“How warm they must be in those cloaks,” said the young censor, yawning hugely.
In addition to the cloaks, every dancer wore a mask of paper pulp, gaudily painted in accordance with the role. The Dragon’s mask had an articulated jaw and required two dancers to operate the hinge. Tsaldu watched the dance from a sense of obligation rather than enjoyment. The High Warden was paying close attention to the drama, leaning forward over the barrier with the enthusiasm of a much younger man.
At last the dancers retreated to a bench near the edge of the arena, just behind the lower barrier. The executioner came out, with suitable fanfare, and the Emperor blessed his blade.
Tsaldu listened attentively as the Most High Immaculacy gave the sermon. Then they brought in the first lot of condemned criminals, a group of arsonists who had killed twelve people. He did his best to pay attention to this too. This was why he did his job, after all. To ensure that goodness was protected and wickedness was punished.
The arsonists came up one by one and were destroyed. Tsaldu thought of the murals in the Inquisitors’ private chapel, where—among other things—tiny sinners were painted at every stage of their judgment and torment. The artist had used a hair-thin brush to mark down the features of each sinner in individual detail, though none was larger than Tsaldu’s thumb. Art was an improvement on life. The sun was so bright that he would have had to squint if he had cared to see any of the arsonists’ individual features.
Other criminals faced the penalties for their various sins. The announcer gave a detailed description of the murders, the abductions, the dark heresies. Noon approached, and one of Tsaldu’s colleagues elbowed him.
“It’s your one next, isn’t it?” he said. Tsaldu bridled at the unwanted contact, but nodded.
They brought Qanwa Shuthmili in alone. Her hands were bound in silver bracelets to keep her from channelling.
Shuthmili didn’t struggle as she was brought in, nor did she laugh and kiss her hands to the crowd as some did. The crowds quieted a little, perhaps surprised by how young she looked, how small and harmless. Tsaldu had seen the dead at the Traitor’s Grave, and knew better.
Shuthmili stumbled along in her chains as though her thoughts were elsewhere. They had not yet sprinkled fresh sand, and the ground was wet and dark with spilled blood.
The announcer seemed delighted to reach the main attraction. He rolled out the charges like barrels down a ramp. “Condemned for traffic with the powers of evil and for disgracing the office of Adept, for basest corruption, for the destruction of Quincuriate personnel, and the premeditated murder of a High Inquisitor of the Church!”
“That seems like rather a lot,” said the young censor.
They made her chains fast to one of the posts in the middle of the arena, and retreated.
There was now a pause in the proceedings. It took a few minutes for the Mouth of Radiance to be prepared. The Inquisitors shivered with satisfaction as the Mouth shuffled into the arena.
In the harsh sunlight all that could be seen of the Mouth, at first, was a tall manlike figure, wrapped in a bulky tar-black shroud. The shroud was belted in with chains of iron and silver, and six handlers in formal Inquisitorate livery held the ends of these chains, moving in a cautious halo around the Mouth as it hobbled across the bloody sand.
Everyone else—guards, priests, announcer, executioner—slipped quietly back behind a spelled barrier. Qanwa Shuthmili did not even look up.
An uneasy silence crept up through the arena. Nobody wanted to cheer the Mouth of Radiance. It did not feel like a good idea to attract its attention.
Unlike most people, Tsaldu knew how the Mouth had been created. Spinel Quincury had devised the monster as a parody of its own existence: many fragmented minds tethered into a single indestructible body. The chaff of a half-dozen failed Quincury coadunates, swept up and compressed into a single miserable hunger.
The handlers released the fastenings of the chains and stepped hastily back. Slowly, as though awakening from sleep, the Mouth struggled out of its shroud and advanced on the condemned woman.
It walked awkwardly, slowly, like a wounded spider. Its ankles were chained together, and its wrists were shackled behind its back. It should have been tall, but it was bent over into the shape of a fishhook. Braces of leather and steel were strapped to its neck and waist to support its frail body.
What most people saw, though, was the face. Tsaldu did not know what Spinel had done to a mortal body to create the Mouth, and he was glad of it. The Mouth of Radiance wore a mask and hood that covered its eyes and brow. The nose was nothing more than a shattered smear of cartilage. The jaw had been wrenched open, beyond what bone and sinew should be able to withstand, dragged down to hang open on the breastbone, like a locket with a broken clasp. Both lips were cut and peeled back, revealing two distant crescents of clean white teeth.
It did not speak. It had no visible tongue. Its throat was an empty well of ichor. As it moved across the sand it left a heat haze in the air, and its bound hands twitched.
Tsaldu was not certain whether the Mouth could understand orders, whether it had been instructed to immolate Qanwa Shuthmili in particular, or whether it simply destroyed any living thing that it perceived. He had seen it before and he knew what to expect. The cloud of dust that smelled like molten metal. The terrible jaw unhinging. And the screaming, of course.
The rumour was that the Mouth took a fragment from every mage it killed, that it drank up the dregs of their agony and grew stronger. Tsaldu thought that was probably just a ghost story.
Shuthmili, who had not moved until now, stood up straight and watched as the thing limped toward her.
A small commotion broke out a few levels below them. At first, Tsaldu assumed it was the crowd. A little rowdiness was to be expected. Usually, if the family of the condemned started making a fuss, the guard would come along to settle them, but it couldn’t possibly be the Qanwa making trouble. Their box was only a little way from the Inquisitorate box, and, after all, Qanwa Zhiyouri had been one of their own, far more so than Qanwa Shuthmili. No, they were all sitting solemnly, with the exception of Chancellor Sethennai, who had sat up very straight in his seat.
It wasn’t the crowd. The disturbance was among the dancers, gathered behind the barrier at the lowest level. One of the servants of the Dragon Zinandour, dressed in black, had broken away from the rest. She dropped over the barrier, landing lightly on the border of the sand, and darted toward the condemned woman, swift and sharp as a hunting-hawk taking its prey.
As she moved she tore off the paper-pulp head. It rolled away, and somehow, as the Wardens rose hastily and drew their weapons, Tsaldu found himself watching its dizzy arc, turning and turning on the bloody sand.
“Get down, Inquisitor!” said one of the Wardens, tightening an arm around Tsaldu’s middle and dragging him down behind the rail.
As he went down, he caught sight of the Qanwa box. Chancellor Sethennai leapt up from his seat and ran toward the barrier. He seemed to be pulling on a pair of gloves.
“Csorwe,” said Sethennai. His voice was not loud, but Tsaldu heard it as clearly as if Sethennai had been standing beside him.
Sethennai raised his hands, and time stopped.
* * *
Csorwe’s boots hit the sand. She ignored the stink of drying blood, the scream of metal on metal as the Mouth’s handlers released its chains. The crowds faded, burnt out by the glare of the sun. There was only her own speed, her own fury, and Shuthmili standing there bound to a post, hanging her head. Csorwe sped across the arena like a stone skimming a pond, and called Shuthmili’s name. She looked up and seemed to see her.
“Csorwe, no,” she said, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “Please, no. Leave.”
“It’s all right,” said Csorwe. She put out a hand and touched her shoulder. Under the rags they had put her in, Shuthmili was trembling. Csorwe was shaking too, for that matter, out of fear and battle-readiness and the sheer relief
of seeing Shuthmili alive. If she had got it wrong, if it turned out this was the end, then so be it. There had been many opportunities to die in Csorwe’s short life, to break on the rocks of ignorance or loyalty or recklessness. But this was the end that she had chosen.
“Go,” said Shuthmili, licking dry lips. “I can’t watch you die.” The Mouth loped toward them, starved and implacable. It was close, now—ten feet—eight feet—Shuthmili’s wrists shook, bound to the post, each locked within a silver bracelet.
Csorwe took her other shoulder and grinned. “We’re not going to die today,” she said. She pulled the Reliquary of Pentravesse from under her robe and looped the chain around Shuthmili’s neck. Shuthmili looked down at it, too numb even to be puzzled.
“Trust me,” said Csorwe, then turned to face the Qanwa box and waved. “You want it back, Sethennai?” she called, although there was surely no way he could hear her. “Then come and take it back!”
Many things happened at once, or perhaps only one thing. A man-shaped shadow came down from the Qanwa box as if all the tiers of the Grand Arena were only a flight of steps.
The Mouth of Radiance froze in mid-stride. It turned its long neck toward the shadow, and lifted its jaw as though trying to speak. Then, with a cry that could have been relief, it disintegrated into a column of grey sand. The column became a cloud, and blew away, as Belthandros Sethennai stepped down into the arena.
There was a flash of light and heat—the sand of the Arena melted and froze to a single pane of volcanic glass—and then the glass illuminated chrysoprase-green, and they fell through.
They hit the ground. Csorwe struggled upright, catching her breath, and hauled Shuthmili after her. They stood on the shore of a gleaming sea. The light of a poisonous sun sparked on the waters. Up ahead, above them, was a monstrous tower, a mountainous spike of black rock and glass.
Csorwe didn’t know what she had anticipated. Not this.
“I know this place,” said Shuthmili, faintly, clinging to Csorwe’s arm as though she trusted nothing else in this world. “I’m certain I know this place—”
Csorwe knew it too. They had been here before, chasing Oranna. This was the Lignite Spire, the throne and earthly mansion of Iriskavaal, as it had once been, as it always was and always would be. Even a sleeping divinity lives always in the present moment.
* * *
Here is the Spire in earnest. It is built from petrified wood. The light and rain of ancient days are imprisoned in rings within rings.
A broad flight of steps leads up to the door, flanked on each side by paired statues.
At the foot of the steps the first pair of statues show two mortal figures obscured by undulating leechlike forms. These figures are supported in midair by the seething parasite life around them, so that they seem to bend in agony or ecstasy.
Then follow others, all troubling: angels erupting with flowers, robed and skeletal things, warriors armoured like insects, whose stone mouthparts seem to thresh the air.
All else fails, and only the Spire is inalterable.
* * *
“Keep hold of the Reliquary and nothing here can harm you,” said Csorwe, walking toward the steps. “He won’t hurt you.”
She took Shuthmili’s hand in hers, wrapping Shuthmili’s thin fingers round the box, hoping fervently that she was right.
“You think this impresses me?” said Csorwe, shouting into the wind that whipped around the spiny turrets. “You think I’m afraid of this? Come out and talk to me!”
You will return to me what is mine. It was his voice, clear enough, but amplified many times, as though it was part of the wind and the corrupted sea.
“Come out and take it back!” she called, though her voice sounded pitifully small and piping.
The doors of the castle were dark wood, carved all over with knotted snakes and polished to a shine. They did not open.
I am here. You will return to me what is mine.
“I’ll destroy it,” she said, clasping Shuthmili’s hand and the Reliquary in hers. Shuthmili didn’t move; her eyes were squeezed shut.
Then you will die here. Both of you. The Lady of the Thousand Eyes will crush you in her coils.
“But you’ll be dead,” she said. This was the gamble. Belthandros Sethennai was the lever that could shift the world, and the Reliquary was his fulcrum. “You’ve lived a long time, but if I destroy your Reliquary you won’t live to see it happen. Isn’t that true, Pentravesse?”
The doors opened. Beyond them was a formless darkness, and on the threshold was the wizard, in his robe of green brocade.
“I should have known,” he said. “You were never one to be taken in by dramatics.”
He looked just as he always had, but he was lying. The castle was not a disguise. It was closer to the truth than this living body with its sad smile and its sympathetic eyes.
“I am now as I have always been,” he said. “I see you must be upset, but I had my reasons for hiding my true name. I had forgotten it myself, you know. There were long ages of searching in the dark, and occasional sparks of light. I never misled you about anything of importance.”
“I don’t care. Whoever you are, you can die,” said Csorwe. “You’re more afraid to die than we are.”
“Yes, I can die,” he said. “I know betrayal. But I never expected this. Not from you, Csorwe.” For a moment the only thing she wanted was to return to the palace of Tlaanthothe, to the way things had been, to her work and her routine and Sethennai’s regard. “I took you in. I have never treated you unkindly.”
She tightened her grasp on the Reliquary. “Sure. That seems about right,” she said. “Call me ungrateful.”
“I made you what you are.” He came no closer. The doors of the castle had closed behind him, and he did not take his eyes off her and the Reliquary.
“You made me your sword-hand, you mean. Your instrument.”
There was more to say. She had learned to kill for him. She had learned cruelty on his account from every angle, in theory and in practice. Every part of her that did not serve his purpose had been cut away. A great wave builds over hundreds of miles, gaining force and speed as it rushes toward the coast, and Csorwe’s anger was something close to this. Still, if there was anything to gain from becoming such an instrument, it was the power to channel and divert such a feeling. She restrained herself.
“Csorwe,” he said. “If I had known you disliked it … Do you believe I never cared for you? I gave you your life.”
“It wasn’t yours to give!” she said, and bit her tongue, reining in her anger again. She had nothing to gain from convincing him. She only needed him to do what she told him.
“You know this is unfair of you,” he said.
Csorwe laughed. It was almost funny. “Is it?” She took the Reliquary from Shuthmili and pulled at the chain, which broke, hundreds of links scattering like sand. “It’s unfair that you need me to give you back your life.”
“This is all very clever—” he said, and saw that Csorwe was about to open the Reliquary, and winced.
Here was the throne, just as Tal had told her. Here was the earthly mansion. She cracked open the lid of the Reliquary. Inside, carefully laid among its wrappings, like a gigantic jewel, was a living, beating heart, as fresh as the day it was cut out. She still had her sword, but if she needed to she could just as easily crush the heart in her hands.
“Guess it was all a lie, then,” said Csorwe. “All that arcane knowledge.” She wasn’t surprised. Pentravesse had never intended to leave a legacy. It was not in his nature to give anything away for free.
“I believed it myself,” he said. “When you live so long it’s so easy to forget.”
“The thing is,” she said. “The thing is, I could ask you for anything. If I wanted to be Chancellor of Tlaanthothe. If I wanted your palace. If I wanted your ship. You’d give me anything you have. There’s nothing you care for more than this. There’s nothing you wouldn’t do.”
P
erhaps that had been the real lesson she had learned in Psamag’s fortress. Beyond fear, beyond pain, she had cared for Sethennai more than life. Despite all his pride and power, there was nothing the wizard loved more than his own immortality, and that was a weakness.
He moved toward her as though to seize the box, then thought better of it. “What is it you want?”
The last trace of warmth had faded from his voice and from his face. This was a business transaction, and it was better that he understood that.
“I want you to take us out of here,” said Csorwe. “I want you to take us somewhere safe.”
“How sensible,” said Belthandros, almost managing to sound bored. “Will that be all?”
“No,” said Csorwe. “Then I want your gauntlets.”
“You want—” He laughed, incredulous. “Why? You can’t possibly have any use for them.”
“You wear them and you stay in control,” she said. “They protect you. The power doesn’t hurt you. Tal told me everything.”
“Ah,” he said. “You’re looking to live forever, are you?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t care about that. I bet you can make yourself some more, but I don’t want you coming after me for a good long while.”
“Other than that, what do you think they can possibly do for you?”
“With the greatest respect, sir, that’s none of your fucking business,” said Csorwe.
“And then? As you’ve so eloquently expressed, you have me on quite a leash. Do you have it in mind to keep me on your staff?” Every word as sharp and clear as a shard of ice.
“No,” said Csorwe, with undisguised disgust. “When we’re far away from here, when we’re safe, when I’ve got your gauntlets and I know you’re not going to turn me into a statue or send me to hell—then you can have it back.” She shut the box with a snap, and he winced. “That’s all. It’s done. Come on.”
They turned, the three of them, an awkward group clustered around a single point, and walked down toward the door that had appeared in the sand.
The Unspoken Name Page 47