The Godlost Land (68 page)

And as for the other gods and goddesses he had never preached against them. So if even they were angry with him they had no cause to ask either of the two gods to intercede on their behalf. But if Xin had done as he said he was in trouble. Nemesis was the gods' agent of vengeance. If sacrilege had been committed Nemesis would respond.

“What did he do?” Terellion could barely even whisper the words. But he had to know. He had to know what was happening to him.

“He answered his daughter's prayers of course. He gave them what they needed to set a trap for you so they could have their divine and righteous revenge. He gave them the living essence you apparently found. Essence he gave them just for you. And which you foolishly drank. Did no one ever tell you that living essences are either male or female? You obviously got the female one.” Varrious laughed some more.

“No!” That could not be. Save that as the pain ripped through his manhood again he knew that it was. It was the only thing that made sense. The essence was undoing his manhood. “It's your essence. Why would you have female essence?”

“Mine?” Varrious asked him, surprised. “Why would you think that? Where would I get living essence from?”

Terellion groaned as he suddenly realised the worthless bastard was telling him the truth for once. The thrall who'd brought the elixir to him had said his fury had found it in Varrious' chamber. But he suddenly realised she hadn't found it at all. She'd just said she had. In actuality she'd brought it with her and her stupid master hadn't guessed. It seemed that those who'd thought they were in control of the furies hadn't been.

“You can't really control the furies at all, can you?”

“They're intelligent. And so the charms our master gave us are of limited use. We can mostly just keep them happy and compliant. But not if you upset them too greatly. And not when they really want something.”

Terellion's dread suddenly grew worse as he realised that Varrious wasn't controlling the furies at all. Not the ones in the city. He couldn't. Not since the mating. That had angered them and they'd more or less broken free of his control after that. Which was why the thralls had been having such trouble controlling them. Now Varrious was just sitting there laughing at him.

“What are they going to do?” Terellion just whispered the words, realising that whatever they were going to do there seemed to be nothing he could do to stop them.

“Vengeance. The perfect and pure vengeance of Nemesis himself. You had their sisters raped and bred. Now they're going to rape and breed you.” The thrall laughed some more, as if it was the best joke he'd ever heard, and the furies hissed happily with him. Terellion just screamed.

“No! I can't! You can't!” But he knew even as he begged that they could and he would answer to her and her sisters for what they considered his crimes.

“Yes. Can. Will.” She held up the glass vial that he instantly recognised. The empty glass vial.

“Living essence. We prayed for it. And when came we gave it to masters. Knew you use. Soon you be woman. Be mated. Bred. By me.”

Terellion couldn't believe that. Save that he did. He had to when it seemed to be happening. And he couldn't believe that these creatures had done this to him. That they'd somehow fooled him. They might be animals but it seemed they could speak and plan. And they could fool him. But why? That was what he didn't understand. If they were angry why didn't they just kill him? He asked the question once the next terrible tearing and crushing agony had lanced through him and he'd finished screaming.

“Because Nemesis wants the punishment to fit the crime.” Varrious answered him between bouts of hysterical laughter. “It's why his daughter now has that. So she can punish you properly.”

“That?” He didn't understand until he looked where the demon king's first thrall was staring. Between the fury's legs, where it seemed she was slowly growing a male member. How could that be?

“Not worry. You live. Bring you upstairs to temple before end. Nemesis insist. Until then you be all mine.” The seductress really did smile at him then, a grin that showed off the daggers in her mouth in all their deadly beauty. Razor sharp, needle thin and loaded with poison.

It was then that Terellion understood that she was a predator – and he was her prey. She actually thought that what she was saying was a good thing. That he should be glad she wasn't going to kill him.

“Soon sisters! She be ready soon!”

One of the furies suddenly announced it excitedly to the world and Terellion could hear the eagerness in her voice. Even as he hated her for calling him “she”.

“Let me see!” The seductress hurried to look, and then to check to see how the elixir was working. He could feel her talons on his manhood, pushing it around gently, testing it, and he knew what she was looking for. He understood exactly what she meant. It was loose. It was tearing itself free from his body somehow. Soon his manhood would be torn from him completely by this terrible elixir. Soon he would be a woman. And she intended to have him after that.

“Kill me!” Terellion begged, knowing that he didn't want that – ever. Death had to be better than that. Anything had to be better.

“Bitch not die.” She smiled at him some more from the far end of the table where she was staring at him and practically licking her lips with excitement. “Bitch coward.”

Terellion would have argued. He would have said something. But just then the elixir struck again, and instead he was racked with agony. Burning, tearing pain as his manhood was crushed some more. Torn a little more. And a little more again. The pain was so bad that he knew it wouldn't be long now.

“Look!” She screamed excitedly and then jumped up on to the foot of the table to stand by his feet and show everyone what she had between her legs. “Nemesis gives gift!”

But it wasn't a gift. It was a curse. A nightmare given form. She was still a fury. Still female in every part save one. But now as his manhood was being slowly ripped from him by the elixir, she was growing one. Growing it straight and strong. It was so big, too big, and he knew she was in a hurry to use it. On him! In him!

“Please!” Terellion begged knowing there was nothing else he could do. But he couldn't even do that. He tried but it just made them angry.

“No beg! No mercy you gave. No mercy you get.” The fury was suddenly in his face, her vipers hissing angrily, hurting his ears. And he could hear the others hissing too.

But even as he was about to apologise and beg some more, one final ripping, tearing pain tore through him and he knew it was too late. He screamed again. Crying out louder and harder than before. Begging for some release from the terrible pain. Praying that what he feared wasn't going to happen. But there was no hope. What he got instead was the release from his birthright. He felt it come loose. All of it somehow tearing itself free of him and hitting the table with a soft wet sound.

It was then that Terellion knew that he had been unmanned, and he lay there mute with shock. His manhood – his precious manhood – had been torn from him! And now he was nothing. Less than nothing. He was a true eunuch. A figure of fun and ridicule. A sad miserable creature that would be better off dead. A woman. Unbidden tears rolled down his cheeks. He had been a stallion in the bedchamber. Now this.

“Look, weapon gone.” One of the furies held up a lump of bloody flesh in front of his face for him to examine and he tried not to look because he knew what it was. It was him. But he couldn't keep his eyes from staring at it. At him. His manhood, all of it. Every last scrap of it now sat in her hands. And they'd taken it from him.

Then she tossed it casually aside as if it was nothing instead of his most precious flesh. In that moment, in that gesture he discovered the true meaning of hatred and he lost control.

“Bitch! Whore!”

Terellion screamed it at her when he had the strength. At all of them. And he kept screaming it at them for as long as he could. He cursed them all with everything he had. And they just laughed at him. So he cursed them some more. After they had done this terrible thing to him he wanted to kill them all.

In the end though, he ran out of strength. And he realised that there there was no point. They didn't care what he called them. In fact they found it funny. They only cared about what he'd done, and he'd bred their sisters like animals. Now they were going to breed him like a bitch in heat. Terellion struggled against the chains holding him and even with the new strength he had been given by the elixir he could do nothing to break them. It was also galling to understand that they'd somehow outsmarted him. A bunch of mindless beasts had outwitted him. How?

She crouched down then, falling to her knees between his legs, and then suddenly reached forward with a talon and started rubbing his stomach.

“Empty. Soon be filled.”

“No!” He shrieked in terror suddenly remembering the rest of her disgusting plan.

“Yes.” She licked her lips some more. “You want put baby in me. Too slow. Now I put baby in you. Much better.”

Terellion didn't answer her. He couldn't speak. Not when he realised he had a new problem. The pain of his injuries was easing. Which meant they were healing. And she knew it too.

“You heal fast. In hurry to breed. Good.”

“Please!” He begged again, terrified of what was coming, but he knew it wouldn't help. Not when she was smiling like that. Not when she was enjoying his fear. Not when he could see that she was eager.

“Is time. Now you know what did to sisters.”

Chapter Sixty Four

“Harl.”

Surprised, Harl looked up as he heard his name called. He was standing at the pit beating his steel as he did every day, and as usual lost in his work. He hadn't heard anyone arrive. He was more surprised by who it was that had called him. It was Marni. She had only been out to his smithy one time. Until he had crafted the bow. Ever since then she had sent her men. She was a busy woman after all. Busy these days training ever more soldiers to be sent into the Kingdom of the Lion to fight the last battle. And she was probably still worried by whatever Erislee and Dina had said to her.

“Commander?”

“I'm so sorry. I have a message for you. From the High Priestess. From Inel Ison.”

Marni handed him the note, and he knew even before he read it that it would be bad. Her tone was the same one priests used when they brought bad news to families. The look on her face was worse. And why was she sorry? But how bad? How much more terrible could his life get?

It was with trembling hands that he took the note from her and unrolled the thin sheet of tissue. And the fear grew worse when he saw the hand writing. It wasn't Nyma's.

And then the first words he read chilled him. They were only “Dearest Harl”, but if Nyma hadn't sent them that could only mean it was her family who had. Erislee. No one else would use such a term.

He read on, trying to absorb the words, and failing. Because there was something within him that simply refused to read them no matter how many times he tried. But he kept trying.

“Harl, are you all right?” The commander was asking him something he realised. She had been for some time. And he didn't know how to answer her. All he did know was that he didn't want to talk to her.

“Go away, please.”

He said it to her once and when she tried to say something else he told her the same thing again and then a third time. He wanted to be alone. He needed to be alone. And eventually something of that must have got through to her. She left, walking off to her horse, and he quickly forgot her.

Instead he just stood there and tried to make sense of what the words said.

Attacked by harpies! Burnt to death! The phrases stayed in Harl's mind. They burned their way into his very soul. Even after the note had vanished, taken away from his hands by the wind, the words remained.

Nyma and his baby; gone!

For the longest time he stood there. Letting the words flow through him, trying to make sense of them. Failing to do so. They just didn't make sense. They didn't make sense because they were impossible. Nyma was in Ilendigo. In the town where her family lived. She was safe there.
Safe
! Far from the fighting. And she was with child, with
his child
. By now she was six months along. That he understood. That made sense.

But in time the truth started forcing its way in. It hammered and clawed at him, demanding to be heard. And though he wanted to keep it out, though he fought it with everything he had, it was winning through.

Then finally it won the battle.

It washed over him; through him. It shouted at him from every fibre and sinew in his body. And it was just three simple words. Nyma was dead. Three terrible words. Three words that demanded an answer. A denial. A protest. Anything!

Eventually he found one. He screamed, a wordless cry that he shouted out to the heavens above. The pain that could not be expressed in mere words. The grief that could not be borne. The rage that could not be contained. All were with him as he let that scream loose. As he let the heavens themselves know his pain.

He screamed and the world screamed with him.

Too much! It was just too much. This could not be allowed to continue. Not now. Not ever. And as the sky thundered above him with rage and the ground beneath him trembled in fear, he knew that the world agreed. She had been killed. Murdered! By the same lying temple who had murdered his family! It was simply too much. It was beyond injustice. It was worse than evil. And it had to be fought. It had to be destroyed. It had to be cleansed from the world.

Suddenly he knew how. He didn't look for it. He didn't have to. The knowledge was simply within him. The way to end this forever. To destroy this evil that kept striking at him. At everyone. To set things right.

Ascendant metal. No one knew how to make it. No one even knew what it was save that it was the metal of the gods. It was what their armour was made of. Their weapons too. But suddenly Harl knew what it was. He knew how to smelt it. He knew the recipes that went into it and the spells that had to be cast on it. He knew it all. And he knew that it had to be cast.

And as the rage consumed him he set to work smelting it. Adding the ores in the right amounts at the right time. Casting the spells on it as he did so. Heating the smithy to the right temperatures. Testing it with his fingers for its texture. Tasting it. Slowly filling his smelter with it. With three hundred weight of ascendant metal.

It took time, but time was all he had left. No lover, no baby. No family and no life. He had time and he had rage. That was all he had.

Hours passed, but he scarcely noticed. Then it was days and he didn't care. All he really knew was that light faded to darkness and then back to light again. It happened several times. People came and left. He paid them no mind. Rain fell and the sun came out again. He hardly noticed. The ground shook constantly but he refused to fall over. The roof of his pit burnt down at one point, the flames from the smithy leaping too high. It was nothing. And when the very bricks of the smithy started melting with the fury of the fire, he didn't care either. All he did was push the molten fury back into shape and shore it up with earth. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the smelting.

Until finally it was ready.

He knew it. He could feel it. Taste the perfection. Smell it. And it was time to cast the armour. But this would be armour cast as no other armour ever before. It would be cast as the armour of the gods had always been meant to be.

Harl took a belt knife from the wall and started scraping away the hair from his head. It would only be in the way. And because the knife was made by him, it didn't take long. Then it was time, and he stepped into the pit, and fired it until the flames were leaping six feet into the air. His clothes had already burnt off him long before, but he didn't care about that. He had no need of clothes any longer. He had need only of the armour.

Then with the strength of rage flowing through him as never before, he lifted the smelter off its chain from where it had been boiling, raised it over his head and upended it.

The metal poured down all around him, like a living blanket of warmth, and he welcomed it to him, shaping it with his hands, keeping it out of his eyes and his mouth, smoothing it down over his flesh, coating every scrap of his flesh, like a baker icing a cake. It was thick and smooth, but above all else it was as it should be. A second skin forming on top of his. A skin of divine fury.

Soon he was standing there in the fire, a statue in ascendant metal, shining like the sun, and he knew he had started well. But there was more to do. One more thing. He reached for his sword, still hanging from the rack where Nyma had made him keep it while he worked, and let the ascendant metal run from his hands on to it. There the metal ran thicker in places, but with his art he made certain to keep the edge of the great sword sharp. All it took was a touch. The metal understood what he wanted. But then that was what it was. The scream of outrage that still lived within him. And it was about to be heard.

He stepped out of the pit, finished with it and ready to move on.

“Now you.”

Harl spoke to the orange cat who he somehow knew wasn't a cat at all, and told him to open the gate to his enemies. The cat was the way.

It was finally time. Time to end this. There could be no more.