Ryk E. Spoor's Blog, page 6

GODSWAR: Chapter 20

Urelle had met someone surprising... but her aunt probably wants to use a mother's caution...

-----

 

 

Chapter 20.

"The Wanderer." Victoria's voice was level, with just a hint of the doubt she felt.

At that, she couldn't deny that she felt a certain frisson of awe at the figure before her. A bit shorter than she had expected, perhaps, but in other particulars, he matched the myths well enough. And from the way the man stood, the faint traces of power she could sense, her long experience told her that he was a very formidable being, indeed.

"Isn't it amazing, Auntie?" Urelle said, her gray eyes sparkling in the lights of the dining room, where they had all met – and where the purported Wanderer had caused a feast to appear from nowhere. "He says he'll teach me how to break the enchantment on the Coins, and maybe other things, too!"

Ingram was silent, staring at the legend-come-to-life in front of him. Quester, too, was silent, though if Victoria understood his body language correctly, he was not quite as shocked, or trusting, as his friend. Well, at least two of us are not taking everything at face value.

"If true, yes," Quester buzzed, confirming her guess.

"If … true? What do you mean?"

"He means," Victoria said, not taking her eyes from the brilliant blue ones across from her, "that it is all very well and good to claim to be one of the greatest Adventurers, but it's something else to be certain. And someone who would dare pretend to that role would be undoubtedly powerful and dangerous in the extreme."

The Wanderer – if that was truly who he was – grinned widely. "Aunt you might be, but I hear a mother's caution," he said. "And I'm glad at least a couple of you don't take my word for who I am." He looked at both Urelle and Ingram. "Your aunt and your friend Quester are very wise not to trust. Urelle has, perhaps, a bit more reason to, because she caught me unawares – unless I played a part even better than one might expect. But understand, Urelle," he looked directly at the young girl, "I could have played out that scene exactly as you saw, down to breaking my own nose if necessary. Trust … but verify."

"In that case, can you prove your identity, sir?" Victoria asked. "I cannot deny that I'd be extremely gratified to have the Wanderer to assist us in any way, but I do need some confirmation of who you are."

The Wanderer looked thoughtful. "Prove is always hard. But perhaps. Certainly, I can first give evidence that we are, at least, of the same profession." He pulled the cloak back from his shoulder, to reveal an Adventurer's symbol.

Victoria squinted at it as she stepped forward. The background – a high cliff with a blue and green waterfall flanking one of red - was not immediately familiar, but it responded with the same white flash and chime as any other Adventurer's patch at the touch of her verification wand.

She nodded. "Well, that relieves me to a small degree. Still, yours is an extraordinary claim."

"Which requires extraordinary evidence. I can certainly prove my power to you, but while that might be entertaining, it's hardly evidence of my identity. Hmm." He stood, thinking, for a moment, and then he raised a brow again. "Now, there's a thought. One moment."

He turned away from them. Victoria sensed a faint touch of magic, and perhaps another power, and realized that he was now surrounded by a sheath of silence; the sounds of the room were deadened when they passed near him.

A few moments later, the young-looking man turned back, expression serious. "Have you still faith in Myrionar, Victoria Vantage?"

She thought for a moment. "Yes. Yes, I do. I still pray to It for guidance, and I know It swore a mighty oath, indeed, to Kyri, one that no god would make lightly."

"Then pray to Myrionar, and ask if It can verify who I am."

She raised her own eyebrow in turn. "Indeed? Kyri was the only one, save perhaps Arbiter Kelsley, whom I have known who has spoken with the Balanced Sword. You believe that I will be answered?"

"I am certain you will be answered – and that you will know it is the true voice of Myrionar."

"I see." She thought for a moment. "I will, if you pardon me, go outside of your castle for this."

"As you wish."

She walked out, through the front doors, then well outside of the walls, into the ruins; this was not merely a moment for privacy, but one in which she should be some distance from the center of power of the one she was questioning.

In the partial shelter of one half-collapsed building, surrounded by vines and fallen stones and the scent of ancient earth, Victoria closed her eyes. Myrionar, I call upon your Balance, on the Mercy, Justice, and Vengeance that are yours, to cut through any falsehoods, to gift me with the truth, and tell me for certain who this man is, he who claims to be a legend.

For an instant, there was nothing. And then she felt the power that always surrounded the Altar of the Balanced Sword, but ten, no, a hundred times stronger, the distilled essence of every service she had attended, the absolute knowledge of a presence that watched over her and defended her, and there came a voice:

I hear your call, Victoria Vantage, and in this moment you do indeed require and deserve an answer. The one you have met is the Wanderer, he who came from Beyond all other things. Trust in his advice and counsel, for the short while it is offered; few indeed are those given this chance.

The impact of that soundless voice was tremendous; it echoed silently through her head, with absolute conviction and undeniable surety, and she knew, beyond any possibility of doubt, that it spoke truth.

But even more than that vast and overwhelming presence, it was the voice itself that struck her speechless, left her pale and stunned, grasping for a way to make sense of what she had just heard.

For she knew that voice. She had last heard it when her oldest niece had bade her farewell on a quest that might end in her death.

Slowly she raised her eyes, and found she was staring directly into the Wanderer's; the wizard had appeared before her in that moment. And she saw the same knowledge reflected in his gaze. "What … what does this mean?" she demanded in a hushed voice.

"You must guess what it means," he said quietly. "Here, you are so far from her quest, from the destiny she follows, and your own path set so that you shall not meet for years yet, that it makes no difference. You cannot affect what is to come; in a sense, it has already happened, even though it is still well in your future."

Victoria took a breath, controlled the chaos in her mind, brought her suddenly-panicked breathing and heart to heel. "You imply magics more potent than I have ever heard of – at least, outside of ancient tales."

"We play in the realms of the gods – as do you, now." The Wanderer's voice was calmly certain. "You're getting ready to butt heads with Ares. This will be one of the ancient tales, a thousand years from now. You haven't really grasped that, not in your heart, have you? This isn't just magic, it's magic of the foundation of reality, the power of the gods, and we're playing a game against powers that could squash even me like a bug if I make a mistake."

He looked up at the sky past the broken walls. "And greater forces are at work than those of just Ares. Everything connects. Kyri and those who will join her are one part; you and Urelle and Ingram and Quester are on a different quest, yet one that is part of the greater war; so are five people from my own world; and there are others." His tone grew pensive. "The stories like to make their characters the focus of the world, but if you really read them all, you know that there are many adventures happening, all at once, and it takes a constant supply of heroes to keep the world protected."

A flash of insight. "And it is not magic that binds you, that brought on the terror my niece saw in you, is it? It's knowledge. Someone, somehow, has come from the future and told you what is to come … in a manner that prevents you from avoiding that same future."

His smile was cold, stiff, mirthless. "You're sharp as a razor, Lady Vantage. Exactly. Oh, I can avoid it. I am, after all, the Wanderer, and the very existence of the knowledge gives me a loophole. But at the same time, I can't avoid it because the only way for me to do so will … well, cause an even worse disaster. All I can do is try to make sure that the consequences are as small as possible. Set up plans that will minimize the disaster, provide for some way out later."

He took a breath and she could hear it shake. He was doing the same thing she had, bringing himself under control. "And one of those things that has to be done is to give you four the best possible chance to survive your own destiny."

"Are you saying we cannot turn aside, either?"

He shrugged. "Cannot is a pretty absolute word. I'd say more will not. Can you imagine getting Ingram to set aside his current goal? Quester abandoning his friend? You and Urelle leaving him to his fate alone?"

She shook her head. "No. I do not see that happening."

"Then it's as near cannot as it gets, and still leaves everyone free will."

"If you know the future," she said after a moment, "then you know whether we will succeed or not, yes?"

A shake of the head. "Not only are there some powers that cloud the direction of the future, but my personal foreknowledge ends well before your quest's conclusion. I know that you have a chance, and that it is not merely the enemy manipulating events."

"You, for instance."

"Heh. Certainly me. I've been meddling since I arrived on Zarathan, and it's my job description by now. Though there's others playing what they call the Great Game a lot better than me. I'm just the wild card that sometimes messes up the board, to use a really mixed metaphor that still kinda fits."

She turned and began walking back to the castle. "And is that what you're doing here? Messing up the board?"

"Pretty much," he agreed cheerfully; then he grew solemn again. "Which is why I have to ask you to leave Urelle with me while you go on."

"What?" She stopped and put her hands on her hips. "And why should I do that?"

"Because she needs instruction, and you will have precious little chance to get her any once you leave here. At the same time, you will have no chance to convince Ingram to stay here for a week or three."

She had to agree there. Ingram had admitted that even waiting to write her a note had technically violated his oaths, and while he had made obvious efforts to appear patient, his single driving focus was to get back to his home and find out what had caused his Clan to send for him, and assassins to be sent after either him, or his companions. "I admit that is true. But he and Quester could continue on their own."

"And you would stay here, accomplishing … what?" the Wanderer said, striding onward. "I suppose you could practice your own arts, but aside from that?"

"We are pursued by the forces of a god, as you yourself pointed out," Victoria said, nettled. "I should leave my niece alone? What if they're seeking her rather than myself, or Quester, or Ingram?"

"Then they would have to get to her through me." The voice had shifted; it held none of the lightness, the strangely playful tone that seemed omnipresent even when he was being serious. This was a voice of iron. "And in one of my own strongholds? Even the God-Warriors would be well-advised not to try it. I assure you, there are very, very few places in the entire world where Urelle will be safer. You have my word on that."

Knowing that he was who he claimed, Victoria found herself accepting his promise. It was certainly true that he had survived literal ages, against an array of enemies who were also legends. "You could come with us, instead. Train Urelle in the evenings. We would undoubtedly all be safer then, would we not?"

"There is a world of difference from an hour or two in the evenings, and entire days spent in hard tutelage, as you must know very well. I have little enough time to teach her, and you will be facing God-Warriors, assassins, others who wield magic, or ki, or even psionic power. The most talented and focused of would-be heroes still can't learn everything in a day, even if the tales might compress three months of learning into a few paragraphs." He smiled that odd smile again. "The Power of Montage still takes time."

"I have no real idea of what that means."

"Don't worry, hardly anyone does. I have to amuse myself sometimes, even if no one else gets the joke. But you get the point, yes?"

They passed through the gate as she thought. Reluctantly, she found herself agreeing with the Wanderer. Urelle was clearly very talented, but she was reaching the limits of her own self-instruction and the limited resources she had brought from Evanwyl. If they were to continue at all, Urelle needed to understand how to expand her gifts.

Victoria recalled all too well how many, many long, bone-weary, brutal hours of practice and sparring and exercise it had taken to bring her to mastery of the Way of the Eight Winds. And, more to the point, how there had been times that nothing less than a living teacher, with new advice and new resources, had been needed to help her move on when she had taught herself all she could. Magic could hardly be any less demanding, even if likely somewhat less bruising, to study.

And if Quester and Ingram continued on, she admitted, they would need all the help they could get if Deimos, or any of their other enemies, caught up. Yes, perhaps Berenike would show up to save the day again … but perhaps not, especially if Ingram were struck down swiftly enough that he could not activate whatever bond lay between them.

Still, there were other issues. "And what about when you have finished this instruction, then? How would she find us? She's hardly ready to wander the Forest Sea on her own!"

"Can't argue that," the Wanderer conceded. "I'll trek around alone, but even I rather prefer having people to help watch my back in places like that. But trust me, I can find you when we're done, and if you can't come get her, I'll bring her to you. That much I can do."

Victoria sighed. "Very well, then. I will leave it up to Urelle."

She entered side-by-side with a legend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post GODSWAR: Chapter 20 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 19

Time to see Urelle doing something magical...

 

-----

 

 

Chapter 19.

Urelle looked at the wide, soft bed with its black-and-green patterned coverlet longingly, but sighed. Can't go to sleep right now.

She had, with relief, let go of the enchantment on the distant Coin once Auntie had brought it up. She had been pushing herself very hard, and it had been time to release it, but – being entirely honest – she didn't think it had been too hard. The effort involved had felt … well, like a good workout with Lythos. Pushing herself, stretching her capabilities as a wizard in a good way. There had been the edge of pain forming, but not quite being reached.

Still, releasing it had meant that her magical strength had flowed back, slowly returning to its full power, and with it she'd found a somewhat annoying alertness. Her body was still tired, but her mind wasn't nearly ready to rest, even though a glance at the stars from her window showed that it must be approaching midnight.

Have to work up the countercharm. Maybe I should work on that for a while.

If this castle had a magical workshop, or even a meditation room, one with the appropriate wards to prevent spiritual intrusion, that would be ideal. Much better than trying to improvise a circle in the wilderness. She threw her cloak on, picked up her pack, and slipped quietly into the hallway, gesturing to ensure the wards around their rooms remained intact. By now she was pretty sure that this wasn't a trap, but might as well leave them up.

She paused, then hit her forehead as a reminder that she was being stupid. Maybe she didn't want to wake them up, but she needed to make sure that if someone else woke up, they'd know she hadn't been kidnapped out of her room or anything. She scribbled a quick note and stuck it to the door with a simple adhesion spell.

The four of them had chosen rooms on the second floor of the right-hand tower; a spiral staircase in the center of the tower led up to each floor, which had a circular hallway connected to the staircase. Each door around the hallway let into a small suite of rooms, each laid out for the use of one person, so they'd each taken one. Hers was between Ingram's on one side and Victoria's on the other; the staircase entrance was just a little farther down the hall, across from Quester's rooms.

Workshops tended to be either very high up, or very far down. This did seem to be a residence tower, however, so Urelle guessed that any such rooms would be below, in the basement; Quester had found a staircase that led downward, but aside from making sure the door to it was closed, they had not bothered with it. Securing their own rooms, getting dinner, and resting had been the priorities – with her dealing with the trace being something for tomorrow.

The stairs downward were broad, flat, and smooth, with patterns etched or engraved into the gray stone that gave shoes a good purchase, ensuring no slipping down the stairwell. Descending, Urelle felt the faintly cooler air she expected underground, and sniffed. There was no noticeable trace of mold or other decay, which encouraged her to think that the basement was also as well-kept as the rest of the castle.

As she approached the bottom, she noticed that there was light coming from below. That made her pause; so far, the one constant they'd noted about the house was that things like the lightglobes were dark until someone needed them on, and she had not yet come close enough to activate them. At least, not based on what she did know so far.

There was no movement below, however, and the welcoming note had given no warnings about avoiding particular locations, so she dismissed her concerns and continued down.

The stair ended in a room that was something of an echo of the entryway above, with two hallways leading out of it on either hand, and a door directly ahead of her.

Hmm. Well, I'm in the far rear of the castle, near or at the center of the long axis. If I was making an enchanting or spiritual circle, I'd put it at the very center – the symmetry couldn't help but support any working you made, especially if there's any mystical sources nearby.

That meant, if she was right, that she should go through the door directly across, so she did.

A hallway ahead had another door on each side, and one more ending it. Still following her tenuous logic, Urelle proceeded to the end and opened the door.

Ha! I was right!

A broad, circular room – nearly a hundred feet across – lay in front of her. In the center, a full fifty feet in diameter, was one of the most complex ritual circles she had ever seen or heard of, a circle with multiple geometric figures inscribed within it – a triangle, a square, a five-pointed star, and more. Elaborate, carefully traced symbols followed every line and curve. Studying the ones nearer her, she could see multiple symbologies involved – Ancient Sauran and Artan, runes she thought were connected with the Children of Odin, some that looked more like picture-symbols, and more; at least a couple looked like they were Toadish.

Once more, Urelle hesitated. Whoever had placed that circle there had meant it for mighty works indeed, powers that, if channeled wrongly, could probably split the castle above like a tineroot by an axe.

On the other hand, she couldn't have imagined a better place to do her practice and finish her research. Stepping farther into the room, she saw there were bookshelves on the walls, a dozen of them, filled to overflowing with books ranging from slim pamphlets to immense tomes so thick and heavy she wasn't sure an ordinary person could lift them. Other sets of shelves held powders and crystals and samples of other materials. Massive, solid worktables were spaced at intervals, some covered with intricate alchemical apparatus, others with more esoteric materials that she wasn't sure she recognized.

For a moment she considered the possibility that she had imagined this place. That either she had just gone to sleep and was dreaming in a far too realistic fashion about the work she should be doing now, or that the castle itself was one of those mystical locations – usually turning out to be diabolical traps – where what you thought of needing would be provided.

But no, she was sure she hadn't gone to sleep yet. She couldn’t entirely rule out the second possibility, of course, but … it just didn't feel like that. The symbology of the circles seemed universally positive – even the darker symbols were placed so that they were negated, cleansing them from any works within.

Looking more closely, she saw that the circle shimmered with magic of a sort she associated with … well, housekeeping. Dusting, moving vases and such aside, preserving food, things like that. A simple, utilitarian magic she hadn't expected. Now why would…

Oh, that would be clever. She studied the different geometric forms, and realized that their elements could be moved so as to make any or all of them active or inactive – with a gesture. I was right. Whoever did this made it so that they could have any of a dozen or more magical matrices available without having to draw and redraw them. The additional enchantments prevented silver from tarnishing, materials used to anoint portions of the array from spoiling, and so on. A lot of foresight went into this. Or maybe just a lot of experience and cursing at the way they should have done something.

With full understanding of the array – or, being more honest with herself, with enough understanding of its basic workings – Urelle took a breath and walked to the center of the geometric figures. A few gestures realigned it to be a pure warding circle, ideal for walling out any extraneous influences, shielding her from even the most malevolent interference, as she studied the Coin to see if she could tease out the last clue to breaking its enchantment.

The frustrating part was that she was so close. She could see the way the magic twined about the Coin, how it vibrated in sympathy with her presence, and those vibrations were, in turn, echoed by its sibling Coins. The magic swirled around it like a symmetrical, beautiful knot. But there was something else involved, because she couldn't, to continue the metaphor, quite get her fingers to grasp the threads and tug any of the strands free. It looked like it should be straightforward to unravel, but none of her tentative approaches had shown any promise.

But within the pristine and protected perfection of this circle, just maybe she could grasp what she was missing.

She let her awareness reach out and inward, once more outlining the spell in moving, geometric lines, a rosette of energy in motion about the unmoving, yellow-cold core of the Coin. It was the same as it had been before…

No.

In this environment – perfectly still, quiet, with even the ambient magic of the world silenced – she could see something else.

It was almost invisible – a phantom shimmer, almost like a glaze of polish upon the strands of enchantment. It took all her concentration to see it, but she was sure it was there. And it was clear, now, that this was the true barrier between her and dispelling the enchantment. It was as though the knot she envisioned had been spread with glue, permeating every turn and curve of the magical string and fixing it together immovably.

The question was … what was this? It wasn't any magic she'd seen before…

Abruptly, her concentration was shattered as she saw movement across from her; the door was opening.

At first, she thought it was one of her companions – Ingram, perhaps, for the figure looked fairly short. But as it emerged into the light of the workroom, she could see that it was someone in a dark travel cloak, hood drawn up so the face was hooded in shadow, leaning on a knob-headed cane. She thought, by the slow and cautious way it moved, that it was an older man; white or gray hair trailed from beneath the hood.

The man did not glance in her direction, and it struck her that the dark stone, her being seated and slight figure, covered with her own dark cloak, must make her hard to see. And with the circle still complete, he would not be getting a hint of her presence in any other fashion.

He turned and moved towards one of the worktables with weary deliberation. He stopped, facing the table, his back to her. That back was tense; just his pose showed that he was in great pain or great inner turmoil.

Then she had to bite back a gasp, for the figure expanded without warning, rising up until the man must have been six feet or a bit taller, straighter; she was somehow certain that the man must be younger now. The cane, too, expanded, widening and drastically lengthening, becoming an elaborate staff of dark wood bound with silvery-shining metal, a faintly-glowing crystal crowning the staff.

And then the taller figure sagged down onto a bench before the worktable, and she heard a gasp of … pain? Perhaps, but she thought it was also fear. She heard a single quiet, desperately controlled sob of someone who was terrified, but still sought to keep hold of their rationality. It was the sound of a man who rarely cried for any reason, who found himself unable to stop himself from crying, and the sound was heart-rending. The last time she'd heard that was when she'd heard her brother Rion crying alone, in the quiet of night … a few weeks before he was murdered. She had hesitated, chosen not to intrude on his pain.

She couldn't ignore that kind of pain now.

"What's wrong?" she said, standing slowly. "What are you afraid of?"

The man jerked upright and half turned, catching one foot on the bench, and fell sprawling onto the floor, the great staff skittering away across the smooth stone until it nearly reached the edge of the ritual circle.

She gestured and opened the circle, running to the man's side. "Oh, Balance, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you that bad! Are you all right?"

"Ow! I broke my nose!" The man's voice was thick, both with unshed tears and the damage done to his nose – and she saw with a wince of guilt and sympathy that there was, indeed, blood streaming from the man's nose.

"I'm so sorry! I've got a healing draught somewhere, hold on—"

The man was getting to his feet and she heard, surprisingly, a pained chuckle, though still with more than a hint of tears, a chuckle that turned into a full, deep laugh that echoed around the room. "HA HA ha ha… ohh, god, that hurts, but it is funny, jeez, that must have looked ridiculous, the way I fell…"

He chuckled again, and gestured; and the staff flew back to him; he caught it gracefully, whirled it around once, and planted it on the ground next to him, the metal-spiked end striking a flash of sparks from the stone. He waved away the bottle she had finally extracted from her pack. "No, don't worry, it's already fixing itself – see?"

She stared. Indeed, the man's nose was straightening, blood no longer flowing, incipient swelling going down.

The sight was somewhat unsettling, so she shifted her gaze and surveyed the staff as the healing continued. It was of a thick, straight piece of dark-brown wood, with silver and gold symbols inlaid in between reinforcing strips of a metal that gleamed with a silky, silver texture different from anything she'd ever seen. At the top of each section were two symbols; one appeared to be an elemental or power symbol, while the one below each of these was a strange set of lines and curves; the three elemental symbols she could see were some sort of starburst – a brilliant, silver-white dot with almost flower-petal wavering rays radiating from it - a stylized wave, and a red-gold flame.

A faintly-glowing crystal, clear as water, topped the staff, bound into place by the same metal bands that reinforced the wood, while the heel was a point, a long spike of the same silky-silvery metal. Something about this … it's almost familiar. As though I know it. Somehow, she knew that the other two faces of the staff – those she could not see – bore a thundercloud and a mountain, topped by a pair of scales. A chill went down her body, even though she couldn't quite understand why.

In a few moments there was no sign the man's nose had ever been injured, and he muttered a swift cleaning spell that made the blood instantly vanish from his face and clothes.

"Well!" The man seated himself again on the bench, this time facing Urelle, the hood of the cloak once more shadowing his face. "My apologies for intruding; I guess you must have been using my circles, there?"

"I was, yes, but no need to apologize. This is your workshop, then? You are our host?"

"It is, and I am." The smile had faded from his face, and she could see more than a shadow of the pain and fear she had heard before.

She bit her lip, then repeated her earlier questions. "So, sir, what is wrong? What are you afraid of?"

The momentary smile was wry. "Tenacious, you are," he murmured, in a voice higher and rougher, which then returned to its prior baritone. "Why do you ask?"

"Because … because I don't like seeing someone in pain. No matter who they are." And because of what happened the last time I ignored it.

"A good answer, I think," he conceded. "I don't like it, either." He sighed. "What is wrong? I find myself in a trap with neither sides nor doors, so it cannot be evaded nor escaped. And I've evaded a lot of traps of all kinds before, so that's what scares me. I know I'm not avoiding this one."

"A … trap?"

He smiled, a flash of white from within the hood that vanished almost the instant it appeared. "Call it … destiny. Something's going to happen to me … sometime soon. I don't know the details yet, but when it happens, it's going to be very bad, and I have to…" his voice shook for a moment, then firmed, "…I have to prepare. Have to make sure some of my legacy isn't lost, that contingencies are set up, my own backup plans in motion. But I never thought … about this particular issue so much before. And not knowing exactly when … I know I have to do some of it very fast, just in case."

There was something about the way he spoke that teased at her, touching that same chilled-spine feeling that the tall, glittering staff had called forth. It wasn't … quite the way anyone else she knew talked. Yet, somehow, parts of it were familiar…

But his problem wasn't familiar. It was frightening. The thought of knowing something terrible was going to happen to you, and being unable to know exactly when… "Is there anything I could do to help? I know you don't know me, but you are our host…"

He glanced from her to the circle and back. "Well, now. You're a mage of some sort, so … perhaps. What is your specialty?"

"I do a little of several things, sir. But mostly, I'm a Shaper."

"A Shaper! Really? That's not common. Few people really have the focus and determination to be a good Shaper, to grab the very fabric of reality and bend it to their will, rather than being a summoner, or channeler, or whatever."

She flashed him her own smile. "I like the idea of fully controlling the magic, of understanding how it works. Of being able to make reality change under my direction, I guess, though by Myrionar that sounds awfully arrogant of me, doesn't it?"

Another small chuckle. "Perhaps … but that's not uncommon for those of us who are Shapers, and I'm more Shaper than anything else." He studied her closely, half-seen eyes narrowing within the cloak. "Something about you is familiar, child. What is your name?"

She felt the word child was going a bit far, but then chided herself for the thought; if this man was the builder of that circle, he was likely far, far older than he looked. "Urelle Vantage of Evanwyl, sir."

"Urelle Vantage," the man repeated, in the tones of someone presented the solution to a mystery. "Sister to Kyri Vantage, I presume?"

"What? You know who I am … who she is?" The chill was back again, stronger than ever. "Who … who are you?"

For answer, he slowly rose and threw back the hood, cast back the cloak.

Hair the color of sunlight crowned a young man's face, a face that was not dark, paler than almost anyone she had ever heard of, save only perhaps the Watchland himself, who also had that nearly unheard-of hair. Dark brows set off eyes that were brilliantly blue, a rare and spectacular color, as well – nearly as rare as Ingram's lavender. With the cloak cast back, she could see beneath a tailored travel-robe of black and silver … and beneath it, faint, squarish shapes of an armor she had only seen on one other person – her friend Ingram, who said it had come from the Founder's own world.

Her gaze flicked to the Staff again, and now she knew why gooseflesh had sprung out across her arms, her whole body. "The Wanderer," she breathed.

He inclined his head.

Urelle had thought she was ready for anything … but she'd daydreamed about meeting the legends in her books, and now a daydream stood before her, a daydream in pain she had never imagined during her own fantasies. "You've met Kyri? How is she?"

"I haven't had the pleasure of meeting her yet," the Wanderer answered. "But I will. I expect our paths to cross fairly soon. I do know about her, and your family – my sympathies and condolences on that, by the way. And yes, I know about the Justiciars."

"If you know, then why haven't you done anything?" she snapped, then clapped her hands over her mouth. Did I say that to the Wanderer?

A wan, sad smile crossed the young face – a face she now knew was old, old, older than any human she had ever met. "Because I dare not. The events happening in Evanwyl are much darker than you know, and even I can't tamper with them."

"But wait, Wanderer – it was always said you were immune to destiny, that you couldn't be held by the bonds of such things. I know that's in all the tales. How can you—"

"It's not nearly so simple, Urelle." The Wanderer seated himself heavily, with an air of exhaustion; with a gesture, he caused another chair to slide over before her. "To explain would take quite a while. I would rather ask you what you seek to do here."

She wanted to pursue the first question; how could he not interfere, how was it that the Wanderer, one of the legendary heroes, could know of the evil of the Justiciars and do nothing?

But his tone was firm, and she remembered that one of the greatest mistakes of Adventurers was failing to take advantage of what they were offered, because they were too busy focusing on something else. The Wanderer was asking what she was doing; he was clearly interested, if for no other reason than to distract himself from his own distress. What sort of an idiot would she be to not find out what he might say about her problem?

She pulled out the Coin. "This Coin resonates with … well, I think it's me and my Aunt Victoria, but maybe also Quester or Ingram. Anyway, there's a lot of these Coins being carried by people from Aegeia who are hunting us. Sent by Ares. We don't know exactly why, but it's not for any friendly reason, that's for sure."

"Have you analyzed the enchantment?"

"I've tried. First I sort of diverted it – used a resonance between two of the Coins to make them track the other Coin instead?" She detailed the procedure she'd used, and the Wanderer (the WANDERER!) nodded and smiled.

"A clever stopgap trick to give you time, yes. Nicely done. Costs you to maintain, though."

"Right. I just let it go the second time this evening, so they'll be starting to get back on the right path now. I have to break this enchantment. I thought I'd gotten it figured out, but it just wouldn't budge. But in your circle I finally saw … well, something." She described the impossibly subtle, transparent magical effect to the Wanderer.

He extended his hand, and she placed the Coin in it. He gripped what she now knew was the legendary Staff of Stars and concentrated; light flared from the crystal atop the Staff, light pure and white and yet, somehow, touched with every color of the rainbow. The light concentrated on the Coin and sparkled for a moment, before fading away.

"I see what you mean," the Wanderer said after a moment. "But that's … a subtle thing indeed." His gaze was speculative, analytical. "You can see that using the standard analysis and detection enchantments?"

"Only in your circle, sir."

One eyebrow rose. "Fascinating."

"Is there something unusual about that enchantment, sir?"

"Quite. I would venture to say that the vast majority of magicians of any stripe would be hard-put to detect it, even with the aid of my circle and far more powerful analysis spells. Still, given your … family connections…" his voice suddenly had the air of someone gifted with a revelation. "Yes, given that, it makes sense that you could see it."

"Can you break it, sir? The enchantment, I mean? Make it so that Ares' people can't follow us anymore?"

"Could I? I daresay so. While I may not quite be the most badass mage on this planet – there's at least five or six others I know of who outclass me – I'm pretty darn good." He grinned at her, and this time the fear she'd seen had grown more distant. "But I think it'd be much better if you broke it."

"But I don't know how, sir!"

He waved that off. "Of course you don't, now. But you will know how, once I've finished showing you how."

"You … you'd teach me how, sir?"

"Yes, I think I will. If your most formidable Aunt Victoria doesn't object, that is."

"Object?"

"You would be astonished the number of people who might object to their children having anything to do with me." He smiled down at her. "But I would very much like to teach you what I can, in the time I have left. Because," he said, his voice suddenly soft and pensive, "I think that's one of the things I have to do."

 

 

 

 

 

The post GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 19 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 18

Our friends were making their way through the Forest Sea...

-----

 

 

Chapter 18.

"Ingram," Victoria said, "How are certain are you that we are still on the proper course?"

"About a hundred per cent," Ingram said. "Why?" Quester caught a hint of amusement from his friend.

"Because I haven't noticed you stopping to take bearings much, if at all, in our travels. And there are so many ways to get lost in the Forest Sea. I've been through this general area before, and to make sure we were on the straight course meant one of us had to ascend to the canopy and check sun and any other landmarks … rather frequently."

"Another advantage of the Camp-Bel legacy." Ingram displayed a peculiar object, oblong, with most of its front surface taken up by what seemed to be a window; however, what was currently visible through this window was some sort of self-illuminated diagram with arrows and some other symbols on it. There were colored studs on the front beneath this window, and faint lines on the sides showed that there might be hidden small compartments or holes there. Quester had seen the device before, but even now he didn't understand details of its operation.

"And this is…?"

Quester saw Urelle gesture, then blink, shaking her head. "There's no magic on that thing. Some on you, but none on it."

"No, of course not. This is technology. It's way beyond what most of us think of as technology, but the Founder and her crew didn't know anything about magic when they crashed here. In fact, according to the stories they didn't believe magic existed until their new hosts made it pretty hard to maintain their disbelief." Ingram glanced down at his viewer, then put it back in the pouch at his side, continuing to lead them onward.

Quester could see Urelle trying to grasp the idea of people who literally did not believe in magic at all. He remembered how hard that concept had been for him to understand. But there were other things to discuss. "You say you have been through this part of the Forest Sea before, Lady Victoria?" Quester asked.

"Years ago, of course. But yes."

"Anything you could tell us about that might be of importance here?"

"Hm." She was quiet for a few moments as they continued to walk. "I am not sure, to be honest. The Forest Sea changes, as you must know. Except in places where some species or group has managed to heavily entrench themselves, the dominant creatures may change from year to year. The land itself may be changed by conflicts between powerful beings; I have seen a valley that was later a flat plain, and, of course, we all know how the Fallenstone Hills came to be."

Quester nodded in human fashion. One of the few tales to survive all the Chaoswars was that one – the story of the Fall of the Saurans, centered around the Great Dragon Syrcal, whose nascent envy of his more powerful and spectacular brethren had been fanned to virulent evil by agents of Kerlamion Blackstar, until Syrcal had performed a ritual of the King of Hell's design that made the Dragon vastly more powerful … and, it seemed, utterly corrupt, and under the direction of Kerlamion. In his battle against Elbon Nomicon, Syrcal had been thrown down and the impact of his fall had created the Fallenstone Hills.

"Still…" Victoria said, "If that viewer of Ingram's is as accurate as he says, I would expect to come across a small lake soon. There's a few rivers that flow down from Wisdom's Fortress and never make it to the larger river – they come out somewhere along the coast between Shipton and Aegeia. One flows through this area and into a lake, which has an outlet for the river to leave to the south.

"If all that hasn't changed, there will be an old … fortress, small castle, something of that nature, on the near shore to us. It's the only reasonably intact structure in a set of ruins; there used to be a town of some sort there, and one that lasted for some time; you don't get such massive stone buildings in a new town."

"Intact? Would it be defensible? Suitable to stay a few nights in?" He asked the question quietly, so as not to be heard by Ingram or Urelle, who were walking together and discussing the viewer and technology in general.

Victoria glanced in their direction and arched an eyebrow at him. "Assuming nothing has happened to it in the interim, yes, it would be quite serviceable for a stay of a few days," she replied in the same low tones. "Might I ask why?"

He verified what he had sensed earlier, testing the air with his antennae as the breeze blew it towards him from the others. "Urelle is near the end of her strength. I believe she has been driving herself to keep the diversion spell going as long as possible, and I can scent the stress and exhaustion in her – even though it is not, I admit, visible."

Victoria's eyes rolled heavenward and she sketched the symbol of the Balance before her. "Stubborn as all my relatives," she said, her gaze softening as it lingered on Urelle. "It has been noticeably longer than the first time. If I am correct, that also means she is far less capable of wielding her magic at this point?"

"That is what she said, and the enervation I can sense would certainly imply that this is true."

"Should I simply tell her to let it go now?"

Quester passed more air over his antennae, then gave a deliberate shrug. "She is not in severe danger as of now, and if she can make it to the ruins, it would not hurt to have the diversion continue as long as possible. It is, of course, up to you; she is your responsibility, after all."

The tall woman studied her niece for several minutes, then nodded. "If we sight the castle before the end of the day, well enough. Otherwise I'll tell her to let go whether she wants to or not."

The occasional rays of sun were slanting very low when Quester, currently in the lead, broke through into a clearer area, to see a broad sheet of blue-green water stretching off into the distance – perhaps two or three miles across, and likely several times that long. On the near shore were ruins, as Victoria had described them – a collection of stone structures, large and small, in various states of collapse, vines and other overgrowth slowly taking them over. He could trace the town's outline in his mind, see where there had been docks, hints of roads, piles of rubble that had been warehouses, and so on. This had been a prosperous settlement once, and not small, perhaps as many as ten thousand people living and working in this now-ruined city.

Quester could see that the encroachment of the jungle was weakened greatly the nearer one got to the center of the town; presumably this was due to the slowly-fading verminwards around the settlement and its buildings.

Dominating the shoreline was the castle or fortress – a massive stone edifice perhaps a hundred feet in height at the peaks of the two towers at each end of the structure, and at least thirty or forty feet high along even the lowest portions of the structure. From what Quester could see in the setting sunlight, it was constructed mostly of a lighter-colored stone – granite was his guess – and, at least from this distance, appeared to be entirely intact, unlike any of the surrounding buildings.

However, what made Quester pause and study the entire area more intently was that the jungle stopped at a distance of perhaps a hundred yards from the castle; even the ruins near the castle were clear of overgrowth. He glanced over at Victoria, seeing her mouth tightened and eyes narrowed. "It was not so clean when last you saw it?"

"No. It appears someone has claimed the fortress for themselves. Or did in recent years, at any rate."

"Balance, Auntie," Urelle said, coming up to the two of them. "I didn't expect the castle you mentioned to be in such good repair."

"That is precisely what we are discussing," Victoria answered. "It was not so pristine twenty years ago."

"Well, this wasn't done in a day or three," Ingram said, "unless whoever's in there is really powerful. Probably – almost certainly – not our pursuers. They wouldn't really have much reason to settle down and clean out an old fortress."

"I cannot argue there," Victoria said, still studying the distant towers.

"Let us continue," Quester said. "If the residents are not hostile, we will have a more comfortable resting place tonight, even if all they offer is a floor."

"And if they are hostile?" Ingram asked.

Victoria shrugged. "It is unlikely they will be so hostile as to engage us in combat, Ingram. They may well wish few visitors, of course – choosing to set up one's household so far from any others is something of a statement of intent – but in my experience, even such people won't begrudge a few Adventurers a space to sleep, if no more. The few that do…" her scent was suddenly sharp and deadly, "…well, they're often ones that Adventurers are needed for."

"Onward it is," Ingram said with a grin.

A broken stone road, encountered after half a mile of hiking, made their progress swifter, and before the last rays of sun had left the upper third of the towers, the four of them were standing before the main doors of the castle. Quester – and, he was sure, the others – had noted the additional signs of occupancy; within the ten-foot wall surrounding the building, there were no weeds, the paving-stones were unbroken and in place, and there were small gardens spaced around the perimeter – at least as far as they could see, and presumably all around the castle. The gates had been half-open, but the faint tingle across his body told Quester that there were active and well-maintained verminwards.

The doors were mostly of a wood Quester had never seen, of startling hues ranging from deep red to yellow; the effect was of a curtain of flame within a grate, the metal binding the door providing the grate portion. Only one thing marred the artistic impression; a white or cream rectangle about five feet from the landing before the doors.

"Well, that's interesting. A note on the doors," Ingram said.

Quester stepped up and read:

Travelers are welcome within, as long as you can pass the wards at the threshold. Please leave all as you found it. Take what you need, as long as you leave something of equal value in its place.

"A courteous mystery, I must say," Victoria mused after a moment. "No signature, no indication of their own identity, but a clear statement of hospitality that expects equal consideration. I have no dispute with these conditions."

"Nor do I," Ingram said. "Quester? Urelle?"

"They seem perfectly reasonable," Urelle said.

"I agree," Quester said. "As long as the wards mentioned are not against Iriistiik."

Victoria chuckled. "I doubt we are dealing with so precise a protection."

Ingram shrugged. "It could just be a trap, of course. Lure us in and get us comfortable. Then bang!"

"Certainly, it could. I doubt it in this case, for various reasons, but we will keep an eye out. And choose adjoining rooms and ward them ourselves."

She touched the doors, and before she could even push, they began to swing inwards. Lightglobes glowed to life, illuminating a wide hallway paneled in a gold-colored wood, with deep blue carpeting.

The four of them stepped across the threshold; Quester noted another tingle – similar but in no way identical to that he had felt at the verminwards – and saw the others blink or twitch. It appeared, however, that whatever the wards protected against didn't include Iriiistiik, lavender-haired boys, or women named Vantage.

"My word," Victoria murmured, looking around at the spotlessly clean sweep of the two staircases curving to the second floor, and the subtle but noteworthy accents of gold and silver around the room. "Hardly the drafty and gloomy castles of your favorite tales, eh, Urelle?"

Urelle smiled. "I don't think I'll complain. As I've started to find out, the Wanderer's words are very true: 'adventures get a lot less fun the more nights you spend away from a really decent bed.'"

Ingram laughed loudly, the sound echoing up the stairs. "Wisdom I can't argue! But it looks like decent beds might really be in our future tonight!"

 

 

 

 

 

The post GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 18 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 17

It's time to look in on our adversary and see him having a family moment...

-----

 

 

Chapter 17.

"Of course I want you to succeed, my son," said his mother. "But there is only so much I can do for you without making my King and husband doubt that it is your success, and not mine, that he sees."

He nodded, unwillingly, in acquiescence. Having Mother's whole-hearted support in his endeavors would make everything vastly easier, of course, but she was right; then there would be – would always be – the question as to whether any of the credit belonged to him, rather than to the Queen and Mother of all. "I understand, Mother."

"Oh, look not so downcast, Raiaga. Still there will be many things I can do to ease your way – not so much as to make the King misdoubt your power, but sufficient to be of much use. I do want to see you recognized, have him acknowledge you and let you take your place among the true Elders, even though your years are so tender." She laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently.

It was … strange, to find that comforting, especially as Mother wore a human form, as was her wont and custom in her home. Beautiful, of course, with long dark hair and an unusual paleness of complexion, the only hint of her inhuman nature visible in her eyes, one violet as twilight cloud, one yellow as gold.

But it was Mother, after all – the only one who he trusted. He was her own grand experiment, one that the King had permitted but never approved – which by itself showed her power and influence. None other of the true people would dare such a thing without both permission and approval.

"Would you be able to assist me in the design – if not the performance – of the ritual to seal off Aegeia?"

"That I can certainly do, Raiaga. But does not the power of Ares give you the knowledge and capability? He has done it before, yes?"

He growled deep in his throat. "Apparently not; it was Athena's doing in all the Cycles I can discern. It would seem that she does it when she is ready to begin the work of taking back the country from her brother." He smiled grimly. "I, of course, want to do it in order to isolate the country and prevent any possible meddling from outside, at least until my control is complete and absolute. And since Athena is not going to manifest, I can't even try to trick her into doing it for me."

"Well, worry not. So long as you have Ares' power for me to work with, I am sure I can design such a ritual that will serve your needs." She seated herself and leaned back in the chair, which reclined to exactly the angle she preferred. "But I would caution you, my little darling, to never be so certain where the gods are concerned. There is always a way for one such as Athena to manifest."

"Hmph." He looked down, frowned, then shrugged and forced a smile. "Of course you are right, Mother. But the only path to her manifestation now is to reach the main temple and claim her spear – and you know how very restricted is the set of beings who could claim it and survive to become the Goddess Incarnate."

"Indeed, and you are in all likelihood correct, Raiaga." She smiled slowly. "But tell me … does anyone else know this? That you have found a way to prevent her incarnation by any but the most improbable means?"

He thought; that smile meant that Mother was planning something, and she would need accurate information. "A very few of my inner circle. Who have their own reasons to keep it quiet, and over whom I have certain … leverage, as you know."

"Well, then, Raiaga, your mother has some advice for you, if you would hear it."

He smiled back; it was a different smile, one he could feel, as he could never truly feel a smile towards any other being. "Always, Mother. You are wiser than I, and I am no fool."

"Best that you are not, my son, or my King will surely end you. Would have already for your ambition, save that you are my special child." She waved that away. "But attend. You have yourself said that only Athena uses the barrier you contemplate, yes?"

"True."

"Then here is my suggestion."

It was a short enough description – an outline of a plan that both awed him with its simple beauty and made him want to stab himself for not thinking of it himself. With difficulty, he controlled that impulse; Mother did not like to see him so seized by rage, and rightly so. Instead, he focused on the lovely symmetry of the plan. "I am awed and humbled, Mother. I should have thought of that, and yet it is only right that you do so."

She ruffled his hair. "Oh, Raiaga, you know how to speak well to your mother. Then if you follow this path, I can promise that I will ensure the seal will be enacted as required. This does not endanger anything in your main plan, I trust?"

"Oh, no, no." As he fit the new idea in, he felt his own smile broaden. "No, far from it, Mother, I believe it will make the entire plan even stronger. You perceived weakness and turned it to strength."

"Well enough, then." Her face was suddenly cold. "But this shall be the only such favor I will do you, Raiagamor. As my King and the Father of our people has said, this must be your test, and weakness is the thing he will abide least of all in one who wishes to be seen before him. A few other small services I may provide, but I, too, am limited by his decree, even though I be your mother; and in truth, Raiaga, if you wish to become one of his favored and, in time, supplant him? You must provide your enemies not the slightest vulnerability."

He bowed his head. "Yet you believe I may succeed?"

"Oh, my strange and wonderful child, you may, if you control the nature you gained from your true father, if you master yourself as you master others. If you do not … you will die."

"I can only die in one way, Mother, and," he gestured, "I have guarded well against that."

"Two ways, Riaga. Be not so arrogant. Yes, you are harder by far to destroy than any of my other children, but do not doubt for a moment that the King, or any of his Elders, could rend your soul asunder – and so he shall, if you fail."

A distant, echoed noise reached his ears. A chime? No, a banging … as on a door…

Fang and Claw, this had best be important! It was a matter of great preparation and effort to arrange these meetings with his mother, meetings that aided him in maintaining his focus and control, and once canceled it would be some time before another meeting could be had.

But the banging renewed, with the sense of a distant voice calling. No choice, then. "Mother, my apologies – I must go now."

As she nodded her understanding, he waved his hand over the crystal set in the bracelet on his left wrist, and without so much as an instant's hesitation his mother's castle vanished, replaced by his bedchamber – and the door, which rattled in its frame as someone hammered on it again. "Lord Ares! Lord Ares!"

"I come! Stop that racket, Phobos!"

He yanked open the door – then froze.

Phobos stood there, uniform spattered with blood, supporting the figure of Deimos, who seemed unable to stand on his own.

"What happened?" he asked, gesturing for Phobos to bring Deimos in.

"I do not know. He arrived in the recall chamber and collapsed. I could barely sense his mind calling to my own."

"That is … distressing indeed," he murmured. "Who else knows of this?"

"No one, Lord," Phobos said after a thoughtful pause. "There were none in the chamber when he arrived, and I brought him here straightaway. No witnesses as far as I know."

"Clean up any traces. I want no one to get a hint of this." He bent his perceptions towards Deimos – and cursed with shock.

"My Lord … what is wrong?"

"What was he fighting?" The words were forced out from between teeth gritted tight in rage … or even, just possibly, fear.

The wounds on Deimos' body were terrible, yes; they would have killed any ordinary being outright. But one such as Deimos should not have been struck down by them.

To Ares-Raiagamor's vision, Deimos' soul had the look of a curtain slashed to ribbons by a berserk hand. No, it was more something rotted or pierced by innumerable tiny holes – the shape was retained, but there was barely anything actually holding it together.

Phobos' eyes widened as he, too, gained a sense of what had happened to his brother-warrior.

In that moment, Deimos' eyes opened. For an instant they stared, blankly furious and fearful of something beyond the room in which they stood, but then they focused, and with a groan of pain he reached out and grasped Ares' arm. "Fading," he whispered.

"I know," Ares said quietly, as he still studied the wounds on body and soul. It’s as though he was struck by a storm of missiles that pierced his essence as well as his body. "Phobos, fetch a new body for Deimos. We must transfer as much as may survive, as fast as possible."

"Wait!" Deimos gasped. "Phobos … there is a survivor."

The other God-Warrior's face went so pale it looked greenish for a moment, and something tense and alien moved within it. "You are certain?"

"Yes."

"Did this 'survivor' do this to you?" Ares asked. "And survivor of what?"

"No," Deimos said, raising his eyes to meet that of his Lord, and they were already clouding towards death. "It … was … Berenike," he forced out, and then his hand unclenched; Deimos slid to the floor, life nearly gone.

Riagamor felt as though someone had rammed a silver dagger into his heart; his hand actually came up to touch the armor encasing his chest, verifying that the pain was merely shock. "Berenike?" he repeated, even as Phobos stared at him with pale, gaping features mirroring his own disbelief. "But … that's impossible."

He knew it was impossible. Berenike had died over two years ago. He'd arranged that death, the final removal – or so he'd thought – of a threat he'd believed dealt with a decade ago. He'd been to the funeral. He'd seen the body – smelled it, known that scent and known she was dead and gone.

And even if she were alive, how… "How," he said, speaking urgently to the dying man, "how could she have done this to you?"

With a final effort, Deimos answered, and though all his remaining strength was in those words, still Ares had to bend near indeed to hear:

"She is already … the Spear of Athena."

 

 

The post GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 17 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 16

Urelle and the others had come to a dark realization...

-----

 

Chapter 16.

Chaoswar.

The word echoed menacingly through Ingram's mind.

On its own it was a silly word. War was usually chaos. Putting the two together was near enough a redundancy. But as every living being on Zarathan knew, had been taught, had read in books or heard in legends or seen in ancient carvings, there was nothing whatsoever silly about it.

"Chaoswar" was only the translation, anyway, of a phrase in Ancient Sauran that meant something more like "the world plunged into war, that only chaos shall remain." The world grew, flourished, the shattered countries that had been healed their wounds and became mighty again, great heroes drove back monsters and abominations from the land, and all was well. And then … every few thousand years (how many, no one really knew) … something happened. The world went mad. Petty disagreements became violent arguments. Monsters became more cunning, devising longer-term plans to bypass defenses around the roads and cities. Those who dreamed of vengeance or conquest found it easier to gain followers, to raise armies and gold and the patronage of demons or gods.

The wars escalated, and in the end, the forces released … would somehow resonate throughout the world, so that even as the war and devastation reached a climax, the knowledge of the world faded. Even the gods, even the Great Dragons, could only recall very imperfectly what had gone before. And so the world would slowly emerge from chaos and confusion, and begin to rebuild anew … knowing only that in the end, no matter their achievements, one day the world's madness would come again…

It was the prayer of every parent and every child that they would not be born into that era.

And now we are.

He wanted to ask if they were sure, but that, too, would be foolish. First, because of course they could not be sure. How much did any of them, even Victoria, know of the world at large, of what passed not just in Evanwyl and the State of the Dragon King and Aegeia, but in distant Elyvias or Artania or the White Blade State or Skysand?

Second, because he did not need to ask. He knew, somehow, that he was right. The next Chaoswar was upon them.

"If that's what we're against … if that's what's really happening … Auntie, what can we do?" Urelle was as stunned as the rest of them by the thought, by the enormity of the idea that the terrible legend had become reality.

Victoria did not answer; Quester, too, was silent for a moment.

Ingram drew a breath. "We do," he said, trying to sound confident, courageous, and strong, and not sure he sounded at all like any of them, "exactly what we're already doing. There's only one country in all the world that's ever resisted the Chaoswars, and that's Aegeia. Whatever's going on there now … if it disrupts our Cycle, that protection will end. Whatever force is behind the Chaoswars must be always seeking to destroy that resistance."

"You believe there is a force behind them?" Victoria asked mildly.

"I think there has to be. Could it really be natural that this kind of thing happens, has been happening since the Fall, half a million years ago? I say no. Something is behind this constant return of utter destruction and obliteration of knowledge, and whatever the Aegei might know of it, they did at least set in motion something that opposes it. That's one of the reasons why the Founder swore her oath to Athena."

"Perhaps your recall to your clan is also connected," Quester mused.

"Probably." He noticed Urelle walking to the fallen corpses of their enemies. "What…"

She had stooped down next to the Rohila. "Got it!"

"Oh, right. Another Coin."

"Now we have two again." She rubbed the back of her neck pensively. "I could pull the same trick again. This time I'd think we've got to have gotten rid of everyone to the west of us. If I send it off to Elyvias a second time we should really pull people off course."

"It might not be a bad idea," Ingram said. Obviously, repeating the same trick too many times would end up failing, but twice? They'd probably think that the misleading enchantment had broken, which it had, and figure they had a lead on the real location. "Actually, it's a great idea to do it again. Unless someone can somehow see through it and find us directly, it'll be a help whether they're fooled or not."

Quester bobbed his antennae. "Yes. Yes, you are correct. If they believe the directions they receive, they will move away from us. If they do not … then they must mistrust any directions the Coins give, and at best they will be moving more slowly as they check and re-check their directions, or go to trying to locate us by other means entirely."

"And since they have very little idea of who we really are," Victoria finished, "any other means of divination will be hard-pressed to give them even a general direction. Yes, Urelle, when we camp—"

"—right now," Ingram said.

Victoria opened her mouth, paused, then nodded. "Ah. Of course."

"Of course what, Auntie?"

"Deimos. We do not know where he has gone exactly, but we must presume it was to warn his master. They could be preparing an assault force even as we speak. Deimos was clearly injured, but how badly we do not know; his power may have been the only thing keeping him alive, or he might be back on his feet in a few minutes."

"Myrionar's Sword, you're right!" Urelle's gray eyes flashed. "Everyone, sit down, I'll start the preparations."

Despite knowing the need to hurry, Ingram saw Urelle stop herself, close her eyes, and focus before beginning the preparations. She knows that we can even less afford a mistake in this magical working. He knew his own instructors would have been pleased by her presence of mind under pressure, though of course they still would have done their best to increase that pressure. It was the Camp-Bel way.

The young mage worked through the ritual more swiftly this time, having successfully done it once before, and having no need to explain the process. In a few minutes, she tossed one Coin into the air and it was snatched away by a large raven and borne aloft, sailing away to the east.

"We will take a quick look at the possessions of our fallen foes, but I do not want to linger long," Victoria said.

"Hold on." Urelle raised her hand. "Let me check over the area. They were defeated very suddenly, and you said she broke even magical protections, so I can probably tell if there's anything powerfully magical hidden on any of them."

"A good idea. Do not leave powerful magic for either our enemies to recover, or others to find if it turns out to be dangerous," Quester agreed. "As long as we can be sure none of it is easily traceable."

"I think we can prevent that, yes."

It did not take long with Urelle pointing out the right areas to search. Among other things, they recovered a beautiful crystalline sword that seemed to have been carven from a single gigantic sapphire and then chased with gold and silver runes, a collection of elixirs or potions, one of the transport or recall scrolls, a powerfully enchanted necklace of red and violet metals, and several other magical ornaments that would have otherwise passed unnoticed.

"I'll look over these later. For now, I'll just put a concealment enchantment over them – sort of practice for what I'll be doing on the last Coin in a couple weeks – and we'll stuff them in Ingram's neverfull pack."

"Good enough," Victoria said. "But let's get moving, please. I am becoming increasingly nervous. I would like many miles between ourselves and this location."

"Right. But have we figured out how to cross this gorge?"

"For now, let us just head west along the edge. Perhaps an opportunity will present itself," Quester said, antennae testing the air. "I scent the presence of water some distance off; if there is a stream entering the canyon, it may have cut its own, smaller, access into the chasm."

"Okay," Ingram said, as they began walking, "but why not just go down first? We were pretty sure we could make it to the bottom, it was just the climb back up on the other side."

"I suspect none of us would like to be boxed in by canyon walls if our pursuers locate us," Victoria answered. "But we can always begin the descent once we have an answer to the climbing problem. Perhaps, after we camp, we will find that one of our newly-acquired trinkets has the capability we require."

They walked in silence for a while, Ingram trying not to dwell on the worldshaking implications of the situation. One thing at a time, he told himself. You can't stop a Chaoswar by yourself, but maybe you can help save Aegeia, as is a Camp-Bel's duty.

But after a while, the silence became oppressive. He looked over to Urelle, who happened to glance at him at the same moment.

For some reason, that glance … touched him. Meeting Urelle's stormcloud-and-steel eyes sent a frisson through him that wasn't exactly excitement … but wasn't exactly not excitement, either. He didn't know what to make of it, except that he liked it.

However, it was also weird and made him cast about for something to say. "Um … Urelle, you know, I was wondering … I wasn't so surprised on our first journey to see your sister do some spectacular things – I mean, she's huge, for one thing. But you picked up that Child of Odin who probably outweighed you two-to-one and threw him like a sack of feed. How? Did you boost your strength or something?"

She opened her mouth, looking puzzled, then suddenly laughed. "Oh! You know, it's something everyone sort of took for granted back home, I forgot you never lived in Evanwyl."

"The Vantage strength," Victoria said with her own smile. "Those in the close family line have that strength. I have it, their mother had it, all three of the children have or had it. Why? No one knows for certain. Some say it's a blessing from some deed done centuries ago, others a touch of blood from something powerful in the line. But it's there, and as you saw, to this day it's nothing to laugh at."

"Indeed," hummed Quester. "I have seen strong grown men who would never have been able to do what Urelle did. That also explains how you can move your axe with such ease."

Victoria nodded. "We all have our talents, of course. Urelle's the first real mage in the family for quite a while. Oh, I know a few tricks, but nothing like her. You've got that mind-trick you can do with Ingram, plus of course your jumping and gliding."

Quester made a dismissive gesture. "Merely facets of being Iriistiik, nothing more."

"We could dismiss the strength – or indeed most other talents – in similar ways, young one."

Quester's antennae tilted, and Ingram smelled a waft of woodsmoke and pineweed; his friend was thinking on that.

"Can I ask you something, Ingram?" Urelle asked hesitantly.

"Of course."

"Why 'Ingram?' Your name doesn't sound anything like the names of other people we've heard of from Aegeia, at least so far."

The question triggered a wash of emotions, a roiling mess not easily sorted out. There was a moment of fond memory, a surge of guilt and anger, a touch of excitement and pride, more. "Well … no. It's one of the Clan Names." He paused, trying to isolate and understand his reactions. I really am proud of my name. It's just the context of the Clan … despite the recall, I'm not over what happened. I still don't understand it.

But he hadn't really explained. "Camp-Bel the Founder did not come from Zarathan at all. She came from up there, somewhere in the stars; some people say she came from the sister world, Zahralandar itself. Anyway, the Clan preserved a whole set of names from the Founder – most of them taken from her crew, we think, but some of them from important people in Camp-Bel's history or stories. Ingram is one of those; reading the remaining tales, he was something like a magician and a hero-thief, though the Camp-Bel claimed there was no magic on her homeworld."

"Oh. That makes sense. The names, I mean. I can't imagine a world with no magic."

"Neither can I." He tried to smile.

Apparently, that attempt was a failure, because Urelle looked at him with concern. "What's wrong, Ingram? I didn't mean to pry, I mean, if those were secrets…"

"No, no, it's not really secret. Clan tradition, but not like some of the real secrets of the Clan." He swallowed. "I … honestly? I don't know what's wrong, really. It just … upset me, somehow." He frowned. "I guess it's because I used to be proud of the name, and then as I got older, I got to be ashamed of it because I wasn't living up to it. I wasn't even good enough to be a real Camp-Bel, let alone one of the best of them."

"Young man," Victoria said with quiet conviction, "I admit to knowing little about the Camp-Bels personally – I have only met one other – but I assure you, there is no clan of warriors or defenders of any stripe who would find you less than an ornament to its name. I do not know why or how they convinced you so completely of your inferiority, but I am absolutely certain that it was utter rot. And the fact that they recalled you as they did shows that they know it."

Ingram felt a shock of tingling cold in his gut, a burst of fear and hope and confusion. No, that's not true! I was never that good! They wouldn't even have had any reason to lie to me that way, to trick me … even if I could imagine how they could have done it…

But on the other hand, he was equally unable to imagine that Victoria Vantage was either so poor in judgment, or so willing to mislead him, that what she said could be dismissed.

Could it be true? Could I have been … good enough? Better than good enough?

     But if I was … then why? Why convince me I wasn't? Why…

He reached into his neverfull pouch and withdrew the box, opened it, touched the Insignia. He was barely aware he was walking; everything was concentrated on that golden symbol.

If you wish to know why, came Quester's thought-voice, then think of what it accomplished for them to do it. What was the effect, the result that would have been different had they treated you as you must have deserved? Ingram heard the buzzing of Quester's voice, realized that his friend had also spoken aloud, so that their other friends could understand.

"That's … a really good point." Ingram took a breath, put the Insignia away, and concentrated. All right. Take it that Lady Victoria is correct. Even as a theory the idea that he wasn't a disappointment, that he was fully worthy of his name, felt almost blasphemous, as though he were dismissing the Clan's fitness to judge him. But if it were true? If he was at least as fit as any of his relatives within the Clan…

Slowly, understanding came. "…I was not seen," he breathed. "I stayed within the Clan grounds almost all the time. I had to sneak out if I wanted to go elsewhere, unless I was traveling with Mother or Father or others of the Clan. I wasn't sent on patrols, or given apprentice assignments – guard duty in safer locations, escort duty with veterans, that kind of thing. I just stayed in, studied, trained, played only with people on the grounds."

"Indeed," Victoria said. "An interesting train of thought, is it not?"

"Very interesting," Ingram said. His gut was churning now, a mix of hope and fear and anger, and he increased his strides.

When I get home … I will demand these answers!

 

 

 

 

 

The post GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 16 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 15

... and we begin with the cover image scene itself...

-----

 

 

Chapter 15.

She rose from below the cliff in a glow like sunbeams on water, bronze curls tumbling across her shoulders, skin of olive-touched gold, a body as strong and tall as Urelle remembered her sister Kyri's, and cradled in her arms was Ingram, staring at the newcomer with such awe and joy and love that Urelle felt something constrict in her chest.

Then the girl laughed, and the sound itself was joy, a clarion cry of courage and triumph that dispelled thoughts of fear and defeat. "Never fear, Ingram," she said, and her voice was somehow bells and trumpets. "Always shall I be there, if I am needed."

This… This is his reserve, his backup, his final secret card, Urelle finally realized. Her senses tingled with the power near her, magical strength mixed with a touch of something else she had never felt before.

The newcomer placed Ingram down in the brush near the cliff's edge and rose. Now Urelle could see that the girl wore armor somehow akin to Deimos', but where his was red and black and bronze, hers was gold and green and silver, shining and bright and bold in the same way Deimos' was in some manner deadly, threatening, dark. Over her shoulder was a quiver of javelins or throwing spears.

She strode forward, still smiling, and Deimos had gone pale with rage or fear or utter disbelief beneath his dark skin. "Berenike?!" he said in a strangled voice. "Impossible."

"Sword of Ares," Berenike said, "by oath and by bond, Ingram Camp-Bel and those he calls allies and friends are under my protection. You raise your hand at your peril, for the Lady's Spear stands ready to strike you."

"Ridiculous!" he snapped. "I know not what kind of trick this is, but I know it must be a trick!" He gestured to his people, who had regrouped. "Take her!"

The entire group focused on Berenike – except, Urelle noticed, Deimos himself. He's slowly backing up … is he planning to retreat?

Berenike's laugh echoed through the clearing again. "Storm of Spears!" she shouted, and hurled one of her javelins.

The dark-metal spear transformed in the moment it left her hand, became a shard of pure golden light that shattered into a hundred hundred bolts of luminous force. They hammered into and then broke the spell-wall before the mazakh, impaled the bilarel in a dozen places each, pursued the Child of Odin and sent him careening into a tree, blew away a cloak of shadow around the Rohila woman, who arched in shock and agony and fell limply to the ground, struck the remainder with such force that they somersaulted backwards, weapons flying from their hands, bodies falling like stringless puppets.

Berenike shifted her stance the slightest bit and Deimos raised his arms, seeing that there was no escape.

It did him no good at all.

Without so much as a pause, Berenike was there, in front of Deimos, and her fist blazed like the sun come to earth as it smashed through the Sword of Ares' guard and came up, a meteor of light, to catch him on the point of his narrow chin. Brilliant energy flashed, a shockwave of energy that lanced around and through the God-Warrior, making his body convulse; Deimos arced upward, reaching sixty feet before plummeting back to earth like a stone.

Urelle thought that must have ended it, but to her utter amazement, Deimos was not dead. He rolled painfully to a sitting position as the Spear of Athena strode towards him. Deimos' face was white, streaked with red blood below the mouth and nose. His hand dove into a pouch at his side and dragged out a piece of paper. Even as Berenike drew back her hand, he gasped a single word—

—and disappeared, leaving but a few drops of blood behind.

Berenike stopped, frowning. "Lady's Spear, that's unfortunate. He'll have run back to Ares, no doubt." She shrugged. "Nothing to do about it now, though."

She turned to face them and smiled. "And you are Ingram's friends. It is good to meet you all at last." She gave a strange salute – bringing her two fists in to her chest so they met at an angle at the center, then rotating both so for a moment both her fists were vertical at her sides – and bowed. "I am Berenike, the Spear of Athena."

Quester gave his own bow. "I am called Quester," he said.

"Hold, now; my friend should be introducing you." She leapt lightly through the air and landed at Ingram's side. The boy had been simply staring, Urelle realized, unable to do anything other than gawk while the newcomer took care of the opposition in two moments.

"Now, Ingram, introduce me to your friends properly," she said.

Ingram blinked, and shook himself. Urelle also noticed that the aura seemed to envelop Ingram as well as Berenike, both of them seeming touched by the magic, or greater than magic, that had appeared along with the Spear of Athena.

"Um … sorry. Berenike, please allow me to make known to you Quester of the Iriistiik, Adventurer and partner to me in our Adventures; Lady Victoria Vantage of Evanwyl, herself of the Guild and a warrior of great deeds; and Lady Urelle Vantage, a mage who is young, but of impressive power already. They were our charges once, but they have followed me on my quest to be my protection, as well. My friends, this is Berenike of Aegis, my oldest and dearest friend in the world and, as you have just seen," his eyes shone up at Berenike again, "the living Spear of Athena."

"It is a pleasure to meet you," Victoria said. "And we are all certainly grateful for your intervention; I admit, I did not like our chances against Deimos."

Berenike grimaced. "Him and that group? No. It was fortunate that he was not prepared for me, and that his power is less…" she grinned, "…direct than mine. Oh, against most foes he's still beyond merely formidable, but Deimos was always more about breaking his opponents' wills and weakening their resolve than direct action – 'dread,' you know – while my job is, well, to hit the Lady's enemies as hard as I can until they stop."

Her head came up for a moment, and Urelle saw a tension on the olive-gold brow, a narrowing of the eyes as though she saw and heard something no one else could. "I would stay, but I cannot leave my duties for long, even for my oath-bound friend." She kissed Ingram on the forehead. "Until we meet again!"

She leapt into the air, smiling at Ingram as she rose up, seeming to fall away upward, until she turned away and disappeared in the same flash of gold light that had heralded her arrival. The sense of magic lingered about Ingram for a moment before also fading away.

"Well!" Victoria said after a moment. "That was … fortunate, if abrupt. Ingram, if you don't very much mind, I think we need to understand just who Berenike is, and how it is that she's coming to your aid."

Ingram turned his face back to them, and to Urelle's surprise, there were tears running down his face, even though he was smiling. But he wiped them away quickly. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I suppose you do. I just … I mean, I knew she'd come, but it had been so long…"

He trailed off, then snorted and smacked himself a couple of times. "Sorry, I need to focus. I was acting … embarrassingly silly there, wasn't I?"

"Yes, you were," Urelle said. It came out sharper than she'd intended, and she wondered why.

"She's … overwhelming," Victoria said after a moment. "It's not, perhaps, so surprising. Is that what she was like when you were young?"

Ingram laughed, sounding more natural. "Well, sort of. Not really. That … aura around her, that's from being a God-Warrior. You must have felt Deimos' aura? That … pressure, that dread of what could happen, of what will happen if you face him? Same kind of thing, but of course you were feeling what an enemy would get there, and what a friend gets from Berenike."

"Logical," Quester said. "So, his allies did not feel dread at all?"

"No. I haven't fought alongside Deimos myself, of course," Urelle saw a shadow of his shame at being kept out of action, "but from what I've heard, it's more the opposite – an absolute confidence that they carry terror with them, and their enemies will flee or be crushed. Berenike's not as, well, dark as that, but it's the same thing; if you're on the other side, you'll be seeing this bright, undefeatable warrior and know that you're facing something totally beyond you."

Victoria had been examining their fallen enemies; Urelle noticed that she looked a shade paler than normal. "What is it, Auntie?"

Victoria rose from next to one of the bilarel. "They are all dead. I had expected one or two survivors. A terrible blow she struck – and leaving not a trace of her weapon save the wounds." She looked down, shaking her head, at the bloody rents covering the gigantic body.

"You killed eight people in one quick motion," Ingram pointed out. "Okay, this is a few more, but still, not that much more frightening."

Victoria's lips curled in a wry smile. "Young man, you are superficially correct. I suspect, however, that you know perfectly well that there is a large difference here."

"Maybe he does," Urelle said, "but I'm not clear on it. You did do pretty much the same thing when you rescued us."

Her aunt chuckled. "I suppose it must have looked that way, yes. But first of all, to do that I had prepared myself ahead of time. By the time I announced my presence, I had already focused myself into the Eight Winds and I continued to prepare until I had to make my move.

"Then, please note, afterward I was exhausted. I could barely have raised my axe to block for a few moments following that passage at arms. Berenike immediately delivered another blow that was utterly out of my ability to perform, and did not seem at all winded by her efforts."

Victoria shook her head. "I do not think that even one of the Justiciars of Myrionar could have done anything like what she did. And finally, not only were there more of them, I would judge that group to have been far more formidable than the eight we first encountered. They had no bilarel with them, and if they had casters, they were not prepared for such an assault. If you watched closely, Berenike's attack destroyed – rather casually – at least two sets of magical defenses and still slew the ones behind those defenses."

Thinking about those points, Urelle felt a leaden chill in her gut. If Auntie was right – and she almost always was – that group had been totally out of their league, even leaving aside Deimos himself.

And this Berenike had killed them all with one attack.

"Auntie … I think we might be out of our depth in this," she said slowly.

"That's why I didn't want you following," Ingram said. He didn't sound angry or annoyed; more concerned, and, behind that concern, afraid. "I have to go. I can't choose anything else, not and be … well, who I want to be, who I've claimed to be, all my life."

"If they're after you like this—"

"They might be after you!" he shot back. "It doesn't make sense, but for some reason it really does look like they're chasing you … or maybe Quester." He shrugged and grinned weakly. "or even you, Lady Victoria. But if you stayed in Zarathanton … you have friends at the Palace. They could…"

He trailed off at Victoria's expression. It had suddenly become dark, grim, mingled with one that Urelle had rarely seen on her aunt's face: chagrin.

"Young man," she said after a moment of silence. "The Sauran King himself has been assassinated, in his own castle. There is nowhere in all the world that I would have thought more safe from assault than T'Teranahm Chendoron, and yet the most ancient and powerful sovereign on Zarathan – save only the Archmage himself – was slain in his own throne room. Clearly, if someone seeks your, or our, ruin, there are ways to accomplish this, especially if your location be known."

Ingram nodded unwillingly.

Victoria took a breath, then continued slowly; her brow was furrowed now with concentration. "But there is more. Understand that I must now break a confidence. In my conference with Toron and his aides, it was clear already that such an act could not occur in isolation, and that in order to prevent panic and fear, we were to keep all news that seemed connected with such a plan to ourselves and to only discuss it with those in the Palace." She shook her head. "But it matters little now; surely the results of these events have already become frighteningly clear in Zarathanton, if nowhere else.

"I told you shortly after I rescued you that Lythos had taken a message to Kyri. But that … avoided telling you the details. When Lythos came to me at our home, he brought with him terrible news: the Artan of the Forest Sea have been wiped out nearly to a one, and the remainder have fled. The Suntree has fallen."

Urelle stared in disbelief at her aunt. "No … no, Auntie, that's impossible, the Suntree's stood for Chaoswars of time, it's…"

Victoria hugged her gently. "Lythos had come from the fighting, Urelle. He saw the Tree falling with his own eyes. He would have fought to the death, except he wanted to seek us out, make sure that we, at least, were alive. I gave him another task, sent him with a message to Kyri, so that she would know what was happening here." A tiny laugh. "It was not, perhaps, the most coherent of messages, but it will suffice … but more importantly, it gave Lythos something to do rather than meditate on the losses of his people."

She looked back at Ingram. "But again, something terrible is also happening in your home country. We are being hunted – which one of us is truly the target may not even, at this point, be relevant. The important point is this: I do not believe all of these things are unrelated."

Urelle found herself nodding; her own gut, tense as it was, agreed. "Yes. Assassination in one country, invasion in the one just to the north, and something terrible happening in one of our allies to the south, and … Auntie, our own troubles. The corruption of the Justiciars, our own God-Warriors in their own way."

Quester gave a buzz-growl and a sharp scent of lightning and musk. "And perhaps even the slaying of the Nests and Mothers. Ours was at the foot of the Ice Peaks, the northern point of the Forest Sea; another of which the Sorter told us was nigh to Aegeia, perhaps within its northern borders, and the third between the Gyrefell and the Nightsky River."

"Ares' Balls," Ingram murmured. "That's not all that far from Evanwyl or from Dalthunia, which fell, itself, not all that long ago. I think you're right, Victoria. By the Lady, I'm sure you're right. There's a connection."

Without warning his eyes widened and he gave a half-heard gasp, turning towards Victoria – and Urelle saw the same horrified expression on her aunt's face. An instant later, the hideous realization broke through to her as well.

"Oh, Myrionar's Balance, Auntie," she said at last, seeing Quester's antennae drooping in shock, "that's it, isn't it? It's started.

"This is the beginning of the next Chaoswar."

 

 

 

 

The post GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 15 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 14

Urelle had pulled off a trick to distract their pursuers. (note: in the prior posted chapter it mistakenly said that she had sent them WEST and in fact it was EAST. I am hoping this can be corrected by publication time).

------

 

Chapter 14.

Victoria saw the tension in Urelle's entire body vanish abruptly – a tension that Victoria had not consciously realized she had seen until it had disappeared. Ah. Of course. "The spell has reached your limits, then?"

"Auntie? How did you know?" Urelle stared at her; the other two looked back from their position a little ahead.

"An educated guess from observation," she answered with a smile. "I saw you relax. You'd been under tension, then relaxed without anything visible to cause it. Only one explanation for that occurred to me."

Urelle shook her head, smiling. "You're too sharp for me, Aunt Victoria. Yes, I just let go the spell."

"In truth?" Quester made a swift flutter of his wingcases and a dip of his antennae. "I had thought you would have dropped it long since. It has been two and a half weeks."

"You really just dropped it now? Sword and Spear, that's impressive." Ingram stared admiringly at Urelle.

Not at all to Victoria's surprise, the youngest Vantage's cheeks darkened and she smiled brilliantly at Ingram. "It's not that impressive," she said, "I just hung on as hard as I could because I knew the longer it ran, the better the chance we lost most or all of them."

"Have you any idea how far our wayward Coin traveled before you released the spell?" Victoria asked.

"Vaguely? A long way. I think … maybe a thousand miles?"

"A thousand…" Ingram and Quester both burst into laughter, the young boy's human chuckles overlaid with the cheerful buzzing of the Iriistiik. "By the Founder, what our pursuers must think! A thousand miles in less than three weeks? Over fifty miles a day!"

"And if they check now, they must reverse course," Quester said. "Most of them must be hopelessly far away from us, unless they have magical means of transport."

"I wouldn't discount that possibility too far," Victoria said after a moment. "Perhaps they cannot use such transport regularly, but the distribution of multiple bands at considerable separation, looking for one target, would strongly argue to me that whoever sent them could, at the least, send them to multiple places at once."

"I … guess," Urelle said slowly. "But … even so, they almost certainly can't have any long-range transportation magic, or powerful mounts, for the group as a whole. They wouldn't have been walking to the estate, not if catching … well, whoever they're really after was that important."

"Hmm. That is a good point. Some individuals in some of their groups may have such transport, but it won't aid them as a group. They do have transport to bring people back to their headquarters, wherever that is – presumably somewhere in Aegeia, based on what they said when debating who would take credit for your capture."

"Did you take those scrolls?" Ingram asked.

"Certainly," Victoria said, "but unless we want to attempt a preemptive assault on an adversary of which we know scarcely anything, they won't be much help to us at this point."

"No, I guess not." Ingram looked around, scanning as usual for dangers.

Victoria approved of his continual alertness. The deep green light of the Forest Sea made everything slightly indistinct, but also meant that the undergrowth here was minimal. As long as they could keep a clear sense of direction, they could travel reasonably well … as long as none of the many dangers of Zarathan's jungles didn't catch them unawares.

So far, they'd caught the dangers unawares – noticing the subtle fogginess about a certain part of the forest that she recognized as the trap of a wandermind, Ingram catching a forestfisher as it attempted a dropping ambush (and practically breaking the spidery thing in two), Quester surprising them by being able to speak to a small tribe of creatures who seemed to be mostly spines and mouths, convincing them to let the small party pass, Urelle unleashing controlled lightning against a cloakwolf pack and sending the nigh-invisible creatures fleeing. The Forest Sea was living up to its grim reputation, and her memory; every other day brought a new lethal threat into range.

But even Urelle was demonstrating that she was, indeed, a Vantage. She was young, she was new, but she was learning, and Victoria could not deny that having someone with true talent for magic along was a comfort. There really were some threats that needed a mage to deal with them well.

"We should, then, be safe from our pursuers for a while, yes?" asked Quester.

"I would think so," Urelle said. "While we've been heading this way for two weeks, they've all been going east. We didn't run into anyone in the last couple of weeks, so I have to guess that there's no one left ahead of us. And retracing their steps to catch up with us won't be easy. We've moved … how far?"

"Something over a hundred miles," Victoria answered.

"So, if we assume our enemies are as fast as we are, they've all gone at least a hundred miles in the wrong direction."

Ingram's face clouded. "Maybe I should have taken the river route. It's going to take a long time to get home."

"Perhaps," Victoria said. "But second-guesses are a waste of time, and you know it. You had what seemed sufficient reasons to avoid that path. We can hardly change it now." She pushed forward, following Ingram and Quester through thickening undergrowth. A clearing ahead, most likely.

"Although that does give me a worrisome thought," Quester said.

"What's that?" asked Ingram, then immediately shouted "Yow!" and fell backwards.

"What… Oh dear," Victoria said.

There was a clearing ahead … in the sense that the land itself was cleared away too. Ingram had fallen back and now was standing up scant feet from the edge of a precipice. Moving cautiously up, Victoria could see that the drop was over a hundred feet down, possibly twice that. A winding river below – probably an unmapped tributary of the World River that flowed from Heart of Water – had carved out a channel through the earth and stone that cut almost due west, across their path.

"Well, now, this is a pretty obstacle, isn't it?" she muttered under her breath.

"Easy enough for Quester and Urelle, I'd guess," Ingram said. "Looks like we've got climbing to do, though."

"I could probably float you to the bottom," Urelle said, "but I'm not sure about getting you to the top on the other side." She looked apologetic. "So many different spells to learn, and, well, I was focusing on ones I could use on my own…"

"Founder's Grace, you've got nothing to be sorry for," Ingram said with a laugh. "Plenty for us all to learn yet. It's not like even Lady Victoria knows how to do everything, right?"

"Quite right, Ingram," she said. "While we prepare ourselves, Quester, you said you had a worrisome thought?"

"Yes. It occurs to me that since our enemies did not, in fact, know where we were, they must have scattered themselves widely, and an obvious set of locations would be along the most-traveled routes such as the river. Yes?"

"Certainly." The implication struck her. "Oh, Balance. We're not much over a hundred miles east of the River." And if they were following something moving east…

Ingram shrugged. "It's possible, of course, but even then, they'd have to have been in just the right spot or they'll still be miles out of position to catch us." He glanced down at the cliff. "Still, maybe we should see if Urelle can give us a quicker way down."

"Perhaps we can be of assistance," said a calm, chill voice.

The group emerging into sight from the northwest was diverse – two armored bilarel, gray-skinned giants eight to nine feet high and heroically muscled; a cloaked figure she was fairly sure was a mazakh from the green-glinting scales on its hands; a pair of fluttering blade-faeries; a pale, delicate, pointed-eared woman with white-gold hair who almost had to be one of the Rohila; one Child of Odin whose black hide-wrapped hands indicated a master of the Way of the Hammerfist; and four humans. Despite all the differences, though, there was a similarity – and a familiarity – about the cut and symbolism of their armor and other accoutrements.

The one who had spoken was human, whipcord-thin and barely topping five and a half feet, with a narrow face and a shock of straw-colored hair. Despite his size, Victoria tensed; there was an air of utter lethality about him, perhaps partly because of the nearly colorless eyes that made his black pupils seem pits in the center of whiteness. He wore brief, stylized armor of red, black, and bronze – a cuirass, a helm that was more a crown than protection, gauntlets and engraved, ornate vambraces, and armored boots with greaves, leaving considerable areas apparently unprotected. At his side, not yet drawn, was a broad-bladed shortsword.

Ingram stepped forward and bowed; though his movements seemed relaxed, Victoria could see he was deathly pale. "Lord Deimos," he said.

The pale, deadly eyes flicked to Ingram's face, and the brows rose the breadth of a hair. "Is it… Why, yes, it is, the young Camp-Bel." He did not bow, but inclined his head; Victoria did not like the way his lips curved in the hint of a smile.

Still, the movement was one of acknowledgement, if not complete respect, and the threat in the eyes was a fraction lessened. "I had heard you had departed on an … extended mission." The colorless gaze flicked from Ingram to Victoria and Urelle; Quester, Victoria thought, was at least partially concealed by the brush behind them. One eyebrow rose again, and she saw a shadow of suspicion on his face.

He gestured to those behind him. The Rohila came to his side, and Victoria saw, with a sense of inevitable dread, the glitter of a Coin in her hand; the woman whispered something to Deimos. His eyes narrowed and his teeth were bared in a smile that held no trace of warmth. "How … interesting. You … or, I should say, one of those with you…" his gaze settled on Urelle, "…are the one we seek."

Ingram swallowed so hard that Victoria could hear it. But he reached back and touched the anai-k'ota's shaft. "You may not touch her," he said. His voice shook, but he continued, "She is under my protection, as a Camp-Bel and as a Guild Adventurer."

Whatever this man is, he is something formidable indeed; Ingram is not easily frightened. Still… "Assuredly you may not," she said, and Twin-Edged Fate materialized in her hand.

Their opponents also drew weapons, but Deimos held up a hand. "There need be no bloodshed," he said. "We seek only one. And we shall not slay her. You could even accompany her, if you wished."

"For what purpose do you seek her?" Quester asked, stepping into full view.

There was a shift in Deimos' expression; it was too quick and distant to be certain, but Victoria thought he was very displeased to see the Iriistiik warrior. "That has not been revealed to me," he said after a moment. "But it is Lord Ares who commands it."

"Lord Ares does not command the Clan," Ingram said, and his voice was clearer – though the dread was still there. "Only our missions, our Founder, and, in the end, the Lady of Wisdom. You are none of these, Sword of Ares."

Sword of Ares? Victoria felt a spurt of fear that was purely her own. By the Balance, this is a God-Warrior!

This was a situation more dire than she had imagined. The previous hunting parties had not been harmless, but if even a tenth of the legends surrounding the God-Warriors were true, they were adversaries far more formidable than even the Justiciars of Myrionar … and Victoria would not have cared to test herself against any of them, either.

And if half the things said of them were true … they were directly empowered by their patron god, and far beyond the weapons of mere mortal Adventurers.

"I cannot gainsay you there, little Camp-Bel," Deimos said after a moment. "Yet I do not forbid you to journey with us. You may guard her all the way to the Throne of War itself, if you wish."

"I'm not going anywhere with you," Urelle said bluntly. "We've already met two groups of you Balance-wreckers."

"I am afraid you are quite wrong," Deimos said. "You will accompany us, young woman. It's only a question of how." He dropped his hand.

But Urelle acted even as his people moved. Lightning bloomed, a forest of crackling, roaring blue-white, knocking the blade-faeries from the air and scattering the others. Even Deimos flinched, the way a man might from an unexpected light.

Ingram moved in the moment the bolts faded. His first steps were unsteady, the shakiness of a man in terror forcing himself to move, but in three feet they firmed, the little Adventurer committing himself fully to the charge, towards the God-Warrior himself.

Victoria had the same idea, and in an instant she was matching Ingram stride for stride. Deimos is their leader. He is the strongest of them. Take him down and we may have a chance against the rest. Fail to do so…

But Deimos, startled or not, had seen them coming, and his shield came up, caught both the anai-k'ota and her great Axe on it with such contemptuous strength that she felt she had sought to cleave a granite cliff in half. He shoved forward, and Victoria tumbled away. Myrionar's Mercy, he threw me back like a child!

Ingram had been flung even farther, and rolled to his feet between the Rohila and one of the human warriors. One of the huge bilarel was engaging Quester, and the Child of Odin had just reached Urelle. His arms lashed out to catch her.

Even as Victoria turned to face Deimos again, the Child of Odin's eyes widened as the delicate-seeming hands closed about his arms and clamped down. Little Urelle yanked the massive Child of Odin off the ground and then threw him into the next two attackers.

This time both of Deimos' eyebrows rose. "That … was unexpected."

The distraction had given Victoria a chance to focus, to recall to herself the discipline of the Eight Winds. "Shall we try again?" she asked, raising the immense Axe and channeling some of her self into it.

Deimos smiled, and an aura of blood-red rose about him. "By all means, my Lady."

"Not by herself, she won't!" Ingram said. His two other assailants were down already, and he tore his way across the ground towards Deimos.

Too late, Victoria saw the scaled arm of the mazakh rising, opened her mouth to call a warning, but light was already starting from the clawed hand—

In the last splintered second, Ingram sensed it – saw movement from the corner of his eye, noticed the direction and intensity of Victoria's gaze, or simply felt it with the gut instinct of a trained Adventurer – and whirled, interposing his weapon between himself and the mazakh.

But it was no single beam or bolt; a column of luminous power roared from the mazakh and hammered Ingram back ten feet, twenty, thirty—

And Ingram Camp-Bel tumbled over the edge of the cliff, a look of horror on his face as he disappeared from view.

From the distant sky there came a flash of auric light.

 

 

The post GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 14 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 13

We should look in on what the OTHER side is up to...

-----

 

 

Chapter 13.

"Lord Ares!"

He turned towards the call, seeing one of the Ekprospos coming towards him. With an annoying effort, he recalled her name. Artemisia Igemon, that was it. "Lady Artemisia," he said, inclining his head. "How can I be of service?"

She smiled slightly up at him; General Aloysius, his incarnate form, was a man of heroic stature indeed, so even the fact that the night-haired woman topped six and a half feet left her nearly four inches below his height. "I wanted to say how your speech inspired my entire regiment. Some few of my men and women had been unsure of the need to march against Velos, but now there isn't a single word that fails to approve."

He returned her smile. "Most gratifying, Lady," he said. "It is, of course, a sad thing that it is necessary, but Velos has lost its way; despite their supposed patron, they have begun inroads into the great forests, untouched these centuries; they have forsaken much of their hunting and fishing, letting farmers supply their meat while they turn their skills of bow and sword to war; they worship less in the moonlight. We are not the only one of their neighbors that Velos has tested, but we are the one that can stop them, set them back on the course appointed to them."

She nodded. "I know, and you may believe that I am ready."

"Excellent." He smiled again as another thought struck him. "And take this command to the others: it is in my mind that your regiment will lead the way, for is there not perfect symmetry in that one who bears the name of my sister of the hunt should lead the forces that liberate her city-state and return them to her fold?"

Her eyes widened, and her arms rose up, first in an upright fist, then brought to her heart, in salute. "Lord Ares! It shall be as you say!"

"Then go now, and prepare. With the plans made, the people behind us, we must not delay, else Velos may learn of these plans and give us far more difficulty than we expect."

"Sir!" The tall woman turned and strode away, a proud bounce to her step at the new honor.

He maintained his usual thoughtful, pleasant expression with difficulty as he made his way up the hundreds of steps of the Aegeian Path, through the Temple of the Guardians, where he nodded at the statues and the worshippers, and then up the second staircase to the High Temple with the Throne in the center. There were fewer worshippers here, but still a few, so he restrained himself from a sardonic glance at the Statue of Athena – her glittering silver spear held in one hand, her great golden Shield raised in the other.

Finally, he entered the private quarters, sealed them, and allowed his face to relax; at the moment, that meant it held an expression somewhere between a grin and a sneer.

It really was extraordinarily difficult to maintain this act. But Ares' image was mostly that of a passionate hero – one who might turn to a dangerous fanatic, true, and thus eventually need to be brought down by his sister – but always one acting on his righteous passions. While he had already begun – starting a decade or two ago – setting the foundations for changing that, becoming an "Ares" much more to his own taste, it was not something he could hurry.

This was even more true with the more important people at the top, such as Lady – currently Undergeneral – Artemisia Igemon. They had grown up before he could have begun the changes; getting them to become the oppressors of his empire would take time, even with the godly aura to influence them.

On the positive side, the Lady of Wisdom had yet to manifest her God-Warriors; neither the Spear nor the Shield of Athena had appeared, which always brought a real smile to his face. The pre-emptive work done early paid many dividends indeed, and not having to hide his true nature from emissaries of Athena was a major benefit. One of her epithets, the Clear-Eyed, referred to how her agents were endowed with often-supernatural abilities to see through deception and disguises. While not even the goddess' power could pierce his disguise, he was much less sanguine about the ability to disguise deep and subtle plans from her sight, or that of her true agents.

He glanced towards the door. Deimos is still not here. That was … annoying. Yes, hunting a moving target was difficult, and with multiple teams searching there was the strong chance that it would be another team that captured the target, but once the target was found, Deimos would know, and would undoubtedly be the one to notify him.

Still, there was no great hurry; as long as this last obstacle was eliminated, it did not matter greatly if the elimination happened today, tomorrow, or three months from now.

But it was tiresome to have to remember names and faces and such. These beings thought they were so important, and treated even their lessers, children and poor and otherwise, as though they were important as well. He found this infuriating, and likely hypocritical. How could they be so stupid as to actually believe that? Still, the game must be played as it was, not as he might prefer it; his forebear had done so for thousands of years in a single role, so he truly could not complain about a few decades.

His extended senses tickled, warned of the approach of someone far more interesting. By the time they reached the door, he was already seated, sipping essence-laden tea. "Enter."

The figure closed the door behind it and stood for a moment, tall and slender and noble in countenance, a faint glow emanating from his golden hair and skin and the gold-and-silver armor he wore. His bow was also of gold, with a crystalline string, and arrows of diamond and auric leaf protruded from his quiver.

He bowed. "Lord Ares." When he rose from the bow, his expression was far less noble, much more akin to the knowing grin on his patron's face.

"I see you have progress to report."

"Much progress, my Lord," said Arquetani, the Sun of Apollo. "The Oracles within Lyra, Apollo's city, have been shifting their messages subtly for all this time. Now, for the first time, the messages are guiding them towards their own holy war, this one for the preservation and control of knowledge, since that's one domain of Apollo, and one that can conflict with Lady Athena's, as 'wisdom' of course requires much knowledge to be gathered."

"Excellent. There are no questions?"

"Few, my Lord. The groundwork has been laid for a long time, the increasing gathering of works from surrounding lands, the promotion of security around the Libraries, and so on. I believe they will be ready to become the next target – most likely, they will enter once Velos begins to totter, ostensibly to protect the city of Apollo's sister, but with the underlying motive of seizing their archives and secure the city for themselves."

"What of the other God-Warriors?"

"No word of either of Athena's – I would presume you would know that better than I." Arquetani's smile flickered with good news. "Geryotrin was able to insinuate himself into the mind and soul of the Anvil of Hephaestus, so we now have an agent in Amoni Agapis who is properly placed to start that city on its way."

He laughed. "You hid that card well, Arque. Any others?"

"Not yet. You already have Apollo's Sun – myself – and his Harp. But I'd expect that we'll see more soon. My main worry is that more gods may incarnate shortly. I admit to being particularly concerned about…" he nodded towards the exterior.

"My dear Athena? Not to worry." He smiled, and this time allowed his teeth to glitter like crystal blades. "She is entirely taken care of. There is only one path for her to manifest now … and that shall never happen."

 

 

The post GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 13 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 12

Urelle had an idea for dealing with their pursuers...

-----

 

Chapter 12.

"This looks like a good spot to camp," Ingram said, studying the small, perfectly circular clearing. "Then Urelle can show us what she's come up with."

"Wait a moment, young man," Victoria said, keeping him from entering. Her sharp blue eyes darted about the grassy, flower-strewn meadow with a flat rock outcropping near the center. Ingram could see tension in her pose, her hand held so that she could summon that immense battleaxe in a moment. She muttered something that Ingram thought was a spell. He also thought she sniffed the air.

The tension released suddenly, and she nodded. "Yes, this will be ideal."

"What were you looking for, if I might inquire?" Quester asked. "I can understand that the circularity of the clearing might be suspicious, but by your scent you were able to allay those suspicions simply by looking."

"See these?" She tapped a set of stones. "Ordinary, yes, but the pattern is obvious to those who know what to look for. There's also a simple spell – I'll teach it to you – that will reveal the markings of the Wardens of the Forest. See those stones, in that pattern, with those markings? It's one of the safe havens they've made for travelers. They're spotted through all the forests, even the Forest Sea."

"You were also smelling for something," Ingram said.

"Excellent observation," she said with a smile. "Yes. There are a few creatures that can either mimic the setup – although they can't actually replicate the spell-markings, so that's usually sufficient proof. Still, I like to be sure that I'm not stepping into an eyrgines or into the trap of a naluthaka."

Ingram made a face. "Eyrgines, I've heard of them. Giant carnivorous plants?"

"Whose traps look like pretty, circular clearings, yes. That's what I checked by smell; they have a characteristic, very subtle perfume, it's a lure for various larger animals. Makes the area seem peaceful and inviting." She went on. "And the naluthaka you might better know as meadowmaws."

Both Quester and Urelle flinched at that. "They're real?" Urelle said, then looked embarrassed as the others looked at her. "Well, I'd only heard about them in Seven Tales of Terian, and you know that some of those are kind of made-up…"

"Perfectly correct," Victoria said, and ruffled her niece's hair. "Plenty of those collections of tales are nothing but rubbish. But the good ones often have a lot of truth to say within the rubbish, and I'm afraid that's one of the nastier truths."

"How did you make sure that this was not a meadowmaw's lair?" Quester asked.

She pointed along the edge of the clearing. "The naluthaka creates a huge trapdoor out of a clearing, cementing it together underneath so that it can be lifted in a flash and the meadowmaw be able to grab its prey. Try as they might, though, that cannot be done perfectly, so if you look very carefully around the edges, you will see a faint line showing the seam."

Ingram nodded. More and more, he was starting to appreciate how fortunate they all were in having Victoria Vantage with them. No matter how good they might be as young Adventurers – and even Urelle looked like she was going to be very, very good – there was no substitute for decades of experience in the job. "You've got a lot to teach us."

"I will do my best, I assure you." Her smile, quick and bright, added warmth to the response.

A little while later, Urelle gathered them near the campfire on the flat, clean stone. "It's a matter of energy flows and redirection," Urelle said, placing the two Coins in front of her.

Ingram studied the Shields. "How do you mean that? Is there energy flowing from us to these things?"

"Sort of. Not exactly." Urelle frowned, even as she began sketching mystical symbols onto the silver-tinted leather she'd laid on the ground. "How do I put it… Well, have you ever seen a crystal winged harp?"

"Attended a concert by Reiva Freyavalyn, in fact. Beautiful music from a beautiful instrument."

"Reiva? I thought she never left Thologondoreave."

Ingram grinned, warmed by her surprised and slightly envious look. "She doesn't."

Even Victoria looked startled. "You've been to Thologondoreave?"

"We have," Quester affirmed. "The circumstances were … unusual."

"I would think so," Victoria said, eyebrow still raised. "It took me six years to convince them to let me visit. But we're off the trail – Urelle?"

"What? Oh, yes. So, you must have seen her sing to the harp, and have it respond, right?"

Ingram remembered the play of gemlight through the Odinsyrnen's coal-black hair, and a voice as pure as diamond singing one perfect note after another, and the harp responding with the same notes, even as she danced away from it. "Yes."

"Well, it's kind of like that. The harp will only sing back to one note for each specific crystal of the harp, its resonant pitch," Urelle said. She put one Shield carefully into each of two circles of symbols she'd scribed onto the leather. "And to make it respond, you have to sing out that note, sending those vibrations through the air to touch the crystal."

Ingram nodded, studying the symbols. He hadn't really learned much about magical symbology, so he couldn't tell much about it; it was clear that the two circles were different, and he thought that one of them was signified as the dominant. "So, the Coins are sending out magical vibrations, so to speak?"

"More the opposite. By our existence, we … well, vibrate the essence of the world. We're a particular part of the world, and our existence speaks to the world, resonates with it. These Coins are mystically designed to sense that vibration, as a magnet seeks the northern and southern reaches of the world when placed in a compass."

"But—"

"Oh, that's very simplified. Really, we're masses of these … vibrations, resonances, essential signatures, whatever you want to call them. Whoever made these Coins had something that was attuned to a particular characteristic that relates to me, or you, or Auntie – whatever it is they're really seeking – and it is drawn towards it, whenever enough power is placed into it to amplify the reaction."

Now her hands were weaving about the Coins; for a moment he thought he saw an almost invisible wavering, like heat-shimmers, tracing the same path as the girl's delicate fingers. "Now, to negate that entirely – to shield us from being traced – that's going to take time. But I think I can do something right now that should at least buy us that time."

She gestured for everyone to come closer. "Just like the singing, it is possible to reverse the process, if you can set up the right conditions. What I'm going to do is attune one of these even more to us – whichever of 'us' is really involved – and then invert the other's performance, focused through this connection I'm making."

Ingram scratched his head. "So, what … the second Coin will be calling to us instead of us calling to it?"

"Better. It will be … oh, shouting, I guess I could say, singing out as loudly as it can, the same vibrations that the other Coins respond to. And as long as we keep the first Coin with us, it'll keep channeling our … essence vibrations to the second Coin, which then keeps shouting them out."

"As long as we…" The idea suddenly solidified. "Ohh, Urelle, that's brilliant!" He found himself laughing at the thought. "But even if we leave the one behind, they'll figure out the trick as soon as they find that Coin."

"Could they use that against us?" Victoria asked. "I think it is a brilliant idea, Urelle, no doubt, but if I understand correctly this Coin will be connected to the other by your magic. Presumably a good mage could trace the 'shouting' as you put it, very easily. And perhaps strike directly at you through such a connection."

Urelle frowned, thinking. Ingram found himself just staring at Urelle despite the frown, forced himself to look away. I have no right, nor do I have the time for … anything like that.

"Yes and no, Auntie, in order. Yes, if one of our enemies who is also a magic user of talent, preferably a Shaper like me, got hold of the Coin, they could follow the trace to the Coin we keep with us. No doubt. But they can't use it against me, not unless they're either ridiculously powerful so that they can target magic miles and miles away, or were something … oh, like a Great Wolf, that could grab that connection and pull through it. I'm just maintaining the spell, not shoving my whole self into it. And even if something like that happened, I'll almost certainly feel something happening and I can just drop the spell." She turned back to the Coins.

"Ingram's other point still stands," Victoria said after a moment. "If we just drop the Coin somewhere, it will not be long before it is found."

Urelle grinned, a smile that said "watch." "That's why I'm not stopping there." Urelle muttered several phrases in what Ingram thought was Artan. "Now, everyone – put one finger on the first Coin. Don't touch the circle around it!"

Ingram carefully complied; the Shield was large enough – barely – for all four of them to get a finger (including a shining-chitin talon) on the golden surface. Urelle made another complicated gesture, then nodded. "Now, everyone lift your fingers … good."

She focused her attention on the second Coin and whispered several more phrases of magical import. "Now, something, anything small, from as far away as you can think of. Anyone?"

There was a pause, then Victoria reached into her pouch and brought out a small golden figurine. "This came from Elyvias; perhaps I've traveled farther, but I doubt it."

"Perfect." A white smile flashed in the dim firelight. "Far, far to the east." She took the figurine and stood it atop the Coin, completed another ritual, and then gave it back to Victoria. Then she picked up the two Coins and tucked the first one into a small pouch at her waist, and threw the second one high into the air.

It arced up, glinting white-gold in a slanting beam of moonlight, and – just as it reached the apex of its arc – was suddenly snatched up by something perhaps the size of Ingram's arm that flew by on batlike wings. Whatever it was circled higher, and then flew off away from the remaining glow of sunset.

"It's now connected with Elyvias – wherever that figurine came from," Urelle said. "It has to make its way there, and it will. Animals will catch it and carry it for a while, it will be dropped on hillsides that face west and roll down them, be spotted by someone who is traveling west, whatever, and…"

"Double brilliant, by the Lady!" Ingram was amazed. "What you're saying is that our … vibrations will now be sent to that Coin … and the other Coins will follow it."

She grinned back. "Exactly."

Victoria was looking as proud as any woman could be of her child, something that sent a slight pang through Ingram's heart. He repressed that reaction; his own problems weren't hers.

"A most elegant solution," Quester said. "But surely an enchantment – even one Shaped – of that nature cannot last forever."

"No," she admitted. "I have to sustain it. As Aunt Victoria said, it's connected to me directly, my strength goes through the first Coin to the second. For now, it's very small, but the drain will increase with distance; at some point I'll have to drop the enchantment before all of my magical resources are bound up in it. But that should be several days, at least."

"If we keep pressing on while they're going in the wrong direction for several days, that will give us a lot of breathing room," Ingram said, feeling some of the weight of worry lifting. "Obviously you can't do that trick again, since we'll be left with only the one Coin. Will this give us enough time for you to figure out the way to suppress the magic entirely?"

Urelle frowned, staring down at the glittering Shield. "I … hope so. It's the best chance we've got, anyway."

Victoria nodded. "As you say, it is indeed the best chance. And I think your instincts are now vindicated; even had our two friends, somehow, dealt with the prior two groups of assailants, I see no way in which they could have thrown off the tracks of the others."

"Neither do I," Ingram agreed. While he felt less tense now, the urgency of his mission still nagged. "I wish we could set out now." At Victoria's raised eyebrow, he raised his hands as though to ward off a blow; she smiled thinly. "I know we can't," he said, "but I want to."

"What do you think we're going to find?" Urelle asked. "I mean … that message has been chasing you for a couple of years, right?"

"I don't know. That's the problem; my imagination can throw up all kinds of horrible possibilities."

"Well … what was Aegeia like before you left?" Victoria asked. "One must presume that whatever has passed since must have roots in what already was. Yes?"

"I suppose. Especially since they did, as you mentioned, send the recall no more than six months after I departed." Ingram busied himself setting up the cookpot and the fire while he thought back on things he hadn't allowed himself to remember for years. It was … surprisingly hard to do.

"Well … Ares had emerged, oh, maybe twenty years before I was born. The city-states have been drifting apart for decades, maybe the last century and a half, so it seemed about the right time. He manifested incarnate in General Aloysius, who'd broken an attack from Velos through pretty much nothing but his own force of personality and passion. Once Ares was fully manifest, of course, he ascended to the High Throne that he and Athena share through the Cycles."

He remembered what he'd been taught and what he'd seen, and waves of loss, fear, pride, hope, and disappointment crashed together and made him hesitate. To cover his discomfiture, he dug in his pack for ingredients to roast in the pot. "At first, he had his hands full fixing things at home. End of a Cycle, things just tend to fall apart. You couldn't have all of Aegeia breaking apart if people didn't start forgetting their direction, I guess. So there was all sorts of corruption in the Ekprospos, the enforcement of laws had become pretty lax, terrible crimes were common, all of that. It made him furious to see all the injustice in Aegis, and so he set about changing that."

"Is this … normal?"

He scratched his head. "Normal? Well … it's not unusual. Like I said before, Ares isn't a villain, at least not most of the time, and even when he is, he'll try to hide it."

"When you say law enforcement was lax and crimes were common…?"

"Corruption at the top, remember? So sure, if you robbed one of the Archons, something would get done, but not so much for the common person. There was a whole series of murders when I was a baby that…" he shook his head. "Never mind. That was an aberration anyway – not from corruption or anything.

"Anyway, that was the first thing he did. Took him several years before he was satisfied, since he had to get people to change their minds – the gods can't just come in and force people to obey. That doesn't really fix anything.

"Then he declared that we needed to also strengthen ourselves against the forces without and within. That also was pretty popular, especially since he'd fixed a lot of what was wrong with the city by then, and people still remembered Velos' attack – as well as one assault from an arm of the Maelwyrd Pirates, something we hadn't seen in, like, a century or two."

Quester buzzed and gave a scent that Ingram knew as derision and cynicism, something like oiled dirt with alcohol. "And then this extra strength made him consider bringing his enlightened … passionate rule to the other cities?"

"Yeah, you've already got the idea. A couple of them had already tried pushing their way in, of course, and they were also feuding amongst themselves, so again, it wasn't as bad an idea as it might sound."

Victoria fixed him with a narrow glare that made him want to crawl away and hide; Urelle's incredulous stare didn't help, and the shift in Quester's scent drove it home.

"Young man," Victoria said after a moment, "Conquest is always a bad idea."

"Well…" he swallowed. "Um. Yes, I guess. Yes. But what I meant…" he hesitated.

The cold stares thawed slightly. "I understand what you meant, Ingram. That it seemed … less bad an idea than it would if you just started conquering peaceful, harmless neighbors."

"Yeah." He thought a moment and cringed both inwardly and outwardly. "Wow, um, now that I think about it, I really said that pretty badly."

"I suspect you said it as your people thought it," Quester said gently. "After all, your god-ruler Ares could justify it. And he is a god of war."

Urelle scrunched her face up, then smiled. "You know, given what we already know about Aegeia … maybe Ingram's wording's closer to right."

"Pardon me?" Victoria looked both startled and shocked.

Ingram noticed that unlike himself, Urelle did not wilt beneath her aunt's gaze. "Think about it, Auntie, Quester; both their ruling gods are gods of war. They have a Cycle based on this conflict between them. In that context, war's pretty much inevitable, so even if the thought of war not being a bad idea sounds … well, insane to us, it's maybe not so crazy for them."

"Hmph." Victoria tilted her head, as though studying something she couldn't quite make out. After a moment, a trace of a smile appeared on her face. "You may be right. It seems a terrible way to run a country, but if Ingram's description is correct, it at least works, and has done so for a very long time." She nodded to Ingram, who finally let himself relax a bit. "My apologies, Ingram."

"No need to apologize." He gave a grin-and-shrug. "You're not the only ones who don't really get how Aegeia works." He thought back. "Now what was I … oh, right. So basically when I left, the country was completing full-on preparations for war. Almost everyone fit to fight was volunteering, except the Clan."

"Why wouldn't the Camp-Bels volunteer?" Urelle asked. "You're citizens, right?"

"Oh, sure, very proud of it, too. But the Founder gave her loyalty first to Athena, and through her direction, to protecting the rulers of the city-states. Eventually that became sort of a general-purpose rule that we protect the legitimate rulers of a country. In the Cycle, we've become … well, sort of the insurance that assassination will rarely be used as a method of war. Not never – some Cycles are pretty brutal – but if you have to go through a Camp-Bel bodyguard or three to get to a ruler, you'll probably think two or three times before you do.

"So anyway, that means we've already all got jobs to do, and volunteering as soldiers isn't one of them." He tried to keep his voice light.

"What's wrong?" Urelle asked.

Spear and Shield, what's wrong with me? I can't hide anything these days! "Nothing."

"You can choose to say nothing," Victoria said, and her voice was gentle, "but I think none of us will believe that it was nothing." Her gaze sharpened. "And some of it goes back to that series of murders you mentioned."

He cursed inwardly again, but it was against pain, not anger. "I … all right." He drew in a breath.

"I … well, I knew I wasn't a real Camp-Bel all along, understand. That … moment that made me run away was more … well, a trigger, not a total surprise or anything. I was adopted when I was a baby because…" He paused, then forced himself to go on.

"That series of murders was the beginning. A little after the time I was born, they started. Someone or something was murdering children – most of them infants, though there were some victims as old as two or three. There were a few adult victims, but they were pretty clearly collateral damage – they got in the way of the killer, saw something they shouldn't.

"The first wave of murders, though, was in the lower city, and so there wasn't much investigation at first. That's part of what I meant about corruption, how far Aegeia can fall toward the end, or beginning, of a Cycle: it didn't affect the people at the top, so there wasn't much effort devoted to it."

Urelle's entire posture and gaze showed both disbelief and sympathy, and he realized that there was a certain frightening parallel between that set of events and the murder of Urelle's own family. "So … what about the Camp-Bels?" Urelle asked after a moment. "Couldn't they do something?"

"Remember what I said about how they're sort of separate? We can't just go randomly poking our noses into the business of Aegeia, we have to follow the commands of the rulers – or sometimes of Athena or her emissaries, if they send their own clear instructions. Anyway, that didn't happen until the killer struck one of the higher houses. Then it became a priority."

"Soul-reading? Resurrection magics? Were they able to find out…" Victoria trailed off as Ingram shook his head.

"Whatever it was was either destroying or at least badly damaging the souls of the murdered. That made the top suspects a zarbalath, a Great Wolf, or maybe one of the parasitic thansaelasavi, because even the cursory investigations indicated that the killer wasn't always the same size, or maybe even shape. So it was either a shapeshifter itself, or it was able to steal other people's shapes, maybe make them forget what happened while under control."

"Or had magic to change its shape," Urelle pointed out. "If a mage like me, or worse, a spirit-mage wanted to do those kinds of things, they could do it."

Ingram shuddered, looking at Urelle and suddenly envisioning the delicate-seeming Vantage girl with a cold, deadly smile. "Yeah, I suppose so." He looked down for a moment, stirred the pot in front of him. "So, the investigation finally started, but there didn't seem to be any pattern in it other than that young children were being targeted. At least, not until the Camp-Bels got involved. We have some really powerful … thinking machines, I guess you can call them, left from Rhyme and Reason, and some of the Captain's Crew are trained to use them."

"I could hear the capitals in that. What's the Captain's Crew?" Urelle asked.

"Oh, they're … the inner circle, is the best way to put it. They're handpicked by the Captain to take the traditional roles of the Crew of Rhyme and Reason, and they get access to the secret manuals and such to learn those roles, and how to operate all the remaining tech – much better than any of the rest of us. Which makes sense, there's not that much of it and a lot of it is pretty delicate." He frowned, rewound the conversation in his head.

"So anyway, no one outside of the Captain's Crew knew the actual details, but they somehow got the thinking machines to analyze all the information on the killer, his victims, and so on, and it suddenly told them what the pattern was, and where the killer would strike next, a house with twin babies, a boy and a girl. The Camp-Bels went to stake out the house, set up a perimeter … and found out a few seconds too late that the killer was already inside."

Despite nerving himself up for this story, he found he couldn't continue.

"I believe I see," Quester said. "One of the twins was killed. The other survived. And that was you."

He nodded, took a breath, forced himself to go on. "My twin sister was killed, and I would've been dead a split second later if … if my … if the people who raised me hadn't stopped my natural father from tearing me apart."

"Your father was the killer?"

"It was a zarbalath, one of the parasitic demons who lives on fear, pain, and the souls of the weak and young. It had been possessing people, passed from one to the other. And by then it was very strong. The house was destroyed, my natural mother was already dead, and my natural father died in the battle."

He managed a sour smile. "From the Camp-Bel point of view, it was hardly a victory at all. We'd had all the information, but had failed to secure the home properly. Now they had an orphaned child with no close relatives, one orphaned due to their errors. The fact that I would've been dead without their intervention was the only bright spot in it. So, they took me in, made me one of them, as the only apology they could give to the dead."

"Oh," Urelle said. "And that's why you've said you aren't a 'real' Camp-Bel."

"Right. I am not descended of those who first took the oath to the Lady, I'm not of the Starblooded – I mean, maybe there's some in me, maybe not, but no way to be sure. The point is that I couldn't match up to my brothers and sisters who were really part of the Clan. Berenike did her best to help me, but I knew I'd never measure up. So, I figured I could join the new army; I was better than their regular recruits, that was for sure.

"Father forbade it, and made me promise I wouldn't go behind his back. Got the Captain herself to come down and take my oath on it. I couldn't believe it!"

He felt the incredulous anger rising again. "I mean, sure, if they had some real use for me it'd have made sense, but they didn't! Even when every single person from my cohort got an assignment, they had nothing for me!" His voice was louder, sharper, almost shouting, even though he was trying to keep control. "They wouldn't even let me bodyguard some minor noble in Amoni Agapis, and no one even thought there'd be combat in that city."

Urelle's huge gray eyes looked at him, filled with sympathy, and he couldn't meet that gaze, not now, not with anger, pique, and shame filling him, so he looked down. "So, I was almost the only person left in the Clanhold my age. Except Berenike, but she had to spend most of her time training for her ascension. She'd stop by when she could, though, until…" He stopped. "Eh. That's enough."

Victoria was looking at him with an appraising glance. "That is upsetting. And, I will say, suggestive."

"Suggestive?" Of all the words she might have said, that wasn't one he'd have expected.

"Oh, most suggestive. Of what I am not sure, but I do, indeed, find it difficult to believe that they would prevent you from serving in any capacity. Unless your Clan is particularly arbitrary and unreasonable?"

"Not … particularly, I wouldn't think," he said after a moment's thought. "But—"

"No 'but,' I think. I have never met another Camp-Bel in person, so I cannot speak to how great the disparity between you and they might be. However, I cannot believe that one of your talents would not have been used for some purpose. The fact that they did not … suggests that they had some very strong reason for keeping you where you were."

"But why?" The question burst from him with a startling flare of desperate, tragic need. "WHY?"

Victoria spread her hands. "That … as of yet … I cannot say."

"But," Quester said, "we may well be on our way to find out. Perhaps that 'why' was exactly the reason your recall message has been following you for two years."

Ingram froze. The thought of … an explanation, a reason, of finding out from his mother and father that it wasn't just that he was a failure and embarrassment, just something kept from obligation and guilt … it filled him with a longing so intense that for an instant he could not breathe.

But he swallowed that longing, denied the desire. What he wanted didn't matter. What mattered was the truth.

So, all he said was "Perhaps."

 

 

The post GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 12 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 11

Well, our group's all together and it's time we learned something about what's actually going on here!

-----

 

Chapter 11.

Urelle studied Ingram out of the corner of her eye as they walked. He was silent when not talking, and his feet would glide over the forest floor, hardly displacing a single leaf, lifting up and over or around even the smallest branches without, as far as she could tell, even looking at them. Even walking next to him she had to strain to hear the faintest whisper of sound from his passage; she sounded like a blundering ralangas by comparison. She tried to imitate the motion, but despite the training she'd had from Lythos, it was much harder than it looked.

He noticed, and smiled. "Took me a long time to learn. Longer than my instructors liked."

"How long?"

"About … um, six months. But that was with a lot of other stuff. If that was the only thing I'd had to learn, I probably would have got it down in two months." He watched her for a moment. "You'll probably figure it out in one. You've got a touch for it."

"Really?" The question was accompanied by a particularly loud snap! from a twig beneath her feet. She grinned and raised a wry eyebrow. "I mean, really?"

Ingram's laugh was light and sunny. "You'll make more noise before you make less, I'll promise you. Not that it matters that much as long as we're talking."

"I noticed that sometimes when you and Quester were patrolling … you know, when we were coming to Zarathanton … you were so silent that I wouldn't have known either of you were there without looking, and then sometimes one or the other of you would just move over to meet the other, as though you had said something. But you hadn't."

He nodded, slowly. "I guess you would have, at that. Quester … he gave me a great honor, about a year ago, after I ended up getting hurt badly defending him. He accepted me as part of his Nest."

She glanced back at the tall, angular figure of the Iriistiik. "But his Nest was destroyed, right?" she said in low tones.

"Apparently the Mother told him that so long as he existed, so would the Nest. Anyway, it's more than a formality. He … well, we can speak now, mind-to-mind, when we want to."

"Wow." She thought about that. It was certainly a convenient talent, especially for two Adventurers who might need to stay dead-silent but still communicate … but linking one mind to another must also come with some risks. "You both must trust each other a lot."

"I would trust Quester if he told me I had to jump off a cliff without a second look," Ingram said bluntly. "And I'm pretty sure he'd do the same for me."

"Naturally," the Iriistiik said. "I can glide."

Ingram burst out laughing.

"But," Quester admitted, "I would also trust you if you said to leap into a raging torrent, and I have no particular ability to swim." He tilted his head.

Ingram's eyes went distant for a moment, then he shook his head. "We're companions all now," he said. "Ask aloud, if you have a question."

Quester clicked assent. "Then, yes, I have a question. There have been a few times in our association where you have mentioned … a reserve, a backup, a hidden card, so to speak. Yet I saw no such in the moment we were captured, nor afterwards."

Ingram gave an embarrassed smile. "Well … yeah. I have to know the danger I'm in, be able to focus on it, and it has to be pretty immediate. Plus I don't know if I can call on … my backup, so to speak … more than once. Maybe I can, but I sure don't want to if I can avoid it." He looked around at all of them. "Sorry to sound mysterious, but it's a secret."

"I have heard of similar things," Victoria said. "Bargains made, debts owed by beings of power that can be repaid by a single service. Just do not fall into the most common trap of such weapons of extremity."

Ingram looked at her curiously. "And that is…"

She smiled. "Telling yourself that there could always be a worse extremity, so that you never dare use it at all."

Urelle saw a startled expression cross Ingram's face. Apparently, he'd never thought of it that way. "Auntie's seen a lot, and she's got a lot of good advice."

"She has, indeed." Ingram paused and turned so that he could bow deeply to Victoria. "Words of wisdom that I will heed … and should have remembered; my people called it the parable of the Always-Worse. Though of course, one doesn't wish to use such reserves too casually, either."

"As with all things, young Ingram, it is a matter of balance," Victoria said.

After a moment, Urelle looked back to the lavender-haired boy. "I think … Ingram, whatever's going on, it's clearly tangled up with Aegeia and your Cycle, right?"

"I don't see any way around that, no. How you outsiders connect to it, I don't know, but my recall, these people hunting us, it's pretty clear there's some kind of connection."

"Then can't you tell us something about Aegeia and its Cycle? I don't really know much about it at all, and from what Auntie has said, I don't think she knows much more than I do."

"No," admitted Victoria. "Aegeia is a strong ally of the State of the Dragon King, and by extension of Evanwyl, but she has always been a fairly private one. So yes, I too, would like to hear what you could tell, Ingram."

"As would I," Quester said. That startled Urelle; she'd assumed Quester already knew everything about Ingram and his people. "You have always been kind and generous with everything … except your past. You speak little of it, or of your people. You are clearly still proud to be of your Clan … yet you were also ashamed, as though you knew yourself to be unworthy. That … discussion you recounted to me explained some, but not nearly all."

Ingram was silent for so long that Urelle started to wonder if he was going to reply at all.

Finally, he sighed. "Yes. Yes, of course, you all deserve to know as much as I can tell you."

"First, understand that the Camp-Bels themselves are kind of outsiders. They entered into the middle of one of the Cycles some time back, when the Founder's ship had crashed and the survivors found themselves here. So the history I've been taught … well, it's through the lens of the Camp-Bel's experiences."

He reached into his pack, brought out the small, oblong object Urelle had seen him using on occasion during their travels. "This datapad holds a lot of records of … well, lots of things, including copies of some of the notes made by other Camp-Bels through the years, so with that, the public history, and what I've seen and heard, I've put together a lot of it.

"Way back … quite a few Chaoswars … the Aegei, the gods of Aegeia, had some kind of major discussion that almost culminated in direct conflict. The Highfather and Highmother together noticed something about the way their conflict and its reflection in their worshippers in Aegeia interacted with the powers of the world, and 'saw both great peril and great promise.' They studied and conferred, and they saw that when God and Mortal were associated in the same undertakings, in just the right way, it created…"

He hesitated, squinting at the screen. "Created a sort of resonance, a reinforcing power that not only supported the mortals and helped guide and strengthen them, but that within the area dominated by the gods – Wisdom's Fortress, as we call it today – the powers and memories and wisdom of the gods were also strengthened."

"In what way?" Victoria asked. "Not the mechanics – I'm sure that's not something the gods let someone write down – but what was the assistance granted?"

"For the worshippers and those around them? The best way to describe it is that it clarified things. If the gods played out their debates in a way that involved mortals, the mortals' worship and belief cycled back to help them learn the lessons and return them to the mortals as well. So, lessons of passion and justice, of courage and strategy, of heroism and compassion versus treachery and cruelty, these became ingrained in the population, and the increased focus and belief of the mortals strengthened the gods."

He looked around at them, then realized they'd stopped moving. "Come on, I know it's hard for me to discuss this while walking, but we can't stop yet." He looked back down at the faintly-glowing device. "For the gods, it's said that one of the major benefits was that it weakened the effect of the Chaoswars. That's why the Lady Herself is often consulted by even vastly more powerful gods, because she will know and remember things wiped from the minds of even the ancient and mighty."

Victoria's eyebrow rose. "Are you saying that the Lady knows what happened during all the Chaoswars since their Cycles began?"

"Not everything. But she will recall more, and more clearly, than the others. Apparently nothing can fully overcome the effect of a Chaoswar – it is said that even the Wanderer himself is not entirely clear on the events that have passed two Chaoswars ago – but some can mitigate the effects, and that is what the Cycle does for the Aegei."

"Why Athena and Ares?" Urelle asked. "I admit I don't know details of your people's beliefs, but they're both war gods. Ares is the violent one who likes fighting and bloodshed, and Athena's the wise strategist, so I see there's a conflict there, but why not Aphrodite versus Athena or Ares or…" she trailed off, seeing Ingram's pained expression. "Sorry. Did I say something bad?"

Ingram bit his lip. "Not … bad. Just … uninformed? Ares isn't like that. Well, he can be – in some Cycles that's his persona – but really, he's more about passion. Sure, that can express as hatred and bloodlust, but it can also be courage, the burning desire to protect someone, the fierce determination to achieve a dream. Athena is about wisdom, about consideration, about analysis and strategy and tactics. But that can be destructive too – you can wisely and passionlessly decide that some course of action will work out best in the long run, and thus it's perfectly okay to, say, kill these five thousand people."

He put the datapad away. "So … my best guess – and it's just my guess, along with a few things I heard in Temples along the way – is that because Ares and Athena both touch on war and strife, but have such different approaches, that they made a perfect choice for a Cycle that could be constrained within Wisdom's Fortress and used to teach reinforcing lessons on balancing passion and calcuation, emotion and thought, all that kind of thing."

"But I've heard there's actual wars fought during your Cycles! I mean, real ones, with armies and people fighting on both sides and dying and all that! Every Cycle! How can the people believe in gods that use them for, what, moral plays?"

She was stunned when Ingram began laughing. "Hey! It's not funny! Fighting wars as object lessons, killing people—"

He held up a hand. "Please, hold on." He stopped laughing and his face became serious. "You know, of course, that death is not the end. Right?"

"Well … that's what we believe," Urelle said after a hesitation. "Myrionar has Its world beyond this one, where those who are Its true followers will live again, to be reborn here or to live forever in the realm of the god Itself. But … well, I don't know anyone who's been there and back."

"I have seen a few," Victoria said unexpectedly. "Those who had fallen and were given the chance to return to this world, to complete that which they had left behind. Yes, this life is not the only one."

"Then understand that those who fall – or even those merely injured – in the Godswar are honored beyond all others," Ingram said earnestly. "They are the teachers of the lessons of the gods, and the students as well, who give their pain and lives for the sake of all. Their souls are gathered – each to the realm of the god they serve – and rewarded greatly for such selfless service, even if they themselves did not understand it at the time. They will see their families and friends again – perhaps returned to this world when the Cycle has completed, or perhaps when their families and friends have themselves passed on to be re-united with their loved ones."

Urelle looked at his face, and the violet eyes that shone with a startling faith. "You really believe that."

"I do," he said, without hesitation. Then he did hesitate before speaking again. "I wanted to be a God-Warrior myself. I really wanted to. It was my childhood dream, the daydream I had every day. I trained as a Camp-Bel … but I also tried to train as though I'd be a God-Warrior, as though I might one day be good enough to be a vessel of the power of the Lady." He flushed with obvious embarrassment. "I knew it wasn't possible, of course, but I dreamed about it anyway."

"Why wasn't it possible?" Quester asked. "God-Warriors are trained mortals, are they not?"

"Well … yes, of course they are." He rolled his eyes. "But the Lady's God-Warriors, the Spear and the Shield, they're, well, women. Not men. And I knew … I grew up with … one of the ones destined to be hers. Even when we were little children, we knew Berenike would have to be the Spear of Athena."

His face shone as he pronounced his childhood friend's name. Urelle felt a twinge at the sight, but couldn't quite identify it. "What about the other gods? Do they have God-Warriors? Do they get involved?"

"Oh, all of them have their own representatives and God-Warriors, yes – Hephaestus' Hammer and Anvil, Aphrodite's Mirror, Ares' Sword and Chariot, all of them. They take sides during each Cycle. Usually it's the same ones on each side, but that can change depending on the, um … roles that Ares and Athena play."

"So, you could have trained to be a God-Warrior for another god?"

"I could … but Athena's the Camp-Bel's patron, though we've worked well for people on all sides." He was quiet for a moment. "But this isn't about my childhood. Basically, what you need to know is that the country goes through this upheaval every several centuries, generally after all the cities of the gods have broken away from Aegis, Athena's city, and become independent. This leads to various conflicts that end up drawing Ares out, sometimes to try to resolve them, sometimes to take advantage of them to lead to conquest, whatever. Ultimately, Athena opposes him, there's lots of dramatic conflict, and Ares is defeated – often by Athena herself, but sometimes by the God-Warriors taking him on. A few times, Ares has surrendered, and in at least one Cycle Athena was the villain of the piece and Ares defeated her and ruled Aegis and the rest of Aegeia until the next Cycle."

Urelle shook her head. "It seems … a pretty crazy way to run a country to me, but if your people are okay with it, I guess I can't argue."

They walked in silence for a while.

"We're taking one of the more difficult routes," Victoria pointed out at last. "I understand your orders told you to avoid the more traveled, but it will take us considerable time to get there if we must walk through the wilderness."

"Can't be helped," Ingram said. "If we take any of the easier routes, not only will it be easier for our hunters to find us, but we'll also be more likely to put other people in danger. Imagine being on one of the ships going down the Great River and then having one or more of these groups ambushing us. I can't risk things like that."

He looked over at Urelle. "I'm hoping you really can do something about those Coins."

She looked down at the two glittering golden Shields in her hand. "So do I."

The complexities of Aegeia washed over her with the worry about these people coming perhaps from all directions, seeking them. She imagined Ingram's scenario, a battle on a ship as it drifted down the river, or what might happen if they traveled with a caravan down one of the Great Roads. But with those images, inspiration suddenly struck her. "You know what? I think I can." As the idea grew, became more detailed, she found herself laughing. "I'm sure I can! When we camp, I'll show you!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post GODSWAR: The Mask of Ares, Chapter 11 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.