The Goddess

Though by the time I married my Tanyth, I had gained all the information available in the library of Clan Abibaal, I did not leave upon my quest to find Tele'kili immediately. Yes, I was keen to enjoy wedded bliss with my incomparable bride, but something else anchored me to Eirashtar. Every time I looked at the horizon and thought to myself Today is the day, I knew in my bones that it was not. I could not have left that castle had I been dragged. I remained, gazing out to the north, waiting for something I could not name.

I learned what I awaited some months after Tanyth and joined our lives. It was morning, and the two of us lingered in bed, our nude bodies intertwined beneath the furs. We had finished our morning session of loveplay, and I already looked forward to the evening's. Tanyth was insistent that I sire an heir, though I believe her motives were not entirely so pure. I did not complain.

A gentle knock sounded at the door. I had been at the castle long enough to recognize Zidon, the prince's majordomo. "Enter," I called.

Zidon opened the door. "Forgive my interruption, my lord, Your Highness. A woman has arrived at our gates asking to see you, Lord Belromanazar. I would have sent her away, but she was insistent that she belongs to you."

"Belongs to me?" I asked, confused.

"I should not be surprised," Tanyth said wryly, pressing her body me and brushing a kiss upon my cheek. "I would expect women at our gates, begging for you."

"Show her to the main hall," I said. "I will meet her presently."

"As you wish, my lord," Zidon said, leaving us.

I rose from the bed, pulling on my boots and loincloth. Tanyth propped herself up on her hip, watching me with amusement. "You are a lord of Kharsoom and you still insist on covering yourself."

"It is my custom," I said.

"I still say it is foolish. Show your glorious spear. Let all see what pleasures me every night and every morn."

"What makes you walk like a sailor."

She scowled, but that vanished in a giggle. "Hush now. We both have our duty. You must put an heir in me, and besides, you have no one else to lay with." She rose, donning her half-skirt, lacing on her sandals, and placing the crown back upon her brow and straightening her jewelry. "Now, let us meet this woman you own."

"I don't own--"

She held up a hand. "We will see what is true."

As we left our quarters, Shaluvia, the princess's warmaid joined us, falling into step behind her mistress. She was silent, and I was not at ease with her. We had once been paramours, but I had insulted her. Now I was her mistress's husband. Our past would linger between us, but as long as she protected Tanyth, I would bear any awkwardness.

We made our way down to the main hall. I had to admit, curiosity spurred me. Who would make such a strange claim? Guards watched a petite figure who sat at the table eating a meager repast, her back to me. She had a mass of dark, wavy hair, and deep brown skin. As she heard my footsteps, she turned, and I knew her.

"Ujaala?" I asked, unable to believe it was her. I had not seen her in years, and assumed that I would never see her again.

"Master!" she cried, leaping up and running to me. She was thinner than I remembered her being, but seemed healthy. I embraced her. She pressed her warm body to mine, losing herself in my arms.

"Who is this?" Tanyth asked.

Ujaala let me go, assuming a servant's posture and bowing her head. "I am Ujaala, Belromanazar's bedslave."

Tanyth looked to me. "You never told me you had a bedslave."

"It is somewhat more complicated than that. I took her from a lord to help me find a man I was hunting. There is no documentation, no official purchase."

"You have not been taking care of her," Tanyth scolded me. My wife went to Ujaala, taking her head in hands. "Oh, my dear, you are lovely. I am the lord Belromanazar's wife, Princess Tanyth of Clan Abibaal."

"I am honored to be in your presence, Your Highness." Tanyth released her and Ujaala bowed.

"Get Ujaala more food and water!" Tanyth called, and the slaves scurried to obey. "How did you come here?"

"Belromanazar and I were separated, now years ago. He was taken by slavers. I hid from them. I tried to follow their caravan, but I lost them. Later, I began to hear stories of a barbarian boldisar from far away wielding a spear with an obsidian blade. I knew it to be my master."

"Where is Quiyahui?" I demanded.

Ujaala pointed up. "She protected me, as you commanded. She waits to be told it is safe. I worried a castle's archers might hurt her, while they would not harm a single slave."

I kissed her cheek. "A wise decision."

Food and water were brought. "Sit and eat," Tanyth said. "When you're finished, I will see you have a bath. Tonight, I expect you to lay with my husband."

"Tanyth," I protested.

"I need a rest." To Ujaala, she said, "You know how he is."

"Yes, mistress. He is... prodigious."

Tanyth let out a musical laugh. "He is at that, isn't he?" Then, to me, "Quiyahui. She is the feathered serpent of your banner?"

"She is. I've missed her," I said. I strode quickly for the courtyard, Tanyth and Shaluvia following.

The sky was a flat Kharsoomian blue, the sun bright. I squinted, hunting for the white serpent who danced through the air like a wisp of wind-caught ribbon. She glided down out of the glare, and my heart soared with her. Until that moment, I hadn't realized what her absence cost. Quiyahui returning was like suddenly regaining a limb I had forgotten I had.

She had grown. When last I saw her, she was twice as long as I was tall. Now it was closer to three times, and she was thicker around as well. I had no idea how large she would grow, knowing only that her mother was a colossus. Her feathers were pure white, and where the light touched them, rainbows appeared across her expanse. Her eyes were an icy blue and she fixed me with them. I felt love in her reptilian gaze, and she struck, swiftly wrapping me in her muscular coils. Shaluvia went for her blades, but Tanyth held up a hand.

"No, it is all right," she said. Shaluvia relaxed, but her hand did not leave the pommel of her sword.

Quiyahui held me in this embrace, and I felt her longing through it. Finally, she uncoiled. "I missed you," I murmured.

Her tongue flickered over me, and that was enough of an answer.

Tanyth approached cautiously. "May I meet her?"

"Yes," I said. "Of course. Tanyth, this is Quiyahui. Quiyahui, this is Princess Tanyth of Clan Abibaal, my wife."

If the serpent understood what wife meant, she gave no sign. She coiled herself up, inspecting Tanyth, the blue tongue caressing crimson flesh. Tanyth giggled. "It tickles."

I embraced my wife, kissing her, and stroking the serpent's head. The three of us rejoined Ujaala in the main hall. I sat down at the table and Ujaala told us what had become of her. She had followed me over the Red Wastes, sometimes only a few months behind, sometimes a year. She had nearly caught up with me in Repentance, but missed me by scant days.

"But I am here now with you," she said, a smile spreading over her face.

"And you are welcome in this household," Tanyth assured her.

"Thank you, mistress."

"You do not have to thank me, my dear," Tanyth said. She spoke to Ujaala like a mother to a child, yet the bedslave was perhaps a decade her senior. "I will need to speak with my husband about the proper care of slaves."

"She is not..." I cut myself off. I had tried to free Ujaala and she had steadfastly refused. Kharsoom was a strange culture that I could not truly understand. This seemed to be the life Ujaala wanted, perhaps the best she thought she could hope for. She would be comfortable enough. I had missed her charms as well, and looked forward to laying with her that night.

With Quiyahui once again beside me, the anchor holding me in Eirashtar was gone. I felt it lift as surely as I could feel anything. The quest called and finally I could answer. I said none of this, instead merely voicing my acquiescence to Ujaala's presence. "See that she's given night tea," I said finally.

I quietly made my preparations and three days later announced my intention to leave. Ujaala wept bitterly when I announced my intention, protesting she had only just found me. Tanyth held her, reminding her that she had a place in Clan Abibaal. "You will be safe here, and Belromanazar will return to us."

"You will return, won't you?" Tanyth asked as we held one another in bed the night before I was due to leave.

"You have to ask?"

"No," she admitted. "But I want you to tell me."

"I will return to you, my love." I paused, and into the silence said, "You did say you wanted a rest."

"I hoped that I would be with child already," she sighed.

"I will not be gone forever. This I vow to you."

"I know." She kissed me. "Because you cannot be long away from me."

"I love you, Tanyth."

She sighed and lay on her back, looking at the dancing golden light on the ceiling. "I think I will like being wed to a wizard. Your finger will finally be cold for a reason."

I chuckled, looking at Diotenah's ring wrapped about the index finger of my left hand. A skeletal serpent, it clutched its tail in its mouth. It had become so silent lately I had nearly forgotten it was there at all. I was only reminded if my finger, which took the temperature of the surrounding air, probed a sensitive spot in one of my paramours.

A ring was forged to distill, to concentrate, the power of the one who forged it. A piece of the creator remained within, and in this case, that piece was that of a ghoul necromancer dedicated to a dark design whose shape I could not yet see. That piece had whispered to me, encouraging me to use its power, but when I lost my magic, its voice diminished. It had been years since I felt the ghoul whispering softly in my mind.

I filled Ksenaëe's saddlebags with provisions, bringing several skins filled with water from the cistern. I was far less concerned about water thanks to my sweetwater goblet. Still, leaving without a supply was an unnecessary risk. Last, I took my weapon, Ur-Anu, a spear forged at the dawn of time to slay a god.

I rode from the gates at dawn, Quiyahui flying next to me. My guide was a map I had created from scattered hints in Clan Abibaal's library combined with what Kirylkis, the xerxyss holy man, had told me. I would learn that I managed a shockingly accurate one. As it turned out, Tele'kili was not particularly hard to find if one knew where to look. It was merely surrounded by some of the most inhospitable terrain in the Red Wastes.

There are times I regret Kharsoom's passing from the world. Nothing is permanent. I understand this better than most. And now, in our Sixth Strata, many places have that bleak, funereal feel that made Kharsoom linger in the heart. The Blacklands spring to mind. I do not find them as romantic, perhaps because I was there for their formation. Their starkness feels more like a tragedy than a remnant of a tragic past. One of the prices of immortality, I suppose.

I left the Forest Issatesh behind for the craggy and broken landscape of the Lu-Ninurta Wastes. I saw no signs of life here. Not a single pharcyl wheeling in the sky, nor a starving jagkru hunting the meager shadows. I saw not even a solitary lizard sunning itself on a rock.

Time was difficult to measure, for every day blended into the next. I know we traveled for more than a month and Quiyahui never came to me in her human form. I did not think this odd at time, so consumed was I in the quest. It was not until later that I realized it, when we were back in Eirashtar, and she awakened me with kisses from her human mouth.

It was not until the sky changed that I was certain my path led in the right direction. No longer the flat blue that reigned over the wastes, the sky had taken on a sickly tinge, an unnatural gray-green. An eerie feeling descended over me like a cloak, and I reached behind me, freeing Ur-Anu from its sheath. I gripped the spear in hand, though no threads met my mind, warning me of attack. If I was going to be in a place where the gods were slain, better to hold a weapon forged to kill gods.

That night, Quiyahui wrapped about me as we nested in the furs, leaning against Ksenaëe. Night in Kharsoom demanded the husbanding of warmth. I fell into a fitful sleep. Nightmares troubled me. A slender figure appeared in shadow, and I did not know who she was until light glinted from her metallic teeth. It was Diotenah, awakened from whatever slumber had claimed her. She was no mere dream. She was an ill omen, a guide to a place of slaughter. She reached out to me, her clawed fingers curling.

I awoke, breathless. A strange, goblin light surrounded me. Gray-green, it was the color of the sky, and in it the shadows danced as though I was underwater. Ksenaëe was still. Quiyahui was a weight upon my chest. It was not until I struggled free of the furs. The qobad squawked and the coatl uttered a warning hiss.

The air was frigid, but I scarcely noticed. A scent like old cobwebs filled my nose. I found Ur-Anu in my hand, but I did not remember taking it up. Diotenah's whispers slithered through my consciousness, spurring me to the edge of the rocky clearing. I peered out onto the pathways below.

An army marched past in endless ranks, passing within a few scant feet of my hiding place. The features of the men below, the design of their blades, was Kharsoomian, but they wore armor like other men. It wasn't merely a few scraps of bone or leather barely covering their nudity, but full breastplates, greaves, even kilts. They marched in orderly rows, some mounted upon qobads, and alongside armored jagkru. Either end of the column vanished on the horizon. I had never seen such a host, not even in the Turquoise Conquest, when the Heacharids could muster endless waves of men. The idea that Kharsoom could manage one was madness.

I watched in mute incomprehension as they marched north. The soldiers appeared as solid as I. They were not the source of the strange light that surrounded them. I could not understand it, until finally I saw the impossible. Shadow and light had been reversed. The shadows of the men were bright, the sky and air dark around them. None of the soldiers made a sound other than the faint tread of feet, and this, combined with the light, rendered them eerie and uncanny to my eyes.

Quiyahui joined me at the rocks. I could not read her face, for her blue eyes were blank. Her tongue flickered out, tasting the air. She never reacted to the soldiers, either in fear or anger.

I began to look into the faces of the passing soldiers, to read some of their humanity in their expressions. They were over all resolute, but I recognized the smaller expressions that war with discipline on the face of a soldier ready to enter battle. Some were gripped with a lust for war, some frightened of the bloodshed to come, some who were in pain from walking, some who daydreamed of somewhere or someone far away. Soldiers thought they hid such expressions from their commanders, but we could read them. We knew them because we saw our hearts echoed upon their faces.

Diotenah's voice grew louder, more frantic, though her words were still at the edge of understanding. These creatures were beyond death. Whether ghost or wight I couldn't say. Had I been the necromancer the Heacharids believed me to be I might have unraveled the mystery, but my knowledge was deficient. And I had spent a decade as a savage warrior, for whom magic was a distant memory.

Diotenah, the remnant of her that remained in the ring had awakened. After so long dormant, her presence was at once comforting and unnerving. A ring was a powerful object, a distillation of power, a creation of a truly powerful spellweaver. It would never die in any meaningful way. It retained the desires of its creators, and sometimes even their goals, though often in a simpler, baser state. I knew only that Diotenah the Shadow's Daughter wanted whatever was at the end of the column. She wanted the place of slaughter.

I looked down at the ring, and perhaps it as a trick of that strange goblin light, but I swear the skeletal serpent tightened upon my finger. Diotenah's purrs slithered through my consciousness. I gripped Ur-Anu more tightly, as though Fate could keep the foul creature's will at bay. I could not. As soon as I donned her ring, I gained her power, but also that piece of her within the object, a demon who would try to compel me to work its foul will.

I watched, mesmerized, as the column marched through the night. As the sun rose and fingers of light touched them, I expected that they would be banished as all nightmares inevitably were by the coming of day. They weren't immediately. As my gaze cast about, I saw that a section of them were gone, then I looked back to another, and they too were gone. They vanished never while under my watchful eye, but when I looked away, as though they were never there at all.

The goblin light of night was replaced by the sickly glow of this place. The army had been a sign. I could not fail to recognize so obvious an omen. They marched north, in the same direction my maps pointed. There could be no other destination for them.

I mounted Ksenaëe and rode along their path, Quiyahui with me. The terrain was the most Kharsoomian I had seen. Dry, cracked red earth like a badly-healed wound stretched over a bleak and plantless expanse. Broken outcroppings showed signs of human works, a piece of a wall here, a broken watchtower there, partly swallowed by the dead earth. The water here came in evil-smelling puddles and though I was wary of ghalaks, none came. I believe even they gave this place a wide berth. As I journeyed to Tele'kili, Mount Sorrow, I took to calling this place Sorrow's Meadow in my mind.

Diotenah never fell silent. I felt glee in her voice as we traced the path of the army. That night, I fell into fitful sleep and once again dreamed of the necromancer. She awaited me in the ruins of a great city, the sky black above her. The pale lines of her lissome body were all that was visible in the dark, slices of pale flesh among silky black. Her lips peeled back from her metallic teeth and her onyx eyes glittered. I awoke, finding myself painfully hard, and once again crawled to the edge of the clearing where we had slept.

Diotenah made sibilant promises as I watched the soldiers pass in their endless ranks. I wanted to return to my furs, to try to wring some rest out of the night, but Diotenah, the ring, would not allow it. The necromancer's whispers were maddened. Her words were still unclear, but I understood the need in her voice, the rage that I had stopped for the night. I should keep moving, as tireless as death.

That day, I was exhausted, slumped in the saddle beneath the punishing heat of the day, hoping vainly for rest that would not be allowed. Every night Diotenah woke me, and every night, her whispers approached understanding. The ring did not truly have a mind, but it had a will, it had desires. It was seeing them, laid out before it and it could not contain itself.

Perhaps it was the ring, perhaps it was the madness of my fatigue, but I began to understand the marching men. They were neither ghosts nor wights. They had nothing left of the will, nor did they have bodies. I began to think of them as scars. Wound a man badly enough and a scar is left. The great circular scar on my abdomen was evidence of that. Kill a man, and the scar was there, but not visible. It existed in the hearts of those he loved, and those who loved him. Kill a god, kill a pantheon of gods, and what shape would the scar take?

I wish that I had known more of theology then. None of my brides at that time were numbered among the faithful. Later, I would have Ten Ghosts, I would have Kyshaelyn, women with deep understandings of the ineffable, who spoke in the poetry of the ethereal. I am, for all my magical skill, a man of the here and now.

As I continued traveling north, sleep became harder and harder to find. Even the fitful dozes I managed in the saddle were denied me. The ring drove me, spurred me on the path of the phantom army. My mind began to spiral, my body heavy. In my few lucid moments, I wondered if this was what happened to all of those who came this way, or if this was a torment unique to me.

My mind had gone that one night, instead of even trying to camp, I joined the march. Ksenaëe squawked in protest. Quiyahui uttered a warning hiss. I heard them, but I could not find it in myself to be concerned.

I no longer slept, but I still dreamed. They came to me when I was wakeful, erasing the distinction between reality and fantasy. I found myself standing with Diotenah. I had forgotten how beautiful she was. Lithe and deadly, she had barely covered herself in flowing black. At the time, her costume had seemed daring. After my years in Kharsoom, it was positively modest. She wore her antlererd crown upon her hairless head. Her lips parted, revealing her razored, metallic teeth. Her eyes, pure black orbs, stared out over the field.

She held out her hand to me, and the ring glinted upon her finger. She was colder than death. She stepped to me, our fingers intertwined. On her face I saw, perhaps it was desire, perhaps hunger. Would she tear my throat with her teeth? Would she climb atop me? I couldn't say which I wanted more.

No, she faded into a sticky shadow, covering my body in a cloak of darkness. The ring glittered upon my finger, and as I moved, I saw black echoes of her spidery body following mine.

A void yawned upon the horizon. A great nothingness, spreading from a central point. In my addled state, I thought it must be how the sun appeared to a blind man, but this was a mad thought. I knew only that this was my destination, this nothing.

The terrain changed in dreamlike streaks. Dry, cracked red earth gave way to meadows freshly crushed by booted feet, to flowers reaching for the sicky gray-green sky. Weapons, first rusted and then gleaming new, sat in the dust. Armor as well. Then bones, first dusty and worn, then fresh, then covered in rotting meat, and then complete bodies freshly struck down, untroubled by weather or scavengers.

Ksenaëe trudged along the paths, even the legendary endurance of the qobad beginning to flag under my madness.

The terrain continued to change, but this time in flashes. I would momentarily be elsewhere, and then suddenly back on the red track to Tele'kili. I saw the muddy road between Thunderhead and Burley Shoal. Later it would be the path through the Hinterlands that opened at the standing stones by Iarveiros. Later, it was a game trail through the emerald Ocaital. Later, a footpath along the cliffs of Melisis. Every step of my journey had brought me here.

I caught flashes of my loves as well. Sarakiel wept, hugging herself. Zhahllaia watched me with steely resolve. Tarasynora turned away. Allegeth clasped her hands in worry. Tanyth kissed her hand, offering it to me. Others, whose faces I did not yet know, watched me. I already loved them, would always love them, but their faces were lost to dream.

I sagged in the saddle. The goblin light suffused everything. No dawn interrupted it. We had found a place of continuous, unnatural night. There was only the endless march. In the corners of my eyes, I saw that we marched through verdant meadows and dense forests, alongside chattering brooks and expansive lakes. But when I managed to raise my head to look, I saw only the bleak and unforgiving Kharsoomian wasteland I had come to know well.

Diotenah marched alongside me, clad in shadow, her pale-gray flesh peeking from her silks. She strode like a queen among her subjects. Was she real, a creation of the ring in this magical place? Or an invention of a maddened mind? Was I dying beneath a stone, the Kharsoomian sun cooking my blood?

A great mesa rose ahead. I saw now that the void wasn't emptiness. It was a city that glowed with a darklight that seared my mind. I knew then that this was a sight no mortal man was ever intended to see.

The city was beautiful and alien, structures of stone, and living wood, and sculpted metal in impossible shapes and sizes. It was a place that could not exist, and yet it did. All around the mesa were endless fields, and here, the army began to mass.

I do not know where I found the strength, but suddenly, I was alert and aware. I had come to a place beyond exhaustion, and found hidden reserves. I rode into the press of the army, but there was always a space between bodies for Ksenaëe. As I made my way through the ranks, I saw the man at the head of this host.

He was Kharsoomian, tall and square-jawed. His oily black hair reached his shoulders, a single thread of gray at his right temple. Long mustaches hung from the corners of his mouth. He wore armor decorated with a sun impaled by two arrows, and a long cloak with fine fur at the collar and a golden crown on his brow. Next to him, a fierce jagkru snarled, armored for war.

I saw then what everyone saw when they looked at me. More accurately, when they saw the weapon I carried. His blade was Kharsoomian, long and straight. The steel was black, glowing with the anti-light that threw shadows about. I knew for certain the blade's purpose. It had a different history, a different god in mind, but it was forged with the fell task it was about to be put to.

This was Shu-Turul, the man who killed the gods of Kharsoom, and his sword was the tool he would use.

With a gesture and the thunderous words of magic, Kharsoom cracked. No, it was not merely Kharsoom, but Thür itself. Shu-Turul tore a hole in the world. The crust of the planet itself opened and bled. It was not merely the bright orange of lava that spilled from the wound, but the purple-blue blood of the world's magic. He was not only altering the natural world, but destroying it. The sound, the smell, the sight, it was cacophony. The roar nearly erased my mind.

The ground beneath his army hurled itself upward, suspended on pillars of fire and hatred. I was upon it too. My poor qobad squawked in terror, ready to wheel away and run, but I held her firm. Quiyahui uttered a dangerous hiss, wrapping partly around me, her head up and ready to strike, the feathers at the base of her neck frilled into a hood.

The army, maddened by the grotesque display of power of its lord, flooded into the city of the gods. Inside the city, great figures strode out of the smoke. They were at once many times the size of human beings, and no larger than we. At the corners of attention, they loomed large. At times, both things would be true, and they hurt to look at, even in the face of their wonder and beauty.

The battle turned into quick images of violence, seen only as I galloped through the city, pushed ahead on a river of bloodlust. A man, barrel-chested and hugely muscled with skin the color of freshly-spilled blood, hewed soldiers down with an axe made of white-hot steel. A woman, cloaked in starry sky, breathed out a night wind over the invaders, dropping them into slumber. A gnarled old man with a beard of thorns tore through charging ranks with vines and trees. Many more of these beings, gods roused from their city, went about the grim slaughter of this Kharsoomian army.

That was the purpose of these men. This host, this endless, infinite wave of men, had only been assembled to distract the gods. I understood that as I watched Shu-Turul dart through the carnage, attacking the gods with his sword while they were occupied.

In that moment, Shu-Turul's inhumanity staggered me. Yet, I have committed similar outrages, haven't I? Not at that time, but all know the tale of the Deadwall, of Oribeiros, the Dirge of the Ancients. They know of my actions upon the Fields of Halifell. Perhaps I recoiled at the sight of this monstrous inhumanity because I was still in the span of a mortal life. It was only once I lived past that span that I became capable of the crimes that would curse me with infamy.

Though perhaps I am too cruel to myself. For Shu-Turul split the world, sacrificed hundreds of thousands of men, and he did it to butcher the gods. I always had my reasons, didn't I? The destruction of some greater evil? I will tell myself these things and I will hope they are not lies.

I watched him thrust the blade through the old man with the beard of vines, take the head of the night woman, cut the huge man to pieces. He would not top this hideous task. I cried out to him, begging him to stop, but he wouldn't. He didn't hear me. I wasn't even there.

I dug my heels into Ksenaëe's flanks. If he would not stop, then I would stop him. Ur-Anu reached for him, a thread trying to connect with the mad murderer. The threads reared and struck like serpents but they could not catch him, for he was but an echo.

Then, suddenly, everything was gone and I was in the ruins of the once great city. Broken walls loomed crazily. Shattered buildings littered what had once been streets. Creatures, not quite plant nor animal grew here, things I had never seen, nourished by the spilled blood of the gods and created in their dying throes.

Ksenaëe squawked. I swung out of the saddle, and my faithful qobad fled. I could not blame her. I'd find her later on the wastes, and perhaps I am pretending to see motive where there is none, I swear she seemed guilty over her cowardice. Quiyahui stuck with me. Later I would understand the part she had to play. Perhaps she knew already. The loyal coatl frilled the feathers from her head in an impressive hood, her blue eyes sparking. She hunted the uncanny silence for an enemy, but found none.

Shadows loomed everywhere, darting quickly through the ruins. When I looked, they were gone, leaving only the eerie remnants of this once incredible place. These were shadows of light, the last remnants of the host. Quiyahui and I crept through this ruined city. Ur-Anu gave me no indication of attack, yet I could not shake the sense that danger waited around every corner.

Diotenah's whispers were deafening, finally audible now that the slaughter of the gods was no longer in front of me. Her words were not clear, but her intent was. She was driving me forward, her voice fraught with ecstasy. All around, the shadows battled in darkness, and with each great one winking out, the city was darker. Though the slaughter in this place, Tele'kili, was millennia ago, it was happening now. It would always happen, for what was time to a god?

I found my way to a great plaza in the middle of the necropolis. A single figure knelt, head bowed, ruined statuary all about her. I saw a flash, the final echo of the battle. I saw Shu-Turul wounding her, but unlike the other strikes it was not enough to finish her, and he was born off by other figures. Then the flash was gone.

I stepped into the plaza, she looked up. The weight of her attention settled onto me and the air in my lungs grew heavy. Her skin was a swirl of colors and patterns, of motes and tiny objects, of butterflies with wings of sunlight and dolls made of jewels. She was at once hollow, a portal, and more solid, more present than anything else. As she moved, the patterns swirled over her body, suggesting a design too complex for a mortal to understand. Her eyes were a sun and a moon, her hair a fall of sunlight on water. When she spoke, her words shook the very core of reality. I recognized the sensation of magic itself, shorn of will but pregnant with power.

"Thou art alive," she said, her Kharish archaic and accented, her tone amazed. "Here. And now."

"I am Belromanazar of Thunderhead."

"I am Errishti."

"I know that name." Mentions of the gods were hard to find, but that name had stuck with me. She was the goddess of magic. Diotenah's whispers reached a fever pitch. I felt her begging me to approach the goddess, to appease her, to seduce her to my task.

"My cult persists?"

"You were the goal of my quest."

She stood, walking to me, her body shimmering. The patterns within her called to me, the sights, sounds, scents of magic. All of it jumbled together into pure art. She cocked her head. She was beautiful, but it was an abstract beauty, the beauty of an eclipse. Her scent touched me. Her smell was purple, and I tasted music on my tongue. She was magic. Pure magic.

"Thy weapon. Dost thou seekest to finish what the cruel one began?"

"This weapon was forged for a different god, a different era. I have no desire to hurt you."

"What then?"

"I come to beg a favor."

"Thou art a practitioner of the Way. My tongue tasteth it." She leaned in, and with no hesitation, parted my lips. Her tongue caressed mine, music blooming over me, dancing over my skin in the delicious breath of love. She parted from me, and the purple smell grew, a bright purple, shot with pink, a shade I had never before experienced.

"My familiar was killed," I explained.

"Familiar?"

"A creature. An animal. My link to magic."

Her expression filled with horror, her arms wrapped about me. Where she touched, I felt the kiss of spice. Warmth touched my eyes. "Thy key! And now, thy gate remaineth locked."

"Can you restore him?"

"No. Ashurdanai yes, for she watcheth the veil between worlds. But she is crossed the veil herself."

I nodded, trying not to show what the goddess's words had wounded me. I had been in exile a decade. And this, the one hope I had was a foolish one. I had found a goddess, and she was unable to help me. "I should leave you."

"Nay, mortal man," she murmured. "I offer thee a pact."

"A pact?"

"I shall show thee."

She drew me to her, erasing the last vestige of distance between us. Though she was no taller than I, holding her in my arms was like trying to hold the sea. I felt at once impossibly powerful and humbled. It was the very essence of magic, a mortal man commanding forces barely under his control. My mind desperately tried to understand the sensations, showing me scents, putting sounds on my tongue, running sights over my flesh. I was already in a state of quivering ecstasy.

"Gaze upon my ruin!" she said, her mouth finding mine. It was a kiss, but that is such a reductive term. It cannot underscore the totality of what I experienced. Suddenly, I could perceive everything through her, like peering through a perfect diamond. On the other side, I saw the city as it once had been.

Towers reached high, piercing the clouds. They were woven of trees and metal and brick, elements combined to make a stronger whole. Every piece of the city flowed into every other piece. Every place a wonder, pools of crystal water high above the avenues. Kharsoomians toiled about, among the others, the gods. Each god ruled a section of the city, echoing a piece of them. I was among the clouds, in a delicate spire, with Errishti. All around, raw magic flowed, metamorphosed, burned, and crackled.

"Behold Uata-Tor, City of the Gods."

Shu-Turul's host assembled beyond. I saw now that it was a meadow, verdant and beautiful, trampled flat by the approaching army. Errishti went to the edge of her tower. She felt Shu-Turul's magics. She knew what his spell would do. She tried to scream a warning, but she was too late. The meadow broke, spilling Shu-Turul's army into the streets of the divine city.

The gods were momentarily flummoxed by the foolishness of the attack, and went about the slaughter with a sense of confused obligation. By the time they realized that the gods were being slain, it was too late. Errishti joined in combat with Shu-Turul, using all of her magic against him, but it was fruitless. He gave her what should have been a killing blade, but was carried off before he could finish the job. The city cracked and broke, the earth spoiled and Kharsoom died.

Errishti was left all alone. She bled for an eternity, never able to leave the destruction of her city. Her magic anchored not only the city but her to this place. It was a great fount, now blocked. I caught the free scent of the Hinterlands, the places between, in the flow of the aerilean stream of magic. This was a tether and a river all at the same time.

I understood the nature of her pact and I accepted gladly.

We rose into the air. The earth could no longer hold us. The stream of magic cradled our bodies, mortal and divine. Quiyahui danced about us like a falling ribbon caught on a stormy wind. My clothes were gone from me, Ur-Anu no longer in my hand. I had no memory of losing them and later I would find they had never left me. I floated before her, mortal, utterly at her mercy. Diotenah's whispers grew frenzied in my ears. What was left of her hissed in need.

Errishti's legs wrapped around mine, and I slid into her. We were connected now, the two of us made one. Ecstasy took me. For the first time, I heard the bliss of love as music, I tasted her need as a spice, I saw her glory in pure light and color that had never existed in Thür.

I was within a sky, day and night at once, swirling about it in endless waves. Storms swept over her silhouette, all around me. Great, roiling clouds spidered lightning over my body. I shook, flooding her. I heard her cries of joy in the howl of the wind. Pieces of her, that which was left, crossing the veil to go where it was slain gods went.

The storm consumed us. It was she, it was me. There was no difference now. The lightning left scars behind, igniting my magic, filling my limbs with aerilean power.

She wrapped her arms around me, her mouth finding mine. I filled her ineffable womb with mortality as she injected me with magic. Diotenah, the shadow of her, threw her head back in bliss, her body shuddering, as ecstasy took her again and again. Lightning could not stop striking us, and now it held us aloft in great chains of heavenly power.

The goddess's mouth on mine washed over me, igniting my body in the energy of the storm. Lightning crackled over my skin, clouds bloomed in my body, wind ran in my veins. I took the goddess, my heart thundering in time with the storm, taking what she would give.

We rose in the sky, united in our passion, Quiyahui swirling about us. The magic spilled from us, igniting our bodies. Strands of lightning reached for the serpent, catching her, and now the she too shuddered in ecstasy. With each pulse of our endless bliss, I felt more of Quiyahui. Her mind, her heart. I had forgotten this closeness, but this was how I had always felt Oddrin. Now, a second link had been formed.

The goddess rode me, the energies of her body permeating mine, reaching into my tissues, reigniting areas in body, mind, and soul I thought gone. They sparked in Quiyahui as well, the link growing stronger. I saw us as two storms, lighting flashing in the clouds, echoing one to the other. Lightning raked claws over one, then the other. Then the clouds joined and were one.

My connection with the serpent was complete. I felt her, knew her mind and she knew mine. Through her, I touched the storm.

Diotenah's lissome form was wracked with bliss. She felt the magic too now. The ring she had formed once again had its true purpose, a master who could command its power.

I held onto the goddess. Lightning crawled along my body, up my staff, and into the ineffable womb of the divine. Her energies reached back into me, touching me with her power, the storm of a dying god. She held me, looking into my face with something between affection and relief. Her eyes, like stars, peered into mine. This was a gift she gave me, the finest gift one could ever give another. Our pact was satisfied.

And then, the bliss was finally too much. It was thunder in my body. All four of us in that embrace, as one, our every piece taken by a stormy ecstasy. I felt myself filling the goddess for the final time. There could be nothing left in my body. Quiyahui wrapped us in her powerful coils, her scales alive with lighting. The shadow of Diotenah preserved in the ring shuddered, grasping the night storm. And Errishti, the goddess, unraveled.

I rode into Eirashtar two months after I left. I was on Ksenaëe's back, Quiyahui following behind, Ur-Anu resting in its sheath. My back was straight, my eyes clear.

As I entered the courtyard, Tanyth ran out to see me. In her eyes was the question, Had it worked? She didn't want to hope, but she could not imagine I had failed.

In answer, I held out my right hand. Lightning crawled up my forearm and reached into the air. A smile spread over Tanyth's face, echoing the one on mine.