by Don McQuinn
“I believe it for you. If it’s so for me, then it’ll be a pleasant surprise. As long as I can put an end to this world for him, then I can meet my own time with no regrets.”
“Such a terrible cost. I almost wish—”
“No, no, no,” he interrupted, “we’ll have no wishes, no what-ifs. Everything’s decided.”
“It’s wonderful to be able to say that, isn’t it? No more fear, no more pain, no more shame.” Smoothly, flowing to him, she wrapped her arms around him, pressed her cheek to his chest. “An end to the darkness. I’ll be clean, Man Burning. I’ll be with my sisters. They’ll forgive me. Church will, too.”
“They all forgave you long ago, sweet Bayek. You paid for any mistakes, many, many times over.”
She pulled back her head, turned her face up to his. He thrilled when the feeling that something superior to ordinary vision enabled her to see directly into his emotions. She said, “You suffered, too. And paid. Can’t you find some happiness in knowing all the bad things are ending?”
“I can’t even remember happiness. All I ask is satisfaction. More than freedom, I need that.”
Nestled against him once more, she spoke in a quiet, musing voice. “Sometimes I worry about what we’re doing. It’s wrong. I don’t like to think we’re bad people. It has to be done, doesn’t it? I’m not just being cruel, am I? Nights, when I’m all alone and it’s quiet, I think about some of the things that have happened, and I want them to know pain. Like mine. I’m not proud of feeling like that.”
Man Burning swayed back and forth, rocking her in his arms. “Hush. What we’re doing is necessary. For ourselves, yes. For others, people we’ll never know, yes. For Church, yes. We strike down evil.”
Chapter 12
Black sky pressed down into the valley holding Windband. Directly overhead and to the east blazed uncountable stars. To the west, that light was restrained, the ragged outline of the looming mountains there obscured. Several Moondance priests had commented on it earlier, muttering about mystic hazes and the upcoming conflict between good and evil.
Warriors of Katallon’s personal guard tracked down the speakers. The priests were given to understand that Katallon invariably represented good. There was no more talk of that comparison.
Nevertheless, like everything else about the contest between Katallon and Conway, the weather was abnormal. People wondered. Animals behaved erratically. Not only priests said strange forces were afoot.
From outlying camps, the people bearing torches flowed in rivulets, then streams, and finally in three seething rivers. They poured up onto a relatively flat knoll. The site offered an encompassing view of the entire valley. Any other time, the torchlit movement would have been a thing of beauty.
Conway, alone at the edge of the high ground, thought of fiery snakes. And of Moonpriest.
Tendrils of suspicion and doubt crept smokily across his mind. They left a residue of fear wherever they touched. The same foreboding he’d known after the battle where the young Kossiar died lodged stubbornly in his head. Worse, the guilt returned.
The people jostled along, buzzing with excitement. Dogs barked, racing along the edges of the winding columns. Despite the darkness, cocks crowed from every aspect of the camps.
There was a fluttery, twitchy edge to the merriment. When the dogs tumbled over each other, the quick snaps and snarls degenerated almost instantly into bloody, squalling fights.
Human laughter crackled with repressed tension. People, too, bumped each other in the dark, much like the dogs. Similarly, they seemed overeager to take those minor collisions to confrontation.
The cloth walls of Katallon’s tent were no proof against the brittle atmosphere. The subordinate chiefs of the tribal groups sat in a rough circle. There was an unusual formality in this night’s arrangement, in that every man managed a distance between himself and his flanking neighbors. It was as though the awareness of a surprise blow was the uppermost thought in the mind of all.
Katallon strode to his chair. He wore leather under chain mail that reached just below his waist. Hundreds of metal rings sighed music as he moved. Vertical metal bars sewn to leather trousers protected his thighs and lower legs from slashing blows. He carried his sword in a scabbard slung across his back. Pheasant tail feathers decorated the handle, which rose above his head. The vivid plumes dangled and danced in the wind of his passage.
Drawing a long, slim-bladed knife from a scabbard at his side, he drove it into the empty chair where the War Chief would normally sit. There was a sharp intake from the circle; no one bared weapons in Katallon’s tent. The prohibition could have hardly been applied to Katallon himself, but he’d honored it as long as anyone could remember. He said, “I have spoken to each of you in private, asking advice and counsel. I was undecided until I entered this room. Some of you asked me to compromise with Moonpriest. You say, rightly, that I need only defeat the Conway one to prove Windband’s leader can defy a god. However, I know that Moonpriest’s challenge is aimed at control of Windband. I will die before I share command. If the Conway one chooses to take Moonpriest’s part in this argument, then he should be prepared to die for him. All agree Moonpriest is holy. Is Conway? Must we believe that every man who comes to Windband with a piece of magic is a god? Moonpriest tells us he’ll die the death of a man when his time away from the moon is ended. Who can say when or how that time will end? As for me, if I am not to be Katallon alive as I am, then I choose to be Katallon dead.”
The chief of the Long Sky People rose slowly. He wore the four-colored jacket of his rank. Each color represented a point of the compass and a branch of the tribe. His trousers and boots were beaded with sacred symbols related to the tribe’s wanderings before it became part of Windband. Before speaking, he placed the palm of his right hand over his heart in the gesture that meant his honor stood on the truth of his words. “The heart and courage and skill of Katallon has led us always to victory. Against men. We all fought beside him. We killed men. Enslaved men. If Katallon wants to fight a god, we can only hold our breath. None here have his bravery.”
Katallon grinned. “None here have yours, either, or you wouldn’t be the only one on his feet, arguing with me. You’re all afraid of what will happen to you if I lose.”
The Long Sky chief winced. “Or if you win. Kill Conway, and what of Moonpriest’s anger?”
“Conway hates Church. Have you heard why? He blames a Healer for the death of his slave whore. It’s said he loved her. What god’s brother would love a whore or a slave? For Moonpriest to do his mother’s bidding, he must supplant Church in every place with Moondance. He can’t do that without Windband. I aim to take Church Home my way in my time. Moonpriest hopes his ‘brother’ will kill me only because he wants to pursue his own goals. Mark what I say: after I kill Conway, Moonpriest will be much easier to deal with.”
Stubbornly, the Long Sky chief persisted. “We can’t help you. We won’t stop you. You are Katallon. We support your right to live or die however you choose. But we ask you to speak to Moonpriest. Tell him he must not include your followers in his vengeance.”
“I’ll do that.” Katallon jerked the knife from the chair’s wooden seat. “Moonpriest has cost me a good friend and many good warriors. I accept that, as all men accept the whims of gods. Conway is another matter.”
Another chief got to his feet. Nervousness made his words rapid, his voice scratchy, in cruel contrast to the solemn dignity of the Long Sky man. “The dogs. The horse, Stormracer. What of the lightning?”
“Moonpriest promises swords only. And knives. If the dogs or the horse come at me, you kill them.”
The speaker hurriedly dropped back onto his chair. The Long Sky chief sent him a chill glance before readdressing Katallon. “Why does Moonpriest have the moon altar at the place of the contest?”
“So Moonpriest and his new ‘brother’ can be in perfect contact with the moon mother.”
Then, as if aware of him for the first time, Katall
on looked at Fox. Bleak, cold silence grew between the two men. The tension in the room was a flame, waiting only the tiniest breeze to lift it to a consuming blaze. To Katallon, the Long Sky chief said, “We have spoken among ourselves of the Fox Eleven one. He has trained Blizzard as well as our best scouts and trackers. We respect him and trust him.”
Katallon said, “We are much alike, Fox and me. Just as I am Windband, and Windband is me, so he belongs to Moonpriest.”
Fox got to his feet, dressed in an elegant antelope-hide short sleeved shirt and trousers, both entwined with decorative vine patterns of appliquéd rabbit skin. When he gestured, his bared arms were hard-muscled as ever, and the sense of waiting violence within him was undiminished. “Only Katallon can command. All agree. Moonpriest has never said otherwise. Moonpriest only says that Church is the enemy of all, and Katallon should attack Church Home first.”
The gathering of chiefs focused on Katallon so intently they seemed turned to stone. Katallon laughed at them. “‘Moonpriest says.’ Look at yourselves. All with one thought: What if Katallon dies? Well, Katallon will not die.”
* * *
Katallon stepped outside his tent. A warrior immediately lit off a torch on a pole by the entry. Another seized Katallon’s red and black battle standard on its shaft, taller than three men, ready to follow his leader. Katallon stepped off, making his way along a cleared path reaching to the testing ground. Every fifth step, another warrior lit another pole-mounted torch. Katallon’s progress was punctuated by a march of flames, and with each new appearance, the approval of the crowd grew louder.
Beyond that natural, inevitable excitement, however, there was a tingle to the air, a suggestion of physical contact.
Conversation was too loud, too fast. Children, when not wide-eyed with excitement, cried fitfully, sometimes for no apparent reason.
There were thirty torches flaring in the strengthening west wind when Katallon and the chiefs reached the roped-off area. By then the cheering was a chant, three beats, Kat-al-lon, Kat-al-lon. The night shuddered with it. Drums gave voice.
Katallon took his standard, stepped alone into the area of combat. Several paces from the altar, he jammed the metal butt of the pole into the earth. Only one small torch burned in the arena, far off, beyond the altar. The torches carried by the people were doused as they formed their watchful circle outside the lines. Moonpriest had insisted. The people had concurred. This was a battle to test the power of the moon. It would never do to cheapen it with torchlight.
Then Moonpriest appeared. Somehow, he made his way through the crowd practically unnoticed, appearing almost magically under the lone torch. Dressed in solid white robe and turban, he posed for a few heartbeats, stern, vaguely disapproving.
Cheering faded. One by one, raggedly, drums ceased. The last to stop left the silence that follows a tasteless remark. Moonpriest strode toward the altar. His sweeping robe made him appear to flow. The massive silver moon disk on its silver chain rode in his outstretched hands. A beacon of his power, it caught the moonlight and shimmered with its same cold beauty. One hysteric ripped open his shirt and cried for its gleam to bathe his soul. A warrior, hair roached in a horse’s mane, he threw back his head in ecstasy and shouted Moonpriest’s name.
Now the enthusiasm was for the man in white. The drums began again, a two beat, hard and soft. Slower this time. Insinuating, rather than insisting. Feet pounded in cadence. Thunder born of hundreds of boots rolled through the earth, a menacing bass accompaniment to subdued voices calling “Moon-priest! Moon-priest!”
Conway’s advance to the altar didn’t start until Moonpriest was already there, standing on the lowest copper step. Two Mountain warriors in the seats turned their crank handles. The disk rumbled irritably, gradually picking up speed. The brushes hissed against the outer rim.
Moonpriest stepped onto the altar to inspect its workings.
The first laughter jerked him upright.
Walking as if his feet hurt, Conway headed for the center of the arena. Bareheaded, clad in a comically long, loose chain mail smock, he carried a heavy sword in thickly gloved, mailed hands. His boots were ridiculously oversized.
He looked far more clown-like than godly.
Giggles speckled the crowd, choked explosions of ridicule, cropping up here, then there. A child shouted, “What is it?” and the wavering bun of respect collapsed under a flood of amusement.
Moonpriest’s fury threatened to topple him from the altar. Bending to Conway in order to keep the warriors turning the wheel from hearing, he said, “You’ve made fools of us both. My dignity, my prestige…”
“Your ass.” Conway was pale, as grim as Moonpriest was angry. “I’m on the line here, not you. Hook this up the way I told you.” He extended a copper wire to Moonpriest, careful to keep the action hidden from the crowd and the wheel turners. Grumbling, Moonpriest moved away. He stopped in front of the container holding the Man Who Is Death. When the end of the wire was joined to the metal, he stepped back and sent a surreptitious glance at Conway.
As Conway moved off, the wire fed off the loops at his back. It was a fine wire, and, in moonlight, invisible. To further obliterate any evidence of his deception, the rising wind blustered across the torch flames. Their light swayed, creating a fitful illumination of confusing shadows. Even the night helped in the deception. The high silken mist that had earlier shrouded the western stars now appeared directly overhead. It veiled the moon’s brightness, turned it pallid.
This time when the people pointed at the eerily obscured sky and mumbled of omens and portents, there were curses and angry orders to stop frightening the children.
Chapter 13
Katallon drew his sword. Raising it over his head, both hands clasping the heavy hilt, he shouted his challenge. “I am Katallon! I am Windband! Who would test me?”
Indistinct in the shifting light, he was a threatening dark bulk surmounted by a mesmerizing steel blade.
At Katallon’s first wild shriek, Conway instinctively stepped back. Flushed, he glanced around. All eyes were on Katallon.
All but Moonpriest’s. Sly, snickering, he whispered, “Formidable, isn’t he? Frightening. No one knows how many men he’s killed, not even him.”
Conway spoke from the side of his mouth. He nodded at the altar. “Is that thing charging?”
“Charging? If you mean is the sky path open to my mother, am I in contact with her, the answer is yes. When you need her power, it will come. Unless you offend her.”
Conway turned away from Katallon, rattled by Moonpriest’s response. The priest’s eyes were dots in round, gleaming whites. Angular features thrust aggressively at Conway.
The desperation of his situation finally cracked Conway’s wall of hatred. He’d convinced himself he needed this madman. Now he was entrusted to him, at his mercy.
Bitterly, Conway told himself he deserved Moonpriest. They shared a past, a present. Now they shared a future. Insanity owned them both.
Why?
The insistent throbbing of a small drum penetrated his self-absorption. The galloping tempo conjured flight. He saw Tee’s image, her dying, a thing he’d refused to see again since the moment it happened. Now, with the possible instrument of his own death posturing before him, he remembered her courage and devotion.
The destruction of Church, revenge on Lanta herself—how would Tee react to those goals?
Would a man of honest courage ask himself that question now?
Would a rational man set himself to single-handedly destroy an organization as demonstrably good as Church?
Conway realized all was silence around him. Only the laughing flutter of the distant torch and the heavy whisper of the spinning moondisk behind him made sound.
“Too frightened to speak?” Katallon taunted. His sword point cut tight circles in the air. “Perhaps too frightened to move?”
“I can move.” The answer felt poor in Conway’s mouth. He tried to cover the weakness by swinging his sword in
a flat horizontal sweep. Katallon grinned hungrily at the sluggishness. He sidled forward.
Surreptitiously, Conway reassured himself his umbilical-like wire was firmly attached to his chain mail.
Moonpriest stood beside the revolving disk, steadying himself by holding onto one of the decorated posts. He smiled broadly at Conway.
Katallon slid forward with long, deceptively swift strides. The sword hissed downward in a skull-splitting stroke. Conway hurriedly raised his own blade, perpendicular to the oncoming blow.
The impact staggered him. His knees bowed.
And nothing else happened.
Moonpriest’s screeching laughter was a cry of mad betrayal.
Fighting for his life in a combat that should never have happened, Conway’s mind momentarily detached itself.
Lanta. I never told her I was sorry.
At the forefront of the crowd, pressed against the restraining rope, Fox struck out in peevish reaction against a body crowding him. Turning, he recognized Altanar and seized his arm in a grip that lifted the slave onto his toes in pain. Mouth nearly touching Altanar’s ear, Fox said, “Where have you been? Do you see what’s happening? What have you done? Moonpriest said his mother would strike Katallon dead if he so much as touched the Conway one. You must have defiled Moonpriest’s tent. Or the altar. Something. What have you done?”
“Nothing! I swear. I wouldn’t dare touch the altar.”
“Then why does Katallon live? Look, Conway can barely defend himself. Katallon plays with him.”
Altanar pried at Fox’s fingers. Reluctantly, eyes fixed on the moonlit struggle in the enclosure, Fox let go. He continued complaining. “I was promised the lightning weapons. Command of Windband’s warriors. Moonpriest himself said it. He cannot fail. Unless you’ve done something.”
Rubbing his arm, Altanar said, “He has his plan. You were there, you heard him say his mother wants Conway dead. The lightning will kill Katallon and the sacred water will kill Conway.” By way of confirmation, he pulled aside his cloak to reveal the tightly lashed top of the bidden waterskin. “You were there, you heard Moonpriest tell me: ‘As soon as Katallon dies, you run from the crowd and declare Conway unclean. Throw the water on him. My mother will claim him.’ That’s what he told us. You heard. Don’t blame me for this.” He jerked his chin at the continuing struggle, where the ring of Katallon’s blows glancing off Conway’s defense was the inexorable song of hammer on an anvil. The crowd roared excitedly.
