Glen Cook - Surrender to the will of the night

“Souls? It’s like Hell? Or Purgatory? Or Limbo?”

“Limbo, maybe. For the souls of gods. Instrumentalities have two souls. They bring one into our world with them. They leave the other one in the Night. It anchors them. I see those when we pass through.”

“Well, that sounds good.” Distracted. “It’s got eyes this time. It’s looking at us… Down!” She pulled the ascendant off his feet.

The toad-thing’s tongue struck where they had been an instant earlier. Heris wasted several seconds wondering how she had anticipated Kharoulke. Maybe repeated exposures during her transitions had left her sensitive. “Why am I wasting time brooding when that thing is about to…? You Aelen Kofer! Why aren’t you shooting?”

Asgrimmur tried to say something.

“Yeah. Never mind for now. Come on.” She grabbed his hand and yanked, proud that she had remembered which one was real. She headed for the nearest dwarfish ballista.

That, being of Aelen Kofer manufacture, was an amazing engine. Which had been assembled where it could not be brought to bear on the Windwalker. None of the crew admitted sharing a language with Heris.

Asgrimmur interrupted her rant, “They couldn’t put it together in a clear line of sight because the Instrumentality would get them with its tongue.”

Heris’s high excitement wilted. “All this for nothing? Did I outsmart myself again?”

“Again?”

“For the first time. What do I do now?”

“You go to the other machine, which is out of the toad’s range, and get it started. Once the Instrumentality is fixed on it these dwarves will move their engine up.”

“You follow dwarf gabble good enough to get all that?”

“I filled in based on context. But parts of me did speak the language when they were independent.”

“Got you. Hanging around with them probably helped, too. So. Here we go. Off to the other one. Carry on, boys. You’re doing a wonderful job.”

Jarneyn’s son, called Copper, had picked up some middle-world Firaldian from Heris, Asgrimmur, and the Ninth Unknown. Copper was in charge of the second and even bigger Aelen Kofer machine. Heris demanded, “Why haven’t you shot the damned thing yet?”

“We were directed not to engage until you were here to see the effect of each shot.”

Heris muttered something about beginning to understand the frustrations her brother often felt. “All right. Talk to me. What are you going to do, Copper? And how did you come by that name?”

His companions snickered. Heris did not miss the fact that they understood her question fine. Then recalled that when they cared to the Aelen Kofer commanded the mythic power to understand all languages. When they failed to understand they did so deliberately.

Copper said, “It’s a bad joke. I did something stupid a few hundred years ago.”

“All right. When I need to know I’ll ask Iron Eyes. What are you doing?”

In part, that was obvious. The dwarves were cranking the ballista so tight it shrieked in protest.

Copper said, “Velocity will be critical, first shot. That will be a missile we cobbled together while we were waiting.” By gesture he invited her closer to the engine, a bow type with long arms crafted of laminated horn from a beast that did not exist in the middle world.

Done cranking, the dwarves moved to their ammunition, carefully arranged on the flattest ground available. Heris counted eight shafts, each fourteen feet long. They ranged from three to six inches in diameter. The one selected was six inches thick and appeared to be made of ice in imitation of a fluted marble column. The head flared out to a foot wide, beginning three feet from the end. That head was hollowed back in a cone shape a foot and a half deep inside.

“That looks like ice,” Heris said.

“It is ice. Carefully frozen, then bound with strings of the sort used on the rainbow bridge. If there wasn’t an overcast you’d see the light do marvelous things.”

“How can ice hurt the Windwalker? He’s a winter god.”

“It won’t stay ice. Impact will turn the ice to water. Hot water. As one shaft splits into twenty thinner ones. The Instrumentality will have twenty jets of water shooting through him. The pain should break his concentration.”

The shaft was in place. The Aelen Kofer moved to where they could begin cranking as soon as the ballista discharged.

Copper said, “This was your idea. All we did was tinker. Which is what Aelen Kofer do. Get up on the king seat and give the old toad a poke in the eye.”

Heris allowed herself to be guided to a seat atop the engine, above and to the left of the butt of the ice shaft. Copper said, “You see two oak levers by your right hand. The nearest one is the safety capture. Push forward on that one first. When you want to loose you do the same with the farther lever. Do them in that order, left lever, right lever, or you’ll find yourself in big trouble.”

“Got it. Forward on the nearest lever, then shoot with the other one.” She rested her hand on the safety release. That lever was as long as an ax handle. She focused on the Instrumentality, whose own focus was entirely on her.

The god knew what was coming. It was poised to do something about it. Kharoulke was one hundred percent connected to the moment. Was one hundred percent outside the Realm of Night. This was a fight for existence. No other instant in the entire history of the Nine Worlds or Night mattered. This was the moment. Perhaps for Heris and the Instrumentality, both. And she felt the full weight of what will the Instrumentality retained. She should not do this wicked thing. She was Chosen…

Unexpected, sharp pain in her left buttock. She jumped, looked down. Copper winked. “You’re going to shoot, shoot, Son of Man. Left side, then right.”

Heris shoved levers. That hairy-ass runt would be sorry he had done that. She did not look at the Windwalker till the trigger lever slammed home.

The engine lurched violently as the tension in the great bow released. It slammed down again, jarring the air out of Heris’s lungs.

The god’s tongue leapt to meet the shaft of ice. For an instant psychic space filled with dark mockery. The god would brush the projectile aside. Then it would accumulate new Chosen.

The Aelen Kofer shaft had to conform to the physical laws of the middle world, in a part of that world where there was little magic left and the deity had squandered its share already.

The monster toad tongue did deflect the shaft. But that was moving too fast, carrying too much momentum, to be redirected much.

It hit just slightly off bull’s-eye. Otherwise, it performed as designed. It was, after all, an Aelen Kofer artifact.

Dwarves swarmed around the engine, getting it properly aimed again, spanned again, and loaded again. “This one is mostly salt,” Copper told her. “Khor-ben’s idea. I know not what muse moved him. Salt shouldn’t do much. On the other hand, there are iron knives inside the salt. They’ll start spinning when they release.”

Heris watched the shaft go into the tray.

Copper told her, “Left lever first, right lever second.”

“I remember.”

The engine did not buck as violently. The dwarves had seen no need for maximum velocity this time.

As the engine slammed back down Heris saw the other ballista ease into position. It got its first missile off an instant before she launched her third, a long wooden pole filled with thousands of little lead darts, each tipped with a barbed iron or silver head. The lead was expected to separate. The barbed heads were ever so slightly curved. They would not travel in a straight line as they kept creeping through divine flesh.

The wood peeled away while the shaft was in the air. The flechettes hit the Windwalker in a broad spray.