The Traitor God

by Cameron Johnston

  I smiled at my crotch. “Still safe and sound, eh, old pal.”

  “What a disconcerting sight,” Shadea said from the bridge above. “Just what are you doing, Edrin Walker?”

  I groaned and looked up from my cock to see that old crone leaning out over the side of the bridge, eyebrows raised. Eva joined her, now dressed in full battle plate with a bastard sword strapped to her back. Both women were dusty, dishevelled and bruised but otherwise looked fine. I was glad that Eva had escaped the Boneyards alive but my feelings on Shadea’s survival were conflicted.

  Ah, fuck it. “I’m looking at my cock, Shadea. Must be a while since you’ve seen one.”

  Eva’s eyes dipped to my bare crotch, brazenly ogling me. “Oh my.” She choked back a laugh.

  It didn’t faze Shadea. “Not at all,” Shadea said. “I dissected one last month. It was rather large in comparison to yours.” She looked to Eva. “Be a dear and fetch the miscreant.”

  Eva vaulted the wall and dropped thirty-odd feet down to me, metal clad feet clanging. She bore the weight of all that metal like it was cloth. At least she had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed as I hastily yanked my trousers back up and tied my belt, not that she averted her eyes. She noted my torn and bleeding leg and then carefully swept me up into her steely embrace. I wrapped my arms around her gorget and held on tight as she climbed the steps back up to street level. Manliness be damned, it felt good. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so safe, and hadn’t much fancied scaling those steps with a wonky leg either.

  My illusion of safety evaporated at the sight of the horrid old hag waiting on us and two squads of armoured wardens busy erecting barricades across the bridge. Shadea’s wards burned bright and baleful across the defences – nobody would get through those unscathed.

  “What’s going on?” I said as Eva set me down. She held onto my arm to help keep weight off my wounded leg.

  “We are securing the bridges,” Eva said. “Coteries of magi are currently moving forward to reinforce the wall guard.”

  Shadea’s nose crinkled. “The stink of daemon spoor and blood magic clings to you.”

  “Oh, you know me,” I said. “Always popular. A variety of interesting friends. Listen, Cillian’s been hurt. She–”

  “Has already passed into the Old Town,” Shadea interrupted. “Your mageborn friend, Layla, is taking her to the healers. It is strange; I had thought that I knew the name of every living mageborn to undergo the Forging.” I swallowed my sudden fear, but she brushed past it. “Councillor Cillian will survive. You have the Arcanum’s thanks for that.”

  I needed to change the subject, else Shadea might pick at the discrepancy until it got Layla killed. “Did she tell you about the Magash Mora?”

  She looked at me sharply. “Cillian has been divulging restricted information. She shall be censured later; however, given the circumstances I will say that it is merely an opinion, one that lacks sufficient evidence. I shall, however, account for every possibility. I admit to some surprise that you survived the underground river.”

  I smiled. “And spare the Arcanum the hassle of dealing with me? So sorry to disappoint. Where is Harailt?”

  Shadea sighed and turned to survey the lower city. “He is currently being subjected to further investigation in the Courts of Justice below the Templarum Magestus. He passed every test I applied but it is a wise precaution given recent events.”

  “I’ve been proven right about everything so far,” I said. “Just because you loathe me doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  Columns of smoke billowed from many sites and the city gates were only now swinging shut after being choked by sailors, dock workers, and herdsmen driving in the last of their cattle ready for the Sumarfuin slaughter. The Skallgrim fleet would land shortly, unless the magi heading for the walls could burn their ships to ash before they even reached the beaches.

  She pursed her lips, thinking. “Contrary to what you may think, Magus Walker, I have never harboured any particular dislike of you. In fact I feel nothing for you at all. Nor have I any solid evidence of you misusing your Gift, despite an extremely colourful variety of rumour to choose from.” She glanced back, that impersonal gaze sending shivers up my spine. “If I had, then you would have been disposed of.”

  I bit back angry retorts. “As if I could believe that. None of you want a so-called tyrant walking about.”

  Shadea was silent for a long moment, thinking. Eva shifted, metal and leather creaking, uncomfortable at the reminder of what the man she’d just held in her arms could do.

  “There are no written histories from before the era of tyrants,” Shadea said. “However, I do believe that oral traditions contain a measure of truth distorted over time. The oldest tales all tell of an age where people cowered around their campfires, fearful of dire entities that stalked the night stealing children from their beds and spreading madness and disease. Humanity is not alone on this world.”

  I blinked, not entirely sure I was hearing her correctly. “Next you will be telling me you have samples of ghosts, ogres and darkenshae floating in jars in your creepy workshop, and that all the monsters of my childhood stories are real.”

  She snorted. “Is it really so strange when you have fought daemons born on alien worlds beyond the Shroud? Perhaps you forget the creature you uncovered in the catacombs as a boy.”

  Eva looked as flummoxed as I felt hearing this. I stared at Shadea, shuddering at the memory of huge bulky bones and a sloping skull with a third eye. “I thought that thing was an ancient magus changed by magic.”

  “It was the corpse of what we call an ogre,” she said. “Ogarim, if you prefer the Clanhold oral histories which are less corrupted than ours. Other artefacts of those creatures’ presence in Kaladon have been uncovered over the centuries, but it is not commonly disclosed to magi of your humble rank.”

  I licked my lips. “Then why now?”

  “One last attempt to turn you from a dark path,” she said. “Some creatures of myth were said to take on human form, and others to inhabit corpses of the wicked. If, as current theory suggests, magic slowly adapts its hosts and their bloodlines to survive surrounding dangers, then it is logical to assume that tyrants might once have served the purpose of identifying such disguised creatures. Sniffers too, perhaps: two differing human responses evolving to meet the same threat.”

  I must have looked incredulous, as she hastily continued, looking slightly irritated at getting carried away with her love of obscure research. “As fascinating as that conjecture may be, what I am suggesting is that you too may find a worthy purpose in the years to come. I deem it unwise to discard any tool unless it bites the hand that wields it.”

  I swallowed. Such a thing had never occurred to me before. A purpose? Me?

  Shadea smiled, a terrifying sight. “By both tradition and familial ties, I was destined to marry a rotund oaf of a high lord and birth him a litter of squalling infants. I chose otherwise.” Dear gods, Shadea wed? Children? I think all involved dodged an axe to the face there. “You too can follow a different path if you so choose.”

  Down below, three wolf-ships beached on Setharii soil ahead of the body of the fleet, the tribesmen glinting dots on the beach. Pyromancers on the city walls began incinerating them with bolts of fire.

  “What madness drives them to dash themselves against our walls?” Eva said, shaking her head as she surveyed the slaughter.

  Before I could reply with: bet it has something to do with a bloody huge monster underground, Shadea’s head whipped around to face the Warrens.

  “Oh no,” she said, and for the first time in my life I saw Shadea afraid.

  The ground shook. Mortar pattered down from the surrounding buildings and pebbles rained from the cliff walls of the Old Town rock. My mind shook with it. Agony pierced right between my eyes. I screamed, barely feeling steel-clad arms keeping me upright.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Eva said, as I jerked and bucked in her gr
ip.

  I dimly sensed Shadea’s fingers press first against my wrist and neck, then peel back my eyelid. The pain wasn’t mine, was cutting in from elsewhere and bypassing every defence I threw up to block it out.

  Eventually my desperate hands latched onto Dissever’s hilt. Fury crashed into pain.

  Shadea hissed and snatched her hand back. “Drop him!”

  Eva let go and stepped away, drawing a green-flecked sword. I fell on my arse, but immediately rolled to my feet with knife in hand, lips twisted into a feral snarl. I barely noticed them, instead growling at the Warrens as an entire street of rotten tenements collapsed in a cloud of dust.

  Shadea waved the wardens back, but I only had eyes for the source of the pain twisting behind my eyes.

  In the distant heart of the Warrens wood and stone exploded upwards. A block of tenements bulged and burst apart as something huge and fleshy and glistening rose from the depths of the Boneyards in a cloud of debris and death. Mental screams emanated from the thing’s insides as it absorbed the tenement’s occupants. I could feel them all: a small town’s worth of agony crashing into me, their minds not quite alive, but horrifically far from dead. Only a fraction of the thing had emerged but I could already sense a dozen mature Gifts of magi flaring bright with magic deep inside that screaming mass, surrounded by uncounted stunted mageborn trickling in power. I was instinctively drawn to one amongst the many, the source of my agony rising from the depths.

  Lynas, my Gift-bonded brother.

  I gripped Dissever in trembling hands. Hard to think. Pain. Fear. Confusion.

  Shadea cursed. “Disable him. Be careful of that blade.”

  I brandished Dissever, growled at Eva and shifted my feet for a better stance. Magic flooded through my muscles, readying for the kill.

  “Sorry,” she said with a metallic shrug. She blurred and something slammed into my face. Everything went hazy as I toppled.

  Chapter 27

  When I regained my senses I was on my back with the tang of iron in my mouth and the right side of my face tight and swollen. There was a strange absence of mental pain. I tried to sit up but a steel-shod foot pressed down on my chest.

  “Welcome back,” Eva said. “Sorry about the face. I tried to be gentle, and I did pick the side with all the scars. Nobody will notice a few more.”

  I worked my jaw. At least it wasn’t broken. Might be a few loose teeth though. “Remind me never to get on your bad side. Well, more than I already am.” She lifted her boot and I sat up to see Martain loitering with a face like I’d shat on his pillow. Oh. No wonder I wasn’t screaming in agony. Even without magic Eva was far stronger than me.

  “Nasty weapon you have,” Eva said. Dissever dangled by the pommel, carefully held between two fingers. “Such an ugly spirit-bound blade suits you. How did a rogue like you obtain such a rarity?” Smoke whipped past her head and with it came distant screams.

  I rose to my feet, battered, bruised, and exhausted without my magic to sustain me. “Found it,” I said, taking in the chaos around us. Armed and armoured wardens and magi rushed to and from the Old Town walls, weapons clanking, panic-filled voices cursing and barking orders. Ash from the fires raging in the lower city drifted down as grey snow.

  Eva grunted. “Figures.” Then she tossed Dissever to me. I suffered a moment of horror for my fingers before the hilt slapped into my palm. “Get ready to fight. We need every weapon we can get.” She stretched a hand back over her shoulder to pull her sword from its fastenings. It glimmered strangely, odd green flecks flowing through the steel – another spirit-bound blade.

  I licked my lips, glanced at Dissever. This was going to sound bizarre to her but I’d never had the opportunity to ask the owner of another spirit-bound object about it. “Does the spirit in your sword ever talk to you?”

  She looked at me like I was cracked. “Did I hit you too hard? I thought your skull thicker than that.”

  I half-laughed, Dissever warm and pulsing in my hand. “I get that a lot. Never mind.” Luckily they were linked to their wielder’s life – if the Arcanum could have taken Dissever from me and given it to somebody more reliable then they would have. I had an instinctive feeling they wouldn’t have lived to regret the attempt. Dissever’s presence in my mind squirmed in response. Was it worrying that such a bloodthirsty spirit actually seemed to like me? Perhaps I amused it – a pet hound doing tricks: stab, slash, roll over…

  DrooomDa. DrooomDa. DrooomDa. DrooomDa…

  People crowded onto the walls of the Old Town to peer out to sea.

  “What is that awful din?” Martain said.

  “Skallgrim battle drums,” I said, the sacking of Ironport vivid in my mind. Sack, such a sham of a word when slaughter and rape were far more accurate descriptions. A huge fleet of wolf-ships approached Setharis, their oars churning water to foam in time to the heavy beat, hundreds of ships cutting through the waves with red eyes glimmering balefully.

  Cillian hobbled over, leaning heavily on a cane. She looked half a corpse, face grey and gaunt after magical healing. Two portly healers flapped around her squawking complaints but she ignored their protestations. She wasn’t about to let a little brush with death keep her from important work.

  “It is good to see you alive,” she said.

  “Likewise. You look like shite though.”

  “You are a silver-tongued fox, Edrin. Shall we see how well you fare after an arrow through your lung?” Her mouth twisted with a spike of remembered pain.

  I held my hands up in defeat. “Where is Layla?”

  “Being escorted to the Collegiate, and to her mother,” she said. “And before you ask, no, neither are held hostage to your good behaviour.”

  “Where is that bastard, Harailt?”

  She grimaced. “The traitor has escaped. Somehow he managed to murder five magi and a dozen wardens guarding him. It should not have been possible given his skills and the strength of his Gift. Some greater power is at work within him. You were correct.”

  I should have trusted my instincts and killed him the moment I’d laid eyes on him. Hindsight is a maddening plague on the mind.

  Archmagus Krandus hurried down from the Templarum Magestus surrounded by a chattering swarm of attendants. He wasn’t what people might expect in an Archmagus: he didn’t look old and wise, instead he was physically in his early twenties with shoulder-length shimmering ash-blond hair held back by a warded golden circlet. Even in my biased eyes he was disgustingly handsome. In one hand he clutched a signal rod tipped with an inverted cone of gold that he barked commands into, carrying his voice to all such devices within a range of several leagues. “The gate guard and magi must hold off these Skallgrim savages,” he said. “Remind the wardens that our walls have never been breached. We are readying to reinforce them.”

  Why was he bothering with the wardens and Skallgrim? Did he not know what was going on?

  Cillian limped towards him. Children tore past ferrying armfuls of arrows to the archers on the walls and the wardens massing by the gate. Shadea was too busy directing the magi on the ramparts to pay us any attention, devising some plan to deal with the creature below. Wardens nearby laughed and joked as they readied to pass through the gate, boasting about how they were going to throw the filthy savages back into the sea.

  “What are these fools doing?” I said.

  “I have just awoken from healing,” Cillian replied. “Archmagus Krandus must think we merely face a Skallgrim fleet and some kind of halrúna summoned daemon.” She coughed and clutched her chest, face twisting in pain. “We must warn him of the Magash Mora before ignorance leads to a fatal mistake.”

  Martain and Eva held me back as Cillian closed the last few steps on her own. The Archmagus was being harassed by dozens of messengers all vying for his attention and one stern older woman was hauling others out of the way, desperate to personally hand him a note written by Shadea’s hand rather than go through his aides. Ah, he had no idea what we faced. At Cillian’s a
pproach he ordered all to be quiet and gave her his full and undivided attention. The older messenger barged in and handed the Archmagus the paper. His face went ashen as he learned of the Doom of Escharr’s rebirth.

  The ground lurched as more of the Magash Mora exploded free of its stony womb. Boulders and fragments of buildings rained down over the city, smashing against the walls of the Old Town. The ancient defences groaned, cracks webbing out through the stonework. Blocks the size of horses shattered and fell outwards, crashing down into the Crescent below. Wardens screamed and scrambled away from the crumbling section of wall. Glimpsed through the gaps, limbs of writhing flesh as large as ships crushed whole streets as an abomination of flesh, blood and bone heaved the last of its mountainous bulk from the dark places below the city. Trailing tentacles snatched up corpses and screaming people and sucked them into its churning flesh.

  Balls of liquid flame hissed from the magi manning the outer walls of the city, a flight of deadly fireflies. Incandescent forks of lightning stabbed out from a magus somewhere down in Docklands, thunder booming. The thing ate their magic the moment it touched flesh. Cries of shock and horror rippled through nearby magi.

  Shadea signalled to Krandus. He glanced at her note again and ordered groups of pyromancers and aeromancers to the battlements. She snapped orders while several geomancers under her command prised blocks of stone from the ruined section of wall. The pyromancers concentrated their magic until the blocks glowed hot, red rivulets of flaming melt beginning to pool. Shadea lifted a hand, then dropped it. “Loose!” Aeromancers launched the fiery missiles out into the air.

  It made sense. Molten rock was molten rock with or without magic. The missiles blasted into the creature, burning pitifully small holes in its hide and slowing it not at all.

  Examining the great wall of the Old Town, it seemed that I was just noticing how shoddy it really was. Any defensive structures it might once have boasted had been left to crumble into picturesque neglect. They must have asked themselves, “What fools would ever dare to attack Setharis?” Such mundane defences as catapults and ballistae would be pointless to their minds when the Arcanum could use magic to obliterate any attackers. What arrogance. Instead they had wasted their coin on faerie lightshows and elaborate feasts.