“Please, do.” Jorim caressed her cheek. “We’d not have gotten even this far save that she fooled him.”

“But not for long enough, Wentoki.”

A young man materialized past Talrisaal. He was the child Nessagafel had been, now grown. He stood naked save for a black ring around his little finger. “You have been quite audacious, my son. I have not had time to fully assess the damage you’ve done. But it matters not, since I will unmake all of this. When I start over, I’ll bring you back and make a special Hell just for you.”

He raised one hand and Tsiwen twitched. Her eyes jerked open. She flew upright, limp as a puppet, her intestines tangling in her legs. With every finger Nessagafel flexed she danced-at times clumsy, others seductively, all the while her head lolling and jaw bouncing open.

“I told you I gave you compassion because I did not need it. I lied.” His other hand came up and Nirati appeared, hanging by invisible strings. “I gave it to you to cripple you.”

Bones cracked. Nessagafel doubled in size. He sprouted a second pair of arms and raised those hands as well, bringing Nauana and Anaeda Gryst into his dancing troupe. The ancient god laughed, his fingers flicking. The women capered through farcical dances, then dashed against the ground like discarded toys.

“That is it, isn’t it? You’re just a child.”

Nessagafel’s head came up. “This, from you? You clothe yourself in flesh and play among mortals. You are the child wishing he could fight alongside his toy soldiers. All you ever sought to do was imitate me, but you never could. You never allowed yourself to set compassion aside. You hoped it would make you superior when you clearly were not.”

“I’ll set it aside now.”

“You, fight me? Here? Now?” Nessagafel’s puppets disappeared. “You are a man. I am a god.”

“But you are limited.” Jorim stood. “By the ring. By your fear.”

Light flashed for a second, blinding him. When vision returned he found his companions arranged in a circle around the two of them. They watched horrified, hands pressed to an unseen barrier. He took heart in Tsiwen’s appearance-her entrails had been replaced. This gave Jorim hope.

Nessagafel leaped at him, all four arms wide, his fingers sprouting claws. He roared soundlessly, yet vibrations thrummed through Jorim’s chest. The murderous fires in his eyes flared, licking up over his forehead, and he descended.

Jorim pushed panic away and grasped the mai. The key to working magic had always been to find the truth of something. He gathered the magic and, clapping his hands, launched a sizzling sphere. Argent lighting wreathed the ball. It blasted into Nessagafel’s chest and exploded. The god flew back, slamming into the invisible wall. The lower pair of arms burst into flames and fell away.

The ancient god crouched at the circle’s edge. “You want to see what I truly am? Your mistake.”

For the tiniest part of a second, too small to measure, Nessagafel revealed his true nature. His physical form became transparent-nothing more than a vessel for his essence. Sounds echoed in colors, light dripped, textures sang. Emotions, hundreds of thousands of them, vibrated like plucked bowstrings, each a needle scraping over his consciousness. Nessagafel was the stuff of hopes and dreams and fears and hatreds, of love and lust and despair. Understanding even one strand of his being would take eternity, and yet uncounted strands coiled in him.

Then Jorim was down, his robe shredded, his chest bleeding.

Nessagafel, wearing the form of a Viruk, stood over him and raised a clawed hand. “All you need to understand of me, Wentoki, is that I am the one who has destroyed you.”

His hand fell.

TheNewWorld

4th day, Month of the Bat, Year of the Rat

First Year of the Restoration of the Imperial Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th Year since the Cataclysm

North Moriande

Free Nalenyr

A burst of magic exploded out from Anturasikun. It blasted Keles flat, washing him in invisible fire. The flames condensed, locking him in a transparent shell. He lay there, immobile, mocked by the smooth motion of the moons.

For a moment he considered giving up. It would have been so easy. Down, paralyzed, facing magical manifestations of Qiro’s fury, it seemed a fight he couldn’t win.

It seemed every bit as hopeless as the defense of Tsatol Pelyn.

Keles’ hands tightened into fists, dispelling the paralysis. It felt as if his flesh was cracking. He flexed muscles and worked joints, letting the shell fall away in bits. Rolling to his side, he came up on one knee and, for the first time, took heart.

Whatever had knocked him down had likewise staggered Qiro. His grandfather’s image had shrunk again to match his own. The brush had vanished, though two bridges stood complete and a third was rebuilding itself. Qiro clutched his head and muttered in his beard.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear. It’s all wrong.”

The land shuddered. The river’s narrowing stopped and began to reverse itself quickly. Shock waves rocked the city. The change came in fits and starts; a bit would move here, a bit there. The earth tore. Roads collapsed. Towers wavered.

“Stop, Grandfather!” Keles rose and vaulted the city’s north wall. “You’re destroying everything.”

Qiro looked up, horror on his face. “Oh no, Keles. I must make it all right. This is wrong. Is this what you’ve gotten up to?”

The ground shook again. Towers cracked. Keles reached out, steadying them with magic. In an eyeblink he read the structures and the forces working on them, reinforcing their strengths.

Yet even as he blunted his grandfather’s work there, Qiro set about other tasks. More of the bridges started to reconstruct themselves. Nelesquin’s troops were already pouring north. Tens of thousands still packed the streets, waiting to cross.

Keru fought at the Bear Bridge and Rekarafi with them. Nelesquin’s hordes came on, mindless and unmindful of the havoc the Viruk wrought. He fought using a spear and had scribed a circle around him in blood and flesh. Warriors clawed slippery bodies aside to engage him.

To the east, the Voraxani fought. Archers on rooftops volleyed arrows into the wildmen. Naleni troops and Desei conscripts manned hastily erected breastworks, stemming the spread of the wildmen, but columns threaded deeper through alleys and side streets. Other squads hunted them down, sparing no sector from combat.

Qiro had focused on the Gold River’s flooding. He raised a new bank, cutting off the outlet Cyron had opened. Keles magically forced the water back into the narrow river channel. A wall of water twelve feet high poured through Moriande, passing beneath the Dragon Bridge. It did not, however, spare the resurrected bridges. Caught in its fury, the Bear Bridge vanished instantly. Grey water splashed, gushing up onto the River Road, scattering troops and washing away Rekarafi’s gruesome monument. The wave swept wildmen and stones down, blasting through the Tiger Bridge. It likewise evaporated, then the whole boiling mass of stone and corpses melted the Wolf Bridge as if it were a construct of rotten wood and children’s dreams.

“Oh, no, Keles, look what you’ve done!” Qiro’s voice reflected the horror on his face. “I have to fix it all.”

Here and there, with no order or reason, Qiro made adjustments. A bridge started to rise. The riverbank retreated, then thrust forward again. Land folded in on itself, becoming pocket worlds from which odd creatures began to emerge. The land erupted in boils, and blood seeped to the surface. Qiro would see that and react to it, compounding the problems, warping the land well beyond even the time of wild magic.

Keles fought against panic. Everything his grandfather was doing was wrong. Keles constantly referred back to the land as it had been when he traveled with Ryn and that knowledge made it easier to repair the damage. But still he was just reacting to his grandfather’s increasingly bizarre efforts. Qiro had lost all pretense of sanity. However he was seeing the world, it wasn’t in a manner that allowed him to make things right again.