“What? Fuck, no. It’s too far for him, El–his soul’s already stretched over the whole fucking New City. You can’t use him for that. It’d break him. Kill him.”
Eladora raises her voice, addresses the stone walls around them. “Spar Idgeson, please–can you do it?”
Cari reaches inside her shirt, finds her amulet, holds it for a moment of silent communion. The amulet was made by Jermas Thay. A relic of the Black Iron Gods for their chosen saint. The Crisis was supposed to have left it magically impotent, but it still seems to help Cari concentrate.
“Fuck you,” says Cari a minute later. She stares at the floor, unwilling to meet Eladora’s gaze.
“Thank you.” Eladora turns to Ramegos. “The god bomb–does it require any special preparations to fire?”
“No. But…” Ramegos pushes herself upright. She winces at the pain from the wound in her side. “Think clearly. The Ishmeric gods aren’t constrained–the bomb might wound them, but it won’t kill them. You might get lucky and take out one of them, but not a whole pantheon.”
“Pantheon-yield,” echos Cari, hollowly. “That’s what Rosha said to me, once.”
“The target,” says Eladora curtly, “will be obvious, I think. I’ve spoke to enough refugees from Severast and Mattaur to know what to expect. The Lion Queen is their Goddess of War–I am assured she will arrive to preside over their victory.”
“Even if we–damage– Pesh,” says Ramegos, “they won’t stop. It’s not like the Grena Valley.”
“I think it will be.” Eladora looks down at Ramegos. “I’ve… I know the Kept Gods. I’ve shared their thoughts. I could taste how they feared the bomb. It’s more than destruction–it’s annihilation. You wrote that yourself. But killing a god isn’t enough. It’s what comes after.”
Steel in the spine, she tells herself.
“I need to go through there,” says Eladora, pointing towards the curtain wall.
She can feel the Black Iron Gods now, hear them. It’s not like the storm-front celestial pressure of the Kept Gods, blindly pushing at her to open her soul, accept them in. It’s different, more insidious. A constant, gnawing demand, a hunger for oblivion. The Black Iron Gods want to unravel her, to devour her piece by piece, cell by cell, until nothing remains but them, those archons of the hungry void.
“I don’t fucking understand,” says Cari angrily. “You want Spar and me to get the god bomb and save the day? Fine. We can try. But why do you—”
“You can save the day,” interrupts Eladora. “But what about the next day? Or the day after that?” She looks up at the conjured heaven above their heads, the arches of unlikely creation born of Spar and stolen magic. “That’s what concerns me. The future. The city’s future.” She thinks for a moment. “Can I borrow a knife?”
Cari snorts. “Sure.”
“And… and the amulet.”
“Should it be me going through?” asks Cari. Suddenly subdued as she thinks about what awaits Eladora on the other side of this prison wall.
“No. You have Spar. It has to be me.” Eladora takes the amulet, settles it around her neck. The memory of her grandfather’s wormy fingers brushing against her skin. “I’m ready.”
“Wait!” groans Ramegos. With Silkpurse’s help, she staggers over to the two younger women. “I’ll go with you.”
“I’m not coming back this way,” says Eladora.
“Aye, I guessed when you asked for the amulet. You’re my apprentice,” says Ramegos. “Can’t finish your lessons without seeing some proper sorcery.”
She slips her arm from Silkpurse, grabs onto Eladora instead. One hand grips Eladora’s wrist painfully; the other traces arcane symbols in the air that blaze with power. “Let’s get to work.”
Carillon prays, and the wall splits open.
The inner cavern is furnace-hot, as though the broken tallow-vats and alchemical crucibles are still running. The machinery in here is more intact than outside. Ramegos’ werelight darts around them, illuminating the half-melted remains of Tallowmen. The ruins of the old alchemists’ chapel, a fortune in gemstones and gold smeared across the ground. An industrial graveyard, where the barrels of titanic artillery pieces rise like unlikely pillars to support the jagged ceiling.
The wall closes behind them, the stone knitting back together. It’s slower than last time. Carillon warned them that Spar was overexerting himself. He, too, must endure.
Ramegos grunts, then says, “Over to the left, if you please.”
Eladora supports Ramegos as they slowly cross the ruins, following the werelight to the wreckage of a huge machine. A press of some sort, thinks Eladora–there’s a mould there in the middle, tanks and pipes like organs and entrails, but also shattered mirrors, aetheric engines–and above it all, surmounting the armoured frame, is the steel effigy of a woman’s face, ten feet tall. Was it the sculptor or the alchemist who captured Rosha’s sneer, or the determination in her gaze? The woman who made the god bombs stares blindly at her prison wall.
“Phylactery,” says Ramegos, “though how she made it without the blessing of Haith’s death-god, I don’t know. Her soul was in there–mould was for making her new wax bodies whenever she wanted.” Ramegos mutters a spell, and sigils glimmer along the frame. “Something’s still in there.”
She lingers a moment, then nods. “Let’s move on.”
There are other things living, or at least moving in the cavern. Whatever’s out there flinches from the werelight, heaving its monstrous bulk into the shadows before Eladora can get a good look at it. Oily feathers, mismatched claws, and a dozen eyes glitter back at her. For all its size, it’s fast. The eyes look human, embedded in a monstrous prison of flesh.
Lightning crackles around Ramegos’ hand. “I’ve got one good spell left in me.”
Eladora can sense the Black Iron Gods before she sees them. The two remaining deities are in the centre of the cavern, in a cage of twisted metal that used to be the alchemists’ Grand Athanor. One of them used to be the bell of the Holy Beggar church down in the Wash; the other rang from the lighthouse out on Bell Rock. Neither of them are bells any more, but neither are they the cthonic idols they once were. They strike Eladora as something unearthly; alien ovoids of metal that fell from some nightmare sky.
They’re aware of her. She senses their awareness groping towards her. Confused by her presence, confused by her existence. They’ve mistaken her for Carillon before.
She decides that the one on the left is the one from the Bell Rock. Cari touched the Holy Beggar bell once, and after that she said it knew her.
Maybe she can fool the one on the left.
“Ready?” she asks Ramegos.
“Set me down here,” replies Ramegos, “and give me a moment.” Eladora lowers her mentor to the floor of broken metal. Ramegos takes out her heavy ledger and hastily scribbles a few more glyphs.
“The first moments of sainthood,” says Ramegos as she writes, without looking at Eladora, “are especially potent ones. When the soul first aligns with the god, when the channel is established. You’re a special case–you’ve already been, ah, claimed, but that was forced on you.”
“I can manage this,” says Eladora. “I’ll see it through.”
Ramegos finishes writing. The pages are smeared with her own blood, but the glyphs are readable. She closes the book, hands it to Eladora with effort. “They sent me up from Khebesh to study those bombs. This is as close as I’ll get to Rosha’s formula. See that… well, you know what this all means. Either the Godswar ends, or the world does. See that it’s put to good use.”
“I will.”
“I wish I could have shown you Khebesh. But that’s too far. There’s never enough time, is there? Never enough.” Ramegos winces. “You’d better go.”
One of the alchemical monstrosities, a shapeless thing spawned from the mixing of a dozen shattered vats, breaks into a loping run towards Eladora, drooling from all four of its mouths. Ramegos hurls a blasting spell at it, st
aggering it. Another creature emerges from the shadows, and another and another, and the darkness of the cavern is lit by blazing sorcery.
Eladora walks towards the god, chanting a spell that becomes a prayer that becomes a plea.
Let me walk between the cracks. Let me step across the sky. Don’t you recognise me? I’m the Herald.
Let me in.
She vanishes.
Falling between darkness.
Hearing the silence between the tolling of the bell.
In the moment after the knife goes in.
How are you here? asks a thing that wears Miren’s face.
Eladora recalls that when Carillon teleported with Miren, the two experienced an overwhelming sexual attraction, a yearning to recover that moment of spiritual union. She remembers the stab of jealousy.
There’s nothing there any more except revulsion, and distant pity.
I’m not here, she insists, giving nothing away. I’m there. I’m across the sea. Where there are dragons in the skies, and other gods in the forests.
Somehow, even though they’re both bodiless, timeless, little sparks of soul held aloft on the hurricane of Black Iron, he scowls.
They’re mine. This is my place. Father made me for this.
She draws herself up. No, it’s mine. I am a daughter of the Thay family. My grandfather woke the Black Iron Gods. He wrote the spells to call them. He made their Herald. You–you’re a thief. A squatter. You’re nothing to me.
She looks beyond Miren’s face, to the Black Iron Gods beyond. I am Eladora Thay. I require passage to Lyrix. Name your price.
The bells’ toll echoes out across the cavern, three times, and then she’s gone.
CHAPTER 50
The spy crawls out of the water, onto a beach of hot ash. In places, the sand has been fused into glass that glitters in the morning light. The stench burns his lungs. He stumbles into the ruins of the Hark prison. Flames and phlogiston-patches smoulder amid the debris. The cages are ruined; the divine prisoners from a dozen pantheons all united in ecumenical incineration. The mirrored tower has toppled, and its sides are blackened and dull.
Remote gunfire echoes across the harbour. The sky above the distant city cracks with miracles.
There was gunfire at Severast, too, and many miracles, and that city still fell.
The spy hurries across Hark Island, crossing to its northern shore. He can see the churning waters where the Grand Retort went down. Kraken-tentacles seethe beneath the surface, a predator guarding the carcass of its kill against scavengers. Poor Dredger, thinks the spy, the greatest alchemical weapons salvage in all the world is right on your doorstep, and you can’t get to it. He finds a hiding place high up amid the rocks, in case the kraken’s dinner-plate eyes spot him. He wonders if the creature in the water is Ory, or some other war-saint, an outrider swimming ahead of the main invasion fleet.
He takes out a spyglass and trains it on the horizon. There’s fighting in the city. The streets of the Wash gleam in the summer sun, making the slums as beautiful and magical as the New City. They’ve been flooded, he realises, by the Kraken-wave. The main fleet isn’t here yet–not that it makes much of a difference to the spy. The means of his revenge are just there, beneath the waves, but it may as well be on the moon.
Without that purpose, that focus, he finds himself slipping away. The summer sun is warm, and his perch in the rocks quite comfortable. Little fragments of his being scuttle away, to find crannies in the rocks, dark places to hide from the light. He could sleep. Drift away.
Become a ghost. Haunt this empty isle. He closes his eyes, lets darkness overtake him. Like a wave rising up, blotting out the light.
He’s not sure how long he rests there. The sun and moon wheel above him. The sky is wracked with storms. Cloud bands march like battalions towards the shore.
Distantly, he can hear the fighting in the city. The defenders have held the line for now–Ishmere’s invasion has stalled in the lower city. Queen’s Point is burning, and parliament is burning, and the Wash is a marshland of floating corpses, but they haven’t managed to push back the defenders on the slopes. From the island, Guerdon is a smudge on the horizon, made larger by the pall of smoke and cloud above it, and the success of the defenders is about as meaningful. In Severast, they held back the Sacred Realm for ten days, and the city still fell.
He remembers that the temple dancers birthed monsters, their bellies swelling right in front of the terrified priests. Children conceived in the dance are holy, they belong to the Goddess. She claimed them as her weapons. Other dancers danced for fire, and fire answered. He remembers the priests of Pesh sacrificing the sacred lions and scattering the blood from censers along the shore, and from each drop of blood a lion-spirit sprang. He remembers castles of smoke and cloud in the sky.
Guerdon can muster only scanty miracles. The Crisis broke the alchemists; the Kept Gods might have recovered a little of their former strength, but have no stamina. A handful of Haithi soldiers will not tip the balance. Guerdon gambled on its god bomb, just like he did.
The spy weakly raises a hand and salutes the city. We both lost, he thinks.
They tell Terevant that it’s been three days since the attack began. He takes the dead at their word. Even the summer sun can’t penetrate the smoke, the flood-spawned mist, the carnivorous clouds that hang over Guerdon, and he can’t remember when he last slept.
They tell him that the line has held. Of that, he’s much less sure. Back in the military academy, they drew neat lines on maps, depicted formations as square blocks of ranked soldiers, the neat contour lines of hillsides. None of it bears any resemblance to the street fighting of the last three days. Fighting Ishmeric godspawn and war-crazed saints. Peshite berserkers, growing stronger with every kill. Monstrous spiders, lurking in wait. He needs to wear a breathing mask even when he’s up on Holyhill now, to filter out the smell of burning from the sacrificial fires. Guerdon’s dead get burned according to the old rites, to carry their souls up to the Kept Gods, and that soul-energy comes right back down again to the saints. There’ve been miracles, too, direct intervention. Damaged cannons remade by unseen hands, a blessing of the Smith. Lights bobbing in the smoke clouds, guiding lost soldiers to safety if they have faith in the Holy Beggar. Gods on their side.
But the Ishmerians have gods on their side, too, and theirs are much stronger.
The Duchess Viaduct fell during the night. He’s not sure what hit it. A miracle of Smoke Painter, maybe–the bridge is still visible, but it’s not there any more. It’s a ghost structure, and the soldiers on it are ghosts too, now. Transparent, eerily silent, unable to touch anything or leave the viaduct. Pressing themselves against the invisible barrier, pleading silently for rescue. Mercifully, the Viaduct is fading from sight now, but Colonel Rabendath has already wiped the neat line of the bridge off his neat maps.
The Viaduct was a linchpin of the defence. Four train lines crossed it, and they’d parked armoured trains with long guns on all of them. All gone now. And the valley below is full of kraken, which meant the bridge was the only safe way to cross to Castle Hill without going below. Now they’re effectively cut off from the western portion of the city. Holyhill and the New City–the miracle district, the mercenaries call it–are alone, unlikely allies, marooned in a growing sea of foes.
They’ve set up a headquarters on the edge of the university, in the old seminary. Terevant follows Rabendath through the corridors, wondering if he should take the lead.
Crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling of the university dining hall, but the impact of distant explosions has shattered some of them. Some of the faces at the table are familiar, some aren’t, but they’re all haggard, soot-stained, red-eyed. Well, almost all–the massive yellow-eyed shape of Lord Rat squats in a corner. Carillon Thay paces next to him, muttering to herself. Glass from the broken chandeliers crunches underfoot as she walks. Only the dead manage to sit still and maintain decorum.
More unlikely allies
arrive. Mercenary commanders, militia from the New City–turncoat saints, some of them–and then a group of Keepers. And in the middle of them is Lys.
Also: the priest, Sinter. Apparently, he and Carillon have some history, as she draws a knife and shouts at him as soon as she spots him. Rat restrains her, and Terevant takes advantage of the distraction to slip around the table and sit next to Lys. She squeezes his hand.
“Still alive?” she asks.
“I think so.”
“You should have left by now,” he tells her. “Get to safety.”
“If I go,” Lys whispers, “then Berrick goes. If Berrick goes, the Patros goes. Patros goes, the Keepers go.” She shrugs. “As long as there’s a chance, I’ve got to stay. I’ve not lost Guerdon yet.”
It’s Rat who calls the meeting to order, the same ghastly call for QUIET issuing from half a dozen mouths at one. Colonel Rabendath nods in appreciation, and rolls out a map atop the table.
The loss of the Viaduct means there is a gap in the defences. The enemy is gathering forces here, in the upper Wash, with the intent of breaking through into the inland portion of the city. You must defend the gap.
“Aye, that’s plain to see,” mutters one of the mercenaries. “but it’ll take everything we have to hold them there.”
“It’s too far from the New City for me,” says Carillon. “And I’ve got stuff to do.”
“The Kept Gods shall keep the city safe,” intones Sinter, and Terevant has to suppress a hysterical giggle at that. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can find the words, a city watch officer stands.
“Before the aethergraphs stopped,” she says, “we got word from the naval base at Maredon. They’re sending reinforcements. If we contain Ishmere in the Wash, then…”
“Then you can bombard the Wash and kill everyone.” Carillon hasn’t put her knife away. “Fuck that.”
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