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

She refuses to believe it, rejects the poisonous thought. Spar, she thinks, is the counterargument. Spar disproves everything. Her friend isn’t a god. She watched him live as a mortal, watched him struggle with the twin burdens of his disease and his legacy. Spar Idgeson, forever the son of the great Idge, the man who was supposed to remake the city. When Spar talks to her in her mind, it’s not like he’s controlling her.

What if this very thought you’re having now is just some fucking god of mischief fucking with you, she thinks.

Hawse’s rough old hands on her elbows, helping her sit down. “Ach,” he mutters, stepping around the pool of vomit.

“Sorry.” She forces a grin. “If you want to have that sort of deep philosophical conversation with me, I should get drunk first.”

“It is of no importance, and I am no philosopher. I only say what I think – ach, I say what seems true.” He wipes her chin with a cloth. “When you first came on board, you were seasick everywhere. This is nothing in comparison.” He bends over to clean the mess on the floor.

“I’ll clean it.” She takes the cloth from him, and he sits down heavily, letting out a groan. Cari scrubs and wipes, cleaning the worn planks, digging into the gaps between them to erase any trace of the thought.

“I should go,” she says after a few minutes. “I’m putting you in danger here. Martaine or some other Ghierdana could show up here.”

“Stay. Give me more time.” There’s a plaintive note in his voice that she hasn’t heard before, but when Cari looks up Hawse’s face is unchanged, as impassive and weathered as a figurehead. “I told you, the Lord of Waters guided you here, and He has a plan for you.”

“But if… if you’re right, and we’re all just receptacles for the stray thoughts of gods, and you’re especially attuned to the Lord of Waters—”

“His last priest,” says Hawse quietly.

“—then you’re channelling a broken god! You’re like the Bythos, just flopping around at random.” She wants to be angry, discovers she’s scared and full of worry, and not just for herself or for Spar. She slumps down at Hawse’s feet.

Hawse takes her hands. “I know. This thought, too, is in me. But I believe that I am… like a lighthouse. I shall guide the Lord of Waters back home.”

The Ishmeric priestess sits like a beggar on the doorstep of the prefect’s palace in Ushket. Her sea-green robes are stained by the reddish mud of the Rock, and soaked in briny water. Her long fingers are so bloated that the gold rings and jewels she wears on them are almost lost in the pale bluish flesh. Her face, though, is ageless and proud, a temple statue come to life.

“Blessings of the gods upon you,” she says as Artolo emerges from the main gate.

“Fuck your gods. What do you want?” Ishmere may be in disarray, but the Sacred Realm is still an enemy. Artolo remembers sitting in the villa back in Lyrix. Outside, Rasce, Vyr and the other youngsters preparing to defend the isle against invaders, swords flashing in the sun. Lorenza and her sisters laying in supplies for a siege. Artolo in the middle of it all, sitting by the fire like an old man, useless and broken.

The invasion never came. Ishmere struck at Guerdon instead, and foundered there.

The priestess rises, leaning on her staff for support. Amulets hang from it, depicting the gods of the Sacred Realm. High Umur, Smoke Painter, Kraken, Fate Spider. And the Lion Queen, although that amulet is scorched and cracked. “May I enter?”

Artolo addresses one of the guards. “When did she show up?”

“At dawn, lord. She said she would speak only to you.”

“She came alone?”

“Yes, lord. But not by ship. I… I think she walked here, over the ocean.”

“My name is Damala. May I enter?” she says again.

Artolo grunts, and they pass through the tall green gates of the palace into an inner courtyard. His steel boots scrape the mud away from the elaborate mosaic inlaid in the floor, revealing glimpses of lost beauty. Two Eshdana follow close behind, ready to strike down the priestess if she invokes any divine powers. There’s no Armistice here, no truce between Lyrix and Ishmere. Not that such a truce would bind the Ghierdana – sons of the dragon walk where they wish, take what they wish.

“I dreamed of this place,” Damala murmurs, “when my gods conquered Ilbarin.”

“You lost,” snaps Artolo. “You failed to hold the island. It’s mine now.”

“The mortal portion of it. The gods of this land are broken, and no longer challenge the Sacred Realm. Without offerings, they shall fade, driven before us as hollow phantoms. Your little gods in Lyrix, too, shall fall to us, in time.” She has to force the last words out, as if they stick in her craw. It’s true, then – the Ishmerians can barely conceive of war since the death of the Lion Queen.

“If you came here to threaten me, you wasted a journey.”

“I come to bargain, not to threaten. You shall have the murderer. The one who loosed the god-killing weapon. Carillon Thay.”

Artolo’s jaw clenches. “Who says this?”

“Fate Spider. He has foreseen this. He has seen you strangle the life from her with your own hands. I have followed signs set before me, read omens given to me. The gods have decreed your fate, and I have heard them speak it.”

“The prophecies of your gods are worth shit.” Artolo tears off his right glove, holds up his maimed hand to the priestess so she can see the stumps of his fingers. The witch’s ghost-fingers glimmer, but they’re not his. “How would I strangle anyone with these hands?”

The priestess grabs his hands. “Our purposes are aligned. We both thirst for revenge! Your mortal body is wounded – and so is the soul of my pantheon! Her death shall be offering and memorial to blessed Pesh!