by Alec Hutson
She peered where he had indicated, but the murk that had covered the ocean since the dawn was impenetrable.
“On a clear day, we would be able to see the edge of the barbarian lands. That coast is claimed by the terrible empire of Kesh. Do you know of it, Lady Cho?”
“I have heard stories. I cannot believe them to hold much truth.”
“Oh! But you should, my lady! I have only spent a few days in their cities of white clay, but I can assure you that the most incredible tales you have heard are indeed true. All men and women must go veiled, to show their subservience before their Lonely God. They have creatures that look like horses, but with two great humps upon their backs. And their emperor, the padarasha, ascends to the throne after proving himself the best in all Kesh at playing tzalik, a game which I’m sure you’ve seen the youth of Shan enjoying in their shameful indolence. I have even heard,” the captain lowered his voice, leaning closer, “that if the first-born child is a girl, a family will bring her to one of their dark temples and –”
Cho Lin slipped her hand from her long sleeve and held it up slightly, and the captain instantly ceased his babbling. “I am not interested in the barbarism of Kesh.”
The captain’s ruddy cheeks flushed, and he bowed in apology. Before he could withdraw, however, Cho Lin spoke again.
“Tell me about the Watcher. Do you truly think we will see it today?”
The captain bobbed his head. “Indeed, Mistress Cho, this fog cannot hide—look!” He pointed off the starboard side of the junk, forgetting his manners in his excitement. By uttering a command to one of her station she would have been expected in Tsai Yin to demand his topknot cut off as punishment, or at least have had him beaten.
But that was not who she was. She played the part of the Shan noble only because it was expected of her here.
Ignoring his impropriety, she peered into the murk, hoping to glimpse the legendary Watcher. How many poems and songs had described that moment when the Ten Thousand Sails had emerged from the fog—on a day probably much like today, she realized, though coming from the other direction—and seen their new homeland for the first time?
Wisps of silk pulled apart
By the gentle hands of Heaven
We pass out of the coddling mist
Of our long cocoon.
We are reborn
Moths straining towards the trembling light
Of a new world
A shadow loomed deep within the fog. Cho Lin felt a little trickle of apprehension, as if this vague shape was a great wave building in the distance, or a creature rising from the depths. On the deck below her the sailors shouted and pointed.
As they approached the shape the mists swirled and parted, revealing a giant warrior half-sunk in the water, waves lapping against the swirling designs carved into his cuirass. Slung over one arm was a shield that would have dwarfed the imperial palace in Tsai Yin, a great lidless eye sunk into the verdigrised metal. His other arm was extended out, but whatever it had once held was a mystery, as it ended before the elbow in a jagged, hollow stump. The warrior’s face was hidden behind a crested helm so spotted with guano it appeared white, while the rest of the towering bronze statue had long ago acquired a green and black patina that almost matched the color of the water in which it waded.
“There must have been a great city here once,” Cho Lin said quietly.
The captain did not reply. A respectful silence had fallen among the crew as their boat drifted closer. Cho Lin imagined a sprawling city of black stone, pillars and amphitheaters and avenues, with this great bronze warrior standing guard on a hill above the city. She had seen Kalyuni ruins before, of course. They were scattered throughout the Empire of Swords and Flowers, though the lands of the Shan would have been a distant southern frontier for the Imperium. The greatest of their cities were drowned beneath this very sea. The Sea of Solace, the first Shan to arrive had called it, for it had offered sanctuary after decades of drifting upon the oceans. But the northern barbarians had another name for the sea, a name she assumed came from the devastation that had been wrought when the ocean had surged over the mountains and engulfed these lands—the Broken Sea.
“Captain,” Cho Lin said, remembering something she had wanted to discuss with him.
He blinked, shaking his head slightly as if waking from a dream, and turned away from the great statue. “Yes, Lady Cho?”
“I want to arrive in Herath as quickly as possible. I know you planned on stopping in Lyr first, but you will press on to Dymoria. You may unload your goods in Lyr on the return journey.”
The captain’s face paled. “Lady Cho… I implore you to reconsider your request. Our hold is filled with silken streamers and porcelain for the wedding of an archon’s daughter, and we will miss the celebration if we bring you directly to Herath.”
Cho Lin ground her teeth in frustration. She did not wish to ruin this captain or whoever had backed this trading venture, but she also did not want to waste time in Lyr while the Betrayers were loose in the world.
Would the demons even be in Herath, though? Her brother believed they were, and he had said the warlocks suspected the same. The evidence was circumstantial, but compelling. Powerful magics had been used to steal away the chest that bound the Betrayers, while at the same time, after two thousand years, a kingdom ruled by a sorceress queen was rising again in the north. The queen or one of her servants must have been the thief—but she could not possibly suspect the danger she had unleashed upon the world. Or did she? What kind of a woman was Cein d’Kara?
But what if they were wrong? What if she found nothing in Dymoria? She would be alone, in the savage barbarian lands, with no idea how to continue her search. The thought made her chest feel hollow.
She frowned at the captain. “Very well. A single day in Lyr to unload the goods. But I don’t want any of the sailors going ashore. As soon as you have finished, we sail north. No delays, or my brother will hear of it.”
The captain bobbed his head gratefully. “A thousand thanks, Lady Cho. Our gratitude is as deep as the ocean—I promise, on my children, we will bring you with great haste to the city of the Crimson Queen.”
Demian awoke.
He lay in a circle of flattened white grass, his head pillowed on his saddlebag, and stared up at a sky stained red by a bloody dawn. Many years ago, some fool had told him that such a morning meant a great murder had been committed during the night: cold steel had pierced a king’s back, or an emperor pushed from a tower’s window. A superstition, of course. The kind of scaffolding the weak-minded employed to keep their realities from collapsing. The world had an abundance of mysteries, certainly, but a rising sun did not possess some mystical connection with the intrigues of a royal palace. The sky was simply red.
Demian rolled to his feet, wincing at the pain in his side. He had been traveling for more than a month, yet still he felt a twinge every morning when he woke. It had been worse along the Wending Way, deep in the Mire, as the coldness of the marshes had slithered beneath his bandages and plucked at the festering edges of his wound. Some mornings it had been a struggle just to haul himself up into his horse’s saddle. Yet he had persisted, crossing the north for the second time in as many months. The Spine had been the worst, treacherous paths winding through narrow defiles and along vertiginous cliffs, and once, when his horse had stumbled on some loose rocks and thrown him, the cut in his side had split open. He had stitched himself back up again as best he could with needle and thread, cursing his horse’s clumsiness… while also thanking all the gods that the beast hadn’t been lamed in the fall.
The journey across the white plains had been much easier. Winter had gripped the lands west of the Spine, but here the days were still warm. Many nights he had barely felt a chill. And while most travelers who dared to brave the plains feared lions or strangling serpents lurking in the long grass, those creatures were wise enough to avoid
him.
Demian gave his horse a handful of oats while he chewed on a strip of salted mutton. He studied the horizon, where the endless sea of white rippled into the crimson sky. There was something out there, at the edge of his vision, a distant shape that flashed red in the dawn light. He squinted, but he couldn’t quite tell if it was a mirage or not. Was it possible he had arrived at Menekar already? He knew he had cut quite a few days of travel by not going south to find the great road, instead blazing his own way through the grasslands, but he’d thought the imperial city was still a few days to the east. The longer he stared at that shimmering lump in the distance, however, the more certain he was that his long journey was finally over.
Would Alyanna be surprised to see him? She would assume he had survived the disastrous assault on Saltstone, surely, but he suspected she also must be aware that he and the paladin had not retrieved the boy. An embarrassment, though Demian knew Alyanna had also failed—as incredible as it seemed, the young queen had bested her in a sorcerous duel, and she had been forced to flee like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs. Following his own fight with the slave warrior, Demian had dragged himself to the courtyard where he had first activated the riftstone… but the portal linking Saltstone with the emperor’s pleasure garden had been severed. Alyanna must have survived and fled back to Menekar.
A single step to cross the distance that had just taken him a month on horseback to traverse. Frustrating—if he had recovered just a little faster from being stabbed by that slave he could have arrived in the courtyard before Alyanna. Who knew what trouble she had gotten herself into while he hurried to rejoin her? He hoped she had abandoned her schemes to destroy Cein d’Kara—clearly, she had underestimated the Crimson Queen. But he suspected she had not. It was not in her nature to admit defeat.
The pale grass whispered against his horse’s belly as he rode towards the shape on the horizon. Gradually it resolved into a great ivory palace perched atop a stony plateau—to Demian it resembled a white lion of the plains lounging upon a rock, surveying its kingdom with casual arrogance. Beneath the sprawling palace, most of the great city was hidden behind walls larger than any he had encountered, save for the iron that girdled Vis. The only building that could be seen was the golden dome of Ama’s temple, which blazed in the harsh sun.
A few leagues from the city, Demian joined the great western road he had avoided when he had first come down out of the Spine. He fell in among a stream of pilgrims and travelers, some in wagons or on horses, and many others on foot. Menekar was the oldest and greatest city in the known world—at least since the cataclysms had swallowed Min-Ceruth and the Mosaic Cities—and the hub of an empire nearly as vast as the fractured lands to the west. All roads led to her, the Mother of Cities. Dirty children peered warily at Demian from the back of a rickety cart filled with vegetables, while farther ahead a more prosperous merchant rode escorted by a pair of men-at-arms in conical steel helmets. The wagon beside them was filled with dusky-skinned men and women, their eyes empty and wrists bound. Slaves.
The droning of a repeated mantra, punctuated by groans and shrieks, made Demian turn in his saddle. Behind him a line of filthy men shuffled on bare and bleeding feet, while mendicants in the pristine white robes of Ama paced behind them, lashing their backs with leather flails. Demian frowned. This was the Scourging, the holiest of pilgrimages for the faithful of Ama. It was a procession from the holy site in the shadow of the Spine where the first of the Pure, Tethys, had been transformed into an instrument of divine retribution against the Warlock King, to the great temple of Ama. A ten-day forced march, whipped along constantly by the clerics of the Radiant Father. More than a few pilgrims had died in the dust before reaching the holy city. Fools.
No one paid Demian any mind. Just another traveler on his way to the marble heart of the world.
The walls swelled larger and larger, until their soaring crenellations blotted out the midday sun, and their approach was plunged into shadow. Without narrowing at all, the great western road passed into the city through the vast Malachen Gate, which was so high that thirty men could have stood on each other’s shoulders and still not been able to touch the stone above. Demian squinted, staring up at the ancient, mottled patch of the wall above the gate. This was where criminals and traitors were hung by their wrists until they died of exposure or eagles tore open their bellies. When Demian had last come through these gates more than a dozen had been hanging, most still alive, and the travelers below had skirted the space below them. Afraid, he suspected, of passing beneath the condemned when death finally claimed the unfortunates and their bowels unclenched.
But today the rows of iron manacles were empty, save for one. A large crowd was gathered beneath, watching silently. There was no jeering or taunting, as Demian had witnessed before. They almost seemed respectful.
When he neared the crowd, an older matron turned away and stumped closer to him, shaking her head and leaning on a cane.
“Who is that?” he asked when he was sure she’d seen him watching her.
The old woman narrowed her eyes. “That’s Torrinis. Been white vizier for near fifty years.”
Demian blinked in surprise. He knew that name. Perhaps the second most powerful man in Menekar, after the emperor. “Truly? What was his crime?”
The old woman studied him, as if unsure she should answer. “He was a traitor, or so they say.” From her tone Demian doubted very much that she believed that. “Now there’s only the black vizier to counsel the emperor. May Ama preserve us.” She sketched a quick circle in the air, glancing around as if afraid someone had overheard her, and then pushed her way into the stream of travelers passing through the gate and into the city.
With a last look at the hanging white vizier Demian followed her, jostled by the crowds. An awed sound rose from those around him as the newcomers to the city spilled from beneath the gate and onto the Aveline Way, the broad avenue that sliced through the heart of the city. On either side of the great road rose towering white buildings, carved of marble and basalt and inlaid with veins of quartz that flashed in the brightness. Images were incised into the stone: lions stalking buffalo across the plains, legionaries brandishing swords, graceful women clad in jokkas balancing water jugs on their heads. Some of those carvings had come to life, as long-necked beauties watched the crowds from balconies draped with vegetation, their eyes heavy-lidded and ringed with khol, lips quirked in secret smiles.
Sirens paid to lure travelers to inns… and their effectiveness was obvious, as Demian noticed the rich slaver leading his entourage towards one of these guesthouses, his eyes fixed on the pale-faced maiden leaning against the balustrade above. For a moment Demian was also tempted to take a room—though not because of the company on offer. No, the thought of sinking into a copper tub filled with steaming water and washing away the grime of his travels was making his skin itch in anticipation.
He snorted and shook his head. For centuries he had dwelled among the kith’ketan, in a tiny chamber carved from the mountain’s flesh. His will had been hardened, turned to diamond by the tremendous pressure of the stone pressing down from above. And yet after only a few months away he was already afflicted by weakness.
He had to see Alyanna.
The one weakness he had never overcome.
The imperial pleasure gardens had faded with the changing seasons. When last Demian had passed along these ceramic paths, jewel-bright flowers had hemmed his way; now, the first breath of winter had withered many of those blooms, though the gardeners had evidently been hard at work pruning and replacing them with delicate replicas fashioned from gold wire and colored glass. The imperial grounds were supposed to be immune to time’s ravages, reflecting the eternal glory of their god, but the sight of this gleaming metal sprouting from the browning grass left Demian feeling cold. Ama was not the one who could bestow eternal life.
That would be the Weaver.
&nb
sp; He found her pavilion empty. Demian slipped inside the hanging silken flaps, his hand on the hilt of his sword. The great wide bed was made up and looked not to have been slept in for a long while. He ran his hand along the sheets, and his palm came away stained slightly yellow by a thin layer of pollen. A sweet-smelling breeze wafted inside, rippling the hanging silks and tinkling a set of musical chimes suspended above the bed. There was a small metallic bird with wings of colored glass set on a low side-table, staring at him with jeweled eyes.
Where was she?
Everything was just as he remembered from when he had visited her before… except that the rosewood chest with its Shan symbols was no longer here. Demian felt a trickle of unease. Alyanna and the demon children were missing.
He stilled himself, receding into the pavilion’s shadows, and reached out with all his senses. Silence, except for the wind rustling the branches outside and the faint chirping of a songbird. He turned inward, feeling the thunder of his heart, hearing only his slow and steady breathing. Grasping his power tightly he extended questing filaments, searching the gardens and the Selthari Palace for any traces of sorcery. The Pure were there in the palace: searing, blinding, empty. Husks of men overflowing with the terrible burning light, yet unaware of his presence; Demian was like a snake in the long grass around their feet, invisible. Faint traces of Alyanna surrounded him. He tasted the heady residue of her magic here, in the pavilion—but it was old and stale. She had been gone for many days, like the demon children and their rosewood prison.
Demian stepped into the thin shadow cast by the candelabra. The darkness embraced him. So cold, so terrible. It clotted in his mouth, caressing his skin with long bony fingers. He pushed through the emptiness, walking the stone path that floated in the blackness, ignoring the faint chittering sounds that seemed to be calling him further into this place. Following those noises meant certain death—that was one of the first lessons he had learned under the mountain, at the feet of the daymo.