The Gods Return Read online

  He sighed, took a deep breath, and intoned solemnly, “Barbathi lameer lamphore. . . .”

  This wasn’t as trying as the previous incantation. All he was doing this time was loosing the power of Franca. It was like lifting the trigger bar of a loaded catapult, childishly easy though it released a ball that could smash a gate or the hull of a ship.

  “Anoch anoch iao!” Salmson said. He stabbed the rooster with his athame. The edge of the ivory knife wasn’t keen enough to slice flesh, but its point could split a bird’s chest. Blood followed as he withdrew the blade, splashing the stone and his arm to the elbow.

  For a moment there was nothing but the thick smell of violent death. Then the rooster’s blood began to steam from the altar, swelling into a misty figure the height of the sky. It didn’t exist in the same world as Salmson and the jungle, but it was nevertheless visible.

  The figure bent to grip the stone door slab. There was no single scale of sizes in what Salmson saw; though he closed his eyes in sudden terror, the figure remained. Lightning flashed within its dim outlines, but the portal remained shut.

  “Bring me a prisoner!” Salmson said. Two rat men seized an old man by the arms and dragged him to the altar. The prisoners who’d been carrying packs merely shrank back, but several of the old men would’ve tottered off if pirates hadn’t grabbed them. The child sobbed in misery; the old woman held him by the shoulders.

  The rats threw the prisoner onto the slab faceup, gabbling in wordless terror. He was still wearing a tunic; Salmson gripped it with his left hand and pulled hard, but the cloth didn’t tear. One of the rat men slid the tip of his sword under the collar and sliced the garment open without touching the skin beneath.

  “Anoch anoch iao!” Salmson said, and stabbed. The prisoner’s back arched. The priest tugged, but the ivory blade had stuck between ribs. He levered the athame back and forth till it came out with another spray of blood. The sacrifice continued to thrash convulsively, but his eyes had glazed before his heart ceased pumping.

  The cloud-formed figure grew denser as it wrestled with the portal. When Salmson looked at it—his eyes were open again, since it didn’t matter—he thought the figure stood in a cascade of planes which should’ve intersected but didn’t, or didn’t in the waking universe.

  Still the portal remained closed. “Another!” the priest cried. “Bring me a sacrifice!”

  Pirates held the prisoners, but none of them came forward at Salmson’s command. The rat men who’d brought the first victim now flung his drained corpse off the slab and minced toward the remaining supply.

  Before the rats could make a choice, the old woman shoved the boy toward them. He turned shrieking to run back, but the rats caught him and threw him onto the slab. The rats’ limbs were slender by human standards, but they had the strength of whalebone.

  “Anoch iao!” Salmson repeated. He stabbed again and the boy’s blood gushed.

  The cloud figure solidified into a black-bearded giant whose legs spanned the cosmos. Lightning crackled from its hands as they wrenched at the portal. The stone came away with a crash and flew skyward.

  The figure of Franca dissolved, but titanic laughter boomed across the sky. The portal was open.

  “Sister take it!” Archas muttered. He was staring into the forest canopy with his sword lifted, as though expecting the giant to reappear. “Sister take it and take you, priestling!”

  “Cap’n?” said a pirate holding a stout-shafted javelin. The weapon had a ring in the butt where a line could be reeved to grapple with a merchant vessel, but the barbed head was equally able to disembowel human prey. “What’s that that’s coming out of the hole now, hey?”

  Salmson’s eyes followed the pointing javelin. The square opening in the temple’s face had been an empty blackness initially; now thin, violet smoke began to drift out of it. Archas took another step back. Salmson set down the bloody athame and raised the miniature of Fallin.

  The Worm crawled through the interstices of the worlds. Salmson gripped the talisman and faced it, too frightened even to think of running. We are the slaves of Franca. All power is in Franca.

  The portions of the Worm in the waking world were slate gray, pebbled, and colossal. A long tusk thrust from the circular mouth, then withdrew. The opened portal was ten feet square, but the Worm could never have passed through it in the natural course of things.

  Sometimes Salmson saw a world beyond as though the Worm were squirming through a frescoed wall. In that other place cold, sluggish waves swept a rocky strand. Where the body of the Worm should have been was instead a purple mist, but it solidified as the creature writhed into the jungle.

  Some of the pirates had fled. Archas held both swords out, and the man with the barbed spear cocked it over his shoulder to throw.

  A fat, scarred pirate with one ear fell to his knees and began incongruously to call on the Lady. How much mercy did you grant to the prayers of your victims, savage? Salmson thought, but the past no longer mattered.

  He held up the talisman. The skein of golden hair blazed brightly, though no sunlight penetrated here in the jungle’s understory. “In the name of Fallin of the Waves!” Salmson cried. “Halt!”

  The Worm reared, its blunt snout penetrating the tree-tops. Branches crashed aside, showering mosses and spiky airplants like a green rain. The creature was thicker than a five-banked warship and longer than Salmson could judge. Perhaps it was longer than the waking world could hold. . . .

  Slowly the Worm settled back, shifting between the solidity of cold lava and the swirls of violet mist that Salmson had seen rippling in the world beyond the plane of this one. The great body didn’t seem to touch the temple from which Salmson had drawn it, but swaths of the jungle beyond shattered at the touch of the gray hide.

  A tree, its crown lost in the canopy two hundred feet above, toppled majestically; wood fibers cracked and popped for minutes. When the bole slammed down, the ground shuddered and knocked several pirates off their feet. The rat men chittered and squeezed closer together; most of the prisoners lay flat and wept or prayed.

  The pirate with the barbed spear screamed, “Hell-spawn!” and hurled his weapon into the Worm; he must’ve gone mad. The spearhead barely penetrated; the creature twitched, causing the thick shaft to wobble.

  Salmson pointed with the talisman. There must be a demonstration; as well to use the pirate for it as the surplus prisoners he’d brought for the purpose.

  “Kill,” he said, though the God had revealed that he needn’t speak aloud while holding the talisman.

  The pirate who’d thrown the spear stood where he was, babbling curses. The Worm’s mouth opened like a whirl pool yawning. Inside was a ring of teeth and a gullet the mottled red/black colors of rotting horse meat.

  Black vapor belched from the creature’s gullet, enveloping the pirate. His scream stopped in midnote. His bright clothing crumbled like ancient rags; his body shriveled as it fell.

  The Worm quivered forward a few segments, furrowing the jungle like a warship being dragged onto the beach. Its maw engulfed the corpse with a cartload of soil and bedrock, then closed. The creature recoiled slowly to its previous position.

  In a moment of trembling anticipation, Salmson felt an awareness of the power he controlled—the power to destroy anything, everything, by directing the Worm. He recoiled: if he went any further down that path in his mind, he wouldn’t return. There would be nothing as valuable to him as the thrill of universal destruction.

  He raised the talisman again. “In the name of Fallin,” he said, “go back until you are summoned.”

  The Worm began to dissolve into glowing mist: patches here and there, spreading like oil over a ridged gray seascape, iridescent but with foul undertones. The sizzle that accompanied the disappearance was too loud to speak over.

  At the end there was a violet speck in the air. It vanished with a clack like wood blocks striking. The forest was silent.

  Salmson still shivered. There was a feti
d odor which he hadn’t noticed while the Worm was present.

  He looked down the swath cleared by the monster’s body, mashed vegetation from which a miasma rose. Birds hopped among the crushed branches, hunting for prey stunned by the catastrophe.

  All this power. . . .

  “Here, Captain Archas,” Salmson said in a clear voice. “Take the talisman. By the grace of Franca, God over all Gods, it is given to you to conquer the Kingdom of the Isles!”

  Archas reached left-handed for the offered statuette. Before he touched it, he paused and said, “And what then? When I’ve conquered the Isles, what of your folk in Palomir?”

  “We’re all slaves of Franca, Captain,” Salmson said. “When the whole world worships Franca, then He will decide our fate.”

  Archas hesitated a moment longer, then snatched the talisman. “There’s nothing more to it?” he demanded. “I just—use it as you did?”

  “The Worm is yours to command,” Salmson said quietly. “But don’t lose the talisman, or—”

  He shrugged and gestured with his head toward the gouge in the jungle.

  “—the whole world will look like this. Like the Worm’s own world.”

  And will it be any different for mankind when Franca is God of Gods? Salmson wondered. But there’s no turning back. . . .

  Chapter

  1

  CASHEL CARRIED RASILE in the crook of his arm up the last few tens of steps to the top of the fire tower, the highest point in Pandah. The old wizard’s people, the Coerli—the cat men—held the physically weak and aged in contempt even if they happened to be wizards.

  Since the Change, Rasile had been helping the humans who’d conquered the Coerli; her life and health had improved a great deal. Still, the fire tower was a hollow pillar with many tens of tens of steps shaped like wedges of pie on the inside. Lots of younger people, cat men and humans both, would’ve had trouble climbing it.

  Cashel didn’t mind. Rasile scarcely weighed anything to begin with, and besides, it made him feel useful.

  Cashel’s friends were all smart and educated. Nobody’d thought that Garric would get to be king while he and Cashel were growing up together in Barca’s Hamlet, but he’d gotten as good an education from his father, Reise the Innkeeper, as any nobleman’s son in Valles got. Likewise Garric’s sister Sharina.

  Cashel smiled at the thought of Sharina. She was so smart and so lovely. If there was wizardry in the world—and there was; Cashel had seen it often—then the greatest proof of it was the fact that Sharina loved him, as he’d loved her from childhood.

  Cashel’s sister Ilna couldn’t read or write any better than he could, and like Cashel she used pebbles or beans as tellers if she needed to count above the number of her fingers. But there was more to being smart than book learning, and nobody had ever doubted that Ilna was smart. She’d been the best weaver in Barca’s Hamlet since she’d grown tall enough to work a loom, and the things she’d learned on her travels had made her better than any other soul.

  None of that had made her happy. Her travels had been to far places, some of them very bad places. She’d come back maybe missing parts that would’ve let her be happy. Still, Ilna was much of the reason that the kingdom had survived these past years; why the kingdom survived and, in surviving, had allowed mankind to survive.

  Cashel, well, he was just Cashel. He’d been a good shepherd, but nobody needed him to tend sheep anymore. He was strong, though; stronger than any man he’d met this far. If he could use that strength to help people like Rasile who the kingdom depended on, then he was glad to have something to do.

  “I’m setting you down,” he said, just as he’d have done if he’d been carrying a bogged sheep up to drier ground. The sheep couldn’t understand him and the Corl wizard didn’t need to be told. Still, a few calm words and a little explanation never hurt. “It’s supposed to be the highest place in Pandah and—”

  He looked around. The top of the tower flared a little, but it was still only two double-paces in diameter.

  “—I guess the folks who said that were right.”

  Rasile stepped to the railing. From a distance the cat men didn’t look much different from humans, but close up you saw that their hands and feet didn’t use the same bones. As for their faces, well, they were cats. Rasile was covered with light gray fur which had a nice sheen since she’d started eating properly again.

  Cashel grinned. If Rasile was a ewe, he’d have said she was healthy. Of course back in the borough she’d have been butchered years ago; there was only fodder enough to get the best and strongest through the winter before the spring crops came in.

  “I’ll never get used to the cities you beast-men live in,” Rasile said. She flicked the back of her right hand with the left, a gesture Cashel had learned was the same as a human being shaking her head. “All those houses together, and so many of them stone. None of the True People ever built with stone.”

  “Well, you don’t use fire, so you can’t smelt metal,” Cashel pointed out. “That makes it hard to cut stone.”

  He didn’t add, “And you cat men aren’t much interested in hard work, either,” though it’d have been true enough. The Coerli were predators. All you had to do was own a house cat to know that most of the time it’ll be sleeping; and when it isn’t, it’s likely eating or licking itself.

  “Anyway . . . ,” Cashel continued diplomatically. Rasile didn’t mean anything by “beast-men” and “True People”; it was just the way the Coerli language worked. “I don’t guess I’ll ever get used to cities either. I was eighteen before I left Barca’s Hamlet, and it wasn’t but three or four tens of houses.”

  Pandah had been a good-sized place when the royal army captured it back in the summer, but that was nothing to what it’d become now. All around the stone-built citadel, houses were going up the way mushrooms pop out of the ground after the spring rains. There were wood-sheathed buildings, wattle-and-daub huts, and on the outskirts any number of tents made of canvas or leather.

  Before the Change, travel for any distance meant travel by ship. The Isles were now the Land, a continent instead of a ring of islands about the Inner Sea, and Pandah was pretty nearly the center. It’d gotten to be an important place instead of a sleepy little island where ships put in to buy fruit and fill their water casks.

  The Corl wizard cleared her throat with a growl that had sounded threatening before Cashel got used to it. She paced slowly sideways around the tower, seeming to look out over Pandah.

  Cashel had spent his life watching animals and figuring out what was going on in their minds before they went and did something stupid. He knew Rasile hadn’t asked to come up here just to view a city she disliked even more than he did. That was why he’d asked Lord Waldron, the commander of the royal army, to put a couple soldiers down at the base of the stairs to keep idlers out of the tower while Cashel and the wizard were in it.

  “Warrior Cashel,” Rasile said with careful formality, though she still didn’t meet his eyes. “You are a friend of Chief Garric. As you know, the wizard Tenoctris summoned me to help your spouse Sharina while Tenoctris herself was occupied with other business.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cashel said. “I know that.”

  “There is no wizard as powerful as Tenoctris,” Rasile said, this time speaking forcefully.

  Cashel smiled. It was a good feeling to remember a success.

  “Ma’am, I believe that’s so,” he said. He could’ve added that it hadn’t been true before Tenoctris took an ancient demon into her while Cashel watched. Risky as that was, it’d worked; and because it’d worked, the kingdom had a defender like no wizard before her. “Even she says that, and Tenoctris isn’t one to brag.”

  “And now she has accomplished her other tasks,” Rasile continued, turning at last to look at Cashel. “It may be that with a wizard of his own race present—and so powerful a wizard besides—

  Chief Garric may no longer wish to keep me in his council. Do you believe
that is so, Warrior Cashel?”

  Cashel chuckled, glad to know what was bothering the old wizard. “No ma’am, it’s not so,” he said, making sure he really sounded like he meant it. He did mean it, of course, but with people—and sheep—lots of times it wasn’t the words they heard but the way you said them. “Look, Garric’s job is fighting against, well, evil. Right? The sort of evil that’ll wipe out everybody, your folk and mine both. And the fight isn’t over.”

  The sound Rasile made in her throat this time really was a growl, though it wasn’t a threat to him. “No, Warrior Cashel,” she said, “the fight is not over.”

  She gestured toward the eastern horizon. “A very great fight is coming, I believe. But—you have Tenoctris again.”

  “Ma’am,” Cashel said, hearing his voice drop lower because of the subject, “what with one thing and another, I’ve been in a lot of fights. I’ve never been in one where I wouldn’t have welcomed help, though. I figure Garric feels the same way.”

  Rasile gave a throaty laugh. “I am relieved to hear that,” she said. “During the time I accompanied your spouse Sharina, Warrior Cashel, I became accustomed to not being relegated to filth and garbage. While I could return to my former life with the True People, I don’t feel the need to reinforce my sense of humility to that degree. Wholesome though no doubt it would be to do so.”

  The laughed together. Cashel looked down at the city, holding his quarterstaff in his left hand. There were all sorts of people below, walking and working and just idling along. They made him think of summer days in the south pasture, sitting beneath the ilex tree on the hilltop and watching his sheep go about their business.

  In the past couple years Cashel had gone a lot of places and done a lot of things, but he was still a shepherd at heart. He’d learned there were worse things than sea wolves twisting out of the surf to snatch ewes—but he’d learned also that his hickory staff would put paid to a wizard as quickly as it would to the sort of threats his sheep had faced.