Cameron Johnston - The Traitor God

My finger probed at a loose tooth, shoved it back into its socket; it was only a tiny pain compared to my back. I cleared blood and gunk from my throat, spat it out. “The gods as my witness, I am no tyrant, if by tyrant you mean my power was used to enslave people outwith self-defence. What did you expect me to do? Let the Skallgrim tear me to pieces?” I nodded to Cillian. “Let Councillor Cillian be murdered?”

We faced each other down, the Archmagus studying me. The god-seed beat hot against my breast. My hand inched towards it. All I had to do was accept it and ascend, and then they would have to face a tyrant god. Ha, wouldn’t the look on their faces be precious then. The Worm of Magic urged me to take the power for my own, but I was beaten down by the world, by pain and death, and didn’t much fancy living forever. I imagined being a god with that slimy hooded arsehole Byzant at my side and not being able to kill him. Nathair had spoken of an endless duty and despite everything I didn’t think him a liar; me and duty did not see eye to eye at the best of times. No, godhood was not for me. My hand dropped to my side.

Before Krandus could reply, the sky darkened. Feathery, screeching darkness descended. I didn’t have the mental energy left to care as a whole flight of corvun alighted on the rubble all around me, dozens of razor claws and vicious beaks between the Arcanum and myself. I chuckled, figuring that it would be just my luck to survive the Magash Mora and the Thief of Life only to be pecked to death by fucking birds. They didn’t look at me – bad meat perhaps – instead they cawed and flapped angrily in Krandus’ direction.

I looked left and right at the vile creatures, then shrugged. “Ah well, doesn’t look like everybody has it in for me.”

The Archmagus stared, not at me, but at the birds. His lips twitched into a smile. “It would seem not.” I hadn’t taken him for one to pay heed to superstitious portents. He hesitantly nodded to them. “I think that clears things up. Do you agree, Councillor?”

Cillian relaxed. “I do.”

“Then the law is satisfied,” Krandus said. “Magus Edrin Walker is declared innocent.”

I blinked. That was it? A charge of tyranny and the two of them dismissed it like it was nothing?

Cillian caught my look. “Martial law, Edrin. Two of the Inner Circle are enough to pass a judgement. The correct one, as it happens.”

Every single corvun in the city shrieked and took flight, wheeling above our heads in a vast screeching flock. For the first time in recorded history the great birds ventured beyond the walls of Setharis. Black wings cut through the smoke as they headed out over the docks and across the bay to descend on the surviving Skallgrim wolf-ships fleeing back out to sea. This was no mere murder of crows – this was a carnage of corvun. People watched from rooftops and windows, through destroyed streets and fallen walls, as black death enveloped the ships. When the birds took flight again they left nothing human on those decks.

Krandus glanced at the remains of the Magash Mora, a hill of dead meat made from the corpses of hundreds of thousands of our people and then extended a hand to me. I stared at it for a moment and then clasped it, flesh to flesh. He didn’t seem overly worried about a tyrant’s touch. It was a display of trust that I had never expected to see. He turned and began the long trudge back up to the Old Town to resume control of his city. Cillian gave me a brief hug before she too left, and I thought my past misdeeds were forgiven as far as she was concerned. I suppose I had saved the city. What more could you ask of a man?

Perhaps the gods, wherever they were trapped, had heard my plea and borne witness after all. The Arcanum weren’t all bad, just horribly entitled and not a little arrogant. Sometimes they forgot what it was like to be merely human, not much different from me at times.

As people began to return to the area, staring in shock at the ruins of their homes, I decided to slink off and find a hole to crawl into. I was exhausted and broken and needed to be alone. My thralls stood watch as I curled up in a ruined corner of a building and collapsed into blessedly dreamless sleep.

I woke to a symphony of pains and tried to take the stress off my damaged back and ribs by resting against the wall. Sitting next to the smouldering ruins of the room I had taken only a few days before in the Throne and Fire, it all seemed like an age ago. Another life. The scorched stone was still warm from last night’s blaze. Morning mists and drizzle had killed off most of the smaller fires but columns of black smoke still snaked upwards from dozens of sites all across the lower city.

I was a wreck: exhausted, torn up and used up. My right hand itched: I scratched at the black specks, but the iron shards of Dissever were buried too deep to tease out. Every breath hurt and I barely had enough strength to turn my head as somebody slid down the wall next to me.

Dying as she was, face crisscrossed with scabs, Charra’s smile was a beautiful thing. I didn’t have words good and glorious enough to describe the feeling of being back home with her. In fact, she was my home. My home was people not place. She stifled a cough with a kerchief then wiped the blood from her lips. We sat in silence, watching people wander the streets dazed and smeared with soot, some raking through the debris of their homes on the slim chance of salvaging something of their lives, others weeping and cradling their dead or sitting numb with shock and staring off into the distance. The lucky ones gave shouts of joy and ran to envelop relatives and friends in fierce hugs. Most waited in vain for people to return home, knowing they would likely never see the bodies of their kin. Most of the dead had been melded into the reeking corpse of the Magash Mora.

“I don’t have any words for this,” Charra said.

I didn’t reply, didn’t feel there was much point. I couldn’t even bring myself to meet her eyes. She was going to die, and far too soon.

Charra sighed. “Not everything in life ends well, Walker. I’ve tried everything possible to get out of this but I’m at the end of my voyage. At least I had my Layla and a few good friends. I have few regrets.”

Despite the outcome, I felt like all I’d done was pointless. Now that I wasn’t living under a death sentence I was terrified of the vast and empty gulf of life ahead of me. Now I knew why elder magi kept themselves apart from normal people: they were so short-lived and gut-wrenchingly fragile.

I eased open my tattered coat to show her the god-seed snug in my inside pocket. “How do you fancy being a god?”

“A god?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “You jest.”

I was utterly serious, and she understood that a moment later. She gasped, hand stretching out towards the shining crystal. Her finger stopped a whisker away from touching it.

“A bad idea to offer me so much power,” she said. “I’d make an awful god.”

I closed over my coat again. I was disappointed but it was as I’d expected. She would have been far better than some. “As would I, but it’s your last chance. It might work with an unGifted.”

She squeezed my arm. “Thank you, but no. I’ve made my peace.” She looked up at the gods’ towers, still dull and lifeless. “Do you know what happened to them?”

I shook my head. “Nathair and these Scarrabus things he was allied with did something to them, something terrible, but I have a feeling we would be in worse straits if they were dead.”

A horse and cart drew up and a group of walking wounded clustered around it. A shrivelled up old chirurgeon, two of his apprentices, and a group of helpers hopped off the back to hand out bandages and poultices and wash out wounds with soured wine. They took out needle and thread and began stitching up wounds. People began distributing bread and water, no coin changing hands.