Reckoning of Fallen Gods

by R. A. Salvatore

  To the side of it, Aghmor noted Egard and his fellows, along with the Elder and Ahn’Namay. They were in front of another person, one the warrior could only hope Bahdlahn had not yet noticed, or at least, had not recognized.

  He saw Mairen motion to Egard, and he quickly diverted Bahdlahn’s attention—and a good thing, and just in time, as Egard so casually shoved Innevah into the chasm. The woman screamed, but only very briefly, more in shock than in terror, it seemed, and both the onlookers turned back to the scene.

  Aghmor ground his teeth in frustration, surprisingly angered by the sheer callousness of his people. Was it because of this uamhas beside him, he wondered? Because he was having a harder time in reducing this one, and thus, others, to mere animals or monsters? Or was it because of her, Aoleyn, he had to consider, looking down.

  Aoleyn was crying then, looking at the chasm, shaking her head, stamping her feet helplessly. Her hands were bound behind her back and she was gagged, but Aghmor and Bahdlahn could hear her muffled wails.

  Bahdlahn started over the ridge.

  Aghmor grabbed him and yanked him back. “There is nothing you can do,” he whispered harshly into the uamhas’s ear. “If there was anything … I’d help you. Aoleyn does not deserve this.”

  Bahdlahn was shaking his head in denial, his bare hands clawing at the stones, but Aghmor felt him relax a bit, as if coming to the realization that there was nothing he could do.

  “If you go down there, they’ll kill you right in front of Aoleyn, then do to her as they would have anyway. Are you thinking that would make her happy? Are you believing that would make her better able to accept her fate?”

  Bahdlahn slumped even more.

  “Do’no do it,” Aghmor said bluntly, and he let the man go.

  He shook his head as Bahdlahn stared, but then the uamhas jerked his head back suddenly, looking upward, his expression curious for just a moment before he turned away and shielded his eyes.

  Aghmor, too, turned about and looked up at the sky, and his eyes went wide when he realized that a piece of the sun was missing!

  * * *

  Aoleyn watched the witches dancing about her. She could have been one of them. Had she behaved as expected, performed without causing so many so much trouble, she would have been inducted into the Coven and would be one of those dancers.

  She was glad, then, that she had failed, for others less deserving of this fate than she would have been brought here.

  And she would have been dancing, and singing, and praising Usgar, when the unfortunate was murdered.

  Better this. Better she face her own death than be a part of inflicting such an injustice upon someone else.

  The notion had her turning to regard poor Innevah, swept up in this tragedy, she feared, because Mairen had looked into Aoleyn’s mind and had seen the uamhas fleeing the tent of Caia shortly before the snake had killed the witch.

  She hoped that was not the case, hoped that Innevah being here was just coincidence, or because Mairen suspected that the woman was a friend to Aoleyn, perhaps. Aoleyn’s hopes had been bolstered when they had set her in this spot near the chasm and had begun their sacrificial dance.

  If Mairen meant to kill Innevah, wouldn’t she do it first, after all, to heighten the pain she inflicted upon Aoleyn?

  So Aoleyn turned to regard the older uamhas woman, and just as she did, she noted Mairen’s nod, then saw the look in Egard’s eyes, and she knew.

  Oh, she knew!

  Seemingly without care, Egard, staring back at Aoleyn and smiling wickedly, reached out and put his hand on Innevah’s shoulder, then simply shoved her into the chasm.

  Aoleyn’s legs went weak and wails escaped her through the gag. She started to fall to the ground, but was caught by an unseen hand, by Usgar magic, and hoisted from the ground, lying horizontally waist height from the ground.

  Mairen was soon there, roughly tugging the gag from her mouth.

  “The world was yours,” the Usgar-righinn whispered. “And now there is only death.”

  “You killed her…” Aoleyn stuttered, or started to. But she heard something, then, or felt it within her, a vibration, the notes of Usgar, she presumed, but altered. Yes, different, the notes sounding discordant.

  A chill went through her, but not from a winter breeze. No, it was a deeper coldness, like she had felt in the pit beneath this chasm when the spirits of the dead had gathered about her and touched her.

  Now they weren’t gathering, she somehow understood. They were passing her by, floating up from Craos’a’diad.

  And the music was … wrong.

  “Do you hear it?” she gasped. “Do you feel it?”

  “Shut up,” the woman hissed at her through gritted teeth, her seeming unbalance letting on to Aoleyn that she most certainly did sense whatever might be happening.

  “Usgar-righinn!” Aoleyn heard Connebragh say, and she twisted her head to regard the speaker, who was staring up at the sky, as were those near her.

  Mairen gasped, and pulled the gag back over Aoleyn’s mouth as Aoleyn, too, turned to look up, to see the sun being consumed, it seemed. Parts of the light became darkness, utter blackness, and the witches gasped as much as sang, and none were dancing.

  Half the sun was gone!

  Then more!

  The whole of it was being consumed before their eyes!

  “Usgar is angry,” one witch dared to cry out.

  “No!” Mairen said. “No.”

  But more of the sun, the giver of light and life, the goodness to Iseabal’s dangerous nighttime orb, went utterly dark. It seemed twilight, then, the gloom growing.

  “Sing!” Mairen demanded, and they did, and Mairen shoved the gag fully back into Aoleyn’s mouth. The poor young woman struggled and thrashed, and Mairen roughly punched and pushed the floating Aoleyn out over the chasm.

  “Sing!” the Usgar-righinn cried again. “Sing for the glory of Usgar! I give you this heretic, Crystal God!”

  Aoleyn felt the music of the witches flowing through her, holding her up. She tried to grab at it with her thoughts, with her spirit, but alas, there was nothing to hold on to. She even clenched her bound hands, as if trying to physically grasp the strands of magic.

  And then the sunlight was fully gone, the land cast into darkness, save the stars that reappeared in the heavens above.

  And then the music was gone, just gone, the magic pulled from beneath her, and Aoleyn followed Innevah into the chasm, into the darkness, into death.

  * * *

  Far below the Mouth of God, where the witches sang and stared in awe, where Aoleyn silently fell, and where Aghmor and Bahdlahn huddled in fear, Tay Aillig entered the dark Usgar encampment.

  All the tribe came out of their tents, staring upward with great fear, cowering beneath a spectacle that they believed could only be a harbinger of evil.

  Many cried out that Usgar had died, that the light would never return, and many simply cried.

  None seemed to take note of Tay Aillig as he walked to the middle of the camp, his gory trophy in hand. He didn’t know what to make of any of this, of course, and he was no less afraid than the others. Mairen had imparted something to him of Aoleyn killing the demon fossa—was this tragedy a following event to that?

  He wondered if he should drop his misshapen bear-head trophy, or if he would do well to insist that it was simply the bear that had killed Ralid. Where was Mairen? He looked around but couldn’t find her in the darkness, couldn’t see any of the witches at all.

  A torch was struck, then another, but no, Tay Aillig saw none of the Coven.

  He looked up at the sky, and thought that this must be Mairen’s doing.

  And when a sliver of light, a sliver of the sun, returned, the Usgar-laoch took heart, and smiled widely, and held up his gory trophy.

  “Behold,” he roared at the gathered tribesmen. “I have slain a monster!”

  All looked at him, to him. All looked back up at the sky, at the sun that was returning
.

  So many fell to their knees, and most of those, Tay Aillig noted, were facing him.

  No, not facing him, for they didn’t dare. They prostrated themselves, faces to the ground before the great man.

  Tay Aillig almost laughed aloud, so thrilled was he. He wasn’t even certain of all that was going on. He had no idea of why the sun had been stolen, or why it was now coming back.

  But he felt confident that most of those gathered would think it all somehow related to him, to his proclamation.

  Tay Aillig felt like more than the Usgar-laoch at that moment, more than the Usgar-triath he hoped to become, even.

  He was a god.

  * * *

  It was strangely silent as she fell, no wind in her ears. But with that coldness of the dead permeating her every pore. She flailed wildly at first, but settled fast and swiveled her head, searching, but all that did was tilt her downward, falling head first.

  Aoleyn didn’t know why—for what did it matter?—but she didn’t want to land that way and splatter her head all over the floor.

  She listened for the music and heard the song of Usgar, and it was loud in here, so powerful.

  She sifted through the melodies, finding one she thought would catch her and slow her, as she had done before.

  Perhaps …

  A blast of wind hit her and sent her spinning, and she wound up with her feet pointing downward, at least. She did find the green stones of weightlessness then, but distantly.

  She grabbed at them for all her life, desperately. She had accepted her fate when she had no hope, when she thought she had no choice. But now, with the song so near and so strong, Aoleyn really didn’t want to die.

  She heard the music. She sang the song.

  But it was too late, and she hit the floor with bone shattering force. She felt the explosions in her legs, ankles, knees, hips cracking and popping. Straight down went Aoleyn, poor Aoleyn, and the explosions all became one great catastrophe.

  And there was quiet. And darkness. And she didn’t know.

  She didn’t know who she was.

  She didn’t know what she was.

  She didn’t know where she was, or who she had been, or that she had ever been. She didn’t know the darkness or the quiet.

  She didn’t know … anything.

  7

  THEY SAY AND IT’S BEEN TOLD

  More than two-score mountain goblins milled about in a mob, brandishing their crude spears and clubs in all directions. They were not of the same tribe. Some were the remnants of a fight with the Usgar, others had lived not on Fireach Speuer, but in other mountains near to Loch Beag, or in dark holes deep underground.

  But they had all come to this place, all compelled by voices in their heads, and all at the same time: the morning following the red moon.

  They didn’t know why. They didn’t know how. But none could ignore the compulsion. They had been called, and so they had come as fast as they could.

  Now that they had arrived, however, those inner voices were no more, and they found themselves in a red stone valley almost completely encircled by high cliffs and crowded by other mountain goblins they did not know.

  Soon after, the howling had begun, all around them, yipping and melodic choruses singing words they did not know. The songs and cries echoed off the stone walls, surrounding the gathered goblins, closing in on them.

  They backed against each other for support, unsure and afraid.

  Forms appeared atop the cliffs, but only briefly, rushing about. Graceful forms, leaner than the mountain goblins, the humanoids more resembled men, and yet did not, and seemed to be something else. The mountain goblins tightened their defensive formation, glancing about nervously, expecting spears to rain down upon them. There was only one way out of this box canyon, a narrow trail between high walls that could be easily turned into a slaughter zone.

  Ropes came flying over the cliffs, bound at the top and winding down to the ground, and lines of those lean humanoids followed quickly, flipping about on the ropes with practiced ease, and rappelling down into the canyon. Wearing overlapping flaps of dark green and golden-brown armor, the newcomers looked down as they rappelled, showing their bright faces to the group below. Others came over the ledge riding lizards, slowly picking their way down the nearly sheer cliffs, sitting way back in their saddles that they wouldn’t overbalance and flip their sticky-footed mounts from the cliff side.

  On one especially large lizard came two riders, the driver in front and a passenger dressed in black, wearing a mask made of a huge vulture’s skull.

  All about the canyon floor, mountain goblins looked to each other with surprise, and more than a few nodded in recognition. To the humans on the other side of the mountains, the mountain goblins were also known as the sidhe, but that was a misnomer, a misunderstanding of the name, which had been coined by the humans not for the mountain goblins, but for these graceful, bright-faced humanoids now filtering down the cliffs.

  But that was all long ago, eons ago, before the fossa had come to Fireach Speuer, even, and the mountain goblins had little knowledge, only folklore, of these strange-looking humanoids, with their bright red, huge and flat noses, and bright patches of blue or white on the cheeks beside.

  The mountain goblins, no strangers to warfare, did understand, however, that these approaching humanoids could have simply rained rocks and spears upon them. If these newcomers had wanted a battle, it would have been a simple slaughter. Yet, they were coming down.

  And so gracefully. They slid to the ground on their ropes, landing lightly and turning about. The last down were the lizard riders, the last of them the driver carrying the black-robed one, and as the others settled about the edge of the canyon floor, he alone approached the gathered mob.

  Scores of crude spears were leveled at him, but he seemed unconcerned. “My cousins,” he said in the mountain goblin language, and in a voice that echoed throughout the canyon, a voice that every mountain goblin in that canyon knew well, for it was indeed the same voice that had sounded within their heads compelling them to come to this place.

  The spears and clubs lowered.

  * * *

  Skath-mi-Zahn, the God-King of the Xoconai, was neither a god nor a king, but a child, a young xoconai. Descended from a long line of God-Kings, the youngster had never seen the outside of his pyramidal temple, and his only interactions happened with the augurs who tended him, and the supplicants they occasionally brought before him.

  This day, like all days, the God-King sat on his throne, a beautiful and elegant golden seat, polished and shining. Perched on the precious chair, atop a marble dais in the center of the voluminous, shining, beautiful circular room, he waited. He had become quite adept at waiting.

  All about the floor of the room, in their black robes and animal skull condoral masks, a bevy of xoconai augurs swept across the room, and several others swept the other way, crossing through doors, parchments under their arms, attendants in tow, going about their business without acknowledging Skath-mi-Zahn. This was normal; the augurs only ever acknowledged the child God-King when they needed something from him—a signature on a decree, a formal recitation of an edict they had crafted for him—or on those much rarer occasions when Skath-mi-Zahn demanded something of them (something the clever old augurs would inevitably mold to fit their own desires).

  The bustle in the great chamber of the xoconai city was unusual this day, with an air of urgency rarely seen. The augurs, so practiced in their ways, so mundane in their daily rituals, rushed about with eagerness and determination, but the God-King, so insulated and caught within the dullness that had been trained into his mind, hardly noticed.

  He knew not what time it was—time was hardly a concept that occurred to the God-King, who spent his days and nights inside and had rarely glimpsed the sky—when an augur, who was titled and so named Pixquicauh, or High Priest of the Xoconai, entered and moved up to the base of the throne to address him directly.

  He
waited patiently, but Pixquicauh did not immediately speak. A second black-robed, skull-faced augur shambled up to stand beside the first, then another, and another. Five more, ten more, and soon, it seemed as if all the augurs of the great temple stood there before Skath-mi-Zahn.

  “A momentous day, God-King,” Pixquicauh said behind his condor skull condoral.

  “Speak!” the God-King commanded in a petulant voice, one full of frustrations so profound that the young servant, who thought himself a god, could not begin to comprehend.

  “The sun was eaten this day. Vomited anew, for us,” said Pixquicauh, with great gravity and drama in his voice, a triumphant roar that made the naïve God-King think he should understand that something was important here.

  “Vomited?” the young xoconai God-King asked, crinkling his face with disgust. “To me, why would you tell such a disgusting thing?”

  Behind the grayish condoral, Pixquicauh sighed. “By the mouth of Kithkukulikahn shall the Shining Orb of Skath-mi-Zane’s day be taken. Kithkukulikahn, God-King. Your dragon.”

  “My … dragon?” The child knew that his face was full of trepidation, but he couldn’t help it. He had been taught every day for his entire young life about who he was and about the glories of his previous life, when he had ridden a great winged serpent and conquered the world. He believed the stories, of course—it was all that he knew—but those lessons put such tales of heroism and brilliance far in the past, and spoke of any return to glory only far in the future.

  “Let it be told that Kithkukulikahn is returned, oh Glorious Gold,” Pixquicauh insisted. “Tonalli was taken, the fiery orb of light returned. The light of day was taken, the light of day returned. It is the time.”

  “The time?”

  As one, the gathering of augurs turned about to face a door at the far end of the chamber. It swung open, and two more of the temple augurs entered the room, flanking a third augur in black robes, but one, the only one, who was not wearing a condoral.

  The God-King sucked in his breath at the sight, for it was forbidden for any to approach him without wearing the appropriate death-mask!