by Tim Pratt
Lump slimed his way forward, rubbed against his sister's leg, then oozed up her back. She gritted her teeth and shuddered as her parasitic twin situated himself to his liking, then she let out a long, breathy exhalation when Lump was still. She pulled her robe back over herself and her brother.
"Good work with the key," she said. "My master will be pleased. And he can heal your injuries, Rodrick."
"I knew I should have negotiated hazard pay," Rodrick said.
Zaqen giggled, and sounded almost like herself again. "You did, thief. That's the only kind of pay you're getting."
∗ ∗ ∗
They made their way back down the corridor, discovering that the pit trap had closed itself, and the blade trap had receded back into the ceiling. Cilian probed at the floor with a long staff until he triggered the pressure plate that made the blade drop again, and they climbed over it safely. They proceeded with caution, in case there were separate traps meant to stop people from coming out of this place, but they didn't encounter any nasty surprises.
Rodrick was troubled. Some of the things the yeti-mage had said were difficult to reconcile with what Zaqen and Obed had told him. Rodrick was no stranger to lies—as giver or receiver—and he'd anticipated a certain amount of deception, but he'd taken this quest essentially at face value: a zealous holy man wanted to recover a long-lost artifact of his watery god. Any strangeness in the behavior of his employers he'd attributed to the fact that Obed was trying to conceal his true identity as a Low Azlanti and pass for human, or to the priest's simple contrariness. But what if they were lying to him about something more? About something larger? He'd allowed himself to grow complacent over their long journey. He needed to reignite the fires of suspicion.
Rodrick knew what Hrym would say, if asked: "Who cares? We're going to steal whatever they find in that vault anyway, whether it's an artifact of Gozreh or not." But a nearly immortal wizard had devoted several monstrous lifetimes to protecting just one of four keys necessary to unlock whatever Obed wanted, which suggested it was an object that might be locked away for a good reason.
Perhaps it was time to ask the fish-priest some pointed questions.
∗ ∗ ∗
"You have ruined the warm feelings I felt toward you when I saw the jewel in your hands, Rodrick." Obed sat up from his tub to fix the thief with a cold stare. "I am not accustomed to being questioned."
Rodrick raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't aware I was questioning you. I was telling you what a wizard in the body of a yeti told me. About Aroden, and the danger this key could unleash, and—"
"I am not responsible for the ravings of some mad hermit in a cave." Obed sank back down into the water. "This key unlocks a vault sacred to—"
"Master," Zaqen said. "Perhaps it's time we told him the truth."
Obed splashed upright again. "Silence, sorcerer."
She lowered her head, the geas forcing her to obey, Rodrick presumed, but after a moment of tension, Obed relaxed slightly, and spoke again. "The truth is a large subject, Zaqen. Which portion did you propose to share with our hirelings?"
"About Aroden," she whispered. "And his resurrection."
"They will think us mad," Obed said.
"Don't worry," Hrym said. "We've thought that for ages already."
Obed nodded stiffly to Zaqen. "Tell them, then. As much as you think necessary."
"Of course, master."
"But tell him as we continue our journey. I wish to reach Port Ice as soon as possible, and we could cover a few miles yet before dark."
Cilian—apparently uninterested in Learning the Truth (or at least the latest truth)—faded off into the woods again while Zaqen and Rodrick made sure the horses and camel were fed and ready to move. Once Rodrick was seated behind the cart horse with the reins in his hands and Hrym unsheathed and resting beside him, Zaqen climbed into the back of the cart and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the seat. "What do you know about Aroden?" she asked.
"Ah, so the truth begins with a quiz?" He twitched the reins, and the patient horse started forward again, the tub of water in the back sloshing. "Let's see. He was an Azlanti, and a great hero, courageous and powerful, fighting demons and so on. When the Starstone fell and smashed the Inner Sea into existence—and destroyed the empire of Azlant in the process—Aroden somehow survived. He got his hands on the Starstone, raised it from the depths of the sea, and became a god in the process. Am I right so far?"
"You are."
"It's funny how the stories you hear in the nursery stick with you. Hmm. Aroden is said to have founded the city of Absalom—which I've always found overrated, frankly, you can't get good Andoren-style bread there—and built the Starstone Cathedral. I suppose he wanted to make sure no one else could become a god quite as easily as he had. Funny how he just found the Starstone lying in a puddle, but expects any other would-be gods to make their way through a fiendishly dangerous set of obstacles for their chance at glory. At some point he ascended into the heavens, as one does, and looked over his people with the customary godlike beneficence. There was a prophecy that he was supposed to return on such and such a date, but—he didn't. There were horrible natural disasters that day instead, and all his clerics found their magical connections to Aroden severed, and their powers lost. I do enjoy seeing self-righteous clerics laid low, but it's sad, in a way. We were supposed to have a golden age, and all we got was ...this."
"He was tall," Hrym said. "Aroden, I mean. Tall even for an Azlanti."
"Hrym claims he met Aroden once," Rodrick said.
Zaqen whistled, low. "Is that true, sword?"
"Ten thousand years is a long time to remember anything," Hrym said grumpily. "Rodrick thinks I'm imagining things. And maybe I am—my memories before Rodrick found me in the linnorm's cave are mostly broken fragments, and they don't add up to any kind of a whole. I'm not saying Aroden wielded me in battle or anything, but it seems to me that I did meet him, or at least see him."
"Perhaps you did." Zaqen took a deep breath. "Our hope is that you will see him again."
After a pause, Rodrick said, "Explain that."
"My master is not a priest of Gozreh. He is a priest of Aroden."
"I thought all Aroden's priests switched their allegiance to that paladin-turned-goddess of his, Iomedae? She always seemed a bit of a humorless deity to me, but to each—"
Zaqen shook her head. "There are still priests of Aroden. They are powerless, it's true, as their god is either dead or, at the very least, cut off from his connection to the mortal plane. Their temples crumble, and their followers have all wandered away or, as you say, switched allegiance."
"Hold on. If Obed is a priest of a dead god, where does he get his powers?" Hrym demanded.
"A very good question," Rodrick agreed.
Zaqen looked behind her, to her master's tub, but Obed remained silent, and may have even been asleep. "He gets his powers from money, mostly. Old Azlant sank, but there are still treasure chambers deep in the sea, and one of them is the place my master calls home. So he uses that ancient wealth to purchase magical items, rings, scrolls, and potions to provide his priestly powers."
Rodrick grunted. "That explains why he couldn't do anything about his inability to walk around in the air for more than a day once he lost his ring. I'd wondered. All right. But what's the point of worshiping a dead god? And what are we looking for, if not an artifact of Gozreh?"
"I'll get to that. For now, you should know there are many worshipers of Aroden among the gillmen, the so-called Low Azlanti. Aroden was one of them, after all, or one of their ancestors, at any rate. They pray for his return and resurrection."
"One wonders who exactly they expect to answer their prayers," Rodrick said, but she ignored him.
"My master is one of the few who wants to do something about Aroden's return. And he believes he knows a way to bring Aroden back to life."
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sword Against Death
That would be quite a tr
ick," Rodrick said. "I know gods can resurrect people, but who could possibly resurrect a god? A meta-god?"
Zaqen served up a thin smile. "Perhaps even a gillman could do it, given the right circumstances. My master has researched the subject for years, and he has reason to believe that Aroden left a certain artifact in Brevoy, locked away beneath a cold lake. One of the great feats the hero Aroden performed was driving a host of demon lords and their followers into the Lake of Mists and Veils, just a short journey north of here. Aroden walked in these lands, once. And he later chose to hide a powerful relic away here."
"What relic is that?"
"The dark wizards who transform themselves into liches lock their life forces away in gems or boxes or stones, called phylacteries. We believe that Aroden did something similar—that after he became a god, he locked his mortal life away in a relic, leaving some of his essence in our world, perhaps to strengthen his connection to the mortal plane after he ascended to godhood. That relic is hidden in a vault, locked and guarded. And if we can recover it ..."
"What?" Rodrick said. "Aroden will pop out like a jack-in-the-box, whole again?"
Zaqen shook her head. "Not quite. The relic we seek holds his mortal life essence, not his divinity. My master has been preparing for years, deciphering secret prophecies and undergoing painful rituals, in order to make himself into a perfect sacrifice: a vessel to contain whatever remains of the great Aroden's mortal life."
Rodrick frowned. "You're saying that Obed wants to become Aroden?"
"Obed is willing to obliterate his own identity if it means there is the slightest chance his god will to return to our world." There was something like awe in Zaqen's voice. "Just as the wizard you faced in the dungeon moved its mind from body to body, Obed hopes that Aroden's mind will take over his body. True, Aroden would then be in a mortal body, without his godly powers ...but that need only be temporary."
"The trial of the Starstone," Rodrick said. "Once Aroden takes over Obed's body, he can travel south to Absalom and try to reach the Starstone again, getting back his old position as the great god of humanity—and gillmen, presumably. Am I right?"
"You understand perfectly," Zaqen said. "You can see why we didn't tell you. It's ...difficult to believe, I know. Insanely ambitious. Perhaps destined to fail. But when there's even a chance that the greatest god of our history might be returned to life, we have to risk all to achieve it."
"You needn't have told me lies," Rodrick said. "I just want to get paid. I've gone along with equally impossible plans before, as long as I was being paid in advance, and not in a percentage of the highly speculative profits."
"My master did not wish his goal to be widely known, in any case," Zaqen said. "There are those who like the world the way it is, who would not welcome even the slim chance of Aroden's return. The demons led by Deskari would descend on us in force if they thought there was a possibility that their master's ancient adversary might return."
"That's a good reason to keep quiet," Hrym admitted.
"But now you know," Zaqen said. "Has it changed your wish to help us?"
Rodrick snorted. "I get paid my weight in gold, and I get to help restore a god to life? I suppose I can go along with that. Having a god be grateful to you is probably worth a little something all on its own."
∗ ∗ ∗
That night, when they camped, Zaqen gave Cilian the same story, and the ranger was appropriately awed, taking her tale as further proof that he was on the path to a great destiny. Obed remained in his tub of water all night, not even emerging to eat, presumably because he didn't want to deal with any questions.
Rodrick didn't really have any questions, though. He went out walking the perimeter with Hrym while Cilian and Zaqen sang a few rounds of "Praise Aroden!" together.
"What do you think?" Rodrick said to his sword.
"Eh? About what?"
"About the so-called truth Zaqen told us this afternoon, of course."
"Oh," Hrym said. "There are two possibilities, as far as I can see."
"They're either deluded, or they're lying?"
"Those are the two I had in mind," Hrym said. "If there was the slightest hint of an outside chance that Aroden could be restored to life, even in a flimsy mortal form, someone would have tried it before now. He was one of the most-worshiped gods in the Inner Sea. His priests and followers were legion. He was a god who had a follower who was a god! Even discounting Aroden's own followers, if Iomedae thought he could be brought back to life, her paladins and priests would have mobilized in their thousands to make it happen. The priests would have been lining up to let dead Aroden use their bodies for vessels."
"Perhaps if there were a truly secret prophecy, something only the Low Azlanti knew ..." Rodrick said. "A scroll with an offhand mention of an artifact, long-forgotten in all other scriptures, discovered by some gillman in a sunken library ..."
"That's what Obed is counting on us to think," Hrym said. "He's counting on that shadow of a doubt, that sliver of possibility. Does Obed strike you as the noble, self-sacrificing type?"
"He strikes me as a zealot," Rodrick said. "And zealots do all sorts of ridiculous things for their causes."
"Yes," Hrym agreed. "Which is why I'm willing to allow the possibility that they're merely deluded. It's possible they believe the things Zaqen spewed. Though I wouldn't refuse to bet on the possibility that they're lying. But what—"
"Does it matter," Rodrick finished. "We'll steal whatever artifact they find in the vault anyway. If it is Aroden's life essence, it will be incredibly valuable, and if it's something else—a magical scythe that instantly kills everyone who has ever annoyed Obed, say—we can still make money from it. Yes?"
"I don't think you'd survive the discovery of a weapon like that," Hrym said. "But basically, yes. Let them tell whatever stories they wish, as long as we can make off with the prize."
"I do admire your pragmatism, sword. But what if the fate of the world really is at stake? There is that sliver of a possibility, after all. The world is a strange place, and full of things even more unlikely than talking swords of ice."
"I can't think about things that big and important," Hrym said. "My mind glazes over when I try to worry about matters of such great import. Creatures like you and I are better off worrying about gold."
"You are the wisest piece of cutlery I've ever known, Hrym." Rodrick tried to see the sense in what his partner said. But he couldn't help but worry. What could the real truth be, if Zaqen and Obed tried to conceal it with a lie of this magnitude?
∗ ∗ ∗
They continued traveling north, squeezed between the mountains on one side and the forest on the other, a situation so essentially claustrophobic that Rodrick let out a long, involuntary exhalation when the track before them opened out to reveal farmland and shimmering lakes steaming faintly in the morning sun. "These are the lands of House Medvyed," Zaqen said. "They control some of the most profitable timber land in Brevoy, and rule from an ancient mountain fortress, Stoneclimb."
"Let me guess," Rodrick said. "We have to steal a magic piss-pot from the lady's bedchamber?"
"Not as far as my master has told me," Zaqen said. "We are to keep going north until we nearly reach the lake, then turn west and head for the city of Port Ice. It's a long trip, but the roads are supposed to be adequate."
Rodrick yawned. "Just let me know when I need to freeze someone's blood or sweet-talk a barmaid, all right?"
"I thought learning the true nature of our mission might energize you," Zaqen said.
Rodrick snorted. "You know how that Lump of yours hungers only for eyes? Think of Hrym and I as spiritual brothers to your brother—except instead of a burning desire for eyes, we have a burning desire for gold. I'm willing to do a lot of things to get that gold ...but we've been on the road for many weeks, and I'm afraid my enthusiasm for everything but finishing our travels and drowning in ale and wenches is fading."
"It's been an even longer road for my master
and me," Zaqen said. "We had to begin in the Inner Sea, after all."
"Ah, but you have your zeal to keep you occupied."
"If we succeed, your part in this will be told forevermore in song and story."
"Oh, that's fine. Songs and stories always sand off the rough and ragged edges, and leave out the inconvenient bits that don't rhyme or scan. It almost doesn't matter what I do—the bards will make it sound good regardless."
"You don't expect us to succeed, do you?" she said.
Rodrick shrugged. "I hadn't given it much thought, as long as I get paid in the end."
"You feel no loyalty to us, then?"
"I like you, Zaqen," he said, honestly. "But I can only be lied to so many times before my fondness for the liar begins to cool. I know, as an outrageous liar myself that's a terribly hypocritical stance to take, but there it is."
She sighed. "I wasn't supposed to like you, either, you know. You and Hrym were meant to be the hired help, utterly disposable. I won't pretend my master doesn't still see you that way. But the two of you are so amusing, the way you continually squabble but obviously still care for one another, and you're brave in your own ways, and better company than I'm accustomed to. You can't blame me for lying to you—I must obey my master in these things."
"Oh?" Rodrick said. "And what if you're still lying to me?"
She shrugged. "I can only say that, given my own choice, I would never lie to you again."
"But you don't have that choice."
"I do not. Which should not be construed as me saying I've lied about anything lately. But forgive me anyway? If nothing else, we still have some distance to travel together, and it's more pleasant if we can talk."
Rodrick smiled despite himself. It was, after all, an unusual and even pleasant experience to be friendly with a woman he had absolutely no desire to sleep with. Their conversations could proceed a great deal more naturally than he was used to, even when based on a certain bedrock of deceit. "Fine, liar. Tell me more about the politics and geography of Brevoy, if you must. I can tell you're dying to inflict the research your master made you do on innocent listeners like Hrym and myself."