The Crippled God

reeled in the First Sword’s wake, as if his limbs were under siege. There was a harshness to the Trellan that had stood him well on the day of the slaughter, but now it floundered in the depthless well that was the emotional torrent of the Imass.
    To feel too deeply, oh, how the callous would mock this. Their regard, flat and gauging as a vulture’s upon a dying man. Something to amuse, but even trees will tremble to cold winds; are you so bereft, friend, that you dare not do the same?
    Onos T’oolan gives us his pain. He is unaware of the gift, yet gift it is. We obeyed the command of the First Sword, knowing nothing of his soul. We’d thought we had found in him a tyrant to beggar the Jaghut themselves. Instead, he was lost as we are .
    But if there be unseen witnesses to this moment, if there be callous ones among them, ah, what is it that you fear to reveal? There in that tear, that low sob? You smile in superiority, but what is the nature of this triumph of yours? I wish to know. Your self-made chains draped so tight about you are nothing to be proud of. Your inability to feel is not a virtue .
    And your smile has cracks .
    Ulag had played this game all his life, and now he did so again, in the ashes of Tellann, in the swirling mad river of the First Sword’s path. Imagining his invisible audience, a sea of blurred faces, a host of unknown thoughts behind the veil of their eyes.
    And he would speak to them, from time to time.
    I am the wolf that would die of loneliness if cast from the pack. And so, even when I am alone, I choose to believe otherwise .
    There was no true unity in the T’lan Imass, for we had surrendered the memories of our lives. Yet even then, I refused to be alone. Ah, I am a fool. My audience belongs to future’s judgement, and harsh it shall be, and when at last it speaks in that multitude of voices, I shall not be there to hear it .
    Can you be at ease with that, Ulag? Can you hear the dry laughter of the Trellan? The jeering of humans?
    But see how it bows you, even now. See how it batters you down .
    Against the future, Ulag, you are helpless as a babe lying on a rock. And the eagle’s shadow slides across the tear-filled eyes, the soft face. The babe falls silent, knowing danger is near. But, alas, it has not even learned to crawl. And Mother’s hands are long gone .
    For this fate, Onos T’oolan, we would all weep. If we could .
    Shield Anvil Stormy picked himself up off the ground, blinking water from his eyes and probing his split cheek. ‘All right,’ he said, spitting blood, ‘I suppose I deserved that. At least,’ and he glared at Gesler, ‘that’s what you’re going to tell me right now. It is, isn’t it? Tell me it is, or so help me, Ges, I’m going to rip your head right off and throw it in the nearest cesspit I find.’
    ‘I needed to get your attention,’ the Mortal Sword replied. ‘With you, subtle don’t work.’
    ‘How would you know? You ain’t tried it yet. Not once, in all the years I’ve been cursed by your company.’
    ‘Well,’ said Gesler, squinting at the mass of Che’Malle Furies thumping past, ‘turns out I got a solution for that. An end to your curse.’
    ‘You can’t run away! You can’t leave me here—’
    ‘No, it’s you I’m sending away, Stormy.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I’m the Mortal Sword. I can do things like that.’
    ‘Send me where?’
    ‘To her, to what’s left of her.’
    Stormy looked away, south across the empty, dismal plain. He spat again. ‘You really don’t like me much, do you?’
    ‘We have to find out, Stormy. Aye, I could go myself, but you’re the Shield Anvil. There will be the souls of friends, hanging around like a bad smell. Will you just leave the ghosts to wander, Stormy?’
    ‘What am I supposed to do with them?’
    ‘How should I know? Bless them, I suppose, or whatever it is you have to do.’
    Destriant Kalyth was riding back to where they’d dismounted. She was looking at each of them in turn, back and forth, frowning at the red welt and split cheek under Stormy’s left eye. She drew up her Ve’Gath mount. ‘Don’t you two ever just talk? Spirits below, men are all the same. What has happened?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Stormy replied. ‘I have to leave.’
    ‘Leave?’
    ‘It’s temporary,’ said Gesler, swinging himself back into the bone and scale saddle that was his mount’s back. ‘Like a mangy pup, he’ll show up again before too long.’
    ‘Where is he going?’ Kalyth