The Hollow God (Swords and Saints Book 3)

by JA Hutson

  “A scientist,” Bell says acidly.

  The Prophet’s storm-cloud-black eyebrows rise. “Ah. A scientist. Your beliefs must be shattered now that you’ve seen the magic of this world.”

  “Magic is but nature uninvestigated by science,” she says quietly, trying her best to match the Prophet’s stare, “I simply do not understand the mechanics yet.”

  “Yet,” the Prophet echoes, turning away with a chuckle. He faces me again, his expression evoking bemusement. He sighs and wanders over to stand beside the kneeling Valyra, resting his hand on her head. A drop of blood falls from her nose to spatter upon the stone.

  My fingers twitch on my sword’s hilt as I gauge the distance between us. The Prophet shakes his head, staring into the darkness. His fingers tangle in Valyra’s hair as her trembling intensifies.

  “You’ve caused me quite a bit of trouble, Alesk,” he says distractedly. “At first I was enraged, thinking that you had betrayed me, like your brother once did. But then it became clear you truly had lost your knowledge of who you are.” He turns to face me again, and there is what looks to be compassion in his face. “And that is my fault, my boy. There must have been some flaw in my key. It was my arrogance that resulted in this whole mess, my belief that as Master of the Keys I understood and had accounted for all the dangers.” He lays his palm over his heart and bows slightly in my direction. “I am so sorry, my boy.”

  I lunge forward, slashing with my sword.

  He doesn’t flinch as the edge stops a hand-span from his neck. Unlike Valyra, I can’t even muster the slightest quiver against the power of the Voices. I try to force words from my mouth, to curse this man who would sacrifice a world to these demons, but I manage only a thin rattle in the back of my throat.

  If anything, the compassion in the Prophet’s eyes only deepens. “Ah, Alesk. What a monster you must think I am. But if you could only remember!” He reaches out with a thick finger and taps the center of my forehead. “I will make you remember, my boy. This I swear, on our shared Silver blood. But for now . . .” His gaze flicks to the shrouded Voices silently watching us. “I believe it is best if you sleep.”

  The power that wraps my limbs suddenly spasms, and a wave of darkness rises up to carry me away.

  10

  “Alesk.”

  Groaning, I force open sleep-gummed eyes. The Prophet sits cross-legged across from me in a small, enclosed space, his considerable bulk perched atop a mound of cushions. We’re in a wagon or carriage, from the swaying motion. I’m lying on a scattering of the same cushions, and I push myself up against the wall behind me, swallowing away the dry ache in my throat. My hands are bound together with thick straps of hardened leather. Ezekal sees my discomfort and pours a cup of steaming water from a spouted brass container, then holds it out for me.

  “Here, drink,” he says, and with a shaking hand I clumsily accept the cup. A floral scent rises from within – so disconcerting after days in this dead world – and I breathe deep before swallowing. The hot water vaguely tastes of peaches, and the rawness in my throat diminishes. The tea pools in my empty stomach.

  “Dates?” the Prophet asks, anticipating my next desire. He pushes a platter heaped with the fruit towards me. As I reach for a handful, I realize that there’s an iron circlet around my ankle, with a short chain connecting me to the wall. Ezekal smiles apologetically when he sees that I’ve noticed my restraints.

  “Eat and drink, Alesk. We have much to talk about.”

  My jaw aches. I can’t remember the last time I’ve eaten fresh food. Slowly I pick up one and bite down; sweet juice floods my mouth, and it takes an act of will not to shovel in more. Instead, I control myself and swallow.

  “Where are my companions?” I ask, my voice ragged from disuse.

  The Prophet pours himself a cup of the peach-flavored water. “They are fine,” he says, and then takes a sip. “They are restrained, like you, in a wagon very similar to this one. None are injured.”

  “I want . . .” I cough and clear my throat. “I want to see them.”

  Ezekal makes a commiserating face. “Alas, I think I should keep you separate right now. But you have my word that they have not been harmed.”

  “Why should I trust your word? I don’t know anything about you except that you ally yourself with demons.”

  The Prophet shakes his head sadly. “I pains me that you do not remember why I follow this path. For it is a path that you once followed as well.” He reaches out and grips my arm fiercely. “You understood, Alesk. You knew that we have no choice. That we must open the worlds to the Shriven.”

  I pull my arm away roughly. “You would kill countless innocents, and turn a lush world into an empty husk, like this one. There is nothing that could justify that crime. Nothing.”

  Ezekal sits back, his silver eyes hooded. “There is Alesk. You knew it.” He is silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts. When he finally speaks his words are raw. “We are the leaders of our people. I have guided them through terrible danger, and you have walked by my side. If I had not made the choices I did, every Silver would be nothing but bones bleaching beneath this tainted sky.” A note of anger creeps into his voice. “And that was our choice: die or live.” He pulls aside a sliding panel to show what is outside. Scythes lope across the wastes, easily keeping pace with our wagon. Beside them the dust bulges strangely, as if things are burrowing beneath the surface. “They cannot be stopped, Alesk. It is a terrible truth, but it is the truth. We did what we did so that our people could live. Do you remember Kelessa?”

  I shake my head, distracted by the Shriven outside.

  “It is our haven,” the Prophet continues, the passion rising in his voice. “The refuge of our tribe. Deep in the mountains – Hesset’s Wall, I think you know the range as, if you’ve spent time in Ysala. A thousand men and women and children who are relying on us to save them from the end of everything.”

  “By destroying a world.”

  Ezekal shakes his head vehemently. “You don’t understand. You did once, and I will make you understand again, this I promise.”

  “How?”

  Ezekal gaze drifts to the wastes sliding past the open window. “I will show you what I did before.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Ezekal does not answer. Rising, he instead puts his hand on a small latch. He twists it, and a hidden door opens smoothly. I’m surprised to see the exhaustion in his face when he turns back. “I’m tired, Alesk. These burdens have crushed me for so long . . . once, you helped me bear them up. Think on what I have said. I will come again soon, my boy.” After a final, long look, Ezekal maneuvers his bulk through the door and shuts it behind him.

  I lean my head back against the wood.

  I don’t know how long I wait for the Prophet to appear again. The passage of time is so difficult to measure in this world, with its broken sky and lack of sun or stars. I sleep for a time, but when I awaken the Shriven outside look the same as before, their stunted legs churning the wastes, furrows carved in the dust by their long bony arms. I finish the water and the dates, gnawing on the pits until they split, and then I investigate the circlet around my ankle and the links connecting it to the wall. Hard, unyielding iron.

  After a long wait, Ezekal slips once more into my small compartment. He’s juggling a plate of flat-bread, a silver carafe, and a pair of goblets. My stomach gives a twist at the sight of the food.

  “I thought I’d share my midday meal with you, my boy,” Ezekal says brightly, settling once more on the cushions. He looks refreshed – there’s no trace of the exhaustion that had been weighing so heavily when last we spoke.

  I try to keep my face impassive so he doesn’t see how famished I truly am, but he notices my gaze lingering on the carafe and chuckles.

  “Wine to soothe the troubled soul,” he says, pouring some into one of the goblets and placing it down within my reach. My tongue feels thick in my mouth as I pick up what the Prophet claims is wine. It�
�s blood-dark, with a spice that tickles my nose. I take a quick sip, expecting anything, and am pleasantly surprised at the wine’s rich, deep flavor.

  “Good, yes?” Ezekal says with a grin, filling his own goblet. “From the Purple Emperor’s own stores.” He lifts his cup towards me. “To our reunion, Alesk,” he says, “and the hope that things will one day be as they were.”

  I don’t drink to that, but he doesn’t seem to care, draining his goblet in one great swig. “That’s good,” he murmurs, smacking his lips.

  I watch Ezekal carefully as he refills his drink. He seems so carefree, despite the terrible creatures he consorts with and the horrors he is laboring to bring down on an unsuspecting world. Is he mad? I almost ask him this. Instead, I put forth one of the many other questions that I’ve been turning over since I saw him last.

  “How did you find us?”

  Ezekal picks up a piece of flatbread, tears it in half, and tosses the larger chunk to me. “It was difficult,” he admits, taking a nibble of his bread. “Very clever, bringing the weaver back here. And also a great sacrifice – I can’t imagine any of you thought the chances were very high you’d survive.”

  “The Contessa said the key would bring us back.”

  The Prophet shakes his head. “The Contessa,” he says, sighing, his craggy brow creasing. “I knew someone was destroying the Gates, and I suspected it might be Avelia. But to learn that she was right under my nose in Ysala, just a stone’s throw over the Wall . . . I’d even heard of the Contessa! And yet I never knew.” He smiles ruefully. “Ah. How did I find you, you asked. Well, after the Trusts failed to keep you all from escaping through Avelia’s Gate, they returned to the emperor and begged for mercy. I convinced the emperor that in order to believe their story of how Valyra had simply vanished, I needed to investigate the manse of the Gilded Lynx. There are certain . . . residues that persist upon the portals that can signal where others have gone . . . I discerned that three individuals had traveled somewhere else in the same world, but that four others had to my surprise come here. I surmised that this must have been the weaver, in order to deny her to me.” He takes a quick sip of wine, his tarnished silver eyes hardening. “Avelia knew I never wanted to come back. It was a masterful stroke on her part . . . but the stakes are simply too high to allow you to escape. So I requisitioned some supplies from the Zimani army and marched to where I know a larger Gate is located. Like Avelia, I have also been seeking out Gates. ”

  “And these demons were waiting for you?” I ask, inclining my head towards the gnarled black shapes outside the wagon.

  The Prophet sighs. “Alas, they were not expecting me. And so the brave Zimani soldiers who had accompanied me died violently before I could explain properly who we were. Luckily, a Scout was with them and when he peeled open my mind he saw who I was.”

  “A Scout?”

  “Ah. I believe they are known to you as Voices.”

  “Why do you call them Scouts?”

  “They precede the legions of the Shriven and prepare the way into each of the worlds they consume.”

  “Are they the masters of the other Shriven? They seem more intelligent than the rest.”

  Ezekal takes another sip of wine. He looks discomfited, as if this is a topic he does not want broached. “There is another. The Mother. I have only seen her once, and the memory is too . . . sharp . . . to hold in my head for long.”

  “Where is this Mother? Somewhere in this world?”

  “She dwells in paradise,” the Prophet says quickly, and from the way his face has closed I can tell this is all he will say. Abruptly, he changes the topic by smiling and pulling out a cloth-wrapped bundle. “A question for you, Alesk. Do you recognize this?” He peels away the gray fabric to reveal a strange dagger. The hilt appears to be obsidian, and its curving blade is fashioned from a green crystal similar to my sword. It’s darker, though, a deep emerald hue.

  He looks at me expectantly, but I only shake my head. Something tickles at the very back of my mind, but as I reach for the memory it squirms away. Ezekal looks crestfallen.

  “What is it?” I ask as he hefts the dagger. Something folded deep within the blade seems to glimmer, like a mirror catching the light.

  “It is the ceremonial knife of the Green Sword, warmaster of the Silvers. It was your father’s, and his father’s before him. And it was yours, before you ventured back into this world. You left it in my care, so it would not be lost if anything happened to you.”

  “Then it was my brother’s, as well.”

  Something flickers in the Prophet’s face. “Yes. Talin once bore this, before he betrayed our tribe.”

  It’s still so strange to hear the name I’ve come to think of as my own refer to someone else. “Why did he betray you?”

  The Prophet scowls. “Immortality is both a blessing and a curse, Alesk. It . . . weighs on all of us. Changes who we are.” He jabs a thick finger at me. “By losing your memory you actually seem to have reversed these effects. You had grown morose, detached . . . but not like your brother. He fell into strange delusions. Some minds are not equipped to deal with the grinding of the endless years. He did not betray me – he betrayed our people, when we needed him the most.”

  I almost tell Ezekal I’ve seen my brother, that he found me in the slave barracks in Zim, but I click my mouth shut. I have to remember that this man is not a confidant or a friend – he is a monster. As apparently I once was.

  Instead, I hold his gaze. “Perhaps the scales finally fell from his eyes,” I tell him levelly, “and he saw you for what you truly are.”

  The effect is instantaneous. Ezekal’s face darkens, his hands clenching into fists. I have the sense he wants to strike me, but with an effort he manages to control himself. Lucky for him, as I’d been tensing to seize him if he got close enough.

  “Your brother was like a son to me,” he says, taking up the black-hilted dagger as he rises. “As were you.”

  The door bangs hard against the wood as he throws it open, and then he is gone again.

  The Prophet does not return for quite some time, and I curse myself for driving him away. There are so many questions I want answered – why is he in league with the Shriven? What was he offered that he would help bring them into his new world after they destroyed the old? Who made the Gates, and where do the demons come from? At the same time, a cold worm of fear is squirming in me that eventually he will be successful in returning my lost memories. That I will remember who I was before, and I will join him again. Surely my nature has not changed . . . but it seems impossible that anything could convince me to usher the Shriven into Bell and Deliah’s world.

  After another long while the wagon halts, and the interminable red wastes stop sliding past my small window. It’s not nighttime – as it is never nighttime in this place – but apparently the demons still need to rest, as they use their arms of hooked bone to scoop out burrows in the dust, then hunker down within. Or perhaps they sense the coming storm, for the wind begins to rise and I hear the sound of grit striking the outside of the wagon. Soon my view outside is consumed by swirling red, and I slide the panel shut to keep the dust out. The Prophet must have another place to shelter, as he does not rejoin me in here.

  The maelstrom continues to strengthen, the wagon shuddering like a living thing. By the time the storm abates, I’m expecting the wagon to be half-buried – I want to take a quick glance out my window and see what it’s like out there, but I’m afraid of what will be blown inside. Instead, I hunker down and finish the last of the wine and flatbread and listen to the wood creak and groan.

  Something thumps against the other side of the door. More thumping, increasingly insistent, as if whoever it is expects me to somehow break my restraints and lift the latch.

  “I can’t get there!” I yell, though I doubt they can hear me over the howling winds. Then a crunch comes and a section of the door splinters. More hacking with a blunted object widens the hole to the point where a hand can
slip inside – I’d been expecting red skin, but it’s pale and most definitely belongs to a man. The fingers scrabble for the latch, lift it, and then the door is shoved open violently.

  “Who are you?” I cry at the large figure. His face is hidden behind a wrapped cloth stained pink by the storm, and the armor he’s wearing is similarly dust-covered. The stylized bronze plates are familiar: they look like what I had seen the elite Zimani soldiers wearing inside the Purple Emperor’s pavilion.

  The soldier does not answer my question as he surges towards me, a curving knife in his hand. I try to catch the blow, but he’s surprisingly quick, and with my hands bound I only manage to raise them so that he won’t plunge the blade into my chest. I steel myself, expecting to feel cold metal slice through my fingers, but instead the dagger finds the strap between my wrists and severs it.

  “What?” I manage dumbly as he shoves me to the side so that he can reach the chain restraining me to the wall. He reverses his dagger, then with the metal pommel strikes the links with such force that a few of them immediately shatter. My jaw drops at his strength.

  “Come,” the man growls behind his cloth, seizing a handful of my shirt and dragging me towards the broken door.

  At first I’m too surprised to resist, but before I am pulled through the door I manage to brace myself against the frame. My shirt rips and he stumbles slightly, coming away with a handful of cloth.

  “Wait,” I say, “I want to know –”

  He mutters something harsh, his hand flashing out to grab the collar of my ring mail hauberk. I nearly leave my feet as I’m hauled from the wagon.

  Immediately I’m pummeled by the storm, and I try to cover my face to protect my eyes from the stinging grit. We’re standing on a platform like where a drover might sit, but whatever animals have been pulling the wagon must be sheltering elsewhere. There’s no sign of the Prophet or any of the Shriven.