Cameron Johnston - The Traitor God

A memory surfaces, Walker’s words: unbalance the bastards; kick them in the balls and do what needs doing while they’re busy puking. He can’t give up yet. He has no idea what he’s doing, but if he can somehow distract the hooded man then he has one last chance to bring Walker home.

He fastens his eyes on an imaginary saviour behind the hooded man’s back, starts laughing – mocking laughter that reverberates down the alley.

The man’s eyes widen. “What are you…?”

As the hooded man jerks back, spins to look behind him, Lynas fires off another message, fuelled with every last ounce of his life-force, hoping it’s just enough, that at least part of the message might make it through and speed off into the night, to reach…

Agony exploded inside my skull. I clutched my head as blood gushed from my nose. It felt like something inside my brain had burst. Gods no! Lynas! Lynas! There is no answer. The constant and comforting presence in the back of my head that had kept me sane for ten wretched years began to fade. Then, nothing.

I was truly alone.

Pyromancer or not, I knew what I had to do. Instead of boarding the Ahramish merchantman I staggered onto the battered old caravel, collapsing to the deck just as the sailors cast off ropes and began pushing us away from the dock with long poles. I was going home and wouldn’t allow anything or anybody to stop me.

Memories forgotten for ten years had been torn loose, were bleeding back into my conscious mind, mixed with something from Lynas. The scent of smoke and blood filled my nostrils as one memory surged to the fore, summoned by the vision: a steel gate slamming shut. As if I were floating outside my body I saw our horrified expressions as that bastard Harailt locked Lynas and I in the catacombs of the Boneyards. Oh how he laughed! The darkness, the harrowing darkness…

The details of the vision drained away like sour wine from a burst skin, leaving behind a fearful mass of muddled imagery and a sudden certainty that by going home I wouldn’t have long to live. So be it.

Canvas snapped taut as sails caught the wind. We slid from the docks, leaving the two militiamen to be torn to pieces by the claws and fangs of my personal daemons. Out of frustration Burn took her time with them, tearing off their arms and legs one by one before finally burying obsidian fangs in their throats. She watched me leave, gaze dripping with malevolence – I had killed her mate.

As the caravel surged out to sea we stared at the forest of masts and sails filling the horizon, an enormous fleet of wolf-ships bearing the emblems of dozens of tribes: rearing bears, wolves, dragons and various runic emblems. Ironport’s sheltered bay was the largest and safest on the east coast, making it the perfect place to anchor a fleet, and with the town’s abundance of mines and smithies they would have a plentiful supply of weapons. Nobody brought a fleet eight hundred leagues across the Sea of Storms just to see the sights and indulge in a spot of raiding – this was an invasion of all Kaladon. The savages had always been numerous, but riven by tribal blood feuds, religious warfare, and hobbled by a strict and somewhat fatal code of honour. Something of huge import must have occurred to see blood-sworn enemies travel halfway across the known world to fight side by side on our shores. Bile rose up my throat. Those sailors’ rumours of stolen children and human sacrifice had not been as wild as I’d thought.

And then my guts heaved as it hit me – Lynas was dead, really dead. He was supposed to have been protected! I had made a deal with somebody too dangerous and powerful to refuse; the reward was the lives of my friends at the cost my exile. There was a secret buried deep inside my mind, locked away by powers far beyond my own, one so dire that even I couldn’t be allowed to know what it was. All I knew was that it had something to do with the death of a god. Every time I tried to remember it only brought back paralysing panic and blackest terror, but now the deal was off and I had to find a way to recover those memories.

The details of the deal itself were fragmented, most of it locked away with that dire secret in my head. I couldn’t remember who, but still knew some of the why: it had been the only way to keep Lynas and Charra safe, their daughter Layla too. They had made some kind of deadly mistake, and Charra had taken dangerously ill. I had been promised that mistake would be rectified, Charra healed, and all three kept from harm if I completed their task and then left Setharis, forgetting everything. Whoever they were, they had broken our deal. And that would not, and could not, be forgiven. I held my head in my hands, throat seized up, eyes gone tight and watery. The sorrow didn’t last. It drowned in a flood of anger. That hooded man would burn for this. Charra and Layla must be protected at all costs.

It was time to go home to a city that feared and despised me. It was time to kill, and I didn’t care how many or how powerful they thought they were. Lynas had always been my conscience, urging me to use my power wisely and well, but now my friend was dead and that “wisely and well” could go fuck itself. I would rip his murderer apart and then I would deal with these Skallgrim that thought they could hunt me with impunity.

The deal was off, and so was my leash.

We spent five days hugging the Dragon Coast south, battered by huge waves and howling winds. Racked by hunger and constant vomiting, huddled up with the other refugees in that sodden and cramped cargo hold, I was desperate to be back on dry land. Only one more day confined in darkness.

I shuddered and tried not to think of the walls closing in on me, the darkness swallowing me once again – it was only a ship. Only a ship. I could escape into the open air above deck if I really wanted, and I only had to keep out of sight of the pyromancer and pretend to be nothing more than a meek little merchant for one more day, for Lynas. Haunted by feverish dreams of his murder, I endured the waking claustrophobia and dwelled on happier days, to when I’d last had hope.

The previous Archmagus of the Arcanum, Byzant, had taken me under his wing and helped me come to terms with the trauma of being buried alive beneath tons of stone and left for dead, thanks to that arrogant vermin Harailt of High House Grasske who had thought himself so much nobler than a poverty-stricken Docklands pup like myself. He trapped Lynas and I in the Boneyards below the city and left us to rot, sniggering into silken sleeves all the while. Lynas managed to get out. I did not. I’d have died there in the crushing darkness if Lynas hadn’t fetched help, if he’d not found Byzant to haul me back out into the light. They had both saved me in more ways than one.

Byzant had been the head of the entire Setharii empire, with hundreds of magi and noble High Houses under his command and a thousand tasks needing done every day, and yet somehow he’d made the time to mentor me when I’d needed it most.

Those had been the happiest years of my life, running the streets with Lynas and Charra. So many wild nights of drunken truths and raucous laughter with the very best company the world had to offer, touring the disreputable taverns of the city and drinking them dry, dreaming those golden days would never end. I had felt fulfilled doing tasks for Byzant to earn my Arcanum stipend and I’d had friends, a life, and a purpose. The old magus had been like a second father to me, and now he too was dead, reported missing only days after I’d fled the city.

The happier days turned to ash and all I was left with was trying to recall everything about the deal I’d made. As much as I had tried to remember during the voyage, all magic and mental trickery had failed. The locks on my mind remained solid. I would need levers to help crack them open, reminders from the old days. I swallowed, fearful of the atrocity I had been involved in all those years ago.