The Warriors of the Gods

by Jacob Peppers

  There was a knock on his door. Kale spun with a speed he had never before possessed, raising his hands and extending his fingers, curled slightly at the tips, by instinct. He stood there, poised to attack, then realized how ridiculous he felt. What did you intend to do, he thought, claw him to death? He tried to make it a sort of joke to himself, to relieve some of the tension and unease he felt, but it didn’t work. After all, joke or not, ridiculous or not, it was true. He had intended to claw this person, to claw him—or her—like a dog.

  Or a nightling.

  That last thought had claws of its own, and they sunk into his mind, his consciousness, so deeply he wasn’t able to draw breath. I’m still a man. Gods, I’m still a ma—

  The frantic scrabbling of his mind was interrupted by another knock at the door. “Go away,” Kale growled desperately.

  “Forgive me, Bright One,” came the familiar voice of Barnabis, the head of his servants, “but I’m afraid I have urgent news.”

  “What is it?” Kale demanded, glancing back at those creatures within the mirrors’ remnants, dozens of those scaled faces watching him with what might have been dark glee.

  “The representative from Welia awaits you in your audience chamber, sir.”

  Kale bared his teeth. The Welian ambassador had arrived days ago with his retinue. Apparently, he did so every year to discuss trade agreements, yet another bit of knowledge Olliman had neglected—or refused—to share with Kale. “I already told you to tell him I have been in an accident and I would make sure to see him before he left,” Kale said, struggling to get the words out past his anger.

  “Forgive me, Chosen,” Barnabis answered, “but I did as you asked. Only…”

  “Only what?” Kale growled at the door.

  “Well, sir,” the man went on, obviously reluctant to speak further, “it has been a week. Representative Lazadar insists he and his retinue must depart tomorrow lest they risk the terrible storms that sometimes come upon the sea in winter during their long journey home. He instructed me to tell you that, should he leave without a meeting, he will be forced to tell his king the trade agreements between Ilrika and Welia are null and void, and they will be left with no other choice but to seek out other partners with which to establish trade.”

  Kale hissed in anger, barely resisting the urge to tell Barnabis that Delegate Lazadar could be damned all the way back to Welia. That would be foolhardy, he knew, and far more difficult to fix than a broken mirror. Guildmaster Balen, the head of the merchant’s guild, had told him on more than one occasion that the majority of Ilrika’s trade revenue came from Welia. Particularly from the exotic wine and spices they offered.

  He hesitated, knowing he could, probably should send Representative Lazadar away, but that would cause its own host of problems. And if he did, if he refused to see the man, what excuse would he give if the counselors asked about it? How long before Guildmaster Balen showed up demanding an audience because of the money he—and the other members of the Merchant’s guild—would be losing on a daily basis without the trade agreements with Welia?

  The truth was that as powerful as Kale was and even though Ilrika possessed one of the largest single-city armies in Entarna, he couldn’t produce coin out of thin air. There were still matters to be seen to, and many of those would require money. The bald truth was that Representative Lazadar could, if he so chose, go a long way toward crippling Kale’s power and reach, undermining what had taken so much effort to build over the months since he’d assumed command of the city. And then the rumors would begin in truth, whispers that would soon grow to stern words, then shouts as men and women—Guildmaster Balen no doubt among them—turned people against Ilrika’s rightful ruler with promises of plenty.

  No. As dangerous as seeing the representative was, it was the best option Kale had. “Proof?” There was still no answer, Shira’s servant off on one of his excursions which he had long since stopped even discussing with Kale. “Damn you,” Kale muttered. It hurt him to admit it, but he had come to rely on the Proof, on his counsel, and was that any real surprise? After all, he had no one else in which he might confide the nature of his problems.

  “Very well,” Kale said finally, “but I am feeling quite ill and out of sorts and my wounds pain me. I’m sure Representative Lazadar will not be insulted if I should ask him to meet me here, in my quarters?” This last was asked with a challenge in his voice, daring the servant to contradict him.

  “I-I’m sure that will be quite acceptable, Bright One,” Barnabis replied. “When would you like for him to visit your—”

  “Now,” Kale snapped. “If I am not going to be allowed to rest until it is finished, then I would see to it as soon as possible. You tell him if he wants to see the Chosen of Ilrika, he will come. After all, we are not the only ones who benefit from the trade agreements.”

  “Of course, Chosen. I will fetch him at once.”

  ***

  The representative must have been waiting nearby, for Kale had barely had a chance to dress—and, of course, put on gloves and wrap his face with bandages to cover everything but his eyes—before Barnabis knocked on his door once more.

  “Come in,” Kale answered, seating himself at the small writing table which he had dragged to the far end of the room only moments before. There were no lights in his room, and he would have to rely on the gloom and his disguise to conceal him.

  A moment later, the door opened, and Barnabis’s familiar, squat form, bowed low. “Representative Angiel Lazadar, Second Word of the Kingdom of Welia and cousin to its king.”

  Barnabis retreated from the doorway then but barely in time to avoid the representative himself who swept in with his arms extended to either side as if he were some king coming out to see his people instead of a stranger in a land not his own, walking into its ruler’s bedchambers. The wide sleeves of his robe hung down so low it gave the man the appearance of having wings. His nose had an arrogant tilt, and he was possessed of the sharp, aquiline features of many of the older noble houses. He didn’t walk inside so much as strut. “Chosen Leandrian,” he said, the words coming out in a practiced, musical lilt that made Kale think this man spent a lot of time talking into mirrors, “we of Welia wish fruitful bounty upon you and your lands. It is my honor to—”

  “Close the door.”

  The man paused, frowning. A normal person wouldn’t have been able to detect the expression in the gloom, but Kale could see it readily enough with his goddess-gifted sight. A troubled look passed across the man’s eyes then, “Chosen, that won’t be nece—” He cut off as Barnabis swung the door shut, and the sound of its closing seemed to echo in the air of the room.

  Some of the arrogance left the representative’s expression as he glanced around, peering into the gloom and clearly straining to make out Kale seated at the opposite wall. Kale smiled at the man’s obvious discomfort. “It is customary, Representative Lazadar, to kneel when addressing the Chosen of Ilrika.”

  The man’s handsome face—and there was no denying its handsomeness, for Kale had concerned himself with his own appearance for most of his life—twisted at that, but he hesitated only for a moment before kneeling and bowing his head. “Of course, Chosen Leandrian. Now, if you will permit me, it is quite dark. I will ask your man—”

  “No,” Kale growled, with far more emphasis than he had intended. The man looked taken aback, but Kale went on, trying to make his voice sound more reasonable. “It is the light you see, Angiel. Since I received my injuries, my eyes cannot stand it. My healers tell me it has something to do with the orbs themselves being singed in the flame, but that they will heal, in time.” A lie, of course. Kale hadn’t asked for any of his healers in some time and would not, not at least until he had completed Shira’s tasks and gotten his own appearance back.

  The robed man ran a hand through his long, oiled beard from which hung several golden rings, a nervous gesture, Kale assumed, but when he spoke, his voice was confident enough. “Forgive me, Chosen,
but it is Representative Lazadar. In Welia, only wives call their husbands by their given names.”

  Kale bared his teeth at that. You are not in Welia any longer, he thought. “Of course. Now, what was so urgent you found it necessary to disturb me in my infirmity?”

  The man opened his mouth as if to address the fact that Kale had still not used his given title but apparently decided against it. “The trade agreements between our two countries,” he said, again adopting that arrogant tone of pronouncement telling Kale he had practiced this speech, “have long benefited us both and cultivated peace and prosperity between us. I, as Second Word of Welia, have been sent to—”

  “What of the First Word?”

  What might have been anger flashed in the man’s deep brown eyes. “The First Word, Chosen Leandrian,” he said in a clearly offended tone, “remains, as always, by the king’s side, ready to say what words His Highness believes—”

  Kale knew he should be calm, diplomatic. After all, the money Ilrika received from Welia was considerable, there was no denying that. But he did not like the handsome man and his arrogant features. “Is your king mute?”

  The representative chose that moment to stand, and Kale noticed for the first time what the thick, voluminous robes had hidden. The man showed the musculature and physical poise of one who had been trained extensively in combat. Though he carried no weapon on him now—Kale’s guards would have insisted it be stripped from him long before he drew anywhere close to his chambers—Kale was certain he usually did. Beneath his robes was the body of a warrior, trained over years of practice, honed to a razor’s edge. And almost certainly possessing no scales, he thought bitterly.

  “King Ashakar stands closest to the gods among any mortal, Chosen,” the representative said in a voice tight with anger. “And so it is that he uses another to translate and voice his will to his people.”

  “The First Word,” Kale said.

  “Yes.”

  He sat back at that, considering. “Still, it is quite odd, isn’t it? King Ashakar wishes to continue his trade agreements with my city, yet he does not come himself, does not even deem me worthy of sending his First Word. Only his Second. Gods, for all the lack of respect it shows, he might as well have sent The Dozenth Word, mightn’t he?”

  “There is no ‘Dozenth Word,’” the representative said in a voice choked with indignation. “There are only Three Words, just as there were only three words which The Dawn Bringer first spoke upon whispering life into my peop—”

  “Forgive me, Second Word,” Kale said, giving the title emphasis and satisfied to see the anger in the man’s perfect features, “but I am not well and have very little patience for listening to the myths of your people.”

  “Myths?” the man demanded, not bothering to try to hide his outrage now. “Chosen Leandrian, you would do wise to watch your tongue, for the creation of my people was no myth. Amedan himself—”

  “Cares nothing for you and your pathetic, forgotten people,” Kale interrupted. “At least, no more than I do myself.” He rose then and was overcome with a powerful urge to pounce on the man, to tear him limb from limb. He resisted it, barely, instead making his way to the room’s window. “Your king is weak, with no significant army with which to do battle, should it come to that. And somehow, in his arrogance, he thinks to send what is little more than his manservant to treat with me.”

  “Manservant?” the ambassador demanded, and Kale, turning away from the window to look at him, noticed the way the man’s hand went to his side by instinct, reaching for a sword that was not there. “I will not be talked to in such a manner, Chosen Leandrian,” he went on, letting his hand drop. “Chosen Olliman himself, your ruler, and the man who would still rule Ilrika had misfortune not befallen him, would never have treated me so. He was a wise ruler, and it is a disgrace to see who has been picked to replace him. I pity the citizenry of Ilrika and—” He cut off as Kale launched himself forward.

  Despite the gloom and the fact that he could almost certainly pick out only the faintest details of Kale’s outline, the Second Word dropped into a fighting crouch, his hands extended to either side, his fingers pressed together, his palms down, in a style Kale had not seen before. Kale had aimed his punch for the man’s midsection, but the representative glided to the side of it, striking him in the wrist with a whip-crack of motion, and Kale stumbled away. There was no pain, though, for the scales, covering his wrist as they did every other inch of him, protected him from it, would protect him, he believed, from any but the mightiest of blows.

  “Are you mad?” Lazadar demanded, his voice high and shocked with none of the heavy, formal quality it had during his speech. “King Ashakar will hear of this—an assault on one of his Words is as an assault on himself!”

  “Do you think I care about your pathetic king or your pathetic kingdom?” Kale asked, genuinely curious as he stood and watched the man.

  “Pathetic you say,” Lazadar responded, his chest heaving from his anger, his eyes wild with it. “Yet, for all our lack of an army, our land is more prosperous than your own city has ever been—particularly now since you have taken over rulership. My king could buy and sell your city a dozen times over and still not notice the smallest dent in his fortune. Yet he and Chosen Olliman were friends. What cruelty of the gods brings one such as you to the throne?”

  Kale smiled. “Oh, but the gods can be cruel, Lazadar. Just how cruel, you cannot imagine.”

  “So I hear,” the representative said, and though the anger was still in his tone, there was something else there too, something like satisfaction. “After all, Ilrika herself has gone through some terrible times of late, has it not? The assassination of their rightful ruler by nightlings—a feat which beggars the imagination, for I have visited this city many times and always considered its defenses against the creatures of the dark as some of the best in the world. Not to mention, of course, the night of the fires where it is said hundreds, possibly even thousands died. And no one to know for sure what caused it…” He shook his head. “Of course, there are rumors. Rumors that Chosen Olliman was not the victim of happenstance. Rumors that his assassination was planned. That the creatures, the Bane, were…helped. It is shocking to think so, but some even believe that you, my lord, are responsible for the Chosen’s death.”

  The small part of Kale’s brain which remained rational, what he thought of as the human part, was drowned out then by rage and fear at how close to the truth the man had come. Gone was the part of him which cautioned against angering this representative of the far off, affluent kingdom of Welia. Gone, too, was the voice whispering that he might have need of Welia’s coin in the future. There was only the rage, that and nothing else. Before he realized what he was doing, he lunged at the representative again.

  Again, the man moved with that gliding ease, his feet seeming to slide in some intricate dance like water given form, and again Kale was struck, but this time on his temple. The bandages padded the blow some, but the scales beneath were sharp, as hard as diamond, and Lazadar cried out in surprise, stumbling away as his knuckles were sliced open. Blood poured on the ground, and Kale shook his head, righting himself and grinning.

  “What’s wrong, Lazadar?” he asked the man whose face had gone pale in the gloom. “You seem as if something is bothering you. I must admit, you obviously have skill, and a strange way of fighting I have not seen before. But, in the end, it does not matter—it cannot. You cannot match yourself against the Chosen warrior of the Goddess herself.”

  The representative retreated a step, going back into his fighting crouch, but the arrogance was gone from his face. “The Goddess,” he repeated, a snarl on his lips. “I had heard rumors you and the city had embraced the Dark Goddess, but I had not wanted to believe them, to believe Ilrika had fallen so far into shadow.”

  “Shadow,” Kale mused. “Yes, I suppose we have fallen into shadow, but tell me, Lazadar, why is it you believe this to be a bad thing? After all, where the shadows
hide evil, they might also hide good. And some good, some treasures, can only be found in the darkness. Besides, since the people of Ilrika have accepted Shira as their patron deity, there have been no more attacks by the nightlings. The goddess keeps us safe.”

  “The shadows whisper only lies, Kale Leandrian,” the man said. “Even the youngest child in Welia is taught as much. Now, will you allow me to leave? It is clear my presence is not wanted here, and you care nothing for the agreements that have stood between our people for decades, since we fought alongside your own troops in the Night War.”

  “Of course you are welcome to leave, Lazadar,” Kale said, smiling.

  The Second Word gave a single nod, rising and starting for the door without speaking, but stopped as Kale lunged forward, grabbing him by the arm. “You’re welcome to leave,” he said again, grinning behind the bandages, “but first, a lesson.”

  He squeezed the man’s arm, calling on his newfound strength, and the Second Word cried out in shocked pain. Then Lazadar twisted, his entire body seeming to spin on his arm as if it was a wheel rotating on its axis. He moved with surprising speed, and had Kale not possessed a strength far greater than his—or any normal man’s—he didn’t doubt the Welian would have broken free easily enough. But Kale did possess that strength, and so the brown-skinned man was brought up short, crying out in pain as Kale gave his arm a vicious wrench.

  Something popped, and the man lashed out with his good hand, striking Kale in the face. The blow didn’t hurt much, but it surprised him, and Kale stumbled backward, releasing his hold. He blinked, shaking his head to clear it, and looked at the man, saw the anger on his face slowly turn to terror. “By the gods,” Lazadar breathed, “what…what are you?”

  Kale was confused for a second then with a building terror, he reached a hand to his face and discovered the man’s last blow had knocked the bandages loose, exposing his scaled features. He trembled, not with rage but with fear, with shame and disgust as the other man stared at him, a look of revulsion on his face. Kale was still standing so, shocked to stillness by the powerful self-loathing he felt, when the representative threw open the door and disappeared into the hallway.