The Traitor God

by Cameron Johnston

  “Harailt and the Skallgrim planned this well,” I said as Cillian returned. “You were complacent.” It earned me a medley of glares from every direction.

  The ground shook again and despite the desperate attempts of a nearby geomancer, the damaged section of wall collapsed in a shriek of tortured stone. In the haze of smoke and flame beyond the gap a behemoth of twisted stolen flesh crawled through my city, crushing temples, workshops and family homes beneath its bulk. The magi attacks seemed pitiful against its monstrous mass. Somewhere dozens of voices shouted and screamed, too far away to make out what the clamour was about.

  Archmagus Krandus ran over, dismissing me with but a glance before focusing on Cillian. “Our attacks are inadequate; whatever damage we inflict is replaced by new flesh as it devours all within reach.” His face was grim. “I fear a full quarter of the populace lost in the creature’s emergence. The Magash Mora grows ever larger.” Screams and shouts again drifted on the wind.

  I shuddered. With all the merchants and migrants flooding into the city for Sumarfuin, that had to be around two hundred and fifty thousand dead – worse than dead. The numbers were staggering. Unimaginable. My own plight as a hunted rogue was shown for the petty thing it was. I felt sick and powerless.

  “We do have one thing that the capital of ancient Escharr did not,” Cillian said. “We have the cliff walls of the Old Town. Newly recovered histories detailing the fall of their empire suggest the creature may starve itself to death. Something of that size must use up enormous amounts of both magic and physical energy. It likely needs to keep eating or die. If we can hold out long enough we may yet survive.”

  Krandus did not hesitate, “Agreed. If no other plan presents itself we will wait this out. The gates of the Old Town are to be kept closed. Make preparations to demolish every route up.” He unfurled a small map-scroll of the city and began studying it with Cillian.

  I looked around in shock, realising that all the people around us were well-dressed, all from the Old Town. The lack of sooty peasants scarred by fire, screaming mothers or barefoot children hit me like a hammer. Those clamouring voices and screams were people outside the gate pleading for safety.

  “You callous bastards,” I said. They would make the rock of the Old Town an inaccessible island. “You can’t cut us off and leave all those people down there to die. If that thing doesn’t kill them then the Skallgrim certainly will.” Martain stayed close to me, hand hovering over his sword hilt.

  Krandus narrowed his eyes. “As much chance for them to flee into the countryside as to stay. Likely more. We cannot take the risk of insurgents entering these walls as they did the lower city. Nor can we risk more magi being devoured. That would further strengthen the creature.”

  Rage grew inside me. I reached for my Gift, felt the sanctor’s power clamping it shut, my mind scrabbling at a slick wall that offered no purchase.

  “It is useless to fight,” Martain gloated. “Your Gift is sealed.” Oh, how he loved this, the smug little prick.

  And then an insane idea reared its ugly head and burst into flames. I stared at Martain in utter astonishment. He didn’t like that one little bit.

  “Cillian,” I said. “How many sanctors are in Setharis right now?”

  “Three,” she replied absently, glancing up from a map of the city. “Why?”

  “What would happen if we stuffed them–” I pointed at Martain, then towards the gap in the wall and the Magash Mora beyond “–down that thing’s throat? It draws power from stolen Gifts, so what if we get the sanctors close enough to shut them down? It might kill it.”

  A sudden silence rippled out from me as magi turned to stare first at me and then at Martain. His jaw dropped, face draining of colour. The signal rod slipped from Archmagus Krandus’ fingers and clattered to the stone.

  “Now wait just a minute,” Martain said. “You cannot be serious.”

  “I know some of you can sense the Gifts open inside that thing, the torrent of magic pouring into its flesh through the magi and mageborn it has absorbed. Sanctors can block that source of power.”

  Martain’s mouth opened and closed, not a sound emerging. His eyes bulged in horror.

  “Cillian, is this viable?” Krandus said.

  She shuddered. “Magus Edrin Walker would be the expert in this particular field. In the catacombs below the city he was able to destroy the smaller offshoot. If he says that their still-living Gifts are being used to draw in magic to grant that creature life…” Cillian glanced at me and I wondered if she was about to reveal the secret of my Gift-bond to Lynas, “…then I believe him. I felt it trying to absorb my own. It certainly explains how something so massive lives against the laws of nature instead of collapsing under its own bulk. Their massed Gifts working together may also suggest how it is able to warp reality in order to devour our magic.”

  Martain sensed which way the wind was blowing, his face going pale, fists clenching, but even he had to acknowledge the sense of it. “I cannot guarantee my power will work against that thing,” he said with a shaking voice. “It may be immune.” He was a smug git, but he was brave. That I could respect.

  The Archmagus stood straighter. “I will not leave innocents to perish where it can be avoided.” He clapped a hand on Martain’s shoulder. “This is worth the attempt.” With that he picked up his signal rod. “Find all sanctors and gather at the gatehouse. Be quick. Notify all commanders – we march to war!”

  Martain’s fate was sealed. “Sorry, pal.” I meant it. Nobody should be asked to do something this insane. But I refused to let Lynas’ body and mind be used to kill our people.

  A series of explosions tore through the curtain wall in the west of the lower city, flames billowing skyward in clouds of greasy black smoke.

  “Oil,” somebody shouted. “The West Gate is burning and the Skallgrim have taken Pauper’s Docks. More ships are heading for the West Docks and… oh, sweet Lady Night, flocks of winged daemons rise from their ships.”

  Krandus’ signal rod chirped and he listened to it for a moment. His brow furrowed, jaw clenching. “The daemons scour the walls and an armed mob has rushed Pauper’s Gates from the inside.”

  Even at this distance I could see people milling at both gates, fighting and fleeing, desperate to escape but trapped between the monster ravaging the city, fire, and a Skallgrim army pouring in through the docks. “They’re trapped. Do something.”

  Krandus’ nostrils flared. “There will be no escape now. With that many trapped the Magash Mora will gorge itself on the flesh of both human and beast until it can envelop the Old Town itself. To the gates! Gather your wardens and form coteries.”

  I shuddered and looked away as the creature wailed, a cacophony of voices like a thousand screeching newborns. It flopped and flowed and crawled and crashed over buildings and streets towards the trapped Docklanders. All the faces of the people I’d seen since coming home flickered through my mind’s eye: the young girl’s wide eyes as silver coins dropped into her bowl, the glowering clansmen brothers guarding Charra’s door, Bardok the Hock and that annoying nobleman dubbed Lord Arse I’d had to endure on the voyage down the coast, and even the barber and his disturbing collection of pulled teeth. How many of them had already been devoured? The thought made me shudder. It was all too similar to the fear I faced every time I used my own magic: that the Worm of Magic would take me and I’d be trapped gibbering in a corner of my own mind, somehow still aware of my own monstrousness. There was no way to know if they were trapped in a similar living death, still horribly aware.

  “I’m going down there too,” I said, surprising even myself. I nervously examined Dissever’s edge. I couldn’t just sit back and let this happen. These were my people.

  “You shall not,” Shadea said, dropping from the walls and landing easily on legs that looked far too scrawny to allow her to leap about like that. “Did you forget that Magus Evangeline was forced to restrain you earlier?”

  “I forgot nothing. You
want the truth?” I caught Cillian’s grim nod from the corner of my eye. “My friend Lynas was murdered by the Skinner. His mageborn flesh was used to help create that damned creature out there.” I tapped the side of my head. “Lynas and me, we were Gift-bonded.” More than one person gasped and whispers of tyrant rippled through nearby magi. “There was no enslavement, we were closer than family, and damn what any of you have to say about it. That’s why I’m back in this accursed back-stabbing rat hole of a city. Lynas sacrificed his life so that thing would not be fully mature before the Skallgrim arrived. Without him it would be a damn sight stronger and all of you would already be dead.”

  Shadea cocked her head. “Ah. So that is why the tyrant is so pained by the Magash Mora’s emergence. On your Oath, can you bear this agony, Edrin Walker?”

  Dissever’s fury bled into me. I held up the foul weapon. “I’ll ram my pain right down its fucking throat. I destroyed the crystal core of the smaller creature with this blade. If we can hack our way in then I’ll bloody well do for this one too.”

  Krandus considered it for a long moment. “Very well. Magus Evangeline, assemble the siege-breakers and have somebody bring this magus his possessions. Be swift as the wind.”

  Eva nodded approvingly. “This suits me better than hiding behind walls while people die.” She sprinted towards the Templarum Magestus.

  Krandus spoke into his signal rod: “I, Krandus, Archmagus of the Arcanum, hereby order the seals broken on vaults three, four and five. Bring forth the articles of war.”

  Even through the beat of Skallgrim battle drums, tolling of bells and the screeching of the Magash Mora, the sudden silence of every magus resounded deeper and louder. The most powerful magical artefacts the Arcanum possessed had been sealed in ancient vaults below the Templarum Magestus at the end of the Daemonwar, all save the enormous titans which had been rendered inert. The Shroud where the Vanda city states once stood had been permanently damaged, and though the Arcanum had managed to block the open portals to the Far Realms long enough to allow the Shroud to scab over, the wound in the world there still festered. To this day all magi were forbidden from entering the Vanda desert. They had sworn that never again would the full magical might of Setharis march to war.

  Krandus looked like he would rather have slit his own throat than let those artefacts see the light of day again if he had any other choice. To my mind nobody should wield that sort of power. However, I also knew I would use that power myself if I needed to.

  After an interminable wait Krandus’ rod finally buzzed and a tinny voice replied, sounding scared. “The wardsmiths have unlocked the vaults.” It was done.

  A CRACK boomed across the Old Town.

  It took everybody a few moments to locate the source. The spires atop the Templarum Magestus listed, snapped, and fell. The ancient building’s steeple groaned, then caved in. With stately majesty the grand halls of the mighty Arcanum collapsed with a roar of tumbling blocks, shatter of stained glass and crackle of broken wards. Disbelief was written across every single face. This was inconceivable. A thousand years of Arcanum art and history destroyed, hundreds of lives snuffed out.

  “No,” somebody croaked. It was me. There would be no articles of war. Not for us. Once the Magash Mora scoured all life from the city then the Skallgrim would walk in and take everything the Arcanum had kept safe for centuries, all that dangerous knowledge and dread power just waiting to be dug up from unlocked vaults. The Skallgrim halrúna might be savages but even without Harailt’s guidance, sooner or later they would learn to use those artefacts.

  “How is this possible?” Cillian said, eyes fixed on the column of dust billowing into the air. She blinked and scrubbed at her eyes, as if not able to accept what she was seeing.

  Krandus stared at his signal rod in horror, then flung it to the stone. “We are compromised,” he hissed, grabbing a hold of a crimson-robed woman with wispy white hair and a harsh expression, councillor Merwyn if memory served. “Run. Spread the word that the rods are not to be used. Send seers to the site – I need to know what happened. No magus – no group of magi – should have the power necessary to break those wards. This could not have been done quickly, nor easily. This was years in the making. Somebody find that accursed Harailt Grasske and bring me his head!”

  Merwyn scurried off, too shocked to notice that the Archmagus was treating a member of the Inner Circle like a messenger girl. Krandus studied the plume of dust rising without visible emotion but his mind had to be feverishly running through our options. When everybody else was rattled he was plotting and planning, and that was why he was Archmagus. Well, that, and he could have made a good attempt at devastating a goodly portion of this city all on his own.

  “What is Harailt planning?” Cillian said. “Why do this?”

  Krandus’ fists shook with fury. “Targeting the magical centre of Setharis makes perfect sense if you want to crush your greatest obstacle to conquest with a single blow. I suspect that the wolf-ships are merely there to hunt down fleeing stragglers and sweep in once the Magash Mora has finished its feast.” He exchanged glances with Shadea. “The Forging rite should have ensured the loyalty of all magi; however, we cannot know what strange powers are at work here.”

  “And what are our bloody gods doing?” I said. “Hiding away like scared children? This stinks. That thing needed serious power to create. Godly power most likely.” The gods should be floating above the city, casting fire and lightning down upon our enemies, ripping the magic and life from their bones and opening the earth to drop their corpses into the Boneyards. All the beasts of Setharis should be rising up to tear down the invaders with tooth, claw and beak. Instead our gods did nothing.

  “Ah yes, Cillian mentioned your previous ranting,” Krandus said. “The Hooded God is not a suspect, whatever his old temple in the Warrens was used for.” He gave a queer, sad smile as he said that.

  “But–”

  “Silence!” A vein throbbed in his temple.

  I clammed up, simmering inside. He meant it, and now was not the time to push the Archmagus.

  The clank of steel-shod boots and heavy armour drew our attention. A dozen dirt-caked figures marched up the street towards us, massive two-handed swords as tall as me held out before them. They were covered head to toe in an entire forge worth of steel plate, razor edges and wicked spikes. Their helms didn’t have open eye slits, instead light glinted off some kind of clear crystal embedded in the metal, and artificer-wrought magical metal replaced leather straps, chain and vulnerable joints. They looked bulky and clumsy to my eye, awkward to fight in, and yet they covered the distance between us easily and fluidly, faster than humanly possible. Looking closer, Eva’s green-flecked blade was strapped to the back of one of them. The immensely heavy armour suddenly made perfect sense – only knights could possibly fight in that.

  A dark-haired boy and girl, twins by the looks of them, trailed a safe distance behind. They bore a passing resemblance to Martain, making them the other sanctors. They were far too young for the insanity we were about to put them through.

  The knights formed a hulking line in front of the Archmagus, their boots stamping down like a thunderclap. “So few, Evangeline?” he said.

  Eva’s voice came out tinny and muffled. “The others were buried in the collapse, Archmagus.”

  Krandus grimaced, rubbed his temples, eyes falling. “It is not enough.” Everything was failing and falling to ruin. He was desperate. It was the first time I’d ever seen him so weak, so human.

  Somebody tossed me my old boots and grey coat. I buckled on the coat and tugged on the boots. It felt like donning armour against change: I felt like my old self.

  “If only we could unleash the titans against the Magash Mora,” Shadea said to the Archmagus. “I believe that is what they were originally created for, though completed too late to save Escharr. The puzzle of the titan’s strange luminescence is no longer a mystery: it was a warning we were too ignorant to heed.”


  Krandus said nothing, didn’t look at her.

  Cillian sagged against me, her strength ebbing. “The point is moot. The activation keys are buried within the vaults.”

  Shadea said nothing, watched Krandus until he finally met her gaze.

  He swallowed. “No. Never again. We swore an oath.”

  Cillian rallied, scrutinizing the Archmagus’ face. She forced herself to stand on her own and let go of my arm. “Explain yourself. As a member of the Inner Circle I demand an answer.”

  “There is one,” he said. “An activation key kept apart from the others. A… contingency. Is one monster not enough, Shadea?”

  “Sometimes you need a monster to fight a monster,” she replied.

  Krandus raked a hand through his perfect hair and sighed. “So be it. Fetch it before I change my mind.”

  Shadea turned on her heel and disappeared into the streets of the Old Town. He straightened up and cast off his distress, and with it went that small measure of humanity he had displayed. He looked us over, eyes shrewd and calculating, and I knew we were nothing but pawns in a desperate game of life and death.

  “Magus Walker,” Krandus said. “You are in the hands of the sanctors until such time as you are needed. You will obey them without question.” Piss on that. “Martain, a word before we march.” The twin sanctors stood on either side of me as Krandus and Martain moved away for a private discussion.

  When Martain returned he appeared troubled, refusing to meet my eyes. I didn’t like the way Krandus had spoken to him in private. I was all too aware I was expendable. Others also owned spirit-bound blades…