Storm clouds gathered above, thick and pregnant with promise. Lightning and thunder shattered the sky in a cacophony of noise. Sights and sounds pleasing to her ear. Terrible yes, but beautiful as so many terrible things were. Her husband’s greatest fault was in believing you could have one without the other. Day does not exist without night and light is nothing but a meaningless word without the darkness to stand as counterpoint.
The most perfect place in the world—terrible and beautiful and perfect. There had been many such once, before the race of man—created by her husband—had stolen them. They believed themselves civilizers, tamers of that wildness. They congratulated themselves on their efficiency, praised their ability to bend the world to their will with technology and endurance. But in truth, they were no more than those tamers of the lion, their greatest crime their presumption in taking that which was wild and stealing from it its beauty. And their worst crime, the crime for which they could never be forgiven, was they did not even recognize the trespass they committed. But they would, in time. So she had promised herself and so it would be, for the promise of a goddess is no small thing.
Soon, the wildness of the world would rise up to defend itself—it had begun already. And then these civilizers would be, like those lion tamers, consumed by that which they thought to control. They would be punished for their transgressions, for the understanding of them made no difference. Whether from malice or ignorance they had erred, had erred greatly, and the punishment would be—must be—the same. And, of course, he would pay as well. He who had taught them the use of fire, who had given them light to conquer the shadows. He, her husband, who had placed these scrounging, grasping creatures above the wilds, above his own children, even above her. He would be made to understand what he had done, what he had lost, and he would suffer. These things she promised herself as she had so many times before.
Suddenly, the thousands of sounds—the waves crashing against the cliff and spewing their foam, the echo of thunder, even the soft, nearly imperceptible sound of snow stacking high all around her—went silent. Shira stood, in that moment, in a world without sound, one in which even those things which she could see seemed dampened, without color.
Then, a moment later, the sky erupted in fire. Bright and shocking, so she was forced to hold a hand against her eyes to block out the blinding light. A line of fire, blue and red and orange, traced across the sky before finally landing behind her in a blast of light and power like a meteor falling from the sky to strike the earth. Shattered rock and debris exploded from the point of impact, the very mountaintop heaving and rippling from the force of it.
Shira, the Goddess of the Wilds, turned from her view, from her promises, to stare at her husband, Amedan, the God of Fire and Light. And whatever else he was—a fool, a betrayer—there was no question of his power. It came off him in waves, and feet of accumulated snow—piled up over years of nearly unending precipitation—melted away in an instant, revealing the hard stone of the mountain beneath, stone which had not felt the sun’s touch for decades. And despite all her hate, hate grown over centuries since he had first created those scrabbling creatures he called man and taken them closer to his heart than his own wife, Shira could not help but stare at him in awe.
Here was the being of irrefutable power and strength which she had once known, which she had loved, before his misplaced adoration for the insignificant mortals had so weakened him. Great and terrible and, yes, beautiful. “Husband,” Shira said. “How long has it been since you have embraced your power so…thoroughly?” She finished this last while glancing around at the bare mountaintop, littered now with broken stone, and at the sky which had cleared as it only did after some immense storm so even the snow had stopped falling.
“You go too far, wife,” he said, his voice booming across the mountaintop like an avalanche of falling rock. He walked toward her, and though he did so without hurry, though Shira knew he would never harm her, no matter her crimes, just as he would never destroy those beings which were a plague on the earth, she felt fear. It was as if the sun itself had come down from the sky, had taken shape and was now stalking toward her. His eyes blazed with fire and rage, and the very mountain seemed to tremble with each step he took.
“How did you find me?” Shira had not meant to ask the question, for it made her sound weak, had not even known she was going to ask it until the words were out of her mouth.
“It matters not,” he rumbled. “This is your place as always it has been. Now, what is it you have wrought? What is this creature which has poisoned Javen, which has sought his death?”
Shira knew well of what he spoke, for she knew all her child’s doings, knew well what had transpired between him and the youngest. “It does not matter, husband. What is done is done, and there can be no undoing it.”
He came to stand within feet of her and such was the terrible rage across his face that Shira’s certainty he would never harm her faltered. Faltered, then shattered completely, and suddenly she was afraid in truth. “For your hatred of me,” he said, and though he spoke in normal volume, each word seemed to shatter the air, “you would let our son die?”
Shira swallowed hard, reigning in her fear. The wild was many things—unpredictable, dangerous, beautiful. But it was not afraid. Never that. “All things die, husband,” she said, calling on every ounce of her will and turning her back on him to look once more over the ocean. “That is a truth even the gods cannot challenge, yet in your arrogance, you have never seemed to understand it.”
There was a tense moment of silence then, and once more she was sure he would strike her down, would bring that terrible power—power that had shaped and molded the world—upon her. She felt sure he was considering it, yet in the end, his weakness won, and she sneered as he walked up to stand beside her. Gone was that terrible wrath which he’d worn like armor, gone, too, that feeling of an eminent approaching storm, one more terrible and more final than any before or any to come. He was only an old god, one on which the weight of centuries sat heavily. “I know you have come to hate me,” he said, “but this…this is not the way. You know this—I see the pain of Javen’s wounding upon your face, no matter how you might try to hide it, just as I feel it in your heart. Would you wound yourself only to spite me? Would you cut off your hand to see me in pain?”
He moved closer to her, resting a hand on her shoulder, and she had forgotten how gentle his touch could be. A being of great power, power that could level mountains and create worlds, and a touch as gentle as silk, as soft as snow. “I never meant to abandon you, wife. Perhaps you do not believe that, but it is true just the same. You hate them, but only because you do not see them as I do, because you do not understand them. Yes, they can be terrible, but they can be good too. They have a potential rivaled by no other creature or being, in this world or any other.”
She turned to look at him, at the blue eyes which seemed to know so much—to know everything. Kind eyes, loving eyes. Weak eyes. Shira knocked his arm away with a growl, her fury rising in her like an unexpected storm, rising from a well of centuries of resentment that had grown and grown until it had filled her up, pushing all else out. “Good,” she spat. “They are pathetic little mewling things, ugly and too stupid to even be aware of their ugliness. And you. You ask if I would cut off my own hand to see you in pain?”
She snarled in wordless rage. “I would do more than that, husband. Far more. I would rip my body apart piece by piece, would break what could be broken, would crush my own beating heart if I thought that, in so doing, I might create in you a wound that would not heal, one that would fester and spread until finally you were destroyed. I would accept the pain of such a tearing, would welcome it, if I thought that in my death, in my agony, I might bring even a fraction of that same pain to you.”
She realized she’d been screaming, and she stood there panting for breath, watching him, hating him. “There is no crime I would not commit,” she said, “no trespass too egregious, if I thou
ght it would bring you suffering. You will feel what I have felt, Amedan. You will understand what it is to be wounded by those whom you love most. You will learn to hate as I have learned—as you taught me. I will destroy all you have created, will tear down all you have wrought. And then, when no more of the race of man breathes, when the world is as it once was, as it should be, then you will despair as I have despaired. You will wither, in your grief, become a wretched, pitiable thing and, in time, you will disappear as I disappeared from your sight. Then, Amedan, then I will be avenged.” The last came out in little more than a guttural snarl, and with those final words, some of her fury—and the strength that fury had brought—seemed to fall away, and she was left feeling tired and out of breath, her chest heaving.
“You would destroy them,” Amedan said in a slow, calm tone that made her hate him all the more. “I understand that—I learned of it, and of much else, when you cast me down to the city of Ilrika. When your agents killed Olliman. He was my friend, wife. A good man.”
“A good man,” Shira sneered. “And he was no friend, husband. A god cannot be a friend with a mortal any more than an elephant can be friends with a bug. For the elephant is too big, its world too different, and it could easily crush the bug beneath its feet without even knowing it.”
“And what of Javen?” Amedan said, still in that infuriating, reasonable tone. “He is no bug, Shira. He is our son.”
“He is no son of mine!” she hissed. “He who turned his back on his mother just as his father did, who chose you instead. No, husband.” She turned back to the ocean, gesturing to the wide expanse of the world laid about beneath them. “My children are out there, in the darkness and the hidden places of the world, places where your light has never touched. Children who are loyal and more powerful than any creature of your making, and they number in the tens of thousands. There can be no victory for you, do you not see?”
“You speak of the Bane.”
“Call them what you will, husband, but they are my sons and daughters, those who chose me over you.” She grinned then, a wicked, cruel expression, and she was pleased at the pain she saw in his eyes. “You made them, yet they turned their backs on you, chose the Wild, the Dark instead. Does it pain you, husband? Does it wound you to know that even those for which you have abandoned all else still turn against you?”
“You use them,” he said. “You take the shadows within their hearts and stretch them until there is nothing good left. But anger and hate cannot sustain themselves, wife. Not forever. They are hungry beasts and when there is no prey left to them, then they will feast on their own flesh.”
“They do not need to last forever, husband,” she said, “only long enough to do what needs be done, what I demand be done.”
He nodded sadly. “And so you admit these you have deemed your children mean nothing to you, are but tools you use for your own ends.”
“And are you so different?” she demanded. “Do not think to wield morality against me like a blade, husband, for as much as you might like to place the blame on me, the only one responsible for Javen’s wounding is you and you alone. After all, it is you who involved him, who involved Deitra and Valaz who now styles himself the Keeper. Because of you, they will all suffer and all die before the end. And I will take pleasure in seeing you suffer as you watch, knowing there is nothing you can do.”
There was silence for some time then, and she thought he would say nothing more. Then he turned away from the water to look at her again. “And this other? The one who has wounded Javen so terribly?”
“He is nothing to you, Lord of Light, nor can he be. He was birthed in hate and pain in the darkness, farther away from your light than any other. He is mine and mine alone, and I am glad he has wounded your son. I can only hope the wounding proves fatal, that you must watch your child die before you. It will be the first, Amedan. But it will not be the last.”
He growled then, a growl that turned into a roar the ferocity of which seemed to crack the very air around her. Shira cried out, starting to turn, but before she could, something struck her with a power, a heat that was beyond comprehension. She was knocked free from the lofty height on which she had stood, and then she was falling, the wind whistling around her. She crashed into the ocean, her body wracked with pain, and sank and sank further until after what might have been minutes or hours—in her agony, there was no knowing for sure—she struck the ocean floor and was surrounded by its darkness. And even in her pain, even in her shock that he had struck her, she smiled, an expression without humor, holding only venom and deadly promise. He thought her hate had corrupted her and perhaps it had, but it made no difference. For hate had other uses. Hate made pain bearable and, sometimes, when it was strong enough, hate gave its own kind of life.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The streets of Peralest were nearly deserted. What few people they passed paid their small group little attention, a fact aided by the darkness of the city streets, interrupted intermittently by street lanterns hung from poles or the sides of buildings. Yet that did little to ease the worry in Rion. Nor was he much comforted by the fact that what few people whose paths they crossed—such as the fat man currently bent over on the opposite side of the street, puking out what he’d had for dinner which appeared to be wine and little else—were too drunk to concentrate on anything but putting one foot in front of the other.
They had waited for nighttime to help obscure their identities, but that gave him no peace. Partly, it was because they were a pretty damned suspicious looking group. A Ferinan, two young girls, a woman, two men and an old bishop with a large bruise on one side of his face. Rion wasn’t sure they would have been any more suspicious if they’d been running around with bloody knives and screaming their brains out. He was also troubled because though they’d spent the time waiting for night to fall finding new clothes which they’d forced the bishop to put on, it didn’t seem to do any good in disguising his identity as a member of the Church. The man could have been wearing a dress and Rion didn’t think it would have helped, thought anybody, looking at him, would know instantly he was a priest and would probably wonder what he was doing out at such a late hour and in strange company.
Rion studied the bishop—Orren, Alesh had named him. It was something about the way the man walked. Not a walk at all, really, but a strut, haughty and arrogant and never mind that he was their prisoner. It was in his eyes, too, eyes that seemed confident he knew more than anyone else, was privy to some secret knowledge they could never attain. It was the same look Rion had come to associate with most of the priests in the Church, and he thought anybody looking at him would know instantly.
Yet, even that wasn’t his biggest concern. His biggest worry, the worry that he could not push from his mind, was that something had happened to the God of Chance. Something bad. Maybe even something fatal. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. And another bad thing, maybe even a worse thing was that Rion’s luck had abandoned him. But no, that wasn’t exactly right either. He still had luck—gods he had more than he wanted—it was just all bad.
There had been the tripping, of course, and the few times he’d fallen after that, telling himself each time he picked himself up it was just a coincidence, nothing more. But it wasn’t—even then he’d known that much no matter what he’d hoped—and the last few hours sitting in the room waiting on night to fall had stolen from him even the possibility of lying to himself any longer.
He’d grown anxious, waiting, and had taken a minute to go down to the bar and order a mug of ale. One which he’d proceeded to drop as soon as he’d taken it in his hands. The glass—a thick, tavern glass with several dents in it from most likely being used as a weapon—picked that time to shatter into a thousand pieces. Pieces which Rion, embarrassed and cursing himself inwardly for drawing attention to himself since that was just about the last thing he needed, offered to pick up. He started to, apologizing to the innkeeper who was decidedly less pleasant than he had been
five minutes before, knelt down, and as soon as he picked up the first piece it seemed to turn in his hand, cutting him deeply on his thumb, a cut that bled profusely, adding to the mess of ale and shattered glass already littering the floor.
He had meant to go on cleaning up anyway, but the innkeeper, not annoyed now but angry, shooed him away in no uncertain terms. Rion went, standing up and managing to get a splinter in his other thumb—not currently pouring blood—while he was about it. He’d gone up the stairs then, or maybe it was fairer to say he retreated, walking as fast as he could without breaking into a run and doing his best to ignore the snickers of the common room’s few other occupants. He’d caused the others a bit of a panic, of course, showing up with his whole hand covered in blood by that point, but they’d gotten it bandaged quickly enough. Still, the bandage hadn’t stopped the pain—in his pride as well as his thumb—from following him as they walked down the streets.
If things continued to go as they had, if his luck continued to decline, he thought a cut thumb would be the least of his problems. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have enough people trying to kill them that they weren’t already having to draw lots to do the honor. The last thing he—the last thing any of them—needed was bad luck. Need it about like I need an axe in the neck. It had been meant to be a joke but, just then with his thumb still smarting and the splinter still lodged in his other no matter how hard he picked at the damned thing, it wasn’t all that funny.
After what felt like a year of walking through the city streets, Alesh and Katherine stopped, and Rion and the others gathered around them. “Alright,” Alesh said, glancing up at the building and the sign hanging from it, advertising carriages, horses, and drivers for rent, “this is it.”
Rion still didn’t love the idea of getting a carriage. Thought it all too likely the man in the shop—if it was even open, and judging by the complete darkness from within, he didn’t think that was the case—would recognize the bishop and call the city guard. It was a bad idea, a bad plan. The problem, of course, was it was the only one they had. Walking all the way back to Valeria—and hadn’t that been a bombshell of a plan when Alesh had first told him and the others what he was thinking—wasn’t an option. Not, at least, with the two girls in their care, for if they ended up being chased, they wouldn’t be able to outrun whoever it was.
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