The Scarred God Read online

Vedic didn’t answer.

  ‘You have! Why aren’t you leading the way?’ She couldn’t keep her anger back.

  ‘That I have visited Golgotha before does not mean I know my way through,’ replied Vedic, his skin still pale in the rising light.

  Anya thought she could see sweat on his brow, which would make little sense in the cold.

  ‘But how?’ asked Akyar, kneeling next to the woodsman. ‘How did you get in and out? You’re not dead.’

  ‘Obviously, I had help.’

  ‘Danu?’ asked Anya.

  Vedic coughed. He seemed embarrassed. ‘Actually, no. It was the Morrigan.’

  Anya watched Akyar look away from the woodsman. The Tream seemed unsure how to react to this latest piece of intelligence but was at least not going for his sword. When no further elaboration was offered, he sighed in disgust and turned to the river.

  ‘Did you die?’ Anya asked.

  Vedic looked at her, startled. ‘What?’

  ‘Did you die? Did she allow you to return? Was that why you became a forestal?’

  Vedic looked sick, but he shook his head. ‘No. It wasn’t that. I’m as alive as you are. Though a fair bit older.’

  Anya frowned.

  Vedic rubbed his arms against the cold. ‘I promise you, if I knew the way out of here, I would share it with you.’

  Anya waved his platitudes away. She sat down on her own and drank a little water from the skin in her pack. They had very limited water now until they found a fresh source instead of blood rivers, and so she just took the minimum to moisten her throat.

  ‘Well, how are we going to get across?’ she asked, breaking the silence.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Vedic, unpacking his pipe from his belt. ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘You keep on doing that,’ said Akyar, walking along the riverbank, away from them. ‘I’m going to ask this fellow.’

  Anya and Vedic’s eyes followed Akyar’s path before they skipped ahead to the spot along the river where he was pointing. Upstream, a low mist billowed down the river, travelling at the vapour’s edge. A long boat appeared, moving as if the fog were pushing the vessel. The craft was similar to the skiffs Anya’s uncle used to fish with on the lake at Larvon. In the rear of the boat, standing and powering the craft along with a few steady thrusts of a long wooden pole, was a tall, hooded figure. The ferryman had arrived.

  The boat was a dirty white.

  At first, Anya thought the hull was made of ash, stained by the blood of the Acheron, but as the boat drew closer, plasma glooping against the hull, it became evident the vessel was made of a single piece of carved bone. Anya tried not to think what would have had bones of sufficient size to produce a boat of that length. What would be the limits of what the Morrigan could do with her power here, in her own realm? If she made an attack on them now, in the open, where there was no possibility of shelter or escape, there would be little chance of survival.

  The narrow craft slid partially onto the bank with the low grinding noise of shingle on bone. The ferryman placed the craft’s pole down inside the hull before stepping, carefully, onto the bank. His hood remained down, and only the pale flesh of his hands, made sickly by the light of the cavern, let slip that there was anything under the robe but shadow.

  ‘Do you seek transport?’ asked the ferryman.

  There was an unpleasant smell coming from the boat – or perhaps from the ferryman. Anya found it hard to tell.

  ‘We do,’ said Vedic.

  Anya noted he had shifted his weight to the balls of his feet. Do you feel the danger too?

  ‘Are you willing to take us?’

  ‘You live,’ the ferryman replied, tilting his head.

  ‘I see,’ said Vedic. His voice was calm, but he looked like a mountain lion ready to pounce on his prey. Anya was reminded of his words – he was not a nice man.

  ‘And what might we do for you to … overlook that?’

  ‘You live, but so do many who come here,’ said the ferryman, continuing as if he had not heard. His head moved beneath the hood, taking in all three of them. ‘I will take you to the other side of the river, but I cannot take you back. Think carefully before deciding.’

  ‘Well,’ said Akyar, turning to Anya with a smile. ‘That’s progress.’

  ‘I don’t like this,’ replied Anya, frowning.

  The ferryman moved. Anya fell silent. He stepped up to Vedic, ignored him and moved on to Anya. At her, he paused. There was a sniffing sound, loud and filled with fluid. His hand rose up, hovered around her face, clenched one, two, three times before falling back to his side, and she caught a definite smell of putrefaction. He walked on to Akyar, where he stopped and sniffed again.

  ‘You,’ said the ferryman, his voice cracked as if he smelt a rank odour. ‘You, I am not permitted to take.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Akyar, fists clenching. ‘Because I am Tream?’

  The ferryman shook his head. ‘Your kind do not come here, but that is not why. You have the gods’ mark upon you. You must wait here or leave by another route.’

  Vedic turned to Akyar. ‘That bloody goat god isn’t even here and he’s causing trouble.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Akyar, ignoring Vedic.

  ‘There is no price,’ the ferryman continued. ‘You are marked.’

  Vedic stepped closer to the him. ‘That is not possible. You take all of us or none of us.’

  Anya was surprised. She had been about to say the same thing before Vedic could accept the ferryman’s proposal to take just the two of them. She had not thought Vedic would show any loyalty.

  ‘Then I will leave,’ said the ferryman, turning his back on them.

  Anya watched him walk down to the boat, her eyes flicking between him and the woodsman. Vedic did not move. He was going to let the ferryman go. Amidst the panic that their only means of escape was leaving, she pushed away the voice at the back of her mind that said he must have a reason and that Vedic did nothing through altruism. She had to act.

  ‘Wait!’ said Anya, jumping onto the shingle. ‘Surely there’s something you want, an act that you would be willing to accept for transportation of all of us.’

  The ferryman stopped. ‘The living have nothing that I desire, and everything I need. You do not understand what you say. Your offer is meaningless. You would refuse me.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Akyar, stepping forward. ‘I realise I am not human, that my presence here is foolish, but I seek a small boy lost from his parents, and nothing more. Will you not help me?’

  ‘Many lost children come here,’ said the ferryman with a shrug. ‘It is nothing to me – they make the final journey as do we all.’

  ‘Even a Tream child?’ asked Akyar.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the ferryman. ‘Usually I do not pay that close attention to my passengers.’

  ‘Please,’ said Anya, her hand on the ferryman’s robed and bony arm. ‘We will do anything.’

  The ferryman paused. ‘Anything?’

  Anya nodded, her heart thumping hard in her chest.

  The ferryman turned.

  ‘I accept your terms.’ He extended a pallid hand towards Anya.

  Anya accepted the handshake. It was icy to the touch, and there was more movement beneath the skin than there should have been. She did not linger over holding his hand.

  ‘So warm,’ said the ferryman, before climbing into the boat.

  ‘That was an unwise bargain,’ said Vedic, holding his left arm as if it were aching. ‘We know nothing of his intentions.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Anya, irritated. ‘You’re the only one of us who has been here before.’

  The ferryman gestured to the seats. The trio hung back, unsure. ‘Well, are you joining me?’

  Silence hung between them as the mist hung on the water.

  The only sound was the slap of blood on the hull as the boat glided through the river, punctuated by the ferryman’s staff being occasionally extracted from the river, ready for another push
. The river seemed far wider now they were actually on the blood and travelling. Anya sat in one corner of the bow, watching her companions. The woodsman was in turn watching the ferryman and looked like he was struggling with some dilemma. Akyar sat in the middle of the boat, staring at the bottom of the vessel and not looking at the blood. Tream did not like boats.

  ‘You’re not taking us to the other side,’ said Anya as the boat reached the midpoint and swung round so the hull was parallel to the bank. Vedic looked tense. He still rubbed his left arm periodically.

  ‘Have no fear,’ said the ferryman, continuing his steady pushes into the water. ‘I’m taking you where you need to go.’

  ‘And where is that?’ asked Vedic, his axe in his lap under his hands.

  ‘The road. You need to get to the road, do you not?’

  ‘What road?’ asked Akyar.

  ‘The road to the Trivium,’ said the ferryman, gesturing in a downriver direction. ‘You’re seeking the Cave of Shadows and the route to the Fortress of the Nine Towers.’

  Anya nodded. That was her plan, to find the road, although she had been banking on the ancient path being near where they struck the river. She knew the road led to the Trivium – in legend, Arawn had taken that path. The road had led him past the Morrigan’s fortress, and this was her hope now. If the Morrigan had the boy, that was where he would be.

  Akyar opened his eyes. ‘And how does a ferryman, who appears from nowhere, happen to know that?’

  ‘I did not appear from nowhere. I came from upstream when I saw your vapour on the air,’ said the ferryman, continuing to push the boat forward. ‘The Trivium is the only way to the cave, the cave the only way to the surface. Anyone living tries to leave here as fast as possible – it was hardly a deductive leap.’

  ‘But we must rescue the boy first,’ said Akyar, leaning forward.

  The ferryman made a strange noise, like someone gargling, and they took a moment to realise he was laughing: slow, low and wet.

  ‘The mistress of this place has the boy. Have no fear, you will find the hag at the Trivium.’

  Akyar frowned. ‘She guards the way out?’

  ‘She is the goddess of death,’ said Vedic, shifting in his seat. ‘People do not come back from the dead.’

  ‘No,’ said the ferryman, turning to look at the woodsman. ‘She is not the god of the dead. Death is absence. She is the goddess of dying itself. The Morrigan, Anu, is the goddess of Golgotha, of the final journey, not the destination. No one has ever seen the god of darkness, and no one is certain that such a thing exists. That final door into the void is one-way, and no one – man, god, Tream or otherwise – returns to tell tales.’

  You don’t know as much as you pretend to, do you, woodsman? thought Anya. Why is that?

  ‘I thought this was your afterlife,’ said Akyar, waving at the landscape.

  ‘No,’ said Anya. ‘This is the final journey. We have no legend for what lies on the other side of the doorway, just superstition. In this way, we are different from the likes of the Tinaric.’

  ‘Golgotha, place of the skull, because in the final moment there’s just you, alone, in your own head,’ said the ferryman, tapping his hood.

  ‘Ferryman,’ said Anya, wondering if she could get the ferryman to reveal more. ‘Why did she take the boy?’

  ‘I cannot answer this,’ said the ferryman. ‘Perhaps she seeks to break Danu’s hold on her so that she can attack the humans. Gods are bound not to interfere with human affairs.’

  Anya sat forward, the memory of her village burning in her mind’s eye. ‘Cernubus has.’

  ‘The hunter is no longer just a god. He has done terrible things to himself in order to take the forest.’

  Akyar looked at the ferryman with narrowed eyes. Anya felt concern ice along her arms.

  ‘Why can’t you tell us what the Morrigan wants?’

  The ferryman turned to the Tream.

  ‘Anu ordered me not to.’

  Vedic’s axe was up in an instant, the edge of the weapon at the ferryman’s throat, and their would-be ally’s hood drawn back, revealing his face.

  Akyar hissed in shock, and Anya felt herself muffle a cry in spite of all the wounds she had seen. The ferryman’s face was only partially there: from the upper right-hand quadrant of his head in a diagonal sweep to the left side of his jaw, the flesh was normal, if pallid. Where the rest of his face should have been was a mass of purple and red meat, blood occasionally dripping down onto his robe, staining his teeth where his lips would once have been. The creature laughed.

  ‘You’re working for her,’ said Vedic, visibly choking back bile. ‘Where are you taking us?’

  ‘Of course I work for her. This is her domain, and I have been bound here to serve this purpose. Did you think the Morrigan was unaware of your presence?’

  Anya drew her own blade.

  The ferryman pushed the axe from his throat. ‘Now put the weapon down. You can’t hurt a dead man.’

  Vedic’s fingers slipped to the ferryman’s throat, checking for a pulse that wasn’t there, before complying with the boatman’s request. He stepped back.

  ‘How can we trust you? Why shouldn’t we jump from the boat?’

  ‘You must trust me,’ said the ferryman, pulling his hood back over his head. ‘You have no choice. If you jump, the river will drown you, and the boat will not respond to anyone other than me. I do not plan to put into the bank until we reach the road.’

  ‘We are your prisoners,’ said Anya. ‘You’re acting on orders.’

  The ferryman shook his head. ‘No. You are the people I am helping in spite of my orders.’

  ‘But you said—’ replied Akyar.

  ‘I said I could not tell you her plans because she bound me not to,’ said the ferryman. ‘I have no such orders about taking you to the road. Gods are capricious and do not always think about what they are doing. Look at your curse, forestal.’

  ‘What other orders did she give you?’

  The ferryman shook his head. He couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.

  ‘Great,’ said Anya, slapping Vedic’s shoulder. ‘Now what do we do?’

  ‘This was your idea, Anya,’ said Vedic, folding his arms. ‘Maybe you can get us out of it.’

  ‘So where is this road?’ asked Anya, irritated again that the woodsman was right.

  The ferryman looked at her before replying. ‘Downriver, where the Acheron meets the Cocytus. You should get your rest – the road is long, and the Cave of Shadows not a trial for the weak-hearted. The Morrigan will not make it easy.’

  As if in answer, rain began to fall – rain the colour of liquid coal, hot like ash and gritty as it struck them. Within moments they were soaked. The rain fell in syncopated rhythm on the river and boat, and they could make out shapes in the murk, some human, some not, all staring at the boat’s progress.

  ‘We’re not going to be a secret after tonight,’ said Akyar, huddling down in the boat.

  ‘No,’ said Vedic. ‘But there was no guarantee we’d make it out of here, anyway.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Anya felt like they had been on the boat for days. It had only been a few hours, but the storm and the ferryman’s presence had left all of them subdued, even the woodsman. The rain had stopped, although everything was still wet, including the ferryman’s robes, which hung in thick, wet billows from his wiry frame and smelt of wet sack.

  Anya had grown tired of waiting for the companions to strike up conversation, and she had little desire to talk to their ferryman. Instead, she had wedged herself in next to the hull of the boat and was watching the flow of the blood-water as the ferry moved. She had always wondered about the Acheron – what creatures would live in such a river? Would there be fish? Why wouldn’t the blood clot? She had been watching the rain, dark as coal, hit the water, thinking it would change the colour. It didn’t. The precipitation dissipated into the blood. She saw no clots either, and so perhaps the rainwater served as a kind of
clot prevention.

  There was no life that she could see in the murk, no fish to speak of, and she was a little relieved to see that, because, after all, what kind of fish would you find in Golgotha? Would you really want to encounter them? Staring at the blood was an oddly hypnotic exercise, and she found her hand reaching out, in spite of her common sense, to touch it. That was when she saw them.

  At first she just saw a single flash of jet black – the creature streamed up to the visible surface and dived again so fast that she wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it. Another occurred a few moments later. And another. Suddenly the water around the boat was full of black, writhing coils of eels.

  ‘We may have a problem,’ she said, sitting back.

  Akyar did not move from the centre of the boat, but Vedic stuck his head over the side for a look. ‘What the hell are they?’

  ‘Kresh,’ said the ferryman.

  ‘Kresh are birds,’ replied Vedic, frowning.

  ‘Kresh are anything that serve under the Morrigan’s pleasure,’ said the ferryman. ‘Technically, I am also Kresh.’

  An eel chose that moment to leap from the water at Vedic. Anya thought the creature was going to land right on him. The woodsman, distracted though he appeared, drew his sword without looking and sliced the thing in two.

  ‘How far are we from the road?’ he asked.

  ‘We are not far away now,’ said the ferryman. ‘Assuming you survive this.’

  Akyar looked up. ‘Survive what?’

  The boat lurched as the eels struck the starboard side en masse and flooded into the hull. The boat protested for a moment, trying to right itself, before pitching over and capsizing, tumbling all the occupants of the vessel into the blood and the writhing eels. Anya caught a brief glimpse of the ferryman flopping into the blood like he was already a corpse. There was no more time for thought as she was engulfed.

  The blood of the Acheron River was warm, like Anya had fallen into the artery of a giant. She barely had time to gasp in air before the eels, swarming over her like vines run amok, pulled her under. Their slick skin slid over her, coating her in mucus. She could feel the thick, knotted muscles of the creatures trying to squeeze the life out of her but struggling to find purchase in the bloody murk.