by Ben Galley
There was no answer, just the fidgeting of silk and ringed fingers.
‘When the city sees a better life, they will take it. All they need is to glimpse it for long enough,’ Heles breathed. ‘You and I both know this city is rotten. How much longer can you go on surviving off its corpse? I know I’m tired of it. Dog tired. Aren’t you?’
She was finished. Her argument had been made. Egos were stroked; her words were spent. Heles let their echoes die and waited for some time to see if her gamble would pay off.
Cinders fell as the director tapped out his pipe. They showered a soldier, but the man didn’t shift an inch. Some switch or lever was pulled, and with a rattling of chains and cogs, the director’s pillar began to lower. The mechanism moved at an infuriatingly leisurely pace, and by the time the director came waddling through the trident points and into the light, Heles was close to tapping her foot.
Bronze silks washed about him. Gold chains hung around his neck, some reaching to his waist. They sported jewels and gems, just like his fingers. The man’s hair was a thin stripe across a bald head, as if a wagon had run a tarred wheel across his skull. His cheeks were pudgy, much like the rest of him, and his movements were sluggish, and yet there was a fierce gaze in his eyes. Warrior-like. Bloodlust.
Heles stood tall as the director approached, soldiers flowing around him.
‘And your bargain?’ he asked of her.
‘Stand with the empress, and as payment for her debt, you can help her build a new Araxes. I may not be Empress Nilith, but I’ll speak for her, even if she doesn’t want me to,’ said Heles, matching his avid stare.
‘Too costly.’
‘Too afraid of a risk, Director?’
‘What do you gain from this? Loyalty has a price.’
‘Peace,’ Heles spat the word. ‘And some fucking quiet.’
After a brief glance around the hall to each of his fellow directors, the man took a sharp breath. ‘We will hold your soul as assurance, should you be tricking us. You’ll spend the rest of your days in Kal Duat.’
Heles swallowed the lump in her throat, wondering how much she trusted Nilith. How much she was willing to sacrifice for a faint dream of a different world. In the end, she thrust out a hand for him to shake.
‘You’ll see,’ she whispered.
Chapter 23
From Beyond the Grave
Worshippers of the old ways are like woodlice. You see one, two, perhaps a dozen, and assume they are all that infest your abode. But prise up a floorboard and you will soon discover the writhing masses hiding beneath your feet.
From ‘On The Origin Of Gods’ by writer Geer Burjali, who mysteriously vanished after its publication
Drip. Drip. Drip. It filled the dark smoke of my dreams: a constant dripping and trickling of water over bare stone, where no moss dared to grow.
I heard it then, as the dullness faded: the shuffling of countless feet. The rising moan of the disillusioned dead. A voice cried out behind me, and a cold waft rushed passed me.
No…
Blue shapes appeared in the grey smog, barging me aside as they ran. Towards what, I did not know, but my legs moved unbidden along with them. Soon enough I was rushing through crowds, like one clueless beast amongst the herd, fleeing an unseen predator flitting through the grass. I looked behind me, but saw nothing but the faint blue outlines of other ghosts, mouths open and crying out.
I refused to be here again. Trapped beneath the earth for eternity. Surrounded by the moaning dead.
Five points of white light glowed above me, and I charged for them, feeling cheated. A hill rose up beneath me, and despite my ghostly form, the effort drained me. Inky water spilled down the slope’s craggy, obsidian surface. I was soon crawling on hands and knees, spitting curses at the lights whenever I found a moment. The other ghosts had flowed around the hill, leaving me alone. A blue river coursed below me.
‘It’s hopeless!’ I yelled to the stars. ‘Fucking hopeless!’
The stars began to flicker, as if they burned too hot.
‘I tried to help! I fought hard! Killed! And for what? This fucking place!’
One star fizzled out, closely followed by a second. I took a stand on a rock, feeling the rivulets of freezing water pushing against my feet. Their flow was increasing. I heard the pounding of a waterfall somewhere in the darkness.
‘Who knows what the gods want, eh? I certainly have no idea, but I know it’s not my best interests!’
A third star was extinguished.
‘Maybe the Cult was right!’ I roared. ‘You hear me, Oshirim? Maybe you did get too greedy, and betray your kind!’
A fourth.
‘Maybe you deserve this flood!’
Caltro… a voice boomed above me, thunder to the storm I heard growing. The smoke above me cleared, revealing the impending fangs of colossal stalactites.
The final star burned yellow, then orange, then as it flickered to red, the blackness claimed it, and the endless cavern fell dark. Even the glowing river of dead below me died away, leaving me alone, a blue candle against the night.
With a shockwave that threw me to my backside, a roiling wave of scarlet light tore through the darkness. The dark was dragged back like a black cloth from a table, sucked into a single point of absolute nothing. It sat between the dead stars, now grey husks against this new backdrop of fire and light. When all but the last of the dark had been consumed, the vortex collapsed in on itself until it glowed a fierce crimson. There came a searing heat as its great eye turned on me.
The water cascaded around me. I shielded my eyes, only to see a towering wave of black water spilling down the cliff above me. I could do nothing but hold my breath through old habit, and curse the dead gods for giving me such a calamitous thing as hope.
Dripping filled my ears again. An incessant patter of water on bare stone. There was a ringing of chains, too, and in the darkness of my closed eyes I wondered how this endless cavern could become any direr. I wanted to curl into a ball, burst into light and blink out like a star.
‘Caltro,’ called a woman’s voice. This voice did not shake the skies like thunder. In fact, it was rather hoarse, and close by.
I tensed, feeling no trickle of ice-water beneath my ribs, lying as I was on the stone. There was no waterfall. No storm. Only dripping.
The chains rattled again. ‘Caltro!’
My eyes cracked open to find, not slick black rock, but dusty, straw-covered sandstone. My hands glowed in front of my face, and I found thin, copper-core manacles around my wrists. Weakly, I pulled at them, and heard my own chains rattle in their fixings. It was not over.
‘Thank fuck,’ I breathed.
I heard the voice again. ‘They must have hit him harder than I thought.’
‘Fucking buffoon hasn’t realised he’s a prisoner yet.’ Another woman’s voice this time, and that stoked me into action.
‘Oh, I have,’ I replied to whoever had insulted me, and with much dizziness and difficulty, I propped myself up onto my elbows to look around.
The chamber was a simple circle of sandstone with a heavily barred door, and I knew instantly it was a prison cell. The roof was distant and the walls devoid of windows. There was only a skylight, set high in the stone wall. What meagre sunlight it let in bounced from carefully arranged polished blocks of stone, making it zigzag around the chamber. It showed me the faces of my cellmates, all of whom stared at me. It was quite the gathering.
Empress Nilith sat cross-legged, arms splayed by a chain and a yoke. One hand was blood-stained and clenched. The other hung limp and glowed blue. She still wore her rags, as I did. The slatherghast’s poison was spreading; I saw the black veins creeping up her neck, reaching for her ears.
Beside her was Farazar, trying to murder me with his gaze alone. He too sat on the floor, his arms and hands wrapped up in lengths of chain.
At his side, I recognised Pointy, dangling point-first from a single piece of rope. He swung ever so gently, lik
e a failing pendulum.
Directly below him, lying in the soulblade’s shadow, was a small creature. It took me a moment to register it was a falcon, and a dishevelled one at that. The bird looked half dead, with feathers all out of place and bloody gashes on his speckled breast. His neck was cocked at an uncomfortable angle, but there was a glint in his yellow eyes that told me a soul lay within him. A strangebound.
To my right were three ghosts, and though I recognised them, it didn’t temper my shock to see them here, chained to the wall like me. The closest was the ghost of Boran Temsa, his head propped up on one knee. Next to him, surprisingly, was Sisine, empress-in-waiting, with a great gash across her neck and her face covered in claw marks and a gloomy scowl. I saw now why the falcon’s claws were caked in blood. It appeared I had missed much since my fall from the Cloudpiercer.
Last, but far from least, was a ghost with a misshapen face and skull, bent arms, and broken legs. Her ribcage was a shallow grave, and she seemed… flatter, somehow. And oh, how Hirana glared at me, her killer.
‘Well, what a delightful party this has turned out to be.’
Any further words and questions I had in mind were drowned out by a burst of shouting from all sides. It seemed they had been waiting for me to wake up.
‘You despicable murdering half-life, Caltro Basalt!’ Hirana screeched, words still difficult after her recent binding.
‘All that work! How was I supposed to know the Nyxwell was dry?’
‘I’m glad!’
‘I will kill you over and over for your treachery, falcon!’ That answers that question.
‘Like I told you before I cut your throat: fuck you.’
‘You conniving bitch of a mother! Living under my nose for so many years after I banished you?’
‘I don’t know why I even got involved with any of this!’
‘Murderer!’
‘Happy now, Mother?’
‘Traitor!’
Their shouting dried up as they realised I was silently shaking my head at them all. I felt like I was trapped in a wagon with a bickering family and screaming children. I did not care about them, not even the talking falcon; I was just elated to not be under the earth, away from the jaws of water and fire. I couldn’t deny that the nightmare, if I could call it that, had shaken me. A black flood… I would have dwelled on it longer had the old widow not challenged me.
‘What are you so smug about, locksmith?’ Hirana snapped.
‘Happy to be half alive, and not in some dark cavern,’ I said, immediately recognising the flinch in hers, Temsa’s and Sisine’s faces. I knew they had seen it, too. Even the falcon nodded soberly at me. ‘You know what I’m talking about. The so-called afterlife. The great lie.’
Hirana was far from happy about my survival. ‘Unimportant. You murdered me, you foul creature!’
‘You should have given me my half-coin.’ I was hardly in the mood to argue with the woman, especially now she had no flesh about her, and was finally on my level.
Temsa interjected on his own behalf. ‘You should have left well enough alone, old bag,’ he hissed, setting off the argument once more. It was strange seeing his lips move, and hearing breath and voice coming from his dismembered head. His spare arm gesticulated on his behalf.
‘You’re one to talk, Boran Temsa!’
‘So you’re Boran Temsa,’ Nilith muttered. ‘I expected you to be taller.’
The soulstealer’s face darkened as the empress continued.
‘This is nobody’s fault but Farazar’s!’ cried Nilith. ‘You’re all blind to it. We’re all here because of his ineptitude.’
Sisine spoke up. ‘I want answers, Mother! Father!’
Nilith raised her chin, staring at Sisine’s wounds. I could see the marks of tears down her soiled face. Perhaps it was at the death of her daughter, or perhaps because of failure. ‘Seeing as we’re all gathered here together, why the fuck not?’
Sisine stabbed the ground with a blue finger. ‘How long has the Sanctuary lain empty?’
‘Four or five years,’ Nilith answered. ‘Annoying, isn’t it? Thinking that he outwitted us?’
I swore Sisine was turning a shade of purple. I busied myself by looking for a stiff bit of straw.
‘And how long have you known?’ asked the empress-in-waiting.
‘A year, perhaps.’
‘And all the while you’ve let him ruin this empire, driving it to chaos?’
‘Pardon me, but I didn’t see you marching across the Duneplains and Long Sands to fetch him. And it’s strange how such chaos should erupt the moment I leave the city, daughter.’
‘That is their fault,’ Sisine hissed at Temsa and her grandmother.
‘I strongly recall being summoned to the Piercer for a conversation all about chaos, Princess,’ said Temsa. ‘You got what you wanted. And what you deserve for all your scheming and double-crossing.’
‘Rich, coming from a cultist like you.’
‘Cultist…?’ Temsa’s head spluttered. ‘They approached me. Betrayed me in the end like everyone else!’
‘You’re the one who let them into the Core Districts once more, Sisine. But it is moot. Farazar brought this upon himself the day he banished me. Isn’t that right, son of mine? You two simply got in the way,’ Hirana growled, still staring at me. I evaded those white eyes. She constantly shuffled around, as if loathing the feeling of vapour instead of skin.
Farazar scoffed. ‘And gladly so, I say. Your cunning and ambition know no bounds, Sisine. And you, Mother. Apparently not even the sky can hold you, it seems. I should have had you killed like Father.’
‘You could have tried.’
‘Where is Etane, daughter?’ Nilith asked.
Sisine narrowed her eyes. ‘You do not call me that. You have no right. I raised myself.’
I saw Nilith flinch as that insult nicked a nerve. I’d found my piece of straw, and while I watched the bickering, I shuffled closer to the wall, clasped the lock, and began to waggle the straw in the simple lock.
‘And Etane is beyond the grave. Danib Ironjaw saw to that. Etane Talin proved himself a traitor in his last moments, though I bet you already knew that, seeing as he was your shade all along.’
‘Somebody had to keep an eye on you. I see I was wise to do so, what with the riots, tals and tors murdered en masse, and a Nyxwater shortage, of all things. How did you manage that? You want the throne, Sisine, but you’re not fit to sit upon it. None of you are.’
‘I’ll fucking second that,’ said the foul-mouthed falcon, much to my surprise.
Hirana rattled her chains. ‘And you are, Nilith? What has all this been for? Just so you can claim the throne for yourself?’
‘And what is that sorcery, making you half-alive, half-shade?’ Temsa demanded.
‘A long story, is what it is, but it makes me more alive than any of you. Alive enough to take the throne and change Araxes for good.’
‘She plans to set them free,’ Farazar growled. ‘Every half-life.’
Laughter erupted from Temsa and Hirana. Sisine just boiled, as if her entire future had just been reduced to cinders before her. Nilith sat straighter, enduring their mockery like a cliff endures the sea, though I could see in her eyes a weakness. A tiredness come from fighting too long, too hard, and for it all to come to naught in a sandstone cell.
‘Madness!’ cried Sisine.
‘Everything seems like madness when attempted for the first time, daughter,’ Nilith whispered.
Hirana was outraged. Her smashed face contorted with rage. ‘This is what you get for marrying a foreigner, Farazar!’
‘You would have murdered me anyway, Mother!’
‘He’s the murderer!’ Hirana yelled at me.
Silence fell as eyes turned on me. I answered it with a simple click of the lock. My manacle sprung free.
‘You’re all murderers,’ I said calmly, though I wanted to shout it in every one of their faces. I didn’t know whether it was the stress
, the haunting, or the soldiers’ clubs, but I felt broken. Tired. ‘Every one of us. Even me, and I came to this city a thief, yes, but not a taker of lives. This city’s changed me, just like it’s changed and warped and corrupted all of you. You play this great game of yours even if it kills you, and yet you all lose in the end. Whether it’s the knife, indenturement, banishment, or just simply forgetting what it’s like to have a soul. Or humanity. You lose. None of you are innocent.’
‘Thanks,’ said Pointy in my head.
I met every one of their scowls even as I tackled the second lock. ‘With the exception of the sword. He didn’t really have a choice. The talking falcon I don’t know.’
‘He’s guilty all right,’ muttered Sisine.
‘You are far, far from innocent. You can blame each other all you want, but look where it’s got you. Dead and in the dirt. You all play along because it gives you an excuse to be cruel and to do as you please. You breed hate and fear. Celebrate callousness. Life has become worthless, not a miracle or magic, and nobody has given even a moment in the last thousand years to think whether things could or should change. None except this woman.’
They took a moment to stare at each other as I gestured to Nilith. The empress kept her eyes on me as I broke open the second manacle and got to standing. It felt strangely good to look down on them all.
Sisine tried to spit at me, but forgot her ghostly form. By the way she shook, I wagered she was far from happy with it. ‘I refuse to be lectured by a Krass thief who has never owned a soul in his life!’ The words, although malformed by her fresh binding, were damning enough.
I threw up my hands in exasperation and pointed at Hirana, Sisine and Temsa. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you all got what was coming to you. Killed. Chained up. Captured by…’ I looked around, confused by the sunlight all of a sudden. ‘Who’s in charge?’
As if they’d had ears pressed up against the door, waiting for the perfect dramatic moment, the locks slid in their brackets, and in swept Enlightened Sisters Yaridin and Liria. Gone were the monkish crimson robes, replaced instead by red cloaks. They wore dark steel breastplates etched with glyphs, kilts of mail, and greaves. Swords hid under the scarlet folds; I saw the tips of their scabbards. The sisters’ bald heads were bare, their glow bright and their eyes shining. They did not look victorious, or magnanimous, but outraged.