Now. Let’s put me to bed.”
18. Cape Tondur: Andoray
A supernatural wind blew south southwest along the coast of Andoray. Little of the power from beneath the sea made it inshore, where scores of ravenous Instrumentalities prowled the brink of the forever ice, eager for any taste of power, dodging or preying on one another.
For all but the greatest a moment of inattention meant certain destruction.
The most terrible doom was the vast white toad squatting atop a promontory of ice that thrust miles out into the sea. That ice creaked forward a yard or two every day. And lifted vertically several feet. Or more, if the Windwalker caught a lucky gust of power. Or if some desperately hungry lesser Instrumentality strayed within range of the Windwalker’s lightning tongue.
There were human worshippers attendant upon the Windwalker, initially. Cold and starvation took most. Their frozen remains lay scattered around the great toad. Most resembled the Seatt peoples of the northernmost north of ancient times.
Not all the Windwalker’s Chosen elected to perish beside their god. One family took advantage of a distraction on the god’s part to flee into the Ormo Strait aboard a boat found caught in a crust of newly formed surface ice. These fugitives were the first Chosen to shake the mad god’s control. His strength was limited and his attention rigidly fixed elsewhere.
Kharoulke the Windwalker had no room in his divine consciousness for anything but hunger: for the power out there, and for revenge on those filthy come-lately divines who had driven his generation into a terrible captivity.
Middle-world time rolled past swiftly. Those who had known the Windwalker elsewhere did not mourn his absence.
Kharoulke sat at the end of the ice, five hundred feet above the frigid indigo waters of the Andorayan Sea. Only a few miles now separated him from the gateway to the Realm of the Gods. He could see through that. The waters beyond were subtly different. He saw but could not reach. A mighty and dark god he was but he had almost no power left. He could not collect enough more. He might not get there in time to sabotage the restoration of his most hated enemies.
Can a god know despair? Particularly a god who knew what it meant to be imprisoned for millennia?
Maybe not. But certainly something very like despair, which had built in the understanding that Instrumentalities of the Night were not armed with a sense of time like the one so critical to those ephemeral mortals who shaped the gods.
There was no longer any guard on Kharoulke’s back but the dread of him. Among the scattered, frozen Chosen, now miles behind, there were, as well, several Krepnights, the Elect. They had not had the strength to survive the frozen dreams of the god who had imagined them, either.
Something flickered into existence behind the great white toad, was gone in an instant. The same shimmering disturbance came and went a dozen times before the cold and hungry god realized that something not of the Night was very active back where he was not watching.
Kharoulke the Windwalker began to turn. He began to change his form.
Thunder spoke, sharp and businesslike.
A thousand invisibly fast iron and silver needles pierced the god, driving deep into his being. The agony was like nothing he had ever known. It raped away all reason.
Kharoulke continued to change, growing taller and more manlike. The pain worsened. Those needles were barbed. Movement made them cut their ways forward, deeper into the divine flesh. Till they were expelled or absorbed they would continue the hurt and would sap Kharoulke’s little remaining power.
In ragged-ass volley a dozen kegs of firepowder spent their chemical energy, not against the Windwalker but against the ice on which he had begun to shift his bulk.
The Instrumentality made one move too many. A crack zigged and zagged from one explosion site to the next, dashing east to west across the promontory. The ice groaned, grumbled, roared.
The Windwalker boomed in rage, so loud his fury could be heard a thousand miles away. He saw. He knew. He began to shift to another shape, angelic, sprouting a vast spread of white wings. But he was a thing of the most intense cold. He could not change quickly. He did not make this change in time.
The tip of the ice headland descended into the sea. The Windwalker followed, plunging deep into the painful, poisonous indigo water. The agony inside the dark god gained accompaniment over all his surface.
The Windwalker’s thrashing only caused the needles within to do more damage. The storm surge waves he generated were powerful enough to wreck small boats when they reached Santerin’s shores.
19. Lucidia: Border War
Rogert du Tancret could be everything ever accused, twice as dark and twice as ugly. But the man was cunning, and Delphic at anticipating personal danger. He would not be lured into any deadly strait, however tasty the bait. When he could not resist he sent someone else to spring any trap.
Azir asked, “Would the same be true if we took the danger to him?”
The Mountain shrugged. It had been a hard several months. He was exhausted. “I’ve lived too long. This kind of war is a young man’s game.”
“You don’t have to be out here. You could be in Shamramdi right now.”
Nassim grunted. Disagreement. This was the point of the spear. This was where Nassim Alizarin had to be. The Mountain would not die in bed.
The Mountain did hope to die having had his revenge on Gordimer and er-Rashal. Sadly, he saw that goal receding. His mission, now, was to open the way to Tel Moussa. “I wouldn’t fit. I wouldn’t be welcome. The emirs already know everything worth knowing.”
“You’re fishing for excuses to avoid any chance of being given more responsibility.”
That was so near the truth that Nassim had no answer. This boy was sharp. He would be a worthy successor to Indala.
Azir laughed outright. Nassim’s face had given him away. “Sometimes you’re obvious, General. I know your heart pulls you another direction. You have my word, if none other, that you’ll get all the support you need.”
Nassim scowled. The promises of princes… But this prince, if such he could be called, was chosen of Indala al-Sul Halaladin, whose word was as good as that of God. Whose word, being executed slowly now, promised the destruction of Rogert du Tancret.
Azir continued, “Sir Mountain, you are a mighty warrior and a great captain. Your dearest enemies confess it. But your personal skills are questionable. I suspect because one purpose of a Sha-lug upbringing is to freeze the Sha-lug warrior at the age of fifteen.”
“Ah. Now you’re repeating something you’ve heard, not something you worked out for yourself.”
Azir used both hands to gesture like he was a balance scale. Meaning, “Some of this, some of that.” Or, “Six of one and half a dozen of the other.”
Nassim scowled again. This pup was just too damned bright.
The scene was a mountain spring back on the edge of the Idiam. The fighters had fled into the haunted country several times while running from the enemy. Brotherhood warriors were tenacious. Tonight a strong breeze stirred the campfire and tossed sparks up like short-lived stars. It was unseasonably cold. The moon was halfway up the sky and nearly full. Nassim thought it looked like a big wheel of ice with some chips knocked off one edge.
The pup said, “My uncle will send more troops. Militias from the hundred towns and cities he’s enlisted in his hope of liberating the Holy Lands.”
Towns and cities that Indala had conquered, by the spear or the tongue, in the Mountain’s eye. They had
