Scourge of the Betrayer (26 page)

The Godveil.

The air shimmered slightly, like hot air rising off an arid plain that warps whatever appears beyond. The only difference was, this shimmering continued much higher into the sky, bending even the bottoms of the dense clouds, and it wasn’t isolated to one particular spot, but crossed the entire shallow valley floor, over the river, and up into the woods beyond, continuing until it disappeared behind the ridge. And once my eye had caught it, the senses picked up two other things as well—the tiniest noise, so remote it was barely audible, like the last note played by a harp, hanging in the air just before it disappeared entirely, only this note never quite got that far. It simply hung there, thrumming so low you would be hard pressed to notice it at all if you hadn’t already seen the warping air. There was also a whiff of a mildly unpleasant odor, a combination of singed hair and vinegar, so faint and unobtrusive, you might have thought you imagined it if the other signals weren’t there to tell you the Godveil was in the vicinity. I’d seen it once, when I was very young, but it had been from very far away, and for only a short time.

I’d run away from home—though I can’t recall why now. Some tiff with my mother, no doubt. Most children threaten as much, and never journey too far from the front door, but I promised myself I was going to run as far as I could, never to return. I even packed some food and clothes, and slipped off through the woods. I didn’t know where I was headed, only that I was going to keep going. And I might have. I put several miles behind me when suddenly the woods got quiet. There were no more bird calls. No more scurrying squirrels. Just empty, still woods. And then I saw it, through the trees… the Godveil. My mother had warned me it was out there, somewhere, and that it was the deadliest thing in the world that no living thing could abide. And looking around the deserted woods, I could see she was right. No one lived near the Godveil, or trafficked in the vicinity if they could help it. To do so was to invite death. So I ran back home as fast as my feet could carry me. My mother whipped me double hard when she learned where I’d gone, and made me swear I’d never do anything half so stupid again. And I hadn’t. Until accompanying the Syldoon.

It’s said the Godveil wraps around the entire world, stretching over mountains, deserts, and every other empty, desolate locale. I hoped never to travel widely enough to confirm or deny that claim, but there was no mistaking that however long or short it was, some part of the Godveil ran its ethereal course behind the ruins before us. There was a good reason no one lived close to the Veil, or built near it either—there were no active settlements, outposts, or communities anywhere along its entire length, if reports were to be believed.

The only structures remotely close were utterly deserted. All I could imagine was that this temple had predated the Veil.

Lloi made some strange fluttery sign over her chest and face and looked shaken. When she saw me staring at her she let out a deep breath. “Like I told you, when my people figured what I could do, they gave me a choice. Leave off some finger bits, or part the Veil. Weren’t much of a choice, really.” And then she shivered, which made me shiver as well, despite the warm, heavy air.

That was obviously an expression, “part the Veil,” and ironic at that. You could walk towards it, but no could walk through it. The Veil didn’t part for anyone. But trying, approaching it too closely, that meant the end, just as surely as walking off a cliff.

I glanced around. The Brunesmen looked uncomfortable being this close as well, and one mumbled a near-silent prayer. Another behind me spoke quietly, with a kind of awe, “Back in Threespire, they got lodges. Call them dream stations. Built right close to the Veil. Never been there, but I hear you pay some coin, you get tethered to the lodge, to a post anyways, so you can walk just close enough. Said the world opens behind your eyes when you do, you see things that never been seen before.”

Another Brunesman replied, “Same where I’m from. Call them something different though. Must be something to it, I reckon. You reckon?”

Mulldoos looked at the pair. “I reckon you two are just about the dumbest bastards in the wide world. Only dumber being some fools willing to pay for a tethering. Veil’s the same as any other natural thing that can kill you. Fire, lightning. Nothing more mystical than that. Only thing that opens up if you get real close is the back of your skull.” He looked up at the broiling clouds. “You don’t run around with your sword in the air when it’s thundering, you don’t go walking towards the Veil. Unless you figure being dead sounds mighty fine. Simple as that.”

Hewspear replied, “Is it? Fires run their course and eventually burn out, and lightning flashes once and is gone. But our grandfather’s grandfathers have seen the Godveil, and their grandfather’s grandfathers besides. A thousand years, maybe more, shifting, but never changing. Calling to any who would travel close, drawing them closer. A beautiful seductress who kills. You don’t find that strange?”

Mulldoos laughed. “I find superstitious old goats strange.”

After a pause, a Brunesman suggested, “It’s said you can see the Deserters, you get close enough. Moving like shadows on the other side. Catch a glimpse of them from time to time. Maybe that’s why they build the dream stations.”

Even now, long, long after those old gods abandoned humanity, they were still mentioned with a kind of reverence.

By most anyway. Voice wrought with scorn, Mulldoos said, “Called Deserters for a reason. They good and left us clean, back when your grandfathers’ grandfathers got grandfathers with grandfathers, ain’t that right, Hew? They abandoned our sorry asses. You think they’re sitting pretty on the other side, posing for a painting? Dumb horsecunts, the lot of you. Deserters ain’t never coming back, ain’t never going to be seen again. Maybe they died on the other side. I hope they did. If we deserved deserting, they deserve something worse. But either way, they’re gone forever and more, and there’s no sense talking about it. So quit your cunty yapping before I take your purses and throw you into the Veil myself.”

That put an end to the discussion. But while Mulldoos had ridiculed and threatened everyone into silence, it didn’t change the tension still hanging in the air. There was that barely perceptible pull from the Veil, even from this distance. More than a simple desire to see how many bones might lay strewn along its course. This wasn’t curiosity, wasn’t even just fascination. It was a horrible compulsion to step closer, to approach the Veil, despite the surety that to do so could only end in doom. Mulldoos was wrong on that count—there wasn’t anything natural about it.

But the tension wasn’t only about the Veil itself, but the Deserters who’d created it. Ages had come and gone since they stranded us on this half of the world, but even though their temples had been torn down by decree, their names forbidden and lost, nothing could wash away the malaise they left behind. People rarely thought or spoke of them, but when they did, it was impossible not to acknowledge… they abandoned us because we had failed. There were different accounts in different lands, but they ultimately amounted to the same thing—we were too weak, too passionate, too ignorant. We’d disappointed the oldest gods in such a profound and egregious way they decided we were hopeless. And so they left. They abdicated, left the throne vacant. New gods had sprung up in their absence, lesser gods to fill the void, but the Deserter’s judgment and condemnation still hung over all of us. Their desertion was unconscionable, but the reasons for it were inescapably damning. To think of the Deserters was to meditate on our own awful foibles.

But while everyone else was fixated on the Godveil and regarding it with quiet awe, fear, or in the case of Mulldoos, real or feigned contempt, and perhaps contemplating our failings as a race, just like I was, I noticed that Braylar was staring at something at the front of the ruined temple, rapt as rapt could be.

Stone stairs led to a single archway in what remained of a wall, with a large pedestal on either side. While one pedestal was empty, the one to the right of the arch supported a massive bust as tall as a man. This wasn’t all that unusual—temples new and old often housed sculptures of gods, heroes, martyrs, and mystics. However, looking more closely, I saw what arrested Braylar’s attention.

The giant head was roughly human in proportion and shape from the cheekbones down, albeit thick-lipped and foreboding, but the similarities ended abruptly at eye level. Or what would have been eye level. Where a man should have had eyes, this statue had two large horns protruding out and up, as well as a ring of somewhat smaller horns circling its head the entire way around. It also had two rows of short horns, spikes really, extending from front to back. The familiarity was obvious. The heads on Braylar’s flail were more stylized than the giant bust, and screaming in rage or pain while this head was utterly stoic and solemn, but it was clear both sculptures were inspired by the same source. This had been a temple for the Deserter Gods, back when they had names and widespread worshipers. Before the Deserters erected the Veil to cover their escape from us.

Braylar’s left hand had dropped down to Bloodsounder, and he was staring down at the Veil beyond the ruins.

I stepped closer to him and whispered, “Is something wrong, Captain?”

His left hand flicked the chains and his eyes didn’t leave the Veil. “You feel the draw, yes? The subtle but powerful urge to approach, to unravel its mysteries, or your own?”

I nodded, and he did as well, but then said, “I do not.”

I looked at him closely. There was no twitching around the lips, no sweat on the brow, no angry scowl. In fact, he looked as calm as I’d ever seen him. Quietly, he said, “The first time I saw the Veil was many years before. And as it happened, I was far closer than we are now. So I felt the pull, bone deep. Our division was trying to evade a much larger force on our heels, and the terrain pushed us much closer to the Veil than our commanders would have liked. It was incredibly difficult to resist the pull. We actually lost several soldiers—warnings mean nothing when you come that close, you simply ride or walk to the Veil until your mind is blasted and you fall down dead in its shadow. And several years after that, I had cause to travel near it again. And while the pull wasn’t quite as potent, it was still there. So I remember it well.”

He turned his head and looked at me. “But now, I feel nothing at all. No tug, no draw, no impulse to approach it. Nothing. It’s as if… as if the Veil weren’t there at all.”

He said this last in amazement. And for good reason. I’d never heard anyone utter this before. Everyone knew someone or had heard of someone drawn to the Veil, slaughtered by it. It was ubiquitous. But to say he felt nothing at all… it was like saying he stuck his hand in the fire and felt no heat.

I glanced down at his flail, and then back to the bust at the temple, looked at the images of the Deserters. “Did you, before, did you have—”

“No. The first two times I’d encountered the Veil were before I’d unearthed Bloodsounder.” He looked back down the hill.

“What does it mean?’

He shook his head and for once seemed truly at a loss. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It is… significant. But what is signified… I don’t know.”

Others had gathered nearby, so the conversation was over. But I was mystified.

We’d gotten as close to the temple as we dared without leaving the heavy cover of the trees on the hill. Further down, bush and bramble gave way to a large tract of wildflowers and meadow that led to the ruins. It was as secluded a spot as could be hoped for, and must have been ideal and idyllic for whatever priests made this place their home in another age. Now, it served as the perfect spot for a secret meeting, well away from the traffic of the trade road ten miles to the west, and in little danger of being accidentally stumbled upon, as even the closest farmstead was in the next valley, far from the Veil and its dangers and ramifications. It occurred to me that a location so well chosen for a clandestine meeting was also the perfect spot for an ambush or treachery.

I looked back at our party when I heard Braylar grilling Vendurro and Glesswik, who had stepped out of the trees to join us.

“You saw no movement then? Nothing to indicate a hostile presence?”

Vendurro replied, “No, Cap. Gless and me, Xen too, we’ve been here since dawn yesterday, exactly as ordered. Circled as close as we could without giving away our positions or getting too near the Veil, and as far as I can tell, we’re the only hostile presence in these parts. We split watches, so there’s been an eye open the entire time. No one in the temple grounds, and so far, no movement along the perimeter neither.”

Braylar pressed him. “As far as you can tell? Are you confident that the woods are clear, or is that merely a guess?”

Vendurro’s cheeks colored and his jaw tightened, but before he could fashion a response, Glesswik said, “Three sets of eyes are better than one, Cap, but they ain’t as good as ten, if you take my meaning. We ate cold rations, moved as cautious as we could, and circled close. Shifting watch the entire time, like Ven told you. No ambush in the bush that we seen. I don’t know that I’d stake my life on it, but—”

“You stake yours and ours as well. Make no mistake.”

“Well, then, two days of scouting and screening says it looks like a safe field. That’s as much as I can say, Cap.”

Braylar nodded at both. “Very well, then. As always, much will be risked on appearances. Assuming he isn’t already hiding among the wildflowers, High Priest Turncloak should arrive shortly. Is Xen still in position near the goat track?”

Glesswik said, “He is, Captain.”

“Very good. Vendurro, take a position close enough to Xen to hear his signal, no closer. Glesswik, return to the track and alert me the minute you see anything more threatening than a grouse.”

Glesswik and Vendurro both saluted and moved off in different directions through the woods.

We all looked to Braylar for the next order while Gurdinn and his men waited several paces away. Braylar stared at the ruins below us and took a deep breath. His eyes were closed, his fingers absently running up and down the flail chains.