Grudgebearer (53 page)

“I won.” Dienox smiled smugly. “That's all that matters, though she did look better with hair. Still, it's pleasing to know she takes her devotion to me so seriously now . . . to shave it all and match me. Too bad it was only a side game. If everyone had been involved, I'd have the dragons back.” Dienox clapped his armored hand on the bony ridge of Torgrimm's chest plate. Dienox's lips curved into a frown as he noticed the warpick. “Why are you armed?”

“You touched two of their minds,” Torgrimm said, avoiding the question. “You made Wylant toss her helmet aside, and then you pushed Rae'en into the Arvash'ae early. Neither is your Justicar.”

“And more times than that. What of it?” Dienox straightened. A battered iron shield forged to resemble a snarling dragon appeared in the war god's left hand. In his right hand, an iron greatsword manifested, its fuller resembling a dragon as well. “You might as well know I ‘influenced' the human captain as well. Minor infractions. At worst it will cost them their lives. Call for an accounting; I'll pay the penalty Aldo demands, but it's not enough to get me ejected from the game. As far as I know, no one has laid claim to them. They aren't anyone's chosen champions.”

Torgrimm swung his warpick. “You disgust me!”

Dienox took the blow on his shield, rolling back in obvious surprise as the bone blade sheered through the metal, cleaving the shield in twain.

“Have you lost your mind, Harvester?” Dienox crouched low on the balls of his feet. “I am the essence of combat! You can't defeat me.”

“No. You are merely war. You have allowed yourself to sink lower than any other deity, abandoning your dual nature. I am eldest, Dienox. When you think back to your earliest memory, whose face do you see?” Torgrimm's warpick cut toward the war god. Dienox sprung over the weapon, seizing it by the haft with both hands.

“Your face, Harvester, and if I acted far enough outside the rules, I suppose nothing could save me from you. If I'd committed such a crime, you wouldn't be talking to me now. I would already have gone to . . . where do gods go when they die, Torgrimm?”

“To the Artificer.” Torgrimm rammed his bone helm into Dienox's forehead, but the war god only laughed.

“Tell me what's really bothering you, Torgrimm. You can't be worried about three souls. Is it Minapsis? I counseled you against marrying Kilke's sister. I've always thought Shidarva more your type . . . or a perhaps a mortal lady? Is that it? You fancy one of these?”

Dienox gestured at the prisoners.

“Take one,” Dienox laughed. “Take them both. Have your fun. I won't tell anyone.”

“You disgust me,” Torgrimm spat. “That's the problem with all of you. You spend so much time in pursuit of your own needs, your own entertainments, you've forgotten how to be gods. You act just like mortals!” He pointed at the captives.

“By me, not this again!” Dienox let go of the warpick and shoved it away. “I know that you're close to them, Harvester. But you must stop this. You need perspective.”

“I'm not the one who had a portion of his powers stolen by one of them,” Torgrimm muttered.

“True,” Dienox picked up the pieces of his shield, fitting them back together, metal flowing into metal until the shield was whole again. “She was worth it though.”

Between them both, two forms appeared.

“We're in trouble now,” Dienox said in mock fright.

Aldo and Shidarva stared at the two gods. “What is the meaning of this?” Shidarva asked.

“Just because you're the new ruler of the gods, Shidarva, doesn't mean you have to get a nit up your nethers over every little thing.” Dienox pushed Aldo out of his way and stood directly before the goddess of justice and retribution. “Torgrimm and I had a . . . disagreement. It's nothing to worry your regalness about.”

“Is this true, Soul Warden?” Shidarva asked Torgrimm.

“Ask Aldo,
” Torgrimm snarled.

“I have heard from Aldo, but I would prefer to hear the truth from your lips as well.”

Torgrimm's body vanished, replaced by a radiant symbol of infinity. “That is the problem that faces us, lady.” His voice was deeper and more resonant, less emotional. “Gods should not have lips. In the past when we appeared to mortals, we put on mortal seemings at Kilke's suggestion. He said that it would put them more at ease. That it did, but now it has gone too far.”

“Now we occupy ourselves with mundane enjoyments. We eat and drink and make merry as they do. We squabble like the mortals placed in our care. Dienox can no longer assume his true form. Neither can Gromma, Xalistan, or even Aldo.”

Shidarva transformed as well, from a beautiful but sad female Eldrennai in long, blue robes . . . into a stylized balance with a dagger suspended from the left side and a shield from the right. “That is not true of all of us.”

“But it was true during the last game,” Torgrimm countered. “In the last round, when you were on the verge of defeat, I recall how distraught you were when you could not resume your divine aspect.”

“And I regained my center . . .”

“Yes, and so should we all,” Torgrimm intoned. “Even now, can you see the web of destiny if you look? Can you observe the tatters these games have wrought?”

“None who played have been able to do that since the first game, Torgrimm,” Shidarva answered.

“It is in tatters!” Torgrimm shouted. “You do not hear the cries of those souls that should have been delivered and were not because of your games! I can. I do.”

“That's a lie,” Dienox roared. “You're being melodramatic.”

“Am I?” Torgrimm asked, resuming his mortal seeming. “Ask Aldo if I lie. Or can even he see that far beyond the games you play? Do any of you have room left for the laws of reality?”

Aldo, in his gnome-like aspect, gazed at the ground with empty sockets. Reaching into the folds of his robes, he withdrew his box of eyes, selected two glowing gold ones and inserted them into his sockets. When he was done, he cleared his throat and stared up at his fellow gods. He looked Shidarva in the eye but could not meet Torgrimm's gaze. “I . . . It is true that my knowledge has narrowed considerably, but I feel that this is a natural thing, the will of the Artificer.”

“Even you have been corrupted.” Torgrimm knelt, touching Aldo's cheek and looking into his eyes. “I'm planning something. Something to put an end to these games you all play with mortals. I know you know that, but do you know what it is I plan?”

“I . . . have my theories.” Aldo looked away.

“The god of knowledge with whom I stood side by side at the dawn of this creation would have known.” Torgrimm stood, taking a step back. “When I put his soul inside the embodiment the Artificer fashioned for him, he shone with divinity, with a knowledge and intelligence so keen that I had seen its like only in the presence of the Artificer alone. Now, when I look upon you, I see a gnome playing god.”

“Now see here, Torgrimm!” Aldo's face flushed red with anger. “I will not have you address me in such a . . .”

“I'm entering the game,” Torgrimm interrupted.

“You can
't,” Dienox objected.

“Torgrimm,” Shidarva began tactfully. “I know how hard it is to watch and not be able to play, but you know that the rules forbid . . .”

Aldo remained silent, the light of his eyes shifting from gold to silver, brows furrowed.

“There is a way,” Torgrimm said softly. “Aldo knows there is. It's merely unthinkable to most of you.”

“How is it possible, Aldo?” Dienox grabbed the other deity by his robe, shaking him violently.

“I cannot say,” Aldo answered as understanding dawned. “Or perhaps ‘am not required to reveal' would be a more apt choice of words.”

“You know the identity of the champion I am allowed?” Torgrimm asked, ignoring the other gods' protests.

“I do,” nodded Aldo, “but not how you plan to get him on the board.”

“That's not fair!” Dienox bellowed. “He could reap the souls of the other champions before their time and . . .”

Aldo touched Torgrimm's breastplate nervously. “If you fail . . .”

“Then it will be the end of everything.”

“If you succeed . . .”

“It will be the end of everything as it is now.”

“That person is not yet eligible.”

“If you could see the web of destiny,” Torgrimm chided, “then you would know he soon will be. The battle will come. Many will die, a hero will fall, and then what is fair enough for Kilke and Dienox will be fair enough for me.”

“Be careful, my friend,” Aldo began.

“I want Dienox punished.”

“You what?” Dienox bellowed. He brandished his sword, stepping toward the Harvester, but Shidarva stepped between them, two scimitars limned in a cerulean blaze appearing in each hand. “He tells tales against me, Shidarva!”

“You have never before—” Aldo began.

“He has done enough.” Torgrimm's voice was calm but firm, a whisper that roared. “I wish to mulct him in a tangible fashion . . . I demand an amercement paid not to me but to the mortals he has offended.”

“Torgrimm—” Shidarva frowned.

“I demand it under the rules of your own game,” Torgrimm's voice dropped even lower, “or are you not the goddess of justice and retribution? Do you no longer obey rules?”

Blue-edged blades whipped about, ahead of the goddess herself, they shattered when they touched Torgrimm's bone plate armor, and Shidarva cried out in pain.

“What?” she hissed.

“I am the Sower and the Reaper, and my course is completely right and good and just. When those conditions are met—”

“No one may oppose you,” she completed. “You are correct. I apologize. What fine . . . what amercement do you suggest?”

“As a former champion, Wylant was to be free of his influence. He has controlled her three times I know about in the last decade alone and has admitted to more.”

“She was going to kill herself,” Dienox objected.

“As would have been her right,” Torgrimm sighed. “Though had you never interfered with her at all, I doubt she would have found herself with such feelings of guilt and loss and hopelessness.”

“I gave her glory!”

“No.” Torgrimm seemed to grow larger, even as his shoulders turned in and his head drooped down. “She gave you victory. You gave her nothing but blonde hair and a runny nose in exchange.”

“What do you want from me?” Dienox growled. “To set her free and slay her captors, to—”

“I revere mortals, foolish god. I want no such thing—”

“Leave her alone,” Aldo coughed. “He wants you to withdraw your . . . ahem . . . blessings . . . all of them . . . and then to leave her alone forever.” He took out one of his eyes, rubbed it on his robes, and popped it back in. “Right?”

“That is what you want?” Shidarva asked.

“It is all I ever want,” Torgrimm said, holding up his palms, “for all mortals to live their lives as they choose to live them, to do their best, and that when we do help them, it is because they ask and even then . . . sparingly.”

“Done,” Dienox pouted. He held out his hand, and a sliver of divine essence slid free of Wylant's soul. The only outward signs were a subtle darkening of her eyebrows and easing of her breath.

“Thank you.” Torgrimm faded from the Shadow Road, reappearing where the web of destiny, as clear to him as the day he was forged, shone around him. Human souls flared briefly within the weblike strands, bright but fleeting. The souls of the Dwarves burned with less intensity, a steady flame, rarely changing, slow to start and slow to blink out. More dazzling were the souls of the elves, burning erratically—in one instant scarcely an ember, a raging inferno the next—but ceaselessly. Wisps of webbing blew free at the corners.

In the center yawned one ragged tear, chasm-like. Souls poured into it and vanished, others flared into existence where they were destined to arrive, then sparked out in the absence of the strands that should have sustained them. Torgrimm sent his essence out along that part of the web like a spider, mending it as best he could, catching the fading souls and storing them in caches of cocoon-like divinity until he could find a place to slip them back in, find them a place where their presence would not disrupt the flow of birth and death.

“Once,” Torgrimm bemoaned, “all of us worked together and the web was always whole.” Now, most of his fellow gods appeared only at the periphery of the web, striking blindly, spewing webbing without care, heedless of the pattern they could no longer perceive.

There was only one other presence which moved with intent across the web, a presence Torgrimm knew well. It cut strands that should have been preserved, working to widen the holes. Torgrimm peered across the web at Kilke, god of secrets and shadow, and snarled.