“You cannot reach Tega?”
“She might be too busy to communicate. Something might be stopping her.” He took a small sip of his wine. The potency of the stuff was not to be overlooked. “She might well be dead. It’s hard to say.”
Nachia took a small sip of her own wine and then consumed the last bite of her apple. “Goriah… I’m so very sorry about her death, Desh.”
He looked out the window toward the endless gray sky and the distant, seething column of smoke where Tyrne should have been. “Some things are inescapable, Nachia. Death is one of them. We will all achieve that state eventually, even me, and I have been alive for a very long time and have no plans of changing that status in the foreseeable future.”
“Your people exploring the world for us.” Nachia looked ready to flinch as she asked her next question. “How goes the war against the Sa’ba Taalor?”
“We are currently being attacked from four separate directions, my Empress, and they seem determined to meet here.” He walked to the map he had pasted to the wall with wax and pointed. First, far to the east. “Elda is suffering. Merros’s plans have worked so far. He let them take one small corner of Elda and has held them off from going any further, but there are doubts he can hold them there. They have machines that can hurl boulders through the air. Not much survives when those rocks land.” He poked another spot to the far south, closer to home. “The Louran are holding their own. Reports are that the invaders attacked and then decided to depart. I have no idea as to why, exactly, but they left quickly.”
“Can you find out why? It could be of benefit.”
“Yes, it could, and I suspect the answer is that Louron has its own sorcerers. Their sorcery is different from mine. Subtler a lot of times. Perhaps your Inquisitor can offer enlightenment.” He did his best to keep the edge out of his voice. The Louron were an unsettling people.
“The Sa’ba Taalor have moved to the east of Louron and are attacking along the shores of Corinta. The Brellar have been alerted and should be on their way to the area to work on our behalf.”
“Can the Brellar be trusted?”
“There’s gold involved. They can be trusted as long as we pay.” He looked toward Nachia and saw the sour expression on her face. “It’s not a perfect solution, Nachia, but it’s all we have. Pathra let the naval forces of Fellein waste away. He trusted the lies and I’m partially responsible for that. I didn’t think we would have troubles like this.”
“I don’t understand this.” She took back her wine in one gulp and then gasped. Having done the same a few times he could understand the reaction. When she had recovered from the drink she shook her head and looked at him again. “You have your Sooth or whatever it is and you never knew that this was coming?”
“I’ve told you before, Nachia, that magic has a cost. Dealing with the Sooth takes more than just a few hours of my life. It takes preparations that can span months. Years, no, decades of effort have gone into learning what I have in the last few months. That is why I have someone else looking right now. My resources have been severely limited. The preparations I had for dealing with the Sooth were in Tyrne. It will be months before I can properly contact them again without having to steal the power I would need from other people.”
She shook her head, frustrated. “I have seen a few of the powers you have, Desh. I know that they exist, but sometimes I swear I feel you are deliberately avoiding using them.”
“I absolutely am.” He looked at her hard then, as he had looked at her when she was younger and reckless and prone to mischief. “I absolutely am avoiding using my abilities.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Losing control.” He shrugged and settled back, while she looked him in the eyes, not the least concerned about his stern expression. That had not changed over the years.
“Explain that to me. Losing control of what?”
He held out his hand and spread his fingers wide. The opened hand was lowered until it was only a foot or so from Nachia’s face and he focused his will. “Look carefully, my Empress.”
It was a trick, really, the sort that apprentices used when they felt the need to show their powers. He created a small electrical charge and held it in the palm of his hand. The glowing bolt jumped from one finger to another, slithering around his hand like a hyperactive serpent. Even if she had touched it, the worst she’d have managed was a tingle and a few hairs standing on end.
“I have seen this trick before, Desh.”
“Yes, I remember, you wanted to study. You would have if I hadn’t caught you in the act.”
It was a bitter point between them from time to time, but the past was the past.
“This is an easy thing, Nachia. This is a sparkle in the air. I could hold this for a dozen days and never grow tired. But as you have already said, it’s a trick and little more. What you want, what everyone seems to want, is for me to end this war before it can get any larger.”
“Yes. That’s exactly it.”
He nodded. “Would you have me cast lightning from the sky and burn our enemies into ashes?”
“Could you do that?”
“Very likely. I could obliterate an entire army of them. I would be sore when it was finished, and I would surely be weak for some time, but I could do it.”
“Then why won’t you?”
“What happens if I miss?”
“I don’t understand.” She frowned, her lower lip jutting out in a specter of the child she was not that long ago.
“Let’s say I aim that lightning storm at Tuskandru. I understand he’s the one who destroyed Trecharch. If I aim at him and I make my preparations I have to be careful to aim at the right location. If he moves, if I miscalculate and he is one valley away from where I think he is, then the lightning I send will hit something else.”
“Then you send it again and again until you hit him.”
“It’s not a sword, or an arrow, Nachia. It’s lightning. A single stroke can destroy a forest. One blast can kill a dozen people. A dozen of your people. Understand me on this, if I cast lightning to kill a living being it will find a living being. I can no more control it after it has been cast than an archer can control an arrow after he has let it loose.”
She was weighing the possibilities. He hated that fact more than he could say.
The bolt that danced around his hand moved and grew as he willed it, and now it arched around his entire arm, crawling, hissing, releasing tiny tongues of electric outrage that burned the very air. That it was a deadly thing was undeniable.
“I can burn a man with what I hold now, Nachia. I can kill with one touch. But once released it is no longer mine. No more than that arrow I discussed. If I cast this away, it finds a target and destroys it. If I am lucky it only strikes that one target. Perhaps I cast it toward the window and aim for a bird, but the bird moves so my lightning moves on and reaches the river and strikes a boat and burns the cargo and the sailors and the boat and the very water.”
“Then you don’t miss, Desh.”
Desh shook his hand and the lightning grew bolder, writhing around his arm and moving to his other hand, a massive snake of electricity now.
Nachia stepped back a bit. He would have never let her be hurt by it, of course, but she did not know that.
“I could cast a lightning storm to destroy the Sa’ba Taalor in Elda. I can look on a map and see where it is. But there is a great deal of distance between here and Elda and there are mountains, there are birds and rivers and cities. And if the map is poorly drawn, instead of striking the Sa’ba Taalor I have just burned away a thousand people and leveled the town of Rethmar. Or, worse, I am off by a greater amount and Danaher burns.”
“You have made your point, Desh.”
He threw the lightning and let it strike his map. The paper crackled and burned in an instant. The wax that held it in place melted and the entire affair crumbled in a smoldering mass.
“I can kill one man from a thousan
d miles away. I have done so. I can create waves that will sink their ships, but I cannot stop those waves from destroying anything else that is nearby when that happens. I can call to the Sooth and ask them to tell me when and where to strike, but what have I said about the Sooth on countless occasions?”
She sighed. “The Sooth lie.”
“That is correct.”
“You could strike at the Seven Forges.”
“I cannot hit what I cannot see and the gods of those mountains, or whatever sorceries they use, have always made it impossible for me to see what lies beyond the Blasted Lands. You know this.”
Nachia Krous did not like being outargued. It went against her nature to concede defeat.
“Do you doubt that they have gods, Desh?”
“No. We have seen the things they can do. I couldn’t hope to mimic the hands they made for Andover Lashk…” He paused a moment there and swallowed. The boy was gone and it bothered him that he hadn’t even considered him for weeks on end. “…or any of the rest of their people. You saw what they did to Merros’s soldier, the one with the metal mask for a face. I cannot work that sort of sorcery and I have never heard of it being worked elsewhere, so no. I just don’t like the notion of gods being involved.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s always possible that gods can do what I cannot and properly aim. If that’s the case, what’s to stop them from dropping another of their damnable volcanoes right on top of this city?”
Nachia paled at that possibility.
“Remain calm. There are many reasons that Canhoon is called the City of Wonders, my Empress. We are safer here than in almost any other spot in the world.”
He hoped that was still true. He hated that he might be lying.
Thirteen
Andover Lashk left Ordna with still more knowledge in his head, calculations and equations the likes of which he had never conceived of before. He also left with two short spears and a new bow, complete with a score of arrows.
How much time had passed? He no longer knew.
It did not matter. The gods would do as they pleased and though he knew he was walking and climbing and living as he had to, he also knew that time was not moving the same for him and Delil as it did for others. A fourth Great Scar cut across his mouth like a slash from right to left. As with the previous three, he accepted the blessing of the god Ordna and knew he would do all he could to live up to that blessing.
When he reached the base of Paedle he saw a temple waiting before he even set foot on the sacred ground.
Delil stopped outside the temple and crossed her legs. “Paedle is one of my chosen gods. We have a long understanding. This journey is yours alone, Andover.”
The temple was an elaborate affair. The entranceway billowed with a dozen gaudy, diaphanous veils that snapped and fluttered in a breeze coming from inside.
Andover looked carefully at the sharp angles and the quartet of faceless stone statues at each corner. One statue was of a young girl. Another of an old man. The third of a woman heavy with child, and the final of a male in his prime. All were naked and carved from a glossy black stone flecked with silver. Each head was featureless. No face at all, and only a hint of where ears should be.
Delil pulled out her weapons and began methodically checking all of them again. He did not have to ask if she felt it was necessary. He already knew the answer.
Andover set down his new weapons before he entered the temple of Paedle.
There were walls, he knew that, but upon entering they seemed to stretch away for eternity. There was no horizon for his eyes to rest on.
At first there was nothing but the endless distance of the temple and the breeze but eventually he noticed the movement from the corner of his eye.
The veils he had seen before moved, separate from the doorway where he had assumed they were anchored.
They shifted and danced in the air and as he looked at them they made forms in the wind: here a withered shape crouching; next a tall, thin man reaching toward him.
There had been a time in his life when Andover would have seen a spectacle like that and applauded the street performer likely responsible for such chicanery even as he tried to understand how it was done.
These days he was wiser. As the veils formed another shape and reached for him, he dodged the cloth that tried to touch his body. There was no consideration, merely automatic response.
“You have learned well, Andover Lashk.” The voice seemed to come from the shifting veils, but it also filled his head. “Not every weapon is a blade or a hammer.”
A moment earlier there had been a dozen cloths of different colors but they merged, shifting into one form. That shape was long and thin and could have been male or female. It was impossible to guess.
Andover bowed before Paedle, arms held out to his sides, his head lowered.
“What is war, Andover Lashk?”
“War is a conflict between two people that cannot be resolved with words and promises.” He remembered that one. It was easy.
He never saw the form move, but it was gone. “No.” The voice came from behind him and Andover turned quickly, but there was nothing to see.
The figure was next to him, moving around him, a shifting shadow too fast to be seen. His eyes ached from trying to keep up. “War is one way to end a conflict between two people. There are others.”
“I don’t understand. Aren’t you a god of war?”
“What is the best way to win a war, Andover Lashk?” Paedle – and there was no doubt that this was the deity. He could feel the overwhelming presence of a god even if in this case it was almost completely hidden – ignored the question and moved again, drifting away from the area and settling in the distance. Range did not seem to matter. The voice was as clear as ever.
“I don’t know. I would think with greater skills and forces?”
“If a thousand solders must move between two mountains to reach their destination, what is the best way to stop them?”
“You could have an army waiting on the other side, where they cannot see their enemies until it is too late.” He nodded, pleased with his answer.
“Would it not be easier to block the passage between the mountains?”
“I suppose. If the mountains are close enough together.”
“You have spoken with Wheklam and learned of the sea.” It was not a question. “If one hundred ships are crossing the ocean to fight against an enemy, what is the best way to stop the invaders?”
“I don’t know.”
Paedle was there again, next to him, the voice neither male nor female, young nor old. “If the ships burn, or if there are holes in each of them, how will the invaders find their way to distant shores?”
“I–” A shiver tore through his body and Andover dodged to the side as the shape came closer again. Fading from one side and appearing on the other. His iron hand moved and caught at the wrist of the shape. He found nothing to capture but a delicate, needle-thin blade. Had it struck he’d have barely noticed. The blade dripped with a thick, clear syrup.
“If a king seeks war, and orders his people to fight, what happens if that king dies?”
“The war is stopped?”
“Perhaps. It might also be delayed. It might also continue with a different leader, but the new leader might not be as strong, or as capable. If you were to strike at me with a sword, right here and now, how best would I avoid that blade?”
Andover shook his head again.
“I could fight you with another sword. I might have a bow and kill you before you come for me. I could threaten to kill someone dear to you…” For a moment the shape shifted, changed and looked suspiciously like Delil before once again hiding in a cloak of semidarkness. “If I knew of your intentions, I could poison your food, or choke you to death in your sleep. There are a thousand ways I could kill you before you ever drew a sword. There are just as many ways to stop an army or kill a king.”
When Paedle m
oved closer this time the cloak was cast aside and the figure that moved forward was featureless. There was no face, there was no sex, instead the shape continued to change and shift, a column of liquid silver that was almost humanoid, but not quite. The voice came from everywhere even as the image flowed and melted into the ground of the temple.
“The best way to end a war is to make certain that it never happens. The best way to win a war is to change the shape of the battles to suit your needs.”
Andover considered those words as he looked around the interior of the temple. It was smaller now, he could actually see the walls in the distance where before there had been nothing, though still larger than even the palace in Tyrne.
“Sit, Andover Lashk, and learn the ways of a silent warrior.”
Andover settled himself on the cold, marble floor.
“If I had let this blade cut me?” He set the dagger on the ground and carefully wiped the wetness from his iron hand.
“You would be in great pain and possibly near death. There are many ways in which you must prove yourself. Expect several lessons throughout your time here. None of mine can long survive unless they are aware of all that surrounds them.”
The lessons began a moment later.
“How can you stand being in a different body?” Jost leaned against the wall of Swech’s bedroom chamber and looked around the room. The bed was large and comfortable. The floor was tiled in dark wood.
“You know the answer to that, little one. The gods make demands and I obey.”
“Does it hurt?”
Swech smiled and brushed her hair. “No. Sometimes. This shape is not as well conditioned as my body. There are muscles that I use that this body does not seem to have ever needed. Sometimes I wake up sore.” She shook her head and rose from the bench where she prepared herself for the day. She was dressed well enough, but anyone who looked at her before she was completely clothed would have been astonished by the places where she could hide a blade.
“They are soft.” Jost’s voice held a thin edge to it.
“Not all of them. Never forget that. It is too easy to assume that they are weak, but some of them are very deadly. Some of them are worthy warriors.” Again her mind shifted to Merros Dulver. He had seemed soft back when she’d first met him, but she had seen him only the previous day as he walked down the street, and she had heard him speaking with several of his followers. He was a skilled tactician. Had he known she was there he would likely have ordered her death.
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