Three (The Godslayer Cycle Book 3) (16 page)

Erias sat up in her saddle, looking to the distance where this town surely existed.  Though she could not see it through the tall trees surrounding her, she imagined what such a town might look like.  And she knew that a town of faithless deserved her guidance more than any that might exist along the Eastern March.  She had not planned to take a northerly route, pressing on eastward so that she might reach her destination sooner.  But with good Ferdinand's words...

“It would seem my presence has been divinely provided, good sir,” Erias said.  “Would you accompany me back to this Oaken Wood, that we might charge those who did rob you?”

The heavy man bowed his head.  “I fear for myself, Priestess.  Please, I beg of you, do not send me back where surely they would slay me on sight.”

Erias could understand the man's fear, and she could not fault him for it.  Not everyone - even the faithful of Zantel - could rely upon the shield provided to a true servant of the church.  “Of course not, good sir.  I assure you that I will travel there posthaste in your stead and bring the word of Zantel to this faithless town.  But I will not compel you to return.  I bid you journey on, with Zantel's blessing beside you. Rest easy on your way, knowing that Zantel's justice shall be meted upon these infidels in your name.”

Ferdinand dropped to his knees, piety exuding from his every pore.  “Oh, bless you, Priestess.”

Erias nodded gravely, but said no more before she urged her horse onward.  She needed no more information from this man, and there was no purpose served in delaying Zantel's righteous wrath to this community.  She fairly brimmed with outrage at the audacity of these faithless scoundrels.

Had she looked back, however, Erias might have seen the good Ferdinand raise his head to watch her go, a leer of wicked satisfaction pasted upon his face that even she could not have mistaken.  He had just sent a vengeful priest to exact revenge upon those who had wronged him, regardless of whether they were the ones deserving of punishment or not.

The palisade surrounding the grotto fairly brimmed with raw power, visible to any entity who might have been looking that direction upon this particular astral plane of reality.  The Gods of the New Order were greatly unsettled, and the energy ebbing through the air as crackles and audible pops of discharged energy was the physical manifestation of their disquiet.  The unbridled power was so potent, that even the border of their chosen meeting site threatened to dissolve into the aether around them.

In recent months, the grotto that formed here - the currently chosen neutral grounds upon which the Gods had chosen to meet - was overburdened by the sheer presence of the number of deities present. There were twenty Gods and Goddesses presently represented in the space contained within the palisade, and the manifested locality had never been designed to shelter so many deities at one time.  In the entire history of the New Order, there had never been such a consistent attendance at any meeting of the Gods as there had been in the last few months.  And the integrity of this locality was beginning to suffer from its overuse.

Three Gods had vanished.  Absolutely.  Without any lingering residual power nor presence, not even a
soul
.  If the Lesser God Ankor was to be believed, they had been slain. 

By a mortal.  By a
Godslayer
.

Corus struggled with that notion.  As the God of Knowledge, he knew well the story of the Godslayer.  Over five hundred years ago, before the New Order had ever attempted their rise to power, a story had first been told of a man who had turned the table on Gods of old and set out to destroy them.  It was a legend from the southern realms, not even one which affected the New Order's dominion.  But the tale had found its way north, as all good stories did.  And many of the mortals confused the story of the Godslayer with the fate of the Pantheon, even though there was no actual connection.

The story said that this man slew one God for taking his wife to bed, and that he slew two more during his quest to defeat the first.  This made him a target of the remaining Gods, who came en masse upon the man and sought to slay him.  But the man had been prepared, and he fought back, slaying all the deities who came against him, one after the other.  As all great epics ended, the hero lost his life in the final battle, and he died side by side with the last of the Gods he battled. 

The story was presumed to tell of how a mortal being had risen to cast aside the Gods, and to establish dominion of mortals over the divine.  Gods in the story were conveyed as tyrants who held an unholy dominion over mortals, and the Godslayer was supposed to be the conquering hero of the tale. 

A great fable - Yet whether there was any truth to it?  Well, that was a great point of contention.

There were many flaws which Corus saw within the tale.  For instance, the means by which the Godslayer of lore used to actually
kill
the Gods was never revealed in the story.  But being of divinity himself, Corus knew that no mortal could simply slay a God with his bare hands.  Magic would need to have been involved in some capacity, either in the form of a weapon or some innate power.  Many speculated that the man in the story might have been intended to be a demi-God, a deity-sired child that lived amongst mortals.  Yet - with so many tales circulating about demi-Gods already in legend, why would this detail have been left out of the tale if that were the case?

Either way, the story occurred before Corus himself ever held dominion over knowledge, and therefore it represented information he did not have personal experience with.  The story held largely to the same details wherever it was told, which gave credibility to it being at least somewhat true, but whether it was a story retold or historically accurate?  Corus had no personal way of knowing.

More than once, the God of Knowledge had considered opening a dialogue with Elgoth of the Pantheon Gods.  Not only was his dominion over knowledge, but he would also have been in power during the period of history in question.  Surely, Elgoth - or perhaps even Dariel, Pantheon God of Truth, would know whether the Godslayer story were truth or legend.  And yet...

The war between the rival groups of deities always kept Corus from taking such action.  Even the pursuit of knowledge paled next to the ambitions of Gods, and to confess a weakness to an enemy was equal to giving that opponent power over yourself.  And none of the New Order wished to concede any advantage to the deities they sought to obliterate from the memory of the mortal plane.

None of this speculation helped in the current debate, except that it largely eliminated the possibility that this current alleged Godslayer was in any way related to the one of lore.  However, in spite of what seemed an obvious deduction, Corus could not escape the fear that a refusal to even
consider
whether the original tale held any connection to their present crisis was absolutely reckless.  Anyone who respected knowledge knew that you did not discard information simply because it held no obvious connection - to do so, left one at risk of repeating mistakes of the past.

Corus once more looked around the grotto, as he had done so often already, as though some kind of shift might have occurred that would serve the situation.  Instead, the powers as they were maintained largely the same, implacable positions they had when this great debate had begun.  To a being that existed for the advancement of knowledge, this gathering represented the antithesis of all Corus held to heart.

Aside from the handful of Gods like himself who stood separate from the debate, all the Gods were heatedly arguing amongst themselves.  Some stood on the shore of the grotto, others ignored the principle purpose of the liquid surface and chose to pace back and forth between opponents on the water's surface.  The mass of forms was in constant motion, none standing together for long.  And therein lay the irony.

Conflict appeared to be the
required
rule to proceed under, even against individuals who completely supported the argument being made. 
For instance, if Kartar, God of War, argued that Ankor should be be held responsible for the deaths of their fellow Gods, Orlicia, Goddess of the Dream, would insist that Ankor be formally charged.  And of course, Kartar had to fire back some insensible reason why his argument was the correct one - even if the end result was
exactly
the same.

There were really just three arguments being made, after all - though of course, the three factions were all divisive within their own positions so as to refuse to see this, even when others supported what they wanted.   There was the position of blame that insisted Ankor was the murderer of their fellow Gods, and that he needed to be formerly called for judgment of his crimes; the position of cooperation that claimed Ankor was innocent and that they all needed to help him uncover the real culprit;
and finally the position of denial that said the other Gods were not really dead, only lost.  In spite of the fact that every single deity had felt the passing energies of the now-missing Gods, this faction believed this to be too simple an answer.  If the missing Gods were indeed dead, their souls would have been found.  No souls, to these few, equaled no deaths.

Corus pinched the skin between his brows.  He was only one of three Gods who stood apart from the ruckus in the grotto itself, and there seemed no way to end the infernal debate with only three to force reason upon the collective.  Of course, he could not say that the other two standing back from the infighting were inclined to end the debate, either.  Faetious was the God of Deception, and was never known for one to prevail upon open and fair discussions, while Urlock, God of Mountains, was simply too stubborn to be budged from his position of neutrality.  Like the great granite edifices his domain included, Urlock was implacable and simply could not be bothered with strife and conflict, letting it simply roll over him as the winds did to the spires he ruled over.

The only God not present at this meeting - nor any other in recent times that Corus could recall - was Belask, Goddess of the Unseen.  Ever the enigmatic figure, it was no surprise that Belask could not be bothered with things that were sought to be discovered - it was her purpose to represent and preserve the existence of things
not
known.  Discover the identity of a being killing Gods?  Hardly.  Belask was far more likely to work against the entire pantheon to keep the identity of the murderer secret.

Which brought to mind a thought that Corus had played with before: Belask was, by definition, the single most likely God to actually know who the murderer of deities might be.  Yet how did one compel a God to reveal information that it was her duty to keep unknown?

Ankor insisted it was a Godslayer - or two, if credibility was given to the second man who helped the Godslayer in the most recent conflict - but this argument worked against him since most Gods considered the original story a fictitious tale, one inspired by wishful thinking rather than anything that had ever really happened.  This above all else was what led the faction believing the God of Mischief to be the true slayer of Gods.  As best Corus could tell, six of the Gods supported this belief: Kartar, Orlicia, Anlar, Thelug, Mastron, and Galanor.

On the opposite side of the argument stood those who believed that Ankor was the one God who could absolutely be ruled out as being complicit.  After all, not only was he a Lesser Power and the victims all Greater Powers, but also the Trickster himself was the one who had brought the concerns over the Goddess Imery's absence to light before any other God cared to look into the matter.  Someone trying to kill Gods in secret, had been the argument, would not make others aware of the death of his first victim when no one even cared about it.  This was the largest faction, comprising of eight Gods: Praelis, Looris, Alana, Davini, Kalrios, Ava, Zantel and Shariel.

Quines, Elevan and Eariel were the only three who held to the belief that there was no murder to investigate in the first place, since there was no evidence that the missing Gods were, in fact, dead.

“You do realize that this cannot continue,” said a voice from behind Corus. 

The God of Knowledge of course knew who stood there, but his body reflected the surprise all the same.  “This is indeed an unforeseen development,” he said calmly.  “I honestly thought you would never attend this debate.”

The dark-robed woman inclined her head.  “The forces of the unseen may be my purview, but even the unknown can be crippled if the balance is not maintained.  The Gods are so embroiled in their arguments that they neglect their duties in the realms of men.”

Corus nodded somberly.  “I do not deny this.  Our brethren are a passionate lot, and when their fires run high as they do now, they tend to forget that anything else in the universe exists.”

“We are young, still,” said the woman.  “And I believe there are too many of us that still forget that.”

Corus turned his attention back to the milling throng surrounding the grotto.  “Would there be any point in asking, Belask?”

The dark woman tilted her head to the side.  “It would depend on how you present your question, Corus.”

The God of Knowledge sighed for effect.  “Do you know who killed Imery?  And the others?”

“Are we all in agreement now that they are indeed dead?”

“Some still hold that they are not, but there is a clear majority who accept that they are,” countered Corus.

Belask bobbed her head.  “Then the fate of those missing is still unknown to at least some.”

“If we are being completely honest, the fate of our brethren is not truly
known
to any.  It's only a belief at this point, is it not?”

The Goddess of the Unseen smiled.  “Well said.”

The two deities fell silent for a few moments as they took in the throng of fellow Gods pacing about below.

“You do realize,” offered Belask at last, “that there is at least
one
God for whom it is not simply a belief.”

Corus looked up at Belask.  “You mean Ankor?  Are you not going against your own sphere by revealing that?”

Belask laughed.  “My dominion is over that which is unseen, unknown.  I am not forbidden to acknowledge when something is
already
known.”

Corus thought on what his dark sister had said.  “I believe I gather your meaning.  We are so engaged in trying to master what did happen, we ignore the knowledge one of our lesser brethren already possesses.”

“Just so.”

“But...  And this is critical: how could we ever trust anything Ankor ever said?”

Belask turned away from her brother, beginning to fade into the aether around them.  Yet before she vanished completely, her final words drifted to Corus' ears. 

“Is that not the purview of
memory
?”

Corus' head snapped back to the crowd below, searching the throng intently until he found the one he sought.  Instantly, he was at the Goddess' side, taking her arm and forcefully shifting them both away from their embattled brothers and sisters.

“You
dare?!
” cried Praelis, pulling her arm from Corus' grip.

“I apologize for how it was achieved,” the God of Knowledge supplicated, “but I am in need of your urgent aid.  And I did not have the time to seek out one of your other forms.”