God Wars Box Set Edition: A Dark Fantasy Trilogy

by Mark Eller

  Yes. Sing to him. Clear his mind. Bring back his memories.

  “Yes…sing to me…sing Missa…”

  Mercktos’s eyes drifted shut as music filled the chamber.

  * * * *

  “You’re telling me you had him and let him get away?” Ani glared at Tessla, feeling something close to abject horror. How could Tessla, Trelsar’s Assassin, allow some cast-out devil to get the best of her?

  “It— it was not that simple. He caught me off guard.” Tessla’s features seemed clouded. Confused.

  Ani hung her head in her hands. It had been another long night of fighting and singing until she was exhausted and hoarse, nearly unable to speak. Something wet marred her face. Pulling her hands away, she saw they were raw and bleeding because of her ineptitude with a short sword. Despair washed over her again. Of late, all she seemed to feel was hopelessness and pain. With Missa gone, she had nothing left. Anithia sat on her bed, uncaring if she stained the blankets with demon blood.

  “I’ll find him. I know I will find him. He seems to be—” Tessla paused a moment as if trying to choose her words carefully, “— attracted to me.”

  Anithia stared at her in disbelief. Had Tessla just said a devil was attracted to her? As in sexually? Ugh. Ani shuddered at the thought. Studying Tessla’s face, Ani tried to see if she could pull any more meaning from the assassin’s words. She couldn’t quite place Tessla’s expression. Was it bemusement, curiosity, or maybe even excitement?

  There was no way of knowing. Ani shook her head. After spending a good part of the last several days studying the woman, she still couldn’t tell what the assassin was ever thinking. “I pray to the gods you do find him. For your sake, he’d better not have hurt my daughter.”

  Stomach churning, Ani thought she might puke. Her eyes welled with tears. Until this moment, she had done okay at keeping her own emotions in check, but by the Seven and Two, they had been so close last night, so near to her baby. If anything happened to Missa someone would pay dearly. Now that she was aware of what her voice and sword could do, Ani would make it a priority to unleash death upon any being who dared stand in her way. She knew what her magic was capable of now, had seen how it raised the very land against hellkind, how it stunned them, made them vulnerable. No, this was no time for tears or for feeling sorry for herself.

  Ani brushed at her eyes with the backs of her hands and looked at Tessla.

  “What do you think he did with Missa? Where would he have taken her, and why did her take her? Everything we heard said Sulya is in charge of all of this?”

  The assassin shook her head. “I don’t know the answer to any of your questions, but he won’t harm her. He needs her alive. In truth, I think Missa is better off in his care than in Sulya’s. Zorce’s general is on edge. She’s been hunted since the kidnapping, has been constantly on the move. This makes her too unpredictable. Mercktos, however, seems more…patient, more willing to wait things out. And if Zorce has told him the child must be kept safe until the time is right, then he will keep her safe.”

  Ani wasn’t sure if Tessla’s words were meant to comfort her or make her worry about a whole new set of concerns, but her contemplation of that would have to wait.

  Blue eyes wild and angry, Calto marched into the room. Still in his armor, his face was dirty, and she saw bits and pieces of bloodied demon flesh speckled all over him. A forgotten or missed chunk of fetid meat fell from his shoulder to plop on Ani’s rug, nearly making her gag.

  “We had her!” Calto nearly screamed. “All you had to do was grab Missa and go, but you couldn’t perform one simple task!”

  “And you!” Turning his anger on Ani, Calto jabbed out an accusing finger. “I almost got killed back there because you suddenly turned stupid and ran.”

  The knight’s nostrils flared, and his furious eyes bulged. His breastplate bore a large dent just to the right of his heart. The blow had been meant for Anithia.

  Ani felt guilty, but not contrite. She hadn’t meant to leave him, but she’d been terrified when a hellhound came out of nowhere. Its huge jaws were lunging at her throat, trying to bite her head off. Yes, she had panicked. Yes, she stopped singing, and yes, she ran. She had reacted out of surprise, out of fear, out of complete terror. She wasn’t trained for this. Calto was, but next time she would do better.

  “I did the best I could.” Ani said.

  Her voice sounded tiny and weak. It sometimes felt as if everyone had to baby her, coddle her. Ani hated it. When it was just her and Missa in Yylse she’d had no problem holding her own, and she knew she could do the same now, but Calto wouldn’t get off her back. He treated her as if it were her fault Missa was stolen. It seemed as if he thought every move she made was the wrong one. Every opinion she voiced brought his ridicule.

  Ani couldn’t believe she once thought the arrogant fool loved her. A heavy feeling sat in her chest like her heart was a ten pound stone. How wrong she had been, even if her intent had been to secure Missy’s future.

  “We did what we thought best.” Tessla faced Calto now, her face, as always, calm.

  Damn. Ani studied the woman, trying to work out even one clue as to how her mind worked. Did Tessla have any other expression than calm? Did she ever get angry, scream…yell…throw a fit?

  “Well, what the two of you thought you should have done and what actually needed to be done were two completely different things. Your incompetence possibly cost us another week’s worth of searching, and might even cost Missa her life.” Calto’s face was bright red. Veins bulged in his neck and temple.

  The assassin clenched her jaw then opened her mouth to speak, but Calto did not give her a chance. Throwing his hands into the air, he flung specks of demon blood and flesh about the room, and stormed away, cursing.

  Ani grimaced. Tessla sighed. Both women remained silent for several moments.

  Tessla finally broke the silence. “He’s right. We lost our focus last night.” The assassin took a deep breath and reached behind her. Producing a pouch from her belt, she pulled a clump of cirweed from it. “I need to go. I’ll keep looking for Mercktos as well as Jolson. Maybe he took Missa uptown, thinking we wouldn’t search there. I’ll see if Calto’s pet spy, the false magician, can discover more. He has given us useful information in the past.” Casually stuffing her pipe full of the toxic weed, she strolled to the door.

  “Tessla,” Ani called to her. The assassin stopped. “For what it’s worth…thank you.”

  Tessla gave her a brief, meaningless smile, and left.

  Anithia stood and went to her window to watch the sunrise. Opening the shutters, she took a deep breath. The crisp, cool air helped clear the stench of death from her senses. In the distance, she saw Omitan’s forest, so calm, so peaceful. A part of her suddenly yearned to be with him. She wanted to ask him questions about her heritage, wanted to know who she really was. She had asked the tree gelf her questions, but all she ever got from Starlite were dire predictions of death and destruction, warnings that they needed to make ready to flee. Ani had passed these predictions on to Calto, but he scoffed at her, told her she was delusional, that Omitan was a lesser god and did not know what he was talking about. It rankled her to the point where she nearly slapped him again, like she had when he told her she was just a means to an end for him and his goddess. But she refrained. Calto had his pride and prejudices. Both were wrapped up in his unerring belief he was always right and everyone else was wrong.

  Ani, however, had no faith in his delusions. Her preparations for flight were already complete, thanks to Starlite’s help. Shortly after Starlite had announced herself by showing up on Anithia’s windowsill, she had taken Ani into the back garden and shown her a set of stairs under a statue which led to an underground tunnel system. The escape route, Starlite claimed, had been built by Lord Hylar Morlon two hundred years earlier during troubled times. Ani had followed the tunnel far enough to know it ended at a cavern. She didn’t know what else lay beyond the cavern, but she wa
s fairly sure Lord Hylar wouldn’t have built an escape tunnel which led to a dead end. During her few free hours, Ani had secretly stored provisions in the tunnel; extra weapons, torches, bandages, arvid jerky…everything she could think of they might need on the run.

  With a long last look, Ani turned to get ready for bed. She dropped her blood stained trousers and shirt on the floor, not caring if they stained Calto’s carpet. She was exhausted. Slipping her gown on, she crawled beneath the heavy blankets. The bed was cold, lonely.

  “What do I do Omitan?” Ani prayed, not expecting an answer. None of the gods had ever answered her prayers.

  The weariness in her bones enveloped her, and her eyes closed. Drifting off to sleep, part of her still felt the hellhound’s breath on her cheek. Even now, her heart beat a little faster. Maybe tomorrow night she wouldn’t be so scared.

  Maybe tomorrow she’d find a big shield.

  Maybe tomorrow they’d find Missa and Ani wouldn’t have to go out chasing hellborn ever again.

  That was an awful lot of maybes.

  Chapter 11-- Changer’s Awakening

  Mathew stepped into the peasant’s hovel, knowing what he would see. He wasn’t disappointed. The small earthen hut was empty except for the ash remains of a central fire pit, a few scattered scraps of worn clothing in a far corner, and a dead woman with a scythe buried deep in her body. He saw no other personal belongings, no sign of food, and no living people. This home, like all the others in the small village he and Glace had walked into less than half an hour earlier, was abandoned except for the dead. Stepping back outside, he looked to Glace. His employee and friend gave him a worried look and shifted the pack he wore across his shoulders.

  Mathew frowned at the pack, though the expression felt foreign on his wolf’s face. It held few useful belongings. Most of its heft was solely due to the two ten pound chunks of salt Glace had picked up in a small village they passed through a couple weeks earlier.

  “Told you nobody living was around here,” Mathew said, tapping his human finger to his wolf’s nose. “I can smell it. No one alive has been nearby for at least a week, perhaps two.”

  Glace nodded while Mathew looked around the village once more. The place was nothing special. Less than a dozen hovels in the center of a snow covered field. There was a common well, some signs of hunting success by the boar’s skull set on top of a post, and a few farming implements set beneath a lean-to. At one time it had been home to perhaps forty people. Now it was home to none. Everyone had left except for the half dozen dead. Nothing looked significantly damaged. He saw no signs of fire and smelled no traces of hellborn. These killings had been committed by human hands. From what he could tell, they had murdered themselves.

  It made no sense, and if there was one thing Mathew wanted out of life, it was for things to make sense. Predictability was where the money lay. Too much of the world had become unpredictable ever since Hell’s creatures started pulling themselves out of hellholes in wholesale numbers. He was enough of a student of history to know Hell’s creatures had wandered the world before. A few demons, a devil or two, and the occasional hellhound or shifter had always managed to find their way to the surface world, but those numbers had been small, almost insignificant except to those whose lives were rived by the creatures. Even the rift in the Hellhole Tavern’s cellar had been more of a conversation piece than an actual danger during most of the tavern’s history.

  But that was no longer true. For the last several years Hell had been encroaching more and more into the mortal world, so much so that many mortals had almost become— well— if not complacent, then resigned to the matter. For the most part, those killed were of little importance, the homeless, the hopeless, and those, like Mathew, whose souls were cursed anyway. To Mathew, this resignation did not make sense. It was obvious Hell had become more and more influential, would soon become a dominating power, but nobody seemed to be taking a stand. The irony was he could not take a stand either, not when he would soon align himself with Hell’s forces by claiming the throne at Athos’s bequest. Soon after, he would make Glace his Chancellor, or his Major Domo, or he would give Glace some other title which would mean nothing since neither of them would be calling the shots. Normally, Mathew wouldn’t stand for being a figurehead, but he had Athos’s promise he would remove the curse which transformed Mathew intoahalf-man,half-wolf.

  Mathew bared his teeth ina snarl. For a chance at normalcy he had given up his power and position in Yylse. He had given up his henchmen and paid thugs. Only a few hirelings still remained to him, and those had been retained for the sole purpose of bringing him the thief, Fox. The young vixen was just too good for his comfort. Something eerie seemed to fill her, something both controlled and feral. He could smell it. God touched, most likely, as witnessed by her mark. If so then by Dakar, not by one of the gods god native to Yernden. Either way, with her free and not within his control, he could not help but think her a danger to both him and his plans.

  No matter. Before long Fox would be in his hands again, brought to him encased in ropes after his arrival in Grace. Though he had little hope Tem and Ergoth could pull the trick, he knew Crabber was more than sufficient for the job.

  Raising his head slightly, Mathew sniffed the breeze. His yellow eyes blinked slowly, and then he gestured toward the clouded sky. “Day’s only half over, but it’s cold and you need shelter.” He lowered his head, ran a hand through the fur along his cheek, and growled irritably. “These places won’t do. Too many dead. There’s a dwelling a few miles past the rise. We’ll go there.”

  “I suppose you can smell that too,” Glace said.

  Mathew nodded. “Partly. Mostly I see the smoke from its chimney. They have a fire going.”

  Shaking his head, Glace took one last look at the earth homes before pulling his jacket tighter. Mathew frowned as he studied the young thief. His last living friend had changed since they started out. Normally not prone to undue reflection, Glace had begun speaking frequently of Selnac, a once old and now dead thief who suffered from weak-minded caring and an even weaker heart. When he spoke of Selnac, Glace often had a strange look in his eyes, one of distant regret, perhaps even resignation. To Mathew, it almost seemed as if Glace had accepted his soul was damned because he and Mathew had agreed to work for Hell’s gods.

  Mathew could not say Glace was wrong.

  They walked for two miles, feet crunching through the snow’s crust while Mathew mulled over the price he demanded of his friend.

  Glace huddled tighter in his jacket. “May the gods curse this cold,” he muttered. “May they cast it into the fire…and they can cast you in it too, Mathew, for dragging me on this damn farce. I don’t know why I agreed to it.”

  “Because you’re a loyal friend,” Mathew said emotionlessly, looking ahead, testing the air with his nose. He smelled frozen death.

  “Why should I feel loyalty to you? You don’t even know the word’s meaning.”

  Mathew nodded. “But I understand its effect and its draw for most people. I pay you for your loyalty.”

  Glace scowled. “Fie on your pay. I’d give it all away if it would find us replacement arvids. I’d give it away to know where we took a wrong turn on this cursed journey and where in hell King Vere put Grace. Shit, Mathew, I’d sure as hell give it away for the privilege of feeling my feet again. Much more of this and I’ll lose half a foot to frostbite.

  “Which half?”

  “The back half,” Glace snapped, stamping his foot down. Mathew heard a crunch. Glancing to the side, he saw Glace had stopped and now looked down to where broken fingers curled around the edges of his left boot. A few feet to one side, the tip of a bare elbow poked through the crust.

  Lifting his foot, Glace shook the broken fingers free. “Apparently, there’re dead people under the snow.”

  “Dozens of them,” Mathew agreed.

  “You could have said something earlier.” Glace shook his head. “Why here, and who do you think did i
t?”

  Seeing the broken end of a crooked branch sticking out of the snow, Mathew took three steps to the side and kicked away a layer crusted white, uncovering the frozen corpse of a middle-aged man. The branch protruded from his chest. Clenched around the make-shift spear were a woman’s delicate hands. “My guess, the villagers killed each other. Only a few died in the village. Most of the others ran, but apparently not fast enough. Infected by some sort of madness, I suppose, but it’s not important. Our business lies elsewhere.”

  Dismissing the remains, Mathew walked on. Glace followed with equal nonchalance. Dead bodies were new to neither of them. A hundred paces further along they found another partially buried body, and then a third, a woman’s, disemboweled and partially eaten.

  Mathew growled. The woman’s stench filled his head with seductive thoughts, making his stomach rumble and ache. A large part of him wanted to fall to all fours and bury his face in the open cavity. It wanted him to sink his teeth into frozen flesh, rip meat free, and swallow it whole.

  Fighting the unnatural impulse, Mathew trembled and stepped away. It was becoming harder to remember he was more man than beast. Every day the curse’s desire grew stronger. Mathew’s only hope for his humanity was to reach Grace, accept the throne, and have the curse removed before his once iron will faltered.

  Moving away did not release him from temptation. Beneath their feet, the snow was packed with covered dead. Some pieces refused to stay buried. Growling a low rumble deep in his throat, Mathew knelt down and lifted a separated head which might have once been a young man’s. He stared into encrusted holes where eyes had once rested. His lids slowly closed. His nose quivered, and he dropped the head onto the snow while drool fell from his muzzle.

  “Damn Hell,” he cursed. “Damn Hell to hell.”

  Glace rested a hand on his shoulder. He squeezed. “I know how you feel.”

  Jerking his shoulder away, Mathew leapt to his feet. His lips pulled back from fangs, quivered, and then relaxed. He shuddered, suddenly cold despite his fur. “You can’t know.”