The Brass God

by K. M. McKinley

  In the west the High Spine broke into the uneven, desert tablelands of the Red Expanse, eventually sheering off into the sea. Their eastern extent was unknown. Both the mountains and the Black Sands ended in a series of cartographer’s fancies on every map Rel had ever seen. No representation could have captured their size, accurate or not. The cliff backing the valley was monolithic, more akin to a giant block of masonry than a natural formation. There were five faults in its smooth surface whose protruding ledges were probably wide enough to accommodate a locomotive. All but one began far from the ground. A goat would fail to reach the others. And this was the face of one mountain in a blocky chain of thousands similar.

  The only other feature in the perpendicular plane of stone was the Citadel of the Brass God.

  A deep arch had been cut directly into the rock. The edges were perfectly pointed, a master mason’s work. The citadel occupied this niche in the mountain like a giant votive candle. A tall, narrow spire of unfeasibly delicate proportions presided over a town tightly crammed about its base. Delicate bridges and aerial walks connected buildings to the tower, but though they arced high in the air, they reached no further than one quarter of the way up the full height. A switchback way was carved into the rock, leading from the valley floor to the citadel, similar in construction to the road mounting the cliff up to the Glass Fort in the Appins.

  There was no sense of scale. The citadel was enormous, but how big Rel could not decide. The way and the aerial walks could have been paths big enough for a single man, or they might have been roads sized for an army of modalmen. By his estimation, at the very least the spire was five hundred feet tall. Recent experience suggested to him that this was a conservative guess. Everything about the Black Sands was gigantically sized.

  The moaning chants of the modalmen reached a crescendo, echoing from the walls of the valley and the mountain in musical thunder. As the sun burst over the horizon they changed pitch and rhythm, and continued as the first rays crept around the edges of the citadel’s recess and struck upon the tower.

  Lustrous black-green glass caught the first rays of the sun and bottled it within itself, kindling secret fires that displayed the amazing artistry of the Morfaan. However, as soon as the citadel showed its magnificence, it revealed also its ruination. When hidden half in shadow, the citadel had seemed whole. With the citadel’s wounds bleeding light, what Rel had taken for deliberate artifice were shown as ragged breaks in the walls. The little town of buildings were roofless shells, a peculiar collection that looked like they had never been inhabitable, with windows that served no useful purpose, and doors opening halfway up sheer walls. The citadel’s spire appeared to have been broken off some way below the top.

  For a minute the Citadel of the Brass God glimmered with the sun, then whatever resonance the first rays conjured from the glass died away, and it became a black, broken sculpture again.

  The modalmen stopped singing. The whisper of clothes and feet on sand took over as they stood. From somewhere far off, Rel thought he heard human cries. The modalmen shut their eyes and raised their four arms to bathe in the sun.

  Black-skinned giants surrounded Rel on every side. He was lost in a forest of legs. He wanted to see what was going on in the camp, and where his people were, but he could not.

  Shkarauthir sighed with deep satisfaction and looked down at Rel. The modalmen began their day calmed by their observance, and their bass chatter filled the valley.

  “The One is honoured. Our tasks begin. After we breakfast we go to the moot,” said Shkarauthir.

  “All of you are going?” asked Rel.

  “All of us. This is an important day.”

  THE PRECURSOR TO the moot involved a long morning of dancing and singing. The king of the Gulu Thek was dressed by the elders in ritual finery of a gold cloth shirt, a cape of dracon feathers, and a tall felt hat. Rel was well used to the modalmen’s outlandishness by then, but this new garb struck him as ridiculous.

  All over the camp songs were sung, as the leaders of each clan were made ready for the moot. Rel could still see little of his surroundings, he would have had to stand upon the heads of the modalmen for that. He decided against requesting the favour.

  The sun was high over the valley by the time the modalmen danced their way toward the moot. Rel walked alongside Drauthek, for Shkarauthir was at the head of the Gulu Thek procession.

  “We see Brass God today!” said Drauthek joyously. “He is mighty. He know what to do. He punish others for raiding small people, you see.”

  Rel saw nothing but stamping, trunk-like legs. He was soon coughing upon the dust their feet kicked up. He was helpless. He tried to ask Drauthek questions, but the giant was caught up in the celebrations, and Rel’s entire efforts became restricted to avoiding being trampled. The crowd became dense as modalmen from other campgrounds streamed in to join the throng. Their songs were all different. Some were harsh, others melodic, one a complicated syncopation of booming calls. They meshed somehow in an outpouring of united racial joy. Rel was shoved and battered, and he feared for his life, until Drauthek finally noticed his plight and scooped him up in his lower arms. Rel fought against the modalman’s urge to cradle him like a child, and eventually, through a combination of shouts, prods and kicks, Rel got him to crook his elbow across his stomach, allowing Rel to clamber up and sit upon Drauthek’s shoulder. The modalman accepted his new role as mount, but would not stop dancing, so Rel clung on as best as he could with his legs.

  Arms waved like prairie grass from one side of the valley to the other. Rel got a fleeting impression of the size of the camp, but the modalmen demanded his attention. Though pressed into one chanting mass, their tribal groupings were apparent as blocks within the greater whole, like unmixed paints on an artist’s palette. The colours and shapes of their glowing markings were all different, as was their dress.

  There was a tribe whose skin was covered in ochre handprints, too small to be their own, perhaps made by human slaves. Another pierced the thick hide of their upper shoulders with the stripped quills of dracons. The tribe next to them was distinctive by the thick band of red paint that circled their heads; those beside them wore cloaks of bark.

  A greater division existed than paint and beads. Half the modalmen wore human skulls polished and threaded like beads onto thongs, or other ghoulish remains. The other half did not. Sitting on Drauthek’s shoulder, he thanked fate for his fortuitous meeting with the Gulu Thek, and not a tribe of man-eaters.

  The tribes had almost completely merged when Drauthek growled and his dancing faltered. He patted Rel’s leg with a massive hand and pointed.

  “Brauctha,” he said. “Chief of our rivals. His clan and ours, bitter enemies.” Drauthek shook his head, causing Rel to grab hold of his ear to avoid falling.

  The brute Drauthek indicated was head and shoulders taller than the warriors around him. Silver studs, driven, so far as Rel could tell, directly into his skull, shone around his head. Sharpened human bones were threaded through the skin between the grooves of his patterning, and he wore a necklace of human jawbones, the teeth of which had been replaced by glinting rubies.

  “He is king of Giev En,” continued Drauthek, struggling to find the right words. “There many tribes, but two kinds of true men, man-eaters, and not man-eaters. Man-eaters eat little people, sometimes eat true men. Not man-eater think this big sin. Giev En man-eaters, Gulu Thek not.”

  “Is it the men-eaters who fight against the men of the Kingdoms?”

  “All true men fight little people, if Brass God says. Otherwise not, and not for long time now. We not fight for years. Sometimes true men fight true men. But all are true men, if eat men or not eat men.”

  “So now what? Will Shkarauthir fight Brauctha?”

  “Not at moot.”

  “Will you fight us?”

  Drauthek shrugged, a titanic motion that caused Rel to nearly fall. “We see. If Brass God say fight, we fight, if he say no fight, we not fight. Must
be showing of hands first.”

  “A vote?”

  “Yes, yes. A vote. A choosing by many?”

  “That is a vote,” said Rel. “You will vote to set my people free?”

  “Not first. Not most important. First we vote for war, or no war.”

  “Against who?”

  “The iron traitors,” said Drauthek with real feeling. “They come soon. All true men unite to fight them. They are bad enemy, from long time ago.”

  The procession headed directly toward the Citadel of the Brass God. For all their circuitous dancing, the modalmen covered the distance rapidly. The citadel was taller than Rel had estimated. Now he was closer he could see that the way was a wide road. But the citadel, no matter how big it was, was nothing compared to the mountain standing in his way like the wall at the end of the world.

  Directly ahead of the procession, between the citadel and the camp, a large screen had been set up across the road. Stout poles of wood held huge sheets of leather taut. These were single pieces, cut from the back of gods knew what. Vents were let into the sheets, to stop the wind from pushing them over. It was towards the screen that the modalmen made their stamping, singing way.

  “There. There is the moot ground! Soon we see Brass God,” said Drauthek, and began his singing and dancing again.

  THE MODALMEN DANCED once all the way around the screened area, which proved to be a rough ellipse. The moot ground was raised a little from the valley floor, being on the beginning of the climb to the citadel, and that allowed Rel to gather more of an impression of the camp’s extent.

  The dried lake dominated the valley, forming a natural boundary between two distinct forms of camp. The camps on the far side were slightly more numerous and of a more disordered character than those on the nearside. Black flags predominated on the far side instead of the reds and blues of the nearer. He saw a large number of wagons under the black flags, each bearing cages like those used to transport war-dracons through civilised lands. There were people within. He rose up on Drauthek’s shoulder to get a better look, but the distance prevented him seeing how many men they contained.

  Drauthek turned away from the view as they moved back around the screened moot ground. With the procession having completed one circuit, robed modalmen unlaced the panel blocking the road and the chanting horde danced inside.

  Rel had expected to see a flat area, or a mound, perhaps. What he saw instead was an ancient amphitheatre dug into the ground directly across the road. A few paces within the screen, the road to the citadel dropped down a hundred shallow steps to the arena floor, crossed the widest part, then climbed the same way up the other side. The rest of the arena was lined with stone benches cracked with the passing of many years. Like the screen around it, the amphitheatre was oval in shape, but formed with precision. Despite its great age and eroded appearance, the geometric perfection of the theatre remained. At either end were stone doors sealing tunnels carved into the bedrock.

  The modalmen descended the steps and spread out. They moved in intersecting lines, only heading back up into the seats after several choreographed passes across the floor. The benches had been built for smaller creatures than the modalmen, and they were an inconvenience to them rather than an asset, something to be scrambled over and stood awkwardly upon. Nevertheless, once they were at their places they continued to jig and sing on the spot.

  Shkarauthir’s tribe occupied a vast slice of the theatre. Drauthek took Rel all the way back up to the top where six feet of stone walled the last bench in. Traces of carvings and peg holes in the cracked masonry for fittings spoke of a richer past. Drauthek made straight for this wall, whereupon he grasped Rel like a doll and placed him on the stony lip of the ground around the amphitheatre. Standing upon this small platform within the screen, Rel was able to see over the heads of the assembled horde right into the centre.

  The amphitheatre floor was three hundred yards long and at least one hundred wide. A hundred thousand humans could have sat within the carved crater surrounding it. Rel estimated there to be at least twenty thousand modalmen there, so many that they overspilled the seats and filled the stepped road.

  It took some time for the modalmen to dance their solemn yet awkward way into their places. Rel searched for Shkarauthir but did not see him, nor any of the other leaders of the clans. By the time the last and smallest of the clans had twirled their way to their place it was noon. The modalmen’s bodies were foamed like exerted garau, and the heat of their exertions conspired with the sun to drive the temperature high. Rel was glad to be up alone on the lip. The modalmen fell into a swaying, exhausted trance.

  Rel had brought his canteen, though he had no food. He sipped his water and settled in for a long, hungry day, diverting his mind from his grumbling stomach by examining the modalmen carefully, and further instructing himself in their differences.

  He dozed awhile, waking when the eastern stone door rumbled aside. In walked the clan chiefs. The stupefied modalmen let out a resounding cheer at their arrival. Rel counted twenty-four of them. Beneath their ceremonial finery their skins glistened with oils.

  The clan chiefs went to stand on the stage before their peoples. Then out came three times as many elders, each cowled and grey skinned. When the last was in place, an expectant hush fell. The snap and thrum of the skins behind Rel tensing and relaxing in the desert wind played an eerie drumroll.

  Horns blew, and the second gate opened to an even greater tumult from the modalmen. They roared and sang and stamped their feet as a palanquin bearing a brazen figure emerged into the white light of the noon.

  A dozen heavily-built modalmen carried the Brass God in to shouting songs so loud Rel’s ears rang. He struggled to see through the banks of waving hands, so stood up.

  A modalman richly clad in a cape of golden beads walked to the centre of the arena and shouted something, and the crowd yelled even louder.

  The Brass God was borne to the centre of the arena to deafening roars. Rel got his first good look at the deity.

  He had thought to see a wonder from ancient times. Instead upon a throne carved from floatstone was sat an effigy of a Morfaan made in brass and steel. Effigy was all it was. The execution was fair in the modalmen’s brutish way, but it was in an abstract style that made no attempt at being lifelike. The body shell was fashioned of brass, beaten into plates and attached to a steel armature. Glass eyes stared fixedly forward. Crudely-sculpted hands grasped stone arm-rests. A suggestion of crossed smaller arms were scored into the metal making up its chest.

  Rel had hoped for a being he could speak with, someone like Eliturion, the god who lived in Karsa, but the future of the Hundred Kingdoms rested upon a statue. His heart sank.

  “Shit,” said Rel.

  The elder in the gold cloak held up his arms. The crowd fell silent. The gold-cloaked elder spoke then, and at length. Rel comprehended not a single word, so he applied himself to the situation as he understood it.

  The outcome of the moot depended solely on the modalmen. If Shkarauthir talked the others round, he supposed that there would be no war. He could not assume it would work. Assumption was a poor foundation for success.

  He wondered how the Hundred were reacting to the news of the Modalmen attack. Before Shkarauthir had appeared, Rel and his men had scouted out the Giev En’s camp. When they were attacked, his warlock Deamaathani used magic to travel back to the Glass Fort. The Khusiak Zorolotsev would have made it back too, a few days later. Rel was glad he didn’t have to deliver that particular report. Hundreds of modalmen in the desert, with a dragon! Messengers got blamed for bad tidings. Mining would have to be suspended. At the least, disruption to operations in Farside and the sands was going to cost a lot of rich men a lot of money, for the new industries were dependent on the Black Sands’ output of glimmer. At best, the horde of modalmen jeopardised the entire territory. At the worst an army of monsters would pour over the Appins.

  Now it was worse still. Hundreds had become thousands
, and the man-eater tribes had far more captives than just those from the rail camps. Rel clenched his teeth. His father advocated disengagement from other’s problems, no matter how dire, intervening only to exploit them for profit. He definitely would not approve of Rel risking his life for the men in the cages. Rel had no idea how he was going to get them out. He could risk his life for nothing. His father would tell him to bide his time, then slip away.

  Rel was not Gelbion Kressind.

  The elder finished, and beckoned forward one of the chiefs, who started a speech of his own.

  Another modalman was called, then another. All spoke passionately to the silent crowd. They were allowed to say their piece without interruption. Then the next took centre stage, then the next. There was no debate.

  Rel grasped the pouch he wore on his belt and twisted it. He wondered if the magic inside was still good. It had saved him from the procession of the dead in Farside. It had done precious little against the Y Dvar in Losirna. He wished Aarin had explained how to use it properly.

  Shkarauthir’s turn came to give his speech. Rel grew increasingly frustrated that he could not understand the language.

  He weighed the pouch in his hand. Inside were small objects as hard as iron. When he first wore it he had fingered the objects gently, curious, but not wanting to break them. Later, he had applied more pressure, and they had not so much as flexed. The pouch was beautifully made, so light he hardly knew it was there most of the time. The stitching was too fine for human hands. Tyn work, he thought. Tyn work and Tyn magic.

  “Don’t open it.” Rel reminded himself of Aarin’s words.

  He let the pouch hang from its fastenings and watched the king of the Gulu Thek speak. The crowd murmured. Cheers broke out. So positive was the crowd’s mood that Rel half-convinced himself that Shkarauthir had swayed them by the time he had finished.

  Brauctha was called next. The cheering that greeted him demolished Rel’s hope. The man-eater modalman bounded into the arena without the stiff dignity of the others. He waved and he roared. Elders scattered around the crowd shook their heads and made other signs of disapproval, but when Brauctha took centre stage the crowds hooted louder than ever. He began an aggressive tirade, jabbing his finger repeatedly in the direction of the citadel.