The Lady of the Snowmist (War of the Gods on Earth Book 3)

by Andrew J Offutt

  “Yes.”

  “We are in the midst of much sorcery, Jairik.”

  “I think we are surrounded by something beyond sorcery, Jil. If gods are supreme, then all must be by their sufferance, including sorcery. Thus their sorcery must be beyond sorcery.”

  “Yet they cannot do everything. Anything they wish or might wish, one means.”

  “Evidently not. Since now we know that the Iron Lords could travel here — ”

  “We know that one could, Jair. Ugh, one likes the sound of Mil’ but not of Mair’!”

  He was impressed with her logic. All right. The Lord of Annihilation had proven that the Lord of Annihilation could enter Snowmist Keep. Perhaps there was some reason Destruction and Dread could not. At any rate, Jarik and Jilain did not know. They did know that only Annihilation had invaded. Don’t we?

  “Since we know now that at least one Iron Lord could travel here and enter this keep, we know that either they lied to me about that — or that She kept them away with, uh, some sort of … spell?” Gods did not cast spells, he thought; gods just Did Things.

  “That seems logical to this one, Jarik. She had means to keep them from here. But those means depended upon Her. Somehow She had to … maintain the — the force, or spell, whatever it is. Oh! We are like unto children talking about … well, whatever children have no idea of. At any rate, when She lay unconscious, that Iron Lord could broach the keep. It — he did. Now She is conscious again, and the others cannot come. His brothers? No no; they are all villagers, aren’t they. Were, that is. Somehow this is harder to talk about than to think on, Jarish!”

  “I think we are short some words, yes. How to apply words to that which we don’t know and don’t understand if we do know or mightn’t understand if we were to know?”

  “Jairik … would you please just not say such things as that? It is what this one said: trying to talk about it is harder than trying to think about it.” After a moment she said, staring at nothing with narrowed eyes: “Very well. Suppose we say that gods have means to keep anyone from broaching their keeps, even other gods. But they must consciously maintain those defenses. As if someone had to stand and hold a gate, rather than lock it!”

  He nodded. The Guardians had lived in a walled village, the first ever he had seen. There had been a gate.

  “So, when the Lady God lay unconscious, an Iron Lord was able to enter. As if the gate stood open, no? So one did — and what that did accomplish was to show us all that they are Her enemies, and that they have no thokht about killing you.”

  “I’d say Destruction and Dread have plenty of thoughts about killing me, right now. And you!”

  “It also accomplished the death of one, and we learned from that! But one had a question: how? How did that Iron Lord enter this mountain?”

  “There is no use asking questions that are unanswerable,” Jarik said, remembering the words of an Iron Lord to that same effect. “Perhaps She can tell us. We must ask. We need to know so much!”

  “All we can, yes! A War, She has said. And it has begun! Another question. How is it that he is destroyed?”

  “Annihilated,” Jarik amended, almost smiling. “That one I can … well, I can suggest a possibility. They have the armor. It is of some metal stronger than iron — iron breaks on it! Thus they are invulnerable to us, to the weapons of mortal humans, as they call us.” Now we know how mortal they are, he thought, and again he almost smiled. “For some reason though, they made a newer, better metal. They forged it into swords, so that gods could strike through the armor of gods.”

  “Wait — here is an improvement on that thokht, Jairik. They have the god-metal; all the gods. They wear it. The Iron Lords, though, uh … discovered? Created? — the new metal. The soords of black are theirs, Jarik, and we have no knowledge that Lady Snowmist has any such.”

  “Hm! Yes, I see that, and it is sensible.” Abruptly Jarik banged a fist into his palm. “Blight! We now have another sword of theirs. Will it cut through the god-metal, though? We don’t know — and Annihilation’s armor is all gone, with his body.”

  “You have the gloves,” Jilain pointed out, “and that ugly helmet with the mask attached.”

  “Yes, and I don’t care to try taking a cut at it with Annihilation’s sword. Those gloves and helmet can be useful to us, surely.”

  “Oh. Of course. Well, we can find out. Then both of us would have black soords, wouldn’t we!”

  “Just what I was thinking. You know what else I have been thinking?”

  “Noo, Jarik; what else have you been thinking?”

  “About this,” he said, and slid both hands up into the tunic she wore.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Below that superficial surface mind was the wide dark reach of all that he was …

  — Vardis Fisher

  The girl of ten came to them as Jarik and Jilain were talking, in low voices. They were clothed, although en deshabille. They rose, their eyes questioning that masked face. She gestured and seated herself on a straight unpadded chair. In silence but with eloquently questioning eyes, they resumed the couch that faced that chair.

  “Might we have something of the god-metal,” Jarik began, “that we may learn whether the sword of the Lord of Annihilation pierces through it?”

  The masked head tipped slightly in a way that reminded him of Jilain. “It will. You named the invader. You know that it was he? Nershehir called Annihilation?”

  “Yes. I have his helm and mask. I know that Dread is old, about ready for … for a new body.” Merely voicing that concept gave him an unpleasant chill, as if someone had bared his back and run a finger right up the middle. “Destruction is not so old, and Annihilation the youngest. Sixteen years ago he took a new body from Hamstarl, eighteen years of age. The face we uncovered looks — that is, looked even younger. It must have been Annihilation — Nershehir.”

  The masked head tilted again. “That is very good deducing,” she said, in that child’s voice that was still too old for a girl of ten.

  “We mortal humans are not stupid,” Jarik said. “We just do not know as much as gods!”

  The mask nodded. “It is our hope that you will continue intelligent, Jarik Blacksword. As it is their wish that the earth be peopled only by ignorant, slavish beast-people. Be assured that the sword will slice iron and pierce our metal, Jarik, just as your own does.”

  “Do you — does She have such weapons?”

  “No, and I came here to tell you things. If we do nothing but listen to your questions, they may not be said. Will you listen?”

  Again a ten-year-old girl had fronted and abashed Jarik Blacksword, and again he took it … precisely because she was not merely a girl of ten.

  “We have much interest in those things you have to tell,” Jilain assured her.

  She told them then, in the voice of a child that was so controlled that it was almost that of an adult. For ten years, she had been raised to become a god. Now she told them that those ten years had become more than a lifetime:

  All of the memories, all the knowledge of the adult Karahshisar had been transferred into the mind of the child Karahshisar. She had lived three months past ten years, and now had knowledge and memories of several lifetimes, and more as well.

  “All this,” Jilain burst out, “in so short a time!”

  “We have … tampered. We keep promising that we will cease, and then we do it again. You have been here fifteen days.”

  “Fif — !”

  She lifted a hand, and they fell silent, automatically reaching each for the other’s hand. Ah, she was strange, this child who was a woman, this woman who was yet a child, who was in turn a goddess. In her now were collected the memories of century upon century of existence. They were no burden, she told them; she did not remember everything at once, any more than any old person did. The knowledge was with her; the memories were available to her. To … Her.

  Yes, she possessed full knowledge of Jarik Blacksword.


  No no — that is, she knew all that the Lady of the Snowmist knew of him, for she was the Lady of the Snowmist; she was She. She did not know who he was, of what union, of what people. He was Beach-gift, the foundling.

  He held out his wrists, then, and she put about them the sorcerous thralldom of the bracers and, at Jilain’s request, the silvery mist curled and encircled her wrists, too. There it became solid.

  “How — how is it that you have her memories?” Jarik asked. His forearms were crossed; he was tracing the fingers of each hand over the bracer on the opposite wrist.

  “It is done. We are … our minds are conjoined. You know that I — She … we can come into your mind, though not at will. Not at this moment. Do not fear that, Jilain, Jarik! This is part of the War, Jarik Blacksword and Jilain Kerosyris. It is part of the difference between the two groups of us, the gods on the earth. We who think of ourselves as the Forces of Man, and those Others of our kith: the Forces of Destruction. We are old, all of us. Ancient we are, and not of this earth. They simply take bodies, use bodies, to live on and on. The individual whose body is thus taken is slain, though not physically.”

  She saw how Jarik frowned deeply, and hunched forward, and she amplified: “When Oak is in your body, are you truly Jarik? No. You are in a way not present. In a way you are dead. The way the Others do it, this supplanting of the mind is permanent. The original brain is no more; that person is no more.”

  Jarik shivered. So did Jilain, and her fingers tightened on his. They stared at the masked pre-adolescent who possessed the memories and knowledge of many centuries of age.

  “Hence the masks,” she said. “The faces of the gods change. The faces of those in both groups of … antagonists. They, the Othersy take bodies. The living bodies of fine sturdy young men. They supplant their very minds within them. The young men live on only in the body, the shell; they live on as Them. Yet they are dead in truth, for they are no longer individuals with any awareness whatever. Their brains are forever suppressed, gone; replaced by those of the Others. An Iron Lord, or a Fog Lord, or Lady

  Cerulean, or … any of Them.”

  Jarik stared and listened, and he remembered. I would not be an Iron Lordf he had told that ominous trio, and at the time he had known and understood less than he did now!

  “We birth anew,” Karahshisar was saying. “Naturally, as before times on … in the place we came from, to your world. We reproduce as you do, whose remotest ancestors we created — or rather developed, by means of our knowledge, from the ape-like hominids.”

  “Sorcery,” Jilain breathed.

  “A word for it; so is ‘science.’ They were far more than apes, and yet far less than human, those most remote ancestors of your kind.”

  “There are worlds,” Jarik said slowly, “other than this.” He sought confirmation, without quite asking a question.

  Sadness was almost a palpable fourth presence in the chamber; he had felt need for the sound of his own voice. Now that he had heard it, it provided small comfort. And too, he knew that he had voiced the manifestly obvious. He had striven never again to do that, since the Lord of Dread had taught it him, by example. His brain stumbled. How long ago it seemed, that interview with the Lords of Iron! He nad been but a boy … and yet it had been less than a season agone, not quite two months.

  Twa moont’s, he thought, for he was most aware of Jilain of Osyr’s Isle. She was a part of why he was so much older, and a different person from that boyish and impressionable Jarik the Iron Lords had tricked — doubtless sneering and smirking at him behind their masks!

  And now the Lords of Iron were but two. Twa!

  The child nodded. “I have said it. Now the Lady Karahshisar has had to compromise. A new factor appeared, and it is not a random one though she did not know … It is you, Jarik. You, Jilain, are the random factor. We — ”

  “What does that mean?” Jarik asked.

  “It means that because of you, some things that might have happened will not, and some things that might not have happened will — and have! In your case, Jilain, it means that some things that would have happened, even with Jarik present, will not. Have not.”

  “I saw a vision,” Jarik said dully. “An attack by sea. I was attacked by an iron hawk. It slew me. I know that I died, in that vision. Then it happened — and Jilain changed all that.”

  “That sounds a sensible explanation,” Karahshisar said, and she lifted a small hand. “But. We can no more explain your periodic spells of prescience than we can know whether they are of what will be or what might be, unless — . Do you understand that?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do we. The Lady Karahshisar, as I said, has been forced to compromise. She has transferred all the content of her mind, all, to me; her daughter. And she still living.”

  “Your father,” Jarik said on a sudden thought. “He is a man? A human, like me?”

  “Of course. A youth — at the time of mating — of the wark of … I shall not tell you. Of the wark of Ishparshule, or of Kirrensark, or perhaps of Ahl, or another. I shall not tell you. It is not important.”

  Not important. The identity of her father is not important! Yet to me it is so important to know who my father is!

  “Do not ask his wark or his name, Jarik Blacksword. He is dead, now, that mortal who fathered me. I never knew or thought about it, you see. These memories are new. A father was not important. You and I share in that, Jilain.”

  “Yes,” Jilain said, nodding thoughtfully. “Yes … Lady.”

  Jarik made no comment, but stored away what he had heard. Dead? But the youths brought here by the Lady God return to their homes in perfect health. Then he must have been slain, or died by accident. An animal, perhaps. Or … it is not true that he is dead, and she does not want me to know. Perhaps only that I might not occupy myself in won-dering and seeking below for the father of this young Lady of the Snowmist. Someone I knew, possibly — or know!

  Jarik wondered. Would he ever, ever be certain of what he was told by these gods on the earth? — of what was true and what was not; of what was illusion and what was reality? Now even She, She, told him that She did not know which of his pre-visions was of something to come, and which of something that might happen. Unless, She had said. Unless something else happened, to change that.

  Jarik sighed. It would be nice, being someone else someplace else — with Jilain! — and knowing nothing of gods and their strife and their lies!

  “So it has always been,” the masked child said. “God into god into god, like the seed into the flower, and into the seed again and yet again into the new flower that comes from that seed and produces within itself a seed for its successor. As a wayfarer pauses now and again for brief rest or lodging, so we who are a-travel along the road of existence find in each rebirth but a fleeting rest.”

  “Then birt’,” Jilain said, frowning over the concept, “is … is only old matter dressed in some new figure similar to the old. Like a new … tunic.”

  The child Karahshisar nodded. “It is but the outer form that changes, aye. Thus: immortality, perpetual continuation. The purpose of existence is to continue to exist. That being impossible, the purpose of existence is to replace the self; to reproduce. Called ever by the same name we are, for it is only the stamped seal that changes. The wax remains the same. It is an unending cycle, a ring, the ring of retum-and-remain. Through countless cycles of time it continues, through the passing on of the entire content of the mind into the new vessel.” She touched her chest with a hand that wore the scintillant silvery glove of Snowmist. “The new body. Each new flower is different, as each new Karahshisar is different. And yet we are all the same. Hence again: the mask. The face that only you and those here have seen will never be seen again.”

  This time she sat still, without making the human gesture of lifting a hand to touch her mask of frosty silver-white. For she was not human. Not quite.

  “And — we? Is it so with us?” Jarik asked.


  “We will not now talk of that,” she said, a god; and though she was but a child of ten years and three months, there was an end to that.

  After a few moments given to thought, Jarik spoke again. “And She? The Lady God. Has She still her memories, though she has shared them with yourself?”

  “In our way of transmitting memories and knowledge from Snowmist to Snowmist, Jarik, the contents of the mind are not like diseases, that you might pass on to another while keeping yourself.”

  “Oh,” Jilain said, uttering the sound as a little gasp.

  “You have said No, that She no longer has memory?”

  And the mask told them, in low tones that did not tremble with emotion. On the table in that other chamber within Cloudspeak now lay a lovely, bandaged, masked vegetable. She who had been the Lady of the Snowmist was moveless and mindless.

  The god is dead; long live the god.

  Jilain whispered, through lips gone dry. “Why does She not … die?”

  “It is our choice,” the child Snowmist said. “We may … it is possible that we may peradventure have need of … the body.”

  Jarik looked at her: the Lady of the Snowmist, a god on the earth, and she was ten years old. He stared at the floor. A concept was teasing his mind, fleeting in and out and round, like mist. He could not quite catch it. Unknown to himself, his fingers were amove, tightening about those of Jilain, so that she knew some pain. She made no sign or sound.

  “Metanira will see to her,” Snowmist said. “Metanira serves. Metanira is not human, not really. She is … made, constructed, a simulacrum. The Lady of the Snowmist constructed Metanira and Sutthaya and others, long ago. For … company. They do what they are bidden, and that only.”

  That hardly satisfactory bit of explanation helped to explain several other things. “And they cannot do aught else?” Jilain asked quietly.

  “That is true,” Snowmist said. “They do only what they are bidden to do, and that is all they can do.”

  That mist-like concept was still playing wind-tag with Jarik’s mind. If such as Seyulthye could be made … others could surely be made … one to fill the armor of Her? So that none might know she was …