The Splintered Gods

by Stephen Deas

  ‘I told you, you could stay with the sled.’ Sivan didn’t look back.

  ‘If you came all this way out of the goodness of your heart to save me from the wicked Lord Shonda, why didn’t you come a little sooner with news of his plans so I was ready to meet him? And why did you tie me up? To be blunt with you, I do not feel particularly rescued, Sivan.’ Inside he winced. Sometimes he couldn’t help himself; he just had to push a bit harder than he ought. He reached the bottom of the dune. Sivan, already halfway up the next, looked back at last.

  ‘You’re free to go, T’Varr. You’re not my prisoner.’ He kept on walking.

  It had never occurred to Tsen, even when it was happening right under his nose, what the slavers in Cashax were really doing, how they ripped tribes apart, families. One thing to treat the barbarians of the other realms so – although the older he got, the more he questioned even that – but the desert men were black-skinned Taiytakei like him. Oh, the slavers dressed it up well, made sure their rich-boy scouts were kept safe and away from the nastier parts of their business, but what shamed him most was that he’d never stopped to think. It wasn’t so much what he’d done, more that he’d joined in so blindly and never once thought to open his eyes.

  Halfway up the next dune, he paused to catch his breath. He was sweating like a pig and Sivan was at the top. At least the shifter was waiting for him this time.

  He’d gone dune climbing once, with Vey Rin, back long before anyone had imagined that Vey’s brother Shonda would somehow rise to be sea lord of the most powerful city in the world. Vey Rin was back in Vespinarr now, mind broken by the dragon he’d been stupid enough to provoke with his jade raven. He owed his life to the rider-slave. Maybe Shonda did too and so maybe Shonda would spare her for that, but Tsen doubted it. Most likely he’d never even know. Vey Rin was certainly in no state to tell him.

  Dunes. One step up, slide most of a step back again, and they’d been bigger dunes than these. He remembered how they’d joke, the two of them, about how many steps they really took to climb. They’d taken their sleds out into the deep desert scouting for signs of the black ooze lakes that rose from the sand now and then and drew the desert men. They’d gone a long way and hadn’t found any and had turned back when Vey Rin spotted one of those dunes that really was as tall as a hundred men and challenged him to climb it. Tsen had given up halfway, laughing, sliding all the way to the bottom and flying to the top on his sled, but Vey Rin had kept on, walking all the way. Something had changed between them after that, as though Vey Rin was always a little disappointed in him.

  He reached the top.

  ‘You should have come to me openly,’ he said to Sivan. ‘You pretended to be the woman I love. You tricked me and I don’t believe a word you say.’

  Sivan’s smile was broad and mischievous and with a touch of malevolence. ‘Would you have come if I’d simply asked?’ He laughed. ‘As it happened, I did rescue you, T’Varr, and I really don’t mean you any harm.’

  ‘But you were coming for me either way.’

  Sivan pointed down the lee of the dune to a pillar of white stone, round and about as tall and as wide as a man. There was a hole in the ground beside it. Tsen found the whole thing so odd that he forgot for a moment how exhausted and thirsty he was. A pillar and a pit in the middle of the shifting dunes? How did the hole not get filled up and the pillar not vanish under the sand? Sivan was already walking, and as Tsen hurried to catch him up, he saw that the hole was more of a shaft, the pillar in the centre of it and that a set of steps spiralled down. Closer still and he saw that the steps were made of the sand itself. Clearly his tutor in Cashax hadn’t been so marvellous after all, since he had no idea what this place was or how it worked or how Sivan had found it.

  ‘Kalaiya,’ he called. ‘I want Kalaiya. That’s all.’

  Sivan started down the steps. When Tsen reached them, he hesitated, but then again he couldn’t think of anything else to do but follow. The sun was hot, the stairs were shady, he needed water, and all that waited for him in the dunes was death. He ran his hand over the pillar as he tested the first step. The stairs looked the same as the dunes but if he closed his eyes and listened to his feet then they were as solid as iron. The white stone of the pillar was hard, flawless and perfect-polished smooth like the white stone of the eyrie and of the Godspike. It had two symbols carved into it but he had no idea what they meant. It disappeared into the shaft and the steps spiralled around it, and as the sunlight fell away, he saw that the pillar itself glowed with a soft yellow light, guiding his way.

  Like the white stone of the eyrie tunnels. So they were the same. He tried not to think about that. Hardly useful just now.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ he shouted. ‘I want my Kalaiya.’

  No answer. Sometimes he wished he’d never heard of dragons. Had never left Xican. Had never risen to be crazy Quai’Shu’s t’varr. Sometimes.

  The steps went sixteen full circles down and then stopped. A passageway apparently of sand led him to another tunnel, this one much longer and larger and made of the white stone again, almost perfectly round but flattened at the bottom, like the spiralling passageways of the eyrie except wider and arrow-straight. The walls glowed with their own soft light, dim as a moonless night lit by stars, and the tunnel ran each way as far as he could see. Across the way and recessed, two bronze doors stood partly open. They were as tall as three men, and carved into each were the likenesses of two serpents twined one around the other. Sivan was waiting for him again. As Tsen stared, Sivan put his hand to Tsen’s chest and shook his head. ‘What’s in there isn’t for you, T’Varr. Wait here.’

  ‘Kalaiya, shifter. If you want something of me, she’s my price.’

  ‘Yes. Now wait while I bring food and water.’

  ‘Is this your hideaway, Sivan?’ He felt close to the end of his rope, as though nothing much mattered any more and he might as well be as rude as he liked.

  Sivan laughed. ‘No!’ Then he shrugged. ‘You can go in if you really want to, but I sincerely don’t recommend it. In part because you’d very likely go mad and at the very least greatly wish that you hadn’t, but mostly because if you as much as touch these doors then the snakes carved into them will come alive and rip you to pieces.’ Sivan cocked his head. ‘Reasonable enough?’

  Tsen laughed. ‘I’m no child.’ He looked at the doors and regarded them nervously. The snakes did seem very lifelike.

  ‘No?’ Sivan laughed back in his face. ‘Have you ever been here, T’Varr? Have you seen a place like it? Have you? Do you have any idea who made it?’

  ‘Actually I do. My eyrie. Perhaps you were too busy pretending to be Kalaiya to notice? It was made by the same sorcerers. The old half-gods.’

  Sivan paused, and for a moment Tsen thought he might even change his mind. But no. ‘Stay here, T’Varr. What’s beyond is not for you. Believe what you like, but you’re no use to me mad.’ He slipped between the doors and left Tsen to stare up and down the tunnel. The world wasn’t big any more and it wasn’t supposed to have many surprises left for a man like him, not for a t’varr to a sea lord, the highest a t’varr could rise. It was his purpose in life to know where everything could be found, procured and bought, how to ship it, pay for it and use it.

  No surprises? Well apart from the Godspike and your eyrie and the storm-dark and the Elemental Men . . .

  But that’s just stuff I don’t understand. Like everything Chay-Liang does. Not the same.

  . . . and dragons and alchemists and shifter skin and jade ravens and everything that ever comes out of Qeled . . .

  Fine. He didn’t have much of an answer to that.

  He looked up and down the tunnel with a sense of awe and wonder that he found he rather liked. Dragons were different. Dragons were simply terrifying, but this . . . How many people knew this tunnel existed? And who had built it? When? How? Where did it go? And then he found himself with the same uncomfortable sense of intrusion that had settled over him when he�
�d first walked through his eyrie, pacing out its empty passageways, imagining its builders and agape at the mystery of its purpose and design. He’d made the eyrie his and the unease had quietly gone. He’d dressed it as the fancy took him and put in his bath, and no matter that no one understood what it was or how it worked or anything much about it, it had become merely a flying piece of rock that made a good place to keep Quai’Shu’s dragons, and that was all he thought of it.

  The dragon was different. The dragon had brought something else. Awe, yes, but not much wonder. Fear mostly. Dread.

  Sivan came back carrying two sacks, one in each hand. Behind him the doors ground shut, apparently a decision made entirely on their own. Tsen took a sharp step away. ‘Who else is here?’

  ‘No one.’ The shifter followed Tsen’s eyes. ‘Not the work of any enchanter, T’Varr. There were no such things when this was made. No such things as Elemental Men and certainly no navigators for there was no storm-dark to cross in those days. It was made by the servants of the sun and the moon and the earth and the stars.’ He laughed as Tsen shuddered. ‘Yes, Baros Tsen T’Varr, the old gods of whom we must not speak – do you think an Elemental Man will hear us down here?’ He rapped the stone with his knuckles. ‘They can’t pass through this. Did you know that? There’s no one here to murder us for remembering, for speaking the old gods’ names and offering them sacrifice. If that’s what you want then go ahead. I hear there are plenty of men and women on the surface who have their secret shrines and none more so than in Vespinarr. Go on, T’Varr – read from the Rava itself if you wish.’ He laughed again at the look of horror on Tsen’s face. ‘I have no use for those gods and their disciples either but I’ll not pretend they never happened. They broke the world and now your Elemental Men keep watch to see that none of us ever grow such a power again, but no one cares about the relics they left behind.’ He chuckled. ‘Except, it seems, for dragons.’

  Tsen glared at him. ‘What do you know? Who are you?’

  Sivan pushed past him, back into the tunnel made of sand, talking over his shoulder as he climbed the steps back to the surface. ‘Follow the old ways and you’ll reach . . . places you’d rather not visit. The Queverra, if you’re lucky. The other way will take you to ruined Uban. It’s not far. No one has much use for a few tumbled-down old temples, but if you were to shift the sand you might find much more than that.’ He turned and tossed one of the bags to Tsen. ‘If we live long enough, you might think on that. In the meantime here’s some water. Earn your keep.’

  ‘My keep?’

  ‘I rescued you from the Vespinese, didn’t I? I think some gratitude is in order.’

  ‘I didn’t ask to be . . .’ Tsen’s voice trailed away. Sivan was mocking him. They walked back across the dunes in silence. It was hard work but he barely noticed. By the time he reached the sled, most of his thoughts were with Kalaiya and what the Vespinese would do to her when they found he was gone. That was far more terrible.

  32

  The Lair of Samim

  It took three days to reach the end of the desert. Days of skimming the sand on the back of the sled. Sivan stopped every few hours to drink and eat and rest, and each time he did, Tsen looked at the water and at the rings on his fingers and wondered what to do. One ring slipped off, one dip of a finger in a full cup, that was all it would take, but no one except Bronzehand had answered him for months and Bronzehand was in a ship far away, and anyway Sivan claimed to work for him so he was hardly going to offer any help. More likely he’d simply smile that bland smile of his and mouth something like, How’s the rescue going?

  Rescue my arse!

  Each time they stopped Sivan took a gold-tinted glass globe the size of a man’s fist off the back of the sled and threw it away into the sand, took another globe out of his bag and put it in place of the old. After he’d done that for the second time, Tsen understood. That was how the sled worked. That was how it got its energy.

  ‘Most of them need to be taken to a black obelisk,’ Sivan said when he caught Tsen’s eye. He looked at the golden globe and tossed it idly from one hand to the other and back again. ‘You’re a t’varr. How much do these cost?’ When Tsen shrugged, he laughed. ‘But you’re a t’varr! You know the price of everything.’

  ‘Not of something I’ve never seen.’

  ‘The enchanters of Vespinarr make these. No one else. They take a great deal of effort and they certainly cost far more than this sled. And here I am, throwing them away.’

  ‘I’m flattered to be considered so valuable.’

  They flew more at night than in the day. Sometimes Sivan found them shelter, sometimes he draped a sheet of dark cloth over the sled and the two of them rested in the tiny patch of shade under neath. Tsen dozed and thought about running away but Sivan never seemed to grow tired and there was simply nowhere to go.

  ‘Aren’t they looking for me?’ Tsen asked after three days. ‘If Shonda wants me dead so badly, why doesn’t he send his men to look for me?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Sivan chuckled. ‘The Empty Sands are vast. He had enough trouble finding your eyrie. Besides . . .’

  ‘Besides what?’

  Sivan pursed his lips. ‘I gave him good reason not to come after us. Don’t you remember? I left a body for him to find. He thinks you’re dead.’

  Oh. Yes. That. The dying sword-slave whose face he’d seen change into his own. He kept blanking that as though it hadn’t really happened. Because it couldn’t have.

  He watched the passage of the sun each day for want of anything else to do and thought they’d flown almost straight south from the Godspike, but on the third morning he saw he was wrong and they’d veered a good way west. The air was still as dry as dust but ahead he saw the glitter of water sparkle here and there in the far distance, while the land become as flat as paper.

  ‘You know where we are?’ asked Sivan when they stopped again.

  Tsen stared ahead. ‘That is the Lair of Samim.’

  ‘The desert men call it the Poison Sea. They say that every venom in every creature in every world was made there. They say the Samim dwells within. Do you know what that is, T’Varr?’

  A wry smile twisted Tsen’s lips. ‘A legend. A giant scorpion a hundred feet long with a hundred legs, with seven poisonous tails and three pairs of claws each of which can cut a horse in two. In a ring around its mouth parts grow seventeen venomous snakes so deadly that neither Zaklat the Death Bat nor the Red Banatch could face it. Fortunately for them and for the rest of us, the Samim never leaves its lair, content to give birth to the endless snakes and scorpions of the world. Just as well.’ He snorted. ‘Stories, Sivan.’

  ‘It wasn’t always so, but either way it won’t trouble us much on a sled.’

  Tsen couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Sled or no sled, a sight like that I think would trouble me very much.’ He looked at Sivan hard. ‘I’ve heard other stories too, ones that have weighed on my mind of late. Stories of the Konsidar and what lies beneath.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Sivan’s voice stayed light and careless. He grinned. ‘Go on then. I like stories.’

  Tsen, who considered that if he had a talent for anything at all then it was for spotting such things, thought he saw a flash of tension behind Sivan’s grin. Yes. I thought so. ‘You really are one. One of the Righteous Ones who dwell beneath the Konsidar?’

  Sivan shrugged. ‘I did tell you so.’ He was still trying to look unconcerned, but another twitch gave him away. And here, tongue, is where you might wish to tread with some care.

  ‘Then your skin is priceless.’ He watched Sivan hard, whose smile had fallen off his face like the moon crashing out of the sky. He looked ready to kill someone but Tsen’s tongue had the better of him now. ‘You’re taking quite a risk coming to the surface. And you’re not working for Bronzehand at all.’

  Sivan didn’t speak. They looked at each other until finally Tsen had to turn away. What’s the matter, fat old T’Varr? You were ready to die only a few days ago
. Although it was more a case of being resigned to the inevitable than actually being keen on the idea. Are you mad, then? And yes, he realised, he was. He seemed to have somehow found some hope. Probably a profound mistake but there it was, and when he looked at it, it didn’t seem to want to go away.

  ‘Would you skin someone, T’Varr?’ Sivan’s expression was strange. Dark and full of glowering clouds. Tsen thought of the alchemist on the eyrie skinning the hatchling he’d poisoned to make dragon-scale armour for his rider. Skinning the assassin who’d tried to kill him to preserve the marks on the man’s back so he might one day understand them.

  ‘A man?’ Tsen shrugged. ‘I’d like to think not but I suppose it might depend on what he’d done. If someone harmed my Kalaiya? Yes, I suppose I might skin them for that. Did you harm her?’

  Sivan stayed silent for a while as though weighing Tsen’s reply. He pursed his lips. ‘No,’ he said, and finished his breakfast and climbed back onto the sled. ‘Coming, T’Varr? Or would you rather stay here and ponder your stories?’

  The Samim itself may have been a story, but the saltmarsh flats where the Yalun Zarang and the Jokun came out of the mountains and hit the desert before they reached the sea were real enough. Men died here more often than in the Empty Sands. They died because they saw the water and drank it, not realising that away from the main flow of the rivers it was poisonous. There were shifting thick yellow crusts over stagnant pools of fetid water that would crack and split and swallow a man, and yes, there were creatures that lived in this swamp, some of them big and most of them poisonous. By midday they had reached the edges of it and Sivan drifted the sled slowly through its channels, taking his time as if looking for something. They changed course several times until Tsen saw the first of the two great rivers ahead, the Jokun. There were boats on the river. People. Which made Tsen have all those thoughts of help and rescue and escape again that he’d had back in the desert, only now they didn’t seem so futile.

  ‘Are you going to take this rope off me?’ he asked. He didn’t get an answer but Sivan didn’t move so he supposed that was a no.