Reckoning of Fallen Gods Read online

  “You know…” He started to apologize once more, but the woman held up her hand to stop him, and this time flashed him a smile that seemed filled more with pity than anything else.

  That struck him, and oddly. Because as he considered it, Talmadge realized that he didn’t need any pity. Certainly not!

  True, he wasn’t much interested in having sex with a woman at that time, but that was more a matter of coming back here, of having Khotai so fresh in his thoughts. Aside from that, though, Talmadge felt truly well, even light. He had conquered his fears to come back to this place. He had faced near-certain death, and a surprising turn of fate—an Usgar woman, no less!—had intervened.

  He shouldn’t be alive, but he was. And the woman had destroyed the demon that haunted the mountain, burning it from the body of a possessed cloud leopard. That’s what she had told him, at least, and he had witnessed the retreat of the leopard. After that, venturing into that high mountain cave, a dark place of murder, after feeling the coldness in there, supernatural, ghostly, demonic, Talmadge held no doubts about the Usgar woman’s claims.

  He went and gathered his clothes, and dressed quickly, then started away, but paused and returned to give a kiss to the wonderful lakewoman who had been so kind and generous to him.

  “It had nothing to do with you,” he whispered in her ear. “You are beautiful.”

  “I know to the first and thank you for the second,” she said, and seemed at ease. “Next time you’re visiting the town, then.”

  Talmadge looked at her and nodded, and felt as if that would be a distinct possibility.

  Then he went out into the day, a spring in his step that he had not known for several years. He shouldn’t be alive.

  But he was.

  * * *

  “What did she do with these crystals?” Connebragh asked Mairen when they were alone in the shallow, the guards having departed with Aoleyn. Connebragh held up the items: ring, belly ring, ear cuff, earring, and anklet, and marveled at the smooth gemstones there. “Are you sure these were not simply taken in an uamhas raid?”

  Mairen didn’t respond, but it was certainly a possibility. Oftentimes, the Usgar war parties would return from the lakeshore villages with baubles such as these, though as to how unimportant little Aoleyn would ever have gotten her hands on them, Mairen could not know. Seonagh had shown her, perhaps. That one, who was Aoleyn’s aunt and tutor, had often been troublesome. The Crystal Maven dismissed that thought almost as soon as it came to her, for Seonagh had been of the Coven and would have known that these gemstones from Aoleyn’s jewelry possessed magical properties, for Mairen had seen them easily enough with her own red-flecked crystal.

  Knowing that, Seonagh would have certainly destroyed them, cast them into Craos’a’diad, as was prescribed by the laws of Usgar. Any magic outside of the crystals was evil magic, by Usgar code.

  No, Mairen was convinced that Aoleyn had fashioned these gems herself, particularly since the wire with which she had fastened them to her body was made of wedstone, the healing stone, the stone of the spirit that provided the fastest connection between a witch and the magic of Usgar.

  Privately, Mairen thought Aoleyn quite resourceful and creative.

  And dangerous.

  So very dangerous, and it was the second issue that had her more rattled than the matter of her heresy with the sacred crystals. Aoleyn claimed to have killed the fossa. Was it possible?

  How delicate and dangerous was this situation for Mairen! She had feared that Tay Aillig would somehow destroy the fossa—she was certain that was the explanation for the puzzles that had been presented to her this morning, with the missing warrior and the injuries she had seen on Aghmor and Egard. Why would any be out on the night of a Blood Moon, when the demonic creature was out and hunting?

  That notion tied into Tay Aillig’s promises to her on the cliff after the fall of Gavina. He had taken her, then and there, in a fit of shared passion, and had insisted that Aoleyn meant nothing to him, except as a tool for his ascension to become the Usgar-triath, the unquestioned Chieftain of Usgar. When Mairen had pointed out to him that such could not be for many years, since the order of ascension had already been put in place, Tay Aillig had confidently laughed at her.

  Had he tried to kill the fossa?

  Had he taken Aoleyn with him to do the deed?

  He had promised Mairen a great role beside him when he became the leader of Usgar, and Mairen desperately wanted to believe him. But there was another matter here, one more troubling.

  The Usgar-righinn, the voice of Usgar in the tribe, the leader of the Coven, did not want the demon fossa killed. The legend of the monster inspired fear, and that fear played into the power of the Coven. Of course, the witches were useful to the tribe in myriad ways, from enchanting the weapons of the raiding parties, to granting the hunters light feet that they could more easily transverse the dangerous mountain terrain, to healing wounds. The magical warmth of Usgar sustained the tribe in a place where they could not otherwise hope to survive, and so the Coven, and by extension, the Usgar-righinn, would always be valued.

  But the fear of the fossa was paramount to Mairen’s power. The witches alone could forecast the next Blood Moon and inform the tribe of its pending arrival. The witches alone would perform the ceremonies about the bonfires that would keep the demon fossa from invading the camp. The Usgar warriors feared little, but the fossa was at the top of that very short list. Removing it would steal much influence and prestige from the Coven, from the witches, and from Mairen.

  “What a fool, that girl,” Connebragh remarked, drawing Mairen from her thoughts. She looked up to see the other witch rolling the items over in her hands, eyeing them with intrigue—perhaps too much so. “Does she not know the beauty of Usgar? Why would she so destroy the blessed crystals?”

  Mairen offered a weak little smile and a shrug in response, and, privately, was truly glad then that they had found the heresy upon the body of Aoleyn. To Mairen, Aoleyn’s claims regarding the fossa were more troubling and more damning, but to Connebragh and all the others, these gemstones were the key, a sin visible to all. Whatever Tay Aillig might want for Aoleyn, the foolish young woman was now under Mairen’s complete control.

  She held out her hand and Connebragh handed over the five pieces of jewelry.

  The damning evidence.

  Now Mairen had to figure out if Aoleyn’s claims about the fossa held any truth, and if so, to determine what she might do to mitigate the damage.

  Certainly, it would have been better for Aoleyn if Tay Aillig had somehow killed the demon.

  Perhaps he had, she reminded herself, fearing that he had used Aoleyn for just that purpose, and fearing more what that might mean for her.

  * * *

  Talmadge walked about Fasach Crann that late morning, taking in the sights and smells and noise of the place, wanting to burn it into his memory and use this warm familiarity to bury deeper the darker experiences he had known in this land.

  Strangely, he thought, he didn’t consider the events of the recent night on the mountain, when he had been captured, beaten, even stabbed, among those darkest moments. Talmadge was a frontiersman. He had known bloody fights and desperate situations. These were his expectations of the world, and so being brutalized by some deamhan Usgar tribesmen was not a shocking experience.

  No, first there had been the incident with a man nicknamed Badger—Talmadge couldn’t even remember his real name, and didn’t care to try—where Talmadge had been nearly killed by a giant lizard and then had been forced to kill the man. That terrible day had stayed with Talmadge for a long time, and he vowed to never again take another person to this special and secret place called Loch Beag.

  A stranger named Bryan Marrawee of Dundalis—at least, that’s what the man had called himself—had helped Talmadge muster the nerve to return to these lands, and then a woman, the most special woman he had ever known, had convinced him to take her here with him.

  A
nd here, she had been killed.

  That was the memory he now had to bury under the weight of normalcy. He loved Fasach Crann, and the smell of the autumn season in the foothills of Fireach Speuer.

  The brutal events of his capture on the mountain, and his journey up the mountain with the strange woman, had intrigued him more than they had wounded him, not because of the capture, but because of the rescue, because of the Usgar lass who had shown such power, such compassion, such courage.

  “Thank you,” Talmadge whispered up the mountainside, to a woman he was sure he would never see again.

  But now he had another problem. He had to get around the southern shores of the great lake, then up north a bit and past the village of Car Seileach before he would be on safer ground. The passes south of the lake were thick with Usgar, as he had learned the hard way the previous night, and the lake itself …

  He didn’t even want to look at Loch Beag, at the dark waters that hid a monster, a monster that had taken Khotai from him.

  But then, how would he get back to the east, for the Matinee, the annual meet-up and celebration of all the men and women living in the frontier beyond the Wilderlands? How would he gather more skins and furs and jewels to trade, both in the Wilderlands to the east and then back here on the plateau around the lake? How would he live?

  He pondered the notion of becoming a member of Fasach Crann. Would they have him, with his unaltered head, looking so much like a deamhan Usgar? And if he could never again muster the courage to go out on the water, what use might he be to the tribe, whose lifeblood was fishing?

  No, it seemed an absurd proposition.

  Talmadge meandered as he pondered and found himself by the dark waters of the huge lake. Yes, there was indeed a monster under those waters, one rarely seen, and whose only human victim in the last years, to anyone’s knowledge, had been Khotai.

  “There are more dangers from the bears and great cats and goblins back home,” he told himself, and with a nod, he moved down the beach to an older villager who was tending a pair of smaller boats.

  “Hail, Memmic,” he said to the man, and put on a wide smile.

  “And a fine day for yourself, Talmadge of the East,” the man replied.

  Talmadge smiled even wider at that reference, Talmadge of the East, a name tagged on him by an old gray-haired fellow and his balding friend, who used to sit by the lake and tease everyone who walked by with their long-practiced barbs. That was two decades ago, though, and both were gone now, but the nickname had stayed on, a fine reminder to Talmadge that these folks here in Fasach Crann considered him a friend. Again, he wondered if he might stay on here.

  But not now.

  “I seem to find myself without a boat,” he said.

  “Long walk, then,” Memmic replied.

  “I was hoping you might help me with that.”

  “Might. What have you to barter?”

  Talmadge shifted on his feet a bit nervously. “Well, that’s the problem, I fear. I brought little with me, had less after visiting Car Seileach, and lost even that along the way. I will be back next year, of course, and with jewelry and furs. First choice to Memmic, I offer.”

  The man snorted and went back to work on one of the craft. “You’ll probably get killed and I’ll be out the jewelry and my boat.”

  “I’ve been coming here for more than two decades,” Talmadge protested.

  “Not every year.”

  “True, but I will be back next…”

  “And who’s to say what dangers you might be finding, on the loch or about the loch, or in the east? If I’m giving you a boat on promise of a future payment, then I’m a fool.”

  “I…” Talmadge paused, really having little he could say in response to that.

  “But,” Memmic continued, “if I’m giving you a boat because you’re Talmadge of the East, and a friend to me and the folk of Fasach Crann, then I’m no fool.”

  “But…” Talmadge paused in his counterpoint as he digested the response. “What?”

  “I’m no fool,” said Memmic. “Take that one.” He pointed to a small boat, one very similar to the boat Talmadge and Khotai had been paddling when the loch monster rose up and attacked them.

  Talmadge stared at the craft for a long while, mustering his nerve.

  “I’ll only take it as far as Car Seileach,” he said, and Memmic nodded. “If it’s still there when I return next year, I’ll bring it back to you, and the added payment still holds.”

  “Were I worried about it, I’d tell you,” said Memmic, and he went more diligently at his work, signaling Talmadge that there was no more that needed to be said.

  Talmadge walked over and rolled the small boat, no more than a large canoe, really. He gathered up one of the two paddles and eased it down to the water’s edge.

  “Take the second one,” Memmic told him. “Easy to lose a paddle, and hard to get to shore with just your hands.”

  Talmadge nodded and collected the second one, tossing it and his nearly empty pack into the boat. Again he paused, staring out at the huge and dark waters of Loch Beag, remembering all too vividly what lay beneath them.

  The question loomed before him, like the dark waters of the lake. Was he going to allow his fear, that terrible memory, to dominate the rest of his days?

  Which would win out here, his past or his future?

  Talmadge blew a deep and steadying breath, and dragged the canoe out into the water. “I’ll not forget your generosity, Memmic of Fasach Crann,” he said, climbing in.

  “Nor your friendship, Talmadge of the East,” the middle-aged man called back to him.

  Talmadge waved and put the paddle in the water, turning away from Fasach Crann, paddling due west.

  He’d stay very close to the shore, he told himself, where he could see the bottom. It would be a longer journey than cutting a straight line to Car Seileach, which was more to the northwest.

  Perhaps he’d dare that straight line on his return trip, he thought.

  Or, more likely, not.

  * * *

  “She is secured?” Mairen asked when Connebragh joined her in her tent later that day.

  “She is bound and naked on her floor, as you commanded,” Connebragh replied. “There are no crystals in there.”

  Mairen glanced at her sidelong.

  “No magic at all,” Connebragh quickly assured her after the reminder that this strange young woman apparently didn’t need the crystals.

  Mairen looked over at a small table beside her bed, five pieces of magical jewelry resting upon it.

  “Have you ever seen this before?” Connebragh asked.

  “No.”

  “Perhaps there is some value…”

  “No!” Mairen interrupted.

  “How do we not know that Usgar didn’t instruct Aoleyn in this new use?” the other witch argued. “You remember her test in the crystal caverns, when she not only survived, and not only kept her wits within that haunted place, but escaped up through Craos’a’diad, the very Mouth of Usgar! Why would the god have let her leave?”

  Mairen didn’t reply other than to simply stare at Connebragh.

  “She claims that she destroyed the fossa,” Connebragh said, lowering her voice and glancing around as she did as if she expected spies in every shadow.

  “You gagged her?”

  “As you ordered.”

  Mairen nodded. “You are to tell no one of that ridiculous tale.”

  “Aoleyn will…”

  “Aoleyn will do as she is told, or she’s to find a long fall in her very near future.”

  The threat spoke of Gavina, of course, but more directly, of the punishment for heretics: being thrown into Craos’a’diad.

  “What will you do with those?” Connebragh asked, motioning with her chin toward the table and the jewelry.

  “They go into the mouth of Usgar, the home of magic. They came from crystals, and so the god will make of them crystals once more.” She paused and narrowed her ey
es. “What will Usgar make of Aoleyn, I wonder?”

  Connebragh’s expression was not one of agreement, but more of surprise, horror, and even sadness.

  “I did not say that we would throw her into the pit,” Mairen said. “But she’s made crimes against the god, and so she’ll find punishment. She’s not for the Coven, not ever. And ne’ermore will Aoleyn hold the blessed crystals in her hand. Such a waste, that. Her powers were undeniable, with few rivals. Threw it all aside, she did, for the love of her own image.”

  “She claims to have killed…”

  Connebragh’s voice faltered before a withering gaze.

  “She did’no kill the demon fossa, and if you think other, then the next time Iseabal shows her bloody face, I’ll invite you to wander Fireach Speuer and call to the beast.”

  Connebragh lowered her gaze.

  “Has the Usgar-laoch returned?” Mairen asked, and Connebragh shook her head.

  “What do you mean to do with the girl?” Connebragh dared inquire. “Are we to keep her bound and under the eyes of the warriors? I doubt Tay Aillig will be pleased by that.”

  “This is not about Tay Aillig!” Mairen scolded. “Aoleyn’s crimes are against Usgar, and so against the Coven, and so against me.”

  “But she’ll not face a throw into Craos’a’diad?”

  Mairen thought it over and shook her head. “No,” she said, thinking the young woman’s crimes did not rise to that level. Surely, she wanted to throw Aoleyn into the pit, though. Aoleyn was Tay Aillig’s wife, and so shared a bed that should be for Mairen alone. But Mairen understood the Usgar-laoch well enough to realize that he’d never forgive such an action. It was going to be hard enough to soothe the fiery man over Aoleyn’s ban from entering the Coven—he was counting on the young woman’s prowess with the magic of Usgar to carry him to great victories on the battlefield. He had watched her with Brayth, using the wedstone to establish a spiritual link with the man, then enacting powerful magics to lead him to great victories over the sidhe, and to nearly escape the demon fossa itself.