Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar

by Frances Mason

  “No, you only smell of wine. You’re pretty clean for a lecher.”

  He groaned and dropped back on the bed. “Are you going to nag me like a wife? I wasn’t planning on getting married for a few decades yet. And I don’t plan to pay for the illusion of marital dissatisfaction.”

  “No, I’m going to tease you like an unpaid whore, and you’re going to like it.” She climbed on top of him. “Like this.” She rubbed her crotch against his, so that he could feel the lips of her pussy and its radiating heat, the gossamer dress preventing entry. He pushed the dress up past her hips, but she put her hands on his shoulders and pressed her weight down, rubbing herself along his shaft without allowing him to push it in.

  “If you keep that up too long I’m going to shoot my wad like a teenage boy with his first girl.”

  “I’d better stop teasing you then,” she said, and rolled off of him.

  “No, please.”

  “Are you begging me?”

  “Will that work?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d like to see you on your knees.”

  “You know, this is torture? Perhaps you should take me down to the palace dungeon.”

  “And you want more.” She gripped his shaft tightly, almost painfully.

  “You really do have a strong grasp of politics.”

  “I’m ready to squeeze every last drop of advantage out of this.” She relaxed her grip and wanked him gently, then slid down and took him in her mouth. He groaned with pleasure, then she gently bit him. He sucked in air. She kissed his sensitive knob and ran the tip of her tongue around the sensitive edge. “But you’re a sensible man. You don’t want lip service.” She let go of his cock and climbed off the bed, gliding with inhuman grace toward the door.

  He sat bolt upright, and called after her, “I’m a fool. I do want lip service. Be a sycophant. Please!”

  She turned at the doorway, smiled, but said nothing. Her eyes were now definitely green.

  “What happened to every drop of advantage?” he begged. Then, thinking of her milky white skin and remembering the name she had given the other night, he added, “White Rose of Thedra.”

  “I didn’t say when,” she said.

  As her footsteps lightly descended the stairs, he lay back and muttered, “Shit!”

  Chapter 55: Alex: Thedra

  Javid Pentafax led his brother away from the Star-way.

  “And now,” he said with a self-satisfied smile. Then he incanted and flourished his hands. Suddenly the spiral of the stairs, which had been suspended in the air, collapsed. Thousands of stone stairs fell from the sky. But there was no crashing sound when they struck the tower flagstones.

  “Hah!” Jared said triumphantly, “I told you it would fall on your head one day.”

  Javid smiled smugly at Jared. “But look,” he said.

  The stones had all fallen, but not a single one remained suspended on the air. They had all vanished.

  Jared rolled his eyes. “A disintegration spell? Boring!”

  “No. Look more carefully, brother. You’ve spent so much time looking through your lenses at what is hidden in the spectra of the moon that you’ve blinded yourself to the possibilities of revelation here on earth. On earth but...not on earth.”

  Jared took out a lens and looked through it. “Ah,” he said, “inter-planar inscriptions. Why didn’t you say so?”

  “What?” asked Alex, a small shadow appearing suddenly from other, greater shadows.

  Both of the twins started at the adolescent thief’s unexpected appearance. “You shouldn’t sneak up on someone like that,” they both said at once.

  “But it’s what I do. That’s why you hired me, remember?”

  “No, no.” Javid shook his head, lifting the white hair of his tonsure with the motion. “I don’t think anything was said about hiring.”

  “Then I suppose you don’t want this book. I’ll just return it to the Labyrinth.”

  “No, no. Here. Give it.”

  Alex made the codex disappear into the sleeves of his cloak, and Javid’s face fell. “No, where is it? Give it to me.”

  It was as easy as tricking a sucker in the market. “You see, you’re not the only one who knows how to make something disappear.”

  “What?”

  “The stairway…”

  “Star-way.”

  “Whatever. You made it disappear.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  Alex looked up in the air where the Star-way had been, then back at Javid’s face, raising an eyebrow. He pointed. “Where is it then?”

  “Where is the Codex of Metma?”

  “Here,” Alex said, and the book was in his hand. “Did you see that?” He made it disappear into his cloak again. “Or this?” Again it was in his hand. “I can do this all night, or you can tell me about that.” He pointed again to where the Star-way had been. “Your brother said something about inter-planar inscriptions, or maybe that was you. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

  “No it’s…”

  “…not. I’m Jared.”

  “And I’m Javid.”

  He looked from one face to the other. “And which one wants the book?”

  “Me…”

  “…you mean you,” Alex said, pointing to the other.

  “Both of us,” said the first, presumably Javid, “but give it to me.”

  Alex tossed the book carelessly to Javid, who panicked and fumbled and dropped it. But Jared, reaching under his brother’s hands, deftly caught it. He gave it to his brother, holding his other hand out toward Alex. Alex feigned not understanding.

  “The gem of seeing,” Jared said, “cough it up you young rascal.”

  Alex coughed, covering his mouth with his hand, then feigned surprise at finding the gem there. He handed it to Jared. Javid did not open the codex, instead holding it close to his chest, as clingy as a jealous lover.

  “So what happened to the stair…I mean, Star-way?” Alex asked.

  Javid said, “It’s still there, not the stones, but the runes. The stairs were just a means to an end. I had to get the runes lined up with the constellations, which would be quite tricky without the spiral framework, and then…”

  “Then they could…” Jared took up the explanation, “it’s hard to explain to someone who has no understanding of these matters. Step on the Star-way.”

  “But it’s not there.”

  “Trust me.”

  “And if something goes wrong you’ll pretend you were your brother?”

  They both grinned at that. Alex looked askance at the twins, each in turn. He tried to distinguish their bushy white eyebrows, but found it impossible. He could only distinguish them by noting that one clung to the book. Javid shrugged his shoulders, and stepped to where the first step had been, and vanished. Alex looked at Jared and said, “that’s a pretty nifty trick. If you could show me how to do that…”

  “…you’d rob us blind.”

  “I wouldn’t rob you any more than I otherwise would.”

  “But you wouldn’t get caught.”

  Alex was incensed. “I never get caught.” That’s not exactly true, he thought but, when the truth isn’t impressive enough, embellish. Or as the simple might call it, lie.

  And then Javid reappeared. “See, quite safe. Try it. Only be careful. Don’t go further than the first step. You need to be able to see where you’re going, or else…”

  “…you might step into limbo. Then…”

  “…there’ll be no coming back. You should make sure you keep a foot in this plane until you’re sure your other is on something solid in the next.”

  “What’s limbo?” Alex asked.

  “It’s kind of a plane, but it’s not. It’s the formless void between planes. It might become other planes someday. If you were lost in there and someone…”

  “…or something…”

  “…made a new plane, then…”

  “…you might be alright. If you hadn’t starved to death fi
rst.”

  “Time may not operate the same in limbo though…”

  “Space certainly doesn’t, so…”

  “…who knows. Have a try.”

  Alex thought, I’d be a fool to trust them. He preferred making fools of others than being one himself. But his curiosity quickly got the better of his common sense, as it all too frequently did. As he stepped forward he heard one of the twins saying, “Just take one step, look around then turn around and come straight...”

  Alex stepped where he thought the first stair had been, and was suddenly blinded. He blinked repeatedly, and the light faded into a landscape of towering dunes. The valleys between the dunes were far beneath him, and yawned cavernously. He was high in the air, on a tower of sand around which a spiral staircase rose. The stairs were crumbling as he watched. He took another step. Wind buffeted him above a crashing sea. A reddish moon glowed above. The tower was gone. He was on a rocky crag. Stones rose in a rough stairway to a promontory on which a gnarled tree defiantly faced the lashings of the wind. He took another step. He could see nothing. But his eyes adjusted, and he saw a nearly perfectly transparent stairway rising among a profusion of other towering staircases, some leaning toward each other, some leaning into each other, others lying flat, some whole, others shattered. He took another step. He was surrounded by fire, and felt searing heat. And from the fire grotesque shapes leered, not human, or animal, but impossible combinations. They reached toward him. He took another step. All around him strange geometries proliferated, shapes that seemed to defy the logic of space, twisting and changing, merging, parting. With each conjunction a million newly possible shapes exploded into his brain with radiance of indescribable colours. He wanted to step further, or go back. But here forward and back did not have the same meaning. He tried to step forward, and time swelled like a new space, but liquid, with distances always changing. He saw it extending to infinity, and felt himself drawn along it to the end. Then he was looking out across lush fields. He saw tiny ants on the earth, then realised they were people, only far away. A hawk flew past, but it was larger than him, and had the face of an old woman, and she cackled at him, her claws extending. Then she screamed in panic, as her claws passed through the air above him and vanished. She drew them back, and turned away, terror written across her withered face, before diving toward the people. Alex wanted to call to them, to warn them of the danger. But they did not hear his warnings, or chose not to heed them.

  He remembered one of the twins had said to take only one step. Clearly it was dangerous here, and the place with strange geometries was beyond his understanding. He turned around, and hoped he could find his way back.

  When he stepped back into the world he knew the twins were discussing heatedly whether to search for him. Jared clucked his disapproval. Javid, in an admonishing tone, said, “You went further than the first step.”

  “It was…interesting. I followed the stairs and…”

  “The stairs?” Javid was surprised. “You saw them?”

  “Yes, except in that strange place with…I don’t know how to explain it. Weird colours. Shapes. Weirder than a trip in the arms of Madame Penya.”

  “The space of spaces. Beautiful, isn’t it? Penya Pollen? You really shouldn’t…Not good for your health. Stick to harmless drugs. Like knowledge. But…you saw the stairs.”

  “Shouldn’t I?”

  “Apparently your subconscious mind made some sort of construct to guide you, or…”

  “…the sword…,” Jared nodded.

  “…yes, the sword,” Javid agreed, “Anyway, you’ve seen what the Star-way is…”

  “A way to other worlds?” Alex asked.

  “Nothing so mundane. A path through the planes, of which the worlds are made, which will lead, when I’ve finished,” He tapped the cover of the codex he clung to his chest, “to a world suspended between this plane and many others.”

  “The world of the gods,” Jared breathed reverently.

  Javid nodded vigorously, his blue eyes even more luminous than usual. “Never before has a human mage created so comprehensive a pathway. It’s a bit disordered of course, and not quite complete. The planes aren’t entirely stable, so I had to take devious routes to reach some destinations, and each plane is a necessary stepping stone to the next. Some of them are quite ordinary. Others are beyond human comprehension. You really shouldn’t have gone so far. The space of spaces is beautiful but easy to get lost in, and even that is unremarkable compared to other planes the Star-way passes through. I have means of finding my way past those confusions, but…I suppose the magic of the sword helped you.”

  “So, are you going to tell me about the sword now?” Alex asked. Javid caressed the codex against his chest like a lover. “Aren’t you going to read that, and tell me something the Labyrinth didn’t know?”

  “The Labyrinth knows all that lies within his shelves.”

  “So he said.”

  “The Labyrinth spoke to you?”

  Alex nodded.

  Javid furrowed his brow in a deeply offended frown, drawing together his eyebrows in a solid bushy white line. “He didn’t speak to me for years. Me, a scholar and scientist. And you, a lowlife with no respect for learning, go traipsing through his halls, once, stealing from his shelves, and he speaks to you? To you!”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, he was going to let me die, maybe have my skin turned into a book so he could keep me in his shelves. He said to say hello.”

  Javid’s eyebrows parted, the frown dissolving, leaving behind an expression of deep regret. “I do miss his learning and wisdom.”

  “And his wit,” Jared added.

  “You mean his threats?” Alex asked.

  “He let you leave, didn’t he?”

  “I had to outwit him to earn my freedom.”

  The brothers both laughed so hard at that their shoulders shook. When he had contained his laughter enough to speak, Javid spluttered, “He let you outwit him.”

  “You mean he was playing with me? That makes sense. I suppose it must be boring surrounded by monks and nuns and books for thousands of years. So, will you tell me what the Labyrinth knew but didn’t bother to tell me about the sword?”

  “You could have asked him yourself. You know he would have told you anything.”

  “So he said. I had more pressing concerns, like getting out of the place in one piece.”

  “You mean you forgot,” Jared said, Alex thought with a little too much satisfaction, “and it’s the old who are called absent minded.”

  Javid, his hands still caressing the codex, occasionally rocked by another burst of irrepressible laughter, said, “Unsheathe it and lay it on the stones.” He opened the codex and leaved through its pages, clearing his throat and chuckling more mildly now, admiring the codex’s illustrations, stopping here and there to silently mouth a line, nodding his agreement, and generally showing the deep satisfaction of a man who has found a long lost friend who had shared so many of his enthusiastic youthful views. Eventually he stopped leafing through. “Here it is. The runes I sought. Ah!”

  “What?”

  “Hmm?” Javid looked up, a faraway expression on his face. “It’s obvious really,” he said to himself, “but you wouldn’t think it.”

  “Think what?”

  “What?”

  “The sword.”

  “The…oh, the sword.” He snapped the codex closed. “Forgive me. I was thinking about more important things. To show you the sword clearly is simple enough.”

  Alex placed his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes. “So simple you could’ve shown me without the book?”

  Javid shrugged, and smiled, then knelt down by the blade. “Not that its identity isn’t really obvious, once you allow yourself to believe it. I think you’ll find this interesting.” He inscribed runes along the length of the blade with a fingertip, their shapes written in fire. At first the runes burned brightly, then they suddenly evaporated in a puff of steam
, obscuring the blade. But the steam cleared. Beneath it the sword was as Alex had seen it in the shrine of Fulkthra. It was transparent, like water, flowing in a circuit, from hilt to tip down one side and back along the other. Along its length runes of fire formed in the water and fought against its flow to retain their form and the flow tugged at and deformed the fiery runes into a glowing steaming stream as the water in turn wrote transparent runes that evaporated in the fire. The only constant in the runes was change, so that it could never be seen clearly whether fire wrote on water or water on fire. Two elements eternally at odds, impossibly bound together.

  “Thus we see the sword’s true nature,” Javid murmured with satisfaction.

  “And read the First Language,” Jared whispered in awe, “we could learn so much. We know so little of the language of the gods. The language of creation.”

  “Only fragments and faded marks of what once was.”

  “Here seen whole and clear.”

  “As the gods wrote them, as the gods read them, as they were at the moment of creation.”

  “And ever will be as long as the gods live.”

  “So what is it?” Alex asked.

  “It is Seltien,” Javid said, and Jared nodded.

  “I knew that. The Labyrinth told me…and Brandon…the blacksmith.”

  “It’s the horn of the river god, or rather, was fashioned from it. Seltathra has ever been a fractious vassal of his lord, Sedthra. At the beginning of things the river locked horns in his estuary with the sea. Sedthra defeated his vassal, breaking his horn.”

  Jared knelt on the other side of the sword and tried to inscribe some of the runes on the flagstones, but before he could complete one it would change. “They change too quickly. I can’t read them clearly,” he cried in despair.

  Javid shook his head sadly and continued. “Sedthra gave the horn to Fulkthra, so that Seltathra might be tamed at his source, in these mountains, which is beyond the sea’s reach. Fulkthra forged the sword in the fires of his own heart, for of all the gods he is most akin to fire. In the pommel of Seltien Fulkthra set a piece of his own heart, so that fire might rule water. Even without the Heart of Fulkthra it is a powerful sword. With it, it’s said it can command the river himself. You have seen some of that power in the tower of the necromancer. It seems Seltien can command the daughters of the river god even without his pommel stone.”