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September 5, 2017 - June 2, 2018
Divine Craft was less obvious than the mortal variety, much as the mechanisms of a living creature were less evident to human sight than those of springs and steel gears.
That grand construct, with its redoubts and fail-safes, its subtle interdependencies, would have taken a team of human Craftsmen fifty years to plan and shape. It was immense, organic, all-encompassing. Divine.
“I’m glad to see you know your history. Yes. Seril and her warrior-priests rode off to battle, not caring whether Alt Coulumb followed them. She died at the hands of the King in Red, and left the city without protectors.” Ms. Kevarian took another sip of coffee. “Kos’s Church hired me, and a senior partner from the firm, to do what we could. The Blacksuits were part of the result.
Your god was one of the last in the New World, and his influence extended around the globe. The pantheons of Iskar draw power from him. His flame drives oceangoing vessels, heats the sprawling metropolises in Koschei’s realm, lights the caverns of King Clock.
The body had the usual four limbs, two eyes the size of small moons, a mouth that could swallow a fleet of ships—features that for all their immensity were beautiful, and because of their immensity were terrifying. It was a great and hoary thing ancient of days, a clutch of power that would shatter any mind that tried to grasp it all at once. It was more than man evolved to comprehend, and Tara’s job was to comprehend it.
“War,” she said. “It sounds so normal, doesn’t it? So pretty.” That last word blighted the air as it left her throat. “A few bodies impaled on a few swords, some bright young boys skewered by arrows, and done. What we did, what was done to us, was not war. The sky opened and the earth rose. Water burned and fire flowed. The dead became weapons. The weapons came alive.” A gleam appeared at the Sanctum’s pinnacle as a novice set lanterns for the evening. Their light reflected off Ms. Kevarian’s flat eyes. “Had Kos joined Seril at the front, she might not have died. We might not have won. If you
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“Seril was night and moon and rock, everything cold and proud and untouchable. Maybe that was why Kos loved her. She wouldn’t burn.”
“The Craft, young Abelard, is the art and science of using power as the gods do. But gods and men are different. Gods draw power from worship and sacrifice, and are shaped by that worship, that sacrifice. Craftsmen draw power from the stars and the earth, and are shaped by them in turn. We can also use human soulstuff for our ends, of course, but the stars are more reliable than men. Over the years a Craftswoman comes to have more in common with sky and stone than with the race to which she was born. Life seeps from her body, replaced with something else.”
“And Tara?” “Is on the path to immortality. A cold and lonely immortality, to be sure, and not one a hedonist would find rewarding, but immortality nevertheless.”
Once, Sister Miriel liked to tell, there had been no coolant system. Once, Seril granted Her touch of moonlight and ice and cold stone to the pipes, calling Her element back to itself: rushing, cool-flowing water. When Seril died, the Church desperately sought another solution.
“You’re insane,” she said. “At least I’m good at it.”
It’s amazing the damage Craftsmen can do if they’re not careful. Miles of farmland reduced to desert in a day by a battle between a Deathless King and a pantheon of tribal gods. Of course the Craftsman doesn’t care. He lives off starlight and bare earth.
“If everyone thought like you, Elayne, no one would have seen the potential in Das Thaumas when it came out a hundred fifty years ago. We’d still be scratching at the edges of the gods’ power with paltry Applied Theology, rather than wielding their might ourselves.” “If everyone thought like you, Alexander, we would never have realized the God Wars were killing this world in time to stop.”
The enormity of the scene pressed against Tara’s skin, against her soul. Great and terrible work had been accomplished here.
There are as many different kinds of silence as of darkness. Some are so fragile a single breath will shatter them, but others are not so weak. The strongest silences deafen.
Fire, the Church taught, was life, energy’s ever-changing dance upon a stage of decaying matter. Every priest and priestess, every citizen, had one duty before all else to their Lord: to recognize the glory of that transformation.
Cat forgot love, forgot duty, forgot everything in the shock of that sight: Abelard, still as if sleeping. A taut piano string snapped within her chest. This pain was hers, and this grief. She was herself, Catherine Elle beneath the Blacksuit.
She advanced upon the battle without walking; her feet hovered a few inches above the ground. Moonlight gave the Guardians’ arms strength and their wings speed and their claws power to pierce and rend and tear. Lightning struck Guardians Jain and Rael, and they collapsed, but Her light pulled them from the brink of death; boar-tusked Gar fell into a pit of infinite depth, but Her love became a long thin silver cord to draw him back. Moonlight closed about Ashe’s mind, and freed her from Denovo’s control.
Denovo called on all his Craft, releasing the gargoyles and their goddess and Tara, everything save for his hold on the fiery sphere. He threw doom and lightning against Elayne and rent the earth beneath her feet and cast her into the outer hells, or tried. Shadow seeped from her, devouring starlight and torchlight and his Craft alike. The blood circle blazed the myriad colors of pure white light. Within the shadow, within the circle, the flame of a cigarette tip flared.
Brilliant and new as a phoenix, Kos the Everburning rose from the ember at the tip of Abelard’s cigarette.
There is a space beyond or beneath the world, where all that is not, which creates all that is, collects and congregates. Shadow dances and wars with light there. Life and mind play their eternal game of flight and pursuit. That place looks like nothing the human mind can grasp, so think of it as a bar: polished wood, brass fixtures, dim lights, beer. A woman sat alone, beautiful and lost and full of rage so old it had become a dull ache deadening every newborn sensation. She cradled a half-empty pint glass. A man entered the bar from a door that had not been there before. He stood waiting for
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Engineers: they spend so much time solving physical problems and obeying physical rules, they forget that nonphysical phenomena obey rules every bit as strict.”
They exchanged a long glance, and Tara saw Ms. Kevarian as she must have been decades before, full and young and twenty-five, staring down a long dark path toward power.
Before him, the Rekindled Flame burned on its throne. Life beat on the drum of his heart. “Glory to Thy Flame, Thou Ever-burning, Ever-transforming Majesty,” Abelard chanted, kneeling, before the glistening brass and chrome altar. He exhaled, and waited. In the space between thoughts, he heard a voice. Hello there, old friend, God said.
She recognized the symptoms. If necromancy was an art, and alchemy a science, then direct memory transfer was surgery with a blunt instrument:
Craftsmen could bend lightning to their will, cross oceans without aid, break gods in single combat, but they remained human enough to hunt scapegoats in a crisis.
“Your … boss … broke Qet Sea-Lord on His own altar. He impaled Gods on a tree of lightning, and laughed as They twitched in pain. He deserves seventeen-fold vengeance. I am the last priest of the old ways. If I do not avenge, who will?”
A panorama of the Battle of Dresediel Lex hung over the couch, burning pyramids and torn sky, spears of flame and ice, bodies impaled on moonlight sickles, warring gods and Craftsmen rendered in vivid scrolls of paint. One corner of the painting showed Temoc locked in single combat with the King in Red, before he fell.
“Politics and security,” Alaxic said, “are two sides of the same parchment.” He raised his hands, and tried to spread them. His fingers crooked in like claws, and quivered. “Dark writing on one side may be read from the other. Once, we sacrificed men and women on Quechaltan to beg rain from the gods. We do the same today, only we spread the one death out over millions. We no longer empathize with the victim, lie with him on the slab. We forget, and believe forgetfulness is humane. We fool ourselves. Your organization is founded on that foolishness.”
When he conquered our city, I strove against him in the air, and fought him on the earth. I learned his dark arts after the War, hoping to cast him down with his own power. But I am tired now, and I refuse to let the Craft carry me on to skeletal immortality. Do you understand?”
Ixaqualtil Seven Eagle ruled a realm of darkness where fire shed no light and no stars shone, a vast vacant universe that resounded with the cries of dying and damned, with demonsong, with the crackle of flame and the slither of invisible blades on invisible whetstones. Within that cacophony Ixaqualtil crouched before the Sun’s empty throne, feasting on all who dared approach his master’s perilous seat.
“There are names and then there are names. I didn’t think you meant that Temoc, of all the Temocs in Dresediel Lex.” “Temoc Godhaven. Temoc Last-Standing, Temoc who strikes as an eagle from the heights. Priest of All Gods. Tormentor of Dresediel Lex. Yes. That Temoc.”
Caleb swallowed. Powers lurked inside that pyramid, powers that could turn a man inside out, or trap a woman in agony until the sun burnt to a cinder and the planet fell to dust—powers ancient and implacable. He knew those powers. They paid his salary.
“What was his name?” “Timas.” “I’m sorry.” “They took him for the sacrifice to the Hungry Serpents.” Kopil tapped the surface of the altar. “He’s still here. A piece of him, at least. Two or three drops.” “Why are you telling me this?” “We all think we’re on our own side, until the time comes to declare war.”
It was not the kiss Caleb remembered from the night of the blackout. That had been soft and harsh and strong, but a human softness, a human harshness and a human strength. This was a god-kiss, skeletal teeth touching lips cool and strong as marble, two colossal powers driven by a need that was not desire, an eagerness that was not passion. One was the shadow cast by the other, but which was which? Or was each the shadow cast, and neither one the caster?
Kopil’s shoulders shook. A noise like grinding gravel issued from somewhere below the hinge of his jaw. The King in Red was laughing.
Sixty years ago, these men and women broke the heavens, and made the gods weep. They had spent the time since learning how hard it was to run a world.
He didn’t know how to respond, so he tried, “That must be stressful.” “It’s no more than I asked for—than any of us asked for.” He sighed. “There is one thing you must understand about destroying gods, boy.” “Only one?” “You must be ready to take their place.”
“Your system kills, too. You’ve not eliminated sacrifices, you’ve democratized them—everyone dies a little every day, and the poor and desperate are the worst injured.” He pointed at one of the street cleaners. “Your bosses grind them to nothing, until they have no choice but to mortgage their souls and sell their bodies as cheap labor. We honored our sacrifices in the old days. You sneer at them.”
Silence echoed in the mountain heights—not an absence of noise, but a presence in itself, a medium that endured human intrusion as the sea endures the passage of a ship. Before the ship came, there was the sea; as the ship passes, the sea rolls against the hull. When the ship is gone the sea remains. Without the sea, there could be no ships. Without the ships, there could be no sea, Caleb thought, not knowing what that might mean.
“He thinks he did right by me. I think he’s a fanatic. But the scars give me strength. They let me touch Craft, grab it, bend it.
A beast sacred and profane bore him north, with a beautiful, terrifying woman, to defend a city wonderful in its horrors. He lived in contradiction, and in fear. His father would not approve.
The world changed, like walking on a tidal beach: one step dry and warm and yielding, the next wet, cold, firm. The pleasant sunlit world faded. Mountains surrounded them, crags old as the frame of the earth. Trees shivered in the wind of their passing, restless shades rising from hungry sleep. This was the world immortal. It would endure man’s scrabbling on its surface, and rejoice when the last city crumbled. Was this how Craftsmen saw the universe? So pitiless, and dark?
“Duels of the Craft,” she said, “are fought on many levels. Mind and soul are two battlefields, the body another, time a fourth, and most of the others make little sense if you’re not a Craftsman. The world is an argument, and like any argument there are many ways to win or lose. You can force your opponent to contradict herself. You can point out her fallacies, her false dichotomies, her exaggerations and distortions of reality. Our authority from the King in Red threatens Allie’s control over the station. She’ll attack the bond between Seven Leaf and RKC, claiming independence. The contracts
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Sixty years ago, his father stood atop the pyramid at 667 Sansilva. As cantors sang, he raised his knife. It glinted black in the sun. The obsidian edge reflected the naked sacrifice. The blade fell, the murder was done, and that, too, had saved the city. Silent, he stared into the dead woman’s eyes. But for the blood, she might have been lost in thought, or prayer.
The Rising had been his father’s fault. When Temoc decided to walk a path, fools always followed in his footsteps. A peaceful demonstration, they claimed, and it was at first, but as weeks rolled on his control of the mob wavered. On the tenth day, some idiot threw a stone, a child died, and the Wardens moved in. Battle lines were not drawn. There were no heroic struggles. Those who resisted, fell.
“So, why do you come back here?” “My friends died in this battle. And we do not all choose where we dream.” “You are a strange person,” Kopil said. “You were a priest, but became a Craftsman. You do not control your own dreams. You refuse to leverage your soul, though it means you won’t survive the end of that slab of meat you call your body.” “The Craft,” replied Alaxic, “is a tool. Not all of us let our tools rule our life.”
“Weak, I feel something like fear again.” “I don’t understand,” Caleb said. “We’ve built a world in the last six decades, but it has not endured the test of time. We inhabit the gods’ abandoned buildings like spiders in an old house. Madmen flock to worship departed lords and dead ladies, to tear down all we have built. They seem to hate me. Perhaps they’re right to do so.”
The Serpents had come to the city’s aid in its hour of need. If their use entailed risk, well enough—they required more study before they were used again. The first investigations into the Craft had transformed kingdoms to deserts. This was no different.
“Their pain is horrible. But we need that water. She must have known that.” “Does our need justify our methods?”