God of Broken Things

Chapter 23

They made me wait in an antechamber of the Hall of Ancestors until night had fallen and the broken moon was directly over Kil Noth. Elunnai’s pale light bathed the hold’s sacred standing stones atop the mountain that reared above it, granting power to their spirits, or so these heathens believed. I sat on a bench with only a single small candle for company, my eyes closed, using my Gift to follow their stray thoughts and flickers of emotion.

The robed druí and the sky-clad painted warriors waited in silence atop the snowy peak until the first of Elunnai’s tears fell streaking and sparking across the sky. They gathered ice and snow in baskets of bone and sinew made from their own ancestors before beginning their descent back into the hold. Their faith was a silvery light in my mind, burning and unshakable as the procession travelled secret paths back down the mountain and wound down the spiral staircase into the Hall of Ancestors.

I heaved myself to my feet, groaning with pain as I faced the doorway. They would see no more weakness from me. The stone door ground back to reveal a blaze of torchlight that stung my eyes.

“Come,” Angharad said, body naked, black and blue tattoos dancing across her pale skin. Her eyes were bound with a strip of black cloth sewn with stylised eyes, but she knew the way with a familiarly bred from centuries of ritual and habit.

The procession shuffled to the end of the hall where two doors awaited us. To the left was the black pyramidal chamber of the Eldest of the ogarim, but this time my grandmother placed her hand on the polished silver circle to the right. The doorway slid back to reveal the holiest site of Kil Noth, the place where they communed with their great spirits.

I had been in this sanctified place only once before, on the horrendous night my grandmother tried to crack my chest open and carve symbols into my heart with her fingernails. Until the Magash Mora, it had been my worst nightmare, forcing me awake and drenched in sweat, pawing at phantom chest pains. Now, it didn’t make me terrified, it made me angry. I had sworn I would never set foot in Kil Noth ever again unless it was to cut out the bitch’s eyes.

I was in no condition to put up much of a physical fight if my magic proved insufficient, and that had already failed in the face of Abrax-Masud’s overpowering might. I was weak and broken and needed both healing and more power if I was to face the Scarrabus queen again and hope to survive. To go in unprepared would be suicide, and if I didn’t go through this damnable ritual all over again everything was at risk. My grandmother had won, but then she usually did. Those amethyst eyes of hers allowed her to see further than anything human ever could.

Angharad gloated, knowing exactly what was going through my mind, that I had no other choice but to do as she demanded. My young mother had been right to run from this evil creature that shared our blood. That raised her. Tortured her. It was no wonder that she had grown up hearing strange voices and seeing things that were not there. It was a gods-given miracle she hadn’t ended up a raving madwoman.

Of course, once I had all the health and power Angharad promised me, I wouldn’t need her any more. The thought of gutting her kept my mood buoyant. I expected her beloved spirit would complain when I did, but I didn’t give a rat’s arse what it wanted.

The natural cavern was vast, lit by roaring braziers and smouldering bowls of incense arranged in a wide triangle around an altar of black stone. Every inch of space was carved with depictions of the great spirits of the Clanholds. There were many that I, not being native, could not identify, but the far wall bore a depiction of a woman holding sheaves of grain – Summer – holding court over the other spirits of growth and life. On the right among many different warrior spirits, was the Skathack, the lady of swords herself with outstretched crow’s wings made of blades. On the left were the nameless great spirits of the animals, with the horned head of cattle in place of prominence. On one side of the ceiling was Sun and its attendant spirits of rain, wind and lightning, and on the other, Elunnai of the broken moon, her tears falling across cracks and crevices towards the black stone slab in a place of honour in the centre of the cavern. That altar was dedicated to the Queen of Winter and made of the same slick organic-looking stone that comprised the room of the Eldest, and also the gods’ towers back in Setharis. It was carved all over with stone icicles and frost patterns so intricate it almost appeared to be a chunk of black ice. Angharad had placed a white wolf’s pelt across the top, still fresh and bloody from the skinning.

The Eldest of the ogarim was already here, sitting in a timeworn hollow in the shadows. Its three dark eyes reflected the dancing orange and yellow light cast by the braziers as Angharad led me into the room and closed the door behind us.

“Disrobe,” she commanded.

I fumbled at my coat and tunic, both hands nigh-useless.

She sighed, exasperated and impatient, and then assisted me none-too-gently to remove my clothing. My scarred and bony body was not a pretty sight but neither she nor the ogarim seemed to care. To one I was a tool to be used, and to the other all humans were broken and half-formed creatures that evoked feelings of pity.

The ogarim studied my right hand, and the hard blackness that was now rising past the elbow. Its white fur stirred though there was no wind in this isolated underground chamber. I felt its mind reach out towards my hand and then recoil a moment before it touched, wary of whatever dwelt within.

Angharad directed me to stand before the altar and offered me a silver cup retrieved from a niche underneath.

“Not going to fuck it up again are you?” I asked, eyeing the half-frozen dark liquid it contained.

She did not deign to answer my taunt and instead rammed the cup against my lips. After a moment’s hesitation I managed to clumsily take it in both hands and drank deep. The thick slush seared a trail down my throat to numb my belly. Whatever was in her alchemic elixir, it tasted like ice and blood mixed together – sharp and metallic but not entirely unpleasant. I suspected this was what pumped through the veins of the callous creature.

She reached for the cup again but I tossed it aside to bounce and clatter across the floor until it came to rest by a pair of huge furry feet. The Eldest tilted its head, studying me with its three eyes in both the physical and magical, not entirely comprehending my ire. They were strangely calm and uncomplicated creatures.

She opened her mouth to rebuke me but I got there first: “Just get on with it. I don’t have time for pointless ritual and pathetic prayer.”

Her eyes blazed with fury as she shoved me onto the altar and pressed my wounded back down hard onto the wolf pelt. The coarse fur prickled my bare skin like little knives but any pain felt distant and woolly as the world began to stretch and spin around me. Angharad’s crystal eyes swirled and pulsed with purple light. Pungent wisps of blue smoke rose from the incense to dance across the room and caress us, the scents changing with every breath. Half-heard whispers filled the room, almost on the edge of understanding.

She took a small flint knife to her fingertip, slitting it open with a deft cut. The blood welled up and she began to draw runes in arcane patterns across my chest. This time I paid very, very careful attention to every single thing she was doing. Some of those runes I had seen before, used by a halrúna blood sorcerer to summon a daemon during the attack on Setharis.

My heartbeat sped up until it thudded in my chest. I had been here at my grandmother’s mercy once before, a naive lamb on the butcher’s table, and had escaped her rage with only horrific gushing wounds down my face and neck. If I failed to willingly form a pact with the Queen of Winter then I doubted I would be so lucky a second time.

“Close your eyes,” she demanded. I did, and she ran bloody fingers from my forehead down across my eyes, whispering the many names of the Queen of Winter as she went.

“My lover and my beloved queen,” she said, her voice dripping with reverence. It was strange to hear her of all people talk of love in such a voice. “Angharad o’ Kil Noth calls ye. Come to this ancient holdfast where the Shroud is thin as paper and the Far Realms but a stone’s throw away. Come, Beirraa, great Queen o’ Winter! Come to Kil Noth. There is one here who has drank o’ your essence. There is one here who offers his essence to ye.” She repeated it a dozen times before I felt a vast presence squeeze into the room.

I shivered as the temperature plummeted. Colours flickered and danced at the edge of my vision, red and blue bleeding in, faster, faster, spiralling in towards a black centre. My flesh refused to obey me, as if asleep.

She placed a hand over my heart, sharpened nails pressing in to draw beads of blood. Her touch was cold as death, cold as the heart of winter.

“Open yourself to the magic,” she ordered. “Relax and wait for her touch. Follow the prepared path into the heart o’ her realm o’ ice and snow. Be at peace, for your journey will be over soon. The Queen o’ Winter calls ye, Edrin Walker.”

The moment I flung my Gift wide her hand pressed down and the runes on my chest began to burn. “I open the ways between realms!”

Ice filled my heart and stabbed into my mind. “Go to her – I set ye free of this realm o’ flesh and blood and bone!”

I plunged into absolute darkness, screaming and spinning for an eternity.

Light exploded all around.

All was now as it had been once before. There was no prepared path and no gentle descent into the Queen of Winter’s realm. Instead I tumbled into a maelstrom of magic and madness. Unnatural worlds and strange skies flickered and faded all around me. Realms without number clamoured to claim the spiritual traveller in their midst, hot and moist winds billowing around me, warring with frigid arctic gusts. Strange air no human could breathe seared and scalded and boiled in my lungs. For a moment I felt icy fingers wrap around my ankle – but then my tainted right hand spasmed and reached out through the void to seize a flickering red light, one small realm among the many.

My body convulsed as if I’d touched lightning, causing the taint of black iron to writhe up to engulf my whole arm. The hand latched onto something solid and yanked me free from that endless fall, flinging me into a realm that was not my own. I fell burning and screaming until I hit land…