The Errant gestured, and flames rose once more from the clamshell niches low on the dome’s ring-wall, casting wavering shadows across the mosaic floor. A sledgehammer had been taken to the altar on its raised dais. The shattered stones seemed to bleed recrimination still in the Errant’s eyes. Who served whom, damn you? I went out, among you, to make a difference-so that 1 could deliver wisdom, whatever wisdom I possessed. I thought-I thought you would be grateful.
But you preferred shedding blood in my name. My words just got in your way, my cries for mercy for your fellow citizens-oh, how that enraged you.
His thoughts fell silent. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. What is this? I am not alone.
A soft laugh from one of the passageways. He slowly turned.
The man crouched there was more ogre than human, broad shoulders covered in bristly black hair, a bullet head thrust forward on a short neck. The bottom half of the face was strangely pronounced beneath long, curling moustache and beard, and large yellowed tusks jutted from the lower jaw, pushing clear of lip and thick, ringleted hair. Stubby, battered hands hung down from long arms, the knuckles on the floor.
From the apparition came a bestial, rank stench.
The Errant squinted, seeking to pierce the gloom beneath the heavy brows, where small narrow-set eyes glittered dull as rough garnets. ‘This is my temple,’ he said. ‘I do not recall an open invitation to… guests.’
Another low laugh, but there was no humour in it, the Errant realized. Bitterness, as thick and pungent as the smell stinging the god’s nostrils.
‘I remember you,’ came the creature’s voice, low and rumbling. ‘And I knew this place. 1 knew what it had been. It was… safe. Who recalls the Holds, after all? Who knew enough to suspect? Oh, they can hunt me down all they want-yes, they will find me in the end-I know this. Soon, maybe. Sooner, now that you have found me, Master of the Tiles. He might have returned me, you know, along with other… gifts. But he has failed.’ Another laugh, this time harsh. ‘A common demise among mortals.’
Though he spoke, no words emerged from the ogre’s mouth. That heavy, awkward voice was in the Errant’s head, which was all for the best-those tusks would have brutalized every utterance into near incomprehensibility. ‘You are a god.’
More laughter. ‘I am.’
‘You walked into the world.’
‘Not by choice, Master of the Tiles. Not like you.’
Ah.’
‘And so my followers died-oh, how they have died. Across half the world, their blood soaked the earth. And I could do nothing. I can do nothing.’
‘It is something,’ the Errant observed, ‘to hold yourself to such a modest form. But how much longer will that control last? How soon before you burst the confines of this temple of mine? How long before you heave yourself into the view of all, shouldering aside the clouds, shaking mountains to dust-’
‘I will be long from here before then, Master of the Tiles.’
The Errant’s smile was wry. ‘That is a relief, god.’
‘You have survived,’ the god now said. ‘For so long. How?’
‘Alas,’ said the Errant, ‘my advice to you would be useless. My power quickly dissipated. It had already been terribly wounded-the Forkrul Assail’s pogroms against my faithful saw to that. The thought of another failure like that one was too much… so I willingly relinquished most of what remained to me. It made me ineffectual, beyond, perhaps, this city and a modest stretch of river. And so not a threat to anyone.’ Not even you, tusked one. ‘You, however, cannot make a similar choice. They will want the raw power within you-in your blood-and they will need it spilled before they can drink, before they can bathe in what’s left of you.’
‘Yes. One last battle awaits me. That much, at least, I do not regret.’
Lucky you. A battle. And… a war?’
Amusement in his thoughts, then, ‘Oh, indeed, Master of the Tiles. A war-enough to make my heart surge with life, with hunger. How could it not? I am the Boar of Summer, Lord of the Hosts on the Field of Battle. The chorus of the dying to come… ah, Master, be glad it will be nowhere close-’
‘I am not so sure of that.’
A shrug.
The Errant frowned, then asked, ‘How long do you intend to remain here, then?’
‘Why, as long as I can, before my control crumbles-or I am summoned to my battle, my death, I mean. Unless, of course, you choose to banish me.’
‘I would not risk the power revealed by that,’ the Errant said.
