The Brass God

by K. M. McKinley

  The modalmen shouted excitedly. Those who disapproved were in a minority.

  The man was taken to the table, the chains looped about his neck and spread limbs. An elder pinned the man in place with a single, enormous hand. The table was rotated into an upright position and the five chains drawn taut by five modalmen. The man’s screams for mercy were ignored.

  The elders turned to face the Fallen Citadel, their hands raised, begging the Brass God for his aid in replenishing their population.

  The Brass God obliged.

  The nested spheres rotated within each other, the patterned, silver metal whispering on itself. Glimmer light built in the hollow, central space, visible when holes in the spheres were aligned. The machine shook; a deep thrum perturbed the air. The elders sang droning chants in accompaniment.

  The shaking grew violent, so that Rel thought the machine would break apart. As it seemed that could be the only outcome, it boomed, and its running became smooth. Glimmer light shone from its markings. The light at the centre was too bright to look at. The turning of the spheres dragged at the world, deadening sound and inducing a leaden malaise in Rel’s soul. Colour drained from its vicinity.

  The elders’ song changed. They shifted their hand positions in perfect unison, the sleeves of their robes snapping with the motion. An arc of power cracked out from the spheres and rooted itself to the lens. Motes of light danced inside the glass, and the apparatus swivelled down to point at the chained man. He howled in terror. The motes merged with one another, glaring brightly as a forge fire. A blade of light moved as slow as a sadist’s knife out from the centre. The modalmen turned away, their eyes closed.

  Rel couldn’t stop watching, though the light burned his eyes. A shaft of boiling radiance stabbed into the man. It hit his chest, and spread through his body, illuminating his circulatory system from within. Light burned from his eyes and mouth. His screams changed to choking whimpers that grew deeper, then petered out into pained grunts.

  Before Rel’s eyes, the man swelled in size. His torso rippled with new muscle. His bones cracked as they broke and lengthened. His head ballooned, his features became liquid. His eyes swam around his face like fish in a bowl. His ragged clothes split from his body, falling to the ground. The light inside him shone brighter, turning him into a pink lantern decorated with branching patterns of backlit nerves. His ribcage cracked open, the skin on his chest tore. Exposed insides writhed with eager growth, budding new organs so rapidly they overfilled him and welled from his broken chest and his mouth.

  As the man grew, the modalmen gently let out the chains. Links rattled through the table one by one, pulled through by his swelling body. The man’s grunts became moans as his body rearranged itself and his throat was unstopped. His struggles lessened, and his head lolled. His eyes closed, his features stabilised, taking on the broad set of the modalman’s faces even while his head continued to grow. Blotches of charcoal grey appeared over his body, spreading like blots of ink, until they had joined together, and the man’s original dusky brown hue was swallowed.

  Chains slackened. The man approached the towering height of the modalmen. His ribs closed over vigorously beating organs. A final snapping of bone, and new, tiny arms budded from his side, skinless and wet. They pushed outward like gory shoots. The space under his armpits shifted and changed with the growth of a second set of shoulders. Skin rippled up over exposed muscle, covering it in sleeves of black.

  The ray of light snapped off. Where a man of the west had been, a naked, new born modalman hung unconscious from the chains. His flesh steamed. The metal of the table creaked as it cooled. Though he had the physique of a modalman, he lacked their clan markings.

  An elder advanced with slow, deliberate steps. He placed a finger upon the new modalman’s head. The light of the elder’s markings pulsed and shone silver. The patterns crept up from the elder’s finger, and drew itself upon the new modalman’s body. His skin opened as if cut. Light flowed along the channels, stemming the blood before it could flow.

  The channels curled all over the modalman. When they reached his ankles, the elder removed his finger, and stepped back.

  “Awake!” the elder commanded in the modalman tongue.

  Groggily, the modalman came around. He looked about him in complete confusion. His legs gave under him. Were it not for the chains he would have fallen. The new modalman looked at his feet. Tentatively, he stood.

  The giants holding the chains relaxed their grip completely. The chains fell in loops at their new kinsman’s feet.

  Modalmen with the same clan markings came to his side, and welcomed him, clothing him in the harness and kilt worn by their race. Speaking soothing words they led him away.

  The modalmen sang and stamped in greeting, all of them.

  And then the process began again.

  THEY TOOK RAFOZO before Tuvacs. He screamed in terror as they bound him to the table. Tuvacs watched as Rafozo was changed, changed by sorcery into the very things that had tormented them. The pain on Rafozo’s face as they remade him was terrible to see, and soon it would happen to Tuvacs. He could not shake that thought. The pain, and the change.

  “Fucking hell, fucking hell,” said Dunets over and over. Finally, his spirit had broken, and he was as scared as all the rest.

  The next man was taken. As the door opened, all the men within screamed unashamedly. A few bellowed insults, but most were thoroughly cowed by their long ordeal, and cried like babes. Tuvacs was no exception, when his turn came.

  He came close to losing his mind when they pulled him out. He could not think. Sheer terror grasped him. He was helpless in the modalmen’s grip, unable even to struggle as they placed him against the table and yanked the chains tight. The spheres screamed with pent up sorcerous power. The lens tilted down to point at him.

  A peculiar calm came over him as he stared at the shining glass. Acceptance of his fate, maybe, or a realisation that it would all soon be over. The magic built within the lens, the blade of light extended. Before it slammed into his body, he spoke.

  “Lavinia.”

  Light burned through him. Every mote of his being was set ablaze. In this universe of pain he clung onto his memories, snatching for them like a man chasing sheets of paper blowing away down a street. His childhood was ripped from him, his memories of Travnic were plucked out from the library of his mind one by one. Mohacs-Gravo disintegrated. His time in Karsa melted away. But he held on hard to the memory of his sister, and he clutched tighter still to an image of Suala, heavy with his child. He would never see the child, not if he forgot. Light and pain became his world. His mental struggles lessened. His soul unravelled, but he held fast to his sister and his lover, focussing all his will on remembering their faces.

  An eternity passed. The light faded. A newly made modalman lay steaming upon the table. Through half-closed eyes, the modalman who had been Tuvacs saw the elder approach to take him into his clan.

  “Suala,” the modalman whispered. “Lavinia.”

  The elder drew with a burning touch upon his remade flesh, and Tuvacs’ vision went black.

  REL MOVED TO the cage door as cautiously as was possible. The glaring light of the Machinery of Change obscured his actions. It flooded the arena, brighter than the sun itself. The modalmen were focussed on the birth of their new clansmen, but if only one looked his way at the wrong time, he would be dead.

  “I’m going to be dead anyway,” he said to himself as he rattled his makeshift pick in the lock. “It will be sooner rather than later. They can’t see through the light. They can’t see like you can,” he told himself. In all that effulgence, the modalmen’s vision would work against them.

  The cage lock was unwilling to cooperate. He had to scurry back to his chains repeatedly as the light died. An hour passed. Fifteen more men were turned into bewildered modalmen before Rel heard the telltale click of the lever turning. The lock would not open. He looked nervously around. No one could see him through the glare. His
hands were sweating profusely. He wiped them on his clothes. A few more jiggles, and the lock snapped wide.

  The latest new modalman was made. The light died. Rel hurried back to the other end of the cage. He was forced to leave the door ajar, its padlock hanging from the hasp.

  He had to wait. Another man must be altered for him to escape.

  Rel looked at the cage. He wondered who it would be. He wondered who would die so that he would have a chance to live. He tried to frame it in the context of saving the world rather than himself, but the end of the world was an abstract. His own life was in immediate danger. A man would die in exchange for his life, there was no other way to see it.

  The latest modalman was led, weak-limbed, to his clan mates. At the climax of each transformation, a new elder came forward, claiming the warrior for his tribe, until every clan had been apportioned a fresh recruit. Once all had taken a turn, the elder of the Giev En took a second.

  Rel waited with his heart in his mouth. He forced himself not to look at the door. He could not help but be conscious that it was open, clearly so.

  Modalmen walked within a couple of yards of his cage to fetch a prisoner. They pulled out another terrified man. Many of them were crying. Others screamed insults at their captors. Their profanities fell on deaf ears. The modalmen took off their latest victim’s manacles, and carried him to the table.

  Rel didn’t know the man. By his sacrifice would Rel be free, if he survived.

  The apparatus was engaged. The light built, the chanting began. When the beam of change forced itself into the man’s very being and began its reforging, Rel threw himself at the cage door and jumped out.

  Dazzling light shone from every part of the arena, whiting out the details of the ancient carvings. Odd shadows collected in sheltered places, throwing off the geometry of the building.

  Rel sprinted headlong for the beam of light. For half the distance he was not seen. As he closed upon the machine, his world drew in, wrapping him in radiance and exaggerated sound. His breathed rushed in his ears. The sand kicked up by his feet pattered down like hailstones. Then uproar chased him.

  He had been seen.

  A giant’s spear slashed the sand yards from where he ran, cutting up a furrow and skidding across the arena floor. More followed. Modalmen broke from their duties guarding the cages or attending the elders and ran after him, but their eyes, sensitive in the dark, were virtually blind as the Machineries of Change did their work, and Rel dodged their lumbering attempts to grab him.

  Then Brauctha was there in front of him.

  “No,” he said.

  Rel skidded to a halt, and turned quickly. Brauctha’s fists thudded into the sand after him. He expected the end. Brauctha reached for him, but another modalman slammed into the side of the king and bore him to the ground.

  Drauthek’s voice chased Rel.

  “Run!”

  Rel glanced back. Drauthek had the bigger modalman in a headlock, the fingers of his lower left hand buried in the wound Shkarauthir had inflicted upon Brauctha’s belly.

  Rel dodged a final clumsy swipe, and leapt for the beam of light. It was further than he had ever jumped in his life.

  Time took on the treacly slowness it had before he had ridden the Road of Fire. His hand slipped into the light, jolting him with power. He wished to turn back, but he could not, and he landed in front of the table. There he took the full brunt of the beam.

  The Machinery of Change called to something inside him, something that had always been there that he had never noticed, but now it was shown to him, he realised it had been there all along.

  Rel was slammed sideways from his body. His soul compressed to a tiny point, hard as diamond. The sky opened, filled with shifting vistas and screaming, tortured faces. He looked away from them, terrified, only to find himself staring downward into infinity. Pillars of black and red smoke turned complex dances, lightning stabbing between them. Streams of light intersected with each other, turned inside out, and became dark. He hung nowhere for an endless moment, then the dark burst apart in kaleidoscopic explosions. With a sickening lurch, he was turned on his head. His lips were numb. His arms lost their form. His skin inflated, encompassing the camp, the modalmen, the mountains, desert, the Earth, the Twin, the sun, and on, past the cold ice that warmed itself at the very last extent of the sun’s rays, out into the void between stars, until his soul brushed the edges of eternity, and galaxies rotated within his mind.

  He burst into fragments. There were a billion of him, an infinity, all living different lives. Reality fractured like a scene blurred by a trick lens. Rel fell down through a shattering, coalescing myriad of images.

  He landed hard on nothing, found himself swooping over strange lands where men and women lived strange lives. Primitives in fur, warriors in armour, cities of vertical slabs with a thousand windows, undersea villages, glittering palaces of metal and stone that floated in the black void. Mankind everywhere, on every sort of world. He was slammed sideways into another place, another time, where Morfaan stood as gods before savage tribes, and took them through gates of light. Another place, and another. A lonely woman sat upon a bed in a strange room lit by lamps that were not fire but were not glimmer. A visitor offered her a different life. On and on, people taken from all across the endless variations of time and space and brought there, to this Earth.

  He fell further, tumbling down the twisting ways of fate and time. He watched reality come apart and reshape itself under the influence of living minds, some deliberately exerted, most change unconsciously done. Finally, he arrived in a blackness of a compact sort, where an incomprehensible being as large as the forever moulded two worlds from nothing, one light and ever changing, one dark and eternal.

  The spell broke, Rel slammed into the arena sand.

  Shouts were coming from everywhere. Human and modalman. Rel attempted to stand. On his first try, he could not, on his second, he went from prone to standing upright without passing through the stages between. His feet drifted over the ground. Power poured from him in torrents, magic coursed through his being. He experienced reality around him not as a concrete actuality, but a series of choices that were now his alone to make.

  Brauctha was shouting in the modalman tongue. Rel fervently wished he understood it. As soon as he had the thought, he could.

  “Kill him! Destroy him!” raged the king of the Giev En. Spears and arrows raced at Rel from every side. They vanished as soon as he was aware of them. Warriors ran at him with their weapons drawn. He threw out his hand and scattered them, blasting apart their bodies into showers of meat.

  “Brauctha,” said Rel. His voice roared around the arena. “The horde will ride to the Kingdoms in friendship. You will cease your transformation of these men. Your day as king has come and passed. Submit, and all will be well.”

  The modalmen were sent into confusion by Rel’s use of their language. His words boomed from him like cannon fire, reverberating from the mountains.

  “You will die, and I will eat you,” said Brauctha. He snatched his sword from an attendant, and charged at Rel.

  Rel looked at Brauctha’s wound. He imagined it opening wide, spreading around his body and splitting his skin in a neat line up over his shoulders and down his back. As he imagined it, so it was.

  Brauctha fell to pieces under Rel’s will. His guts unraveled upon the floor. His skin fell off. His remaining eye dropped from his skull. The impetus of his charge propelled him a few more yards. Within three steps he was a walking pile of gristle and steaming bone. He did not stop, but pressed on until he collapsed into a wet mound of fats and unravelling flesh that bubbled, liquefied, and sank into the sand.

  Rel spread his arms, and commanded the world to let him fly. Meekly, reality hoisted him skyward.

  “Release these men!” he shouted.

  Silence fell. The man on the table screamed, halfway transformed, condemned to a choking death by malformed organs bursting in his chest. Rel looked upon him,
and attempted to undo the change. That he could not do. All that resulted was more screaming.

  “Release them!” he shouted. His voice broke and stuttered. The fire in his blood went from empowering to burning. His belief in his own power wavered. Flight was seen as the impossibility it was, and he fell to the ground. A modalman moved on him, sword up. Rel removed his head with a thought, but still his power faltered. The energy streaming from him stuttered.

  Drauthek was being held on his knees by four other modalmen. The men shouted from their cages. Rel stood.

  “This horde is mine by right of conquest,” he said.

  The modalmen milled about, their unity gone. The elders argued around him, then one pointed toward the citadel, and the others looked and cried out.

  Lights ran around the broken fortress. A glowing cloud detached itself from the summit and flew unerringly for the moot ground. It descended and touched down between Rel and the dying, half-transformed man, where it solidified into the machine body of Qurunad, the Brass God.

  “And lo, so came unto them the God of Brass!” Qurunad said.

  The modalmen fell to their knees, prostrating themselves before their deity. A panicked song of worship arose from all quarters.

  “You, Rel Kressind, cease to exert yourself or you will die. Your abilities are unstable. Stop now. Let me finish the business of tonight.”

  Rel held his hands up. They sparkled with fitful power, but his thoughts were unformed. The sand flowed around him, half alive. Flowers sprang up and died. Tiny armies made of dirt fought a battle by his feet. He tried to regain control, but the more he strived, the more slippery reality became, and he had the sudden fear he would wish himself from existence.

  “Modalmen!” said the Brass God. “The Endless War continues. Your might at arms is needed again.” He pointed at the cages. “End what you began! Add these men to your ranks, swell your numbers. The war demands it! I demand it!”

  “What are you doing?” said Rel. He felt sick. He was incredibly thirsty and hungry but the thought of consuming anything nauseated him.