Fallen Gods

by James A. Moore

  “Fire, it seems.”

  “Which are you?”

  “I remain Ahbra-Sede.”

  The burnt, discarded thing in the snow before him twitched, and Beron wisely stepped back.

  Ahbra-Sede tilted its head and then looked down at the remains. “It wishes to live again.”

  “And how does it do that?”

  “The Undying can never be killed. They are Undying.”

  “So why does it reach for me?”

  “There must always be a host, or the Undying cannot be reborn.”

  “So it could live again?” Beron smiled. Servants that could not be killed? What a lovely notion.

  “Oh, yes.”

  Beron nodded and went to see his three naked fools. The knife at his side worked fine to cut through the bonds of the closest, a man whose name meant nothing to him, as he was already as good as dead.

  While the man tried to thank him for releasing the restraints, Beron grabbed him by his closest leg and hauled him sputtering and screaming through the snow.

  Argus was busy packing herbs into his pipe and watched with one raised eyebrow. “Going to castrate him or something?”

  “Something. Watch and learn.”

  Ahbra-Sede watched on silently as Beron lifted the screaming naked man at his waist and threw him on top of the twitching cloak of black.

  The cloak exploded into activity, wrapping itself around the fool and truly giving him reason to scream.

  Beron and Argus both watched, fascinated, as thin, worm-like tendrils stabbed themselves into naked flesh and burrowed deep, reddening even as they pushed deeper. There were hundreds of them and they pulled the cloak in closer until it wrapped itself around the poor bastard. Beron stared, delighted that his pet would be returned to him, but from the corner of his eye he could see Argus, and the man looked horrified, something Beron had never seen before.

  “Gods, Beron! What have you done?”

  “I’ll have my servant back! I’ll find and hunt down all of those thieving bastards and this time I’ll blind their fucking eyes and cut off their feet!”

  Ahbra-Sede backed slowly away and shook its cowled head. “You do not understand…”

  Beron scowled and looked at his Undying pet. “What do you mean? You said it needed a new body and I gave it one.”

  “Lord Ariah is powerful, yes, and he changed the Undying for you, but he cannot bring back the dead. That power belongs only to the gods.”

  Beron’s scowl deepened. “What does that mean?” Next to him Argus cursed and grabbed hastily at his axe and the heavy short sword on his other hip.

  On the ground, the condemned man screamed again but the voice was different this time, it was deeper and nearly deafening.

  Beron’s skin crawled.

  Ahbra-Sede soared upwards, lifted on a blast of hot air.

  The other shape rose from the snow, shivering and twitching, and in an instant Beron understood.

  The things he had offered to Ariah had been changed. They were black and glossy, like well-cured leather that had been oiled and polished.

  The thing that rose from the frozen ground now was brown and lightly furred and instead of pure darkness, the slaver could see a hint of teeth inside its hood.

  Heat rose from the newly reshaped He-Kisshi, and the air steamed around it, half obscuring the horrific thing.

  “Oh. Fuck.”

  “You dare much!” The voice roared from the Undying that had, true to the name, been reborn, once again returned to its proper shape.

  Beron reached for his whip and snapped it several times as a warning. He couldn’t get his foolish mouth to make sounds just then. He was too terrified.

  “You would defy the gods? You would take another as your god?” The voice trembled, not with fear but with rage. It stalked forward and Beron stepped back. Beside him Argus kept his weapons lowered and also stepped back.

  “You attacked us! What were we to do?”

  “Free the Grakhul! Those you should have never taken!”

  Sometimes instinct is all you have. Beron lashed out, his bullwhip cutting the air and striking the hood of his enemy.

  The Undying caught the whip and ripped it from his hand. Beron yelped as his smallest finger broke from the force. The whip soared into the darkness.

  That did not stop him from drawing the sword at his hip.

  The sword shuddered, twisted, and turned, moving before Beron and placing itself between him and the He-Kisshi.

  The Undying paused and seemed to study the blade. Without eyes clearly seen on the hideous visage, Beron could only guess.

  “This is not finished, Beron of Saramond.”

  “Are you afraid of a sword then?” Beron grinned.

  “I fear only the gods. I could kill you right now.”

  The sword wanted to fight. He could feel the way it pulled at him, nearly demanding that he engage the Undying. Ariah wanted the servant of the gods dead.

  “Then come for me! Come and kill me if you can!” It was Beron’s turn to roar and he stepped toward the thing, ready to slice it into bloody gobbets and feed the remains to his dogs when they returned. The very thought was giving him an erection.

  Even as he screamed, he saw Levarre coming from behind, his dagger and short sword, gifted him by Ariah, held in hands that jerked and twitched much like Beron’s did. The weapons wanted blood. They wanted the He-Kisshi.

  Levarre charged as the creature looked at Beron.

  And the Undying moved out of the way, sliding to the side with terrifying speed as it avoided the short sword’s keen blade. Levarre compensated by hurling his dagger. The blade slid through the air and the Undying screamed again as the blade cut into its side.

  The flaps of that leathery cloak opened and the creature rose into the sky, the winds driving with enough force to stagger all of the men and half blind them with air-blasted snow.

  Black blood fell from the wounded beast and it pointed a finger at Levarre. “DIE!” One word and no more.

  A second later the world exploded into white light and the hairs on Beron’s body stood straight. He barely noticed. He was too busy being cast into the air and dropped a dozen feet away. His eyes burned, his skin burned, his muscles twitched and refused to obey.

  Burnt ozone and roasted meat smells assaulted his nose.

  The world faded and came back, vanished and returned, and finally Beron opened his eyes and could see, despite the dark blue aura that swam in his vision.

  He saw enough. He saw Levarre’s burned, shattered body and the field of ground around him that had been cleared of snow. He could only guess it was Levarre, for that was where the man had been standing, but what was left looked as if it had been torn apart by hounds and then burned in a funeral pyre.

  Not far away, Argus was crawling on his hands and knees.

  The He-Kisshi was gone.

  “What happened?” Beron’s voice was strained, and his lungs ached.

  Several men moved cautiously toward them, eyes wide and faces made into masks of shock and terror.

  One of them, Orton, spoke up. “Lightning. It came from the sky and hit… Well, it hit whatever that was.”

  Beron nodded and slowly, painfully, made his way to his feet.

  Levarre was dead. His sword lay beside him, unscathed. The dagger a few feet away, half buried in melted slush.

  Argus coughed and shook his head. “I’m done. I have always served you, Beron, but I’ll not fight against creatures that cannot die.”

  Beron barely heard him. He was too busy trying to make sense of what had just happened.

  Harper Ruttket

  The sun finally broke through the clouds again, and Harper allowed himself a small smile. They’d moved on, riding through the snow and the cold, letting the wounded have the horses. In a few cases they had to double up, but the Slattery girl had stayed with the animals, and none of the soldiers from Stennis Brae had been waiting for them anywhere along the line. Being as she was scryer
, he hadn’t been certain if that would be the case or not. Desmond was not wounded, exactly, but the markings on his face, the strange pebbles that stuck to him, were a bother. They’d actually changed during the night –growing a bit, it seemed, though not much. Whatever the case, the end result was unsettling. He looked like a man cursed with lizard skin. Harper had heard of such things before, but never seen the like.

  They walked and rode toward the sun where it cut through the cloud cover. The snow had stopped, and that, too, was a blessing. The cold bit, but it did not sink teeth deeply. They would survive. That was all that mattered just then. Fourteen of them and they were together. Between them they had weapons, water and food.

  Bump had a look on his face that said he was considering making a rousing speech – he’d always wanted to make one, and Harper knew it – but the words weren’t there in his head, or on his tongue. A good lad with an axe, but not much for speaking his mind in sentences longer than four words. Besides which, there was every reason to believe the man would end up laughing at himself before it was finished.

  Harper had never much liked rousing speeches. The best rallying cry he’d ever heard came from Brogan when the widower said to kill all the pale-skinned bastards that had just slaughtered his wife. That speech amounted to a sword through a man’s gullet.

  He was still contemplating the fine art of making speeches when the thing they’d killed in the night dropped from the sky in front of them.

  No. It wasn’t the same, but it was close. This one was taller.

  “Lay your weapons aside and come with me.”

  Harper contemplated which weapon to best shut the thing up. Two daggers wound up between separate fingers, ready for throwing.

  It did not attack. It stayed where it was, roughly four inches above the snow.

  They had no fire to use this time. They only had their weapons and all of them were cold and tired.

  Still, Harper weighed his two longest daggers and held them at the ready. “Can’t do that. We have places to be that do not involve being tied up and tortured.”

  The thing shivered violently and Harper saw something fall from the cloak into the snow.

  “You will come with me. There is no choice. If you do not fight, I will not hurt you.”

  Desmond spoke up. “We’ll see you dead first.” He was covered in odd bumps, he was tired, he was half frozen, and yet his axes came into view and seemed to dance around his hands. He was a terrifying man when he wanted to be.

  Jon had a javelin in his hand. He eyed the cloaked shape and Harper knew he was choosing the best place to hurl it.

  Again the shape shuddered and the ground responded. It was subtle, but Harper felt it. The land under the snow moved and the snow shifted as well.

  “What are you up to, you vile beast?”

  “You killed Porha-Sede. I will not die the same way.”

  “We killed what?”

  “The Second Child. I am the Third Child. I will have you as my prisoners.”

  Harper shook his head. “You make as much sense as a drunken slaver, lad. Go away before we have to get nasty with you.”

  The snow moved and bucked in several spots and for the first time since the thing landed Harper became truly uneasy. One thing to face off against a single creature, even if it was not natural, another to get a sense that you were about to be ambushed.

  “What are you doing? Don’t make us attack. Go on your way and we’ll let you be.” He spoke the words and tried to sound confident, but there was something going on that he could not see.

  The shape shook again and whatever was happening beneath that dark cloak, a blackness pushed down into the earth.

  “Enough!” Desmond hurled an axe and the blade sank into the cloak with a satisfying thunk.

  “You are too late for that. I am properly seated and you will not move me.” One of the monster’s hands grabbed the axe and wrenched it out of its torso. There should have been blood, or at least, from what they had seen before, there should have been darkness. Instead the cloak fluttered open and Bump saw the dark black bark where flesh should have been.

  The axe was cast aside and those hands, which also had taken on the texture of a tree’s branches, creaked and moved into clenching fists.

  That was when the ground erupted in a dozen places. The snow was shoved back and hard-packed earth crumbled away as thick roots came past the moving ground and struck at them, a dozen serpents of wood rearing up and striking.

  Harper staggered back as the ground under him moved, but before he could compensate for the unexpected motion he was captured. A column of thick wood writhed and whipped around his right leg, pinning him as easily as he might grab a grounded fish trying to breathe and fight its way free from a net.

  He stabbed at the thick wood and grunted as the blade dug in a small amount and the wood failed to give way.

  Both blades struck repeatedly and had little impact. He looked toward the thing that called itself the third child and flipped the blades in his hands. One and then the other soared toward the hood of the creature. The first missed as it jerked to the side; the second, however, slammed deep into the opening.

  The thing let out a warbling scream and threw its arms wide. Both of those clawed hands grabbed at the hilt of the dagger buried deep in whatever might pass for a face, and sought to pull the blade free. The cloak opened further revealing the deep, twisting roots that buried themselves in the ground and then came out and attacked Bump and his companions.

  The root around Harper’s leg contracted and he screamed as the pressure crushed the muscles in his thigh and calf and threatened to shatter bones.

  Not far away one of the horses cried out as well, a sound that Harper would never forget. Thick roots crushed the animal and swept upward, circling around the two men riding. Bos and Neely both cried out and did their best to defend themselves, hacking away at the heavy roots with axe and sword.

  The roots continued their greedy scramble and the hooded form doubled over, until, finally, it wrenched Harper’s knife free from whatever face it hid.

  It was over in seconds. All of them, fourteen travelers, and the thing had captured them as if they had no skills among them.

  Hard vines encircled each of them and the cloaked form shuddered again. There was a great cracking noise and then the form drifted forward, leaving behind a freshly torn stump that bled red sap.

  One of those odd, wooden hands held Harper’s knife.

  It moved toward him and shook with fury. “Vile human.”

  Bump let out a scream and hurled his axe in a move that was pure desperation. The blade sank deep and the handle vibrated and let out a loud warbling thrum as it quivered in place.

  Again the creature screamed in pain, and this time it collapsed in the snow, shuddering and convulsing. Harper’s knife fell to the ground and he reached, pulling his slender blade from the hilt and then hacking furiously at the wood around his leg while it was distracted.

  The thing rose again and surged toward Bump, the man’s axe standing still in the hood of the creature.

  One hand grabbed Bump’s neck in a parody of a lover’s caress, the fingers scraping flesh away roughly.

  The other hand was fast and drove a thumb into Bump’s right eye, tearing the organ apart.

  In his life Bump had endured cuts, bruises, broken bones and a thousand scrapes. One does not live as a mercenary without getting wounded. Harper knew that none of that compared to the pain as his eye was cut open. He tried to pull back but failed. The hand holding his face was too strong.

  Did he scream? Gods, yes, until his voice was raw and his throat felt bloody. After that he didn’t quite black out, but slumped back bonelessly, whimpering like an old man lost in nightmares.

  Harper’s blade finally cut enough of the root away to let him break free. Around him half his companions were wrapped in the roots of the demonic tree-thing. The rest were circling around, looking for a way to help their friends.

>   Mearhan Slattery was staring; her eyes wide, her skin paler even than usual. Laram, wounded or not, took at the thing with a roar, his double-bladed axe gleaming dully as it swept around with his full body weight and sank deep into the cheek of the second child.

  The hooded beast staggered back and let out a gurgled groan, as, finally, the damned nightmare understood how to bleed. Laram hit it again, and a third time, his entire body into each and every swing of that axe.

  Harper didn’t have the sort of raw power that Laram had, so he chose a different tactic. He ran for his arrows and did what he did best. The first arrow sank deep into the hood despite the beast trying to avoid it. The second punched through the back of the hood and shivered in the flesh beneath it.

  One long limb reached out and slapped Laram aside as if he were only a child. Rough flesh tore his skin, left him bleeding, but Laram was back up in an instant and growling. His axe sank deep into the very arm that had attacked him. It was not severed completely but it was cut over halfway through.

  The great cloak flapped as the winds came out of nowhere and knocked most of the free companions to the ground. The ground ripped and shook again as the roots lifted completely free, tightening their grips on the people who were pinned.

  Sallos and Jon cut themselves free of the hellish tentacles holding them before the cloak and all of those dangling roots rose into the air and flapped away into the skies.

  Harper’s body shook with excess adrenaline and he watched the shape disappear into the distance, never once taking his eyes from it.

  “What just happened?” The Slattery girl was speaking, but he barely noticed. When she repeated the question a second time he looked her way and shook his head. “We just lost half our people.”

  “Are we going after them?”

  Harper shook his head. “No. We don’t have the time. We have to move on.”

  Laram screamed, furious, and looked toward Harper. He was not disagreeing, just raging.

  Bump, Bos, Neely, Kano and more besides. There was no time to go after them again. They had too much to do, too far to travel. There was the hope that they would not be sacrificed, not until all of them were captured. That was the only hope, really. The thing had taken them. He didn’t know where; he didn’t have any notion. They were gone. Did it work for one of the kings? Did it work for the slavers?