by Robert Brady
“Go,” I said. “Save your man. He’ll choke to death and die in that dust.”
She looked into my eyes. She was about Shela’s height, brown-haired, brown-eyed, her skin startlingly white with high cheek bones and a tiny, bow of a mouth. She squinted, considering her loyalties, and then she ran back down the hill.
Warriors from the North attacked the loose dust around their fallen comrades and, covering their own mouths with cloths, began pulling them out. They finally retrieved the armored blond warrior and resuscitated him, coughing and choking, to regroup on another hill.
Pretty stupid, strategically. I guess if you’re used to believing that there’s an advantage in the high ground, you don’t just unlearn it.
Raven turned to comfort her infant son. Jack and Raven stepped up to either side of her. I approached the North Men with Dagi.
When they realized I was coming, one screamed a war cry and readied an attack, but the female stopped him. She and the male in the black armor stood up and approached me.
We met at the base of their new hill. The man’s blue eyes regarded me, the contempt obvious.
“You kill this god,” he told me, “but we have more.”
I chuckled. “You think he’s a god?” I asked him.
A look of rage crossed his face. “You blaspheme?” he demanded. “They came to us over one thousand years ago, and all of them still remain. They are gods.”
“They live a long time,” I granted him, “but gods don’t fall to men.”
I pointed to Raven with her son. “If he’s a god,” I asked him, “then what is she?”
Even as I did this, I realized finally why we hadn’t seen any magic from the men of the North. The Uman-Chi would have recognized Cheyak magic in a second. Certainly, the Cheyak wouldn’t have let their own people practice it.
If your people have magic, and you live among them, then it’s a lot harder to appear to be a god.
The warrior had no answer for me.
“You think you come here to conquer,” I informed him. It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t take it as one. “In fact, you’re just here to pay back a debt they think they’re owed.”
“We don’t question the will of the –“ the man began.
“Of the gods?” I interrupted him. “God so vindictive that they throw your lives at an enemy, no care for whether you live or die, so that they can have what they want?
“What kind of god is that?” I demanded. “What does that god provide you with, other than misery?”
“Dust,” Jack said, from behind us. He, Raven and Vedeen had been approaching the entire time. “We come from dust, and to the dust we return. All is dust, and dust is all.”
Yeah, Jack, I thought. I get it.
“What do you know of gods?” the female demanded of me. Blood from her weeping wounds dribbled down her face and arms. “Who are you? Just a man – no different from this one, no different from any other.”
The other warriors from the North were looking on. There were at least a couple dozen of them, and more watching from the tunnel.
That was enough.
“What am I?” I returned to her. “What makes me different?”
I pulled my sword. They pulled theirs and stepped back, ready to fight, to kill as they’d been taught.
Instead I spun the sword in hand to turn the point down and, with all of the strength in my arm, I drove it into the ground between them and I.
It passed right through the top of what could have been a boulder. Sparks flew out around it.
“What am I?” I demanded.
Best to put this in the words of Arthur Brown.
“I am the god of Hell Fire!” I roared at them.
Because there was only one place to go with this and, as far as I was concerned, there was only one God, and He’d been showing me all of the signs that I could stand since this travesty had begun.
Because you simply can’t live without faith, in a world of absolutes, where you have to live like a robot and lay your head down for the axe man, because you know the alternative is a hell worse than the one you’ve already made for yourself.
Because even if you chose not to believe in a god, you still have to have faith, because the whole of existence is so gigantic that, without something to believe in to keep it all going, you’re a fleck of nothing whom your parents should have chucked into the nearest river the moment you were born.
If you matter, then you’ve got to put some degree of faith into something bigger than you are, or you’re seriously just wasting your time and everyone else’s.
“You will NOT,” I heard in my head, in War’s familiar voice. I saw Raven turn her head to one side. She was probably receiving a similar message.
Shove it, asshole. I’ve been putting up with that crap for too long.
“Dominus meus pastor, Qui habitant in eo,” I began, but I caught myself.
Saying it in Latin wasn’t where the power came from. The Latin was a crutch, perhaps a guide.
I said the words, and I believed in them.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” I informed them all.
The ground beneath me shook, as their god, Earth, stirred to the power I was unleashing.
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”
Raven stood up next to me, and put a hand on my shoulder.
“He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake,” we said together.
“Father, no!” Dagi exclaimed. The earth, quite possibly the world shook again.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me,” I said, with Raven and, now, with Jack.
I recognized War’s presence in my mind – I felt the shadow of the pain. I accepted it. I could take the pain, if I had to. It didn’t scare me anymore.
“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”
I heard War’s angry howl as I undid the fasteners that held this world together, and I did to him what Moses did to the Egyptians, what Constantine may well have done to Rome.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
The sky darkened, lightening crashed into the ground. The Men of the North stepped back from me, terrified as the ground shook mercilessly around us.
Then, in another moment – nothing. No shaking of Earth, no Weather to strike out in her death knell.
Dagi, Raven and Jack stepped back from me and, a moment later, I was ringed with fire.
“Remember the words!” I commanded them, and I took the sword embedded in the ground in my left hand.
And I was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
No Place for Emperors in Heaven
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a wealthy man to enter into heaven.
Or something like that – I don’t have the Bible memorized.
The problem, of course, was that, for all of the crap that I was guilty of, heaven simply wasn’t an option for me.
And after a display like that, I really couldn’t just stick around on Fovea and run Eldador. I mean, it’s pretty hard to say, “Observe me and my god-destroying miracle, believe in what I say, and now I’m going to stick around for another 50 years.”
After the big finale, the play kind of has to end. That’s how I found myself floating back in that void I’d been in, when I met War. However, now, there wasn’t War or, more precisely, there wasn’t enough War left for me to worry about.
Well, that’s not true, I heard in my mind.
That took me by surprise, although it wasn’t War’s voice. “Are you…?”
Kind of a chuckle. No. He doesn’t talk much – He definitely doesn’t talk to the likes of you.
>
“Then who?”
Peter is a good name for you to know me by. In terms you’d understand, I run admissions.
This could not be good.
Nice work on Fovea, by the way. A lot of us didn’t think you could pull that off.
“Um – thanks?”
Are you interested in what happened?
“Am I going to like it?”
That’s pretty much up to you. Would you rather spend eternity not knowing?
No, I thought. That wouldn’t be good at all.
First I was looking down at a plain, and a herd of horses were running across it. To one side of the herd were several smaller herds, and in that herd I saw the Almadain – my horse. He wasn’t the fastest among them, but he might have been the happiest. The joy just radiated off of him. His mane was long and his tail held high – his scars were visible because it was spring and he’d lost his thick fur coat.
Next I was in a walled city – it was in the process of being rebuilt, and there were Dwarves helping Men that I recognized as Volkhydrans. Outside of the gates, I saw Eric, a little older than I remembered him, with Nina by his side. Eric was on one of Blizzard’s foals that I’d given up hope for years ago – a mare. Nina was on a bay mare holding an infant with light purple hair and grey eyes, screaming his lungs out. Facing him were Vinkler and Maree, both dressed out like Volkhydran royalty, arguing. From what I could hear and understand, Vinkler wanted to build another city where the pass between the Great North and Volkhydro was, but Eric was building a holy city there already, and didn’t want to change his decision. I think, in the back of his mind, Eric wasn’t ready to allow North men to have another city in his kingdom.
Next we were in Wisex, which I recognized from the black rock and granite from which everything was made. Dagi was sitting on a stone throne that I’d had made for myself, and there were Andarons in her court. She was also a few years older than I remembered her. Her sword and shield were mounted on the wall behind her, with dust on them. There were no need for things like that for her.
Farther north, Chesswaya was on the Andaron plains with Kills with a Glance, and they were clearly on the site of a new city. My view expanded, and I could see that other cities were popping up on those untamed plains. Chesswaya was a real beauty, and the Andarons around her admired her. She didn’t have her staff in her hand anymore. I couldn’t tell where it way.
To the East of that, on the other side of the mountains, Vulpe was presiding at a funeral at Steel City. He wore a circlet in his hair like I sometimes wore, and in fact he’d let his hair grow longer. There was a woman I didn’t recognize next to him, looking at him and then into the grave and weeping.
It occurred to me that Rennin had a daughter, but had lost his sons.
To the south, Angadorian knights patrolled both a border with Toor, and with Eldador. Lupennen rode his horse that I remembered and was surveying land with a group of Men. I could only think that he’d separated himself from Eldador and founded his own nation, and was now expanding it. Once in a while, his hand fell to a short sword at his waist. He seemed to have discarded that dagger of his.
The hardest vision – the one I wanted least – was Galnesh Eldador. Looking there, I saw the usual collection of palace barons at dinner, with Tartan Stowe at the head of the table and Lee beside him. Her belly was swollen and I could only think, “I hope they got married first.”
Lee’s spear was hung as an ornament over the bay windows that looked out over Tren Bay – also dusty, one of many decorations in the dining room. Opposite it, I saw a painting of me, leading Blizzard by his reins into what looked like the Great Northern Mountain Range.
“The Free Legion?” I asked.
They have their own lives. Ancenon is back Outpost IX, waiting for Angron Aurelias to die. D’gattis has his studies, Nantar finally had a son. Thorn is with his daughters and yours, building cities in Andoron.
“Dilvesh?”
There is no room in this world for the Cheyak. They and their magic will fade.
Your friend Arath is the leader of the Druids now. He married Vedeen.
“Jack? Raven?”
Jack returned to his earldom, Raven and their son with him. We’re going to influence the son to be our first Pope.
The hardest question of all. “Shela?”
Not all stories have happy endings.
“I really need to know.”
In fact, you don’t, but I’ll show you, anyway.
I recognized the tower we kept in Chatoos. As I recalled, we’d hidden a lot of gold under the floor boards.
In the tower, I saw Shela, playing on the floor with a little girl with her hair in a pony tail like I used to keep mine. She and the girl each had one of those dolls that I’d had created for Lee.
Shela was doing some sort of little play for the girl, and the girl was laughing and trying to participate. Finally, the girl – Chawnee – leapt up and threw her arms around Shela, who hugged her close.
The man servant we’d hired almost two decades ago entered with a platter with sandwiches on it. Chawnee dug into the sandwiches, but Shela just nibbled on one, and kept looking, like she was waiting for something to come down the tower stairs and get her.
I had to note one thing I hadn’t seen.
“No magic?” I asked.
He doesn’t like magic. I can’t say that I blame Him – your track record as a people with magic isn’t good.
I also didn’t see any Uman.
You won’t. Their time has passed.
“OK,” I said. “Now the big question. What about me?”
What about you?
“Is this it for me?”
That would be kind of wasteful, and He doesn’t like waste. Problem is – there’s no way you’re going to live where I’m from. I mean – let’s face it, you’re kind of a bad guy.
I always figured I had that coming.
I think you know where you’re going.
“Is it bad?”
Yeah, it’s pretty bad. If you think about what it’s called, it couldn’t be that great.
There are things that you do in your life, and you think, “I’m really going to pay for this,” but at the same time, you don’t really think, with your life, “I’m paying the ultimate price for this.” Instead, you look at everything that you did, that you thought was good, and you figure that’s going to outweigh everything you did that was terrible, because that’s the only way you get to justifying doing all of that terrible stuff.
I’d given up my actual God for a foreign god, I’d pushed that god’s will, usually over or through anything that stood in my way, and a lot of people had died because of it. I did or said anything that I needed to in order to better my position in Fovea, and then I’d betrayed that god after an attack of conscience.
Yeah, it was going to be pretty bad.
“One thing?” I asked.
Which is?
“Is there anything you can do for Shela? She doesn’t deserve this.”
What, exactly, do you think a sorceress who murders people with her magic or her knives, who tortures and who had children out of wedlock, deserves?
“Wow – kind of a hard line you run there, Peter.”
There are rules, Randy. You live by them, or you don’t.
“But she didn’t know that.”
I can have Jack tell them to her, I suppose. Her choice as to whether she follows them.
“Thank you.”
I’m afraid that’s all of the time we have.
I nodded, much as I really didn’t have a body when I was like this, and I couldn’t nod.
I felt a sense of falling. That increased into a stomach churning, rushing, terrifying sensation that mixed with heat and the smell of sulfur, and that seemed to go on for a very long time.
At the end, I was standing at the edge of a pit of lava, in a giant cavern where the walls glowed red from the heat. Hunched over, horned beings raced here and there as if they were prep
aring something, largely ignoring me except that they didn’t knock me over when they came near me.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned to see a black-skinned, red-eyed, slavering beast with horns, about my height. His foul breath ran hot against my face, and his taloned fingers pinched my skin.
“Hey, boss,” he said to me. “Ready to get started?
Sitting atop the apex of one of the Iron Mountains, Steel looked out over a changed world.
He’d known success. It had been very close. Many things that should have gone his way, simply didn’t.
The gods War and Power were defeated and waning. Peace would follow, but War and Power, Law and Order would no longer be worshipped, and the violence would someday return. Steel regretted that, but this was the way of things. Man was turbulent, and the turmoil would find its own way.
Weather, Life, Desire – all would be absorbed into nature. Chaos, Destruction, they would find their place in waning as well. For the former, he would barely notice the change, such was his nature. As for the latter, he would become even more powerful as the vestiges of magic and of the Cheyak and the Uman were dissolved.
Steel would miss Adriam and Eveave, bound to the aether. What a sacrifice to make, to give up one’s creation for its own betterment. Adriam had seen that what He had created would, by design, ruin itself, and had allowed the machinations of War to bring in the one thing that could both save and destroy it.
But Steel would always know that he had delivered the master stroke, the one thing that no god could understand essential to victory:
Empathy. Without that, it all would have failed. The One’s love for his horse, the Raven’s compassion for her old man, and his for her, coloring it all, changing the plan, making it about the people rather than the machinations, that is what, in the end, had enabled the One to sacrifice selflessly – the act that would finally usher in the new God.
Now Steel, too, could pass. He would become an ‘interesting tale,’ a leaf in a forest of stories of the way things used to be. Ignominy – the fate of the gods, unfortunate as it might be.
