by Sam Sykes
“Sooner than that.”
At the top of the hill, the three of them met. The last time this had happened was several hundred years and many more bodies ago. Azhu-Mahl had looked very different back then. Mundas himself had not left quite so many of his burdens behind. And Qulon …
“Mundas,” a shrill song of a voice chimed out, “how good of you to crawl out to see me.”
Qulon never seemed to change.
Short, barely coming up to Mundas’s chest, she looked delicate and austere, an heirloom passed through several generations of a petty and spiteful family with many dead relatives.
Mundas had never seen much purpose in clothes—he didn’t feel cold, let alone shame or modesty—and so Qulon’s elegant silk leggings and long, collared tunic always struck him as ostentatious. But that decadence seeped into every part of her being. Her left eye was shut coyly, her right bright and observing. Her black hair was done up in a braid so long she wore it draped around her neck like a scarf. Even the long scar on her face, she wore like jewelry: a deep line running down from her eye that pulled the right corner of her lip up into a crooked grin.
“One never comes to see you, Qulon,” Azhu-Mahl said, sneering. “One only comes to see what damage is done upon your arrival.”
“And … you.” She turned that crooked grin, dripping with contemptuous false sincerity, upon him. “You’ve changed since I saw you last.”
“What is it you wish, Qulon?” Mundas asked before Azhu-Mahl could retort.
She looked to him with her one eye. “That’s it? Straight down to business? No pleasantries? No questions as to what I’ve been up to all these years? I’d ask what you’ve been up to, of course, but …” She glanced toward the distant shadow of Cier’Djaal. “By the bodies in your wake, I think I’ve an idea.”
“What a very clever way to demonstrate that you have no idea what we’re doing,” Azhu-Mahl replied. “Did you come all this way just to try to lecture us?”
“Lecture you?” Qulon placed a hand to her chest in mock shock. “Perish the thought. But if my presence is interrupting your delicate work, I can come back later. Say, when you’ve killed the entire city instead of just half?”
“As though anyone would listen to you, of all people, on matters of life, you selfish—”
“The oath.”
Both Azhu-Mahl and Qulon turned glares upon Mundas for disrupting their spat. He did not acknowledge this.
“Really,” Qulon sighed. “Is it necessary? We all know it. No one forgot it in the past thousand years. Must we—”
“Nothing is true until it is spoken, nothing is a lie until it is spoken,” Mundas replied. “We did not come out here to argue.” He fixed a steady stare upon her. “The oath.”
Qulon looked to Azhu-Mahl, who folded his arms over his chest and shrugged. She sighed, rolled a single eye.
“If you insist.” She made a gesture toward Mundas. “You’re senior. You begin.”
Mundas inclined his head and spoke low into the wind.
“There is no law but mortal law.”
“There are no gods but deaf gods,” Azhu-Mahl continued, bowing his head.
“There are no answers but the answer,” Qulon replied, likewise bowing.
“We who renounce do so to find the answer.” Mundas raised his head. “Let them be spoken.”
Qulon raised her head. “Death is not eternal.”
Azhu-Mahl raised his. “Flesh is not a prison.”
“Time,” Mundas said, “means nothing.”
He let out a long breath. These oaths had seemed more glamorous long ago. They had carried more weight, it seemed, took longer to speak. Or perhaps there had simply been more of the Renouncers back then.
In some quiet moments between so many years, he almost forgot why they needed them. But then, on nights such as these, he would remember the bloodshed that had made them necessary. And suddenly the oath seemed heavy again.
“Your presence here is unwarranted,” Mundas said. “The pact does not require us to disclose our pursuits toward one another. We all agreed that we would pursue our own ends toward the answer.”
“The pact does forbid interference,” Azhu-Mahl added, coldly.
“Direct interference.” Qulon held up a finger. “I am violating no agreement by stopping by.” She wielded her smile like a weapon, brandishing its saccharine insincerity at them. “Really, all this parroting of laws and oaths at me makes me think you boys don’t trust me.”
Emotion was something that Mundas recalled fondly. Much in the way, he supposed, a mortal would recall fondly a toy from their childhood. He had left much of his behind much in the way they would leave theirs behind.
And just as the sight of a ragged doll or a dusty wooden horse would anger a mortal at the reminder of time’s cruel passage, so too was Mundas annoyed that he could feel ire forming at the corners of his eyes.
“We are doing good work here, Qulon,” he said. “We have found our answer.”
“Indeed? And your work is so good that you have not seen fit to share it with the other Renouncers?” Qulon let out a shrill laugh. “Or were the rest of us to simply take you at your word that you’ve solved the problem of mortal frailty?”
“We simply thought not to bother you,” Azhu-Mahl replied. “One would hate to strain such narrow perceptions with so vast a vision as ours. Especially one such as—”
Mundas held up a hand. Azhu-Mahl slid into a sneering, contemptuous silence.
“It has been many years since we gathered,” Mundas said. “Many wars, many plagues, many famines; surely you have not been blind to it. Surely you have heard the screams they offer to heaven.”
“As I have heard the silence heaven offers them,” Qulon replied, coldly. “Do not presume to speak to me as though I am sympathetic to gods. I search for the answer, just as you do.” She shook her head. “But what you plan to do …” Her lips curled up in a cold grimace. “You would offer them slavery and call it salvation.”
Mundas regarded her carefully. “What do you think you know?”
“More than you believe I do,” she replied. “I know you have engineered two wars in this city. I know you have driven the people to despair. I know you intend to bring about a god for them to worship.” She cast him a sidelong look. “But more importantly, I know you, Mundas.
“You have always believed that the answer lay with gods, even as you agree that they are worthless. You have always sought to give them a savior. And, after so many years and deaths, you’ve never once considered that mortals need no shepherd.”
“It is precisely because of those deaths that I see no other way,” Mundas replied, more heatedly than he intended to. “Mortality is a curse, a two-headed hound that fights itself for scraps while it starves to death. The best and brightest among them still do not seek anything but power for themselves. They need guidance. If heaven will not grant it to them, then I shall.”
“By delivering them to a demon,” Qulon snapped.
“By giving them someone who will listen,” Mundas retorted. “By giving them someone who has the power to save them. The God-King was so named for—”
“I have read the records,” Qulon interrupted. “Though perhaps not the same as yours. What I read was the tale of a cruel tyrant who craved absolute control over his subjects and was cast into hell for it.”
Mundas stiffened. “He has had time to reflect upon this. He has had time to learn.”
“No one ever truly learns, Mundas. A demon’s mind is expanded, but it remains finite. It only means his penchant for savagery is that much broader than a mortal’s. You may try to temper him, you may try to guide him, but he will not be commanded. Sooner or later, he will return to what he knows.”
“If we are to believe that gods are deaf, we must also question their judgment,” Azhu-Mahl chimed in. “And if they saw reason to cast him into hell, that is reason enough to question whether he deserved it. We all knew that the answer, when we found it, wo
uld never be perfect.” He cast a sneering smile toward Qulon. “Ours, at least, has a lower body count.”
Only at that comment did Qulon’s serenity crack. Her mocking confidence slipped away as her lips curled back, baring her teeth. The scar on her face seemed to grow into a chasm as her face screwed up in anger.
“It remains,” she snarled, “the only way.”
“The only way to a mass slaughter,” Azhu-Mahl scoffed.
“You have always looked down upon the mortals,” Qulon snapped. “You, with all your powers, think them simple and weak, sheep that must be herded. I see creatures destined to be strong, to need no gods, let alone demons posing as them. They are burdened by such reliance, held back by their own fears of a heaven that doesn’t exist. Once they shed these …”
“And you intended to make them do this through murder.”
“Through nature,” Qulon retorted. “They are born in conflict, spit out upon an earth that tries to kill them. They think, they endure, they survive, they master. They merely need to figure out how best to do this.” She sniffed, trying to force her composure to return. “They are creatures of conflict. Let them embrace it.”
“You advocate slaughter,” Azhu-Mahl snarled. “A world where the weak are killed for no other reason than because someone could kill them.”
“If they are to master this world, they must discover what works. That which doesn’t must be left behind.”
“This indifferent savagery is why we renounced the gods in the first place!” Azhu-Mahl all but roared, his voice shrill and angry. “What good do we do them if we sit back and let them murder each other?”
“Perhaps it’s not as charming as your tale of a god descending from on high and delivering them,” Qulon replied, forcing her smile saccharine once more. “But it at least treats them as more than beasts to be herded.”
“You have seen what we’ve seen,” Mundas replied. “The wars that burn within Cier’Djaal’s walls are nothing compared to what the mortals can accomplish. They need guidance, they need a shepherd.”
“A shepherd never comes without a sty and filth to roll in,” Qulon replied. “There is no worship that is not slavery, there is no god that is not a tyrant, there is no miracle that comes without a cost.”
Shame was not something Mundas recognized, let alone felt. It was a mortal construct, designed to herd the others into obedience. And, for the irritation he felt at Qulon’s smug smile, he felt no shame.
Merely regret.
Regret for the precious time wasted in coming out here, regret for thinking that Qulon could ever be convinced of the answer, regret for believing that he would be needed here.
He exchanged a brief glance with Azhu-Mahl, the same conclusion reached between them without words. And as he looked back to Qulon, and as she regarded him through her eye, he saw that she, too, saw no more reason to expend words. And so, with the briefest of nods sparing the briefest respect she was owed, he turned to go.
And that was when he saw it.
A flash of movement, the barest twitch of muscle, out of the corner of his eye. For the briefest of moments, Qulon’s crooked smile had become one immense grin of profoundly unnerving joy.
He had seen that smile once, long ago.
He could still recall the smell of the corpses cooking in the sun.
And that was when he knew why he had come here.
“What is it?” Azhu-Mahl asked as Mundas halted.
“You,” Mundas spoke, an edge of fire in his voice.
“Me?” Qulon replied, voice lilting like a cracked bell.
“You are plotting something,” Mundas said. “What is it?”
“Are we all not plotting something?” She shrugged, smiling. “The Renouncers were formed to plan, after all.”
“If you are intent on interfering with our answer, you will reap nothing but carcasses and misery,” Mundas said with what might have been a snarl, had he the capability to do so. “Step away from this, Qulon. Pursue your own ends. In time, you will see we were correct.”
Her smile faded. She looked at him through her eye and spoke slowly.
“Is that a threat?”
“It …” He caught himself. “We maintain the pact. We do not interfere directly with one another.”
“Nor do I intend to,” she replied. The smile came creeping back. “Directly.”
“What is this?” Azhu-Mahl swept forward. “What are you scheming?”
“Scheming? A Renouncer does not scheme. A Renouncer seeks truth, as you have done.” She turned away, folded her hands behind her back. “I really do admire your plan, gentlemen. Create enough misery that mortals will crave whatever savior you give them, even if it’s a demon. Really, I can’t see how that might go wrong.” She paused. “Unless, of course, they find a different savior.”
“Qulon …” Mundas began.
“Spare me, Mundas,” she replied. “The answer is never a monologue. It is a debate, forever going on, an argument in which everyone has a chance to voice their views.”
And she turned. And her smile was slow and soft as a porcelain knife.
“All I’ve done,” she said, “is offer my rebuttal.”
TEN
THE PLEADING KNIFE
What concerns me are the scraws.”
“The what?”
“Those giant birds they ride.”
Words passed through a cloud of pipe smoke. Scents of confusion, of fear, of anger through the reek of tobacco. Spilled ink and cold meals and hours upon days in the same small, stinking, sweltering room.
These didn’t bother Gariath. Not anymore.
“If they were capable of striking at us,” Daaru muttered, “they would have by now, wouldn’t they?”
“Not necessarily,” Mototaru replied, chewing on his pipe. “We drove them from Shaab Sahaar, but we didn’t get all of them. We can assume that their wars in the city have occupied them. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t turn on us when we marched.”
“It’s not a quick march to Cier’Djaal.” Daaru let out a low hum. “Birds flying over our head, dropping fireflasks, shooting arrows for that many miles …”
“Just so.”
“What do you suggest?”
Gariath stood over the same map as they did, staring down at the same parchment they had been staring down at for so long. And for all that time, they had been talking of strategies and casualties and acceptable losses and other terms that, if they came from human mouths, Gariath would smash their teeth in for speaking.
But still, he could only barely see the map. He could only barely hear their voices.
“Send a secondary force up the river.” Mototaru drew a finger across the Lyre, toward Cier’Djaal on the map. “Tho Thu Bhu river barges. We can cover them with green fronds that won’t burn. Force them to send their forces to intervene them.”
“That will divide us.” Daaru shook his head. “Our original plan was to storm the three openings to the Green Belt. To send a force of any size up the river, we would abandon one of those openings.”
“It divides them, as well.” Mototaru tapped the map again. “If they focus their forces on the Green Belt, they won’t have enough troops to counter our warriors from the river. If they deal with our barges, then we don’t have to worry about those troops at the Green Belt.”
Daaru let out a low, frustrated growl. He glanced to Gariath, but only for a moment. Mototaru didn’t even bother. Both of them, over the course of hours, had learned that whatever he was thinking, he was not willing to impart to them.
Just as well.
If they knew, he thought, they would just quietly pack up and go home right now.
His mind was somewhere else, somewhere across a hundred sweltering hours and miles of hot sand. There, he couldn’t hear anything but the moan of a hot desert wind mingling with the screams of the dying as it blew over blood-soaked sand. There, he couldn’t see anything but a road of tulwar flesh and tulwar blood, leading right to the gates
of Cier’Djaal. When he closed his eyes, when he opened them, it didn’t matter; he couldn’t see anything else.
Lesser minds might have called it a vision.
Gariath would have called it annoying.
And he would have said so, but every time he was tempted to open his mouth, his mind went somewhere much closer, to the darkness of the warehouse and Kharga chuckling in the dark. And no matter what he wanted to say, he could only hear seven words.
Have they told you how it ends?
“What if the humans have torn each other apart by now?” Daaru asked. “What if there are no … bird … things?”
“Brilliant.” Mototaru puffed on his pipe. “Inform the soldiers to prepare for any sneak attacks by giant ox-women that walk on two legs and spew fire from their twenty nipples.”
Daaru blinked. “W-what?”
“Yes, now imagine hearing something that stupid every sixteen breaths. This is what it is like discussing strategy with you.” Mototaru snorted, expelling great clouds of pipe smoke from his nostrils. “In war, fortune favors whoever feeds it the most bodies. We would be idiots to gamble on something we have no reason to believe.
“Scraws.” He thrust the tip of his pipe at the drawing of Cier’Djaal. “Phalanxes. Legions. Dragonmen.” He glanced at Gariath. “Big dragonmen. We must assume all of them are present in Cier’Djaal, all of them want to kill us, and all of them will be very hard to kill.”
Daaru sighed and ran a long hand across a long face. The barest hints of color rose into his complexion but quickly died as he slumped against the map table. He waved at Mototaru to continue.
“We must have a plan for anything the humans can do to us,” Mototaru said. “The barges we send upriver must have enough warriors to come at the humans from behind. I suggest no less than twenty barges, each one with a dozen warriors or so. Enough for a full contingent. That will—”
“How many will survive?”
Mototaru almost choked on his smoke. Daaru looked up suddenly. Both of the tulwar looked at Gariath as though they just now noticed him. The dragonman himself hardly noticed it when he spoke, the words falling from a numb mouth like so much drool.