The Warslayer(27)

Of war.

It took her several seconds of staring at a quite nicely painted battle with banners and a lot of foot soldiers with long spears before she realized what she was looking at. Bloodshed. Battles. Conflict. Strife. Peace-breaking, in fact. And all the figures were obviously Allimir, the folks who were allegedly so clueless about this sort of thing they'd got an Aussie schoolteacher to do their fighting for them.

"Belegir!"

He came running when she bellowed, looking frightened and out of breath, dropping the lead-rope and leaving the animals behind. She pointed accusingly at the wall with its pictures of battles.

"What is this? Is this you? You told me you and your mates were pacifists! Englor got all queasy at the thought of fudging a traffic ticket! You weren't even willing to bully me into sticking around to help you—and now this? Looks like you can stage a good and proper barney when you want to. God's teeth!"

Belegir stared at the wall, where several Allimir spearmen were engaged in graphic and bloody violation of one another's civil rights and personal space.

"But that was long ago," he said weakly. "We no longer—"

Glory turned on him with a low growl, clenching her fists. If this was getting in touch with her Inner Vixen, at the moment she welcomed it. She'd been frustrated, frightened, and guilty for too long. Now she wanted to break something.

"You—told—me—you—didn't—do—things—like—that—" she growled in a low husky feline rumble, leaning over until she was staring right into his eyes. "You said you didn't know how!"

"I said we had forgotten the arts of war," Belegir whimpered, tears welling up in his eyes. "And we have! Oh, please, Slayer, do not hit me! I beg you—"

Glory straightened up with a gasp, stepping back and raising her hands to her face. Her heart hammered. The line between being a bully and an action hero was a fine one, and she was afraid she'd just crossed it. "Sorry," she muttered, stepping back further. "I'm sorry. Belegir— Oh Lord, please don't cry. I'm sorry I scared you. Please. But you have to explain this. I don't understand." She closed her eyes, wishing the ground would open up and swallow her, or that Erchane were a proper Goddess-sort who could rise up and smite her dead. Was this what she'd come to? Beating up on someone she was dead sure wouldn't fight back?

"If you can do this, if you have pictures of this, why aren't you. . . ?"

"These walls show stories of long ago," the Allimir mage said in a low trembling voice. "Long before Cinnas, in the morning of the world, the Time of Legend. That the pictures are true is a secret only the mages know—the people who once came through these halls saw only something they knew could not be, a nightmare to frighten children, but we who are of the Temple know the truth. It is no myth. Once this was so, as real as the wind and the sky. In the long ago, the Allimir had conquered the world, enslaved the nations until they were no more, until there was nothing in all Erchanen but the Allimir. But War was like an old love that would not be set aside, and so, in our folly, we still courted her, turning at last upon our own people to set upon them in lieu of other foes. It was an age of madness. The Allimir would have been swept from Erchane's embrace forever, swept away like the snows of winter when spring once more rules the land.

"But Cinnas came to save us. Cinnas brought peace to the Allimir, may his name be revered forever."

Belegir hung his head, as though he had told her something so shameful she'd hate him forever.

Glory looked back at the painted walls. King Arthur and the Norman Conquest, Ivanhoe and the Wars of the Roses; the sort of endless hearts in armor brawls that had been a staple of cartoons and comic books—and syndicated TV series like TITAoVtS—ever since people had started telling each other stories. So ordinary, so inevitable, that they were kiddie fare where she came from, instead of the stuff of repressed nightmare.

"How?" she said at last.

"He banished War from Erchanen, chaining Her upon Elboroth-Haden of the Hilvorn, once called Grey Arlinn. In relief at their deliverance, his people believed She was gone forever, but when I began my studies in this very place, I realized that was not what Cinnas had said to the people when he descended the mountain. No magic—no ensorcelment—endures forever. Why should this of all the great magical workings of history have been different? Discovering those time-lost details became my obsession. I became distant, ungracious, even rude."

"Fancy that," Glory muttered under her breath.

"I taught myself disciplines that no mage had seen a use for in centuries. I mastered ciphers that had lain fallow since Cinnas' day. And I discovered that Cinnas' magics had indeed possessed a term. On the thousandth anniversary of her binding, the Warmother would go free of her chains unless—until—a hero bound her once again."