Bad Gods Read online

  I may not play chess as well as the Chief, but there are games I’m good at, when I have the pieces.

  I leaned forward. “You hear anything, and you tell me, and I’ll get you Flower’s recipe for spiced goulash. If the information’s useful, I’ll get him to come show you how he does it.”

  She stared at me.

  I stared back.

  Finally she blew a delicate puff of air through slightly pursed lips. “Very well.”

  I was smiling as I left, but as I walked towards home, my good mood faded. I still had nothing, and if that girl was in some bastard’s hands...

  I turned the ring on my finger round and round, crossed the river and headed south.

  Tiresana

  Surrounded by the sort of luxury even my master hadn’t enjoyed, I rode by barge to the capital, Akran, and to the Temple of All the Gods.

  For five days I lay on a silk-covered couch being fed fruit by beautiful servants and watching land I’d jounced over on a sandmule drift past gently. I felt as though I were in a guilty dream, suspended, waiting for someone to realise it had all been a mistake.

  For five days the Avatar Hap-Canae appeared daily and spoke with me, talking about the marvels that awaited me, and asking me questions that no doubt exposed the echoing depths of my ignorance about, well, pretty much everything. Even about Babaska, she I was about to serve. I knew that she took human lovers, though it didn’t always end well, and that she sometimes turned up in battle to fight beside a favoured soldier or a company. That was about it. I’d had a lot more education in scrubbing than in religion; what little I knew was mostly from fireside tales.

  I was an eager listener, partly because I really was interested, and mad to learn, but mainly because I was half in love from the moment I first saw him. After a few days in his company, drenched in his charisma, the focus of utter and undivided attention from a divine being, I was as hopelessly, helplessly, awe-strickenly in love as any sixteen-year-old girl in the history of all the planes. Even now the scent of myrrh will bring it back to me; that drugged and burning madness.

  It was the day before we were due to arrive. He lay on a green silk draped couch, the perfect background for his tawny robes; a plate of honey-cakes stood on the little table between us. His robes left one shoulder bare. I watched the smooth play of muscle beneath his glowing skin, and tried not to tremble. I was lying feet away from an Avatar, being treated like a priestess, and I was crazy with desire.

  “Have you attended a Sowing?” he said, picking up a cake.

  “Twice, so far.” I blushed, I swear, all the way to my waist. The Sowing happened at Spring Festival, one of the most important in the year.

  Hap-Canae smiled. “Only twice! Well, at least you know what will be expected of you.” He bit into his cake.

  I hadn’t thought of it, but as a High Priestess of Babaska, of course, I would be expected to perform the Sowing. I wondered what it would be like to do it with a man in front of a whole crowd of people. Would everyone guess I’d never done it before? What if I got it wrong?

  The thought was probably written all over my face.

  He ran a finger down my cheek. My whole body seemed to melt outwards from where he’d touched me. “Well,” he said, “you will receive some instruction, before you have to take part. But I think you might benefit from a little practical experience, hmm?”

  He took my hand and led me to the covered area where he slept. I hardly felt the deck of the barge beneath my feet.

  He had brought a mirror with him, of course; it stood on a gilded stand. I saw my face in it as he undressed me, my eyes wide and solemn.

  I knew what went where, and that it was supposed to be an enjoyable experience; but otherwise I was ignorant as a calf. Daft with desire and drenched in Hap-Canae’s charisma, utterly stunned with delight at having been Chosen, not just as a priestess but as a lover, I thought it was all wonderful. I was used to feeling too tall, too broad in the shoulder, too big altogether, but compared to him, magnificent in his size and strength, I was fragile, delicate. He could flip me over with one hand.

  Just the sight of his hands, the hands of an Avatar, of Hap-Canae, golden and glowing on my ordinary breasts, was enough to send great washes of feeling through me from nipples to groin. I hardly dared glance at his cock, but when he guided my hand to it and I felt it leap under my fingers, I almost fainted with pleasure. I’d done that. I’d made his body respond, to me.

  And when he pushed inside me, I welcomed the pain, a willing martyr to desire. Later, I’d understand what pleasure was; that first time, all my joy was simply in having him inside me.

  Chapter Six

  Though it was only lunchtime, The Swamp was already busy, the smell of alcohol, fish and riverweed rolling into the street. Kittack looked up from wiping the bar and bared triangular teeth at me; he’s Ikinchli, and they’re basically lizards. It took me a while to get to the bar, excusing my way through a lot of scales and tails. Kittack serves stuff that I wouldn’t drink on a bet, but it’s very popular with some of the more reptilian bunch.

  “Babylon.”

  “Hey, Kittack.”

  “You want a little my special beer? Put scale on your chest, hah?”

  I glanced down at myself. “I’ve got enough on my chest to be going on with, thank you.”

  Kittack flicked his tongue out at me. It’s dark blue, long, pointy, and very adept. “I remembers.”

  “Me too. Put that tongue away before I forget what I came here for. You got a minute?”

  He blinked at me, third eyelids pearling his eyes briefly. “Okay, we go back room.”

  He hissed and clicked at his barmaid, a lamia with deep blue-green scales, hands like an angel and lamplight eyes. If she ever fancies the work, I’m offering her a job. She slid up to the bar and winked at me. “Keep him back there a while, I make twice the tips when he isn’t around.”

  “No respect,” Kittack grumbled. We went into his ‘back room,’ which has heated stone benches and a small pool in the middle. Things swished and whirled in the water.

  I settled myself, showed him the picture, and told him what I knew.

  His cranial crest flicked up – not a good sign – then he went still. No-one can go more still than an Ikinchli. “Girl gone disappear. Why you ask me, Babylon?”

  “Fain told me that these people come from the same place as you, Kittack. I just thought you might have heard something.”

  “Who you been listening to?”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “You been hearing bad old stories?”

  “Sorry, Kittack, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Stories from back home, about my people kidnap pretty girls for sacrifice to Old.”

  The Old are sort of gods. Kittack’s sort of gods.

  “I’ve heard nothing but what Fain told me.”

  He flicked his tail. “Stories how the Old want pretty girls for make bouncy then cut head off. Waste of pretty girls, you ask me. Is all old foolishness from home.”

  “Who made up these stories?”

  “Gudain.” He tapped the portrait. “Master race, hah? Big pain in the tail; think us Ikinchli are made for slave, you know? So we do all hard work, not get nothing for it. Lots like me, we get chance, we leave.”

  “I don’t blame you.” I sighed, and shoved the portrait away.

  “What’s matter?”

  “Well, I’ve promised to look for this girl. Been paid.”

  “So? Is good. Money is money. I hear anything, I tell you.”

  “Thanks, Kittack.”

  He shrugged – he does it with his whole body. “Is no problem. Strange, though.”

  “What is?”

  “That Gudain girl. She got yellow eyes.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I never seen that before. Gudain always grey eyes. Funny. Maybe means she different, not so much pain in arse like other Gudain, hah?”

  “Yeah, maybe. You been getting any trouble?” br />
  “From Gudain? No. Mostly don’t come to Scalentine. Why would they? Back home, very comfortable, tell everyone what to do. Here, maybe not so much.” He waved a foot around in the water. “Me, not so political. Live here now, not there. Some my people, very political. Meeting, meeting, talking, talking. One day we go home, throw down Gudain, all be great, you know? But is all talk.”

  “I meant, from the locals.”

  “Bit graffiti, is all. ‘Scaly go home,’ usual.”

  Ikinchli are ‘Scaleys’ only if you’re dumb or plain rude, and only to their faces if you’re looking to lose a part of your anatomy.

  “Idiots,” I said.

  “True.”

  “You tell the militia?”

  “What’s point?” he said. “No head broken, why they care? You tell them about girl?”

  “Not yet. I’m sorry, Kittack. I didn’t mean anything, you know? I didn’t know, about the stories.”

  “S’okay.”

  I stood up. “I got a few more people to talk to. You take care, all right?”

  “You better tell Bitternut about girl. Otherwise he think you don’t love him no more.” He grinned, all teeth. “When you going to get smart?”

  “Lay off, or I won’t let you in next time you come calling.”

  “Then I waste away, turn into little shrivelled up lizard, you wear me for brooch.”

  “Like you can’t get bouncy anywhere else. I like your new barmaid.”

  He hissed a laugh. “No bouncy there. She cheek me, not know her place. Also she like girls. Also can break my arm. Too many tough women; what’s a poor guy to do?”

  “You could visit the Twins, you might get a taste for it.”

  He gave a theatrical shiver, his tail whipping over the stone. “Pain for fun? Not this lizard. You mammals are weird.”

  Tiresana

  As we approached, with the lesser barges and the trade-boats scuttling out of our way, I caught my first glimpse of the great statues, hundreds of feet high. They were seated rigidly on their thrones, staring out across the desert. Hap-Canae, Meisheté, Aka-Tete, Shakanti, Rohikanta, Lohiria, Mihiria. Babaska. Eight statues, eight gods.

  The statues were older than anyone remembered; they’d been made of some hard red stone that wore well, but even so, their faces were fading and blurring. Behind them, the walls stretched out to either side. “Is that Akran?” I asked. “I didn’t know it had walls.”

  Hap-Canae smiled. “Oh, no, that’s not the city. That is just the temple.”

  I gaped. How huge could it be?

  “See how the people love their Avatars?” Hap-Canae said. “Now, it is very dusty. Here.” He whisked a scarf of fine white gauze about my head and face. “We will go in the side entrance; the precinct is sure to be crowded.”

  We anchored at the jetty and I was led, shrouded like the dead, through an ancient side-gate, its thick carved wood silver with age.

  I barely glimpsed the precinct before Hap-Canae ushered me inside, and up a set of stairs. All the servants were left behind.

  I was slightly breathless by the time he finally paused at a window, looking down on the precinct, and I did likewise, and stood, gaping.

  The walls were no deception. The Temple of All the Gods was the size of a town: the very courtyard was so huge the gods all had their own separate temples within it, lined up along the walls. One so white it hurt and all agleam inside with silver, one blood-red, one bright with gold, a gold sunburst mounted above the roof. I had never seen anything so astonishing, and only remembered to close my mouth when I breathed dust and started to cough.

  “That,” Hap-Canae said, pointing, “is the temple of Babaska.”

  It was of rich purplish stone, polished to a gleam. Inside I could see a statue, in white, ten feet high. Babaska. Hand on sword, her skirt kilted up and her hair bound back for fighting, smiling. There must have been a ceremony or a festival; the steps and altar were all draped in scarlet flowers, wilting now. I wondered what the festival had been and realised, nervously, how little I still knew about the ceremonies of the goddess I was supposed to serve.

  The place was all a-bustle, priests of all sexes, acolytes and lay servants scurrying across its expanse like so many white-clad ants and disappearing into the cool shadows. Guards, very fine with their shields and spears polished bright, stood like statues.

  “Come now,” Hap-Canae said, and led me on down the corridors, with their silent painted processions of offering-bearers and sacrifices.

  We went down more steps into the great mass of buildings behind the main temples, opposite the front gates. In and further in, to what was known as the Inner Temple, the oldest part, from which the rest had grown out over the centuries. It lay within the greater temple like a hidden drawer in a jewellery box, a place to keep secrets.

  “Hap-Canae,” someone said. “So, finally, you’ve made your choice?”

  A woman with bone-white skin and silver hair that swept around her like a cloak was standing in the doorway ahead of us. She wore black gauze, through which her body showed like the moon through clouds; she was as tall as the Avatar Hap-Canae, and had the same devastating glow; and she frightened the life out of me.

  That was the first time I saw the Avatar Shakanti. She looked at me as though wondering if I were ever likely to become worth her notice, then shrugged, and turned away into the room.

  It was a cool white room with a blue tiled floor. There, seated on the benches or lounging on cushions on the floor, I saw the other girls. “These are your rivals,” the Avatar Hap-Canae said.

  “Rivals?”

  “Why, yes.” He laughed, that rich gold laugh, his hand resting on my shoulder. The Avatar Shakanti glared at him. “You would like to be a High Priestess of Babaska in a temple like this, would you not, rather than some miserable province, where the temple is of dried mud?”

  I could hear the laughter still bubbling under his voice, but I didn’t understand it, not then.

  Chapter Seven

  Scalentine has always been a city of mixtures. It’s a planar conjunction, for the All’s sake. We link to seven planes permanently, and new portals pop open every now and then, more of them during Twomoon. Some of them only spit out a handful of wanderers before they close again. In some unfortunate cases, all we get is, well, bits; some portals close fast.

  Scalentine is a city surrounded by a few miles of farmland and forest, but after that, there’s... nothing. A wall of air. Sometimes you see things in it, patterns, swirling, sometimes... other things. Watching it for too long can be addictive, and doesn’t tend to be healthy.

  We’re a small plane; a sort of bubble caught between portals. Some say the whole plane is no natural thing, but something built. But who built it, or for what purpose, well, there are as many theories as there are students of the Arcane, not to mention people who’ve had a few too many drinks.

  And there are those who think Scalentine was made for them, and no-one else should be allowed in.

  But we get people from everywhere. Planes, and worlds within planes, and races within worlds, and tribes within races. We have Fey and humans, fauns and Ikinchli. We have people with tusks, people with fur, we have Barraklé and Edleskasin and even Monishish or Dra-ay from the Perindi Empire. Hells, there are at least thirty known races within the Perindi Empire alone, and half of them seem to end up here.

  No-one knows who the original builders of the city were, or what they looked like. If there were builders. The city feels so alive, sometimes I think it just set itself here, and waited for people to start arriving, to fill its lungs with breath and its veins with blood.

  I headed to the Hall of Mirrors. It looked spectacular, as always. Its dome is a fine framework of black-painted iron, lacing together panes of multicoloured glass; by day it’s pretty enough, but at night, with all the light spilling out, it looks like a giant coloured lantern. (If you’re of a cynical turn, of course, it’s more reminiscent of one of those deep-ocean fish I’ve h
eard of, that uses pretty lights to lure its prey).

  The smell of expensive perfumes, the subdued notes of a small orchestra, and the discreet murmur of a great deal of money changing hands greeted me as I went in, and looked up, like I always do. I had a drunken conversation with a friend once who suggested the panes of glass are in a mystic pattern which hypnotises people into spending money. We had just been on a bit of a spree, admittedly, but I think he was wrong. Although the first thing I saw when I dropped my gaze was Bannerman’s, and his window display got me, like it always does, dammit.

  I told myself I wasn’t here to shop, but I did go over for one quick look. Okay, there wasn’t anything there I actually needed, but it was all so shiny. And I was pretty sure the centrepiece was a Gillalune. Elegant, gorgeous, just the thing for day or evening wear... but I really, really didn’t need another sword, and I couldn’t afford a Gillalune anyway. I was still there, trying not to drool too obviously, when I heard my name being called.

  “Hey, Chief,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  He strolled over, saw what I was looking at, and whistled. “Splashing out?”

  “That wouldn’t be a splash, that would be a flood.”

  We both looked at the window for a bit longer, and Bitternut sighed. “Beautiful.”

  “You think it’s a Gillalune?”

  “Looks like it, doesn’t it?” he said. “Look at that wave-pattern on the blade. Bet it sings like a bird.”

  “Yep. You got time for spice tea? I need to talk to you about something.”

  He gave a quick glance around. “Looks quiet enough, so long as we stay on the square, but I can’t stop long.”

  We settled ourselves at the only café where we could both fit our legs under the table.

  “So how are you?” I said.

  “Crazed. Carnival opened last night.”

  “Ah.”

  Carnival’s a portal. There are seven permanent or near-permanent portals. Four are fixed ones that always open onto the same planes. Portal Bealach is the biggest, our main trade route. It links to a spot on the border between the Perindi Empire and the Flame Republic (lot of work for the Diplomatic section). Portal Eventide links to the Fey lands; Throat Portal links to a plane that seems to be mostly ice, darkness, and brutally ferocious beasts, but also contains several powerful if not very appealing countries (more diplomacy); and Portal Spirita, which is an anomaly – it’s a permanent portal, but the plane on the other side changes. Very little comes through Spirita, and what does is strange. Stranger, that is, than what comes through the others. Lunatic travellers, self-proclaimed saviours, victims of obscure curses and scholars of lost tongues.