by A J Dalton
Jillan took a wooden step forward. Samnir’s heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder. ‘You cannot think of doing this, lad! Not after everything we have already sacrificed! Not after your parents’ own sacrifice!’ Jillan shrugged himself free of the old soldier and took another step.
The ground suddenly rumbled and pillars of stone rose ahead and behind the pagans, forming walls between them and their enemies. Freda climbed out of the earth, bright gems shining magically at her neck. The mountain men fell back from her, raising their weapons, but Jillan came and gestured for them not to be alarmed. A golden youth descended through the clouds of thick smoke billowing from the inn and alighted on the wall facing the Saint.
‘Can it be? After all this time?’ Torpeth gnashed, apparently beside himself. ‘The whispering shadow? The Great Deceiver! Still the gods test me and demand final payment!’
The Peculiar looked down upon the Saint. ‘It is here I must intervene. Have you not already been warned that my claim to the boy is the greater? Do you defy your betters, little Saint? I cannot allow it.’
The Peculiar glanced back over his shoulder and spoke so that only the defenders would hear and be compelled: ‘Hide your eyes now, for otherwise your minds will be unhinged.’
With those words the Lord of Mayhem transformed himself into the shimmering image of whatever the Saint’s army most desired. The Peculiar heard all their thoughts and fantasies, those of the Saint foremost among them, and made himself into them. He was the ideal of female beauty and carnal lust: her sex was vulnerable and promising; her lips were sumptuous, yielding and hungry; her eyes teased, undressed and pleaded; her breasts heaved with passion, the buds of her nipples erect and yearning; her slim waist gave way to pronounced hips and a sculpted behind that thrust out urgently. A heady musk filled the air that flared nostrils, dilated pupils, bared canines and made tongues hang. Then, conquering the remaining senses of those fixated on her, the Peculiar spoke in a shifting timbre that touched, seduced, commanded and compelled: ‘Take your swords and put them to your throats. See how your Saint also finds a blade. Follow his lead and we will come together! That’s it. All of you.’
‘Friend Anupal, do you not remember your promise?’ Freda asked in anguish, almost breaking the spell.
The Peculiar blinked. ‘And you promised to trust my judgement whenever I decided there were those who had to die. Now don’t interrupt me again, dear one.’
‘No!’ Jillan shouted. ‘You cannot kill them all. You cannot avert one genocide by committing another!’
The Peculiar smiled coquettishly. ‘Oh, but I can. Now, brave Heroes and Saint, push your swords—’
‘Cursed god!’ Torpeth spat, leaping impossibly high and landing directly behind the Peculiar on the wall. ‘It was you who destroyed my own empire with your wiles and words. It was you who destroyed my army and people. It was you who broke the gods and gave this world to the others.’ He wrenched the helmet of sun-metal from the vision’s brow and kicked her from the wall. ‘You cannot be allowed to do it again! The Geas will never be restored through your acts – it will only be diminished further. Out, devil! Away from all living things and this world!’
The Peculiar landed below, body and form at once dislocating, and looked up aghast. ‘You! Torpeth the tyrant! Still alive. Petty Geas, what have you done!’ The Peculiar’s mask of beauty fell and there was a moment of insanity given physical form, a scratching itchiness inside the skull and a burrowing through flesh that felt like the carving Jillan had seen Ash try to sell in Saviours’ Paradise.
The Saint leapt forward. Not hesitating for an instant, he broke a glass phial of blood against the Peculiar’s dissolving teeth and jabbed a tapping tube into the god’s liquefying flesh. A single sun-bright diamond of blood was distilled at the end of the tube, which Azual greedily lapped up with his long tongue, as the rest of the Peculiar trickled away into the earth.
The Saint threw back his head and screamed to the heavens as he grew back the hand he’d lost in Hyvan’s Cross, his eyes were restored and he increased exponentially in stature. ‘I am made anew! The power of creation is mine!’ He raised the shining helmet of sun-metal, stretched it wide and lowered it over his brow. ‘Witness as I am crowned a god!’ His voice shook buildings to their foundations, toppling many, burst eardrums, rattled brains and was mentally heard the length and breadth of the Empire. Several Saviours were shaken out of the waking dream and knew a loss of self-control for the first time in their near-immortal existence.
‘That could have gone better,’ Samnir groaned from where he’d fallen. He coughed up blood.
‘Kill them all!’ the Saint demanded and used his will to force all the Heroes back to their feet.
‘You said you would spare them!’ Jillan cried out, his ears ringing so badly he thought he would pass out.
‘That was before I became divine, you wheedling child! The girl will be the first to die.’
The taint was howling and howling, making it impossible to think. The ringing, the smoke, the blood, the death, the sacrifice: it was all too much! It was an unending assault, like a battering storm, a sort of spell that had been conjured over millennia to destroy the People and the Geas. It was a spell or consciousness that had seen countless generations sacrificed to its making. It was the magic of the Saviours. He saw it now. It was so colossal it all but eclipsed this world, just as Azual’s prodigious size now cast a shadow across the whole of Godsend.
The Saviours had influenced and then controlled all of history and the lives of the People just to bring about this moment when the spell of their will would finally devour the Geas. And it was not just on this world. They would claim and devour the entire cosmos. Just to bring about this moment, their first moment of true creation, the moment when they truly claimed the power of all and became gods of the mind, of matter, of space and time.
All this he understood in an instant, and yet he could only care because of Hella. He had resolved not to use his magic to destroy anything again, but his resolve was as nothing when put next to losing her forever. He would not let them kill her, could not idly stand looking on when she was the only meaning left to him.
At last, having unknowingly resisted it from the first day he was born, he allowed his voice to become one with the taint’s. He realised now that everything the Empire had ever said and taught had been designed to make the People deny and reject their own power, so that they could never become a threat to the Saviours. They’d cajoled, bullied and punished him into seeing his potential as something tainted, sinful and other. His magic was a tempting voice he should always suppress, it was a selfishness of which he should be ashamed. He should loathe, mutilate and sacrifice himself before ever thinking to use his magic. He should keep it in abeyance until the Saint had a chance to Draw it from him completely and claim it for the Saviours. How many millions had allowed the parasitic Empire to bleed them of their magic, freedom and selves? The scale of the crime was unthinkable. It would ultimately see the People and the Geas extinct, and the Saviours equipped with even greater power to visit cataclysm and apocalypse on other realms.
The taint was not the insidious voice of some corrupting entity. The taint was part of him. It was the stubborn and aggressive part of himself that believed passionately in things, that loved others passionately and would do whatever it had to in order to safeguard that which he loved. It was the part of him that challenged a bullying teacher, stood against a classmate intent on harming him and defied a genocidal Saint.
It was not even a question of releasing the taint. It was not an issue of giving himself over to it. It was simply allowing it to exist. It was sharing life with it. It was merging with it and becoming one with the storm, the storm of magic and consciousness. He now rose up with it, fully matching the overarching Azual. Jillan’s eyes blazed as bright as the Saint’s own and lightning arced between his fingertips.
‘You will not touch her!’ Jillan commanded the Heroes who had raised their swords to
cut Hella down. The soldiers stopped and looked around in confusion, apparently at a loss as to how they had even come to be in Godsend.
‘You dare!’ the glorious Saint thundered, the displeasure of his look combusting the air around them. Then he released a killing red mist towards Jillan.
Jillan replied with a tempest, sweeping the mist away, and poured liquid fire at the leering deity. The magic washed over Azual, but fizzled away as he shrugged and renewed himself.
A mental blast from the Saint made Jillan cry out, for he did not know how to defend himself against such an invasion. Azual rampaged through Jillan’s mind and memories: ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are!’
Jillan sat having breakfast with his parents in their little house in the southern part of town. He whined that he didn’t want to go to school, that he was feeling ill and that his mother should stay at home with him. ‘He’s not ill,’ his father Jed decided on behalf of the family. ‘Who are you afraid of, son?’ The door rattled and the Saint’s voice came from the other side: ‘We both know who you’re afraid of, don’t we, Jillan?’ Jed moved towards the door. ‘Who’s there?’ Jillan leapt up from the breakfast table, begging his father not to let the Saint in, and fled to his parents’ bedchamber.
He clambered out of the small window as he heard his parents being torn apart behind him. He raced through the morning towards the Gathering Place, where he knew his beloved Hella and his other classmates would be waiting. Long sharp fingers pinched him by the ear and Minister Praxis dragged him into the school. All day the Minister punished them, until it was dark and Jillan was forced back out. The darkness was waiting to ambush him, he knew.
He ran and ran, bullies and killers on his heels, all the way to Saviours’ Paradise. Aspin was in a punishment chamber calling for help, but Jillan dared not go down there because he knew the Saint would trap him. He fled with Thomas’s wagon and the sick blacksmith, the sound of Aspin’s cruel torture in his ears the whole time.
They made it into the woods and onto the hidden paths. He didn’t want to go any further, but Thomas was forcing him on to Linder’s Drop. ‘No, Thomas, please! You don’t understand. Linder’s Drop is a dream. You must wake up!’ The blacksmith shook his head. ‘Ridiculous! If I’m not awake, but think I am, how on earth can I wake up?’
‘How do I wake up?’ Jillan cried to the forest. ‘Geas, help me! Wolf, help me!’
And in reply the burning orange eyes of the wolf came out of the dark. ‘Honestly, must you be so dense? You wake up by going to sleep,’ the predator said in the voice of the taint. ‘Lie down and I will watch over you. Quickly, before they find your trail again.’
Jillan closed his eyes and found himself in the ruined landscape of the Saint’s mind. The green hill was there with its throne of skulls, but the throne was empty. All the People, the Heroes and the Saint were somewhere behind him, scouring the land in search of him. If he could get to the throne, he might be able to seize power here. He ran with all speed, his existence depending on it.
‘NO!’ boomed the ground and sky as Azual realised his own peril. To save himself, the Saint severed their mental link and they were facing each other in the eye of the storm above Godsend once more.
We are too evenly matched. I cannot overcome him.
Azual flew at Jillan, slashing with his talons, but Jillan’s armour flashed and threw the Saint back. Jillan came in with fists, but Azual was more muscular and faster. He caught Jillan’s chin with an elbow and then got him in a headlock. The death grip tightened.
Jillan called down lightning, and it struck Azual’s helmet, the sun-metal absorbing the energy. Jillan poured flames upwards but these too disappeared into the helmet. His vision began to blur and develop spots. He attempted a mental blast of his own and that also went into the shining headgear.
The Saint hurled them both down into Godsend, Jillan landing cruelly on his spine. The violence of the impact and the eddies of the titanic forces the two of them threw at each other caused a concussion wave that flattened every being in Godsend and made them black out, all except Freda, who channelled the power of an earthquake towards Jillan so that he could hit Azual with it. Yet the boy reached up clumsily with his hand and only managed to find the Empire god’s terrible crown again.
Jillan could hardly see any more. He was only dimly aware of his nemesis flipping him over; of Azual keeping one hand at Jillan’s neck to carry on throttling him; of the Saint using his talons to slash at the fastenings of Jillan’s armour to expose his chest; and the divine representative of the blessed Saviours extending the talons of his free hand.
‘And now I will have your sacred heart, boy, to drink your life blood and at last have the power of the Geas as my own.’
Jillan drew the last of the power and life energy from his core, and whispered, ‘Then it is my sacrifice and gift to you, holy one!’ He raised two trembling fingers as if in benediction and trickled the last of his magic into the helmet of sun-metal.
The Saint laughed maniacally. As he began to extend his talons into Jillan’s chest, a single drop of sunlight fell onto his hand. It burned through his flesh and bone. He frowned in annoyance and tried to renew himself, but the drop ran towards his wrist. With a mighty clash of his teeth, Azual severed the hand from him, discarded it and grew himself another. Another drop fell and began to burn.
Azual’s head hurt. Molten sun-metal trickled down his face, searing through one of his new eyes, burning deep into his cheek, dissolving his teeth and coming out through the bottom of his chin. It dripped onto his chest and burned straight down towards his beating heart.
He frantically used all his power to renew and recreate his body, but the sun-metal ran faster and faster down his head and body.
‘Pleaggge!’ he belched. ‘Save me!’
‘I cannot,’ Jillan mumbled, ‘for you have already taken everything I have, holy one. Where are your Saviours now?’
Azual scrubbed at the blinding metal, only succeeding in spreading it further. He threw himself onto the ground and rolled to smother the deadly stuff or rub it off, but his movements became weaker and weaker, until he was all but still. For a few brief moments he seemed but a youth of Jillan’s own age. Eyes streaming, the boy looked at Jillan and gave him a sad broken smile.
‘We seem the same, you and I … Will you not help me, before it turns dark and the bad people come for me again? I’ve been trapped here in my room for so long. No. You should leave before they come.’
‘I’m sorry … Damon? I can wait with you for a while. I don’t think they’ll be coming any more,’ Jillan said with the last of his breath, and closed his eyes.
‘Really? They’re not coming?’ the boy asked ever so faintly, as he became lost in shimmering heat and steam.
Moments later there was nothing left of the holy representative of the Saviours.
Freda came over to peer at the puddle of what was left and shook her head. ‘It was as friend Anupal said. None can be omnipotent and the world still exist.’
CHAPTER 14:
Or end what has begun
The masked Saint and her children picked their way through the still bodies and debris that were almost all that remained of Godsend. Izat knew she would not have long to get to the boy and Draw him, if he still lived.
An unkempt but tall woodsman was suddenly standing in front of her. The Saint’s children hissed and scattered.
‘You should not be here, Unclean one,’ Izat challenged him, the authority of her voice muffled by the mask of the Peculiar that she wore.
‘Nor should you, holy one. Tell you what: I won’t tell if you don’t,’ Ash replied with a wink. ‘There’ll be hell to pay if they find out you’re in another Saint’s region uninvited, won’t there?’
‘You know nothing of which you speak. Stand aside. The mad Saint is no more and I command here on behalf of the Empire.’
‘Oh, I don’t think the Empire’s in any shape to be commanding anyone right now, do you?’ the w
oodsman replied, looking around the body-strewn ruins and his smile becoming a wolfish grin. ‘Why don’t you just run along, Izat? That is who’s behind that quite unbecoming mask, isn’t it? Then there won’t be any need for unpleasantness. There’s been quite enough for one day, don’t you think?’
Izat spluttered in outrage. ‘How dare you address me in such a manner! I cannot let such impertinence pass without reprimand and censure. I insist you stand aside this instant. I would rather not sully my hands and rumple my robes with one so Unclean, but will not hesitate to do so if you do not immediately adopt a more reverent tone. The boy is a citizen of the Empire and thus I claim him. It is my divine right!’
‘Enough of your primping, preening and posturing, Saint. What of the boy’s rights?’
‘He has none. He has not yet been Drawn. I will be his mother and father and make all decisions for him. Children, remove this upstart, being careful not to splatter me if you please. Quickly now!’
A dozen children stole out from behind semi-ruined walls and overturned barrels and sought to encircle Ash. There was a feral look to them, but the woodsman showed no concern. He shook his head. ‘To think you would corrupt and use these children for your own dirty work. How can you, in all conscience, put these innocent children in the way of harm? Don’t wish to risk chipping one of your nails, is that it? Just how is it that you are called holy? I say you are not holy, Izat. I say that it is time you and your kind were ended. My friend here agrees with me and has a voracious appetite. I’m surprised you haven’t already started running.’
Izat took a cautious step back, turning her head this way and that in an attempt to identify a threat. She peered through drifting smoke and looked into pools of shadow. Satisfied there was nothing amiss, the mask turned back to Ash and the Saint stepped confidently forward, head lifted imperiously.
‘You still don’t see him, do you, Izat? I’m not surprised really, for he is the darkness and cannot be seen. He stalks you from within darkness too, little Saint. He is the Chaos! Are you afraid of the dark, children? You should be. Surely you see something in the deep, deep shadow beneath that wall over there? Are those just orange cinders drifting on the wind or are they the burning eyes of a black wolf watching and waiting for you? Look more closely. There! Didn’t you see him blink?’
