Song of the Risen God

by R. A. Salvatore

  Ferdinand would give to these pretty goblins a place in our heaven beside St. Abelle, the master had noted in one particularly strong rebuttal. What demon might they bring beside them, for surely it is demon magic that performs these feats of which he claims?

  “Magic, magic,” Thaddius said with a sigh, for he simply couldn’t garner more from this parchment. He looked at the many rolled scrolls piled in the cart beside his desk.

  It was all a puzzle, and not just a puzzle of many pieces but one where most of the pieces were broken, with bits that could not be found.

  The monk leaned and listened carefully. No more dust was falling. What in the world had brought such thunder to St.-Mere-Abelle?

  It had to be the divine throwers Talmadge had told them about, Thaddius decided.

  He hoped he would emerge from these catacombs to find the monastery intact and still in Abellican control.

  The monk put it out of his mind. His mission was clear. He carefully copied the pertinent lines, then rolled the parchment and resealed it, then went to the side cart to guess which of the many there might help him sort it all out.

  * * *

  Tuolonatl walked among the wounded who had crawled or been carried back to the xoconai line. She watched helplessly as augurs with insufficient bandages tried to stem the blood flowing from garish wounds or tried futilely to clean skin burned by magical fire without wiping the skin itself from the poor warrior.

  Little healing magic was available on that field, for the augurs had exhausted themselves in firing the divine throwers.

  She found Ataquixt, his arm broken and strapped tightly to his side. He wasn’t lying and wailing, though, but sat beside the cot of a young female warrior whose upper chest was badly burned. She was trying to remain calm, and trying harder to draw breath.

  “Ixchel?” Tuolonatl said, recognizing the woman, who had been named “Rainbow” because of the purplish lines where her red nose met her blue skin, a rare condition the xoconai called tzel.

  Ataquixt nodded.

  Tuolonatl recalled the battle at the wall. She had seen Ixchel and her cuetzpali scrambling up by the large gate, and now, given the wounds, she realized that she had seen Ixchel fall—though, at the time, she hadn’t known the identity of the mundunugu tumbling hard to the grass.

  Tuolonatl looked more closely at the woman’s injured chest, listened more closely to the raspy breathing. She had seen this before. The burns were not superficial, she knew, and the young woman had to work hard to force her injured muscles to push her breath past her inner scarring. Without divine intervention, magical healing, Tuolonatl was fairly certain that the poor young thing wouldn’t survive the night.

  “They were ready for us,” Ataquixt remarked. “They knew how we would attack and how to defeat it. This will be no easy conquest. Even the throwers failed.”

  “Attacking a fortress is never an easy task,” Tuolonatl replied. “Attacking one full of sorcerers is more difficult still.”

  “How many did we lose?”

  Tuolonatl shrugged. “Three hundred, perhaps, dead on the field. Thrice that number of wounded, and so another three hundred will likely die if the augurs cannot recover their powers and bring magical healing.”

  “Did we kill a single human?”

  “I do not know.”

  Ataquixt sighed. He turned back to the wounded warrior and laid the hand he had been holding gently down beside her. “I need to find an augur for her,” he said, standing and turning to face Tuolonatl. He meant to say more, but then he jerked in surprise, and even fell back a step, the words catching in his throat.

  Cued by his expression, Tuolonatl turned about and saw Scathmizzane himself approaching, the god now back to a size still superior to, but more in line with, that of a mortal xoconai. High Priest Pixquicauh came with him.

  “Move aside,” Tuolonatl whispered to Ataquixt. “I will speak for your wounded friend.”

  Bowing and backing, Ataquixt retreated.

  “My Glorious Gold,” Tuolonatl greeted them, bowing low.

  Scathmizzane didn’t respond, other than to look past her to the gasping woman on the cot.

  “Do we know when your priests will again find the power of healing?” Tuolonatl dared to ask—of Pixquicauh, not Scathmizzane. “Many more will die, I fear.”

  “Like this one?” Scathmizzane asked, moving past the commander.

  “Yes,” Tuolonatl replied. “Her burns are mortal, I expect.”

  The Glorious Gold stood up straight and turned to look Tuolonatl straight in the eye.

  “What would you pray for me to do, my cochcal?” he asked.

  Tuolonatl shifted nervously from foot to foot and cast down her gaze. “She is young and a fine mundunugu,” she began quietly. “She led the charge into the western towns, and here rode through the lightning to the wall—and got up the wall—and then the fireball exploded, killing her cuetzpali and throwing her back to the field. Her valor cannot be questioned, though she is barely more than a girl.”

  “And so?”

  “Heal her, Glorious Gold,” Tuolonatl said, and she had to swallow hard when those words left her mouth. How dare she ask a god for anything? “Or give to Pixquicauh the power to ease her wounds. She is a valuable mundunugu.”

  Scathmizzane moved past her to stand over Ixchel. “No doubt you see yourself when you look upon her,” he said. He glanced back with a little grin.

  Tuolonatl conceded that with a shrug.

  Scathmizzane bent low, his face very near to Ixchel’s. “Are you afraid to die?” he asked, and Tuolonatl didn’t know if he was speaking to her or to Ixchel. “Is it not a blessed thing to die for Glorious Gold? Is that not the highest purpose of my mortal children?”

  The wounded woman stared up at him, trembling and sweating, her blue eyes open wide.

  Scathmizzane put his hand on Ixchel’s face, and Tuolonatl held her breath, thinking her wish granted.

  He ran his fingers down over her face, and her breathing quieted immediately and her eyes closed.

  Resting comfortably, Tuolonatl thought, for just a moment, but when Scathmizzane stood back up, turned, and walked past her, giving her an unimpeded view, she realized that Ixchel wasn’t breathing more easily, that Ixchel wasn’t breathing at all.

  “It is good to die for Glorious Gold,” Scathmizzane said, walking toward some more wounded warriors.

  Tuolonatl’s jaw dropped open. She wanted to say something, but how could she?

  “You failed,” Pixquicauh scolded, moving right before her, so near that the confused cochcal stumbled back a step. It took her a moment to get past that shock.

  “Failed?” she replied, her voice a whisper.

  “You failed. You had the wall but were turned back.”

  “The wall was not broken,” she retorted, regaining her voice and her fortitude. Up came her sharp glare, a look clearly threatening. “Their magic defeated your throwers. You failed.”

  “We did not fail, and this is good,” said Glorious Gold, moving back to tower over the pair. “These are the greatest powers of the children of Cizinfozza, all together in one place. We know that now. They cannot escape.”

  “Their power is considerable,” Tuolonatl said.

  Scathmizzane laughed. “These are the greatest priests of the human kingdom. Almost all of them. Would you have expected less?”

  “No, Glorious Gold. But to go against them … do we bring in ten thousand more? Twenty thousand? Every macana and mundunugu, and throw our full force against those strong walls? I would counsel against—”

  “We will destroy them,” Pixquicauh interrupted, moving right beside Tuolonatl and staring through that awful half skull at the woman he so obviously thought of as his rival for the love of Glorious Gold.

  “How many would you lose on the field, High Priest?” Tuolonatl answered him, not backing down a bit, not even blinking, as she stared through those dead sockets into the man’s eyes. “Half our army? It will be that, perha
ps more, and perhaps futilely.”

  “You doubt?” the high priest shouted in her face.

  “You were not there, at the wall,” Tuolonatl growled back, in his face. “You did not see them reverse the magic of Glorious Gold’s spear to repel your throws. You did not see the sheets—sheets, and not simple bolts!—of their lightning, or feel the heat of their fireballs.”

  “We will destroy them,” Pixquicauh stated quietly, evenly, threateningly.

  “In time,” said Glorious Gold. “In time.”

  When Tuolonatl and her counterpart looked back to him, he waved them apart.

  Tuolonatl looked past the god and back at the field, at the many dead before St.-Mere-Abelle’s gates. “We cannot afford such losses.”

  “To die for Glorious Gold is the greatest feat of all!” Pixquicauh yelled at her, but his animated response didn’t last, as Scathmizzane agreed with Tuolonatl.

  “They have nowhere to run,” Scathmizzane told them. “Let them have their hole, a prison of their own making—nay, a coffin of their own making. Let them watch the world around them become Tonoloya. They have nowhere to run, and if they come out, we will kill them. Build more pyramids, Pixquicauh. And set more mirrors here on the line holding them. If the children of Cizinfozza come forth from their temple, they will find an army stepping in to defeat them.”

  “And for now?” Tuolonatl dared to ask.

  “Let us go and watch the sun rise from the eastern beaches of Tonoloya.”

  Tuolonatl almost reflexively replied that there were no eastern beaches of Tonoloya.

  But that was the whole point, was it not?

  20

  SECRET OF THE GOD CRYSTAL

  Bahdlahn and Julian emerged from the ramshackle building in the western section of Palmaris with the sun setting before them. Summer was nearing its end, the days growing shorter.

  The two moved apart, one going north, the other south, moving shadow to shadow and making sure that no xoconai were about.

  As they expected, there were none. The city had grown quiet in the last few weeks, and the conquerors had concentrated about the docks and the massive rebuilding project in the square of the ruined St. Precious. In this most remote section of town, where the buildings were lower, the folk poorer, the few xoconai about mostly patrolled the wall, making sure that the city didn’t bleed needed servants.

  With summer ending, though, and only the wilds out to the west, where would the folk run?

  Bahdlahn waited at the edge of one winding lane, studying the shadows, looking for movement. Julian soon joined him, and the two made their way, leapfrogging from house corner to house corner, making their way east and keeping near the north wall. At a building directly north of St. Precious square, they paused, then slipped fast down an alleyway and through a concealed door that led them into a crawl space beneath a stone house.

  Julian closed the door behind them and paused there, listening, while Bahdlahn silently counted the passing heartbeats.

  They knew just how long it would take the xoconai lizard riders to move past this place far enough for them to slip out.

  On Bahdlahn’s nod, Julian quietly and carefully opened the door. He peered left and right, then went out fast, Bahdlahn close behind. Two houses down, they saw a candle in the window, just the signal for which they had hoped, and they went to the front door and pushed through without hesitation.

  Their host, a woman named Cathilda, had bowls of stew set out for them, two extra places at her table, opposite the two plates she set for her teenage daughter and son. Her own setting was at the north end of the table, to Bahdlahn’s right, and opposite that, at the far end, was another setting, the bowl empty.

  “Donovan is at Saint Precious?” Julian asked, when they were all seated.

  “Every day until long into the night,” Cathilda replied. “I been luckier, working the wall. The sidhe want all of us away from the wall long before the sunlight fades.”

  “We don’t work long hours,” said the daughter, whom Bahdlahn thought to be about fifteen years old, her brother two or three years her junior.

  “I feed the lizards,” the son said, smiling.

  “Should poison them,” the daughter said.

  Bahdlahn stared long and hard at the two. They weren’t being badly abused, clearly, if at all, and despite all that had happened, the children (though surely not the mother) had retained their ability to smile. That was something, at least, he thought.

  As soon as they had finished eating, Cathilda told her children to clear the settings and go to the bedroom, a back section of the main hall, walled by a blanket.

  “What does your friend know?” Julian asked, as soon as they were gone.

  “Which friend?”

  “Your cooking friend,” the Allheart Knight explained. They never used names of the contacts, in case Julian or Bahdlahn were caught.

  “He’s knowing that the meals he’s making are fewer,” Cathilda replied.

  “Good news, then,” said Bahdlahn.

  “Aye, there’s less of the bright-faced devils,” Cathilda said. “But not all’s good news. More o’ their priests’re here. They’re building more o’ those mirrors so they can bring in all the fighters they need, fast.”

  “So, if we’re to hit them, it’ll have to be a quick attack and retreat,” Julian said.

  “Aye, and then they’ll start killing ten for every one you hurt.”

  Julian nodded. “Not yet,” he agreed. “We’ll soon know the name of every sidhe in Palmaris. We know their every patrol route, and know the new ones before they even implement them.”

  “What we’ll need to learn is how to shut down their priests and those mirrors,” Bahdlahn said, and Julian nodded.

  “You heard of the attacks on Saint-Mere-Abelle?” Cathilda said.

  “A bit,” said Julian.

  “The sidhe’ve been going at the walls, and they’ve been knocked back. Lots of the bright-faced devils killed,” Cathilda said. “A dragon showed up, but … I hear they’ve stopped trying to get in.”

  “A siege?” asked Julian. “They’ll never take the monastery. The tunnels are endless below, with chambers full of water and fish.”

  Cathilda pushed her chair back, rose slowly, her back obviously stiff from the long hours of work, and moved to the side of the room. From between a pair of boards, she produced a parchment, then brought it back to Julian.

  “You know how much for each sidhe,” she said, giving it over. “Here’s the total they’re cooking each day.”

  Julian glanced at the numbers and meals listed on the page, turning the parchment so Bahdlahn could see.

  “Seems that more and more have left,” Bahdlahn said, though he wasn’t sure, since he didn’t know how to read and had only a rudimentary grasp of the numbering system of this strange land.

  “Could be ships moving back and forth to Palmaris,” Julian warned. “The number of enemies here could rise quickly with a couple of ships.”

  “More likely shows how many o’ them have marched out to the east,” Cathilda interjected. “They’re a long way across Honce, so say the whispers.”

  Julian nodded, but didn’t seem convinced, Bahdlahn noted, and he understood. They didn’t know how many xoconai would continue to filter into this kingdom, after all, particularly since these magical golden sheets in the pyramids allowed them to cover such distances so quickly.

  Julian nodded at Cathilda, then pushed back from the table, rising and grabbing his dark cloak. Cathilda nodded and motioned to a basket in the corner, to the side of the door.

  The two warriors smiled appreciatively. They knew what was in there: food for those in the forests beyond the western wall. The folk of Palmaris were supporting the resistance. Out in those woods, Julian and his fellow Allhearts (which, to him, included Bahdlahn) and the Abellican monks were assembling a fairly cohesive and powerful force. They hadn’t struck, and wouldn’t strike, anywhere within Palmaris yet, for fear of retribution, but
they had already launched a couple of raids in the south, hitting sidhe patrols and even taking down one of the pyramids. They had buried the golden mirror in the forest and had captured one of the sidhe priests, though the zealot had killed himself by breaking free and leaping from a cliff.

  They had also found some refugees, several bands, some from Palmaris, some from Ursal, some from smaller towns scattered about in the southwest.

  The two left Cathilda’s house and crept along now familiar avenues and alleyways, coming to the wall. They removed some bricks at the base of a nearby building, crept beneath it, carefully replaced the bricks, then crawled down into a tunnel they and their allies had dug, which took them far out from the city’s northern wall.

  Bahdlahn climbed out from beneath a wide-spreading oak tree, behind Julian, and there he paused, looking back at the city. For many nights after the invasion, Palmaris had seemed a dead thing to Bahdlahn, the only sounds being the occasional cries of fear and pain as the townsfolk were rooted from hiding places. Now, though, much had already returned to a state of new normalcy. Candles burned in windows and towers, torches marked the xoconai patrols, and a general glow showed the presence of the city from a long way away.

  And out here in the forest, Julian of the Evergreen was quietly building an army.

  “You haven’t won, deamhain,” Bahdlahn whispered into the night, and he followed his friend into the forest.

  “No, they haven’t,” Julian agreed.

  “And they haven’t won that great fortress you spoke of, Saint-Mere-Abelle,” said Bahdlahn.

  “Of course not! And they never will.”

  “Then why were you troubled? I saw the cloud pass over your face when Cathilda spoke of the place. What troubled you?”

  “Her reference reminded me of the tasks King Midalis put upon me. He asked me to go out and tell them.”

  “You have sent many couriers.”