Matthew P Gilbert [Gilbert - War God’s Will

Dead Gods Due

Mad Gods Muse

You are reading: War Gods Will

Prologue

One Millennium Past

N aritas could barely suppress a gleeful cackle as he regarded the dark, thin face before him. Amin al Asad, you are such a gift to us! You must do it yourself, he insisted.

Al Asad glared back with dark, rage-filled eyes, and took the wicked, rune-carved blade. His long, dark fingers pushed Naritas's lighter, frail digits from the weapons grip. I follow through on my plans, whatever the cost, weakling. He snatched the dagger from Naritas with a sneer, not bothering to hide his contempt. Just as my men did.

Al Asads smoldering gaze lingered a moment before he turned away. His jaw bulged as he clenched his teeth and raised the point of the blade to his eye.

Yes, Naritas hissed, barely able to hide his elation. This is how the magic works. He spoke confidently, but in truth, he was anything but certain. What he had in mind, many would call madness. No one had ever attempted anything so bold. Men were not meant to tread in such places.

Naritas allowed himself a quick glance at the huge stone font in the center of the room. Ten feet across and three deep, it brimmed with dark liquid. Near one edge of the font, a golden lions head protruded from the surface, the only visible portion of a statue submerged there. Mere hours before, a measure of that liquid had run through the veins of al Asads warrior priests. Each had walked proudly, even arrogantly, to the sacrificial font, placed his neck over the collection trough, and slit his own throat with inhuman resolve. Oh, I suppose the poor sods we used to round out the volume resisted well enough, but then they werent part of the ritual. They were just material. Disposing of the corpses had been thirsty work, indeed, but there were always students who needed to work off their tuition, and as far as Naritas was concerned, the more unpleasant the work they were assigned, the better.

The font was as great an abomination as Naritas could conceive and create. Abomination was the heart of the ritual. It would draw him. It would call to his nature, and lure him into the trap.

Naritas turned back to al Asad and watched him intently. We will see if you share your mens resolve, al Asad.

There were scholars in Torium who studied the depths of the mind, learned men who would have argued that it was not possible for human beings to do such things, that their own minds would rebel against such self-destruction, no matter their motivation, but al Asad and his men were apparently something more than mere humans. They were unique, and unique was another word for power to one who understood the true workings of the universe. One such as I.

Naritas knew he could not allow his giddiness to show, but it threatened to burst from him all the same. I stand on the brink of greatness, and I owe it all to petty politics!

Al Asad had come to them months ago, outcast and full of grief and rage. Snakes had put fangs into the boy king Alexander, whispering venom in his ear, poisoning him against his teacher. Fools hungry for power, with no concept of how a fighting man would respond to their pathetic games. Such mistakes are often lethal.

They certainly would be if Al Asad had his way. He wanted a weapon, and Naritas, the Master of Torium, had many ideas for such things. One, in fact, was so audacious that he had never spoken of it to another soul, but he had written down his research, his mad experiments, his good results with demons and other unnatural entities, and his plan to move forward to a full test.

Of course, that had required enlisting some allies. His underlings were happy to assist, though they knew only pieces of what was truly at stake. After all, the University at Torium was a place of knowledge and learning. If it was also a place of madness, where blasphemous ideas were entertained with cold reason, where men truly struggled to learn secrets they were never meant to know, was that a sin, really?

It is the very definition of progress.

* * *

Tasinal and his brethren soared over Torium like eagles searching for prey, their shadows flitting and warping over the ground beneath, dark reflections in a convoluted, twisted mirror. With equal measures of excitement and fear, he watched Amrath drop from the sky like a stone toward the ziggurats below, and, along with the rest of the Council of Twelve, Tasinal followed. The coming battle would be hard fought, much more real than the trivial handling of Aristademos and his men. Naritas and his students had much knowledge of true magic, and were firmly ensconced in the most powerful defensive structure of the civilized world.

The 'university' had never been penetrated, partially because of its claims of neutrality, but more so because it was indeed a fortress, one designed by magi with an intricate understanding of physical forces. The entire compound was surrounded by a high, sloped wall made of some sort of odd sedimentary stone quarried from nearby deposits, a light, airy material that was impervious to catapult or ballista fire. It did not shatter or puncture like ordinary stone or brick, but simply swallowed projectiles whole, absorbing and redirecting the energy away to nothing.

Further within lay a great central pyramid that towered over the landscape, the university where the magi, claiming to be scholars and educators of men, carried out their black magic. Between the wall and central structure was a great moat, and beyond, more, smaller, flat-topped pyramids encircled the city just inside the wall, watchtowers with overlapping fields of fire to mass archers, siege weapons, or other, more arcane engines of destruction.