That was it, Mairen knew. On that field and through Brayth, Aoleyn had seen the fossa and had magically, intimately, battled the fossa. The Usgar-righinn had forgotten, but now that she considered it, Aoleyn’s claim of defeating the demon carried more credibility.
“Go and free her,” Mairen instructed. “But remain with her, wherever she goes. She is to touch no blessed crystals. Stop her with any means you can, should she try, even if you kill the fool.”
Connebragh nodded.
“And keep the guards beside you both,” Mairen went on. “Two strong warriors, but not with crystal-tipped spears.” When Connebragh’s eyebrows arched at that, the Crystal Maven explained, “Aoleyn might access that magic.”
Connebragh sucked in her breath at the stark reminder.
“Do’no e’er think too little of that one,” Mairen warned. “Else she’ll melt the skin from your face.”
She waved her hand then, and the younger woman turned and started to leave. Before Connebragh had even exited the tent, Mairen was moving toward a small chest she kept under her bed, one that held her private collection of magical crystals.
Yes, she thought, it was indeed possible that Aoleyn had destroyed the demon fossa, and had thus upset the order of things in dangerous ways.
Mairen found a crystal thick with gray. The wedstone, the most holy of Usgar’s gifts, and one full of powerful tricks that could only be accessed by the greatest witches.
Clutching the crystal to her chest, Mairen let her thoughts and heart filter into the magic. She heard the music of Usgar, the magical vibrations within the item, and it made her warm. The powerful witch let her thoughts flow freely, let her spirit escape, and threw herself wholly into the magical item, filtering into it, becoming one with it, as if making love to it.
It beckoned her as she awakened its greatest power, pulling her spirit from her body and setting it free.
Unbound in the room, Mairen looked back upon herself, sitting and cradling the crystal, and saw there a bright light, calling her back to her physical form. But not now. Not yet.
Unseen, the ghost glided out of the tent and willed herself upon the winds of the spirit world through the encampment. She paused and turned, moving right through the side of the tent Aoleyn shared with Tay Aillig.
The troublesome young woman sat on her bed now, naked, but wrapped in a blanket, and rubbing her wrists where the bindings had been. Connebragh sat across from her, flanked by two warriors.
Aoleyn stretched out her shoulders and craned her neck, then suddenly turned to face the area where Mairen’s ghost lingered, staring curiously.
Suddenly, the Crystal Maven felt more naked than her prisoner! Could Aoleyn somehow see her, or sense her presence?
No, it was impossible.
Despite her denial, the Crystal Maven backed out of the tent and was fast across the encampment and out onto the mountain. She wasn’t held to the ground, so she floated up higher, looking down from above, soaring this way and that in her search for the Usgar-laoch. Free from her mortal coil, far and wide she flew, to all the haunts where Tay Aillig might be. She passed the cliff where Gavina had fallen to her death, the ledge where Tay Aillig had taken her so forcefully.
She lingered there, basking in the beauty of that memory, for she indeed loved the powerful man.
She went up to the winter encampment and saw Elder Raibert, the Usgar-forfach, preparing for a hike—down to the summer camp, she presumed. She passed over the pine grove and the sacred meadow known as Dail Usgar, the lea containing the great Crystal God, the physical manifestation of Usgar’s magic, a shaft of godly power angled from the ground like a giant cock.
Flying up th’Way toward Craos’a’diad, Mairen spotted the uamhas slave at his work, his muscles thick and strong from the labor as he carved out step after step in this difficult stony incline. Mairen took great care to stay far away from him—the danger of spirit walking was the temptation of possession. Too near, and she might enter this uamhas’s body and take command of it, but such was rarely a good thing, and always a dangerous ploy.
At the top of Fireach Speuer, even above Craos’a’diad, she found no sign of Tay Aillig, so down the side of the mountain she flew, soaring above the miles of stony vales and huddles of trees. She spotted some warriors, Usgar warriors, moving along a trail, and noted that they carried with them a body.
For a moment, Mairen despaired, but no, it was not Tay Aillig. It was Ralid, and these men, led by Egard, Tay Aillig’s nephew, had been sent to find and retrieve him.
She moved past them down the mountain, again offering a wide berth.
In a clearing farther down the mountain, she found her lover. He walked about, bending low to study tracks, to sniff the blood, to watch a flock of buzzards attacking a pile of gore.
He carried a spear that Mairen knew well, one whose tip she had empowered before, one thick with green and gray flecks.
Her spirit went to him tentatively, calling to him silently, spiritually.
Aoleyn has returned, she imparted to him when she had joined. She could feel his revulsion, a natural reaction to the shock of having another will enter your body and mind.
“Mairen?” he asked aloud, and she heard his silent scream more profoundly: Get out!
You must hear me, she implored. I will not stay! But Aoleyn has returned and she claims that she destroyed the demon fossa.
Get out! his thoughts screamed, and she felt him fighting her, battling with all of his considerable willpower.
Mairen tried to silently converse with him, but he was too frantic, too desperate, and simply fighting too hard.
The Crystal Maven turned her power outward, surrendering control of the body for just a moment, just long enough for her to evoke the magic in Tay Aillig’s spear tip.
A flash of lightning sent him flying. Mairen felt the jolt as well, since she was in the body, but unlike the host, she was prepared for it.
It may be true, she imparted stubbornly, and quickly, before Tay Aillig could regain his sensibilities and put up a wall of anger against her. We can’no know with that girl. Foolish girl! Come back to camp with a trophy, Usgar-laoch. Take a creature, burn its head. If the fossa is destroyed …
Something happened then, something Mairen could not have foreseen. Her connection was broken, shattered, and she was flung from the physical coil of Tay Aillig. Flung away, too, were her senses, and she floated on those spiritual winds helplessly for what seemed an eternity.
She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know who she was!
As she regained her very identity, it seemed to her as if something had simply ended the magic that allowed her possession. She felt like a deer on the butcher’s table, her head suddenly chopped off.
And she felt the magic fading from her, and understood then the grave danger.
Up the mountain she flew, with all speed and determination, but, as if in a dream, her journey seemed sluggish. She needed speed, but couldn’t find any, as the magic withered, and when it died away altogether, she realized, she would be left out here, trapped as an unbound spirit and so … dead.
She saw the pinpoint of light ahead of her, far away, a brighter speck on a bright day, and she dove for it for all her life, needing to get back into her body before the magic faded altogether.
She came into her form and shuddered, stumbled, and fell to the floor.
“Mairen?” she heard, Connebragh’s voice. She felt the woman’s hands upon her, turning her over gently. “My Usgar-righinn, what is wrong?”
“It broke the magic,” Mairen struggled to explain.
“Usgar-righinn?”
“It was like he chopped my head off.”
Connebragh fell back a bit, staring at her, clearly at a loss.
Mairen wanted to explain it to her, but alas, Mairen didn’t understand it either. She had been forcefully expelled from Tay Aillig’s corporeal form, hurled out and away. But it hadn’t been a battle of willpower that had defeated her pos
session—she had experienced such battles before.
This … this was different. The chords of magic itself had been cut, chopped off, expelling Mairen and nearly leaving her stranded outside of her body. She couldn’t be certain of what that might have meant, but she suspected that her spiritual wandering would have been eternal, helplessly so.
She took Connebragh’s hand and let the woman help her to her feet.
“Aoleyn is secure?” Mairen asked shakily.
Connebragh nodded. “She offers no resistance.”
“Because she is broken,” Mairen said, and hoped it was true.
* * *
Tay Aillig was still sitting on the ground, still trying to digest all that had happened. In his hand, he held a small stone, a sunstone, the gem of anti-magic.
Now that he had a moment to catch his breath, he wondered if he had been wise in waging this last battle. It was Mairen who had come to him, he realized then, though in the confusion and panic of possession, he had not even considered that possibility.
He rolled the small round sunstone over in his fingers.
He looked to his spear, lying on the ground to the side.
The Usgar-laoch gave a little laugh, silently congratulating Mairen on evoking the lightning magic of that spear tip. The jolt had defeated him.
Only then did Tay Aillig more clearly decipher the last message Mairen had imparted to him before he had used the sunstone to throw her out.
“What have you done?” he whispered to the empty clearing, though he aimed the question at Aoleyn.
A myriad of possibilities swirled before him as he replayed that last message in his mind over and over again. What gains might he find?
* * *
The days on the lake had not settled poor Talmadge as much as he had hoped. Still, he paddled right along the shoreline, which in some areas, like the swampy cove he had recently left behind, was actually more dangerous than the open waters of Loch Beag. Oh yes, the monster was out there in the deep, but monsters were in here, too! The clo’dearche lizards could kill him, certainly, and the swamp grasses teemed with venomous snakes and giant serpents that could enwrap a man, squeeze the life from him, then swallow him whole.
Talmadge could deal with those more normal creatures. The lake monster to him had become something more, something sinister, something beyond comprehension, almost godly.
He was glad when he at last came in sight of the groves of low willows that sheltered Car Seileach and gave the village its name. He could travel on land from this point forward, he knew, far from the hunting parties of Usgar.
He put in at the village beach and dragged his canoe onto the shore. The people here knew him, and greeted him warmly—and indeed, more came rushing to see him than Talmadge ever remembered before.
And they talked to him, or at him, many all at once.
“He is one of you,” he heard.
“Of the east,” another insisted.
Talmadge finally managed to calm them all enough to get a simple question in: “Who?”
“The man of the sun!” several said all at once, both excitedly and fearfully.
3
THE OBEDIENT BOY
U’at walked his cuetzpali, Huetwiliz, up the side of a boulder tumble, the lizard’s padded feet securely sticking to the rocks at every angle. Often called collared dragons, these huge lizards served as mounts to the mundunugu, the elite cavalry of xoconai armies. Cuetzpali were docile creatures, as long as they were well fed, and easily controlled mounts, but when hungry, or when in battle, they were fearsome indeed, with claws on their forelegs that could rip an opponent apart and a mouth full of small teeth but with a bite strong enough to crush the thickest bones.
Cresting the top boulder in the high tumble took U’at’s breath away.
He had summited the highest peak of Teotl Tenamitl, far east in the great range, and now the Ayuskixmal fell away before him, and the vast eastern lands beyond that. So different was this view from the one he had left behind, from the high peaks to the west and looking west. There before him down the western slopes lay the basin of Tonoloya, the nation of xoconai, their many cities shining gold in the lowering sun. There, he could see the great ocean far upon the horizon, but here there was no ocean, just land as far as he could see. Land far, far below him, as the slopes of the mountain range dove more steeply.
After taking in the view for many heartbeats, he walked his lizard a bit to the side and forward, to peer around one ridge, and once more U’at lost his breath. For there, far below, in the shadow of this mountain, lay a great rectangular lake, lined and hemmed by mountains all about.
“Tzatzini,” he whispered reverently, wondering if he was truly standing atop that most sacred mountain. Could it be?
Tzatzini, or The Herald, was the mountain home of U’at’s god, the Glorious Gold, and if this was truly that place, then the lake below …
“Otontotomi,” U’at whispered with equal reverence. Was it possible that he was looking down at the ancient and most holy place in the long history of the xoconai? That he was even now walking the trails of the mountain home of his god?
Almost in a daze, so overwhelmed that his hands were shaking, he tried to turn Huetwiliz aside, toward a cave where he could leave the well-trained mount that he might more intimately explore this remarkable place. Finally, U’at gave up, dismounted, and walked the lizard into the shallow cave.
Overwhelmed still, U’at walked out of the cave and down the side of the mountain as if in a dream. Spear in hand, he set off on foot to see, to learn, to hunt.
* * *
He brought the makeshift hammer—just a stone wrapped to a stick with vines, and not one done with great care—down hard on the wedge, the one piece of metal the Usgar had given him. He was tired, though, and his angle was wrong. The stone head chipped when it clipped the edge of the wedge, then skipped down the side to hit him on the hand.
Bahdlahn cried out and dropped the tools, seeing that the hammer had come apart with the blow. He grabbed reflexively at his injured hand, only then realizing that the chipped stone had flown into his eye.
The strong young man, barely more than a boy, rolled to the side of the path, grimacing and growling, cursing the hammer, cursing the work, cursing the Usgar, and cursing life itself. Finally, he settled down and lay there on his back, staring up at the stars and the silvery moon coming up over the side of the mountain.
How long had he been working on this trail, the place the Usgar called th’Way? He had lost track of the days. A month? Two? How many stairs had he cut and carved in the stone and hard earth? How many logs had he shaped and placed to bolster the edges and keep the earth from washing away?
He imagined the trail behind him, leading all the way down to the hidey-hole he used when resting. The newer stairs were better than the first ones he had worked, as he perfected his technique.
“Or am I a fool?” he said, rolling up on one elbow to glance down the trail. “The deamhans will see the new steps and just make me go back and make the first ones better.”
He gave a little laugh, so helpless. This was hard work, but was it worse than being down in the camp? At least up here, he didn’t have to suffer the insults and taunts of the Usgar on a daily basis—in fact, he hardly saw the monsters.
He looked down at his bruised and bloody hand. It wasn’t so bad, he thought, and noted, too, the clear definition in the tight muscles of his forearm. He was no more a boy, obviously, and had grown into a tall and strong man. The last weeks up here on the mountain, lifting stones and logs, wielding a heavy hammer incessantly, had tightened and thickened his muscles.
The Usgar thought him a stupid man, a true simpleton. That was the only reason he had been allowed to live into adulthood.
Bahdlahn sat up, clutching his hand and rubbing his eye with his bent wrist at the same time. He looked back down the mountain, back toward the Usgar summer encampment, though it was not in sight from this vantage point.
; His mother was down there. His dear mother, Innevah, who had told him that he was stupid from his earliest days, and for his own good. Her cleverness was the only reason he was alive.
“All my love,” he whispered to the mountain winds, and dared believe that the breezes would carry his words to Innevah’s ears.
The pain in his hand hadn’t brought tears to Bahdlahn’s blue eyes. The stone chip had made one eye water, but no tears of pain or sorrow.
He could not say that of his reaction to thinking of his mother, down there on the mountain with the Usgar deamhans, suffering their crimes and injustices and humiliation.
He wanted to kill them. How he wanted to kill all of them!
But no, not all, the young man thought, and despite his pain and anger, and all the terrible things in his life, he smiled then and thought of her, that small woman with the black hair and black eyes who had grown up beside him and been so kind to him, who promised that she would not let Tay Aillig or the other Usgar kill him.
“Aoleyn,” he whispered to the wind, and just speaking the word made him feel warm and comforted.
A while later, Bahdlahn sighed and turned his attention to his newest wound. It wasn’t too bad, he believed. Perhaps a broken finger, and a painful gash where the hammer had removed a bit of his thumbnail. It would be okay soon enough, but was swollen now.
Bahdlahn gave another sigh. The day had been warm, so he had decided to spend most of it in his hidey-hole, figuring to work through the night. He certainly didn’t want to fall behind now. The Usgar had been up here recently, and they had surely marked his progress. If they returned soon and noted that he had barely moved forward on their all-important stairway …
Another sigh escaped Bahdlahn. “I grow tired of your threats, Usgar,” he whispered, and decided then to retreat to his den and sleep the rest of the night through.
Dark thoughts followed him down the path, one that he knew so well now that he skipped it easily, even in the moonlight, even when a cloud passed above, blocking the moonlight. By the time he arrived, the first glow of dawn had come to the northwestern slopes of Fireach Speuer, though the sun was still long from climbing the sky behind the mountain.
Reckoning of Fallen Gods Page 6
