The Traitor God

Chapter 10

A door slammed, waking me at an unnatural hour of the morning, hanging half-off the bed. Groaning, I hauled myself off the old straw and scratched my many itches. I ran a hand across my bristly chin. The last thing I needed was to look unkempt in the Old Town, and in any case the last few years I’d spent in Setharis I’d sported a ridiculous Ahramish-styled philosopher look with pointy goatee, so in the interest of not being recognized I would need a clean shave and new clothes. Between that, time, and the scars marring my face, if I was careful I should be able to slip into the Old Town without notice.

A quick scrub of face and armpits with a wet rag and then it was time to appease my grumbling stomach. The innkeeper provided some hard bread and a chunk of tangy cheese that was surprisingly good considering the midden I was staying in. Seemed she took more care over her kitchen than her cleanliness. I washed it all down with watery morning ale. Sometimes I missed the crisp mountain streams of the mountainous north, but drinking water in Docklands was asking for your breakfast puked up in a corner somewhere. I dipped a rag into the ale and used it to give my teeth a polish, then chewed on a wilted sprig of parsley to freshen my breath. Most nobles and magi wore expensive perfumes to mask their odour, but this was the best I could do given the circumstances.

A runner arrived with a package from Charra. It was on: Old Gerthan would meet me at the top of Sethgate, and the next morning she would meet me in Carrbridge temple square at three bells before noon with all the information she was compiling. She ended the brief note with: “Buy yourself something pretty”. I opened the included coin pouch and smiled at the gleam of silver inside. Outside a soft drizzle was falling, perfect weather for a man to buy himself a cloak and keep the hood up.

Just before crossing into Carrbridge I noticed a blood and bandage barber’s sign down a side street. Barbers and chirurgeons had an unsavoury reputation, the shedding of blood and body parts seen as fearfully close to sorcerous practices by superstitious peasants. However much people dreaded going to barbers, their sort were necessary for those without access to Arcanum healers.

A man exited the shop, reeking of rum and holding a swollen jaw. I peered inside. A young man with cropped dark hair was washing his bloody hands in a ceramic bowl by a crackling fireplace, steaming rags hanging above it. A set of pliers on the workbench next to him still clutched a cracked yellow molar.

“Be right with you, friend,” he said, cleaning up after that poor sod’s adventure into dentistry. He corked a bottle of dockhouse rum and stowed it away in a cupboard before picking up the tooth and adding it to a large pickling jar on the sideboard. The jar was full of human teeth: a week’s extractions later to be handed over to the priests of the Lord of Bones for safe disposal. It was a little unsettling to see his collection, but vinegar did render them useless for any sort of sorcery. Even if he did wish to trade body parts in Setharis, the Lord of Bones took a dim view of that sort of thing and tended to nail such people to walls, through their eyeballs if they were lucky.

He looked at my unruly mass of hair. “A shearing, is it?”

“No, a clean shave, thank you.” Due to my peculiar magical adaptions a haircut felt akin to somebody pulling off my fingernails.

He opened a leather case and took out a straight razor of fine steel and a small blue bottle of oil. I settled into the chair and he placed a steaming cloth over my face to soften the hair. He stropped his blade up and down a strip of thick leather and when he was ready he removed the towel and poured a small amount of perfumed oil onto his fingers, massaging it into my neck and jaw.

I was grateful he didn’t plague me with inane chatter as he carefully scraped the blade across my skin. Acutely aware of the knife at my throat, I fought down a rising paranoia. He was young, and I’d been gone ten years so he couldn’t know me. Still, I sat there sweating until he had finished, then watched him clean his tools and pour the gunk of oil and hair into the fireplace. Only then did I pay – a magus had to be careful with their cast-offs. My face felt newly-born as I stepped out and the breeze played over bare skin.

I blended in with the merchant traffic heading into Carrbridge, paid the toll, and then followed the path along the riverbank west to Sethgate at the very centre of the Crescent. All traces of rot disappeared and signs of true wealth were displayed in the finery of every shop front, in the mouth-watering aroma of roast suckling pig and capon from classy eateries, and in the brightly coloured clothing and fur-trimmed cloaks of passersby. Illusionists and acrobats plied their trade on street corners, breathing fire and juggling knives, entertaining with daring tricks and clever artistry. A puppeteer made her painted dragon dance and snap at three giggling children each time they tossed a coin into its wooden maw.

One of the illusionists was Gifted in a minor way; her glowing balls of faerie fire danced around the audience’s heads while shadowy daemon-shapes writhed across the walls. People gasped and stepped back as the shadowy claws reached for them. I kept a hand on Dissever and gave her a wide berth. Daylight or not, I didn’t trust shadows that moved on their own.

A pair of grizzled wardens watched me stroll by, noted my patched trousers, and took to following me down the street at a discreet distance. My coat was a fine piece of work, but that could have been stolen. Time to get some new clothing. I went into a store and spent Charra’s coin on new trousers and a dark tunic trimmed with vermillion, then fastened a waxed cloak around my shoulders. The shopkeep’s apprentice polished and buffed my boots as best he could – the leather was nicely worn-in and I wasn’t breaking in new boots if I didn’t have to.

When I emerged from the shop I looked less out of place. The wardens lost interest and wandered off to scan the crowd for cutpurses. I pulled the hood of my cloak up and began the long walk up the path to the Old Town. Ornate gilt-and-lacquer carriages bearing seals of noble houses trundled past, the scent of horseflesh and sweet perfumes wafting in their wake. Me, I had to slog my way uphill on foot, puffing and panting.

A gust of chill autumnal wind tore at my clothes. It was raining red, leaves stripped from the ornamental crimson maples so prevalent in the Old Town. Those and the venerable oaks were the only trees that didn’t grow twisted and foul in that magic-saturated soil. In another time and place I would have called the leaf fall beautiful, but all it did was remind me of Lynas’ skinning, the colours the shade of his blood. By the time I got to the top of the ramp I was in a foul mood, sweating profusely and wheezing for breath, making me realize just how indolent I had become.

Old Gerthan was there waiting for me. He looked unchanged: gaunt face framed by an unruly white beard, watery eyes, that same polished heartwood cane in his liver-spotted hand. Some magi were fortunate that their aging stopped in the prime of youth, while others like Old Gerthan and that hard-nosed bitch Shadea had to suffer the ills of a permanent old age. Some didn’t stop at all, slowly withering away year by year, life stubbornly clinging to their crumbling bones until even the magical resilience of a magus’ body finally failed.

I was surprised by one new addition: Old Gerthan was wearing the white robes of the Halcyon Order, healers that knew no rank and asked for no coin. So he had discarded the trappings of wealth and power to devote himself to healing the world? A laudable goal, but not one that I could ever follow: I was by nature more egoistic than altruistic. Although all Halcyons I’d ever met had seemed content, so perhaps there was something to it all.

He nodded to me as I hauled my sorry carcass up onto the flat before the gatehouse. “Good day, ‘Master Reklaw’,” he said. “Still among the living, I see.”

Ah, right, that. “Good day, Magus… er… Gerthan,” I said, desperately trying to remember his House name. Had I ever known it?

He chuckled. “Only ever called me Old Gerthan, eh? I take no offence.” His eyes hardened. “However, before I offer my assistance you will answer these questions: ten years ago, did you kill anybody before you left this city? Did you harm any other magi in any way?”

I frowned. “I haven’t the faintest clue what you are talking about.” He said nothing. I cleared my throat and clarified. “Not to my knowledge, no.” It was the truth as I knew it.

Old Gerthan’s gaze scoured my face for a long moment before his expression softened. “I believe you. More importantly, I believe Charra, and she does not give her trust lightly.” He plucked his white robes. “I owe this new and higher calling to her. Five years ago plague ravaged the lower city. She came to us, and on her knees before a small council of magi she begged for more aid.” He shook his head. “Charra is a proud woman and she does not beg, at least not for herself.”

“That does sound like her,” I said.

“I was struck by her sincerity and agreed. What I saw on Docklands streets that day, the poverty, overcrowding and sickness… I had no inkling it was so terrible. I put my Gift for healing at her disposal and in so doing I discovered my life’s calling. I owe her a great debt.”

He was a good man, one of the few who had treated me fairly even after the Arcanum found out what my awakened Gift was. “So how do you plan to get me in?” I said.

“Why, we go straight through the main gate, you scallywag. Luck mysteriously has it that today nobody is on duty that could possibly know you, but keep your hood up to be doubly certain.” He strode off, cane clacking, walking quicker than his aged frame should allow. “Come along now, no dallying.”

We walked past a dozen guards clad in battle plate and chain, and right on through the massive doors of enchanted oak and steel. The air vibrated with barely restrained magic, deadly ward-glyphs glimmering overhead. On the other side of the doors half a dozen combat-ready magi and two sniffers awaited us, all fresh from the Collegiate. Some magi looked young, but their old eyes and aura of power always gave them away. Old Gerthan nodded to one of the sniffers, a friend, and vouched for me. They frowned but bowed to the wishes of an older and well-respected member of the Arcanum.

We wound between the worshippers thronging the grand temple square, passing marble columns and archways carved with scenes glorifying the gods. The temples had been grown by the gods themselves, their black bones lifted from the living rock beneath us before being clothed in exquisite marbles, bronze and gold. It made the temples of the lower city seem like dirty fishing shacks. The temples changed shape yearly, each god trying to outdo the others, all except for the Thief of Life, whose many-columned classical Escharric edifice at least looked like he had made a vague attempt to rein it in. This new Hooded God looked like he had dived head first into the games of the others, and his many-columned temple was by far the gaudiest, gloating in its aggrandizement. The gods all schemed against one another in petty ways, bidding for mortal influence and prestige. As immortals they were probably bored and used us as playthings and pawns in an endless game of oneupmanship. Nathair generally remained aloof from that sort of nonsense – my kind of god really.

Behind the temples squatted a cluster of sinister step pyramids. The Tombs of the Mysteries were reputed to be shrines of deities forgotten long before Setharis was founded, grown from the same slick black, almost organic-looking stone as the towers of the gods. Their sealed doorways were overlarge and oddly-cut, protected by ancient enchantments no magus had ever deciphered never mind penetrated. Many had tried, and many had died.

A deep DOOOOOOMMMMMM rang out across the city. The black-iron tower in the centre of the square seemed crude and out of place next to the majestic temples, but it contained something of incalculable value – the Clock of All Hours. The great bell rang again. The verdigris-crusted spire vibrated and shook off corvun-crap as it rang out noon. The cogs of the arcane machine churned endlessly, powered by another long-lost art, tolling every three hours from dawn until nightfall. It was the legacy of the original architect of Setharis, the refugee Escharric magus Siùsaidh, whose other, and to my mind greater, creation had been the sewer system that kept the air of the Old Town fresh and fragrant. Doubtless her practical sort would have had no truck with the backstabbing politics that plagued the Arcanum nowadays.

As the last ringing echo faded, from the centre of the square the godsingers lifted their voices tower-ward in praise. Crimson leaves swirled around them as their hymn swelled, illuminations from the temple windows intensifying. Competition was always fierce for a place in the choir, a chance for the finely-voiced faithful to please their gods.

The temple of Derrish opened its doors and priests began taking tithes. Rich merchants handed over bags of coin to receive the god’s blessings, and more practically, to gain the temple’s political clout and financial advice in return. Derrish was widely regarded as the incarnation of Setharis, a bit of a money-grubbing scoundrel that saw himself as better than everybody else. Mind you, he was a god, so arguably he kind of was.

A line of bleeders shuffled towards crimson-robed priests of the Thief of Life, watching drops of their blood patter down into golden bowls as an offering, then drinking a tiny cup of his holy red wine. What Nathair got out of these transactions, no mortal knew. He had always been the least popular of the gods, his priesthood’s cultish practices seeming uncomfortably close to blood magic. Despite dark rumour, it seemed that his popularity had grown tenfold in my absence, probably because he didn’t hold with long, boring sermons.

The grey-robed priests of the Lord of Bones remained silent as they went about their business: bestowing final blessings on the dying, and taking in the corpses of all Gifted to set them to the pyre. The fate of mundanes was different, of course: the priests took those bodies down into the Boneyards beneath the city, where they alone had no fear to tread amongst the darkness and the dead, to lay them to rest somewhere within that maze of catacombs. As a god he was deathly dull. Quite apt really.

On my travels I had discovered that in many foreign lands they believed people possessed a strange and nebulous thing called a soul, which I understood as a strange sort of spirit locked in a cage of meat. People had a deep-seated need to believe that they didn’t wink out like a snuffed candle when their physical end came, but like most magi my opinion differed: we believed that over time our lives slowly drained back into the sea of magic it had spawned from. The fact magi tended not to die of old age lent a measure of credence to that idea, the Gift constantly refilling our hourglasses with sand.

Lady Night was a mystery. She had no discernible aspect or interest save perhaps an association with the hours of darkness. She was said to be an ever-watching guardian but also a thief, both hero and villain. People called on Sweet Lady Night when traversing dangerous paths by torchlight, and cursed the Night Bitch when misfortune’s silver eye fell upon them. She had no established priesthood, but every so often somebody would feel a deep calling and be drawn to minister to her worshippers for a few years. Legend said that the Lord of Bones and she had been lovers long ago and some folk liked to imagine that they still were, an immortal love lasting thousands of years. I chose to believe it even though I could only dream of finding such love.

And then there was the Hooded God. Only a handful of worshippers set foot in his temple, and they looked as guilty as any red-handed murderer, slinking up, looking left and right before heading in and closing the door behind them. It seemed that this new god had not built up any sort of real following yet. I couldn’t think of any living magus both old and powerful enough to be anywhere near calling themselves a god, so which mortal had occupied dead Artha’s position so quickly?

I had been picking at the old, dread secret in my head since I returned home, all the reminders helping to pry off the protective scabs. So near the site of Artha’s temple, I couldn’t help but use it to pick at the scab in my mind a little more.

Oh Artha, what have I done! His blood speckled my face, metal tang burning my lips as I plunged my hands into his splayed flesh, searching… A tidal wave of horror overwhelmed me. Everything went red and I toppled.

I regained awareness lying in a quivering heap of terror, with a raging headache and a pool of vomit by my mouth. The lines of worshippers had all shuffled forward and people were peering over at me with disgust, wondering if I’d been overcome by religious fervour. I shivered – I had cut him open, gutted like a fish. My heart pounded and sweat beaded my brow. Artha had died by my hand.

“Get up! Burn you for a fool, boy,” Old Gerthan said. “Now is not the time to be drawing attention.” I stood and pulled my hood lower, trying to walk normally away from the scene. I buried my horror in a corner of my mind, as I had to.

At the edge of the square Old Gerthan stopped and handed me a scroll. “This will get you in and out of the evidence room. Good luck.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I won’t forget this.”

He smoothed his beard, looking thoughtful. “What happened to your friend was terrible. I hope you find the answers you seek.”

“I will.”

“Oh, and Walker – you are dead to me.”

I got the point: he knew nothing and I was on my own. Old Gerthan disappeared into the crowd. I looked up at the gleaming golden spires and gothic arches of the Templarum Magestus. Fear shuddered up my spine. I was a chicken about to stick my head into the maw of a sleepy fox and hope it didn’t bite down.