Blackhand (21 page)

With Ru’s mind following him, Quintel crawled the world looking for the Agara's dense flame. He checked in caves and under bridges. He looked in cities and forests. He even glanced at Sirian Ru's side of the world, just to prove to the living god he could do it. Seeing nothing he realized there was only one spot he had not searched. In a flash he sent his mind to God's Finger and there he found the lost flame.

At the top of the salt tower, the Agara was destroying everything. The entity had defecated in the crystalline well and torn out most of the ornate foliage crowning the spire. It sang a guttural, hissing song as it gouged the earth and splintered the trees, happily fulfilling its calling.

Quintel hovered above the tower, stunned by the ruin. Uprooting a thousand-year-old tree, the Demonthane noticed him and froze, falling into silence mid-note. It met his disembodied sight with an eyeless stare. Both figures remained motionlessly, fixed upon each other for several breaths. Then the monster laughed, knowing there was nothing Quintel could do but watch.

The Demonthane cast the ancient tree aside and ripped another from the ground.

“Watch, vile monster!” it spat at him. “Watch me destroy the sanctuary of your jealous maker!”

The sight was too much and Quintel started to pull away when something stopped him. His god half wasn't ready to go. It had caught sight of something. It was looking at something behind the Agara. For a moment, the slice of god was quiet and unafraid. But only for a moment. Soon it lost track of whatever had grabbed its attention and returned to its blubbering.

His curiosity satisfied, Quintel withdrew and returned to the plains. As he hovered in the sky above his body, he realized he could see all the players at once -- the two approaching armies, the Demonthane, Ru… and himself. It seemed the flat earth had transformed and he now hunched over the playing board again. Patterns of attack and defense flashed within his mind and he saw a hundred different options for the future. None of which led to victory for the Abanshi.

Quintel refilled his body. The fragment chattered in terror. He realized he had been gone for hours.

Chapter 25

Sirian Ru felt what he believed to be joy. It was certainly a level of satisfaction he had not known before. His arrow had found its target. The Demonthane had killed the minion, knocking out a leg from Yuul's strategy.

Over the years, Ru had searched the world many times for Yuul's lost human minion, only to be looking too far beyond his own nose. He knew the man was out there for he could feel his strength. All the while the minion had been sitting in the palm of his right hand. The one Vaerian Ru had not suspected was the one Huk had imprisoned. The god had to admire his adversary. Yuul had shown creativity and a willingness to gamble with that move.

Ru might never have found the minion if not for Yuul’s hybrid.  When the abomination ventured from his body and made contact with the Vaerian, Ru knew exactly where to send the Demonthane.

From across the world, Ru saw everything that transpired after that. He witnessed the Demonthane impale the minion, and saw the man-god suffering over the death. The hybrid had no control over his new power. He rode it like an unbroken stallion. It controlled him more than he controlled it. By the time the thing mastered its might, the battle would be over.

Ru thought it best to let the Agara rest since its next target would be Yuul's creature. He sent the Agara to God's Finger to recuperate and defile Yuul's silly tower. The Agara could fly, so the top of the pillar was no longer out of reach. He didn't want his adversary interfering, and desecrating the tower would prevent that. When the war was over, Ru would knock the spike down and grind it back into salt.

Ru cast his sight to far side of his world. His human soldiers were exhausted and of little use. Taln was even showing signs of fatigue and he had traveled with a full belly and plenty of water.

The Thogs, however, were performing with remarkable success. The beasts were more effective than even he had hoped. Only a few thousand had fallen and the battle was nearing an end.

At the Iron Gate, Ru watched as the Thogs smashed holes through the wall, allowing a roaring stream of attackers to flood into the Abanshi kingdom. It was a vision the god had dreamed about for centuries.

Yes. Sirian Ru was joyful.

As his forces pierced into the heart of the Abanshi lands, something glimmered in the corner of his eye; just a wink, but enough to jerk his attention away from the fight. The wink had come from the top of God's Finger.

His mind rushed to the spike. He saw the intricate foliage and stone formations decorating the terrace, but no indication of anything else. Perhaps he had imagined the glimmer. Without a minion to summon it, Yuul could not pierce the spiritual membrane encasing the solid world. The god was sure of it. He had made the membrane himself. The wink could not have been Yuul.

Ru lingered atop the spire for a few moments, but sensed nothing. When convinced, he returned to the conflict to gloat.

Yuul relaxed, but not too much. Ru had sensed it. When turned at a certain angle, Yuul could make itself almost invisible, but the pose required concentration. The sight of the Thogs pouring into the Abanshi kingdom hit the young god hard. Its concentration had slipped in a moment of despair, exposing it upon the physical plane. By fortune, Ru had not seen it when taking a closer look.

Yuul had been hiding on God's Finger since Siyer died. It did not know where else to go. The Agara inside the winged body was quite capable of killing it, especially now that Yuul had lost a good-sized chunk of its power.  Even a well-placed arrow from a human archer could bring it death. The god had no choice but to hide and wait.

Siyer's death had wounded Yuul. The god had chosen Siyer in the womb and followed him through every moment of his life. Of all his minions, Siyer was the greatest. His grasp of the game and its strategies made him the perfect mentor for the Abanshi vessel. The Vaerian saw instantly the benefit of hiding in plain sight. He understood the necessity of his imprisonment and its relation to conditioning the vessel. He always knew exactly what the god needed and when. He would be missed.

Yuul had wanted to reward its loyal minion, but that door was closed. At least Siyer would be spared more disappointment if they failed.

The young god remained perched in its strange position. It had learned that, with a bit of contorting, it could hide behind the atoms that made up solid matter. It could remain hidden from Ru, the Agara and anyone else who lived and breathed. It was practicing this new found skill when the Demonthane crested the horizon.

The god saw the Agara although it was many miles away. Its wings took slow hacks at the air, propelling it with ease. Only the weight of its presence had been visible before. Now Yuul saw the monster in detail; scale armor skin, sickles for hands. No eyes.

The Demonthane closed the distance at incredible speed. Within a few moments, it landed agilely upon the grassy rooftop of God's Finger. Yuul fell even deeper into despair. The tower was the sole fragment of earth it claimed for itself. Now it was lost.

Folding its wings, the Demonthane scanned the area. Its vision passed over Yuul without pause, oblivious to the god's presence. The monster walked to the center of the garden where the oaks encircled the well and tore out one of the ancient trees with its hooked hands. The tree's exposed orange roots looked like the phalanges of a sea creature. The Agara tossed the old oak aside and repeated the act with another tree, and then another, and another, until all within the circle were scattered like kindling. Then it strode to center of the deforested ring and defiled the well. It shred the petals from the flowers, tore out the sacred hedges, splintered more of the ageless trees and gouged the hallowed earth that nurtured Yuul's garden.

Yuul felt loss crush in from all directions. First the disaster with the merging, then Siyer's death, now this. All of its work, all of its dreams, died as it watched helplessly. The young god had pierced the fabric of reality only to have a closer view of its own defeat.

The Agara sang. It was enjoying its task. It was doing what it was created to do. As it ripped out another tree, the creature suddenly stiffened and fell silent, staring at something in the air.

Yuul looked and saw Quintel's mind bobbing around the edge of God's Finger. It was a confused mess, a consciousness at war with itself. The Abanshi had no control over his powers. Yuul saw the severed part of itself curled up in Quintel's soul, traumatized and terrified, afraid of everything. The Abanshi forced the fragment to cooperate. Yuul was pleased with this. That was exactly why an Abanshi was chosen to be the vessel. Their will to fight was stronger than a god's fear of death. That part of Yuul's strategy had been correct.

The god studied Quintel's mind while the Demonthane shouted insults and stamped the ground. Yuul saw the fissure between the man and the god. Grief and guilt had driven the amputated piece into despondence.

Only one thing kept Quintel from being paralyzed by the schism. The divine fragment inside him was not a fully conscious mind. It was a collection of impulse and feeling. It did not have sentience beyond Quintel's own. It was the raw force of Yuul's identity, the basic building blocks of the god’s essence. If Quintel could figure out how to merge his mind with those divine impulses, he might be able to attain control over his power. But that had not yet happened.

Yuul turned to examine the Demonthane. The design was far more complex than that of the Thogs. While the Demonthane's spirit resided within the large stone, the object was not merely a power source as it was for the Thogs. It was more like a house -- a place where the Agara's mind could reside and animate the body it lived within.

Insight struck Yuul. A new level of understanding clicked into place. The god examined the construction of the Demonthane more closely.

The premise was familiar: Place an entity from another dimension into a body that moved within the world of the living. The difference was Yuul had tried to share a body with someone blessed with birth, while Ru had created the Agara’s form.

Yuul realized its plan had been impossible. The two halves did not make a whole. What Yuul observed with the Agara seemed to work well, however. A soul-mind core connected to a physical body by a network of fibrous nerves. The Demonthane was like a puppeteer.

For a second, Yuul felt Quintel's attention fall upon it. The god fragment had sensed its hiding place! It recognized part of itself hidden behind the atoms. Yuul remained very still. If the Agara sensed it...

After a few long moments, Quintel's interest moved on and his mind withdrew to his body many leagues away.

The Agara halfheartedly destroyed a few more of trees and grew bored. It sprawled out on its back and looked into the blue sky, pleased with its efforts and content to rest.

Yuul had been handed a new strategy. Now that it had time to examine both Quintel and the Demonthane, it understood how they operated, how they were the same, how they were different and what went wrong with the original plan.

A new plan emerged within the god's thoughts. The deity now realized how it could incarnate within the world of the living.

Chapter 26

Behind him, Quintel heard the disciplined march of Aul's vanguard. Heavy cavalry, catapults and archers. The forces entered the western pass and spread out to optimize their firepower on the open field. In front of him, the rumble of the berserk Thog horde echoed down the canyon walls.

Quintel felt the attention of the Abanshi army as they noticed him on the field. At first, they didn't recognize him. Then a rippling wave of bewilderment moved through the ranks. Most of the soldiers knew nothing about the queen's lost brother, but the officers did, and their feelings about his unexpected presence were negative. “Bad omen, madman, traitor” were the labels he sensed scattered among their thoughts.

He ignored them and stood unmoving, his bare sword tucked into his belt.

Aul rode up behind him.

“I won't trouble you with mundane questions about your escape or how you beat us here,” she said, circling him on her gray mare. She was sheathed in mail and wore the war helm of Abanshi royalty. “I will only ask for your intentions. What is it you plan to do?”

Quintel felt the god moan and hide. His Abanshi side was stronger and spoke.

“I plan to fight,” he said. “I have merged awkwardly with the god. It fears death more than any human. And not just its own. Any death brings it crippling grief. I do not know if it will let me raise my sword. But I must try. The Thog army must be broken and there is a Demonthane loose upon the world. My time to help may be short.”

Aul drew her mount to a halt and leaned forward on her saddle.

“I will not let you lie to yourself, no matter how insane you may be,” she said. “If you stay, you stay to die. Know this in your heart and be free. Our scouts tell us the Thog creatures are impervious to our weapons. They routed the Iron Gate in minutes and tore thirty thousand men apart.”

“I know, Aul. I saw it.”

He sensed she believed him at some level. She glimpsed the truth, but didn't understand it. She wasn't sure of his divinity, but she sensed there was something within him besides madness. He felt her heart soften toward him.