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

“Is she here?”

Martaine shakes his head. “She died. Just after we arrived. She fell from the seawall. I saw it, we all did. All those who made it here on Moonchild. Saved us from the dragon, then died on the rocks.” He sighs, rubs his hands on his stained trousers. “I always knew she’d fall to her death. Told the captain so. You couldn’t keep her out of the rigging, or off the rooftops. Always climbing, always running.”

“And Vorz?” Unable to keep the note of loathing out of her voice.

“He’s gone. His men fished the dragon boy, Rasce, out of the sea and fled. Went down to Ulbishe, I hear.”

“Ulbishe,” she repeats.

“Were you looking for Vorz?”

“Books have to be balanced, but that’s my business.” She removes her glove, carefully tugging at the fingers, one by one, to avoid tearing the skin. She touches the wall with her spell-scorched palm. “I’ll see the boss, now.”

The new master is younger than Myri expected. Her face, too, is familiar. She sits behind a heavy desk in the house on Lanthorn Street. She’s richly dressed, a jewelled pin at her throat like a respectable guildmaster.

“You’re Hedan’s daughter, right?”

The master’s face is impassive. “I remember you, too. You were Heinreil’s sorceress.”

“Is he—”

“I am master of the Brotherhood now.” She toys with a little golden casket, the only ornament on her desk.

“Didn’t you take the ash?”

“I did. But the dragon I swore to serve is dead, and my brother negotiated a bargain with Thyrus and Carancio. They had little choice but to accept. Now, the Brotherhood has an understanding with the Ghierdana. This is our city once again.”

“And your brother?”

“He crossed the Ghierdana. He had to go.”

“All right. I’m not getting involved. I’m not staying. I was done with Guerdon years ago.”

“So why are you here?”

“I owe a debt to Carillon Thay.”

“She’s dead,” says Karla. “She fell from the seawall, and the sea took her. Her body was washed away.”

“She had a friend. Spar.”

Karla rises. “I can show you his grave.”

The dark cellar would smell foul, if she could smell anything.

“Watch your step,” warns Karla, and Myri conjures a werelight in response. The floor of the cellar is pockmarked with old graves, hastily dug out of the solid floor with pickaxes and then refilled, urban cairns. Karla leads her to one open grave. A single pebble rests there.

“I didn’t know what else to do with it,” says Karla, suddenly nervous. “He was… in there, I think. I don’t know. He never spoke to us. Only Rasce.”

Myri kneels down in the dirt of the cellar and begins to inscribe a complex glyph on the floor. Her fingers trace silver lines of sorcery over the empty graves.

“He doesn’t need to speak to me. Just listen.”

A distant flare of light.

Not light.

Sorcery. A light in the aether, an invisible sun. It draws Spar back together, gathers him. Fragments of awareness gone feral, rats creeping through the walls of what was once his mind.

A stranger’s voice, but the light’s enough to keep his attention. He can string his consciousness along the trail of light, for a little while. Remember what it was like to be.

“I went to the masters of Khebesh. I told them everything I knew about the Gutter Miracle. About the New City, the Saint of Knives. Everything I knew about Jermas Thay’s work, about Carillon’s creation. Everything.

How do I put this?

Gods are patterns. Patterns in timeless motion in the aether. Living spells, if you want to think about it that way. Mortal thought agitates the aether. Individual mortals don’t count for much, but the right thought makes a spell. And a lot of mortals… Gods are born out of our collective thoughts. Into the pattern of their divinity, they channel prayers, channel the residuum of the dead. That’s what keeps the god moving through the aether. The pattern retraces itself, over and over.

And then there’s you. A mortal soul, given the accumulated power of a pantheon. The masters didn’t believe me when I told them you’d survived in any form. You’re an anomaly, Spar Idgeson. Caught halfway between god and mortal.

So, if you’re not a god, how was Vorz’s pawn able to make sacrifices to you? Not to the Black Iron Gods. To you.

My theory – and the masters agree – is that you’re holding yourself back. You’re caught between the mortal world and the divine – between being a timeless pattern of magic, endlessly renewing itself, and being a mortal mind anchored to the material world, to mortal time.

There’s the choice before you. You can let go of your linear consciousness, stop clinging to anchors like Carillon, like your memories. You won’t think any more, not like you do now, but you’ll still exist. You’ll be… a pattern. A living spell. If people worship you, you’ll gather power, influence fate. Maybe even accrue saints, think through them. Like Pesh was all war, like the Mother is all mercies, like the Lord of Waters is the seas of Ilbarin, you’ll be… well, I never knew you, Spar Idgeson. I don’t know what sort of god you might be. A tyrant, or something else. Maybe something good. I don’t know.

Or, you stay as you are. This beacon I’ve conjured to draw you out – I can inscribe it, make it a lasting enchantment. It’ll keep you together, for a while. It will be an anchor for you, a sort of artificial saint to give your consciousness a reference point. The spell will run out eventually… but not before you. Your mortal body is long dead; your thoughts are fuelled by the stolen power of the Black Iron Gods, and by whatever’s left of the sacrifices the Ghierdana gave you. Maybe more residuum from corpses would prolong you for a little while, but you can’t process it cleanly. Human thoughts are too messy.

So. That’s it. I don’t even know if you can hear me, or if you’re too far gone already. If you can