The Traitor God

Chapter 35

The streets were dead; not just quiet, actually dead. Corpses of cats and dogs and chicken and swine lay eviscerated and drained of blood, piles of feather and bone marking where the god had plucked birds from the sky. Even the tiny husks of flies and beetles littered the ground. Nathair had left nothing alive in his wake. I heard a wail and hobbled back the way I had come on my flight with the crystal with the vague hope of finding survivors trapped under collapsed buildings. Remnants of Skallgrim warriors were scattered across the street, a scrap of scalp and hair there, a finger here, and fragments of shredded armour and broken weapons that had proven useless.

I located the source of the noise and found Harailt still alive, if you could call the state he was in living. His body was a mound of quivering flesh wheezing and bubbling, and his mind a gutted and insane ruin. As I approached he mewled pathetically from a gash in what was left of his throat. Three battered and bloodied Skallgrim surrounded him – lucky stragglers arrived too late to enjoy Nathair’s attentions – prodding the mound with weapons. I took their minds without a second thought. They stood motionless, awaiting my orders.

I didn’t say anything as I approached the remains of Harailt. His single remaining eye begged me to end the agony. I knew that I should hand him over to the Arcanum, but I didn’t have it in me to allow him to live, even in eternal agony. I almost stopped myself, thinking it would be far too quick an end for what he had done. But none of it was Harailt’s fault, not really – he had been infested and controlled by Nathair and that Scarrabus parasite. Whatever he had done to me, nobody deserved this. I picked up a discarded Skallgrim axe and chopped, once, twice, a dozen more times to make certain.

He didn’t die easily, and it wasn’t quick. When he finally breathed his last I didn’t feel the satisfaction that I’d expected given our history. I just felt empty.

My three mind-broken thralls followed me as I wandered in a daze back to what was left of Lynas’ warehouse and slumped down atop a pile of rubble. I stared at nothing. Thinking. Hurting. Mourning. For what seemed like hours. Eventually footsteps crunching towards me made me look up.

Krandus and Cillian advanced on me through the smoke and dust. Cillian still looked half-dead, but had regained some of her strength since I’d seen her last.

My three Skallgrim thralls closed ranks around me. I wondered how I appeared to the Archmagus: guarded by the enemy, a torn and ragged figure dripping the blood and gore of a god and with a lake of stolen power seething inside me. My coat hung in tatters around my shoulders like a cloak of bloody skin, and at some point amidst the chaos I’d lost my right boot and the little toe with it, leaving just a ragged stump. I didn’t feel that pain yet. Funny the trivial details that strike you when imminent death comes knock, knock, knocking at your door. A toe was the least of my worries.

They stopped ten paces from me, power vibrating amongst them like a leashed storm ready to be loosed in the blink of an eye. I waved off my thralls and heaved myself to my feet.

“Magus Edrin Walker,” Krandus said, sounding exhausted. “The Arcanum has felt your power used against the populace of Setharis.” He calmly eyed my enslaved Skallgrim. “I am required by law to charge you with the ancient crime of tyranny. As of old, we cannot suffer an enslaver to live. How do you plead?”

I lifted a hand to slick gory hair back over my shoulders. The sea of magic in my belly spoke to the wounded animal inside that wanted to lash out, to bring death and ruin to my enemies. It whispered words of victory and assurances of my own might: I had taken three men as my own, and I could take many more if I wanted. It was so difficult to summon the willpower to shove the urges to one side. That was what had defeated Artha in the end: when the god started listening to the corrupting urges of the Worm he began acting on instinct rather than rational thought, and he went too far down that slippery slope to climb back up. Not as he was. I refused to fall as he had – too many innocents would get hurt.

My finger probed at a loose tooth, shoved it back into its socket; it was only a tiny pain compared to my back. I cleared blood and gunk from my throat, spat it out. “The gods as my witness, I am no tyrant, if by tyrant you mean my power was used to enslave people outwith self-defence. What did you expect me to do? Let the Skallgrim tear me to pieces?” I nodded to Cillian. “Let Councillor Cillian be murdered?”

We faced each other down, the Archmagus studying me. The god-seed beat hot against my breast. My hand inched towards it. All I had to do was accept it and ascend, and then they would have to face a tyrant god. Ha, wouldn’t the look on their faces be precious then. The Worm of Magic urged me to take the power for my own, but I was beaten down by the world, by pain and death, and didn’t much fancy living forever. I imagined being a god with that slimy hooded arsehole Byzant at my side and not being able to kill him. Nathair had spoken of an endless duty and despite everything I didn’t think him a liar; me and duty did not see eye to eye at the best of times. No, godhood was not for me. My hand dropped to my side.

Before Krandus could reply, the sky darkened. Feathery, screeching darkness descended. I didn’t have the mental energy left to care as a whole flight of corvun alighted on the rubble all around me, dozens of razor claws and vicious beaks between the Arcanum and myself. I chuckled, figuring that it would be just my luck to survive the Magash Mora and the Thief of Life only to be pecked to death by fucking birds. They didn’t look at me – bad meat perhaps – instead they cawed and flapped angrily in Krandus’ direction.

I looked left and right at the vile creatures, then shrugged. “Ah well, doesn’t look like everybody has it in for me.”

The Archmagus stared, not at me, but at the birds. His lips twitched into a smile. “It would seem not.” I hadn’t taken him for one to pay heed to superstitious portents. He hesitantly nodded to them. “I think that clears things up. Do you agree, Councillor?”

Cillian relaxed. “I do.”

“Then the law is satisfied,” Krandus said. “Magus Edrin Walker is declared innocent.”

I blinked. That was it? A charge of tyranny and the two of them dismissed it like it was nothing?

Cillian caught my look. “Martial law, Edrin. Two of the Inner Circle are enough to pass a judgement. The correct one, as it happens.”

Every single corvun in the city shrieked and took flight, wheeling above our heads in a vast screeching flock. For the first time in recorded history the great birds ventured beyond the walls of Setharis. Black wings cut through the smoke as they headed out over the docks and across the bay to descend on the surviving Skallgrim wolf-ships fleeing back out to sea. This was no mere murder of crows – this was a carnage of corvun. People watched from rooftops and windows, through destroyed streets and fallen walls, as black death enveloped the ships. When the birds took flight again they left nothing human on those decks.

Krandus glanced at the remains of the Magash Mora, a hill of dead meat made from the corpses of hundreds of thousands of our people and then extended a hand to me. I stared at it for a moment and then clasped it, flesh to flesh. He didn’t seem overly worried about a tyrant’s touch. It was a display of trust that I had never expected to see. He turned and began the long trudge back up to the Old Town to resume control of his city. Cillian gave me a brief hug before she too left, and I thought my past misdeeds were forgiven as far as she was concerned. I suppose I had saved the city. What more could you ask of a man?

Perhaps the gods, wherever they were trapped, had heard my plea and borne witness after all. The Arcanum weren’t all bad, just horribly entitled and not a little arrogant. Sometimes they forgot what it was like to be merely human, not much different from me at times.

As people began to return to the area, staring in shock at the ruins of their homes, I decided to slink off and find a hole to crawl into. I was exhausted and broken and needed to be alone. My thralls stood watch as I curled up in a ruined corner of a building and collapsed into blessedly dreamless sleep.

I woke to a symphony of pains and tried to take the stress off my damaged back and ribs by resting against the wall. Sitting next to the smouldering ruins of the room I had taken only a few days before in the Throne and Fire, it all seemed like an age ago. Another life. The scorched stone was still warm from last night’s blaze. Morning mists and drizzle had killed off most of the smaller fires but columns of black smoke still snaked upwards from dozens of sites all across the lower city.

I was a wreck: exhausted, torn up and used up. My right hand itched: I scratched at the black specks, but the iron shards of Dissever were buried too deep to tease out. Every breath hurt and I barely had enough strength to turn my head as somebody slid down the wall next to me.

Dying as she was, face crisscrossed with scabs, Charra’s smile was a beautiful thing. I didn’t have words good and glorious enough to describe the feeling of being back home with her. In fact, she was my home. My home was people not place. She stifled a cough with a kerchief then wiped the blood from her lips. We sat in silence, watching people wander the streets dazed and smeared with soot, some raking through the debris of their homes on the slim chance of salvaging something of their lives, others weeping and cradling their dead or sitting numb with shock and staring off into the distance. The lucky ones gave shouts of joy and ran to envelop relatives and friends in fierce hugs. Most waited in vain for people to return home, knowing they would likely never see the bodies of their kin. Most of the dead had been melded into the reeking corpse of the Magash Mora.

“I don’t have any words for this,” Charra said.

I didn’t reply, didn’t feel there was much point. I couldn’t even bring myself to meet her eyes. She was going to die, and far too soon.

Charra sighed. “Not everything in life ends well, Walker. I’ve tried everything possible to get out of this but I’m at the end of my voyage. At least I had my Layla and a few good friends. I have few regrets.”

Despite the outcome, I felt like all I’d done was pointless. Now that I wasn’t living under a death sentence I was terrified of the vast and empty gulf of life ahead of me. Now I knew why elder magi kept themselves apart from normal people: they were so short-lived and gut-wrenchingly fragile.

I eased open my tattered coat to show her the god-seed snug in my inside pocket. “How do you fancy being a god?”

“A god?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “You jest.”

I was utterly serious, and she understood that a moment later. She gasped, hand stretching out towards the shining crystal. Her finger stopped a whisker away from touching it.

“A bad idea to offer me so much power,” she said. “I’d make an awful god.”

I closed over my coat again. I was disappointed but it was as I’d expected. She would have been far better than some. “As would I, but it’s your last chance. It might work with an unGifted.”

She squeezed my arm. “Thank you, but no. I’ve made my peace.” She looked up at the gods’ towers, still dull and lifeless. “Do you know what happened to them?”

I shook my head. “Nathair and these Scarrabus things he was allied with did something to them, something terrible, but I have a feeling we would be in worse straits if they were dead.”

A horse and cart drew up and a group of walking wounded clustered around it. A shrivelled up old chirurgeon, two of his apprentices, and a group of helpers hopped off the back to hand out bandages and poultices and wash out wounds with soured wine. They took out needle and thread and began stitching up wounds. People began distributing bread and water, no coin changing hands.

“I’ve been away so long,” I said. “I’ve missed so much and I can’t do a damn thing to help you now.” My clenched fist pounded the ground. “Lynas is dead and it’s all been for nothing if you die too.” All those years away and all I’d had for comfort was the knowledge I was protecting them. What did I have to live for now?

She shook her head. “We can only do what we can do. You’re not a god, Walker, and they got the shitty end of the stick too from what you said. Look around. All of this you see before you, all these people still alive – that is not nothing. Lynas did that. You did that. That’s what’s important. Who gives a damn what those Arcanum pricks think? Layla is fine, and a little piece of Lynas and I will live on in her. He would have called his sacrifice a bargain.”

She was right. Charra was always right.

A young girl with a wine-stain birthmark caught my eye, busy splinting and strapping up a man’s broken arm. I recognized her and remembered tossing her a handful of silvers outside an inn. She looked half-starved still but did have a new dress, albeit now bloodstained. She busied herself helping the wounded with a determined air, her hands deftly wrapping bandages. One of the chirurgeon’s apprentices came over to speak to her. She gave him a shy smile and he flushed a little red. Their body language gave them away, both feeling that unspoken attraction. Good for you, girl, I thought, a worthy profession, and perhaps even a loved one. There would certainly be a need for healers in the days to come. I sat a little straighter.

Charra gave me a sad smile. “It feels petty to cry over my death amidst all of this. Let’s have a going away party instead. I’d get more enjoyment by having it before rather than after. I don’t see why everybody else should get all the fun.” She slapped me on the back, making me squeak with pain.

“So I’m dying,” she said. “Shit happens.” She put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me in close. “You saved Layla. I can never thank you enough for that. Now stop being a big, ugly, moody bastard and give me a hug.”

Gods help me, I did just that. My tears came thick and fast as I let go of all that bottled up emotion.

Something had changed inside me: all that stolen magic roaring through me, the god blood that soaked into my skin, the emanations of the crystal core and my own tampering… I felt a strange numbness when I thought about the masses of unknown dead. Hopefully it was just shock, but I wasn’t holding my breath. All I could do was to hold onto my love for Charra and Lynas, and what was left of my humanity. Just because Lynas was dead didn’t mean he was gone.

I pulled back from her and scowled down at myself, “Self-pity never helped anybody.”

“It’s good to have you back, you big idiot,” she said. “I’ll get a decent send-off now, hey?” She gave a morbid chuckle, then coughed blood again.

My heart gave a twinge. I couldn’t save Charra, but I’d done good. And I’d damn well be around to help Layla – not that an assassin needed much help from anybody. We sat in silence for a while, lost in contemplation.

I couldn’t help but absorb the mood of the people. More than ever their thoughts bled into my mind. It was not a hot anger, quick to flare up and swiftly burning out. This was a stone-cold fury that would not stop until cities burned and the shattered bones of our enemies were ground into dust.

This attack had been a very grave error. It was on every face, in every look of shock and loss that was slowly changing to rage. Apathy and in-fighting had been endemic before the horrors of yesterday. We had been a city divided and gnawing on its own rotting innards. If the enemy had bided their time and taken the Free Towns Alliance piece by piece before turning their eyes on us… but no, now that they had roused the serpent from its long slumber there was no lulling it back to sleep. We were a city united by rage and loss.

The Arcanum and the High Houses thought they ruled Setharis with an iron fist, but in reality they too bent to the will of the masses. Magic, wardens, steel and stone – all would be swept away if they dared oppose the unified will of the people of Setharis, and the people demanded war.

Setharis had once had a mighty empire, had callously crushed countless armies and ruthlessly consigned entire peoples to a footnote in history. The Skallgrim tribes would soon learn to regret ever rousing this dark leviathan from its apathetic slumber. And behind them their Scarrabus slavers would learn to fear. We knew they existed now, and we would hunt them with vicious zeal. But all of that would need to wait.

Layla approached us, face drawn and worried, “You found him then?”

Charra opened her arms and Layla flew into them, kneeling in the dirt next to us.

My withered heart gave a lurch, a pang of pure joy.

“So tell me, ladies…”

Charra quirked an eyebrow. “Tell you what?”

“The last ten years,” I said. “Tell me everything. Layla, I wish I could have been here to see you grow up.”

We talked for hours, and it was just like old times. Lynas was gone, but his daughter was here, safe and telling me silly stories about her beloved father. The hours galloped past until daylight ebbed and night’s chill misted our breath.

Eventually Layla helped us old and broken things to rise, and as we limped off I vowed to focus all my efforts on making sure Charra’s last days were the best they could be. We were going to lose somebody we loved, somebody who should have had years left to her. With my accursed magic all I could offer was an end to pain and the company of an old friend.

We passed through throngs of the homeless, the wounded and bereaved. My lot was better than theirs. They’d had far more to lose in the first place.

Charra coughed again, tried to clear her throat with little success. “I could do with a strong drink.”

“I’ll buy,” I said.

She half-laughed, the very best that could be hoped for under the circumstances. “It seems there is a first time for everything. Never thought I’d live to see the day when Edrin Walker bought the rounds. Wait a moment, you cad – I bet you’re hoping that you can salvage ale from the ruins!”

As we talked my worry for the future deepened. I was not what anybody could ever call a good man, and soon there would be precious little left in this world that I truly cared about. I feared how deep into darkness I would sink. Other than Layla, what did I have to live for after Charra was gone?

With the gods still missing and the Arcanum wounded, the Skallgrim and their Scarrabus enslavers must have thought their plans successful, at least in part. They thought us defeated. They were so very, blindly wrong. Soon they would experience the pleasure of facing an enraged tyrant with little left to lose. I had run from everything for ten wretched years – no more! It was time to stand and fight. If Nathair had spoken truly then a grand conjunction of realms meant these disgusting parasites were only one of several awakening ancient powers, but none of them had ever seen anything like me. I had bathed in the blood of gods, and my power was growing.

In the back of my head the remnants of Dissever pulsed with pleasure. Images of rivers running red flashed through my mind.

A great war comes.