Blackhand

by Matt Hiebert

  What was left for him? Leave the wall and continue the hunt? Hundreds of Thogs had escaped his blade in the Forestlands. They still roamed the countryside, killing anything in their path. The god in him wanted to pursue them, but Quintel would not move. He refused to become distracted again. That time had passed.

  The decision made him little more than a decoration for Ru's walled garden.

  As the finality of his situation soaked deeper into acceptance, he found himself thinking more and more about the Lanya's solution. He found himself pondering the folds and turns of the spell that would end his existence. And Ru’s continuous attention did not help his darkening mood. The Living God's constant presence mocked him.

  Quintel felt like the stalemate — as Aul had called it — was actually a victory for the god. Although trapped on the other side of the barrier, Ru still lived. That was victory in itself.

  The crowd of humans behind him grew. Pilgrims from across the world journeyed to the wall just to be near him. A small town sprouted. Log structures arose to house the faithful and supply their stores. Worn dirt roads formed from repeated traffic. Merchants who didn't care about him in the slightest migrated because that's where their customers had gone.

  He never interacted with the pilgrims. Occasionally, a precession would pass by to view him, but none dared speak.

  While they worshiped and feared him, the pilgrims did not love him. He sensed some believed they did, but their feelings were for a caricature they had pieced together from stories.

  As the devoted congregated, Aul's final speech played in his mind repeatedly. She had been right. His last meaningful connection to humanity disappeared when she left.

  During one of the moments when all these mocking factors descended upon him – the staring wall, the omnipresent god, the lost love – he realized only one action remained for him. There was only one thing he had not done.

  The Lanya would have their way.

  He summoned the image of the Lanya’s spell and studied the elegance of its complexity. What magnificent design! What exquisite craftsmanship! The minds that created the spell worked upon a plane of understanding he could only appreciate from afar. He followed the mandala in his imagination one more time.

  Then he made the second fold.

  The god in him whimpered, but he did not hesitate. He made the third fold, reshaping his soul and that of the fragment so they would at last be one. The fourth, the fifth. The sixth, the seventh. Deeper and deeper he traveled within the Lanya’s maze of thought. With each turn, he felt himself and the consciousness within him drawing closer, binding tighter together like the strands of a twisting rope. The god was afraid, but Quintel was not. He was finished. All things that occurred before seemed a postponement to the inevitable. This last act would fix that which was broken.

  Upon the final step, he paused for a moment and looked back upon his life. He thought of Aran, his banishment, Siyer, the game, the Agara, the gods. And of Aul.

  Memories echoing, Quintel made the final fold. White light exploded though his mind, permeating all that he was. He felt its warmth like the rays of the forgotten sun. An eruption of light, his lifelight, a shimmering rain of all his experience, exploded from his core and pierced the infinity that was the severed deity.

  And then Quintel died.

  The god fragment screamed as the man’s soul emptied into its heart. Pain flooded its being beyond anything it ever feared. The weight of the human's life burned. Everything defining the god burst into a flame of memory and existence. It felt the weight of time, a thing it had not known existed. It felt the desires of the man and each one scorched like molten iron. It saw itself through human eyes and went insane. The god forgot its own existence and plunged into nothingness so the pain would end.

  And then it, too, died.

  For a time, the new being stood there lost, without reference. Who was he? Where was this place? Why was he here?

  The being let his mind become one with everything around him and saw what had happened a long time ago. The world had been shattered. A god had saved a piece.

  Once there had been a vast universe reaching in all directions forever. He could still hear its dying echo. Now it was gone. Beyond the shard of remaining earth he stood upon was nothing -- a void so empty it did not deserve a name.

  The speck was the whole of all that remained. He warred with a god upon it. But the struggle was an illusion. The tragedy of the truth no longer hid from him. He, himself, was the god he hated. He was the emptiness beyond the sky. He was the broken world. He was them. They were him. All men. All matter. All thought, hope, joy, lust, love, hate, grief, pain were him. Not separate. Not other. One. The last ember of a universe wanting to die. The two gods, the last sparks of desire in its death throes. They were following a path to a final end, honoring a law that could not be changed. There had been a beginning and this was the end. Only one thing. Everything, one thing. Dying.

  The god who hated him saw what occurred and came in a mist.

  “Little Abanshi,” said Sirian Ru. “Where are you? I cannot see you. What have you done?”

  “I have become one with all things,” the being answered, feeling nothing towards his rival.

  “Ah,” said the god, understanding what had happened. “The Lanya have shown you their path. Yes, you are invisible to me.”

  “I am one with you.”

  “True, but it doesn't matter. We are here, now, locked in a struggle, separate and in opposition. Time and space keep us from being united. We are enemies.”

  The being understood.

  “I must kill you then?” he asked the god, turning a latent memory from his former lives.

  “You must try, I suppose, but I do not believe you can.”

  The being looked into the depth of the god’s heart and Ru felt it.

  “Yes, it is possible.”

  “Possible but unlikely,” Ru countered. The god looked upon the creature before him and marveled. The being’s design was graceful, stunning. Something never seen before. “No matter. Peace is impossible between us.”

  “Peace?”

  “An illusion. A myth. Only an ideal in this world.”

  “I have memories from the others before me. They are distant and contradictory. But some are clear. I remember a woman. And I remember you.”

  Sirian Ru looked upon the new form of life and could not help but be amazed. Not a man. Not a god. Not a combination. Something new created by the universe in its fading moments.

  “What is your name?” the god asked.

  The being thought. There were names in his past, but they no longer held true. Another name passed from the lips of the people around him like the beat of drum.

  Blackhand. Blackhand. Blackhand.

  “I am Blackhand.”

  “Blackhand? An obvious label I suppose. There is something you must know, Blackhand. If you kill me, this world dies. I am the god who keeps it alive.”

  “And if this world dies, the universe dies?”

  “Yes.”

  Blackhand paused for a moment, assessing everything he knew.

  “I am here to kill you, Sirian Ru. I am here to end the universe.”

  “No, you must ---” As Sirian spoke, another life sprang from the ether and attacked the god like a tiger, biting chunks from his misty existence.

  “Back to your castle, Lover of Life!” the new entity shouted. It was a woman. Blackhand knew she was the Lanya queen. “Do not speak your lies to him!”

  Sirian Ru screamed in pain and fled.

  The Lanya spirit turned to Blackhand.

  “You have wasted much time,” she said. “Things have changed in the world. Do you remember the woman? The one you loved?”

  Blackhand did remember. Her name was Aul.

  “Yes, I remember,” he said.

  “We are killing her now,” said the Lanya. “You spoke with the covetous god for too long and the moment for you to act has arrived. We take her life to prov
oke you.”

  “No.”

  “It is happening.”

  “No!”

  Driven by an emotion he did not fully understand, Blackhand bolted from his long slumber at the base of the wall and ran west to where he knew Aul would be. His mind shot to the other side of the world to find her light. In a single pass he found her, safe within the walls of Jura. Her light had changed since he last saw her. Where passion had once burned red in her heart, now golden waves of experience shaped her soul. Where the silver spines of determination once crowned her head, an emerald halo of wisdom now rested. He ran to meet her before the Lanya could complete their task.

  During his conversation with the god an entire city had formed around him. Thousands of people lived in the city and its buildings and streets were made from mortared stone. He leaped over it in one step. The people below screamed as he passed above their heads.

  Tearing across the countryside he saw the world had changed greatly since he last roamed its surface. Where small villages had once been, great cities now erupted with life. Cobblestone roads replaced empty forests. Wild rivers were now bridged and dammed. How long had he slept? How long had it been since the others died within him? How long had he conversed with the god?

  Bounding across the landscape, it took him only three days to traverse the width of the world. But as he closed upon the mountain-spiked horizon, he felt Aul’s light fall dark. In a world filled with millions of sparkling lives, he saw hers disappear into nothingness.

  The Lanya had fulfilled their threat.

  What was that he felt? A small and distant emotion moved inside of him, soft and wet. He stopped running and paused to study the sensation. He remembered it, but the memory was far away and belonged to another. It was grief. Once, he knew, the emotion had paralyzed him, burned him, cut his legs out from under his body. Now it was a small thing, a sensation of change. Ice melting to water. A lingering stain where something had once been.

  He stood there for a time, staring at the empty hole in the universe that had once been the woman he loved. Then he took a step forward. And another. His goal had disappeared yet he knew he must finish the journey.

  He came upon the Abanshi Mountains, the border of his homeland, the place of his birth, the kingdom Aul had ruled. He remembered the land had been a wilderness when last he saw it. Now highways cut through the mountains and throbbed with travelers.

  He passed hundreds of people who followed roads that had not existed the last time he was there. Or at least, the last time his body had been there. The travelers were startled by the sudden wind that passed by them. Stone bridges vaulted over plunging canyons that had once been impossible obstacles. Tunnels beneath the earth, once hidden, had become bazaars for tourists.

  In the space between two soaring mountains, he remembered there had been a great iron gate where a battle had taken place. Now the way was open and only the hinges of the gate remained as a monument.

  He kept moving, ignoring the traffic he alarmed. Aul was gone but he knew where he should go. To the Abanshi. Jura. Her castle.

  Slowing to an even stride, he let his past revisit him as his senses took in the surroundings. He remembered pain, fear, dread, hunger. As he left the wall of mountains and entered a wide open plain, he remembered the battle he fought against Sirian Ru’s manufactured army. He remembered the awe of his allies as he stacked the bodies of their enemies high. And he remembered hope.

  Night came and went without notice. When he arrived at the gates of Jura, the guards were shocked to see him and sent word of his arrival throughout the great city. A wave of panic rippled through the population at the news. They did not want him there, but they knew they could not stop his entry.

  “Where is Aul?” he asked one of the guards who greeted him.

  The guard escorted Blackhand to a great hall in the center of the castle. The room was dark, but he remembered there had once been a great festival held here in his honor. At the center of the room, a body lay on an adorned table. The body was that of an old woman dressed in blue and silver robes. A jeweled crown rested upon her head. He walked over and saw that it was her.

  “Three Lanya warriors entered the kingdom and slew her,” said the guard. “No one knows why they did it. We light her pyre tomorrow.”

  Even aged she was still beautiful. Her scarred face was the same as the faraway picture in his mind, but the lines of a hard life had cut deeply around her eyes and mouth. Her hair was combed in long flowing, gray strands.

  “She mourned for you,” a woman's voice came from beyond the glow of the ceremonial candles. “For thirty years, she mourned for you.”

  The woman stepped into the light. It was Ana. Older now, her hair white, her face mapped with wrinkles. She had been his other sister.

  “Not for me,” Blackhand said. “For another.”

  “Is that how you've dealt with your condition?” she said coming closer. “By telling yourself it happened to someone else.”

  “Quintel is dead. The god that resided within him is dead. I am Blackhand, the being who remains.”

  “You haven't aged a moment,” Ana said, marveling at his unchanged face. “Your visage is darker, but you are the same man.”

  “No. Quintel merged his soul with the divine fragment. His spirit was absorbed by the god and the god died from the pain.”

  “Yet here you are, visiting the woman he loved,” Ana noted. “If you are not him, why did you come?”

  Blackhand thought a moment, but had no answer.

  “I do not know,” he said. “It seems the love did not die with Quintel.”

  Ana’s lips tightened. He could see her heart break. Love that survived death, yet was unfulfilled during life. Love wasted.

  “Do you know why the Lanya killed her?” she asked.

  “Their queen said it was to provoke me.”

  Blackhand remembered it was the Lanya who had given Quintel the instructions for merging his soul with the god’s. They had waited for that to happen before they killed Aul. He had to exist before this could happen. And the Lanya wanted him to remember her, over everything else. They allowed her memory to survive their spell.

  His mind searched the world and drank all the things that had occurred around the warrior-witches. He knew that they had made other things happen. He now remembered another god walked the earth in the body of a Thog. He somehow knew the Lanya had given the veiled god special instructions.

  “The Lanya are controlling all of this,” he said. “They seek something unseen. They manipulate all of us.”

  “To what end?” Ana asked.

  Blackhand took another look at Aul and brought his marked hand to her face, touching it for the last time. Was that love that stirred within him?

  “I do not know,” he said. “But I am going to ask them.”

  Chapter 41

  He left Jura in search of the warrior-witches. Finding them was not hard. The Lanya could no longer hide from him. Now he saw their island clearly, floating apart from the world to the south, hidden in clouds and magic but bare to his sight. He headed toward them without regard to route or road.

  In complete control of his power, Blackhand was unburdened by the god's fear and sorrow. The trembling being that had lived in Quintel’s breast was gone. His mind could be everywhere at once without conflict. When he looked across the convex surface of the world, he saw a place at rest. The nations had joined under Aul and worked as one to better humanity. No wars raged. No more monsters roamed the earth. The gods were sequestered. Man had at last achieved peace. Sirian Ru had lied.

  As he journeyed to meet the witches, he knew he was walking into a trap. The Lanya had killed Aul to bring him back into the world and they had succeeded. Their action had torn him away from the dream and set him tearing across the earth. For some reason, they wanted him angry. They wanted him to come to them enraged. In that they had also succeeded.

  He wasn't sure what he would do when he confronted them. He thought pe
rhaps he would simply destroy them. They had tried to capture him once and he believed that was their intent this time. But with the limitless strength that now boiled through his limbs, he knew they would fail. There was no force that could hold him.

  Yet he was also aware they were the ones who created him. It was their guidance that let him merge with the god and gain control over his power. They had wanted him to become Blackhand. Quintel had been a man trying to control the might of a frightened god. Blackhand was a being without definition. They had given him this, perhaps to their own end. But why?

  In the end, he was just another product of their plan and that fact angered him even more. The anger was not like the nausea that rose from the emotion when he was a man. Rather, it was a burning that singed him from all sides, almost a feeling outside of himself. Had the Lanya manufactured this as well?

  As the Abanshi Mountains disappeared behind him, Blackhand let his thoughts turn inward. He wanted to know more about himself and so explored the remnant memories of the two beings who became him. He saw the arc of Quintel’s life from the moment of his conception to the time he made the final fold in the Lanya’s spell. It was a narrative filled with pain, emptiness, loss. Moments of joy punctuated the story, but they were fleeting and rare. The memories of the god were simplistic in comparison. Here was a being unborn, an entity who simply realized it existed, begotten with all the knowledge it would ever need, never changing. Its memory was a featureless white shelf spanning forever. He saw the god’s complex and flawed relationship with humanity, its compulsive desire for their attention, driven by a need it never questioned or analyzed. In all, it was the lesser of the two beings who made him.

  As he turned and studied the images of his dual past, he found few answers to the questions that pushed him forward. Why was he so angry? What compelled him to confront the Lanya? Why did Aul’s death mean so much? He felt millions of lives salted across the tabletop of the world. How could one outweigh the rest? The questions circled upon themselves.