The Horns of Ruin (38 page)

I rested on a terrace of pews. It amazed me, how much this
place resembled the Grand Library, in the Scholar's prison up above. The same
wild logic of architecture and landscape permeated everything, though here the
logic slipped into dream as much as reality. And no books, I realized. There
were no books here.

The farther I went, the narrower things became. Ceilings
dropped claustrophobically low; walls pressed in. The stairways were mere wisps
between rooms. The logic of the place was compressing into a single, disjointed
note. I felt more and more like I was pressing on into a dollhouse, hunching
down to pass through doors, stepping over walls that had never been closed. I
was about to invoke Morgan's strength to clear a little space when I passed
through the final door, and came to the heart of it all.

The central chamber was enormous and smooth. White walls
raised up dozens of feet, a cylinder of arches, each arch leading off to tiny
rooms like the one I had just left. It was as if the architecture of the
building was an ever-expanding note, and this was the bell that had sounded it.
I looked around once, then saw what was at the center of the room.

A boat, tucked into a bank of sand, wooden sides charred
and bound with brass. The nose of the boat was down, as if it had plummeted to
this spot and burrowed into the earth. Lying in the bottom of the boat, but
nearly vertical due to its orientation, was a body, bound in chains.

Amon the Scholar. Still breathing, his lungs rasping like
steel on sand. His skin was charred and black, great cracks in the flesh open
and raw. Not a tall man, but a god. Water from the lake burbled from his mouth
with every breath, slopping messily down onto his bound chest. The chains sang
with power, hovering inches over his body and orbiting, seemingly diving into
his body and his soul to twist out in a complex knot that strained my eyes. I
looked away.

Nathaniel was there, leaning against one of the arches. He
held a cigarette cupped in one hand, the iron mask of the Betrayer tucked under
his arm like a football. Other than the mask, he was dressed as an Elector of
Alexander. Playing his full hand. Hiding nothing.

"I thought he had convinced you," he said,
quietly, his voice carrying through the bell-shaped room like an infection.
"I thought Barnabas had turned you aside. Thought that you weren't going
to come to me at all."

"You won't run from me this time, Betrayer," I
said, though my voice shook.

"Oh." He smiled, then stubbed the cigarette out
on the wall and dipped his head to place the mask on his face. When he looked
up, it was with a gray visage, articulated into the shape of a face, cruel and
sharp. "I wouldn't dream of it."

held my bullistic on him,
trained at his heart. He smirked.

"Bullets, Eva Forge? Black powder? Is that how you
wish to resolve this?"

"You dead. That's all I care about."

He nodded slowly, looking down at the floor. His hands were
clasped behind him.

"I understand that. Expediency." His voice echoed
off the high walls of the chamber. Behind me, Amon burbled on his eternal bed,
iron creaking through his chest. "The Betrayer follows a similar path,
Eva. One knife, rather than two, rather than a legion. One knife in the
dark."

"Driven home by a coward," I spat.

"Well. Why fight when you cannot win? Why not fight
the battle you are guaranteed to win? Efficiency of force." He was getting
close enough to make me nervous. I poked the revolver at him. He smiled.
"And still you haven't shot me."

"Whatever you want," I said, and sighted the
shot.

"We dream Morgan's death every night, Eva. His last
moments. The blood on our knife. The sirens in the camp as the body is found. I
close my eyes at night and dream that glory." He stood straightbacked,
halfway to the Scholar's coffin, arms still behind his back. Like a
schoolteacher, standing in front of a gifted though stubborn student. "Is
there anything about that you wanted to know?"

"Nope." And trigger. The thud of gunpowder roared
through the chamber, flash and shock shuddering up my arm.

His swing was quick, quick as a bullet. Quicker. He swung
his right arm up, holding something loose and silver. Sparks showered the white
of his armor, but he kept smiling. I backed away as he slithered forward,
cycling hammer and cylinder, taking even breaths, timing the shots to match the
quiet of my body, putting round after round on target. And every shot, every
booming report, met by that arcing silver that ended in sparks and his smile.

We stood, separated by ten feet, immobile. That dry
clicking sound was the hammer landing on an empty chamber. He was in a relaxed
stance, swinging his weapon casually across his chest in a figure eight. It
looked like a chain, mirror bright and as long as my leg.

"Reload, if you like. I'm in no rush."

I stared at him in empty panic and fought my way through
the nerves, through the antiseptic terror of his defense. I flicked my wrist
and emptied the shells, clattering, to the floor. Calmly as I could, I pinched
bullets out of my belt and seated them in the empty chambers. He watched me
with idle amusement.

"If you prefer, we can start again. I can go back to
my wall, there. Light a cigarette-"

"What happened to the darkness, Nathaniel? What
happened to the expedient blade in the middle of the night?" I slapped the
cylinder shut. "Why are you toying with me?"

He bowed ever so slightly. "A final kill, Eva. We have
been counting the days, praying for the sheath to be dropped, the cloak pulled
aside. There have been many deaths in these two hundred years. In the house of
Morgan, in the temple of Amon. Even in the halls of Alexander. But it is
drawing to an end. I am savoring the last bite of a marvelous feast."

"The halls of Alexander? You would kill your
own?"

"They are not all our own. Very few are, in fact. We
kill those who must be killed."

"And Morgan? Why must we all be killed?"

"You come here, and do not know the answer? No, I
think you do. Come," he raised a hand. "The feast is getting cold.
Let us dine."

I slapped the cylinder closed then holstered the revolver.
I was never a lady of the bullet, anyway. Blade was my soul, and blade my
heart. I raised my hands, and the sheath fed me my sword. Nathaniel laughed.

"Excellent! I would have it no other way." He
stopped spinning his chain and held it limp in front of him. The links of the
chain were sickle sharp and barbed, oddly formed to let the chain lay nearly
flat when it was still. It swung slowly by his chest like a pendulum. With a
quick hand he snapped it to one side. The chain stiffened, the links collapsed
together, and suddenly he was holding a sword, full of barbs and gaps and links
and sickle-shaped cruelty. Idly, he twirled it in his hand, and it droned as it
cut the air.

"What amuses me is how little curiosity you show for
your brothers of Morgan. Tomas? Isabel? You have yet to ask if they still live,
or if I have named their judgment and declared their-"

I struck, without invokations or rage, without thought. I
was mesmerized by the pattern of his blade, its path burned into my mind, its
farthest orbit, weakest point, just as I stepped forward and put my blade
neatly into his chin. Just nicked it, like an accident you might have while
shaving.

He stumbled back, blood coursing down his throat and onto
that gloriously bleached doublet. The mask went flying, to crack against Amon's
charred boat. It ended up on the floor, spinning like a dropped plate. I barked
out a laugh.

"Show your face, coward," I said, and swung in
again.

He answered, his face angry, the blade swift as he
countered my stroke, countered again, then riposte. I took the stroke on the
wide, flat face of my sword and twisted the handle to throw off his weight. I
lunged again. He back-stepped from the attack, and collected himself.

"Not talking so much now, eh?"

"Why do you attack without your invokations, Eva
Forge?" he chided. "Has Morgan left you? Have you lost your faith in
the old Warrior?"

"I don't need the rites to put down a dog. Even
Alexander's dog."

He settled his face, assumed a stance of defense, and swung
the chain-sword in a close dance. That drone hummed off the high ceiling and drowned
out Amon's unnatural chorus.

"You seek to unsettle me. You think that because we
fight in shadows, we do not know how to fight. You demand proof." He
skittered forward in a series of quick half-steps, his balance always at
center. "Proof you shall have."

Proof I had. I didn't think that, of course. I knew damn
well they could fight. Elias had put up a fight. I had crossed blades with
Nathaniel's boys over Simeon's body. He could fight. I just didn't want to
waste my noetics this early on. Reserves for the long battle. If he was going
to gloat, then I was willing to stretch it out.

I did just enough to keep him away, and he did just enough
to keep me moving. We retreated across the chamber in a slow circle, blades
dancing through sparks, the room quiet except for the metal strike and the
drone of his blade, the scratch of grit under our feet as we moved. One
circuit, and I had seen enough.

"Barnabas, never dead, son of hammers, son of
light," I incanted, and the room began to hum with power. "Elias,
green life and dark soil, warrior of wood and woad, blood feeding the life of
us all. Isabel, ink-stained and careful shot." As I spoke the timber of
our blades changed, the drone muting to be replaced by the high song of my
sword. The sparks began to mix with a clinging fog that trailed my swings. The
air cracked. My voice snapped like a flag in a hurricane. "Heridas, who
stood at Chelsey Gate against the Paupers' Tyrant, dead for a day and still
fighting. Bloody Jennifer, two swords against the night, never to see the
dawn!"

The tide shifted, and we balanced against each other, blade
for blade, stroke for stroke, countering each counter and stepping past each
heart strike.

"What sort of invokation is that, Paladin? I know the
names of your dead."

"The dead and the living," I spat. "Simeon,
barrels hot, chamber dry, his eyes the eyes of heaven, his bully the hammer of
gods. May the warrior never die!" And the chamber echoed with my voice,
the warrior never die, never die ... "Jeremiah Scourge, last of the living
shield-brethren of dying Morgan, carrying the flashing steel into the Straits
of Armice, unyielding as the Rethari swarmed. The massacre at Middling Hall,
the charge of Maltis, the siege of Or'bahar. The hundred years of the warrior,
and a hundred more, and a hundred more!" I bullied into him, blade
swinging wildly, fire in my eyes and in my hands, wicking from my sword as I
struck again and again. "A hundred years forever, and may the warrior
never die!"

He was in earnest now, falling back, sweat and blood
dripping down his face and neck. Reckless with his blade, he left openings that
I widened, revealed weaknesses that I pursued. He fell back, and I advanced,
the warrior in me rising like the sun.