The Brass God

by K. M. McKinley

  When the platform upon the wall of fatty rock appeared above him, Aarin was close to dissipation. He felt thin, the atoms of his being smeared over too much space. He thought he might vanish into nothing before he arrived, but on he went, until he hovered over the figures crowding the flagstones. They appeared so insignificant. Seutreneause stood over Aarin’s body; five monks waited near the bottom of the stairs ready with medical supplies to revive him; four Guiders with drawn daggers crouched at his side, ready to plunge their weapons into his heart should he attempt to escape. It was a laughable precaution. Aarin had been barely able to move on his previous returns. He knew then that they feared him, and he was glad.

  This time it would be different, and daggers would be no help to them.

  Aarin flew at his body, and something ancient and powerful followed. Tallimastus clung to his back, while within his being boiled a crowd of angry ghosts. Sensing their revenge was at hand, they poured out of the glowing rent in his arm and swarmed around him in loops, their mouths open in silent shrieks, before plunging back into his spiritual form where they raced the immortal circuits of his soul.

  For a moment Aarin hung over his corporeal shell, watching the seething mass of revenants plunge down to infest his body. Above his head the gates of death swung wide, opening the terrible rift into which the Guiders saw. Gates was a poetic term for this gash in reality. Green lights shimmered, and through them the strange sights of the Lands of the Dead were visible. Aarin had never seen beyond the gates. Tallimastus’ presence cleared the mists that clouded the marches of life, and Aarin witnessed wonders.

  “Do not look into the light,” said Tallimastus. His voice resounded around Aarin’s mind, as if he were part of his own psyche. “Turn your face from it, and you will not die. This I swear. You are under my protection. I am death.”

  Aarin tore his eyes from the Lands of the Dead. It would be easier to deny the god and the prior their wishes, and ascend to the perils of the afterlife alone. The ghosts sensed his indecision, and howled the louder, until his own desire for vengeance and a need to fulfil his oaths pushed him back toward his body.

  He landed hard, his limbs twitching at the impact of his spiritual form. For something with so little physical mass, a soul possessed great heft. More ghosts followed him, smacking into his body one after the other. If any of the Guiders on the platform had been of the same degree of ability as Aarin they might have seen his passengers taking that fateful step from death into undeath, but the ghosts possessed his body unobserved, the only sign of their return to the material world the repeated twitching of his limbs.

  Aarin’s jaw clamped. The pain from his neck was worse than ever before. His flesh was compressed and bruised, his windpipe pushed to a fractional width. His spine ached from the jerk of the drop; they’d nearly broken his neck this time. Before he had come round, weak, but mobile. Now he flopped upon the cold flags like a landed fish.

  “He has a palsy! We may lose him,” said one of the monks.

  “Then do your work!” Seutreneause said. “The secrets of the dead are his. Do not let him drag them into the afterlife with him. Do you hear that, Guider Aarin? I will not let you die, not until you have revealed what the Dead God said!”

  His heart surged into action. His eyes flickered open, and he drew in an agonising gasp. The rush of breath down his throat pained him terribly, but after the first gulp of air he could not stop, and panted for the foul atmosphere of the pit, filling his lungs with it.

  “He returns!” said the monk’s physic. “He lives!”

  Seutreneause looked down at him triumphantly, as if it were he who had risked his life and soul to speak with the Dead God, and he who had returned with all the secrets of life and death to command. Aarin hated him more than ever.

  “Excellent, excellent,” said the prior eagerly. “To his aid. Give him water, give him mead! Soothe his throat so he might speak.”

  Aarin tried to wave away the men that hurried over, but they would not relent, and set about unwrapping funnel and flask. Under the guard of the four armed monks, two others gripped his head, and inserted the long neck of their silver funnel into his throat so that it scraped against his swollen gullet. Another uncorked the flask and poured it down the funnel, until Aarin spluttered and choked and the funnel was withdrawn.

  “No more!” he gasped. “No more! I have news from the Dead God!”

  “Now, Guider,” said Seutreneause, “what did he say? Speak truthfully, or I shall be forced to break the fingers on your right hand also.”

  Aarin nodded. The motion sawed at his neck across the line of the noose. Tallimastus’ spirit was a weight upon his soul that threatened to drag him out of his body for good, but his loathing of the prior gave him the strength to hold himself in place, and look upon his right arm.

  “Draw back the sleeve. You shall see the message Tallimastus our lord has deigned to give you.”

  “Success?” said Seutreneause eagerly. He was canny enough not to bend down and look himself, although he could barely hold himself back. Instead he ordered forward his monks. They grabbed Aarin’s wrist and pinned it to the flags, as if he had the strength to assault them and escape. They drew back his sleeve.

  “There is nothing here, prior,” one said. They exposed Aarin’s arm. The flesh was unmarked.

  Seutreneause’s face set with grim fury. “Guider Aarin, you shame our order. Why must you be so recalcitrant?”

  Aarin laughed feebly, bringing on a cough that rasped at his bruised throat. “It is you who shame our order, prior,” said Aarin. “Why would the Dead God favour someone like you with the secrets you crave?”

  “Break his fingers,” said Seutreneause. “All of them. We will miss your aid in the scribing of the book, but you leave me no choice!”

  The monks worried at Aarin’s fist, trying to uncurl his right hand, while another brought up a hammer and a chisel.

  “You use the tools that should safeguard the dead to harm the living,” said Aarin, “and you call yourself worthy.” A wriggling sensation worked its way down his arm. The spirits of the dead moved in his body, chilling his blood. The Guider holding his arm gasped at the sudden change in his body temperature and released him.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Seutreneause.

  “His arm is like ice!” the man said.

  Aarin sat, and held his arm out to Seutreneause. The pain of the cold was agonising, but he smiled through his grimace. “Look again, prior.”

  Seutreneause’s eyes widened as the flesh of Aarin’s arm parted. The smooth cut Tallimastus’ nail had inflicted upon his spirit was mirrored by his body. Scarlet blood welled up and poured from his arm, soaking his black robes. The wound was deep, exposing the muscles and tendons. All power has a cost.

  The magic the god had put within him burst forth from the wound in a tidal wave of light. The spirits of the sacrificed dead came screaming out of the Dead God’s prison, into the world of the living.

  First to emerge was Mother Moude, shrieking her fury. She arrived as a vapour that shimmered and took on human form as it streaked upward into the void, looped, and came arrowing back toward the group of men, screaming overhead and making them duck. More streaks and spears of light followed as Mother Moude’s shade coalesced. As she flew she screamed with rage, her voice regained in the mortal world. Her ghost looped up and round and again then plunged downward to spear through one of the monks. He threw up his arms to shield himself, but she was something crude matter could not stop. He was frozen in this aspect of terror, his robes furred with sudden frost as his soul was torn from his body and shredded into glowing wisps on the air by the shrieking witch.

  “The dead are using his body as a gate! Kill him!” shouted Seutreneause. “Quickly!”

  The four armed monks lunged for Aarin. They were dead before their weapons could touch him, their howling spirits dragged backward from them by the ghosts pouring out of Aarin’s wound.

  Aarin lay back on the sto
ne as dozens of vengeful spirits passed from him. The monks rallied themselves, forming back to back, using their Guider’s skills against the ghosts. A couple of them had some skill, and sent the dead screaming away out of this realm and into the next. The Lands of the Dead’s ragged entrance pulsed hungrily over the crowd as their essences raced through it.

  With a chilling shriek the last of the ghosts hurled itself from Aarin’s body. The warmth returned to his arm. His blood flowed freely from him in frightening amounts. He staggered, lightheaded and clamped his arm to the wound.

  “You cut too deeply, god,” he said.

  “I cut as deeply as I needed,” said Tallimastus. A glow surrounded Aarin, and Tallimastus manifested around him, encasing the Guider in a glowing, phantasmal form. “The gates of death are closed to you. I will hold them shut as long as I can. I swear you will not die.”

  “Tallimastus is here!” a monk shouted, stumbling backward from the divine apparition.

  “They can see you,” said Aarin.

  “I stand upon the threshold of my prison,” he replied. “But though my gaol, this place is part of the Lands of the Dead. We can look deeply into that country here. I cannot leave, but my powers are strong.”

  Tallimastus took on his war aspect, the chooser of the slain who selects the mightiest warriors to watch over the ways of the dead and safeguard the souls that travel there. In that guise he was a warrior with raven hair and scaled armour, bearing a tower shield and a broadsword, only his blinded eyes, covered over with a cloth soaked with new blood, suggested his identity.

  “It is my turn to take vengeance,” he said. He stepped forward. Aarin moved helplessly with him, his bleeding arm lifting as the god raised his weapon

  “The sword of the dead! The sword of the dead!” A monk shrieked, and fled before Aarin. The weapon in Tallimastus’ hand grew monstrously huge, and cut the monk down from behind, slicing his back open and scattering his entrails in loops over the stairs. His soul came out of his body, and that too was cut, broken apart into pieces as it raced frantically for the afterlife.

  “You expunge them!” said Aarin.

  “It is no more than they deserve,” said Tallimastus, advancing upon the monks. “They never attempted to release me. They took the money of Res Iapetus. They thought they could contain death.” A Guider bravely stood his ground, flinging out a dozen of the iron darts that the Guiders used to pin dangerous spirits. They flew truly, right at the blind god’s face, but Tallimastus raised his shield and they rang off it, and fell away into the black pit.

  “Nice try,” said the god of the dead. His sword descended, cleaving the monk into two. An explosion of blood washed over the flagstones. The monk’s soul burned up in a flash of green. “You were my priests. You betrayed me knowingly, you colluded with the Goddriver. Man’s hubris knows no bounds. You forgot I am a god! My vengeance is your reward. Is it not terrible to behold?”

  Of the dozen monks who had sent Aarin off into Tallimastus’ gaol, five remained alive. A pair of them retreated up the stairs, keeping the ghosts off them with their Guider’s arts. Coronas of energy flared around them, warding away the vengeful dead. Where the energies touched the scabrous rock, it decayed into a mealy sand that sloughed from the wall and splatted, thick as porridge, on the steps. Two of the ghosts were pinned by iron darts to the rock. One took the opportunity afforded by the open gates of the dead and fled for the next world, but the majority were hellbent on revenge. Mother Moude soared and dived, harrying the surviving Guiders. Pasquanty’s angry shade followed her, as clumsy in death as he was in life, the diabolical expression he wore more than made up for his fumbled attempts to break the Guiders’ spells, striking fear in all who saw it.

  The ghosts of three monks who had given their lives in attempts to contact the Dead God before Aarin gathered as a throng over the abyss and advanced upon the prior, staring at Seutreneause with empty, unblinking eyes.

  “What we found, was not what we expected,” they said. “What we found, was not what we expected,” they repeated, over and over.

  “Stop!” said Seutreneause. “You sacrificed yourselves for the greater good. You were honoured!”

  “No honour is to be found in being the tool of another’s ambition.” The middle monk came forward, and pointed accusingly at the prior. “You lied to us. All things are clear to the dead. We were trapped, denied life after life. You knew this would happen to us, and you did not tell. Now you shall face the judgment of the Dead God.”

  Tallimastus swelled to gigantic proportions. Aarin floated at the centre of his chest.

  “Ah Seutreneause,” boomed the god. “You do not defend yourself with the discipline of necromancy, my gift to the true sons of the Dead God’s quarter.” Aarin mouthed the words along with him. “You do not do this, because you cannot. You are a weak Guider, prior. A quill-sharpening social climber. You used those granted power by me.”

  “I wanted to end the crisis of the dead!” raged Seutreneause. “I wanted to save the souls of mankind! I have held true to my oath!”

  “Then you should not have taken Iapetus’s money,” said Tallimastus. “You should not have furthered the existence of this place.”

  “What could I do? For two centuries you were trapped. How could I go against that?”

  Tallimastus reared back and grew bigger. His sword was the length of a ship’s mast, his shield the size of a sail. Aarin was a mote of matter encysted in green light. “A true priest of mine would have made every effort to free me, and damned the consequences. Instead you sought profit, status and power for yourself. I offer guidance and protection in the life beyond. You have squandered eternity for mortal gain. You sought to end the crisis, it is true, but I know your heart, and the secret dreams you have locked within are of Seutreneause the saviour, the deliverer from damnation, lauded and loved across the world. A true servant of mankind craves none of these things. A true servant has humility.”

  The wall trembled. Moist boulders rained down from above and crashed through the platform.

  Seutreneause cowered backwards, hands held beseechingly in front of his heart. “Please, please! I was wrong. I only wanted to discover why the dead would not go easily. I only wanted to help.”

  “You lie. Perhaps you wished for those things, but they were modesty’s cloak for your ambition. Maybe you believed it yourself, but I can see more clearly into your soul than you can. Always, those with little talent abuse those purer than they for gain. Always, greedy men convince themselves they work for the betterment of others.” Tallimastus’ foot descended, pinning the prior’s robe under his sandal.

  “Then why didn’t you answer? Why did you not release the monks I sent to you? I could have helped!” shouted Seutreneause. “You forsook us!”

  “You forsook me,” said Tallimastus. “You left me to rot in Res Iapetus’ prison, half a being, trapped nowhere. Do you know how bored I was?” Tallimastus leaned down, putting his shimmering, phantasmal face close to the prior’s. “I pass judgement upon you, Descan Seutreneause. I find you unworthy of your office, and I hereby relieve you of your soul.”

  “No—!”

  Seutreneause’s scream was cut off by Tallimastus’ sword. It sliced through the prior’s body, smashing the flagstones beneath. The remainder of the platform collapsed, carrying off the last monk stood upon it screaming into the pit. The cliff shook. Boulders bounced down from an unseen height, spraying viscous fluid as they span off into the dark.

  Seutreneause’s ghost rose up from the pit. His cries had an edge of desperation as he flew desperately toward the gate of the dead and the shifting, auroral world beyond.

  Tallimastus waved his sword into smoke, reached out and snatched the shade from the air.

  “No you don’t,” said the Dead God. Seutreneause wailed. “It is over for you.” The god crushed the prior’s ghost into shreds of greenish mist, and inhaled them.

  Tallimastus sighed with pleasure. Aarin, caught within his being, felt the
prior’s passing. An utter extinction of life and soul. It was the most terrible thing he had ever felt.

  The Dead God shrank in on himself, and bore Aarin toward the ragged foot of the stairs. One of the two Guiders who had fought on the steps was frozen in place. The foot of his comrade lay bloody on the bottommost step. Close by, a ghost thrashed and screamed on the rock, pinned by two darts.

  Tallimastus deposited Aarin between these grizzly remains, and drew back into the void. With no body to anchor him, the god’s form began to fade. The cliff shuddered. Part of the wall over the stairs slipped down in avalanche, taking half the width of the staircase with it.

  “This place collapses,” said Tallimastus. “My prison will no longer be accessible to the living.” The god looked upward, through the tear in space that let onto the Lands of the Dead. Aarin glimpsed strange landscapes, and crowds of lost souls, but they came and went quickly, and for the most part he saw nothing but waves of magical energy rippling on the skin of reality.

  “I see into my immortal kingdom,” Tallimastus said sadly. “Another rules in my place. She disguises herself, but I know her. The Dark Lady! Be wary of her, Aarin, she cares nothing for this world any more. She was unharmed by Iapetus. She retains all her power.”

  Tallimastus’ warrior aspect rippled away. Once more he was a tired old man.

  “I feel him, my living half. We are as one for a moment. I am whole. We were not always as we are, Aarin. We were not always gods. Forgive us for what we have become. There is great power in you and in all of your family. Fate has a role for you, and with that I cannot interfere. But I can help.”

  Aarin felt a sudden weight. On his left arm was Tallimastus’ shield, clasped in his right was his sword. They had become solid steel with a golden sheen. A greenish light shone in them still, marking them out as more than mortal gear.

  “Take my weapons.” The god was now an outline, his blind eyes pearls peeking from the dark. “They will serve as my badge and will grant you passage where you must go. Seek out the Drowned King, speak with Res Iapetus, cleave true to your oath and salve the hurts of the dead. I will hold you back from death for as long as I can. Be careful, for I do not know how long I will be able to.”