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

off again, trudging across the hillside. She’ll be around the Rock by dusk. She can make it to Ilbarin City by noon tomorrow. She may not have any food left, but she still has money. She doesn’t need the captain to find her a ship to Khebesh. She hasn’t needed Hawse in years. The Ishmerians want to kill me, the Ghierdana want to kill me, and my best friends are a city and a ghoul. I’ve clearly made a fucking great success of it without you.

The wind picks up, flinging dust in her face. She pushes on, head down, one step after another after another. She’ll get to Khebesh, she tells herself. Get rid of the fucking book, trade it for the sage counsel from the master sorcerers of the forbidden city. She doesn’t even know what she’s going to say to them when she gets there. My grandfather made me to be the centrepiece of a ritual to bring back the Black Iron Gods, and I sort of accidentally dumped all their power into the corpse of my dead friend. And then he turned into a city. And I could hear him in my head, and together we beat the shit out of the Ghierdana, and fought off an invasion, but now he’s fading. Is there a lotion you’d prescribe?

What happens if it doesn’t work?

What happens if it works?

For a moment she feels a strange friction in the air, like there’s an invisible wall blocking her path that she has to push through. It scrapes against her skin, then becomes a weight inside her skull, a building pressure.

She suddenly has the terrifying sensation of motion, like the whole hillside is trying to push her off. She falls to her knees, clutches at the ground, and the dirt stings her bare skin.

Then, as quickly as it came, the sensation passes. The mountain’s just a mountain again.

“Okaaay,” she mutters to herself.

Then she’s flung bodily into the air.

Sun and sky and sea and Rock whirl around her, and then she lands heavily in the dirt, the impact knocking the breath from her lungs. Stones digging painfully into her face, her chest. The weight of the book sends her pack sliding forward, slamming into the back of her skull. Fuck. She tries to scramble back up, pain shooting through her wrist as she puts weight on it. The ground shifts and slides underneath her, and she falls again.

She glimpses a blur of movement. Not human, a whirling blur of dust and stones, but as it rushes towards her Cari suddenly sees it as an old woman, hunched and grey, her face scarred by claw marks. Stones for teeth, thorns for nails.

It’s the spirit of the mountain, Cari thinks a second before it hits her again, square in the chest. Ribs crack, and she’s sent tumbling back, rolling down the mountainside.

The earth around her screams and roars. Rocks fall with her, pelting her with debris. Clouds of dust block out the light. The old woman’s everywhere around her, everything around her, hammering and clawing at her. The wind spits curses loud enough to deafen. All Cari can do is curl up, a mortal in the face of divine wrath.

In Ilbarin they worship Usharet, goddess of the mountain.

And the mountain lands on Cari.

Cari wouldn’t put much money on it, but she thinks she’s still alive. She feels like a sack of bone shards and pulp. Her thoughts drip slowly through the mush of her brain. It takes her a while to work out that she’s moving, not lying on the hillside. She’s in the back of a wagon. Creaking of wheels, whispered voices, the clank of heavy metal kegs next to her. Hands bound with rope, but she can tell from the way it’s digging into her back that she’s still got the fucking book. They haven’t even searched her satchel. She tries to whisper a cheer, but the effort sends a spear of pain through her side.

One of her eyes has swollen shut. Four men she can see, all armed, but they’re not watching her. They’re all looking up the slope of the mountain, watching the slopes. Fuck, that thing that attacked her, that goddess or whatever it was, it nearly killed her. It must have kicked her all the way down to the road.

The setting sun’s on her left, falling behind the Rock – she’s heading the wrong way. They’re going back towards Ushket. Shit, she thinks, but that’s the least of her problems. She fights down the feeling of panic, and the effort makes everything go dark again for a minute.

Spar? I’m hurt. Spar was able to take her injuries back in Guerdon, protect her from harm, but she’s far away from him now. Her wounds are her own, and they’re bad. Everything around her seems so much harder now, a world of sharp stones and cruel foes, and she’s small and broken.

Think. She’s too hurt to move quickly, but she can still move. Her hands and feet are bound, but it looks like a rushed job. The same coarse rope used to secure the kegs in the wagon, and it’s not drawn tight. She can wriggle free, if she gets a chance. The four guards around her sound like they’re local boys, Eshdana conscripts, and they’re as scared as she is. Carrying sticks and knives, no real armour. Not soldiers. Just hired muscle. And they don’t know you’re awake. Wait for your moment. She imagines Spar giving her the advice. She’d never tell herself to stay still. Wait for the opportunity. Until then, play unconscious.

That part’s really easy. She blacks out again for a moment as the wagon rolls over a bump in the road. Liquid sloshes around in the kegs beneath her. Pain sloshes around within her, like it can’t decide which of her many bruises and cuts deserves primacy. Settles in her wrist, her knee, the ribs down her left side. She tastes blood in her mouth.

“The old