The Godlost Land

by Curtis, Greg

  She looked surprisingly athletic he thought and her skin was well tanned as if she had spent a good part of her life out in the sun. A soldier of some sort perhaps, despite her small stature. The manner of her dress suggested the same.

  She wore a long pleated skirt – an uncommon garment in these parts – belted over a white cotton vest. Meanwhile a long woven jacket went over the top, and it hung open in the way a soldier would wear one so that he could reach for a sword. If he had to guess from the stiffness of its movement over her body as she walked, she was wearing a long knife underneath. Either that or a short sword was belted to her waist and then pushed back a little so that it couldn't be seen from the front. But it was the shoes that usually told you most about a person and she was wearing boots. Fine leather riding boots. That suggested to him that she was someone used to life out in the open, not in the home. Soldiers knew the value of good boots.

  “Who are you and why are you following me?”

  Harl had decided to be direct if only because he was too tired to be anything else. It had been a long morning and there had been a lot of walking involved. Besides, if she objected to his manner he thought it would be easy enough to simply stretch out a leg and push her backwards with it, over the railing for the horses to be tied to and into the trough. She might be upset but at least she'd stop following him.

  “Who said I was?”

  The woman stared defiantly at him, her eyes studying him intently. At least as intently as he was studying her.

  “You know, you look cold standing there. I have a coat in my pack that might just fit.”

  “I'm not cold!”

  But she said it just a bit too fast and her voice was just a little too high pitched. Which fairly much told him that she knew about him and his coats. But he decided to have some fun with her anyway.

  “Really? But I think it would look very good on you and it's rude to refuse a gift.” He turned to his side and pretended to reach into his pack.

  “No!” This time she did screech – just a little bit.

  “Well then, if we're done playing games. Who are you and why are you following me?” If she knew about the coat after all – and she had just fairly much proven that she had – the rest followed.

  It took her a moment to accept that she'd given herself away, and then another while she glared at him unhappily. “You know, they said you were difficult.”

  “And I would guess that I know who the “they” are. But I still don't know who you are or why you're following me.”

  Some days you just had to keep repeating yourself until the words were finally heard. This, Harl decided, was looking like it was going to be one of those days.

  “I'm Marni Holdgood and I was sent by the High Priestess Erislee Moonsong to ask you some questions.”

  That surprised him a little. She didn't look like a priestess, or at least she wasn't wearing the robes of one. But who else would a High Priestess send save one of her calling? Who else did she have authority over? Her soldiers maybe? In any case if he'd thought anyone would send someone to bother him it would be Nyma. She who kept visiting him and was supposedly the High Priestess' sister. He still wasn't completely convinced of that. It could be. Dryads did not always view the bond of marriage in the same way others did. And maybe the High Priestess was a quarter dryad even if she did look completely human, while Nyma who looked to be pure dryad was a quarter human. Maybe. And maybe the moon was made of aged milk.

  “Fine. Ask your questions.”

  He guessed it wasn't a choice. High Priestess Erislee Moonsong's name was one that was held in high regard these days. Hers was the name that conjured up hope in the hearts of the people. And while she might not have any actual position, if someone had been sent by her to ask him some questions, refusal would be seen in a poor light.

  “First she asks who it was that you sent to free her. She wishes to know the soldier's name.”

  “As I said to Nyma, I sent no one.”

  It seemed they still hadn't realised that he was the warrior. But he understood that. After all, he was a wizard and wizards weren't soldiers. Maybe he should be grateful for that he thought. After all, it had not been an amicable rescue.

  “The soldier is not in any trouble I assure you. The High Priestess would simply like to extend her thanks to him.”

  “And I stand by my answer. I sent no one. Next question please.”

  Whether she believed him or not he was done answering her. She wasn't done with the question though. He knew that. For a while she just continued to stand there, apparently weighing up the likely outcomes if she asked it again and eventually coming to the conclusion that it would go no better. But she wasn't going to put the question away completely he suspected. Just put it aside for the moment. He was sure that she intended to ask him again at another time.

  “All right then, – ” she fixed him with an irritated stare “ – you are a wizard living in the Rainbow Mountains, one of the five kingdoms, when most of your kind are gone and the rest have joined the enemy. And thus far we don't even know your name. How are we to know you do not follow the Circle?”

  That actually made sense to him – unfortunately. Ever since Geron had told him the truth he had been asking himself the same questions about everyone he had ever known. Trying to work out which if any of his friends had truly been his friends. And whether any of them had helped murder his family. He couldn't believe that any of them would do such a thing. But if Geron was to be believed, most of the wizards had. Which left him with no way of knowing.

  And that was a hard thing to live with. It left him with a terrible question that he could never answer. Which of his friends should he mourn – because they were most probably dead? And which did he curse with his every breath because they'd helped kill them? Which of them did he now have to pray were actually dead because the alternative was too horrible to imagine?

  But the pain was a private matter, and he could dwell on it another day. Not now while he was being questioned.

  “First, you do know my name. You've been asking after me in each shop I have visited and in each they have told you my name. Have they not?” He stared straight at her until she wilted a little.

  “Harl the trapper.” She didn't like being forced to say it, but she was out of choices. It was either admit what she knew or end up in some strange world of pretence.

  “As it is. I am Harl. I trap rabbits and possums for their fur. So I am Harl the trapper.” She didn't seem that impressed by his admission of his name though. He noticed the cynical stare she gave him. He couldn't help it – he wasn't blind. No doubt she thought he was lying, even though it was actually the truth.

  “Next as I said to Nyma when she first came to my home, I am not a wizard. I am an arcane smith. I enchant wares. Armour, weapons, clothes, charms. I have a great knowledge of spells. But my magic is restrained. I can't cast. I cannot throw fireballs or lightning bolts. I can't create storms or thunder cracks. I don't have any power to summon. Nor do I have any magics of the mind to control people with.”

  “Lastly you would not know about the Circle at all were it not for me. I was the one who placed the bonds of truth on Geron and asked him about the attack upon Lion's Crest. It would seem a silly thing for me to do were I one of the Circle. Besides which if I was, Geron would surely have known me. He does not because though we had seen one another in Lion's Crest before the attack, I was too far beneath him for him to notice me. And he'd obviously never seen me since.”

  It seemed like a reasonable argument to him. Logical and well stated. But he wasn't so sure she agreed from the look on her face. A little bit of doubt coupled with consideration as she thought on his claims. It was quite a pretty face he thought, though a little too stern.

  “Then if you are who you say you are you would be happy to have someone come and examine your magic?”

  “No!” The denial came out of his mouth almost without his thinking about it – and he wasn't completely s
ure why it should matter so much. But it did. Maybe he'd simply been running and hiding for too long. Concealing his magic. His privacy was precious to him.

  “My magic is my own as is my life. But is it my magic that you're interested in, or whether I'm in league with the Circle?”

  He wasn't sure quite which mattered most to her, nor why. But he would have thought he had given quite a compelling argument that showed he wasn't of the Circle the last time he had seen Nyma. On the other hand he realised, there was a war raging somewhere out there. And no doubt the new temple priests would want to make sure of the wizards in the lands they freed from the clutches of the old priests. They would want to know their loyalty and their ability both. Especially when it seemed the old temple priests were actually wizards and thralls.

  “Both, but mostly the former. For now.”

  Harl wished she hadn't added the last part, but at least he knew he could prove what he could do in a matter of a few minutes at most.

  “All right then, come with me.”

  With that he stood up, swung his pack over his back and marched out across the street and then along a few doors to Yarl's place. Yarl was of course out the back in his smithy. They could hear him beating away at some metal. Probably horse shoes. That was the normal lot for a blacksmith, which was one reason Harl was glad he had never become one. Shoeing horses was back breaking work, and painful when you caught a hoof in your softer parts as was common. So Harl walked around the narrow foot path to the back of his shop and the smithy where he was working.

  “Hail Yarl.”

  He greeted the blacksmith as he often did and walked up to the pit. Then before either his follower or the blacksmith could say anything he rolled up the sleeve of his cloak, reached into the pit which was still flaming hot and pulled out a burning coal. Then he walked back to the woman and held out his hand with the burning coal in it just in front of her.

  “Arcane smith. Completely immune to fire. Does that satisfy you?”

  She stared at him for a long time before finally nodding, clearly beyond the ability to speak just then. He could understand that he supposed. The first time he had seen his old master plunge his hand into a bed of burning coals he had been much the same. Just as he had been the first time he had done it himself.

  “Good.” He walked back to the pit and tossed the coal back in while Yarl stared at him with a similar look on his face. But then he had had even less warning than the woman and that wasn't something a man saw every day.

  “And if you doubt my craft –.” He drew his great sword with a well practised flourish and strode over to the pile of fire wood in the back of the yard and brought it down on a log as thick as his thigh. The sword cut cleanly through it and without any of the noise that an axe would make. There weren't many swords that could do such a thing.

  Harl sheathed his blade and nodded politely to the still speechless blacksmith, before heading back around the side of his shop to the street. It was a little while before he heard the sound of his inquisitor behind him. It was only then that he turned to face her.

  “If you get an artisan to examine the bonds of truth I left Geron wearing you'll notice the makings of the craftsman upon it. They are my markings, and any wizard and most of the artisans from Lion's Crest will know them. That should prove everything I've said and shown you.”

  “Now is there anything more you need to ask?”

  For an answer all he got was an eventual shake of the head, and that was enough for him.

  “Good. Then I'll be on my way, and I trust I won't be receiving any more visitors any time soon. I have had quite enough of them. All I want is to live my life in peace.”

  It was rude of course, but he was beyond politeness. In fact he was mostly just tired. Not from the long walk into town or the shopping. Not even from the horror of having had to deal with Geron. He was simply exhausted from five long years of having spent his life running and hiding. And after a while a life lived like that became something a man grew weary of. All of these visits just added to his weariness.

  And now, talking to the woman, having to prove himself to her, it was growing. It was only to be expected when it seemed that those he had hated and feared for five long years were actually innocents. When he had discovered that those he had looked up to and wished one day to join, had turned out to be the guilty. And especially when he knew she was right to be suspicious. He was a wizard even if arcane smiths did not see it quite the same way. And wizards could not be trusted.

  His world had been destroyed by that betrayal. Though destroyed was too gentle a term. It was as though his entire life had been stolen from him and what was left of it made no sense. He felt like a fish flapping on a pier trying to work out what had happened to the water. Everything had been turned upside down and he simply didn't know who to believe any more. Who to trust.

  The worst though was the doubt as to who was friend and who was foe. When he'd first started running his worry had been whether any of his friends had died – though of course logically he knew most of them probably had. Just as he knew his family surely had. But now he had to wonder if some of them had been a part of this betrayal? Because most of his friends were wizards. And most of the wizards from Lion's Crest had been involved. It was one thing to fear and grieve for missing friends. It was something else entirely to have to wonder if they had ever been friends at all. If they had been involved in the death of his family. And then to spend long hours and days thinking back on his time with them, wondering if any of that friendship had been true.

  Really, all he wanted was to be left alone. Just for a while. Six months or perhaps a year. Maybe two. Long enough for the world to make sense again. Long enough to see whether this new hope that had sprung into being would last. To know once and for all whether he would have to move on or not.

  But even as he walked away he knew that that wasn't going to happen. He didn't know when or why. But he knew that people were going to continue to bother him. It seemed to be his curse in life.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cut Valley Holding. It was a large town of nearly thirty thousand people, though thanks to the morning's battle that was now less by quite a few hundred. The temple complex that had grown out of the centre of it like a weed was gone too. All that remained was a small forest of burnt out timbers and a column of smoke lifting high into the blue sky. A banner of dark fume announcing to the world and more importantly to Midland Heights what they'd done.

  The priests were gone, most of them dead. But while fifty or sixty had died, still another half dozen lived. But not for long Erislee thought. They had been made to drink the tea of root and vine – the pointy ends of swords were good for persuading people to do things like that – and then been manacled and shackled to a chain running from the back of a wagon. Soon they would be marched away to the Fortress of Glass River to the south where they would be interrogated. After that they would be tried and almost certainly found guilty and hung. Such was the way of things.

  Erislee was glad she wasn't in charge of that side of the campaign. While there was no doubt that they deserved to die for their crimes, there was something about the almost mechanical process of interrogation, trial and execution that struck her as just a little hard. It was one thing to kill a man in the heat of battle as the hundreds of soldiers of the false temple had been. But this other thing – it was almost cold blooded. But then she was High Priestess to Artemis the Huntress, not Dike Astraea the Goddess of Justice. What did she truly know of justice?

  And after discovering the priests' execution pit she could not deny the people's call for justice no matter how harsh it seemed. She'd heard rumours of course in the other towns. That the false priests were executing their prisoners by feeding them to their creatures. In some towns the temple soldiers had hunted them down for sport. At others they had just thrown them into the cages to await their fate at the hands – or claws – of the chimera. But this was the first time she'd seen a fighting pit.
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br />   In actual fact it was little more than a dozen foot deep hole in the ground. The priests had organised for people to be tossed in to the pit with whatever beasts were there waiting, and then watched them be torn apart. Perhaps they'd even waged coin on the outcome.

  Of course she understood the logic of the killing. The demons had to be fed, and the chimera were their beasts. So when they killed, a part of the life of whatever they killed went to Tartarus. But it was barbaric. And worse, some of the bones she could see in that pit looked too small to be those of adults. These priests and their followers needed to die. It was just that she was not so cold blooded as some. She had a terrible feeling however that she needed to be.

  It was for that reason that she tried to lead the campaign through her war masters. For her this was a hunt and she understood hunting. But it was also a war, and she knew little about war. She knew even less about running one. About the recruitment of soldiers, finding supplies, interrogating prisoners, training, maintaining communications or any of the other hundreds of things a war master needed to know. That side of things was all being run through the ancient fortress under the leadership of Commander Theris. Her task was to lead the fight, his to provide her with whatever she needed to win.