Book of Silence

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Garth was awakened by the roar of a warbeast. Startled, he sprang to his feet and hurried to the door of the shop. There he paused, waiting, the Sword of Bheleu in his hand.

The roar was not repeated; instead, he heard an unfamiliar voice calling his name.

"Garth! Garth of Ordunin! We would speak with you!"

Puzzled, and without opening the door, he bellowed back, "Who are you?"

"I am Uyrim, a priest of Aghad; I have been sent to seek a truce!"

Garth considered that. His immediate suspicion was that it was some kind of trick, an attempt to lure him into a trap, but after further thought he decided that the offer might be genuine. After all, although he had suffered at the hands of the cultists, losing his chief wife and his best human friend, they had suffered worse in return. Perhaps they had had their fill of sending assassins to be fried by the sword; perhaps they did not want to see their temple reduced to ash, as the remnants of Weideth had been.

He lifted the latch and swung the door an inch or so inward, so that conversation would be more convenient, but he did not emerge, nor present any part of his body as a, target. "I am listening," he called.

"Haggat, who set assassins upon you, who had your wife killed, who had the Baron of Skelleth slain, who sent the Council of the Most High against you, is dead, and his killer is the new high priestess of our sect. We wish to start anew. We are willing to forgo our rightful vengeance for the killing of Haggat's predecessor if you, in turn, will consider your own vengeance accomplished in the deaths you have already brought upon us. You have slain eighteen trained assassins and our fourteen magicians and cost us almost all our magical arsenal. You have destroyed our temple in Ur-Dormulk and eliminated our influence in Skelleth. Leave those of us who yet survive in peace, and we will, in turn, leave you and yours in peace. Swear that you will accept this offer, and we will swear in return, and you may leave Dыsarra unmolested. Refuse us, and we will strike against you in whatever way we can. We know now that we cannot kill you while you bear the Sword of Bheleu, but we can kill those you care for. For every member of our sect you slay from this moment on, a member of your family in Ordunin will die. Those, O Garth, are our terms."

"They're lying," Frima said close behind him. Garth started; he had been so attentive to the Aghadite's words that he had not heard her approach. The warbeast's roar of warning had awakened her as it had the overman, and she had made her way carefully down the stairs in time to hear most of what the priest had said.

"How can you know that?" Garth asked.

"They always lie," she said.

"They lie when it serves their purposes and tell the truth when that would serve better. Perhaps this is such a time," Garth said.

"They aren't going to give up their revenge. Aghad is the god of hatred, remember? And besides," she added, her expression turning hard and fierce and a hand going to the crudely bandaged wound on her arm, "I'm not going to give up my revenge."

Garth considered that and quickly agreed that the Aghadites could not be trusted. Still, the offer of peace might be genuine; he had, he knew, cost the cult heavily.

That did not necessarily mean that he should accept the offer. After all, if the cult could thus change direction once, it could do so again, when next its leaders felt they had the upper hand. The fact that they were offering a truce now implied that Garth currently had the advantage-and the essence of tactics was to pursue every advantage. If he were to attack now, he suspected that he could destroy the entire sect; if he accepted their truce and thereby allowed them time to rebuild, they might find some way of attacking him successfully while he was off guard. Quite aside from his desire for revenge, the cult, by its nature, was a menace not just to himself, but to anyone else who encountered it, for so long as it existed.

By the priest's own admission, Garth had destroyed the cult's influence in Skelleth, and he could not believe that they had ever been strong in the Northern Waste-after all, he had seen no Aghadite overmen, save the high priest he had killed in Dыsarra's market three years before, who had almost certainly been Yprian; and had they not had to lure Kyrith south before they could kill her? Therefore, if he were to wipe them out now, they would be unable to carry out their threat to destroy his family and friends; whereas if he were to wait, they might well manage some retaliation.

There was no question in his mind as to whether or not they deserved to die; these people were, by their own boast, dedicated to hatred and treachery. They had butchered Kyrith and Saram. They had insulted and reviled him, attacking him repeatedly. They deserved to perish, and he deserved the pleasure of dispatching them.

The thought of spilling Aghadite blood was warm and comforting; a pleasant reddish glow seemed to suffuse his thoughts. He did not notice the literal, physical existence of that glow, emanating from the gem in the sword's pommel.

Frima noticed it but, knowing it to be directed against the followers of Aghad, chose not to point it out.

"Who are you, to offer me terms?" Garth called through the crack in the door. "You are a priest of Aghad, you say, and you speak of a high priestess, and of someone named Haggat. I know nothing of any of you. You say that it was the dead Haggat who sought to harm me; why should I believe that? Your cult has acted against me, not as individuals, but on behalf of your god. I do not defy you, or your high priestess, or your dead Haggat, whoever he may have been if he truly existed at all. I defy your god himself. I spit upon your deity. I denounce Aghad as the filth he is. He has defied his brother and superior, Bheleu, god of destruction, and must pay for that affront." An inspiration came to him, and he called to Koros the command that meant, "Attack!"

The warbeast roared in response. An instant later Garth heard the sound of something being crunched, followed by human screams. He swung the door wide and stepped out, the Sword of Bheleu ready in his hand, glowing white and dripping hissing white flame.

The screaming stopped, and he saw Koros standing in the alley across the street, gnawing on the bloody remains of a red-garbed dead man, while another broken corpse lay sprawled nearby. A sling was draped across one limp hand, and half a dozen darts were scattered in the black dust of the street.

Something moved, and Garth swung the sword, spraying flame, only to find that he had roasted a plump rat, drawn by the scent of blood.

It seemed unlikely that the party sent to negotiate a truce had been only two men; Garth looked warily about for more, but saw none. If there had been others, they had slipped away unseen.

Frima emerged from the shop to stand behind the overman; her father's sword, taken from its place behind the curtain, was naked in her hand. Here, in her home city, however changed it might be, she was no longer content merely to watch Garth kill her foes for her. She was determined to kill a few herself, and her father's sword seemed an appropriate weapon. She wished she had thought to bring Saram's blade; that would have been still more fitting.

She knew, however, that she was no swordswoman, and the sling in the corpse's hand caught her eye. She picked it up, gathered up the darts, and tucked them into the pouch she wore on her belt in imitation of Garth and defiance of Dыsarran custom.

That done, she looked about and saw no enemies to attack, only the warbeast devouring its prey and the overman standing warily nearby.

"Now what do we do?" she asked.

"We attack," Garth replied without thinking.

"Attack the temple?"

Garth glanced at her, his red eyes ablaze in the afternoon sun. "Yes," he said.

"Good," Frima said. "Let's go."

Garth turned, looked about, then reluctantly turned back to the girl and asked, "Which way?" He was almost totally unfamiliar with this part of Dыsarra.

Frima suppressed a giggle at the helplessness of the god-overman who needed to ask directions of a tinker's daughter. "This way," she said, pointing.

Garth nodded, signaled Koros to accompany him, and followed as Frima led the way through the maze of the city toward the Street of the Temples and the temple of Aghad.

In a red-draped room beneath the temple, the new high priestess was arguing with some of her congregation-who considered her sudden self-proclaimed elevation and subsequent policy to be faulty. The discussion had been going nowhere; Haggat's former acolyte had an irrefutable claim to her new position by virtue of being the only surviving person who knew all the cult's secrets, and she was utterly unyielding in her determination to abandon any attempt to kill the troublesome overman.

The objectors were equally adamant in their insistence upon following more traditional rules of succession and in pursuing the cult's ancient policy of unrelenting vengeance. There was nothing unorthodox in moving up through assassination, and they agreed that Haggat had deserved removal for his bungling, but the post of high priest was not to be taken by a mere acolyte with no grounding in theology. They argued that the high priestess should immediately begin training a proper priest in the inner mysteries of the cult's workings and return to her own rightful position as first among acolytes-though they were willing to guarantee her accession to the priesthood shortly after that return.

She knew just what such promises from priests of Aghad were worth. After coming into her post as Haggat's acolyte, she had maneuvered for three years to obtain power and was not about to relinquish it now to please a bunch of doddering traditionalists. She was saying as much, thickly laced with invective, when a messenger arrived, gasping from his long run.

"Your pardon, O priestess, chosen of Aghad, blessed of the darkness, mistress of treachery, but I bear urgent news," he said.

"Speak, then," she commanded.

"Garth refused the offer of truce and sent his warbeast against us. Uyrim and Hezren were slain; the rest of us escaped."

"Aghad devour you!" the priestess shouted. "Why? What went wrong?"

"I don't know, O mistress. Uyrim spoke well, I thought, yet the overman refused to parley. He said that his quarrel was not with Haggat, but with Aghad himself."

"That's idiocy! It was not Aghad who slew his wife, it was men, men acting on Haggat's orders. Haggat was a fool, attacking the overman openly; the essence of Aghad's power is deceit and coercion, not magic or brute force."

"Yes, mistress," the messenger agreed; the gathered priests remained silent, but many wore expressions approving the priestess' words.

"Did Uyrim warn him of reprisals?"

"Yes, mistress."

"He must know how weak we are in the east, that he does not fear such a threat. We'll have to show him that we are not so weak as he believes. He has two more wives; I want them brought here as quickly as possible, alive and intact." She turned to the closest thing the cult still had to a wizard, an apprentice who had been given charge of the few remaining magical devices. "Do we have any means of teleporting them?"

"No, mistress," the girl replied. "The last were used in Weideth."

"Oh, gods, may Haggat's soul be Sai's plaything forever! Do we know where more such magic may be found?"

"No, mistress-at least, I do not."

"Then we must do it the hard way and hope that we can hold out until the overwomen are brought here. That could be a month." The high priestess had a tendency to think out loud, now that she was free of her master. Haggat had been unable to speak, having had his tongue cut out in punishment for killing his own master long ago, before he had joined the cult, and in consequence had been resentful of those who spoke freely around him. His acolyte, who had always been near him, had learned quickly to keep her mouth shut. Since killing him, she had taken much pleasure in being able to speak as often as she wanted and for as long as she chose.

She turned back to the messenger. "Does the overman still have the Baroness of Skelleth with him?"

"Yes, mistress."

"He treats her well?"

"Uh…I am not certain, mistress."

"He seems to care for her, doesn't he? And she's not protected by the magic sword. And the strange old man is no longer with them to protect her. We'll have to make use of what we have. She won't be as good a hostage as Garth's wives would be, but she may serve, at least for a time." She paused and was about to speak again when another messenger entered the room and prostrated himself before her.

"Your pardon, O priestess, chosen of Aghad…" he began.

"Speak, messenger," she ordered impatiently.

"The overman is on his way to the temple, with his sword blazing and the warbeast beside him."

"You're certain?"

"Oh, yes, mistress."

"P'hul!" the high priestess spat. "Tell everyone. We can't face him yet."

"What?" one of the older priests protested. "You can't mean to abandon the temple?"

"You are free to stay here and die if you choose, Sherrend, but I, and anyone else with any wits, will be hiding in the tunnels. Nothing can stand against that sword of his. I saw in the scrying glass what it did, and our surviving scouts have told all of you. You heard what it did to our temple in Ur-Dormulk. Only a fool would stay here to face it." She ignored the priest's sputtering objections as she climbed down from her cathedra and announced, "Gather everything of value and make sure everyone is armed; we leave immediately. And I still want people sent after those overwomen, and after that woman he has with him."

The messengers and the wizard's apprentice bowed obediently; the priests squabbled among themselves, some bowing and hastening to obey, others staying to voice protests that the priestess ignored.

Even the stodgiest, however, had souse sense of self-preservation, and within minutes the room was empty as the Aghadites prepared to evacuate their stronghold.

Garth was completely unaware of this activity. He reached the Street of the Temples as the sun was sinking behind the western mountains, washing the shrines in shadow. The topmost edge of the silvery gate of Aghad's fane caught a stray beam and glinted brightly as the overman drew near.

Garth smiled, and the Sword of Bheleu blazed up whitely, chasing away the shadows and drenching the metal gate in its own sickly glow.

The valves of the gate were worked into ten-foot-high runes, two to each panel, spelling out AGHAD; the top of the GH rune was still dented where Garth had struck at it three years before. The walls of the temple were built of blocks of stone, each block carved into those same four runes, a myriad reminders of his enemy's name.

When last he had been here, he reminded himself, he had been unable to deal with the trickery of the Aghadites. His sword had broken against these gates. Now, though, he carried the Sword of Bheleu. He swung the blade up and brought it crashing down against the top of the gleaming metal valves.

The blade sheared through the metal as if it were paper; it could just as easily, Garth knew, have exploded the gates into shards. That was not what he wanted; he wanted to destroy this place slowly, at his leisure, and enjoy each step of the process.

He slashed again, cutting away a triangular slice of the second A rune. Another blow removed the top of the GH, and another cut apart the D.

Half a dozen blows reduced the gleaming gates to scrap, and Garth stepped through into the courtyard beyond, leaving Koros and Frima waiting in the street.

The colonnade that ran around three sides of the court was dark, the torches mounted on its columns unlit; the fading sunlight did not penetrate its gloom. The fountain in the courtyard's center gurgled, but Garth could not see the spray; it was hidden behind a barrier of rotting severed heads, stacked up like bricks around the fountain's rim, five deep. None were of recent origin, that was obvious; the bottommost tier was comprised mostly of almost-bare skulls, and those in the top rows were sufficiently decayed for the worst of the stink to have passed.

Although the majority were human, of both sexes, the skull that faced him most directly on the lowest level was that of an overman.

Revolted, Garth swung the sword up and sent a bolt of crimson flame at the grisly pile. The heads scorched, blackened, and crumbled to ash, revealing the bubbling spout of the fountain.

When Garth had first visited this place the fountain had pumped clear, clean water, liberally laced with poison; now, the fluid that pumped forth was thick and red. He did not care to investigate further, but simply reinforced the sword's power and reduced the stone and metal of the fountain to powder, boiling away whatever liquid it had held.

He paused and considered his next step. It occurred to him that no one had, as yet, opposed him; no voice had addressed him from the shadows. In fact, there was no sign that anyone was in the temple at all. That worried him; was it possible that the Aghadites had seen him coming and had fled, giving up their sanctuary?

Wasting no more time, he began blasting away at the temple itself, slicing the columns that supported its porches, breaking down the walls beyond. Masonry fell roaring, and the temple crumbled about him. He marched forward into the rubble, continuing to blast at the walls that still stood.

In the street that fronted the shrine, Koros and Frima waited, alert for an attack. Frima was eager to spot and kill any Aghadite who might flee from the destruction; Koros, as always, was not concerned with the reasons for its master's orders, but was ready to obey them and slaughter anyone who came near.

No one came. Walls tottered and fell, sections of roof caved in spectacularly, stones shattered, but no one emerged from the temple of Aghad.

Garth's rage grew steadily as he broke into chamber after chamber without finding a living foe. Clouds gathered in the sky above him, lightning flashed, and the earth shook beneath his feet, breaking open the extensive temple basements.

He continued to wreak destruction, working his way down beneath street level into the catacombs under the shrine. He found corpses, some of them fresh, some ancient, but none wearing the dark red robes of the cult, none that were still warm. He found animals-bats, serpents, great cats, and others-and slew them, but he found no humans. He saw machinery and smashed it, but saw no one operating it.

At last, as he had done in Ur-Dormulk, he found himself standing in a great pit where the temple had been, a pit that was as empty and lifeless as the one in Ur-Dormulk. His foes had escaped him. He had destroyed their stronghold, but they had escaped.

He bellowed with rage, the sword swinging in circles above his head; thunder rumbled, and lightning flickered through the clouds, as if reflecting the streak of fire the blade left hanging in the air.

He lashed out in frustration, blackening the smoking rubble and cutting a groove in the stone that surrounded him. The ground trembled below him.

A pile of debris tumbled aside, revealing an opening into the black, volcanic bedrock; the flame from the sword sliced through a stone slab, uncovering another. Alerted, Garth hacked away at the walls of the pit and found several such openings, thirteen in all, ranging from broad passageways skillfully concealed behind camouflaged stone doors to narrow crawlways, too small for an overman to enter, that had been hidden by the heaped rubble.

Here, then, were the means by which his enemies had fled. He could pursue them, overtake them, destroy them; he needed only to learn which of the passages they had taken.

He growled in frustration; there was no way he could know which routes they had chosen. He pointed the sword at the nearest and sent a gout of flame into it, illuminating the dark stone with an orange glare, but he could see no sign that would tell him whether the tunnel had been used or not. No dust lay on its floor; no footprints showed.

Enraged, he sent the flame winding on into the depths, out of his own sight, a writhing serpent of living fire.

A moment later he heard an immense explosion, and shards of stone and wood spattered across the rubble from somewhere well beyond the edge of the pit, hidden from his view. Gobbets of flame flickered across the night sky, and he, knew that his fiery messenger had reached the end of the tunnel.

He also knew that it had not found any Aghadites.

"Garth?" Frima's voice called from the edge of the pit, at the spot where the silvery gates had once stood.

He growled a wordless response.

"What happened? A house up the street burst apart; did you do that?"

"Yes," he said. He struggled to think, to plan; the raging fury in his head made it difficult to do so. "Did you see anyone leave that house?" he called.

"I don't know; I might have," Frima answered. "There were some people on the street just after we got here."

Garth growled. "Those were Aghadites," he said. "I'm sure of it. They had a dozen escape routes here. They could be anywhere in the city by now." He realized, as he spoke, that they might even have left the city. A party might well be on its way to Ordunin, to carry out the god's vengeance against Garth's family. Quite aside from his desire for. revenge, the cultists were an ongoing threat to innocent people everywhere, and Garth was more determined than ever to destroy them all.

"Oh," Frima said.

"We will hunt them down, wherever they hide," the overman said as he turned the sword's flame against one side of the pit to carve himself a way out.