Godspeaker

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Godspeaker Page 24

by Tessa Crowley


  Several further moments of silence passed, and then she turned on one plated boot and addressed the other soldiers, now staring in uniform silence.

  “Did you hear that, guards?” Soya asked. “It calls itself krashth-gar.”

  Not having expected to be addressed, the guards exchanged looks among themselves in unsteady silence.

  “Do you want to know what I call it?”

  She reached over her shoulder, and before my mind was able to perceive the movement, she had unsheathed her broadsword, swung it high, and cut the thing in two before it had a chance to react. Slimy black viscera spilled onto the floor. I covered my mouth with my hand and looked away while Soya turned to face the guards.

  “I call it fucking dead.”

  There were a few hesitant chuckles, though only a few.

  “I call it unholy. I call it Shadowspawn. I call it demon. But mostly I call it dead.”

  She pointed her sword toward its bisected corpse, still twitching gruesomely.

  “It has no Light to protect it,” she said, “and that means we can kill it. That means we can win. That means that the night does not yet fall on the Silver City, not while your Lord-Regent draws breath, not while your swords are sharp and your Craft is hot.”

  By some combination of the direness of the situation, her startling display, and her own charisma, she had them spellbound, and as she walked toward the nearby table full of weapons and armor and related miscellany, they watched in reverent silence. She snatched a rag and used it to clean her broadsword of the black blood.

  “You’re scared,” she said. “That’s fine. I’m scared, you’re scared, everyone in fucking Andelan is scared. So quickly after we lose the Worldmother’s Light, we’re forced to confront a real possibility of death. That’s fucking scary.

  “But it’s also good. Fear keeps you sharp. And it’s liberating, too. These ugly bastards are coming for all of us – every last one. There’s no hiding, no clemency. So why not go down swinging and screaming Skyfire?

  “Umbrion may have taken the Worldmother’s Light, but her fire still burns in all of us. Has not Perenor been showing you that, bringing it out in you? It can still burn through any shadow!”

  The corpse began to glow white-hot. One of the guards, runed sword shining, was bringing it to a burn with rudimentary, but effective, Craft. Bells of white-hot flame began to consume the body. The other guards noticed and watched in kind.

  “I’ll not ease your minds with pretty, false promises,” Soya continued, “and I won’t say that we will win, only that we can, that we must. Ours is the greatest city in Andelan, and if we are to die, then we will be the last ones to go, Craft blazing, swords shining! We will defy the darkness till our last breaths!”

  One guard called for a cheer – then another, and another. Soya continued, shouting over the growing sound:

  “So fight like our world depends on it, my friends, because I assure you that it does!” she cried. “Fight and scrape and claw and bite, because we must believe that the Light will always be stronger than the Shadow, and because we will not be collateral damage in a war of gods without going down fighting! We are worth the fight!”

  Soon, the room was pulsing with their cheers, and with the words of House Rhodan (“Glory in Light!”), and Soya stood at the center of the room, sword in hand, eyes burning.

  She was ferocious and brave and handsome at that moment. It’s how I’ll always remember her, I think, for the rest of whatever days I have left.

  “Not a bad leader, that friend of yours,” said a voice from behind.

  I spun – Perenor was standing behind me, looking exhausted, but smiling. Behind us, the crowd still chanted – “Glory in Light! Glory in Light!”

  I smiled weakly at him. “Almost l-l-l-like she was b-born for it.”

  “I need to talk to you, Silas.”

  I nodded, looking back to the chanting crowd only for a moment before I followed him out into the hallway. There was little else but a small, dirty window looking out onto the city. The gray overcast was dark – far darker than it should have been so close to daybreak – as though in warning of tidings to come.

  “H-h-how g-goes the crash c-c-course in Craft?”

  “I think I’ve done all I can for them,” Perenor said. “They have no finesse or control, but they can summon fire well enough, and I suppose that’s all they need.” He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palms.

  “G-g-good,” I said. “Y-y-you should r-rest.”

  “Would that I had time,” he answered. “There’s yet more work to be done.”

  “P-P-Perenor, you’re in n-no sort of sh-shape for that.”

  “I don’t imagine anyone ever could be, but that won’t stop me from fighting.”

  I started. Perenor leveled me with an even stare.

  “F-f-fight?” I repeated. “Perenor, y-y-you can’t f-fight.”

  “I can,” he answered. “I’m a sorcerer, and this city needs defense. It would be irresponsible to sit out because I’m tired.”

  “Y-y-you’re m-more than tired, P-P-Perenor, you’re stretching y-y-yourself past your l-limits—!”

  “But I can fight,” he interjected, “and in the current circumstances, that means I must.”

  “Being th-theoretically c-c-c-capable of combat d-d-doesn’t m-make you real-l-listically ready for a b-battle!” I said. “Y-you woke up only hours ago f-f-from two d-days of unconsciousness! W-w-would you ask m-m-me to fight, s-s-since I’m n-now a s-sorcerer by some r-r-rudimentary definition?”

  “Of course not. You’re not fully trained in Craft and you’re not trained at all in combat.”

  “Th-then I’d ask the s-s-same of a m-m-man who can b-barely stand up!”

  “Silas, I want to fight.”

  “Wh-wh-why?”

  “Because it’s worth fighting for!”

  “Y-you could die!”

  “It’s also worth dying for!”

  I reeled back. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been shocked, but I was. My brother was willing to die? What would I ever do without him?

  “Don’t you remember what you said to me?” he continued, dropping his voice. “Back before the riot at Umbrion’s temple, you said that there were things more important than you. And at the time I didn’t want to believe it, but now that this battle is so near, I think I understand.”

  I stared at him in furious silence. Why did he have to have this clarity now? Why couldn’t he be selfish for a while longer?

  “There are things more important,” he said. “More important than you, than me, than any one Andel. All of this shared progress of our people, our society – we can’t allow it to just be wiped off the map by some doom-driven god. The sum of all Andel achievement, all our history and culture – isn’t that worth fighting for? Isn’t that worth dying for?”

  My eyes burned with tears as I realized that I couldn’t talk him out of this. Perenor was going to fight, and maybe die, and the worst part is he was right to do so.

  “I d-d-d-don’t w-w-want you to d-die,” I whispered, with the infinite naïveté of a boy.

  “I don’t want to die, either, but I will if I have to,” he answered with the patient wisdom of a man. “If it means defending this city, this world. I will, Silas.”

  “I’m guessing you don’t want heavy armor,” Soya said behind him, softly.

  I lowered my head to hide the tears now falling down my face. Perenor looked back. Behind where Soya was standing in the doorway, the guards were still chanting and cheering.

  “Yes,” he answered after a lapse. “Light. Leathers, if you have them. They’re better for combat Craft. That was a nice speech you gave in there, Rhodan.”

  “We can rustle something up for you,” Soya answered, foregoing the compliment. I wiped the tears now rounding my jaw. “Silas, you should stay here.”

  “I-I-I—”

  “Yes,” Perenor said, as though driving home his point, “he should.”

  “We need y
our connection to Umbrion,” Soya told me. “We can’t risk you.”

  I couldn’t risk either of them, but they were going off anyway. It seemed so tremendously unfair somehow, for them to go and put themselves at risk while forcing me to stay behind.

  “I-I-I-I—”

  “Perenor, let’s get you suited up. Then we should get you out to the southern docks; that’s where the vanguard will come, according to Silas, and where we’ll need the most help.”

  Were they really going now? What if they died? What if this would be the last time I ever saw them? I stared uselessly at them as they walked away and I didn’t know at that moment what I wanted, but I knew it wasn’t this.

  “Er, Your Holiness?”

  The voice was coming from behind. I looked back, but only briefly. It was one of my usual guards.

  “Lady Soya asked me to take you down to the underbelly of the castle, where the families are.”

  I looked back. Perenor and Soya were exiting through a large iron door. I watched them leave, wondering if I could ever really stay here while they were out there, weighing questions of love and death and fate that I was not equipped to answer.

  In the end, though, I found that there was only one question that mattered – would I ever forgive myself if anything happened to either of them and I was not there?

  There is a saying – and I know not whether it will survive in common parlance after all that’s happened – that says the gods do not deal in chance. It’s often used as a comforting platitude, a reassurance that all pain is part of some grander design. The implication, however veiled, is that our lives are fundamentally out of our hands; that we are pawns in a greater game of destiny.

  I don’t know that I ever really believed that, but after all I’ve seen, I know for certain that I do not now.

  There is no tide without ripples, and similarly, there is no destiny without the million-million insignificant choices in every person’s life. It is the insignificancies that drive the tides of history, not vise-versa. One foolish boy goes running headlong into battle and dooms a kingdom; one brave sorcerer does the same and saves it. Both acting and reacting, both forging fate with each breath and each step with everyone else.

  I wonder, then, what that implies about my choice to shake my guards, to leave the castle and go out into the fray.

  Because of course I did, because obviously I did, because my brother and best friend were out there, and I could not let them risk their lives without at the very least standing by their side. The moment I was shepherded into the jail beneath Silverwatch, repurposed as a makeshift shelter for the families and their young children, I knew I could not stay. Already I could hear the clash and clamor of battle far above my head. It was dawn; the fight had started.

  I ignored the guard’s shouting and I left with an armful of stolen armor off a nearby rack. I ran, not thinking of fate, but forging it anyway, unwilling to leave those I loved behind.

  And in that ever-advancing tide of destiny, I made a choice, and here at the end of all things, I am forced to wonder whether it was the right one.

  It should come to the reader as no surprise that despite all these pretty ideas about love and death and destiny, I remained entirely unsuitable for actual battle.

  When I pushed through the front doors of Silverwatch, down the steps, and into the city, the first thing that hit me was the sound of it.

  The demons that Umbrion had made had already broken through the barricades. All around me, the black-skinned monstrosities were loping, slouching, snaking through the streets, hissing and snarling. But the sound of it, gods, the sound – I could hear people screaming, the sound of ripping flesh and snapping bone and clattering metal.

  I’d swiped a set of ring mail on leather, the smallest size I could find, but it still ill fit me. Fat raindrops drummed my hooded cloak, and my runed short sword felt entirely useless and clumsy in my hand. I was not and never would be any kind of fighter; the sword did little else but remind me.

  Every sensible part of me was screaming to go back, to get out, to flee while I could. Every other part of me was desperate to find Perenor and Soya.

  So I hefted my useless sword and pulled forward my hood and pushed into the bedlam.

  Those demons, those monstrosities, they came in every shape and size, small and impish to massive and hulking. The only common features they shared were their black, scaly skin and their taste for flesh.

  I ducked and weaved through the madness, shouting my brother’s name through the cacophony of wind and rain and screaming. All around me, people were dying, throats and hearts and viscera ripped out before falling into an eerie silence as their demon assailants set to eating them as a night-cat would eat its prey.

  I had nearly given up all hope until I saw a familiar flash of blue-white light further into the city, near a large square built around a fountain.

  “Perenor!”

  There he was, Craft and teeth flashing, his runed staff in one hand and a sword in the other. He was cutting demons down with terrifying efficiency, with ferocious bursts of Craft and precise swings of his swords.

  And by the gods, some quiet part of me supplied, was he ever impressive. Among mere mortals, he wielded Craft like a lesser god, all righteous vengeance and deliberate fury. For a moment I could only watch, awestruck, spellbound, as he took on some half-dozen of the black-skinned abominations at once, burning through them with searing blue-white light.

  My attention was drawn by a looming shadow, growing even in the darkness.

  It was small at first, but rapidly grew in size. By the time it came over the hill coming up to the square, it was the size of a building. Its features came into definition – a massive, sinewy arm gripping a chimney, its legs spread wide. It was as tall as a house, and soldiers and guards went fleeing before it, scrambling away.

  “Perenor! Behind you!”

  He did not hear me. He was so focused on the creatures in front of him that he did not notice the massive demon thundering towards him until—

  “No!”

  The demon dipped its hand down and swatted him as one might swat away a gnat, and Perenor went flying, soaring through the air and crashing into the fountain with a dreadful, ominous CRACK.

  I ran forward, my sword clattering to the ground.

  Perenor collapsed in the basin of the fountain, and as I grew closer, I could see blood snarling through the water. I did not have time to think; I ran in front of him and stretched my arms out as the demon came lumbering forward to deliver a killing blow—

  “Stop!”

  The demon stopped.

  It stared down at me, its massive hand still raised and primed to strike. Rain sluiced down its black scales, and its massive eyes were fixed on me.

  All the other demons in the square had also stopped.

  “D-d-d-don’t hurt him!” I said, arms still outstretched. “Don’t hurt him!”

  Slowly, slowly, the demon lowered its arms. My head spun. To what degree would it follow my commands? Would they do whatever I said?

  “D-d-don’t hurt an-nyone,” I continued, hoping they could understand me. “J-j-just leave! G-go back to the sh-shadow!”

  A tense lapse of silence. Then, from the side—

  “Speaker orders us to stop?” It was one of the smaller demons, currently half-finished devouring the corpse of a guard; I was nauseous just looking. The demon appeared to be addressing me.

  “Yes!” I sobbed. “P-p-please, just g-g-go back to the ocean, d-d-don’t hurt an-nyone!”

  “Speaker orders us to stop!” another demon said, sounding surprised. “Maker says one, Speaker says another! Who follow?”

  What ensued was what I can only describe as several moments of bickering. The demons – and there were quite a few listening, by this point – were all squabbling amongst each other, saying things like Maker says kill and Speaker says stop.

  At a wider radius, the guards who had stopped fighting due to the sudden discussion
were watching. It was doubtlessly not a good picture, seeing a huddle of demons around me that were not ripping me apart.

  “I am y-y-y-your Speaker!” I said, drawing myself up as much as possible, projecting all the authority I could manage. “I order y-y-you to s-s-stop!”

  This seemed to ignite even more discussion, as though it was the most profound philosophical question yet posed to them. Perhaps it was.

  But it was not until one great, booming voice superseded the rest that everything came to a sudden stop:

  “I answer only to Maker,” the massive demon above me boomed, its voice as loud as thunder. And with one hand, it punched a hole in the roof of a nearby building.

  People started screaming again. The fighting resumed. I staggered back.

  “N-n-no!” I cried. “I’m y-y-your m-maker, you m-m-must answer to me!”

  “Silas—”

  I spun. Rain blurred my vision, but I could see Perenor lying in the shallow pool of water, now stained read with blood. Everything else in the world suddenly stopped mattering. I fell to his side.

  “Perenor,” I said, grabbing him by the shoulders. He howled in pain and I withdrew my hands. “G-g-g-gods, you’re hurt—”

  His pain seemed to subside a moment later. “You saved me,” he said. There was blood in his mouth, and he was delirious.

  “Help!” I shouted into the battle, but no one could hear me over the clamor. “Help, s-s-s-someone help!”

  “I remember why we stopped singing,” he said to me.

  “Sh-sh-shut up, Perenor, for f-f-fuck’s sake, you’re w-wounded—”

  “They told me,” he kept talking, like he hadn’t heard me, “they told me that you would never be the sort of scion House Olen needed. They told me not to bother trying to help you, that you would never change.”

  I simultaneously wanted to hug him and knock him unconscious, if only to keep him from wasting breath. “Sh-sh-shut up, Perenor!” I wasn’t sure I could take much more of this. “Someone help!”

  “I believed them,” he told me, and he was choking on the blood filling his mouth. “I believed them. I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to disappoint them—”

 

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