Two (The Godslayer Cycle Book 2) Read online

  Avery had no idea how long he lay upon the earth, but it could not have been long, for Hamil was applauding him.

  “Where... Where are we?” managed Avery.

  “Inside, I'd wager,” said Hamil. “Smart move, throwing the stone back into the wall. I think a blast like that could very easily have banished us both.”

  “Banished?”

  “Never mind,” responded the scribe. “Can you sit up? I can't imagine we will go undiscovered all that long lying in the street like this.”

  Avery became aware of himself at that moment. He was lying face-down in the street, his mouth full of grit. Spitting and hacking the dirt from his mouth and throat, Avery pulled himself weakly up to his hands and knees. Vertigo overtook him, though, and he had to stop in that position for several minutes. Hamil waited patiently while Avery recovered his senses, apparently not as anxious to be on the move as he had originally suggested.

  Finally, Avery felt strong enough to thrust himself into a sitting position, taking deep lungfuls of air as he did so. “The wall?” he managed after a few such breaths.

  “See for yourself,” remarked the scribe.

  Avery looked up to see the young man motioning behind him. Unable to gather the strength to turn, Avery simply let himself fall backwards and stared upwards into the sky behind him.

  The wall of water was still there, though admittedly they were now looking at was clearly the inverted side of the circular structure. Whatever passage they had forged had been swallowed behind them, apparently taking with it their only means of forging a new exit point.

  “All or nothing now,” mumbled Avery to himself.

  “In for a pint, in for the barrel, and all that,” answered Hamil. The scribe suddenly clapped his hands together, causing Avery to wince in disapproval. “Ready to go see the sights, then?”

  “In another minute,” Avery scrinched his eyes closed again. “I am still regaining my strength.”

  “I say again, My Lord. We should not stay in the street like this. We are bound to be discovered.” Avery felt the scribe's hands lifting him up. “Here, let me assist you.”

  As Avery allowed himself to be lifted, he opened his eyes to take in their surroundings.

  The invader had not noticed before how much dimmer the light was on this side before. When he looked up, he could see a distant area where the light of the day reflected off the wall's surface. But it shone at an angle, much like one would expect from a setting sun drawing the horizon's shadow across the landscape. Levitz could not possibly enjoy more than an hour of direct sunlight in its current straits, and what light illuminated the streets through refraction off the liquid surface was quickly fading.

  Avery returned his gaze to street level. “Where is everyone then?” Twice now, Hamil had urged them to hide, but there was not a soul to be seen or heard. If the town had not been wiped from existence, then should not the citizens have survived, as well? After all, how could a faux God compel worship if he didn't have living subjects?

  “I cannot say,” responded Hamil, looking around anxiously himself. “But I don't like it. Not one bit.”

  Before they could wonder further though, the sound of a solid object rapping on wood drew their attention towards one of the buildings a short distance away. The pair of intruders looked to what looked to be a small home, waiting for the sound to repeat. After a moment, it did – and once they could determine its precise direction, a lone arm waving from behind a door at the side of the structure also came into view.

  Hamil and Avery looked to each other. “Might as well,” said the scribe after a moment. “We're going to have to talk to someone sooner or later.”

  Avery shrugged and stood away from the scribe, indicating he should lead the way. “By all means,” he said sardonically. “But I'll let you lead so I have more time to regain my strength.”

  Hamil scowled in disapproval, but Avery quickly thwarted the young man's protest. “Next time, you can hold the extremely painful, exploding rock and let it tear every nerve in your body out while I go talk to the strangers hiding in the building, okay?”

  The scribe bit back his retort, conceding the point. With a sigh of resignation, he turned and started toward the house.

  Avery had to admit that walking was helping him come back to himself much quicker than he had thought possible. Remarkably, by the time the pair had reached the doorway in question, he could barely feel the residual effects of his trauma, at all.

  “Close enough,” came a voice from the other side of the slitted door. The arm had been withdrawn and now barely a sliver existed between the door and its frame. “Whatcha doin' out on the street like that? Did they find your hidey-hole?”

  “They who?” asked Avery, stepping forward in spite of himself.

  “Whatcha mean, who? You think I'm stupid'r something?”

  “Sir,” offered Hamil. “We really just want to know where everyone is.”

  A rough cackle came from behind the door, much like the sound that Avery himself had uttered only a short time ago. “You've lost it, have you? Gone insane, is that it?”

  Avery felt his anger rising, but suppressed it. “Look, we really don't know what's going on. We just made it past the wall--”

  “Past the wall? Now I know you're insane! Even if such a thing were possible, why would anyone get past the wall in this direction?” The door abruptly slammed closed. “Go away!” called the voice inside. “I won't have your madness getting me killed!”

  “I feel like I'm living through a children's story,” grumbled Avery, trying with bare success to keep his anger in check. Raising his voice, he called, “If you don't open that door, I'm going to knock until it falls down on top of you!”

  Hamil giggled in spite of himself. Avery had cited a line almost verbatim from a child's story, one where an imp was refused shelter by a greedy lord. When the lord ordered his servant to bar the door and leave the imp to the night's terrors, the demonic creature had proclaimed he would continue to knock until the door fell down and let him in anyway. The lord had laughed, and the imp proceeded to strike the door. “One,” had called the imp. When the lord, still refused, he struck again. “Two,” called the imp. Again, the lord refused and the imp struck the door a third time. Inexplicably, the heavy door had fallen inward, crushing the lord who had been lurking behind it. “Three,” had said the imp.

  The moral – if that was what it could be called – was to ward against the dishonor of refusing shelter to anyone in need, for in the story, the imp had eaten all that had lived within. Now, Avery's warning seemed to be threatening the very same fate to the man hiding inside the home.

  The symbolism did not escape Avery, either. He could certainly emulate the story, knock two times, then bash the door down on the third blow. But he was not forced to do that.

  The door opened, and a woman appeared. “Forgive my husband,” said a weathered woman. Avery would have gauged by lack of gray in her hair that the woman was perhaps thirty, but the years of working in a fishing village had taken a premature toll upon her skin, chaffing it until it was dry and brittle. “He's afraid, and that does peculiar things to people. You're right to ask for shelter, and we're wrong to deny you.”

  Avery bowed respectfully. “We honestly do not seek shelter, just information. It is as I said – we just came from beyond the wall and we need to know what has happened here.”

  The woman squinted her eyes at the pair, then pursed her lips. Finally, she said, “Well, at least you believe what you say. So I can't fault you that. But you'll have to forgive, because there's no way for any living mortal to get out of this town. We've all accepted that much. So why should we believe that there's a way in?”

  Hamil's face lit up. The scribe did so like making his pronouncements. “You have nearly answered that question for yourself. No mortal could get through the wall. But a God could and did.”

  Hamil stepped back and flourished his arms towards Avery. “Behold your rescuer. I presen
t to you, Avery, God of Vengeance, and liberator of Levitz!”

  Chapter 18

  The Witness had called the presence a God, but it was not acting like any wrathful deity that Dart had ever envisioned. If a God had truly pierced the wall surrounding Levitz, what other reason could it have than to seek vengeance against the upstart mortal at the heart of the debacle? Why not seek out the reason for the anomalous manifestation?

  And yet it had not – the presence had lingered at the fringe of the community. What was it waiting for? If it had no intention of tearing down the power behind the unearthly anomaly, why had it bothered to pierce the veil?

  Gods simply did not come to the mortal realm that often. If they did, Dart was confident that she would have felt this imposing phenomenon before. This was why they had priests and clergymen, after all.

  Yet in all her four hundred years, this was something new.

  Dart was convinced that what she had sensed – and presumably the feeling she shared with the Witness – was not any actual manifestation of power by the God. Or, at least, that was how the Witness described it. He insisted that if it had been a display of power, the impact upon their perceptions would have been significantly greater. He explained that as rare as a personal entry into the mortal realm was for a God, to actually have that God use his powers was almost unheard of in living memory.

  This pretense was validated by the consistent flow of power emanating in their direction. Unless the God had entered casting off some powerful effect and maintained it at a constant level consistently, then this was indeed only its substance that Dart felt. She shuddered at the idea of how much more power this being possessed if this represented the barest influence it could have on the world around it.

  Gravin was not handling the news all that well, either. He had been pacing all night, restless to the point of mania. He had overheard the Witness' declaration of there being a God in Levitz, and he had prepared for the inevitable confrontation that had never come. He had pulled the sword free of its binding and stood facing the door, bracing himself for attack.

  But an attack had not come, and until the dim twilight of the town had receded in favor of true night, he had held his stance – stiff yet unsettled, shifting, twitching.

  It was obvious that whatever had triggered his own senses had faded – he was not aware of the continued existence of the deity. Otherwise he would not have stood awaiting its arrival. He would have known that the deity was keeping its distance, for whatever reason.

  But he had been rattled by what he had felt. Perhaps it had been nothing more than the disruption of his own magic he had sensed – he was clearly in communion with the magic of the sword. It only made sense that he was also tied into the magical weave it created. If the God had forced its way in through the wall, would that account for whatever triggered Gravin's awareness?

  Yet if there had been some manifestation of power to pierce the watery prison wall, it could not have been from the God. As the Witness insisted – and Dart believed – they would have felt that. So the God had come into the city by taking advantage of something else powerful enough to disrupt the power sealing the community off from the outside world.

  Did this suggest that the God was following some other, more powerful being? Or was it perhaps subterfuge, trying to mask its entry into the town? If not for the demi-Gods' presence inside the walls, Gravin would only have sensed the breach of his wall – and perhaps the God was not aware he would have sensed that? The magic holding the wall in place had clearly not been shattered – the immense edifice still stood imposingly, casting its shadow over everything, even in light of day, the strange dancing lights of the reflected liquid surface still dancing upon the ground beyond the tavern entryway.

  Gravin's foreboding was only increased by the fact that his appointed minions were gone. The one who had brought the child had been sent into the night to bring him news of this God, and had not returned. His second subordinate had never come back, at all. Though Gravin had gained no true advantage from having these men with him, their absence definitely affected his self-confidence.

  Now the daylight – or what passed for it with the refracted light falling upon the town, magnified and reflected at angles from the walls surface – had returned, and only now did Dart sense movement. Gravin had long-since abandoned his defensive stance and now paced the room anxiously.

  Yet Dart must have shown some tell of what she sensed, for Gravin stopped his tracking across the floor and rushed over to roughly lift her up to face him. “What? What do ya see?”

  “N-nothing,” managed the immortal. “I never see things, I only feel them. I'm not a seer.”

  Gravin growled – literally snarled like a beast. Through gritted teeth, he took another breath and managed. “What do ya feel, then?”

  Dart glanced to the Witness for guidance, but Gravin released one of her arms to grab her face, forcing it forward. “Pay heed ta me, no' him. What do ya feel?”

  The immortal swallowed. “It's coming. The God is coming in this direction now.”

  “Why?” demanded Gravin. “Why now? Why no' sooner?”

  “I told you,” barked Dart. “I'm not a seer!”

  Gravin released the woman's chin only to deliver a staggering blow across her jaw that nearly dislocated her head from her shoulders.

  “I don't know!” Dart screamed, trying to pull away from her attacker. Desperately, she fumbled for the knife she kept hidden at her waist, only to have her wrist seized in the man's bear-like mitt. The pressure threatened to crush each of the tiny bones in her hand and wrist.

  “I warned ya 'bout keepin' that put away!” he bellowed in her ear. Somehow, he had pulled her to his body without her even being aware, holding her to his chest in some demented form of intimacy.

  “Torture her all you like,” said the Witness. “We certainly can't stop you.”

  Dart's heart sank at how passive her companion was proving to be. Even with her life on the line, he was giving the beast permission to torment, possibly even kill her.

  “But if you continue that now,” continued Dart's fellow immortal, “you will be unprepared for the God when it arrives.”

  The grip holding Dart slackened slightly, the uncertainty measured in the minor abatement of pressure against her body. Then she found herself stumbling backwards, caught in the Witness' arms.

  “It's alright,” said her new friend. “It will be over soon enough, one way or the other.”

  Dart looked up at the Witness through blurred vision. “You can see what's going to happen?”

  “Not at all,” countered the other demi-God. “I simply cannot imagine that for all his bravado, that this Gravin has any chance whatsoever against a real God.”

  * * *

  Avery stood with all the self-imagined confidence that he could manage. None of it was real. Not one lick. But he could at least manage to stand before the structure without his knees quaking. That had to count for something.

  There had been no more putting off the inevitable, though. Hamil and his God had accepted the night's hospitality of the frightened family at the edges of town, but come daybreak, there was no longer a justifiable excuse to avoid the trek into the heart of the town to confront the barbarian whom the family had come to know only as Gravin.

  Avery had a name now for his fellow sword bearer. But from what the father of the household had told him, the man was truly a monster. Nothing like Avery had been like when he had been gifted with the powers of a God.

  Well, that was not entirely true, either. Avery could recall what he had originally planned to do with One. His mind had been aswim with images of seeking bloody vengeance against all those who had hurt him through the years, of torturing and slaughtering every man, woman and child in Scollhaven as penalty for all of his own hard years. He had envisioned himself as a crimson avenger, reigning terror down upon anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path – all for the simple crime of not being heretic, not wearing the bra
nd of condemnation.

  Yet Avery's dreams of retribution had almost immediately faded. He had taken a step forward to defend a barmaid from being raped by corrupt officials – his own dear Viola, though at the time he had no idea of how significant she would become to him. When he had revealed himself to the people of Scollhaven, they had fallen all over themselves to worship him. And he had accepted that devotion with the barest of hesitation. Though he had declared himself the God of Vengeance, he had instead shown compassion to those he had dreamed of slaying.

  In the end, Avery's inherent humanity had prevailed. When overcome with nigh infinite power, he had chosen to shelter and defend those who remained mere mortals.

  Yet his counterpart had become the living embodiment of the horror that Avery might have become. Here was the reality of someone who had acted on the more base instinct to exact punishment against the less fortunate of humanity. Avery could not imagine what this man had endured before becoming empowered, but he clearly lacked the moral core that had somehow survived in Avery through all his outcast years.

  And this ruthless fiend was now who Avery had to face off with if he was going to wrest control of the sword to his own purposes. And he needed to do so soon – the ethereal presence of the Godslayer hung over his mind now, gaining more power over him with each passing moment. The man would find him soon, and Avery needed to be ready for that confrontation, as well. But he could not possibly deal with both Gravin and the slayer of Gods.

  Avery could feel the proximity of his newest followers, as well. Half the town it seemed had been waiting for him on the street when he had exited the small abode that morning. Word had spread that a God had come to free them, and they now flocked to be present when their liberty was reclaimed.

  Hope, it seemed, held more power than fear. Or at least it did when there were two figures for these disparate emotions to center around. Yet in spite of the renewed courage that had brought them out of hiding, they still preferred to follow rather than lead. Avery was still very much on his own in confronting Gravin, with only his enigmatic scribe to chronicle his success or failure.