“That’s possible,” I replied, “even likely, but I’ll need more information before we can assume Mal’goroth is behind it.”
“I haven’t finished,” said Karenth. “When they were escaping from the palace Dorian fought against Chel’terek. He was lucky to survive.”
“Chel’terek?” I was confused.
Karenth sighed, “That’s the name of one of the others whom humans call the Dark Gods, though he is much weaker now.”
“I thought Mal’goroth ate them. Isn’t that what you told me once before?”
“He caught them and devoured their power. It was similar to what you did with me, though much more direct. The spellweavings that created them are virtually indestructible. He left them nearly powerless, but he couldn’t unmake them. Instead they’ve become his servants,” explained Karenth.
Well shit, I thought, there goes my one advantage. I had hoped that by taking command of the remaining Shining Gods, I would be able to counter Mal’goroth at least in the numbers category. Now it appeared that he would have far more helpers than the meager three I could potentially command. “How many of them are there?” I asked.
“What a surprise,” he commented raising his eyebrows, “a piece of history you don’t know. There are forty-one of them, if you don’t count Mal’goroth.”
I chided myself mentally. He was right, and as soon as he had said the number, I felt the knowledge rise from my hidden memories. Forty-two guardians of the other realm, keeping the gates and protecting the groves from the outside. The memory led to other questions, such as what the ‘gates’ represented, but I had more practical concerns for the present.
“How strong are they?”
“About as strong as I was before this ‘gift’ of yours,” said Karenth looking down at our hands. I was still transferring power to him. He now held roughly an eighth of the power he had had originally.
An eighth of a Celior, I thought wryly, remembering my measurement system, by contrast I had roughly one and a half Celiors still at my disposal. I had drained a substantial amount from the God-Stone in addition to the power from the Iron Heart Chamber. “It sounds as though they are fairly weak then,” I noted.
“That’s still enough to make one of them a serious danger to one of your knights, and there are a lot more of them. This is aside from the fact that they are still immortal,” Karenth informed me.
His words were unsettling and they sent my thoughts into a desperate spiral. What do I do? Even though I was dead, my family, even my nation, needed me. I had thought I could save them but it seemed that at every turn I found the odds stacked against me. More importantly, what would Mordecai do? Well, for starters he wouldn’t be flying in the wrong direction, prioritizing the return of Lyralliantha before taking care of his own people. That couldn’t be helped however. My only hope of freedom was to fulfill her command and trust that she would keep her word.
And after that? How do I defeat a legion of immortal mini-gods, their nigh-omnipotent master, and his human patsies—all while keeping the nation more or less intact? It was hopeless. Once Lyralliantha freed me, I should use the token she had given me and destroy myself. At least then the ‘hero’ could go to his well-earned rest. I was only a poor copy. Saving the world was impossible. I should content myself with saving Mordecai. Let his soul find peace wherever it was that souls went after they passed through the void. That was a more reasonable goal. What would Mordecai do?
Fight!
The last thought came from somewhere else, accompanied by a painful pulse in my chest. I took an unnecessary breath and let out a sigh. “Goddammit.”
Karenth looked at me questioningly.
“Here’s what I want you to do,” I told him, and for the next quarter of an hour I laid out his instructions. Once I had finished, I opened the ‘door’, allowing a blast of air to roar into the interior of my flying device.
“What are you doing now?” he asked.
I smiled. “I’m kicking you out. My binding won’t let me stop, so you’ll have to make your own way back, but I’m sure you have power enough now.”
“Right here?!” he said, startled. His voice rose to a shout as I placed a hand behind him and gave him a rather ungentle shove.
“Yep,” I said smugly, watching him fall for a few seconds. His body sprouted wings, and he took flight before he had fallen halfway to the ground.
Alone, I watched the ground fly by beneath me for a few minutes before exploring my second idea. Closing my eyes, I turned my attention inward, seeking the black core of my being. It was a place of darkness, the She’Har spellweaving appeared to me like a sphere made of nothingness, a blank place that light entered but never left. Within it was Mordecai’s soul, but from my perspective nothing of its interior could be observed.
Lines of dark power stretched outward from it, snaking their way throughout my body, and though some stopped there, many others went farther, stretching away invisibly into the distance—to the other shiggreth. According to my best guesses, those lines should allow me to control and communicate with them. I believed that they were dependent upon that link, that eventually, when I was free to destroy the spellweaving that maintained my existence, they would also die. For now though, I had other uses for them.
Focusing, I sent my thoughts outward along lines that stretched hundreds of miles, in a thousand different directions: Come. You are needed. Mentally I created a vision of the place I wanted them to go. Giving instructions as carefully as I could, I sent more images, faces and heraldic designs, each accompanied by one command or the other: Kill these. Spare those.
Inevitably, I knew that there would be mistakes. The images I had used to identify friend and foe were limited, and some innocent lives might be lost. Luckily my emotions had ebbed to a low point. Guilt wasn’t a problem. Necessity and efficiency were all I cared about.
My biggest concern was that my commands might be ignored, or too complicated. My own experience suggested that their minds might be more complex than I had assumed before becoming one myself, but I still couldn’t be sure. I was, after all, in a unique position.
Chapter 27
Penelope Illeniel stared at the sky for long minutes after ‘Brexus’ had disappeared with his cargo. The others went back inside, except for her children, who stood with her, sharing the quiet melancholy. Internally she was a wreck, her emotions were twisting and turning, anger mixed with sadness. How can I believe what Elise says? He barely spoke to me.
He nearly killed Cyhan. If it is him in there, he’s changed. He’s become darker and more violent, she thought. But he didn’t hurt the children that day. Her thoughts had gone back to the day that Matthew was wounded during Moira’s confrontation with her ‘father’, if that’s who Brexus really was.
Today he had seemed just as distant, almost mechanical. He had shown no concern for her or anyone else in the house. Except for that last moment, when she had blocked his path. I thought he was about to hit me. She had refused to react to his threatening gesture, thinking to let him show his true colors. His sudden paralysis, accompanied by those words…
He sounded like my Mordecai, if just for a moment.
“He didn’t even look at me,” noted Matthew in a forlorn voice.
His sister tried to explain, “He isn’t quite the same, but he’s just trying to protect us. He thinks he’s a danger to…”
“Just shut up!” Matthew interrupted loudly. “Ever since you got your magic, you act as though you know so much more than everyone else!”
Our moment of solidarity is over, thought Penny. “Stop!” she ordered. “Both of you go inside. We’ve enough to worry about without you two bickering all the time.”
She kept her eyes on the street for a minute more, then she heard someone behind her. “You should come in, Countess. The streets aren’t safe,” cautioned Stephen Balistair.
She decided to heed his advice and stepped in, closing the door behind her. “I told you yesterday, call me Penny
,” she rebuked him.
Ariadne had appeared two days previously, desperate and seeking refuge, with Elise Thornbear and a few others. Stephen Balistair had shown up later in the same day, bringing with him some of the survivors of Lord Hightower’s garrison. Dorian had returned later still, and his revelation regarding Martin Balistair’s part in the treachery that had killed the King was less than welcome news.
Dorian wasn’t one to act on mere rumor, but the fact that Stephen was Earl Balistair’s oldest son cast him in a suspicious light. His solution had been to lock the man away, but for some reason he couldn’t fathom Ariadne forbade it. She believed Stephen’s claim of ignorance and shame at his father’s actions.
Since then they had gathered several hundred armed men, remnants of the city guard, the palace guard, and the retainers of some of the local nobility who hadn’t been involved in the plot. They were woefully outnumbered, but the invaders hadn’t yet been able to organize properly. Sir Egan and Sir Dorian had also proven remarkably effective at dissuading Tremont’s men from trying to force them into a head on confrontation, but their luck couldn’t hold out for much longer.
“Forgive me, Penelope,” replied Stephen courteously.
“Penny. Only my father calls me Penelope,” she returned. And Mordecai sometimes, when he was angry or tense. She cut that thought off immediately.
Dorian spoke up as she entered the main hall, “Are you sure we did the right thing?” The ‘right thing’ he was referring to was letting Mordecai remove the She’Har woman.
“We obviously couldn’t do anything with her,” she observed.
“That’s not what I mean. We don’t know what his motivations are. Nor do we know what will happen if he releases her. Her race wasn’t known for being friendly to humankind after all,” he responded.
“Your mother thinks we should trust him,” Penny replied.
The large warrior grimaced for a moment, “She’s never seen some of the things I have. In Gododdin we found whole villages, men, women, children—everyone. They look like us, but they aren’t people. Sometimes they seemed to remember things, or have knowledge from their former lives, but they only used it to get close to their next victims.”
“You think it’s just a ruse? That he, or it, whatever you want to call him—just wants to get closer to us so he can devour us?” she asked, careful to keep her tone neutral.
Stephen spoke up, “That’s what happened with Katherine.” He was referring to his now deceased wife.
Dorian nodded. “I tend to agree with Stephen, but I’ve never seen anything quite as complicated as this.”
“Complicated?”
“Usually, even the ones that have some memories only pursue short term goals. If he’s one of them, he’s acting in a whole range of ways that are uncommon. Mother’s story about this woman, it doesn’t make sense. I’ve never heard of one letting someone go,” explained Dorian.
“Yes you have,” reminded Penny, “us.” Years ago, she and Dorian had been captured and used as bargaining chips when the shiggreth made a deal with King Edward.
“What?” Stephen Balistair had obviously never heard that story.
Penny retold the tale of their time with their undead captors, leaving out some of the more embarrassing details. “Anyway, that clearly shows that they are sometimes capable of advance planning,” she added when she had finished.
“You ignore the fact that their goal at that time was to get leverage against Mordecai,” noted Dorian.
“Well they’ve got a lot better than leverage now,” said Stephen. “They have the wizard himself.”
“Mordecai was only a means to an end for them,” declared Moira Centyr, walking into the hall and joining the discussion. Her new body had perfect hearing and she had been listening from the kitchen. “Their goal has been accomplished.”
“We’re still alive,” argued Dorian. “As far as I am aware, they were created to destroy mankind.”
“That statement has some truth. From what I have learned, they were a vengeful accident on the part of the last of the She’Har, but there is another purpose that they have helped to fulfill,” Moira told them.
Penny interrupted, “You said Mordecai was still himself. Why would he be serving their interests? And what is this purpose?”
“I would like to know that as well,” said Ariadne, stepping up beside Moira Centyr.
Moira dipped her head in deference to the princess. “As you wish, Your Highness. My knowledge is limited but I will share what I can.”
“We shouldn’t talk in the hall when there are seats aplenty in the next room,” suggested Ariadne.
After they had taken seats and gotten more comfortable, Moira continued, “I doubt most of you are aware of this, but I was originally responsible for part of the creation of what we now call the ‘Shining Gods’. Well, not me exactly, but the woman whose name and memories I bear. She created me as well, but for simplicity’s sake I refer to myself as ‘Moira’.”
“Pardon—what?” asked Stephen, already confused.
“I can clarify some of that later,” Penny told him. “For now please continue, Moira.”
“The Centyr wizards specialized in creating magical intelligences. Artificial minds, crafted purely from magic. At that time, there was an Illeniel wizard, a gifted enchanter, who devised an enchantment to make those minds permanent. His goal, and mine, was to create an immortal servant, powerful and ever vigilant, to protect humanity.” Moira leaned forward as she warmed to her subject.
“To some degree, we succeeded. Though as most of you are aware, our success has since been overshadowed by what became of our creations after we were gone.”
Penny interrupted, “What does this have to do with Mort?”
“He has in many ways become something similar. When he fought Thillmarius, the shiggreth leader, he destroyed him by removing the magic that maintained him. As a human he was incapable of directly changing or controlling the She’Har magic, but as an archmage he was able to subvert the magic, replacing the mind it held with his own,” said Moira.
Dorian broke in, “And that made him into one of them?”
“Not directly,” corrected Moira Centyr. “He imprisoned his soul within the She’Har spellweaving, severing its connection with the living world. After that his body died, though magic continues to sustain it.”
“Severing its connection…,” mumbled Penny quietly to herself.
“So he is one of them,” said Dorian.
“Yes and no,” said Moira. “I won’t sugar coat this. The man you knew is trapped, locked within the creature you just met. He isn’t in control either. He may not even be aware of the outside world.”
“Huh?” interjected Dorian.
“His body is now a type of soulless animate construct. His brain, his memories, they’ve become a magical awareness, similar to the sort the Centyr wizards used to create. Initially the construct wasn’t even aware of that fact, it thought it was him.”
“So there are two Mordecai’s?” Penny asked.
“There you have it,” said Moira, pointing at Penny as if she had won a prize. “We have two, the original living soul, which is now trapped in a magical prison, and the present Mordecai, who has renamed himself ‘Brexus’.”
Stephen Balistair groaned, holding his head in his hands as though he feared it might split apart.
“It gets better,” Moira informed him. “He is also the locus, the focal point for the shiggreth. To destroy them completely we will have to destroy him.”
Penny flinched visibly at that pronouncement, but Dorian spoke first, “Wait! He’s their leader now?”
“That is my best guess,” she answered, “though I saw no direct evidence of it while I was with him.”
“If he’s still Mordecai, or if he is a copy of Mordecai, shouldn’t he be helping us?” asked Dorian.
“He may want to,” began Moira, “but there are a couple of reasons why we shouldn’t put the same trust in hi
m that you would in the man he once was.”
Penny broke in, “Dorian’s mother told me that he helped a woman after he attacked her. That sounds to me as though he still retains some of his old self.”
“Let me explain,” said Moira. “The She’Har woman has modified the magic that sustains him. She’s bound him to her will. While I don’t think her intentions are necessarily malign, her priorities are different than ours. As you noticed, he virtually ignored everyone here. He must satisfy her demands before his own. At the moment that means he must reunite her with her lover.”
“Is this the purpose you mentioned earlier?” said Stephen.
Moira nodded. “Exactly. Her goal, Mordecai’s first priority, is the rebirth of the She’Har race.”
“The same race that nearly wiped us out two thousand years ago,” noted Penny. “The same race that created Mal’goroth, who is still trying to finish the job.”
“Remind me again. Why did we let him leave with her?” asked Dorian.
The twins had snuck back into the room unnoticed. Moira Illeniel spoke up unexpectedly, “We couldn’t have stopped him. He’s more powerful than anything you can imagine now.”
Dorian looked down at the small girl, “Lass, I’ve fought the things we used to call gods—up close and personal. I can imagine quite a bit.”
Penny’s daughter didn’t waver, “Take what you imagine, and multiply it.”
“Maybe he’ll take care of Mal’goroth for us then,” suggested Stephen.
Moira Centyr grimaced, “I think that’s what he wants, but he felt that Mal’goroth was at least an order of magnitude more powerful than anything he could hope to deal with.”
Penny spoke, “This is all beside the point. We know that we’re facing something too powerful for us to fight. The question is whether we can trust Mordecai, or Brexus—whatever you want to call him.”
Dorian was gritting his teeth now. “As much as I hate what’s become of him, Mother thinks we should trust him. I’ve never gone wrong putting my faith in him before.”