The Horns of Ruin (15 page)

"Eva Forge, Paladin of Morgan, why have you come to
the Blacksmith?" the old man intoned.

"To arm myself," I answered.

He struck the anvil again, a little harder.

"For battle?"

"Forever."

Again, hammer to anvil, again a little harder. The anvil
sang and the pieces of the revolver jumped. They would have shifted if they had
not been locked in place by ritual and rite.

"Do you swear yourself to the struggle of
Morgan?"

"I swear myself to the battle, the blade, the
bullet."

Hammer. Anvil. Light runes glowed faintly across the shell
casings of the bullets. Lines of arcane light began to itch their way across
the pieces of the revolver. My fingers ached to answer them.

"Do you swear yourself to your brothers of Morgan and
to your sisters of the Champion?"

"I swear myself to the monastery, to the legions of
the Warrior, until the grave."

Tomas lifted the hammer over his head and struck again. The
room was filled with the music of the anvil, and the arcane lines of the
revolver nearly outshone the molten gold of the forge behind him. When he
struck I could feel the echo of it in my feet.

"Bind yourself now to this weapon, the Terrorfel of
Morgan. With it, you must carry the battle, follow the hunt. You must serve the
scions of Morgan-"

And I realized he was off script. I looked up. His eyes
were full of furious rage. He stared through me, glaring with such hatred that
I nearly staggered back.

"You must serve your Fratriarch, whatever the
cost."

I was lost for a response. Words left me. I put a hand
against the anvil to steady myself and was shocked at its chill in this place
of fire.

"Forever," I finally managed.

He raised the hammer high above his head and struck as if
he meant to shatter this anvil that had stood here for a thousand years. The
head bounced off the smooth black surface, the shaft leaving Tomas's hands and rebounding
to fly up and drag the hammer back up into the air. It scattered the pieces of
my new revolver. The runes of binding screamed through the air as they were
bound to my soul.

"Forever," he said, quietly, then walked out of
the ritual chamber. I did my best to avoid Tomas after that. Not sure what his
problem was, whether he was angry with me for failing the Fratriarch, or if he
was trying to impress upon me the gravity of the situation. As if anyone
understood it better than me. Then again, the more I looked into this whole
thing, the less I understood. Bull on, I thought, and the clarity will come.
Bull on.

I didn't like what I was finding with the Amonites.
Everything about the Amonites' little hiding place was incompatible with a
secret conspiracy committed to overthrowing the city's religious hierarchy. So
while it was my first inclination to blame the Betrayer's feral children, I
just didn't see it in that group. The only thing I wasn't sure about was that
escape route. Awfully sophisticated. Even Scholars would be hard-pressed to
throw together an impellor on the fly, especially one that could move people.
Near as I knew, the technology didn't work like that. The monotrains had some
kind of receiver in each car that was specially tuned to the impellor. You
could feel the waves go by, but it wouldn't push you around. Not like that
thing had.

I had nothing else to do. Alexander's Chanters would do
their weird little trick to Cassandra, and we'd know what she knew about the
Fratriarch and the free scions of Amon. It wasn't the fastest process, and took
a great deal of energy from the godking, so it was not a rite that was lightly
used. Until I heard from them, though, I had no other leads to pursue. And the
Fist of Elders was locked away in the Chamber. Well, three of them at least-I
could hear voices behind the door, Simeon and Tomas and Isabel arguing and
reasoning and just ... yelling. Elias was missing when I gave my initial report
and the others had been in no mood to answer my questions. Wherever the hell he
was, he doubtless had his reasons, and it didn't seem likely that the rest of
them would grant me even a brief audience for a while.

Getting back to the cistern was easy. The whiteshirts were
all over that hideout now, taking lithos and cataloging the debris. Not as much
debris this time, though. The coldmen had come through here on their way to
killing a bunch of Owen's men, and they had done their share of damage. The
whiteshirts were heavily guarded, two guys with bullies for every one
scratching in a notepad, and even then they looked nervous. I waved my way
through and went downstairs.

The spiral staircase was dented and bloody. Everything
smelled like blackpowder and burned metal. Where the hatch used to be there was
a crosshatch of yellow opening out onto the water. Two guys in a collapsible
raft were beginning to dredge for bodies. They came over at my signal. Probably
glad to have a break from dragging the bodies of people they knew out of the
water.

"What have you found so far?"

"Six of us, two of them," the guy with the hook
said. "It's not as deep as we thought."

"What about the machine?"

"Keeps fouling the hook. Pushing it around in the
water."

"You know where it is?" I asked.

"Sure," he said. "At least, I know where
we're avoiding."

"Good enough. I want it up."

"The machine? That's, uh ..." He looked around at
the raft, his length of rope, the crude, bloody hook. "That's a little
more than we can manage with this equipment."

"Then get some better toys. I want that thing on the
surface."

"Okay, okay. Soon as we get the rest of our boys
up-"

"They'll still be dead, whether you fish them up now
or let them marinate overnight. Get on the rig to your boss and get whatever
equipment you need down here. That machine's going to be dry and tight in the
next hour, or I'll know who to yell at."

"Lady, listen-" he started.

I stopped him. "No, no, not worth it. Trust me, it's
not worth getting on my bad side. You're a tough guy, I get it. They don't give
this kind of duty to a softie. But I'm the last Paladin of Morgan, and for now
that's the highest authority you've got." I pointed at the water and then
jerked my thumb in the air. "Up. Now."

He sighed, gave his partner a bitch look, then pulled the
raft ashore and clomped up the stairs. The other guy looked at me for a while,
then shrugged and lit a cigarette.

"I was tired of dragging up bodies," he said.
"This is fine with me."

"Glad to be of service."

He laughed and nodded, then leaned back in the boat and
closed his eyes.

"Anything's better than fishing for your friends,
lady. Don't mind us.

It wasn't what I expected. They sent a couple divers down,
hooked the machine, and then dragged it up onto a temporary platform of rafts,
lashed together and anchored next to the ruined hatch. Owen must have heard my
name going through the static of the communication rigs because he came down
just as they were dragging it out of the water. The impellor waves kept fouling
the lines, pushing the whole load into the wall. I stood on the slowly bobbing
platform with my arms crossed, waiting.

"You cause a lot of trouble," Owen said.

I nodded. "I get things done, though. Covers for a lot
of bad manners."

"If you say so. But listen, maybe next time give me a
call when you're going to change people's orders and requisition Alexian
equipment," he said, standing next to me on the platform and watching the
work. "I can get this stuff done without so many ruffled feathers."

"Is that your job, now? Make sure Eva doesn't piss off
too many of your fellow Healers?"

He shrugged, and then we were quiet for a while as the
machine was finally pulled free of the water. It spun crazily on the lines,
like a bottle rocket on a string. With a little effort and a little luck, they
got it down on the platform. The rafts immediately began tugging at their
anchor. I stepped away from the stream of force echoing out from its side and
moved closer for a better look. The impellor wave was rippling the air like a
heat mirage.

Several things. I had never seen an impellor this small.
The enormous devices that ran the monotrains were as big as houses, where this
one was maybe fifteen feet long and half that in width. They were also immensely
complicated machines, sprouting conduit and gears and various ... flashing
things. Machinery wasn't my strong point. But they looked like big machines.

This did not. This didn't look anything like what I
expected. It was almost organic, like a smooth seashell, rippled and furled,
with whorled apertures of some glossy, fluted material that was colored with
the deepest blues and reds I had ever seen. It was a beautiful engine, if it
was an engine at all.

I put my hand against its side. The surface was cool and
soft to the touch, denting slightly from the pressure. My skin began to vibrate
in time with the waves of impellor force.

"Is there a control panel somewhere?" Owen asked.

I blinked and turned to him, then looked around the smooth
shell of the impellor.

"No, nothing I can see. It looks alive, doesn't
it?"

"It started talking to you, Eva?" He smirked,
circling carefully around the artifact. He paused and then put his hand against
it, standing opposite me. "Here we go."

I felt a momentary surge of panic along my spine, and then
the impellor waves fell out of rhythm and subsided. The artifact lay there on
the platform, inert, like an instrument just put aside by a master. I stepped
back and crossed my arms, fighting a chill.

"Any idea what it is?" I asked.

"An impellor, isn't it? Sure felt like one." Owen
rubbed the hand he'd touched to the device. I walked around and saw what he'd
activated. It was some kind of indentation in the side of the artifact, almost
like a handprint but somehow wrong. Too small, and the fingers were ...
strange.

"Maybe some kind of new design," I said.
"Might be these runaway Scholars have more resources than I thought, if
they're cooking up stuff like this."

"It is the oldest design," a voice said behind
me. I turned and saw that a couple of Owen's boys were bringing an Amonite onto
the platform. It was the same guy who had sealed the hatch for us.

"You survived," I said. "Hope you didn't
have to fight or anything inconvenient like that. Or did your dogs know not to
bite one of their master's boys?"

He ignored me and went to the artifact. His hands trailed
along the flutes of the apertures like an artist tracing a line in a painting.
When he was done communing with the thing, he turned to Owen, sparing me the
briefest look.

"It is not a made thing. Or at least, not made by the
Scholar's Cant."

"So it's something they found?" I asked. "Or
something they stole?"

"Something they stole," he answered, still not
looking at me. "Or perhaps something they bought. This is a Feyr
device."

"The Feyr make impellors?" Owen asked.

"The Feyr can make anything, if they decide to. Or
they could. The time of the great Feyr fabricators ended when the Brothers
Immortal destroyed this city and cast down their gods. But yes, at one time,
this was made by the Feyr."

"So it's old. Maybe something they dug up out of the
city. Any ideas where they would have found a thing like this?" I asked,
walking to stand in front of the Amonite. I plucked the hem of his hood, so he
couldn't avoid looking at me.

"That is not what you are asking. You are asking if I
have any ideas about where they might have gone, or where you might find others
of their kind. In this, you know as much as I do," he said. His eyes were
lined with dark concern, and he nodded up toward the abandoned hideout, far
above. "You have seen that place, as have I. Where do you think they might
be, now that you have turned them out of their home?"