The Obsidian Heart

by Mark T. Barnes

  Indris sat sprawled on a couch, Changeling almost purring in his lap. The chambers of the Suret Council in Avānweh were close to the last place he wanted to be, yet there had been little choice. The Exalted Names had taken possession of what they called the Emphis Mechanism, then brought Anj and he here.

  Towering natural limestone columns marched around the room, each carved with the solemn faces of the Sēq Masters and Magnates who had come before. Femensetri’s likeness was up there somewhere, carved during the time of the Awakened Empire. Ilhen lamps shone up each column, bright ivory beams soon lost to the jagged darkness of the cave ceiling overhead. The walls, too, were rough stone in as many places as they were polished smooth, a jigsaw of nature versus craft. Jade radiance washed the room, reflected from the brilliant and different curves of the crooks held by the Masters.

  Anj stood at the centre of a stone table that dominated the chamber, wincing as she shifted her weight, her shoulder recently healed but still tender. The Masters sat in their high-backed chairs around the sweeping curve of the table—which resembled a crook—while high-ranking Sēq Knights and Inquisitors, those fit enough to attend, were seated along the straight edge. There was a chair there for Indris, which he had politely declined.

  Zadjinn smiled politely at Indris, nodding his head in greeting. His gaze, when it settled on Anj, was not one of surprise or revulsion, as was the case with the others. No, Zadjinn expected Anj to be there.

  “I didn’t abandon the Order, sahai-Femensetri—”

  “I’m no longer your teacher, girl!” Femensetri looked at Anj across the ridge of her knuckles, long dirty fingers interlaced. “You’ll address me the same as any other Master here and not presume on any fondness I certainly don’t feel.”

  “As you wish,” Anj inclined her head politely. “I didn’t leave the Order, jhah-Femensetri. I was tasked with a mission by a sect within the Sēq, who understood my need to bring back my husband after he was abandoned by the Order.”

  “I would be careful of your tone, young one,” He-Who-Watches said, his eyes clear as backlit glass. The man’s nimble fingers toyed with the greyed edges of the taloub he wore about his head. “And remind you that you are responsible for the consequences of both your words and actions. Falsehood will not be tolerated.”

  Two of the Inquisitors rested their hands on their dauls, expressions cold as if Anj were nothing more than a puzzle box to be opened.

  “Of this I’m well aware” Anj said tightly, “but it doesn’t change the facts of how I came to do what I did. I was sent to follow Indris’s path. It happened these orders coincided very much with my desires. There was no way I was going to refuse, and those who approached me knew it.”

  Indris leaned forward in the couch, almost at the same time as Femensetri. He could hear Femensetri’s voice in his head, clear as if she actually spoke. Her inner voice gave truth to her expression. Indris felt he owed his sahai an apology. You didn’t know! All these years you’ve resented Anj, and all this time she’s been faithful. Zadjinn likewise gave himself away. Leaning back in his chair, face too calm to be natural, with no hint of surprise. You, on the other hand, knew all too well.

  “Enlighten us, please, Anj-el-din shel Näsarat,” Aumh said in a voice as small as her body, at odds with her mind and her strength. A tiny blue butterfly rested on one of the flowers that grew in the Y’arrow woman’s greenbrown hair. Indris pursed his lips at the use of Anj’s full name and the guilt he felt at abandoning his quest to find her rose new in him. For two years he had searched for his missing wife, after he had been away from home for more than five. Everybody had assured him she was dead, or gone so far away in the world she was unlikely to return. Even those who knew better and could have told him the truth…“Who were these mysterious benefactors who found such an elegant and timely way of satisfying the best interests of yourself, your husband, and the Sēq Order of Scholars, all at the same time?”

  Anj remained quiet for a few seconds, before saying in a strong voice, “I’m unable to answer that question for you, jhah.”

  “Unable, or unwilling?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes it matters!” Femensetri shouted, her voice cracking around the room. Arcs of lightning jumped between her fingers and her mindstone blazed an angry black. Indris jumped a little in his seat. “This isn’t a bloody game, girl, and you shouldn’t be feeling so satisfied with yourself! There’s something… wrong… about you. About this. No matter what your orders were, you’ve a tale to tell and we’ll have it from you. We’ll soon see how unable, or unwilling, you really are.”

  Anj’s face contorted into a snarl, quickly overcome. Femensetri and the Waterdancer looked back at her from beneath raised brows, He-Who-Watches tapping his forefinger against his chin, the nail reflecting the light.

  “So,” He-Who-Watches murmured, “part of the mask slips and what I see is dark and cold, something coiled around the deepest parts of the world and something we have long thought anathema. The end, child, does not always justify the means.”

  “I’ve done what I’ve for—” Anj began, only to be stopped by Zadjinn. The Erebus.

  “There’s no need for fear, Anj-el-din,” Zadjinn interrupted urbanely. “If you’ve done what was asked of you.”

  “Oh, that I have, jhah.”

  Indris tried to relax and let the bubble that swelled in his mind burst. Voices lapped at his consciousness like sluggish little waves, strewn with the flotsam and jetsam of thoughts. He picked at them, but they all looked and sounded similar, too difficult to tell where their journeys had started

  He let the spoken voices in the room drift away, focusing on his breathing and eliminating sounds one by one. First the voices. Then the metronome dripping of water down the limestone columns. The creak of people moving in their seats. The faint sizzle as the air burned where it touched the witchfire of the Scholar’s Crooks. Changeling’s contented purr. The beating of his own hearts and then finally the sound of his own breath until there was only the colour and shape of the voices in his head.

  Eyes open, he looked at Femensetri. One of the voices bobbing in his mind became clearer, its shape, weight, texture, and timbre more defined. Femensetri stared at him. Unless he was mistaken, there was a satisfied look in her opal-coloured eyes. Does she know I can do this? Was she waiting for this? Within moments her voice in his head faded to nothing. He opened his mind further, to hear the others at the table. When Indris opened his mind, voices from all across Amer-Mahjin crashed over him. He clamped his teeth shut around a groan. It was like trying to listen to different singers in a massed choir, all singing different songs in different tempos and keys. Indris concentrated on the people he could see, narrowing in on each voice as it was coloured by its unique signature timbre. It was hard, but he found he could match a face to a voice—

  Until he came to Anj.

  Her mind was hidden behind complex defences that baffled Indris. They were a confusion of writhing thoughts, cool and slick, coiled about each other and constantly flexing, slithering, and changing. But there was something there, a flicker in the depths of her mind, gone almost as quickly as it appeared.

  She was sent to find me!

  As if knowing her thoughts had been heard, Anj revealed her purpose. “I was sent to find Indris by the Dhar Gsenni. They had learned it was Sedefke who left instructions across the centuries for Indris to travel to the Spines,” She looked at Zadjinn, who sat in his chair looking betrayed. Anj gave the man a look devoid of sympathy. “The same as it was the Dhar Gsenni who asked me to follow him. And the Dhar Gsenni who wanted me to find whatever secrets Sedefke had hidden, investigate them, then bring them back in secret.

  “And it’s this same sect who knows Indris found signs of the Founder.”

  “He what?” Femensetri stared at Indris, who looked back in shock. She turned her attention back to Anj. “How could you know that?”

  “Because when I found Indris on the Spines, he told me. W
hy do you think he went to Sorochel in the first place? It was to continue the search. It seems the Founder is alive after all.”

  “But why did you not return to… us?” Zadjinn’s voice was plaintive, though his mien was aloof. “We thought you had betrayed the Order. We sent Knights, Inquisitors, and even an Executioner, to find you.”

  “I know. They weren’t very good.”

  Indris shuddered at the offhanded way she dismissed some of the most skilled hunters and killers the Sēq could produce. She killed a Sēq Executioner? Sweet Näsarat! But then, she was one of the Eight.

  “So why return now, child?” He-Who-Watches asked, his gaze keen.

  “Because my task is done.” Anj turned to Indris, her smile warm, tears making luminous sapphires of her large eyes. “My husband has returned, and locked in his head are the secrets Sedefke tried so hard to hide from you all.”

  “IF A HAPPY ENDING IS WHAT YOU’RE AFTER, STOP THE STORY WHERE IT MAKES YOU SMILE, OR CRY FOR LAUGHTER. IN LIFE, IT’S THE RARE SWEETNESS TO HAVE TEARS OF JOY, OR PAINLESS ENDINGS. PEOPLE FEEL. IT’S WHAT THEY KNOW, AND IT’S WHY I WRITE.”

  —Nasri of the Elay-At, Shrīanese dramatist (495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation)

  DAY 358 OF THE 495TH YEAR OF THE SHRĪANESE FEDERATION

  Behind the Wanderer the shapes of their pursuers were quite clear, brilliant points of lanterns picking out the lean, predatory shapes of the corsairs. The witches and their spirits were close enough to be blurs in the darkness. Shar had tried on a few occasions to turn them northwest, yet each time they had been hemmed in and driven southward.

  The ship crossed over the white sands of the Dead Flat. There was no discernable difference in the Wanderer, but Hayden had warned them that would change soon enough. The mountains of the Mar Ejir were a jagged shadow to the east, a long wall down the Dead Flat all the way to the borders of Erebus Prefecture, about the last place Mari wanted to go.

  The first of the corsairs crossed the boundaries of the flat a few minutes after, her sister ship not far behind. While the corsairs made a smooth transition, the same could not be said for the witches who flew beside them. Mari smiled with grim satisfaction as the barely perceived shapes of the witches dropped from the sky. There were flashes in the air like diamond dust under lamplight, which Mari assumed meant the release of the bound spirits. From what she could see, the witches enjoyed neither a soft, nor elegant landing. The way they bounced along the sand looked painful. The trailing corsair turned back, then settled into the sand where the witches had fallen.

  “How will they get their ship out?” Bensaharēn asked. The Poet Master of the Näsarat stood easily on the rocking deck though. “Come to think of it, how will we get this ship out?”

  Hayden squinted at the ship, which had landed, then shrugged. “Ain’t going to be easy. If they’s smart, I reckon an enterprising person’d take the smallest couple of Disentropy Spools and head out of the Flat. Let them store up energy, then walk them back in.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Ha!” the old driver laughed, then coughed. Mari frowned at the rattle in Hayden’s lungs. When he recovered from his coughing he patted the deck and said, “It’ll be worse for us when we come back for our girl here. We’ll be a lot further into the Flat, so it’s a much longer walk.”

  The Wanderer shuddered. The hum and spark of the Tempest Wheels lowered in pitch and Mari felt her stomach rise into her throat as the ship dropped a metre or so. Hayden patted the rail, as if soothing the Wanderer.

  Ahead of them, rearing out of the rippled blanket of sand, was the outline of a rounded ziggurat set in the middle of a reaching spiral of columns. Mari pointed it out, and Shar angled the Wanderer in that direction.

  The Wanderer dropped again, in time with the sound of the Tempest Wheels slowing.

  “Figure we’re just about done flying,” Hayden said. “Best bring our girl down soft as you can, young miss.”

  It wasn’t a crash. Nor was it a landing. The Wanderer was still travelling at a reasonable speed when her landing legs hit the ground. There came a groan of distressed metal. The grinding and snapping of wood. Then the ship canted sharply and slid, almost turning to face the pursuing corsair. It, too, came to a landing only a hundred metres or so away, though far more elegantly than Shar’s attempt.

  “Why could you not have done that?” Mauntro asked.

  Shar flipped him a rude hand gesture.

  “We may have violence in our immediate future,” Ekko said with what Mari was sure was enthusiasm. The lion-man pointed to where a score or more of shapes were disembarking from the corsair. Mauntro and his handful of Tau-se escorted Roshana on deck. The woman gave Mari a vengeful glare, holding one hand up to her temple. Danyūn and his Ishahayans lurked not far behind. Nazarafine and Navid stood close together, Siamak towering over them. Omen was true to his nature, standing wraith-like in his pale Shroud behind Vahineh with her expression of childlike innocence in her patchwork face. She clutched a fold of Omen’s Shroud in her hand, as if it were the favoured blanket of a babe.

  “There’s the remains of a building and some columns up ahead,” Mari nodded to where several columns stretched from the sand like the stiffened fingers of a drowning man. “It’ll give us some cover.”

  “What disaster have you led us into, Mari?” Roshana asked scathingly as she looked about the rippled expanse of the Dead Flat, harsh under moonlight. “We should’ve been in Qeme by now if you—”

  “There was no choice, my rahn,” Bensarahēn said.

  “Danyūn,” Roshana said, “can you get us away from here without being seen?”

  The Master of Spies surveyed the world around him placidly, though quickly. He looked to his Ishahayans, whose fingers flickered quickly in the low light. Danyūn nodded, looked at Nazarafine, Navid, and Vahineh for a second, then to Roshana.

  “Not all of us, my rahn,” was his quiet response. Roshana took his meaning, her glance at Nazarafine, Navid, and Vahineh was calculating. It was like watching a farmer deciding what animals to cull and it made Mari uneasy to see.

  “May I suggest, my rahn, the Lion Guard and the Ishahayans take to the sand to slow pursuit.” Mauntro inspected his powerful recurved bow and counted arrows. “It will give us the opportunity to even the numbers somewhat.”

  “Do it.” Roshana chewed her lip, hands clutched around the hilt of her own well-used shamshir. “Kill what you can, then regroup with us at the top of the ziggurat.”

  Mauntro and Danyūn nodded, then led their warriors silently off the grounded ship. Vahineh remained where she was, crouched in the folds of Omen’s Shroud. The Wraith Knight stood still, seemingly impervious to what was happening around him.

  I don’t know if I can trust him, but I need him. We are too few, against too many, and our chances are slim at best.

  “Vahineh seems to have taken a liking to you, Omen.” Mari went to touch the young woman’s hair, but she ducked and buried her face in the folds of the Omen’s Shroud. “We need you to take care of her, no matter what. Can you do that for us?”

  Omen did nothing for a long while. He just stood there, head angled away, staring at the ruins in the desert. Mari was about to speak again, to get some response, when Omen leaned down and picked Vahineh up like a child. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his hips, face buried in the hard angle of his neck and shoulder. Holding her tightly, Omen ran stork-like and at speed for the ziggurat.

  Mari, her friends and the rahns dashed after Omen. Roshana outdistanced her peers, leaving Siamak to help the portly and wheezing Nazarafine. The outer ring of stones—hundreds of them like broken teeth—was not much taller than she was, yet wide enough she did not think she could span one with her arms. They had been worn smooth by storms of wind, rain, and sand. The wind wheezed across the stone, rising and falling, like an old man trying to catch his breath. Mari cringed at the sound, glancing this way and that as if she were about to be set upon by soul-stealing No
mads at any time. There were legends of ghuls roaming the Dead Flat, preying on merchant caravans and travellers who strayed too far from the roads. Or worse, vampires who could change shape into desert lights and lure the unwary into their withering embrace. Mari drew her Sûnblade and moved on more cautiously, ashamed at herself for being afraid of childhood stories, but aware all such stories had a dark and terrible truth to them.

  On quick feet they raced through the columns, made spectral in the moonlight and drifting clouds of sand. At what she took to be the centre of the place the rounded ziggurat rose from the sand. It looked to be almost forty metres across, with twenty or so tiers to the top, each tier as tall as her chest. She wondered how much of the ziggurat had been buried under centuries of sand in the fallout of the Scholar Wars. Some of the ancient shrines her people had built were hundreds of metres tall. She didn’t dwell on it long, however, for soon Ekko found a narrow stair that they used to scale the ancient ruin.

  The top of the ziggurat was almost ten metres across, and had several heavy blocks of stone curved along the top like a saddle, surrounding a broad, dark pit. Sacrificial altars, Mari thought with some distaste. She knew her people had a barbaric past, but seeing it was different. Mari looked away, wishing there was somewhere else they could seek cover, but they had what they had. Wooden poles leaned awry, bleached as old bone under centuries of summers. Dark granite statues were set in a circle around the platform, their cruel, angular features dulled by time. The carved plates of their armour were worn, as were the sweeping folds of their coat that merged into the stone of the platform. She chanced a look into the pit but could see nothing save the sands that drifted downward before being lost to sight in the sharp-edged shadows.

  Her comrades waited in the lee of the statues, out of the wind. The rahns stayed together, whispering among themselves. Roshana crouched sullenly with her back against a statue, the bare blade of her heavy shamshir across her knees. Siamak leaned on a long-hafted battleaxe. Nazarafine’s only weapon was her wounded nephew, who sat silently nearby. Hayden held his storm-rifle at the ready, Ekko had a thumb-thick arrow to the string of his bow. Shar was rubbing at her recently healed arm, sword unsheathed, while Bensaharēn knelt facing the stairs, eyes closed, face peaceful, hands like old oak resting on his thighs. Omen was so still he may as well have been another statue. Vahineh crouched at his feet with a length of the Wraith-Knight’s Shroud wrapped around her head. The broken woman rocked back and forth, fingers splayed on the stone to either side of her.