Shards of the Gods

Chapter 2: The Bell in Crust Village

Reksa didn't move for nearly half an hour.

He just sat at the bottom of the narrow crevice, his back pressed against the cold bone, listening to the hooves of the Sweepers' horses fading away to the north. The voice's final words still hung in his head, refusing to leave.

The last time I saw that face, you were killing us all.

"You've got the wrong person," he finally whispered. His voice was hoarse. "I'm twentytwo. I'm a scavenger. In my whole life, the only thing I've ever killed is rats."

Perhaps, the voice said. Its tone was no longer accusatory, more like someone trying to recall a rapidly evaporating dream. My memory is full of holes. I am only a small shard of something that used to be much larger. I remember your face, but I don't remember your neck, or your voice, or what you were holding. Perhaps I am wrong.

"See?"

But if I'm wrong, the voice continued, why didn't you burn?

Reksa opened his mouth, then closed it again. He had no answer.

My name is Wiratma, the voice said after a pause. I used to be the Gatekeeper of the East. Now I happen to reside in the palm of your hand. So we might as well be polite to each other.

"A god," Reksa said flatly.

Once.

"Speaking inside my head."

You say that as if it's a disaster. Look on the bright side: you won't have to talk to yourself anymore.

Reksa stared at his hand for a long time. Then he let out a short, dry laugh, almost like a cough. The laugh of someone too exhausted to panic.

Only then did he notice something else.

There was something all around him. Not a sound, not a light, but a pulse—distant and faint, like the heartbeats of people sleeping in the next room. He closed his eyes, and the pulses coalesced into directions: three weak pulses to the east, one strong, cold, and alien pulse to the north, and another, very far away, that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up for no reason.

"What is that?"

Other shards, Wiratma said. You can feel them now. That is normal. He paused briefly. Actually, it's not normal at all. But I won't explain that now. You need to go home. Before dawn. Someone will be looking for you.

"Who?"

Kuncoro. He saw you hold an intact shard and not die. People like him sell that kind of information faster than they sell scrap.

Reksa fell silent. Then he stood up, brushed the dust from his trousers, and slipped out of the crevice like a shadow.

Crust Village didn't have a beautiful name, but it had an honest smell: woodsmoke, salted fish, and bone dust drying on zinc roofs. Its shacks stood huddled together at the foot of a giant shoulder blade, mostly built from scrap that was unsellable. In these predawn hours, there was only a mangy dog barking lazily and a woman sweeping her yard with a frayed, balding broom.

Reksa's shack was at the very back, hugging the cliffside. In front of it, sitting on two old crates, Bagas was patching a burlap sack with a large needle. A small oil lamp flickered beside him.

The old scavenger didn't raise his head as Reksa approached.

"You're late."

"There was a lot to dig up."

"You were running."

Reksa stopped in his tracks. "No, I wasn't."

"Your breathing is still heavy. There's fresh mud on your knees, even though it didn't rain last night." Bagas bit the thread, snapping it with his teeth. "And you don't have your crowbar."

Reksa only just realized his hands were empty. His crowbar had been left behind at the edge of the excavation. He cursed himself silently.

"Bagas..."

"Your hand." The old scavenger finally looked up at him. His eyes were grey and calm, far too calm for someone who had spent his entire life scavenging in graves. "Show me your hand."

Reksa didn't move.

"Son," Bagas said softly. "I've looked after you for seventeen years. Do you think I don't know when you're lying?"

Slowly, Reksa extended his right hand. Under the glow of the oil lamp, the skin looked perfectly normal, but as Bagas touched his fingertip to the palm, faint golden veins flared briefly beneath the skin, then went dark.

Bagas took a long breath. He wasn't surprised, and that was exactly what terrified Reksa the most.

"You know," Reksa whispered. "You already knew something."

"Sit."

Reksa sat on the crate beside him. Bagas set down the sack and the needle, staring out into the dark expanse of the Bone Fields beyond the cliff.

"Seventeen years ago," he said, "I was digging in a crater left by a massive explosion, far to the north. The crater was fresh, they said, and the earth was still warm. In the middle of it were three large shards, all black and dead, as if burned from the inside out. And sitting right there among those shards was a small child."

Reksa held his breath.

"You weren't crying," Bagas continued. "Not trembling. Not burned. You just looked at me and asked, 'Is the war over?'"

A breeze swept past. In the distance, the mangy dog stopped barking.

"Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"Because you were a child who remembered nothing, and I was an old scavenger with absolutely no power to protect you from the people who would come looking for you." Bagas reached into his pocket and pulled something out: a piece of dull black cloth, neatly folded. "This is the cloth you were wrapped in back then. It's no ordinary cloth. Keep it. Don't show it to anyone."

Reksa took it. In the corner of the fabric, nearly faded away, was an embroidered pattern of a circle, cracked right down the middle.

A cracked circle, Wiratma muttered in his head, very softly. I've seen that before. Where...

"Do you hear something?" Bagas asked, watching Reksa's face.

"...No."

Bagas stared at him a moment longer, then nodded slowly, as if saving the question for later.

Then, the sound came.

Chime.

Soft and clear, from far away. Like a small bell struck once.

Chime. Chime.

Bagas stood up instantly, his expression shifting. For the first time that night, he looked genuinely terrified.

"A seeker bell."

"What?"

"The Sweepers have bronze bells filled with shards. They chime if there's a living shard nearby." He gripped Reksa's shoulders. "Kuncoro has talked. They're coming to the village."

"I can fight..."

"You can't fight anything." Bagas dragged him to the back of the shack, to a section of the cliff covered by piles of scrap. He pulled away an old wooden board, revealing a dark hole just wide enough for a person to fit through. "An old passage. Go all the way down, it lets out on the west side of the Scrap Market. Look for a woman named Nyai Kemuning at the fabric stall. Tell her you are Bagas's boy from Crust. She'll know."

"Bagas, come with me."

"If I come, they'll chase two people instead of one." Bagas gave a faint smile. "I'm old, son. All I can do is slow them down."

He's right, Wiratma's voice echoed in Reksa's head, no longer teasing. Go.

"I'm not just going to leave—"

"Go!"

The chiming of the bells grew faster and louder. From the direction of the village came shouts, the sound of doors being kicked in, followed by the clatter of boots and the neighing of bone horses. Blue lanterns began to sweep across the zinc roofs.

Bagas shoved Reksa into the hole and slid the wooden board back into place. The last thing Reksa saw through the narrow gap was that old face, perfectly serene, like someone who had known for a long time that this day would come.

The passage was narrow and smelled of damp earth. Reksa crawled through the darkness, the black cloth folded against his chest and blood pounding in his ears. Every now and then, he heard footsteps overhead, and each time, the chiming of the bell drew closer, then faded, then neared again, as if something up there was sniffing him out.

After what felt like an eternity, he found an exit. He pushed aside the covering stone and crawled out onto the western cliffside, where the biting night air hit him like a slap.

From there, the entirety of Crust Village lay stretched out below him.

Dozens of blue lanterns surrounded the village from all four directions. Bone horses stood in neat lines, their riders clad in black armor bearing the crest of the Rakta Duchy on their chests. At the center of the formation stood a tall man in a grey robe, holding a bronze bell that swayed gently in his hand. His face was invisible from this distance, but Reksa could feel the pressure radiating from the man all the way up here, like an invisible wall.

Officer Dharsa, Wiratma said grimly. I know his kind. He is no ordinary human. He is a highlevel shard wielder.

Houses were searched one by one. The villagers were dragged out and lined up in the dirt clearing. Reksa saw the woman who had been sweeping the yard, now standing trembling with her hands raised. He saw the mangy dog bolt into a dark crevice.

And he saw Bagas.

The old scavenger stood in front of their shack, alone, his hands open at his sides, his expression blank. Officer Dharsa approached, stopping right in front of him, and said something inaudible from this distance.

Bagas shook his head.

Dharsa spoke again. Bagas shook his head once more, and this time, something in his face changed. It wasn't fear, but exhaustion. Then he smiled, and that was what gripped Reksa's chest the tightest.

Dharsa raised his hand.

Without thinking, Reksa stepped forward. His right hand flared hot, the golden veins glowing beneath his skin, and something unfamiliar surged inside his chest—something ancient, angry, and ravenous.

Don't.

Wiratma's voice hit him like a physical blow.

If you go down there now, you die, and his death is in vain. You don't yet know what you're capable of. You don't even know who you are.

"He's going to be killed!"

Perhaps, Wiratma replied, his voice wavering. But Bagas isn't trying to die. He's buying you time. Don't waste it.

Reksa gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. Tears fell without him realizing it.

Down below, Dharsa lowered his hand. Not to kill. He merely gestured, and two soldiers dragged Bagas away, alive. But Reksa couldn't feel any relief. An officer didn't take an old scavenger alive for no reason, and he knew what it meant. Bagas would be taken to some unknown place, where questions he couldn't answer would be asked.

Reksa turned and began to run, away from the village, toward the distant market to the west.

You made the right choice, Wiratma said quietly after a while.

"Shut up."

Very well.

They ran in silence for a long time. Dawn was beginning to pale on the eastern horizon when Reksa finally stopped to catch his breath, leaning against a towering, upright bone that rose like a spire. He pulled the black cloth from his chest and stared at the cracked circle pattern in its corner.

"Wiratma."

Yes?

"You said earlier you had seen this pattern before."

A moment of silence. Then the voice replied, so softly, as if afraid of letting his words ring too clearly.

On the final seal. On the door none of us dared to open. That pattern is not the symbol of any god.

He paused.

It is the symbol of the one who closed that door from the inside.