The Traitor God

Chapter 19

I ran, heedless of direction so long as it was away. Charra grew heavier and heavier until she felt like a lead weight in my arms. My breathing became ragged gulps and my muscles burned and shook. The false strength I’d been imbued with by that dab of alchemic was fading fast, leaving behind a greasy, queasy feeling akin to a whole-body hangover. It was potent stuff. I forced myself on, to create as much distance between us and that thing as possible.

Lathered in sweat, wounds in my shoulder stinging, I slipped and slid down a set of steps and then staggered across a subterranean stream running through a half-collapsed corridor. My head cracked off a low-hanging stalactite and everything went fuzzy for a second. We fell and I bruised my knees trying to keep Charra and the lantern from crashing to the ground.

I placed her down on a dry area and slumped to the floor, chest heaving. We had to be far enough away from that thing now. We had to be, because I didn’t have much left to give. The back of my throat burned with a little bile that had forced its way up from the effort. I retrieved the whisky flask from the pocket in her cloak. It seemed to take forever for my jellied muscles to prise the cork free. I took a swig to wash the foul taste of bile and alchemic from my mouth, swilling it around and spitting it out, then a swallow to soothe my burning throat.

Charra slept on, peaceful as a babe. I was on my own, buried somewhere in the dark depths of the Boneyards with only a single lantern, an unconscious friend and unknown thousands of the dead all around me. It hadn’t been so bad when we’d had a trail to follow. The darkness closed in around me and my pitiful little light. I started panting, panic rising from within like poisoned water drawn up a well.

“Shite, shite, shite, shite,” I muttered, teeth clamped together, eyes screwed shut. My knuckles whitened around the handle of the lantern. Visions of my fate stormed through my mind as I tried to control my fears; if I didn’t they would consume me. I had to keep Charra safe and see this bloody debacle through to the end. I’d accepted that I was going to die, but not like this, not in this dread place, gone howling mad and blindly clawing at the walls. I folded my legs beneath me in a meditation position and tried to concentrate, to clear my mind as I had been taught so long ago.

Deep Breaths – stuck in an ever narrowing tunnel, unable to turn…

Calm yourself – lantern running out of oil, plunging into darkness…

Peace. Quiet. Relax – crawling things nipping at my flesh, squirming all over me in the dark…

One with natur– buried alive under tons of earth and stone. Corpse dust on my face, in my mouth, choking…

Peac– the revenant’s hungry eyes as it rises from its deathbed…

My eyes snapped open as the vision of that old undead thing materialized before me, echoed in every leering skull and scattered bone, a palpable presence hanging in the darkness that resurrected a child’s terror. No – I destroyed you!

I was going about this all wrong.

Dissever was in my hands as I stood and opened my Gift. Anger and power flooded into me, blasting through the pain barrier caused by alchemic poison. I was a magus. I was no longer that powerless cringing child shivering in terror from crawling bugs and long-dead monsters. I didn’t need mind-rotting drugs to feel powerful.

“I am the fucking monster here!” I roared at the vision of the revenant, my voice reverberating back in hollow echo.

I closed my eyes and plunged into absolute darkness. Except, that didn’t matter. The air currents washed over skin and super-sensitive hairs, and the earth vibrated with almost imperceptible movement and pressures. In a mess of panic and fear I’d suppressed and forgotten my magic-given gifts. I couldn’t see far in my little island of lantern light, but then I didn’t need to actually see.

I sensed no malign magic or movement in the tunnels nearby, no revenant creeping towards me in the darkness. An ever-so-slight air current cooled my skin. I took several deep breaths of moist, warm, stale air, and then turned around. The air was slightly cooler in that direction, and a mite fresher. It seemed a possible way out.

I opened my eyes again and stamped down the last remnants of my panic with bloody-minded will. It was still there waiting to break free, but Charra’s breathing was ragged and her skin covered in a swollen lattice of angry red streaks. I cursed myself for an idiot and ran to her side, scooping handfuls of cold water from the stream to scrub her exposed flesh to get rid of any lingering poisons. She didn’t stir.

“Charra,” I said, shaking her. “Charra, wake up. Please wake up.” No response. I peeled back one eyelid. She didn’t even twitch. Her pupil was huge and dark, not natural.

I gritted my teeth, wishing again that I had the Gift to heal. But, no, all I had was a manipulative curse. All I could do was to get her to somebody that could help, whatever that cost me.

I winced as I hefted her back on my shoulder. Lantern in hand, I followed the hint of fresher air, staggering through a winding maze of dank tunnels and excavated caverns, forced to fortify myself with magic and take frequent breaks to stave off complete exhaustion. I stood at a crossroads, peering into the darkness down each path. Something slammed into rock somewhere down the tunnel to my left, causing stalactites to crack and fall. I shuttered my lantern so only a glimmer of light showed my way, and edged towards the source. Every few years the Arcanum sent coteries of magi into the depths to clear out warped creatures, and if this was an Arcanum party they would have a healer with them.

I made my way down towards the vibrations. Warm, humid air washed over me in rhythmic cycles. As I got closer the air carried a rancid meaty smell akin to a bad Docklands butcher sited next to a tannery.

I carefully set Charra down and propped her up against the wall. “I’ll be back soon,” I whispered.

It took an almighty force of will to prise my hand from the handle of the lantern, and shuffle forward in the darkness, ever wary of stepping on bones. Gradually my eyes picked up a dim light ahead, and with it, muffled voices.

“Pour it in the pool, not over my feet, you cretin,” a man said. “That spill is worth more than your entire village!” At that distance it was difficult to make him out clearly, but his voice was slick with the cultured tones of the Old Town.

I slunk forward, back to the wall, until the tunnel opened out into a torch-lit cavern. The whole space was awash with a hiss of stray magic, masking lesser magical traces. Four rough men in tattered homespun, their skin mottled with rashes and sores and unnatural growths, were pouring the contents of large jars into a pool of black water a hundred paces wide. A dozen empties had been discarded behind them and, sat closer to me, only a single remaining jar remained sealed with green wax. Their robed leader’s face was hidden in the shadows of his hood and a pair of fresh corpses lay at his feet. My gut instinctively clenched – he was Gifted, and surely had to be an elder magus from the insanely potent aura of magic that cut through the haze of stray magic. Or something more – a god perhaps.

The men finished and scurried back from the pool. The hooded man pulled back his sleeves and plunged his arms up to the elbow in the water. The aura of power drained away and the air reeked of blood sorcery. At a word his cringing minions tossed in the two corpses. The surface of the water churned to pink froth as something snatched them under.

The ground shuddered. Stalactites fell from above to splash into the black pool. The hooded man turned in my direction and I slipped further behind the safety of the wall, holding my breath as he scanned the cavern. I resumed breathing as he chuckled and said, “How they struggle, trapped so deep below the city. Trusting fools.”

I scowled as the sweet scent of blood and alchemical spice reached my nostrils. I recognized the green wax around the necks of those jars and was certain they were pouring mageblood into the pool, more than I had ever believed existed.

It was impossible to obtain that much from a few down-on-their-luck donors. Somewhere, somebody was farming Gifted like cattle, draining their blood and smuggling it into Setharis. But why? What could they possibly gain by pouring it into the water? With that much you could have sold it to amass entire armies of mercenaries.

“Fetch the last of it,” the man ordered.

One of his minions scrambled closer to my hiding place and picked up the final jar. It seemed the perfect time to get into his head. Hidden by the magical haze, I eased my Gift open and carefully snuck into the depths of his mind. He was half-deaf and his knee ached from an old breakage. I learned he was a simple, weak-willed country man come to Setharis to find his fortune, and been consumed by the dark underbelly of the city. Sadly his memory was damaged by years of alcohol and alchemic abuse and he knew little of worth, but he was deathly afraid of whatever the magus kept beneath the water. Oh well, he would just have to ask this hooded man a few leading questions. It was a simple task to gently take his reins and guide his lips.

He lumbered towards his master and considered the jar in his hands. I could smell the heady reek of mageblood through his nostrils. “Master, how long until we are ready with… whatever we are doing?”

The hooded man paused, surprised at being questioned. “The date is set and we cannot afford further delay. Three days left until the city is full of lazy peasants fat from food and wine. I had hoped my creature would be fully mature and already able to scale the walls of the Old Town by then – curse that fat fool’s interference! Now pour that last jar in unless you want to join it in the pool. In three days you will have all the women, wine and gold I promised you.”

Fat fool? I almost said it out loud, catching myself just in time. He was planning something terrible for Sumarfuin. This wasn’t some pissy little blood sorcery ritual to bolster a weakling’s power; this was on a grand scale, like something straight out of the histories of the fall of Escharr. If the sorcerer could enact a ritual this huge and complex he was dangerous beyond anything I’d ever dealt with. Suddenly the invasion of Ironport seemed a mere portent of far worse to come. My anger grew, causing the minion’s knuckles to go white around the jar. I took a deep breath and calmed myself, bidding my puppet to begin pouring slowly. I had to find out everything I could.

My puppet frowned. “That fat fool was a bad man?”

The hooded man sighed and muttered something unintelligible. “Yes, yes, he was the bad man who burned my stockpile and caused so much delay. Now please stop asking stupid questions and pour.”

It crystallized in my mind. The green wax and pottery fragments on Lynas’ warehouse floor, imports from the Skallgrim lands. The robed man with inhuman strength and daemons at his beck and call. The butchering of mageborn. It all fit together: Lynas had picked up a new delivery from the Harbourmaster and accidently broken a seal on one of the jars, then realized he’d been importing mageblood. When he investigated and found out what it was to be used for, he torched that old temple trying to destroy their whole damn mageblood supply. He had delayed the birth of this monster before running to warn people. They murdered Lynas to cover up the truth, then paid Layla’s assassins to slaughter everybody else that might know anything, like the Harbourmaster and the Iron Wolves, and Bardok the Hock huddled alone in his warded shop.

Lynas, you stupid bastard. Why couldn’t you have just run away instead of trying to be a hero? Because Lynas wasn’t selfish like me. He didn’t leave me in the Boneyards to die alone in the dark, and he bloody well wouldn’t have turned his back on everybody else. He’d been through the Forging, and that carved loyalty to Setharis into every mageborn’s heart, but he’d have done the same by choice even if it cost him his life.

I watched through my puppet’s eyes as a bloody hand lifted from the water to caress his master’s arm. No, that wasn’t water, it was thicker. It couldn’t possibly all be mageblood – so, blood of the unGifted perhaps? That meant hundreds or even thousands of bodies. It seemed likely this was where the missing people of Setharis had ended up.

He pulled his glistening hands from the pool and dozens of arms burst from the depths, grasping towards the sorcerer, their human skin replaced with thick grey leathery hide. Faces surfaced – men, women, children, and animal – with mewling cries of hunger. Ropes of flesh and muscle writhed across the surface like the tentacles of some great sea monster. He stroked them, murmuring sweet words. “Hush. You will feed soon.”

Hunger and pain blasted through my mental defences. Blind animal rage. All-too human horror. A maelstrom of madness. Overwhelmed, my eyes were drawn to a single face among that vast melded bulk, only now rising from the depths of the pool. Free from the heavy cloak of blood magic, the Gift-bond pulsed into a weak and twisted semblance of life.

Lynas. My brother in all but birth, his face now a mottled grey mockery of life. I scrubbed at my face and looked again, found it all too real. His eyes stared at me, devoid of anything that had once been my friend, then his mouth opened and began screeching.

The sorcerer stiffened and spun to face me. “Edrin Walker! Still alive and breathing we see.”

I stepped out. “You know me then, sorcerer?” I did my best to ignore the animalistic urges pulsing in the back of my head.

He chuckled, voice almost lost amongst the gibbering mewling cries of the thing in the lake. “Oh yes, we know you. And you know parts of me very well indeed.”

Parts of him?

He looked left and a glittering shard beast crawled down the wall, he looked right and two burning green eyes stared from the shadows. “The Arcanum were fools to believe your false death. My shadow cats should have torn you to shreds years ago, but when they didn’t return with your head I knew you must still live.”

Flames licked up his hands and robed sleeves, burning him not at all. “Such a happy day when I finally get to dispose of filth like you. All these years I have wanted to see you burn and now my god has granted my wish.” He waved a hand towards Lynas, “Say hello to your fat fuck of a friend. Will your screams be as pathetic as his when we skin you alive and feed you to my pet? When I am done with you perhaps I will pay his lovely daughter a visit.” He noted my shock, “Oh yes, we know of her. I have learned many things these last few years.”

Power filled me to bursting. God or magus, this fucker needed to die. Dissever leapt into my hand, lusting for blood.

He laughed, voice subtly different. “Such a unique pleasure seeing you again. It’s been far too long, my little Edrin. Bring him to me.”

Three of his minions pulled out knives and shambled towards me, my puppet remaining where he was, still pouring. The magus opened himself up and pulled in more power than I could dream of handling. He levelled burning hands at me.

The magus was the bigger threat. His Gift would instinctively resist my intrusion, so I put the full might of my rage behind the blow. His mind was a fortress of control surrounded by a spiked moat of alchemic haze. Fuelled by rage and hatred, I blasted through his first lines of defence. Inhuman thoughts tainted his mind, fragmented shards both unknown and unnatural. There was something unspeakably alien inside. As flames roared up around him I pressed in deeper, touching something of immense power. It flinched, inexplicably fearful of me. Then a third power scattered my attack with a surge of more-than-human will – it felt like a god – and its relentless force tore me out of the magus’ head. We both screamed.

He fell to his knees, dazed, grip on his power lost. Fire exploded from him in an uncontrolled sphere. One of his men was blasted through the air to crunch into the cavern wall. The thing in the pool surged up in a glistening mass, enveloping and consuming my puppet and not shying from the flames but lapping them up. I stared in shock as its heaving bulk devoured the otherworldly fire.

Two of his servants had almost reached me when the shockwave of hot air reached us. They stumbled, disorientated. I clamped a hand to one’s arm. With the skin contact I was able to smash through his drugged mind with a mental war hammer, then crudely twist his perceptions. It was all so easy and I felt like a god playing with a new toy.

He drooled idiotically, then turned and stabbed his friend in the belly. In his mind his friend wore my face, and me his beloved master’s. He sawed open the man’s belly, intestines spilling out like links of sausage.

The magus blood sorcerer climbed to his feet. Flame began spiralling round his hands, faster and faster, building to a firestorm. He cocked his head to one side, listening. “Really? Must you find out what this secret locked away inside his head is? I know, I know, you don’t like anything kept from you.”

I went cold. Who was he talking to? What was he talking to?

The flames intensified. “Surely it is safer to burn him to a crisp? Oh very well, if you only need his head intact, your wish is my command, my god.”

I went cold. A god. He said there was a god inside him.

The thing in the pool was agitated, bulk crashing against rock. Earth and pebbles trickled from the ceiling. From the darkness above, a handful of glittering shard beasts scuttled down stalactites towards me.

There was still a small chance I could kill this murdering bastard. I could open myself up beyond my limits and rip my way into his mind. If I did that I’d likely die, or end up a twisted insane wretch even if I succeeded. If I fought and failed then this blood sorcerer would be free to carry out his foul plans. For Lynas’ sake I almost risked it, but with Charra sick he would have beat me black and blue for even contemplating it. Charra’s life was not something we would ever gamble with. If only I’d kept that damn alchemic bomb, then I could have blown the bastard to little pieces – yes, and no doubt bury Charra and yourself in the resulting cave-in.

From around the feet of the magus, pebbles and rocks were sucked up into his vortices of flame, glowing bright red.

I tore myself away from dreams of vengeance and ran for my life back down the tunnel.

WhumpWhumpWhumpWhump – flaming bolts of rock blasted from the vortices to explode against the cavern wall. Razored fragments of old bone and stone scythed out. The tunnel shook from multiple impacts. My left leg collapsed beneath me. I tried to keep moving, using the wall to keep myself upright. Explosions deafened me as I lurched blindly down the passage. The ceiling cracked and groaned, and finally came crashing down behind me. A dust cloud enveloped me. Choking and coughing I dragged myself forward. Visions of being buried alive kept me moving. Fragments of rock bounced off my back in eerie silence, my ears stunned and useless.

Eventually the air cleared and my ears started working again, the only noise that of my battered body scraping across the ground. A dim light in the darkness made my heart soar. I’d never been so eager to see light. No, that wasn’t true – visions of being a child locked in that room with the revenant flicked through my mind. Sweat burst from every pore.

Have to get to Charra, I told myself. Get help. My leg throbbed, the pain ramping up to searing agony that eclipsed that of my shoulder. I focused on the pain and used it to blot out my terror, crawling into the light to discover I’d left a bloody smear along the floor behind me. Jagged shards of hot rock had torn through boot and trousers to bury in flesh. My clothes still smouldered and I realized that my wounds being cauterized was the only thing saving me from bleeding out. Charra’s breathing was ragged, the red streaks angry and weeping. I had to get her out of here. If the poison didn’t kill her then that magus would when he came looking for the remains of the intruder.

The Worm of Magic was awake inside me and yelling promises to help if only I would let myself go. It was only a small terror compared to Charra dying in front of my eyes. My body was a wreck. What other option did I have? With a useless leg and a torn-up shoulder I couldn’t possibly carry her.

So I swallowed my terror and did what every part of my Collegiate indoctrination and common sense had trained me to deny. For the first time in my life I gave in to the Worm, flung wide the doors of my Gift and welcomed in unrestrained magic.

Power roared into me. I was a demigod filled with all the power of life and death. All tiredness and pain washed away and my wounds itched with quickened healing. Strength returned tenfold. The darkness retreated to a crystal-sharp half-light.

My sanity cracked. The physical world wavered around me, glimpses of other worlds and strange dimensions drifting past my eyes. I slid towards Charra, tripped out on the majesty of creation, trails of thought billowing out behind me. Below my feet lay a yawning abyss of darkness, a place I knew I could never escape. A cloud of creatures darted in and out of my thoughts like a shoal of silverfish. It was so tempting to drift off on a wave of magic, my mind gone elsewhere, leaving my body behind as a mindless animal host for the Worm of Magic, or perhaps an empty suit of meat for something else to take up residence. A dark mass blotted out my vision. The feeding things fled from a vast predator. I shuddered and flinched back to the physical, focusing solely on Charra.

I picked her up, light as air, and cradled her carefully, afraid I might crush her brittle human bones. Tendrils of dark magic were spreading towards her heart. Convinced of my own god-like power, I almost reached into her body to rip them out, but managed to stop at the last moment. My confidence was a delusion; I didn’t have the knowledge or skill to heal, and probably never would. The tides of magic roared through me, trying to twist my mind and body, but through force of will and the mental conditioning required for my talent, I resisted the worst of magic’s seductions. For now.

I broke into a sprint, feeling my way through air currents towards the freshest air, through cavern and corridor and tomb, until I came to a place that shook me to my core. My delusion of godlike power cracked and dropped away beneath me. I staggered through a doorway cut through a rock fall and into the room where I had been trapped as a child. The old stone block with strange carvings had been removed, but otherwise the room remained untouched.

I couldn’t control myself – my hand snapped out and blades of air lashed out to shred the room, gouging stone. I howled with the effort, power straining mind and body. Vulgar magic was arduous for me, something like this normally impossible. The walls started to crack and crumble. Pain roared through me. I drew deeper on the magic and flung out all my fear. I had to destroy this room. These nightmares haunted me and destroying them was the most important thing in my world.

Charra groaned, her breathing too rapid. It cut right through my self-absorbed fear – my only living friend was far more important. She was the only light in the dark of my heart that kept me human.

I tried to stop, and found that I couldn’t halt the magic. I had opened myself too wide and drawn too deep. Panic tried to rise and failed, swamped by the pleasures of pain, power and promise. It hurt, and it was ecstasy. My Gift shuddered, threatening to tear itself apart due to the torrent roaring through it. I’d be little more than a gaping hole through which magic flowed into the world – an abomination, warped and twisted at the bestial whims of the Worm. I found myself at peace, not caring. Maybe it would even be a good thing? Pleasure pulsed at the thought.

Agony exploded in my leg, cutting through pleasure and disrupting the aeromancy to drive me to my knees. A few flickers of air swirled in the dust. The surge of magic slowed. Dissever had somehow managed to slice through its sheath and into my leg. Before I knew what I was doing my hand found the hilt. Bloodlust and rage swarmed through me, fighting back the pleasure and dreamy confidence, and stamping down my terror of the dark.

Idiot, Dissever thought at me. Brainless bald ape. Do not. I will not be lost again. Care for the female, you fool.

Charra!

Fucking weak idiot, letting myself get sucked in. I clutched her to my chest and glanced at the half-destroyed room of my nightmares. Then I turned my back on it and ran for the way out. I sped through the tunnels I’d been carried from as a child, wishing that I was once again safe in Byzant’s arms. The magic stormed through me and my mind kept drifting off in scattered directions. Dissever’s counteracting influence rapidly waned.

An archway lay ahead, closed by a gate of massive warded steel bars blocking my exit from Boneyards. Barely pausing, I hefted Dissever and sliced through. Warded steel sparked, then parted and thudded to the ground. I stepped through the hole and an array of hidden wards activated. I spun to shield Charra with my body. An alarm shrieked and a web of force squeezed me like a giant fist. Despite being filled with a torrent of power, I was held fast, barely able to breathe. Magic built up inside me, screaming to be unleashed. These paltry wards couldn’t hold me. Nothing could hold Walker. I shuddered, trying to fight the madness down.

A trio of magi tore in, magic crackling around them ready to destroy whatever twisted monstrosity had emerged from the depths.

Dissever writhed from my grip. Jagged metal teeth pierced my wounded leg and then the enchanted weapon sagged, black iron turning into a viscous liquid that flowed into the cut, hiding inside the wound. The pain felt distant, like it belonged to somebody else. “Help her!” I pleaded. “She’s been poisoned.” The floodwaters of magic rose inside me, an unstoppable tide breaking through every shred of my restraint.

The magi gasped, seeing Charra’s arm dangling limp. All three lifted their hands and unstoppable power slammed into me.

Survive, Dissever commanded. I am not done with you yet.

Everything went dark.