Immortal Progeny (Fragile Gods Book 1)

by Philippa Ballantine

  With the drivers' final breaths smothered in their throats, Fleabane wriggled under the portcullis, and within a minute found the pulley to raise it. Amaranth's constructs located that mechanism easily enough in previous nights, but the beetle-scorpions could not operate the pulley, so the scrawny child was necessary to the plan. If Amaranth was honest, it was more than that. Whatever the drivers took from within her left her weakened considerably, out of breath, gasping with exertion, and without an arm. The other young woman might be a little strange, but she was sturdy and knew how to help with the sewing.

  Fleabane slid her shoulder under Amaranth's remaining arm, and whispered to her, "We're out...you did it. I knew it..."

  She didn't reply—too busy pulling her constructs back. They returned to her, their sometime mother, scuttling through the sand and dirt towards her feet. Some Amaranth could feel would need re-stitching if they were to survive, others would not make it much further in any case, but they were the only chance they had to get beyond the pit.

  Beyond the pit. Amaranth's chest constricted, but she stopped gasping for an instant. She had no idea what life was like beyond the pit.

  Her grasp tightened around Fleabane. "We have a way to go still. These pits will not be the end of this...we don't know anything about what lies out there."

  "You don't," Fleabane whispered with a sly smile.

  Perhaps their histories would make a difference after all. The smaller girl's eyes gleamed in the faint moonlight, full of secrets yet to be revealed.

  "Well," Amaranth said quietly as they ventured out into the trench, the constructs scuttling both ahead and behind them, "regardless, we have to be careful. Use what little we have..."

  Two spare parts girls and a handful of insect constructs would not be much against a whole world.

  The young girl turned them left at a junction in the trench. "We know how to get out of here, and that's more than we had a month ago."

  Fleabane's optimism was wonderful, but Amaranth wondered just how far that would get them.

  "You're right," Amaranth whispered, "but let's just get away from Damnation before morning comes. The rest we will figure out as we go."

  Together, the two of them scuttled off down the trench, with the constructs acting as their tiny guardians—their only protection in the world beyond the pits.

  Chapter Two

  Visitor from the Deep

  When the gods warred, mortals took their peace where they could find it—yet, finding it was quite the trick. For the moment, Rowan thought she located a brief space for happiness.

  The sun shone on her back as she worked on the illuminated manuscript in the scriptorium of Providence, the temple-city by the Binding Sea. Her skin was warm under her priestess' beige dress, and the rows of chairs and seats around her were blissfully empty. In the highly populated confines of the temple, it was a real treat to have a small pocket of silence all to herself.

  At Rowan's elbow sat a small vase of violets she picked from the forest up on the cliff behind the temple-city that very morning. They were such delicate flowers; already, three of the blooms were wilting and hanging from the container. They served as a reminder that while mortal and divine might be deep in the business of war, the world was still turning, and spring would come even after a hard winter.

  The sun caressing her bent neck was in the ideal position, since it did not lie across any of the pages she had been working on since last summer; it would otherwise dry the precious ink too quickly and spoil the whole thing. She was so very close to finishing the coloring. The previous week, she did the last of the gilding on the previous page: the face of her goddess, Serey, Sister-Earth. Then, only yesterday, she put the final touches on the chimera monster the goddess was slaying, so now there were only fine details to fix.

  Rowan chewed on the corner of her lip, feeling the nerves building in her stomach. If she made a mistake at that point she would lose months of work, and most likely be ejected from the scriptorium as unreliable. It was the one activity Rowan truly treasured; it was hers alone and much more precious to her than everything she learned as leader of a Goddess Quarter.

  Steadying her breathing, Rowan carefully dipped her brush in vermillion, slipped the excess off on the jar's edge, and with the fine rabbit's hair prepared to fill in the final temple-city on the exacting map she had drawn. Every one of the scarlet marks was one that gave allegiance to Serey, and though it was a constant delight to add more to the image, it made finishing it a near impossible labor.

  As she set to work, darkness flickered in the corner of her eyes, and Rowan was filled with a strange desire that haunted her since last summer. She was possessed by the desire to draw that figure again—the one her mother had forbidden. Rowan's hand trembled all by itself, and she was forced to stop working on the manuscript. She took a deep breath, and steeling herself, glanced over one shoulder towards the door. She was alone, but the feeling persisted. In desperation, Rowan changed her color to black and hastily scrawled the shape on her blotting paper just to get it out of her head.

  It was tiny; the form of a man with odd lines erupting all over his body as if he were a pincushion, the head tilted to one side watching her. The desire, once satisfied, passed as it always had before. Rowan was able to bundle up the paper and throw it away. She had much better things to think of than that strange scribble—besides it was just another mark of her weakness.

  Corrupted thoughts, Mother called them, and they were once again getting in the way. It was not just in the scriptorium these things happened. Rowan blushed at the recollection of all the times she embarrassed herself before others. It was bad enough in front of her fellow clergy, but with the arrival of the Hathorian priests yesterday, the possibility of humiliating her mother was terribly real.

  If there was to be an alliance, then everything needed to go smoothly.

  "It will," she whispered under her breath. From below the scriptorium the voices that lived there whispered. She could never make out what they said, but then she did her best to ignore them. Sometimes at night they were loud enough to wake her up. Other times they tried to distract her from listening to her teachers. Yet she knew what they were.

  Ten years before Mother rescued her from a burning village of heretics; that was all those voices had to be, memories from a dark time. Today was not going to be like that.

  Today, the Brother-Lord of the marshes would be accepted as a bride-groom of Serey, so that together both temple-cities could bring the remaining heathen unbelievers to the path of truth. Together they might be able to overcome the Mountain-Lord, Mikieck, and his grip on the high pass out of the peninsula.

  She had to finish her book. It would make a fine gift to the Hathorians, and Mother would be pleased. Rowan embellished the edge of the last page with the forms of homunculi and progeny to the exultation of Serey—a daring break with tradition since the constructs were not usually depicted—their existence a communion of holy and profane. Though they did the work of the goddess, their construction was something not mentioned in polite temple society. She hoped the deputation from Hathorian would take it in the spirit in which it was meant.

  Rowan pushed her hair out of her eyes and carefully stilled a tremor in her hand. No more scribbling. She leaned down to apply that final, all-important dot. Just the moment before she did so, the young woman paused and glanced at the violets. Had she imagined it, or had the vase just moved in the corner of her vision?

  As Rowan's heart started to race, she began to worry. The compulsion to draw the man had been unnerving, but perhaps she was going to start seeing different things? She stared intensely at the violets, but there was no mistaking it—they moved again.

  Rowan's gaze darted to the corners of the room, to the places even the morning sun could not quite reach, and her fingertips itched to draw him again—just to ease the nervous flutter in her stomach.

  Then the vase of violets rocked back and forth—for a moment threatening to tip over a
ltogether. Their antics were accompanied by a distinct lurch under Rowan's feet and elbow. Surely her torment had not grown so strong?

  The narrow tip of Rowan's brush—a single hair really—hovered above the parchment. Carefully, she pulled it back from her page, and considered that perhaps it was something else entirely.

  Serey, Sister-Earth, creator of all that was strong and good in the world, had been appeased, so there were no quakes of her displeasure to be felt. However, they were on the delta of a wide river, and though Hathor would not have disrupted the talks, Kneda, Wave-Father, was a constant danger.

  Rowan felt her heart slow, her breath slide over her parted lips, caught between the peace of the moment and what she felt sure was the violence of the next ones ahead.

  When the second rumble passed through the soles of her feet, and the desk she was leaning on trembled beneath her elbow, her hard-won peace was utterly broken.

  Rowan returned the brush to its jar, folded up the manuscript, and placed the leather-bound volume back on the shelf along with all the other treasures of the temple. All the time the rumbles began to resolve themselves more and more, and became the unmistakable, rhythmic pounding of footsteps.

  Scampering to the window, Rowan stared out. The grey smudge of the river surrounded by the thick green of the forest looked clear, but as she leaned out to her right to see the state of things from the sea, the temple let out a groan like a wounded bull, and the ledge under her hands shook mightily. It was a fierce, direct hit, one that sent a shower of red rocks cascading down the side of the building, and a rumble through the entire temple. It was a solid, thick cliff-face, but it could not be immune from those sorts of blows forever.

  Rowan's mouth was dry, even while her mind flooded with relief that it was not her torments returned. Quickly she pulled her head back from the window; she didn't need to see the progeny to know it was there, and she had to move fast.

  Contemplation, prayer and art were not possible today, apparently. Snatching her staff from where she left it leaning by the door, Rowan abandoned all chance of safety, and raced up the deep cut stone steps to the top floor of the temple. Her legs were young and strong, but she felt her heart pounding in time with the attack. Several times she had to catch herself against the walls and throw her arms over her head, or risk being brained by loose rocks shaken from the temple roof. Always though, she scrambled on.

  She was rapidly joined by other priests and priestesses emerging out of nearby rooms and corridors like ants from a disturbed hill. They shared her devotion to Serey, and all of them responded to the danger to their temple and their goddess with equal fervor. Ten of these were Rowan's quarter, her soldiers for the goddess. There were young and old, men and women, from all corners of Rahvas, but all faithful and dedicated servants of Sister-Earth. However, Rowan did note one was missing.

  While most of the priests and priestesses rushed to their defensive positions throughout the temple, the quarter kept heading upward. Rowan tried to ignore the desperate flutter in her stomach as they reached the final flight of stairs. It was here Tagier finally joined them. The woman's shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, her grey hair standing up in points from her head, and her dress in a state of disarray, but her green eyes flashed with excitement. "Onwards!" she yelled gleefully, as always expressing the delight in battle the others were too afraid to show.

  Rowan wished she had half as much enthusiasm as the temple quaked and groaned around them. Nevertheless, the quarter reached the top of the stairs, some of them panting, others resolute and calm. Rowan caught Tagier's gaze for just a moment, and her friend leaned in to whisper into the younger woman's ear, "You can do this..."

  Rowan did not know where Tagier got that belief from, but she held onto it tight.

  She gave what she hoped was a firm nod. "Let me assess the situation," Rowan said to her quarter. "Wait for my orders." A progeny was not a construct to be rushed towards—unless one really longed for death.

  Rowan tried her best to summon that warm calm she had only a few minutes before in the scriptorium as she eased open the door and inched herself out onto the battlements. It was to be her first real confrontation with a heathen construct. Though her mother trained her rigorously, she only just realized that terrifying fact as she stood there looking up at it in awe.

  After being inside the cool dark of the inside of the temple, Rowan was momentarily dazzled by the light. As she struggled to orient herself, hand flung over her eyes like a shocked child, she looked up at the progeny. The mountains were to the south, yet—impossibly—there was one right before her. A mountain emerged from the sea.

  During her preparation, Rowan fought homunculi, but those were only human-sized and of her mother's making. A progeny was a creature of far greater faith and magic—consequently, it was also much more impressive.

  It was a wall of flesh, manipulated and created by heathen priests to bring down the temple-city of Serey. Rowan knew this in the logical part of her brain, but the reality of the monster above was taking her some time to process. One of its roving eyes, easily the size of a cartwheel, swept up and down the battlements as it emerged from the churning ocean.

  Rowan was not a tall woman and had always felt insignificant, yet as the towering creature's tentacle reached down towards the temple-city of Providence, Rowan realized how she underestimated her insignificance.

  That, along with the sudden assault on all her senses at once, made her cower back against the wall for a moment. First, there was the tremendously vile smell. Nothing could prepare her for the odiferous mélange dying fish, salt, and dark magic created.

  As Rowan vainly clasped a hand over her mouth and nose, a jaw like a pit opened high above her, spewing water as if it was some abhorrent fountain. So close, she could see where the stitchers cobbled the creation together, even glimpse where the huge human-like eyes were attached, but she did not know the name of the creature they used to make its midsection. Whatever it was, it had long black tentacles, which whipped around it, smashing the stonework in a manic frenzy. A small part of Rowan, despite her horror, was amazed by the essence control that created such a thing.

  It was an odd, quiet thought to have in the midst of the progeny's howling and battering of the temple. Tentacles black as sin, and thick as the battlements themselves, lashed out grasping onto the cliff-face, and pulled the progeny still further out of the tumult of the sea below. It didn't get any prettier the more that was revealed. Rowan's terror became a howling beast in the rear of her brain she dare not acknowledge.

  As the progeny loomed higher, blocking out the sun, it sent waves of water pouring over the battlements like it was emerging from an overflowing bathtub. So lost was Rowan in the moment she almost missed the far more present danger of being drowned and crushed at the same time.

  She whipped her head around to call to her quarter waiting just inside the doorway. "Hold on!" she screamed, but then the sea was upon them. The tumult rose above her and then crashed down.

  For a long, panicked moment, Rowan couldn't breathe as water invaded her mouth and nose. Her body reacted violently, even as her mind wondered who would finish her map in the scriptorium now, and if the shadow man would still look for her. It was not her mother or her friends she thought of in that instant, it was the whispering darkness, and the strange pin-cushion man who always seemed to be there. Her fears gripped her tight even so close to death.

  Rowan's feet and hands scrambled about; whether to swim or climb, it was hard to tell. In that terrifying moment, she couldn't figure out which way was up or down. She imagined being driven over the side of the battlements to her watery death—if the progeny didn't swallow her whole before the long fall. Through the swirl of water in her ears, she heard her quarter yelling as they were pushed back down the stairs. It all seemed very distant and doomed.

  Somehow, with her goddess' help, Rowan's frantic fingers found anchorage in the wall she was thrown against, and the water subsided as quickly as i
t had come. She gasped and coughed the ocean from her lungs, thinking bitterly the seers once again failed them; no one thought the heathen priests of Kneda had the creation of a progeny in them.

  With her thin shift clinging to her most inappropriately, Rowan pulled herself upright and began to look about desperately for her quarter. When another door opened along the battlements, and Gentian appeared under its cracked arch, her attention was divided. The progeny was blocking out the sun, its vile tentacles helping it cling to the cliff-face and the walls of the temple. The watering human eye, transformed to something truly monstrous by dark magic, focused on Gentian.

  "Mother!" Rowan screamed, and the Stonekeeper turned. Her bright blue eyes lit on her daughter and a crooked smile danced on her lips.

  "Be careful," she called as if Rowan was crossing a busy road and she didn't want her to be hit by a cart. The ridiculous nature of her warning reminded Rowan sometimes her mother could be kind.

  Gentian Stonekeeper's small, round form moved out onto the damp walkway as though she were simply taking the air. Seeing her, Rowan found she could breathe properly for the first time since seeing the heathen progeny; there was something about her abrasive mother that made the world seem right and safe.

  She'd lain in those arms as a child and had all her nightmares chased away by the sheer strength of her personality. Those hands soothed her, or urged her back into the world to confront bruises. Under those clear blue eyes, she lived out all the major traumas of her teenage years. The dark shadows had no hold over her when they looked upon her. She was a force of nature no one could deny.