The Demigod Proving (5 page)

With a calm face, the Master swiveled his head to evaluate the converging attack.

“Come, my children,” he said. His deep voice rumbled through the courtyard. “Let me end your betrayal and put your souls at rest.”

The draegon, still near the trees, reared up on two legs and roared. The volume made Wrend’s ears pound.

Screams filled the courtyard. The two women to Wrend’s left turned and fled toward the forest. The serving girls on the boardwalk scrambled for a door. Others began to scatter away from the impending fray.

The Master didn’t wait for the demigods to reach him. He bent, spread his arms wide, and grabbed the ends of a wagon. With no apparent strain, he stood, rotated his body, and threw the wagon. It creaked and twisted in the air, heading for two attacking demigods as they flew toward him.

But in mid-air, their paths shifted. Wrend blinked in surprise. Usually an object moving through the air followed a predictable path based on the angle and speed at which it left the ground. Yet the demigods’ paths changed in mid-air. They moved aside to avoid the wagon. It was like they’d pushed off of something invisible.

The wagon descended, rolling over the roof of another wagon and slamming into another. They both shattered and toppled, nearly crushing a fleeing priest.

“We have to get out of here,” Teirn said.

“To the forest,” Wester said.

They’d both stood and turned toward the trees, but Wrend moved the other way, to help the Master. He drew his sacrificial knife—the only weapon he kept on himself at all times. The steel of the blade had a slight blue hue.

“Where are you going?” Wester said.

“To help,” Wrend said.

A demigoddess jumped from the top of a wagon, slashing at the Master’s throat with a sword. He ducked under her blows and swung his fist upward at her. Like the other demigods, she dodged in mid-air.

Ichor, Wrend realized. She used Ichor to alter her path. In fact, the Master and his attackers all used Ichor to magnify their abilities.

Wester grabbed Wrend’s arm and began to pull him away.

“Come on!” Teirn said.

Wrend yanked his arm free. “I’m going to help!”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Wester said. “Look around you. No one else is running to help.”

Wrend glanced through the courtyard. Wester was right. Everyone that Wrend could see was either attacking the Master—swarming in the air around him with blades flashing—or fleeing. Only the paladins atop the Wall didn’t move. They just stood still, facing the outside world.

“Why isn’t anyone helping?” Wrend said.

“They’re not stupid,” Teirn said.

“Because,” Wester said, “he’s god. He doesn’t need or want help—especially yours.”

Wrend faltered, looking from Wester and Teirn to the Master.

The draegon leapt into the fray. It smashed past wagons and snapped its teeth at a demigod approaching the Master from behind. The demigod dodged the bite and turned to face the draegon.

No fewer than nine Caretakers converged on the Master, each from a different direction. He towered over them, so they had to jump from the ground or from nearby wagons. They moved with unusual speed and strength—leapt higher and moved faster than a regular person could have. As demigods, they looked like normal people, had inherited a normal human size and mortality from their mortal mothers, but had gained the ability to use Ichor from the Master.

A whine arose from the front of the courtyard, like the sound of a thousand hummingbirds. From the very front wagon, a winged creature the size of a dog lifted into view. It had a long neck and a barbed tail.

A kirana. A flesh-eating, lizard-like bird.

It tucked its wings onto its back and dove down among the wagons. At least a dozen more arose from the same spot and scattered into the courtyard, diving and snapping at the fleeing people.

“Cuchorack,” the Master said. “Kill the kiranas.”

The draegon roared and spread its wings. With two flaps and a flexing of its legs, it lifted into the air, passed over the scuffle. It landed in the midst of the kiranas, crushing a wagon. It darted its head side-to-side, nipping at the kiranas, slashing with its horns. The kiranas converged on it. They plunged into its thick fur and came away with chunks of flesh.

“Come on, Wrend!” Wester said.

Wrend stepped backward, nodding that he heard, that he understood he should get out of the courtyard. But he still held his knife. He still wanted to help.

Near the Wall, a wagon tilted upward and lifted into the air, held by a demigoddess. She hovered a dozen feet up, the wagon perched in her hands at an angle. It seemed impossible. Certainly the Master, with his enormous size, could lift a wagon. But a Caretaker no taller than six feet? Wrend couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t have if he hadn’t seen it.

Ichor. It had to be Ichor.

Wrend had known that demigods performed miracles with Ichor, but hadn’t known that the power allowed Caretakers to perform such feats of strength.

The woman hurled the wagon end-over-end at the Master. He scrambled aside to avoid the projectile, and his assailants also dodged. However, before the wagon even landed behind him, a second wagon—thrown from another angle by a different Caretaker—hit him in the chest and disintegrated to pieces. Crates spilled out, dumping ceramic plates that shattered on the flagstone.

Though he stumbled, the Master remained standing.

Wrend halted his retreat. The Master had taken a wagon in the chest and stood firm. What else could he endure?

The attackers fell back among the wagons. A handful of them lifted wagons into the air and tossed them at the Master from several directions.

He jumped up and away. The wagons slammed into each other, shattering in a maelstrom of wood. The Master soared through the air, to the front of the courtyard. Before he landed next to the draegon, his attackers had used their unusual speed to converge near the center of the courtyard. As he hit the ground, the Master caught a kirana by the neck and slammed its body into the ground. Next to him, Cuchorack’s jaw closed over a kirana. Others still swarmed around it.

The Master burst back uphill, throwing aside wagons as if wanting to clear the area so he could fight unhindered. With each swing of his arm, a wagon flipped away. One went to his left. Then his right, then his left. They smashed into other wagons or flipped up and into the air. The Master roared with each throw.

One wagon tumbled through two others before it collapsed enough to be stopped by a third. Another wagon crunched against the Wall at the far corner of the courtyard, tearing down one of the red curtains as it crumbled against the stone. Yet another wagon slammed through the second-story railing around the balcony of a building not far from Wrend. The next wagon soared onto the parapet of the Wall, taking out three paladins.

The next wagon flew directly toward Wrend.

He turned to run, but he couldn’t move fast enough. The wagon hurtled toward him. It loomed. Every detail became clear: red-tiled roof, a window with blue curtains, and inside a table and chairs upside down.

The wagon hit the ground. It sagged at the impact, but bounced and continued to roll toward him.

Strangely, what he imagined would be his last thought, was that he wished it could have at least been the cheese wagon.

Chapter 5: Seeking Safety

As unpleasant as the task may be, there is no excuse for not considering another’s point of view.

-Wrend

Wester intervened.

He leapt in front of Wrend, ducked under the upside down wagon, and extended his hands over his head so they touched the red-tiled roof. His face contorted in effort, and he pushed.

The wagon lifted into the air, still spinning, and passed over Wrend’s head. It soared into a cluster of pines. Branches cracked and broke as they caught the wagon. Wrend gaped. His blood thundered in his head.

Wester turned toward him. “Don’t just stand there!”

All thoughts of defending the Master disappeared from Wrend’s mind. He turned and bolted for the forest. Ahead of him, Teirn had already passed from the flagstone to the dirt beneath the trees. Wrend followed, pumping his arms and legs as fast as he could, ignoring the continued sound of wood shattering and bones breaking behind him.

“Hurry!” Wester said. “We need to get to safety!”

Wrend followed Teirn into the forest. He didn’t look back. His breath burned in his lungs. He hardly saw where he ran, for in his mind the wagon loomed before him, about to crush him. It filled his head, made his heart pound and his legs weak. As he ran past the trees, pushing branches out of his face, he saw it over and over. The wagon nearly flattening him.

Before he knew it, the sounds of the draegon, kiranas, the Master, and the demigods had all faded, absorbed by the soft dirt and the pinion pines and blue spruces. Wester had passed him and Teirn, ahead, and led them through the dried pine needles.

“Where are you leading us to?” Wrend said, thinking he knew.

“To safety,” Wester said.

“To the Chapel in the Forest?” Teirn said.

Wester nodded. “It’s far enough away from the courtyard that it should be safe there.”

In another ten seconds, they reached a wide stone path that stretched perpendicular to the course they’d been running, and turned left to follow it through the forest. In another thirty seconds, they reached their destination.

Wrend had always liked the Chapel in the Forest. He’d first seen it in the winter, after a blizzard. As he’d approached it, he hadn’t even seen it because of how the ubiquitous white stone blended with the snow.

The pure stone blanketed the ground as it rose in steps up the canyon slope. On each step, a row of white benches stretched in a half circle, so that from the front of the courtyard, where Wrend and his brothers entered, concentric half rings of white bench on white ground stretched up the canyon wall, broken in places by flights of stairs. It took a thousand people to fill the Chapel, and it happened every day. Here, the oldest Novitiates, serving girls, and priests gathered to worship the Master daily, in the shadow of the Enclosure.

Wrend had never climbed over the Enclosure, though like all Novitiates, he’d been tempted to. A few years before, five demigods somehow got over the Enclosure, spent a night outside the Seraglio, and returned. They’d subsequently perished at the Master’s hands.

The Enclosure surrounded the entire Seraglio. It stretched from the Wall at the canyon’s front, up both sides to the very top of the canyon. Constructed of gray and brown stone, it stood forty feet tall and actually leaned inward at an angle that would prevent anyone from climbing it from the inside. Wrend had never seen the opposite side of the Enclosure, but understood that thick thorn bushes grew all along its base and even up its side. Along the top, metal spikes protruded straight up.

Beyond it, steep canyon walls stretched high into the air. They towered over everything. Wrend had never known a day without their presence, watching over him with their swaths of granite stone jutting out in the midst of firs and spruces and pines. How many times had he wished to scale those canyon walls, to see the world beyond? A hundred? A thousand? A dozen times everyday ever since he could conceptualize it?