The Crippled God

We are failing. That shining thing, there in her hand, is dying.’
    ‘Tell me its name,’ Abrastal whispered. ‘This argument of yours. You name one side faith and another despair . Speak to me of what she holds. This failing, dying thing.’
    Spax turned to Abrastal in surprise. ‘Why, Firehair, you do not yet know? That which fades from the world? Its name is compassion . This is what she holds for the Fallen God. What she holds for us all.’
    ‘And it is not enough,’ Krughava whispered. ‘ Gods below, it is not enough .’

BOOK FOUR
     

     

THE FISTS OF THE WORLD

If there was a better place
Would you seek it out?
If peace was at hand
Would you reach for it?
And on this road stand thousands
Weeping for all that is past
The journey’s at an end
We are done with our old ways
But they are not done with us
There is no air left
In this closed fist
The last breath has been taken
And now awaits release
Where the children sit waiting
For the legacy of waste
Buried in the gifts we made
I have seen a better place
I have known peace like sleep
It lies at road’s end
Where the silts have gathered
And voices moan like music
In this moment of reaching
The stone took my flesh
And held me fast
With eyes unseeing
Breath bound within
A fist closed on darkness
A hand outstretched
And now you march past
Tossing coins at my feet
In my story I sought a better place
And yearned so for peace
But it is a tale untold
And a life unfinished
     
    Wood-Cutters
Tablet IV
Hethra of Aren
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
On that day I watched them lift high
In the tallness of being they shouldered years
And stood as who they would become
There was sweat on their arms and mad jackals
Went slinking from their bright eyes
I see a knowledge sliding beneath this door
Where I lean barred and gasping in horror
And for all that I have flung my back against it
They are the milling proofs of revelation
Crowding the street beyond like roosting prophets
And as the children wandered off in the way of gods
The small shape was unmoving at suffering’s end
On this day I watched them lift high
Tomorrow’s wretched pantheon around stains
On the stone where a lame dog had been trapped
In a forest of thin legs and the sticks and bricks
Went up and down like builders of monuments
Where the bowls are bronze and overflowing
And marble statues brood like pigeons
Have you seen all these faces of God?
Lifted so high to show us the perfection
Of our own holy faces but their hands are empty
Of bricks and sticks now that they’re grown
Is there no faith to scour away the cruelty of children?
Will no god shield the crying dog on the stone
From his lesser versions caging the helpless
And the lame? If we are made as we would be
Then the makers are us. And if there stands
A god moulding all he is in what we are
Then we are that god and the children
Beating to death a small dog outside my door
Are the small measures of his will considered
And in tasting either spat out or consumed
In the ecstasy of the omnipotent
     
    Children Like Gods
Fisher kel Tath
     
    THE RAMPS HAD BEEN LAID OUT, THE CREWS SINGING AS THEY HEAVED on the ropes. Columns of black marble, rising in a ring around the glittering mound. The dust in Spindle’s mouth tasted like hope, the ache in his shoulders and lower back felt like the promise of salvation .
    He had seen her this day and she had been … better. Still a child, really, a sorely used one, and only a bastard would say it had all been for the good. That the finding of faith could only come from terrible suffering. That wisdom was borne on scars. Just a child, dammit, scoured clean of foul addictions, but that look remained, there in her ancient eyes. Knowledge of deadly flavours, a recognition of the self, lying trapped in chains of weakness and desire .
    She was the Redeemer’s High Priestess. He had taken her in his embrace, and she was the last ever to have known that gift .
    The digging around the mound had scurried up offerings by the bucketload. T’lan Imass, mostly. Bits of polished bone, shells and amber beads had a way of wandering down the sides of the barrow. The great plaster friezes they were working on in Coral now held those quaint, curious gifts, there in the elaborate borders surrounding the Nine Sacred Scenes .
    Spindle leaned against the water wagon, awaiting his turn with a battered tin cup in one cracked, calloused hand .
    He’d been a marine once. A Bridgeburner. He’d trained in military engineering, as much as