The Betrayed

by Igor Ljubuncic

  “Whatever you think or feel about the world means nothing. The armies of unbelievers are on your doorstep, waiting for the magical shield protecting you to crumble. Soon, thousands of them will pour in here and cut your bodies to pieces. Is that what you want?”

  “The world of men is dead to us. It’s Damian’s world now. He can do with it whatever he wants.”

  Ayrton raked his hair. He felt desperate. This was a lost battle. These gods were doomed. “Forget about the humans! Save yourselves. Save your souls. Do it for your own sake.”

  “We are safe in the city,” Simon intoned.

  Ayrton shook his head. “The City will fall soon. You will be in danger.”

  Simon smiled. “We cannot die. We will be remade.”

  The Outsider let go of Simon’s wrists. He retreated a few steps. The god continued chiseling as if nothing had happened. Immortality was a curse. It made the gods stupid.

  “There’s no hope,” he croaked.

  Elia laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You will figure a way.”

  Ayrton sat on the ground, feeling defeated. “They are like children, children who have seen their most precious toy taken away. They will never understand what’s going on. They are lost in some dream of the First Age.”

  Elia sat beside him. “You will think of something.”

  “Those who do not wish to be saved cannot be saved. You can force the body, but you cannot control the soul. They are doomed. All of them. They refuse to acknowledge reality. And this city is their bane. This city…is frozen in time, just like they are.”

  “Dying is a unique experience. It exposes your weaknesses,” Elia said.

  He nodded. His mission was doomed. The gods and goddesses would never wake from their slumber of stupidity and denial. If he had a century, then he might have accomplished something. But swaying the deities to forsake ages of timeless ignorance in just a few weeks…it was impossible.

  Religion was dead. It had been dead since the beginning of the Second Age, he realized. People simply did not know it. The houses of the gods were an illusion, a human illusion. What people did in the outside world had nothing to do with the gods and goddesses. It was the fruit of their own imagination, their own effort. The world truly belonged to Damian.

  The gods were husks, nothing more. A sad memory of a better, more innocent age. But it did not matter, Ayrton knew with sudden clarity. Faith would always be what people thought and imagined. The bodies that represented that belief were meaningless.

  Suddenly, he realized he was cold. Very cold. The blissful warmth of the spring was gone, replaced by a biting chill. Elia sat, hugging herself, shivering. Ayrton frowned.

  Looking around, he saw the trees and flowers wither. The deep greens turned gray and brown with age and frost. The season turned in a blink. Turned backward. It was winter now, all of a sudden.

  He handed his jacket to Elia. She was wearing only a light gown over her perfect form.

  Ayrton felt something soft touch his face. Looking up, he saw a light flurry of snowflakes descend from a monotone white sky. Like a child witnessing his first snow, he extended his arms, letting the flakes touch his palms and melt against the heat of his skin.

  “It’s snowing,” he whispered.

  Elia snuggled against him. He missed a breath. “What is happening?”

  Ayrton let his arms drop. He knew what was happening. “The barrier has fallen.”

  CHAPTER 45

  It was almost time, the moment his soldiers dreaded the most. Every hour, on the hour, Davar sent one of his men probing into the magical land of the gods to test the barrier. For the past two days, the experiments had ended with the expected results. Dozens of corpses lay just several yards away, across a span of invisible, magical death.

  Slaughter continued all across the Territories. The big cities were all gone, but villages remained, hundreds of them. Bands of Feorans prowled the land, burning and pillaging, killing everyone they found. The roads were still packed with refugees from the towns, fleeing to the countryside. The wise ones had fled into Eracia and Parus, safe for the moment. But the justice of the Way would find them eventually.

  Messengers arrived in a continuous stream, reporting on the progress of the extermination. Hamlets burned all over the unholy land. Every death signified another dent in the shield protecting the false gods. Very soon, the facade would crumble.

  Thousands of Feorans were poised just outside the magical border, waiting for the signal from their leader to strike, like a pack of hungry wolves, waiting for the fire to die out before they savaged the lone traveler.

  The location of the mythical City of Gods was unknown to almost any living man in the realms, but Davar possessed a higher knowledge. He had it almost completely surrounded. His troops were still deploying in the west, toward Lia Lake, fighting the snow and mud.

  The turn of the year was almost upon them. General-Patriarch Davar hoped he would see the birth of the new year along with the death of the false gods. It would be his gift to Feor, to the world.

  Davar looked behind him. A score or so of frightened young men waited, mainly fresh converts. This was their chance to prove their faith. He had explained to them, if their love for Feor was great enough, no harm could come to them.

  He sought the most desperate face. “You, man,” he said, pointing.

  A pair of veteran soldiers pushed the pale convert forward. He was breathing in short pants, rivulets of sweat rolling down his cheeks despite the cold. He swayed like a drunkard.

  “Easy now.” One of the veterans steadied him.

  “Go beyond that marker,” Davar instructed. “It will be all right. Feor will protect you. If you truly love him, you have nothing to fear. You do truly love him, don’t you?”

  The man nodded weakly. Then, he doubled over and retched on his own boots. Steam rose from the slush. Davar rolled his eyes. Some people were just too weak. Several volunteers who had decided to decline this marvelous opportunity lay in the snow some distance away, turning blue with frost. The Movement had no place for weaklings.

  It took several moments before the lad could stand again. He sobered, took a deep breath, and tottered forward. He passed the old, weathered marker. Nothing happened. He turned and smiled.

  Davar motioned for him to move forward. “Go on. Go on.”

  The soldier trod slowly, as if the ground were treacherous. He paused after every step, anticipating something dreadful. But nothing happened. His feet touched the sprawled figure of one of the first volunteers.

  The general-patriarch and several of his most senior zealouses waited, hardly daring breathe, lest they spoil the fragile balance of the moment. They waited and hoped. Had the barrier collapsed?

  Buoyant with confidence, the volunteer advanced ahead of the last of the victims. Still, nothing happened. He walked faster now.

  “What do you feel?” Zealous Leonard shouted.

  The volunteer turned, smiling. He did not seem to have heard the officer. His hands trailed shapes in the air. His face was locked in wonder, seeing things they could only guess. Which probably meant the magic was still in place. It was only the matter of time.

  A bloodcurdling shriek startled them all. The volunteer went down, gripping his chest, howling. His screams dwindled to a gurgle, trailed away into silence. The thrashing form became very still.

  Davar pouted. The man had managed another ten paces. A new record. It was obvious the magic was failing, but it was still strong enough to murder anyone within fifty paces of the marker. They had to wait. Another hour.

  Davar had no idea what the most sensible time interval was, but an hour seemed like a reasonable choice. This way, he could still keep his eagerness sated without losing too many men.

  Suddenly, he lost his vision. He found himself on the ground, biting the frosty mud, flailing without control. Feor had come to him again.

  “Take me to my tent,” he rasped. His soldiers rushed to him, lifted his twisted form, a
nd led him to the warmth and seclusion of his pavilion. They laid him gently on the carpets and retreated.

  “My god,” he wept.

  A gray shape floated inside his head, possessing him. “You have come so far. I am pleased.”

  Davar whimpered with ecstasy. “Yes, my god, yes. I have obeyed your every command! The cities have all been razed. Jaruka is a charred ruin.”

  “You have served me faithfully. You will be rewarded for that,” Feor said. Davar whimpered some more. “Has the barrier collapsed yet?”

  “Not yet, my god. But soon, it will come down soon. My troops are roaming across the Territories, burning villages and killing anyone they encounter. Soon, the last of the people in this unholy land will be dead.”

  “Very good. Now, this is the most crucial part of your mission. You must not fail now.”

  Davar shook his head vehemently. “No, my god. I will not fail you.”

  “You must kill the false gods. You must find them and destroy them. I have waited a long time for this glorious moment. Your men are doing their job with great success. Before long, the foul magic of the false gods will shatter. You must storm the city and kill anyone you find.”

  “Yes, my god, I will. No one will live.”

  “I will remain inside your head. You will share your experiences with me. I want to see the Gods die with my own eyes. I want to hear them scream with my own ears. I must witness this moment of truth.”

  Davar sobbed. “I’m honored, my god.”

  “I will surrender your body to your control now. Do not tell anyone of me. They must not know I’m with you.”

  The general-patriarch gasped as incandescent white light exploded before his eyes, drilling into his skull. He reeled on the floor, slowly regaining his senses. He waited for quite some time before he rose, wiped away his tears, and came out.

  Feor was with him, inside his head, a twin spirit that shadowed his own. It felt as if his life echoed itself faintly, every movement, every sight doubling and tripling and replicating into infinity. Everything became blurred and stretched, words, feelings, smells.

  Wrapped in the presence of his god, Davar struggled back to the line of his men. They waited.

  Davar noticed the time for another attempt was ripe. He turned around. The volunteers stared at him, dread filming their eyes. If they had only known the very god they had sworn to was watching them now.

  “Who will come?” he said. Who will come, who will come, who will come…the words trailed. He waved his arms dreamily, watching their misty silhouettes linger in the cold, crisp winter air.

  “You.” He pointed when no one stepped forward.

  This volunteer was stronger than the one before. He did not try to resist. He walked steadily, staring straight forward.

  The man crossed the line. Nothing happened.

  He walked forward, never looking back or at the ground littered with his comrades.

  “Soldier!” Davar called. The volunteer turned. “What do you see?” he asked.

  “Snow, sir,” the man offered. “Just snow and dead vegetation.”

  Davar felt a joy of alien excitement course through his blood, like liquid fire. The barrier is down. Bodiless words stirred in his head. The barrier is down…

  The general-patriarch swallowed.

  The soldier walked forward. He passed the last body. Nothing happened.

  “Keep walking,” Davar shouted. “Keep walking.”

  A wave of murmurs spread down the line of armed men. Hungry, tired, and cold, they had waited for two long, grueling days in the bitter cold, eating salted pork and drinking melted snow water and knifing chilblains off their feet and palms.

  The ranks stirred. Like animals, they could smell blood.

  Davar waited, his breath lodged in his throat. Could it be true? Had the barrier really collapsed? The volunteer was almost half a mile away, topping a little crest. He walked with grim determination, as if looking back would undo his tremendous luck of being alive.

  The barrier is down. Go. Murder them, Feor spoke. Avenge me.

  Davar raised his sword aloft. The soldiers became quiet. They looked at him, waiting for the word of Feor.

  “Commence the attack. Kill anyone you find. Leave no survivors.”

  A thunderous cheer exploded down the long line of Feorans. They hollered with all their might, a deliverance of caged beasts bursting free. Ignoring their exhaustion of several long months of marches, sieges, and fighting, the soldiers charged forward at a trot, slipping in the mud and fresh snow, trampling the countryside to a brown pulp.

  A blanket of fur and leather uniforms crawled over the soil that no human had walked in thousands of years. The magic barrier was gone. The City of Gods was at their mercy now.

  Find the gods and kill them, Feor shrieked with joy.

  Davar rushed forward.

  CHAPTER 46

  Armin and Ewan walked down a path that had clearly been made by humans, a new road, carved into the cruel face of volcanic rock.

  They found discarded tools, clothes, and wagons everywhere, a testimony to the secret of the eight dead Caytorean merchants and their iniquitous business. They found old fire rings, black spots on the dun, lifeless ground. They found tent pegs and coils of rope and shreds of canvas that marked the location of abandoned camps.

  As they moved deeper into the island’s heart, they began encountering corpses. Most had been picked clean by rain and maggots, leaving behind only bleached bones and cracked skulls. Armin lingered by the skeletons, examining this and that bone. Ewan watched him with morbid curiosity.

  “What do you see?” he asked on one occasion.

  “Death, violent death,” the investigator answered.

  The trail of garbage and dead people followed them up all the way to the summit of the mountain dominating the island.

  Damian’s home was a blasted, inhospitable rock, with a single, crooked, sheared fang in the middle. The human-marked road circled the sharp face of the cliffs, winding up toward the top. They found pieces of scaffolding and ramps creaking in the wind, slowly falling apart as sea salt ate at their joints.

  There was no vegetation, no place to hide from the ferocious elements. Armin spent the nights cowering in a cocoon of blankets. Ewan was oblivious to both fatigue and the chill, staying by Armin’s side, keeping him warm with his own body. They used bits of old, rotting timber to make fire.

  Luckily, the ordeal was a short one. On the third day of their journey, they crested the last twist of the trail. Before them stretched the broken lip of the mountain’s summit. And it was no ordinary summit after all, but the edge of a volcano. Rock and more rock stared at them. The wind howled, a thin, sharp, mind-splitting fury. They had to shout in one another’s ear to be able to communicate.

  Ewan looked at the world. The gray sea, merging into a gray sky, with livid spots where storms raged. Other islands rose from the sea like turds in a pond, ugly and uninviting.

  The world around them was cold and dead, a heap of gravel and stone and ashes. They could see the trail they had followed, a snake that had scarred the dead land. A passage of so many people and so many deaths. There were many more skeletons littering the rim of the volcano.

  Drawn by the chasm that breathed just on the other side, they walked the short distance toward the inner slope. And paused.

  “What in the name of…?” Ewan whispered. But he knew. He just knew.

  Armin stared. The center of the bowl was a black hole, a dark black hole that sucked the light from the air.

  “Incredible,” the investigator said.

  The wind shifted. A gust of air whipped out from the bowl, overwhelming them with the stench of old death. Armin bowed and retched dryly. Ewan stood grimacing, but otherwise unmoved.

  “That black thing is the Abyss,” the Sirtai said and snorted. It was stating the obvious.

  Ewan nodded. Only then he noticed how quiet it had become. It was as if they were in the world of the dead already.<
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  The inner slope of the volcano was sheer and steep, insurmountable. Scaffolding led toward its depths, but it looked rickety, with many menacing gaps. It was either chancing it or jumping straight down.

  “I must go there,” Ewan said simply.

  “You cannot,” Armin pleaded.

  “I must. I know what I have to do. It’s clear to me now.”

  Armin stood silent for a moment. “I will wait for you here,” he said at last. If he could survive the cold, that was. But there was nothing else he could do to help the boy.

  Ewan extended his hand. Armin smiled softly and gripped the boy’s warm, callused palm. The boy smiled back, his face a reflection of sadness of an entire age of humans. They did not speak any more. There was nothing left to say.

  With a grim, determined nod, Ewan walked to the edge of the cliff top. Stone crumbled beneath his feet, rolling away into the chasm below. The boy looked one last time at Armin and, taking a deep breath, leaped toward the Abyss.

  He landed with a thud. None of his bones were broken, despite his awkward landing. Walking closer to the edge of the black hole, he stepped carefully, unable to fully block the prevailing stench of rotten flesh.

  He approached the Abyss. Its impregnable darkness stabbed at his eyes, making them water. The measure of emptiness of that thing was unimaginable. Up close, he could see wisps of smoke trailing out of it, disintegrating and dispersing in the cold air.

  Ewan stepped closer.

  A black, cowled form materialized before him, blocking his path.

  “Welcome, I have been waiting for you,” it said.

  Ewan stopped. “What…Who are you?”

  The form stirred. “I’m your father, Ewan. Welcome, son.”

  The boy stepped back. “You are lying.”

  The apparition gave a throaty, disembodied chuckle. “Oh, such presumption. Well, that is to be expected. After all, you are one of my sons. Even if we are distanced a thousand generations apart, I can always tell my own blood.”