Immortal Progeny (Fragile Gods Book 1)

by Philippa Ballantine

  After all, it was too late now for anything else now. Fleabane, a frown creasing her forehead, rose and stepped out as well. The strange woman raked her eyes over them both, but Amaranth thought her gaze lingered longer on her. Then the stranger crooked her finger, drawing them closer without saying a word. The ribbon of beetle-scorpions followed in Amaranth's wake, along with the two dog progeny, though they had their ears pressed flat against their heads.

  As the strange little procession reached her, the older woman flinched back a little. "By the narrow road, you two reek! I always presumed the masters at least washed their herds."

  Amaranth raised her head and glared at the woman, for a moment forgetting the strange hair and remembering her own pride. "We don't belong to them...not anymore. As for the smell...well...we had to hide in an offal pit..."

  The creations circled about her feet as if undecided whether to attack or not. The mysterious driver glanced down at them, and then across at the dog progeny still hanging back in the shadows. "No," she said in her strange, soft voice, "I can see you are no one but yourselves now." Her gaze raked over the empty sleeve that hung limply at Amaranth's side. The expression on her face was odd, one Amaranth didn't recognize at all—could it be pity or disappointment?

  The strange woman's lips twisted a little. "We are all our own creations." She pushed back her curls, revealing the hairline and the scars about it. The stitches were small and done with real talent, but there was no mistaking them. Amaranth blinked. She had never thought of using her skills on herself like that. Her mind raced with a thousand questions all at once.

  The newcomer smiled, but held her hand up to her lips. "Never seen one like me have you?" She sighed. "Oh well, time for that later, for now I think the two of you are in an urgent need of a ride." She stepped back and gestured towards her cart. "It just so happens the road is calling me. I am on my way to Penance for the congress. Should be quite the event."

  None of those words meant anything to Amaranth. She shared a glance with Fleabane, but the girl seemed totally bereft of any idea. She was staring at her toes, either lost in thought or completely drained of all motivation. It was impossible to tell. The creations at her feet had nothing to offer either; they merely milled around her toes, ready to sting or abide as she commanded. Ceelut and Cedejo also waited, and the knowledge they would tear this woman apart, hair or no hair, was comforting.

  The odds of them finding another ride in the town of the pit drivers were near impossible—she knew that. They could not face another dawn in that terrible place.

  Amaranth walked closer, until she stood only feet from the strange woman. She held out her hand, and on her command her beetle-scorpions scampered up her legs and back to rest once more under her hair. They waved their pincers at the stranger, a reflection of Amaranth's own concerns. "Who are we throwing our lot in with?" was the only question she had.

  The woman's hair flushed almost white, and up close Amaranth realized it was not her only remarkable feature; she had eyes of different colors. One was jet black, the other scarlet. She smiled when she replied. "I am Ohian, but most know me as the Patchwork Angel."

  What that meant exactly was a mystery to her, but Amaranth stared at her for a long moment, trying to see beyond the name. Usually, she could tell a lot by looking at an animal or person, mostly which bits would make progeny and which would not. Staring at Ohian hard, there was nothing to see. As unnerving as that should have been, Amaranth was intrigued.

  "Ohian, thank you," she said. "We will travel the road with you for a while."

  Amaranth turned back to Fleabane, but her fellow compatriot barely looked at her. "Should we not find our own way?" she muttered under her breath.

  "Dawn comes and we'll be dead," Amaranth replied. It was the short, cruel truth.

  Fleabane locked eyes with her, defiant for a moment, but then gave a nod.

  The two young women climbed up, and Ohian showed them where to sit in the small cart. Inside it was packed with sweet-smelling herbs, while hundreds of metallic trinkets hung from threads in the ceiling. Amaranth and Fleabane sat rather awkwardly on the narrow bench behind Ohian, in among the strange objects. Ceelut and Cedejo would have to run alongside, though they looked unhappy with that—almost as much as Fleabane.

  Ohian took her place, picked up the reins, and gave them a light flick. "Let's shake the dust of this place from us then. Hestia, get on."

  The white mare twitched her ears, but set off at a fast walk. Ohian glanced over her shoulder, so Amaranth caught a glimpse of her red eye. "There is a warm water spring in the hills beyond town, I think you should bathe there."

  A bath? Amaranth sank back a little and wondered what on earth that would feel like. Despite her fear of the ocean, she thought it just might be a wonderful thing. A tentative smile flickered across her lips.

  Ohian let out a little bell-like laugh. "I can see I have much to teach you." She shook the reins once more, and the mare picked up pace. "Civilization is all about the bathing. In fact, it is the best bit."

  Once they were out of the main square, Hestia began to move faster, her reins jingling.

  Amaranth thought it was probably the fastest she had ever been in her whole life. New experiences all lay ahead of her, yet as they went she could not look anywhere but Ohian's hair. Some recollection itched at the back of Amaranth's mind, but controlling the progeny and the hounds taxed her. Perhaps the promised hot bath would awaken the sluggish recollection. She settled against the back of the cart seat and tried not to worry. They were leaving Damnation behind, and that was a great improvement.

  Chapter Nine

  The True Love of a Mother

  Vervain followed two bright lights. They bobbed and danced ahead of her, always drawing her on, but never letting her catch them. She knew catching them was the most important thing in the world. One gleamed like onyx, its surface dancing with bright silver sparks, while the other spun around it, alternating all the colors she knew, and some she did not.

  When she stretched out her fingers, consumed by the desire to hold them, know them, they fluttered from her grasp—but never too far. Sometimes Vervain almost brushed them, and she felt a rush of sensation up her arms; however, they moved away before she could fully embrace them. In that strange half-world she ran on, exhausted, but knowing if she gave up she would be nothing.

  Her face was getting cold, and though Vervain jerked her head away from the uncomfortable feeling, it followed her. She was angry it was getting in the way of her pursuit because she was so close to the lights, and once she had them everything would be better. They could do what they were made for. Lights had to shine.

  She lost her footing, and found herself tumbling, but as always falling was close to flying. Vervain had the feeling of arms around her, cradling her as the air rushed by, and a warm voice in her ear told her not to be afraid. The warmth was drained away from her skin, the voice becoming more distant, and a deep shiver claimed her body.

  Vervain could ignore it no longer—the sensation was too much. The cold woke her, and she spluttered and cursed as the water poured over her face and down her chest. When her eyes cleared of water, she was finally able to focus. What she saw was not comforting; the butcher stood over her with the now empty bucket. A slight turn of her head, and there was her true captor.

  The Stonekeeper stood at the rear of the cave near the flickering lantern, but her smile was constant. Vervain didn't want to look at her, but then she didn't want to be there either.

  Resistance had always been a concept. In her many years of training in akasha, they discussed it often while seated next to the Flame of Knowledge. The young Vervain had been passionately sure if her time of testing came she would be resolute, just like her beloved teacher, Setna. He was famous for surviving his five-month imprisonment and torture by the priests of Heresphone. Like him, Vervain was sure she would not break.

  Hanging from cuffs in the depths of the flesh pits of the goddess Serey, Verv
ain could have laughed at the young fool she'd been. Everyone breaks. They should have told her that. They should have prepared her for it so it would not stain her conscience.

  Gentian, with her kind motherly-face, stepped forward out of the darkness, and her brow furrowed. "What have you become?" she asked, and her tone was full of genuine curiosity.

  It seemed such a strange question; no 'who are you?' nor even 'what can you do?' It was like the Stonekeeper already knew Vervain, but the prisoner was sure that couldn't be true. She was most certain she would have recalled an encounter with the poisonous little woman.

  Vervain would have spat in her face, or at least sworn at her, but she did not have the energy left. The blood they took from her sapped a lot of her strength. She could only lift her head a little, and croak out, "I am a seeker of truth. A child of this world like you."

  "Really...like me?" Gentian grabbed Vervain by the head and jerked it around. "Do you really think that even I, the Stonekeeper of the goddess Serey, would be able to live with so much of my blood drained away? You are most definitely not a child of this world!"

  Vervain was able to focus her eyes on the row of glass containers they lined up next to the wall; there were many. So many. She studied the human body, its stresses, limitations, and even dissected corpses at great personal risk—since it was forbidden by the theists. She knew how much blood was contained in it, how much could be taken before it would extinguish life.

  "Those cannot all be mine," she muttered, her gaze darting along them, counting. "You are playing tricks with me...that is enough blood for ten grown men..."

  "I only wish I were," Gentian said, staring up into Vervain's eyes as if the answers were there. "I thought perhaps you remembered your sister, and that is why you attacked our forces. The question I must know the answer to, if you do not know the other, is how did you survive that fall?"

  The strange last question didn't even register because the word 'sister' hit her. It was the one word in that place of nightmares that made sense. The face she shared would be logical if they were twins. Setna found her by a river as a little girl, so perhaps the monstrous woman found her sister in a similar way. Vervain was the fortunate one—she couldn't imagine being raised by Gentian Stonekeeper.

  While she had been taught in twin disciplines of akasha and science, her sister was trapped with the Stonekeeper, learning the filthy lies of the theists. Even though she was in a deadly situation, somehow part of Vervain felt terrible for that woman she only glimpsed when she fell through the gap in the wall. No wonder she was so horrified when she laid eyes on Vervain. Who could guess what lies she'd been fed all her life?

  The fall though? She'd had dreams like that ever since she could remember, but they never frightened her—in fact they were strangely comforting. Despite everything, Vervain wondered if she could trick Gentian into revealing anything else, since she seemed to know so much more than she did.

  While Vervain pondered how to get that done from her rather disadvantaged position, the Stonekeeper began to pace back and forth in front of her prisoner, her hands clenching and unclenching on each other. "If you have this gift, what might Rowan have? She's never showed any special signs." Gentian stopped, her back straightening. "Unless she's been hiding it from me all along. Is that possible?"

  Vervain wondered if the Stonekeeper was actually hearing replies to her questions. Sometimes theists went mad, believing they were receiving the voice of their god.

  One glance to her right showed Vervain the butcher was as puzzled as she felt. His eyes were stuck to his mistress while she went through whatever internal battle raged within her.

  While he was otherwise engaged, the captive examined the ties that bound her to the ceiling. It was a faint hope, but as far as she knew it was the only life she had, and it would be against the tenets of nature if she did not attempt to at least hold onto it.

  As she tugged as surreptitiously on the thick iron bonds as she could, Vervain glanced out at the vast factory of meat and construction that Gentian ruled over. Long lines of theists stretched into the dim reaches of the caverns carved out by the sea. They cut flesh, they stitched muscles, and they breathed life into what was dead. They were an ant colony of diligent, terrible works, and Vervain knew all those stitchers, all those igniters, all those butchers of flesh could not be so hard at work for nothing.

  Setna feared the strength of Serey was growing far beyond the ability of the other theists to regulate it. Seeing all of that work laid out before her, Vervain knew so many progeny and homunculi could only mean an invasion was imminent. Only one temple-city remained on the peninsula, blocking the progress of the goddess Serey north through the only pass to the grasslands beyond. If they could overcome that one god, then they could escape the natural container the mountains made of the peninsula.

  "Mikieck," Vervain blurted out, though her throat was as dry as a desert. "You're planning to attack the Lord-Mountain and his temple-city."

  Gentian stopped pacing and stared at her for a moment. The flickering light gave her the appearance of a childhood nightmare, the very ones Vervain awoke screaming from as a girl. In that moment, Gentian resembled all the crazy theists Vervain learned to fear. "The heathen will be brought low, and we can move onto conquering other realms," Gentian intoned without one ounce of emotion.

  The vast, deep caverns of Resolute, the high mountain temple-city, stood firm almost as long as there were gods to praise. Though the highland dwellers showed no sign of designs or conquest, they repelled every attempt by the lowland temples to push beyond the peninsula into the heartland of the continent. The scope of Gentian's vision was startling, especially with the congress coming soon.

  The Stonekeeper tilted her head. "You think I am reaching too far, perhaps?" Vervain felt a chill ran through her. Is this nightmare of a woman reading my thoughts?

  "Some in the temple also have reservations...but now I have something they do not." She moved over to one of the impossibly full jars. "The congress begins in a few days, but this,"—she tapped one of the jars—"is far too important to worry about that." Gentian turned her full attention on Vervain. "I'll be concentrating on winkling out all out your secrets. In fact, I did a little experimentation while you were gone." She crooked her finger at the masked butcher, and he walked over to her.

  The Stonekeeper lunged forward with shocking agility for one her age. She unsheathed a long dagger from under her cloak, and slit the man's gut between one of Vervain's breaths and the next.

  The man let out a grunt of pain, but did not scream. When he fell to his knees, clutching his belly to keep his own innards from escaping, Gentian kicked him over completely. While he writhed on the ground, still without screaming, she snatched up one of the jars of Vervain's blood and poured it over the wound. It seemed like a cruel mocking of a dying man, but then...he was not dying for long.

  Vervain forgot she was chained up, forgot the assembling army below, and even her own fear, as the Stonekeeper carefully let blood fall on the butcher's open wounds. The gentle splatter of liquid was the only sound in the room, but in the dim light of the lantern, Vervain watched his terrible wound heal itself. Flesh knitted and was made whole again, until there was only a man with a torn bloody shirt lying on the floor.

  "Serey is good," he said, and they were the first words she heard out of him.

  "The blood is not Serey's," Vervain replied on reflex, still not knowing what to make of it all. She had cut herself numerous times as a child, even broken her arm once when pursuing a rabbit through the forest. It hurt a lot, and yet if her blood could do this....

  It hadn't before, her mind ticked over. Something happened to her since then, because surely Setna would have noticed such power in her before.

  She feverishly pondered over what it all meant, while Gentian replaced the jar on the shelf. When she turned back, her look of unmitigated glee was sickening.

  "The blood may have come from you," the Stonekeeper said, with one of
those disturbing motherly chuckles, "but it was sent by Serey, so that I might have the means to do good work. Imagine what the stitchers could make with this..."

  Vervain learned the one true weakness of the progeny was their creation was less than an exact science; stitches came undone, certain creatures were incompatible, and sometimes the creations could run mad and kill their creators. If her blood could somehow remove those weaknesses, Serey's priests and priestesses would have free reign to smash the remaining temple-cities.

  Vervain did not know what that world would look like, but she was absolutely certain if there was one temple, one god, there would be no place in it for any dissenters; chief of those being the Zoekers of the Higher Knowledge.

  Gentian and her butcher picked up two of the glass jars and carried them from the room, ignoring Vervain completely. She knew they would be off to continue their experiments, and now she was now just another resource in their quest to dominate all.

  Dropping her head to her chest, Vervain felt exhaustion rush back over her. Akasha and its control had been her life, and it seemed greatly unfair she would give it to something else—something she did not believe in. Vervain wanted to rage, scream, and destroy everything. Instead, she hung there, head down, shaking without impotent outrage, all thoughts of control lost to her. How long she hung like that, she couldn't say; it seemed like forever and no time at all.

  "What have they done to you?" At first Vervain thought the question came from the depths of her own mind, a plaintive cry for understanding from her spirit, but then she saw the feet standing right at the edge of her vision.

  Managing to rouse herself, she pulled her chin off her chest and looked up into her own face. It was the woman from the chamber, the one who appeared out of the smashed hole in the dungeon—or was it merely her brain trying to grab hold of any hope? Vervain narrowed her eyes, scanning the woman before her as she never had her own reflection.