by Jon Hollins
“Try me.”
“She’s right,” said Afrit, who seemed to have finally settled on horror as the emotion du jour.
“Shut up,” said Lette whipping around to point the knife at her. “I’m not talking to you.”
“You want a drink,” Quirk said calmly, “don’t you?” She looked at each of them in turn. “We all want a drink. You’ve wanted one ever since you got to the wall in Vinter.”
And … Will thought about that. Yes. Yes, he had. But surely that was pretty much to be expected when you were facing imminent death and then saw all your dreams go up in dragon smoke.
“I have been in a constant state of wanting a drink since I was being about six years old,” said Balur.
“I always liked the Analesians,” said Firkin.
“You’re not helping,” said Quirk.
Firkin raised both hands. “Very sorry, I’m sure.” But that mocking smile was still on his lips.
“Remember the story he told?” Quirk said, turning back to the rest of them, ignoring Firkin. “The story of Barph’s Strength. Barph angers Lawl. Lawl collects Barph’s blood. And he tells.” She pointed at Firkin. “He tells us that whoever drinks it is given powers. Divine powers. That they’re stronger, invulnerable. That they can face dragons. Except does it work on us? No. It only works on him.”
“Yes,” agreed Balur. “That was being weird.”
“Barph’s Strength,” Quirk almost shouted. “Barph’s!”
“Yes,” Balur said again. “That is being the name of it.”
But Lette said, “Ohhhh,” long and drawn out, and with just enough horror in it to make Will’s skin start to creep, because he felt like he almost saw. Almost.
“Right?” said Afrit. “Right?”
“Lawl always was a precious fucker,” said Firkin. “Never could take a joke.”
“No,” said Will. He shook his head. Because it couldn’t be that. It could never be that. It was too big, and too wild, and too utterly devastating.
“But why now?” said Quirk, still talking a step ahead of Will. “Why—”
“Because of the champion,” Lette cut in. She had apparently caught up. “Because Lawl rules the Hallows. If he’d gone down to get it himself and he’d gotten himself killed … then he would have ended up in the Hallows. And Lawl would have been in charge of him. That was the true punishment, right?” She pointed at Firkin. “He stole your strength and he put it within arm’s reach, but if you fucked up … then you’d be stuck in his domain. You’d be under his thumb. So you send us dumb shits down to get it for you.”
“I don’t …” Will started. But he did. He really did. He just didn’t want to.
Barph’s Strength. Not anybody else’s.
“Never could take a joke,” said Firkin.
Except Firkin didn’t say it. Will knew that now.
Barph said it.
53
The Chapter of Revelations
Barph. Firkin was Barph. Okay. Okay. Lette took a breath and kept her cool.
Will didn’t. “No,” he said. “Just … No.” He shook his head. “Really just no. That’s absurd. That’s just … no. That defines no. That stands in opposition of all that can be said to be yes. That’s no in its purest, most unadulterated form. Complete no. No, and no, and no, and no again. So much no.” He held his hands as if to ward the idea off. “It’s a tidal wave of no. A no that could trample through the countryside destroying small towns and breathing fire upon the landscape. An epic no. The sort of no bards will compose song cycles about. Absolute no. Infinite no. A divinity? Firkin? Firkin? No. No. No. No. No. No. No.”
“Look,” said Firkin, “it’s not like I’m any happier about it than you are.”
Which, given the enormous shit-eating grin he was wearing, didn’t necessarily seem to be the truth.
“There is being,” Balur said, “one way to be sure.” No one paid him much attention.
“But it fits,” Quirk was saying. “Everything fits. He drained the cup.”
And as much as Lette wanted to agree with Will, she agreed with Quirk.
“I know,” Will said. “I know. I know. I know. Everything fits the way you’ve explained it. It makes sense. But, I mean … it’s impossible. The sequence of events as we see it has to be flawed. We have to have made a mistake. Something’s wrong.”
And then, with a roar, Balur smashed his sword into Firkin’s midriff.
The little man flew. His legs left the floor. They trailed behind him as he sailed through the air, flying out behind him like streamers on a child’s kite. He smashed into a tree with enough force to see splinters and bark flying. Then he slumped to the ground.
“Holy fuck, Balur!” Lette shouted.
“Shit!” Will yelled Firkin.
“Gods!” Even Quirk seemed to have forgotten this hiding they were meant to be doing.
Afrit let out a short, sharp laugh, then clapped her hands to her mouth and went back to looking horrified.
“What did you just do?” Will was running at Balur, fists balled impotently. “What the fuck did you just do?”
Lette wondered if she would have to intervene, but Balur barely paid any attention to Will, focused on the spot where the old drunk or new deity had landed.
“I was testing,” said Balur. “Someone is claiming to be a deity, so I am seeing if he is invulnerable to harm. Obviously.”
“You fucking killed him, you maniac!” Will’s fists pounded against Balur’s waist. “He was a sick man!” Balur watched Will distastefully.
“That was perhaps a bit much,” said Lette, advancing on Firkin’s collapsed corpse.
“He was the one saying—”
And then Firkin stood up. He rubbed his stomach with one hand, then cracked his back. “Now that,” he said, “is what I’m talking about.”
There was a lot of shouting and yelling after that. And a lot of denials. And Balur had to stare down Will when he suggested that Balur had used the flat of his blade.
“Just admit it!” Quirk almost shouted finally, apparently oblivious to the fact that if she was right, she was chastising a being powerful enough to smite her like she was a small and particularly irritating bug.
Lette took a step away from the Tamathian academic.
“It’s how I told you all back in the Vinter cells,” said Firkin. He sat down next to the fire as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Lawl couldn’t take a joke. He cut me. He collected the blood in that goblet. And all my divine power ran out with it. He hid the goblet in the city dedicated to me, because he thought that was funny. Then he put a divine guard over it.
“The idea, as you surmised, was that I go and try to get it back. The only thing he hadn’t been able to take from me was my life. And he knew I wasn’t going to go and just die for his convenience. So he had to tempt me to get into trouble. And so I was meant to go and face off against the champion, have my arse handed to me, go to the Hallows, be utterly at his mercy, and learn my lesson.”
He spat into the fire. “Well, fuck that.”
“What,” said Lette, who was curious now despite her skepticism, “could you have done to piss him off that much?”
“I got him drunk,” said Firkin with a shrug.
Balur thought about that. “That is not seeming—”
“Fine!” said Firkin with an exaggerated sigh. “I got him blind drunk, and told him that this mortal he was seeing on the side was about to dedicate herself to a temple of Betra, at which point my grandmother would know all about his latest series of indiscretions and castrate him. He was always worried about that from her. Anyway, he was in a panic, and I sort of egged him on and got him to smite this temple. But then I told him he missed, and he did it again. And then I told him he missed again. Told him he almost got her that time. So he smote another bit of town. And then I got a bit carried away.”
“Smote,” said Will. “As in thunderbolts, people dying, that sort of thing?”
“In my def
ense,” Firkin said, “I was just as drunk as he was.”
“How carried away?” asked Balur.
The lizard man was loving this, Lette knew. He’d always loved stories about Barph’s antics.
“Well …” said Firkin, looking a touch embarrassed. “You know the Tharkian Waste?”
The Tharkian Waste was a nation-sized desert of blasted, inhospitable land that lay over the Broken Peaks, which formed the easternmost wall of Kondorra.
“No way,” Lette found herself saying. “You’re saying you really are responsible?”
“No!” said Firkin. He sounded put out. “I am saying very distinctly that Lawl is responsible.” Then more sheepishly, “I am just responsible for him being responsible.”
“No,” Will said again. He put his head in his hands. “No. Just no. You were my friend. All my childhood, you were my friend. You fought against the dragons with my father. You helped raise me. You were a good man. This is bullshit. This is all bullshit.”
There were tears bright in the corners of Will’s eyes.
Firkin smiled sadly at Will. “I know,” he said softly. “I know.” Then he brightened. “But the truth is,” he grinned, “it was all bullshit, and I was never your friend. So there’s that at least.”
And that was how Lette found herself peeling Will’s fingers off a divinity’s neck.
“Fuck you!” he shouted, though whether he was shouting it at Firkin or at her, Lette wasn’t entirely clear. “Fuck you!”
“I wasn’t done, piss on it!” Firkin snapped. “Touchy little fucker.” But he was still smiling to himself. “Firkin was a construction. A mask.” He grimaced slightly. “That’s not quite it. He was more than that. He was a personality I put on. I was Firkin, for my own sanity. Just only for as long as I needed him to be. And when I was Firkin I didn’t know who I really was.” He reached out a placating hand toward Will. “Firkin really was your friend. That was real. But when we got to Vinter. A lot of things I’d put in place in my mind … contingencies.” He shook his head. “It was hard to come back to myself. But I had to try. I had to try to get my real life back. You understand that, right?”
“But … But …” Will just couldn’t take it. And Lette’s heart went out to Will. It really did. “You practically helped raise me. I mean … Not with any of the important staying-alive parts. Or anything hard. But you were. … You were there. You helped teach me how to smile. How to be angry.
“And I thought … I thought … when you lost your mind to drink, it was like you were dying. It was like pieces of you were dying right in front of my eyes.”
Tears were running straight down his face.
“And then in Kondorra, there were … glimpses … moments. I thought I saw you in there. I thought maybe …” He put his head in his hands.
“Firkin’s really dead now, isn’t he?” he said into his palms.
“Pretty much,” said Barph without missing a beat.
“Fuck.” It was like Will took a blow to the gut, and he took it badly.
“On the flip side,” said Barph, still without any indication that he gave much of a damn, “the good news is that now I’m back to being me, I know how we can defeat these stupid dragons.”
And that, right there, in the middle of every disaster that had befallen them, in the wake of the loss of a world to the dragons, in the wake of everything, that casual claim that now it could be fixed? Really? Fucking seriously?
Lette found it was her turn to lose her cool.
“Oh bullshit!” she yelled. “Fucking bullshit! You show up here, all divine, just as everything goes to shit, and all of a sudden now things can be fixed? Now? Fuck you. Fuck you.”
“I didn’t know before,” said Firkin, or Barph, or whoever in the Hallows he was meant to be. “Before, I wasn’t myself. It was only after you rescued me that I knew what was going on. But I can see it now. And I know the pattern of it. And so I know how to interrupt the pattern.”
He looked apologetic, which as far as Lette was concerned was pretty much a pure admission that some shit was awry.
“Shit is not that convenient,” she said. “It’s not.” She pointed at Will. “I’m with him,” she said. “There’s a mistake in here.”
“The dragons,” Firkin—or Barph—cut in, “are trying to kill me and my brethren. They want to kill the gods. I don’t need a ploy or an angle. This is self-preservation. And not much of the world is left on my side.”
“Your side,” Lette spat. “Who said we’re on your side? I’m on my side, which is the side of not being oppressed by dragons or anybody else.”
She was breathing hard. She tried to get a rein on her temper but it was bucking hard, trying to break free.
“How can someone kill the gods, anyway?” Quirk asked. If Lette could have thought of a reason to shout her down as well, she would have done so. This was not a moment for quiet academic interest.
Firkin opened his mouth.
“Stop!” It was only after Lette said it that she realized she had a knife in each hand. She found that she was pointing them at pretty much everybody. “We’re saying … let me get this straight. We’re saying Firkin is Barph, the god of drunken carousing, the god of anarchy, the trickster god, the god of hedonism. We’re saying that he pretended to be a village drunk and Will’s childhood mentor for five or six decades, and that we just woke him up … and … okay, I can actually believe that. I can get on board with that. I saw what Balur did. But now he has a plan and we’re just going to be like, “Oh great, please tell us more about that”? We’re not questioning anything?”
She looked desperately at Will. She so needed him to be Will at that moment. To be kind, and nice, and reassuring, and sweet, and also angry, and pissed off, and to have a plan.
“I don’t see another option,” he said to her. He looked utterly defeated. He looked exactly like what she didn’t want to see. “I think we have to hear him out at least,” he said.
“Do we?” she said. “Really?”
“Even I am thinking we should at least hear him out,” said Balur. “Even if it is just so I can be having longer to figure out how to try and kill him again.”
Firkin met her eye without hesitation. And he could kill her. Suddenly she knew that very clearly. She had seen that smile before. She had worn it herself. He could kill her, and he knew it, and he knew she knew it too.
But also, he wasn’t killing her. He made sure she saw that too. So in the end she just collapsed. It was easiest just to let her legs go out and slump to the ground.
“Fine then,” she said. “Just fine. Lay it on us. Tell us how to kill the dragons. And at the end I’ll see if I think it’s better to kill them or you.”
Barph smiled. The self-satisfied fucker. “The question,” he said, “is how to kill a god.”
“Be stabbing it very hard,” suggested Balur.
“No,” said Barph.
“Dropping something on it.” Balur tried again.
“No,” said Barph.
“What if it was really big? Like a mountain.”
“No,” said Barph.
“Blowing it up.” Balur was relentless.
“It wasn’t a fucking multiple-choice question,” Barph snapped.
Sometimes, Lette found herself reminded of exactly why she liked to be around the big Analesian.
“Well, it was sounding like a question,” Balur said quietly to himself.
“Rhetoric!” Firkin snapped. And there was an echo of the command that had been in his voice in Vinland. But this seemed to Lette like a less forthright version of Barph than the one that she had glimpsed there. Those had been violent outbursts. Something calmer was in their place now. And was it simply control? Now that Barph had all his faculties, could he be civilized? Or was this calmer face another mask? She wished she knew more about the myths of Barph.
“How do you kill a god?” Quirk asked. Her calm seemed a little forced now.
Barph smiled, settled back. “You we
aken him,” he said.
“How?” the academic pushed.
Barph nodded appreciatively. “I can tell you’re the smart one.” He looked at the others. “Where does a god get his strength?”
There was a long pause. Lette was fucked if she knew.
“Was that being a rhetorical question?” asked Balur. “Because I honestly could not be telling.”
Lette tried not to laugh. She really did.
Quirk and Afrit were looking at each other, as if shocked they didn’t know this. Barph was looking at them. “Something you want to say, Quirk?” he said, but then he shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “You don’t know either, do you? Too much head and not enough heart in you.”
Quirk apparently took offense at that. “That sounds like the way things should be to me. The world could use a little more logic in it.”
Lette enjoyed watching Afrit’s face during that little exchange. She thought Barph probably did too.
Barph turned to smile at Will. “Maybe you have it,” he said. “My old friend.”
Will twisted on the end of that particular blade. It was a cruel thing to say, Lette thought. But she also saw that he did know.
“It’s people, isn’t it,” Will said. He pointed around the group. “It’s us.”
Barph beamed. “Yes, Will,” he said. “It is. It’s you. And Lette. And Balur. And Quirk. And everyone else on this world.”
“You are eating people?” Balur said, sounding confused. “I am not remembering those stories. I am thinking I would be remembering stories that awesome. And would maybe have been going to temples a bit more often.”
“How about,” Lette said, “you shut up for the rest of this conversation?” Her affection for Balur only stretched so far.
Balur snorted indignantly.
“You believe,” said Barph, taking charge of the conversation once more, “in us. In the gods. You believe in our power. In our right to rule. You have faith in us. You”—he licked his lips—“worship us.”
Quirk thought about that. “How would you even measure—”
