Legend

by Robert J. Crane

  “Did …” Calene Raverle’s quiet voice came from behind him and Cyrus turned to see her standing above him, tentative, her wet cloak drawn around her like it could protect her from some expected wrath of his. “Did you really mean … I could have those?”

  He glanced at the claws and then shrugged, tossing them to her. She caught them, nearly fumbling the blades, her eyes hungry as she slipped them into her hand. They seemed a perfect fit, the lightning sparking in the moonlight and lighting up her pupils as she gaze eagerly at the weapon. She tried an experimental slash with them, and it was blazingly fast, so quick that Cyrus could scarcely see her motion save for the flash of lightning as she moved. A rumble of thunder followed, and the white light blazed off the blades as three strong bolts forked and hit the water, stirring the still surface of the ocean beneath them.

  Calene froze, her mouth open in a perfect “o” of surprise. “Uhhh …” she said, altogether too fast to be understood to anyone not used to the challenges of speaking with a godly weapon in hand.

  “Be careful where you point that thing,” Terian said, walking calmly past her, his axe up defensively, ready to absorb any excess lightning that might have flown at him. He looked at Cyrus. “Can we talk?”

  “Sure,” Cyrus said. “Calene?” he waved her off gently. “You mind practicing with that somewhere else? Preferably keeping it pointed in a safe direction?”

  “Oh! Certainly.” She tiptoed off cautiously, holding her arm at an uncomfortable angle, the blades pointed safely out to sea and away from the small party that lingered behind Cyrus, talking in hushed tones.

  “The calm after the storm, eh?” Terian asked, taking a seat on the thin air next to Cyrus and sounding pained. He stretched Noctus back over his shoulder and Cyrus heard the click as the axe was secured into its harness.

  “Kind of like the fury after the death of Mortus, I suppose,” Cyrus said, staring off into the endless seas ahead of him, the horizon lit white by moonlight, reflecting in a long trail across the waters between him and the edge of the sky. A thought occurred. “I wonder if something similar to that happened in Yartraak’s realm after we killed him in Saekaj.”

  “I don’t know,” Terian said, “but when I got Noctus from his treasure room, the place was dead quiet.” Cyrus looked at him out of the corner of his eyes. “I assume if he had any servants left alive in the Realm of Darkness, they’d skedaddled long before I came calling, or else they didn’t have access to his private chambers.”

  “Hm,” Cyrus said. “I’m sorry about Grinnd.”

  “It’s a war. People die.” Terian said. The words were firm but his voice was as close to despondent as Cyrus could recall hearing the paladin. “Grinnd’s best friend died in similar circumstances, in the jaws of a sea monster.”

  “So that’s what he meant when he said he was going to die like …”

  “Verret,” Terian nodded. “Yes. I led an expedition to kill a monster that was choking off Sovar’s supply of fish and … Verret was the only casualty.”

  “Was he the first person you’d lost under your command?” Cyrus asked, looking at the Sovereign with curiosity. I haven’t really seen this side of Terian before. I don’t think we’ve had a conversation about this part of leadership lately, if at all.

  “Yes,” Terian said. “You tend to remember the first, but the rest … they all run together after a while, you know, when you’re responsible for so many. I mean, now I have entire armies under my command, and citizens die every single day. The farther up the ladder you climb, the more people die within your tent, I suppose … but the less you feel it.”

  Cyrus nodded. “Narstron … wasn’t under my command when he died, but we came to Sanctuary because of my actions.” Terian blinked at him, brow furrowed. “I went on the expedition into Ashan’agar’s Den where we met Orion, Selene, Niamh and … Vara … because I wanted the Serpent’s Bane.” He slapped the grip of Praelior as he said it. “My avarice led us there, but he and Andren were willing accomplices after that. Our ambition led us up, I suppose.”

  “Do you still blame yourself for their deaths?” Terian asked.

  “Of course,” Cyrus said, and he caught the subtle nod. “Do you still blame yourself for—”

  “Yes,” Terian said. “But it’s not a raw wound anymore. More like an old scar that tingles every now and again.”

  “I know just what you mean. Fresh and angry when it’s first opened.” He thought back to the days when avenging Narstron was the dark thought always clouding his mind. “I stormed Enterra looking for vengeance at the head of an army, trying to find some way to right the wrong done to me—to me, as though I were the one that died.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Now it’s all faded away, with but a trace left behind to mark its passage.”

  “And this latest wounding …” Terian probed carefully, Cyrus recognized the signs. “Do you think—”

  “What I think is my wife died only a day ago,” Cyrus said without emotion, “at the hands of the God of War, the very deity who I had entrusted my life and fortunes to for a great many years.” He blinked, the cool chill of the sea air tickling him through his chainmail and underclothes. “Alaric and Vara helped me off Bellarum’s path, and apparently he’s the jealous sort, so …”

  “But this is bigger than vengeance now, isn’t it?” Terian asked, still probing.

  “Yes,” Cyrus said. “And it’s not as though killing Bellarum would bring her back. It won’t.” He saw a flash of the blue, and the memory of her eyes losing sight of him as they clouded over pierced his heart again. “She’s not coming back, not from what he did to her. And he plainly means to do more.” Cyrus shifted, his armor clanking slightly. “Bellarum’s thirst for war has expanded beyond watching mortals wage it upon each other. Now it’s a craven desire to pit his gods against fallible men and women and children who have no hope of saving themselves. When I put his head on a pike, it’ll be for a lot of reasons, but I know it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t decided to do this terrible thing.”

  “It’s almost as though he’s playing into your hand,” Terian said. “Pushing the gods into a war to unite mortals against his little pantheon. Like he wants you to kill them and come at him.”

  “Because he does.” Cyrus nodded. “He wants everything else that’s a threat to his power to die so that he can rise, he can ascend, he can—”

  “And it doesn’t cross his mind that he might … lose?” Terian asked. Now Cyrus could see the paladin’s reticence.

  “I don’t think we’ve seen him play his last advantage yet,” Cyrus said. “We are talking about the God of War, after all. Strategy and tactics are his bread and butter. For years he has manipulated people—including myself—into doing his bidding. He orchestrated the death of Mortus, pushed us into confrontation with Yartraak that he knew would bring death … he had his hand on the scales when Alaric’s fate was decided, and he pushed almost the entirety of Arkaria against Sanctuary to see which of us would fall. And that’s after he pitted his pawns, the titans, against us in the south.” Cyrus shook his head. “No, Bellarum is playing the same game he’s always played. Whatever he has in mind to do, it’s certain we don’t know all the means he’ll use to go about it.”

  “So, you know he’s been manipulating you,” Terian said. “And you think he’s doing it still now?”

  “If he didn’t have a purpose still in mind for me,” Cyrus said, staring at the calm sea, something that seemed so alien to the writhing feeling in his soul, “he would have killed me by now, I think.”

  “Why all this, though?” Terian asked. “If he’s so powerful, why pit you against the gods? Whoever comes out of that fight is bound to be both strong and determined. The survivor is going to be a hell of a threat to him.”

  Cyrus looked right at Terian. “I don’t know. I’m sure he has a reason, though.”

  “Doesn’t that worry you?” Terian frowned. “That you’re playing into his hand? That you’re pushing along his wheel,
with no idea that you’re even doing it?”

  “No.” Cyrus shook his head. “Because I have wheels in motion that he has no idea about, either.”

  “Anything you’d care to share?” Terian asked. “You know, to reassure your ally the Sovereign that we’re not just clearing Arkaria of the gods so that Bellarum can annihilate us and … I don’t know, do whatever he wants to do?”

  “He told the others he wants to start over fresh,” Cyrus said, pursing his lips in thought. “If we assume that’s true—and I don’t, but it’s a possibility—then I come to the conclusion that when the field is clear, there will be no pantheon, just one true god, and it will be Bellarum.”

  “But there’s not going to be anyone left to worship him,” Terian said. “If he wipes us all out.”

  “I expect there’ll be survivors,” Cyrus said. “He made it plain in our last meeting that any who do not serve will die. My assumption is that people who fear death will serve, and thus—”

  “And thus he has a following, while any of us who stand against him are … what, crushed on a final field of battle?”

  “Probably something like that.”

  “And you’ll be leading the opposition to his all-encompassing godhood, presumably?”

  “Either I will,” Cyrus said, “or else some alliance of the gods who are rallying around him.”

  “What if we carved them off?” Terian asked, leaning in conspiratorially. “What if we used Terrgenden and Vidara to make some overtures? Some of them have got to be realizing the game here—it’s not like Bellarum has been well-liked in the pantheon to date, after all. He killed Eruditia, for crying out loud. It kicked off a war ten thousand years ago and ended with them all rallying against him—”

  “So the stories go,” Cyrus said.

  “Yes, so they go,” Terian said. “My point is they’ve taken up arms against Bellarum in the past. If the gods are immortal, they must have long memories, and surely some of them still recall what he did in those days. You know Vidara and Terrgenden do. Every one of them we kill,” he waved a hand at the surface of the water below, glittering and unbroken, “we lose a potential ally against Bellarum. We talked a lot in this last year about dividing and conquering—”

  “There was never a union between us and the gods to divide,” Cyrus said. “They were never on our side; they just expected us to be on theirs.”

  “Well, he’s certainly broadening the split between us,” Terian said with some urgency. “He’s pushing us further apart, and we’re doing the work necessary to break ourselves off permanently. What if we just—”

  “Stopped?” Cyrus asked, staring at him. “If we just stopped killing them? Swore fealty to … Rotan, Virixia, Enflaga, Ashea … is there even anyone else left?” Cyrus’s lips split in a mirthless grin. “You want to go back to worshipping them? Just pretend none of this happened and swear fealty to the old gods once more? All is forgiven?” He looked over the calm horizon. “I doubt they’re going to forgive us for what we’ve done. Certainly not long enough to trust us in some battle to the finish with Bellarum. They don’t even trust each other enough to make that happen. Look at Vidara and Terrgenden, split off from the others.”

  Terian frowned. “You’re making a point I don’t like.”

  “Oh, well, in that case I guess I’ll just stop talking, won’t I?” Cyrus sniped. “The problem with trying to repair this rift is that the expectations of each side are utterly out of alignment. The gods think we should bow to them, and while we might have done that once, when we thought they were infallible beings who ruled with our best interests in mind, we’re not stupid enough to buy that anymore.” He felt the hard crease of anger settle on his lips, tugging them down. “I’ve seen enough of these so-called deities to know that for most of them, the only interest they have is their own. They’re as petty as any twelve of us, maybe pettier, and they don’t care if they raze our cities to ash and rubble so long as they still get to sit on high.” Cyrus turned away from Terian, the rage burning at his heart. “You can see how they feel about us in the way they turned on our people, coming at the weakest, the most defenseless, aiming to wipe us out like vermin.” Cyrus looked back to find Terian cringing slightly, his resignation expressed in a very small nod. “I will never bow to one of them again. Bellarum had the right of it, though I’m sure he didn’t mean to. If those who do not serve will die, then I suppose I’ll die—but I won’t go quietly, and I doubt I’ll go alone.”

  “I just …” Terian felt at his chin through the gap in Alaric’s old helm. “I just want there to be a better way.”

  “For your people?” Cyrus asked.

  “And myself,” Terian said quietly. “I don’t want to die any more than any other man, Cyrus, I’m just willing to make that sacrifice if the cause is just.” He sighed. “And the cause here is more than just, I’m afraid. You’re quite right. I saw it years ago with Yartraak, but I told myself it was different with him because the other gods didn’t stand on the necks of their mortals the way he did with Saekaj and Sovar. But they do—or they do now. It’s obvious, and there’s no denying it any more. They don’t mean to rule over us quietly from afar, trading worship for some semblance of peace and order from on high.”

  “No,” Cyrus said, in a harsh whisper. “The compact, if ever there was one, is broken. Bellarum may have wanted the war, but the gods pursued it, and now we have to fight it to preserve our land.”

  “Then it’ll end like you said it would before,” Terian said. “Either they die … or we do.” He sat still for a moment. “So … what are your ideas on how not to make it us?”

  Cyrus felt the barest hint of a smile touch his lips. “I’m still working on it, but I’ve got a few wheels to turn. I need some time, and I think it’s obvious by the scale of these sudden attacks, we don’t have much of it.” He got to his feet, hovering over the still sea below. “We need to talk to Vidara and Terrgenden again. See what the next move is.” He looked back and saw the rest of the company getting up, following his lead.

  “I trust you, Cyrus,” Terian said, peering out at him from Alaric’s eye slits. “You’ve seen us through the battles so far. I just hope that when the day comes that you need help, you don’t wall yourself off from asking for it.”

  Cyrus just stared at him. “The day is coming. Soon.”

  Terian opened his mouth as if to reply but stopped himself. “All right,” he said instead and milled back to join the others as Quinneria took a step forward, lingering like Larana would have at the fringe of Cyrus’s attention.

  Cyrus stared at his mother evenly, and she stared back. That’s not like Larana, he thought. “Back to the portal below Reikonos. We need to go to the Realm of Life.”

  She nodded once, and then closed her eyes, casting a spell. The light flashed around them, tearing them out of the Realm of Storms—or Calm, now, Cyrus reflected, and when the light faded they were returned to the Reikonos catacombs, the high ceilings and faint light glowing around them.

  And they were not alone.

  There were four figures standing around the portal, wide spaces between their massive figures. They were all lit with an unearthly glow that had nothing to do with the faint light shed from the stone walls.

  At the left, Cyrus’s eyes played over a man carved out of rock, a stout perverse figure not unlike Fortin but more human-shaped. He blinked his smooth, rocky eyes as he stared at Cyrus, his squat face marred by what looked like a scar that ran from temple down to his neck, along his cheek. His head nearly touched the ceiling. He reminded Cyrus of the golems that he had created that populated the first isle of the Trials of Purgatory.

  Rotan, the God of Earth.

  The next figure was alight with orange flame that glowed along her body in much the same way that lightning had played over Tempestus’s skin, the strange, hot magic running over her. She looked down at Cyrus and his fellows with eyes that were red, not from the typical godly glow, but from clear anger, and smoke rose ou
t of her mouth. She was, in her way, even more intimidating than her creation, the Siren of Fire, and she leered down at the raiding party from near the top of the chamber as well, her height as daunting as Rotan’s.

  Enflaga, the Goddess of Fire.

  Next was a thin creature, just as tall as the other two, but with slick skin like a serpent’s. There were no scales, just a blue tinge to her flesh made live, and she looked down from a long neck—not unnaturally long, but long enough that Cyrus compared her again, unfavorably, to a snake. Her eyes were slitted as well, and he could almost imagine her tongue flitting in and out of her mouth as she smiled at their sudden appearance.

  Ashea, the Goddess of Water.

  The last of those waiting for him hovered a few inches off the ground, as Cyrus did, but she was far more massive. Her neck was cricked to keep it from hitting the ceiling, and she had pure white wings that were folded behind her, unnecessary for her flight. Of all of them, she seemed to regard Cyrus with the most indifference, almost bordering on regretful. She stared at him with her arms folded casually, as though he were not worthy of her concern.

  Virixia, the Goddess of Air.

  Cyrus just took them all in, one at a time, as they stood there. Their postures were tense; they were ready for him, it was obvious. “Any chance you’re here to offer a pact to kill Bellarum together?” Cyrus asked, breaking the silence that had hung in the quiet, catacomb room.

  “No, Cyrus Davidon,” Enflaga said, in a voice that reminded Cyrus of a fire burning out of control, “we’ve come to end your heresy—and your days.”

  They loomed over him, unmoving, like four great statues peering down. Every one of them reminded him of their creations in the Trials of Purgatory, as though they’d poured a piece of themselves into those creatures. He watched them, waiting for them to make the first move, but they seemed to be savoring this moment, savoring it … or too worried that whoever moved first would be struck down.

  “Say something, General,” Martaina murmured, a whisper in his ear. “The elemental deities are standing right there waiting … to kill us. Just say something,” she said, her urgency rising until everyone could hear her. “Say something!”