“Because of her!” Pixquicauh shouted.
Tuolonatl braced herself against the expected ire of Glorious Gold, but, to her surprise, she found Scathmizzane’s expression seeming quite calm and content.
“No,” he told Pixquicauh. “It is too late for any killed here to offer us their power. Their journey would not be complete in time, in any case. But it matters not. We have enough.”
Tuolonatl wasn’t quite sure that she understood what he was talking about, but she noted that Pixquicauh apparently did, for while he threw her another sour look, he did seem to relax a bit.
“Can you not feel it?” Scathmizzane told him, told Tuolonatl, told all of the gathered xoconai army, his voice emanating strength, carrying through the air like the roar of a lion on a quiet night.
“The power!” Glorious Gold said, swinging about, striding powerfully, his giant fist clenched in the air. “Do you feel it, my children?”
A huge roar arose, and Tuolonatl noticed that Pixquicauh, too, was cheering wildly.
“What does he mean?” she asked the high priest.
He snorted at her with open derision. “We have killed enough. The crystal is empowered to glorious heights.”
When Tuolonatl screwed her face up in confusion at that, he continued, “Why do you think we were told not to use the divine throwers anymore, other than the two volleys to test the strength of the great temple in the northwest? To save the magical power, you ignorant fool. Because now Glorious Gold holds the power.”
Tuolonatl still wasn’t quite sure that she understood everything going on here, though the pieces were falling together. She stared down hard at Pixquicauh, his claim that they had “killed enough” hanging in her thoughts. The largest battles, Ursal and Palmaris, were long behind them, and in their march east, more had surrendered or fled than had been killed. Indeed, the fights had been few and swift ever since their departure from Palmaris. The most lying dead on any field had been the xoconai killed before the gates of St.-Mere-Abelle.
But rumors had reached her ears of mass executions in the conquered lands.
She shook these thoughts away for the time being, for Glorious Gold approached once more, his smile wide, his giant steps full of energy and life.
“You will incite it,” he said to Pixquicauh, and he held forth a triangular chunk of crystal—no, not crystal, Tuolonatl realized, but diamond. A huge prism that appeared to be a solid block of diamond.
Pixquicauh took it and brought it close to his heart.
“Go, my high priest,” Scathmizzane ordered. “Go now, before the daylight fades, all the way to Otontotomi.”
Both Pixquicauh and Tuolonatl widened their eyes at that. Such a journey would require scores of flash-steps—a hundred and more—and would carry the high priest three thousand miles away!
“Tarry not,” Scathmizzane added. “You must be there to catch the sunrise. You must stand atop the great temple and find the first rays of dawn as they land upon the great crystal settled in the heights of Tzatzini.”
“Catch them?”
“You will understand. You are the inciter of the triumph of Glorious Gold. None but Pixquicauh is worthy to bring me the dawn. Go.”
Pixquicauh scrambled away, moving with his entourage toward a pyramid that was only then being constructed on this latest battlefield. Even with the incomplete structure, they could make the golden mirror work, and he would be on his way.
Tuolonatl sat straight on Pocheoya, trying not to wilt under the gaze of Scathmizzane.
“Tomorrow, when the sun here is halfway to its zenith, you will see the power of Scathmizzane. You will witness the most Glorious Gold.”
“I will secure the village,” she replied.
“Feed your warriors well. We have one more great battle before us.”
“At the temple in the far northwest?”
“No, my servant. That is of no concern. Let the human priests stay huddled in their hold until they die of old age. We’ll never let them out, and there is nothing they could do to us even if we did.”
“And this temple?”
“You will see.”
“Then where is the great battle, Glorious Gold?” she dared to ask.
“In the south, not so far. In a city the humans call Entel. When Entel falls, we will realize the completion of Greater Tonoloya. We will own the heartland sea to sea, the Kingdom of the Xoconai, the Kingdom of Light, the World of Glorious Gold!”
He turned and walked away, back to his dragon. Tuolonatl should have been comforted, for he hadn’t scolded her for her act of mercy in allowing the retreat of the villagers—or for anything at all.
But she wasn’t comforted. For some reason she didn’t quite understand, Tuolonatl was fearful of what the morning would bring, of the power she would witness, and what that power might do.
* * *
Aoleyn moved into the nave of the largest belowground chapel of St.-Mere-Abelle. Many of the monks were in there—this was the place Father Abbot Braumin had determined would be the gathering hall for those who would spirit-walk from the monastery to gather information about the lands.
Something was wrong, the young witch knew immediately. Very wrong.
She found the father abbot surrounded by some masters, including Viscenti, who noted her approach and waved at her to hurry over. To the side came Aydrian, as well, looking very concerned.
As Aoleyn neared, she was able to see through the line of masters, and then she understood. For there sat three brothers, their expressions blank, other monks working furiously on them with various magical stones.
“Even with the chrysoberyl,” Master Viscenti told Aoleyn and Aydrian.
“What happened?” Aydrian asked.
Aoleyn answered before Viscenti could. “They were caught by the call of the God Crystal.”
“There will be no more spirit-walking,” Father Abbot Braumin said, coming over.
“I can go out,” Aoleyn told him. “I have been right to the cavern beneath the God Crystal. Its call cannot hold me.”
The father abbot looked to Aydrian, who shrugged helplessly. “We have little choice, I fear,” he responded.
“Perhaps,” Father Abbot Braumin agreed. He glanced back at the lost brothers. One of them had collapsed over the table, the monks near him shaking their heads. His spirit had fully deserted him, and he was quite dead.
“Do not go forth,” Braumin ordered Aoleyn. “We cannot lose you. Not now.”
The woman nodded. She wasn’t afraid of going out from this place spiritually. She had been there, in the powerful thrum of the magical crystal, hearing the call in the full-throated song of Scathmizzane. She was not afraid.
But she wouldn’t disobey the father abbot.
* * *
High Priest Pixquicauh came out before the dawn. The old augur, weary from his previous day of a hundred flash-steps across the breadth of the continent, looked very much his age as he ascended the long stairway leading up to the apex of the great pyramid temple of Otontotomi.
He finally reached the top, standing beside the large golden mirror that Scathmizzane had placed there, and stared out to the east, to the brightening skies. Far back there, he knew, dawn had long come, and fifty thousand xoconai macana and mundunugu stood on the field before the human temple built beside the eastern sea, prepared to witness the ultimate glory of Glorious Gold.
Tuolonatl was there. She would see it.
Pixquicauh winced. He reminded himself that he was inciting this most powerful act of Scathmizzane, and he tried to hold on to that, to suppress his envy that she, and not he, would actually witness the direct result.
The old augur turned to the south, toward the dark stones of Tzatzini, but he paused as he did so, noting some swirling brightness within the golden mirror. Tears flowed from Pixquicauh’s eyes as the image brightened and became clear to him. There stood Scathmizzane, twice the height of a xoconai, holding a triangular diamond prism similar to the one Pixquicauh now carr
ied. The whole scene came into focus, a gift from Glorious Gold. Pixquicauh saw his god, saw the dragon, saw the human temple up the hill from them. Beyond that temple, halfway up the eastern sky, was the sun, and now that orb had climbed far enough for the very tip of Tzatzini to limn with silver light.
A song came to the high priest’s ears, the human witches beginning their dance about the God Crystal high on the mountain. The winds must have been favorable, he thought, for how could he hear them from so far away?
He shook his head. This was no trick of the wind. He was hearing them because Glorious Gold wanted him to hear them.
Pixquicauh lifted the prism in both hands, above his head.
The dawn’s light crept down the highest peaks, and when it fell upon the human witches, the God Crystal flared with brilliant power and the prism vibrated and called to it.
A narrow and intense beam of light shot down from the mountain, striking the prism before Pixquicauh even realized its existence. From the prism, it arched up into the sky, no longer a singular beam of light. Rather, it was a brilliant, shining rainbow lifting out to the east, all the way to the east, to be caught, Pixquicauh saw just an eyeblink later, by the prism held high by Scathmizzane!
“Glorious Gold!” he cried, feeling the beauty and the power.
* * *
“Do you feel that?” Aoleyn asked Aydrian and Father Abbot Braumin. The three of them were out walking the walls of St.-Mere-Abelle on that cloudless late summer morning.
The other two looked at her curiously. She closed her eyes, focusing on the feeling. Her right hand went to the wedstone on her hip, her left into a pouch and to the borrowed chrysoberyl. She didn’t call on that second gem quite yet, though. Instead, she fell within herself, into the realm of the spirit, but did not walk out of her corporeal form.
She heard it from the west, a unified cry of abject horror, thousands and thousands of voices shrieking in the final moment of existence itself. No, not voices, but pure energy—she was hearing, or feeling, the last cry of pure energy.
Energy of human and xoconai.
Shocked, Aoleyn let go of the wedstone connection and blinked her physical eyes open. She started to respond to her companions but found them gawking, staring off to the west. Following that, she saw it: a great rainbow, moving swiftly across the sky, though not instantly, as she would have expected.
Because this wasn’t just color and light, she knew.
“I have to go,” she told Aydrian and Braumin. “Now.”
“Go?” Aydrian asked.
“Spirit-walking?” the father abbot asked at the same time, his voice clearly more distressed than Aydrian’s.
Aoleyn didn’t bother to respond. She now grasped the quartz with the chrysoberyl and fell fast into the wedstone, quickly freeing herself from her body and chasing the rainbow, the leading edge of which was now far to the east, diving over the horizon.
With the far-sight of the quartz, she soon saw the truth, soon saw him.
Scathmizzane, twice the height of a man, stood before the great xoconai army, facing away, facing up a long stone-and-grass hill topped by an Abellican monastery like St.-Mere-Abelle, with its back atop a high cliff overlooking the sea. The huge xoconai god, or demon, or whatever he was, held aloft a large sparkling stone, catching the rainbow within. Scathmizzane trembled with mounting power, Aoleyn could see, and he began to grow, his jaw shaking as if he was attempting to keep this godlike force within his corporeal frame.
He grew and grew and grew. Twenty feet tall and more—the size he wore when he rode the snakelike dragon that now slithered about the field behind him.
And still he trembled, his form itself blurring, flickering with sparks of magic, it seemed.
Aoleyn had once before seen the light that now shot forth from the sparkling crystal. This was a sharper and tighter beam, but with the same results. It stabbed down from the crystal in Scathmizzane’s upraised hands, flashing out over the cliff top to the right, the south, of the monastery.
Scathmizzane turned the angle of his prism, lowering the ray, and when its line touched the cliff top, the grasses burned and the stone itself began to melt and spray.
Loch Beag, the woman thought—and her corporeal form back at St.-Mere-Abelle said, though she didn’t realize that.
Down, slowly, came the beam, the ground beneath it roiling and spraying in protest, smoking liquid stone flying into the air.
Lower went the mighty beam of energy, moving nearer to Scathmizzane, then passing before him.
The cliff face rumbled in protest.
Aoleyn moved behind and around Scathmizzane, flying fast to the sea, out over the water. She saw the line of molten stone on the cliff face, the beam cutting through. A chunk of the cliff south of the monastery rumbled, cracked, and fell hundreds of feet to crash on the stones and surf far below. And still the molten line moved along to the north.
Aoleyn understood the inevitable result. It was like Scathmizzane was taking a large spade to cut out a semicircle of the cliff about and beneath the monastery.
With a simple thought to the quartz, the witch flashed back to the field, to find that those inside the doomed structure were figuring out their doom as well. The gates flew open wide and terrified people rushed onto the field, most running north, trying to get ahead of that destructive line of energy, some running south—all running away.
Monks magically took flight from the wall tops, scattering, fleeing in all directions except toward the giant monster.
Aoleyn could hardly force herself to bear witness. She kept trying to calculate how long it would take Scathmizzane to finish his great excavation, and how many of the poor folk would get beyond the doomed region.
It happened faster than she had thought, though, the weakened cliff face trembling, cracking, a massive chunk sliding and breaking apart. The monastery rolled over on itself, the whole of it—a gigantic slab of earth and stone and structure and screaming, doomed people—plummeting to the sea.
The giant lowered the sparkling block of diamond. The rainbow simply winked away to nothingness, and all was suddenly silent, so quiet, so eerie.
Aoleyn’s spirit lingered on the field. East of her, to the south and north, those who had made it out climbed back to their feet and began running once more. Now the xoconai lizard riders went out, north and south, to catch them, while the bulk of the conquering force began to wildly and thunderously cheer.
The witch didn’t know what to think or do. She had seen such power before, when the ray from the God Crystal had breached the mountains to drain Loch Beag, and she knew—she just knew—that the God Crystal had again been source.
She had never imagined that this monster had a method to take that power across the world in such a manner. Her mind whirled at the implications. She tried to fight against the hopelessness.
The field went silent, startling Aoleyn, and it took her a moment to realize that Scathmizzane had called for the quiet, his hand upraised. And now he stood, not so far from her, staring in her direction.
No, staring at her. Somehow, the demon god of the xoconai could see her!
“We have a guest!” he said to the xoconai woman standing beside him. That woman followed Scathmizzane’s gaze, but whether she, too, could actually see Aoleyn, the witch did not know.
“She who killed Cizinfozza has come to witness our victory,” Scathmizzane said loudly, his voice godly, and thousands of eyes turned in Aoleyn’s direction. “Behold, my children, she who defeated my enemy and freed Tzatzini for the xoconai!”
They saw her. Aoleyn looked down at herself as panic filled her, for she felt as if she was becoming corporeal once more—not that she was flying back to her form but that, somehow, her form was being brought here, to this field, before this godlike being.
“I do not know if I should devour you or anoint you high priestess of Tonoloya,” Scathmizzane said to her.
Aoleyn tore her gaze from him. With all her determination, wrought of the purest d
esperation, she forced herself to see St.-Mere-Abelle again, to see herself and Aydrian and Father Abbot Braumin. She felt the pull of Scathmizzane, but she fled and fought.
When she arrived back in her body, she was sitting against the parapet. Aydrian and Braumin were very near, each holding a hand, both staring with grave concern.
“Aoleyn?” Aydrian kept asking.
“Are you all right, woman?” Braumin kept asking.
“No,” she answered, her voice a whisper. She was still trying to make sense of what she had seen, but what most stood clear to her was the fall of that monastery into the sea far below.
St.-Mere-Abelle was similarly perched on a high cliff.
“We cannot stay here,” Aoleyn whispered. “We are all doomed.”
22
ON REFLECTIONS OF DIAMOND LIGHT
“Saint Gwendolyn,” Father Abbot Braumin said after Aoleyn described the abbey she had seen in her journey.
“Saint Gwendolyn-by-the-Sea,” Master Viscenti elaborated.
“It is gone,” Aoleyn said. “We cannot stay here.” She turned to Aydrian. “It was much like the golden ray that split the mountains, and that rainbow carried it all the way from the crystal atop Fireach Speuer.”
“How do you know this?” Aydrian asked, as Master Viscenti echoed, “Fireach Speuer?”
“I know,” said Aoleyn. “And I know where the power came from, and it is horrible, and Scathmizzane will regain that power and more—enough to do to us here what they did to that temple, that Saint Gwendolyn-by-the-Sea.”
“And what did Scathmizzane do?” the father abbot asked.
“He cut off the edge of the cliff, all about and below Saint Gwendolyn. The ground crumbled beneath the place and it fell, all of it fell, to the sea far below.”
All of the monks in Braumin’s audience hall began talking in excited whispers, more than one yelling a denial.
“You are certain of this?” the father abbot asked.
“I saw it. All of it. I know not how many hundreds died, but I know where they are going now.”
Song of the Risen God Page 37
