The War God's Wife

Prologue

It was quiet now.

The last of the shadow mages had finally fallen still, their bodies silently spilling their life-blood onto the open plain.  Above, five of the seven Moons wheeled in their heavenly orbit.  To the northwest, the sixth was beginning its dawn, the pale orb just barely peeking over the horizon.  In this empty grassland, you could see the stretch of stars and Moons for miles around. One of the more beautiful sights in Ultima, if you disregarded two dozen butchered mortals.  But I guess most would.  I was.

I drew in a steadying breath.  My Well, the center of all my energy that allowed me to cast my magic, was low.  Already, it was beginning to recover, but battling mages always required a great deal of energy and an arsenal of attack magic to overcome their defenses.  Of course, this was little issue for me, because I was the Second Tel'mak, paragon of honor and bravery, the one whom the mortals called the War God.  I had trained with every weapon imaginable since I could walk, had practiced battle magic since I had first accessed my Well, and had slaughtered mortals since before the first stubble of beard had appeared on my chin.  And now I wanted only quiet.

I always liked the quiet. It let me be calm, collected, at ease.  Wind whistled through the branches of the scare trees scattered about the prairie, and I closed my eyes as the air kissed my face, featherlight on my skin and hair.  It was so quiet, so serene now that it had the feeling of wafer-thin glass: so fragile the slightest disturbance might upset it.  I breathed deep, and the sereneness of the quiet instantly cracked at the sharp scent of iron.  With that scent, all the gruesome imagery and noise returned, badgering my ears and creating a light show of indistinct faces behind my eyelids.  I sighed sharply, my mood fouled.

"Have you finished over there, Brother?" I called. My brother glanced up, his eyes glinting like flint.

"Of course," he snorted, extracting his knife from a corpse. "Like you didn't already know that." I shrugged and pulled my sword out of my own corpse. The two of us quickly moved through the maze of death we had created, making sure each was lifeless. One moaned as I rolled him over, the movement jiggling the huge gash in his chest. I pulled him up off the ground, his blood rushing down like a river. His eyes fluttered open, grasping my existence for a moment.

And then I plunged my dagger into the top of his skull.

There was a flash of pain and panic in his eyes, and then they rolled back, dull and empty. I yanked my blade free, wiped it clean on his already blood-soaked robe, and dropped the corpse back to the dirt. My brother snorted again.

"Sloppy to miss one like that," he scolded. I shot him a dark glare, but his eyes twinkled with amusement to show how toothless he meant it. I decided to grunt instead of retort. I was still in a bad mood from the stench of iron stopping up my nose. My brother didn't say anything but merely leaned down to slash the throat of another survivor. The sound of panicked gurgling immediately rose, but it dwindled quickly as we moved on. Step by step, we waded through the sea of death until I stepped onto brown, brittle grass. My brother stretched, his lithe body rippling its muscles in response.

"Shall we treat ourselves to some good food?" he asked. "Perhaps to some easy company?" I raised my eyebrow at his obvious insinuation. On the one hand, the pleasure would be a welcome distraction, as would the hard liquor my brother would undoubtedly shower us with. On the other, though, . . . .  Too many memories flitted through my head, each one making my heart feel more and more sour.

"Not tonight," I replied. He shrugged, but I was too distracted by the noise in my ears and the scent in my nose to care about the blatant look of annoyance in his eyes. Faintly, I could hear the sound of crackling flame and knew it was the sound of him leaving. Now my head ached as the sound of pins-and-needles slowly crescendoed, buzzing even into the edges of my vision. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my palm against my ear, as if I could block out the accursed ghost that haunted my ears. Maybe I could die and be rid of this torture, a voice in me thought darkly.  I almost agreed with it.