The Last Whisper of the Gods (44 page)

She tried to shout Vagrum’s name, but the fall had knocked the wind out of her. There was no need, however; Vagrum had noticed the source of her alarm. The merchant had shed his robes, revealing armor underneath. Both he and his bodyguard were rushing forward, cutlasses in hand.

Fighting instinct took over for Vagrum. His heavy broadsword was drawn with more than enough time to block the thrust of the merchant, who clumsily left himself open to a counterattack. Vagrum took the expedient route and dealt him a kick between the legs that drove him to his knees retching and gasping in pain. He turned to handle the other opponent, whose approach was more measured and cautious. It mattered little; Vagrum had the obvious advantage in both size and experience. After easily blocking a few tentative strikes, Vagrum feinted to the left, then took advantage of the resultant opening. The beheading was quick, clean, and decisive - the inevitable result of the sharp edge of a blade meeting a neck with the force of such a big man behind it.

Meanwhile, a galloping Rexall had reached the bowman, who fired two panicked arrows, both of which missed, before deciding it was time to make his escape. Rexall wasn’t in a generous mood and ran him down before he could reach his horse. The collision was a messy concussion of hooves and bone with the horse emerging largely unscathed. The same couldn’t be said of the bowman; when Rexall reined in his horse and dismounted to finish him, there was no need. His skull was partially caved in, with bits of brain visible through the smashed bone. The stranger’s mount, spooked by the violence and the smell of blood, and obviously unaccustomed to either, fled.

Yanking the arrow from his arm, where it had plunged into muscle and caused surprisingly little bleeding, Vagrum grimaced. “Amateurs!” He spat the word like a curse. “Are you all right, Milady?” There was concern in his voice as he offered her his hand. She was bruised but it could easily have been much worse. The attackers may have been amateurs but, without Vagrum’s expert swordsmanship, Alicia knew they would have succeeded. Her father had once lectured that a recognized trap could still be successful if one was careless enough to trip it.

After pushing the bowman’s corpse off the road and claiming the bow and half-full quiver, Rexall rejoined them. “You know how to use one of these?” he asked Vagrum, proffering the bow. The big man nodded, but tossed the weapon aside.

“Too conspicuous and not the sort of thing a noble’s bodyguard would carry. We prefer cold steel. If I wanted a bow, I would have brought one from Vantok, and it would have been better made than that piece of shit. No food, water, or money on him?”

“Probably in the saddlebags. The horse ran off.”

“Not used to banditry, I guess. Stolen then. Like the wagon. I wonder what happened to the real merchants? Probably long dead.”

“Ask him,” said Alicia, indicating their prisoner, who was writhing on the ground where Vagrum’s kick had felled him.

Vagrum towered over the merchant, whose eyes, glassy with pain, were open. “Sloppy work. For an ambush to succeed, it can’t be so obviously an ambush.”

“Only supposed to distract,” gasped the man between groans. “While your attention was on us, he was going to shoot her.”

“A fatal shot at that distance? He’d have to be good or lucky. And he ain’t lucky.”

Alicia didn’t mention that if not for Vagrum’s warning, she would have been hit squarely between the shoulder blades.

“He was good.” The man paused to retch. “Better’n anyone I ever seen. And all he needed was a little scratch.” Something like triumph shone through the pain in his eyes. “You’re dead, brute.”

Poison. Alicia was horrified. Vagrum, however, didn’t appear particularly concerned, which was curious considering that two arrows had marked him. He ambled to where he had tossed the shafts, picked one up, and smelled it. “Coated with myrtle berry poison. Usually deadly. Also common. Kills in minutes.”

“Vagrum!” cried Alicia, her voice panicky.

“No need to worry, Milady. I ain’t lived this long without a little immunity. My old sergeant knew a trick. He trained me to build up tolerance to the most common poisons by dosing with increasing quantities. Start out tiny and build up over a period of months and years. Don’t work with everything and if’n it was something exotic, I’d be dead. But not myrtle berry. I could survive ten times what was on either of those arrows. But it will cause weakness and fever. I can feel it seeping into my bones.”

“Why’d you target us?” demanded Vagrum of the merchant. His words were slightly slurred, as if he had been drinking. Alicia heard it but she doubted any of the others noticed.

Hope entered his eyes and voice. “Let me go. I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me and I’ll
consider
letting you go, or at least give you a quick death. Refuse and I’ll cut off your legs and arms and leave you here for the animals. That would still be better’n you deserve.”

Alicia couldn’t determine whether her bodyguard was more offended by the ambush or the clumsy manner in which it had been staged and executed.

The merchant looked as if he believed Vagrum. “A bounty. Biggest bounty I’ve ever heard tell of. On her.” He pointed to Alicia. “Description fits perfect - young, thin, pretty, hair of pure yellow, aristocratic. 50 gold for her head on a pike.”

“And alive?”

“Same. 50 gold. This wasn’t no kidnapping. It was a killing with proof. Nothing unusual about that ’cept the price. Someone wants her dead bad.”

“Who?”

“Dunno. You look like a man of the world. You know how these things work. If you do a job, you send word back through a chain until it reaches the payer. Then he sends someone to verify and hand over the gold.”

Vagrum nodded, remembering past instances when he had fulfilled bounties offered by anonymous employers. The process to claim the reward could be Byzantine and laborious. If they had the time and patience, they could eventually learn the identity of the man who wanted Alicia dead, but it would take weeks of tracking down leads and meeting with contacts. They could ill afford that kind of delay with Winter threatening.

“What was the bounty on the rest of us?”

“No bounty. Dead or alive, you ain’t worth nothin’. You was just in the way.”

Alicia was wrestling with the question of why someone would want her dead. Surely it was in Ferguson’s interests to have her returned intact to Vantok? Was she now being targeted by the same people who had tried to kill Sorial?

“So you’ll let me go?” asked the man hopefully, rising to a sitting position.

“I’m a man of my word. I said I'd consider it, and consider it I did. You can go straight to oblivion.” His sword, still red with the blood of his first kill, flashed, and the man’s head landed next to his body, the surprised expression frozen on his features.

Alicia stifled a gasp. She knew Vagrum had a reputation for ruthlessness but she had never seen it played out before this. In fact, the only other time she had seen him fight was during the chaotic night in Vantok when they had been set upon in the streets, an event she had subsequently learned was at least partly staged.

“It had to be done, Milady.” He wiped off his blade on the dead man’s clothing then sheathed it. He was unsteady on his feet and leaned against his horse to keep his balance. “Dead men tell no tales. If the bounty is that rich, there’ll be others. If they learn of this, it could discourage some.”

“Fifty gold!” Rexall sounded impressed. “A princely sum. For that kind of money, I’m halfway tempted...” He lapsed into silence when Alicia shot him a withering glance.

“We can talk about all this later, when we’re warm and safe. For now, we need to hurry. Check the wagon,” said Vagrum. He clambered atop his horse with some difficulty, recognizing that the waves of dizziness he was experiencing would prevent him from remaining on his feet. Sitting in the saddle and swaying a little, he began the job of bandaging his arm. The simple action demanded more concentration than it should. “Take only what will help - food, water, small valuables, and so forth.”

As it turned out, the wagon was almost completely empty, excepting provisions sufficient for small number of people on a short journey. It was unclear whether the wagon was recently stolen but it had been stripped. Rexall, Alicia, and Kara salvaged what they could, but it wasn’t much.

The horse had a badly injured leg. Without hesitating or flinching, Kara drove her knife through one eye and into its brain. Death was instantaneous. “You live with animals long enough, you know how to do these things right.”

Dusk ambushed them as they went about the work of cleaning the attack site. By the time they had finished checking the wagon and dragging the bodies to the side of the road, the sky had grown dark. The first flakes of snow began to fall.

“Do we make camp here or continue?” asked Alicia.

Vagrum was still conscious although he sounded like a man who had exceeded his capacity for hard spirits. “Go on. There should be an inn within the next couple of miles. This ain’t a night for us to spend out in the cold and snow.”

So they continued slowly into the darkness, with only Vagrum’s pole lantern to guide them. Alicia was soul-sick and numb to the bone, and the possibility that this was all for naught made her question the wisdom of having escaped the temple in the first place. For the first time, she yearned for her cozy quarters there.

They rode in grim silence, the only sound being the clop-clopping of their horses’ shoes on the road. As the snow mounted, even that became muted. As a child, Alicia had loved the snow, a white parfait of ice crystals that turned the whole world magical. Tonight, she had never hated anything so much. And to think, 300 miles south, Vantok basked the heat of an unrelenting Summer. Tonight, she would have given anything for a measure of that warmth.

It took two more hours before they saw the flicker of lights in the distance through the thickly falling snow. It was a small roadside stop, more a waystation with a few rooms for rent than anything else, but it was as welcoming as the largest, most lavish inn in Vantok’s wealthiest district. Even the normally sour Vagrum, who had become listless as his body fought off the poison’s effects, wouldn’t refuse a bed this night. Alicia yearned for a fire to coax life back into her numb fingers and toes. The hand painted sign hanging above the door proclaimed The Lonely Traveler’s Repose. They tied their horses to a post and entered through the unadorned front door.

Sorial absorbed the entirety of the portal, and it absorbed him. They mixed and mingled until it was unclear where one began and the other ended. Unclear and immaterial. He was rendered blind, deaf, and dumb. He burned, although whether from heat or cold, he couldn’t tell. Nor did it matter. He was consumed by the totality of the experience. Time and life stood at a standstill as Sorial confronted his fate.

Before him was a door, but not one he could open. He saw it not with his eyes, for they hadn’t accompanied him to this place beyond matter, but with his mind. He would either return the way he had come or his journey would end here. The gateway to further exploration was barred. It required power to enter and he had none. Whatever reality existed deeper within the portal was denied to him. But he sensed contending forces beyond - order and chaos, the building blocks of all things, locked in a precarious balance.

Divorced from the anchor of his body, his mind floated free. Pain, pleasure, and sensation slipped away. Individuality had as little meaning as physicality. He had moved beyond such boundaries. Here, he was glimpsing reality as the gods envisioned it - a true representation they had closed off to their creations when they become too venal and self-serving to deserve it. Once, this had been man’s inheritance. No more. Now, it was a state only a select few could glimpse, and then only for a fleeting moment a thousand times faster than the blink of an eye.

Those who died at the portal weren’t denied this experience. It was available to all, although the return path might not be. It was the human form, not the portal, that contained the fatal flaw. The portal acted upon every supplicant identically, without bias. It triggered something in every cell. If the cell was attuned, it would transform, and a new genesis would occur. The birth of a wizard, in prosaic terms. If not, it would collapse. The portal didn’t care. It acted as it had always acted, as it would always act. It had immense power but no free will.

The portal was sentient, although not in a way a human could readily understand. But, as he floated immersed in its essence, Sorial heard a voice. The timber was the same as its
comecomecome
call. It spoke without word or sound deep in the core of his being. Its message was delivered in symbols and images and he comprehended more perfectly than would have been possible with conversational phrases.

Welcome
. The greeting conveyed fraternity. Whether this experience would kill him or transform him, he was offered a sense of belonging.

You have come for Apotheosis. This we will accomplish together. You have set yourself upon an irrevocable path. There is no turning back. You are imbued with the elemental touch. When we release you, your vessel of flesh will contain this... or it will not. That is a matter between you and the gods and the raw stuff of which all things are made.

There are laws governing Apotheosis. It is neither random nor careless, and should not be approached as either. There is a price to be paid, both now and ongoing. This you must know. For the transformation to be complete, the link of convergence must be severed and, in sundering it, you will lose a slice of your individuality. Or you can give everything and be granted the gift of annihilation: the greatest gift the universe can impart.

All things begin here and here all things end. Only here is there no difference between energy and matter. But even should you seek it, you cannot enter The Otherverse. The way is barred and to quest for its unsealing is forbidden. The only paths available to you are the one back to your universe and the one forward into oblivion.

To complete the transformation and return to your body, you can surrender as you see fit.
This was followed by a list of “choices,” each of which resulted in a form of physical deformity or handicap. He could sacrifice grace, beauty, strength, touch, sight, hearing, the ability to reproduce, or a thousand other things. By mixing and matching, the number of possibilities became endless. Fingers, toes, eyes, ears, gonads, tongue, clear breathing, sound sleep, stamina, and more. There were only two incontrovertible demands: he had to give enough of himself to close the link of convergence and whatever he surrendered would be forever gone. It would be as if it was never there.

Instinctively, Sorial knew what his choice would be, as if the answer was locked within the cells of his body. He didn’t have to agonize over it, puzzling over which combination of infirmities was the least disadvantageous. He would give to the portal two of his senses. No longer would his mouth taste or his nose smell. The pleasures associated with eating, drinking, and inhaling would no longer be available to him. He would never again savor the taste of fresh baked bread or drink in Alicia’s flowery scent. But it could have been worse... far worse. More painful options were available but they were not for him.

It is good. Make yourself ready and the link shall be severed.

A part of Sorial wished there was some way to stay. The serenity here existed in no other place. But it wasn't possible. For flesh-and-blood beings, this wasn’t real. It was a temporary anomaly, a bubble in time, in which his mind attempted to make sense of an otherwise incomprehensible experience. It was a doorway to a forbidden, denied vastness. He understood that when he returned to his world, it would be at the instant of his departure.

Perhaps those who were destined to die could stay in this state for as long as they wanted. Would this bubble expand for them so it didn’t pop until they chose to let go or dashed themselves against the door in a vain attempt to breach it? Maybe those who failed at the portal were the lucky ones. Unending bliss until, like the gods, they elected to slip into nothingness. It was conjecture, but it felt right. For Sorial, however, there was no invitation to linger. His physical shell awaited.

Farewell
.

The link closed; his consciousness snapped back into his body.

Apotheosis. Transformation. The Lord of Earth had arrived.

* * *

When Sorial regained his senses, he was lying face down at the lip of the portal, staring into the blackness of the well. He inwardly recoiled; to enter again was to die. No form, even one with magical aptitude, could endure the process a second time.

The throbbing was gone. No call of
comecomecome
echoed in his head. All was stillness and quiet; the compulsion had been squelched. For him, this portal was as dead as the one beneath the stable at The Wayfarer’s Comfort. But that wasn’t the only change of which he was cognizant. The pain that had plagued him since he had awakened in the dungeon cell was gone. His body was invigorated, although those pieces carved away by swords and Langashin’s knife hadn’t been miraculously regenerated. He was without a left hand and two toes on his right foot, but the injuries were cleanly healed. All vestiges of corruption had been burned from his flesh. Open wounds were closed. The transformation of his cells had flushed his system clean of toxins and impurities.

As expected, the price demanded to sever the convergence link had been paid. His saliva was without taste and the cavern had shed its pungent odor. He had lost much since leaving Vantok… but what had he gained?

He gradually became aware of the sounds of battle. Time had passed, perhaps not while he had been in the portal but during a brief period of recovery afterward. As he listened, straining with his ears, the noise resolved itself from a random cacophony into the sounds of steel ringing on steel and of men grunting and shouting. He pushed back from the edge of the portal and rose to a sitting position. Around him, there was chaos. It seemed as if half the settlement had poured into the cavern and there was only obstacle between them and Sorial.

Warburm was still alive, although the wounded innkeeper was hard pressed, fighting three opponents at once. His back was to the low stone wall surrounding the portal. Blood poured from a gash in his forehead, running into his eyes and impeding his vision. He had cuts to his forearms and a jagged wound across his chest. Four bodies lay at his feet, but the men he was facing were fresher than he was and there were twenty ready to take their place, all clamoring like animals for his blood. Warburm was a dead man; it was only a question of how long before he made the error that would allow one of his foes to strike the fatal blow. Fatigue was taking its toll. His ax movements were sluggish. He was fighting a desperate defensive battle, conserving stamina by blocking blows and never counterattacking. The tactic was designed to prolong the struggle, not win it. He was buying time.

Sorial rose, naked as the day of his birth. His skin glowed with the phosphorescence of deep caves - an eerie pale green. The three attackers engaging Warburm were too focused on their opponent to notice, but everyone else in the cavern saw. A hush fell over the throng.

“Enough!” said Sorial, the word gaining resonance as it rolled like a wave through the cavern. It was his voice, yet not - deeper and throatier, amplified by the earth surrounding the temple of the portal. The authority in the simple command was enough to stop even those fighting Warburm. The innkeeper heard it as well and an incongruous smile split his face from ear to ear.

Like a toddler taking a first step, Sorial approached his first act of magic by concentrating on the ground beneath his enemies’ feet. The uncertainty of what he was doing or how to do it didn’t stop him. It came naturally, almost like breathing, although it was achieved clumsily without the benefit of practice. If there was only one thing Sorial knew for sure, it was that his untried powers gave him mastery over earth in all its layers and forms. So he used that control as a weapon. In his mind, he saw the ground collapse beneath his foes, swallowing them up. And that’s what happened.

A gaping hole opened in the chamber's floor and two dozen screaming men plunged downward, including the three in close combat with Warburm. The innkeeper avoided accompanying them by vaulting atop the portal’s lip in a moment of quick thinking. Seeing their fellows tumble into an abyss of collapsing stone and dirt, the survivors broke and fled, emptying the cavern. Sorial watched them go then calmly replaced the floor in front of him, entombing the men who had fallen - not that any were likely to have survived their ordeal.

“Langashin!” These others were irrelevant. There was only one man in this settlement Sorial wanted to confront. He clambered down from the portal’s ledge and limped toward the exit. Although his foot injuries were healed, he hadn’t yet become accustomed to balancing on three toes. Warburm trailed him, dripping blood from a multitude of wounds. Outside, Sorial could hear men running. He didn’t think his tormentor would flee, however. Langashin had too much pride for that. He would seek the confrontation even though he didn’t understand what he would be confronting. Or, if he did, it wouldn’t matter.

At the entrance to the cavern, Sorial paused. There, surrounded by five dead foes, was Brindig’s body. At some point, someone had found an opening and driven a sword deep into the watchman's chest, piercing his heart. Sorial felt tears sting his eyes, but now wasn't the time for mourning. There would be time enough later to light a candle for Brindig, for Darrin, and for Lamanar.

“Langashin, you craven dog!” Sorial’s magnified voice reverberated throughout the settlement, so loud that it carried above the commotion and echoed off the nearby mountains.
There’s no way he didn’t hear that.

The crowd ahead parted for the leader as he moved against the prevailing tide. Chaos reigned. People fled en masse with no one except Langashin headed in Sorial’s direction. The inquisitor strode purposefully, brandishing an impossibly large cudgel; it might have been carved not from the branch of a tree but from the very trunk. To the extent that his expression was readable under all the facial hair, it was grim. His mistake in keeping Sorial alive had become evident. He had played a dangerous game and lost. He knew that now. All he could hope was that the new wizard was too weak and uncertain to be able to bring him down.

Once outside the cavern, Sorial’s skin no longer glowed. With his injuries healed, he was in better physical condition than when he had been half-dragged, half-helped through the entrance minutes before, but he didn’t present an imposing figure. He was unarmed, unarmored, and unclothed. He faced Langashin naked without even a knife.

Sorial had no intention of allowing the settlement’s “Guv’nor” to come within striking range. This wasn’t going to be a conventional duel. It occurred to Sorial that if he failed, Langashin would bludgeon him to death.

Langashin bellowed a challenge in a language Sorial didn’t recognize. He broke into a run, then stumbled and nearly fell as the ground beneath his feet shifted like quicksand. Sorial stood near the edge of the large unstable area, watching as his adversary flailed ineffectually, trying to gain purchase. Langashin’s struggles only caused him to sink deeper; in the process, he lost the cudgel. Within seconds, the moist, insatiable ground had swallowed him to mid-thigh. Only then, recognizing how dire his situation was, did he cease thrashing.

But this was no way for Langashin the torturer to die. It was too humane. Sorial didn’t consider himself bloodthirsty by nature, but in this case he was willing to make an exception.

He concentrated on the mire, causing it to harden. Langashin was now partially buried not in shifting, moist sand but in a dry, crumbly substance. He began to struggle again, seeking to pull his legs free, but he wasn’t fast enough. The ground continued to solidify, changing into rock. Langashin let out a bellow of pain as his trapped legs were pulverized by the calcifying earth, ground into a bloody pulp and shards of bone.