Captain Callan woke up in the small cell and groaned. Every part of him hurt, but especially the wound where they’d pulled the arrow from his leg.
There had been a brief moment when he thought he and his crew would escape the gray-skins. That moment was crushed when the great black ship cut his little vessel in half. Each of the black ships, in addition to being nearly impossibly large, also had sharpened metal along the keel. That metal destroyed wood with ease and his little ship was no exception.
Wounded as he was, he thought he was a certain candidate for death, but the Sa’ba Taalor came down and grabbed him.
The woman who came for him was lean and hard and heavily scarred. She pulled the arrow from his leg and lifted him like he was a child. When he tried to struggle she put him down and beat him until he thought his seams would split.
When he came to, he was in the cell, three sides wood and one iron bars.
“You are alive and awake. This is good.” The voice was heavily accented.
It was not the same woman who’d bested him so easily. This one was scarier. She wore cloth pants and a leather vest over a white shirt. The fabric was made to breathe and hung loosely except where she had pulled the fabric tight with leather straps to hold the sheaths for her knives. She sported several knives along her arms. Her mouth was scarred in several spots, and her skin was dark gray and seemed almost corpselike. Her eyes glowed in the semi-darkness of the ship’s hold. On the top of her head a deep blue scarf ran around her hair, binding it, and then dropped along her back. The scarf was tied to her waistline loosely allowing her to move her head easily.
It seemed an elaborate effort, but he decided not to focus on that. Instead he looked carefully at the sword she was sporting.
“You are Callan?”
Callan nodded, suddenly very aware that he had to piss and that he was also extremely thirsty.
“I am Donaie Swarl; I am the King in Lead, Chosen of Wheklam.” The words meant nothing. She was obviously not a king. Kings had finery and were, as a rule, men. But she had a sword and that was enough for him to let her keep her delusions.
“Majesty.” He nodded his head. “I’m sorry, but who is Wheklam?”
“Wheklam is the god of the sea, and seafaring warriors.”
“I like him already.”
She nodded her head and crouched down until they were eye to eye. “He likes you, too. He favors you. Your crew is dead. They served me no purpose. Your ship is gone, as you tried to flee.”
He nodded his head. “Sorry about that. I thought you were trying to kill us.”
“We were.” Donaie, King of the Mad, nodded. “We would have killed you, too, but Wheklam said you had a purpose.”
“What purpose is that?”
“You can talk to the scarred people, yes?”
“Scarred like you?” He shook his head.
“No. The others. They… write on themselves. They carve words in their flesh.”
“Oh, yes. The Brellar. I speak their language.”
“Excellent!”
Without preamble she opened the door. Apparently it wasn’t locked. He hadn’t bothered to check, really, as the light shone through several portholes and trying to sneak off the ship would have required darkness. Still, in hindsight, he could have at least looked into the matter.
Hard, callused hands grabbed Callan and pulled him to his feet. He did his best not to scream at the pain in his calf. It was bandaged and he could see that it had been cleaned, but still.
Despite being a dead shade of gray, she was attractive enough. Still, he blinked when the scars around her mouth moved as she smiled her approval. As a rule, he found all women a worthwhile pursuit. He decided he could make an exception in this case.
“You can stand. Good. Come with me.”
Donaie Swarl moved and he followed. Her back was to him. He had no weapons, but if he were fast enough he could surely take her.
Callan shook his head. No. The way she moved, he had no doubt it would be a mistake. And anyway, there was nowhere to flee. They wanted him alive. There would be chances to escape later once darkness fell.
Callan could see other cells down the hallway they walked. They were, universally, uninhabited. They were slavers’ cells. He recognized them easily enough to understand that he was not on one of the black ships. This was a Brellar ship. Above him the deck would be vast, with enough space for three hundred men to stand comfortably apart from each other.
As they walked up the narrow stairwell to the top level – several flights that made his calf scream with each stair climbed – Callan’s eyes adjusted to the changing light. He saw more and more of the scars that crossed the woman’s body. The Brellar inflicted scars on themselves, but these were different. He could see that they overlapped in many cases and some were faint with age, others newer. This was a lifetime of fighting and injuries. He had heard of the Sa’ba Taalor from Tataya, but he had never seen them up close until now.
They were scary people. They were, judging by this one, survivors at any cost.
The sky outside was overcast, and a quick look around told him they were near the shores of Roathes. The villages that should have been there were little more than ashes among more ashes. The hot air here was acrid, but calmer than the last time he had been through. Far behind him, he knew, there was an island growing in the sea. A fiery mountain at the center of that island continued to bellow fire and smoke and cast lightning into the waters. But it did so with less violence than before.
The waters around the ship were littered with flotsam, jetsam and corpses. The sharks would come soon, he knew, even through the ashes that poisoned the waters, for they could not possibly resist a feast of this scale. Close enough to see but not to get caught in any currents, two of the great black ships waited, their decks covered with more of the gray-skins.
The deck Callan stood on was covered with the prone forms of the Brellar. They were not dead, but they had been beaten and subdued.
Standing among them were dozens of the Sa’ba Taalor. He looked first to the Brellar, who mostly lay still, their eyes searching their environs or closed to avoid the glare of the day. The Sa’ba Taalor did not wear much by way of armor and several of them had cuts freely bleeding, or newly crusted. They also had weapons. Sorts he had never seen before. There were swords, to be true, but there were other things that looked designed to break bones and heads with ease.
Judging by the ruined flesh on a few of the Brellar, they did their jobs quite well.
“You will speak for me.” Donaie Swarl looked his way. “And you will speak for them. Do not lie to me. I will know. My god will tell me.”
“Othea is my god. Also a god of the sea.”
Donaie looked at him for a moment. “What does your god tell you right now, Callan?”
“Nothing.” He frowned.
“Then listen to my god and listen well. Ask the questions. Answer them truthfully, and you will walk away from this intact.” She tilted her head for a moment and nodded. “Wheklam says you may even have this ship if you do this thing. You like to barter, yes?”
“Yes. I do. Indeed.”
“Then that is the offer that Wheklam makes. Safety and this ship in exchange for truths.”
“What of the people already on the ship?”
“You will be captain. That will be your decision to make.”
He nodded his head. As they’d spoken, several of the Brellar had looked around to see his face. He recognized Tomms, one of the chieftains of the Brellar.
“Tomms. You are alive.”
Tomms looked his way. “Yes, and thanks to you, they now know my name.”
Callan shook his head. “They want to speak to you. I am to translate.”
Tomms sat up. No one stopped him. His face was swollen on one side, bruised and bashed. His lip on that side was smashed and bloodied and would heal poorly. The scars on his body glistened in the sunlight.
Donaie walked Callan closer, holding his arm.
“I want to know about his scars. Why does he scar himself? Do his gods demand it?”
Callan asked the questions, moderately curious as to how Tomms would answer.
“My gods demand nothing. We write our victories on our flesh. We tell stories of what we have achieved in our lifetimes.”
Callan looked to Donaie Swarl and answered truthfully.
Her face took on a different look. Rage made her terrifying as she bared her teeth and her scars split baring even more.
“What do his gods say to this?”
Callan translated.
Tomms answered, “We have no need of gods. We find our own way. We are our own gods.”
Callan hesitated for a moment. He did not know that the Sa’ba Taalor would not like the answer, but he could guess.
“These are his words, yes? Not mine.”
Donaie Swarl nodded agreement and he repeated Tomms’s answer.
The woman of the Sa’ba Taalor strode over to where Tomms lay and grabbed him by his hair. She ripped hard and he followed, screaming in pain even as he stood.
Tomms brought his arm around and struck her in her side, his fist dealing a brutal blow. None of the Brellar were bound, they were merely subdued. At the sound of combat several of them started to rise.
Donaie Swarl barely flinched. She brought her free arm around and slammed Tomms in the face with the palm of her hand, sending him staggering back as she let go of his hair.
“Tell them to stop or they die faster!”
Callan repeated the message and the Brellars who were rising either froze where they were or stood the rest of the way with their hands above their heads, clearly showing that they had no weapons.
Donaie spoke again. “Tell them. Let them know that they have marked themselves and bragged for the last time. The gods decide who survives scarring, no one else.”
He repeated the words, and Tomms looked directly at the King in Lead and spat blood and a tooth onto the deck. Through his ruined lips he said, “Fuck your gods.”
And Callan sighed and repeated the words exactly.
The reaction was immediate. The Sa’ba Taalor brought all their fury upon the Brellar. Not a single one of them touched Callan, but as he looked on, the Brellar were cut, beaten and broken. Some used their hands. Others used swords. Some brought up their metallic clubs with heads the size of Pabba fruit and smashed them down on the skulls of their enemy.
Through it all, Callan watched. The Sa’ba Taalor acted with rage. They did not forgive and they took no quarter.
It took a few minutes to finish the massacre. Callan stood still throughout it, not daring to move, lest he catch the attention of the gray-skins.
When it was done, Donaie Swarl gestured to one of her followers, who took up a horn from a satchel at her hip and blew a sharp note. Moments later one of the black ships started moving in their direction.
“The ship is yours.” She dismissed Callan with those words.
“Why did you kill them all?”
“His words offended our gods. His scars offend our gods. His people offend our gods, and so we will kill all of them.”
“What of the corpses?” When Callan spoke that time it was more to himself.
Still, the king answered, “It is your ship. Do with them what you will.”
He did not speak to her again as she climbed the rope cast down from the black ship. A score of ropes fell and the Sa’ba Taalor scaled them.
Callan was left alone with the dead.
He waited until the black ships were far in the distance before he started screaming.
The keep ahead of them was not large, but the gods wanted it taken. That was enough for Tarag Paedori.
He looked back at Kallir Lundt, and asked, “Do you know this place, Kallir?”
The Fellein looked at the tower and the surrounding walls with metallic eyes. His face was metal, a gift from Truska-Pren.
“I do not. The town we passed, Inbrough, that I know. I have seen it on trips down the river in the past, but this?” He shook his head in the way of his people. “This has been built in the last few years.”
Tarag looked the structure over. It was large enough to host as many as twenty, he guessed. Had they built it into the side of a mountain the size would be impossible to guess, but the short tower and the surrounding wall were freestanding. The wall surrounding it was only fifteen feet in height. That barely qualified as anything but decoration in the Taalor valley.
Without any preamble Tarag urged his mount forward. The great beast let out an amiable rumble and obeyed. The path leading to the strange standalone tower was hardpacked dirt and little else.
The others followed as he knew they would.
The gate in the wall was open. The King in Iron rode toward it with one hand on his sword’s hilt and looked around carefully.
He slowed only when he realized that the aperture in the wall didn’t have an open gate. It had no gate at all.
That was enough to give him pause. True, there were no other structures around, but that didn’t mean there were never visitors. The paved pathway was a sign of that.
“What sort of town builds a wall and forgets to build a gate as well?”
Kallir shook his head. “None that I have seen of any size. Most of the towns I’ve seen that had a gate needed it to keep out marauders. The land is mostly calm, but there are always exceptions.”
Tarag shook his head and moved forward again, riding through the opening, his eyes sliding over the landscape inside.
There was only the one structure and none other.
No people were moving about the courtyard.
The tower was large enough. Close to fifty feet in height, and built of good stone, if he could judge by appearances.
Its door was too small for his mount to join him, so Paedori slid off the great beast’s back and passed through, drawing his sword.
There was only one person standing on the other side of the door. He was a broadshouldered man, balding and bearded, wearing casual clothes.
“You are Tarag Paedori, the King in Iron.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes I am.”
“Good. Excellent.” The man nodded and moved away from a table where he’d been looking at several thick volumes. “My name is Jeron. I am a sorcerer. We are going to have a discussion.”
“What do we have to discuss?” The man was a fool. But he was also a sorcerer, or at least made that claim and, having seen what one of the sorcerers could do, it was best to at least hear him out.
“Why you are going to leave Fellein and never come back.”
“Truska-Pren demands that I be here. He will have his revenge for what the people of Fellein did to the people of Korwa.” He would have laughed under many circumstances. But the man was an unknown quantity. It was best to respect the unknown.
“The people of Fellein did not destroy Korwa.” The man looked at him with cold eyes. “The Wellish Overlords did that.”
“So you say. My god says otherwise.”
“Your god is wrong.”
He kept his place, but it was not easy. To insult the gods was beyond mere folly.
Jeron smiled. “I have proof. I have testimonies from hundreds of witnesses.”
Tarag looked on, not moving. “Where are these people?”
“Well, they’re dead.” He shrugged and gestured back to the books. “They have been dead for almost as long as Korwa, but they were there to see the final days. They survived the experience. They wrote their tales down and I have spent hundreds of years collecting them. The truth has always been my passion.”
“You would have me believe books over my god?”
“I would have you consider all possibilities, the better to decide if this war should happen.” As the man spoke there was a change in the pressure in the room. Tarag Paedori looked around and noticed that the door through which he had entered was gone.
“Truska-Pren has given me life. He has offered me a kingdom and the chance to lead the greatest armies that the whole of the world has ever known. Do you know what he asks in exchange for this?”
“No. I do not.” The sorcerer had crossed his arms over his chest.
“That I obey him.”
“Well, isn’t that what every god asks?”
“I do not know every god. I only know Truska-Pren.” A small lie. He had spent time in the presence of all the gods, as virtually every member of the Sa’ba Taalor did.
“We have so much we could share, Tarag Paedori. We have a different world filled with its own wonders. You could teach us of your gods and we could teach you the history of the world beyond the Seven Forges.”
The King in Iron stepped closer. “I know your world. I have listened to a thousand tales about it from one of your own. A soldier who has seen much of your Empire. If I need to know more, I can ask him. Or I can ask Truska-Pren. Either way, I would learn what I need to know.”
Jeron opened his mouth to counter, but before he could, Tarag continued. “Do you know of my people? Of my gods?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Yet you would have me choose your words over those of my gods?” He simply stared as he spoke. This man, Jeron, was mad.
“Well.”
“We will teach you of our gods when you are given the choice to follow them or to die.”
“That’s not the best solution.”
“It is the only solution. It is what the Daxar Taalor demand and they are the gods of my people.”
Tarag did not alter his position. He did not have to. He merely continued to stare at the sorcerer, letting the learned man make his first move.
“I cannot let you attack Canhoon.”
“Are you the one who lifted the city into the skies?”
“No. But I have enough power to level you and your army.”
“You are not a god. Do not presume to stop the armies of a god.”
Two strides had him moving past the startled mage and grabbing one of the ancient books.
“You trust in words written in the past. I trust in words spoken to me by a god.”
“Your gods are not–”
“A wise man,” Tarag interrupted, “does not insult a god in the face of the faithful.”
Jeron closed his mouth and nodded. After a moment, he asked, “What do your gods say to do?”
“I have been tasked with conquering Fellein in the name of my gods. If I must kill every person in Fellein to do so, I will.”
Jeron sighed, nodded and then threw both hands in Tarag’s direction.
The energies hit him in the side. He could not have dodged even if he’d been given warning. As Tarag turned, he felt the book in his hand crisp and ignite. The volumes on the table, the table itself, did likewise.
The clothing on his body was all that stood between his metal armor and the waves of heat that hit him. Tarag Paedori turned to face the man trying to kill him and let the burning ruins of the book fall to the ground. The sword in his hand was starting to glow red.
“You would seek to kill me with fire?” Tarag grinned.
He walked a pace toward Jeron the sorcerer, who looked at him with a shocked expression.
“I am the chosen of Truska-Pren, the God of Iron. When I talk to my god, I walk into his heart, the very center of a mountain filled with molten iron.” He took another step forward as his armor grew hotter still.
“My god protects me from that heat as he does now.” He shrugged and the armor screamed, metal tortured by heat moved and moaned.
He reached out with one gauntlet and grabbed Jeron before the man could move away. The reaction was immediate. Jeron screamed as his flesh began to burn. His left arm caught on fire, the cloth blazing and burning the skin underneath. Tarag’s other hand reached for the sorcerer’s face and caught his bald ear and half of his scalp.
Jeron tried to pull away, but Tarag Paedori hauled him closer, letting the man thrash against the burning metal that covered his chest and body.
A moment later he let the man drop to the ground, blistered, burning, breathing.
Jeron was still alive, much as he might have wished otherwise.
“You are not a warrior. You are not a fighter. You are not important. Your Empire will fall because the gods demand it. People like you, like your Empress, you only delay the inevitable. We have spent a hundred lifetimes preparing for this. What have you done?”
When he looked again, the entryway to the room was there once more.
Tarag Paedori thanked his god and then called in others to search the keep.
There was nothing useful to find or to have: books, and one ruined old man.
They left the area, heading east again.
A short time later Tusk and his newly acquired boats came alongside them. Tusk rode along the shoreline. The boats were handled by the Sa’ba Taalor who also followed Wheklam. Most of the recently converted walked along the shoreline behind Tusk and in front of his troops. They were, he explained to Tarag, earning the respect of their fellows.
To Tarag’s eyes, they looked like they were suffering and miserable. Life is pain.
“Durhallem wanted to convert them instead of killing them?” Tarag frowned at the notion. The Wounder was not normally so generous.
“He says we should try new things.” Tusk shook his head. “Who am I to argue with a god?”
“No one.”
“Exactly.”
“What happened to your armor?”
Tarag looked down and saw the heavy scorch marks where flesh had burned and where, frankly, metal had glowed hot enough to soften and lose a bit of its previous form.
“A sorcerer tested his power against a god and failed.”
Tusk laughed at the very notion.
“We ride. Let us reach Stastha and hear what she has to say.”
Tusk smiled at that notion. “Indeed!”
A moment later they moved on, and both signaled for the horns. It was time. War was upon them. Glorious, wondrous war.
They passed odd outcroppings of ruined stone wall and occasional buildings that rose toward the skies above, and Tega explained to Drask that this had been the edge of Canhoon. The lake that replaced the city was calm enough, despite the easterly winds.
Across the ruins, Drask saw the Sa’ba Taalor before they saw him. They were too distant to recognize and so he rode closer, his companions on the back of Brackka easily compensating for the change of pace. Though Nolan still did not speak, at least he no longer fell from the mount at every change of direction or speed.
Two mounts rode ahead of them. One carried a male warrior; the other carried a corpse.
He would not have recognized Andover Lashk if it had not been for the iron hands.
“You have changed a great deal, Andover Lashk of the Iron Hands.” He smiled as he spoke.
The boy was gone, replaced by a man. He sported hard scars on his flesh and, like Drask himself, he had seven Great Scars running down his face, angry slashes that fell in a symmetry meant only for the followers of Ydramil. He had met with all of the gods and survived. More importantly, he had been found worthy.
Andover the man looked at him for a long moment without recognition and then he smiled broadly. “Drask! Gods, you are a sight!”
Both slipped from their mounts and hugged each other warmly. It was not a common gesture among the Sa’ba Taalor, but it was a sign of complete trust.
When they broke away from each other, Andover looked to the other two and nodded his head.
Tega stared at him for a long while, her mind processing before, “Andover?”
“It is good to see you, Tega.”
She climbed down from Brackka’s back without the grace of Drask, but she managed. When she moved closer, Andover realized that he now looked down on her. He had grown a great deal.
His stomach iced over as she stared at him, and froze completely when she touched his heavy arms and looked into his face. How was it that a woman he barely let himself think about could so easily cripple his mind?
Drask could see the questions on the young man’s face.
“Tega and Nolan and I met in the Blasted Lands. We did not plan to meet, but the gods saw to it.”
“You have changed so much, Andover.” Her eyes were wide as she stared up at him. “You look more like Drask than like yourself.” That was true enough. Both were gray skinned and longhaired. Their Great Scars were nearly identical. The rest of them was as different as ever, of course. The scars on their bodies told different tales. Drask had one metallic hand and Andover had two.
“You are as beautiful as ever, Tega.” The words would have never been spoken in the past. Andover Lashk would have trembled at the very notion. Andover Iron Hands was not quite the same man, though he shared all of his younger self’s memories. The world changes, and the wise change with it.
“Why are you here, Andover?” Drask asked.
“I’m seeking Old Canhoon.”
“The gods send you to Old Canhoon?”
“Yes. They have not said why.”
Drask nodded. “And what is this?” he pointed to Delil, where she lay across the back of her mount.
“Delil. She… She is dead.”
“The gods decree that she should be burned. You know this.”
Andover looked away from him. The boy’s face was a man’s and the sorrow it showed seemed not to fit his features properly any longer.
“The Daxar Taalor do not agree with your heart. What is it that you want from them, Andover?”
Tega stepped back, looking from one man to the other.
“I…”
Drask continued to stare, his gaze unflinching, as the younger man, so changed from what he had been and still changing, look at Delil’s corpse and then at the ground. Finally he looked at Drask again and said, “I want her back.”
“And have you asked the gods for this?”
“No.” His eyes fell back to the ground.
“Why not?” Drask stepped closer until Andover felt obligated to look at him again.
“Because they might say no.”
“Very likely they will. She has served her time in this world and nothing goes to waste. But you will not have an answer until you ask.” He held up his silver hand. “I had no answer until I asked Ydramil for this. It was not merely given. I had to make sacrifices.”
“Who should I ask then?” Andover’s eyes blinked back tears that wanted to fall. Another sign he was more Sa’ba Taalor than Fellein these days. When they had met previously the boy would have wept.
“Ask the Daxar Taalor and see if they respond. You have been with all seven of the gods.” He gestured to show the Great Scars on Andover’s lips. “Ask all of them and see if they answer you.”
“Where shall I go to ask?”
“You can ask here. You can ask anywhere. The Daxar Taalor are spreading across this land. They will hear you.”
Andover nodded and walked slowly over to where a portion of the wall that had once surrounded the city still stood.
Tega moved closer to Drask and asked, “Your gods can raise the dead?”
“Yes. I suppose all gods can.”
“But you… I felt it… you raised Brackka back from the dead.”
Drask nodded. So many tales of the gods and all they had done, of raising the wounded few who survived the cataclysm and helping those last survivors become the Sa’ba Taalor. That simple tale was one of the foundations of his entire life. The gods could raise the dead. He had done so himself now. Had he considered how he had done it for too long he would have been no closer than he was currently to understanding why it had worked beyond accepting that he and Tega and Nolan had bathed in the energies of the Mounds and come away changed.
Did that make them gods?
He looked past Andover and toward the distant City of Wonders. “Yes. I did. I’m still reflecting on that.”
Behind him still on Brackka’s back, Nolan let out a laugh. It was the only sound he’d made in days.
Andover looked into the waters of the lake that should not have been there and tried to calm himself. The gods had already granted him so much. He needed look no further than his hands.
“Delil is dead.”
He spoke the words to his reflection. The wind smeared his doppelganger’s features.
His reflection answered him in Ydramil’s voice. WHY DID SHE DIE?
Andover shook his head.
When Ydramil spoke again it was with the full force of his power. ANSWER ME. WHY DID SHE DIE?
“Because she was careless.”
YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN GREAT GIFTS. WHAT WOULD YOU DO TO HAVE HER BACK?
Andover looked at his reflection and knew that it looked back.
“What would you have me do?”
Soon enough the gods answered.