Theros

by Jenna Helland

  “Come leap off the side, and I will gladly dash you against the rocks of existence,” Kydele said.

  “Did my revels awaken the hydra?” Xenagos demanded.

  “From the eternal fires to the shards of sky to the peak of Mt. Velus,” Kydele told him. “And then the void. But void no longer.”

  “Speak clearly,” Xenagos ordered, “or I will cut your tongue from your mouth.”

  “You think you can hide what you’re doing?” the oracle asked. “The gods are well aware that something is amiss.”

  “But do they know it is me?” Xenagos asked.

  “Soon everyone will know your name,” she said. Xenagos was flattered though clearly she did not mean it well.

  Kydele turned her back to him and went to the body of Deiphon. Xenagos decided that he hated Kruphix’s oracles most of all. She’d let herself be taken captive to spy on him. He should kill her now before Kruphix deciphered his plans. The strands of hair hanging in front of Kydele’s face became like the veil of Athreos as she helped Deiphon’s soul find passage to the Underworld. So much fuss over one arrogant human.

  “Thank you for the lightning, Keranos,” the oracle said to the sky.

  Instead of killing Kydele, Xenagos thought maybe he would just control and humiliate her in his valley. Her strange god-sight was better than none at all. But he felt weak after the disappointment of the revel. Her mind was clear and unimpaired, while he felt shaken and spent. He didn’t want to test his strength against a female, so he did nothing as Kydele transformed into mist and vanished through the gap in the vine-roof. She would journey back to Kruphix’s Tree at the waterfall at the edge of the world where her god monitored the pulse and ebb of time and creation.

  Hey, wake up,” Xiro growled. “It’s our watch.”

  The toe of a boot tapped Elspeth’s leg, and her fingers closed around her sword. She’d been asleep for such a short time. And despite the hard ground, the knobby roots under her thin blanket, and the stench of rotting apples, she really didn’t want to wake up.

  Elspeth opened her eyes just as a shower of sparks erupted from the volcanic Mt. Velus, which dominated the horizon above the orchard where they were camped. Tonight the night sky was particularly vibrant. Astral clouds of violet and blue framed the mountain and transformed into wave-like patterns before her eyes. The inhabitants of Theros had a name for the night sky: Nyx, the realm of the gods. At first Elspeth thought people were being metaphorical about the word “realm.” But she’d been back on Theros for several months, and the more Elspeth learned from visiting the temples, the more it sounded like Nyx was an actual place. She’d come back to the plane because of the gods. Maybe the gods made Theros immune from atrocities like she witnessed on Mirrodin or the chaos that afflicted Bant. If the gods were the key to the safety of the world, she needed to understand everything about them. But first she had to earn her keep by working for Xiro, and he was nudging her in the side and ordering her to wake up.

  “Now!” Xiro crouched down and shook her shoulder. “Or I take that precious blade of yours and kick you in the river.”

  “Don’t touch my sword,” Elspeth said, climbing out of her bedroll.

  Xiro was the captain of a crew of sellswords based in the Foreigners’ Quarter in Akros. Xiro paid tribute to Iroas, God of Victory. He even called his crew Iroas’s Cutters after the patron god of Akros. Except Elspeth, all of the Cutters had served in the Akroan army at one time or another but had been cast out for reasons no one talked about—outcasts not by birth but by circumstances. Xiro took jobs out of necessity, but he and his men often talked of regaining the favor of the authorities. Elspeth knew he longed to be accepted back into the pristine city beyond the boundaries of the shabby quarter he now called home.

  Xiro waited impatiently while she rolled up her bedroll and stashed it with the rest of the crew’s gear under a tarp strung between two apple trees. This was their third night sleeping in the orchard of a nobleman’s estate just outside the walls of Akros. The Takis Estate was one of a few large agricultural holdings near the city. It thrived on the banks of a tributary of the Deyda River, which flowed from high in the mountains down to the sea. Arvid Takis, the patron of this estate, was angry with King Anax of Akros, which is why he turned to Xiro for protection rather than relying on the help of the army. The Cutters had been hired to watch for leonin raiders coming down from the highlands. Of the major estates around Akros, this was the only one that hadn’t been attacked by marauders. Xiro’s crew was watching around the clock, taking turns patrolling the grounds.

  “Where are the other men?” Elspeth asked Xiro as they made their way from the orchard to the walls of sprawling Takis Manor.

  “They’re doing a pass around the hinter grounds,” Xiro said. “Then they’ll retire to the orchard for what’s left of the night.”

  “Isn’t it usually the minotaurs that are the main threat to Akros?” Elspeth asked. “Why does Master Takis think the leonins are at fault?”

  “A leonin was spotted in the orchard a few days ago,” Xiro said. “Minotaurs don’t do scouting missions before they attack.”

  Elspeth had learned that hordes of minotaurs plagued the mountains around Akros. Caravans that traveled the Great River Road alongside the Deyda River to the sea were constantly attacked. Although minotaurs lacked the organization for a full-scale attack against the polis, even the flatland around the walls weren’t immune from the constant minotaur threat. The conflict originated with the gods themselves. Iroas and Mogis were twin brothers and both gods of war. But Iroas’s domain was victory and honor while Mogis prized slaughter and pain. They were always at each other’s throats, and Iroas’s main focus seemed to be keeping his brother at bay.

  “What temple did you see this week?” Xiro asked pointedly. He was both amused and alarmed by Elspeth’s exploration of the holy sites of his city. He acted as if her interest in the pantheon was distasteful at best and perhaps a little immoral. There was only one god for him, Iroas, and he would never darken the door of a “lesser” god’s temple.

  “I visited a shrine to Keranos at the back of the Royal Observatory,” Elspeth said. “They assured me that it was just a poor imitation of his divine observatory, his temple in the mountains.”

  “Keranos, the God of Insight—pah,” Xiro said, making a dismissive motion with his hand. “He’s never told me anything I didn’t already know.”

  “Heliod also has a shrine outside of Akros in the mountains?” Elspeth asked tentatively. Thinking about Heliod made her feel strange. She remembered him from her first visit to Theros, years ago on the mountainside. Since then, whenever she heard the word “god,” she always saw his face.

  “It’s just up the Ridge Trail less than a mile from the King’s Gate,” Xiro said. “The location is out of respect to Iroas. Not because we Akroans disregard the God of the Sun.”

  When they’d reached the edge of the orchard, a strong scent of citrus hung in the air. Two ceremonial towers stood on either side of a bronze gate, which was open slightly. As they watched, dappled, prismatic light shone down from Nyx. The cosmic shadows cast from the heavens were constantly on the move across the land. It had been disorienting at first, but now Elspeth saw it was like a natural camouflage. If you could move with the night shadows, you could be nearly invisible.

  Still in the darkness under the trees, Xiro crouched down and inspected the impressions in the dirt road leading up to the gate. There were so many foot- and hoofprints that it looked as though an army had ridden through the area recently. Elspeth waited for Xiro to act, but he was still at his post. He was an older man with a pleasant but timeworn face, and Elspeth thought highly of him because he didn’t blink at hiring her, a foreign female who reported no military training. His intelligence was centered in his resourcefulness—he’d be the man you’d want around in a fight or to fix a broken wheel, but not the man with whom you would choose to spend a leisurely afternoon in conversation.

  “Somet
hing’s wrong,” Xiro whispered. “The boys should have completed their pass. But there’s been no signal. And why did they leave the gate open?”

  As if in response to his words, the south watchtower exploded in a hail of fire, shards of stone, and red dust. Elspeth whirled around and covered her eyes as the rubble rained down on them. They were saved from the worst of it by the overhanging branches of the apple trees. When the dust cleared, they could see that the gate had been melted down the middle, leaving a wide gap into the grounds of the estate.

  With their weapons drawn, they ran through the twisted metal of the gate, which glowed red hot from the explosion. Just beyond the gate was the area called the Garden Ring, a grassy circle where the stable boys exercised the family’s horses. The Garden Ring was deserted, but firelight flickered beyond the wall of the inner courtyard.

  “We’ve got to keep them from the manor house!” Xiro said.

  She followed Xiro as he raced toward the inner courtyard. Elspeth had been inside the courtyard once before, and it had been like something out of a dream. Flowers bloomed in beds along the inner wall, hanging baskets overflowed with blossoms, and a pond teemed with golden fish. The Takis family used the inner courtyard for entertaining, and it boasted carved benches, a pavilion with a frieze of Mt. Velus, and statues of the gods made by Meletis’s finest sculptors.

  When Elspeth and Xiro reached the cherrywood gate, they found it splintered and hanging precariously under the stone arch. Xiro battered his way through the remnants and into the inner courtyard. They stopped short beside a burning trellis, the pink roses now black husks. From the trellis, the flames traced the mortar between the flagstones, which glowed with unnatural heat. Xiro hurried to the ash-choked pond and looked frantically for a vase or bucket. But something in the shadows in the corner of the garden caught Elspeth’s eye. It was obscured by bushes and a line of fruit trees, and it was so low to the ground that she thought it might be an animal terrified by the flames. She took several cautious steps toward the shadows. Eyes stared up at her, but they had strange, rectangular pupils that bisected the iris.

  “Elspeth!” Xiro called. “Help me with the fire.”

  When Elspeth turned her head to Xiro in response, the creature lunged through the bushes and plowed into her. It knocked her off her feet and was on top of her, snarling and snapping as if it were trying to devour her face. Several more dark shapes bounded off the top of the wall over her. They made a strange hollow sound as they hit the flagstones. When they landed, all three charged at Xiro. Elspeth shouted a warning and braced herself against the attacker. With one arm jammed under the animal’s throat to keep its teeth at bay, Elspeth’s fingers found her sword. She couldn’t swing the blade to slice, but she slammed the hilt into its head. It reared back in pain, and she shoved it away.

  Elspeth scrambled to her feet as the creature drew back into the shadows in temporary retreat. She peered into the darkness where she could see the outline of … what kind of creature was it? Its form was blurry, as if the air around it shimmered with energy. It might be some kind of canid, but it was definitely not a leonin. Too small, she thought as it blasted out of the bushes and jumped at her again. She dodged it and swung a wide, low arc. The tip of her sword sliced it from belly to chin, and it fell to the ground.

  Elspeth raced for Xiro, who was pinned against the wall as the creatures encircled him and tore at him with their teeth and hands. In the light from the burning trellis, she could see they had furry legs with hooves, but their torsos were humanoid. Before she could reach her captain, several more creatures appeared along the top of the wall. They leaped down at her as if the fifteen-foot drop was nothing. At the edge of her vision, she saw that the one she had cut so badly now stumbled to its feet. Blood gushed from its wounds and stained the ground, but it took no notice of its injuries. She plunged her sword into the throat of the closest attacker and waded into the fray near Xiro. She wondered if her vision was distorted because she couldn’t quite see what she was fighting. But everything else—the trees, the flowers, the flames—stood out in sharp detail.

  “They don’t stop,” she shouted as she sliced off the disturbingly human arm of another relentless attacker. Losing an arm only made the thing pause. When it regained its footing, it charged at her, mouth first. Elspeth split its skull with her blade and it slumped to the glowing flagstones. They might be subject to harm, but they were insanely persistent.

  Nearly a dozen of the creatures had leaped down from the wall and crowded inside the courtyard. Those who weren’t attacking Elspeth or Xiro were smashing statues or setting fire to anything that would burn. They seemed to be in a mystical trance, making jerky motions while they casually destroyed the beautiful courtyard.

  “Guard the door!” Xiro screamed as he sliced his blade through the air. Blood sprayed on the wall behind him.

  Elspeth darted across the burning ground and positioned herself in front of the door that led into the manor house. She felt a strange wind swirl around her. Each of the creatures froze for an instant, twitched abnormally, and then resumed their activities with renewed vigor. Something magical was at work here, no doubt. She took a deep breath, preparing to cast a spell despite the chaos around her. Her friend Ajani had once told her that all magic came from the land, but the strongest mages found individual ways to channel it in battle. Some chanted words to focus their minds while others cried out the names of their enemies. For Elspeth, she learned how to channel it through the ritualized motions of her blade. She was still using the power of the land, but the patterns focused the magic, like sound blasting through a horn.

  Three of the creatures charged her simultaneously, but Elspeth’s spell was complete. Strength surged through her and empowered Xiro, too. She heard him shout a battle cry as the unexpected energy flooded his body. A creature clamped its jaws down on her forearm, but she barely felt it. Elspeth brought her sword down and practically severed its head from its body. She shook her arm violently to dislodge the lifeless head from her arm. Another tried to gore her with its horns, but she kicked it back and it stumbled into another one. After the impact, the two turned on each other. They tumbled to the ground. The one on top slammed its head into the other. Then it ripped out its throat with its teeth and began to eat the other’s flesh. In horror, Elspeth watched the gruesome spectacle of cannibalism against the backdrop of flame.

  “Set them against each other!” she shouted to Xiro, who hacked at a creature that wouldn’t die.

  She ran at one who was pounding the stone head of Iroas into dust with a hammer. She grabbed it by its horn and shoved it into one of its companions. The two collided and began tearing at each other with teeth and fingers. Xiro followed her lead, and they corralled the creatures in a corner. The creatures seemed to have no wits about them. They were overcome with frenetic madness. A high-pitched and discordant howl sounded from the direction of the orchard. As the sound grew louder, the remaining attackers screamed the same garbled words over and over: “King Stranger. King Stranger. King Stranger.” Then, almost as if someone had pulled a lever, they burst into self-immolating fire.

  The howling faded, and the only sound left was the crackling of the dying fire on the charred husks of the creatures. Xiro doubled over and caught himself from falling on the shattered base of one of the statues. His arms and face were a mass of scratches and oozing bite marks.

  “What were those … beasts?” Elspeth asked, staring at the bloody pulps of the corpses that had been devoured by their companions.

  Xiro straightened himself. Elspeth knew this man had endured the harsh training of an Akroan soldier and weathered many battles. But now he looked ill and shaken.

  “Not beasts. Satyrs.”

  “Satyrs?” Elspeth said in surprise. She’d seen friezes of the frolicking goatmen with flasks of wine and pipes. “I thought they lived in eternal bliss. Ramblers and merrymakers, from the stories I’ve heard.”

  “They’re drunks and fools,” Xiro said. �
��And sometimes vandals. I’ve never seen anything like this. No one has ever seen anything like this.”

  “What were they screaming, just before they died?” Elspeth asked.

  Xiro wiped his brow, smearing the blood and dirt. “ ‘King Stranger.’ ”

  “What does that mean?”

  Xiro shrugged. “Just madness. You can’t make sense of madness. Come on, let’s find what’s left of our crew.”

  Heliod took the form of an ordinary man and stood on the crown of rock overlooking the vast, rolling sea. The sky was cloudless, an endless blue above the dark depths of the ocean.

  “Sister,” he called. The winds bowed low in his presence and let his voice ring unobstructed to the edges of the land.

  A dark cloud eased across the horizon, and the gusts of bitter wind lashed his rock. It was a sure sign that Keranos, God of Storms, was watching even though he was not wanted. Heliod drew himself taller, still a man but towering to the sky. In this form, he was much like the colossal men of old now gone from the mortal realm.

  “Sister, I must speak with you,” he commanded. Then he glowered at the sky, where Keranos sulked in a gray fury. “Go back to your mountaintop, Keranos. I am not interested in you.”

  The sea raged in response to his reprimand, so he knew that Thassa, God of the Sea, was listening after all. An unnatural undulation of a female voice pulsed beneath the depths and bubbled its way to the surface. Echoing across the choppy waves, the chanting sound grew louder until a powerful geyser of water burst up from the floor of the ocean and blasted into the sky. Thundering waves radiated out from the shaft of water, which reached for Nyx and then cascaded back to the sea. Thassa’s arrival was accompanied by a wall of water that smashed against Heliod’s rock. The force would have flattened an ordinary man, but Heliod was now a pillar of marble a hundred feet high and hollow. He was filled with the dark, starry sky of Nyx, the god’s realm. The depths of his being was inhabited with constellations and the eternal void—as it was with all gods, as it was with all gods’ creations. Unlike this mortal realm, which had edges, Heliod was endless and unfathomable. And now angry.