The Godless (43 page)

Ayae's voice cracked on the first word, but the second was strong, clear. “What … what do you want from me?”

“It is said that a Keeper will not attack a Keeper, that to do so invites the wrath of all the cursed upon you.” She lifted up the drink in a salute. “Because of that, I would like you to carry our evidence through the gates of Yeflam to Benan Le'ta, to ensure that when we fall back, there is someone waiting for us at the gate of Yeflam.”

 

7.

 

Bueralan descended last, watching the unmoving silhouette of Dural as he was lowered slowly into the darkness.

Once his feet touched mud he released the rope, leaving it slack while his eyesight adjusted to the frail light at the bottom of the shaft. Constantly under threat from shadow, he could make out the shapes of those around him, but their details—their expressions—eluded him. Yet he could see that one of the priests had lifted the glass orb that had been used to light the path he'd swum earlier with Zaifyr and that either Handsome or Ugly was crouched before the crawlspace that led deeper into the mine.

“You are going to say into the smell, aren't you?” said the latter. “That's what you're going to say to me, isn't it?”

“Take a deep breath.”

It was hard going, more so for Bueralan whose hands were still handcuffed together, forcing him to move like a three-legged dog. Yet, it was better than when he had swum before: the sense of being crushed by stone had abated, though it still lingered on the edge of his consciousness. Halfway through the crawlspace he realized that enough mud had worked its way up between his wrists and chains that he could pull his hands out, if he twisted and turned enough. It would not be easy, but he could do it, given enough time; but with Ugly behind and Handsome in front, and priests both in front and behind, the saboteur did not have the time and plodded on slowly, smiling grimly as those in front of him gagged on the putrid air ahead.

Once in the bolt hole himself, he held his breath and quickly pushed through the fissure into the City of Ger.

Or what remained of it.

A part of the stone roof had fractured, resulting in a large part of the cavern collapsing. No doubt the same explosion that had cleared out the rancid water had left its mark here. Standing on the path to the temple, his gaze adjusting to the pale light, Bueralan located the break point: the newly drilled holes in the ceiling. Those around him would have difficulty recognizing that, and he was caught in two minds about it: firstly, he believed it better not to explain it, not to tip the extent of Heast's plan; but he realized that it offered him an easy opportunity to thin out the numbers around him, an opportunity for either one of his guards to be sent back to the rope, to Dural, the general, the Faithful and their war.

“Tell me, Captain, how did this look before?” Mother Estalia stepped around him, the muddy priestess gazing up at the ruined ceiling. “Was it complete?”

“Mostly,” he replied. “The paths had eroded and houses crumbled. But there was destruction as well, evidence of fighting.”

“Yes, of course.” Slowly, she began walking down the street, the ruined buildings on either side shadowed crypts, their open doors dark depths that held bones and little else. “The people who lived in Ger's tomb were eventually killed by the first of the Mireean people, most of who came in search of gold. What they panned from rivers and dug from the ground laid the foundation for the city that they built around the Spine, the original base of the city above us. But they first had to murder the people who lived beneath, who saw everything in it as sacred to Ger himself and the Spine of Ger as a holy artifact, a walk they took in birth and death, a journey across their god to celebrate and mourn. At their peak, those people numbered twenty thousand if I recall correctly.”

“They were eradicated.”

“They did not have a standing army,” she said. “They were a fractured community, divided by their cities and temples, with no centralized government. They fought a guerilla campaign with intermittent attempts at suing for peace for over three decades. Their enemy was similar in that it had no central government, but their wealth eventually demanded that they come together and form one, which resulted in the building of the first Mireea. It was there that the People of Ger destroyed their last chance for peace, when they burned the city to the ground. The Mireeans hired an army to clear out the caves, a campaign that took eight bloody years but which saw the end of a people and their holy work.”

“And that is why you're marching on Mireea now?” Ahead of him, Bueralan could hear the rush of water, the start of the river. “Because of that work that was stopped?”

“Always the spy, I see.”

He shrugged. “It's mostly curiosity.”

“The Mireeans are a faithless people, that much is true, and their deaths are a firm statement in this new world, but … no, that is not the reason.” Ahead, the river appeared, the violent red light of it brighter the second time, stronger, as if in response to the destruction around it. “Within this tomb there are twenty-three temples. That is what is recorded, at any rate, but I would not be surprised if there were more. Each of the buildings was built over a fissure directly over Ger's body. It gave the priests access to the wounds that he had sustained against his brothers. For the centuries that they lived here the priests tended his wounds, attempting to heal him. It was their belief that he would rise again. Which way, Captain?”

Bueralan indicated to the left and, slowly, they began to follow the river.

“We do not wish to heal Ger.” Estalia raised her voice over the water. “His time is done, as is the case with all the old gods. Very few will argue with that. But there is power still in him, power that we have been sent to take and to return.”

“To return to who?”

“To the gods' child.” The red light mixed with her smile, stained her teeth. “Why do you think the gods went to war, Captain?”

 

8.

 

Zaifyr remained seated for longer than he intended, his mind adrift.

He had not attended Heast's meeting, but that had not surprised him. After the messenger had been and gone, leaving a written note to both he and Ayae, Zaifyr had known that he would not set foot onto the roof of The Pale House. There had been no insult. No demand. In truth, the letter had contained nothing out of the ordinary. It was a simple request by the Captain of the Spine and, while Zaifyr did not dislike the aging soldier, the illusion that he was a cheaply paid mercenary at the other's call was only that and he had no desire to perpetuate it.

Truthfully, he had lost his desire to do so shortly after his arrival. The Quor'lo had been of enough interest for him to ignore the presence of the Keepers. But Samuel Orlan, followed by Ayae, had ensured that he'd never been able to assume the role he had sought to play. He should have recognized it when he had stepped into the burning building, drawn by the presence of Ayae, the feel of her power, and reached through the fire to slit the throat of the Quor'lo.

“Why shouldn't we be interested?” Jae'le said, months earlier. Zaifyr had been living in his house, a huge, sprawling, three-leveled building that twisted through two ancient trees, bent to the will of the man who had lived in it for a century, hidden deep within the Qarli jungle. “It is some distance from us, I allow that, but Mireea is built upon the body of Ger and if an army led by priests does truly march on it, shouldn't we be interested?”

“You don't even know if this is true.”

But he did.

Zaifyr should have known as well. He should have looked at his brother—the Animal Lord, the First Immortal—and known that he was not a man given to fancy.

Yet, it was also true that Jae'le had become solitary, a hermit who had, for centuries, only left his home to travel a narrow path that snaked through the broken peaks of the Eakar Mountains, to sit outside the crooked madhouse he had built. It was he who had opened it and offered to take him in, to care for him. That was why Zaifyr had always returned to the house, to its twisted limbs, slow heat and animals that spoke no words to him.

What did his brother know? The question was one he repeated as the suns rose and set. Why had he insisted that Zaifyr leave shortly after his arrival? What game was being played?

No answer was forthcoming. The afternoon's sun rose, the heat sinking into his bones, and he felt fatigue seep into him. He knew that Jae'le had kept information from him, but that was not unusual: all five brothers and sisters had done so in the past, himself included. He kept his secrets partly as a by-product of his desire not to be judged, and partly because he had grown disinterested in the debates and squabbles of his siblings. He had not, as he had said to Jae'le, visited Aelyn once his ship had been pulled into dock outside Yeflam; not because of their past, but because he did not wish to be drawn into the squabble that existed between her and the others regarding her Keepers and their ideologies.

He had only his own apathy to blame, a fact he could recognize now, after having spent time with Ayae.

He ran a hand through his hair, shaking the charms, and rose. Her life was so strongly tied to Mireea and the war upon Ger's corpse that she would not be free of it for a time, if ever. Some wars malingered—he knew that, certainly. They dug beneath the skin to bury in the veins and blood, to become new muscles, new pulses. Zaifyr had seen men and women become entrenched in history, unwilling to leave at first, and unable to do so later: Aela Ren, the Innocent, was one such man, and his war would only end when another killed him.

If
another killed him.

The comparison between Ayae and Ren was an uncomfortable one and Zaifyr let it fall from his mind as he left Ayae's house. He walked the streets, looping two blocks around The Pale House
to his empty hotel, in case one of the Mireean Guard or Heast saw him. Not that he suspected the old soldier would say a word to him; they would glance at each other, one would nod, but no words would be exchanged. Still, it was easier—and a cynical curve to his lips emerged at the thought—to take the longer road and mingle with the people there.

While doing exactly that he spied a woman, her left eye damaged and scarred by a bird's claws, emerging from a simple house.

Apart from the injury, there was nothing about the woman that would have drawn his eye: she was of medium height, wearing the mismatched leather armor that nearly all Mireeans wore now. By her side was a short sword, the pommel plain, the scabbard likewise. Her hair was short, brown with gray flecked through it, and Zaifyr thought that she was no older than forty, a tanned white like many of the men and women who lived in Mireea.

Slowing his pace, the charm-laced man followed her, though it soon became apparent to him that he need not have worried. From over the shoulder of two large men (“How many are there? All I see is a sea of them,” said one; “I've heard ten thousand,” said one to the other) he could have reached out, could have taken the discolored cloth she raised to her wounded eye, to the pus and blood that further stained it, that caused her to wince.

She turned at a T-junction, her objective seemingly the hospital at the end. Zaifyr moved around two men between them, quickening his pace, but waited until she had pushed open the door to close the gap, catching the door as it swung shut. The lack of sound caused her to turn.

Her face, tightly drawn in pain, revealed its recognition. She turned and sprinted deeper into the hospital and Zaifyr, momentarily startled by a quality of desperation, of need, in her expression, hesitated. He gave her four to five steps, time enough to burst through a door that he shouldered through, time enough to find her in a room full of occupied beds, each holding a mercenary from Steel, with a pair of healers working through the ranks.

“What is this?”

One of the latter called out as Zaifyr reached the woman, as he grabbed her shoulder and felt it give beneath his hand, felt it crumble with fragility, as if something were rotten beneath.

Then, blood splattered across his face.

He stepped back, momentarily confused. He had not hit her, had not attacked her—and then he saw, wiping the blood from his eyes, her smile, her bloody smile, as she stepped away from him, as she stumbled to the ground. A wave of nausea followed and he staggered, surprised, shocked. He had not—he could not—he raised his bloody hand to the approaching healers, attempting to call out—

He fell to the hard, white-tiled floor.

 

THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF BIRTH

For many years, I have looked upon the city beneath me, trying to see how its dark towers and lamp-lit streets could help the voiceless. I performed terrible acts and allowed terrible acts to be done in my name. Worse, the men and women who perform these acts thank me for the privilege, for the moral certainty, for the frames I have given them that absolve all from their cruelty. They thank me though they need not, they thank me because they believe I am the child of a god.

But I am not.

I am not, no, and the terrible truth is that everything my brothers and sisters and I have done has been with a belief in an absolute authority that we do not have.

—Qian,
The Godless

 

1.

 

He was not dead, but neither was he alive, not as he knew it.

Zaifyr's body lay on the floor beneath him, familiar yet not. He could feel a chill in his spine, but it was dull, the pain hidden behind another's. That pain, in contrast, was a full-body chill, of empty veins and lungs, of cold, cold emptiness sharply accentuated around the shoulder and the eye, the echo of brittle bones frozen deeply within him. Within
her
.

He felt the woman who had died in front of him as clearly as he did himself, the second presence surrounding him as he gazed not just at his prone form, but at hers as well.