Reckoning of Fallen Gods

by R. A. Salvatore

  Others jumped out and helped, grabbing at the sides.

  “Still some fights,” Talmadge told them. “Avenge your villag…”

  The word stuck in his throat, as he happened to glance over the side of the boat, to the rear bench, and to the one-legged woman lying upon it. He breathed her name—he couldn’t even find the strength to speak it—and he pulled himself over the rail awkwardly, tumbling down hard as the craft bounced with the tugging and splashing.

  Talmadge clawed at the wood and forced himself back there, falling over Khotai, and now calling to her softly and repeatedly. She looked dead, her face blue, and so he was elated when she at last opened her eyes.

  “My Khotai,” he said. “I am so sorry. For leaving you. For leaving you then and leaving you now.”

  He was rambling, and thought he sounded quite silly, but the words poured forth before he could begin to even think of what he should say.

  Finally, Khotai lifted her hand gently to his face, then grabbed him more forcefully. “Promise me that you’ll never leave me again,” she whispered, and it sounded to Talmadge as the most beautiful song he had ever heard.

  13

  CUOWITAY

  “The village is secured,” Aydrian said, walking over to join Talmadge and Khotai. He offered a smile when he saw the two up close, Khotai behind Talmadge and with her arms wrapped about Talmadge’s neck, and also with a rope tied about both of them, so that if Talmadge stood, he would lift the woman up with him.

  “I see that you have shed your fear of being a burden to this man you love,” Aydrian said rather bluntly, drawing a look of confusion from Khotai and a scowl from Talmadge.

  “That is why you sent him away, is it not?” Aydrian bravely pressed on. “You weren’t mad that he left you—how could he have possibly known better with your leg in his hand…”

  “Aydrian!” Talmadge scolded.

  “It is the truth,” Aydrian replied. “You could not have known that she might be alive, and she left you as much as you left her. Did you not?” he asked Khotai directly, and she still seemed confused.

  “How many times did you inquire about him, if he had been seen?” asked Aydrian.

  “I thought him surely dead,” Khotai admitted, and Aydrian looked Talmadge in the eye and held up his hands as if that answer ended the debate.

  “She was never angry at you, my friend Talmadge,” Aydrian explained. “She was as shocked to see you as you were to see her. And as elated—which didn’t last for either of you. You saw what had happened to her and were horrified, and she knew almost immediately that it would not be fair to you to so burden you with a crippled partner, one for whose condition you would no doubt feel responsible.”

  “Shut up,” Talmadge warned, and seemed as if he meant to leap up and attack Aydrian. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because he’s right,” Khotai answered, eliciting a gasp from Talmadge, but not surprising Aydrian in the least.

  “My friend, the only way to face pain is to admit it, and, well, face it,” Aydrian said. “I do not know you so very well, and yet I recognize this truth about you better than you do, it would seem. You run from pain, and hide from pain, better than any I have ever known. That way leads to shadows where there should be light, I assure you.”

  “Now you’re my teacher?”

  “Someone has to be,” Khotai said with a laugh—a wonderful laugh that none had heard in a long, long time—into Talmadge’s ear.

  Talmadge’s expression shifted instantly, and he reached up to put his hand over that of his beloved and turned to look into her brown eyes and into that brilliant grin.

  “The village is secure?” Khotai asked Aydrian.

  He nodded. “The folk of Fasach Crann are even now planning to pursue the sidhe who overran Carrachan Shoal along with the survivors of that town. To retrieve the supplies before winter comes on in full.”

  Talmadge stood up, taking Khotai with him. “Will you join?”

  “A chance to kill goblins,” Aydrian replied with a wry grin. “What do you think?”

  “Join him,” Khotai said, and Talmadge glanced back doubtfully.

  “If you reverse our fates, I’d drop you in the mud and pick you back up when I returned,” Khotai assured him.

  That brought smiles all around. The three started for the center of the town, where Catriona and the others had gathered to plan their assault to retake Carrachan Shoal, or chase down the sidhe to take back the supplies. Before they arrived, though, there came a flash high up the mountain, bright and sharp like a bolt of lightning.

  “Ah, but I told you it was them deamhans!” a man near Catriona shouted, shaking his fist at Fireach Speuer.

  “They set the sidhe on us,” another chimed in.

  As he finished, the thunderous report echoed down from on high, rumbling about the town and turning all eyes up to the mountaintop, where flames then leaped, and another crackle of lightning.

  “Not so sure,” Catriona, and some others, said quietly.

  “Your lens,” Aydrian said, holding his hand out to Talmadge.

  Talmadge handed it over and Aydrian wasted no time in putting it up to his eye and calling upon the far-seeing magic. He knew immediately that the villager’s assessment of the situation could not have been more wrong.

  * * *

  Twenty to a side they sat, glancing about uncomfortably, expressions revealing their distaste for their surroundings, for though this was a temple to their beloved Glorious Gold, and the family temple of the line of Bayan, of Pixquicauh himself, no less, these wealthy, pampered augurs and the sovereigns of the greatest score of xoconai cities were not accustomed to such sparse surroundings and dirty stone. Nor were they pleased about the difficult journey in merely getting to the place, far in the east for most, and in the less-traveled foothills of the towering mountains that, to the xoconai, separated the world of light from the darkness and death of Cizinfozza’s realm.

  The pyramidical temple around them was constructed of simple gray stone, and had not been built to hold this many. Bundled together on benches that had been brought in for this occasion, the city sovereigns were not used to such crowded proximity, which forced unusual and demeaning informality. These xoconai women and men, elected to leadership, were not used to being touched by any who were not given explicit permission to do so, but in here, they were bumping up against each other with disquieting frequency.

  An altar of simple granite rested along the back wall, beneath a mural of faded paints depicting a great victory of old. Before that altar stood the High Priest, and beside him, a propped sheet of polished gold, which seemed so out of place in this otherwise drab structure. Even the dusty air could not dim the luster of that golden mirror.

  “The Glorious Gold will take joy in our attack,” Pixquicauh told them.

  From the sides of the chamber, the augurs raised their fists in apparent agreement, but among the central twenty, the pragmatic sovereigns who governed the cities and who could be voted out of power at any time, the reaction was much more ambivalent, and more than one hiss of disapproval was heard.

  “The armies gather,” one of the sovereigns said.

  “Every day brings more macana,” another added, using a word that referred to the tooth-edged war clubs of the xoconai warriors and to the warriors themselves.

  “The mundunugu ride from every corner of Tonoloya,” said another.

  “If we wait, we will become unstoppable,” said a third.

  “Our army is already unstoppable!” cried one of the augurs. “We have the power of Scathmizzane behind us. We cannot lose on the battlefield.”

  “You must never think that way,” one of the sovereigns, an older woman, scolded.

  “To suggest otherwise is heresy,” the augur retorted.

  “Heresy!” the priests called in agreement, and several sovereigns joined in.

  The old woman sovereign bowed low, conceding. “It is not said and was not told that we are not already sup
erior,” she said apologetically.

  “Then it is not wise to imply it,” boomed the stern voice of Pixquicauh. He and the old woman exchanged glares then, hinting to the others that there was personal history between them. There was indeed history, and they were indeed contemporaries.

  The sovereign sat down and lowered her gaze, which pleased the High Priest greatly, for this situation between them had been reversed decades before.

  However, another city sovereign, a younger woman with a strikingly bright red nose and brilliant sky-blue beside it (such colors were usually not nearly as bright in the women as the men) stood up quickly, and with clear determination.

  “More macana every day,” she said, her voice loud and strong. “But they are more mouths to feed. Food is not so plentiful. We need more to feed the army of Glorious Gold, and more still if we would have our army march into the mountains against the coming winter.”

  “If they march, we will have more food,” said another sovereign. “For all our cities. My citizens are so busy with the needs of the macana that they are not gathering as they should.”

  “How many citizens will be needed to ferry food to the marching army?” an augur argued.

  More voices joined in. Up by the altar, Pixquicauh grew angrier by the moment. “Voices without recognition!” he finally yelled above them all, for indeed, protocol said that speakers should be recognized by him, as the one leading this gathering, before any word was uttered.

  The temple quieted.

  “I have seen,” the High Priest declared, indicating the golden mirror beside him. “Scathmizzane has shown me the mountain lake and the humans. Food is plentiful beyond Teotl Tenamitl.”

  “We do not know snow,” the old woman sovereign dared to argue. “Not here. Or very little in the hills. That is not the way of the tall mountains! The snow in the mountains will stop an army, and the winds freeze the blood. To go is a great risk and all could be lost.”

  Pixquicauh stared at the sovereign with his bulging dead, borrowed eyes. The orbs didn’t blink, of course, but he was twitching, so great was his anger. This one, Sovereign Disu Suzu Ixil, had ever been a bane to him. It was she, a mere child, who had sent her macana to these foothills demanding a tithing of food in the Summer of Barrenness, when the old augur’s father was still presiding at the temple.

  The temple’s flock had eaten little that year. Many had left, not to return, reducing the tithing to the augur’s family. It was she, this one, Sovereign Disu Suzu Ixil, who had begun the fall of the augur family of Bayan.

  It was possible that she knew what she was speaking about—hers, Tavu Tavu, was the easternmost city of Tonoloya, nearly as high in the foothills of the Tyuskixmal as this very temple, and her citizens were known to wander the higher passes. But Pixquicauh didn’t allow that possibility to dissuade him here, not against this one, not when he, not Disu Suzu Ixil, had spoken to Scathmizzane.

  “I have made my decision,” he declared, lifting his right arm before him, palm down. “I speak for the Glorious Gold.” He held his pose as a murmur of complaint wafted through the crowd. If he turned his hand palm-up, it would be a call to wait; a clenched fist meant a call to war.

  He closed his fist.

  The priests cheered, as did some of the city sovereigns. Those who had spoken against this course said nothing aloud, but the eyes of Disu Suzu Ixil spoke loudly to the High Priest.

  Loudly in disagreement.

  That only made him more certain of his decision.

  “I speak to the macana when the dawn’s rays shine upon the mountaintops,” he declared. “To war!”

  * * *

  Good fortune alone had saved them, Tay Aillig believed. Had not Aghmor been out on the mountain that particular morning, up high and in the only region allowing him to see past Fireach Speuer to the south and west, the Usgar would not have seen this force of monsters crawling up those southwestern slopes with wicked intent.

  Had Tay Aillig understood the truth of why Aghmor had been out there, circling around to conceal that he had been bringing supplies to the missing slave, he probably would be holding a significantly different opinion of the day’s “hero.”

  The Usgar, fittingly with Tay Aillig as their leader, did not lack confidence in battle, no matter the odds. They saw themselves as godlike compared to the lesser creatures skittering about them, like the lakemen, and particularly the mountain goblins, whom they called sidhe. But the tribe numbered around three hundred—not three hundred warriors and witches, but three hundred in total, and more enemies than that were coming over the high ridges of Fireach Speuer against them this day.

  Caught by surprise, the tribe might have been overrun before they could organize any defensive posture. Caught out in the field, away from this sacred place, even the great warrior Tay Aillig might have been forced to order a full retreat so as not to engage such a mass of enemies as was now approaching.

  But here, with time to prepare, the Usgar-triath did not want to run. With the witches so close and attuned to their warriors, Usgar spear tips gleamed and crackled with power. The bond was strong, the proximity to the source of power so important that Tay Aillig expected Mairen to heal his wounds as fast as he received them.

  Even without that, though, the proud man willingly and often uttered, “They are just sidhe.”

  He glanced to the sacred pine grove, hearing the song, for in there, ten witches danced about the God Crystal, and others, former witches, or those training or having shown some affinity with the magical song, sat about the perimeter of that dance, basking in the power of Usgar being brought forth by Mairen and the others. There were only twelve in the Coven now, for Aoleyn had not been replaced—and the thought of Aoleyn did send a pang of regret through Tay Aillig. Not because he was sad about killing the troublesome little wretch. On a personal level, he cared not at all for her, but her prowess in the joining ritual, where a witch sent her magic out to the attuned warrior, could not be denied, not after the display she had put on with Brayth against these very same enemies, and even against the demon fossa.

  Two other witches had gone out from the sacred grove, positioning themselves as Tay Aillig and Mairen had determined, one up above a narrow ledge rounding the mountaintop on the west, the other at the base of a decline thick with snow, down which the sidhe would likely swarm.

  They would know soon enough, as the first sentries began calling out that the enemies were in sight.

  You think I would fail you? he heard in his head, a sharp reminder that Mairen was in there, telepathically joined with him, and had realized, obviously, his regret over Aoleyn.

  Tay Aillig could only laugh, but he stopped in surprise when he felt the power of Usgar suddenly flowing through him, strengthening him, toughening him, and his spear began to thrum with power beyond anything he had ever felt before.

  We are near the God Crystal, Mairen explained in answer to his unspoken question, to his surprise, really.

  The leading monsters came rushing down the bottom steps of th’Way, between the caves which normally housed the uamhas, though they were all huddled in the main encampment now, and in sight of the eastern edge of the winter plateau, where stood Tay Aillig and the main group of Usgar warrior defense.

  The Usgar-triath began to bark out an order, but stopped before he uttered a word, finding a sudden impulse to hurl his spear at the oncoming enemies.

  Not the spear. Throw the magic, he heard in his mind. Tay Aillig had never experienced anything like this before, never anything this intense, and it unsettled him somewhat, so much so that he thought of grabbing the sunstone he had in the small pocket he had secretly sewn into his pants.

  He felt Mairen’s questioning at that notion and worked hard to dismiss it before she could solve the puzzle here. He focused immediately on her instructions and followed his instincts through the call and flow of the magic. His eyes went as wide as those around him, though not as much so as the eyes of the charging mountain goblins, when a treme
ndous blast of lightning exploded out of his speartip, blinding all with its searing flash, and crackling into the monster ranks.

  Down went the lead sidhe, rows and rows, some falling into lumps, others down and jerking about in spasms.

  Now Tay Aillig called for the charge, the Usgar warriors launching themselves into the sidhe ranks before the monsters could recover. Several more spear tips erupted in smaller bursts of magic, some fire, some lightning, and more monsters died.

  Up on the mountain to the east, Tay Aillig heard screaming, and he glanced that way and couldn’t help but grin wickedly.

  Up on a narrow ledge, a witch had magically brought forth a field of ice, and the sidhe were struggling to hold their footing on the edge of the cliff. That grin became a mocking laugh, and one of approval to Mairen, surely, when the witch cast a second spell, a great burst of wind down at the enemy holding so tenuous a position. Over they went in a tumble, a dozen and more plummeting down the rocky, windblown cliff face.

  And those sidhe behind, not yet in the magically iced area, turned about and fled.

  * * *

  Some distance to the west of the winter plateau loomed another, more roundabout approach, but one that the sidhe had decided to use, with their second line coming in opposite those charging down th’Way. It was a clever play—or would have been, had not the Usgar, who knew every slope, every stone, every gully on this part of Fireach Speuer, anticipated it.

  The mountain path ended in a long snow-covered decline that emptied into a gully west of the camp. At the base of that slope, burrowed into the snow, hid a trembling Connebragh, who was second in power in the Coven, behind the Usgar-righinn. She clutched two crystals, one filled with milky white flecks, the other thick with red, like tiny embers floating within the clear crystal.