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

betrayal still rankles. Artolo sacrificed his fingers to ensure that Vyr retained standing in Great-Uncle’s eyes – the boy should be grateful!

“A moment, please.” Vorz taps out a message on the keyboard. He flicks a switch, and the machine changes to a slightly different, but equally unpleasant noise. Vorz types again, fingers flying over the keys. Steam rises from the metal coil, and the liquid in the tube bubbles. His work done, he switches the machine off and closes the box.

He takes down the gilded skull from its shelf. Carillon threw down everything from that cabinet in her escape attempt yesterday, smashed all the jars, but this morning there’s not an item out of place, not even a stray shard of broken glass glinting on the floor.

Vorz places the skull in Carillon’s hands, then steps back to a safe distance. Aetheric energy crackles for an instant, leaving after-images when Artolo blinks, making his ghost-fingers tingle. Cari stares into the skull’s eye sockets, and shudders.

And that’s it.

There are no demons conjured, no magical blast. No mad god appears in the lab, the skull doesn’t come to life and start disgorging prophecy. Everyone else in the room – Vorz, the witch, the dragon, even Cari – seems to perceive that something meaningful has happened, but it’s all opaque to Artolo. It adds to his frustrations – he has no desire to know anything more about their mystical nonsense, and it’s always been his philosophy that sorcery is all either portentous mummery or self-destructive madness, but he’s at a disadvantage here, in front of Great-Uncle.

“Are you done with her?” Artolo demands.

The Dentist ignores him. “There’s minimal spiritual contamination”, whatever the hell that means. “She remains primarily congruent with the Guerdon entity. And we are fortunate in the circumstance of her conception, too. If she were not the offspring of a formless one, the tincture would require much more denaturalisation. As it is, I can proceed to the next stage immediately.”

From his black bag, he produces a metal syringe. Again and again, he takes blood from Cari. Wrists, ankles, chest, even from between her eyes. Each sample squirted into a neatly labelled glass jar, then tucked away inside his black bag. Cari shudders each time the needle pierces her skin, but she doesn’t struggle. She just bites her lip and endures. Artolo watches her throat move, imagines her swallowing all her clever retorts and insults. Imagines his ghost-fingers strangling her instead.

“What do you have for me, Vorz?” demands the dragon.

“Not yet,” replies Vorz, distracted. Cari chokes and shudders as he pulls two teeth from her mouth and collects the bloodied spittle from her lips in a vial.

Vorz holds the last vial up to the light. He taps it with a gloved finger, and for an instant Artolo seems to see darker shapes congealing and then unravelling within. “A catalyst, I think. An accelerant.” His hands shake.

“Come up. You, too, Artolo,” orders the dragon. Vorz closes his black bag and carries it with him as he crosses the gantry and climbs the rickety metal stairs to the roof.

“Watch her,” snarls Artolo. The witch nods and turns to face Thay, catching her in the act of reaching for the tray of scalpels.

“What?” says Cari, snatching back her hand. Artolo growls and follows Vorz up to the roof.

Great-Uncle waits there, sitting on his haunches. The whole roof of the refinery flexes when he shifts his weight. Below, the athanor’s at full heat, and thick clouds of white mist whip across the rooftop, stinging Artolo’s eyes.

“Vorz.” The dragon extends one wing, folds it to enclose the Dentist, then tucks his head beneath. A private conference. Artolo waits, enduring yet another snub. Great-Uncle may consult with his counsellor, of course, but the Dentist is only Eshdana. Artolo is Ghierdana. Has he not done enough to earn redemption? How much more must he sacrifice before Great-Uncle favours him again?

He roams the tin roof, the metal creaking under his boots. What was Vorz talking about, with his black box and his secret messages? Again, Artolo is left on the outside, exiled to this cursed Rock, banished from the councils of the family. His heart pounds; his blood thunders furiously through his veins, thick and hot with anger. He can feel it curdling in his brain, the fringes of his vision reddening.

He needs to kill again.

He can smell Thay downstairs. A few steps, and he’d be on top of her. Those blades are just there, in his mind’s eye. His own wounds ache with remembered pain. Gods, does he not deserve revenge?

“Artolo!” roars the dragon.

Slowly, he turns away from the stairs. Turns to face Great-Uncle. There’s an expression on the dragon’s face he has not seen before – a combination of bemusement and anger.

“I am not accustomed,” says Great-Uncle slowly, “to repeating myself.”

Artolo hastily kneels. “Forgive me.” Had he been so lost in his own thoughts that he failed to hear the dragon’s command? Thay’s fault, of course. It’s all Thay’s fault.

“There was some benefit in your obsession. We can use the Thay girl to hasten our plans in Guerdon.”

Artolo flinches. “Are you taking her away?”

The dragon chuckles. “Quite the opposite. Hold her here. She must not return to Guerdon.”

“Great-Uncle, there is no surer way to keep a prisoner than in a grave.”

The dragon laughs. “You have the right of it, nephew. Take your revenge, and know this – you failed me in Guerdon, but you have atoned here. You shall not be my Chosen again – but your offspring shall be favoured.”

A fierce joy blazes through his soul, hotter than dragon-fire. “I shall remind Thay that no one crosses the Ghierdana,” vows Artolo. He rises, bows and runs back towards the stairs. His ghost-fingers flex. He won’t use the knife. The dragon-tooth knife is the dragon’s symbol. No, no, he’ll strangle her. He’ll break her. He’ll—

The explosion from below nearly knocks him off the roof.

Artolo stumbles down the stairs, ears ringing. Vorz’s lab is afire, flames leaping purple and green