§091 Grand Melee

The Dark Lord called down to Mabundala from his tower, loud enough for the armed host to hear. "You say I deserve death for the change I wrought in the world. But I have only danced at the end of Fate's string."

— Elven Histories

For the first time in this life, Taylor felt like he needed a drink. It was hard to be angry when he understood the gods' position all too well. They had a civilization to save, and they could recycle souls whenever they felt like it. To them, a mortal death was a small thing because they knew what lay on the other side. What were the temporary lives of a few children compared to the fate of everyone else?

He understood it, but he didn't like it.

For whatever reason, they needed a soul from outside their own world. They had to put that soul into a human body, so it would have access to the class system, but they had to ensure the vessel grew up too isolated to feel a strong connection to the empire or the human race. They needed someone good enough at magic to perform their tasks, and rational enough not to take revenge for the ill treatment.

It felt ridiculously complicated compared to simply raising and training a few hundred children and taking the best ones. Somewhere in all that mess, Mallus was involved. Only an oracle, or a god of oracles, would come up with the idea of snatching one particular soul out of the universe to do their work for them.

"Do as you like," they said, knowing full well what his character would drive him to do under the circumstances they set. He was tempted to call the whole thing a trap, a maze, or a jail, but none of those metaphors applied because there weren't any walls. Nothing was forbidden to him.

If he wanted to disappear into his Other Place and abandon Aarden, he could. There was nothing stopping him. He could ignore the empire's failings and find a place in the Imperial Court of magicians. If he wanted to be a prince, he could sell himself as a husband and helpmate to the Princess of Dimmik.

But that wasn't who he was. He was the person who tried to fix things. Big things, like institutions and magic systems. He might wreck a lot of stuff along the way, but that was the price of change.

He didn't like that the gods knew how to play him so well. But neither did he want to be someone else, just to annoy the gods.

It made him poor company, for which he apologized to his companions. Fortunately, the battle had so worn Kasper out that he went to sleep early. In the quiet of their rented room, Taylor worked on his plans for the Uroda refinery, while Blake tied new flies for their next fishing trip along the river. An hour of quiet work did a lot to calm him.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Seven words from Blake were a soliloquy.

"I'm not sure there's anything to talk about." Taylor traced a long oval that would be his main lava channel, and penciled in branches for groups of oxides he wanted to separate from the molten silica. 

"Did you all know she was sick?"

Black cut a strand of thin wire with a quiet snip. "Yes."

"Did Otis know?"

"No."

Taylor worked for a while longer, until the frustration built up in him again.

"She knew, Blake. She knew I would be cursed, and she knew I might not live, but she took the chance anyway. And I think the worst thing is, she knew she would probably die. She was the only person in my life who would have understood what was happening to me, and she died. Didn't she leave a letter? Special instructions? Anything?"

"Otis burned it."

"Fucking Otis!" Taylor didn't swear often because it was unseemly in a child. But it felt like a good time to make an exception. "Every time I learn something about him, he gets worse! If there's one person in the world to go Dark Lord on, he's it!"

As upset as he was, the chance to vent did Taylor some good. He was asleep at a nearly reasonable hour.

That night, Taylor dreamed of Gelexia. She rested among old-growth trees with trunks wide enough to carve houses in. Dappled sunlight filtered in from the canopy far above, lighting her proud face. Her coat was fine, brushed copper, with black fur at the tips of her tail and ears.

"Drink," she said. There was room among the beastborn gods, for some of them had gone extinct. Ravenous, Taylor shouldered his way to an unoccupied breast and latched on to the toughened teat.

Godfire filled his mouth, yet he didn't burn. He swallowed and drank again, pulling at her for more. The godlings shuffled and cried, and Gelexis soothed them with licks of her tongue. Taylor drank his fill and let the mother of all beastkin groom him.

She nursed them and cleaned them for now, but when it was time, she would leave them on her own. Those who grew strong enough might survive.

The next day, Taylor was in the stands again, this time in the special area set aside for town leadership. They called their town executive a reeve, and their current one was a Tauran man who towered over Taylor. In spite of the size difference, Reeve Franck practically begged him to watch the event from the leadership box. 

"He'll go," Blake said, officially tipping his word count for the week into record territory. Blake staked out an area close to where Kasper waited for his bout, while Taylor followed the reeve.

He soon found himself among the leaders of Cazenac, some minor elven dignitaries, and the rabbitkin priestess from the priory. He pretended to be comfortable with them, listened more than he talked, and watched the fights. He abstained from alcohol, but was happy to accept a bag of fried locusts. They were crunchy, and the spices made his tongue tingle.

Day two of the Beaktin Battle Holiday featured grand melees. All combatants in a section entered one big circle, and the last able fighter inside was the winner. Taylor had to admit, it was the most exciting thing he had ever seen without having his own life threatened. Even the lowest tiers were fun to watch, as children made and broke alliances, dragged each other out of the ring, and chased their friends in circles until one or the other of them was too exhausted to run.

When it was Kasper's turn to melee with the older kids in his section, he stuck to the edges. When people came after him, he ran away until his pursuers went after other opponents. If someone wasn't paying attention to him, he attacked and threw them out of the ring, sometimes by an impressive distance. Near the end, an alliance of stronger fighters teamed up against him, but he goaded the stronger opponents into fighting each other instead, convincing them to break their alliance because he would be easy to finish off later. 

The crowd loved it. And when he threw the last, unfortunate victim from the ring, a boy nearly twice his size who was so tired he could barely resist, the entire arena was on its feet. Taylor was, too, clapping and roaring with the rest of them. Kasper waved once and ran to the stand where he leaped into Blake's arms.

Taylor couldn't hear them, but he could see their lips move.

"Did you see that?"

"Magnificent!"

Taylor's heart swelled so much, he thought it might burst.

The afternoon was a heady festival of street food, live music, and line dancing. Whole blocks of the waterfront were filled with beastkin dancing in sync, with varying degrees of skill. Nobody minded if Kasper was still learning the steps, or if Taylor turned right when he was supposed to go left. 

Gods, how he missed the calique of Tenobre! Their dances were different, but the feeling was the same. All they needed now was a garden full of teenagers making out, and he would feel right at home. But beastkin took those encounters far more seriously than the casual explorations of the calique. Beastkin tended to bond hard or not at all.

When they were tired, Taylor and Kasper joined Blake by the water, almost far enough away from the commotion to be quiet. Kasper sat between them, while all three ate fried foods and washed them down with a mildly bitter fruit drink native to Cazerac. The river sauntered past them, placid on the surface but filled with life.

Taylor knew it was coming. He had the dream again, of drinking from the goddess Gelexia. During breakfast, he spied the priestess from the other day pacing toward Town Hall. Random beastkin saw him sitting at breakfast with Kasper and Blake, and either waved or nodded in respect.

The first mail delivery of the day appeared after breakfast and included a meeting request from the reeve. Taylor didn't have to catch the carrier on the turnaround because she waited for his answer unbidden. He wrote that he would appear within the hour and went upstairs to dress in his crafter's outfit. He wanted to take care of this as soon as possible.

"What is it?" Kasper asked.

"They didn't say, but I can guess. They want a statue."

At Town Hall, he found the reeve's office was occupied by the big tauran, the priestess, and the council of seven elders. 

"You want a divine statue of Gelexia." It was a statement. When gods and goddesses went out of their way to appear to him, it usually meant they wanted a figure made. And what Gelexia wanted now was larger than any he had attempted before.

"She speaks to him." The priestess smiled at something only she knew. "The stone is ready, and the workman is here. Make the sacrifice."

"It's a lot of money, Domine."

"No it isn't. It feels like a lot because you want a pretty new bridge, but we don't need a new bridge. The bridges we have will stand for a hundred years. Our Gelexia won't last that long, and the craftsman is here now."

"Give it up, Franck," said an older Tauran. "We're blessed because of Gelexia, and she barely asks for anything except prayer, and we've barely spent anything on the temple for years."

"Including when you were reeve," said Franck.

"I never had a divine sculptor walk into town. If I did, I would have emptied the improvement fund to hire him."

The priestess looked at Taylor with her distant gaze and placid smile. "Will you give us a new Gelexia, Envoy of the Gods? Even though our reeve doesn't want it, the people do. The offering is ten aurochs of gold."

"She holds the money until the job is done," Taylor told the reeve. To the priestess, he said, "Show me the stone."

The old figure was carried away on the shoulders of twenty large beastkin and paraded through the town, street by street, among people who sang Arcaic holy songs, and then to a sacred cave in a nearby hill. Taylor would later learn that the cave held even older versions of the same statue, their rock decaying in geological time. Kasper was part of the procession, and not just because he was invited. There wasn't much worship of the arcaic gods back in Midway, at least not outside of their home, and he was curious about how it was done.

While the ancient statue wended its way to its final resting place, Taylor squared up the new block in the temple's diffuse spring sunlight. Gelexia's gifts were still in him, waking for the task ahead. With the temple doors closed, he removed his mask and replaced his usual prayer beads with a different strand, one that converted all mana into the divine attribute. It included small mounts for mana crystals to augment Taylor's own. Thus surrounded by the divine, he could absorb it and expend it at the same time.

He soon lost track of time, which was common for a large working of magic. There seemed to be no end to Gelexia's gift, nor would it let him rest. When food came, he ate it. When darkness came, he worked by cold starlight. Taylor was vaguely aware of other people in the temple from time to time, but he didn't dare allow his hands to go astray. Kasper swept up for him and spent hours watching him work.

All her pups were piled before her, one of each living beastkin tribe, feeding deeply from the ur-mother of their kind. Her face was from his dreams, a proud, fierce guardian of her brood. Inch by stony inch, her fur took on a texture that would surprise anyone who touched it, velvet on the fingertips.

When the goddess was finally done with him, Taylor lay down in a corner and slept, using his satchel for a pillow and a cloak pulled over his head.

The temple was already open when he woke up. Kasper had not only swept the area clean and helped wash the floors, but also put Taylor's mask on for him. Worshipers passed through the room, a dozen or so at a time, to gawk at the new Gelexia while trying not to disturb the sleeping boy who carved her.

She was remarkable. The statue had such a presence that he could believe that she breathed while no one was looking. He chose a moment when everyone's attention was on the figure to stand and stretch, then sneak out the back door. Taylor stood on the hilltop, looking across the river to the rich lands beyond, trying to work the soreness out of his hands and feet.

"That was very impressive." The priestess had crept next to him to enjoy the same view. "She should last at least a millennium. I'm surprised the reeve didn't think it was a good deal."

She handed him the pouch of gold. "This is yours, now. I hope it brings you happiness. Or helps you."

"It turns out that being a powerful magician costs a lot of money, so thank you."

"Your family will be here soon. You should enjoy the view." She breathed deep. "It's a nice morning."

The priestess left, just as Blake and Kasper crested the hill. They had most of today to fish, followed by an early morning departure.