Blood of War

by Remi Michaud

  “This is how it began last time,” Shomra said as a shard of rainbow light surrounded him and disappeared before touching him. “It took me two centuries to finally thin the herds at my gates that time.”

  “Yes, I admit I chose poorly. As I recall, I was under a certain amount of pressure at the time,” Gaorla said. His children lowered their heads at the mild rebuke.

  “But that one had a dark streak right from the beginning,” said Valsa. “Jurel is different. I saw it in his place. I felt it in him. He's had a difficult time of things, lost many loved ones, but there is still light in him. I hope his light is not extinguished.”

  “It will not. I am certain of it.” Maora rubbed his chin with a finger, his eyes clouded, pensive. “He is a fine choice but it will take time. Perhaps,” he said, turning to Shomra, “you can do something to help him.”

  Silently, slowly, Shomra turned to his brother. “You ask a great deal.”

  “You have the authority.”

  “It is no small thing.”

  “No. But the benefits would outweigh the costs.”

  “It is a valid idea, my son, and a good one,” Gaorla said, nodding slowly. “But first, I will speak with him.”

  “Please help him, father,” Valsa said. The idea that even gods must sometimes pray was lost upon her. “He must realize his importance. There is so much at stake.”

  “I know, Valsa. I know.”

  For a moment longer—or an eternity; time had little meaning in that place—they regarded each other. No more needed to be said. They knew.

  Then, they were gone.

  Chapter 23

  Jorge rubbed his throbbing temples, wishing he could tune out the roar in the council hall. News of the battle had reached them by Sending an hour prior. Or more precisely, he thought bitterly, news of the massacre. His indigestion was acting up and he supposed if he was not careful, he would have to visit Geoff down at the infirmary about his blood pressure.

  The council hall was again filled to capacity. Like the last time when Kurin's young man had made such an impression, the noise was enough to raise the ceiling. Unlike last time, not even the Custodian's heavy staff cut the din. Though Jorge noted Goromand's ancient aide had ceased making the effort. He leaned against Goromand's chair and held a hand to his chest like a man having heart palpitations. His useless staff rested forgotten against the wall behind him.

  A pang of dread pierced Jorge. He had not heard from Kurin since the battle. He worried for his old friend. They had joined the Salosian Order within days of each other nearly fifty years before and they had been as brothers ever since. Of all of them, only Jorge knew what Kurin had spent the last forty years attempting to accomplish.

  * * *

  It had started with the ancient scroll Kurin dug out of the cobwebs and dust at the far back of the library. Kurin had spent the next two weeks wearing a perpetual scowl and with barely two words to spare for his best friend. Jorge, exasperated to his wits's end by the standoffish behavior of his usually ebullient friend, confronted him and, after some browbeating, had convinced Kurin to tell him what he had found.

  It had been the first step on a road that Kurin would travel for the next forty years. The scroll contained text written some two thousand years prior at about the time of the founding of the Kingdom of Threimes. It detailed—in an archaic form of Kashyan that almost looked Dakariin, a similarity that had intrigued Jorge mightily—how, behind the political scene that had brought about the birth of the kingdom, there had been dark forces at work. A strange being calling himself the God of War had roamed the land causing strife at every turn. It was this being who had caused the war and, unwittingly, the subsequent treaty between Kashya and Madesh.

  The scroll detailed how the being became frenzied with this new peace and began a rampage that would see tens of thousands dead in the southern half of Madesh until the gods had stepped in. There had been a terrible struggle. So much power had been released that the earth had nearly shaken itself to pieces.

  Jorge had gaped in awe, while Kurin nodded knowingly, as he realized that this was the time the Sun Sea was created. The being had disappeared, the scroll continued, but there were hints that a new God of War would rise in the world again.

  Though Jorge tried to talk him out of it over the next several weeks, Kurin continued his search in earnest. For the next few years, Kurin sifted through the entire contents of the huge library searching for any more references to the God of War. No matter how strongly Jorge urged him to leave it alone, Kurin persisted. He would not be stopped in this quest.

  “Don't you see?” he asked Jorge one day after Jorge tried again. “This is proof that the prelacy is wrong. This is proof that the Salosians should be the kingdom's only sanctified religion.”

  “So you would search for a god to prove the prelacy wrong? That's it? Kurin, this is madness. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. You're talking about the God of War. Do you really want to unleash that on this world? This scroll you've found paints a pretty grim picture of what could happen.”

  Kurin then gave Jorge a terrible look, darkness gathering about him until Jorge barely recognized his best friend.

  “You know what they did to my family, Jorge. You know what drove me to the Abbey's gate in the first place.”

  Jorge nodded mutely. Kurin had recounted the story once, only once, in their first year and it still gave Jorge nightmares.

  “What if I can find him, Jorge?” Kurin asked. “What if I can find him while he's still a young man? While he's still impressionable? What if I can befriend him before he knows the truth about himself? Become his mentor maybe? What if I can mold him, hone him? What if, Jorge, I can then point him at the prelacy? What chance would that pack of unmitigated fools have against the God of War?”

  “But, Kurin, you're a healer. The God of War? Come now, it's foolishness.”

  Kurin's eyes darkened. “Sometimes you have to lance a boil before it'll heal.” Then he sighed. “I know it seems strange, but there's a little more that you haven't seen. Look.”

  Kurin produced a tattered parchment, as thin and brittle as finest mica. There was writing on it, but some of it had faded, obliterated by time. It appeared to be some sort of epistle, though not much of the original message was left. Jorge squinted as he translated what remained of the spidery scrawl.

  “The gods as we think of them...narrow view of their truth. There is much more...”

  Here there was a large break where the words were completely illegible; only a few individual letters could be made out. But near the end, a little remained. Jorge squinted harder, forcing his eyes to pick out what was left.

  “All the gods are necessary to maintain the proper balance. If even one is missing, then our world must surely spiral into nothingness.”

  That was all that could be read. Jorge could not hide his bewilderment from Kurin, nor his shiver; for no explicable reason, he felt cold.

  “I don't understand. What is this? Where did you find it?”

  Gesturing toward the far end of the library, Kurin said, “It was back there too, near where I found the other scroll. There's a lot of stuff that seems to have been forgotten by our brothers and sisters.” Sighing, pinching the bridge of his nose, Kurin leaned back in his chair. “I don't fully understand it myself—there's too much missing!—but that last bit seems clear enough, don't you think?”

  Jorge glanced down again.

  Kurin continued, “Admittedly, it's just a scrap, a tiny piece to the puzzle. But the way I decipher it is that the...beings, for lack of a better word, that we call the gods are far more than we ascribe to them. Following that thought, I've made some deductions and they feel right to me.

  “Valsa, for example, we call the Goddess of Life, but I wonder if she is more than that. The Goddess of Creation, maybe? Shomra, the God of Death, might be her balance, the God of Destruction. Maora, we name the God of Knowledge, but I've begun to wonder if it wouldn't be more accurate t
o call him the God of Information. Not just our narrow view—dates in history, alchemy, mathematics and all that—but of all information.”

  “What other information is there?”

  “Have you heard of what brothers Talwin, Bartle and sister Glayda are theorizing? They theorize that even light contains information. And sound. More than we presume. To date, their work spans two good size tomes. I don't fully understand it myself but it's quite interesting.

  “What I'm saying is, the gods do certainly seem to fill the roles we have ascribed to them, but our view of them is far too limited. They fill much larger roles that we cannot even begin to imagine.”

  “All right,” Jorge hedged hesitantly. “But then what about this God of War business? How can war be good for anything?”

  Kurin grinned tightly at him. “You're still thinking within the narrow narrow lines as the everyone else, Jorge. What is war?”

  “Death. Violence. Suffering.”

  “Yes, yes,” Kurin acknowledged, nodding impatiently. “It's all that, but I'm talking in more general terms. Balance, Jorge. War is about balance. Balance of power. Balance of force.

  “The way we imperfect humans wage war, there is always an imbalance. One army is always larger than the other, or better armed, or the commanders on one side are more experienced than the other. So one side always wins.

  “But, let's think hypothetically for a moment. What if you had two perfectly matched armies? Exact same number of soldiers, exact same skills, exact same weapons, even the leaders think the same. Exactly, perfectly matched. What would happen?”

  Now Jorge was thoroughly confused. “They would destroy each other by attrition.”

  “Not so! They are perfectly balanced. If even one soldier dies, then that implies the perfect balance cannot have existed in the first place.”

  Jorge chewed a fingernail, struggling with this idea. “All right. I suppose. But so what?”

  “So what if this God of War then, if viewed in the more general terms in which I've described the others, could more accurately be called the God of Balance? What if, extending the military analogy, we were to call the opposing armies Life and Death? Or Creation and Destruction?”

  The realization struck Jorge like a physical blow. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped open. “Are you implying...?”

  Kurin was already nodding, smiling bitterly. “If I'm correct, then the lack of this God of War means the world, and the universe is somehow out of balance.”

  Jorge nodded, excited now that he had caught up with his friend's theories. “And that means that one way or the other, the universe, like a disadvantaged army...”

  His excitement faded as cold horror grew like a parasite within.

  Kurin was still nodding, though the smile was gone. He finished his friend's thought, “Must ultimately be destroyed.”

  * * *

  “I warned you all! I warned you!”

  The shrieking voice cut through Jorge's reverie, bringing him back to the present. His eyes snapped up to the speaker. There stood Andrus, pale faced and fever eyed, glaring at the assembled council.

  “I warned you what would happen if you allowed that...that pretender to lead our army. I knew this would come and you have no one to blame for this madness but yourselves. You...you fools!”

  His next words were drowned out as a thousand voices rose in unison, many shouting accusations and recriminations, some agreeing with Andrus.

  Gods but Jorge's guts were roiling. He would most certainly have to visit Geoff. The old man had a knack for brewing the most potent heartburn potions. They often tasted like dead skunks that had spent a week rotting under a summer sun but by the gods they worked.

  Having had enough of this ridiculous display, Jorge rose and pushed his way to the dais. He glared at Goromand, challenging. Goromand shrugged helplessly. Do what you have to.

  Arcanum in the council chamber was strictly forbidden, so when Jorge released a burst of power overhead that blinded everyone in the room, everyone fell instantly silent as they blinked and rubbed watering eyes.

  “Enough,” he said into the sudden silence. “We can shout accusations and recriminations later. We can moan and lament later. If there is a later for any of us. Right now, we need to figure out what we should do. Keeping in mind that there is a massive army marching toward us intent on stamping us out without mercy, is there anyone here who can offer us a useful suggestion?”

  Eyes glanced away from him, at each other as his words sank in.

  Kurin, you better not be dead, you old fool. You got us into this. You find your Jurel and get him back here.

  Please. We need you.

  Finally, after an interminable silence laden with dread, one quavering voice spoke quietly from somewhere in the back rows.

  “Flee.”

  The roar immediately reached a crescendo as a thousand voices strove to be heard.

  * * *

  Gaven lay breathlessly in a small gully behind thick gorse, not daring to move a muscle. The sharp edge of a rock pressed uncomfortably into his side, but he ignored it. Worry about the pain later. Ahead, no more than twenty paces—though it was hard to tell; the forest played strange tricks with sound and light—at least twenty Soldiers of God searched for him.

  Or maybe not for him specifically, but for any survivors who had managed to flee the battlefield.

  He waited until the clamor of their passing faded away, then he waited a while longer. There were dozens of such patrols tramping through the forest; every once in a while he faintly heard a terrible scream that usually ended too abruptly. It was now early afternoon—or so he thought by the slim shafts of light that filtered through the dense canopy—and he had managed to get as far as perhaps a half mile from the battleground.

  Extracting himself silently from the dense underbrush, he moved off, following the terrain as needs dictated, but heading in a generally southern direction. He followed a game trail, keeping his eyes peeled, his ears straining, for any of the hundred different sources of death that roamed these woods. Off to his left, in the distance, he heard more tramping. As yet, he judged they were too far to pose a threat. The Soldiers of God were skilled at the art of war but they were not very good woodsmen; it was a surprise that they managed to catch anyone with the ruckus they were stirring.

  He halted for a moment, pressing himself low against a wide trunk, when he heard a branch snap nearby. Slowly, he readjusted Jurel's sword in his scabbard and wiped his palms on his breeches. It would be truly unfortunate to lose his own sword because his hands were slippery.

  A rustle ahead. He swallowed convulsively, consciously breathing deeply, slowly, in...out...in... as his ears pounded to the tempo of his heart. Slowly, he eased himself around the girth of the bole, hoping he could get past without attracting any attention. Oh yes, attracting attention was definitely low on his list of priorities. He stared into the concealing wall of the forest, not at all confident with his chances. He had never been much of a gambler; except for games of Bones with Jurel, he never wagered. He never diced when he was invited. Because he never won.

  Trying not to hold his breath, he eased away, toward the heavy underbrush away from the game trail. Wiping his palms again, he searched the forest, but all was quiet, all was still. Leaves shushed and rustled, streamers of sunlight turned small patches into emeralds.

  Cold steel pressed against his throat.

  He hissed, every muscle in his body turning hard as stone.

  “You're getting better, lad,” growled a familiar voice, “but you still need to remember that there's ground behind you too.”

  The tension drained from Gaven's body, his breath expelling explosively, and he sagged against the form behind him.

  With a grunt, Mikal let Gaven slide to the ground.

  * * *

  Mikal led Gaven stealthily through the forest. Soft spears of sun illuminated the ground in patches, a faint breeze whispered in the leaves. It even smelled serene what with
the heady mixture of loam and late summer foliage. For all that, no more than a few miles away, hundreds of men and women lay twisted, dead in a lake of blood, it was oddly calm in the forest; the forest did not care, the forest was simply too old and too great to worry about the short little lives of men.

  Gaven soon found himself led along the base of a ridge; as he stalked through the undergrowth, he glanced up frequently, but the sun was hidden beyond the impenetrable canopy; it was nigh impossible to gauge their direction. He broke through a thick layer, and found himself at the edge of a tiny clearing. A short distance away, in the shadow under an overhang in the ridge, he heard a gasp.

  It was a flurry of arms and raven hair that wrapped him in an embrace. Metana wept quietly for a moment as she squeezed Gaven hard enough to make his ribs creak.

  When Metana pushed herself away, she made her way to the ridge, drawing Gaven along behind her. He was surprised to find that there was a deep indent at the base. The shadow from which Metana had materialized hid a deep depression that all three could comfortably fit in. Mikal sat stiffly, back against the uneven back wall, eyes closed.

  An alarm sounded in Gaven's mind.

  “Are you hurt, Mikal?”

  The man grunted. “Just a scratch.” He stretched his arm, and winced; more than just a scratch then. Mikal wincing was the same as a normal man writhing in agony on the ground. Metana glanced at him, but her expression betrayed no more than mild concern. More than a scratch, but apparently not life-threatening.

  “Where's Kurin?” Gaven asked, searching the trees. Where ever Mikal was, Kurin was generally close.

  But Mikal and Metana shared a guarded look.

  “He...” Metana said, turning back to Gaven. She could not seem to finish; she lowered her eyes and stared at her hands.

  With a burgeoning sense of dread, Gaven turned to Mikal whose stony stare sent a chill scrabbling along Gaven's spine.

  “He was injured in the battle,” Mikal rumbled softly. “He single-handedly destroyed nearly half the Gaorlan priests before he was felled. Never saw anything like it in my life. I tried to go back for him but this scratch slowed me down. I saw him fall but when I got close, there were too many Soldiers of God. I had to run.”