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

like back in Gissa, where she could sense that she and Rhan-Gis were kindred spirits of some sort, so she was able to slip inside his defences and stab him with her bloody dagger.

At the same time, it’s not like it was on the Rock of Ilbarin, before Usharet attacked here. There, it was a sense of opposition, of hostility. Usharet saw her as an enemy and struck at her. She got the same feeling when Moonchild approached Yhandis – a god perceiving her as something dangerous or unclean. A servant of a rival deity. That makes sense to her – she’s the Herald of the Black Iron Gods, Saint of Knives, Other Portentous Titles Pending. Eladora and Ongent were always going on about gods as patterns, as currents of psychic force. So, if Cari’s part of a current that flows one way, and she runs into a god flowing the other way, that causes friction. Hostility. Push far enough, and you get angry manifestations, the wrath of god.

She drums her fingers off the side of the boat. They’re so numb, she can’t feel the timbers. So, think of it like trespassing into another gang’s turf. She had the right idea in Yhandis, she decides, when she compared religious symbols and faith to declaring membership in a street gang. What does that mean for the Lord of Waters? Why doesn’t she get the same feeling of hostility from that god?

Almost experimentally, she nudges the tiller to starboard. For a moment, the feeling of friction increases by an almost imperceptible amount, then it fades away again. The Lord of Waters should be antithetical to her, but for some reason it’s suppressing that hostility. A temporary truce.

Cari tries again, and again, picking at it like a scab, until she’s sure.

Hawse said the Lord of Waters had a plan for her. He’d tried to help her escape Ilbarin because of that conviction. Hawse thought the god wanted him to assist her; she thought that it was nonsense, that Hawse was just dressing up his own desire to help her in religious trappings. Now, she’s beginning to suspect they were both wrong.

She nudges the tiller again, finds her course.

The mage-wind fails in the afternoon of the second day, but by then the storm’s already gathering. Behind Cari, lightning crawls and slithers over the dome of the sky, the bolts branching like the tentacles of the Kraken. Soon after that, sections of sea begin to freeze, the Kraken stealing the water and leaving razor-glass ghosts behind. Waves ahead of her bulge, then scab over like blisters, the Kraken sowing obstacles in her path. She weaves through them. Glances over her shoulder to see Moonchild on the horizon, the plumes of smoke from her funnels mixing with the gathering darkness of the storm clouds.

Just a little further. They’re nearly in Ilbarinese waters.

Ahead, more clouds. More darkness. Two storms at sea, rushing towards one another. An overwhelming sense of pressure weighs down on Cari, crushing her. She has to strain to lift her head. She shifts her grip, putting her heavy stone hand on the tiller, to keep the boat on course as the world howls around her, wind and wave and, horribly, her own voice joining in a wordless scream.

Moonchild’s closer now, cutting through the surging waves like an iron blade. She can see a figure on the prow, arms upraised, and she knows it’s Artolo. She can imagine him, bloated, skin growing scaly and blue-tinged, as the Kraken claims him. It’s not just the Ghierdana crime boss chasing her – he’s just the focus, the barrel of the gun. It’s the Kraken and the rest of the maimed pantheon of Ishmere that pursues her.

Just a little further.

A rushing wave tears the tiller from her hand. Her fishing boat spins this way and that, buffeted by the wild weather. Spray lashes over the side, nearly blinding her. All Cari can do is cling to the side and pray.

In the distance, Artolo moves his right arm in a sweeping arc, and a huge wave rises up, mountainous, a blasphemy against gravity. The foam atop the wave is a forest of white tentacles. Kraken-shapes move within the wall of water. The wave mounts, and mounts, tall enough to swallow the New City and all its towers.

Then Artolo clenches his left fist, and the wave turns to Kraken-glass, every droplet a lethal knife. The miracle explodes invisible around her, filling sea and sky. So close she can see the gods, see the Kraken in the water. The waves are his writhing, hungry tentacles.

Cari shouts one last obscenity, but her word is lost in the roaring waters as the wave comes crashing down.

Artolo is gigantic, bigger than the sky. Only his steel boots keep him on the ground – without them, he would bestride the world, step from Ilbarin to Ishmere in a single bound. Another step would bring him to Guerdon – he will swallow Thay’s soul and carry it with him, make her watch as he washes away her New City like a child’s sandcastle in the rising tide. He shall throw Great-Uncle down, too, knock the dragon from the sky and quench his fires in the cold deeps.

Artolo’s skull is fit to burst with furious joy. Irritated by the constraints of bone, he dissolves it with a thought, drawing ever closer to the perfection of his new God – for his new god is very close, now. The waves are Artolo’s racing pulse; the seas his cold blood.

“We have to turn back!” shouts Dol Martaine over the tempest of wind and wave.

“No! Not until she is dead!” Thunder booms in the clouds, echoing Artolo’s words.

“It’s like the invasion of Ilbarin! We have to turn!” Martaine tugs at Artolo’s arm, disrespecting the living god. With a twitch, he flings Martaine across the deck; with a thought, he turns the seawater sluicing across the forecastle into razor-water, stripping the flesh from Martaine’s hands and knees.

Artolo reaches out