The Unspoken Name

by A. K. Larkwood

  “One has to wonder what the fugitive intends to do with my niece in a place like this,” said Qanwa. “Any ideas, Mr. Charossa?”

  “No,” said Tal. This part was a lie. He knew exactly why Csorwe was there, and he was prepared to bet that Shuthmili was with her by choice, but he didn’t like Qanwa enough to want to help. He didn’t give a damn whether they managed to retrieve her or not. All he wanted was the Reliquary. Then he could finally go home.

  “I will be going down to the surface of the world myself to retrieve Shuthmili,” said Qanwa. “Wardens, I’d like you to accompany me to the tower, along with Vigils One to Four. Vigil Five will remain on board Tranquillity to provide communications. Mr. Charossa, I understand you are eager to join the party.”

  That was putting it a bit strongly. Tal didn’t want to spend any more time with any of them, but he could put up with it to get to the Reliquary, and if Qanwa’s people could deal with Csorwe and Oranna and any other fucker who got in his way, so much the better.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Understand, Mr. Charossa, that I have recently had some disappointing experiences with foreign passengers. If you hinder our operations in any way, I will not hesitate in ordering Vigil to stop you in whatever manner it thinks best.”

  Tal promised he would be a good boy, and this was how he found himself in the Domain of the Lignite Spire, surrounded by Qarsazhi who hated him as much as they hated each other.

  Qanwa was about as friendly as Csorwe ever had been on this kind of expedition, which is to say that she ignored Tal completely and strode on ahead, with two Wardens and an Adept, taking readings from some kind of instrument and checking her map of the dry seabed. Two Warden-Adept pairs fanned out to scout the surroundings, one on each side. The last Adept was left behind to escort Tal.

  “So, you must be the unlucky one,” he said. It was Qarsazhi-sized, so about a foot shorter than Tal, but beyond that he could tell nothing about its mood or age or gender. Everything about it was neutral.

  “I do not understand,” said the Adept. This was a simple statement of fact. It did not invite clarification, but Tal didn’t need inviting.

  “Since they’ve left you behind to babysit me,” he said. “Bet you’re the one that always has to make the coffee, too.”

  The Adept said nothing for a moment. “This is nonsense,” it said, with the same objective finality.

  “Oh, you tell yourself that, but I bet it stings,” said Tal.

  “Do you write with your right hand, Mr. Charossa?” said the Adept.

  “What?” said Tal. “Yes.”

  “It does not follow that your left hand is less favoured. Do you prefer one of your eyes?”

  The Adept’s voice was as flat as ever, but there was still something about the way it said this that made it sound as though it was threatening to take away whichever eye Tal liked the least. Despite his best efforts, his ears twitched as he shook his head.

  “Both eyes have value,” said the Adept. “This body ensures that you do not obstruct Inquisitor Qanwa, while my other bodies perform higher functions. Perhaps this is a clarification.”

  Tal grimaced. “You’re all the same person,” he said. A thought occurred to him. “Do you ever—”

  The Adept turned its blank face to him, and Tal thought better of it.

  He gave up on looking for entertainment from Vigil after that. He walked on in silence, watching the Lignite Spire grow larger on the horizon. Inquisitor Qanwa had given him back his sword. He was sure he would need it before the day was done.

  After an hour or so, the Adept walking beside Tal stopped in mid-stride. It was so still that it looked less like a person than a tall bottle wrapped in white silk. Tal waved a hand in front of its eyes, or at least the region where he assumed its eyes had to be, behind the mask.

  “Hey, you,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  No response from the bottle. He didn’t quite dare to take it by the shoulders and give it a shake.

  It came to Tal that this was the first moment he’d enjoyed without scrutiny since he’d let the Qarsazhi discover him aboard Tranquillity. Qanwa and her crew were visible up ahead, but they wouldn’t see him now if he struck out by himself. The urge to get away was on him like an itch, that familiar restlessness prodding him to slip his bonds and run, like he was back at school and desperate to avoid an exam he knew he’d fail.

  He knew his own interests better now. Running would just guarantee pissing off Qanwa before they even got to the Spire.

  “Hey, Inquisitor!” he yelled, instead. “Your wizard’s broken!”

  They didn’t turn back immediately. They had stopped too, in fact, and he realised the same thing had happened to the Adept who had been walking with them. Before Tal could do anything, the Adept beside him screamed.

  It was like the scream of an animal or a child. Tal had been through some shit but at least he usually knew what was happening to him and how long it might last. The Adept sounded like it had never experienced suffering before. The one up ahead was screaming too, sending up plumes of rage and agony to the shifting sky.

  After a second or two the noise was unbearable. Tal covered his ears with his hands and shouted to the others again, but they clearly couldn’t hear him over the screaming. Then a Warden came running up to him.

  “Can’t we shut them up?” said Tal.

  “Inquisitor’s trying to calm it down,” said the Warden, bellowing over the noise.

  Then, as abruptly as it began, the screaming stopped, and the Adept crumpled to the ground. The silence rang almost as loudly as the sound, drumming in Tal’s ears. He felt as if he’d been slapped.

  “Trust the fucking mages,” said the Warden to herself. She hoisted the defunct Adept over her shoulder and strode back toward Qanwa. Tal took it that he was supposed to follow.

  Up ahead, Qanwa had got her Adept sitting upright. Its mask was lifted a few inches, enabling it to sip water from a flask. Tal peered, fascinated, and caught a glimpse of a withered chin and a mouthful of uneven teeth. As Tal approached, it set down the flask and snapped the mask back into place.

  “The Spire has defences, Inquisitor,” it said. Its voice cracked like a mudflat in a drought. “It detected my scouts and disabled them.”

  “How?” said Qanwa. Tal almost admired her composure. She sounded as though she was upbraiding a servant for bringing her soup cold.

  “It is ancient, Inquisitor,” said Vigil. “When it was built there was no Quincuriate. It thinks I am a little divinity. A threat.”

  “How can it still be working?” said Qanwa. “This is a dead world.”

  “The Lignite Spire is, or was, the seat of Iriskavaal the Thousand-Eyed,” said Vigil. “Her power lingers.”

  “I see. And when you say disabled, what do you mean, exactly?” said Qanwa. She looked up, noted the presence of Tal and his group, and nodded to the Warden, who set down the still-unconscious Adept.

  “I do not know,” said Vigil. “I have lost contact.” It sounded almost like a person, now. It had the blank, uncomprehending manner of someone trying to understand a knife to the gut.

  “All right,” said Qanwa. “This body is alive, as is Vigil Two. It is safe to assume that your other bodies survive and that the Wardens who accompanied them will take them to safety.” She closed her eyes, thinking, then gestured to the female Warden who had come for Tal. “Warden Balshu, you will remain here, with Vigil One and Two. Vigil, when you regain full communication, instruct your Adepts to assemble here and return to the ship with Balshu and the remaining Wardens. It would be irresponsible of me to risk Vigil’s safety any further.”

  Qanwa sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose hard between her fingers. Tal intimately recognised the look of somebody wishing Csorwe had never been born. “Warden Zilya, you will continue with me to the tower. And you, Charossa, I suppose.”

  If Tal had been Warden Zilya, he might have asked whether it was irresponsible to risk his safety. However
, Zilya just nodded.

  As for Tal himself, his sense of self-preservation had dried up and dropped off long ago from lack of use.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Can’t wait.”

  * * *

  The throne room of the Lady of the Thousand Eyes was illuminated with the light of a perfect sunset, red-gold, frozen in the instant before darkness.

  “The sun of Old Ormary shines on us,” said Oranna. “Three thousand years after its death.”

  “All worlds fade. All strength fails. No spirit perseveres. Nothing may be preserved.” Ushmai quoted scripture when she didn’t know what else to say, but in these circumstances it was not inapt.

  “Desolation is its watchword,” said Oranna. The Unspoken was very far from her now. Its voice had faded as they navigated deeper into the tower. This had frightened her at first, but the Unspoken had been with her as long as she had been capable of thought, and she knew it would come back to her. It knew what she intended, and what she needed, and what she would give in return.

  The throne room was as austere as the rest of the tower. A huge, high, bare room of cool grey stone. It had no ornament, and bathed in that bloody light, it needed none.

  Pentravesse had walked in this hall as a young man. Here he had received Iriskavaal’s patronage, and she had made him great. She had nourished him without draining him.

  Pentravesse and the Lady of the Thousand Eyes had been more than an aberration. It had worked once. It could happen again. They had made the modern world. With the knowledge preserved in the Reliquary, Oranna and the Unspoken would remake it as they chose.

  Under the apse at the far end of the room was a long table. On the table was a chalice. Oranna withdrew the Reliquary from her pocket and set it on the table. She didn’t dare to imagine it might open of its own accord, and, indeed, it did not.

  Above the table, set into the wall like a mirror into a frame, was a great stone slab, polished to a reflective shine. Oranna had seen something similar in the Hollow Monument, but that had been obsidian where this was green chrysoprase. All such shrines respond to the same syntax. The altar, the offering vessel, the reflecting glass. This was a machine for prophecy. All that was needed was a suitable offering.

  The Qarsazhi fed their gods on bread and milk and other things you might give an infant. Other lesser deities survived on honey and seawater. But the Thousand-Eyed One had been a goddess in the old style, as old as the Unspoken, and she required more serious sacrifices.

  “Ushmai,” said Oranna. “Would you come here? It’s time.”

  * * *

  When Csorwe and Shuthmili entered the throne room it was bathed in a light like the end of the world. A curly-haired girl sat by the altar as if it were a dinner table. Her head rested on her folded arms. She might have been napping. You had to come a little closer to see the pool of blood, and realise that she was dead. In this light, her yellow robes were the colour of roses.

  At the other end of the table was Oranna, with her back to them. Her head was bowed. She had rolled up the sleeves of her robes, and her forearms were open, dripping blood like ink into a silver cup. She was as pale as a raindrop, and shivering. On the table beside her was the Reliquary.

  Csorwe strode into the hall. Shuthmili caught her sleeve and pulled her back just as a curse-ward detonated, lacing the hall with streams of light and heat. Csorwe’s hair singed, and she flinched back, but Oranna did not seem to notice. She was looking up at a great panel of green stone. In the stone, her reflection bobbed like the head of a cobra.

  “Be careful,” Shuthmili whispered. “There are more wards.”

  Oranna started laughing. “What do you want?” she said in a low voice. Csorwe and Shuthmili exchanged a glance, but Oranna wasn’t talking to them. She reached toward the Reliquary and brushed it with her fingertips, smearing blood on the lacquer. “Lady, what more can I give you? You have had everything from me.”

  Shuthmili gestured to the pillars that ran the length of the room. Each was inscribed with a curse-ward in blood. The wards grew messier and less exact as they got closer to the altar, as though Oranna had started by drawing them with a fine brush and ended by daubing with her bloody fingers.

  “Let me see what she’s done,” Shuthmili murmured. “Don’t walk anywhere before I tell you.”

  Csorwe nodded. She was watching Oranna’s face in the green stone. She looked desperate. Csorwe had prepared herself for a fight. She hadn’t expected to see her enemy already on her knees.

  Shuthmili moved to the first pillar and carefully began to scour away the ward. The blood blackened and fizzled under her bare hands, then came away in dry flakes.

  “Yes, I can handle this,” said Shuthmili, with a certain quiet satisfaction. All the same, Csorwe didn’t enjoy standing and watching. With every pillar, Shuthmili moved closer to Oranna, who remained oblivious, swaying in unison with her reflection.

  It was very quiet in the throne room. Every drip of blood and every sizzle of magic was audible. Every now and then they heard Oranna utter another miserable, incoherent prayer. Csorwe didn’t trust any of this.

  “This quarter’s clear,” said Shuthmili eventually. “You can come up to where I’m standing.”

  Csorwe approached. “What’s wrong with her?” she said. “Is this a magic thing?”

  “Yes. She’s gone too far. If she was an ordinary practitioner she would be a sad little pile of burst organs by now,” said Shuthmili, leaning in to whisper again. “She’s trying to draw on a god besides her patron. Iriskavaal is not answering. And Oranna’s feelings seem very hurt,” she added, with pleasure.

  Shuthmili cleared another ward and Csorwe followed after her, feeling useless. Oranna showed no sign of noticing them, but they stayed in the shadows of the pillars and kept their voices down.

  “When you get the last one, I’m going straight for her,” Csorwe murmured. “If she puts up a fight you stay back. I’ll handle her. Once I get the Reliquary, we just run, all right? No point hanging around to talk.”

  “I think I’ve enjoyed enough of her conversation.” Shuthmili gave a taut smile, and Csorwe felt a flare of determination: to make it out of this, to live, to find out whether Shuthmili would like to be kissed.

  One by one the curse-wards fell. The shadows in the throne room seemed to lengthen, as if the dead sun was setting into eternity. Csorwe paced, fondling the hilt of her sword and resisting the urge to drum her fingers on something.

  “This last one is … sticky,” said Shuthmili. The final curse-ward, on the pillar nearest to the altar, didn’t look like much more than a smeared splash of blood to Csorwe, but Shuthmili narrowed her eyes at it and muttered, “Oh, she thinks she’s so smart.” She pressed one fingertip carefully against the bloody marble, then the flat of her palm. “As soon as I start to defuse it, it’ll try to go off. I can protect myself, but you should stay well back. And I’d better contain it too.” She came a few deliberate steps away from the pillar, back toward Csorwe, then knelt and traced a line on the ground. A shimmering blur appeared in the air, a barrier like a heat haze, separating Csorwe and the rest of the throne room from Shuthmili and the pillar and the altar beyond them. “There. That should give me enough time to erase the control sigil. But I can’t stop this once I start. Be careful.”

  “Take your time,” said Csorwe. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  Up at the altar, Oranna had fallen silent. She was leaning over the chalice, holding her bloody arm in one bloody hand. Her eyes were wide open and unseeing.

  As Shuthmili got to work on the final curse-ward, the pillar began to smoke. It was subtle at first, like breath condensing on a cold day, except that it was red. The space behind the barrier began to cloud scarlet. Farther behind Shuthmili, Oranna and the altar were silhouettes in red fog.

  “All well in there?” said Csorwe, not sure whether Shuthmili could even hear her. The barrier held back the fumes as if it were solid glass.

  Shuthmili made a noise of assent, gr
itting her teeth. “Nearly there,” she said.

  And then the doors to the throne room opened. Standing in the doorway were Inquisitor Qanwa, a Warden, and Tal Charossa.

  “Csorwe!” said Shuthmili. She couldn’t move. Her palm was still flat against the pillar.

  The new arrivals stopped dead, struggling to take in the scene. It took Csorwe a second, too, to understand what had happened. Tal had thrown his lot in with the Qarsazhi. A dull wall of rage came down before her, blotting out everything else. Just as they were close—just as she had begun to see something better—of course Tal was here out of pure spite and obstinacy to take it away from her.

  “Shuthmili, we are here to take you home,” Inquisitor Qanwa started. Then she seemed to see what Shuthmili was actually doing, and faltered. “By the Nine—”

  “Stay out of this,” said Csorwe, stepping out in front of Qanwa, her hand clenched on the hilt of her sword.

  “The mind boggles,” said Qanwa, “at what you think you are doing. You have one chance to surrender your sword before we remove it from you.”

  “Go to hell,” said Csorwe. On the periphery, Tal was trying to drop back into the shadows. “I can see you too, you piece of shit, stay where you are.”

  “Aunt Zhiyouri,” said Shuthmili, straining to look back over her shoulder without losing focus on the curse-ward. “It’s all right, please—we can talk in one moment—let me defuse this.”

  “Warden, deal with this,” said Qanwa.

  In the red twilight Csorwe had somehow lost sight of Tal, and before she could look for him, the Warden charged. Csorwe’s instincts took over, smoothly, like a visor clamping down, and she went for her sword.

  The Warden looked as if he would be slower than Csorwe, but his reach was clearly longer and he would hit hard. Csorwe dodged away from him, darting around the nearest pillar, but he came up quicker than she expected, and for an awful moment she was boxed in between him and the wall.