Wrath of Kings

by Glen Cook

  For her part, she avoided the subject of Ethrian. He seemed content to ignore the matter.

  She thought she was bringing him around, luring the old Mocker out, but then the army paused on the outskirts of Throyes while its quartermasters obtained provisions. Mocker went into town.

  Haaken Blackfang brought him back on a stretcher. Haaken wouldn’t say much about the circumstances, but Nepanthe soon noticed a cooling toward Mocker by Blackfang, Bragi, and Varthlokkur. When she thought her husband had recovered sufficiently, she started asking questions.

  He wouldn’t talk about it. She tried everything. He remained as obdurate as a stone. He even lost all interest in sex, a problem she’d never faced no matter how rough times had become.

  The army was in the Mountains of M’Hand, traversing the Savernake Gap, nearing Fortress Maisak, Kavelin’s easternmost outpost. From its Marshall down to its footsoldiers the army was a-bubble with anticipation. Mocker was the exception. He became more morose with every step taken westward. Then he told her he wanted her to slip away and stay at Maisak.

  “Why?” she demanded, almost as suspicious as Bragi and Varthlokkur seemed to be. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m not going.”

  Anguish distorted his face. He relented a little. “Self, am in bind. Have decision to make. Job to do, maybe. All would be easier if wife was out of way, safe.”

  “What kind of decision? Does it have anything to do with what happened in Throyes? Is that why you’ve been unfit to live with?”

  “Since Throyes,” he admitted.

  “What happened there?”

  He tried to share his pain. “Agent of Pracchia contacted self. Said same have Ethrian. Must do something for them, else he dies.”

  “The Pracchia? What’s that?”

  “High Nine. Rulers of Hidden Kingdom, secret society trying to take over world. Has members everywhere. Fadema of Argon. Lord Chin of Shinsan. Others of equal power in Mercenaries Guild, in Itaskia, everywhere. Same have no mercy upon such as self.” He spoke as a man who had firsthand knowledge.

  Fear caressed her. “What do they want you to do?”

  He clammed up. He wouldn’t say another word no matter what she tried. Her fear grew by the minute. “Defy them,” she insisted. “You know they won’t go through with their part. Will they? Kidnappers never do.”

  She might not have existed for all he reacted. His mind was made up. He was betting the long odds, hoping to save their son. She loved him for that.

  On that ground alone she allowed him to talk her into staying behind at Maisak. She shut down her fears, tuned out her conscience, and prayed the deed wouldn’t be something so heinous the shame would dog them the rest of their days. She sat in the cell-like room the garrison commander had allowed her, numbly awaiting news.

  A soldier came one afternoon. A sergeant. He closed and locked the door and went away. Now the room was a genuine cell. He did not tell her why. She knew nothing for days. No one would speak to her. The men who brought food and removed the honeybuckets looked at her in a way that terrified her. As if they were building her a custom-designed gibbet.

  Then Varthlokkur came. His face was long and tired. He released her under Royal parole, and when they were out of the fortress, on the road down to Vorgreberg, he told her.

  Mocker had tried to murder Bragi. Had tried and failed. He had died in the attempt.

  Her world, briefly reborn, had come to an end.

  FIVE: YEARS 1014–1016 AFE

  THE GATHERING STORM

  Ethrian slept and dreamed. He visited the greatness that had been Nawami before the split with Nahaman. It had been a large and industrious empire, quite unlike any of his own time.

  Into his dreams crept whispering voices, arguing.

  “It’s not worth the risk, Great One.”

  “He has to be polarized. He has to finish what he started.”

  “But the Power we’d use… We have so little. If we fail…”

  “If we fail, we’re lost. And if we don’t try, nothing changes. We’re as good as lost.”

  The stone beast and woman in white? Ethrian wondered. Had to be. But how was he tapping their exchange?

  He slept, and yet had a feeling of wakefulness, of being outside himself. He could float and gaze down on the curled form of Ethrian, lying there between the stone beast’s paws. He could be amazed. That boy had changed. He had grown.

  So had the pool. It was bigger, deeper, murkier, and muddier. A few droopy reeds now grew along one side. A frog peeped out from among them. Insects swarmed. A family of dull-colored mudhens patrolled the pond’s surface. Swallows had daubed a few mud nests into cracks in one of the stone beast’s forelegs. There was a twig nest in the scraggly old acacia that had been there when Ethrian had arrived.

  A turtle dragged itself from the pond and paused to take the sun.

  “We’re growing. He’s opened the door…”

  “It’s a crack too narrow to slide a razor through. All this time. What’s been gained? A bigger pond? Ten thousand years of this won’t restore Nawami. The door has to open all the way. We need a flood of power. Take him there, Sahmanan. Show him.”

  “The investment is too big. It would leave us blind. We couldn’t see to K’Mar Khevi-tan.”

  “I know the risks. Nevertheless, you go. The Word has been spoken.”

  “As you speak, so must it be, Great One.” There was more. Ethrian lost the thread. His new awareness slid down a wormhole into yesteryear, into a time when the stone beast was a thing freshly hewn from the heart of a mountain. Artisans clambered over it, polishing away the last marks of hammer and chisel. The thing loomed over the landscape like some timeless guardian, yet at that moment it was just shaped stone.

  Nahaman and Sahmanan conducted fell rites between the monster’s forelegs. They and a thousand lesser priestesses dragged sacrifices to their altar, tore out hearts, and filled buckets with blood and the air with a stench of burning corpses. They bathed the stone with the blood. Their summons went out.

  It was heard, and to them came a hatchling god, a bundle of dark energy so small the women gathered it into a basket. They hauled it up the stone beast’s back, and down a stairwell which plunged to the monster’s heart. There, with further ceremony, they bound their new national godling, and constrained him to their service.

  The god in the stone beast grew. His power waxed. His cunning sharpened. He was subtle. Not till too late did the sisters realize there had been a reversal of the roles of servitor and served.

  Sahmanan surrendered to her Great One. Nahaman rebelled and fled. She made herself mistress of another land. She returned with her fleets and dragons and dark dragon riders.

  The wars were bitter and pointless. That which had been lost was gone forever. The stone beast was master now. He would not yield.

  Who can slay a god?

  “Deliverer. Arise.”

  Groggily, Ethrian abandoned his slumber. Night masked the deserts of Nawami. Tenuous, the woman in white stood over him. Straining, he rose.

  Something was wrong. The ground seemed too far away… He had grown. He had to be years older… How could that be? He glanced around. The pool was exactly as he had seen it in his dream.

  “Yes. There have been changes. You opened the door a crack before you fled into sleep. You have to open it all the way.”

  Ethrian did not reply. He reviewed the arguments he had thought out before. He added what he had learned by eavesdropping. And still he could not bring himself to decide. Something down deep told him this was not the time.

  “You haven’t shown me what to do.” How long would they endure his temporizing?

  “You know, Deliverer. The Power is in you. Give us Nawami. We’ll reward you with your enemies.”

  My enemies are greater than you know, Ethrian thought. They could not imagine the might of Shinsan. He could not himself, and he had seen it. They believed th
eir Nawami the epitome of imperial achievement.

  He suspected the lords of the Dread Empire themselves could not encompass the size and strength of what they had wrought.

  “Deliverer!”

  He gave her his attention. She was exasperated with him. “Will you liberate us?”

  He shrugged.

  Angry, the woman faced the darkness between the stone beast’s legs. Her stance shrieked I told you so!

  “Show him, Sahmanan.”

  “Show me what?”

  “Yesterday. A yesterday dear to you,” the woman replied. She cast a tremulous glance at the stone beast. “The day your father died.”

  “Time it well, Sahmanan. Err, and you face my wrath. And my wrath can be eternal.”

  She told Ethrian, “The Great One wants me to take you back to your father’s death, that you might know the revenges at your command.”

  “I….”

  “Close your eyes. Concentrate on staying beside me.”

  “I’d rather see my mother. Is she alive?”

  The woman started singing. Something tugged at the folded-in corners of Ethrian’s soul, tenderly pulling him free. He was returning to his out-of-body state. He settled onto his pallet and let go.

  But he made Sahmanan work. He had made one decision. No matter what they got, they would work for it. He would hold back. He would make them underestimate him.

  He was free. Sahmanan took his hand. They drifted up into an afternoon sky, above the terrible desert. The will and power of the stone beast carried them, higher and higher, farther and farther from the lonely mountain.

  A barren Cordillera passed below. The range was but the parched bones of what had been. Not a lichen discolored its shades of grey.

  Beyond, fifty, a hundred miles, they reached land where life still flourished. It seemed to leap up and tickle Ethrian’s soul with joyful chlorophyl fingers. A surge of happiness swept through him. The desert was not all the world.

  Sahmanan murmured, “This, too, was part of Nawami.” She sent a vision. For an instant he saw the bustling cities, the endless miles of farms and fields and country carefully tamed. Now wilderness ruled. The descendants of Nawami were savages using stone tools, hunting and eating one another.

  Their speed increased. They whipped over a thousand miles of Dread Empire before Ethrian recognized it, and another thousand before he could make Sahmanan understand that this was the land of his enemies.

  They passed over another thousand miles, and another, and yet another, before reaching the Pillars of Heaven and Pillars of Ivory, the great twin barrier ranges marking Shinsan’s traditional western frontier. “Do you begin to see?” Ethrian called.

  The woman’s response darkened her face. Nawami could not have matched a tenth of this.

  They fluttered across the vastnesses of the Roë Basin, rapidly outpacing the sun. They crossed the mighty Mountains of M’Hand, drifted down on the little green kingdom of Kavelin. Down to its capital, Vorgreberg, which had seemed such a huge city to a younger Ethrian. He observed that it had not changed.

  “Be quiet. Don’t distract me. I have to reach back and find the right moment.” Sahmanan’s face became intent.

  Down they dropped, gently, till they were among the towers of Castle Krief. Reality began to flicker. Ethrian thought of the quick flashing of distant lightning.

  “Now,” Sahmanan told him. She squinted with her eyes closed. “Follow me.” She drifted toward a wall.

  And into that wall and out of sight. “Eh?” Ethrian murmured. Then, “Why not? I don’t have a body to stop me.” He willed himself to follow.

  Two men were fighting on the far side of the wall. One was a big man. The other was short and fat. They tumbled across a bed. The big man was unarmed. The smaller had a knife. The bigger had a wound across his back.

  “Father!” Ethrian shrieked at the fat man. And at the big, “Uncle Bragi!”

  They did not hear him. Sahmanan reached out, gently drew Ethrian into a corner.

  Ragnarson smashed his opponent’s knife hand against a bedpost. The blade skittered under a wardrobe.

  Mocker, the boy’s father, bit and gouged. So did Ragnarson. Ragnarson was doing a lot of yelling, but Ethrian could not hear what he said. The only voice in this dead zone was that of Sahmanan.

  Ragnarson seemed to be weakening. His wound was bleeding freely. He stopped blocking the smaller man’s blows, tried for an unbreakable hold. He got behind Mocker and slipped an arm around his throat. He forced his hand up behind his own head. He arched his back and pulled.

  It was a terrible hold. It could break a man’s neck, Ethrian knew. His father had taught it to him when he was five.

  Mocker kicked savagely. He wriggled like a snake with a broken back. He slapped and pounded with his free hand, and clawed for the dagger beneath the wardrobe. Bragi held on. Mocker produced another knife, scarred Ragnarson’s side repeatedly.

  “Why are they doing this?” Ethrian whined. “They’ve been friends longer than I’ve been alive.”

  Sahmanan did not answer. Her lips shaped a weak little smile.

  “Father!”

  Mocker’s struggles were weakening. Ragnarson slowly dragged him to his feet….

  The smaller man exploded. He had been faking.

  Ethrian foresaw the inevitable. He threw himself forward, shrieking, pounding both men with his fists. He might have been battering ghosts. He felt no impact at all.

  Ragnarson leaned forward till Mocker was almost able to throw him. Ethrian begged him to stop. He snapped back with all the strength and leverage he could apply.

  “No!” the boy shrieked.

  He could almost hear his father’s neck breaking.

  Sahmanan seized his arm. “Come!”

  He fought. “No! I won’t! My father….”

  Fear filled her eyes. “We have to leave now!” She dragged him into the wall.

  The door of the bedchamber burst inward. Bragi’s brother Haaken, the wizard Varthlokkur, and several soldiers charged in. Light flooded the bedroom. Ragnarson let his old friend slide to the floor.

  Ethrian struggled, but could not break the woman’s grip. She tugged him through the wall. He kept pulling back toward that room, but she lifted him into the approaching dawn and carried him back to the east. After a while he stopped fighting.

  “Now you have seen your father slain,” she said. “You have seen your enemy. Will you deliver us now?”

  “Why were they fighting?”

  Waves of anger beat at him. “We used the last of our power to show you this. Will you persist in refusing us? Have we destroyed ourselves over you? I warned him….”

  Ethrian answered anger with anger. “Enough. I may loosen the ties a little. Let me think.”

  He had seen his father slain by his best friend, true, but there had been something askew there. The something, perhaps, behind Sahmanan’s eagerness to depart before the piece was complete.

  He relived that moment of breaking bone… A flash of hatred hit him. It stabbed toward Bragi Ragnarson, then recoiled, twisted, speared toward those who ruled the island in the east. They had choreographed that bitter scene. The old man had hinted at it… Those tools of the Dread Empire….

  “All right. I’ll free you. A little.”

  He was sure the woman and stone beast were more than they pretended. They were hiding from him. He was afraid they represented a deadly trap. He had heard all the tales of deals with devils.

  The hatred remained with him, twisting his thoughts, telling him to take what they offered. The stone beast had known, and had sent him where the black emotion would be triggered. It had placed its bet well. The hating was too strong to deny.

  He would loose them slowly, shaping them to his will. Forcing their cooperation.

  Sahmanan brought him through the long eastern day, into the twilight, over the desert, and down to his place between the stone beast’s paws. She was now but a ghost of the ghost she had been. The monster’
s voice was the whisper of a petulant child when it questioned her. It hadn’t the strength for anger.

  Ethrian decided to release them a little more, for his own sake. He went down inside himself and found the key to it, and tried to replenish them.

  The will of the stone beast smashed against him. He staggered, fought back. It had deceived him. It was not as weak as it pretended.

  He controlled his panic, used his will. Gradually, the flood rushing to that mighty thing failed.

  Stopping it completely was as hard as slamming a vault door. He did it, and lent the closure a deep-throated finality. He tried following through with a bolt of anger, but there was nothing left to throw. He was exhausted.

  He collapsed in his sleeping place.

  The monster alternately cursed its failure and crowed over its success. It had stolen ten times the strength Ethrian would have delivered willingly.

  The boy slept. Time lumbered along. The woman came to him in dreams, again arguing for deliverance. He ignored her, and nurtured his hatreds.

  He would shatter the island in the east. He would carry fire and sword through the Dread Empire. His armies would feed on the enemy fallen, and grow fat. They would become invincible. He would take them across the world, to his former homeland, and would avenge his father….

  These aren’t my thoughts, he told himself. Something is shaping my dreams.

  The something left him. His dreams became his own. His strange companions were preoccupied elsewhere.

  Often, it seemed, he touched distant minds and unconsciously took from them, adding to his own knowledge and strength. He began to follow his desert companions more exactly.

  At first they were delighted with their new strength. As time passed, though, there was a change to consternation which threatened to become fear. Then:

  “Deliverer! Wake up!”

  A hand rocked his shoulder violently. He ignored it. He clung to his twilight state and drifted out of himself, surveying his surroundings.