The Obsidian Heart

by Mark T. Barnes

  Then stopped altogether.

  A single spider, much larger than the others, descended on the end of a web as thick as Corajidin’s little finger. It was a beautiful monster, so pale as to be translucent, shining with a swirling blue-white light at its heart, which resembled a face seen through mist. Corajidin looked around, but his companions seemed frozen in their moment.

  The giant arachnid landed on the gossamer-clad woman, whose face was spread in a euphoric smile, her teeth improbably white against full, darkly painted lips. The light from the spider shone on her burnished skin, reflected like stars in her eyes. Legs spanning the woman’s torso, it reared… then plunged glass-needle fangs into her chest.

  Corajidin wanted to cry out, but could not. The spider pulsed, each flare of light getting fainter, radiant filaments pouring into the woman who remained rooted to the spot.

  The light in her eyes faded, leaving them little better than dull beads.

  They remained so for what may have been a second, or an eternity, before they shone brightly, backlit by thousands of flickering candles.

  Then the spider fell to the ground and shattered. The crystal fragments of its body broke apart into a fine cloud of diamond dust, rainbow hued with refracted light. There came a resounding chime like the sounding of the great bell.

  And time started once more. The light poured across the world, like molasses at first, then quickening till it filled the bowl of Corajidin’s world. It was darker now. How much time had passed?

  Corajidin fell sideways, head bouncing on the dead leaves and dried twigs. He lay there, light-headed and gasping, only the barest sensation in his fingertips as if his hands had fallen asleep.

  Everybody stuttered into movement. Belamandris and Kasraman rushed to Corajidin’s side. The woman in red gossamer fell backwards into the mulch like she had been poleaxed. The three crones fussed about her, pierced grey tongues working in their dark mouths, long-nailed hands prodding and probing the supine form. The Emissary stood, heedless of the stains on her clothes, and watched with fixed determination while her crones worked.

  The gold spout of a wine skin was placed against Corajidin’s lips. Liquor, sweet as honey, gushed across his tongue. Kasraman bound his wounds, chanting over them. The pain rapidly dwindled to a pleasant tingling. For several moments he sat there, head lolling, before he felt a sense of gentle lassitude sweep over him.

  Belamandris helped his father to his feet. Corajidin staggered, but soon found his footing. His eyes were drawn to the woman in red gossamer, who had not moved since she had fallen.

  The Emissary crossed to where her crones worked, twigs snapping beneath her split-toed boots. She spoke in a guttural, phlegmatic language, which the crones answered in, their voices high-pitched like a branch scratching glass.

  “Father,” Kasraman said. “We need to go. Now!”

  “Your Coronation—” Belamandris began.

  “Can wait!” Corajidin snapped, head light and feeling dizzy. “I’m sorry, my sons, but this…”

  “Is something people may hear of in the fullness of time,” Kasraman said sharply. “But your Coronation is something thousands are already in attendance to see.”

  “Your boy is right,” the Emissary said over her shoulder. “Go. Put a golden hat on your head. We’ll do what needs be done here.”

  “But—”

  “Just go. This is the day you’ve plotted and schemed for.” The Emissary patted the woman in gossamer’s cheek. “Enjoy it so there’s at least some recompense for the price you’ll pay.”

  Hours of ceremony all for one Imperialist rahn and a score of loyal sayfs to attend. Kasraman’s estimate of thousands had been somewhat inflated.

  Where was everybody?

  Ajomandyan as Arbiter of the Change—the man supposed to crown the new Asrahn—was absent. They had waited until Corajidin had finally demanded Narseh perform the ceremony, and the old Knight-Marshal bellowed the oaths across a Tyr-Jahavān, which may as well have been a ghost town.

  Roshana, Nazarafine, and Siamak were not present. None of the Federationist sayfs made an appearance and even some of the Imperialists were missing. Kiraj, the Arbiter-Marshall and Padishin, the Secretary-Marshall, spent the entire ceremony talking quietly to each other. Ziaire and a goodly number of her courtesans were present, though Corajidin doubted their attendance was anything more than business.

  Corajidin had learned that the Sēq were gone, Amenankher closed fast behind them. The witches were unable to navigate the complex Wards left to secure the Sēq’s mountain fortress. The Emissary laughed when Corajidin demanded she break them. All the Sēq treasures, their weapons, plus the source of the Water of Life, were locked away and useless to him.

  Time oozed on as he slouched on his cold, uncomfortable sphere in the Tyr-Jahavān. His thighs began to cramp and his head to ache, along with a sense of foreboding that the Emissary’s most recent task had failed. Around him people talked and danced and laughed their brittle laughs. They whispered, looking at him over their bowls of wine. The mixed scents of grilled meats, vegetables, dips, and spices made him nauseated. And everywhere were the ones who asked for favours in return for their support. You promised me.

  Promised.

  Promises.

  Promise.

  It was Ziaire, not Corajidin, who declared the evening at an end when she made her vague and enthusiastic farewell, much more enthusiastic than her greeting. No sooner had the courtesans left than the others began to trickle away, the chamber becoming a ludicrous place of vast and silent emptiness between small, quiet conversations.

  He left as soon as it was seemly to do so, his fury barely contained by the way he throttled the crown in his hands.

  Corajidin tossed and turned on his wide bed. The stars outside the window tracked slowly across the black night sky and the streets outside were silent. At regular intervals the Anlūki could be heard, their armoured tread loud in the stillness of the early morning.

  A play of light and shadow at the door to his chamber caught his attention. Figures stood there, limned in the radiance of ilhen lamps. Three were short and hunched, holding a golden chain attached to a tall figure in red gossamer. The fifth spoke.

  “We’ve done what you asked, Corajidin,” the Emissary said. “Your new bride is prepared, and not without cost.”

  “I paid—”

  “We need more.” She held up her hand to forestall his protest. “And you’ll give us what we ask, without complaint, when the times come.”

  “Or what?” he sneered, sick and tired of the Emissary’s haughty attitude.

  “Or what was given can be taken away.” The crones tugged on the chain so the woman in gossamer was forced to bend double. Her eyes were panicked, but her mouth remained closed. One of the crones extended a yellowed claw against the woman’s long neck. “But the price will be paid for services rendered, regardless. You swore you knew the consequences of your actions to the powers that are. They don’t give second chances, Corajidin.

  “So… will you do as you’re told, or do we destroy this magnificent specimen right here?”

  The woman in chains clearly heard what was being said yet did not speak. There was a mixture of defiance and fear in her eyes, a look he recognised. If only he could be sure! But the Emissary was leaving him little choice.

  “Very well. What do you want?”

  The Emissary smiled, rubbing her thumb along the squid carved on to the pommel of her sword. “I understand you’ve sent your daughter to Tamerlan, to learn from the whip and rod, coal and pincer of the Dowager-Asrahn, your mother-in-law. I want Mari shielded at all times, so no mystic can ever find her. And I want her to remain there, freezing and alone, until I say otherwise.”

  “But she’s my daughter!”

  “Be thankful I’ve not asked for her head. Yet. Indris needs to be kept from distractions, and your daughter is nothing if not a distraction to him. I need my husband back.”

  He started at the emphasis
in her voice on the word, need. “Why?”

  The crone dug her nail into the chained woman’s throat. The Emissary stared at Corajidin. “Will you do it?”

  “Yes! Ancestors, yes. I’d rather Mari not be in contact with the man who led her astray.”

  “Ha!” The Emissary barked a laugh. “Your daughter strayed long before she met my husband.” Before he could respond to that, she said, “And there’s something more we would have, for all we’ve done for you.”

  “What?” he asked nervously.

  “The Sēq are by no means broken, Corajidin. And there is the matter of the Empress-in-Shadows who stands in… your… way. My Masters would have you unite the Avān sooner, rather than later, and there can not be two Mahjs of the one people.”

  “You want me to—”

  “Destroy Pashrea and the Sēq powerbase, yes. How else can you help deliver the world my Masters need?”

  She clapped her hands and the crones pushed the woman in gossamer and chains into Corajidin’s chamber. She stumbled and he caught her. When he looked up, the Emissary and her crones were gone.

  Corajidin removed the collar and chain from around the woman in gossamer’s neck.

  “Thank you,” the woman said in a voice like smoke on brandy.

  “You can speak?”

  “Oh, at least,” she purred. She looked at him candidly, appraisingly. She walked about the room, touching things, seemingly oblivious to the way her robe parted as she walked. Her gestures were so familiar it pained him as much as aroused him. She ran her fingers over silk sheets, almost shuddering with the sensation. The woman picked up a scent vial and delicately dabbed behind her ears, the inside of her wrists and between her breasts, the last with a shy smile that was all artistry. Yashamin’s favourite scent.

  “My name is Corajidin.”

  “Jidi.” His hearts rapped against the cage of his ribs. Was it really her?

  She walked around the bed, to where several of his most treasured items were. She lay her long fingers on them, slowly, sensually, her eyes lit with the reflection of precious metals and jewels. She stopped in front of Yashamin’s funeral mask and picked it up.

  “What is your name?” he asked, afraid of the answer. The body is different the face is different but the way she moves and talks surely it must be her? He felt lightheaded, his desire threatening to overwhelm him. Corajidin staggered forward a step. Then another, and another. He wet his lips with his tongue as she settled on the bed to lay, supple and exposed, her robe parting to reveal new lands for him to conquer.

  She put Yashamin’s mask over her face.

  “What would you call me?”

  “SOME CONSIDER IT IRONIC WHEN WE SAY THAT WE FIGHT IN THE NAME OF PEACE.”

  —from The Values, quotes by Kemenchromis, Sēq Magnate and Arch-Scholar (Third Year of the Awakened Empire)

  DAY 5 OF THE 496TH YEAR OF THE SHRĪANESE FEDERATION

  Sitting cross-legged on a broad balcony at Amarqa-in-the-Snows, Indris closed his eyes against the reflected light from the harsh white vista of the Mar Silin. The towering peaks of the Mountains of the Moon stretched in an achromatic line, stark against the cloud-streaked sky, which seemed all the more blue in contrast. There came the distant rumble of the Anqorat River where it burst forth in sheets of glistening spume, the start of its journey to the Marble Sea almost fifteen hundred kilometres away. The air was crisp, redolent with eucalyptus. A sharp cracking sound echoed across the manytined valley below, as another tree exploded in the cold.

  He had come here every day since his arrival, in order to nurture his bruised psyche from the none-too-gentle caresses of the Suret and the Inquisition. Taqrit had been a rank amateur by comparison, though at least Indris’s current interrogators were not trying to be deliberately cruel and, thus far, there had not been a daul in sight. But escape was necessary, even if it was fleeting, like this current retreat.

  There were few people out. Some Sēq novices trained with their wooden swords, spears, and knives, while others were given rigourous training in unarmed combat. From a distance they looked like a murder of crows flapping about, beaks stabbing for food. A lone librarian sat at an open window, her face beatific in the sun. A black-hulled wind-galley, bright with flashes of lightning from its Tempest Wheels and Disentropy Spools, made its way home. All was at peace. If all one did was look at the surface.

  Invisible to the untrained eye, the ahmsah was incadescent with patterns of energy that overlapped and intersected with each other. Wards, barriers, and mystic filters covered the valley in an umbrella of power and illusion, monitored at all hours for anything untoward. Not even a rabbit could enter the Amarqa valley without the Sēq knowing about it.

  Indris climbed to the top of his consciousness and watched the circuits flowing around his world. While it was true the Sēq had protected themselves, they also needed to view what transpired beyond their walls—more so now than before, given the chapterhouses of Irabiyat and Avānweh were lost. It had taken four days for Indris to isolate the gaps in the pattern, qantums of nothing like pinpricks in a sky-sized sheet. The gaps moved along in the wake of several ahm dense states, where the sheer volume of energies could not be perfectly merged. After several hours Indris had mapped his way through and was finally able to access the ahmtesh, where the souls of the dead moved, spoke, danced, and dreamed with little care for the troubles of the world they left behind.

  Almost immediately he saw two bright stars rocket his way from the luminous thunderhead that was a gathering of souls. They spiralled around each other, firefly bright, leaving fading trails behind them. Indris fortified his kaj, in case these two meant him harm. He waited tensely; ready to slide back down the ladder of his states of existence and shelter within his physical body.

  “Indris!” Chaiya said. As she closed, the star transformed into the features of his friend, her jade and ink etched form beaming. Beside her was another shape, which swung and spiralled behind her as if it were a kite on a string. “We’ve been looking for you. Where have you been?”

  “I’m in Amarqa-in-the-Snows, and I don’t have much time, not if I want to keep my soul excursion a secret. I’m sorry to rush you, but can you tell me what happened to my friends? To Mari and Shar? Hayden, Omen, and Ekko?”

  “Oh, Indris!” He quailed at the remorse in her voice. Tiny diamonds lit on her cheeks, the analogy of her memories of sorrow.

  “Tell me, please.”

  “Death is truly not the end,”—the other soul pulsed—“with naught to fear, nor heart to rend. One wonders now, with all that’s here, what it was I came to fear.”

  “Omen?” Indris choked the name.

  And the figure transformed, slowly at first, then more rapidly, into a tall, slender man in a fine over-robe, long coat, loose trousers and boots with the toes curled up. The face had high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, set between a long straight nose and thick eyebrows. The face turned into a small cloud of swirling jade smoke, before it settled again into a gentle smile.

  “Do not be sad, my intrepid friend, for we can still speak, now and then.”

  “What happened?”

  Omen recounted the events of the Dead Flat, of his and Hayden’s deaths and of Vahineh and Mari being taken. He spoke of the deal Roshana made with Belamandris and how Ekko had managed to spirit Shar away before they, too, were killed. Indris listened to it all with growing sorrow, mixed with a rising anger and frustration.

  “This happened because of me,” Indris said. “You and Hayden. Mari. This is on me.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Indris,” Chaiya wrapped her soul around Indris’s and held him close. “You carry the weight of too much that is not your fault. Don’t add this to your burdens. They’re happy here.”

  “They?”

  “Hayden,” Omen smiled. “Along with his wife and daughters. It seems we do all come to the one place when we die, the same place all our souls come from. I even found an old cat of mine, one who had shared my life for almost t
wenty years. He had been waiting a long time, as relaxed and proud in death as he ever was in life. But as to Hayden. He told me to tell you, if we spoke, that he is happy, and that he finally managed to make it home.”

  Indris felt his soul shine with bittersweet melancholy. Movement from the corner of his eye caused him to turn. A shimmering curtain was drifting their way, vertical lines and streaks of grey similar to approaching rain. The Sēq.

  “I need to go”

  “What will you do about Mari?” Omen asked.

  “I’ll find her and bring her back,” Indris said. “But she’s gone for now, and there are other friends to whom I must make amends. But there are things I must do here, first.”

  “And once you’re done here?” Chaiya’s face floated in front of Indris’s.

  “I’ll call upon some friends, old and new, for what will come next.”

  The rain-grey curtain was much closer now. Indris bid his friends farewell and plummeted back to his body.

  Indris stood and wiped the snow from his over-robe. The tears of grief he kept.

  He turned and walked into the vastness of Amarqa. The time would come when he would pay back his debts in full, as there would be a time he would exact his price from those who had wronged him, and caused those he loved to suffer.

  But for now, this is where he needed to be if he were ever to find the answers he needed, to the questions he was only now learning to ask.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Indris

  Avān. Pahmahjin-Näsarat fa Amonindris, formerly a knight of the Sēq Order of Scholars and now a daimahjin, a mercenary warrior-mage. Once commanded the Immortal Companions’ nahdi company. Also known as Dragon-Eyed Indris; Indris, Tamer of Ghosts; and Indris, the Prince of Diamonds. Bears the mind blade, Changeling.

  Shar-fer-rayn

  Seethe. War-chanter of the Rayn-ma troupe, reputed to be the last surviving member of her family. Met Indris in the slave pits of Sorochel, from which they escaped together. Now travels with Indris.