The Last God

by Michael McClung

  He stood up and stretched his back. “Let’s say you’re right, then. The Chagans are out to renew magic to bolster their emperor’s power, and in the process they might unleash devastation on the world. The question – the pertinent question at this point in time – is what in hells would you have me do about it?”

  I shrugged. “Beats me. I just thought you should know.”

  He stared at me. I’m not sure if it was a stare of disbelief, disgust, or fury. Maybe all three. Finally he shook his head and stalked off back to wherever he’d left his carriage.

  I’d told him the truth, if not the whole truth. I’d just have to settle for that. And so would he. I went to go collect my acolyte.

  I found Jessep unconscious under the table I’d set him at when I went to meet Morno. I was impressed by the number of empty wine bowls scattered across the table’s scarred surface, and by the size of the puddle of vomit Jessep’s head rested in.

  The serving girl was not impressed. Not even a little. Best twelve coppers I ever spent. I settled my bones on the bench that Jessep had vacated, and poked him with my cane to see if he was still breathing. A great ripping snore was his response.

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” I told the girl.

  THE ACTINIC BLUE LIGHT blinded me once more. Godhead’s Eye pierced me with its gaze, unblinking, merciless, vivisecting my soul. That sound, a thousand leviathans in chorus rang in my ears. The dust of ages choked me as I writhed on the stone floor, in a great pool of my own blood.

  The others were already dead. The ur-ghrol’s headless corpse still spasmed, inches away.

  I woke up sweating and twitching spastically. At least I hadn’t pissed myself this time. I’d had to blame that outcome on old age and infirmity more than once over the years. At least I’d never shat myself. Take your victories where you can, I say. I decided to avoid drinking any more of Tambor’s Best, all the same. Gorm on a stick, I hate that dream.

  Once the pounding of my heart, if not my head, had subsided, I worked my way up to standing and splashed water on my face at the basin. Then I crept out of my cell, even more slowly than usual, to get some porridge started. I very much doubted my stomach could handle anything more solid, or seasoned.

  “Hey, really old man,” Jessep called to me from the temple’s entry. The little bastard looked as fresh as a flower. Youth truly is wasted on the young.

  “What do you want, pimple mill?”

  “There’s a palanquin outside waiting for you, with some big, burly Chagan fellows to hoist it.”

  I hobbled towards him. “I’m surprised you know what a palanquin is.” They weren’t exactly common anywhere along the Dragonsea.

  “Oh, I know the meanings of lots of words,” he replied, and started ticking some off on his fingers. “Geriatric. Disgusting. Dirty old man.”

  “That last one’s more a phrase than a word,” I observed.

  “It’s just one word in Chagan. I looked it up.”

  “You’re getting annoying, boy.” I’d never realized what a prude Jessep was. Came from being brought up in a decent family, I supposed.

  His eyebrow rose. “If I’m getting annoying, consider the company I keep.”

  “This damned hip of mine always aches more just before a big rain. I’m thinking the roof needs tarring again. Another coat, just to be safe.”

  Jessep glared at me. But he shut up.

  I made it to the doorway and looked out. Sure enough, a gilt, silk-curtained palanquin was parked at the bottom of the temple’s steps, with a muscular bearer stationed at each corner. Or maybe it was just a sedan chair. I wasn’t clear on where the one ended and the other began. It had attracted a crowd. Half of them were just gawking. The other half, like as not, were trying to figure out how to steal the thing.

  As soon as I appeared, the curtains parted and a child popped out. Shaven-headed, it was hard to tell if it was a boy or a girl, but it looked to be about eight years old. It rushed up the stairs towards me, stone-faced. I was just about to raise my cane to fend it off when it stopped at the top step and went down on its knees, bowing, forehead to none-too-clean stone.

  “Jessep.”

  “Master?”

  “If this creature is up for a change in employer, your days are numbered.”

  “I’m not sure if you should be so lucky, or I should.”

  The creature in question, who turned out to be a girl, bore an invitation from Beloved of Biyu Chang Ying, for the Sage of Lucernis, Revered Lhiewyn. Said Sage was invited to morning tea at the Chagan embassy. If morning did not suit, the palanquin would wait, in case lunch time was more convenient. If lunch at the embassy proved inconvenient– you get the idea. I bowed to the inevitable, but not without a fight. I went to the mending table and wrote out a quick note:

  Priestess,

  I know you’re on holiday here in the west, but some of us have our regular work to do. I’ll be free for dinner. Hope your porters brought some water with them if you’re really going to keep them out there all day. Also, somebody’s sure to figure out how to pinch that golden eyesore if you leave it lying about long enough.

  L.

  I sanded the note and passed it to Jessep. “Give that to the dream servant out there. And ask if she’s willing to change employers while you’re at it.”

  He rolled his eyes and turned away to do my bidding. “If I’m very lucky, her mistress will consider a trade,” I heard him mutter.

  I’LL BE DAMNED IF THE palanquin didn’t stay parked outside the temple until dinnertime. Jessep kept me informed of the doings on the street. I went over the temple’s finances, and when that dismal task was finished, I started in on the supplies inventory.

  “Jessep, what are you doing with the red ink, drinking it?”

  “Of course not. I pour it over my naked flesh and dance under the light of the full moon, master.”

  “Gah, stop putting images like that in my mind.”

  “It was that Lemak text. All the short vowels have to be in red.”

  “I know that, thank you. Most scribes are satisfied just putting a red dot under each.”

  “Then most scribes are lazy.”

  I grunted. Say what you would about the lad, and I did every chance I got, but also say he took his profession seriously.

  While our carping at each other was diverting to a point, I couldn’t stop picking at the meeting that lay ahead of me. Chang Ying had obviously moved on to the second, or perhaps third phase of her plan. Whatever that plan might be. Could be anything, from an attempted seduction to a kidnapping followed by torture. The Chagan imperial court was a snake’s nest, and beneath all the formality and courtesy, every member of it played a game where the slightest misstep meant death.

  This priestess of Biyu, who was one of a very large pantheon of Chagan gods, demigods, saints and supernatural entities, was an imperial agent. Of that there was no doubt in my mind. Maybe she really was a priestess in addition to that, maybe not. The one didn’t preclude the other, not in the Chagan empire. There, religion was as involved in politics as anything else, and all legitimacy and moral authority flowed from the emperor’s throne. In Chagul, every priest and priestess served two masters – their deity and their emperor. Not in that order, either.

  As for Biyu, he’d appeared on the scene more than two thousand years previously, if memory served. He was old, but almost certainly not old enough to be the real thing. Chang Ying had said she’d actually met the fellow, which either made her a liar or a victim of a very persuasive hoax. That, more than anything else, was what had made me feel so melancholy the night of Morno’s banquet. Pointing out the idiocy of others has become a hobby of mine over the years, but that night, when the girl’d said she’d met her god in the flesh, I hadn’t had the heart to rub her nose in the patent absurdity. And then there was the fact that I’d have to explain why it was absurd, which, well, no. Talking about the origins of the gods was just about the last thing I was ever going to do, even behind giving
out my beef stew recipe.

  I might regret that lost opportunity of enlightening the girl, though, if I found myself chained to a wall come midnight, being tortured for the location of the Eye.

  With such cheery thoughts I whiled away the day, until it was time for dinner. Then I got cleaned up and dressed for whatever the young woman had in store. I didn’t know exactly what’d be appropriate attire for both a seduction and torture, so I settled for clean robes and called it done.

  Jessep gave me a baleful, disgusted stare as I made my way down the steps toward the palanquin, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

  I DISCOVERED THAT PALANQUINS, or sedan chairs, made me seasick. Probably both. Which is funny, because actual ships never had. Other than that, I couldn’t tell you much about the trip, because I kept the curtains closed, just in case. The last thing I needed was people on the street seeing me puking up my guts. I managed to make it the whole trip without doing so, but it was a near thing. By the time we made it to the Chagan embassy, which turned out to be a building loaned to them by Morno adjacent to the governor’s manse, I was ready for some other, more conventional torture. So long as it was on solid ground.

  Chang Ying herself appeared at the palanquin to help me out of it, which she did after a deep bow.

  “I hope the revered’s journey was pleasant.”

  “Let’s just say I’ll be walking back, and damn the leg.”

  She laughed, obviously thinking I was joking, and put her arm through mine to escort me inside.

  The Chagans had transformed the interior of the building. Silk hangings, painted screens, potted plants, lanterns and strange scents combined to make an assault on my senses. Incredibly delicate, incredibly rare and expensive pottery was placed here and there, almost carelessly. If you squinted, you could almost imagine you were somewhere far to the east of the Dragonsback range, instead of a few hundred feet from the smelly old River Ose.

  The priestess took me further inside, down silent corridors devoid of other people. The shaven-headed little girl who was her emissary trailed behind us at a respectful distance. Eventually we came to a door, which opened onto what were obviously Chang Ying’s private rooms. Chang Ying bowed once more and gestured for me to enter.

  Inside was lavish extravagance. Also food. I approved of the second.

  She’d laid out a banquet on a very low table. Dozens of dishes were arranged there, big and small. Around the table were dozens of cushions.

  “Are you expecting me to sit on the floor, priestess? Because that’s going to be difficult with this leg of mine.”

  “We also have elderly and infirm people in Chagul, Sage Lhiewyn, and know how to accommodate them.”

  “That makes me feel better and worse, all at the same time.”

  “An honored guest who cannot sit at the table will be made comfortable, and served accordingly. Allow me to help you sit, and we will arrange everything to your satisfaction.” She nodded to her servant, and between them they got me propped up on pillows in such a way that I wasn’t in agony. Then they started in on the food, the girl bringing dishes to Chang Ying, who then offered them to me with brief descriptions. I recognized the grapes. I made it through some clear soup and a braised pork dish before I lost patience.

  “Priestess, this is all very nice. Extremely flattering and such. I know plenty of men who’d fantasize about being waited on hand and foot in such a way.”

  She raised a delicate eyebrow. “But...?”

  “But I’m not one of them.”

  She passed the dish she was holding back to the girl, who took it and disappeared.

  “What kind of a man are you, then, Sage Lhiewyn?” she asked with a small smile and a twinkle in her eye.

  “The kind that prefers a possibly unpleasant truth to an exotically scented lie.”

  “The revered is wise, then, which I already knew.”

  “There’s something more to this. Why don’t you just spit it out, instead of being quite so Chagan?”

  “But I am Chagan.”

  “Pretend you’re Lucernan for a day. You’ve studied us ‘unsettled’ for long enough; consider it a test of your cultural knowledge. Just tell me what it is you want from me.”

  “Very well, Sage Lhiewyn. With great difficulty and onerous expense, two years ago I was able to track down and purchase a copy of your expedition notes to Dat Chet, to the southern continent. Well, a single journal, to be precise. It was obvious from the contents that it was neither the first nor the last.”

  There it is, I thought. The torturers are probably behind that curtain. I put on my best puzzled face.

  “What the hells would you want with something like that?”

  “I follow Biyu’s will. I do not question it.”

  “That’s admirable. It’s almost certainly fake, though. The journal I mean, not your god’s will. That, I wouldn’t presume to judge.”

  “Why do you believe the journal I acquired isn’t yours?”

  “Because they were all lost decades ago. Sorry about that.”

  “Lost?”

  “All right, burned. I pitched them into a fire to keep any idiots from following in my footsteps. I’m fairly certain I didn’t miss any, so whatever you bought, it’s a forgery, most like.”

  “I, too, thought as much at first. After all, it dates from more than a hundred and fifty years ago. And while you are certainly venerable, that would make you more than double the age you appear to be.”

  Oh, shit.

  “Getting old is horrid. Being old for that long would just be unimaginable cruelty.”

  “I defer to your greater experience in matters of age. In any case, I kept the journal, having spent so very much on it. And when your note arrived this morning, I thought I might compare the handwriting, to see how well the forger had done his work.” Here she produced my old, long-lost journal, leather cover cracked, pages yellowed and salt-stained, ink faded. I’d thought it lost overboard. How it had survived really was a mystery to me.

  Next to it she lay the note I had penned her just hours before.

  “A more than passing resemblance, would you not say?”

  “Well, I’m no expert, but they certainly look similar. I don’t understand why you’re so interested in it, or in that shithole to begin with.”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “What more is there to say? The expedition sailed in 797, Lucernan reckoning. Fifty-nine years ago. Sixty next month, now that I think on it. It’s a matter of record. Why anyone would go to the trouble of forging an entire journal of mine, down to copying my bad penmanship, only to get the date wrong by a century, is beyond me. People do bizarre, idiotic things as a matter of course, and I stopped trying to figure out the whys decades ago.”

  She stared at me for a long time. I knew that trick. Most people will get uncomfortable with long silences, and are practically compelled to fill them with blather. I filled my mouth with grapes instead.

  “I think it would be easy for Lagna’s high priest to forge the public records of an expedition that no-one remembers or considers important. I think it makes much greater sense than someone else forging a diary that very few know of, and even fewer care about.”

  I had no good response to that. She wasn’t wrong, after all. I just shook my head.

  “What did you find in the ruins, Venerable Lhiewyn?” she finally asked.

  “Ghrol. Broken crockery. Pain.”

  “You did not find gods?”

  I laughed. “Is that what you’re looking for? I thought you already had one.”

  “I look for knowledge, as my god bids me. You are the priest of the god of knowledge, and you have first-hand knowledge of Dat Chet. I do not understand why you of all people would withhold knowledge when it is asked for.”

  “Because some things aren’t worth knowing, and some other things are too dangerous to know.” I grunted and shifted my leg. “The Deadlands don’t hold anything for you, or your god. All you need to kn
ow is that there’s nothing there anymore worth exploring, for anyone other than the suicidal. And there are many less inconvenient ways to top yourself than mounting an expedition to that hell hole.”

  “Lagna withheld knowledge from none.”

  “And look where it got him.”

  “Yes. Your god is dead, dear Lhiewyn. Mine is very much alive, and He bids me learn more of Dat Chet.”

  “You know, gods don’t ever really die,” I said, hoping to change the subject. “They just...”

  “They just what?” she asked, refilling my wine glass.

  “They just change state.”

  “Forgive me for saying it, but yours ‘changed state’ to a headless corpse, and all because of a dare from a demon lord.”

  “Yes, well, He wasn’t the god of wisdom, to be sure. But you’re making my point for me now.”

  She rose from her cushion, and began to undress. I put down my wine.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Persuading you to tell me what you know of Dat Chet.” She smiled mischievously. “Playing the part of a demon lord to your Lagna. But I promise it will end more pleasurably for you than it did for him.”

  Layers of silk fell to the floor, exposing young, firm, graceful flesh. Her waist was tattooed, a sinuous vine of Chagan characters that appeared to be, from what I could tell at a quick glance at the moving canvas of her body, a prayer to her deity.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Do you really think waving a pair of tits at me is going to get me to change my mind?”

  “I was hoping so, yes. They aren’t terribly large, but I think you’ll agree that they are well formed.” She cupped them in her hands and looked down at them, as if considering.

  She expected me to be all eyes on her rosy nipples. All right, I admit I noticed them. But I noticed something else as well amongst all the intricacies of her tattoo, and it explained quite a lot.