Empire of the Saviours (Chronicles of/Cosmic Warlord 1) (21 page)

‘You do not wish to treat me severely, holy one? Just as you did not wish to treat the People of New Sanctuary severely, holy one? You promise me a normal life, holy one? Yet what was your promise worth to the innocent dead of New Sanctuary? You have forfeited your right to anything from me! Why should I trust you will treat my son well when your own Minister in Godsend sought to persecute him? Why should I trust you when you leave a good man like Samnir a dribbling idiot?’

The Saint sighed. His voice was full of contrition as he said, ‘Only the blessed Saviours are perfect, Jedadiah. I have had to endure my own struggles and hardship. I regret what happened in New Sanctuary, but there was no doubt that the Chaos had been allowed to influence the People there. You know there was unholy magic at work there, do you not? Yes, I can see you do. I regret the behaviour of my Minister, and he has already been censured accordingly. And I regret what I had to do to Samnir, but he had to be punished for his defiance and an example had to be made of him to the other Heroes. Surely you understand that none may be permitted to defy the holy representative of the blessed Saviours. Otherwise such anarchy would see the Empire undone and the People ruled by the Chaos.’

Jed was not sure what to say. He had never really understood big ideas like the Empire and the Chaos. If Maria had been here, she’d have known what to say.

The Saint immediately took the last thought from his head. ‘Ah yes, your dear wife Maria. She is well, Jedadiah. She is in the next room, and I have made sure none of the men have touched her. See, I am not the monster you think I am. She was about to tell me where Jillan was herself, but worry overcame her and she fainted. I know she wants you to tell me what I need to know. We don’t have time to wait for her to come round, though, for the sooner we find Jillan the sooner he will no longer be a danger to the People. He’s killed two of the People now, Jedadiah. How many more?’

Jed hesitated. Could Maria really want him to tell the Saint where Jillan was? ‘You are lying,’ he sneered. ‘Let me see her and then I’ll know the truth of your words.’

The Saint casually squeezed Jed’s mind and smiled as the big man winced. ‘You see, I could render Maria unconscious quite easily and appear to be telling the truth. But I am not someone who indulges in such deception, not someone who shrouds their thoughts like you, Jedadiah. Shame on you!’

Jed’s face flushed.

‘I know all of this is confusing for a simple and honest man like you, Jedadiah. Yet I understand your concern is that of a loving husband, as is right and proper. If I do not get the answers I require from either of you soon, then I cannot promise what will or will not happen.’

‘If you touch a hair on her head—’

‘You threaten me?’ the Saint asked dangerously. ‘You are simple, Jedadiah, but that cannot excuse such a blasphemy. You are forcing me to deal with you more severely. If I have to force the answers from your head, your mind will probably be so damaged that you will be little better off than Samnir. That will upset Maria terribly. I doubt I would find Maria’s mind as easy to break down, but her body is far weaker than yours, is it not? Where a brute like you could endure physical torture all day, perhaps perversely enjoying the scars it won you, how would you feel about Maria going through the same and losing her pretty looks? It would be a shame to have to remove that button nose of hers.’

Jed roared in anger and surged to his feet despite his chains. He barrelled into the Saint and knocked him backwards. Jed pursued and brought his head up sharply under the Saint’s chin, snapping the holy representative’s head back. The Saint’s eye lost its focus and his arms flailed as he tried to keep his balance, but his feet caught on each other and he slammed into the wall of the room, suffering another blow to the head.

Jed hopped and jumped closer but in his haste pitched forward. He fell into the Saint and bit at the holy one’s cheek, just short of his good eye.

‘No!’ the Saint screamed in a high girlish voice. ‘Not my eye!’

The panic brought the Saint back to himself. As quick as thought, he seized Jed’s mind and squeezed it hard. The hunter’s back arched and his mouth stretched wide in silent agony. The Saint threw the big man off him as if he were naught but a rag doll. Jed hit the floor heavily, shaking the floorboards and raising a cloud of dust around him. Blood trickled from the hunter’s ears and nose.

‘How dare you!’ the Saint raged, already on his feet. ‘You would attack my holy person? It is inconceivable! Truly you are in the thrall of the Chaos. And all of this had only been a test of you and Maria, Jedadiah, for I have known where Jillan is all along. You have condemned yourself. See!’

The Saint implanted a false image of Jillan entering the gates of a town in Jed’s mind. Jed, dazed as he was, held onto the image as a suffocating man will hold onto his last breath.
He has reached Saviours’ Paradise safely
. Jed grinned as darkness crept up around his conscious mind.

The Saint gave an ugly laugh. ‘Has he indeed? Then you have at last told me what I needed to know, Jedadiah. I will soon find him and he will willingly give himself to me, if he ever wants to see his parents breathe again.’

Aspin fought his way down the mountain through the snow into the ridges of foothills where there was some tree cover from bone-white birch and grey-stone oaks. The snow wasn’t as thick here and the air was warmer. There was even the odd bird around, singing a questioning note or two to ask where everyone had gone.

He followed the line of foothills, as they gave him a fairly dry route across the land. When they began to peter out, however, he entered an upside-down place of yew trees. Here there were branches wider than the feasting hall in his village. They grew down to the ground from their trunks, went flat for some distance and then wound up into the sky to make cages for the air. A good number of the trunks had been torn in two by heavy branches growing out of each side of them, and their grey skeletons lay everywhere. It was a graveyard of giants. Yet it was an eternal graveyard, for from the centres of the broken trees came new ones, many crying blood-red berries even at this time of year.

Such trees were hallowed to his people, for the berries were so potent that the merest touch of them on the skin would send an individual to sleep for days or longer and visit tortured hallucinations of possible futures on them. Any sort of ingestion of the berry, even a weak distillation, was almost always fatal. Such an ancient grove of trees, were it to exist in the mountains, would have been a sacred and eternal temple of the Geas for his people.

He stood now in awe, listening to the voice of the wind moaning from the huge hollow bodies of the yews. Were he worthy, he would have been able to understand the voices and will of Wayfar of the Warring Winds and Gar of the Still Stone. Would the voices be telling him to go forward or back? Was he being warned or mocked? Or were the voices lamenting the fall of the gods before the others and their Empire came? This was an in-between place: between eternity and an end, the Geas and the Empire, his people and the others, and god-given life and oblivion. Yet Aspin himself was neither on one side nor the other, for he was exiled, in limbo, suspended between realms.

There was a feel of quiet waiting here, which was closer to peace than anything he’d known in his life. He was tempted to lie on the ground with these giants and their petrified blood-red tears so that he could sleep and dream of possible futures forever more. It was so tempting … but he knew his cursed stomach would all too soon rumble in discontent and keep him from his rest. Ah, but this stomach of his was to blame for all his woes. He was tempted to tear it out and have done with it, perhaps devour it to teach it an ironic lesson, but he knew the rest of his body would then all too soon start to protest. Damn this body of his – it was a constant trial to him. Were it not for his body, existence would be far easier, but even the gods had to manifest themselves physically to exist at all in this world. Damn it, the essential nature of this world was of course physical. That was the deal and something he’d agreed to even when in the womb, so what was he complaining about?

What was his cause for complaint? What was his cause? He had no idea. Damn Torpeth for exiling him and forcing him to find a bigger cause. Why couldn’t the flatulent old hermit just have left him alone to live out his days as the smartest and quickest of the warriors in the village? Why couldn’t he have let him pair with Leesha and have several young ones – the gods permitting – to keep him in his old age while he contented himself with foaming flagons of winter brew by a well-made fire?

Aspin sighed. He knew that he could not spend his life hiding from the others, and his people could not stay safe forever. The others would come eventually, and then it would all be over. Perhaps Torpeth had foreseen that the others would come in Aspin’s own lifetime, and had therefore sent Aspin out to learn what he could, so that his people would be better prepared. But what could really be learned that would save them from the might of an entire empire? The only hope was if Aspin could find the fallen gods and somehow raise them back up so that they could fight for the Geas once more.

The idea seemed to have come from nowhere, but it felt right to him. Yet where were the gods to be found? The others must know, since they had toppled them in the first place. So it came back to finding out about the others once more.

Restful as the grove was, therefore, he could not linger here too long. If he lingered, he might never leave, he knew. Besides, there soon wouldn’t be much shelter between the realms because there was no longer any balance between them: one realm grew stronger while the other became weaker. It looked like the two realms would soon collapse together, the rule and realm of the others finally prevailing, as the realms and power of the Geas were finally undone.

His people had run out of time then. Maybe Torpeth’s hand had been forced. Aspin nodded. Feeling a new weight of responsibility on his shoulders, Aspin passed through the grove before it could begin to visit further revelations on him, revelations concerning the likely future that were no doubt so terrible he would be unmanned completely. Suddenly scared, he quickened his pace until the grove of yews was lost behind him. Perhaps he would never be able to find the place again.

Leaving the foothills, he found the going easier than expected. No snow had fallen in the lower lands thus far, and he even found he was too warm in his layers of goatskin. There were also plentiful amounts of food to be had: from mushrooms to nuts, to birds, to fish in streams and even a rabbit or two.

Then he came across a wide, wide path made of flat stones. It disappeared beyond sight ahead and behind him. Who had created this path and how long must it have taken? These others must be far more powerful than he’d ever imagined. Guessing that the path led somewhere important – perhaps to the home of the others even? – he began to follow it. He travelled quickly on the wide and level path, and he found there was suddenly hope in his heart.

Aspin whistled as he went and therefore didn’t hear the wagon coming up behind him until a distant voice hollered at him.

‘Hey there! Jillan, is that you?’

Aspin almost jumped out of his goatskins, so startled was he. He spun and took in the wagon, pulled by two chestnut mares, coming towards him. A lone tubby man with greying hair held the reins of the horses loosely in his hands. Aspin knew he had time to run into the trees if he wanted to, but he’d been seen now, and besides the man had an open face and no weapons in evidence.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said the wagon-driver. ‘You looked like someone I know is all. You’ve both got fair hair and are of a similar height, but I can see that you’re older. Forgive me. My name’s Jacob. I’m a trader from Godsend. I take it you’re travelling from Heroes’ Brook. Road still flooded, eh? Long walk to Saviours’ Paradise.’

‘I … Yes. My name is Aspin, good man Jacob.’

‘Tell you what, why don’t you take a seat up here beside me and I can take you on to Saviours’ Paradise. You’ll be going for the market, yes? Looking to trade skins are you, or to find some work?’ Jacob winked. ‘Or looking to find yourself a maiden.’

Aspin nodded cautiously and then attempted a smile. ‘Yes.’

‘Come along then, up you come. I’ll be glad of the company in truth, for this is a long and quiet road, and Tilly and Floss aren’t the most talkative, eh, girls?’ One of the horses snorted in answer as Jacob flicked her rein.

Aspin found himself laughing with this jolly man, and settled back to hear his wild, wonderful and sometimes worrying tales of life in Godsend. He was just relieved that the first person he’d met upon entering the Empire hadn’t tried to kill him. Perhaps the old gods still had enough power to provide him with some limited fortune.

One of the Saviours stirs! Hide and do not move! See and hear nothing! It is D’Shaa. The Saviour ascends from the level of the sacred to the enlightened! Clear out of the Saviour’s path so they may rise with all speed!

D’Shaa drifted up the eternal staircase, each step six foot deep and high. They were no obstacle for one such as her, of course, who could move like the wind or support herself on the air. But the steps were a definite challenge for the paltry beings who were the retainers. She casually crushed them as she would flick dust off her statuesque shoulders. Their lives were so transient and meaningless that they were little more than dust anyway. Indeed, most of the filth that settled out of the air in the Great Labyrinth was comprised of the dead cells that constantly sloughed off their skin. The retainers started dying as soon as they were born. They were a sort of living death that appalled all of her kind and left none in any doubt that this world should be undone before its sickness found a way to spread through the cosmos. To think that their dead cells floated in the air and that she effectively breathed and ate them! It revolted her and made her sickened by her own body, the physical form her kind had to assume in this world. Once the Geas was consumed, she would be free of this miserable muddy world, free to spread her wings and sail through the cosmos wherever her whim took her. Ah, the wonders and power that would be hers once she was free of this tawdry yet binding place. Soon, soon. And as long as she could survive dangerous and conniving competitors like D’Selle.