Blackhand (34 page)

“The Forestlands put up little struggle after that. The Thogs had taken the fight from them. There were a few battles. Argoth. Huk’s fortress,” she continued. “The rest saw the error in trusting Ru and joined us. The Thogs gave us the most trouble. Our saviors they might have been, but not for long.”

He managed to gather enough courage to speak. He was going to tell her he was sorry.

“Aul, I….”

“Do not address me, traitor,” she said softly. Had she spoken in anger, the words would have hurt less. “God or not, you have no voice among the Abanshi now.”

As she spoke, he glimpsed the horror she had experienced over the last few months, the stench of her dead, the piles of bloated bodies in the tunnel, the terror she felt watching her soldiers halved with the stroke of a Thog ax.

“And for what final prize?” she circled around him. She wore no armor and was dressed in robes bearing Forestland colors. “A stalemate?”

She was silent in a way that gave him permission to speak.

“I am sorry, Aul,” he said. “I had no choice.”

“How I am tired of hearing your apologies,” she answered through a bitter smile. “You had no choice but to turn your might on the Vaerian weapons? Was it their effectiveness you loathed? Fifty of our dead fell by your own hand. They were your countrymen!” She paused for a moment, her hands shaking at her sides, letting her rage fade back to hate.  “But no matter. There is victory here.”

Head high, she gazed beyond him toward her troops in the distance. She raised her arm and made a sweeping gesture as if encompassing everything behind him.

“Look! Look at my new kingdom,” she said. “It reaches from the Abanshi mountains to the foot of this... living wall. And, Sirian Ru's barrier seals two ways. You are locked out, but the god is locked in.”

She was right. The god had severed himself from the outside world to keep Quintel away. In that, there was some level of victory. But the god had won as much. In fact, Quintel knew Ru had escaped with a greater prize.

He thought Aul should be satisfied with such an outcome. The god was imprisoned. Her permeating anger should have been softened by the end of the thousand year war. Then he realized her pain did not come from the battle. In the center of her red soul, he saw a hollow place. A hole left by lost love.

“And so it ends, dear brother,” she continued. “The war. The struggle. The evil god's desire. The purpose of your existence. All has come to a final stop.”

Quintel looked back to the wall which looked back at him. What was his next step? What could he do? Nothing.

“Stand here and wait, Blackhand Thogstacker,” she said. “Impotent and useless. Already a legend of a past age. Stand here and wait for the wall to wither beneath the rain. You have nothing else. Worshiped you may be, but the life left in you will be empty. For no one remains to love you.”

She walked back to her troops and he heard them break camp to begin their journey home. Soon the sounds of the army faded into the distance. A few of the soldiers remained so they could be near him. They were Forestlanders who saw him as a deity, the enemy god who saved their people despite their sins against him.

Their adoration gave him no joy, for he knew it was misplaced. He would gladly trade their worship for one more kiss from Aul. But he knew such a thing would never come again.

Chapter 39

What now, little Abanshi? Sirian Ru thought to himself as he sat upon his throne. What steps do you have left? Try and circumvent the wall and see how far it can reach. Try and tunnel beneath its base and learn the depth of its roots. Let it seize you and rip you to pieces. Live forever in its gullet as butchered meat. Become a memory to all who adore you. Move to the world of legend.

It was over now, at least this chapter. Ru knew the monster could not bridge the wall. He had been afraid his power would not be great enough to create the structure. He had no precedent to support his plan. The tactic had a high probability of failure. While the creature was massive in size, its construction was simplistic. The obsolete Thogs provided the template to give the wall order, the spare soulstones provided the power for it to exist. Its single duty was to crush the Abanshi monster if he got too close.

Yet where did the tactic leave Ru? All humanity had turned against him, thankless for what he had done for them. He was trapped behind the wall as much as the abomination was trapped outside. He had created a prison for himself in exchange for his life.

Ru wondered if he had done the right thing. Perhaps he should have faced the monster. There was a good possibility he could have killed it. But he did not want to risk his one life on possibilities. They cut both ways no matter how thin.

At least food was not an issue. He had enough for an eternity. A hundred thousand humans were sealed in with him. That gave him plenty to eat as long as they kept mating. And Ru knew there was no keeping them from that. Wonderful creatures, humans.

But Ru had no intention on staying in his self-created prison for an eternity. The Vaerians had resurrected devastating technologies from the Pastworld. It was only a matter of time before they figured out some way around the wall. He could not rest. His machinations must continue.  He had to strike a final blow.

Ru had learned much from making the Demonthane and improved Thogs. Injecting variety in the process gave him new ideas. Bits and pieces of these ideas could be melded to form a single brilliant idea. One thought in particular had already proven profitable. The Abanshi monster could not fly, and Ru made things that could.

“I may be out of your reach, horrible thing, but you are not out of mine,” Ru said to the empty room.

The Agara's wings had been the most successful aspect of the creation. While the Abanshi had found a way past its impenetrable flesh, he had trouble reaching the Demonthane when it was airborne.

Ru would explore that feature further.

Aside from steel-like flesh, there were other ways to make his creations impervious. Size needed to play a role. If he made a creature large enough, it could simply survive more strikes from the Abanshi's blade. The wall proved his methods could be adapted to such a scale.

But the most effective feature was found in the improved Thogs. Their ability to make decisions had sent the Abanshi bolting in a thousand different directions. Many of the Thogs escaped his wrath simply by running away. Giving them the power to think worked far better than draping them within hardened flesh.

Ru let his imagination play with the formula. Many possibilities appeared and he realized he should have been pursuing these from the beginning. No matter. He now had time, a few moments to breathe, a few years to put some of his new ideas into service. Already, he gathered his strength to create a soulstone greater than any previously pulled from his body. He wanted to make something larger and more refined than even the prototype housing the Agara – which the Abanshi had cleverly formed into a weapon. Something on such a scale would be invincible. The effort would take years -- perhaps decades – but the end result could remove all the obstacles that plagued him.

Yuul was another factor troubling him. His rival had been curiously quiet throughout the entire ordeal. The young god should have been giving his creation some kind of assistance during the conflict, yet they didn't seem to be in contact at all. Yuul had always offered tactics and advice to its minions atop the safety of God’s Finger. Perhaps circumstances had struck the young god mute. Without someone to summon it, Yuul could not enter the physical realm. With the Vaerian minion dead, the Abanshi was the only living thing that knew how to bring the upstart deity into existence. Yet he made no attempt to do so and had all but ignored God's Finger.

Something was suspicious there. Yuul was up to mischief.

Ru grew weary of such thinking. The subtleties tired him. This is not what he wanted for his world. This was not how things were supposed to be. Sometimes Sirian Ru thought he should just give Yuul a portion of the world so the child wouldn't be such a nuisance. He could let the younger god rule the western lands and receive the worship it craved. But he knew if he did, the giving would not end. Yuul would not stop coveting until it owned the entire wedge.

And such opportunity had already expired. All humanity was against Ru, and he had sealed himself in a prison of his own making. The monster stood at his doorstep, the Vaerians were developing better weapons and the Lanya had emerged from hiding. Those issues all had to be dealt with immediately.

On that list, killing the Abanshi was Sirian Ru's first priority. No Vaerian weapon could rival that threat and the Lanya could be dealt with in other ways. The Abanshi was a single-minded, half-divine being who wanted him dead. Ru had to squash that problem as soon as possible. But he had to learn more about the creature first. He didn't even know its name.

Sirian Ru rested on his throne and considered his next move. He knew the time had come to pay the Abanshi a visit.

***

Oh, how Yuul hoped the Lanya queen had not misled him! What risk it ventured by following her advice! How could it be in a more dangerous position than it was now?

As the other Thogs wandered outside of Ru's factory, Yuul tried to emulate them in movement and behavior. This basically entailed walking around and snarling at other Thogs if they crossed its path. A few of the more intelligent ones knew something was different about Yuul, but their attention did not stay on the god long enough to threaten its disguise.

The Lanya queen had sent Yuul directly to Ru's castle to prepare for such a gambit. Even the god was amazed at her foresight. If she was right, of course.

How could she have such vision? How could she foresee such a complex end to the struggle?

Yet already parts of her plan had become solid. Sirian Ru had raised a wall that effectively prevented Quintel from fulfilling his threat.  Had Yuul not gone directly to the peninsula as she commanded, the young god would have been locked outside with Quintel, ineffective and useless. If her strategy followed its course, it would be Yuul who finally brought an end to the elder god. Although Yuul was not quite sure when or how that moment would arrive.

The Thogs did not experience boredom, but Yuul did. Days of walking around grunting and snarling had left the god exhausted. It took to playing elaborate tricks on the hulking creatures. Poorly balanced building stones fell and crushed clawed feet. Misplaced lengths of rope entangled the clumsy beasts in complex combinations of coincidence, leaving them dangling upside down from scaffolding.

Yuul avoided the humans who milled about the factory. While none of them were looking for a god in the guise of a Thog, the slightest suspicion could get it killed.

The god was not certain what would happen next. It knew it was in the right place, but had no idea what it was supposed to do. The Lanya queen had said to wait, so that's what Yuul would do. Perhaps Ru would show himself and Yuul would have the opportunity to drop a building stone upon his head.

Such waiting could last centuries, but Yuul would be at the right place when the moment came.

Out of boredom, the god weighed the risk of entering Ru's castle and taking matters into its own hands. How close could it get to its rival before being noticed? Probably not very. The inside of the castle was a labyrinth that could not be solved. More than likely, Yuul would become lost in the structure's innards and render itself as useless as Quintel.

So it grunted among the beasts, lost in their numbers, patiently waiting for the moment when it would know what to do.

In the meantime, a loose wagon wheel was about to fling off its hub and crash into the tentacled giant who took Yuul's ration of food the night before.

Chapter 40

For months, he stood motionless, studying the wall, waiting for some revelation that would allow him passage. Ru's work on the living barrier was haphazard and sloppy, but the end result was successful. Quintel could find no way around.

What was left for him? Leave the wall and continue the hunt? Hundreds of Thogs had escaped his blade in the Forestlands. They still roamed the countryside, killing anything in their path. The god in him wanted to pursue them, but Quintel would not move. He refused to become distracted again. That time had passed.

The decision made him little more than a decoration for Ru's walled garden.

As the finality of his situation soaked deeper into acceptance, he found himself thinking more and more about the Lanya's solution. He found himself pondering the folds and turns of the spell that would end his existence. And Ru’s continuous attention did not help his darkening mood. The Living God's constant presence mocked him.

Quintel felt like the stalemate — as Aul had called it — was actually a victory for the god. Although trapped on the other side of the barrier, Ru still lived. That was victory in itself.

The crowd of humans behind him grew. Pilgrims from across the world journeyed to the wall just to be near him. A small town sprouted. Log structures arose to house the faithful and supply their stores. Worn dirt roads formed from repeated traffic. Merchants who didn't care about him in the slightest migrated because that's where their customers had gone.

He never interacted with the pilgrims. Occasionally, a precession would pass by to view him, but none dared speak.