“—doesn’t mean I’m losing my touch.”
Tal looked as if he might scream. She’d better dial it back.
“Think for a second,” she said. “It’s obvious that whoever has Shuthmili wants the Reliquary too—and—look.” She took a breath. Time to take a risk. “Did you ever hear Sethennai mention Oranna? You know—one of his old friends—”
Another time, she might have goaded Tal a little more about this, prodding him for a reaction to Oranna as a competitor for Sethennai’s interest. Probably for the best they didn’t have time for that.
“I guess,” said Tal, recovering some of his composure. “Vaguely. Shit, you think it’s her?”
“Could be,” said Csorwe. “I’ve met her. She means business.”
“You really think she killed that boy? I thought she was a librarian.”
“She’s from the House of Silence,” said Csorwe, wondering grimly why she’d ever thought it was a good idea to share her suspicions with Tal. “We’re—they’re into sacrifice.”
“Woooow,” said Tal, spreading on layers of scorn that didn’t do anything to hide the tremor in his voice. “Ye olde House of Silence. You must be looking forward to seeing her. This place must be a real home away from home for you two.” He gestured to the rows and rows of tombs around them. “You can have a good old-time corpse-fondling party down here.” He fell silent as Aritsa approached.
“I will wait here,” said Aritsa. He looked older and wearier than before. “In case Shuthmili is simply lost, and returns to us.” He didn’t sound hopeful. “One cannot overestimate her value to the Church and to the state of Qarsazh. I can assure you of our gratitude and the Church’s generosity, if you will accompany Malkhaya down to the lower levels to search for her.”
* * *
The air in the Hollow Monument was very still. This place had been sealed for uncounted ages, and nothing had moved. Everything perishable was gone, the people were rag and bone in their tombs, but the monument was still standing.
Something had preserved it.
Something that had collected like dew in crevices of the rock, as the Unspoken One had come to rest in the bowels of the sacred mountain. Some ancient power, biding and gathering itself in darkness.
Csorwe and the others felt it at about the same time. It was like hearing voices in the wind.
“There’s something here, isn’t there,” said Malkhaya.
They nodded. Csorwe and Tal had spent enough time with the Siren to recognise the feeling. Something grand and alien was beginning to notice them. Somewhere deep beneath, it waited and listened. Latent, potential, vigilant.
“The lenition,” said Malkhaya. “Damn it, damn it, damn it. I thought it was too much. It happens when worlds die, but this is something else.”
“A god,” said Csorwe. No point dancing around it.
“Yeah,” said Malkhaya. “When something like that settles down somewhere, decides to make its earthly mansion, it distorts the place. Hollows it out from inside, like a tapeworm. It’s like what they do to—”
He stalled. Csorwe felt no inclination to complete the thought. She knew as well as anyone what the gods did to people.
“We’ll deal with it when we get to it,” she said, stalking on down the corridor, past doorways and more doorways and passageways that looped in endlessly on themselves.
After a few minutes, Malkhaya stopped again, blinking like a man waking from a dead sleep. “Do you smell smoke?”
The scent was sweet, funereal, and familiar. Csorwe’s stomach twisted. It was not woodsmoke, but burning lotus. Recollection took her with such violence that it blinded her. Falling through darkness—the gathered faces in the halls of the House—the litany of the Unspoken—
“Slow down, Csorwe, you idiot,” hissed Tal, and she realised she was walking toward the source of the scent.
They followed the smoke out onto a long gallery that crawled along a sheer wall. There was a larger chamber below, but it was too dark to make out any detail. The scent of lotus was wafting up from the lower level.
The gallery had no guardrail. If they fell it would be a drop straight onto the stone floor far below. They inched their way along, flat against the wall. Then, with almost blinding brilliance, a pair of lights appeared in the lower chamber, illuminating two figures in a doorway more than thirty feet below. There was nowhere for Csorwe, Tal, and Malkhaya to go. They shrank into a crouch, pressed against the wall. It was no good: if these figures looked up, they would be seen.
The two strangers started across the room. The first was an Oshaaru woman, not tall but stately. Her long hair was loose, falling down her back in a shining mass. Her tusks were capped with chased silver that gleamed in the lantern light, and she moved with unmistakeable purpose and certainty. She lifted the lantern, and Csorwe saw her face clearly.
It was the librarian of the House of Silence. It was Oranna.
Csorwe felt no satisfaction at having been right. Instead, some inner alarm began to ring frantically. She felt her pulse beat harder in her throat.
Another woman followed, like a cygnet after a swan, dressed in the familiar yellow habit. She was carrying a torch of lotus-straw.
Not just Oranna, then, but a whole expedition from the House of Silence. And Csorwe was here to face them alone.
“I think she may be beginning to wake,” said the acolyte. Csorwe recognised her, but found she couldn’t remember her name.
“Oh? Has she spoken?” Oranna’s voice was as sweet and as chilly as Csorwe remembered it. Csorwe took a deep breath, digging her nails into her palms under her cloak, telling herself it was good that her suspicions were confirmed, that it gave her more information to work with.
“Only muttering,” said Oranna’s subordinate. “Shall I order them to burn more lotus?”
“No,” said Oranna. “I want to speak to her. Bring her down to the theatre to join me.”
So Shuthmili was being held somewhere, most likely drugged and unable to fight for herself. Csorwe forced the image away. Tal wasn’t wrong: they really weren’t here to get distracted. Malkhaya could handle it. The Adept was not her responsibility.
Oranna and the acolyte moved out of sight, their lanterns blinking out one by one as they disappeared into darkness.
Csorwe rose, and turned to see that Tal had Daryou Malkhaya in a headlock, with his hand clamped over the Warden’s mouth. Malkhaya’s fists were clenched on the edge of the gallery, as though he had been on the point of leaping down to the floor below.
“Shut up,” said Tal, in a harsh whisper. “Are you insane? Are you fully fucking deranged?”
Malkhaya threw him off. “They’ve got Shuthmili,” he said, remarkably controlled for someone who had been in such close proximity to Talasseres’ armpit.
“Yeah, I got that. She is the big scary necromancer you’ve all been pissing yourselves over,” said Tal. “What were you going to do, fall on her head like a fucking anvil? It’s a sheer drop! Shit on my life, you people are stupid.”
Tal’s favourite thing to do was pick a noisy, pointless fight at the worst possible moment. Csorwe thanked the Unspoken that Malkhaya seemed to be used to doing as he was told, and didn’t rise to it.
“All right,” said Malkhaya. “Then what?”
Csorwe was already moving on down the gallery. There was another door. “Further down,” she said to Tal. “Come on.”
* * *
Oranna went down to the theatre to wait for her prisoner. This was the deepest part of the Hollow Monument, a natural cavern that had been hollowed out and tiered for hundreds of spectators. At its centre was a hollow basin, stepped down by degrees to the surface of an offering-pool. This pool never froze or stirred. It was a still, black mirror.
Oranna paused to look down at her reflection, a golden shadow on the surface of the water. Yes, even after thirty-six years drawing on the power of the Unspoken, beating back the tide that eroded her flesh and bone, she looked well. A little underfed, but
well. This was not vanity, she told herself, unless vanity was satisfaction with a hard-earned achievement.
Beyond the offering-pool was a colossal pillar, of ice or translucent stone. It was jagged at its peak, as though it had been snapped off from some larger structure. Though eyeless, it seemed to survey the theatre with the blank gaze of a statue. Motionless, inhuman, but alive. This was the heart of the monument, the seat where the god rested and sang.
This was its song, endlessly repeated, like a single note echoed into infinity:
Beyond your sight, beyond your sense, beyond the ecliptic of your understanding: here am I.
Come to me and rest.
Lie down in darkness.
Set aside the cares that burden you.
Sleep as you so greatly desire.
“Do shut up,” said Oranna. She had heard quite enough of this since their arrival at the Hollow Monument a week ago. If she had wanted to rest she would have stayed at the House of Silence and drifted into oblivion with the rest of them.
At the base of the pillar was a statue of a kneeling man, or so Oranna had first assumed: an enormous naked warrior or athlete, both muscle-bound and literally bound to the pillar by dozens of iron chains that stained the ice with rust.
Oranna was not often wrong, but she had soon discovered her error. This was no statue. It had been a living person. It was now something between a corpse and a revenant, blue-grey and stiff with frost. Every inch of its skin was encrusted with ice crystals.
Some of the acolytes in Oranna’s retinue had been quite scandalised by the sight of it, but Oranna’s own view was that once you had encountered Belthandros Sethennai there wasn’t much left that could impress you as far as men were concerned, even if this one was about eight feet tall.
His frozen hands were clasped. Just above them, bound to his chest by innumerable narrower chains, was a small, octangular box.
Oranna stepped toward the man in the ice, and reached out with one uncurling hand. Before her fingertips could touch the Reliquary, she stepped back, laughing. “I’m not quite so foolish,” she said. Her attempts to retrieve the Reliquary from the statue had already cost two acolytes, not to mention the young lay-brother she had sacrificed for the ritual of oblation.
She was getting closer, though, and was nowhere near the end of her resources. It was wonderful to know that she had found it first. Perhaps Belthandros had given up. Perhaps he was content with a mortal life. Perhaps over the last five years he had got comfortable in his palace, surrounded by barrels of resin-wine and flexible Tlaanthothei consorts. That was his own concern. In any case, Belthandros had never fully grasped the possibilities that the Reliquary offered, never understood the true relationship that Pentravesse had shared with the Lady of the Thousand Eyes.
The urge to touch the Reliquary was surprisingly strong. Oranna lowered her hand deliberately. She would hold it soon enough. In the meantime there were other things to attend to.
As if prompted by the thought, one of Oranna’s acolytes came down the steps into the theatre, followed by a cluster of revenants, carrying the prisoner between them.
“Where should we put her, librarian?” said the acolyte, Ushmai.
Oranna gestured toward the stone chair that stood between the pool and the pillar, and sent them all away.
She stood watching as the girl in the chair stirred, then sat up, gripping the arms in a panic. She waited as Shuthmili got her bearings. She had been given enough lotus to keep her groggy, but not enough to be utterly disoriented.
“Qanwa Shuthmili,” said Oranna. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
“You know that it is,” said Shuthmili quietly. Unconscious, she had been nothing to look at—a small face with a thin mouth and an unremarkably pointed nose—but now she was awake, her eyes were as wide and dark as the offering-pool.
“The finest Adept in three generations,” said Oranna. “A match for any in history. Earmarked from childhood for the Imperial Quincuriate, yes?”
Oranna hadn’t set out to learn about Qarsazh’s secret weapon, but in the course of research into the Reliquary you could end up hearing about all kinds of interesting things. There had been whispers about Shuthmili across many worlds. Many of the whisperers had an acquisitive gleam in their eyes. Some of them had come right out and said it: Imagine what we could do if we had something like that. It had been a delightful coincidence to discover that Shuthmili could be found in the same world as the Reliquary of Pentravesse, but, after all, there was no coincidence where the Reliquary was concerned.
“Personal glory is one step from pride,” said Shuthmili. She met Oranna’s eyes with a steady stare.
“What a shame, for that to be so,” said Oranna. “What a cruel shame for you, to have been born with such a gift, into a society which regards it as a mutilation.”
On her travels Oranna had met a few Qarsazhi mages—runaways from the School of Aptitude or from their assignments—and every one of them had been a furtive, sleepless, guilt-racked disaster. They never lasted long on the outside. By comparison, Shuthmili seemed remarkably composed.
“My aptitude is neither a blessing nor a curse. It is a duty. My duty is to shed light,” said Shuthmili, clearly parroting from doctrine.
“In a sane country you could have been whatever you wished,” said Oranna. It was Qarsazh’s wastefulness that truly irritated her. “A leader, if you chose. Zinandour is a remarkable divinity. It is a shame that her power is reviled.”
“I know where my future lies,” said Shuthmili, with the same steady composure.
“In the Quincuriate?” said Oranna. “You must know what that will entail for you.” Knowing how the Quincuriate worked made it hard to understand how anyone thought of the Unspoken One as a cruel god. The Qarsazhi had devised something far worse, and they were only mortals.
“Of course,” said Shuthmili. “I have no fear of the tether.”
“And why should you, I suppose?” said Oranna. “Your handlers have no more use for your ingenuity and ambition than the Quincuriate will. I am sorry to have brought you here like this, but I’m sure you see that I could never have approached Dr. Lagri Aritsa directly. The truth is that I need your help.”
Shuthmili began to say something, as Oranna had expected. Oranna ignored her, and so did the god in the pillar, still singing its unchanging song. Come to me and rest lie down in darkness set aside the cares that burden you.
“You will have perceived that there is an entity abiding in this place,” said Oranna. Shuthmili gave the slightest nod. “You Qarsazhi have little interest in gods other than your own. But perhaps you’ve heard of Iriskavaal the Thousand-Eyed, and her dying wrath.”
“Of course,” said Shuthmili. “Iriskavaal was a petty tyrant. Her followers rose up in defiance.”
Oranna was surprised they told it like that in the School of Aptitude. In her experience the Qarsazhi did not like to think too closely about either tyranny or rebellion. “Iriskavaal’s throne was reduced to splinters. She perished more truly than your own goddess, for instance. Zinandour was banished from the mortal realm. Iriskavaal was broken. It is a more terrible death than any of us will suffer. An unknowable and immortal mind broken into hundreds of fragments. Each one limited, confused, suffering, comparatively powerless.”
“That does sound difficult,” said Shuthmili. There was no alteration in her tone of voice or expression—both were perfectly flat—but Oranna knew when she was being mocked.
“If you think your confusion and suffering is something to boast about, imagine struggling on for thousands of years, alone,” she said, sharply. “Most of the fragments have somehow been lost. Until recently I knew of only one surviving piece, the poor hapless creature they call the Siren of Tlaanthothe. It was enslaved by mortal mages, bound into the service of Belthandros Sethennai and others like him. But now—”
“The divinity in the pillar,” said Shuthmili. Oranna felt a warming glow of triumph. It was always so easy with the clever
ones. Despite Shuthmili’s efforts, Oranna could tell she was beginning to be interested.
“Quite,” said Oranna. “We’ve taken to calling it the Sleeper. After the shattering of the throne, this fragment somehow came to rest here—diminished, but not without power. The people of this world must have worshipped it before their decline, but it has been trapped alone in this place too long. It has lost its mind. I came here hoping to win it to my cause. That has yet to happen, but I have some resources left at my disposal.”
“I don’t see how this adds up to you needing my help,” said Shuthmili. “If you mean to make a tribute of me—”
“Good heavens, no,” said Oranna, rather shocked. “There is no value in an unwilling sacrifice. Even your people recognise that. No.” She wandered back toward the pillar. The frozen face of the dead man stared down at her, impassive. “Have you ever heard of the Reliquary of Pentravesse?”
To Oranna’s surprise, Shuthmili nodded. For the Qarsazhi, the very nature of the Reliquary made it something heretical. Shuthmili must have read something she shouldn’t.
“The Reliquary is here,” said Oranna. She gestured back toward the pillar, toward the box chained in the dead man’s hands. Best to give Shuthmili a moment to take in the whole strange tableau. If Shuthmili was shocked by the sight of it, she showed no sign. “It was stolen. Perhaps the thief panicked, or was pursued, or simply intended to hide it until they could use it safely … they sealed it here, in this moribund world, with this unfortunate gentleman bound to the pillar to serve as lock and guard all at once. As a piece of magic it’s sickeningly good. The same curse, powered by this man’s torture and slow death, binds the Sleeper and the Reliquary together.”
“A gigantic curse-ward,” murmured Shuthmili.
Oranna smiled. She was certain that curse-wards did not form part of the curriculum at the School of Aptitude. Shuthmili had definitely read something she shouldn’t.
“Yes. I’m sure you can see how badly things would go for someone who tried to take the Reliquary without removing the binding.” Those in Oranna’s retinue who had made the attempt had died screaming.
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