The Warriors of the Gods

by Jacob Peppers

  “That’s as may be,” Larin said, “but I wouldn’t worry about it none, lad. I’ll be gone long before they get here.”

  Alesh wanted to ask the man what “gone” meant, but his courage failed him, and he didn’t think he needed to in any case. He felt all too sure he already knew. “Thank you, Larin. For everything.”

  The Chosen smiled then, the most genuine expression he’d ever seen on the man’s stony face. “You’re welcome. And do me a favor, Alesh. Be better than me, be an example to others. I never had the knack myself. Sure, the world might be a shitty place, but it doesn’t have to be. I think—and this might seem funny, comin’ from me—but I think people are mostly good. They just forget it sometimes. They just need someone to remind them. You need to be that someone for them.”

  “What if I can’t?” Alesh asked, his voice little more than a whisper.

  “You can, lad. I believe in you. Shit, look at what you managed with me,” he said, glancing down at his bloody form and giving a laugh that quickly turned into a cough.

  Still, Alesh understood what Larin meant, with what feeling the words had been spoken, and he started toward the door, not trusting himself to speak. He paused at the doorway, glancing back at the old giant propped against the cellar wall. “What should I tell the others?”

  Larin smiled, but when he spoke this time it seemed to take all his energy to get the words out. “You just tell ‘em not to worry about old Larin. I’ll be along directly.”

  ***

  She was waiting for him in the church proper. If, that was, it could even be called a church anymore. Certainly no services to praise Amedan—or, more likely, Shira—would be held here, not anytime soon. Several of the pews had been overturned, and the bodies of robed men were scattered among them, broken and battered like dolls cast away by their owners. None of the robed men moved, didn’t so much as whimper or mewl in pain. Larin might not have been subtle, but no one could say the man wasn’t thorough.

  Katherine watched him, a question in her eyes, one she didn’t need to voice, for Alesh knew it well enough. He pretended not to see it there, not yet ready to speak about the Chosen, his mind a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. So, instead, he only took the time to grab a knife from one of the fallen priests. “Come on—let’s go see about the others.”

  The question was still there, hanging between them, but perhaps Katherine saw some of his inner turmoil in his face, for she let it remain unasked and only nodded. “I was thinking…I didn’t see Rion among the others, nor did Orren mention him.”

  “Escaped, probably,” Alesh said. “There’s something to be said for being the Chosen of the God of Chance and Luck.”

  “And the others?”

  “We’ll find them,” Alesh said, and he did not have to feign the confidence with which he said it, for he knew then he would find them, would go to any length necessary to do so. And if, when he found them, something had happened to them, something had been done to them, then he would track down those responsible, and deal with them the same way a man dealt with a rabid beast. You didn’t reason with the beast, didn’t ask it to trim its claws or pull its teeth, for the beast would understand neither. You put the beast down. And when that was finished, he would have more work ahead of him.

  Larin had asked him to be the man, the Chosen, that the world needed him to be. He wasn’t sure he could, wasn’t sure he was capable of that, but he would try, and Orren and his evil followers were hardly the only dangers the world held. There were other beasts slinking among the lands of men, other fangs that had drawn blood and would continue to do so until they were stopped. Kale. Tesharna. Shira. The Broken. That other, the shadow figure Alesh did not fully understand, but that he had chased for miles to retrieve Sonya. All beasts waiting to be put down, and it was up to him to do it.

  He was struck by an idea then. A wild, crazy idea, but when the world was crazy, he thought maybe those were the best kind. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  ***

  Katherine watched Alesh walk back into the cellar, and though she couldn’t quite define it, there was something different about the way he walked. It was as if he were lighter, as if his steps weren’t as heavy as they once had been. It didn’t make sense, but she saw, felt it just the same. Despite their situation, despite all they had been through and that they’d nearly been killed, he seemed to be more content, more sure than at any time since she had met him. There had been a change in him—perhaps a change still happening—and she thought, whatever it was, it was for the good. Had Larin said something to him? Katherine thought he probably had, was curious about what it might have been, but she decided she wouldn’t ask him. Those words, whatever they had been, had been for Alesh and he alone.

  Thinking of what the Chosen might have said, reminded Katherine of her own words while they’d been trapped in the cellar. What she had said but, even more so, what she had nearly said. She blushed then, her face heating. As one of Chosen Alashia’s agents, she had often found it necessary to hide her true identity, her true feelings, and she had become very good at it. Over the years, she had learned to hide them even from herself. After all, it was important that her role as one of the Chosen’s agents wasn’t discovered, and Katherine had often been forced to go to great lengths to keep it so, staying in some of the worst inns and taverns a city had to offer, relying on her own wits—and Darl’s skill in combat on more than one occasion—to keep her safe from the inherent dangers in such places.

  But Alashia was dead, and Katherine was her agent no longer. Instead, she was something else, a woman Chosen by Deitra, the Goddess of Art and Music herself. That made her think of what had happened back at the Drunken Bard, and when her face heated again it wasn’t with embarrassment but with shame. Irrational, of course. After all, those men she had slain had come to kill her and Alesh as well as the others. She had only been defending herself, defending her friends, yet the shame was there just the same, and it wasn’t so easily banished by something as simple as logic. She realized to her horror she couldn’t even remember the number of men she had killed, had lost track of it in the throes of the song she had sung, one to which she could not now remember the words or even the melody. For while it had gripped those around her in its power, it had gripped her as well, pulling her along, making the knife in her hand only another instrument, one which contributed to that bloody, crimson dirge of pain and death.

  Had it been three she had killed? Four? In truth, it could have been as many as twice that, and try as she might, she could not remember. It didn’t seem right to her. She thought if a person killed someone—or several someones—then she should at least have to live with the knowledge of those lives she had taken, should have to recall, as a sort of penance, the exact manner and circumstances in which she had done so. Yet, even as she stood there waiting on Alesh, she noted that her memories of the fight at the Bard—if it could even be called a fight—were fragmenting, dissolving like mist before the rising sun. She only remembered bits and pieces: the weight of the knife in her hand, the feel of the blood, warm and tacky on her fingers, so she had to concentrate on not letting the blade’s handle slip from her grasp. And the looks of the men. Those she remembered well enough. The looks of frozen terror and horror as they watched her come, unable to even so much as raise a hand to defend themselves as their death fell upon them.

  The scar of what she had done, of what she had become would remain for the rest of her life, would follow her always. Perhaps to be forgotten for a week, or a month, but then to return again, the shame a bitter thorn in her soul that could never be dislodged. She thought then that the worst wounds a person received, the very worst, were always the ones they caused themselves. And if she continued her course, if she continued to act as Deitra’s Chosen, the night’s work at the Bard would not be the last to scar her soul.

  And what of it? she thought. Sure, she could abandon the mission to which she’d been called, could leave Alesh and
all the others to fend for themselves. She did not think Deitra would punish her for it. Yet, how much pain and suffering would others endure if she chose to do so? True, she might never have to look that death in the face, might not have to carry the memory of it with her for the rest of her life, but it would still happen whether she saw it or not, whether she knew of it or not. “No,” she told herself, “you’ll stay. Because someone has to. And,” she went on, having the thought even as she spoke it, “because Alesh needs you.” She didn’t know how she knew it, only that she did.

  “What’s that?”

  Katherine jumped, startled by the sound of his voice in the stillness. “Nothing,” she said, turning to where Alesh was coming out of the cellar door and forcing a smile. “I was just talking to myself, that’s all.”

  Alesh nodded, glancing around at the dead men, frowning. “Well. Beats the company, I’m sure.”

  He stepped fully from the door then, and Katherine was surprised to find he was leading a familiar robed figure behind him. “Is that the bishop?”

  Alesh glanced back at the wavering, barely-conscious robed man standing behind him, his wrists bound with rope. “Was. I think it’s fair to say the privileges of being a bishop in the Church of Amedan are revoked once you start trying to kill innocent people.”

  He gave her a smile then that might have seemed almost flippant in other circumstances, but it didn’t, not to Katherine. She thought she saw what hid beneath it, the well of emotions churning under the surface, held in place by that fragile expression, so she smiled back. “I think that sounds about right, and, I mean, you are Amedan’s Chosen, after all, so if anybody gets to make those sorts of decisions, I guess it’s you.”

  He winced at that but nodded. “Anyway, I thought we’d bring him along. I’ve got an idea he might come in handy.”

  “Along where?” she asked. “It’s a big city, and we’ve no idea who might be on the side of the Dark.”

  “First?” Alesh asked. “I think we should find a more comfortable place for him.” He cocked his head at the dazed old priest. “A nice quiet room in an inn where no one will trouble him.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we find our friends.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kale Leandrian examined himself in the tall looking glass. His quarters were dark, for he had ordered the servants to stop lighting candles and lanterns days ago, the light always seeming too bright, hurting his eyes. The only illumination came from the window on the room’s other side and the pale morning sunlight filtering past the drawn curtain. Yet, for all the darkness, he could see himself easily enough thanks to Shira’s blessings, and he did not like what he saw. Scales, not just on his arm now, but on his face, on his whole body. Dark scales, nearly black, that seemed to shimmer in the poor light. When they had first began to appear in other places, Kale had tried to rip them off, had pulled and pulled at them and suffered great pain in the attempts, yet they would not be dislodged. They were a part of him, and he could no more pull them off than he could pull off his skin.

  “I am a monster,” he said, and even the sound of his voice sounded hoarse and grating to his own ears. The voice of a wolf, if it could speak. He half-expected the Proof to answer, to recite some saying about Shira’s blessings, but the man was not there. Not a man, a part of Kale’s mind corrected in a panic. This same part sometimes gave him the urge to throw himself through the room’s window. The scales were strong, just as he himself had grown stronger, but he doubted even they would be able to withstand the hundred-foot fall from where his quarters were located at the top of the castle. It would be over then, and he would be a monster no more.

  But that voice, that human part of him, was growing harder to hear with each passing day, increasingly drowned out by new sensations, new feelings. New needs. He had not put those needs into words, not yet, had refused to do so even within his own mind, but they were there, digging at him, shouting to be heard. And as time went on, their shouts grew louder, their demands more insistent. No, he told himself, it is only your imagination that’s all. You’re still a man—you’re still you. It was a lie he had told himself much over the last days, and one becoming increasingly more difficult to believe.

  As for the window…well, it would always be there, should the worst come to the worst. For now, Kale was not yet prepared to give up on his life, thinking something might still be done. He would do Shira’s will, would accomplish that which she wished, and then he would be returned to normal, a man once more, the Chosen of Ilrika who would reign over not just the city but over the entire country of Entarna. The Proof said Shira had promised it, and so Kale believed it. He had to believe it.

  “Proof?” There was no answer from Shira’s creature, but that was no real surprise. When the rash had first appeared on Kale’s arm, it had seemed the Proof was there with him every moment, always waiting in the shadows, ready to offer comfort and reassurance. Now though, Kale would often turn to speak to him only to find himself alone, the Proof off seeing to his own business. When Kale asked him about it, often angry and, in some strange way, jealous of the creature’s time, the Proof always assured him he had been seeing to the goddess’s business, ensuring Kale’s success in any way he could.

  Kale believed him—again, he had no real choice—but that didn’t keep him from feeling lonely. He hated himself for that feeling, scorned himself for being pathetic, but it was there just the same and hating himself did not change it. With the alterations in his body, he could not go out and socialize as he once had. Instead, he was forced to stay in his quarters lest someone discover what had happened to him. True, the city had already given itself to Shira, done so in a night of lust and violence which had been the culmination of Kale taking power within Ilrika. Yet, it would be disastrous for the people to learn their ruler was nearly a nightling himself, a beast with fangs and scales on his skin.

  And so he remained in his rooms whenever he could, covering himself from head to toe when he was forced to attend an audience or some important meeting with the heads of the city’s various guilds, perpetuating the lie that he had been in a terrible fire, and would heal, given enough time. And so far, though they probably had their suspicions, they all seemed willing enough to believe it. After all, they, like him, had no real choice. But should they be confronted with the truth, should they be forced to see it, Kale did not like to think of what might happen. For even though the city had, as a whole, given itself to the worship of Shira, the Goddess of the Wilds, there were some groups still loyal to Amedan. And despite the best attempts of his spies and agents, their identities could not be discovered.

  Yet, they were still there, in the city, plotting Kale’s downfall, plotting against the goddess herself. That, at least, there could be no denying, for though his agents might not have discovered any of the identities of those conspirators, they had discovered other things. Engravings appearing on walls where there had been none a day before, engravings illustrating a hand clenching a burning torch, one of the symbols of the God of Light and Fire. Others were more specific, words etched into the sides of buildings claiming that Shira was a Goddess of anger and hate and following Amedan was the only true way.

  Kale had such markings removed as soon as they were discovered, yet for every one he took down, two seemed to crop up. So far, there had been little more than the signs, no more than cowards whistling in the darkness, but should the thick woolen bandages he wore to cover his face be removed, should the people of the city see him for what he had become, then he believed it would be more than that. It was not even beyond the realm of possibility to think these conspirators—whoever they were—would come for him, would march on the castle, a mob carrying swords and torches. And it was not the swords he feared, not really, but the torches, the light and fire they brought.

  So he remained sequestered within his rooms, a prisoner within his own castle, and his hate grew. A hate for Amedan, for the people of the city, even for himself. But a h
ate, most of all, for Alesh. After all, it was his fault the people had suspicions about Kale, he who had named him traitor. And somehow, despite the fact that the man was outnumbered and being hunted, he was still alive. But at least there was some good news there, for Shira had told him Alesh and the rabble traveling with him had been captured in Peralest and would soon be within Tesharna’s clutches.

  Kale’s hands balled into fists at his sides as he thought of Alesh, of all the trouble he and those with him had caused. He felt his muscles—stronger now than they had ever been—clench and tighten at the thought of what he wanted to do to the man. This was his fault, all of it. Kale’s difficulty in gaining the respect of the city and its people, the change overcoming him. After all, had it not been Alesh and the affections Olliman had shown him that had driven Kale to this point? Even those who truly worshipped the goddess Shira could not help but notice Kale’s inability to bring this one rebel to heel. He knew that they whispered, even now, was told as much by the Proof who had no cause to lie. And, if what Shira’s servant said was to be believed, the whispers were growing louder as the days passed, men and women sharing meaningful glances behind Kale’s back, perhaps rolling their eyes in disgust.

  The thought of those ungrateful traitors sent a fresh wave of anger rushing through him, and the next thing he knew, his fist lashed out, striking the mirror. The surface which reflected the face and body of some half-man, half-monster, shattered into a thousand crystalline pieces, many of which flew back and hit Kale but were unable to penetrate the scales covering his flesh. He stood there, his breath heaving in his chest, staring at the remaining shards of glass, at the creature, dozens of him now, reflected in their surface. Foolish, to have done that. A servant would be required to clean it, and that would risk him seeing Kale. Foolish, but he could not deny it had felt good. Sometimes, he’d learned—and was learning more everyday—it felt good to break things.