It seemed appropriate, he thought.
It was almost nightfall when he at last made the encampment, or what was left of it, for the preparations for the journey back up to the winter plateau were nearly completed. One tent that remained was Tay Aillig’s, and as he approached it, Aghmor heard the voice of the War Leader, and that of Crystal Maven Mairen, as well.
“There is nothing to explain,” he heard Tay Aillig say.
“There’s a time of mourning expected,” Mairen replied.
“But not demanded. We’ll be married on the morning, a celebration to lead the journey up the mountain. We’ll consecrate the union at the sacred form of Usgar, the Usgar-righinn and the Usgar-triath. It’s fitting and right.”
Aghmor wasn’t surprised by the statements, including Tay Aillig’s titling of himself as Usgar-triath, as Chieftain—until he realized that Tay Aillig was already presuming that old Raibert was dead. How could he know?
Had Mairen seen it with the magic of Usgar?
“War Leader,” he said, announcing his presence. “I must speak with you.”
Tay Aillig pulled back the inner flap and motioned Aghmor inside.
“Sad news comes with me,” Aghmor said. “Elder Raibert has passed on to Corsaleug.”
He watched their faces as he told them, and neither seemed the least bit surprised, for a moment. Then both appeared shocked, and given the last few remarks they had made before they had known he was there, Aghmor knew they were feigning surprise.
“And the Usgar slave, too, is dead, I fear,” he added.
“The boy?” Tay Aillig asked. “How?”
“We did not see him when we went to Craos’a’diad,” Mairen told him.
“He was off gathering stones, then,” said Tay Aillig.
Aghmor shrugged. “He is not there, and has not been for some time. I found blood. I think him dead.”
Tay Aillig let out a little growl.
“He would have become dangerous,” Mairen said. “His mother was given to Usgar.”
“I wanted to kill him,” Tay Aillig replied, then to Aghmor, “You found his body?”
“Just some blood.”
“Then he has run off,” said Tay Aillig. “Find your witches, Mairen, and find him.”
“There were sidhe tracks near th’Way,” Aghmor said.
“We should have killed him years ago,” Tay Aillig grumbled.
“He is stupid,” Mairen reminded him. “If he ran, he is on a main trail down the mountain or he will get lost in the wilds and killed by a beast. He can’no evade us.” She left the tent and Aghmor heard her call for Connebragh. They would search the lower trails magically, but they wouldn’t find Bahdlahn, Aghmor expected, and hoped.
Once again, the man wondered why in the world he was taking this great risk, and for the sake of an uamhas.
Tay Aillig led the way out of the tent, then, and shouted for the tribe to gather around him. He pulled Mairen to his side.
“We have word that Elder Raibert is dead,” he said, and gasps and wails arose, followed by many chants and prayers.
“This is time for the fist of Usgar to tighten,” he declared, holding up his clenched hand. “The traitor Aoleyn was given to Usgar, and the Usgar-forfach is delivered into the hands of our god. This day, I take Mairen, Usgar-righinn, as my wife.”
There came cheers, lots of cheers, but many murmurs, too, and more than one glanced to Ahn’Namay, who all believed to be next in line to replace Raibert.
“I take these signs from Usgar,” Tay Aillig shouted. “He is pleased.” He stared straight at Ahn’Namay and smiled. “I am Usgar-triath, and Usgar-righinn is my wife.”
More cheers, more gasps, and one shout of “no!” followed immediately. The gathered folk looked all around as if not quite knowing what to make of this startling claim to power. There had been no Usgar-triath, no Chieftain, since Raibert had forfeited many of the duties of the position many decades before. Most of those gathered weren’t even old enough to remember that day.
But now Tay Aillig had named himself as such, and had claimed a wife, though his own sacrificed wife’s body had barely cooled.
“Let any who would deny this speak now,” Tay Aillig said, an obvious warning. As if on cue—and it probably was on cue, Aghmor realized—more than a few young and strong Usgar warriors, led by Egard, nephew of Tay Aillig, moved to stand beside the man, the Usgar-triath, in open and threatening support.
An uncertain gathering began to whisper, to cheer, to complain, but as the moment moved along, as more warriors moved to Tay Aillig’s side, as the other eleven witches of the Coven moved to join the Usgar-righinn, the cheers began to outweigh any other sounds.
These were the finest warriors of Usgar and the witches of Usgar united.
None in the tribe would stand against them.
Aghmor wasn’t surprised by any of this, other than the suddenness and boldness of the move. The harsh justice swiftly enacted upon Aoleyn had cleared the way.
So had the timely death of Elder Raibert.
Coincidentally and conveniently.
* * *
“If he is not dead, find him and return him to me,” Tay Aillig whispered to Mairen as the chorus of cheers mounted around them. “I would know my greatest pleasure in killing that uamhas.”
“The greatest pleasure, you say?” Mairen whispered back teasingly, and she squeezed Tay Aillig’s hand.
The man managed a smile and a wink at his new wife. Let her believe what she needed to believe to lend him her power. He gripped her arm tightly, and his free hand went to the secret tab in his breeches where he kept the sunstone he had gained in a raid on a lake town years before.
The sunstone which could defeat the witch’s magic wholly.
The sunstone which could poison an already-feeble old man quite effectively.
11
THE SHADOW IN THE DEEP
“You keep looking to the east,” Aydrian noted late the next day, when he found Talmadge halfway up the same ridge from where they had first seen the destruction of Car Seileach. Down below, the work of rebuilding the devastated village and preparing the dead for burial had already begun. “Do you search for the monster?”
Talmadge gave a curt shake of his head, if that’s what it even was, and didn’t otherwise respond, obviously distant and distracted.
“If there is a lake monster,” Aydrian remarked, figuring that would get the man’s attention.
“There is.” Talmadge didn’t even look Aydrian’s way when he spoke the words.
“Tell me of it,” Aydrian bade him.
“There is a monster, a huge and terrible beast. It lives in the lake, and only in the lake from everything I have ever heard. And I have heard much, for the folk of all the villages know of it, and they fear it, but they know how to avoid it and so it rarely kills anyone.”
“It is a great fish?”
“No…” Talmadge paused and shook his head, as if trying to convince himself. “Not a fish, or unlike any I have ever seen or known. Nor is it akin to the giant clo’dearche lizards that swim the waters of Loch Beag.”
“But you believe that something has changed?”
“The villagers speak of the lake monster causing this great upheaval.” Talmadge replied. “Some say that the beast swam up with the great wave and bit their houses apart.”
Aydrian looked back at the ruins of the lake and put on a doubtful expression. “In a time of great tension and fear, the last thing to believe might be the words of those so afraid.”
“There is a monster,” Talmadge repeated. “And it is huge and terrible.”
“You have seen it,” Aydrian remarked.
“Once,” Talmadge said, his voice faltering. “Only once.”
“But you lived to tell the tale.” Aydrian paused, studying Talmadge’s face, recalling their earlier conversation, before they had come running to Car Seileach. “Two years ago,” he added. “You survived.”
“My beloved, Khota
i, did not.”
Aydrian and Talmadge fell silent as the sun sank behind them, its last rays sweeping the still, still waters of Loch Beag.
* * *
The lake was calm again the next morning. Too calm, perhaps, with nary a ripple showing on this windless day. Even the way the paddles of Talmadge and Aydrian sank into the water seemed exceptionally quiet to both of them that overcast morn as they paddled out of the cove which held Car Seileach. They had done all they could there, or all that they could do which the resilient villagers could not do for themselves.
They were a long way out, moving south and east across the lake, but close to shore as Talmadge had insisted, before the frontiersman even found the courage to speak. “They showed you a great honor in allowing your use of the magical gems,” he told Aydrian. “To the folk of Loch Beag, magic is the evil way of the Usgar.”
“They were in desperation,” Aydrian replied. “Several more would have died if not for the magic of the soul stone, and many others would have remained badly crippled to the end of their days.”
“They lost many,” Talmadge agreed. “A score dead, a dozen missing. But they will survive and go on.”
“There is no other choice,” said Aydrian. He was in front of Talmadge, kneeling and paddling, so the frontiersman couldn’t see his face. But the tone of his voice revealed a grimace, and Talmadge knew that Aydrian’s last statement was also the fallen king’s reminder to himself.
And one to Talmadge, one that pained him and reminded him of that fateful journey across the lake, when he had seen the monster and had lost his beloved Khotai.
The lake was so silky smooth, so deceptive, such a perfect cover for the horrid monstrosity which lurked below.
It wasn’t until Aydrian glanced back at him that Talmadge even realized that he had not put his paddle in the water for many, many heartbeats.
“Would you prefer that we walk?” Aydrian asked.
Talmadge shook his head quickly, before his fears could overrule his good sense. He would have vastly preferred walking around the lake, but knew that such a journey was not without its own dangers and would take much longer. He had to get to Fasach Crann, to his friends, to the village that had taken him in as one of their own so many times over the years. The villagers of Car Seileach had thought it unlikely that the other villages between them and Fasach Crann had been hit nearly as hard, because of the geography of the lake and the areas where those villages had been built, sheltered and often up on rocks, and, of course, Clach Boglach, the town in the backwaters, with houses built on stilts and protected from the wave by many thick groves.
But Fasach Crann had been built right on the waters of Loch Beag, with a long and open beachfront and many houses very near the water. They were not prepared for such an event as this great wave, and why should they be?
Talmadge was afraid of what he would find, but knew that he had to go and look, and help, if there was anything left of the village to salvage. He owed it to the folk, a hundred times over. That realization alone allowed him to dip his paddle under the too-still waters of Loch Beag and more forward.
He let his mind drift back to the happier times when he and Khotai were running the frontier together. There had been no better time in Talmadge’s life! So immersed did he become in those daydreams that he didn’t even realize how rapidly the canoe was moving, gliding along the water with barely a wake, almost as if it was floating above the lake, yet still being propelled by the paddling.
He glanced all about, unsure, and finally, his gaze fell upon Aydrian.
“What are you doing?”
There came no answer, other than a low chant whose words Talmadge could not decipher. He couldn’t get up close enough to look around the front of the man, but if he had, he realized, he would have seen the energy of a gemstone of some sort.
Aydrian’s paddle went into the water, and a great stroke sent them soaring along. Then to the other side of the canoe went the paddle, and again, the canoe lurched forward.
Talmadge kept up his own paddling, but watched the shore now more than the lake ahead, his jaw hanging in disbelief at the shoreline sliding past at great speed.
It ended a short while later, and Aydrian lifted his paddle and held it across the canoe and leaned on it, giving a big exhale, as one might after a great physical exertion.
“Magic?” Talmadge asked.
It took Aydrian a moment to catch his breath. “I wasn’t sure if I could manipulate it that way, to take the weight from myself, the canoe, and you all at once.”
“Impressive.”
“At the same time, I was giving both of us greater strength for our pulls,” Aydrian went on. “I don’t know it you felt the gusting tailwind, but that, too…”
He paused and laughed, and added, “I am quite weary.”
“But we are near to Fasach Crann already,” Talmadge informed him. “In a single day! You see those rocks ahead, and the bend to the south beyond? From there, we will catch sight of the village.”
Aydrian continued to rest for a bit, but Talmadge picked up the pace behind him, and even without the magical enhancements they made good time in rounding the rocky peninsula. Talmadge held his breath as they turned toward the south, then gave a great sigh of despair when Fasach Crann—when what used to be Fasach Crann—came into view.
The wave had reached up to the back edges of the village. Talmadge could clearly see the line where it had reversed, taking all the vegetation, and all of the structures, with it. As his initial shock wore off, he took some comfort in noting that the rebuilding of the village was already under way, and that there was much activity and many villagers working.
“They saw it coming,” he whispered hopefully.
“The ground rises swiftly not so far back from the shore,” Aydrian remarked. He put his paddle into the water and helped drive them to the water’s edge, and soon both were out of the canoe and dragging it forward.
A mob of villagers, spears and clubs raised, their faces twisted with outrage, came rushing down at them, others whooping and calling out alarms. The mob slowed, though, and put up their weapons somewhat, when they recognized Talmadge.
“Talmadge of the East,” said an older man, stepping out before the others. “That is not my boat!”
“It is not, friend Memmic,” Talmadge replied. “The great wave took your boat. This is a boat from Car Seileach, who gave it to me to cross the lake back to you.”
“What of Car Seileach?” asked another villager, a young woman named Catriona with golden hair, thick and braided, and a growing reputation as a superb fisherwoman.
“Ruined, like here…” Talmadge started to reply.
“And who is he?” Catriona insisted, prodding her spear toward the stranger, who couldn’t, of course, understand any of this chatter.
“Where did Talmadge find more coin for such a boat?” Memmic wanted to know.
“He is … I did’no,” Talmadge said, turning to an answer far easier than explaining King Aydrian! “They gave me the boat because of my … of our, efforts in helping them after the great wave. Many died, and many homes were washed…”
“Who is he?” Catriona demanded again.
“A great hero of the eastern lands,” Talmadge replied quickly.
“Come at the same time as the great wave?” Catriona asked.
“At the same time as the darkness in the day?” another man from further back in the gathering added.
Talmadge realized that this was not going well. He turned to Aydrian and warned, “Make no move to threaten.”
Aydrian shrugged, seeming fully at ease.
“We came to help,” Talmadge told Memmic, and particularly Catriona, who seemed as if she was taking the lead here. The frontiersman looked about, hoping to spot some of the other noted leaders of the tribe with whom he was on better terms. Judging from the size of the gathering, it seemed to him that most of Fasach Crann’s tribe was out here, and unlike with Car Seileach, few of the peopl
e here seemed to have been wounded.
“How did you…” he started to ask, but paused and shook his head. “I feared that I’d be finding many dead.”
“We’ve got missing,” said Memmic.
“Take their boat,” Catriona told some of the others, who advanced immediately.
Talmadge moved to intercept, as did Aydrian, and that brought the spears and clubs up high again.
“I am no enemy,” Talmadge reminded them.
“Take the boat,” Catriona said more insistently, her stare locked on Talmadge.
“We lost two boats on the lake,” Memmic explained, pointing out to the north. There, far out on the lake, loomed the angled mast of a sunken fishing boat. “The wave took them and flipped them—that is how we first saw it coming, and in enough time to flee the village to the higher land.”
“What are they talking about?” Aydrian asked, and Talmadge stepped aside and pulled Aydrian with him, then surrendered the canoe while he translated the conversation.
Aydrian looked out to the lake, then glanced back to see the villagers, turning the canoe to paddle out.
“Stay here,” Aydrian told Talmadge.
“Don’t,” Talmadge warned, but Aydrian shrugged him aside, and pulled off the cloak that had been covering his fabulous, shining armor.
That elicited more than a few gasps, notably from Catriona, who started to say something—likely a command to attack the man, Talmadge thought—but stopped and gasped instead as the stranger ran to the water, then began running across the water!
The two men at the canoe dropped it to the sand and stood gawking, as did all the rest.
“Talmadge?” Memmic and Catriona said together.
“Not Usgar,” Talmadge said immediately, thinking it wise to get that out there right up front. “He is, he was, a king from a land called Honce, a land I once called home.”
“He was your king?” Catriona asked.
“No, well, perhaps yes,” Talmadge stuttered. “I knew little of the greater…” He fumbled about, trying to recall the lakeman word for “cities,” but then gave up the hunt. Did they even have such a word?
Reckoning of Fallen Gods Page 16