The Horns of Ruin (31 page)

"Couldn't wait?" I asked.

"I heard something. Noises."

"Yeah. Just don't look around." The street was
empty. Dusk was falling. "It's kinda weird."

We went around the thudding cylinders and caught sight of
the Feyr ducking into a maintenance shaft. I snatched up my sword and fed it
into the sheath's grasping mitts, then followed. Cassandra didn't say anything,
though her eyes must have seen a lot of blood and a lot of sleeping bodies.

The corridor wasn't meant for big people. It made me wonder
as to its origin. Amon, for all that he was a murderer and a mad assassin (and
I corrected myself even as I thought it, but the thought came naturally),
probably wouldn't have designed his engines to depend on child-labor parties.
And he certainly didn't design anything for the Feyr. No one did.

I went to the impellor because I knew they would be there.
Something about the energies that washed out of those machines attracted the
little creeps. I had the beginnings of an idea why that was, now that I knew
something of Amon's research into the impellors. If the stuff Cassandra was
reading from the archive was true, of course. Whole little creepy Feyr villages
gathered ramshackle beneath each of those towers, filling in whatever space
they could find with clapboard buildings and driftwood catwalks. They even
built little rafts to anchor around the water-bound impellor towers between the
horns. The crews tolerated them because sometimes they were helpful, calling
the Amonites' attention to things that were on the verge of breaking, or
clearing out in advance of some disaster. Like little canaries. Some people
thought they could see the future. I preferred to believe that they were simply
very aware of their surroundings.

"What did you do back there?" I asked. It was
hard to talk, bent over and squatting along with my knees in my face. I could
crawl, but that was a bad position to try to react from. Not that this was much
better.

"I made it night. For them, of course."

"Then why didn't they wake up, the ones who
fell?"

He shrugged. "Night is when you sleep. When you wake,
it is morning."

"Huh."

He stopped and looked back at me. "You would like a
demonstration?"

"No, no. Just curious."

"It is good to be curious," he agreed, then
continued on his way.

The path opened up, and I was in the expected hovel-town of
the Feyr. This space must once have been a cistern, or some other storage
facility. Muck lines on the wall of the wide, round chamber showed that varying
levels of some liquid had spent time here. It smelled, mostly of burning timber
and cooked food. The tiny houses were elevated on stilts, with porches that
joined towers of buildings like wide catwalks. The stilts were water-stained
and black. Maybe the place still flooded occasionally. It wasn't a big place,
maybe a dozen small homes for small people. The largest building, at the
center, did not share a porch with anyone else. We headed for that building.

All around, the Feyr watched us. Cassandra had the archive
in her arms, hugging it like a child as she rushed forward. The little people
were silent, and simply dressed. Their hair looked like the swept-back roots of
an overturned tree, thick ropes branching out from their scalps, the same shade
of brown or black or chalk white as their hard, knobby skin. Their eyes were
large and black, without pupils or irises, deep and watery like those of a
shark. The rest of their faces were pinched and tiny, mere sketches of a nose
and mouth filled with tiny, sharp teeth. They had three thick fingers, each
opposed to the other two, and their nails were hard and sharp. They looked like
something grown in the dirt, yanked out by their feet and still caked in the
mud of their birth.

My guide took me to the building in the middle. It was wide
and flat, almost entirely porch, open to the rest of the room. Up the stairs,
and the guy in charge was waiting for us in a tall chair. More of a cushioned
platform than anything else. He looked distracted.

His skin was as brown as a chestnut, and just as shiny. He
sat with his hands in his lap, and his eyes on his hands, unmoving. My guide
bowed out, leaving us alone with the creepy guy. Elemental, I think they called
him, the guy in charge. Strange name for a boss. I waited for a while, then
grew impatient.

"I've got some questions for you."

"You do," he said, without looking up from his
hands. "Old questions."

"Pardon me?"

He raised his head, tired, blinking those deep, dark eyes
like a man just waking up. He looked from me to Cassandra, and then to the
archive.

"Old questions," he said again. "We wondered
when one of you would come to us again, to ask these questions."

"How do you even know what we're going to ask?"
Cassandra said.

"When there is a flood, you do not ask about planting
crops. When there is a fire, you do not ask about building boats." He
folded his fingers together and clenched them in front of him. "Unless
your boat is on fire, I suppose. And then you would have to ask very
quickly."

"Amon must have been a very patient man," I said,
"to learn anything from you."

"He was. Though it was not me, but my father."

"Making you how many hundred years old?"
Cassandra asked. Which wasn't what we were supposed to be asking about, but I
suppose the Scholar is the curious type. I was getting impatient.

"We do not think in such paths." The Elemental
raised his hands to the dirty ceiling and nodded. "The days and years are
like-"

"Like water drops, right? Or snowflakes? And we are the
blizzard. Look," I leaned down to the tiny man, "we've got some
people who might be dying right now, and they do think in such paths, so maybe
we could skip the poetry lesson."

The Elemental looked at me, his hands still raised to the
ceiling, his face placid.

"A child of Morgan, then?"

"Brilliant. And since you already know our question,
why don't you go ahead and give us our answer, so we can get out of this sewer
before it floods again?"

One of the Feyr, on a different platform, stepped forward.

"Flooding occurs on the third Friday of every
alternating month, at a volume of-"

"Shut up!" I yelled across the porch to him. He
did, and stepped back. Cassandra was taking notes.

"The question that you are asking, just so we are
clear, it involves the cycle?"

"The cycle of. . ." I glanced back at Cassandra,
who was rubbernecking the whole Feyr populace. "Of what now?"

"The Titans burned their candle slowly, and lived
long. We burned ours even more slowly, so slowly that there was hardly a flame
to be seen." The Elemental gestured nebulously, addressing us. "You
burn quickly. Like a flare."

"Like a fuse," I corrected. "This is the
cycle of godhood, then?"

"Yes. We can feel it in the air. The gods are
changing, and you are changing with them. The days of mankind on the throne of
god are limited."

"And after us, who?" Cassandra looked up from her
notebook. "You?"

"We have had our time, and will have it again. But I
think it will not fall to us."

"Then the Rethari? Or some other race that we've never
met, across some other ocean?"

"A wise thought. Other oceans." The Elemental
folded his hands beneath his chin and stared thoughtfully at the ground.
"A good thought. But the power that will be released with your fall, I
think it will go to the people of the scale. As you say."

"Alexander should hear this," I said. "I'm
sure he'd be pleased."

"We have spoken. Not recently, but the nature of the
formula is familiar to him."

"He knows this stuff?" I asked. "Knows that
fewer gods means a quicker descent? That doesn't seem to make him likely to
betray his brother either, does it?"

"Our conversation was after the death of your god. And
only shortly after the death of yours," he answered, nodding to Cassandra.
"He felt the change in power. It pleased him."

"Pleased him?"

"Before there was one fountain, and three vessels.
After, one fountain, one vessel."

"More power for the godking," I said.
"There's your motivation."

"You are implying that Alexander killed Morgan, and
framed Amon." The Elemental shook his head. "We do not know that. To
be clear, we stay out of the affairs of brief men."

"But it makes sense, doesn't it?" Cassandra
asked, desperation in her voice. "Amon spoke with your kind, learned the
truth of the cycle of gods. Why would he kill his brother, knowing that it
would doom the Fraterdom?"

"Why does Alexander not raise up more gods? Why does
he keep what knowledge he has secret?" The Elemental spread his hands
wide. "Men do irrational things. Especially the Brothers."

"So it could have been Amon," I said, weighing
the thought. "All along, Alexander could have told the truth of that. The
rest he's hidden just to accumulate power."

"I will not lead you to answers like this. The ways of
men are their own." He shook his head sadly. "I do not understand
them."

"This has been a tremendous help," I said,
rubbing my face. "You've revealed to us, through a series of overly
complicated proclamations, that Morgan could have been killed by Alexander, or
he could have been killed by Amon." I sat down and folded my hands over my
knee. "And either way, it doesn't really matter because the cycle of the
gods is rolling over, and we're all going to end up servants of the Rethari.
Any idea how long until that happens?"

"We don't know how it hasn't happened yet. It should
have been years, the way Alexander is burning. Like a fuse, as you say."
He grinned and sat back. "Like a fuse. I like that. I will remember it,
for the next time one of your kind comes to ask us these questions."

"So it should have happened already. And you have no
idea why it hasn't?"

He shook his head. "Something is holding the water
back. That was the point of Alexander's questions, when last he came to speak
to us.

"The hidden archive," Cassandra said. "The
full knowledge of Amon. He must be handpicking the best for the Library
Desolate and putting them to work on Amon's research into the cycle."

"Which means he might have solved it," I said.
"He might have figured a way to keep the cycle from turning."

Again, the Elemental shook his head. "The cycle will
turn. The sky will turn. The waters will rise and the dam will burst, and
everything will be washed clean. Our whole race could not hold the power.
Madness and the Ruin were the cost of that. Who knows what's happening in Alexander's
strange little head?"

"What did you say about ruin? The ruin of what?"
I asked.

"Of nothing. Of everything. You know our sins, child
of Morgan. The blackness that we created, the destruction that we wrought. It
gave birth to a form, a form that lives in this lake."

"What now?" Cassandra asked. "Some kind of
monster?"

"Some kind of darkness," the Elemental answered.
"We built our temples to try to purge it. It absorbed all our pain, all
our vile terror, and fed it back to us. More with each sin, always more."

"Is it still here?" she asked.

"It must be. We did not purge it, but it no longer
speaks to us. Your Alexander knows of it. We always thought ..." He
paused, as if weighing us. "We always thought it was the burden of that
sin that kept us from ascending completely. We may have been wrong. Alexander
seemed to think it could ... sponge up divinity. Swallow the light of the
holy."

"And hold it," Cassandra said. "Like a
battery."

"But what about-" I started.

The Elemental raised a hand. "I'm sorry, but there is
nothing more I can tell you, because there is nothing more I can know." He
stood and ritually brushed off the knees of his robe. "I wish you well,
scions of Morgan and Amon. It is quite a task you face."

"Wait! You didn't actually answer any real questions!"

"You did not ask any real questions. I can hardly be
blamed for that."

He turned and stepped off the edge of the porch, to
disappear among the mass of Feyr that surrounded us. They began milling about,
until we lost sight of the Elemental.

"That's great," Cassandra said. "You think
we could come back later?"

"Maybe we can make an appointment," I answered.
We went back the way we came, past the wooden houses. The place looked
abandoned now. "I get the feeling that he doesn't talk to a lot of people,
though."

"Other than the gods, that is. And neither of us is
Alexander."

"No," I said. "We certainly aren't. Nor
Amon, nor Morgan. And we don't know what Alexander knows, or what he's doing to
maintain the cycle. If he's using that damned Ruin." I looked up at the
bricklined ceiling and grimaced. "Not yet, anyway."

he old part of Ash is nice,
especially in the early fall. The worst of summer is past, the worst of winter
far away. The air is clean, probably the only clean breath you'll get in the
whole city. Distant winds come down from the Crow's Teeth Mountains, wash
across the vast plains of the collar, and break over the lake, right into the
Brothers' Spear. That air carries the smell of the harvest and the cold promise
of snow.