Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (108 page)

"But what shall I tell my favorite?" She-who-is sobbed. "That while she was a prisoner, I went and gave away her husband to somebody else?"

She-who-is' gossamer wings drooped with regret.

Bishamonten bit his non-corporeal tongue. Before Ninsianna had been kidnapped, he hadn't cared for how cruelly the goddesses'
Chosen One
had treated his novitiate. It reminded him a little too much of the way She-who-is mistreated her husband. The Dark Lord's pitiless black eyes met Bishamonten's. It was disconcerting to see those terrifying black orbs filled with an expression of '
help me out here, friend…'

"The girl threw herself off a cliff into the river in grief," Bishamonten said. "And I, to my shame, was not there to intervene. Ki's Agent served her purpose, and now she is gone."

She-who-is stopped crying.

"Gone?"

"She is gone," Bishamonten said. "And
he
has absolutely no memory of her." He suspected the only reason the Champion didn't remember his new queen was because She-who-is
had resorted to her old tricks.

"Well if she is gone, then," She-who-is said to her husband, "there should be nothing preventing him from finding her."

"That is the idea, my sweet," He-who's-not said. "Go, my love. Search through your realms and find her. Moloch cannot exist except as a parasite off of his own bloodline."

"I have searched everywhere!" She-who-is exclaimed. Her beautiful features turned sinister. "That girl knew something. I know she did! Why hasn't she passed into my Dreamtime?"

The Dark Lord placed his enormous dark hands around
HER
tiny white ones.

"The girl is
gone
now,"
HE
said. "And my Champion shall give his life to find your Chosen One. He loves her. More than his own existence."

She-who-is' lip trembled, and then she pulled away.

"Very well, then," She-who-is said. She waved her hand at her retinue of creatures. The animals rushed at her, not eager to be left behind in the Dark Lord's realm. With a crisp 'snap' of her gossamer wings, the goddess that ruled All-That-Is disappeared, taking her creations with her.

It took a moment for Bishamonten's eyes to adjust to the total darkness. While
SHE
had been here, there had been a pleasant, underlying hum, but now a horrible emptiness ate away at his nerves. The Song of Destruction. The powers of Chaos which the Dark Lord ruled.

Shadow cats crept out of the walls and circled around him, attracted to his soft, blue light. The Dark Lord reached down and picked up the most-developed of the litter, the one which had been assigned to watch Ninsianna. The creature purred as its master absent-mindedly rubbed its nothingness.

"I have another favor to ask of you, old friend," He-who's-not said.

Bishamonten nodded. It behooved him to ingratiate himself to the Dark Lord.

"The girl…"

"Is dead?"

"Not yet," He-who's-not said.
HIS
ebony features reshaped themselves into an expression of concern. "I am not good at these things, tinkering with the lives of mortal men."

Bishamonten waited, wise enough not to say
'I know.'

"So long as
she
lives, my Champion shall live as well," the Dark Lord said. "If
she
dies, no matter
what
games my mate plays to make things come out in her favor, when he feels her death-wound, he shall remember not just this lifetime, but all the lifetimes he has ever known her, and he shall follow her into the land beyond."

"Why did he not follow her the first time he felt her die?" Bishamonten asked.

"Their union was unconsummated," the Dark Lord said. "Incomplete. A partial union which had been cut short again and again. This time, he has bonded with her completely. It was how she was able to heal him."

He-who's-not stroked the shadow cat which sat in his lap like a little black blob, his dark features thoughtful.

"She is powerful, the girl. She took on Moloch's venom, drew it right out of my Champion's body and brought it into her own to transmute it. She is in terrible shape, close to death, but I have intervened to preserve her until she can heal."

"How?"

"The girl's natural inclination is to hide," the Dark Lord said. He ran his clawed hand along his hairless head, pausing to scratch at the places where six horns erupted from his skull. "I think it would behoove us if
you
were the one to teach her how to use that gift. For if She-who-is finds her, you can be certain there will be a mishap."

"You wish me to teach her the path of shinobi-on-mono?" Bishamonten asked. The invisible warrior.

The Dark Lord's lips twitched in about as close as an ironic smile as the humorless god was capable of displaying.

"I think, perhaps, it will be
she
who teaches
you
a thing or two about hiding," the Dark Lord said. "Not even
SHE
can see her when she wishes to hide. But she is untrained. I know of no person on her world who is capable of teaching her how to use her gift."

"Very well, my lord," Bishamonten bowed.

The Dark Lord stared out across the enormous hall where the larger universal game of chess unfolded, his expression worried.

"If
she
dies," the Dark Lord said. "My Champion will die as well. A clever man would eliminate him, not by killing
him,
but by killing her. As much as it goads me to perpetuate a lie, until this game is finished, that is the way things must remain."

"I understand," Bishamonten nodded. He turned to go.

"One more question," He-who's-not said. "The second agent? Do you have any idea as to her identity?"

"I thought it was the little fairy general?"

"I am certain it is
not
," He-who's-not said. He fiddled with his dark knight. "Ki's Agents are always subtle, the last person you would expect to pull the stellar matter out of the black hole. And their mission? It is usually something you do not expect. Whoever this second Agent is, if you encounter them, you are to give them all necessary assistance."

Bishamonten bowed.

"As you wish, my lord."

Since it was considered bad form to dematerialize out of the Dark Lord's presence, Bishamonten wound his way back out through the enormous chess pieces, each one representing a galaxy the two deities controlled, through the enormous doors and out into the chaos beyond. He hated this place! They all did, with its infernal silence and the sound of chaos crushing molecules.

In a blink of an eye, the God of War moved to carry out the Dark Lord's plan.

~ * ~ * ~

January: 3,389 BC

Earth: Uruk Territory

Gita

The cold grip of death carried her as she floated in the song, rocking gently as her body was carried downriver. There was no sensation here, other than the cold she felt no pain. She would just let go, and then she would wait for him, for he had given himself to her, and once he crossed over, she understood he would be hers.

Days passed by as the gentle currents carried her downstream, but try as she might to just let go, something whispered to her. Stay. Mikhail needs you. You cannot let go so long as he is still alive.

Something tugged at her chest. Pain. Shouting. Arms picked her up and carried her away.

More time passed and she realized she was no longer cold. That sensation of floating faded into a new song. Children's voices and the sing-song humming of an old woman. Fragmentary glimpses of curious eyes and wrinkles blended with the pain of somebody poking at her chest. A new voice joined the others. Masculine. Familiar. Not
his
voice
,
but a voice which was welcoming nonetheless.

Gita opened her eyes.

Staring back at her was a thin, rather comical face with a broken nose and mismatched eyes, one eye brown and the other hazel-green. His brow was furrowed with worry, and he held a cloth to her forehead, warm and wet and scented with a bit of cedar.

"Dadbeh?" Gita whispered.

"Hey," the elite warrior said. "What you doing all the way down here?"

Gita groped for the song which had receded the moment she had opened her eyes. It was still there, just harder to hear when she focused on something else. She could still
feel
him, and she knew he was still alive.

"Gita?"

Gita opened her eyes again, not particularly happy she'd been saved.

"You should have let me die."

Dadbeh dipped the cloth it in a bowl of water held by an old woman. He spoke to her in Kemet, and then placed it back on Gita's forehead.

"For a few days we thought you
would
die," Dadbeh said. He gestured to several small children who huddled around them, their brown eyes wide with curiosity. "Bitaneth and Ineni found you in the process of being fed upon by a vulture. They were certain you were dead, but Menwi said your wound wasn't fatal; that you only needed help."

He pointed to the wrinkled old woman, who grinned at Gita with her jagged teeth, many of them missing. She wore the colorful sewn robe of a Kemet trader, one which had been torn and hastily patched.

"Thank you," Gita said, even though she didn't really mean it. In the song, it had been peaceful. In the song, there hadn't been any pain. In the song, that ever-present sense of hunger had receded, and in its place there had been a sense of fulfillment, of being loved, of
mattering
to somebody other than her poor, long lost mother.

She stared up at the woven linen ceiling of the low tent, little more than a tarp stretched over a central stake. It was a trader's tent; the kind which could be packed up as they moved from village to village in their great, circuitous trading routes which carried them up one great river and down the other. The Kemet traders were friends with all tribes, and while they carried news from one village to another, they were also notoriously tight-lipped about passing along information which might earn them the enmity of their trading partners.

The old woman spoke to Dadbeh at length in Kemet, of which Gita understood only a little. The old woman snorted and then punched Dadbeh in the arm. Dadbeh gave her a lopsided grin, never handsome, but always comical and earnest.

"She wants to change your dressings," Dadbeh said. "She said I must leave so I don't catch sight of your breasts. I told her you were flat-chested, so it wasn't like I would see anything."

"You … are a goat's behind," Gita said. She gave him a weak grin. "Go on. Get out of here."

Dadbeh's smile disappeared.

"What happened to you? Did the villagers do this to you?"

Gita swallowed, wondering how much she should tell him. Nothing. She would tell him nothing.

"I cut myself and it became infected," Gita said. "Once Mikhail got better, they didn't need me anymore, so I left. I got sick of people blaming me for something I didn't do."

Dadbeh took her hand and squeezed it.

"I know how that feels," he said. His mismatched eyes glistened. "I think you're the only other person in the village who mourns her loss."

Shahla. The woman who had stabbed Mikhail.

"I know," Gita said. "I hate her. And I miss her. She was the only real friend I ever had."

Dadbeh grimaced, no doubt to prevent himself from doing something so unmanly as cry.

"I'm glad you're here," Dadbeh said.

He got up then, an elite warrior who stood on the shorter side of average, so wiry he barely filled out his two-tiered kilt, the man Shahla had almost married. With a few spoken words between himself and the old woman, he crawled out from underneath the tent.

Gita lay back and closed her eyes as the old woman chattered in a dialogue of which she could only understand a little. The wound was healing. She could
feel
it heal the longer she resided in the song. She shut her eyes and surrendered to the song, the one she knew would help her transmute the poison.