The Crippled God

shape low across its summit. The chains of her ancestors still bound him. Distant deaths tracked cold fingers across her skin – Reverence was no more. Diligence was gone. They had lost the heart of the Fallen God.
    When a building is so battered and worn that no further repairs are possible, it needs tearing down. As simple as that, now. Their enemies might well stand filled with triumph at this very moment, there on theheights of the Great Spire, with a fresh clean wind coming in from the sea. They might believe that they had won, and that no longer would the Forkrul Assail make hard the fist of implacable justice – to strike at their venal selves, to crush their presumptuous arrogance. They might now imagine that they were free to take the future, to devour this world beast by beast, tree by tree, emptying the oceans and skies of all life.
    And if the victory on this day just past tasted of blood, so be it – it was a familiar taste to them, and they were still not weaned from it and perhaps would never be.
    But nature had its own weapons of righteousness. Weapons that struck even when none held them. No god, no guiding force or will beyond that of blind destruction was even necessary. All it needed was freedom.
    The time for Lifestealer had come.
    Face the sea, you fools. Face the rising of the sun, imagining your new day .
    You do not see what comes from the darkness in the west. The slayer is awakened. Obliteration awaits you all .
    Innocence and ignorance. He had struggled with those two words for so long, and each time he had looked upon the face of Icarium Mappo had known his own war, there in his mind. They were places of being, that and nothing more, and long had sages chewed on their distinctiveness. But they understood little of the battle the Trell had fought. He protected innocence by making ignorance a weapon and shield. In the belief that innocence had value, was a virtue, was a state of purity.
    So long as he remains … ignorant .
    Knowledge is the enemy. Knowledge was ever the enemy .
    Staggering through the gloom, shadow roads crossing the plain around him though there was no sun left to cast them, he looked up to see a figure in the distance, coming from the southeast.
    Something cold whispered through him.
    He’s close. I feel him … so close! He forced himself to move faster – that stranger, the way it walked, the way it seemed a thing of bleached bone beneath this uncanny light – he knew. He understood.
    With a soft groan, he broke into a run.
    She saw him, after turning, after feeling his footfalls lumbering closer. Skin the colour of stained wood, a dark visage bestial by nature and ravaged by deprivation. The creature was emaciated, hunched beneath a heavy satchel, his clothes half rotted off. An apparition, yet one of weakness and pathos.
    Calm faced him, waited.
    When she saw him spot the body of Lifestealer – when he cried out asmall animal sound, pitching as he changed direction, as he stumbled towards Icarium – Calm stepped into his path. ‘It is too late, Trell. He is mine now.’
    Haunted eyes fixed on her as the Trell stopped, only a few paces away. She could see the pain that had come from running, the way his chest heaved, the way he bent over, legs shaky beneath him. Then he sank down, pulled the satchel from his shoulder. His hands fumbled and a scatter of small objects spilled out from the sack – the shards of a broken pot. The Trell stared down at them, as if in horror. ‘ We’ll fix that ,’ he mumbled, visibly jerking as he pulled his gaze away from the fragments. Looking up, he glared at Calm. ‘I won’t let you, Assail.’
    ‘Don’t be a fool.’
    He pulled a heavy mace from the satchel, struggled to his feet.
    ‘I will kill you if you continue to stand in my way,’ she said. ‘I understand, Trell. You are his latest protector – but you lost him. All the ones before you – and there were many – they all lost him, eventually, and then they died.
    ‘But none of you ever understood. The Nameless Ones weren’t interested in Icarium. Each time, the one they chose – that one was the real danger. A warleader who threatened their hidden alliances. A rebel of terrible potential. Each time, for nothing more than squalid, immediate necessities – political expediency – they snatched away the maker of trouble, gave to him or her a task impossible to achieve, and a lifetime chained to it.
    ‘You are the last of them, Trell. Made …