The God Eaters

by Jesse Hajicek

  When, some vague eternity later, the fog cleared and dropped him into a body bound with cold-iron chains and tortured by a Healer's efforts to keep it alive, his groan was one of despair. It was followed in the next bubbling breath by a screech of rage.

  Someone said, "How 'bout you heal 'im up, and we'll shoot 'im again."

  Nearer: "You've done your job. Now it's out of your hands."

  Outraged: "That fucking savage took out five of my men! He deserves --"

  "We have a use for his kind. That's all you need to know."

  Kieran willed them all to die, but his will was caught in some sticky nowhere and lost; his insults and threats were ignored. His screams of pain and outrage likewise. At last, when he'd stopped bleeding from the lungs and they'd loaded him on a wagon, he fell silent.

  He began to smile. He knew his teeth were red.

  Someone in a sand-colored police uniform clouted him on the ear. "What are you so happy about, you murdering freak?"

  Kieran spit blood before answering. "Now that Shan's dead," he said, "I've got no reason to be nice anymore."

  They hit him again, but he could see them trying to figure out how he could be any worse than he'd been before, and he went on smiling.

  --==*==--

  In the bare desert a hundred miles northeast of Trestre rose an immense table mountain of banded golden stone. It stood more than twice as tall as any other land form in the area, nearly circular in shape, too steep to climb. Its distinctive form and size had earned it a place in the mythology of the natives. They believed it had once been the castle of a god. It was riddled with tunnels, but they claimed not to have done the digging, nor did they know who had. They called it Iaka'anta, and would not approach it.

  The Eskarans called it Churchrock, and they had made it into a laboratory and a prison.

  Staffed and maintained by the elite government mages of the White Watch, the Churchrock facility provided an excellent place to study magical Talents and the people who posessed them.

  Its natural properties made it easy to set up and maintain a ward to keep the prisoners from using their magic. Though far from water sources, it was situated on a flat plain not far from a major rail line; the ancient tunnels simplified building and provided some inherent shielding.

  Most important -- at least to Watch Director Thelyan -- was the fact that it had once belonged to the devil-god Ka'an, and no longer did.

  Thelyan did not, of course, inhabit it. He only rarely visited it; twice yearly for routine inspection, and occasionally to satisfy his curiosity about the progress of some experiment, or to view an interesting subject. He had left standing orders that he was to be notified if the facility recieved a threnodist, stormcaller, or oneiromancer who fit certain criteria, but as these were rare Talents and his criteria rather strict, such a case occurred only once in a long time. Even more rarely -- only once before in this incarnation -- he came to visit a subject who'd been held here far longer than any of the researchers knew. Iaka'anta's best qualification for being made into a prison, when he had ordered the Churchrock facility built, was that it had been one already for centuries.

  In the bowels of the mountain was a door that looked as if it might lead to a storeroom, uninteresting, distinguishable from all the other doors in the place only by the fact that it could not be opened. Hardly anyone could even see it. Now Thelyan put his hand to the latch and watched with satisfaction as the shape of the locking spell rearranged itself to accomodate him.

  He opened it and slipped through, letting it lock itself behind him.

  Beyond, a stair led up. He had carved this stair into the stone with his own magic, alone, long before his chosen people officially occupied this territory. There was no source of light. Thelyan didn't need one. He could see the stone around him with senses far finer than sight. The only other individual in the world who posessed these senses, at least to such a degree, awaited him at the top of the stair.

  Climbing the long spiral high into the mountain, he reached another door, this one of thick copper. This one had greater protections on it. He could not simply slip through, but had to provide a key, an intricate idea-form that completed the waiting spell. Any magic directed against the door itself would simply ground in the copper. Only this particular password would trigger the lock, which was a masterpiece of spellcrafting. Thelyan believed that not even the one beyond the door could have set a spell in grounded metal. He built his structure of thought and fitted it into the pattern, and the door swung open with a screech of metal.

  He made a light, a tiny whorl of a sigil which lifted free of his fingers to float above him, hissing faintly and emitting a blue-white glow. This revealed an ovoid room, just large enough to contain the null sphere that held the prisoner, while giving Thelyan room to stand and observe it.

  The null sphere was an invention he hadn't shared with anyone. It was the only structure strong enough to contain one of his own kind. A lacy cradle of brittle iron clasped what looked like a giant drop of mercury, twelve feet in diameter. Seals were fixed at each intersection of the iron straps, each made of a different material: jade, wood, granite, ice. As he inspected it for signs of wear or damage, the mirrored sphere rippled from time to time. It was not mercury; it was a thought-thin but absolute divide between inside and outside, which not even light could cross.

  Once he'd satisfied himself that the device was in good working order, he touched two of the runes, releasing them, so that light and sound could pass through.

  Now a shape was visible, hanging motionless in the middle of the sphere. A naked human form, curled fetal and inert. In appearance, it was a boy of fifteen years, chalk-pale, shrouded and tangled in hair the color of cherry wood. The boy's fingernails were ten-inch corkscrews.

  Thelyan had stopped him from aging, but could not remove him completely from time. Even though he was never fed or given water, he somehow managed to obtain substance from somewhere. Thelyan had never been able to induce him to part with the secret of how it was done. It was in hope of obtaining such secrets that Thelyan kept him embodied and imprisoned, rather than absorbing him. Sometimes, more often as he descended further into madness, the creature could be tricked or bullied into parting with useful information.

  "Chaiel." Thelyan's voice disappeared into the tiny space, barely sounding in his own ears.

  "Chaiel. Wake. Chaiel. I wish to speak with you."

  This went on for some time. After many more repetitions of his name, the boy in the sphere at last responded. Sluggishly, he opened his eyes and turned them on Thelyan, iron gray and perfectly insane, as round and unthinking as a lizard's.

  "Chaiel. Speak, so I know you can hear me."

  "Speak so I know you can hear me," the boy echoed. His voice was dull.

  "Answer, so I know you understand me."

  After staring at Thelyan for a minute or two, the boy gave a flat imitation of a giggle, without changing the blankness of his face. "No. I don't like you."

  "Of course you don't. However, I suspect you're bored. I have a puzzle for you to play with."

  That had the usual effect: the boy straightened with a sudden knifing motion, twisting in the air to face Thelyan, suddenly eager. "Give it!"

  "My precognitors have recently begun to see a major change affecting me. The lesser Talents put faces on this change, telling me they foresee a war, or bad weather, or a rebellion. Those I rely on, though, tell me they can't understand what it is they're seeing. They say that changes emanate from a blank place, or from a thing so alien they can't describe it. Several have gone catatonic.

  You may not be able to see the future, Chaiel, but you know all the past. I wonder if you can figure out what they're seeing."

  Chaiel began to laugh. Thelyan waited patiently for him to finish. Eventually, the boy said brightly, "That's easy. They see your death and they're afraid to tell you."

  "Unlikely. There's no force on earth that could kill me."

  "I could."

&nbs
p; "Perhaps. If you weren't in the null sphere. But you are in the sphere, Chaiel, and you won't get out."

  That might have been a mistake. It sent the boy into a convulsion of babbling and weeping that lasted nearly half an hour. Thrashing like an overturned insect, he strained to reach the sphere's surface. He knew he could not, but tried anyway. Clawing at his face with his helical fingernails, Chaiel drew bleeding scratches down his cheeks and brow as the nails broke off. Once they were no longer part of him, they fell clicking to the floor beneath the sphere, to join a litter of similar scraps there. He watched their fall with an expression of anguished longing.

  When Chaiel had calmed somewhat, Thelyan rephrased his question. "What sort of thing would appear to a Precognitor as a blank space radiating change, or as a thing too alien to describe?"

  "One of us," Chaiel answered promptly.

  "There are no more of us."

  "You didn't eat us all. Some of us you lost."

  "Who?" Thelyan knew the answer, but there was a chance of some new information.

  "Medur."

  "Incarnated. Powerless. She was never a threat."

  "Ka'an."

  "Also lost in incarnation."

  "How can you be so sure? We all start incarnated. Maybe he's getting his power back, did you think of that? Maybe he fell into his Burn and sucked it up." Chaiel made a rude slurping noise.

  "Like a fly on an eyeball. And he's going to come for you and twist you around until you're inside out and you have to look at yourself and see that there's nothing in there!" This was followed by another spate of giggling.

  "I would have sensed such an event. In any case, I doubt a personality as fractured as his has survived repeated incarnation."

  "Because he's full of smaller gods?" More giggling. "That's unstable? You're a menagerie. You should be in here. You could keep yourself company. You'd never be lonely." An abrupt shift to anguish. "I wish I had another of me! Oh, Thelyan, let me out, I promise I'll be good!"

  Thelyan ignored this. "What is it my Precognitors are sensing, Chaiel?"

  "Lemon drops. Penwipers. Go to hell."

  "If you don't tell me, I'll leave, and I won't talk to you anymore."

  "Good." Sulking, Chaiel curled up again, and put his arms over his head.

  "As you wish." Thelyan reached for a seal.

  "Wait! I can tell you something else important!"

  "Yes?"

  "Medur is male this time!"

  Thelyan shook his head at this useless information. It wasn't important, and Chaiel knew it wasn't important. He was just wasting time. Thelyan touched the seal that controlled the passage of light; he heard the beginning of Chaiel's wail just before he stopped sound as well.

  The weakest of his enemies, Medur was no threat to him, and he'd made no effort to seek her out.

  If she could have been controlled, her abilities in the realms of agriculture and the cementing of community ties might have been useful, but she was irrational. She would lack the strength of personality to emerge as herself; she'd remain encysted within the mortal body's mind, dormant.

  He'd had his chance to swallow her, centuries ago, but had chosen instead to scatter her power and kill her body rather than poison himself with her sentimental weakness. The only possible threat was Ka'an, and that devil-being could be dangerous only because his Burn had not dissipated as the others had. Even so, the evil one would have to emerge and subdue his mortal vessel's mind, a difficult enough task even for Thelyan, who retained all his power from life to life.

  No, the source of change couldn't be another immortal. It must be something else, some complex system or train of events that a mere human mind couldn't grasp. Thelyan would meet the threat and deal with it when it occurred.

  He locked the door behind him, thinking that it would probably be decades before he opened it again.

  Chapter 1

  The sound of the train was hypnotic. It dulled his mind and made his limbs feel heavy. It made it easier to pretend he wasn't here, and none of this was happening.

  It was, after all, patently ridiculous that he, Ashleigh Trine, minor rebel and utter clueless nobody, could ever be treated like this. Like a dangerous criminal, a rogue Talent, too nasty to hang. It had to be some kind of stupid dream. A very long stupid dream, a prank that had gone about three months too far. Any minute now one of those Watchmen in the white coats would come in and announce that it had all been very funny and now he could go home, and they hoped he'd learned his lesson about gossiping behind the government's back. He was a good sport. He could take a joke.

  They'd taken his chains off at a whistle stop somewhere in West Mauraine. He'd been allowed to use the station lavatory, but not to buy a candied apple from the vendor on the platform. Not that he had any money. Or bootlaces, pen, pocketknife, etcetera; he supposed they'd take his clothes when he got to prison. Thinking about this made him increasingly fond of the yellow shirt and brown corduroy bags he'd been arrested in. He'd been wearing them for months now, while awaiting trial, and they'd been a bit ratty to begin with, so there wasn't much left of them. But now they were just about all that remained of the world he belonged in. His clothes, and his glasses -- If they were going take my glasses they would have done it already, wouldn't they?

  Ashleigh leaned against the swaying wall of the prison car, peering out the tiny slatted window, picking at the scabs the cold-iron manacles had left on his wrists. There was desert outside. It had been interesting to see how the slushy end-of-winter snow of Eskard had given up on the way west. Not gradually as he'd imagined, but all at once, so that he would have missed it if he'd had anything better to do. For instance, a bloody crayon to write with -- how could you kill yourself with a pen, and ought he to be worried that they'd thought he'd want to?

  He was going to be eaten alive in prison. He'd realized that shortly after the shock of not being executed had worn off. He was pale, skinny, freckled, redheaded, and myopic; he was certain to learn new definitions of pain, fear, and degradation. There was nothing he could do to stop it. He could only try to distract himself from worrying.

  A sort of shack thing flashed by, and he saw a farmhouse farther off, skimming along between the stationary mountains and the speeding scrub. A plume of smoke rose from an intermediately distant valley beyond the farm, growing closer as acres of dry plow-furrows slipped by. Ashleigh could discern a sharp new smell under the reek of the engine and the desert's alien scent.

  Something chemical. A city; or at least a giant refinery. He'd heard that most of the iron and coal and so forth for the Commonwealth's military machine was produced out here. He scrubbed ar his glasses with a filthy shirttail and peered hard at the plume of pollution as it grew closer. He sincerely hoped this wasn't his destination.

  When the train stopped at a roofless platform surrounded by grayish adobe shacks, his heart sank. He told himself they were just taking on fuel and water, but it had only been four hours since the last stop. Then one of his white-uniformed guards came and banged on the compartment's iron door to get his attention, and he knew: he was being sent to wheeze out his last months in slavery at some asbestos mine or something. He wondered whether, if he made a break for it, they'd just shoot him.

  "Back on the bench, Trine," the guard said. "Hands on your head."

  Ashleigh did as he was told. The man came in with his gun trained, as if his slight, bespectacled prisoner might perform some amazing feat of derring-do and wrest the weapon from him. He was followed by another, who carried the hated manacles.

  "Oh, no," Ashleigh groaned. "Do we have to?"

  Ignoring him, the man fastened the chains on Ashleigh's wrists. As he stepped away, he said,

  "You better keep that big mouth of yours shut from now on. We're taking on a couple of real baddies. They won't be nice to you like we are."

  "If I'm not a real baddie," Ashleigh muttered, "why am I here?" Naturally he got no reply. The Watchmen just slammed the door, leaving him to scratch his wrists a
nd remind himself that none of this was actually happening.

  The engine sat on the tracks, humming to itself, for a long time. His watch was another of those things he didn't have, but it was long enough for the sun to get behind a ridge of furrowed hills a couple miles west of the train. The desert, which had been all rust and mustard before, went suddenly purple. The warmth of the day was instantly gone. Some kind of demented dog started howling somewhere nearby.

  A clang of footsteps on the metal connector-thing outside his moveable cell made his heart jump with apprehension. The 'real baddies' coming aboard, no doubt. A Watchman stepped in first, establishing a field of fire throughout the tiny room. Then a big, saggy pig of a clearly nasty man, who glared at Ashleigh with a sort of hateful avarice, obviously hoping he'd get a chance to do some violence as soon as the guards were out of his hair. He had to be threatened before he'd take his seat against the opposite wall.