by Martin Davey
Landros looked at the head of the god on its spear, green wig blowing in the wind, red mask expressionless even in death.
And he knelt. He knelt and he bowed his head and he wept as he knelt. The Nameless One with his thousand faces, the Keepers with their masks. Shadows and deceptions. All he knew was that he had failed Ysora and he wouldn’t do so again. He had failed her but she had been brought back to him and he would protect her or die in the trying.
A blade touched him on each shoulder, his skin crawling from the touch, his shoulders trying to shrink away from the cold steel. “Do you denounce the Keepers?” Phailin asked.
“I do,” said Landros, head bowed.
“Will you fight until the Keepers are dead and destroyed and gone from the world?” All was silent except for the wind blowing, the baby still crying and the children playing.
“I will.” He knees felt cold in the mud, something dripped from his face. Tears or snot.
“Will you never rest until the truth is returned to the world, until all men know of the history, the true history of the Wars of Deliverance? Until all men know of their true gods?”
“I will not.” The memory of the blade of ice still skittered up and down his shoulders and Landros tried not to shiver against it.
“Good. Now rise.”
Landros rose to his feet once more, hands and knees thick with mud. He felt a hundred eyes on his back. Ysora showed no emotion at him taking the vows, only looked at him with eyes dark in her pale face.
“Good.” Laraine stepped forward, her cloak flapping about her shoulders. “This will be a long war and a bloody one.” She pointed to the head of Keeper Reioshar, silent and watchful on its gory spear. “Let our people see the true face of our enemy. Too long have the Keepers hidden behind their masks.”
Landros nodded and bit his lip. How long ago it seemed since Keeper Jerohim had come to him in his Dream, had chosen him to be Captain of the Watch. Flies were already buzzing about the head of Keeper Reioshar as Landros wrapped his hands around the spear. How proud he had been to be Chosen. How proud he had been telling Dorian that he was to replace him. He pulled the spear from the ground. It made a wet sucking sound. The god had been lit in red fire as he had spoken to him. The gods can see into the hearts and minds of all men, it was said. Flies buzzed angrily away as he lowered the head on its spear. “We love you, Landros. Your gods love you and have Chosen you,” Keeper Jerohim had said.
Landros blinked away the memory, blinked away the memory of the Nameless One striking down Clerk Lovelin.
“Too long!” Laraine shouted, almost screamed over the wind that now howled about them. “Too long have the Keepers been allowed to hide behind their masks!” She pulled the head from the spear, the blood already dry. She held it aloft by the green wig, the green strands seeming to snake about her hands and wrists in the wind. “Too long have they been allowed to lie and steal from our kind!” She held the head of the god in one hand, reached up with the other hand toward the mask. “See the face of our true enemy! See the true face of those that would call themselves gods of our kind!” And she pulled the mask from the face of the god, something wet and thick and sucking sticking to the mask as it was pulled away. The long wet things dangled and swung from the mask as she lowered it and held the head even higher. “See the face of our enemy!”
Landros remembered the poem by Solphin:
They burst through the gates,
With their hearts set out in flame,
And all the people fell down and prayed,
And all the people here now had fallen down to their knees before the head of their god, but they weren’t praying; they were screaming and screaming. And only dimly did Landros realize that he too had fallen to his knees, spear still in his hand and he was screaming with the rest of them.
EPILOGUE
He woke gasping for breath, coughing and choking, kicking the sheets from his ankles. Sweat covered his body, slick and warm, and he sat on the bed breathing deep and slow.
He looked around the room; thick woven rugs scattered about the floor and the walls, each one showing the Keepers in all their glory, bright and colourful. Furniture made from only the best wood, a chest of drawers fashioned from the green wood of Harragstown, a wardrobe which looked like it could only have been built by the great Veronin, a writing table made from polished veirwood, the paper on its top white and the inkpot with the crest of the Keepers painted in intricate detail on it. A rich room enough to rival his own. He breathed deep again, knowing he’d had a Dream, the shape of it not fading, never fading, but settling, almost like a dog adjusting the blankets in a new basket to fit its own shape. A single candle burned in the corner.
He coughed and ran a hand through his sweat-streaked hair and looked at the woman next to him. The sheets were tangled all about her, wrapping about her long legs and her narrow hips, her breasts were small and still erect nipples pointed to the ceiling. Blonde hair, dark with sweat, spilled about the pillows and he sniffed. Not usually his type. Usually he preferred brunettes with more meat on them.
The writing table was ready for him, the chair pulled out just so as he always insisted before sleeping every night. Strange how he had made that part of his seduction, preparing the table before the fucking. All the women seemed to like that, preparing the writing table for the great Solphin before getting plowed; especially the highborn ones, those whose husbands or fathers or grandfathers had been Chosen by the Five.
Solphin ran a hand through his hair and let the dream settle in his mind, like a still lake waiting for the ripples to subside after being disturbed by a thrown pebble.
The Great Solphin. That’s what they called him. The Great Solphin. How they introduced him at their balls and their parties. And he played the part, grew his hair long and wore the brightest, most outrageous clothes he could find in all Eshotar. Fucked their wives and their daughters and their mothers and their aunts and they only seemed to love him all the more for it.
The Great Solphin.
How great did one have to be to Dream and to write what he saw?
The woman on the bed stirred, moving a long leg, her hips curving, her thighs still bright with sweat, pulling the sheets to her breast, her back to Solphin. Yes, he could see why he had chosen her last night. Already he could feel the stirrings in the pit of his stomach. But no, the Dream was calling him, the pool was quietening, the ripples shimmering in the sunlight and going to wherever it is the ripples go.
He pulled on his robe, rich and red, and he pushed his hair away from his eyes, sat in his chair that had been pulled out just so by Josamine, that was her name, Josamine. Outside in the city, the bells were beginning to ring for the Day of Thanks, the greatest holy day of them all. He would probably watch the preparations after his writing. He liked to watch the hustle and bustle of the greatest city of them all. He liked to watch from the highest towers, the spread of the city below him, the luxury and the squalor mingling together in some teeming hive, the colour and the glory of the Keepers. This was the world the Keepers had made for them all, all celebrated in one great day. The strong and the clever and the brave were Chosen by the Keepers and lived a life fitting their skills. Those weak and cowardly and fickle were left to make their own way in the world. The Keepers could see into the hearts and minds of all men. Where else could a boy born in some backwater fishing village, too weak for his mother and too sensitive for his father, be called to the greatest city in the world and live a life of luxury through nothing more than the writing of his Dreams?
But the waters were stilling, the depths of the lake calling to him. He looked to the woman, Josamine. Her legs long and pale and her hair blonde. She had wanted him to wake her so she could watch him write, he remembered now. He waved a dismissive hand and left her sleeping as he went to the writing table, the thick rugs soft under his feet. Nobody should watch him write; never show your audience the truth behind the illusion. They liked to think of him pacing the room, his hair fly
ing around his face, think of him dressed in his finest velvets and silks, every word a torture, every metaphor written with shaking hand and furrowed brow, paper strewn all around his table, screwed and torn as he fought to find the truth behind every Dream.
He remembered when writing had been like that, long ago. Before the Keepers had Chosen him and he wrote in a shack by a river with reeds shushing in the breeze and berragulls crying plaintively in blue skies, with his mother and father despairing at him over his shoulder as he scribbled and scratched and tore and then scribbled and scratched some more.
The Dreams were thrilling, awe-inspiring. To travel in the memories of a god? To see what he had seen three thousand years ago? Battle and war and glory and heartbreak. But the stories weren’t his own, the writing not his own. The stories were the stories of the gods’ battle against evil, and he could glory in it as much as the rest of the world gloried in the poems of Solphin. But the stories would never be his own.
The woman stirred on the bed once more. She really did have nice legs, and the way she sighed into her pillow...He vaguely wondered who her husband was. He’d have to screw some loose papers into balls and toss them around the room before she woke.
But the waters of the lake were almost still now, the Dream about to take hold. He’d learned in the first week of his new life not to be standing when the Dream took his mind. A sharp corner of a table scarring his temple, something which only seemed to make the women pursue him even more when he told them it was from a jealous husband .
Josamine stirred again. Solphin wished he could remember where he had found her. From what he remembered of the place, some seedy bar in the darkest shadows of Forgotten Corner where they served the best tears of Mir, the smoky green drink that made his head foggy and his tongue thick. No matter, there were always plenty more women panting for the great Solphin even if he never found Josamine again.
He sat at the writing table and picked up the quill, smoothed the delicate white paper before him. Perhaps when the Dream was done, he would write a poem of the loveliness of her lines. How long had it been since he had written his own words? Just the thought of it filled him with despair and lethargy. A man’s words can seem so small and feeble when he has been Chosen to write the words of the gods.
The waters were still, sparkling in the sunlight, cool and calm for the briefest of moments, and then Solphin was submerged, sound and light and sensation broiled all around him, rushed past him, buffeted him with wind and random noises. A woman laughed, a man wailed and a child screamed, all merged into one terrible sound. Darkness and light and light and darkness. Fear and wonder and hatred and love. Glimpses of wonders no human had ever seen; golden pyramids floating in a black sky, twisted towers that were red and white and crooked and soared to touch fat white clouds in a blue sky. Great beasts swimming through the air, long tails flicking and green scales glinting.
Insitur, the realm of the gods. A world of wonder and beauty. Even this had failed to move him to write his own words. He had once written about the colour of the sun through a grey cloud, about the berragulls circling and crying overhead, once written about the winds battering the shaking wooden walls of a lonely fisherman’s hut. Now the realm of the gods wasn’t enough to make him write his own words.
And then the journey ended and the Dream began.
Yellow and red leaking across the sky like blood running across a smooth wall. Breath hot on his mask, wet with fear and hatred. He was on his knees, had known this would come to pass. Told his brothers that he would be the one to come to Yerotan where death waited. He would learn of this threat to his kind and their children, learn what it was that waited out here beyond the borders of Katrinamal. And now he knew. Death and agony waited for them all. A hundred, a thousand tiny hands grasping and tearing at him, their screams long and dark and cold. What had the foul creature done to him? What depraved magic had the monster found in death? He had known his own death waited him here on this field, but the feel of the death magic, the cold sickness of it, the grasping, feverish touch of a thousand unseen hands and fingers... His eyes widened behind his mask, his breath loud in his ears as he looked at the Nameless One, tall and serious faced as it raised its hood, concealing its face in shadow. The blade flashed silver in the red dawn and all was blackness.
More noise, more silence, rage and fear and heat and cold buffeting his ears and his eyes and his heart. Then there was more blackness, cold and oily and thick, blackness, a black flag that was named death and it was raised atop a battlement next to a village that burned brighter than the sun. And the black flag fluttered and whipped and spilled and leaked into the surrounding fields and farms and villages and towns. A tide of death and destruction tainting and violating everything it touched.
Hedges withered and died, crops rotted and failed, streams and rivers curdled and dried. Everywhere was death. And now he saw the one who carried the flag, a woman of no special beauty, too lanky and tall for that, her hair too wild and thick. And by her side stood a man with a serious face, a man with collar length sandy hair and a red coat flapping in the same silent wind that blew the woman’s hair from her face. The black flag was gone, the man and the woman were gone and there was wind, cold and wet and there was the Sea. The vast expanse at the end of the world, the waves whipping and crashing against cliffs looming and black. Despite the waves, despite the wind, the sun was brilliant and bright, too bright to look upon. But then as it advanced across the Sea at an unnatural rate, never climbing higher into the sky, always the same distance above the waves, Solphin saw that it was no sun at all, only a golden orb of such brilliance that men fell to their knees and shielded their eyes from it. Men who screamed and wailed as the brilliance of the orb stripped their skin from their bones, scorched and burned them until they were nothing but ash blowing in the wind.
The world burned in brilliance and the world froze in darkness until the two met, the black flag of death and the righteous burning of the orb from the Sea, and two figures emerged from the union. A grey King and a grey Queen, tall and grey and with no passion or compassion in their hearts as they watched the ash of the dead bury the world.
Solphin gasped the air of a dying man, sucked in the air, cold and glorious after the death of the world. He sucked in another breath savouring the beauty of the world of the Keepers. This was their gift, he had always known; a world without war, a world without the tyranny of the Kings and Queens. A world where a lonely fisherman’s son could rise to be the poet of the gods.
And the Keepers needed him now more than ever. They needed their poet to spread the word of the gods, spread the word of the danger to the world, to have the people rally to their gods.
Solphin, poet of the gods, lifted the quill and closed his eyes, breathing deeply, his hands still shaking from the horror of the dreams. When he opened his eyes, he began to write, his hand guided by the gods.
Rage! Rage against the dying of our blessed one,
When Keeper Reioshar faced the nightmare of ages past,
He knew death to the bone,
And cried “Rise! Rise! Rise my children,
That you will never fall beneath the ash of the dead.
Rise my children and save our garden from the curse of the grave.”
A long slender arm draped around Solphin’s neck. “So the great Solphin weeps as he writes, does he?” Her voice was low and husky from the tears of Mir the night before.
Solphin rested a hand on her arm, all desire gone from him. “Tears, my love?” He touched his cheek. “We will all be weeping soon enough.” And he turned back to his desk and continued to write.
COMING SUMMER 2012
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
Chapter 3
CHAPTER 4
Chapter 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
EPILOGUE