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

and blue from the shelves of burning alchemical materials. There’s a gaping hole in one wall where the shoreside window used to be – and no signs of Carillon Thay.

The witch lies slumped in a corner, her armour scorched by the explosion. Artolo darts over to her, but she holds up a hand. She doesn’t speak – jerkily, she points to her helmet, indicating that some mechanism has been damaged.

“Where is she?” roars Artolo.

The witch rises, unsteady on her feet, and points down at the shore below, a stone’s throw from the refinery. There’s a covered motorboat down there, one of the smaller skiffs used to patrol the ruins – and as Artolo watches, it takes off. Moving jerkily, as if the pilot is unfamiliar with the controls.

“Contain the fires!” Vorz shouts from the top of the stairs, unwilling to leave the comparative safety of the roof and enter the growing blaze that used to be his laboratory.

To hell with that. Thay will not escape him again! Artolo climbs out of the ruined window, clambers and slides down the outer wall of the refinery, clinging to pipes and vents until he lands heavily on the muddy ground at the foot of the wall. The boat’s already moving, its engine suddenly roaring as it rushes away. He charges down towards the water. She’s taunting him, waiting until he’s almost in reach and then dancing away. The boat’s pilot finds the throttle and opens up, the little motorboat shooting like a reckless rocket over the waves, racing south over the drowned streets of Ilbarin City.

Massive wings cover the sky as Great-Uncle swoops down from the refinery roof to land in the surf. He lowers his neck for Artolo to climb on board, and Artolo does so joyously, his face breaking into a wild, incredulous grin. He’s Chosen again, exalted again, flying again! Oh, the thunder of the wings! The rush of air! The thrilling leap as the dragon takes to the air, the lurching glory of the downsweep, the steel-cord strength of Great-Uncle’s muscles between his thighs. Artolo’s ghost-fingers cannot grab the ridged scales of the dragon’s neck – the magic of the witch’s spells pales in comparison to the divine vitality of the dragon – but he doesn’t need to. His hooked boots find the catch-scales instantly, leaving his hands free to wield a gun or spyglass.

Each stroke of Great-Uncle’s wings lifts his heart. One wing beat, and he forgets his failure at Guerdon. He couldn’t find the words to win forgiveness from the dragon, but what are words compared to the headlong rush of flight, the sensation of it, the defiance – dragon and rider, defying sky above and earth below, hunting, devouring, burning as they choose.

Another, and he forgets his maimed hands, his whole mind afire with the joy of flying.

The dragon twists in the air above the boat, and Artolo leaps down, landing cat-like on the aft deck. He should have a sword in his hand, should have the Ring of Samara on his finger, but it’s still the most alive he’s felt in years. Oh, to be raiding Haithi trader vessels again!

He stomps forward, eager to find Thay. It’s just her and him on this little boat. His revenge is finally at hand! Artolo tears back the awning, an overture to the violence he will do to Carillon Thay when he finds her.

But she’s not here.

The boat’s empty.

The controls move of their own accord. They’re limned by faint traceries of purple light, the lingering after-energies of a spell.

Hollowly, feeling like he’s operating his own body at a distance, Artolo takes the helm. He throttles back on the spluttering engine, turns the boat around in a wide arc. The dragon circles overhead once, then flies off towards the shore. Artolo follows.

The fire in the refinery is still burning, but is still contained to the upper room. Workers hastily drag the troughs of unrefined yliaster out, so the smoke doesn’t contaminate the brine. Other workers drive cartloads of casks down the road to Ushket, in case the fire spreads. Black smoke mingles with white vapour from the athanor. He imagines Vorz gliding around on the refinery floor, the Dentist’s well-ordered realm of calibrated gauges and titrations thrown into disarray. A little taste of the chaos and ruin that Thay brings.

Refinery crew call for his aid. Artolo ignores the commotion.

He abandons the boat close to the shore and steps into the surf. His steel boots sink deep into the mud as he climbs up the last slope. Waiting for him in the shadow of the refinery is the witch. Unmoving, as if frozen in fear.

“You did this,” Artolo growls – and then he sees it. The stillness of the armour. The syringes do not hiss, the tubes don’t gurgle or throb.

He shoves the armour in the chest, and it falls over, collapsing and breaking apart as it lands in the mud. A dissipating haze of purple light as the animating-spell breaks. Sections of the suit go rolling down the slope to be swallowed by the sea.

Other parts land at his feet, metal tapping against metal like a distant bell.

Artolo falls to his knees, pawing through the empty armour with his fading ghost-fingers. Trying to read his future in entrails of rubber, casting syringes like runes upon the sand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The city takes on Rasce’s fury as he marches downhill. His passage becomes a hurricane, pebbles and dust flying up around him, as though an invisible dragon flies overhead. Crowds part to let his host pass, and church bells jangle in alarm. A mob forms around him – ash-marked Eshdana, Ghierdana kinfolk, Brotherhood thieves, and even ordinary folk of the New City, who take up sword and club and follow him without knowing why.

When he comes to the border, the Guerdon city watch soldiers stationed there try to bar his path, but there’s an unseen contortion of the ground, and they topple as he strides past. Guerdon shivers, struck