“I have returned with an army of goblins and orcs. Together we will build a great city for all of us to dwell and prosper. It is designed to suit all of our needs and give us space enough to live life as we wish. We will work hard until it is done, under the guidance of the orc king. Tomorrow we start building. This is my will.”
Gnak loved the simplicity of the trolls. He was the oldest and wisest and therefore he knew what was best for the people. Had they been a traditional orc clan, he would have been put to death years ago when he began showing signs of decline. But here he was honored and obeyed. Here he was a king because of his frailties and weaknesses. The trolls, like the humans, had a better way than the orcs. Soon, all of their ways would be the same.
Knowing that it was common for those of his kind to simply stand without speaking for hours, he still feared leaving the body unattended. Daring not to shift, he turned again to the new steps his people had built and picked his way through the village once again. Feeling more invigorated than he had in over a month, the troll king climbed down the hundreds of stairs back to the army that awaited below.
Seeing and feeling their eyes upon him, he bowed low as he reached their level and turning he strode across the uneven ground. All was still as he had left it. The army was still formed into ranks as if they would march directly into the wall of the cliff. The enslaved giants were still harnessed to his great cart. They stood at the ready, waiting to receive their orders.
Climbing into the immense wagon he stretched his weary bones and sitting, he rubbed his arthritic knees before closing his eyes and abandoning his body.
Blinking his eyes rapidly, Gnak took a deep breath as his heart sped back to a normal pace in his chest. Rising, he climbed out from his concealment within his orc body and looking to his captains he began to speak.
“Mighty Gathos clan. We have done much and come far but I must yet ask more of you. Ishanya wishes us to build a great fortress city with homes for all the goblins, trolls, and orcs. She wants temples devoted to her. She wants walls and war machines to protect us. She bids us hurry. Something is coming that the goddess tries to prepare us for, and I do not wish to fail her. Tomorrow we will start constructing our new home. Our new future. Set camp and rest through the night. Help the goblins to set up their forges, and build many fires. Send out parties to hunt, for we will need food to fuel our progress. Go now, and see it done.”
Waving his captains away, he climbed back into the cart as orders began being shouted behind him. Though they had far to go in constructing the city, he felt a measure of relief just knowing how far they had come already. He would see to it that all the goddess’s wishes were met. He would see to it that all of his people’s needs were met and they lived well.
Turning to face the flap upon the back of the cart, Gnak sat upon the pile of furs on the floor of the wagon as a voice sounded within.
“Gnak?”
“Jen?”
“Who else, silly?” she asked with a giggle from inside his head.
“I’ve done it, Jen. I’ve brought them together and led them to the site of our city.”
“I’m very proud of you, Gnak, and I’m sure that Ishanya is watching and is pleased as well.”
“I hope so.”
“Just keep teaching them. Keep them praying and show them the way.”
“I will, Jen.”
“Good. I hope to come back soon, and if you can keep Ishanya happy, maybe she will let me come back.”
“Gnak would like nothing more,” he replied honestly.
For long hours they talked about things that Gnak had discovered or learned through the memories of the kings he controlled. It was good to hear her voice and know that in some capacity not only was she still alive in a sense, but she was able to enjoy the small grasp she still held on to life.
During the night Gnak made sure all of his bodies made appearances and by morning picks, chisels, hammers, and shovels were distributed as dust and flakes of stone began to be chipped away from the mountainside. Shifting between his bodies day and night, Gnak directed their progress in all matters, using the combined knowledge of all his lives to design the city that would best serve his people.
* * * * *
Months of toil and laborious work and the beginnings of their future home was beginning to take shape all across the face of the mountain. Standing as the troll king on an outcropping of stone, he watched as the progress slowly took shape.
All about the stone slopes and rock faces, the trolls and orcs worked side by side cutting great blocks of stone where thoroughfares and roads would wind up between the buildings. With long saws of twisted wire and buckets of sand, they worked day and night to slowly and painstakingly create that which Gnak could see in his mind. Once cut away, the large slabs of stone were taken up by teams of goblins who placed them upon logs and slowly rolled them out to a central location where teams of goblins and enslaved giants placed the stones in large iron baskets. Once secured, using a series of cables and pulleys the stones were lowered down the mountain face where they were received by yet more similarly created teams.
On and on the little puppet masters caged upon the backs of giants toiled, making their enslaved beasts lift the enormous blocks of stone into position upon the forming wall of the fortress. When placed, the goblins would apply a layer of a substance they called tar to the top of the stones before placing the next level.
All about their future city goblins worked with hammer and chisel to chip away the stone of every surface. They clung to rock walls like insects, teeming about in groups as they sang merry songs. From their labors dust and stone rained down upon the city around them, as they carved the faces of the buildings, creating windows and doors. But the most important work was unseen from the surface. Though it was the goblins that tirelessly carved out the interiors of the buildings, making not only rooms, but chairs and tables and other devices for the people to use as they worked, it was what they did deeper still that was really making a change.
Deep inside the mountain’s core the goblins tunneled like rats. Creating the chimneys and vents required to heat the city to a constant degree was dangerous and laborious work that led to many deaths each day. Poisonous air was discovered in places and cave-ins were common, but still they worked on without complaint. For here in the depths of the mountain’s core was the source of the goblins’ dreams and desires. As they created that which would sustain life in their city, they too found veins of precious metals and stones.
Working nonstop around the clock, the goblin miners gathered raw materials that they delivered at regular intervals to the craftsmen of the city. The clang of hammer on steel rang from more than two thousand blacksmiths’ forges as tools were repaired and created. Sparks flew from their great grinding wheels as chisels were sharpened and wire saws were honed.
From his vantage point Gnak could monitor their progress as his great horde seemed to swarm across the face of the mountain. And although their progress upon the city was great, nothing to Gnak was so grand as that which was being constructed higher up the mountain. Leaving the troll king upon his ledge, he shifted to his orkin body higher up the mountain to again behold the jewel atop his city.
At the pinnacle of the city’s highest point sat the location that had once been the trolls’ hidden village. It was a wide clearing that ran nearly level and provided for Gnak the perfect location for Ishanya’s desires to be realized. Here, in the center of the clearing, a great towering temple was being constructed, the likes of which he had never seen a building made before.
Like the wall at the lowest reaches of his fortress, here great stone slabs were carved and stacked with bindings of tar. The stones were placed to create great layers that created squares with a hollow core. Each layer was smaller than the previous, building a structure with huge natural steps on all four faces. Though it was not yet complete, Gnak recalled it from his vision to see that all was exactly as it should be. Progress was slow but steady. It
would take his horde under a year to finish the basics of the fortress and make it habitable. He looked forward to the day.
Assuring himself that no one was approaching, Gnak took one final look out upon the temple devoted to Ishanya before closing his eyes.
Breathing in the sulfurous fumes with one great sigh, the goblin king blinked away the crust from his eyes and rose from the chair where those who passed him by thought he merely slumbered. Motioning to his guards, he strode out from his recess carved into the cavern wall and climbed down the shaft to the steady rhythm of picks and chisels beating upon the rock below.
Here was the richest vein they had yet found of quartz rock laden with gold. Day and night his goblins pounded the quartz to dust before using liquid metal to bind the gold together, extracting it from the white powder. The goblins had amazing knowledge of mining and extracting resources that Gnak found fascinating, and though he allowed them to mine the minerals that would create the coins of their future currency, his real reason for chasing this particular vein was not the wealth.
Even now he could feel the heat growing with each downward step he took within the shaft, and he knew that soon they would reach what he already knew laid beyond. Somewhere ahead was the molten core of the mountain within a great cavern of red and black. It was not only the natural source of heat they needed to moderate the temperature in their city, but was also the singular spot where they would recover all the molten metals to create for all of his people the weapons and armor they would require when Ishanya called upon them.
Entering the last leg of the cave, a great shout arose as a cloud of dust exploded down the tunnel. Recognizing the sign, Gnak ran in the goblin king’s body down the shaft towards the cave-in, wondering how many men he had lost. With an eerie glow upon the walls, the goblin king reached what would have been the end of the tunnel to find his team of miners standing upon a natural ledge where they peered down into a molten lake below them.
Heat poured from the molten surface below that roiled and bubbled noxious fumes, and as they stood there on the ledge they could feel the heated air whipping past them, gaining speed and momentum by the second as it climbed all throughout the caverns above. He couldn’t resist. He wanted to see the heated air escape the vents above.
With all his goblin cohorts’ attentions drawn to the view beyond, he took a risk he normally avoided and closing his eyes he shifted.
In a lair formed of nothing but darkness, there before him, atop a throne of living, twisted beings, Gnak looked upon his goddess as the tortured faces of the device moaned in silence their agony and despair. Dropping to his knees before the all-powerful being, he lowered his face to a floor he could not even see. So pure was the darkness around her that it had become a solid substance creating all that she wanted and altering to suit her will.
In skintight leather that clung to her every curve she rose from the wicked throne, a darkness shining off of her sculpted body that reminded him of the tar the goblins used. Only she could be so powerful as to make darkness shine.
Striding to where he prostrated himself upon the floor, she looked down upon him, a wicked smirk upon her face that spoke of mischievous deeds and twisted fantasies. Gnak wondered what he could learn if he had access to her mind.
“Stand, cowering mortal,” she demanded him.
Without even a single thought, Gnak scrambled to his feet in instant obedience. Looking upon her he was accosted by mixed emotions that made him both desire her and loathe her. Her beauty was unequaled among any of the races, and though he was drawn to drink in her every feature, he felt disgusted by the desire and fought against it as her own gaze swept over him with disgust.
“You have done well,” she stated simply.
Gnak relished in the praise but said nothing in return. If she wanted him to talk she would tell him to. He waited to see if she would speak further and remained unmoving, torn between the desire to look upon her and the need to look away.
“For your obedience I will create more champions among your people, though they, like you, are still ignorant. Prepare for the arrival of my other servants and learn well your abilities. If you were not so limited by your weak mortal brain I would give you more power. Yet even now you have not yet realized the power you have already been granted. Return to your pathetic plane and see to it that all is prepared. I grow impatient. The time is upon us.”
Opening his eyes, Gnak found himself still within the shell of the goblin king. His shift had not completed. The goddess had snatched him from his mortal shell before he could even make the switch. Shaking his head as a means to clear it, he thought about all that yet needed to be done in preparation and barked at those closest to him to send them back to work.
Promised more power and blessed champions, Gnak had been told that a war was coming and soon. He only wished he knew what ‘soon’ meant to an immortal. Though there was yet much to be done, he vowed his people would be ready and waiting when again the goddess called upon them. Turning, he strode back into the darkened cavern with his guards hot on his heels to make his rounds with the goblin slavers.
-End
THE CALLING
AGE OF THE GODS, VOLUME XI
THE BLOOD AND BROTHERHOOD SAGA
Chapter One
Squinting against the blinding rays reflecting off of the blanket of snow on the ground, Seth listened to the crunching beneath his feet that came with every step. He imagined that each crunch was another life he had ended without the right to do so, and with every step his heart grew heavier. The sun ahead, then, must certainly be the personal hell he deserved for all he had done, awaiting him just beyond the horizon. These, and darker thoughts, had plagued him for the entire seven days he led his small army westward, towards the kingdom once owned and abandoned by the now dead, King Robert Sigrant.
Blinking away the dryness of his eyes, he licked his chapped lips and squinted into the sun he followed. Following would be better, he thought. He had never wanted to be a leader. Never even wanted to be in an army, let alone lead one. Leaving Valdadore with the mutated men, women, and children he had created had been hard enough. But this… this was altogether unfathomable.
The very first night they began to come, those who sought to follow him into some unknown future. Hundreds at first had rushed to join his meager ranks, and then more. They called him everything from a hero to the savior of mankind, and each time it made the pit in his soul bigger. Without even looking back he could count them. Seven thousand, three hundred and nine. Most were too young to even be on their own, yet because of the disease he had brought to Valdadore, because of his desire to protect himself from the pain of loss, he had made orphans of them.
He had done this, and it was his duty to them — to lead. Not that he wanted to, but he had to. For whatever twisted reason fate had seen fit to bestow upon him, they believed in him. They believed he was more than he was. They believed that he would lead them to some bright and glorious future where life would somehow again be good. But Seth couldn’t see it. Ahead, instead, he saw more fighting and more death.
It would come, Seth knew. War. Death. They both stalked him. He could feel their icy clutches upon his heart and taste their foulness in the air. He could not escape them. They were his fate. They were what had driven him from Valdadore, not Garret’s words. His brother’s pain, rage, and hatred had hurt Seth, but he had left to protect his brother and his home from himself. Shaking his head, he wondered how Garret fared. In their final moments together Seth had seen a change in his brother. For days, perhaps weeks, the king had approached a precipice, but with the death of Linaya he had tumbled down, and Seth could think of no way to save him. He couldn’t even save himself. His only option was to leave.
Telling himself for the millionth time that one day he would return, he lowered and shook his head. One day when he was stronger and when he could fix all he had done, he would return to his brother and repair that which he had broken. If, of course, love was something
that could be repaired. Seth could only hope.
Feeling about him with his power, he again counted all those auras that now were so close to his bloated power that they were consumed within it. Seven thousand, three hundred and nine. Some were farmers, others had lived in the city. Two were red-robed mages, another was a healer, and more showed signs of godly blessings as well, though their talents remained a mystery. Unfortunately, Seth simply didn’t care enough at present to be intrigued by such a mystery, such was his self-loathing.
Further down the road behind them, another group rushed to catch up. Seventeen more. Scanning about them, he located no danger and simply let them come. There was no stopping them. No convincing them that it was folly to follow him. He’d tried several times, and never was he able to discourage a single soul.
“Do you plan to trudge on like this forever?” Sara broke the silence.
“Would you have me trudge on in another manner?” Seth asked, more out of habit than real interest.
“You’ve been either staring at the sun or your feet for hours. I get it, Seth, I do, but look at them. They have all come for you. They believe in you. I believe in you. I know it hurts, but this,” she said, gesturing to him with a flick of the wrist, “this doesn’t help anyone.”
“It isn’t supposed to help anyone. I have a lot to think about, and this is how I think.”
“No, this is how you attempt to punish yourself for things out of your control.”
“So it’s not my fault you are like this?” Seth snapped, gesturing at her the same as she had done to him.
“No, it is the fault of a goddess who gave you a power beyond your comprehension.”
“So I’m just too stupid to understand what I’m doing then, and that makes it okay to kill thousands?”
Age of the Gods: The Complete, twelve novel, fantasy series (The Blood and Brotherhood Saga) Page 173