Steven Brust - Issola

Bugger. This was not precisely the right time to start feeling maudlin. But those were my thoughts as I moved toward destiny or whatever it was I moving toward. Destiny, a spot in a ballad, or a quick death, maybe, if the Jenoine noticed me, or if I slipped a little and fell into that.

As deaths go, that one wouldn’t be bad.

I mean, dying in pain has never been high on my list of desires. But, on the other hand, I’m not real fond of the death that comes on you out of nowhere, not even giving you time to realize that you’re going. When I had thought about it—and, my line of work, I had found my thoughts often straying toward that most morbid of all subjects—I had often felt that I wanted to go peacefully, while awake, not in pain, but aware that I was going—with time to say goodbye to life, so to speak, even if it were only to be a temporary goodbye until an awak­ening in the Paths or in a new incarnation. But then, I won­dered, what if I got that, and, in the event, proved craven? The last moments of life have always seemed to me to be a good time for a last mental balance sheet—a chance to say to yourself: Okay, how did I do? How terrible to arrive at that point rea­sonably happy, only to find that in your last extremity you lost your dignity with your life, and that your whole image of yourself was proved to be only a lie! Rather than that, I’d prefer to go in my sleep, which I’ve always dreaded; or even by the sudden hand of an assassin, as has seemed most likely for the past several years, or perhaps by a wrong step into amorphia.

Sorry to drag you along for all of this, but, as I say, those were my thoughts at that moment, and if I had to live through them, you have to as well. Deal with it.

Ummm ... would you be mad at me if, after all of this buildup, nothing much happens? Heh. Don’t worry about it. Stuff happens.

Distantly, in the back of my head, as it were, I was aware of Loiosh communicating with Rocza, who seemed to settle down a bit.

We were walking directly toward the Jenoine, but the Lords of Judgment weren’t—they were instead spreading out, as if to protect against a retreat. Myself, I was all in favor of permitting the Jenoine to retreat if they wanted to. But why did we have to be the group that moved toward them? Two answers popped into my head at once: first, we had the Great Weapons, and, second, I had no doubt that it was Sethra Lavode who was giving the orders.

There was even someone or something above the Jenoine at least, there seemed to be a hovering sort of darkness about fifty feet up that appeared thick enough either to contain some thing sentient, or perhaps even to be something sentient, though if it was it was nothing I wanted to get to know personally.

Aliera said, “Sethra, look.”

We all stopped and looked, and discovered that we were, in fact, not the only ones moving directly at the Jenoine: the dragon was, too.

“Well, that is hardly surprising,” said Sethra.

“Who is it?” asked Aliera.

“You don’t know?”

“No, should I?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, who—”

“Not now,” said Sethra. She frowned, and finally said, “Very well. Leave her alone, we’ll adjust.”

I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that, but it wasn’t my decision. There is a certain relief that goes with knowing that someone else is making the decisions. Maybe if I were to live two or three thousand years I might get to the point of liking that feeling. Watching Sethra, I got the impression that she was in psychic contact with someone or other, maybe with all the gods at once, so she could direct the battle. I don’t know.

The closer we got, the bigger they looked. And the scarier. They didn’t look so large out here as they had when surrounded by walls; but they were big, and so bloody alien. Their arms were awfully thick, and their hands looked capable of crushing a hu­man skull without too much work, and even from this distance their eyes seemed to glitter with intelligence, and with powers beyond my comprehension. I guess the problem was, I just had too much time to think about things. In my own line of work it was different—either it was an unexpected attack, in which case I was too busy to be scared until it was over, or, preferably, it was something I had planned out to begin with. This was just all wrong.

Sethra turned to us suddenly and said, “She did it.” I was about to ask who did what, but Aliera said, “The Necromancer?”

Sethra nodded.

“Good,” said Morrolan.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “They’re already here. What’s the point of—”

“She has blocked their passage out,” said Sethra. “They have no choice now but to fight.”

I looked out over the Sea of Amorphia, then looked away. “Good place for it,” I said.

“Yes, in some ways it is,” said Sethra. “In spite of the un­predictability of the results, if they fail to achieve their link, then they have an additional threat, with no compensating ad­vantage.”

I had been being ironic, but I didn’t explain that to her. At that point the Necromancer herself shimmered into existence a few feet away, walked over, and joined us, as if she were taking her constitutional. She nodded to Sethra and ig­nored the rest of us. Apparently she was the one being in ex­istence who was immune to Teldra’s powers.

We continued our stroll toward the Jenoine: Teldra, me, Aliera, Morrolan, Sethra, the Demon Goddess, and the Necro­mancer. We kept getting closer, and they still didn’t act, though now I could hear them jabbering away in their own language, probably deciding which of them got to eat which parts of which of us. There was no indication that they were worried.

“Dammit, Loiosh. I wish they wouldn’t just stand there, waiting. I wish they’d do something.”

“Sure, Boss. What would you like them to do?”

“Well, jumping in the Sea would be nice.”

“Heh.”

“Or they could even surrender to us. That would be fine.”

I probably shouldn’t have said anything, because it was right about then that they went into action. Well, okay, it probably had more to do with the Necromancer, and even more with the fact that we were barely twenty feet away from them, but it seemed that way.

The way things had developed, there’s no way I should have been caught by surprise, but I guess that’s one of the problems with surrendering the initiative—they moved very fast, and for a second I froze—Spellbreaker flopped there, swinging back and forth a little. From their position, facing out in all four directions, they moved suddenly, and as if they’d trained for the maneuver for years. They seemed to grow larger, and one of them reached out for us, as if to grab and crush us, though more likely he was going to—

“Vlad!” said Sethra sharply, and I started Spellbreaker swinging again.

“Left!” said Loiosh, and I moved to the left, though I’m not sure what I was avoiding. I bumped into Teldra and we both stumbled. Teldra kept her balance, but I ended up on one knee, automatically raising my hand so I could keep Spellbreaker spinning. Spellbreaker obligingly shortened itself—I felt it vibrating in my hand, looked at it, and saw the links become larger. When I looked back up, my view was blocked by Morrolan and I don’t know what happened, but Sethra was holding Iceflame up above her head, and there was lightning and flashing and all that sort of stuff going on somewhere in front of me—it was really shaping up into one of those big sorcerous battles they always talk about. What was I doing here?

I wasn’t even aware of how loud things had gotten until I saw Aliera shouting but realized I couldn’t hear her—not that it mattered, she was probably yelling some sort of Dragon war cry or something. She was also moving Pathfinder around in some sort of pattern—I wanted Pathfinder to be emitting flashes, sparks, lights, but whatever Aliera was doing with it didn’t show.