by Matt Hiebert
“Quintel, you must control your fear. You are the Thog Stacker! A moment like this will never come again. The intersection of events is providence. If we wait, Sirian Ru will rebuild his army! He will--”
“Ru knows everything!” Quintel shouted, startling the divine splinter within him. “Every weakness and fear that defines me. Every doubt. Ru knows more about me than I know about myself!”
“You must--” Aul began but he cut her off.
“I must leave!” He stepped past Aul toward the door.
“I do not expect you to understand,” he said. “It is not fear that guides my decision. It is cold reality. If we march upon Ru's castle now, the battle will end in my death. And there will never be another to take my place. When the time comes for me to slay the god, I must taste victory before I even draw my sword. This is not that time.”
He opened the door. The din of the party flooded into the small room. He knew they did not understand. The Vaerians felt confused and bewildered by what had transpired. But far worse, Aul felt betrayed. Pain stabbed her core. He turned to them. He wanted to tell them why he had to leave, why he had to get away from his fragile human allies.
“Humans...” he started to explain, but instead he looked into Aul's eyes, saw what was there, and left.
Chapter 32
Quintel stopped the first servant who crossed his path. “Have someone bring me clothing and boots suitable for a long journey on foot.”
The attendees of the celebration kept their eyes upon him as he walked through the great hall without a glance in their direction. They saw his agitation. He would not feign his contentment for the sake of theirs. They would all know of his actions soon enough.
He returned to his suite and removed the ornate robes. Now that he knew his course, he felt relieved. He knew this was the right decision, no matter how Aul felt. She could not see as he did. She did not have the eyes of a god. In the end, she would know he was right.
After a few moments, the servants arrived with his rugged apparel. They gave him a heavy leather jerkin, breeches, a wide belt and sturdy pair of boots. Quintel sent the servants away and clothed himself. Once assembled, he housed the black sword in his belt without a scabbard. The entity within stirred silently.
He felt Aul coming up the hallway. She had another plan, another speech, she wanted to share. She was going to try and talk him into staying. But there was something else in her heart, something he could not interpret, which made him pace the room. He did not want to talk to her anymore. Her disappointment was more than he could bear.
She knocked lightly at his door.
“Enter,” Quintel granted.
He saw a thousand changes in her lifelight. She had been counseling with the Vaerians, and it had not gone well. Part of the visit was to try, a final time, to convince Quintel to fight. Another part she kept hidden within a deeper place he could not see.
She shut the door and stood there a moment, her eyes to the floor.
“The Vaerians believe we should march without you,” she said. “They believe their new technology will compensate for your absence.”
“Perhaps it will.”
“Perhaps.” She left the doorway and walked deeper into the room, measuring her words. “But will the Abanshi follow if you are not at their lead? If you do not believe this is the right thing to do, how can they?”
“That is not why I leave.”
“But that is what they will see.”
“I leave to discover what I am, not to avoid the fight. Until I have control over this... entity, I am vulnerable to Ru's power.”
“I watched you slay an army of Thogs in a matter of hours. You have a god inside of you. What is there to fear?”
“Facing another god.”
Aul walked over to him. She reached up and touched his face, letting her fingers trace his cheek and jaw line. He had never been touched in such a way before.
“I believe the god within you has loosened your resolve. It has confused you, made you forget who you are. Remember your Abanshi blood, Quintel. It will tell you what to do next. It was why you were chosen.”
Her touch sent tingling sparks racing from his cheek to his stomach. He again saw her beauty. Not just the beauty of her lifelight, but that of her eyes, face and flesh.
“I have not forgotten who I am,” he said, but saying it made him wonder.
“You need to be grounded,” Aul continued. “You need something to remind you that you are still a man.”
“What would that be?” he asked.
Aul's lifelight turned burgundy and violet. A strange heat radiated from her body into his own. His heart pounded, influenced by the strange emotions she secreted. He felt the human rise over the god, a flea commanding a stallion. His god-half liked the feeling.
Aul held his eyes with her own. Their faces were just a few inches apart. Her hidden thoughts became revealed. She was in love with him. And it was not the love a sister holds for a brother. The intensity of the sensation overwhelmed him.
“A wife.” She leaned in and their lips met. Her breath was sweet, her mouth was hot and moist. Without a thought, his blackened arm moved around her waist and pulled her closer.
“You are my sister,” he said, but did push her away.
“I am a woman you met but days ago. If there is a law against it, I will strike it from the scrolls.” Her mouth pressed against his again.
His loins burned with a desire he had never felt before. The god didn't know what was happening, but encouraged him to continue, drunk upon his passion.
They kissed again, deeply and without restraint. Quintel did not resist the new sensation. No convention could sate Aul's longing for him and her desire ignited his own organic want. It felt good.
“I had accepted myself a spinster queen,” she said, barely taking her lips off his. He could taste her words as she spoke. “No man has ever been worth my effort. I had resigned myself to die without knowing love. Then you came.” Her hands explored his body, reaching beneath his jerkin and finding bare flesh. “What is blood when you have found love?”
Quintel buried his face in her neck, breathing in the essence that was Aul. Her lifelight was fire red, an inferno between her legs sent red heat boiling throughout her entire body. Seeing her passion, feeling her lust, drove him mad. Her desire became his.
He let his hands move over her form, the hourglass of her waist, her soft skin and firm breasts. Her lifelight begged for his touch and he gave it, following her desire like a map, letting it guide his hands and lips to places he knew would build her passion.
With all her boundaries stripped away, he saw more than ecstasy in her light's dance. He saw her life as an open valley before him. He witnessed her years growing up alone and unloved, as he had. Her pain when she resigned herself to a life of celibacy. The brutal climb to power that forced her to sacrifice almost all of her human relationships. And finally, the tinder of hope that grew to a flame when she accepted her forbidden desire.
Once the idea of their joining crossed her mind, nothing was going to keep her from him. She was Aul, Queen of the Abanshi. She would not lose him. That was the source of her heartbreak when he announced he was leaving. Not the loss of his sword in battle.
“You cannot leave,” she gasped as his lips moved down her throat.
He started to speak, but something moved within the room. He felt Sirian Ru's gaze upon them.
Quintel spun around, his passion broken. Ru had seen everything.
“What's wrong?” Aul asked.
“Sirian Ru is here,” Quintel turned to where he felt the presence and let the eye of his soul open. He could see Sirian Ru's senses floating in the room, a smoky strand of knowing.
“Be gone!” Quintel commanded, but the wisp ignored him.
“You can see him? Here, now?” Aul rearranged her garments and was back to being a queen.
“Yes,” Quintel whispered. He saw the god's thoughts. Ru was happy. He wanted Quintel to mat
e with Aul. The god knew it would distract him. “He is pleased with our union. He feels it will delay me.”
Ru heard Quintel’s words and fled. In a flash, the god's mind was gone and Quintel was in pursuit.
Quintel's body stood frozen in mid movement. He sensed that Aul felt the pose strange, but he did not care. His mind sped after the retreating god. He was not as agile as Ru -- wobbling over the landscape like a leaf on the wind -- but the deity could not evade him. With his eyes upon the god's heart, Quintel saw what Sirian Ru did not want him to see. Ru was afraid, off balance, weak. Even more so than himself.
Quintel pushed forward wanting to learn more. Ru's confused castle loomed before him and he saw the god's essence retreating to its highest spire. As the last thread of the deity's conscious disappeared, Quintel glimpsed an image of what the god feared most. Within Ru's thoughts, he saw a picture of a human army surrounding the castle with Quintel at its lead.
“Away!” the god commanded silently within his center of power. A spiritual typhoon slapped Quintel like a fly, sending him tumbling into his body on the other side of the world.
Within his quarters, Quintel staggered backwards. The god was far more powerful than he was upon the spiritual plane. It was on the physical stratum Ru feared him.
Aul hooked her arm around his waist to keep him from falling.
“What happened? What did you see?” she asked. Her lust had vanished and her lifelight was focused in silver. Quintel was amazed she had such control over her passion. He still felt the dying embers of the heat even after being smote by Ru. He took a breath.
“The god knows fear,” he said. “He wants me distracted, delayed. He is afraid I am coming for him.”
Quintel saw the elements of Aul's soul rearrange themselves. He saw her strategy find new setting, like the gears within a Vaerian machine. She did not need an explanation for how this changed things. She surmised the difference on her own and it made her love him even more. Quintel still felt the need to speak the words aloud.
“We march upon Sirian Ru's castle.”
Chapter 33
The war machine rumbled to life. The Abanshi and Vaerian armies meshed with rehearsed precision. Columns of men sprouted down the length of the highway, marching east with measured step and song. Abanshi cavalry and strange Vaerian wagons crawled toward the mountainous horizon loaded with supplies and weapons.
For several days, Quintel made a point of avoiding Aul and watched the activity from the edge of the city. A part of him longed to be with her, while another part did not want to give Sirian Ru what he desired. He knew his resolve would not last long. Now that his passion had been ignited, both his halves desired her presence.
During his isolation, he came up with a plan to keep the two opposing armies apart. It was a flimsy strategy built upon hope. The odds of its success were small but it was all he had. At some point, he would have to share the plan with his sister, and he knew she would not like it.
At last, as the line of warriors disappeared, he surrendered to his longing and joined Aul at the rear of column. She had lingered, hoping to find him, hoping he had not fled into the wilderness. Her light burned with the mind of a warrior, but something soft and hidden within her had been awaiting him. She began interrogating him as soon as he appeared.
“How will the god in you react when there is bloodshed?” Aul asked after too few pleasantries. She rode upon her mare while Quintel walked at the edge of the road. “Does it still fear death, even after the violence it delivered to the Thogs and Demonthane?”
“The Thogs are not like men. They are not truly alive so they cannot die. The Agara still lives, trapped within the sword. It is only when the lifelight of a human is snuffed by violence that the god mourns. When people start to kill people I will become incapacitated with grief.”
Aul did not like his answer.
“So during the coming battle with the Forestlands, you will not be able to help us?” she pressed. He saw her thoughts clearly. She needed him in the fight.
“I hope there will be no battle,” Quintel said. “I hope the Forestland armies will stand aside so we can approach Sirian Ru's castle without casualties.”
Aul turned to him, her lips tight.
“I wouldn't give odds to that,” she said with overt patience, as if speaking to a child. “Even without the Thogs, their forces equal ours. They have no need to surrender. You are the factor that tips the scales.”
Quintel thought this an unfortunate balance since he wasn't going to kill anybody. “The enemy does not know of my weakness. I may be able to convince them to surrender before any blood is spilled.”
He saw Aul look toward the legion of Abanshi and Vaerian soldiers before her and his eyes followed. The chain of men stretched beyond the horizon. The vanguard had left yesterday afternoon, while the last warpacks were just departing. There were eighty thousand men, thirty thousand horses and five thousand wagons. The column was a day’s ride in length. He could tell she did not like his desire to avoid bloodshed. His strategy clashed with her Abanshi spirit.
“The Abanshi and the Forestlands have been at war for a thousand years,” she said. “I wouldn't count on their cooperation. If diplomacy were an option, we would not have assembled the greatest army in history. At some point, you will have to fight. You have forced the divine piece to your will before, you can do it again. Grief is the god's weakness, not yours.”
Quintel did not answer. He didn't want Aul to know his intentions if a battle erupted. She would find them cowardly. If he could not get the two armies to bypass each other, he planned to flee, putting as much distance between himself and the conflict as he could. From there he would make his way to Sirian Ru without the liability of his human allies. And then he did not know what he would do.
At the Iron Gate, the procession was delayed. The canyon pass had been sealed by the avalanche machines and boulders choked the way. Engineering crews worked for days to clear a path wide enough for the wagons, finally resorting to building a makeshift bridge over the debris. Many more of the black power stones were collected from among the crushed Thogs. Some of the creatures still possessed movement in their pulverized limbs. The Abanshi and Vaerians hacked at their torsos until the stones came loose. In time, the column moved forward.
The army entered the great emptiness and began the trek toward the Forestlands. Quintel had taken the same path many years before during his banishment. He had almost died then, but now hunger, fatigue and dehydration meant nothing to him. This was not true for the thousands of men and horses who traveled with him.
Soon the roads would disappear and bottomless fissures would mar the land before them. To overcome this barrier, a great tunnel, many miles long, had been cut beneath the worst stretch of the broken terrain centuries earlier. Smooth trails and stores of supplies filled the tunnel's hollow center. In a few days, they would descend into the manmade cavern, shortening their journey while maintaining the companionship of their stocks.
As he followed the column, Quintel again questioned his decision to join the attack. He felt he should be wandering the wilderness, away from humans, mastering the great being within him. Not marching in a column of armored warriors. He felt he should be seeking out the Lanya.
But when would Ru again be at such a disadvantage? What new creatures would the god build if he left the field? What mistakes would he correct in his design?
Quintel had seen the answer to his dilemma in Ru's own heart. He knew the time to move was now. He knew he had no choice. Yet the knowledge did not succor him.
As the army crawled forward, Quintel stayed close to Aul. He could have bypassed the column, but he wanted to see her light and hear her voice. Her confidence blazed and gave him comfort. She had donned the mantle of a queen again, but deep within her heart, he saw passion burning for him. And he liked it.
And what of his own passion? He had been consumed by its flame, drowned in its fluids. As any man, he had felt such sensations
before, but nothing like what overcame him with Aul. Her heat had touched him off like an oil-soaked pyre. He was powerless against the feeling. It overcame him as completely as the god's sorrow. It was a weakness.
This thought made him again want to put distance between himself and his sister. And he knew there was another queen with whom he required audience.
“I'm going to move ahead,” Quintel said as night draped the sky. “I will meet you at the tunnel's entrance.”
“Do you know where it is?” Aul asked.
“I will find it.”
She smiled with closed lips. “Until then.”
He shot down the road, disappearing into the darkness. Soldiers and horses startled as he passed, frightened by the shadow flying by them in the night. Quintel veered away from the main route, taking to the roadless landscape, gliding over its surface without a sound.
His mind flew outwards, over the parade of soldiers, beyond the broken wilderness, into the Forestlands. The few dozen Thogmasters who escaped the Lanya had managed to pass word of their defeat through relay and signal. Further on, he saw the Forestland armies gathering from the corners of the four kingdoms. They had not rallied their human forces earlier, expecting the Thogs to take care of things. Clusters of men and equipment now gravitated toward the Abanshi border where the forest stopped and the mountains began. The groups ranged from well-equipped militias to ragtag bands of villagers armed with pitchforks. It was not an impressive defense.
As his senses soared over the forest canopy, something else caught his attention. A tower moved down a dirt road, lurching forward as if alive, its conical roof peeking above the treetops. He went in closer. There were dozens of them. Each was forty feet tall, pulled by teams of oxen. Their exteriors were covered in steel and wood plates. Firing ports for archers encircled the structure on several levels. They were mobile castles.
His mind turned away from the green forest and moved toward the northern edge of the world, passing the decimated peak of God's Finger without stopping. He was looking for the Lanya. They were out there somewhere and they alone held the answers to his questions. Skirting along the edge of the world, he sought some trace of their existence in the roiling clouds. Legend said they lived on a floating island hidden in the mist surrounding the edge of the world. Yet he could not find them. As he circled the rim of the earth, he felt Sirian Ru's gaze always upon him, subtle but overbearingly present.