Vengewar

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The other priestlord was concerned, but resigned. “Better the barbarians attack those who harmed our beloved empra.” He bowed. “I agree, Key Priestlord. It is a hard choice you made, but a good one.”

  “I made the decision for the good of Ishara. At present, the empra is incapable of leading her people, and I have reluctantly stepped into the role so we are not vulnerable when the godless attack, as they surely will.”

  “I heard that Empra Iluris disappeared,” Erical said. “That she has gone to hide among her people, or that she has ascended to the realm of the godlings.” He glanced at the shadowglass window. “But I commune with my godling daily, and she has not informed me of this. Is it true that Iluris vanished?”

  Klovus avoided the subject. “I have been preoccupied saving our land, but I intend to investigate the empra’s disappearance further when I return.” Not interested in further uncomfortable questions, and anxious for a meal and clean garments, he turned to go.

  As he left the temple, he called over his shoulder, “The Hethrren will pass through Prirari on their way to Serepol. Magda has promised that her people will not engage in plundering, pillaging, or raping, but they do need to eat, and there are many Hethrren. Our districts must provide them with the food they require, because they will be our crusaders. I encouraged them to move as swiftly as possible so as to cause no undue harm to the land.”

  “Hear us, save us,” Erical muttered.

  “They may well save us.” Klovus brushed at the sleeves of his caftan. “I leave Prirari in your hands, Priestlord Erical. Let me be the steward of the rest of the world.”

  * * *

  Three days later, after Klovus and his company of soldiers had gone, Erical received word that a barbarian army was approaching. They marched across the landscape like locusts. Fields were shorn and then trampled, storehouses raided. The Hethrren ate all available food, cut down orchards for firewood, made camp wherever they chose. Some villages used their local godlings to divert them and protect themselves, though Magda and her uncouth followers seemed to defy the lesser deities.

  Inside his temple, Erical ran his fingers over the shadowglass. He could see his beloved godling swirling there, the most beautiful thing ever to exist in the universe. “You know what is happening,” he whispered to her. “You must be strong. We have to save our city.” He shuddered at the thought of those barbarians sweeping through the streets of Prirari and disrupting the lives of the good people here.

  Attuned to him, his godling swirled in a slash of color, brightening with anger. Erical wanted to calm her, but the people were uneasy—and what the people felt, so did the godling. She responded and magnified those emotions.

  Ever since the first reports of Hethrren had trickled in to the city, the temple sacrifices had increased—urns of blood, baskets of fresh fruit, bushels of bread, gold coins, anything of value—and the godling grew stronger. Now Erical had to decide how to use her. Key Priestlord Klovus had explained his plan and had told Erical not to provoke the unlikely mercenary army, but he wouldn’t let the barbarians harm his followers either.

  “They are coming, and we must face them.” He pressed his palm against the shadowglass and felt the godling without needing to activate the shimmering spelldoor. He had never been forced to bring this godling into battle before. “You will awe them. You will terrify them. I may need you to fight, but I will try to find another way.”

  He looked at the offerings piled in the temple. Perhaps there was an alternative to outright battle … a chance that might still hurt Prirari, but not cut so deep. “I always need you, but soon I will need you more than ever. We will save the city together.” He hoped the godling could feel his confidence.

  Erical’s personal love was worth as much to her as all the prayers of the people. And he felt the godling’s warmth surge back into his heart. His thoughts sparkled, brightened.

  * * *

  When the Hethrren army proceeded across the landscape, some followed the roads, while others spread out into fields, orchards, and pastures, wherever they wished. From behind their city walls, the Prirari people saw the smoke from distant camps. It was an army large enough to devastate any city, should the barbarians choose to wield their strength.

  Lines of mounted Hethrren came forward carrying clubs, spears, and swords. As Erical watched them draw closer, he knew that he must not fail.

  Getting ready, he activated the spelldoor and released the glorious godling. She emerged like a pillar of smoke mixed with rainbows and lightning, dazzling colors that would make even a blind man weep. She was an ethereal column that undulated like a serpent of storms, a river of beliefs that manifested faith and goodwill. This godling had protected Prirari ever since the farming town had become a city, preventing floods, diverting forest fires, helping the people prosper.

  Erical left the temple and walked with the godling behind him, majestic, beautiful, and exuding as much power as could be created by fears and imagination. He felt invincible.

  Outside the walls of Prirari city, the Hethrren closed in, whooping and cheering because they saw much wealth and minimal defenses. But the priestlord intended to stop them, or at least divert them. Erical sensed that his godling was uncertain, yet not afraid.

  Emerging from the city gates, the priestlord walked toward the oncoming barbarians and the stocky woman who rode at the fore. Some young children rode in front of their parents in the saddle, or trotted along beside the ragged columns. Both men and women had babies strapped to their backs, mixed throughout the barbarian army, although it did not seem to affect their warlike posture.

  The swirling godling hovered behind him and flowed closer, rising up like a cobra to defend her priestlord. Magda urged her horse up to him, dubious but not frightened by the entity. She held a twisted club in her hand, ready but not threatening. Not yet.

  Erical faced her. “I am the priestlord of this district. Key Priestlord Klovus told me that you would pass through our land, and that you have sworn not to pillage or destroy our homes.”

  Magda snorted. “Yes, my lover made me promise that, but our people must eat, and you are required to give us food.”

  “We will feed your armies so you can be on your way.”

  “Good. Then open the gates of your city so we can ride in.”

  “You will remain outside,” Erical said. The godling swelled and looped up like a ribbon of anger and defiance. The aurora colors brightened, and a panoply of scarlet eyes lit like fresh flames in the shapeless head of the godling.

  Magda’s horse reared, forcing her to grab its mane. “We must eat! You are required to give us food.”

  “And so I will.”

  The godling stood as a guardian, intimidating the front lines of barbarians who looked hungrily at the city, but were afraid to pass the angry deity. A few of them even seemed ready to challenge the godling, but they would not need to.

  Priestlord Erical raised his hands in signal, and horse carts emerged from the city, all loaded with fruit, piles of bread, kegs of fresh cider, wheels of cheese, hams, smoked legs of lamb. “We will feed you,” Erical said, “and you will be satisfied. However, you will not enter my city.”

  Magda looked skeptical at first, but as wagon after wagon emerged piled with the supplies Erical had taken from the city storehouses, from merchants and farmers, she grunted. “Perhaps it will be enough.”

  “And then you will be on your way,” Erical said.

  The godling flared, and sparks crackled up and down her serpentine length as she twisted and shifted like a contained tornado.

  Magda scowled back at her thousands of Hethrren and clenched her jaw. “Yes, then we will be on our way.”

  Erical felt a swell of relief, coupled with the godling’s satisfaction. The people watched from the city, and when they understood that he had negotiated a painful but necessary solution, they all prayed, “Hear us, save us!”

  The entity grew stronger, more colorful, more beautiful—and more threate
ning.

  Magda and her Hethrren rode away the following day, as promised.

  68

  DISPATCHED by her mother from the ice palace, Koru led her frostwreths in search of the dragon. Ossus stirred in his deep underground sleep, which caused the Dragonspine Mountains to buckle and break. She just needed to find him.

  Riding oonuks, her war party included twelve warriors and a pair of mages, a male and a female named Elon and Mor. All were eager to face their destiny after centuries of spellsleep, though Koru was disappointed that Queen Onn saw fit to send only fifteen on such a crucial mission. Her mother gave so little importance to the very reason for their existence!

  Elon and Mor, both bald and unattractive, clutched their mounts’ thick white fur and rode along with the party as if enduring a punishment. The warriors were fully armed, bred for combat, and entitled to victory. Koru had trained with them to hone her abilities. Her own armor felt like a protective shell that covered her shoulders, breasts, abdomen. Crystal-scaled boots reached to her knees, but left her thighs bare.

  Far ahead, a black line of snowcapped peaks undulated across the landscape. Her party had been riding south and east through the frozen wastes for days, and she could see the pall of smoke in the air where the dragon’s hot exhalations boiled up from the side of a mountain.

  Koru yanked on the spiked reins to draw her wolf-steed to a halt, and considered the mountains. “There lies Ossus.” She gripped a spear with an elongated tip of cold crystal. “If we can make the dragon show himself, perhaps we can kill him.”

  Leran, one of the warriors, laughed a deep-throated challenge. “You have always been ambitious, Koru. You think you could slay Ossus yourself?”

  “Of course not. That is why I brought the rest of you along.”

  Leran touched his polished armor. “Dar wounded Ossus long ago. We can finish the job.” Their mounts pawed the drifts of dirty snow.

  Koru wanted to know how Dar could have been so brave, so powerful. On further study of the legends and historical records, she learned that another great wreth warrior, Rao, had fought at Dar’s side against Ossus. Maybe it had taken both of them to inflict the wound that drove the dragon underground.

  But she had discovered that Rao was a descendant of Raan—one of the sandwreths. Had Dar and Rao fought together, as allies? Had they worked to defeat the dragon—as Kur had commanded them to do—rather than trying to kill one another? That might be the only way the wreths could slay the dragon.

  Annoyed with Onn’s narrow-minded vision, Koru raised her spear. She was impatient with her people, frostwreths as well as sandwreths. Their petulance and prejudice were delaying the god’s return and the restoration of a perfect world. With a huff, she prodded her oonuk into motion. The great white beast bounded forward.

  Koru’s party rode hard for days, heading toward the heart of the smoking mountains. When she found roads and abandoned villages, she remembered her mother’s pet boy child, a reminder that the humans had built their own civilization while the wreths were dormant.

  With the recent eruption, an incredible amount of ash, smoke, and debris had spewed into the air, obliterating these villages on the slopes. Now the wolf-steeds prowled among burned and ruined barns, warehouses, inns. Gray ash covered the ground, softening the harsh skeletal outlines of the town. Pawing at a fallen, charred beam, the beasts uncovered two blackened bodies. Koru looked down, trying to imagine the lives these poor creatures had. The oonuks tore the blackened flesh from the bones and feasted.

  Moving beyond the town, the war party picked their way among jumbles of black volcanic rock. The ground thrummed and vibrated, but the shaggy wolf-steeds climbed boulders and leaped across fissures, bearing their riders.

  The most prominent mountain stood like a grand throne, but its top had been sheared off in the recent upheavals. Mount Vada looked like an open wound, its peak gone, the side split. Thin rivers of orange lava streamed down like the spilled blood of a dragon. Was Ossus still bleeding from the wound Dar had inflicted with her spear?

  When the war party reached the steeper slopes, they paused again. Without speaking, the two mages slid off their mounts and stood side by side, spreading their arms and splaying their fingers as if catching the air. Elon and Mor bent down in their blue robes to touch the hot ground. The blistering rocks sizzled their palms, but the two mages did not flinch.

  “The world is in pain!” Elon said. “The ground in upheaval.”

  Mor said, “These mountains are filled with power.”

  Koru lifted her spear. “Then we should release it.” She glanced at the determined frostwreths around her. “We will not have a better opportunity than this.”

  “We can sense the anger.” Mor’s voice was even rougher than her partner’s gruff tones.

  Elon lifted his hands from the hot rocks, stared at his blackened palms, then used his innate magic to heal them. “At the end of the wars, the power in the land was nearly spent, but much of it remains here in the Dragonspine Mountains. We can feel Ossus stirring.”

  “Then shake him awake!” Koru and the others also dismounted, telling their oonuks to follow. “We will join in the effort.”

  The mages’ expressions did not change. Mor said, “We will borrow your power.” She slammed her palms against the mottled rock that had recently been belched out of the mountain.

  Koru felt a weakening inside, as if her own life and strength were flowing into the world.

  Mor shoved the ripples down into the ground, and Elon did the same.

  Koru dropped to her knees and pressed her hands against the searing rock as well, ignoring the burn. The ground shuddered, the slopes writhed. Koru felt a slash of pain through her heart as the world reacted. They called the dragon.

  When some dark presence deep below lunged out, she lost her balance and fell backward. The other wreths sprawled as the earth heaved. Mount Vada bucked in convulsions.

  The two mages continued their silent onslaught. Fumaroles vented hot gases with a shrill whistle. Geysers sprayed feathers of superheated liquid high into the air, and the jets rained hot pebbles down around them.

  The ground roared, and then Mount Vada split open again. Lava squirted out in a scarlet plume, and smoke and ash became a fierce blizzard. Enormous slabs of blackened rock slid away to reveal a chasm in the mountain.

  Something huge and black moved within the darkness, clawing its way out.

  Koru scrambled to her feet and grabbed her spear. At first she saw jagged and angular wings, black scaly skin stretched between long ribs, and then came a pointed snout, horns and spines, fiery eyes. The creature screamed and shoved itself free from the confines of the mountain.

  A dragon exploded into the smoky air as lava continued to spew out. Flapping its great wings, it pushed itself into the sky. The wreth warriors scrambled for their weapons, some shouting in challenge, others with fear-cracked voices.

  Then, before the dragon could circle around once, a second terrifying figure began to emerge from the fissure—another dragon just as monstrous as the first.

  “How can there be two?” Leran cried. “There is only one Ossus!”

  The first beast flew above the rumbling mountain, lashing its barbed tail. Koru said, “Ossus embodies all hatred and violence. Maybe that cannot be contained in one form. The two dragons must be fragments of Ossus.”

  The ground shook again, and the rumbling grew louder. Smoke and fumes filled the air as the second giant reptile struggled to break free of the mountainside. The head emerged, stretching a serpentine neck. Fire sputtered from its long tongue, gasping out of a cavernous throat. With muscular back legs, the second dragon lunged out and flapped one huge wing, but its other wing was stunted and malformed. Though it strained against the tough, scaly membrane, the other wing remained weak, bent.

  The first dragon screamed into the air with a world-shattering sound. It flew high into the sky and arced away from the mountains to spread its evil across the land. It soared away.<
br />
  But when the second dragon finally took wing, it could not fly far.

  As Koru and her war party gathered their weapons, the monster spotted them below. In pain, struggling to fly, it dove toward them to attack.

  69

  AS the Utauks piled dead wood for the communal bonfire, Penda and Hale Orr took seats outside next to the old matriarch. She liked to watch the heart camp’s nightly blaze. Shella din Orr was surrounded with pillows and cushions, covered with colorful blankets.

  Penda was also propped on pillows, so that she felt less ungainly. Her belly seemed to grow more enormous every day. Other Utauk women—including one who had borne eight children of her own—kept Penda company during the uncomfortable rides as the wagons traveled across the landscape. The mothers gave her advice, told her stories, and emphasized how wonderful childbirth would be. Penda had seen women give birth before and knew that it was a messy and painful process. She just wanted this over—with Adan at her side.

  But she was also the queen of Suderra, and she turned her thoughts to other concerns. “We know what the wreths are doing, Mother. Cra, we’ve got to do something about the slave camp where Glik is being held.”

  “Just knowing that the wreths cannot be trusted gives us an advantage,” said the old woman. Her voice whistled and clicked as she formed clear words in spite of having only a few teeth. “They think we are all happy to be their friends.”

  Hale cracked a stick in his fingers. “Cra! That advantage does us little good unless we can use it. We should do something to free those poor people.”

  “You want to make the Utauk tribes into armies?” Shella remained skeptical. “We have never been good at war.”

  “We will all have to fight if it is the end of the world.” Hale’s voice did not have his usual bluster and optimism. He was weary and concerned for his daughter and her baby. “Utauks strive to be neutral, and we surround ourselves with a tight community, but we are not helpless.”