The Silver Lake (15 page)

The words slapped against Brax’s mind like a cyclone. Forcing himself to stand, he snarled at the surrounding spirits, then flung his knife hand, already slick with blood from the wound on his arm, toward the now familiar Deity, shouting out his promise as it spilled into his mind.

“Save us, God of Battles, and I will pledge you my life, my worship, AND MY LAST DROP OF BLOOD, FOREVER!”

The resulting explosion of manifested power flung both Kemal and Yashar against the far wall as Estavia burst fully into the physical world. Whirling Her great swords above Her head, She fell upon the attacking spirits. The nearest were shredded instantly, their fleeting energy devoured by the raging Battle God or taken by Havo manifesting above the city walls; the farthest fled into the sky, transformed by the blood and power they’d feasted upon and by the subtle will of Incasa. The God of Battles howled in triumph, then caught up Brax’s pledge in a savage, gluttonous embrace. He felt his spirit lifted into the air, felt it sucked dry and then filled up again as Her lien burned a new kind of life through his veins. Then he was slammed back into his body. His injuries blazing from Her touch, he dragged Spar under the fishing boat and blacked out.

High above the city, Estavia carved a great arch of protection around their hiding place. Then, as even the storm itself retreated before Her wards, She vanished as violently as She’d come.

There was silence across the dockyards.

In Her shrine, Yashar dabbed the blood from Kemal’s face as he shuddered in the throes of Estavia’s passing. Finally, he stilled. As Cyan Company began to pick themselves up, he opened his eyes and stared blearily about. Yashar smiled down at him.

“How do you feel?”

Kemal coughed weakly.

“I hurt... everywhere,” he whispered.

“I’m not surprised.”

“Did it ... work?”

“I imagine. She seemed ...” Yashar searched for the right words to describe the God’s response. “... pleased with the result, whatever it was. You, uh, didn’t happen to see anything about that while She was throwing you around the room, did you?”

“No.”

“Well, maybe someone in Sable Company did.”

“Maybe. Remind me ...” Kemal’s eyelids fluttered. “Remind me to thank them.”

“For what?”

“For not being one of them.”

Yashar chuckled. “All right, now you’re babbling. Time to stand up, Kemin,” he said, using the diminutive in a gentle but patronizing voice. “That is, if you can.”

“I’m not standing?”

“No, you’re lying on the floor.”

“Oh.”

Tucking one arm around Kemal’s waist, Yashar drew him to his feet. “Come on. There’s a nice, clean bed in the infirmary waiting for you.”

“I don’t need ... the infirmary.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I’m fine. I just ... need sleep ...” Kemal made a weak grab for one of the half a dozen Yashars spinning in front of his eyes. “And ... sex.”

“Not tonight. You’d get blood all over the blankets.”

“Oh. Point.”

“Yes, point,” Kaptin Julide agreed in a dry voice from behind them. “Enas, help him.”

The other warrior caught Kemal up and, together, he and Yashar half-supported, half-carried him from the shrine. The rest of Cyan Company stumbled out behind them. As the last delinkos took down the hanging lamp, she glanced over at the great onyx statue of Estavia, noting the sated gleam in Her ruby eyes. She grinned back at it. Ghazi-Priest Kemal wasn’t the only one wanting sex tonight. Calling out to another delinkos to wait for her, she hurried after the rest of her company.

In his bed of future possibilities, Incasa stared into the depths of Gol-Beyaz, watching the new streams of possibility snake off into the darkness. The spirits of the wild lands had chosen their champion and their sacrifice this night. Creation had been seen to, only destruction remained unquickened before they might become trade and expansion, prosperity and power, as the lake dwellers prayed they would. But the choice was a delicate one; each candidate brought a host of unpredictable possibility streams with him that might destroy the future if left to their own devices. It required a delicate touch to sort out the odds on which one of these candidates was the most valuable without being the most dangerous. And Gods were not known for delicacy.

Closing His fist around His ever present pair of mystical dice, the Patron Deity of Anavatan’s gamblers reached out for His First Oracle again.

At Incasa-Sarayi, Freyiz sat unmoving on a small woolen carpet in the center of her meditation room. She’d been there all night, feeling the shifting currents of the future’s many streams washing over her and waiting for the new vision she knew Incasa would send to her. The single lamp flame illuminating a square foot of polished walnut floor around it was nearly spent, but her outwardly blinded eyes continued to stare into the depths of the small bowl of water before her, regardless. She was patient. She had waited many nights in the past and would wait a few more before her time was done. Taking in a deep breath, she tasted the faintest hint of incense in the room. The burner had long since dried out, but the years of divination smoke had pervaded the air with the permanent taste of oil, acacia, marigold, and wormwood. It was a comfortable, familiar scent, and she let it weave about her, calming her mind and soothing her stiffening joints. When the God’s icy presence finally touched her mind, she was ready to receive His vision-gift.

A hundred future streams bubbled up before her, each with its most critical moment fanning out from the events of that night. Some ended in blood, others in flowers, but most snaked off into a watery void, trailing reactions like fine strands of sea grass drifting in the ocean. She reached out, seeking clarity, but the futures slipped through her mind, refusing to be restrained. She bore down and finally, bit by bit, they steadied. Four hazy figures made of fire, features still unformed, appeared over the streets of Anavatan. They wavered in and out of being, first united and then apart, creating and destroying a hundred new streams with every turn, each one growing more tangled and more volatile with every passing moment. As she watched, one vanished into death while another transformed into a shaft of silver light, but the two who remained still battled across the currents, causing ripples of chaos in their wake.

Deep within her mind, she felt Incasa’s growing agitation, and reaching out, she ran her thoughts over each figure until she found the single moment of weakness that undermined their futures: a hitherto unseen tower by the sea that one day would force a choice from both of them. She flicked it aside impatiently, and once free of its influence the first figure became a frightened, injured child, held safe in the arms of the Battle God’s newest Champion. But as she reached for the other, the storm-tossed wild lands of the Berbat-Dunya appeared before her. She tasted madness, pain, and fear, and saw a thousand blood-splattered creatures of mist and power tearing at a boy-child of flesh and bone. Beyond his death, the futures lay like withered seaweed across the tower’s western face; beyond its life, they writhed like water snakes along the south.

“Not much of a choice,”
she noted silently, offering the image and its fate to Incasa. “But either way, the odds favor this one. His future is more malleable.”

She felt the God of Prophecy raise one snow-white fist then, after a heartbeat’s pause, He nodded and flung the dice toward the second boy and his tormentors above the Berbat-Dunya. The newly created stream surged toward His chosen candidate and the unmasked tower vanished into the unfashioned future once again, delayed but undefeated.

Above the wild lands, Graize screamed out his defiance at his attackers. Engulfed by thousands of ravaging teeth and claws, he no longer knew where he ended and they began, he only knew that their savagery fueled his own rage and he clung to that, striking out at them as they tore at him. But he was growing weaker, his body drawing closer and closer to death with each attack. Just as he felt the final darkness poised to sweep over him, a crack of power, as icy as the Deniz-Siyah Sea in winter, slammed into his thoughts; some half-formed wall of both protection and restraint deep inside his mind cracked under the onslaught, releasing a surge of energy that flung him forward; and, without thinking, he sucked it back into his body. It tore its way through his mind, filling him with an overpowering sense of invincibility and, with a scream of renewed hatred, he caught up the largest of the spirits and drove his own teeth into its misty face. The ice-cold power of pure prophecy shot down his throat, freezing a path through his entire body even as he snatched up another.