Tenth moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus
Five miles from Deep Forest, Wheat Lands
The moment had been everything he’d been praying for these last months – a return to the Dark Lady’s embrace – and yet nothing like he’d expected. It was early, for a start, far earlier than Corvus had anticipated, and if not for that bastard Koridam, he’d have been there to witness it, to see Rill give birth to a life that would become divine. But that he was not there was ordained, as were all the actions of a life dedicated to the gods. The Lady’s will.
The sense of Her return had grown through the night, a looming glory that lifted the hearts and spirits of the faithful so that they barely slept behind the protective ditch and wall thrown up by the East Rank. And the enemy knew what was happening, too, for they didn’t attack that night as they had every other night, didn’t pick off sentries or sabotage the palisade, steal inside to kill.
And then dawn, and triumph, the culmination of the Blessed One’s plans. The glory of their Bloody Mother filling every heart and soul with adoration, with awe and worship and completion.
And then the fall. Rejection and panic, rage and possession, and behind them to the southeast, a storm gathering black and brooding and pregnant with madness.
The Dark Lady’s presence, Her pure and guiding presence, was muted, blurred, mixed like paint with another, the jealous and fearful and angry – so angry! – essence of Holy Gosfath, until they couldn’t feel either god distinctly, just a roiling maelstrom of rage and vengeance and lust. They were neither uplifted in adulation nor strengthened with holy purpose. Instead, they were battered and bludgeoned with divine rage, divine pain.
Under the clear sky of Rilpor, the army of the faithful knelt in concentric circles around a small knot of men at the centre: Corvus, Fost and Tett, the surviving or promoted war chiefs, General Baron of the East Rank and his most devoted officers, all of them anointed war priests, as Corvus himself was, all lending their faith and discipline to his as he strove to discover the cause of the gods’ fury, the gods’ … merging.
He focused his breath and his mind on Them, seeking, trying to understand the confusion of impressions and emotions that battered at them, to see through it to the gods Themselves, here in Gilgoras. Here in Rilpor. It may just take time for Her to settle, to come to understand the limits and abilities of Her new form. A day or so, no more, with the Blessed One there to guide Her.
An intruder ripped into his mind, enveloping him in a hot, sticky rush of confused emotion. Men cried out in consternation and disgust, in fear, as a slick and oily wetness curled into their heads as it did his, a dripping anger bound up with need and awash with lunacy sliding through their thoughts, searching, picking at them, picking them apart. Part of him knew who it belonged to, but he wouldn’t – couldn’t – accept the name his mind supplied. It wasn’t Her. This was not Her.
Corvus clenched his fists as it touched him, as it rummaged in his head, a hunger to it that only made its touch the viler. It didn’t want him, it didn’t care for him – it needed something from him, but neither he nor it knew what.
Corvus groaned, pawing at the air to push away the web of madness that clung and stuck, that he inhaled with every breath.
Cries of distress and disgust rang across the camp as the worm in Corvus’s head writhed faster, harder, bloated with his memories, with parts of him that it chewed away from the rest and swallowed. It was getting angry now as whatever it looked for inside them it failed to find, angry and more desperate, its rummaging careless, harmful. A man in the third ring out collapsed, a spontaneous nosebleed erupting, pouring crimson down his face as he coughed and choked.
Corvus had the briefest glimpse of … something, something that couldn’t possibly be his beloved gods, couldn’t even be alive. Some amalgam of his memories, perhaps, but he didn’t believe his own lie. Multiple arms and screaming mouths, eyes misaligned and bulging mad, spine bent this way and that and … bunches of red and black tentacles whipping above its head from the weeping, broken flesh in its back.
‘You contacted a monster,’ someone shouted; he couldn’t see who. ‘What have you done? What have you done?’
Corvus dropped forward on to his hands and vomited, trying to push the image from his head as all around him his army did the same, rejecting with frantic force the thing twisting through their thoughts. Malice and lust and vengeance and the urge to kill exploded inside him, so thick he could almost taste it, viscous as phlegm.
It was not in Holy Gosfath’s nature to concern Himself with the goings-on of mortals: He feasted when blood and flesh were offered; as Lord of War he lent strength to His armies, but He did not often grace Gilgoras with His presence. But as the worm writhed faster, Corvus began to see Him in there, entwined around and through and within the Dark Lady. They were both there, both inside him at once. His gods. The only gods, joined as They never had been before.
And They were angry.
Corvus wiped a string of drool from his chin and raised his arms to the sky, knowing what had to be done, knowing that victory lay in embracing the madness, that to reject it was to know the void. She was back and he would worship Her. Nothing else mattered but to do Her will.
‘Dark Lady, beautiful goddess of death and fear, you are returned to us. I feel you in the wind and in me, and I rejoice, for we have missed the glory of your touch.’
The part of him that stood separate in the back of his mind didn’t rejoice; it cowered, hands over its head, praying for the monster to go away. Corvus ignored it and Fost’s abject terror. If the gods were angry, Corvus would placate Them. That was the way of things. It didn’t matter what the gods looked like now: They were still his gods. He repeated that over and over, convincing himself, or trying to.
‘Holy Gosfath, God of Blood, of war and mutilation, you are reunited with your Sister-Lover, made whole by Her return. I feel you in the wind and in me, and I rejoice, for we have missed the power of your divine battle lust.’
Against the odds, despite every obstacle, every moment of indecision or lack of faith, the Blessed One had done it. She’d brought the Dark Lady back to them. She’d reunited Her with Gosfath, together for eternity as one all-powerful being, unstoppable. Corvus vomited again, unable to stop himself. He spat to clear his mouth and made himself stand and face his army.
‘Together for eternity,’ he shouted. ‘The gods are returned, to Gilgoras, to each other, and to us. Holy Gosfath, Dark Lady, we are your children, we do your will, satisfy your desires. For you, we march to war. For you, we will destroy our enemies and offer their blood and meat for your rejoicing.’
He gestured at the others and the chorus was ragged, unsure. But it was there. ‘Our feet are on the Path!’
Corvus shook his fists at the sky. ‘Our feet are on the Path. The Path to war!’ he screamed and this time they stood and roared it back at him, the chant growing into thunder as they drank the horror like sweet poison.
He didn’t wait for them, just headed for the gap in the palisade and the long, stubbled fields that led to Mace Koridam and his ragtag army. His gods were back and Their rage filled his head and heart. The madness of battle was a madness he could understand and he embraced it with something like relief.
Bloodlust shook him, his own and the gods’, and it rose like a tide to consume every doubt, drown every image in his head. It flooded across them all, the need to kill for the gods, the need to wipe the stain of Light from the land, and his army didn’t hesitate, rippling over the ditch and wall, madness and rage speeding their feet to the final confrontation.
The gods demanded blood, and gladly Corvus would give it to Them.