9.

 

It was a slow, dark crawl from the bottom of the temple.

Bueralan moved in pitch dark navigating up the dark stairwell; the faint light from fissures in the temple was like the midday’s sun. The strength that he had felt before was gone and the returning pain had almost made him sink to the floor among the dead. He had fallen to his knees before the images of Dark came to him, before the sight of them in Ranan came to him—real or imagined, he did not know. He had groaned as he rose, but had not stopped as he began to walk. His feet touched cold mud before the second set of stairs and he smeared it over his wrists. Scraping his hands and wrists, he pulled himself free from the cuffs that he had worn, cuffs that he wished he had broken when the strength flushed through his body. Slowly, his feet shifting through the glass-ridden mud, he found a broken pew and took a seat. It groaned from his weight, but held. It was not until a moment later that he noticed—thanks to the position of the seat—that the temple had sunk. As he grew accustomed to the light, he saw that faded paintings had fallen, bones shifted and rusted, broken armor had rolled down to the wall. Only the pews, bolted to the floor, had resisted the call and remained perfect in the broken lines.

“Should I thank you, Ger?” His ragged voice echoed, its own answer. “I don’t understand any of what just happened, but I don’t like it. I feel like I was used, that you thrust yourself inside me, that you saw everything about me, everything I’ve done and will do. But I have my freedom and I don’t know that I would have it without you. So I’ll thank you for that, and will be glad that this is the only time a god showed interest in me.”

The temple groaned and sank, the movement startling him.

It was not until he pulled himself out of the temple that he saw the damage around him. The once-placid lake was riddled with stalagmites, the red-lit ceiling having fractured and fallen, leaving lurid lights in the water. The destruction had broken open other parts of the temple, threatening to reveal the rotten wood and cracked brick building, its glass windows broken eyes throughout. But the real damage had been done not to it, but to the floor of the lake beneath. Gazing down as he swam, Bueralan saw the wide, thick fractures in the ground and felt the faint pull of the water as it seeped downward around the building, as the weight of the lake threatened to take both the temple and river downward—down to Ger’s body itself.

There was nothing divine about the destruction. As the saboteur pulled himself up, he saw the top of the cave threaded with cracks and breaks, could smell the powder of explosives: the work of Heast and the two midgets he’d had prepare a series of explosions in the killing ground.

The path he had followed to the temple was impossible now. It had been difficult to climb the first time, but now, with the ceiling fallen over it, Bueralan knew that he would not be able to make his way to the river. Not that he was confident that that was the way he should leave; following the river took him back through the city, through the mining tunnel and to the shaft. If there had been no major damage done to any of those steps before, as there was with the wall he had to climb, there still remained one important fact. Dural had drawn the rope up.

That left him with following the caves out. In the opposite direction he had entered, a dark exit was his only choice.

“I’m keen not to do that swim again,” he had said weeks ago, while standing beside Zaifyr. “But I have no idea where on the mountain this will leave us. It could be anywhere.”

“It could be nowhere,” the other man had replied.

No choice now.

The walk was slow, dark. The only light to guide him came from the carapaces of bugs and stones that glowed red, then green, and which lost their luminosity shortly after he lifted them. It was a barely lit trail, revealing nothing to him of his surroundings, resulting in sharp stones cutting his bare feet, his toes stubbing on rises. But worse were the ditches, the sudden impacts on his spine that he could not avoid. Two ditches dropped him so suddenly that for a moment he thought he was in free fall …

Only to land, hard.

After a while, the need to drink drove him to small recesses of water. He drank from those he could see in the pale light, avoided those he could not. Still, some of what he consumed was fresh, others not. His thirst, his hunger and his muscles kept time, but it was imperfect. He knew he had slept twice, but had no idea for how long. A third time was interrupted by ants crawling over him, biting him. As with the previous times he had slept, he had only sat to gather his strength before rising and continuing onward.

He did not know which sun he saw when he emerged from a cave. Nor did he know where he was. The brightness of the sun blinded him at first, left his sight washed out in gray and white and black, as he adjusted. But when color returned with the heat, there was nothing to indicate how far along the mountain he had gone, or how far down. He assumed he’d come some way, and not just because of the strain on his body. Around him the trees and grass dropped downward, falling in a series of declines that were lost in the thickness of the forest around him.

“You will need shoes to rescue Samuel Orlan.”

He spun to his left, aware that he did not have the strength to fight—

“You should have chased me more.” The old, ragged man from Dirtwater grinned, revealing a mouth of missing teeth. “I would never have led you deep into Ger’s tomb, I promise. But on the other hand, you would not have been touched by a god, and how unique a thing is that now? And by a dead god! A dead god’s touch!”

Dry, raspy, Bueralan muttered, “What are you doing here?”

“I bought you shoes.” The worn but good boots sat next to the old man’s dirty bare feet. “Though I do wonder why I didn’t steal a second pair—I took two horses, after all.” He pushed himself off the fallen tree that he had been sitting on and beckoned for Bueralan to follow. “But maybe there is a system to all of this. One pair of shoes is really two shoes, and two horses are eight legs, and two swords are many deaths. The math really does make complete and utter sense.”

The saboteur said nothing, followed the old man as he rose, holding the boots and leading him through the trees.

“The important thing, however, is that you can now rescue Samuel.” Ahead of the ragged old man, a small clearing appeared. Two horses were staked to the ground, near a saddle, a bedroll, and a bag of supplies. “It’s really against my better nature to do this. I warned him, you know. I told him that we could not engage her. That we had to step away. She was inevitable, of course, the last bit of fate, but he—he said enough of that—”

“Enough of him.” Bueralan opened the pack, found it full of food, water. “He can live or die, it’s of no interest to me. I care only for my own.”

“Your own? Well, I suppose you might save them, as well. But.” The old man shrugged and dropped to the ground, cross-legged. “But unlikely.”

He ate a piece of dried meat, slowly. “How’d you get here?”

“Oh, you know. Here, there. The wind whispered.” He gave Bueralan a benign smile. “He said to me, after Linae died, he said that I should be here. He said I would meet the last of the god-touched here. He promised to deliver unto us a man by whom we could be free.”

“Ger.”

“And so here I am, one last task. But that’s life, is it not? You work for one business faithfully and get a satisfying retirement and suddenly you have to do a favor.”

“Is that second horse for you?”

“Oh, no.” The old man’s smile faded and his gaze grew troubled and frightened. “I will not go near her, no matter who orders it.”