by Ty Johnston
Bayne raised his hands out to his sides as if questioning. “I suspect you are speaking of the other gods. Those other than myself.”
“You speak true.”
“What has happened to them?”
Marnok paused, staring off above Bayne’s smooth pate as if seeing the past once more with his own eyes. “There was war. Among the gods. I could not prevent it.”
The swordsman guffawed. “I am not surprised. No creatures such as myself would submit to the likes of you.”
“Notwithstanding the accident, the first major failing of our venture,” Marnok agreed. “We did not take into account the corruption of power, and the gods were indeed powerful.”
Bayne lowered his arms. “What of these gods, then?”
“The war claimed most of them,” the king spoke with a dull voice, as if he were repeating words from a history he himself had written. “There at the end, there were but three. You, myself and Valdra.”
The warrior’s eyes widened. “Valdra!”
“Yes,” Marnok said with a nod. “I would almost swear you recognize that name.”
“I do,” Bayne said. “We met, but some short while ago.”
“Impossible.”
Bayne growled. “There was a woman on a mountain. She had two sisters. I spoke with them.”
“Sisters?” Marnok said. “Yes, there were two sisters, the only other goddesses amongst our lot. Interesting, this world of yours. If there was only time to study it further.”
“Tell me more of Valdra.”
“She was to be goddess of peace, your counterpart,” the ruler said, “but the calamity that was our war brought about a change in her. She still believed in peace, still hoped for it, but a stronger side of her had appeared. She found … she was not above use of the sword to enforce such peace. That had not been her initial regard.”
Now Bayne chuckled.
“I slew her,” Marnok said.
Bayne stopped laughing and took a step toward the throne, his left boot placing itself upon the lowest of the steps leading to the royal seat, his hands in fists at his side.
Marnok seemed to ignore the warrior. “As chief of the gods, I had made sure to make myself more powerful in all ways than the other deities. Against my desires, I was forced to use that power to do away with Valdra.”
Bayne gritted his teeth. His words were seething. “What did you do to her?”
Marnok sighed, once more staring off into space. “I tossed her from a mountaintop, her body impaled upon rocky crags below.”
Bayne’s fists tightened, his nails digging into flesh, blood flowing between the fingers.
The king’s gaze returned to the warrior. “That left only you.”
“Obviously, you did not slay me.”
“No,” Marnok said, “and believe me, I tried. But we had made our god of war all too well. I could slow you for a while, even imprison you temporarily, but your strength and skill was too much. Eventually I stumbled upon a few notions for destroying you, all untested at the time, but there was no chance to put them into operation. You, the last of the gods but myself, were loose in the world. And you were doing what you did best, spreading war, most of it against myself and my followers and the remaining few scientists who still happened to be alive by that point.
“I decided that since I had had some success in entrapping you, though I could not hold you, there was but one thing to do.”
“Which was?”
“To ensnare you once more, then send you into exile.”
“Exile?”
The king nodded. “Yes. Through what you would think of as magic, I managed to trap you and force you into unconsciousness. Then I placed you within a small vessel … a ship of sorts to be placed among the stars. You were encased within a … silver ball, seemingly for all time. I launched you into the skies and beyond this world, believing I would never see you again.”
“I am sorry to have disturbed your plans.”
Marnok grinned, though there was no true glee in it. “Hardly. I am actually relieved to see you once more. It has been long since I have conversed with an … equal.”
“I find your sincerity difficult to believe”
“No, it is true, Aris-Bayne,” said the king who was a god. “Once I realized who you were, my mind went to working. But first I had to discover how you came back to our world.”
“And what did you find?”
“It took some days, but utilizing ancient technology and not too few of my own abilities, I learned of your existence in another world, one far from this one.”
“Ursia,” Bayne said.
“Is that what you call it?”
“It was the name of one of the larger nations,” Bayne said, “as well as of one of the continents.”
Marnok nodded as if approving or agreeing. “Interesting. Also interesting was that it appears your arrival upon Ursia was quite by accident. A wizard had been performing a ritual to summon a demon. Instead, you appeared. Pulled down from the heavens, it would seem.”
The swordsman could but grin. At the time, his arrival to Ursia had seemed the accident of which Marnok spoke, but Bayne had learned otherwise. One of the gods of Ursia, Ashal, had been behind disrupting the spell of Verkanus, thus bringing down Bayne.
“Particular events were mostly cloudy to me,” the king continued, “but I did surmise how you eventually returned to this world.”
“And?”
“Another accident,” Marnok said. “You fell into a pit of lava.”
“How would this bring me here?”
“The lava would have destroyed you,” Marnok explained.
“This tells me nothing.”
“You are still a god of this world,” the king said. “Hardwired into your DNA is a teleportation … my apologies. Let me speak in frank words you will understand more clear. As one of our gods, there is magic within your blood that transfers you to the place of your creation upon your encountering something that would destroy you. As there are very few things that can potentially destroy you, it was a matter of luck.”
The warrior’s gaze narrowed. “Thus your words when we met.”
“Which were?”
“That I should be dead.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“If all you say is true,” Bayne said, “then why do I have no remembrance of much of it? Why did I not recognize Valdra upon finding her in that other world? And why did she not recognize me?”
“Perhaps she did, but kept it to herself,” Marnok said. “To be truthful, I left her body where it lay. I suppose it is not impossible she somehow recovered, being a god after all, and fled to the world you encountered.”
Bayne shook his bald head. “This makes little sense to me.”
“Some of it does not to myself,” the king said, “and it does not help that before exiling you, I had much of your memories distilled from you mind.”
“What?”
“You had asked about your memory,” Marnok said. “I admit, your lack of those is in large part due to myself. I was the god of gods, Aris-Bayne. I could have no one more powerful than myself. To that end, when I discovered I could not easily destroy you, I made you … blank. I allowed only rudimentary knowledge to remain in your mind. Language. Basic survival skills.”
Bayne shook in rage, his eyes red, his fingers gripping and ungripping at his side.
“Of course if I had discovered lava would destroy one such as yourself,” Marnok went on, “you might not very well be here now.”
“I will gut you like a hunted animal, Marnok,” Bayne said with gritted teeth, “and when I am finished with you, I will hang out your skin for all your suppliants to witness.”
The king scoffed. “Easier said than done, Aris-Bayne. I am quite formidable myself. Besides, I have greater plans for you, for us.”
Bayne glared up at Marnok. “Yes. You spoke that you were relieved to see me. How is this so, since you sent me into exile?”
Marnok si
ghed and leaned back on this throne, closing his eyes and turning his face to the ceiling almost as if bored. “I have been king for a very long time, Aris-Bayne. Centuries. Before that, I was a god. Thousands of years.”
“You are lonely.”
Marnok’s eyes opened and he stared down at the man before him with new appreciation. “To some extent, yes. There has been no other on equal standing with me, no other with whom to speak frankly. The populace at large knows me as their king, but I have not been worshiped publicly as a deity for some time now, and the centuries have cut away the public’s beliefs in divinity, mainly because of my own doing, my wish to limit the annoyance of acquiescence. Still, I have an inner circle of priests, worshipers who know some of the truth, who are familiar with my … our … history. But it is not the same.”
Bayne lowered his fists. “You expect sympathy from me, then?”
“Not at all,” the king said. “My weariness comes not only from a lack of a compatriot, but from sheer boredom. After being a god and a ruler for so long, I have grown tired of the constant tasks I am called upon to perform, silly statescraft and the like.”
“You yearn to be free.”
“Yes.”
“And you find in me the potential for a replacement.”
“Perhaps.”
“You are as mad as your subjects,” Bayne said. “I had no love for the steel shackles you placed upon me, nor will I allow those of administration. Look elsewhere for a new king.”
“There is nowhere else to look,” Marnok said.
“Then allow your people to decide upon their own ruler,” Bayne suggested.
The king chuckled. “As you say, they are but fools, little more than children. To allow them to make such a decision would lead to war, quite possibly a war worse than the one between the gods.
“I desire my freedom, Aris-Bayne, and you will provide it.”
Marnok’s final words had been stern, with more than a hint of steel. Which was fine with Bayne. He was familiar with steel.
The warrior took a step, a singular footfall nearer the sovereign, and held up a fist. “Very well, Marnok. You desire freedom. Then I will provide it to you. The freedom of death.”
The time for words had passed. Bayne had heard enough.
He leapt up the stairs three at a time.
Marnok brought back a giant fist.
As the warrior reached the dais, the king’s hand thrust forward, though not to deliver a blow. At the last moment, Marnok’s sausage-sized fingers sprang open and spread wide.
Bayne ducked low, wading in with his own fists, but even his wolf-like speed was no match for the god above him. Marnok palmed the warrior’s face, the huge fingers enveloping all of Bayne’s head.
Then the king raised his arm, lifting a kicking Bayne from the ground.
“I have told you of your past, Aris-Bayne,” Marnok said, “but to win you over, perhaps I must show you.”
Bayne’s hard fists wailed as if mallets upon the thick wrist holding him up high, but he could see nothing, hear nothing, not with that giant mitt embracing his skull. All before him was black, and the only noise he could detect was that of the king’s words.
“Accept your destiny,” Marnok spoke, “for I define your destiny.”
There was a lurch.
It was not a fall, not a plummet. More as if Bayne were shoved aside.
His stomach pitched and he found himself bent nearly double, his arms clutching at his sides as his eyes squinted in pain.
Then it occurred to him he was no longer in the presence of the king. He was no longer held prisoner by that massive grip.
But where was he?
The tightness in his stomach easing, Bayne leaned back and opened his eyes. He found himself standing in the middle of a flatlands of ash, surrounded by a ring of flames as tall as a castle wall at a distance from him equal to a short arrow shot. The place seemed familiar, as did the situation, with him beneath a black sky containing no stars nor moon. It reminded him of his awakening in Ursia, when the mad emperor mage Verkanus had summoned him forth. Then there had been flame and ash. But there had also been a crater and bits of steel littering the ground. There was no crater here, nor pieces of metal surrounding his feet.
No, it was not any memory of Ursia that was drawing the scene before him to his mind. This was something else. He had been here before, in this exact spot, in these exact circumstances. But when? How? And where was this place?
“Bayne!”
The voice had been far-off, but it had been strong, and feminine.
He turned in the direction from which he believed the voice had come. “Here!”
“Bayne!” It was nearer now, yet still at a distance. Definitely a woman.
“Valdra?” the warrior asked himself. Could she be here? For some reason, that felt right. It felt as if that was how things were supposed to be.
He took off at a sprint in the direction of the voice, noticing for the first time he was weighed down by thick plate armor and two short swords strapped at a thick belt girdling his waist. But he was Bayne kul Kanon, Aris Bloodmaker, a god of war. Heavy mail and weapons would not deter him, would not even slow him.
A third time the voice came, “Bayne!”
And this time he knew from what direction the solitary word had come. He changed his course slightly and ran.
The wall of flames was before him, further darkness beyond. He jumped into the blaze, miniature fires lingering on the edges of his armor, but he was through and kept on running.
The ground beyond the circle of flame was of flattened grass, as if an army had passed, the soil beneath darkened as if blooded by a thousand cut throats, the dirt showing red near the light of the fire. Along the horizon now were black mountains, the tallest of which was aflame at its apex.
Bayne kept running. He knew from where the voice had come. He knew who he would find there. He just had to keep running, charging toward the horizon in the far distance that could only be distinguished from the black sky by a slim glowing line.
Then, an outline upon that horizon. A figure, kneeling. No, more than kneeling. Wounded. In pain. Suffering.
Bayne’s booted feet kicked harder at the dead ground, sending him faster with breaths harsh enough to bring a sharpness to his chest. But that pain would not slow him, let alone deter him. He kept running and running toward that silhouetted figure.
He was upon her then. It was Valdra, but unlike he remembered her from the mountain in Ursia. She was more than injured. She was broken. Her hair was longer, streaked with clots of blood as it hung in strings beneath her dented helm. From her chain hauberk extended crook arms, shattered throughout so that her hands hung limp at her sides. Her legs were broken, bent in awkward angles to which legs were not meant to be.
She looked up as he approached, her gaze wet and frightened at first, but upon spotting him there was an essence of relief, even of hope.
“Bayne,” she repeated, now the word little more than a whisper.
He dropped to the damp ground next to her, his knees sinking into the wet grass. His plated hands reached for her, but paused inches from her flesh, afraid he would break further that which was already broken.
Valdra’s eyes grew wider as she stared into his face. “Listen to me, Bayne,” she said, pleading. “You must listen.”
He nodded. “I am.”
Her head twisted with a creak to glance toward the burning mountain along the distant skyline, then with a grimace she looked back at Bayne. “You must trust what I say to you, though much of it will sound strange.”
Bayne nodded once more.
“Marnok has won,” she said. “You and I are the last, and I will not linger much longer. It is up to you to best him, to – ”
Here she stopped, gagging and coughing, then spitting up blood that dribbled down her chin.
For the first time he could remember, Bayne felt more than pity. He felt pain, true pain, pain of the heart, of the soul. He had kno
wn this woman in his past life, a life he did not remember, but when he had met her upon that mountainside in Ursia, there had been something. He would not call it a dawning of memory, but something else. Though he had not known the woman then, his soul had remembered, had called out to her. This was all a rush of emotion, of heartbreak with which he was unfamiliar. His preference would have been to face down a thousand iron-plated demons or dragons than to feel this awful thread of anguish.
Her smile was thin, the blood staining her teeth. “Not much longer now.”
He could but stare at her. For all his might there was no power within him that could ease her pain, let alone save her broken form.
“I know you come from the future,” she said, her eyes never leaving his. “Marnok sent you here in hopes of rekindling the past, to bring you around to him. But I’ve used what little power that remains to me to intervene. That is how I know you are called Bayne in that future time, whereas I have known you as Aris.”
She coughed once more.
Bayne reached out again, but a glance from her paused his hands.
“There is nothing that can be done for me, my love,” she said, “so please take away those eyes of pain. You are a god of war, and it does not suit you.”
He flinched. A sting.
“But even a god of war must have freedom,” she went on. “If you go down Marnok’s path, you will never taste freedom again. The centuries will pass long and slow, and you will be alone, always.”
His eyes pleaded.
“No,” she said. “I cannot come with you. It is too late for me. He has crushed me, and soon only you will remain. Here, in this time, you have yet to confront him, but once you do he will send you into exile. The you that is before me now, the you from the time to come, the you with no memory, must be the one to best Marnok. There is only one way.”
Bayne eased back to rest on his haunches, his eyes still pleading, questioning.
“As goddess of peace, it has been my curse to see the future,” Valdra said, “but know that we will meet one more time, you and I and two of our fellow gods, my sisters. This meeting will be in another world in another time far from this one, and there you will not know me, which would break my heart but for the knowledge that you are here with me now in the end of my life. It will be a god of that world, a god known as Ashal, who will bring us together one last time. It will be his benevolence for you that will compel him to do so. But after that meeting, and after this final one, you must return to Marnok, and you must strike him down.”