The Tyranny of the Night

39. A Living Brother, a Loving Death

Svavar understood what had to be done. That was as plain as anything he ever knew. He and Grim would shake the Old Ones' control no other way. He gathered Arlensul's spear, forged by the Instrumentalities themselves. It felt remarkably light and agile in his hand.

It struck like an adder's tongue dart, entering Grim's back easily as a dagger into soft cheese. He felt his brother's heartbeat, relayed down the haunted shaft. He screamed as Grim's life flooded otherworldly metal and wood.

He screamed again when the rage and madness of the Gray Walker followed. The pain was beyond imagination. But it lasted only an instant. Then the One was away, sprinting for the dark mandala but missing it and continuing onward in a large, blind arc.

Dead men tripping over dead men continued to pour out of the mandala, driven by Arlensul's sisters. They spread out across the slope.

He had done Arlensul's will. He was supposed to fall on the spear himself, now, he supposed. But that was not going to happen. A fragment of the One had infected him through the Chooser's blade.

The adder's tongue flicked.

Arlensul was surprised. This did not fit her plan. Svavar was surprised himself as a part of the Chooser reached him through the spear.

He screamed some. The pain seemed to go on and on and on but in reality lasted only seconds. Then came a flood of emotion as the warrior Gedanke staggered out of the dark mandala, harried by Arlensul's sisters.

The foulest blow, Arlensul ceased to exist while straining toward her dead lover.

Not even the Instrumentalities of the Night are true immortals. And that, Svavar realized vaguely, was the cause of all his despair.

Stupid, enfeebled gods far from events had heard a snatch of an echo running through the canyons of time and, in their dread of marginalization and extinction, had latched onto that one remote moment as the key to their continued existence.

How could he know these things?

Arlensul’s spear leapt in his hands. Her sister Sprenghul shrieked in mortal agony. The Great Sky Fortress was bereft of another sustaining Instrumentality. Svavar felt power and knowledge flood him. That spear was something from darkest legend, a Harvester of Souls. Each Instrumentality it devoured made it easier for him to draw power and knowledge from the next.

Svavar smiled weakly. They had guessed wrong. All of them. Their Godslayer was right here among them, the tool chosen to destroy their expected assassin.

There was a mythic irony here. Or, perhaps, Instrumentalities of a higher plane were dabbling. The gods of the gods might be at play.

Svavar turned on the last of the Choosers, Fastthal, still driving Heroes into the world. Her father jogged past. The Heroes milled. Some drifted toward the soldiers Svavar sensed watching from cover not far away. Some meandered along the foot of the wall. Some climbed.

Fastthal shrieked in rage and fled into the dark mandala. Svavar had no trouble seeing through that, now. He saw the rest of the Old Ones, in all their dreaded forms. They were as confused as the Heroes, and frightened besides. They did not know what to do, now.

In the end they chose withdrawal. They closed the dark mandala, isolating themselves from their monstrous regiment of dead and mutilated killers. Svavar could not stop them, nor could he get through to punish them.

He noted that his brother, Grimur Grimmsson, had died as he had expected throughout his life, far from home and to little point, not even in real despair. He had lived as he believed he should. Strong and predatory.

The tale was told at last. Asgrimmur Grimmsson could lie down and abandon his burdens.

Svavar planted the butt of Arlensul's spear in the snow. This

should be almost painless.

He tried. He could not do it. Not because he was a coward, though. The spear refused to accept him. The power and knowledge he had absorbed from the Choosers and the All Father, before he got away, would not let him. Nor did the Asgrimmur Grimmsson core of him really want to do it There was work to be done, still. There were debts not yet paid.

Svavar was slow but he got there. Asgrimmur Grimmsson was dead. What stood in his boots now was an ascending Instrumentality. He could not slay himself even had he that will. Someone had to do that for him, now.

His universe filled with thunder and lightning, sulfurous stench and yet more incredible pain, first exploding in his left shoulder, then at a dozen points elsewhere in his body.