Immortal Progeny (Fragile Gods Book 1)

by Philippa Ballantine

  The structure that hung on the edge of the mountain was like that; room stacked on room, crowded next to more. It made the wasp look positively lazy by comparison. All of them were connected and accessed by a long chamber at the top of the stairs with only one door.

  Her mouth was dry, and the temples before her were water. As much as Amaranth longed to run up the stairs like a mad woman, one glance told her that would be a bad idea.

  The guards standing to each side of the stairs were clothed in the same dull red as the stone, so in her excitement she missed them, but they were there; standing at attention with grey halberds and watching over the growing crowd with still faces.

  Penance was a place for excitement, but the guards seemed unimpressed by the pilgrims. They had undoubtedly seen plenty of them in their time in the city. Amaranth wondered how many they cut down for being over exuberant.

  Barely had the thought crossed her mind before it brought with it a slew of hot memories, pushing aside the temptation to run up the stairs.

  The strange and dangerous cloaked figures loomed over Amaranth and her sisters. She was soaked in fear and confusion, but she held tight to their hands with both of hers. A man strode forward, and Amaranth caught a glimpse of him from under the curtain of her hair. The sun gleamed off him as if it loved him. He was beautiful, and she knew a savior when she saw him. When the bad woman's ill-made creature pinned him to the ground, she inhaled sharply.

  At her side, one of her sisters squeezed her hand. This was not how it was meant to be...or was it? One of the cloaked figures grabbed the sister on her right, while another claimed that on her left. They did not cry out, but they clutched together harder. The bond should not be broken. It could not be broken.

  Then there was a flutter of light in that darkness. Amaranth, who was not yet Amaranth, saw a woman race towards them. Her cloak was bright blue, like a bird's wing, and her face was kind. Amaranth wanted her to sweep her up, but it was her sister she took.

  Her fingers were lost, slipping loose in a painful separation. There was no name to scream out—they did not have them yet. Amaranth caught a glimpse of her last sister, as she was bundled up and carried off by the hard-faced woman. Short and poisonous, she feared for that sister. At least the first gone had been taken by kindness.

  "This one shall be for the pits." She didn't know what that meant, but she felt the clamp of a broad hand on her hand. It was not gentle.

  The first sister gone was flying. She was close enough that Amaranth could feel that. Tucked beneath the wing of the woman of light. Not flying...falling.

  With a snap the connection between them was severed by distance. It was only then that Amaranth began to cry.

  Someone hugged her. They were small, like her, like her sisters had been. She hugged them back fiercely, as she would have done her sisters, clutching the body tight with her remaining arm. It took a moment for Amaranth to realize it was Fleabane.

  They had not hugged much. Pulling back, Amaranth understood things changed.

  Fleabane gave an awkward shrug. "You were sobbing so hard...you...you were starting to get noticed."

  Looking around Amaranth saw that for the lie it was. She had been crying, the wetness on her cheeks affirmed that, but she was not the only one. So close to the temples and denied entry, there were many pilgrims around wailing and crying, stretching out their hands to the unmoving guards.

  Amaranth decided not to point that out to Fleabane. She had done a kind thing, and she didn't want to make her regret it. Peering around her companion from the pits, Amaranth caught Violet looking at her. It was such a gaze of naked devotion and adoration that for a moment she thought it was directed at her daughter. However, the way Violet jerked her gaze away when she realized she had been discovered told otherwise.

  Amaranth didn't understand it, but it was a strangeness in a sea of strangeness, so she too turned away, to concentrate on the temples.

  The memories, despite their terrible nature, were a gift. The dam had been broken and she could now access all of the past. The rumble of the crowd around her gasping that the rescuer woman had fallen, taking the sister she had tried to save with her. The ache of her separation from her sisters like a terrible wound. The travel to the pits locked in a cart with no windows, and the drivers pairing her with a desperate, sad woman. They said she was her mother, and Amaranth was so broken and lonely, she clung onto that. Then the pits were her total reality.

  Now, that was different. She reclaimed some of what they stole from her. Sisters. She had sisters. They might have survived as she had. The hard-faced little woman had taken her, and she had been a priestess. But a priestess of what, she asked herself, pushing her newly reclaimed memories as hard as she could. It had all been a burble of words around them.

  "It started with S..." she whispered to herself, more to anchor it in reality than to hear the words. "It..."

  Amaranth stopped and stared hard at Violet, who was still ignoring her eyes now fixed on the temple steps. She admitted to being there in the square when the sisters were brought there, that meant she knew where her sister went.

  Amaranth was just about to work her way towards Fleabane's mother when the doors to the temple opened. A wizened old man wearing a patchwork cloak made his way down the steps, leaning heavily on a staff. She knew him too. Amaranth swayed slightly on her feet. He was there too; he stood among the priests with their single color cloaks.

  Her shock gave way to anger. The old man, who looked exactly as she remembered him, stood there and did nothing as three small sisters were separated like cattle. The progeny dogs at her side snarled and barked loudly, their gold eyes fixed on the little man, just at the same time as the crowd roared with delight.

  He jerked his head upright as if hit, his gaze raking over the crowd of pilgrims before him. Amaranth hoped he had heard her creatures, then maybe he would see her and recognize her. Perhaps his sight was as infirm as his legs, because it passed over her.

  "Quiet darlings," she whispered to Ceelut and Cedejo. "We'll have our chance." The few remaining scorpion-beetles at her neck danced on their segmented legs, as if to remind her they were there. The desire to get inside the temple swelled inside her, overcoming—at least for the moment—her desire to punish the old man.

  "The representatives of the temples have finished their worship, and now it is time to open the fingers for you." The wrinkled old face did an impression of a smile, but Amaranth wasn't fooled.

  She didn't like the look of that man, and she hadn't when he hovered over her and her sisters. At her side, her hand clenched into a fist. It would have been easy to mutter one word to her progeny, and they would have torn apart this dusty old man with hardly any effort at all.

  Vengeance felt like it was at her fingertips, but Amaranth saw something in his worn face and expression that made her put it aside. His movements spoke of hollowness and she realized that whatever she could do to him, time had already done. As he moved to one side, pain and frustration with it in his expression, she felt an odd sorrow for him well inside her. He had done nothing to prevent what happened to her and her sisters, but she would give him the same. Nothing.

  The old man's voice scarcely rose above the excited murmur of the crowd. "Go, find your faith. Find your gods."

  The armed men took two measured steps back and swung their halberds out of the way. The crowd surged forward; women sang, and men cheered. While some broke out into a run, Amaranth walked forward at a steady pace, her progeny dogs keeping pace with her. She couldn't help locking eyes with the old man, and even through the running crowd she felt his recognition. His pale face went even paler, and he clutched as his cane like a drowning man.

  Her sister was thrown into the water, so it was only fitting the impression was Amaranth's last glimpse of the old man. Then she was up on the steps of the temple, and suddenly he ceased to matter at all. The entrance was swarming with pilgrims, all darting towards their finger temple, laughing, crying, and som
e hysterical.

  The name finger temple she knew, but why exactly they were named that she didn't quite understand until she saw the spread of tunnels pointing in all directions. When Amaranth had been in Penance, they never got this far, and for a moment she was frozen to the spot. What was she supposed to do now?

  Ceelut sniffed around her, while Cedejo stayed close and growled at pilgrims that got too near Amaranth. Most of them didn't even notice, and soon Amaranth was alone in the entrance apart from the occasional person darting towards corridors, like insects drawn by light.

  "It's amazing." Only Fleabane's breathy comment alerted Amaranth they followed her in. Her companion from the pit craned her neck looking up at the many twisting stairways and corridors filled with excited people. Light filtered in from somewhere, keeping the entrance dimly, and rather eerily, lit. The sounds of low prayers began to echo from the out of sight temples as people found their place. The languages now became foreign to her. Amaranth had never learned anything but True Tongue. Pit drivers didn't need their meat to know more.

  The words mingled and seemed to stick in her head though, making her feel dizzy. She wished for two good hands to stop up her ears, but after a moment and a few deep breaths she was able to find a calm spot in her mind.

  The weight of Violet and Fleabane's regard weighed on her, and she felt them leaning towards her almost in the same way her progeny did. Whatever expectations they had of her, Amaranth decided she had to put them aside. This was her journey. She started dreaming of it at the bottom of the pit, and even if it was turning out nothing like she'd ever imagined, it still belonged to her.

  The tug within her body went on though, blocking out concerns for the others. Without saying anything to them, she turned and followed its guidance. Most of the pilgrims had gone up; their feet clattering and slapping on the stone stairs leading towards the light. Amaranth did not find herself going that way. Instead she traced the tug within her, turning left and left again, taking staircases that were covered in dust that led deeper to the undercarriage of the finger temples. After a while the sound of the other pilgrims faded to nothing, in the silence there was only the crunch of her feet in the debris, with Fleabane, Violet, Cedejo and Ceelut trailing in her wake.

  Gradually the passageway grew narrower and narrower, but other sounds could now be discerned. Amaranth frowned; they were voices, a man and a woman, and they seemed to be arguing. Gesturing to her companions to move silently, Amaranth eased herself down the stairs and ducked her head to peer into the dim finger temple that they had reached.

  A man lay bound in the shadows, from her vantage she saw his feet, but not much else.

  Two women faced each other, while a circle of wrapped and shambling figures stood around them. Amaranth immediately recognized them as the same assailants from the previous night. However the two before them drew her eye.

  The one on the left also sent a jolt of recognition through Amaranth. She had long twisting hair, just like Ohian. It also flickered with green and blue light, the tentacles waving about as if threatening to wrap around the other. In that light it was possible to see the difference though; this chimera had a burnt and scarred face that spoke of previous misfortune.

  That would have been arresting enough, but the second female shape was just as unusual.

  She was a made creature, it was easy to smell the death that radiated from her, but Amaranth couldn't take her eyes away from her. The sword she held waved in the direction of the chimera, and her stance was calm but assertive. Nevertheless, the compulsion to go to the strange, rotten figure was powerful. It was the tugging Amaranth felt so strongly right from the first sight of Penance. It was an act of will not to dash to her. Yet there was about to be violence. Amaranth had a highly honed sense of that from the pits.

  The chimera, her hair pulsing white, laughed and shouted at the man on the ground. His face crumpled into despair.

  The finger temple was a narrow space, stretching out to the abyss, so that all the players in this little drama before her were lit from behind. She might not understand the reasoning, but she understood there could only be one result: Violence.

  That was wrong. Amaranth knew that as much as she knew her own mind. This was a holy place, and they were stopping pilgrims who might want to use it. It was a strangely righteous anger that she'd only ever experienced when the drivers took things from those weaker than themselves. Always it was the strong snatching what they needed, and damn the rest.

  Glancing down at Cedejo and Ceelut, she smiled. For some reason, she wasn't afraid. In fact, she wanted to make others afraid. Before Fleabane or Violet could stop her, she stepped down into the temple with only her progeny following at her heels.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The Rainbow Queen’s Temple

  "You guardsmen do not die easily." The voice that brought Isobah back to consciousness was beautiful, and for a moment as he hovered in that grey space of near-unconsciousness he imagined it was Kiya.

  His waking brain discerned his hands and feet were tightly bound, and that realization caused him to jerk wide awake in an instant. The floor underneath him was polished black marble, slick and cold. He took a moment to assess the aches in his body; nothing broken, though his throat was in agony. It was not quite as bad as the time he took a punch to the neck, but it would remind him of his own foolishness for a while. If he lived.

  Steadying his breathing, he tested the bonds as subtly as he could. They were sturdy rope from the feel of it. Given enough time and determination, he would be able to work his hands out, but it would be noticeable to his captor. They were, after all, in the room with him. From that angle Isobah could not see the speaker, but looking out to his left, and raising his gaze from the black floor, he was immediately sure he was in another finger temple—this one was definitely not Mariki’s.

  For all that, there were few on the ground who followed his goddess, her temple gleamed, full of the pure light of the sky. This one was dim, dusty and forgotten, as if very few feet bothered to tread its stone in an age. Isobah had a good view of the finger itself. It was broken off far from the edge of the void, as if someone amputated it. Whoever the temple belonged to, they had no worshippers, and definitely no pilgrims to take care of the temple.

  "Soon there will be many who come here," the woman’s voice echoed through the chamber, traces of triumph lilting each syllable. "And all of that power, all of those people will be mine."

  "A creature that hides in the shadows," Isobah said, with a growl. "If you think you are a god you best consider your actions a little more." He wanted to arch back and turn his head to look at her, but he would not give her the satisfaction of seeing him struggle.

  He didn't have to do so though, because most thoughtfully, she walked around Isobah and stepped into his line of sight. She even leaned down to stare at him. "Once I was in the light, once I was a goddess."

  Isobah should have laughed at such a pronouncement; after all, it was the kind of thing the mad said. He could have found twenty twisted and sad individuals on the streets of any city in Rahvas who would have asserted the same thing. However, Isobah did not laugh. The woman was beautiful, that was true, at least half-true. The right side of her face wore the touch of flame. Melted skin locked her eyelid in a permanent droop and pushed her hairline back over one ear. It was her hair that touched a painful memory. It moved of its own accord, some rare sea creature she skinned and replaced her own scalp with. It pulsated with different lights, mostly greens and blues, as it undulated between fine filaments forming into tense angry tentacles.

  Isobah did not laugh because he knew her—and he knew her for what she claimed to be. He also made it a policy never to laugh at chimeras.

  The lick of terror began well up inside him. She was doing that; the Rainbow Queen could manipulate any human's emotions if she was close enough. He felt it most intimately when he stood on the burning ship with which she assaulted Diligence. In those last moments she tried
to use love to keep his sword from striking her. She chose poorly, but he had not struck. Instead, he pushed her from the ship, letting the good air of his goddess take her.

  Now she was trying to frighten him, and he felt it. That made it easier. Pushing aside the emotion being forced into him, Isobah ground out the words he never dreamed of saying. "You are dead. I saw you catch fire. I saw you fall."

  "Two out of three correct," she said softly, and brushed the side of his face. "Poor foolish Isobah, always believing what Mariki tells you."

  She was as mad as all chimera, but her madness made her think she was a goddess. She saw herself as a match for Mariki. She imagined she would devour the Mother-Sky and take her place in the air. The Rainbow Queen she styled herself, claiming she was a living god with a body. It was an abomination since the gods did not live except inside their followers.

  Yet there she was—in the terrible flesh. Isobah gritted his teeth, and tested his bonds again as surreptitiously as he could. They were definitely too tight to slip out of without notice, and far too strong to snap.

  "That was your assassin up above?" he asked, playing for time. The bonds might be tight, but they could be loosened with blood. It would not be the first time he used that trick. "That isn't your style, oh mighty Rainbow Queen. What is your reason for snatching me? I am not the Lightkeeper."

  Her smile, sweet on one side terrifying on the other, leveled him. He was frozen in place by sudden abject horror. He felt his blood boiling, his bones cracking open, even though his brain knew it was not real.