by C L Walker
“Then you’re no use to me.”
I grabbed each of his limbs with different spells and prepared to pull him apart. I was already covered in blood and adding his would make me smile.
He wasn’t saying I was going to die. I simply wasn’t going to come back for James. That didn’t have to mean the woman and the hollow man were my enemies. If I defeated Bannon, then Bec and Buddy – who I presumed were the people he’d seen – would once again be on my side.
Though why I wouldn’t fetch my master myself was a mystery.
I let the angel go. It wasn’t his fault that the future was confusing. In a former life I would have torn him apart to make a point, but now I wondered who I was making the point to? Myself? The island? The angel would be dead.
He settled back on the ground and looked up at me. Birds sang in the trees and I heard animals scurrying in the shadows. James laughed in the distance.
“He will be fine here,” the angel said. “I will care for him as though he belonged here.”
“Thank you.”
“I would do anything for you, Agmundr. Even if it hadn’t been the future I already knew was going to happen.”
“Of course,” I said, sighing at the tangled nature of it all. “You would say that even if it wasn’t true, because that’s what you’re supposed to say now.”
“Just so.”
“I need to speak to James,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for not tearing me apart during a childish fit.” The smile on his face told me he was joking, but I wanted to flatten him anyway.
I struck out into the jungle, tracking the boy the old fashioned way. He was a clumsy runner and he hadn’t tried to hide his tracks, and his path was easier to follow than the sun across the sky.
I stepped from the jungle into a large clearing. Children ran across in the low grass chasing a small pig, and James had joined them. They screamed and shrieked, or yelled obscenities at each other, waving sharp sticks in the air. The pig didn’t seem to mind though, and when they finally caught it they let James stroke it before starting the chase over.
I waved him over and he came without question, all the fear of before melted away.
“You can see the future,” I said. He was an oracle, even if what he’d seen had broken him in some way.
He nodded.
“Then you know that I will come back for you. Or, rather, my friends will.”
He nodded again.
“If I survive I will make sure you are well. If I don’t then you will be safe here. Understand?”
He nodded again and reached out for my hand. I let him take it and he spent a moment studying the lines on my palm before moving on to the tattoos, tracing them with his finger until they rose out of his tiny reach.
He spoke, and it was like the jungle and the children disappeared. Even the sun seemed to fade into the background.
“You will die, Agmundr. I have seen it.”
I wanted to object, or to ask him why he was talking. I wanted to make him stop talking so I didn’t have to hear what he was going to say. The angel had been right; I didn’t want to know the future, and what James was saying had the echo of prophesy to it.
“There will be a terrible battle on a mountaintop and you will be slain. You will allow yourself to be slain because you cannot control your emotions.”
“I can’t defeat him if I keep holding back,” I said, though there was no way the boy could understand.
“When you die you will remember this conversation and you will smile.”
He smiled himself, as though showing me what he saw. Then his smile turned into a giggle and then into a full belly laugh. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen and I was smiling despite myself. When he couldn’t breathe anymore he stopped, bent over and choking.
“I thought you didn’t talk,” I said.
“I…I had nothing to say.” He looked up and grinned at me again.
“What else can you tell me?” I didn’t want to know, but I had to.
“The world is about to get very dark for you and those you love.”
“You speak like someone older,” I said. His voice was that of a child but his words were considered and precise.
“I am a very old man, deep inside.” He let go of my hand and took a step back. “Go. Fight. I have to play.”
He turned and ran away, not giving me the chance to ask him what he meant.
I returned to the beach to talk to the angel but he was gone. I was alone and the nearby gate was calling to me, flashing behind my eyes whenever I blinked. It was time to go. Everything I needed to do was done, and I knew what was about to happen.
I stepped through the gate and began my run to the mountaintop.
Chapter 36
The first time I had run to the mountaintop was to save my wife. It was a pointless race with a desperate ending, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it as I flashed through the heavens.
I didn’t know where I was going. I ran by instinct, heading in the direction that felt most right. Sometimes I had to leap across enormous canyons and other times the gates were right beside each other. Mostly I used the odd shortcuts that ran across all the afterlives, compressing each heaven into a flash of light and nothing more.
When I’d reached the mountaintop as a man I’d found my wife’s blood covering it and the cleric waiting to etch the tattoos into my skin. It had been the beginning of my long life, and this was to be the end.
Oracles could see the future and they could tell you about it. Most of the time. But once you knew what they said you could change it. Unlike the angels, who were infallible as far as I knew, oracles saw a range of futures and picked the most likely one. Which gave me wiggle room.
I crossed into the hells, barely noticing the change. The flashes of light grew fewer and I was running in darkness more, but the process was the same. I did it instinctively, and eventually I felt the mountaintop getting closer.
I knew what was coming and what I’d have to do. I’d have to absorb the power of the blood she’d spilled there and I’d have to spill blood of my own. The elder-gods had thought the spot so sacred they’d created an eternal afterlife to honor it, and Bannon was forcing me to sully it.
Bannon was going to die horribly, if it was the last thing I did.
The final hell before the mountaintop seemed designed to stop me. Granite slabs so tall that I couldn’t see the top of them stretched across the world, dividing the landscape into long, fifty-foot wide corridors. The gate to the mountaintop was only a mile away when I was forced to stop.
“He isn’t finished yet,” Buddy said. He stood before an army of hollow men and demons, with a few angels dotted throughout the crazy mass.
“He will be when I arrive,” I replied.
“Your time is over,” Buddy said. “The god Anarchy will reign from now on.”
I shook my head, tired of the speech. “He isn’t a god. He’s a man, like me.”
“And you say you’re not a god?” The demons laughed at Buddy’s words, but I wasn’t interested. “If you aren’t a god simply because you are a slayer of them, then what is a god?”
I planned my answer, prepared my words and thought I might win the argument. But I wasn’t there to win an argument and the hollow man was just delaying me.
I summoned my strength and blasted through the crowd. A wave of magical energy and flailing demons traveled before me, knocking everything out of my path or trapping it. Buddy leaped out of the way, as did a score of others, but I got most of them.
I stopped before the gate to the mountaintop and surveyed the hell. This was a mistake.
Buddy landed hard behind me, blocking the entrance to the gate as he punched me in the back, sending me skidding along the dusty rock that formed the ground. Demons and other hollow men landed beside him, once again blocking my path.
“You healed well last time,” I said as I found my feet. “But I let you live, hollow man. I could have killed you
.”
“My lord Anarchy didn’t will it,” Buddy said, about to launch into another speech.
“Shut up about Bannon already,” I said. “He’s an idiot who got lucky. He’s a dumb soldier with anger issues. I beat the hell out of him and he’s annoyed at me for it. That’s it.”
“Blasphemy,” Buddy said. I was getting the feeling he was the only one Bannon had properly converted to his made-up religion. The others seemed less concerned with whether Bannon was a god and more concerned with the coming fight. That was the right thing to focus on.
“I’ve killed a lot of people tonight, Buddy. I’d like to only kill one more.”
“You will never get through us,” was his reply.
I hadn’t dragged an ethereal sack of hollow men with me through the hells, so I was low on power. All I had to do, though, was punch one of the assembled beings and I’d be ready to go.
I could do that.
Buddy came at me first but I was ready for him. He leapt into the air and came at me with a kick, but I grabbed his leg and slammed him into the ground, following up with a punch that once again tore through his flesh and bathed the tattoos in blood.
I was renewed, and Buddy was screaming. I allowed myself to feel pity for him for a moment, but only a moment.
I turned on the demons and hollow men. The demons came in all shapes and sizes; animals twisted into humanoid shapes; smaller versions of the pig creature who’d stood over the settlement in the HND; an assortment of subtly twisted humans.
They screamed and attacked. I screamed back at them and did the same. We met in the middle and carnage ensued.
I shot blasts of magic from my hands as I dodged swipes and bites. I wrapped the larger ones in impenetrable energy webs as I picked off the smaller ones with my bare hands. I didn’t save anything for when I was done with the fight. I gave it everything I had and offered no mercy.
An imp creature got through my defenses and stabbed its claw through my leg. The tattoos blasted it away, leaving the claw in place. I tore it from my flesh and used it as a weapon, slashing and cutting and stabbing until I was covered in the clumpy, putrid blood of the demons and the hollow men. My enemies fell screaming to the ground around me and I couldn’t stop laughing.
And then Buddy was there, healed and ready to fight, holding an ornate dagger that I knew was infused with angelic power.
I stopped fighting. The demons were dead or demoralized, and the hollow men were so broken they wouldn’t be back in the fight for hours. All that was left was the former guardian of the gate who had once helped me defeat Seng.
“Don’t make me kill you,” I said.
“You cannot stand in the way of the master.”
His words reverberated in my head, destroying any anger I’d felt toward the groaning, screaming, bleeding masses around me. His master. Bannon had made them his slaves, as I had been to so many crazy men over the years. And I had done what my master’s enemies had always tried to do, and I had killed them.
“Don’t do this,” I said. “We’re friends, right?”
“We were.” He gripped the dagger more tightly, preparing to defend the gate with his life.
“We still are. Your master wants me to go through the gate, because that’s the only way he will truly beat me. He put you here to slow me down but he never expected you to stop me. You can’t. None of them could and he knew it.”
“I’m the sword of my god,” Buddy started.
“No, you’re a confused fallen angel, and I won’t kill you.”
I dropped the gore-covered claw and put my hands at my sides. Buddy didn’t change his stance, though he didn’t attack either. Which was a kind of progress.
“I’ve hurt you in the past, Buddy. You know you can’t beat me. I don’t want to hurt you again. Not because Bannon wants me to.”
“His name is Anarchy.”
“Fine, Anarchy, then. I don’t want to hurt you because Anarchy wants me to hurt you.”
Buddy gave nothing away before he attacked, but he wasn’t that fast and he wasn’t that strong. He jabbed at me with the dagger and I yanked it from his hand before punching him in the face. He staggered back, now without his weapon.
“Can we be done here?” I said. “I’ve got somewhere to be and you don’t stand a chance.”
I knew he wasn’t going to let me pass, because that wasn’t what his master had ordered him to do. I had taught him free will and Bannon had taken it away. And now he was going to die for it.
He stepped forward, ready to fight with his bare hands if he had to. The red rage burned inside me, desperate to get out, but oddly, not to hurt Buddy. Seeing the hollow man follow his insane orders made me want to destroy Bannon all the more, but that didn’t mean I had to hurt Buddy.
I threw the dagger at his leg and he stooped to catch it, but I was already running at him and as he looked up I was there, kicking him in the face. He went down hard, his bones breaking and his right eye bursting under the pressure of my boot.
I reached down, grabbed his spine where I thought it least likely to kill him, and tore it out of his back.
“My lord commands me,” Buddy said as I walked to the gate. “He says you are not to enter.”
“I know,” I said. “It isn’t your fault. I’ll be right back.”
I took a deep breath of the stale, damp air, and stepped through the gate.
Chapter 37
The gate opened twenty feet from the top of the mountain. There was no blood were I stood and neither the cleric nor Bannon were in sight.
The skies were dark, like a storm was about to break just after sunset. The sky was heavy and seemed to crush the world. Breathing was harder, as though the air was somehow more solid.
I walked up the path to the mountaintop, the tattoos glowing a dull red, ready for whatever I found. I’d never made the journey slowly before; I’d been running there to save my wife or been running through so I didn’t have to see any it. Or I’d been with Roman, and been trying not to look.
Erindis and I had formed the mountain when we’d remade the world. She had wanted a static plain from horizon to horizon, an easily controllable space that she found more pleasing than the chaotic mess the world had been before we started reshaping it. I’d agreed to let her do whatever she wanted, but the mountain was mine. I’d argued for it and I’d won.
When the elder-gods killed her they’d put everything back, adding, if anything, more chaos to the world. But having seen the heavens and the hells I saw the influence of our design everywhere; there were endless plains in abundance, and even the HND was little more than a shadow of the world we’d created.
It was like the people of the world remembered us, even after we’d been erased from history. They’d built us into their religions and their oral traditions, and their afterlives had followed. To think that we could have had such an effect was frightening and humbling.
The mountaintop was protected by a shield. It flashed when I approached as a kind of warning, then glowed with the same dull red of the tattoos. I peered through at Bannon and the cleric.
The old man was etching the blood into the soldier’s skin, burning the tattoos that would give him the power he craved. I remembered when he’d done it to me, how much I had cried and howled. It was painful, but I suspect it was the knowledge that I was giving up my life, and the joy of knowing it would return Erindis to the world.
Bannon was stoic, staring at the endless flat horizon and letting the old man do what he needed to do. The smell of cooking flesh hung in the still air as the blood charred his skin. No sooner had a tattoo been placed, however, than the wounds it created healed.
“I am here,” I said. He was expecting me, despite the obstacles he’d placed in my way.
He turned, jarring the cleric’s hand so he could face me and smile. “I’m so glad. I wasn’t sure you’d make it before I was done.”
“You shouldn’t have sent people to stop me then.”
“But th
en you would have come too early.” He waved away my comment, laughing and speaking as though we were old friends and we were going to a bar to chat. Nothing in his demeanor suggested he understood what was about to happen.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” I said. The mountaintop was covered in my wife’s blood. It pooled in the crevices and swirled around Bannon and the cleric’s feet. There was more blood there than could have been in a person, but it was all hers. And it was all-powerful.
It covered their legs. Bannon was naked but the cleric still wore his dirty robe, and it was red with her blood up to his knees. It covered his hands and there were smears on his face where he’d scratched himself while he was working. An intense red light sprang from his fingertips as he went back to tracing the runes and symbols.
I wanted to leave, to never have to see the sight again. I wanted to scream and to fight, but I couldn’t do anything. I had to watch as he finished his work and gave Bannon what he wanted.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Bannon said, as though pondering the words for meaning. “I don’t know what I’m doing? The gods think they have this whole ‘power’ thing sewed up. They think bending the world to their will is all there is. They believe in subtlety and cunning. Let me tell you, I’ve been running around being subtle and cunning for months, and it’s a crock of shit.”
“When did you start controlling them?”
“Your people? Three or four months ago. I really got lucky snatching that Roman guy, though, let me tell you. He said I had blood enough for one trick, and I picked the right one, didn’t I?”
“He helped you?”
I needed to get through the shield and stop the process. I needed to find a way through and to the blood, so I’d have the power to face him at all. But he was smart and he had his naked feet in the blood, so he was far more powerful than I could hope to be.
“It’s amazing what the liberal application of bamboo shards to toenails can achieve.” Bannon laughed, altogether too pleased with himself. “And the fun part, the unexpectedly delicious part? I got a spell you don’t have. I checked with your robed tattoo artist friend here. He doesn’t know what it does.”
