by Jon Hollins
And so he stepped forward, and he led the others toward the Killing Plains, and toward certain death.
2
First in the Heavens, Last in Our Hearts
Gratt watched Will and the others leave. When they were out of earshot, he signaled to his guards and headed back to his tent. A few minutes later, they deposited what was left of Lawl in front of him.
Gratt hated Lawl. He hated him with all the passion of a spurned child. Of a malformed creation ignored by his maker, abandoned for his ugliness, and left down here for millennia to fulfill rote duties over and over and over again.
However, Gratt was also practical.
Lawl looked up at Gratt and grinned. “See,” he said. “What did I tell you? He knows nothing. He thinks going to the Deep Ones will make him a god as well.”
Gratt shrugged. “You have bought yourself a week of life at best. When he doesn’t return, I will kill you then.”
“I promise you, he is surprisingly effective.”
There was a gleam of hope in Lawl’s eyes, which was the only reason Gratt had agreed to this bargain. He didn’t give the human much longer than two minutes in the Killing Plains. And then he would get to pull all that hope away from Lawl, and it would be so sweet.
For a moment the idea crossed his mind that the human would be successful. He dismissed it quickly, but not before he shuddered. Gratt wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. Not even Lawl.
3
Fiery Zeal
Far, far above Will and Lette and all their terrible, terrible mistakes, Quirkelle Bal Tehrin was getting ready to make her own.
Her belly was pressed into long grass. The smell of dirt and animal shit was ripe in her nostrils. The sheath for her hunting knife was pressed painfully into her hip. Mud was smeared over her hands and clothes. And she was grinning like a fool.
Five men and women were scattered in the grass around her, armed with a variety of weapons. Gartrand clutched his grandfather’s short sword, sharpened so many times that its blade was almost as narrow as a rapier’s. Ellabet had a wooden staff, its tips encased in cold, hard steel. Poll held a club he had carved himself from the limb of a heavy oak. Tarryl had his old yew bow, an arrow fletched with goose feathers clutched between his teeth. And Salette … well, Salette had a sock weighted with sand. But Salette brought a lot of enthusiasm with her, and that made up for a lot.
There were eight others scattered farther afield, all with their own makeshift and homespun weapons. Thirteen men and women. Thirteen fighters. Thirteen people fueled by anger, outrage, and an unshakable sense of justice. Thirteen who refused to simply lie down and accept the world as it was. And all of them were waiting for her signal.
The Barphian temple lay below them like a throat waiting to be slit.
Quirk’s rage was almost a palpable thing in her gut. She could swear that she could feel it crawling around inside her. Its barbs and hooks caught at her, inflamed her.
It was almost a year that she had been at war now. It had started in her hometown of Tamathia, long before Barph’s rise, back when the dragons started to threaten dominance over Avarra. And she had been a reluctant fighter. She had resisted violence for as long as she could. But in the end her opponents only understood the language of force. So, slowly, she had learned the grammar of bloodshed. It came easily to her now.
But this creature of rage. This thing that mewled and spit and tore inside her … that was Barph’s creation. That was his own thing. His gift to her.
She had owned it once before. A long time ago. It had been forced upon her. When she was seven, Hethren, the demigod horseman, had plucked her from her parents’ cold, dead hands and taken her to be part of his war band raging through the north. He had cultivated her rage like a royal gardener in his hothouse. He had broken her until her only concept of humanity was viscera and bone. Things to be broken. Breaths to be taken. Blood to be burst from the sack of skin that contained it.
And then … then there had been rescue. There had been kindness. Concepts she had forgotten or had believed were only myths. Eight years. Eight years it had taken the kind men and women of Tamathia to bring her back to herself, to teach her how to be human again, to slay that beast of rage.
She had liked being the person those Tamathians made her. A professor at a university. A creature of logic. An educator. She helped the world. She broadened its horizons. She was so very, very close to being whole.
And then, somewhere, somehow … Afrit.
Afrit had been a professor too. And at first she had just been that. Just a face in the corridors of the university. But then she had been … what? A nuisance. That thought almost made Quirk smile now. Someone nipping at her heels with questions. Someone waiting at her door at odd hours. Afrit had believed herself Quirk’s fan, enamored with Quirk’s early adventuring and her academic vigor. Such an idea had been foreign to Quirk’s view of herself. But then events had forced things to a head. The dragons’ attempt to overthrow the gods had thrown the pair of them into partnership as unlikely leaders of a resistance movement. Everything had come clear.
And then everything had become less clear … Emotions had become entangled. Afrit, it became apparent, was enamored with more than Quirk’s mind. But that part of Quirk was broken, a casualty of Hethren’s brutality. She was a creature of intellect now. She had left physicality behind. That was who she was.
And then Afrit had broken Quirk’s idea of herself utterly. She had destroyed all Quirk’s ideas. All her promises to herself.
Afrit had made Quirk love.
Afrit had made her love by sacrificing herself.
Barph had come for Quirk, to kill her, to take away the divinity that Quirk held nestled in her heart, thinking she was keeping it safe for Knole’s return. And in the confusion and desperation of the fight, Afrit had sacrificed herself. She had let Quirk live. And she had made Quirk love her.
But then she was dead. And so Quirk’s love was born a useless, pointless thing. And then, just as Afrit’s death had breathed life into Quirk’s love, Quirk’s love breathed life into her rage.
Barph had done this to her. Barph had taken Afrit from her. And so Quirk would take everything from Barph.
Slowly she began to crawl forward on her belly. The thick grass she lay in continued for another ten yards before it was interrupted by the pebble-strewn pathway that surrounded the temple’s forecourt. She could just make out a guard strolling back and forth through the space right before her, swinging his arms and working out a crick in his shoulder. He would pause from time to time, adjust the crotch of his britches, yawn.
It was easy, in some ways, to think of him as just a man. A little hungover, a little tired, waiting for his shift to end so he could shuffle back to his barracks or dormitory room to polish his armor and play dice with his friends. His only crime his utter banality.
Easy. And a lie.
This man was a monster. An oppressor. This man’s simple existence condoned a dictator, a killer, a peddler of hate and lies. This man didn’t just accept Barph’s hegemony, he defended it. When Barph told him to tear something down, he obeyed. He ripped and tore at the foundations of culture and learning and hope, all at his master’s will, all without any care for the consequences. There was nothing banal about this man, just as there was nothing banal about the god who commanded him.
Six months ago, with Lawl’s carefully ordered world laid out before him, Barph had begun to kick at the anthill like an angry toddler. He had manifested in palaces and castles. He had plucked the heads from kings and queens as if they were grapes upon the vine. He had slain generals and dukes and ambassadors. He had torn down the walls of courthouses and set alight cities’ guards. He had systematically and comprehensively destroyed every individual and institution involved in maintaining order in every city in the world.
It had taken him a month to bring Avarra to its knees. A totalitarian insistence on anarchy. It was a concept so hypocritical it would have made Quirk laugh i
f she had still been capable of laughter. If she hadn’t been trying to mend the broken bodies that always seemed to be thick around her. If she hadn’t been stabbing his priests over and over and over again in their stupid, ugly, dumb fucking faces.
Quirk crept forward another yard. The guard stopped, squinted out over the scrubland where she was hiding. The others were lying flat and still. She was leaving them behind. She could feel Tarryl’s eyes boring into her, trying to act like hooks to hold her back.
Tarryl was a pussy who needed to remember to bring his balls to these affairs, as far as Quirk was concerned.
Furtively but furiously she signaled him to come forward. He hesitated, then wriggled up on his belly.
“There’s too many of them,” he said. “There’s thirty guards plus the priests. Surprise isn’t enough.” There was more passion in his voice than she’d expected from the old man. He was a phenomenal shot, but for a resistance fighter he was usually surprisingly reluctant to either resist or fight.
There were words that Quirk could say now. She had reams and reams of words. For so long, in her life after Hethren, she had worked on always having the right words. She had so firmly believed that all problems could be talked out, be reasoned out, if everyone just came with an open mind. That deep down, everyone was reasonable, if you just gave them a chance.
For an intellectual, she had been shockingly foolish.
Quirk didn’t say a word. Quirk just stood up.
She heard Tarryl gasp.
She saw the guard cock his head, turn around. She saw his eyes go wide.
And she smiled once more.
There was a reason Hethren had taken her to be part of his war band. There was a reason others followed her. There was a reason she had been able to stand against the dragons, and against Barph.
When she had been in her mother’s womb, one of the gods had touched Quirk, and she had been given a gift.
Quirk stretched out her hands toward the guard, and gave birth to fire.
When Quirk had first set the world aflame, it had scared her so badly she had pissed herself. She was six years old. She had been thinking about how her brother, Andatte, had stolen the licorice root that she had hidden in her bedroll, and that she liked to chew at night when everyone else was asleep. She had been thinking about how unfair it was, and how she didn’t want to cry, but it made her feel like crying. She had been alone, dodging the other children and trying to avoid her mother’s giving her a chore to do. She was hidden in a woodshed, empty during the hot summer months. And as she raged silently at her brother and fought vainly against tears, the heat of the shed had seemed to rise and rise, scalding her. And she had almost screamed, she was getting so hot, almost gone to look for her mother. Almost.
And then …
Then her hands were on fire. And then the woodshed was on fire. And she had screamed for real and true then. And she had gone running for her mother. And she had been so scared she would get in trouble, she hadn’t told anyone how the fire had really happened. And every time she remembered what had happened, hot tears would spill down her face, and the other children would point and laugh, as long as Andatte wasn’t around.
But even in that first moment, in that unbearable crescendo of heat, in the terror that had gripped her, there had been a sense of ecstasy too. A sense of release. Something chained within her broke free, and it rejoiced in that freedom.
And now, here, burning the guard of a Barphian temple dressed in bronze armor and gripping a steel-tipped spear, she felt it again. She understood it now, she thought. She didn’t long for it as she had once, when she was wild and blunted to almost every other pleasure in life. She didn’t think of it as a curse either, as she’d been taught to. It was simply part of her. And she had to be careful, yes, but that didn’t mean she had to be fearful. Magic and flame—they were tools and had their uses.
Like burning this living shit of a guard at a Barphian temple, dressed in his preposterous armor and gripping his useless bloody spear.
In the crackle of the flames and the screams of the dying guard and the shouts of shock and horror from the others, she missed the twang of Tarryl’s bow. But then an arrow fletched with goose feathers was jutting from the throat of another guard, who was gurgling and collapsing. Another arrow glanced off the curve of a bronze helmet.
From Quirk’s right there was a whirring sound, and then a rock the size of a hen’s egg smashed into another guard’s cheek, and bone crunched and blood sprayed, and the man was dropping howling to the ground.
Her signal, it seemed, had been universally clear. Around her the last resistance force she knew of in Avarra tore into battle.
It was not an efficient fighting force. It was not well disciplined. There was no uniform charge. No attempt to pick off particular weaker-looking members of this tribe. But there was passion. And watching Salette smash her weighted sock into the side of a priest’s head brought a genuine smile to Quirk’s lips.
She marched into the chaos her plans had created. Into the screams and the shouts, the blood and the fury. A guard came at her, spear clutched in both hands above his head. She made a pyre of him, pushed him casually away.
The majority of the priests had retreated back to the body of the temple. They were pushing the heavy wooden doors closed. She could see others already wrestling with the bar to hold them closed and leave their comrades trapped outside.
Wooden doors. She would have laughed if she laughed anymore these days.
A blade whistled past her ear, buried itself in the smoking wood. A bronze-clad temple guard howled, wrenched the blade free. The guard recovered, came at her again, blade held low. She closed the distance, feinted left, darted right, put her hand into his face. Her hand was wreathed in fire.
Teeth gritted, Quirk burned down the temple doors, filled the room beyond the doors with fire, and marched inside.
Smoke roiled around her head as she strode through an elegant stone arch carved with vines and lifelike clusters of grapes.
The soldier waiting behind the arch missed his chance to kill her by a split second. His blow came just a fraction of a moment too late. She caught the slightest glimpse of movement, and her hair-trigger nerves sent her skittering sideways, ensuring his blade bit into her shoulder and not her neck.
Howling in pain, staggering away, she kept the wherewithal to clamp a flaming hand to the wound, stanching the bleeding. But the guard was already trying to make up for his poor timing, and Quirk didn’t have moments to spare in preventing herself from bleeding out.
The guard was rushing her, sword held above his head. She staggered back, tripped over her own feet, sprawled.
The guard stood over her, started to swing the sword down at her stomach.
Afrit. She would find Afrit in the Hallows.
Afrit.
There was a gurgling sound and a clank of metal. She opened an eye. An arrow sprouted from the guard’s neck. He keeled over backward.
She blinked. Smoke was everywhere and she didn’t …
Tarryl appeared, looked down at her.
“Gods.” He spat. “The fuck is wrong with you?” He reached down, grabbed her wrist. It was the injured arm. She screamed as he hauled her to her feet. The man blanched. “Fuck’s sake.”
“Leave me.” Quirk was panting through the pain. “We’ve got the element of—”
“Would you shut up.” Tarryl shook his head. “Crazy bitch. We’ve got two dead outside and five wounded. The only reason they haven’t retreated is because they wanted to get you out of here in one piece, and I was stupid enough to volunteer.”
Shouts from the other end of the room cut off Quirk’s objections. Shadows moved through the smoke of her fires. Tarryl pulled her backward down the corridor. Her arm protested. She didn’t.
They made it outside, and three others closed around them. Gartrand had a gash in his skull above one eye, and half his pale face was sheeted in blood. Poll was holding his club in his off hand, the ot
her arm clutched protectively to his ribs.
“Salette,” Quirk managed to say. “Where’s Salette?”
Tarryl didn’t look back at her, instead launching an arrow at the temple doorway. “Two dead,” he said.
They retreated up the hill, back toward the safety of the trees. Smoke poured out of the windows of the temple as Quirk’s fires took hold. Temple guards attempted to rally. Priests tried to smother flames with wineskins. And supported by the arms of others, Quirk felt like nothing but a failure.
4
Did I Stutter?
Up, far above Quirk, and impossibly far above Will, Barph rose and so did the sun. The exact relationship between the pair was hazy to Barph. Did the sun rise because he did? Or did he rise because the idiotic ball of fire was shining directly into his eyes through the bedroom window? He could probably figure it out if he concentrated, but he was trying to avoid concentrating, especially with a hangover like this one.
After a while he attempted to get out of bed. His red silk sheets had apparently launched a sneak attack in the night and mired his legs. As he tried to rise, they flung him murderously off the edge of the four-poster and onto the floor, where he fell and rolled through discarded wine bottles, stained chalices, and plates of grapes. He flung the sheets away, picked himself up, and stumbled blearily through the room, searching for the door. He couldn’t find it, so he waved his hand at a wall and had one appear there.
He staggered through the Summer Palace, rearranging corridors as necessary to allow for a more rapid journey to some fresh air. Then, bored of that, he rearranged the palace so that most of it was behind him instead. The architecture rumbled and rattled, marble sliding over granite, as plaster ran and moldings folded and unfolded in and out of reality.
Only the font stayed in place. The font at the heart of the palace. The font full of his blood, which marked him as owner of this place. Its one true owner. Him alone.