The Dawn of a Desperate War (The Godlanders War)

by Aaron Pogue

Corin leaned back, relaxing a little, and nodded. “What will the druids do?”

  “If I have my way, they’ll do precisely what you have suggested. Fortifying some stronghold in the Wildlands seems as good a plan as any I have heard.”

  “Then I will need your help,” Corin said. “We must choose a fitting spot and move Auric and Sera there. And you must find me Ben Strunk. And Jacob, the innkeeper. I need to speak with him.”

  “Why do you need them?”

  “Some secrets I must keep close,” Corin said.

  “If I knew the significance of your assets, I could better help you manage them.”

  Corin considered the druid for a moment. Then he sighed. “They’ve accepted you back into the Council, then?”

  He cocked his head. “How’d you know?”

  “You’re already talking like them. The honest truth is that Ben is my friend, and I entangled him in all of this. He’s not an asset, but Jessamine will see him the same way you do. I want you to find him just so I can know he’s safe.”

  Corin felt a touch of remorse at the shame that reddened the druid’s cheeks. But just a touch. Ben would not expect any honest sentiment from the pirate, no matter how close their friendship. They were not that sort of men.

  More importantly, Corin could ill afford to let the Council discover that he’d lost the sword. Whatever ploy he had to use to prevent that, it was worth the cost.

  So he sat patiently through Jeff’s apologies. Then, dismissing them with a gracious word, he changed the subject. “And of my other request?”

  “Which was?”

  “The princess and the farmboy,” Corin said. “I want to see them hidden somewhere safe within the Wildlands.”

  “Preposterous as the concept is,” Jeff said, “it’s something I can offer. What else do you need?”

  Corin blinked. “That’s it? No arguing? No wheedling? You’ll make that happen?”

  “Without delay!” Jeff said. “If you have a horse that can make the journey, I’ll take you there tonight.”

  “And the others?”

  Jeff grinned. “They’re already waiting. I’ll send word ahead for the princess to set an extra place for breakfast. She’s a surprisingly good cook.”

  While Jeff was settling his tab with the new innkeeper, Corin slipped out to the stable, donning the glamour of one of the men he’d seen inside, before he stepped out into the night.

  In the end, the effort wasn’t necessary. The stable hands seemed to have been as caught up in the fear as everyone else, so only one remained on duty. That one was snoring softly in the hay, wrapped protectively around an empty bottle.

  Corin left him sleeping, saddled a horse, and led it off into the shadows while he waited for Jeff. The druid came along soon after, and shortly the two men were riding west along the same cart path that passed the burned-out farmhouse.

  Corin couldn’t help looking in that direction as he rode past. “I came by the farmhouse first,” Corin said, his voice raw and thin. “I didn’t know what had happened. I thought—”

  His throat closed up, his collarbone aching, and Corin tried to shake it off. The very memory of that dread overwhelmed him.

  Beside him, the druid tsked. “You’ve my apologies for that. No, no harm befell those two. After you raised such a ruckus in the village square, Auric brought me your instructions, and we saw them off to safety right away.”

  “Then what . . . what happened to the house?”

  “We did that. In case Jessamine followed the trail back to here. Stirred up some locals and convinced them to put the place to the torch. They’re not really violent folks, and I don’t think it sits well with them, what they did. But it certainly convinced Jessamine that the farmboy you had visited is well and truly gone. And this way she could find no evidence that the family here was in any way related to the missing princess.”

  “Clever,” Corin said dully. It was clever. It was precisely the kind of plan he liked. But at that moment, the thought of them torching Auric and Sera’s home—however temporary that home had been—lay on his chest almost as heavily as his fear for the people themselves.

  He remembered how he’d felt that morning when he woke up in their cabin. The memory of home had hit him like a crushing wave, and the grief of losing that, and now he felt some echo of that loss on the princess’s behalf.

  “Gods’ blood,” he muttered. “I need to see this matter settled so I can breathe again.”

  He hadn’t meant much by the comment, but Jeff fell into a contemplative silence for a while. Then, without looking Corin’s way, the druid said, “It won’t work.”

  Corin looked up sharply. “What?”

  “Killing Ephitel. It won’t solve your problem.”

  Corin snorted. “It’ll certainly help.”

  “I was a doctor in another life. That’s not the same as a counselor, but sometimes I had to fill that role. And this is something I have seen before. You need to grieve, Corin. You need to say good-bye. That’s the only way you’ll ever be able to breathe easy again.”

  “Stormy seas, they’ve got you good and deep,” Corin said.

  “This is not the Council talking.”

  “There was a time when you were the only person in the world encouraging me to do what needed doing.”

  “And I still do,” Jeff insisted. “If avenging Aemilia is the only reason you have to kill Ephitel, then cling to that reason. It’s the end I care about, not the means.”

  “Then what—”

  “I just want you to understand,” Jeff said. “It might improve the world to make him dead, but it won’t fix what’s broken inside you. There’s not enough hatred in the world to take the place of missing love. Got it?”

  “I . . .” Corin couldn’t find any words. Pain and anger burned like twin forgefires in his breast. He wanted to lash out at the druid, but he could find neither the strength nor the words.

  Jeff nodded with an infuriating understanding. “I told you, I’ve seen this before. Hell, I’ve lived it more than once. I know what I’m talking about.”

  Corin forced the emotions back. He buried anew the pain of his loss, crushing the sharp-edged memory, until at last he could speak.

  “It’s all I’ve got.” His words were thin and parched, as though he hadn’t tasted water in days. “Hate’s enough to do the job.”

  “And afterward?” Jeff asked.

  Corin rode in silence for a while, feeding the last vestiges of his pain into the inferno of his rage. It boiled hot and wild down in his belly, but when he spoke now, his voice carried an eerie calm.

  “Afterward,” he said, “belongs to you. Let the druids fix the world. I only do the breaking.”

  They rode in silence after that. Corin’s body ached from hard days in the saddle. He felt bone weary too, despite the week he’d spent in bed. He followed blindly when the druid led him off the cart path and into a fallow field. They pressed through tall grass for a while, with forest to the left and right, and mountains up ahead. Southwest, then, toward the Dividing Line. Jeff pushed the horses hard, and Corin was glad of it. He was ready to be done with this journey, ready to start the next step. Ready to face Jessamine and right that wrong, at least. Or fall to her and join Aemilia in death.

  The druid rode straight for the Dividing Line. Farther north, the forest grew right up to its edge, but here there was only open, rolling plains. This land would have been prize farmland anywhere else in Raentz, but no one wanted to live so close to the Wildlands. For miles, there was only wild grassland.

  Corin looked back over his shoulder. The sun was rising, red and angry, staining the whole horizon pink. How far had they come?

  He turned forward again, and shied his horse away from the edge. From his vantage on the horse’s back, Corin caught a glimpse thirty paces down to the Spinola lowlands.

  The Dividing Line made the border between Raentz and ancient Spinola—better known as the Wildlands, and rightly so. The Dividing Line was said t
o be the edge of the gods’ domain. It was a sheer cliff, some thirty paces high, that ran straight as a knife’s edge from the Endless Ocean to the Medgerrad Sea.

  Sheer everywhere except at Reconciliation. Such was the poetic name of the half-mile stretch where a gentle slope interrupted the Dividing Line. To north and south, the cliffs made a lethal fall, but at Reconciliation, a child could stroll across the border between civilization and wilderness.

  It was said that in the ancient days, when Spinola boasted law and prosperity and bustling cities, that the grandest and most prosperous had been right here at Reconciliation. It certainly had been one of the most important markets in all Hurope.

  Now no remnant of that place remained. Corin hadn’t entirely believed in the slope, either, but he saw it now before him—wide and green and gentle. Even the lowland plains beyond looked safe and inviting, but Corin knew better. He’d spent a day ashore in Spinola, when he’d first met Auric, and the things he’d heard in those few hours had been enough to convince him he never wanted to come back.

  But now, despite himself, he heeled his horse forward beside the druid’s. They rode down Reconciliation like some grand boulevard, and at the bottom Jeff continued on straight as an arrow toward the heartland.

  Corin frowned at the distant mountains, considering, before turning to the druid. “Why are they already here?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I told you why I thought we needed to come here. I pled my case. But you were one step ahead of me. Why? Had you already reached the same conclusion?”

  Jeff showed Corin a sardonic smile. “I only wish the Council thought the way you do. No. But you were right believing these two weren’t safe anywhere within the Godlands.”

  “Why?” Corin asked again. “Is it true the gods’ dominion doesn’t reach this far?”

  “Yes and no,” Jeff said, choosing his words with care. “Obviously, they don’t try to control this territory, same as Jepta and the Black Forest and the Isle of Mists.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s . . . fuzzy to them.”

  “Fuzzy?”

  The druid shrugged. “I don’t know. Oberon understood it. The elves tend to feel the world around them—not just through their senses, but through their instincts. They know how reality ought to be, and that gives them their ability to shape it.”

  Corin nodded, remembering. “Avery showed discomfort around Jessamine. He said she made him itch, that all justicars made him itch because of the way they twisted reality.”

  “Fascinating,” Jeff said. “He is probably more sensitive than most, but that’s the heart of it. But Oberon wanted to make this world a balance between Faerie and Yesterworld, so he built balances into it. He inscribed an enormous circle on the face of the world—”

  “The Godlands,” Corin said, imagining the boundaries Jeff had just described.

  “That’s how they gained their name,” Jeff said. “Within the circle, the ancient elves have full access to their . . . whatever it is that makes them elves. I don’t know. I was never a specialist in their kind.”

  “And outside the circle?”

  “Outside the circle, they’re half blind. Outside the circle belongs to the sons and daughters. It’s a preserve for humanity. A sanctuary from the elves.”

  Corin laughed dismissively. “The Wildlands is a sanctuary? The Endless Desert? The Black Forest? These are dying grounds!”

  Jeff sighed. “Ephitel has had a thousand years to make them so. He never shared in Oberon’s vision. Who do you think brought the monsters out of Faerie to populate those lands?”

  “That is the work of Ephitel?”

  “Yep. He started it even before he displaced Oberon. After the war with the infidels, he proclaimed Spinola a vulnerability, positioned as it was. So he brought in the manticores to secure our borders.”

  “Gods’ blood!”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Corin considered this and shook his head. “But you still haven’t told me why you brought them here.”

  “It was Auric’s idea, really. He’d heard all the same legends you have, and he’d spent some time here, as you mentioned. When he heard us worrying over a place to keep them safe from Jessamine, he suggested here.”

  Corin shook his head. “Poor fellow. That was months ago.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t boasting. They seem as safe as kittens.”

  “But living like that? With his princess? I’ll admit she seemed satisfied to play some Raentzian farmwife, but roughing it out here in the wild? A princess?”

  Not quite concealing his smile, Jeff looked sideways at Corin. “I think she’s happy enough as long as she’s with him.”

  “She won’t be happy to see me, though,” Corin said.

  “No. No, she won’t.”

  “Did you send word ahead for breakfast?”

  Jeff nodded. Corin didn’t ask him how he could have done so. Aemilia had once tried to explain the use of the arcane tablets they all carried, but she’d lost him halfway through.

  “And . . . did you tell her who was coming?”

  Jeff’s grin broke free at that. “What, and risk her poisoning you before you get your shot at Ephitel? Never.”

  Corin breathed a little easier. He’d not expected poison—though she was a Vestossi—but the thought of missing breakfast seemed barely half a step below assassination.

  His stomach rumbled, and Corin groaned. “How far is this hiding place?”

  “The permanent camp is still three days’ ride,” Jeff said, raising his hand to forestall Corin’s curses. “But breakfast is just beyond the next hill. There’s a little gully, and a welcoming party waiting there.”

  Corin frowned, considering those distances. “How could they have come so quickly to meet us? Were you expecting me?”

  “Not really. Actually, they’re on their way back. We sometimes make trips up into Raentz for food and supplies. I sometimes stay behind to listen for rumors, see what pops up.”

  “Ah,” Corin said. “And this time it was me.”

  “You’re quite the rumor.”

  “You aren’t wrong,” Corin said, “and she’ll be coming for me. There will be no more trips up into Raentz. Certainly not for those two.”

  “They’ve always traveled beneath a glamour.”

  “I can see through glamours,” Corin said. “Can a justicar?”

  Jeff scrubbed a hand through his hair, nervous. “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Then we’ll assume she can.”

  “Of course.”

  “Are there others? That boy draws followers like a horse draws flies. We could send someone else in his place.”

  “I’m sure we could find someone,” Jeff said, his expression suddenly unreadable.

  Corin considered digging for an explanation, but his stomach growled again as he caught the scent of roasting pheasant on the air. He rose in his stirrups and narrowed his eyes to peer toward the ridge of the hill.

  “Just beyond this hill?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Good,” Corin said. “I’m starving.” He kicked his horse into a gallop up the gentle hillside, and as he topped the ridge, he caught sight of the camp in the gully down below.

  He understood Jeff’s comment, then. Dozens of people scurried here and there throughout the camp. One or two had the look of druids about them, and Corin quickly picked out Auric and the princess, but the rest all looked like common folk: Raentzian by their dress, farmers by their complexions.

  Jeff caught up with Corin while he stood staring down at all the people.

  “What is this?” Corin asked. “Who are these others?”

  “Refugees. I told you there were quite a few who wanted to leave a town Jessamine had visited twice.”

  “These did not all come from that sleepy village.”

  Jeff glanced his way, then nodded admiringly. “Perceptive. No. No, most of those moved to the ruins months ago. These are their distant friends or family or other
s who heard about a place of refuge and came looking.”

  “There are rumors about this place?” Corin asked, horrified. “And you let them come?”

  “He lets them come,” Jeff answered, and Corin understood with no more explanation. Auric wouldn’t turn away a refugee. Not for anything. And he had a way of winning arguments.

  Corin sighed. “This will be trouble.”

  “I’ve been saying that for weeks.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Hundreds,” Jeff said. “We’ve built a refuge in the Wildlands. Civilization has returned to Spinola.”

  “Fortune favor,” Corin said; then his stomach rumbled again. “But breakfast first.”

  Corin spoke a word of caution to the druid as they descended on the camp. Then he dressed himself in the glamour of a young pirate he had met back in Rauchel. It was disguise enough to stop rumors among these refugees and to forestall Princess Sera’s wrath, for a while at least.

  He found a hearty breakfast, with buttered rolls and roasted pheasant and sweet red beets. All he’d had since leaving Aerome had been one loaf of bread and four sad apples, so he went back for a second helping and a third, and the woman tending to the food seemed all too happy to comply.

  As he was finishing his third plate, she came to settle down beside him, groaning in a friendly way as she rested her feet after the morning’s work. “Not too bad, huh?” she asked in Raentzian.

  Corin knew enough of the language to carry on a conversation, if clumsily. Most pirates could do the same in any of the languages along the Medgerrad, but Raentzian and Ithalian were the most important.

  This time Corin did his best and hoped the glamour would make up some of the difference. “Best food I’ve had in days. Seems like the only.”

  She nodded, sympathetic, and though she didn’t mention it, she clearly noticed he was not a native speaker of her language. She ducked her head for a better look at his face. “You one of them Nimble Fingers?”

  He started, but she laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Oh, no need to fret. My husband ran the tavern out of Loison. He was one of the first.”

  Something in her tone—a blend of grief and sympathy and deep, abiding hatred—made it entirely clear what she meant.