Reckoning of Fallen Gods, Page 3

  They say and it’s been told that god’s dragon will eat the sun. And he will give it back, in golden light, to shine upon the Xoconai.

  The short night passes, and the golden gift of the dragon so ends the long night. And each day in the golden light, will we know the glory of god shines upon us. And calls us to war, great war, the end war, and heralds then peace for a thousand years.

  The time of the Xoconai. Glory be to Scathmizzane.

  He who gave us Teotl Tenamitl, that on the sunset slopes, the lands of Tyuskixmal, we would find sanctuary against the darkness.

  He who raised high the mountain parapet, the castle wall, to keep the foul men and goblins at bay.

  * * *

  They say and it’s been told that the dragon will come when the wide-winged totot are few in the west, for the high lakes of Tyuskixmal have dried. But the great waters of Ayuskixmal, the sunrise slopes, remain, over the parapet of Teotl Tenamitl.

  This time is now, and we are called to Ayuskixmal.

  There in the lands of men, our half-kin are slaughtered. The bastard children of Scathmizzane, crushed now beneath the boots of men, will find vengeance and then peace. We are called to accept them and nurture them, and offer purity in their sacrifice that the blood of Cizinfozza be excised from them. And they will repay our mercy and lead us to the sea in the east.

  * * *

  They say and it’s been told that in the west we will gather, and from the west we will march. The augurs will be the eyes, mundunugu the heart, anqui hunters the belly, macana the arms, cuetzpali the legs.

  We will scale the parapets of Teotl Tenamitl and there beyond clear the Ayuskixmal, the eastern slopes, of canker’s buds.

  And from the mesa shoulders of the deep lake of the water dragon, we see the land before us, far and long to the east, and we look then upon the wide nation that will be ours once more.

  There we welcome the bastard children of god. And we teach them and let them run before us to take their vengeance and mark our march.

  The men will think their lands safe, but they will be wrong.

  For then they will see the beautiful and terrible glory of the Xoconai.

  * * *

  They say and it’s been told that the dragon sun will melt the gold, and the Xoconai will build their temples of it. The ugly gray stone of men will shine with brilliance when the Xoconai remake their castles to see the light, to shine like the dragon sun.

  No more will those fortresses insult the eyes and weaken the heart. No more will they be thick and dark, for what need of wide walls when all the land is Xoconai? And in these thousand years of peace, the greatest weapon will be the dagger of sacrifice to the Glorious Gold, for under His light the enemies of Xoconai will hide in dark holes and there remain. Except a few, of course, to test our love, and these we will catch and give to Him.

  * * *

  They say and it’s been told that Tonoloya, the empire of the Xoconai, will see the fiery orb of Tonalli awaken and climb from the sea, and then calm her fires and go back to her sleep beneath the wave, and all the lands in between will know peace and love.

  And in the east, we will cheer the waking Tonalli.

  And in the west, we will cheer the Tonalli before she settles to sleep.

  And the children of the lands in between will salute the passage, and exalt in the prayers of the east and the west.

  * * *

  I am old now and I have said farewell. The riches of the world fly away one by one as I enter the shadow willingly. A shadow that darkens without, but brightens within. In my death, I see the freedom and the birth of that which will be.

  And that is glorious.

  —The Last Augur of Darkness

  1

  BLOODY WITCH

  Work about the Usgar encampment increased that surprisingly warm late-summer day, as the tribe prepared to make the move to their winter sanctuary. While most of the creatures living on the huge mountain would sleep the winter in deep holes, or would migrate down further to the plateau, the Usgar tribe moved opposite, climbing to the mountain heights as winter neared. There, on the small meadow beyond the pine grove that housed their winter camp, they would be protected from the cold winds and deep snows by the warmth of Usgar, the Crystal God.

  The winter was the time of peace for the tribe, when the hunters and warriors could rest, when all the world about them slept under a thick blanket of unrelenting snow.

  But now of course was the time of preparation, filling stores and packing the tents to prepare for the great trek up Fireach Speuer’s steep trails. Many years in this season, the tribe would launch a large raid upon the villages on the lakeshore below, but not this year, particularly not after the events of the previous night.

  “It does not explain,” said Mairen, the Usgar-righinn, or Crystal Maven, of the tribe, who led the Coven of witches and so was considered the most powerful woman among the Usgar.

  “It is all the explanation you need,” replied the warrior, Aghmor, mustering all the strength he could to show confidence in his impertinent reply. He had been summoned to Mairen’s tent immediately upon his return to the encampment, taken by the arm by the witch Connebragh and tugged along unceremoniously before the eyes of many onlookers.

  For all his anger at the indignity of being paraded about by a mere woman, though, Aghmor was well aware of the power of the one now standing before him. It didn’t seem a wise thing to him to deceive, and to insult, the Usgar-righinn, after all, who was powerful in the ways of Usgar magic.

  But it seemed more foolhardy still to cross Tay Aillig, the Usgar-laoch, the War Leader, and the cruel man’s instructions had been clear.

  “Elder Raibert is soon to arrive,” Aghmor announced.

  “You disturbed the Usgar-forfach?” Connebragh asked with a gasp.

  Mairen held her hand up before the other woman to bid her to silence.

  “What do you know of Ralid, who is not in the camp, and rumored to be wandering about the lower hills of Fireach Speuer?” Mairen asked.

  Aghmor just shook his head.

  “What do you know of Aoleyn, who is not in the camp this morning?” she asked more sharply.

  Again, he shook his head, and this time he lifted his palms helplessly.

  “Why were they out on the night of Iseabal’s bloody face?” Mairen asked, referring to the goddess associated with the red moon, the Blood Moon.

  “We do not know why,” Aghmor replied.

  “If you know so little, then why did you travel to the sacred plateau to speak with the Usgar-forfach?”

  “I … I…”

  When he had felt cornered earlier, Aghmor had thought himself quite clever in invoking the Usgar-forfach, the tribe’s Elder who was once the Chieftain, who remained in the winter encampment all through the year. In truth and tradition, Mairen ranked below all the men of the tribe. In practice, however, only a handful of Usgar men dared cross her.

  Aghmor had to hope that the fact that he had gone to fetch Raibert at the behest of Tay Aillig would be a warning to Mairen that she should take great care in scolding him. He was not acting on his own, but with the apparent blessings of the two most important and powerful men in Usgar.

  “Where are they and why were they out of the camp?” Mairen asked evenly, her face a stern mask, unyielding and unbending and so unlike the other women of Usgar.

  “We’re not knowing that they’re out of the camp at all,” Aghmor lied, and stammered, feeling as if he was standing on muddy ground indeed.

  Mairen nodded and put on a pensive face. She turned to Connebragh and asked, “Sister, how long would it take you, do you think, to get to the winter plateau?”

  Aghmor began nodding, too, his mind immediately beginning to calculate the hours for such a journey up the mountainside. As soon as he had started that mental task, however, he caught on to Mairen’s true question here, and he was sure that his subsequent gulp was heard quite clearly.

  “Half the night,” Connebrag
h replied, both she and Mairen looking to the warrior.

  “Not quite as long to return, unless one took care in the dark, don’t you think?” Mairen asked, and it was unclear as to whether she was speaking to Connebragh or Aghmor—not that it mattered, in any case, for the point of the question was certainly aimed at her knowing target.

  “I am swift,” Aghmor stuttered under the weight of those two gazes. “That is why Tay Aillig asked…”

  “The sun is recently up above the wide shoulders of Fireach Speuer. The noon hour is only just passed,” Mairen interrupted. “You went up the mountainside to speak with Elder Raibert as soon as we were done with Tay Aillig this morn.”

  “Yes.”

  “But how could he know then where Ralid might be?” Mairen asked, and when Aghmor didn’t immediately respond, she went at him more forcefully. “You, too, were out last night, under Iseabal’s bloody face. The night of the demon fossa. You were out—you were all out.”

  “I was with the Usgar-laoch,” Aghmor stuttered, not wanting to admit anything, not sure where all of this was going. “He is War Leader. I cannot question…”

  “Where?” Mairen said directly, and poor Aghmor swallowed hard.

  * * *

  Whispers sifted through the Usgar encampment that day, as news began to spread that members of the tribe were missing—although of the actual number being reported absent Usgar found a wide range indeed among the gossiping men and women, and particularly the children, who carried the news from one group to another, from the workers bundling supplies to the many guards posted this day, seemingly on every high rock jag and in the branches of all the tallest trees.

  The warrior Aghmor had been rumored to be dead throughout most of the morning, and the whispers of his demise persisted even after he had returned. Ralid, too, was missing and rumored killed—some said it was a bear that had finished the poor young warrior, but those who believed they knew better insisted that it had to be the demon fossa. “For didn’t you see the Blood Moon last night?” went the refrain whenever whispers of a more mundane death, like the notion of a bear, were spoken.

  Whatever might be transpiring on the slopes of Fireach Speuer outside the camp, emotions were certainly running high within. The Usgar-laoch, Tay Aillig, was also missing, and although many had seen him leave earlier that very morning and he had apparently made no secret of his departure, the rumors were stubborn things. By early afternoon, most of the camp was certain that he’d been eaten by the fossa during the Blood Moon the previous night.

  Gradually, though, the known truth had begun to win out, but that truth, too, did not inspire ease in the camp. The great Tay Aillig, the Usgar-laoch of the tribe, had been chased home after a losing battle with a great mountain bear, it was said, a defeat that had left a promising warrior, the missing Ralid, fending for himself on the lower slopes.

  It was confirmed, too, that another of the tribe was missing as well: that headstrong young woman who had been named to enter the Coven, and who had been claimed as wife of Tay Aillig.

  “Usgar-laoch is out searching for her,” many claimed.

  “He is desperate to find her!” others agreed.

  “But he was out last night, too, I’ve heard,” some chimed in, and with an edge of suspicion to the words. And the whispers grew, hinting that Tay Aillig had been angry with Aoleyn.

  The gossip grew even more intense and suspicious-sounding when word came down that the great Usgar-forfach, Elder Raibert, was coming down from the high plateau this day, something that had not occurred in the memory of half the tribe.

  Like most people in an environment as harsh as Fireach Speuer, the Usgar survived through ritual and tried tradition. So many anomalies in so short a time caused great stress among them, for the credo of life in a land unmerciful and with dangers unrelenting went along the lines of: “I did this yesterday and so I am alive today. If I do it again today, I will be alive tomorrow.”

  Adding to all of that tension, yet another very recent incident already had many people unsettled, for Aoleyn’s expected ascent to the Coven had been facilitated by a tragic accident that had killed another witch, the poor woman fumbling with her magical crystals, her spell failing, leaving her to plummet to her death from a cliff. And of course, the previous night had seen the Blood Moon, the night of the demon fossa. The Usgar were the most powerful warriors in the region, feared by all.

  But they, too, remained humbled by the demon fossa, and when the full moon shined red, when Iseabal showed her bloody face, they wisely cowered.

  Not the previous night, however, not for all of the tribe, at least, and now they feared that they had suffered more losses. The Usgar were not numerous, less than three hundred strong, and every loss was painful.

  The palpable nervousness wafting about the encampment showed itself in the fast-turned heads and gasps when a cry went out from a sentry on a high rocky jag further up the mountain. All the whispers began coalescing around that call, and all eyes moved to the indicated trail, winding down from higher up Fireach Speuer, beside some huge stones to the southeast of the camp.

  A lone figure came into view soon after, far away, but a human figure, surely. From this point to the top of the great mountain was Usgar territory, where no lakemen ventured, and so the first murmurs spoke of Elder Raibert, the only tribesman known to be higher up the mountain at that time.

  But no, it was a woman, walking not in the shaky gait of an elderly Usgar, but with confidence in her stride.

  The calls and alerts and the cries for “arms!” died out quickly when the sentry who had first spotted the arrival called out that it was Aoleyn of the Usgar.

  Nervous whispers became those of relief for many, of consternation against the young woman—how dare she go out on the night of the Blood Moon?—for many others. Aoleyn’s reputation was already that of a free spirit, and that was no compliment. She was constantly battling against the leaders of the tribe, and against the dedication to order that had sustained Usgar as the dominant force on the plateau beyond the memories of any living man.

  And still she had been chosen by Usgar-righinn Mairen to join the Coven, and more remarkably still, by Usgar-laoch Tay Aillig to be his wife!

  The gossip flew on, growing in strength and salacious detail, when the distant figure dipped out of sight, below a bend in the trail.

  The people in the camp could no longer see her, but a pair of sentries in a blind beside the trail east of the camp noted her clearly enough to see that Aoleyn was covered in blood, her hair matted with the stuff, her shirt torn ragged, her shoes crusted.

  So much blood! And though her gait was determined and steady, she was leaning a bit to one side, where much of her clothing had been fully torn away.

  “Go fetch Tay Aillig,” one of the watchers said.

  “He is not to be found,” answered his partner. “He departed camp soon after speaking with the Usgar-righinn.”

  The other man nodded. “Then fetch Mairen,” he decided. “The Crystal Maven can heal the girl, if there be great wounds beneath the shreds.”

  “Aye, and decide what’s to be done with the lass, leaving like that,” said the other. “She can’no enter the camp—none can, on Tay Aillig’s word.”

  The other man nodded, and the sentry ran off to fetch Mairen.

  The remaining man shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t know this unusual young woman very well—unusual both in temperament, if the rumors were true, and in appearance, as he could see by his own eyes. She was curvy and quite short, the top of her raven-haired head barely touching the chin of most Usgar women. And while dark hair was not unheard of in the tribe, it was not typical, and Aoleyn’s was as dark as a moonless midnight.

  As were her eyes, black eyes, eyes that seemed to look through him, he thought, and would surely see through any lies or foolishness. And that crooked smile she so often wore—he had seen it many times from across the camp. Perhaps it was an honest smile, but to him it seemed one rooted in Aoleyn’s
belief that she knew things others did not.

  “Loving the look of herself,” he whispered, and aye, that was it. For to his thinking, this young Aoleyn wore upon her a confidence few warriors might match, and that no woman should even attempt.

  If all of that wasn’t imposing enough to the warrior, he reminded himself that this was Tay Aillig’s wife, for some reason no one seemed to understand.

  Now he was tasked with stopping this headstrong lass who had the ear and thrall of Tay Aillig.

  “On word of the Usgar-laoch himself,” he said to himself, but not as quietly as he had intended, when he dropped down from the blind to block the path.

  “What word?” she asked, stopping short with obvious surprise.

  “You can’no go in,” the sentry explained. “None are to be entering the camp.”

  Aoleyn put her hand on her hip and gave him that crooked smile of hers, and the sentry hoped she didn’t hear him gulp.

  “Truly?” she asked.

  “Aye,” he said, and he looked up and down at the bloody woman, and thought he noticed something shiny through one of the tears in her shirt, near to her belly button, which remained tantalizingly out of sight. “Are you hurt, then? How can ye not be?”

  “No,” Aoleyn replied, and now she seemed suddenly uncomfortable, and she shifted a bit and brought an arm across her belly, covering up. “And should I tell my husband of your wandering eyes?”

  The sentry swallowed hard again and looked up at her, shaking his head vigorously.

  “I am returning from th’Way,” Aoleyn explained. “I need to change my clothes and wash.”

  “Wash the blood, aye. And how, then, you can’no be hurt?”

  The woman snorted and started past, but the sentry could not ignore the commands of the Usgar-laoch, orders which offered no compromise here. He held out his spear sidelong to block the trail.

  “You can’no go any more.”