Legend

by Robert J. Crane

  Stepan opened his mouth to make reply but stopped at the sound of shouts at the far end of the camp. I turned my head to look, as did he and Olivier. One of the fires at north end, toward the village, was surging higher into the night, and for just a moment I thought perhaps it had simply gotten out of control.

  Then more shouts followed, then screams, and the sound of movement in the dark, and by the time the blasts began to light up the night, I already knew we were under attack—and that we had found what we had been sent to this place to search for.

  7.

  Cyrus

  “What mischief do you bring us now, Terrgenden?” Cyrus asked, his voice thick with disdain. He felt a physical reaction in his muscles, threatening to vault him out of his chair so he could draw his swords and cut into the bastard with both of them. With Praelior and Rodanthar together, I might just be able to—

  Terrgenden turned his head to look pityingly at Cyrus. “You can cleave my head from my body if it would make you feel better, though I expect you’d find as much satisfaction in that as you would attacking any random person on the streets of Reikonos to find your revenge.”

  Cyrus kept his hands anchored on the table edge. “You’d let me?”

  Terrgenden sighed. “Would it make you feel better? It’s not as though Bellarum and I are friends; he would rejoice in my death far, far more than you.” The God of Mischief sighed again. “Besides, I haven’t even delivered my message yet.”

  “Perhaps you should get to that,” Vaste said. “You know, before heads start flying.”

  “Indeed,” Terrgenden said in that peculiar accent of his. “Very well. I bring you deepest condolences from a mutual friend, someone almost as grieved by your wife’s death as you yourself.”

  Cyrus stared at Terrgenden. “Who might that be?”

  “Vidara,” Aisling said, staring at the God of Mischief with calculating eyes.

  “Vidara,” Terrgenden agreed. “Though I must admit to a little grieving of my own. You have my condolences as well, for whatever that’s worth—”

  “Almost nothing,” Cyrus said.

  “Cyrus … perhaps it might be wise to remember our place in the world,” J’anda said with a fair helping of caution, the torchlight dancing over his lined face.

  “It’s all right,” Terrgenden said, brushing the enchanter off. “Were I in his boots, empty words wouldn’t mean much to me, either.” The God of Mischief took his feet off the table and leaned forward. “So … how about instead I offer you a chance at your revenge?” He waved vaguely down the table at Quinneria. “Not that I’m sure her plan isn’t absolutely wonderful, but I believe Vidara and I might be able to offer a more inside look at the Pantheon, and exactly how it is arrayed against you at the moment.”

  Cyrus’s eyes narrowed in plain suspicion. Is he lying to me to draw me out? “Why would you offer me revenge against Bellarum?”

  “Maybe you missed the part where he said that the two of them aren’t friends,” Vaste said.

  “He said Bellarum would be glad to see his head cut off,” Longwell said. “That’s a bit more than not friends.”

  “Yes, it’s very much as though we’re enemies,” Terrgenden said, nodding affably. “Because we are enemies. Long have we danced around the simple fact that we hate each other. The others in the pantheon, they have gradually moved from being his avowed enemies to firmly placing themselves in his camp.” He made a face, pursing his lips and frowning in concentration. “I, on the other hand … I wouldn’t mind seeing you gut him and use his intestines for hanging dead animals you’ve killed—or whatever it is you do with your time when you’re not killing gods.”

  “I have a feeling that the amount of time I spend not killing gods is about to be severely reduced,” Cyrus said.

  Terrgenden chuckled. “Oh, yes, you’re very fierce, I know.” The smile faded. “You have more than just Bellarum, Enflaga, and Ashea against you. Virixia of Wind and Rotan of Earth stand … perhaps not enthusiastically behind Bellarum, but with him. And there are others in the line as well—Tempestus, Nessalima, Levembre … the list goes on and on.” He shrugged. “While I know you’re a virile sort of fellow, your army is looking a bit anemic these days.”

  “Your point?” Cyrus asked, catching the stray looks from everyone around the table. Terian, in particular, cringed away.

  “They’re not going to come at you in anything less than threes,” Terrgenden said. “Even in your reduced state, you can expect them to pounce on you when they get half a chance. Bellarum has rallied the pantheon in a way that hasn’t been done in ten thousand years. And then, it was against him.” Terrgenden smirked. “The times, they do change, don’t they?”

  Three gods at a time? The thought stung Cyrus’s throat, cracking through to his reason. “I …”

  “You can’t handle that,” Terian said for him, causing Cyrus’s anger to flare as he met the knight’s steady gaze. “We can’t,” the Sovereign finished.

  “There are still ways,” Quinneria said cautiously.

  “Oh, yes, of course, I’m sorry,” Terrgenden said. “I didn’t mean to deprive you of all hope … but you might need help.”

  Cyrus stared over at him. Three gods at a time … that seems impossible, at least for our numbers. His eyes flitted to Aisling, who caught his gaze and gave him an almost imperceptible nod. You can trust him, sort of, he took it to mean. “What do you propose?” Cyrus asked, taking a deep breath.

  “That you accompany me back to the Realm of Life,” Terrgenden said, pushing back from the table. “Any of you who want to embark on this fool’s,” he pointed at Cyrus, “errand. Because if we’re going to talk about the mass killing of gods … you might want the help of some of the people who were there for it when it happened the last time around.”

  8.

  Alaric

  Screams rang out across the army camp as tongues of flame lit the night, blazing through the air like massive torches. I had seen a fire swallower once, when he came to court to entertain us, and it looked like fifty of those were coming at the edge of the camp in the night, only they would have to have been giants to spray that much flame from their mouths.

  “What the …?” Stepan asked, scrambling to his feet. His clothes were made of expensive cloth, carefully stitched by our finest seamstresses. They weren’t quite as impressive as my silken doublet, bought from an overseas trader who came to port in Actaluere and carried to Enrant Monge as a gift, but they were an example of the best works of our kingdom. Most of the men fighting in the army had sandals and animals skins for their clothing.

  When I saw the first of our attackers, these breathers of fire … they wore armor and clothing that made Stepan’s finery and my own leather armor look as though it were the work of the hill people of eastern Syloreas.

  They came out of the night behind us while the flames were blazing ahead, and I turned to see … well, they didn’t look anything like the people I knew. They looked like … like men with skin of blue so dark it almost looked black, as though the midnight sky were stalking out of the shadows behind us. I saw one of them come surging out with something in his hand that he extended toward Olivier, whose face was white with fear, and whose head was turned the wrong way to see his attacker approach. The blue man jabbed Olivier in the back of the head, and there was a spark like someone had struck a flint stone. Olivier’s eyes bulged and he jerked, throwing his head back as though someone had stabbed him in the spine. Then he went limp as sleep and slammed into the ground face first, his arse up in the air.

  “An-drej, vadan dei!” the blue man shouted. He wore armor of sleekest metal that covered him from foot to neck, exposing his flesh only from the chin up. He wore a grin that told me he was a predator, used to attacking weaker prey. He gestured toward me with a long stick-like weapon, the one he’d struck Olivier with, and I went for my sword, drawing it at the same time I heard Stepan pull his own weapon. His was a weathered broadsword, and I knew from watching him spar w
ith one of my instructors that he was fair with it.

  “What is this thing?” I hissed as I stepped back. The sound of screaming was near deafening in the night air. Horses, men, and the howls of more of what I assumed were these blue beasts echoed in the night. I had never heard so much as a tale of men with skin of blue.

  “I don’t know,” Stepan said, standing at my shoulder, his sword extended next to mine. “Some devil, I think.” He swallowed visibly.

  “Is Olivier dead?” I asked, unable to keep myself from babbling.

  “Concern yourself with your own survival,” Stepan said.

  I held my sword in front of me, tip wavering, as the blue man regarded us with a malicious smile. “Ungh-rav.”

  “What the hell is he saying?” I asked. I had almost no control over my body, my fear causing my hands to sweat heavily around the grip of my blade.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Stepan said roughly, “we’re surrounded by enemies and the army is falling,” he raised his own blade in front of him, “we have to attack now and get out of here—”

  He launched into an attack but the blue man saw it coming. He parried, knocking aside Stepan’s blade with a casual swat of his stick. There was a flash of light as the sword made contact with the blue man’s weapon, and a crack louder than steel hitting steel.

  I was petrified, my fear a tangible thing, my bowels threatening to empty themselves in my breeches, but as the blue man swung around he opened up his side. I had a sudden flash back to my training, to the times when my instructor, a grizzled old swordsman named Rinkhoff told me, over and over, “Look for the opening, and strike for death when it appears!”

  I struck for death, lunging at the blue man when his back was half-turned, his teeth showing a wide smile to Stepan as he engaged my father’s courtier. I came at my quarry full-out, in a charge, taking the three long steps between us as I made to drive my blade’s point into the side of his exposed head—

  The blue man barely glanced at me as he raised his hand and caught the tip of my sword in his gauntleted fingers like he was snatching a fly out of the air. His steel fingers clenched tight around the weapon and I heard something break. I instinctively yanked back on my weapon and pulled it free of his grasp, but—

  The sharp tip of my sword, forged by our kingdom’s best blacksmith, was broken off like it had been made of nothing more than glass.

  I stared at my weapon—the finest our people produced—its tip twisted as though it had been dipped in one of the mountains of fire in the northeast. I looked from it to my enemy, and he flashed me a nasty smile.

  Stepan made his move while the man was distracted, swinging his sword around and aiming for the head. The blue man twisted, turning his back on Stepan and throwing out his free hand behind him as he plunged his stick weapon toward me. I saw him catch Stepan’s blade with a dexterity more impressive than I’d ever seen from any man. He latched onto the blade, grasping the sides, and crushed it in the middle as though it were freshly molded metal, still hot and malleable. He broke it right in the center and then jabbed his baton into my ribs.

  The weapon didn’t hit me particularly hard, more of a thump like someone poking me with a stiff finger. But it only touched me for a second before a surge of something racked my body and lit the night like summer lightning. My eyes blazed, the sky flared, and I could see everything in stark clarity—the blue man, grinning, his fellows in armor exactly like his, running wild through the army camp, some of them shooting fire out of their very hands—

  Then the brightness faded. My eyes fluttered shut, and I slammed into the earth, the smell of rich dirt filling my nostrils as the ground seemed to swallow me up into darkness.

  9.

  Cyrus

  The light of a teleportation spell’s end faded to reveal a sky lit by a full moon overhead, shining down with glittering silver beams upon meadows covered with flowers bright and opulent, full of color even in the leeching moonlight. Cyrus stared across the meadow at the flowers. They were listing curiously, their faces turned away from the sky like they were hiding from the moon.

  “This way,” Terrgenden said, beckoning them forward.

  Cyrus looked around him, trying to place the exact location. It looked familiar, of course, though the last time he had been here, it had been covered in deep drifts of snow. The smell of sweet flowers filled the air, and if he’d been in a different emotional state, Cyrus might have found it intoxicating. But he was not in a different state, and he took little notice of it.

  J’anda stood just to his side, his purple staff shedding a little light from the orb at its tip. Beyond him stood Calene and Scuddar, as well as Mendicant. To his other side was Terian, his hand interlaced with Kahlee’s. Longwell, Quinneria, and Vaste were beyond them. Aisling was lurking somewhere behind him, Cyrus suspected, but Terian’s other men had remained behind in Saekaj, along with Cattrine. He’d seen the look in her eyes, the one that told him that she would avoid becoming embroiled in his war, and he’d acknowledged it with a nod. As far as he was concerned, nothing more ever needed to be said about the matter.

  Only a day ago, I would have done anything to avoid this war myself, he thought. Now, given all that’s happened … I wouldn’t miss it for anything left in this land.

  He started after Terrgenden, matching the god’s modest stride. Cyrus suspected the trickster was capable of much more than the pace he had adopted, which meant he was slowing himself so as not to leave his audience behind in the meadows. The rustling of the grass as they walked was like a slow hiss.

  “This all looks different,” Vaste said.

  “Look at the adorable chipmunk,” Quinneria said. She snorted when Vaste jerked. “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.”

  “Oh, you’re hilarious,” Vaste said. “Is there any atrocity you wouldn’t commit upon a troll?”

  “I always enjoy your banter,” Terrgenden said, strolling along under the silver moon. “Some guilds, they take themselves very seriously, especially once they reach a certain level of success. It’s as though they get so focused on whatever they’re trying to accomplish that anything else falls by the wayside. Humor is always the first casualty, it seems.”

  “What is the second casualty?” J’anda asked.

  Terrgenden gave that a moment’s thought. “Ethics, I think. A sense of entitlement overtakes some of these individuals, an idea that the rules do not apply to them. That they perhaps make their own rules.”

  “Are you still speaking of the higher guilds?” Quinneria asked.

  “I think now I’ve transitioned neatly into speaking about all beings,” Terrgenden said, leading them toward a circle of tall stones of varying heights. It looked vastly different than how Cyrus had seen it a few years past, covered in a thick shroud of snow. The stones were massive, taller than he, and had they not been in the realm of a goddess, he would have wondered how they had been moved to their current positions. Moonlight fell over them, draping them in a soft white glow.

  Cyrus stared at the bridge ahead of them, extending over a pond, its waters motionless and the moon reflecting perfectly from above. He paused, unable to take another step, and the others halted with him. The garden around him was entirely too like the one at Sanctuary for his liking; it was a ripping in his very soul, sorrow making its way through him like a wave.

  “Cyrus,” Quinneria said under her breath. “It’s not—”

  “I’m fine,” he said, spurring himself into motion again after the God of Mischief, who had paused to look at him with his eyebrow quirked up.

  “Did you just realize that you’ll never see the gardens of Sanctuary again?” Terrgenden asked, with what sounded like sympathy.

  “There are a lot of things I’ll never do again,” Cyrus said, striding past him, “like killing Mortus or Yartraak. The past is past, after all.”

  “Is this the mopeyness you were speaking of?” Terrgenden asked once Cyrus was a few feet away.

  “Gods—errrr—heavens, yes,”
Vaste said.

  “Hm,” Terrgenden said.

  “Leave him be,” Calene said in a hushed voice. “He’s lost his wife and his guild. He’s not got anything left now, does he—”

  “Well, he’s got his mother, the serial troll annoyer and killer,” Vaste said. “That’s not nothing. She can make a breathtaking pie, after all.”

  “Thank you,” Quinneria said as Cyrus reached the apex of the bridge and began to walk down the other side. “Perhaps we should—”

  “We should let him go ahead,” Terrgenden pronounced, and Cyrus turned his head slightly to listen. “I think it would be best for all of us if we gave him … a head start.”

  “Because of the mopeyness?” Vaste asked after a beat.

  “Because there’s no one left who will mourn the death of Vara as much as he, save for perhaps the one who waits ahead,” Terrgenden said, his voice receding into the distance as Cyrus stalked on.

  I doubt the so-called All Mother will mourn my wife as much as I do, Cyrus thought, his fists clenching as he moved on, over the end of the stone bridge, cool, wet grass whispering against his boots. He paused, letting his head fall back as he stared up into the sky. I know someone else who will need to be told, though. He took a chill breath of the night air, letting it infuse him. It felt as though it heated up in his lungs, and he was filled with burning purpose once more. He could see the tops of the stones ahead, the circular structure at the edge of Life’s Realm a curious thing. In spite of the impressive size of the things, Cyrus could see little purpose for them.

  He stopped when he reached the edge of the ring of stones, their heights reaching above his head, and he stood there, feeling like he was standing outside a circle of some power, as though there was a shield to prevent him from entering. At its center he could see her, standing in a shaft of purest moonlight, the white glow leaching the lustrous brown from the Goddess of Life’s hair. She looked almost cronelike in this light, her shoulders slumped, her cloak of bright green turned shadowy grey. Her head was down, and she did not stir as he took a step into the circle.