The Traitor God

Chapter 25

A nearby warning bell tolled frantically. The wardens up on the walls hastily strung bows. Fearful faces stared out to sea. I followed their gaze. Hundreds of square sails studded the horizon, bearing the emblems of dozens of Skallgrim tribes. I licked my lips and swallowed, a thrill of fear rippling up my spine as I remembered those same wolf-ships unleashing red slaughter and daemons on Ironport. Of course Harailt was in league with those savages. He never had any empathy or mercy to begin with.

The sound of bells spread across the city as more wardens spotted the Skallgrim fleet. With the fires raging on the docks, most people were still tearing in and out of the gate to help, but some stopped to point and gawp in horror. The volume of traffic made the gate warden’s work impossible and to the sniffer on duty Cillian’s magic had to have been like staring into the sun, so it wasn’t a surprise he didn’t notice a filthy barefoot scumbag like me slipping through the gate.

Once Cillian was out of sight I felt able to breathe again, but I picked up my pace and resisted the urge to continually glance behind me. As soon as I entered the market I felt the crowd’s panic, and I didn’t need to be a magus to sense the riot birthing.

Blood stained the stones underfoot and food stalls had already been picked bare and overturned. A wild-eyed old man with long straggly hair, dressed in nothing more than rags, deftly dodged the two armoured wardens pursuing him and clambered up onto one of the stalls so he could be seen by all. “The Skallgrim are coming,” he screamed, pointing towards the sea. Then he spun to hiss up the hill at the gods’ towers. “An end to the leeches that grow fat on our blood and toil. Rise up and put an end to the corruption of vile magic at our heart!”

The wardens caught him, one hauling him kicking and biting from his podium while the other hefted a club and bashed the old man’s head. He flopped down unconscious, blood matting his hair. The wardens didn’t check to see if he was alive or dead, and probably didn’t care, instead hastily dragging him off with the angry crowd edging after them. Then the whispers started rippling through the crowd – High Houses – the Arcanum – gold – war – vile corruption – fat leeches – eat while we starve – our blood and toil…

More than swords and magic, words held real power. Regimes the world over had risen with a few whispered words in the right ears. And they’d also fallen to a few well-chosen words said to big crowds of scared people. People were like that in groups, a herd instinct sweeping them along in a flood of anger instead of fear, like cornered rats turning on a cat. I pushed in next to a gaunt woman wrapped in a ragged shawl, a refugee from Ironport by the cut of her cloth.

Setharis was ready to explode, and that old man had just flung in an oil lantern. I opened up my Gift – finding it oddly pain-free, if strained – and scanned the crowd, locating two other agitators without too much difficulty: they were the calm ones filled with a purpose verging on the fanatic. I skimmed the surface and tasted their thoughts, felt their disdain and disgust for the depraved cityfolk they found themselves surrounded by. They were not from Setharis, though they’d spent years here. They were Skallgrim infiltrators. Who had ever heard of subtlety from the Skallgrim? They preferred to fight each other over long-held feuds rather than looking to war with anybody else. Or they had done – times were apparently changing. The men were readying to fling more words into the crowd – more torches to help start the fire.

The tension was building to its peak. Somebody picked up a piece of horse dung and flung it at the retreating wardens. It splattered against one man’s helmet and he turned, still holding his bloodied club. It had to be now. I placed my hand on the refugee’s arm. She twitched as I entered her mind, then stilled.

“I’m from Ironport,” she shouted. “And Skallgrim beasts skinned my daughter alive.” For some reason I’d found that daughters usually had a more emotive effect. The crowd turned to stare. “Sacrificed for their sick, heathen blood sorcery,” she continued. The crowd needed a reminder of the distinction between our magic and their sorcery. Even the crudest peasant knew dozens of dark tales about blood sorcery.

“No, the Skallgrim will save us,” one of the agitators started up as the warning bells on the walls tolled louder, more urgent. “They bring all Kaladon a purity that was lost, and they offer Setharis, the Free Cities, and even the heathen Clanholds a life free from the yoke of magic.”

Time to break out the emotional blackmail. Tears started rolling down the refugee’s face. “Skinned her alive as I watched,” she sobbed. “Just like the monster that’s been killing people here.” Eyes widened in the crowd as those words sunk in. Skinned alive by Skallgrim beasts. The Skinner.

“Lies!” the agitator shouted, drawing the eyes to him. “It is those leeches up in their palaces that caused this. They are the problem. The Skinner is one of them. They don’t care if a few peasants die. We should march up there and take the wealth that should be ours.”

I let go of the woman, leaving her sobbing her heart out and with no idea what she had just said.

“Sounds like he’s in league with the Skinner and the Skallgrim to me,” I shouted. “He’s a traitor. The Skallgrim want to skin us alive and drain our blood. Everybody knows the Arcanum hunt and kill all blood sorcerers.”

All it took was giving the man in front of me a shove with a shout of “Get him!” A few members of the crowd took a step forward, more followed, and then the whole crowd surged as one, grabbing at the Skallgrim infiltrator. All that fear and anger they’d been building exploded in his face. The mob took hold of the screaming man and started tearing him to pieces. Never before had I exerted such power over the hearts and minds of people on such a grand scale. Their emotions were in the palm of my hand. I could make them dance like a puppeteer’s painted dolls and I found that I liked it.

A person could be clever, but crowds of people were stupid and easily manipulated. The problem was that once you built it up to a fever pitch, then somebody with just the right words could redirect it. Once a riot started they were difficult to control, but that wasn’t my problem. I just didn’t want dozens of innocent people incinerated by the defensive magics guarding the Old Town. I felt giddy with my own power, the Worm of Magic purring happily in the depths of my mind. I held a truly fearful power, and it was harder than ever to resist the delicious temptation to meddle, to dominate and direct, to rule. Letting my magic loose in the Boneyards had changed me, brought me closer to the mindset that the Worm – or worse, myself – desired. How could I cope without Lynas? He had always been my conscience, the hand on my moral rudder steering me back into safer waters. Even during my years of exile he had always been a presence in the back of my mind, mentally chastising me when I contemplated going too far.

Nauseated, I tore myself away from temptation and struggled against the tide of people, trying to avoid all the boots stepping on my bare feet as I followed the second agitator fleeing down a side street. He was the clever one, the one who had known when to shut his mouth and leave it well alone, which meant he was more dangerous than his fellows. He might know what Harailt’s end game was. I followed him as he skirted the centre of the Warrens and headed towards Westford.

He stopped at an intersection and looked back. I slowed, made myself look exhausted, hanging my head and dragging bare feet through street filth. His gaze slid straight past me. Looking at the ragged state of me nobody would expect I was anything other than a deranged beggar, and Setharis had no shortage of those. He slunk down an alley and out of sight. I tailed him further west. He paused at a crossroads and I ducked into the shadows of a doorway as he carefully looked in all directions before heading right. I sidled up to the wall and carefully peered around the corner. He stood a mere pace away, dagger in hand. I lurched back as the point darted for my eye. A door thumped open behind me and I spun to see two heavy-set men emerge.

I backed away, holding up filthy hands. “I don’t want no trouble. Just some food if you got any?”

The infiltrator sneered and the two men reached for me.

Back the way I’d come, somebody cleared her throat.

“Die,” Cillian said.

All three men twitched, blood gushing from nose, ears and eyes as they crumpled to the mud. I winced, expecting to experience Cillian’s wrath myself.

“Skallgrim infiltrators,” I said, when her magic didn’t burst me like a rotten tomato. “How did you find me?” I eyed my prospective lead’s blood pooling in the mud and thought it wise not to rub her mistake in her face.

She gazed at the corpses, her face grim, and I wondered if she had ever before used her magic to kill – until now I’d only theorized her deadly potential. “I followed the trail of devastation,” she said. “It took me a while to work my way through the angry mob. After that I followed the tracking ward I had placed on your clothing.”

She’d done what? I started sweating, wondering if she’d placed some nasty surprise in me ready to explode on command.

She smiled thinly, glanced at the corpses by my feet. “It is war then.”

“We have been at war quite some time,” I said. “We’ve only just noticed.”

She gave a terse nod. “You are not the fool you pretend to be, Magus Edrin Walker, and I am only just starting to realize that.” Her eyes bored into me. “I am on to your game.”

I swallowed, smiled sickly. “Ah, that.”

She paced the cobbles. “The Arcanum had deemed it impossible for the Skallgrim to ever unite. Of the great powers, Setharis has been in economic decline for the last fifty years and our closest allies in Ahram and Esban consumed by infighting. We will receive no aid from them. It is an advantageous time for the Skallgrim to expand their territories.”

If she was being straightforward with an untrustworthy cur like me then things had to be truly bad. Either that or the blow to her head had been worse than I’d thought.

“It stinks, Edrin,” she said, “stinks of long and meticulous preparation for conquest, and patience is not something the Skallgrim have ever been noted for.” She was reinforcing my own disquieting suspicions. “Over the years far too many of our ships have gone missing, and our agents in other lands have been turning up dead with depressing frequency. They must also be involved with the Magash Mora in some manner, but again the Skallgrim tribes lack the knowledge necessary to create such a creature. I feel an unknown power behind all these events.” She chewed on her bottom lip, eyes widening, “Harailt was posted to our embassies bordering their lands ten years back. It cannot be coincidence this all happens here and now.”

“You believe me then?” I asked.

“It would seem to match up. We have no time to debate this. Their infiltrators will be all over the city trying to incite the masses and there is no knowing how many of their warriors are already inside our walls.

“You did well,” she said. “You played that angry mob as deftly as any minstrel ever plucked strings.” Her eyes narrowed. “Now, tell me how you managed it without touching them all?”

I grunted. “You saved those sailors from a fiery death quicker than I’d expected.”

“I sit on the Inner Circle for a reason. Don’t change the subject.”

We passed from the dark of the Warrens into a wider street, one lined with newer wood. It probably hadn’t existed for long enough to acquire a name yet. People were dashing to and fro, some holding bloody noses or makeshift weapons, all avoiding eye contact.

I could have lied to her, come up with some pretty story wittering on about body language, expression and posture, but events were already too dangerous and spiralling out of control. “Oh, that?” I said. “I don’t need to touch you to get into your head. I haven’t since I was a mere initiate.”

She lurched to a stop and a trace of fear seeped into her expression. “Just how strong are you?”

A woman ran down the street, toddler wailing in her arms. She hammered on a door, panting for breath. It creaked open, then swung wide. An older woman hugged her tight. “A mob is ransacking that fancy brothel,” the first woman said. “Best keep your girls indoors.”

Charra’s Place. Layla.

I felt the air stir – too late to do anything about it other than drop to the dirt. An arrow thudded into the wall behind me. I scrambled to my feet, wrenched my strained Gift open and searched for the bowman. Sudden waves of agony made my attention snap to Cillian, who was staring at another arrow jutting from her chest.

Pink froth bubbled from Cillian’s mouth and a dark stain spread across the front of her robes. She coughed, spattering my hand with blood, then slumped against the wall, a sickening sound of air wheezing from the wound. That sound, it… Blood gushed from my nose, head ringing like somebody had rammed a steel-shod boot into my face. Mental protections cracked and splintered, and bled out: the sound of a god’s agonized wheezing, my hands slick with hot blood so filled with magic that it sizzled against my skin. Artha’s heart spasmed as I cut deeper and pushed a hand into it…

Another arrow buried itself in the wall a hand span from my face. I didn’t have time to think, panic stamping the surge of memory back into its pit. I scanned the rooftops as my mind expanded into nearby buildings. Snarls of thought and emotion marked dozens of people out of sight inside the walls. There – two bowmen inside fourth floor windows, their killing intent searing my senses. It was infectious. My urge to kill swelled.

One of the attackers stepped forward to the edge of the window and lined up another shot. I stabbed into his mind, scattered his thoughts and planted the urge to step forward for a better aim, onto a wooden sill that wasn’t really there. I took grim satisfaction in the spike of confusion when his foot unexpectedly plunged down through air. It was much easier to fool somebody than go directly against their survival instincts. He fell screaming from the window, head hitting the cobbles with a sound like a burst melon.

His accomplice was no coward; after a quick glance at the mess on the cobbles he tried to take his own shot. His mind was calm and orderly, an experienced killer. He resisted mightily and was about to loose when his body exploded, painting the surrounding buildings red.

“Got… him,” Cillian wheezed.

I held onto her arm in case she fell. Her breathing came in rapid gulps and her robes were drenched with blood. I reached to pull out the arrow. She hissed, her eyes not filled with panic but with a warning to back the fuck away.

“Wait…” she said between gulps, concentrating hard. The blood stopped spreading. Being a hydromancer had perks I’d never thought of before but it seemed she couldn’t suck all that spilt blood back up after it had soaked into the muck under our feet. She groaned and clamped her hands around the base of the arrow. “Barbs… have to… break off… the shaft.”

I gingerly took it in two hands, and made to snap it off to leave a short stump, then paused and felt bloody stupid as I took Dissever to it instead. The arrowhead barely moved, but she still shrieked as steel grated against bone. “What now?” I said.

She gritted her teeth and held out bloodied hands for me to help her walk. I didn’t think it wise, but then I’d just been about to blindly rip an arrow out so what did I know. Somehow she stood on her own two feet. I didn’t think I would be up and about with an arrow through my lung. She took a few faltering steps clutching onto my arm. “Get me… Templarum Magestus. No… time to spare. Magash Mora…”

“I’ll get you there if I have to carve my way through,” I said, bending so she could put an arm around my neck. She panted with pain as I took her weight. Magus or not, there was a limit to human self-control.

Feet pounded towards us down nearby alleys. Scuffles and cursing erupted as the narrow passages crammed with angry and frightened people. We slipped off the wider thoroughfare and into a narrow winding passage choked with filth. If they were Skallgrim then it wouldn’t take them long to figure out where we had gone.

Cillian was lighter than I’d expected. Somehow she exuded an aura heavier than her frame could possibly allow. My body felt leaden and clumsy and I had to draw in a trickle of power and flush it through exhausted muscles. Magic was all well and good but I badly needed decent food and a few weeks of rest. It was a wonder either of us were still moving.

Through drifting smoke and crumbled tenement walls I glimpsed the gods’ towers and we angled northwest, figuring it would be quicker heading for Westford Bridge rather than risk the centre of the Warrens. We hobbled through the small passages between listing buildings, bare feet squelching through mud and slime, Cillian hissing with each step. People were fighting and dying and a miasma of violence filled the whole area. Up ahead a cloud of anger and fear marked a full-blown riot, their emotions bleeding out into a communal torrent of rage.

Carrion spirits would be swarming over the city, drawn to the shedding of this much blood and magic like crows to a battlefield. The spirits would have a short existence in Setharis before the city devoured them, but they’d instinctively do their best to inflame the situation, to feed and breed and spread disease.

We burst from the gloom of the Warrens into a wider street, barging into some poor sap and knocking them to the cobbles. I turned to spit a quick apology but the words went unsaid as thick coils of smoke drifted past. Flames illuminated the black haze up ahead and terrified people were running for their lives towards us. I knew exactly where I was now. Charra’s Place lay only a short distance up the street towards Westford Bridge.

“Walker,” Cillian wheezed in warning.

I started, looked down at the person I’d bumped into. “Sorry, I–”

“Piece of dung!” The scars at either side of Rosha Bone-face’s mouth pulled white in a scowl. A dozen knives glinted in the gloom as more Smilers surrounded us.

I felt Cillian tense. “Easy now,” I said. “Stay calm.” These people had no idea how close they were to a very messy death.

Rosha scrambled to her feet. “Stay calm? I should cut your stinkin’ cock off!”

“I wasn’t speaking to you,” I snapped, nodding to Cillian. “I was telling this magus here not to burst you like rotten fruit.”

Despite Cillian’s bloodied state she must have given a fearsome glare judging by Rosha’s taken aback expression. “I have no time to dally… with the likes of them,” she said, staring at their scarified smiles.

“A magus?” Rosha growled, voice wobbling with uncertainty as she took in the ruins of Cillian’s expensive robes. The Smilers were used to intimidating people, but we weren’t displaying the slightest smidgeon of worry. “What would scum like you be doin’ with one of those daemon-touched bastards?”

“Councillor Cillian is right,” I said, opening up my Gift and reaching for Rosha. “We don’t have time for this crap.” Her eyes bulged as she felt me prod the inside of her mind. “So, are you going to get out of our way or are you coming to Charra’s Place with us?” I asked, withdrawing but keeping my Gift ready.

A strangled choke erupted from Rosha’s throat. “Councillor?” She coughed and cleared it, looking at us like we were daemons in human form. “That’s the direction we was goin’ anyways, you maggot.” A shocked expression burst across her face, and she paled as it dawned on her what she’d just called the magus. Her bad habits would get her killed some day, but not by me.

“Uh, sorry, my, ah, maguses,” she said. The rest of her gang looked like they’d collectively soiled themselves. Not surprising considering the dread stories that gleefully spread amongst the peasantry. Suddenly their knives seemed woefully inadequate. On the other hand, our reputation as magi was the only armour we had: all it would take was one idiot to stick a knife in my back and I’d be out of the game. I hoped they didn’t have somebody insane enough to risk attacking us. Cillian would slaughter them.

“Get a move on,” Cillian said, hobbling past two young Smilers, the puckered scars still red and angry on their cheeks. We limped uphill towards Charra’s Place, closer to a bridge over the Seth and closer to help. After a moment’s hesitation the Smilers followed us, their confidence returning with each step they took beside us. People coming downhill took one look at the angry wolf pack heading towards them and scattered, slinking off into darkened alleys or closing and barring their doors.

The smoke grew thicker, black coils writhing into the sky as flames licked up a nearby merchant house’s walls and roared from windows on the upper floors. A mob surrounded Charra’s Place, lusting for the riches inside, brandishing knives, sticks and broken bottles, flinging rocks and flaming debris at the shutters. The immaculate garden and delicate moonflowers had been churned into mud beneath their feet. A group of men had torn a heavy wooden beam from one of the burning tenements and was using it as a battering ram.

As we approached, a woman smashed a lantern across Charra’s front door and the oil exploded in a black cloud. Another crashed into the upper wall, flaming oil bursting across a shuttered window. The wood was ablaze but it didn’t deter the men with the battering ram as they continued pounding the door.

A wild-eyed woman in the torn and stained remnants of a dress turned to face us, her eyes catching sight of Cillian’s robes. She snarled, revealing a mouth full of broken teeth. “Old Towners! Get them!”

“Oh, shite,” I said, as the crazier half of the mob broke away and howled towards us. A few crossbow bolts zipped from slits in the brothel walls into the backs of the charging mob, dropping two to be trampled beneath their fellows without a second thought.

“Cillian,” I said. “A little help here?” The front rank of the mob dropped mid-step as something inside them burst.

The Smilers didn’t run. Maybe it was some sort of loyalty towards Charra and Layla, or perhaps this was part of their territory, but whatever reason they readied their knives and closed ranks around us.

The throbbing mass of rage surged towards me like an oncoming forest fire, and as much as I tried to keep it out, their emotion soaked into me.

I wrenched my Gift open as wide as I could manage. It was recovering astonishingly quick. Blissful power and pain roared through me in an uncontrolled wave to slam into the oncoming mob. One after another, I broke in and tore a part of their minds out. I felt laughter building up to eruption inside me as they fell face-first to the cobbles, drooling and blind. Only two survived to reach us, and the Smilers’ knives made quick butchery of them.

I grinned. It had been so easy. Was this the pleasure of potency felt by elder magi? It was glorious. Sudden horror helped me wrestle that ecstatic torrent of power to the floor and stuff the laughter back down my throat where it met the rising panic and disgust at my grisly handiwork.

A terrifying and monstrous strength was biding its time inside me. I couldn’t let the Worm of Magic take the reins again, no matter the cost. I glanced at the Smilers as they swallowed nervously and edged away from me. If I lost control I would take their minds, and they would be mine forever. I now knew exactly what it would feel like to be a tyrant. It was galling to admit the Arcanum were right to fear me.

Cillian stepped over a corpse and we advanced on the suddenly stilled and staring mob in front of Charra’s Place, the human vermin in it for loot, rape, or the primal joy of destruction. The shitweasels that had just come to the horrid realisation they had attacked magi.

The Smilers trailed after us, didn’t seem to have it in them to get too close. Rosha looked about ready to throw up and hung back out of our sight.

I stopped, my gaze sliding past the opportunistic bastards like a reaper calmly surveying a field of wheat. My brush with such a mass of vileness had affected me and it was a struggle to remain calm. If I hadn’t been sickened by what I had just done I think I might have killed the rest too.

“Fuck off,” I said. “Or I’ll kill you all.”

The mob burst apart like a flock of startled sparrows and the burning doors of Charra’s Place swung open to disgorge a fully armed and armoured host, Layla at the head. The hulking forms of Grant and Nevin flanked her as she approached us, both of the big hairy clansmen gits bloodied and battered. Layla’s clothes were bloodstained but it didn’t look like hers. She ignored the twitching mindless bodies behind me. “Where is my mother?”

I swallowed. “She’s safe. The Arcanum has her, but I’ll get her back.” It grew dark as a bank of thick smoke rolled over us, making it more akin to night than day.

Realisation suddenly crapped on me from a great height. Idiot. You bloody fool! In my worry over Cillian and Layla I had forgotten something vital, life and death even. I was covered in sweat and blood and I’d just used an enormous amount of my magic out in the open for any fool to sense – or any daemon. I shoved Cillian into Layla’s arms. “Get her to the Arcanum alive and you’ll get your mother back.”

Cillian gasped for breath. “Edrin, what are–”

I didn’t hear the rest, was too busy fleeing as fast as abused muscles could carry me. A sudden churning in my gut and a glimpse of luminous green eyes through the smoke warned me that my idiocy had paid off.