Gods old and dark

by Holly Lisle

  And then he hurried away from her, aware suddenly that his tracks across the ground and the thick grass pressed too deep, and that his veyâr seeming was beginning to take on the pebbled skin texture of his rrôn true-self.

  He stilled his mind, sought calm, and prayed to the Egg that he would be out of view of her mind before he had to release his body from this tiny veyâr cage.

  CHAPTER 4

  Tinhaol, Oria

  MOLLY STOOD WATCHING the place where the stranger had been long after he moved beyond her sight. The feeling that she knew him only grew stronger. She knew his eyes, she knew his voice, she knew the cadence of his speech, she knew the rhythm and shape of his mind.

  He had not offered his own name, any more than she had offered hers, but had they exchanged names, she had no doubt that the names given would have both been equally false. The stranger was not who he claimed to be.

  She studied this growing conviction of hers curiously.

  Hmmmm. She drew her shields around herself again, making herself unnoticeable to anyone or anything passing by, and turned and walked slowly back up the Fael Faen Warrior Peak, thinking. By the time she'd reached the top, nothing useful had suggested itself, so she closed her eyes and let the sun beat down on her, and slowly erased everything about the stranger that she did not recognize. His face and body—gone. The language he spoke—gone. His claimed history, his interest in antiquities, his remarks about past illness—gone.

  With her eyes still closed, she studied what remained. Eyes of deep, unblinking amber, eyes that sent a tiny shiver down her spine. Thoughts that moved slowly, deliberately, with force and focus, not as a stream ran over pebbles but as a river ran between deep, well-cut banks. The sense of kinship, of being kindred spirits. The darkness.

  In the distance, Molly's ears caught a sound out of place. For a moment, she couldn't identify it; from so far away, at first all she could catch was the rhythm. Then, however, that rhythm, the eyes, the voice, the thoughts, the bond of empathy all clicked, and Molly's skin went goose bumped all over, and she become violently sick. She flung herself forward on hands and knees and threw up in the tall grass until her muscles ached.

  What she'd heard had been a rrôn flying away. The man she'd walked with had been no man at all, but a rrôn disguised in veyâr form. And the feeling of déjà vu—that had been because the rrôn had been Baanraak, who had already killed her more than once. Who intended to kill her again and again, while he claimed her and possessed her and made her into a monster like himself.

  She had walked with him. She had touched him. She had let herself like him, and had been so lulled by his form and the layer of thoughts he floated across the surface of his mind that she had actually planned to return to this place to meet with him again. To walk with him again. To see if perhaps the two of them might become friends, if such a thing as she could have friends. He could have killed her at any time, but instead he'd used their meeting to…what? Gather information? Set up some different approach? Amuse himself by getting past her defenses?

  It didn't matter.

  He'd proved that he could get close to her, that he could step inside her defenses, lure her into false security. If he could do it once, he could do it again. And the next time, she might be with Lauren and Jake. The next time could cost them everything.

  She had to destroy him—she had to hunt him down, kill him, gather up his resurrection ring or rings, make sure she removed him from existence not just once but for all time. Baanraak had to die.

  Cat Creek, North Carolina

  In the kitchen, still in his travois, Jake sat up and pushed the dark blue sun canopy out of his way. Rubbing his eyes, he said, "Mama, is it time to get up?"

  Lauren leaned down and stroked his forehead. "Not now, sweetheart. We'll talk quieter. Hush. Roll over and go back to sleep."

  He nodded, not worried, and snuggled back into the sleeping bag on the travois, and went back to sleep.

  "Maybe we should talk a little softer," Lauren said, watching him sleep. Round-cheeked, trusting, but less the baby than he had been, he looked more like his father every day.

  Pete said, "We could turn out the lights down here and light a candle."

  Heyr sat back from the table a bit, working his way through the second bottle of Pete's smuggled, prized Wychwood beer—this time Hobgoblin Strong Ale, though the last time Lauren had noticed, Pete had in a case of Hare-raiser. She couldn't help but see Pete counting the stranger's swallows.

  "It's all well and good to say you're a Sentinel from out of town, Heyr," Lauren said, "but if that's the case, why didn't we have some warning that you were coming? And what did you do that crashed all the gates in town?"

  Pete added, "And what interest do the West Sweden Sentinels have in the business of the Cat Creek Sentinels?"

  "I'm more from Siren," Heyr said. He took a long draw on the second beer, draining it to the dregs. "Fine stuff," he said. "Has a bit of hair on it. Have another?"

  "No," Pete said, though Lauren knew that not to be true.

  "Ah, well. Better than the local horse-piss by a long shot." Heyr sat forward. He seemed too big for the room—too big for the house, or for anything with walls. His hair was so red she could have thought he dyed it, except he didn't seem the type to resort to such vanity. He kept his beard neatly trimmed, his skin was browned by the sun, and his eyes were that October-sky blue that showed up in tinted contact lenses and not in real eyes. But he didn't seem the type for contacts, either. The black T-shirt draped across a set of muscles that were just…damn. They were lovely. He wasn't wearing tight clothes to show off that body. He was wearing loose, practical clothes to work in, and still had his tool belt hanging around his hips with his hammer in the hammer loop, and a pair of worn work gloves tucked beneath the belt. And, a little grubby, a little sweaty, he was still so damnably attractive Lauren felt shivers down her spine.

  He said, "I came down here because the lot of us up there got hit by a flow of fresh magic. Healthy stuff—upflow from the downworlds. You know there hasn't been any of that on our world since Kerras fell and the Night Watch focused their top-level operations here."

  Lauren nodded, nervous. The fact that Sentinels were picking up the magic already could prove to be a problem for her. The fact that one of them had tracked it all the way back to her was certainly a problem; it meant she and Molly hadn't done nearly as good a job of covering their tracks as they'd thought.

  But those weren't the only problems she was looking at right at that moment.

  Heyr's presence tingled all up and down her nerves, and the sensation was getting stronger the longer the two of them were in the room together. He was like…she couldn't think of a good human analogy, dammit. But looking at him, she felt like a cat with catnip, and that wasn't good. Further, it didn't make sense.

  She cleared her throat and focused on her most pressing problem. "Pushing the live magic in from downworld isn't precisely an official project," she said.

  Heyr looked straight into her eyes and said, "I didn't think it was. The Sentinels have a habit of dragging their feet when presented with possibilities. They like to do risk analysis. They like to talk themselves out of things."

  Pete laughed, and for just a second Lauren could see him liking Heyr in spite of his first inclinations.

  Heyr chuckled, and at the same instant that he did, thunder rumbled nearby. The coincidence of timing unnerved her a little. "So…how unofficial are you with this…initiative?" he asked.

  "We're it," Lauren said, waving a hand to include Pete. "Him, me, and my sister, who is officially dead, and who stays downworld on Oria."

  Heyr looked impressed. "You two must be really good if you've managed to fake a death well enough to fool Sentinels. I've seen it tried before, by people who wanted out. The Sentinels don't usually miss a trick."

  "Probably helped that Molly was really dead when they buried her," Pete said.

  Heyr sat there for a long moment while an uncomfort
able silence grew in the room. He looked from Pete to Lauren, back to Pete, back to Lauren. Lauren could see the red hairs on his muscled forearms standing up, and goose bumps rising. "She was dead when they buried her. But. She isn't. Now."

  Pete said, "She's what the veyâr call a Vodi. Half-human, half-veyâr. They kidnapped her into Oria, gave her a gold necklace, and when she got killed, the necklace brought her back to life."

  Heyr stood, all the color drained out of his face. "No, it didn't," he said. "All hells, man, you've been keeping this a secret, communing with one of those things?" He turned away from them, and Lauren was more aware than she wanted to be of the muscles bunching in his back, of the way his fists clenched and unclenched.

  "Your sister is gone," he said, turning back to face Lauren. "That thing that looks like her is a soulless monster. Deadly. The gold she wears may be preserving enough of her that you think you know her. But you don't. They turn on the people who trust them. Sooner or later, everything you know about her is going to wash away, and you're going to find yourself looking into the eyes of someone you love who is in the process of killing you. Or your little boy. Or…" He put his hands on the table and stared down at her and at Pete.

  "You need to kill the thing, and once you kill it, you need to destroy the gold ring that brings it back. The veyâr…Odin's eye on all of them, that they see their madness before it's too late. They always were willing to meddle and tinker with toys that they should have destroyed." He stood straight, thinking. "I'll help you kill her," he said.

  "No you won't." Now Lauren stood. "I know what Molly is, and as she is now, I don't trust her. I watch her all the time. But I have it on the highest authority that she has a chance to create a soul for this new body of hers. That she has a chance to matter, to come in on the side of good. She's fighting beside me to bring life back to Earth. I bring life back to the worlds, she hunts and destroys the Night Watch."

  "She is the Night Watch," Heyr growled, and on the travois beside Lauren, Jake stirred. Heyr noticed and lowered his voice. "She just doesn't know it yet."

  Lauren gave him a hard, cold look, and said, "I know how badly this could go. I also know how well it could turn out."

  "You do, do you? Who was your higher authority? Some wishful veyâr who told you the dead things sometimes grow souls?"

  Lauren watched him, not saying anything.

  Heyr caught some whiff of her confidence—her certainty—and he paused. "Highest authority. Head of the Sentinels?"

  She said nothing.

  "Some meddling old god thinking about trying the metal magics himself, in spite of years of bad experiences with that kind of immortality?"

  She shook her head.

  "Beyond the old gods, there is no higher authority. Unless you're talking about the one who made the Tree, but he doesn't give direct answers."

  "He does if you go to him," Lauren said.

  "You'd have to travel Gjoll—the River of Souls—to get to him. And once there, you couldn't have left. Not even the gods leave He——…that place."

  "You might be surprised."

  Heyr digested that implication with a long silence, never taking his eyes off her. "I am…and yet, seeing you…less so than I would have expected." He fell silent again, looking at her thoughtfully, and stood with his thumbs hooked into his work belt for a moment.

  "I want you to understand this: Molly fights for us. There are less of the Night Watch today than there were yesterday because she is on our side. Without her, I cannot do what I must do."

  "If you declare her your equal, then she is your equal. Nevertheless, if you're in company with one of the dead things, the Night Watch will use her to watch you. You'll be the next best thing to an open book for them. I have something in my truck that will help you."

  He turned and walked out of the kitchen, and until they heard the front door open, then close quietly, neither Lauren nor Pete said anything.

  As soon as the door shut, however, Pete stood up. "Eric is going to have to know about this guy," he said. "I'll tell him he needs to call a meeting tomorrow. Today. I hate late nights—I can't keep track of what day it is. I don't believe for a second that he's here with Sentinel permission."

  "You think he's…working independently. Like us?"

  "At the very least," Pete told her.

  They heard the front door open again, and Lauren put her hand on the dagger at her waist. Heyr might be coming in, or something that had surprised Heyr out by his truck. Lauren preferred to assume the worst.

  "It's just me," Heyr called. He walked to the back of the house and filled the kitchen doorway as he came through it. "Take this," he said, and handed Lauren a large knife in a sheath.

  "Got one already," she said, not accepting the blade. Instead, she patted the pommel of the veyâr dagger.

  "No, you don't. Not like this one, anyway. This is of upworlder make."

  Lauren, still not inclined to accept a gift from this unsettling man, shook her head. "I'll keep the one I have."

  Heyr sighed. "You've heard the stories about old heroes and their magic swords and magic cups and flasks that filled themselves, haven't you?"

  "Of course."

  "The stories are, for the most part, true." He shook his head, and for a moment those fierce blue eyes were focused on something far away. Another time, another place. "The named weapons are almost all gone from Earth, moved downworld yet again, where the heroes who wield them hope to do some good. But there are other weapons, unnamed ones—"

  "Rather like unregistered guns," Pete said, and Heyr frowned at him.

  "A bit like that, I suppose. Weapons whose past has not been glorious enough to earn them a name and a pedigree, or weapons whose past has been lost in time. Or, like this blade, weapons that are small and unobtrusive, not meant to draw attention to themselves. This blade was created on this world by one of the old gods."

  "If you tell me it glows blue when orcs are near, so help me God, I'll go get the poker from beside the fireplace and bash your head in with it," Lauren said.

  "No glowing. No singing. Nothing so…showy. This blade will guide your hand to danger, even in the darkness, even when you are not watching. And when you wield it, it will give your blows strength."

  "Why aren't you using it?"

  "I have other tools and weapons. I…found this one, and carried it with me. I have not bound it to me; it has no owner, and at the moment no specific loyalty. But my belly told me I should someday have use for such an ownerless weapon, and clearly this is what I have been waiting for."

  "I drive a twelve-year-old Dodge Caravan," Lauren said, taking the knife and removing it from its sheath. It was a pretty thing—silvered handle with a comfortable, hand-formed grip, double-edged blade, strong crosspiece. In her hand, it felt…at home, actually. As if it had been made just for her. "I'm a widow with a three-year-old kid." She tested the balance of it, and drew a couple of lines in the air. "I shouldn't have a magic blade."

  "You hide behind the ordinary," Heyr said, his voice strangely intimate, "but you have never been ordinary."

  She looked into his eyes, and her heart raced and her mouth went dry and in her belly, everything tightened, aching. Holy hell, how did he do that?

  Heyr looked into her eyes and the world became a tunnel between the two of them, with nothing outside of it. "You bind it to yourself by giving it a name and a taste of your blood," Heyr told her.

  Pete, looking from the knife to Lauren to Heyr, said, "That sounds like a nasty little ritual."

  Heyr shook his head, and thank all the gods he looked away from her, because Lauren wasn't sure she could have looked away from him. "It's a…courtesy," Heyr said to Pete. "And an introduction. It's not just a knife." He turned back to Lauren. "Be sure to remember that. Give it a unique name. Something short, something strong and good that you'll remember in tight places and times of need. You'll soon grow to know it well enough, but the first time—well, the first time your objective is to surviv
e to the second time."

  Lauren nodded. Curious or compelled—she would never after know which—she touched the point of one finger to the tip of the blade. It was the lightest of touches, but the point cut her finger nonetheless, and for just an instant her blood stained the blade's tip. Then the blood vanished, and the cut at the tip of her finger healed.

  Heyr nodded. "It knows you, now. It will never again cut you. It cannot be used against you, and even in the hand of an enemy will fight in your defense, and the defense of those you consciously guard. Until you die or destroy it, it will be your blade."

  Lauren could feel the truth of that, actually. In her blood and bones, she could feel the presence of the blade as if it were a warrior standing beside her, guarding her. She thought of heroes in movies and books, and tried to think of a name worthy of the hero-spirit that she felt. Nothing, no one, seemed to do it justice.