No Return (28 page)

THE 26
^th
OF THE MONTH OF PILOTS, 12499 MD
THE CITY OF TANSOT, KINGDOM OF STOL

P
ol had spent much of his adolescence along the docks of Ravos, Pusta’s capitol city. There he watched the fishermen pull their catches from the teeming sea, corded arms and calloused fingers quick with the rusty latches and mechanisms of their enormous trap baskets. Naked, they scampered with odd grace over the monumental wire and steel structures suspended between the docks, dodging the man-sized pincers and jagged jaws snapping at them from below.

Their dexterity astonished and thrilled him, as did their scars and missing limbs, which rarely impeded them in their tasks. Such devotion to work had made Ravos the most successful exporter of seafood in all of Knoori. The fishermen were beautiful and dangerous and proud of their craft, and they shared their bodies as freely as they shared labor. They did not look down on an elderman boy, especially one so eager to learn.

Had Pol’s mother known the way he spent his evenings, spreading his legs for men of low caste, working, drinking and carousing with laborers, she would have locked him in a cell. Had he been dimmer or less intellectually inclined, she certainly would have found him out.

Despite the time he spent with fishermen and dockhands, he did not echo their concerns or beliefs. They were a fascinating people in their own right, but hardly examples for an elderman boy. He used them, first for pleasure and then for their unique perspectives.

Few noble-born men cared to know what laborers thought of the world. Unbeknownst to the aristocracy, labor guildsmen communicated across national borders, irrespective of the restrictions placed upon them by government. They exchanged information on trade and common magical practices, and maintained extended family ties.

In Pol’s opinion, these comprised the least significant percentage of exchanged information. The majority of laborers in Knos Min, Nos Ulom, Stol and Casta practiced a highly fluid form of oral storytelling called adrasses, which recounted moments in Adrash’s life upon the earth. An adrass—the events of which often began thirty millennia or more before the present age, far beyond the scope of recorded history—never referred to the god’s ascension into the sky. It never referred to the Needle, or the obvious threat its existence posed to the world.

Such tales transcended the rude boundaries of Adrashi and Anadrashi, for while no sane man could deny the god’s existence, he could interpret events as he saw fit—a fact that contributed to the continual development of adrasses. Even Orrust and Bashest sects, a small minority in most nations, took part in the telling, incorporating the legendary events of Adrash’s life into the traditional stories of their own deities.

The fishermen of Knoori’s coasts shared a particularly rich canon of adrasses, compiling the numerous tales of Adrash’s life as a sailor. Of course, the people of Jeroun generally agreed the god had exiled himself to the ocean for a period of time prior to his ascension into the sky, yet only the most conservative Adrashi claimed to know his reason for doing so. Largely uninterested in his motivation, fishermen of all varieties celebrated Adrash’s incredible feat of navigating the ocean with tales of superhuman strength and daring.

According to the fishermen of Ravos, the god had set sail from their very docks. They claimed he saw their bravery, their clean sweat, and was so inspired that he decided to embark upon his own adventure. He formed a ship out of steel and glass without the assistance of tools, fusing the materials together with the light from his eyes. Once finished, he pushed the vehicle out to sea alone, battling beasts along the way.

Convictions were split on the ship’s name. Some swore it was
Aberrast
, others
The Oabess
. Its prow was a knife blade, fine enough that creatures learned to steer clear of it lest they be cut in two. He piloted the sixtyfoot vessel alone with a crank drive and propeller of his own design. Many adrasses differed in this account, insisting that the ship was powered by sail or by thaumaturgical engine, but the fishermen of Ravos loved nothing more than a display of muscle.

They downplayed the role of the divine armor in Adrash’s life. In their accounts he only grew to rely upon its power later—during the unspoken period after he left Jeroun’s surface. They saw the god as a being of superhuman sinew and bone, relying upon his strength, wits, and nautical skill. Some went so far as to claim he found the armor itself while at sea, that it was a gift from the Ocean Mother, no greater than his whalebone sword Amedur, his shark-toothed club Xollet, or his narcroc-ivory spear.

Oftentimes, the armor, swords, whips and spears came second to Adrash’s most treasured possession: The sentient dagger Sroma, which he had carved from the rib of a giant elder corpse he found floating around Iswee, the floating island on the other side of the world. He carried the dagger onto the sodden land and battled the reanimated elders who defended it from man. He used it to carve the wooden skyboat
Dam Tilles
, which astronomists claim sits atop Mount Pouen, under the crystal dome that covers the island of Osa.

Adrash slept with Sroma, never let it leave his side. The Ystuhi, a religious sect of crab-catchers who inhabited the south Pustan coast, still carved blackwood statues of the god with elaborate whorls cut into his skin and the outline of the dagger between his shoulder blades. They believed Adrash had loved the weapon enough to embed it in his flesh.

A Pustan fisherman’s version of Adrash would be unrecognizable, unbearably offensive, to the conservative Adrashi nobles of Stol or Nos Ulom, who revered the god as all-powerful and immutable, as distant from man as scrub grass was to sentinel oak. In this regard, Pol stood somewhere on the fringe of both groups. In the days of youthful revolt, he had been much influenced by the fishermen. In truth, he still considered Adrash a vengeful, even capricious lord. But in accordance with conservative Adrashi ideals, he believed Adrash had always possessed the armor. His other weapons were the stuff of myth.

No god would debase himself with such crude tools. Only man and elderman relied upon the strength of bone and steel.

‡

Mid-afternoon, Pol walked to the docks to buy a set of knives. Not any knives, either. He required a very specific design for his purpose. Garrus had recommended a bladesmith in Vanset, but Pol did not trust Ulomi and decided on a shop Shav recommended in Little Demn. He admired Tomen for their serious, frequently violent practicality. If anyone could make a knife suitable for an assassin’s hand, a desert man could.

He met every stare in the street, unafraid. The unsheathed blade of his liisau caught the sun, announcing his presence from several blocks away. For someone like Pol, Little Demn was just as dangerous during the day as the night. Men could easily see him for what he was: not only an Adrashi, but one who actively sought peace with the devil.

It was an important distinction, for just as many types of Anadrashi zealot existed as Adrashi. Roughly equal in number but generally less organized than their god-worshipping brethren, one basic belief bound them: Adrash should not be worshipped. The reasons for this numbered in the thousands, but roughly boiled down to two philosophical stances—the canonical and the personal.

The Black Suit orders, for instance, taught that Adrash actively sought the destruction of the world, and could only be kept at bay by displaying one’s faith in mankind, by cursing the god at every opportunity, and by physically besting those who worshipped Adrash. Though they acted in the community, they primarily expressed their faith through planned, bloody encounters with similarly outfitted Adrashi orders. Their faith was a thing of rigid order, tradition, and—though they would not admit it—a certain measure of symbiosis.

This expression contrasted sharply with that of the Rinka, a fraternal organization of former Adrashi in Northeastern Casta. Bound by the shared experience of family abuse, the members expressed their ecstatic faith in city squares and markets. Crying and screaming were encouraged as part of the proselytizing. Members often renounced drinking and gambling, and preached nonviolent opposition to Adrash through meditation and fasting.

Tomen rejected both the canonical and personal stances. They considered the existence of Adrash—whom they considered to be a demon of great power—to be a practical affront to humanity, and reacted in kind. Reasoning that Adrash drew strength from his worshippers, the men of the desert took every opportunity to take the lives of Adrashi, as well as weak-wristed Anadrashi. They valued freedom and self-sufficiency above all else, wrote no creeds, proselytized not at all, and committed no violence upon their brothers. Some claimed that within Toma existed the most peaceful society on the continent.

Along its borders, however, more men died in combat than anywhere else on the continent—a situation mirrored in their expatriate communities. But for the presence of the city watches, places like Little Demn were for all practical purposes border towns at war.

Pol interpreted the looks he received correctly. They would gladly gut him if given the opportunity.

A month ago, he might still have chosen to travel alone, but he would have seriously considered the consequences. This morning, however, he had not given it a second thought. Cool fire moved along his nerves, twitched the muscles in his fingers, urged him to move, to strike.

Do it
, his stare mocked.
Attack.
He knew with every ounce of his being that an entire army could not stand against him.

He had moved the Needle.

Every day since Ebn’s disastrous mission, he had awakened to the same nervous sensations, the same memory of knocking one of Adrash’s spheres out of alignment. He recalled the pain of the sigils awakening upon his body—the mounting, rapturous pressure of the unknown spell straining for release—the vaguely disappointing knowledge that he had acted too late to save his brethren—and then the near-instinctive unloading of his pent magic upon the first target that came to mind. He tried to summon the exact feelings to him again, lingering on each detail as one might linger on a lover’s touch.

It had been a gift from the void. A call to action, proof he could no longer sit by and let events continue unchecked. He would answer the call and make himself a leader of men, but to do so he knew he must prepare carefully.

For a brief period after the disastrous encounter with Adrash, he worried he had become too addled to continue painting sigils on his skin. But, despite all of the energy coursing through his system, his hands were sure with each stroke. He even found himself painting his back, as though his fingers had eyes of their own. Sometimes it seemed the sigils were painting themselves. The marks became more complex, esoteric, and dangerous. He became a collection of alchemical lore. A weapon.

His power would soon eclipse Ebn’s. Possibly, it already had.

Odd now that I must search for knives
, he thought. Such crude implements, yet he did not want to rely solely upon spells and sigils. He would not underestimate Ebn, a craftsman of magic with few equals, a mage who responded to attacks with cunning and raw power. She had even swayed Adrash, if only for a moment. Undoubtedly, she had examined her memory of the failed mission. Perhaps she had discovered what Pol had done, knew his power for the threat it was.

During the final confrontation, she would not allow sentimentality to cloud her judgment.

In this, they were bound. He prepared himself, and thought up novel ways to kill a master mage in orbit.

‡

Shav weighed the knife, flipped it a few times to test the balance. Ten heavy inches of steel, a straight handle accounted for half its length. The teardrop blade, edge ground to razor sharpness, accounted for the other half. Per Pol’s request, the bladesmith had bound a fine layer of charcoal to its surface so that it would not reflect light. It was a simple, elegant weapon, a tool clearly intended for killing.

“I told you he was good,” Shav said. “When will the others be ready?”

“Week’s end, he said.”

“You must have been robbed.”

Pol smiled. “Yes, I was, and he took some convincing. He told me that if he accepted my business, he would be dead by week’s end.”

“Nonsense.” Shav stood and threw the knife overhanded into the target Pol had fixed to the wall. His next throw hit flat and clanged to the floor.

“Why is this shaped so?” he asked, running his finger over the chisel-shaped tip of the handle.

“I have designed the knife carefully,” Pol said. “Once thrown, it has two tasks. First, it must shatter Ebn’s helmet. Second, its weight must carry the blade forward into her skull. In many ways the handle is more important than the blade.”

Pol gave this information without hesitation. He had long since ceased keeping secrets from Shav. He no longer hid his sigils. Though he had not yet discovered a use for the quarterstock, his idiosyncratic presence was oddly comforting. Furthermore, he was an excellent lover. Even his smell, which seemed to always carry the salt and rot of the sea, had an odd charm.

It amused Pol to think he had once been intimidated by the quarterstock. Shav turned his hand. The knife disappeared into his sleeve. He thrust his hand forward, and the knife appeared in it. He grunted in surprise at the blood welling up from his calloused thumb. “Why is the blade so sharp? You can practice with a dull knife, can’t you?”

“No.” Pol took the weapon from him. He hefted it and then flicked it underhanded into the target. “I will not chance it. The weight of the practice knives needs to be exactly the same as the killing blade itself.” He pulled the knife free and repeated the throw. He moved back a pace and hit the target handle first, but got it the next time, and the next.

Shav watched, brows raised. “You’ve thrown knives of this design before?” Pol shrugged. “No.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t get used to this, then. Handling the knife, yes, but maybe not the throwing. No doubt, it will fly differently in the void.” Shav sat at the table and tore a piece of rouce bread, dipped it in green olive relish.