The Broken God

by Gareth Hanrahan

  Her skin stings from where Vorz stole her blood. Her back aches from her contorted position inside the cask. How long should she wait? Is this the sort of escape attempt she might have devised herself – badly thought through and desperate, right Spar? – or is there a plan? Is Myri out there, or has she been handed off to some accomplice? Should she call out? She’s literally in the dark about what to do next.

  Hell, for all she knows there’s no one out there – maybe the mule ran off while still hitched, and she’s technically its prisoner. From Dol Martaine to Twelve Suns Bleeding to the fucking Ghierdana to Myri, and now a mule – her captors are getting worse. She giggles, and realises that there isn’t much air in the oven-hot casket, so waiting for the right moment might not be an option.

  Still, she waits. After all, every minute spent in the cask gets her further away from the camp.

  Cari’s had too much experience with gods to pray to them, but still she hopes that Adro’s still alive. The dragon promised to send a healer, and while she knows that the promise of a dragon means nothing, it’s all she can offer.

  She rubs the needle wounds, wondering what Vorz was doing to her. Something to do with her sainthood – Professor Ongent did the same experiment with a skull, back when she had no idea what she was. Sometimes, Cari wishes she could find some alchemist or sorcerer she could really trust, get some answers.

  The confinement and darkness of the cask are familiar to her on some deep, atavistic level, familiar to some part of her she prefers to flee from. Fuck. The damn thing is like a bell, isn’t it? She’s inside a bell-shaped steel vessel. Or maybe it’s the resemblance to an alchemical jar. Jermas Thay made her, bred her from his son’s seed and a Raveller – a shapeshifting horror from the underworld, a living sacrificial knife for the Black Iron Gods. Ravellers can steal human forms, human faces, but they’re not human. Malign emanations, the hunger of the gods oozing into the material world.

  Cari doesn’t know if she was even born. Did the Raveller keep its shape long enough to give birth to her, dissolving back into its amorphous slimy form even as she came into the world? Or did Jermas grow her in a jar like this one? When she broke into the Alchemists’ Quarter back in Guerdon, she saw other embryos growing in tanks. Was she cultivated the same way?

  Is she even really human? Is her soul her own, or is she an emanation, too, a little tendril of god-stuff in the physical plane? At least she’s replaced the Black Iron God with something better. Human or not, mortal or not, at least she’s got Spar.

  From outside, there’s a thump, and the cart slows. Swerves slightly in the manner of a mule halting at the roadside verge for a snack, then stops.

  It’s as right a moment as she’s going to get – and Cari feels that there’s nothing out there that can be as bad as spending any more time with her own thoughts in the dark. Cari presses her fingers to the lid and turns it as best she can. It moves a finger’s breadth, but it moves. She twists it over and over, pain shooting through her wrists, until finally it pops off and she can crawl out into the glare of the sun.

  The mule is munching contentedly on some thorny plant that sprouts in unlikely profusion along the side of the road. Two more casks of yliaster on the wagon. And behind her, lying face down in the dust, a crumpled human figure wearing a hooded cloak.

  It’s Myri.

  Cari considers leaving the sorceress to die in the dirt. Even considers speeding her along. The woman served Heinreil back in Guerdon, serves the Ghierdana here. She’s an enemy – but she got Cari out of that lab, and clearly has some plan in mind. So, fuck it, Myri gets to live a little longer.

  The woman is disturbingly light, like she’s burned herself hollow. Unconscious, from some combination of the scorching heat and whatever sorcery she’s performed. Something big, from the state of her. Soot cakes Myri’s mouth and nose, and bloodless wounds have opened on her wrists. Cari looks around for some shelter, spots signs of a landslide, a patch of green on the mountain, and then realises she’s been here before. Up the slope is that little shrine to the goddess of the mountain. Also the Goddess of Kicking the Shit out of Cari – but she’s heard the Ghierdana attacked the goddess, disrupted her. They can’t permanently kill her, but it takes time for a deity to re-form. Maybe the shrine is safe – and it’s probably not the sort of place anyone else would willingly go.

  She huffs up the mountain, Myri thrown over her shoulder like an evil carpet. Approaching the small shrine does bring on the same prickly tension feeling as before, but it’s much weaker this time. She passes the marble statue of Usharet that adorns the front of the shrine, dumps the unconscious sorceress in the shade and goes around the back. There’s a small room there, entered through a doorless archway. She freezes for an instant, thinking she glimpses someone sprawled in front of the altar, but when her eyes adjust to the shadowed room, it’s just a thorn bush sprouting from a crack between the tiles that just happens to resemble a hunched woman, thorn branches growing across the altar like a drowning swimmer clinging to driftwood.

  The walls are decorated with mosaic tiles soiled with dust that’s blown in, and there are little alcoves on either side where attendant priests must once have stayed. And – miraculously – there’s a basin of fresh water, filled by a spring that trickles from one wall. No food, but Cari ate yesterday, so she’s doing well by the standards of this dying rock.

  Cari drags Myri into one of the alcoves and sits down on the floor opposite.

  That thorn bush really looks like a person, the more she stares at it. She can make out the curve of a spine, the suggestion of legs in that tangle of roots, even a hint of a face.

  “She’s coming back.” Myri speaks through cracked lips, a throaty whisper.

  “Figured that.”

  “Don’t say her name.”

  “I know!” snaps Cari.

  Myri gestures weakly towards the basin. Cari scoops up some water in her palm and trickles it into the sorceress’s mouth.

  “Where’s… the food?”

  “There isn’t any.”

  “Idiot. In other casks! I brought supplies. Food, medication, money.”

  “Oh. Shit. They’re down the hill. I thought they were just full of yliaster.”

  “There are waterproof sacks floating in the brine.”

  Cari hurries out of the shrine, looks down the slope at the distant ribbon of the empty road. There’s no sign of the mule, or the cart. She doesn’t know if the animal wandered off, or if pursuers from the refinery got it. Or, hell, if the dragon swooped out of the blue sky and grabbed it.

  “The cart’s gone.”

  Myri taps her head gently against the tiled wall. “Idiot.” Her fingers twitch spasmodically over the hollow of her elbow. An injection site for her suit’s vitalising fluids. “Don’t go outside again. Until nightfall. The dragon will be searching.”

  “So,” says Cari, “are you fucked without that stuff? You gonna die?”

  “No. But it’ll hurt.”

  “I’m sort of fine with that.” Cari grabbed a scalpel as she fled the lab, and she produces it now. “Why’d you pull me out of there?” she demands.

  “Don’t.” Purple light crackles around Myri’s fingers, she says, looking at the scalpel. The whites of her eyes aren’t white; they’re mottled brown, a mass of scars. “Khebesh, of course. They wouldn’t let me back in.”

  “Back?” echoes Cari. “You’ve been there before.”

  “Trained there.” The lightning snakes around her hand again. “They won’t let you in, either. Not unless you’ve got some key, something to trade. What is it?”

  “A book. There was this sorceress in Guerdon, Doctor Ramegos. She died in the invasion.”

  Myri nods. “She was working on the god-bombs. Her grimoire would be enough to open the gates. So, where’s the book? It wasn’t on the Rose.”

  “Captain Hawse hid it. I think I know where.”

  “Show me,” orders Myri.

  “Fuck off.”

&n
bsp; “I—”

  “And don’t bother fucking threatening me.” Cari puts on a mocking imitation of Myri’s voice echoing within her helmet. “‘I shall blast you with dread sorcery.’ You want to kill me, the Ghierdana want to kill me, the Ishmerians want to kill me. Heinreil wanted to kill me, back in Guerdon, and you saw this thorn bitch wanted to kill me,” she adds, kicking at the Usharet-tree.

  Myri rolls her scarred eyes. “Maybe you should stop provoking… well, everyone. And I was about to say, I have a ship. Well, a sailing boat, but it’ll reach the mainland.”

  “You’ve got a sailing boat. They’ve got a fucking dragon.”

  “He’ll leave for Ulbishe soon. We just need to stay hidden until he does.” Myri coughs. “Vorz got what he wanted from you.”

  Cari rubs her own wounds. “They took my blood. Why?”

  “You’re an interesting specimen. A synthetic saint. Breeding saints is commonplace – drooling sacred idiots, inbred to be pleasing to Culden or whoever. But you were made for a singular purpose.” Myri licks her lips, and bits of dead skin flake off. “A freak.”

  “You’re one to fucking talk.”

  “This?” Myri holds up her scorched hand, as if seeing it for the first time. “I brought this on myself. I chose this, and I live with my choice.” She coughs again. “And, yes, if I don’t get to Khebesh, I’ll die with my choice. But it will be my choice.”

  “They can cure you in Khebesh?”

  “They can help me.”

  “That’s why I’m going there. To find help for Spar.”

  Myri laughs, coughs, laughs again. “Who told you the Khebeshi could help with that?”

  Cari’s cheeks redden. “Eladora Duttin. My cousin. Was she wrong?”

  “Wrong? Not necessarily. The Khebeshi are the greatest sorcerers in the world. But what you did, your Gutter Miracle – that wasn’t sorcery. Facilitated by sorcery, maybe, but it was a botched miracle.” Myri shrugs. “Maybe if you had a few dozen archaeotheologists studying it for months, they could begin to reconstruct the aetheric currents. But from what I understand, the New City wasn’t exactly a conducive environment for research while you were… what was it, the Saint of Knives?”

  Cari sits back. Certainly, she drove away anyone that stank of sorcery when she was the Saint of Knives – she and Spar feared they might discover the secret vault under the New City that contained the remaining Black Iron bells, the unfinished god-bombs. And Eladora told her, once: “there are theological engineers trying to calculate how much divine power you disposed of.”

  Was Eladora lying to her, when she told Cari to go to Khebesh? Once, Cari would have found the idea absurd – her cousin was dully honest when they were children. But Eladora’s involved in politics now, in international affairs and intrigues. Even if she wasn’t lying, it’s certainly possible that Eladora had some ulterior motive for getting Cari out of Guerdon for a long time.

  But there has to be some truth in Eladora’s words, too. The fucking book is too valuable for her to just give it away.

  “I’ll get the book,” mutters Cari, “you get your boat.”

  “Like hell. We’ll go together. I’m not letting you out of my sight.” Myri groans as she reaches for the water. “And I’ll need to lean on you to walk, anyway.”

  Myri does let Cari out of her sight, though, to sleep. The sorceress draws a warding rune on her side of the shrine first, barring Cari from entering her little alcove.

  Myri’s woken by the sound of Cari slicing open waterproof sacks with a scalpel and spilling the contents across the yliaster-slick floor. Cari sorts through the junk, scooping up most of the vials of Myri’s drugs and stuffing them back into one of the sacks. Leverage.

  “How?”

  “Found the mule. Some kids found it. I took it back.” Cari holds up one large black box. “I found this, too. This is the thing Vorz was using, back in the lab. Some sort of aethergraph?”

  “An advanced model. I hadn’t seen anything like it before. It might be useful.”

  Cari grunts. The aethergraphs she saw back in Guerdon communicated through fat wires that the alchemists planted across the city like choking vines. This one works without wires, presumably transmitting messages through the invisible aether, the realm of the gods.

  Another synthetic saint, sort of.

  “Can they track us through this?”

  “I don’t think so. Certainly not when it’s switched off.”

  “Can I talk to Guerdon with this?”

  “Perhaps. Vorz was able to talk to someone in Guerdon.”

  Into the sack it goes. Myri paws through the other bags.

  “Hey, most of the food is missing. And my money. And—”

  Cari shrugs. “Had to leave the kids something.”

  Bolstered by the contents of one of the vials, Myri’s able to walk the next morning. The sorceress knows the routes the Eshdana take, and they’re able to cross much of the island without being seen. Cari feels a sharp pang of guilt as they pass into the shadow of the peak – she wonders if Adro lived through the night, if Ren’s still waiting for her to return with help. To bring hope in a handful of chits.

  She could have kept going, last night. Returned to the camp under cover of darkness. Maybe, maybe she could break in. Cut a few throats. Find Adro and Ren – and then what? Their chances of escaping would be minimal, and even if they made it out of the camp, they’d still be stuck on Ilbarin, hunted by the Ghierdana. It comes down to power, doesn’t it? She doesn’t have the strength to drive the Ghierdana off this island, to bring them down or to carry her friends to safety. Better to run, to hide, to conserve what she has, instead of dying beside them in a futile gesture.

  By the time they reach the little cove west of Ushket, Cari’s almost convinced herself she’s doing the right thing. Can’t afford guilt, she tells herself. Have to move fast now.

  “Cove” isn’t the right word – before the war, this would have been a stony cleft high up on the north-western face of the Rock. Now, the floodwaters break against cliffs that in a rational world should be hundreds of feet above sea level. Cari wonders if Myri can see the churning of the miracle that piles the waters up on Ilbarin.

  Myri’s boat is a small one, drawn up on a low shelf of rock. The tide’s rising towards it – at high tide, Cari estimates she’ll be able to refloat the boat on her own, with only a little sorcerous help.

  “Does she have a name?” asks Cari.

  “Tymneas.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A sorcerer of Khebesh. A renegade, they called him. An inspiration of mine.” Myri struggles to lift the remainder of their scanty supplies on board. “Khebeshi masters don’t usually leave the city except on matters of great importance. The outside world is considered perilous – and corrupting. They hide behind the Ghost Walls.”

  Cari hurries over, grabs the sacks off Myri, hoists them on board. “I’ve heard that name before. What are the Ghost Walls?”

  “A mystery only for the initiated,” mutters Myri, with a sarcastic edge. “That’s what they told me.” She lowers herself painfully on to a flattish rock, takes a sip of water, another vial of her painkilling drug. “What do you know about sorcery?”

  Cari shrugs. “Chant words, wiggle fingers, shit explodes. Oh, and it fucks you up. Sorcerers I’ve known include bloody Jermas Thay himself, the treacherous bastard who killed Spar, a bunch of fuckers I knifed back home. Oh, and you. On the whole, I’ll pass.”

  “So, you know nothing.” Myri snorts. “I suppose that’s to be expected.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You understand what you are, don’t you?” Myri’s gaze is uncomfortably intense.

  “What?”

  “Back in Guerdon, I studied you. It was Heinreil who spotted you, but I helped him put the pieces together.” She smiles. “Vorz had the right idea. I would love to dissect you. Unravel you, and find out how you were created. You were made as a tool, Carillon Thay. You never needed to under
stand the supernatural any more than my boat needs to understand how to navigate, how winds and currents work. You were made to be used. You need guidance, not comprehension. A hand on the tiller. To act, not to know. You’ll note that all those who sought to make use of you were sorcerers.”

  Eladora too, thinks Cari, a spike of doubt stabbing her in the stomach. She hides it with anger. “I honestly don’t fucking know if you’re trying to teach me or insult me.”

  “I’ll try teaching. Everything exists on two planes. The physical, and the spiritual – or, as sorcerers prefer to call it, the aetheric. The gods exist primarily on the aetheric plane; mortals, primarily, on the physical. But the two worlds are interconnected.”

  “Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “It goes both ways. Mortal thoughts shape and agitate the aether, pushing it in different directions. Over a long, long time, those eddy currents become self-perpetuating and—”

  “That’s all a god is, right?” Cari does know something about this. “A self-perpetuating structure.”

  “From one perspective – yes. Gods are structures in the aether, given motion by the action of human souls. And freshly dead souls are most potent of all, for they are free of mortal entanglements. Hence the divine hunger for sacrifices and funeral rites, and the preponderance of psychopomps.”

  “Preponderance of psychopomps,” echoes Cari. “Gods below, if you don’t die on the way, this is going to be a hellish journey. Go on, what does all this have to do with the Ghost Walls?”

  “The aetheric plane is perilous. It’s elemental chaos, churning with gods and demons. Worse, it’s timeless – effects ripple and echo there back and forth in time, from a mortal perspective. Now, when a sorcerer casts a spell—” Myri conjures a werelight, snuffs it out, “I’m reaching into the aether with my mind, and agitating it just so as to create a physical effect. To do so, I must expose myself to the currents and storms of the aetheric plane – and, often, endure cross-currents and backwash. And, because I am human and thus a creature of the material realm, such backwash takes on material form. Material consequences.” With a hideous grin, Myri wipes away a little blood from her lips and flicks it into the surf. It glimmers for a moment before a wave washes it away.