke them. And many humans perished in the centuries of fighting. By the time the war was concluded, no one really remembered why it had started, but the damage was done for all eternity. The world was changed forever.”

  He paused for dramatic effect. “The Father of Evil was banished. His followers scattered, cast away from the Old Lands. Barriers were put up to keep them away, so they could not return.” Like e
verything else, made from faith and destined to fade away. Dreadful mistakes, Tanid knew.

  “What if the Father of Evil returns?” a nameless face asked.

  “He will never return,” Tanid replied with cold certainty. “But we must never slack our belief. Never. Old enemies still remain. They are hiding in their distant lands, waiting for us to forget them so they can strike again. Our faith is our strongest weapon against the evil.” Until he found a stronger one.

  Tanid stared at his worshippers. He could see conviction etched in their features. They had to believe the war was inevitable so they would not blanch when he marched forth against Calemore.

  “How will we know these enemies?” someone else inquired.

  The god wondered how much he dared tell them. How would one know the White Witch of Naum? He brought total destruction with him; that was the simple answer.

  “When foreign armies attack our lands.” Tanid noticed some confusion. “When enemies from without strike against us. They will not be Eracians, nor Caytoreans, nor Parusites, not even Athesians,” he emphasized. “We must be united in this struggle. Only if we all stand together, as brothers and sisters, joined in our love for the gods and goddesses, only then we can win.”

  In his head, the sad repetition of the old war was replaying. The world forever changed by killing and magical blasts, humanity reduced to a rabble of wild beasts, himself weary, weakened, and disillusioned by the bloody aftermath.

  Tanid still wished he had Children who could see into the future, another domain of life that had been denied his kind. If only he knew what might happen, he could prepare. But the best he had was Bad Luck Ludevit.

  We killed them, we hunted them down, we used them, and then threw them away. Now, I am paying the price of our pride and fears. So few of them left.

  He wondered how many magic wielders Calemore had. If there were any Special Children in Naum. What kind of powers had the witch accumulated while he had been locked behind the Veil?

  I must defeat him. I must find a way to become invincible, to free myself from faith. Only he feared the answer to his need was the same as to the question humans asked themselves at least once in their short lives: how could they cheat death? They could not.

  Tanid stepped off the crate. Brother Clemens resumed his story. The god retreated from the fire, into the shadows near the stacked firewood. Pasha was there, sitting on an upturned log, raking the snow with a stick. The boy saw him and stood up.

  “Your Holiness…”

  “Yes, child?”

  “I must ask you a question, please?” The boy looked withdrawn, frightened. Even now, months since he had been bought, he was still bashful, still looking sad for being abandoned by his family. He had not made any friends, and he rarely spoke to anyone.

  Tanid gestured. “Go ahead, son.”

  The boy made a painful expression. “Is it wrong to kill?”

  “Sometimes, it is not,” Tanid replied, touching a gentle hand to the boy’s shoulder. “Do not doubt our path. We serve the gods and goddesses. We are protecting them. In doing what we must, we are saving the world from a great evil.”

  “But I was always taught that killing is bad,” the boy tried.

  “Most of the time, yes. When people fight their neighbor over a plot of land, or when someone kills another for gold. People wage wars, and often, they revolve around petty things, around small, insignificant, and selfish reasons.” Tanid hoped Pasha followed his train of thought. “But this is different. This is so much bigger than any one individual. We are fighting to save the faith, to save humanity.”

  Pasha shrugged, a clumsy, boyish gesture at odds with his incredible abilities. “Feels wrong.”

  “Those men we had to fight, they have only one purpose in life. They are paid to kill those who practice faith.”

  “Like the Feorans?” the Special Child asked.

  Tanid was surprised the boy knew anything about the war that occurred before he had been born. But maybe, at the border between Caytor and Parus, the stories survived the trickle of time.

  “Yes, something like that,” he said carefully. He did not doubt the boy followed the gods and goddesses, but he was careful with his condemnation. The common people had been enamored by this new, violent deity. If only they had known it was Damian corrupting their souls again.

  Only Parus had stood unaffected by the Feoran Movement. Tanid had no doubt the wild new religion would have eventually spread into Eracia, consumed most of the Old Land. Even so, Damian had come so close to victory, in the span of a few quick human years, while all of them had slumbered in the city, oblivious of the threat closing in on their throats. Never again.

  “It is justifiable,” the god added. “We are protecting the faith.” We are fighting the war that began in the ancient past. Either way, the boy would not understand the truth. None of them would. Tanid alone had to bear the burden.

  “I miss my family,” Pasha said, his voice squeaky.

  Tanid was not sure how to console him. He could uplift the boy’s spirit when it came to his love for the gods and goddesses, but family was a strange concept to him. At least, family in the human sense, because all these men worshipping him now were his children.

  And Damian’s too. His orphans. He must never forget that.

  The clash with Calemore was inevitable. It would happen soon, within days, months, or years, an inconsequential breath of time that humans would count so meticulously. Tanid was glad for every moment of peace he won, as it gave him that much longer to prepare. After all, the White Witch had had an age to hone his hatred. Tanid had only come back to his senses a heartbeat earlier, when the barrier around their city had fallen.

  I am using these humans, one of Damian’s creations, against Calemore, another creation of his. All the while, the Father of Evil lies dead, locked in the Abyss. He had truly been Unmade, killed by that frightening Special Child. He had become like the gods he had sent to their deaths.

  Until he returned.

  One day, he might, alone or with the rest of them.

  That would never happen, Tanid hoped, far from being confident as he had been during the speech earlier. They had all thought Elia dead, and then, she had come back, not even as a goddess. Why, no one knew. Damian, too, could be unleashed into the world again.

  What had made the Abyss? Why had Elia been resurrected?

  Once Tanid mastered those questions, he knew he would be truly invincible. Till then, he needed faith to sustain him, like flowers needed the sun’s light.

  Pasha noticed His Holiness was no longer paying attention to him, so he shuffled away, dejected, sorrowful. Tanid did not try to stop him. What could he tell the boy? The world needed his sacrifice, and there was no place for soft sentiments. Calemore’s hordes would show no mercy when they swept over the Old Land.

  Tanid wondered where he should marshal his forces. Maybe lead them to back to the Singing Heights and stand there. It was no longer his own land, and he doubted anyone even worshipped him there, but the place would augment his magic. The currents of air that wailed and shrieked through valleys and round jagged peaks, they gave him strength.

  Or head farther north, past Athesia, into northern Eracia and Caytor, and await the arrival of Calemore’s armies there. He still pondered. Should he ask the Parusite king for help and cooperation? Would the man understand his need?

  Humans fought their wars never thinking about the future. In a way, they were so lucky, blessed with their short spans of life and weak memories. They never got bored repeating their mistakes, fighting the same battles, believing the same ideals.

  He stepped into the field of snow, walking past the frozen mounds of dead people. Spring was coming. In a few weeks, the snows would melt, and then the soldiers would be busy dragging the corpses away to a distant burial spot far from the camp.

  Most of the bodies belonged to Calemore’s raiding parties, repelled, defeated, killed to the last man. With Ludevit’s magic at his side,
he always had the early warning when the hunters came. With thousands of followers, he no longer feared being discovered, no longer worried about fleeing. Even if the White Witch knew where he was, Tanid knew he would not dare assault him here, even if only because of the very remote chance something might go wrong. Tanid knew Damian’s son well enough. He had planned this war for so long, he would not let even one small mistake, one erratic moment spoil everything. So, he kept sending cheap humans to do his dirty work, and Tanid continued destroying them.

  His small following had turned into a sizable host. The barn had become a house of religion, and the empty fields around it were dotted with houses. A city was coming to life outside of Keron, and it drew people of faith toward it, almost like a beacon. Still, it was a chaotic warren of buildings and huts and animal pens, without much order or discipline or quality. But it was a beginning. Almost like a birth. You could not really know what might come out from a squealing red mass covered in threads of mucus and some hair. Perhaps Keron would become a holy place, like the Safe Territories.

  One thing was certain, he would have to move soon. The thawing of the snow would make the squalor just as deadly as the steel blades of a mercenary party. There was a limit to how quickly he could gather new followers just by staying here. He had to travel, send forth his men, preach in towns and villages, gather crowds, like the wind gathers leaves in its wake.

  The Parusite king…Tanid kept wondering if he might get a blessing from the Parusite ruler. Would King Sergei listen, or insist on his little war? By now, he should have heard of the religious movement coming to life in Keron. So far, the king had kept quiet.

  But it was a minute worry. Tanid was bothered by a much greater dilemma. How could he make himself more than he was? A black whisper rose in the back of his mind. You are just like Calemore, trying to be more than you are.