The Brass God

by K. M. McKinley

  “What do they want us for?”

  “I can’t say,” said Rafozo.

  “Where are we going?” said Tuvacs.

  “North,” said Rafozo. “The desert plays tricks on us. The sun does not always move as it should across the southern sky, but I’m sure we’re going north”

  “How many cages like this are there?”

  “Many,” said Rafozo. “I haven’t been able to count them all. There are hundreds of modalmen here. An army goes ahead of us, and a rearguard some miles behind. I think they are being followed. I will not hope it is men who come after them to save us.”

  Tuvacs fought back dizziness to crane his neck and get a better view past the draft beast to the front, then past the wagon behind. He counted five further wagons. The dust in the air suggested many more.

  The caravan started to climb the side of a low ridge that ran to the horizon. The land here was rockier than the site of the massacre, but the black sand of the desert was ubiquitous and coated the ground thickly. The formations of red stone rising from it looked like the hairy backs of the creatures. Tuvacs looked back as they went up, the elevation allowing him to count a dozen more cages.

  The wagon crested the ridge, and began to descend to a plain free of rocks, dominated by black sand alone. The cages made a long line winding across the desert, flanked by lines of dispersed modalmen riders and infantry. Fifty or so cage wagons down the line, other carts and wagons bunched together at the head of the convoy, beyond that was the modalman horde, huge shapes shrouded in the dust of their marching.

  “Why are they going north?” Tuvacs asked. “There’s nothing north; only desert, then the High Spine.”

  “What are you thinking?” said Rafozo. A few of the others were looking at him now, woken by their talking.

  “That none of it will matter if we end up on a modalman’s plate.” Tuvacs gripped the bars tighter, watching the vast cloud of dust kicked up by the modalmen.

  “Are you proposing escape?” when Rafozo said this, a couple of the prisoners who knew Mohacin looked at Tuvacs expectantly. Their interest spread further. The prisoners leaned in to listen.

  Tuvacs’ legs had used up their little strength and he sank to a painful crouch. “Maybe. It would be better than sitting around waiting to see in whose gut we end up, don’t you think?”

  Rafozo shrugged. “I do not want to stay here and find out.”

  Tuvacs thought about Suala, carrying his child back at the camp, and about his sister Lavinia, whom he had been forced to abandon in Karsa. Not once in his life had he sat back and taken what life had thrown at him, not when their parents died, not when he was struggling to survive as a gleaner in Mohacs-Gravo, not when he had fled with his sister to the faraway Karsan isles.

  And not when the modalmen had attacked. Not even then.

  Tuvacs felt behind himself, brushing his fingers against the bar he rested against. It was a thick piece of iron set directly into a socket in the wood without screws or other fastenings. He grasped it and tugged. It jiggled a little in its hole. He turned to face the bar. The wood’s grain was exposed by erosion and desiccation. He picked a few splinters out with his fingernail from around the bar’s base.

  “This will come out, if we have enough time,” Tuvacs said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Unholy Alliance

  AGE WAS PAIN. Adamanka Shrane got up from her morning prayers grimacing at the throb in her limbs. Her muscles creaked. Her knuckles ached. Her knees required a certain effort to straighten, and they did so to a fusillade of popping cartilage.

  She hobbled from her prayer mat to her bed and sat with a groan.

  Summer was only halfway through; the hottest time of the year had yet to come. Already the morning’s sun beat on the lead roof of the Pantheon Maximale. Her quarters in the tower would be stifling by noon. Rain fell rarely that year, and only the times when the Godhome shaded the city provided respite from the heat. Nevertheless, she was always cold. Age came on her faster and harder than it ever had. Shrane turned her hands this way and that. A mere two years since her last rejuvenation and she was already ancient. Her skin was wrinkling, thinning to the point of translucency. The faint outlines of emerging liver spots dotted the back of her right hand. The marks were the first to appear. This time they had come quickly. She frowned at their unwelcome return.

  When she had been young—not truly young, but after the first couple of rejuvenations in the pool of the Iron Fane she still regarded herself so—she had been vain. The gift had gladdened her. Back then she lived for years between immersions, but the effect of youth now lasted such a short time, and each expenditure of magic she made to hurry the Iron Gods’ return aged her faster.

  There were other, new hurts she had never experienced before. An ache so persistent it took on solidity; the invisible wound where the Iron Gods’ king had split her in twain. There had been no pain until her other self’s death in the Sotherwinter ice, where she was slain by the Goddriver’s scion, Vols Iapetus. Only then had the sting of the king’s sword returned, never to leave again.

  With the death of her magical duplicate, much of Shrane’s power had consolidated itself in this single body, along with the memories and experience her other self had gathered. But by no means everything had come back, and the sense of something lacking gnawed at her in the night. Most unsettling of all was the uncertainty of who had been the real Shrane; her, in Perus, or the one who had gone south. She feared that she didn’t exist at all any more, but was a copy of herself.

  “I live to serve,” she whispered, and made the sign of the Iron Church, a loosely curled fist placed on her stomach. Her mouth was gummy. Her lips were slack over her teeth, and never properly closed. Still she was glad. Vols Iapetus died defeating her. She had served well. The Iron Gods had arrived at the city of their ancient enemy, the Morfaan, and mustered a huge army there. Had she been of one body, she did not doubt that she would have survived her confrontation. Empowered by her masters, she would have smashed down Iapetus without injury.

  That was not to be, so she put it from her mind. Shrane had an uncommon focus. She did not allow regret or pride to distract her.

  She stood stiffly, but as she crossed the floor to the round window she grew stronger. She opened the slatted blinds fully and pushed open the single-hinged pane, allowing the smoky air of Perus into her rooms. The sun was still climbing. It was an hour or so until it would be blocked out by the looming disc of the Godhome whose edge rested on the hills of the Royal Park like a lid half-lifted from a pot. Warm peach sunshine sliced through the slats, dividing up her room into narrow lanes of light and dark.

  She began the day’s tasks. Her night robe dropped to the floor. She took toilet and cleaned herself with water and cloths. She looked in her mirror sparingly, so as not to see that her body had lost its voluptuousness. She dressed hastily.

  Once her iron staff was in her hand she felt powerful again, though her palm tingled at its touch. She gave a quiet gasp of pleasure as its magic washed through her, driving out aches and pains, straightening her posture. For the time being age was a fleeting visitor. It came in as surely as the tides of the Earth, and receded with the sun’s rising. However, at the close of each passing day she was a little older. She wondered if the pool of the Iron Fane would regenerate her at all next time she visited it. For every one of her predecessors there had come an occasion when it had ceased to work.

  She stood taller, and took in a deep, resolute breath.

  Only then did she notice the man standing in the doorway leading into the dark attic over the Pantheon’s knave. He lurked outside the rule-straight beams of sunlight where velvety blackness clung to exposed stone and wood. He was hardly there, just a glimmer of eyes in the shadow. He only assumed a solid shape as he stepped forward; a shadow seeming to detach from the darkness into fully rounded life.

  She gasped at being caught unawares, and levelled her staff at him.

  “A little alarmed to hav
e a strange man watching you dress?” said the stranger. He smiled insinuatingly.

  “You are no man,” said Shrane. There was strength in her words. A shiver of magic passed over the stranger. He made an admonishing face and waved his hand, as if shooing away an insect.

  Shrane flinched as her spell was dismissed. The end of her staff jerked up a half inch, momentarily out of her control. She pushed it back down and kept the top trained on him.

  “There is no need to attack me in that way. You could simply ask me what I want,” he said. He stepped closer, emerging further into the fuzzy light, though he avoided the stark slices of sunlight pouring through the blind.

  He was unhealthy. His skin was pallid, with a greasy sheen, with red patches around his mouth and nostrils in bright contrast. He had shoulder length hair, very dirty. Missing hanks exposed his scalp. His teeth were rotting in his head, and his breath reeked so strongly Shrane smelled it across the room. His clothes were Karsan, finely cut, but threadbare and caked in filth.

  “I am not fit for court, I realise. This shell takes badly to my presence. It appears both you and I suffer a regrettable degeneration of physique. Such is the burden of power.”

  “Who are you?”

  The stranger held up a finger. “It must be very unnerving for such a grand puppeteer like yourself to be so ambushed. I have been watching you for a few weeks. You use others.” He looked down. Beneath the planks of wood and stone under his feet, the cathedral was full of the devout. He smiled a brown smile, as if he could see the congregation of the Church of the Returned running about like ants in the hall below. “I will not be used.”

  Shrane followed the man with the head of her staff as he paced around the pool of patterned light. She had little affection for her accommodation. She had laired here out of necessity, if with a certain ironic glee at skulking in the church of the false gods, but having this thing in there with her was a violation.

  Shrane forced back panic, and appraised her foe. He was not human, but wore a man’s body. There was something else inside the cloak of flesh, something wicked.

  “You are of the Y Dvar,” she said.

  The man dipped his head. “That is so.”

  “Are you one of the false gods?” Her grip tightened on her staff. This was an unwelcome development. A god, even a false god, she could not stand against, not with all the power her masters had invested her with. One of their servants she might best. She wracked her memory, looking for signs that would help her discern what order of being he was. She had been a young woman when the gods and their ilk were driven away. They were unimportant to her church, and she had been taught to disdain them. Facing one in person was another matter.

  “You are asking yourself, now how can that be, when Res Iapetus banished them?’ said the man. He was enjoying himself. His rotten smile made her heart pound with fear.

  “You have got back into the world.”

  “Or I never left.”

  “The numbers of the remaining gods are but two.”

  “Not true,” he said. He trailed his filthy fingers curiously along Shrane’s few possessions. He came close to touching the cloth bound sacred book of her church. She was the last of its adherents. The book was all she had of her people. She tensed. He paused before touching it, then withdrew his hand carefully with a knowing smile. If he was vulnerable to its sacred nature, that was something. She shifted her stance. There was a scent of corruption to him beneath his body’s stink.

  “Reveal yourself,” she said, putting a touch of magic into her voice. Her veins burned. Her sorcery was a poisonous sort wedded to iron, powerful but deadly to its user.

  The Y Dvar grimaced, and again brushed her power away. “I told you not to do that. The wards of the ancient gates are weakening, a situation you and your masters are abusing. You know this. There is no need for enchantment.”

  “Then speak freely!” she said, suffusing her utterance with more power. The being flinched.

  “You do have some ability. Very well, I said I would say! Really.” He tutted, then he bowed. “I am no god, but merely a servant of the Dark Lady, ostensibly anyway. I serve myself in the main. You have been using the lure of the gods to make men do your bidding.” He wagged his finger and shook his head. “Very naughty.”

  “You cannot stop me. Your gods are not gods. I commit no blasphemy.”

  “I have no intention of stopping you,” he said. “And, for the record, your gods are not gods either. It just so happens the aims of these gods who are not gods concord. I come to you in the spirit of alliance. We should work together. You wish to allow the Draathis back onto this Earth, I would allow the return of my mistress’s pantheon to their home. These desires are not mutually exclusive.”

  “The gods of men are irrelevant to the Draathis.”

  The being shrugged. “Maybe they were once. Times change.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Ah, well,” he ran his hand along a shelf, holding it up to inspect for dust. He frowned at the grime he found, and wiped it on his dirty clothes. “Then I will have to stop you.”

  “You cannot,” she said.

  “Do really want to risk that? You are close to success. I understand you are the last of your kind. If you fail, then your entire line will have wasted several thousand years of their time. Think! An entire culture dedicated to one cause, pursuing it doggedly, and you come within a hair’s breadth only to throw it away by making the wrong decision.” He looked at her sharply. “So I advise you, don’t make the wrong decision. Come now, you and I are only servants. We can work together. Our respective masters can resolve any problems they may have with each other once they are all safely back upon this world.”

  She hesitated, then put up her staff and let its butt slide to the floor with a clank. A choir had begun practicing in the cathedral. Since the incident on the Godhome and the lights seen there, the numbers of worshippers coming to the Pantheon had increased sharply.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Give me your name.”

  He smiled. “I never had one until recently.”

  “So you are of the lesser Y Dvar, and not of the benevolent kind.”

  “How can you tell?” said the thing with mock hurt.

  “The stench gives you away.”

  “Oh very good,” he chortled softly. “Yes, I am, well, I was Y Dvar. At the moment I am not. I am here because I have found someone whose testimony will aid you in your aims, if you will but choose to ally yourself with me.”

  “Then, goodfellow,” she said levelly, “who are you at the moment, until your stolen body falls apart? Reveal your name to me, and we might bargain.”

  “I have nothing to lose by giving you my name, and everything to gain. All you had to do was ask.” The being made a deep, elaborate bow. “My name is Guis Kressind,” it said, with genuine relish.

  “And who is this other you speak of?”

  “Ah, I think you know him. In fact, if I’m correct, you’re the one that sent him and his lady friend off on their perilous little jaunt.”

  “That boy,” she said. “Harafan. You found him?” This was bad news. She had been looking for the Harafan herself.

  “Harafan, yes, that’s the chap. I found him before you could, you see. A handsome young fellow, and as I see it, an important part of your schemes. I am sure Comte Raganse will be intrigued to know that he was recently on the Godhome. I think that was your intention for him, wasn’t it?”

  “What is the bargain you offer?”

  “Cooperation, a pooling of resources. We work together to bring the Draathis to Perus, and the gods also.”

  “If I refuse?”

  He grinned evilly. “My dear goodlady, either Harafan can come with both of us to see the comte, or he won’t be coming at all.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Bad Tidings

  ARKADIAN VAND WAS not accustomed to silence. For days he had been rushing from one factory to another. All his world had been constructed
of noise. His affairs in Maceriya in particular concerned him greatly; all this nonsense about the gods’ return had the lands of the old Maceriyan septet in uproar. Revolution was in the air, and such political upheavals had a tendency to divest men like Vand unfairly of their assets. Meetings with his agents and the grandees of various governments had taken him across nine lands in as many days. To add to the upheaval on the continent, Katriona Kressinda-Morthrocksa had been agitating for greater rights for the workers of Karsa, and the movement was gaining traction there. If it took root in the heartlands of industrialisation, it would be but a matter of time until it spread across the continent. Vand had barely slept, barely eaten and his clothes smelled of spent glimmer from the many trains he had ridden. A week and a half had whirled away, the passing of the days marked by the clatter of train wheels, the roaring of engines, and the shouting of stressed men.

  Then there was discovery at the dig at the Three Sisters and that, above all other things, required his attention.

  Now this.

  His office in Karsa City was unbearably quiet. Three clocks ticked loudly. Some city noise worked its way in through the tall windows. Vand heard none of it. A bowl of apples, his favourite fruit, sat untouched on his desk.

  The report held his attention in a trap. His clenched hands stretched the paper until it was taut as a drum skin. One more tug would take it past the point of failure. Vand understood material tolerance better than any man alive, and held it there purposefully.

  The cords on his neck stood out hard. Men of vast wealth were often fat. Vand would have hated to be thought so. Persin, his rival, was fat. Vand worked hard to keep his body trim.

  Arkadian Vand was a man who liked to know everything about everything, but he did not know how he felt about this news. Not exactly. What was better: absolute knowledge that Trassan Kressind was gone, a cruel blow which could be absorbed and dealt with, or fretful uncertainty, which at least had the benefit of hope but which bred anxiety?