The Godlost Land

by Curtis, Greg

  He could guess why too. She had been a powerful wizard. Her magic and her life were bound up as one. And when she'd made the deal she'd bound herself body and soul to it. When she'd died, thereby breaking the deal, every trace of her magic and her life had been released. No mere flesh or blood could contain that sort of power.

  Without thinking Harl grabbed a handful of the long grass lying beside him and wiped the blood off the sword. It wasn't just the automatic reaction of a swordsman protecting his blade. It was that he didn't want any of that dead blood near him. And then when he was done and the blade was shining once more as it should, he sheathed it so he didn't have to look at it.

  After that Harl got up, as best he could. It wasn't easy. He hurt. Every part of his body ached as though he was an old man who had just been trampled by a heard of minotaurs. He felt brittle and broken. There was blood trickling down his face and leaking into his eyes. His legs felt as though they'd been rubbed raw. But still he somehow managed to make it to his feet – with a little help from one of the soldiers who came rushing over to help him when he saw him struggling. Even as Harl tried to thank him for his help though, the man went rushing off to help others and he ended up calling his thanks to a disappearing back.

  Unfortunately the man had reason to hurry. All around him Harl could see bodies. People had been tossed around much as he had been, and while some were getting to their feet, others looked like they had been badly injured. A few were obviously dead. Living people couldn't lie in those positions. Not if their bodies were in any way intact.

  As for the wizard herself there was nothing left. When he looked all he could see of where she had been was a charred blackened crater, and in it a blackened body lying beside it that he assumed was her son. If Avan even had been her son. But in truth there was so much deep charring that it could have been anyone.

  When Alenda Goldeneyes had died and the deal had died with her, he guessed the magic that had been bound up in it had simply burnt itself free in an orgy of violence and fury. All that remained of her was the char in the bottom of the crater. If that. It was the only explanation he had for where she was.

  He should help the fallen. There were so many down and so few in good enough condition to help them that he should do something instead of just standing around like a fool who'd been hit in the head once too often. Harl realised that in time, and made to go to them. Unfortunately his legs weren't obeying him properly any more. Instead of walking he staggered like a drunk and was probably lucky not to fall over. Still, he tried and slowly managed to take a few shambling steps towards the nearest of the fallen. It was then that Marni came out of nowhere to start spitting out questions at him.

  “What happened? What was that?”

  She looked frightened he thought. Pale as she shouldn't be and uncertain as she never was. And there were scorch marks on her armour. At least they weren't on her.

  “I don't know.” He shook his head a little to clear out some of the wool in it. “I think when she died, her part of the deal with the demon died with her. Part of the spell between twelve of the most powerful of wizards in the world and the king of demons was unravelled in a few heartbeats. And that was what we saw. Apollo's priests will no doubt be able to tell us more.”

  If anyone could tell them what had happened it was them. Because if the God of Light and Knowledge didn't know, than no one did. But where they would find such a priest he didn't know. They like everyone else had been driven from the five kingdoms when the false temple had come to power.

  A sudden thought occurred to him. “You might ask old man Seran. He lives half a league south along this road in a copse by a small green lake and carries the markings of Apollo upon his neck.” Harl had not asked, but he had assumed the man was a follower of the god. Perhaps he was a priest.

  Marni stared at him for a bit, considering his words she finally came to a decision.

  “Soldier, take this man away and tend to his injuries.” She yelled at a soldier somewhere off to his side. “And by all that's proper find him some clothes!”

  “Clothes?” He tried to ask her what she was talking about but she was already gone before the word even left his mouth. Vanished somewhere into the distance to do soldierly things and help with the injured. Which left him wondering.

  He was dressed. His brigandine was still in good condition as were his gauntlets, both having been protected by the spells woven into them. Maybe they could use a little cleaning as they seemed to have been blackened a little by the fire, but they were decent. So why did he need clothes? And then he felt a breeze on his aching legs and a terrible thought occurred to him. Unable to help himself he looked down to check.

  His leggings were gone, burnt almost completely off him in the fire, and he was standing there in the middle of the compound nearly naked from the waist down! It was lucky that the brigandine ran all the way down to his thighs or he would have been completely exposed. But as it was he had to suddenly start pulling it down lower to make sure it kept covering his private parts as he managed an embarrassed, awkward shuffle towards the soldier.

  Still, there were worse things he could have been. He could have been dead. Harl tried to tell himself that as he followed the soldier who was hopefully leading him to the laundry. But still he felt the heat in his face and hoped that no one was looking.

  As the sages said, some days even when you were victorious you still had to walk in defeat.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Terellion awoke from his nap as a terrified scream ripped through his soul. In an instant he was wide awake and panicking. His heart was racing in his chest and his palms were sweating. He was actually trembling with fear. His first thought was that something terrible was coming for him. Someone. And he was too feeble to escape. He felt old and frail. Very old and very frail. Helpless.

  Desperately he threw off the covers that his attendants had pulled over him as he slept on the divan and tossed them to the floor. They could pick them up later. The only thing that mattered was that they wouldn't get in the way if he had to flee.

  In time though he realised that he didn't have to flee. It had just been a nightmare. And not even his nightmare.

  The terror had belonged to Alenda Goldeneyes. He had felt her fear as she had witnessed her last moments in the world. Before a wild eyed barbarian with long dark hair and a blazing sword had cut her to pieces.

  It took a moment for that to make sense to him. That it was her that had died and not him. And that someone could actually have killed her. But he knew it had happened. He had not just seen it, he had felt it. That terrible sword cutting through her arms as if they were his own arms. It had felt as if the man had severed his own neck and he had witnessed his body disappearing as his head fell to the ground. In a very real way it had been him dying. That was what had made it so terrible. That was why he had cried out. It was why his heart was now beating so fast in his chest that it hurt and his hands were trembling.

  This was the difficult part of his gift asserting itself he realised. It was why he had chosen for most of his life to never completely control someone. Just to command them. Because when he dominated another completely he formed a bond with them. A bond that he mostly controlled. So he could talk to those he commanded in that way. He could tell them what to do. But by its very nature a bond was two sided. And in this instance, powered by her terror, Alenda had overcome his command. She had forced him to see what she saw. To feel what she felt.

  And to add to his woes the binding was screaming at him. The magic with which he and the others had formed their deal with the demon king. It was raging, tearing itself apart, and with that tearing him apart. He could feel the magic within him, crying out as it was tortured, trying to break free. And if it did break free, it would kill him.

  Eventually he managed to calm down. To accept that it was not him who had died. But even as his heart stopped racing and a sense of peace returned to him, he knew it would be a long time before he forgot this.
Before he forgot the wild eyed barbarian who had killed Alenda and threatened his life.

  The savage had to die.

  But first he had to survive. He had to resist the out of control magic threatening to burst free from him. To add his strength to holding the binding secure.

  As always Terellion held up his hand and waved the attendants away as they tried to comfort him. He couldn't be distracted just then. They had rushed to him the moment they'd heard him cry out. The women were posted around the walls whenever he slept. And they always stood there silently while he napped, waiting to serve him, and there to protect him if needed. But while they were there at his command, after a while it grew tiresome.

  They were decorative enough he supposed. That was why he had them after all. And while they weren't armed, if by some impossible chance an enemy did come after him and creep into his chambers while he slept, every one of the women would throw herself against the enemy's sword to defend him. Protecting him was their only purpose in life. But against what had just happened they could do nothing. An actual army could not help. But he needed protection.

  That it was Alenda who had died didn't particularly bother him. He had never liked the mistress of fire anyway. She was too proud and too intolerant. And regardless of her power she was still just a woman. She'd once even had the gall to call him old. The miserable old hag wasn't that much younger than him herself! So when he'd taken over her mind he'd made sure to have her suffer appropriately for her sins. He'd never let a day pass without making sure she felt the aches and pains of old age, even if they were mostly in her head. And she could never pass a mirror without seeing the lines in her face growing deeper. It had seemed a reasonable punishment he'd thought. Besides, for his purposes he only needed her alive, and her life and magic bound into the binding. He hadn't needed her happy.

  So her death meant nothing to him. Even the pain of her death meant nothing. It was just a scream of terror and passing that he heard through his bond with her. Though it had shaken him what he'd felt of her death through his mental bond with her was unimportant. It couldn't harm him. What did matter was what had followed. What he could still feel through the binding they both shared.

  Because the binding had been damaged by her passing. More than damaged, it had been hurt. It screamed in his soul in a way that no spell could. It shed its vital magic as a wounded man shed blood. For a moment he'd thought that it might be destroyed. And with it, him. And that fear remained.

  For long minutes that seemed like hours the binding shook and quivered. It screamed its pain and it threatened to tear apart, like the string on a lute snapped too hard. And he pushed his every piece of magical power into calming it. Because if it broke he and all the other Circle wizards would die. He would die. And there was nothing he could do to stop that. Nothing except try to stop it breaking and pray to the gods who would never help him.

  But the binding didn't fail. He guessed that was because it was a binding and not a spell. It had its own life. Its own ability to heal. And despite everything it somehow managed to hold together. The scream slowly passed and the binding grew solid once more. It stopped shedding magic.

  That was a good thing. A very good thing. And once it happened Terellion breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed he wouldn't die this day. Maybe Xin had never been in danger – he was simply too powerful – but even the great demon king would have been hurt if it failed. Maybe badly hurt. Too much of his life force as well as theirs was bound up in it.

  But it had had to be that way. He'd had to bind his life, those of the other circle wizards and Xin together. There had been no other way to make the deal as powerful as it was. To allow for the gate to Xin's realm to remain permanently open and for the demon king's immense armies to flow through it in one direction while the lives of those they killed travelled in the other for Xin to consume. To guarantee the trust between both sides. And to make certain that neither side could break the deal without the other agreeing. They had to have absolute agreement.

  The only way to break the binding without everyone being killed or injured was for all of them to agree to end it. To withdraw from it at once. And that would not happen. Xin would never agree because it would mean the end of his food supply, and he could not abide that. That was why he'd agreed to the binding in the first place, even though it left him vulnerable too. Nor would Terellion agree because it would mean the end of his hopes of finally having the great answers. Of regaining his youth and having his immortality. That was why he'd agreed to be so bound. And the others could not agree because Terellion would not allow them to. All of them were bound to him by his gift, though none knew it. None understood that their decisions were not their own. That their wills were his. That he told them what they valued. What was important to them and what wasn't.

  Well, all save one as he was abruptly reminded.

  “Alenda's gone, free of your control. The binding is damaged and the end draws closer. It's not going to hold for long. And you've still got nothing! Growing frightened old man? I mean what are the gods going to do with you when you pass? After what you've done to their followers and their faiths?”

  “Filthy bastard!” Terellion screamed at the summoner, uncaring of who heard him. But Maynard just laughed. He always laughed as he mocked him.

  “They'll condemn you to Tartarus for eternity, where Xin will torture you personally. He'll never forgive you for failing him. For hurting him. Never!”

  Maynard laughed some more at him and Terellion screamed with impotent fury. Why wouldn't he just break? He hated the summoner! Hated him with everything he had. Which was odd because as a summoner himself he had once thought the two of them would be close. But that was of course before he had first come to the city and slowly started working his way up the hierarchy of wizards through his secret gift. In hindsight he should never have bound Maynard to him. He should have chosen another Circle wizard for the binding instead. Any other Circle wizard. At the least he should have had Maynard killed long ago when he had first started proving so difficult. But now he couldn't kill him. He couldn't afford for him to die.

  So instead he broke him again. He made Maynard believe that he was talking to himself. That demons possessed him. That they were telling him lies. And that the only truth was that he had lost his mind.

  It worked as it always did. He heard Maynard scream as the fear possessed him. And he knew that in Midland Heights the summoner would be drawing a crowd around him as he started ranting and raving to himself. As he did every few days. There was a reason the people called him Maynard the Mad.

  But once Maynard was quiet again, his mind in shreds once more, Terellion's thoughts had to return to what mattered. And what mattered was that one of the twelve was dead. The binding had been damaged and with that his very life had been threatened. That mattered. A savage had tried to kill him! And he had nearly succeeded.

  But the only thing he knew about it was that it had happened somewhere in the Rainbow Mountains where Alenda had been. She had escaped the city when Midland Heights had first been blockaded, doing exactly as he had ordered her to. He could not have allowed her to remain in a city soon to be under siege, and in time he feared, to fall. Not when he knew that her death would endanger him. It was taking time to gather his new army together. To pull troops and beasts from all over the five kingdoms. It was taking too much time. Midland Heights could have fallen before they were ready to march.

  The High Priestess no doubt thought she was a military genius. That she was unbeatable. But in reality she had just been lucky, striking at the very worst moment she could. Striking just when he had weakened his forces at home to create two new armies to fight two new wars in two new lands. Still, Tyche's blessing was a powerful gift. It had left his forces crippled. He had pulled back as many troops as he could from the two wars, halting their advances into the dryad realms and leaving them simply holding what they had. He had stolen yet more from the towns and cities in the rest of the five kingdoms, lea
ving them perilously weak. And he had formed a third army from them all. The bitch's death was coming. But it would take time. So he had ordered Alenda to flee.

  She had fled through the mountain passes before the siege had begun, a difficult journey but one he had known she had to take. Unfortunately Maynard hadn't fled with her. He'd resisted Terellion's will and he had broken him again. Unfortunately breaking him had left Maynard unable to escape. It was almost as if he wanted to die. And now Maynard would. Which would have been a blessing had it not placed the binding and Terellion in danger once again. That was not acceptable. Terellion could not allow another day like this one. But it seemed he couldn't stop it.

  Terellion suddenly felt ill as he realised he had placed his own head in a noose five years before. Maynard for all his jeering contempt, was right. The binding meant that sooner or later he was going to die. Casting it had been a calculated gamble of course – any deal with a demon was. But sealing the deal in the form of a binding had meant that both sides had to be true to their deal. With it no one could go back on their word. Even more importantly, the demon king wouldn't simply turn his beasts on the wizards when the time came. If they had just had a handshake and cast a normal portal spell to transfer chimera to their world and life force to Tartarus, it would have been broken sooner or later. And then the demons would have slaughtered everyone they could including Terellion. The binding had been a way of preventing that from happening. It had been meant as a way of making certain of his survival.