Servant: The Dark God Book 1 (53 page)
Read Servant: The Dark God Book 1 Online
Authors: John D. Brown
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Coming of Age, #Epic, #Historical, #Sword & Sorcery, #Teen & Young Adult
Argoth felt as if he’d had this conversation once before. Indeed, had not both Nettle and Ummon, his son of long ago, been asking him to fight? To step fully out of the shadows? Perhaps Hismayas had never intended his Order to hide itself so deeply.
He realized it was time, whether he wanted it or not. The wheels were in motion. The Order was going to stand forth in the sun.
Argoth said, “We can raise an army from Koramite and Shoka, from Vargon and Burund.” He thought of the Groves scattered through the many glorydoms. He thought of the dark days before he joined the Order. Of the men and women who yet walked those forbidden paths. “And we shall send out a call. There are many in every nation who will answer. If Mokad gives us enough time, you will have your army.”
49
Purity’s Choice
THE VERY NEXT morning in Shim’s hold Argoth told Serah everything. She did not weep. Instead, she fell silent, and her face turned hard as stone. Later in the day Matiga, without invitation, showed up with pot of spicy sausage and barley and her famous currant rolls. The girls ate it all with relish, but neither he nor Serah touched their food. They both knew he had stolen her son, and that she had every right to hate him.
When the cleaning was done, Matiga sent everyone but Argoth and Serah outside. Then she turned to them both.
“I assume he’s told you all?”
“Yes,” said Serah.
“At least he got that right,” said Matiga. “And I assume you know what will happen if you tell your sisters before Lord Shim brings this before the Council.”
“I do.”
“We will bind you with an oath,” she said. “And you will keep it.”
“I need no binding,” said Serah. “But I will take it anyway.”
“Good,” said Matiga. “He was stupid not to bring you in. Women provide ballast. And that’s something this one desperately needs.”
“Indeed he does,” said Serah.
Matiga didn’t seem to see it, but Serah was a pot of simmering fury.
Argoth tried to take her hand, but she moved it away.
The Creek Widow said to Argoth, “You realize the importance of what we learned in the cave? Every Glory in every land is ruled by such a creature. Every Glory is cultivating a field and delivering its harvest. We are a race of cattle.”
“Are we sure?” Serah asked.
“I saw the woman that held the Skir Master’s chain when he enthralled me. I saw the woman here. The glamour was the same. I can feel it even now—the rotted roots of the thrall I wore still work in me.”
“That will pass,” said Matiga.
So said the books, but he still felt a compulsion and prying. A door somewhere was still open. A door to another being like the one they’d faced in the cave.
“We don’t have the knowledge to fix this open door in me,” he said. “We don’t know their powers. I’m a risk.”
“We don’t have the knowledge,” Matiga agreed. “But we will. We have the gifts of Hismayas: we have the Book and the Crown.”
“The book has always resisted us.”
“But I think I understand a few things I did not before. I think we should try to open the book again.”
“And if we fail?” asked Serah.
“What worthwhile thing is ever achieved without risk? We have the seafire,” said Matiga. “We have our lore. We might know less than we’d like, but we know enough. If we cannot unlock the secrets of The Book, then we shall prepare with the knowledge we do have. At the very least our eyes have been opened.”
Serah looked at Argoth, her furious indignation at what he’d done to Nettle still simmering in her eyes.
He tried again to take her hand, but she moved it away. Argoth thought of Nettle’s face, of the trust and pain that had shone in his eyes as Argoth drew forth his Fire. “Nettle was a man,” he said. “He made a man’s choice.”
“I’m not angry with Nettle,” she said, the pain and frustration flashing in her eyes.
Argoth waited.
“You said you’d tell me a story about a woman who married a monster. You revealed the monster. Now you need to wait for me to tell you how that story ends.”
Argoth nodded. He would wait. He’d wait, if he had to, until the Creators raveled the earth.
The Creek Widow looked to Serah and then Argoth. “Nettle is separated, not lost. We only need to learn how to bring his parts together again.”
There was a knock on the door, and then River barged in. “Purity,” she said. “She’s failing.”
* * *
Sugar knelt next to Mother on the bed and stroked her arm. Her face was bloodless—the collar about her neck seemed to be feeding on her. “You’re going to be okay, Mother.”
Legs sat on the other side. “River’s bringing the Creek Widow and Argoth.”
“You need to listen to me,” Mother said. “Back at the house there’s a stone on the right side of the hearth. You can remove it.”
“I know it,” Legs said.
She looked at Sugar. “If you remove it, you’ll find a stone box. Inside are things that must not fall into the Fir-Noy’s hands. They are your heritage.”
“They burned the house,” Sugar said.
Mother struggled to speak. She was exhausted. “Promise me you’ll retrieve them.”
“I promise,” Sugar said.
“Learn the lore,” Mother said. “Keep your hearts right.” Then she slumped back, spent, as if saying those few words had used up all her energy. She took a breath. “I’m proud of both of you.”
Oh, where was River?
As if on cue, the door to the chamber flew open, and River, the Creek Widow, and Zu Argoth hurried in.
The Creek Widow sized Mother up and down and began to roll up her sleeves. “You don’t look good, my girl,” she said. “Is it that collar?”
“I think so,” said Mother.
“We’re cutting it off you.”
“Matiga, that may kill her.”
“It’s killing her now.”
“No,” Mother said.
The Creek Widow turned to River. “Get me a pair of hoof nippers.”
“No!” Mother said more loudly.
The Creek Widow looked down at her. “We’re taking it off, Purity.”
Mother shook her head and mustered her strength. “I saw things in the cave,” she said. “The woman took me abroad one night. Showed me the world of souls. Things are not right.”
“What does that have to do with this collar?” Zu Argoth asked.
“The ancestors,” Mother said and trailed off, too exhausted to finish her thought. “Sparrow is in danger. He doesn’t know the ways. If I don’t go, I risk . . .”
“What do you risk, my dear?” the Creek Widow asked.
“The children,” she said and squeezed Legs’s and Sugar’s hands.
Arogth, the Creek Widow, and River looked at each other confused.
“I think she’s out of her mind,” Argoth said.
“No,” Mother said forcefully. “Everything has become clear. I must go.”
What was Mother talking about? “They can heal you,” Sugar said. “Just let them cut that thing off your neck.”
Mother smiled wanly and turned to Sugar. “You take care of Legs,” she said and winced. “I will find your father, and we shall prepare a place for you, so that where we are, you may be also.”
Sugar had only just recovered her. Mother couldn’t go now. “Mother,” said Sugar. “Please.”
Mother spoke slowly, carefully, just as she did when she wanted Sugar to listen closely. “I will go hence”—she took a resting breath—“so that you may follow. Trust me, my love. Trust me.”
Tears rolled down Legs’s face. “I trust you, Mother.”
Sugar found tears in her own eyes. She trusted Mother as well, but surely there had to be another way. How could all those future dreams, all those days as mother and daughter, be ripped from her again?
The Creek Widow knelt down beside Mother and took her hand. She felt her forehead. “Purity,” she said.
Mother looked at her clear-eyed. Some silent communication passed between them, and then the Creek Widow nodded. “Be safe,” she said.
The words fell like boulders, crushing Sugar’s joys. Sugar closed her eyes. “I love you, Mother.”
“I love you,” Mother said and stroked her hair again. “I love you both. I will be waiting with your father in brightness.”
Sugar and Legs both pressed into her. Clutched her.
Mother took a handful of labored breaths. And then her grip fell slack. Her chest stopped heaving.
“Mother,” Legs said.
Sugar looked up and around the room, not knowing for sure where Mother’s soul would be. “Tell Da I love him,” she said. “Tell him I will act, and not just be acted upon.”
Again the emotion well up inside her, and she buried her face in her mother’s neck. And as the fountains of her tears rose, so did a resolute determination: come what may, Sugar, the daughter of Sparrow and Purity, would follow their footsteps; she would learn her mother’s lore. She would fight the enemy and become Purity’s daughter in very deed.
50
Raveler
IN THE DAYS following the battle in the caves, Uncle Argoth and Lord Shim began raising dreadmen. The Creek Widow and River began teaching Talen and the others the first things about using Fire and soul and the history of the earth, but Talen found he couldn’t focus. The monster had saved them all. He needed to honor its last wishes.
Talen shared his thoughts with River and the Creek Widow, and they joined him on a trip back to the refuge. They stood on the hill above the vale and looked down at the valley where the Divine had battled. The damage was clear to see: great erratic swathes and loops of dead grass and trees. Off to one side of the meadow a boar staggered and sounded out its pain.
Talen suspected he knew why. By the time he descended the hill, the boar was on its side kicking weakly. There was a wound on its side: that was probably the spot where the raveler had wriggled in. The boar might have been sleeping or eating. It could have been doing any number of things when the weave had found it. But Talen was sure it was the cause of the boar’s throes.
They waited until the boar ceased its struggling; not much later the raveler worked its way out from underneath the animal and snaked into the grass.
Wearing the white, gold-studded gauntlets, Talen quickly plucked it up. The raveler immediately stilled, and he placed it in the Skir Master’s case.
The monster had talked of stomachs. Uncle Argoth and the Creek Widow had taken the remains of the original monster and opened it up to discover its lore. They’d also search their books for any record of the sons of Lamash. But they did not unlock its mysteries. In fact, the mysteries seemed only to multiply.
However, Talen
was
able to identify what the monster had been talking about, for inside the creature’s chest had been a row of similar organs, black as coal, woven of willow withies, and merged into the flesh of stone. One, Uncle Argoth said, contained soul.
The monster had spoken of the stomachs the woman had already taken. And where would she put them but somewhere close to her? And so Talen went back into the cave with the others.
They searched the chamber of battle. They searched the passageways leading in and out. They found many rooms, but they never saw a nest.
They were about to descend the broad path that led to the belly of the mountain, when Sugar asked if they’d been looking in the wrong place. Perhaps, she suggested, they should look up.
It took less than an hour to find the woman’s roost. In one room with a sulfur pool there were a scattering of her dead eel creatures lying on the floor. When the group held their torches aloft, they saw an opening to a small chamber above. It contained silk clothing that Lumen, the former Divine of the clans, wore, an ancient, cankered sword, and a handful of abominable weaves, including two of the monster’s stomachs.
The morning of the next day, Talen placed the monster’s stomachs on a large slab of granite on their farmstead. The survivors of the battle in the cave gathered round.
Talen donned the fine white, gold-studded gauntlets and removed the last Hag’s Tooth from its silver case. He held it up.
“This,” he said, “is to honor the bravery of Barg, Larther, and all the many other things that composed the servant of our enemy. May they find the safe path in the world of souls.”
Then he lowered the tooth to the stomachs. When its sharp tip touched the first stomach, it came to life, and wriggled out of his hand.
All stood round the stone, watching the tooth weave its way in, around, and through the stomachs that lay on the rock. As it worked, the blackness of the withies leached away, leaving behind simple wood.
A small breeze gusted through, and then, for the briefest moment, Talen thought he heard singing.
The tooth wriggled out of the pile of spent stomachs and rolled off the rock into the dust.
Talen picked it up. It had yet one more task to perform.
* * *
That evening Talen stood on the hill above the farmstead. At his feet lay three graves: one for Mother, a new one for Da’s body, and another for that of Sugar’s mother.
When Sugar had said she had no home, River and Talen had insisted she did. It was too risky for her to go back to her village and gather up any of her father’s bones that might remain. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t make a small monument for the time when they could retrieve the bones. Nor did it mean they couldn’t bury Sugar’s mother here.
Talen had expected someone to desecrate the graves, for the Fir-Noy were becoming more belligerent than ever, but that had not happened yet. Instead, they’d found gifts left on the graves in respect: apples or bunches of late summer flowers. There weren’t many gifts. But it surprised Talen there were any at all. Yesterday, they’d found a bowl of blood from a small sacrifice, clearly from someone who believed that the ancestors could drink the Fire of a newly killed animal as it poured forth.
But well-wishers weren’t the only ones visiting the area. There were reports of something in the woods, something killing the deer and sheep. Legs said he’d heard and smelled it one night in the yard. They had found footprints the next morning, and the evening after that Talen had seen its face in the shadows staring at him. They’d tried to track it, but lost the trail, and the dead bodies of animals began to mount.
“It’s Da,” said Talen. “Who else could it be?”
“Let us hope it isn’t the woman seeking revenge,” said Sugar.
“If it were, wouldn’t it be killing humans?” asked Legs.
“I don’t know,” said River. “We hardly know anything.”
“Well, I know this,” said Talen. “During that last battle, it was Da that was looking at me from the eyes of the earthen figure. It was Da in that awful body wanting release. It’s him. I can feel it.”
They built a fire, Legs sang a few mournful songs, and then they waited, watching the sun set and bats come out to flit over their heads. An owl swooped silently across the field below. Next to the graves, Nettle crawled in circles as if searching for something in the grass. It pained Talen to see his friend in such a state—half mad, the other half lost. But he respected Nettle for the sacrifice he’d made.
When the light finally faded completely, Talen pulled on the gauntlets and removed the last raveler from the Skir Master’s case. The late summer air had turned cold with the promise of autumn. It had not yet frozen hard enough to kill all the insects, so the mosquitoes rose as the sun set, but an evening wind kicked up to blow them away. River fed the fire, and they waited, the stars shining above them in the night sky, a hard-edged sliver of a moon giving them light.
One by one each of the others fell asleep in their bedrolls, but Talen did not. He waited and watched, and when he began closing just one eye to rest it, he roused himself and stood.
A light burned in the window of their house on the other side of the field below. Ke was there, being nursed back to health by the Creek Widow.
Talen walked to a stone on the far side of the hill. When he came back, he found River awake making them both a cup of tea, the Creek Widow sitting next to her. Talen took his cup gratefully, then sat with the two of them, sipping the red liquid and letting the cup warm his fingers.
He looked at his sister. She had tried to kill him. He did not hold it against her. However, she was not quite the sister he knew from before.
He’d just poured himself a second cup when a branch cracked at the edge of the wood behind them.
Talen turned.
He could make nothing out at first; the shadows along the forest edge were too deep.
“Just to the left of that great pine,” River said.
The earthen figure, the one with the vicious muzzle, the one Da had been poured into, stood in the night shadow of the tree.
“Slowly,” the Creek Widow said.
They rose and faced the creature.
“Da?” Talen called out.
The thing did not move. It was covered in grass as the first monster had been, and that gave Talen pause. They didn’t know if Talen and the monster had killed the woman, or if she’d merely fled. If she wasn’t dead, then this creature, Da, could very well be her thrall.
Behind them the fire popped, and Nettle snuggled up closer to Legs.
“Father,” said River, taking a step forward.
The creature stepped out of the deep shadows of the wood into the remaining vestiges of the moonlight. In one hand, it held a doe by the leg, dragging it along behind like a child might an overlarge doll.
“Careful,” the Creek Widow said.
“We’ve brought help,” Talen said and held up the raveler.
The creature opened its ragged mouth, just like the first had. Talen’s shoulders and neck prickled in alarm. What if the woman had returned?
Talen forced himself to take another step forward. Then another. Soon he stood an arm’s length away.
This body was shorter than the first one. It was made of more than dirt and stone, for he saw many growths of withy wood rising from its skin.
“The ancestors are waiting,” said Talen. “It is time for your release.” He held the last raveler up.
The creature dropped the doe into the tall late-summer grass. It stood for a moment regarding them, then reached out for Talen. He thought it was going to grasp him by the throat as the first had, and he stiffened, but it simply ran its rough fingertips down the side of his face.
River touched its arm. “You watched over us here. Watch over us now from the other side.”
The Creek Widow said nothing, but Talen could see she was trying to hold back tears.
The monster that was Da grasped the raveler. Talen could feel the horrid strength in that stony hand. Now was the moment, and Talen wondered if it would destroy this tooth as the other monster had the first two.
“We will see you in brightness,” Talen said, and he released the raveler.
The monster held the spike up in the moonlight as if examining it. Then the spike flashed to life and burrowed into its rough hand.
The creature opened its ragged mouth and took a terrible breath.
River stepped back.
But the creature stood still quite some time, its arm outstretched, as if noting the progression of the raveler to its heart. Suddenly, it looked down and felt its chest. Then it looked back up at Talen and River and staggered back one step.
“Da,” River said.
The monster threw its head back and opened wide its mouth. No sound escaped. But three ribbons of lavender light shot out and streaked up into the night sky. They weren’t as bright as those down in the woman’s cave, but shone nevertheless. Moments later, the monster leaned to one side, sagged, and fell heavily to the earth.
Talen waited for the creature to move again, to continue the throes of its death, but it lay still as the earth from which it had been formed. Something silver flashed in the moonlight by the monster’s chest, and the raveler wriggled its way out of the creature’s side, dropping into the dry grass.
Talen picked up the raveler, and it immediately stilled. He looked around, hoping the ancestors would arrive quickly to gather Da in. “Do you think they will come?”
“Purity will find him,” River said. She looked out into the night. “Farewell, Father.”
“What do you think it means that he had those ribbons in him?” Talen asked.
“What ribbons?” River asked.
“The ones like those down in the cave.”
The Creek Widow shook her head. “I saw no ribbons.”
“Neither did I,” River said.
He had seen them; it hadn’t been his imagination. “They came out of his mouth. They were pale and faded. Like the ones with that sucker-faced woman.”
“You don’t know that was her true form. She could have shown that awful visage to you on purpose. But that’s another matter.” The Creek Widow shook her head. “Those ribbons and your sight are yet another mystery. I feel it will be years before we answer them all.”
River looked over at him and took his hand. She’d loved Da probably more than any of them, but there were no words to say. So they walked back to the camp fire to sit and drink tea and stare into the fire with their thoughts.
The Creek Widow stayed back with the body for some time, talking to the night air, talking to Da. When she returned, Talen gave her another cup of tea. He motioned at the gauntlets and raveler. “A little bit of knowledge,” he said. “That’s all that separated Da from the Divines.”
“Knowledge and heart,” said River. “Remember: he was given the choice to rule and refused.”
“Do the Divines choose?” asked the Creek Widow. “I wonder if they all leap to it.”
“Regardless,” Talen said. “Da served the Creators to the last.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t compare him to Divines. I think he was more like one of the old gods than anything else.”
That set Talen back. The old gods were the stuff of stories and legend.
“Imagine what he could have done,” said River, “if he had been able to practice in the open.”
“He would have blessed the hens,” said Talen. “He would have multiplied their eggs.”
River looked sidelong at him. “How do you know he didn’t?”
“Goh,” said Talen, and he realized Da probably had. Their farm had prospered. Not always. The hens had died, after all, but even the peach trees seemed to bear more fruit than those of the neighbors.
“Da would be so pleased to know that the vision he worked for is now beginning to come to pass,” said River. “Not in the way he hoped, but coming to pass nevertheless.”
“Perhaps,” said the Creek Widow.
“We’ll be attacked on all sides,” said Talen.
“We will,” said River. “But we should have a season to prepare. And if we ultimately fail, we will go out like Da, fighting.”
Talen nodded. He wrapped the white gauntlets and raveler case in a cloth and placed them in a sack and put it aside. “If Da was like one of the old gods, does that also mean I have to worship you? Because I’m just not going to do it.”
River laughed, and then she hit him on the forehead with the heel of her palm. “You will always worship me.”
“I will,” said Talen. And he meant it.
They began to reminisce about Da and Mother. The Creek Widow added stories Talen had never heard before. Every remembrance seemed to call forth three more, and soon the bittersweet memories came as a flood.