The Brass God

by K. M. McKinley

  The howling of the damned sounded out Tallimastus’ disappearance. They whirled around each other in a rising wind, and sped upwards toward the exit from the cavern. Aarin yanked out the iron darts from the moist stone, and the pinned shade shot after the others.

  He looked up the shaking stairs. Wet tears appeared in the marbled rock. He had very little time. He shoved past the dead Guider. The stairs, always treacherous and slick, jumped under his feet, threatening to pitch him into the void and its stinking wind. There would be no return this time if he fell.

  He ran pellmell, barely slowing for the wide swathe where rockfall had reduced the steps to stubs.

  Pillars of stone thumped down like steam hammers, shaken from their moorings by the convulsions of the underworld. Aarin cursed his monk’s habit for slowing him, but he could not stop to tear it free. A fall of rock blocked his way, ramming down right before his nose. Instinctively, he lashed out with the Dead God’s sword, sweeping the green blade across the rock. To his amazement the weapon cut through without hindrance, as if the stone were not there, and the blockage tumbled off the steps and vanished out of sight.

  A dire howl came now on the wind. Aarin had no desire to face whatever thing possessed the voice, and was gladdened when the lamps at the head of the stair came into view. He pelted toward them, through the short tunnel and the open yett, and into a scene from a nightmare.

  In the Room of Names, the dead slaughtered the living. The ghosts of the court of the Dead King ran amok, plunging their phantasmal hands into the chests of the monks and stilling their hearts. The animates stumbled in confusion. A monk ran screaming past Aarin. He raised his shield and sword, but the monk was blind with terror. A phantom flew through him, freezing him to the spot. The slaughter was done in seconds. With Mother Moude at their head, the dead flew away through archway, and up the stairs into the scriptorium, leaving the bodies of monks frozen in a tableau of fear.

  Pasquanty’s spirit remained behind, looking sadly at his body shambling idiotically about.

  “I am sorry, Pasquanty. Come with me, and I shall send you on once we are outside.”

  Pasquanty’s soul drifted miserably over to Aarin’s side.

  Aarin spoke words of command over the animates. They ceased their confused shambling and turned as one to face him. He selected six of them, Pasquanty’s corpse included.

  “Come with me,” he said. The vault shook. The roar of collapsing stone issued from the tunnel. A crack appeared across the roof. Where it ran through the names of the dead, Aarin heard faint screaming.

  “It is over. This venture is done,” he said to Pasquanty’s shade. The ghost nodded. “Which makes my task, our task, all the more pressing.”

  Holding the weapons of the Dead God ready, Aarin ascended the stairs into the scriptorium.

  They emerged from the dark into the grey light of day. The monks in the scriptorium were all dead, frozen in various aspects of terror, hands flung up, mouths screaming, all of them coated in ice, their black robes and bandages covered in frost.

  “This will not last,” said Aarin. “The power of the dead cannot hold so long in the Lands of the Living.” There were nought but the dead to hear him, and he spoke mainly to reassure himself. Screams rang from all over the monastery, and the shrieks of the dead. The voices of the living fell rapidly silent. He passed frozen corpses at every turn.

  The front gate was unlocked. Dead monks lay spread around the green hill before it. Frozen as they ran, they had overbalanced and lay upended on the ground. An almost comical sight. Aarin advanced carefully down the steep path toward the flat, wave-cut pavement that surrounded the island’s single hill. The stone was covered only by the very highest tides, and at that moment its numerous rockpools reflected the grey sky. A light drizzle fell. Aarin shivered; it was cold and windy, but he would not have to endure it for long.

  Where the last of the grass met the round pools of the bare rock, Aarin stopped. His little band of animates shuffled to a halt. Pasquanty drifted to his side. The power Tallimastus had unleashed was leaching away, and Pasquanty’s shade was evaporating into nothingness.

  Over the silent monastery the gates of the dead were open, shedding deathly green light across the Final Isle.

  In liminal spaces the rituals of the dead had the most efficacy, and the border of the ocean and the land offered Aarin the best chance of helping the ghosts. Aarin thrust the sword of the dead into the green grass, causing it to wither in a circle three feet across. He leaned the shield against it. He held up his arms. The gash on his right forearm gaped bloodlessly. He should have been crippled, but the arm functioned perfectly, and no pain troubled him.

  “Spirits of the dead! Spirits of the dead! I call upon you,” he said, beginning the rite of passing employed for ghosts who had lost their bodies but not yet passed on. “There is nothing to fear. Life is done, but a new life beckons, if only you hearken to my voice, and heed my words.”

  He looked around the sky, seeking the ghosts who had followed him back into this world.

  “Come to me,” he said. “I shall show you the way.”

  A soft moan announced the arrival of the first—one of the monks Seutreneause had sacrificed. A second materialised next to him, then a third, then the four luckless others who had strayed into the prior’s grasp. It was the first time Aarin had had a good look at them. They were fishermen of the southern isles, lured to their doom or rescued from shipwrecks, only to find their salvation was nothing of the sort.

  “Heed me, spirits of the dead!” Aarin had never guided so many spirits at once on his own. He prayed to his rediscovered god that he could do it, and save them from extinction. “Heed me!”

  More materialised, the ghosts of the monks slain in the monastery, hovering side by side with those who had killed them, peace imposed by death. He was heartened by that, only a few of them had been expunged.

  Green light spilled onto the shore. Aarin looked up. The gate shone brightly. The clarity Tallimastus’ presence had bestowed upon him was gone, and he saw only the shifting veils he had witnessed so many times before. Few Guiders in that age had Aarin’s skill or talent, and most saw less than that.

  He lifted his face to the ghosts.

  “The way is open! Depart! Go from this place unto your rests. Your time here is done.”

  There was no reluctance on the part of the ghosts. They rose in ones and twos. Their gazes dwelled a little on the mortal lands, but by the time they reached the undulating edge of the gates they had their eyes firmly fixed on their destination.

  Pasquanty lingered a moment longer. Aarin smiled at him. “I am sorry I was not a better master, Pasquanty. May you find peace wherever you go, and if we should meet in some other realm, I pray I will be a kinder friend.”

  Pasquanty gave a mute smile, and floated upwards. He watched Aarin most of the way, but finally he too turned his face from that world to the next so that it was bathed in light, and was gone.

  One spirit remained.

  Mother Moude floated in front of Aarin, her face full of hatred.

  “You may go Mother,” he said. “You are free.”

  The ghost shifted from form to form as she stared at him, going from voluptuous maiden to middle-age to rotting corpse in a sickening cycle.

  Mother Moude was a wild talent, a mageborn executed for witchcraft in an age less tolerant of women with power. She should never have been killed. Her soul should never have been imprisoned in its iron box. Her sacrifice by Seutreneause to the Dead God was but the last in a long line of indignities.

  In death, she retained her ability, and unlike most ghosts she could speak with the living.

  “No,” she said.

  Aarin had had custody of her before, and though he could have, he had not released her because he feared her. He had been right to do so. She sped at him, screaming. He snatched up the shield of Tallimastus, and she slammed into it. The uncanny metal deflected her, and she rebounded off over the ocean as a sc
reaming green light. A flash of silent lightning ushered her over the horizon.

  The gates of the dead faded out of the sky.

  Aarin cried out as pain flooded back into his arm, bringing forth a trickle of blood. Guiders had some healer’s skills. He probed it gingerly to check his veins and arteries were not cut. The wound was grave. Without Tallimastus’ aid, it would kill him. He struggled one-handed to tear off a strip of his habit and bind it closed.

  “The Dead God’s power fades,” he said to himself. He looked up across the boundless sea. He did not have much time.

  “Come,” he said to the animates, and set out across the platform of rock to the cliffs at its edge.

  A series of jetties projected from the cliffs at varying heights, cunningly built up from natural protrusions of the rock to allow the monks to access the sea whatever the tide. Their longboat bobbed on the water some way out, anchored clear of the stone. A coracle was tethered to the topmost pier so that it would float safely free at the highest tides. Aarin commanded one of the dead to fetch it. It obeyed mechanically, its soulless body motivated by Aarin’s will alone. It went to the coracle, picked it up and placed it upside down upon its back. Aarin was still bleeding slightly, and by the time the dead man had carried the coracle down three flights of wave-worn steps to the sea, he was shivering with shock more than cold.

  The animate stared at him with dead eyes.

  “Go to the longboat. Draw in its anchor. Return with the boat’s line,” Aarin commanded.

  The dead man wordlessly set about his task. The water washed over the top of the jetty currently level with the sea, and he waded through it. At the end, he flipped the coracle off his back and into the water, then clambered in.

  It took an age for the dead man to paddle out to the bigger boat and start the return journey.

  “The rest of you, draw it in,” Aarin said through chattering teeth. He wasn’t sure he could keep himself awake. If Tallimastus’ influence was gone and he died, Aarin hoped he could find his own way to the next world. The thought of dissipating to nothing as Seutreneause had panicked him, and made it hard to concentrate on what he was doing.

  The longboat bumped against the jetty. Aarin splashed through freezing water and half fell into it, the shield and sword of the dead banging on the boat’s ribs.

  “Get in,” he told the dead men.

  The animates clambered aboard, and took up the oars. There were eight of them. Aarin threw the extra two oars overboard. Six rowers would have to be enough.

  “Take the boat about, and row into the ocean.”

  They did as he asked. The rain was falling more heavily. Aarin wished he had taken the time to gather more clothes and tend to his wound better. He reminded himself none of that would matter in a few moments.

  The Final Isle retreated quickly. From out on the water, nothing seemed any different to the first time he had seen it. The monastery stood on the side of the hill near the rounded summit, its solitary tower spearing the grey sky. Grey rock fringed the green. Grey sea surged around the rock, rushing into a million small cavities with a growling shush.

  “Stop. Here,” ordered Aarin.

  The undead ceased to row. The skiff slid to a halt on the sea. Aarin stood up, and walked to the prow. He looked down into the water. It was a singular grey, covered over with shifting circles of spume dappled with the expanding ripples of raindrops. It was entirely opaque to human sight. The boat lifted and sank in the swell. Aarin stared.

  Without a word, he lifted his foot over the gunwale, and stepped into the water. The weight of Tallimastus’ shield and sword dragged him down with frightening speed. His wound stung at first, but the cold of the ocean killed the pain. The weight of the water crushed the air from his lungs, forcing an involuntary moan out of his throat in a cloud of silvery bubbles.

  He could fight the urge to inhale only for so long, but that was the plan.

  What better way was there to summon the Drowned King?

  Aarin’s body screamed at him for breath. Daylight was a pewter gleam far above, the elongated lozenge of the longboat’s hull no bigger than a seed. He could not have swum back if he had wanted to.

  He could not deny his body. He breathed in, and his lungs filled with a choking wash of freezing water.

  His lungs burned. His mind dimmed. Tallimastus’ shield and sword pulled him faster and faster, taking him down to the fathomless deeps.

  Aarin was dimly aware of cold, slimy hands grasping his ankles before he drowned.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  To Sea Drays Bay

  TWELVE DAYS AFTER leaving Trassan’s grave, the ice ran out.

  Antoninan, Ullfider, Persin, Bannord, Ardovani and Ilona stood upon a ridge. To the south the eternal white of the Sotherwinter ice cap blazed, the long tongues of glaciers nosing down from it toward the sea. To the north, the crags and stacks of the ice shelf gleamed in sunlight that was melting it into ever more fantastic shapes. Azure pools of water collected on its surface. Waterfalls rushed into the sea. Constant groans and rumbles passed through the earth, interrupted by the thunderous, glassy shattering of collapse, and the roaring of the sea as the ice was received.

  The noises disquieted the dogs. The nights kept their bitter chill, but the days were getting hotter. Merciless sun blistered the skins of the party. Half the time they were far too hot, but were forced to keep themselves covered against sunburn. The insides of their noises bled for want of moisture in the air. For all the snow melting on the coast there was precious little to drink inland. The earth soaked up what water freed itself. The air sucked it away. There were no springs to be found anywhere nearby; that part of the Sotherwinter as dry as it was cold, a frigid desert. Many of the men resorted to ramming their canteens full of snow, and putting them against their bodies, although Antoninan grew furious with those he caught doing this, warning of frost burn. He scolded others for eating the ice, saying it would waste their bodies’ strength. He told them all to wait for evening when they could set up their stoves to melt the snow safely. Thirst drove them to disobey.

  Behind them the pillar of steam rose high into the blue of the sky. A solitary column of vapour, there were no clouds for it to join or storms to disperse it. When the winds teased it apart it always returned. An innocuous streak it seemed, but it loured over the Sotherwinter as menacingly as a thunderhead, and drove the survivors on as if it were a lash.

  Their progress slowed. For a day the sleds bumped over frequent patches of rock. The dogs became ill-tempered. The men were forced to lend their strength to the effort. Antoninan ran up and down the line screaming at them to mind the runners. Then finally the shadowed slope heavily mottled with rock, and over the ridge the sunward side nearly bare. Beyond the hill the land was free of ice.

  Antoninan snapped his telescope shut and said something filthy in his native tongue.

  “We have to cross it,” he said.

  The land before them was a plain of broken rock dotted with pancakes of snow. Tussocks of grass rattled in the dry winds. Tiny flowers skulked at the bases of exposed root balls. Expansive snowfields glittered in the sun beyond, but the distance to them was considerable.

  “Can we not go south, use the permanent ice there, and come back around?” said Bannord.

  “A further diversion than using the pack ice in the first place,” said Antoninan.

  “Though safer,” said Bannord. The song of the ice thrummed over the landscape oppressively. A mighty booming followed his words, warning them away.

  “Sea Drays Bay is only fifteen miles distant,” said Antoninan. “I can see the hills that shield it from here.” He pointed to a range of black curves, gentle as a woman’s body.

  “You are sure?” said Ullfider. He was grey and haggard. In Karsa his life was one of ease, and he was old. After the voyage he had expected to spend his time in the comfort of the Prince Alfra, appraising the wonders of the past. The sled ride was hardest on him, even though Antoninan had excused him
from all work.

  “We could unload, take the stress off the sleds,” said Bannord. “Go slow, the drays could take the sleds over. It’ll slow us right down, but it has to be done. We need the speed of the sleds on the far side, or we’ll be caught.”

  “The runners will break on the rock,” said Persin. “We cannot lose the sleds.”

  “Travois then,” said Bannord. “The dogs drag the loads, we carry the sleds. It’s five or six miles to the snowfields. It’ll be hard work, but we can do it.”

  “What will we make these travois with?” said Antoninan. “If we carry the loads and cross back, we will lose at least a day.” He looked back at the steam column marking the Draathis advance.

  “They will catch us,” said Ardovani.

  “I am aware of that, Tullian,” said Antoninan testily.

  “We’re going to have to carry them,” said Ilona. “But not all the way.”

  The others looked at her.

  Ullfider made a dismissive gesture. Antoninan shot him a look of rebuke.

  “Let the goodlady speak,” said Antoninan. “Go on.”

  “We can go quicker if we take an indirect route.”

  “Nonsense!” snorted Ullfider.

  Ilona ignored him. “We trace a line between the largest snow pans. The distance between them isn’t so large. If we pick a good route, we can save time. We carry the sleds to the snow patches, use them to ferry the equipment across. We’re going to have to carry all of the gear some of the time...”

  “But not all of the gear all of the time,” said Bannord, finishing for her approvingly.

  “It will take too long,” said Ullfider. His scoffing turned into a phlegmy cough.

  “Not if we work out the best way,” said Ilona, pointing. “That one there. Then to that one there. Where they are close together, further on, we can shovel snow into roads, make paths between, and save more time.”