Blood of War (2 page)

He would not fail. He was so much more than Calen had ever been. He would see Kurin on a pyre, he would watch as the flames licked hungrily, would listen to the screams, would smell the flesh cooking. He would see Jurel put to the question and flayed. He would see that the Prelacy remained strong.

After all, he did not want his church to be weak when he rose to his rightful position. And as soon as he completed this task, Grand Prelate Maten would most certainly name him his successor.

Behind steepled fingers, he smiled.

* * *

Gixen passed through the monstrous doors set in featureless stone and into the pitch black chamber beyond—or he supposed it was a cavern; this place was carved from the bowels of a mountain. The chamber was warm, almost hot as though there was some great furnace that sent its fires invisibly into the great blackness. Gixen marveled at the heat. It was not often that he felt warm enough to sweat. Not so far north.

He walked with a confident stride, surrounded by the only illumination in the chamber-cave, a small circle of light with no apparent source, that showed only inches of the floor around him and did nothing to penetrate the ink beyond. Like shining a light through oil. His stride was confident but (and he would never admit this out loud) he was not. There were strange things here: he heard a slithering noise like there were a hundred snakes resting in a tangled pile trying to get comfortable; and worse, far away moans, cries, screams, like a dungeon was just a stairwell away. But of course he knew the stories. There was no dungeon. The sounds were here. In this chamber. And as hot as the chamber was, he shivered. His predecessor was among them.

Fool Xandru.
We all knew you were too weak to lead us.

He walked until the circle stopped and he stopped with it. For some reason, he was very afraid (again, something he would never vocalize) of what would happen if he stepped from that circle of light into the darkness beyond.

“
Ah, Gixen. So good of you to come,”
his master said and his voice sounded like the pile of snakes he thought must be here somewhere, only louder. Not loud like an earth tremor, or like a roll of thunder. Nothing like that. If there had been no other sound in the chamber, Gixen would have had to strain to hear his master's words. But combined with the whispering slithers and the far away moans, the voice became easy to understand as though it was somehow fed by those other sounds, like it was a melody that became apparent only with the intertwining and counterbalancing of the harmonies.
“I have a task for you.”

Bowing low—but not so far that he groveled; he hated grovelers and would not stoop to that level for anyone—he touched his hand to his forehead.

“My lord, I serve you,” he said simply, too loudly. His voice cut into the darkness like an ax and the far away song of the tormented seemed to hesitate, to go still for a moment. He winced. But, just like the circle of light, his words disappeared only inches from him, swallowed into the depths: the ax sinking into thick oil, touched it, was swallowed by it, but did not harm it.

“
Of course you do,”
his master said and he shuddered. Perhaps a little more care would be in order.
“You will get me my prize. The prize that Xandru, my last pet, failed to get.”

There was almost a fondness when it spoke Xandru's name. Gixen could imagine that his master preened his predecessor like a spinster strokes a beloved cat in her lap. But he knew what had happened to Xandru.

“Where may I find this prize you seek, my lord? I will bring it to you.”

“
Far to the south. Beyond our borders. Beyond...”

The rest of what his master said was washed away. In his mind, an image appeared, forced its way in like a violation, like a kind of mental rape that he could not fend off. He cried out but it did no good. When did it ever? He had taken part in his share of rapes. They always cried out, always screamed in terror, begged him to stop,
please stop. Please no
. It was what thrilled him. It was what made it special. He controlled, took what he wanted, and they feared and gave it to him. It was a connection deeper than love. Nothing was deeper, more satisfying, more all-encompassing than fear. And now he was the fearing one, he was the
giver
. He found it...arousing. Oh, he would enjoy this memory the next time!

The image expanded until it went to all corners of his vision, grew until it ate him, became him, or he became it. He recognized the mountain he stood in the center of but he did not see it from the center. He saw it from far above, from the eyes of a bird. A hawk maybe. A crow. He looked down and saw the town his people lived in, a haphazard collection of huts and tents strewn like scree at the bottom of the mountain about a mile north of the entrance to the chamber-cave. Beyond and to the south, he saw the great vista of his homeland, white and brown and blue. Fields blanketed by snow gave way to rocky tundra with only sporadic growths of mosses and lichens and the odd stunted tree, bent and ragged like old men who wore too little clothing and hunched for protection from the chill winds; and south, far away south, the barren wasteland gave way to a forest. A huge, great monster of a forest that sprouted too suddenly, and went on for miles and miles, leagues and leagues in every direction, and from his height, it seemed like a green quilt covered the land.

He passed over the great forest and it blurred under him, so fast was he flying. When the edge came into view and passed behind him, fields of green sprinkled with bursts of color rushed by. He saw a road like a ribbon, followed it, plotted its course from his vantage. He passed a great city that looked like a ragged mountain with its peaks and spires, that looked like an injury on the land.

He accelerated. He followed the road and it followed a river, a wide swath of blue that seemed even from that height to flow with a purpose, to be alive. Another great city, this one much, much larger than the last, spreading for miles, biting deep into the natural, into the true and good, with its stone death and its human infection. And on he went, faster and faster, over lands that were so green that emeralds would have wept with envy, so full of life that he could scarce believe it.

Villages like pricks of a thorn passed, farms and another great swath of forest passed, and then he passed over two towns, tiny from his vantage, that flanked each side of the great river. Beyond the towns, the river spread, grew, widened until it was a great inland sea, as if the towns themselves choked the river. It was a sea so calm that a perfect twin of the sun glared back at him.

The world tilted suddenly; common sense told him that he should slide eastward as though he was on a steep hill and could not keep his footing, but instead he turned left—west. The oddness confused him, nauseated him. He had never paid much attention to the ways of birds. Except as a meal, they were useless to him.

He flew for a time longer along the northern shore over another verdant swath of trees until he spied a bit of brown-gray nestled against the edge of a cliff that tumbled into the living sea. As he began to descend, he realized that he was aiming straight for the brown-gray. Soon, it resolved itself into a town of its own—no, not a town, a compound, a...monastery? He had heard of such complexes but he had never seen one before.

He slowed, saw a long building that kinked in the center so it reminded him of breaking a piece of wood over a knee. A spire rose from the center, a needle that stabbed the sky. He dropped further, and fast too. So fast the world turned to a blur, so fast he thought certain he would be dashed against the flagstones below. His guts roiled like a butter churn—which was strange to him. Did he have guts where he was? But at the last second his descent slowed and leveled off, and he flew to one of many windows set into the pale brown walls.

He flew into the window and all movement stopped so that he seemed to hover in the center of the sparsely furnished room: a cot, more like a pallet on flimsy wooden legs, a bookshelf—almost empty, except for one black book whose title he could not make out but that seemed to almost glow—and a couple of plain chairs around a wooden table. The only color in the room was a too-bright rug with silly geometric patterns in the southern style that covered the center of the floor.

As he hovered, he turned until he faced the door that presumably led to the rest of the main building. Just as his eyes focused on the door, it opened and a man strode in. Tall, very tall, muscular, with dark blond or light brown hair, the man stopped and his brow furrowed.
Eighteen, or maybe nineteen turnings old,
thought Gixen.
Young.
The young man scanned the room as though he was trying to find something though there was not much to see. He took two paces toward the cot and turned again, his head swiveling, then he stepped to the desk where he froze. His back stiffened as though he had just heard unpleasant news. Slowly he turned until he seemed to be facing Gixen and though Gixen knew it was not possible, the man's eyes, blue like the afterimage of lightning, seemed to focus on his own and he frowned.

“
That is my prize,”
his master whispered and Gixen shivered.
“That is who you will bring to me.”

* * *

Throughout the spring and summer, industry hummed like well oiled machinery. Harvests were abundant, trade was brisk. The land was blanketed with an air of single-minded attention to work. The people smiled and gossiped and traded and worked together as always but there was an underlying edge as though all understood there were portentous events occurring that would change their lives in ways yet unknown, like an earthquake brewing just beneath the surface.

And the rumors spread as rumors do, like an infestation.

Chapter 2

Jurel had wondered for months what it would be like at the Abbey. Kurin and Mikal had told him stories of course, but the stories differed so drastically, they could have been describing two entirely different places. Kurin, being an adherent of Valsa, the Goddess of Healing, spoke of quiet days in study and meditation. He spoke of the joy and fulfillment inherent in the healing of the ill and the injured. He took on a dreamy quality as he reminisced of days spent poring over texts and tomes devoted to understanding physiology and the various ways to keep each part of the body running smoothly. Mikal, on the other hand, being a follower of the god of war—Jurel, as fate would have it—was a warrior, a swordmaster, and commander of the entire martial arm of the Salosian Order. His stories of life at the Abbey tended to be more...dramatic, involving weapons and action in lieu of meditation. Jurel had not been quite sure what to expect.

As it turned out, the Abbey was rather a dull place. Or, at least, so it seemed to Jurel. Upon arrival some few weeks back, the haggard party was met by a large delegation headed by Abbott Goromand. There had been plenty of bowing and flowery speeches welcoming Jurel to this humble place. Jurel had painted a smile on his face and thanked everyone for their graciousness and hospitality. Goromand had attempted humor: “Of course. It's not every day one gets to play host to a god!” The key word being
attempted
.

After Jurel attended the necessary grand welcoming feast as guest of honor (by the end of which he had found it nearly physically impossible to maintain his wooden smile), he had been assigned rooms. The Abbott himself had proudly informed him that he would be vacating his own chambers for Jurel's use. Jurel had demurred. He had no desire to displace anyone. Though Goromand had insisted, Jurel continued to decline, asking for only a bed and a table. Disgruntled, Goromand had ordered his subordinates to return his furniture to his chambers.

Once he was settled in his cozy little room, which consisted of a small but comfortable bed, a simple yet sturdy table, a bookshelf filled with dozens of titles ranging from simple treatises on farming techniques to more esoteric subjects (like the one that purported to discuss trigonometric considerations in kinetic manifestations of arcanum—even the title gave him a headache), and a thick, expensive rug from Kashya, he had settled into a rut very quickly.

For the first few days, he had wandered the compound aimlessly, sometimes joining in with the sparring soldiers under Mikal's sharp eye, or lending a hand to the construction crews who were rebuilding the southern face of the Abbey. The latter had not lasted long; as soon as word of his identity spread to the construction crews, they refused to let him so much as lift a finger, horrified at the very notion. As if he had not carried a ton of stone just the day before. They had begged his forgiveness while fawning at his feet.

Fawning! At his feet! Honestly! After he had demanded for the fifth time that they stop treating him like a crystal vase—and after he had been ignored for the fifth time—he had stormed away, utterly disgusted.

Goromand and several of the chaplains had subsequently tried to engage him in discourse. On one such occasion, he had happened upon them while they were discussing philosophy and had asked Jurel's opinion on some of the finer points of theology. Jurel had stared blankly at them, understanding approximately one word in three that they spoke.

That was when things went from aimless to mind-numbing. He soon discovered that a tutor had been assigned to teach him everything from languages, to history, mathematics, alchemy, theology, and arcanum. The discovery of his new tutor came early one morning when the sun had barely peeked over the horizon; a timid knock at the door woke him. When he grumpily swung his door open, there stood a gaunt man of middle age and little hair, fidgeting at a large tome he carried while constantly pushing little round spectacles back up the bridge of his nose and restlessly shifting his weight from foot to foot.

The brother bowed with bird-like tics and jerks, smiled nervously, adjusted his spectacles, and introduced himself as Brother Andrus. He was a devotee of Maora and had been selected—much to his deep honor, he assured Jurel—to be the one to expand Jurel's education.