The Horns of Ruin (41 page)

"That's why he sent his little dead army, to crack
them open?" Owen asked. "And we've been worshipping this guy?"

"There are valves. But emptying the Ruin through them
..." Malcolm shook his head. "I don't know what would happen."

"Will it be something better than the city getting
destroyed by those two bastards, throwing the entire Fraterdom into
chaos?"

He bent his head to one side and thought, steepling his
fingers against his lips.

"I can't guarantee that it will be."

"Close enough for me," I said. "Show us
where these valves for the Ruin are."

"Hold," Cassandra said. She was standing between
us and what remained of the door. "I cannot assist you in this. You act
against Amon."

"But I act in his interest," I said, turning straight
to her and clasping my hands across my sword. "If Alexander doesn't kill
him in this fight, he'll be so badly wounded that he won't be able to hold on
to the power of the Ruin anyway. Better to let it out now than have it tear
free later."

She stared at me, hands clenched into a fist between her
breasts, legs set to receive a charge. No other movement.

"We don't have time for this, girl." I walked up
to her. "Are you going to stop me from doing this?"

Several breaths. She shook her head.

"Then move or follow. We're going."

And we went. When the room was empty she touched a finger
to the bloody handprint on her breast, then smeared it against her forehead.
But she followed us.

What the Feyr had told me of the Ruin was minimal. An
ancient place. An atrocity lodged in the soul of their people, and then passed
on to us. That it could be used to prevent the cycle of gods was a by-product,
and one that the Feyr had never tapped. Leave it to man. Leave it to Alexander.

It did explain why we built our city on a lake, though. The
Ruin itself did not float, nor did it sink. It simply was where it was, and the
city was built up around it. The Elemental of the Feyr had described it like a
sore, burned into reality. It looked like a rock, though.

Malcolm led us through the wreckage of the Spear and out.
The sky resembled a white-water rapids now, conflicting currents rushing
together and churning in near invisible turmoil. Whatever madness drifted down
into the city was turning Ash into wreckage as well. Buildings burned, sirens
called, but no one was answering them.

"I would take the 'train," Malcolm said,
"but I'm pretty sure they're not running on schedule today."

"Smartass," I answered. Turned to Owen.
"That wagon of yours available?"

He shook his head. "Do you honestly think the
communications rig is going to work in this mess? And if it did, do you think
anyone would answer?"

"Mm. Well. I guess we're walking."

Not a long walk, but a difficult one. Streets were flooded
or had fallen through, replaced with sudden lakes and rivers that coursed
through the infrastructure. Usually stable boulevards tilted, and buildings
creaked dangerously. Lots of glass, lots of debris. Lots of bodies, and most of
them dead at the hands of other citizens.

What had I done? What cost was I asking the rest of the
city to pay?

"You've done nothing that should not have been
done," Cassandra answered, though I'd kept my mouth shut. She looked at me
with those blindfolded eyes. "These things have unfolded in a way that
could not be expected."

"Are you going to be creepy like that forever now?
Because if you are, I'm not sure we can still be friends."

"Maybe after the apocalypse I'll feel a little more
chipper," she answered.

"Thank gods," I said.

What should have been five minutes by foot took us half an
hour, and we were all on edge by the time we got where we were going. I'm not
sure I could have found the place without Malcolm. As it was we kept getting
lost, doubling back, finding new roads that hadn't been ruined.

The building itself was uninteresting. Long and flat-sided,
cut out of granite, no windows. A sign on the front declared it to be part of
the power grid.

"That supposed to be funny?" I asked.

"We don't get a lot of opportunity for levity in the
Library Desolate," he answered. "Is it funny?"

I didn't answer. We went inside, with the help of Malcolm's
passkey and a complete lack of guards.

"You'd think these guards would have stuck, at
least," I said. "Alexander's true nature couldn't have been much of a
surprise to them."

They had stuck, though, and died in their service. When we
found them, they were stuffed into a closet. Dead, not hiding. Butchered. I
immediately thought of the groups of coldmen Owen and I had found around the
city. Similar slash wounds, similar savagery. We exchanged a look.

The foyer of the building led to a freight elevator. No
stairs. We all got in, locked up, and began the descent. Quiet ride down, but
when the doors opened we were all a little open-jawed.

The Ruin of Ash was a wide, flat stone, big as a hockey
field, glossy black and pitted. It looked a lot like the Feyr artifacts we had
seen, only huge. It radiated energy, like a hot furnace about to blow. It was
nestled into a bowl-shaped room. The room was lined with drumlike receivers,
gathering and emitting some invisible force. Just standing in the doorway was
like being deaf in the loudest room you've ever heard.

"This is it," I gasped. Malcolm nodded, but kept
his head down. "What do we do?"

"Nothing," said a voice from the corner. The two
men, their tattooed eyes, their bulky robes. They walked toward us like monks,
hands clasped at their waists, sleeves hiding their fists.

"Who are you people?" I said as I led my little
contingent out of the elevator. "I mean, I've appreciated your help, but
what's your part in all this?"

"This is our point," he said, nodding to the Ruin
behind him. "And we have appreciated your help as well, Eva Forge."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

The nearer one shrugged and tore out of his robe. Not a man
at all, and not wearing armor. He was armor. Bulky chest and backwardbending
knees, arms like a giant's. And the tattoos around his eyes? Scales, just like
the rest of him. His mouth yawned with teeth, and was as wide as both my hands
together. He wore shielded gauntlets, bound to sharp punch daggers. He smiled
at me with gods so many teeth.

Rethari.

"Dramatic, my brother," the other one said,
calmly drawing back his robe and then rolling up his sleeves to reveal similar
weapons. "Can't we keep our dignity?"

"You sent the artifact, didn't you? To get us here, to
this point? To reveal the betrayal of Alexander and drive us to war against
ourselves?"

"Not at all. We had no idea Amon still lived. That was
just icing. All we wanted to do was drive the scions of Morgan away from the
godking. This ..." He raised his hands and nodded. "This is just
serendipity."

"We're here to destroy that thing," I said.
"And we're really not going to let you stand in our way."

"What luck. We're here to destroy it, too. Just
..." And he cocked his head to the sky. "Not yet."

This gave me pause. I didn't like that our paths aligned. I
looked to Malcolm, but he just shrugged. Cassandra stepped forward.

"You mean to free the power entombed in the Ruin, to
force the turning of the cycle and ascend your gods. I will stop you," she
said.

"Stop us from doing what, little girl? You want to
destroy the Ruin? Fine." The one still wearing a robe held out his hand.
It contained a tiny wheel and chain. "Here is the plunger. We've already
set the charges. We will give this to you. We'll even pull the trigger, so that
you might escape and live."

"They won't blow it yet," Malcolm said. "Not
until Alexander and Amon kill each other."

"Why?" I asked. "Why wait until then?"

"The power would release from the gods, but the cycle
would not turn. Not immediately. Maybe a month, maybe a year, but it would stay
in the mantle of mankind. New gods would arise."

"Not if you blow it up," Cassandra said.
"That kind of release would overwhelm the city, no matter when you do it."
She looked at me. "It might be enough to kill the Brothers, and leave the
rest of us mad with divinity."

"Until the cycle turned," Malcolm said.
"Which we would have no mind to prevent."

"So," the Rethari said, gripping the plunger.
"We seem to be in something of a draw. If you'd all please step back
..."

The ghost appeared from the direction of the Ruin, rushing
up the bowl of the room without making a sound. He started as little more than
a fog, quickly solidifying as he came. Feet away from the Rethari he struck. I
heard the blade go into meat, once, twice, and then a tearing slash that
buckled the giant creature's back. Those tattooed eyes bulged, and then he
tumbled to the floor.

His companion howled and went to slash at the assassin. I
drew iron and put him down before he could even take a step.

Nathaniel knelt behind the fallen Rethari, blood on his
blade and mouth. He looked up at me, chest heaving, skin white, the wound I had
given him still oozing into his shirt. Maybe not so much of a Healer, after
all.

"I could not let that happen," he said. His voice
was wet with blood. "Not to Alexander. All that I do, I do for him."

"I understand," I said. "Thank you."

"So. Redemption at last, Eva Forge?"

"Let's not be idiots, Nate."

I raised the bully and put lead in his eye. His skull
pulped around the bullet's path, bright crimson on his white pauldrons. He
tumbled back and was still. In the quiet that followed, I walked over to the
Rethari detonation device and crushed it under my foot. When I turned around
they were all staring at me.

"I'm not much of a forgiver," I said. "Now
show me how to vent this place."

The sky was a nightmare of light and current and arcane
shadow. The city of Ash was cast in stark and unnatural darkness. The surface
of the lake rippled with the impact of unseen forces, like a giant rainstorm. A
thunderhead of ash and fury was growing over the battlefield, and the two
combatants faced one another in utter silence and calm.

With a roaring creak, the great circular tracks of the monotrains
shuddered and strained into life. Behind their shrouding towers, the impellors
sparked. Glowed with arcane power. Began to move. The trains inched forward on
their tracks, slowly speeding up as the cycle of the impellors increased, each
pass moving the trains forward a little quicker, each pass coming sooner and
with more power. More strength. Strength unrestrained. Something was wrong.

Thankfully, no one was on any of the trains. A small grace,
on a day of great tragedy, with more tragedy still to come. The trains turned
and turned, howling around their tracks. The force of the impellors exceeded
all that the tracks had been designed to withstand, and kept going. Sparks
showered down from the iron wheels, the metal of track and train starting to glow
as they continued to accelerate. All across the city people stopped their
rioting and their persecution and turned to look at the howling iron horses.
The smart ones ran.

When the tracks failed it was with a great sigh of
straining metal and broken tolerances. In many places, freed Amonites ran to
the failing system and tried to bolster them, but this was beyond their ken.
Many died, only hours into the dawn of their newly liberated Cult. Many
ordinary citizens died as well, for standing too close to faltering tracks, or
not realizing what was happening and trying to get close enough to see.

In most cases the trains just toppled from their tracks,
skidding through towers and streets and across cobbled paths before burying
themselves into a canal or building. Hot metal charred the ground as they
rolled, flailing around like chain shot.

On the impellors roared, faster and faster, their power
drums glowing to sun's brilliance as they spun. Their force peeled open the
towers that hid them, shattering their skin like a struck bell. Feyr boiled up
from their hidden places, screaming in mad ecstasy, clawing at their ears. The
impellors roared, and soon the towers that had been built taller than the
tracks were crumbling. Walls boomed, windows popped, the steel framework
splintering like china. The city fell, tower by tower, block by block. Only the
ancient buildings stood, those that had been built lower than the tracks. Even
those structures sustained damage as the higher places collapsed on them in a
cloud of glass and steel.