She smiled. “It would not have mattered. I assure you that if I caught Captain Medophae in your position, I would have been the uncomfortable one. I would have felt out of place, not him. Wherever he was, it was exactly where he should be, and no one could deny it.” Then, she dropped her voice so low he almost couldn’t hear her. “I wish he would return....”
“You miss him.”
“Teni’sia lost its two greatest assets in one moment. Perhaps the two greatest leaders we ever had or shall ever have. The entire country changed when the queen died, though the kingdom won’t feel it right away. I think eventually Medophae and the queen would have married.”
“And you would have been okay with that? Some lowborn ruling over you?”
She chuckled. “You wouldn’t say that if you had met him. So many of us longed for their marriage. This Wave, as everyone calls it, this thing that has washed over the lands, pushing vitality into the plants and animals, it has brought Teni’sia only misery. Many believe that The Wave is connected to our queen’s death. The supernatural creature that killed her preceded The Wave by a matter of days. It is too great a coincidence.”
“You don’t think Collus will make a good king here?” Mershayn asked, irritated.
She turned to him, also irritated. “Would you rather I not speak plainly?”
He sighed. By Thalius, the woman knew who she was talking to. Mershayn would rather bite off his own tongue than encourage a convenient lie over the truth. “No, I’m sorry. Please continue.”
“I do not mean to disparage His Majesty. He has fine qualities, and I know he is your brother, so you know him better than I. He may become an excellent ruler in Teni’sia, but he is not Queen Tyndiria.” She took a deep breath and hung her head. “We loved her.”
Mershayn kept silent. He liked Deni’tri, but even he could see that there were some subjects that shouldn’t be discussed with a common guard.
She pushed away from the rail. “Pardon me, my lord,” she said, seemingly troubled by her thoughts, “But I must continue my sweep. I enjoyed talking with you.”
“I...” The departure was so abrupt, but he could think of nothing to say to stop her, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. “Thank you. Good night.”
“Good luck with your...swordplay.” She gave him a wry smile over her shoulder, then continued along the North Walk. As she disappeared into the night, he saw her hand drift down, unhook her hatchet and begin flipping it again.
He turned—
—and came face to face with a tall, thin albino. His skin and hair were the color of fresh snow... But no. He wasn’t an albino, for his eyes weren’t pink. They had pupils and a black ring around the white iris. He was something else. Something...other.
He was at least a head and a half taller than Mershayn. Tight-fitting white scale mail wrapped his torso, and a thick, black belt wrapped his waist. His leather breeches were white as well, and his knee-high black boots glinted in the torchlight. A wicked dagger protruded from his belt, hooked and curved as though it was a flicker of flame turned to steel. Mershayn had never seen a dagger like that. It sent a swift chill through him, and his first impression was that this was an assassin, perhaps the supernatural creature that had killed Tyndiria. Neither Deni’tri nor Mershayn had heard him approach.
His long, thin nose wrinkled at the sides, as though Mershayn smelled like week-old fish. His derision was plain as he stared at Mershayn, like he was a piece of dung about to be scraped off a boot.
Mershayn sucked in a breath and stepped back into stance. He pulled his sword—
The stranger spoke in a tongue that sounded like thick oil poured between rough rocks. Mershayn’s sword stopped halfway out of its sheath; he couldn’t move his arm.
He opened his mouth to yell for help, but the man spoke again, quickly, and Mershayn’s voice froze.
The stranger’s cold eyes regarded him. “Where is the man you call Medophae?” he asked.
Mershayn suddenly found he could talk again. “He was here,” he was surprised to hear himself say. He hadn’t meant to say anything. “He’s gone.”
“Gone where, human?”
The disdain in the man’s voice when he said “human” made Mershayn feel like dung being scraped off the man’s boot. “No one knows,” Mershayn answered. And why did he just keep answering? Mershayn wanted to tell the man to jump into the ocean, but his lips just kept forming the words, and his voice kept telling what he knew as though he had no control over it.
“Where is Randorus Ak-nin Ackli Forckandor?” the stranger asked.
“What?”
The man sneered. “The one you call Bands.” He said the name in the same tone as he’d said human.
That name sounded familiar, but it certainly wasn’t anyone in Teni’sia, not that he knew. He tried to dig it out of his memory. Was this someone he’d met before?
“I don’t know who that is,” he said.
The stranger rumbled, and the sound seemed like it was coming from the belly of an enormous beast. His fists shook at his sides, like he was trying to hold something in, but his voice came out as cold and smooth as ever. “This place is beloved of Medophae?”
“Beloved? I don’t know. I guess,” Mershayn said. “The people here love him, that’s sure.”
“She will come here,” the stranger concluded, to himself rather than to Mershayn. “She will come here looking for him.” He glanced at Mershayn again, and in the stranger’s white eyes, Mershayn saw himself as a corpse, cold on the flagstones of the Northern Walk. He saw Teni’sia burning. The blood of her soldiers dripped from her walls. Babies wailed at the sky, their mothers slain.
“I would kill you now,” the stranger whispered, conspiratorially. “But my lord commands me not to, so I shall have to save that joy for when I return. You will forget you saw me.”
Mershayn found himself back by the southern edge of the walk, heading into the hallway that led into the castle proper, that led eventually to his chambers. His head felt thick. Where was he going? He stopped, trying to remember....
Ah yes, to his chambers. He smiled at the thought of Lady Ari’cyiane. That was something worth staying up for.
Then he frowned. Why did he feel so befuddled?
There was something he desperately needed to remember.... Yes, something of great importance. Something...white. It was... The thought floated away from him like dandelion fluff. He looked at his hands. Red marks slowly faded from his sword hand, as though he had just gripped it very hard. He looked at his sword.
A foreboding worse than he had ever known hovered around him. But then it was gone. He spun around and looked behind him. There was no one there.
Mershayn paused in the hallway for many long moments. His heart thundered in his chest, but he didn’t know why.
8
Medophae
Wide leaves drooped from the branches of thick-trunked trees, and bushes huddled at the edge of the forest. It took a second glance to realize that a city began there, but once Medophae saw it, he recognized it in an instant. Only Denema’s Valley had such unlikely overgrowth. He turned and surveyed the moss-covered buildings. He moved slowly, as though his muscles wouldn’t respond normally. Wasn’t he... Wasn’t he in Rith? He and Mirolah had just arrived and...
He didn’t remember the journey from there to here, and he immediately wondered if he’d had a memory lapse. He used to have them all the time when he lived in his cave, before Orem brought him to Teni’sia. But he hadn’t had one since The Wave, since Mirolah had freed the GodSpill, since Zilok stripped Oedandus from him and made him mortal for a short time again, since Mirolah had loved him and pulled him back into the land of the living.
He looked to his left, expecting to see her, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere.
Movement caught his attention, and he spun, looking down the green sward of the street.
An enormous red dragon rose above the buildings, crushing them under its talons as it moved forward
. The dragon’s long, serpentine neck rose overhead, as tall as a castle, looking down on Medophae.
Medophae’s body went tight, and he could barely breathe. He frantically searched for Mirolah, but he could not see her. Where was she? She couldn’t be here! This wasn’t a threat that a mortal, even one as powerful as Mirolah, could survive.
He took a step back, then forced himself to stand firm. The presence of the dragon washed over him in waves, tearing at his sanity, ripping at his courage. Medophae had only felt this kind of fear once before, when he had braced Dervon the Diseased.
The force of Oedandus surrounded Medophae always, even when he wasn’t wreathed in golden fire. That godly force created a glamour around him that made people like him, even love him. But there were other ways to use that presence, and Dervon had transformed it into terror. Rather than attracting and beguiling mortals, it horrified them. Anyone who looked upon Dervon would cringe into a babbling ball of insanity or flee screaming.
That was happening to Medophae now. It was like facing Dervon all over again. He knew who his dragon was, who he had to be.
This was Avakketh, god of dragons.
“Medophae,” Avakketh said, his voice shaking the buildings. Even the ground trembled.
Medophae wanted to run the other direction, to get away from him, but he clenched his teeth and stood his ground. Oedandus stoked within him, and golden fire flared across his arms. As a mortal, he could never resist the fear spilling off Avakketh. But with Oedandus, he could, if only barely.
“What do you want?” Medophae didn’t call the godsword. It was possible Avakketh only wanted to talk, possible that the fear pouring off him was incidental, much like Medophae’s own glamour.
“I know your secret,” Avakketh said. “I was there.”
“You were where?”
“When you killed Dervon.”
“Dervon.”
“You braced him. You fought him. But you did not win. The thin little human legends say you destroyed him, but they lie.”
Medophae remembered that horrible, excruciating moment. Dervon had him pinned like a butterfly to a board, sickly claws of black stuck through him in a hundred places, down from the sky, up from the stone below. Oedandus healed the flesh around the punctures, keeping Medophae’s body alive as he screamed. Dervon had been too strong for him, for all of them. Even with Tarithalius and Bands helping him, the god had held them all at bay until...
Until Zilok intervened.
“Your threadweaver friend set Oedandus free,” Avakketh said, as though reading Medophae’s mind.
Zilok had done something to Medophae’s mind, had opened a door, and Oedandus came raging through it like never before. The god took over Medophae’s body, shot like an arrow into Dervon, consuming him with golden fire. That was how the battle was won. Medophae had been crushed. He, actually, had lost. It was Oedandus who prevailed.
Afterward, Zilok had described what he’d done, that he’d pushed Medophae’s personality to the back of his mind where it wouldn’t go insane from the twisting warp of Dervon’s presence and the inhuman pain that coursed through him, a place where Medophae’s mortal weakness wouldn’t get in the way.
When Oedandus emerged, Medophae had been smothered in his own body, crushed under the weight of his god’s rage. Medophae had almost been erased, and for an eternal moment—when Dervon’s body lay in a smoking ruin—Medophae thought Oedandus would keep his body.
“You lost that battle,” Avakketh said. “The humans call you a god, but you are not.”
“I never claimed to be a god.”
“You never denied it.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you gone.”
“What?”
“I’ve come to offer you mercy,” Avakketh said. “An apocalypse comes for all humankind. Amarion will be destroyed. Because you are the caretaker of my brother Oedandus, I have chosen to aid you.”
“What are you talking about? Amarion destroyed? What apocalypse?”
“As a favor to you, you may also warn a few of your chosen. You may take them with you when you go. And lastly, I will give you that which you most desire.” His giant claw came forward, large as a house, and it opened. Inside was Bands. She was curled up in her dragon form, and her head rose. The dark green bands that gave rise to her nickname encircled her neck up to her chin.
Medophae’s knees felt watery. “Bands!”
“My love,” Bands said, but she seemed sad.
Avakketh closed his fist, and Bands was gone once more.
The sight of her twisted inside him. He had cast her away. He’d thrown her into the ocean, and she was still alive after all. He could save her...
Suddenly, it struck him. This was a dream, some threadweaver mind trick, like Ethiel had used on him. He wasn’t really here.
“Bands is gone,” he said. “She is beyond anyone’s reach.”
“Love,” Avakketh whispered. Buildings crunched and crumbled as he turned, resettling himself on his haunches. His black gaze never left Medophae.
“What?”
“The answer to the Red Weaver’s riddle is Tarithalius’s grand trick upon your entire species. ‘Love’ is the answer you missed for centuries. But now, apparently, you have fulfilled the riddle, and Bands was freed.”
Ethiel’s words rang in his head: You must give to someone that which you have already given away. And you must cast away what now sustains you.
Love...
His mind raced, putting that word into the riddle. Avakketh was right. It fit. For over four hundred years, he had tried everything, but he’d never fallen in love with anyone the way he had loved Bands. Not until Tyndiria. He had loved Tyndiria, but he still couldn’t cast Bands away. He’d kept her close, and the enchantment remained. Tyndiria had put a crack in his soul, but Mirolah had shoved her way through.
Love...
That was exactly the kind of thing Ethiel would do. She knew falling in love with someone other than Bands was impossible for Medophae. Even if he tried. Especially if he tried.
But then came Mirolah, and he had cast Bands’s gem into the Sara Sea.
“No...” he said.
“Bands is free,” Avakketh said. “You two can have each other. But you must leave Amarion forever. This is my gift to you.”
Gift...
Bands had rarely talked about Avakketh. Unlike the capricious “sometimes here, sometimes gone” nature of the human god, Tarithalius, Avakketh was like a stern father to his dragons, present and demanding. And Bands had not left Irgakth under easy circumstances. She had been banished. Or, more accurate to say, she had banished herself due to her curiosity about humans, and she had once confided to him that the reason Avakketh reviled Bands was because he hated all humans....
“You’re the apocalypse,” Medophae whispered, putting the pieces together. “You want to destroy Amarion.”
Avakketh rumbled, shifting again, grinding stone beneath his tail, his scaled belly, and his talons.
“I won’t let you,” Medophae said, but he felt a weak flutter in his stomach, like he had no substance inside, like he had no strength.
“Leave and be rewarded,” Avakketh growled. “Or stay and be destroyed. You may take your favorite twenty humans with you. The humans you care for. I will even let you take my rogue daughter. Randorus can fly these chosen few far over the ocean to Dandere, back where you came from.”
Medophae swallowed hard. “No.”
Avakketh lowered his head. “Resist me, and everything you love will die in torment. I will strip the flesh from your beloved one bloody rope at a time, and she will scream for you to help her. She will scream your name as she dies.”
Oedandus responded to Medophae’s anger, flaring gold fire across his skin.
Avakketh smiled, scaly lips pulling back from teeth as tall as Medophae. “Little godling, you are a fool. We will meet soon again, and I will have your answer. For if we meet a third time, I will consider your ch
oice made, and my offer will be gone.”
Avakketh moved so quickly Medophae didn’t have time to react. His enormous talon whipped out, slamming down, crushing Medophae’s body, smashing the breath from his lungs, cracking his bones...
The god’s voice thundered in his mind as he died.
“A sweet reward, or bitter devastation. Choose well, godling...”
Medophae thrashed awake, trying to escape the deadly talon. His breath came quickly, but he wasn’t in Denema’s Valley. No trees leaned over moss-covered buildings. No verdant streets. His aura crackled and spit, throwing golden light into the dark. He was in a house, sleeping on a pallet on a wooden floor, a woman lying next to him. A blanket had been stretched across a rope in front of him to his right. To his left were wooden walls and a window.
“Medophae?” the woman said. He shifted quickly. Her name. What was her name?
“Are you okay?” she asked. Her warm fingers pressed into his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
“Mirolah,” he gasped, remembering her name.
“You’re shaking,” she said, concern in her voice.
“Just a dream,” he managed, but the cold reality pressed into him. It hadn’t just been a dream. Avakketh had been here. Medophae could still feel the overpowering presence of the god.
Mirolah encircled him with her arms and laid her head on his shoulder. “A nightmare for Wildmane,” she said. “Who would have thought?” The concern gave way to playfulness as she whispered in his ear. “Shall I sing you a lullaby?”
If a spell had been cast on him, Mirolah might have been able to detect it if she looked. And he didn’t want her looking. She was naturally curious and incurably impetuous. Nothing would hold her back if she sensed something. She’d trace it back to its source, and if the god of dragons found a human snooping about his threadweaving, he’d kill her. He’d snuff her out like a candle.
He didn’t respond to her suggestion, and she rubbed his back softly, around in a circle. It was a nice gesture, and under most circumstances, Medophae would have welcomed it, but when she touched him...
The GodSpill Page 7
