He stared up the mountain. The Great Sky Fortress looked like a distant dream lurking behind thin trailers of gossamer. The dwarves were solid enough, though. And they were afraid.
Svavar thought back. He could not recall the dwarves speaking last time. Nor could he recall much about them from the myths. They were the wondrous artisans who crafted the magical artifacts that made the legends go. If treated badly or cheated they could become quite unpleasant
He who was widest, shaggiest, and grayest asked, 'Are you the One Foretold?'
'Huh? What's going on?'
'The End of Time.' The old dwarf said no more. He answered no questions. His companions were astonished that he had spoken at all.
Svavar looked inside himself for the anger. He tapped it. He began to climb the mountain. A band of dwarves followed.
The road upward was in poor shape. There were no guardians at the rainbow bridge. The bridge itself was little more than a hint of tangled color. No pure mortal could have walked it. There were no guardians at the gate. The gate was in sad repair.
The interior of the fortress seemed little changed. Gloomier, perhaps, but not insubstantial, which was true of everything outside. Neglected, though, yes. For a long time.
Svavar drew upon stolen memories to find his way around. It took just a thought to move to the hall where the Heroes had waited. Hundreds remained there now, never having gone through the dark mandala. But most were in wretched shape, missing so many parts, that Svavar's disgust fanned the flame of his hatred. He would avenge and release those pathetic cripples.
There was a feasting hall where the northern gods gathered.
He could not recall how to get there. How could that be? He had to know the way. He was a god. Well, if not wholly a god, definitely a budding Instrumentality. He could step outside himself, even here. And he had other memories. He should know this fortress to the last dust mote. He had taken recollections from three Old Ones… Ah. So. There were a dozen more of them, as yet untouched by the disaster at al-Khazen. They were hiding. While blinding him subtly.
He materialized in the place where the Old Ones cowered. It had no evident bounds, neither ceiling nor floor nor walls. Just dark, smoky distances. None of the gods wore the guises seen in the myths of men. But he knew them.
Only the Trickster showed no fear. He believed he could talk his way out of anything.
Svavar discovered that an abiding anger was no substitute for knowledge and millennia of experience.
The fight was nasty. Not a word passed one way or the other. Svavar withdrew eventually, godly tail between his remaining legs.
The Old Ones suffered, too. Excepting the Trickster, who stood aside. The divine family survived, barely.
Svavar took some of their knowledge away with him.
Dwarves waited at the rainbow bridge. They had reinforced it. The grizzled one who had spoken to him before advised, 'Keep the centipede shape. You're hurt too badly to be human.'
Time passed. Svavar healed, drawing power from the harbor water. The realm of the gods grew more tenuous. But the gods themselves persevered, holed up inside their hidden place.
When he recovered, Svavar climbed the mountain again. He found only eleven surviving Old Ones. They were weaker. The Heroes in their Hall were putrefying. They would not suffer the bidding of the Night again. They had found the freedom of death.
Svavar realized that the Old Ones were trapped inside their Great Sky Fortress. How and why were not clear. It might be the dwarves' doing. They were the architects and artisans of the divine realm. After long ages they saw an opportunity to put paid in full to their indentures.
Svavar climbed the mountain four times. The struggle never went the way he expected. But he was not dismayed. Life never conformed with wishful thinking.
The Old Ones weakened evermore. Svavar fed on their knowledge. The Trickster tried to work his wiles, but Svavar remained stubbornly disinclined to make deals. There was reason to suspect that his meddling had pushed Arlensul into a position of compromise with the mortal Gedanke. Arlensul remembered. Arlensul remained resident within Svavar, in a spectral fashion, still animated by rage and hatred.
The Great Sky Fortress was a shimmer against a lowering sky. Svavar went up the mountain for the last time, but this time the rainbow bridge would not support him. The Aelen Kofer had abandoned it.
The dwarves knew the heart of the Great Sky Fortress remained real to the surviving Old Ones. But the exterior reality was tenuous. The entire realm would vanish soon. The Old Ones would be locked in an inside without an out. They would spend forever trapped inside a shrinking bubble.
Svavar was satisfied. Though his Arlensul side did crave the pleasure of witnessing their final, screaming madness.
There was no warmth left in the harbor when Svavar swam away. The dwarves had left on the golden barge already.
He had no greater goal than to find himself a warm power leak somewhere in the Andorayan Sea.
42. The End of Connec: The Return
Connecten forces evacuated Shippen after the spring storm season. They disembarked in Sheavenalle after an easy twelve-day passage. Brother Candle and the chaplain corps made the passage aboard Taro, the vessel they had ridden southward. Insofar as Brother Candle could determine, ship's company and human cargo were short fewer than a half-dozen men, none of whom had been slain by Calzirans. Accident and illness accounted for most of the expedition's losses.
Big changes were under way in the End of Connec. That was plain before Brother Candle cleared Sheavenalle's waterfront. He saw armed men in leather armor, never alone, going in and out of low places. They spoke harsh foreign dialects.
They were employed by the wealthy families who were the real powers in a city that owed fealty directly to the Dukes of Khaurene.
Duke Tormond's vacillation, his perceived weakness, his failure to stand up for his people and the legitimate Patriarch when bullied by Brothe, had begun to yield their fall of poisonous fruit. Those hotheaded nobles and knights who had taken part in the Black Mountain Massacre, those they inspired, and the wealthy bourgeoisie, had been hiring thugs to protect themselves — initially from the predations of the Brothen Church. But, once they had armed men available, they succumbed to the temptation to settle old scores.
Duke Tormond possessed neither the means nor the will to suppress these abuses of law, ducal rights, and the ancient peace. Not while the horrors could still be smothered in the nest. Bishop Richenau was the worst offender. He had recruited three hundred toughs during Count Raymone's absence. He insisted he needed them to punish the enemies of the Church.
Mathe Richenau was only modestly less corrupt than his predecessor. And at one time had counted himself amongst Anne of Menand's lovers.
However much Count Raymone had matured while on crusade, so had he been hardened and his confidence in himself been tempered. He returned to Antieux one afternoon in early summer. Next morning, as the sun cleared the hilltops beyond the Job to the east, he and his veterans attacked the manor house formerly occupied by Bishop Serifs, now the residence of Bishop Richenau. Outnumbered, nevertheless they routed the Bishop's bullies with great slaughter. They then fired the manor house to flush Richenau. Following a ten-minute trial the Bishop was reunited with his god by being buried alive, head down, with his desperately pumping legs exposed.
Count Raymone had not matured to the point where he understood that these kinds of messages are never understood by those for whom they are intended.
Count Raymone ordered all confiscated properties returned to their rightful owners and all Brothen Episcopal
