The Obsidian Heart

by Mark T. Barnes

  A sense of urgency washed over him. Femensetri’s wordless commands resonated in his mind. He circled Vahineh, his speed growing. Eventually, battered and torn, he and she seemed to be motionless relative to the world spinning about them in a chaotic shadow play.

  Indris focussed his mind into a chisel. With as much force as he could muster, he slammed the hard edge of his psyche against the chains that held her. The chains rang, rippling as if made more of fluid than metal. Above and below, space roiled like an ocean in a storm. Blue-white light lanced into them, cold and painful. Vahineh’s mind was drowning in the turmoil of the Font and Īa was reluctant to let her go.

  Shards of her mind, her soul and those echoes of her Ancestors pierced him. They sliced fragments from his Fortress. The casual weapons of her broken mind flayed him. Still, Indris stuck at her chains unrelentingly. Links broke away to strike him. He reeled from each impact, yet refused to abandon her. One by one, the chains that held her broke away with a clash of falling bells.

  He tenderly took Vahineh in his arms as the last chain broke. Comforted her, his mind bathing her in warm softness, even as he flexed his will to slow them from their reckless whirl.

  Holding her tight, Indris brought her to a gentle stop. He coaxed her to seal the cracks in the mirrors of her mind. To find and hold on to her sense of her living self, rather than the selves of the dead. Mirrors fell from the invisible walls. Puffed away into fragments so small they were little more than powder. Images, though bent from true, were once more whole: Vahineh herself, no older than a child on the cusp of adolescence, surrounded by the falling autumnal leaves of her experiences.

  Indris opened a window in her mind. Light from the outside cleared the darkness that pooled at her core. Together they walked towards the mirror and the smiling young woman whose visage seemed so at peace.

  Then he felt the sharp stab against his Inner Fortress.

  He reeled. Try as he might to hold on to Vahineh, he could not. He was wrenched away, mind battered, hoping he had done enough.

  Through the pain that threatened to split his head, Indris saw Femensetri standing over him, mindstone burning. Flares leaped from it, to collapse against her forehead. The blue-green-black opals of her eyes shone like the panels of a lantern.

  Yet it was another Sēq Master who plied Indris’s mind with razors of thought, besieging his Inner Fortress in an attempt to claim the treasures of his mind. His head felt hot, lanced through with pain as he came to one knee, hand on Changeling’s hilt.

  “No!” Indris roared. On instinct he sent a thought lance to pierce the prying Master between the eyes. The woman reeled, mouth a lopsided tear in her face. He caught sight of Femensetri surrounded by five other Sēq Masters. Their crooks flared into an incandescence that almost blinded him. Disentropic Stains thrashed as they collided, casting long shadows on the ahm. The other Masters were tame compared to the Stormbringer; slick in their silks with mindstones polished, smooth and small as fingernails. One of the Masters faltered, then collapsed. Shortly after another one reeled. Femensetri’s face was lit with a savage smile. Shadow spiralled around her mindstone.

  The man who had fallen away from Femensetri came to stand over Indris, levelling his crook at Indris chest. Indris drew and struck. Changeling howled. The Master’s crook belled, shards splintering away as it broke. With a muffled curse, shock etched onto his features, the man stumbled back. Before Indris could defend himself, another Master flung a glittering net of light around Indris, which engulfed his body, and squeezed.

  Shar and Ekko stormed through the door, weapons drawn. They were blown back by a spinning ring of light that also brought down part of the wall. Rubble crashed from the ceiling, his friends buried under dust and debris.

  “Stormbringer!” the oldest of the Masters thundered. He was a tall, powerfully built man with feline features, angular and proud under long white-blond hair. Tongues of honey coloured fire lashed around him, almost obscuring the man’s features in heat haze. Through the pain, Indris remembered him as Zadjinn. An Erebus from the time of the Awakened Empire. “Relent or I kill the pup you so ably trained!”

  Femensetri cast a glance at Indris, calculating. The web tightened, biting into Indris’s skin. It sizzled with power, burning him. He bit down on a scream of pain with only limited success.

  Expression apologetic, Femensetri dampened her power. She looked at the other Masters with disdain. “How weak the Order has become, if you are what passes for Masters.”

  “I saw such things…” the Master who had looked into Indris’s mind murmured, hair in disarray. Her eyes were still unfocussed. “The things you know. The things you have seen and done.”

  Zadjinn frowned at Indris before casting a curious glance at Vahineh.

  “Bring the Stormbringer, the apostate, and the girl to Amer-Mahjin,” Zadjinn commanded. “The others are of no consequence. Collapse this dung heap on their heads, and be done with it.”

  “No!” Indris yelled. He struggled against the binding net, felt the threads of energy burning through his clothes and searing his skin. The smell of burned flesh was in his nostrils. He glared at the Sēq Master who had cast his binding. The pressure in his mind swelled rapidly, seeming to expand beyond his skull, bypassing his Disentropic Stain. He spoke in a voice he barely recognised as his own. “Release us! Now!”

  Indris’s voice rolled around the room, filling the corners, then rumbling back across the people around him. The Master he had targeted began to relax her control over Indris’s bindings when Zadjinn lashed Indris with a whip of fire. Indris yelled with the pain, losing the tenuous control he had with his new, and uncertain, powers.

  The Master sneered at him and spitefully clenched the web around Indris. The air was forced out of his lungs. His bones creaked. Blood welled from deep cuts.

  The world seemed to splinter. Cracks formed where they should not. Walls, floor, and ceiling cracked and fell away.

  Vertigo.

  Nausea.

  Darkness.

  He shrieked as he tried desperately to breathe then all his senses focussed into a single point of a nothing, which was everything, and he screamed as the world writhed and he saw—

  “DECISIONS ARE LIKE STONES, YET YOUR APPROACH TO THEM SHOULD BE AS WATER.”

  —Nimjé, Gnostic Assassin of the Ishahayan and Master of Spies for the Great House of Näsarat (371st of the Shrīanese Federation)

  DAY 353 OF THE 495TH YEAR OF THE SHRĪANESE FEDERATION

  Poet Master Bensaharēn had said to Mari that schooling her in patience had been one of the hardest tasks he had ever faced. She had suffered through hours of her teacher having her sit and do nothing, time she could have spent doing almost everything else she found more important. Fidgeting constantly on the inside, mind flitting across the lessons she enjoyed more, Mari had learned enough composure to, if not fool Bensaharēn, at least allow him to accept with good grace she was not going to master everything quite so easily.

  Patience was something she had learned, but still struggled with. After hours waiting for Indris, Mari made speed to the armoury of the Qadir Sûn in search of armour. The streets had become dangerous since the Accession vote, and she was not going to take the chance of being knifed in the dark by some zealot who masked himself in the fervor of a patriot. The best armour she could find was an uncomfortable and ill-fitting leather hauberk, studded with steel scales that showed the rust of disuse. Swearing at the laziness of the armourer, regretting not having something that fit, Mari left the qadir to find Indris and their friends.

  He said he’d come, she thought. Unless he was unable to. The thought he may be unwilling flickered across her mind, followed shortly by an image of Neva’s lovely face. She banished her doubts with a snarl. Indris should have been back by now, she was sure of it. Something must have gone wrong.

  Spurred on by a growing dread—ears tuned to the distant sounds of fighting in the streets, and the shrill whistles of the huqdi, the street dogs who we
re more thugs and ruffians than warriors—Mari held her sheathed Sûnblade in her hand as she jogged to the Qadir Bey. The guards there had neither seen, nor heard, from Indris. Another, faster run took her to the Qadir Selassin where Martūm’s indolent guards were uncivil and unhelpful. The man who made the improper suggestion as to how they could spend their time together was lucky to have kept his teeth in his head, saved only by Mari’s constantly growing concern.

  On her desperate way to the Qadir Näsarat, her dislike of Roshana at war with her doubt, Mari saw squads of kherife racing towards the sullen glow of a fire in the distance. Jaw set, Mari followed them to where a small crowd of people were gathered around a collapsed villa, along with a small hemisphere of the mountain that was broken around it. Flames licked at exposed beams of wood, but the rest of the stone looked as if it had been pounded by a hammer the size of a house.

  The kherife were speaking with some Tau-se nahdi, all of whom were covered in cuts and rock dust. Blood glistened darkly on their fur. Mari edged closer to hear what was being said. She had to control herself when she heard that the villa had belonged to the Scholar-Marshall. When she heard there had been others inside, she shoved through the cordon to where the Tau-se and the kherife stood.

  “Who do you think—” one of the kherife began, then recognised Mari for who she was. He and the other kherife gave her the Second Obeisance, fingertips to their hearts as they bowed. “How may we help you, Pah-Mariamejeh?”

  Mari bowed her head, as much in respect for the kherife’s manners, as to gather her thoughts. “What happened here?”

  “We’re not certain, pah,” one of the Tau-se replied in his deep, plush voice. “We were guarding the exterior of the villa, with orders not to enter. We do—”

  “Who was inside?” Am I speaking too quickly? She wondered. Is this what panic feels like?

  “The Scholar Marshall and some of her guests, including ser-Neva and ser-Yago, the Sky Lords grandchildren.”

  “Are they…?”

  The Tau-se became stiff, eyes wide. Their tails dusted the street in agitation. “We were rendered unconscious, pah. When we regained our senses, the villa was as you see it. We have been clearing rubble with the help of the kherife, and some of the local residents, but have found no sign of the Scholar-Marshall, or her guests.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Almost three hours, pah”

  Mari looked at the massive weight of stone. Felt the heat of the flames even at a distance. She opened her mouth, and sniffed, trying to fight back the warmth of the tears without touching her eyes. Could anybody have survived that, for so long?

  Heedless of the danger, Mari joined the front ranks of those who helped clear away the rubble. By the time they managed to enter what remained of the building, she hoped she would be too tired to cry at what she saw there.

  Two hours or so later, Mari had not been listening to the clocks and the smoke and the overcast obscured the stars, she dropped the last load of rubble she could carry. Every muscle ached. Her eyes were red raw from shallow tears and smoke. Her skin and hair reeked. Other than the Tau-se, who seemed incapable of fatigue, there were none who remained from the workers she had initially joined. She vaguely remembered being told to rest, as much as she remembered with shame her ungracious, and often hostile, responses. But they had been right then, and there was nobody left to tell her to rest now.

  On unsteady feet, Mari shuffled back to the Qadir Sûn. The guards in their polished armour, with their mirror-bright shields and spears, looked at her bedraggled figure in consternation, but said nothing. Some looked at her with compassion, others kept their faces as cold as chiselled stone, eyes resolutely forward, avoiding any form of contact or recognition. Such was sende that a person could, upset, burned, and filthy, walk the halls of a qadir without being questioned, or offered the assistance she did not ask for.

  Staggering into the antechamber she had started from, Mari stopped in shock.

  Shar, Ekko, Omen, and Neva were battered and bruised. Hayden looked the worst. Pale beneath a deep cut on his brow, face dirty, two fingers on his left hand bound together.

  “Where have you been?” she wanted to shout, but found herself grabbing faces and kissing them in relief. She even took a surprised Neva in a rib-creaking embrace, so glad was she to see them alive. But not all of them. She grabbed Shar’s arm as she snapped, “What happened? Where is Indris?” Then, remembering the others, she said, “And what about Femensetri and Vahineh?”

  “Taken.” Shar said miserably.

  “What? When? By who?” Mari asked, although she thought she knew the answer to the last question. She rose to her feet, attaching her Sûnblade to her weapons belt. How had her father or brothers known where to look? There would be no time to waste.

  “Too long ago, and we’ve no idea.” Neva was furious, her face streaked with dirt and blood. “We’ve been waiting here for hours!”

  “Can you tell me why my friends were kept waiting?” Mari snapped at the Sergeant-Major of the Sûnguard, who stood nearby. “People could’ve been searching all this time!”

  “Apologies, Pah-Mariam,” he said. “Knight-Lieutenant Sûn fa Navid was under orders not to admit anybody to the qadir. Your friends told me their tale when I started my watch, so I brought them here. Unfortunately, you were absent and nobody knew where you had gone.”

  Mari winced at the subtle rebuke. Her absence did not excuse Navid, though. Nazarafine’s nephew was a warrior-poet from the Sûn Isles who had done his training at the Saidani-sûk, the Four Blades School of the Great House of Sûn. He was a proud and prickly man eager for recognition and glory, yet had done little worthy of either. Navid was in need of a few reminders that not all orders needed to be followed slavishly, no matter whether he was his aunt’s favoured relative, or not. For now, there were more important things to be done.

  “Tell me what you know,” Mari said to her friends.

  “Never saw ‘em enter,” Hayden muttered, “nor leave.”

  “We tried to help,” Ekko rumbled. “Whoever was responsible collapsed part of the corridor leading to the room before we could get a look at them, though. Then the rest of the ceiling followed. We were trapped for almost an hour in the rubble.” The Tau-se looked at Omen with respect. “Were it not for Sassomon-Omen being there to help, working in the flames as he did, we may not have been so fortunate.”

  “Such is the task in times of strife, to aid, to risk, to save a life,” Omen hummed absently as he stared into the grass at the base of a potted plant.

  “Whoever it was, clearly were after either Indris, Femensetri, or Vahineh,” Neva said, looking askance at Omen. “Yago’s gone to tell our grandfather what’s happened. This is another of many attacks in the city over the past couple of days. Tensions are high all over after the election.”

  “We must get Indris back!” Shar said, cutting off Neva’s train of thought. Her orange-gem eyes were bright with unshed tears.

  “It is true that we must act,”—Omen said—“let us not wait when we can attack.”

  “I’m likin’ the sound of that song,” Hayden nodded. His eyes looked slightly unfocussed. Ekko growled, tail slicing air.

  “Hayden,” Mari said, “you’re wounded. Maybe you should let us do this.”

  “I’m fixin’ on gettin’ me some payback, young miss.” Hayden’s jaw clenched. “Just try and keep me away.”

  “But where do we look?” Neva asked, exasperated. “We don’t know who has them or why they were taken.”

  “I’ve an idea,” Mari said. In her mind there were few people who would want to, or could, take Indris and Femensetri. She knew she could not defeat Indris in a fight. She was a better sword-fighter, yet his scholar training gave him an advantage she could not match without salt-forged steel. Belamandris, now he knew what he was dealing with, was probably also a fair match for Indris, sword-on-sword. However it would take a special combination of people to enter a guarded villa, defeat Indris and F
emensetri, then steal away with a third hostage. Given the third hostage was Vahineh, the list of candidates dropped considerably.

  Mari remembered her conversation with her father in Amnon. His obsession with the witches. He had confessed how he had turned to them for an answer to his illness. Nadir had spoken of nahdi armies and witches brought back from Tanis.

  “Neva?” Mari turned to the tall gryphon-rider. “Do you think your grandfather would spare the time to see me?”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s the Arbiter of the Change and I don’t want to go kicking over a wasps nest without him knowing why.”

  “He’s a great admirer of yours,” Neva admitted, “if not of your family. What do you think he could do for you?”

  “Give me some advice on how far I can go before I walk the wrong line of the law in his city.”

  “When do you want to see him?”

  By way of answer, Mari drew her over-robe on over her armour and gestured towards the door.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone,” Mari said to the Sergeant-Major. “When you’ve the chance, please let Rahn-Nazarafine know I’ve gone with my friends to see the Arbiter of the Change. She can send people after me. Or not. I really don’t care.”

  “The rahn won’t be happy, Pah-Mariam,” the soldier replied.

  “It’s going around.”

  Mari led her friends via the most direct route out of the qadir, which also took them far from the galleries housing the royal chambers. Bound-caste servants in pale yellow tunics bowed their heads as Mari and the others passed. Sûnguards stood at their stations, polished cuirasses and gold-washed scale hauberks shining. The guard’s tall shields were polished so brightly it seemed to Mari she walked down a hall of mirrors. Nobody tried to stop them. Silently she thanked the Sergeant-Major for giving her the time to do what she needed, before anybody foolishly tried to impede her.