“Hire one from the port towns,” she said, not looking at me. “My place is at the temple.”
“You told us yourself how important this Quest is. The Ki-Rin chose you, remember? You’re the one who got us off our asses. We’ll be lost without you.” I touched her chin, turned her face toward mine. “I need you. Come with me.”
She pushed my hand away. “You ask this now? In front of her?”
“He’s right. You should go,” said Melinda, stepping forward. Her anguish was now held at bay by renewed resolve. She was becoming more than just the Over-Boss of the Thieves Guild; she was becoming a leader of men.
“I don’t know you, and I have no feeling for you,” Melinda said to Cassie. “But if this piece of shit and his friends really are the only hope we have of saving the Woerth, then go with them. Make sure these dipshits finish what they started. And when the job is done, do with him what you will.”
For the first time that day, Cassie smiled. “You have some balls on you, I’ll give you that,” she said to Melinda. “You saved our asses back here, and I won’t soon forget it. I’m only sorry we didn’t meet under better circumstances.”
Melinda bowed. As Cassie turned away, I stepped over to my soon-to-be-ex-wife, determined to end our time together with some small measure of grace.
“Thank you,” I said. “The words can’t mean shit to you, but I’ll say them anyway: I’m sorry. I never thought you’d be just a minor character in my story, or I a minor one in yours. I thought we’d walk through the tale together.”
“Stuff your apology up your ass,” Melinda said. Although she looked up at me, she seemed somehow taller. “Just do your job. I’ll do mine. I’m the only authority left in this city, and it’s my job to see that Redhauke survives the wars to come.”
“If there’s anything you need from me, just send word.”
“I need nothing from you. Don’t ever step foot in Redhauke again while I’m alive.”
Her eyes dismissed me. My head was filled with more bullshit, everything I wanted to say to her to justify my wretched behavior. At the end, silence was the best option. She turned away, heading back into the tunnels alone until the darkness swallowed her. I haven’t seen her since—and I never even learned her real name.
Amabored called over. “The boats are here. Let’s go.”
Outside the gate floated a pair of dinghies, each crewed by two scruffy sailors sitting the oars. In the closer boat, a squat, barrel-shaped man in a blue captain’s uniform stood puffing on a pipe, his booted foot resting on the gunwale. He bore a close-cropped white beard and wore a billed cap pushed down on his head. He smiled broadly at us.
“Captain Quid Saltwind at your service, my lords and lady,” The captain said. “If you’d be so kind as to board these boats, we’ll slip out into the Whitehorse Estuary, where the Bilge Rat awaits.”
“The Bilge Rat?” Lithaine asked. “As if we haven’t had enough of rats already.”
“Ah, but the Bilge Rat isn’t just any rat, my eldritch friend,” said the Captain. “She mayn’t look like much, but she’s as fast as a horse-lord and as sturdy as a hill troll. She’ll do just fine for our purposes. Now, if you please.”
We boarded the boats. As we slipped away from the Shield Wall, I sat staring into the tunnel mouth, hoping that Melinda might yet emerge, might wave, might grant me some sign that she wouldn’t hate me forever. If it was hatred she chose, however, then I had certainly earned it. Her path was now her own.
So I left the city of my dreams, never to return.
BOOK IV
Showdown at the Blue Falcom
1
The Showdown at the Blue Falcon, as historians would dub it, featured multiple takes on the theme of loss. Young Redulfo suffered his own future death. Nine years later, those of us who assaulted the Workshop of Telescopes suffered the second and final loss of our friend. In the catacombs below the inn, I suffered the loss of the woman I pretended to love. And, for a moment, my friends thought they had lost me.
With my mother dying too soon for me to recall her love, the first great loss of my life was the loss of the city I loved. The Remembrance potion provides me with perfect recall of Redhauke despite last stepping foot in the place forty years ago. The city spires pastel in the dawn mist; toothless merchants smelling of cardamom and rum, calling prices across the packed labyrinth of the Bazaar; the salted stink of the stevedores unloading fish on the docks; the Grand Promenade, lush with fruit trees growing in marble pots carved with images of the great merchant princes of old; at the first brush of dawn, the calls to prayer from the temples, mosques, and churches crowding for attention along the Godsway. I could lose myself still in the streets of the city, wandering along its marbled bridges, ancient cobblestones, and narrow dirt alleys in search of my wasted youth. It is well that men forget—if we could live always in the rosy past, who among us would bother to live in the present?
To tell this tale fully, then—to make you understand why, in just a few days, I’m going to murder everyone I love—I must dwell also in the desert of my memory, lest I dwell only its green fields. In that wasteland, my father looms large.
Elderon and I were just a few years out of diapers when we figured out that Olderon was out of his mind. His madness was forged in the Horst mines, where he suffered the tortures of the damned, and I might forgive him for it if he didn’t seem to relish the crazy so much. If history is made by men with iron balls, then Olderon’s package was forged by Weiland, the Smith of the Gods. For years, he plotted his revenge while slaving in the mines for his Talon masters: saving scraps of steel, recruiting allies, scouting an escape path, and stashing caches of supplies. To construct weapons, he built a secret forge in the deepest, most dangerous section of the mines. Then he led his men in a revolt that would soon pass into legend: hacking apart an entire legion of guards, fleeing Gorm on a pirated bireme, losing the pursuing Talony fleet in the labyrinthine channels of the southern islands, making landfall on Hydra Rock, slaughtering every native on the island, founding a city, methodically conquering the other islands, building a kingdom, and defending it against invaders for thirty years. Who could measure up to that resume? Not me.
The constant trauma and stress, however, put a kink in his brain. On one particularly fine midsummer’s day on the high grasslands overlooking Tradewind, my father and Jorren, his Master-at-Arms, took my brother and me to drill with our swords in the tall meadow. Elderon was ten; I was eight. When our ponies crested the ridge, we saw a small open tent billowing in the wind. Beside the tent stood a rack of short swords. Inside the tent burned a small brazier. Someone had thrust an iron brand into the coals.
We tied up our ponies. Master Jorren, a squat, one-eyed veteran campaigner who wore the traditional spiked and jeweled mohawk of House Panterian, led us to the sword rack and ordered us to choose a blade. Elderon and I traded wary gazes. If only we had learned to become allies against Olderon, it might have turned out differently for my brother—it might be his fat ass warming the throne today instead of mine. And yet here I sit, while he rots in the grave with his skull resting on his ribcage. I don’t apologize for it; I avenged his death, for fuck’s sake. The asshole is no doubt sitting a bar stool in Valhalla right now, still stewing with resentment.
Swords in hand, wooden bucklers strapped to our opposing forearms, we turned to face each other. My brother’s face flushed red with rising adrenalin; I suppose mine did as well. Master Jorren stepped forward.
“Today’s lesson is about fear,” Jorren said to us. “Fear leads to inaction. Inaction leads to death. Properly crewed and captained, however, fear can become the ship that carries you to new conquests.” He gestured toward the tent. “Within the tent you see a brand. You will fight to the first blood. The winner, as judged by your Lord Father, will brand the loser.”
In the shocked-white expression of my brother, I saw the mirror image of my own face. Elderon swallowed hard.
“You think this a cruel test,
and so it is,” said Jorren. “But now you know fear. One of you will master it, and one of you will be marked by your failure to do so. The winner, therefore, has nothing to fear. You will begin on my mark.”
Jorren was right—fear burned in Elderon’s eyes, as it did in my own. When I turned my gaze upon Olderon, watching us through lidded eyes like an old lion in the shade, I felt something else—an emotion stronger than fear. It was hate. I hated the old bastard, and I knew then that my brother would have to kill me before I’d let him put that iron on me.
“Begin,” called Jorren.
“For the Lordship!” I cried, and charged at Elderon. He flung up his shield, and the battle was joined.
For twenty minutes, we tried our best to murder each other. Our fear and rage ebbed and flowed across the high plain as the older men watched. Elderon was bigger, and for a while his strength carried the day. When he saw the hate in my eyes, however, his fear crippled him. Raining blows as my anger swelled into fury, I drove him back. After I took care of my brother, I vowed silently, I would turn to the old man and stick this sword in his belly.
I sent Elderon’s sword spinning from his hand. Ducking around his shield, I dug my sword point into his arm. He cried out, tripped backwards over his own feet, and fell hard on his ass. I thrust my blade under his chin.
“Yield,” I said. Elderon’s eyes, burning with acid tears of shame, rolled wildly over to our father’s expressionless face. There, he found no succor.
Jorren stomped over, grabbed the boy by the armpits, and wrestled him to his feet. Then he turned to me.
“Fetch the brand, boy,” he said.
With my brother’s pleas ringing in my ears, I turned toward the tent. He may as well have begged for mercy from the pitiless stars. Anger now writhing in my stomach like a nest of maggots, I pulled the red-hot brand from the coals and walked it over.
Elderon twisted and pulled in Jorren’s iron grip. His eyes were those of a horse trapped in a burning stable.
“Father, don’t let him burn me! Please!” my brother cried.
Holding the brand aloft, I looked now to my father and Jorren. Their faces betrayed nothing. My brother’s gaze was locked on the burning red end of the brand. He had also wet himself.
That did it. With my gaze still locked on my father’s, I cast the brand on the ground at Jorren’s feet.
“Have you lost your senses, boy?” Jorren asked. “Pick up the brand and finish the lesson. Your king and father commands it!”
To this day, when the nightmares come in the deep hours of the dark, Olderon’s is the face I see. It wasn’t fear that I rode into battle; it was hatred for the man from whose seed I came. If love is this most powerful force in the Multiverse, then hate is its dark mirror; hate can command armies, raise monuments, inspire great art. And yet, hate is a parasitic muse, taking so much more from your soul than it gives, until it leaves you lying in the gutter soaked in your own piss and shit. From this vantage point in time, I can see the hard wisdom inherent in the lesson. For an eight-year-old boy, it was a heavy load to bear.
“No,” I said to the two old men.
Elderon’s fear broke, and he collapsed crying in Jorren’s arms. Ignoring his eldest son, Olderon strode forward to tower over me. His thick brows narrowed together. For a long, silent moment, he regarded me coldly. Then he turned away.
“My younger son has chosen dishonor,” he said to Jorren. “Toss him in the dungeon until he learns wisdom.”
2
For three days, I languished in my father’s dungeon with only a crust of bread and a cup of water per day to sustain me. On the third day, the heavy door finally opened. The cell flooded with light. Two gaolers entered bearing a brazier burning with red coals. They placed it in one corner and thrust a brand into the fire. I shrank back into the opposite corner, ready to go straight for the balls of the first one to come after me. Then Olderon strode in.
He stared at me down the slope of his nose. I expected to find only cruelty in his gaze. Behind the hard flint in his eyes, there was something else: a mewling, hairless runt of an emotion, grasping blindly for a teat. I dare not call it love, for of love Olderon knew nothing. Better to call it pride—but did it burn for me, or for himself? Had he even then begun the long con designed to trick me into becoming one of the greatest heroes of my age?
“You’re a stubborn lad,” Olderon said, “but you come by it honestly. There’s a debt still to be paid for losing the duel. If you won’t brand your brother as I command, then you may take the brand in his stead. The choice is yours.”
The scar is old and weathered now, eroded by time. After such a sacrifice, you might think that Elderon would learn to love me. Instead, it cemented his contempt. Whenever we swam the surf on Diamond Beach or grappled shirtless in a game of Crush the Kobold, the brand on my arm was a livid reminder to my brother that I had kicked his ass. Our hatred burns brightest for those who show us mercy.
3
My own hatred is but a feeble flame compared to the great inferno of hatred that Lithaine must bear for me now. Even now, the elf—or whatever he has become since he merged with Madrigel—must have already taken ship from the Were Coast. When he arrives with his host, any day now, he will put my crops to the torch and my subjects to the sword. Then he’ll come for me. Should I sound the Conch of Battle, summon my admirals, and command them to muster their fleets? That would mean only the end of my fleets. Lithaine means to finish me. Was it my fault that the fucking Fire Die rolled his name? It could have just as easily been Amabored’s name, or Malcolm’s, or mine. We’re all slaves to Fate—everyone but me, that is. Should my ultimate plan bear fruit, then I’ll make Fate my bitch.
Lithaine never grasped Madrigel’s plan until it was too late. The minute he realized that Starfall was really the Celestial returned, he should have run for the fucking hills. Instead, he fell in love with her. You don’t need a wizened sage to remind you that fucking an angel is going to get you burned.
When Starfall first spoke her challenge to the Violet Queen, halfway along our journey to Redulfo’s lair, we didn’t know what to expect. We understood the Queen no more than the ant comprehends the boot. So, we lay prostrate on the ground, our hands mashed over our ears, trying to keep out the Queen’s maddening voice even as it emerged from inside our skulls. Lithaine still held the sword aloft, his hands fused to the hilt. As the Queen approached, his boots left the ground. He was carried forward, floating, toward the monstrosity. The sword was running the show; Lithaine was merely a useless appendage.
“PREPARE YOURSELF FOR THE VOID, CHAOS-BITCH,” the sword cried.
“THE VOID HOLDS NO TERROR FOR ME, CELESTIAL,” the Queen said. She surged forward, her horrid purple torso towering far above the tree line atop legs that seemed to quaver in and out of existence. All around us, the black sky was torn apart by shards of unholy violet light as the Last Universe collided with our own. We had no idea what she wanted then, and I still don’t today; even when we confronted her again in her Palace of Webs, where the Word holds no sway, we could not divine her will. “I AM THE DEVOURER OF WORLDS. SOON THIS UNIVERSE WILL PERISH, AND SHE WILL BE FREE FROM HER PRISON AT LAST.”
“BOASTFUL WORDS, WHEN THIS UNIVERSE IS UNDER MY BANNER. BACK TO YOUR HOLE, BITCH!”
And then Starfall blazed white—a white of such blinding intensity that only later did we realize that we had witnessed pure industrial-grade logos, the ultimate expression of Law in the Multiverse. Her blade was now an impossibly blue and bright rectangle that seemed to expand in all directions at once, until it became a portal into another world—the Celestial Kingdom itself. From deep within the portal came the faint echoes of Heavenly choirs. For a moment, the Violet Queen seemed to hesitate.
From somewhere deep within the maelstrom of white, blue, and purple light, Lithaine’s voice called faintly: “Are you assholes going to help me out here or what?”
Though my head seemed to weigh as much as a small mountain, I managed to ra
ise it and direct a questioning gaze to Amabored, prostrate nearby. The barbarian merely shrugged.
“That goddamn sword is his problem,” Amabored said. “I told him not to pick it up.”
From the sword-blade-turned-portal, now a blue rhombus blazing in the sky, emerged Madrigel herself. No longer was she the ghostly child we had seen first outside of Doomtown, and later at the Blue Falcon; she was a woman now, and her white face bore the flawless beauty of the Elohim. The silver crown of her choir gleamed. Blinding logos streamed in long comet-tails from her white wings tattooed with sonnets to El. As her blue-white Celestial essence merged with the spectral wrongness of the Violet Queen, both angel and arachnid were consumed by the light. They collided, and the earth shook from a monstrous tremor that lifted us all from the ground and slammed us down again. Then came the Queen’s horrid wail—a cosmic shriek of fury that echoed unto the Void itself—and the entire scene winked out of existence.
Lithaine fell to the ground in a heap. Still he clutched Starfall, but the sword was inert—just cold, pale steel. The elf was unconscious. The rest of us rose warily to our feet. We were alone again in the mountain forest now slumbering under a black sky. The spiders were gone. No sound remained but the wind soothing the frightened trees. After a long moment, the crickets resumed their night music.
Malcolm knelt beside his fallen liege. “Thank the Star Maiden, he lives still,” said the paladin.
“Praise Jesus,” said Amabored, reaching for his flask. “Who wants to get blotto?” he called out.
“Who doesn’t?” I asked.
4
Lithaine remembered nothing after Starfall began her dance with the Violet Queen. He was dazed, paler than usual, but otherwise unharmed. He returned Starfall to her scabbard, where she rested quietly. Then he poured a flask of brandy down his throat and said nothing more. The rest of us knew well enough to leave him to his thoughts.
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