It was not difficult to find the place where Hazoth died. The very ground there cracked open to admit him, and while the earth had smoothed itself over, finding its own level, not even weeds would ever grow there again. Coruth paced out the patch of utterly barren ground to find its center, then sat down on the dirt and let the sun warm her for a while before she did anything else.
“She’s your daughter too,” Coruth said finally. Hazoth couldn’t hear her, of course. He was dead. But some things needed to be said even if there was no one there to hear them. “You were a terrible man, a right bastard, frankly. One of the worst. But it was your seed that put her in my womb, and I figure you have a right to know what’s going to become of her. It isn’t pretty.”
A soft breeze stirred the grass at the edge of the barren patch. Each individual blade fluttered, rubbing against its neighbors. A cricket looking for a meal approached the place where Coruth sat, then reconsidered and turned away. No human being was in sight-and definitely not in earshot.
“She’s going to learn magic, one way or another. She’ll gain the kind of power you and I work with, maybe even more. I’m going to have to train her. It’s the only chance she’s got. And you, of all people, know what that means. I’ve seen her future and it can go one of two ways. Normally when I see the future, I know it’s bound to happen. That there’s no changing it. I do my best to look surprised when it comes to pass. And being a witch, well, that means when I see something unpropitious, something I don’t like, it’s just too bad. More times than not I have to go along and help make it happen anyway. This time, though, I see two possibilities. One is she becomes like me. A witch. Old and alone and bitter, but the world is better for it. The other chance is she becomes a sorcerer like you, and every horror of the pit can’t match what happens next. I can’t let that come to pass. There’s still time for her to pick which path she’ll walk. Do you know how rare that is? How infrequently I get this chance to make the future a better place?”
A cloud passed briefly across the sun, one of those thin insubstantial clouds that can’t block out all the light. A chill breeze ruffled her clothes, but soon enough the cloud passed by and the sun returned. Coruth tilted her head back and let the heat sink into her face.
“It’s going to cost me. Especially now, when I’m needed for other things. I don’t suppose you care, but Helstrow fell today to the barbarians. I’m going to have far more work than I can handle. As if that’s something new.”
In the distance she could hear a cowbell chiming, as a herd of animals was brought down to the common.
“Sod this,” she said. “I’m getting stiff, sitting here talking to you. I just thought you had a right to know about Cythera. A father should know these things.”
It hurt her old joints to stand up, but she did it without making too much noise. She started away from the barren patch of earth, intending to head home and begin her preparations. But then she glanced around slyly to make sure no one was watching, and headed back.
The patch of dirt was the closest thing Hazoth had to a grave. She hitched up her skirt and pissed all over it, cackling the whole time. And then she went home.
Chapter Thirty
Helstrow burned for days. The barbarians were too busy celebrating to notice. A great carousing went on in whatever houses remained spared by the flames, an orgy of drinking and debauchery. Out in the streets, men of Skrae hung by their necks from every eave and standard, or lay stinking and bloody on the cobbles. Inside the houses, berserkers danced and reavers gambled for the spoils of war, while drunken thralls made sport in the elegant mansions, stealing what they could carry, smashing anything too big to be moved.
Of all that horde, one man stayed sober on the night of the victory-Morget, now called Mountainslayer, who never touched spirits. Nor did he exult or crow in victory. Instead he roamed the alleys and lanes of Helstrow, looking for something he could not find.
This place, this fortress city, belonged to him and his people now. As it should be. As it always should have been. Morget knew the story of this land, having heard it repeated by scolds since he was just a boy.
Once, Morget’s people and the people of Skrae had been cut from the same cloth. When they first arrived on this continent, fleeing from the decadence and bureaucracy of the Old Empire, they had all been warriors, every man among them as proud and fierce as Morget’s berserkers and reavers. They lived as nomadic hunters and raiders. Over time, though, the weaker among them banded together to form villages and holdfasts and eventually permanent cities. They built high walls to keep out those who were too strong and wild to live in any structure more permanent than a tent. Eventually the city people united against the nomads. A great war was fought, and the wanderers, the warriors, were too small in number to resist. They had been pushed back to the east, where they could not endanger the city folk. Eventually they were pushed right over the Whitewall Range. A wall higher than anything their cities could boast.
For two hundred years the clans of the East had been penned in, kept locked behind those mountains by the men of Skrae. Morget’s people had once been great warriors-soldiers, generals, slayers of elves and ogres. For far too long they’d been reduced to raiding the sheep of the hillfolk north of their steppes or at best picking away at the edges of Skilfing in the Northern Kingdoms. It kept them sharp, forcing them to keep their arms strong and their fighting skills honed. But it made them bitter as well because they knew their true destiny was to rule, to smash open every wall and plunder the treasures inside.
Now that destiny was coming to fruition. And yet…
Morget had believed it would make him happy to stand here, to walk these streets he’d conquered. He’d thought he would feel some kind of fulfillment now that his life’s grand task was under way. He would take the West back for the strong, for the righteous, for those who worshipped only Mother Death.
So why, then, did he wander aimlessly, feeling empty, feeling like he was still only part of what he should become?
For anyone else it would have been reckless to wander those ways alone. Morgain and her spearmaidens roamed the rooftops with bows. Their faces were all painted to resemble the visage of their goddess Death, and they acted as Her servants in the world that night, finishing off those few soldiers of Skrae who had not surrendered and who thought to hide in dark and small places. Time and again as Morget turned down a new street his thoughts were interrupted by the sudden twang of a bowstring and a desperate cry. His clanswomen were drunk on black mead, that most befuddling of brews, and Morget wondered if they even saw half the targets they fired at or if they chased as many phantoms as real enemies. More than once they drew on him, but he had only to stare upward, his red-painted face fixed in a scowl, and strings were eased, arrows unnocked.
He came at one point to the Halls of Justice, the last public building in the fortress-town untouched by fire. Inside he heard Hurlind the scold recounting the day’s battle, embellishing the tale with many a jest and pointed observation on the quality and quantity of Skrae’s collective manhood. Morget almost passed by, but as he glanced in toward the light and merriment, he saw something he could not ignore.
His father sat on a stone bench, surrounded by half-dressed barbarian women as drunk as he was. The masterless dog was curled up on Morg’s lap, kicking one leg in sleep. Berserkers had passed out on the marble floor in heaps. As the first to the gate, the first to storm the city and brave its defenders, these men had been given the honor of feasting with the Great Chieftain, yet none of them had managed to stay awake long enough to enjoy it. The fury they brought to battle was not without a price to be paid later, a torporous exhaustion that could last for days. Morget had been one of them once, and he understood, so as he stormed into the chamber of justice he did not trod on his brethren but stepped over their snoring bodies.