The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3) (66 page)

Pacmad’s trust would have been a nice achievement, but being a queen topped that. Screw him and his clan.

She offered him her most sincere face. “Just a little.” No coyness, no whorishness there. She was being honest, really.

The chieftain retrieved his hand and picked up the blade. “I have some news for you.”

The sudden change of topic startled her. “Oh?”

Pacmad sheathed the blade in his belt. “I received several reports from the north. The Namsue are being engaged heavily just days away from Somar. There’s this northern force fighting them. You will read the reports and tell me if there’s anyone in
that lot who might be persuaded to watch the killing from the sidelines or even join my side. Like that Rotger fellow.”

“Yes, I will do that,” she agreed.

He slid the chair back and rose. “Your letters did not seem to have made any difference,” he chided in a calm voice. “On the contrary, the Eracians all seem united in their effort to crush me. So, either they ignored you or you made the wrong impression.”

She did not need him to be explicit about his threat. She swallowed. On top of everything, now this, fresh mistrust from Pacmad.

“They did not ignore or misinterpret my letters.” She hated sounding defensive. It only made her sound more guilty.

The Kataji tapped the side of his neck. “I am going to see Aileen now,” he told her, and he never told her where he went. “In the evening, you will show me your fresh batch of letters, and they will be convincing and sincere. Your countrymen had better listen this time.”

Sonya heard her breath come out in a fast, angry sniff. Pacmad was laying blame on her for things outside her realm of control. She could not influence how the division commanders would respond to Pacmad’s messages. She still did not know who led the Northern Army. She was powerless to make any difference outside Somar. Why would Pacmad insist on something like this, unless he wanted to make her fret?

Maybe he is playing a game
, she hoped. Trying to scare her so she would not focus on other affairs and, that way, lose control of the court. Yes, that was it. If he really wanted her punished, she would have known by now. Whenever he was displeased, he was not shy with his kicks and punches. So, he must be trying to unnerve her.

She could not let him. Which made the necessity of a quick Eracian victory all the more urgent. She watched him saunter out of the throne hall, several of his warriors at his tail. Pacmad was ruthless and utterly smart, almost a genius, but she would best him yet.

With the catastrophic threat of the viceroy’s identity hanging above her neck like a sharp ax blade, Sonya went about being a loyal Eracian citizen and plotting the downfall of the invaders. Such a difficult challenge, but one worth the station of the soon-to-be queen of the realm.

CHAPTER 49

T
anid sat in front of the fire, watching the flames dance. If he let his eyes unfocus, the orange and yellow tongues became dancers and birds and lizards, any manner of wild things that his mind could conceive. And that made him wonder.

What preceded his own kind? Who had made the gods?

But the blaze had no answers, only its warm depths that left him deeply curious.

The god looked up at the sky, clear, the color of sable peppered with silver frost. The stars looked hazy in the cold, but they were every bit unchanged as the day he had first glimpsed them. Small and big, the bright, shiny ones, the splotches of gray that marked the eastern corner of the firmament, they all remained timeless. He was a deity, but the world was
beyond
him.

Perhaps it was divine nature to create, seeking an answer to your own existence. Maybe it was the reason why they had created humanity, trying to unravel the mystery of their own creation through man’s actions. It was only Damian who had dared explore that crucial question to the limit. But several thousands of years later, Tanid was still as clueless as ever.

Maybe he should leave the Old Land, he thought. Maybe he should seek answers elsewhere. Humanity had begun here,
but it had taken on a life of its own, spread everywhere, become something else. To their astonishment, the gods had learned they no longer controlled their own creation. They had learned that the power of belief was a double-edged weapon, one that sustained them and one that could unmake them.

When you create
, he mused,
you give away of yourself. When you create life, yours becomes unnecessary
. A bitter lesson.

He should have been wiser back then. He should have seen the warnings. But when you had immortality at your own side, time lost its meaning. He should have realized that making humans so short-lived would make faith equally vulnerable. The godly timelessness became an idea that mankind could undo every time a new generation was born.

Tanid did not quite recall the days before the war. Mostly, he remembered his arrogance and stupor. It was only many years later that he had opened his eyes and glared at the alien world, so changed, a world that no longer belonged to his kind, a world that had faraway places and strange nations that had never seen a deity in their lives and never spared a moment of worship for their creators. They had turned to other forces, to nature, to water and fire, to spirits, seeking strength and guidance in the mysteries of the world. Tanid and his kin could only stare in horror at seeing reality forget and abandon them.

Yes, he should leave the Old Land. He should venture past its marked borders, visit the Wild Islands, seek help from people who had no personal interest in his kind. They might see the threat the White Witch posed as more than just an ancient, unfinished feud or an exaggerated bedtime story. They might understand the mortal danger.

It was more difficult with the people of these lands, the realms. They worshipped him, but they no longer knew why. For them, the story of the Age of Sorrow did not exist. It was a
fable, a myth, not even that. Apart from a few patriarchs, perhaps, humans no longer believed the gods were among them. And if they did, Tanid was not quite sure how they might react to this revelation. It frightened him as much as imbued him with hope.

Above all, though, he knew he must not make the same mistake as in the old times. He must not let faith be his only instrument of power. But how? He was not really sure.

Humans worshipped him in a hundred different ways. When they prayed for male children, for warm summers and luck with dice, when they lusted after their neighbors’ wives and went to battle, they prayed to their gods and goddesses, and their energy made him stronger, more powerful. Only just as easily, they might forget him, and he would become a weak thing that even some street urchin could destroy. He had to find a way to detach his own existence from their lives, from their beings. He had to figure out how to tie his divine life to the greater powers that made the world. He glanced at the fire again. The answer hid inside the flickering orange wisps. In the stars, and the wind, and all the other forces that made him just as vulnerable as these short-lived creatures sharing the fire with him.

His mind went back to the Womb, the birthplace of his kind.

Who had built that?

Partially hidden in the shadows, Brother Clemens was preaching to the mass of followers, hundreds of shiny white eyes locked on the priest, faces rapt with concentration. Tanid was jubilant at their expression of love and dedication. Each new man who bent his heart to his cause gave him that much more of a chance in a war against Calemore.

Only he was restless, and worried.
I can make the wind blow more slowly, but I never
made
the wind
.

How could a god overcome his own weakness? Perhaps one could not. He almost envied Damian’s son. He was immortal, he was immensely powerful, and he was not at the mercy of those who followed him, in person or as an ideal retold from father to son through generations. And yet, the witch wanted to be one of them. Did he know something Tanid missed? Or was he just as deluded about the grandeur of divine existence as they had all been before Elia’s death?

Maybe Calemore was responding to his inner nature, just as powerless to change his own fate as Tanid. Part of him was probably asking the same question, in some other distant corner of the world where he massed his army of death. Maybe.

Tanid was only half listening, but the words filtered through his anxiety. Clemens was trying to retell an old story about the gods and goddesses. It was pure fiction, he knew. Nothing of the sort had ever happened. Throughout time, humans had filled in the vast gaps in their knowledge and made a new truth. Tanid let the priest talk. He had a solid grip on the audience, and that suited the god just fine.

I must harness the world to my side
, he swore.
I must
.

He frowned at the last passage from the holy brother. “There is more to that story,” he interjected gently. The eyes all turned toward him, glazed and eager.

“Please continue, Your Holiness,” Clemens said, stepping back deferentially.

Tanid climbed onto the wooden crate that served as the podium and stared at the crowd, the details dwindling into the darkness around him.
Magic, why does magic exist?
he asked himself, questions rising from the dark depths of his soul.
Where does magic come from?

“There was a great war once between the gods,” Tanid corrected. “In times past, not all gods and goddesses were united in their
cause. The strife almost broke them. And many humans perished in the centuries of fighting. By the time the war was concluded, no one really remembered why it had started, but the damage was done for all eternity. The world was changed forever.”

He paused for dramatic effect. “The Father of Evil was banished. His followers scattered, cast away from the Old Lands. Barriers were put up to keep them away, so they could not return.” Like everything else, made from faith and destined to fade away. Dreadful mistakes, Tanid knew.

“What if the Father of Evil returns?” a nameless face asked.

“He will never return,” Tanid replied with cold certainty. “But we must never slack our belief. Never. Old enemies still remain. They are hiding in their distant lands, waiting for us to forget them so they can strike again. Our faith is our strongest weapon against the evil.” Until he found a stronger one.

Tanid stared at his worshippers. He could see conviction etched in their features. They had to believe the war was inevitable so they would not blanch when he marched forth against Calemore.

“How will we know these enemies?” someone else inquired.

The god wondered how much he dared tell them. How would one know the White Witch of Naum? He brought total destruction with him; that was the simple answer.

“When foreign armies attack our lands.” Tanid noticed some confusion. “When enemies from without strike against us. They will not be Eracians, nor Caytoreans, nor Parusites, not even Athesians,” he emphasized. “We must be united in this struggle. Only if we all stand together, as brothers and sisters, joined in our love for the gods and goddesses, only then we can win.”

In his head, the sad repetition of the old war was replaying. The world forever changed by killing and magical blasts,
humanity reduced to a rabble of wild beasts, himself weary, weakened, and disillusioned by the bloody aftermath.

Tanid still wished he had Children who could see into the future, another domain of life that had been denied his kind. If only he knew what might happen, he could prepare. But the best he had was Bad Luck Ludevit.

We killed them, we hunted them down, we used them, and then threw them away. Now, I am paying the price of our pride and fears. So few of them left
.

He wondered how many magic wielders Calemore had. If there were any Special Children in Naum. What kind of powers had the witch accumulated while he had been locked behind the Veil?

I must defeat him. I must find a way to become invincible, to free myself from faith
. Only he feared the answer to his need was the same as to the question humans asked themselves at least once in their short lives: how could they cheat death? They could not.

Tanid stepped off the crate. Brother Clemens resumed his story. The god retreated from the fire, into the shadows near the stacked firewood. Pasha was there, sitting on an upturned log, raking the snow with a stick. The boy saw him and stood up.

“Your Holiness…”

“Yes, child?”

“I must ask you a question, please?” The boy looked withdrawn, frightened. Even now, months since he had been bought, he was still bashful, still looking sad for being abandoned by his family. He had not made any friends, and he rarely spoke to anyone.

Tanid gestured. “Go ahead, son.”

The boy made a painful expression. “Is it wrong to kill?”

“Sometimes, it is not,” Tanid replied, touching a gentle hand to the boy’s shoulder. “Do not doubt our path. We serve the gods and goddesses. We are protecting them. In doing what we must, we are saving the world from a great evil.”

“But I was always taught that killing is bad,” the boy tried.