They rode for miles with very little conversation. The solemn Banner guards never let down their watchfulness, and the wreth escorts had no interest in friendly talk. Kollanan said quietly to Adan, “Do they intend to ride through the night? We need to rest the animals if we are to keep up with them.”
Adan spoke up, calling ahead. “We all need water. You said you would provide it.”
The lead warrior turned around. “Soon. Endure a while longer.”
As purple dusk set in, the wreths guided the party into a side canyon. The weary, thirsty horses sniffed the air, perked up, and trotted into the canyon. Adan also smelled moisture and saw a seep in the canyon floor lined with green vegetation. A trickle of water bubbled out of the rocks to form a pool.
The warrior said, “We camp here for the night. By morning, we will have augas for you to ride, because the terrain is not suitable for your horses.” He looked at the crowded animals drinking from the spring. “Your mounts will be safe enough at this oasis. They will be waiting for you when you return.”
The following morning a lower-caste wreth arrived leading twenty riderless augas. “These beasts will take you to Queen Voo,” the lead warrior said, then looked at the Banner guards. “Do all your servants wish to come?”
Captain Elcior bridled at the insult. “Servants?”
Adan calmed him before the soldier’s pride could cause problems. He whispered, “He doesn’t know. To sandwreths, every human is an underling.” Even the kings of Suderra and Norterra, he realized.
Adan delegated a relieved-looking Seenan and two other Banner guards to stay and watch their horses, while the rest of the party rode to the desert palace. Kollanan and his companions approached the augas, awkward and uncomfortable. Adan swung into a low saddle, showing the others how to mount the lizard creatures. He glanced at his uncle and raised his eyebrows in amusement. “My pregnant wife rode an auga out on a dragon hunt. I’m sure Kollanan the Hammer can manage.”
“Ancestors’ blood, I can!”
Taking the reins in one hand, Elliel mounted a reptile’s hard saddle. Thon seemed perfectly comfortable sitting astride his creature. “Let us ride! I want to meet this sandwreth queen.”
The party moved off into the desert canyons and gravel-filled washes that opened into a sprawling salt pan. The augas bounded along, as if glad to stretch their legs.
After hours of riding, Adan brushed white powder from his reddened face and squinted ahead at what was surely a fevered mirage, but his companions saw it as well: an enormous structure of monolithic rocks, sandstone spires, and spiraled turrets, enticing and frightening.
When the augas reached the high arched entrance, Queen Voo stood there waiting for them. She fixed her spangled eyes on Adan, as if she didn’t even see Kollanan, Elliel, Thon, or any of the Banner guards. Her voice held a sharp, scolding tone. “Where is your wife, King Adan Starfall? I requested her to come here. Why would you ignore my words?”
Adan felt a chill even in the hot desert, but he didn’t flinch as he dismounted. He stared directly at the queen as if she were his equal, whether or not she believed it. “The rigors of travel might not have been safe for Penda, as she is so close to birth.” Right now, it sounded like a good justification.
Voo’s offense melted into disappointment. “I forget how fragile and weak humans are. Your wife should have given birth here in my palace. Think of what an honor it would have been.”
“I thank you for the offer.” He kept his voice flat. As the others awkwardly climbed down from their saddles, he turned to his uncle. “I’ve brought you an equally important visitor, King Kollanan of Norterra, the kingdom to the north. He wanted to meet you.”
“Of course he did.” Voo studied the bearded older king, but her greatest interest swung over to Thon. “This one intrigues me. His wreth blood seems more pure than that half-breed.” She gave Elliel a dismissive glance. Voo leaned closer. Adan had watched the sandwreth queen look at Penda with similar analytical curiosity. “What are you then? You are not a frostwreth. But how could you be some other kind of wreth?” She sniffed as if she could inhale the scent of his bloodline. She looked into his crushed-sapphire eyes. “Most unusual.”
“This is my hair. These are my eyes,” he said. “This is me. I came because I hope to find information here. I wish to study the recorded history of sandwreths and your legends. I want to learn if I am part of it.”
Voo turned to the mages standing behind her in the grand entrance. “We have ancient records, but I have not reviewed them in a very long time.” She walked around him, curious and intent. “And what is this mark on your face? You are quite handsome, but that design…”
“It is a rune of forgetting,” Elliel said, sounding defensive next to Thon. “Like mine.” She touched her own face.
“You are just a half-breed,” the queen sneered. “We know what you are.”
Voo showed no further interest, but Elliel continued. “My own people, other Bravas, did this to me … but we do not know how anyone could have overpowered Thon and made him suffer such a spell.”
“I remember nothing,” Thon said, “but I do want to learn who or what I am.” He paused. “It has been suggested I may be Kur himself.”
Voo laughed. “Suggested by a fool, perhaps! Kur gave the wreths his mission, and then he vanished from the world. He will not return until we have eradicated evil by killing Ossus.”
“Ah!” Thon sounded amused. “And Ossus is stirring in the Dragonspine Mountains. Mount Vada split open and belched fire. I was down there myself…” His voice trailed off, then he brightened. “Kur must be very pleased if you and the frostwreths are prepared to fight the dragon at last.”
Queen Voo seemed to fold in upon herself with anger. “First we must destroy the frostwreths. We cannot let them have part of the perfect world.”
“Ah,” Thon said again.
“Come with me. We will talk further inside.” Voo turned with a swirl and led them into the high, dry palace.
The main gallery was a cavernous chamber with an arched ceiling supported by thick stone columns that rose from a floor of pristine sand. Voo glided toward her raised throne, leaving the others to follow her. Her footprints erased themselves in the soft surface, but as Adan and Kollanan stepped after her, their boots sank in up to the ankles.
Before either king could speak, Voo dropped into her sandstone throne and spoke directly to Thon. “How would you fit into wreth history? Can you remember anything of the wars?” She stretched out her fingers, making grains swirl across the smooth canvas of sand, forming shapes. Marching armies appeared and crashed into one another.
“I do not remember them like that,” Thon said.
“We keep written records of those wars and our painful history … of Kur and his true love Raan, who should have been the mother to his perfect child—until she was poisoned by her treacherous sister.” Her expression pinched with rage. “That is what caused all the wars.”
On the dusty tableau, armies smashed each other until all that remained was a blasted landscape. Voo observed in silence, then smiled. “And now our race has awakened again, so we can eradicate the children of Suth.”
In the middle of the floor, a great bulge arose like a sand dune, which became a mountain range of scales. Finally, the head of a dragon emerged and opened its fanged mouth, drooling dust. “Afterward, we can destroy Ossus.” She smiled at Thon. “Will you fight on our side against the enemy? As King Adan Starfall will tell you, I like to have powerful allies.”
Adan tensed, not sure how Thon would respond, since he knew about the work camp and what the sandwreths did to their captive humans.
“I am not your enemy,” he replied carefully, “but I am not your ally either. I am … waiting.”
Voo pursed her lips. “You are exceedingly handsome.”
Elliel bristled, ready to fight, but Thon didn’t flinch. “I am glad my appearance pleases you.”
“As handsome as Kur himself, perhaps?” Voo let out a
wistful sigh. “You may be right after all.”
Though the comment was meant as teasing, Thon took it seriously. “Perhaps I am.”
28
PROGRESS on the Magnifica temple was significant, but not fast enough for Klovus. Even after he summoned resources and labor teams from across Ishara, impatience burned within him like indigestion. He wanted to prove his triumph. And he knew how.
Construction crews swarmed over the great plaza. People moved into the site with pallets of mortar and cartloads of bricks. Mule-drawn wagons rolled across the flagstones, carrying water barrels for the laborers, but the workers barely paused to sip a ladleful before going back to their tasks. Wooden rollers were lubricated with a slurry of mud for moving stone blocks, each the size of a cart and requiring dozens of men to move them, block after block, hour by hour.
He wanted more progress than that. Only with the godling’s help could he make up for lost time.
When the idea occurred to him, the key priestlord did not hesitate. Now, standing by the scale model of what the completed Magnifica would look like, Klovus clapped his hands and shouted out across the busy plaza, startling the nearby crew bosses. “All work must stop, now! Everything, stop.” The exhausted laborers turned to him, blinking with disbelief. He shouted again, “All workers—leave the Magnifica site. You need do no more work today.”
“But, Key Priestlord,” said Ur-Priest Dono, “we cannot afford to stall. The momentum of all these teams—”
“—will pale in comparison to what I intend to do.” He smiled. “Just observe.”
Though confused, the priests and workers obeyed his orders. The crew bosses called their teams to halt. Klovus was impatient. “Tell them to hurry.”
Gongs sounded to spread the word all around the plaza. Exhausted, grimy laborers dropped their tools, left their mortar and bricks. Hundreds of bewildered, dust-covered workers descended the scaffolding and ramps and retreated to the fringes of the huge construction site.
Klovus licked his lips as he let the energy build within him. He could feel his connection to the Serepol godling, sensed it stirring beneath the temple’s sprawling foundation. The great deity was restless, hungry, anxious to do something.
Klovus had not released the main godling for some time. The entity had never been allowed to achieve its full potential, and this was just the beginning. As the Magnifica grew, so did the deity’s strength.
Finally, with the construction site empty, a storm of tension hung over the disarray of stone blocks and piled bricks. The second platform of the stair-stepped pyramid was taking shape, and the foundation for the third had been laid out, but it would be weeks before the next level was completed.
The people gathered daily to pray for Iluris, but he would show them the true power of their faith, and manifest exactly what they had given him. They believed in their key priestlord, and that belief allowed him to do virtually anything.
When he was young, Klovus had served as an acolyte, then a minor priest, and finally ur-priest of the harbor temple. Now, because of his strong affinity for the godlings, he was the most powerful priestlord in Ishara. The faith the people used to create and strengthen the entities was connected to his own faith in what the godlings could do.
For hours at a time, Klovus would stand by the spelldoor in the subterranean vaults and sense the Magnifica godling, like a doting parent watching a newborn baby asleep. He would commune with it, nurture it. His thoughts were its thoughts. His wants and needs were reflected in what the godling did. It was his sibling, his shadow, his reflection.
Standing by the model of the Magnifica, he envisioned the huge temple in his mind and felt the godling locked below, attuned himself to it. The entity understood the significance of this construction site, knew what it could do to assist with the enormous task. Then, in the growing hush around the plaza, Klovus called forth the godling.
It stirred beneath the Magnifica’s foundation, then emerged from its spelldoor into the real world. Klovus could hear the gasps among the crowd of observers.
The huge temple base trembled and shook, as if the stones couldn’t contain the power seeping up from below. The godling was smoke and energy, fire and storm, a mass of emotions, needs, concepts. All the fears, hopes, and unbridled desires of countless sacrifices, prayers for wealth or revenge, for power or peace, were all manifested in a contradictory storm.
The shimmering shadows congealed into a brutish mass that rose taller than three men. Gasping supplicants retreated toward the dubious shelter of buildings around the plaza. Workers from outlying districts had seen their smaller local godlings, but this was the Magnifica godling, the main entity in all of Ishara.
The people began chanting, “Hear us, save us!”
Klovus raised his hand and shouted to the godling, “This is your temple, designed by your faithful followers and built by your workers! But you can help. You can make the Magnifica stronger … and make yourself strong at the same time.”
The spectators could not take their eyes from the rising entity. “Hear us, save us!”
He summoned a crystal-clear mental image of what the Magnifica needed to be. He pictured the components—stone blocks, bricks, structural girders—all laid out in exactly the way the gigantic pyramid must be constructed. The godling could assist.
The indistinct form flowed forward and snatched a cart-sized block of stone as if it were no more than a child’s brick, and stacked it precisely in its second-level position. It swirled in and out of the already assembled stones, picking up hundreds of molded bricks, scattering them like leaves in a whirlwind, then laying them down with sharp ricocheting cracks, fusing them into archways, smaller temple alcoves, and sacrificial portals.
As Klovus felt the godling work through him, he twitched his arms and clenched his fists. He watched as the roiling appendages picked up another immense block, and set it in place.
The work crews shouted reverberant cheers of “Hear us, save us!”
Returning to the mountain of quarried stone, the godling laid another block, and another, accomplishing in moments what work teams had taken days to achieve.
The godling thrived on its work, and Klovus swelled with his importance. Directing the deity demonstrated to the people that he was key priestlord, knew that he served and spoke for the powerful entities that protected all of Ishara.
The godling expended great energy, pleased to be released, for it often brooded behind the opaque spelldoor. It wanted to be free, wanted to act, and Klovus gave it a purpose now. More importantly, the people of Serepol witnessed how powerful, how awe-inspiring, how terrifying the thing was, and they knew that the godling, their godling, was there for them. All around Ishara, the deities protected their people from natural disasters, served and helped them, but this one was the focus of the land. The Serepol godling was Ishara.
Once the huge temple was finished, he hoped, the entity would be strong enough to cross the ocean and reach the Commonwealth, where it could scour the land clean of the godless and leave the old world empty and dead, as it deserved to be.
The increasing crowds watched in awe. Klovus was pleased to note that not once in those hours did a single person mutter a prayer for Iluris.
As the entity moved hundreds of tons of stone, though, completing the second level of the temple pyramid, the key priestlord could feel it diminishing. To Klovus, the godling was noticeably more diffuse, even as it continued to slap down thousands of bricks, build up walls, and shift more stone blocks. Its power, drawn from countless prayers and blood sacrifices, was not infinite.
Klovus could not let the people realize its weakened state. They must never know that godlings had limits.
Fortunately, the basic work of the second level was finished now. Before the fading became noticeable to the crowds, Klovus called the godling to a halt and let it rise and roil like a hurricane in front of the people, who still chanted, “Hear us, save us.”
Klovus shouted to the astonished audienc
e: “I hope you are inspired. I now dismiss the godling, because it has shown you what needs to be accomplished here. The godling is your servant, just as you serve its needs. We are Ishara, and we are strong!”
The deity disappeared back into the Magnifica like smoke drifting on the wind. The people stood in stunned veneration.
“Now you must all work harder,” Klovus said. “You’ve seen what the godling can do. Show it what you can do!” He had them entirely in his control. “Offer your strength and your sweat! Give of your blood. Present your sacrifices—the priestlords are here to accept them. The more you give your godling, the greater Ishara becomes. Make Ishara strong, and you make yourselves strong!”
29
DISCREETLY leaving Bannriya, Penda and her father headed north into the hills of Suderra. Their saddlebags carried the food and camp supplies they would need.
“I feel like a little girl again,” she said as the horses moved along a clear path toward the hills.
Hale Orr glanced at her rounded belly. “You are married to a king and about to give birth to my first grandchild. I can no longer think of you as a little girl.”
The skas circled overhead, chasing each other and taking turns landing on Penda’s shoulder. Although Ari’s heart link remained with the tribe-sister Glik, the blue reptile bird also felt an affinity with Penda. Neither ska showed any interest in Hale, and he pretended not to take offense.
Daughter and father traveled without plan or destination, because they wanted no one to know where they were going. They left the main road and entered the forested hills, following scattered lines of blue poppies, the secret sign that Utauks planted when they wandered the land. They camped alone the first night, building a cheery fire, opting to eat pack food because Penda’s father had no inclination to hunt.
“I used to be a good shot with a bow. Alas, bows and arrows aren’t my specialty anymore.” Her father held up the stump of his left wrist.
She shared out the bread and some cheese. “This is feast enough.”
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