The Broken God by Gareth Hanrahan (desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📕

keeps talking while Cari wrestles with the fish. Something about wandering the lands around Paravos, sometimes alone, sometimes with criminals or godbands or mercenaries. Something about angst and fireballs. The other woman’s casual power irritates Cari – if she could throw spells like that, she wouldn’t have ended up in a tin can playing sidekick to fingerless Artolo Dragonshit. She imagines what she could do with a sorcerous talent like Myri’s. Imagines zapping Aunt Silva with a blasting spell. Imagines stealing blue jade from the Eyeless with Adro, using the same invisibility spell Twelve Suns used.

Imagines countering Ongent’s paralysis spell, and saving Spar from falling.

That’s what she wants, that sort of controlled power. Call it Saint Aleena’s paradox. The sweet spot is enough to stop other people fucking with her, enough to hurt those that deserve hurting, but not so much that people look to her for salvation.

The fish thrashes on the hook, pulling hard against the line. Cari’s forearms strain to hold on.

Once, back in Guerdon, they thought there might be a way for Cari to command the Ravellers and control the power of the Black Iron Gods, and the thought had filled her with a cold horror unlike anything she’d felt before. The thought of being responsible for everything terrified her. Her immediate reactions: run away. Failing that, give it all to Spar. Let the clever people like Spar, like Eladora, figure it all out.

The line goes slack, suddenly. The bastard got away.

“I asked about Khebesh,” says Cari, sullenly.

“I’m telling you about Khebesh.”

“No, you’re not. You’re rambling about fucking mercenaries in the Pultish Waste. Get on with it.”

“Khebesh won’t make sense unless you understand.”

Every act of sorcery is a risk. No matter how talented the sorcerer, no matter how prepared, there’s always a risk. Eventually, the dice turn against them, and the spell turns on the sorcerer. Sorcerers are thieves and gamblers, stealing little fragments of the power of the gods and betting they can ride out the storm that follows in the wake of blasphemy.

The Khebeshi sorcerer who found Myri, though, claimed to have a foolproof system. A way to use sorcery that was a sure thing. He didn’t try to force her. Didn’t abduct her. Didn’t threaten her. He just walked into the mercenary camp in the middle of the Pultish, strolling past sentries and wards like they weren’t there, and offered her knowledge.

She sailed with him for Khebesh the next day.

All the maps place Khebesh along the southern coast of the Firesea, but that’s like trying to mix cartography with poetry. The city is where it needs to be; where magic rhymes with reality. They saw the spires from afar, flashing like silver spearheads in the summer sun. They passed through the Nine Perilous Gates that are the only way through the fabled Ghost Walls, and at each gate Myri overcame some challenge, solved some riddle, proved her worth, until at last she came to the spiritual oasis of Khebesh, where the chaos of the outer worlds, both mortal and divine, cannot trouble the tranquillity of the school.

In Khebesh, there were no gods, and there were no nations. Myri was not a Varinthian barbarian nor a prisoner of Haith; neither an initiate of the priesthood of the boar god nor a war-sorcerer of the Empire. There are only students in Khebesh—

“So who cleans the toilets?”

“What?”

“Who cleans the toilets?” repeats Cari. “Look, I was the Saint of the New City, right? I know fucking plumbing from the inside. Blame Spar. I don’t know what it says about the man that he had the presence of mind to imagine a remarkably intricate and functional sewage system while dying, but yeah, I’ve had more toilet-centred divine visions than I ever wanted. Even in the New City, miraculously conjured and all, someone has to clean the shitter. You’re telling me about some equally magical fortress of academia – gods, it sounds like Eladora’s wet dream – but I’m asking you, who cleans the toilets there?” Cari shrugs. “I’m trying to get a handle on who I’ll be dealing with.”

“There were servants.” Myri frowns. “I didn’t pay much attention. I was busy learning.”

For there was much to learn there, in the city of sorcerers, and Myri drank knowledge like pure water. For uncounted centuries, the sages of Khebesh have gathered arcane lore from across the world. They depart the city cloaked as pilgrims, as beggars, as adventurers, as hedge-sorcerers, hiding their true nature as masters. They wander the world, observing and learning, never interceding – for the sorcerers of Khebesh understand that the outside world is broken, like a clay pot that has been shattered. Every act of sorcery risks widening the cracks, so every spell must be carefully considered. Every word of power weighed out, coins from a miser’s purse. No magic may be used unnecessarily; anything that can be done by mundane means should be done by mundane means, no matter how arduous. Myri studied the works of past sorcerers who summoned demons and challenged gods, but she was not permitted to conjure the feeblest werelight when there was a candle to be used instead.

The method to glue the broken pot of reality back together has yet to be found, so it is the custom in Khebesh to record every spell cast, every miracle observed in a great tome that each sorcerer bears with them at all times. When a pilgrim returns to Khebesh after long, lonely years away, their book is added to the great archive.

One day, the masters of Khebesh predict, a Mind shall arise of such profound complexity, an intellect beyond the comprehension of anything save itself. That Mind shall encompass all the knowledge in the archive, and all the wounds of the world, and all shall be renewed. The Mind shall—

“Was that you?” asks Cari.

“What?” Myri chokes, coughs so hard she spits out something black and shrivelled. “What do you mean?”

“The Mind they talked about. I mean, you’re a shit-hot