'Tell me what you're doing,' she finally said.
'He lives, and that alone may save us.' He paused. 'How far you fall, girl, matters nothing to me. Just keep your thoughts to yourself.'
She watched him peel Heboric's rotting clothing away, revealing the astonishing weave of tattooing beneath. Baudin then moved to keep his own shadow behind him before bending close to study the dark patterning on the ex-priest's chest. He was looking for something.
'A raised nape,' she said dully, 'the ends pulled down and almost touching, almost a circle. It surrounds a pair of tusks.'
He stared, eyes narrowing.
'Fener's own mark, the one that's sacred,' she said. 'It's what you're looking for, isn't it? He's excommunicated, yet Fener remains within him. That much is obvious by those living tattoos.'
'And the mark?' he asked coolly. 'How did you come to know such things?'
'A lie I spun for Beneth,' she explained as the man resumed his examination of the ex-priest's crowded flesh. 'I needed Heboric to support it. I needed details of the cult. He told me. You mean to call on the god.'
'Found it,' he said.
'Now what? How do you reach another man's god, Baudin? There's no keyhole in that mark, no sacred lock you can pick.'
He jerked at that, his eyes glittering as they bore into her own.
She didn't blink, revealed nothing.
'How do you think he lost his hands?' Felisin asked innocently.
'He was a thief, once.'
'He was. But it was the excommunication that took them. There was a key, you see. The High Priest's warren to his god. Tattooed on the palm of his right hand. Held to the sacred mark — hand to chest, basically — as simple as a salute. I spent days healing from Beneth's beating, and Heboric talked. Told me so many things — I should have forgotten all of it, you know. Drinking durhang tea by the gallon, but that brew just dissolved the surface, that filter that says what's important, what isn't. His words poured in unobstructed, and stayed. You can't do it, Baudin.'
He raised Heboric's right forearm, studied the glistening, flushed stump in the growing light.
'You can never go back,' she said. 'The priesthood made sure of that. He isn't what he was, and that's that.'
With a silent snarl Baudin pulled the forearm around to push the stump against the sacred mark.
The air screamed. The sound battered them, flung them both down to scrabble, claw, mindlessly dig into the rock — away. . away from the pain. Away! There was such agony in that shriek, it descended like fire, darkening the sky overhead, spreading hairline fissures through the bedrock, the cracks spreading outward from under Heboric's motionless body.
Blood streaming from her ears, Felisin tried to crawl away, up the trembling slope. The fissures — Heboric's tattoos had blossomed out from his body, leapt the unfathomable distance from skin to stone — swept under her, turning the rock into something slick and greasy under her palms.
Everything had begun to shake. Even the sky seemed to twist, yanked down into itself as if a score of invisible hands had reached through unseen portals, grasping the fabric of the world with cold, destructive rage.
The scream was unending. Rage and unbearable pain meshed together like twin strands in an ever-tightening rope. Closing in a noose around her neck, the sound blocked the outside world — its air, its light.
Something struck the ground, the bedrock under her shuddering, throwing her upward. She came back down hard on one elbow. The bones of her arm shivered like the blade of a sword. The glare of the sun dimmed as Felisin fought for air. Her wide eyes caught a glimpse of something beyond the basin, lifting ponderously from the plain in a heaving cloud of dust. Two-toed, a fur-snarled hoof, too large for her to fully grasp, rising up, pulled skyward into a midnight gloom.
The tattoo had leapt from stone to the air itself, a woadstained web growing in crazed, jerking blots, snapping outward in all directions.
She could not breathe. Her lungs burned. She was dying, sucked airless into the void that was a god's scream.
Sudden silence, out beyond the ringing echoes in her skull. Air flooded her, cold and bitter, yet sweeter than anything she had known. Coughing, spitting bile, Felisin pushed herself onto her hands and knees, shakily raised her head.
The hoof was gone. The tattoo hung like an after-image across the entire sky, slowly fading as she watched. Movement pulled her gaze down, to Baudin. He'd been on his knees, hands cupping the sides of his head. He now slowly straightened, tears of blood filling the lines of his face.
The ground under her feeling strangely fluid, Felisin tottered to her feet. She looked down, blinking dumbly at the mosaic of limestone. The swirling furred patterns of the tattoo still trembled, rippling outward from her moccasins as she struggled for balance. The cracks, the tattoos. . they go down, and down, all the way down. As if I'm standing atop a bed of league-deep nails, each nail kept upright only by the others surrounding it. Have you come from the Abyss, Fener? It's said your sacred warren borders Chaos itself. Fener? Are you among us now? She turned to meet Baudin's eyes. They were dull with shock, though she could detect the first glimmers of fear burning through.
'We wanted the god's attention,' she said. 'Not the god himself.' A trembling seized her. She wrapped her arms around herself, forcing more words forth. 'And he didn't want to come!'
His flinch was momentary, then he rolled his shoulders in something that might have been a shrug. 'He's gone now, ain't he?'
'Are you sure of that?'
He shook off the need to answer, looking instead at Heboric. After a moment's study, he said, 'He breathes steadier now. Nor so wrinkled and parched. Something's happened to him.'
She sneered. 'The reward for missing getting stomped on by a hair's breadth.'
Baudin grunted, his attention suddenly elsewhere.
She followed his gaze. The pool of water was gone, drained away until only a carpet of capemoth corpses remained. Felisin barked a laugh. 'Some salvation we've had here.'
Heboric slowly curled himself into a ball. 'He's here,' he whispered.
'We know,' Baudin said.
'In the mortal realm…' the ex-priest continued after a moment. 'Vulnerable.'
'You're looking at it the wrong way,' Felisin said. 'The god you no longer worship took your hands. So now you pulled him down. Don't mess with mortals.'
Either her cold tone or brutal words in some way steeled through Heboric. He uncurled, raised his head, then sat up. His gaze found Felisin. 'Out of the mouth of babes,' he said with a grin that knew nothing of humour.
'So he's here,' Baudin said, looking around. 'How can a god hide?'
Heboric rose to his feet. 'I'd give what's left of an arm to study a field of the Deck right now. Imagine the maelstrom among the Ascendants. This is not a fly-specked visitation, not a pluck and strum on the strands of power.' He lifted his arms, frowning down at the stumps. 'It's been years, but the ghosts are back.'
Watching Baudin's confusion was a struggle in itself. 'Ghosts?'
'The hands that aren't there,' Heboric explained. 'Echoes. Enough to drive a man mad.' He shook himself, squinted sunward. 'I feel better.'
'You look it,' Baudin said.
The heat was building. In an hour it would soar.
Felisin scowled. 'Healed by the god he rejected. It doesn't matter. If we stay in our tents today we'll be too weak to do anything come dusk. We have to walk now. To the next waterhole. If we don't we're dead.' But I'll outlive you, Baudin. Enough to drive the dagger home.
Baudin shouldered his pack. Grinning, Heboric slung his arms through the straps of the pack she'd been carrying. He rose easily, though taking a step to catch his balance once he straightened.