The Godgame (The Godgame, Book 1) (8 page)

But a new chantiac would mean new temples as well as renewed excitement and enthusiasm. He must find this boy and have him brought to Talos. But where to look? Nova was a very large territory. Where should he start?

He needed more information. He had risen high, it was true, but only through patience and subtlety. To get what he wanted, others had to first think it was they who were making the decisions, not him. He would wait.

~

He waited for longer than he would have liked. With nothing to go on, without a name or location, anyone he sent out to search for the boy was unlikely to find him. He intended to send Skin after the boy. She was his best and most trusted agent. She was arkaine, highly skilled, and fearless. If anyone could locate and bring the boy back quickly, it was she.

After several days, his patience was rewarded and the answers he sought became clear.

He was visited by the hallowgeons.

It happened as it had two times before, while he looked over the City from his balcony and contemplated the politics of the heirotimates. After the last visitation, he had made it his business to be present in this location every evening he was able. The hallowgeons did not conform to any schedule but their own, their ways mysterious and strange. They often did things that did not seem to serve any rational purpose, yet claimed it was their task to impart wisdom to the human race.

The first time he’d seen their ship, an irrational horror had filled him. Not because he felt his life was in danger, but because he was before something that every fiber of his being felt should not exist, something not of this world. It had been hovering silently in the air next to the Ziggurat, several feet above his balcony. It was an incomprehensibly intricate design, with details that somehow eluded his examination, giving it a hazy and gray quality, as if his human eyes did not have the proper faculties to process all that was before him. It was a ship very different from the aerials—including Marrow’s, the largest and most renowned of the airships—capable of elevations far higher, far above the clouds, travelling into regions not understood by humanity, where the hallowgeons must live. Above the clouds there was said to be a place referenced only as the “Void” in the text Lemmenkainen had given him, an ancient tome without a title, the personal understandings and scientific observations of an arkaine from the First Age of the world who had perished long ago.

“Good evening, Trevor,” a strange voice spoke from behind him, and when he turned, his heart immediately began to beat furiously in his chest.

The three hallowgeons were standing behind him. Gray robes draped their bodies, as if to conceal anatomies his eyes might find twisted and displeasing to gaze upon, hoods up over their heads so that only their pale faces were visible. They were very tall, the shortest at perhaps a little over nine feet, the tallest closer to ten.

“We are well met,” Cadoc said, in a voice Trevor knew as the most normal of the three, yet that seemed to possess an echo of sorts, each cadence reverberating in his skull and lingering, fading only reluctantly.

“Welcome,” Trevor managed, swallowing, doing his best to collect himself and hide his discomfort. Even with the masks the hallowgeons wore, their presence was still disconcerting. The identically blank and pale visages the three wore could not conceal their eyes, that peered from slits, larger than human eyes, Cadoc’s shot with veins so yellow they seemed to glow, the one known as Mithra (who had spoken initially) almost white and filled with milky wriggling movement, and the one known as Siriac (the tallest of the three) so black it was as if there existed none at all.

“We have come to impart upon you certain information so that you might act in a way we find pleasing,” Siriac said, in a voice so deep and hollow that one felt rather than heard it.

“I…” Trevor took a deep breath. “I have been waiting.”

SKIN

Skin woke to the ringing of a telephone.

She lifted herself and stretched. It felt as if she’d been sleeping for a very long time. She sat for a moment, looking at the palms of her hands, deep aubergine lines marking the folds of her joints. She felt as if she’d awoken from dreams vivid and real yet could not remember them, left with remnants of feelings only partially realized.

Brriiiiing.

She stood. She was in a small, austere room, furnished only with a bed and a desk. The walls were bare. On the desk sat the phone, made of red plastic worn and scratched.

Brriiiiing.

She reached out and lifted the receiver. “Yes?”

“I need you,” the voice from the other end said.

Skin blinking, trying to remember where she’d heard that voice before, to whom it belonged.

“Meet me in our usual spot.”

“Yes,” Skin said, feeling her lips forming the words as if of their own volition.

The line went dead. Slowly, Skin let the receiver fall back into the phone’s cradle.

She looked around the room again. There were three doors, two against one wall and one opposite. One must lead to the closet, the one next to it the bathroom, and the one opposite to the outside. She was surprised to note, she did not need to use the bathroom. Such bodily functions were no longer a part of her life, although she did not know why.

The first door she tried opened to a large walk-in closet. She pulled the string that hung from the ceiling and artificial light filled the space. Along one wall, her clothes hung from a rod, everything from colorful silks to more practical leathers, and some with reinforced sections of armor plating. Along the other wall, an array of weapons, various blades—from small and concealable throwing knives, to swords curved and straight—as well as several projectile devices, flintlock pistols with leather holsters.

She blinked and nodded. “Yes,” she said once more, this time for her own benefit. This was always the moment she remembered her purpose. She served Trevor, performing whatever tasks he or the Archon needed of her. The man on the phone had been Trevor Rothschilde. She took her orders from him and... There was something else... She could feel a stirring in her gut, a knot of emotion, of confusion and warmth…

She shook her head to clear it. She drew her hands into fists, clenching, feeling the muscles in her arms flex. She looked down at herself. She was naked. Her body was long and lithe and strong, hairless and smooth except for a tuft of black hair at her pubis. She was arkaine, standing ten feet tall, her skin a purplish tone. She smiled to herself. She felt good.

She dressed quickly in practical pants and a blouse. She would return for whatever supplies and weapons she would need when she discovered the nature of her mission.

She moved to the door she presumed led outside.

“Good evening. Please state your designation,” the door said to her.

She looked at it for a moment, at the latch, at the black circle from where the voice had come. “Skin,” she said. “My name is Skin.”

“Is it?” the door asked her, then paused, as if thinking. “Are you sure?”

Skin waited, although it was a strange question.

“Alright, checks out,” the door said finally. The latch clicked and Skin pushed her way through.

She stepped out into a dim and cool night, the moon a sliver among pinprick stars. Below, she could see the lights from the City, glowing and flickering in the distance. Above, the Archon’s Pyramid loomed, more informally called the Ziggurat. Steps led up its side, a stairway she knew she had climbed innumerable times before, but she could not remember ever having done so. She began the ascent.

It was a long climb, but her body was fit and strong. Still, her breathing was labored by the time she’d reached halfway to the top. She slowed to catch her breath, but pressed onward.

She was unconcerned with being seen. There were windows and viewing platforms all over the Ziggurat, but most were predominantly, for whatever architectural reason, on the other facings. Although the Archon’s Pyramid was composed of unsymmetrical terraced structures that appeared like random and often precarious-looking stacks, all were built around a basic polyhedron core of four roughly equal and triangular sides. There were many paths up the Ziggurat, external stairways and internal passageways, but none as private or as direct as this one, although it was rarely used, and almost never at night. The steps Skin now climbed faced one of the poorest sections of Talos, the lights in its buildings dim, its people unconcerned with the politics within the Ziggurat.

Skin stopped a moment, her breath fogging the air lightly before her. How did she know such things? She had no memory of ever learning them. It was as if certain of her memories had been erased, or only those necessary to her work had been programmed into her current incarnation.

A shudder ran through her body. She dismissed this odd and disquieting thought and returned her attention to the steps, quickening her pace until she was panting for breath once more and could feel herself sweating.

~

At the top of the stairs there was a freestanding arch. She walked through it and stopped for a moment to catch her breath. She was in the Garden of Mue.

She moved through the columns, letting her instincts guide her, inhaling deeply of the night breeze fresh and cool, goose bumps rising on the exposed skin of her arms. Something moved at the corner of her eye, but when she turned her head to look, there were only vague shapes obscured in shadow, still and silent.

She moved through a place where foliage rose from perfectly round pools of dark and lightly rippling water and into a small grove, trees replacing the columns, obscuring much of the moon’s reflected light.

She plunged into darkness, letting her feet guide her easily to her destination. She danced over a scattering of stones rising just barely above the surface of more water and felt tile beneath the soles of her shoes. A fountain burbled to her right.

An arm wrapped around her from behind and she whirled out of its grasp. She spun, taking the arm deftly by the wrist with one hand and twisting. She heard a grunt of pain. She was unarmed, but her skills were absolute and she did not need a blade to be an effective weapon. She could easily, with an upward thrust, break the arm that had grabbed her, but something stayed her strike.

“Skin, please,” a voice said, and a face came into view, faintly glowing in the moonlight.

Skin let the arm fall and took a step back. “Trevor?”

The man came forward, shorter than she, and embraced her. Before she knew what she was doing she was embracing him back, his lips brushing the skin between her breasts, rising as she bent, up her neck until their lips met, drawing him in, his scent musty, as if he’d been spending too much time in old and dark places, yet also clean, intoxicating. She was the first to open her lips, to take his tongue into her mouth, guiding it with her own. She clutched him fiercely, running a hand down the back of his head, his neck, feeling the muscles rippling in his back. She could feel him, hot and stiff against her thigh.

She was on her knees and then she was on her back, the warmth of his body on top of her. A bed of vines which crawled down the side of the fountain formed a soft mat beneath them. She moaned into his mouth, rational thought forgotten, giving in to her physical desires.

She was sopping wet as he slid into her.

~

“If the hallowgeons only knew,” Trevor said, lying next to her, one hand cupping her breast.

Skin smiled. “I know.”

“Do you?”

“Crossbreeding is forbidden,” she said.

Trevor didn’t say anything, but she could feel him nodding next to her.

She was lying on her back, peering up through a sliver in the canopy of branches at the stars in the night sky. The air was still in the grove, cool but not uncomfortable on her bare skin. “They watch,” she said. “They see more than you know. My people…”

“Yes?”

She could feel Trevor tense, eager for this tidbit of knowledge she was about to share with him, but whatever it was, it was gone, lost to the night. “I don’t know,” she said, the thing she had remembered for a brief instance forgotten once again.

Trevor let it go and they lay silently for a few precious moments, as if they might freeze time, happy and content with nothing but each other, avoiding the ambitions and responsibilities of their lives.

After a while, Trevor said, “I have a task for you.”

Skin continued to watch the stars and waited.

“I had a visitation. The hallowgeons came to see me this evening.” He paused.

Skin didn’t move. She felt frozen, suddenly cold.

“They told me of a young boy with an unusual ability. They want this boy to replace Galen as the chantiac. I want you to go and find him and bring him to me.”

Still unmoving, she nodded.

“You will bring the boy to me so that I may see to his training personally,” Trevor said. “This child, should he truly have the ability the hallowgeons claim, is extremely important. This boy will not only help to restore faith in the Church of Awa, but may have other interesting uses as well.”

Skin brushed Trevor’s hand from her breast and crossed her arms. “What uses? What do the hallowgeons say?”

“They say he can bring the dead back to life.”

Skin scoffed.

“I know. It sounds farfetched. But if what the hallowgeons say is true…”

“The hallowgeons have been manipulating humanity for their own gains for centuries.”

Trevor was silent for a moment, then asked, “Is that true?”

Skin tried to think, to remember. “I’m not sure.”

“They claim to do things for a large universal aesthetic, but I know their visits are feared. The last time they appeared in Ebon’s Square, years ago, one of them made a motion in the air and the fingers dropped from the hands of all the people within a hundred feet, severed clean and twitching. No one knows why. They left without speaking a word.”

Skin nodded in the dark.

“They have been known to appear at random to kill those who do not support their apparently unfathomable sense of universal balance and aesthetics. The first time I was visited, I was absolutely terrified. I was consulting with a young tinker from The Mechanicus and, to underscore a point they wanted to make to me, the hallowgeons first lopped off the tinker’s head and then began calmly and meticulously to remove his organs and sort them into various piles, using blades unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, speaking casually while they performed the evisceration. It was…well, most horrifying...and one of the defining moments of my life...”

“And you still trust them?”

“Let’s just say, the words they spoke to me that day, the point they were trying to make, is one I will never forget.”

Skin rose to a sitting position and began to dress. “Where is this boy?”

“He is Novan, from the small village of Fallowvane.”

“He’s from Nova? Why would the hallowgeons choose a Novan to be the next chantiac?”

“Good question. One for which I do not have an answer. Get him for me, and we shall see what we discover.”

“I’ll need transportation, and supplies. The journey is far.”

“I have seen to it. In the alcove below your chamber, you will find everything you need. Excluding weapons, that is. Those, I leave up to you.”

Skin stood, pulling her pants up, buckling them about her waist.

Trevor lay on his side, looking up at her. “Once more before you depart?”

“No. I must begin my preparations immediately.”

Trevor smiled crookedly. “I know.”

Fully dressed, Skin turned to leave.

“Wait,” Trevor called after her.

She turned back and saw that her lover now had a very different expression on his face. He sat up and fixed her eyes with his. He looked vulnerable, almost desperate. “Do you love me?” he asked.

Skin thought for a moment. She looked at Trevor’s face, into his almost-pleading eyes, at his sharp features, angular nose, lips soft and large, the hair on his head shaved nearly to his scalp, a blond color even lighter than his pastel skin. She felt something, some stirring of emotion, but it felt remote, like something once felt, now in the past.

“Yes,” she said, but knew it was a lie.