by Gregory Ashe
Chapter 73
Ilahe’s injured arm throbbed, but she raced along behind the gray creature. It leaped farther every time, as though something chased it on. Or drew it. They had rounded the temple now, and the creature landed on tree limbs that cracked and, more often than not, broke under its weight, although this did not seem to bother the creature. Always it landed high enough that Ilahe could find it again, in spite of the tall grasses and unnatural growth of wildflowers that blocked her sight. Breath like fire in her lungs, Ilahe wondered again why she followed the creature. All she knew was that her instincts told her to keep following. Something familiar about its face.
The grasses grew just as thick under the trees, in spite of the shade that broke the heat, but Ilahe found the creature easily. Fingers—claws—buried deep in a tree trunk, a hundred paces ahead. She stumbled toward it, cursing the Paths and the impossible fertility of the land. Everything was green and bright and fresh, filling her lungs with life, and it pressed in on her like a weight, a hundred times tighter than the Iris—if the Iris were a womb, this was the spider’s web.
Between one step and the next, Ilahe found herself standing on stone, the grasses and flowers following the slabs of rock like a curtain. She drew a deep breath. Without the enclosure of the vegetation, the cool air brought momentary relief. The creature dropped onto the stone, a few feet away, and a thud traveled up Ilahe’s legs. It gave her a long, blank look, and then darted behind a pile of rocks.
Arm aching—it must be broken, for the pain had not eased—Ilahe drew one sword again, praying that the salt and blood would affect the creature. With careful steps she made her way around the pile of rocks.
The mouth of a cave met her. Fresh boards, unweathered by sun or rain, covered a portion of the opening, and a crude attempt at masonry marked the edge, but most of the cave’s mouth stood open. Whoever had begun to block up the cave, he had left the job undone.
A click of stone on stone sounded in the darkness, and Ilahe’s heart sank. The creature was in the cave already. Waiting for her. But why? What did it want?
Above her, Ilahe could make out the great walls of the temple, and the curve of the dome against the darkening blue of the sky. The creature had led her here for a reason. To take her into the temple compound? It was possible. But why? The question came back, again and again, but Ilahe had no answer. If the boards were any evidence, though, there was someone who did not want people using this tunnel, and that was all Ilahe had to go by. It was going to have to be enough.
As she crawled over the low barrier, Ilahe bit off a prayer of thanks to the solars. She would not pray to them, ever again. But, staring down at the bundle of torches she had found, Ilahe could not repress a smile. At least she wouldn’t have to follow that creature in the darkness. If it tried anything—well, she still had the cam-ad.
Lit torch in her good hand, Ilahe followed the creature as fast as her injured arm allowed. Each movement sent a jolt like lightning through her elbow, and so Ilahe took even steps, trying to soften the impact. The stone walls, rough and uneven, rose a good arm’s length above her head to meet the roof of the cave, although in parts, the ceiling disappeared above her as the wall surged up. In places, long gouges marked the floor—five lines, regularly spaced—and once, along the edge of a tunnel, something had punctured the grey stone. Ilahe grimaced, wishing she could draw a sword, but holding the torch kept her good arm occupied. Hunting was not a skill that women learned in Cenarbasi, but she did not need to study hunting to know that she was seeing the tracks of something. An animal, perhaps, if animals left marks in stone.
Always the creature—its dull skin almost indistinguishable against the gray stone—stayed at the edge of her torchlight, or perhaps a few paces beyond, waiting for her to come close before sprinting away again. Those empty eyes tracked her progress with detached scrutiny.
Sound, distorted by the stone and darkness, brought Ilahe to a stop. She pressed against the wall of the cave. Throw the torch down and draw her sword? If the torch went out, she would be lost, unless she were lucky enough to find it—and light it—again while blind. But if the eses caught her before she could draw the sword . . . Well, if they did, Ilahe still had the cam-ad. Gripping the torch, she stepped toward the sound.
After a dozen paces, Ilahe realized she could make out the far end of the tunnel. Light, from somewhere else. The sounds were louder here, clearer. Grunts and shouting under the bright clang of metal. Ilahe nestled the torch in a cleft of one wall—to keep it upright and, she hoped, burning—and drew one of shimmering pink blades. In the darkness and the torchlight, the pink metal swam with pinpoints of fiery light. Crouching, Ilahe slunk toward the end of the tunnel.
It turned abruptly at the end, opening up onto a cave whose ceiling was lost in darkness. Light almost blinded Ilahe—great lanterns swung from water-slick stone pillars—but she could make out massive stones, boulders really, that dotted the chamber, gray stone dark with blood in spots.
A man raced in front of her, the edges of his outline blurred with speed. Dust and chips of stone whirled into the air, making Ilahe cough, but she could not tear her eyes from the man. He leaped into the air, soaring towards one of the stone pillars. Instead of crashing into it, as Ilahe expected, he landed horizontally, for half a heartbeat, and then pushed off—flying through the air of the cavern.
A group of men in chain, blades shimmering in the lantern-light, clustered together atop one of the boulders. The blurred figure crashed into them—his figure solidifying in the last paces—and a death-cry rang in the cave. The eses had been bowled over, and the sarkomancer—Ilahe assumed that’s what he was—had regained his feet. Before the eses could reach him, he threw himself off the boulder, his form blurring as he gained distance on the salt-blades.
Ilahe’s mouth twisted. She had no desire to fight another sarkomancer—not after her encounter with Ayde. The sounds of more fighting rang out from somewhere else in the room, but she could not find the source. Nor did she see the creature. With a hiss of frustration, Ilahe scooted forward a few more inches, glancing around the room. Where was it?
As she glanced to her right, Ilahe’s heart almost gave out. She jerked back. The stone gray face hung motionless, less than an arm’s reach away, staring at her with expressionless eyes. The face was so familiar, but Ilahe could not place it. Pressing the back of her good hand against her lips, Ilahe struggled not to let out a second, angrier shout. By the blackness, what did it think it was doing?
After a dozen heartbeats, the creature’s head disappeared, and Ilahe slid out into the cavern, eyes searching for eses. The cluster on the boulder had regrouped—one fewer, this time—and the sarkomancer darted from boulder to boulder. Ilahe’s eyes could barely track him. A sarkomancer fighting the eses. It did not make sense to her, especially not during the High Harvest, why the servants of the gods-made-flesh would fight each other. Some struggle among the priests, perhaps. So long as they did not notice her, Ilahe did not care.
A second tunnel opened up just a few feet from where Ilahe had emerged. Where the creature had gone. Ilahe stepped inside, grateful, and worried, to find it as well lit as the cavern. The tair’s guards controlled these caverns, and they were fighting among themselves. If it truly was infighting, then it might work to Ilahe’s benefit—they would be too busy fighting each other to interfere with her rescue. If it was something else, though, then Ilahe could be walking into a situation worse than she had imagined.
Still, there was nothing to do for it now. She had trusted her gut in following the creature, and it was too late to go back. Daye could already be dead, and Ilahe had no time to spare. Tasting dust and chalky stone at the back of her throat, Ilahe entered the lighted tunnel, sword still held in one hand.
It was easier to follow the creature now, although he ranged farther ahead. Lanterns sat along the tunnel—they were not hung, and so Ilahe assumed they were impromptu. More evidence that the eses’ presence in the caves was not
planned. More tunnels—some lit, some not—branched off from the path Ilahe followed, but the creature did not deviate. Deeper and deeper it led her. Dust gritted between Ilahe’s teeth, pressed down on her tongue; she had found the abundance of life, the sheer fertility of the Thirteen Paths, overwhelming, oppressive, alienating. This closed world of stone and darkness, though, was infinitely worse, and more than once Ilahe had to remind herself of the rainbow shimmer of the Iris, of the feel of the salt breeze on her skin, to quell her rising panic.
A reverberation, and the distant click of stone, woke Ilahe from her thoughts. Screams followed a heartbeat later. Fighting ahead. Ilahe eased her cramped hand on the hilt of her sword and hurried forward, her arm throbbing with each step. Something to take her mind off the tunnels. More quickly than she realized, Ilahe arrived at the mouth of the tunnel.
For a moment, she could only stare. The cavern that met her gaze was larger than anything she could have imagined—the far walls were lost in the distance, the ceiling hidden by total darkness. Bonfires burned throughout the room, but they were spaced so far apart, and the room so vast, that they shone like angry stars, rather than illuminating the room.
The creature squatted in the distance, barely visible in the light of the closest bonfire. Ilahe made her way toward him, grateful that he scurried forward, keeping away from her. Closer to the bonfire, Ilahe made out the shapes of men—eses, she saw—arranged in formation. She crept closer.
The eses, armed with nets and hammers, stood in regular lines, forming two boxes—one nested inside the other. Ilahe stared at them, confused. To judge by their stance, they expected an attack, but Ilahe saw no one else. Perhaps a sarkomancer, hidden by his speed. Yet their positioning was strange—why not spread out with salt-blades? Why hammers, which lacked the shimmer of salt-infused metal?
At that moment, with a series of cracks, three dull, gray shapes flew down from the darkness, landing among the eses. The eses reacted with precision—nets flying, hammers swinging—but they were too slow. The gray creatures moved so quickly. Eses toppled, screaming, as the gray creatures ripped them open with bare hands. After a handful of heartbeats, two of the gray creatures darted off, their speed allowing them to outdistance the eses. The third clawed frantically at the net that held it, but the eses—ignoring their dead—seemed to have the situation under control. Those with hammers moved in and, with a precision that shocked Ilahe, began to bring their hammers down on the creature. The sound of metal on stone, followed by great splintering cracks, filled the air, but the creature never let out a sound.
Ilahe retreated a few steps into the darkness, bile and the tang of fear coating her mouth. What were those creatures? What had she been following? She turned her head and saw the creature, less than a dozen paces away, watching her. They moved as fast as sarkomancers and killed and died in silence. What could do that?
It continued to watch her, and Ilahe, heart in her stomach, stared back. She had followed it this far, and if the eses were any sign, this was a place controlled by the temple. Perhaps she was near where the victims were held. Perhaps she was under the temple itself. The too-flat clang of metal on stone continued to ring.
After long moments, Ilahe stepped toward the creature, and it shifted forward a few paces—not far now, thankfully, for Ilahe could barely make it out in the darkness. Slowly, her arm throbbing with each step, she followed it through the vast chamber, skirting the bonfires that seemed so welcoming and yet so distant. As they drew closer to the far wall, where another bonfire burned, Ilahe realized that what she had taken for a large patch of shadow along the far wall was actually an archway. The smooth, fitted stones—barely visible in the flickering light of the bonfire—showed that it had been constructed by men, even if nature had provided the initial opening.
The archway was vast, and Ilahe did not want to think what passed through it. She had not seen a god-made-flesh, but the size of the archway made her tremble. Once again the magnitude of her initial arrogance pressed down on her, the way it had when she first felt the call of the street harvest. She had come here thinking to kill a god; what madness! Shrugging off a tremble, Ilahe crept forward, glad that she had only to free Daye and escape this mad city.
She hurried forward, heedless of the edge of the light, when a shout broke the stillness.
“Stop,” a voice commanded.
Eses emerged from the darkness, moving in their double-box formation, and one in the lead, with long blond braids, pointed a hammer at Ilahe. Her heart pounded inside her, and she cursed herself. Blackness take her, she was so close. The creature was nowhere to be seen. Ilahe stood up straight and tossed back her braids, wincing as the cool air of the cavern found the sweat on the back of her neck, trickled between the black mourning cloths she had tied all those months ago. Her arm wounded, facing superior numbers—there was no help for it. She would have to use the last cam-ad. And she would lose her best weapon.
As they drew closer, Ilahe could make out more details. Fair-haired, some of the men as wide as she was tall, the eses were packed with muscle, and all carried both net and hammer. The one in the front, his cheeks covered with a blond down, lifted his hammer as he stepped toward her.
“Tair bless us,” he said with a smile, “a Cenarbasin.”
“Told you they’d send folk,” said another esis—a lantern-jawed man near the back. “Spies and assassins. I knew something wasn’t right when word came down, knew it.”
“Shut your mouth,” the downy-cheeked one said. He squinted at her; the bonfire was behind the eses now, and the man’s own great shape cast a shadow of Ilahe. After a moment, though, he rolled his fingers along the shaft of the hammer. “Tair and Father take me,” he said. “It’s a woman.”
“What?” said another esis. Ilahe did not look to see which one. Her eyes remained fixed on the one in front of her. She already had her blade bare; she could take this one, at least, before the others reached her. And then they would know she was not a woman. She was a weapon.
“It’s a woman, by the Father’s glory,” the down-cheeked esis said. “Drop the sword, girl, and lie down on the ground. We won’t hurt you.”
Someone chortled. The lantern-jawed man.
“I know what eses do to women,” Ilahe said, her voice thick. Anger or fear, she could not tell which. “You can’t please them, so you beat them. Are those hammers a nice compensation,” she glanced at his crotch, “for something missing?”
A smile tugged at the esis’s mouth, and he dropped the net and gripped the hammer with both hands.
Ilahe brought her hand up, ready to smash the cam-ad, to send slivers of light and heat inching through her flesh. Something caught her eye. Movement in the darkness, gray barely visible through the shadow. A click—so close it sounded right next to her—and then a gentle thud that ran through the packed earth.
The creature she had followed—gray skin, tattered clothes—landed in a crouch between her and the first esis. It straightened, and for the first time, Ilahe was close enough to examine it. The skin was rough and pebbled, as though pinched by perpetual goose bumps. Its fingers ended with sharp claws, stained dark from blood or soil, Ilahe did not know. She caught a whiff of it, cool, dry against the roof of her mouth, like turning over a stone in summer.
The esis scrambled back, face paling, but after two steps he stopped. The other eses surged forward, but the down-cheeked man raised a trembling hand and stared.
“Serbe, that you?”
Ilahe stood, watching. Confused. The esis acted as though he knew the creature before her, and the name he had spoken sounded familiar to Ilahe. She had heard it once, somewhere.
“We never heard anything after you left with Tozu for the Atasi. What—what happened?”
“Tair fend, Galh, he’s a gloried wight, don’t you have eyes?” Lantern-jaw said.
The down-cheeked esis started and flushed. “It’s not true, is it, Serbe? You were just supposed to wait for some ‘bow-blood, come back aft
er a few weeks. Say something—say you’re not a wight.”
Ilahe stood up straight, as though struck by lightning. The Atasi. What the blind Khacens called the Danma Mountains. Where she had first fought a sarkomancers. As though it had been yesterday, Ilahe remembered the heat of the sun, the thin, dry air of the mountains, the smell of leather and sweat. A man who lay dying, killed by his friends, and begging her for burial.
The wight—she had heard Lantern-jaw call it such—turned for a heartbeat, empty gray eyes staring at her. She remembered that face pale and sweating and twisted with fear. And she had walked away from it, mocking the man’s superstition. It would kill her now—she deserved nothing less.
In one easy movement, the wight turned and sprang. It slammed into the down-cheeked esis, the chain shirt ringing in the still air, and the esis gave a scream. As the two figures, one of stone, the other green and mail and dark red blood, rolled across the stone, the other eses sprang into action.
Heart hammering, Ilahe turned and ran. She could not bear to watch, did not dare stay and risk the eses turning on her as well. Blindness and blackness take her, that wight. It had followed her all the way from the Danma. Why? What did it want?
No answers came. Ilahe sheathed her sword as she stumbled forward, through the archway. The creature had led her here, had protected her against the eses. She ran down the massive tunnel, each stride sending jolts of pain through her arm, her breath heavy and hot. The darkness grew around her as the bonfire receded, but Ilahe ran, and as the last red twinkle faded, she saw light ahead.
Ilahe stumbled out of the tunnel into another vast chamber. The walls and the roof were lost in darkness, but each step, the rumor of echo from her movement, told her that its dimensions were, if anything larger than the last cavern. Light came from ahead of her—a pit, or a depression in the floor. It was hard to say. Raised voices broke the stillness, and Ilahe crept forward.
Although the shouts continued, Ilahe forgot them for a moment as she reached the edge of the pit. A pit, perhaps, but it was like calling that foreign sun a candle. This was terrace after terrace descending down to a small square of earth. The terraces were strangely uneven; the lines drew Ilahe’s eye, seemed to lead into impossible angles. She sucked in a breath and forced herself to look away, but there was something compelling about the design. She had studied mathematics as one of her skills, and she thought she could almost make out the pattern of the terraces.
The air, sharp and acidic, burned her nostrils, and underneath rode something else, foul, like carrion or rotting fish. It came from the pit, an invisible cloud. Ilahe covered her mouth with her good hand and started making her way around the edge of the pit. Great lanterns hung at various places along the terraces, and more lined the long stairs that led down to the heart of the pit. More light than she had seen in days, it felt like.
Shouts again, this time with fear, and then two figures flashed through the air above the pit, blurred and writhing with the unnatural speed of sarkomancy. Ilahe reached the steps and crouched. No reason to draw attention to herself if the sarkomancers were still fighting.
The two blurred forms struck one of the terraces hard, throwing up clods of soil. A heartbeat later, they were at it again—flickering through the air, leaping back and forth. At times the lantern light caught on metal, but it was so fast that it shone like lightning. Moving at such great speed, the battle seemed more like a dance, for Ilahe could not make out the individual feints or parries—only smooth, sweeping lines of motion in the yellow light.
Then, one of the figures disappeared, and the other hovered on one of the terraces, as though hesitating.
With a cry of triumph, the second shape flickered back into existence—behind the one hesitating. Ilahe sucked in a breath when she saw the pale skin, the smooth white hair, the cold expression.
Ayde thrust with a dagger, so long it was almost a shortsword, and the blurred figure collapsed, turning into a stout, bearded man who fell forward, the dagger glinting in his back as he dropped onto the next terrace and lay still.