Child of the Sword, Book 1 of The Gods Within (36 page)

Durado told him he’d received orders from
Olivia to close the pass. They’d destroy any provisions on the east
side, then remove the railings from the stone bridge and retreat
westward. There, they’d station archers to stop anyone who might be
foolish enough to attempt a crossing.

It was reported that Salula was riding ahead
of Illalla’s army with twelve twelves of Kulls on short rations.
He’d detach fifty or so to Kallun’s gorge, then take the remainder
south to Sa’umbra Gap. His intentions were obvious: to close both
passes completely so that any Elhiyne resistance could not be
supplied from the west. Salula and his halfmen would eat poorly for
a few days, but Illalla and his army would not be far behind, and
control of the passes would greatly speed his conquest.

Morgin listened to all of this, and wondered
why he had chosen to ride into the face of that army. He thought on
that for some time but came up with no answer, and when he looked
he noticed that the same question was written on the faces of the
old man and his son, though they were too polite, or fearful, to
speak it aloud.

Durado sent his son with Morgin as a guide.
The trail down the eastern side of the pass was treacherous at
best, and with its twisting and turning ways would have been
impossible for Morgin alone, though even with Samull’s leadership
it was difficult and tiring, and more than once Morgin was thankful
for the boy’s company.

They passed through a number of small
villages on the trail, strange little clusters of huts that clung
precariously to the side of the mountain, always placed on what
seemed the most inhospitable terrain. Morgin’s imagination pictured
them in daylight bustling with activity, peopled by a hearty race
of mountain folk immune to the harsh realities of winter in the
Worshipers. But now, in anticipation of the evil that would soon
settle upon them, they were silent, dark and deserted.

It was not until well past midnight, after
several hours of exhaustive riding, that the trail leveled off
some. Samull told Morgin that the going would be easier then,
though he would not turn back at Morgin’s request. And Morgin, no
longer required to concentrate so on guiding Mortiss, relaxed his
soul for the first time in days. His magic, now beyond any control
of his doing, detected the scent of Kulls on a nether wind. They
were not far below, and riding steadily up the trail.

He turned quickly to Samull. “Go back.
Now.”

“But sir!” Samull pleaded. “The trail is
still dangerous.”

“I have my magic to guide me,” Morgin said.
“But the Kulls are approaching, and I’ll not have you with me when
they pass.”

Samull’s eyes opened fearfully. “The
halfmen?”

“Aye. The halfmen.”

“But what of you, milord?”

“My magic will hide me. But you must go
back. Now. I command it.” Ironically, Morgin realized he sounded
quite like Olivia.

“Aye, milord,” Samull said. “May the
gods
protect you.” The boy turned his horse and disappeared
quietly up the trail.

Morgin wasted no time. He backtracked up the
trail, found a spot where he and Mortiss could step off into the
trees. They could not go far, but he managed to get them fully off
the main path. He dismounted, stood near the horse’s head, then
cast a spell to calm the beast and keep her still. But as the magic
washed over her, she shook it off as if she had power of her own
and needed not the aid of some mortal fool.

Only seconds later the first Kull rounded a
turn in the trail, a dark apparition seated atop a black horse
visible only as a shadow in the moonlight. To Morgin’s senses the
halfman and his horse emitted no humanness, no life.

More Kulls appeared behind the first. Their
horses trudged slowly and methodically up the trail, as if they
were stone given life only by magic, and not a single Kull spoke.
There was none of the chatter that would come from a troop of men,
only the creak of saddle leather and the soft clop of many hooves.
It was an eerie sound that filled the moonlit night, an evil sound
that raised the hairs on the back of Morgin’s neck. He held his
breath as they passed, and was thankful for the moonlight and the
contrast it gave to the shadows in which he and Mortiss hid.

When the last Kull disappeared far up the
trail and well out of sight, Morgin released his breath in a long,
slow sigh. He stretched his tired muscles, and resisted the
temptation to lay down then and there to rest.

Sleep! With the exception of that short nap
at the top of the pass he hadn’t slept in days. He’d lain
unconscious in a ditch for some hours, but that was far from
restful sleep. It took great willpower to lead Mortiss back out
onto the trail and mount up. Oddly, she seemed to know the trail
even in the dark so he let her pick her own path, and he resolved
that he would have to move with caution, for now his enemies were
both behind and in front of him.

Mortiss, without his urging, maintained a
grueling pace. Even when he tried to slow her, to pace her
carefully, she refused and pressed on, as if she had no need of
rest or other mortal comforts, and by noon of the following day
they had covered a good distance. The trail leveled out some, and
the hillsides across which it cut were far less treacherous, though
still quite dangerous if one was careless. The land about him was
rocky and harsh, but green with a life of shrubs and ferns so thick
he could never have cut a new trail through it. And above it all
towered the forest, evergreens so high they were un-climbable, so
dense that the sun seemed lost from the sky.

Morgin met no one on the trail that day. He
passed by several small farms with no signs of life, and through
three villages that likewise appeared deserted. The last was the
largest of the three. In the middle of the village a catch-pool
collected water from a nearby stream, and there he stopped to
refill his water skin.

He desperately needed rest. He sat down at
the edge of the pool and dropped Mortiss’ reins, knowing somehow
that she would not wander off. She walked casually to a nearby
animal trough and bent her head to drink. A peaceful silence
descended on the village and the surrounding forest, a silence
broken only by the lap-lap sound of Mortiss’ tongue in the water,
the rustle of leaves in a soft breeze, the slow and unbroken hiss
of a thousand drops of accumulated mist dripping from the leaves of
the forest. But there was another sound too, almost masked by the
others, and Morgin was slow to recognize it: the pad of feet moving
stealthily between two of the huts.

He jumped to his feet and drew his sword.
Mortiss, sensitive to the tension in the air, stopped drinking. The
silence descended again.

Morgin stood with his back to Mortiss and
eyed the huts about him, then reached out with his magic to sense
who might be lying in wait. It took but a moment for him to locate
thirty or forty living beings scattered throughout the huts and the
forest beyond, all more fearful of him than he of them.

“I am Elhiyne,” he shouted. There came no
reply. “You have nothing to fear from me. I am here to kill
Decouixs, not peasants.”

He waited several seconds and there came no
answer, so he sheathed his sword, mounted Mortiss, and rode out of
the village.

Beyond the village the path widened enough
for a small cart and the going eased somewhat. Mortiss kept up her
pace as if she were in collusion with Olivia and wanted to be sure
that no time would be wasted in delivering Morgin to his fate, and
near nightfall they reached the Road of the Seventh Deed, often
called the God’s Road. Morgin remembered asking as a child what the
strange names meant, but no one seemed to know, though quite a few
were willing to make up stories.

The road led north to Yestmark, then into
the Decouix lands. It also led south to Sa’umbra Gap, and beyond
that to castle Inetka. But south was of no concern to Morgin.
Illalla would use this road to bring his army down from the north
to Sa’umbra Gap. And it was on this road that Morgin would meet
him. Morgin wondered what he would do when that time came, but he
put those thoughts quickly from his mind for he had reached the
point of complete exhaustion. It was time to rest.

He led Mortiss off the trail to a spot some
distance into the forest, finding that the dense undergrowth was
ribboned with small game trails and moderately passable. He tied
the animal’s reins to a nearby branch, then cleared a space to
sleep. He summoned a minor demon and placed it under geas to watch
over him and awaken him at the moon’s rising, but Mortiss shooed it
away with her own magic. She would watch over him, and she would
wake him when the time was right.

I’m so tired I’m beginning to imagine
things
, he thought. He’d lost the demon through carelessness,
and he was too weak to summon another. He shrugged, wrapped himself
in his blanket, and without lighting a fire lay down to a restless
and fitful sleep.

Tall trees lined both sides of the God’s
Road, turning the night sky above into a thin slit of dark night
and sparkling stars. The rays of a gibbous moon lit half of the
road brightly, while the other half remained a thin streak of black
moon-shadow, cast by the angle of the moon and the height of the
trees on that side of the road. Morgin found it comforting to ride
in the shadow, feeling less exposed than in the full light of the
moon.

Mortiss had awakened him with the rising
moon, and they’d begun their journey north. He was in no hurry to
meet the oncoming army, so he kept her at a slow but steady pace.
But shortly after they’d begun travelling he spotted a dark shadow
ahead in the road. It appeared to be a crumpled heap of some sort,
but not until he reached it did he realize it was the remains of
some poor soul caught on the road by the Kulls and cut down without
mercy. Farther on he discovered other bodies, and parts of bodies.
The Kulls had butchered anyone they’d encountered on the God’s
Road.

Near sunrise of the first night on the road
he came to the river Augis. Just across the river the road passed
through the center of a large village, and as he approached it he
could smell death hanging on the air. The village had been burned
and its population slaughtered. Bodies were strewn about
everywhere; the lucky ones had been cut down quickly, while the
unlucky had been hacked slowly to pieces. He rode through it
slowly, wishing he could look away from the carnage.

At the far edge of town his eye caught a
brightly colored heap of cloth lying by the road. He dismounted to
investigate, and found a small girl of no more than ten or twelve
years. Her gaily-colored skirt had been pulled upward, then tied
about her throat with a piece of rope to trap her arms within its
folds. The Kulls had stopped for some pleasure, then finished by
strangling her in the cloth of her own gown. He cursed them, then
sobbing openly, he buried her in a shallow grave.

He rode out of that village at full gallop,
spurring Mortiss unmercifully, demanding all the speed she could
deliver. He rode through that day and into the next night, stopping
only during those few hours between sunset and moonrise. He pushed
himself and Mortiss constantly, tapping the power that seemed now
to hover always about him. The death he saw in the road goaded him
into haste. It was never long between one crumpled heap in the
moonlight and the next, and as each appeared in the distance he
felt drawn to it, rushing to confirm that it was more death, then
rushing on to be away from it.

He now knew what he must do. By some strange
twist of fate it had been left to him to end the killing, and
without an army at his back there was only one way to do that:
Illalla must die, even if Morgin must die with him.

Mortiss, seemingly inexhaustible, perhaps
sensing the murderous rage that drove him, never slackened her
pace. Again he sensed a strange intelligence within the animal, as
if she felt even more compelled than he to seek Illalla’s death.
Again he dismissed his thoughts as pure fantasy.

It was shortly before sunrise of his second
night on the road that Morgin came to the river Ulbb. There was no
bridge here at the crossing, but instead a wide shallows that made
for an easy ford. The riverbed was solid, primarily pebbles and
sand and small rocks the size of a man’s finger. Morgin dismounted
to drink, to rest, and to watch the sun rise. He allowed Mortiss
free rein to graze, found a spot well off the road and sat down by
the water’s edge.

The water at the crossing was no more than
ankle deep, rippling over the rocky bottom like a babbling brook,
but the babble here was a soft roar, for the ford was easily two
hundred paces wide. He closed his eyes, but resisted the temptation
to lie back, for he knew if he passed into sleep, he would not wake
for hours. As he sat there, the backs of his eyelids brightened to
a deep red and his face warmed as the sun splashed its first rays
over the horizon.

He heard a voice in the distance and opened
his eyes. Up the road, on the other side of the ford, he saw three
peasants walking his way: a very large and broad-shouldered man, a
woman and a young boy. All three wore simple homespun, and carried
bundles strapped to their backs.

The spot Morgin had chosen to rest was far
enough off the road that they clearly hadn’t seen him yet. He
waited until they’d splashed through the shallow water in the ford
and had crossed the river, then he stepped out onto the road and
into view. The three froze in their tracks and eyed him fearfully.
The large fellow crouched slightly into a defensive posture. The
woman’s eyes darted about desperately as she looked for a means of
escape. The boy clutched her sleeve, his mouth open in a big round
O.