Read Online The Broken Lands by Kate Milford - Free Book Online Page B

four letters Christophel had scratched into the packet were neat and legible again, black against the gray skin.
    Walker opened his mouth, but Christophel raised a hand to silence him. In his other hand the conjuror held the saucer of ash. He watched the tallow creature intently.
    After a moment, another detail appeared on its head: a wide mouth. It opened, and the thing began to speak. The sounds were indistinct mutterings at first.
    Then it spoke a single audible word. “Root,” it mumbled. “Root.
Root
.” Each repetition of the word made the voice stronger, until at last its first sentence emerged. “I am the root,” it said experimentally.
    The creature paused, turned its head and body in a circle—although it had no eyes, the motion was plainly that of
looking around
. The tallow around its ankles swirled in little eddies like moving water as it turned.
    â€œCan it see—” Bones began. Christophel put a finger to his lips and shook his head.
    â€œI am the root,” the tallow figure said again, more confi­dently.
    Watching it closely, Christophel poured some of the ash from the saucer into his palm and curled his hand into a fist.
    â€œI am the root,” the thing said once more. This time the words rang like a declamation. It raised the hatpin like a staff. Christophel took a deep breath and brought his fist with the ashes to his face.
    â€œI am the root, the root of the tree,” it announced, “and thou shalt have no gods other than me!” And then it shouted something that sounded like
“Syn!”
    The moment the creature finished its declamation, Christophel took a deep breath and blew the ashes in his fist across the table before the tallow-work figure. “Synack,” he whis­pered. The ashes settling across the table smoldered briefly, a little nebula of red cinder stars, and faded to gray again.
    The figure replied with another syllable,
“Ack,”
turned to face the opposite corner of the table, and raised its arms again. Christophel moved around to that corner and poured more ash into his hand.
    â€œI am the root, the root of the tree, and thou shalt have no gods other than me,” it called again.
“Syn!”
    Christophel blew another puff of ash across the table. “Synack,” he repeated, and once again the dead ashes flared to life for a moment as they settled. The tallow creature replied again,
“Ack!”
and turned to the next corner.
    At each corner the figure repeated its proclamation. Each time, Christophel responded with a puff of ash and the whispered word that brought the cinders to life. And when they had faded again, the creature spoke its reply.
    When all the ash had been distributed, the creature stuck the point of the hatpin into the tabletop and spoke the word written on its forehead.
“Init.”
    Immediately, a smattering of cinders across the table lit up like tiny gaslights, and one by one, lines of dull gold light radiated from them back to where the hatpin’s point rested in the tallow. The pin glowed with the same shade of gold each time this happened. So did the smoldering cheroot in the tallow creature’s head.
    Christophel brushed off his hands. “It’s begun. We can leave it to its work. Come.”
    Back in the sanctuary, Walker folded his arms and fixed Christophel with a wary glare. “You said you were raising a demon, not some kind of . . . some kind of
god
.”
    â€œIts name is Bios. And it isn’t a god,” Christophel said dismissively. “It only thinks it is. It has to, or it wouldn’t do the work we want it to do. The creature has to think the process it is undertaking is its own idea. That table is its domain, its universe. It doesn’t know we exist.”
    He poured himself a cup of lukewarm tea from the pot they had left behind and took a sip. “If there is some kind of god in the system, some mystical root in the