“There are general spells to make an area secure,” Numair said hesitantly. “I would hope that the darkings aren’t immune to their effects. Of course, chances are that our friends are using such spells now, to hamper the enemy’s spy-mages.”
Colors rippled over Gold-Streak’s skin. The other two blots flowed into it to form a single, quivering mass. They seemed to be conferring.
Movement in the pot where Numair was brewing their tea caught Daine’s eye. On top of the curtain wall at Port Legann, Tkaa the basilisk stood by Kitten. Yellow fog was drifting through the air over their heads: The wyverns were on the attack once more.
A burning log snapped, throwing up sparks, and the image dissolved. Mute, Daine pulled off the silver claw that hung around her neck, the symbol of the tie between her and the badger. She held it out to him. “I’m asking you now, by this symbol of the bond that’s between us: please help my friends.”
The badger whuffled, wet nose quivering.
“If it helps, I will take them as far as I can,” the duck-mole told his fellow god.
“What is it, Gold-streak?” Numair asked. The three darkings were surging up and down beside Daine, reminding her of children trying to get an elder’s attention. Gold-streak had stretched until it stood taller than Leaf and Jelly.
To her surprise, a slit opened in the knob that served Gold-streak as a head. The opening moved; a squeak reached the girl’s ears. Quickly she bent down so that her ear was close to the blots. “I go,” repeated Gold-streak. Its voice was tiny.
SIX
CHESS GAME
Numair touched her shoulder. “What’s the matter?” She looked up at him. “It’s Gold-streak. It—it talked.”
“But they don’t talk, do they?” he asked. “My impression was that they only communicate what is said to them, or near them.”
Gold-streak stretched a bit more and said, “Now talk.” It was louder this time, enough so that everyone heard. “I go. Talk to darkings. Teach them—” It returned to its huddle with Leaf and Jelly. They vibrated together until Gold-streak’s head rose out of the mass. “Freedom,” it said clearly. “Choosing.”
“Do you know where your brethren are—who they spy on?” asked the badger.
All three blots nodded.
“And I can transport a darking from place to place, here or in the mortal realms,” the badger commented. He sighed, and pointed out, “It will take us a while, even going from spy to spy by magical means. Transporting all over the mortal realms, I will need to rest. Numair Salmalín, look after my kit. Put that back on your neck,” he ordered Daine crossly, meaning his claw.
She obeyed. Gold-streak ended a last conference with Leaf and Jelly, and rolled up the badger’s leg to his back. The god looked at it. “Ready?” he asked. Gold-streak nodded. Silver light exploded, and they were gone.
Numair straightened their camp. He filled their fire pit and the trench that had served as a privy, scattering leaves and stones to make the place seem untouched. Daine packed, rapidly stowing their belongings. Broad Foot, Leaf, and Jelly watched from a safe distance.
“It’s as good as the courtship dances of cranes,” the duckmole remarked. When they finished, he created a pouch in Numair’s fresh shirt, and materialized in it. “You never bump into each other, and you never try to do the same tasks.”
Daine smiled up at her tall friend. “We’ve been doing this for a while,” she explained. “I’ve lost count of the camps that we’ve put up and broken down.”
Numair reached, as if he wanted to stroke her cheek, then dropped his hand. “Where do the darkings ride?”
Leaf coiled around Daine’s neck. Jelly, still aquiver, tucked itself into a pocket of the girl’s breeches, letting only its makeshift head stick out.
Today Daine set the pace. She knew exactly how fast she and Numair could walk together, just as she knew how often they had to rest. The man and Broad Foot talked quietly; Numair had a great many questions about the home of the duckmole’s mortal children. Daine and the darkings watched their surroundings. The small blots were fascinated. Wary, the girl carried her bow in her free hand. She wanted no surprises.
Their trail led downhill, through a less heavily forested land. It was almost noon when they came to the narrow arm of a swamp. “Mauler’s Swamp?” asked Daine, seeing that Numair was looking at their map.
The mage nodded. “There should be a bridge ahead.”
Daine pointed. The bridge was a low one, rising a handful of inches over the water’s surface. Fashioned of sturdy-looking logs, it would hold them clear of the murky water until they were completely across.
Mosquitoes and biting flies came for them as soon as they stepped onto the bridge. Killing the insects did no good: They were gods, and restored themselves instantly; their dead bodies fell into the mouths of waiting frogs and fish. Their bites raised welts that itched crazily. At last Numair spun a fiery magical shield to keep the things at bay.
The insects buzzed outside, on a level with the humans’ faces.
“The bears and the deer let us feed off them!” protested a horsefly.
“Muskrats,” a tiny voice said; Daine couldn’t see who spoke. “Don’t forget them.”
“They are gods,” Numair replied calmly, undisturbed by a chat with insects. “No doubt they replace their blood instantly. We are not gods.”
“Mortal blood tastes best,” added the small voice. “It has life in it. The blood of gods doesn’t.”
“I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am to deny you such a treat,” Numair said.
“You know very well we could break that shield, if we wanted to,” cried a blackfly. “We are gods, after all.”
“What good is blood that’s given so grudgingly?” the horsefly grumbled.
“What good indeed?” inquired the mage, voice mild.
“Selfish,” a mosquito snapped.
“I hope that Mauler eats you! It would serve you right!” the invisible bug told them. The insects left as abruptly as they had come.
Daine wiped her forehead on her sleeve; it was hot and close in this marsh.
“Broad Foot, what is this Mauler?” Numair asked. He kept his staff—its crystal charged with his Gift—raised before him in case something larger than insects came to feed. “He looked like a crocodile in the image that Weiryn showed us.”
“Lord Mauler is an older god of the People,” said the duckmole. “He is a link between crocodiles and the dinosaurs. May we move faster?”
“Why?” asked Numair. Daine paused briefly to string her bow. When she reached back to her quiver, an arrow met her fingers—Leaf had gotten it for her.
“Mauler isn’t entirely friendly to trespassers,” Broad Foot told him. “He puts up with them on his good days, of course.”
“You’re afraid today may not be one of his good ones?” suggested the mage.
“Exactly.”
Daine watched their surroundings closely as they followed the log bridge around the bole of an immense cypress. Below, in murky water, she saw an oddly regular pattern that ran under their bridge to emerge on the other side.
The pattern moved; water heaved and rolled. A hollow tree boomed like a giant drum. The bridge shook, then settled. The thing underneath headed for open water, pulling skeins of vines in its wake. Daine’s jaw dropped. At best guess, the creature was over thirty feet in length; any three of the crocodiles she’d seen in Carthak, lined up head to tail, could fit inside its skin comfortably. It curved back around, then stopped.
Twin yellow rounds popped through the surface.
A tiny voice just under the girl’s ear—Leaf’s—said, “Uh-oh.”
Dark shutters slid down over the orbs, then lifted. They were eyes. Daine gulped, sweating. It was one thing to see a creature in a vision over her father’s map; such a vision was very misleading as to size. One of those eyes alone was larger than Broad Foot. If she used her bow, would her arrows do more than tickle him?
“What the
—?” Numair stared at those two immense yellow eyes.
“Lord Mauler,” Broad Foot whispered. “Greetings to you, cousin!” he called.
“And good day,” muttered Numair. He broke into a trot, Daine behind him. To their relief, solid land was a few yards ahead. Mauler thrashed as they stepped off the bridge. The surface of the swamp rolled, and crested, and splashed the travelers. The great creature dove, leaving only surging water to mark his passage.
Broad Foot shook a clump of plants off his bill. “I don’t know which is worse—when he’s cross, or when he’s trying to be funny.”
Numair wiped his face on his sleeve. “If it’s all the same, I won’t stay around to study his moods.”
Now the way led slowly uphill. The trees thinned. Clearings expanded; streams flattened and slowed. The air warmed and dried. They kept going after sunset, using the lights overhead, fired by the war with Chaos, to see by. At last they made camp beside a lazy, wide stream.
After eating, Broad Foot volunteered to stand watch until dawn, since he didn’t always need to sleep. The two humans curled up under their blankets. Daine had thought she would sleep instantly. Instead she watched the war lights bloom and fade.
I know my Da, she thought. I could change my name. No more looks from them that know I’m Sarrasri because Ma was my only family—that I’m a bastard. I s’pose Da acknowledges me now. It’s my right to change my name. Weirynsra. Veralidaine Weirynsra.
It didn’t sound right. When all was said and done, she was Veralidaine Sarrasri, really. She’d been that for sixteen years. Changing now would be—uncomfortable.
That settled, she closed her eyes. What did the Dream King want to say tonight?
She had the answer almost instantly. Rattail appeared next to her; they were seated on clear air that had turned solid, enough so that Daine could hear her friend’s tail slapping the invisible floor in back of her.
“So now we get down to it,” said the wolf. “There is one thing that Father Universe and Mother Flame have forbidden Uusoae to do—meddle in the affairs of mortals. All of Chaos gets half of its strength from mortal creatures, because they are half Chaos by nature. My lord Gainel thinks that someone is helping Uusoae to tap into the other half of mortal fire, the half that does not belong to her. He thinks that she is playing this game, which she is forbidden to do.”
Below them appeared a great chessboard in red and gold. Uusoae was the red queen, her appearance for the most part that of a woman in an orange gown, with tangled black hair. Only her eyes and hands changed shape, constantly. Her king was an empty shadow that tried to draw all that was nearby into it. At last a pincer-handed Uusoae ringed it with multicolored fire to save her other pieces from being gulped by her consort. The leftmost rook was a yammering, three-headed ape: “Discord,” said Rattail when the girl pointed it out and asked. Uusoae’s other rook was a lean, blue-skinned youth with six arms, each one holding a weapon. Smiling at Daine, he pulled a seventh arm from behind his back—it held Numair’s dripping head.
A hand rested on her shoulder; she jumped. The newcomer was Numair, well and whole. “Violence,” he said, pointing to the blue youth. “With Discord, the gate-keeper of Chaos.” Daine glanced at the rook Discord, and saw that it juggled her own head.
“Charming,” she murmured drily.
“It’s their nature,” said Rattail, with an unwolflike shrug. “They can’t help being what they are.”
Numair took his hand from Daine’s shoulder and looked at the wolf. “Daine, would you introduce us?”
“I dunno,” said the girl, looking at Rattail. “Are you Rattail, or are you the Dream King?”
The wolf’s shape puddled, curved, and straightened into a rail-thin man with inky, tousled hair and bottomless eyes. —I thought perhaps you would be less unnerved by hearing of these things from a friend.—
“Maybe,” she replied, looking at gold’s ranking pieces. These were the Great Gods: Mithros and the Goddess as king and queen, the Black God and a white-eyed female— “Shakith, goddess of seers,” whispered Numair—as high priests, the desert god Jihuk and the Smiths’ god as knights, Kidunka the world snake and the Wave Walker as rooks. “Where are you?” Daine asked Gainel.
The Dream King smiled. —Like you mortals, I have one foot in the Divine Realms, the other in Chaos. Lately that’s been a most uncomfortable position.—
“Understandably,” replied Numair. He pointed to Uusoae’s pawns as they materialized on the board all at once. “Now we have some answers!”
The central pawn was the Stormwing Ozorne. His closest neighbor was a blond Scanran mage who used a ruby in place of a lost eye.
Numair whistled softly. “Inar Hadensra. That explains far more than it doesn’t.”
“He’s very powerful?” asked Daine.
“Yes, indeed. And he serves only the Council of Ten in Scanra, not whomever they have as king that week. The Copper Islander to his right? That’s Valmar, the third of King Oron’s sons, carrying a general’s baton. And next to him is Deniau, the high admiral of the Copper Isles, and Valmar’s brother. Ozorne has powerful allies.”
Daine wasn’t sure how mere two-leggers might compete with the spidren—a giant, furred spider with a human head—hurrok, dull-eyed female Stormwing, and winged ape that filled out the number of red pawns, but she kept that to herself. Looking to the row of gold pawns, she saw a piece that looked like her at the far end of the board, and one like Numair at the end closest to them. Between their pieces stood a gold-skinned, almond-eyed Yamani who carried a spyglass; Tkaa; King Jonathan; Queen Thayet; the King’s Champion; and Kitten.
“I don’t like being so far apart from you,” she told Numair.
Pieces vanished and reappeared. Now the Great Gods struggled with the Chaos beings, neither side appearing to have the advantage. Ozorne and his allies, holding swords, spears, and axes that rippled with the constantly changing colors that filled the sky and Chaos vents in the Divine Realms, attacked the gold pawns. Gold’s pieces were armed, but the attack took them while they were staring at the Great Gods’ fight; red’s pieces swiftly cut them down. When Daine, Numair, and the other gold pawns were dead, Ozorne and his allies slumped to the board and dissolved, blending with their weapons. Their melted selves flowed around the outside of the ring of struggling gods, to become the Chaos stuff from Daine’s earlier dreams, flooding over, then eating, the Great Gods.
“I don’t like that game,” said Numair, his grin a bit forced. “Can we play a new one?”
In the blink of an eye, the whole board twisted. When it straightened, all the pieces had been returned to their original places. This time, as the gods and the lords of Chaos struggled, gold’s pawns led the attack. The Scanran mage threw fire at them; King Jonathan blocked it. Alanna the Champion locked blades with an armed spidren. Daine’s pawn went straight for Ozorne, Numair’s for the Copper Islander Deniau. All over the board, opponents were locked in desperate battles.
The spidren was the first killed; Alanna raised her sword with a triumphant cry. Uusoae appeared, shrieking as she charged the King’s Champion. Gold’s pawns were swept out of harm’s way as the Great Gods appeared in a circle around the Queen of Chaos. Red’s pawns vanished.
—If she is behind this, she will come to avenge her servitor, the one who found a way for her to use mortal power without Father Universe and Mother Flame knowing. Once she reveals herself, they will enter the matter, and end the fight. Gods and mortals will be safe again, at least for another thousand years.—Gainel, who had stayed beside the girl and Numair all along, looked at them. Daine could no more read the emotion in those shadow eyes now than she had been able to the last time she met their gaze.
He disappeared, and was replaced by tree limbs and leaves. It took Daine a moment to realize that she was now awake and that Gainel’s soft voice was in her mind, not her ears. —Her ally may not be a spidren. It may be another immortal, or a human. Whoever it is, for the sake of your parents, humankind,
and the beast-People, you must kill him, or her. It is the only way to end the war.—
“Why didn’t someone just tell us what the problem was?” demanded Numair. Daine looked: He, too, was awake and sitting up.
—Because the Great Gods believe that no problem exists. They say that no mortal would risk the destruction of his or her own realm by helping Uusoae to break the walls that keep her contained. I no longer argue with my brothers and sisters. They only laughed, so I gave it up. Farewell then, mortals. Good luck.—
Though he was nowhere to be seen, Daine knew the Dream King had left as surely as if she’d seen him walk away.
Later in their travels that day, as they ate lunch by a stream, the ground shook. Two sounds tore through the air. The first, Daine and Numair agreed later, was that of an iron door being slammed. The other, hard on the heels of the first, was undeniably that of a drawbridge being slowly, ponderously lowered.
Daine and Numair covered their ears, to no effect. When the booming echoes faded, she checked Leaf and Jelly. Both were shrinking, shivering blobs.
“Oh, my goodness,” Broad Foot remarked sadly. “So it’s come to that.”
“Come to what?” Daine asked, rubbing her abused ears.
“Follow me.” Broad Foot waddled to the stream, Daine, Numair, and the darkings right behind him. Leaning over the water, he breathed on it. An image—or rather, three images—grew on the surface.
The first, before Numair, showed the walls and ramparts of Port Legann from high overhead. A colossal spotted hyena gnawed on a tower, then on a siege engine outside the walls. Under her, around her, even through her, humans surged in battle. Was the hyena a ghost? Raising a muzzle that dripped blood, she gave the stuttering, eerie cry that made her kind so feared. Pricking cat ears forward, Daine also heard a distant, dim roar: human voices shouting and the clang of swords, shields, and armor.
In the water before the duckmole, Daine saw wheat fields. Cattle and sheep grazed nearby, herded by children and dogs. Over everything, in a form as sheer as the hyena’s, slunk a yellow, mangy, cur dog. He was little more than a skin-covered skeleton, as unhealthy an animal as Daine had ever seen. He took bites from everything: grapes, wheat, apples, herd animals. As he bit, things began to shrivel.