The Corpses of Dead Gods
O range sparks drifted into the sky from the bonfire.
Alton warmed his hands as did others, the glow flickering against their faces.
They’d had a brief snowstorm during the day, and while the snow hadn’t lasted, the cold remained.
Despite the weather, the encampment had enjoyed a fine Feast of Vendane with moose and venison and duck brought in by hunters.
Everyone ate well and those not on duty had indulged in ale.
Revelers brought out their instruments, and dancing and laughter lent a festive air to the encampment.
He had not lingered for the entertainment, however, for he knew it was hard on Estral whose music and voice had been stolen from her.
Bonfires before the breach in the D’Yer Wall and in other places along its length had become standard in order to dispose of blighted trees and junk wood left over from building, as much as to keep soldiers on guard duty warm and discourage incursions from Blackveil.
Upon his arrival to the wall, Alton had marveled at how all the cutting and building had transformed the encampments at the breach and Tower of the Heavens.
They were more like towns now, burgeoning with troops and buildings and the services a growing military presence required.
Each of the ten towers was once again staffed by a Green Rider and a squad of soldiers.
It pleased him enormously though he felt it well past time.
“You warm enough?” he asked Estral.
She nodded and smiled, and gestured to him.
“Yes, I am fine,” he replied. “A trifle tight in the belt, though, after that feast.” She’d worried about him and his healing injuries the whole journey down, and every day since, and while his return had drained him of energy and caused him some pain, he’d grown stronger each day.
He wasn’t by any means ready to chop down trees or help with the building, but he could go about his day without needing to drop where he stood for a nap.
To Estral’s other side was his little brother, Marc, who banged sticks together and threw whatever he could find on the ground into the fire, and generally made a nuisance of himself.
Alton had protested the inclusion of his brother in the party that had ridden out to the wall with Captain Rennard.
His father had responded with, “He is a D’Yer.
He needs to learn about the wall and its significance now that he’s old enough to understand. ”
Almost twelve years old, Alton thought, scowling. Old enough to want to be part of what all the adults were doing, yet young enough to mess with sticks and miss his mother. If their father had had any concerns about sending both his heirs to the wall, he hadn’t shown it.
To Alton’s right, Rennard was in conversation with Lieutenant Fyrth. The fire cast shadows beneath the lieutenant’s eyes.
“Yes, sir,” Fyrth said. “It’s looking good. Gate and walkway and everything.”
Ah, Alton thought. They were talking about the palisade, another big change.
“—a couple more weeks before move in,” Fyrth continued. He scratched beneath his collar and sweat dripped down his temple.
Maybe he oughtn’t stand so close to the fire, Alton thought.
“It is fortunate we just happen to have D’Yerian stone masons on hand,” Rennard said with a chuckle. “We’ll have an entire castle before long.”
The plan was to turn the palisade into a stone-walled keep. Even as the wooden structures were being completed, the masons were beginning work on the keep.
Fyrth nodded, vigorously scratching his neck.
“Something wrong, Lieutenant?” Rennard asked. “Poison ivy?”
“They think it’s too hot.”
“Who?” Rennard asked.
Clack-clack-clack came Marc banging his sticks together.
“Will you quit?” Alton snapped.
Marc paused and pouted. “They keep singing.”
“Who?” The musicians over by the dining hall had taken a break.
“What are you talking about?” Rennard asked Fyrth.
Fyrth winced. “They want to be free. Too hot.” He tore at his collar popping buttons to get at whatever it was that irritated him.
“Why are they always singing?” Marc demanded. He started banging his sticks together again.
Before Alton could rebuke him, Estral tugged on his sleeve and gave him a significant look. At first he didn’t understand, but then he recognized a familiar rhythm.
“Marc—” he began.
“What the hells?” Rennard cried.
Alton tore his gaze from Marc and turned it back to Rennard and Fyrth. The fire cast fluid light on Fyrth’s bare neck. A black pustule, about the size of an egg, twitched, the skin around it blanched and bloodless, and torn by incessant scratching. Black, bulging veins fed the pustule.
“Nythlings!” Alton screamed.
Even as Rennard drew his sword, Fyrth wavered on his feet and vomited black bile and blood down his front.
The pustule erupted with yellow pus, and two black reptilian creatures shook free of their fluid sacs and clawed their way out of his neck.
They extended membranous wings that glistened with mucus and blood in the firelight.
Rennard drove his sword into Fyrth’s chest, a mercy and necessity if there were other eggs embedded in his flesh. The lieutenant collapsed to the ground and the creatures sank their jaws into his corpse to feed.
“Kill them!” Alton cried, fumbling after his own sword.
Rennard hacked one in half where it sat on Fyrth, his blade sinking into the dead man’s chest. The second creature hissed and lifted off, flying over the heads of those around the fire. People shouted and waved swords in the air trying to reach it.
Where were the damn cats when you needed them? Alton wondered, and he had a swift vision of Mister Whiskers stretched out in front of the hearth in Tower of the Heavens, sleeping soundly with his paws in the air.
The nythling dove and fluttered, snapping its toothy jaw.
Alton kept Estral close so he could protect her.
The creature was small but quick and vicious.
Thanks to reports brought back from the Blackveil expedition, he had known immediately what the growth on Fyrth’s neck had been, and the danger a nythling posed.
A soldier screamed when the thing clamped on to his wrist. He attempted to shake it free.
When it came loose, it was with a hunk of flesh in its mouth which it gobbled down.
Then it was off again, swerving and zipping around the frenzied humans.
Someone managed to hit it with the flat of his sword, but it was only a glancing blow. Then it dove for his brother.
“Marc!” Alton yelled.
He was in mid-leap to reach his brother when Marc simply swung one of the sticks he’d been playing with and whacked the nythling right into the fire. The creature shrieked, but the flames consumed it, its wings coiling into themselves in the heat.
Alton laughed half-hysterically. “Well done!”
Marc shrugged and went back to banging his sticks together.
“Poor Fyrth,” Rennard said, looking down at the remains of his lieutenant. “I suppose we ought to inspect everyone to see if they’ve got any of these things growing on them.”
“Agreed,” Alton said. “We should cremate the lieutenant to ensure there are no more nythlings nesting in him.”
Orders were given for a proper pyre to be erected, and personnel lined up at the dining hall in shifts to be checked over by menders. Alton did his best to calm worries and made sure his brother stayed in line.
“I don’t have any of those things in me,” Marc complained.
“Doesn’t matter. Everyone’s getting checked, including me.”
He was glad to see Rennard also working to keep everyone calm and orderly. When Estral emerged from the curtained area the menders had set up, she gave him a big grin indicating all was well with her.
Thank the gods, he thought.
With her hands she asked how he was doing.
“I am fine,” he replied, and he was surprised to find that it was true.
He had come through the episode with the nythlings just fine and felt much like his old self, more than he had since his wounding.
“Those nythlings were exactly as described by the reports, though no one seems to have noticed Lieutenant Fyrth acting oddly. One person said he had looked unwell, like he was catching cold, but that’s all. ”
Poor man, she gestured.
“Yes.” They’d checked his corpse, as well, but there had been no other pustules on him.
The pyre would ensure it and be a respectful send off, but it was a sad end to their holiday celebration.
He pulled Estral aside and said, “Marc...He must be hearing the voices of the wall. The rhythm he was banging out...”
Estral nodded in agreement.
“Hearing voices like that,” Alton continued, “drove my cousin Pendric insane.”
What will you do? she asked with her hands.
“I want to see if the tower will let him in and connect with the spirits in the wall.”
“My lord?”
Alton turned to find Corporal Manning approaching. “Yes, Corporal?”
“Sir...” Her expression was odd, her eyes large, and her hesitation unusual.
“What is it? More nythlings?”
“No, sir, but you need to come take a look.”
“Corporal—”
“Please,” she said.
He and Estral followed her outside. A cluster of soldiers gazed at the sky. The stars shone piercingly bright now that the clouds had moved out.
“What is it you wanted to show me, Corporal?”
She pointed at the sky. He and Estral looked up, and after a moment, Estral gasped.
“What is it?” he said. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
Estral cleared her throat, forced herself to speak in a hoarse whisper. “New constellation. Just above the Sword of Sevelon.”
“What? How is that possible?” When he looked, however, he could see it. “How? How do we get a new constellation?”
“Very old lore,” Estral whispered, “the kind that the first moon priests removed from the Book of the Moon as heretical. It’s said a new constellation will form when a god dies.”
“But gods can’t die.”
Estral shrugged. “Those old moon priests didn’t think so either, or they didn’t want anyone to know it was possible.”
“Kind of looks like a horse to me,” Corporal Manning said.
“Or a dog,” Alton murmured. Whatever it was, he saw the new constellation, heard Estral’s words, but could not grasp that it was actually there before his very eyes. “What does it mean when a god dies?”
Estral shook her head, indicating she did not know.
He grew up attending chapel out of duty more than faith.
He didn’t think much about the gods on the whole, and had been indifferent at times as to whether or not they existed.
If they did, and if the old lore was correct, that meant there was imbalance in the heavens, for the gods supposedly provided humankind with a sort of equilibrium—sun and moon, feast and famine, birth and death.
What would imbalance among the gods mean for the world?
To his mind the bigger question was, what could cause a god to die?
“If a god has passed,” Estral whispered faintly, “it is a transition, or rather a transformation of great beauty.”
Alton took in all the sky he could. It was staggeringly beautiful, gems set on midnight blue velvet. How many millions were beyond his sight? Despite the beauty, he could only think that the heavens were littered with the corpses of dead gods.