Spellslinger 6: Crownbreaker

by Sebastien de Castell

  I pushed my shoulder against the wall to get myself upright again, then turned around and walked back the other way.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Reichis asked. ‘Why are we headed back inside?’

  It was hard to talk while carrying Ferius and pushing through the crowds. ‘Because we weren’t the only ones casing the temple.’

  38

  Criminal Elements

  There had to be at least fifty thousand people in the circular courtyard that surrounded the walled city of Makhan. They spilled out into the nearby streets, clambered up on the single-storey buildings of Mebab just to have a vantage point from which to peer up at the spire.

  In the short time since I’d tried to get Ferius away from here, the crowds must have doubled. The temple had no bells, but the pilgrims carried their own little ones with them, shaking them almost feverishly. Those without simply banged one tin begging cup against another over and over.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked a pock-faced man next to me.

  ‘God!’ he said, religious ecstasy oozing from him like pus from his wounds. ‘Word has come from the temple; He will visit another miracle upon us!’

  Great. Of all the times for Him to make an appearance, why now when I needed to track down whatever other Argosi were in the area and get them to help me take Ferius to a travellers’ saloon?

  ‘Is she dead?’ the man asked, reaching out his hand like a scavenger’s paw to see if there might be easy meat.

  ‘Touch her again and you’ll really need a miracle from your damned god,’ I growled.

  Blasphemy aside, my reaction was enough to make him slink away, slipping deeper into the mass of souls all around us.

  ‘Heh,’ Reichis said, after repeating my threat to himself. ‘I like that one.’

  I had to squat down, supporting Ferius on my knees to give my arms a rest. How was I supposed to find another Argosi in the middle of these hordes of bodies? Ferius had never taught me any sort of Argosi distress code to gain the attention of others. It was always just ‘find a travellers’ saloon’ or ‘paint a card’ or something equally slow. No wonder there were so few of them; they probably all ended up dead on account of never getting help from any of the others when they needed it.

  ‘Reichis, can you get airborne and spot any other Argosi?’

  He gave a nervous snarl. ‘In an open area like this, with all those temple guards? Somebody’ll get it in their head to shoot me down with a crossbow bolt. Besides, how would I tell who’s an Argosi and who’s just another useless skinbag?’

  He had a point. It’s not like there was an Argosi uniform.

  Different looks. Different paths. Half the time they don’t even use the same words to describe the Argosi ways. They’re all so … individualistic.

  A joyous roar began to build from the crowds, reaching a crescendo as I felt the swell of bodies begin to push forward, pressing even tighter around the temple walls. I had to stand back up to avoid being trampled.

  ‘My God!’ a woman next to me sang out in desperate fervour. ‘Do You see me, God? Please, it is I, Ahame. Please, turn Your eyes to me!’

  Above us all, on a shallow balcony near the top of the spire, a pair of curved double doors slowly swung open. A figure stepped out in plain white robes. A boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen, but with his shaved head and rake-thin frame he looked even younger.

  ‘That’s the skinbag idea of a god?’ Reichis snorted. There were so many people pressed up against us now that he wasn’t even bothering to stick to my shoulder, clambering onto their heads to get a better view. ‘Squirrel cat gods are giants, their teeth as long as that spire there. And the claws, so sharp they—’

  ‘Not now,’ I said.

  All around us, men, women and children screamed at the spire, all of them with some variation of the first woman’s plea. They begged with desperate urgency for God to glance their way.

  Is this all we want from our gods? To be noticed by them? To know they’re watching over us? Not the big, collective mass of humanity, but just us personally?

  Seemed to me the last thing I needed in my life was to live under the scrutiny of some deity. I had enough problems with guilt already.

  Not to mention with exhaustion.

  I couldn’t set Ferius down for fear she’d get crushed, but my arms were ready to give out. She’s wasn’t very big, but was a lot heavier than she looked. Or I was weaker than I thought. Either way, my whole body was starting to shake with the effort.

  ‘Your friend comes for God’s blessing?’ another woman next to me asked in a Berabesq accent so strong I could barely make out her words.

  I nodded.

  ‘I will share your burden,’ the woman offered.

  She was covered head to toe in a gauzy beige linen fabric, even her face hidden from the world. There were a number of illnesses that required such covering. I’d seen men and women whose skin and muscle – even their very bones – were slowly melting away from a wasting disease. The very thought repulsed me.

  Despite that, I nodded again and thanked her as she took Ferius’s legs and helped me hold her there, protected from the crowds around us. The removal of so much strain on my arms almost made me cry out with relief. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  The woman’s head tilted down. At first I thought it was a small bow, but then I realised she was staring at Ferius. ‘Your friend is very ill. Let us pray God hears her even though her pleas are silent.’

  I looked back up to the balcony atop the spire. The boy hadn’t moved an inch. He just stood there, gazing down at his followers packed like fishes in a net. The heat had become sweltering, and sweat dripped down my face in sheets. When the drops landed on the skin of my collarbone, even they felt hot.

  I heard a groan behind me, and turned to see an old man collapse to the ground. One person knelt down to help him, only to nearly get trampled as others just stepped over him to get closer to the wall.

  What kind of god allows his people to suffer for no better purpose than to watch them adore him? I wondered.

  Just then, I saw the boy’s arms spread out wide. He turned his hands palms down, the fingers wiggling playfully. What I thought was more of my own sweat sliding down my face turned out to be drops of rain, cool and gentle on my skin.

  The crowds chanted, ‘Dabhra, dabhra!’ Thank you, thank you!

  This soon ended as men and women once again began shouting to the boy to see them, to hear them, to heal the ills of their lives. A deafening cacophony of entreaties filled the air. They begged for the easing of a sickness, or for wealth, or even for love. ‘I am so lonely, God!’ one elderly woman in front of me cried. ‘Send someone to me! Man or woman, I care not! Do not let me end my days alone!’

  In fact, most of the cries weren’t for supernatural aid at all. They were for those simple things human beings were supposed to give one another anyway. The sharing of wealth, of food and shelter. Medicine to cure suffering. Companionship to ease loneliness.

  What odd miracles we ask for, I thought.

  And what miracle have you come in search of, Kellen of the House of Ke? Kellen Argos, Path of Endless Stars. The spellslinger. The outlaw. The God slayer.

  I looked around to see who had spoken. It wasn’t the voice of the woman helping me with Ferius, and no one else nearby was looking at me. The voice had been so close though, as if they were whispering in my ear or coming from inside my …

  My gaze rose above the heads of the crowd, higher and higher until it reached the top of the spire. Though it must’ve looked to all those in the temple grounds as if the child god was looking at them, I knew then that they were all wrong.

  He was looking at me.

  Well, Kellen? God asked, his young voice like a bell inside my head. Have you come to kill me or not?

  39

  The Voice of God

  Rain was now falling not in drops but in great sheets that drenched the crowds amassed outside the temple city’s walls. Berabesq has never been entir
ely arid, not even its deserts, but this much precipitation in such a short time was unprecedented. Impossible. A miracle.

  But then … a simple ember spell can appear as a miracle to someone who’s never before seen magic performed.

  You doubt me? God asked. He didn’t sound particularly angry, but then he didn’t sound too pleased either.

  The men, women and children crowding the streets began to dance in the rain, twirling about joyously as they tumbled into one another, their arms raised to the sky in religious ecstasy.

  ‘You seem like you have more than enough admirers already,’ I said quietly.

  One presumes that if he was a god, he didn’t need me to shout.

  But these are my followers. They have spent their lives in prayer almost from birth. The first words they learn to read are from their family codex. When a child takes her first step, her parents cry out, ‘God gives her strength!’ again and again, until neighbours all along the street chant it with them.

  ‘In my business we don’t call those followers,’ I said. ‘We call them marks.’

  ‘Who are you talkin’ to?’ Reichis asked. His fur was soaked all the way through and starting to smell a little dank – a refreshing reminder of things more mundane than the voice of a deity in my head.

  I meant only that devotion comes easily to my people, he said.

  ‘And belief in miracles.’

  And belief. A pause. But faith is foreign to you, isn’t it?

  ‘An apt choice of words. My people don’t believe in gods.’

  Yet they share such profound conviction that only magic defines them. A Jan’Tep house is no more than the sum of the power of its bloodlines. A man is measured solely by the spells he can cast. Do you believe that, Kellen of the House of Ke?

  The woman next to me in her linen wrappings ignored the frenzied dancing all around us, her gaze locked on me. Blessedly – if that’s the right word – she was still helping me carry Ferius.

  ‘Shouldn’t gods have better things to do than worry about whether a lone foreigner worships them?’ I asked.

  Another pause, longer this time.

  But how is one a god if he is only worshipped by his people?

  A good question, if one was even the slightest bit interested in theological quandaries.

  Are you here to kill me, Kellen? he asked again.

  I strained my weary muscles to lift Ferius a little higher. ‘Save my friend,’ I said softly. ‘Save her and I’ll leave here tonight. I’ll leave you to—’

  What of your mission? What of the people whose lives your employers fear will be destroyed by war if I live?

  ‘They’re not my problem!’ I shouted, unable to stop myself. I gazed down at Ferius, her features so pale under the sheen of rain coating her skin. She looked like a corpse freshly pulled from a river. ‘Berabesq magic comes from worship, from their faith, from you. That means this damnable curse, this malediction, it comes from you!’

  Then you accept my godhood?

  ‘You stupid, vain son of a bitch! You think I give a shit whether you’re really … Whether you’re …’

  A long time ago, sitting in some lousy saloon, I’d watched Ferius drinking herself into a stupor. One shot of Gitabrian whisky after another. I’d asked her what was wrong, what she hoped to accomplish.

  ‘Accomplish?’ she’d asked with a snort. ‘I aim to get mighty drunk, kid.’

  ‘But why?’

  She held the little glass tumbler up to her eye, the dark, smoky liquid inside distorting my view of her. ‘Fifth lesson of arta precis, kid. Sometimes to see a thing truly, you have to stop trying to see through it.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  She rose to her feet, the legs of her battered chair creaking in complaint. ‘It means that every once in a while when somebody smiles at you, it ain’t a sign they’re plannin’ to knife you in the belly. They’re just happy. Sometimes a body cries just cos they happen to be sad, not to manipulate you.’ She picked up several of the little whisky tumblers on the table, carrying them awkwardly against her chest as she turned to go. ‘And on occasion a respectable woman just feels a hankerin’ to get good and drunk.’

  I don’t know why that memory came back to me just then, but I looked down at Ferius’s pale features, searching desperately for a glimmer of that customary smirk of hers – the one she used to tell me that everything was going to be okay, no matter how much the evidence suggested otherwise. All I found was a very sick woman whose eyes were clenched so tightly in pain that I wondered if they would ever open again.

  Sometimes to see a thing truly, you have to stop trying to see through it.

  I looked back up at the spire, at the god standing there, performing miracles even as he seemed so determined to question my belief in him.

  Yet what did I really see?

  A boy looking down at me, asking if I believed he was God.

  ‘Ancestors,’ I whispered. ‘You aren’t sure, are you?’

  What?

  ‘You don’t know if you truly are God.’

  Just like that, the rain stopped falling. The crowds stopped dancing, looking at each other in confusion. Once again they all turned to look up at the boy on the spire, waiting for his next miracle. But he just turned and walked back inside, the doors closing behind him of their own accord.

  Perhaps we will find out together, when you come to kill me.

  40

  The Path of Winding Roads

  At the boy’s abrupt departure, a great wail rose up from the crowds outside the temple. ‘Come back! Come back!’ they cried, hands gesticulating manically in the air as they formed the religious signs of their various sects. It was like watching thousands upon thousands of spellcasters discover their magic had suddenly fled them.

  ‘Interesting,’ said the woman in the beige linen wrappings, still holding on to Ferius’s legs to help me carry her. ‘I suggest we leave this place now. There will be increasing … consternation among the pilgrims when they realise their god will not be returning today.’

  ‘Their’ god. She wasn’t one of them.

  Her voice and accent had changed too. Strangely, Reichis recognised her before I did.

  ‘Ugh,’ he groaned. ‘Of all the stinkin’ Argosi in the world, why did they send us her?’

  The gauzy fabric covering the lower half of her face shifted just a little – enough for me to detect the hint of a smile. ‘Does the squirrel cat suffer from an upset stomach? Or is it perhaps that he recalls that last time our paths crossed he absconded with a number of my possessions?’

  ‘Tell the skinbag she ain’t gettin’ none of her stuff back, Kellen,’ he snarled in warning.

  ‘Come,’ she said, shifting her grip to take Ferius from me. It was mildly embarrassing how easily she was able to bear the weight, but then I recalled that she was a lot stronger than she looked.

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Rosie,’ I said.

  Even as she turned to carry Ferius from the temple grounds, I saw the tell-tale stiffening in her shoulders. ‘I am the Path of Thorns and Roses. I have walked the length and breadth of this continent, fought duels against soldiers and mages, rescued villages from plagues and turned away armies with nothing more than the cards in my deck. You, teysan,’ she said, emphasising the Argosi term for a lowly student, ‘will address me with the proper respect.’

  ‘Anything you say, Rosie.’

  Reichis liked that one too.

  Rosie led the way, navigating effortlessly through the endless crowds of people frantically discussing, debating or simply bewailing the god’s disappearance. There was something both dizzying and faintly blasphemous about the winding route we followed, defying the geometric perfection of the city’s arrangement of streets and alleys with sudden hard turns left and right in no pattern I could discern. Despite the fact that it was Rosie who carried Ferius all by herself, it was all I could do just to keep up.

  For his part, Reichis seemed to enjoy the u
npredictability. He would suddenly leap from my shoulder to bounce off the sides of one building and then land on the shop awning of another. He’d clamber up to a rooftop in order to launch himself into the air, spreading his limbs so that the furry flaps between them would billow out and catch the breeze, allowing him to fly above the crowds. As often as not he’d end up having to land on the street and scramble back to catch up with us when the Path of Thorns and Roses had once again made one of her unexpected turns.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ I asked.

  ‘A strange question,’ she replied.

  ‘It seems a perfectly obvious one to me.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The urgency driving me to get help for Ferius warred with my irritation at Rosie’s imperturbable and needlessly inscrutable behaviour. It had been a while since I’d run into another Argosi, and I’d forgotten that most of them are smug arseholes.

  ‘How long has it been since last our paths crossed?’ Rosie asked, turning another corner onto a wider avenue filled with street carts bearing fruits, vegetables and other foods, along with signs that showed prices crossed out and much higher ones hastily marked in their place.

  ‘A couple of years, I guess,’ I replied. ‘Since that mess with the shadowblack plague in the Seven Sands.’

  Her eyes glanced up at a small polished mirror mounted on a pole one of the merchants had attached to their cart in order to spot thieves. ‘Have you travelled in that time, teysan? Seen new places?’

  ‘Well, yeah, but—’

  ‘Consider then all the places I have travelled. All the things I must have seen and done since last we met. Ponder on how many battles I have survived, what secrets I have unearthed.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  She changed the subject as unexpectedly as she switched sides of the street. ‘Walk next to me and flip a coin, please.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A coin. A shiny one. Do you have such a coin?’

  I had any number of coins of course. In this case I chose my castradazi luminary coin, not for its mystical properties, but because it was the one that somehow always stayed cleanest and so was always shiny. I pulled it from the slot I’d sewn into the hem of my shirt and tossed it in the air. It landed tails up in my palm.