God Conqueror 3 Read online

  “Well, it seems to suit her pretty well so far, doesn’t it?” I asked.

  Elodette harrumphed, which I took to mean that she couldn’t deny it.

  Willobee said wistfully, “You know, Master, it’s not too late to turn around and accept the good mayor’s offer to be hosted in Galeurn for a week until they throw a feast in our honor.”

  “We’ve already been delayed by a day,” I replied. “Now we just have to hope that we don’t arrive too late to save the Tarlinians from Thorvinius. There will be plenty of other feasts in the future.”

  “Assuming we don’t get killed by the Thorvinians,” Willobee pointed out.

  “I think that’s a fair assumption given our track record,” Lizzy scoffed.

  “The oracle Peryenia seemed to feel pretty confident that we would be capable of saving the order of Tarlinis if we tried,” I said.

  “She also said we might all get slain, but somehow no one else seems to be focusing on that part,” grumbled the gnome.

  “I do not see why the prospect of becoming a martyr for the glorious cause of Qaar’endoth’s eventual world domination would disturb you,” Florenia replied.

  “I’m not trying to get anyone killed,” I said quickly. “In fact, I’m going to do absolutely everything in my power to prevent that. I just don’t think it’s productive to focus on the potential negatives, as opposed to the positive outcomes that we’re trying to achieve here.”

  After another few hours of riding, we stopped to enjoy the pies and other pastries that we had purchased from Sol and Minna’s bakery.

  Willobee and Lizzy between them, as usual, scarfed down approximately half of the food in the time that it took the other seven of us to eat the other half, but even the petite princess downed almost half a pie on her own, which for Ilandere was an astronomical quantity of calories.

  “I shouldn’t have eaten so much, I don’t want to become plump,” she said sheepishly afterward.

  “You can eat as much as you want and not become plump if you exercise your muscles more, Princess,” Elodette replied. “All you ever do is lift the gnome up and down from your back.”

  That was, to be fair, a not insubstantial physical feat considering Ilandere’s extreme slenderness, since Willobee standing at all of three feet tall still somehow managed to weigh just about as much as one of my six-foot-tall bodies. I guess gnomes were just made of a denser material. Or maybe it had to do with the bile sac that he must have somewhere inside of him to produce that acidic blue slime. Or, maybe he just had a ridiculous amount of gold, gems, and other valuables hidden away in his clothing that were weighing him down. I wouldn’t put it past him. At least he had mostly given up on wearing the chain mail shirt that we had acquired once after a skirmish with bandits, which fell down to his ankles and looked more like a gown on him.

  “I’m not meant to be a warrior,” Ilandere answered her handmaiden. “I accept that now. I’d rather just be Vander’s wife.”

  “But why couldn’t you be both?” Lizzy asked.

  “I don’t need her to be. I have you for that. And Elodette. The warrior part, I mean, not the wife part,” I added quickly since I didn’t want the fierce huntress to think that I was making any unwarranted claims about our relationship, which was based on mutual respect but, so far, quite platonic.

  After a few more hours of traveling, we reached a broad rushing river that reminded me of the one near Ferndale that we had once had to build a bridge in order to cross. I knew based on Mayor Kenniworth’s map that we would be following this river upstream until we reached the temple of Tarlinis, which was built upon its shore.

  We stopped and allowed Generosity, Virility, Fury, Slayer, and Chivalry to drink while we refilled our waterskins and splashed water on our faces.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Willobee said to Lizzy as he sidled over in such a way as to place several of me in between him and the she-wolf. “My beard is clean.”

  Lizzy had a habit of forcibly washing Willobee’s lavender beard, which tended to get sticky from all the various drinks that he dipped it in. She snorted, “That’s gotta be one of the least convincing lies you’ve ever told, gnome. I can see your beard with my own eyes and smell it with my own snout.”

  She didn’t even have a snout at the moment, just a pretty little freckled nose, but I knew that being in her human form didn’t seem to diminish Lizzy’s preternaturally keen sense of smell.

  It became harder for us to carry on a conversation as we continued after that, since the sounds of the rushing river swept away our voices unless we shouted at each other. So we mostly just rode in companionable silence and appreciated the beauty of the green grass and the blue sky and the trees and the flowers. When we walked through some daisies, it reminded me of the nerisbane that we had fetched for Marvincus, and I wondered what kind of mischief the gnomish magician might be up to with the kirinyet-based drug, and whether he had ever bothered to extract his stony bodyguard from the wall of The Cartwheeling Djinn. I also wondered if gathering nerisbane and processing some kind of transfiguration drug from it had been the primary purpose of that Thorvinian-seeming outpost that Lizzy and I encountered, and if so, how vital that resource might be to The Devourer’s power.

  When it grew dark, we set up camp. Instead of a stag or a boar, Elodette brought back three hares that night, and we stewed them with the apples that we had carried with us in our packs from Galeurn.

  “What kind of business brought you to the Cliffs of Nadirizi before anyhow, gnome?” Lizzy asked. “Were you chasing after your kid’s mom? Or running away from something bigger than you? I guess pretty much everything’s bigger than you, huh. Well, not Marvincus, he’s the same size, but he got you good anyway.”

  Willobee drew himself up to his full three feet of height and glowered indignantly while the she-wolf had a good chuckle at his expense. “I was pursuing immortal fame, glory, and infinite riches, and fleeing the humdrum realities of everyday gnomish life,” he responded loftily. “And maybe a debtor or two. But that’s beside the point.”

  “What is everyday gnomish life like anyway?” Ilandere asked curiously.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Willobee replied. “Gnomes don’t often live together in big groups for long enough to develop a typical social structure as a species. We don’t like each other.”

  “Well, what was your personal everyday life like, before you met Vander?” Ilandere persisted. We all knew by now that it was pointless to question Willobee on his past, but I guessed there was no harm in the centaur princess trying as long as she didn’t expect to gain any reliable information out of the effort.

  “Less perilous,” the gnome responded. “And before I met you, it was like a night sky without the moon and the stars in it. You have brought luminous beauty and scintillating radiance into my existence.”

  “And a nice place to rest your ass,” Lizzy added.

  “She is a princess, and you should not refer to her that way,” Elodette reprimanded the she-wolf.

  “I said a nice place, didn’t I?” Lizzy demanded. “Didn’t say a bony place or an itchy place or a stinky place--”

  “Hey, this is some really great stew,” I said. “The rabbit is tender, the apples are sweet and juicy. Really just the best damn stew I’ve ever had.”

  By this point in our travels, my five extremely different companions all understood each other and got along pretty well for the most part. But half of them weren’t shy about getting their claws out on occasion, either. Ilandere would never say a mean word about anyone, and Willobee tended to take a conciliatory role, or fall quiet and make himself small so that we would forget about him until the conflict was over.

  We made a pretty bizarre family, but somehow it worked.

  After we had finished eating, there was enough moonlight to see by, so Elodette and I went off to practice archery. I didn’t think I would ever be able to shoot quite as well as the centaur who liked to boast about her famous teacher Chir
on, but in our more recent training sessions she had started telling me that I wasn’t bad for a human, which from her I could only interpret as high praise indeed.

  Meanwhile one of my selves took Florenia off to a clearing, set her up against a tree, pulled her skirt up, and pleasured her with my tongue until her cries started scaring the birds from their nests.

  My two other selves stayed at camp with the rest of my companions, minus Lizzy, who was off on the prowl for some kind of hapless furry dessert, and played gambling games with the gnome and the centaur princess.

  We couldn’t play for stakes, since Willobee was the only one of us with any money in his possession, although technically, it had really been Lizzy and me who brought back the extra bushel of nerisbane that we had sold to Marvincus. And Ilandere’s only possession of material value was the golden apple from Galeurn, but when the gnome suggested jokingly that she should wager it, the little princess had gasped, “I could never do that!” with an expression of such shock in her enormous dark eyes that Willobee had promptly backed down from the notion.

  We used a dozen stones and a dozen sticks as our playing pieces for a game that involved guessing and bluffing, and an assortment of leaves to represent our winnings. Predictably, Willobee soon started gaining far more than his fair share of leaves, and Ilandere quickly lost all but one of hers.

  “How are you doing that?” the little centaur princess asked the gnome in frustration.

  “I am not even cheating, you know,” he replied. “You are just extremely easy to read. You wear all of your emotions on your face. It is part of what makes you so beautiful. Also, you believe everything that Vander or I say, even when we are playing a game that specifically entails lying.”

  “Two sticks for one stone,” I said since it was my turn next.

  “… One stick for one stone?” Ilandere guessed hopefully.

  “Nope, it was two,” I said as I plucked the last remaining leaf from her pile.

  “Also, you are highly impressionable,” the gnome remarked by way of listing another reason that Ilandere was losing the game.

  “Let’s play another round,” I said quickly before the centaur could become disheartened.

  The next time, instead of really playing to try to win leaves, Willobee started explaining everything that he was doing to Ilandere during each of his moves.

  “So, what were you going to guess?” he asked her.

  “Two sticks for two stones,” she replied.

  “Ah, but do you know why you were going to guess that?” the gnome inquired.

  “… Because I thought that’s how many pieces you were holding?” Ilandere said in confusion.

  “Yes, but why did you think that?” Willobee persisted.

  “Because you had a sort of… shifty look on your face,” the centaur said after a moment’s hesitation. “And you looked kind of like your clothes were itching you.”

  “Yes, my carefully crafted dishonest expression consists of a slightly tucked chin, a flickering gaze, and a flush in my cheeks,” Willobee agreed. “But why did you guess down instead of up?”

  “Er,” Ilandere began.

  Willobee interrupted her, “It was because I raised my left eyebrow instead of my right one and I wiggled my nose only once.”

  “But I didn’t even notice that you raised your eyebrow or wiggled your nose,” Ilandere protested. “Besides, I don’t see how that would possibly--”

  “Exactly,” Willobee said triumphantly. “It was effective precisely because you only noticed subconsciously.”

  “What were you really holding?” Ilandere asked.

  “Four sticks for two stones,” the gnome replied. “Which is more than I said, not less.”

  The little centaur princess frowned. “But how do I know you’re not lying about your tactics for lying?”

  “Princess, how could you possibly question my integrity, after all we have been through together?” Willobee exclaimed as his ears drooped with dismay.

  “I didn’t mean that!” Ilandere said quickly. “Of course I trust you.”

  I sighed and asked the gnome, “Are you going to teach a class on psychological manipulation next?”

  “I am a class on psychological manipulation, Master,” Willobee replied.

  After a few more rounds, in which Ilandere failed to perform any better at lying or at detecting other people’s lies despite Willobee’s intricate instructions, Florenia and I returned to camp, and we all settled down to bed for the night. Soon after that, Lizzy came padding back into camp with a bloody muzzle and wrapped her musty-smelling but nice and warm canine body around both the gnome and one of my selves.

  In the morning, we ate some dried apples, since that was the only kind we had left, and then we saddled and loaded up the horses, I reassimilated one of my selves, and we mounted up and continued following the river toward the temple of Tarlinis.

  It was almost midday when Lizzy suddenly said, “I can smell them about half a mile from here.”

  “Smell who?” Ilandere asked.

  “They smell like those same creatures that you and me ripped up in Kanminar, Vander,” Lizzy said. “Those mutant ones with all the animal parts.”

  “Thorvinians,” I said.

  Chapter Ten

  “Can you, er, smell any other details about them, Lizzy?” I asked. “Any idea how many there are? Or what they’re up to?”

  “Well, it doesn’t smell that bloody yet,” Lizzy said, “so I don’t think they’ve breached the temple. But as far as how many goes, I dunno, cause if there was such a thing as units of stink, well some of ‘em stink just as bad as two put together, and some of ‘em stink the same amount per square inch maybe but they’re huge like that prickly fucker with the tusks, so it’s impossible to tell for sure how many. But there’s just… an awful lot of stink.”

  “My people are doomed,” sighed an unfamiliar voice sadly.

  We all looked around, but couldn’t see the speaker. Virility neighed with alarm, for which I didn’t blame him.

  “Who said that?” Ilandere whispered.

  “I did,” replied the voice. I was looking in all three directions at once but still didn’t see anyone.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Tarlinis,” the voice replied in a tone that suggested it was admitting an embarrassing fact.

  “You’re Tarlinis, the god?” I exclaimed.

  “You’ve heard of me?” the voice asked with surprise. It seemed to have floated closer to my self that had spoken most recently. “Er, all good things, I hope?”

  “We heard from an oracle that your temple was about to come under attack, and now, apparently, it has,” I said.

  “Oh, wonderful, are you going to save my people?” the voice asked eagerly.

  “No offense,” I said, “but isn’t that your job?”

  “… Well… you see… Thorvinius is so much more powerful than I am, I just don’t think it would be a very good idea for me to go up against him,” Tarlinis sighed. He sounded as though he had shrunk back a bit from my self that asked the question.

  “How can you be a god and still be that much of a pussy?” Lizzy demanded.

  “Don’t your people need you?” I asked.

  “You can’t see me,” Tarlinis said, “but I’m not exactly, ah, a very large or strong god. I’m a bit on the, er, I don’t want to say scrawny, but certainly leaner and less athletic side. If you could see me, then you’d understand why I don’t think I’d be very effective at fighting Thorvinius.”

  “Why can’t we see you?” Lizzy demanded. “You hiding from us on purpose?”

  “Well, I just get a bit nervous around new people, and I feel more comfortable being invisible until we really get to know each other, if that makes sense,” Tarlinis said.

  “Is Thorvinius here?” I asked.

  Tarlinis actually gasped aloud. “Fairlands, no! But his followers are, a lot of them, and it’s not a good idea to mess with them even when Thorvinius
himself isn’t here.”

  “Well, that’s what we’re about to do,” I said. “We’re going to go help your people. I guess you can stay invisible if you want, but do you want to tag along and see if there’s a way you can be useful too?”

  “I suppose I could,” Tarlinis said reluctantly.

  “What are your god powers?” I asked him. “Besides invisibility.”

  “Well, I can go through things,” Tarlinis said.

  “You can go through things?” Lizzy repeated in an unimpressed tone. “Like, narrow doorways?”

  “Like stone or fire or water,” Tarlinis answered. “Anything really. Or flesh, I can go through people and animals too.”

  “Oh, does it kill them instantly if you do that?” Lizzy asked with much greater interest.

  “Er, no, but I’m told it makes them feel mildly queasy,” Tarlinis said. “And, ah, causes a slight statistical increase in the probability of contracting a cold within the next week.”

  “Great, then you’re useless,” Lizzy sighed.

  “That’s not true at all,” I said. “He can easily get in and out of the temple, and in and out of the Thorvinians’ camp outside the temple, without being seen.”

  “Oh, I don’t really want to go into their camp, it’s not a nice place, they’re very brutal people,” Tarlinis said quickly.

  “Not even to help your followers?” I asked. “The members of your order that are being attacked because of their allegiance to you?”

  “Well, I didn’t ask them to worship me,” Tarlinis whined. “That was their own decision.”

  “A pretty poor decision if you ask me,” Lizzy grumbled.

  “Lizzy, let’s just get over there to the temple and check things out,” I said through gritted teeth. “Tarlinis knows the situation a lot better than we do, and I’m sure he’ll be able to prove the power of his abilities to us soon.”

  The invisible god made a high-pitched and very noncommittal humming sound in response to that remark, but he didn’t object, so I spurred my three horses on and decided to just trust that Tarlinis would follow along with us. If he didn’t, then maybe Lizzy was right that his company wasn’t much of a loss.