Touched by the Gods

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Then if we learn that an enemy seriously threatens the Empire itself, you'll come?”

  “Of course,” Malledd said. “But it won't come to that. All's been peace beneath the Hundred Moons since before my grandfather's grandfather was born.”

  Vadeviya nodded again, and slapped Malledd on the shoulder. “Well, let's hope you're right, lad!” He turned away. “I'll be going, then,” he said. “If you ever wish to talk to someone about your duties as the champion, you come see me in Biekedau – just ask for me at the temple. Vadeviya. My best to your wife and son, and my blessing upon you.”

  Malledd blinked in surprise. “You're leaving?” he asked.

  Vadeviya nodded. “I have my answer,” he said.

  “But... you walked ten miles to ask me that?”

  “And to get a look at you. You're a good, strong young man, Malledd. The oracles said you would be more than that, if the need arose, and I believe them, but I wanted to see you, and hear your words. I've done that, and it's a long walk home if I want to be back at the temple by nightfall.”

  He was already shuffling out the doorway by the time he finished this speech.

  Malledd hesitated, but then simply stood and watched the priest go.

  He didn't like it.

  The priest said he really was the gods' chosen champion, and that there were no others. And he might be needed as the defender of the Empire.

  Nonsense, he told himself. He was a blacksmith with a wife and a baby and another baby on the way. Surely, the gods could fight their own battles. They didn't need an ordinary smith blundering about.

  He watched the priest walk up the lane, past the graveyard with its flower-locked gate. Then, when the priest was out of sight, Malledd turned back to the forge and picked up the hammer and tongs.

  Chapter Ten

  Asari blanched as Rebiri Nazakri growled. He backed against the rough brick of the alleyway wall, away from his master's anger.

  “It uses too much energy fighting through all these guards, or blasting in through the roof,” the wizard said. “I spend all my time rushing to and from the caves! Is there no other way to get at these stinking Domdur bureaucrats?”

  “None that I know of, Master,” Asari said.

  “I have only just returned from the mountains, and if I have to blast my way through the soldiers I'll need to return there tomorrow!”

  Asari stammered, unsure what he was trying to say.

  He was terrified of the old man. The black magic of that double-ended staff was foul, dangerous stuff; Asari had seen it in action, and just being near it was uncomfortable. How Rebiri could hold it and use it was beyond Asari's comprehension.

  “Is there no other way to restore the staff's power?” Asari asked. “Your son's staff – ”

  “My son's staff uses sunlight,” Rebiri said, interrupting, “and is weak and ineffectual in consequence. I draw on the dark powers of the earth, and those can be found only in the deep caves.”

  “Are you sure there are no caves nearer than Govya that might serve? What of the crypts beneath the governor's palace?”

  “And how am I to enter those crypts?”

  Asari had no ready answer for that. He turned and peered around the corner at the plaza outside the city's government offices.

  At least a dozen heavily armed, heavily armored soldiers were patrolling the plaza. The Domdur had not been so cautious when Asari Asakari had first led Rebiri Nazakri and his son to Pai Shin, three years before, only to find the governor of Matua too well-guarded to kill. They had returned here to Pai Shin half a dozen times since, each time with plans to deal with the Domdur defenses, and each time they had found the defenses strengthened, and had gone elsewhere.

  For three years they had roamed across Matua and Olnami and back and forth to and through the Govya Mountains, three years of murders, sabotage, and general harassment of the Domdur and their puppets among the Matuans and other subject peoples.

  Never Olnami, though. The Nazakri did not harm Olnami, not even those who worked willingly in the Domdur provincial governments. Instead, Rebiri and Aldassi tried to recruit any Olnami they encountered.

  So far, only a few had joined the Nazakri campaign of terror – a campaign that had been frequently interrupted by the need to return to the mountains to restore the wizard's dark magic. Those interruptions had made it hard to build any sort of ongoing structure or develop any real momentum in their rebellion.

  “This is not enough,” Rebiri said. “These assassinations are nothing more than pinpricks to the Domdur Empire. We haven't done any real damage. We haven't struck high enough. I need an army.”

  “You have threescore men,” Asari reminded him. “If Aldassi led them here, even with the new walls and the increased patrols we could force our way in without depleting your staff's power.”

  “We might reach the governor, yes – but threescore men against the entire world, Asari? What could threescore men do against a city – any city, let alone a fortress like Seidabar? I want to destroy Beretris and all her kind!” He shook his head, and the red-glowing end of his staff crackled. “I need more, more men, more power...”

  “Could you train others to use black magic, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps – but could I trust them, if I did?”

  “You could trust me,” Asari said. “You could trust Aldassi.”

  “I could trust Aldassi, yes, but he's used too much of the bright magic; the dark powers won't obey him. As for you – could I trust you?” He stared penetratingly at Asari.

  Asari hesitated. To anyone else he would have said something reassuring, whether it was true or not, but to Rebiri...

  He respected and feared Rebiri, and he knew that Rebiri would prefer the truth to a lie – especially on a question of trust. “I don't know,” Asari admitted. Eager to change the subject, he looked back at the plaza, and as he did an idea struck him.

  “Suppose,” he said, “you were to kill one of those guards – just one. And then we'd leave. And tomorrow night we'd come back and kill another, and the next night another, and so on, no matter how many men they posted. In time, the soldiers would grow frightened and rebel against their masters, and then you'd have your army!”

  Rebiri considered that, stroking his beard thoughtfully. Asari had seen him do that often. The wizard had once said that he was not so much thinking when he did this as trying to feel whether or not a proposed course of action suited his destiny.

  The Nazakri spoke often of this supposed destiny, this fate that guided him; Asari suspected that it was one thing that kept potential recruits from joining. Everyone knew that destiny favored the Domdur, and only madmen thought otherwise. For most people the ten years of oracular silence had not yet changed this belief.

  “No,” Rebiri said at last, “I would not have my army. I'd have an unleashed mob that I could not control. And it would take longer than I like. But it's an interesting notion, very interesting.”

  “You could make it clear that it's something horrible happening,” Asari suggested. “Then it wouldn't take as long. For example, what if you made the dead soldier walk out into the middle of the plaza and then collapse at his comrades' feet?”

  Rebiri glanced out at the plaza, and something seemed to stir in him. “Very interesting,” he replied. He looked up at the sky, where a large red moon shone directly down on him, then back out at the plaza. For a moment he gazed at the guards, thinking; then he apparently reached his conclusion, satisfied with whatever he had discerned about his destiny. “Come on!” he said.

  Asari knew better than to ask where they were going; instead he followed silently as the old man led the way through the maze of alleys. Flickers of lamplight from half-shuttered windows drew yellow daggers across the brown bricks and black wood of the city, and smoke curled lazily across the score of multicolored moons overhead; the smells of incense and ordure twined about them as they skulked and scurried.

  For someone who had lived most of his life as
a lone exile in the mountains, Rebiri Nazakri had done an amazingly good job of learning his way through the back streets of Pai Shin. It was mere moments later that Rebiri and Asari were climbing over the blackened stone wall that blocked the end of the alley the plaza guards used as their latrine. That was, Asari realized, about the only place they could catch one of the guards alone.

  They stopped at the top of the wall and perched there in the dark. A broad overhanging roof cut off most of the moonslight, and no windows opened here – that was presumably one reason the guards were permitted to use it as they did; no one would see or smell the result.

  Rebiri Nazakri wrapped the skirt of his robe around the red end of his staff, hiding its glow. All they had to do now was wait.

  Sure enough, perhaps twenty minutes later, as they crouched uncomfortably atop the wall, the heavy footsteps of an armored soldier approached. Asari tried to hold himself motionless, to silence his breath and heartbeat.

  The Nazakri did not bother with such precautions; instead he pulled out his staff, letting the red glow spill down. The soldier looked up, startled, just as the darkness surged forth from the black end of the staff.

  The blackness was like a physical thing. It wrapped itself around the approaching guardsman, yanking him forward.

  “Kill him,” Rebiri hissed from the side of his mouth.

  Asari hesitated, then glanced at the old man's face, lit by the red glow of the staff. When he saw the wizard's expression his hesitation vanished; he leapt down from the wall, ignoring the splash when he landed and the latrine stench, and ran forward, drawing his knife.

  The darkness had formed a sort of cocoon around the soldier; he was struggling, but unable to move more than a few inches. It was a simple matter for Asari to reach up with his dagger, slip the blade between breastplate and backplate, and ram it home. He sawed the knife back and forth as blood spilled out, running down across the armor and the dagger's hilt, black against black in the unnatural crimson light from the staff.

  Asari felt the man convulse, then go limp, as the dagger found his heart.

  Asari yanked the blade out, wiped it off with a rag from his pocket, and stepped back as the darkness released the dead soldier and let him slump to the ground.

  By the time Asari had sheathed his blade Rebiri had descended from the wall to stand beside him, looking down at the corpse.

  “Make him walk, you said,” the wizard said.

  “Yes,” Asari said. “Can you do that?”

  “I don't know,” Rebiri admitted, “but I'll find out.” He hefted his staff, looked at the two ends, then pressed the black end to the dead man's chest.

  The corpse stirred, as if startled. Rebiri lifted the staff.

  Asari had expected the dead man to go limp again when the staff was removed, but he did not; instead, he sat up, as if he were still alive.

  That clearly surprised Rebiri, as well; he swung his staff away and stared at the corpse.

  “At last!” the dead man said, in harsh Matuan.

  The two Olnami both stepped back involuntarily. Asari could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end at the sight of this hideously unnatural phenomenon. He had been living with black magic off and on for three years now, but this was new – and terrifying.

  Rebiri lifted his staff as he backed away, holding the red end foremost – the red end that held mystical fire commingled with darkness, the destroying end.

  “Who speaks?” Rebiri demanded.

  The dead man turned his head to look at them, revealing dead eyes that seemed to gleam a dull red. “I have no name,” the corpse said.

  “You aren't the man we just slew?” Asari asked.

  “No,” the thing said, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. “I have his form and his memories, but I know I am not he.”

  “Nor are you anything I intended my magic to do,” Rebiri said. “What are you?”

  “I am the darkness beneath the earth, the darkness that is not the mere absence of light, but its opposite,” the corpse replied. “I am a creature of ancient legend, the scourge of the night and the sworn enemy of the Domdur gods. The Domdur of old called my kind nightwalkers.”

  Asari and Rebiri looked at one another; both of them had heard the old stories of nightwalkers, undead beings that defied the gods and roamed the countryside doing evil.

  “But there are no more nightwalkers,” Asari said uncertainly.

  “The gods cast us down into the earth,” the corpse agreed, speaking as much to itself as to the two Olnami. “We were trapped there for centuries, bound in the stone and clay one with another, our identities lost in the darkness, all of us unable to think, or to move with any purpose.”

  “How do you come here, then?” Rebiri asked.

  “You brought me,” the nightwalker answered, turning to stare into his face with those dead eyes. “You sucked me from the depths of the earth into that crystal you carry and brought me to this place, where you sent me into this body.”

  Rebiri stared at the black end of his staff. “Did I? Do I have other nightwalker spirits here, then?”

  The nightwalker laughed horribly. “That is all you have, old man. All that darkness you draw upon is my people's essence.”

  Rebiri looked at the nightwalker, then back at his black crystal. He raised the staff angrily, and Asari wondered if he intended to blast the nightwalker, or to smash the crystal against the pavement and shatter it. “All I have done I have done with your kind? This darkness has minds and voices in it? Then why, in the years I have wielded it, has it never spoken to me before?”

  “Because our consciousness was destroyed, long ago,” the nightwalker replied. “We were torn from ourselves and made to forget, and we have all existed in endless dreams... until you put me in this body, and the lingering memories, the heart and brain, reminded me what life was and restored me to myself. Never before have you let one of us touch a corpse.”

  For a moment the three of them remained silent, the two Olnami standing, the nightwalker sitting, each contemplating the others. Asari struggled to absorb what the dead man had said; he glanced at Rebiri's face to see how the old man was taking it, and didn't like what he saw there. The old man's face was alight with the obsessed look he wore whenever he felt his supposed destiny most strongly.

  Then the nightwalker began to get to its feet.

  “Now what?” Asari asked, backing away. “Are you going to kill us?”

  “Should I?” the nightwalker asked calmly. “Do you mean me harm?”

  “No,” Rebiri said quickly, stepping forward. “No, not at all. In fact, would you be interested in a bargain, dark spirit?”

  Asari cringed. Nothing good could come of bargaining with a thing like this.

  “What sort of bargain?” the nightwalker asked.

  “You say the gods cast you down, the gods of the Domdur,” Rebiri said, and his voice had the crazed quality that Asari had heard several times before – each time before Rebiri's destiny led him to do something reckless or simply insane in his perpetual war against the Domdur.

  “Would you have vengeance, nightwalker?” Rebiri shouted. “And you say I have your compatriots trapped – would you have them freed? Would you have the others still confined in the earth brought out and given form?”

  The nightwalker studied the wizard with interest; Asari stared at him in shock. One of these horrors was unsettling enough; was Rebiri really planning to unleash more?

  “All this would please me,” the nightwalker said.

  “Swear to serve me, and you shall have it!” the Nazakri cried.

  “Serve you? Forever? I think not...” The nightwalker took a step forward.

  “Not forever, then!” Rebiri shouted. “Only until Seidabar falls!”

  “Master,” Asari said, “think what you're doing.”

  “I am thinking, Asari,” Rebiri replied. “I am giving myself an army! Fate is with us! Can even the Domdur defeat an army of the undead? Each of their soldiers
who falls will join my army, as this one has – we'll be unbeatable!”

  “But can you trust them?”

  “Until Seidabar falls,” the nightwalker said. “I will swear to that, and I will keep such an oath.”

  Asari glanced uneasily at the undead creature, but the words had to be said. “But master, nightwalkers are evil...”

  “Do you think I care?” Rebiri demanded, and the nightwalker smiled in response.

  “They cannot move by day, the legends say...”

  Rebiri glanced at the animated corpse.

  “The legends are correct,” the nightwalker admitted. “The gods' sunlight forces us down into mindlessness.”

  Rebiri frowned, but quickly devised a solution. “We will raise an army to guard them by day,” he said. “When the rest of the Olnami and the other conquered people see what we have fighting for us, they'll flock to our banners – we have something more to offer now than vague promises! Until we are ready to march on Seidabar, these nightwalkers will serve as our assassins – no more will I need to blast my way in. The guards will flee in terror!”

  “If they do not,” the nightwalker said calmly, “We will kill them.”

  Asari looked from nightwalker to wizard, wizard to nightwalker, and knew he would not be able to prevent this horror from happening.

  Worse, he realized, was that he was inextricably caught up in this unholy agreement. He looked from Rebiri to the reanimated soldier, and could not tell which of the two looked less human.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lord Duzon flicked an invisible bit of dust from his velvet sleeve, then settled into an elegant and comfortable slouch as he watched the proceedings from his place at the back of the council chamber. His left hand held his broad-brimmed black hat artfully draped on one hip, the plume curling suggestively around his thigh.

  A little Matuan stood nervously before the Imperial Council at the center of the half-ring of the Council's table, fumbling with his own ugly dyed-straw hat and throwing frequent glances at his patron, Lord Gornir, rather than meeting the gaze of Prince Granzer, the President of the Council. Duzon smiled ironically to himself; the Matuan was probably uncomfortably aware that Granzer was not only President, but also, not coincidentally, husband and consort to Princess Darisei, eldest child of Her Imperial Majesty Beretris.