What choice did he have, really? Levarre agreed.
It was Levarre who marched down and called for the wagon master to lead the slaves toward Beron. For the space of a heartbeat he’d been certain the other slavers would rebel against their new plan. He too might have considered it, but finally the pale women were brought to the city of blooms and men took the place of the horses that refused to go farther. Another hour or more lost to the efforts, but well worth it.
Ariah watched on and nodded his approval as the pale women and the Undying were delivered. Without hesitation he gifted Levarre with a long dagger and a short sword that bore the same unsettling mark as Beron’s.
After the promised delivery the demon pointed toward the north. “Your enemies, Brogan McTyre and Harper Ruttket are there. You must find them, bind them and deliver them, along with the other men who have created this turmoil. In the meantime, I will discuss the ways of the gods with their faithful followers.”
As he spoke Ariah’s visage changed and once more became nearly unbearable. Beron and the men were glad to leave.
“What have we done, Beron?” Levarre’s voice was shaken as it had every reason to be.
“We have broken from the gods that have punished us and become the priests for a new god, one who would see us put into power over all we survey.”
“The gods will be angry.”
“They are already angry. They are destroying the world. We will become the saviors of this world, Levarre, and the people will be grateful for all that we have done.”
Levarre was silent, but he nodded his head.
He would come around in time. He was a good friend, which was why Beron had offered him a part of the pact.
Besides which, if Levarre failed him, he would be sacrificed to Ariah. Beron was new to the idea of worshipping a god, but he intended to do it the right way.
Messengers were sent, calling for more forces. The slavers wanted to be paid? They’d come and serve. As a rule, slavers liked to be paid.
Then it was merely a matter of following Ariah’s guidance. They rode west, toward the distant mountains, and veered lightly south as that was the direction Ariah said they should go.
Fourteen
Where the Rains Go
Myridia looked out at a land as different from her home as any could be. On the other side of the mountains waters flooded the land. On this side the river poured steadily through the vast crystalline cave, but there were no storms, no raging winds, and no rains soaking everything.
So far, there was peace. It would not last.
The night people had not done anything yet, but she could feel them as surely as she felt the pull of the Sessanoh. There was an urgency in her guts. She knew the others felt it too, or at least some of them did. The gods did not speak to her. They had never spoken to her. She was leading, but in this she was alone.
Lyraal was walking the perimeter of their small camp. She carried her sword over her shoulders and whistled softly as she eyed the world around her. Lyraal was not trusting. She would have made a better leader but refused.
“Fine, then.” Myridia almost spat the words. “I’ll lead.”
Even as she said those words she felt the first cold touch of air from a place that she sensed but did not see.
Once there was a city that could only be seen at night. Garien and his people paid the price for visiting. It was not a temptation she could permit.
“Up!” The sun was just rising and the others were sleeping, exhausted. That did not matter. She had led them into danger with the troupe and the things that followed. The troupe was gone, perhaps, or merely joined with the night people. In any even they had to be avoided and failing that they had to be cut down.
Her people had lost so much. She had wanted to let them have time to adjust, even knowing that time was a precious commodity. No more.
“Up, I say! We have a long way to go and we will do what the gods demand.”
Lyraal walked through the camp, kicking at the legs of anyone too foolish to stir. She did not want to lead, but she was an excellent means to make others obey.
The other woman nodded and offered her a small grin of approval.
It was enough for now.
The Sessanoh waited. According to legend there were more of their kind waiting at the Mirrored Lake. They would find out.
Myridia looked over her shoulder, back toward the mountains once again. Somewhere behind her the night people did whatever they did in the daylight hours. She’d keep her distance if she could. If not, she and hers would endure whatever happened. That was all the choice they had.
* * *
Edinrun was called by many names; most were complimentary. In the finer arts there was no greater city. Universities and colleges were in abundance and, if one wished to learn, one merely had to observe a few rules and possibly offer coin in exchange for lessons, mundane and arcane alike.
The great storms had not reached the city yet, but they would be on their way shortly – seers and charlatans alike agreed on that. From the great wall that surrounded and on occasion protected the city, if one chose to take the time, one could see the towering black clouds as they rose higher and higher in the distant north and spread to the west like a vast shadowy wing. If that were a wing, however, the beast that spread that limb would indeed be godlike in its expanse.
Some were already saying it was the end of the world, even among the enlightened who no longer believed in gods.
It was to this place that three of the He-Kisshi came. They drifted down from clear skies and alighted themselves on the great wall.
Like penitents at prayer, they marched slowly along the wall, ignoring the awkward silences and the fearful stares cast their way. They were not there to speak to humans. They were there to do the will of the gods.
The First Tribulation was Storm. In time, if not stopped, the winds and rain and furious lightning would shatter the world, but it would take time. To the north, few doubted the anger of the gods.
In order to make certain that the south understood the anger of the gods just as well, the He-Kisshi came to deliver a message.
Words would not suffice. They seldom did.
And so it would be action.
The Second Tribulation was released into Edinrun.
The Second Tribulation was Madness. The gods watched their servants at work and knew that it was good.
* * *
The rains were not stopping. Brogan shook his head and spat. He’d never run across so much rain in his entire life and he wondered if it was possible to flood the whole of the world.
Beside him, sitting on a pile of oilcloths he’d be assembling into a tent soon, Harper sucked contentedly at his pipe, the aromatic smoke drifting around him lazily.
“Will you ever stop puffing away on that infernal thing?”
“Not likely. I find comfort in it.”
“Wine is cheaper.”
“Weighs too much, and too many people want to have a nip of it.”
“You should quit it anyway.”
Harper eyed him and smiled. “You kill those gods, I’ll quit smoking my weed. Until then let’s just say it calms my nerves.”
Harper looked to the distant eastern horizon and continued smoking.
“Your nerves need calming?”
“There’s trouble coming from the east.” Harper tapped the ashes from the bowl of his pipe against his boot heel and watched the embers die in the rainwater.
Brogan saw what approached and was not certain what to make of them. They were female, to be sure. They were pale, absolutely.
For a moment he thought the creatures were the slave women he’d sold off. But their faces were bestial, with large, dark eyes and mouths full of sharp teeth. Their hands were clawed with long fingers and what looked like webbing between those digits.
They were heading for the camp and coming along at a hard run.
Brogan gave a sharp whistle. Harper did the same and the men with t
hem that had been setting up camp immediately went for their weapons. Some didn’t even bother to look for what was attacking, but instead prepared for the attack.
“Archers!” Brogan reached for his own bow. He wasn’t the world’s greatest bowman, but he could live on what he hunted and that meant decent accuracy.
The winds were light. The rain was heavy. He drew an arrow, nocked it and released as the first of the white things came within range.
Not ten feet away from him, Harper was doing the same. Arrows rose without military precision, but they flew high and fast, and when they dropped again most of them drew blood. Seven of the white women fell to their injuries. The rest moved faster, coming in on hands and feet in some cases or simply running in others.
Brogan’s second arrow missed. The third punched through one of those large, dark eyes and dropped the creature in the mud. Two more arrows, two more hits before the enemy was too close to allow for many ranged attacks. There were a few of the lads who were better at archery than he was and who continued to fire arrows at a terrifying rate. From this close the impacts dropped the women with arrows doing horrific damage, often punching completely through bone.
Brogan took up his axe and met the charge of one coming his way. She slashed with webbed claws and her speed was impressive but her strength was obscene. Had it not been for his cloak, the fingers of the creature would have cut him apart. Instead she was tangled long enough that the head of his axe bit deep into her chest and sent her staggering back. The second swing carved away a large section of her face and left her down and screaming.
They were not fighters. Whatever they were, strong as they were, the things were not trained at all. They flung themselves clumsily at their enemies and made wide swipes with their claws in the hopes of hitting something. They were fast enough that a few of them did, in fact, cause great harm, but they were the exceptions.
The mercenaries, by comparison, were hardened fighters. Most of them had been soldiers at one point or another, and even those who had not served in armies had been trained with swords, with axes, bows or spears.
Harper took his usual stance at Brogan’s side and they advanced together, watching each other’s flanks as they cut into their enemies. The white women were terrors to behold: exactly far enough away from human that it was hard to accept they were real. Exactly fast enough to make up for their lack of skills. One of them cut three fingers deep into Brogan’s arm even as he drove the tip of his sword through her throat and shoved her back, choking on her blood.
Beside him Harper moved grimly and quickly. Several of the things screamed at him in a language that Brogan could not understand but had heard from the white women and the men who killed his family.
Four of them came for him at once, pouncing like feral cats. One he kicked in the face as it dropped low. Another he slapped with the flat of his sword. A third got the axe in her side as she tried to twist away. The fourth knocked Brogan off his feet and sent him sliding through the mud.
The sword slid away and he scrambled for his knife.
She came at him again, sliding through the mud herself as she reached out to grab at him. The knife cut into the palm of her hand, carved halfway through bone and lodged there. Brogan twisted, pulled at the handle of his axe and tore it free from the one he had stuck it in. The she-thing hissed and lunged and Brogan’s axe cut into her neck and shoulder alike as he swung.
He had to kick the dead thing in its face to get his axe back. By the time he was standing the majority of the white women were dead or dying. Laram had one pinned in place with a spear and it screamed its agonies into the wind. Desmond stood over one that he had literally cut in two with his axes. Sallos was panting and holding his arm, which was bleeding freely enough to be a bother. Anna was already next to him, urging him over to where she could sit him down.
Harper said, “They did not stay slaves. I don’t know if they escaped or if they were sent after us, but they did not stay slaves.”
“These are the Grakhul?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so, but they called me by name and they accused me of killing them.” He lowered his head a moment. “To be fair, I did.”
“No, Harper. You did not act alone.”
His friend looked at him. “I made a choice, Brogan. I will accept whatever stains it leaves in me. I would do nothing different, given a second chance.”
That was one more reason to strike down the gods. The very notion should have terrified him. He had seen their power from a distance, had seen their servants, both the He-Kisshi and the Grakhul. The gods had condemned him and challenged him and even now there were armies gathering to hunt him down. Even so, he was gathering an army of his own. It was a small army but they were loyal enough. Those that knew him understood why he’d committed his sins, if sins they were.
Still, he looked around at the dead women and felt no guilt over the kills. He thought of the thing in his saddlebag, the fur that continued to move, to struggle to be free to the point that every night he settled the matter by wrapping it in yet another oil cloth and nailing that cloth to the ground with tent poles lest it try to escape.
The very notion of that, when he let himself dwell on the situation, was nearly enough to make him want to scream and run off into the night. Dead should be dead.
Surely his family was dead enough. They were not afforded the luxury of coming back from what had been done to them.
Brogan lent himself to the task of stacking the dead to one side of the camp. He studied them carefully, the webbing on their hands, the odd, scintillating scales on their flesh, small enough to go unnoticed at first. They did, indeed, have different teeth, but only in that they were sharper than he’d expected. A close examination showed that the sharper teeth had actually slid down over perfectly normal ones, like a second set that acted as a shield. They had hair. They were adapted for swimming, he supposed.
“What the hell are these things, Harper?”
Harper stared long and hard, then shrugged. “They are dead. That is all that matters.”
Brogan could not argue with that.
“Why did they attack us?”
“Because everyone on this planet wants us, Brogan.” Harper scowled lightly. “The only good news is that they want us alive for now.” He paused then added, “Whatever it is you plan on doing, it has to be soon. They’ll keep looking for us and I know some are loyal, but sooner or later one of ours will aim to take us for the rewards being offered.”
“What rewards?”
“Don’t be a fool, Brogan. There are always rewards.”
“Aye. There’s that.”
“So what are we doing?”
“I’ve already said. We’re going to find a way to kill the gods.”
“How?”
Brogan nodded toward the bundle he’d already nailed to the ground. “There’s the first step. We have other places we need to go. There’s a cave inside the mountains that I need to visit.”
“A cave? What sort?” Harper looked at him and scowled.
Brogan pointed north. “There. The Broken Swords. Somewhere in that madness is the secret of what I need next. The challenge is finding it.”
Harper stared at him as if he were losing his mind. “It’s only a legend, Brogan.”
“I thought so too, but the Galean said otherwise. Whatever the case, I’ll try to find what I need and I’ll finish what has been started.”
“Brogan, it’s a madman’s game.”
“Harper, it is the only game left. We fight or we die. I fight or I die. The gods want me dead. The feeling is mutual.”
He looked at the distant crystalline shards that ran through the mountain range.
“One way or another, this is all that is left. Live or die. Win or lose. I have no intention of dying. I will not let the gods win. All that they have taken from me, I will take from them.”
On the other side of those very mountains twelve of the Grakhul continued their quest to find the
Mirrored Lakes, the Sessanoh, so that they could prepare for the sacrifice of Brogan McTyre and his cohorts.
Directly to the east a band of slavers was coming for the same man, intent on capturing him and torturing him for as long as they could before he was surrendered for sacrifice. They did not follow the gods, but instead followed a new deity, a demon that promised them all they could desire.
To the south several groups were gathering, drawn to Torema and to Edinrun. There they would find their world was already changing more than they wanted to know.
Four of the Undying were dead or missing. One hid itself among the humans and another was bound and sealed in a package carried by none other than Brogan McTyre.
In a distant place, where once the Grakhul offered sacrifices to the gods and dwelled in a city called Nugonghappalur, the ground was shattered and crumbled into the sea. What was left was a collection of harsh, jagged stones that rose out of the waters when the tide was low and hid beneath the waves when the waters rose. Half a league off what had been the shoreline a great arch of stone seemed to rise and fall with the tide as well. That archway, that portal to other places, seethed with electricity. Lightning caressed the stone and never did the least bit of damage. At certain times, as it had always been said by the Grakhul, the gods would make their presence known, sometimes even entering the world of man to mete out their justice. Mostly, however, the gods merely watched and passed judgment from afar.
There were Five Kingdoms. One was under water, the last of the towns and cities were drowning in the waters drawn in from the sea as the land was shattered and the oceans crept closer.
Above the north and eastern skies the clouds grew in a slow moving tempest, eating the land and spitting out the corpses of those too slow to escape the wrath of the gods.
In ten places around the land, there were hidden doorways to other realms, prisons created by the gods to keep demons locked away, secured and hidden from the world after they served their purpose and punished those who defied the gods.
The Last Sacrifice Page 28