The man’s scowl lapsed back into boredom, and he turned down the juncture, trailing a momentary skirt of illuminated stonework and scrolled carpet in his wake. And then blackness. Sanctuary.
“Dear, sweet Sejenus …” Dinch gasped.
“We must follow him,” Xinemus whispered, feeling his nerves gradually calm.
Witnessing the face, the sorcerous light, now made their every step sing with peril. The only thing keeping Dinchases and Zenkappa behind him, Xinemus knew, was a loyalty that transcended fear of death. But here, in this place, in the bowels of a Scarlet Spires stronghold, that loyalty was being tested as it had never been tested before, even in the heart of their most desperate battles. Not only did they gamble with the obscenely unholy, there were no rules here, and this, added to mortal fear, was enough to break any man.
They found the juncture but could see no light down the other corridor, so they inched blindly forward as they had before, following the limestone walls with their fingers.
They came to a heavy door. Xinemus could see no light seep around it. He grasped the iron latch, hesitated.
He’s close! I’m sure of it!
Xinemus pulled open the door.
From the drafts across their humid skin they could tell the door opened upon a large chamber, but the darkness was still impenetrable. They felt as though they were entombed in dread night.
Holding a hand before him, Xinemus stepped into open blackness, hissed at the others to follow.
A voice cracked the silence, stilled their hearts.
“But this will not do.”
Then lights, blinding, stinging bright and bewildering. Xinemus yanked free his sword.
Blinked, and squinting, focused on the figures congregated about them. A half-circle of a dozen Javreh, fully geared for war beneath blue and red coats. Six of them with levelled crossbows.
Stunned, his thoughts reeling in panic, Xinemus lowered his father’s great sword.
We’re undone …
Behind stood three of the Scarlet Magi. The one they’d seen earlier, another much like him but with a beard dyed in yellow henna, and a third, who from his very bearing Xinemus knew had to be the senior.
Against his crimson gown the man was more than pale; he was devoid of pigment. A chanv addict, no doubt. One small obscenity to heap upon all the others. About his waist he wore a broad blue sash, and over it, a golden belt pulled low to his groin by a heavy pendant that hung between his thighs—serpents coiled about a crow.
The red-irised eyes studied them, pained by amusement.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk …” From lips as translucent as drowned worms.
Do something! I must do something! But for the first time in his life, Xinemus was paralyzed by terror.
“Those things,” the sorcerer-addict continued, “that you clutch to protect yourselves against us … Those Trinkets. We can feel them, you know … Especially when they grow near. Hard sensation to describe, really … Kind of like a stone marble, pitting a thin sheet of cloth. The more marbles, the deeper the pit …”
The flicker of translucent eyelids. “It was almost as though we could smell you.”
Xinemus managed to sound defiant. “Where’s Drusas Achamian?”
“Wrong question, my friend. If I were you, I should rather ask, ‘What have I done?’”
Xinemus felt the flare of righteous anger. “I’m warning you, sorcerer. Surrender Achamian.”
“Warn me?” Droll laughter. The man’s cheeks fluted like fish gills. “Unless you’re speaking of inclement weather, Lord Marshal, I think there’s very little you could warn me about. Your Prince has marched into the wastes of Khemema. I assure you, you’re quite alone here.”
“But I still bear his writ.”
“No, you don’t. You were stripped of your rank and station. But either way, the fact is you trespass, my friend. We Schoolmen look very seriously upon trespass, and care nothing for the writ of Princes.”
Humid dread. Xinemus felt his hackles rise. This had been a fool’s errand …
But my path is righteous …
The sorcerer smiled thinly. “Tell your clients to drop their Trinkets. Of course, you may drop yours as well, Lord Marshal … Carefully.”
Xinemus glanced apprehensively at the levelled bolts, at the stonefaced Javreh who aimed them, and felt as though his life was held from a string.
“Immediately!” the mage snapped.
All three Trinkets thudded like plums against the carpets.
“Good … We’re fond of collecting Chorae. It’s a good thing to know where they are …”
Then the man uttered something that turned his crimson irises into twin suns.
Xinemus was thrown to his knees by a blast of heat from behind him. He could hear shrieking …
Dinch and Zenkappa shrieking.
By the time he turned, Dinch had already fallen, a heap of writhing char and incandescent flame. Zenkappa flailed and continued to shriek, immolated in a column of blowing fire. He stumbled two steps into the dark corridor and collapsed onto the floor. The shrieks trailed into the sound of sizzling grease.
On his knees, Xinemus stared at the two fires. Without knowing, he’d brought his hands up to cover his ears.
My path …
He felt gauntleted hands clench him, powerful limbs pin him to his knees. He was wrenched around to face the chanv addict. The sorcerer was very near now, near enough that the Marshal could smell his Ainoni perfumes.
“Our people tell us,” the addict said, in a tone which suggested that untoward things were best not mentioned in polite company, “that you’re Achamian’s closest friend—from the days when you both tutored Proyas.”
Like a man unable to fully rouse himself from a nightmare, Xinemus simply stared, slack-faced. Tears streamed down his broad cheeks.
I’ve failed you again, Akka.
“You see, Lord Marshal, we worry that Drusas Achamian tells us lies. First we’ll see if what he’s told you corresponds with what he’s been telling us. And then we shall see if he values the Gnosis over his closest friend. If he values knowledge over life and love …”
The translucent face paused, as though happening across a delicious thought.
“You’re a pious man, Marshal. You already know what it means to be an instrument of the truth, no?”
Yes. He knew.
To suffer.
Heaps of masonry nested in ashes.
Truncated walls, hedged by rubble, sketching random lines against night sky.
Cracks forked like blind branches chasing elusive sun.
Spilled columns, halved by moonlight.
Scorched stone.
The Library of the long-dead Sareots, ruined by the avarice of the Scarlet Schoolmen.
Silent, save for the small sound of scraping, like a bored child playing with a spoon.
How long had it scuttled like a rat through the hollows, crawled through the labyrinthine galleries hewn by the random plunge of cement and stone? Past entombed texts, wood-blackened and crocodile-scaled by fire, and once a lifeless human hand. Through a tiny mine, whose only ore was the debris of knowledge. Upward, always upward, digging, burrowing, crawling. How long? Days? Weeks?
It knew very little of time.
It shrugged its way through torn, animal-skin pages pinched by massive surfaces of stone. It heaved aside a palm-sized brick, raised a silky face to the clouds of stars. Then it climbed and climbed, and at last lifted its small, puppet body upon the summit of the ruin.
Raised a little knife, no bigger than a cat’s tongue.
As though to touch the Nail of Heaven.
A Wathi Doll, stolen from a dead Sansori witch …
Someone had spoken its name.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ENATHPANEAH
What vengeance is this? That he should slumber while I endure? Blood douses no hatred, cleanses no sin. Like seed, it spills of its own volition, and leaves naught but sorrow in its wake.
&nb
sp; —HAMISHAZA, TEMPIRAS THE KING
… and my soldiers, they say, make idols of their swords. But does not the sword make certain? Does not the sword make plain? Does not the sword compel kindness from those who kneel in its shadow? I need no other god.
—TRIAMIS, JOURNALS AND DIALOGUES
Late Autumn, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Enathpaneah
The first sound Proyas heard was the rush of wind through leaves, the sound of openness. Then, impossibly, he heard gurgling water—the sound of life.
The desert …
He awoke with a start, blinked sunlight from eyes that teared in pain. It seemed a coal flared red-hot behind his forehead. He tried to call out for Algari, his body-slave, but could do no more than whisper. His lips stung, burned as though bleeding.
“Your slave is dead.”
Proyas remembered something … A great bloodletting across the sands.
He turned to the sound of the voice, saw Cnaiür crouched nearby, bent over what looked to be a belt. The man was shirtless, and Proyas noted the blistered skin of his massive shoulders, the stinging red of his scarred arms. His normally sensual lips were swollen and cracked. Behind him, a brook sloshed through a groove that wandered between earth and stone. The green of living things blurred the distance.
“Scylvendi?”
Cnaiür looked up, and for the first time Proyas noticed his age: the branching of wrinkles about his snow-blue eyes, the first greying hairs in his black mane. The barbarian was, he realized, not so much younger than his father.
“What happened?” Proyas croaked.
The Scylvendi resumed digging at the leather wrapped about his scarred knuckles. “You collapsed,” he said. “In the desert …”
“You … You saved me?”
Cnaiür paused without looking up. Then continued working.
They drifted like reavers come from the furnace, men hard-bitten by the trials of the sun, and they fell upon the villages and stormed the hillside forts and villas of northern Enathpaneah. Every structure they burned. Every man they smote with the edge of the sword, until none were left breathing. So too, every woman and child they found hidden they put to the sharp knife.
There were no innocents. This was the secret they carried away from the desert.
All were guilty.
They wandered southward, scattered bands of wayfarers, come from the plains of death to harrow the land as they’d been harrowed, to deliver suffering as they’d suffered. The horrors of the desert were reflected in their ghastly eyes. The cruelty of blasted lands was written into their gaunt frames. And their swords were their judgement.
Some three hundred thousand souls, perhaps three-fifths of them combatants, had marched under the Tusk into Khemema. Only one hundred thousand, almost all of them combatants, would leave. Despite these losses, with the exception of Palatine Detnammi, none of the Great had died. Using the Inrithi caste-nobles as compass points, Death had drawn circles, each one more narrow than the last, taking the slaves and the camp-followers, then the indentured caste-menial soldiers, and so on. Life had been rationed according to caste and station. Two hundred thousand corpses marked the Holy War’s march from the oasis of Subis to the frontier of Enathpaneah. Two hundred thousand dead, beat into black leather by the sun.
For generations the Khirgwi would call their route saka’ilrait, “the Trail of Skulls.”
The desert road had sharpened their souls into knives. The Men of the Tusk would lay the keel of another road, just as appalling, and far more furious.
Late Autumn, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Iothiah
How long had they plied him?
How much misery had he endured?
But no matter how they tormented him, with crude pokers or with the subtlest of sorcerous deceits, he could not be broken. He shrieked and shrieked, until it had seemed his howls were a faraway thing, the torment of some stranger carried upon the wind. But he did not break.
It had nothing to do with strength. Achamian wasn’t strong.
But Seswatha …
How many times had Achamian survived the Wall of Torment in Dagliash? How many times had he bolted from the anguish of his sleep, weeping because his wrists were free, because no nails pierced his arms? In the ways of torture, the Scarlet Spires were mere understudies compared with the Consult.
No. Achamian wasn’t strong.
For all their merciless cunning, what the Scarlet Magi never understood was that they plied two men, not one. Hanging naked from the chains, his face slack against shoulder and chest, Achamian could see the foremost of his diffuse shadows fan across the mosaic floor. And no matter how violent the agonies that shuddered through him, the shadow remained firm, untouched. It whispered to him, whether he wailed or gagged …
Whatever they do, I remain untouched. The heart of a great tree never burns. The heart of a great tree never burns.
Two men, like a circle and its shadow. The torture, the Cants of Compulsion, the narcotics—everything had failed because there were two men for them to compel, and the one, Seswatha, stood far outside the circle of the present. Whatever the affliction, no matter how obscene, his shadow whispered, But I’ve suffered more …
Time passed, misery piled upon misery, then the chanv addict, Iyokus, dragged a man before him, thrust him to his knees just beyond the Uroborian Circle, arms bound behind his back, naked save for his chains. A face, broken and bearded, looked up to him, seemed to weep and laugh.
“Akka!” the stranger cried out, his mouth mealy with blood. Spittle trailed from his lips. “Bease, Akka! Beease tell them!”
There was something about him, an irksome familiarity …
“We’ve exhausted the conventional methods,” Iyokus said, “as I suspected we would. You’ve proven yourself as stubborn as your predecessors.” The red-irised eyes darted to the stranger. “The time has come to break new ground …”
“I can bear no more,” the man sobbed. “No more …”
The Master of Spies pursed his bloodless lips in mock remorse. “He came hoping to save you, you know.”
Achamian peered at the man as though he were something accidentally glimpsed—something merely there.
No.
It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t permit it.
“So the question is,” Iyokus was saying, “how far does your indifference extend? Will it bear the mutilation of loved ones?”
No!
“I find dramatic gestures are more effective at the beginning, before a subject becomes too accustomed … So I thought we would start by putting out his eyes.”
He made a circling gesture with his index finger. One of the slave-soldiers behind Xinemus grabbed a fistful of hair, yanked his head back, then raised a shining knife.
Iyokus glanced at Achamian, then nodded to his Javreh. The man stabbed downward, almost gingerly, as though skewering a plum from a platter.
Xinemus shrieked, the pit of his eye cramped about polished steel.
Achamian gasped at the impossibility. That so familiar and so cherished face, crinkling into a thousand friendly frowns, splitting into a thousand rueful grins, asylum amid so much condemnation, now, now …
The Javreh lifted his knife.
“ZIN!” Achamian screeched.
But there was his hanging shadow, smeared across mortared glass, whispering,
I know not this man.
Iyokus was speaking. “Achamian. Achamian! I need you to listen to me carefully, Achamian, as one Schoolman to another. You and I both know you’ll never leave this room alive. But your friend, here, Krijates Xinemus …”
“Beaassee!” the Marshal wailed. “Beeaaaaseee!”
“I am,” Iyokus continued, “the Master of Spies for the Scarlet Spires. No more and no less. I bear neither you nor your friend the slightest ill will. Unlike some, I need not hate my subjects to do what I do. You and your suffering are simply a means to an end. If you give me what my School needs, Achamian, your friend will become useless to me. I’ll order his ch
ains removed, and set him free. You have my word as a Schoolman on that …”
Achamian believed him, and would have given anything if he could. But a sorcerer two thousand years dead looked from his eyes, watched with a horrific detachment …
Iyokus studied him, his membranous skin moist in the unsteady light. He hissed and shook his head.
“Such fanatic stubbornness! Such strength!”
The red-gowned sorcerer whirled, nodded to the slave-soldier holding Xinemus.
“Nooooo!” a piteous voice howled.
A stranger convulsed in sightless agony, soiling himself.
I know not this man.
The nameless orange tabby froze, crouched, his ears pricked forward, his eyes fastened on the debris-strewn alleyway before him. Something crept through the shadows, slow like a lizard in the cold … Suddenly it dashed across dusty sunlight. The tabby jumped.
For five years he’d skulked the alleys and gutters of Iothiah, feeding on mice, preying on rats, and when he could, scavenging rare scraps discarded by men. Once he’d even eaten from the corpse of a fellow cat that some boys had thrown from a rooftop.
Only recently had he started dining on dead men.
Every day, with a piety born of his blood, he padded, crept, and prowled along the same circuit. Through the alleys behind the Agnotum Market, where the rats nosed garbage, along the ruined wall, where the dead weeds and thistles beckoned mice, behind the eateries on the Pannas, across the temple ruins, then through the labyrinthine slots between the crumbling Ceneian tenements, where sometimes a child might scratch his ears.
For some time now, dead men had started appearing along his track.
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