God of Emptiness

by Walt Popester

  They passed under a giant claw pointing westward.

  Ash came up between them. “You see? These same ruins are encouraging us to go back while we can. Adramelech seems to have a soul.”

  “Adramelech has a soul,” the lizard pointed out. “Liquid and hidden.”

  It was almost sunset when, exhausted, they reached an old bridge collapsed in the dry bed of the river it once crossed. One of the arches had been converted into a tavern, and Dagger climbed its steps, at least the five ones emerging from the sand. He put his hand on the door and stood there motionless, enjoying the sounds coming from inside—clinking mugs and a confused chatter. He pushed it forward.

  The tavern was crowded with vagabonds and travelers, with their backpacks at the foot of the tables where they sat drinking and eating.

  “Cow’s shit!” Ianka said. “There’s half Agalloch in here! Ktisis take me if that’s not the nimrod, with the gypsy and ten lives!”

  Ash closed the door behind him. “Half of the city is in march. It was to be expected with what’s going on at the foot of the Fortress. The lizard was right.”

  “The lizard is always right,” the lizard replied.

  “At least when he’s sober,” Erin said. “I don’t think we’ll find a table, though.”

  Kerry thought about that. He approached one of the corner tables, with five young vagabonds sitting in front of their mugs…and long, sharp daggers stuck in the wood. Kerry silently placed himself behind the biggest one, who followed the gazes of his companions until he was face to face with the lizard.

  The Messhuggah smiled, bending down to whisper something in the patron’s ear, resting a wrinkled hand on his shoulder in a friendly way. Then Kerry’s fingers tightened, digging claws into the skin. The expression of his victim veered toward terror. When the lizard released him, he turned to his companions and made a quick, nervous gesture toward the door.

  Kerry clasped his hands. “Hey guys, look, there’s a free table!”

  The others were too tired to complain about his methods and sat down.

  “What did you tell him?” Dagger asked.

  “That the problem with these places so far from home is that no one ever finds your corpse.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Oh, nothing. Come on, let’s order something.”

  The waiter came. “I recognize your accent. If you don’t have those round, golden things that make that tin tin sound, you can—” He grabbed on the fly the coin tossed by Kerry. “Hey, be my guests. Can I take your order?”

  “Six draugs, for now.”

  “But you’re only five, lizard.”

  “Yes, but my green-eyed friend here hasn’t yet managed to drown the voices inside his head.”

  “Tsk.” The waiter turned away.

  The Messhuggah grabbed him by the collar, forcing him to bend down. “And only my friends can call me lizard. Remember that, the next time I have to cross your pointless, existential journey.”

  “Let me go!”

  Kerry let go the grip on his neck, but not that of his eyes as the waiter went back to the counter.

  Ash laughed. “Are you desperately trying to get noticed?”

  “Yes. And no. It really bothers me hearing that word on the lips of a stranger.”

  “And what do you prefer, Messhuggah?” the white blood continued. Araya’s son was about to strike him, when he went on, “How are you planning to gather the information we need?”

  The lizard didn’t speak. The young waiter brought six foaming mugs on a tray and put them on the table, leaving in a hurry.

  “Roses sellers.” Kerry sipped his draug. He watched a beggar roaming the tables trying to sell his desert roses in a wicker basket. He persecuted couples, especially the ones who had a manifest need to be left alone.

  “Roses…sellers?” Ash said.

  “Don’t you ever wonder how these guys get by?”

  “Well, maybe they sell something once in a while.”

  “Have you ever seen somebody buy a rose from them?”

  “No.”

  “Yet they’re all quite plump and robust, no?”

  “Well. Yes.”

  “And if I told you that, in fact, roses sellers are a very sophisticated, articulated, and organized network of informers, would you believe me?”

  “It would be quite unlikely. And disturbing.”

  The Messhuggah whistled and waved to the vendor.

  Who came up. “Sell rose?”

  “Sit down with us, friend, do you feel like a mug of draug?”

  “No, thank you. Roses?”

  Kerry drew near and said in a whisper, “It’s raining from the bottom up in hell. The dwarves on the banks of the river noticed that, too.”

  The seller changed his facial expression, and his accent, too, “And do the Overgods really piss in the mugs, in Almagard?”

  “So it is written.”

  “So it is said. What do you need?”

  “Information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “Who can give us a ride, here?”

  “But he was just a rose-seller!” Ash said. Everyone turned to him.

  The informer took the draug of the white blood, sipped it, and turned back to Kerry. “It depends. To go where?”

  “Let’s say that my friend might want to circumvent that gigantic black phallus that some Hammer Guardians erected in this city.”

  The seller almost choked hearing those words. “Hey, man. Information like that is going to cost you.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know. These people are blind. Soon the money of the Guardians won’t be worth anything here, if the Fortress can’t free itself from the siege of the world that it has sworn to defend, or something like that.” He turned to Dagger. “But that sword on the back of your friend…I think if you put it on the scale we can find an agreement.”

  “My brother is not for sale.”

  “Your brother?”

  Ianka elbowed Dagger. “My friend’s been drinking a bit too much. You know the custom of the Guardians of the Sword, right? They always give a name to their weapons and he called his Brother. I say, how can he be such a dork?”

  “He said my brother.”

  Schizo stuck a knife in the table surface, turning it in his fingers. “And he also said that it’s not for sale.”

  “Then it will be hard to—”

  Kerry dropped a small leather bag on the table. “See if this is enough.”

  “What’s it?”

  “Magic dust. Pure.”

  This time, everyone turned to him.

  The seller blinked and reached out his hand. But Kerry stopped him. “First, the information.”

  “I’m trying to save your life, friend,” the seller answered. “These people are so addicted to any substance ever conceived by of your sick, lizard minds, that if they saw you going around with this arsenal, they wouldn’t think twice about killing you.”

  “They can try.”

  “Sahid. Ask for him.”

  “Where?”

  “In Vardo. It’s a commercial center, the most important distribution point in all the north-western Adramelech, not far from here. Follow one of the caravans of refugees on their way to its safe walls, it closes its gates at dark. You’ll find Sahid at his slave stand, the biggest one in the market square. He knows the way to avoid the black tower’s control.”

  “Refugees on their way to a market of…slaves?” Erin reasoned.

  The seller looked around. “Do you want the real information? I’ll give you the real information. Fate is often met on the path taken to avoid it, and these people are marching to their own misfortune. They believe they’ll fill their hands with juicy grapes, but they’ll find themselves biting the dust.”

  Kerry closed and opened the membranes of his eyes. “What is pushing them away from their homes?”

  “Orgor’s raiders, that disgusting pig. They appeared in the night while people s
lept, burned the villages of mud lost in the ruins, raped anything that breathed and then chained whole families to take them away. Came dawn, nothing was left. So now there are only refugees…”

  “…who, in Vardo, will find the same slavery they’re escaping from,” the Messhuggah concluded. He looked at a woman, perhaps just a little girl, trying to persuade the baby in her arms to sleep. “And what do they do with all these slaves, in Vardo?”

  “They pack them up and ship them to Asa Bay. Far, far east.”

  “Pack them up?”

  The informer continued, “Who doesn’t have a place in the city is cataloged with an accompanying paper telling what he’s done in his life. For those young and strong there’s always hope. But of all the old people arriving at the western gate, only a few get out of the eastern one. I stopped wondering why pigs are still so fat in Vardo.”

  “Stick to the point. This story is already full of macabre allusions.”

  “From Vardo on, the road becomes a whole slave caravan eastbound. A half of it passes through the tower; it’s the official traffic. You may try that way, but not dressed like this—in rags and unarmed like everyone else.”

  “Or?”

  “Or Sahid will give you a price to let you use his passage under the ruins, which is how he avoids the control of the Hammer Guardians. Vardo is an open territory. Say you’re in town to buy slaves and there will be no problems. Whatever happens, try not to look too rich, or too poor.”

  The Messhuggah stared. “Can we trust this Sahid?”

  “There’s no place in Adramelech he can’t get you to. Human territories, Tankars’ land—name the place and take a seat. For Ktisis…someone believes it’s him who brought the Nehamas in that cursed temple. That man fucks with Sep-Hul-Turah, for all I know.”

  “The Nehamas. In the cursed temple. You do know a lot of shit, huh?” Kerry pulled his hand from the bag of magic dust. “I like professionalism. Whenever I meet it in a mere human it restores my faith in this corrupt world. Listen, we’re looking for another individual…”

  “The Hermit,” Dagger intervened, before the Messhuggah’s gaze made him understand he had talked too much once again.

  “The Agent Orange,” the lizard specified. “Get that look off your face. You know whom I’m talking about, as I know I’m not the first one who comes looking for him.”

  “Yes, but if the Agent Orange gets caught by a simple seller like me, Ktisis, then it’s better he changes job.”

  “True enough. But perhaps he showed up in the guise of a woman, or an old man, or a boy of six years. Maybe you thought he was a Tankar in her prime.”

  “He could have been my mother, then.”

  “And maybe he really was, and filled your head with crap about how cute and pink you were when you were born. But, whatever he looked like, perhaps he was looking for the Hermit, too, and asked you some questions.”

  The seller shook his head.

  Ianka grabbed him by the collar.

  Kerry put a knife under the chin of Schizo. “Leave him. He tells the truth.”

  “How can you be so sur—?”

  “We lizards can smell bullshit from miles away, how many times must I repeat that?”

  “I can smell it, too, in here.”

  “Then wash yourself, Ian. This young friend has already helped us enough.”

  Ianka sheathed his dagger.

  “You can go,” the Messhuggah allowed, picking a desert rose from the basket of the seller. He observed the shiny crystals in the firelight. “They will come asking about us. You’ll say you saw nobody.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you trust him?” Erin growled.

  “Of course,” Kerry replied. “Because this good boy doesn’t want to have anything to do with the Agent Orange. He knows that we could be his friends, and if he wronged us, Orange may get a bit nervous. And he would find a breeze pulling the guts out of his mouth.”

  “Not again!”

  “What?”

  The seller looked down. “Once my father owned this place. He was…” He shook his head. “A story you don’t care about. My mother had to sell these walls to feed us.”

  “And then she sold you too.” The lizard shrugged. “We didn’t ask for the story of your life. All the misery of this world looks the same, and you have no idea how much we’ve already seen. Go. Shoo.”

  The informer took his leave with a shy smile. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.” He walked over to another table. “Sell rose?”

  “Must you always be such an asshole?” Ash snapped.

  “Did you really think that it would be so easy to find your brother?” Dag said. “It was better not to talk.”

  “And you, did you really think you can find the Hermit like that? Are you fucking crazy to speak so openly about him? You’re always running, even when you should just walk.”

  “These are Warren words!”

  “Of course they are, and he was damn right about it!” Kerry nodded to a table. Now the seller was sitting next to a bearded, old man, who gently stroked his cheek.

  “He’s selling himself too,” Ianka understood, getting serious. “Whores give me the nerves. I hope I don’t have to meet one ever again.”

  “Why?”

  “I have my reasons. Those who sell everything of themselves for food will have no scruples about selling you too.”

  “Ian?”

  “Shit! Have you ever been in the orphanage of that fucking Sanctuary? No! So don’t tell me to…to…” Schizo made a nervous gesture, before draining his mug.

  They remained silent for a long time.

  “What’s it going to be then?” Dagger said.

  “I’ll see if we can trust this Sahid,” Kerry said. “Meanwhile, the informer will say to the four winds he’s seen us—and that you are looking for the Hermit—but this could come to our advantage for reasons that one day I’ll explain. Ianka is right. Whores are good informers, and not only for those who pay them.” He turned his glass in his clawed fingers, before looking up to the stars.

  Dagger, too, found that the sky was nice that night, in the brief instant that preceded the moment in which he wondered why was he sitting comfortably at the table, watching the stars.

  Everything was thrown upside down when the second wave of energy stormed the tavern. Ash and Kerry ended under the debris. Dagger and Ianka instinctively protected Erin. Only shapeless limbs remained of the patrons sitting close to the door. On them She laid her white, bare foot, descending like a messenger of death. She advanced leaving bloody footprints on the bare wood. Her eyes were two spheres of alabaster in a face of blue and white light.

  “I want Olem!” she said in a voice that seemed to come from far away—a lament born in hell.

  “Missy?” Ianka recognized her. “Oh shit! Why don’t dead stay dead in this story?”

  Now I understand, Dagger thought. The Disciples brought her back to life to convince Olem to collaborate!

  All the survivors fled, apart from them.

  “I want Olem,” Missy repeated, dressed in torn rags. She levitated in the air, advancing with outstretched hands.

  Ianka and Dagger stood up. Erin, Ash, and Kerry were soon at their sides.

  “I think you’ve got something she wants,” the lizard said.

  Dag pulled Solitude from its sheath and pointed it in front of his eyes. “You’d have better stayed dead, bitch!”

  His unusual antagonist didn’t answer with her favorite line, this time. Her belly swelled until it exploded into long, green, and damp filaments. A slimy and long appendix came out of it, at the end of which was a blue, expressionless baby.

  All five stared in terror, watching him move forward in his infant, funeral flight. When he was in front of Dagger, the baby split himself in two offering a mouth of sharp fangs mounted on his necrotic diaphragm.

  “I want Olem,” Missy repeated through the belly of her son, before screaming in pain.

  Ianka had cleanly
severed the appendix holding the monstrous baby to her womb. “Go to hell, you and your mother!”

  The child fell to the ground. Everything stopped. The woman remained suspended in midair, her gaze on the small, blue body.

  The unborn son of Missy and Olem stood up on his own feet—his face dead and expressionless, his eyes and lips swollen. He stumbled to his mother, raising his hands to be picked up.

  She descended to the ground, picked up the baby and cuddled him. She didn’t spend time uttering soothing words of comfort. She simply repeated, “I want Olem!”

  Kerry took a step. “Climb over the wall behind you and run as fast as you can.”

  Ash tried to say, “And what will you—?”

  “NOW!” The lizard jumped against mother and child with a smoking sphere in his hand.

  “Oh, shit!” Ian dragged them away. “RUN!”

  Missy waited for the Messhuggah with an icy smile. The light became so strong that there was no more time to do anything but flee. Dag jumped over the wall. He injured his hands and knees, falling face down in the sand. The shock wave pushed him away. He rolled through the remains of an exploded world and looked at his limbs. Four: they are all there!

  A voice from somewhere, “Run!”

  “I…”

  “RUN!”

  “I don’t see anymore!” He was somehow back on his feet and opened his eyes. He ran, stumbled on the rocks and fell to the ground again.

  The light decreased enough to let him turn around. His sword was pushing him toward the tavern, forcing him to plant his feet into the soft terrain. For a moment, he thought he heard Olem’s voice, Missy, I miss you, sweet sister!

  The arch of the bridge finally collapsed, forcing The Light at the End of the World to darkness. The stones rolled over the broken, smoking remains of a shelter that would never again host a mortal or eternal being running away from his fate.

  “Kerry,” Ash whispered, standing up on his knees. “Kerry’s dead! What do we do now?”

  Erin put a hand on his shoulder, just like Ianka. Everyone somehow expected to see their friend coming out of the debris, or from behind them, saying, It was a breeze. I didn’t think it could be so easy to cheat you!