Child of a Dead God

by Barb Hendee

  His tunic was split along the side. The fabric’s edges were soaked dark with his fluids. But in place of an open wound, Magiere saw only a scar.

  She’d seen the marks her sword left on the undead, but the wound couldn’t have closed that quickly.

  “I am bolstered . . . fed in the orb’s presence,” Welstiel whispered, “but you . . . you still live and breathe. No matter what you gain from it, I will not need to take your head . . . to kill you!”

  Magiere hesitated. She didn’t know to what extent the orb could affect her and wasn’t about to test it. If he was right, she had to take his head before she was too wounded to go on.

  Welstiel rushed with an upward whip of his longsword, trying to strike for her chest between her weapons. Magiere pivoted sideways and swept her left forearm down.

  She caught the sword’s end with the flattened dagger. Welstiel dropped low and thrust out, and the longsword skimmed along the blade.

  The sword’s point buried in the upper half of Magiere’s sword arm.

  Without hunger to block the pain, Magiere crumpled and dropped the falchion.

  Chap saw Magiere drop to one knee. And he went cold inside as Leesil shouted, “No . . . no!”

  Sgäile’s foot cracked against the muscular undead’s skull.

  Chap sprang, clawing up the undead’s body.

  He didn’t care what happened to him, so long as this vampire went down and someone got to Magiere. He sank teeth into the undead’s throat and called up a memory from within Leesil’s mind.

  The large undead teetered and began to fall toward the chasm’s edge.

  Chap clung to it by tooth and claw, letting his weight bring it down.

  Leesil rolled to his feet as Chap latched on to the undead’s throat. Between Sgäile’s last kick and the dog’s sudden weight, the undead began to topple toward the edge.

  Chap didn’t lunge away.

  Leesil threw aside one winged blade. He reached out wildly to grab Chap by the scruff, but his mind was still numbed by the sight of Magiere buckling under Welstiel’s thrust.

  A memory erupted in his head.

  Downstairs in the Sea Lion’s common room, he’d been alone in the dark—drinking—as Ratboy slipped in through a window. At the sound, he’d pulled a stiletto and hurled it. But the blade had stuck into a tabletop rather than into the little vampire’s head.

  Only Chap could have raised that forgotten moment, trying to tell him what to do—whom to save.

  Leesil snatched a stiletto from his wrist sheath, breaking the holding strap. With one quick flip, he caught the blade and threw it.

  Magiere gasped as Welstiel jerked his longsword out of her arm. Her fury held, but it wasn’t enough to eat the pain—not like her missing hunger could have.

  On withdrawal, Welstiel flicked the sword tip at her throat.

  She barely blocked it with her dagger-shielded forearm. The longsword’s tip slid off and scraped her hauberk’s shoulder. It didn’t cut her, but its drag on the leather pulled her off balance.

  Welstiel swung his blade back, and it rose over his head. With no room to dodge aside on the narrow bridge, Magiere raised her forearm with the dagger and braced for the impact.

  Welstiel lurched.

  The longsword stalled and wobbled above him. His eyes widened, and his lips spread, exposing clenched teeth.

  Magiere almost lost her opening in surprise. She spun the dagger in her grip and slashed fast and hard across his knee.

  The blade cut through his breeches. He screeched in pain, and Magiere heard a sizzling hiss from the dagger. She started at both sounds.

  Smoke rose from the severed cloth around Welstiel’s leg. As he spun away along the bridge, Magiere saw the stiletto embedded below his left shoulder blade. She glanced at the dagger in her hand.

  A red glow along its center hair-thin line faded quickly to its old charcoal black. Vapor thickened and sputtered softly as its moisture touched the blade—as if the metal had suddenly heated during her swing.

  Welstiel came about. He fixed upon her in cold anger and advanced.

  Magiere abandoned any notion of grabbing for the falchion. She came up, gripping the dagger’s hilt hand over hand. Welstiel took a double hold on his sword as he brought it down.

  Sparks scattered as weapons collided and then vanished rapidly in the humid air. Magiere let the dagger tilt upon the impact.

  The instant Welstiel’s sword slipped away, she slashed the blade back up across his face.

  Welstiel whipped his head aside with a cry, and the stench of burning flesh filled Magiere’s nostrils. She swung out, striking for his sword arm. Smoke erupted from his wrist as the blade slashed across. He shrieked as his grip on the sword’s hilt went limp.

  The longsword clanged upon the bridge and Magiere heard nothing more.

  Welstiel grabbed for his wounded wrist with his fingerless hand. He tried to shield his smoking face with both arms, and one foot slipped off the side of the bridge.

  “No!” Magiere screamed. “Not that easy!”

  She grabbed for him as he fell, catching his forearm. Her knees hit the bridge as Welstiel’s full weight dragged her down, and her grip slid up to his wrist.

  Magiere held on to Welstiel and strained to pull him up.

  She couldn’t spend her life wondering if he’d truly died in the chasm’s depths. She wouldn’t live with that doubt. But she wasn’t going to drop the dagger for a second grip.

  Magiere slammed the blade down into Welstiel’s chest.

  He didn’t even scream as smoke welled from the heated blade sinking into him. She heaved on the hilt, draging his torso halfway onto the bridge. She released his wrist, pinning him with her knee, and snarled her fingers into his hair.

  Welstiel convulsed once as she jerked the dagger out.

  The blade crackled as his black fluids burned off under its heat. Magiere pressed it to his throat.

  A charred gash angled between Welstiel’s eyes, running from the bridge of his nose and down through his cheek to the side of his mouth. Teeth and bone showed through smoking split skin. His eyes were filled with confusion and pain, as if none of what was happening could be real.

  And it still wasn’t enough for Magiere.

  Not for all she had suffered or what so many others had lost because of him. She leaned close to Welstiel’s mangled face, whispering, “Whatever waits for you . . . when you get there . . . give Father my hate!”

  Magiere shoved the blade down.

  Welstiel’s face went slack as it split his throat. When she felt the dagger jam into bone, she ground it through.

  The tip of the dagger grated on the stone.

  Magiere let Welstiel’s body tumble off the bridge.

  Leesil hoped his stiletto had struck true. He rushed for Chap, but he wouldn’t make it.

  The large undead’s back and head cracked against the bridge’s side. He rolled off and fell.

  Sgäile flung aside Leesil’s old blade and bolted onto the bridge.

  In midair, Chap tried to leap off the undead’s chest. Only his forepaws hooked the bridge’s edge. Sgäile reached out and grabbed for Chap, pulling the dog up. The yowling undead clawed at empty air, and fell into the chasm’s clouded depths.

  Leesil quickly closed on Chap and Sgäile, but then his gaze traced along the bridge.

  Halfway out, Magiere knelt, staring over the edge, but Leesil saw no sign of Welstiel.

  “Drop down,” he said.

  Sgäile buckled low, still holding Chap, and Leesil hopped over them. Before he reached Magiere, she lifted her face.

  Her fingers were snarled in the hair of a severed head, and Leesil saw one white temple as he slowed. Magiere slumped and closed her eyes. Beneath her scowl, Leesil could see her pain. In the end, even killing Welstiel hadn’t taken it away.

  With her eyes still closed, Magiere flung the head.

  Leesil watched it fall through the misty air, growing faint and small. It vanished altogeth
er, though he never heard it strike in the chasm’s obscured depths.

  Magiere felt as if she’d awakened in one of those seven hells Leesil so casually spit out in his curses. Welstiel was gone, but it solved nothing—changed nothing—for her.

  It didn’t erase what she was, or change what might wait for her in the future.

  Then Leesil crouched down before her.

  Magiere gazed into his wild amber eyes, so faintly slanted beneath white-blond eyebrows. What might he say about all this? What was there to say? But the sight of his tan face and bright hair pulled her halfway from that hell.

  “Where’s Chane?” he asked, so softly, as if reluctant to ask anything of her.

  The question shook Magiere fully back into the moment. “I don’t know.”

  Leesil pivoted, and Magiere saw Sgäile and Chap near the bridge’s end.

  “Stay there,” he called to them. “Watch the tunnel . . . Chane is still missing.”

  Chap spun about, and Sgäile followed the dog off the bridge. Leesil turned back and reached for Magiere.

  “Let’s see that arm.”

  She’d forgotten about the wound, and strangely, all the pain was gone. Leesil pulled apart the blood-soaked rent in the sleeve of her wool pullover. He wiped gently with his fingertips, clearing blood from her arm, and then stopped.

  Magiere saw no wound. Not even a scar.

  “Even you don’t heal that quickly,” Leesil said, looking none too pleased. “I saw a wound on that big undead close too fast. What is happening here?”

  Welstiel had claimed he was untouchable in the orb’s presence, and she wasn’t. Apparently he’d been wrong—not that it made Magiere feel any better. She spun on one knee, looking back to the orb. Li’kän stood staring at it, and nothing on the platform had changed.

  “Come on,” Leesil urged, “before we get any more surprises.”

  He grabbed her arm, hoisting her up.

  Magiere paused only to pick up her falchion, but she didn’t sheathe it or the dagger. As she stepped onto the meeting place of the four bridges, she kept her eyes on the white undead.

  All her dissatisfaction settled on the notion of taking Li’kän’s head.

  This ancient thing—and whatever controlled it—wanted Magiere to have the orb. So why had Li’kän done nothing to stop Welstiel and his minions?

  “What’s wrong with her?” Leesil asked.

  Magiere took a long breath. “I don’t think she’s been down here in ages—or longer than I can guess. She just froze at the sight of it.”

  “So what is it?” Leesil whispered.

  Magiere had no answer. She was no mystic or sage, and doubted that even those who were would understand the orb. She was just a rogue, a charlatan grown tired of the game . . . and a tainted thing born in the worst of ways. But instinct told her this device was no longer safe here, and she believed the Chein’âs knew this as well.

  They had given her the circlet, what Wynn called a thôrhk.

  Without even thinking, Magiere sheathed her falchion and tucked away the dagger. She pulled aside her hair to lift the circlet from her neck. From the look of its open-end knobs and the grooves in the spike’s head . . . was this thôrhk a handle for lifting the orb?

  Leesil’s brow wrinkled as Magiere fitted the circlet over the spike.

  The knobs slipped along the stone grooves, until they settled in the notches on the spike’s opposing sides. Gripping the circlet like a bucket’s handle, Magiere lifted with both hands, trying to clear the orb from its tall stone stand.

  She expected resistance. Whatever the orb and false spike were made of, the whole of it looked heavy. To her surprise, the circlet lifted easily.

  A hum rose around Magiere, seeming to fill the cavern. Or was it inside her, running through her bones, gathering in her skull?

  “No!” Leesil shouted. “Put it back in!”

  Magiere felt water droplets gather on her face. She saw them on her hands as the air’s mist seemed to pull in around her. A light spread from somewhere beneath her grip on the circlet, and she dropped her gaze.

  The spike hung free, dangling from the circlet’s knobs. Rather than lifting orb and spike together, her circlet had pulled the spike, separating it.

  The orb, still resting in the stand, emanated light . . . was made of light. Its glow sparked within the drops upon Magiere’s arms and hands.

  Rainbow hues swirling through the orb suddenly bled into each other, until its whole form burned pure teal.

  “Put the spike back!”

  Magiere heard Leesil’s shout, but she couldn’t turn away, and her eyes began stinging from the light. Her vision blurred like snow blindness.

  Only the orb remained crisp and real.

  Magiere couldn’t move, though she felt someone’s hands close atop her grip on the circlet.

  Chap turned back as the landing hollow’s dark space filled with light. He cringed at the brilliance erupting from the platform.

  Three hazy silhouettes were barely visible in the glare. Then a tingle crawled over Chap’s skin, making his fur bristle.

  Fay—he felt his kin manifested here.

  Chap turned aside from the blinding light and saw Sgäile shielding his eyes. And beyond the elf, the hollow’s walls began to bleed . . . water.

  Globules welled from the stone and ripped from its surface, but they did not fall downward. Each glittering droplet shot toward the platform, like heavy rain falling inward from all around into the teal brilliance.

  Chap felt a hint of connection to Earth, Fire, Air, Spirit . . . and an overwhelming sense of Water. He had not tried to root himself in the elements of existence, yet they sharply filled his awareness—and the last, primal Water, smothered the others.

  He remembered being born.

  Every pain and sensation flickered past in his mind. He drifted back further, almost remembering his existence among his kin, the Fay.

  They—he—had mourned a loss.

  No, a sin—from an instant before the first “moment” existed.

  From when “time” came into being at the beginning of creation.

  Chap inched forward in the blinding light, feeling with his paws for the bridge’s edge. He cried out through his spirit to his kin.

  What . . . was so horrible . . . in the making of this world? What did you . . . we do?

  There was no answer.

  Once, at one with his kin, “time” had meant nothing to Chap. Now he struggled with moments and days and years like walls built around his lost memories. But he felt the presence of a Fay in this place.

  Chap lifted his head and tried to gaze into the light.

  One? There was only one Fay here?

  How could he sense one and not the many? There were no others like himself in this world that he knew of. The tingle across his skin sharpened.