The Traitor God

by Cameron Johnston

  “Bad booze and worse women,” I whispered. “What’s it to you?”

  She scowled. Cillian was colder and harder than she had been, but people could change a lot in ten years. You didn’t become a member of the Inner Circle by wearing pretty flowers in your hair and filling out your robes nicely; you got there by power, skill, manipulation and ruthlessness. Time passed, people and places changed. That was the way of things. I pulled at my chains and realized that my arms barely worked, the muscles slow and unresponsive, my body almost completely numb. There was no feeling at all in my left leg where I’d been wounded. I suffered a moment of panic until my toes gave an obliging wiggle. They’d taken the shards of stone out but it was still wrapped in a bloodied bandage.

  She shifted, crossing her legs. “I shouldn’t bother. Those chains are unbreakable. In any case, you are lucky to be alive after allowing your magic to overwhelm you. You always were weak and contrary, but I had not thought you to be a complete idiot. You were a survivor, more inclined to scurry off like a rat than stand and fight for something worthy.”

  A niggling worry that I was too groggy to understand everything made me ask: “How long have I slept?”

  “Two nights.”

  A dark and urgent thought reared its ugly head. My tongue juddered over cracked lips and I struggled forming the right words. “Boneyards – Charra.”

  “Charra? Ah, so that was your dirty little friend,” Cillian said, a sour expression on her face. “She is alive. For now.”

  “If you are threatening her then I’d think very carefully,” I said, with only a hint of a tremble making its way into my voice. Something was wrong with me, my body flipping between hot and cold, some sort of alchemic wearing off.

  A look of haughty scorn on her face. “Or you will do what? You cannot even get out of bed.”

  Dissever purred from somewhere inside my body, letting me know it could slice through my leg, chains and Cillian herself all with equal ease, but physical or magical threats wouldn’t do any good. I had to hit her where it would really hurt, threaten something she’d dreamed of for so long. “Or you’ll lose your council seat.”

  Her brow furrowed in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “How many favours do you think Charra is owed by people of power and influence? How many precautions do you think she’s taken?” I said with a forced smile, futilely straining against my chains. “Those crusty old traditionalists can’t be pleased a young upstart like you sits on the Inner Circle. How many more votes against you do you think it would it take? Do you even have a clue who you are dealing with, Cillian?”

  To her credit, she didn’t let her mouth run away with her. She scrutinized my face. I didn’t have to bluff, which was good since if I’d had to lie I didn’t think I’d be the least bit convincing in my current state. I knew fine well that Charra could call in favours – she’d called in Old Gerthan to look at the murder scene after all – and you didn’t get as rich and influential as Charra was without greasing a large number of palms and bartering favours with both the gangs and the nobility.

  Finally Cillian nodded. “It would seem that I have underestimated her, in that case,” she said. Her cold and controlled facade cracked, lips twisting into a snarl. It was good to see that some of her old fiery nature remained. “In any case, you arrogant buffoon, I was not making a threat. I simply meant that the healers have purged the poison from her body, but they cannot halt her disease progressing further.”

  I went still. “What do you mean?”

  Her anger shattered: lips parted, eyes softening as realisation dawned. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?” The numbing effects of the alchemic they’d given me was fading fast, draining from my body like I was a leaky bucket, leaving me shaking and bonecrushingly tired. I waited for the pain that would be arriving shortly. You couldn’t do what I’d done, physically and magically, and not reap the consequences, but at the moment all I felt was my stomach dropping away into a bottomless pit. “I have to see her. Please. What’s wrong with Charra?”

  “It is not my place to discuss your friend’s health,” she said, silk whispering as she paced the room. “Edrin, do you have any idea of just how much trouble you are in? After ten years supposedly dead you suddenly burst out of a warded entrance to the catacombs with your magic out of control and a dying woman in your arms. There are many questions needing answers, not least your actions on that night ten years ago. You know as well as I do that magi whisper tyrant when they speak of you. However unwarranted.” That last bit she didn’t seem entirely convinced of.

  I creaked open my badly abused Gift. A trickle of power seeped through. It felt not dissimilar to plunging my head into a barrel of shattered glass and I couldn’t hold it open. Cillian was fortunately not endowed with senses acute enough to detect that sort of attempt. What she was, however, was potentially the most dangerous magus I’d ever met, Byzant and Shadea included. Cillian didn’t go in for fire and lightning or flashy tricks, nor inhuman feats of speed or strength; her affinity was for water magic. Fire, earth and air, and even the rarer talents such as mine, took a little time to channel the power and weave a magical attack. Hydromancers boasted the swiftest of all Gifts, but even amongst those Cillian was special. She could use her Gift as fast as thought, could stop my blood pumping or burst my veins before I could blink. I had to first break through people’s will to affect them, while she suffered no such restrictions.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll answer whatever questions you have. Just get me out of these damn chains and take me to her.” My head started throbbing and I was burning up, pain finally arriving to kick down my door and fling in an oil lantern. She’d timed her visit perfectly. I didn’t think it a coincidence.

  Cillian held up a finger. “Not so fast. Answers first, your friend second. No negotiation and no room for you to wriggle out. That is the way this will happen unless you want to spend your life in chains.”

  She held all the cards and she knew it. Well, all but one. “Let’s cut the crap,” I said. “Take me to see Charra, and I’ll tell you what I was doing in the Boneyards, or whatever else you want to know.”

  She sighed. “For once in your life do not make things worse for yourself. You will see her only when I am satisfied with your answers.”

  I ran my tongue over dry, cracked lips. “Cillian, fuc… uh, the gods know you have no reason to trust me, but you can’t afford to dick about on this one. You need to know this, and you need to deal with it right now. Let me see her.”

  She shook her head, moved to leave.

  “Then on your head be it, Cillian. Go right ahead and open that door if you really don’t want to know about the monster that grows beneath your very feet, the monstrous creation of blood sorcery that will be unleashed tomorrow.”

  Her hand paused on the latch. “Oh, very well,” she said. “But if it is not worth my time then you stay chained. As will your friend.” She turned back to me, eyes cold and calculating like the politician she now was.

  It was hard to concentrate through the pain: Gift and muscles torn, bones aching, bruises throbbing, leg and shoulder wounds burning.

  “Can I have a drink please?” I was frustrated by my own weakness.

  She picked up the jug on the table, poured me a cup and carefully tipped it to my lips. Up in the Old Town the water was always pure and crystal clear. A chill balm soothed my lips and raw, parched throat.

  “Thank you,” I said. So how to spin this… “How much blood magic has been going on lately?” Her lips tightened. “Let me guess: my friend Lynas Granton’s murder wasn’t investigated properly because there was a damn sight more going on than the Arcanum will ever publicly admit to?”

  Her silence was answer enough. I cleared my throat and continued. “I followed the Skinner’s trail down into the catacombs.”

  She looked at me incredulously. “And just how exactly did you find his trail?”

  The pain was distracting an
d my head was thumping, making it difficult to manipulate truths and think up believable lies. I almost blurted out the actual truth, but the last thing I wanted to do was sully Lynas’ name by telling her that had been importing mageblood. Instead I said, “Because I actually give a shite about Docklanders.”

  “As foul-mouthed as ever, I see.” She chewed on her lower lip. “I find it difficult to believe that you would go back down there after what happened to you in the past.” At least she believed me.

  “For Lynas, Charra and Layla, I would.” The sooner this was over with the better.

  “Who is Layla?”

  Damn – I had to avoid any mention of their daughter. If they investigated and noticed the Forging rite papers for Layla had been falsified then they might start linking it all up to whatever deal I’d made ten years ago to haul everybody out of the fire. I was in no condition to attempt to match wits with Cillian. She was dangerously intelligent and had no doubt acquired a goodly dose of cunning if she’d risen this far this quickly.

  “Charra’s daughter, not anybody you would know.” Fortunately she seemed to accept my answer. I proceeded to detail our encounter with the living idol and then my discovery of a magus blood sorcerer, the one that I suspected had a god inside him, and something else truly alien. She went ashen-faced as I described what he was growing in that pool of mageblood, the thing that ate magic.

  She thumped down into the chair at the foot of my bed, her eyes burning into me. “Go over that again. Every single detail.” When I was done she looked ill, her face pale and sweaty. She had some idea of what that creature was. If a member of the Inner Circle was this scared, with all the arcane might at her disposal, then I found that downright terrifying.

  “What was that thing in the pool?” I asked.

  “None of your concern. You will not mention it to anybody.”

  I was exhausted and in too much pain to put up a fight. “Please take me to Charra. Then you can go and poke about in your beloved book stacks.”

  When we were more than friends she had spent most of her spare time with her nose buried in dusty books, Escharric scrolls and stone tablets, pouring over obscure histories and ancient texts written in dead languages of long-vanished civilisations I couldn’t even name. I resented it at the time, wanting her to spend more time out carousing with me than curled up with her beloved books. And who had done well for themselves in the end? Not me. Never me.

  Absently, Cillian nodded. She chewed on her bottom lip, something she had always done when worried, and a habit I suspected she had tried hard to eradicate. Without a word she turned and wandered from the room, deep in thought.

  “Come back here,” I croaked.

  She didn’t.

  Chapter 21

  An age passed before three men entered the room: two muscular guards in chain and leather and a tired-looking young man in dust-streaked travelling clothes with a pack still slung over his shoulder. I didn’t recognize him, but from the sour expression he knew exactly who and what I was.

  A strange dislocation washed over me. My Gift felt fuzzy and distant. A thrill of instinctive fear ran through my abused body – he was a sanctor, a magus-killer. I wasn’t in any condition to try to use magic, but they considered me dangerous enough to deny any chance of that.

  “A damned tyrant,” the man groaned, hand clutching his head. “You are in my charge now that you are awake.”

  The two guards carefully donned thick leather gloves before unchaining my ankles. It seemed the Arcanum still thought I could only use my power through skin contact. With the tyrants before me all dying so young they had little else to go on but what I had previously told them. The fools. Did they not know I was a liar?

  “I’ve been accused of bringing on headaches before,” I said, “but never so quickly. Has to be a record even for me.” The sanctor looked at me like he’d happily stab me in the face. Luckily I was on familiar ground there. I tried to engage him in conversation but he found the bare walls far more interesting.

  The guards hauled me to my feet. My legs were locked into a solid mass of cramping muscle. I gritted my teeth and ignored it. Pain belonged to somebody else. The numb stiffness in my left thigh made it difficult to walk; it felt like somebody had rammed an iron rod through the muscle. Blood seeped out to stain the bandages as they dressed me in plain grey tunic and trousers, no modesty spared.

  They half-carried me down a deserted wood-panelled hallway with guards posted at every door, the sanctor never more than three paces behind me. I wondered if he kept his distance out of habit, or if he too feared my touch. Ah, if only – the things I could do with an enslaved sanctor! It would be so simple to control the Inner Circle then; to shut down their Gifts and beat them unconscious, to dominate them while they slumbered. In a month I would control the core of the Arcanum. In six, the city. Everybody who mattered anyway: peasants swarmed like vermin in the lower city, far too many to take them all. Then I would have the power to change everything. The only problem would be… My thoughts crashed to a stop. Peasants as vermin? This wasn’t me. I looked deep into myself, scrutinized my own mind. The Worm of Magic stared right back out at me, larger and more cunning than ever.

  If I wasn’t who and what I was then I didn’t think I’d ever have noticed the taint to my thoughts. There was no way to know how much the magic had altered me in body or mind. I shuddered, horrified, fighting the urge to vomit. When a magus gave in to the Worm it didn’t create something that wasn’t already there, it was far more insidious than that: it took what already existed and twisted it, stretched it out in obscene directions. Those thoughts were horribly, and entirely, the darkest whispers of my own mind.

  I stumbled and would have fallen if the guards hadn’t kept a firm grip on my arms. I always hated those crusty elder magi, so cold and inward-looking, but now I finally understood. Magi could live a long, long time, and generations of mundanes came and went whilst we remained almost unchanged. It was too painful to watch them wither and die. It was natural to come to believe a mage’s life was of far more importance than brief mortal flames, inevitable to assume that with greater experience you knew better. It was logical to want control, for the greater good.

  A chill of paranoia shivered up my spine. Hair and senses tingled in response, possibly my old magic-induced changes reacting to the new alterations in my mind. I had no way to know what else was happening inside me, burrowing like invisible worms through my body, devouring the old and excreting new flesh. Before I could horrify myself further, the guards stopped outside a door and dragged me into a small room with a table and chair, and Charra lying on the bed.

  She looked little better than I felt. Scabbed red lines crisscrossed her face, neck and hands, and her skin held a peculiar grey tinge. A wide smile of relief appeared and she sat up.

  The guards dumped me into the chair and one stepped outside, the sanctor and the second man loitering inside the doorway to keep watch over me. It was too early to tell if I was entirely sane after what I’d done to myself. I had held on long enough to prevent the worst consequences, but if I wasn’t sane I would think that.

  “How are you feeling?” I said, putting aside personal worries for later paranoia.

  She coughed, wet and phlegmy, and glanced at the guards. “Mostly just confused. They haven’t told me anything.”

  I scowled. It was typical of the Arcanum to treat mundanes like children. I had to keep telling myself that I was different, that to me normal people were not just dupes to manipulate and discard. But they already were: I’d barely set foot back in Setharis before I chewed up and spat out that young thief who’d taken my coat. Because I’d found it convenient. Not to mention that warden whose mind I had burned out, or the infantilized dockhand who had tried to take my winnings. Charra had called me cold, but I figured that as long as I still felt a little bad about it then I wasn’t entirely lost. I was walking a hair-thin path.

  Charra stared at me with big bewildered eyes as I told her
about the statue, and the roots wrapping around her while she slept. She shuddered, but stayed quiet until I finished. I decided not to tell her about what they’d done to Lynas’ body. She had enough to deal with right now without being forced to suffer that horror.

  Instead I began telling her about the blood sorcerer and the creature in the pool, omitting certain details like the true extent of my powers due to eavesdroppers. Cillian would have taken that badly, and in my position I couldn’t afford to aggravate her more. I was part-way through the tale when the sanctor cleared his throat. Loudly. Pointedly. I ignored him. He apparently didn’t hold with Docklanders knowing details of Arcanum business.

  I continued: “…so this blood sorcerer was a magus–”

  The sanctor cleared his throat again.

  Again I ignored him. “–and I could tell from his voice that he was from the Old Town.”

  A hand gripped my wounded shoulder. I winced as the fingers squeezed. Not the guards, they were too stupid to know what I shouldn’t be discussing. The sanctor then. His bare finger rested against my neck. Oops.

  “You will cease discussing this subject,” he growled. “Or your time is up and you will be back in chains.”

  I looked at his hand on my shoulder. Then slowly lifted my head to meet his gaze. My lips twisted into a mocking smile as I reached for my Gift, letting none of the excruciating pain that caused me show. He snatched his hand away, backpedalling and staring at his hand as if it had been poisoned. It seemed to me that he was frantically searching his thoughts for any trace of tampering. Good, let his paranoia grow. Sometimes the superstitious fear of tyrants came in useful. I could still feel magic lurking beyond my Gift, but an invisible vice clamped it closed and kept me from using it. At the moment it was oddly comforting to know I couldn’t, however much I needed that surge of supreme confidence right now.