The Gods Return Read online

  Praise for the Novels in The Lord of the Isles Series

  “An absolute surfeit of weird, sometimes terrifying creatures.”

  —Booklist on The Mirror of Worlds

  “Courage, ingenuity, and a bit of fancy wizardry.”

  —Publishers Weekly on The Gods Return

  “Drake has a light touch with his characters, making them believable and serious without becoming overly ponderous or melodramatic. He employs the standard epic fantasy tropes of action, sorcery, and romance to great effect in this exciting, compelling read.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Fortress of Glass

  “Drake has wit. . . . Installments stand on their own feet, giving readers the luxury of jumping right into the action.”

  —Starlog on The Fortress of Glass

  “Drake’s grasp of large-scale action, as well as small dramas, makes him a superb storyteller. The sixth addition to his Lord of the Isles series belongs in most fantasy collections.”

  —Library Journal on Master of the Cauldron

  “Great, gritty realism on both material and magical planes, and Hell quite literally breaks loose on occasion. The audience for this kind of fantasy saga should prove large and ongoing, and for this volume, at least, it will be well deserved.”

  —Booklist on Master of the Cauldron

  Tor Books by David Drake

  Birds of Prey

  Bridgehead

  Cross the Stars

  The Dragon Lord

  The Forlorn Hope

  Fortress

  The Fortress of Glass

  From the Heart of Darkness

  Goddess of the Ice Realm

  The Gods Return

  The Jungle

  Killer (with Karl Edward Wagner)

  Lord of the Isles

  Master of the Cauldron

  The Mirror of Worlds

  Mistress of the Catacombs

  Patriots

  Queen of Demons

  Servant of the Dragon

  Skyripper Tyrannosaur

  The Voyage

  The

  Gods

  Return

  THE THIRD VOLUME OF

  The Crown of the Isles

  DAVID DRAKE

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  NEW YORK

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE GODS RETURN

  Copyright © 2008 by David Drake

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-5118-0

  First Edition: November 2008

  First Mass Market Edition: January 2010

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  TO DAN BREEN

  As sort of a bookend, for making this series much better

  than it would’ve been without his help.

  Acknowledgments

  WHEN I’M DEEP into writing a novel, everything else sort of blurs. On my own, I’d eat whatever’s simplest to grab. I don’t have much sense of serial time on my best day, and when the book takes over I’m likely to be off by a week or more on when things have to be done. The fact that things (this includes sending in the taxes and paying bills) are done and I’m fed excellent, healthy meals is due to the efforts of my wife, Jo.

  Dorothy Day and my Webmaster, Karen Zimmerman, archived my rough and intermediate texts, so that if disaster struck central North Carolina the work would survive. (I might not, but that doesn’t concern me. In that case, somebody else will have to sort out the problems.)

  Dorothy helped with continuity matters (for example, what color was the Ornifal standard?), and Karen (a skilled cybrarian) researched all manner of questions, including finding books and images that my whim suggested might be helpful. (I have very clever whims, by the way.) I joke about “my trained staff,” but in all truth Dorothy and Karen make the process smoother and the result significantly better than it would be without their help.

  Dr. John Lambshead provided me with drawings of a large, vicious nematode which he discovered and named after his then girlfriend, now wife. (Hi, Val!) My version of the creature is bigger still but perhaps no more dangerous if you happen to be of the right size.

  I had computer adventures. (Do you know anybody else who had the power button of his PC fall into the case? Mine did.) My son Jonathan and my friend Mark Van Name kept me going. All they get out of it is a fund of stories with which to astound their fellow geeks.

  Thank you all.

  Dave Drake

  Author’s Note

  THE RELIGION OF the Isles is based on the Sumerian triad of Inanna, Dumuzi, and Ereshkigal. That fact is of more significance here than it has been in the previous books of the series.

  The magic (which in the Isles series is separate from religion) is based on that of the Mediterranean Basin in classical times. Its core was probably Egyptian, but it borrowed heavily from other cultures (including Jewish elements). What I call words of power are the voces mysticae which were written or spoken to bring the request to the attention of demiurges.

  I do not believe the magic of the Isles series or any other magic is effective in the waking world. I’ve been wrong about many other things, however. On general principles, I prefer not to pronounce the words of power when I transcribe them.

  My background is basically that of a classical antiquary. There’s a great deal to amuse other classicists in this novel besides the snatch of Ovid which I translated (and for more, check my Website, david-drake.com). I put in these references not as jokes but to give some of the texture of our wonderful real world to my fantasy creation. (Though, okay, the discussion of Pytheas and Strabo is a bit of a joke.)

  I don’t believe I’ve discussed style in print before. I’m going to do so here because of some recent questions.

  Although this novel (and most of mine) is told in third person, I do not use an omniscient narrator: each section is written from a particular viewpoint and in language appropriate to that viewpoint. Ilna is more formal than her brother Cashel, but neither of them has the educated vocabulary to be expected from Garric or Sharina. In all cases this internal viewpoint involves the use of contractions that would not be proper in (say) an academic paper.

  I believe this helps to put the reader in the character’s own worldview. You may think I’m a fool to do this or that the technique doesn’t work; we can discuss those matters. Please, though, don’t assume that I and my erudite editor are ignorant of the rules of formal English prose.

  One final note: we scattered the ashes of my editor and publis
her Jim Baen in a grove on my property. I’ve put the grove into this novel. I can’t say with Horace, “Exegi monumentum aere perennius . . . ,” but I felt that a little extra memorial to my close friend would be a good thing.

  DAVID DRAKE

  www.david-drake.com

  The

  Gods

  Return

  Prologue

  YOU WERE RIGHT, priest,” said Archas grudgingly as he and Salmson stared at the jungle-covered building. He wore his blond beard in two braids, curving outward like the horns of a mountain sheep. “Though it doesn’t look like any temple I’ve ever seen.”

  Before the Change that mixed all eras to re-form the Isles into a single continent, Archas and his men had been pirates scouring the seas off Sirimat and Seres. Now Franca the Sky God had use for them.

  The under-priest Salmson shivered despite the muggy air and the runnels of sweat which had already soaked his robe. “Franca’s revelation to Nivers His priest is always right, Captain Archas,” he said. “Of course. Franca is lord of all existence; how can He not be right?”

  Salmson looked up to mumble a prayer, but he couldn’t see even a patch of sky through the layers of foliage. Nonetheless Franca was present, here and everywhere. All power is Franca, and all serve Him.

  “Anyway, it’s a temple and a prison both,” Salmson said, wiping his neck where the robe chafed. Insects ringed the collar, not biting but drinking his sweat and making him itch. Other insects crawled into his eyes, though he kept blinking them away. “And it’s your path to power, Captain.”

  Salmson had spent the past twenty years as steward and general dogsbody to Nivers, high priest of Franca, in the glittering ruin which was all that remained of the Empire of Palomir. It frightened him to have suddenly become so close to unthinkably great power. That was true even though the power was his to control.

  The Gods of Palomir had returned. Deep in Salmson’s fearful heart, he regretted his loss of the past when rats chittered in the crystal hallways of Palomir and the jungle inexorably devoured its margins. Those days were gone forever, though. Now Salmson spoke with the voice and power of Franca.

  He grimaced and said, “Bring up the prisoners. It’s time we got started.”

  The man-sized rat beside him turned and sent a clicking call back along the trail. A squad of rat men chivied the captives out of the jungle, each carrying a pack. There was no formal division, but Archas and his men had taken the lead during most of the journey from their base on the eastern coast of the seaway which penetrated the new continent.

  The pirates didn’t mix with Salmson’s escort of rat men, but they wouldn’t have mixed with another band of human cutthroats either. The pirates were a pack of wild beasts which Archas ruled by being the most savage beast among them.

  Whereas the rats were certainly beasts, but not wild ones: they were the minions of Franca, raised by Nivers to serve the place of the human worshippers which depopulated Palomir could not yet provide. The rat men stood upright, carrying swords. They spoke their own language among themselves, but they took Salmson’s orders and kept better discipline than most human soldiers; certainly they were better disciplined than Archas’ pirates.

  The rat men were as ruthless as the icy winter wind. Franca demanded that in His worshippers, and soon all the world would worship Him.

  The prisoners staggered forward and set down packs before sinking to the ground. The six-year-old boy and handful of elderly people didn’t have burdens, but even so the trek had exhausted them to the point of collapse.

  This wasn’t a clearing, but the canopy hundreds of feet in the air and the lesser canopy of saplings and palms thirty or forty feet up meant there were only ferns and fungi on the forest floor. Some of the captives stared fearfully at the rat men and the pirates, each band more savage than the other; most turned their eyes to the ground. Here flowers fallen from a giant tree threw magenta patterns across the leaf mold.

  Only one prisoner, an old woman, bothered to look at the structure to which Salmson had drawn them. It was flat-topped, a massive table at least eighty feet long—both ends were hidden in the forest—and twelve high, built from the coarse red limestone which underlay the jungle’s thin soil. The frieze along the top register seemed to alternate geometric designs with the heads of stylized beasts, though it was hard to be sure: fern fronds and the roots of major trees covered most of its length.

  Archas prodded the alcove in the center of the structure with one of his pair of curved swords. “This isn’t a door!” he said. “It’s carved out of rock just like all the rest of the thing. Where’s the real door, then?”

  The altar block in front of the temple had a narrow ledge along the back side. Salmson looked up from laying out his apparatus there. A pair of captives had carried the chest holding his paraphernalia of wizardry.

  It made Salmson uncomfortable to think of himself as a wizard. He felt even more uncomfortable in directing the powers of Franca, though . . . and that seemed to be the truth of the matter.

  He rose to his feet. “That’s as expected,” he said curtly. “It’s the door, or will be. Now, get out of the way while I remove the seal.”

  Archas gave him a look of cold appraisal, flicking his sword like the tip of a lion’s tail. He stepped aside, though.

  They were all on edge, even the chittering rat men. The journey along jungle tracks or no track at all, the heat, the insects—all these things were uncomfortable enough. Beyond those normal miseries lurked fear of the unknown and the scraps of knowledge which were even more fearful.

  There was no turning back; Salmson touched his apparatus, nerving himself to begin by raising his athame. That knife of art had been cut from a whale’s tooth by a wizard of an age lost in dim time. Its yellowed ivory was inscribed with symbols which Salmson couldn’t translate and with tableaux which were all too clear.

  No turning back. . . . “Abriaon orthiare,” Salmson chanted, dipping the athame’s point at each syllable. He hadn’t scratched a figure on the altar as he normally would’ve done, but he thought he saw a pentagram glowing in the heart of the opaque stone. “Lampho!”

  Wizardlight as blue as the heart of a glacier quivered along the edge of the alcove; it spluttered every hands-breadth as if igniting blobs of sealing wax. Only when it had described the whole rectangular course did the cold glare fade away.

  “There!” Salmson cried. “Archas, get the shackle that I’ve freed. By Hili, man, don’t lose it or you’ll never control the—Hell blast you, I’ll do it!”

  The priest scrambled around the end of the altar, tripping on tree roots because his eyes were focused on the wall from which a quiver of gold was drifting. He thrust his hand out against the stone and to his relief felt the ghostly caress of the gossamer which had held the portal closed beyond the strength of even a god to open. Carefully, he began to wind the fetter onto a tourmaline miniature of Fallin of the Waves.

  “What is it?” said the pirate chieftain. He’d stepped back when Salmson shouted at him, his sword raised against whatever might be coming from the tomb. Now he approached again, keeping the blade slanted across his body with the edge outward. “Is it a hair? It looks like blond hair!”

  “It’s a hair,” Salmson said slowly as he coiled the wisp of gold on the finger-long tourmaline statue of Franca’s sibling. “It’s supposed to be a hair of the Lady Herself.”

  Salmson knew everyone’s attention was on him. There were forty-odd pirates; two had died during the march, one in a fight too disorganized to be called a duel and the other screaming at the demons he’d swilled with his wine. The twenty rat men groomed themselves as they waited. Though they didn’t wear armor for this expedition, the jungle’s mold and moisture had caused their harnesses to chafe. They licked the sores in their coarse fur methodically.

  “A god’s hair?” said Archas. “That’s impossible!”

  He glowered, then added, “And anyway, didn’t you say the Gods were dead? The Lady and the Shepherd and t
he Sister, all three?”

  Nearly a hundred human captives had survived the march, but they were too cowed even to run away. They watched with the dumb apathy of sheep at the gate of the abattoir.

  The black rooster trussed to a handle of Salmson’s casket watched him with furious black eyes, though. Unlike the human prisoners, it hadn’t given up.

  Slavery is a state of mind, thought Salmson. But we are all slaves of Franca. Even the cockerel.

  “I said,” Salmson said as he finished coiling the impossibly long strand of hair, “that since the Change this world is without gods. As for what the hair is—perhaps you know best. But I warn you, Captain, when I turn this over to you—”

  He raised the talisman to call attention to it. The filament was so clear that Fallin’s carved features could be glimpsed in the pale green stone.

  “—don’t lose it. Without it you won’t be able to control the Worm. No one will be able to control the Worm.”

  Salmson’s lips smiled, though fear froze his mind for an instant at the thought behind his words. No turning back. . . .

  “But no matter,” he said, walking back around the altar. He placed the talisman on the ledge among the other implements and raised the athame again. “Bring me the cockerel.”

  A rat man lifted the rooster. Instead of cutting the cord, he teased the knot open with delicate claws before handing the sacrifice to Salmson.

  The priest held the cockerel to the center of the altar stone with his left hand. It wriggled and tried to peck him, so he shifted his grip slightly.

  Salmson had noticed birds all the way from the seaway to here. They’d clattered and called in the foliage even when they couldn’t be seen, but generally he’d seen them. Since he’d spoken the incantation to unshackle the portal of the Worm, the forest had been silent.