Reckoning of Fallen Gods

by R. A. Salvatore

  “It is said and so it has been told,” the new Pixquicauh recited obediently, and there was strength in his voice, power beyond anything he had ever before known.

  Scathmizzane stared at him for a few long heartbeats. “You know what to do,” the God-King prompted.

  Pixquicauh spun about to address the whole of the gathering, and they saw that the jaw of his fused xoconai condoral did not move when he spoke, though his undead, bulging eyes did roll to scan them as he commanded.

  “Go!” he told them. “Tell the sovereigns of Cuowitay. Gather the armies.”

  8

  KING’S ARMOR

  “What was that?” Talmadge asked when the shadow finally crossed over and past the sun.

  Bryan could only shrug. “Whatever it is, it has passed. A giant bird?”

  “We would now see it, yes?” reasoned Talmadge, for the sky around the sun was perfectly clear and perfectly empty. “Might it have flown into the fires of speuer?”

  “Speuer?”

  “Heaven,” Talmadge clarified.

  “It flew into the sun? I suppose that is a possibility, but the shadows seemed more as if something had passed across…”

  He stopped and jumped, and so did Talmadge, when there came a tremendous “ka-thump,” like the sound of a cupped hand being shoved down into water, only a thousand times louder.

  Both turned to the lake and rushed to the ridge for a better view, and together they gasped at a huge swell, a circle of waves rolling out from the south-center of Loch Beag, not too far offshore. They watched dumbstruck as the moments passed and the great, lazy, rolling swell moved toward them, dissipating as it went, but then leaping when it hit the shallows, to roll over into a crashing wave. It rushed up onto the shore, rolling in for some distance before quickly receding, and taking with it trees and brush, even large stones, in that retreat.

  “What?” Talmadge asked.

  “Something fell from the sky?” Bryan asked more than answered. “A giant threw a stone, perhaps, one that crossed the sun and fell into the lake.”

  From the man’s face, Talmadge realized that he didn’t believe his guess any more than he expected Talmadge to buy it.

  No matter, though. They waited a bit longer, but the lake soon flattened and seemed to return to normal. And above, the sun was shining.

  “I hope it didn’t do much damage in Car Seileach,” Talmadge remarked, and when Bryan looked at him curiously, he added, “The village just to the south. Fine people.”

  Bryan smiled warmly. “I admit that I was hoping to find you up here,” he said. “I expect that I am a bit … unusual, for the experiences of the tribesmen around this lake.”

  “Loch Beag,” Talmadge said reflexively, and Bryan smiled again.

  “You see? Another reason I am glad to find you.”

  “You don’t even speak their language.”

  “Did you, when first you came up here?”

  It was a good point, Talmadge had to admit, to himself at least. It had taken him several journeys up here to be able to easily communicate with the lakemen. Bryan’s path would likely be easier, since Talmadge had also taught many of them common words of the language of Honce-the-Bear.

  “You can be my guide,” Bryan said enthusiastically.

  Talmadge almost agreed, but after a short consideration, answered, simply, “No.”

  “No?”

  “Why are you up here?” Talmadge knew that his tone had changed, had become less friendly, but it couldn’t be helped.

  “To see the world. Why are you?”

  Talmadge didn’t blink.

  “My life is an adventure,” Bryan said. “You made this place seem an adventure.”

  Talmadge dropped his gaze, just a bit, to the fabulous breastplate Bryan wore. Even aside from the magic in the gemstones set in the metal, this silverel, whatever that may be, it seemed pretty obvious that no ordinary man, not even a man of noble birth, could be wearing such a suit, or holding such a sword. Talmadge had never even heard of such treasures, and though his experience with the lands to the east was limited, the Matinee each year on the frontier was full of stories of treasure and adventures and great heroes.

  “No,” Talmadge said again, still shielding his eyes and staring out at the lake to see if anything more was to come. “There is too much unknown. I cannot…”

  “Risk your friends,” Bryan finished with a nod. “I have great respect for that.”

  “No ordinary man would wear such armor,” Talmadge said bluntly. “It is the badge of an order—Allheart Knights, perhaps? What designs might such a warrior order have on the villagers of Loch Beag, I wonder? Nothing good, and nothing I would aid in inflicting upon them.”

  “No knightly order inspired this suit,” Bryan said. “The armor is unique. It was crafted specifically for me, just for me, by the finest blacksmith in Honce-the-Bear, using the greatest metals in the world. There is no equal to silverel, I assure you. This sword will hold its edge when you and I are dust. And both armor and sword were crafted with the greatest gemstones found, too. No minor magic, these.”

  “Then you have even more to explain.”

  “Sit,” Bryan bade him. “It is a long tale. Perhaps shorter, though, if you have heard of King Aydrian of Honce.”

  The name was known to Talmadge, but not well. He knew that a young man named Aydrian Boudabras had assumed the throne more than a dozen years before, and the result had been a great civil war, both within the kingdom and within the dominant Abellican Church. By that time, though, Talmadge had been in the frontier, and so had heard some stories, but nothing that had mattered much to him.

  “I have heard the name.”

  “He was a young man, too young,” said Bryan. “And corrupted, both by the evil lurking within the Abellican Church and the demon dactyl itself. He failed, miserably, and the kingdom was plunged into darkness.”

  “All because of him.”

  “No,” Bryan quickly replied. “And that is why I can rise each morning with hope.”

  Talmadge looked at him curiously after the strange answer.

  “He … I, was merely a tool for greater and darker forces to work their evil.” The man looked off into the distance, his expression one of profound sadness.

  “What do you mea…?” Talmadge began, but he bit it short and stared hard at the man. “I?” he asked.

  Not turning back to regard him, Bryan slowly nodded.

  “You were a part of that? A friend of King Aydrian?”

  “This is Aydrian’s armor,” Bryan explained. “Made to fit Aydrian perfectly.”

  “Then how do you have it?” Talmadge said, but haltingly, for the truth was coming plain now, as unbelievable as it seemed.

  “Do you know the end of King Aydrian’s tale?” Bryan asked.

  Talmadge tried hard to remember. “I heard of a battle at a church.”

  “A monastery, a great abbey,” Bryan corrected. “And not just any abbey, but St.-Mere-Abelle itself, the greatest structure in all the known world, a fortress beyond compare. The battle was worthy of that place, I assure you.”

  “You were there?”

  Bryan laughed and nodded. “Did you hear of a dragon entering the battle?”

  “There is always a whisper of some ridiculous…”

  “There was a dragon there,” Bryan interrupted. “A real dragon, a tremendous and great flying beast that breathed fire, and with claws that could grasp a man and crush him with ease. A beast with such strength that it could lift a fat ox in each claw and fly away without hindrance.” Bryan sighed and settled back. “A dragon, a true dragon, and that was not the only marvel of the Battle of St.-Mere-Abelle. The air was filled with magic. Lightning bolts and fireballs.” He winced and whispered, as if his voice was failing him, “So many valiant men killed, on both sides. Ghosts pulled from their graves…”

  Aydrian stopped and heaved a great sigh, looking past Talmadge, looking to nowhere, Talmadge understood, except back to that lo
ng-ago day.

  “Who won?” Talmadge asked.

  “Aydrian’s reign was ended that day.”

  “And Aydrian?”

  “Your King Aydrian Boudabras died that day.”

  Again, there came a long pause, and Talmadge sensed a great sadness within the man.

  “He was your friend?”

  “My mortal enemy, though I did not know it at the time.”

  “Then how have you come by the armor of dead Aydrian?” Talmadge dared to ask.

  “Because Aydrian Boudabras was killed, but Aydrian Wyndon reborn,” the man explained. “This sword…” He lifted the blade and Talmadge shied away just a bit. “This sword was crafted by the elves.”

  “I’ve never seen an elf,” Talmadge said, his tone more than a little dismissive.

  “Few have. They train the rangers who roam the lands.”

  “‘I’ve never seen a ranger, or heard of one.”

  The armored man laughed a bit at that. “The sword was gifted to Mather Wyndon, and from his ghost, won by Elbryan Wyndon, hero of Honce-the-Bear, trained by the Touel’alfar, the elves. This was his sword, and his bow, Hawkwing, made for him.”

  “You seem to have collected some fine items…” Talmadge began.

  “Elbryan was my father,” the man interrupted.

  Talmadge considered it for a moment, then said softly, “Elbryan, Bryan…”

  “My name is Aydrian,” said the other. “Aydrian Wyndon. I was born as such, and raised as such, until taken by dark forces and given the title of Boudabras. Then I was King—nay, Tyrant would be a better title.”

  He smiled again, and Talmadge knew it was at his expense, for his own face was screwed up indeed at that moment.

  “I thought I would never again admit that,” the man, Aydrian, went on. “I know not why. Perhaps as part of my penance, or because I feared that I would never be worthy of the name Wyndon.”

  “Or because King Aydrian still has enemies?” Talmadge offered, but Aydrian shrugged and shook his head.

  “If that is so, then so be it. I did not flee the battlefield. Those who defeated my armies that day at St.-Mere-Abelle granted me leave, with my mother, Jilseponie, who had once been Queen of Honce-the-Bear, and who, on that day, had twice been the hero of the realm.”

  “It seems that you have many stories to tell,” Talmadge said, and Aydrian laughed and nodded.

  “Too many for now. But I have told you the one that matters most.”

  “And what now for Aydrian Wyndon?”

  “The world. Helping where I may, and harming no one.”

  The two stared at each other for a long while then.

  “We should go and see to your friends in Car Seil…?”

  “Car Seileach,” said Talmadge, and Aydrian nodded.

  Off they went, and this time, Talmadge led the conversation. “You have seen much of the world?”

  “More than most.”

  “Have you ever been to To-gai?” Talmadge asked. “That is where I will go.”

  “They are not the most welcoming of people,” said Aydrian, and Talmadge flashed a scowl. “I have been there,” Aydrian went on.

  “Tell me the way.”

  “East,” Aydrian replied. “East until you see the mountains looming in the south. That is the Belt-and-Buckle. If you can cross, you will find the steppes of To-gai.”

  “And if you cannot cross?”

  “Then you travel east for many weeks, to the coast of the Mirianic, and there sail south around the mountain spur from the city of Entel to the port of Jacintha.”

  “And you are in To-gai?”

  “No, then you are in Behren. You travel the weeks again, the other way, across scorching deserts, keeping the mountains to the north, until you reach the plateau.”

  Talmadge hesitated. But he had made up his mind. “How might I cross these mountains? Is there a pass over them?”

  Aydrian shook his head. “Well, perhaps there is, but the way I know is not over them, but under, through a deep tunnel known as the Path of Starless Night. But it is guarded by the doc’alfar, the dark elves. If you are elf-friend, they may let you pass. If you are not … then you should not approach their homeland, or the entrance to the path, for they will find you, and you’ll be given to the bog.”

  That sounded unpleasant. But so did crossing all the way to the coast, across Honce-the-Bear, a land Talmadge had not seen in years and to which he never planned to return at all.

  “Why do you want to know about To-gai? Do you plan to go there?”

  “I knew a woman once,” Talmadge said cryptically, with a movement that could have been a nod, or maybe a shrug. “It is … it was, her homeland, and I would like to see it.”

  “What happened to her?” Aydrian asked.

  “She died.” He looked to the left, to the great water. “On the loch, two years past. I was with…” His voice failed. “I did not think I would ever return here.”

  “That would seem to be a common theme with the man called Talmadge,” Aydrian said, and Talmadge looked at him with confusion for just a moment, until he remembered that the other time he had met this strange man, by a river far to the east, he had also been avoiding the plateau, because of the terrible incident with the man called Badger.

  “You run from more than you run to,” Aydrian said. “That can never be a good thing.”

  Talmadge didn’t answer, but the question reverberated in his thoughts along the way to the village. Yes, he was leaving again, as every year, but if he went to To-gai, as he was thinking, he thought it unlikely that he would ever return to Loch Beag.

  He thought of the Usgar woman he had met a few nights earlier, who had saved him from her tribesmen, and who had dared to enter that cave, a demon cave. Aydrian might know something of that, he told himself, and so decided he would talk with this strange man about it in the very near future.

  He shook his head. Why should he care? He was leaving and not returning.

  But he couldn’t shake the image of that small and dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, Aoleyn. So full of spirit and surprising power. So much like Khotai.

  Talmadge stopped, and Aydrian went many more steps before turning back to regard him.

  Talmadge had left that woman, like he had left Khotai, like he had left his village when the rosy plague had come calling.

  That was indeed the story of Talmadge.

  But the Usgar woman on the mountain was still alive, he believed. He had offered to take her from this place, but she had refused.

  Perhaps he should not have left her, should not now leave her. Not now. He looked to Aydrian again, in that splendid armor and with those fabulous weapons and mighty gemstones, and he wondered.

  His hand reflexively went to an inner pocket of his trousers, feeling around for an item he once had, but knew he had lost: a lens held within a brass ring and magically empowered by two small quartz gemstones. How he wished he had it now. He could look up the foreboding mountain, magically and from afar, and perhaps find the young woman, to at least learn if she was well.

  Perhaps this strange man who claimed to be a king, and who certainly was dressed in armor and magic befitting such a station, could replicate that far-seeing crystal. Talmadge even started to ask.

  But there came a wail, and such a cry that it froze both men in their tracks.

  “Car Seileach?” Aydrian asked.

  “It is at the end of a cove…” Talmadge stuttered. “It should be protected from the wav…”

  “Shallows,” Aydrian breathed, and started to run.

  Talmadge, who had never encountered the activity of large waves, wasn’t sure what that might mean, but between Aydrian’s gasp and the wail of the distant woman, he didn’t need to have an explanation then. He sprinted behind the man, and was amazed that he could not keep up. Aydrian was running in plated armor, and unarmored Talmadge, a man who spent his life running the trails of the frontier, could not keep up.

  And the man’s stride!
Talmadge was taller than Aydrian, his legs much longer, and he was thinner. Talmadge glided when he ran, with long loping strides.

  But Aydrian almost seemed like a springing deer, his strides covering nearly twice the distance as Talmadge’s.

  Another question, another thought, Talmadge filed away as he caught up to Aydrian at the top of a bluff beneath the blowing branches of a willow, a bluff, he knew, that looked down upon the village of Car Seileach and the sheltered cove that housed it.

  It was not a large village, perhaps a hundred houses and a few common areas, for village meals, for building boats, for councils, for prayers, and the like.

  Now it was a hundred shattered structures of thatch and wood floating mish-mash in the cove, many pieces bobbing under the weight of shocked and desperate villagers hanging on.

  Men and women ran all about the shoreline, which had mostly reverted to its pre-wave levels, Talmadge could see. They wailed and they cried, screaming for children or other loved ones who were missing.

  “Their heads,” Aydrian stammered, for, despite the devastation before him, it was impossible not to notice these people, their skulls elongated and shaped from birth—in this particular village, most usually into two distinctive humps.

  “They are just men and women,” Talmadge yelled at him, running by and down to the shoreline, calling out and trying to find some way to help.

  Any disappointment he might have felt at Aydrian’s reaction wouldn’t last, though, for the armored man ran past him, seemed to almost fly past him. Aydrian didn’t go into the water, he went onto the water, running across it as if it was solid ground!

  A woman nearby struggled in a tangle of flotsam and jetsam, and Aydrian rushed to her, bending low, offering her a hand, then hoisting her effortlessly from the water, quickly running back to shore to drop her on dry ground. Right back out he went, returning soon with two more.

  And so it went, tirelessly, and when a wailing woman screamed for her child and indicated a bobbing corner of what had been a house, Aydrian ran to it, patted a green strip of cloth he had tied around his left arm, and, armor, sword, and all, dove under the water.