The Horns of Ruin (40 page)

I clambered from the water, gasping and tired. I rode some
of the detritus out when the building opened up, was lucky enough to find
something wooden, and the wave brought me home. Lucky enough for that.

I sat on the shoreline, trembling, eyes wide at the ravaged
coast. Waterfalls coursed out of broken windows; the harbor was choked with
shattered furniture and churning pedigears and bodies. Lots of bodies. The
sirens started up again as Amon raised his spear and pointed it across the
city. Far away I heard stone shattering, and a pillar of debris towered between
the buildings. The Spear of the Brothers, my guess.

From the wreckage of his throne, Alexander ascended. He
rose into the air, white as the full moon, halberd in hand, half-shield on his
back. And now he wore the articulated mask of the Betrayer. Alexander the
Healer, Alexander the Betrayer, Alexander the godking of Ash.

The city stopped, the sirens and the pedigears and the
monotrain. The impellors slowed and then halted. The gods of man faced each
other across the landscape of the city of Ash, and we all stopped.

"Godsdamn," I whispered, easing my blade from its
waterproof bag. "Gods and Brothers be damned."

Above me, the sky began to turn.

he war between the Brothers
Immortal was a thing seen and yet unseen, felt and yet unfelt. They hung above
the city like rogue stars, one charred, one shining, hovering in poses of martial
meditation. Around them the sky boiled and churned. In the city it felt like
bad weather in a clear sky. Like everything was wrong with the world.

Massive pressure systems lumbered through the streets,
causing windows to creak and eardrums to pop. Just as suddenly the air would
vacate this alley or that building. People stumbled into the open, gasping for
breath, blood leaking from their ears. The sky turned dark one second, then
flared into brilliant whiteness the next. The air groaned with the passing of
unseen energies.

It was worse for me, for all the scions of our erstwhile
gods. Nausea swept through me, crippling weakness, then frenetic energy
bordering on the psychotic. I was dizzy, I was high, I was tired, and I was
scared. I focused on the ground in front of me, on each faltering step, on the
sword in my hands. Around me the city was a hash of gunshots and oily smoke and
breaking glass. The world was going mad.

The maddest part was around the Library Desolate. These
were people who had voluntarily submitted to imprisonment, in order to serve
the god they loved. And now they were free, and their god wasn't dead after
all. Only he was clearly mad, and that madness was rippling through the
community like a virus. Meanwhile, the citizens of Ash, who had grown up being
taught that Amon was the darkest villain mankind had ever spawned, were just
coming to grips with seeing the Scholar rise from the lake like an eclipsed
moon. That his rising had killed hundreds of people, ruined the shoreline, and was
now the subject of an arcane war that, simply, none of us could understand
wasn't helping the public mood. Crowds had gathered at the Library, to be met
by the newly freed Amonites. A thin band of whiteshirts stood between them, not
sure who they were supposed to be holding back. My approach disrupted things
even more.

"Paladin! Paladin of Morgan! Save us!" some of
them shouted, from all three groups. Save them from the madness of their god,
or the crowd, or their duty? I wasn't sure. And I was in no position to do any
of it, anyway.

Others among them remembered the lies of Nathaniel, of the
trials that had just been conducted, the judgments that had been handed down.
Some of these same citizens might have stood in the shadow of the Strength,
cheering while it burned.

My mind was in turmoil. I pushed my way to the whiteshirts,
the hands of the crowd on me equal parts acclamation and condemnation. It was a
gauntlet. By the time I reached the Alexian lines, I was twitching with
restrained violence. Someone had to take control.

"Your god has betrayed you," I said to the
frightened line of soldiers. "Amon did not kill Morgan. It was
Alexander."

Okay, that probably wasn't the best thing to say, given the
situation. Probably not a situation on earth where that would have been the
right thing to say. But I was never a leader of men. More like a leader of the
charge, and that's what this was. A rush to enlightenment, storming the walls
of an ancient betrayal.

"What the hell are you talking about?" one of
them shouted. We were all shouting, just to be heard over the crowd. Crowd.
Riot, more like.

"Look up, look at your god." I pointed at the
distant figure of Alexander, hovering among novas of power. "Tell me what
you see!"

They peered up, squinting at the light. Finally one of them
raised a set of binoculars to his eyes.

"He's wearing a mask," the man reported. They
looked back at me.

"The articulated mask of the Betrayer," I said.
"The fight is too dire, his brother is returned. He has to play all his
cards, bring all of his aspects into play."

"To hell with you, lady. I swore to Alexander on my
name, and with Alexander I'll stay," one of them said.

I nodded. "Fairly said, but consider: I am the last of
the scions of Morgan. What reason would I have to stand with my god's
betrayer?"

"Your god is dead. What reason do you have to stand
with him?"

"She's a lady of conviction, fellows," said
another in the crowd, and I turned to him. Owen, face smeared with ash, a
bandage across his forehead. "You broke my skull, Eva."

"The cost of trusting me," I said.

"Yeah. But that up there? That's not the god I swore
my name to."

"Then help me stop him."

He laughed and shrugged. "Of course. What else would I
do with my time? But what are we supposed to do here?"

I looked around at the seething mobs on both sides of us.
Even among the whiteshirts there were those who would knife me before they
would follow me. Best to just defuse and get out. I went to the nearest
Amonite.

"Who leads you?" I asked.

"Amon, risen again, Scholar and Saint!" he
shrieked. I took his collar in my fist and slapped him once.

"Among these people here, who leads you?"

The Scholar looked at me numbly, so I dropped him and went
to the next.

"Who leads you?"

"That is my calling," said someone deep in the
crowd. He fought his way forward. An old man, face lined with ash and tears of
joy. He looked calm, though. Not at all mad. "What do you need, sister of
our brother?"

"You're never going to get out this way. These people
will kill you. Go back inside, and wait. Let the Alexians guard you."

"Did that work for you, Morganite?"

"Well-"

"Then do not ask the same of us. We have been falsely
bound for too long. The Library is being gathered and removed."

"Agreed. But if you come out this way, there's just
going to be a lot of burned books and dead Scholars." I strained my neck
to see around the crowds, then looked back at the old man. "There has to
be another way out. The lake?"

"The lake," he said, considering. Eventually he
nodded. "I think something can be done with the lake."

"Great. Everyone inside."

And they went. Peacefully, quietly, calmly. The whiteshirts
followed them in and sealed the door. I stayed outside. When I turned to go,
Owen was waiting.

"I said, you broke my skull."

"I'm sorry. Honestly I am. But now isn't the time for
this."

He sighed, tore the icon of Alexander from his breast, and
tossed it to the ground. Then he unhitched his shotgun.

"What is now the time for?"

"Follow me," I said, then left. He followed.

We found our way back to the Spear of the Brothers. Its
remnants, at least. Just as I had feared, the central tower had turned to
chalky powder and collapsed. There were bodies. I found a door, then a
stairwell, then more doors. I got out from under that sky of madness and felt a
little better. Even Owen seemed to be relieved to be out of the gaze of his
former god.

The architecture had been shuffled, levels misaligned,
doors hanging open and corridors flooded. I didn't think I would find my way
back to Cassandra. Turned out not to be half as difficult as I was expecting.

Some kind of feedback had found its way to the chamber with
the pressurized dome, where I'd left Cassandra and that cranky old Amonite
Malcolm. The dome itself was cracked like an egg, steaming with frost and an
aura of flickering light. The rest of the floor was leveled. Cassandra and
Malcolm stood by the ruin of the dome, looking up at it. Cassandra was ...
changed.

She turned to me when Owen and I slid down a bit of wrecked
floor and into the chamber. She wore little armor: pauldrons and a halfbreast,
gauntlets, armor for her hips and pelvis. Boots. She wore nothing else. Her
nakedness reminded me uncomfortably of Amon, hovering above the city. The armor
was metal, but charred. And the bloody handprint on her chest leaked through the
metal, for all the world looking like it had soaked through the armor from her
skin. When she turned to me, I saw that she was blindfolded. Smears of ash
showed on her cheeks.

"You ..." I started.

"I have accepted what you turned away, Eva," she
said. Her voice was unchanged, only sad. "I am the Champion of Amon."

I shuddered at the sound of her voice. Malcolm looked
between us, then at Owen, then shrugged.

"What happened here?" Owen asked.

"Place blew up," Malcolm said. "She started
babbling, then she stopped, then the place blew up. She shielded me. When the
smoke cleared, she looked like that. So." He clapped his hands and turned
to me. "What's happening outside?"

"It's complicated," I answered.

"I figured." He looked back at the dome, then
fished something out of his robe and threw it to the ground. The remnants of
his soulchains. "Complicated is good, sometimes."

"In this case, complicated will end up destroying the
city," I said. "Those two are going to keep at it until one of them
is dead. And they're too evenly matched for it to be a clean fight. The city
won't survive."

"None of us will, in the grand sense," Malcolm
said quietly. "Alexander was barely holding on to the power. And that was
with the people behind him. He's played his hand now, revealed himself as the
Betrayer. Tell me." He turned to us. "Do you think the city will
worship Alexander the Betrayer?"

"No more than they'll worship Amon the Mad," Owen
snapped.

"Some of us will," Cassandra said.

I nodded. "There will be split loyalties. And neither
will let the other live, either way." I walked up to Malcolm. "What's
that thing called? The damned holy battery?"

"The Ruin," he said. "They're both tapping
it now. Even if it only held the power Alexander has gathered in the last two
hundred years, this battle could last for weeks."

"But you said it goes back farther than that. Back to
when the Titans fell."

"Aye. Don't worry. The energies will drive them mad
long before then."

"Or they'll kill each other," I said.

The building shook, chunks of ceiling and tile clattering
down into the chamber.

Malcolm nodded. "That does seem the more likely
conclusion."

"What if we destroyed it?" I asked.

He turned to me, a quizzical look in his eyes.
"Destroy it? What good would that do?"

"Drain them of their power. At least the stored stuff.
I don't know, maybe it would weaken them enough to put them on their
heels."

"Or it could destroy the city. It's a boiler, Eva. You
don't just punch a hole in it."

"There are pressure valves, though. The impellors.
That's what Amon was getting at, when he was working with the Feyr." I
made a connection in my head. "It's what the Chanters were looking at,
too. They were working with the Feyr, building something. They must have been
figuring something out about the Ruin, and Alexander didn't like it."