The Crippled God

life. It is all that it is, all that I am. This life – why do I deserve this? What have I done to deserve this?
    The Storms ripped into her. The Storms tore her hide, rent vast tears in her wings, until her will alone was all that kept her aloft, flying across these wracked skies, as the sun bled out over the horizon far, far behind her.
    See the darkness. Hear my cries .

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
     
On this grey day, in a valley deep in stone
Where like shades from the dead yard
Sorrows come forth in milling shrouds
And but a few leaves grey as moths
cling to branches on the shouldered hillsides,
Fluttering to the winds borne on night’s passing
I knelt alone and made voice awaken
to call upon my god
     
Waiting in the echoes as the day struggled
Until in fading the silence found form
For my fingers to brush light as dust
And the crows flapped down into the trees
To study a man on his knees with glittering regard
Reminding me of the stars that moments before
Held forth watchful as sentinels
On the sky’s wall now withdrawn
behind my eyes
     
And all the words I have given in earnest
All the felt anguish and torrid will so sternly
Set out like soldiers in furrowed rows
Hovered in a season’s sundering of birds
With no song to beckon them into flight
Where my hands now spreading like wings
Bloodied in the passion of prayer
Lay dying in the bowl
of my lap
     
My god has no words for me on this grey day
Pallor and pallid dust serve a less imagined reply
Mute as the leaves in the absence of bestir
And even the sky has forgotten the sun
Give me the weal of silence to worry answers
From this tease of indifference – no matter
I am done with prayers on the lip of dawn
And the sorrows will fade
with light
     
    My Fill of Answers
Fisher kel Tath
     
    HE’D BROUGHT THE BUNDLED FORM AS CLOSE AS HE DARED, AND now it was lying on the ground beside him. The cloth was stained, threadbare, the colour of dead soil. Astride his lifeless horse, he leaned over the saddle horn and with his one eye studied the distant Spire. The vast bay on his left, beyond the cliffs, crashed in tumult, as if ripped by tides – but this violence did not belong to the tides. Sorceries were gathering and the air was heavy and sick with power.
    It had all been unleashed and there was no telling how things would fall. But he had done all that he could. Hearing horse hoofs behind him he twisted round.
    Toc saluted. ‘Sir.’
    Whiskeyjack’s face was cruel in its mockery of what it had once been, in the times of living. His beard was the hue of iron below a gaunt, withered face, like the exposed roots of a long-dead tree. The eyes were unseen beneath the ridge of his brows, sunken into blackness.
    We are passing away. Sinking back from this beloved edge .
    ‘You cannot remain here, soldier.’
    ‘I know.’ Toc gestured with one desiccated hand, down to the shrouded form lying on the ground. Behind Whiskeyjack the Bridgeburners waited on their mounts, silent, motionless. Toc’s eye flitted over them. ‘I had no idea, sir,’ he said, ‘there were so many.’
    ‘War is the great devourer, soldier. So many left us along the way.’
    The tone was emptied of all emotion and this alone threatened to break what remained of Toc’s heart. This is not how you should be. We are fading. So little remains. So little …
    When Whiskeyjack wheeled his mount and set off, his Bridgeburners following, Toc rode with them for a short distance, flanking the solid mass of riders, until something struck him deep inside, like the twist of a knife, and he reined in once more, watching as they continued on.Longing tore at his soul. I once dreamed of being a Bridgeburner. If I had won that, I would now be riding with them, and it would all be so much simpler. But, as with so many dreams, I failed, and nothing was how I wanted it . He drew his mount round and stared back at that now distant shape on the ground.
    Fallen One, I understand now. You maimed me outside the city of Pale. You hollowed out one eye, made a cave in my skull. Spirits wandered in for shelter time and again. They made use of that cave. They made use of me .
    But now they are gone, and only you remain. Whispering promises in the hollow of my wound .
    ‘But can’t you see the truth of this?’ he muttered. ‘I hold on. I hold on, but I feel my grip … slipping. It’s slipping, Fallen One.’ Still, he would cling to this last promise, for as long as he could. He would make use of this one remaining