Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,121

he told Ruwhere.

“The sword is part of Qash,” she replied. “And Qash is quite mad. Our people drove him mad a thousand years ago when they sacrificed a virgin to him.”

“Ah,” Fool Wolf said, “and since they are his descendants, they also require virgin sacrifices.”

“Yes, you see that do you? But their union was unnatural, evil. Qul always strained to be free and finally—after centuries, with my help—Qul managed to break away and take her daughters with her.”

“The virgins are Qul’s daughters?”

“The men who sent you here are the sons of Qash. It is from the daughters of Qul that they must have their sacrifices. I brought the daughters here, the ones who remain virgin, to keep them safe.”

“I can think of better ways to save a virgin,” Fool Wolf said. “The problem is in being virgin, yes? If only virgins are fit for sacrifice—”

The air suddenly crackled with force, and his sight opened as he was yanked beneath the lake. Ruwhere was a burning brand, the knot in the heartstrings of a god, and the god was all around them, a half-formed woman, naked, mutilated. Her gaze was all deranged fury.

Ruwhere’s calm exterior broke, and that rage rushed through her.

“Wait—”

“You’re like them,” Ruwhere said, in a low, flat tone. The reasonable old woman was nowhere in that voice. “They don’t kill them. They rape them, just as they taught Qash to rape Qul, just as they now must rape to keep their youth.”

“I didn’t understand that,” Fool Wolf said, backing away. “I was only joking. I wouldn’t…”

It’s too late, Chugaachik snarled. Qul has her.

“You have!” Ruwhere screamed. “The things you’ve done, I see them now, the things…” She choked off, and her eyes rolled back.

He did the only thing he could do. He tossed the grapevine ring so that it landed about Ruwhere’s neck. Her eyes went wide with shock as Qash entered her by his vein, seeking through to Qul. Mad or not, Qul understood the danger, and in an instant severed the conduit. But by then, Fool Wolf had lunged past the sorceress and taken grip on the sword.

He turned and found Ruwhere blazing with godforce and knew that if it weren’t for Chugaachik, he would already be dead. Gasping as his bones began to burn, he threw himself at her, plunging the weapon in deep just below her breastbone. Ruwhere hung on the blade, her eyes gradually calming.

“You’ve done it,” she gasped. “You monster. You don’t understand what…”

But she fell away, and the presence of Qul diminished and then fled from the sword.

“It was only a joke.” Fool Wolf sighed.

He tried to drop the blade, but his head seemed to fill with locusts and his legs began jerking without his permission.

And he knew Ruwhere had been right, and Qash was in him.

He’s trying to make you walk, Chugaachik said. She seemed weak, far away.

“I’m not walking,” he noticed.

Because I’m fighting him. He’s trying to drive me out.

Fool Wolf considered that for a moment. “Can he?”

No. But this is taxing, and I cannot help you like this.

“That’s interesting,” he said. “I wonder if you’re lying. If he might rid me of you, given time.”

He would have you then, always. Do you want that?

“I could drop the sword.”

Not if I’m gone. But you can drop it now. You should drop it now.

Fool Wolf looked at the weapon, considering, seeing possibilities. If Qash forced her out, and he managed to leave the valley, wouldn’t he be free? Qash was a god of place—he would stay. It might be a chance worth taking.

But he didn’t know enough yet.

“Let’s not be in a hurry about this,” Fool Wolf said. “I think I’ll go have a look at those virgins, first.”

Ruwhere hadn’t made any effort to hide her trail, and even without his senses heightened by Chugaachik Fool Wolf was a good tracker. Her path carried him higher up the steepening valley wall, through rattling stands of bamboo and graceful tree ferns, and finally to a series of broad terraces planted in crops that Fool Wolf didn’t recognize. A few men and women working in the fields gave him odd glances, but no one spoke to him.

Above the fields he came to the village, if it could be called that. Tents, lean-tos, and a few crude houses—all clearly recent—clustered thickly around an older, much more solid building, an enormous longhouse of cedar raised up on twelve thick stone pedestals. A lot of people were watching him now, but he didn’t see any