Right now, though, he was so tired his bones ached and his knees felt ready to buckle, and there were still nightwalkers to be dealt with, things that had to be done.
“Those of us who remained are gathered in the palace,” Graush said, “where we could defend the Empress' body to the last – that is, the Councillors and guardsmen who stayed; there are priests in the temple, and undoubtedly a few ordinary people scattered about.”
Duzon nodded. “We must cut the heads off these nightwalkers,” he said, refusing to be distracted.
“I'll send men to attend to it immediately,” Graush agreed. “Might I suggest, my lord, that you rest? You've come a long way very quickly, judging by the message the priests received three nights ago – or one long night, perhaps I should say. You've come a long way and you've fought long and hard. You must be tired.”
“I'm ready to drop,” Duzon admitted. “But I can't, not yet – you must see that these bodies are dealt with! Not one head can remain attached!” Then his gaze fell on Malledd. He pointed. “Except that one. He was... he was the true champion. Have his body taken to the temple.”
The gods had attended Malledd's birth; they might want a part in his burial.
Graush looked down at the burned body and grimaced. “I'll see to it, my lord,” he said. “Now, come and rest.” He took Duzon's arm and led him into the citadel.
#
Malledd floated in emptiness, the pain vanished. He drifted for a timeless time, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, just enjoying the sensation of painlessness.
Then a light appeared before him, and a voice spoke – a voice he could not describe nor remember once it had spoken, but a voice whose words burned themselves into his mind.
The voice, he knew, of a god.
“You have done well, Malledd,” the voice said.
“Am I dead?” Malledd asked. “Are you done with me now?”
“You are not dead. We will not permit you to die until you have lived your full term beneath the Hundred Moons; that is a part of the service to which you were bound before your birth. Perseverance, strength, stamina, and the gift of healing – those are the qualities that came with your birthmark, in payment for your service.”
“But champions have died!” Malledd protested. “Some died in battle...”
“Never until we were ready,” the voice told him. “Each champion's span of years was determined in advance, and nothing was ever permitted to alter that decision. Ba'el sought to violate that covenant, as he violated so many others, but he failed, and has been punished for his defiance and treachery. You will live the years we chose for you.”
“Who are you?” Malledd asked.
“Your name for me is Samardas. I speak to you on behalf of all the gods in council – all save Ba'el, who has been cast down from the heavens for his crimes and declared no longer one of us.”
Malledd could think of no response to that astonishing assertion except, “Am I dreaming?”
“You are experiencing an oracular vision.”
“I am dreaming,” Malledd exclaimed. “I should have known it; the gods no longer speak to mortals, save for Baranmel's appearances.”
“No,” the voice said. “That limitation has passed. Ba'el spoke to Rebiri Nazakri of the Olnami, in defiance of our agreements, and the agreements have been cast aside with he who broke them. The oracles will speak anew.”
“Am I to be an oracle, then? Is that why you're speaking to me?”
“If you wish to be an oracle, your wish will be granted. If you choose otherwise, then you shall not become an oracle. We are indebted to you, Malledd; you destroyed Ba'el's mortal instrument when we could not yet intervene, and you thereby preserved Seidabar and the Domdur Empire. We pay our debts. You shall have what you wish of us.”
“I don't want anything,” Malledd said. “I don't even know if I believe any of this is happening. Maybe I'm imagining all this while I'm dying.”
“You are not dying,” the voice insisted. “You will live many years yet. This conversation is your opportunity to choose how you will live them.”
“With Anva,” Malledd said. “That's all I ever wanted – my home and my family and my friends. Let Lord Duzon be the champion – he wants the job! Just send me home to Grozerodz!”
“You are the champion,” the voice said. “Even the gods cannot change that.”
“But no one has to know it,” Malledd said.
“As you wish,” the voice replied.
Then the light was gone, and the voice was silent, and Malledd floated again in the cool, painless void for a very long time.
#
“Listen, my lord,” Lord Graush said, leaning forward across the little table in the antechamber. “People are still scared. The Empress is dead, and the succession isn't properly settled yet – Graubris has set himself up in Rishna Gabidéll with Lord Shoule, claiming himself to be the Emperor. We've laid siege to the city and demanded their surrender, and Zolous did a fine job in organizing the siege, but he refuses to order an assault or allow himself to be crowned until the gods have made their will known directly and explicitly. He insists that until we know for sure who is to rule, Granzer's in charge, as President of the Imperial Council.” Graush sat back.
“That's all very well,” he continued, “it's quite proper and will look good later, but people want an emperor, not a president. I'm sure the oracles will issue a pronouncement eventually and put an end to the matter – they've already told us enough to know that Shoule's head belongs on a spike, and I've no doubt at all we'll have it on one soon enough. As yet they haven't named the new emperor, though. And nobody's sure whether to really trust them yet, after they were silent so long – that's why Shoule's still alive.” He sighed and slumped back.
“It's hard to believe anyone wouldn't trust the gods,” Duzon murmured.
Graush nodded. “It almost seems as if the whole world has been going mad,” he said. “Seidabar itself was attacked and only saved at the last minute; the sun was put out for a triad! Ba'el's moon is gone, blasted from the sky by mystical fire. The Imperial Council, even the Imperial family, has been split by treason.” He shook himself. “We need a champion, my lord, someone we can rally around, someone we can thank for our deliverance, someone we can show off and applaud. We need a live champion, not a corpse burned to a crisp.”
He leaned forward again and pointed. “We need you, Duzon. Half the returning troops are already swearing that you're the chosen one, that you saved them all when Balinus was killed, that you worked miracles to defeat the Olnamian.”
Lord Duzon looked helplessly at Vadeviya, seated by the window.
The priest shrugged. “The oracles haven't said anything about it yet; I doubt they will. Malledd certainly wouldn't have minded; he never wanted it known that he was the chosen.”
“But the oracles...” Duzon protested. “Won't they tell the truth eventually?”
Vadeviya shook his head. “I don't think so,” he said. “They've already given instructions about Malledd – we're to send his body home to his wife, just as it is. They never mentioned who he was; they simply called him Malledd, son of Hmar.”
“But what if someone asks who the champion is?”
“The gods have always been able to keep quiet when it suited them.”
Duzon could hardly argue with that. He glanced out the window, then rose, ready to face the Imperial Council.
#
The pain was back.
Malledd was unsure just how the transition had occurred; he had no memory of anything between the timeless floating in a void and his current existence, though he was sure time had passed between the two states.
He hurt all over; his entire body was burned and raw. He couldn't see anything, as his eyes were closed and crusted over, and he was in no hurry to open them.
He could feel movement, though. He was lying on something hard, something that wavered and vibrated. Every few seconds something would jar him, and the constant
pain would suddenly spike up into pure agony.
He could hear, too. A dull wooden creaking was the most common sound, but the jars were sometimes accompanied by thumps or splashes, and occasionally followed by a man's voice cursing quietly. He could smell cool air, damp wood, and the faint scent of manure.
He lay like that for several minutes, wishing the sound and movement would stop, wishing the pain would stop, then finally decided that if he opened his eyes and tried to move he might be able to do something about it.
Reluctantly, straining at the effort, he opened his eyes a crack.
Daylight flooded in, and he quickly closed them again.
Slowly, carefully, he opened them again and stared straight up at the glorious intense blue of a cloudless sky after a summer rain.
The world jolted again, and he glimpsed hard straight edges to either side of that magnificent expanse of sky.
The possibility that he had just seen the sides of a coffin occurred to him. While he didn't want to move yet, he didn't want to be buried alive, either; he forced himself to turn his head to one side.
Sure enough, a wooden plank stood just inches away, but if this was his coffin someone had re-used materials – the wood was dark and soft with moisture, patterned with old stains and new. He could see now that he was lying on dull brown woolens spread over more planking.
The creaking continued, and at last he recognized it – the creak of a cart moving at a comfortable walking speed.
He was lying in a cart, an old, weatherbeaten cart, being taken somewhere – but where, and why?
Well, there was one way to find out. He could ask the driver. He opened his mouth and tried to speak.
No sound emerged, just a dry gasp of air, and he realized that a part of the pain he felt was thirst, intense, burning thirst. He struggled to lift himself, to speak, and finally managed to force out a rasp that was meant to be the word “Water!”
Exhausted by the effort of speech he fell back on the woolens and stared up at the blue, blue heavens – and the creaking stopped.
Malledd heard thumping and muttering, the sound of heavy boots on planking, and then a shadow appeared in his field of vision, a dark form blocking out part of the sky that he belatedly identified as a man's face.
“Those eyes weren't open before,” the man muttered.
Malledd blinked, and opened his mouth, trying to speak.
The man's own jaw dropped in astonishment, and he fell backward, out of Malledd's view. Then he quickly scrambled back up.
“You're alive!” the man shouted. “By Vevanis, you're alive!”
Malledd croaked dully.
“All the gods, you're thirsty, aren't you?” The man hurriedly turned away, and Malledd heard the clattering of metal on wood. “Wait, I've got beer – you'd probably rather have water, wouldn't you? I'm sorry, I don't have any here, not unless you want the rainwater... Well, of course you do, though it's not much.”
Then the man was back, and a cool, wet cloth was being lowered to Malledd's lips. He closed his mouth on it and sucked feebly.
The pain abated, ever so slightly. Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
When he awoke he was still lying in the cart, still in agony, still horribly thirsty, but he felt better than he had before.
Now two men and a woman were leaning over him. The woman was holding a cup to his lips, and he tasted water; he drank greedily, lifting his head to get more of the precious fluid. Hands slid under him to support his head.
Moments later he was sitting up, friendly hands steadying him as he looked around.
He was sitting in an old wooden cart in a small paved yard, surrounded by buildings he didn't recognize.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“Nuzedy,” one of the men answered – the cart's driver, he realized, the one who had first discovered he was still alive. “At Igibur's caravanserai.”
Malledd blinked – which hurt; his eyelids hurt. Everything hurt.
But it hurt less than it had.
“Why?” he asked.
The cart-driver looked helplessly at the other two, then back at Malledd. “The priests hired me to take you to the village of Grozerodz, somewhere southwest of Biekedau on the Yildau road, and deliver you to Anva the smith's wife,” he explained. “For burial, I thought. They said the gods had ordered it, through an oracle. I was almost to Nuzedy when you... when I found out you were alive. So I brought you here and summoned a physician and a priest.” He gestured at the others.
Malledd looked, and noticed for the first time that the other man wore a priest's robe.
The woman smiled at him. “Pashima must like you,” she said. “You should have been dead; you're healing faster and better than anyone I've ever seen.”
Pashima, goddess of health and healing, had undoubtedly been one of the gods who approved of him. He had always healed quickly. He remembered his dream, when he had spoken to Samardas; the voice had said that he had the gift of healing. Had that been a true vision, then?
“Yes, I think she likes me,” Malledd murmured, through lips that were already less cracked and painful than they had been a moment before.
“She must,” the driver said. “You weren't even breathing, I'd swear to it!”
“Well, he's breathing now,” the physician said briskly, “and he's probably in considerable pain. I have some salves that might help...” She turned and lifted up a heavy pack, and began rummaging through it.
“An oracle,” Malledd said, looking at the driver. “There are oracles?”
The driver turned to the priest, who said, “Oh, yes – you hadn't heard? No, I suppose you were... well, if not dead, the next thing to it. Since the Long Night ended the oracles have been active again – very active. The gods have chosen Zolous as Emperor and commanded the people of Rishna Gabidéll to put Prince Graubris and Lord Shoule to death, they've settled any number of lesser matters – it's as if they're making up for lost time. This is an age of wonders, my friend – Ba'el's moon has been struck from the sky, the gods are speaking to us again, and now you have risen from the dead!”
“I wasn't dead,” Malledd said. “Not quite. The gods wouldn't allow it.”
The priest and the driver glanced at each other as the physician lifted a handful of foul-smelling white goo and began smearing it on Malledd's chest.
It stung for an instant, somehow intensifying a pain Malledd would have thought could not be noticeably worse, and then a soothing chill spread across his chest, and the pain faded to a dull ache. He tensed at that first contact, drawing in his breath, then relaxed and exhaled as the cool relief sank in.
“Good,” the physician said, as she scooped up more of the salve. “That shows you can still feel. Sometimes burns will numb the flesh permanently.” She slathered on more of the stinking stuff.
As she worked, Malledd realized for the first time that he was naked; his clothes had been burned away by the Olnami wizard's magical blast. He would have to borrow something to wear.
“Since you're alive,” the driver said, “I'm not sure my original instructions still hold. Should I carry you on to this Grozerodz place, or take you back to Seidabar?”
That required no thought at all.
“Grozerodz,” he said. “And Anva.”
Epilogue
Malledd thought he might have been able to stand on his own feet to walk into the house, but the others all insisted that was absurd, so he allowed himself to be carried. Anva didn't help with the lifting, but she was there at his side, weeping hysterically and calling his name, as he was slowly hauled to the bedroom and lowered gently into their bed.
Neyil and Poria stood by, staring wide-eyed at their father's return. Arshui was in his aunt Vorda's arms, clearly unsure what the excitement was about or who this strange man was; he was too young to remember Malledd's departure.
Once he was safely deposited, Malledd smiled and thanked everyone – it seemed half the village had seen his return and helped out. The b
edroom was far too crowded for comfort.
“Tell us about it!” someone called.
“You were there, weren't you? Did you see Lord Duzon slay the wizard?”
“Did you fight?”
“Did you help put Lord Shoule's head on the spike? Or the traitor Prince's?”
Malledd raised a hand for silence. It took a moment for the excited babble to subside, but at last he was able to speak without straining to be heard.
“I went to Seidabar,” he said. “I fought at the Grebiguata River, alongside Onnell and Bousian and Delazin and the others – and Lord Duzon. I returned to Seidabar with Lord Duzon and fought there, as well; that was where I was burned by the wizard's magic. Lord Shoule and Prince Graubris weren't yet dead when I began my journey home, so no, I didn't put any heads on spikes. The rest can wait. I'll be here for many years yet; don't make me use up all my stories at once!”
That evoked appreciative laughter.
“All right, that's enough,” Anva announced. “Everybody out – let him rest! Let him heal!” She began herding the others toward the door.
Ten minutes later the room was empty save for Anva and Malledd; even the children had been shooed away. Anva settled heavily onto the bed and leaned over to stare at Malledd's face.
His skin was still red and puckered from the burns, and he knew he looked hideous, but she gazed at him lovingly, as if he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
“I thought you were dead,” she said. “Onnell came and told us you had died in the fighting at Seidabar.”
“I almost did,” Malledd replied. “I was left for dead, and taken for dead.”
“You shouldn't have been there in the first place! You're a smith, Malledd, not a soldier!”
He smiled weakly.
“I can't imagine how we could all believe for so long that you were the divine champion!” Anva said, a bit wildly. “It was so obviously nonsense that the gods would choose a smith's son in a little village like this, rather than someone like Lord Duzon.”
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