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

Then she realises that it means cousin in the royal sense. If Rhan-Gis is the embodiment of Gissa, then Cari’s the embodiment of Guerdon.

“Wait. What about Myri? I can’t just leave her here.”

“Artolo’s sorcerer?” Twelve Coins Bleeding sounds surprised. “I assumed she came with Artolo.” His hand – pseudo-hand, whatever – passes over Myri’s unconscious face.

“No, with me.”

“As your prisoner?” There’s a note of respect in Adro’s voice. In the simulacrum of Adro’s voice. She’s talking to a pile of worms, she has to remember that.

“No. She wants to get to Khebesh, too. We’ve been helping each other.”

“Ah.” It’s Adro’s voice, but she can’t read the emotion behind it. Surprise? Amused acknowledgement of yet another absurd situation involving wild Cari? A piece of a puzzle slotting into place? “I must present you. Emissaries of Ishmere are here in Gissa, and it is necessary to convince Rhan-Gis to protect us from them so we may travel in safety. Come with me.”

The Crawling One glides out of the cell, and she follows. She doesn’t have much choice – it’s as powerful a sorcerer as Myri, if not more so, and it doesn’t suffer the same ill effects as she does when it uses magic. And the little sacrificial knife she stole isn’t going to cut it, so to speak. They pass back the way she came – the corpse of the man she killed is now covered with little white dots that must be worm eggs. Soon, they’ll hatch and bore into his brain, and eat whatever remains of his soul, his memories. Gods below, he’ll come back and know she murdered him. She wants to tell him to get in line behind Artolo and the whole bloody Sacred Realm and everyone else, but she can’t summon up the bravado right now.

Instead, she whispers, “I’m sorry” as she passes.

“That reminds me,” says Twelve Coins Bleeding, “I presume the Ghierdana took the worm I gave you. No matter – I have a prodigious supply.” Putting just enough of one of Adro’s leers in to sound right. “You recall what you are to do with it?”

“Put it in the sorcerer’s tomb in Khebesh.”

“Exactly. I shall ensure your passage to Khebesh is untroubled. Trust me, Cari.”

She really, really doesn’t.

Apparently, getting presented to Rhan-Gis first means getting bathed and anointed by handmaidens, then putting on the most absurd outfit Cari’s ever worn in her life. A dress of shimmering samite, whiter than fresh-fallen snow. A necklace of glittering gems, rings of gold. She horrifies the handmaidens by insisting that she gets to keep wearing her walking boots – and while they’re distracted by that outrage, she slips that sacrificial knife into a fold of the dress and hides it with a belt of gold and emeralds.

She’s very, very glad for once that Spar’s thousands of miles away and can’t see her.

They’ve taken her stuff, including Ramegos’ grimoire and the aethergraph. Twelve Coins Bleeding tells her that she’ll get it back, that he’ll get her to Khebesh as promised. She doesn’t have a choice but to comply. She feels like she’s in a den of snakes, where one false step would get her bitten. Typical – the first time in her life she’s treated like royalty, and she can’t relax and enjoy it.

The handmaidens offer her a plate of grapes and sweetmeats, and she nearly accepts – then she remembers the plate must be empty, that those grapes and sweetmeats are dust and pebbles transformed by the miracles of Rhan-Gis. This city is doing her head in. Food isn’t food, walls aren’t walls, the thing that talks like Adro certainly isn’t Adro, and she’s sitting here dressed like a princess, which certainly isn’t her. She’s got to get out of here.

“You have ’em,” she says when the handmaidens offer her the plate again. The girls fall on the plate like hungry ghouls, coughing out prayers of thanks to Rhan-Gis between bites of dust. Cari sits back down on the edge of a bench and tries to stay sane. She has to stay out of the god’s influence, to see the world clearly in all its broken horror. It’s the only way she’ll be able to find her way out of this city.

Long ago, she guesses, Rhan-Gis was just a minor god. The embodiment of the city of Gissa, venerated by a few priests, celebrated in some annual festival or when some new civic building was established. A handful of miracles to His name. Cari’s encountered gods like that on her travels, in places yet untouched by the Godswar. Not Kept Gods like in Guerdon, starved of power so they don’t become monstrous titans, but slumbering, placid gods, little more than abstractions given a name, a face.

Then there was some wound. Some attack or injury that ruined that tranquil order, damaged the god’s perfectly ordered domain. A first cause. The god sought power to heal the wound, to correct the wrong, or the people turned to the god with more fervent prayers, more votive offerings and sacrifices. Maybe Rhan-Gis inspired his people to start moving the city, to bring Gissa out of danger or shift it closer to some font of magic. Maybe the priests thought the best way to aid their god was to offer him sacrifices, or to steal power from another deity. Cari imagines the world as some great invisible machine, the gods as spinning cogs, each in their place, each serene and balanced. Then one wheel flies off its axle, knocks into another, and it all collapses into chaos. Into the Godswar.

“Carillon. It’s time.” Adro’s voice.

Now, to avoid getting crushed by a spinning wheel.

Up close, Rhan-Gis is easily the most beautiful human Cari has ever seen.

The young saint-king of the city, the avatar of the god Rhan-Gis, supreme master of the eternal city of Gissa offers her a glass of wine. “My Crawler tells me that you are Queen