by Ben Galley
‘What are you doing now, for dead gods’ sake?’
‘Drownin’ sorrows or celebrating summin?’ she asked.
I shrugged. ‘Bit of both, I think.’
‘Mm.’ The ghost nodded sagely as she produced another clay tankard of foaming beer. ‘Not a soul in this city that don’t have a sorrow or two. More so now, what with all these attacks. Nyx dyin’ out, too, or so they say. Streets are worse than they ever been, and that’s sayin’ summin.’
I looked to the doorway, hearing the muted splash of rain behind the shivering curtains. I pondered what waited for me beyond.
‘Ahem.’
I offered up the other ring when I realised she was staring at me with her palm out, eyebrow raised. The shade rolled her eyes at my payment but still snatched it away in any case. There was a brief white glow in her fingers as they grazed my skin. She flashed me a curious look.
‘What’s your sorrow?’ she asked. Whether she was genuinely interested or simply fulfilling the age-old role of a conversational barkeep, I didn’t know. All the best ones know beer tastes sweeter when swilled alongside words.
‘I had a difficult decision to make.’ I found solace in the fact I’d found another ear to bend. Such is the way of lonely people sitting at bars, and nothing is better for teasing out problems than the blank judgement of a stranger. It made me feel alive again for a moment. I clung to it.
‘Tough one, was it?’
‘It was.’ I nodded, though my thoughts turned inwards, my mind too busy to focus. I lost myself in the bronze, and those goggle eyes.
Several hours earlier
The rain came like a pirate invasion. It crept into Araxes from the sea and stormed the city street by street, darkening the sand and adobe walls with spots and streaks. I thought I imagined it at first, as the first drops hit Pointy’s blade with musical chimes. But what started as tentative drizzle became fat, heavy dribbles, born of desert dust meeting cold ocean air. I had wondered why the night held no stars for me. No moon. Now I knew.
The city streets between me and the Core Districts were quiet and empty save for a few drunkards and shades still running errands. Arctians, even the dead ones, are no fans of rain. They scarpered as the downpour descended, leaving me alone with the sizzling lanterns and dying torches. The golden streetlight faded, leaving my glow to light my way. Raindrops flashed blue around me, seeming unearthly. The sand was bleached to grey as the rain drummed it into mud.
My stolen rags became sodden and unbearably heavy, slipping from my frame unless I concentrated. With Pointy hanging at my hip from a scrap of twine, I raised my hands and face to the dark sky, trying to drown myself in the soaring roar of rainfall.
I felt the fat drops fall through me, warm to my cold. Here and there, one would treat me with kindness, catching and rolling down my vapours for a moment. One hovered on my lip, but as I opened my mouth it was lost to the ground.
For somebody who had always found peace and quiet in the patter and kiss of rain, warm or cold, this was a tragic disappointment. I savoured what little I could before I trudged on, moodier than I had been before. There was no bird. No carriage. No wagon. Just my legs, and tonight they were feeling more jellied than usual after the haunting.
‘We’ll be lucky if we reach the widow by next nightfall,’ I muttered to Pointy. ‘This city is far too big for its own damn good.’
The sword’s tone was wistful. ‘I don’t mind. This is the furthest I’ve been out of the Core Districts in decades.’
I hauled him from the makeshift belt and stared at the face on the pommel stone. Pointy’s eyes were closed to the rain. I watched the drops bounce from the metal. ‘You sound like you’re enjoying this,’ I accused him.
‘It almost tastes like freedom. Almost.’
‘Hmph.’ I had to agree. I had escaped, after all. I was lost to Temsa, vanished in the honeycomb of Araxes’ streets, and was headed to Horix to claim my coin at last, and yet even with all my good fortune, I still felt emptier than even a ghost should feel.
I threw a look over my shoulder, finding the streets behind me just as empty. I had run for hours, and still there was no sign of pursuit. ‘Do you have a half-coin? I’ve never thought to ask,’ I said to Pointy, trying to distract myself.
When I turned to look at the sword, the eyes were open and staring at me. ‘My builders made it so that every soulblade is its own half-coin,’ he said.
‘How many of you are there?’
Pointy whistled, though gods knew how. ‘No way to tell now. Deadbinding was quite the craze, and it carried on for years after I was bound. Many soulblades were destroyed or broken once the practice was banned. I was part of five made as a set for a Skol duke. Our names were Ortan, Larili, Renester, and Pereceph, and all of them were mute except me, Absia. That was my name. I was a mistake, really, which is perhaps why I survived the cull. Why I was passed from master to master over decades. Whoever keeps hold of a soulblade owns it, you see. In all my years, I’ve never figured out whether that is a blessing or a weakness.’
That seemed easy to me. ‘Blessing, I’d say. At least you can’t lose yourself.’
‘I would say I’ve already lost most of me, wouldn’t you agree? You forget, Caltro, that some dead lose more than others. You’re lucky only your neck is slashed, and that you’ve only got a few holes in your belly.’
I thought of the ghost in Horix’s tower, Kon, and his zigzag body, crippled even in death. There it was again: that guilty comfort in knowing your own situation could be worse.
‘Look at me, Caltro. I feel like fair Faerina, trapped in her eternal chrysalis, aching to escape the foul clutches of Gar Rel—.’
‘Pointy.’
The sword huffed. ‘Don’t you realise that after centuries like this, I would give anything to be other than what I am?’
His was a simple question, but it echoed my own pain and shamed it all at once. ‘No. And yes.’ I pursed my lips. ‘I do now. I guess I was distracted with my own… you know.’ I swore I saw the pommel blink.
‘If that’s what they call an apology in Krass, I’ll accept it.’
Pointy had wormed it out of me, but I let him have it and said no more. The sword did have it worse than me, as did many others.
I saw one such creature at that very moment as I glanced idly down a side alley. The ghost was busy trying – and failing – to haul a body through the mud. It wasn’t in my nature to gawk, but there was something sorry about this scene that made me pause and stare.
The ghost must have been fresh. For one, he was stark naked. Secondly, his grip didn’t look strong enough. Only by wrapping his arms around a leg could he gain any sort of traction. The mud tripped him instantly. Again and again the sorry dance was repeated. An old saying floated through my head, half-remembered. Something about the connection between repetition, failure and madness. I could have scorned the ghost and walked away, but I understood what a half-life was. It was not life after death, but perpetual death after death. That breeds a special kind of desperation.
‘What are you doing, Caltro?’ whispered Pointy.
I took a few steps forwards, noting the vicious wound on the back of the ghost’s head. I looked down at the body and found the same wound drawn in black blood and white skull. Something grey and fleshy lay within.
With a polite cough, I announced my presence. The ghost immediately fell over the body, snarling and thrashing at the air between us. He was an Arctian man. His slurred accent was noble. Judging by the silver-trimmed clothes on the corpse, so was the man.
‘You stay away, shade!’ he cried, ignorant to the irony.
I held up my empty hands, only to realise one still had a sword in it. I flashed a smile and quickly sheathed it. ‘I don’t have a white feather on my chest, see? I’m bound and have no interest in you. Or… you.’ I gestured to the corpse.
The man futilely tried to spit at me. ‘Get the fuck away!’
Pointy had some wisdom for me. ‘He’
s got bats in his head, as the great Bastiga would say.’
I began to tread backwards. ‘I was only trying to help—’
‘Go awa—’
The ghost went rigid as if he had been stung by something poisonous. Pointy was swiftly in my hand again. The ghost retched, his mists convulsing, twisting about him. With a crackle of white sparks, a flash of green polluted his cobalt glow. Like ink blooming in water, the putrid green quickly consumed his legs, then his torso, and finally his head. Within moments, he had gone from a bright sapphire to a duller emerald. When the ghost found his muscles again and began to rear up, his face had lengthened, his nose was a tall column and dark swirls underlined his eyes. They were piercing lights, and already they were fixed on me.
‘Oh, not now. Not fucking now,’ I muttered. I didn’t need another visit from the dead gods. I’d already made up my mind.
‘What is it with you and dead things rising around you?’
I waved Pointy at the ghost, wondering why I couldn’t be left alone and unbothered for more than a few hours in this city.
‘Caltro,’ he wheezed, in a voice that sounded like an echo from a hundred miles away. It was almost lost in the drone of rain.
‘That’s me. And who might you be?’ I challenged him.
The ghost stretched tall and I saw he’d found an extra few feet in height. His sickly glow bathed me, and although it was faint, it somehow drowned mine out, like cupping a hand around a candle. If I stared hard enough, I caught his vapours drawing the edges of a breastplate, gauntlets, and greaves. On his head there was the shadow of a tall crown.
‘You have called me Oshirim for millennia. You may use that name.’
‘What in the blasted fucking Reaches is going on?’ Pointy blurted, forgetting to whisper in my head. ‘Did you say “Oshirim”? As in the dead god Oshirim?’
I knuckled my brow. ‘I apparently have a habit of attracting deities. This isn’t the first time one has paid me a visit.’
‘I…’ Pointy was speechless. I looked to the pommel stone, half-expecting to catch his mouth flapping.
The ghost was also looking down at the sword. ‘A soulblade, you call it? Such waste. So crude,’ he intoned.
For an inanimate object, Pointy sounded rather out of breath. ‘See, Caltro? He understands me.’ To the ghost, he said, ‘You should know that I would be bowing, my lord, if I could. I am honoured by your presence. However strange and unexpected.’
Oshirim inclined his head and then looked questioningly to me. I bit my lip and begrudgingly bent a knee. It was shallow, swift, and about all I owed to a foreign dead god.
‘I thought there wasn’t enough power left to come visit me again. Or did you gods lie about that too?’ I asked bluntly.
‘Caltro! Have some respect,’ Pointy hissed.
Oshirim looked to the centre of the city, where the lights became a wash of orange behind the curtains of rain. ‘Our great enemy became too curious. He took a chance that set him back, and it shared some of his power with us. I hope we are not wasting it once again. Come.’
Before leaving, he knelt to touch the corpse. Where his ghostly fingers met the robes, black liquid bubbled. The body deliquesced before my eyes, collapsing into the sand. Oshirim arose with a shiver, breathing long and slow, leaving me to stare with raised eyebrows at a simmering puddle of ink-stained robes.
‘Er…’ I began.
The god crooked a finger at me. ‘Come.’
‘Do as he says, Caltro, for gods’ sa—I mean, just follow him.’
‘You stay out of this, Pointy. You don’t know what I know,’ I snarled at the sword before stuffing him into my belt. It was my own fault, but the blade nicked my calf, and twisted my lips at the flash of pain. I could feel the cold creeping up my leg.
I jogged awkwardly to catch Oshirim’s longer strides. Walking side by side, we bathed the mud and rain-slick walls with our green-blue glow.
The god wasted no time in speaking. ‘You still dawdle while our enemy grows ever stronger.’
Perhaps it was Oshirim’s calm, his expressionless face, or the ancientness pouring from him, but I felt like a student to a master again, one that I hadn’t asked for. ‘I am not dawdling. I have had my own problems to deal with, thank you. It’s not easy being dead, you know. Besides, I have found the Cult, and I’ve spoken to them. Well, they spoke to me. They know what I can do. The so-called gift you gave me.’
The dead god growled, and for a moment I thought it was the sound of clouds grinding together. ‘And now? What is in your mind?’
I crossed my arms. ‘I want my half-coin back. That’s all that matters to me. Not your flood, not Temsa’s greed, not the Cult’s games, not Horix’s writ of freedom, nor any other empty promise I’ve heard since being dead. My freedom is what matters, and I trust nobody but myself to claim it. Doubt and desperation made me forget that, but I know my worth now. My power. And with it, I will win Araxes’ game.’
The god sighed. ‘How selfish.’
‘It’s what I’m owed!’ I snapped.
Oshirim paused mid-stride, casting a withering look down on me. I wondered if all the gods had worn the same look, just hidden behind broken faces.
‘You toy with the fate of countless millions, Caltro.’
‘Just as you toy with countless more! That’s right, Haphor told me what we are to you.’
‘Caltro…’
I snarled at the whisper in my head. He knew nothing. ‘We’re nothing but sustenance to the gods, Pointy. Fuel. Slaves, just as we are here. They just want my help to survive, but they have given me no reason to help besides riddles and threats. Even the Cult were kind enough to promise me freedom.’
Oshirim towered over me, stepping close and looming like a cliff face. I seemed as though the weight of a building pressed down upon me. My vapours flapped as if a great wind sought to drag me away. Instead of a ghost before me, I saw a figure burning white, with a mitre of fire upon his head.
It lasted only a moment before he withered to my own height. His glow faded, growing sicklier. When he spoke, it was in the voice of an old man, tired of life and struggle. It was faint, and I had to strain to hear him over the rain.
‘If you truly require an explanation, you shall have one. You were our ancestors’ greatest creation. Despite your follies, we gave you sanctuary and haven amongst the stars, away from the trials this world has known for thousands upon thousands of years. We gave you life beyond death. Duat. Paradise, as you called it once, and a paradise it still is. All we asked was a copper coin for the boatman, to cross the river you know as the Nyx into duat.’
I kept my mouth shut, even though my questions and quips clamoured to be free.
‘We may be gods, but we are not immortal. We are born. We die. Generations of us have watched over the passage of the living and the dead. And yes, Caltro, for every soul that passes our gates, our forms are sustained. You say it as though you are farm beasts. Meat. That is not so. It is kinship. Trade.’
Oshirim was talking faster now, his words coming like a waterfall. I struggled to understand them. The spell must have been fading, and fast, like his glow.
‘You call us “dead” gods, and although that is not true, it shall be soon. Sesh killed the boatman and closed the gates to duat. Souls have waited a thousand years at those gates. Where the Nyx once flowed, it trickles. It is blocked, and the pressure grows… the world behind this one shakes in ways you cannot understand. Sesh’s bonds fray. The god of death has no love for life. He sees it as a plague. Given a chance, he will rid the world of it. Do you wish for that to happen, Caltro?’
Oshirim staggered then, putting a hand to a wall and almost passing straight through it. I instinctively moved to catch him, and as my vapours brushed his, I saw that vast cavern stretched before me again. I felt the cold water seeping between my feet. I heard laughter echoing in the endless darkness.
‘The wolf at the zoo,’ I whispered, remembering the same darkness in its eyes.
‘He made a mistake… wanted to see you for himself. See… who we’d chosen. Now the Cult know of you, time is shorter.’
‘But why did you choose me?’ It wasn’t the most pertinent question. Haphor had already given me her verdict and it hadn’t been a kind one. Perhaps I shallowly sought for more recognition, another reason besides randomness.
The ghost collapsed to his knees, splashing murky water. He looked up at me, and I saw a broken man poking through his regal emerald features. ‘You crave freedom and justice more than most. As do we. There will be none if Sesh is not stopped. You can run. Fly, even. Flee as fast as you can. His flood will find you too.’ He choked on something before pressing his hands together, palms flat. ‘It is not in the nature of gods to beg…’
Those were his last words. I let him fall to the mud, knowing there was little I could do for him.
‘Caltro!’ Pointy called to me, but I was still lost in that great cavern, my gaze roaming over the countless millions of dead. Waiting. Pointless.
Oshirim’s last words cut into me like a blade. ‘Save yourself, if that is all you care about. Perhaps Haphor was right: in doing so, you might just save this world. The gods. The dead. That is our only hope. This is the last you shall hear from… us.’
No sooner had he finished speaking did his form lose its hold. He evaporated into the rain-soaked air, formless as the wafting smoke of a dead candle. Gone, his stolen ghost with him.
I rose from the mud without a word. Pointy was wise enough to hold his tongue, though no doubt he had plenty to say. Plenty of his own so-called wisdom to lacquer Oshirim’s challenge with.
With a soft squelching, I resumed my march for the city. I knew one thing for certain after this visit from the god of gods: I needed a beer.
I watched the bubbles popping in the foam, melting like the dead body had. The shade cleared her throat, and I realised her question was still waiting for an answer.
‘Life or death all over again,’ I said.
She looked at me skewed. Try as she might, she couldn’t rid her face of contempt. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ With a snort, she left me with my beer and stalked back down the bar.