Sword of the Gods - Bruce R. Cordell [5]
He frowned and rubbed his head, wincing at the touch. The dretch had tagged him on the temple. That probably explained why everything seemed foggy. He needed to find some healing.
First things first, he thought. If I can remember how I got here, or even where here is, everything else should fall into place.
He went back to the altar and studied the marks chiseled all over its surface. The iconography was … some variety of divine runes? No, he realized; the glyphs represented spirits of the land.
Many of the carved sigils depicted animals: the predatory curve of a hawk wing, the inquisitive point of a fox nose, and the streaming mane of a galloping horse. All the figures were blurred by decades or even centuries of neglect. Dirt and time had nearly erased them.
He ran his fingers across the bend of the horse’s spine, racking his mind. But no. He’d never seen the altar before. He had no memory whatsoever of coming to the place.
Anxiety pressed a dagger-sharp point against his surface calm. Could he have been brought here against his will, unconscious? That seemed the answer that best fit the evidence. He swung his gaze around, trying to see everything at once. He ignored the whisper of dizziness that followed each motion.
The land beyond the ring fell away into the surrounding mist in a way that suggested he was on a hilltop or mountainside. Despite the cloud cover, something in the silence and texture of the air implied daybreak was nigh, not sunset.
He shivered, scanning the wide landscape. Nope, he thought. Never seen it before … He convulsively folded his arms across his chest, careful of his sword.
By all that was holy and sovereign, just what was going on here? Someone had laid him out on some kind of ancient altar, he was alone out in some godsforsaken wilderness, it was a miracle he wasn’t dead of exposure already, he didn’t have any clothes—
“Stop!” he said to the air.
Panic will get you nowhere. Everything will be fine.
“And now you’re talking to yourself. That means you’re probably crazy on top of being forgetful. And cold.”
At least he could remedy the last. Though they couldn’t answer his many questions, the dead wouldn’t be needing their garments anymore either. Besides, he should probably have a look through their pockets to see if anything rang a bell. He moved to the largest gathering of bodies and took stock.
Most of the fallen sported whorls tracing fine lines across skin the color of coffee, or sea foam, or dull silver. They weren’t exactly human, but …
“Genasi,” he said, suddenly recognizing that most of them shared a particular heritage. Genasi were people whose bloodline had long ago mixed with the elements. He’d known a woman once with eyes like distant storm-clouds … but had she been a genasi? No, maybe not …
The memory slipped away like fish in dark water. He returned to his task.
He couldn’t get an accurate count of the dead because several were heaped in a pile. More than ten, but probably less than twenty; to satisfy himself, he’d have to sort them out later to get a precise total.
He also found a few corpses that were definitely not genasi. More demons, apparently.
Multi-limbed, some with arms ending in pincers instead of hands or claws, and some with tentacles. They all sported red incrustations similar to the dretch’s. The comportment of the dead suggested the people and demons died fighting each other in some kind of fever of violence.
A sacrifice gone bad, probably. If so, he was incredibly lucky to have survived it, especially since evidence suggested he’d been the designated guest of honor.
He nudged one of the dead demons with his sword tip. That touch was all it took; the demon evaporated, as did the limp forms of all its fellows. A particularly foul wind ruffled his hair, and when it died down, only the genasi’s bodies remained.
He shook his head. He didn’t want to think about demons and evaporating bodies until he had put together an outfit.
Many of the genasi wore long leather coats, dyed various shades of red, with the insignia of a burning