Wrath of a Mad God Read online

  As much as Magnus knew he must trust this Dasati renegade, deep within he harbored doubts. While they seemed to be serving roughly similar causes, they were not entirely after the same goals, and Magnus had no doubt that Martuch would put serving his own people’s needs ahead of the lives of the four humans from Midkemia.

  Now the other reason for Magnus’s discomfort entered the tiny garden. It was, if he was to believe what his father had told him, his grandfather, the legendary Macros the Black. But the man who stood before him was not human, but Dasati. Yet the 4 5

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  man had memories that could have only belonged to Macros, spoke flawless King’s Tongue, Tsurani, and Keshian, as well as any number of other languages from Midkemia and Kelewan, and in so many things demonstrated that he had the mind of a human from his home world. Yet the entire question of Macros’s presence on this world, in this form, raised questions that went far beyond troubling. Secretly, Magnus was frightened.

  Macros had been absent most of the time since Pug and the other arrived, and Pug and he had had only minutes at a time to speak. The tall Dasati nodded a greeting and came over to stand before Pug and Magnus. “May I sit?” he asked.

  Magnus nodded, moving over on the stone bench to make room for the Dasati magician.

  “Even after weeks, my mind is reeling,” said Pug. “I realize you have . . . changed, yet I can see . . . you are still you.”

  He studied the features of the Dasati sitting next to him. “I’ve been, by any reasonable measure, patient, I think you’ll agree.”

  He glanced at his two companions. “We understand from what we’ve pieced together that you are the leader of a group constantly in peril, and that you have many responsibilities. But you are here, now, so as we have this time, why don’t you tell us the complete story?”

  Nakor rose from his bench and walked over to sit down before Pug. “As much as I enjoy a good story, it would be useful if we heard only the truth this time, Macros.”

  Macros smiled. “Perhaps my most grievous sin was lying.

  At that time . . .” He looked away as if into a painful memory.

  He took a breath. “It was so many years ago, my friends. I was an arrogant man who refused to trust others enough to tell them the simple—or in some cases not-so-simple—truth and let them choose whether or not to do the right thing.

  “I manipulated people with lies, so that I could ensure . . .”

  He shook his head. “Another sin was vanity, I’ll confess. I was so certain back when . . . when I was young, when I was human.”

  He waved his hand in a general circle. “This experience has been humbling, Pug.” He looked at Magnus. “I’ve a grown grandson and I have missed every day of his life.”

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  “You have two,” said Magnus. “I have a younger brother.”

  “Caleb,” said Macros to Magnus. “I know.”

  Pug was still grappling with the fact of his alien existence, forcing his mind to accept what he could see with his own eyes.

  Once past that amazement, he was still left with another issue: that the man before him was Macros the Black, his wife’s father.

  As he had just openly admitted, he was a man who had used people as one might use tools, and shamelessly lied to gain advantage. He had put people in harm’s way without their consent, and had made choices for others that had resulted in pain, suffering, and death. As a result, trusting him was a difficult task. Then again, Pug had watched Macros die defending others against Maarg, the Demon King. It had been the highest act of sacrifice and almost certainly had saved Midkemia from horrors for which the Serpentwar would have been but a mild prelude.

  Maarg would have almost certainly destroyed the entire world given enough time.

  Macros spoke calmly. “The time for duplicity is over.” He looked at Magnus and reached out, his hand gently touching his face. “I’m younger than you, in this body,” he said with a bitter smile. “Despite being hundreds of years in memory, I’m but thirty years as the Dasati measure time.” He took his hand away from Magnus’s face. “Around the eyes, you resemble your mother.” Magnus nodded slightly. Macros’s gaze went from his grandson, to Nakor, then to Pug.

  “Start at the beginning,” said Pug.

  Macros laughed. “For this story, the beginning was my ending. As I told you, I died at the hands of Maarg, the Demon King.” He looked across the garden, and gazed into the distance, focused on memory. “When I died . . .” He closed his eyes. “It is difficult to remember, sometimes . . . the longer I live as a Dasati, the more . . . distant my human memories are, the feelings especially, Pug.” He looked at his grandson Magnus. “Forgive me, my boy, but whatever familial ties I should be feeling are absent.” He lowered his eyes. “I haven’t even asked about your mother, have I?”

  “Actually, you did,” said Magnus.

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  Macros nodded. “Then I fear my memory is fading very rapidly. Ironically, for a human who has lived the span of more than nine hundred years, it would seem that I am dying.”

  Pug’s shock could not have been more evident. “Dying?”

  “A disease, rare in the Dasati, but not unheard of; should anyone besides our group and our Attenders suspect, I would be killed out of hand for weakness. The human ailments of the elderly are alien to the Dasati. Should the eyes fail or the memory fade, the person so afflicted is killed without thought.”

  “Is there anything—” began Magnus.

  “No, nothing,” said Macros. “This culture is about death, not life. Narueen said there may be something the Bloodwitches could do in their enclave, but that’s a continent away and time is of critical importance.” He smiled. “Besides, if you’ve already died once, death is hardly something to fear, is it? And I’m interested to see what the gods have in store for me this time.” He winced slightly as he shifted his weight. “No, death is easy. It’s dying that’s the hard part.” He looked around. “Now, as I was saying, my memory seems to be fading, so I’ll tell you what you need to know and then we can see if we can serve a common cause.” Looking at Nakor, Macros said, “The gambler. The one who cheated me! Now I remember.”

  Nakor smiled. “I told you how when you revived from your ascension to godhood.”

  “Yes . . . You slipped me a cold deck of cards!” Macros looked amused at the memory. Then his eyes narrowed and he studied Nakor more closely for a moment. “You are more than you seem to be, my friend.” He hiked his thumb in the direction of Martuch’s home and said, “As is your young friend. He has something within his being that is dangerous, very dangerous.”

  “I know,” said Nakor. “I think Ralan Bek contains a tiny fragment of the Nameless One.”

  Macros pondered this and then said, “In my dealings with the gods and goddesses I have come to understand a little of both their abilities and their limitations. What do you know?”

  Nakor glanced at Pug.

  “We believe that the gods are natural beings, defined in 4 8

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  many ways by the form of human worship. If we believe the god of fire to be a warrior with torches, he becomes that,” Pug answered.

  “Just so,” said Macros. “Yet if another nation sees that being as a woman with flames for hair, then that is what the deity becomes.” He looked from face to face. “In ancient days, the Dasati had a god or goddess for almost every aspect of nature you can imagine. There were the obvious major gods: the god of fire, death, air, nature, and the rest of it—even a god and goddess of love or at least the fundamental male and female urge to create offspring. But there were also so many minor gods it would give a scholar a throbbing head just to catalogue them.

  “There was the goddess of the hearth, and the god of trees, and the god of water was served in turn by the god of the sea, and another god of rivers, a goddess of waves, and another for rain.

  There was
a god for travel, and another for builders, yet another for those who labored under the ground in mines. As I understand it, there were shrines at every street corner and along the roads, and votive offerings were placed upon them by a worship-ful populace who dutifully attended the prescribed public worships, festivals, and dedications.” He took a deep breath. “The Dasati were a race of believers who also had a sense of duty that would shame a Tsurani temple nun. They created a pantheon of thousands of gods and goddesses, and every one had their appointed day of celebration, even if that consisted only of laying a flower on an altar, or hoisting a drink in a tavern in the god’s name.

  “It is important to remember that these gods and goddesses were as real as any you’ve encountered in Midkemia, even if their realms were minute. They had a spark of the divine within them, even if their mandate was only to ensure lovely flowers in the field each spring.”

  Of Pug, he asked, “What have you learned about the Chaos Wars since we last met?”

  “Little. Tomas has a few more of Ashen-Shugar’s memories to draw upon, and I’ve found an odd volume or two of myth and legend. But little substantial.”

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  “Then listen,” said Macros. He looked directly at Nakor.

  “The truth.”

  Nakor nodded once, emphatically, but said nothing.

  Macros began. “Before humanity came to Midkemia there were ancient races, several of which you know about, such as the Valheru, rulers of that world and masters of the dragons and elves. But other races existed as well, their names and nature lost before the dawn of human memory.

  “There was a race of flyers who soared above the highest peaks, and a race of beings living below the ocean depths. Peaceful or warlike, we will never know, for they were destroyed by the Valheru.

  “But above all others rose two beings: Rathar, Lord of Order, and Mythar, Lord of Chaos. These were the two Blind Gods of the Beginning. The very fabric of the universe around them was their province, and Rathar weaved the threads of space and time into order, while Mythar tore them asunder, only to have Rathar reweave them, over and over.

  “Ages passed, Midkemia was a world in balance, the hub of that particular region of space and time, and all was well, more or less.”

  Nakor grinned. “If you were a being of incredible power.”

  “Yes, it was not a good time to be weak, for it was rule by might and no hint of justice or mercy existed,” responded Macros. “The Valheru were far more an expression of that epoch than they were evil; it can even be argued that good and evil were meaningless concepts during that time.

  “But something changed. The order of the universe shifted.

  More than anything I wished to know the reason for this shift, yet it is lost in time. A fundamental reordering of things took place—it’s impossible to say what the scale of time involved was, but to the races living on Midkemia at the time the result of that reordering seemed abrupt. Vast rifts in space and time appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and suddenly beings unknown on Midkemia entered the world: humanity, dwarves, giants, goblins, trolls, and others as well. And races that came but did not endure, as well.

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  “For years a war raged across the universe, and we mere humans . . .” He stopped and laughed softly. “You mere humans could only apprehend the tiniest part of it. What we know is legend, myth, and fable. Shreds of history may be enmeshed in them, but no one will really know the truth of it.”

  Nakor laughed. “For a man who can travel in time, you had a simple enough means to discover that truth.”

  Macros grinned. “You would think so, wouldn’t you? But the truth is I do not have the ability to travel in time, at least not in the fashion you’d imagine.” Looking at Pug, he said, “I remember when you and Tomas came to find me in the Garden, at the edge of the City Forever.”

  Pug remembered. It had been his first encounter with the Hall of Worlds.

  “Had I the ability to travel in time, I never would have permitted the trap sprung by the Pantathian Serpent Priests to fling us backward through time.”

  “Yet you instructed me how to accelerate its unfolding many times, until we reached a point at which time was meaningless,” observed Pug.

  “True, and while I lacked your talents in that regard, I also lacked the skills to manipulate time as the Pantathians had.”

  “In all our encounters with the Serpent Priests,” said Pug,

  “we found them clever, but hardly brilliant, dangerous in numbers, but never individually.” He mused for a moment, then added, “I never considered that the time trap was actually a spell of majestic complexity and required skills beyond their abilities. At least one of those priests was inspired.”

  “All things return to the Nameless One,” said Nakor. “As he has touched Leso Varen, he must have so done with a Pantathian high priest. There was your inspired genius.”

  Macros waved his hand. “Yes. Had they all had that level of talent, the war would have turned out very different, but other than that one savant, they were always a nuisance at most—”

  “Nuisance?” interrupted Pug. “Tens of thousands died over the course of two wars because of that nuisance.”

  “You mistake my meaning,” said Macros. “They created 5 1

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  chaos, but as Nakor observed, it was the Nameless One at the root of it all.”

  Macros stood and walked a pace, turned and said, “There is so much to tell, and it’s difficult to know where to begin.” He glanced from face to face. “Should a question occur to you, perhaps it were best if you leave off asking until I make this following point.” He waved his hand in the air, and a globe appeared, an illusion that Pug instantly recognized, for he had used such things to teach students at the Assembly on Kelewan, the Academy at Stardock, and upon Sorcerer’s Isle.

  “Consider this globe to be all that can exist,” said Macros.

  “Surrounded by the void, it represents all of what we comprehend.” He waved his hand and the globe was now banded with shades of grey, from a nearly black band at the bottom to an off-white one at the top. “Each layer represents a plane of reality, with the centermost one being our own . . . your own,” he corrected himself. “As you noticed on Kosridi, it’s a physical match for Midkemia, as this world is a match for Kelewan.”

  “Kelewan,” said Pug. “I had no inkling.”

  Macros nodded. “You sit within a garden that is roughly in the middle of the great hall in the Emperor’s palace in the Holy City of Kentosani, if I remember my Tsurani geography. There’s an affinity between physical creations that I do not pretend to understand—it can even be argued that there is but one physical expression and that the planes are overlays, spiritual realms that actually exist in the same space. It’s all very difficult and borders on the abstract debates ordinarily suitable only for students of natural philosophy. But I can appreciate your not recognizing Omadrabar being analogous to Kelewan, because this world has been occupied by the Dasati a great deal longer than Kelewan has been home to humanity.

  “Were you to rise up to a great height, you would find that while the seas would look familiar, far more of this world is covered by construction.” He paused. “Did you know that given the manner in which the Dasati farm, they’ve been forced to include gigantic farming enclaves within the cities, so they can feed the populace?”

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  Macros shrugged. “Enough digression. These levels or planes of reality have been stable for . . . well, I guess since the dawn of time and as you see them.” He waved his hand, and suddenly there appeared a distortion, as if someone had stuck a long needle through the sphere from the bottom, pushing a small part of each layer upward, until it intersected the layer above. “Then came something I can only call the Disturbance.”

  Pug glanced at his companions, but said nothing.

  Macros con
tinued. “Like the cause of the upheaval that brought humanity to Midkemia, we’ll never know the cause of the Disturbance.”

  Nakor grinned. “Are they the same?”

  Macros frowned like an annoyed schoolteacher. “If you find out, please let me know. This Disturbance is an . . . imbalance, a pressure upward from the lowest to the highest realm of reality. Just as the Dasati are attempting to manifest themselves into our . . . your realm, so are creatures from the third realm attempting to rise up into this one.”

  “You’re describing a cataclysm of unprecedented scope,”

  whispered Pug.

  Macros nodded. “Yes, my friend. The entire fabric of the universe is being rent apart, and we must stop it before it gets worse.”

  “How?” asked Magnus quietly.

  Macros sighed, a very human sound coming from a Dasati.

  “I have no real knowledge, just intuition, and even that is . . .

  not compelling.” He waved his hand and the conjured sphere vanished. “The Chaos Wars appear to have been an attempt at reordering the balances within the entirety of reality, from the highest to the lowest plane. We can only speculate on what occurred in the other realms of reality, but I suspect balance was restored, else the crisis we face would be even more catastrophic.

  We’ve had no evidence of any interaction between your native realm, the one I used to live in as well, and the one above it, the first heaven.”

  “Because the Nameless One is imprisoned?” suggested Nakor.

  “Most likely,” said Macros. “So, the chaos comes from the 5 3

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  lower realms. His Darkness, the Dark God of the Dasati, is so powerful in his supremacy that whatever incursions from below threatened this plane have almost certainly been dealt with.”

  “If I might ask a question?” inquired Magnus.

  “What?” asked his grandfather, barely hiding his impatience at the interruption.