Ashhur stroked his hair with his massive hand, tracing the lumps on his distended brow. Warmth began to spread through Patrick’s body.
“You are no monster,” Ashhur said. “You are the most perfect of my children.”
Patrick sniveled and clutched tight to his deity’s robe.
“No one else in Paradise has been given so many obstacles as you, my child. And yet you have embraced each one, turning it into a source of strength. You are all I could have ever asked for, and more.”
“But I have killed,” Patrick said, staring up at that tired yet smiling face. “Many, in fact. And I think I…enjoyed it. I think that might be why Nessa died. It was a punishment. My punishment.”
Ashhur shook his head. “Nonsense. It was in no way your punishment. I can see into you, my child. You enjoy killing no more than you enjoy poking yourself with a needle.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because I feel your guilt. It consumes you. One who revels in the destruction of others does not feel remorse after the fact. Do not confuse the rush of battle with pleasure in violence. One is a survival instinct all humans possess; the other is the seed of evil.”
“And what of a man who poisons his own child while he is still in the womb? Is that a seed of evil?”
“It can be,” said Ashhur with a sigh. “In the case of your father…it was not. Your father’s failing is one of pride and ignorance. He is a cowardly, jealous creature…though that is no excuse for what he attempted to do to you.”
“Yet you forgave him.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Because he was sorry. Truly sorry.” The god shook his head. “And he longs for my approval just as much as anyone. If Paradise survives the coming onslaught, he may come to be my biggest failure.”
Patrick chuckled as he wiped away his tears. “Wouldn’t that be my mother’s failure? She was the one who made him, after all.”
At those words, Ashhur grimaced.
“I feel your mother has had other, far greater failures.”
“What would those be?”
“Not now, my child. I will explain after I do what must be done.”
“Which is?”
The deity gently lifted Patrick off his lap, placing him down on his feet beside him. Ashhur then rose to his full height and leaned over the low partition. Patrick did the same, and when he saw a gathering of massive grayhorns foraging on the grasses beyond the lower outer wall, his heart nearly stopped in surprise. There had to be at least a thousand of them down there, perhaps the entire population in Dezrel. It was then he realized that their hornlike calls had ceased.
“So many…they’re silent,” he said. “Why?”
“They are connected with the land. They know what is to come.”
“Which is?”
Ashhur offered him a sad smile, then knelt down and held his hands out before him, hovering over the wall. He closed his eyes, though Patrick could see their glow intensify beneath the lids.
“From the flesh you gain sustenance,” whispered Ashhur, “and like the plants, from the soil you grow.”
Patrick had heard these lines before, and he made a dash for the walkway that connected the two walls, stumbling on his uneven legs until he crashed into the outer parapet. Wedging his shoulders into one of the notches, he wiggled until he could look down. It had started by then.
He looked on in awe as the grass field outside the walls shriveled and died, watched as the leaves and needles fell from the trees in the nearby forest, the trunks shriveling into brown clumps. The giant bodies of at least a thousand grayhorns shifted as their stumpy rear legs grew, fingers sprouted from their three-toed front legs, their necks extended, their snouts widened, the horns on their noses extended, and the tusks wrapping around the front of their elongated snouts drew back, allowing them to open their mouths wide and scream, which they all did, seemingly at once.
By the time the transformation was finished, a wasteland as dead as the Tinderlands stretched a good mile in every direction. The newly altered grayhorns stood on their powerful two legs, rising upright to a height of twenty feet each. They formed a living wall in front of the one made of stone, standing still, their eyes locked on the horizon.
“By Karak’s hairy ballsack,” Patrick mumbled, his troubles momentarily scuttled to the back of his mind. He moved away from the outer wall, and when he turned, he noticed that Ashhur was slumped over the inner wall’s low barricade. “My Grace!” he shouted, running back up the walkway.
Ashhur groaned and collapsed when Patrick reached him.
“My Grace, why?” he asked. The deity’s skin was now so white it was nearly translucent, and it seemed to take him a great amount of effort to lift his arm and gather Patrick near.
“It was…necessary…” Ashhur said. “Protection, for my people.”
“No, it wasn’t. We need to train the people, wake them up! There are two hundred thousand people within these walls. More than enough to mount a defense of this land.”
Ashhur grabbed him by the front of his tunic, pulling him close and cutting off his words.
“No time,” the god said. He pointed over the short wall with his free hand. “They are here.”
The deity released Patrick, who whirled around and gazed over the now dead valley. To his horror, a black shadow was spreading over the distant hills, swallowing the land like a disease. Ashhur joined him, kneeling now, a bit of color returning to his cheeks.
“Oh shit,” Patrick said.
“Go,” his deity told him. “Ready my children. The hour of dying is upon us.”
CHAPTER 45
After so much time, so much marching, so much fighting, so many successes and a few setbacks and failures, they had finally arrived.
The army approached from the southeast, spreading out in waves from the Gods’ Road. Karak took the lead, guiding his forces through the wide expanse of grassland nestled between tree-covered hills. Velixar trotted beside his Lord, with Lord Commander Gregorian and the large Quellan, Captain Shen, on their flanks. Behind the foursome, the rest of the army spread out in a wall of steel, leather, and flesh that seemed to stretch for a mile.
They crested the hill, the sound of thousands of marching feet swallowing all else, and Mordeina finally came into view. Velixar gawked at the sight before him. A massive wall encircled what had once been a sprawling landscape of tents, crude huts, and the manse on the hill. A collective gasp rose from the soldiers, though when he turned his head to glance at Gregorian and Shen, he saw no awe in their eyes. It took an individual of might and faith not to look on that wall with fear or uncertainty-even wonder. In all of Dezrel, even Velixar had only seen one walled city: Port Lancaster, in the far south of Neldar. While that wall had taken many years to construct, this one seemed to have popped up overnight.
“Ashhur has been busy,” Velixar said.
“As I told you he would be,” his god replied.
“I never doubted your wisdom, my Lord. But there is a difference between being told something and seeing it with one’s own eyes.”
“You seem impressed.”
“I am. It is an impressive wall.”
Gregorian chuckled humorlessly. “It is still but a wall, and any wall can be brought down.”
Karak held up his hand, and the massive force came to an abrupt halt, almost in unison. The deity then looked down at Velixar and nodded, before striding toward the walled enclosure. Velixar signaled for Shen and Gregorian to stay put, then urged his horse onward, keeping stride with his god.
When they had put a good five hundred feet between themselves and the waiting force, Karak drew to a stop. They were three-quarters of a mile away from the settlement, yet the wall was still large enough to fill their peripheral vision. It was strange. The grass was brittle and dead beneath his horse’s hooves, and the forests on either side of the valley were filled with leafless trees, their empty branches jutting out like dried bones, snapping with the slightest breeze. Velixar looked toward the wall again and saw a tall figure standing atop it, facing them. Even from such a great distance he could see the twin glow of Ashhur’s yellow eyes, the fluttering of his white robe in the wind. Velixar’s gaze then wandered down, and he noticed giant forms standing before the wall, their color a gray so deep that they almost blended in with the stone.