* * *
The black stain flowed into Eavijne’s garden. It possessed just enough energy to keep moving. Saturated with silver dust, it suffered abiding agony. Already diminished by its struggle to break through compromised seals, it had not been alert enough to smell the silver powder trap.
It lived, but with little power or strength, little ability to reason, and little sense of identity. Instinct took it to the orchard where it found just one overlooked, shriveled green apple that did little to restore it.
It did what no rational god would have done. It engulfed the only living tree. It understood the enormity of its action only after it finished.
That was the last tree. There might be no more golden fruit. Starved for life and restored immortality, the Trickster might have written the deaths of all the Old Ones.
Hatred and rage so possessed him that he did not care for long.
He took the shape of a slim youth of middle height, his hair a mixture of streaks and shades of ginger that made it look like his head was on fire. He had a hatchet face, flushed because of his emotional state.
He stepped through the broken orchard wall, headed for the rainbow bridge. He thought he was moving brisk and businesslike. An observer might have suspected intoxication or mental defect.
He started across.
Once again hunger trumped reason.
He swallowed some of the magic holding the bridge together. It was Aelen Kofer magic. He did not gain much from it. He would need massive draughts to benefit, like a man surviving by eating grass and river mud.
The rainbow unraveled.
He cried out once, startled, as he began his fall.
He had stolen just enough magic to change into a generic-looking gliding thing that, nevertheless, could do no more than slow its descent enough to choose a place to smack down.
The harbor extended a siren call but it was in the open. He would be seen.
He did not want his escape to be known. There was revenge to pursue.
He passed over the Aelen Kofer town, toward the scrubby wilderness beyond. One wing tip brushed a stunted treetop. He spun. He hit the ground hard. Pain became his universe.
Even gods, if incautious or inattentive, must suffer the laws of physics.
* * *
Gods, goddesses, and middle-world folk crowded the Aelen Kofer tavern. Vast quantities of ale disappeared. The dwarves had been kind enough to leave many barrels.
Ferris Renfrow and Cloven Februaren dragged themselves well under the weather. Asgrimmur tried but no longer had the knack. He was trapped in eagle form. Eavijne was not there to celebrate with or for him. The instant she set her feet on solid ground she rushed off to recover her dropped nubbins. Anna became tipsy. The children became incensed because they were allowed neither to celebrate nor to wander out of sight. Pella, especially, thought he could be helping Eavijne.
Hecht whispered to Heris, “I thought you were hot to get down here and suck up some of Iron Eyes’s finest.”
“I was. I am. But I can’t let my hair down till I have everything tied up. I don’t.”
“Uhm?”
“You saw what came off the mountain behind us.”
“The Trickster, I presume.”
“No one else. So what I’m going to do is get some sleep, then I’ll get out there and do something about him.”
Hecht had questions. He let them slide. What Heris hoped to accomplish remained an enigma. It did seem obvious that the Trickster had to be eliminated from the process.
“I’ll go with you.”
“Piper…”
“Knock it off, Heris. You know…”
“By Aaron’s Hairy Balls, Piper! Are we two of a kind, or what?”
“Or what, as Pinkus would say. You’re right. Neither of us can help thinking we know better than the whole damned rest of the world. Lucky for me, I’m right.”
“The folk of Santerin have a word for what’s coming out of your mouth. That word, rendered in my finest Church Brothen, is bullshit!”
A snicker interrupted them.
Cloven Februaren had appeared, quietly. “You kids want to do some god-hunting, you’d better round up all the allies you can. The Trickster is a first-ranker. He won’t go quietly.”
Hecht admitted, “He’s got a point.”
Heris nodded. “He does. You volunteering, Double Great?”
“After I sleep it off. Though I’d say volunteerism isn’t relevant. The Trickster has to be dealt with if the rest of us want to get out of here. So, tame him or kill him. Soon. Because we’re locked up till Iron Eyes knows that letting us out won’t be a disaster for the Nine Worlds.”
“Right,” Heris admitted. “So get your sleep. We’ll start early.”
“Where are you going?” Hecht asked.
“To the smithy. To find out what tools and options the Aelen Kofer left. Then I’ll put me away for the night, too.”
* * *
Februaren asked, “How many friends does Lucke have amongst our Old Ones?”
“Luck?” Hecht asked, looking past the old man at the Instrumentalities joining the hunt.
“The Trickster. He’s like Ordnan. His name is seldom spoken. It has a lot of regional variants. Luke. Lucke. Luche. Luck. And others.”
“Oh. Right. Where’s Heris?”
“Here,” from behind him.
Februaren said, “He’s out there. He’s badly hurt. On the surface it looks like he has no friends and no way of regaining any strength. Eavijne got her fruit back—with Pella’s devoted assistance.”
Ferris Renfrow, ragged and hung over, arrived. He grumbled, “So let’s do this. So I can go back to bed.”
Hecht exchanged glances with Heris. They had been killing gods long enough to know that the Trickster still had options, especially if he was up for a little divine cannibalism.
The myths did not define his limits or boundaries.
Heris asked, “Double Great, do you or your cronies have any idea where he is? Or how strong he is?”
“He’s weak as a baby. As gods go. Weaker than Kharoulke was. And getting weaker because there is no magic to tap. I can’t tell you where he is. I do know the right direction.”
“Thank you.” Heris exchanged looks with Hecht.
Hecht asked, “What resources do we have now that we didn’t have on top of the mountain?” He had seen the gap in the rainbow bridge.
“Lots of iron. Aelen Kofer love iron. And some silver. That surprised me. I thought for sure they’d take every grain. And there’s a partial keg of firepowder but nothing to use it in except a couple of old hand-helds.”
“We won’t need to shoot him if he isn’t agile. We can scatter coins and iron filings on him and watch him melt.”
Heris said, “There aren’t any coins. The dwarves took those. Unless you have some in your pocket.”
“A few pennies. I’ll ask Anna and the kids. They’ll have a few in their shoes or up their sleeves.”
* * *
Hecht, Heris, Februaren, the Bastard, and the ascendant formed the advance party. Asgrimmur flapped around overhead, scouting. He was hard to understand when he shouted down. A half-dozen Old Ones followed at a distance.
The Trickster was not hard to find. He was a straight walk out through uncomfortable terrain, still where he had fallen, two miles from the Aelen Kofer town.
He was a disappointment. A once major Instrumentality had become a semitransparent blob pulsating slowly amongst the rocks and debris of the woodland floor. That blob inspired neither fear, nor awe, nor dread. Dirt and broken leaves covered it. It leaked. In the middle world it would have been the focus of a storm of insects.
Hecht said, “Let’s kill it and go.” He pointed his hand-held at a purple-brown kidney shape inside the blob.
Which began a feeble flow into the shadow under a rock overhang. Before Hecht fired, Februaren asked, “Why not try to make contact? We could have the cleverest god ever managing our dirty tricks for us.”
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Asgrimmur waddled close. He tried biting the blob. Hecht suspected the ghosts he harbored wanted some vengeance of their own.
Heris said, “Or we can kill him and never have to watch our backs.”
She and Hecht fired their hand-helds. Hecht followed up with silver coins. Heris scattered iron filings from the smithy.
A divine psychic shriek followed, freighted with despair and disbelief, the death cry of an entity long convinced that its end was a mystic impossibility.
The blob began to liquefy and melt into the soil.
Heris observed, “I’d say this is anticlimactic.”
“But useful in the extreme.” Hecht nodded toward the posse of gods watching. “Look at them. Appalled. Crushed. The shiftiest one of all got rubbed out by a couple of middle-world mortals. Let’s hope they keep that in mind.”
Renfrow, Februaren, and Asgrimmur all made noises of indeterminate meaning. Renfrow added, “And the Gray Walker did nothing to keep that from happening.”
Asgrimmur croaked, “Patience ran out.”
In myth Ordnan had tolerated mischief, wickedness, and outright betrayal. In myth Lucke was supposed to bring on the fall of the Old Ones. His children would be great monsters on the plain of final combat, fighting against the Old Ones.
Hecht said, “This kind of changes all that, doesn’t it?”
Februaren said, “All that changed at al-Khazen.”
Renfrow said, “Or al-Khazen could have been the Twilight struggle beginning. The myths could just be an interpretation.”
Hecht did not want to hear that hypothesis.
The last of the liquefied Instrumentality sank into the earth.
Heris said, “Suggestions? Anyone? Let him be? Dig all this up and burn it? Scatter it? Mix in poison, like iron ore that will kill him if he tries to pull himself back together?”
Renfrow said, “How about all of the above? Heating this earth in a smelter with the iron ore.” He showed a thin smirk.
Heris eyed him suspiciously.
He said, “When you’ve been around as long as me it gets easy to infer plans from actions. You’ve been especially interested in the smithy.”
Februaren asked, “Where’s the egg? There ought to be a big one. Right?”
Heris said, “So Renfrow sees what I’ve been thinking. We’ll need every able body, though. Renfrow. One last time. Would anyone here try to help the Trickster get through this?”
“No.” But, then, “Not on the surface. Secretly, maybe. The motives of the Night…”
“Mysterious ways. Asgrimmur, flap back there and tell those folks what we’re going to do.”
The eagle gave a raptor shriek, clumsily took to the air.
Watching his short flight, Hecht said, “I think he likes the eagle shape.”
Februaren responded, “He’d better. He’ll be stuck in it if we don’t get out of here.”
Asgrimmur returned, settled heavily onto a boulder. He spoke slowly and carefully. “We do not have much time. The world is dying. What used to be … the distance is all fog and gray.” He flew away again.
“Isn’t that special news?” Heris said.
Februaren said, “Worth keeping in mind.”
Rattled, Renfrow asked, “You do have a plan for getting out, don’t you?”
Heris growled, “We would’ve been gone already if this asswipe hadn’t gotten loose.” She kicked the ground.
People and divinities brought tools and buckets. Heris took a shovel, turned over some earth, told them, “I need all the dirt that looks like it’s soaked with oil. Haul it back to the smithy.”
She filled two buckets and headed out.
* * *
Heris had paid attention when Khor-ben Jarneyn had waxed eloquent about dwarfish industrial techniques.
“The girl is like that,” Cloven Februaren grumbled. “Iron Eyes bored the socks off the rest of us. The more excited he got, the more boring he was. But Heris ate it up. You want to talk dirty to that girl, talk the metallurgy of the Night.”
“You’re in a fine mood, Double Great,” Heris said, breaking dirt up and feeding it to the smithy furnace, burning just warm enough to cook the moisture out and hot enough to kill anything living in the soil that the Trickster could use as a condensation point. That done, she increased the heat, created several hundred pounds of grossly impure glass. The liquid went into ceramic molds once used to cast ingots. It cooled. And at the center of one lay a glowing soul egg that looked like it contained living fire.
“Look at this, Piper! Am I a genius, or what?”
“When it comes to doing nasty unto the Night, you are the queen.”
Heris sweet-talked the one male god into showing off by demonstrating how far out into the harbor he could chuck the glass ingots. But the one containing the fiery egg she took to the tavern, where it went on display.
Asking Ferris Renfrow, Cloven Februaren, and Asgrimmur to be attentive to potential reservations and possible loopholes, Heris treated the Old Ones to a fresh round of oath bindings. She then told Hecht, “Finally! I can settle down and have a beer.” And, then, “If I get too drunk don’t any of you bastards take advantage of me.” Then she broached her own small keg of dark ale.
* * *
Piper Hecht had a hangover, his first ever. He did not enjoy it. Nor did the fact that so many others suffered equally improve his mood. Anna and the children had avoided the curse by going to bed before the celebration got rowdy.
“I didn’t do anything but take a few sips,” Hecht complained to Asgrimmur. He got no sympathy. The ascendant had been unable to do the kind of drinking he would have liked. Drinking had been a manly art in the culture of his youth.
Hecht had nursed one mug all evening, shaking his head at the Old Ones. They, like their original worshippers, thought a good time was to get stinking drunk and start a fight.
They had done some serious damage to the tavern.
Anna brought Hecht a breakfast of ham slices and cheese chunks. Both were old and smoked and required determined chewing. “Piper, tell Heris we really need to get out of here. The Instrumentalities are devouring everything. We’ll be down to nothing but beer tomorrow.”
Hecht grunted. He rubbed the heels of his hands against his temples. That did not help. “Are we out of bread?”
“Yes. And most of the ingredients for baking it. We have a little cured meat and hard cheese. Even the dried fruit is gone.”
Vali materialized. “I found some onions, Dad. Must be two hundred pounds.”
Onions sounded better than desiccated ham.
“None of us will mind onions before long. Now what?” The Old Ones had just jumped as though collectively goosed. They began murmuring.
“Get Heris.” Hecht produced his handheld firepowder weapon. It clunked against the tabletop.
He had no match handy but doubted that would matter. The Old Ones did not understand the weapons. They had trouble with most things mechanical. That was Aelen Kofer stuff.
He chewed tough meat and watched. Heris joined him. She chewed tough meat, watched, and said nothing, either.
Cloven Februaren arrived. Ferris Renfrow followed. Both were suffering.
Februaren moaned, “In a sane world an accomplished sorcerer could banish a hangover in seconds.”
Renfrow grunted and growled, “In a world with color and magic.”
There was no color in the tavern whatsoever, which Hecht took to indicate a total lack of magic.
He felt his left wrist. His amulet was there.
Februaren noted the movement. Weakly, he said, “No magic at all.”
Two Old Ones left their crowd. Male and female, they looked like healthy humans about forty years of age. Hourlr and Hourli. They were twins. And not originally Shining Ones. They were Raneul, gods the Old Ones had defeated in the War of the Gods. Some of the defeated had left their world for the Realm of the Gods after that war’s end.
The curious character inside Piper Hecht wante
d to ask questions until he ferreted out details of that conflict.
The twins faced him. Their manner was respectful. The female said, “It is plain that you do not trust us, despite the oaths and assurances you have extracted.”
“Talk to Heris.” He indicated his sister. “She decides here.” A nod.
“As you wish.” Hourli nodded.
The male god spoke to her. “You judge us all by the example of Lucke. You believe that his behavior is what can be expected of us all. That is not the way it will be.”
Hecht was inclined to observe that only one rogue Instrumentality was needed to bring on the pain. He kept silent.
Heris said, “Most knowledge of you has vanished from the middle world. You live on only in the folk stories of peasants and Asgrimmur’s recollections from the Great Sky Fortress. And in the Bastard’s mind. None of those sources offer any reason to trust the Shining Ones.”
“Perhaps. The mortal perspective must, of necessity, be different. However, mortality is being taken into account. We are investing in our own survival. We must immigrate to the middle world for the power. While we are there, during your time, we will cleave to our promises. Without trickery. Without treachery. Without legalistic mumbo jumbo being used to evade understood obligations. We face extinction. That is no sweet prospect.”
The female divinity continued, speaking to Hecht. “It used to be thought best for us to be seen as clever and tricky—though that reputation came more from muddled, delusional mortal thinking than from deliberate divine mischief.”
Hecht was not sure he understood, but that sounded good.
* * *
Korban Iron Eyes burst into the tavern, stumbled, nearly fell. Audacious but inauspicious. A dozen short, wide, hairy, ferocious-looking dwarves followed. All wore armor and an arsenal of sharps.
The Aelen Kofer.
Every dwarf had a slow match sputtering atop his or her helmet. Every dwarf’s personal weaponry included at least two handheld falcons.
Hecht muttered to Heris, “I didn’t think it would be long before they started playing with firepowder toys.”
“Good news, them turning up, though.”
The return of the dwarves meant a way out of the Realm of the Gods. If Iron Eyes decided to let them go.