Tenebroum

Chapter 198: Another Problem

Despite the fact that the act of will had left Jordan completely drained, it had been worth it to beat the Lich back. He didn’t know what that monster was up to, but he knew that if it tried again in the next night or two, he would not be able to intervene again quite so soon.

That thought filled him with even more dread than the hundreds of stars he’d lost that night. The Lich had slain less than a third of those, but suddenly shifting an entire hemisphere of the sky to beat it back had caused losses everywhere. A game as complex as the night sky was not meant to be shifted so suddenly, and he could have very easily drowned the world in shadows in his attempt to fight the Lich.

Even so, despite Jordan’s best efforts, a few of the smaller monsters had gotten through and would wreck no end of havoc if they found somewhere suitable to hide from the light of day. “You can’t win them all,” he sighed, laying on a couch in the rear of his small palace while he looked up at the sky. No matter how tired he was now, he dared not sleep. There was too much to do after all the snarls he’d created. It would be weeks before he put the whole weave back together again in something that resembled an orderly pattern, with all the constellations where they were supposed to be.

“Master, I have come to inform you that the ladies Chamen Sea and two forest Goddesses that declined to give me their names have come to visit you,” one of Jordan’s servants said after appearing behind him and giving him a hell of a scare.

“By the dark, I told you not to do that,” Jordan gasped, momentarily losing enough of his concentration that the endless battle faded from his mind for a moment, leaving the small cluster of stars he’d been helping to fend for themselves a moment. “You can tell them the same thing I’ve had you tell everyone else.”

Jordan felt rude addressing the ageless young man like that, but he’d given up trying to ask these people for their names. They didn’t have any, and they didn’t seem to appreciate it when he tried to give them one. They might look human and act human, but they were something else.

If he had more time, he’d study them; they seemed to be an advanced sort of servitor that was tied to the house, but time was the one thing he did not have these days. Certainly, he didn't have the time to have an audience with every God and Goddess that seemed to want his attention the last few days. He hadn’t even had time to check on the children since all of this had happened, and he was certainly more concerned with their well-being than whatever else a god might tell him just now.

Just that thought made him smile. Here he was, the black sheep and sole survivor of his family, and now suddenly, he was in the position to tell Gods to come back later. I didn’t even finish the Collegium, and here I am lording over… as Jordan experienced the moment, he suddenly realized that his servant was continuing to stand there like he was waiting for more of that order.

“Go on,” Jordan said.

“Shall I tell them three weeks, like the others,” the servant asked.

“Yes, please,” he sighed. “The night before the full moon, and not before.”

Jordan’s strange servant bowed and walked away, and as he did, Jordan called after him. “You can just tell everyone that. You don’t need to ask me every time!”

The man paused, turned, and bowed to acknowledge that order, but Jordan knew that he wouldn’t honor it. If someone showed up in an hour, then he, or someone like him, would show up to disturb Jordan’s concentration and tear him away from the cosmic battle that truly mattered.

Jordan returned to the task at hand, frowning as he noted that in the time it took him to resolve that conversation, two of the stars on his side had been lost, and the situation had worsened slightly. This is why Gods never answer prayers, he thought to himself. They’re too busy dealing with everything else.

While true when he was aggravated, that statement became less true throughout that day and the days that followed as he slowly put the sky back where it was supposed to be. Lunaris had personally intervened in his own life twice, and it could be argued that Siddrim had as well, even if that was through Sir Farbaer. Jordan supposed that he could look through her journals and see if there was any mention as to why she saved him while she let Abenend burn to the ground, but that would have to be a project for some point in the distant future. He didn’t have any more time for himself than he did for others, as he focused entirely on keeping the world from falling into ruin.

In the days that followed, though, the second, third, and fifth attacks from the Lich that he’d feared never materialized, giving Jordan all the time he needed to fix the things that were broken. It was only once all of that was done that he finally took a look around the world again, and he liked what he saw. n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

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Not only was the bleed-through of the shadows less than he’d feared and almost completely dissipated by now, but there seemed to be less in the way of undead, too. Humanity was winning on several fronts, most notability in the northern and the desert kingdoms.

Jordan had feared that the surprise attack from the Lich had indicated that its evil was resurgent, but if anything, it seemed to have been a last gasp from that evil creature. Not that he was willing to count the thing out, of course. As long as shadows clung to Blackwater, and even after, that thing would be a menace, but if it had finally burned itself out, then the world would recover, and after a new Lord of Light was put into place and the sun rose once more…

Jordan sighed at that thought. He knew that’s what the Gods and goddesses would demand of him in a few days. He even knew who the candidate was, but even if Jordan thought that little Leo was ready for such a burden, it would violate the prophecy that he’d spent so much time studying in the Book of Ways. No, for now, his hands were tied, and he would do only his job. Everything else would come in the fullness of time.

When the conclave of deities finally arrived a week later, he was only half-right. The gods of cities and rivers he’d never heard of crowded the amphitheater that he hadn’t set foot in since Lunaris’s death. To him, it was hollowed ground, but to everyone else, he was just a pretender to the throne. The All-Father did not join them. No one could say why, though the Goddesses of Nature and the Sea and Storms stood by his side in the center of that vast place.

Jordan noticed that no one sat very close to anyone else. It was not a protocol he understood, but he didn’t ask, either. Instead of focusing on the Lord of Light and who it should be, though, the conversation mostly revolved around a new threat: Malkezeen.

“It has returned,” Niama told everyone. “I have seen it with my own eyes. Malkezeen walks among us once more.”

Jordan did not reveal his ignorance by asking who that was. Even though his strange but dutiful servants had done their part to make sure he looked a bit more like a god than he ever had before, he still knew precious little. Instead, he listened and learned as everyone else shared what they knew.

Apparently, this was the entity that they all truly feared. That was one of the reasons they’d done so little about the Lich. It was likely only a harbinger of the true evil that waited to devour the world with war and famine. Apparently, several small gods had already been devoured by it, and servants of the Lich might have been murdered as well, but that was harder to say.

“Perhaps it has eaten the All-Father,” the lesser God of a faraway city to the north asked. “It’s not like him not to be here.”

“It’s not,” Istiniss agreed. “But the All-Father would never leave the depths for such a brawl, and Malkazeen is too hungry to search the deeps for him. There is a reason why the Lord of Dwarves has survived endless cycles of light and dark, and that is by not getting involved.”

There was a mixed reaction to those words, and Jordan could see there was not a lot of love lost there. At one point, the goddess of the great Bahlmatta Mountain range asked him if he’d turned the moon's gaze so recently to fight the chimeric wolf-rat. That was apparently why they were all here. They thought that he was seeking to lead the charge against the most terrible evil any of them were likely to ever know.

“I didn’t,” Jordan admitted, provoking audible sighs. He explained how he’d fought against the Lich when it had attacked the sky, but no one seemed to care about that. The Lich had done its damage, and even now, as its armies were winnowed and routed, the Gods were turning their attention to other matters. That annoyed him more than he could say.

If the thing is weak, then now is the time to strike and finish it. He thought. We can’t let it fester and grow once more.

Everyone else’s concerns lay elsewhere, though. He was standing on the moon with a hundred divinities, many of whom were from so far away that he’d never even heard of them, and they were acting like a flock of frightened children. No, they were worse than that; Jordan had seen the way that Cynara, Leo, and all the other were reacting to the hardships they found in the wider world, and none of them were freaking out like this.

“The child has been found, the sword has been forged, and the evil will be struck down,” Istiniss answered finally as if that meant anything.

Jordan said nothing about that either, but mostly because it seemed to calm everyone. Fate was a slippery thing, though, and he’d dealt with it just enough to be uncomfortable around it. It had warned him of what Tazuranth was going to do but had told him nothing of this rat-wolf spirit nor about the Lich’s attack against the stars. Hells, it hadn’t even told Jordan that he was going to become the God of the Moon. That was a hell of a thing to leave out.

So, even if there was a prophecy that was playing out around them, there was no telling what terrible consequences it might cause, even if it was literally true. Jordan explained some of those fears to Istiniss alone after the meeting had broken up and people started to leave. She just smiled and said, “The tide will come in and out twice a day. That’s the only prophecy I truly need to know. Everything else will be as it wills.”

Jordan thought that was the least satisfying non-answer he’d ever heard, but he thanked her for it just the same. Then, when she had departed along with everyone else, he went to his library. It was time to get some answers. Even if he didn’t have the time, he would make it. There was too much he was missing, and he would have to fix that if he wanted to be ready for whatever was about to happen next.