The Gods Return coti-3

by David Drake

  "Ah," said Garric. He started to speak further, then swallowed the words. "Of course we can fight a God, lad," said the ghost, answering the unvoiced question. Carus smiled with grim insouciance. "I don't see any way we can win, but that doesn't stop us trying." Garric looked at the corpse again; it was smaller yet. From the way it stank, the extra bulk was being lost in the form of noxious gases. Garric grimaced. He said, "Tenoctris, do you need this further? Because if you don't…?" "What?" she said, looking over her shoulder with a critical expression. "Oh, yes, you can bury it. And I have no more incantations for the present, so I suppose we can go outside-" She nodded to the screen of brush. "-this." It struck Garric that Tenoctris, though born to an aristocratic family, paid almost no attention to her surroundings except as they had bearing on something she wanted to accomplish. A peasant might have ignored the stench because he was used to worse; Tenoctris had simply been oblivious of the fact the corpse stank. The fence curled past itself like the coils of a snail's shell. Garric stepped out the open end and said to his aide, "Lerdain, have a detail burn the offal outside the camp. They can use this-" He patted the screen they no longer needed. "-for fuel if they like." The camp was crowded and though as sanitary as possible-by Carus' order through Garric's lips, the latrines were dug before the troops were released to build personal shelters-it was a trampled, barren waste. It would've been far worse if it'd been raining. "A soldier lives in dust or mud," Carus said. "Unless the winter's particularly cold and there's ice instead. Even then it's mud inside the tents and around cookfires. If he's got a tent and a cookfire." Garric laughed and said aloud, "Who'd be a soldier, eh?"

  Tenoctris looked at him. "Who indeed?" she said. "But why do you mention it now?" "Because…," Garric said, answering both the rhetorical question and the real one. "A soldier is told where to go and who to fight. He doesn't have to think about anything, so he's without responsibility for the result. Even if he's killed, he's not responsible for it. Whereas-" He looked into the wizard's eyes. "-I'm responsible for defeating an empire that turns rats into soldiers. And I know how fast rats breed." "Your highness, if I might have a moment with you," said Lord Acer, newly appointed to the command of an Ornifal cavalry regiment. There was no question whatever in his tone.

  "The food-" "Master Acer!" Garric said. He was angry and frustrated at the greater situation. It was probably a good thing that this young fop was providing a legitimate outlet, though Garric wouldn't release his feelings- King Carus laughed at the thought. -with a sweep of his sword, the way his ancestor had been known to do. "I am in conference with Lady Tenoctris, on whom the survival of mankind depends. Report to Lord Waldron, if you will, and inform him that you're to be reassigned to an infantry regiment at Pandah as of this moment!"

  Acer's mouth dropped open. Other aides, waiting to talk to the prince when he was free, stifled laughs-or didn't, in the case of Lord Lerdain, a husky youth and the son of the Count of Blaise. If Acer wanted a duel, Lerdain was very much the boy to give him one. Acer went pale and stumbled blindly away. He'd have tripped over a tent rope if another officer hadn't guided him around it. "That was excessive," Garric muttered. Tenoctris shrugged. "My mother always told me that high birth doesn't exempt one from basic courtesy," she said. "I'm inclined to agree with her, though it's not something I worry about a great deal." She cleared her throat and resumed, "You're right that we can't attack the problem by preventing Palomir from finding rats. That's only one aspect of what's going on, though. The rats provide a physical core around which the priest and his God can form a warrior. He also needs human souls to animate the forms.

  Otherwise they'd still be rats-large ones, but no more dangerous or disciplined than so many wolves." "We've heard that the priests are sacrificing everyone they capture," Garric said. His lips moved as though he were sucking on a lemon. "That's why, then? To make an army of rats?" They were standing in the middle of the camp, close to the headquarters tent. The location was about as private-and comfortable-as anything available. The guards kept everyone else out of earshot, which a tent's canvas walls would not. Not that it seemed to matter whether anybody overheard them… "Not in the way you mean it," Tenoctris said. "The blood sacrifice increases Franca's ability to affect events in the waking world, but the souls themselves are those of the dead." She grinned. Tenoctris had always had a bright smile and a whimsical sense of humor. "The innocent dead, I suppose you might say," she said. "Though I don't know that any human being is completely innocent. The dead weren't worshippers of Franca and His siblings, at any rate." She nodded back to where they'd been. Lord Lerdain watched proprietarily as a Blaise file-closer and a squad of armsmen under his command tramped toward the main gate, carrying the remains of the ratman on the mat of brush that had concealed it. "Any more than the rats who supplied the physical form were Franca-worshippers, you see," she concluded. Garric nodded. "All right," he said. "I understand the situation. What can we do to change it?" "We need to prevent the priest behind this," Tenoctris said,

  "from haling souls out of the Underworld. We need to close the Gate of Ivory. And that will require a very particular hero." Garric lifted his sword slightly and let it slide back, unconsciously checking to be sure that it wouldn't bind in the scabbard if he needed to draw it quickly. "Well, I don't know that I'm particular enough," he said.

  "But I'll try." The wizard laughed merrily, making those waiting beyond the line of Blood Eagles look up eagerly. "Garric, in most respects you'd be ideal for the task," she said. "You lack one necessary attribute, however: you're not dead. The late Lord Munn is therefore a better choice." "I, ah…," said Garric. "Can I help you reach Lord Munn, then?" "If you mean, 'Can I help you go to the place where Lord Munn's body rests,'" Tenoctris said, "no; I'll get us there. But Lord Munn won't accept orders from a woman, not even a woman who's a wizard-" She smiled, but the harshness of her expression was very unusual for Tenoctris. "-and who has the power to plunge his soul beneath the deepest Hell. Of course, if Lord Munn did not have such a strong, ah, will, he wouldn't be any good to us. That will require the presence of a warrior king." Garric grinned and stretched.

  "Then take me to him, milady," he said. Tenoctris nodded. "There's a sacred grove within a mile," she said. "It focuses a useful amount of power. We'll go now, if you're ready." "Lord Attaper!" Garric called.

  "Lady Tenoctris and I are leaving the camp immediately, and I suspect you'll want us to have an escort." *** Not even Chalcus could climb a smooth rock wall and shove that roller out of the way, thought Ilna as she looked at the roof of the cave. It was solid black; only memory told her where the opening might be. But I wish he was here. She lowered her eyes to where Usun probably was, though she couldn't see him either. "My name is Ilna os-Kenset," she said. "A wizard named Brincisa lowered me into this cave to fetch the box you were in. She left me here when I wouldn't send the box up ahead of me." She sniffed and added, "She'd have left me anyway, obviously. Well, this way I have company. Besides the ghoul." The wizened little man laughed like an angry squirrel. "Oh, you have much more than mere company, Ilna!" he said. "You have Usun!

  And as for that Brincisa-" He snapped his fingers. "-she fancies herself a wizard, true, but Hutton could stand her on her head when he wanted to. He did that! Hutton had me, you see." Ilna thought of the last time she'd seen Hutton; probably the last time anybody would see Hutton. Smiling faintly she said, "It doesn't seem to have done him a great deal of good. Unless his final wish was to become dinner for a ghoul." As Ilna's eyes adapted, she became aware of a faint blue glow in the direction the ghoul had disappeared. She heard or at least felt a low hum. She couldn't tell where it came from or even be sure it really existed. Usun cackled again. "Oh, no, Hutton had great plans!" he said in his harsh, high-pitched voice. "He didn't really die, you know." "He certainly seemed to be dead, Master Usun," Ilna said tartly. "Even before the ghoul began to eat him." "Ilna, I'll burst with laughing!" Usun said, chortling loudly enough to make it seem a possibility. "You're right, you'
re right, but Hutton didn't imagine you. Well, who could, eh?" He paused. Ilna could now see a hint of the little man, squatting on his haunches at her feet. He was doing something with his hands-coiling the thin filament that'd bound the box to Hutton's corpse, she suddenly realized. "He really did stand his wife on her head, you know," Usun said confidentially. "Stood her there, dropped her, and warned her that he'd do it again if she annoyed him. But maybe Brincisa wasn't so very thick, eh? She was sharp enough to fetch you and turn the tables on Hutton once and for all. He thought he was so clever, but now where is he?" "He was dead when I met him," Ilna said irritably. "When I first saw him, that is.

  The ghoul started eating the corpse, but it didn't kill him." Usun looked up. "Not really dead, no," he said. Familiarity didn't make his voice more attractive. "Hutton froze time in all this cavern. He sent his soul into the Underworld to gain knowledge that he called wisdom."

  He laughed again. "Wisdom!" he said. "But Hutton knows better now, eh?

  He thought he'd return to his body in three days. He'd rule the waking world, he thought. Rule the waking world indeed! But you broke the spell and freed the ghoul when you cut Hutton's soul away from his body." Ilna held strands of yarn in her left hand. She could plait a pattern that would direct her next action. She wouldn't be able to see it, but she didn't need to see fabric to understand it more clearly than an educated person like Garric would gain from a long written description. On the other hand, there was another way which might provide more information still. "Master Usun," she said, "I want to get out of this cave before the ghoul or something worse comes back."

  She coughed. "And if there's water that's safe to drink here," she added, "I'd like to find that even sooner." "We'll have to dispose of the ghoul in order to get out, but we'd want to do that anyway," said the little man with an enthusiasm Ilna didn't share. "The first thing we'll do is scout the territory. You say that he carried off Hutton's body?" "Yes," said Ilna, frowning as she considered the matter. "I don't think the light here is good enough for him to see my patterns clearly. If we can build a fire, though, I can hold him while you hamstring him with a dagger or whatever from the floor here." "A bold plan and a clever one, Ilna," Usun said, "but you're wrong about being able to hold the ghoul. You think he's a beast, do you not?" "Of course he's a beast," Ilna snapped. "I just watched him bite a man's face off. The fellow deserved to have his face eaten, but that doesn't make the thing that did it any less of an animal. And I've held other creatures, bigger ones, while Ch-ch… while my companions killed them." "The ghoul, as he now is…," Usun said quietly. He was standing upright with the long filament a shimmering coil in his right hand. "Was a wizard in a former age, Ilna. A very powerful wizard, and that age was longer ago than even I can count. He tried to defeat death through his art and thought he had, but…" He laughed. His glee had a cruel undertone, though Ilna didn't suppose she was one to complain about someone taking pleasure in the ill fortune of an enemy.

  And the ghoul was certainly no friend of hers. "By trying to cheat death, he made himself a thing of death," Usun went on. "I wonder if he still thinks he won, eh? For thousands of years he's eaten the dead that are given to him, so that he won't come to the surface to hunt the living. He's not to be held by wizardry, Ilna. Not even by such great wizards as ourselves." Ilna scowled in disgust. "He's human, then?" she said, just to be sure. Usun hadn't said that in so many words, and it might make a difference. "He's as human as I am," Usun replied. He cackled again. "Oh, that's a fine joke, eh? But-" He looked up at Ilna. She didn't need to see his expression to be able to imagine it clearly. "The past doesn't matter, eh?" he said. "What matters is now, and we're going to hunt him down and end his little games, yes? Because he's in our way, and because we're great hunters, you and me." Ilna sniffed. She looked upward again. Though her eyes were adapting to the blue glow, she still couldn't see the roof of the cave. Nor would it have helped if she could. "Well, Ilna?" the little man said. "There are swords here. You can take one." "I don't have any use for a sword," Ilna said. She reached into the darkness and found the loose tangle of the rope she'd been lowered by. She coiled it in quick loops, each one precisely the size of all the others. "All right," she said. "I don't think we'd gain by waiting here and hoping that the stone rolls itself back, so we may as well hunt this ghoul."

  "Oh, yes, thegreatest hunters!" said Usun. He trotted toward the source of the glow. Ilna followed taking one stride for three of his. *** Cashel blinked. They'd stepped from Dariada into a rocky canyon suffused with smoky yellow light. The air was hotter than what they'd left in the sunlit square, and sulfur bit the back of Cashel's throat with each breath. He stepped clear of the two women and spun the quarterstaff as he checked all directions. His butt caps trailed blue wizardlight, piercingly bright in this yellow dusk. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck were already prickling at the presence of wizardry. There were goats, which didn't matter. They were herded by things that weren't goats andsure weren't human. "Are those demons, Rasile?" Liane asked calmly. She'd slung her satchel behind her and held the knife ready in her hand. Cashel hawked up phlegm and spat toward a bristly growth that might be grass. Anything wet must be welcome in this place. Besides the maybe-grass, there were bushes that looked a little like the century plants he'd seen on Pandah before the Change, and there were full-sized trees farther up the cliffs. Those last were tall but spindly, and instead of leaves they had clumps of spines. "They think of themselves as human beings, Liane," the wizard said. "They would be as bad as demons if we could not protect ourselves, but the same is true of many of those you consider human beings. Or I do." The creatures had four legs with sharp hoofs, and the hands on their two arms had as many fingers as a sea anemone.

  Their bodies seemed to be covered with horn like insects, but when Cashel stared at the nearest one, it flattened against the rock wall.

  It was light gray when he first saw it, but squeezed onto the rock it took on a mottled yellowish pattern that made it hard to see even though he knew it was there. Hooting in high-pitched voices, a handful of the creatures came toward Cashel and his friends. They leaped over the rocks and bobbed their necks up and down. Each of them probably weighed as much as Liane, but their heads were small for the bodies and sort of wedge-shaped the way a possum's is. They didn't seem to have weapons; but there was a lot of them, if they knew what they were doing. "Tell me if something comes from the back!" he shouted to the women as he stepped between them and the little demons. Funny. The goats seemed normal enough, but Cashel had never seen anything that looked like the creatures tending them. He kept the quarterstaff spinning, but he was picking which of the creatures to strike first and who to pop next and next. You didn't go into a fight swinging wildly, not and expect to win; and Cashel always expected to win. The demons clacked to a halt well out of the quarterstaff's reach; their hooves on the rocks sounded like gravel spilling down the sloping face of the seawall at Barca's Hamlet. They even stopped hooting, though they whispered to each other and sometimes waved their hands. Had they just been bluffing when the charged? "We come as friends, People of the Valley," Rasile called. "We come as allies." "You come to prey on us!" shrilled the midmost of the group that'd rushed Cashel a moment ago. "The Lord preys on us daily!" another demon said. "You will join him and eat us all up!" Cashel could hear the words clear enough, though it sounded like the demons were whistling instead of speaking.

  They didn't have lips that he could see. The goats, white-faced with dirty gray hides from the neck back, went on with their business of scraping a meal from this rocky waste. Cashel didn't like goats, but they seemed to make a living here and he'd never known a sheep that'd could've done it. He hacked again, though he didn't spit; he might need the moisture soon. The back of his throat felt like somebody'd taken a wood rasp to it. "We've come to free you from the Lord,"

  Rasile said. "In exchange you will guide us to the tomb of the hero Gorand." Cashel took a quick glance and saw that Liane was keeping an eye
on what was happening behind them. Nothing was, but he was glad for her doing that. He really wanted to keep his eyes on the nearest group. "You are lying to us, demon," the leader of the, well, demons said. "They are lying," said the other four in chorus. "They come to prey on us, like the Lord does." "Our race is at an end," the leader said. "No one can defeat the Lord." A descant of high voices keened, echoing faintly. All of the demons in the valley were howling like their children had died. There were more of them than Cashel had imagined at first; it was only when they moved that he could tell them from the rocks. "No one can defeat the Lord!" the leader repeated. "We will all be eaten by the Lord and these new demons come to plague us."

  "No one can defeat the Lord!" said his companions. "And yet," said Rasile, "we shall." She turned to smile at Cashel. "Are you ready, Warrior Cashel?" she asked. "Yes ma'am," Cashel said. "Where do we find this Lord, please?" "I think he's found us," Liane said, pointing with her left hand toward a blotch of light the color of rust. It was half a furlong distant, near a pair of the little demons flattened against the wall of the canyon. "Yes," agreed Rasile. Cashel nodded and started toward the light as it flickered, swelling rapidly. *** Sharina wore a pair of simple tunics and a nondescript gray cloak-borrowed from Diora-over them to conceal not only the Pewle knife but Burne. The rat rode in a fold of her outer tunic, his little nose wrinkling excitedly at smells that passed Sharina unremarked.