by Fiona Patton
“They can’t get up the Halic if the sea chain’s in place,” he answered.
“Is it?”
Spar nodded groggily. “He doesn’ know th’ streets,” he slurred. “Illan. His prophecy won’ find us in th’ streets. Too narrow . . . too many people pressin’ in on th’ future streams. Need to get lost in . . .” He blinked rapidly as his eyes went from white to black in an instant. “Dockside.”
Brax gave him a worried look. “Can you make it to Dockside.”
“Yeah. With help.”
“Right.” He stood. “Kez and Jaq’ll help you. I’ll help Graize.” Stooping, he lifted the other man up and over one shoulder. “Come on, let’s get out of here before they have time to reload.”
He straightened with a grunt, heading out the door and up the stairs at once. Spar followed, one hand on Kez’s arm and the other still clutching Jaq’s collar. As they emerged onto the rain-splattered streets, both kardon glanced back to see Hisar, swaying a hundred feet into the air, eyes half closed, arms spread wide, seeming flickering from gold to silver to gold again.
“Move now, stare later!” Kez snarled, pulling their attention back to earth. But as they plunged down a narrow close, both risked another backward glance.
Wrapped in the young God’s mind, Graize felt his grip on his own body fade. They seemed to go on forever, growing larger and larger until their heads touched the clouds. Beneath their feet, he could see the temples, homes, and warehouses of Anavatan laid out like little boxes, the cobblestone streets weaving between them like lengths of twine. Thunder rumbled in the distance, a streak of lightning lit up the sky, illuminating the God-Wall glowing with its customary afternoon blue and inlaid with streaks of silver that shone to Graize’s God-enhanced vision.
He laughed out loud. He felt bloated with power and potential. And yet, on the very edge of being, he felt strained and stretched to the breaking point. He ignored it. Far to the south, he felt a stirring of alarm and then a sudden tugging in his groin. He looked down.
A copper thread of power, little more than a breath of possibility and fine as a strand of spider webbing, stretched between him and a tiny figure fighting on horseback in the fields of Bahce-Koy. It held his attention as nothing else had and, little by little, he felt it drawing him back to himself.
He disengaged from Hisar so fast that the young God staggered backward and, in the streets, both he and Spar cried out as the bulk of Hisar’s power drain transferred from one to the other.
Spar stumbled and would have fallen if Jaq hadn’t shoved himself in front of him.
Kez pulled him back upright. “How far?” she shouted.
Brax just shook his head. Behind them, he heard the sound of another volley hitting the area around the cistern’s entrance and turned suddenly to stumble down an alleyway behind two warehouses.
“The way to blind a seer . . .” Brax panted. “Is to act unpredictably.”
“For how long?!”
“For as long as we can.”
“That’s not gonna be much longer,” she groused as she shifted Spar’s weight across her shoulders. “He’s gettin’ heavier.”
Above the city, Hisar turned blazing eyes on the Volinski fleet. His merging with Graize’s abilities had given him the understanding of Illan’s purpose, and He would not suffer it to be. He only had two sworn and he would not allow the foreign seer to threaten them.
Growling low in his throat, He stepped back into the waters of Gol-Beyaz.
On the streets, Brax turned and caught Spar under the arm with his free hand as they emerged from the alleyway and onto a wider, cobblestone street. It marched due north to open up on the sandy shore of the Halic Salmanak and, as they hurried along it, Brax glanced about him with a frown of recognition. But it was only when they reached the dilapidated wharf that he rocked to a halt.
Kez glared at him. “What? Why are we stopping? Are we resting?”
He narrowed his eyes. The upturned fishing boat was long since gone, but the wharf on Liman Caddesi looked much the same as it had six years ago. He nodded with a resigned expression.
“I guess we weren’t so unpredictable after all,” he noted.
“What?”
“Nothing. Yeah, we’re resting.”
Laying Graize down as gently as he could, he covered him with his cloak, then assisted Kez in setting Spar down beside him. Jaq immediately took up position beside the youth, and as the dog pressed against his side, Spar’s arm snaked out to wrap around his neck. He opened his eyes.
“Hisar needs power,” he whispered.
Brax crouched down beside him. “You said that before,” he answered, moving a lock of plastered hair from his kardos’ face. “Looks like He’s already taking more than His fair share.”
“He needs more.”
“There’s no more to be had. Graize is unconscious and you’re close to it.”
“He’s going after Illan through Gol-Beyaz.”
“Then He’ll get power from Gol-Beyaz.”
Spar shook his head. “He can’t. He’s not . . .” He struggled to find the right words, then just slumped.
“He’s not a real God yet?” Brax hazarded.
“No.”
“So, how do we make him a real God?”
“You Invoke Him.”
They both turned to glance at Kez who glared at them.
“What? That’s what you do for Gods, isn’t it? That’s what the priests at Dockside’s Oristo-Cami say. When the Gods need power Their priests call for an Invocation an’ Their worshipers send Them what They need to manifest.”
Spar waved a weak hand in Graize’s direction. “We’re Hisar’s only priests and He hasn’t got any worshipers.”
“Horseshit. He has dozens of worshipers. He has had for weeks.” Turning, she pulled her knife and drove the tip into the wharf, scratching out the four lines that made up the simplest of the tower symbols. “Just because we haven’t sworn officially doesn’t mean we aren’t worshipers. Besides, He saved Zeno. Everybody knows that. We owe Him.”
She sheathed the knife with a snap. “You call. We’ll answer.”
Straightening painfully, Spar draw Jaq closer to his side. “All right,” he panted. “But if I’m gonna . . . do this I can’t do it . . . by myself. I’m gonna need Graize’s help.” He gave a cynical snort that took years off his age. “Ever think you’d hear me say that?” he asked Brax.
The older man just gave a snort of his own. “Can you get him woken up or do you need my help?”
“I need your help.”
“How?”
“You need to go back to the mountain ridge.”
Brax sighed. “Figures. I was kinda hoping you just needed me to slap him.”
“No such luck.”
“Right.” Sitting down with his back against the bank, Brax pulled his own, larger, heavier knife from his belt. “Keep an eye out,” he said, handing it to Kez. “We won’t be able to defend ourselves if anyone comes on us.”
“Who’d come on us,” she demanded in a sarcastic voice. “You’re wearing Estavia’s leather cuirass.”
“Better safe than sorry.”
“Sure. Whatever.” Accepting the weapon, she made herself comfortable where she could see both up the street and along the shore. “Go ahead. I’ve got your backs.”
Nodding, Brax pulled his sword, laid it close beside him, then after lifting Graize until he was tucked under his arm, he closed his eyes, and as he’d done in the alcove, reached out along his oaths to the God of Battles for his visions of Kaptin Haldin. Spar began to sing the single note of Hisar’s Invocation, and beside him he felt Graize stiffen and then relax as the music took him.
Far away, Graize floated easily beside the copper thread, unwilling to be drawn away, but slowly, very slowly he heard a single note sung into the distant darkness. It called to him along a path of power and obligation and reluctantly at first, he followed it.
And stepped back onto the snow-clad mountai
n ridge. Brax, wrapped in silver light and overlaid by the seeming of Graize’s dark-haired boy, stood to one side of him. Spar, wearing the midnight robes of a seer over a golden tunic shot with greenish threads stood to the other. Before them, the shimmering tower that was Hisar moved from gold to silver to gold again but then, as Spar pressed his hand against his chest and sang one long clear note into the crimson air, the silver began to overtake the gold.
Wading hip-deep in Gol-Beyaz, Hisar paused as a thread of silver power began to travel up His body.
On the mountain ridge, Graize stared into the sun as a hundred streams appeared before him, drawn to the surface of his prophecy by the sense of urgency in Spar’s song. The past, the present, and the future; streams upon streams upon streams, reaching out into the darkness. But one shone brighter than the others. It began in a mist-shrouded doorway and flowed unimpeded to a sea of possibilities. With a sigh of weary acceptance, he reached for it.
“That one. Give me that one.”
And, pressing his own hand to his chest, joined his voice to Spar’s.
Their song moved out past Liman Caddesi, past Hisar’s unfinished temple site, and out across Anavatan. The strength of its call caught the young God up, shifting and merging His seeming until It became a vast tower of gold and silver, standing like a bastion between the Volinski fleet and the people of Anavatan.
And the people responded. Hisar’s people. Lifters, beggars, tricksters, students, apprentices, and laborers, the unsworn youth of a dozen precincts, stood by the carved tower offerings that had turned an entire city into a temple and stared up at their young God of Creation and Destruction. One by one, they joined their voices to their two young priests, until finally Kez stood and shouted a simple oath into the wind, echoing the words Graize had shouted on the grasslands nine months before.
“Mine! My God!”
Hisar’s tower-seeming exploded in a spray of golden fire, flickering from male to female, to both, and back again, faster and faster, as each one of His young followers added their oaths to their leader’s.
“MINE! MY GOD!”
He rose higher and higher, then, twisted about in midair to stare at the six great statues standing guard above the Gods’ temples. She gestured and a golden tunic, streaked with threads of green, flowed suddenly about His chest and down Her hips, a red and silver-flecked bead appearing on a hide cord about His neck. Her thick, blonde hair grew longer, spilling down over His shoulders to fall into Her pale gray eyes, the pupil of the right ever so slightly smaller than the left. A scattering of fine copper whiskers spread across His olive cheeks tinged with honey-gold and silver, and down Her arms and legs in a fine down. A pair of military sandals wrapped about His feet, the cords spinning up Her calves as a copper belt wrapped about His waist with a scabarded silver sword on one side and a golden knife on the other. In one hand, She held a pair of wooden soldier’s dice and with the other, He reached down to stroke one fingertip along Jaq’s forehead and the dog woofed a greeting at Her as She straightened. And stared out across the water, Graize’s prophecy blazing in His eyes.
A single future streamed out before Her and, with one move, He stepped over the gathered penteconters. For a single instant, She and Illan stared into each other’s eyes, the ghost of Leold Volinsk shimmering in the air between them, then, as His people’s Invocation built to a crescendo, She closed Her fist around the dice and drove it through the center of the Volinski flagship. As the atlas table shattered into a thousand pieces, the vessel cracked in half, the sterncastle and forecastle nearly meeting in the middle before being sucked to the bottom by a sudden vortex of silver power.
Hisar stared at the wreckage for half a heartbeat, and then opening Her hand, scooped up half a hundred oarsmen struggling in the water and set them gently on the shore by His temple site, then turned Her gaze on His city.
“THE BOUNTY OF HISARO: CREATION AND DESTRUCTION IN EQUAL MEASURE!” He shouted, preening as the sound of cheering echoed across the water, then turned again, and dove headfirst into the center of Gol-Beyaz, splattering Incasa in a shower of silver surf.
On the southern shore of the Northern Trisect, Panos swayed, pressing against a wooden pier, her expression grieving. Beside her, Hares touched her shoulder gently but said nothing.
“I saw it,” she said, her usually musical voice thick with unshed tears. “Towers. Rigidity and the blind ambitions of kings and princes.”
They stood together for a long time, watching as both the dromon galleys and the penteconters moved in to gather up the survivors from the flagship, then the artist stirred.
“What do we do now, Oracle?” he asked quietly.
Panos turned her gaze to the south. “Now?” she echoed, her black eyes shrouded. “Now we go home.”
“To Skiros, Oracle?”
Drawing the cloak more tightly about her, she shook her head. “No, Hares. I have done my duty by king and father. He has all he could wish for now. Volinsk and Anavatan are weakened equally and he will soon have his free and open trade and access from the southern sea to the northern. May it give him pleasure,” she added bitterly.
“You have seen this?” he asked.
“I have seen this,” she answered, setting her usual metaphors aside. “The young God has entered the field of battle and so the Yuruk and Petchan raiders will withdraw. With half the royal family of Rostov and Volinsk drowned, their fleet captains will sue for terms. King Pyrros will row his royal trireme up the singing silver lake to its shining capital, and meet with Anavatan’s governing council.”
She paused, staring into the distance for a long time. Beside her, Hares waited patiently and eventually she drew herself up with a sigh. “And we, Hares,” she continued, “we will go home to the warm, white shores and glittering green-gem waters of Amatus. And there, amidst the scents of olive trees and grapevines, and the cries of sweetmeat sellers and wine merchants, I will find a humble artisan, priest, or poet to fill my heart and warm my bed and lose myself in its mountains and harbors forever. I am done with royal fathers and with royal lovers. They ask too much and they give too little.”
She fell silent once again until her retinue began to shiver in the rain, then she stood with a determined expression. “Come, Hares. Let us find a boat to take us across the Halic. I fear I must attend my father once more before I’m finished. We must seek refuge at Incasa-Sarayi while we await his arrival.”
“They will grant us access, Oracle?”
“Oh, yes. They have already seen it.”
“Yes, Oracle.”
As Panos led the way to the water’s edge, she deliberately turned her gaze from the five small figures crouched wearily beneath a wharf on the opposite shore.
Finally the smallest of them stirred.
“Come on,” Kez said in an authorative tone. “We still have to get this one somewhere warm and dry or he’ll die of his injuries.” She jerked a thumb at Graize.
Brax shook himself. “Right.” Standing, he reached down and drew Graize up on his feet. The other man weaved groggily, then allowed Brax to put a steadying arm around his shoulders with only a faint hesitation. Brax turned to Spar. “Can you walk?”
His kardos nodded ruefully. “With help.” Catching hold of Jaq’s collar, he drew one finger along the silver streak emblazed across his forehead with a wondering smile. “Good thing I had all that practice painting that dog symbol on me for all these years,” he said in a fond voice.
Jaq woofed at him, then moved forward, drawing the youth up behind him. Spar allowed Kez to throw a hand out to steady him, then together, they left the cobblestone streets of Liman Caddesi behind and made for the warm kitchen fire at Estavia-Sarayi.
Behind them, the youth of Anavatan waited until the sky calmed and the ripples of Hisar’s entry into Gol-Beyaz stilled, before returning to their own lives, and Estavia’s navy herded the ruins of Illan of Volinsk’s invasion fleet into port.
18
Hisaro-Sarayi
BRAX
STOOD HIGH ON a rocky promontory above the hospital village of Calmak-Koy watching, as across the strait, the construction of Hisaro-Sarayi came to a close for another day. With the threat of invasion past, the work had progressed quickly; in the last four weeks the foundations had been laid and the walls begun. If he squinted past the late afternoon sun, he could just make out Spar and Hisar standing talking—or rather arguing—with Kez about one or another of the many details.
He chuckled and, standing beside him, Graize turned his own head.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Graize glanced away.
The two men had managed an awkward peace as the three fleets anchored in the waters below, but like them, they also had some skillful negotiators at their side. Although Spar had refused to get involved, Hisar had hotly declared that He had no intention of allowing their old rivalry to jeopardize the strength of His new temple and they had better go and have some proper sex right now. And Kez had also declared—no less hotly—that she had better things to do than be a matchmaker, she had a temple to build. But she had spent a fair amount of time hovering about Graize’s sickbed anyway, assuring herself that Brax spent at least as much time beside it as she did.
But it wasn’t until Kemal and Yashar had taken Brax aside that he’d actually started thinking past the realization that he and Graize no longer wanted to kill each other.
Throwing himself down on a stone bench in the hospice herb garden, Kemal had smiled fondly at his oldest delos. “Did you know that when I first met Yash, I thought he was a bombastic, irresponsible troublemaker?” he asked with a laugh.