There’s another sensation, too, like she’s passing through invisible veils. She has to push at the empty air; something unseen and unnamable passes through her. It tickles her skin, her bones, her mind – it’s like the feeling she experienced on the mountain, just before the goddess of the mountain nearly beat her to death, but she doesn’t get the same feeling of hostility here. Just a feeling of presence. One time, back in Severast, Cari robbed the house of a dead man. He was a wealthy merchant who died suddenly, and all his family and servants were away at the funeral rite in the temple of the Dancer. Cari had slipped away from the rites, swapped her acolyte’s robes for the more practical garb of a sneak-thief, and made her way through the cobbled lanes of Severast until she found the empty house.
She remembers making her way through the rooms, knowing the owner was gone, but still sensing him everywhere. Papers left on a desk, a half-finished bottle of wine, a caged parrot demanding attention – as though the merchant had just stepped out for a moment. A house that was unoccupied but not empty.
The aft hold is like that.
Captain Hawse is there, waist-deep by a makeshift floating altar, on which he’s laid the sacred icons of the Lord of Waters. Blue light wells from the water when he touches it. As Cari enters, there’s a sudden splash and ripple from the far side of the room. One of the Bythos, maybe, vanishing into the water.
The expression on Hawse’s face is one she’s never seen before. His eyes are closed – in prayer? In pain? – but he senses her approach.
“I said I would tell you, did I not?”
“What is this, captain?” asks Cari. It’s obvious what it is – a little temple to the Lord of Waters, with Hawse as priest. But in all the time she knew him, Hawse’s approach to religion was pragmatic. He made offerings to the Lord of Waters, but also to all the other sea-gods, to Kraken and St Storm and Vas and the Whale-God. Sailors are syncretists; you never know which god, if any, is going to have influence over the shifting currents and storms of the open ocean, so you hedge your prayers. “Have you gone hallowed on me?”
“The man you knew is dead, Cari,” says Hawse.
“How metaphorical are you being, here?”
Hawse ignores her, and speaks without opening his eyes. He recites rather than replies, as if he’s quoting some ancient prayer from thousands of years ago. “When the Sacred Realm of Ishmere made war upon the land of Ilbarin, there was much suffering. From Ishmere came the Kraken, bearing the temple-fleets, the armies of the mad gods. The sky darkened with the demon offspring of Cloud Mother. The hearts of brave men were dismayed by the horrors conjured by Smoke Painter, and the minds of women were poisoned by the whispers of Fate Spider. Woe and suffering came from Ishmere. Anathema upon the gods of Ishmere!
“The kindly gods sent forth a host of saints to defend the shores of Ilbarin. Their battle cries shook the mountain. Their blades were fire and thunder. To look upon them was to go mad with joy.”
She’s never heard him talk like this. Never heard him talk for so long. Hawse was always a man of few words.
“The Rose was caught between them. We were on our way back from Paravos, and I sailed us right into… into…” He opens his eyes, fixes his gaze on Carillon. Moistens his lips. “The Krakens stole the seas, and we couldn’t move. I saw the clouds eat my crew. I saw everything breaking. And they were in me, too. I was their battlefield. We all were. They’d command us, and we obeyed. Gods sending us this way and that. Jumping into the water. Or the sky. It was all one. Everything was broken. Pesh told me to kill, and I killed. But death was no release from their commands. Even the men I killed kept fighting. It was madness.”
She remembers the attack on Guerdon, the Kraken-waves that carried temples full of saints and monsters, the things in the clouds reaching down with their tentacles. The feeling that everything was breaking, everything was slipping away. She saw hundreds of people go mad as the gods approached. She had Spar to anchor her, but the things she saw that day still wait in her dreams.
She had power then. She could do something. How much worse to be utterly powerless before the wrath of the mad gods? To know that no matter how hard you tried, all your efforts could be brushed aside in an instant. To know that you were nothing compared to them, a mote of dust, a drop of water in a torrent. Like the whole world is theirs, to be remade as they wish, and you count for nothing.
Captain Hawse plunges his hands into the water, and the blue glow intensifies. He closes his eyes again. “All was lost. My ship was lost. My crew… I had to save them. And the Lord of Waters heard my prayer. I swore that I would serve him with all my soul, and with His great hand, he lifted the Rose out of the storm and carried us to safety.”
Captain Hawse cups his hands, lifts them out of the water. He splashes the glowing blue water over the icon of the Lord of Waters on the altar. “I saw, too, the hateful gods of Ishmere attack my Lord. I saw the Kraken wrap tentacles around Him to drag him into the blackest depths of the ocean, where the damned dwell. Smoke Painter poisoned him. The Lion Queen tore open his stomach, and the waters poured out. I saw my god sacrifice himself to save me and my crew.” Tears run down Hawse’s cheeks, and they too glow blue, leaving luminescent tracks on his face.
“That’s what will bind Dol Martaine, Cari. His life and mine belong to the Lord of Waters.”
Cari leaves Hawse at prayer, or communing with the Bythos, or whatever he’s doing down there, and climbs back on deck. She’s glad to be back in the open. A cool night breeze blows in from the sea, and she shivers.
She wants to climb. She’s always liked to be up high, up in the rigging, or on rooftops and spires. She likes getting to places where no one can follow her, where no one can see her but she can still watch the world below. Back in Guerdon, when she could choose where to live, she made herself an eyrie atop one of the tallest spires in the New City. It’s a stupid thought, she tells herself – even if she wasn’t limping and sore, even if the Rose still had her graceful masts, she’s supposed to stay hidden.
So, she walks around the deck, prowls through the empty cabins. The sound of Hawse’s prayers from below mixes with the endless washing of the waves, but it’s not a restful sound. She’s not sure if she likes this new side of Hawse. Faith in the gods is not something she trusts – it’s a form of madness, surely, to put your trust in such things. Or anything, for that matter. She trusts Spar. Trusted Rat, sort of. And once, she’d have said she trusted Hawse.
She trusted the captain he was. Not the priest he’s become.
The urge to run wells up in her. Well, limp, but she can still move. There’s food in Hawse’s cabin, maybe money. A sword, at least, perhaps some other weapons. She could try to get around the mountain again. Dol Martaine said that the Ghierdana control all the ships leaving Ilbarin, but that means that people do leave. She could sneak aboard. All she needs to do is reach the mainland, and then she can find her way south to Khebesh, right. Maybe that’s why Hawse took the fucking book – to keep me from leaving. What if he’s in league with Dol Martaine, and Martaine’s gone to get the Ghierdana?
The stairs creak. She tenses, ducking into a hiding place, hand reaching for the knife that isn’t there, but it’s just Hawse coming back up, wringing out his shirt and pulling his coat around him against the chill of his wet clothes. He digs through his pockets, searching the wrong hip pockets first, just like he always does. A gesture made so very familiar over the years.
That’s the Hawse she wants to be here.
“Dol Martaine said your god is dead,” she says.
He lights the pipe, ambles over to her. “Gods cannot die. They always return in some form. They are outside death.”
“I killed Pesh.”
His face is unreadable.
“In Guerdon. They made an alchemical bomb, a god-bomb. It annihilates gods. No coming back. That’s why the Ishmerians left Ilbarin. I killed their goddess, captain.”
He’s silent for a long time before he speaks again. “The
Bythos already told me. They would not have guided you here otherwise. And Martaine’s half right – the Lord of Waters fell in the invasion. But nothing is ever wholly lost. He shall come back, not as he was, perhaps. Nothing will ever be as it was. But he’ll come back.” He sighs. “I’m a poor priest, Cari. I’ve never studied the scriptures, and I don’t know much about interpreting omens. But I believe that the Lord of Waters has a special purpose for you. If you must get to Khebesh, then I’ll help you. But you must be patient: you need time to heal.”
CHAPTER NINE
Artolo runs his ghost-fingers over the barrel of the gun. Flexes them, to make sure they’ve got the strength and speed to pull the stiff trigger when the moment comes. He looks up at the barren hillside and imagines Carillon Thay popping up from behind one of those rocks. Would shooting her be enough? The rifle’s chambered with oversized phlogistonic rounds, and the witch has woven spells around each bullet to make them even more potent.
No. Shooting would be too quick, too painless. Something slower.
Anyway, Thay isn’t his quarry today.
The witch points up the slope. “There’s the shrine,” she says, pointing with her armoured hand. She sounds breathless from the effort of weaving protective spells around Artolo, but this is dangerous work – the hunting of a god.
The shrine on the shoulder of the Rock of Ilbarin is an ugly thing, squat and rough-made, cut from the same stone as the mountain. There were other shrines and temples dedicated to the goddess of the mountain, but they’re all gone now. The rising seas drowned most of them, and the Ishmerians defiled the rest. This little shrine, high on the upper slopes, is perhaps the last.
He hesitates. “You said tearing down this shrine would provoke her.”
The witch shrugs. “She’s already provoked. She’s already active. Demolishing the shrine will make it harder for her to reform coherently. She’ll come back even more disorganised.”
Artolo raises the rifle, presses his eye to the scope. He trains it on the shrine. There’s a statue there, depicting the goddess Usharet. The statue is beautiful, a work of ecstatic devotion, every careful chip with the chisel a prayer. It depicts a young woman, tall and athletic, defiant as the mountain. Usharet, before the war.
“We’d better be quick, before she finds someone to saint,” mutters the witch. No doubt there are many souls among the survivors of Ilbarin who know the rites and prayers to please Usharet, to attract the attention of the goddess; if the whirling pattern of Usharet alighted on some compatible soul, that’d be trouble he doesn’t need.
Especially with Great-Uncle on the way back to inspect the yliaster refinery.
He sweeps the scope left and right, up and down the slope. Other than a few lazy whirls of dust, there’s no sign of movement in the blasted landscape.
“Nothing,” he mutters. “The bitch must be over on the west side of the Rock.”
“You’re thinking like a mortal,” replies the witch. Her armoured suit whirs as she surveys the landscape. “She’s everywhere on the mountain. She is the mountain. We need to get Her to concentrate Her being. Make Herself manifest. And then you shoot Her.”
The other two riflemen on either side of Artolo signal their acknowledgements. When the goddess Usharet was at the height of her power, she’d have shrugged off attacks from little weapons like these. But like the other gods of Ilbarin, she was broken by the Sacred Realm. She’s nothing but a mindless godhusk now. Greatly diminished, and soon, she’ll be diminished again.
Artolo grunts in acknowledgement. He checks his gun again, checks his fingers. There was a time when he’d have laughed in the face of a broken little goddess like Usharet. Laughed, then shot her in the face. But he’s not laughing now.
“Martaine!” he calls. Dol Martaine turns and hurries over to Artolo.
“Aye, sir?”
“Take four men. Blow up that shrine. Be on your guard – this will call Her, my witch says.”
“I’ve set up trigger-wards,” adds the witch. “They’ll go off before She manifests. That’ll give you a little warning.”
“How much warning?”
“Better than none. But not by much.”
“My life’s in your hands, boss,” says Martaine, shooting a sidelong glance at Artolo’s gloved fingers. That borders on insolence, and Martaine’s only Eshdana. He doesn’t get to speak out of line.
“Go,” snarls Artolo.
Martaine picks four men from the gaggle of beaters and sentries they’ve brought to this not quite godforsaken hillside, and they begin their slow ascent, carrying a bundle of alchemical explosives. They walk gingerly over the unstable rocks. Avoid the tangles of dead thorn bushes. Flinch at every shift in the wind.
Some of them look back, as if worried they’re being abandoned on this cursed hillside as sacrifices to Usharet. Martaine, to his credit, never looks back.
Artolo’s still not completely sure about Martaine, but it’s obvious the man has ambitions beyond this ruined island. Most of the other survivors just stumble around, hollow and confused, unable to reconcile their memories of what Ilbarin was with what it’s become. They cling to what can be salvaged from the past, as if they can wait out the destruction. Artolo’s seen survivors out of Ilbarin City dragging furniture with them, as if the floodwaters might soon recede and they can return to their homes. Trying to find some government official to complain to, when there hasn’t been a functioning government in Ilbarin in months. Wasting food on children, though there’s no hope of them seeing the next year. Idiots, all of them.
Martaine’s not like that, reflects Artolo. Maybe it’s a mark of a well-travelled man – seeing the world gives a breadth of vision that’s necessary to survive. You learn there are possibilities elsewhere, and there’s no sense tethering yourself to a dead cause, a dead past. There are always new lands to conquer.
“You travelled before I found you, yes?” he mutters to the witch.
“I did. All over the south, then up through the trading cities. Nearly went to the Archipelago. Ended up in Guerdon instead.”
She’s distracted, working her magic. He should pay attention himself. The goddess could manifest at any moment.
The glow of the warding runes laid down by the witch is unchanged. Martaine and his men have nearly reached the shrine.
His mind returns to Carillon. She deserves a slow death at his hands. Yes, it’ll have to be with his hands. She wasn’t the one who cut off his fingers – it was a punishment decreed by Great-Uncle – but it was her fault. Curse the gods, and all their fucking mad blessings. Handing out power on a whim, or according to some twisted philosophy that meant nothing in the real world – it disgusted him. Power should go to those strong enough to claim it, brave enough to use it. When Great-Uncle punished him, hard as it was it made sense. He’d failed the dragon, and so he suffered. Not because of some nonsensical sin, not because the gods were randomly cruel, and not because of some heavenly war. No, the dragons knew how the world really worked, once you stripped away all pretence, all the holy scriptures and divine commandments.
You were strong, or you suffered.
Ilbarin was his proof of that. This land of crushed and broken gods, without the wit or strength left to them to spawn a saint. Lawless and godless, too many people and not enough food. There’s only one way off Ilbarin, and he controls it. He can reward the worthy, the ones with the courage and sense and strength to become Eshdana, and the others suffer.
He’ll make Carillon suffer. He’ll… he’ll bury her on this mountain. There must be hidden caves in the depths of the Rock, cracks and crevasses where he can entomb her alive, down in the darkness, surrounded by stone, the roots of the thorn bushes pushing into the fecund stickiness of her eye sockets, drinking her soul…
That’s not my thought, he realises.
The warding runes flare. The ground shakes.
She’s right below them.
The witch senses it, too, but she’s clumsy in her articulated armour
, too slow to react. Artolo grabs her and sprints forward as the hillside explodes behind him. He shouts a warning, but it’s lost in the thunder of the eruption. Boulders crash around him. Dust billows up, and through the choking clouds he sees the goddess. He tries to bring the long rifle to bear, but she’s too close.
Witless, broken, but cunning like a fox. The goddess recognised the long guns, knew they were a danger to her.
The goddess is a leafless tree, barren and bare, twisting in the force of some unseen gale – but every time she bends, every time her long tangled arms reach down, they come up dripping with the entrails of one of Artolo’s men. She shakes her arms, scattering the gore like dew, and green shoots begin to sprout across the mountainside. Bits of rifle and rifleman land in front of Artolo, both horribly mangled.
Ghost-fingers close on the trigger. The recoil hammers through his body and tears at every old wound. He feels it in his finger-stumps, in the belly-wound, in his spine. The flash blinds him; his nose fills with the caustic stink of sulphur and phlogiston.
Usharet roars in pain. The blast catches her in the chest, nearly severing one arm. She comes running towards him, sliding – he’s standing in the path of a landslide. Thorn-fingers reach for him—
—And stop. Usharet’s frozen, held paralysed by the witch’s sorcery. A cage of ebony lightning flickers around the goddess, tendrils flickering and snatching at the human-shaped assembly of rock and dirt that makes up Usharet’s form.
“Can’t. Hold. Her,” groans the witch. Unearthly light blazes from every joint of the armour; black liquid drips from the witch’s wrists, sizzles on the ground. Every syringe in the armour clicks into position, pumping drugs into the witch’s sorcery-riddled body. If it were not for the rigidity of the locked armour, she’d be writhing in agony from the arcane backlash.
Artolo draws his dragon-tooth knife. The blade is blunt, but it’s still got power. He leaps on to the back of the frozen goddess, drives the blade like a chisel into the wound, cleaving the arm from the body. The arm falls apart, dissolving into its components in a rain of stones and roots and rot.
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