by Tim Stead
“Gone?” Sithmaree asked, and she had paled beneath her olive skin, her eyes widened. “It has gone!”
Jidian, too, looked shocked. “So we are brought down by Pelion’s hand,” he said. “The very hand that raised us up. Are we mortal, then?” There was despair in his voice.
“No,” Pascha said. “You retain everything but the Sirash. You have your life, your strength and skill. Your creatures will still obey if they can hear you, but only then.”
“Why?” Sithmaree demanded. Anger was to be expected. “Why take this from us? It has something to do with you, does it not?”
“It does. The Sirash could have been used as a weapon, and Pelion did not trust me with it, though I asked him a hundred times to reconsider. He would not.”
“Because you were untrustworthy,” Sithmaree snapped.
“No more or less than any being. Pelion’s fear was so great that he could not trust his own shadow. Who I was made no difference to him.” She paused. Sithmaree was still unsatisfied, but there was no time for this. If their quarry realised that he was trapped he would retreat into the great forest and they would have a cursed time of it trying to track him and root him out. “Come,” she said, and walked away from them. She made for the night gate, walking quickly, and she was glad to hear steps behind her. Even being what she was she had been uncertain that they would follow.
She paused before the gate and looked back. It was just the three of them – Caster, Skal and Jerac. She smiled.
“I will go directly ahead from the door. Caster, you go to the left, Skal to the right.”
“And me?” Jerac asked.
“You will follow me. We shall be a net and drive him before us, but I think that we can outrun him. He will try to hide, I expect.”
“Do you really need us, Pascha?” Caster asked.
“You think I’m trying to make you fee useful?” she asked. “Well, no, I don’t need you, but it would take me a week to corner him on my own, unless I simply burnt off half of Narak’s forest or brought it down about his ears, but either would probably kill him and I don’t want that. This has to be done quickly. Does that answer you?”
“Forgive me,” Caster said.
Pascha wondered if she had changed so much. She did not feel it. In her head she was still the Telan shop girl that Pelion had plucked from a humdrum life, still the Benetheon god. It was all the same person.
“Nothing to forgive,” she said. “Now let’s get this done.”
She threw the gate open and rushed out.
It happened just as she had expected. She knew that she would be lucky to see the arrow, so she listened for it. It came from the right where the forest was thick, just a faint hiss in the air, and as she turned a flash of light on the arrow head.
She caught it.
It would be more accurate to say that she drew them together, the arrow and her hand, made them meet in a place just a foot from her chest, and closed her hand about the shaft. She glanced at it. Blood Silver tip, of course. She threw it aside and began to run directly towards the archer, hidden as he was in the undergrowth.
She saw Skal sprinting to her right along the edge of the mound that was Wolfguard, following its curve to get to one side of their quarry. He was fast. To her left Caster was already in the forest. She could hear him tearing up the low growth that barred his way. His passage sounded like a storm.
There was no second arrow. It seemed likely that the bowman had turned and fled. He no longer had the Sirash to run to, and so he would be on foot. Pascha reached the spot where he had been hidden. There was a place that had been beaten down. He had lain here for hours and watched.
She ran on, trying to follow his trail through the forest. There was a broken branch here, a trampled clump of grass there. It was the thinnest of trails, and it did not surprise her when she lost it. She stopped and listened, hoping to pick up his sounds.
Jerac stopped, too. He was only a few paces behind her.
The wind stirred the leaves about their feet, which made it harder to hear anything. She strained to hear, closing her eyes, trying to blot out the sounds of nature and seek a rhythm of feet, anything.
The arrow struck her in the neck. It bounced away, leaving her more shocked that hurt. Their quarry’s stealth was exceptional, but the arrow had been a mistake. It had pointed to him. She turned and ran again. Jerac was alongside her now, keeping pace easily, it seemed. The look on his face was unreadable.
They lost him again, almost at once.
This was proving to be more difficult that she had supposed. Their prey was cunning and skilful, and there would be no more arrows to point him out. He would have learned that lesson.
Now she would have to resort to magic. If once she had caught sight of him it would have been a simple matter. She had leaned from Pelion how to mark people so that she always knew where they were. She had done this to Caster and Skal, and was aware of them moving steadily through the forest.
Stop, he has gone to ground.
They stopped, surprised that she could speak to them, perhaps, but a god mage needed no calling ring. In truth she did not even know if their quarry was still within the trap they had set for him. She might have over run him if he had hidden well enough. She was beginning to think that she had underestimated him altogether.
She reached out. It was the same thing that she had done with the sparrows, the same trick that had first given her a hint of the power that was developing within her. She became the forest. She was trees and mice and birds, wolves and deer, hawks perched high in trees and snakes peering out from beneath fallen logs. She became everything.
And there he was.
He was moving with consummate skill through the trees, crouched low. He knew where she was, and that was not how it was supposed to be. She tried to touch his mind, but the metal helmet he wore was a cold, solid barrier, and she could not pass.
Skal, he is heading back towards Wolfguard. Follow him wide and quiet. Caster, go further out and do the same.
This was what she had not wanted to do. If she stayed still she could direct the hunt, but not be part of it. She could send Caster and Skal to his exact position and have them hold him until she arrived. But there was another way, she realised, a better way. She could use his own skill and stealth against him.
The first thing she had to do was hide. She was well out of sight now. She turned to Jerac.
“Head back towards Wolfguard, Jerac,” she said. “When I need you to stop I will tell you.” Like this.
Jerac nodded. He did not seem surprised or alarmed that she could speak to his mind. He just turned and trotted off the way they had come. Pascha looked about her. There was an old tree nearby, an oak. It was so vast that it had gathered a nest of leaves in its first fork, a ledge broad and flat enough to hold an armchair.
She went to climb the tree, but stopped. Why bother? She willed herself upwards and forwards, and found it simple. She denied the ground the pleasure of her weight upon it and rose into the air, stepping forwards until she sat gently in the tree fork. She lowered herself among the leaves and dead twigs until she was well concealed. She closed her eyes again and expanded until she was once more the spirit of the forest.
If only she had mastered all the skills that Pelion had shown her this would not be necessary. Pelion could have perceived his prey and moved to that location in the same instant. Truly he did not need Farheim for a task such as this, but she had yet to master that last step. For Pascha it was necessary to release the forest in order to move. She had not developed the ability to combine two such different states of mind. It would come. There were already indications that she would be capable, but not yet.
Faster, Skal. Stop when you get to Wolfguard’s rise.
She watched them all. It was a dance now, a game. She moved her Farheim one at a time, blocking any direction that he could move but her own. When he tried to hide he sent one of them directly at him, but slowly enough that he could slip awa
y. It was not as simple as it might have seemed. Their quarry was quick witted and possessed of the sort of animal cunning that she would have credited to Narak, but not to any of the others. Five times he slipped the net and had to be brought back in. He seemed to realise that he was being herded, and resisted.
In spite of it all, and with the patience of a master hunter, she drew him closer with every move.
It took an hour. On her own she might never have done it, and she would tell Caster that. She sat in the tree, a spider in her forest web, and drew him in. He came so close that she could smell him, could hear the small rustling of dead leaves as he came to the base of her oak.
She waited until she felt his hand touch the bark of the tree.
“You cannot run any more, Deus,” she said. There was fear at once, a few hurried steps, but then he stopped.
“Pascha?”
She stood up from her place of hiding, her bow in hand, but no arrow strung. “I want to talk to you,” she said. She could have killed him, and it would have been over, but she desperately wanted to understand what had made one of the Benetheon turn against the others, what had made him kill. She feared the same demon might dwell somewhere in her own mind.
“And after that?”
“You know what must come after that,” she said.
“I can still run,” he said. “Your dogs are behind me and all the forest is ahead.”
“You cannot run,” she said.
“Faster than you,” he said.
“I have improved as an archer,” Pascha told him. “I can hit a mark at any distance, no matter what lies between.”
“I can dodge arrows,” he replied.
“Then run,” she said.
He stood on the balls of his feet, poised to spring away like a deer before a hunter. Pascha stepped out of the tree fork and drifted to the ground as gently as a feather in still air. This froze him in place with astonishment.
“It is you,” he said. There was a touch of awe in his voice. “You have hidden the Sirash. How did you do that?”
“It was Pelion,” Pascha said. “The Sirash is not hidden. It is gone. The Benetheon is undone.”
“And what are you?” he asked. “What are they?” He gestured behind him. It was an angry, frustrated gesture. It had the flavour of defeat.
“I am what they once called a god mage. I have the talent, and Pelion had given me the knowledge. They…” she paused. “They are Farheim, but old friends, too. Caster you know, and Lord Skal you met a couple of days ago. He took your sword I hear?”
“You have brought these… these abominations back into the world?” Now he was angry. It was a storm of changing emotions, but all concealed behind the blood silver helm. Yet anger without power is little more than despair, and that was all that was left to him. Even so, Pascha understood his words deeply. She would never have created Farheim intentionally. She shared his opinion of the breed, if not of the people she had changed.
“There will be no more, Fash,” she said. “These are the last.”
“So you know,” he said. “I wondered if you did.” He took off the helmet. He had clearly been suffering beneath it for his hair was matted with sweat, his face unshaven, his eyes bloodshot. There he stood before her, Crow Fashmanion, Lord of the Air. “No more? Then why these?”
“A mistake. I did not know what I was, what I was doing. Now you will tell me your story. Why?”
“Why?”
“The war, killing your brother gods, everything. I know it was all your doing.”
Fashmanion sat down on the dead leaves, his shoulders slumped. He allowed the blood silver helm to roll away from him. “You would never understand,” he said.
“I understand many things that you do not, and I want to know. Tell me.”
“Do we have time?” Fashmanion glanced over his shoulder in the direction of Wolfguard.
“We have,” she assured him. She had already told Caster, Jerac and Skal to wait, and they were standing some two hundred paces from where the crow god sat, out of earshot, but a few seconds away should they be needed.
“Very well. I am glad of the chance to explain myself. Perhaps you will truly understand.” Fashmanion made himself comfortable, sprawling against the trunk of the tree. He pulled out a silver flask and sipped from it. “It started with the last war,” he began. “I thought, at the end of it, that I had been wrong to abstain. Narak gained such influence, and the Seth Yarra seemed so harsh. It was a disaster for the kingdoms, especially Afael. Well, you know that better than most.
“I was afraid, worried that they would come again. We knew nothing about them. Not how many there were, where they lived, if they had any notion of attacking again. I set myself the task of finding out.
“I sent out crows in every direction across the sea: mostly to the east and south because they had first landed in Afael. Hundreds died. They grew too tired to fly and fell into the sea. As last, however, one found an island. It was a small island that had never been visited by men of the kingdoms, and yet it bore structures, shelters, and there was the rotted hulk of a boat on the beach.
“I sent other crows to the island, and the following spring I was rewarded by a fishing vessel, unmistakably Seth Yarra, that came to harvest the waters round about. I watched, and when they departed I followed. Crows perched in their low rigging, and the fishermen didn’t seem to mind. We came at last to a port, a village port, but beyond it stretched a vast land. I sent more crows. Using the island as a staging post I managed to get two hundred birds to Seth Yarra lands, and then I began to explore.
“It was, as I have said, a vast land. It quickly became apparent to me that it was both larger and more populous than the kingdoms, and at first this troubled me. How could we resist such a people? They were ten, twenty times our number, their villages covered the land, their towns bustled, their cities thronged with people.
“I sought their kings. I found none. I sought their lords, and there, too I was defeated. Imagine a society that has no lords or kings, where men own the land they till, where if a man builds a house he owns it. That is Seth Yarra. I do not say that they are better than us. Venal men still seek power, still abuse it, but their sway is limited.
“I became interested in them, and grew less afraid. Do you know that they have no poverty? Everyone owns their own life, charity allows the most disadvantaged man to be master of his own destiny, to grow crops, to feed himself, to build a dwelling. Every city has a college of priests who study their book. You mock it here because you do not understand it, but The Book of Seth Yarra is a wonderful thing.
“It has laws that are wise, it tells men how to plant and harvest, how to care for their land, how to build houses, how to make pots, sew clothes, make cloth, tan leather, make paper, smelt iron – it tells them everything that they need to know for a full and prosperous life.
“It also tells them how to make war. The book, however, does not tell them to do any of these things. It only says how they may be done. This is important to understand. The making of war, the invasion as it seemed to us, was a decision made by priests.
“I learned their language. It took a century to become fluent. I learned their laws, their ways, I made clothes in their style, and finally I visited their land.
“What I saw there convinced me that their way was better than ours. I cannot say all the things that I saw, there were so many, but I saw a land that was full and largely happy. Even in the cities the lowest of the low had bread and shelter.
“I was low born, Pascha. I was poor. I remember what it was like to go without food for three days, to eat from the leavings of others. These are the things that shaped me, and they shaped my desire to see Seth Yarra overwhelm the kingdoms.”
Fashmanion paused. His eyes were burning with a young man’s fervour. It was something she had never seen in a Benetheon god, or at least could not remember. Most of them were tired, worn out, jaded.
“You have killed a hundred thousand men,”
she said. “More. Is the price worth it?”
“If I had won, yes.” He looked down at his hands. “But now it is all come to nothing. The lords and ladies will go on, the poverty, women and children starving the alley behind a fat man’s house. It will all go on.”
“You talk well, Fash,” Pascha said. “You always did. Are you trying to convert me? It’s a little late. You tried to kill me twice.” Yet despite that she was moved by his words. She had never been poor. Her father had been well to do, comfortable. But from her secure position she had looked down on the poor with sympathy. When she caught a young girl, she might have been eight – but looked six, stealing from them she let her go. It was one of the most resilient memories she possessed. She could still picture the dirty face, the terrified eyes, wide and clear. The punishments for theft were severe. Why had she let the child go? She had thought about it for many years, and it was the same reason that Fashmanion had for starting a war. Poverty, the sort of grinding poverty that plagued all the great cities of the kingdoms, was an injustice in a land of plenty.