The Horns of Ruin s-9

by Tim Akers

  I twisted and swung my sword behind me, rising on one foot, just enough strength to drive the sword into the other ghost's belly, punch it in deep. The air smelled like piss and blood. I drew the sword out and up, rasping the blade against his ribs before exiting the steaming corpse just below the throat. He gurgled, already dead, slumped to the side. My return strike blocked Nathaniel's startled swing, corrected, then two quick punches that put the sharp base of the blade into his thigh, then his belly. We fell apart, leaving a pool of spilled life between us.

  "The dead of Morgan," I burbled. He stared at me, face pale as his cloak, lips quivering. I was on my knees, gasping, grating my teeth.

  Nathaniel leapt to his feet, hand on his opened guts, and invoked something short and arcane. Two quick steps and he was in the air, off the wall and higher up, disappearing into one of the archways. He left his sword and mask behind.

  I knelt before Amon, my life spilling out into my lap, the chamber filled with the sound of the Betrayer's footsteps as he ran away, down the hundred hallways that led out of this place. Echoes of his feet, and my failing heart.

  You come here, and do not know the answer? No, I think you do. His words ran through my mind as I lay before the undying Scholar god. I think you do. I did. Barnabas cutting the chain, the ease with which Cassandra's shackles fell away at the touch of my blade. The chains on the shoulders of the Librarians Desolate, and the chains twisting through their god. Before me. I knew.

  The power of the soul-bonds came from this body, these chains. No Amonite had been able to remove his own chains, not since the Healer had taken possession of the Library Desolate. There must have been a ritual, with Amon as the sacrifice, and the chains as the reward. As long as these chains held Amon, the noetic chains in the city above would hold his scions. That was how these sorts of invokations worked.

  But for every ritual, there had to be a price. An out. Chains had to have a key. And what better key than the Cult who hated Amon most? Only a scion of Morgan can free a Scholar. Barnabas knew, as the Fratriarch. Knew that when he laid his knife against Cassandra's chains, they would melt away. And Alexander must know, because he was the one who bound the rite to begin with.

  And when Alexander learned that some secret of the Betrayal, some clue as to the assassin's true name, had fallen into the hands of the Cult of Morgan? What panic that must have caused. What fear. What desperation. Desperation enough to kidnap his brother's Living Sword, torture him, murder him. And when he learned that the archive had escaped his grasp, in the hands of the last Paladin and her Scholar companion…

  That was the joke of it. Our greatest enemy had been our only ally. Every little thing Alexander did to undercut the Cult of Morgan during these past centuries-the civilian army, the protection of the Amonites, the factories that churned out rifles and bombs and fighting machines that made our glorious charges, our swords and our martial skill… made those things we held most holy irrelevant on the battlefield. I had always mistrusted Alexander, because I felt he humored us, coddled us. In fact, he had smothered us, one strength at a time, one recruit at a time. Until the time came when there weren't enough of us to oppose him. And then he struck. Declared us apostate, whipped up the populace against us, took our Elders captive and put them on trial.

  It didn't matter that I knew the truth of it. No one would believe me. No one would trust a scion of the Warrior again, especially not in opposition to Alexander. The godking.

  I stood, my chest rearranging itself, the blood flowing fresh down my legs and arms. Such a damn mess, Eva. You're just all screwed up. You can't go to the city now, and tell them all about the lies of Alexander and the true betrayal. It was up to someone else, now. It would have to be the Amonites who told the truth.

  All I could do was let them go.

  I raised my sword and stepped to the coffin. No invokation, no glory of the fallen church of the Warrior. Nothing but a ritual being broken. I brought the blade down, and it struck deep into the helix of chains that twisted around the Scholar's charred body. Metal parted like silk, the pattern of its orbit disrupted. I looped several bands of it around my sword, drew tight the tension of bonds, and then pulled back. The full length of the blade rasped through the metal and then they let go of their ancient station, with a sigh, with a clatter. The chains fell to the floor.

  I stumbled back, weakened by blood loss and off balance from the blade. What would Barnabas think of his student, barely able to hold her weapon over her head? As if I were a child. As if I were weak. I went to one knee, holding myself up with the sword, tip biting deep into the pebbled floor.

  Amon opened his eyes and looked at me.

  "I will need champions," he said. His voice sounded like tombs speaking.

  "I am bound to Morgan," I answered feebly.

  "Morgan is dead," he said, then stood. His skin creaked like unkempt leather. He stood before me in the mutilation of his nakedness, and held a hand out to me. "And I am not. Stand as my champion."

  "I am bound." I looked up at him, faint in head, weak of heart. "But I will fight for you, in what time I have left."

  "That is enough." He breathed in deeply, then opened his mouth and let out a long, even breath that smelled of spiced meat and hot stones. The pebbled floor around my knees flaked and then rose. The shards drove into my flesh, sealing the wounds and patching the damage, but at such a cost. I jumped to my feet, panting and mewling in pain. The sword spun from my hands. When the pain stopped I was filled with a heavy coldness that touched my bones and weighed me down. Again I fell to my knees, my hands, gasping for air.

  "You have paid the price of Amon," he said. "If only in part. As for my champion, I will find another. Another…"

  He was still for a moment, then cocked his head to the ceiling.

  "Or another will find me. Yes." Arms out, palms up. "A Champion of Amon."

  The room shivered, but that might have been all the new rock in my gut. I was having trouble focusing. He inhaled deeply several more times, his breath curling out in oily wisps. Eyes closed, and then he turned to me. "I thought you were her, but you are not. The girl who found me, who touched my mind. Her spirit is in turmoil, but I have made repairs. It is done. Stand, let us rise to settle our scores."

  "You're damned crazy," I spat.

  "I have been bound in a tomb of my own making, held in perpetual sacrifice to the glory of my murderer." He set his feet in the center of the chamber and raised his arms. "Perhaps madness is the price of that. Rise!"

  I didn't get the chance. The air shimmered around him, and a pulse of energy washed out from his lungs and pushed through the building. Everything shifted, and a sky of dust shook loose from the walls to hang in the air. The world groaned at our waking. The room pitched, and then we tore free.

  The whole building was rising, rising, ripped from the bottom of the lake and rising to the city above. I looked at Amon and saw perfect calm there, perfect calculation. Perfect rage.

  What had I done?

  * * *

  It began as a tide. The dark waters that slapped against the docks on the inner shore of Ash swelled against the pylons. Fishermen and watch captains noted the difference, and peered out into the artificial bay. That swelling became a tumult, and then water was rushing over the side of the city in a white-capped rush. Boats that were near the shore beached against cobbled streets. The new tide cracked open the glass shells of the closest buildings, washing through them in a wave of shattered windows and furniture and screaming citizens. Sirens sounded all across the waterfront, a droning wail that mingled with terror and shock and breaking glass. Deep in the city the domestic canals rushed their banks. The current flashed against bridges and walkways in a furious white foam.

  At the center of the bay, a dome of dark water was rising, the disturbance sloughing off new currents. In a fury of foam and displaced depths, something white and massive broke the surface and rose, rose, burst from the lake and then settled into it. It trailed tendrils like
netting, like a great fish torn free from a fisher's snare. It was a complicated object, like a deck of shells that had been poorly shuffled.

  As the fishermen and the watch captains and ordinary citizens of Ash stared, the huddled structure began to shift and blossom. The overlapping leaves slid together, water still cascading off their grooved surfaces, some of them diving back into the lake as they shifted aside, others bursting from the water in a rainbow-laced spray.

  The new island opened at the top like a flower opening to the sun. It was full of light. The inner workings of the island splintered apart, tumbling into the water like a discarded carapace. From the distance of the city, it looked like whole buildings were being turned inside out and disgorged into the lake. Another wave rose up to crash against the city.

  From the new opening rose a figure. Telescopes and gunsights snapped to him all along the shore. Black, mostly naked, only the barest armor covering him and that looked to be made of charred wood. On his back he wore a wide, flat disk that silhouetted his upper body. The disk was of beaten brass, slightly elongated, and had some sort of aura filtering along its edge, like a blade that had been heated in the forge, distorting the air.

  He rose above the building, above the lake, above the heights of the city. Arms spread wide, legs extended like a swimmer, he rose and the city watched him. Afraid. Unsure. Even the sirens quieted as their attendants left their stations to watch the spectacle.

  He held out a hand and the towers screamed. Glass vibrated and steel hummed throughout the city in a wave. It passed through people, through stone, through water and steel. Finally, it rested on the Spear of the Brothers, tightening until the whole structure sang like a tuning fork. Something shifted inside the shining white marble tower, then a small section of the white stone crumbled like snow. An object flew out of the tower and smashed into a nearby building, raking along the glass walls and furrowing a trail of shattered windows. The object flew straight and true, breaking anything that stood before it, cracking walls and bending pillars with its passage. With a hammer's blow it struck a tall glass building on the water's edge, cratering the facade, burrowing through floors and stairwells before erupting from the other side in a shower of glass and noise. It flew to the figure and snapped into his hand, glowing with the might of its passage.

  He raised it over his head like a benediction. The Spear of Amon, in the hand of Amon. The Scholar had taken up his weapon. War was upon us.

  * * *

  I clambered from the water, gasping and tired. I rode some of the detritus out when the building opened up, was lucky enough to find something wooden, and the wave brought me home. Lucky enough for that.

  I sat on the shoreline, trembling, eyes wide at the ravaged coast. Waterfalls coursed out of broken windows; the harbor was choked with shattered furniture and churning pedigears and bodies. Lots of bodies. The sirens started up again as Amon raised his spear and pointed it across the city. Far away I heard stone shattering, and a pillar of debris towered between the buildings. The Spear of the Brothers, my guess.

  From the wreckage of his throne, Alexander ascended. He rose into the air, white as the full moon, halberd in hand, half-shield on his back. And now he wore the articulated mask of the Betrayer. Alexander the Healer, Alexander the Betrayer, Alexander the godking of Ash.

  The city stopped, the sirens and the pedigears and the monotrain. The impellors slowed and then halted. The gods of man faced each other across the landscape of the city of Ash, and we all stopped.

  "Godsdamn," I whispered, easing my blade from its waterproof bag. "Gods and Brothers be damned."

  Above me, the sky began to turn.

  19

  he war between the Brothers Immortal was a thing seen and yet unseen, felt and yet unfelt. They hung above the city like rogue stars, one charred, one shining, hovering in poses of martial meditation. Around them the sky boiled and churned. In the city it felt like bad weather in a clear sky. Like everything was wrong with the world.

  Massive pressure systems lumbered through the streets, causing windows to creak and eardrums to pop. Just as suddenly the air would vacate this alley or that building. People stumbled into the open, gasping for breath, blood leaking from their ears. The sky turned dark one second, then flared into brilliant whiteness the next. The air groaned with the passing of unseen energies.

  It was worse for me, for all the scions of our erstwhile gods. Nausea swept through me, crippling weakness, then frenetic energy bordering on the psychotic. I was dizzy, I was high, I was tired, and I was scared. I focused on the ground in front of me, on each faltering step, on the sword in my hands. Around me the city was a hash of gunshots and oily smoke and breaking glass. The world was going mad.

  The maddest part was around the Library Desolate. These were people who had voluntarily submitted to imprisonment, in order to serve the god they loved. And now they were free, and their god wasn't dead after all. Only he was clearly mad, and that madness was rippling through the community like a virus. Meanwhile, the citizens of Ash, who had grown up being taught that Amon was the darkest villain mankind had ever spawned, were just coming to grips with seeing the Scholar rise from the lake like an eclipsed moon. That his rising had killed hundreds of people, ruined the shoreline, and was now the subject of an arcane war that, simply, none of us could understand wasn't helping the public mood. Crowds had gathered at the Library, to be met by the newly freed Amonites. A thin band of whiteshirts stood between them, not sure who they were supposed to be holding back. My approach disrupted things even more.

  "Paladin! Paladin of Morgan! Save us!" some of them shouted, from all three groups. Save them from the madness of their god, or the crowd, or their duty? I wasn't sure. And I was in no position to do any of it, anyway.

  Others among them remembered the lies of Nathaniel, of the trials that had just been conducted, the judgments that had been handed down. Some of these same citizens might have stood in the shadow of the Strength, cheering while it burned.

  My mind was in turmoil. I pushed my way to the whiteshirts, the hands of the crowd on me equal parts acclamation and condemnation. It was a gauntlet. By the time I reached the Alexian lines, I was twitching with restrained violence. Someone had to take control.

  "Your god has betrayed you," I said to the frightened line of soldiers. "Amon did not kill Morgan. It was Alexander."

  Okay, that probably wasn't the best thing to say, given the situation. Probably not a situation on earth where that would have been the right thing to say. But I was never a leader of men. More like a leader of the charge, and that's what this was. A rush to enlightenment, storming the walls of an ancient betrayal.

  "What the hell are you talking about?" one of them shouted. We were all shouting, just to be heard over the crowd. Crowd. Riot, more like.

  "Look up, look at your god." I pointed at the distant figure of Alexander, hovering among novas of power. "Tell me what you see!"

  They peered up, squinting at the light. Finally one of them raised a set of binoculars to his eyes.

  "He's wearing a mask," the man reported. They looked back at me.

  "The articulated mask of the Betrayer," I said. "The fight is too dire, his brother is returned. He has to play all his cards, bring all of his aspects into play."

  "To hell with you, lady. I swore to Alexander on my name, and with Alexander I'll stay," one of them said.

  I nodded. "Fairly said, but consider: I am the last of the scions of Morgan. What reason would I have to stand with my god's betrayer?"

  "Your god is dead. What reason do you have to stand with him?"

  "She's a lady of conviction, fellows," said another in the crowd, and I turned to him. Owen, face smeared with ash, a bandage across his forehead. "You broke my skull, Eva."

  "The cost of trusting me," I said.

  "Yeah. But that up there? That's not the god I swore my name to."

  "Then help me stop him."

  He laughed and shrugged. "Of course. What else wou
ld I do with my time? But what are we supposed to do here?"

  I looked around at the seething mobs on both sides of us. Even among the whiteshirts there were those who would knife me before they would follow me. Best to just defuse and get out. I went to the nearest Amonite.

  "Who leads you?" I asked.

  "Amon, risen again, Scholar and Saint!" he shrieked. I took his collar in my fist and slapped him once.

  "Among these people here, who leads you?"

  The Scholar looked at me numbly, so I dropped him and went to the next.

  "Who leads you?"

  "That is my calling," said someone deep in the crowd. He fought his way forward. An old man, face lined with ash and tears of joy. He looked calm, though. Not at all mad. "What do you need, sister of our brother?"

  "You're never going to get out this way. These people will kill you. Go back inside, and wait. Let the Alexians guard you."

  "Did that work for you, Morganite?"

  "Well-"

  "Then do not ask the same of us. We have been falsely bound for too long. The Library is being gathered and removed."

  "Agreed. But if you come out this way, there's just going to be a lot of burned books and dead Scholars." I strained my neck to see around the crowds, then looked back at the old man. "There has to be another way out. The lake?"

  "The lake," he said, considering. Eventually he nodded. "I think something can be done with the lake."

  "Great. Everyone inside."

  And they went. Peacefully, quietly, calmly. The whiteshirts followed them in and sealed the door. I stayed outside. When I turned to go, Owen was waiting.

  "I said, you broke my skull."

  "I'm sorry. Honestly I am. But now isn't the time for this."

  He sighed, tore the icon of Alexander from his breast, and tossed it to the ground. Then he unhitched his shotgun.

  "What is now the time for?"

  "Follow me," I said, then left. He followed.