The Unremembered: Book One of The Vault of Heaven

by Peter Orullian

  Around a corner, they suddenly were in an expansive square ringed with water fountains now home to accumulated drifts of wind-borne dust and dried leaves. From each fountain ran a tributary channel downward to a great fountain at the square center. All the empty pools were recessed into the ground, so that the water might have lapped near a person’s toes as he stood to appreciate the mists it produced.

  Tahn walked close to one fountain. A large bowl stood poised atop the back of a large, granite-sculpted man, the musculature of the figure still evident in the skillfully textured work of the sculptor. Around the perimeter of the great square stood several such statues, each facing the fountain at the center, their eyes peering along the channels that fed the central fountain. Tahn followed a channel, forgetting the stranger as he passed him by.

  The channel emptied into a deeper basin. On one side, a set of stairs descended into the fountain.

  “Grace and utility,” the stranger said. His face appeared in conflict, admiration contending with envy. The struggle twisted his smile in a horrible line. “This is where they were sanctified. Where they completed their journey.”

  The man’s words disquieted Tahn, despite the beauty being described. He didn’t care about this lost city-nation anymore. He and Sutter had concerns of their own. They had to get to Recityv. Wendra would be worried sick, if she was not in need of help herself. Tahn subtly placed a hand on the sticks hidden within his cloak. There were other reasons to hurry, as well.

  Tahn refocused on the man. “How do we find our way out of this place?”

  The man did not look away from the fountains. “What, so quick to leave so remarkable a place?” A wry grin spread on his lips as he finally turned to marvel at the immensity of the palaces and towering stone edifices that faced the great square. “What adventurers you are proving to be, young friends.”

  “Will you help us, or not?”

  Unsmiling, the man pointed to the northeast. “Between those two towers.”

  Several towers rose to the north, spires reaching skyward. Tahn could see away to the cliffs, a morning haze in the air washing the crisp edges that touched the sky. But he didn’t immediately see.

  The stranger pointed once more.

  Then Tahn spotted the towers. Each rose with prim majesty from an edifice several blocks away, a stone staircase on the outer wall of both towers spiraling toward the top. A narrow bridge passed between them near the pinnacle. Just under the footpath, Tahn thought he could see a dark, vertical line in the distant cliff wall obscured by the haze.

  “Must be a gap like the Canyon of Choruses, huh?” Sutter remarked.

  “Indeed,” the man said. “But it is a great deal more difficult to find than it appears. The streets in that direction are not square, and the cemetery there is less … habitable.”

  Something in the way the man used the word habitable was unsettling.

  “We’ll just follow the rim around until we come to a break in the cliff,” Tahn stated matter-of-factly. “We should be able to reach it well before dark.”

  “And so your eyes would deceive you.” The stranger stared at both Tahn and Sutter. “The envy of the outside world forced the Stonemount people to protect themselves. In the west there is the Canyon of Choruses. In the north”—he looked again to the dark line between the towers—“the canyon is bordered by wild growth. People here learned to navigate the wilds, but foreigners often found their final earth early by trying to pass through them without a guide.” He turned a mirthful eye on Tahn.

  “Don’t tell us: you know the way through these wilds.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Ta’Opin

  Jastail and Penit rode side-by-side ahead of Wendra. The highwayman had astutely discovered that if he kept control of Penit, he controlled her. At times he spoke in avuncular tones to the boy, at other times as though they might be brothers, giving advice and smiling over the lad’s imperfect knowledge. Penit seemed just young enough to forget their circumstances and lose himself in conversation with an adult. Wendra stewed in her anger over Jastail’s easy manipulation of the youngster. Once, he even patted Penit’s shoulder, the boy laughing at some comment. Wendra’s heart was gladdened to witness Penit’s resilience, but the dirty hands of the trader on Penit forced her to close her eyes and hum the discordant strains chiming in her head.

  Colors swirled in her vision. She could feel blood coursing through the veins at her temples. She could hear the blood coming in rushes like the reprise of a song, ebbing and flowing with regret and violence as each beat of her heart pushed it along. When she opened her eyes again, Penit and Jastail were looking back over their shoulders at her, curious looks on their faces. She hadn’t thought she’d been loud enough to be heard. She ignored their looks and fought for balance as the fading harmonies of rhythmic sound, like strings being plucked by calloused fingers, brought tears to her eyes. They were not the peaceful tunes of her childhood, or her box, and she couldn’t remember their melody, only the rough feel of them on her tongue and the image of broken glass on cellar floors.

  After that, Jastail did not speak as often to Penit, nor did he put his hands on him. But he continued to keep the boy close, even when they stopped to rest and eat.

  Near meridian of the second day, they came to a road that stretched north and south.

  “We’ll use the road,” Jastail said. “But keep your wits about you. The road is filled with travelers whose business it is to deceive. Don’t let them know anything about you, or you’re likely to wind up dead.” He looked at Penit when he spoke, but clearly meant his words for Wendra, too. He turned north and kicked his horse into an easy canter.

  They passed a few homes. Wendra badly wanted to make a break for safety among those strangers. But each time, the people they saw remained silent and distant, their eyes following them from behind window glass or over the backs of standing cattle. Others turned their own backs to them in counterfeit gestures of labor, while searching from the corners of their eyes as Jastail and Penit passed by.

  Farther on, at a fork in the road, Jastail called them to a stop, surveying each direction. Finally, he led them fifty strides from the intersection and asked Penit to build a fire. The boy eagerly took to the task.

  “Not concerned about your fellow tradesmen pursuing us anymore?” Wendra asked as Jastail took a seat on a flat rock.

  The highwayman smiled. “They’ll wait their chance upon me. For now, they will return to their trading.” He carved a slice of cheese. “When we meet again, they’ll remember what their efforts earned them, and I will be wealthy enough to have them whipped for harboring ill thoughts of me.”

  Wendra looked for Penit, who bent gathering sticks near a copse of alder a stone’s throw away. “There’s no mystery in you,” Wendra said, seething. “I have saved your life more than once and for it I must watch the boy learn to trust a salter’s hand. You don’t live to build wealth; the shine of a copper has long since lost its luster for you.”

  “Ah, but remember that each time you helped me you also helped yourself.” Jastail took another slice of cheese and looked away with a studious gaze. “The irony is striking, don’t you think, that by helping me you preserve your life, which also helps me? It is true charity, thank you.”

  Wendra clenched her teeth and a flush of heat raced through her body. “Keep your thanks to yourself. Do you think I will not find a way to escape—”

  “And shatter poor Penit’s illusions,” Jastail interrupted, a wry look upon his face.

  “You are a fool to be so confident.”

  Still smiling, he said glibly, “And you are a lovely woman far from home whose views of the world and its people are not useful beyond the limits of the most rural town. And maybe not even there.” Jastail scrubbed at his beard and motioned toward the trees and sky. “A different season turns now, and the covenants of the early fathers no longer apply to us, if they ever did. Dear lady, you may be right about my waning desire for coin, and any ma
n is grateful to the hand of his rescuer, but it ends there.” His tone became serious. “A day ago you asked about the book I read. Well, let me tell you, line and verse it opens a spyglass to the farthest reaches of what man is. And where the lens blurs on too distant an object … there, there is where I long to be. To know what I am capable of…”

  Jastail looked into the distance, recalling the words from the poem.

  The bird that uses wings only to gather insects,

  No matter how finely plumed,

  Is a meaningless creature.

  The horse that uses hardy legs

  To but pull a plow through the soil,

  Is a meal waiting to be prepared.

  What then of man, so noble in reason, fine in particulars, crafty with wit,

  Who rests his body and rises again at dawn to weed a furrow,

  Draw a mug, or argue over the shifting of a line upon a map?

  How lesser is he, to have been endowed with such capability

  And yet negotiate each breath to the breeding of yet another man,

  Who will but eat and drink and argue until his own rest is come.

  Jastail’s smile returned. “So now you have it … the all of me.”

  “Bitter words for a poet.”

  “The truth always sounds bitter to an unfamiliar ear.” Jastail put his cheese away and pointed at Penit. “It is forgivable in the boy, but you’d do better to understand the poem.”

  Wendra regarded Penit for a long moment. “I understand it well enough,” she asserted, still watching Penit. “They are a coward’s words, written with his own grave at the back of his mind. Some men come to nothing because they aspire to nothing.”

  “And this is how you value an author?” Jastail said, interest arching his brows.

  “No,” she said sharply. “It is pity for one who thinks so little of his own contribution that he must do as the starling and soil his home for those that come after him.” She directed a searching look at Jastail. “Is this really all of you? Are you like the maker of your poem? Perhaps that is why you drag the boy and me toward some hidden destination. You are the starling soiling the nest by killing or corrupting a woman and child.”

  Jastail did not reply, but stared at Wendra. She returned his gaze with equal measures of hate and empathy. She did not know if she believed what she had said, but it eased her mind and satisfied her sense of justice to insult him using something he cared about, as Jastail had done to her in using Penit as leverage.

  “No words from the apprentice wordsmith,” Wendra finally said. “Your wisest choice in a week’s time.”

  Jastail stood and positioned himself between Wendra and Penit, who was now coming back with an armload of dry firewood. “You have a sharp tongue and clever mind, but on the highroads away from the walls of your cozy home, there is an immutable truth. Everything may be bought and sold, and what is not can be taken if you are willing to risk.” The corners of his mouth dropped to the utter look of apathy she hated so much. “For all your clever words, you will do what I say because the risk for you”—he nodded subtly back toward Penit—“is too great. And when our verse is written, dear Anais, you will be a notation writ in small script, and that will be a good deal more than the grave marker will say.”

  Wendra opened her mouth to respond, but just then Penit returned. She closed her mouth with a sour smile to cover the comment she’d intended to make. Jastail grinned a mouthful of smiling teeth, and took some of the load from Penit’s arms.

  Staggered clouds floated high in an otherwise clear sky turned russet with dusk. Wendra saw to her horse, taking her music box from her satchel and gripping it tightly. She would not play it, for fear Jastail would have something to say about it, but holding it was enough. She heard the tune in her mind and watched the fire-colored sky give way to violet hues as Penit helped Jastail feed the fire. Soon, the crackle of burning wood echoing behind them accompanied their voices like ghosts in the dark beyond the horses.

  She wondered if the others would find her, or she them. And if so, would it be in time to escape what Jastail had planned for her and Penit? He used people the way his poets used their words, each stroke carefully placed, each word just the right choice to carry off the intended meaning. Her head ached with the constant effort of sorting things out, tracing her steps since the High Plains and wondering how she came here.

  The sound of metal clanking drew her from the dark thoughts. To the east, toward the road, she could see two lanterns swaying with the gentle motion of a large wagon. By turns, the lanterns struck the sides of the cart, causing a dull, tinny whop in the night. The slow clopping of hooves came next, and then the sound of song, evenly measured and hummed low in the chest of a large man.

  Before she could think, Jastail was beside her. “On the highroads it is unwritten grace to share a man’s fire and offer him a cup of tea. He’ll have seen our fire, and he’s made no secret of his presence on the road. When he comes, remember all that I have said. He may be yet a rougher man than I, and you may be glad of my company. Or he may be more your suit.” Jastail sniffed. “But even if I am taken down, you may be sure I won’t go down alone. And you know where my first strike will go.”

  Wendra marveled still at the indifferent timbre in Jastail’s voice. “Would you sooner we die than let us go free?”

  “I would sooner you keep your manner as cordial as when we first met in the shadow of the north face,” Jastail said. She could not see his eyes, but he had already affected the charm that had first allayed her fears of him. He wore a different face as easily as a player wore a mask.

  The wagon creaked to a stop at the crossroads. “Hail there,” a voice called.

  “And you, traveler,” Jastail said in a raised voice. “Come off the road and share our fire.”

  Penit left the fire and jumped through the high brush toward the wagon as it turned from the well-worn ruts. As the stranger came, Wendra regarded Jastail’s handsome profile silhouetted against the firelight behind him. She thought how strange—and deviously useful—a face he had, to show apathy in one moment and to be striking in its strength and affected good-nature the next.

  The horses’ muzzles emerged from the darkness into the dim glow of the flame, their backs already striped by the glare of the wagon lanterns. Their tack and harnesses jangled and yawed until the driver pulled them to a stop and tied the reins down to the hitch. A tall man with a deep chest hopped spryly to the ground. His buckle gleamed in the flicker of the firelight, but his face remained obscured until he came close. Nearer, Wendra realized the man was Tilatian—one of the dark-skinned peoples out of the east. Some of Ogea’s stories hinted that the Tilatians were Inveterae, once confined to the Bourne; though Ogea thought that particular bit of wisdom to be nothing more than a myth.

  And though Wendra had never seen a Tilatian, the real shock came when she realized the man had shaved every last bit of hair from his head and face and wore no tunic; he was not simply Tilatian, and not a man at all, but Ta’Opin—a race within a race, as Ogea would have said. If Tilatians were uncommon, the Ta’Opin were rare, perhaps mythical. The Ta’Opin were rumored to live six generations, and to end their days with a strange madness, such that most took their own lives before the dementia beset them.

  The shock of seeing one of the Ta’Opin made Wendra forget Jastail, who strode confidently past her and put out his hand.

  “Off of the road when greater light has failed, share our tea.” Jastail said it with a strange rhythm. It carried the sound of a routine greeting.

  “And a tale when our tobaccom is lit,” the other replied as if by rote.

  They clasped hands, and Wendra wondered if she could communicate her predicament to the man without alerting Jastail. As the two approached the fire, Penit flitting about their legs like a light-fly, Wendra put her box away and joined them.

  Jastail produced two tin cups and poured steaming tea into each. He handed one to the traveler. “What name do you carry acro
ss the highroads?” Jastail said, settling himself again on his rock.

  “Seanbea,” he answered, and sipped his tea. “Thank you for the tidings. Not every fire near the road is the welcome it used to be.”

  “Truer words were never spoken,” Jastail said, nodding. He pointed his cup of tea at Penit. “This is Penit, a fine young man I’m escorting to Recityv to run in the Lesher Roon.” He raised his other hand with his open palm up. “I am Jastail. And this is Lani,” he said as Wendra came into the circle near the fire.

  The Ta’Opin stood and bowed slightly at the waist. The deferential gesture took Wendra by surprise. It struck her as strange but pleasing to see a wagoneer so far from the trappings of society perform such a simple but genuine acknowledgment. Perhaps he would be just the one to help her and Penit get free of Jastail. She nodded in return and sat on a fallen log next to the boy. She nudged him subtly with her elbow.

  “I meant to tell you,” Penit whispered. “Jastail told me about it today. The Lesher Roon is a race with a great prize. And we need to go to Recityv anyway, right?”

  Had the boy become so completely blind to the highwayman’s manipulation?

  Jastail cleared his throat with the obvious intention of ending their exchange. “Have a seat,” he invited the Ta’Opin. Seanbea sat directly on the ground close to the fire and drank his tea. “You drive your horses late,” Jastail said over his own cup.

  “And would have gone on another hour or two if you’d not welcomed me to warm my hands,” Seanbea replied.