God of Broken Things

Chapter 38

The Clanholds on a sunny spring day was quite a sight. The endless white snow-bound valleys and frozen streams had given away to lush grass and budding trees. Sheep dotted every hillside and long-horned cattle with shaggy red hair had been put out to pasture, barely even noticing a horse and its steel-masked rider winding through the valley. It was serene without hordes of screaming daemons and bloodthirsty warriors trying to hack your head off. Hawks circled lazily overhead and small blackbirds flitted through trees and bushes, singing their hearts out. I was in no great hurry.

Banks of vibrant yellow blooming gorse bushes lined the path on either side, prickly and fragrant. A riot of small white flowers, delicate as single drops of snow, bloomed outside the squat, drab farmhouses and atop picturesque rises.

As the light began to fade I came to the only inn for leagues around, two storeys of grey stone and lichen. An old man was sat outside weaving a length of rope, smoke rising from a clay pipe jutting from cracked lips. He looked up, shading his eyes against the sunset as I approached and dismounted. “Lad!” he shouted. “A customer!” A small, surly boy scurried out to take the reins and led my mount to a small stable around the back.

I looked at the valley ahead, the route growing increasingly steep. “I need a private room and a hot meal.” The mask was itching and my legs were burning, the skin cracked and weeping from all the riding.

The old man leaned forward, took out his pipe and cocked his head, looking me up and down. “Room and meal? Nae bother, but you don’t wanna be headin’ up those parts. There’s tell of monsters lairing in the hills now. O’course you have a big sword strapped to yer mount. Any good?”

I shrugged. “There will not be monsters for long.” I collected my pack and sword from the stables and was shown to my private room. After undressing to treat my wounds and slathering a mixture of herbs and grease across burning, itchy scars, I replaced my mask and clothing and went back out to sit at a table by the hearth in the common room. A young girl brought me a cup of ale and a wooden platter of bread, cheese and a bowl of mutton stew. She shied away from me, afraid of the mask.

The old man was not so bothered, quite the reverse. “Wounded in the war were ye? Didn’t mean no offense. You folks fought a’side our young’uns against the Skallgrim and their monstrous beasts is all.”

I nodded. His expression slumped into gratitude. “Did you know ’im? The tyrant as was called Walker?”

“I did. He was a good man.”

The old man sat opposite without asking and bellowed for ale. “That must be a story and a half.”

I looked down at my food forlornly. An audience was not welcome, given I would have to lift my mask to eat and drink.

“Have you ever heard of a being they call the God of Broken Things?” I asked instead. “Is it real?”

He paused, then slowly nodded. “So I hear. Certain to be strangeness on the path ahead through those there hills. Folk vanish. Folk go in with food and goods and come back with silver and no idea where they’ve been.”

I unfurled my map, set it on the table and tapped a crude drawing. “I am looking for this valley.”

He squinted down at it, then back at me, then at the map again. “The rock there looks like the maiden stone. Said to be a legendary druí bard with a silver tongue as was turned to stone in a storm, struck down by great spirits who didn’t like her telling tales better than themselves. It’s a little off the track. A way’s up the rise and then left through a tiny pass right by a shrine to The Queen of Winter. Horses refuse to go there so it’s said. Nothing more to see, it’s just a barren hunk o’ rock and scree down that way. Whole legend is a crock of shite if you ask me.”

I was almost at my destination. “Keep the horse. Where I am going I will have no need of it. Have your boy lead me there in the morning. Now leave me to eat in peace.”

The next morning the surly boy led me to the entrance of the pass. He seemed nervous to go any further, muttering about curses and dead spirits of evil druí stealing away and eating the hearts of wayward children. I imagined any such being might spit this sour child right back out.

I slung my pack and sword over my shoulder to squeeze my way through the small pass, a crevice in the side of a cliff really. On the other side another, hidden, valley began. A crooked stone pillar, like an old woman with a hump, guarded the route ahead. An old shrine to the Queen of Winter lay in ruins, kicked into a ditch.

I began to walk, and at my pace I would be at the mark on the map within the day. It was disappointing to only be attacked twice, once by a half-starved bone vulture, and once by a strange demon that was half-dog and half-monkey. I enjoyed the diversion of beating both to death with my bare hands.

After a few hours, rock gave way to soil and grass. I came across farmers tilling small plots of land, and tending sheep and cattle. I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. This was no hidden valley, and was surely no secret if people lived and farmed here.

A few of them waved as I passed by, and I hesitantly returned it. It was certainly not a place of daemonic terror and they didn’t seem scared to see an armed stranger with a steel mask. It was a little odd so soon after a great war, and yet none of them bore any weapon beyond hoe and shovel.

It was a pretty place, and sheltered from the winds that scoured some of the other places in the Clanholds. Swallows flitted and danced in the sky and I found myself enjoying the walk. For a time it distracted me from constant pain and the rubbing of clothing.

After another league or so past a number of occupied dwellings, and others still only half-built, I realised that something was bothering me. I had not seen any children, and a number of the inhabitants bore nasty scars. Old limping warriors and women with faces lined with grief laughed and smiled without care as they worked the land. Phantom hairs on my arms rose.

This place was not right. I kept my blade close to hand. Splitting from the main path up ahead, a gravel track led to a wide circular tower made from dry stone that loomed above every other building I had seen in the valley. Smoke trailed from gaps in a circular slate roof, and people were coming and going from the tower’s single and very defensible doorway, some laden with building materials and others hefting sacks of grain. As I approached the door leading to a large and smoky central room, a man on his way out stepped aside and with his sole arm held the thick oak door to allow me to enter. I stepped through and tried not to stare – his face was a disfigured mass of burn scarring.

“Good afternoon,” he said cheerily in a Setharii accent hailing from the cultured middle classes of the Crescent. “The ale here is cold and the food is hot. You will find what you seek, of that I have no doubt.” He pointed to her mask. “You will not need that, Eva. We are all friends here. None will judge a person on such superficiality.”

I went for my sword, but he turned his back on me and wandered away, humming merrily. I stood inside the doorway, hand on sword hilt and heart hammering.

“Are you coming in or not?” a dry, male voice said from a chair by the fireplace in the centre of the room. “It’s a little draughty with that door open.”

I advanced slowly into the room and let the heavy door swing shut behind me. The place appeared to serve as the tower’s great hall, with huge wooden beams and tables and chairs set around the central fire pit while other doors led off to side rooms and steps up and down the tower. The man’s back was carelessly exposed to the doorway, as if he was not in any way afraid of being surprised or attacked. His stockinged feet were up and resting on a padded stool, and next to him was a small table with two foamy mugs of ale.

Smoke curled in the air like dragon’s breath, drawn from a clay pipe held in his left hand…a dark and weathered hand missing a finger.

“How do you know my name?” I demanded. “Are you the one they call the God of Broken Things?”

“I am,” he said. “As to how I know your name…”

He stood and turned. My sword was up and ready to strike in a horrified second. The ancient Escharric tyrant Abrax-Masud stood before me. The enemy lived!

I flashed forward, magic singing in my veins as I cut at his neck. He lifted his right hand and my sword clanged into it, like I’d struck iron. I stared at the enchanted black iron plates enveloping his hand, and then at the cheeky, foreign smile twisting Abrax-Masud’s lips. His bald head had grown to stubble and the oiled beard shaved off entirely. On his tunic was pinned a badge that said: “A god. Yes, really.” This… this was…

“Walker?” “Ta-da!” he said, ignoring the blade so near his throat to fling his hands wide and grin at me.

“Walker?” I repeated, stunned. I had to be sure. I fumbled for the scraps of terrible old poetry Layla had given me and began reciting it.

He cringed. His face reddened and he snatched the paper from my hands, crunched it into a ball and lobbed it into the fire. “I will kill her!”

“It is you!” I gasped. “Course it is. Do I look like an arrogant piece of shit with a bug pulling my strings? What other bloody sneaky little bastard do you know who could pull this off?”

He must have sensed my rising anger: “Uh, we have ale. Or I have a flask of whisky somewhere…” he fumbled at his clothing, searching.

“Walker?”

He looked worried. “I… uh… I thought it would be fun to surprise you once I sorted myself out. I guess seeing me in my new meat suit might have been a little terrifying now that I think about it.”

I snapped and punched him full force in the face. It sent him spinning to crash head-first into the far wall. I choked with sudden fear that I’d killed him.

I got back up and dusted myself off, without so much as a scratch to show for the truly impressive blow I’d taken. I smiled ruefully at Eva. “I have an elder magus’ body now. Just as well really. Sorry about the bad joke. It honestly sounded far more fun in my head.”

Her sword clanged to the floor and she rushed me, wrapped her arms around me and squeezed hard. “Bastard. Utter bastard.”

“Did I ever deny that?” “How did you survive? I saw you die. You both died. You…” “Like all bullies I gave them exactly what they wanted, and exactly what they expected. When they used their full might to force through my defences they found a simulacrum of myself waiting, and then my trap slammed down to keep them locked inside my flesh. My true self was already slipping into their body, leaving only a few physical movements for my own to finish the job.” I looked down at the new flesh I inhabited. “As for this, you never did see it destroyed. You all remember only what I wanted you to. In fact, all I did was turn and walk away from the city.

She shook her head and cursed my weird magic. “What of the Scarrabus inside you?”

My face twisted in disgust. “Let’s just say that after I killed its mind what was left made its own way out of my body in a very unpleasant manner – now there was a shite I can never forget.”

Both of us could have done without that lovely image, but as usual my mouth was running far ahead of my brain.

“What brought you to this place?” she asked.

I held up my new, darker skinned hands, and examined them. They still felt utterly foreign. I willed the black plates covering my right hand to slide forward and form the vicious barbed blade of

Dissever and then back again. The daemon grumbled in the back of my mind, complaining I wasn’t feeding it enough. Not that there was enough blood in all the realms to sate its thirst.

“I came here searching for the legendary God of Broken Things,” I said. “I hoped it could bring me peace. What a crock of shite that was. Maybe once there was such a being, but no longer. Instead I sat in this ruin alone with my thoughts, trying to put all the broken pieces of myself back together and overwrite all the remaining inclinations this body’s previous owner left behind. All he knew is still inside this old brain you know, good and bad and ratshit insane. While I worked out the issues I thought I’d take the time to write a great saga for the bards to tell, but one that tells how it really was, full of pain and panic, sacrifice and bloodshed.”

I sighed and shook my head. “The world had other plans for me. I can still feel them all out there, the wounded and the despairing, the ones who had once prayed I might save them from the Scarrabus queen and gifted me their will and power. I invite them here to rest and to heal, and eventually return to their old lives if they want. And if not, they can stay and forget their pain and turmoil and have a second chance to be happy. I can offer them that. There was no God of Broken Things when I arrived, but there is one now.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Say, how do you feel right now?”

It took her a moment. Then she gasped with the sheer bliss of suffering no pain. “Thank you.”

“What are friends for?” “Is that what we are?” she countered.

I sensed her malicious glee and realised I must be flushing with embarrassment.

Then that glee died, utterly, replaced with a barren yearning. “Walker, there can be no future for us. I cannot offer you anything physical. With my wounds we can never… you know…”

I chuckled. “The pleasures of the flesh are overrated, Eva. I’m more interested in your mind. The things I can do will surprise you.”

My magic wrapped around her. I opened myself up and invited her into my mind, our thoughts entwining, pleasure exploding.

She drew back, panting. “I will stay, to rest and heal in mind if not in body. Besides, a big, ugly, idiot like you needs somebody with some sense to watch his back, and to stop your damned saga from making you sound far worse than you really are.” She punched me in the arm hard enough to crack stone. “I’m glad you didn’t die.”

I handed her a mug of cold ale. “I’ve always said that heroism could get a man killed; luckily I am more thief than hero.”

She removed her mask and knocked the ale back. “I hope this fancy new body of yours is not as much of a lightweight as your old one.”

“Challenge accepted.”

For the first time in a long time, it was going to be a good day.