The Horns of Ruin s-9

by Tim Akers

  When I stopped, I was alone. The room was a ruin of broken bodies and fragments of arcane and noetic light, glimmering like snowflakes. Barnabas stood at the center of the room, hands still crossed on his hammer, head bowed, eyes closed. He was spattered with the black, cold blood of those monsters.

  "What you have done, Eva, cannot be undone." He sighed deeply, hefted his hammer, and walked out of the room. As he went, he turned back to me, just once. "I hope you can carry this through. There is no other choice."

  When he was gone I stood in the center of the room and gathered my wits. Energy was thrumming through my body and through my blade. There was a noise at the door, and I turned to it. A whiteshirt, peering into the room. I moved quickly to the corridor. There were a lot of them, and they had bullistics.

  "What will you do, to stand against the Warrior?" I growled. Pulses of heaviness rolled off me, pushing against the walls and the floor, pushing against this cadre of gentleman soldiers.

  The front row of Healers popped open their shotguns and let the shells clatter to the floor. Behind them, another whiteshirt emptied his clip, and then another. Soon the floor was rattling with unspent cartridges. When the last threat vanished-and I could feel that diminishment in them, could feel the empty weapons all around-when they were defanged, I nodded and stepped back into the room. Malcolm, who had retreated to the other side of the dome, came tottering back into sight. He was hugging the little archive against his chest.

  "I'm not sure what to think of that, lady. I wish you hadn't killed my friends, but I don't think I'd have missed this for anything."

  "I have freed you. I will free all of the Scholars. You may go."

  "You'll probably want to rethink that. We've been under heel for two hundred years. That's an awful powerful grudge to bear." He scratched his brow and nodded. "And we aren't all pleasant old men. Hardly any of us are, actually."

  "Be that as it may, I will see the wrong done to you righted. It is only just."

  "Just isn't the best course, always. But I'm not going to stop you. Do you mind-"

  He stopped and turned to the dome. One of the pressurized doors unsealed, and a cloud of fog vented into the room.

  "There was someone in there? You sent some poor damn fool into the mind's archive? What the hell were you thinking!" He dropped the archive and ran to the bottom rung.

  "She's an Amonite," I said. "She'll be fine."

  "Oh no she won't. Hell, that'll just make it worse. Brothers damn hell, lady, do you just go around pushing all the buttons in a factory?"

  The door finally creaked open. Cassandra stepped into view. My heart jumped. She was hurt. Something was wrong with her.

  She stood just inside the door to the dome, wavering slightly. The pressure suit hung in tatters, her pale skin steaming in the air. The bloody handprint between her breasts pulsed through the remains of her clothing. She put a hand against the dome to steady herself and ripped the suit's mask from her head. Long black curls tumbled out and around her face. She was hunched over, like she was catching her breath. When she looked up, I could see that her eyes were nothing but ash.

  "Cass!" I yelped, and jumped for the ladder. She collapsed forward, skinning her knee on the iron sill of the door before pinwheeling out into open air. I collided with her falling body, and we landed in a heap. I wrenched myself around and cradled her head, then laid her down. She looked up at me with empty eyes, tears that were nothing but soot smearing across her temples.

  "Cassandra, what happened?"

  "Amon," she whispered. "Amon lives."

  17

  he girl is mad," Malcolm snapped. He stood over the both of us, kneading his hands into his robe. "I don't care how talented an Amonite she was, looking into that archive without the proper training will have broken her."

  "It's sure as hell done something to her," I said. I brushed a flake of ash from Cassandra's cheek. She didn't seem to be in any pain, but neither did she seem herself. I was starting to lean toward Malcolm's interpretation of her condition. She was sitting against the curve of the dome, her hands limp by her sides, looking around the room. Even though she didn't have any eyes.

  "The archive is… How to explain it?" Malcolm sputtered. "That man who was just here, Barnabas. Who was he?"

  I turned to the old guy. He did like the tangents. "Fratriarch of Morgan. He died at the hand of the Betrayer. I was supposed to be guarding him at the time."

  "Then it wasn't him. Not really. The dead don't walk, or reason, or argue. But Alexander has a trick that lets him capture the essence of a man, and put it back in the body later on."

  "The coldmen?"

  "Oh, yes. What a name for it. The coldmen. That's exactly what they are. Anyway, to the point, the archive is like that. A bit of Amon's soul was saved. Bottled up, and kept in there. Just the thinking parts, mind you. Not the… Betraying things."

  I sighed. "None of that matters, you realize. Alexander was really the Betrayer all along. What should we do with the girl?"

  "Oh. Oh, I don't know. I'm not a Healer, am I?"

  "The bottle doesn't hold the soul," Cassandra said. "And that soul hasn't been bottled, anyway."

  "Elephants like penguins, but penguins aren't really elephants," Malcolm answered. "Gibberish."

  "I can't imagine why you didn't go into the healing arts, sir. You have such a Healer's manner about you."

  "Really? I never thought it would suit me, honestly."

  The power of whatever I had invoked was long gone from my body. I was tired. Despite the surety of my words earlier, I really had no idea where I was going from here. Barnabas had been right, just as right as he had been dead. So what if Alexander killed his brothers two hundred years ago? From the looks of things, he was all that was holding the Fraterdom together. Even if I could challenge a god, killing him would get me nothing but an empire of ruin, followed shortly by an invasion from the Rethari. Which is probably what they were after. Probably why they gave us the archive in the first place.

  On the other hand. He had killed Morgan, his brother. He had framed Amon, his blood. And he had used the Scholar's research to learn about the divine cycle, and to harness as much of the power as he could hold. He had tortured and oppressed the scions of Amon to perfect whatever process he was using to hold back the cycle. And now that the scions of Morgan had discovered the truth of it, he was hunting us and killing us. Had killed all of us, assuming the mock trials and authentic executions had taken place in the shadow of the Strength. Had killed all of us but one. And what was I supposed to do? Forgive that? Forget that?

  So this is what I was left with. Bring down the Fraterdom, or let a murderer of gods off the hook. There was no winning. And when there is no win condition, all you can do is fight, as best you can, as long as you can. May the warrior never die.

  Malcolm had his hands around Cassandra's wrists, and was peering at her face. "I think she'll live," he said. "Though her mind… Who knows?"

  I looked at the girl's face, and wondered what she had done to deserve this. What any of us had done. That she would be so… maimed, just as Amon was being justified. Not that it would do the old, dead god much good. But it would have done her some good, I think. Something was boiling in my mind. I looked up at Malcolm.

  "His name be praised," I said. "His body held tight."

  Malcolm startled, but covered it quickly.

  "I'm sorry, what?" he said.

  "You said that. You or your friend. In the hallway, when you were going to the other room. We overheard you. It's how we knew where the archive was to be found." I stood up and crowded the old man's space. "What did you mean by that?"

  "It's just… It's a ritual that we have. A blessing." He blinked rapidly and looked up at me. "May the warrior never die. That sort of thing."

  "When I say that, I mean that we are all warriors, those of us in the line of Morgan. That he and I and every blade-wielding, bully-toting fool who has bled out on some gore-smeared battlefield far from home
are of one blood. One spirit. That the warrior is all of us, and will always live. So." I poked him in the chest. "When you say that thing about Amon's body-what are you talking about?"

  "Nothing, nothing. Forget you heard it."

  "You have his body. Don't you? That bull about the archive being a bit of his mind, held in a bottle-"

  "Bullshit," Cassandra sang, like a child.

  "Bullshit," I repeated. "You have him in there, don't you? Amon, bloody Scholar of the Brothers Immortal, founder of the city of Ash. He really is alive, isn't he?" I stabbed my finger at the dome. "He's right in there!"

  "Well," Malcolm said. "Not… right… in there."

  * * *

  This is the story of Amon's death. After the united forces of Morgan and Alexander punched through the Rethari homelands and dragged the Scholar back to Ash, there was a trial. A brief trial. When the sentence was read, Amon was bound in chain and placed in his famous boat. The boat was set on fire and then pushed out into the bay. The whole city gathered on the docks and watched the bastard burn, cheering as he screamed and cheering even louder when the boat failed and sank, and his screams were cut off by the black, cold water of the lake. Burned and drowned, and at the time we all felt that was too good for him, but it was the sentence Alexander, newly crowned godking of all the Fraterdom, handed down.

  This was before we knew he was innocent. This was before we knew that Alexander was our Betrayer, and all Amon had done was be a little too smart for his brother's comfort. Burned and drowned. But not, apparently, killed.

  * * *

  How do you kill a god? I had been giving this a lot of thought. Admittedly, I only started thinking about it when I learned that perhaps it was Alexander who had put a knife in Morgan's back. And my thoughts mostly involved ways in which I'd like to shoot him in the face. But these were unrealistic and, honestly, insufficient. Morgan had suffered grievous wounds in his life, wounds that would kill the strongest of mortal men. There was something special about the Betrayer's blade that killed the Warrior, probably something to do with the fact that it was held by someone he trusted so deeply, that the hand that pushed the knife into him was that of his brother.

  I was no god's sister, and no scion of the Betrayer, either way. I had always assumed that, because Alexander bound the chains and kindled the fire, there was something special about it that could kill a god. But what if it had only been simple flame? Simple water? Surely these things wouldn't kill Amon. So what then? He sank to the bottom of the lake, undying? Eternal?

  Apparently. Because, as I strapped on the suit that Malcolm handed me, a lot of what he was saying involved water.

  "We don't know what's at the end of it. They monitor the chains, so we don't get near the pool. But the cable should lead the whole way. I've made the appropriate modifications, here," he said, tapping the new helmet, the tank that clipped on my belt, "that should let you make the descent. After that, I'm no help."

  "How long have you known?" I asked.

  "Since I came here. It's openly known, among the scions who are brought from the Library. It's why we work so hard to please Alexander. To preserve the body. As long as we're useful to him, he keeps Amon alive."

  "And when you're not?"

  "Then? I would not want to be in the Library Desolate on that day. I would not want to be wearing the chains when Alexander drives in that knife."

  "They'll be coming, soon," I said. We had secured the door, Malcolm applying various invokations to strengthen the steel and seal the portal. But it wouldn't last forever. "He'll discover that his gambit with Barnabas failed, and he'll send someone else."

  "Don't worry. I'll keep the girl safe."

  "I meant you, old man." I shrugged and fitted the helmet over my head. "The girl can keep herself."

  "Of course," he said, patting my shoulder. "You meant me. Nevertheless, I assure you, the girl will be safe."

  I looked across the room at her. Sitting against the wall, staring at her hands, and at the bloody print on her chest.

  "Okay," I said. Then I unsealed one of the pressure doors, and went inside to the mind of Amon the Scholar.

  * * *

  Just about a foot below the lip of the door, there was a narrow walkway that went all around the inside of the dome. It was stone, and the first of many concentric steps that led down into a pool of water. The water came up to the third step, splashing lightly over it with each swell of the tide. The pool was cold and clear; I could see that the dome was in fact a sphere, and the steps went all the way to the bottom of it. A round opening at the bottom of the sphere, about five feet in diameter, led out into some darker space.

  The archive itself sprouted like a flower from that opening. It was a series of thick cables, ranging in size from the width of a pencil to a couple that were as thick as my wrist. On the end of each cable was a cylinder of some translucent material, each sized according to the width of its cable. The cylinders glowed with an inner light, shimmering in the water like bottles of lightning, with the pulse turned way down. Most of the cylinders stayed below the surface, but those that had bobbed to the top shifted and hummed with a constant chiming sound.

  "Leave it to the Scholars to make it all so damn complicated," I whispered to myself. I could see damp tracks where Cassandra had emerged from the water just a little while earlier. I put my hand beneath the surface and found it to be warm and… sticky. Not really water. Too thick. When I took my hand out it dried quickly, though where the water had splashed against the stone it remained. Water that wasn't really wet. Of course.

  I sat by the edge of the pool and then slowly eased my way into it. The suit constricted as it came in contact with the water. The liquid. Whatever you want to call it. What had been comfortable a moment before was now too tight. Half in the water, warmth tingling along my bones and light flashing in my eyes, I pulled the helmet up and sealed it, then cut the bottle on and breathed in a healthy gasp of iron-laced air. Do it quick, Malcolm had said. Do it quick, and don't look back.

  I plunged into the water and understood what he meant, right away. I also understood why Cassandra was out there, babbling to herself. And Amon wasn't even my god.

  The water opened to me, opened fully to me, filled me with light and lightning and a glowing warmth unlike any I have ever known. Underwater, the chiming of the cylinders cascaded into more than sound, into pain and madness, and through it all there were voices, a single voice, a thousand times a single voice reciting prayers of madness and mathematics that slid over me without sinking in, drowned me without water, tore me without blood. I was no longer seeing a pool of water, a flower of light and sound, a dome in a building under the city of Ash. I was seeing formulas from the inside of numbers, knowledge from the inside of words. I was seeing the greatest mind our world had ever known, with an eternity of knowledge flowing out in a breath, half a breath, a never-ending sigh of…

  What saved me was the mud between my own ears. I was an idiot. I mean that in the best possible way, the sort of idiot who can get by and take care of herself, but also the sort of idiot who looked at all this and could just let it slide over her without it sinking in. A duck in the water of genius, you could say. But I saw what had driven Cassandra a little insane. The initial blast had done a number on me, though. I was floating limp in the water, tangled in the cords of the mind, wasting the limited breath in my bottled lung.

  I shrugged out of the coils of light and pushed to the bottom of the pool. The stalks of the cables thickened near the opening, and I dragged myself down by pulling on them. As I got close to the opening, the warm, clear water became mixed with patches of darker, colder stuff. Actual water, I thought. Lakewater.

  The helmet had a tiny light. I turned it on, and could see that there was a disk, wider than the opening and about a foot below it, that held all of the bundles of cable together. I squeezed between the opening and the disk, and came out into the lake, at the bottom of the city.

  I'd been underneath the city b
efore, along the edges. Never this deep. The water here was impenetrably black, swallowing the beam from my lamp in a matter of feet. The underside of the city disappeared in blackness. I couldn't see any of the familiar blinking pathlight from the waterways, or swirling dock indicators or… anything. It was just watery night.

  Examining the disk with my feeble light and my hands, I could see that it was shaped like a barrel, slightly bowed at the middle and warm to the touch. Metal, but old and pitted with corrosion. A single cable emerged from the bottom, heavy and thick. It descended into the depths of the lake.

  Stay close to the cable, he said. It interacts with the suit, and keeps you from experiencing… something. Something to do with pressure and depth and blood. I hadn't understood most of that, but the illustration Malcolm had used when he could see that my eyes were glazing over was a tube of meat, filled with blood, and a hundred hammers hitting it from all directions at once. So I was going to stay close to the cable.

  The water near the cable was warm and tingled across my skin, or at least it felt that way through the suit. When I put my hand on the cable the bones of my wrist hummed. Didn't like the feel of that, but I liked the idea of hammered meat even less, so I held on while I followed it down into the lake. Every once in a while one of my feet or the tips of my fingers would stray a little too far away from the cable as I swam, and an instant numbing coldness would fill them. That was all the instruction I needed, really. I was not a complete idiot.

  It was a long, cold trip. The pressurized bag that held the sword and bully creaked on my back, the water tingled through my skin, the light disappeared, and my eyes swam as the cable and the darkness seemed to be the whole world. Down and down and down, lake without end.