“Did you know this was coming?” Cyrus asked, and he did not even try to hold the danger out of his voice.
“Mind your tongue, Cyrus Davidon,” Vidara said, her voice soft, but with an unmistakable hint of menace in it. “For my rage might match your own right now, and us hacking great pieces out of each other would do little to advance the vengeance we both seek.”
“Did you know?” Cyrus asked again, taking another step and then holding himself back, as if he had lashed a great chain to the nearest stone to keep himself from charging forward. His rage was like an animal within, desperate to claw out and then claw someone else.
“Of course not,” she said, still not turning. “If I had known—” Her hands were limp at her sides, but she flexed the left one. It looked grey in the moonlight, too, like a thin layer of ash had fallen over it. “But I didn’t.”
“Why now?” Cyrus asked. “Why … after a year … why did he come now?”
“I assume because you’re a true pain in the arse,” she said simply. “And because all the conventional cat’s paws he’d tossed at you had failed. You saw to that—the Leagues, the Confederation, the Kingdom, Amarath’s Raiders, Goliath … every tool the gods had on Arkaria to control you, you disassembled and threw back.”
“I didn’t disassemble Goliath,” Cyrus said. “Their own Guildmaster sacrificed them on the altar of his godhood.”
“Yes, well, I’m not here to quibble with you,” she said, “but your mother as much as showed him how to do it.” Vidara turned her head, and her face looked off-color, not flesh-toned at all, as though the moon were turning a different shade entirely. “Quinneria was supposed to be dead. Alaric was to have seen to it.” She looked down. “But it turns out he trusted us even less than we trusted him.” She smiled faintly. “He was wiser than any of us gave him credit for.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Cyrus said, closing his eyes. “Bellarum … he’s …”
“He runs the pantheon now, Cyrus,” she said, causing a chill to run up his back. “The elementals—Virixia of Air, Rotan of Earth, Ashea of Water, Enflaga of Fire … they have deferred to him.” She looked at him through tired eyes. “It’s to be war, you see. He’s raised his fist, become more powerful than them all, and they are falling right into line with his long-laid plan.”
“What is his plan?” Cyrus asked, and she fell into silence. “What does he want?”
“To remove the ‘of war’ from his title, of course,” Terrgenden said, leading the rest of his party into the circle. “It’s all he’s ever wanted, really—power.”
“That’s not all he ever wanted,” Vidara said, barely above a whisper, “but it seems to be all he wants now. Power enough to destroy, to control all.”
“He wants to be the undisputed god,” Vaste said, nodding slowly as he leaned against one of the tall stones, looking as though he were about to collapse. “Doesn’t that mean that the elementals you just mentioned, the rest of the pantheon … that they’re … in the way of that goal?”
“I should say so,” Terrgenden said. “But me saying it doesn’t make any of my fellow deities listen to me.” He shrugged, bringing up his hands to make especially expressive. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“All those tricks catching up to you?” Aisling asked.
“You leave a pin on Enflaga’s chair one time, everyone calls you a trickster,” Terrgenden said.
“It was hardly one time,” Vidara said. “And that was hardly your only trick.”
“We’re talking to future marks here,” Terrgenden said, sounding a little pitying, “they don’t need to know what I do until they put on their boots and find them filled with mud—or worse.”
“Terian, he sounds worse than you at this pranking thing,” Vaste said.
“I’ve outgrown that, thanks,” Terian said smugly. “I’m mature now. I’m a Sovereign.”
“But still a jackass, my dear,” Kahlee said, nudging him playfully.
“I said ‘Sovereign,’ didn’t I?” Terian looked around for support. “‘Jackass’ is implied in that.”
“Mmm,” Quinneria said, drifting into the center of the circle of stones. She opened her eyes as she shuddered lightly, then looked to Mendicant. “Do you feel that?”
“Yessss,” the goblin said, making a shudder of his own under his robe. “That’s … it’s so raw … so …”
“What is it?” Terian asked, shuddering himself, though in a way that made Cyrus think it was down to cold or nerves rather than whatever ecstasy had driven it for his mother or the goblin. “Don’t leave us standing here in mystery.”
“This is Vidara’s seat of power,” Quinneria said, looking at the Goddess of Life, who was still standing in the open stream of moonlight coming down on her. “This place is an intersection of magical currents, and she draws from them.”
“Like a tick on a vein, eh?” Terian asked, and catching a wrathful look from the Goddess, held up his hands. “Or … a fat noble at a buffet?” Grimacing, he went on. “A, um, starving, friendly beggar at the—”
“Just stop now, husband,” Kahlee said, fastening a hand over his mouth, “before you cram your leg in all the way up to your genitals.”
“We know that’s not possible,” Vaste said, and when Kahlee gave him a questioning look, he said, “Because then he wouldn’t need you.”
“I wish I could be observing this under different circumstances,” Terrgenden said. “So amusing.” He sighed. “But I’m not, and neither are you. These are grave times, appallingly grave.”
“And you want us to kill gods to save you,” Cyrus said, cutting right to it.
“I thought they were going to help us?” Longwell asked, lance slung over his shoulder.
“If they’re not, we are truly outnumbered, even if we do summon up the last vestiges of our army,” Calene said.
“We can’t help you openly,” Terrgenden said, shaking his head sadly.
“And we’re dead.” Calene nodded, nose wrinkled. “Who wants to kill all the gods with no help?” She raised a hand. “Not me, no. I’m just raising my hand because … I don’t know why, actually.” She let it fall and looked to Cyrus. “I mean, all due respect to the Guildmaster—”
“We don’t have a guild anymore,” Cyrus said. “I told you, I’m the master of nothing.”
“Well, all due respect to you, sir—and I think you’re wrong about that,” she said, “but if we have only a small army, and no godly assistance, the idea of trying to even do the very Sanctuary thing of dividing and conquering these—these deities—one by one … well, it would seem impossible.”
“Not impossible,” Quinneria said, “but difficult. And yet, I don’t think Terrgenden and Vidara brought us here just so they could say, ‘Good luck, you’re on your own! Have fun.’” She looked at the God of Mischief. “Or did you?”
“There are boundaries circumscribing our action,” Terrgenden said, “even for a so-called trickster who pushes at them. If the two of us declared in loud voices our opposition to Bellarum, or moved against him openly, he would kill us both.” He snapped his fingers. “Bring in all the others, invade our realms, slaughter us, and that would be the end of that. He now has the power to do that.”
“If you managed to take out a couple gods on the way,” Cyrus said coolly, “I might consider that a reasonable exchange. Speaking as a general.”
“As you said, you’re the general of nothing, and definitely not the general of me,” Terrgenden said, looking right back at him. “As unattached as you may be to my neck, I’m quite attached to it, and I wish to continue living. I wish to win this war, to see Bellarum dead, to see his little alliance broken before it turns its spears and swords on me. That means I—we,” he pointed to Vidara, “can help you. But not openly, not yet. Because we are two against …” He inclined his head slightly. “Against many.”
“You don’t even know how many enemies you’ve got,” Quinneria said.
“Do you?” Terrgend
en fired back.
“Let’s say for a moment we decide to go along with your offer—” Terian began.
“Which you will, as you always do with these sorts of alliances,” Terrgenden said, speaking directly to Cyrus. “It’s a pattern with you, isn’t it? Get proposed something, consider against it, look for other options, and finally go along with it. It’s very wise to stop fighting the current and just flow with it, especially when you’re heading in that direction anyway.”
“But what does this get us?” Terian asked. “Maybe Cyrus and I can take a god straight up, with our weapons—”
“I have one as well,” Quinneria said, hoisting Philos up, “and magic beyond most.”
“I have the magic as well,” Mendicant said.
“I, too, have a godly weapon,” J’anda said, looking sidelong at Aisling.
“So do I,” she said with muted enthusiasm, “but apparently I have more regard for my life than the rest of you, because I’m not interested in being splattered by Bellarum or any of the lesser minstrels in his merry band. And a godly weapon or dozen does not simply level the battlefield. Gods are stronger than us, faster than us, and their magics are more powerful than—” she glanced at Quinneria, “well, more powerful than most of ours.”
“Theirs is more powerful than mine,” Quinneria said, “but it takes longer and requires more concentration to cast, and I can send up a cessation spell that will stop a god from using that magic, which is what I did to keep Mortus from escaping the Realm of Death when we fought him. I did something similar to Yartraak. It stops their spell magic, if I can manage to get it up before they blast at me with their magic, as you saw with Malpravus.” She shook her head. “I see no easy way to do this, though. I had thought if we could engage them one by one—”
“It may still be possible,” Terrgenden said, stroking his chin. “It will require a fair amount of treachery, though. Some … scheming, if you will.”
“Oh, we’re good at that,” Vaste said. “Or, well … he is.” He pointed to Cyrus. “Or used to be.”
“For killing my way to Bellarum,” Cyrus said quietly, “I can assure you I will bring every treacherous trick I’ve ever learned to bear. There is no line I’m not willing to cross to see him dead.” Cyrus stared hard at Terrgenden, then Vidara. “What are you two willing to do?”
There was a silence, and then the trickster finally spoke. “Any attack you make, even if successful, will ruin your element of surprise. Even a clever deception, something like you did with the dragons—he will at least ponder the possibility it was you. He’s been watching you since you were a child,” Terrgenden said, coming right up to Cyrus and looking in his eyes, “and he knows everything about you. Your strengths, your weaknesses …” The God of Mischief lowered his voice. “How you would react to him killing Vara.”
“He knows you’ll come after him,” Vaste said, “with everything you have.”
Cyrus thought about that for a moment before responding. “But he thinks I have nothing left. He thinks I’m finished.”
Terrgenden nodded subtly, but it was Vidara who answered. “Yes,” she whispered.
The answer came, obvious as hell to Cyrus, and a slow, satisfied smile slid across his face. “Then I guess it’s going to come as a real surprise when I show him just how wrong he is.”
10.
Alaric
I awoke in the back of a wagon with bars of some dark metal that looked ebony in the light of a fading sun. Twilight shone in on me with a blinding orange, and I closed my eyes once more to blot out its brightness. I slowly blinked to wakefulness, allowing my eyes time to adjust, my head aching and the memory of what had happened coming back to me along with the sensation of movement. A hard bump caused my jaw to hit the wagon’s bottom with a sharp shock. A persistent up and down sensation followed, wheels rolling over an uneven road.
“I was wondering when you would waken,” Stepan said. I tilted my head up to find him sitting on a wooden bench stretching along one side of the wagon, one of about ten men doing so on that side.
“How long was I …?” I ran a hand over my aching head, finding a sensitive spot on my brow that was smudged with dirt, presumably from where I had landed when I fell.
“I don’t know,” Stepan said, “I’ve only been awake a little while myself, but presumably at least a day since it’s looked like sunset for a while.” He nodded his head behind him toward the orange sky.
“It always looks like that,” a man said to my other side. A large man peered down at me with interest. His clothes weren’t the skins of my soldiers; they were rougher, more worn. His beard was immense, giving him a rugged, woodsman look of the sort not favored in Enrant Monge. His clothes looked like they might have come from a goat or two put together by an unskilled seamstress and subjected to the ravages of time. Beside him, Olivier huddled, shaking, his head bowed. The stranger smacked his chapped lips together; I noticed there was dried blood was matted in his mustache. “You come from the south?”
“Enrant Monge,” I said, looking at Olivier next to him, seemingly reduced to fearful, shaking silence.
“Mmhm,” the man said. “I’m Varren. Come from Pinradeonage, myself.” He opened his mouth to reveal terrible, uneven teeth. “They get you near the village, too?” A wind rustled through outside the wagon, stirring the long grass that filled the fields on either side of the road.
“Aye,” Stepan said, leaning lethargically back against the metal bars like he’d given up hope of escape. “You?”
“I’ve been here for months already,” he said, sticking out a dirty hand to point back in the direction the wagon had come. I hauled myself up to look out the bars at the back and saw … something … massive behind us in the distance. It was covered in what looked like scaffolds of the sort I’d seen the workers use when they tried to repair a fallen segment of Enrant Monge’s outer wall. This was ever so much bigger, though; it looked like it was a vast network of scaffolds, maybe even miles across, though it was hard to tell from the back of the wagon. “Been helping build that since they grabbed me.”
“They’re after labor, then?” Stepan asked, coming to the conclusion while I was still getting my wits about me.
“That’s all they use us for here, near as I can tell,” Varren said, and then he turned his head and spit past Olivier’s ear, out of the wagon. Olivier flinched as though the man had struck him, continuing to shake and hold himself, his hands clutching at his leggings, holding on so tightly that they’d become pale and bloodless from the intensity of his grasp.
“You’re talking about the blue men?” I asked, getting to my feet and grabbing the bars overhead. I looked around for a place to sit, but all the seats were occupied.
“Yeah, we call them Sky-men,” Varren said. “They don’t talk like us, either. Got their own language, and they expect you to learn the words. Only a few of their guards speak our language.”
“Why ‘sky-men’?” I asked, trying to decide where best to sit. The entire wagon was filled with my soldiers, so any seat was mine for the taking.
“You’ll see,” Varren said with a wide grin.
“You, move,” I said, looking at the soldier next to Varren. The soldier looked back at me with eyes that went from worried to angry in a second.
“Who says?” the man asked, practically spitting the words at me. He was bleeding from his eyebrow.
“I’m going to be your king,” I said, giving him a dose of his attitude right back. “Make room.” Varren, next to the soldier, grinned even more broadly.
The soldier looked at me with sullen eyes, and then lashed out with a kick, taking my feet from under me. Strong blows crashed in on me, rocking my head back and slamming it into the wagon floor. I heard something crack and then something else, the world flashing over me, my head rocking back and forth with the punches as my own soldier pummeled me.
“Arevane!” The shout cracked through the air, and I barely felt the wagon come to a halt. The soldier work
ed my face with punch after punch, and I flailed helpless slaps at him that didn’t so much as cause him to flinch. “Arevane!” I could feel warm blood and warm tears coursing down my face as he beat me, the pain of his punches mingling with the shock that I was being struck—and by my own vassal, no less.
The sky started to go black around me, that orange shade of sunset disappearing like the sun had fled. My eyes rolled uncontrollably, my lips drooling blood and spittle as another blow crashed into my nose. Warm blood ran freely down my cheeks and chin, and he kept hitting me, hitting me, and I was powerless to—
“AREVANE!” Something that sounded like thunder blasted through my consciousness and jolted me upright, my pain still there but a tingling sensation running over my flesh. The world around me was back to clear, the sky orange, the men lining either side of the wagon on the benches fighting and clawing to try and push against each other to slide down their benches, away from the cage door at the back of the wagon.
I looked and saw the man who’d been pounding me lying flat on the floor of the wagon at my head, staring into the sky above, drool twisting down his cheek. He did not stir, but his chest was rising and falling with breath. I brought a hand up to my face and it came back smeared with blood and salty tears. I turned and saw one of my jailers standing in the open door of the wagon, one hand aglow with white light, the other clutching one of those half-staves, the baton I’d been hit with. I didn’t have much familiarity with these bastards yet, but I recognized this one.
It was the same blue man who’d knocked me out to begin with. I could tell by the ill-favored smirk he gave my attacker as he surveyed his work.
“En egraave, arevane, cetoes markost arevane!” he said, very firmly, as though that made any sense. He shook his baton at every one of the men in the wagon, and Varren spoke. “He said, ‘When he tells you to stop it, you damned well better stop.’”
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