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

“Am I the prophesied one who’ll restore the world to balance? No, Carillon Thay, we’re not all chosen by destiny. I’m good, but I’m not some fabled arch-mage. It’s just a philosophic theory, not a mystic prophecy.” Myri wipes her lips. “My tale was not unusual. The pilgrims look for talent. Khebesh gathers the best minds to itself. They look for keen intellects, and souls that have not been corrupted by divinity.” Myri nods at the book, wrapped in its oilskin. “They’d never let something like you through the Gates, normally. You’d endanger their precious equilibrium.”

Cari scowls and throws the fishing line out again.

“Anyway,” says Myri, “it’s all bullshit. Their theories are bullshit. Take the two of us, for example. All the spells I’ve worked in my whole life, all of it – they’re nothing compared to the chaos you unleashed as a Saint. I lit a few candles, but you set the world on fire.”

Cari doesn’t answer, but her shoulders hunch. I didn’t, she wants to argue, it was the gods. Shapes are visible in the water. More big fish. Come on, one of you, bite. For all her divine connections and mystical experiences, she can’t even command a fucking fish to bite. Her wrists ache where Vorz bled her.

“I told them as much,” says Myri. “I told them that the world outside the walls had gone beyond salvaging, and that choosing to restrain our own power was folly. I wasn’t alone in this. Others agreed with me, and I wasn’t the first to make the argument.”

“Tymneas, right?”

Myri’s eyes widen in surprise. “How do you know that name?”

“You told me.” Cari slaps the side of the boat. “You named this boat after him, and said he was an inspiration of yours.”

“He’d left Khebesh long before I arrived, but I found some of his grimoires in the library. He was a pilgrim sorcerer, a wanderer. He often travelled to Ilbarin. Further, sometimes. I took Tymneas’ grimoire with me when I confronted the masters, but they wouldn’t listen.”

“So you told the guys we’re going to beg a favour from to shove their whole philosophy up their arse. What happened then?”

Myri left without winning her staff. Instead, she inscribed sigils on her living flesh, a map of her own soul. A declaration that the rest of the world could shatter and burn, but she would remain true to herself. She would not hide behind the Ghost Walls, nor give up her talent for sorcery. Five years after she entered Khebesh by the Perilous Gate, she left by the same route. She fled in the night, wrapped in a warding-cloak. The masters are not vengeful or cruel, but neither do they tolerate the theft of their secrets. If they caught her, they would take her back to Khebesh and never permit her to leave again. She travelled, never lingering anywhere for long for fear of meeting a disguised pilgrim-sorcerer.

She returned to her old ways. The mercenaries of the Pultish were all dead now, so she went west, to the Trading Cities, where a sorcerer might easily find employment. She would prove to those cloistered masters that it was foolish to remain in obscurity, to leave the gift of sorcery to moulder out of some misplaced sense of obligation to a future that will never come. The Godswar shatters the world more thoroughly than she ever could, and she intended to make a better life for herself amid the ruins, before the end.

Better than she ever was before, thanks to her training in Khebesh. Better than any graduate of Haith’s dusty institutes, or Smoke Painter’s academies. The alchemist-scholars of Guerdon might be her equals in finesse or technique, but not in strength. She worked her sorcery, and the dice never turned on her. Her luck wasn’t faultless, and the power that runs through her burned her, but she did not relent. The power was worth the price.

Severast to Jashan, to Khenth, to a dozen other places, and in the end to Guerdon. Some of those cities are familiar to Cari, but Myri’s descriptions of them make them sound alien to her. Weird shit attracts weird shit, she guesses – no one’s going to hire a sorcerer like Myri just to steal a cargo of blue jade or rob a warehouse full of wine-of-poets. No, you hire a sorcerer when you need to fight a demon, or spy on the dreams of some politician, or…

“When did Heinreil hire you? When he stole my amulet?” Cari’s hand involuntarily grabs at her neck, remembering that her treasure has been taken from her again. This time, the loss of the amulet doesn’t hurt so much. It’s tainted now she knows the truth of its origin. Back then, though, the amulet was all she had of the mother she never knew, all she had to give her a home.

“No. I’d worked with him before, several times. He kept me a secret from the rest of the thieves’ guild.”

“Brotherhood,” Cari corrects automatically. She spits over the side. “That slippery bastard.”

“He treated me well, and he wasn’t crazy like Artolo. As employers go, I rate him highly.”

“He poisoned Spar!”

Myri shrugs. “That’s between Spar and Heinreil.” She gestures at the grimoire. “That’s an account of all the spells Ramegos cast. All her sins, all her worries about how her actions distort the world. Fuck that. My actions are mine. Let the world attend to itself.” She takes a moment to catch her breath, then continues. “Heinreil brought the amulet to me. I could tell it was a potent talisman, but I couldn’t divine much about it. I figured you’d stolen it somewhere, but Heinreil found out that you got it from your grandfather.”

“They told me it belonged to my mother.”

Myri smiles, and it’s an ugly sight – her lips have been scorched by the words of power that rested upon them, so it looks like a wound opening. “More accurate to say that it