Song of the Risen God

by R. A. Salvatore

  Bahdlahn wanted to scream, to cry, to shout in denial.

  But mostly, to cry.

  He had killed a xoconai. Not a goblin, he knew. Not a monster, he knew.

  Julian pulled him away. The others were through the hole in the wall, and Brother Ottavian worked his citrine once more to try to cover the breach as best he could.

  A pair of knights hoisted the dead sentry and off the troupe went, into the night, across the fields north of Palmaris, with the monks guiding them by using the farseeing quartz crystal and shielding them with the shrouding darkness of their magical diamonds.

  * * *

  The sun rose on the conquered city of Palmaris. Xoconai columns roamed the streets, ordering the citizens out of their homes, sometimes pulling them out of their homes, directing them into the streets to hear the demands of their conquerors and to learn the new reality of Palmaris.

  On a high platform built on the enormous square outside of St. Precious monastery, High Priest Pixquicauh addressed them all, his voice echoed by callers set strategically throughout the city, assuring them that the fighting was over.

  “We are not unmerciful,” he told them. “We come with the word of Glorious Gold—you will learn the beauty of our god, the true god, Scathmizzane.”

  He motioned, and the xoconai ranks below moved back, revealing King Midalis dan Ursal, stripped to the waist and bound to a large pole that had been set deep into the ground among the cobblestones.

  A thousand gasps echoed around St. Precious Square.

  “Look up at me, Midalis,” Pixquicauh ordered, and when the battered and broken man didn’t immediately respond, a xoconai warrior stepped over and yanked his head back.

  “Pledge undying fealty to Glorious Gold,” Pixquicauh demanded.

  “I pledge that I will not raise arms against—” Midalis began.

  “Fealty! Name Scathmizzane as the one true god. Your god!”

  Midalis stared up at him in obvious confusion.

  Tuolonatl walked over and dismissed the soldier, forcing him away.

  “Fealty!” Pixquicauh called down.

  Tuolonatl moved before the king. “You know what you must do,” she said quietly.

  “I cannot,” Midalis told her. “I hold faith in the teachings of Blessed Abelle.”

  “And you would rather die than renounce your faith,” Tuolonatl said. “Yes, I know this and understand this, and even applaud this. But this is no longer about you.”

  “You are defeated,” Pixquicauh called from above. “Pledge your undying fealty, indeed your love, to Glorious Gold!”

  “No,” Midalis called back, and Pixquicauh mocked him with laughter.

  And Tuolonatl sighed.

  “Then I will murder before you every human in this city,” the high priest replied. “Each day. Every day, until they are all dead.”

  The crowd shuddered as one, wails and cries and shouts of protest rising, the whole thing threatening to explode.

  “He is not bluffing,” Tuolonatl explained. “If any now about this area try to revolt, the blood will be deep enough to cover your bare feet.”

  “Fealty!” Pixquicauh yelled.

  Of all the awful moments of King Midalis’s life, this was the worst. Even the Battle of St.-Mere-Abelle, where thousands had lain dead, paled beside the man’s current turmoil.

  “This is not about you,” Tuolonatl told him again.

  She might as well have added that Midalis’s fate was already sealed in any case, and he knew as much, of course. His mind whirled, trying to suppress the fear, trying to determine the righteous course and the correct course, which seemed disparate paths indeed. Which would be the better course?

  “Bring forth—” Pixquicauh started to order, moving to the front of the platform.

  “I pledge!” King Midalis shouted, and he called out, too, for his warriors, for his citizens, to hold back, to hold calm.

  The high priest paused and turned that hideous skull face upon Midalis once more.

  “You pledge fealty?”

  “Yes.”

  “You pledge your obedience to the xoconai, who have claimed this city as their own?”

  “Yes,” he said through gritted teeth—for that was the only way he could stop them from chattering.

  “You pledge your love to Glorious Gold?”

  The utterly defeated, utterly broken man slumped then to the limit of his bindings and quietly replied, “Yes.”

  “Good! Then you accept his judgment!” Pixquicauh announced. This time, he did not ask.

  Time seemed to both slow down and speed up for Midalis at that terrible moment. The woman who had come to him to quietly speak with him, the great xoconai warrior named Tuolonatl, offered him a last nod, even a look of respect, then turned and walked away. A bunch of xoconai men dressed in robes swiftly moved past her and formed a circle about him.

  As one, they lifted sheets of polished gold, like large shields, before them.

  Up on the platform, another augur lifted a smaller sheet, holding it high and turning it to catch the morning sunlight and then reflect that beam down at the circle of augurs.

  Midalis grimaced in pain as soon as the light hit the golden shields and was magnified a hundred times over in a brilliant glare that stole all other images.

  The augurs began to chant and, as one, took a small step forward.

  The heat intensified.

  Another step. Midalis cried out in pain.

  Another step, and another, and then more slowly, until the golden shields formed a solid circle about the king, and within that ring there was only light, blindingly bright, a singular white image.

  And within that ring there came a singular sound: the screams of a man melting alive.

  And then … silence, perfect silence, all about the square.

  Up on the platform, the augur lowered his golden mirror. The circle of augurs moved away.

  Where King Midalis had been, there was now only a crumble of blackened bones, piled in a puddle of black liquid.

  “Will any choose to join him now?” Pixquicauh cried. “No? Then kneel, one and all, to the power of Glorious Gold!”

  Tears and screams and shouted protests gradually gave way, the massive gathering falling to their knees.

  Not all, though, the high priest saw from his high perch. “Bend the knee to Glorious Gold,” he called down one last time.

  More lowered. A few did not.

  Pixquicauh motioned to Tuolonatl, and she sent forth her mundunugu.

  The defiant humans were brought forth, one by one, and were tied to the pole, which had survived the fiery light.

  The augurs repeated their gruesome ritual.

  It went on for a long while, and even those taken who changed their minds were offered no reprieve. When it was done, the pile of bones at the base of the pole could be counted only by the thirteen distinct skulls.

  “Go forth to your homes and your work,” the high priest told the gathering, and the echoing augurs told the rest of the city. “You are the servants of Glorious Gold now, the servants of the xoconai. We are merciful masters—to those who obey.

  “But know this, without any doubt,” he cried more loudly. “Know that we will kill a hundred of you for every xoconai who is assaulted.”

  The crowd dispersed. The sun climbed higher in the sky, a clear day.

  But to the folk of Palmaris, the darkest day of all.

  19

  IXCHEL

  Was it a dream?

  Aoleyn sat comfortably, legs crossed under her, on the floor of her darkened room in St.-Mere-Abelle. She looked down at her hand and slowly unfolded her fingers to reveal two large gemstones, a chrysoberyl and a quartz.

  She had requested them from Father Abbot Braumin, and he not only had complied but had given her the finest of each gem available in the monastery—likely the finest in the entire Abellican collection. He had offered her a magnificent wedstone as well, but after examining the one she kept on the chain abou
t her waist, the father abbot had simply laughed and shaken his head, certain that he could not improve upon it.

  Aoleyn had used this combination on a hunch and had found a beautiful intermingling in their magical songs. The wedstone freed her spirit from her corporeal form. The chrysoberyl protected her from the temptations of possession and from anyone else possessing her.

  And the quartz, the gem of farseeing … With it, Aoleyn had found the distances eliminated. She didn’t fly free across the landscape of the world in her spiritual form, as usual. Instead, she merely thought of a place—Ursal, Appleby, even Fireach Speuer—and she was there, glimpsing, hearing, feeling the wind.

  Or was she? Was it but a dream?

  The woman closed her eyes and focused on that experience, solidifying the details, replaying them, clarifying them, committing them fully to her memory. So many things had come at her, so fast, that she hadn’t found a moment to digest the connections among the images, the sounds, the places.

  She sent her thoughts, her spirit, north over the sea and saw the ragtag collection of boats hugging the coast, desperate people trying to get away, to get anywhere. She felt their thirst and hunger, the burns and blisters on their skin from days in the sun on the open water. She knew that many, most perhaps, would die.

  She saw Palmaris, broken, with xoconai soldiers all about. In the large square, a line of men and women marched in shackles. One by one they were judged, and most were tied to a pole set in the middle of the wide square, surrounded by xoconai priests—augurs, they called them—carrying shining golden shields. A wide circle at first, but closing, closing, the light brilliant, the glow opaque.

  Aoleyn had heard the screams and felt the pain.

  The magical light of the xoconai melted them!

  Soon after, almost instantaneously, she stood again in Ursal. Before her, hundreds of men scrambled to clear the rubble of the monk’s grand structure while others worked under the direction of xoconai drivers, rebuilding.

  She forcefully entered the mind of the leader of the xoconai team there and found an image of his vision. They were building a temple, a great one like the one that had been buried under the lake of her homeland.

  They weren’t leaving, ever.

  She went east, following the line of the xoconai army—and how far they had already marched! Far beyond St.-Mere-Abelle, she knew, overrunning every town along the way. And before them trudged the refugees, by the thousands.

  Aoleyn took a deep breath and stared down at the gemstones. Was this reality? Had she actually seen these things or was this some manifestation of her fears? Truth or nightmare?

  She didn’t know, and she feared it was a combination of both. And there was something more, she knew. She had felt it in the deaths she had witnessed in the city called Palmaris. The spirits of those victims had fled immediately, had swept out of the city, heading west, ever west.

  Aoleyn remembered what she had seen in the west, the procession of the dead. She remembered the compulsion to join them and go with them and be … what?

  She rolled the gemstones in her hand, terribly afraid.

  Could she trust the chrysoberyl?

  She knew that she had to try.

  She closed her hand and closed her eyes and fell into the three songs once more.

  Aoleyn moved her thoughts and thus her spirit to the west, far west. She saw Appleby and many other towns where life had returned to a new normal and the men and women labored for the benefit of the xoconai. She heard a service, a holy gathering, led by an augur and attended by dozens of xoconai and hundreds of human men, women, and children—so many children!

  She cast her sight and spirit much farther and saw the xoconai city on the plateau, which had been under Loch Beag. It was beautiful—she couldn’t deny that.

  Graceful boats sailed about the vast lake before the place. They were like the uamhas boats she had often seen from Fireach Speuer, except many greater in number and sailing much farther out from shore. Of course, she realized, there was no lake monster lurking beneath the much shallower waters of this wide lake. Aoleyn flitted about the xoconai who were out fishing and dared to slip into the mind of one, then another, just briefly. She moved back to the rim of the great chasm to look down on the city, and now she knew its name: Otontotomi.

  And within that massive pyramid in the center of the large city was Scathmizzane, the Glorious Gold. She could feel it. She could sense his presence, his sheer power, one she had felt before.

  They called him a god.

  Aoleyn knew better, and so she was afraid.

  She turned away from Otontotomi. She looked up the mountain that had been her home.

  She felt the power of the God Crystal.

  Aoleyn blinked, fingers squeezing on the chrysoberyl, one running over the quartz.

  Then she stood on the edge of another chasm, a smaller ravine atop Fireach Speuer, Craos’a’diad, the Mouth of God.

  She stared into the abyss below, a darkness that felt as death but teemed with life—life energy, at least.

  Dare she?

  She wanted to let go of the song, to wake up back in her corporeal form.

  But they needed her. They all needed her.

  She fell from the ledge, into the chasm, down, down, among the spirits, and she heard them, she felt them, she felt what had brought them here, for it called to her, too.

  The notes of the chrysoberyl sounded stronger in her mind, protecting her, keeping the compelling voices at bay.

  But not the voices of those around her—a thousand, ten thousand, whispering, fearful, dead. These were not the people of her homeland, not the Usgar or the uamhas. These were the folk of the Wilderland towns and the eastern kingdom, and these were the xoconai who had fallen in the battles.

  She knew that, she felt that, she heard their whispers.

  And she learned.

  She went to a serene cave far below the chasm and knew that she now was below the sacred lea and the God Crystal. This room, with this pool, was connected to this crystal.

  To her surprise—her shock, even—she heard the song of the Coven once more. They were up there still, dancing and singing!

  She floated up to the ceiling, to the vein she knew would lead to the God Crystal itself, and there she found a cacophony, a great huddled and teeming mass of spirits being sucked within, and one in particular whom she knew.

  Aoleyn understood and was afraid.

  Yet, one voice called her forward, asked her to join, to come into the light of Glorious Gold.

  She awoke in her chamber in St.-Mere-Abelle with a start and a scream.

  The door banged open and Sister Elysant ran in.

  “Aoleyn!” she cried, grabbing, hugging the woman, trying to steady her. For Aoleyn was trembling wildly and sweating.

  “Aoleyn? Are you all right? Aoleyn?”

  Aoleyn slowly turned her head to regard her friend. Her thoughts swirled, a twisting line of images and sounds, whispers and feelings, fear and loathing and temptation.

  Temptation? Recognizing that only made Aoleyn’s thoughts spin even more.

  “He’s dead,” the witch said, before she even realized she was talking.

  “Who?”

  “King Midalis is dead,” Aoleyn stated with complete confidence.

  * * *

  Brother Thaddius rubbed his weary eyes, which were red and itchy from the candle smoke and the incessant dust of the catacombs. He looked around at the daunting pile of scrolls. The writings from St. Belfour’s tomb had led him to the diaries of Brother Gilbert, and the log of the monks who visited those diaries—none in more than two centuries—had shown him the name of Brother Percy Fenne, who had accompanied Belfour in his travels, in his quest to find the xoconai.

  That clue had steered him to seek out the signature of Percy Fenne in other logs, contemporary with his search for Brother Gilbert’s diaries. He had then searched and searched, discovering references to the writings of several other brothers, but these h
ad brought little but frustration, for they spoke not of the xoconai but of the Belt-and-Buckle Mountains, of towns and settlements, and of the Behrenese and fierce To-gai-ru they might encounter in their travels.

  In those many tertiary scrolls and crumbling parchments, Thaddius had found only one more possible lead: a trio of relatively obscure references to “Brother Journey,” a moniker given to a second-century monk, Master Ferdinand, who had traveled the desert dunes of Behren, south to the secret Walk of Clouds of the mystics known as the Jhesta tu, and west all the way into, and across, the high tundra of To-gai.

  Thaddius rubbed his eyes again, sighed, and looked down at the table before him, at the rolled scrolls on one side, at the pots holding dozens of others, which stuck up like naked tree trunks, neglected and long dead. Only one of the hundreds of scrolls he had perused had given him anything that could prove of value, and that scroll was so decayed that he found little more than cryptic and ambiguous phrases.

  He looked at his own writing, cribbed from Ferdinand’s many writings.

  They eat the dead and from the dead find power.

  Run, do not fight, for the god grows stronger with every kill and every death!

  Thaddius was fairly certain that these referenced the xoconai, but Ferdinand might have been writing about the To-gai-ru! In all the scrolls, he had so far found only a single reference that he could tie directly to the race of xoconai:

  What terrifies most about these bright-faced fiends is that they fight without fear, they die without fear. The xoconai are the light, their god the right … a candle in the darkness … the only truth. No other faith, not Samhaist, not Disciple of Abelle, not Jhesta tu, not Chezhou is acceptable. We are heathens, one and all, to be given to the giant god of Glorious Gold.

  The monk looked around at the dusty air, at the gloom beyond the low arches. He knew that he could spend another year searching these vast collections. And, in that year, he might find something of true value or perhaps nothing more than these same cryptic references, as full of superstition as of information.