Wrath of a Mad God (36 page)

A voice inside his head said, “Sometimes.”

Pug reached out and took his son’s hand. “With all those things taught to us by Martuch on Delecordia, we began a process of trying to be here. Now, to go home, all we must do is—”

“Stop trying,” finished Magnus.

Pug gripped his son’s hand tightly. “Just let go, Magnus.” He looked down at his old friend and said, “I will miss you, gambler.”

“I will miss you as well, magician.” Nakor yawned. “The end comes quickly as it must. That is good, for I am very tired and need to rest. The God of Thieves gave me a far longer allotment than most men have, so I do not feel cheated it ends now.” He rested his back against the rear of the throne. “I’m going to start time again, so it will get noisy and unpleasant. You might want to leave now.” He held up his hand and suddenly the wind and noise returned.

Pug said to his son once more. “Let go, Magnus.”

Magnus closed his eyes and tried to relax. “Father, it’s as if I’ve clenched my fist for a year. I can’t unfold my fingers.”

“Slowly. Let go slowly.”

Pug and Magnus stood motionless, concentrating the part of themselves that had been controlling the magic that allowed them to stay in the second realm, and suddenly, there was a wrenching pain, as if fire burned across their minds. Then their lungs burned and their skin felt as if lightning danced across it.

Both men fell to their knees and then lay prostrate on the ground. When the pain ebbed away and they at last could open their eyes, they found they were no longer in the deep cavern.
Instead they were in a crater littered with stones and rubble. The noise and stench of the deep pit was gone.

Pug felt his lungs almost collapse from the pain of breathing, but with each breath the pain lessened. After a moment he sat up and saw his son, looking as he always had. Magnus groaned and then started to cough and finally managed also to sit up. Pug saw that his son’s illusion was gone and that he looked human once more.

“Where are we?” Magnus asked his father.

Pug stood on unsteady legs and looked around. “I recognize this! We are in a subbasement—”

“But there’s nothing above us,” interrupted his son.

“I know, but once this was the lowest level of the great arena in the Holy City.”

“We’re back on Kelewan?”

“Apparently,” said Pug as he looked around. “Given the congruency of the two worlds, it makes sense that if we changed the realm in which we resided, we wouldn’t have any reason to change location.” He pointed to the rubble surrounding them.

“The Dasati raid…it was more like utter destruction.”

A pain erupted inside Pug’s chest and head, and he doubled over, only staying upright with his son’s help.

“What is it, Father?”

“Ban-ath,” said Pug. “He’s reminding me I need to get back to Midkemia.”

“Can you conjure a rift home, or should I fly us to the Assembly?”

“I can make a rift and take us where we need to go,” said Pug, though he was almost at the point of total exhaustion.

He closed his eyes and Magnus looked around the crater that had at one time been the bottom of the great arena in Kentosani. The stones around them still reeked of conflict magic and Magnus detected other energies. A great battle had been waged here, as both magicians and priests from the various orders fought against the raiding Dasati. If the reports that had reached Valko were true—and apparently they were—the Dasati had destroyed a large part of the population after killing everyone in the Tsurani High Council and the Tsurani response had been slow; early estimates
had put the dead at fifty thousand Tsurani, warriors and common people. But looking at the devastation around him, Magnus could easily believe more than that number had perished, for this was the result of Tsurani magic, not the death magic practiced by the Dasati. Some group of magicians and priests had literally torn this arena down around the ears of the Dasati. While his father worked, Magnus used his own arts to rise into the air, gaining a better look.

Once he could see over the rubble that had been the shell of the great arena, he wished he hadn’t. The entire heart of the Holy City was in ruins. Fires still burned in sections abandoned by those who lived there and nowhere close by could Magnus detect any sign of life. There was still a faint stench of decay on the wind as bodies left unburied lay where they had fallen. Scavengers had finished most of the work days earlier, but just enough death lingered on the stones to suggest to Magnus this was now a dead city.

He felt overwhelmed, even after all they had been through. Could they really stop the Dark Lord from reaching this world?

He lowered himself down just as his father finished casting his rift spell, and a doorway-sized grey oval appeared in the air. Without saying anything to his son, Pug stepped through and Magnus followed him.

Caleb stood in shock as his father and brother walked through a rift into his father’s office and then he raced forward as his father collapsed to the floor. Magnus also could barely stand and had to put his hand to the wall to steady himself.

“Mother will be overjoyed to see you,” Caleb said, as he knelt beside Pug, “if you have the good grace not to die on me before she returns.”

Magnus smiled. He enjoyed Caleb’s dry sense of humor. “It’s good to see you, too, little brother.”

Half conscious now, Pug required the help of both his sons to regain his feet. Once he had stood up, he said “I feel sick. The transition.”

Magnus felt as ill as he had when they had first transited to Delecordia.

“Get a healer,” said Pug to Caleb. “We do not have the luxury of time. We cannot afford to lie abed for days.”

“I’ll send for one,” said Caleb, “but until he arrives, to bed with both of you.”

Caleb called for help and a pair of students came to take Magnus back to his quarters, while Caleb helped his father to his own.

As soon as Caleb left his father to await the healer, Pug felt a searing pain across his forehead and he arched his back in agony. Then the pain lessened.

A man stood next to the bed. “Sorry,” he said. He was a familiar figure, short and bandy-legged and wearing a tattered orange robe. He had a rucksack hanging from one shoulder and held a staff in the other hand. He waved his hand and Pug’s pain and fatigue vanished.

“Nakor?” asked Pug in wonder.

“Not really, but I thought you’d prefer this appearance to the others I’ve used over the years,” answered the figure. “And should anyone chance upon us, it’ll save a lot of questions.”

“Ban-ath?”

Bowing, the figure said, “At your service, Pug. Or rather, you’ve been at mine. And you’re not done yet, but we are getting close to the end.”

Pug sat up, feeling as if he had rested for days. “What have you done?”

“Well, if all goes according to plan, I’ve saved the world and everyone in it, as well as a sizable piece of this entire universe,” said the god in Nakor’s form. “You’re looking a mess, magician, and you have much left to do, so clean up while I tell you some things.”

“More lies and manipulations?”

“Oh, almost certainly, eventually, but for now I’m content to limit myself to the truth, for right now, that will serve me best.”

“The truth?”

“Yes, magician, this time you hear the truth.”

P
ug listened.

“There’s little to be gained by rushing, but time does press. Still, after what you’ve endured over the years—”

“Over the years?” Pug interrupted.

The god who looked like Nakor held up his hand.

“Do you remember the story Nakor told you, the parable of the scorpion and the frog?”

“The scorpion kills the frog who is helping it cross the river and when asked why answers, ‘because it is my nature.’ Yes, I remember it.”

“Good,” said Ban-ath. “Because it is my nature to lie, to manipulate, to steal, cheat, and ignore laws and rules at every hand. It was I who put you where Macros could find you, Pug. I who guided him to Crydee and let
him think watching over you was his idea. It was I who manipulated Macros every step of the way, making him think he was serving the lost God of Magic.” He betrayed a moment of reflection in his expression as he gazed out into space and said, “It will come to pass that Sarig returns, just as the others returned, as the Dasati gods returned to their realm…if we survive long enough, but Macros was not Sarig’s servant. He was mine. His vanity was my biggest ally; he never once conceived that anything he did might not be the product of his own genius.

“I manipulated his magic to infuse the ancient armor found by Tomas in the dragon’s cave, so that my magic could bridge time and space, and convey Tomas’s thoughts back to Ashen-Shugar, manipulating one of the enemies of the gods, so a war we were losing could become a war postponed.”

“What?” Pug was incredulous.

“What you call the Chaos Wars is only a small part of a much vaster conflict, one about which you are now learning, one which has been raging since before the rise of humanity and even the creation of the gods. At the advent of a new epoch, when we who are your gods rose and disposed of those forces you think of as the Two Blind Gods of the Beginning, as the Valheru rose against us, all of that…well, to put it bluntly, at that time we…or more to the point,
I
was on the losing side.”

Pug could only stare at the likeness of Nakor.

“So I cheated.”

Pug suddenly started to laugh. He could not help himself, but in that instant he realized that no matter how vast and deep this conflict was, no matter how dire the results were for millions of intelligent beings, to this entity, this “god,” it was just a game, no more worthy of respect than a game of lin-lan in the back room of an alehouse in Krondor.

Nakor’s face grinned. “Ah, you do appreciate a good joke, don’t you?”

“Joke?” said Pug, sobering. “I’m laughing at the sheer madness of this all. I’m laughing to stop myself from reaching out to strangle you.”

“I wouldn’t recommend your trying, Pug,” said Ban-ath,
suddenly solemn. “Understand, I am the scorpion, and I can no more change my nature than you can become a frog.”

Pug waved away the remark. There was a knock at the door, and suddenly the figure of Nakor was gone. The door opened and Caleb appeared with a young woman behind him, a healer named Mianee.

Pug said to them, “I’m fine, really. Bring me some food if you don’t mind, and some ale. Actually, I’m famished.”

Mianee was a no-nonsense type who refused to be put off, so Pug endured a quick examination, after which she pronounced him fit. She left and Caleb returned with food and ale. When the tray was on the table at the bedside, Pug said, “I would like some time alone, son. I’ll call you if I need something.”

Caleb appeared about to ask a question, thought better of it, then left, closing the door behind him. Pug looked from the door back to the tray and found a stranger standing next to it, picking up a piece of cheese. He was of slight build and had curly brown hair and Pug took a moment to recognize him. “Jimmy?”

“Of course not,” said the figure, nibbling at the cheese. He was now the twin of young Lord James, Jimmy the Hand, when he had first come into Prince Arutha’s service as a squire. “This is very good.”

“Ban-ath,” said Pug.

“Of if you prefer Kalkin, Antrhen, Isodur, or any number of other names humanity inflicts on me—Coyote is one of my favorites—but no matter the name, I am myself.” He gave a theatrical bow which very much reminded Pug of the former thief who had grown up to marry his daughter and become one of the legendary figures of Kingdom history.

Pug sat back and started to eat. After a moment of silence, Ban-ath said, “As I was saying: we were losing the war with the ancient powers and the Valheru were doing us no good. Of a hundred lesser aspects and the dozen greater aspects of the god-force only a dozen lesser and four greater endured.

“You must understand I am giving you a limited perspective, a glimpse of a far greater whole, but a whole which is beyond even your not inconsiderable intellect’s ability to grasp.
Yours is, perhaps, the greatest mind in the history of the human race on Midkemia, Pug.” Pug began to object, but Ban-ath cut him off. “Save your modesty, for although it may be considered a pleasant quality by most people, I don’t see it that way. Vain people like Macros are easy to manipulate. There is an axiom, ‘you can’t cheat an honest man,’ and an honest man admits his own shortcomings. With you I must approach certain tasks in a far different fashion than I did with Macros; I could easily convince him he was the genius behind all his plots and intrigues. You, on the other hand, are more effective working on behalf of something you believe in, and while telling you the truth is less fun, it is more efficient. Still, I’m willing to be honest—occasionally—since I am a creature of hard facts and probabilities. Best of all, you know what you don’t know and long to learn, which is why you’re a great deal more intelligent than most people.” Ban-ath waved him out of the bed. “Get dressed.”

With a snap of the god’s fingers, Pug was suddenly wearing a clean, fresh robe.

“The food?”

Another finger snap and Pug was no longer hungry. “With rank comes privilege. We can talk while we travel. We have a lot to see.”

Another finger snap and they were somewhere else.

It was a void, but not like the one he had experienced when he had destroyed the original Tsurani rift at the end of the Riftwar. This felt different. Rather than the absence of anything, this place felt as if they were surrounded by everything, but in a fine powder, compared to which the finest mote of dust was grotesquely large and coarse. “Where are we?” Pug asked.

“We are in the fourth realm below, or what your poets, dramatists, and not a few clergy called the Fourth Level of Hell.”

Thinking of what he had glimpsed through the portal to the fifth circle when Macros had battled the Demon King Maag, and what he had seen of the second plane—the Dasati plane—he said, “This is not what I expected.”

“Nor is it what you would have encountered millennia ago,
had you cause to visit.” Pug detected an odd tone in the god’s voice, a note of regret. “This was to the Dasati world what their world is to yours. There were beings living here, Pug, a little more civilized by your standards than the demons, but not by that much. Still, they had a society, or rather a great many of them, for they were spread far and wide throughout this universe, much as humanity is spread throughout our realm.”

“What happened?”

“The Dark One,” said Ban-ath shortly.

“What do you mean?”

“No one knows, or at least no one I know does, and I know a lot of people…billions in fact.”

Pug glanced at the source of the voice, expecting to see Nakor again, but there was nothing but void all around him. “What am I seeing?”

“A plane of reality so devoid of life that it has been reduced to a fine primordial grit, a place where every single bit of reality has been equally distributed across the entire volume of this reality.”

“How is that possible?”

“In an infinite universe, anything you can imagine is possible somewhere, probable, even.”

“Then this entire realm is completely devoid of anything beyond this…fine dust?”

“Well, nothing is eternal, or at least we’ll never know. Even the gods as you think of us have limits on their perceptions and existence. It may be that for some reason or another two motes will bump into one another and bind, and eventually a third will join them, and that attraction will continue as it pulls more matter into a sphere. Eventually all that is here will be pulled in and when it reaches a certain level of density—”

“It explodes,” said Pug. “A new universe is created. It’s what Macros showed us—”

“In the Garden by the City Forever, when the Pantathians trapped you, Macros, and Tomas was there with that dragon, yes, I remember.”

“You remember?”

Laughing, the God of Thieves said, “I orchestrated it!” His tone turning serious, Ban-ath added, “You may never fully understand, nor may you ever forgive me—about which I care nothing—but many of the pains you’ve suffered and the wonders you’ve observed have been part of a much larger plan, one that has been preparing you for what you must do now.

“Seeing that image of how your universe began was merely your first lesson in appreciating just how vast things are, and how important what you’re about to do is. For you must do something that you would have been unable to until now. You had to see a universe born, watch people die including those you’ve loved, travel the Hall of Worlds, and do so many other improbable things, Pug, because you must undertake even more arduous and challenging tasks and make decisions no mortal should ever have to make.”

“What decisions?”

“In time. Right now you must learn more.”

“We’re not really here, are we?”

“No. We’re still in your room, actually, and you’re sitting quietly on your bed staring into space, but for the sake of what comes next, think of yourself as being on an amazing journey.”

Ban-ath snapped his fingers.

There was a flash and suddenly they were in a different reality, one in which massive chunks of rock and debris sped past at great speed. This time Pug saw a sky that was more akin to what he might expect of the Dasati universe, a place of colors and energies vivid to the eye, but beyond human senses. But here there were vast curtains of colors with massive flows of energy pulsing across their surfaces, and he knew he was witnessing something incredibly distant. Sheets of scintillating colors, red, purple, violet, and indigo shimmered impossible distances away, covering incalculable areas in the heavens. A giant rock the size of a mountain tumbled past, energy dancing across its face, sending jets of magma erupting into space. A vast distance away, stars illuminated the vault of the sky, though there were far fewer than in the night skies at home.

“Where are we?” asked Pug.

“This is the third realm, most recently occupied by the Dark One. As you see, he left enough big pieces behind so that this level of reality has a chance to reform a little more rapidly than the realm we just left. There are corners of this universe where life still exists, a few minor civilizations in fact. They may even endure long enough to reach out to other worlds.”

“Why is there less destruction here?”

“A variety of reasons,” said Ban-ath. “As you have no doubt noticed the states of energy are much higher in our realm, the so-called first realm, which by the way is considered the First Circle of Hell by those who live in the realm above us.”

Pug laughed. “It’s a matter of perspective, I guess.”

“Very much so.” Ban-ath’s tone turned somber. “You have been cursed as much as blessed, Pug of Crydee. More than any mortal since Macros.”

“I’m beginning to understand that.”

“Macros was an imperfect vessel, our first attempt, and in many ways he was a poor choice.”

“Why?

“The things that made him so easy to manipulate: vanity, arrogance, and a fundamental distrust of others. You on the other hand were a new soul, untroubled by so many of the things which marked Macros in previous lives. You are the result of a conspiracy of gods, for we had need of you.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a weapon, of sorts, and a tool, and you bring the one thing to this situation that no god can: humanity. We are slaves to you as much as being your masters, Pug. The relationship between the gods and humanity is one of a fair exchange. We provide expression for your deepest beliefs and needs, and you give us form and substance.”

“Why you?” asked Pug. “If I had been asked before which god would be responsible for restoring things to this realm as they should be, I might have suggested Ishap, for balance is crucial. Or among the lesser gods, perhaps Astalon, for his justice, or Killian for her nurturing of nature. But you?”

“Who else?” said Ban-ath, giving a deep rumble of a laugh.

“Macros thought he was somehow working for the lost God of Magic, Sarig, and Nakor thought he was the instrument of Wodan-Hospur, the lost God of Knowledge.” He paused.

“You’ve seen only a tiny aspect of the gods, Pug, but you’ve seen more than most. And you’ve heard more, from people like Nakor and Jimmy.

“You know that even the memory of a god, or a god’s dream, or a god’s echo can take on form and substance, and can act as if the god were still present.

“I am here presenting to you an aspect of myself, providing an illusion to instruct you, but I am also at the same time listening to a thief in Roldem who is about to be found out by the City Watch, begging me to intervene. I am watching a man lie to his wife as he leaves to meet his mistress, who lies to him about loving him while taking his gold to give to her lover, a thug who doesn’t quite believe in me, but who grudgingly leaves a copper once a month in the votive box in my shrine in LaMut, just in case. I am also listening to the pleas of a gambler about to lose his last coin and who will be beaten and killed later tonight when he cannot pay back the gold he borrowed from an agent of the Mockers in Krondor when the Upright Man makes an example of him. I am sitting with a merchant who has placed gold in the hands of one of my priests to beg me to keep my worshippers away as he ships valuable spices from Muboya to the City of the Serpent River. I hear every prayer and answer them all, though most of the time my answer is no. I also see every act done in my name, and an endless series of possibilities for every choice made. Humanity speaks to me constantly, Pug.