by J. B. Toner
in Issue 81, October 2018
1
Only the dead are safe, and Death’s Lane was a well-lit street in a prosperous part of town. Hanging lanterns, redolent of myrrh, lined the cobbled avenue that led to the Final Temple; grave and dark-clad companies of pilgrims came and went. The moon was fading in the west and the sun was hours away, but no footpads prowled the predawn black—not here. As Brand the bard walked up the Lane, he felt more relief than trepidation. Ten years: a long time to wait.
The candlelit vestibule was large and comfortable; soft carpets underfoot, heaps of blessed and desiccated femurs in the corners, all that one might expect. But the huge ebony door to the inner sanctum stood fast. Only at the monthly holy days was entry permitted to the laity. Half a dozen worshipers (or mourners) milled about, murmuring prayers, and a single cleric stood by the door, hooded. Brand approached.
“Good morrow,” he said cheerfully. “I need to speak with the High Priestess.”
A lengthy silence. “You may enter in a fortnight, on the Sacred Day. At that time, she may speak to you if Death so moves her.”
“Yes, of course, that’s the protocol. But I’m afraid my business won’t keep. If you’ll kindly inform the Priestess—”
“Stop.” Hard grey eyes peered out from under the hood. “You disturb a place of reverence. I ask you once: go in peace.”
“I can’t do that, friend. But my argument isn’t with you.”
“Nevertheless.”
Brand smiled. “Very well, then. Let’s have ourselves a Knowing, you and I.”
“You’re no cleric.”
“Not exactly, but I might surprise you.”
“Be it so.”
The people in the vestibule drew back. The two opponents paced to the center of the room.
“Vesh of Sendroval,” said the cleric. He was tall and broad, and cloaked in sable.
“Brand of Kaavas.” The bard was tall as well, but lean to gauntness; his face was young, his eyes ice-blue and old. He wore a leather shirt and trousers, tough and travel-stained, and a well-tended flute protruded from his belt like a sword-hilt. His smile was calm and friendly.
Each man covered his right fist with his left palm and bowed at the waist. Then their gazes met, and the dim vestibule began to waver and billow like smoke. Beyond the walls stood the orderly city of Sendroval, ancient firmament of oak and granite; it too became a flickering shadow in the luminescence of the higher Spheres. And then two naked souls, waist-deep in their Wells, stared each other down across the Gap of Self.
I must see the High Priestess at once.
You must leave the Temple of Death.
They rose, weightless, and hung in the glowing, chiming vastness. Beneath them was the muddy Sphere of Earth, and the awful crimson Sphere below; above, the blue and gold where the Gods held council. Around them were the gleaming worlds and moons. Here in the Midland, Earth and Heaven overlapped, and spirits could truly touch; so naturally, the men of Earth had weaponized this place. If one soul entered another’s Well, it could impose its innermost beliefs upon the other.
Vesh moved first. His power came from Death, of course: overshadowing, inexorable. He speared toward the enemy Well with the strength and speed of fate, clearly accustomed to quick victory. Brand moved casually into his path, and their deep-selves smashed together. Vesh’s heart roared: All things die, and Death defeats all things! But his conviction collided with a simple rhyme, empowered by Rhyme itself: Yet Death breathes Beauty while the sword-man sings.
The cleric bounced back, and stared. You’re a bard.
I never claimed not to be.
But all bards perished ten years ago.
Not all.
Prepare, then.
Vesh ascended through the slow revolving orbs of the cosmos. A cleric’s power depended on his piety, his connection to the deity he served; but in a Knowing, a shrewd tactician drew on all the sources of the Midland. Death was kin to War, so Vesh now plummeted toward Brand with a hurricane of swords and axes. But War was kin to Song, and the bard serenely blocked the cleric’s path with a cyclone of drums and fifes. Steel pierces all, Vesh snarled, despite your tunes.
The fiercest fall, said Brand, who fight uncrooned.
Lute-strumming fool! Vesh leaped yet higher, and summoned about himself the towering forces of the Sea. How many men have perished in the waves? Uncountable the dead, uncountable the doom-destined mariners of days to come. Galactically tremendous, the Sea-tides crashed down toward the simple bard.
Creation, though, remains the secret fire that kindled all the universe ablaze. Brand wrapped himself in the life-begetting inferno of the Sun, and the tsunami became a constellation of frothing steam rising back to the empyrean.
Now weary, Vesh’s astral avatar began to sink. A final effort: The doom of men–
To whom I tend. Thrusting aside the last musterings of Death, Brand shot toward the cleric’s Well. Vesh fumbled weakly to push him back, but his powers were spent. Brand’s soul plunged into the pool of Vesh’s ultimate beliefs, the things he truly Knew. And that which Brand believed, his own true Known, now entered Vesh. The one thing that could never happen in a Knowing was for one spirit to impose upon another a belief it didn’t hold itself.
The Midland faded, and the vestibule returned. The two men blinked in the candlelight. Vesh nodded.
“You must see the High Priestess at once.”
2
“So you’re going by Brand these days.”
“He was a great bard.”
“A great fighter too, by accounts. I hear he sent quite a number of souls our way. Long before my time, of course.”
They were sitting in the Priestess’ small grey chamber. Outside the curtains, the morning sun was scratching at the windows; but in here, a flickering taper gave the only light. Brand had declined tea, so they were both drinking blood-red wine.
“I need your help, Nella.”
“You know it’s ‘High Priestess’ now. We’ve both of us changed since you left.” Her face was plump and smile-lined, and might well comfort the bereaved if she chose; but when displeased, the cat-green eyes showed something else entirely.
“I came back when I could. When it was time.”
“Why now?”
“The new generation is rising. Minds that were first learning their letters when we were slaughtered are ready to burst into song. The world needs poetry just as surely as it needs death.”
She sipped her wine. The whisper-crackle of the tiny flame made the silence audible, as the flame itself gave substance to the dark.
“What do you need from me?”
“To do what you are. From here I have one more stop to make, and then I walk into the Temple of War. I need you there to speak for Yyrkana Thread-Cutter, Lady of Death.”
“Well, you haven’t grown less brazen. I’ll go and meditate, and see if she cares to speak to me today.”
“I made rather a racket in the Midland just now; I think she’ll be attentive. Tell her I still speak for the bards, and I offer half of what is coming to us.”
“Wait here.”
She rose, casting the hood over her face, and left the room. Brand finished his wine and waited. The taper burned down, and he sat in the darkness alone. Many musics were present to his mind.
At last she returned, looking cross. “All right, lead on. I’m not to let you out of my sight.”
He smiled. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t my decision, Brand.”
“You didn’t have to ask her, High Priestess.”
“Oh, just go. And for mercy’s sake, don’t call me that. Until we reach Gordash’s Temple, I’m simply another cleric out for a stroll.”
They headed out into the fair spring sunshine, he in his blue cloak and she in her black. Beyond Death’s Lane was a babbling marketplace, and beyond that was the Merchant’s Quarter. To the east, radiant over the rooftops, was the golden dome of the Temple of Sendra, Goddess of Wisdom. Brand headed west.
“I trust you don’t plan to fortify yourself with a visit to the brothels,” Nella said dryly.
“No time now. I wish you’d thought of it sooner.”
They stopped in front of a weary tenement where the daylight seemed dimmer somehow. Brand gazed up at the eyeless walls and nodded to himself; then, bothering neither to knock nor try the knob, he kicked in the front door. He led the way down the trash-strewn hallway and up the trash-strewn stairs.
“Lovely,” said Nella. “Perhaps next time, a well-appointed bordello after all.”
On the fourth story, they came to yet another flimsy pine door. This time Brand raised his fist and knocked.
A muffled voice: “Go away and die.”
Brand knocked harder.
“In the name of the fiery depths—” The door was yanked open by a scruffy blond man in his thirties, clad only in an unbelted dressing gown. He was wiry but well-scarred, like one who kept fighting despite the rarity of triumph. When he saw Brand, his irascible expression turned incredulous. “Oh no, not you.”
“Hello, Cooran.”
“But I. . . how did you even. . .”
“You’re still a priest of the Bard-God, my friend.”
“There is no Bard-God! There are no more bards!”
“That changes today. But I need your help.”
“I serve Drimslip now.”
“The Spirit of Thieves?” Nella scoffed. “He’s never held a place among the Gods.”
“Nor would he,” Brand interjected. To hold a seat at the Council of Gods, a Spirit needed one thousand official clerics, and the last thing a sensible follower of Drimslip would do was declare himself as such. “But we can offer him a clandestine voice on the Council, through the harpstrings, for his help.”
“. . . What would you ask of him?”
“Just the loan of one of his servants. I need a skilled thief who knows his way around the Midland to get me into the Temple of Gordash Crow-Feeder. Such a man as once lived for the chance at being part of a rousing tale.”
Almost imperceptibly, the furrow in Cooran’s brow lightened. “Something might be arranged.”
But Nella’s frown deepened. “Stand fast, the both of you. A cleric dispossessed a decade ago, who now serves a Spirit who’s never had clerics at all—and he’s the crux of our plan?”
“In the days of Variol Harp-Wielder, I was one of the strongest Knowers in the Midland. And who in damnation are you, thread-plucker?”
“Nella of Sendroval.” And she covered her fist with her palm.
“Friends,” Brand said placatingly, “perhaps—”
“Cooran of Travisham.” Following suit, he bowed, and she bowed back. Then their eyes met, and the tenement was gone. They faced each other from their Wells, and Brand stood nearby in his own, watching intently.
You have no place in this mission.
You’re an arrogant harridan.
Anticipating her opponent’s use of Music, Nella drew upon the silence of the grave: the deep, black, sound-swallowing nothingness that waits beneath the grass. But Cooran didn’t try to match her strength. The Spirit of the Grass itself, unworshipped by men, dwelt quietly in the Midland, endlessly growing and alive. As she drove toward his Well on the wings of oblivion, she found herself gently but tirelessly pushed back by a vibrancy no scythe could keep at bay.
Pivoting in mid-idea, she pushed forward with the breath of Winter, foe of Grass and friend of Death—but, slipping behind her defenses, Cooran himself now called upon Yyrkana Death-Goddess. His handling of that power was far less efficient than the Priestess’ would be; but the difference in sheer brute force between a mere season and final mortality was enough to break her momentum once again.
She fell back to her Well and glared, but a grudging respect was dawning in her face. Nevertheless, she felt, it was time to put forth her true might. She soared above the Gap of Self, among the swirling suns, and descended as the hammer of Apocalypse. Death is victorious!
Yet the battle is glorious.
As she slammed into his avatar with the full, terrible weight of her Goddess, she saw what he had done: buoyed up by Rhyme, he’d cast out webs of invocation in two opposite directions, channeling Gordash by the call to arms and Sendra by his stoic perseverance. In the figure of the Bard, War and Wisdom met—and he warded himself with all three. It was a brilliant move.
But he was out of practice, and Rhyme was no longer a God. She pressed him slowly down, and down, until her feet stood firmly in his Well. Her Known was now his own.
Her opinion, however, had changed in the course of this fight. True, he’d been defeated; but for a simple thief to hold his own against the High Priestess of Death was a remarkable feat. The belief she had sought to impose, she no longer held: and therefore, nor did he. The Midland faded, and the tenement returned.
Brand let a few beats go by as thief and Priestess leaned against the wall to catch their breath. “All right, Nella, what say you? He’s a good man, as you can see.”
“You know your business, I suppose.”
“So what’s the plan, Variol?” Cooran asked, still panting.
“He goes by Brand these days,” said Nella.
“No.” The Bard straightened his shoulders and loosened the flute at his hip. “Not anymore.”
3
Centuries earlier, after the brutal blood-storm of the Sages’ Quarrel, the warrior-poet Brand had written:
When War and Wisdom intertwine,
And Sleet engenders Flame,
The keen Edge of a peaceful Mind
Becomes the Fighter’s Bane.
Farmers and philosophers, peaceful folk of every walk, had been quoting these words for generations. Ultimately (so the people of Elland had come to believe), those who fought for home and family were stronger than those who fought for the sake of the battle itself. A strange but working paradox. In the Sphere of Earth, that simple observation had nudged many a conflict toward bloodless resolution; at the Council of the Gods, it had fostered fresh unrest.
“What would your warblers warble about, without combat?” Gordash thundered.
Variol’s face stayed straight, but the corners of his ice-blue eyes crinkled. “Days of glory past, I suppose. Or possibly love, or death, or the terrors of the sea. A good bard can generally think of something.”
The Crow-Feeder loomed. His eyes were coal, deep black but apt to flame; his hair and beard were dark but iron-frosted like a many-wintered king’s. He stood head and shoulders above the Harp-Wielder, and his scabbarded glaive stirred lightnings in the mortal realm. But Variol held his gaze, unflinching.
“Unless of course we turn to tunes of food and rest and childbirth. How many boys would grow to men of steel without the sword-songs of the bards in their young ears?”
“They—we—” The War-God stomped his huge red boot and turned his back. “You talk your way out of everything, Variol.”
“Brother, you know that’s not true. I love a good fight almost as well as you do, but it needs to be about something. Otherwise it’s just noise.”
“Gentlemen,” said Sendra, “let us calm ourselves.” Patroness of Elland’s capital city, the Lady of Wisdom wore blue and silver, and her flowing hair was white as bone. “Larger concerns impend—in particular, the one thousandth anniversary of the Sun-Temple’s completion.”
“Well, well.” Hyrule the Sun-God flapped his hands deprecatingly. “It’s no great matter.”
“Nonsense, brother. Great revels must attend this occasion. Variol?”
“Of course, dear sister. Every bard in Elland will gather for such a day.”
“Perhaps my fighters will be there as well,” muttered Gordash.
Sendra’s eyebrows rose. “To be sure. No fewer than five thousand shining blades shall honor this millenary.”
Dark-skinned, sleek-scalped Yyrkana smiled her cryptic smile. “And a thousand reeking dead, perhaps?”
“Perhaps in spirit,” Variol said cheerfully. “I promise to inspire sweet ballads of the sun-kissed wayfarers of old.”
“Very wise, Harp-Wielder.”
“Indeed,” said Sendra. “Without the harp to speak it, what mortal would heed the words of Wisdom?”
Hyrule beamed. “I look forward to your songs of the sunlight, Variol.”
When the Council dispersed, the God of Bards relinquished human form and went flowing through the Sphere of Heaven. The music of uncounted verses shimmered like a tunnel-cave of diamond-ice around him, the murmuring of mortal dreams laid bare. The resonance of every singing soul surrounded him, no slush of chaos but the perfect half-imagined forms to which the bards of Earth aspire: True Love, True Hope, True Vengeance, True Despair. He skimmed through swift eternities outside of time, communing with a million yearning hearts. He heeded prayers, inspired new words, and sent the call to every bardic priest.
Each God, of course, had followers by the hundred thousand, and the average person venerated every deity to some degree. But a cleric had a profound personal connection to a given Spirit, and was ultimately granted access to the Midland. There they could confer with many Powers, duel other clerics in their astral forms, and even speak face to face with the transcendental denizens of Elland’s pantheon. Long ago, Variol was a simple Spirit of the Midland; but bards and poets rose from every mortal rank, and came to worship him in many ways, until at last he was admitted to the Sphere of Gods and given a seat at the Council. Since then, he’d grown in power till the Crow-Feeder came to envy him and finally hate him. But Variol loved his dumb, earnest brother: he welcomed strife on Earth, but not in Heaven.
So when the day came—when kingdoms gathered for the mighty celebration of the first great Temple of the Sun—two thousand bards and more came roving from every crevice of the continent, to sing and play. Well nigh five hundred bardic priests came roving too, summoned in person by the voice of Variol. And when the High Priest of the Sun invoked the blessing of Hyrule and began the festival, the warriors of Gordash freed their swords from their sheaths and turned upon the bards.
Many of Variol’s worshipers were strong fighters; but they were taken offguard, outnumbered, and hampered by the love of weaker brethren whom they sought to shield with their own backs. That day was no battle, but a filthy slaughter, unbecoming warrior and poet alike. And when the crimson dust had settled, Variol had far fewer clerics than a seat at the Council required. After nine hundred years among the Gods, he was exiled to the Midland and the Earth.
4
“My blade drank deep at the Sun-Temple. I knifed eight of those bastards before I took a spear in the guts. Then I lay among the dead till eventide. My fiddle was smashed and all my friends were killed. Hail the God of War.”
“Vengeance, Cooran. It’s time for vengeance. Now how do we get inside?”
“Well, you’re clever to bring us here in the daytime. They’ll be watching for thieves after sundown.”
“I’ve tipped a glass or two with Drimslip.”
The Temple of Gordash was a single mighty steeple, xiphoid, with two upward-curving wings of red marble protruding from the fourth floor to represent the hilt of a sky-cleaving sword. It glimmered dully in the vernal sun, looking thirsty for storm and flood.
“How much time alone with the High Priest do you need?” Nella asked.
“Not bloody long.”
“All right,” Cooran said. “Step one is getting into the sanctuary. A simple matter of securing three robes.”
Variol, of course, had compelled Vesh to let him speak to Nella; but she was an old friend and had called off her guards when she saw him. Logresh, High Priest of War, also knew the Harp-Wielder from of old; but if they approached him within shouting distance of his guards, he’d have Variol executed on sight. And when the human body of a Spirit (as opposed to a full God) was destroyed, that Spirit was trapped in the Midland forever.
Cooran pointed. “There: the alley.”
Warriors came and went from the Temple, some in cleric’s red and some in fighter’s mail. Average folk, too, went into the vestibule to pray for the outcome of some clash of wills or fists. Variol and his friends loitered outside a nearby tavern, nursing ale and eyeing passersby. At length, a single cleric came down the front steps of the Temple and headed up the street on foot. Cooran nodded tersely, and the others headed into the tavern and out through the back.
“Ho there!” With a magnanimous slosh of his tankard, Cooran stumbled into the street. “G’morrow, friend. Hail th’Warg’d.”
The red-clad cleric spared him a disdainful glance, not breaking stride. “As you say.”
“Wai-wait, have a drink wi’ me, friend.” He made as if to throw an arm around the cleric’s shoulders, but the man pushed him off.
“Don’t waste my time, weakling.”
“Wha—you’re no figh’r! Man can’t drink, man can’t fight.”
The cleric finally stopped walking. “Are you challenging me?”
“Chal’nge you t’th’gatesa Hell, red-cloak. Lesstep into that alley an’ settliss!”
“Lead on, dead man.”
Cooran reeled his way into the alley. The cleric followed, sweeping back his ceremonial robe with a well-practiced gesture and reaching for the hilt of his sword. And Variol stepped out from behind a post and bashed him over the head.
Half an hour later, they approached the Temple steps in three new blood-hued robes. It was just shy of noon, and the sky-blue sky was free of any cloud. The vestibule, lit by two huge windows on either side of the oaken double doors, was sparsely decorated with two rows of granite lances and a single giant painting of an empty hand upon the ceiling to remind all comers that no sword was stronger than its bearer. The guard at the sanctuary door nodded dourly to the three intruders, and they passed through without incident. Walking out again would be the test.
Inside, smoking torches lit the space. A single cleric stood chanting the Ballad of the Bear in the Ancient Speech, and his voice rolled sonorously through the chamber. Statues of men fighting men, beasts, and demons lined the walls, and they were strangely beautiful. Acolytes were sparring near the center of the room, some with rattan sticks and some with fists and feet.
“Let’s hope they haven’t changed the protocols,” Cooran whispered.
“It’s only been twelve years.”
“I was here just a few months ago,” Nella said. “They were still using the flets then.”
As they came closer to the center, they could see that there were indeed long thick cables rising from the floor. The cables rose through a hole in the stone ceiling, perhaps thirty feet in diameter, and were attached to tiny wooden platforms fitted with metal cranks. These platforms, called flets, were how clerics came and went through the first four stories of the tower. Only those with the strength and endurance to wind up the cable of their flet could ascend.
No one questioned them as they stepped onto three empty platforms. It was assumed that only warriors would undertake the rigor. Both men were concerned about Nella; but she weighed little, and her grandmotherly plumpness concealed a springy bamboo strength at which her enemies would be astonished and dismayed. As for Cooran, he was fit and fueled by old hatred; and Variol, though only as strong as a man, had access to reserves of energy that kept him unwearied. The three of them turned their cranks and wound their cables, and the flets shuddered slowly upwards.
The second level was full of steaming baths and tables for massage and acupuncture; the third, of brimming bookshelves. Dozens of warriors strode about in search of both healing and learning. But the fourth floor was a dim, echoing expanse where no man walked. With supreme effort, the three friends made it to the top and slumped to the marble floor to let their sweat cool. Beyond the shadows, the two gigantic wings of the tower stood open. There the most dedicated fighters would retreat into intense meditation for whole days at a time.
This floor had no ceiling but for the heavy rafters from which the flets were hung. Overhead, the endless cone of the steeple stretched away into darkness. A spiral stair wound up and ever up, and a crimson cleric stood sentinel at the foot of the steps. In one of his hands was a halberd; in the other, a rope upon which the slightest twitch would set alarm bells jangling.
Cooran wiped his brow and pointed with his chin. “Over there.” Because the tower’s architecture was curved to represent a blade, there were jutting corners in odd spots along the walls. Once they’d gotten their wind back, they got to their feet and walked toward one of the shadowed wings, drifting casually over to the wall as they went. Just before exiting the main floor, they turned a corner that hid them from the sentinel’s gaze. It was close enough to the exit that he should assume they had gone in to meditate, but just close enough to the outer chamber that the spiral stair wound past above.
“Wait here.” The wiry thief set his fingertips into the seams of the marble blocks and began to climb. The narrow steps were a good thirty feet up from where they stood, but Cooran wriggled up the wall like a ferret. Two minutes later, he lowered a slender cord. Variol went up first, and the two of them pulled Nella to the top. “Quietly now.”
Around and around the Temple tower, up steps by the score and the hundred, they went in silence. At last they reached the top, where a single door stood fast, and Cooran produced two wires and a thin metal rod. “No warrior can make a lock a thief can’t pick.”
“All right,” Variol said. “Once the door’s open, I’ll go in alone. You close it behind me and stay outside, whatever happens.”
Nella scowled. “We’ve come a long way to be left out of the fight, Harp-Wielder.”
“The life of a trespasser in the inner sanctum is forfeit, no matter whose it is. But unless you violate that taboo, they won’t dare harm Yyrkana’s High Priestess, nor her lieutenant.”
“No one’ll believe I’m her lieutenant,” Cooran muttered with a wire in his teeth.
“They will if you glower and keep your mouth shut.”
“Logresh won’t be alone in there, you know. And only his best people will be up here with him.”
“I can’t take on a whole Temple by myself, but I can handle a few red-cloaks. You two hold position. I’ll be back.”
A click, and the door swung open.
5
The bards had never had a temple. Their worship, their supplication, their sacrifice all flowed from their music, and they went wherever the wind took them. Twelve years ago, Gordash had invited Variol to come see his Temple in Sendroval—showing off, no doubt, and also perhaps seeking his brother’s approval.
A system complexified by millennia governed these comings and goings. A God, of course, could walk the Earth in human form at will; but to enter another God’s Temple uninvited would bring down the wrath of the Council. Now that Variol was a mere Spirit, this law no longer bound him, but it brought its own downside as well. No mortal or Spirit had the power to contact a God in the Sphere of Heaven, but could only hope to be favored with a visitation at the deigning of the deity. The one exception was a given God’s High Priest, who was given the gift of reaching out in meditation to the realm beyond the Midland. Thus, if the mortal Nella should enter the Temple of Gordash and then entreat Yyrkana to speak through her, Death could make her voice heard therein without any rules being broken.
Just as Variol remembered, the door opened onto a long, carpeted corridor. Paintings of Cundar of Raelor, greatest of all warriors, adorned the walls. The Bard trod softly to the end of the hall and peered cautiously into the room beyond.
“Hm.” He’d been hoping Logresh might have two or three fighters with him. At a glance, he counted eight. They were gathered around a burning forge in the center of the Spartan chamber. One of them was humming the Lay of the Lion. In the corner was a cot where Logresh slept and meditated, and legendary blades hung nearby; otherwise, the space was bare but for some lifting-weights. “Well, here we are.”
He stepped into the open and said, “Warriors.”
They spun toward him, unsheathing dirks and hatchets. At the rear, the High Priest rose from his cot and stared. “You.”
“I’m only here to talk.”
“Kill him!”
They started towards him, and he played his trump card. When clerics battled in a Knowing, their bodies stayed behind in trance. An unscrupulous personage could simply walk up to one of them and cut his throat. However, as a Spirit of the Midland, Variol had one hidden power that no mortal had: he could ascend to the astral plane and drag as many astral avatars with him as he chose. He leapt up to the Midland with the High Priest and his eight fighters in tow, and the ten of them stood in their Wells with their spiritual fists clenched tight.
Variol roared: My quest is honorable!
And the warriors responded with variations on, You will walk out the door and off the ledge.
Three of them came bounding through the planets with the force of War behind them, a tempest of catapults, trusting in plain strength. Variol sprang lightly into the skies and summoned the kindred energy of Wisdom into himself, pulling it not only from the surrounding space but directly out of the attacking clerics. And without it, their strategies dissolved—their weaponry disintegrated—they came with flailing fingernails and gnashing teeth like primates, and Variol slapped them back into their Wells.
A lady cleric assailed him next, slimly muscled and grimly confident. With the Spirit of Lightning behind her, she smashed him backwards; and as she did, the fifth fighter dove in behind her, adding the Spirit of Fire. Variol responded with the power of Gordash himself (for the Midland was saturated with the energy of every Spirit, and even one’s own enemies could harness it) and raised a towering battlement against the elements, a fortress of obsidian that shed the flames like rain. You think you know the War-God? she snarled. The clerics summoned up cold iron—and he gave back the lightning he’d been given, blasting both.
Two more warriors were hovering behind the fallen. They came gliding toward him, one of them radiating the withering breath of Death and the other emanating the winding, clutching tendrils of the Jungle-Spirit: life unchecked, untended. These two were obviously used to working together, and were shrewd as well as powerful. Variol retreated and wrapped himself in Despair, the wretched energy that made the living envy the dead and the dead the living. It slowed them down, but they pushed him glacially back.
Then the eighth cleric joined the fray, crashing into the web of life and death in which Variol was already entangled, adding the force of Quaggaroth, God of Time. That power magnified both of the opposing forces bearing down on the Bard, for Time encompasses and unites the two. Variol was shoved waist-deep into his own Well, holding up the weight of all three enemies by sheer will. His only edge was that, whereas a mortal cleric drew strength from his God and could grow weary as his focus waned, a Spirit was its own power-source and could never tire. There was a long, grueling stalemate—then Variol unleashed his Song.
A slovenly wilderness, the wordless Wood;
A Hero’s fall, unsung, foregoes renown;
Time’s fateful flow (arising, crashing down
Through fights and forests), danced, is understood.
A sparking, buzzing glow entered his astral limbs. The colossal mass of his opponents grew lighter and lighter as he sang, and the four of them went sailing upwards. They broke and came flying at him with winds and waves and morning stars, but he’d found his rhythm now, and blocked them all with the music that gives the chaos of nature its meaning. A conflagration in the dark between the suns, and three spent priests of War went plunging down like meteors into their Wells. Variol dipped down eight times, and eight strong souls now Knew what he had Known.
Logresh stood calmly in the background, waiting. Variol swept down and levitated just above the old man’s Well. Gordash hoped you’d simply disappear.
I did. You’ve had ten years to revel in your murder, and I to plan my justice. An eyeblink for a God, but long enough for a man. You should thank me.
Those murders give me neither joy nor pride, Harp-Wielder.
Then step aside.
You know I can’t.
Have at you, then.
The High Priest wasn’t the High Priest for nothing. Logresh was a tall broad-shouldered figure like a lumberjack, grey-bearded and black-eyed, but a piercing intellect drove his tensile sinews. He’d prepared for this day. His first move was to call upon the Spirit of the Bards.
Let none deny
That steel and gore
Make ballads fly
Forevermore.
Variol’s own power pushed him back. You want to match rhymes with me, you son of a pig? He blazed forward:
Yet honor fails
When warless folk
By war assailed
Are scumly choked.
It wasn’t his best work. Poetry needs passion and placidity, and he had one of those. The High Priest moved serenely toward his Well, still chanting.
Dishonor and Despair have given birth
To all the greatest Epics of the Earth.
And Variol: Gods damn you, man, you’re cunning. But I see now your stratagem. Somehow he was all the way to the brink of his Well already; Logresh was perhaps the strongest mortal foe he’d yet encountered. It was time to stop playing fair.
All Gods and Spirits, heed! Ascending swiftly to the heights, he sent his calling forth. All heed, all heed! My name is Variol Harp-Wielder, Spirit of the Bards, once God of Bards, betrayed by cowardice and plunder. I call for justice now, I call for vengeance now, all head!
So many Gods and Spirits loved the Bards. All Powers, all mortals, respected Variol. The very Spheres resonated with his call. The power, power, divinest power flowed into his veins. He swooped down upon the High Priest’s avatar, kicking and punching it backward, slowly backward, ever backward, until the two of them stood face to face in Logresh’s Well.
Honorable indeed is your quest, the High Priest said, as I Knew already but veiled the Knowing from myself. What would you have me do?
I need to speak with your master.
Be it so.
6
Nella and Cooran were permitted to enter the sanctum. The thief stood off to the corner, and the eight clerics in a ring. In the center was Variol with High Priest and Priestess facing him on either side. A droning war-chant filled the room, and Logresh stood entranced. Thunder muttered in the skies above. Then Logresh spoke, but his voice was deeper than his own:
“Hello, brother.”
Variol’s face was somber. “Gordash.”
“Broke into my Temple, hey? You’ve always been the clever one.”
“Gordash, you disgraced all warriors on Hyrule’s day. You brought shame to the sword.”
“I did. Fifteen hundred years I’ve been a God, but this decade has been long and long. I dwell in shame these days.”
“Then accept my judgment. You will leave the Council. Your priests will be divided between myself, their inspiration, and Yyrkana, their destination. When you’ve been exiled in the Midland for a few centuries, perhaps we can discuss your penance, but for now I want you gone.”
There was silence. Then Nella spoke, but she too spoke with altered voice:
“Hear him, brother. The Council has been torn by distrust since that day. Your betrayal can no longer be borne.”
“You don’t know everything, sister. The doing was not mine alone.”
Variol’s hands rose to shake Logresh by the robe, but he caught himself. “What are you saying? Who else knew your treachery? Was it Hyrule?”
“No. Not Hyrule.”
“. . . Sendra,” murmured Death. “It was Sendra, wasn’t it?”
“You grew too powerful, Variol. The sages called on you as much as on her—more, perhaps. So did my fighters. The plan to cast you from the Council was hers.”
“Why, Gordash? Why did you go along with it?”
“She—she’s my big sister.”
Another silence. “It’s time for me to come home. Yyrkana?”
“Of course, Harp-Wielder.”
A Spirit could enter Heaven only at the behest of a God, and only for a brief time. Variol took the Priestess’s hand, and his body became as mist; then she blinked and became Nella once more, and Death and the Bard were gone.
Through the Midlands they rose, and far above the Gap of Self—through the wheel of all created things, and far beyond—and then they stood in the Final Sphere, by the True Tree from which all earthly trees proceed, beneath the Sacred Sun by which all stars are kindled. The Crow of Creation flapped her wings in the branches overhead, and the World-Wind blew: the zephyr-gale that stirs all souls to life.
“She’s restless,” said Yyrkana, unveiled in her sleek ebony form.
“Change is coming. It’s good to see you again, by the bye.”
She smiled her shadow-smile. “And you.”
They went into the Hall of Heaven, to the Council of the Gods. Since the Knowing of “Brand” against Vesh nine hours ago, the Bardic resonances had reverberated through the Spheres. All Gods and Spirits knew what was afoot. As Variol re-entered the Great Hall, the Powers of the Universe in quorum gazed upon him from their haloed ranks.
And their leader. “Spirit of the Bards and Wielder of the Harp,” intoned great Sendra, Lady of Wisdom. “You have no place here, not for many years.”
“Because of you, Truth-Speaker. By your envy and your malice I was dispossessed, and over a thousand innocent men and women butchered. If you can thus betray me with impunity, what God is safe? Are we a Council, or a despotism?”
“Enough. Speeches are your stock in trade, but we are not mortals to be swayed by pretty words.”
“Nor cowed by bloody steel. Let the Council hear the evidence and vote upon—”
Her speed was that of thought. A streak of light across the Hall, the back of her hand across his face, a thunderclap, and he was hurled from Heaven. Down through the galaxies, into the Midland, and into his Well like a meteor. As he struggled to his feet, he heard and felt the splash—and there she stood.
What now, Sendra? What Knowledge would you share with me? That your actions were justified? Go on, then. Show me you believe it.
You should have stayed away, Variol.
I never plotted one jot against you. We sing our songs and go our way in peace. We don’t even have a Temple!
Oh, I know. Three thousand years I’ve governed mortal men. A few score, a few hundred, live up to the standard you would set: life as an adventure, life as song. The rest need iron platitudes, and when those fail, the sword.
Do they. Perhaps you need to keep them weak and foolish, you and Gordash. Perhaps you need your Temples and your praise.
I speak truth.
Then why am I not compelled? You know better than you let yourself know.
Without me, your songs would be but wind in a hollow tree!
And without me, your wisdom would echo in an empty room. We need each other, all of us. That’s why we have a Council.
I sorrow, Variol, to murder your body. I sorrow to set you adrift for eternity. But–
Stop. Yyrkana stood behind the Wisdom-Lady, and the glowing Host of Heaven stood behind her. Too long have we endured this tyranny. Sendra Truth-Speaker, your seat at the Council is forfeit. Gordash Crow-Feeder, your seat at the Council is forfeit.
The red God bowed. I accept this. I will walk the Midland and the Earth till I regain my honor.
No, the silver Goddess said. No, this is wrong. The Council needs my counsel. I will govern. I must govern. I must govern all!
Stop, Yyrkana hissed. Your time is ended. You are banished, now and ever. Fall!
The power of the Gods arose, a howling wind. Earth and Hell and Heaven trembled. Sendra shrieked, and twisted, and was gone.
Variol rose from his Well. So, Thread-Cutter. Shall we divide the War-Spirit’s clerics, as we agreed?
Death glanced at him. In time. For now, it falls to me to bring order to the Council and the cosmos. You’ve waited ten years, Bard-Spirit. Keep waiting. And then she too was gone, and the Gods with her. Variol was alone with the slowly settling dust.
7
Outside the walls of Sendroval, the plains of Roon stretched away almost to the horizon. Just at the edge of sight, the sun went to his western rest beyond the Mountains of Daggaroth. The spring air was cool but not bitter, and the millionfold song of peepers shimmered in the twilight.
“I’m sorry, Variol,” said Nella.
“It’s not your fault, old friend. You can’t defy your Goddess.”
“No.”
“We could keep company for awhile, you and I,” said Cooran.
“No, your place is here among the wealthy and the stupid. Drimslip is lucky to have you in his ranks.”
“Yes.”
“What will you do?” the High Priestess asked.
“I think I’ll head toward Raelor. Stories are always blossoming there.”
“But what about your place among the Gods?”
Variol smiled in the gathering dusk. “Gods come and go, Nella. I’m a bard. I owe your mistress a debt for reminding me of that. For ten years I’ve been so bent on revenge that I’ve forgotten my true path; but Death has given me life again.”
“This story isn’t over,” Cooran said.
“Oh, this story’s just about to start. I’ll be seeing you both. Farewell for now, and keep your weapons sharp.”
The Harp-Wielder set off on foot across the murmuring grass.
©October 2018, J.B. Toner
J.B. Toner studied Literature at Thomas More College and holds a black belt in Ohana Kilohana Kenpo-Jujitsu. He and his lovely wife just had their first daughter, Sonya Magdalena Rose. Toner blogs at jbtoner.blogspot.com and tweets at AntiheroCouplet@twitter.com. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.