The Traitor God

Chapter 20

I drifted in and out of consciousness, living more in dream than reality. Every so often I woke in agony, followed by a vague sensation of soup being spooned down my throat before something sweet and sticky was squirted into my mouth, flinging me back into the dream…

“Stop fidgeting, boy.”

When the Archmagus tells me to stay still, I dare not even blink – even if he does have my eyelid peeled back and is blinding me with a candle held in front of my eye. He goes through the same checks and tests again and again, every day. It is tedious. At least the beeswax candles favoured by the Archmagus fill his chambers with the delicate scent of honey rather than the reeking incense used elsewhere in the Collegiate.

“Move your eyes from side to side again,” he orders.

I look back and forth across his personal quarters while sinister animal heads mounted on the walls stare back at me with glassy eyes. His rooms are packed with an assortment of intriguing mechanisms and bubbling vials and tubes that beg to be poked and prodded. His possessions are obsessively orderly and despite the amount packed into the room everything has its set place; I suspect that his servants live in mortal fear of moving something when cleaning. It is cold in the Archmagus’ rooms and all I want to do is huddle next to the hearth and savour the warmth and the light – especially the light. It has been weeks since I was carried from the Boneyards, but I still can’t be alone at night without a candle by my bedside, and even then I only manage to sleep thanks to exhaustion. The nightmares are relentless.

My eyelid slaps back against my eye. I reach up and rub the tears away, multi-coloured wisps dancing across my vision. Byzant strokes his beard, deep in thought. I stay put, keep my eyes down and hope that he is finally done with me. I say nothing, fearful I won’t speak properly to the Archmagus and get punished, even thought he has only ever been considerate towards me.

“Has the fever abated?” he says, concerned, his hand cold against my forehead.

“Yes, Archmagus. Over a week ago.”

“Eating well?”

My face twists. “Mistress Sellars makes sure that I eat nothing but stin… uh… healthy foods.”

“Mmm, good, good,” he replies, distracted. Eventually he lifts up my chin with a liver-spotted hand. “Try once more. What am I thinking of?”

I swallow and stare into his eyes, take a deep breath and concentrate on opening my Gift, reaching out to him. For a moment everything seems to go fuzzy and I feel lightheaded, but that’s all. I try again, and all I get is a headache.

After a while the Archmagus sighs and shakes his head. I couldn’t manipulate fire, water, earth or air, and now this, whatever it is. I’ve disappointed him yet again. I’m useless. He strokes his beard, great emerald ring glinting in the firelight. “That is enough for today, young Edrin.” A twinkle appears in his eyes and a smile creases his lips. “Go and get yourself something decent to eat. Perhaps something that does not stink.” My face flushes red. “If Mistress Sellars objects then tell her to pass her protestations on to me. What do you desire?”

I grin. Finally I’ll get some decent grub in my belly. “I can’t wait to tuck into some smoked haddock.” I frown and scratch my head. “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I hate fish. I meant to say that I fancy a big slice of cheese and some roast pork.”

The smile on the Archmagus’ face is worse than death-grins on corpses, and I’ve seen a fair few. His eyes are lumps of ice. He says nothing, just shivers, turns and waves me away. I am halfway out when he unexpectedly speaks. “I will help you to manage this special Gift that you have been granted. You will come at the same time every week without fail.”

“Yes, Archmagus,” I squeak, walking from his quarters as quickly as I can without running. Outside the great iron-bound doors I sag against the wall, shaking. Have I said something wrong? I don’t even know what all of this is about. Surely private tuition with the Archmagus is a rare privilege reserved for children from the High Houses? It is almost like he suspects me of something bad. I find myself shaking and don’t know why. I mull it over as I walk to the kitchens.

My belly rumbles and my mouth waters as the scent of a pig roasting on the spit wafts down the hall. I dump all those confused thoughts into the back of my mind.

The dream began fading, piece by piece, until it dwindled away to nothingness. I felt myself clothed in heavier, aching flesh.

I cracked open sleep-crusted eyes, feeling like they were filled with broken glass. A blurry blue shape sat on a chair by the foot of the bed, tinkering with some sort of glinting metal object. I was dozy and weak, barely able to focus. There were no windows in the room, but a gem-light embedded in the wall gave off more than enough light for me to recognize the fine stonework and the distinctively ornate vaulted ceiling. I was in the Collegiate? I tried to push myself up to peer at the figure by my bed, but found myself chained to the steel frame, manacle bands digging into wrists and ankles. I was naked and covered only by a thin blanket, but didn’t feel unhappy having been stripped and chained, even though I should. I didn’t feel much of anything but numbness and a raging thirst.

“Byzant?” I said, my tongue thick and swollen. “S’that you?”

The figure stood. “Hardly,” she said, voice firm but with an edge of something more – a mix of resentment and relief. “Archmagus Byzant went missing ten years ago. Would you happen to know anything about that?”

Her voice seemed naggingly familiar but I couldn’t quite put a name to it. I blinked away the gunk and peered through one eye, unable to focus with two. She wore robes of finest blue Ahramish silk, and curly brown hair spilled around her shoulders. A name floated up from somewhere. “Cillian? That you?” As my vision cleared I noted the odd device in her hands, comprised of metal circles holding coloured glass discs. It looked harmless, but in this den of vipers it was wise to distrust everything. “What do you have there?”

“It is I, Edrin.” Cillian sighed and shook her head. She flicked out a disc of red glass and held it up to the oil lamp, splashing red light across the wall. “No need to be afraid, it is merely a tool for new initiates, a visual representation of the Gift.” She flicked out a blue disc to turn the light magenta, returned them and then held up a lone disc of yellow to filter the light. “I intend to use it to demonstrate that the source of light, representing magic, is the same for all, but that each Gift filters it differently.” She held the disc closer to the lamp – to the source of magic – and the glass disc bubbled and melted. Sugar-glass rather than true glass. “I also feel it to be an elegant illustration of the inherent dangers.” She studied my face. “Tell me, Magus Edrin Walker, why did you flee Setharis shortly after the god Artha died and Archmagus Byzant disappeared? Why did you go rogue?”

She said nothing more. The silence stretched and deepened while she waited for an answer. On a small table beside the bed a jug of water called to me, my throat dry and rasping, but chained to the bed it was just a different kind of torture for me. I frowned, head clearing slightly. “You can’t blame me for every ill.”

She stared at me, face unreadable. “You claim it to be mere coincidence? If it was not you, then why flee? Who else would we suspect under such circumstances?”

“Byzant would have squashed me like a bug.” Which he would have. Effortlessly. Byzant had been older and scarier than any magus in existence, that old crone Shadea excepted. “My leaving had nothing to do with that, and in any case I left before he disappeared.”

“We only have your word for that, and I am certain it is merely blind coincidence that you leave the very same day a god dies and then you return shortly after the rest of our gods go missing,” Cillian said, voice oozing sarcasm. “You really must forgive my entirely unwarranted scepticism. We have had you tested and the loyalty of the Forging is still in place; without that I would not believe a single word you say.” It wasn’t like she had any cause to trust me, not after the way I’d treated her in the past, but it still rankled. She looked over the scars running down my face and neck. “What happened to you?”

“Bad booze and worse women,” I whispered. “What’s it to you?”

She scowled. Cillian was colder and harder than she had been, but people could change a lot in ten years. You didn’t become a member of the Inner Circle by wearing pretty flowers in your hair and filling out your robes nicely; you got there by power, skill, manipulation and ruthlessness. Time passed, people and places changed. That was the way of things. I pulled at my chains and realized that my arms barely worked, the muscles slow and unresponsive, my body almost completely numb. There was no feeling at all in my left leg where I’d been wounded. I suffered a moment of panic until my toes gave an obliging wiggle. They’d taken the shards of stone out but it was still wrapped in a bloodied bandage.

She shifted, crossing her legs. “I shouldn’t bother. Those chains are unbreakable. In any case, you are lucky to be alive after allowing your magic to overwhelm you. You always were weak and contrary, but I had not thought you to be a complete idiot. You were a survivor, more inclined to scurry off like a rat than stand and fight for something worthy.”

A niggling worry that I was too groggy to understand everything made me ask: “How long have I slept?”

“Two nights.”

A dark and urgent thought reared its ugly head. My tongue juddered over cracked lips and I struggled forming the right words. “Boneyards – Charra.”

“Charra? Ah, so that was your dirty little friend,” Cillian said, a sour expression on her face. “She is alive. For now.”

“If you are threatening her then I’d think very carefully,” I said, with only a hint of a tremble making its way into my voice. Something was wrong with me, my body flipping between hot and cold, some sort of alchemic wearing off.

A look of haughty scorn on her face. “Or you will do what? You cannot even get out of bed.”

Dissever purred from somewhere inside my body, letting me know it could slice through my leg, chains and Cillian herself all with equal ease, but physical or magical threats wouldn’t do any good. I had to hit her where it would really hurt, threaten something she’d dreamed of for so long. “Or you’ll lose your council seat.”

Her brow furrowed in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“How many favours do you think Charra is owed by people of power and influence? How many precautions do you think she’s taken?” I said with a forced smile, futilely straining against my chains. “Those crusty old traditionalists can’t be pleased a young upstart like you sits on the Inner Circle. How many more votes against you do you think it would it take? Do you even have a clue who you are dealing with, Cillian?”

To her credit, she didn’t let her mouth run away with her. She scrutinized my face. I didn’t have to bluff, which was good since if I’d had to lie I didn’t think I’d be the least bit convincing in my current state. I knew fine well that Charra could call in favours – she’d called in Old Gerthan to look at the murder scene after all – and you didn’t get as rich and influential as Charra was without greasing a large number of palms and bartering favours with both the gangs and the nobility.

Finally Cillian nodded. “It would seem that I have underestimated her, in that case,” she said. Her cold and controlled facade cracked, lips twisting into a snarl. It was good to see that some of her old fiery nature remained. “In any case, you arrogant buffoon, I was not making a threat. I simply meant that the healers have purged the poison from her body, but they cannot halt her disease progressing further.”

I went still. “What do you mean?”

Her anger shattered: lips parted, eyes softening as realisation dawned. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” The numbing effects of the alchemic they’d given me was fading fast, draining from my body like I was a leaky bucket, leaving me shaking and bonecrushingly tired. I waited for the pain that would be arriving shortly. You couldn’t do what I’d done, physically and magically, and not reap the consequences, but at the moment all I felt was my stomach dropping away into a bottomless pit. “I have to see her. Please. What’s wrong with Charra?”

“It is not my place to discuss your friend’s health,” she said, silk whispering as she paced the room. “Edrin, do you have any idea of just how much trouble you are in? After ten years supposedly dead you suddenly burst out of a warded entrance to the catacombs with your magic out of control and a dying woman in your arms. There are many questions needing answers, not least your actions on that night ten years ago. You know as well as I do that magi whisper tyrant when they speak of you. However unwarranted.” That last bit she didn’t seem entirely convinced of.

I creaked open my badly abused Gift. A trickle of power seeped through. It felt not dissimilar to plunging my head into a barrel of shattered glass and I couldn’t hold it open. Cillian was fortunately not endowed with senses acute enough to detect that sort of attempt. What she was, however, was potentially the most dangerous magus I’d ever met, Byzant and Shadea included. Cillian didn’t go in for fire and lightning or flashy tricks, nor inhuman feats of speed or strength; her affinity was for water magic. Fire, earth and air, and even the rarer talents such as mine, took a little time to channel the power and weave a magical attack. Hydromancers boasted the swiftest of all Gifts, but even amongst those Cillian was special. She could use her Gift as fast as thought, could stop my blood pumping or burst my veins before I could blink. I had to first break through people’s will to affect them, while she suffered no such restrictions.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll answer whatever questions you have. Just get me out of these damn chains and take me to her.” My head started throbbing and I was burning up, pain finally arriving to kick down my door and fling in an oil lantern. She’d timed her visit perfectly. I didn’t think it a coincidence.

Cillian held up a finger. “Not so fast. Answers first, your friend second. No negotiation and no room for you to wriggle out. That is the way this will happen unless you want to spend your life in chains.”

She held all the cards and she knew it. Well, all but one. “Let’s cut the crap,” I said. “Take me to see Charra, and I’ll tell you what I was doing in the Boneyards, or whatever else you want to know.”

She sighed. “For once in your life do not make things worse for yourself. You will see her only when I am satisfied with your answers.”

I ran my tongue over dry, cracked lips. “Cillian, fuc… uh, the gods know you have no reason to trust me, but you can’t afford to dick about on this one. You need to know this, and you need to deal with it right now. Let me see her.”

She shook her head, moved to leave.

“Then on your head be it, Cillian. Go right ahead and open that door if you really don’t want to know about the monster that grows beneath your very feet, the monstrous creation of blood sorcery that will be unleashed tomorrow.”

Her hand paused on the latch. “Oh, very well,” she said. “But if it is not worth my time then you stay chained. As will your friend.” She turned back to me, eyes cold and calculating like the politician she now was.

It was hard to concentrate through the pain: Gift and muscles torn, bones aching, bruises throbbing, leg and shoulder wounds burning.

“Can I have a drink please?” I was frustrated by my own weakness.

She picked up the jug on the table, poured me a cup and carefully tipped it to my lips. Up in the Old Town the water was always pure and crystal clear. A chill balm soothed my lips and raw, parched throat.

“Thank you,” I said. So how to spin this… “How much blood magic has been going on lately?” Her lips tightened. “Let me guess: my friend Lynas Granton’s murder wasn’t investigated properly because there was a damn sight more going on than the Arcanum will ever publicly admit to?”

Her silence was answer enough. I cleared my throat and continued. “I followed the Skinner’s trail down into the catacombs.”

She looked at me incredulously. “And just how exactly did you find his trail?”

The pain was distracting and my head was thumping, making it difficult to manipulate truths and think up believable lies. I almost blurted out the actual truth, but the last thing I wanted to do was sully Lynas’ name by telling her that had been importing mageblood. Instead I said, “Because I actually give a shite about Docklanders.”

“As foul-mouthed as ever, I see.” She chewed on her lower lip. “I find it difficult to believe that you would go back down there after what happened to you in the past.” At least she believed me.

“For Lynas, Charra and Layla, I would.” The sooner this was over with the better.

“Who is Layla?”

Damn – I had to avoid any mention of their daughter. If they investigated and noticed the Forging rite papers for Layla had been falsified then they might start linking it all up to whatever deal I’d made ten years ago to haul everybody out of the fire. I was in no condition to attempt to match wits with Cillian. She was dangerously intelligent and had no doubt acquired a goodly dose of cunning if she’d risen this far this quickly.

“Charra’s daughter, not anybody you would know.” Fortunately she seemed to accept my answer. I proceeded to detail our encounter with the living idol and then my discovery of a magus blood sorcerer, the one that I suspected had a god inside him, and something else truly alien. She went ashen-faced as I described what he was growing in that pool of mageblood, the thing that ate magic.

She thumped down into the chair at the foot of my bed, her eyes burning into me. “Go over that again. Every single detail.” When I was done she looked ill, her face pale and sweaty. She had some idea of what that creature was. If a member of the Inner Circle was this scared, with all the arcane might at her disposal, then I found that downright terrifying.

“What was that thing in the pool?” I asked.

“None of your concern. You will not mention it to anybody.”

I was exhausted and in too much pain to put up a fight. “Please take me to Charra. Then you can go and poke about in your beloved book stacks.”

When we were more than friends she had spent most of her spare time with her nose buried in dusty books, Escharric scrolls and stone tablets, pouring over obscure histories and ancient texts written in dead languages of long-vanished civilisations I couldn’t even name. I resented it at the time, wanting her to spend more time out carousing with me than curled up with her beloved books. And who had done well for themselves in the end? Not me. Never me.

Absently, Cillian nodded. She chewed on her bottom lip, something she had always done when worried, and a habit I suspected she had tried hard to eradicate. Without a word she turned and wandered from the room, deep in thought.

“Come back here,” I croaked.

She didn’t.