Cameron Johnston - The Traitor God

They’ve found him.

I fell to my knees screaming. I was frantic, stuck in this shithole town and unable to come to Lynas’ aid. A pair of young spearmen of the Ironport militia ran over to check on me, looking panicked. Blackest dread filled me as I realized my Gift had opened wide to receive the vision and that my magic was bleeding out into the world unchecked, advertising my presence like a blazing beacon in the night.

The shadow cat came from the direction of the Skallgrim shaman, a writhing mass of deepest dark the size of a horse leaping through a tenebrous doorway. They’ve found me. My eyes wanted to slide over it and I had to concentrate to see it at all. Obsidian fangs and claws glistened, wisps of black breath misting the air, green eyes fixed on me burning with recognition, with hatred.

Lynas’ terror eclipses my own–

He runs as fast as his bulk will allow, slipping and sliding across cobbles slick with the bouncing rain, splashes through a pool of street filth, the rotting refuse and sewage coating his boots. Puffing and panting, he staggers up to a crossroads, skids to a stop, backs away. Another daemon squats straight ahead. A whisper of memory, something Walker once said, names it: shard beast. He lurches right, down a dark winding alley. His only chance is to head for the open space of Fisherman’s Way.

His legs burn with the effort. He’s too old and too fat for this. Why couldn’t he just have met Charra and Layla for dinner and wine, as they did at the end of every week? Oh no, instead he had to go snooping! All this because he is trying to grow his business so his daughter is set for life. He crushes all pointless thought: ignorance means death. A pile of garbage trips him and he stumbles, almost falls, flails to a stop against the alley wall, breathing in ragged heaving gulps, his legs shivering beneath him.

But he can’t stop; he refuses to. Charra and Layla’s smiling faces flash through his mind. He has too much to lose.

Pushing himself off the wall, he forces leaden legs back into motion. He’s bought the city some time, but now he has to get out into a main street, to call for the wardens, the street gangs, anybody. He has to warn them all or thousands will perish. His family will die.

“Come on – you – fat – fool,” he pants, focusing on keeping his feet moving, trying to ignore the sweat pouring down his face and the salt stinging his eyes. He wipes them with the back of his hand, blinks his vision clear.

A hooded man in dark and sodden robes blocks the exit from the alley, loitering in deepest shadow. He prays it is a magus here to help.

“There are daemons back there,” Lynas shouts. As he tries to run past, the man hooks his arm out, slams it into his throat. Lynas’ feet fly out from beneath him.

“I know,” says the man.

His back crashing to the cobbles leaves Lynas gulping for air that his stunned body can’t provide. The shadows close in around them.

“I should know,” says the hooded man, pulling a scalpel from a voluminous sleeve. “I am their master, after all.”

I hissed in pain. Magic thudded through blood and muscle whilst my mind shuddered, the vision stabbing into my head in fits and starts. Burn all daemons!

For ten long years I’d had no inkling of who hated or feared me enough to set daemons hunting me. I had assumed it had something to do my part in the death of a god. And yet, perhaps I’d been wrong all those years, for I recognized this particular shadow cat’s badly burned muzzle from where I’d dropped a blazing house on her and her mate years ago. This daemon cat I called Burn had been summoned by the Skallgrim shaman in the skull-mask, but no untrained Gifted reliant on blood sorcery could compel the allegiance of a whole pack of such powerful daemons. Whoever their real master was, they were either one of those tribal savages, or allied. But who was it, and why me?

Now that the daemons had found me I didn’t have to hold back, reduced to relying on my paltry skill with two other – and to my thoughts lesser – magics dealing with air and manipulation of the human body. Every Gift processed the flow of magic differently, offering certain innate talents, and my accursed Gift to control the human mind was powerful when used subtly, and far more dangerous when used without restraint. It was the oldest and rarest of all human magics and these particular daemons could smell it from a league away.

The minds of the two militiamen were snarls of fear. If they caught sight of the shadow cat they would flee and leave me to die. One of them put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I grabbed it and my magic surged into him, breaking into his thoughts. It was always easier with skin contact, and with all his panic and confusion it was a simple task to order him to defend me. The man spun and levelled his spear at the daemon. His confused companion followed suit.

I left them to delay the thing while I lurched towards the ships. They’d be dead anyway when the Skallgrim caught up with them. “I’m coming, Lynas. Hold on!” I tried to reach out to him through the Gift-bond but–

A warm wetness blooms over Lynas’ crotch: he’s pissed himself. “Please. Please, no,” he wheezes. “I won’t tell anybody.”

“No, you will not,” the man replies, a grin flashing inside the hood. “I have need of your flesh, mageborn. The magic it contains will be put to good use.” He kneels down to straddle Lynas, pinning his body to the cold cobbles, arm held skyward in a vice-like grip. A single deft slice and he opens Lynas’ arm from wrist to elbow.

Lynas screams, knows he’s about to die. “Gods save me!”

The hooded man chuckles. “The so-called gods of Setharis have been blinded and chained, Lynas. They are too consumed by their own struggle for survival to notice what happens here. You will get no help from them.”

He knows he has to keep trying to send a message through the Gift-bond. Others would claim it’s an abomination – an invitation to his enslavement by Walker’s stronger Gift – but that trust had already been repaid a thousandfold. Wherever Walker is in the world now, he has to reach him, to tell him of the threat to Setharis, to warn him that Layla and Charra are in danger. If he’s still alive, then maybe…

“I feel you, Lynas. Run! Get out of there. I’m coming. Please…”

It’s too late.

He gathers the power of his stunted Gift, lets it fill him until he’s almost bursting, hoping it will prove enough to bring his friend home. He imagines Walker: that cynical smile, those exhausted and haunted eyes as he walked out of Lynas’ door for the last time.

The scalpel cuts deep. Bright arterial blood spurts across the silvery face of the broken moon.

Lynas feels his power building, eager to surge through the Gift-bond, but then the knife twists and he screams instead.

The hooded man’s grin widens, white teeth gleaming in the moonlight. He shakes his head and tuts. “Nobody will be coming to the rescue, you pathetic waste of the Gift. To think you once thought to become a magus.” He starts to cut the skin from Lynas’ flesh, the scalpel shining red and silver.

Lynas screams as hot sticky rain drips onto his face. He yearns to be home with his family in front of a crackling fireplace, merry with food and wine. All he’s ever really wanted is for everybody to be happy and healthy. And he’s failed them. He closes his eyes and wills the pain to stop, prays for death.

“Death won’t save you either, Lynas,” the man says. “I have something far more useful planned for you.”