The Godlost Land (5 page)

Physically he might be human in shape, massive of course and far too broad of shoulder, but that was the least of him. Under his dragon scale armour Terellion knew, the demon king was pure demon. Skin of pure green and covered in slime like some sort of sickly frog. Obsidian black eyes. And power beyond that of any mortal. He was not a god, but he was the next thing to one. A foul god. Maybe that was why the gods had forced him and his kind to live in Tartarus – the lowest level of the underworld.

“Inform your master that the High Priestess is on her way and payment as agreed upon is expected.”

“I shall and it will be paid – on delivery.”

The man gave a tiny nod of acknowledgement. The bare minimum he could get away with without being rude. It angered Terellion though he tried not to show it.

“And tell him too that we will need more beasts as our armies march on the dryads. Already some of the soldiers report the pens in the temples are thinning as too many beasts are drawn into the army. Our numbers are being stretched and we are vulnerable.”

And that was a problem. Many of the temples had been emptied out of most of their war beasts and soldiers, and those that remained were just enough to control the people. If a threat arose he worried that they might not be sufficient to the task.

“Vulnerable to whom?” The man smiled condescendingly at him as if he were some sort of slow witted child who needed to have something obvious explained to him. “There is no one left to fight us in the five kingdoms. The people are broken. All that remain are the outcasts, and they spend their days running and being hunted. They are no threat.”

“So you say. But do you say it because you truly believe it or is your master running too low on chimera to be able to send any to us?”

Terellion suspected it was the latter. Xin had sent through the bulk of his army at the start, and what he had left in reserve was limited. Especially when his position as king was tenuous and he needed his armies to support him. Rule among the demons was little short of open warfare. Demons vied with one another, and their methods of battle were usually bloody and violent involving assassination, warfare and torture. All were accepted methods of getting ahead in the demon realm. In fact they were the only accepted methods. There was a reason that Xin wore dragon scale armour all the time.

“You need not doubt my master's power Terellion.” Varrious smiled broadly at him, a gesture designed to impress him with its confidence. It didn't. “Whatever you need he can provide – for a price.”

“And yet I notice you are not walking your pet Varrious. Is she perhaps unwell? Overworked because there are so few of her kind?”

Terellion mentioned the pet mainly because he knew it would upset the miserable thrall. For all the charms he had been given to control her the man was still nervous of the fury he had charge of. He soon saw the man's feigned confidence slip a little and took a little pleasure in it.

“Resting in her cage as is normal for her kind. There seems little need for my master's winged assassins at present.”

“Need?” Terellion stared at him evenly. “Surely to have such a magnificent creature beside you is not something you would only desire out of need. Or does she frighten you?”

It was more than just something he said to fluster the thrall – though it did just that and he was pleased by the reaction. But over the years as the furies had proven their worth and torn through his enemies, he had come to admire them. They were magnificent. The finest of all the chimera, and nothing at all like their diseased cousins the harpies. They were clean and graceful, deadly and terrifying, but also seductive and exotic. They might only be animals but in them he thought he could see value, which was not something he had ever seen in a human woman. Weak men like Varrious feared them. Not strong men. Not him.

“She doesn't frighten me.” Varrious denied it, but Terellion saw through his lie. And he immediately knew how to take advantage of it.

“Good, then have the furies paraded through the streets regularly. It does the soldiers good to see them. Keeps them in line. And when you come to see me next, bring your pet. She can use the exercise and the sunshine.”

“I will Terellion.”

Varrious didn't seem happy with the idea. But Terellion was. He quite liked Varrious' pet. Even among her kind she stood out. Taller of limb, more graceful in her womanly curves, and with a golden brown colouration. One day he thought, when he had his immortality, when he was young and vital again and no longer had to fear her viper bite, he would try out a few of them. After all there were only so many pathetic, docile wenches a man could abide. And he had been bedding them since he was twelve. Sometimes you wanted a little variety in the bedchamber. Something that might actually try and say no. That might resist him. Besides, they came with no angry husbands he would likely have to kill.

Husbands were an annoyance, and after a while it had become obvious to him even as a child that the number of them killing themselves in inexplicable accidents was drawing attention. That was when he'd first started hiding his magic. Just in case someone did work out what he could do and then came for him. Even at twelve or thirteen he'd known that others would be angry with him if they knew. And even with his magic he couldn't fight everyone.

It was a fact of life that no one, not even the most powerful wizard, was invulnerable. A master of fire could be killed by a man with an arrow or an assassin in the night. A master of summoning could be killed in a heartbeat by a fireball. And even he, able to control armies with a few simple words, could be killed by anyone who realised his ability and prepared accordingly.

It was because of that that he'd first started limiting himself. Keeping a private herd of women in his mansion instead of going out and bedding new ones every day. It was a little less interesting, but after a while he'd realised that women were just that – less interesting. And after the first few hundred or so he'd understood that one woman was much the same as another. They were all just whores. Good for bedding but after that you really just wanted them gone.

Currently he had a stable of about thirty whores, and were it not for his enfeeblement, he would have been perfectly happy just riding them. Getting rid of them when they got old or their bellies started bulging and replacing them with newer ones of course. But more than that he didn't need. He wasn't greedy. Of course once he had his immortality – once he was as hungry and potent again as he had been as a teenager – then he might need a few more.

But the one thing he wouldn't need he decided as he left the temple, was Varrious. The man would die and die horribly when the time came.

Still, not yet. For the moment the man was useful. And Terellion had done what he needed to do. Given him word of the High Priestess' arrival and made the deal. Varrious would tell his master. And in time Terellion would receive the next clue in the translation of the ancient stone tablet. A few more rare ingredients to cast the spells. Step by step his immortality was coming closer.

That had to be enough for the moment.

Chapter Four

The sound of someone carefully forcing his way through the trees was the first thing that told Harl his home was no longer the secure hideaway it had been. And that annoyed him. Even more than it scared him it annoyed him. This was his home. He didn't know who was coming – it could be a friend or a foe – more likely it was neither, just a beast – but the one thing he didn't want was people knowing where he lived. He didn't even tell the other outcasts he had dealings with. It was only a short step from someone knowing, to everyone knowing. And then sooner or later Artemis' beastly armies would be on him and he'd have to flee again. He didn't want to flee. Not now.

He'd been happy in the long abandoned smithy for nearly two years now. It had been a miracle finding his home, if only a minor one. The forests were filled with abandoned buildings. Over the years trappers, hunters and many others found little clearings and built themselves shacks. And when they moved on or died, the buildings remained. The miracle hadn't been in finding the house – he'd found many others over the years – it had been in finding one that also had a smithy.

When he'd found it Harl had moved in immediately. At first he had thought he would remain there for only a few weeks or months and he had hoped that it would be long enough to get the smithy running and craft himself some proper armour. After three years of running, wearing whatever armour he could scrounge from the fallen and using their weapons as well, he had been desperate to once more become a warrior instead of just a refugee with a blunt sword. But he hadn't known if he would have the time. He always moved on when the chimera started turning up. He had to. Once the first one found him the rest sooner or later followed.

But that hadn't happened this time. Not in his present home anyway. In truth the regularity with which they had been finding him had been decreasing during the previous years. During the first few weeks when he'd been on the run, the chimera had caught up with him almost every day. There had been no rest at all, and he'd been running while carrying some nasty wounds. But as time had passed and he'd travelled further and further from Lion's Crest that had become perhaps once a week and then once a month. It had slowed, allowing him the time he'd needed to heal and rest.

He was no sage but even he knew why it had changed. It was simply arithmetic in action. There were only so many chimera and as the territory Artemis' armies sprawled out over grew, they simply had to be spread more thinly. Even the Goddess couldn't have her monsters everywhere when the size of her realm grew so greatly. He also hoped that he and the other outcasts had also been contributing to her problems by killing as many of the beasts as they could. Harl had no idea how many of them had fallen to his swords, but in five years it had to be a hundred at least. How he'd survived so many fights he didn't really know. But he did know his skill with the blade had grown enormously in that time. He was a dangerous man. Others he assumed, if they still survived, had to be the same. The outcasts – or at least those that he knew – seldom discussed such things. Even among themselves they kept secrets.

Whatever ever the reason the chimera hadn't found him in his new smithy didn't matter. They hadn't found him and as the months had peacefully followed one after another he'd stayed. In time he'd even started making it a home of a sort.

Repairing the shack little by little, patching the walls of the home so the wind no longer blew through it, working on the thatch so that it no longer leaked in the rain. It was only simple stuff, crude at best, and not what he would have done if he'd had the luxury of time and some coin, but he still felt good about it.

He'd worked on the smithy too. Rebuilding the base so that it stood tall enough for him to work at. Relining the fire pit with white refractory bricks so that it was hot enough. Putting a thatched roof over the top of it to keep the rain out. And even running a few hollowed out logs from the roof to act as channels which would carry the rain to a trough in which he could cool his wares. He didn't have an anvil of course – that would have been too much to hope for. But some large river rocks with the right curves did nearly as well.

Rebuilding the smithy had been the start of his dream of returning to his trade – a little. In the end he was an arcane smith. It was part of who he was. And he needed weapons and armour. But he needed more than that. He'd discovered that after all the years of running he needed to return to his trade. If only for a little while. Even if he couldn't sell what he made because it would reveal him as a minor wizard, just to start crafting some of the wares he had once made was a blessing.

In time he'd done more. He'd started crafting himself the weapons and armour that would not just keep him alive, but which were the very peak of the arcane smith's art. Not just simple enchanted wares, but master works. The things he'd been without ever since he'd fled Lion's Crest and which he could be truly proud of.

So he had an ice blade – a sword that was the equal of any in the land. He had a brigandine and gauntlets to keep him safe in a fight. Knives with the fire blood enchantment on them – weapons that only he could use and which would kill an enemy quickly and with just a scratch. He'd even started enchanting a few rocks with spells of blinding light. It had been an experiment but a successful one. Throw them and his enemies would be helpless.

And little by little he'd transformed himself from a man who spent his life on the run, into one who could do more than simply defend himself when he had to. One who could fight like a demon and take no more injuries doing it. Injuries had been a part of his life for those first few years. But not since he had returned to his calling. More than a few minotaurs and leonids could attest to that fact.

And though his new smithy was primitive and not nearly as comfortable as his old smithy in Lion's Crest had been, it had begun to seem almost like home. But the only reason it could become that was because he was so far from Lion's Crest and the Huntress' arrival in the world had been long enough ago that the attacks had diminished in number. The wars had ended; there were no more armies to battle. Now there were only the stray chimera wandering at random in the wilds while the soldiers and the priests kept to the towns. Now he had a life again. As much as anyone had these days.

The smithy was in a good location, but it was a very long way from his former home. Three hundred leagues south from Lion's Crest, it was almost at the edge of the five kingdoms and as far away from the Goddess' seat of power as he could get without leaving everything he had ever known. Far enough away that the temples to the Goddess in the nearby towns were small, crude affairs and her beasts only occasionally wandered out this far. But not so far south that he was in the wilds where there were no towns and people.

Others he was sure had fled further south than him, out into the wild lands beyond and then on to the frozen southern lands where the Goddess' beasts did not yet roam. But for that safety they had had to pay the price of living in a land where no one spoke their tongue and where everything was strange. Where the people worshipped different gods, had different laws and different customs. And where they might not be welcome. And even if they were, they might never be able to return to their true home.

That was why he had chosen not to go any further when he'd found the abandoned smithy hidden away in the forest. He had reached the furthest limit of the five kingdoms. But he had gone no further. Because despite the constant danger, he couldn't quite bring himself to abandon his homeland. And here, where he currently lived, was still a part of it. The people here spoke the common tongue of the five kingdoms, even if they had a broad accent, and they lived much as did the people of the Kingdom of the Lion. He understood them. He could move among them and not be noticed. And he did just that since no one could simply live in the wilds forever alone.

From here he was close enough to the track that he could walk to the nearby town of Whitebrook in only a couple of hours. And he did. The track would also take him past a number of other outcasts' homes along the way. Shacks more or less like his where they hid. He was far from the only one hiding in these remote parts. And though he knew only a few of the others, it was precious to him to know that others were there. It was useful too. He could trade with them if he wanted to avoid the dangers of the town, and in particular the temple priests who lived there. He liked to do that when he could.

Whitebrook was relatively safe. The local priests were quiet, choosing to keep their heads down for the moment, but they watched, and he was sure they knew that some of the survivors of their Goddess' vicious attack were living out here. He would guess that they reported back some of what they saw, and that they sent their chimera after some of them. But really it was a small temple, all that such a small town could support, and their pens were small as were their barracks.

There was also a nearby mine where he could quarry some iron ore and a little chromite for smelting when his supplies ran low, and a river bank where the best clay for bricks could be found. It had also provided the smooth river stones he used in the pit. His pit was of course no ordinary pit. He didn't burn coal. He used magic to enchant the rocks themselves that filled its flat circular base, and from them gained a perfect smokeless fire. The perfect fire for smelting the best steel and crafting the finest wares.

Best of all about the location though was the fact that the smithy was hidden from the track. Well hidden. There had once been a path leading to it from the main south track, but that had long since become overgrown after the ancient smithy had been abandoned at least fifty years before. And if there had been a sign pointing in its direction, it had long since disappeared. Now, the only way to the track was by weaving your way through the thick forest, and not many people would do that. Not many would even know to do that. After all, as they walked the track there was no sign that there had once been a path leading off it.

But apparently that had changed. Someone knew where he lived and was coming and there was no point in regret as they said. So, instead of indulging in it he put down his hammer, tossed the half finished blade he was working on into the cooling trough, and reached for his sword. He even tossed his apron to one side. As an arcane smith he didn't need to wear one – fire held no danger for him – but he chose to wear it all the same to keep the soot and char from staining his clothes. They weren't elegant clothes, but they were still the best he had. And even though his pit used flaming stones instead of coal, it was a dirty business.

Then he stepped out from behind the pit and stood ready to face whoever was coming.

It wasn't one of the Goddess' twisted beasts. He knew that long before he set eyes on his visitor. He had never known the beasts to creep anywhere. The minotaurs and leonids would smash their way through the forest without a thought to get to their prey. The harpies would screech as they flew overhead. And the cerberi would howl as only two headed hounds could. It seemed that no matter what unholy fusion of man or beast the Goddess created, none of them had the mind of a man. None of them understood stealth. Not even the leonids who as part lion he would have expected to be able to creep up on their prey. None of them understood words either, which made it difficult for him to understand how the priests could command them. But that was another matter.

Hand on the hilt of his ice blade he stood there waiting and soon enough, he could make out a little of his visitor. And he was surprised.

For she was a woman. Few women went out alone in the wilds. And none visited him. Of course she couldn't be a normal woman. This far out in the wilds, and surrounded by the huntress' beast army, there were few normal people. Not outside of the towns and villages where humans survived by bending their necks in worship to the Goddess at the local temple.

Out here everyone who lived outside of the control of the temple of the huntress did it through some sort of skill. Most of them were skills that the normal townsfolk didn't have. There were a few wizards, mostly less powerful ones like him who had learned the value of hiding over fighting. Those who had chosen to fight, no matter how powerful, had perished. Rickarial had taught him that.

There were quite a few trappers and foresters around, some of them were only one small step removed from barbarians and brigands. People whose skill included finding their way around forests in complete silence, and using any number of weapons. Longbows, especially spelled ones, were a favourite, and he sometimes got requests for spelled arrow heads from those few of his neighbours who knew what he could do.

A few priests survived in the wilds, the gifts their deities granted them often helping them to remain hidden. But they were probably the most highly prized enemies of Artemis' temple and accordingly the best hidden. Even among the other outcasts they kept their nature secret.