God's Last Breath

by Sam Sykes

  He probably could have thought of a better one than storming out of the tent, if he tried.

  She’s wrong.

  SHE’S WRONG!

  They kept coming to him, the retorts that would make the cold pain stop and make her see. A dozen times, he turned back to the tent to tell her. And a dozen times, he stopped at the tent flap and turned back around.

  They all sounded weak, words that limped out lamely and died on the dirt. And any time he tried to speak them, it was her voice he heard.

  When he looks at you, what does he see?

  Like a hammer, pounding that cold spike into his skull. He had to silence it. He had to make her see.

  He had to know.

  The Chosen were still in full revelry when he came back through their camp. And they were no less excited when they saw him. But he pushed through them. Beyond a few disappointed moans, he encountered no other resistance.

  In fact, he noted, there were quite a few less than before.

  He could see them at the edge of the camp. A few dozen simply standing there, arms hanging at their sides, staring out at some distant spot, swaying in the night wind like some kind of fleshy forest.

  Freaky bastards, he thought.

  Not freaky enough to deter him, though, as he hurried to the very tall dune at the edge of the valley and hauled himself up its slope, coming to a stop at its very peak.

  A painted shadow framed in the light of a sinking moon, Mocca looked almost delicate. He was seated cross-legged, his eyes out at some distant point. The serpents of his beard stretched out from his chin, writhing as black stalks, twisting up over his head, their eyes tiny pinpricks of light in the night. He looked a little like a macabre flower in bloom, forever growing.

  Yet as Lenk took a step closer, the writhing stopped. The serpents looked toward him and, with an almost resentful hiss, slid back to disappear into Mocca’s skin.

  Mocca, for his part, didn’t seem to notice.

  “You seem troubled.”

  “Getting in my head again?” Lenk muttered, stalking toward him.

  A smile crept across Mocca’s face. “You’re always troubled. It’s part of your charm.”

  He spoke without looking away and Lenk stared out over the dunes, trying to follow his gaze. And though he could see nothing but sand and dust ahead, he knew what the demon’s eyes were fixed upon.

  What was happening in Cier’Djaal right now, he wondered?

  How many people had died since he had departed it? How many shops had been burned to the ground? When they returned, triumphant, to save the world, would they even find anything left to save? Or would the only people to greet them be the legions of dead with their empty eyes and mouths?

  And among the dead, Lenk wondered, would he see her carcass? Her fair skin thin with rot, her hair thick with grime, ears wilted like flowers in winter, and glassy eyes staring at him as if to ask if it was all worth it?

  He shook his head. The thought left him, but another one crept in.

  You would know, wouldn’t you? His gaze drifted toward Mocca. You can see everything in this desert if you want to. You could tell me if she was still alive.

  You’d tell me if she wasn’t.

  A breath. Cold.

  Wouldn’t you?

  “I spoke with Shuro,” he said.

  A stony moment passed before Mocca spoke. “Not what I would have done, were I you.”

  “I know.”

  “But then,” he sighed, “what is a mortal if not prone to spitting in the eye of logic?” He glanced out the corner of his eye toward Lenk. “I take it this is why you are troubled?”

  Lenk folded his arms across his chest. “She still hates me.”

  “Unfortunate. But understandable.”

  “Understandable?”

  “A mortal can only ever see a grain of sand or the entire desert, nothing in between. Whatever you did or did not do, she will only remember the blood of her fellow pawns on the dirt you stood upon. She may never again think of you without also seeing their bodies, broken and twitching.”

  He paused, then looked at Lenk with a sheepish smile on his face.

  “Ah. Apologies. I expect you wanted to hear something more reassuring. Shall I try again?”

  “How are you going to stop it?”

  The words just came out, without him even trying. Mocca raised a quizzical brow, but he couldn’t stop.

  “How are you going to stop the war?” he asked. “How are you going to save everyone?”

  Mocca’s stare lingered on Lenk for a very long moment. Slowly, he looked back out over the dunes. Slowly, he spoke in a voice soft and ancient.

  “Save everyone?” he asked. “Or save her?”

  Lenk’s mouth went dry. He found that he dreaded to hear the answer. And yet.

  “Both,” he said. “You said you could save them all. That includes her.”

  “I did, didn’t I? That is why you delivered me from the pit, I suppose.” There was a note of contempt in his voice, however brief. “To save her.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “I do,” Mocca said. “I will watch. I will listen. I will act.”

  Lenk blinked. “That’s it?”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint.” Mocca cast him a sidelong smirk. “Would you have preferred something more dramatic? Making the heavens open up so that I may descend from a throne of clouds? Or perhaps arrive in a chariot pulled by seventeen white stags? And should the chariot be on fire? Mortals do seem to love fire.”

  “Stop that,” Lenk said, voice hot. “You don’t get to joke.”

  “No? Then take me at my answer,” Mocca replied. “I will do what no god has yet been able to. I will see the hungry combing through the filth and I will give them food. I will hear the sick whisper their prayers to me and I will bring them a cure. I will not be blind, or deaf. I will simply … be.”

  Lenk stared out where he thought Cier’Djaal might be, squinted as though he could see, somewhere in all that desert, where Kataria might be.

  “It all sounds so simple,” he whispered. “It can’t be that easy.”

  “Simple, yes. Easy, no. There will be work to do, of course. Some of it will come slowly and with great difficulty.” He smiled. “But we cannot fail, Lenk. For we are needed.”

  He shut his eyes. The smile on his face grew broader, serene.

  “I can hear them now. I can hear them praying in the dark. I can hear them whispering my name.”

  “Your name?” Lenk asked. “They don’t know your name.”

  “They do. They simply call me something else there.” He cast a glance at Lenk. “You doubt me.”

  “It’s just … I’ve seen it. I’ve seen what kind of work we have to do out there. I sometimes wonder if even you can do it.”

  “Perhaps I can’t. Perhaps this will all end in failure, somehow.” He rose and placed a hand on Lenk’s shoulder. “But, as someone close to me once said, I have to try.”

  “Yeah,” Lenk said. “I did say that.”

  “And did you mean it?”

  He met Mocca’s gaze. “I did.”

  “Then cling to it.”

  Lenk hadn’t read enough of them, but in so many stories, it seemed like there was always a moment where someone described a great weight being lifted from their shoulders. In Lenk’s experience, it never happened as easily as that.

  It got chipped away, that weight. Bit by bit, it fell from people and landed at their feet. And sometimes it followed them and hopped back on. Lenk was sure he’d feel that weight again, someday, feel it crawl back onto his shoulders and settle there until his back broke.

  But, for the moment, he felt like a little bit of it had fallen away in just such a way that he could stand a little taller and breathe a little easier.

  And yet, as he watched Mocca begin to walk away …

  “How does it begin?”

  Mocca paused, didn’t turn around. A silence hung between them, as if giving Mocca a chance to pre
tend he hadn’t heard, and Lenk a chance to pretend he hadn’t spoken. And yet …

  “The war that ends it all,” Lenk said, “how does it begin?”

  Mocca’s figure trembled slightly, like a lake with a stone through it. He spoke a cold shadow of a word.

  “How,” he asked, “do you think it begins?”

  “Armies,” Lenk said. “Swords. Fire. Stones flying through the air, horses on the ground. Same as any other war.”

  “Of course.” Mocca’s voice was low, harsh. “Your stories are filled with such tales, aren’t they? Romantic poems about men giving their lives to a glorious cause interspersed with dread tales of shock and horror, each one fighting for the control of the imagination.”

  “Are they not true?”

  “Not this time. Not this war. Mortals are obsessed with death. They can’t help but be. And so they build their great stone cities and carve their stone idols in hopes of denying that they will one day be forgotten. But creation, for a mortal, is simply a talent. Not a gift.

  “The gods gave you one gift. Not fire. Not story. Not medicine. They gave you a need to destroy. And it burns so brightly within your blood that you can’t help it. And it makes it so that, for all the creations and all the wonders in the world, just one person with a big metal stick can destroy it all, if they feel the need to.”

  Mocca’s form was twitching at the edges. His skin was rippling. His robes billowed with a breeze that wasn’t there. And his voice burned with a heat that made Lenk feel sick with fever just to hear.

  And still, he asked.

  “Tell me,” he said, “how it begins.”

  “If we don’t stop it,” Mocca said. “It begins as all great wars begin.” He continued down the hill. “With three words.”

  TWELVE

  WIZARD’S DIPLOMACY

  Aw, for fuck’s sake, put some pants on. You can’t fucking kill a man with your cock flopping about like a dead chicken.”

  And with those words, the plot to assassinate a Lector was under way.

  Dreadaeleon staggered backward as the clothes were thrust into his arms. The woman who had brought them to him spared just a moment to cringe at his nudity before glancing at her companion.

  “You couldn’t have dressed him before you undid his bonds?”

  The other Librarian, a tall Djaalic fellow, glanced up from the table he had just freed Dreadaeleon from.

  “We’re trusting him with the fate of the entire Venarium. I think we can trust him to dress himself.” He glanced at Dreadaeleon and echoed his companion’s cringe. “Seriously, though, put some pants on.”

  Dreadaeleon returned their sneers as he began to dress himself. “You’re late. I expected you hours ago.”

  “It’s barely midnight,” the woman replied. She leaned out the door to Dreadaeleon’s cell, glanced up and down the hall. “Annis has been working late these days. I hear he’s trying to figure out the Venarium response to the war.”

  “That’s what you wanted, right? The Venarium to be involved?”

  Dreadaeleon cinched up his belt around his trousers, noting with a frown how far he was able to draw it around his waist. The food sneaked in by the conspirators had given him back some weight lost during his imprisonment, but as he looked down at his own scrawny body, he still thought himself not nearly the heroic figure he should have been.

  Of course, you’ve never been one for bulk, have you, old man? He sighed, reached for his shirt. Chin up. They’ll remember you for what you did, not how you looked.

  “Not the way Annis wants,” the man said. “He’d have us march out there, say a few words, and go back to the tower. We want freedom.” He looked down at his feet. “I want to see my family again.”

  “He wouldn’t do anything to help the city, anyway,” the woman muttered. “Shinka’s right. Our powers weren’t meant to be cloistered up here. We’re meant to be out there, helping people.”

  “And where is Shinka, anyway?” Dreadaeleon smoothed the shirt out and began to pull on the brown coat. “Call me crazy, but I feel like this would go more smoothly if I had another Lector fighting beside me.”

  “I’d call you worse things than crazy, personally,” the woman said. “But Shinka is anything but. If you fuck this up, she wants to be far away. If you can pull it off, though, she’ll be there when you need her.”

  “How reassuring.”

  Dreadaeleon hadn’t meant to sound quite so sarcastic. Rather, he had meant to sound quite a bit more angry. After all, it was bad enough to be used as a tool without the implication of being left to die if he didn’t do what he was supposed to.

  But then, he thought with a sigh, what else would you do with tools that don’t work? It’s not like you’ve got a hell of a lot of other choices, old man.

  That much was true.

  Trusting his life to the aid of Shinka, who very clearly valued him only so much as his ability to harm a man who quite likely could kill him, was not good.

  But staying down here to rot until he could be executed, harvested for his organs, and have the remainder of his body summarily incinerated or made into a Charnel Hound wasn’t much better.

  What would be good would be escaping, fleeing the tower and disappearing down some hole with someone warm and a voice like silk …

  But you fucked that one up, didn’t you?

  He had tried not to think about Liaja. Because he couldn’t remember her dusky skin, her flowing black hair, the curve of her lips without remembering that he couldn’t see her. And he couldn’t remember that he couldn’t see her without remembering how badly he had fucked everything up.

  He shook his head, forced her from his thoughts.

  Not like she would do much good for him now.

  Not like he had ever done much good for her.

  As he buttoned the coat around himself, he noticed one more garment on the floor: a long, broad-brimmed hat. He picked it up, felt its weight in his hands.

  “This is a Librarian’s hat,” he said. He glanced up. “Are these a Librarian’s clothes?”

  “It’ll look less conspicuous to have a Librarian out at this hour,” the woman replied. “Why? Is that a problem?”

  He shook his head.

  There was probably a poet out there who could find the words to voice the irony in him, the man who was to assassinate a Lector of the Venarium, wearing the iconic headgear of the Venarium’s own champions, the Librarians.

  Hell, he could probably have taken a stab at it himself.

  But he was smiling just a bit too broadly to try.

  “There’s one other thing.”

  The man approached Dreadaeleon and reached into his pocket. He presented Dreadaeleon with a wooden box, small enough to fit neatly in the palm of his hand. He prized the lid open, revealing a soft velvet interior with a small gray thing that vaguely resembled a pebble sitting in it.

  But Dreadaeleon knew all too well what it was, and his eyes widened at the sight.

  “Broodvine,” he whispered, in the same breathless manner in which a starving man slavers over a dead animal.

  Instantly, he could feel the pains returning: the haziness of his vision, the crawling of his skin, the distant ringing in his ears. Just seeing the thing was enough to make the addiction come crawling back, skittering up his back on skinny little needle legs and latching on at the back of his skull.

  “After your incident, Annis went on a rampage, getting every sample he could find outside the tower and locking everything up. We risked a lot to get it.”

  The man thrust it toward Dreadaeleon. Instinctively, he cringed away from it.

  “You’re quite sure”—he paused to wet lips that were suddenly dry—“you want to give that to me?”

  “No chances. If you can’t win with this, then we were fools to put our trust in you. What’s the matter?” the man asked. “This is the thing you used to defeat Lector Palanis, isn’t it?”

  Dreadaeleon opened his mouth to speak but found no words. What
could he say?

  No thank you, the last time I used that stuff, your friend Shinka used it to drive me insane and kill a fasha?

  So he had found the words but no voice to give them.

  “It was a mistake,” the woman said. “He can’t handle it.”

  Something hot lit up behind Dreadaeleon’s eyes. Without his even realizing it, his hand shot out and snatched the box up, then slid it into his pocket.

  “I can handle it. I can handle anything. That’s why you’re trusting me to do this, isn’t it?”

  “Trust isn’t the right word,” the woman said. “I wouldn’t trust you to piss yourself if you were sixty cups deep and strapped to a chair.”

  “It’d be more accurate to say that your intervention, we believe, yields the highest probability of the accomplishment of our goal.” The man offered a stiff nod.

  “Oh, good,” Dreadaeleon replied with a sneer. “Just so long as we’re all friends at the end of it.”

  The woman spared him a glare but said nothing else. She leaned out the door, peered down the hall once more, and stiffened up. She gave a nod down the hall, then glanced back to her companion.

  “Yalva just gave the signal,” she said. “Annis just left his study. We’ve got to move now.”

  The man looked to Dreadaeleon. “Same plan as before. Are you ready?”

  Dreadaeleon stared at the hat in his hands for a long moment. Back when he was a child, one apprentice of many inducted into the Venarium, he occasionally wondered if he would ever wear this uniform. Granted, when he fantasized about it, he always imagined actually being one of the Librarians, rather than simply wearing their clothes.

  But even then, he barely ever had a thought for the responsibilities that came with it, the dangerous tasks and most malignant heresies that only the Librarians were charged with solving. Rather, whenever he thought about wearing this uniform, his thoughts were always on the people.

  The people who would look at him with fear and admiration: the barknecked peasants who would quake and shutter their houses at his passing, the swooning maidens who would quiver at the sensation of power radiating from him, the fellow wizards who would salute and stand at attention in his presence.