The Tortured Wind Read online

  The Desine loved his people. He was always there to guide them.

  Zron fell to the ground and begged. But his god did not answer him.

  ***

  Screams pierced his temples like nails. Sandsa batted the sounds away before his hand lazily moved to his mouth where it captured a yawn. A tendril of his shaggy blond hair curled onto his forehead. He ignored it. His hand fell to his side.

  Standing atop the dune, he watched the destruction unfolding before him, blue eyes bright and framed by his tanned features. Down in the gully, nestled between the rock-studded dunes, warriors fired their lasguns and priests wielded their Magic, more devastating than any man-made weapon.

  ‘But what does the Desine say?’ the warriors shouted as the battle continued, wearing down their bodies and their hope.

  No priest on either side heard an answer from their god, but still they said, ‘Our cause is just! The Desine smiles! We win this day!’

  The sun warmed Sandsa’s back as he trudged away, wondering how to begin his task. He had searched his sprawling sands for anyone with her name and had failed…perhaps he would turn his eyes to the cities and the domains belonging to his brothers and sisters.

  The taste of salt on his tongue gave him several seconds of warning before the Watine, the god of water, oozed into being.

  ‘Pathetic mortals,’ the Watine said in his low, sibilant voice. ‘How they fall to pieces without us there to guide them through their wretched lives.’

  Sandsa regarded his brother coolly and made no move to greet him. The Watine opened his tattered cloak and made a sarcastic gesture that could have been a wave or a threat. His hair, dripping with water and mucus, hung over his face; instead of hiding his permanently dour expression, the greasy strands enhanced it.

  Sandsa held out his open hand. A whirling sphere of sand appeared on command, dancing above his palm; a not so subtle reminder for his brother not to test him. He allowed it to hover there for a moment, then extinguished it.

  ‘Fayay,’ he finally said, ‘I have very little patience for your antics today.’

  ‘You seem to have even less for the mortals,’ Fayay noted. His cracked lips parted into a smile that revealed the fungus painting his chipped teeth. ‘Are you punishing them? There are more delightful ways to do that. I can show you.’

  Sandsa kept his face blank despite the disgust and anger he felt. That Fayay thought Sandsa was falling into his sadistic ways was bad enough; Fayay offering to show him how best to torture mortals was beyond insulting.

  ‘I am no longer their god,’ Sandsa said and continued to amble away, allowing his beige cloak to fly up into the wind, exposing the simple threadbare clothes he wore beneath it.

  A column of briny water exploded out of the dune in front of Sandsa, halting his path.

  ‘What are you saying, Desine?’ Fayay called.

  Sandsa smiled grimly and turned back around to face his brother. ‘You know what I mean. Oh, how could I forget. You don’t.’

  Fayay cursed. He lacked the mind-reading abilities that many of their brothers and sisters possessed and Sandsa had always made a point of reminding him of this inadequacy.

  ‘We have lived for millennia, you and I,’ Sandsa said then patted four fingers to his mouth, as though smothering another yawn. ‘And yet you do not understand. You never will.’

  ‘You think you know more than me?’ Fayay hissed. ‘Do you perhaps presume to think you know more than Father?’

  The laugh curdled in Sandsa’s gut before it reached his lips. ‘Father. Some father. The Ine is unfeeling. Uncaring. Their Creator God. He created this mess long ago. And now we must eternally clean up after him.’

  Fayay’s pale blue eyes narrowed. ‘You are leaving the deserts to rot. What for? To live like some irresponsible mortal?’

  ‘Ah, so you do not need to read minds to know my plans.’ Sandsa clapped his palms together. ‘You should congratulate yourself, Fayay.’

  Fayay frowned in the direction of the two warring tribes as they shouted and killed each other, all in the name of their god. ‘Do you envy these maggots?’

  Sandsa laughed darkly. ‘Envy the mortals? Of course I do! Do you know what it is they have? We can guide them but it is up to them whether or not they listen. Free will, that’s what the Ine gave them. Free will. They get to do whatever they want.’

  ‘Listen to yourself. Mortals are foolish, pitiful creatures and — ’

  ‘Then why do you keep looking after them?’ Sandsa demanded. ‘The mortals — they’re his creation. It’s not our fault the humans poisoned their planet then spread so far throughout the galaxy that he lost control of them. He made us, his children, just so we’d take care of the ones he couldn’t! And instead of one god meddling with their lives, there are now more than fifty!’ Sandsa drew a breath. ‘Now there will be one less. It is time I left my people to fend for themselves.’

  Fayay’s tongue danced over his bottom lip, like some sort of slimy creature sneaking out of a cave. ‘I care as little for the mortals as you do, Sandsa. But it is our duty to maintain Father’s grand design.’

  ‘I…’ Sandsa hesitated. ‘I have my reasons.’

  ‘Does your favourite, Kuja, know your reasons?’

  Kuja, their youngest brother and god of the rainforests, was the only sibling Sandsa could stand, the only other god who had felt the loss when their mother had left their father to live as a mortal. But no, this wasn’t something Sandsa could share with Kuja.

  Kuja wouldn’t understand. None of them would.

  Sandsa spread his arms, deliberately providing a tempting target to his brother. ‘Admit it, Fayay. You despise being second best. If I leave, there will be no one to challenge you.’

  The Watine’s lips twisted. ‘I will tell Father what you are doing. And he will punish you accordingly.’

  ‘Hoping to impress him, are you?’ Sandsa asked scornfully. ‘Hoping he’ll kill me because you never managed it? Do not bother, Fayay. He already knows. Don’t you, Ine?’

  Their father’s presence bled into the landscape. Sandsa had the satisfaction of watching Fayay’s already pallid face bleach even further. The Watine immediately exploded into wisps of water that evaporated in the arid climate as he teleported away.

  Sandsa formed another sphere of sand in his palm and waited.

  His father appeared in front of him. He was two heads taller than Sandsa and his body was so thin it was almost skeletal. His hair was a white crown, matched by a neatly trimmed beard, and his blue eyes were the twins of Sandsa’s own. This was the Ine, the Creator God, the first deity that the humans had worshipped so many aeons ago, when they had been contained on one lonely planet, unaware that so many alien species shared the same god.

  ‘We must talk, but not here,’ the Ine said, his lips stretched into a genial smile.

  His father touched his shoulder and the icy tendrils of a forced teleportation threatened to invade Sandsa’s veins. He jerked away and threw the ball of sand he’d prepared; it shattered against his father’s face. The Ine’s apparent good will vanished. He clapped his hands and the rolling sand dunes around them disintegrated into blinding white walls and floors; with his love of the sun, Sandsa found this environment harsher and more cruel than any of his baked deserts. This realm, beyond the sight of mortals, was a boring cage, a palace of pain, not the home that the other gods seemed to think it was.

  Standing there, on a walkway lined with pillars and his curious brothers and sisters, Sandsa howled a challenge then ran full tilt at the Ine. The columns of stone on both sides exploded into gritty tornadoes and twisted, spurred on by his fury. Balls of sand chased Sandsa, then overtook him. He threw everything he had at his father.

  The Ine held up a hand. Sandsa froze in place and his control over the sands abruptly withered; his missiles dropped to the floor and the pillars became still and cold once more.

  ‘Sandsa, my son,’ his father began, ‘you gave your people their own powers. You made
them special compared to those that do not live in the deserts. That was no uncaring gesture.’

  Sandsa pulled his lips back into a snarl. ‘I only gave them power over the sand so they could protect themselves from the mortals who insist on inserting a chip into their flesh to talk to you!’

  ‘Your people have “the Magic” so long as you are there for them. You are the source of their powers. What will protect them if you leave?’

  ‘Nothing you say will keep me in your grasp,’ Sandsa warned.

  ‘If you abandon the deserts, my son, then you renounce your place among us.’

  Sandsa felt the eyes of his siblings upon him and found himself unable to turn his head to regard them, to challenge them, to ask for their help. Kuja might try to intercede, but the young god would be too powerless to do anything. And Fayay…he would be loving this, anticipating the moment he became the most revered of all their siblings.

  ‘One woman is not reason enough to turn away from your people,’ the Ine told his eldest son.

  Sandsa wet his lips. ‘Father…’

  ‘The woman in your dreams — do not let a reckless pursuit of her be your downfall.’

  Sandsa’s cheeks felt hot with anger and shame. So even his dreams were laid bare to the Ine. His father had watched them, had seen the woman that haunted him, called him, and offered so much more than anyone else could.

  ‘I am a god, just as you are, Father,’ Sandsa said lowly. ‘But you forget. My mother was human, extended though her life was. You give the mortals the choice to obey or ignore us. Since part of me is human, I should be able to choose my fate. And I choose the woman in my dreams.’

  ‘There is no choice to be made, Sandsa,’ his father said. ‘Do you not see this?’

  Sandsa merely glared at him.

  The Ine’s expression remained infuriatingly calm. ‘Then you will ignore me, the deserts and your duty, and place your focus entirely on this woman.’ Not a question. An acceptance.

  ‘Sandsa, no!’ That was Kuja, the Rforine, tearing free from the line of silent gods to stand between Sandsa and the Ine. ‘I lost Mum. Don’t make me lose you too.’

  The rainforest god was only seventy years old, practically a baby. And it showed. Green eyes growing moist, long copper fringe flying back over his head, face dotted with freckles, Kuja repeated his entreaty, anguished.

  ‘Do not pretend you understand what is going on here,’ the Ine told Kuja, his voice measured and unhurried despite the muttering that passed through those standing around them. ‘You cannot help him.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kuja whispered, turning to show his tears to Sandsa.

  Sandsa shook his head. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. I know you can’t escape him. Goodbye, Kuja.’

  Stepping aside, hunched in defeat, the Rforine briefly squeezed his brother’s shoulder before rejoining the ranks of those who would never dare raise their voices against their father. Another hand replaced Kuja’s, one of iron and aeons, and the Ine pushed his eldest son backwards, saying, ‘Desine, god of the deserts, you are hereby outcast from this realm, an immortal wanderer with no home. May you find what you seek.’

  And Sandsa fell. But not to the floor, where the impact might have shaken the fear from him.

  He passed through a white shroud that ripped when he touched it, he sailed down past stars and planets dancing in their ancient patterns and, as he continued to fall, he saw her face, a smile tweaking her lips. But then she was gone, unreachable in the blackness of infinity.

  He hit the ground on a planet he’d never bothered to learn the name of and gripped sand between his fingers, cursing, using words invented by the mortals, then stood to stare around at the predictable blandness of one of his deserts. Nothing changed here beneath the sun — or suns, depending on where you were.

  He knew every minuscule detail about his people, the nomads who had left the cities behind to seek his protection. Every speck of sand spoke to him constantly, nagging, telling him everything unbidden.

  ‘I’m sick of it,’ Sandsa said and his body collapsed into a sandy pile. He became a formless entity, searching…searching…

  Eventually he arose somewhere else, surrounded by looming buildings peppered with lights. He stared up at the windows, feeling instead of seeing, and then he began to stride through the streets, lured forward by the promise of her.

  ‘Callista,’ he murmured over and over.

  Of course she wasn’t in the deserts; he would have found her sooner if that was the case. He could feel her somewhere here, just out of reach…

  ‘Callista, Callista,’ he chanted as he followed his dream.

  ***

  Head Priest Zron wavered on his knees, unwilling to complete his fall to the killing grounds. He reached for the hazy horizon, begging for one last glimpse, one last touch, of the great Magic that the desert god had created for his people to tap into. He felt…nothing. He was not yet dead but the numbness in his limbs was spreading to his heart and would soon reach his eyes and his mind.

  The Desine was gone.

  ‘Abandoned,’ Zron whispered in horror.

  When at last he collapsed onto the sand, a darkness swallowed him, one that would soon swallow all the sands.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Callista would usually have slid in through one of the windows of her suite, but the grid of metal bars meant to keep her safe had recently been replaced with a laser variant. The thieves of Atsa City were growing ever more opportunistic after all, their brazenness fuelled by a lack of consequences because the Chippers remained in their stone outpost after sunset. They didn’t do this because they acknowledged that the gangs ruled the nights instead of the governor who had invited them — no, they did it because GLEA refused to pay the medical bills of those who got involved with night-time activities on Yalsa 5. The expense would most likely outstrip the donations that the Agency received from those few grateful followers of the Creator God who lived on the planet.

  Callista would rather have eased her way past bars instead of facing the echoing entrance hall that was formed by cold, unfeeling marble. Her keypass lay flat against her palm as the electronic door wheezed shut behind her, throwing out a puff of air which disturbed her dusty hair. It was already flinging around her chin again; she had pulled it back into yet another knot but none of the strands were long enough to stay in that position for more than a Yalsa 5 hour — which, conveniently, wasn’t too far off the length of one Old Earth hour. The days were not dissimilar either so, unlike some other planets that kept to Old Earth time, night here generally tended to fall when it was supposed to.

  Callista stopped dead when she realised she wasn’t alone.

  It was probably a good thing she’d remembered to stash her weapons under the front porch or she might have shot the two people waiting for her without realising who they were.

  Eyes narrowed in defiance, she said, ‘I am twenty-five. Old enough to retire if I was a miner on the asteroids. Old enough to go out and enjoy myself without coming back to this…this interrogation.’

  Her parents were standing at the foot of a chipped grand staircase that was in danger of losing its rotted wooden railing. She could understand their desire for the coin-chips to fix it up, but she disliked them expecting her to help fund their lifestyle. As for the money she pocketed at night while working for the Maria, that was hers. Something they couldn’t keep track of. She didn’t touch the bank account they’d given her — not that it had much in it these days — because she preferred to keep her purchases a secret.

  ‘What have you done?’ her father demanded. ‘See, your mother is so upset.’

  ‘Isolde Israr asked you to marry him!’ her mother cried, pacing on the first step as though afraid to fall to the floor, where her husband had planted himself.

  Callista’s father’s loamy eyes lit with anger. ‘You refused him?’

  ‘You want me to marry a guy who whinges to you when his guards — no, spies — catch me eating a hamburger wh
en he’s decided I need to be on diet?’ Callista asked, crossing her arms over her chest and causing her jacket, which was quite snug when she sealed it, to strain over the unfortunate assets that had made her the target of a millionaire friend of her parents.

  Perhaps ‘friend’ was too generous. Accomplice, perhaps.

  She’d had Kick drop her off three blocks from her parents’ house so they wouldn’t know that Isolde hadn’t brought her home. Now she wondered why she’d bothered with the pretence; her parents obviously knew that she’d ditched Isolde at the restaurant. Clearly she would never make them happy unless she chained herself to some guy who wouldn’t find her when she was in trouble and lay healing hands upon her…

  ‘He’s loaded!’ her mother shrieked.

  ‘So’re the asteroid miners — and for some reason they got sent a bad reference after I applied so I can’t be one of them,’ Callista said, then shook her head, amazed. ‘I can’t believe I stayed here as long as I did. After tonight, I’m gone. You won’t see me again.’

  She slid her finger across the sensor that would automatically unzip her jacket. Her mother gasped when the leather parted, revealing what Callista was wearing beneath it. Callista smiled down at the black tank shirt which was emblazoned with the Maria logo. Hiding her gang affiliation beneath the jacket had been her way of feeling that she could, at any time, escape her parents’ plans for her — not to mention the company of one Isolde Israr whose idea of taking a woman on a date was to abduct her at gunpoint.

  Exposing the symbol now was a good way to show her parents what she thought of the tune they wanted her to dance to. She was terrible at dancing anyway. That particular flaw had earned her the ironic gang name ‘Dancer’ barely a month after signing in blood. It was really her parents’ fault for letting her stay out so late, thinking she was looking for a suitor, hoping she’d been with Isolde, praying to any god that would listen that she’d been planning to drop some grandchildren for them.