The Shadow Saint

by Gareth Hanrahan

  To do something stupid.

  “Do you have an alchemical foundry to hand? One designed according to the most closely guarded secrets of the alchemists? The ones who got killed when you conjured the New City on top of them?”

  Cari glares, but doesn’t have an answer.

  “And even then, what would that achieve?”

  “Kill the Ishmeric gods!”

  “Ramegos designed the whole machine on Hark Island to achieve the conditions necessary to kill one god. The weapons aren’t a solution. E-everyone’s extrapolating from the Grena Valley, but that was chosen as a test site because it offered optimal conditions.”

  “Godsfuck. So what do we do?”

  “Running off wildly won’t help.”

  “No, let’s sit here and read a book about how much smarter you are than everyone else. That’ll fucking help.”

  Silkpurse shifts uncomfortably. “The Keepers are stronger than they used be. They have saints now. Guerdon ain’t so godless. Not saying I want to live under the Kept Gods again, but better them than Ishmere. An’ there’s a king now, maybe it won’t be so bad.”

  “Holyhill’s fucked,” declares Cari. “If they’re going for the churches and temples the Keepers will go first.” A savage grin on her face. “Welcome to sainthood, Silva. I bet they’ll make a really nice relic from your fucking skull.”

  A coalition. An alliance, thinks Eladora. The Church’s saints, marching to war alongside the city watch and the navy. Alchemical weapons to bolster them. And Terevant owes her a favour–maybe they can call on the Haithi troops to aid them. They can fight back, can’t they?

  She slumps down against the wall, pressing her hands over her ears to blot out the sounds of bombardment. All she can hear is the booming of her own blood.

  What portion of the invasion fleet has landed already? Twelve ships is only a fraction of Ishmere’s strength. And when Mattaur fell, there were avatars there, the gods manifested as fully as they could in the physical world. For all the carnage and destruction outside, this is still just a probing attack. Is Ishmere holding back, or is this all the force they could muster now? All the intelligence reports claimed that they were going to attack Lyrix. They’ve changed course for some reason. A spy, she guesses, reporting that Guerdon was more vulnerable than it appeared.

  If that’s true, then this is only the first wave. There’ll be more ships. More saints.

  It feels like she’s reading all this in a history book. Detached and distant, with lists of troop numbers and estimated miracles. The Fall of Guerdon: a critical reassessment, with special emphasis on political discord and the role of the Thay family.

  She has no idea who’d win in a conflict between this Ishmeric force and whatever coalition of city watch and Keeper saints and Haithi troops they could cobble together, but she knows that it wouldn’t be a decisive victory. Ishmere has vast fleets; Haith has undying hosts. The winner would not be allowed to hold Guerdon, not while the city contained prizes like the alchemical works, the hidden god bombs. There’d be a counter-invasion, and another, and another.

  Repelling the invasion won’t end the war.

  Think. Think.

  Think as saints hurl lightning across the sky. Think as the noise of artillery fire is joined by the crack of rifles down by the docks. Think as the city groans and creaks beneath the weight of floodwater.

  Silkpurse kneels down next to her.

  “Miss, we’re going to Lord Rat. The ghouls are gathering down below. He’s called for Carillon. Are you coming?”

  Eladora shakes her head again. She can’t remember how to speak.

  Cari pauses. “El. I know a bunch of smugglers. Spar says they’re leaving tonight–they’ve got a boat hidden up the coast. If you want, it’s your best chance to get to safety.”

  There’ll be more waves. More gods.

  She stands. She has no handkerchief, so she wipes her nose on her sleeve. “I’m going to Kelkin,” she says quietly.

  Cari looks disappointed. “For fuck’s sake, El.”

  “I… I have an… an inkling of an idea. A thesis.”

  The ghoul beams. “Mr Kelkin will know what to do.”

  “Mr Kelkin,” mutters Eladora, “will not like my idea.”

  CHAPTER 45

  The unseen creatures paw and sniff at Terevant. Long rough tongues lick his hands, slipping under the wrists of his shirt to probe his periapt-scars. Ghouls, he thinks, feral ones. The corpse-eaters were eradicated in Haith centuries ago, but he recalls old stories. Young ghouls can almost pass for human, talk like humans, and elder ghouls are monsters out of legend, necrophagic demigods of the underworld. Between those two stages is the feral period, when the monsters become savage predators and scavengers. He’s in the midst of a pack of two-legged wolves.

  Stay calm. No threatening gestures. But don’t play dead–they eat corpses. Death, they’re probably hungry. The Church of the Keepers is supposed to feed them, but they’ve closed the corpse shafts.

  “I don’t have any food,” he says. The ghouls leer and whoop. One of them tugs at his shirt, claws pushing at the painful scar. Another shoves him, pushing him over. He can’t keep his footing in the darkness.

  More ghouls join the pack, dragging something behind them. He can’t see them, but the tunnel’s more crowded, and he can hear wet cracking noises, smell the blood. They’ve grabbed a corpse, and they’re dismembering it. Ripping it limb from limb, picking it apart. His stomach lurches and he retches, making his chest burn with pain again. Grotesquely, one of the ghouls passes a lump of flesh back to him, offering it to him as if they expect him to share in their grisly feast. He takes the flesh and throws it aside.

  One of the bigger monsters yowls, and he can’t tell if it’s an instruction or a question or an animalistic roar.

  And then they lift him, the whole pack carrying him, dragging him at speed through the tunnels. He shouts, but they’re moving so fast through the endless darkness that he can’t even hear the echo of his screams. He kicks, but they’re monstrously strong. Clawed hands grab his ankles, his arms, trap him in place. Clawed hands close over his mouth, muffling him. Plunging through the city’s depths, a headlong rush like a runaway train. He’s convinced at every turn that they’ll smash his head against some unseen obstacle, or that half the ghouls will go one way and the rest another and he’ll be torn apart.

  Down go the ghouls. At times, their wild race through the city’s underworld brings them to great open chasms–sewers, maybe, or train tunnels, or unseen caverns–and the ghouls leap across them, the chill wind rushing across Terevant’s face, the synchronised grunt of the pack as they fling themselves across the abyss.

  Abruptly, the pack pauses. He hears some of them move away, muttering and growling to one another in low tones. They’re suddenly cautious. They lay Terevant down on the floor–it’s rough, metallic, broken, like he’s lying in a scrapyard. A broken pipe presses against his ribs; his cheek lies against shattered glass. He can smell a foul chemical reek, and something slimy–not a ghoul, much smaller, the size of a housecat maybe, but squishy and cold–scuttles over his calf. Where have they brought him?

  The ground trembles as something elephantine walks towards him. Hot, foul breath. The yelping of the ghouls becomes subdued, even awed. Massive claws lift him from the ground–and then, worst of all, the creature takes control of his voice. Rotten-fruit words swell up in his stomach and pour through his throat like lumpy vomit.

  “URH. A COIN LOST IN THE GUTTER. A KITTEN IN A BAG. MAN OF HAITH. WHAT GOOD ARE YOU? YOUR SOUL IS BOUND TO YOUR BONES. MUST WE CRACK OPEN THE MARROW TO FIND YOU?”

  The creature drops him, sending him sprawling back on the broken ground, but his mouth keeps moving. His voice echoing in his ears. “YOUR TWO-FACED SERVING-MAN, HIM WE COULD EAT. HE OFFERED UP ALL HIS SECRETS. YOU ARE THE LORD OF THESE SOLDIERS. THEY WILL LISTEN TO YOU.”

  Terevant tries to speak, tries to tell the ghouls that he’s a wanted criminal, that he has n
o authority over the House Erevesic troops any more, but the monster still seizes his throat.

  “TELL THEM THAT THEY WILL FIND NO TREASURE HERE.”

  The monster releases him. Terevant gasps for air. “Why are you doing this?”

  “WE WERE HERE FIRST.” The elder ghoul squats down next to him. Instead of speaking through him, it takes control of a chorus of its lesser kin, its voice a guttural choir of barks and grunts that somehow form jigsaw words. “ALWAYS, WHEN THE DARK TIMES COME, WE GO TO THE DEEP PLACES TO SHELTER. KELKIN’S PLANS HAVE FAILED. THERE WILL BE MUCH DEATH. WE SHALL HIDE DOWN HERE UNTIL THE STORM PASSES, AND THEN THE STREETS WILL HAVE SUCH A BOUNTY OF DEAD FLESH FOR US TO EAT. THIS IS THE WAY OF THE GHOUL.” The monster leans in, so close that Terevant can hear the rasping of its tongue. “TELL THEM TO LEAVE.”

  “They won’t listen to me.”

  “YOUR STRENGTH IS COMING, MAN OF HAITH. I SMELL IT. AND WHEN YOU HAVE IT, YOU WILL MAKE THEM LEAVE. MARCH AWAY TO YOUR DUSTY LAND, AND TROUBLE MY CITY NO MORE.” The ghoul chuckles. “YOU CAN LEAVE US DAERINTH. THERE IS NOT MUCH SOUL LEFT IN HIM TO EAT, BUT I SHALL PICK MY TEETH WITH HIS BONES.”

  A strange light approaches. Its radiance illuminates the chamber around them. It’s vast, an underground cyst hundreds of feet across. An endless junkyard, piled in drifts and mounts, shattered and twisted like some giant child had played with it before discarding his broken toys. The ceiling, by contrast, is a magnificent vault that wouldn’t be out of place in the grandest cathedral in all the world, all made from a pearly white stone that—

  “We’re under the New City.”

  “Indeed.” The conjurer of the light emerges from another tunnel. It’s Dr Ramegos. Her robes are wet and tattered, and she’s bleeding from many small cuts. Behind her are more ghouls, pushing her along like the others carried Terevant. “This used to be the old Alchemists’ Quarter, up until the Crisis. The god bombs were made here. But you put an end to that, didn’t you, Lord Rat?”

  Now that he can see the elder ghoul, Terevant wishes it was still dark. The creature’s right next to him, so close he can feel its fetid breath on his neck. It’s at least twice his height, with a horned head that resembles the skinned skull of a dog. Eyes that make him think of a furnace’s light, like the thing’s burning souls in its emaciated belly.

  The elder ghoul speaks through Terevant again. The words pushing irresistibly out of his throat. “CARILLON KILLED THE BLACK IRON GODS. SPAR BURIED WHAT WAS LEFT. IT IS WISE TO LISTEN WHEN GHOULS SPEAK OF GRAVES.”

  Ramegos sits down next to Terevant, facing the ghoul. “If this creature had let us excavate the vault, we could have recovered the remnants of the last two bells ourselves. But he wouldn’t let us in—”

  “YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ASK,” growls Rat, through one of the other ghouls. Terevant and Ramegos are surrounded now by a host of the scavengers, swarming like moths around the light. Ramegos doesn’t flinch. She ignores the ghoul’s interruption.

  “He wouldn’t let us in, and Effro Kelkin wasn’t willing to risk the alliance with the ghouls. So, we struck a secret deal with your Crown. A phylactery in exchange for the location of the vault.”

  “The Erevesic sword.” She killed Olthic, thinks Terevant. The Crown killed Olthic.

  “SHE HAS WRONGED BOTH OF US,” says Rat, “SHALL WE KILL HER?” The ghouls laugh. “SHALL I BREAK YOU, OLD WITCH, AND EAT OF YOUR SOUL?”

  “You’ve been threatening that since I arrived,” Ramegos sneers. Sorcery crackles between her hands. “He’s too much of a coward to try it,” she says to Terevant. “And if I’ve wronged you, he’s done worse. Ask him who told the Keepers about Edoric Vanth. Go on, Rat, admit it.”

  The elder ghoul laughs again, a horrible gurgling. “COURAGE IS BORN OF FEAR. FEAR IS FOR SURFACE FOLK.” A different ghoul speaks this time, but they’re still Rat’s words. “YOUR BARGAIN WITH HAITH WOULD HAVE BROUGHT TROUBLE DOWN ON US. HAS BROUGHT TROUBLE.”

  “Where’s the sword?” demands Terevant. He feels like he’s walked in the middle of a long-running argument.

  “Young Eladora Duttin came to me, and… convinced me to return it to you. I tried, I really did. I gave it to your man Yoras.”

  “Where is he?”

  Ramegos shakes her head. “I’m sorry. He’s gone. We got caught in the open when Ishmere attacked. The sword’s in the middle of the Wash. It’s hell up there.” As if to underline her words, the cavern shakes slightly, rocked by a distant explosion or divine thunderbolt far above.

  “YOUR PLANS HAVE FAILED,” says Rat. “THE ARMADA OF ISHMERE IS HERE. THERE WILL BE GODSWAR ON THE STREETS, AND MUCH SUFFERING.”

  “I thought we’d have more time,” says Ramegos. “That they’d bypass Guerdon, and go and conquer Lyrix or Haith first. No offence.” She sighs. “We tried. We really did. We nearly changed the world, here. If we’d had a little longer…”

  Rat nuzzles her, his massive snout pushing against her. “LIE DOWN AND DIE, THEN, AND WE SHALL EAT OF YOUR FLESH.”

  “I’m not dead yet,” snaps Ramegos. “I’m leaving, by the quickest road I can find.”

  “WITHOUT THE SWORD,” growls Rat, “HE IS USELESS TO ME. YOU ARE BOTH MEAT.” The ghoul looms over them, claws gleaming in the werelight.

  Terevant scrambles to his feet. “I’m still the Erevesic! Even without the sword–those troops are mine. Bring them to me. Let me talk to them!”

  “AS YOU WISH.” The ghoul shrugs. “THE GODSWAR IS UPON US. IT MATTERS LITTLE HOW YOU SPEND YOUR LAST BREATHS.”

  The ghouls lead Terevant and Ramegos across the strange landscape of the cavern, through the wreckage. They must take a circuitous route; the ghouls may be mostly immune to the toxin pools and piles of shattered alchemical weapons, but Terevant is still mortal. He imagines he can feel the poisons seeping into his flesh. His lungs burn, his eyes water, but he can’t look away. Behind him, Ramegos coughs into her sleeve. She mutters something about the place being too unstable for protective spells.

  They move through the remains of the old Alchemists’ Quarter. The god bombs were forged in these machines; a kingdom’s ransom in weapons lies scattered across the tortured stone. They pass the corpses of monsters that Terevant doesn’t recognise–misshapen things, like a dozen animals stitched together. Crawling horrors of wax. Slime pools that sprout eyes and stare at him.

  There are other creatures in the darkness. Drawn by the light, they slither and lumber and pounce. Things that might once have been human, shambling wretches in the tattered remains of protective suits. Half-wax creatures, partially melted. Feral raptequines, thin as skeletal horses, pale manes matted with blood.

  Ahead, the walls curve inwards. The white stone’s smeared with patches of crushed metal, debris piled atop more debris and crushed by some unimaginable force. A containment vessel. He imagines a stone giant, frantically ramming handfuls of molten metal against cracks in the wall, desperate to seal away whatever lies on the far side. Something more toxic, more abhorrent than all the horrors of this outer cavern.

  At the foot of the massive wall is a patch of light. Dozens of Vigilant troops in House Erevesic livery stand watch alongside a smaller continent of embassy troops. Behind them are a handful of living souls. Some wear the black robes of necromancers, others the uniform of royal engineers. Haunted faces, pale from the dust, smeared with blood and slime. They’re quarrying through the wall. Terevant wonders for an instant why they don’t simply blast through the wall, then remembers the piles of alchemical waste and broken weapons littering the wreckage. No wonder they aren’t using explosives.

  When they spot the ghouls, the Vigilants react as one, aiming their rifles into the darkness. The ghouls take cover amid the debris, leaving Terevant exposed. He advances all alone, stepping over bodies. Recently killed ghouls, a few broken Vigilants, damaged beyond repair, and beneath them a gory carpet of slaughtered abominations.

  It is the Erevesic, shouts one of the undead in amazement.

  The Erevesic! echo the
other troops of his House. They’ve fought for his family for centuries. They lived and died and rose to fight again alongside his ancestors, alongside the bearer of the Erevesic sword.

  Familiar skulls that he last saw back in Old Haith emerge out of the darkness. Commander Rabendath, Iorial, Brythal. Bony hands supporting him, leading him into the light.

  “The city’s under attack,” says Terevant. “We should be up there. Brythal, your daughter’s up there in the Patros’ palace, it’ll be their first target—”

  We have our orders, lord, says Rabendath, and you are not in command here.

  Daerinth hurries towards him accompanied by four Vigilants from the embassy staff. “Arrest him!” he croaks. “Arrest the ambassador’s murderer!”

  The Erevesic is in custody, says Rabendath. The House Erevesic dead close ranks around Terevant. He and Daerinth are left staring at each other through fences of bone.

  “Take him to the camp! Put him on a train to Haith, so that he may stand before the Crown’s justice,” insists Daerinth. “He should not be here.”

  “Let him through,” orders Terevant.

  The old man pushes through the lines, clutches at Terevant’s arm. He whispers, “I gave you a chance to run, you fool. I tried to avoid this.”

  “You murdered my brother.”

  “I tried to avoid the necessity. If not for your intransigence, he would be alive and crowned, but… it had to be done. It is for Haith I do all this.”

  “What have you done?”

  “I never wavered. The Crown will see I never wavered.” The Crown, not the Houses or the Bureau. Olthic tried to secure Guerdon by diplomacy, Lys by guile, and all the while there was a third plan, born of desperation and cold calculation.

  Daerinth weakly pushes Terevant away, raises his voice.

  “A kinslayer cannot hold the family sword. The souls of the Enshrined dead would reject him. The line of the Erevesics ended with Olthic. You owe this traitor no loyalty.”