Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar

by Frances Mason

  To the east and west of his window the city was mostly dark, though torches and braziers marked the main avenues with dots of light, and occasional lanterns burned in windows in the tangled minor streets.

  Lanterns burned in the Labyrinth of Leaves too, which extended in a two mile arc to the south of the city. The twins had told Augustyn much about that place, though he suspected there was much more they had remained silent about. The Labyrinth was a city in itself, where nuns dedicated to Kemthi, goddess of wisdom and prophecy, and monks dedicated to Pulmthra, the god of learning and science, maintained the greatest library in the known world, a maze of rooms filled with shelves and scriptoria and stairways and passageways that turned in ways that tricked the eye, where it was said an intruder would sooner be lost to life than find the tome he sought. Even the librarians, monks of the god of learning and nuns of the goddess of wisdom, were said to sometimes get lost in there, wandering for days before recognising some sign above an archway or codex in a shelf. Citizens of Thedra cynically speculated in sniggering tones that when a lost monk or nun was found dead from starvation they would be flayed and their skin used as parchment in the scriptoria, a final dedication to the deity they had worshipped without learning enough wisdom to find their way. He hadn’t asked the former brothers about that rumour but he suspected it was nonsense. The fact the rumour had many variations, one about monks, another about thieves, another about prostitutes, and too many others to mention, suggested a well cultivated myth. Whether cultivated more by the Orders of the Leaves or by the citizens of Thedra was a moot point.

  Augustyn turned back to his study. In the centre was an equilaterally triangular table. The surface of the table was tessellated black and white, and on the triangular tiles were the pieces of the three players, green, red and blue. Battle Board, a game of strategy between three players that had originated in the ancient empire of Kemet, when the rule of that now decaying city had reached all the way from Seltica in the west to Vrongwe in the east, from the jungles of the south to the forests north of Ropeua. That had been thousands of years before, according to the learned twins, but still the legends of that greatness survived and, along with the legends, this game, perhaps not quite the same as the ancient Kemetese emperors had played. The rules were simple enough. Each piece had its possible moves: king, queen, regent, heir, arkon, abbot, lord, knight, pawn. The aim was to reduce the two other kings to your own pawns through a carefully balanced combination of destruction and alliance. Any player might either fight or join forces with another. If the other two kings became your pawns simultaneously you became the king of kings and won the game. He was now playing a game against Jared and Javid, but as twins they completed each other’s thoughts as they did each other’s words, so strategy against them was unusually difficult, even more than their remarkable intelligence would have made it. He reached out, lifted one of the green pawns. So insignificant a piece, and yet…he placed it back down in a new position. What would they make of that?

  Chapter 2: Jared and Javid: Thedra

  “What do you see?”

  It was the question Javid Pentafax always asked. His brother, Jared, did not answer, only showing Javid his snow white tonsure, matched by the one Javid had retained, though neither was any longer a Brother of the Leaves. Jared’s eye was pressed against the lens. His only interest recently had been what he could see through that lens. The matters of this earth mattered less to him than the swirling spectra and coronae of the moon. But who was he to judge him? After all, he sought to reach that celestial world himself, not merely to see it, but to walk on it. That world obsessed them both, though they sought it in different ways. He looked around the observatory, littered with half completed experiments: an armillary sphere with a delicate clockwork that would match the movements of its rings to the movements of the heavens, if only the final piece could be inserted, at the heart of the clockwork around which all its parts had been assembled; retorts and alembics, spirals of glass to improve distillation, flasks to collect residues, and trays to dry them. There were the leftovers of completed experiments also, like the spare parts of those tiny metallic birds, driven in part by clockwork, in part by runic magic, which Jared had constructed for their powerful and wealthy patron.

  Everywhere about the observatory were crystals and precious gems; sapphires and diamonds and rubies and emeralds, quarts and amber and jade; suspended by magic in the air, all marked with runes that pulsed with their own light – anything to divide further or recombine the images divided in the giant crystal embedded in the mechanisms of the dome above. And all those rays of light, by skilful calculation – extending along lines that ran back and forth, through and beyond the stones, passing through sequences of inscribed runes which spelled out, in the first language, the names of clarity as the gods might write them – would converge again at the centre of the observatory, in a polished silver dish. Into this dish Jared was looking, through yet another crystal, a lens no larger than his eye, balanced over the centre of the dish on a tripod, though not directly above it, since dish and tripod were rotated to face the astronomer. The great crystal above was set to run along rails in the semi-spherical surface of the observatory’s dome, and made to face, through the complex clockwork mechanism, the moon, now full and clear in the midsummer sky. The observatory was a work of genius, which they had designed and built together, but his brother’s obsession had become such that Javid was left to construct his own masterwork alone.

  Outside the observatory Javid traced the sign of the rune of following over a flat rectangle of volcanic granite. Where he had traced a flame burned brightly. Then he blew gently on it. A ghost of the image rose from the fiery original, dividing again and again until there were hundreds of flaming images of the rune dancing in the air. With a flick of the wrist he scattered them and they fell on the granite rectangles the workmen had winched up to the tower gate earlier and laid out in a long line. It was an expensive operation, quarrying the stone, carting it up along the Low Way to Bridge Gate, across Thedra Bridge, through North East Quarter and South East Quarter to South Gate, then winching it up to the top of the southern tower of South Gate. Javid and his brother were only poor philosophers. They could not have achieved any of this without the patronage of The Duke. Now Javid drew and replicated a rune of command, casting them across the stones, careful to entangle each with its accompanying rune of flight. The final stone had no rune yet, and he knelt down to inscribe it, but it was more difficult than the others. A rune of flight would not be sufficient, nor would a rune of command, nor a rune of union, nor any two of these. He must combine all three, and the runes and their entanglement must be precisely calibrated, or the results could be disastrous. The stone might shoot up into the air without direction or catapult over the city, crashing down like a lightning bolt from the mighty hand of Saruthra, god of the skies. Or it might obey his will so precisely that any vacillation would make him, from a high point, plummet to the hard stones of the tower. Or it might interpret union in a way he didn’t intend and turn his flesh to granite when he stepped onto it, or allow him too much movement and let him slip when he was high above the tower. The ways a triple inscription could go wrong were many, and the ways it could go right were few. It took a lifetime’s learning to choose the few from the many and greater skill not to smudge one rune in the inscription of or combination with another. Each must be well defined but work in concordance with the others, and every added rune added to the difficulty exponentially. He completed the inscriptions, the runes writhing like snakes in a pit, dangerous to any but the snake charmer. Then he inscribed another rune, a simple single rune, across his chest, one of the runes of air. As he did so air began to pour from his lungs with every inward breath, as if it overflowed from some internal spring. Stepping on the granite rectangle he commanded it with a thought, and it rose slowly. The other stones rose to follow. He floated towards the centre of the spiral stair and the stone rose, followed by the others in an orderly line, l
ike the rungs of a ladder without sides. Up he rose, quickly enough to reach his goal, but not like a stone shot from a catapult.

  As he rose the city spread out below him, covering much of the lake that filled the dormant volcano’s caldera. Thedra, city of wonders, built by giants in a time when giants submitted to men of great sorcerous arts. A city in which ordinary and extraordinary men from all corners of the Realm of Ropeua mixed: merchants and franklins, guild masters, journeymen and prentices, monks of the god of war and nuns of the goddess of love, whores and courtesans and catamites, thieves and assassins, actors, beggars, jugglers, card sharps, wizards, knights who spoke of chivalry and mercenaries who only cared for coin, commoners who struggled to survive and nobles who lived in opulence. The city rose on pylons from the caldera lake in two massive rings of stone that seemed a challenge to Fulkthra, terrifying god of fire and earthquake, or perhaps one day a sacrifice to his hot anger. Javid could see the outer ring of the main city clearly now, with its four great gates marking all points of the compass, each flanked by two great towers. East of North Gate was The Temple, looking across Thedra Market to Thedra Bridge. Thedra Bridge’s wide way was lined with houses and shops and guild halls, where corrupt city guards would sooner take a bribe from a thief than arrest him yet would protect a business if the owner paid the price. At the outer end of the bridge heads of traitors, or those falsely accused of treason, rotted on poles in the summer heat, eyes bulging or liquefied, jaws slack, as if their mouths gaped with the scream of their dying torment. Beyond the bridge, just below the lip of the caldera, was North Bank, its lamps and torches tiny dots of light when seen from on high, haunt of thieves and actors and whores, with its playhouses and baiting pits and brothels and gallows. Within the outer ring of Thedra, where the pylons met the lake was a ring of water, across which slender bridges arched from the inner towers of each great tower gate to the inner ring. There was another slender bridge, the Bridge of Kings, longer than the others, arching from a door in The Temple, behind the statue of Thulathra, king of the gods, to the king’s chapel behind the throne in the great hall. For the Inner Ring, huge as it was, a thousand yards in diameter, was nothing but the king’s court. Its towers and spires soared towards the stars, though not as far as Javid’s Star-way, and vast pleasure gardens filled the spaces between expanses of multi-coloured marble, soft pinks and blues and greens not clear from this angle or at this hour, veined with gold and silver; and roofs of tiles painted silver and gold. From the palace of the inner ring all of Ropeua was ruled. Some of the towers were almost as high as Javid now was, so that he could not see the circular lake at the heart of the inner ring where he knew from his youth that on sunny days gondoliers rowed gondolas with awnings of cloth of gold, and minstrels sang to the harmonies of lutes or other more exotic instruments, giving pleasure to king and queen and courtiers.

  And still he rose higher, and higher, and higher, until the torches and lanterns of the city, that had been like yellow stars below, seemed to wink out, and the golden and silver roofs of the palace, glowing in fantastic spectra from the prismatic light of the moon, merged into a scintillating rainbow ring, which shrunk to a point, then vanished.

  Up here he couldn’t smell the lake. Up here the four winds ruled. The southerly from the mountain passes blew cold and fresh far beneath his feet, and gusts that even eagles would not know, of air too thin to breathe, cooled his face. Down below the city stank. Not with the usual stench of city life, of piss and shit emptied lazily into streets from chamber pots when the refuse carts were late, or of rotting food and human waste on the carts or near the collection points from which it was dropped to the barges, but with a stagnant smell that no mountain breeze would lift or summer rain wash away. The lake smelled putrescent too, and not merely with the smell of the refuse barges or the vast stinking refuse plateau beyond the caldera rim in summer. It was as if the river Selta were punishing Thedra for some terrible sacrilege. The power of cleansing was gone from his waters.

  Javid knew those waters flowed sluggishly, oozing over the cliff into the lake at the southern end of the caldera, like molasses poured from a barrel. There was no joy in their movement, but why Jared did not know. He had tried scrying, descending to the caldera lake and drawing many runes of showing, but the waters resisted, and the usually still surface rose in waves, as if angry at his meddling. He had asked the Sisters of the Labyrinth what they knew, but for all their prophetic skills they could not find the cause either. The abbess herself only said, “The river laments, but will not speak his loss.” What could Seltathra, god of the great river, have lost?

  He reached the top of the spiral Star-way and, positioning himself two steps beyond the final stair, waited for the next stone following to settle in place. As it did he inscribed a rune of finishing, which settled deeply into the granite, and wiped away the ephemeral runes by which he had transported the stone. Then he inscribed two more runes, carefully entangling them in a way unique to their function. This way he continued, adding stairs to the Star-way, each seeming to float upon the air. And at each step he would inscribe two more runes, one matching the second on the step below, the next to match the first on the step above. When he had finished the sun was rising in the east. Up here he could see the curvature of the earth, up here, without magic, the air would be too thin to breathe, even for the hill-men of the Pecta tribes, or the giants in the hills above Thedra. Up here the whole of the kingdom stretched out before his eyes, and much that lay beyond. From here he could see that even the western sea was not endless, but that distant continent he saw beyond it was not what he sought. He looked to where the moon was now less than half a world, severed by the horizon. That was his goal. That sphere of swirling spectral colours was what he aspired to reach, one day.

  Chapter 3: Alex: Thedra

  Alex Quickfingers heard the now familiar voice calling, musical but full of meaning. Though he did not know its source he was drawn to the sound, and every dusk as the sun set over the western peaks, capping them in shades of gold and violet, his eyes turned to the tall tower outlined against their distant heights. It was a tower no ordinary thief who wished to live would dare enter, where even the greatest of War’s Monks would lose heart. In the day the tower seemed always in shadow, no matter how bright the sun. As night fell, from the high window just beneath the conical roof, the only window, a strange light would emanate; not bright and joyful, like the fireworks calling back the goddess Dawn to chase away the longest, darkest night at midwinter; but pulsing like a sick heart, bleeding crimson streams into the darkness. A light that would pollute healthy shadows. He had resisted answering the call, shuddering despite the summer warmth whenever he saw that light, though every night he seemed to have strayed closer to the tower. He had occupied himself with the healthy, honest occupations of a “low lawyer,” a thief in the local thieves’ cant.

  Alex was eighteen years old, at least if his father had remembered his age right and told him the truth of it. He was small, less than five and a half feet tall, but strong for his size, with wiry, supple muscle. He had cropped short brown hair, dark brown eyes under beetling bushy brown brows, strong chin, and aquiline nose and dusky skin more like a southerner than a native commoner of these parts. He wore brown doublet over brown tunic, brown breeches and hose, and supple brown leather boots, scraped and dirtied to dull the polish. Most of this was hidden beneath the brown cloak he wore, with its conveniently loose sleeves and spacious hood, which gave him the appearance of a mendicant monk of Ilsa. The resemblance was apposite, since Ilsa was the god not only of beggars but also thieves.

  Despite Alex’s age, and though he was not a member of the guild, he was already a master thief, or “master at law” as was said in thieves’ cant. Alex could pick a pocket hidden beneath several layers of clothing, even from one of those special “pickpocket proof” belts that held the money sacks right against the rich man’s skin. He could cut a purse and replace its weight so that the most sensitive target would not
feel a thing. He could filch with sleight of hand an item from a merchant’s stand if the merchant was looking suspiciously right at him. He could pick a lock with the ease of a master locksmith. He could sneak up behind a paranoiac. He could blend into shadows like a bad smell into the tanner’s village. If there was any way to relieve a man of the burden of success, Alex was its master, and would not hesitate to take what was rightfully someone else’s. His only weakness as a thief was his smugness; he would occasionally become complacent because of his skill.

  Alex silently crouched in shadow now, watching one of the members of the “House of the Hand,” the Thedran guild of thieves. Randy Barber was his name, though Alex usually just called him Bastard. A thuggish thickset man whose hood, when drawn over his head, barely hid his many times broken nose. He did not hide in the shadows like Alex. He was a “mangler,” as the guild manglers were known. His father had cut hair for a living, but Randy was more likely to cut throats. On his more gentle days he would happily bash innocent young criminals who refused to pay the guild what they thought was a sufficient share of their takings. Alex was pretty sure Bastard bashed young thieves regardless, just for the fun of it.