The Brass God

by K. M. McKinley

  At the centre rear of each army the generals oversaw their troops, and these were of a third type of being. Qurunad and Rel flew past these two—there were no more—without lingering as they did over other parts of the field.

  “The Children of the Five,” Qurunad said. “We must pass them quickly. Their power and might is preserved in this record, so it is possible for them to notice us.”

  “They transcend time?”

  “It is more and less complicated than that,” said Qurunad dismissively. “You would not understand.”

  The Morfaan’s masters were tall, slender creatures, lofty as trees. They were beautiful by any human standard, with fine faces and slender limbs. Like the Morfaan, they too had four arms, but theirs were all of equal size, and freely displayed. They blazed with inner radiance, a pure, white luminance like starlight, so bright their armour’s colours were washed out by it.

  The red general had long blonde hair braided into complicated tresses tumbling down its back. The swell of breasts and a wideness across the hips indicated it was female. The blue was a male, with brown hair blowing free in the frozen wind. Both had piercing blue eyes with white pupils. The sclera, the white part of the eye, was in them black. They were girded for war, outfitted in gloriously made armour, three swords of light belted to their sides, and shields as tall as men upon their lower left arms.

  Qurunad looked over the Children of the Five dispassionately. “Our masters were beautiful, but they were flawed. They were the sons and daughters of god, given dominion over these worlds, and they squandered their legacy. What could have been glorious was instead ruined. They waited so long for the One to return that they lost their way. There were many schisms between my masters down the aeons. Two occurred a long time before my people and the Draathis were made by them. The last saw the remaining few pure lords and ladies fall from their intended path entirely, and become obsessed with petty display. Hundreds of thousands of my kind died for their amusement in wars fought for no reason other than to entertain. You see them here at the final play of their power.” He gestured grandly. “This is the day of the Great Betrayal.”

  A sucking boom set time into motion. Rel was rocked by a sudden explosion of noise. Cannons firing, Draathis howling metallic war cries, the sounding of horns and the singing of battle songs. Dracons more numerous than a forest’s worth of birds screeched and roared. The armies lurched towards each other, bent on the other’s destruction.

  From the cannons blue orbs of energy flickered over the heads of the front lines, landing with thunderous force and carving bloody lanes into the regiments on each side. Warriors caught directly in the blasts were obliterated. Skeletons showed as black silhouettes within the Morfaan, their flesh white, and they burst apart in showers of ash. Draathis hit by the cannon exploded, flinging out sprays of molten iron in secondary waves of death.

  Somehow, though they were again now high above the field, Rel fleetingly saw scenes close to. He watched as a handsome Morfaan captain levelled his pennant, and his squadron of dracons galloped out. He saw the female Child of the Five’s black and white eyes darting across the battle, reading the movement of her foe. He saw the male hold out his two right arms, swords flickering with energy in each, bringing forth a flurry of semaphore from the signallers around him that prompted swift changes in the formations of his soldiery.

  The Draathis of both armies moved toward one another under heavy fire, the ranks of Morfaan hard behind in close support. The iron monsters built up speed slowly, but once they were running they were unstoppable, outpacing the second and third lines, opening up space between them and their comrades. Their formations became a little ragged for their charging, but the iron giants of both sides met nearly simultaneously right across the front of the battle, with a clanging of metal on metal like the ringing of ten thousand muffled bells.

  The Draathis brawled with fists, smiths’ hammers beating on hot metal flesh. Their blows were phenomenally powerful, knocking their targets over, or sending them staggering many feet back with dents in their skin. Rel imagined the effect of one of those fists upon a human body. How could they even be killed? A bullet wouldn’t stop one, he thought. A cannonball might.

  The Morfaan of both armies spread out in measured synchronicity. Their formations held perfectly. They covered the lines of their metal comrades, tackling breakthroughs of Draathis from the opposing side, though many died doing so, as a dozen Morfaan were required to fell one Draathis. The Draathis wrought bloody havoc where they could. Rel watched as one, clutching the head of a slain rival, barged through the line of enemy Draathis into the red Morfaan. Using the head as a bludgeon it felled ten of them before enchanted glaives and the concentrated fire of two cannons brought it to smoking ruin. Even in death, the Draathis was deadly. Molten iron sprayed from its wounds, burning and maiming the Morfaan engaging it.

  The tumult was harshened by the screams of Morfaan and dracons. Still they fought, responding without question to the orders of their glowing, inhuman masters.

  By now, the cavalry wings on each side had engaged. The red cavalry drove off the blue in disarray, and reformed on both flanks, angling themselves inward to attack the rear ranks of the blue army’s second line. Seeing this, the female Child of the Five went into a frenzy of activity, sending out orders via her flagmen to prepare her infantry to fend off the charge.

  More Draathis were breaking through into the blue lines. Crossbows spat bolts of screaming magic at them. Where they breached the iron skin they left holes aglow with dripping metal and the Draathis fell lifeless, but as often as not the bolts ricocheted off.

  “Now we come to it,” said Qurunad. “The moment history was changed. The Draathis were clever. They waited until my people were fully engaged before springing their trap.”

  The red cavalry charged, horns blaring, in two directions, one half of them slamming into the rear ranks of the blue’s second line, the other racing and feinting in front of the third. As a soldier, Rel could see they were doing so to draw the fire and attention of the back line away from the attack on the second. It was a callous manoeuvre, achieved at a horrible cost in lives. Broken dracon bodies wheeled upward, blasted skyward by the force of cannon immensely more powerful than those possessed by the Kingdoms.

  A hallooing call sounded from somewhere amid the Draathis. It was loud, but barely audible among the raging battle, until it was joined by another, and another, until in chorus the calls of the Draathis gradually overcame the clamour of arms. Draathis from both sides disengaged from their opponents. They stepped back from their melee, and threw their lumpen heads upwards, mouths wide, and sang out notes as blaring as steam horns. The song spread quickly, and soon all the Draathis were singing, and had ceased fighting. Their bodies shimmered with the heat issuing from their mouths.

  At first the Morfaan and their masters were unaware what was happening. The blue general noticed before the red, and became paralysed in horror. His banner men looked to him. Finally, he marshalled himself, and sent out a rapid succession of orders. By then it was too late.

  Moving as one unstoppable formation, the Draathis from both sides poured uphill into the blue lines, slaughtering the Morfaan by the hundred. The smell of cooked blood fouled the battlefield as Morfaan were crushed underfoot by hot iron. Caught between the advancing Draathis and the red cavalry, the blue second line broke catastrophically. The red cavalry, still ignorant of what was happening, sounded horns for pursuit, but as they hacked down the fleeing blue Morfaan, they were caught by the Draathis of their own side and slaughtered. Dracons’ heads exploded under Draathis fists. Morfaan sauraliers were ripped from their saddles and torn in two with contemptuous ease.

  By this point, the generals understood the day was lost. The blue made a rapid pattern of ritual gestures and disappeared in a spear of light that soared skyward, leaving his warriors to their fate. The female screamed at his cowardice, and launched herself upward. She flew without wings, raining down lashes of fi
re and black storms of unmaking that annihilated everything they touched. Though combat between them continued sporadically, the Morfaan from both sides trained their guns on the conjoined Draathis horde, blasting holes in their lines. Molten iron blood set the grass afire. Smoke and steam fogged the field. More bass singing had the Draathis change formation. The centre pressed on into the scattered remnants of the blue army, while the Draathis flanks reversed course, and began a jog toward the red lines that became an unstoppable charge.

  The blue guns fired for a brief few rounds before the Draathis ploughed into them. They smashed down the crewmen, and wrenched the guns from their carriages, which they then wielded as cumbersome shotguns.

  The newly armed Draathis ignored the artillery pounding them from the red line, and aimed for the female general sweeping their ranks with death. Cerulean blasts arced toward her, each discharge of energy accompanied a thunderclap. She flew gracefully through them, her robes streaming behind her and energy trailing from her hands, and responded with awesome might.

  Draathis cannoneers disintegrated into showers of iron dust, their stolen weapons thumping smoking to the turf. She turned about, spiralling around, unleashing power Rel had never heard of, not even in the most far-fetched tale.

  She slaughtered over a thousand Draathis, but there were too many of them for her to prevail. Her grace and agility were no defence against the lightning chasing her across the sky. She managed a second pass before a column of energy tore off her lower left arm and smashed a hole through her side, and she fell shrieking to the earth.

  She survived the fall. Her wound was as large and ugly as a dracon bite, and bled glowing blood that soaked into the torn up ground. She was trying to rise, pushing herself up, when the Draathis surrounded her. They lifted their heads, but no singing came. Instead they gave voice to a horrifying roar of triumph, impelled by centuries of pent up rage.

  Rel turned away as they stamped her to death.

  Qurunad looked down at Rel. “It is foul, is it not? Our masters were cruel and arrogant, but even they did not deserve to die like this. They thought themselves masters of everything upon this globe. This battle was a shock to them. The same day, Draathis all across the world rose up and slaughtered the Morfaan and the Children of the Five alike. It was the first battle in a war that has lasted for thousands of years. Far worse was to come. This battle took place a few hundred miles south of where my citadel now stands. If you look north, you will see there were no mountains then. The city in the distance is Losirna, which you visited on your way here.” Qurunad looked over the untamed prairies to the city in the distance, and the rich fields that surrounded it. “The Black Sands was not always as it is now. Once, it was the heart of our empire. Ruthnia, where your Hundred Kingdoms squat in the ruins of our world, was but a province. The Draathis destroyed it all.”

  The battlefield froze and shrank from view. Rel blinked, disoriented. He was back in the Citadel’s park, staring at a grey patch in space that snapped closed as Qurunad’s mechanical fingers pulled free the piece of Morfaan silver from the machine. He contemplated it before placing it back into its tray, and shut the casket.

  “This box contains the history of our wars,” he said, resting his hand upon it. “In here is every atrocity visited upon the Children of the Five and the Morfaan by the Draathis.”

  “What happened to the Children of the Five?” said Rel. “I have never heard of them. In the Kingdoms, it is accepted that you Morfaan were the masters of the world.”

  “We ruled this world for thousands of years, once they were gone. So they were forgotten,” said Qurunad. “The Children of the Five were much diminished in number and in potency by the Draathis’ betrayal. In time, they withdrew to the fringes of the world, leaving us to fight their creations without help. Our war continued against the Draathis for scores of centuries. They evolved a cruel intelligence of their own, and a technology to go with it. Eventually, we were victorious, but at incalculable cost. Victory resulted in the destruction of our heartlands and the creation of the Black Sands by weapons of such power you could not possibly imagine them. We drove the Draathis through the greatest of the World Gates to the World of Form, but they returned, and returned again. Every 4000 years, every time the Twin draws closest, they make another attempt to take this world for themselves.”

  “What about us? What about humanity?” asked Rel.

  “Under the Children of the Five we thrived, though we were servants to them. We learned many things at their urging. Some of the Children of the Five were not the idle things you saw in the battle, spending blood for leisure, but were thoughtful beings who desired above all else to find their god. We helped their search, and in doing so we discovered the way to many worlds, places that are closer to us than our own skin, but forever invisible.” He stroked his broken lower arm with one his upper limbs. “Our explorers travelled the spheres, visiting thousands upon thousands of worlds in dozens of existences. We found no trace of the One or any like him. But in many, many places we encountered your kind. When the war dragged on and our people dwindled, your kind were brought here to fight for us. We do not have the art of our creators, and although we could make things such as this,” he gestured at his metal body, “we cannot create life. So we brought you here, along with the animals and plants you depend upon. With your help, we beat the Draathis.”

  “You won thanks to us?”

  Qurunad snorted metallically. “Not in the most important sense. It did not work. To all intents, we lost. Though you were numerous, and the strains we teased from you potent, you could not win us the victory we needed quickly enough. When it was finally won, you remained numerous, while we were few. We were outnumbered in our own world. Those of us that were left decided to shepherd you, and rebuild the world for both peoples. We would do better than our creators, we thought. After the Draathis returned for the first time, we built and took up residence in the Parrui, that which you call the Godhome, and began our great endeavour. The period you refer to as the Maceriyan Resplendency was the result.”

  He looked away from Rel at the murals for a while. When he resumed his account, he spoke quietly.

  “We should have left, but grief and arrogance blinded us. Although the Maceriyan Resplendency ushered in an era of prosperity for your people, it was a crude memory of the Children of the Fives’ civilisation. The world sickened. We discovered our kind had made a grave mistake bringing you here at all. Everywhere your kind were discovered, your creatures had supplanted those that were there before. Our world was no different. You corrupted the One’s holy creation. Your animals drove the draconkind to extinction, your crops choked the flowers of His fields. Your piss and your shit poison everything, and now you enter an era of filthy machines. Where ours held harmony with the world, yours only take. Their manufacture scars the land. Their operation sucks the soul from the Earth.”

  The Brass God stood, and looked up through the clear ceiling, where the sun shone against the cliffs climbing vertically out of sight. “As if your goats, your dogs, your wheat, birds, fish, rats, mice, and the million other things you infested this sphere with were not bad enough, worse by far were your minds. We saw you as weak and plentiful, the perfect slave, but you are not weak. Our numbers dwindled ever faster. Few Morfaan took children to term. Our young became rare things, treated like princes, to their detriment. We did not know why, until we found too late that your will is greater than ours, especially when there are many of you. As you increased in number, so we died away. You have reshaped this world merely by your presence. We were fading, as the Children of the Five faded.

  “When the Draathis returned, they tore down our civilisation. We sealed our World Gates, confining ourselves to this one reality in a bid to shut them out, but they returned again. They forwent the gates and crossed the airless spaces between our worlds, raining from the sky in iron ships. They found common cause with the men of the north, whom they beguiled, laid waste to the lands there, and marched
upon Ruthnia. Once more the world was brought to ruin, millions of Morfaan and men died, the Resplendency was brought to an end, though compared to the struggles of olden times this Great War, as your people called it, was a skirmish. Somehow, the Draathis had mastered magic, an impossibility, we thought, but they, like us, used you as their pawns, and so our third error was revealed. Their Iron Mages succeeded in enchanting the world, rendering the light of the sun here poisonous to our bodies. We remained a while, to see some of what was lost regained, forced always to travel in the mists, before it was decided we should finally leave altogether and await the Earth’s return to grace. The last thousands of my people were put into sleep. I was one of seven chosen to watch over them in a fortress built beyond any world; two, the sibling-spouses Josan and Josanad were chosen to wake from time to time and travel as emissaries to our lost home. Their role was to guide you as best they could. You will know of them. But there were five more, who gave up our flesh to advise the two. We intended to wait out our foes. The Draathis’ last incursion was weaker; desperate, we thought, in its vindictiveness. We assumed they would die in exile. The world of Form was a paradise, they made it a hell. We thought nothing could live there. We were wrong again.”

  “But you are here, not in this other place,” said Rel.

  “How marvellously astute,” said the Brass God drily. “The plan did not work. The Draathis are ready to take the Earth. It is we who have grown weak while they have grown stronger. When I realised this, the others would not listen to me. They had become cowards, clinging to forlorn hopes. I tried to convince them to reopen the world gates, and take the Heart of Mists to a new land, reawaken our people from its confines and start again far from this wreck of a sphere. I encouraged them to leave you to your fate. This was the second time I did this. For the second time, they would not listen. So I broke my vows, escaping here, where I had left this body for my refuge. I have dwelled within this citadel alone for a long time, watching, waiting, until the modalmen gathered for a last battle. I expect they will lose.”