Sir Eardale said, “He is, in great part. The problem and danger is that he doesn’t know he is. He really thinks that all devout Chaldreans are spoiling for a war against everything non-Chaldarean. But he’s wrong. Even the most devout Chaldareans just want to get on with their lives. In peace.”
“What about us?” Tormond asked. “Is he likely to carry out his threats against the End of Connec? Can he?”
No one could answer that. Only Sir Eardale had seen what was happening in Brothe. His observation was, “You can’t predict what a madman will do.”
Father Clayto asked, “Does it matter if Sublime can carry out his threats? A better question is, will he try? I’m afraid that, unfortunately, the answer to that one might be yes.”
The Duke asked, “Do you find all this amusing, Charde?”
“Yes. In an irreverent fashion. Though no less frightening, for all that.” He explained how a Maysalean could see God as a cruel practical joker in this. Once he finished explaining, he asked, “How will the Emperor react if Sublime launches a crusade against the Connec?”
“Excellent question,” Sir Eardale said. “We expect to take that up with the Emperor himself. He’ll certainly be interested now that his soldiers have disposed of those assassins who wanted to kill Immaculate.”
Brother Candle was intrigued by the incident at Viscesment. Immaculate’s defenders must have been forewarned.
Dainshaukin were notoriously quiet and sternly withdrawn from everyday life. Within their own dwindling. communities they considered themselves an elder race, the first masters of the transition between the Age of the Gods and the Age of Man. The Dainshau at the table showed a palm.
The Duke identified him. “Tember Remak wishes to speak.”
The Dainshau said, “Tember Remak has a question. Where does the Collegium stand in this? Does the Patriarch have their support?”
“They elected him,” Father Clayto said.
“That would be a function of bribery and political persuasion. That would mean nothing in the time of the Festival of Hungry Ghosts. We have seen no evidence that Sublime fronts for the Tyranny of the Night. He is a great blusterer living in Bad Dog Village, not the sweet lord of Once Glance Great Fortune.”
Though couched in unfamiliar terms from Dainshaukin parable, the questions were important. If the sorcerers of the Church did not support Sublime his ambitions would be curbed. In particular his intelligence efforts would suffer. Espionage was one area where an alliance with the Instrumentalities of the Night could be very profitable.
“Is there any way to know?” Tormond asked. He peered at Brother Candle.
Brother Candle replied, “Our familiarity with the night is considerably exaggerated, Your Lordship. The fact is, Seekers After Light reject the night when we pledge to follow the Path. That’s why we’re called Seekers After Light. Some of my colleagues here, though... They probably do roast Chaldarean babies and run naked under the full moon with demons from the Pit.” He could not keep a straight face. Father Clayto had denounced the Seekers After Light for those very things.
One by one, each religious leader denied any involvement with the Instrumentalities of the Night. Mostly with good humor. “So we’re blind,” Tormond said. “So we have no choice but to sit here and take whatever Fate hands out.” That earned him a clutch of scowls. There was no “fate” involved in the Will of God.
Brother Candle said, “Isn’t it always that way in the Connec? Time and fortune have been generous. Never compelling us to bend the knee to the tyranny of the night.”
Brother Candle received scowls himself. There was no “fortune” in the Will of God, either.
It was a strange convocation. No one demanded war. Almost everyone pled for peace — while making it plain that there would be no acquiescence if Sublime chose to make war.
The gathering broke up before Brother Candle fully understood what was happening. He suspected that Tormond and Isabeth wanted it that way. The religious leadership was prepared to fight the agents of darkness and forces of oppression. Without Tormond himself having committed passionately to any particular course.
Vacillation and procrastination were Tormond’s best-known traits. In the slow-moving world of the Connec doing nothing often proved to be the best way of handling problems.
Brother Candle was sure today’s troubles would not fade away. Unless God chose to introduce Sublime to heaven’s reward early.
11. Great Sky Fortress, Realm of the Gods
There was no time in the Hall of the Heroes. There was only horror without end.
Shagot wakened and slept, wakened and slept, ten thousand times, or less, or more. Each time he wakened he found himself in the same place in the same black-and-white world filled with the same silently screaming dead.
This was not the Heroes’ Hall of legend. There was no roistering. The Daughters of the All-Father, when they could be seen, looked more like Eaters of the Dead than Choosers of the Slain. They walked but looked more like crones who had starved to death than the voluptuous maidens of myth.
Shagot never expected much of the Choosers of the Slain. Not even to see them, ever, fair or foul. Even so, he was disappointed in the Hall of the Heroes.
The dead heroes were heaped in there as though just dropped. Not even stacked. As they had died, faces contorted in agony, limbs missing, guts spilling, wounds open.
But there was no decay. There were no carrion bugs or birds. No worms. And no odor of death. Shagot sensed nothing to convince him that he had died and gone to heaven. Shagot did not spend much time awake but after a few decades of tiny slivers of consciousness, he concluded that a different destination had claimed him. Perhaps something as bleak and terrible as that burning pit those Southron girlie missionaries had insisted would be the destination of the wicked and those who did not believe in their weird god.
Not once did his view change. He saw nothing of his companions on the road, nor anything of the fake fishermen who had brought them here and then abandoned them. The Choosers of the Slain turned up once in a while, evidently bringing in new clients.
Only sleep kept insanity at bay. Vast sleep and the fact that he was not an imaginative man.
Then, on his ten-thousandth, or twenty-thousandth, or thirty-thousandth day of imprisonment in Paradise, Shagot wakened from eternal fog to find his view of heaven changing.
He was being moved by the Choosers of the Slain. He caught glimpses of their shrunken-head shriveled faces as they carried him by supporting him under the armpits. His feet dragged. He tried to help. Feet and legs would not cooperate. They just slipped and flopped.
Feeling began to return. He felt his heart try to beat, something he could not recall happening at any time since the boat. The Choosers’ bony, hard fingers dug into his flesh. He felt the numbness and pain that spring up in muscles long unused. He tried to speak. Nothing but a gurgle emerged. But, at least, he was breathing again. It was a long journey to wherever those horrid women dragged him. His vision expanded and improved. He was able to lift his head for seconds at a time. He found himself being hauled into a part of the Great Sky Fortress that, despite vast emptiness, seemed more humanly comfortable. Not in the sense that it was anything like anywhere he had been before but because what he saw now fit in with what he had heard about the Eastern Emperor’s palace at Hypraxium, from old-timers who had followed the amber route south to serve in the Emperor’s lifeguard. That was something the old adventurers always mentioned. The unoccupied vastnesses of the Emperor’s house.
Shagot’s hearing began to return. He wished it had not. The Choosers of the Slain argued bitterly in a tongue that sounded a lot like Andorayan. Shagot understood about a third of what they said. Ah! They used an ancient form of Andorayan. Language had been a gift of the gods a long time ago. It stood to reason that that language would have been their own and that men would have corrupted it over time.
The Choosers of the Slain proved to be extremely negative minor goddesses. They were not happy abo
ut anything. They did not like Shagot and his band, other members of which were being resurrected as well. They did not like their Father’s plan. They did not like the Hall of Heroes. They did not like the dead. They did not like their lives. They were especially put out with their sister Arlensul. Her selfish behavior had gotten her exiled and her share of the work dumped onto her long-suffering sisters.
The Choosers were just plain not happy with anything.
They got to wherever they were going. They dropped Shagot and went away. Shagot found himself resting on what appeared to be a vast plain of an empty floor. He saw no bounds, no walls, just a gradual fading into foggy darkness starting an arrow’s flight away. There were no columns to support the ceiling. If one existed. It was too far above to be seen. Distant movement caught his eye. The hideous pair dragged Svavar his way.
Shagot heard something behind him. He found the strength to roll over.
His face was less than a foot from polished black granite. Polished black granite that had not been there just minutes ago. Tiers of black granite went up and up and up almost forever. Somewhere, at the very edge of hearing, singing went on, funereal choral stuff that made Shagot’s spine shudder with cold chills. What the hell was wrong with those people?
Shagot levered himself onto his hands and knees. That gave him a better view all around. The granite rose in one-yard steps and setbacks, only about twenty times. There were what might be thrones way up top.
Svavar groaned beside Shagot.
There followed a time of no time, when time must have*passed because Shagot discovered that dramatic changes had taken place between one moment and the next.
Finnboga, Hellgrim, and the Thorlakssons were there. They remained disoriented. Beyond them was Erief Erealsson. Erief looked exactly like what he was, a dead man erect only by virtue of some supernatural power. Hundreds of equally color-drained dead men formed behind him, rank upon rank, as far as the eye could see.
Shagot did not greet his former captain. Erief exuded the same bleak creepiness Shagot felt whenever he neared one of the ancient burial mounds found throughout Andoray. The haunted mounds. Mounds said to be filled with blood-starved undead who, if they broke their bonds and caught one of the living to drain, could reclaim life. For a short while.
Shagot was a skeptic. He knew no one who had had a genuine encounter with a draug. He wanted to remain skeptical, too. But the Choosers of the Slain had been equally unreal. And these dead men had a hungry look in their eyes. Those that still had eyes.
One by one, his companions climbed to their feet No one spoke. They were not brilliant but they understood that this was a place where any word spoken might be the wrong word.
The Choosers of the Slain came forward. They were nightmares now. They looked more like the harpies of southern myth than the beautiful daughters of the great god of the north.
The chamber crackled. Shagot’s hair stood out. Lightning flashed. Thunder bellowed. Shagot screamed. He recovered to find himself clinging to the top of the first granite tier, trying to remain upright. His equilibrium was gone.
The Choosers of the Slain were up top now, with a dozen more sublime beings. They were not ugly anymore. The gods all looked like they had just stepped out of the old stories. Each was good-looking. Each shed a golden glow of youth.
Excepting the one wearing the dark gray, with the eye-patch, the staff, and the long white hair. The one with the wicked, winged night thing riding his shoulder, unlike any raven that ever flew the skies of Shagot’s earth. That one god was not in a cheerful, playful, or youthful mood.
The Gray One spoke to one of his companions, a small, bent god who looked like he might be part dwarf. The small god nodded, floated down toward the heroes. Shagot paid little attention, other than noting a vulpine calculation in the god’s expression as he approached. Shagot was far more interested in the several goddesses.
The bent god came to rest on the bottom step, in front of Shagot. “Hi there, Hero. Ready to go to work? Hell. Who gives a peck of rat shit if you are or you aren’t? My half-idiot brother wants you. So he can tell you what your future is going to be.
Shagot knew whom he faced, now. His name, in modern Andorayan, could be rendered several ways. Trickster. Liar. Deceiver. And, in a stretch, Traitor. Shagot’s analytical side always wondered why other gods did not exterminate him. Maybe by drowning him in a peck of rat shit.
The bent god made a couple of gestures. Shagot lost his allegiance to the floor. He tried to grab on to nothing. Trickster laughed but made sure Shagot drifted up toward the First Among Them, Whose Name is Never Spoken. the One Who Harkens to the Sound.
Shagot knew the name as did every Andorayan and everyone else who accepted the northern pantheon, but he did not know how he knew it, since it was not supposed to be spoken.
The agony of standing in the glory of a god drove Shagot to his knees. He was afraid, which was a rare sensation. He stared at the granite beneath him an awaited the will of the god.
These gods were old. These gods were tired. These gods were supported by a dwindling number of believers. the Chaldarean insanity was a thousand-tentacled monstrosity creeping in everywhere. It converted kings and princes and chieftains by political persuasion and bribery. They then converted their peoples at sword’s point. These gods might not have many centuries left before they began to fade away to lesser spirits.
Sometimes, for a flickering instant, they failed to reflect the expectations of mortals. In those moments the All-Father and his spouse, his sons and daughters, his nephews and nieces and half-brother, looked no more appetizing than the Choosers of the Slain. Many became something to raise the human gorge.
But even that was because the human mind insisted on imposing form upon the formless.
The All-Father addressed Grimur Grimmsson, known to the world as Shagot the Bastard. His voice sounded only inside the sturlanger’s mind. Hero, we stand in the Postern of Fate, facing the end of time. Facing what could become the Twilight of the Gods. You have been chosen to accomplish great things.
That was like a scream deep inside Shagot’s brain. the voice of the god was far too loud. Shagot smashed his forehead against the flood, Trying to fight the pain.
The All-Father understood that mortal flesh had limitations. the volume went down. So did the level of divine sententiousness. the god chose to speak out loud, like an ordinary man.
“Grimur Grimmsson, we have chosen you to be our champion in the world of men. We’re approaching a critical age. the gods themselves are threatened. Not just your gods but all gods. the Heroes will go forth from the Hall to fight once more. And Grimur Grimmsson will show the way.”
“As you command.” Shagot could not stop shaking. Nor could he concentrate enough to listen closely. Nevertheless, he understood what the gods wanted done.
Despite the lack of mental acuity, Shagot did wonder why the gods needed there men to affect their will in the mortal world. They were gods, weren’t they?
Shagot and the companions were going to visit the south, where other gods reigned. Once they found what the gods wanted found they would perform rites that would summon the Heroes of the Hall. All of them. the Heroes would execute the will of the gods. the full extend of which those gods did not see fit to reveal to Shagot the Bastard at the moment.
12. Firaldia, Ormienden, and the End of Connec at Antieux
By the second afternoon, after Else fell in with the youngsters, they were deferring to his leadership. He did not want that. But it fell out that way.
That evening the band reached Ralli, where the main industry was wresting white marble from the flank of a nearby mountain. Ralli marble was renown for its lack of flaws and its almost translucent quality. Quarrying had gone on there for two thousand years. Ralli marble could be found in palaces and memorials all around the Mother Sea.
The townspeople eyed the travelers warily, which was understandable. They might be brigands or criminal fugitives. Soldiers commonly were.
>
A fellow who might have been a constable came and told them, “If you’re looking for quarry work you need to go up to the quarry head in the morning. If you’re looking for the man hiring soldiers, he’s set up on the barren south of town.”
The constable wanted them to keep on moving.
Else grunted. His ragged bunch would generate confidence in no one.
“The recruiters are offering a hot meal to everybody who’ll listen to their pitch.”
Else asked, “Any of you boys interested in the quarrying trade? I recommend that over taking up the profession of arms.” Nobody volunteered. The youngsters were all sad and homesick and going on mainly because they did not want to reveal their humanity to their companions.
Two dozen tents stood in the waste ground mentioned by the constable. Else did not like the camp’s look. It was too orderly. Too professional. He observed, “It looks like we’re in time for supper.” In the twilight a line of men received food from a pair of squat, wide cooks who might be brothers. “Anybody see any banners or shields?” It would be nice to know who was hiring.
A voice asked, “Does that matter?” An armed sentry materialized from brush beside the road. Else was startled. Professional indeed.
“Of course it does.” Else assessed the man as best he could in the failing light. The sentry did the same with him. Each saw a professional soldier. Else said, “Some people I won’t follow. Maybe because of who they are. But, mostly, because they have reputations for failing to pay their men.”
The light was not so weak that Else failed to catch the sentry’s contempt. He was not a mercenary himself so did not think well of mercenaries.
Else did not think well of them himself but he had to play that part.
The sentry shouted, “Post number three! I have thirteen and a mule, coming in.” Else asked, “Are you expecting an attack, or something? Here?”
“You let your guard down because you think you should be safe, you’ll end up prematurely cold.”
Else grunted. That confirmed his suspicion. Professionals, indeed. He had fallen in with the Brotherhood of War again. Not so good. On the other hand, maybe not so bad, supposing they were putting together a gang to assist the Patriarch in some of his mischief. But knowing who these men were made Else uneasy. He was marching a little too close to the Brotherhood lately. Someone jogged up. He was not one of the fighting brothers. He was too small and too young but, obviously, had been around them long enough to have picked up a military patina. “Come with me, please.”