The Horns of Ruin s-9

by Tim Akers

  I thought about that. It troubled me. The strength of Morgan, his courage and his bravery, his victories in battle-these were the things that gave us our power, our invokations. Each of our powers had its basis in some part of Morgan's story. Everice, Mountain among Streams, for example, is a defensive stance. When invoked, the scion of Morgan can face multiple threats at once, her attention divided equally in all directions. It draws its power from Morgan's actions at the Battle of Everice, when his line had been overwhelmed by the Rethari hordes. Morgan had stood alone against waves of scaled Rethari warriors for a full day, striking each of them down with a single blow. To the rest of the army, heavily pressed and unable to relieve their god, Morgan had looked like a mountain in a flood, battered from all sides but unyielding.

  I wondered what bit of Alexander's history the power of the chains came from. Nothing widely known, it would seem. All the gods had their secrets, of course, revealed only to the highest scions. Still, it was a strange power for Alexander the Healer.

  "Master Barnabas, I beg forgiveness for my actions. The presence of so many of the Betrayer's scions-"

  "Forget it," he said wearily, and then smiled. "There is a duty here, and a purpose. These people do not serve Amon the Betrayer." He stopped and fixed me with his pale eyes. "He did many things. It is by his hand that this city was raised, and by his servants' hands that it still stands. His tools drove back the Feyr and forged the Fraterdom. The Betrayal was one act, as horrible as it was. One act. They worship the god that he was. Not the murderer he became."

  "Is that supposed to be enough?" I asked.

  "It must be. Amon is dead. Morgan is dead at his hand. Of the three brothers, only Alexander remains. There is nothing more we can do."

  We stared at each other, master and student, elder and orphan. The Fratriarch sighed and turned to the servitor, who was waiting at the foot of a staircase. I followed, as I always follow. The Cult of Morgan was not mine to lead.

  We continued in tense silence up a tightly coiling spiral staircase, dusty shelves of books on all sides, until we emerged into a much larger room. The Fratriarch and I stumbled to a halt, wide-eyed.

  We were on a broad terrace that was, itself, part of a cavernous space of books and dappled light. This single room was a gash that ran the height of the building, steep walls that stepped outward in terraces and narrow walkways, polished wooden railings and trestles arching across the gap, their paths illuminated by warm frictionlight and, amazingly, the natural sun in delicate patterns. I followed the thin light up to the ceiling. Several of the domes that we had seen outside yawned over this grand chasm, their chipped black paint letting in a bright constellation of sunlight. And everywhere I looked, the walls, the rooms that opened onto the cavern, the walkways that wound treacherously across, all of them were lined with bookcases. They seemed to burst organically from the wood and stone, like strata of musty intellect crushed into gilded pages by the weight of the building.

  The servitor hurried to a cabinet by the edge of the terrace. It was a dark wooden contraption with many tiny doors, each one cryptically marked with letters of the Alexians' secret language. The bald man ran a finger along the cabinet, then snapped open one of the doors and drew out a long wooden dowel, jangling with loops of chain. He looked up and saw us in rapt distraction.

  "The Grand Library. Surely there are records of this place in your monastery?"

  "The godking had our records burned when his Cult took over the prison a century ago," Barnabas whispered, then looked at the servitor. "He didn't trust his brother's church to hold the secrets."

  "Trusting his brother Amon led to Morgan's downfall, eh?" the servitor said tersely. "Perhaps Alexander did not wish to make the same mistake."

  I stepped to the bald man and placed a hand on his shoulder. "You should watch your words in the presence of people like me."

  "You should watch your hands on the body of your godking's servant, woman."

  The Fratriarch placed his staff between us, and we parted. I went to stand by the railing. This guy was getting on my nerves more than he should. Something in the air of this place made me uncomfortable, like a battle shifting under your feet before you can do anything about it. I put my elbows on the railing and stared down into the shelved chasm.

  The floor of the library was dark and far away. A bristling forest of frictionlamps cast a ring of dim light around the perimeter, but the center of the floor was a slippery shadow of darkness. That void seemed to writhe with shivering currents. I struggled to focus on that strange expanse. Suddenly there was a disturbance and something smooth and gray rose from the floor. It slid quietly to the edge of the darkness, casting out ripples. I saw a pier, then, and tiny figures casting lines. A depthship, surfacing from the water.

  "They have access to the lakeway?" I asked.

  "No, no. There are wards. The lake is there for our use." The servitor shook his head. "They could no more travel it than they could fly out that window. Settle down."

  The city of Ash was unique in the world, in that it floated on a great lake. Ironically, the many fabulous machines, each as large as a country town, that churned and lifted and stabilized the city were the design of Amon the Scholar. In this he had not betrayed his brothers, for those engines still kept the city afloat all these centuries later. But as much of the city lay below water as above it. This submarine section was linked by long passages of steel and stone, known collectively as the lakeway, navigable only by depthships. In places it emerged in underwater chambers, or let out into the black deeps of the lake itself. To have an open passage to this network in the middle of a prison… well. I found it strange.

  "I don't care if you've nailed their tongues to the floor, Baldie. I don't care about your chain tricks or the fact that these bloody bookworms probably can't even swim. The second we're out of here I'm filing a motion with the Council to have that 'way sealed and your access suspended until such time-"

  "Are you here to add anything of value to these proceedings, or is your sole purpose in this matter to run your mouth and lose your temper and make pointless threats that you have no ability to carry out?" he snapped. He left the open cabinet and stuck one pale, thin finger in my face. "Because I'm beginning to suspect that you're nothing but a good sword and a great rack!"

  "Yeah," I said, thoughtful. "Yeah. That's all of your wisdom I'm going to take."

  I flared invokations: the Sundering Stone, the Wall of the World, Hunter's Heart. My sword was in my hands, bleeding light and smoke and fire. The Alexian took a step back, and his form was fraying at the edges as he chanted the defensive invokations of the Healer. Barnabas stepped between us, then cracked me across the head with his staff. My invokations dropped.

  "Child," he said, and nothing more. Over his shoulder, the servitor of Alexander looked on with amusement. I returned the sword to the tiny, clasping hands of the sheath and took a stance of meditation.

  "You should teach your children better, Fratriarch. A servant of Alexander knows his place in the presence of Elders." The servitor whipped his hands and the invokation fell, his body snapping back to wholeness like a spring. Barnabas rounded on him.

  "A servant of Alexander should know his place," he snarled. He poked the pale man in the sternum with the staff. "Wet nurse, or bed maid, or hearth servant." Poke. "Not provoking the scions of Morgan." The Fratriarch crowded the servitor, stepping in too close and then following him as he retreated. "God of War. Champion of the Field. Heart of the Hunter. Do you understand?"

  "That woman is… she is-"

  "She is a warrior, an anointed Paladin, a scion of Morgan. She is a dangerous person." He put an old hand against the servitor's chest and gave him a slow, powerful push. The pale man stumbled back. "As are we all, dangerous people."

  The servitor trembled against the cabinet, staring at the Fratriarch. He looked between us, then picked up the chained dowel that had tumbled from his hand.

  "We have business, Fratriarch. There's
no need for this to get complicated."

  "It always is, servitor," Barnabas said. His voice was tired. "It always is."

  The bald man scowled but returned to the cabinet. He fingered the dowel, then unclasped a length of chain and handed it to Barnabas.

  "Some of the chains express an aura of restraint, drawing on the souls of any who have been bound. We use those for crowd control. Other sets are attuned to specific individuals. Since your request was for a single subject, this is probably the best."

  Barnabas took the chain. It was a narrow loop, not more than six inches in loose diameter. He twined it around his fingers and squinted. "How does it… Ah." The old man looked disoriented for a moment. Startled, I stepped forward and put a protective hand on his elbow. Slowly he regained his bearings. He looked at the servitor. "You didn't have to hurt them at all, did you?"

  The bald man shrugged.

  "Well, where is he?" Barnabas looked around, then stopped. "She. Yes, I see. Like this."

  He raised the chain, his fist clenching around the flat, dull links. A figure rose from a table on a nearby terrace and crossed over to join us. She was a young woman, a girl really. The dark robes of the Cult of Amon hung loosely on her frame, but she had her hood down. Her hair stuck out in thick, black curls, startling against her pale skin. She kept her eyes lowered. The chains that hung around her shoulders looked very new.

  "A child? Did our request not stress the importance of our need?" Barnabas asked.

  "This one is… gifted. Unique. Have faith in Alexander, my friends."

  "My knee will bend to him, sir," I said, "but my faith belongs to Morgan."

  The servitor shrugged again, laughter dancing in his eyes. "As you say. If this girl will not serve, I'm sure we could reprocess your request. It would take some weeks, of course."

  "Don't toy with us, Healer." I looked the Amonite up and down. A pretty thing, if frail. Battle would break her. "What's your name?"

  "Cassandra," the girl said. Her voice was quiet.

  "You can incant the histories of Amon? The rites of the Scholar?" Barnabas asked.

  The girl looked between us, then raised her arms and locked her fists together in front of her small breasts. Her voice, when it rolled into the quiet of the Grand Library, was a different creature from the timid ghost that had given her name as Cassandra. It was rich, resonant, touching in the deep places of my mind. The words spoke of stress lines and inertia, gear periods and energy reserves. It was the language of clockwork, the language of machines and engines arcane. It had a rhythm to it, smooth, churning, driving forward from beneath my skin and through my bones to a peak of momentum and mass and energy.

  "Hold," Barnabas barked, and the girl stopped. I came out of a stupor I hadn't realized I was in. The room was changed. A table by the cabinet was disassembled, the old form cut away into gears and chains of wood. It was some sort of machine now, clockworks and cranks and long pistons of polished maple that gleamed in the halflight of the glass domes above. A gentle cloud of sawdust hung in the air around us.

  "Do you see, now, the futility of locks, Lady Paladin?" the servitor asked. I stared at the wreckage of the newly made engine.

  "What's it for?"

  The girl shrugged. "It goes around," she said. "It is an engine merely for the sake of engineering."

  "We've seen enough," the Fratriarch said. "She will do."

  Our departure had none of the idle tension that marked our arrival. The servitor chatted happily with the Fratriarch as we made our way through the book-hemmed labyrinth. I walked beside the girl Cassandra, my hand on my revolver.

  "So, what is the purpose of your request, Frat Barnabas?" the servitor asked. "One hundred years, the Cult of Morgan doesn't step foot in the Library Desolate, and suddenly you make a request for one of our guests. Some project, I assume?"

  "What business is it of yours? She will be returned to your charge, brother."

  "As you say. Though, to be honest, with your companion I wouldn't be so sure. Small matter to me. I love the Amonites no more than you do. A matter of curiosity, is all."

  "Then curiosity it must remain." Barnabas folded his hands at his waist, indicating resolve. The subtlety of his action was lost on the servitor.

  "Plumbing trouble, perhaps? The Chamber of the Fist is hip deep in used toilet water, eh?" The servitor beamed and chuckled. He looked back at me. "We have plumbers in the city of Ash, you know. No need to deal with the folk of Amon for that."

  "As much as I appreciate the assistance of the godking in this matter, I'm afraid our reasons must remain our own," the Fratriarch said.

  "Have the scions of Morgan so lost faith in his brother Alexander, then?"

  "As you said," Barnabas stopped and turned to the bald man, "it was faith in our brother Amon that cost Morgan his life. And gained Alexander a throne."

  The servitor smiled stiffly, then nodded and led us out.

  2

  he streets outside were busy. We began the long walk back to the Strength of Morgan, leading our black-robed charge. The girl kept her head down as we walked. I stayed in the front, my eyes on the crowd.

  "Eva, we should speak about your outburst in there," Barnabas said after we had walked several blocks. Took him longer than I expected. Old man must have been tired, from all the talking and the making nice to that bitch servitor.

  "Which one?" I asked without looking back. Didn't like having the Fratriarch out in a crowd like this. I liked it even less as his only guard, but he hadn't wanted the sort of scene that an armed convoy would have caused. I didn't care about the scene. Hell, I just wanted more swords, more guns, and more eyes on the crowd. The Frat was probably right, though. Too much attention. Besides, the Cult of Morgan was spread awfully thin. The days of armored columns were behind us. I stopped daydreaming about a glorious caravan of fellow Paladins and snapped back to the conversation. "That man was trying to piss me off. I obliged."

  "Not much of a task, Eva. Listen." He plucked my sleeve and I stopped, but I wouldn't look at him. These talks were bad enough without having to see the expression in his watery old eyes. "The Cult is waning. We need to preserve our relationship with Alexander and his scions. He's the last of the brothers still alive. Without his support, we'd be adrift. We'd be dead."

  "Is it too much to ask that he honor the memory of his dead brother?" I turned, glaring at the Amonite before settling my gaze on Barnabas. His eyes were old and tired. "That his scions treat the Cult of Morgan as something more than a curious relic from antiquity?"

  "He honors us. Without him-"

  "Honor? He drags us out for parades and holidays. He has his court jester write poems in Morgan's memory, then he steals our recruits and dedicates them to his own Cult. He's strangling us with bloody honor, Fratriarch."

  Barnabas winced. The crowd around us had slowed, gradually becoming aware of who was standing in their midst, and what these rare individuals were arguing about. The Fratriarch bent his head to me and spoke in a furious hiss.

  "He does not steal recruits, Eva. Morgan is dead. Amon is dead. Of the three Brothers Immortal, only Alexander remains. Parents do not dedicate their children to the service of a dead god."

  I looked around at the silent crowd.

  "Mine did," I said, then marched off. The pedestrians melted away from me, anxious and afraid.

  "Aye, girl. We know," Barnabas said quietly, then glanced at the Amonite and motioned her forward. "Come on. She'll leave us if we let her."

  I made them struggle for a minute before slowing so they could catch up. I was a little embarrassed to have walked away from the man I was supposed to be guarding, but I was a little more pissed that he'd lectured me in public. We walked in tense silence for a while, then I drew up next to the Fratriarch.

  "So why are we doing this?" I asked, nodding at the quiet girl in her black robe and dull chains. "We've had no need for an Amonite for one hundred years. Why now?"

  "It is a matter for the Elders, Eva."
<
br />   "Well. Let me know if this one is lacking. I can be persuasive."

  The girl looked up. Her face was impassive. "I will serve you, scion of Morgan. But not out of fear."

  I snorted. "As you say. Just keep in mind that-"

  "We're being followed," Barnabas said under his breath.

  And we were. Of course we were. Damn Barnabas's fault for calling me out, and that damn Alexian's fault for being a windbag and giving me a good reason to get in trouble. That was my first mistake of the day, I think. Probably not the worst. I pulled our little group to the side of the road, grabbing the girl by her thin shoulders and pretending to shake her. Like we were arguing.

  "Where are they?" I asked. The girl kept staring at me, indifferently. Barnabas pulled my hands away from the girl.

  "They've passed us now. Probably more around and they're just handing off the tail." I looked up at his face, then followed his eyes down the street. Two men in bulky overcloaks, the hoods up, were strolling casually along. They turned a corner and one of them spared us a glance. His face was cowled, a ventilated metal mask covering his nose and mouth. His eyes were much older than his body suggested, and there were strange markings around them like tattoos. The pair disappeared behind a building. I looked back at Barnabas and the girl. She was still staring at me.

  "Distinctive couple," I said. "Not terribly sneaky."

  "They snuck up on you," Cassandra said.

  I grimaced, but ignored her. Barnabas was looking up and down the street.

  "They were pretty obvious. Maybe just trying to spook us?" I asked.

  The old man shook his head. "There was something different about them, right up until they passed us." He twisted his staff in his hands like he was wringing a towel. "I didn't see them either. Not at all. For all that they stuck out, I didn't see them."

  "Invokation of some kind?"

  "Something."

  I looked at the girl again. "Maybe the sworn rites of Amon the Betrayer?" I asked. She flinched, but her eyes did not leave mine. "One of your assassin friends, come to collect his girl?"