The Traitor God

Chapter 8

Even the unnatural vitality of a magus’ body had limits: I was mentally drained by the vision, and physically from five days of seasickness. I needed to sleep and regain my strength – oh, to sleep on solid ground again! I found the inn and haggled with a sour-faced woman for three nights’ lodging, paying extra for no questions asked. It was strange to be back in a building I once drank in with Lynas.

Sadly I couldn’t spare the time to sleep, only taking a few minutes of rest before heaving my sorry arse back up off the bed. I had some small affinity with both body magic and aeromancy, nothing much to speak of really, but occasionally useful. I tweaked my body functions a little, stimulating a few fleshy inside bits I’d discovered as a Collegiate initiate studying for examinations – last minute, naturally. False freshness cleared away the cobwebs and I felt like I had emerged dripping from a mountain stream, but I would pay for it later; the comedown was a bitch.

I slipped back out into the night and headed for Lynas’ warehouse. Before long I would sight the titanic black armoured statues flanking Carr’s Bridge, looming chest and shoulders over even the tallest of tenements. Cowardice and Greed, two of five titans wrought from enchanted black iron and forgotten magic in ancient days, bearing enormous swords that only god-like strength could lift without rope and pulleys and two dozen cart horses hitched up. They fascinated and terrified me in equal measure.

I turned a corner and missed my step. Their features were visible in the darkness, emitting an eerie green phosphorescence. What. The. Fuck?

I approached with a degree of superstitious dread, studying Greed’s heavy jowls and tiny piggish eyes for any hint of movement, then Cowardice’s hollow-cheeked cringing expression. There had always been an indefinable something about them that perturbed me, even before I knew what they really were – and now this. The glow was a new aspect, and I should know since I’d once tried to climb the heights of Cowardice on a drunken dare. I think I managed to reach the knee before getting stuck, not that I received any sympathy whatsoever from Lynas. New occurrences were never to be trusted in Setharis, because it usually meant magic gone awry.

I wondered if the titans guarding the other two bridges over the Seth also glowed. Each had been named after one of the cardinal disgraces; their real names, if they ever had any, were consigned to the same desert sands that buried their creators. At the centre of the Crescent, Wrath and Pride guarded the approach to Sethgate Bridge. At Westford Bridge Lust stood lone vigil. The titans were Escharric relics the Arcanum had excavated from half-buried ruins over two hundred and fifty years ago. Crusted in bird droppings and layers of soot, it was hard to imagine that they were in truth arcane war engines. The Escharric empire had fallen before the war engines could be used, and I wasn’t sure that was a bad thing, given the disaster caused when the Arcanum used them for the first and hopefully last time during the shockingly brief war against the Vanda city states.

There had once been a sixth and unfinished titan, later named after the final disgrace of Ignorance. In their lust for knowledge Arcanum artificers had tried to take it apart to study the construction. Texts record Ignorance exploded in a lightning storm that incinerated thirty magi and fused the desert sands to glass for leagues around. In our classes at the Collegiate I had been the only one to note that those same texts hadn’t bothered to record the number of servants and labourers killed. Hundreds more dead, and yet not worthy of mention.

Finally Carr’s Bridge itself came into sight, ancient pitted stone arcing over the turgid and infested waters guarding the Crescent from the undesirables of Docklands. The human features of statues lining the bridge and either side of the stone-walled riverbank were long since worn away by wind and rain.

I slipped into the shadow of a statue as a warden left the bridge tollbooth. Only rogues were abroad in Docklands at this time of night and I didn’t want to be remembered. He didn’t see me as he wandered over to Greed and dropped his trousers, whistling tunelessly as his piss splashed across the titan’s metal heel. I winced. He was pissing on a bloody monster! The lower classes thought them mere statues with a few fanciful tales attached, which was exactly how the Arcanum wanted it.

There were two things to note about the history of the titans: firstly, they had only been used once. History records that during the war with the Vanda city states two hundred years ago, the enemy’s mage-priests had conducted a mass human sacrifice of their own people to gain power. The ignorant savages ripped a gaping ragged hole through the Shroud and mistakenly opened doorways to dozens of other worlds. An army of daemons had poured through the breach, destroying their cities and beginning what came to be called the Daemonwar. The Arcanum had been forced to unleash the titans against the teeming hordes of inhuman creatures, and with the heroic sacrifice of half the entire Arcanum they ultimately thwarted that daemonic invasion from the Far Realms. The lush lands of the Vanda were reduced to a barren, cursed wasteland where nothing would ever live again.

The second thing was that the first was a big fat stinking lie. Many years ago in the Collegiate library I’d happened across pages torn from a diary – an eye-witness account of what had really happened: the Vanda city states neighbouring the desert of Escharr had joined in federation, and under the leadership of their mage-priests formed a collegiate of their own with the intention of rivalling the magical might of the Arcanum. The Setharii empire had been at its height, swallowing up the island nations of the Thousand Kingdoms one by one and forming colonies to exploit and export abundant natural resources. The Arcanum could not abide the birth of a magical rival, especially not one that threatened their monopoly on Escharric ruins and ancient artefacts buried beneath the sands.

And so the ignorant magi of Arcanum manufactured an excuse to wage war, and in order to learn more about the workings of their recently discovered titans they gleefully unleashed the ancient war engines upon the Vanda. The official histories were lies, and this horrific act was before the Daemonwar had even begun. The lands of the Vanda burned while the Arcanum looked on in impotent horror, unable to stop the titans slaughtering everything: men, women, children and even animals. It was a mass death of our own devising. We rent the Shroud that protected our world from the depredations of daemonic invaders. The greatest disaster in all Setharii history had been caused by the Arcanum’s morbid curiosity, by arrogant children playing with Escharric toys they didn’t fully understand. It wasn’t the first time dabbling with that fallen empire’s artefacts had exploded in our faces and it wouldn’t be the last.

It was ancient history to me, but those torn pages showed the Arcanum for the self-serving political entity it truly was and I’d never forgotten the lesson. It is so much easier to blame crimes on the voiceless dead.

In any case, the titans were too dangerous to re-bury and attempt to forget, too massive to hide, and much too valuable to destroy; instead they were deactivated and had spent the last two centuries where the Arcanum could keep close watch over them.

The guard fumbled his cock back inside his trousers, wiped his fingers on his tabard and then joined his colleague in warming their hands over a glowing brazier outside the tollbooth. They were ostensibly stationed here to maintain the peace and keep traffic moving, but in reality their role was to dissuade thieving little Docklands toerags swarming over the bridge at night. If the poor wanted in and out for a spot of thieving they would have to swim the Seth, and I didn’t fancy the odds of them making it across in one piece. A thousand years of Arcanum experimentation had let all sorts of abominations escape into the river.

With shard beasts on the loose I dared not rely overmuch on the fabled daemon-devouring air of Setharis. Nobody else was out this late, and the running water should confound the magical senses of any shadow cats and sniffers nearby, so I reluctantly accepted the risk and eased open my Gift.

I eavesdropped on the wardens: just the usual moans about drink, gambling debts and women. Guards proved much the same in whatever city or town I passed through. It was simple to fog their minds and walk straight down the middle of the bridge. As I passed the tollbooth they glanced up, but I was just part of the furniture, entirely expected and effectively invisible.

Unlike the shifting sands of the Docklands slums, Carrbridge looked exactly how I remembered it. Cosily nestled between the massive cliff walls of the Old Town rock on one side and the Seth on the other, the old, stone buildings were plain but solid, and the signs above shop fronts bright with new paint. The Crescent was the domain of the richer merchants and the poorer nobility and Carrbridge was the least of these areas, the furthest east and consequently the recipient of more smoke and foul odours blown in by prevailing winds.

Before long I was passing the mouth of East Temple Street leading into the district’s square of worship. The temples here were smaller and less ostentatious than the grand square up in the Old Town, but then Carrbridge was a more practical sort of place, less given to garish displays of wealth and magic when compared to Westford, Sethgate, or the Old Town itself.

The emblems of the gods of Setharis looked down upon the square. Facing me was the ossified throne of the Lord of Bones and the broken moon of Lady Night, both gods’ original names long since lost to the mists of time. On my right were the gleaming golden scales of Derrish, the Gilded God and Lynas’ patron deity, and next to it a smaller temple bearing the blood-filled hourglass of Nathair, the Thief of Life. On my left was the grim temple of this new god, marble statues of a faceless hooded figure standing sentinel either side of its entrance. Over the door the emblem of the Hooded God had been painted over the axe of Artha the Warlord. The dead god. I ground my teeth and had to force myself to look away. Now was not the time to pick at that scabbed-over wound in my memory.

I’d never seen any hint the gods paid a blind bit of notice unless they wanted something in exchange, and I doubted they would even bother to piss on their worshippers if they were on fire. Charra and I were agreed that it was folly to worship the Setharii gods, but Lynas had felt very differently. It was not a thing we discussed often, mostly because I tended to end up ranting like a drunken oaf. In this very square Lynas had once slugged me in the stomach and hadn’t talked to me for a week. I’d probably deserved it.

The street split and I went left down Coppergate Road. A grinning copper lion reared over the entrance to an inn that beckoned me with buttery light, scent of roasting meat, merry music and laughter.

My stomach growled, tightening as I stomped past. I began noticing signs of the same rot that riddled the lower city: refuse piled up in side alleys, broken shutters, buildings with cracked and peeling facades. If the blight had penetrated the Crescent then trade was much worse than I had realized.

Lynas’ warehouse was locked up tighter than a gnat’s arsehole: every door and window had been chained or boarded over and inscribed with magical ward-glyphs, glowing balefully. A pair of wardens patrolled the exterior, hooded lanterns raised to peer into every shadow where Elunnai’s silver light didn’t reach. This one was going to be tricky.

I mulled over my options. I could fog the wardens’ minds while I broke into the building, but any loud noise would shatter their obliviousness, and more importantly I didn’t fancy using so much magic in a place the Arcanum had their eyes on as part of an ongoing investigation unless I had to. So I decided to try the straightforward and honest approach first, an unusual choice for me it has to be said.

I walked towards the wardens, fully visible in the moonlight, giving them the time to see that my hands were empty.

They drew swords. “This area is off limits,” the older man with a drooping ginger moustache said. The other warden was younger, with a short dark beard that hadn’t yet crept up his cheeks, but his eyes were wary. I was reasonably certain I could take both with ease if necessary.

“The owner was a friend,” I replied. "I’ve been away and just found out about his murder. Would you be willing to discuss it?”

I felt a tremor of movement on the wind brush the back of my hair. It took a moment for my enhanced senses to locate a third warden at a second-floor window in the building behind me. I turned my head slightly, glimpsing a bowman with an arrow nocked drawing a bead between my shoulder blades. Unfortunate.

Ginger moustache was about to tell me to piss off, then checked himself as his eyes grazed my fine greatcoat. You didn’t have to be a magus to see the wheels turning in his head: I could be somebody important. “Sorry. I can’t tell you anything,” he said. “And no, you cannot bribe us to let you snoop about. If you want to know anything, take it up with our captain.”

That was my second line of attack wiped out then. I had just been slapped with the gauntlet of bureaucracy and I didn’t have nearly enough time or patience to work around it. Their disciplined minds would have proved too difficult for small-time magical dabblers in deception, but I was something else entirely. If there had been only one warden then I could have smashed straight through into his mind, two I could manage with some difficulty, but three at the same time, and with one out of physical reach… well, I supposed life would be dreary without taking risks.

This was blatant tyranny, but they left me no other option. After ten years of hiding what I was and scraping by on meagre trickery I opened my Gift wide, letting the magic surge into me. All tiredness washed away. The street flared brighter as my eyesight sharpened until I could see every pore in their skins. My heart thundered, straining at the cage of my ribs. I took a deep breath, the air filling my body with energy. Sweet Lady Night, I had not felt what it was to be a real magus for so long – it was glorious! I wanted to let it all in, to bathe in the bottomless sea of magic.

I had almost forgotten how sweet the temptation could be. I bit my lip and drew back from the edge. I had a murderer to burn. If I was careful I’d be able to keep the magic within our bodies and minimize any detectable leakage or risk of detection.

I strengthened my muscles with a touch of body magic then shot forward, hands clamping around their throats before they could blink. My magic slammed into their minds with all my might. Their wills shattered like eggshells and they slumped to the ground glassy-eyed.

The swiftness of breaking two such strong-willed men stunned me. I was off balance and reeling. How had it been so easy?

In my shock I hesitated too long. An arrow loosed at my back. I spun, grunting with the sudden effort of using my paltry skill in aeromancy to throw up a meagre wall of wind between us. The arrow veered right, missed me by a few fingerspans and skittered down the road. The bowman nocked another and drew the string back.

I panicked, and instinctively struck out mentally. A surge of power stabbed into the bowman. He collapsed backwards, his mind shredded and his heart stopped. With the might and right of magic surging through me this unknown man’s death was insignificant.

Heart pounding, I stood listening and waiting, feeling the vibrations on the air. The street remained empty save for the seductive whispers of magic stroking my mind. No shadow cats and no Arcanum sniffers with guards. I’d gotten away with it.