The Realms of the Gods (16 page)

“I don't like being so far apart from you,” she told Numair.

Pieces vanished and reappeared. Now the Great Gods struggled with the Chaos beings, neither side appearing to have the advantage. Ozorne and his allies, holding swords, spears, and axes that rippled with the constantly changing colors that filled the sky and Chaos vents in the Divine Realms, attacked the gold pawns. Gold's pieces were armed, but the attack took them while they were staring at the Great Gods' fight; red's pieces swiftly cut them down. When Daine, Numair, and the other gold pawns were dead, Ozorne and his allies slumped to the board and dissolved, blending with their weapons. Their melted selves flowed around the outside of the ring of struggling gods, to become the Chaos stuff from Daine's earlier dreams, flooding over, then eating, the Great Gods.

“I don't like that game,” said Numair, his grin a bit forced. “Can we play a new one?”

In the blink of an eye, the whole board twisted. When it straightened, all the pieces had been returned to their original places. This time, as the gods and the lords of Chaos struggled, gold's pawns led the attack. The Scanran mage threw fire at them; King Jonathan blocked it. Alanna the Champion locked blades with an armed spidren. Daine's pawn went straight for Ozorne, Numair's for the Copper Islander Deniau. All over the board, opponents were locked in desperate battles.

The spidren was the first killed; Alanna raised her sword with a triumphant cry. Uusoae appeared, shrieking as she charged the King's Champion. Gold's pawns were swept out of harm's way as the Great Gods appeared in a circle around the Queen of Chaos. Red's pawns vanished.

—If she is behind this, she will come to avenge her servitor, the one who found a way for her to use mortal power without Father Universe and Mother Flame knowing. Once she reveals herself, they will enter the matter, and end the fight. Gods and mortals will be safe again, at least for another thousand years.—
Gainel, who had stayed beside the girl and Numair all along, looked at them. Daine could no more read the emotion in those shadow eyes now than she had been able to the last time she met their gaze.

He disappeared, and was replaced by tree limbs and leaves. It took Daine a moment to realize that she was now awake and that Gainel's soft voice was in her mind, not her ears.
—Her ally may not be a spidren. It may be another immortal, or a human. Whoever it is, for the sake of your parents, humankind, and the beast-People, you must kill him, or her. It is the only way to end the war.—

“Why didn't someone just tell us what the problem was?” demanded Numair. Daine looked: He, too, was awake and sitting up.

—Because the Great Gods believe that no problem exists. They say that no mortal would risk the destruction of his or her own realm by helping Uusoae to break the walls that keep her
contained. I no longer argue with my brothers and sisters. They only laughed, so I gave it up. Farewell then, mortals. Good luck.—

Though he was nowhere to be seen, Daine knew the Dream King had left as surely as if she'd seen him walk away.

Later in their travels that day, as they ate lunch by a stream, the ground shook. Two sounds tore through the air. The first, Daine and Numair agreed later, was that of an iron door being slammed. The other, hard on the heels of the first, was undeniably that of a drawbridge being slowly, ponderously lowered.

Daine and Numair covered their ears, to no effect. When the booming echoes faded, she checked Leaf and Jelly. Both were shrinking, shivering blobs.

“Oh, my goodness,” Broad Foot remarked sadly. “So it's come to that.”

“Come to what?” Daine asked, rubbing her abused ears.

“Follow me.” Broad Foot waddled to the stream, Daine, Numair, and the darkings right behind him. Leaning over the water, he breathed on it. An image—or rather, three images—grew on the surface.

The first, before Numair, showed the walls and ramparts of Port Legann from high overhead. A colossal spotted hyena gnawed on a tower, then on a siege engine outside the walls. Under her, around her, even through her, humans surged in battle. Was the hyena a ghost? Raising a muzzle that dripped blood, she gave the stuttering, eerie cry that made her kind so feared. Pricking cat ears forward, Daine also heard a distant, dim roar: human voices shouting and the clang of swords, shields, and armor.

In the water before the duckmole, Daine saw wheat fields. Cattle and sheep grazed nearby, herded by children and dogs. Over everything, in a form as sheer as the
hyena's, slunk a yellow, mangy, cur dog. He was little more than a skin-covered skeleton, as unhealthy an animal as Daine had ever seen. He took bites from everything: grapes, wheat, apples, herd animals. As he bit, things began to shrivel.

Daine looked at the water image in front of her, and shivered. It showed Corus, the Tortallan capital, with its crowds, rich marketplaces, and temples. A giant, ghostly rat crept through the streets, thrusting his nose into windows and doorways. He licked a man who was making a speech in front of the stocks: The man began to cough. A woman brought him a dipper of water; he could barely drink it. Two men helped him to sit. The ghosts of tiny rats flowed from his mouth, landing on those who had gathered around him.

“Slaughter has been out since May,” Broad Foot said. “Malady, though, and Starvation—what you heard were the gates to their dwellings being opened.”

“The Three Sorrows,” whispered Numair, making the Sign against evil on his chest.

Daine copied him in the Sign; her skin prickled. Leaf curled around her neck to see. Now it rubbed its tiny head, with its green hat, against her cheek. Jelly had vanished into Daine's pocket when the three images had appeared in the water.

“They are the siblings of the gods,” the duckmole explained. “Their appearance causes great changes, many for the good—”

“I doubt the ones they kill think so,” murmured Daine. She looked at the duckmole, thinking hard. It was one thing to ask the badger for help, another to ask the duckmole. Broad Foot had nothing to do with her, really, or with humankind—there were no two-leggers in the lands where his mortal children lived.

“You know,” said the mage casually, “the more disorder that is created in the mortal realms, the more power that Uusoae will have to use. Or so it appears to me.”

Daine took her cue from the man. “I bet that Chaos will feed on this. How can she not, when all three Sorrows are wandering loose?”

The duckmole sighed. “So that's it. You want me to halt the Sorrows.” He scratched himself. “I can't stop them all,” he warned them. “They are strong. They ought to be, with humans feeding them for centuries. I can only hold one, and I'll have to remain in the mortal realms to keep it from breaking loose. The Great Gods themselves could do no better. Some powers cannot be ruled, even by the mightiest.”

Daine and Numair traded worried looks.
Choose
between Slaughter, Malady, and Starvation?

“Who are we to say which roams free?” whispered the girl. “If we ask to hold Slaughter, Malady and Starvation will kill hoards of folk—but if we hold Starvation, which kills slow, the other two will wipe out large numbers. . . .” Her throat closed.

“Armed humans can defend themselves,” Numair said, thinking aloud. “Hopefully Starvation can be held at bay through food imports. But Malady. . . .” He shuddered. “Malady doesn't care who it takes, or how many. Malady can wipe out armies and leave no one in the Yamani Islands or Carthak to farm the land.”

“And it's just out,” added the duckmole. “It's weak still.”

Daine shivered and tried not to think of friends killed in battle, or dying slowly of hunger. “Malady,” she whispered. “If it can be only one, let it be that.”

Broad Foot rocked from side to side, muttering. At last he stopped. “Stay on the path,” he ordered. “It is a fixed thing, even on the Sea of Sand. It will lead you to the Dragonlands. Getting in, of course, is
your
affair.”

“Of course,” murmured Numair.

Daine knelt to face him. “I'll owe you for this, Broad Foot.”

“So will I,” added the man.

“It
is
only fair. If you can force Uusoae to reveal herself, and save the divine and mortal realms,
we
ought to do some things for
you
. Be careful, then.” Silver fire gathered around his small body, and he vanished.

“What will we do if the dragons refuse?” Daine asked Numair.

“Fret about them later,” he said, gathering their things as she quickly finished her lunch. “I'm worried about crossing the Sea of Sand, if Rikash doesn't help us.”

Daine stowed her pack and quiver on her back. “What's wrong with the Sea of Sand?”

“I keep forgetting that we haven't both made a study of myths and legends,” remarked Numair, shrugging into his own pack. “The Sea of Sand is more than a desert. It's said the Great Gods take mortal heroes there—though Alanna the Champion never mentioned such an experience. If the hero survives, it is a sign that his—or her—mortal impurities have been seared away.”

Daine winced. “Please, Goddess,” she said, looking up. “Send Rikash with help.” She led the way to the path. “I'm fair confused,” she told Numair. “If I'm in the Divine Realms, why do I look up to pray to the gods? Shouldn't I be looking somewhere else?”

“Thinking about things like that will give us both headaches,” he replied. “Although I believe that Shuiliya Chiman had visions of the dead praying by looking down. Now, in the lost books of Ekallatum . . .”

Daine smiled. As long as he could talk of learning, Numair would forget anything else, including future dangers. At her belt and on her shoulder, two heads craned toward the mage: The darkings were fascinated.

The path ahead climbed; they stopped often both to rest and to get out of the sun. To the east, the ground fell to a broad river with a sea of grass on its far bank. To the
west, the thinning forest gave way bit by bit to scrub and short grasses. Finally, as the afternoon sun beat down without mercy, they stopped near a spring tucked in a rocky cleft. First they ate a meal of bread and fruit, then curled up to sleep until the sun went down.

“What do you mean, ‘no reports'?” The voice was young, male, with the accent of the Copper Isles. “All through this campaign you have been able to say exactly where the enemy is! Now, suddenly, you have no information from your spies? There is a Yamani
fleet
north of us—what if it is coming here?”

“I have but two spies there, as you know! If there is some way that they have been detected— Put your own idle mages to the task!” Ozorne's voice was twisted by fury. “You want everything handed you as a gift. But for me, you would have neither courage nor allies to take on Tortall, for all your vows of death to King Jonathan's line! If you want news, scry for it!”

A hoarse voice added, “General Valmar—if you think perhaps to take your fleet and slip away tonight, or tomorrow, or ever, know this.” From a childhood spent too close to that harsh land for comfort, Daine recognized a Scanran voice. “Every skin of liquid fire that you possess will burn, should I touch it with my Gift. If you throw them overboard, our allies among the merfolk will fasten those skins to your hulls, and I will burn them then. We will not have the Copper Islanders act as they have so often, and forget their vows of allegiance.”

Footsteps—hurried ones—receded. Daine heard metal claws digging into wood.

“The centaurs, too, grow restless,” the Scanran remarked.

“I have hairs from every tail among them, to bind them to me. They'll sing a very different tune, should I scorch even one.” Ozorne's voice was sullen.

“Sometime you must tell me how you first had information so detailed that one might think you perched on the shoulders of the northern defenders, and now you have nothing. I look forward to hearing.”