Three (The Godslayer Cycle Book 3) (8 page)

Avery squirmed at this last - barely discernible had Brea not been watching for just such a reaction. The man was not as confident about Nathan's open brotherhood as he professed, but clearly the man had struck out upon this path, and he intended to see it through.

The man across the pit returned his sword to its sheath.  “Then by your leave, I will remain.”

Brea shrugged and returned her gaze to the pit, meditating upon the random sparks of the dying embers she saw there.

*    *    *

“It's maddening, Bracken,” growled Nathaniel.  “It's there, then it's not.  I can
feel
it, then I can't.  I don't understand any of it.”

The burly dwarf stood to the side of his friend and companion, leaning heavily upon the haft of his great axe.  The weapon itself stood nearly as tall as the dwarf himself, and he had to sink it into the earth several inches in order to lean on it in this manner.  “I's magic,” he grunted.  “What'd ya 'spect?”

“Something a bit more consistent,” said Nathaniel.  “Like what happened when the other two swords woke up.”

“So ya'd rath'r have a brick upside th' 'ead than whispers in yer ear, tha's it?”

Nathaniel chuckled.  “Not exactly.  But something more than this...  there-then-not-there feeling.”

“Ya think it's anythin' ta do wit' that girl ya met? Tha' demiGod lass?”

The taller man shook his head.  “I don't think so.  It's spring, and that's when Avery said the third sword would wake up.  So it's just a common timing thing, I think.  And she's gone now, so there's that.” 

Nathaniel had woken that very morning to find a note pinned to his door:

Had to leave.  Someone's coming.  We'll be in touch.

The note was not signed nor addressed to anyone specifically, but Nathaniel had known its meaning.  Tanath was a demi-God and she ran when danger came near.  It was the nature of the immortals to do so - or so the stories told - which coincided with the other feeling Nathaniel had woken to.

Bracken spit to the side of the trail the pair had been walking along.  “An' Avery's sword? Ya still feel it, 'swell?”

Nathaniel nodded.  “Yes.  It's very close now.  Might even be in town now.”

“'Nother common time t'ing, tha'?”

“No,” said the man, his jaw setting.  “I'm thinking Avery must be here because he somehow feels the new sword waking, too.  But why he'd come to me instead of following it himself, I can't say.”

The dwarf twisted the haft of his weapon, worrying the blade of the axe a bit further into the earth.  “An' how much long'r ya gonna keep Brea in th' dark 'bout all this?  Ya know, she's prov'd 'erself. She's loyal.”

Nathaniel ground his teeth at this last.  “You say she is.  I'm not sure
what
she is.”

“She's loyal,” repeated the dwarf.  “Why she's loyal, well, tha's up fer guessin', but she
is
, an' tha's really all tha' matt'rs a' the moment, dontcha t'ink?”

Nathaniel was silent a moment before responding.  “The Gods have been gone a long while, too.  Haven't seen any of them since Levitz.  Haven't seen any of the Old Gods since before that.  I don't like that.  And I don't like that there's so much we don't know.  About the new sword.  About why Brea's still here.  Or what Avery is up to.  None of it.”

“Well, ya know wha' I sed we shoul' do 'bout the brat,” said Bracken.  “Find 'im, broil 'im and be done wit' 'im.  Simples' solution's of'en the best.”

“Avery's a wildcard, I won't deny that,” rebuffed Nathaniel.  “But he didn't have to give me
Two.
He's not the enemy we thought he was.  He's in it for himself, no doubt.  But is that enough of a reason to kill him?”

“You sed the Ol' Gods told ya to gat'er all the swords.  Avery's got one, so's if'n yer gonna do wha' they want, sooner 'r later, yer gonna hafta take 'is sword, too.”

“I don't work for the Old Gods,” growled Nathaniel.  “I'm only going along with them until we find Geoffrey.  After that, they can all hang in the wind for all I care.”

“An' Mari?  Wha' 'bout their promise ta bring 'er back?”

A great look of sadness enveloped Nathaniel's heart.  “My wife is gone, Bracken.  Now more than ever.  She's been turned into some kind of totem by the Old Gods, and that means she's never going to be my wife ever again.  I know that now, and I'm ready to put her behind me.”

Bracken guffawed.  “You no more'n believe tha' than I do,” bellowed the dwarf.  “If'n tha' were true, you'd no' still be pushin' Brea 'way.”

“Brea is not my wife!”

“No, bu' ya gots feelin's fer her, and she fer you.  No doubt 'bout tha'.”

“That's not real.”

“Says who?”  The dwarf's brows knit together.  “Jus' 'cause magic made ya see i', don't mean i's any less real.”

“Magic didn't make me see it,” amended Nathaniel.  “Magic made it happen.  Which means once the magic fades, so will the feelings.”

“Really?” laughed Bracken.  “Been close ta half a year since i' happen'd.  When's it gonna go 'way then?”

“It's not right, Bracken,” said Nathaniel softly.  “I don't love Brea.  I love Mariabelle.”

“Ya sed yerself - Mari's gone.  Brea's 'ere.  Ya gotta move on.  Or yer ne'er gonna be able ta be a man e'er 'gain.  An if'n we do fin' Geoffrey, ya won' e'en be able ta be a fat'er, 'cause ya won't be able ta feel yer love fer yer son while ya block out the rest o' yer feelin's.  All ta spite Brea.”

“No, to spite the swords!”  Nathaniel turned roughly on his friend, closing the distance between them.  “It's not Brea who made me feel this way, it's the damned Old Gods and their swords!  I just have to get ahold of whatever sword that man held in our camp that day, and I can undo this!”

“A swor' tha's no' real?  Tha' doesn' exist? One ya canno' feel 'r sense?  How long 'til ya ge' a feel fer i', then?  An' how long ya gonna wai'?”

Nathaniel was about to respond when suddenly his mind reeled.  The vagueness was gone, slamming all of his senses with the profound impact of his Avatar abilities.  The Old Gods had given him the ability to sense the swords.  Like a lodestone, he was drawn to their existence, but more, he could at times see through the swords as though he were contained within the steel of their forms.  This feeling was not entirely that - he still saw himself precisely where his physical body was - but the feeling of being somewhere else was unmistakable.  And he knew exactly where the third sword was...

“It's in Oaken Wood,” Nathaniel managed, forcing his throat to utter the sounds, his mouth to form the words, in spite of how rigid and unmoving his body felt.  “
Three
is in Oaken Wood right now!”

Nathaniel reached to his side to make certain
Two
was still at his side and without another moment's hesitation, he forced his body to run - run for the town, run for Brea, run to save anyone from whatever disaster this sword's new wielder intended.

The man known as the Godslayer barely registered his own body responding to his commands, and had no clue whether Bracken followed.  But somehow, he knew the dwarf would.

*     *     *

Some distance away, a figure stood in shadow, watching as the two forms took off running.  The pair had been too far away to make out their words, but the urgency of their actions and the direction they had fled told him enough.  Something had happened back in Oaken Wood.  And since the spy had not heard anything on his own, he could only imagine that it had something to do with Malik's swords. 

That
was
after all Nathaniel Goodsmith's primary talent - to sense the swords so he could use them. This had been intended to be a talent devoted to the Pantheon, but Nathaniel Goodsmith had corrupted that purpose.  He had no faith in his heart for the Gods, and he only sought out the swords for his own selfish interests.  He might have been born into the powers of the Avatar, but he was a heretic all the same.

The young man scowled at the thought.  To be blessed with the glory of the Gods, and to shun their blessings so that one could usurp the power for oneself.  There could not possibly be a greater heresy.

Picking up his pack, the young man set off after his quarry.  The twice-damned Avatar had no idea he was being hunted, so there was no urgency to the man's motions.  Besides, he had been gifted with his own talent in order to escape immediate notice.  He was able to be unseen so long as he did not fall directly within someone's line of sight.  So long as he stayed a fair distance away, Nathaniel Goodsmith might be able to hear him, but he would never be able to find him.  Not until his predator was ready to pounce.

The man was ready for the eventual confrontation.  He would confront the man that so many called the Godslayer.  It was not even a true title, since the godslayers were the swords, not the man.  But that mattered little to the spy's purpose.  He only cared about the sword he was after - the one that would give him dominion over all the rest.

The young man could not help but let out a light laugh as he trekked through the woods.  Nathaniel Goodsmith had the greatest weapon in all of Na'Ril and he had no clue what its true power was.  While the so-called Avatar chased after the nine godslayers, he had no clue that he didn't even need any of them.  He actually possessed the keystone to all of their powers, and he was blind to the fact. 

Because he lacked faith.  Because he was not the true Avatar.

But the young man was.  Or he would be, once Nathaniel Goodsmith drew breath no more.  The young man had been the one destined to be the Avatar, not this Nathaniel Goodsmith.  Malik had trained him for this purpose, imbued in him the skills that only a God could. Perhaps at one point in time, Nathaniel Goodsmith might have been the man to sculpt the young man's future, but Malik had intervened, sent the young man upon his true path.

Yes, Nathaniel Goodsmith might have been the young man's father by birth, but it was Malik who was his father in all other rights.  And Geoffrey Goodsmith would slay the pretender in his true father's name, restoring the purpose to what it meant to be the Pantheon's Avatar.

The last three weeks had been the most confusing of Alisia's short thirteen years.  True, she did not have a wealth of life experiences to draw upon, but she was fairly certain that no one else alive had ever lived through what she just had.

It had all started...  Well, that might not be entirely accurate, she chastised herself.  How can something have started if it had not
really
happened yet?  So how did one say something had already happened if it had not?  Not yet, at least?

This confusion was only the smallest fraction of what Alisia was dealing with though.  Being uncertain how to frame simple passage of time was so small compared to the concept that she
was
out of her natural time in the first place.  And no matter how hard she tried, she could not seem to get back to where she started.

And that's really all she has really wanted at one time - what she still secretly wanted, even if it had proven impossible - to go back to when she had found this damnable sword and put it back in the hole.  Maybe then the disaster her life had become - would become? - would not have happened.

Three weeks ago by her own passage of time - in twice that length of time in the future that had not yet come - Alisia had found the sword, the one that called itself
Three
. 

Yes, called
itself!
  The sword had actually told the girl its own name!  The fact this was not the strangest of things to have happened to her in these last several weeks simply helped her put the whole affair into greater perspective.  When a talking sword is not the strangest thing for you to encounter, something is definitely wrong with your life!

Alisia had come across the sword in her parents' pasture.  One of the horses had nearly broken a leg when its foot had sunken into a hole, and it had been Alisia's job to fill it in.  This kind of thing happened pretty routinely - wild animals were always digging holes, and water eroded away other areas.  But the hollows could not be left or one her family's animal could cripple itself.  So whenever a new hole was discovered, it would be Alisia's job to fill it.

It was not a complicated process.  Alisia would retrieve some rocks from the nearby stream bed and fill the hole before covering it with sand from the stream bed.  She did not even need to have her father oversee her work - she just did it without asking.

The only thing different about this particular labor was not even the work itself - it was the life surrounding it.  Not three days prior, Alisia had lost her mother.  It had been a senseless, random thing - she had not fallen ill, nor been struck by some traveling cart, nor even fallen off one of the mares she so loved to ride. 

No, nothing like that.  Alisia's mother had simply not woken up one day.  The local hedge witch had said her brain had simply burst during the night, evidenced, had said the old woman, by the blood in the woman's eye.  No sickness, no need to burn the body, she had said. 

And yet, the simple matter-of-fact way in which the hedge witch had delivered the news had been worse than if Alisia had been forced to watch her mother dismembered right in front of her.  This had been her mother, and the old woman had dismissed her death as easily as she might have discussed a visitor coming to stay for a time.  There was no great turmoil, no tragedy - not for the old woman, at any rate.  But for Alisia, it had been devastating.

Alisia's father was a stout man, and he only became more gruff with his wife's passing.  He only shrugged at her death, then picked up the shovel to go out back to dig a grave.  Alisia had seen no tears in the large man's eyes, nor even a single emotion.  He could have been planting seeds in the back of their cabin for all the care he showed for what he was burying.  And once the deed had been done, he simply went about his daily chores as though nothing had happened at all.  The only comment the man had made before walking out to tend to the animals was that it was Alisia's job to fix the meals now.

That was it.  No remorse, no comfort for his teen daughter.  Just a simple, “You'll be fixing the meals from now on,” and then the man had walked out the door.

Three days later, Alisia had cried all the tears she could manage.  She had tried all morning to summon more, but the well spring had dried up.  All that had been left behind had been a numbness that consumed and devoured every other emotion in the young girl's heart.  Her father could not be concerned with so terrible a loss, but Alisia had been overwhelmed by it - even moreso by her father's complete apathy about it.

There had simply never been enough time, and certainly no time to plan for her mother's abrupt passing.  Alisia's father had transitioned without losing a step, but Alisia was fumbling.  All her mind could imagine were the promises undelivered.  The spring trip into Wellington for supplies where her mother would always come home with a new dress - and this year, Alisia was to have had one, as well. The new mare who would finally be old enough this summer to ride, and her mother's promise that Alisia would get to break the steed.  All the crafts Alisia's mother did in the evenings that had always held the inherent promise of being passed to her daughter one day.  All of it gone.  All of that, and so much more.

On the day when she went to the field to fill the hole, this was all the girl's mind could imagine.  She knew the steps, did not really have to think about what she did.  She saw the horse stumble, discovered the soft spot in the ground where the horse's hoof had descended and mechanically went to the barn to collect the buckets.  She had woodenly walked to the stream without a thought, sorted rocks into one bucket, shoveled sand into the other with her hands, then simply turned back to carry her load to where it needed to be.

Arriving at the softened turf, Alisia had knelt and pulled away the grass that still covered the hole.  As she peeled away the covering, she thought briefly that it had the appearance of an old fox's den - it was certainly large enough.  But it had been covered over long ago, so there would not be anything within the crevice now.

Still, the thought of possibly burying something living gave her pause.  Even in her disheartened state, she cared about things like that.  And so she had bent low to look into the hole - and seen something long and black shine back at her.

At first, the girl had jerked back, thinking she had discovered some snake's lair.  But when nothing moved in the hole, she looked again.  The black, shiny surface had not been a snake's hide after all - it had been a smoothly polished piece of leather.  And the leather was shaped like...

A sword!  Even now, Alisia remembered the thrill of seeing an actual weapon of war.  These only existed in faery tales for the girl.  She was a rancher's daughter - she had never seen an actual sword in her life.  Only in the picture books.  Only in the illustrations that told of legends she did not possess the knowledge to actually read about.  But a picture of a sword was all she needed to recognize this for what it was, and the thrill of finding such a thing in her own field was exhilarating.

For the briefest moment as she reached into the hollow to pull the long object free, she forgot her grief.  She forgot that her mother was gone, but thoughts of sharing her new-found treasure with her mother brought the pain back in an onslaught. 

If only I had found this a few days ago
, the girl had thought. 
If only Mother had more time with us so she could have seen.  If only I could show this to her.

Touching the sword's hilt had sent a jolt through the girl's arm, a fire of electricity as it seemed to reach into her very soul.  Without understanding why, she drew the steel from its casing.  Thoughts of lost time filled her mind while electricity filled her body, but she could not release her hold upon the sword's hilt. 

And in a moment, Alisia had no longer been where she was.  Oh, she was still in the field, kneeling where the hole had been - but the hole was no longer visible, and it was now night.  Daylight had fled, leaving her alone in the field.  Of course, at the time she had not known she was not
where
she had been.  She thought she had somehow lost track of time, not that she had moved in any way.  She was, after all, in the same physical place she had been before.

Panic had filled the teen's heart, believing she had somehow lost the day.  Her father would be upset with her - how could he not be?  She had not been home to fix the evening meal. 

With the cool of the night on her skin, she had picked up her new prize and rushed home.  She looked about for the horses, thinking that if she had passed out in the field, no one would have been there to corral the horses into their stalls.  But the field was empty, their animals gone.  Had her father corralled the horses but left her undiscovered in the tall grass?

As Alisia had approached the cabin, light had streamed from the uncovered window, showing her the interior readily enough.  But her race to the door came to an abrupt halt along with her heart.  For moving about the front room of the cabin was...

Mother!

Alisia's mother moved about, carrying something further into the room, her back to the window.  Possibly she was retrieving the cooking kettle from the fireplace, but Alisia could not tell with the woman's back to her. It did not matter - none of it did.  Her mother was
alive
- and all Alisia had to do was run through the door to hold her mater once more.

But the girl only took a single step before stopping again - for another figure had stepped into the light, coming up behind her mother.  Someone shorter than the older woman.  Shorter even than Alisia herself.  Yet the girl recognized the other child in an instant.

Alisia was looking at herself.  She was looking at herself as she had looked years ago.  The girl was actually looking at her
younger
self.  A younger self moving about with the energy of youth around a mother who had not yet abandoned her daughter.

Hot tears fell down Alisia's face as she felt her knees strike the ground.  And then she was no longer staring at the lit window - she was looking on the exterior of her home in the light of day.

Some inner sense, something Alisia could not specifically identify, told her she had moved.  Not across any distance, but across time.  She knew instinctively that she had returned to the time she had left behind, that her former trip to the past was just that - a movement across time itself.

The dullness in the girl's heart returned, but it felt different now.  It was not the absence of emotion from grief now - it was the uncertainty of precisely how to feel.  No emotion seemed appropriate for what had just happened.  Disbelief mixed with utter confusion, neither emotion able to gain purchase upon her. 

Numbly, Alisia looked down at the sword in her hand.  Her right hand gripped the hilt of the sword while her left held tightly to the sheath.  Her hand shook as she willed it to open, seeing for the first time the three raised white pips stretching in a diagonal line against a small black square inset into the hilt.

Three
.

The word came unbidden to her mind, and the girl knew this for what it was.  It was the sword's name.  The sword had just told her it had a name, and its name was
Three
.  No thoughts of why it would have such a name crossed her mind, only the incomprehension of why a sword even needed a name.

The next few days had been a whirlwind.  Alisia instinctively knew the sword had been responsible for her journey across time, for the chance to see her mother again.  It had been a miraculous gift, and the thoughts of it filled her with exhilaration. 

For days, that was all the girl did - used the sword to move back and forth across time, to catch glimpses of her mother.  She hid herself away, where her father could not find her and used the sword. She saw her mother in times before she was born and at various points along the path of her own young life.  It was glorious, seeing her mother live again.  And it consumed the girl absolutely.

Alisia did not eat.  She did not sleep.  She just went back and forth - letting the sword keep her in the past for as long as it could, before the sword instinctively returned her to her own time.  There were times when she saw no one at all around their homestead, and times when she saw only herself or her father.  But the times she saw her mother were the real treasure.

It all came to an end when her father found the girl.  Not her father in the present - her father of the past.  To the man of that time - a point where Alisia was barely a toddler - the girl from across time had only been an intruder upon their family land, one holding a weapon.  Her father had come at her wielding a large hammer, one he used for driving fenceposts, demanding to know who she was and why she had come there.  He surely perceived the stranger with the drawn sword as a threat. 

In hindsight, the girl realized she could have explained, told her father about who she was and why she had come into her own past.  But fear had gripped her and
Three
had released its hold on the past, returning her to the present.

Her heart racing, Alisia had fallen upon the straw of the barn where she hid.  She gasped for breath, her own weakened body finally surrendering to the fatigue of the last several days. 

When she had woken, the girl had been in her own bed, the sword gone from her hand.  Panic filled her, desperation to have back the focal point of her obsession.  She had risen, pushing aside her bedding and searching about the room with her eyes desperately.  Her legs shook and her eyes burned, but all she could think of was getting her hands upon the sword - to go back.  To go back again.