by James Derry
The sound of thunder. Cloth ripping apart, and a copper rod falling to the floor. Then the attack stopped. Into the silence erupted curses from Sessuk. Sygne had reached the threshold leading out of the temple. She turned, and Jamal turned with her. Sessuk was angrily shaking his staff. The two-pronged end of the staff had gone dark.
Sygne chuckled. “It lost its charge.”
“Charge?” Jamal asked.
“Charge!” Sygne ran toward the wizard.
Jamal shrugged. Sygne had been right about everything so far. He would follow her again.
Sessuk’s eyes widened as he saw them both barreling for him. He dropped his staff and twisted his fingers together, trying to cast a spell. Jamal sprinted ahead of Sygne. He sprang at the vizier to close the few yards of distance. The vizier stammered over some sort of incantation. Jamal smashed his mouth shut with one flying punch. The vizier fell backward and hit the floor, as stiff as a plank.
***
Several minutes later, Sessuk grumbled his way to consciousness. “W-what? Where?”
Sygne was glad to see the vizier awake. After Jamal knocked him out, they had tied his hands to his belt. Then they had frantically tied each of his spell-casting fingers into bent positions using scraps of the burnt tapestries. The minutes stretched on, and Sygne’s initial fear changed to a dread that Sessuk’s brain had been permanently injured. Even if Sessuk was a traitorous murderer, she didn’t want to see him die.
Now she could see a malicious recognition plow its way through the haze in the vizier’s eyes. “You! What have you…” Sessuk struggled with his fingers. He huffed, “You don’t know what you’re doing! You are upsetting powers that you can’t understand!”
“You don’t understand.” Sygne pointed to his staff. Jamal took a few respectful steps backward. “That is not a lightning rod. The Mentors invented lightning rods to stand near the palace at Albatherra and draw off lightning strikes. The theory is that lightning—or more accurately, electricity—is attracted to solid objects. Especially metal objects.” She glanced to Jamal. “For instance, the copper that helped those Issulthraqi banners stand.”
Sessuk struggled against his bonds. “I don’t want to hear your gloating. Free me. Now!”
“No! You tried to kill us. You deserve to hear how I beat you with science. Jamal said he wasn’t interested. Although I find that extremely rude, considering that it’s knowledge that saved his life.” She squinted at Jamal. He shrugged at her.
Sessuk shouted, “Free me now, or you will be sorry!”
“Wait,” Sygne demanded. “You are my captive audience. And that means you’re going to hear what the Mentors think about where electricity comes from. Have you heard of Mentor Thalekter and his experiments with amber and wool?”
“Enough! I shall call for help!”
Jamal scowled. “You came here alone.”
“You should know—a pious man is never alone. Especially in a house of worship.” Sessuk pointed to the portrait of Bliss, which had been knocked over, but hadn’t been burned.
“Can he truly summon a god?” Sygne asked. Most of the other Issulthraqi tapestries had been incinerated, but Victory’s tapestry was also still intact. Why would Sessuk choose to be rescued by a love goddess when a formidable war deity was also available?
“Let’s gag him!” Jamal said.
But Sessuk beseeched the image of the love goddess. “Bliss! Hear my plea! I have great need of thee!”
Jamal rushed forward and aimed a kick at the vizier’s head. Sessuk flinched, and Jamal’s sandal caught his shoulder.
Sessuk blathered, “I am but a humble flea. Oof!”
Jamal stomped again. Sygne flinched.
“Grant your divine mer-cy…”
Jamal grabbed Sessuk by the collar and pulled him up into his fist. His punch caught the vizier hard across the jaw.
Sessuk went silent.
Jamal released the vizier’s collar and let him drop to the flagstones. “Is that what passes for a prayer in Issulthraq? And they had the gall to criticize my songwriting?”
“Jamal! Do you feel that?”
A swirl of warm air passed like an unwanted caress across the nape of Sygne’s neck. She wanted to flee from the temple, but it was too late. Even before Jamal could respond, the evidence of Bliss’ arrival had advanced from ‘barely perceptible breeze’ to ‘eye-searing ball of light.’
The floating orb of flame grew larger—stationed smartly in front of the temple’s one exit—and then Sygne and Jamal found themselves graced by the presence of a goddess.
10 – The Duel
Sygne’s second impression of Bliss wasn’t nearly as astounding as her first had been. The air shimmered around the goddess’s flaming core, and those scintillations created a warm, pleasurable breeze, spiced with lovely incense. The radiating waves of heat and the sweet scent were obviously impressive effects, but by comparison, the Dweller Under Dreams had to set all of reality to hemorrhaging. The Dweller had been turning Sygne’s brain to chutney; whereas Bliss made Sygne’s brain feel simply benumbed. This resulted in a sluggish sense of euphoria, but also Sygne felt relief. At least she could still think.
How strange that she could become so quickly inured to the divine.
Sygne attempted to judge the goddess with a dispassionate eye, but empirical observation was not easy. Bliss kept shifting appearances. Was her hair black? No, upon second impression it seemed as bright and airy as sunlight. Then her hair undulated into rich, coppery waves. Sygne found that she couldn’t properly describe the goddess’s face, her body, or even the clothes she wore. Bliss’ eyes flickered through erratic phases, all of them centered around a core of intense disgust.
Jamal dropped to his knees and said, “Beautiful goddess! We’re honored to have you here. We aren’t here to hurt this man. With your leave—”
“I do not leave.” Bliss sneered. “Everywhere and everlasting.”
There was coldblooded malice in Bliss’ voice, and Sygne’s extremities were lost in a blizzard of tingling nerve endings. A form of electrical attraction? Her arms clung to her sides. She couldn’t move them. Her feet were immobile.
The sensation was… blissful. There was no better word.
“Gjuiran,” the goddess spat at Jamal. “I smell that shallow faith spewing from your pores.”
Jamal said, “I am Gjuiran, Your Perceptiveness. I must say that your skills of observation are only outmatched by your—”
“Mine patience is strained. I am not here to listen to your gibberish. I am not here to save that one.” Bliss gestured to Sessuk’s unconscious body. “I am here to kill the two of you.”
The love goddess unsheathed her short-sword. Even in the dim, indirect sunlight inside the temple, Heart-Piercer sparkled like the surface of a crisp mountain stream.
Jamal clasped his hands together. “I beg of thee, as a goddess of love and compassion—”
“Fool. I am the goddess of passion, not love. And I am very passionate about killing you.”
She flicked her hand, and Jamal’s torso was frozen into a very erect position. Bliss pointed her sword at Jamal’s chest. Heart-Piercer shone keenly, but there was something less than intimidating in the way that Bliss held it. The blade was turned so that its cutting edges pointed straight up-and-down. It reminded Sygne of the vertical wound in Yur’s chest—running through his ribs instead of between them.
Jamal’s whole body was rigid, but his eyes cut to hers. He had also noticed the way that the goddess handled her sword. Sygne’s tongue felt swollen and slow. She had to run it across the roof of her mouth and flex it before it felt agile enough to form words. The goddess was glowing and shifting erratically, and that made her seem almost see-through. But the full weight of a god was hidden behind that ephemera, and that was what moved now to deliver a killing blow through Jamal’s chest. Sygne had to act. She had to speak.
Her words started as a groan. “Yuh-ooo… Y
uh… You killed General Yur!”
Bliss’ head snapped her way. “Mine ears… What do I hear?”
Sygne felt her certainty evaporate in the heat of the deity’s glare. Her tongue was capable of movement, but now she stuttered. “Th-th-the way you hold your sword. It matches the wound in Yur’s chest.”
“Idiocy. I laugh at you.” But Bliss held up Heart-Piercer and studied the way her fingers were wrapped around its diamond-rimed hilt.
Sygne felt emboldened. “It’s true! Yur insulted you in front of a crowd of your followers. You wanted to make him pay for that.”
The goddess scoffed, and Sygne felt a sharp pinch in her chest. It was a distinctly uncomfortable sensation to find herself the direct target of a deity’s contempt.
“Mine power is in passion. Not bloodshed. I would punish Yur by making him fall in love with a syphilitic goat—not by fouling mine pristine blade with filthy mortal blood.”
Bliss made a good point. But there were other details that pointed to her guilt. Why had Sessuk summoned her instead of Victory? Why had Bliss hesitated when Sygne mentioned Yur’s wound? Sygne felt like she was missing something else, some vital clue that could help confirm her hypothesis. But at the moment the goddess was staring her down, and Sygne’s tongue was engorging to speechlessness again.
It was Jamal who brought the argument back on course. “Then you can’t kill us! We’d get our grimy blood all over your flawless blade.”
Bliss snarled, and her hair swirled in unseen air currents as she turned to glare at him.
Jamal swallowed down some great upheaval gathering in his throat. He said, “You should make us fall in love with goats. Something that’s more libido related?”
Again Bliss leveled her short-sword at him. “I know that you think you can trick me. Mine nose smells your damage, and I suppose you think you cannot love again. I can make you love again, grimy man, just that I might shame you and break you for a second time. I could do that, but it would be more tidy to kill you now.”
Jamal’s tongue flicked nervously over his lips. “If you kill us, what will you tell the rest of the Fabled Pantheon? Won’t they think that it’s suspicious?”
Bliss grinned slyly. “Mine peers would never doubt me; I am above reproach. But if you fear for the purity of Heart-Piercer, then I shall summon another sword to spill your blood.”
The fire in Bliss’ chest turned a deep crimson color. It was obvious that she had something very bad planned for them. She tilted her head to the ceiling.
“Victory! I have need of thee.”
***
It was as if someone had thrown open the heavy doors keeping out the stink of death from the streets. The doors were still tightly shut—no means of escape there—but nevertheless an acrid odor flooded the temple. It was a smell like an old abattoir cleaned with lye. Plumes of gray mist rose from the seams in the flagstone floor.
The fog of war.
Close to where Victory’s banner lay beneath the mist, a pillar of fog billowed upward, growing thicker, until Jamal could not see through it. A shadow gathered within that pillar of fog. Then the shadow moved, and heavy black armor clanked together under the swaying of a ponderous gait.
The Issulthraqi goddess of war stepped out of the fog, and she was truly a terrible sight—an apparition awful enough to send an entire regiment into retreat. She was clothed in all black, from the hood of her cloak down to the taloned toes of her metal boots, and her voice growled like distant thunder.
“Who are these people? I demand to know.”
Jamal’s chest heaved. His bowels cramped. Love and war had caused all of the worst miseries in his life. Now love and war stood before him in anthropomorphic form, eager to pile more miseries onto his imminent death.
Bliss lowered her short-sword, and the room grew darker as she hid its glowing blade behind her back. “I called for thee, oh Splitter-of-Skulls. I present to you the cravens who killed our servant Yur.”
Victory strode closer to Jamal. She seemed far more solid than her amorous cousin, but in this case ‘solid’ was a relative term. Spikes rose from her shoulders and greaves like stalagmites. In between the spikes, flowing scales of armor tumbled and grated together like shale in an avalanche. Flecks of metal fell from her armor as she walked, but they always disintegrated before hitting the ground. Those flakes of ashen debris, combined with the mist billowing around her shins, made Victory seem like an angrily simmering volcano. Her eyes glowed red under the shadow of her hood, which helped to complete the impression of inexorable, molten retribution.
Victory sniffed the air. Her voice was a low, smoky rasp. “I smell an odd stench. I ask—what are they?”
“I say they are a Gjuiran and an anti-theist.” Bliss ran her fingers seductively across the ragged spikes on Victory’s shoulders. She cooed, “I wish you would kill them.”
“Wait!” Sygne had finally found her voice. “Bliss killed Yur, not us!”
Victory’s eyes blazed at the scientician, and Bliss said, “I hear her spouting lies! And blasphemy. I ask thee, oh Maker-of-Widows and Killer-of-Widows, kill them now.”
But Sygne stammered on, “If you look at the angle of Yur’s wound, you’ll see that it was made by a very sharp sword, cutting across his ribs.” Sygne’s eyes darted from Heart-Piercer to Bliss’ face. “Y-Yur was killed by someone he trusted. He didn’t expect it. And it had to be someone who could enter and leave a locked room. I…”
“Enough,” Victory said. She turned to Bliss. “Do mine ears detect a note of truth? I ask, did you kill our servant?”
“Never! I would never pollute mine blade. I demand that you cease this blasphemy with apposite force!”
“Apposite force,” Victory repeated. She seemed to approve of the phrase. Victory closed in on Jamal, her jagged battle-skirts swaying at her thighs. Two huge, hungry spikes extended from her breastplate. Victory could kill a man a dozen times over—just by standing close to him.
Sygne cried out. Anguished. Urgent. Jamal couldn’t understand what she said. Every ounce of his being was concentrated on the avalanche of black, metallic death looming over him.
His breath shuddered. “Wait.”
Victory chuckled. “I hear that word often, on the last breath of many a man. But mine patience ran out long ago. So I will smite you now.”
“No. Please,” Jamal croaked. “I’m a warrior like you.”
“Foolish mortal. I am unlike you in every way.”
“Of course you are… But, would you at least honor me with a warrior’s death? Would you let me die in a fighting stance, rather than on my knees?”
Victory stepped back. “I am amused by your request. I will see you die on your feet.”
Jamal found that his legs could move (although unsteadily), and he quickly rose. The war goddess stood perfectly still. Under the shadows of her hood, Jamal could see that she looked like an exceedingly beautiful corpse.
“Well?” she asked.
Jamal’s eyes had drifted down to the two massive thorns of metal protruding from the goddess’s breastplate. “Hmm?”
Victory said, “I have invigorated you with a whiff of divine courage. But I ask, is this your fighting stance? I say you look like a man cowering upright.”
Jamal glanced down at his body. He still wore the coarse brown vestments of the Kritan clergy. His shoulders were slumped, and his hands were cupped over his loins. “I… I don’t have a sword.”
Jamal let the sentence hang in the air. He stared at the floor, but he could feel the heat of Victory’s fiery gaze on the top of his head.
Finally Victory’s igneous shoulders shook with a shrug. She pulled at a spike on her waist. The spike came loose, revealing a new length of wetly glimmering metal. It was as if the spike had been the hilt of a saber buried deep in Victory’s guts. Once she had pulled it free, Victory brandished the weapon so that it sang through the air. It was a straight blade, as black as midnight and
serrated on both edges. Gorgeously malicious.
Victory presented the sword hilt-first to Jamal. He wondered if even a touch of the hilt would prove deadly. What if the divine weapon was infernally hot? Or poisonous to mortals? What if it was so heavy that it fell through his palm, like a hammer dropped through a sheet of wet parchment? Jamal closed his fist for a moment and withdrew his hand.
Then he reached out and took the sword.
The weapon felt lighter than he expected. The weight of the blade shifted somehow, and it was like a living thing, eager and responsive. Jamal tested it with a swing.
It was truly a godly weapon. He spun and pulled off his monk’s robe in a flourish, so that he bared his chest and his muddy dimije trousers. As the brown fabric wafted through the air, he swung his ebony sword and cut it right in half. Then he executed a flawless one-handed cartwheel to give himself some separation from Victory. He landed lithely on his feet, brought the blade up to his forehead, and bowed deeply. Maybe it was the ‘whiff of divine courage’ that the goddess had mentioned, but suddenly Jamal felt energized—and nearly optimistic.
Victory was unmoved by his display. Her glowing eyes were half-lidded.
“I apologize.” Jamal nodded to the war goddess. “You’ve done me a great favor, Victory, giving me a fighting chance like this. Can I—”
“No chance,” Victory declared. “Fighting or otherwise.”
“You’re quite certain of yourself,” Jamal said.
“Yes. I am a certain death.”
“Could we make this more of a contest then? You probably have more lethal prowess in your little finger than I have in my entire body.” For effect, he twitched his pecs. “What if you fight me with just one finger?”
Bliss stamped her foot. “I demand it! Kill him now!”
“Jamal!” Sygne shouted. “Please! Run!”
Victory’s face did not change. Both of her hands were sheathed in black gauntlets, with razor-sharp claws extending from her knuckles. She used one of those claws to cut off the smallest finger on her left hand. Sygne gasped and squealed.