The Horns Of Ruin Part 20

"I would love to discuss theology, honest to Brothers I would." Another hammer into the door, another twisting of power against my s.h.i.+eld. "But I think you're telling the wrong story."

"You would have us deny the Scholar, I know. The Cult of Morgan would like to line up all the scions of Amon and cut us down, but we are trying to make good on-"

"That's not what I meant." I nodded to the archive that Ca.s.sandra had dropped when she changed into the bodysuit. "That's an archive of Amon. Came into the hands of my Cult just-" I lost my breath and something nearly forced the door. "Just f.u.c.king look at it. Ca.s.sandra highlighted the important stuff."

He wrinkled his brow and, as if there weren't an army of men on the other side of the door trying to kill us both, knelt curiously by the archive and ran his hands over it.

"Fascinating. A lost archive. And how did you say you came across it?" I didn't answer, and he didn't seem to need me to. "It must have been from the final flight of Amon. When he was driven from the city, he took his closest followers and went north. Hid among the scattered tribes of the Rethari. The armies of the Fallen Brother had to fight their way through legions of those scaled b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to get to him. Ah, but get to him they did. Much was lost, in those last days. Perhaps this was recovered there. But by whom, I wonder? One of your people?" he asked, and looked at me.

I was busy invoking mantles of strength and fortification, against the onslaught on the other side of that door. They had brought a lot of clever noetics to the fight, and I was having trouble holding out. I wished the guy would get to the reading, and stop blabbing on about the last days of Amon. Didn't have the breath to spare for the necessary obscenities, though. He seemed to get the idea.

"Oh, well. Perhaps those answers will come another day. Listen to me, prattling on about other days, when this is clearly our last. Ah. Some habits are hard to break." He spun up the archive and peered into the s.h.i.+fting icons of the screen. Even under duress as I was, I could tell that he was good with the machine, in a way that Ca.s.sandra couldn't approach. She had said that the ones picked for Alexander's special service were the best of the best. I believed it.

He took it all in quickly. The old man's face went slack as he absorbed the archive, wrinkles smoothing out, mouth hanging open. When it was done, he leaned back and looked up at the ceiling.

"The implications are ... curious." He rubbed his face and stood, then began to pace around the bodies of his fallen comrades. Hardly aware of his surroundings, or the battle I was fighting at the door. "This must have been purged from the Library's records, and our access to the mind below is severely monitored. But the path taken does not match the knowledge."

"Uh-huh," I grunted.

"Why would he kill his brother, when he's just determined that the noet must be distributed? My G.o.ds, what does this mean for the Ruin? If we've been cutting off other conduits and simply venting the extra power, while keeping Alexander at the top of his game ... What does this mean?"

"Uh-huh. Hm. Gah-" I was pushed away from the door, and had to draw my sword and fight back a brief tide of whites.h.i.+rts before I could get it closed again.

"I wonder if Alexander knew all this? I wonder if that's what led him to build this place? But he couldn't have, if he ordered Amon killed. It does reflect his understanding of noetic force, that there's only so much at a time and it can be distributed across many G.o.ds. That's the whole impetus behind the culling. But if Amon's observations are true- The door boomed open, throwing me across the room. I landed in a heap at the base of the dome. Malcolm watched me go, then looked curiously at the door. Realization dawned across his wrinkled old face.

"Ah. I see. Well, I suppose it was nice while it lasted."

"Quitter," I spat, and came swirling to my feet, blade already swinging through the stations of defense.

What came through the door was not what I expected. Not what I was prepared to face.

A group of coldmen, solid-looking guys with blades on their wrists, frost and fog wicking off their bodies as they walked in. And in their midst, standing taller than the rest, Barnabas Silent, Fratriarch of Morgan.

His skin was utterly pale against the harsh steel of his new garments. The injuries he had suffered while in captivity had faded away, though traces of the scars stood out in puckered white lines across his cheeks. He stood tall, as he always had. Pewter blue greaves and chest plate had been bolted on over his robe, and the lower half of his face was covered with a plate-mail bevor. His eyes were as clear as gla.s.s, and they leaked oily tears down his wrinkled face. In his hands he held a wicked hammer of blue steel, just as he had in his youth.

"Don't look at me like that, Eva. This is difficult enough," he said. His voice was a static-laced grating, only hinting at the gentle man who had raised me.

"What have they done, Barnabas?" I whispered.

"Killed me, Eva. Killed me and raised me and made me into something else."

"And have they sent you to do the same to me?"

He shook that great, heavy head of his and smiled.

"They sent me because there is no one else you would listen to. This has all been an awful mistake, Eva. They learned about the archive from their agents, but didn't know what it was. They kidnapped me because they suspected, because they were startled that the Fratriarch of Morgan would a.s.sociate with an Amonite. It was a horrible, brutal thing to do, but it is done. What Alexander has done is unforgivable. What he has done to our Cult, to our G.o.d ..." He placed the palm of his hand against his chest. "What he has done to us, Eva, can never be undone. And it can never be repaid. But this has to stop."

I put the point of my sword into the ground in front of me, like a statue at guard in the king's chamber.

"You have to be kidding me, Frat. Unforgivable? Does that even begin to cover two centuries of ... of deception? I have no interest in that debt being repaid. You're right there. It can't be repaid, like some kind of bar tab." I drew the sword to my side, tip still on the ground, and leaned against the pommel with all my weight. "But what settlement I can make in Alexander's flesh, I'll take."

"Think about that. Think of the consequences to the Fraterdom, Eva. What will become of the tribes of man, if the last of their G.o.ds falls? And think about who would benefit from such chaos." He took a great step toward me. The air around me chilled, and my lungs ached with the sudden cold. "Morgan has been the tool of Alexander for too long. Do not submit yourself to a new master, just to spite your old."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"The Rethari," Malcolm answered. He was sitting on the archive as if it was a barrel, his hands folded neatly in his lap. "This archive must have come from them, yes? It was lost in their lands, and has not been seen since. The Cult of Morgan did not go looking for it, and yet here it is. Mysteriously."

"And who better to benefit from the turning of the divine cycle, Eva?" Barnabas said. "When mankind falls, it is the snakes that will feed on the body."

"You know about that?" I asked. "About the cycle?"

"I know now. Dying and living again have brought me a certain ... clarity?" Another step closer. He whispered, "About you as well, girl. A great many strange things, about you."

"What?" I asked, backing up. The rest of them were looking at us strangely. They hadn't heard. Barnabas smiled and shook his head.

"They raised me to ask you to turn back. Yes, Alexander has sinned against us. In a moment of rage and weakness and jealousy, he struck down our G.o.d Morgan. Horrified, he tried to cover his action. Amon paid the price that Alexander could not stand. In the end, he has done everything he could since that time to atone for those twin evils. He has raised mankind up, and held the tribes together. He has arranged to keep the memory of his fallen brothers alive, through their scions. And he has kept the cycle from turning, for all these years. For that mercy, for that atonement, you must turn aside."

I sheathed my sword with a great deal more spinning and show than was necessary. I was furious. I needed both hands to express it.

"Mercy. Atonement. He murdered both of his brothers, one out of jealousy and one out of cowardice. His every action has been selfish, and his every purpose bereft of honor. You want me to stop, because if I don't that G.o.d may die? Honestly, Barnabas. How can we let a G.o.d like that live?"

"The Rethari will ascend, and the days of man-"

"Will be d.a.m.ned! And the Rethari should rise up! If this is the best we can do with that divinity, then let them have it for a while. Maybe we'll learn something of atonement, then." The rest of the room had pulled back. The crowd of whites.h.i.+rts at the door, the troupe of coldmen. Even Barnabas. Blasphemy felt good. It felt honest, for once. "You don't believe this, do you, Fratriarch? That we should honor the memory of Morgan by honoring his murderer? That the Betrayer should be protected because he's the only G.o.d we have left?"

"The alternative is unacceptable," he said, sadly.

"You speak as if there actually are alternatives. As if choosing between no G.o.d and that G.o.d were a choice."

"Eva, please." He raised his hammer between us, holding the shaft parallel to the ground, one wide hand under the steel head, the other grasping the base. "Please, no."

I stood straight as I could. There was a heaviness to the room, a cold void that was waiting to be filled with blood and fire. I drew my sword, and the rasp of it tore through me like a hook.

"Do what you must, Fratriarch. But I will not stand aside."

There was silence all around us. He bowed his head and touched a dead finger to his forehead. No one moved.

"I am not going to fight you, Eva Forge. The time for that is past. I think they hoped that I would, when they plucked me from the grave. They did not believe you would be willing to strike me down." He laid the head of his hammer on the floor with a mighty thud, and crossed his hands on the base of the shaft. "They were wrong, on both accounts. These others may try to oppose you, but I will not."

There was half a breath where the six coldmen exchanged querying glances with their goggle eyes. They had not even raised their hands before I struck. Best not give them the luxury of certainty. I invoked as I moved, striking between words, rus.h.i.+ng forward and falling back with the rhythm of my invokation.

"The Fields of Erathis! The River that Roared and Bled! Having- warry, Belhem, the Legions of Tin-Terra, the Legions of the Scale!" The first coldman fell, even as my blade pa.s.sed through him and the next one was coming up. "Morgan stood there, he stood against them all. He stood as the warrior." A spinning block, blade's edge against his knee, blade's flat against his head, pommel to chest, upstroke and then down. He fell. "The champion, the hero, the hunter. My blade is bound to him!" And I realized I was just talking, but my blade traveled on. The next two were circling me carefully, the final two rus.h.i.+ng up to join the circle. "I am bound to him! To the battle, to the grave, to the hunt! I commit myself to blade and to soul, and never may the Warrior die!"

And something happened. I knew Morgan was dead, but his power lived on. This was something I had never been taught in monastery, never really thought about. Amon was dead, and yet his power was all around us, in the machines that fed the city, in the Cants of Making and Unmaking. Alexander lived, and his scions flourished. But Morgan was dwindling. Because we had bound ourselves to the memory of his days, and not the glory that had come after, to the battles that were fought in his name, with his power. To the heroes who had followed in him. I had been serving a dead man, rather than the living power that had sustained the Cult since his death. And yet I could feel the power of Morgan welling up around me, though I was speaking no invokation I had been taught.

"I bind myself to Barnabas," I howled, "hammers flas.h.i.+ng, battle raging. To Tomas, to Isabel." I racked my brains for the history of the Cult, for the great Fratriarchs and Paladins who had come before me, and after Morgan. "Clovis on the ramparts of Messit. Pure and High Yelden, Paladin of the OverArch. Katherine, Kaitlyn. Sweet Anna, b.l.o.o.d.y Jennifer. To the Paladins who held the walls of Dalling Gate for a hundred days, and the Paladins who marched against the Rethari, to bring the traitor Amon to justice. May they be forgiven. May we all be forgiven, and justified, and remembered forever. May the Warrior never die!"

And I struck, G.o.ds, I struck like lightning and fire and stone and blood. I struck with rage and purity, the light of three hundred years of divine service coursing through my skin and fire arcing from my blade, my face, from the strength of my arms. I blasted that room, those who stood against me, those who didn't get out of the way. That room saw the binding of this new G.o.d.

When I stopped, I was alone. The room was a ruin of broken bodies and fragments of arcane and noetic light, glimmering like snowflakes. Barnabas stood at the center of the room, hands still crossed on his hammer, head bowed, eyes closed. He was spattered with the black, cold blood of those monsters.

"What you have done, Eva, cannot be undone." He sighed deeply, hefted his hammer, and walked out of the room. As he went, he turned back to me, just once. "I hope you can carry this through. There is no other choice."

When he was gone I stood in the center of the room and gathered my wits. Energy was thrumming through my body and through my blade. There was a noise at the door, and I turned to it. A whites.h.i.+rt, peering into the room. I moved quickly to the corridor. There were a lot of them, and they had bullistics.

"What will you do, to stand against the Warrior?" I growled. Pulses of heaviness rolled off me, pus.h.i.+ng against the walls and the floor, pus.h.i.+ng against this cadre of gentleman soldiers.

The front row of Healers popped open their shotguns and let the sh.e.l.ls clatter to the floor. Behind them, another whites.h.i.+rt emptied his clip, and then another. Soon the floor was rattling with unspent cartridges. When the last threat vanished-and I could feel that diminishment in them, could feel the empty weapons all around-when they were defanged, I nodded and stepped back into the room. Malcolm, who had retreated to the other side of the dome, came tottering back into sight. He was hugging the little archive against his chest.

"I'm not sure what to think of that, lady. I wish you hadn't killed my friends, but I don't think I'd have missed this for anything."

"I have freed you. I will free all of the Scholars. You may go."

"You'll probably want to rethink that. We've been under heel for two hundred years. That's an awful powerful grudge to bear." He scratched his brow and nodded. "And we aren't all pleasant old men. Hardly any of us are, actually."

"Be that as it may, I will see the wrong done to you righted. It is only just."

"Just isn't the best course, always. But I'm not going to stop you. Do you mind-"

He stopped and turned to the dome. One of the pressurized doors unsealed, and a cloud of fog vented into the room.

"There was someone in there? You sent some poor d.a.m.n fool into the mind's archive? What the h.e.l.l were you thinking!" He dropped the archive and ran to the bottom rung.

"She's an Amonite," I said. "She'll be fine."

"Oh no she won't. h.e.l.l, that'll just make it worse. Brothers d.a.m.n h.e.l.l, lady, do you just go around pus.h.i.+ng all the b.u.t.tons in a factory?"

The door finally creaked open. Ca.s.sandra stepped into view. My heart jumped. She was hurt. Something was wrong with her.

She stood just inside the door to the dome, wavering slightly. The pressure suit hung in tatters, her pale skin steaming in the air. The b.l.o.o.d.y handprint between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pulsed through the remains of her clothing. She put a hand against the dome to steady herself and ripped the suit's mask from her head. Long black curls tumbled out and around her face. She was hunched over, like she was catching her breath. When she looked up, I could see that her eyes were nothing but ash.

"Ca.s.s!" I yelped, and jumped for the ladder. She collapsed forward, skinning her knee on the iron sill of the door before pinwheeling out into open air. I collided with her falling body, and we landed in a heap. I wrenched myself around and cradled her head, then laid her down. She looked up at me with empty eyes, tears that were nothing but soot smearing across her temples.

"Ca.s.sandra, what happened?"

"Amon," she whispered. "Amon lives."

*he girl is mad," Malcolm snapped. He stood over the both of us, kneading his hands into his robe. "I don't care how talented an Amonite she was, looking into that archive without the proper training will have broken her."

"It's sure as h.e.l.l done something to her," I said. I brushed a flake of ash from Ca.s.sandra's cheek. She didn't seem to be in any pain, but neither did she seem herself. I was starting to lean toward Malcolm's interpretation of her condition. She was sitting against the curve of the dome, her hands limp by her sides, looking around the room. Even though she didn't have any eyes.

"The archive is ... How to explain it?" Malcolm sputtered. "That man who was just here, Barnabas. Who was he?"

I turned to the old guy. He did like the tangents. "Fratriarch of Morgan. He died at the hand of the Betrayer. I was supposed to be guarding him at the time."

"Then it wasn't him. Not really. The dead don't walk, or reason, or argue. But Alexander has a trick that lets him capture the essence of a man, and put it back in the body later on."

"The coldmen?"

"Oh, yes. What a name for it. The coldmen. That's exactly what they are. Anyway, to the point, the archive is like that. A bit of Amon's soul was saved. Bottled up, and kept in there. Just the thinking parts, mind you. Not the ... Betraying things."

I sighed. "None of that matters, you realize. Alexander was really the Betrayer all along. What should we do with the girl?"

"Oh. Oh, I don't know. I'm not a Healer, am I?"

"The bottle doesn't hold the soul," Ca.s.sandra said. "And that soul hasn't been bottled, anyway."

"Elephants like penguins, but penguins aren't really elephants," Malcolm answered. "Gibberish."

"I can't imagine why you didn't go into the healing arts, sir. You have such a Healer's manner about you."

"Really? I never thought it would suit me, honestly."

The power of whatever I had invoked was long gone from my body. I was tired. Despite the surety of my words earlier, I really had no idea where I was going from here. Barnabas had been right, just as right as he had been dead. So what if Alexander killed his brothers two hundred years ago? From the looks of things, he was all that was holding the Fraterdom together. Even if I could challenge a G.o.d, killing him would get me nothing but an empire of ruin, followed shortly by an invasion from the Rethari. Which is probably what they were after. Probably why they gave us the archive in the first place.

On the other hand. He had killed Morgan, his brother. He had framed Amon, his blood. And he had used the Scholar's research to learn about the divine cycle, and to harness as much of the power as he could hold. He had tortured and oppressed the scions of Amon to perfect whatever process he was using to hold back the cycle. And now that the scions of Morgan had discovered the truth of it, he was hunting us and killing us. Had killed all of us, a.s.suming the mock trials and authentic executions had taken place in the shadow of the Strength. Had killed all of us but one. And what was I supposed to do? Forgive that? Forget that?

So this is what I was left with. Bring down the Fraterdom, or let a murderer of G.o.ds off the hook. There was no winning. And when there is no win condition, all you can do is fight, as best you can, as long as you can. May the warrior never die.

Malcolm had his hands around Ca.s.sandra's wrists, and was peering at her face. "I think she'll live," he said. "Though her mind ... Who knows?"

I looked at the girl's face, and wondered what she had done to deserve this. What any of us had done. That she would be so ... maimed, just as Amon was being justified. Not that it would do the old, dead G.o.d much good. But it would have done her some good, I think. Something was boiling in my mind. I looked up at Malcolm.

"His name be praised," I said. "His body held tight."

Malcolm startled, but covered it quickly.

"I'm sorry, what?" he said.

"You said that. You or your friend. In the hallway, when you were going to the other room. We overheard you. It's how we knew where the archive was to be found." I stood up and crowded the old man's s.p.a.ce. "What did you mean by that?"

"It's just ... It's a ritual that we have. A blessing." He blinked rapidly and looked up at me. "May the warrior never die. That sort of thing."

"When I say that, I mean that we are all warriors, those of us in the line of Morgan. That he and I and every blade-wielding, bully-toting fool who has bled out on some gore-smeared battlefield far from home are of one blood. One spirit. That the warrior is all of us, and will always live. So." I poked him in the chest. "When you say that thing about Amon's body-what are you talking about?"

"Nothing, nothing. Forget you heard it."

"You have his body. Don't you? That bull about the archive being a bit of his mind, held in a bottle-"

"Bulls.h.i.+t," Ca.s.sandra sang, like a child.

"Bulls.h.i.+t," I repeated. "You have him in there, don't you? Amon, b.l.o.o.d.y Scholar of the Brothers Immortal, founder of the city of Ash. He really is alive, isn't he?" I stabbed my finger at the dome. "He's right in there!"

"Well," Malcolm said. "Not ... right ... in there."

This is the story of Amon's death. After the united forces of Morgan and Alexander punched through the Rethari homelands and dragged the Scholar back to Ash, there was a trial. A brief trial. When the sentence was read, Amon was bound in chain and placed in his famous boat. The boat was set on fire and then pushed out into the bay. The whole city gathered on the docks and watched the b.a.s.t.a.r.d burn, cheering as he screamed and cheering even louder when the boat failed and sank, and his screams were cut off by the black, cold water of the lake. Burned and drowned, and at the time we all felt that was too good for him, but it was the sentence Alexander, newly crowned G.o.dking of all the Fraterdom, handed down.