The Brass God

by K. M. McKinley

  Vand had a small, fast carriage to take him to the dig. It conveyed him rapidly but it was cramped, and his knees jostled those of Zeruvias, the fat, rich Guider of Musra who accompanied him. Zeruvias was an ugly man. Beneath a bald pate, his was face marred by a dozen small bumps, and his mouth dragged down by the excessive weight of his jowls. This involuntary expression of lugubrious annoyance suited him. Zeruvias was a haughty man, his pride bolstered by the importance of his position until it had become an inviolable shield.

  “They are fools to settle here,” said Zeruvias, glowering at a small farmstead. “No man should tempt the wrath of the Sisters.”

  “Even here things are changing, goodman.” Vand pointed out onto the horizon. Large, six-legged dracon-cattle cropped the grass with horned lips, their massive heads backed with frills crowned with broad racks of spines. “Kuzaks from the east. They are canny enough with their beasts to move on when trouble threatens. The Goodfellow Culon of Ostria brought them here, he rents the land from the Farthians. A delicate yet lucrative arrangement. Progress comes in many forms.”

  Zeruvias’ face crinkled with distaste at the talk of money. “An old way that serves them poorly in their homeland. The Kuzaks are backward.”

  Vand struck his cane upon the carriage floor. “I could not agree more, but an old way wisely applied in a new place is a hallmark of magisterial thinking, my dear Guider Zeruvias.”

  Light filtered grey through ash clouds made Zeruvias look ill. “You say you bring me here because I am gifted. I am a Guider of the Dead God’s True Quarter. I am a mageborn fourth son, and pledged to the service of the dead. It has been said that I am among the most gifted Guiders since the time of Res Iapetus.” He said this bitterly, not with pride. “It is a curse. In the course of my duties I have gazed too often through the veil of death. For better or worse, my experiences lead me to think that all the works of men in life are folly.”

  “What have you seen?” asked Vand curiously.

  “I do not see much, none of us do. But I cannot say what I have, you know the law. I would not tell you if I could.” He looked back out of the window. “It is best not to know,” he added after a moment’s thought.

  The carriage jounced over a dip in the causeway. Either side of the road a shallow ravine spread out long jagged fingers.

  “The repairs are becoming rougher,” complained Zeruvias.

  “When we are done, you shall be rich enough to buy all this desolation and make them anew. All I require is a little help.”

  “Guiders own no property,” said Zeruvias.

  Vand raised his eyebrows at the Guider’s large gold rings, his spreading girth, the rich clothing. “Indeed.”

  “Do not judge me by my appearance. I need distractions more than most,” said Zeruvias. “A good life is poor recompense for the horrors of death. Why are you dragging me all the way out here, Vand? Is not Jolyon a good enough Guider for your camp? I recommended my best.”

  “Jolyon is more than adequate for guiding those who die at the camp,” said Vand.

  “If there is any issue with his ministry, you must understand any Guider sent here will be kept busy to the point of exhaustion,” said Zeruvias. “These are dangerous fields you plough, Vand. Many men die here. Although given your record I doubt that is a matter of concern to you. You spend blood freely.”

  Vand’s mood chilled at this admonishment, though he ensured his smile remained warm. “As I have told you, it is nothing to do with Jolyon. This is a matter of grave import that only a Guider of your ability can deal with. Jolyon is not up to the task, you are. Indulge me. Stop fishing, dear Guider. You will soon see what I have to show. Do not spoil my surprise.”

  “I do not see this need for subterfuge.”

  “I have rivals. I must be careful. Vardeuche Persin has stolen too much from me. I have learnt caution.”

  The two men fell silent. Zeruvias stared out of the window, sunk into annoyance.

  The coach rumbled off the main Farthian way onto the track leading to the site. The dig was just inside the border with Ostria, and well off the main road. Vand had been obliged to build his own access. The road was rough and the ride became uncomfortable. The day wore on, the Three Sisters grew ever larger. They stopped once to let an empty supply wagon coming back from the dig head past them, before heading on and only halting again for the night. They ate a meal in a field of dead grass as dark fell. Throughout the evening Vand had more to say to his coachman than Zeruvias, chatting with him as he unhitched the drays and pegged them out to sleep. Vand and the Guider slept in the coach. Rattling grasses lulled them, though the rhythms brought strange dreams.

  Deep in the night a cracking boom startled Vand awake. Zeruvias slept on. The engineer looked out at the Sisters’ fires glowing balefully on the horizon. The red light pulsed yellow. A flicker of green volcano lightning sheeted the sky, its thunder quiet. The noise ceased, and Vand was quickly asleep again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Vand and the Machine

  VAND WOKE AT the light tap of his coachman on the door. He relieved himself in the cool dawn, his piss steaming onto the ground. Zeruvias slept through their departure. He woke an hour later, as Vand breakfasted on a dry loaf and a round of goat’s cheese.

  “Sleep of the dead,” said Vand.

  “The sleep of the dead is considerably less peaceful,” said Zeruvias. He smacked his lips and pulled a face. Vand caught a whiff of night breath. He offered the Guider a bottle of scented water. Zeruvias took it gratefully, swilled the water around his mouth and spat it from the window. Vand knocked on the ceiling for the coach to stop that the Guider might toilet. Afterwards, while the coach stood waiting, Zeruvias shared the last of Vand’s breakfast, then they cleaned their teeth with powdered floatstone and vinegar. One more stop and many miles saw the volcanoes grow taller and taller, the land blacker. The rare signs of human life vanished altogether. Vegetation retreated to isolated patches, much of it dead. Wrinkled sheets of old lava covered most of the ground. Earth tremors rumbled under the carriage’s wheels several times.

  The Sisters soared. The lowest was four thousand feet high, the tallest six. The two tallest were so close they touched, a broad saddle valley separating their cones. The third stood four miles apart from the other two. The track veered toward the Lonely Sister, then as she grew to block off the sky, turned again, curving to the southeast around the base of her cone.

  “We have passed within the borders of Ostria, though the inhabited marches are many miles that way.” Vand pointed between the three volcanoes. “And one hundred and forty miles to the south is the great river Olb. All the land here is waste, and dangerous. And yet there is treasure here worth risking everything for, buried in the shattered floatstone spat out by the Sisters.”

  Vand timed his speech carefully. As he finished, the coach came to a low rise. On the other side a wide, stepped pit a mile square opened up in the ash. A town of tents was arrayed neatly to the south, divided into quarters with an engineer’s fastidiousness. In the centre of each quarter was a large blockhouse cut from the volcanic rock, refuges from eruptions. A ramp led down into the pit from the town of tents. The road skirted the edge of the pit on its way to the ramp. At the top of the ramp a number of guards occupied wooden sentry huts either side of the downward track. Recognising their employer, they waved the coach through.

  A scene of great industry greeted them. The pit was cut down into soft rock and compressed ash via a series of steeply edged tiers. The bottommost was five hundred yards on each side. Further pits were sunk into the floor. The bottoms of these were gridded by lines strung from stout wooden markers, strips of fabric tied to them at four foot intervals. Huge tents covered the most important excavations. An engine house belched glimmer-tainted steam from a brick chimney. Long canvas hoses ran from it, splitting at valves that leaked fine mists of pressurised water. The hoses were directed by teams of men at the pits and the walls, jets of water blasting ash away. Othe
r pipes pumped the waste slurry out, carrying it up the levels, finally spraying it over the lips of the pit into a holding dam next to the town. Everywhere men were at work, digging, sifting and spraying. Light dray carts pulled loads of spoil up out of the pit. Everyone there was filthy, grey from head to foot with ash, their nation and race unguessable.

  “Here the Morfaan once had a city,” said Vand. The coach bumped across the site. Men shouted halloos at the coach. Dogs barked. The noise was oppressive. “It was buried long since by the fury of the Sisters. Much of it is crushed, burned, destroyed beyond recognition. But not all. After the incident at Thrusea I invested most of my remaining funds here. I had a feeling that I may discover something. A good engineer never dismisses his intuition, Guider. It is good that I did not, for I have found a great deal. Within a month we had uncovered the map that revealed the location of the city in the Sotherwinter which Trassan Kressind, on a ship of my design, is currently exploring. When he returns I will be greatly enriched. I would have been content with that, but then I found something else.” The coach came to a halt before the canvas wall of one of the largest tents. It was vast, its roof held up by a dozen masts. “That object is within this marquee. I wish to ask your advice on it. That is why I have brought you here.”

  The coachman opened the doors and the men got out. Two workmen, filthy as the rest, held open a flap in the canvas and bowed as Vand strode through into a room partitioned by walls made of more canvas. Inside were rows of what appeared to be crude plaster statues, fine in proportion but seemingly unfinished, each tagged with a numbered orange card.

  Zeruvias faltered as he stepped through the door.

  “The wall between the worlds is thin here,” he gasped. A servant in clean livery came to him and offered him a glass of wine from a silver tray. Zeruvias took it gratefully and gulped it down. Vand took one of water.

  “These are the dead,” said Zeruvias.

  “Yes,” Vand tapped one of the figures on the shoulder. “Morfaan, entombed by a fall of ash. We found many odd cavities on the site. My hypothesis was that the cavities were left by the bodies of the dead, so we poured plaster into them. Naturally, I was correct.”

  The statues were dirty grey, many in attitudes of fear or agony, arms thrown across faces, hands gripping heads. Several had strange stubs halfway down their torsos. Zeruvias stopped by one and looked closely.

  “Are you sure these are Morfaan? These ones have four arms.” Zeruvias pointed at small limbs. There were several with the additional limbs. On figures that seemed female they were tiny, on the males they were large enough to be useful.

  “All of the figures had them. They are delicate, and broke off on several.”

  “I have never seen an image of a Morfaan with them,” said Zeruvias.

  “I have come to believe their art was stylised, and that they omitted their lesser limbs for some aesthetic reason. Puts you in mind of a riding dracon, doesn’t it?” said Vand. “I hear in the duel in Perus where the male was recently wounded, that he revealed a pair of lesser arms, and that he wielded daggers in them. It did him no good against Kyreen Asteria.”

  Zeruvias stopped by a mass of plaster. Close inspection revealed it to be a mother sheltering two small children with her body. A hint of the terrified expression on one child had been preserved. Zeruvias recoiled. “A gruesome find.”

  “I expected you to be fascinated. Are you not?” Vand bent down to peer into the face of the dead mother. “It is a glimpse back into ages unknown. Can you feel their spirits?”

  Tentatively Zeruvias rested a hand on one of the statues, its arm was flung up to shield its long face. The detail was poorly rendered by the natural mould, but the gaping scream of its mouth was clear. He shuddered and withdrew his hand. “Some ghosts linger, weak with time but I would be careful.”

  “Can you remove them?”

  “They are not human, Goodman Vand,” said Zeruvias. “The task is beyond the Guiders. I know not where the dead of the Morfaan go.”

  “No matter. They have been no trouble,” said Vand.

  “I apologise I cannot be of more help, if that is what you called me here to see.” Zeruvias wiped his forehead. “Please, I wish to leave.”

  “This is not what I brought you to see, Guider,” said Vand. He gestured with his cane to a canvas door. “This way!” he said. Vand’s men undid toggles, and held the flaps open to reveal a much bigger space.

  A sheer-sided pit opened on the far side, shovel marks fresh in ash walls twenty feet deep. Planks of wood braced against the walls held the pit open, and scaffolding provided a catwalk over the cavity. Vand led Zeruvias out onto the walk. Below, men diligently scraped at the ash with trowels and brushes. Broken walls criss-crossed the pit, their decoration and mouldings preserved as shattered jigsaw puzzles. Upon the glassy walls that stood tall enough, reliefs of Morfaan were visible.

  “It is... magnificent!” said Zeruvias.

  “All historically very important,” agreed Vand. “But this also is not what I have to show you.” He could not keep the excitement from his voice. They crossed a tall wall and reached the centre of the dig. Vand pointed down. “This is.”

  A pair of dark glass eyes gazed up at them from a huge, stylised, silver alien face half buried in the ash. The head it adorned was as large as a coach. The nose was fine and long, with a septum that extended almost as far as the upper lip, the eyes far larger than those of a man, the lips very full, the forehead high and narrow. Beauty was inherent to the features, albeit not of a human kind. Age had not touched the effigy. The incredible alloys of the Morfaan did not tarnish, and the metal gleamed as if freshly polished.

  “We took it for a statue, at first,” said Vand. “The legs remain buried, but my men will soon have the whole body uncovered.”

  Vand was gratified to see Zeruvias gape at the figure. From the crown of its head to the point where its thighs disappeared into the wall of the pit it was thirty yards long. It lay on its back, one arm trapped beneath its back, the other flung out. In an articulated fist it clutched a lump of iron bigger than a Torosan godling. This lesser figure was so corroded its humanoid form was not immediately obvious. Another iron figure clung to the side, arms and legs gripping the fluted armour cladding the figure. That, though scabrous and flaking, retained visible arms and legs.

  Zeruvias looked up, his jowly face slack. “What is it?”

  Vand smiled with pleasure. “It is a machine, goodguider. A machine. See!” he came to Zeruvias’ side and pointed with his cane past the figure. The wall of the pit behind was of white masonry. “There. The city wall, I think, twenty feet tall, and I believe reduced from its full height. Twelve feet thick at the base. This machine fell upon it.” Vand pointed out hints of a bed of rubble that the device sprawled upon. “There are no joins to it, like at the Glass Fort at the gates of the world, and this material is strong! I cannot break it, but this machine did.”

  Vand descended a ladder. The scaffold shook. “Come!” he called from the ladder’s foot. “It is quite safe.”

  Zeruvias followed. Three men waited at the bottom, stern-faced academics as dirty as the workmen. Only slightly cleaner was Guider Jolyon, pale and tired looking in his grey robes. His greasy tonsure was clogged with ash and his nostrils sported sooty stains beneath.

  “Jolyon?” said Zeruvias.

  “Lord Guider,” said Jolyon.

  “And this?” said Zeruvias, indicating the rusted iron creatures clinging to the Morfaan machine. “They are macabre.”

  “We have found several dozen,” said Vand. “The work is not Morfaan. I suspect they are also some sort of machine. I have not yet discerned how they were articulated. I thought at first that the joints had rusted closed owing to water seeping into the ground. But they have none. We sawed one of those we found in the streets open. It was completely hollow inside. If it were a machine, I can see no method by which it could be made to work, but it also does not strike me as a statue. Tell me, Zeruvias, h
ow does it look to you?”

  “As if they were fighting,” said Zeruvias.

  “Precisely,” said Vand, stabbing his cane into the ash. “There are signs of battle all over this city. We have excavated only a portion, but the traces of fire and collapse are all around to see.”

  “Could that not be caused by the eruption?”

  “I thought so, but now I do not,” said Vand. “The signs are quite different, you see. The buildings that were intact have collapsed roofs due to the weight of the ash upon them, but are otherwise undamaged. Other buildings are holed, as if by cannon fire, and the outer wall is damaged. The destruction came before, not after.”

  “It is not a coincidence, a battle and a volcanic event at the same time?” said Zeruvias. “These could be idols. This could be some elaborate Morfaan art.”

  “I do not think so. Think instead on the implications of that coincidence between eruption and war,” said Vand. “Why would anyone build so close to the volcanoes?”

  “I have no clue, goodman.”

  “Think!” said Vand.

  “Are you saying that the volcanoes were not here?” said Zeruvias.

  “Volcanic eruption as a method of waging war!” Vand exclaimed excitedly.

  Zeruvias looked askance at the machine. “Nonsense. Not even the Morfaan had that kind of power.”

  Vand shrugged. “Perhaps too fanciful. But as you said, the Morfaan were not human. I expect to have answers soon enough. There is a library here,” said Vand. He fished out his watch chain. The fob was fashioned from a ball of bright silver, half an inch in diameter. “You are familiar with the term ‘Morfaan silver’?”

  “Of course,” said Zeruvias. “You have a piece there.”