One (The Godslayer Cycle Book 1) (28 page)

Together, husband and wife sat together, embracing each other until late into the morning, long after Mari's tears and sobs had ceased.  And when they did part, they laughed together for a time before settling down to renew their love once more upon the bedroom floor.  Yet this time, there was no desperation nor angst.  There was only love in its purest and most perfect form.

They had barely finished their lovemaking, Mari only shortly having left to draw water for a bath, when Airek unceremoniously appeared in the room, his ranger-like attire once more upon his masculine form.

“
By the Old Gods!” exclaimed Nathaniel, rushing to cover himself.  “Don't you Gods know anything about privacy?”

Airek's countenance was grave.  “Of course.  And under normal circumstances, we respect it.  This, however, is not a normal time.  And I have not the time to play at trivialities to mind your dignity just now.”

“Nate, is something wrong?” came Mari's voice from the other room, followed momentarily by his wife in person, still undressed, her skin still glistening with sweat.  Immediately upon seeing the other man in her bedroom, she let out a shriek and dove behind the doorframe.  “Nate, who is that?!” she demanded from beyond the doorway.

Nathaniel sighed.  “Mari, it's a long story.  Airek, get out!  I don't care what's so damnable important.  Just get out!”

The God remained unmoved.  “Not this time, Nathaniel.  There is no more time to delay in your task.  I told you we might have a couple days to spare, and now that seems to have been too much.  Forces are in motion...”

“
I don't care about 'forces' or Gods or Avatars just right now,” Nathaniel retorted.  “All I care about is that you are upsetting my wife.  We have had an especially difficult couple of days...”

“
Fine.  If our discussion will upset your wife, we shall speak elsewhere.”

And with those words, Nathaniel realized he was no longer in his cabin.  In fact, he was no longer inside, at least not inside a normal building.  He stood now in some kind of marble structure that resembled more a gazebo than anything else.  Patches of snow littered the ground outside the stone structure, visible between the six pillars that supported the massive roof over his head.

Spanning a mere two hundred feet in diameter, and ten feet in height, the structure was nevertheless imposing.  Three other pillars acted as central supports at evenly divided placement within the interior of the structure, with a statue of some sort erected at its exact center.  Otherwise, Nathaniel was entirely alone.

At this point, Nathaniel also realized that he was no longer nude.  He wore a fine leather outfit, adorned with a cape lined with fleece to protect against the cold.  His boots and mits were of similar construct and his garment also sported a hood to shelter his ears from the wind he felt blowing from behind him.  All at once he felt the cold snap of the air upon his face and was in true appreciation that the rest of his body was so well insulated.

“Where am I?” Nate managed after a moment.

“
We are at a lost shrine high in the Helapro Mountains, far to the east of what you call the Wildelands,” answered the statue, which suddenly rose from its pedestal and walked to stand beside Nathaniel.  The man realized that the statue had been in Airek's likeness all along, if in the God's feminine form, and as it moved towards him, its appearance flowed until it once again became the flesh and blood proximity that Nathaniel had once before seen.

“
Nice trick,” Nathaniel muttered.

Airek did not acknowledge the comment as she continued in her explanation.  “There are thousands of greater and lesser shrines still standing all over this world, and many more that have been destroyed entirely over the last several centuries.  If nothing is done to halt the ebb of our power, this emptiness may well be the last remnant left of the Pantheon within the mortal realm.”

“I have heard this before, Airek.  And as I have said, I can sympathize.  But I'm not the adventuring type.  Maybe five years ago, I might have been up to what you propose, but my family must come first.  Abducting me and dropping me in the middle of nowhere is
not
going to change my mind.”

Airek considered for a moment.  “Perhaps that
is
what it will take,” she said cryptically.  Turning without another word, she turned back to the pedestal, her body once again resuming the marble texture of the statue.  By the time she stepped once again upon the dais, she was once again only the statue her body had been before.

“
Hey!” Nathaniel shouted, too late to undo the change.  Nevertheless, he rushed over to the statue and tried to push at it, to get some response to indicate it was more than just a slab of marble.  However, the statue remained solid and unyielding.  “You can't just leave me here!”

Yet that was exactly what the Goddess had done.

Nathaniel had never felt so helpless.  Even after he had lost his mother, there had been support from Bracken and his community.  And he had known the terrain, the lay of the land.  Now he stood literally in the middle of nowhere, with no idea where he was exactly or how to return home.  He had no money nor means of transport, much less any food or timber for a fire when the cold of the day passed into the sure frigidness of night.  And it seemed Airek intended to leave him here until he consented to the God's bidding.

“
To the Abyss with
all
of you then!” Nathaniel shouted to the air.  “I will not be your whipping boy!  Do you hear me?  I will
never
help you if you do not return me to my home
now!
”

The only response he received was the wind whistling between the edges of his hood.  “To the Abyss with you then,” he repeated in a quieter voice.  “I'm on my own then.”

Nathaniel knew it was pointless to wander from the only visible landmark in sight, but he also realized that to remain was suicide unless he planned to submit to Airek's less than subtle means of persuasion.  That he refused to do.  At least he knew Mari and Geoffrey would be safe no matter what happened to him.  Perhaps if fortune smiled upon him, he would someday be able to return to them, if the Old Gods did not continue to plague him along the way.

He left the shrine, scouting out the edges of the plateau upon which the shrine was erected.  At first, no immediate exit revealed itself and Nathaniel began to dread the idea of scaling down the steep sides of the mountain without any kind of gear.  On the second circuit of the perimeter though, he discovered a thin trail buried in a drift, not even partially melted since it had fallen in the shelter of a large outcrop of stone.

Correction,
Nathaniel amended as he tried to edge over the ice and snow. 
It has melted some.
  The thin layer of ice crusting the surface of the drift was stark evidence that some thawing had occurred, but it had only refrozen to form a hard crust upon its surface.  Under his weight, the ice crunched and split, cutting at his outfit's legs with the sharp edges as his legs plunged up to his hips in the snow beneath.

The drift proved harder to navigate than Nathaniel had thought, and it took nearly twenty minutes to reach a part of the trail not so deep in snow.  By then, he was sweating profusely in his clothes.  Yet he dared not remove anything in the snow and ice for fear that he would lose what body heat he had.  Instead, he elected to sit and rest for a short while before continuing on, careful to not let himself become too complacent in his rest.

As he sat, he took careful notice of the footpath he was now on.  It was barely wide enough to accommodate him.  He felt fortunate that he had not lost the trail while it was buried beneath the drift, though.  A misstep along the path could well have sent him on a hard tumble down the hillside, with several small and large rocks jutting visibly from patches of snow along the way.

Ahead, Nathaniel could see there were few patches that were completely free of ice or snow, and he could well imagine that those patches of ice would make the trek perilous.  Yet this still remained his safest route off the mountain.  He refused to even consider returning to the summit to await the Old Gods' whims, so he had to press on.  Regardless the risk, he would not give into Airek's trap.

For the next several hours, Nathaniel made his way carefully along the path.  It had soon become apparent that the trail had indeed been long unused.  A fairly large section of the path had fallen away at one point, forcing Nathaniel to make a heart-stopping move along the shifting earth that remained.  In this case, he was sure the frozen ground had aided him rather than hindered, for the ice cemented the shale stones together somewhat.  Without this added support, there would have been no way he could have crossed without the ground giving way to send him plummeting down into the crevasse alongside the trail.

After that hazard though, the trail had remained relatively stable.  Caution made it possible to avoid losing his footing on ice, and larger drifts of snow proved easier to pass than the first one.

Before he knew it, the day had begun to grow dark though.  He remembered talk from trappers who frequented Bracken's inn that days were shorter within the mountains, but still an ache of regret filled him as he realized he had been gone from Mari's side for the entire day.  And likely, he would not see her for weeks, possibly months more.

Nathaniel was just beginning to consider stopping for the night when he rounded a turn and came upon the ruins of a village.  It had at one time been a sizable settlement, but now only partial walls and crumbled stone showed evidence of what it once was.

“They were five thousand strong,” came a feminine voice from behind him.  “They were slaughtered, one and all.  Every man, woman and child.  All crying out for me to intervene.  But I was helpless to do so, bound by covenant to not oppose another God.”

Nathaniel did not need to turn around to know that it was Airek who spoke.  A sick, gut-wrenching feeling filled his being as he imagined the staggering loss of life.  He could not bring up the anger and resentment he had held inside him for the last several hours, either.  He could not hate someone who had had to watch so many people die...

“Who did this?” Nathaniel managed after several minutes.

“
The armies of Kartar, God of War.  During the inquisition that swept this land two hundred years ago.  These people had fled here to escape persecutions one hundred and fifty years earlier.  They were my faithful and I blessed them for their worship.  Until Kartar's people found them...”

“
I had heard of such things...” Nathaniel tried to reason, “but to actually see where such a purge took place...  This is why you brought me here?”

Airek nodded, though Nathaniel could not see.  “You needed to understand what a world without a Pantheon could come to be like.  For now, the New Order stands somewhat united because we exist.  Once we are gone, there is nothing stopping them from setting upon their own.  They are by nature a conflictive lot.  And they will tear this world down upon themselves for the sake of their personal egos.”

Nathaniel walked forward until he stood next to the closest wall.  Something had caught his eye.  As he moved a fallen stone for a better view, he almost dropped it when he got a clear view of it.  It was a skull, too tiny to be anything but that of a small child, the bones barely knit before the side had been crushed in.

“
I could tell you her name,” offered Airek.  “I could name every lost soul here, tell you of their lives, their passions, their dreams.  Such is the fate of a God, to always remember, even when tragedy would make it easier to forget.  I have countless souls that weigh upon my conscience, Nathaniel.  So do not think that what I or my fellow Gods demand of you is done without fully considering what it is we ask.  The concerns, the needs, of one mortal man are as nothing compared to those of the divine.”

“
You really don't understand, do you?”  Nathaniel turned away from the little girl's remains and looked upon the Goddess.  “In your divinity, you overlook the needs of those not so gifted.  You have eternity to do and redo whatever it is you wish, but a mortal has no such luxury.  Once the time has passed, that's it.  We do not get to undo our mistakes nor outlive their consequences.

“
You think that I need to see things from your side?  I concede that yours is not a carefree existence.  Nor is it a comforting thought that other Gods, ones capable of this kind of atrocity, may well inherit the world when you are gone.  But if I sacrifice
my
life to preserve yours, when it's all over, I cannot just pick things up where I left them.  Geoffrey will only be a child for so long.  Mari can only bear more children for so many years.  And we all only have a handful of years given to us.  As a mortal, I cannot get any of that back if I give it up to go on this quest for you.

“
It is not that your fate is not important,” Nathaniel summarized.  “It is that my life, my wife and son's lives, must stand above all else.  For when my end does come, I could not bear the knowledge that I let
them
down.”

Nathaniel shook his head.  “Perhaps that makes me selfish.  Maybe I just don't have the makings of a hero.  Either way, I don't care.  I love my wife and I won't leave her, not for you nor anyone else.”