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

This hollow beneath the New City could swallow any of the cathedrals atop Holyhill and have room to spare. Littered around him is the wreckage of huge machinery, athanors and containment vessels, industrial crucibles and spawning vats. Littered around him, too, are the remains of products of those vats – corpses of splattered wax, corpses with organs from disparate creatures fused together, things he cannot name.

The light from his lamp falls on a cleared area, a wide road cut through the debris. It’s obvious that someone – a great many someones – has dragged material out of the cavern. It might be a salvage operation, but some instinct tells Baston it was more of a heist. There’s something in the air, along with dust and the stink of incipient lung cancer.

The trail leads across the cavern to a partially demolished curtain wall, a barrier breached by an ugly gash. There’s another vault through there, equally huge. Rasce hurries off that way, limping slightly now, sloshing through puddles of spilled alchemical run-off without care. Baston follows, unslinging his gun just in case something in here isn’t quite dead.

“What is this place?” he breathes. He can’t bring himself to speak loudly. It seems oddly disrespectful, like this place is a church. Or a tomb.

“The ruins of the Alchemists’ Quarter,” says Rasce. “Spar buried their works here. Ghouls guard the tomb. Behold!”

He flings his arms wide, and the curtain wall flares with light, like there’s fire buried deep within the stone. The light outlines a figure sitting cross-legged in the breach. Gigantic, hunched, its horns like antlers, long clawed fingers caked with grave dirt. Hooves crusted with a mash of wax and ordure.

“Gods below,” mutters Baston, and then invisible fingers grab his tongue, his throat, and words exhume themselves through his mouth. “SO, AT LAST, THE DRAGON’S BOY SHOWS HIMSELF. I AM TOLD YOU CAN DO WHAT CARI DOES.” The ghoul’s long tongue, like a black snake, slithers out and tastes the air. “I WOULD SPEAK WITH MY FRIEND.”

“He is here,” says Rasce. “He is all around us. But first, Lord Rat, I would bargain with you.”

The ghoul laughs, a sound like an earth slip, like an open grave caving in. Then he speaks through Baston again. “I KNOW ALL ABOUT YOUR PLANS AND DESIRES, DRAGON’S BOY. I KNOW WHERE YOU SEEK TO TRESPASS. KNOW THIS – IF YOU SET FOOT OUTSIDE THE NEW CITY, I WILL EAT YOUR BONES AND SEEK MY FRIEND IN YOUR MARROW.” Rasce takes a step back. Baston’s grip on the gun tightens.

“SPAR – THERE IS MUCH WE MUST DISCUSS.” Rat waves a paw towards the inner vault. “HOW MUCH DID YOU SEE?”

“He – he says he was confused,” says Rasce. “Weak and scattered, after the invasion. What happened here?”

“HURRH.” The massive elder ghoul scratches the ground with one paw, hunches his shoulders. Its claws stir up piles of slag, intermixed with blackened bones, scraps of metal and leather. A shattered Haithi helmet. Rat’s nervous. The thing seated before them is a necrotic demigod, one of the most powerful entities in Guerdon, but Baston can tell that Rat is… embarrassed. “I FAILED IN MY VIGIL. SINCE THE ARMISTICE, ELADORA DUTTIN’S INFLUENCE HAS GROWN. SHE HAS SOME HOLD ON THE NEW MINISTER OF SECURITY, NEMON. AND THROUGH HIM, THE CITY WATCH. SHE HAS GATHERED OTHERS TO HERSELF, TOO. SAINTS. WILD TALENTS. MERCENARIES, INCLUDING A DEAD MAN OF HAITH. NOW, THANKS TO THIS FOOL’S ACTIONS” – he waves a claw at Rasce – “SHE HAS CONVINCED THE ALCHEMISTS TO GIVE HER THE TALLOWMEN.”

Baston has to gasp for breath, interrupting Rat. The ghoul frowns in irritation. “WITH CARI GONE… WITH YOU GONE… SHE CONVINCED ME THAT THE NEW CITY WAS NO LONGER A SAFE RESTING PLACE FOR THE THINGS YOU BURIED HERE. SHE TOOK THEM AWAY.”

“What did she take?”

Baston’s stomach turns. It feels like his guts are overflowing with dirt, like he’s swallowed handfuls of earth and stone. Still, the words come, the ghoul using him as its herald, like Rasce speaks for Spar Idgeson. “THE BLACK IRON BELLS. GUILDMISTRESS ROSHA’S CASKET. OTHER TREASURES OF THE ALCHEMISTS’ GUILD.”

“And where does she keep these treasures?” asks Rasce.

Like Rasce’s supposed to speak for Spar Idgeson.

“I WISH TO SPEAK WITH MY FRIEND,” Rat growls.

“Oh, he is here,” replies Rasce. He speaks quickly, like he’s rehearsed this speech. “But my services as mediator are not without cost, and here is my price. Your ghouls control the underworld. You will help me get to St Styrus’ Shaft.”

“YOU DO NOT DICTATE TO ME!”

Rat rises to loom above them – and there’s an earthquake, right there, a spasm of the New City. Baston falls to his knees, and the Rat’s flung backwards as the hexagonal hunk of stone he was seated on suddenly rebels, knocking him over. He lands heavily on the far side of the curtain wall, a grunt of pain escaping both his lips and Baston’s simultaneously. Then he’s up like a panther, leaping back towards the breach.

But before he can reach it, Rasce gestures, and the stone of the curtain wall melts, flows, knits together. It’s sluggish, and seems to fight against him, pseudopods of stone rolling backwards against the flow. Fires blaze within the wall; bloodstains appear on Rasce’s leg, his side.

Across the great cavern echoes the hooting and yelping of ghouls. A great many ghouls.

The hole’s become too small for Lord Rat to squeeze through, but one of his long ropy arms snakes through the gap. The claw grabs Rasce’s foot and yanks him over. Baston glimpses Rat’s drooling maw on the other side of the wall, eyes blazing with fury.

He reacts on instinct, the way the Fever Knight taught him. Reacts the way any right-hand man should.

The gun in his hand barks as he shoots Lord Rat in the face.

The ghoul flinches – the gun’s too small to do real damage to such a monster – but it only takes a moment. Rasce pulls himself free and deliberately