Read The Splintered Gods Online
Authors: Stephen Deas
Not that that helped her much. She crouched in her shell and waited for the dragon to open its mouth, for the fire to come and the dragon yard to turn into a blazing inferno, but the dragon simply swooped, flared its wings, flapped hard once and rose sharply away. The wash of air plucked the nearest slaves and soldiers in handfuls off the ground and scattered them like a farmer scattering seeds. All across the yard the shock of the dragon’s passing shoved fleeing screaming men in the back like a mule’s kick, sprawling them to the stone. The wind slammed into Liang’s shield. She saw the dragon rise over her. In its foreclaws it carried Zafir.
The dragon powered between the helpless glasships. It skimmed over them, smashed the heart out of the nearest with a single lash of its tail, gripped the glasship’s great disc with its hind claws before the vessel fell out of the sky, and levered it sideways through the air before landing on the back of the next. The first glasship, stricken, slid sideways and down, tipping and falling faster all the time. It clipped the eyrie rim as it plunged towards the storm-dark below, chipping a shard the size of a house from its outer disc and cracking it to the core. Lightning from its half-charged cannon arced across the stone. The glasship tumbled out of sight.
Looking for somewhere to shelter before the dragon brought the other two glasships down on top of them all, Liang glanced up. The dragon was sitting on the second glasship with Zafir beside it, gazing at the scurrying little figures of men beneath it, at the terrified slaves and the men of Vespinarr running this way and that, wild with dread; and Liang stared back, wondering not for the first time what kind of creature it really was, what it could become if Bellepheros stopped feeding it his potions, how such a monster
had ever come to exist and what it must have taken to tame it. She was still wondering when the dragon lazily turned its head to look at something else.
A man was standing on the wall where no man had been a moment ago. Then Liang saw another and another, coalescing out of the air around the eyrie; and as she watched, one appeared in the dragon yard beside the broken body of Baros Tsen, another winked into existence beside the ruined scaffold, and another beside Mai’Choiro Kwen, holding out a bladeless knife in warning.
The Elemental Men had come.
The dragon Silence plunged out of a sky so high and vast that only a dragon could understand it. The stars watched it leave them. The dragon spread its wings wide and seemed to glide, though it was still so high that there was no air to lift it. It fell, mile after endless mile, until the ground came to welcome it and the sun rose before it. Broken crags and cracked stone passed beneath, dry and almost dead but never quite. Scars in the brown earth marked where rivers once ran and might run again. Further towards the rising sun, broken cliffs rose out of the earth, misshapen things, crumbled scattered mesas packed ever closer until they merged into a plateau.
As the dragon flew on, it felt a whisper and changed its course. It flew over the top of a great chasm in the earth, a bottomless thing. A wind seemed to suck at it though the air was still, dragging it down. Calling it. It felt the touch of Xibaiya deep beneath the earth, the realm of dead souls through which every dragon passed between each life. It flew on and away.
In Xibaiya the Nothing slowly grew, the unravelling thing, the crack in the essence of everything summoned by the Black Moon to shred the world as the age of the Silver Kings reached its end. The cataclysm of the Splintering and the birth of the storm-dark. The dragon Silence had been there and had seen the crack first made; and then again, in Xibaiya, as it passed between its many lifetimes. It held those memories in iron claws of purpose now. The Nothing seeping from its cage, unravelling everything it touched, the essence of matter and life dissolved to foam and smoke. The dead earth goddess and her slayer, who had held the Nothing at bay for so long, gone.
Or not. The dragon Diamond Eye had tasted the Black Moon. Silence had felt the memory burn inside the fog of drowning that was the great dragon’s stifled mind. The dragon-queen had given
that taste a face and now the dragon Silence hunted. Among the canyons and the mesas below it, it sensed little ones. Thoughts. It fell out of the sky and tracked the incessant inner murmurings of the little ones. When it found them, it fell on them and snatched one away and perched itself on the ledge of a cliff and ate him. A black-skinned man. It hadn’t seen his like for such a long time, but it
had
seen them once, in that very first lifetime when the gods themselves had gone to war and dragons and sorcerers had fought and died until the Black Moon broke the world with unleashed imaginings.
Blood tasted good. A fresh kill, and now it wanted more.
It struggled to remember. How was the Black Moon free once again?
It was a child of the sun . . .
But that could not be.
Perched on pinnacles of stone, reaching out to drink in the world, the dragon Silence found again the presence felt from atop the Godspike. A touch of something immense. The ghost of an echo of a memory of the greatest half-god of them all. The Black Moon. The god-killer.
I see you.
The sun set and the stars came out to mock it once more. The dragon Silence flew on. The plateau broke into a landscape of swirling stuttering stone and sand that led it to the sea, to a broken city and a place where a mighty monolith of stone rose from the waves, a place remembered from long ago when the Silver Kings had left their chaos and their dragons and their monsters amid the endless legions of little ones. It circled and swooped and settled on the top of a single tower made of glass and gold, a strange sorcery, weak and fragile when set against those it remembered, yet one not tasted in its many lives before.
It had been here long ago and in another life. There had been other relics. The remnants of creatures made to fight the gods and others of its own kin too. It had been different then. Its body had been fully grown and strong, big even for its own kind, sharp-minded and filled with desires. The dragon Diamond Eye had been here too in those years after the world had shattered. It had flown and plucked giant stone men out of the water and dashed
them on the rocks the way seabirds dropped crabs to break their shells and feast on the soft insides.
The dragon Silence reached out its senses and found the stone men were here still, a few of them. A handful, lurking under the water but twisted now. Dulled in their own way. Held and bound by some sorcery.
So many strange magics. The world had changed.
The dragon remembered it had come with a purpose. It searched and found again what it was looking for. The Black Moon, some echo of a memory of it, was near.
It hunted. Back in the desert on the edge of the blasted city it found little ones, a hundred of them and more; and what greater pleasure could there be than to fall among them and taste their fear; but it had come to them for another reason and so it kept to the sky. In the deep of night it soared overhead, and perhaps one of them might look up and see a star flicker off and on as the dragon passed before it or perhaps not, but they would never sense its presence. It flew in circles and reached down, sifting through inane chattering thoughts until it found what it was looking for, the one who carried the echo.
It had names. Berren. Crowntaker. Bloody Judge.
And the dragon saw that it had another name too, a hidden name. Skyrie. Pieces of two souls merged together, the one trying to hide inside the other
And deeper still, the echo. Buried where almost no one would find it. A splinter of a half-god. The dragon wondered who could have done such a thing and why and how, who could have made a little one like this, so cleverly done and difficult to unravel – but dragons were immortal and had time until the end of the world.
However long that would be.
A memory haunted Berren now and then, as clear as a temple bell. It came from long ago when his life had been different. He’d come from three years of war, of fighting for the Sun King to buy freedom for his lover Fasha and their son from Princess Gelisya of Tethis. The winning of her back was a story in itself, but it had ended well enough, with the three of them safe and free and together; and after he’d stolen them away, Berren had carried them through Tethis to the castle on the top of the cliff. He’d taken a pair of horses and left the men he’d fought beside for all those years and simply gone, done with it all – or so he thought. He’d ridden with Fasha over his saddle and the sleeping babe in his arms, and now when he closed his eyes he saw them clearly again as though no time had passed at all. Sometimes he’d stopped simply to look at her face. He’d taken them to a tavern, a place whose name he’d never known, and gazed at the face of his son, a face he’d never seen until that day; and when at last Fasha had stirred, he’d carried her outside. The day had been a glorious one, a warm late-afternoon sun tingling his skin. They’d sat in the shade together while he told her everything that had happened. They’d shared wine and got drunk together and she’d sat on his lap and they’d kissed for hours and time had slipped away between them. Years he’d waited to feel like that again. It had been the most achingly beautiful thing. He could see her clearly even now, her face only a few inches from his own, strands of hair falling across it, shy and smiling and aglow with happiness.
He sat quietly in the slave cage, motionless, remembering again. A tear rolled over his cheek because it was gone, all of it. He remembered her, how beautiful that moment had been, how perfect, how it had seemed that the world could do whatever it wanted and they’d meet it head on, the two of them hand in hand
together, the happiness of that evening an armour as unbreakable as the Sun King’s coat of burning mail. Other moments belonged beside it, crowding around and clamouring to be remembered, but the vision of Fasha in the tavern by the woods was the worst of all. So heartbreakingly full of joy. That moment in the woods when the world had been made of her smile felt like the last joy he’d ever had or might ever have again.
Was she dead now? He didn’t know.
A cool night wind blew out of the desert. It smelled of dry stone. The other slaves were sleeping. The moon was high and bright. Berren lay on his back staring at the night. The stars weren’t the stars he remembered. He wondered if they had ever been.
No. This wouldn’t do. He had to move. Had to do something more than sit there and remember, with the pain of it getting worse every minute, with his heart about to burst with grief. He nudged Tuuran and then kicked him until the big man’s snores stopped and he opened his eyes and growled: ‘What?’
‘I told you how the Bloody Judge of Tethis got his name. I told you how he fought the Dark Queen for years and how that ended. I never told you the bit in between.’
Tuuran glared and slowly shook his head. ‘Now, Crazy Mad? You have to tell me a story now?’
‘Yes.’
Tuuran let out a little gasp of exasperation. ‘Tell it to the stars.’ He turned over.
Berren poked him hard. ‘I would, but they say they can’t hear me over your snoring.’
For a few seconds Tuuran didn’t move. Then he sighed and rolled back again and sat up. He looked Berren in the eye for a long time. ‘Go on then, slave. So there was a little thief boy in Deephaven who took up with a thief-taker and fell in love with a sword of the sun and ran away to sea when—’
‘Press-ganged, big man. I was press-ganged.’
‘Whatever.’ Tuuran looked Berren up and down. ‘Does this have anything to do with why you didn’t lift a finger to stop us from being made into slaves again, Crazy? If it does then I’m listening, because I was quite enjoying all that
not
being a slave we managed
for a while there. Otherwise, if it doesn’t, save it for someone who cares. I’m not sure I’m even speaking to you any more.’
‘The Bloody Judge, before he turned to hunting warlocks and putting an end to the Dark Queen, fell in love with a slave. Did I tell you that? He fathered her child and then went to war to buy her freedom. He came back and took her and his son and turned his back on everything. No one knows what he meant to become. Certainly not him. Something else, that was all that mattered. Six years he’d been a sailor and then a soldier. Fighting was all he knew, but he never forgot how it felt to have a moment of joy. The gods knew they’d been few enough.’ Berren gazed at the stars. ‘I never forgot . . .’
Tuuran yawned. ‘Sounds nice. Can I go back to sleep yet?’
‘The gods took her, Tuuran. Piece by piece. He didn’t see it at first, but he couldn’t let go of the warlocks and all the things they’d done. Just couldn’t let go.’ Berren shook his head. He might have wept but all his tears had gone long ago, all except one. ‘His son fell ill and died and he wasn’t even there. All that love and joy he’d found and he kept putting it aside for one more killing, over and over. One day he rode away and never came back. There was nothing left. It was all gone. Love? He hadn’t the first idea, but revenge? He understood
that
perfectly. From the day he left Deephaven, his life had been made of it and so the Bloody Judge had his way. Through the back alleys of the world, cutting down the warlocks that survived. He found the remnants of the Fighting Hawks and made them his own and brought them down on the Dark Queen. Revenge for what, though? For a son taken by sickness before he could speak a word? The work of the gods, not of any warlock. For a lover whose fire for him died long before she left him? No one to blame for that but himself.’
He didn’t care any more whether Tuuran was listening. Memory after memory came back, all the things he’d ever done and all the things he’d ever been. A scared little boy scraping dung from the streets for Master Hatchet down in the Deephaven docks. Earning his name from the Fighting Hawks the day he’d killed an old woman without even thinking before he struck. Leading those same men ten years later to tear down the Dark Queen. The thief-taker’s apprentice, paralysed by fear with a golden-hafted knife in
his hand, turning it on himself, powerless as the warlock towered over him.
Three little cuts. You. Obey. Me.
‘Over the years he forgot how to have those things he’d lost. He forgot that he wanted them, forgot what they even were, just knew that something was missing and so he went looking for it in blood. In all the wrong places and all the wrong ways.’
The pain was crushing. All he could think of was that day in the woods with Fasha, the smile on her face and the taste of wine on her lips and how he’d never had its like again and never would. The numbing all-devouring dread that at the end of his life he’d look back and be left with that one and only thing that truly mattered. And as the anguish gripped his thoughts, they slipped from Fasha to the warlocks he’d killed, then back to Fasha. His son. Saffran Kuy. Fasha. Vallas. And the knife, always the knife.
He shook himself. Why tonight? All these memories coming back at him, it felt almost as though someone had crept inside his head and crawled into his heart with a big spoon and started stirring. He clung to Fasha, gripped her as though she was right in front of him and held her as though his life depended on it. He had no idea why she’d come to him out here like this after so long, but now she was here, he wouldn’t ever let her go, ghost or not.
‘Interesting story.’ Tuuran belched, sat up, then stood and started to pace back and forth. ‘Nice of you to wake me up to share it. Don’t know how I’d have made it to morning otherwise.’ He stopped and glared at Berren. ‘I
will
kill him, you know. I will.’
‘Who?’
‘The skinny shit who made me into a slave again.’
‘What?’ Fasha shattered before him. ‘What? Gods, Tuuran, it’s just another way to get to where we want to go.’ Berren stared out into the darkness, trying to pick up the pieces and put them together again.
‘Still going to kill him.’
‘It’s possible, big man, that you won’t, on account of me having stabbed you through the eye while you were snoring before you got the chance.’
Maybe Tuuran caught the edge in Berren’s voice. He stopped his pacing and sat down again, let out a long heavy sigh and rolled his eyes and then slapped Berren half-heartedly on the shoulder.
‘You know what? He sounds like a bit of an idiot, this Bloody Judge of yours.’
‘Is that your idea of being helpful?’ Berren spat. ‘He should have stayed with what he had instead of running off to fight monsters who no longer mattered.’
That earned him a snort of derision. ‘Never mind the monsters, he should have had a woman in every city and fathered bastards with all of them, that’s what he should have done.’
‘You never have a woman who was special?’
‘I knew a good whore who knew just exactly how to—’
Berren punched him. Hard. ‘I was forgetting. You were an Adamantine Man. You don’t have feelings.’
‘We’re swords. We sate ourselves in flesh and move on. In more ways than one.’ Tuuran snorted and slumped onto his back, looking up at the stars. ‘I had some feelings once. Saw a girl being hurt by a man who should have known better and had no right to, and so I stopped it.’
‘Did you fall in love with her, Tuuran? Secretly and from afar and without telling a soul?’
Tuuran kicked him. ‘Don’t be daft, you mudhead. She took the knife off my belt, stabbed the idiot to death and ran away, and I got sold into slavery for my pains.’ He snorted again and then burst out laughing. ‘Great Flame! Yes, there were plenty I might have been sweet on but that’s not the soldier’s way. We love like kings while we live. We move on. We fight. We die.’
‘Who am I, Tuuran?’
‘An idiot, Crazy Mad. Why did you let them take us? Really?’
‘Why did you, big man?’
‘Because I didn’t fancy twelve of them against one of me after you threw down your sword, that’s why! Flame, I’m not
that
terrible. Six apiece maybe we could have beaten.’
‘No. Not six.’ Although true as it was, that wasn’t why Berren hadn’t drawn his sword. He’d had no doubt at all that he would have won against six, twelve or a thousand. It was more the how that troubled him.
You’re doing that thing again.
What thing?
That silver eyes thing. Weren’t there some of our comrades here just now?
Still couldn’t say why Fasha had come back to him so hard tonight. She was fading now but the hurt was still there. The hurt was always there. Just sometimes he forgot.
When at last he fell asleep, the dragon of Dhar Thosis visited his dreams. He saw it staring at him while Tuuran and the dragon’s rider talked. Staring and staring straight through him, right into his deepest secrets as if it wanted something. As if it knew him, but neither of them was quite sure how or when or why. He tried to ask it but the words stuck in his throat. The dragon kept staring, and he saw, now and then, flashes of other familiar memories that tried to cling but never quite could. Things he’d seen before with other eyes. Dragons filling the sky, hundreds and thousands of them, the air thick with their cries, flying to war; men arrayed under the sun, light gleaming from silver so bright that it blinded; armies massed among spires so high that clouds snagged on their flawless white stone; the light of the moon shining down, hard and violent; and it burned and he clenched his fist and would not bow, not ever, not even to the god that had made him, not any more because now he knew what lay beneath and behind and beyond, and these things called gods were nothing but empty masks.
And then it was gone, and nothing was left but an endless waste-land of night, and the Black Moon had eclipsed the sun for ever, and among the twinkle of midday stars one winked as a distant dragon passed overhead.
The dragon seemed to pause.
I see you
, it said.