They collapsed together to their knees, the Dark Lady keening and Dom convulsing with black lightning. He could feel blood running from his eardrums, could smell scorched flesh as his hand, melted to the knife hilt, blackened into a claw. His vision smeared as his eyes boiled in his head.
‘But … but you love me,’ She said, Her voice small, disbelieving and, slowly, scared. Her fear cracked his heart into pieces. Her eyes were gold and filling with black blood, streaking down Her cheeks like lines of ink. It ran from the corners of Her mouth, obscuring Her words, pumped steadily from around the blade, hissing like snakes as it fell to melt the stone beneath Her and stain his arm.
Her pain crashed in waves of emotion so strong it knocked weapons from hands, burst eardrums, ruptured hearts. Scores died and hundreds more were driven past the edge of madness and still She lived. Suffered at his hand, Her pain his torment, Her fear his eternity.
Oh, my love, forgive me. Forgive me, please. I love you I love you I love you.
Dom was pain personified, pain perfected, pain distilled into its purest essence. A gibbering, writhing wreck of a man. Her eyes were entirely black now, and he couldn’t see past the blood to the expression they held. And still he loved Her. He always would.
The Fox God wrapped Dom in His arms and pulled, breaking Dom’s fingers to free him, and then wrestled him away, the black lightning flickering over Him without harm.
‘No!’ The loss was so profound that, despite the agony, Dom struggled to reach for his love. To take it back, to apologise, to tell Her again that he loved Her. To ask to go with.
The Fox God cradled him against His chest and murmured words he had no ears to hear, while a great sucking, howling vacuum rushed around them with the noise of a million screaming sacrifices.
At its centre the Dark Lady.
At its centre pain and avarice and a lust vaster than the world. She arched Her spine, hands even now trying to cup the blood and press it back inside. Her mouth opened impossibly wide and every one of Her teeth curved backwards like a snake’s. She screamed like the death of innocents, like She was innocent, a scream that shattered Dom’s heart into a million weeping pieces and which he echoed with every fibre of his being.
And then She burst.
THE BLESSED ONE
Fifth moon, afternoon, day forty-three of the siege
Grand temple square, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
Lanta wept. She knelt on the stone, dragging the black stains of the Dark Lady’s blood on to her arms and face, and she wept with all the broken-soul intensity of a bereaved parent, a lost child, a betrayed lover. Her goddess, her guiding light, her beautiful Bloody Mother …
The Dark Lady had been here in the real world that was Her divine right, terrible and beautiful and powerful and … screaming. Bleeding. Dying.
Time had passed. She didn’t know how much, but the sun stood still in the sky, looking down with infinite sorrow on the dead, the dying and the deranged. Corvus was there, on his knees by a pool of puke, hands clawing at his hair, his cheeks, fingernails cutting bloody runnels in his skin. Lanta’s grief swelled again.
What had happened? How had it happened? Lanta still had the after-images of the … the vanishing seared into her eyes, the fluttering black flags of lightning arcing crazily across the square, ripping the life from those they touched but not enough, nowhere near enough to restore Her to life, before a final blast and She was gone.
Gone.
There was no lore, no history to explain what she’d witnessed. It was impossible, and yet it had happened, and Lanta knew exactly who was to blame for it. And yet …
And yet she lay on the stone and she wept.
At either end of the district was the sound of slaughter. Not battle, not the clash of weapons and the roars of the fighters, but slaughter. Not even pleas for mercy. The Mireces and East Rankers were being murdered where they lay in their grief. It meant nothing.
The Fox God and the Godblind slumped nearby, dazed, and Lanta knew that they should be punished, tormented over days and weeks and months for their crimes. And though she knew it, for the first time in her life, she hadn’t the will to see it done.
‘Mother,’ she sobbed, holding hands black with divine blood to her lips and eyelids, smearing it across her cheeks and down her chin in looping swirls. ‘Mother, come back. Come back, I beg you.’
There was no response, nothing but the howling void of loss and the black rot of hysteria creeping in around the edges of her mind. It would be so easy to just give in, the way she could see hundreds of the faithful doing, tearing at themselves and each other with fingers, with knives and arrow heads, carving themselves open in the hopes their blood might summon Her back. Even Corvus, rocking on his knees with a knife slashing at his forearm, stuttering, roaring howls tearing out of his throat. Many cut and cut and cut too deep, arterial blood red against blue sky and white stone and black loss.
‘No.’ It was a whisper, mumbled through lips stiff with grief. ‘No, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe She’s gone.’ Lanta glanced again at the Godblind, sobbing with uncontrollable loss in the Fox God’s arms.
‘No,’ she said louder and Corvus looked up. ‘No! I do not accept it!’
She traced whorls down her throat and across her collarbones with the black blood, tore off her sleeves and continued the patterns down her arms, acting on pure instinct, a lifetime of devotion. She pulled up her skirts and traced patterns on her legs and over her belly, down under her linens.
‘Dark Lady, beautiful goddess of fear and death, I offer you this body, that you might live again. God of Blood, of war and mutilation, I offer myself as your consort, that your Sister-Lover might live again. Red Gods, I worship you. Dark Lady, beautiful goddess of fear and death, I offer you this body, that you might live again …’
Lanta lay on her back in the blood, ignoring the chaos, and she summoned her will to conquer the madness and fear, and she searched. Somewhere far away, wounded and in pain, feeling abandoned, the Dark Lady might be hiding. Not dead, just … gone. Yearning for Her children. Perhaps even afraid.
Figures shuffled towards her, Corvus, Skerris and Valan, war chiefs and officers, Raiders and soldiers, their voices torn with weeping, halting along with hers. None of them touched the black blood. Behind them, the Godblind mouthed the words as well while at the edges of the plaza, the enemy slunk, scenting blood.
Lanta closed her eyes; they were irrelevant. She had one task and one only and she would see it done, no matter the cost.
The voices around her cracked and then swelled, adding power to her power, and Lanta felt her soul tug free of its moorings and tumble through Rilpor, through Gilgoras, and past the tattered veil.
There. Just about. Not the loving embrace, but the hungry one. It’s a start. A good start. From Him to Her, perhaps.
‘Holy Gosfath, God of Blood, lover of war and death, come to me. Use me to guide you into the world, to walk where your Sister-Lover so briefly did. Come for vengeance, Holy One, come for justice. Blood and more blood shall be yours. Theirs and ours, if you will it.’
She raised her arms to the sky, back arching with need and strain. ‘Holy Gosfath, I summon you to war,’ she shrieked. ‘Wreak bloody fucking destruction on them all!’
The clouds that had presaged the Dark Lady’s arrival darkened again, roiling above the plain. Thunder muttered. Lanta lay still, arms up, sacred blood soaking through her gown, warm and sticky against her back and arse and thighs, like the leavings of a messy lover. Tears trickled from her eyes and her heart and soul bled, but still she strained, beckoning, coercing, her will a guiding light that could not be denied as her acolytes continued the prayer around her and the Wolves crept closer, swords bright with faithful blood.
Pain seared Lanta’s skull and she screamed, offered the hurt to Him if only He would come.
All this and more, Lord. My body to restore Her, my will bent to your desire. More sacrifices than you have ever seen befor
e and your Sister-Lover in your arms again. Come to me, Red Father, come and kill!
The clouds were black and blotted out the afternoon sun, and in their roiling a shape formed, crimson as sunset and bleak as disease. Shouts of alarm from the attackers told her they saw Him too and now she opened her eyes and looked in awe and wonder on what she had done.
As tall as the sky, with mountain goat horns curling from His head and black talons tipping each finger, Gosfath, God of Blood, bulled through the tatters of the veil and into Gilgoras. He came roaring His pain and loss and world-breaking rage. All across the sky within reach of His voice, birds fell dead.
Lanta felt a manic giggle swell in her chest as she climbed to her feet. The faithful around her rose as well, turning to face the god and the Wolves ranged in front of Him, their horrified gazes snared by His presence.
Gosfath’s strength is in His impulses. He is the jealous one, reminding us that the world is cruel and senseless and death is arbitrary. He can rape the whole world if only it will bring Her back to me.
I care not.
‘Welcome, Lord,’ she shouted, a hard wind whipping her hair and gown behind her. It whined through the streets and buildings of the temple district, stinking of rot and whispering through the Dancer’s sanctuaries as silent as plague.
‘Your Sister-Lover, our Bloody Mother, the Dark Lady Herself, is dead. Murdered! Will you take vengeance on those who dared to raise a hand to Her? Will you spill their blood as they spilt Hers?’
Lanta was drunk on power and insane with grief, the blood of a goddess fizzing on her skin and warm as lust upon her tongue. She revelled in Gosfath’s slow, calculating regard. She smelt of His Sister and knew a flicker of delicious fear. His appetite was well known. The love of a god. How blessed she would be to die in such a way.
‘Lord, Father, he is here, both of them are here! The ones you seek, the killers. See?’ She flung her hand towards the Godblind and the Fox God, and Gosfath bared white fangs and stepped into the city, crushing walls and buildings beneath His feet, shrinking to twice man-height as He came.
His shadow blasted the life from everything it touched and left disease and rot strewn in its wake. He pushed through buildings and walls, smashing stone from His path as He neared, scattering allies and enemies alike with great sweeps of His hands. He came for vengeance, and it would be terrible.
Every Mireces and East Ranker stiffened and howled as the god’s bloodlust infected them. Lanta felt it herself, an almost overwhelming urge to pick up a knife and kill. Kill everyone, everything that stood between her and her gods. She resisted, barely, and only because Gosfath needed her, His presence anchoring her to her duty.
The men around her felt no such restraint. Roars of pure fury burst from throats, dragging the attention of the Wolves away from the god, and battle erupted across the square, the true believers squandering their lives with no thought of defence, their only desire to take as many of the enemy screaming into death with them.
They would not stop. They could not. They would have red fucking slaughter and the city would drown in it.
From the corner of her eye, Lanta saw the Fox God climb to His feet, dragging the Godblind up and pushing him gently away. She smiled. Her own power was great, but the power of the Trickster would do even more to open a channel for the Dark Lady’s return, if they could but harvest it.
‘Yes,’ she called, ‘yes, Father. Him,’ she pointed. ‘Kill Him, the Fox God, and then kill them all. I will deal with the Godblind cunt.’
Lanta held back her hair as the wind howled and Gosfath smashed through the last wall between Him and the Fox God. So close Lanta could feel the electricity playing across His skin, the waves of His divine fury, divine need. Her own needs rose to match His, bloodlust and fucklust like nothing she’d ever felt before, so hard and hot she nearly buckled.
The Fox God stepped forward in the wide square.
Lanta licked godblood from her palm, felt it ricochet through her limbs and pulse in her ears and heart and womb; then she raised her hands palms up to the sky and threw back her head. ‘Blood rises!’
DOM
Fifth moon, afternoon, day forty-three of the siege
Grand temple square, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
The wind tasted of sulphur and rot, black and cold against the sweat on his face, the thing that used to be his hand.
The stone rocked beneath his feet, blasted, cracked and as desolate as time. Black light burnt in his eyes, obscuring his surroundings, and black wind howled in his ears, smothering all sound.
His body was heavy, rooting him to earth, and yet weightless, straining into the sky. He didn’t know if he stood or floated, didn’t know if he breathed. If he lived.
There had been something inside him once, but now it was gone. He thought it might have been his soul, but such words and concepts didn’t exist any more. Empty, he understood. Pain, he knew that too. There wasn’t anything else.
He couldn’t remember his name, or where or why he was. Just pain and emptiness and the blackness, in his eyes, in his ears. In him. The wind blew, and the black light burnt, and he existed at its core, in its very heart, a spinning fragment of consciousness in a vortex of madness.
His mouth was open now, the rotten tempest howling past his lips and teeth and down his throat, poisoning him with its taint. Straining to fill the emptiness and failing. Too much emptiness, so much he could drown in it with just a little effort. Just a step.
‘Why?’
Hands on him, pawing, slapping, shaking. He felt them rain against him, distant as hope, heard the slide of a knife drawn from leather.
‘How could you?’
Sobbing now, the sound skating into his ears on the back of the wind, the sobs sliding into his throat, oily. Another’s pain for him to choke on, to swallow down into his bones, corrupting. The sharp bright sting of parting flesh high on his cheek; he blinked, embracing the pain, welcoming it as the slightest anchor of mind to flesh.
‘You loved Her.’
A flicker within now, something other than pain. Something so huge it surely couldn’t all be contained within, not unless his insides were as vast as the night sky. A frown creased his face, the edges of his awareness lightening further. He came back to the earth and himself, knowledge of feet on stone, the weight of his body dragging and the slow throbbing agony in his left hand, dead and wrong.
He blinked again and then he saw. A woman stood before him, coal-coloured loops and swirls decorating her skin in sigils of power, runes of magic and summoning. Dark magic, black power, and the bright lunacy of loss burning in her face.
‘You loved Her,’ she repeated, her tone broken and uncomprehending, and the vast emptiness within roared its denial and its lust for obliteration.
She raised her knife and though he wanted to open his arms to welcome the blade, he reached out instead and seized her throat, squeezing, shaking, slamming her to the ground before she could give him back his name and everything that surely must go with it. The knife skittered from her grip.
Gods fought behind her and he turned away. He couldn’t look back; the gods’ presence threatened to remind him of something that would tear him apart and he refused to acknowledge it. Not now. Not ever.
Legs unsteady beneath him, he staggered from the square, leaving the madness of battle, taking the emptiness of loss. Behind him, broken and alone, the woman sobbed.
CRYS
Fifth moon, afternoon, day forty-three of the siege
Grand temple square, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
Gosfath was tall and muscular and bright red. He was unarmed, if you didn’t count the horns and the talons, and he was naked but for a short kilt, the slabs of His face carved from cruelty and a terrible lust. Crys was pretty sure his own weapons would be more than useless against Him, despite the lack of armour.
His memory of what had happened with the Dark Lady was vague, hazy, but one thing was certain: he wasn’t going to b
e kissing the God of Blood.
Throw them away. The weapons, get rid of them. They’re not going to do us any good.
Crys ignored the voice and launched a flurry of attacks with the knife and metal poker he’d taken from the torture table, roaring as his relocated kneecap crunched and popped. He swung the iron rod hard into Gosfath’s upraised forearm, waiting for the greenwood crack of splintering bone. The poker bounced off the arm with a sound like a tuning fork, numbing Crys’s hand, already slippery with blood. It slid from his grasp.
Happy now?
And the knife. Just do it. What use is it going to be anyway?
Dom stabbed Her; I can stab Him. Stands to reason.
He didn’t wait for an answer, throwing himself up and forward, blade aiming for the baleful eye. Gosfath caught him around the throat with one hand, talons puncturing into the back of his neck. Crys slashed at the arm, at the chest he could just reach, at the face. It was like trying to score granite, the blade making no impression.
Well, that’s just not fair.
He’s the Lord of War, what did you expect?
Gosfath’s mouth opened wide, so wide, His pointed black tongue flicking towards Crys’s face. Crys swung again, a wild, desperate slash that sliced through the tongue’s tip and sprayed him with black blood.
Gosfath roared so loud it was a physical pressure, and then Crys was slamming into the stone and Gosfath had both hands pressed to His mouth. His eyes flared brighter and His roar was a heady mix of rage and pain.
Well done. That’s exactly what we were trying to avoid.
What, hurting Him? Crys asked as he scrambled backwards, searching for another weapon and feeling the hot leak of blood between his shoulders.
No. Pissing Him off, the voice said and Crys looked back just in time to take a palm the size of his ribcage straight in the face. There was a moment of bleary confusion as he flew through the air, limbs flailing, before impact with the temple wall sent a series of cracks through his neck and back.
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