It was a miasma of flesh and death. Fleabane stood trembling, her whole body shaking, and her arms spread wide. It looked like she was about to break into reckless and hysterical screaming. Luckily instead she threw up the little remaining in her stomach. Amaranth, connected to the beetles as she was, did not have that problem.
Above, the wild dogs peered down at them, snarling and snapping, gleaming eyes fixed on the humans and the pile of refuse they sat on. Perhaps, Amaranth thought, they feed here from time to time.
They were massive beasts, much larger than she could have imagined, with powerful jaws made for breaking bone, broad chests made for long distance running, and eyes that could see much better than hers in the dark. Suddenly the offal pit faded from her concern.
Amaranth poured her essence back into the beetle-scorpions who still waited in the dust up there. The wild dogs might be large, but they could also be useful. When her creations began crawling, and stinging, the larger animals yelped in anger and fear. For a long time, the dust they kicked up obscured the sliver of the moon she could see.
As all that subsided, Amaranth felt around for her creations; she had ten remaining that she could still animate. It had not been in vain though; around them were three dead wild dogs. The others scattered where her progeny could not reach.
Turning, Amaranth grabbed Fleabane by the arm. The girl shook her head, still gasping in the stench of the pit. Her eyes flitted around madly before finally focusing.
"Look around for the freshest pieces," Amaranth told her sternly. "I have an idea how we may protect ourselves." She felt behind her ear for her needle. "We just may have a chance to get out of here alive. You still want that, right?"
Her companion swallowed hard, and then nodded slowly. "I thought you said we needed to be away from the town by dawn?"
Amaranth shrugged. "The world is wider than I thought; more dangerous too. For this crossing, Fleabane, we are going to need guardians. Now," she said, holding the needle up in the dim light of the moon, "let's make some for ourselves."
Chapter Six
The Patchwork Companion
In the temple-city of Diligence, flying high over the lake of Eler, Isobah had lain prostrate before his prophet, the Lightkeeper for two days and nights. For the first day, with nothing but the insides of his own eyelids to contemplate, he dreamed of his lost wife and child. Kiya he saw as she had been that day in Penance, her sky-blue robe just fractionally out of reach of his questing fingertips. Nyennoh came to him as he had been the day he disowned his father and left Diligence forever. The imperious set of his broad shoulders, the disappointment in his eyes, and the handsome face that gleamed as black and beautiful as his mother's; all carved pain deep into Isobah's heart.
Mother-Sky wanted him to learn, he knew that, but what more could he glean from the ghosts of his shattered past? It was a relief when exhaustion swept Kiya and Nyennoh away, and all that remained was a void of discomfort, hunger and despair.
When the second dawn made itself known by dancing against his eyelids, the guardsman wondered if he might just die there in her chamber. If his ghosts came back to haunt him for that reason, he would at least die having seen them one last time. Mother-Sky was full of mercy for her sinning son.
Yet Isobah's body continued to call to him. Despite the sun pouring through the gap in the roof, the stone was achingly cold, and after such a long time the guardsman wondered if the Lightkeeper forgot he was there at all. The prophet was many things—but mindful of mortal considerations was not one of them. It was entirely possible Isobah might die from lack of food and water, his flesh rot away, and his bones be swept into the corner without her even noticing or smelling a thing.
Even knowing all that, the guardsman did not so much as move a limb to adjust for some small chance of comfort. Although Isobah's muscles were plagued by hundreds of aches and pains, he remained flat on his face, arms outstretched before the Lightkeeper. If he died before she spoke, if that was the will of the Mother-Sky, then he was at peace with that.
The Lightkeeper was silent as a statue in her niche. Isobah could only see her toes curved against the warm rock and the long tendrils of the connection, phosphorescent green and blue, curling up from the fliers below. Her mind was in the beasts that gave the temple-city flight, and Isobah was a mere bug before that sort of power. Sanguine, soul or spirit, were required to command the progeny, and while she gave them her spirit, Diligence flew. It was a feat of strength and faith he could only hope to emulate.
The Lightkeeper was all he had left of Kiya, for she loved their leader as powerfully as she loved Isobah...perhaps, if he was honest, a little more.
When Kiya was gone, he clung to the Lightkeeper, desperate for forgiveness. His wife died because of him, and the only peace from that ugly fact came in the presence of the Lightkeeper. Nyennoh left him because of it, but her hand on his head washed away—even if just for a moment—the guilt of it.
He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the remnants of that image to leave him. Finally, and thankfully, the nagging voices of Isobah's body slipped away, and there was only the temple-city, the prophet, and the sky above them all. He felt the movement of their home beneath, the slight groan of the rock carried by the fliers, even the snap and recoil of their stingers as they fed on the lesser creatures below in the clouds. Isobah was one with all of them—almost as much as the prophet herself.
Only when he achieved that level of awareness did he hear she had been speaking to him all this time. She whispered his name, but he was too busy to hear it with his own cares and ghosts.
Slowly, keeping his eyes averted from her face, Isobah slid up from his prone position until he was kneeling before the prophet.
"Are you ready?" she asked softly, and he dared look up.
The Lightkeeper, the pilot of the temple-city, and the prophet of the Mother-Sky herself, was not looking at him. She would never look on another mortal again. Her beautiful dark face was tilted upwards, but her eyes had been burned out long ago in service of the goddess. All she saw was through the senses of the fliers, and they didn't have eyes either. She didn't really need them; she was Diligence's mind and eyes as well as its soul.
Like all the important things in life, this feat was won and kept only through sacrifice. The Lightkeeper offered up all of herself so Diligence would be able to fly on, largely safe from the bickering of other temple-cities.
Isobah only wished he had been called as she was. He wanted very much to touch the fliers' connection, to see and hear what those ancient knitted beasts felt. That was not his place. The Lightkeeper summoned him for something else.
"You are a fine protector of Diligence," the Lightkeeper said, her voice remaining soft. "Since your great loss you have done well, and the people speak of you with deep respect. It was you who threw down the Rainbow Queen, and they remember your strength. The fliers hear it. I hear it."
"Thank you, Keeper," Isobah said, feeling his heart swell with pride. "I serve Mariki, Mother-Sky as best I can."
She was silent for a long time, until he wondered if he should prostrate himself again.
The Lightkeeper's voice, when it came, changed; it was as sharp as steel. "You must do better than your best, Master Isobah. The time of the Melding is coming, when the last of the temple-cities will battle to claim the right of the One True God. It is an event that shall herald peace in our world, but it will be bought with pain, blood, and many deaths."
Isobah could not help but frown. The Melding was an event often talked of, looked for, and yet ever distant. Since the Schism, all the gods and their followers battled for dominance over Rahvas, but should the Lightkeeper bring her temple-city down to fight with the others, he feared the results.
It was his weakness, this lack of faith. He felt the bright heat of it in his youth, but after over four decades of life, it wore him down. Too many wars and too few victories birthed a niggling doubt in his head. It was his second greatest shame that Isobah knew the Ligh
tkeeper could probably see.
The prophet tilted her face so the light danced over her sharp cheekbones and fine dark features. "The goddess does not demand that we give up our questions or doubts, Isobah. Indeed, she values them. The light is not afraid of the shadows. The sky does not fear the earth."
"Then I will not be afraid," Isobah replied, his face burning a little that he was so easy to read. "What would you have me do, Lightkeeper?"
"The Congress of Temples is gathering already. Next month's new moon will see the talking, and the testing once again. I want you to represent Diligence there."
Isobah wished she asked him to go into battle, fetch the heart of her enemies, or nearly anything else; the congress was a place no man would choose to go. He saw enough of it the one time he went, and the idea of revisiting the site of his wife's death was enough to make him clench his jaw hard.
The battles between the temple-cities were at least honest, and about blood and faith. The gathering of the divine representatives was a place where he was more likely to be stabbed in the back than in the chest. On the surface it might be about negotiation and keeping the folk beyond the temple-cities safe while the matter of the One True God was resolved, but for him it would be diving back into that pit of snakes.
Isobah bowed his head. "I feel I am not worthy, Holy. I am no diplomat who knows the right thing to say and when to say it. I fear I would not carry Your Word well."
What happened all those years ago hung in the air between them, unspoken.
The Lightkeeper sighed, and the connections to the fliers shifted slightly as her distress was communicated along to them. "That is why you must go, Isobah. The congress will be perilous this season, more so than any other year. I suspect there are still chimera about in the world who will likely show themselves as the Melding draws closer."
People who tried to make themselves into progeny, who cut on themselves to add power, were to be greatly feared. They ran mad and caused death wherever they went. Some even went so insane as to imagine themselves gods. The Rainbow Queen, that pale-faced terror, had been a chimera. She was able to convince enough weak-willed she was the wife of the Sky Serpent, and even invaded Diligence, reaching this very chamber once. The Rainbow Queen was not the only chimera in Rahvas.
Isobah flexed his fists, and realized the chance to fight them would bring great honor. If the Lightkeeper said it was true, then it was true. The fliers that lived in her mind were very sensitive to changes in the air, and bought her much more information than a mere mortal could understand.
"If they are at the finger temples or Penance itself," he said, his back straightening slightly, "then I will find and finish them." He had no chance to make things well with his son, but perhaps he could make up for his failure to his goddess.
The Lightkeeper nodded, and the connections to the fliers pulsed with light. "You will do many things in Penance, my guardsman." Her fingers clenched and fluttered.
The word chimera was a name to strike fear into any god-fearing citizen of Rahvas, but Penance had that same effect on Isobah. He never wanted to go back to that city—let alone look into the Void. However, the goddess did not give any man what he could not bear.
"You are a good man, Isobah," the Lightkeeper replied, her blind eyes flickering over his form in an illusion of sight. "Listen, observe, and mind the patchwork I am sending with you."
The sudden mention of homunculi made the guardsman's body run cold. He would rather be paired with an atheist than a piece of patchwork, but faith and honor did not allow him to open his mouth.
"She will be my eyes and ears at the fortress," the Lightkeeper said. "Once you reach our temple at Penance however, then you must obey her as you would me." With that her body sagged back in the niche and the connections began to pulse brighter. She vanished deeper into the merge with the fliers and was lost to him.
A homunculus? The Lightkeeper began making them only in the last year, but he had yet to have much interaction with such a thing. His mouth twisted. He'd been so proud of his goddess for avoiding the unholy creations, but apparently the time of the Melding meant some things had to change.
Still, to obey a patchwork? As a young man he would have questioned his Lightkeeper, but with experience came acceptance. Mother-Sky would reveal her plan in the fullness of time.
Isobah stiffly bowed, even if the Lightkeeper would not see it, and turned on his heel as only a soldier could. The rock stairwell behind him led directly to the priest pit where the gruesome but necessary work of the goddess was carried out. The smell of blood filled his mouth and set his primitive instincts on fire.
Light flickered along the cave walls, but it came from no lamp. The fliers' connections were the only illumination as the guardsman descended. Isobah kept his gaze lowered as he followed the stairwell down to the bottom and avoided making a judgment on those priests who had to do the ugly work of the goddess.
To his right there was at least a view worth taking in. The caves were fractured and gaping a little so the sun and sky were visible in tiny glimpses. Directly below were the mile-long stingers of the fliers and the wide acreage of their gas floats, gleaming and flickering with vivid greens and blues. Beyond that there was nothing but the extreme likelihood of falling for miles. Just like she had. It must have been terrifying and glorious all at the same time.
Isobah stood for a moment, unable to tear his eyes away from the open sky, and he was so engrossed that when an igniter cleared his throat, he actually jerked back as if slapped. The pale face of the priest said he didn't get out into the sun often, and his smirk was that of one who believed he knew far more than Isobah. He couldn't know that secrets were the last thing the guardsman ever wanted.
Isobah surmised he had twenty more years than the igniter. The guardsman remembered feeling that young, arrogant, and in control of his own world. All that changed with the death of his wife, and he could only recall the sensation with a mixture of condensation and sadness.
Stroking his narrow beard, which was sprinkled with more than a touch of grey, he smiled slightly at the igniter. If the priest was lucky, he might get to the silver beard stage—though it was unlikely given their dangerous work; the wide expanse of airbags were temperamental beasts.
"Get a move on," the igniter said, with an insulting tilt of his head. "She's waiting..."
Isobah's smile turned to a scowl. Let them have their new games of flesh and blood; he was a man who still held onto his honor, and the Lightkeeper knew that.
He kept his silence as the igniter led him to a series of cells, where the smell of blood and sweat assailed him on every side. Things lurked in those cells; things half-made and ill-made. This was where the priests kept their experiments and failures, yet it was there the patchwork the Lightkeeper wanted him to work with waited.
The construct threw itself against the bars, but Isobah had been expecting no less from it and did not flinch back. The thing's mismatched eyes flickered over him; the blue one locked on the guardsman's face, while the yellow one roamed about and up to the ceiling. The body they created seemed assembled only of human parts, and they appeared female, because the shift dress they draped over it revealed that much. Still, it was impossible to tell what the cutters and stitchers used on the inside.
The face was the worst of all, crushed and smashed until barely human. Only the eyes showed any sign of previous humanity. Isobah knew it was not his place to comment, but it seemed a very ill-made thing, barely deserving of the title 'she'. Whoever the cutter and stitcher were here, they were not particularly talented craftspeople and they had used poor ingredients.
Isobah recalled with a curl of his lip the terrible creation Gentian, Stonekeeper, used to prevent saving Kiya or those strange girls. Back then he gloried in his goddess' rejection of making homunculi. Times changed for the worse apparently.
"Hold out your hand," the young priest said, and Isobah did so with his eyes still locked on the homunculus.
The cut
was swift and painful as he sliced the joining knife over the guardsman's palm. While he jerked back his hand and shook it, he noticed that immediately the construct grew silent, and both eyes fixed on him.
"She will follow you," the priest said, his smirk returning, "but only at the temple will the Lightkeeper speak through her."
"It...I mean she...won't speak by herself before then?" Isobah fervently hoped she would stop staring at him. The lack of blinking from her half-filmed over eyes was disconcerting, to say the least.
The priest unlocked the cell door even as he replied. "No, she is merely moving flesh until then."
"What do I call her, then?" Isobah asked, unconsciously clamping his sleeve over his mouth. The closer the homunculus got, the worse the smell was.
The priest shrugged. "She doesn't have a name, but if you need to address her, then you should choose one for her."
The guardsman looked into the different colored eyes of the creation as it stopped mere feet from him. Like all homunculi she was made of stitches and stolen flesh, but he couldn't shake the feeling she was unholy somehow. Isobah had to remind himself she was a creature of nightmares and horror, but deities could speak through even the poorest instrument. Still, it needed to be a word he would not say often. Her smell easily made up his mind.
"Feculent," Isobah said, "that is your name, homunculus. Show that you understand."
It nodded its head slowly, though there was no other sign of recognition. It would have to do.
As Isobah led the homunculus out of the cell and back up into the light, he contemplated how lucky it was he was a man of faith, because he was going to need it on this journey. He would be glad when it was over and he was back once more in the land of light and good clean air.
Chapter Seven
Flotsam on the Shore
After what happened there was only one conclusion: Serey was testing her. Rowan spent the next couple of days keeping her head down, sweeping the floors of the temple, and hauling debris from the sacred places.
Immortal Progeny (Fragile Gods Book 1) Page 7
