The Godlost Land

by Curtis, Greg

  He had of course needed knowledge, beginning with learning which demons had what knowledge of which of the great answers. And then of course he had needed knowledge about the demons themselves and how to bargain with them. So Lucara the sage had become his right hand. In actuality Terellion despised the man. He might be a Circle wizard but he was a pointless sort who, if left to his own devices would have spent his entire life with his nose in a scroll. But he needed him. So he'd taken him even before the others.

  Last of course had come the deal. Eighteen months of long and difficult negotiations with the demon king through his first thrall, during which time they had hammered out every detail. What the demon king would give them, what the Circle in turn would give Xin. The penalty clauses for failures and the settlement of disagreements. How the plan would work and who would have command of what.

  That had been the most torturous time of his life, and he had truly learned to hate Various – the demon king's first thrall and negotiator – during it. But eventually an agreement had been reached. Xin would provide them with an ancient tablet from a ten thousand year old temple covered with the knowledge of the six great answers, in return for lives. Tens of thousands of lives. And to keep the deal going as the tablet was translated they would together conquer the five kingdoms.

  It had seemed like a simple enough thing. The demon king would provide the Circle with armies of chimera and claim enough thralls to control them in the five kingdoms. Then those armies would do two things – conquer the lands so that Terellion ruled, and feed the demon king the lives of those they killed as they conquered the lands. It was a victory for them all. And because Xin was so hungry, because he had starved for so long, he would give them the information they wanted as well. After all, why would he care if the Circle learned the six great answers? He just wanted to eat.

  So the deal had been made. It had been bound. The life forces of him, the other eleven Circle wizards, Xin himself and an extra few hundred souls, had been bound into the agreement. Enough to make it more than a mere spell. More than an agreement. It was that which could not be broken by any of them. Only by all of them together. It had seemed like the only way that trust could be gained.

  That of course was where everything had gone wrong.

  Demons couldn't be trusted. They couldn't tell a direct lie in their deals – that much was agreed by everyone – but their version of the truth often had no relation to the actual truth.

  Naturally Terellion had always known that would be a problem. It was just that he'd never expected that it would be such a big one. That the demon king would so easily and constantly confound them.

  The lies had begun on the first morning, just after the deal had been agreed. When the demon king's beast army had burst from the gate and started killing everyone in Lion's Crest. That was a mistake. The agreement had been that there would be a cull of one in ten. Everyone had understood that to mean that they would kill one in ten. The demons had somehow interpreted the agreement to mean that they would let one in ten survive. They'd claimed it was simply a misunderstanding. A mistake in translation. Even as they'd continued slaughtering the entire city.

  Even Terellion had been shocked by the carnage he had seen that day. But what troubled him wasn't the extra deaths. It was simply the practical problems that such a cull had left them with. With so many dead they would end up with so few survivors that it would become difficult to find enough people to keep feeding the demon king. And they needed to have enough people left to keep trading with him. Because they needed more from him. They'd known they would right from the start.

  The tablet Xin had given him had needed translation. That he had expected as it was at least ten thousand years old and written in a language no one had even seen before. Even properly motivated Lucara could do only so much. But if they'd given away ninety percent of their trade goods in the first deal, what did they have left to bargain with?

  Terellion had repaired the mistake and limited the killing as the invasion had progressed, but never as well as he would have liked. The stench of the decaying bodies had been minimised by having the chimera carry the corpses through to the demonic realm for the lessor demons to feed on. It had also taught him that he needed to understand all the details of every deal they made. Yet still Xin always managed to get more from each new deal than they expected, and provided the Circle with less. It was the demonic way – bargaining in bad faith.

  And now Terellion was certain, he was doing it again. Whatever Xin wanted the High Priestess for, it had to be important. He wanted her. He had traded for her. She had to be valuable to the demon king in some way. How, he didn't know. But he knew he had to find out.

  “Good! Leave me!”

  Terellion dismissed the soldier with a brusque wave of his hand, and if the man was upset about it, the wizard didn't know or care. He only cared about one question – why did the demon king want the High Priestess? Now?

  It had been a clever move capturing her when they'd taken the city. A move that had crippled the Temple of Artemis and left them helpless for five long years. The Circle had destroyed the other temples quickly and completely. They were all enemies and dangerous ones – especially when priests were completely resistant to his control. But when they'd taken the Temple of the Huntress and assumed its identity, they'd desperately needed a way of ensuring that the Goddess' servants did not strike back. And keeping the last High Priestess of the temple alive and out of the way did that.

  The other temples and shrines had been quickly destroyed. The priests and high priests had been slaughtered so that they could not pose a threat. But they couldn't do that to the temples of Artemis when they were pretending to be her temple. They'd slaughtered her priests of course. All that they could find. Any that had survived could have been dangerous when her temples still stood. They could have exposed the lies. And if they'd had access to the temples they could have called on the Goddess herself to send her servants to aid them in battle. Unicorns and griffins were fearsome creatures. And with an angry Goddess behind them the temple could have overcome their armies.

  But holding the High Priestess meant that no more high priests and priestesses to Artemis could be called. And it limited the power a priest or priestess had, since there was an ancient contract within the temple that granted some powers only to the highest priests. It was rather like stealing the generals to an army, and with them their knowledge as well. The remaining soldiers were leaderless and unable to be promoted to a position of power. But more than that they did not have the knowledge to run a campaign and they didn't know where to find that knowledge.

  So they'd captured her, and then they'd made sure she could do nothing to guide the others. Trapped by the wards of silence the Circle had devised, she was unable to call upon the power of her Goddess and summon the terrible companions of the Huntress. The unicorns and the griffins. They would pose a direct and powerful threat to his mercenaries and the chimera. Equally, with the current High Priestess caged and bound there could be no new High Priests and Priestesses called to the Goddess' side. Especially once all of the Great Temples to Artemis had been destroyed save the one they held.

  Holding her prisoner had been useful.

  So why did Xin want her now? And when she died would the unicorns and the griffins be released and start returning to the five kingdoms by themselves?

  They were both important questions. But not as important as his finally getting his answers. And the information Xin would give them in exchange for her would help.

  “He's going to kill you.” Terellion jumped as the man's voice interrupted his thoughts. “Xin will never allow you to ascend. He's already worked out how you'll die and with a little of Tyche's blessing, it'll be brutal.”

  The voice came out of nowhere, which wasn't surprising. Terellion knew it was only in his thoughts. Just as he knew whose voice it was that was plaguing him. Maynard the Irrepressible. Maynard the Miserable as he thought of him. Once more the summoner
was slipping a little from his grasp. Something he should never have been able to do. But for forty years he had done the same. Ever since Terellion had first taken control of him.

  It was unfair. A curse. No one else could resist him. Especially when he dominated them completely as he did the cursed wizard. But the miserable summoner could. He had for forty long years. When Terellion had first sought to join the Circle he had needed to be assessed. And since he was a summoner he had been assessed by another summoner – Maynard. But the miserable wizard would have noticed immediately that his skills weren't as powerful as he claimed. So to make Maynard believe his skills at summoning were as great as he said they were he'd tried to bend his thoughts just a little. It had been such a small thing. All he'd had to do was impress him. But when he'd taken control of the summoner's thoughts things hadn't gone so well.

  Who would have thought that a simple summoner with no magic of the mind at all could thwart him, even in the small ways he did? That he could defy him? Aggravate him? But he had. He still did. He was the only one of the eleven he dominated who could contact him directly. The others could answer him when he spoke to them, but Maynard for some reason could simply call him. He could resist his compulsions. And every so often he would try to upset him.

  It should never have happened. He'd initially intended to do no more than shift Maynard's impressions a little. A minor magic at best. But the annoying wretch had spotted his attempt to control him instantly and then battle had ensued. He'd been forced to take complete control so that Maynard never revealed his secret – that would be a disaster. Maynard however had fought him. He still did somehow. He'd fought him for forty years. Somehow he'd found a way of shifting a part of his mind into the creatures he summoned, those accursed, endless cats. And through them he could buy himself a little freedom from his control. Not much, but just enough to keep regaining his wits and fight Terellion's will. For forty long years he'd been forced to hold the wretch tight. Maynard had been the first wizard whose will he'd had to completely subsume. All because he hadn't wanted to admit that he wasn't quite as strong a summoner as he'd pretended to be.

  How did he do it? None of the other Circle wizards could fight him like that. Not even White Tail who still believed himself to be the most powerful wizard of the mind in the five kingdoms. He had folded easily and never even known. Now he was just a puppet like the others. But not the accursed summoner! Somehow Maynard kept slipping out from under his control. Some days Terellion suspected it was the damned work of the satyr god, Pan. He was an eternal trickster and the world of creatures was his domain. But could Maynard be a follower of Pan's? Could any human? Satyrs and fauns, yes. Not humans surely? Then again, some claimed that Pan was also Prometheus, and many wizards did follow him. Terellion himself had made the occasional offering. Until he'd launched his campaign of course. Now he knew there was no point. No god would help him. Not even Prometheus who was after all the god who had brought them both fire and magic.

  Maybe it had been a mistake sending Maynard to Midland Heights. To let him a little further away from his direct control. But the bond had been tight and Terellion was sure he could control him at a distance through it. And in truth he'd just wanted the man out of his sight. Maynard was an embarrassment even when he wasn't causing him trouble. Terellion would have killed him if he hadn't been a part of the binding. He'd needed twelve Circle wizards for the binding, and when there were only eighteen to begin with and some of them like Rickarial had blood that allowed them to resist his will, Terellion had been short on numbers.

  “Quiet you, the demons are close. They're in your thoughts.”

  With just those few words and the thought behind them he twisted the summoner's thoughts, driving him to the edge and beyond with fear and most of all with the terror that Maynard's thoughts were not his own. And once again Terellion broke the summoner's reality. It was as easy as always but it would not be permanent. Nothing he could do to the summoner seemed to be permanent. In a few days the man would once again be free and causing him trouble.

  Maynard screamed in terror, and Terellion knew the satisfaction that he'd broken him again. It was enough for the moment. In the end Maynard the Mad as they called him was only an annoyance. The demon king was the true threat. And if he wanted the High Priestess and was prepared to offer the Circle some more of the hard to get ingredients for the spells they needed to cast to learn the answers then that had to mean there was more to the woman than he knew. It was just a matter of finding out what. With that knowledge, maybe he could for once turn the deal around on the demon king.

  Maybe it was time to have a chat with the demon king's thralls? Not Xin's first thrall obviously – the man was too closely connected to Xin and Xin might notice if Varrious' thoughts had been tampered with. But the man's aid. Just a quiet word in private which the woman would remember nothing of, always assuming he didn't have an unfortunate accident as a few others had had. Terellion had found that killing them was often the safest option.

  It was risky, but it was a risk he could limit, especially when no one knew he had the magic of the mind. They all still imagined he was just a summoner and worried much more about the faun White Tail. In fact the demon king's thralls were under strict command never to go near White Tail, or even to leave their false temple if he was in the city. But he wasn't in the city just then and no doubt they were feeling a little more relaxed because of it. The arrogant faun had his uses and acting as an unwitting decoy for Terellion was one of the most valuable of them.

  After the soldier had gone Terellion decided to do it, and bellowed his orders at the other soldiers lined up around the wall.

  “Bring me Odinne.”

  Odinne was the right choice he thought. She was only a lowly ranked thrall among Xin's cohort, but she was often close to Varrious. More than that she was one of the few women among the thralls. Not worthy of bedding because of the plainness of her face, but still easily controlled because of her gender.

  He could also claim a good reason for summoning her. She was the one who dealt with problems with the chimera in the city. And there were always problems with the chimera. The occasional accident when somebody got eaten or trampled. Most of the chimera were of course locked away. The furies were locked in a dungeon under the temple. The harpies had cages on the roofs of many of the buildings throughout the city. The leonids and cerberi had their own pens. But the minotaurs were allowed to wander around freely with just a keeper. They were the most docile of the beasts. But they were still dangerous and every so often they proved it.

  If someone in that sordid pit of demon thralls knew what Varrious knew about his master's plans, she did. And she would tell him without ever knowing that she'd said anything at all.

  Chapter Three

  The Great Temple of Artemis. It was an impressive structure Terellion thought. The Huntress had had a loyal following. Though of course few of them now lived and the temple was no longer hers.

  In fact it was no longer a temple at all. The shrines and altars inside had been destroyed. The priests had been killed. And everything that even looked sacred had been destroyed. What was left was just a building.

  And yet for all that it remained impressive. And pretty. The domed roofs looked almost delicate in the day light, supported as they were on huge, thin columns. It was only when you got up close that you realised that those thin fluted columns were six foot thick marble. And when you looked up from underneath that you realised the domes were not delicate at all. They were incredibly solid and had been braced with massive lintels from underneath. Only the very edges of the domes were thin, and that was just to fool the eye.

  It was also deceptive in its openness. It looked as though the temple was completely open. Purely a structure of tall columns and domed roofs. But it wasn't. It had a great many walls. The artisans who had crafted it had used many techniques to fool the eye. The marble of the walls was green veined with gold and black. Beautiful, but more importantly, able to
remain unnoticed behind the rows of carefully planted trees. They had also built the temple down instead of up. So after you ascended the stairs to reach the giant plinth on which the temple stood, you then had to descend many more steps. The great chambers of the temple were actually dug into the massive plinth.

  All of which meant that once inside the temple you could not be seen from the outside. Nor could you see outside. All you saw were walls of solid sandstone and marble, on top of which the impossibly tall columns stood, and then the roof arching overhead. On a good day the sun would shine between the columns, reminding you that the temple actually had no walls. Just a dome high above.

  The gardens surrounding the temple added to its beauty. Untold centuries of gardeners had slowly surrounded the temple with massive gardens of trees and shrubs, not just for their beauty but because the Goddess was a forest guardian among other things. Where else could you go hunting after all?

  Of course these days the gardens were filled with kennels for the cerberi, and like any hounds they tended to bay. Unlike most though, with two heads their baying was both disturbing and threatening. It was something about the way the two throats bayed in harmony.

  From a distance when you approached the temple all you heard were the cerberi, and all you saw were trees – a small forest in fact. And from out of that forest endless delicate stone columns reached for the sky, together with a huge series of domes balanced precariously on top of them. It was a trick of the eye, but it was a good one. It was also very different from the style of his castle, which had solid stone walls and triangular stone roofs.