The Horns of Ruin (42 page)

The impellors howled like sirens, like juggernauts, like
the horns at the end of the world, calling damnation down from heaven. The
horns sounded, and Ash fell into ruin.

Above us, the sky wrinkled and flexed. The two gods of man
screamed along with the ruining of their Fraterdom, and when the last gasp had
left them, the world was silent. They fell to earth like broken angels, to
crater into the city. The storm broke, the sky cleared, and the world breathed
anew.

he crater was twenty feet
across, lip to smoldering lip. What had once been a smooth stone parkway was
now fragmented like cracked pottery. The heat of Amon's entry had fused the
stone as soon as it was shattered. He lay at the bottom, venting arcane steam
from the fissures in his skin.

We pushed through the silent crowd that had gathered.
Cassandra ran gracefully down the incline and knelt at the side of her god. I
waited up top. The crowd began to mutter.

I heard a lot about Amon the Betrayer, about how he was
dead and was back. To finish the job he had started, some said. Others, that he
had allied with the scions of Morgan to put down the true godking. Others
claimed he was someone else, some new god. Some devil, or a sign from the next
ascendant race. Some knelt right there and swore allegiance to this unnamed
deity. Some called for a lynching. Some stayed quiet, too scared or confused to
do anything but stare.

When Cassandra looked up at me, the crowd stiffened. I
hopped down and made my way to the girl.

"They'll kill him," she whispered.

"He might have killed himself," I answered, my
eyes up on the crowd around us. "I think we're in a delicate place here,
girl."

"He did what was natural. He did what you would have
done, in his place."

"Aye. Doesn't make it right."

"Paladin," one man called down to us. His robe
was singed, and there was a nasty scar along one eye. "Who is this new
god, that we may name him?"

"Amon, Brother of Morgan and Alexander," I
answered. "The Healer bound him. Morgan has released him."

"Why would you release the Betrayer?" he asked.
Those who had knelt looked at me expectantly. I held a new religion in my
hands. I wasn't sure what to do with it, whether to crush it or let it grow,
set it free to find its own way. Nurture it. Cassandra tugged on my hand, pulling
herself up. She was still so light. She faced the crowd with her blinded eyes
and the dripping blood on her breast, the pale skin of her torso and the
charred metal covering her shoulders.

"Amon was betrayed, as was Morgan. Alexander acted
against them, to gain the throne," she said in a clear, loud voice.
"Alexander is the Brother Betrayer."

"Well, I probably wouldn't have gone that far
..." I hissed. The crowd was restless now. New gods were one thing.
Casting down the old, established gods was something else. I took Cassandra by
the arm and bent my head to hers. "Losing either of these gods is
unacceptable, Cassandra. Divinity has been lost, and the cycle is turning. We
can't put Alexander down without threatening the whole divinity of man."

"He murdered your god, Eva. He kept my cult as a pet
and yours as a shield, until he burned the Strength and strung up your Elders.
You would forget that?"

"No. But remember, your Cult has been tolerated for
two hundred years because you served the god Amon was before the Betrayal. Now
it is Alexander who is in need of that tolerance. Nothing's changed."

"How can you say that, woman?" she hissed.
"Alexander must be punished for his crimes, his followers cast down and
his temples leveled. Nothing short of justice must be seen. Nothing has
changed? Everything has changed! Amon lives!"

I pushed her away, back to her prone god. "The only
difference is that you are in the right, now, when before you thought you were
in the wrong. Only you have changed."

"Eva-" she said, scowling. I held up a hand.

"Enough. See to your god. He won't be worth a miracle
for a while. And when the power in him settles, I'm leaving it to you to see
that he doesn't let his rage guide his terrible hand."

"You would dictate to your god?"

I climbed back out of the crater, then drew my sword and
presented it to the girl and her god.

"I am Eva Forge, last Paladin of the dead god Morgan.
Last scion of that god, his living blade and only initiate. I am the Cult of
the Warrior, and I will hold you accountable. Amon is mad. Alexander is a
murderer. Only the Warrior stands."

"The Warrior stands," several members of the
crowd whispered back to me, and then more. The Warrior stands, rippling out
into the mob, into the city, into the sky. I turned my back on them and headed
toward the wreckage of the Spear of the Brothers.

I had another god to settle, and another score to count.

I could not walk alone. I hoped that the crowds would stay
behind, but some followed, and more joined as I made the long walk across the
city. He was easy enough to find. The sky was cut where he had fallen, a line
of night in a bleached sky.

Halfway there, Malcolm appeared at my side. He was
smirking. Looking back at the crowd that had gathered in my wake, he leaned to
me and said, "Tell me something about your parents, Eva."

I gave him a look. Not a happy look. "What are you
talking about, old man?"

"Your parents. Were they kind? Cruel? Did you run away
from them, and swear to the Cult of Morgan to spite your mother? Or did they
raise you holy and chaste, and cried tears of joy when their little girl chose
the humblest of the Cults to call her own?"

I grit my jaw and marched on. "This isn't the
time."

"It's not. It's a terrible time. But I have to know
what I'm seeing, don't I?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You don't," he said. He waved a hand behind us.
"But they know. They can feel it."

I stopped walking, and the Amonite walked past me a couple
steps before coming back. He was still smirking.

"Let's get something straight," I said.
"I've got a hell of a lot on my mind. We have two gods, and they're both
dangerous. My Cult is the last unspoiled Cult in the city of Ash, the last holy
house in the divinity of man. And my god is dead. I don't have time for games,
old man."

"No," he said, quietly. "You don't."

"I've already threatened one divine being today,
Amonite. I'm on my way to maybe kill another, or maybe forgive him his life. I
haven't decided. So do you have anything else you'd like to say, or can I be
about the Warrior's business?"

"Of course." He bowed and held his hands out,
palms to the sky. "Do what you must. Do what you were raised to do."

I grimaced at the formality of his pose, glared at the
crowd behind me, then stomped off. The crowd followed, flowing around the old
man like a river. When I turned the next corner I looked back. He was still
there, unmoved.

Alexander had his own crowd. Mostly whiteshirts, from
initiate Healers to patrolmen to Electors and ArchPaladins in full battle gear.
A scarred valkyn lurked at the edge of the crowd, its glimmering eyes watching
me, hissing steam from its neck. They were quiet as I approached. Past a certain
point my followers held back. Some unconscious calculation of blast radius, I
suspected.

I walked with intent, and without forgiveness. They parted
silently to let me pass, closing up behind me, patrolmen and priests looking at
me with eyes that ran from disbelief, to horror, to hate, to fear. Most of them
looked lost, and furious at their loss. Near the inner edge of the crowd I
passed Owen. He nodded to me, and I put a hand on his arm and squeezed. He
looked shocked.

Near the center there was chanting. Arcs of light danced
over the crowd. When I got there, I saw five High Healers standing around
Alexander, hands joined, chanting the rites of fulfillment. I clambered down
into the crater, so much like Amon's landing spot, and put my hand on the shoulder
of the closest priest.

"What he has can't be cut away, Doc."

He stumbled in the invokation, and the arcs of light fell
away. Murmurs rippled through the crowd, but the Healers split and faded back.
Alexander was alive, awake, sitting up. When he saw me he winced and struggled
to stand. The Betrayer's mask was nowhere to be seen.

"You would have a word with me, I suppose," he
said. His voice was cracked and weak. I nodded. "Then have it. I have a
city to rebuild."

"I want it from your mouth," I said, and shocked
myself with the cold anger in my tone. "I want it in your words."

"Who are you, to demand-"

"Who are we, to demand. The city. The generations of
Amonites who have suffered, the legions of Morgan you have thrown into battle.
These, here, who have sworn words to your name, and knew not to whom they were
swearing. Who are we? Your Brothers Immortal, Amon, Morgan. We demand it,
Alexander." I raised my arms and turned to the silent crowd. I saw some
who had followed me filtering in. "In your words. From your mouth."

He set his jaw and clenched his fists. Back stiff. Head
high.

"I don't know what-"

Blade in hand without thought, metal against the softness
of his neck, heavy against his blood. The skin parted and wet the steel.

"How many, just today? How many have died? I have
emptied the Ruin with my own hand. You can feel it, feel the loss of power. The
divinity has been spread, Alexander. There will be new gods. The sky will turn,
and maybe it will fall to the Rethari, or maybe we will hold on. We can't lose
a single divine body, not with things so delicate, but I swear to ..." I
stopped, trembling with sick rage. "I swear in my own name, if you breathe
one more lie to me today, on this day, in this city you have ruined, among
these bodies, I swear I will end you, Alexander. I will spill your holy
godblood across these stones without a second thought."

Long breaths without movement, his eyes burning cold and
bright. Eventually, he nodded.

"I, Alexander, Brother of Morgan and Amon, godking of
all Ash, last of the Brothers Immortal ... I killed my older brother, and cast
the guilt on my younger. I am the Betrayer. But only for the good of-"

I pulled the sword away, slicing lightly through his flesh.
Enough to sting. He gasped, then I wrapped my fist around the pommel and
punched. Holy teeth and a divine nose crumpled.

"That's enough," I said as he fell to the
cobbles. I flicked the blood from my sword, sheathed it, and turned to leave.

No one got in my way.