The cuetzpali scrambled quickly over the rocky jags and up the steep slopes of Tzatzini. Tuolonatl and Ataquixt had ridden hard through much of the night, and now, in the light of dawn, they pressed their mounts on even faster.
They heard the windburst up above and saw the distant pines shudder under the blow. It was a magical burst, they both suspected, particularly given the location.
They saw Glorious Gold astride Kithkukulikhan, high above Otontotomi and speeding for the mountain.
They saw the beam of magic come forth from within that same windblown grove, stabbing out at Kithkukulikhan and dropping the dragon and its rider from the sky.
“Our enemies are here,” Tuolonatl realized, beyond any doubt. “They have the God Crystal, the power of Tzatzini!”
The cochcal’s jaw dropped open when the God Crystal fired again, a ray of brilliant light diving down over the lip of the chasm far below, melting the mirror atop the great temple, then moving down to assault the stone of the pyramid.
Tuolonatl turned back and started to urge her mount forward once more, but Ataquixt grabbed her by the arm. She looked at him incredulously.
“I fear that the world is about to suddenly change in great ways,” he warned. “My cochcal, my commander, my dear friend, I pray we find our way.”
Tuolonatl didn’t quite know what to make of those strange words, but she merely nodded and started off. Moments later, the ground trembled again as, down below, the pyramid temple collapsed. At the same time, off to her right, she saw Kithkukulikhan, wounded but not dead, speeding up the hill, slithering about the high jags, running over the small trees with its great girth.
“Where is Scathmizzane?” she whispered, noting that Glorious Gold was not upon the dragon’s back, as far as she could see. She looked to Ataquixt, who wore a grim expression, but one that seemed oddly removed from her observation.
* * *
Aoleyn gasped, startled, at the view before her: the dragon’s head striking with the speed of a white-furred viper.
Aydrian dodged with an amazing sidelong leap and roll, and the dragon’s head hit the ground of the plateau with such force that it jolted all of the onlookers from the ground. Then came a sudden sizzling flash, a lightning bolt from Thaddius that hit the dragon squarely in the face, in the mouth.
The beast seemed to simply ingest it, unbothered.
But Aydrian was right back in the fight, his enchanted sword with its silverel blade cutting across the side of the dragon’s head as it reared once more—and actually digging in, flecking scales and slicing dragon flesh.
The dragon roared.
Aoleyn pulled a crystal from an inside flap of her cloak. It was the gray-flecked one, full of lodestone. She sent her thoughts through it, toward the dragon, trying to find some bit of the beast that would attract the magic. She sensed Aydrian’s sword and breastplate clearly enough, but nothing from the dragon. Perhaps if she waited until the powerful man struck again, she could launch her missile at the embedded sword …
Aoleyn recognized the large xoconai who came through the pines to the left of the opening overlooking the winter plateau. All around her, the witches gasped and threw themselves to the ground—whether in fear or in supplication, Aoleyn could not tell.
Even Mairen slumped down. Unlike the other witches, though, the Usgar-righinn, the leader of the Coven, who had been the most powerful woman of the Usgar tribe, didn’t seem awestruck, nor supplicant, but simply overwhelmed. She fell to her knees, tearing at her bare skin, pulling at her hair, her mouth twisting as if she wanted to scream at Scathmizzane but could not find any measure of control sufficient to formulate a curse.
Aoleyn glanced behind, noting Connebragh and the two uamhas quickly retreating into the trees.
“They understand,” Scathmizzane said to Aoleyn, and his words echoed twice more, reaching the woman in three languages: that of the xoconai, that of the Ayamharas Plateau, and that of Honce-the-Bear. “They … you … cannot defeat me, because I am you. Behold Mairen, who was your better.” Scathmizzane swept his arm out to his right, to the woman sobbing and thrashing on the ground. “She knows she is lost, and nothing can save her, or any of you.”
Over to the side, the dragon roared—in pain, Aoleyn thought. But she did not, could not, turn away from Scathmizzane, this godlike being called Glorious Gold. She couldn’t deny his beauty, the lightness about him, a seduction of hope and love.
“I am given form and name by the heart, young Aoleyn of the Usgar,” he said, and still his words echoed in three languages.
He wanted everyone in the area to hear and understand.
“Open your heart and see the truth, and you will understand.”
Aoleyn lowered her gaze in contemplation, and opened indeed—not her heart, but the song within the spear-like crystal in her hands.
Scathmizzane was dressed as a xoconai, with that rolled darkfern breastplate common among the warriors. In the darkfern were veins of the same metal that had been fashioned into Aydrian’s fine sword.
She felt that metal now, calling to her crystal.
“I know you, high priestess of Tonoloya,” Scathmizzane teased.
Aoleyn brought the song up as she brought her gaze up, staring with hatred at the being. The God Crystal beside her called to her, promising her even greater strength, but she didn’t accept that invitation, and it was her power, and hers alone, that sent the crystal flying spear-like at Scathmizzane, with tremendous speed and power. It crashed through his breastplate, scattering the broken darkfern, and drove through Glorious Gold himself, right through, coming out the giant’s back.
From that hole came not blood but light, beams of light, front and back.
Scathmizzane, so obviously unhurt, just laughed at Aoleyn.
* * *
Aydrian had faced a dragon before, but that beast was quite unlike this one—more formidable, in many ways, particularly since this dragon had come into the fight badly injured. Still, the serpentine attacking style of this dragon surprised the ranger and seemed far too fast for a creature of such size.
Again and again, Aydrian had to throw himself wildly to the side, or back, or shift and reverse in midstep to avoid the snapping of the dragon’s huge mouth. He was scoring hits with some of his counters, and his sword, Tempest, was powerful enough for those hits to penetrate and sting. But if he was doing any real damage to the dragon, the beast didn’t show it.
And the dragon was learning.
Over to the left went Aydrian, rolling, as the dragon bit at him. He had to roll again the same way when the beast swept down and around in the strike, chasing him out to the side.
Aydrian called to the gemstones in his sword and in his breastplate, growing stronger and tougher, his very form blurring to offer greater confusion and defense. He called upon graphite to send sparks arcing up and down the length of Tempest, trying to maximize his every strike.
Behind him, Brother Thaddius threw lightning bolts and bursts of biting cold at the dragon, but this seemed to be having little effect.
Back to the right ran Aydrian, pausing, reversing, then reversing again as the huge head swayed in the air far above him.
Down it snapped, and the man leaped aside again, beginning the dance anew.
He couldn’t continue for much longer.
“Thaddius, I need you,” he called.
The response came as a stroke of lightning searing over Aydrian’s head to flash against the dragon’s head. Perhaps it stung the beast, but it nearly cost Aydrian his life, for the blinding flash gave him hesitation but gave the dragon none, the fanged maw rushing down at him right through it.
Aydrian rolled and twisted, turning his hips forward, toward the dragon. As it reared, the man used his enhanced strength and considerable athletic prowess to propel himself forward, a mighty leap right into the length of the dragon.
Tempest struck hard, but if Aydrian had been amazed by the striking speed of the great beast, he now was truly stunned at how
quickly the dragon coiled before him, head coming in low. To this point, the dragon had struck like a cobra, but now it seemed more akin to a viper.
Its neck uncoiled straight ahead, too fast for the ranger to react. The toothy maw closed about him and drove him back at lightning speed, playing out to the end of the dragon’s length. He felt the maw closing upon him, the swordlike fangs digging into his breastplate, crushing it, piercing it, closing as if to bite him in half.
He called upon the soul stones in his breastplate for all his life, throwing waves of healing against the pressing doom.
It couldn’t hold!
He felt more waves of healing—from Thaddius, he realized, when he heard the monk calling for him—but that, too, could not be enough against the bite of this giant monster.
With a determined growl, Aydrian reached his arms straight overhead, resisting the instinctive urge to grab at the dragon’s massive jaws to try to pry himself free. He took up Tempest in both hands, and with every bit of power and denial he could manage, drove the sword hard into the dragon’s left eye.
Ichor spewed and sparks flew as the enchanted silverel blade punctured the orb and drove deeper.
The dragon went into a rage, lifting its head and slamming it—and Aydrian—back to the ground.
The healing couldn’t begin to dull the pain now, as Aydrian’s bones began to snap and his tendons tore, but he didn’t let go of that sword hilt, and he continued to press with all his might.
He heard Thaddius screaming for him, but the monk’s voice seemed far away, receding with every passing syllable.
He knew he was dying.
He wouldn’t let go or let up.
* * *
The javelin flew out, startling Tuolonatl, who turned to her companion, then quickly back, to follow the missile’s flight all the way into Kithkukulikhan’s remaining good eye.
The beast lay flat on the ground, its thrashes turning to trembling. The powerful human was broken in its jaws, but his hands still clenched the sparking sword with its blade buried to the crosspiece in Kithkukulikhan’s left eye.
She turned back to Ataquixt in horror.
“I missed,” he said with a shrug. “Perhaps I should have thrown for that one instead of the human in Kithkukulikhan’s jaw.”
Tuolonatl glanced back to see a robed human priest, glowing white, go running past the dragon’s head, disappearing behind its massive length. A heartbeat later came a massive fireball, exploding across the midsection of the dragon. The blinded beast gave one last shudder and lay very still. The human in Kithkukulikhan’s locked jaw fell limp, arms dropping out wide to either side, head lolling back so far that his golden helmet fell free, dropping to the ground below to clang and bounce about on the stones.
Tuolonatl didn’t know what to make of any of it, didn’t know where to turn or how to feel—or how to consider Ataquixt and his claims. When did that one ever miss with his javelins? Was there a finer slinger in the mundunugu ranks?
It all seemed secondary, though, a moment later, when there came a bright flash of light back among the pines. Both xoconai drove their lizards swiftly ahead and saw Scathmizzane bleeding light, brilliant beams from his chest and back, as if a hole had blown right through him, releasing Glorious Gold from within.
He was laughing and seemed not in pain. He was facing down a human woman whom Tuolonatl now recognized. She was the one who had swooped down in flight over her forces at the lakeside town during the initial assault on the plateau, the one who had come out of the great fortress of St.-Mere-Abelle to foil the magic of Scathmizzane’s spear as it called the divine throwers to destroy the wall, the one who had appeared briefly on the field outside of the other human fortress as it fell into the sea. A woman Scathmizzane had taunted then as he taunted her now, calling her the high priestess of Tonoloya.
None of this made any sense to her.
* * *
“You have the weapon you need right beside you,” Scathmizzane taunted Aoleyn. The xoconai god closed his eyes, and the light beams front and back faded to nothing. “Do you think there is any other way?”
Aoleyn, frozen with indecision, stared at him with hatred and tried to come to terms with her fears. This was very different from her climb into the fossa’s den of death, where darkness fluttered all about her, threatening to swallow her. She was driven then by a different kind of fear, by a primal revulsion and a threat of her own death.
This was the opposite. It wasn’t death and dark doom nipping at the young witch’s sensibilities but a temptation of life and power beyond anything she had ever known. Yes, she could tap the God Crystal—she could feel the power thrumming there, awaiting her call—and she didn’t doubt that doing so would destroy Scathmizzane. She glanced at the crystal and thought that it looker redder to her now, as if filled with the blood of the dead. She could use it to strike at Scathmizzane, to destroy Scathmizzane.
Then what? Would Aoleyn replace him?
Her gaze faltered. She glanced at the xoconai god, then back at the huge crystal.
Aoleyn shook her head. She could feel the souls below her in the caverns, trapped there, ready to be pulled through the God Crystal and obliterated, scattered to nothingness.
Cizinfozza had trapped the souls in the mountain before, and Aoleyn had felt their sensations of joy when she had freed them to go to … wherever it was that the freed souls of the dead might go.
And she had felt the terror of those newly trapped souls, facing nothingness.
Could she so condemn them to nothingness?
Movement to the side—Mairen coming her way, coming for the crystal.
“Mairen, no!” Aoleyn ordered, and she followed that order with a blast of wind from her moonstone, which sent the powerful Usgar-righinn stumbling, then tumbling, backwards, rolling to the edge of the lea.
Scathmizzane laughed all the louder.
“Will you fight me, then, high priestess of Tonoloya?” he asked.
“Quit calling me that.”
“Perhaps you are correct. Any true being worthy of such a title would have already removed me by now, would have made the God Crystal her own.”
“Removed? You mean destroyed,” Aoleyn spat back, only because, in her frustration, she wanted to say something, anything, to slap at the taunting xoconai god. And why wasn’t he coming at her, or throwing magic at her?
Scathmizzane was laughing yet again. “Destroyed? Foolish child, I am not a being. Do you think me afraid? I do not have the hopes and dreams and fears of you pathetic mortals. Do you not understand? I am a way, a manifestation of the desires within you all, the thoughts you cannot admit but cannot privately deny. I am as eternal as they.”
“So thought the fossa,” Aoleyn argued. She jumped a bit as a fireball exploded off to the side, out on the Usgar winter plateau. She glanced that way, enough to see Aydrian in the dragon’s maw, to see Aydrian’s sword buried to the hilt and the flames biting about the middle of the dragon’s torso.
“Cizinfozza?” Scathmizzane shouted, demanding the full attention of all in the area once more. “You think Cizinfozza destroyed?”
He mocked her fully, his laughter echoing all about the lea and the pines, all across the stones of Fireach Speuer.
Aoleyn felt her rage rising, an overwhelming scream of denial. She felt the pull of the God Crystal and almost reached for it.
But no. No. No, that she would not do!
Even so, her anger demanded release, and her tattoos glowed with energy, they too demanding release.
She felt her arm transform into the leopard paw.
Then her other arm, and her legs.
And more—she could not stop it. She was falling, falling, into the tattoo’s magic. Her vision changed and she thought for a heartbeat that she had fallen, for the ground was nearer. Her hearing grew sharper, the xoconai god’s laughter seeming to fill her entire body.
Before Aoleyn even understood what she was doing, the woman—the gray-furred, black-spotted
leopard—leaped across the lea, slamming into Scathmizzane, biting and clawing with abandon.
“Oh, fool mortal!” Scathmizzane said, laughing still. “Cizinfozza destroyed? The god of darkness awaits the whispers and shouts of humans who dare to be as gods, the cries of pride and the primacy of self.”
Aoleyn’s leopard claws tore at Scathmizzane’s flesh, every opening expelling rays of light. He made no move to fight back or even to fend off her raking claws. He just laughed and talked.
“The whispers of envy toward those deemed undeserving of station or wealth,” Scathmizzane said to her.
The leopard Aoleyn bit into his neck, tearing at his throat and tasting that light. But that could not silence Scathmizzane, no.
“The demands of satiation in excess and without effort, for money, for carnal pleasures, for power.”
Aoleyn’s front claws locked upon the god’s shoulders, her maw clamped about his throat, and her back legs came up, claws raking wildly, peeling the flesh away, bathing that area in golden light.
“Yes, power,” Scathmizzane’s voice boomed, and it seemed to be coming from all around now. “The cries for power. And when the song is loud enough, then will Cizinfozza be called back to his place—or perhaps, this time, Cizinfozza will manifest among the xoconai.”
Aoleyn felt a sudden intense heat, a light too brilliant to observe, and she fell to the ground, not because she had leaped away but because Scathmizzane was gone, simply gone, leaving a brilliant glow and nothing more.
Except for his voice, lingering among the ravines of Fireach Speuer. “Perhaps I will find the humans as my next servants,” he warned, and the words became laughter, echoing, echoing.
But not for Aoleyn, for the departing demon Scathmizzane imparted one more thing to her, inside her thoughts, perhaps—whether it was a personal epiphany or a notion offered, she could not know.
I leave because I am done, and now my students continue my work.
26
ETERNAL BEING?
Song of the Risen God Page 42