The Horns of Ruin (3 page)

The floor of the library was dark and far away. A bristling
forest of frictionlamps cast a ring of dim light around the perimeter, but the
center of the floor was a slippery shadow of darkness. That void seemed to
writhe with shivering currents. I struggled to focus on that strange expanse.
Suddenly there was a disturbance and something smooth and gray rose from the
floor. It slid quietly to the edge of the darkness, casting out ripples. I saw
a pier, then, and tiny figures casting lines. A depthship, surfacing from the
water.

"They have access to the lakeway?" I asked.

"No, no. There are wards. The lake is there for our
use." The servitor shook his head. "They could no more travel it than
they could fly out that window. Settle down."

The city of Ash was unique in the world, in that it floated
on a great lake. Ironically, the many fabulous machines, each as large as a
country town, that churned and lifted and stabilized the city were the design
of Amon the Scholar. In this he had not betrayed his brothers, for those
engines still kept the city afloat all these centuries later. But as much of the
city lay below water as above it. This submarine section was linked by long
passages of steel and stone, known collectively as the lakeway, navigable only
by depthships. In places it emerged in underwater chambers, or let out into the
black deeps of the lake itself. To have an open passage to this network in the
middle of a prison ... well. I found it strange.

"I don't care if you've nailed their tongues to the
floor, Baldie. I don't care about your chain tricks or the fact that these
bloody bookworms probably can't even swim. The second we're out of here I'm
filing a motion with the Council to have that 'way sealed and your access
suspended until such time-"

"Are you here to add anything of value to these
proceedings, or is your sole purpose in this matter to run your mouth and lose
your temper and make pointless threats that you have no ability to carry
out?" he snapped. He left the open cabinet and stuck one pale, thin finger
in my face. "Because I'm beginning to suspect that you're nothing but a
good sword and a great rack!"

"Yeah," I said, thoughtful. "Yeah. That's
all of your wisdom I'm going to take."

I flared invokations: the Sundering Stone, the Wall of the
World, Hunter's Heart. My sword was in my hands, bleeding light and smoke and
fire. The Alexian took a step back, and his form was fraying at the edges as he
chanted the defensive invokations of the Healer. Barnabas stepped between us,
then cracked me across the head with his staff. My invokations dropped.

"Child," he said, and nothing more. Over his
shoulder, the servitor of Alexander looked on with amusement. I returned the
sword to the tiny, clasping hands of the sheath and took a stance of
meditation.

"You should teach your children better, Fratriarch. A
servant of Alexander knows his place in the presence of Elders." The
servitor whipped his hands and the invokation fell, his body snapping back to
wholeness like a spring. Barnabas rounded on him.

"A servant of Alexander should know his place,"
he snarled. He poked the pale man in the sternum with the staff. "Wet
nurse, or bed maid, or hearth servant." Poke. "Not provoking the
scions of Morgan." The Fratriarch crowded the servitor, stepping in too
close and then following him as he retreated. "God of War. Champion of the
Field. Heart of the Hunter. Do you understand?"

"That woman is ... she is-"

"She is a warrior, an anointed Paladin, a scion of
Morgan. She is a dangerous person." He put an old hand against the
servitor's chest and gave him a slow, powerful push. The pale man stumbled
back. "As are we all, dangerous people."

The servitor trembled against the cabinet, staring at the
Fratriarch. He looked between us, then picked up the chained dowel that had
tumbled from his hand.

"We have business, Fratriarch. There's no need for
this to get complicated."

"It always is, servitor," Barnabas said. His
voice was tired. "It always is."

The bald man scowled but returned to the cabinet. He
fingered the dowel, then unclasped a length of chain and handed it to Barnabas.

"Some of the chains express an aura of restraint,
drawing on the souls of any who have been bound. We use those for crowd
control. Other sets are attuned to specific individuals. Since your request was
for a single subject, this is probably the best."

Barnabas took the chain. It was a narrow loop, not more
than six inches in loose diameter. He twined it around his fingers and
squinted. "How does it ... Ah." The old man looked disoriented for a
moment. Startled, I stepped forward and put a protective hand on his elbow.
Slowly he regained his bearings. He looked at the servitor. "You didn't
have to hurt them at all, did you?"

The bald man shrugged.

"Well, where is he?" Barnabas looked around, then
stopped. "She. Yes, I see. Like this."

He raised the chain, his fist clenching around the flat,
dull links. A figure rose from a table on a nearby terrace and crossed over to
join us. She was a young woman, a girl really. The dark robes of the Cult of
Amon hung loosely on her frame, but she had her hood down. Her hair stuck out
in thick, black curls, startling against her pale skin. She kept her eyes
lowered. The chains that hung around her shoulders looked very new.

"A child? Did our request not stress the importance of
our need?" Barnabas asked.

"This one is ... gifted. Unique. Have faith in
Alexander, my friends."

"My knee will bend to him, sir," I said,
"but my faith belongs to Morgan."

The servitor shrugged again, laughter dancing in his eyes.
"As you say. If this girl will not serve, I'm sure we could reprocess your
request. It would take some weeks, of course."

"Don't toy with us, Healer." I looked the Amonite
up and down. A pretty thing, if frail. Battle would break her. "What's
your name?"

"Cassandra," the girl said. Her voice was quiet.

"You can incant the histories of Amon? The rites of
the Scholar?" Barnabas asked.

The girl looked between us, then raised her arms and locked
her fists together in front of her small breasts. Her voice, when it rolled
into the quiet of the Grand Library, was a different creature from the timid
ghost that had given her name as Cassandra. It was rich, resonant, touching in
the deep places of my mind. The words spoke of stress lines and inertia, gear
periods and energy reserves. It was the language of clockwork, the language of
machines and engines arcane. It had a rhythm to it, smooth, churning, driving
forward from beneath my skin and through my bones to a peak of momentum and
mass and energy.

"Hold," Barnabas barked, and the girl stopped. I
came out of a stupor I hadn't realized I was in. The room was changed. A table by
the cabinet was disassembled, the old form cut away into gears and chains of
wood. It was some sort of machine now, clockworks and cranks and long pistons
of polished maple that gleamed in the halflight of the glass domes above. A
gentle cloud of sawdust hung in the air around us.

"Do you see, now, the futility of locks, Lady
Paladin?" the servitor asked. I stared at the wreckage of the newly made
engine.

"What's it for?"

The girl shrugged. "It goes around," she said.
"It is an engine merely for the sake of engineering."

"We've seen enough," the Fratriarch said.
"She will do."

Our departure had none of the idle tension that marked our
arrival. The servitor chatted happily with the Fratriarch as we made our way
through the book-hemmed labyrinth. I walked beside the girl Cassandra, my hand
on my revolver.

"So, what is the purpose of your request, Frat
Barnabas?" the servitor asked. "One hundred years, the Cult of Morgan
doesn't step foot in the Library Desolate, and suddenly you make a request for
one of our guests. Some project, I assume?"

"What business is it of yours? She will be returned to
your charge, brother."

"As you say. Though, to be honest, with your companion
I wouldn't be so sure. Small matter to me. I love the Amonites no more than you
do. A matter of curiosity, is all."

"Then curiosity it must remain." Barnabas folded
his hands at his waist, indicating resolve. The subtlety of his action was lost
on the servitor.

"Plumbing trouble, perhaps? The Chamber of the Fist is
hip deep in used toilet water, eh?" The servitor beamed and chuckled. He
looked back at me. "We have plumbers in the city of Ash, you know. No need
to deal with the folk of Amon for that."

"As much as I appreciate the assistance of the godking
in this matter, I'm afraid our reasons must remain our own," the
Fratriarch said.

"Have the scions of Morgan so lost faith in his
brother Alexander, then?"

"As you said," Barnabas stopped and turned to the
bald man, "it was faith in our brother Amon that cost Morgan his life. And
gained Alexander a throne."

The servitor smiled stiffly, then nodded and led us out.

he streets outside were busy.
We began the long walk back to the Strength of Morgan, leading our black-robed
charge. The girl kept her head down as we walked. I stayed in the front, my
eyes on the crowd.

"Eva, we should speak about your outburst in
there," Barnabas said after we had walked several blocks. Took him longer
than I expected. Old man must have been tired, from all the talking and the
making nice to that bitch servitor.

"Which one?" I asked without looking back. Didn't
like having the Fratriarch out in a crowd like this. I liked it even less as
his only guard, but he hadn't wanted the sort of scene that an armed convoy
would have caused. I didn't care about the scene. Hell, I just wanted more
swords, more guns, and more eyes on the crowd. The Frat was probably right,
though. Too much attention. Besides, the Cult of Morgan was spread awfully
thin. The days of armored columns were behind us. I stopped daydreaming about a
glorious caravan of fellow Paladins and snapped back to the conversation.
"That man was trying to piss me off. I obliged."

"Not much of a task, Eva. Listen." He plucked my
sleeve and I stopped, but I wouldn't look at him. These talks were bad enough
without having to see the expression in his watery old eyes. "The Cult is
waning. We need to preserve our relationship with Alexander and his scions.
He's the last of the brothers still alive. Without his support, we'd be adrift.
We'd be dead."

"Is it too much to ask that he honor the memory of his
dead brother?" I turned, glaring at the Amonite before settling my gaze on
Barnabas. His eyes were old and tired. "That his scions treat the Cult of
Morgan as something more than a curious relic from antiquity?"

"He honors us. Without him-"

"Honor? He drags us out for parades and holidays. He
has his court jester write poems in Morgan's memory, then he steals our
recruits and dedicates them to his own Cult. He's strangling us with bloody
honor, Fratriarch."

Barnabas winced. The crowd around us had slowed, gradually
becoming aware of who was standing in their midst, and what these rare
individuals were arguing about. The Fratriarch bent his head to me and spoke in
a furious hiss.

"He does not steal recruits, Eva. Morgan is dead. Amon
is dead. Of the three Brothers Immortal, only Alexander remains. Parents do not
dedicate their children to the service of a dead god."

I looked around at the silent crowd.

"Mine did," I said, then marched off. The
pedestrians melted away from me, anxious and afraid.

"Aye, girl. We know," Barnabas said quietly, then
glanced at the Amonite and motioned her forward. "Come on. She'll leave us
if we let her."

I made them struggle for a minute before slowing so they
could catch up. I was a little embarrassed to have walked away from the man I
was supposed to be guarding, but I was a little more pissed that he'd lectured
me in public. We walked in tense silence for a while, then I drew up next to
the Fratriarch.