Two (The Godslayer Cycle Book 2) Read online

  “And so you're saying the death of Kelvor and Galentine was part of your plan all along?” asked Malik.

  “Of course!” exclaimed Ankor, beaming with satisfaction. “Finally, one of you has been listening! No offense, old man, but I had given odds to the lady here acknowledging that first--”

  “How do your own Godlings ever handle all of your prattle?” demanded Malik.

  “Truth to tell, they don't really,” admitted Ankor. “They usually either banish me from their presence if I am in their domain, or just go away in disgust if I'm not. I don't mind admitting--” Ankor jabbed his thumb at his chest, “--the life of this God of Mischief is a lonely one, indeed.”

  “So now you are saying you are out to see your brother Gods dead?” demanded Charith. “When did that become part of your plan?”

  “And sister Gods,” offered Ankor. “Can't forget the sister Gods. They're the worst!”

  Charith raised a delicate eyebrow.

  “Oh, the question,” said the Prankster. “Right. Truth to tell, it became part of the plan when I realized that was what you lot were doing.”

  The God of Mischief held up a finger to block the other Gods' protests. “Don't bother denying it. Why else create nine magical swords that can kill other Gods? You certainly weren't planning on killing each other – your covenants forbid it. Which means, they're only good for slaying other Gods, which from where I stand – unless you plan on carving out a new empire somewhere and leave us younger Gods be – we are the target.

  “So when I decided to start working with you, it was more an act of preservation than anything else. If I could help you line up the other New Order Gods for the slaughter, then I would have some worth – and I hoped that my worth could buy me a pardon from your genocidal plans.” Ankor shrugged. “Was I wrong?”

  Charith shared a lingering look with the God of War and Peace before turning her attention back to their guest. “You are not... entirely wrong,” admitted the Goddess. “The swords were indeed created to give our faithful the means to fight back against your brethren, if they chose to do so. We are, after all, forbidden, as you say, from attacking other Gods.”

  Ankor sensed there was something omitted from the explanation, but chose not to confront it.

  “Yet,” continued Charith, “we cannot command our faithful to actually attack you and yours, either. Just as we cannot command them not to forego killing any God, including yourself, regardless how deserving you may be of that immunity.”

  “But you can make suggestions,” amended Ankor. “You can speak to your Godslayer, tell him of our treaty, and make sure he's not going to come swinging for me while we are allies.”

  “We could,” acknowledged Malik. “But – if we are indeed being honest with each other – I do not believe Nathan will be of a mind to listen. I had already informed him that you were working with us, and then you showed up in Levitz at the side of Kelvor and Galentine. How would you suggest we convince this very willful young man – and I assure you, he is extremely obstinate, at times – to stay his hand if he believes you have broken the truce once already?”

  Ankor stiffened. “I never attacked your man. Ask him. I stayed back and let the other two do all the work. I even tried to warn him in the middle of the battle. I whispered in his ear that he couldn't tell who was on your own side. I could not have been more direct without revealing our outright allegiance, though the boy blurted that out on his own! He could have cost us the entire battle?”

  “As I recall, having been watching the town myself,” Charith supplied, “he was about to have his neck snapped at the time. How exactly were you helping him at that moment?”

  “I would have, if he had been too at risk, I assure you,” rebutted Ankor. “I was right there – if I felt his life was in danger, I had the opportunity to intercede. But he used his own magic to teleport away, and so I didn't have to expose myself.”

  Ankor raised his hand to forestall further argument. “Look, I can run through this all day or you can just accept that what I did, I did for the good of our mutual cause, which for the moment I am going to presume includes my safe passage through the realms for the moment, yes?” When neither Pantheon God objected, he continued. “I am expecting you to give me a fair warning if that situation changes, of course.

  “But there is one more thing I want to make clear before I leave.” Ankor's face took on its most serious expression. “No other of the New Gods to my knowledge know anything about Avery, the Godslayer or your precious nine swords, other than what they will learn in the days to come from Avery's loud mouthed speech on the street of Levitz. Imery, Galentine and Kelvor had been part of some secret splinter group investigating Avery's emergence, and the investigation by extension became an investigation into the Goddess of Truth's death.

  “But if what they told me is true, no other New Order deity knows what they were doing. I was brought into a very tightly knit conspiracy, and as far as I know, all players in that game are now gone from the board. Except for myself, of course.”

  Ankor clapped his hands together, rubbing them enthusiastically as his cunning grin returned. “Which also means you need me more than ever. No one at the moment – not even myself – knows what will be coming next, or what my fellow Gods will do now that not one, but three Gods have been killed. There will be a reaction, for certain, but without me being embedded in their camp, you won't know what to expect.”

  Ankor paused, letting this sink in. At last, Malik gave a curt nod of reluctant agreement. Ankor returned the gesture.

  “Then for now, I'll take my leave,” said the God of Mischief. “There is a lot going on in my domain that I will be needing to attend to, now that the watchdogs of justice and honor are no longer looking over my shoulder.”

  With a wicked wink, Ankor vanished from Charith's demesne.

  * * *

  Ankor appeared in the great amphitheater that served as the Lesser Powers' gathering place. Gods did so need their common ground. The Pantheon had theirs (though who knew what that resembled) and the New Order had a grand hall in which they gathered when common need dictated it. But since the Lesser Powers were not permitted to utilize the Greater Powers' domain, they forged their own, choosing an amphitheater in the ideal that each could rise to a point in the area and be heard equally.

  Of course, being of divine form, there was no one set point in which this could be accomplished. The stage area of the semi-circular structure moved and flowed, depending upon where the God wishing to speak presently stood or sat within the structure.

  Three Goddesses immediately took notice of the Prankster's arrival. Two of them made directly for his side, while the third raised her head in disgust and moved away.

  “I see Daerma has not yet forgiven me,” he murmured, presumptively to himself. Yet he knew the Goddesses approaching would hear, nevertheless.

  “What do you expect?” asked Wronri, Goddess of Seduction.

  “When you manipulate the Dream Mistress to embrace a fantasy,” added Seree, Goddess of Charm, “you are bound to bruise her ego. Dreams and fantasies are her dominion, and you outdid her.”

  “Poor girl,” said Wronri.

  “Yes, poor girl,” acknowledged Ankor. “I should probably be punished for overstepping my bounds.”

  Wronri leered viciously at the Prankster, reaching out to delicately draw a fingernail down his chest. “Are you inviting?”

  Ankor cupped the Goddess' hand in his own. “Any other time, but there are important matters that need to be addressed first.”

  “Yes,” spoke up Seree, a glint in her eye. “My faithful tell me you were there this time. Were you?”

  “Oh yes, I was.” Ankor's head bobbed enthusiastically. “I maneuvered the pieces all together perfectly and got to have a ringside seat while they went to war.”

  “Which is where, I do believe,” came a masculine voice from across the arena, “you take the stage and tell us what exactly has happened, Ankor.”
r />   The God of Mischief nodded his head towards Laer, Lord of Darkness. “If you ladies will forgive me, it seems others are demanding my attention.”

  Seree bowed and backed away, while Wronri dug her nails lightly into Ankor's chest before stepping back herself. There was a promise there, one which Ankor realized he might have to consider acting upon before she changed her mind. At the moment, he had become the center of attention, but the Gods' favor was ever fickle. Who knew how long he could continue to hold these Lesser Powers to his objectives?

  The amphitheater shifted, rising in the distance so that the lowered stage could manifest below Ankor's feet. As the other Gods settled in to hear what the God of Mischief had to say, the center of their attention smiled broadly.

  “It is working just as I said it would,” he announced to the gathered deities. “Our long centuries of suffering under the heels of our betters is coming to an end. I personally lured two more of our Greater brethren to their demises, and still my role in this debacle is undiscovered.”

  A low murmur of approval rumbled down to the floor of the theater, and Ankor raised his hand to silence it before he continued.

  “Before I give you the blow by blow of what happened,” grinned the God of Mischief, “let me just say it like this: Three down, twenty-one more to go.”

  Louder approval rose from the gathered deities, and this time Ankor made no effort to quell the noise. Instead, he called over them.

  “Our days of subservience under the Greater Powers are numbered. Soon, not only will we be the Greater Powers ourselves, we will be the Only Powers left standing in the New Order!”

  * * *

  Malik scowled as he stormed down the hall. The corridors in his domain were ever circuitous, a manifestation in his own mind of the constant state of conflict between war and peace. Other deities of the Pantheon chose to maintain two separate aspects of their demesnes, but for Malik, there was only one – the twisted maze-like passages that comprised the entirety of his realm.

  That damnable Ankor was going to be the death of every plan he had ever conceived! How much did the Godling really know and how much was he bound to discover before this was all over? And what was the point in making a truce with someone who was on the list of deities that needed to be wiped from existence if the Pantheon were to rise again to supremacy?

  The God and Goddess of War and Peace could not seem to keep his secrets. He had partnered with Charith to create the nine swords, but then Airek had somehow uncovered their existence. When he had managed to convince Charith to remain silent about the first sword, the one from which all the others were forged, Dariel had uncovered that deception when he came across Malik within the pocket space where he had stored it. And now Ankor – one of the Godlings, by the Pit! – Ankor had uncovered the existence of the swords with barely two of the nine awake!

  Certainly, the New Order would have eventually learned about them, but Malik had hoped that at least half of the swords would be in play before the Godlings could pierce the magic concealing them from divine vision. But now at least one of the Godlings was in possession of that knowledge. Whether Ankor could actually see the swords or not was debatable, but he knew about them. And what was keeping him from telling the others? The word of the Prankster? The Prankster?!

  Malik suppressed the urge to scream, to vent his rage to all corners of his domain. He was trying to stay ahead of the game, but he apparently lacked Dariel's skill for manipulation and deceit. Or Ankor's, for that matter. By the Father, Malik was God of War and Peace! Why had Fate left upon his shoulders the necessity of balancing the cosmos, when he clearly lacked the sphere of influence needed to effect the changes that needed to be made?

  The sphere of War would have to do. The influence of War provided for feints, for misdirection, for flanking maneuvers. All of these had elements of deception to them, and they needed to be the areas the God drew upon if he were to master the design he had set in motion.

  Malik set his mind to think along those paths, to not let the deception and manipulations of others foil his battle plan. Some of his secrets may have been exposed, but not all. There were still some things not even his allies in the Pantheon knew about. Perhaps the swords had been scattered, and maybe they had been locked into a prophecy that required an avatar to unite them towards their purpose on the mortal plane. But there was a weakness to the prophecy that he alone – apparently – had seen. And he had taken the steps to make sure that that weakness was exploited to the Pantheon's advantage.

  Certainly, the prophecy required an Avatar – and the Pantheon had made certain to create their matrix to pass down through the bloodlines of the faithful to insure the best chances for the Avatar being loyal to them. But Nathaniel Goodsmith was willful and defiant in his own right. Worse, he was not a true worshiper of the Old Gods – that had been his mother, who had died before inspiring in the boy any real devotion to the old ways.

  There was no doubt in Malik's mind that Nathaniel was also keeping something from the Pantheon. The boy's arrogance and distant attitude in their last meeting was proof enough of that. Something had been passed onto their Avatar – probably by that priestess who he had suddenly decided to join up with – which had soured the trust he should have had in his mother's Gods. Which only made the already resistant young man even more difficult to direct along the path the Pantheon needed him to follow.

  Well, Malik had foreseen the need to motivate Nathaniel once, and the God's foresight had proven invaluable. In fact, it may yet remain the one slim hope of turning the entire plan back upon the rightful path – which was to set the Avatar status into the hands of someone truly devoted to the Old Gods, and not just reluctantly going along with the quest until he could set right the wrongs done to him.

  Charith had promised the lad a chance to have his wife returned to him if he collaborated and slew the New Order's Goddess of Death, Elevan. Malik himself had suggested that the true identity of Geoffrey's kidnapper could only be learned by following the quest for the swords. It was entirely possible that if both things were not accomplished that the boy would keep to the right path – but there was always the chance that if Nathaniel found his wife restored to him, he might return to protecting her rather than continuing the quest for the swords. Knowing the stubbornness that he had already displayed, it was entirely conceivable that Nathaniel could place an ultimatum at the Pantheon's feet – that with his wife restored, he would not further act unless it also assured the return of his son.

  And Malik knew that the latter would not happen by following the swords. At least, not in the way Nathaniel expected. And not on its own.

  Malik calmed himself as he arrived at his destination. Within the structure of his labyrinthine domain were secret areas, parts of his domain that he had learned could exist between the divine and mortal realms. It was in precisely such a pocket of reality that Malik had hidden the swords, and where First had been secreted for centuries. But that had not been the only such pocket dimension he had created.

  Malik did have one small gratitude to offer to Dariel. The God and Goddess of Truth and Deception had informed him of how another God could focus in on where these pockets were if Malik himself were occupying them. At least, if efforts were not first made to conceal the manifestation of the God which entered such a pocket.

  Armed with that knowledge, Malik first made a point of shielding his form from detection before preparing to enter this specific pocket. Each of the spatial areas that he had created required a very specific pattern to be followed, to have the God walk in a set pattern through specific areas of his demesne, in order to gain entry. The path set for each entry was unique and intricate – there was simply no other way to enter the pocket area if the pattern was not followed – unless another God would choose to focus on Malik's presence while inside the rift.

  This latter was the method by which Dariel had bypassed Malik's security once before. But being forewarned, Malik made sure that there would be no disc
ernible presence to latch onto this time. And with his form masked, the God of War and Peace traversed the sequence of steps necessary to access the area he sought.

  Once he had completed the ritual, he was no longer within his twisted halls, but instead within a seemingly finite room, cast entirely in white. This particular chamber was larger than the one that had housed the swords originally, and it also had more furnishings – a bed, a desk with a chair, a wardrobe and several cabinets where the God knew dishes and food were stored. There was also a fixture that through divine power produced a constant flow of water which could be diverted either to clean dishes and clothes, or even to bathe in a white-wooden tub located behind a curtain for privacy concerns.

  “Malik!” cried a young voice, the object of Malik's desire appearing from behind the curtain. The young man's shirt was removed, and only one stocking was on his foot. It seemed that the God had caught the boy in preparation for bathing.

  “Yes,” said the God. “And how is my devoted pupil today?”

  The young boy, who appeared to be roughly eight years of age, bounced up and down on the pads of his feet. “I finished the Oraclice!” he cried excitedly.

  Malik beamed, proud of the child's accomplishment in spite of himself. “And did you find it inspiring?”

  At this, the boy relaxed somewhat – still excited though somewhat more thoughtful. “I don't understand why the oracles were so intent on keeping the war going.”

  “Mortal diviners are ever a troubled lot,” responded the God. “The Oraclice is more of a cautionary tale though, than one that should be taken openly as true. The moral to be learned is that those who dare defy the wishes of the Gods only seek to usurp power beyond their station. And you saw what happened when the oracles did.”

  The boy's easy smile returned. “They were sacrificed on the battle field.”