I stumbled back, weakened by blood loss and off balance from the blade. What would Barnabas think of his student, barely able to hold her weapon over her head? As if I were a child. As if I were weak. I went to one knee, holding myself up with the sword, tip biting deep into the pebbled floor.
Amon opened his eyes and looked at me.
"I will need champions," he said. His voice sounded like tombs speaking.
"I am bound to Morgan," I answered feebly.
"Morgan is dead," he said, then stood. His skin creaked like unkempt leather. He stood before me in the mutilation of his nakedness, and held a hand out to me. "And I am not. Stand as my champion."
"I am bound." I looked up at him, faint in head, weak of heart. "But I will fight for you, in what time I have left."
"That is enough." He breathed in deeply, then opened his mouth and let out a long, even breath that smelled of spiced meat and hot stones. The pebbled floor around my knees flaked and then rose. The shards drove into my flesh, sealing the wounds and patching the damage, but at such a cost. I jumped to my feet, panting and mewling in pain. The sword spun from my hands. When the pain stopped I was filled with a heavy coldness that touched my bones and weighed me down. Again I fell to my knees, my hands, gasping for air.
"You have paid the price of Amon," he said. "If only in part. As for my champion, I will find another. Another…"
He was still for a moment, then cocked his head to the ceiling.
"Or another will find me. Yes." Arms out, palms up. "A Champion of Amon."
The room shivered, but that might have been all the new rock in my gut. I was having trouble focusing. He inhaled deeply several more times, his breath curling out in oily wisps. Eyes closed, and then he turned to me. "I thought you were her, but you are not. The girl who found me, who touched my mind. Her spirit is in turmoil, but I have made repairs. It is done. Stand, let us rise to settle our scores."
"You're damned crazy," I spat.
"I have been bound in a tomb of my own making, held in perpetual sacrifice to the glory of my murderer." He set his feet in the center of the chamber and raised his arms. "Perhaps madness is the price of that. Rise!"
I didn't get the chance. The air shimmered around him, and a pulse of energy washed out from his lungs and pushed through the building. Everything shifted, and a sky of dust shook loose from the walls to hang in the air. The world groaned at our waking. The room pitched, and then we tore free.
The whole building was rising, rising, ripped from the bottom of the lake and rising to the city above. I looked at Amon and saw perfect calm there, perfect calculation. Perfect rage.
What had I done?
* * *
It began as a tide. The dark waters that slapped against the docks on the inner shore of Ash swelled against the pylons. Fishermen and watch captains noted the difference, and peered out into the artificial bay. That swelling became a tumult, and then water was rushing over the side of the city in a white-capped rush. Boats that were near the shore beached against cobbled streets. The new tide cracked open the glass shells of the closest buildings, washing through them in a wave of shattered windows and furniture and screaming citizens. Sirens sounded all across the waterfront, a droning wail that mingled with terror and shock and breaking glass. Deep in the city the domestic canals rushed their banks. The current flashed against bridges and walkways in a furious white foam.
At the center of the bay, a dome of dark water was rising, the disturbance sloughing off new currents. In a fury of foam and displaced depths, something white and massive broke the surface and rose, rose, burst from the lake and then settled into it. It trailed tendrils like netting, like a great fish torn free from a fisher's snare. It was a complicated object, like a deck of shells that had been poorly shuffled.
As the fishermen and the watch captains and ordinary citizens of Ash stared, the huddled structure began to shift and blossom. The overlapping leaves slid together, water still cascading off their grooved surfaces, some of them diving back into the lake as they shifted aside, others bursting from the water in a rainbow-laced spray.
The new island opened at the top like a flower opening to the sun. It was full of light. The inner workings of the island splintered apart, tumbling into the water like a discarded carapace. From the distance of the city, it looked like whole buildings were being turned inside out and disgorged into the lake. Another wave rose up to crash against the city.
From the new opening rose a figure. Telescopes and gunsights snapped to him all along the shore. Black, mostly naked, only the barest armor covering him and that looked to be made of charred wood. On his back he wore a wide, flat disk that silhouetted his upper body. The disk was of beaten brass, slightly elongated, and had some sort of aura filtering along its edge, like a blade that had been heated in the forge, distorting the air.
He rose above the building, above the lake, above the heights of the city. Arms spread wide, legs extended like a swimmer, he rose and the city watched him. Afraid. Unsure. Even the sirens quieted as their attendants left their stations to watch the spectacle.
He held out a hand and the towers screamed. Glass vibrated and steel hummed throughout the city in a wave. It passed through people, through stone, through water and steel. Finally, it rested on the Spear of the Brothers, tightening until the whole structure sang like a tuning fork. Something shifted inside the shining white marble tower, then a small section of the white stone crumbled like snow. An object flew out of the tower and smashed into a nearby building, raking along the glass walls and furrowing a trail of shattered windows. The object flew straight and true, breaking anything that stood before it, cracking walls and bending pillars with its passage. With a hammer's blow it struck a tall glass building on the water's edge, cratering the facade, burrowing through floors and stairwells before erupting from the other side in a shower of glass and noise. It flew to the figure and snapped into his hand, glowing with the might of its passage.
He raised it over his head like a benediction. The Spear of Amon, in the hand of Amon. The Scholar had taken up his weapon. War was upon us.
* * *
I clambered from the water, gasping and tired. I rode some of the detritus out when the building opened up, was lucky enough to find something wooden, and the wave brought me home. Lucky enough for that.
I sat on the shoreline, trembling, eyes wide at the ravaged coast. Waterfalls coursed out of broken windows; the harbor was choked with shattered furniture and churning pedigears and bodies. Lots of bodies. The sirens started up again as Amon raised his spear and pointed it across the city. Far away I heard stone shattering, and a pillar of debris towered between the buildings. The Spear of the Brothers, my guess.
From the wreckage of his throne, Alexander ascended. He rose into the air, white as the full moon, halberd in hand, half-shield on his back. And now he wore the articulated mask of the Betrayer. Alexander the Healer, Alexander the Betrayer, Alexander the godking of Ash.
The city stopped, the sirens and the pedigears and the monotrain. The impellors slowed and then halted. The gods of man faced each other across the landscape of the city of Ash, and we all stopped.
"Godsdamn," I whispered, easing my blade from its waterproof bag. "Gods and Brothers be damned."
Above me, the sky began to turn.
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