Demon Lord V - God Realm

by T C Southwell

  "Keep them closed," she advised, then went to Ethra and knelt beside her to feel for a pulse in her neck, which was weak and rapid. The bandage the soldier had wrapped around her neck was soaked with blood, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Artan came to stand beside her, glancing at the dead beasts with a grimace of disgust.

  "Vampires," he said.

  Sarrin studied one of the misshapen black creatures. It had bat wings and bulging eyes, small clawed hands halfway along its wings and a long, rat-like tail. "Vampires that spit acid."

  Artan glanced at Bane. "The acid smog we walked through did nothing to him, yet this did. How is that possible? And why didn't that girl understand me in the kitchen, yet she did here?"

  Sarrin shook her head. "You will have to ask Bane. Unless..." She looked at Mithran and Grem, but they shook their heads.

  "Is he blind?" Mithran asked, casting a worried glance at his son.

  "For the moment."

  "Will it heal?"

  She stood up. "I do not know."

  Artan approached the place where Bane had fought the beasts, and Sarrin and Mithran joined him. The acid that had missed Bane had eaten deep into the floor and wall.

  "I think that answers your question. If that had been one of us, we'd have no head left," Mithran muttered.

  Sarrin returned to Bane and sat beside him, studying his face. The mottled red marks still marred his skin, and tears continued to pour down his cheeks to drip from his chin. She dressed the wound in his side, winding the bandage around his waist.

  "What is wrong with Mirra?"

  His soft words made her jump. "She will not wake, that is all. I think she hit her head."

  "Bring her to me."

  Mithran scooped Mirra up and laid her beside Bane, who pulled her into his arms and cradled her against his chest, stroking her hair.

  "And Ethra?"

  "She is hurt. You saved us, but the vampires took a lot of blood from her."

  "How did they get in?"

  "I do not know." Sarrin glanced at Artan, who searched the room with the rest of the men. After several minutes, Grem discovered a hole in the wall under the bed. Sarrin tended to her injury with Artan's help, and then sent him for more bandages. He returned empty handed, dragging the kitchen girl.

  "She's playing dumb again," he said.

  "What do you want?" the girl demanded, trying to pry his hand from her arm.

  "Bandages," Sarrin said.

  The girl shot Artan a scathing look and left, followed by the muttering soldier. He returned with several rolls of bandage and some soft clean cloths, which Sarrin took with a puzzled look.

  "Where do they get such fine things from?"

  "Their god," Bane said. "He provides everything they need, as soon as they require it."

  "How does he know?"

  "This is his realm. He knows everything that happens here."

  "Did he send the vampires?"

  Bane shook his head. "No. He does not control what happens; he only provides things, since they cannot provide for themselves."

  Sarrin placed the soft cloths on his eyes and wound the bandage around his head. "If he is a light god, he could heal you."

  "But he will not."

  Sarrin glanced around as the cowled man appeared in the doorway. He surveyed the carnage before approaching Bane.

  "I see you have had some trouble."

  Bane said, "I suppose that costs extra?"

  The man shook his head. "No. It is regrettable. You are hurt?"

  "A little."

  "Most unfortunate."

  "If you had blocked up the hole under the bed, it would not have happened."

  The cowled man shook his head again. "The beasts make the holes with acid. They come from the dark realm below. Nothing can resist it, not even metal."

  "This is not a domain."

  "Not anymore, but once it was. Our god chanced upon us as our domain collapsed, and saved us."

  Sarrin finished bandaging Bane's eyes and turned to the stranger. "Why did he not create a new domain for you?"

  "I do not know."

  "Because he cannot," Bane said.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "If he could, he would have. No light god would choose to live like this if he did not have to. He is a lesser light god, is he not?"

  The man studied Bane. "You know a great deal about gods, friend. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Tronak, high priest of Lord Frendar."

  "I am Bane."

  "What is your title?"

  "Lord."

  Tronak's head dipped, and he folded his hands before him in a pious gesture. "I meant your real title. You are, after all, a god, are you not?"

  Artan's hand dropped to his sword hilt, and his men followed suit, starting to draw their weapons. Grem stepped closer to Tronak, his demeanour menacing and his grey eyes hard. Bane's nostrils flared, but he lifted a hand, halting the men.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "The tongues."

  "Tongues?"

  Tronak turned his head towards Artan, then faced Bane again. "The kitchen wench informs me that when your people are away from you, she cannot understand them, but in your presence, all appear to speak the same tongue. Only a god can transcend the barrier of language merely with his presence."

  A slight smile tugged at Bane's lips. "You would think that a god would know that, would you not?"

  "Unless he is young, and mortal. A blue god, perhaps? Certainly one who can pluck gold from the air and withstand a vampire's acid."

  Bane raised a hand and fingered the bandage over his eyes. "Not quite."

  "Your powers tell me that you are a greater god."

  "And your soul light tells me that you are a strange creature indeed. Not alive, are you?"

  "No. My lord finds me useful."

  Bane nodded. "So now that we all know who we all are, what changes?"

  "Nothing. You are welcome here, as is your gold."

  "And when we wish to leave?"

  "We will regret your absence." Tronak bowed his head. "We ask only that, since it is such a trifling matter to you, you provide us with as much gold as you... deem our aid worthy."

  Bane tilted his head. "Why the need for gold?"

  "A bargain struck with our dark lord, Morvanor, who leaves us in peace as long as we pay him in gold."

  "Dark gods do love gold, do they not?"

  "It is said that he covers his realm with it."

  "And your god will not provide it?"

  Tronak shook his head. "He provides everything else. We must do something for ourselves."

  "Tell him that I wish to speak to him."

  "He will not."

  "Why not?"

  Tronak's skinny hands fluttered. "He is... capricious."

  "A strange way to describe a light god, even a lesser one."

  "Lord Frendar... whom we love above all else... is a child."

  Bane sat quite still for several minutes, as if he studied the priest, even though he could not see him in the usual manner. "A child god. Who would be foolish enough to make a mortal child into a god?"

  Tronak spread his hands. "We do not know."

  "And you are his playthings."

  "You could say that, I suppose."

  Bane turned his head away. "Leave me."

  As soon as Tronak left, Bane clasped one of Mirra's limp hands. "How fares Ethra?"

  "She is alive, for the moment," Sarrin replied.

  "You think she will die?"

  "It is possible."

  Bane sighed. "This is worse than I feared. We have wandered into a child god's playground."

  "You think he will harm us?"

  "Not as such. He will do to you what he has done to his own people. He has made them grotesque for his amusement."

  Sarrin swapped a nervous glance with Artan. "He cannot do it to you?"

  "He might try, but he is in for a nasty surprise if he does."

  "What will you do?"


  "I do not know." Bane touched the lump on the back of his skull, wincing. "This place is only a fragment of a collapsed domain. There can be no light realm, and this child god provides for them for some reason."

  "Pity?" Sarrin suggested.

  "I doubt it. I know his kind. I met one after he had been cast down and made himself into a dark god. Lesser gods and true dark gods think like humans, since that is what they used to be. This one is a child who has been made omnipotent. Depending on how old he is, these people are either his playthings or his experiments."

  "Are you not also human, My Lord?" Artan enquired.

  "I am both. Sarrin, I want you to pray to him, ask him to meet me."

  "Yes, Lord." She hesitated, loath to argue with him. "But if he is, as you say, a spoilt child who treats people as playthings, would that not be dangerous for you?"

  "No. I want to know how this situation came to be, and how depraved he is. I want to know what I am dealing with, since we have to stay here for a time, whether we like it or not. He must live amongst his people, but invisible."

  Sarrin glanced around. "He could be here even now?"

  "Yes, but he cannot hear us."

  "Will he hear my prayer?"

  "Yes."

  She bowed her head and whispered a few words.

  Grem asked, "What is Tronak?"

  Bane shrugged. "Probably a ghoul. There is nowhere for souls to dwell until they are reborn here, so it seems that Frendar has trapped Tronak's, probably because he is a useful servant. Any children born here will be stillborn, but the other beings are alive. Tronak appears to be the only dead one."

  "How can you tell?"

  "His soul looks different. Larger, more diffuse. Probably dispersing. Eventually Tronak will simply cease to be. His soul will be destroyed."

  "How terrible," Sarrin muttered.

  "Yes."

  Bane turned his head as Mithran said, "We'll have to move to another room. I think we should all stay together from now on, and post a guard."

  Sarrin guided Bane to a room down the hall while Artan and his men gathered up the equipment and brought Ethra. Mithran followed, carrying Mirra. Sarrin found her self-appointed role as guide to a blind god novel and somewhat disturbing. She had always known Gods to be distant, celestial beings, unseen and unknown, but prayed to often and believed in fervently.

  Meeting Bane had been a strange and enlightening experience, but seeing him blind and in pain, so utterly human, shook the tenets of her faith to their foundations. She recalled again her brief glimpse of Armorgan in his final, disastrous battle with a dark god. He had been a shining figure of white light, as she had always imagined him, all powerful and all wise. The dark god, Torvaran, was a grim figure with a stony countenance of chiselled perfection whose raucous laughter had chilled her blood with its evil.

  Their meeting had been a cataclysmic eruption of blinding blue incandescence, as Armorgan, trapped in the light realm after centuries of flight, had attempted to place the shining metal shackles upon Torvaran's wrists. In the instant when he stepped forward to meet his foe, her heart had swelled with love and reverence. Then the massive explosion of white fire had torn through the light realm, hurling herself and her companions far into the fading cloud gardens.

  When they had crept back to the place where the two had met, only the gleaming metal cuffs remained, lying on the crystal sand. Her despair had almost overcome her, and many of her companions had slain themselves in their anguish. Then Artan and his men had arrived and taken them through the great Gate into the darkness beyond. She had been numb with grief, but the dangers they had encountered had somehow revived her will to live.

  The discovery that the strange, beautiful man they had found lying unconscious in that terrible dark place was in fact a mortal god had ripped apart all her beliefs and left her floundering in an ecclesiastical quagmire. That he was a dark god had made her long to plunge a dagger into his heart, and only the chance that he might be tar'merin had saved him. His suffering then had grieved her, but it had been caused by Armorgan's shackles, which were made to vanquish a dark god.

  Now nothing more than a particularly nasty dark beast had injured him, and somehow that made him so much more human. She glanced at him, and her heart swelled as it had done when she had thought of Armorgan in the past. Bane walked beside her, however, his hand upon her shoulder, and she was certain a dark god could not kill him. Stranger still, he had a mortal wife, a father and a friend who all clearly loved him.

  Here was a god in whom her faith would be safe, who could not be taken from her, and yet was so accessible and touchable. Her brief encounter with Kayos had been daunting and uplifting, but he, like Armorgan, was far removed from the mundane world of men. All her life she had longed to be able to see Armorgan, to speak to him and know him, but it had been an impossible dream. Bane was entirely different. Apart from the strange flashes of blue light when the vampires had attacked them, she had hardly seen him use any power. She wondered how it would make her feel if she ever did witness his use of the destructive black fire that was his true weapon.

  They arrived at the door to the new room, and she pushed it open, guiding Bane over to the bed, where he flopped down once more. She gazed at him for a moment, then went to help carry Ethra as Mithran laid Mirra beside him.

  Once the group was settled into the rather crowded accommodations, a guard was posted, and Bane tried to get some more sleep. His eyes tingled, and he wondered what that meant. Was he blind? If so, would Kayos be able to heal him? Clearly the last of Mirra's power had been used up when the dark beast had attacked her, and it had probably saved her life. How would he free the Grey God if he was blind? How would he survive, for that matter? His ability to see souls helped a little, but demons would be invisible to him now.

  All he could do was hope that his sight was not gone forever, and rely upon these people to help him. It put all of them in danger, however, and he dreaded that more harm would come to Mirra. Already she had been hurt through his inability to protect her from the dark beasts, and his inadequacy made him angry. He sighed and stretched out beside his young wife, reassured by her soft breaths against his cheek that lulled him into an uneasy sleep.

  Chapter Eight

  Soul Eater

  Kayos turned to face the man who walked towards him, ignoring the hound that stood a few metres away, watching him with glowing eyes. He had found a light place, but not a domain, and so his dilemma had been resolved. The dark god stopped a few paces away and smiled. His skin gleamed dull gold, and crimson feathers clothed his scalp. Narrow black eyes slanted under feathery brows that joined the feathers atop his head, meeting between his eyes in a deep 'V'. His flat, cold countenance had the unnatural perfection that all dark gods possessed, along with a serpentine quality.

  His smile revealed a solid white ridge instead of teeth, and he lacked external ears. A well-fitting suit of dark crimson velvet clad his tall, lean form, edged at the collar and cuffs with gold patterns, a series of golden clasps running down the front of it. A short, matching velvet cape hung from his shoulders, lined with black satin, its edge ornamented with intricate gold patterns. A gold band encircled his brow, set with seven glowing rubies. His eyes swept over Kayos and came to rest on his face.

  "So, you are a fine quarry indeed, Silver God."

  "Not one you can overcome."

  "That remains to be seen. I am Torvaran."

  Kayos shrugged. "How nice for you."

  "And you are?"

  "Kayos."

  "A presumptuous name. Do you aspire to that state of being, or do you claim to own it?"

  "I created it."

  Torvaran's smile faded a little. "That would make you one of the Originators."

  "You are quite well educated, for an upstart dark god."

  "I have been around for a while, and heard the legends. You have not heard of me, then?"

  "Should I?"

  The dark god glanced off into the distan
ce. "If you were as well educated as I am, you would."

  "I do not bother to keep track of dark gods. To me, your kind come and go in the blink of an eye."

  "Allow me to enlighten you, then. I am known as the Destroyer."

  "Are not all your kind?"

  Torvaran's smile returned. "Some lay claim to a domain and enslave one of your kin to serve them. I do not. I destroy light gods. You will be the first Silver God on my tally."

  "I have no doubt that I am the first Silver God you have encountered in your short and unremarkable existence."

  "Which is why you will be the first I destroy."

  Kayos glanced at the Hound. "If you had met an Originator before, you would know that we are not so easily overcome as our children."

  "Then this will be a pleasant challenge. Your children die too easily."

  Kayos studied Torvaran, whose confidence, although common to his kind, was chilling. He could continue to flee until he found a domain, but already he was far from where he had left Bane. He did not wish to go any further, or it would take a long time for the Demon Lord to find him. Also, Torvaran would keep pace, and if a light god allowed Kayos to enter his domain, Torvaran would follow, with disastrous consequences for the domain and its owner. He hoped that Bane would be fully recovered before he fought this dark god, who struck him as old and powerful. He spread his hands.

  "Do you plan to bore me to death with your boasting?"

  Torvaran smiled. "You will soon see that my name is well earned, Silver God. You are foolish to face me, you should continue to flee."

  "Well, since you are so fond of giving advice, here is some for you. Leave now, or you will pay the price."