The Horns of Ruin (35 page)

He wrinkled his brow and, as if there weren't an army of
men on the other side of the door trying to kill us both, knelt curiously by
the archive and ran his hands over it.

"Fascinating. A lost archive. And how did you say you
came across it?" I didn't answer, and he didn't seem to need me to.
"It must have been from the final flight of Amon. When he was driven from
the city, he took his closest followers and went north. Hid among the scattered
tribes of the Rethari. The armies of the Fallen Brother had to fight their way
through legions of those scaled bastards to get to him. Ah, but get to him they
did. Much was lost, in those last days. Perhaps this was recovered there. But
by whom, I wonder? One of your people?" he asked, and looked at me.

I was busy invoking mantles of strength and fortification,
against the onslaught on the other side of that door. They had brought a lot of
clever noetics to the fight, and I was having trouble holding out. I wished the
guy would get to the reading, and stop blabbing on about the last days of Amon.
Didn't have the breath to spare for the necessary obscenities, though. He
seemed to get the idea.

"Oh, well. Perhaps those answers will come another
day. Listen to me, prattling on about other days, when this is clearly our
last. Ah. Some habits are hard to break." He spun up the archive and
peered into the shifting icons of the screen. Even under duress as I was, I
could tell that he was good with the machine, in a way that Cassandra couldn't
approach. She had said that the ones picked for Alexander's special service
were the best of the best. I believed it.

He took it all in quickly. The old man's face went slack as
he absorbed the archive, wrinkles smoothing out, mouth hanging open. When it
was done, he leaned back and looked up at the ceiling.

"The implications are ... curious." He rubbed his
face and stood, then began to pace around the bodies of his fallen comrades.
Hardly aware of his surroundings, or the battle I was fighting at the door.
"This must have been purged from the Library's records, and our access to
the mind below is severely monitored. But the path taken does not match the
knowledge."

"Uh-huh," I grunted.

"Why would he kill his brother, when he's just
determined that the noet must be distributed? My gods, what does this mean for
the Ruin? If we've been cutting off other conduits and simply venting the extra
power, while keeping Alexander at the top of his game ... What does this
mean?"

"Uh-huh. Hm. Gah-" I was pushed away from the
door, and had to draw my sword and fight back a brief tide of whiteshirts
before I could get it closed again.

"I wonder if Alexander knew all this? I wonder if
that's what led him to build this place? But he couldn't have, if he ordered
Amon killed. It does reflect his understanding of noetic force, that there's
only so much at a time and it can be distributed across many gods. That's the
whole impetus behind the culling. But if Amon's observations are true-

The door boomed open, throwing me across the room. I landed
in a heap at the base of the dome. Malcolm watched me go, then looked curiously
at the door. Realization dawned across his wrinkled old face.

"Ah. I see. Well, I suppose it was nice while it
lasted."

"Quitter," I spat, and came swirling to my feet,
blade already swinging through the stations of defense.

What came through the door was not what I expected. Not
what I was prepared to face.

A group of coldmen, solid-looking guys with blades on their
wrists, frost and fog wicking off their bodies as they walked in. And in their
midst, standing taller than the rest, Barnabas Silent, Fratriarch of Morgan.

His skin was utterly pale against the harsh steel of his
new garments. The injuries he had suffered while in captivity had faded away,
though traces of the scars stood out in puckered white lines across his cheeks.
He stood tall, as he always had. Pewter blue greaves and chest plate had been
bolted on over his robe, and the lower half of his face was covered with a
plate-mail bevor. His eyes were as clear as glass, and they leaked oily tears
down his wrinkled face. In his hands he held a wicked hammer of blue steel,
just as he had in his youth.

"Don't look at me like that, Eva. This is difficult
enough," he said. His voice was a static-laced grating, only hinting at
the gentle man who had raised me.

"What have they done, Barnabas?" I whispered.

"Killed me, Eva. Killed me and raised me and made me
into something else."

"And have they sent you to do the same to me?"

He shook that great, heavy head of his and smiled.

"They sent me because there is no one else you would
listen to. This has all been an awful mistake, Eva. They learned about the
archive from their agents, but didn't know what it was. They kidnapped me
because they suspected, because they were startled that the Fratriarch of
Morgan would associate with an Amonite. It was a horrible, brutal thing to do,
but it is done. What Alexander has done is unforgivable. What he has done to
our Cult, to our god ..." He placed the palm of his hand against his chest.
"What he has done to us, Eva, can never be undone. And it can never be
repaid. But this has to stop."

I put the point of my sword into the ground in front of me,
like a statue at guard in the king's chamber.

"You have to be kidding me, Frat. Unforgivable? Does
that even begin to cover two centuries of ... of deception? I have no interest
in that debt being repaid. You're right there. It can't be repaid, like some
kind of bar tab." I drew the sword to my side, tip still on the ground,
and leaned against the pommel with all my weight. "But what settlement I
can make in Alexander's flesh, I'll take."

"Think about that. Think of the consequences to the
Fraterdom, Eva. What will become of the tribes of man, if the last of their
gods falls? And think about who would benefit from such chaos." He took a
great step toward me. The air around me chilled, and my lungs ached with the
sudden cold. "Morgan has been the tool of Alexander for too long. Do not
submit yourself to a new master, just to spite your old."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"The Rethari," Malcolm answered. He was sitting
on the archive as if it was a barrel, his hands folded neatly in his lap.
"This archive must have come from them, yes? It was lost in their lands,
and has not been seen since. The Cult of Morgan did not go looking for it, and
yet here it is. Mysteriously."

"And who better to benefit from the turning of the
divine cycle, Eva?" Barnabas said. "When mankind falls, it is the
snakes that will feed on the body."

"You know about that?" I asked. "About the
cycle?"

"I know now. Dying and living again have brought me a
certain ... clarity?" Another step closer. He whispered, "About you
as well, girl. A great many strange things, about you."

"What?" I asked, backing up. The rest of them
were looking at us strangely. They hadn't heard. Barnabas smiled and shook his
head.

"They raised me to ask you to turn back. Yes,
Alexander has sinned against us. In a moment of rage and weakness and jealousy,
he struck down our god Morgan. Horrified, he tried to cover his action. Amon
paid the price that Alexander could not stand. In the end, he has done
everything he could since that time to atone for those twin evils. He has
raised mankind up, and held the tribes together. He has arranged to keep the
memory of his fallen brothers alive, through their scions. And he has kept the
cycle from turning, for all these years. For that mercy, for that atonement,
you must turn aside."

I sheathed my sword with a great deal more spinning and
show than was necessary. I was furious. I needed both hands to express it.

"Mercy. Atonement. He murdered both of his brothers,
one out of jealousy and one out of cowardice. His every action has been
selfish, and his every purpose bereft of honor. You want me to stop, because if
I don't that god may die? Honestly, Barnabas. How can we let a god like that
live?"

"The Rethari will ascend, and the days of man-"

"Will be damned! And the Rethari should rise up! If
this is the best we can do with that divinity, then let them have it for a
while. Maybe we'll learn something of atonement, then." The rest of the
room had pulled back. The crowd of whiteshirts at the door, the troupe of
coldmen. Even Barnabas. Blasphemy felt good. It felt honest, for once.
"You don't believe this, do you, Fratriarch? That we should honor the
memory of Morgan by honoring his murderer? That the Betrayer should be
protected because he's the only god we have left?"

"The alternative is unacceptable," he said,
sadly.

"You speak as if there actually are alternatives. As
if choosing between no god and that god were a choice."

"Eva, please." He raised his hammer between us,
holding the shaft parallel to the ground, one wide hand under the steel head,
the other grasping the base. "Please, no."

I stood straight as I could. There was a heaviness to the
room, a cold void that was waiting to be filled with blood and fire. I drew my
sword, and the rasp of it tore through me like a hook.

"Do what you must, Fratriarch. But I will not stand
aside."

There was silence all around us. He bowed his head and
touched a dead finger to his forehead. No one moved.

"I am not going to fight you, Eva Forge. The time for
that is past. I think they hoped that I would, when they plucked me from the
grave. They did not believe you would be willing to strike me down." He
laid the head of his hammer on the floor with a mighty thud, and crossed his
hands on the base of the shaft. "They were wrong, on both accounts. These
others may try to oppose you, but I will not."

There was half a breath where the six coldmen exchanged
querying glances with their goggle eyes. They had not even raised their hands
before I struck. Best not give them the luxury of certainty. I invoked as I
moved, striking between words, rushing forward and falling back with the rhythm
of my invokation.

"The Fields of Erathis! The River that Roared and
Bled! Having- warry, Belhem, the Legions of Tin-Terra, the Legions of the
Scale!" The first coldman fell, even as my blade passed through him and
the next one was coming up. "Morgan stood there, he stood against them
all. He stood as the warrior." A spinning block, blade's edge against his
knee, blade's flat against his head, pommel to chest, upstroke and then down.
He fell. "The champion, the hero, the hunter. My blade is bound to him!"
And I realized I was just talking, but my blade traveled on. The next two were
circling me carefully, the final two rushing up to join the circle. "I am
bound to him! To the battle, to the grave, to the hunt! I commit myself to
blade and to soul, and never may the Warrior die!"

And something happened. I knew Morgan was dead, but his
power lived on. This was something I had never been taught in monastery, never
really thought about. Amon was dead, and yet his power was all around us, in
the machines that fed the city, in the Cants of Making and Unmaking. Alexander
lived, and his scions flourished. But Morgan was dwindling. Because we had
bound ourselves to the memory of his days, and not the glory that had come
after, to the battles that were fought in his name, with his power. To the
heroes who had followed in him. I had been serving a dead man, rather than the
living power that had sustained the Cult since his death. And yet I could feel
the power of Morgan welling up around me, though I was speaking no invokation I
had been taught.

"I bind myself to Barnabas," I howled,
"hammers flashing, battle raging. To Tomas, to Isabel." I racked my
brains for the history of the Cult, for the great Fratriarchs and Paladins who
had come before me, and after Morgan. "Clovis on the ramparts of Messit.
Pure and High Yelden, Paladin of the OverArch. Katherine, Kaitlyn. Sweet Anna,
Bloody Jennifer. To the Paladins who held the walls of Dalling Gate for a
hundred days, and the Paladins who marched against the Rethari, to bring the
traitor Amon to justice. May they be forgiven. May we all be forgiven, and
justified, and remembered forever. May the Warrior never die!"

And I struck, gods, I struck like lightning and fire and
stone and blood. I struck with rage and purity, the light of three hundred
years of divine service coursing through my skin and fire arcing from my blade,
my face, from the strength of my arms. I blasted that room, those who stood
against me, those who didn't get out of the way. That room saw the binding of
this new god.

When I stopped, I was alone. The room was a ruin of broken
bodies and fragments of arcane and noetic light, glimmering like snowflakes.
Barnabas stood at the center of the room, hands still crossed on his hammer,
head bowed, eyes closed. He was spattered with the black, cold blood of those
monsters.

"What you have done, Eva, cannot be undone." He
sighed deeply, hefted his hammer, and walked out of the room. As he went, he
turned back to me, just once. "I hope you can carry this through. There is
no other choice."

When he was gone I stood in the center of the room and
gathered my wits. Energy was thrumming through my body and through my blade.
There was a noise at the door, and I turned to it. A whiteshirt, peering into
the room. I moved quickly to the corridor. There were a lot of them, and they
had bullistics.

"What will you do, to stand against the Warrior?"
I growled. Pulses of heaviness rolled off me, pushing against the walls and the
floor, pushing against this cadre of gentleman soldiers.

The front row of Healers popped open their shotguns and let
the shells clatter to the floor. Behind them, another whiteshirt emptied his
clip, and then another. Soon the floor was rattling with unspent cartridges.
When the last threat vanished-and I could feel that diminishment in them, could
feel the empty weapons all around-when they were defanged, I nodded and stepped
back into the room. Malcolm, who had retreated to the other side of the dome,
came tottering back into sight. He was hugging the little archive against his
chest.