“We won’t need to shoot him if he isn’t agile. We can scatter coins and iron filings on him and watch him melt.”
Heris said, “There aren’t any coins. The dwarves took those. Unless you have some in your pocket.”
“A few pennies. I’ll ask Anna and the kids. They’ll have a few in their shoes or up their sleeves.”
* * *
Hecht, Heris, Februaren, the Bastard, and the ascendant formed the advance party. Asgrimmur flapped around overhead, scouting. He was hard to understand when he shouted down. A half-dozen Old Ones followed at a distance.
The Trickster was not hard to find. He was a straight walk out through uncomfortable terrain, still where he had fallen, two miles from the Aelen Kofer town.
He was a disappointment. A once major Instrumentality had become a semitransparent blob pulsating slowly amongst the rocks and debris of the woodland floor. That blob inspired neither fear, nor awe, nor dread. Dirt and broken leaves covered it. It leaked. In the middle world it would have been the focus of a storm of insects.
Hecht said, “Let’s kill it and go.” He pointed his hand-held at a purple-brown kidney shape inside the blob.
Which began a feeble flow into the shadow under a rock overhang. Before Hecht fired, Februaren asked, “Why not try to make contact? We could have the cleverest god ever managing our dirty tricks for us.”
Asgrimmur waddled close. He tried biting the blob. Hecht suspected the ghosts he harbored wanted some vengeance of their own.
Heris said, “Or we can kill him and never have to watch our backs.”
She and Hecht fired their hand-helds. Hecht followed up with silver coins. Heris scattered iron filings from the smithy.
A divine psychic shriek followed, freighted with despair and disbelief, the death cry of an entity long convinced that its end was a mystic impossibility.
The blob began to liquefy and melt into the soil.
Heris observed, “I’d say this is anticlimactic.”
“But useful in the extreme.” Hecht nodded toward the posse of gods watching. “Look at them. Appalled. Crushed. The shiftiest one of all got rubbed out by a couple of middle-world mortals. Let’s hope they keep that in mind.”
Renfrow, Februaren, and Asgrimmur all made noises of indeterminate meaning. Renfrow added, “And the Gray Walker did nothing to keep that from happening.”
Asgrimmur croaked, “Patience ran out.”
In myth Ordnan had tolerated mischief, wickedness, and outright betrayal. In myth Lucke was supposed to bring on the fall of the Old Ones. His children would be great monsters on the plain of final combat, fighting against the Old Ones.
Hecht said, “This kind of changes all that, doesn’t it?”
Februaren said, “All that changed at al-Khazen.”
Renfrow said, “Or al-Khazen could have been the Twilight struggle beginning. The myths could just be an interpretation.”
Hecht did not want to hear that hypothesis.
The last of the liquefied Instrumentality sank into the earth.
Heris said, “Suggestions? Anyone? Let him be? Dig all this up and burn it? Scatter it? Mix in poison, like iron ore that will kill him if he tries to pull himself back together?”
Renfrow said, “How about all of the above? Heating this earth in a smelter with the iron ore.” He showed a thin smirk.
Heris eyed him suspiciously.
He said, “When you’ve been around as long as me it gets easy to infer plans from actions. You’ve been especially interested in the smithy.”
Februaren asked, “Where’s the egg? There ought to be a big one. Right?”
Heris said, “So Renfrow sees what I’ve been thinking. We’ll need every able body, though. Renfrow. One last time. Would anyone here try to help the Trickster get through this?”
“No.” But, then, “Not on the surface. Secretly, maybe. The motives of the Night…”
“Mysterious ways. Asgrimmur, flap back there and tell those folks what we’re going to do.”
The eagle gave a raptor shriek, clumsily took to the air.
Watching his short flight, Hecht said, “I think he likes the eagle shape.”
Februaren responded, “He’d better. He’ll be stuck in it if we don’t get out of here.”
Asgrimmur returned, settled heavily onto a boulder. He spoke slowly and carefully. “We do not have much time. The world is dying. What used to be … the distance is all fog and gray.” He flew away again.
“Isn’t that special news?” Heris said.
Februaren said, “Worth keeping in mind.”
Rattled, Renfrow asked, “You do have a plan for getting out, don’t you?”
Heris growled, “We would’ve been gone already if this asswipe hadn’t gotten loose.” She kicked the ground.
People and divinities brought tools and buckets. Heris took a shovel, turned over some earth, told them, “I need all the dirt that looks like it’s soaked with oil. Haul it back to the smithy.”
She filled two buckets and headed out.
* * *
Heris had paid attention when Khor-ben Jarneyn had waxed eloquent about dwarfish industrial techniques.
“The girl is like that,” Cloven Februaren grumbled. “Iron Eyes bored the socks off the rest of us. The more excited he got, the more boring he was. But Heris ate it up. You want to talk dirty to that girl, talk the metallurgy of the Night.”
“You’re in a fine mood, Double Great,” Heris said, breaking dirt up and feeding it to the smithy furnace, burning just warm enough to cook the moisture out and hot enough to kill anything living in the soil that the Trickster could use as a condensation point. That done, she increased the heat, created several hundred pounds of grossly impure glass. The liquid went into ceramic molds once used to cast ingots. It cooled. And at the center of one lay a glowing soul egg that looked like it contained living fire.
“Look at this, Piper! Am I a genius, or what?”
“When it comes to doing nasty unto the Night, you are the queen.”
Heris sweet-talked the one male god into showing off by demonstrating how far out into the harbor he could chuck the glass ingots. But the one containing the fiery egg she took to the tavern, where it went on display.
Asking Ferris Renfrow, Cloven Februaren, and Asgrimmur to be attentive to potential reservations and possible loopholes, Heris treated the Old Ones to a fresh round of oath bindings. She then told Hecht, “Finally! I can settle down and have a beer.” And, then, “If I get too drunk don’t any of you bastards take advantage of me.” Then she broached her own small keg of dark ale.
* * *
Piper Hecht had a hangover, his first ever. He did not enjoy it. Nor did the fact that so many others suffered equally improve his mood. Anna and the children had avoided the curse by going to bed before the celebration got rowdy.
“I didn’t do anything but take a few sips,” Hecht complained to Asgrimmur. He got no sympathy. The ascendant had been unable to do the kind of drinking he would have liked. Drinking had been a manly art in the culture of his youth.
Hecht had nursed one mug all evening, shaking his head at the Old Ones. They, like their original worshippers, thought a good time was to get stinking drunk and start a fight.
They had done some serious damage to the tavern.
Anna brought Hecht a breakfast of ham slices and cheese chunks. Both were old and smoked and required determined chewing. “Piper, tell Heris we really need to get out of here. The Instrumentalities are devouring everything. We’ll be down to nothing but beer tomorrow.”
Hecht grunted. He rubbed the heels of his hands against his temples. That did not help. “Are we out of bread?”
“Yes. And most of the ingredients for baking it. We have a little cured meat and hard cheese. Even the dried fruit is gone.”
Vali materialized. “I found some onions, Dad. Must be two hundred pounds.”
Onions sounded better than desiccated ham.