Master Aepep had warned him about bloodshed. They might have to work with these people later on, and the death of priests that the others might have loved would do little to foster cooperation. However, he was responsible for his charges, and for getting the man they had come for out of the cathedral, and he was willing to kill every other person in this building if he had to.
The three guards, who had stood there watching the play of magic with open mouths, finally got their wits about them. Within seconds they had all drawn swords and started toward the mages, their eyes a combination of mirrored anger and fear.
Bastet threw a ball of electricity at one of the guards, striking the man with scintillating energy that played over his armor, making him fall to the floor with spasming muscles. Ruhak hit the second soldier with a blast of cold to the body. That man dropped his sword from nerveless fingers and staggered back to the wall, his arms wrapped around himself, attempting to keep from freezing. He slid down the wall, shivering, and while still alive, was obviously now no threat.
The last soldier, the largest, swung his sword back to set up a strike that could take the head off of his target. Marcus pushed his palm forward again, shouting and concentrating all the energy he had left in his body into the center mass of the guard. The man flew off his feet, striking the wall and joining the priest on the floor, still breathing but unconscious.
“Master Tengri,” called out Marcus, staggering away toward the line of cells on one wall. He legs felt almost too weak to support him, and Bastet offered him a shoulder to help hold him up on his way.
“Who are you?” asked a baritone voice from one of the cells, the only one that seemed to be occupied. Marcus recognized the voice, even if it sounded weaker than he had heard before.
“You met us on the ship to lands of the Etruscans, and we saw you come to our aid in the city off the docks.”
“The young wizards,” said Tengri, coming to the bars. “And you have come to rescue me?”
“Of course. We met with the king. We told him about you, and he wants to meet you.”
Tengri closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head and opened them, his ice blue orbs staring at Marcus. “The king is in danger. So is your master. We need to get out of here before they are killed.”
“Let’s get him out of this cell,” Marcus ordered the others in his party. He turned back to the walking god as his subordinates came up to examine the lock. “Is your equipment stored near here? Your weapons and armor?”
“I have no idea,” said Tengri, shaking his head. “That’s not important. I can worry about that later.” The lock clicked and the door swung open on its hinges. “We need to get out into the square, and quickly.”
“Understood,” said Marcus, gathering up his energy for a moment, then turning to his companions. “We’ll go out the way we came in. Everyone stay alert.”
They started back, and Marcus could feel his strength increasing as they got closer to the stream of Earth power they had used before. Tengri appeared to gain strength as well, until the exhausted man they had rescued was again a powerful warrior with a long stride moving him quickly down the corridor.
“I can feel the power,” said Tengri, taking in a great breath as he flexed his arms.
“I didn’t think divine magic users could use nature energy,” said Marcus, looking curiously at the man, then remembering that he was not really such as the priests.
“I am not a priest,” said the man in a voice that echoed through the corridor with its power. “My kind can take in just about any form of energy, though it takes a lot to maintain us in our divine form.”
“You really are a god,” said Marcus in a soft voice. “And you can become one again, if you gain enough power?”
“I really was a god,” responded Tengri. “The sky god of my people, until Erlic killed most of my worshippers, or corrupted them to his worship. And can I become a god again? As far as I know, no god thrown from heaven has ever returned. Some walk the Earth for centuries, others fade after a few years, but all are doomed. Even the gods of the Eldritch people suffered that fate, those who lost all of their worshippers.”
“I thought the Eldritch were all gone,” said Bastet, looking at the big man with wide eyes. “How can any of their gods still exist?”
“Who said they are all gone,” said Tengri with a smile, stopping for a moment to expand his chest again, then blow out a deep breath. “Just because they are nowhere to be found? Some of their gods still exist, and they are angry at humanity for displacing their people. Many of the wars in the heavens are between the pantheons of the humans and the pantheon of the Eldritch. They still fight us, and would depose us, if possible, bringing their worshippers back to prominence on this world.”
Wars in the heavens, thought Marcus in disbelief. That was not something the people were taught, and he had to wonder if even the priests knew anything about it. They must, since they are our conduits to the gods. But it doesn’t seem to worry them.
“And Erlic, my brother, who wishes to become the one god of the humans, would make himself the only defender against the Gods of the Eldritch,” said Tengri through gritted teeth, his jaw muscles clenched. “He will of course fail. No one deity can stand against another pantheon, and humanity is doomed if he wins his war against the other gods.
“And who is this Erlic?” asked Bastet, walking on the other side of Tengri.
“The god of war and death,” said Tengri, shrugging his shoulders. “Though more of death than anything else. His worshippers’ worship death, and use his divine powers to circumvent the normal discontinuity between the living and the dead. To bring horrors to this world, and feed him the soul energy of those who don’t follow him.”
They walked in silence for some minutes, everyone lost in their own thoughts. The corridor was empty, and Marcus refused to believe that no one had been alerted to their presence. Which had to mean there were much more important things going on that was turning the attention away from them. And that didn’t bode well for whomever that attention was directed towards.
* * *
Aepep threw his shield back up at the last moment, deflecting the bolt the patriarch had sent his way with renewed strength. Pallion screamed in frustration and sent another bolt his way, then another, hammering at the shield that was now drawing energy directly from the stream of Earth power that was flowing through the city. The shield was now as strong as anything the priest could throw, and Aepep was sure he could keep it up as long as needed. What he wasn’t sure of was if they could keep the king and his men alive. The time spell could only slow it, not reverse it, and they would reach a point where their frozen bodies would start to die.
Pallion threw his head back and screamed, then started shouting more words in the archaic language to the sky. Clouds rumbled, lightning flared, and a bolt struck down onto one of the other towers. Aepep closed his eyes as the electricity flared, and so didn’t see how the woman appeared on the top of the tower. When he opened his eyes, she was there, in all her unearthly beauty. Hair like burnished copper, pale white skin glowing with divine light, eyes the color of the sky staring into his. She was dressed in shining mail, a spear with a glowing head in her hand, a helm on her head with her red locks flowing from underneath. He knew that if she threw that spear at him it would strike with the force of a lightning bolt, and no shield he erected would be able to protect him.
“You have called on me, my Patriarch,” came a voice that seemed to radiate from the sky above the woman, simultaneously soft as silk and harsh as thunder.
“Mighty Morrigan. I call upon you to smite these blasphemers who stand before you,” said Pallion. “They use forbidden powers to thwart your commands.”
The goddess looked over at her high bishop for a moment, then back down at the archmage. Aepep could feel the inhuman power of her gaze, beyond anything he could muster, or even a score of archmages. And behind that power was a mind of childish simplicity, not really a being as
much as an accumulation of energy. There were memories there, and traits, but no real personality other than what the beliefs of the worshippers instilled in her.
“You dare,” said the voice that penetrated straight to his bones. “You dare to come to a land not your own, to wage war against my representatives on this plane of existence. I will show you war.”
The figure grew as she spoke, until she was towering into the sky, raising her spear into the air, its point aimed at the archmage. He was paralyzed in the face of her power. If he had been in his own land he might have been able to call on one of his own gods to counteract her power. In this land his Gods would not hear him, even if they decided to come to his aid, never a sure thing.
The bolt that shot from the point of the spear was brighter than the sun, slicing through the archmage’s shield as if it didn’t exist. Pain such as he had never imagined wracked his body, and he expected to be turned to ash any second. That would have been a relief, since it would have ended the torment.
Oh no, said a voice in his head. Your torment will not end so quickly. I cannot banish you to the hell of my making, since your soul is marked for another, his afterlife is not mine to interfere with. But I can ensure that you go to the afterlife with the memories of torment that will last you until your rebirth.
Aepep tried to turn his head despite the agony, to see what was happening with his young charges, and with the king and his men. But his muscles were locked, and the pain too much to break through with mental contact to the other mages. So, it comes to this, he thought as the waves of agony continued to tear at him. Failure, after all they had been through to get here. That would be the worst memory he would take into the afterlife. That he had failed his young charges, and had not led them to the safety he had promised them.
* * *
As he walked back into the light of day, as overcast as it was, Tengri blinked at the momentary pain before his eyes adjusted. The square was just ahead, through the alley that they had exited, the one had led to the secret entrance to the cathedral.
“What in all the hells?” blurted the young mage who stood next to him, staring up at the top of the cathedral.
Tengri looked over at the mage, then followed his eyes, his own widening as he saw the deity who stood on one of the cathedral towers, her body expanded to greater than human proportions, the light of the heavens shining from her skin and mail. Her spear was pointed toward the square, where the king, the mages and the royal guardsmen all stood as still as statues.
“Master Aepep,” cried out Marcus. “He, and my brothers and sisters, are under attack.” The young mage started to step in that direction, his body tensed and leaning forward, ready to move into a run.
Tengri grabbed the arm of the mage and pulled him back. “Don’t. You will just add yourself to the victims out in the square.”
“We have to do something.”
“I will do something,” said Tengri, striding forward at a quick walk. If she will listen to reason, he thought, knowing how he might have reacted to what he was about to do when he was a powerful but limited deity. He didn’t hold high hopes for his chances, but he had to do something for the people who had come to rescue him.
“Morrigan,” he yelled at the top of his lungs, looking upward at the goddess. “You must listen to me.”
“I must?” roared the voice of the goddess, her baleful eyes turning his way and freezing him in place. “You?” she said next in a low voice that still carried through the square. “How did you get here? How dare you intrude upon my domain? Aren’t the steppes enough for you?”
“I will tell you,” he whispered, all he could manage. He wasn’t sure if she would give him a chance to say what needed to be said. From the glare of her eyes he was almost sure that she wouldn’t, that all this would be wasted, and that his brother would win in the end.
“You must not pay him any heed,” shouted Pallion from the other tower, looking down on the square.
“I must not?” shouted the goddess, turning her gaze upon the patriarch of her church. “Who are you, mortal, to tell me what I must not do?”
Pallion dropped to his knees under the force of her gaze, and immediately the king and his guardsmen staggered out of their frozen state, all taking deep breaths into oxygen starved lungs. All appeared confused for a moment, but that confusion turned to fear as they realized in whose presence they now stood, and they all dropped to their knees, averting their eyes. All except for the king, who stood and stared at the goddess.
“King Rory,” called out the voice of the goddess. “You have disrespected me in the past. I should smite you and send you to the lowest of the hells reserved for those who displease me.”
Rory looked up, no fear in his eyes as he glared at the goddess.
“There is reason for your anger. That I understand, and I therefore take pity on you. You have been a great leader, with love for my people, and because of that you have my forgiveness. And know you that your beloved wife resides in paradise, awaiting her rebirth to this world.”
The tears started flowing from Rory’s eyes, and Tengri knew that the man had lost the core of his anger against his goddess. And then he had no time for other thoughts as the goddess turned her eyes on him once again.
“And you,” she growled, pointing her spear at Tengri. “What are you doing here? And, what happened to you?”
“My brother, Erlic, destroyed my church, killed most of my worshippers, and deprived me of my power. I fell from the heavens, to find myself on Earth, and now am but a wanderer.”
“And you came here for?”
“Help. I have need of a king, of a people, to stop my brother and his people.”
“And you thought you could come here and lure my people into a war half way around the world. What gives you the right?”
“They will be coming here, Morrigan,” explained Tengri, regaining the power of his voice. “If you would look what is going on in the rest of the planet, you would see that the entire world, and all the gods, are at risk of losing their power. Erlic is determined to be the only god on this world, and he knows the only way to do it is to kill the worshipers of all the other deities.”
Morrigan nodded her head, then disappeared, leaving everyone in the square unsure of what was going on. Tengri was sure she would now be looking over the world with her divine sight, seeing if what he had said was true. The gods had the power to see much of the world, that which wasn’t purposefully hidden by the other gods, or the powers of magic. But most did not waste the time or energy to look at much more than their own region, their source of power, all they concerned themselves with.
Pallion was back on his feet, glaring at the king and his men. He raised his hands to the sky and started to shout a spell, taking advantage of the goddess’ absence to again trap his enemies like flies in amber. He shouted the final word and gestured with his hands. Confusion spread across his face as nothing happened.
“Your goddess no longer favors you,” shouted Tengri with a laugh, looking up at the priest.
“You lie,” screamed the patriarch, glaring down at the walking god. “You..”
“Told the truth,” called out a voice from above, just before Morrigan rematerialized on the mortal plane of existence, this time on the steps in front of the cathedral, now the stature of a normal woman. The power of the divine still radiated from her perfect form, her beauty was such that it both enraptured and terrified all who looked upon her.
“Erlic leads a crusade against the rest of the world, as you said. His power has already grown to the point where the power of myself and my siblings can no longer stand against it. Not without the help of the other pantheons.”
“Then what are you going to do?” said Tengri, the only one in the square able to look directly at the goddess.
“I know not,” said Morrigan, shaking her head. “And why did you come here?”
“To enlist the aid of this fighting king and his army. And the aid of these mages, a
nd whatever other magic I can muster.”
“And will that be enough?”
“With strategy and forethought, and the courage of mortal man, with the backing of the gods,” said Tengri, bowing to Morrigan.
“My Goddess,” yelled Pallion, his eyes wide, forth flying from his lips. “You cannot listen to this demon in man’s form. We must not allow these people unworthy of power to exist among us.”
Morrigan turned and pointed her spear at the patriarch, and with an echoing scream he disappeared. The goddess looked back at the king.
“What happened to him?” asked Rory, eyes wide.
“I have sent him to his, reward,” said the Goddess with a cold smile. “Along with all of his church who plotted against you.”
With a wave of her hand Father Trevor appeared in front of the goddess, dropping to his knees and averting his eyes.
“Rise, Patriarch Trevor. Your wisdom and humility serve you well, and will serve me as well.”
Trevor looked up at the goddess, who smiled down at him. She then turned her attention back to the king.
“King Rory, the ruler of my people, I have a task for you. You are to organize your army and take the fight to these Turkish nomads and their god of death. Lord Tengri here shall be your advisor, and you will marshal all the resources of military and magical might that are available. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my Goddess,” agreed the king, nodding his head. “But, it will take time to organize a force.”
“Then take what time you need. Do not move while ill prepared. My people, my worshippers are in your charge, and they are your responsibility.”
She looked back at Tengri and pointed her spear at the demigod. Tengri felt a sudden thrill of fear, unsure what the goddess was going to do. The gentle light that came from the end of the spear touched him, washed over him, and he felt the surge of energy infuse his body.
The Chronicles of the Eirish: Book 1: The Lich's Horde Page 12
