Cameron Johnston - God of Broken Things

As the edge of twilight approached and the sky began to darken, I paused to catch my breath and as always my eyes were drawn to the vast crater in the centre of the lower city that had once been the snarl of crooked lanes that made up the human cess-pit of the Warrens. Where I’d grown up. Where Lynas had been murdered. Much of the Docklands area had been spared complete devastation by the Magash Mora, instead being merely ransacked by Skallgrim raiders or subjected to fire’s voracious hunger. The people of the Warrens had suffered a far darker fate than axe or flame. I shuddered at the memory of that mountainous creature of stolen flesh and bone erupting from beneath our streets and lanes. It had been a thing of nightmares, and visions of it plagued my nights; I was lucky if I ever managed more than a few hours of undisturbed sleep.

An old man in rags with a long straggly beard shuffled towards me. “Got any food, friend?” There was little hope left in his voice, and just enough desperation to speak. His nose was red and his lips were blue, not good signs. A duo of corvun lingered on nearby rooftops, the great black birds waiting for him to drop dead so they could feast on his warm innards.

I went to turn away and resume my journey. I meant to. But some small voice lingering in the back of my head spoke up ‘What would Lynas do?’ My best friend had ever been my conscience in life, and in death his memory tried its best, but it was failing. I had always been selfish, but these last few months had wrought changes in me, and not for the better. You could not go through what I had and come out unscathed; mentally, magically and especially physically.

I sighed and dipped a leather-gloved hand into my money pouch. A couple of silvers left. Enough for scraps of food and warm lodgings on a few frozen nights. I dropped them into his shaking hand. “On me, pal.” It wasn’t like I was going to die from missing a few more meals. Magi died hard, and after recent events I would die harder than most. My flesh was changing, and that was more terrifying to me than any hunger. I flexed my right hand, skin and leather creaking. The taint was making it increasingly stiff and painful, but under that glove waited worries best left for another day.

As I left the old man behind I searched inside myself for any sign of satisfaction, any hint of taking pleasure from doing a good deed as I had felt in the past. Nothing. Just an old friend’s voice blowing away on the breeze.

Resuming my trek up the hill, I passed through palls of smoke and steam. The pyres burned day and night, sending columns of black smoke and funerary prayers up to writhe around the five gods’ towers that reared up over the Old Town on its high rock, slick black serpents of stone twining around each other until their fangs pierced the clouds. The towers remained dark and silent, our gods still missing, and in one case, dead. The Fucker. I only wished I could murder that traitor god all over again! You know, without all the writhing in agony and torture I’d experienced – he had not been in his right mind and I’d still only survived through crude cunning and blind luck.

I passed over the worn hump of Carr’s Bridge into the largely undamaged streets of the Crescent, slogging through rutted piles of slush towards what had been a fine inn for wealthy travellers with a gleaming copper lion rearing over the doorway. It had served mouth-watering spiced meats and fine ale, and now it served up bandages and medicine. A line of the diseased and destitute stood outside waiting for hand-outs of stale bread, smoked fish and, if they were lucky, a morsel of preserved fruit.

The burning sun dipped behind the city walls and the bells of the Clock of All Hours rang the day’s last. Lanterns and candles came to life all across the city, a tide of flickering flame. I was too busy looking up to watch where I was going; my boot came down on black ice and went right out from underneath me, pitching me down on my arse. My back and side shrieked in pain from where that corrupted god had shattered my spine and torn out a rib to prove a point before putting me back together in order to start all over again. It had never fully healed, despite the best efforts of the Halcyon Order. I tried to lever myself up but my left hand flopped beneath me, taking another of its trembling fits.

“Fucking useless lump of meat, work damn you!” That damage was all of my own making, but you couldn’t fight a god and come out intact. The fear that both of my hands were becoming useless was inescapable.

Anger and frustration were futile, but when did that ever stop anybody from feeling it? I’d likely never be free of pain and disability: magical healing just didn’t work that way. It could only heighten what the human body could already do for itself and even a magus like me couldn’t suffer what had been done and walk away. It was, I suppose, a small price to pay for survival.

I staggered to my feet, bones clicking, and kicked a wall to knock the slush from my boots before shoving open the door to the hospital. Inside, the smoky, sawdust-floored room was packed with wounded being attended by chirurgeons and nurses. I wrinkled my nose at the sour reek of sweat, sick and putrefaction. It was a scent I was still to get accustomed to. As I stepped inside I ran head-first into a wall of agony, my every nerve raw and burning. Gritting my teeth, I shoved it to the back of my mind and hung my coat from a hook on the wall, in its place donning a stained leather apron.

That’s one problem with my sort of Gift: unlike the vulgar elemental magics – summoning otherworldly flames and the like – mine is a double-edged sword. While others called my mentally manipulative kind tyrants because we can get into your head and rearrange things, the men and women in this hospital could now affect me as well. My Gift had been abused and torn during the carnage of Black Autumn and I could no longer shut out all their fear and agony.

Old Gerthan looked up from the patient moaning atop his work table. His aged face was gaunter than ever, eyes red and watery, and his beard wispy and stained. “About time,” he said wearily, “I’m taking this man’s arm off.” He stabbed a thin dagger into the glowing coals of a brazier and took a bone-saw from the hands of an apprentice chirurgeon with a wine-stain birthmark across her cheek. She gave me a nod of greeting and then busied herself setting out needle and thread and other instruments.

Old Gerthan tested the saw’s teeth with a finger. He grimaced, then shrugged.

The emaciated young man on the table complained feebly and tried to sit up. The magus firmly pushed him back down – Old Gerthan might be cursed with permanent old age but his withered flesh still coursed with potent magic. I took his place holding the man down and studied the angry red and ominously black threads of infection running up the poor sod’s arm and shoulder from a festering wound in his forearm. His other arm was afflicted in a lesser way. I raised a questioning eyebrow. I’d seen them heal far worse.

“I have been here for ninety-six hours,” the old magus replied. “Assuming I haven’t missed an extra day.” He didn’t need to elaborate. There had always been too few magi with the Gift of healing in the Arcanum. And now? That number was hopelessly, laughably, inadequate. Countless Setharii had already felt the touch of his healing Gift, their flesh purged of infection and mending with eerie swiftness, but now he was exhausted and strained, teetering on the edge of losing control. And if a magus lost control they were destroyed like rabid dogs. A Gifted healer like Old Gerthan was far too valuable to take such risks.

Only the very lucky came back sane after ceding control to the Worm of Magic, and even then only if quickly caught and disabled. Nobody ever came back unscathed – I was a living example. My damaged Gift throbbed with remembered pain.