The Horns of Ruin

by Tim Akers

  "What are you doing?" Malcolm asked. He had a bony hand around Daniel's elbow.

  "New gods?" I asked.

  "Yes. Do you think only the Brothers have ascended? That there is but one god by accident? Alexander has culled the harvest, my dear Paladin, and this is where he hides the chaff and stores the wheat."

  "Stores the wheat," I said, mostly to myself, mostly to be heard. "Like that damned Feyr said. The Ruin could be used to swallow noetic divinity. Alexander must be doing that!"

  "Has been doing it for two hundred years, little girl," the Amonite said.

  "Why in hell did you tell her that?" Malcolm shrieked. "Do you want to implicate us in the murder of a thousand gods, boy? We'll be lucky if they only kill us, rather than-" He glanced back at me. "Rather than other things."

  "You're saying that Alexander has been ... has been hunting gods?"

  "Young gods. New gods. Gods before they are truly divine. We can sense them with the Ruin, sense them as they draw power off. Only the ordained scions of the three Cults are allowed to survive, since their development can be monitored and controlled." He turned to Malcolm and smiled. "It's okay, old man. I told her because he's already forgiven us. I told her because he already knows."

  "What?" I barked.

  "He monitors the chains," Daniel said, and raised his arms again. "Not always, and not all the time. But I sense his eyes upon me. His eyes upon you."

  I skipped forward, drawing the sword as I moved and bringing it down in a long, sweeping arc. The blade parted Daniel's skull and exited at his hip. The boy slid apart. Malcolm was howling.

  "You can't leave me to face him!" he yelled. "You can't give Daniel a quick peace and leave me to answer to that man!" He threw himself to his knees, his hands at my waist. "Please, for the love of mercy!"

  "Mercy is in short supply," I said. I drove the sword down his chest and twisted. The blade became entangled in his chains, and when I twisted the links popped like glass. The whole length of it slithered to the floor. Malcolm fell back on his butt, his eyes wide with shock. He looked like he was having trouble breathing. I saw that where the metal had slid across his body as it came free, there were angry welts. I bent to him, and helped him to his feet.

  "Last ... push. He gave one last push, as the chain came loose." He held his hand to his chest and breathed in shuddering gasps. "How did you do that?"

  "I'm not sure. The Fratriarch did it for Cassandra. I thought it was worth a try."

  "You don't understand. Those links went into my soul. You severed them cleanly, like they were mere steel."

  "Steel doesn't cut that easily, but yes. You are free."

  He stood at my side, wavering on his feet. His hand was on my shoulder.

  "Good to ... good to breathe once more, my own breath. Even if it is at the end, even if we don't have much time. Even if he's already on his way here."

  "You have to help me, then. There's little enough time without-"

  The door began to unlatch. I threw myself against it. Whoever was on the other side began hammering at the metal.

  "Help me, old man! Don't stand by and watch it end this way!"

  "It's already ended, woman. You cannot stand against Nathaniel. I don't care what tricks they taught you in that monastery. Blades are blades. He will cut you down."

  "It's no damn wonder they've been able to keep you people-" I grunted as a great deal of force was applied to the door. I staggered back, then threw myself against it again. Planting my sword, I invoked the Stones of Averon and set my shoulder against the steel. Malcolm was still watching me.

  "No damn wonder they've been able to keep you on the leash for so long," I said through gritted teeth. "You give up before the fight is started."

  "Not so," he said. "The fight has been over for a long time. Amon's Betrayal doomed us. We have been working to preserve the memory of the man, while shunning his darkness ever since. Any death is good for us."

  "I would love to discuss theology, honest to Brothers I would." Another hammer into the door, another twisting of power against my shield. "But I think you're telling the wrong story."

  "You would have us deny the Scholar, I know. The Cult of Morgan would like to line up all the scions of Amon and cut us down, but we are trying to make good on-"

  "That's not what I meant." I nodded to the archive that Cassandra had dropped when she changed into the bodysuit. "That's an archive of Amon. Came into the hands of my Cult just-" I lost my breath and something nearly forced the door. "Just fucking look at it. Cassandra highlighted the important stuff."

  He wrinkled his brow and, as if there weren't an army of men on the other side of the door trying to kill us both, knelt curiously by the archive and ran his hands over it.

  "Fascinating. A lost archive. And how did you say you came across it?" I didn't answer, and he didn't seem to need me to. "It must have been from the final flight of Amon. When he was driven from the city, he took his closest followers and went north. Hid among the scattered tribes of the Rethari. The armies of the Fallen Brother had to fight their way through legions of those scaled bastards to get to him. Ah, but get to him they did. Much was lost, in those last days. Perhaps this was recovered there. But by whom, I wonder? One of your people?" he asked, and looked at me.

  I was busy invoking mantles of strength and fortification, against the onslaught on the other side of that door. They had brought a lot of clever noetics to the fight, and I was having trouble holding out. I wished the guy would get to the reading, and stop blabbing on about the last days of Amon. Didn't have the breath to spare for the necessary obscenities, though. He seemed to get the idea.

  "Oh, well. Perhaps those answers will come another day. Listen to me, prattling on about other days, when this is clearly our last. Ah. Some habits are hard to break." He spun up the archive and peered into the shifting icons of the screen. Even under duress as I was, I could tell that he was good with the machine, in a way that Cassandra couldn't approach. She had said that the ones picked for Alexander's special service were the best of the best. I believed it.

  He took it all in quickly. The old man's face went slack as he absorbed the archive, wrinkles smoothing out, mouth hanging open. When it was done, he leaned back and looked up at the ceiling.

  "The implications are ... curious." He rubbed his face and stood, then began to pace around the bodies of his fallen comrades. Hardly aware of his surroundings, or the battle I was fighting at the door. "This must have been purged from the Library's records, and our access to the mind below is severely monitored. But the path taken does not match the knowledge."

  "Uh-huh," I grunted.

  "Why would he kill his brother, when he's just determined that the noet must be distributed? My gods, what does this mean for the Ruin? If we've been cutting off other conduits and simply venting the extra power, while keeping Alexander at the top of his game ... What does this mean?"

  "Uh-huh. Hm. Gah-" I was pushed away from the door, and had to draw my sword and fight back a brief tide of whiteshirts before I could get it closed again.

  "I wonder if Alexander knew all this? I wonder if that's what led him to build this place? But he couldn't have, if he ordered Amon killed. It does reflect his understanding of noetic force, that there's only so much at a time and it can be distributed across many gods. That's the whole impetus behind the culling. But if Amon's observations are true-

  The door boomed open, throwing me across the room. I landed in a heap at the base of the dome. Malcolm watched me go, then looked curiously at the door. Realization dawned across his wrinkled old face.

  "Ah. I see. Well, I suppose it was nice while it lasted."

  "Quitter," I spat, and came swirling to my feet, blade already swinging through the stations of defense.

  What came through the door was not what I expected. Not what I was prepared to face.

  A group of coldmen, solid-looking guys with blades on their wrists, frost and fog wicking off their bodies as they walked in. An
d in their midst, standing taller than the rest, Barnabas Silent, Fratriarch of Morgan.

  His skin was utterly pale against the harsh steel of his new garments. The injuries he had suffered while in captivity had faded away, though traces of the scars stood out in puckered white lines across his cheeks. He stood tall, as he always had. Pewter blue greaves and chest plate had been bolted on over his robe, and the lower half of his face was covered with a plate-mail bevor. His eyes were as clear as glass, and they leaked oily tears down his wrinkled face. In his hands he held a wicked hammer of blue steel, just as he had in his youth.

  "Don't look at me like that, Eva. This is difficult enough," he said. His voice was a static-laced grating, only hinting at the gentle man who had raised me.

  "What have they done, Barnabas?" I whispered.

  "Killed me, Eva. Killed me and raised me and made me into something else."

  "And have they sent you to do the same to me?"

  He shook that great, heavy head of his and smiled.

  "They sent me because there is no one else you would listen to. This has all been an awful mistake, Eva. They learned about the archive from their agents, but didn't know what it was. They kidnapped me because they suspected, because they were startled that the Fratriarch of Morgan would associate with an Amonite. It was a horrible, brutal thing to do, but it is done. What Alexander has done is unforgivable. What he has done to our Cult, to our god ..." He placed the palm of his hand against his chest. "What he has done to us, Eva, can never be undone. And it can never be repaid. But this has to stop."

  I put the point of my sword into the ground in front of me, like a statue at guard in the king's chamber.

  "You have to be kidding me, Frat. Unforgivable? Does that even begin to cover two centuries of ... of deception? I have no interest in that debt being repaid. You're right there. It can't be repaid, like some kind of bar tab." I drew the sword to my side, tip still on the ground, and leaned against the pommel with all my weight. "But what settlement I can make in Alexander's flesh, I'll take."

  "Think about that. Think of the consequences to the Fraterdom, Eva. What will become of the tribes of man, if the last of their gods falls? And think about who would benefit from such chaos." He took a great step toward me. The air around me chilled, and my lungs ached with the sudden cold. "Morgan has been the tool of Alexander for too long. Do not submit yourself to a new master, just to spite your old."

  "What are you talking about?" I asked.

  "The Rethari," Malcolm answered. He was sitting on the archive as if it was a barrel, his hands folded neatly in his lap. "This archive must have come from them, yes? It was lost in their lands, and has not been seen since. The Cult of Morgan did not go looking for it, and yet here it is. Mysteriously."

  "And who better to benefit from the turning of the divine cycle, Eva?" Barnabas said. "When mankind falls, it is the snakes that will feed on the body."

  "You know about that?" I asked. "About the cycle?"

  "I know now. Dying and living again have brought me a certain ... clarity?" Another step closer. He whispered, "About you as well, girl. A great many strange things, about you."

  "What?" I asked, backing up. The rest of them were looking at us strangely. They hadn't heard. Barnabas smiled and shook his head.

  "They raised me to ask you to turn back. Yes, Alexander has sinned against us. In a moment of rage and weakness and jealousy, he struck down our god Morgan. Horrified, he tried to cover his action. Amon paid the price that Alexander could not stand. In the end, he has done everything he could since that time to atone for those twin evils. He has raised mankind up, and held the tribes together. He has arranged to keep the memory of his fallen brothers alive, through their scions. And he has kept the cycle from turning, for all these years. For that mercy, for that atonement, you must turn aside."

  I sheathed my sword with a great deal more spinning and show than was necessary. I was furious. I needed both hands to express it.

  "Mercy. Atonement. He murdered both of his brothers, one out of jealousy and one out of cowardice. His every action has been selfish, and his every purpose bereft of honor. You want me to stop, because if I don't that god may die? Honestly, Barnabas. How can we let a god like that live?"

  "The Rethari will ascend, and the days of man-"

  "Will be damned! And the Rethari should rise up! If this is the best we can do with that divinity, then let them have it for a while. Maybe we'll learn something of atonement, then." The rest of the room had pulled back. The crowd of whiteshirts at the door, the troupe of coldmen. Even Barnabas. Blasphemy felt good. It felt honest, for once. "You don't believe this, do you, Fratriarch? That we should honor the memory of Morgan by honoring his murderer? That the Betrayer should be protected because he's the only god we have left?"

  "The alternative is unacceptable," he said, sadly.

  "You speak as if there actually are alternatives. As if choosing between no god and that god were a choice."

  "Eva, please." He raised his hammer between us, holding the shaft parallel to the ground, one wide hand under the steel head, the other grasping the base. "Please, no."

  I stood straight as I could. There was a heaviness to the room, a cold void that was waiting to be filled with blood and fire. I drew my sword, and the rasp of it tore through me like a hook.

  "Do what you must, Fratriarch. But I will not stand aside."

  There was silence all around us. He bowed his head and touched a dead finger to his forehead. No one moved.

  "I am not going to fight you, Eva Forge. The time for that is past. I think they hoped that I would, when they plucked me from the grave. They did not believe you would be willing to strike me down." He laid the head of his hammer on the floor with a mighty thud, and crossed his hands on the base of the shaft. "They were wrong, on both accounts. These others may try to oppose you, but I will not."

  There was half a breath where the six coldmen exchanged querying glances with their goggle eyes. They had not even raised their hands before I struck. Best not give them the luxury of certainty. I invoked as I moved, striking between words, rushing forward and falling back with the rhythm of my invokation.

  "The Fields of Erathis! The River that Roared and Bled! Having- warry, Belhem, the Legions of Tin-Terra, the Legions of the Scale!" The first coldman fell, even as my blade passed through him and the next one was coming up. "Morgan stood there, he stood against them all. He stood as the warrior." A spinning block, blade's edge against his knee, blade's flat against his head, pommel to chest, upstroke and then down. He fell. "The champion, the hero, the hunter. My blade is bound to him!" And I realized I was just talking, but my blade traveled on. The next two were circling me carefully, the final two rushing up to join the circle. "I am bound to him! To the battle, to the grave, to the hunt! I commit myself to blade and to soul, and never may the Warrior die!"

  And something happened. I knew Morgan was dead, but his power lived on. This was something I had never been taught in monastery, never really thought about. Amon was dead, and yet his power was all around us, in the machines that fed the city, in the Cants of Making and Unmaking. Alexander lived, and his scions flourished. But Morgan was dwindling. Because we had bound ourselves to the memory of his days, and not the glory that had come after, to the battles that were fought in his name, with his power. To the heroes who had followed in him. I had been serving a dead man, rather than the living power that had sustained the Cult since his death. And yet I could feel the power of Morgan welling up around me, though I was speaking no invokation I had been taught.

  "I bind myself to Barnabas," I howled, "hammers flashing, battle raging. To Tomas, to Isabel." I racked my brains for the history of the Cult, for the great Fratriarchs and Paladins who had come before me, and after Morgan. "Clovis on the ramparts of Messit. Pure and High Yelden, Paladin of the OverArch. Katherine, Kaitlyn. Sweet Anna, Bloody Jennifer. To the Paladins who held the walls of Dalling Gate for a hundred days, and the Paladins who ma
rched against the Rethari, to bring the traitor Amon to justice. May they be forgiven. May we all be forgiven, and justified, and remembered forever. May the Warrior never die!"

  And I struck, gods, I struck like lightning and fire and stone and blood. I struck with rage and purity, the light of three hundred years of divine service coursing through my skin and fire arcing from my blade, my face, from the strength of my arms. I blasted that room, those who stood against me, those who didn't get out of the way. That room saw the binding of this new god.

  When I stopped, I was alone. The room was a ruin of broken bodies and fragments of arcane and noetic light, glimmering like snowflakes. Barnabas stood at the center of the room, hands still crossed on his hammer, head bowed, eyes closed. He was spattered with the black, cold blood of those monsters.

  "What you have done, Eva, cannot be undone." He sighed deeply, hefted his hammer, and walked out of the room. As he went, he turned back to me, just once. "I hope you can carry this through. There is no other choice."

  When he was gone I stood in the center of the room and gathered my wits. Energy was thrumming through my body and through my blade. There was a noise at the door, and I turned to it. A whiteshirt, peering into the room. I moved quickly to the corridor. There were a lot of them, and they had bullistics.

  "What will you do, to stand against the Warrior?" I growled. Pulses of heaviness rolled off me, pushing against the walls and the floor, pushing against this cadre of gentleman soldiers.

  The front row of Healers popped open their shotguns and let the shells clatter to the floor. Behind them, another whiteshirt emptied his clip, and then another. Soon the floor was rattling with unspent cartridges. When the last threat vanished-and I could feel that diminishment in them, could feel the empty weapons all around-when they were defanged, I nodded and stepped back into the room. Malcolm, who had retreated to the other side of the dome, came tottering back into sight. He was hugging the little archive against his chest.