Immortal Progeny (Fragile Gods Book 1) Page 4

  The Stonekeeper took a position directly beneath the snarling mass of dangerous flesh, and she looked pitifully small against it. Rowan's stomach flipped over, and for a moment she was convinced she was about to see her mother slain.

  Gentian Stonekeeper, even with the rank water dripping all over her, looked up at the progeny and didn't flinch, though she held nothing more than a small knife that looked like it might have been snatched from the kitchen. It probably had been.

  Rowan felt her quarter, damp but unbowed, reach a position at her back, and gestured them to follow her. "The Stonekeeper needs protection! Quickly!"

  All of them surged forward, running along the battlements towards Gentian, even as she raised her hand high and sliced the knife across it with no pause. The battle was not won yet, but Rowan smiled because the heathens were about to learn what it meant to tangle with the true goddess' people. Gentian might be her mother, but that was the least of what she was.

  Sanguine, soul or spirit, were the only tools to control a construct of any size. However, the price was a heavy one. The training and dedication required was beyond Rowan, but she took real pride in the fact her mother handled it so easily. Whatever else Gentian did, this one thing was her true calling.

  Her heart swelled when the little woman's blood dripped down onto the temple stones of their goddess. It might have been her imagination but the blood gleamed brighter and more intensely than she'd ever seen before.

  Rowan jerked her head to the quarter, and they knew what must be done; they surrounded Gentian to act as guards to a body that would be uninhabited during the battle.

  While Rowan took Gentian under her right arm, the strong arm of Tagier took the other side. She caught her mother when her legs sagged. The remaining quarter drew the circle tight while the two of them lowered the priestess to the ground.

  Rowan and Tagier shared a slightly mad smile, all fears swept away. The younger woman knew what she was feeling because she felt it too; the chance to see Gentian's work was a rare one. It had been a great deal of time since any heathen deity dared to attack Providence. They were about to get a firsthand demonstration of true power.

  Now the temple shook in earnest; it was surely only the prayers of the priests and priestesses and the will of Serey that kept it from sliding into the ocean.

  The heathen progeny roared, perhaps feeling the change in the air and this new disturbance not of its creation. Its pit of a mouth was full of teeth as it slashed its tentacles back and forth. Now that the water was drying from its form, Rowan saw the stitching holding it together was not as finely done as she previously thought. The priests of Kneda had been in a rush, and that would surely cost them dearly in the moments to come. She imagined soon she would be adding another red dot to her map.

  From below the temple, another great roar came, and this one brought a smile to the faces of the defenders. Serey was answering her attackers, and Gentian's spirit was about to make itself known.

  The rattle of a long coiled form moving out from the cave made Rowan's heart race faster and her skin run hot. She dashed to the battlements, leaving Tagier and the rest of the quarter to hold the empty body of her mother. She wanted to see her soul.

  The ruddy brown progeny of Serey had the long segmented body of a centipede, with the snapping claws of a mud crab stitched on its front. Essence manipulation made the progeny huge, easily a match for the heathen attacker. The earth goddess might not have the most beautiful constructs, but the stitching was fine, and the movement of the construct smooth and supple. The Kneda progeny by comparison looked as if it had been made by an incompetent child and was controlled by an idiot.

  The sacred Serey creation made no sound as its segmented legs powered it over the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Every construct had to have some kind of human portion, and this one shared a similar trait to its enemy; it had abnormally huge human eyes in its insect head. Rowan caught a glimpse of the wide milky expanse, strangely blue, before the head of the sacred progeny lashed out, sinking curved teeth into the heathen construct's body. The grey-blue head arched back as elementary pain reached its creator, and it let out an oddly human howl that hurt the ears of the mortals around it.

  "Rowan!" Tagier's voice sounded very far away over the roar of the progeny. Rowan whipped her head around, and the shadow of the tentacle crossed over and above her like a dark cloud. It was all the warning she got, and far too late.

  It smashed into the battlements to one side of her, and this time the strength of the temple was not enough. The blow tore through the stone with an ear-splitting crack, while the impact rippled towards Rowan as if through water.

  Abruptly realizing the danger, she darted forward, but there was nothing to hold onto, nothing to stop her fall; there was only a moment to catch a glimpse of her quarter, moving towards her far too slowly, and then she was gone. The stone wrenched from under Rowan's feet as if it was a mere carpet, and she became part of the flying debris.

  The air, ground and sea blurred. Rowan flung out her hands, trying to grab hold of something solid. A rough jerk signaled her goddess was indeed mighty; Rowan's bloody hand miraculously connected with an edge of broken rock. Her shoulder screamed in pain when her whole body jerked like a rag-doll at the end of it. Glancing down, she saw her own feet hanging over an abyss that ended in heaving waves and pointed rocks.

  Above the progeny raged and battled, but it was easy to see the better-made sacred one was pulling apart the howling Kneda invader. Rowan had faith right would triumph, even if at that moment her fate was more precarious and uncertain. Blood was pooling under her slashed fingers, and the agony of her arm transmitted into her screaming shoulder.

  The goddess might provide opportunity, but she also required a person take responsibility for his or her own path. Taking a deep breath, Rowan began to swing her body back and forward so her other hand could find a grip. Each movement brought more pain. With a grunt, she managed to get her left hand up next to her right one. It eased the agony in her shoulder immediately, and with a grin of triumph she pulled herself over the shattered edge of rock to safety.

  As Rowan lay there, sucking in large, shuddering breaths, she contemplated her second brush with death in as many minutes. Now she could process what happened; the heathen progeny ripped one of the towers built into the cliff-face apart, exposing the interior of the temple like a hungry peasant tearing into a loaf of bread. Luckily, it was not the scriptorium tower or the treasures would have been lost.

  While the battle thundered above her, Rowan levered herself upright and stumbled through the darkness of the exposed rooms. It took her a moment to realize it was the dungeon; a part of the temple she never ventured into—either while training or studying in the scriptorium.

  She needed to get back up to the battlements quickly—not to protect her mother, she didn't need protecting now—but to watch the destruction of the heathen progeny. That would be an event not repeated for many years, Rowan was sure, and one that might influence her next illumination.

  With a quick glance to the struggling, heaving constructs seen through the broken walls, she felt her way along the torn corridor with outstretched hands. Most of the cells were intact, and Rowan caught frightened glimpses of sinners within. They shied away from her, filthy, pagan and terrified.

  This was not her domain, and the souls incarcerated offended the goddess in some way, so Rowan tried to avert her eyes from theirs lest she catch some of their sin. What mattered was reaching the battlements and her quarter before the battle was completely over. Everyone else was getting a better look at it than she was, buried down here with the heathens.

  Rowan was so engrossed in her thoughts she actually leapt when one of the prisoners caught at her sleeve. Drawing back from such presumption, the acolyte turned to give a stern tongue-lashing to the offender—but stopped before a word left her mouth, blinking in stunned surprise.

  The light filtering through the break in the temple wall only barely
reached that far back, but it still managed to show the female prisoner pressed against the bars, hand outstretched. She was filthy, with a look of stark desperation in her eyes, but that was not what gave Rowan pause. Her straw-colored hair, her wide green eyes, and sharp features were both hauntingly familiar. Both of them stared at each other for a long time, as the sounds of the progenies' battle raged outside. Suddenly that didn't seem to matter at all.

  Rowan swallowed hard, trying to understand what she saw before her, because she had seen it this morning in the mirror outside the dormitory. The stranger in the dungeon wore Rowan's own face.

  As the priestess stood there, stunned, the prisoner grabbed her again, her hand connecting with Rowan's arm. In that moment it was not the face that was so strange; now a cacophony of voices filled her head.

  Prisoners terrified of approaching death. Priests and priestess so proud of their goddess they would die for her. Thousands of beasts above and below drowning in a sea of blood. All of them banging loudly in her mind with a jumble of pressing thoughts and fears. The demanding living and the hungry dead all screaming out.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, but tears leaked out nonetheless. It was too much for her, she had her own fears to hang onto, not this sudden chorus of pain and despair.

  Rowan jerked backwards, stumbled, and fell onto her rump with a gasp. The prisoner's hand spasmed shut, and her breathing also came hard like she'd been running.

  "Who are you?" her voice was low, and the only unfamiliar thing about her.

  It was a question she didn't know the answer to, and one she couldn't face right at that minute. Turning, Rowan scrambled to get out of the dungeons, and away from the unholy prisoner who was also impossibly her.

  Rowan reached the stairs, but the woman's voice was not so easy to escape.

  "They're a lie, you know," she howled. "You've seen the proof—the gods are all a lie!"

  Rowan felt like the shadows were screaming at her once again. Her tribulations had a new face—hers. What it would mean she didn't want to contemplate, but she didn't know if she could stuff away what she saw. Did she have the courage, she wondered, to ask her mother what it all meant, or would the fear of being told it was her own madness keep her silent?

  It seemed she was attacked from within and without, and beset on all sides.

  Chapter Three

  Finding Magic and Pain

  The woman's eyes were Vervain's eyes too; full of fear and shock. When the stranger turned and ran however, the spell was broken.

  The prisoner sank back on her heels and stared at the spot where her double stood only a few days before. It was hard to tell time down here, but the break in the wall now at least allowed sunlight through—even if it felt like she hadn't blinked since then. One small part of her brain whispered she must have been an apparition, perhaps brought on by the lack of sleep and food, compiled by the looming threat of the stitchers. That was what her trained and disciplined mind reasoned, but at the same time, there was the touch they shared. She felt sure that could not have been imagined, all the voices of an entire temple echoing in her head: triumph, horror, and delight.

  Resting her head against the bars, Vervain stared out at the sun and racing clouds visible through the broken skin of the tower. When the rumbling started, she hoped perhaps all the sorry tenants of the dungeon might be mercifully killed by the progeny. She often dreamt of falling, and in her dreams it did not seem a terrible fate. Flying and falling were not so very far apart and in her dreams she welcomed the sensation as if it were saving her.

  Vervain licked her dry lips and rubbed a hand through her dirty hair. "No such luck." When she stuck her fingers through the bars, the tantalizing breath of the wind brushed against them. It was enough of a reminder to Vervain that much existed beyond her incarceration.

  The glimpse of something in the woman who wore her face sparked a small shred of hope that perhaps Vervain's contact with the akasha had returned. The tingle in her skin, the slight buzz in her ears that would have signaled its arrival, however remained elusive.

  "Akasha will not be easily mastered," she muttered to herself as the words Setna repeated over and over again during her training echoed in her brain. Despite the situation, her scholarly curiosity was peaked. The theists cut her off from the akasha, yet somehow something flickered in her when she touched that other woman.

  What exactly could it have been, and who was that other woman? Vervain began to pace, even though she knew it was burning valuable energy. It was the only glimmer of hope since she’d been captured by these damn theists.

  By the gouges she’d carved into the flat metal of her cage, it had been three weeks ago that they had taken her. Another one and she knew her fate. The theists might not acknowledge the natural rhythms of akasha, but they certainly knew at a full moon the akashanic aura would be at its strongest. That was when they would come with their knives and carve her up into useful pieces. They might despise her kind and call them demons and witches, but they believed their flesh made for the greatest progeny and homunculi. It was yet another way they were perverse.

  Vervain shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. The idea of unwillingly donating pieces of her body to the creations the temples were using to tear apart the world was highly unpleasant. That image could wreck her and make her lose her focus. It might end up causing her to surrender to despair and curl up into a ball in the corner.

  She was Zoeker, the name for an explorer in the lost language, and had been trained by the best of those that remained. Though the theists might call her a witch, they could never understand what she really was. Insatiable curiosity was the goal of the Zoeker, higher than any god, and even in her current situation Vervain could not abandon it.

  "No, I will not," she said, squeezing her upper arms until the pain brought her racing thoughts to a halt. "All I damn well need is my focus back."

  Her whole body ached, but she was still a young woman, and it was time to remember she did have resources. Perhaps the connection she felt with her other was a way out. She wouldn't know unless she tried.

  Pushing aside her bodily pains, Vervain sat on the rocky floor, folded her legs crisscrossed, and then clamped her hands together. Her fingers she steeple and linked, like the world's four powers. Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Vervain pressed her thumbs together and down, making a triangular shape. It was the akashanic breach, and she aimed it directly at her torso.

  As always, for a brief moment, her mind darted back to the first time she felt the connection to the akasha. Vervain could almost feel Setna's hearth fire warming her back, and smell the old books piled on his desk. She would have given anything to hear his voice guiding her through her own powers, like a miner feeling her way into the depths of the earth for treasure.

  "We are merely tapping into the energy of the world around us," he always assured her. "There is nothing to be feared in those places, as long as we are careful and trained."

  A Zoeker could, much like a miner, delve too deep, or bring the akasha crashing down around him, but those things were the same as the dangers of a forest fire, or the surf on the shore. They were not the work of some unseen, cruel gods.

  Except, of course, those who believed in them were quite convinced otherwise, and unfortunately managed to twist most of the population either through fancy ritual or by the sword.

  Akashanic balance was hard to achieve. It was the act of being and yet not being. The place in between things. The realm of neither one thing nor another. Ultimately, it was an uncomfortable spot to occupy—and one that had not helped her current situation.

  She had tried to reach her fellow Zoekers, but distance and the disturbance of the theists terrible work had brought nothing but failure. Still it was an escape from this dark place—or at least it had been.

  The warmth she associated with that was not present, but something else lingered on the very edges of her perception; a shadow of a shape. Her body was long away from her, but her perc
eptions were as sharp as they were when Setna trained them. It did not feel like akasha. It felt as though it was in her, rather than beyond in the natural world.

  Vervain pursued it relentlessly, chasing the phantom in her head, and it was as though the thing threw memories at her as a distraction. The woman felt blasting heat on her face. Her feet ached and bled. She was not alone. She'd never been alone, but she had been torn apart. More than one shadow ran ahead of her. Vervain's hand reached out to catch them but grasped at nothing.

  And that was when her body called her violently back. Pain lanced Vervain's side, and she jerked so hard she toppled out of her position to sprawl on the floor. It took a moment for her vision to return, but when it did she did not like what it revealed.

  The butcher had the telltale signs of his trade soaked in the edges of his robe, while its hood was pushed back to show his sharp angular features. He was still threatening her with the spear he just jabbed her with. He might have been handsome in another place and time, but most certainly not while he was leering through the bars of Vervain's cell. "Time to move, meat," he growled, jabbing her with the tip of his spear once more just for good measure.

  She frowned at him. "I think you'd treat your meat better than poking at it." Vervain saw the look in his eyes, he wanted more than that, but he was afraid to contaminate her flesh. Given half the chance, she would have turned her akashanic powers on him, burning his lusts from him like the holy flames so many of these theists believed in.

  For now, she was without her power, and so Vervain staggered to her feet. The butcher unlocked the gate, and she had only one last glimpse of the blue sky through the broken wall before he poked her along the hallway and deeper into the temple.

  The walls were lit by sconces, but she would have far preferred they were not because what they revealed was horrifying. The theists did their dirty work in those rooms. As they descended further into the dungeons carved into the cliffs, the sights became darker and more terrifying, and the smells were far worse even than the cells where she was kept for three weeks. Several times Vervain had to stop and choke back her own vomit, only to earn more jabs with the butcher's spear. He was apparently immune to all the pit had to offer.