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

who wielded a flaming sword. The touch of the sword burned Carillon’s soul, and the city took the wound. The soul of the city burned.

Vorz has determined that the reverse is also true.

The dragon opens his jaws, and again the towers burn.

For Rasce, it’s standing in the path of a raging hurricane – and the exhilarating joy of reaching up and seizing the wind, of directing the hurricane.

He is with them as the people burn, as the dragon-fire consumes the towers and everyone inside them. The fires are so hot, the victims are consumed utterly, skin and muscle burning away in an eyeblink, the skeleton lingering a moment longer, then it too dissolves into the inferno.

And the souls, the souls are captured in an alchemy of atrocity. All gods are carrion gods. The souls become fire, too, fire of a different sort. Raw power, flooding through the New City. Raw and full of pain. The dead don’t know they’re dead yet, don’t know they’ve been snatched from mortal existence and turned into fuel for miracles. Thousands of fiery meteors, souls crashing across the aether.

Rasce draws on that power, channelling and shaping it. His blood burning, the stone scabs on his chest burning, everything’s fire and stone now, no distinction between the two, the aether and the material overlapping, god and man overlapping, and there’s nothing except his will, his power. He exhales, and his breath is hurricane fire. At this moment, he is the dragon.

The magic leaps across Guerdon, drawn into the depths of the New City and then spat like an artillery barrage across to five targets in the Fog Yards.

There are five pebbles hidden around Mandel’s fortress. Five little pebbles cut from the New City. They’d fit into the palm of your hand.

The whole of the New City sprang from the corpse of a single Stone Man.

The five pebbles erupt, hissing like angry dragons. They sprout like vines, flow like lava. They smash through walls and pierce containment vessels. They rear up, five earthquakes, and shatter the fortress. It’s an explosion of solid stone, an ongoing devastation. Guards flee, firing desperately at the onrushing stone before they’re entombed or crushed. Tallowmen cackle, dancing through the chaos of living stone, slashing at it in confusion with their knives and axes, unable to comprehend this miracle.

The rushing stone sheds dust, and the dust is also alive. Where the dust touches human flesh, it burrows in like a spore. The Stone Plague can be a weapon, too. Dust clouds billow though the yliaster processing sheds at Mandel & Company, catching the workers there unawares. They pass through all the stages of the plague in an instant, beyond the help of any alkahest. A single Stone Woman, her lungs calcifying, her eyes gone to marble, stumbles out into the courtyard and fails to scream.

Where the dust cannot find purchase in flesh, it clogs vents, adheres to breathing masks and goggles and the joints of protective suits. Mandel’s guards are equipped to fight the Godswar, but even they are taken by surprise, easy prey for the host of ghouls that follows in the wake of the explosions. It clings, too, to the blazing wicks inside the heads of the remaining Tallowmen, snuffing them out.

In the space of ten heartbeats, the unvaniquishable fortress is conquered.

Rasce sinks back to himself. Sharp spikes of pain sear through his body – the stone plates in his side have sprouted five matching spurs, five stag-horned growths driving into his lungs, his bowels, reaching for his heart. The pain is enough to stagger him. His vision blurs.

“I was right,” breathes Vorz, his voice full of quiet amazement. “I’ve done it.” Almost absently, the alchemist produces a syringe and injects it into Rasce’s neck. More tincture or more painkiller, he can’t tell.

“I have to see,” says Rasce. He stumbles up the tunnel, coughing despite his breathing mask. He has to see what he has done.

It has to be enough for Great-Uncle. It has to all be worth it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The mage-wind drives Cari through the darkness. She’s no idea how fast she’s travelling. For that matter, she’s hazy on where she’s going – she can navigate by the stars and keep the tiller straight on this heading north-east, but she can’t tell if she’s on course for Ilbarin or Firesea or if she’ll miss them both and break out into the Middle Sea.

She’ll run out of food long before then, of course.

And run out of water before that.

Oh, but she’ll probably fall unconscious out of sheer exhaustion even before that.

On the whole, one of my better plans, right?

All during that long night, the wind in her ears and the spray in her face, Cari has time to think. At first, she berates herself, cursing herself for once again doing something immensely stupid. Acting on instinct, mistaking an escape route for a plan. She can’t outrun Moonchild. She can’t lose Artolo either, not when he’s got the Kraken on his side. Even if the Bythos block him from directly striking her with miracles, he can find her by looking for the gaps, for the places they protected her. She remembers looking for Heinreil that way, long ago in Guerdon. The guildmaster stole her amulet, and that amulet blocked her from perceiving him through the visions sent by the Black Iron Gods. In the end, she worked out how to find the amulet by looking for blind spots. Artolo can do the same.

She glances over her shoulder, tries to draw on this knack for sensing godshit she’s developed. She strains her inner eye, searching for the knot of Kraken-shit around Artolo, but it’s too much for her. All she finds is a headache – and the feeling of a gathering storm. Tension all around her, electricity in the air. Power in the water, the spray tingling when it touches her skin. But there’s no hostility in it.

She tries to analyse the sensation, to put words to it. It’s not