The Horns of Ruin (39 page)

"I bind myself to the legions of the blade, to my
brothers of sword and sisters of bullet. To the thousand years of Morgan, those
who fell in his service, and those who fell in his defense. I bind myself to
the battle unending, the hunt eternal." I spat the words, my voice rising
into a crescendo of mad fury. "To the living sons of the warrior, and to
the dead." And with each oath I struck, sword hammering against his
defenses in glory and light. "To the dead! To the dead of Morgan! The dead
of Morgan! Morgan!"

I threw him back and blood spilled out from his chest. He
gasped and brought his sword around to defend. I hammered it aside and drew
blood again. He was on his knees in the presence of the warrior god. I howled
and rushed in.

The blade came from nowhere. From the shadows. It took me
in the back, sliding smoothly between doublet and ribs, hot metal straight
through me, and when it left there was nothing to fill that void but cold. I
stumbled. I fell.

Nathaniel dragged himself to his feet, supporting his
weight on the sword of chain. His servant ghosted behind me, shaking blood from
his weapon and muttering invokations. I was on one knee, trying to get my
breath against the pressure of the blood that was filling my mouth.

"The dead of Morgan," he said, and spat.
"Morgan, warrior of the field. Champion of the people. Damned
butcher." He raised his sword. "Hail to Morgan, the Brother Betrayed.
Long may he die."

I twisted and swung my sword behind me, rising on one foot,
just enough strength to drive the sword into the other ghost's belly, punch it
in deep. The air smelled like piss and blood. I drew the sword out and up,
rasping the blade against his ribs before exiting the steaming corpse just
below the throat. He gurgled, already dead, slumped to the side. My return
strike blocked Nathaniel's startled swing, corrected, then two quick punches
that put the sharp base of the blade into his thigh, then his belly. We fell
apart, leaving a pool of spilled life between us.

"The dead of Morgan," I burbled. He stared at me,
face pale as his cloak, lips quivering. I was on my knees, gasping, grating my
teeth.

Nathaniel leapt to his feet, hand on his opened guts, and
invoked something short and arcane. Two quick steps and he was in the air, off
the wall and higher up, disappearing into one of the archways. He left his
sword and mask behind.

I knelt before Amon, my life spilling out into my lap, the
chamber filled with the sound of the Betrayer's footsteps as he ran away, down
the hundred hallways that led out of this place. Echoes of his feet, and my
failing heart.

You come here, and do not know the answer? No, I think you
do. His words ran through my mind as I lay before the undying Scholar god. I
think you do. I did. Barnabas cutting the chain, the ease with which
Cassandra's shackles fell away at the touch of my blade. The chains on the
shoulders of the Librarians Desolate, and the chains twisting through their
god. Before me. I knew.

The power of the soul-bonds came from this body, these
chains. No Amonite had been able to remove his own chains, not since the Healer
had taken possession of the Library Desolate. There must have been a ritual,
with Amon as the sacrifice, and the chains as the reward. As long as these
chains held Amon, the noetic chains in the city above would hold his scions.
That was how these sorts of invokations worked.

But for every ritual, there had to be a price. An out.
Chains had to have a key. And what better key than the Cult who hated Amon
most? Only a scion of Morgan can free a Scholar. Barnabas knew, as the
Fratriarch. Knew that when he laid his knife against Cassandra's chains, they
would melt away. And Alexander must know, because he was the one who bound the
rite to begin with.

And when Alexander learned that some secret of the
Betrayal, some clue as to the assassin's true name, had fallen into the hands
of the Cult of Morgan? What panic that must have caused. What fear. What
desperation. Desperation enough to kidnap his brother's Living Sword, torture
him, murder him. And when he learned that the archive had escaped his grasp, in
the hands of the last Paladin and her Scholar companion ...

That was the joke of it. Our greatest enemy had been our
only ally. Every little thing Alexander did to undercut the Cult of Morgan
during these past centuries-the civilian army, the protection of the Amonites,
the factories that churned out rifles and bombs and fighting machines that made
our glorious charges, our swords and our martial skill ... made those things we
held most holy irrelevant on the battlefield. I had always mistrusted
Alexander, because I felt he humored us, coddled us. In fact, he had smothered
us, one strength at a time, one recruit at a time. Until the time came when
there weren't enough of us to oppose him. And then he struck. Declared us
apostate, whipped up the populace against us, took our Elders captive and put
them on trial.

It didn't matter that I knew the truth of it. No one would
believe me. No one would trust a scion of the Warrior again, especially not in
opposition to Alexander. The godking.

I stood, my chest rearranging itself, the blood flowing
fresh down my legs and arms. Such a damn mess, Eva. You're just all screwed up.
You can't go to the city now, and tell them all about the lies of Alexander and
the true betrayal. It was up to someone else, now. It would have to be the
Amonites who told the truth.

All I could do was let them go.

I raised my sword and stepped to the coffin. No invokation,
no glory of the fallen church of the Warrior. Nothing but a ritual being
broken. I brought the blade down, and it struck deep into the helix of chains
that twisted around the Scholar's charred body. Metal parted like silk, the
pattern of its orbit disrupted. I looped several bands of it around my sword,
drew tight the tension of bonds, and then pulled back. The full length of the
blade rasped through the metal and then they let go of their ancient station,
with a sigh, with a clatter. The chains fell to the floor.

I stumbled back, weakened by blood loss and off balance
from the blade. What would Barnabas think of his student, barely able to hold her
weapon over her head? As if I were a child. As if I were weak. I went to one
knee, holding myself up with the sword, tip biting deep into the pebbled floor.

Amon opened his eyes and looked at me.

"I will need champions," he said. His voice
sounded like tombs speaking.

"I am bound to Morgan," I answered feebly.

"Morgan is dead," he said, then stood. His skin
creaked like unkempt leather. He stood before me in the mutilation of his
nakedness, and held a hand out to me. "And I am not. Stand as my champion."

"I am bound." I looked up at him, faint in head,
weak of heart. "But I will fight for you, in what time I have left."

"That is enough." He breathed in deeply, then
opened his mouth and let out a long, even breath that smelled of spiced meat
and hot stones. The pebbled floor around my knees flaked and then rose. The
shards drove into my flesh, sealing the wounds and patching the damage, but at
such a cost. I jumped to my feet, panting and mewling in pain. The sword spun
from my hands. When the pain stopped I was filled with a heavy coldness that
touched my bones and weighed me down. Again I fell to my knees, my hands,
gasping for air.

"You have paid the price of Amon," he said.
"If only in part. As for my champion, I will find another. Another
..."

He was still for a moment, then cocked his head to the
ceiling.

"Or another will find me. Yes." Arms out, palms
up. "A Champion of Amon."

The room shivered, but that might have been all the new
rock in my gut. I was having trouble focusing. He inhaled deeply several more
times, his breath curling out in oily wisps. Eyes closed, and then he turned to
me. "I thought you were her, but you are not. The girl who found me, who
touched my mind. Her spirit is in turmoil, but I have made repairs. It is done.
Stand, let us rise to settle our scores."

"You're damned crazy," I spat.

"I have been bound in a tomb of my own making, held in
perpetual sacrifice to the glory of my murderer." He set his feet in the
center of the chamber and raised his arms. "Perhaps madness is the price
of that. Rise!"

I didn't get the chance. The air shimmered around him, and
a pulse of energy washed out from his lungs and pushed through the building.
Everything shifted, and a sky of dust shook loose from the walls to hang in the
air. The world groaned at our waking. The room pitched, and then we tore free.

The whole building was rising, rising, ripped from the
bottom of the lake and rising to the city above. I looked at Amon and saw
perfect calm there, perfect calculation. Perfect rage.

What had I done?

It began as a tide. The dark waters that slapped against
the docks on the inner shore of Ash swelled against the pylons. Fishermen and
watch captains noted the difference, and peered out into the artificial bay.
That swelling became a tumult, and then water was rushing over the side of the
city in a white-capped rush. Boats that were near the shore beached against
cobbled streets. The new tide cracked open the glass shells of the closest
buildings, washing through them in a wave of shattered windows and furniture
and screaming citizens. Sirens sounded all across the waterfront, a droning
wail that mingled with terror and shock and breaking glass. Deep in the city
the domestic canals rushed their banks. The current flashed against bridges and
walkways in a furious white foam.

At the center of the bay, a dome of dark water was rising,
the disturbance sloughing off new currents. In a fury of foam and displaced
depths, something white and massive broke the surface and rose, rose, burst
from the lake and then settled into it. It trailed tendrils like netting, like
a great fish torn free from a fisher's snare. It was a complicated object, like
a deck of shells that had been poorly shuffled.

As the fishermen and the watch captains and ordinary
citizens of Ash stared, the huddled structure began to shift and blossom. The
overlapping leaves slid together, water still cascading off their grooved
surfaces, some of them diving back into the lake as they shifted aside, others
bursting from the water in a rainbow-laced spray.

The new island opened at the top like a flower opening to
the sun. It was full of light. The inner workings of the island splintered
apart, tumbling into the water like a discarded carapace. From the distance of
the city, it looked like whole buildings were being turned inside out and
disgorged into the lake. Another wave rose up to crash against the city.

From the new opening rose a figure. Telescopes and
gunsights snapped to him all along the shore. Black, mostly naked, only the
barest armor covering him and that looked to be made of charred wood. On his
back he wore a wide, flat disk that silhouetted his upper body. The disk was of
beaten brass, slightly elongated, and had some sort of aura filtering along its
edge, like a blade that had been heated in the forge, distorting the air.

He rose above the building, above the lake, above the
heights of the city. Arms spread wide, legs extended like a swimmer, he rose
and the city watched him. Afraid. Unsure. Even the sirens quieted as their
attendants left their stations to watch the spectacle.

He held out a hand and the towers screamed. Glass vibrated
and steel hummed throughout the city in a wave. It passed through people,
through stone, through water and steel. Finally, it rested on the Spear of the
Brothers, tightening until the whole structure sang like a tuning fork.
Something shifted inside the shining white marble tower, then a small section
of the white stone crumbled like snow. An object flew out of the tower and
smashed into a nearby building, raking along the glass walls and furrowing a
trail of shattered windows. The object flew straight and true, breaking
anything that stood before it, cracking walls and bending pillars with its
passage. With a hammer's blow it struck a tall glass building on the water's
edge, cratering the facade, burrowing through floors and stairwells before
erupting from the other side in a shower of glass and noise. It flew to the
figure and snapped into his hand, glowing with the might of its passage.

He raised it over his head like a benediction. The Spear of
Amon, in the hand of Amon. The Scholar had taken up his weapon. War was upon
us.