The Brass God

by K. M. McKinley

  “The creations of the One were the gods of our masters. Long before they came to this Earth, they dwelled up there.” Shkarauthir pointed his finger toward the Twin. “There they lived for untold years. The One was pleased with his creatures. They could talk, and make music, and they danced and played in the changeless forests of that world. Their antics delighted him and the Twins, causing the One to dally while the void grew and the sky became dangerously empty. The creatures took pleasure in all they did, and most especially in the creations of the One. But their words were those of children, and though charming to begin with, after a time their prattle annoyed him, and their doings he found foolish.

  “Dismayed, he withdrew, and wandered the garden of stars awhile, wondering what he could do. He had made the beings exactly as he had planned, and they loved all he made as he so desired. As he looked at all the beauty he had created, and the void that wanted to engulf it that he also had made, a thought struck him. His children had no power of their own to make things with their hands or their minds. They would never appreciate his work truly, until they could do work of their own. Furthermore, should they create, then the ever-growing void might be more quickly filled. The One was a being that transcended the division between Will and Form, being of neither, and greater than both. But his creatures were wholly begat from this creation’s duality. Though they were of his flesh, he could not invest them with his own ability, for that is a power from beyond this place. He thought and thought on what he might do, and saw that if he gave them a little of Will’s being to complement their hands and minds, they might change the universe. They could never make something from nothing as he had, only change what was already there, but it would be enough.

  “In great excitement, he returned to his worlds, and bargained with Will that she might give up a part of herself, so that the First Born could know change too, and truly love; for love transforms, and without love there can be no change. With that understanding of the universe they might make and help fill the void, for making is but changing by another name.

  “When the One returned he had been gone for aeons, and the two First Born had become hundreds. In a clearing in a forest of still flame trees, to the greatest five of the First Born he granted Will’s gift. Fearing ill effect, he used but a little Will at first. He stepped back to watch his efforts. To his disappointment things went on as before. The Five sang the songs he taught them, and danced their little dances, and spoke the words he put into their mouths. Nothing new, however, did they make. No change could they affect. They made no tools, nor homes, or clothes.

  “So the One took them up into his arms, and into them he breathed a little more Will, and the same result he obtained. Then a little more, until finally, frustrated that his own desires not be realised and fearing the hunger of the void, he steeped these Five in so much Will there was little else to them but Will, and the divine flesh that came from himself was greatly diluted by the stuff of Will. The creatures cried out, and fell down still, and he thought them dead. Exhausted and woeful he went away to fill the sky. The Twins cried for him as he left, reminding him of his failure. He grew irritable with them, and he ignored them.

  “The next day or century, or aeon, for these measurements of time are man things and not applicable to the likes of the all-encompassing One, the One returned to his world of Form and found its timeless situation altered. The groves of ever burning trees of shiftless fire had become of wood and leaves, and they grew and died. Form had changed, and that, in that changeless place, was not possible. As for his five First Born infused with Will, well, they were nowhere to be seen. He marvelled at this turn of events, and hurried from the clearing where he had changed the Five, and into a whole new world.

  “The Five had become many, for the One had been gone far longer than he intended. They harvested the last forests of fire, and refashioned them into cities made of sparks. Everything they looked upon they remade into something new. They made art and music and works of Will that he had not taught them. So amazed was he, he did not stop to reflect on the absence of Form’s voice, or how it had begun to lose its eternal aspect, and change. He went among these Children of the Five with great joy, meaning to embrace them and love them, but they scattered from him, and were afraid. His light was greater than their light, and he hurt them, for he comes from without, and there was so little of his flesh remaining in the Children of the Five that his touch burned them. As they fled in terror it was then he realised he could no longer hear the voice of Will either. Once again he withdrew. His new children had changed his old, but how?

  “The next time he returned, he found temples and statues. The Children of the Five had come to worship him as a god, and this he did not want. He had made all, and though he desired love and appreciation of his art, he did not wish for blind devotion. So he donned a form of flesh like theirs, and came to them disguised as a teacher. During this life he instructed them in many arts, and laid down the Rule of Twenty, but his attempts to dissuade the people from his worship came to nought, and the many corruptions of his teachings filled him with anguish.

  “In the end, the One saw that he spent too much time upon the Twins. They lived, but differently, without voice or thought, they were dumb orbs fit only to house other creatures. Form had lost its changelessness. Will, though no Child of the Five had yet set foot upon it, was changed too, and become more stable in shape. So did the natures of the two worlds begin their long convergence, until there is today little difference between them.

  “Cruelly, he blamed the Twins’ predicament on their own selfish need for love. The One could not conceive of a mistake on his part. The void continued to grow, and he had abandoned his self-appointed duty to fill it, all because his world-children required constant attention! So he spurned them, and loved them less. One last time he went back into the world in the teacher’s guise to speak with the Children of the Five, and though for him it seemed but a few minutes had gone, in truth several hundred years had passed while he thought angrily upon the Twins’ downfall.

  “With a heavy heart, he called the lords and the prophets of the Children of the Five together, and for the last time he spoke with them, and there was now scorn in his voice to embitter his love. At first they did not hear his new teachings, for in their minds they contradicted the old, though they did not realise that was their error, for they had misinterpreted much of what the One had taught them. So much time had passed, they said he could not be who he said he was, and they doubted him. Angered, he cast off his teacher’s guise, and stood before them in the full raiment of his glory. They fell to their faces, not daring to look up. Those that were slow were burned by his brilliance, and many were struck blind.

  “‘My children,’ he said to them, ‘the time has come for me to leave you. My presence hurts you more than it helps, and this sorrows me. In recompense I leave this world to you to do with as you please. I offer one last warning before I go, and I plead with you that this lesson, unlike so many others that I have given, shall be heeded. You are invested with the power to create. Exercise it well but in caution, for the act of creation changes the creator. The effects of your gifts go further than you can conceive. The worlds of Will and Form have lost their voices and their purity already because of you. I am changed because of you. And so you will also change yourselves. Those that can change may change themselves without intention, for this universe I have made is altered by your presence alone.

  “His light grew brighter in preparation for his final departure.

  “‘Prosper, my children, but never look to the skies and expect my return, for it shall never come.’ And with that, he disappeared forever.” Shkarauthir nodded in satisfaction. “Some believe the One will relent and return. Some do not. What is true and known is that he never has.”

  Rel waited expectantly for the next revelation.

  Shkarauthir shut his eyes and hummed deeply. “This is why we go north.”

  The Modalmen stood, and went to thei
r fires in total silence.

  Rel looked about in astonishment. He fixed narrowed eyes upon Shkarauthir. “That’s it? That tells me nothing about why you are going north!”

  Shkarauthir’s nostrils flexed. “That is because you do not listen.”

  “Really? Do you really believe that?”

  Shkarauthir shook his head sadly. “So impatient. A true man would hear the wisdom I have just spoken, and, if he did not think himself properly informed, would wait for further enlightenment.”

  “How long would that take?”

  “As long as it takes. A year, a thousand years.”

  “I do not know how long you live, but I do not have a thousand years,” said Rel.

  The huge modalman began unwrapping his blanket.

  “Come on,” said Rel. “There must be more you can tell me.”

  Shkarauthir sighed. “Though you are as impetuous for knowledge as the Twin worlds were in their desire to be loved, I will offer you this. Creation begets creation. It is easy. Wisdom, however, must be learned, and the Twins and the Children of the Five were poor students. They did not see that one solution can create more problems. The One was a god to his children. In their turn they had children of their own, who worshipped them as gods as the Children of the Five worshipped the One. They were of two kinds, for they were of iron and they were of flesh. Divided from the start, they knew little but war. The urge to create is strong. The children of flesh, the grandsons of the One, could make no children like the One or the Y Dvar. So they stole their own. We are their foundlings, we are their warriors. War comes to our masters’ door again, the war of iron against flesh, the war of Form against Will, and that is but the latest campaign in the ageless struggle between being and void. That is why we go north.”

  “Well,” said Rel grudgingly. “Thank you.” He unstrapped his bedroll and shook it out. “I still do not think you are telling me the whole of it.”

  “No story is ever the whole of anything,” said Shkarauthir. “No man can ever know all the story. Though there are many themes and many plots, there is only one story, the tale of the One and the void. We come and go into this great story, ignorant of the beginning before us, and dead well before the end. What you heard is enough. Be satisfied.”

  Rel laid his bedroll. “There would be answers in this city for me. My people have learned a lot digging up places like this.”

  “Then they are foolhardy. These places are graves, traps for the unwary.” Shkarauthir settled himself into his blankets. “Be careful, small one. Stay close by the fire and sleep. It is only safe in the barracks, where my people lived when we served our masters. This was our domain, and it remains so. There is protection here still that is lacking outside these walls.”

  The modalmen fell asleep quickly and so Rel seized the chance for one last question.

  “Shkarauthir?” asked Rel.

  “Mmm?” said the great chieftain.

  “How is it you speak Maceriyan so well?”

  “The One,” sighed Shkarauthir. “He put the words into my mouth, as he put the pebbles of words into the mouths of the first people, all blessings be upon him.”

  With that typically obtuse answer, Shkarauthir was suddenly asleep, as were the rest of his kind, leaving Rel awake alone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Cold Fate

  THEY BURIED TRASSAN Kressind on a promontory overlooking the shelves of stacked ice that clung to the shores of the Sotherwinter. Little more than a knoll that jutted out over the snow, the hill was high enough that the indigo sea could be seen surging impatiently a mile away.

  Though the knoll’s rock was free of snow, in its vicinity there were few places uncovered by the gathering thaw. Where the soil was exposed it was loose and moist on the surface, permanently frozen a foot down, so they laid Trassan to rest in a cairn of stones, trusting that the weight of rock would keep his body free from the attentions of the birds and the dracon-skuas that swarmed and dove at the foot of the ice cliffs.

  Ilona sat alone upon the stone, listening to the screeching of the seabirds. A final chance to say goodbye, and she had no words to give. It was late, nearly midnight, but still bright as day. A strange clarity was upon a landscape lit by light the colour of pale summer wine.

  The service was short. Few words were said. Not for lack of respect, Ilona thought, but from sorrow. After it was done, and Trassan’s cold body interred, the others left her alone with her grief. She was grateful for that. Only Tyn Rulsy waited for her, perched on a swelling in the rock. She looked to be staring at Ilona’s ironlock propped against the cairn— Bannord had insisted Ilona have one of their remaining guns—though whatever she actually saw with her button black eyes, it was far away from their physical location.

  Winter grudgingly relaxed its grip on the Sotherwinter, but it did not rule uncontested. Under the midnight sun the snow crept away from the black dome of the stone inch by inch. Clear patches of ice showed at the fringes where water had melted and frozen again in the brief nights. It was only days after midsummer’s eve, so Ilona supposed the process would continue a while, uncovering a little more of the rock before the cold of the polar winter returned and the rock was buried again.

  Even at the height of summer her breath clouded the evening air, but there was life there upon the narrow bit of land sandwiched between the ice of the interior and the ice of the littoral. Small flies warmed themselves on the rock, stealing energy for their desperate mating flights. Grasses grew in a crack across the top of the crag, bearing delicate purple flowers. The cairn holding Trassan’s body was built over the grass. She stared at the plants, feeling sorry for burying them; their life was hard enough. Right by the lowest stone in the pile, three blooms bobbed madly in the sea breeze. It was so alive, a flash of colour in a monochrome wasteland.

  Ilona faced out to sea and wept, crying as she could not in front of the others. The frigid winds dried her tears as quickly as they fell.

  “Ilona.”

  Tullian Ardovani spoke behind her softly. She rubbed her eyes with the cuff of her parka before facing him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling the need to apologise, as if sorrow would kill them all in that deadly place.

  “Don’t be,” he said. “How are you?” The magister’s expression was all so puppyish in his solicitude that she wanted to slap him.

  Nobody knew the angry Ilona of Karsa City. They had seen her once, when she kicked Trassan. After that Ilona had clamped down on her spirit so hard she felt smothered. But it had worked. They all saw her as dutiful and willing to learn. Except, perhaps, Bannord. He could see her true self, she could tell from the way he smiled when she lost her temper and just as quickly reeled it in. Nobody else glimpsed the effort it took not to let her irritation get the better of her.

  “As good as can be,” she said.

  “Trassan was a good man,” he said.

  “He was.”

  He came to her and rested a hand on her shoulder. He didn’t have his gloves on, and his fingers were red as mince with the cold. It was an awkward gesture. A more confident man would have taken her in his arms, and held her tight, and let her weep. Ardovani was a picture of self-assurance compared to the expedition mage, the deceased Vols Iapetus. He greeted every new experience with a joyous enthusiasm that was lifting to the spirits. But when around her he had the withdrawn timidity that academic men suffer in the company of women. It was a shame. If only she could crush him and Bannord together and make them one, she might have the perfect man.

  “If there is anything I can do...” he said.

  “Can you bring Trassan back from the dead?” she said, regretting her mocking tone the instant she had spoken.

  He shook his head in genuine sorrow. “Only the very greatest necromancers, the Mage-Guiders of old, could do that, and in truth I am not sure they are anything more than stories. I have a small talent for directed glimmer machines,” he said modestly. “I am no mage.”

  “I am sorry.
I am prone to making light at inappropriate moments.”

  “I had not noticed that.”

  “There is a lot you don’t know about me.” She sighed. “You are a very trusting man, magister.”

  He looked a little uncomfortable. She was toying with him, she knew, but the effect she had on him made her feel better.

  “I can’t bring him back, but I did see him go,” he said.

  “What, into the...?” she pointed upward, then laughed through her tears. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t laugh. It’s mostly relief.”

  “Really!” he said, sharing her unexpected laughter. “I’ve never seen a ghost depart before. I mean, all mageborn theoretically can, but I suppose back home there is too much noise. Too many other wills pushing at reality. Here, in this place, anything feels possible.” He lapsed into thought.

  “What was it like?” she asked quietly.

  “Beautiful and terrifying. As you might expect. I could not see into the next world, but he was heading there with purpose, and he looked at peace.”

  “He got through, even without a Guider?”

  “I believe he did.”

  Neither of them spoke of the fates of those who were lost after death, the tormented souls that roamed the Earth, or worse, vanished altogether. There was no Guider in the ship’s crew. All souls lost at sea were the property of the Drowned King, excepting those that belonged to the One.

  “They say the strong willed find their way, no matter what,” he said.

  She closed her eyes, to better feel the wind on her face and hide her grief. “I was in love with him when we were children. I had no real friends of my own. My mother’s behaviour drove people away, but not family. Aarin was closer to me in years, but Trassan and I loved the same things. He was always more interested in engineering than I was, but we shared a passion for faraway places, and tall tales. He was quite the romantic.” She looked down on the stone bed her cousin would sleep in forever. “We were very close. I hated him when he used me to get my father’s money. I provoked him, I suppose. I knew he’d never marry me, I didn’t want him to, but I couldn’t forgive him for making a child’s promise he could not keep. And then he broke his other promise, to take me into the crew. I blame myself. If I had not been so forward with him, then perhaps he would not have left me behind like he did, and I would not have had to smuggle myself aboard the ship. Now he’s dead. I wish we had parted on better terms.”