The Horns Of Ruin Part 19

"Our lot is not the one I would have chosen. That any of us would have chosen. But we are here, and we must play our part. It is all we can do for the Scholar."

"His name be praised," his companion intoned, like a prayer. "His body held tight."

The two men sighed, then moved inside the larger room. As the door swung shut I heard one more snippet.

"When we are done with the preparations, we can return to the archive and lock it down. The toll won't last forever."

"It will set us back weeks."

"Perhaps. But we'll still be alive."

And the door shut. I looked at Ca.s.sandra, but she was already past me and around the corner. I followed. She went straight to the door the men had come out of, and had her palm against it, her eyes closed.

"We can't wait around, Ca.s.s," I whispered. "They'll be coming back."

"Yes," she answered, and opened her eyes. "Coming back to the archive."

My eyes widened, and I turned to the door. The archive. I changed stance and began to invoke the Rite of the Sundering, as quietly as I could. Ca.s.sandra gave me a little slap and shushed me.

"We'll need to close the door again, Paladin." She produced a complicated tool, knelt by the door, and put her forehead against the metal. "This may take some time."

"It's in short supply, I think. They know someone is in the building."

"It will take more time if you keep talking."

I grimaced, but backed off. This was much too long of a hallway for me to be comfortable. Any of these doors could open with little or no warning. And if they had found the ma.s.sacre upstairs, it wasn't like we'd be able to talk our way past a patrol. Sword in sheath, bullistic in hand, I paced. That was as much peace as I could give the girl.

Her whole body hummed with attention. She had the tool flat up against the lock. There were sounds coming out of her, out of the door, out of the tool. Like stones grinding. That had to be drawing someone's notice, didn't it? This was taking forever. A thousand forevers. I kept my eyes on all the doors, on the pa.s.sageway, especially on the door that those two had gone through. Had they been Amonites? Alexians? They had referred to the Scholar, so probably some of Alexander's pets. They still wore the chains, I remembered. They couldn't be all that free.

The grinding sound stopped, and the door sighed open. Ca.s.sandra stood, smiling.

"Breaking things is not always the way," she said.

"Fine, fine," I said, hurrying her through the door. "Let's just get inside."

The door locked behind us. Inside was a square room with a low ceiling. The s.p.a.ce was dominated by a bra.s.s dome that reached almost to the ceiling, and nearly to the walls. The only clear areas were at the corners, where the circ.u.mference of the dome did not reach. There were hooks all along the wall by the door, several of which were hung with some sort of suit. The dome looked pressurized, and in fact had several dogged portals leading into it at various heights, each one accessible by rungs soldered onto the dome. It was covered with Amonite runes, some painted on, some forged into the metal, or made of iron or copper or gold and bolted to the surface. I looked back at Ca.s.sandra.

She was standing in quiet awe, her eyes wide. She was whispering below her breath, and her free hand was making rites. The symbols of her faith.

"This is it?" I asked.

"Yes. The last archive of Amon the Scholar. It's ... enormous."

"Well. We aren't taking this thing out of here, obviously. You wanna strap up and see what you can-"

"Can you give me one second of quiet, for Brothers' sake? Does Morgan have no holy place, no room of silence and meditation?" She turned to me, and I saw tears in her eyes. "Can we just be quiet for a minute?"

I gritted my teeth. "Battle, Ca.s.sandra-that is our holy place. Everything else has been burned." I pulled one of the suits off the wall and tossed it to her. "And I've prayed enough today. I'd like to get out of here cleanly."

She looked unhappy, but she shucked off her robe and pulled on the suit over her skinny legs. I gave her what privacy I could. She was half into it when one of the pressurized doors unsealed with a gasp of frost, and an Amonite came out.

He was in a suit like the one Ca.s.sandra was pulling on. Without looking around, he hurried down the rungs and to the floor near us. He stopped long enough to release the mask and hood. His hair was white, but when he turned I could see that he was quite young. He didn't register who we were at first, instead rus.h.i.+ng to one of the hooks that held a gray robe. He stopped, looked at me, at my revolver, at the blood still on my boots. Unphased, really. Then he looked at Ca.s.sandra, half naked, half suited, unchained and yet so clearly an Amonite. His eyes got wide. He jumped for a switch by the door, a panel that had a big red b.u.t.ton on it. I got between him and it.

"Don't," I said. He stopped, his hand trembling as it reached for the b.u.t.ton.

"They'll kill us all. If they find you here, they'll kill every one of us." He looked between us. "You don't know what you've done."

"And you have no idea what I've done. Or what I'm willing to do. Now get away from that switch."

"It doesn't matter," he said. "They'll kill us all." And he jumped for the console. I put two bullets in him, the report loud, the reverberations echoing around the dome. He fell, startled, and lay there with his mouth open.

"You didn't have to do that," Ca.s.sandra said as she rushed past me. She knelt at his side. "You didn't have to kill him."

"I think I did," I answered. She didn't look up. Blood was trickling out of the guy's mouth. He was trying to talk, but nothing was coming. He put a b.l.o.o.d.y hand on Ca.s.sandra's chest, right over her heart, smearing gore on her skin and unders.h.i.+rt. And then he died.

Ca.s.sandra nearly vibrated, she was so furious. She rolled him onto his back, cupped his hands over his eyes, and pushed his mouth closed. She was saying some kind of rite over him.

"We don't have time-" I said.

"We have more time than he does. Now shut up. This is not a place for blood."

"It's going to be, if you don't-"

"Shut. Up," she said, exasperation in her voice. "In Amon's name, be quiet."

I took a step back, but I was quiet. I remembered standing the watch over Elias. Who was I to deny her the comfort of ritual? She finished, stood, and buckled into the suit, all without looking at me, or the body of the Amonite.

"Watch the door," she said, and started up the ladder.

"He was going to sound the alarm."

"Watch the door."

She got up the dome and undogged the portal. White frost blossomed around her, turning the suit into a glittering sleeve. She disappeared inside, sealing the dome behind her.

I looked at the body, at the slowly growing pool of blood, at Ca.s.sandra's gory footsteps, and where she had knelt by the Amonite as he died. Then I turned, and watched the door.

*he guy just lay there, dead. I usually didn't spend a lot of time with the people I killed. The advantage of a battlefield. You charge a position, sweep through, put down whatever resistance, and then redirect. Maybe get called back to reinforce the line, or forward to exploit a breakdown in the enemy. And then you move on. Plenty of time around dead bodies, of course. They were everywhere in the modern battlefield. But which ones did you kill? Which ones died at your brother's hand, or some other soldier's, or their own? Who could tell? Who could sort it out?

But this guy, I had killed him, and he wasn't going away. Ca.s.sandra's reaction had been wholly surprising to me. He had been about to call the heat down on us. Killing him was all I had. Maybe I could have subdued him, just knocked him out and tied him up, but it had been a split-second decision. This is how it had ended up.

I turned him over with the toe of my boot, so I didn't have to look at his gaping mouth and the weird way Ca.s.sandra had arranged his hands. That would probably upset her, too, but we can't all get what we want.

Look at me. What I want is my Cult back. Barnabas alive, the Strength intact, and a steady flow of initiates in the door. That was never going to happen. A long time, we'd been dying, little by little. Every potential initiate who pa.s.sed us by to serve in the whites.h.i.+rt army was a little death. When the initiates stopped coming, it was only a matter of time before we stopped being. Just stopped. I didn't expect it to happen like this, of course. I didn't expect the Betrayer to come back, to start killing us off. But you can't turn back time. There wasn't going to be a Cult of Morgan, once this was through.

Scratch that. I didn't want the Cult back. It was dead, and had been dying for a long time. I didn't want to drag it out. What I wanted, what I really wanted, was revenge. I wanted the d.a.m.n Betrayer dead, whoever he was. Alexander or Amon, it didn't matter to me. I wanted his towers thrown down. I wanted his Cult scattered, his scions persecuted and killed. I wanted to put my blade through the gut of that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Nathaniel. I wanted the Cult of the Betrayer to suffer what Morgan had suffered. Wiped clean from the earth. That would be enough for me.

And this guy. What did he want? Amon was dead. Even if the Scholar were cleared of the murder of his brother, people would never trust him. Never trust what they'd been taught for two hundred years to despise. And how would the Cult of Amon react, to learn that their G.o.d had been falsely accused? That they had lived in slavery or on the run for two hundred years to preserve a lie, all the while ruled over by the man who had put both of our G.o.ds to death. What measure of forgiveness would they be willing to pour out, and what measure of wrath?

I realized then the horror of what Ca.s.sandra and I were proposing. To expose the last G.o.d of man as a murderer. What would that do to the city, to the Fraterdom? If the cycle were about to turn, and Alexander was the only thing holding our divinity together, would it be worth our revenge to throw down the G.o.dking and open the door for the ascension of the Rethari? But what choice did we have? Bend the knee to a murderer, or lose our empire. These were the things we must face.

That's when the door opened. I was lost in staring at the dead guy and trying to juggle the G.o.ds of man, and didn't hear the bolts throw. When the door began to slide open, I only had time to step behind it. Good thing is, the Scholars were still talking, and that distracted them enough to get inside and close the door before they saw the body. Soon as the door was closed, I slid in front of it, right by their fancy panic b.u.t.ton.

Two men, one old and stooped with age, the other young and thin. They wore gray robes, similar to the two we had killed upstairs. They wore their soul-chains openly, looped around their chest and neck, linked to their wrists and waist. A lot more chain than what the Librarians Desolate wore, I noted, though it seemed a much lighter weight. Almost delicate. Their heads were close together, and they were talking.

"The duration of the interruption doesn't matter," the old one was saying. "Any interruption is terrible. Alexander plays with these things like they're dice, but if we build up too much noet-"

"Yes, yes. Too much power, not enough conduit. I know, Malcolm, but-"

And that's when they saw the body. Malcolm just stood, staring at the twisted form, its back sticky with blood, the stink of meat and voided gut finally cutting through the antiseptic purity of the chamber. The other one, the young one whose name I had yet to hear, immediately turned for the b.u.t.ton. Turned right into my bully, in his eye.

"What have you done?" he whispered. Malcolm turned and saw me. They both started backing up to the dome. "They'll kill us all."

"That's what he said. I'd like to hear a little more than that, if you don't mind."

"It's too late. You don't understand what you've done. As soon as the Holder learns that the archive has been found ... he'll just kill us. He'll start over with a new batch from the Library."

"They can't afford that, Daniel," Malcolm muttered. "They can't get a new crew in here and hope to maintain the noet. The Ruin will break open, and then where will we be?"

"You're right, old man," Daniel said. "They'll just kill those of us responsible. Which is you, and me." He glanced at the body. "And Jeremiah, I suppose. But that won't really matter."

"You're a.s.suming I'm not going to kill you first," I said. "Can we get back to paying attention to the girl with the bully?"

"You must be the Paladin," Daniel said. "Am I right? The last scion of Morgan?"

"I'm your girl," I answered.

"What happened to your Cult? Why did you turn against Alexander?"

"You're joking, right? We've been set up. The Betrayer has been hunting us down, disguised as one of the Healer's men. Guy named Nathaniel has a whole cadre of masked a.s.sa.s.sins skulking around. I think. . ." I went over in my mind what I thought, and found I didn't really know yet. "I think he's part of a sect of the Healer, which has been secretly wors.h.i.+pping the Betrayer all this time."

"Nathaniel Cascade? High Elector of the Cult of Alexander?" Malcolm's face wrinkled in a deep smile. "You're accusing him of wors.h.i.+pping the Betrayer. I a.s.sure you, my girl, that he is not of Amon."

"I didn't say that. But what makes you so sure?"

They both wrinkled their foreheads. I decided not to explain myself.

"Not of Amon. Well, no, he's obviously not. Nathaniel Cascade is the Chief Elector of this facility, Paladin. He's the Holder of our chains." Daniel raised his arms and displayed the links around his wrists. "When we say that they'll kill us all, we mean that he will kill us all."

"And smile through the whole butchery," Malcolm said.

"What is this place?" I asked.

"The hidden house of Alexander. He has gathered here all the stories of the forgotten G.o.ds, the mythos of the Feyr, even artifacts from the age of the t.i.tans." Daniel raised his hands and presented his palms to me. "And the untold stories of the new G.o.ds, as well."

"What are you doing?" Malcolm asked. He had a bony hand around Daniel's elbow.

"New G.o.ds?" I asked.

"Yes. Do you think only the Brothers have ascended? That there is but one G.o.d by accident? Alexander has culled the harvest, my dear Paladin, and this is where he hides the chaff and stores the wheat."

"Stores the wheat," I said, mostly to myself, mostly to be heard. "Like that d.a.m.ned Feyr said. The Ruin could be used to swallow noetic divinity. Alexander must be doing that!"

"Has been doing it for two hundred years, little girl," the Amonite said.

"Why in h.e.l.l did you tell her that?" Malcolm shrieked. "Do you want to implicate us in the murder of a thousand G.o.ds, boy? We'll be lucky if they only kill us, rather than-" He glanced back at me. "Rather than other things."

"You're saying that Alexander has been ... has been hunting G.o.ds?"

"Young G.o.ds. New G.o.ds. G.o.ds before they are truly divine. We can sense them with the Ruin, sense them as they draw power off. Only the ordained scions of the three Cults are allowed to survive, since their development can be monitored and controlled." He turned to Malcolm and smiled. "It's okay, old man. I told her because he's already forgiven us. I told her because he already knows."

"What?" I barked.

"He monitors the chains," Daniel said, and raised his arms again. "Not always, and not all the time. But I sense his eyes upon me. His eyes upon you."

I skipped forward, drawing the sword as I moved and bringing it down in a long, sweeping arc. The blade parted Daniel's skull and exited at his hip. The boy slid apart. Malcolm was howling.

"You can't leave me to face him!" he yelled. "You can't give Daniel a quick peace and leave me to answer to that man!" He threw himself to his knees, his hands at my waist. "Please, for the love of mercy!"

"Mercy is in short supply," I said. I drove the sword down his chest and twisted. The blade became entangled in his chains, and when I twisted the links popped like gla.s.s. The whole length of it slithered to the floor. Malcolm fell back on his b.u.t.t, his eyes wide with shock. He looked like he was having trouble breathing. I saw that where the metal had slid across his body as it came free, there were angry welts. I bent to him, and helped him to his feet.

"Last ... push. He gave one last push, as the chain came loose." He held his hand to his chest and breathed in shuddering gasps. "How did you do that?"

"I'm not sure. The Fratriarch did it for Ca.s.sandra. I thought it was worth a try."

"You don't understand. Those links went into my soul. You severed them cleanly, like they were mere steel."

"Steel doesn't cut that easily, but yes. You are free."

He stood at my side, wavering on his feet. His hand was on my shoulder.

"Good to ... good to breathe once more, my own breath. Even if it is at the end, even if we don't have much time. Even if he's already on his way here."

"You have to help me, then. There's little enough time without-"

The door began to unlatch. I threw myself against it. Whoever was on the other side began hammering at the metal.

"Help me, old man! Don't stand by and watch it end this way!"

"It's already ended, woman. You cannot stand against Nathaniel. I don't care what tricks they taught you in that monastery. Blades are blades. He will cut you down."

"It's no d.a.m.n wonder they've been able to keep you people-" I grunted as a great deal of force was applied to the door. I staggered back, then threw myself against it again. Planting my sword, I invoked the Stones of Averon and set my shoulder against the steel. Malcolm was still watching me.

"No d.a.m.n wonder they've been able to keep you on the leash for so long," I said through gritted teeth. "You give up before the fight is started."

"Not so," he said. "The fight has been over for a long time. Amon's Betrayal doomed us. We have been working to preserve the memory of the man, while shunning his darkness ever since. Any death is good for us."