The God Killer Page 5

  Hawk glanced at Fisher. "You take blue, I'll take grey," he said briskly, and stepped forward axe in hand to face the High Priest of Dusk the Devourer. Field looked at him warily, but held his ground. Hawk grinned unpleasantly. "I'm Hawk, Captain in the city Guard. That's my partner, Captain Fisher. You may have heard of us. It's all true. Now get yourself and your people off the Street or I'll cut you off at the knees."

  It was Field's turn to look taken aback, but he recovered more quickly than Buchan. "Lay a hand on me, Guard, and my followers will tear you apart."

  "Maybe," said Hawk. "But you'll still be dead."

  "You're bluffing."

  "Try me."

  Field met Hawk's unwavering gaze, and some of the confidence went out of him. A cold breeze touched the back of his neck as he realized the Guard meant exactly what he said. He looked over at Stoner, who was staring at Fisher like a rat mesmerized by a snake. Field looked back at Hawk and nodded slowly. He turned away to face his followers, careful to make no sudden movements that might upset the Guard. Talking slowly and calmly, he told his people the time was not yet right for direct confrontation and they should return to their homes and pray for guidance. Not far away, Stoner was putting the same message across to his people. The crowds stirred and muttered reluctantly, but eventually did as they were told. Field and Stoner turned back reluctantly to face Hawk and Fisher again.

  "Very nicely done," said Hawk. "Now get the hell out of here. And if there's any more trouble, we'll know it's you, and we'll come looking for you."

  "Right," said Fisher.

  The two High Priests left with what dignity they could muster. Which wasn't much. Hawk looked at Buchan.

  "A riot's a riot, sir Buchan. All you have to do is separate out the leaders, and break their authority."

  "You were lucky," said Buchan tightly. "Real fanatics would have died rather than give in."

  "But they weren't real fanatics," said Hawk. "I could tell."

  "What would you have done if they had turned out to be the real thing?"

  Hawk grinned. "Run like fun and screamed for the SWAT team. I'm not crazy."

  "Right," said Fisher.

  Chapter Three

  Gods And Devils and Other Beings

  The sorcerer Tomb led Hawk and Fisher down the Street of Gods, and the crowds parted before them to give them room. Curious eyes watched the Guards pass, but no one wanted to get too close. Word of their arrival on the Street had preceded them. Hawk and Fisher nodded politely to the few brave souls who ventured a greeting, and kept their eyes open for unfriendly faces. Their encounter with the High Priests hadn't made them any friends. And besides, for no reason he could put his finger on, Hawk felt more than usually uneasy about his surroundings. The Street of Gods had changed since the last time he saw it. The buildings pressed more closely together, as though for comfort and support, and the occasional creatures and manifestations had a dangerous, openly threatening air. Even the street preachers seemed wilder, more intent on messages of destruction and damnation. The Street had grown darker, colder, more turned in upon itself. As though it wasn't sure who it could trust anymore. Hawk looked at Fisher to see if she'd noticed the changes, and saw that her hand was back resting on the pommel of her sword. Fisher liked to be prepared.

  The last time they'd visited the Street of Gods, Hawk and Fisher had been acting as bodyguards for the political candidate James Adamant, as he made the rounds of sympathetic Beings, looking for support in the elections. Adamant was now Councilor Adamant, though of course that didn't necessarily prove anything. One way or the other. But though even then the Street of Gods had been a strange and eerie place, with its creatures and illusions and uncertain reality, the Street that Hawk walked now seemed somehow more sour, and more defensive. As though it was on its guard… Hawk frowned. Presumably even Gods could get scared, with a God killer on the loose.

  Hawk scowled, and let his hand fall to the axe at his side. More and more, he was feeling very much out of his depth. He'd faced some strange things in his time, but his experience in Haven was for the most part with human killers, with their everyday schemes and passions and hatreds. He knew how to handle them. But, for better or worse, he was stuck with the God Squad now, until either he found the killer or his superiors relented. He'd just have to get used to the Street, that was all. He'd seen worse, in his time.

  A group of monks came striding down the Street of Gods, arms swinging with military precision. Their robes hung loosely about them, the cowls pulled forward to hide their faces. Tomb moved to one side to let them pass, and Hawk and Fisher did the same. Anything could be dangerous on the Street of Gods, and it paid to be careful. The monks went by, looking neither left nor right. Tomb waited until they'd passed, and then continued on his way. Hawk and Fisher followed on behind.

  They were on their way to look at the churches of the three murdered Beings. Rowan wasn't with them, because she wasn't feeling well. Apparently she'd been quite ill recently, and spent a lot of time in bed, dosing herself with her herbal remedies. Hawk just hoped it wasn't catching. And Buchan was off somewhere on business of his own. No one asked what. Buchan being Buchan, no one really wanted to know. Which left Tomb to act as their guide.

  The first murder site was a huge, solid building right in the middle of the Street. The walls were made of great stone blocks, each of them as big as a man. The church was three stories high, with narrow slits for windows. There was only one door, made of solid oak, and reinforced with wide steel bands. Hawk studied the building thoughtfully as Tomb fumbled with his key ring. The place looked more like a fortress than a church. Which suggested this was a religion with enemies, in the Church's mind if nowhere else.

  And it had to be said that worship of the Dread Lord hadn't been an exactly popular religion. Human sacrifice wasn't banned on the street of Gods, as long as it didn't endanger the tourists, but it was frowned on. Tomb finally located the right key and unlocked the huge padlock affixed to the door. He pushed the door with his fingertips, and it swung silently open on its counterweights. Hawk studied the dark opening suspiciously.

  "There's no one in there, Captain Hawk," said Tomb reassuringly. "After the murder was discovered I set up protective wards to keep out vandals and souvenir hunters, and they're still in place. No one's been here since I left. Follow me, please."

  Tomb walked confidently into the gloom, and Hawk and Fisher followed him in, hands hovering over their weapons. A bright blue glow appeared around the sorcerer, pushing back the darkness and illuminating the hallway. The hall was grim and oppressive, without ornament or decoration of any kind. Tomb allowed them a few moments to look around, and then led them toward a door at the far end of the hall. The front door slammed shut behind them. Hawk jumped, but wouldn't give Tomb the satisfaction of looking back. The second door opened onto a rough wooden stairway, leading down into darkness.

  "Watch the steps," said Tomb. "Some of them are slippery, and there's no handrail."

  They followed the stairs down into the darkness for a long time. Hawk tried to keep count, but he kept losing track. By the time they reached the bottom, Hawk realized they had to be uncomfortably far beneath the city, down in the bedrock itself. Tomb gestured abruptly with his left hand, and the bright blue glow flared up, shedding its light over a larger area. Hawk and Fisher looked wonderingly about them. The stairs had brought them to a vast stone chamber, hundreds of feet in diameter. The walls were rough and unfinished, but the sharp edges left by the original cutting tools had been mostly smoothed over by air and moisture in the many years since the cavern had been hewn from the living rock.

  Stalactites and stalagmites hung down from the ceiling and jutted up from the cavern floor. There were pools of dark water, and thick white patches of fungi spattered across the walls. There were cobwebs everywhere, shrouding the walls and hanging in tatters between the stalactites and stalagmites. Fisher touched one strand with a fingertip, and it stretched unnaturally before it snapped. Fish
er pulled a face, and wiped her hand clean on her cloak. It was very quiet, and the slightest echo seemed to linger uncomfortably before fading away into whispers. In the middle of the cavern, the webbing had thickened and come together to form a huge hammock, hanging suspended above their heads from the thickest stalactites. It was torn and tattered now, but there was enough left to suggest the immense size of the form that had once hung within it.

  "Gods come in all shapes and sizes," said Tomb quietly. "They can be human or inhuman, both and neither. People don't seem to care much, provided they're promised the right things."

  "You never did say what you believed in, sir Tomb," said Fisher.

  Tomb smiled. "I'm not sure I believe in anything, anymore, my dear. Working on the Street of Gods will do that to you. It makes you doubt too many things. Or perhaps it just makes you cynical. We need Gods, all of us. They offer hope and comfort and forgiveness, and most of all they offer reassurance. We're all afraid of dying, afraid of going alone into the dark. And perhaps even more than that, we need to believe in something greater than ourselves, something to give our lives meaning and purpose."

  "What happened to the body?" said Hawk. "I take it the Being did have a body?"

  "Oh, yes, Captain Hawk. It's over there. What's left of it."

  Tomb led them across the gloomy cavern to what Hawk had taken for an exceptionally large boulder. It turned out to be a huge pile of sharp-edged objects, dark and glazed, held together in one place by strands of webbing. It took Hawk a while to work out what he was looking at, but eventually some of the shapes took on sense and meaning, and his lip curled in disgust. Going by the size of the carapace segments and the many jointed legs, the Dread Lord had been more insect than anything else. The pile of broken pieces stood nearly ten feet tall, and was easily as broad. The Being itself must have been huge. Hawk shivered involuntarily. He'd never liked insects.

  "Was it in pieces like this when you found it?" he said finally.

  "More or less," said Tomb. "The pieces were strewn across the floor of the chamber. Whatever killed this Being tore the body apart as though it were nothing but paper. Its followers… tidied it up."

  "So the killer has to be immensely strong," said Fisher. She thought for a moment, staring at the pile before her. "This… dismembering— Was it done while the Being was still alive, or after it was dead?"

  "I don't know," said Tomb. "I hadn't really thought about it. How can you tell?"

  "By the amount of blood," said Hawk. "It stops flowing after you're dead. So if there's not much blood splashed around a dismembered body, it's a safe enough bet the victim was dead at the time. You learn things like that in the Northside."

  "I see," said Tomb. "Most interesting. But not much help here, I'm afraid. The Dread Lord didn't have any blood. Its body was hollow."

  Hawk and Fisher looked at each other. "This case gets better all the time," said Fisher.

  "Do we have any clues as to the motive?" said Hawk. "Did the Dread Lord have any particular enemies or rivals? Someone who might profit by its death?"

  Tomb shook his head. "There was no feud or vendetta as far as we can tell. The Dread Lord hadn't been on the Street long enough to acquire that kind of enemy."

  "All right," said Hawk patiently. "Let's try something simpler. Do we know when the murder took place?"

  "Some time during the early hours of the morning, nine days ago. The High Priest came down to consult with his God about whatever nihilists consider important, and found his God scattered across the cavern floor."

  "Can we question him about it?" said Fisher.

  "Not easily," said Tomb. "The High Priest and all the Dread Lord's followers are dead. Suicide. That's nihilists for you."

  "Great," said Hawk. "No witnesses to the murder, no clues at the scene of the crime, and no one left to question. I've only been on this case a few hours, and already it's driving me crazy. Nothing in this damned case makes sense. I mean, how did the killer get down here? I assume the church was well-guarded?"

  "Oh, yes," said Tomb. "Over a hundred armed guards, supplied by the Brotherhood of Steel. No one saw anything."

  "I hate this case," said Fisher.

  "This is the Street of Gods, Captain Fisher. Normal rules and logic don't apply here."

  Hawk looked at the pile of broken and splintered chitin that had once been worshipped as a God, shook his head slowly, and turned his back on it. "We're not going to learn anything useful here. I'll call in the forensic sorcerers, and see what they can turn up." He stopped. Tomb was shaking his head. "All right. What's wrong now?"

  "I don't think the Beings would allow that kind of investigative sorcery on their territory. The Gods must have their mysteries."

  "Even though the sorcerers might come up with something to keep them alive?"

  "Even then."

  "Damn. In that case, we'll just have to do it the hard way. Take us to the next murder site, sir Tomb. And let's hope we can dig up something useful there."

  At first glance it was just an ordinary house. Two storeys, slate roof, good brickwork. Windows and brasswork had been recently cleaned. It looked as out of place on the Street of Gods as a lamb in a wolfpack. Tomb knocked politely on the door, and there was a long pause.

  "Are you sure this is the right place?" said Fisher. "This is the closest I've ever seen to archetypal merchant-class housing. All it needs is a rococo boot-scraper and a lion's-head door-knocker and it'd be perfect. What kind of God would live here?"

  "The Sundered Man," said Tomb. "And he doesn't live here anymore. He was murdered six days ago. Show some respect, Captain, please."

  They waited some more. People passed by on the Street of Gods, going about their business in the warm summer sun, but all of them seemed to have some kind of smile for the people waiting outside the tacky little two up, two down merchant's house. Fisher took to glaring indiscriminately at anyone who even looked in their direction.

  "Are you sure there's somebody in there?" said Hawk.

  "There's a caretaker," said Tomb. "Sister Anna. I contacted her earlier today, and she said she'd be here."

  There was the sound of bolts being drawn back from inside, and they turned to face the door again. It swung suddenly open, revealing a plain-faced, average-looking woman in her late forties. She was dressed well but not expensively, in a style that had last been fashionable a good ten years ago. She looked tired and drawn, and somehow defeated by life. She smiled briefly at Hawk and Fisher, and bowed politely to Tomb.

  "Good day, sir sorcerer, Captains. I'm sorry I took so long, but all the others have left now, and I have to do everything myself. Please, come in."

  She stood back, and Tomb led the two Guards into the hall. It was just as narrow and gloomy as Hawk had expected, with bare floorboards and plain wool paneling on the walls. But everything was neat and tidy, and the simple furniture glowed from recent polishing. Sister Anna shut the door, and slid home four heavy bolts. She caught Hawk looking at her, and smiled self-consciously.

  "Our God has been dead barely a week, and already the vultures are gathering on the Street. If sir Tomb hadn't put protective wards round the house on his first visit, they'd have torn the place apart by now, searching for objects of power and whatever loot they could lay their hands on. Not that they'd have found much of either. We were never a rich or powerful Order. We had our God, and his teachings, and that was all. It was enough. As it is, the memory of the wards keep most of them away, and the locks and bolts take care of the rest. This way, please."

  She led them into a pleasant little drawing room, and saw them all comfortably seated before departing for the kitchen to get them some tea. Hawk slipped his hand inside his shirt and felt for the bone amulet that hung from his neck. It was still and quiet to his touch. If there was any magic left inside the house, it was so small the amulet couldn't detect it. Hawk took his hand away from the amulet and looked round the drawing room. It was comfortably appointed, but nothing special. Cups and sauce
rs had been carefully laid out on the table, along with milk and sugar and paper-lace doilies. Hawk looked hard at Tomb.

  "What the hell is going on here, sir sorcerer?"

  Tomb smiled slightly. "You'll find all kinds on the Street of Gods, Captain Hawk. Allow me to tell you the story of the Sundered Man. It's really very interesting. His life until his twenty-fourth year was quiet, comfortable, and quite uninteresting to anyone save himself. He was a junior clerk in the shipping offices. A little dull, but good prospects. And then the miracle happened. For reasons we still don't understand, he took it into his head to visit the Street of Gods. And whilst there he started to perform wonders and speak prophecy. For twenty-four hours he walked the Street of Gods, wrapped in Power and dispensing miracles. And then… something happened. His followers called it the final miracle. He levitated into the air, smiled at something only he could see, and never moved again. He had somehow become sundered from Time; frozen in a single moment of eternity. Unmoving, unchanging, never aging. Nothing could reach him, or harm him, or affect him in any way.

  "It was never a very big religion, but those who'd been with him on that day, and saw his wonders and heard him preach, proved very loyal. They believed their man had become more than human, a God who had stepped outside of Time to commune with realities beyond our own. One day, he would return and share his knowledge with the faithful. That was twenty-two years ago. They waited all that time, and then somebody killed their God."

  "But why build a house like this on the Street of Gods?" said Hawk. "Why not a church or temple, like everyone else?"

  "This was his house," said Sister Anna. "Or as near as we could get to duplicating it. We built it around him, room by room. We wanted him to feel at home when he returned." She put her tray down on the table, picked up the china teapot and silver tea-strainer, and poured tea for all of them. She finally sat down facing them, and they all sipped their tea in silence for a while. Hawk studied her over his cup. There were deep lines in her face, and her eyes had a bruised, puffy look, as though she'd been crying recently. Her shoulders were slumped, and her gaze was polite but unfocused. Delayed shock, thought Hawk. The longer you stave it off, the harder it finally hits. He looked at Tomb and raised an eyebrow, but the sorcerer seemed content to leave the questioning to him. Hawk looked at Sister Anna and cleared his throat.