And then, footsteps. The door to the hangar burst open, and in came the young guardsman, and with him Belthandros Sethennai.
Sethennai’s shirt was only half buttoned, his hair loose, and Csorwe realised that, for the first time, she had taken him by surprise. It didn’t make him look any gentler. He looked as though he’d been carved from basalt: hard, precise, unforgiving.
“And what the bloody hell do you think you’re doing,” he said, striding toward them. His hands and feet were bare.
Csorwe couldn’t think or speak. She was horribly grateful when Oranna stood up in the cutter and laughed.
“What does it look like, Belthandros?” she said. “Don’t be a sore loser.” She still had that lump of crystal clutched in one hand, and now the shadows gathered about her, accumulating like wool around a spindle. She began to reach for the controls of the cutter, but the little mazeship was still anchored to its mooring by a sturdy chain. The switch to release it was mounted on the wall behind Sethennai. Oranna looked to Csorwe just at the moment he noticed she was there.
“Csorwe,” he said. “Quick off the mark, as always. I’ll handle this. Go up to my study and fetch my gauntlets.”
She stood frozen for a few seconds before it came to her: he didn’t realise. She had been caught in the act and it didn’t even occur to him that she was capable of turning against him. She was unspeakably relieved—It isn’t over, he still trusts me, it doesn’t have to be the end—and maybe this was it. Maybe she’d reached the limit of her defiance. She was going to do exactly as she was told. She was going to fetch the gauntlets. Then she would follow him straight back to her old life, to solitary expeditions and biscuit rations and squabbling with Tal Charossa for scraps of attention. She wasn’t going to argue. She was just going to do it.
“No,” she said.
Sethennai was already striding down toward Oranna, and it took him a second to understand what he’d heard. “What?” he said, looking back toward Csorwe. A deep frown cast his eyes into shadow.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
Sethennai flashed her a taut uncomprehending smile. The young guardsman saluted and scuttled out, presumably going after the gauntlets himself. “That’s nonsense. I need you in Tlaanthothe.”
“Well … I’ll come back,” she said, lamely, as if she could ever possibly come back after breaking a prisoner out of the deep cell. “I have to go.” She couldn’t bring herself to speak Shuthmili’s name.
“Exalted Sages, what has got into you?” said Sethennai. His smile did not fade, but he looked less amused than ever. “Why would you want to go?”
Csorwe said nothing, avoided his gaze, wondered whether she could really make herself do this.
“Has she made you an offer? We’ve discussed this, Csorwe,” he said. “Nobody else is worth your time and talents. Our friend here certainly isn’t. Any wage she’s named, get it in writing and I’ll double it.”
Oranna was still laughing quietly to herself. Csorwe knew she had to leap one way or the other, but couldn’t make herself move.
“It’s not that,” she said.
“If it’s a guessing game you have in mind, we can play in considerably more comfort once Oranna is back in the deep cell,” he said. “This doesn’t amuse me as much as you seem to imagine it might. Today is not the day to test me.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said.
Sethennai sighed. “Whatever this is about, it’s going to have to wait. I need you focused.”
“You don’t understand,” said Csorwe. “I’m sorry. I am sorry. But—”
She lunged forward, hooked her foot round his ankle, and drove her knee between his legs. He stumbled back and fell with a startled yelp of pain, curling like a beetle. She leapt past him before he could recover, pulled the switch to release the cutter, and threw herself back into the boat beside Oranna. Sethennai was back on his feet—she heard him call her name—but the cutter was already moving away from the edge, Oranna’s hands were on the wheel, and before he could reach her, they were gone.
22
Obligation
THE THAWS HAD COME early in the high mountains that year, and there were clear streams running in the forest above the House of Silence. They gleamed in the first light like new steel. Oranna brought the cutter in to land in a clearing high up on the hillside.
Csorwe’s hands were clenched into fists in her pockets to stop them from shivering. Only a few weeks ago she had laughed at the Unspoken with Shuthmili. Remembering that deliberate, childish defiance, she wanted to give her past self a good shaking.
At least Oranna was keeping quiet. After their escape from the palace of Tlaanthothe, she had been ebullient in a way Csorwe found hard to stomach, but the closer they came to the Shrine, the more she withdrew into herself. Now that they’d arrived she was as rigidly tight-lipped and tense as Csorwe herself.
They walked down through the woods in near silence. Little grey birds sang in the branches of the pines, and once or twice they saw a fox streak across their path, a sleek ghost-white shape, to be seen only as it vanished.
Csorwe had no time for any of this beauty. From the memory of her disrespect to the Unspoken she had moved on to her most recent treachery, and felt sick with guilt.
“Shit,” she muttered, “I actually kneed him in the balls.”
“Not before time,” said Oranna, with a brief, thin smile. “I didn’t think you would do it, when it came to it.”
“Me neither,” said Csorwe. “He’ll come after us.”
“Not here,” said Oranna. “The Unspoken One knows Belthandros for what he is. I doubt he will ever willingly return here.”
This was no comfort to Csorwe. “The Unspoken One knows who I am,” she said. “I was here with Shuthmili and it remembered me.”
“Of course,” said Oranna. “You cannot think it will ever forget you.”
Csorwe shivered.
A bare prow of rock jutted out from the dark sea of evergreens, marking the Shrine of the Unspoken Name. Here below them were the narrow steps cut into the rock, leading up from the road in the valley below. Here was the plateau where little flowers grew between the flagstones. Here was the doorway into the hillside.
Oranna’s expression did not bear looking at. It was one measure of fear dissolved in a whole sea of anticipation. The light of dawn made her radiant.
“You’re really weird about this, aren’t you,” Csorwe muttered, to no response. It didn’t make her feel any better. You could be as brazen as you liked, but mortal audacity made no more difference to the gods than the buzzing of flies.
Oranna dropped down onto the plateau from above, and Csorwe followed her.
Approaching from another angle had made it almost possible to forget where they were. All of Csorwe’s shame and remorse were blotted out in an instant by terror of the divine. For the first time in eight years, she felt the true, close presence of the Unspoken One.
At first it was no more than an incurious tide of dark water. Once or twice it lapped at her, then receded, impassive. The absence was almost worse. Up ahead, the empty doorway yawned, and the Unspoken waited.
“I can’t,” said Csorwe. “I can’t do this.” She turned. In that moment it made no difference that she had lost everything and everyone else. She couldn’t face the darkness in the Shrine. “I have to go.”
“No,” said Oranna. “Why?”
“I didn’t want to die—I still don’t—I can’t do this,” she said, choking on the words.
“You will not die here,” said Oranna.
“I left. I abandoned my duty,” she said.
“The Unspoken One is merciful,” said Oranna, and she truly seemed to believe it. “This is a time of change, Csorwe. In such a time the duty that is imposed on you may not be the purpose that you are truly beholden to fulfil.”
“I—I left with Sethennai,” she said. Given the choice she would not have spilled out this much misery in front of Oranna, of all people, but she c
ouldn’t seem to stop. “And I don’t know if he was worth it.”
She had believed in him, so deeply, and for so long, but with every year that had passed, the life she had imagined had receded, like a shadow on the wall, always moving away. Whenever she had been happy—with the Blue Boars, with Shuthmili—she had given it up for him, a man who valued her as a sharp edge and gave away her secrets without even recognising what they were.
“Ah,” said Oranna. “Well, yes. Belthandros is, forever and in so many ways, a disappointment.” She smiled secretively to herself. The sun was still rising over the mountain and her eyes were filled with light. “A mistake to waste much soul-searching on that man. Remember your reasons for coming here.”
Csorwe couldn’t remember any reason for doing anything. She was cold and tired and for an instant it truly seemed as though she had come to this place as a castaway, thrown up on to a bare mountainside by forces she could not understand or control. Just following orders as usual.
Unfortunately, that wouldn’t wash any longer. She was here by choice. By choice, because she had made a terrible mistake and she needed to put it right. By choice, because Shuthmili mattered, even if she never wanted to see Csorwe again.
She told herself these things and felt infinitesimally braver.
They walked together toward the Shrine, and stepped through the door in the hillside, into the shadow.
“I assume you brought a light,” said Oranna.
Csorwe flinched, feeling strongly that it was a bad idea to talk in here.
“Don’t be silly,” Oranna went on, sounding more brittle and less natural than usual. “We want it to know we’re here. It’s not blasphemy if you’re all friends. Light, yes?”
“I thought you were a mage,” said Csorwe, rummaging in her backpack for the alchemical torch.
“And I thought you were supposed to be a competent operative— Ah. Thank you,” she concluded, as the torch bathed the chamber in a pallid, stuttery light.
It was as Csorwe remembered it: a large round cave, punctured with many passages that sank away into the mountain. In the middle was the pit, with the smooth notch for kneeling.
“We ought to have brought a calf,” said Oranna. “Well, no matter, you have plenty of blood.” On seeing Csorwe’s expression she took a step back. “That was a joke.” Her voice was shaky. Csorwe had never heard her acknowledge a mistake. It hadn’t occurred to her until then that Oranna might also be frightened.
Csorwe swallowed. “No more jokes,” she said. “Have you been here before?”
“No,” said Oranna. “I have not.”
“I’ve never been further than this,” said Csorwe. “Which way do we go?”
“Deeper,” said Oranna. “I don’t think it matters. The deepest point.”
They circled the pit. Csorwe remembered the protocol for conventional mazes, so they took the leftmost path. There was no sound but their own footsteps, their own breathing, and occasionally a drip of water like a glass breaking.
The tunnel split, and split again, into narrow channels that spread and converged at random, wide enough for one to pass at a time, and then only by sidling shoulder-first. Csorwe had the uneasy feeling that they were making no progress, that the paths were only turning further in on themselves.
“Lenition,” she said.
“Yes,” said Oranna. “Hold fast.”
The presence of the Unspoken deepened around them. It made no attempt to encroach on them. It didn’t need to. It was like walking into the sea, wading up to the waist and then up to the neck.
After a while, Oranna began to pray.
“The tongue is to be cut out, for the name of all that is praiseworthy is unspeakable. It is correct to seal the mouth and exult in starvation,” she said. The Litany of the Unspoken was not cheerful, but at least it was familiar. Csorwe thought Oranna was reciting it for comfort, until they heard the answer.
The voice came rustling out of the darkness ahead of them.
The eyes are to be put out, for there is no use in them. Mortal witness is not to be borne in sight but in annihilation.
Oranna looked up and smiled, as if greeting an old friend. “May we bear witness, for desolation is thy watchword.”
And at last the passages opened onto a great cavity, like vessels broaching the chambers of the heart. The light of the alchemical torch burnt low, smothered by the absolute darkness. Instead, they heard and felt the void before them as a change in resonance. There was no sense of freedom or release in the great open space, for something else was there, a paralysing thing, a weight that distorted the space around it.
Csorwe’s heart rattled in her chest. The distortion seemed to press down on her lungs. She struggled to get even a mouthful of air. In this room, in the deepest darkness of the mountain, was the throne of the Unspoken One.
The rustling voice faded. At first the chamber seemed very quiet, and then they heard the small, dry sounds that filled the space. Like the beating of the wings of moths, like the whisper of cloth on stone, like fallen leaves.
Oranna raised the light, and they saw that the throne room of the Unspoken One was not empty. All around the edges of the cavern, all waiting in rows on ledges and galleries, all turning to face the intruders, were the dead.
They were uncountably many. The crowds extended beyond the light of the lantern. None of them were taller than Csorwe. The white dresses were almost pristine—a little ragged at the hems—but the faces of the Chosen Brides of ages past had shrunk flat against their skulls. Their eyes were deep pits. Their hair had fallen like dry straw. Only their tusks—some bare, some capped in gold—were just as they had been in life.
Csorwe stopped short, speechless at the sight. So many of them—still dressed for the ceremony—and all so small, so thin—and all of them had died here when Csorwe had fled.
Even Oranna paused. As she did so, the revenants moved. Csorwe’s hand went automatically for the sword that was not there, and felt newly ashamed.
They were not being attacked. They were being welcomed.
The dead girls moved at a measured, ceremonial pace, stepping in formation into the centre of the room. They took their places in two columns that stretched on into the darkness ahead.
“The honour guard,” Oranna murmured. “Failed vessels. So many of them—”
The dead stood upright and unmoving, only shifting slightly to follow Csorwe and Oranna as they approached.
The presence of the Unspoken was everywhere: in the darkness, in the cold, in the empty eyes of the mummified brides. It seemed to have no source, fluctuating around them like wavelets on a still sea.
No—thought Csorwe—it was them. All of the brides were a part of the Unspoken. Sethennai had sent Csorwe once to the shallow lakes of Salqanya to harvest a certain anemone, a sensitive creature between flower and shellfish, with many fronds that moved in unison to taste the water. The dead girls reminded Csorwe of nothing so much as this. Appendages of some unknown and unknowable intellect. It was all of them.
They couldn’t turn back now. Bound together by the meagre light of the alchemical torch, they walked down between the columns. The entrance disappeared behind them, and the light seemed to shrink. All Csorwe could see was the ground just ahead, bordered by the pale skirts and bony ankles of the brides.
And then they came to the end of the room. They came to the throne.
It was a rough shape cut into the wall of the cavern, a deep door-shaped indentation at least thirty feet high. Sitting within it, like a white bird on a window ledge, was another bride, as shrivelled as the rest. A crown of dried flowers still rested on her thin hair.
As they drew near, Oranna made a noise, horribly loud in the silence of the chamber. A choke of suppressed grief.
“Ejarwa,” she said.
The girl on the throne watched her without expression.
“No, wait,” said Oranna, raggedly. “I was Ejarwa. You were Oranna. We changed places. You remember—”
> The girl closed her shrunken eyelids and opened them again, lizard-like.
“I was Oranna,” said the girl. She spoke in a soft rasp, carrying all the chill and all the weight that Csorwe recognised. A voice as cold and hard as iron. “I was Ammarwe. I was Serwen. I was Najad. I was Cwenna. I was Anakhrai—”
She stopped mid-word and blinked again.
“I am the Commander of Legions, the Knight of Abyss, the Overseer of the Eaten Worlds. I am that which has passed away and that which is yet to come. But you know me, as I know you. Ejarwa. Csorwe. What is it that you desire?”
It became clear that Oranna could not speak. Csorwe was going to have to do this alone.
“I—I most humbly ask a boon of the Unspoken One,” she said. “Knowledge. Knowledge of the present time. I am sorry—”
The throne-bride watched Csorwe, unblinking.
“You return to me, beloved Csorwe,” it said. “You recall your loyalty. To those who serve, the prophecy is freely given. What will you know?”
It would be so easy. It was always easy to take what was offered and not think about what they would ask from you, but Csorwe had played this game before. She no longer followed the Unspoken One. Her loyalty had never been freely given.
“No,” said Csorwe. “I do not serve.” Oranna flinched, and she felt the surge of the Unspoken One’s displeasure and incredulity as a physical, crackling rush. “I—I come here as a supplicant. With respect. But not to serve.”
The throne-bride said nothing.
“I’ll—” said Csorwe, faltering. “I’ll make a fair exchange. I’ll give my word. What would this knowledge cost me?”
“Your word is worth nothing,” said the throne-bride.
Csorwe felt a well of panic opening up somewhere beneath her, but she couldn’t let herself fall. She had no intention of pledging herself blindly ever again, and there was no point trying to trick or cheat the Unspoken. Oranna and Ejarwa had tried it and the god had claimed them both in the end.
Perhaps if she chose to return to the service of the Unspoken—if she did it deliberately—it might not be so bad. No, it was no use lying to herself. A lifetime serving the will of the throne-bride would be as lonely and rewardless as it had ever been to work for Sethennai. Instead of an empty room at the palace, a hollow grave here in the mountain, surrounded by her own shrivelled sisters.
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