99 Gods: Betrayer

by Randall Farmer

  Wisdom barked laughter again. “Your willingness does you proud, but you are too forward. We make our own decisions in this matter.”

  Wisdom’s words struck him as a dismissal and a refusal. Dave stepped back, not wanting to give these monsters any excuse to attack him.

  “Whatever,” Nessa said. “We agree to your request. We’ll tell you our story, but we want Elorie Portath in return.”

  “You have the nerve to negotiate!” Glory said. “This is what we get for setting forth our generous offer?” The four Watchers’ quivered with palpable rage.

  “I’m not as overcome with anger as I was yesterday, but understand you aren’t facing helpless scholars and investigators,” Nessa said.

  The short woman Watcher became more distinct. “Your threats poison the well,” she said. “I am moved to like you, but I have only so much patience.”

  Nessa shook her head. “If you wish politeness, a name would be helpful. Otherwise I might give you one you won’t like.”

  Nessa’s comment appeared to amuse the athletic woman Watcher. “The name of mine you can use is ‘Sorrow’.”

  As usual, Dave found the Watchers’ speaking mannerisms difficult. Did that mean her name wasn’t Sorrow? Or was she saying she had many names, one of which was ‘Sorrow’? Or did she translate her name from another language, taxing her politeness? Or was she just a pathological dissembler?

  Bah.

  “Sorrow? Yah, I can understand how the two of us could learn to be friends,” Nessa said. “Don’t think of what I said as a threat but as a hunch about what the future might bring.”

  “I cannot abide this insanity,” Glory said. “Sorrow, this discussion now is yours. If I speak any more I will bring down upon us the fight we do not want.”

  “I as well,” Wisdom said.

  Sorrow stepped forward, waved her hand, and two benches appeared, perpendicular to each other. “Sit, Nessa,” Sorrow said. She looked at Ken and the rest of their crew. “You. Back off a few paces. Show your good intentions.”

  Dave didn’t understand Sorrow’s own intentions, but he backed off when the rest did. Ken stalked back farther than the others, and Dave sensed the anger radiating from the Telepath. Rocks broke near where he stepped and the few blades of scrub grass bent away from him in mock terror.

  Uffie, on the other hand, walked up to Dave’s elbow.

  “There’s a deeper flow here today than yesterday,” Uffie said. “I fear you’ve made yourself a target.”

  “Because I’m a Psychic?” He didn’t bother to even speak the term ‘Riverwalker Sibyl’. He doubted anything so worthless might make him a target.

  Uffie nodded.

  “Okay, what do you mean by ‘deeper flow’?”

  “The Watchers feel far more nuanced in their actions and thoughts today.”

  Dave grunted, not understanding.

  Uffie noticed. “They’re taking us more seriously.”

  Ahh.

  Nessa and Sorrow introduced themselves more completely, Nessa giving her full name and the fact she was currently married to Ken (which Dave knew) and that she had been married before (which Dave hadn’t). Sorrow countered by giving Nessa two other names: the Huntress and the Virgin Mother.

  The last sent shivers up and down his spine. Such implications! Impossible? No. Mr. Lorenzi was over five hundred years old. Jesus’s mother, though? A monster like her? This had to be nothing more than a coincidence of naming.

  “You’re not just a magician, like Lorenzi,” Nessa said. “What are you?”

  “We are what we are.” Sorrow blinked, in what Dave read as surprise. “Johannes d’Lorenzi is still among the living?”

  “Yes, if you call his bodily state living,” Nessa said. “The heads of his order of holy men lie above us.”

  “No secret to me,” Sorrow said. “However, I thought Lorenzi killed in the French Revolution, beheaded, though I’ve had more than a few moments of doubt, especially recently. He must have found a trick to allow him to survive, although he has kept his, um, head down since.”

  Nessa laughed. “Head in the food trough, perhaps. His current physical body is grossly fat. If you believe his stories he left Europe after the French Revolution, hunting magicians world-wide.” She paused as Sorrow’s eyes lit up; Sorrow knew something they didn’t, likely about Lorenzi. “You didn’t answer my question, either.”

  “Nor am I likely to.”

  “You’re not very cooperative, you know.”

  “And you are?” Sorrow said. “At least you’re somewhat sane today.”

  “And how many hundreds of years has it been since you were fully sane?”

  Sorrow’s three Watcher companions now matched Ken’s anger. Dave guessed they didn’t appreciate this particular style of discourse. Sorrow, on the other hand, did.

  “We are well matched,” Sorrow said. “You and Ken should surrender to us and let us shelter you under our power. Surrendering will find you a way to the answers you seek faster than any other method.”

  Nessa snorted. “I’m not surrendering without a reason. How about the two of us duel, and the loser’s group surrenders to the winner?”

  Sorrow grew even more distinct to Dave’s eyes; she appeared as a mid-caste Indian, athletic and forceful. She didn’t match the clothing style of the other Watchers. Instead, she wore a leather jerkin over some form of armor made of tiny scale plates tied to the clothing underneath. Like Nessa, she wore her hair long, tied in back by ribbons. She looked like she could crush rocks in her bare hands.

  Not the Virgin Mary. Not at all.

  “As pleasant an endeavor as I might find the contest, neither your companions nor mine would agree to such a course,” Sorrow said. “Perhaps some other time.”

  Nessa laughed. “Why don’t you tell us if Elorie’s alive?”

  “I can agree to your request. She is alive but suffering, the suffering not our doing or yours.”

  Crap. Dave started to shake, and he had to steady himself by leaning on Uffie.

  “Thank you,” Nessa said. “How about this? I’ll tell you my story and that of Ken, we agree to continue talking afterwards, and you let Dave go comfort Elorie. They’re linked, in strange ways, in a form of marriage.”

  “You would give us another hostage?” Sorrow said. “What sort of trap is this?”

  Dave almost blurted out ‘hey, I didn’t agree to this’, but he held back long enough to realize he approved. Damned Telepaths. So much for being telepathy-proof.

  “If you weren’t immune to telepathy, because of Nessa’s mood these past few days, she would have had you doing idiotic things and been treating you like a footstool,” Uffie said.

  Dave shook his head. Footstool.

  He remained unconvinced that ‘pawn’ was better than footstool, though.

  “You’re less likely to kill him if you have him fully in your clutches than if he remains out here with us,” Nessa said. “Not that it’s particularly unlikely in either case. I can easily pick out your group’s stray thoughts about what you are planning to do to convince Ken and me you mean business.”

  “There are worse things we can do to him than a simple quick death,” Sorrow said.

  “I once blew the God Miami into a bazillion tiny pieces. Don’t press your luck.”

  Dave grew icy cold at the idea that Nessa and Ken had written him off and consigned him to death. He didn’t understand their morality or their way of thinking, no, not a bit. But…

  Miami?

  Into a bazillion tiny pieces?

  “Meaning?” Sorrow said.

  “If you decide to make a statement by slowly killing Dave or Elorie, you’re going to experience pain. Perhaps death.”

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Sorrow said. “Your request is senseless and your threats are needlessly impolite, but I’ll agree to them if you let us check him out first to let us make sure he’s not a trap.”

  “Dave?” Nessa said, and waved Dave forward.


  “Good luck,” Uffie said, a stark basal whisper.

  Dave walked up to Sorrow, and she waved him over to the other three Watchers.

  He blacked out.

  Dave woke, or came back to consciousness, on a straw-strewn floor that stank of goats. His head hurt and his mind spun. He wasn’t sure what the Watchers had done to him, but he knew he didn’t like it.

  “Get away from me, Dave.”

  Elorie’s voice, harsh and pain-ridden. Dave turned his head until he found Elorie. She lay on a bed made up of tied ropes, a feather mattress on top of the ropes, Elorie on top of that. Her eyes had dark black circles under them.

  “Now!”

  “Elorie? What’s wrong?” Dave said. He got to his hands and knees and almost lost the remains of his power-bar breakfast. The world swum around him, his vision dimmed and he collapsed back to the straw and dirt. Whatever the Watchers did to him didn’t agree with him at all.

  Damned Telepaths. They set this up just to make him miserable. He was angry enough to throttle them both. They certainly weren’t his friends.

  “I don’t want to talk about anything,” Elorie said. “Just get the fuck out of here.”

  Dave didn’t answer or move, stalling and attempting to recover his mental and physical equilibrium. His thoughts didn’t cohere; Elorie’s anger at him didn’t make sense.

  He waited until his thoughts made sense again and the urge to vomit receded. He realized sweat covered him, so thick he smelled his own reek.

  Elorie’s anger? The betrayal.

  “I’m sorry, Elorie,” Dave said, from on the floor. He didn’t want to chance moving again. “I apologize. I didn’t follow your lead in the Room of Finding, and I still don’t know if what I did saved your life or doomed the rest to die. You were right about Dubuque. I was wrong. Nessa – she and Ken brought me here – Nessa convinced me that Dubuque set us all up to die.”

  “Go. Get lost,” Elorie said. “I don’t fucking care. Fuck your apology. Just go.”

  If she didn’t care, then why was she so angry? Dave crawled, scraping straw and dirt into the holes in his shirt, until he reached Elorie’s bed. He got to his hands and knees, then when he didn’t fall over, levered himself to a sitting position. Elorie rolled and turned away from him. Faintly, ever so faint, he heard her crying.

  He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder; Elorie backhanded him, hard, across the face. He fell back, the pain of her blow summoning anger and the taste of vomit in his mouth. He took several deep breaths to calm himself before speaking again; Elorie hit harder than he thought possible. While he calmed himself Elorie rolled over and sat on the edge of the bed. She slapped him again; he partially blocked her hand.

  “Go away!”

  “I’m not leaving until you tell me why,” Dave said. He hadn’t been able to damp his anger, and when she moved to slap him again, he reached out and grabbed both of her hands. She struggled to free herself and screamed; no words, just a scream of rage. Dave let go, she tried to slap him again, and this time he just put his arms in the way to stop the slaps. Elorie continued slapping, shouting “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”, but Dave didn’t move.

  He lost count of the number of slaps. When she stopped, Dave saw her eyes brimming with hot anger. Her flushed face belied the fact a waxy white pallor covered the rest. The return of zombie Elorie.

  “You’re ill, very ill,” Dave said. “Lie down, please.”

  “Of course I’m fucking ill, you cretin,” Elorie said. “The cancer’s back, it came back when I touched the trap in the Room of Finding. The trap undid Persona’s patch job and I’m in pain.”

  “Let me help you,” Dave said.

  “Fuck,” Elorie said. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

  Understanding washed over Dave. Now he knew why her friend who had custody of Elorie’s youngest child hadn’t wanted to be with Elorie until the very end. Elorie must have acted like this.

  Character flaw? He decided not to think about that question until after his anger subsided. “Can’t the Watchers help?”

  “Of course they can’t help, moron, I’m immune to everything they can do.” Abusive, crude and nasty. No wonder she had been alone. She had forced everyone away from her. She always forced everyone away from her, he realized. “I’m fucking dying and there’s nothing anyone can do. Now get the fuck out of here and leave me alone!”

  “Let me help, Elorie,” Dave said. “I love you, more…”

  Elorie ripped the wedding band off her left hand and tossed the ring at Dave. The ring bounced off his chest and rolled to the floor, to hide itself in the straw. “Get out!”

  “No,” Dave said. He knee-walked over to Elorie, levered himself up on the wooden bed frame, and sat down on the bed beside her. The ropes creaked with the strain. “I do love you.”

  “You can’t love me, you don’t even know who I am!” Elorie said, a hair-raising scream. She turned, grabbed his ragged shirt, and shook him. “I’m not the woman you think I am. You don’t know shit. You’re not even the right type of man for me!”

  After she exhausted herself shaking him, he gathered her into his arms. More struggle; he rocked her.

  “Dave, I’m a wild woman, the sort of woman men’s mothers warn them to stay away from,” Elorie said, whispering. “You clearly didn’t want to know, despite all my hints, despite the crazy chopped up tats still covering my body. Iris’s father? He was seventeen years older than I was and married. I was his mistress, Dave. He helped pay my way through college. Now that you know how I sold myself, do you still love me?”

  Sold herself? He twitched and covered up his emotions. “Of course, El…”

  “Lunatic. After the relationship cooled, I got wilder, partying day and night, following whatever whim crossed my path. I fucked any man who wasn’t disgusting and quite a few who were. I took every drug, in every way imaginable. Iris’s father eventually dumped me in disgust. I kept partying. I would do anything, the stupider the better.” She paused. He didn’t say a thing. “Come on, something in this shitpile must be a deal breaker. My wildness sure scared the crap out of Stephen’s parents.” The man she had almost married.

  “Nope,” Dave said, not sure if he told the truth or not.

  “Retard. Hell, I’ve been date raped. Real raped. Beat up. I was an accomplice in an armed robbery, once, just to find out what crime was like. I took up hang gliding just to prove my mortality. Same with my other wild hobbies. I dated some men just to tease them with my availability, and then refused to sleep with them, even though I’d sleep with their loser friends. I fucked others just to find out how miserable I could make them. I’ve driven away nearly everyone who’s ever gotten close to me, many on purpose. Do you realize you’re next, loser? Foolish yet?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well then, if you’re too much of an idiot to run after hearing all that, then you certainly don’t meet my standards.” She sniffed, laughed insanely for several seconds, and went back to crying in his arms.

  Well, if their marriage was over, it was over. Fine, he thought. He still loved her, still wanted to tend her. She might die, but if she did he vowed to be at her side. If she lived, well, after this display Dave suspected she would never want to speak to him again. He would morn his loss later. His life was hers. All his earlier self-centered life had left him nothing but fucked over and over and over. He had vowed to change, and he would.

  He rocked her. She relaxed in his arms after a long while, many minutes later.

  “The thing possessing the others could do magic,” Elorie said, a rough whisper, unprompted. “The thing – he – kept talking about the Watchers’ defenses, though he always called them the Betrayers instead of any of the other names we have for them. The possessor thought my death would power some spell that would break down the Watchers’ defenses. Jack and Osham tied my arms behind me and tied my feet together, pulled back my hair to expose my neck, and started their magic chant. Only when they laid their knife
against my neck and sliced, the knife didn’t cut my flesh.”

  Dave’s eyes pinched shut. He imagined Elorie’s terror, the frantic beating of her heart as her life was about to end. Again. Cruel, cruel fate.

  “The Watchers had dulled the knife. The possessor had Georgia brain me with a rock, but the rock crumbled when it hit. Another trick of the Watchers, but being brained still hurt like hell.” The scrape still rode Elorie’s temple, among her many older wounds. “Next, they attempted to strangle me with a shoelace. The shoelace broke, but not until after I’d blacked out. Then the possessor had Jack and Osham try to beat me to death with their bare hands. That’s when the Watchers attacked.” Elorie paused. “If you hadn’t interfered, if you had followed my lead, we would have all been joined with the thing. Because your mind can’t be controlled, you would have been the thing’s prisoner, not me; you would have been the one they would have tried to sacrifice.” Another pause. “When the Watchers attacked, I would have been part of the thing. The Watchers would have killed me and put me out of my misery. That way I wouldn’t be faced with the cancer again. Your actions were hopeless, Dave. I’m fated to die no matter what happens.”

  Elorie took a deep breath. “Now, get the fuck away from me, you goddamned betrayer! It’s your fault I’m stuck here in pain!”

  Dave patted his pockets until he found his pocketknife. He took out the knife, opened it, and gave the knife to Elorie. “Here.”

  Elorie held the open pocketknife in her hands and stared. Without warning, she fell into a trembling fit, the knife falling from her hand, bouncing on the bed, and down to the floor.

  “No,” she said. “Not that way.”

  Dave closed his eyes. “Do you want me to…”

  Elorie leapt at him, grabbed him and bowled him over. His head hit the back of the wooden bed frame. Wincing against the pain, he found Elorie hugging him and crying hopelessly, whimpering “No, no, no,” without pause.

  After the pain receded, he took Elorie in his arms and rocked her to sleep. Later, when she was fast asleep, he left her in the bed, covered, and went to talk to the Watchers. On the way out of the room he gathered his pocketknife and, after shifting through several piles of filthy straw, Elorie’s wedding band.