Angus Wells - The God Wars 03 (39 page)

           
He heard her give a small,
frightened cry as the shape emerged, and, unthinking, lay an arm about her
shoulders, holding her against him as he began to smile, head bowed in
obeisance.

           
Your
land
of
Lysse
,
that is my sister's domain.

           
From between the trees came a horse,
huge, larger again than Bracht's great stallion stood above the Jesseryte
ponies. The stars were reflected in its coat, or shone therein, for it seemed a
thing of shadow and light, not entirely distinct, but rather shimmering, as if
the force of life itself played and danced within its form. Brilliance sharded
where hooves struck grass, it seemed the eyes shone moonlight.

           
Calandryll said, "Horul!"

           
Aye,
the god returned, for this is my domain, and I heard your call.

           
The shape changed then, flickering
in the instant of an eye's blinking, faster, becoming no longer equine, but a
man-shape, naked and muscular, surmounted with a horse's head, the mane flowing
proud over massive shoulders, the eyes bright with intelligence.

           
Calandryll felt Cennaire press
closer, trembling, and said, "There's nothing to fear. Save you
lied."

           
She shook her head, but it was the
god who answered.

           
She
did not. All she told you was truth.

           
The weight of doubt oppressing
Calandryll lifted somewhat at that. "Then she's one with us?" he
asked. "She's a part to play in this quest?"

           
Aye,
said the god. Though it may cost her, or you, dear.

           
"Do you explain?"

           
I
cannot. A hint of laughter, rueful, light like falling stars shed from between
the equine lips. I am bound—did my sister, my brothers, not say as muchl What
aid is ours, we give you; but what aid we may give you is limited by designs
beyond our making, by powers greater than us.

           
Calandryll looked up—the man-horse
form of the god overtopped him by a head or more—and said, "But I should
trust her?"

           
Do
you not love her?

           
"I do."

           
Without
trust, what value has lovel

           
"But . . ."

           
She
was a courtesan? A mage stole out her heart, made her revenant? She has slain
men you named friend?

           
"Aye! All that."

           
But
still you love herl

           
"Aye. But ..."

           
Think
you change is impossible? Forgiveness? Look into your soul, and trust what you
find there.

           
"You say Menelian's death, the
others, count for nothing?"

           
I
say you look for answers, and that I offer you those within my power to give.
To take them, or not, that is for you to decide; but that te fleshly organ you
name the heart is not the repository of the soul, but only a mechanism. The
pneuma rests elsewhere, in every fiber of the being. In the flow of blood and
the tissue of the muscle; in the bones and the skin. It is all of you mortal
folk, the totality of you; not some single, isolated part. This upstart wizard
may hold her heart, and so control her physical existence, but he cannot govern
what she is. That shifts and changes, is altered by time and the influence of
others, by folk such as you and your comrades.

           
Again, then, that spectral laughter,
like the distant dance of stars in the night sky, far off, like the hint of
sunlight rising through the mists of dawn.

           
It
is your choice, Calandryll den Karynth—to trust her, or not. But if you love
her, I tell you that you had best trust her. Put aside all she was, and trust
in what she is now. Those deaths you spoke of! No, they are not nothing—they
cannot be, for each life taken leaves a debt that must, in some fashion, be
settled. But this woman may atone for her sins. Has she not already risked much
on your behalf, on behalf of your quest!

           
"Aye, she has." He drew
Cennaire tighter against him, suddenly aware of her arm about his waist, the
pressure welcome. "But what further part has she?"

           
That
I cannot say. Forces move within the realm you name the aethyr . . . Horul
paused then, the great, black-maned head craning back, moving from side to
side, nostrils flaring as though scenting the night. . . . Forces far greater
than mine, than any commanded by we Younger Gods. Tharn stirs, and would see us
gone, and even now his strength is growing apace. Men feed it; men may defeat
it.

           
"You speak," Calandryll
said, aware that he echoed Bracht, "in riddles. If men feed Tharn's power,
and may defeat the god, why do you not show us the way?"

           
More laughter then, self-mocking,
light dribbling from between the widespread lips to tumble down onto the grass,
great arms spread wide as burning eyes locked on his face.

           
Is
life not a riddle! Why did Y1 and Kyta quit your world! Why give it over to
Tharn and Balatur! Why not take it back, when the godwars
_%
came! I
cannot answer you, Calandryll; not with simple words. You are bonded to what
you are, and I—and all my kindred gods—bonded to what we are. There are chains
about us all, and we none can break them; only seek to slip them, or learn to
live with them. You must do what you must do, as must I; and more than that I
cannot tell you.

           
It was on Calandryll's lips to
retort: "More riddles," but he bit back the words and said instead,
"But did you Younger Gods only lend us your aid, then surely we might
defeat Rhythamun. Only bring us to him, and let us take the Arcanum from him,
and we none of us need fear Tharn's resurrection."

           
Could
we, Horul answered, do you not think we would! We cannot! Men look to raise
Tharn, and men must prevent that resurrection.

           
"That's much to ask of
men," Calandryll said.

           
Perhaps.
But is it more than men ask of us!

           
"Then a lesser boon—do you lend
your voice to convincing Bracht, Katya, be that needful?"

           
Were
they here now, then I think they should believe.

           
"But they are not! Let me bring
them; or come to where they are."

           
We’ve
not the time.

           
Again the great head swept round,
about the confines of the trees, up toward the twinkling stars. Were they a
little dimmed? Calandryll felt the unpleasant prickling of trepidation, as if
the air grew sullen with impending storm.

           
Tharn
would deny even this much, were he able. But he’s not yet so strong. Even so ..
.

           
The god broke off, head again flung
back, the equine nostrils flaring. Calandryll followed his gaze and it seemed a
curtain was drawn across the heavens. The stars, the moon, were lost, not
behind cloud or the pale misting of dawn, but gone, as if they existed no
longer.

           
He
stirs, he waxes angry. Horul's eyes returned to Calandryll, to Cennaire. I’ve
no more time. I must depart, lest his wrath descend on you. Go on your way in
knowledge that your heart speaks true, and that atonement may be won. Now—
farewell.

           
He turned, moving across the
clearing, becoming again a horse, stars' light and moon's shine, trailing
brilliance as he reared and galloped skyward, toward the heart of the oppressive
absence that lay across the firmament. Calandryll stared, awed, as the god
rose, a shooting star now, a comet, that raced headlong into the vacancy.

           
Then light exploded, blinding, and
the pines were shaken, bent, by a silent wind. So fierce was the blast,
Calandryll felt himself totter, Cennaire's grip firm about his waist, her eyes
wide and frightened as she trembled, pressing against him as if, even in her
terror, even as she held him upright, she looked to him for strength, for
support.

           
The searing flash died, leaving only
afterimage,

           
the trees sighed upright, and all
was still a moment. Then shouts disturbed the night, and the whickering of
unnerved horses, torches flared, and the shapes of kotu-zen, of Bracht and
Katya, approached.

           
"Come," Calandryll urged
gently. "We must tell them what Horul said."

           
"Shall they believe?"
Cennaire asked.

           
"Perhaps. I do."

           
This time, as they walked back
toward the road, he took her hand.

           
THE others met them on the road,
swords drawn, alarmed, only Ochen seeming calm, as if he sensed what had
transpired. Calandryll assured them all was well, returning to the fires to
answer the questions that came in aural bombardment. He had hoped that Horul's
divine intervention would convince his comrades of Cennaire's integrity, but he
was disappointed. They had not witnessed the appearance of the god, and it
seemed impossible to dissuade Bracht from hostility, his hawkish features
planing into lines of hard skepticism as Calandryll recounted all the god had
said, his audience silent, reserving judgment until he was done, the Jesserytes
looking then to Ochen for confirmation, though it was Bracht who broke the
silence.

           
"A trick," he declared
with sour finality. "Some gramarye of Anomius's making, designed to
beguile, that his creature become trusted. None others saw the god, only you.
Can you surely say it was not some conjuration?"

           
"Had you been there,"
Calandryll told him, "you'd not doubt."

           
"But I was not," the Kern
replied. "Only you and she. And you are clearly entranced."

           
Calandryll flushed at that, in part
embarrassed, in part angry. He looked toward Cennaire, who smiled helplessly
and shrugged; he turned to Ochen, asking, "Can you not convince him? Or do
you, too, believe I am beguiled?"

           
"I believe you speak the truth.
But ..." The wazir, like Cennaire, shrugged, as if he doubted his ability
to persuade the obdurate Kern, looking then to Bracht, his voice solemn.
"A magic greater than man's walked, this night. Power immeasurable strode
the aethyr, and I felt it. That was no making of sorcery, neither Anomius's nor
Rhythamun's, but of godly proportions. Did you not see the sky cloud, Bracht?
Could you not feel it?"

           
"I saw cloud hide the
stars," Bracht answered. "A storm built, and there was lightning. I
saw that, and no more."

           
"Horul!" Ochen sighed.
"You see with your eyes, not your soul. Had your god only gifted you with
that other sense when he drove those nails from your hands ..."

           
He shook his head, resigned into
silence. Bracht frowned and demanded gruffly, "Do you insult my god,
wazir?"

           
"No," Ochen replied,
"I say only that your vision is limited by prejudice."

           
Bracht barked a dismissive laugh.
"Is it prejudice that I mistrust a thing created by a sorcerer sworn to
slay me? I hear her condemned out of her own mouth. Ahrd! Do you wonder I find
it hard to accept this tale?"

           
Cennaire listened to their debating
less with her ears than with those other senses granted by her revenancy.
Bracht was firm in his doubt, his refusal to trust her sharp and hard as
tempered steel. In him, dubiety was like the falchion he carried: edged and
rigid, unbending. Calandryll emanated a confusion of emotions. Love bled from
him, but like fever sweat—tainted with the poisons of squeamishness at all she
had done, all she had been, the fear that he might lose Bracht's friendship.
She turned her preternatural attention to Katya, and found a confusion similar
to Calandryll's: belief was there, that Calandryll spoke only truth, that had
he been deceived, Ochen should know it, therefore that Horul
had
appeared and declared her true.
Katya wanted to believe, to accept, but mingled inextricably with that
acceptance was a doubt born of Bracht's disbelief, a desire to take the side of
the man the warrior woman loved, the result confusion.

           
Is
this what love is then? she wondered. Certainty and doubt all tumbled together?
The opinions of friends balanced against heart-felt emotions? Trust where
common sense declares none can exist! To believe when belief is impossible?

           
She turned her attention to Ochen,
and found him protected by his magic, unreadable. A natural, instinctive
defense? Or something else?

           
Chazali was far easier: his emotions
gusted out, fierce, hidden only from natural senses by the discipline of his
caste, which hid his feelings from men, but not—never—from her. He believed
Calandryll, believed that Horul had appeared, and consequently believed all he
had heard. That she had been a courtesan meant nothing to him, only that his
god had declared her true. That she was created by Anomius troubled
him—distaste there—but not distrust. He was angered by Bracht's rejection—of his
god, as he saw it—and tempted to take the Kern's argument from Ochen's hands
and answer it with his sword.

           
Burash!
she thought suddenly, does this go on, we play into Rhythamun's hands. We fall
on ourselves in doubt.

           
Then, beyond hesitation, firmed now
by forces beyond her understanding she knew with utter surety that she was
committed to the quest. She chose not from sudden emotion, but from an inner
deliberation, a certainty past questioning, as if Horul had somehow washed away
her doubts, the uncertainties and self-interests disjected by the god. And yet
it seemed her presence drove a wedge between the questers, that mistrust set
them at loggerheads.

           
"Listen!" Her voice forced
silence on their arguing and their faces turned, startled, toward her. She
looked to Bracht, allowing her gaze to encompass Katya. "You do not trust
me. I cannot blame you for that, and no matter what I tell you, you'll likely
not believe. But, do you hear yourselves? You argue round and around in
pointless circles—Calandryll tells you Horul vouched me true,- Bracht claims it
was a conjuration. Trust flees, and its going aids only Rhythamun. Your
disbelief breeds doubt like a festering sore."

           
Her voice was fierce and for long
moments the Kern faced her with narrowed eyes, a hand upon his swordhilt, as if
he anticipated she might attack him. She faced his stare unflinching, willing
him to believe even as she sensed his refusal, thick on the night air. Then he
shrugged without giving answer.

           
"Do we face facts?" Ochen
asked into the silence that fell then. "Trust or no, we go on together,
and in Pamur-teng consult a gijan. Perhaps the spaewife shall persuade our
obdurate friend. If not"—he shrugged, sighing—"mayhap Horul will
appear again. Whatever, we've little enough choice save to continue. So—do we
set this arguing aside for now and find our beds? Or do you prefer we debate
the night away?"

           
"And be I right?" asked Bracht,
not at all mollified.

           
"I tell you that you are
wrong," said Ochen wearily, "but even be you right, Cennaire offers
you no harm. Even does she serve Anomius, she needs you alive, no? Save all the
prophecies be wrong, it is you three, and none others, can wrest the Arcanum
from Rhythamun, and save you succeed in that, the book is useless to her
creator. That, my doubting friend, is simple logic."

           
"Aye," the Kern allowed
with a reluctant grimace.

           
"Then do we sleep?" the
wazir suggested, answered by Bracht with a sullen nod.

           
They settled in their blankets then,
Bracht and Katya across the fire from Cennaire, Calandryll and Ochen like
guardians to either side, the night heavy with distrust.

           
THE
days that followed were little better. Bracht spoke to her only at need,
and then but curtly, in monosyllables. Katya was more generous, but cautiously,
aware of the Kern's hostility and unwilling to fuel his animosity. Calandryll,
for entirely different reasons, grew distant, troubled by the divisions and his
own confused emotions. Chazali and his warriors were meticulously polite, their
attitudes shaped by the knowledge that their god accepted her, but only Ochen
seemed untroubled by her condition, as if he saw her now as a victim, certainly
as a potential ally, and consequently she found herself much in the wazir's
company.

           
He was still greatly occupied with
Calandryll's instruction in the occult, and while no further sorcerous attacks
manifested, he devoted time each night to warding their camp with protective
magicks, but when not so busied, he sought out Cennaire and spoke with her as a
friend. He was, she recognized, looking to set an example, to break down the
barriers risen among the party, and at the same time intent on learning all he
could of Anomius. It mattered little enough to her, far more that the wrinkled
mage offered her a friendship otherwise denied, and she told him all she could
remember of her creator and his plans.

           
"I believe," he remarked
one night as they sat about the fire, "that the time fast approaches you
should use that mirror."

           
"What say you?" Bracht
glowered from across the flames. "That she should advise her master of our
intentions?"

           
"To an extent, aye."
Ochen's face was fissured, simian as he beamed at the suspicious Kern. "Think
you Anomius does not wonder where we go, what we do? Likely he grows impatient
for news."

           
Bracht readied an angry response
that was curtailed by Katya's hand upon his arm, her voice soft in his ear,
bidding him be patient and hear out the wazir. Calandryll, intrigued, motioned
for Ochen to continue.

           
"From all Cennaire has told me
of this sorcerer," Ochen declared, ignoring Bracht's low-voiced correction
of that title to "her master," "there are limits to his
patience. So—let us give him such news as will placate him awhile."

           
"Why?" came Bracht's blunt
question.

           
"For several reasons/' Ochen
returned patiently, "foremost that we learn where he is."

           
"What matters that?" the
Kern grunted.

           
Ochen drew in a slow breath, as
though forcing himself to patience. Softly, soothingly, Katya murmured,
"Do we hear out the reasons, Bracht?"

           
The wazir smiled his gratitude for
that intervention and answered, "Does he escape those gramaryes binding
him to the Tyrant's cause, think you he'll not come seeking the Arcanum
himself? I'd know him still fettered, lest we find a powerful enemy at our
back."

           
"Could he find us, even
freed?" Calandryll asked.

           
"It might be." Ochen's
face composed in lines of gravity. "I've the feeling this Anomius commands
great power, and so I'd know precisely where he is. Does he grow impatient, I
say we should placate him with such news as we choose to impart— enough he's
satisfied Cennaire goes loyal about his business."

           
"And you'd trust her in
this?" Bracht's voice was weighted heavy with sarcasm.

           
"My god has vouchsafed her
integrity," Ochen returned, ignoring the Kern's dismissive grunt,
"so, aye. But for your sake, I say she shall use the mirror only while
observed."

           
"And reveal ourselves to
him?" Bracht barked. "Ahrd, man, you know he can see out through that
cursed glass."

           
"He shall see only so much as
we'd have him see." Ochen chuckled, grinning as if delighted at catching
out the Kern. "We shall all of us be present, to hear what Cennaire tells
him." He paused, his grin widening as Bracht frowned, clearly reveling in
the Kern's incomprehension. "You seem to forget"—he
chuckled—"that I, too, am a sorcerer, and not without some small
talent."

           
"For riddling/
⁷
Bracht muttered, his expression sullen, aware that Ochen toyed with him.