The Brass God

by K. M. McKinley

  “I do,” said Vand. He played with the silver as he talked. “It is completely pure. For centuries men have searched it out. Unearthed troves of it have fuelled wars and built temples.” Vand stamped his cane again upon the ground, the ferrule grinding on the gritty ash. “Our ancestors never guessed the true value of it. I confess that I was drawn to the reports of this place in the hope of digging up plenty for myself. But curiosity led me to examine what I found with more care. You see the patterns of course?”

  “Of course,” said Zeruvias.

  “I discovered that on each orb is inscribed a series of microscopic lines, beside and within the visible lines, invisible to the naked eye. Only modern optical equipment, and I used the very finest lenses, allow us to see them. I began to consider what these lines might mean. I had them further examined. I discovered that the lines are not of uniform depth, but made up of thousands of tiny indentations. Now, I wondered, why would anyone, Morfaan or man, go to such effort for something that cannot be seen?” As often when feeling pleased with himself, Vand lectured. To his associates’ regret, it was his favoured form of discourse. “It was then that I realised that they may be a sort of book.”

  “Were you correct?”

  “I was!” said Vand, delighted at his own genius. “No book of any kind has ever been found in a Morfaan site. Paper does not last, of course, but think on the multiplicity of tomes that exist in the Kingdoms. Where are the holy books of the Morfaan? The paper and skin of their pages will be gone, but their metal casings, the fittings, jewels, scroll tubes, the shelves, even, to house them would remain. Where is all the paraphernalia associated with knowledge? Surely, they must have had some way of recording their wisdom. Signs of that should survive when the books themselves do not. Instead we find Morfaan silver, nestling in its casings snugly as a goodlady’s jewellery. That led my thinking on. Maybe they had some other manner of storing their thoughts than the written word. Their culture was an ancient one, blessed with an insight beyond ours. How did they pass it on?” Vand held up his fob. His eyes gleamed fanatically. “The silver! Silver is the metal of magic, sympathetic to the workings of will. Mages have used it for millennia, the magisters make much use of it in their enchantments and their mechanisms. Even I, in the Prince Alfra and in many other areas employ it in my devices. The Morfaan wielded magic well. These spheres have purpose.” He snatched up the fob to hold it between finger and thumb. “And therefore I divined that there must be some device to enable these baubles to be read, if I were correct.” He clenched his fist around the fob.

  “And is there?” asked Zeruvias.

  Vand nodded to one of the waiting men. From under a cloth he produced a mangled metal construct. A box, featureless but for the dents and scratches on the surface. A pair of mangled, horn-like protrusions graced the back. Though the device was damaged, the bright metal was the same as all Morfaan steel artefacts, undimmed by its immense age. Vand took the device, held it up, and pressed the sphere into a cavity at the base. It slotted home with a soft click.

  “I am often correct,” said Vand. “Alas, my magisters are as bereft of ideas as I am as to how this item functioned. It is ruined beyond repair in any case. My hope is that Trassan Kressind will find an undamaged example and bring it home from the south. But I rarely limit myself to a single line of inquiry. Failure waits at the end of so many ventures.” He did not reveal that he feared Trassan’s expedition already lost. Vand held his secrets more closely than a gambler holds his cards.

  Vand turned and held out his hand to the head of the fallen Morfaan figure.

  “This machine, however, does work. My magisters investigated it thoroughly. There is a power source in there, dormant, but stable. And they detected signs of an... animus, shall we say? They duly withdrew, for spiritual matters are not within their area of expertise. That is when I asked Jolyon to investigate.”

  “You did?” Zeruvias asked Jolyon.

  “I did, Lord Guider,” began Jolyon. “But... Please, do not touch it.”

  Jolyon’s manner concerned Zeruvias. “What did you have him do, Vand?” he demanded.

  “Only what I am going to ask you to do. I wish you to contact the spirit my magisters and your own Jolyon here say reside in the machine.”

  “Impossible.”

  Vand gave him a wolfish smile, and stepped back. “I think not. Jolyon had some success. All he lacks is your talent, goodguider.”

  Zeruvias puffed up at the praise. “Well, it is true I have some ability that others lack.”

  “Don’t do it, Lord Guider,” said Jolyon.

  “Leave us,” Vand ordered. His men climbed the ladder without word. The sounds of labour ceased, and all over the pit men were called from their work. Jolyon hesitated.

  “You too, Jolyon,” said Vand.

  Jolyon looked to Zeruvias.

  “Do as he asks, Guider,” said Zeruvias. “If Vand will speak with me privately, then I will allow it. I will get to the bottom of this, you have my word, and I shall demand recompense for any abuses made of your position or your person.”

  “As you wish.” Jolyon bowed. “But don’t touch it.” With a worried backward glance, he climbed out of the pit.

  “Jolyon is coming back with me,” said Zeruvias when they were alone. “I will not allow you to misuse the servants of the dead. Look at the state of him, the poor man’s exhausted.”

  “That is your prerogative,” said Vand nonchalantly.

  Zeruvias lifted his chin high. “We will see how many men wish to stay in this perilous place when there is no one to guide their soul safely from the world.”

  Loud bangs penetrated the canvas of the tent. The clatter of picks and shovels on rocks outside sounded faintly, but they could not hear any word spoken save their own. The men stared at each other, weighing the other’s intentions.

  “I will pay you ten thousand thalers,” said Vand. “If you do as I ask.”

  Zeruvias contrived to look shocked. “Outrageous! A Guider is not to be bought! In this irreligious age, ours is the last sacred task.” He held up his hand. “I cannot. I cannot!”

  “Twenty thousand,” said Vand. He stepped close in to the Guider. Zeruvias looked to the floor, but Vand followed him, bending down to look into his face, trapping him with his eyes. “Do you think I asked you by accident, Zeruvias? There are others are gifted as you. Not many, to be sure, but there are several of equal and greater talent. There are not, however, many Guiders who like to live the high life you enjoy. I have many of my own talents. One of those is to know who might be useful to me. You piqued my interest. Why does this man bury himself in pleasures of the flesh when the secrets of the afterlife are known to him? You came here because you suspected you might gain from it.”

  Zeruvias made a choked sound and stepped back.

  “What if I did?” he hissed.

  “You are frightened by what you have seen. Wine, money, women. They are your solace.”

  “Please, please!” said Zeruvias forcefully. “Do not. It is too much. The things I have seen there, on the other side. I deserve my distractions.”

  “There are no heavens, no opportunity of peace after death?” said Vand. He attempted to remain unmoved, but Zeruvias’ revelation made him uneasy.

  “Yes, yes there are those places. It is the souls who do not see the way, the ones we do not find, those we fail to guide... It is their fate that weighs on me. I will not add the hells of another race to those of our own. I am burdened enough.”

  “Terrible things?”

  “More terrible than you know!” gasped Zeruvias.

  “Tell me. A burden shared, is a burden halved.”

  “I cannot.” He suddenly looked Vand in the face. “There are those in my order who fear something is amiss. It is all going wrong. It—” He looked behind him, eyes wild, suddenly aware of what he was saying. “No. No. I will not tell you.” He cowered. Vand saw the weakling behind the facade. It was all he could do to hide his disgust.

>   “Then do not. Instead allow me to help you take comfort in this life. I have the money here, in my offices. You may take it away with you today. Or if you prefer, I will give you a promissory note and you may withdraw it from my bank in the Kingdoms. My notaries are forewarned and will give you no difficulty. How many warm bodies and pints of wine could you buy with that money, Zeruvias? How many good meals, eh?” He poked the Guider in the belly sharply.

  “No, no please, I can’t.”

  “Twenty-five thousand. And a stipend of one thousand per year, every year, for the rest of your life, should you discover what I need to know.”

  Zeruvias glanced up. He licked his lips. His hands were trembling, his posture was cowed, but he did not refuse again.

  Vand was encouraged. “A short service. Talk to the ghost in the machine. Reveal its secrets to me, and you are free to go, and go rich.” Sure his fish was hooked, Vand leaned on his cane. “What do you say?”

  Zeruvias swallowed hard. “Twenty-five thousand? A thousand a year?”

  “In cold, hard cash. Guaranteed.”

  The Guider remained half-crouched, trapped by indecision.

  Vand waited for the moment for the subtle shift in Zeruvias’ posture that would tell him he’d won. It duly came. The Guider stood tall. He regained some of his composure, and smoothed out his robe. “It would be a shame not to know the secrets of the ancients.”

  “Think how much we might learn! If we learn all the Morfaan knew, we might even aid the dead better. You are but doing your duty.”

  “Yes, I am. It is incumbent on me to do this. It is the right thing.”

  Gently, Vand took the Guider by the arm and led him to machine’s long, alien face. “Here, I think.”

  Zeruvias nodded. He lifted his arms and placed his hands upon a cool metal cheek.

  “There is a presence in here, very old, very angry.” He closed his eyes.

  “Can you talk with it?”

  Zeruvias’ face shifted in concentration. “I cannot find a form in it, its language is not ours. It is trying to talk, but it cannot make me understand. I sense frustration.”

  A rising hum came from the device. Zeruvias, deep into his guiding, did not hear. Vand stepped back, looking up and down the length of the giant figure. Nothing externally had changed, the noise came from within.

  “Yes, yes, I can hear it now. It changes language. Wait, no, no! No, stop!” Zeruvias pulled back, but his hands were stuck fast to the metal. His eyes still closed, he writhed and keened, an inhuman noise that had the hairs on Vand’s neck standing on end. An internal voice urged him to go to the Guider’s aid, but it was small and easily quelled.

  “What does it say?” urged Vand.

  “It... it will not talk to me. It is trying to talk through me! It is in me!” Zeruvias screamed. The machine droned higher, thrumming the air; the pulsing reached a sympathetic frequency with the jelly of his eyes. Vand screwed them tight against the pain and took three faltering steps backwards.

  Zeruvias went rigid. His hands still pressed to the metal, he turned his head as far as it would go. Muscles bulged in his neck, his face went red. The Guider let out a helpless gasp, and his spine dislocated with a series of three meaty pops. The head rotated around until he faced Vand, his eyes wide, the pupils dilated so far the iris was crushed to a hair’s breadth.

  The vibration stopped. A great, booming beat, like a pulse greatly amplified, shook the pit. Vand opened his eyes.

  “I am awakened,” said Zeruvias. His jaw was slack, the voice not his own. The words were High Maceriyan, but only just, a form of the language older than history.

  “Yes, yes!” said Vand. “Speak with me!”

  The machine spoke again. This time Vand struggled to understand the archaic dialect against the pounding of the machine’s heart.

  “You need a something... what?” he shouted.

  The machine spoke for a third time. It ran through a dozen words, enunciating them clearly and individually. Vand understood none of them. “Pilot,” it finally said. “Bring me a pilot.”

  “A pilot?” said Vand, he did not understand. “How will a boat’s pilot help?”

  “Will and Form, in balance,” continued the voice. “Find this in one young. Bind them to me. Bring me to life.”

  Zeruvias made a strangled noise and fell to the ground, dead. The pounding diminished to a whine, and faded.

  Vand’s ears rang in the quiet. “Come back!” he shouted. “Explain!”

  He ran over to the figure’s head and rapped hard upon the metal with his cane. He expected the ring of a hollow cavity, instead he heard a clocking as solid as that from an iron bar.

  Men were coming back into the tent, peering down at the scene.

  “Get the physic!” shouted Vand. “And get off the walk! There are too many of you. You’ll collapse it!” He knelt by the dead Guider. Smoke wisped from Zeruvias’ ears. An expression of unalloyed horror was his last gift to the world.

  Jolyon pushed through the men backing away from the edge and came down the ladder. He shoved Vand aside and cradled Zeruvias’ flopping head in his hands. He shut his eyes and whispered out a hurried Guider’s cant. He stopped, and stared down at his dead superior, then looked at Vand.

  “What have you done?” he said.

  “Nothing. He touched the machine, then this—”

  “His spirit has fled. I was too late to guide him. I have no way of knowing if he made the transition correctly. This place, it is thronged with the dead! It is perilous to pass here, and I cannot see what became of him!” Jolyon stood shakily. “You must leave this machine alone!”

  “Absolutely not,” said Vand.

  “It is cursed.” Jolyon looked at the alien face. “It has you in its thrall! Clear this site, take your men from here, you are tampering with forces beyond the knowledge of any man. Begone, or pay the consequences.”

  Vand held his cane across his chest with both hands. “Steady, Guider.”

  Jolyon advanced on him, his fists clenching.

  A hiss had them turn. A clunk of drawn bolts followed. The cheeks of the machine popped out an inch, opening either side of the nose. Foul air rushed out, causing Vand and Jolyon to gag. A mechanism purred inside. Vand’s men shouted in alarm.

  The face of the machine parted. The cheeks opened further outward. The right stopped a quarter way, something grinding within the head halted its progress, but the left swung smoothly down, revealing a dark interior.

  Vand put a handkerchief to his nose and approached cautiously, ignoring the warnings of his men. He ducked his head inside, then jerked back as a seat of ivory and woven sinews spilled from within. A tangle of bones wrapped in a golden costume fell from the cradle, hitting the floor by Vand’s feet.

  “A body,” whispered Vand. He looked at the skull and frowned. “Human bones.”

  Jolyon was driven forward by his concern for the dead. He knelt and laid careful hands on the jumbled skeleton, unfolding the clothes so that it lay flat. Respectfully, he lifted the skull and placed it at the head of the body. The sutures in the skull were not fully bonded. “It is a child,” he said.

  “Will and Form,” said Vand to himself. He looked again inside. The interior was completely dark, but the seat hung out into the light filtering through the tent’s fabric. A mesh of silver could be a skullcap, wands of ivory could be control levers. He understood none of it. It enthralled him.

  “A pilot,” Vand whispered.

  Jolyon looked up from the dead child accusingly. Vand looked back. Destiny had them rocking on a fulcrum so finely balanced Vand felt the world shift as seesawed between differing paths. Vand determined then and there that he would find a pilot for the machine, and he knew with utmost certainty that Jolyon would stop at nothing to prevent that from happening.

  He looked to his foreman on the walkway above.

  “Clear this away, carefully! I want it examined,” he ordered. “Then back to work!”

  The Guider st
ared at him.

  “Leave,” Jolyon said.

  “Absolutely not,” replied Vand.

  Something would have to be done about Jolyon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Sea Dragons

  ON THE FINAL DAY of Gannever, the sleds crossed the last of the hills and began their descent toward the shore. Eustache Antoninan stood tall and shouted behind him to the rest of the party.

  “Sea Drays Bay!” he cried. “Sea Drays Bay!”

  The dogs howled joyously and the men permitted themselves to smile. Under sunny skies, the sleds coasted down long, smooth banks of snow towards the ocean.

  The beach was a mix of pebbled stretches and dark sand. Low dunes, sparsely covered with hardy grass, divided littoral from land. Through piles of layered ice stacked up by successive great tides the sea was visible, cold and blue under a cloudless sky. Torrents of water bubbled from the grounded ice banks, rattling the cobbles of the shore loudly on their way to the waves. The world contained by the bay was tinted black and white and shades of pure blue, a beautiful vista that stretched along a perfect crescent for ten miles. Two imposing headlands marched from the hills into the sea, holding off from the shore the great wall of ice that circled the Sotherwinter. The ice that had barred the landing of the Prince Alfra only a few weeks before was breaking apart, forming a drifting maze of bergs that thunderously ground into each other, stranding their fellows upon the reefs of black rock strung out between the headlands. The beginning of a major tide was in play, and as the water pushed itself through the ice wall foam sprayed high. But though tempestuous at the entrance, the rising waters quickly smoothed inside the bay, and only wavelets broke on the beach.

  The dogs ran to keep ahead of the sleds, and the party shot down toward its goal exhilaratingly fast. Ilona laughed with joy. Even Tyn Rulsy, pressed into her side against the cold, smiled.

  There was no need to apply the sled brakes. The slope was gentle and levelled off long before the dogs were overtaken by their loads; soon they were pulling again, the snow rasping under the sled runners.