overconfidence. “Do explain.”
“I talk to our couriers. I talk to merchants. I talk to refugees. I ask for reports from our agents in the republics because their ships visit all the ports of the Mother Sea.”
Hecht nodded. No point hurrying the man. Talab could get where he was going only along an engineered path.
“No matter where the reports originate, they always mention upswings in the activities of the Night. Not big stuff. Not yet. Just more sightings, more encounters, more malicious mischief getting more virulent.”
“Only the minor spirits remain unbound.”
“Unbound and unconstrained. But becoming more numerous. They’re running from the ice, too.”
“Which we expected. Right?”
“Yes, sir. But what hasn’t been considered is the fact that the things of the Night have always been more common along the edges of the ice, where societies are more primitive. Out there some of the big ones are still running loose. When the ice advances, and establishes itself permanently in places like the high mountains, all the wildest surviving free shades are pushed into tamer country.”
Hecht nodded. No one talked about it much — yet — but that was a logical and obvious development.
“That’s generally recognized. It’s started already.”
“Yes, sir, it has. What I don’t hear discussed is what that means for the Night.”
“Yes?” Talab might be headed where most people were afraid to go.
“When people get pressed together you get what we already have here in Brothe. Worse poverty. More violence that’s deadlier. More organized criminal activity. More racism and prejudice. All because you have more people trying to live off the same limited resources.
“The same thing happens with the things of the Night. Only they start to combine into stronger entities.
Not often willingly. They just keep getting bigger and stronger if they can devour their own kind. They get angrier, more hateful, and malicious. When they’re strong enough, and big enough, they turn into the Night things from old scary stories.”
“The ice will gift us with a new round of monster gods?”
“If it advances far enough. Possibly a crop as ugly as those who cursed the earth before modern religions hammered their deities into a more benign shape.”
The God of the Pramans, the Chaldareans, the Devedians, and the Dainshaukin enjoyed the same lineage. The Dainshaukin saw Him fierce and psychotic and disinclined to be a nurturer or giver of rewards. He was a punisher, the Punisher, the source of all misfortune, and would happily do you in because He did not like your haircut.
Devedians had a better deal. Their vision of the Almighty visited miseries only when they were earned.
He could be appeased without a human sacrifice.
“It isn’t something we can do much about. Except keep our heads down and hope … What?”
Titus Consent said, “You’re forgetting the soultaken.”
“I haven’t forgotten. They …” Hecht noted what had to be a warning glance from Talab to Consent, nearly invisible in its subtlety, reminding him that his staff had other loyalties.
The soultaken had been men from another age conscripted by their gods so they could open a pathway out of a northern sort of hell. The dead heroes preserved there could then storm forth and destroy what those gods feared most: the Godslayer. Someone who, by happenstance, had learned that even the greatest of the Instrumentalities of the Night could be rendered subject to the wrath of men.
Else Tage had slain a bogon, a baron of the Night, in Esther’s Wood in the Holy Lands, saving his war band from an attack initiated by a source he never identified. Later, he and the Devedians of Brothe destroyed one of the soultaken meant to silence him before knowledge he did not know he possessed became general.
The All-Father god of the pre-Chaldarean north himself perished trying to extinguish that knowledge.
Prophecy fulfilled.
Piper Hecht remained
“I talk to our couriers. I talk to merchants. I talk to refugees. I ask for reports from our agents in the republics because their ships visit all the ports of the Mother Sea.”
Hecht nodded. No point hurrying the man. Talab could get where he was going only along an engineered path.
“No matter where the reports originate, they always mention upswings in the activities of the Night. Not big stuff. Not yet. Just more sightings, more encounters, more malicious mischief getting more virulent.”
“Only the minor spirits remain unbound.”
“Unbound and unconstrained. But becoming more numerous. They’re running from the ice, too.”
“Which we expected. Right?”
“Yes, sir. But what hasn’t been considered is the fact that the things of the Night have always been more common along the edges of the ice, where societies are more primitive. Out there some of the big ones are still running loose. When the ice advances, and establishes itself permanently in places like the high mountains, all the wildest surviving free shades are pushed into tamer country.”
Hecht nodded. No one talked about it much — yet — but that was a logical and obvious development.
“That’s generally recognized. It’s started already.”
“Yes, sir, it has. What I don’t hear discussed is what that means for the Night.”
“Yes?” Talab might be headed where most people were afraid to go.
“When people get pressed together you get what we already have here in Brothe. Worse poverty. More violence that’s deadlier. More organized criminal activity. More racism and prejudice. All because you have more people trying to live off the same limited resources.
“The same thing happens with the things of the Night. Only they start to combine into stronger entities.
Not often willingly. They just keep getting bigger and stronger if they can devour their own kind. They get angrier, more hateful, and malicious. When they’re strong enough, and big enough, they turn into the Night things from old scary stories.”
“The ice will gift us with a new round of monster gods?”
“If it advances far enough. Possibly a crop as ugly as those who cursed the earth before modern religions hammered their deities into a more benign shape.”
The God of the Pramans, the Chaldareans, the Devedians, and the Dainshaukin enjoyed the same lineage. The Dainshaukin saw Him fierce and psychotic and disinclined to be a nurturer or giver of rewards. He was a punisher, the Punisher, the source of all misfortune, and would happily do you in because He did not like your haircut.
Devedians had a better deal. Their vision of the Almighty visited miseries only when they were earned.
He could be appeased without a human sacrifice.
“It isn’t something we can do much about. Except keep our heads down and hope … What?”
Titus Consent said, “You’re forgetting the soultaken.”
“I haven’t forgotten. They …” Hecht noted what had to be a warning glance from Talab to Consent, nearly invisible in its subtlety, reminding him that his staff had other loyalties.
The soultaken had been men from another age conscripted by their gods so they could open a pathway out of a northern sort of hell. The dead heroes preserved there could then storm forth and destroy what those gods feared most: the Godslayer. Someone who, by happenstance, had learned that even the greatest of the Instrumentalities of the Night could be rendered subject to the wrath of men.
Else Tage had slain a bogon, a baron of the Night, in Esther’s Wood in the Holy Lands, saving his war band from an attack initiated by a source he never identified. Later, he and the Devedians of Brothe destroyed one of the soultaken meant to silence him before knowledge he did not know he possessed became general.
The All-Father god of the pre-Chaldarean north himself perished trying to extinguish that knowledge.
Prophecy fulfilled.
Piper Hecht remained
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