"I know."

"And the answers are all in this place called Brothe?"

"Unless the Old Ones change their minds. Now shut the f.u.c.k up. We've got a long walk ahead. And most of the time we'll need to stay out of sight of the natives."

"Why?"

"The Old Ones don't want us noticed. They didn't say why. Same old s.h.i.t. We're supposed to be thrilled to be used like a pack of dogs."

Each hour left the six less sympathetic toward their G.o.ds.

THE G.o.dS OF THE ANDORAYANS REFLECTED THE NORTHERN folk themselves. Which meant that they were rowdy, drunken, not too bright, drunken, violent, drunken, and short-sighted. While often drunk.

Those were values their culture had accreted over the ages.

They were not the values of anyone in the world where the Andorayans found themselves now.

"We'll find the man."

The others scowled but readied themselves for travel. With less enthusiasm than ever.

The serious grumbling started a week later, as s.h.a.got tried to sneak past Antieux unnoticed. Finnboga snapped, "What the f.u.c.k are we doing, Grim? We were supposed to catch some a.s.sholes that killed Erief. But I ain't heard Erief s name come up in a month."

Sigurdur grumbled, "I'm ready to go home."

s.h.a.got reminded him, "Home ain't there anymore."

"Whatever is there, it'll be a lot more like home than this is."

Even Asgrimmur was restive. "I'm thinking maybe it's time the G.o.ds looked out for themselves."

s.h.a.got drew a deep breath, released it. He did not know how to fight this creeping defeatism. He had trouble enough motivating himself.

He slept longer now than he had while they were part of the Arnhander army. He could not help it. He wanted to pursue a normal waking cycle. He wanted his band out of this country where they could be held accountable for the bad behavior of their former Arnhander companions.

That was the worst. The sneaking. The creeping along, trying to get by unnoticed.

Hallgrim wanted to know, "Why the h.e.l.l are we doing this, Grim? These people don't know who we are. We should get down on the regular road. Just be some guys headed east."

Hallgrim's argument made sense. But the G.o.d voices inside s.h.a.got would not let him acquiesce.

"This is bulls.h.i.t," Finnboga insisted. "I'm about ready to take off on my own."

"It'll get easier once we get to the country they call Ormienden."

It seemed to take forever to get there, though, because s.h.a.got spent so much time asleep. And, after they reached Ormienden, s.h.a.got still refused to travel normally.

Svavar, Hallgrim, and the others became increasingly mutinous. While s.h.a.got became more and more unable to be anything but "a huldrin mouthpiece for a gang of lunatic G.o.ds who ain't relevant no more," according to s.h.a.got's own brother, Svavar.

A week into Ormienden, s.h.a.got wakened to find himself alone except for his brother. The way Svavar hunched as he cooked told s.h.a.got that something was seriously wrong.

Horses were missing. "They left, Grim. They couldn't take it no more. But they left all the stuff."

s.h.a.got could not get an emotional handle on what had happened. "I don't understand."

"You won't listen, will you? They been telling you and telling you."

"You're still here."

"I'm your brother. But if I thought you could keep yourself alive on your own for a week, I'd be gone, too."

s.h.a.got did not resume traveling that day or the next, sure the others would recover their senses and return.

Svavar did not push. Svavar no longer believed in any mission from the G.o.ds. But s.h.a.got was family.

Svavar had concluded, after all he had been through since Erief's murder, that it might not be a bad thing if a few G.o.ds died, too.

In time, s.h.a.got pulled himself together enough to get up on his hind legs and start traveling again.

"Where are we headed, big brother?" Svavar wanted to know.

"For now, the Old City. Brothe. I don't know why. That's where they want us to go."

s.h.a.got was puzzled with himself. He had no drive left. But for the nagging of the G.o.d voices in the back of his brain he would have headed home himself.

Asgrimmur, for his part, began to see his brother as a holy madman. Those were rare in northern tradition but the notion of the insane having been touched by the G.o.ds was entrenched. In s.h.a.got's case there was no doubt.

THE G.o.dS OF THE NORTH WERE SPITEFUL, CHILDISH, AND PETTY. A great many G.o.ds, across the earth, went way long on the famine, pestilence, and war, but came up short on characteristics their worshipers would find congenial.

Finnboga and Hallgrim, Sigurdur and Sigurjon, encountered the malice of the Instrumentalities of the Night just two evenings after abandoning s.h.a.got and Svavar.

They were sheltering for the night beneath an old stone bridge spanning a stream less than six yards wide. The river was low because of the season. It had snowed that afternoon. Now a brisk and bitter wind muttered around the old bridge. Gusts whipped their little fire, threatening to kill it.

This shelter had served travelers for centuries. Numerous fires had burned on the same spot, surrounded by the same blackened stones. Another fire burned on the north side of the stream, where half a dozen southbound travelers huddled against the cold.

Hallgrim grumbled, "I'm getting old. Ten years ago this would've been a spring breeze. Now I'm thinking about emigrating to Iceland."

His companions grunted. None had visited Iceland but they had heard about the geysers and hot springs and magical vents that defeated the most ferocious winters. When the cliffs of ice crossed the Ormo Strait to begin devouring the New Brothen Empire, Iceland would still be warm.

Sigurjon observed, "Things could be different out there, though. If it's part of one big kingdom and those black crow priests run things."

Finnboga inquired, "How hard could it be to kill a few priests?"

"How hard?" Sigurdur snapped. "Look at us."

Sigurjon said, "It must be harder than it looks. Otherwise, why would those lilies be in power?"

Sigurdur said, "You're right. They are in charge in these parts. And it don't look like there's much chance of that changing. s.h.i.t!"

"What?"

"I've got to c.r.a.p again." It was the sixth time that day. Sigurdur had begun to worry. A man who lost control of his bowels could end up s.h.i.tting himself to death.

Sigurjon told him, "Well, take it downwind. That last load was so foul the flies dropped dead."

Stomach cramping, Sigurdur stumbled away, headed for a spot he had scouted before darkness fell, antic.i.p.ating this emergency.

He located the twin stones, fumbled with his trousers, urgently willing them out of the way before the explosion came while dreading me crude bite of the wind on his b.u.t.tocks.

He managed in time, voided the first nasty charge. He indulged in a little self-congratulation even as he bent over a fresh, more ferocious set of cramps.

As that departed in a rumbling gush Sigurdur realized that he was not alone. And that whoever was there was not one of his traveling companions. He could see his brother, Hallgrim, and Finnboga huddling close to the fire, making jokes at his expense.

He eased a hand toward his knife.

A shadow drifted nearer. The campfires cast just enough light to show him a woman wearing a hooded black cloak. The cloak's hem dragged the ground.

He could see nothing but her face. It was a beautiful face, much like his mother's must have looked when she was young.

Sigurdur thought, you heard about this sort of thing all your life but you were never ready when it happened. You never believed you would attract the interest of the Instrumentalities of the Night.

The woman opened her cloak. She wore nothing beneath. Her body was perfection. It exuded warmth. It could not be resisted.

It was too late even for the wary.

SIGURJON BEGAN TO WORRY. "WHAT'S TAKING HIM SO LONG? He's always been full of s.h.i.t, but... G.o.ds."

"Maybe he's trying to get it all worked out in one grand-daddy load."

"He'll get frostbite on his a.s.s if he fools around too long." Sigurjon rose. He yelled. His twin did not respond. He sat back down, sure that if there was any real trouble he would sense it through their twin bond.

Half an hour later Finnboga and Hallgrim were troubled enough to go out searching, shouting, leaving Sigurjon by the fire.

They found nothing.

"We'll look again after it's light. We can't find anything now. Let's cast lots for first watch." That would have been Sigurdur's job.

THEY FOUND THE PLACE WHERE SIGURDUR HAD EMPTIED HIS bowels. Then, despite the tracks they had left all over while searching in the dark, they discovered the trail Sigurdur had left when he headed upstream, beside the river. They found Sigurdur himself half a mile from camp, half in and half out of the river, naked from the waist down. They never found his trousers.

"He died happy," Hallgrim said.

But Sigurdur's skin was as pale as the snow, not because he was dead but because all the blood had been drained from his body.

The frozen mud retained footprints made by a woman's small, bare feet.

The tale was not hard to read, just hard to believe. You heard the stories but you never really believed.

But the things of the night were as real as cruel death. And every bit as wicked as the stories claimed.

The survivors made no immediate connection between Sigurdur's misfortune and their having turned their backs on their G.o.ds.

When they returned to camp they discovered that they had been plundered by their neighbors. The villains had left them with little more than what they wore and the weapons they carried. Which they had come near ruining while hacking out a shallow grave for Sigurdur.

Sigurjon was the smartest survivor. He began to suspect divine mischief when something got Hallgrim a week later. This death in the dark did not leave its victim smiling. It did not leave its victim with a face at all.

Neither Sigurjon nor Finnboga ever heard a sound.

17. The Connec, After the Blood

Brother Candle's captors let several days pa.s.s before he was allowed to see Count Raymone Garete. No one accused him of anything. He was known and respected throughout the End of Connec. To be deemed a traitor he would have to indict himself out of his own mouth.

"Well?" the Count asked. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I was on the road. Trying to overtake you. The Arnhanders captured me. At the moment you attacked the Archbishop was offering me the opportunity to be the central character in a heresy trial."

"I can see why he'd think that way. Why were you trying to catch me?"

"In hopes that I could talk you out of attacking the Arnhanders. This war can only end in disaster for the End of Connec."

The Count's henchmen laughed, mocked Brother Candle, made chicken-clucking noises. Few were older than the Count. One said, "Looks to me like the disaster boot is on the other foot, Brother. Twice, now."

Brother Candle shook his head. "I have no hope of selling sanity, now. The die is cast. You arrogant young men. Listen! Don't rest on your laurels. Next summer, or the summer after, or the summer after that, the armies of Arnhand and the Brothen Patriarch will return. And they'll descend like the Wrath of G.o.d Himself."

That was not what they wanted to hear. They wanted to be told that Santerin would never stop feuding with Arnhand. They wanted to hear about dynastic troubles that would cripple Arnhand. They wanted to be told that the Patriarch was a bucket full of wind, with the Grail Emperor hard on its flank, poised to strike the instant Sublime overextended himself.

Brother Candle had enjoyed success in his worldly life. His success as a Perfect was more limited, because he was now a holy man. A holy man who lacked the advantage enjoyed by Sublime an army to make dimwits listen.

He did not remain with the Count. He got back on the road. He would rejoin Duke Tormond and try to subdue the future from Khaurene.

There was no way to stop the coming war. Arnhand's leading families would all demand it. What he had to do now was keep emotion from gaining complete control. The more the emotions could be blunted the gentler the future would be.

He would try to convince the high and the mighty- Tormond in particular-that they must prepare for the worst.

He did not want war. But if war could not be avoided, then the Connec should be prepared to respond with a ferocity and vigor that would overawe anyone interested only in fattening his fortune.

Brother Candle walked the ancient, cold highway to Khaurene uncomfortably aware that the one last thing he had to do in this world, and had to do better than he had done anything before, was a work that he loathed. He had to nurture and guide the Seekers After Light through an age of horror and violence that would determine whether their faith persevered or vanished from the earth forever.

The Maysalean Heresy would not go meekly, however gentle its hopes. Ironically, though, those Connectens who would bear the brunt of the expense and fighting would be devout Chaldareans defending themselves from men who claimed to be the champions of their own faith.