sometimes to think in terms of simply destroying an opponent to look for more subtle opportunities…or threats.
“I admit what I have seen shows it could be highly inconvenient,” Fiendark replied now. “Their efforts might make our task more difficult, yet what if it does? In the end, the destruction will only grow greater and even more complete as their resistance delays their final defeat, and that can only serve our own ends.”
“That might seem reasonable enough,” Phrobus conceded after a moment. “But Tomanak’s invested too much in the effort for me to simply assume it to be true, and I don’t like those threads I can’t see. No. We will assume nothing, and we will bring this Bahzell Bahnakson and all those other threads which revolve about him to nothing. Am I understood?”
Heads nodded around the throne as fresh thunder exploded outside the palace to underscore his question.
“Good,” he said with a thin smile. But his smile was only fleeting, and a frown replaced it as he gazed at Carnadosa thoughtfully.
Of all his children, she was the most subtle. Indeed, there were times when even he sometimes wondered exactly what game she might be playing. And, whether he chose to admit it or not, she was the one who most worried him. Not because he thought she was actively plotting to supplant him, but because if she ever did decide to overthrow him as he’d attempted to overthrow his own father, she was the one most likely to succeed. She was unimpressed with the taste for cruelty which infused Sharna, just as she disdained Krahana’s hunger and Fiendark’s lust for destruction. But neither did she have any use for Krashnark’s perverse sense of honor. Pragmatism was all that mattered to her, and she was a past mistress of the indirect approach. Very few of her victims ever even suspected her presence until she pounced from the shadows.
Yet she was also capable of direct- very direct-action when it seemed called for, and her status as the patron of dark wizardry and knowledge made her followers a force to be reckoned with in any mortal reality. It was possible-indeed, probable, given the outcome-he should have given her primary responsibility for the last attempt to disrupt Tomanak’s plans for this Bahzell Bahnakson, whatever those plans might be. He’d chosen not to because it had seemed a case in which wizardry couldn’t be openly utilized-not yet, at least. And, he admitted, because Shigu had been so insistent on doing it her way.
But now his options were limited. Sharna and Shigu had both been badly damaged in their recent confrontations with Tomanak and his accursed champions, and it would be mortal decades yet before even Krahana fully recovered.
There were times Phrobus was forced to admit there were at least some advantages to the fashion in which Tomanak and the other Gods of Light interacted with mortals. Their insistence that their “champions” had to give their allegiance knowingly, aware of the implications of their choices, made it far more difficult for them to enlist followers, and their refusal to simply enter into those champions and turn them into avatars limited their freedom of action. Seduction and corruption made recruitment far simpler for the Dark Gods, especially for mortals too foolish to suspect what their ultimate fate would be, and far more could be accomplished by turning those strong enough to bear the touch of godhood without being instantly destroyed into mere appendages. Not every mortal was strong enough, by any means, to be turned into an avatar, but those who were became conduits and anchors-doorways (so long as they lasted), through which their masters and mistresses could reach directly into the reality of mortals at will.
But Tomanak and his fellows’ refusal to suborn the wills of mortals meant they could act in the mortal world only when they were allowed to-when they were invited to-by those who’d chosen to serve them. And their refusal to burn out their servants limited the total amount of their own power and presence with which they could invest them. No mortal could long survive the direct embrace of godhood, even when the god in question sought to protect him, and so the Gods of Light treated their champions with silk gloves. They gave only so much of their power as their servants could channel, and in the process they surrendered control of what their champions did with that power.
No Dark God would give up that control, nor would one of them worry himself unduly over the fate of one of his servants. Avatars existed to be used, after all, even if they tended to be…consumed quickly. Replacing them could be inconvenient, yet that was acceptable, because while they lasted, they gave their masters direct access to their own reality, and there were always others who could be recruited to replace them afterward.
Yet there was a disadvantage to that, as well, as Sharna and Shigu had both discovered. It was one thing for a god to decide to withdraw his power from an avatar in an orderly fashion; it was quite another when that avatar was destroyed before he could withdraw. When that happened, the power, the fragment of his own essence, which had been poured into his mortal tool was lost with the avatar. Worse, it left him temporarily maimed, unable to reach back into that particular reality until the strength he’d lost regenerated itself once more, and that was precisely what had happened to Sharna and Shigu.
Sharna had largely recovered from the damage he’d taken when Bahzell slew Harnak Churnazhson, but he’d been foolish enough to invest even more of his essence in the sword with which he’d armed Harnak. He’d seen that as a way to ensure Harnak’s victory and avoid his avatar’s destruction, but it hadn’t worked out that way, and the sword touched by his essence now lay at the bottom of the sea. It would be centuries before he recovered from that, and until he did-or until the sword could be recovered from Korthrala’s keeping and returned to him-he had no personal access to that reality.
Phrobus knew his son well enough to feel confident Sharna was far from brokenhearted by the knowledge that he couldn’t have faced Bahzell and Tomanak in personal combat once more even if he’d wanted to…which he most definitely did not.
Shigu had managed not to leave any of her being lying around in cursed weapons, but she’d never been noted for her rationality, and she’d poured herself wildly and recklessly into her avatar when she confronted Dame Kaeritha Seldansdaughter. Indeed, she would have emptied even more of herself into her tool, even at the risk of completely destroying that reality, had Tomanak not blocked her. Given the possible consequences of any universe’s destruction, it was as well Tomanak had, but that same block had prevented her from withdrawing any of the power she’d invested, and her avatar’s destruction had cost her even more dearly than Prince Harnak’s death had cost Sharna.
Krahana-wiser than her brother and saner than her mother-had committed her most powerful servants to the attack on Bahzell Bahnakson, but she’d declined to face him directly through an avatar of her own. As a result, she continued to have access to Bahzell’s reality, but her resources there had been seriously curtailed. Until she could recruit or breed new servants powerful enough to replace those she’d lost, her capabilities would be only a shadow of what they had been.
And Fiendark had too many other responsibilities elsewhere (and was too fond of sheer destruction to be trusted with this task, anyway), which left only Carnadosa…and perhaps Krashnark.
“I think this has become a task for you, Carnadosa,” he said finally.
Her expression never changed, but her obsidian eyes glittered as she contemplated the possibilities. She’d been involved only peripherally in the last attempt, as the coordinator and link between Shigu and Krahana, and her mortal servants had been wise enough to remain safely in the shadows rather than confront Tomanak’s champions directly. More than that, she was unique among the Dark Gods in that she practically never used avatars of her own. Her wizard followers were usually quite powerful enough for her ends, and she had no desire at all to see her power diminished if a confrontation with one of the Light’s champions went poorly. Giving her primary responsibility in this instance would increase the odds that she would be forced to confront Tomanak or one of the others openly, whether she wished to or not, and it would definitely raise the probability that sorcery would be used openly sooner than Phrobus could have wished. She was too canny and too well informed not to recognize at least some of the potential consequences of reintroducing the arcane into the long, simmering conflict between Norfressa and Kontovar too soon, yet if she succeeded where Sharna, Shigu, and Krahana had all failed, that entire reality would become her personal possession, and all the power generated by every mortal living in it would be added to her own.
“Obviously, our original strategy failed miserably,” he continued. “You have a free hand to formulate your own approach to the problem, although I want nothing done without my approval. We’ve failed twice already; I refuse to fail a third time. And because I refuse to fail yet again, Krashnark will assist you.”
A flicker of disappointment showed in her eyes as she contemplated being forced to share the spoils of victory with her brother, but she was too wise to protest. And too wise not to recognize what a powerful ally
