In the Ruins

by Kate Elliott

  Antonia’s eyes hadn’t stopped stinging since that awful night when the wind had torn the thatch off the cottage in which she sheltered, and ash had started to fall. She rubbed them now as they halted.

  “God help us,” added the soldier, voice choked. “The western hills are all on fire. And the plain of Dar—look!”

  “I see nothing,” said his companion.

  It was a foul soup of air, like the congealed breath of the Enemy: smoke and brimstone, the stench of the Pit. For the space of one breath, a shift in the wind stripped the worst layer of haze off the land and she glimpsed the distant towers and walls of Darre before they were swallowed up again in the fog.

  “We must descend,” she said, and she heard the two guards whistle hard between teeth. They were frightened because they were weak, although they had guarded her faithfully enough on their journey. She had lost count of the days.

  “Who knows what kind of creatures might be lurking down there in that smoke,” said the taller one, called Focas. “They could have claws as long as my arm. They might rip us to pieces.”

  “God will protect us,” said Antonia. “Have we not met dangers? Have we not survived?”

  Pietro spoke less but said more that was to the point. “What if we can’t breathe that fouled air?”

  “We must go down,” repeated Antonia. “We must reach Tivura, to see if the princesses have survived. As for the rest, I fear God have punished the wicked most decisively.”

  The soldiers looked at each other, a glance that excluded her, as they had always excluded her. They served her faithfully, it was true, but out of loyalty to Empress Adelheid. Still, no matter how irritating it was that they could not recognize her worth and God’s favor, she endured it because she had to, because it was another test thrown in her path. God honored the righteous, but They did not always spare them trouble and ingratitude.

  “The princesses,” said Pietro. “That’s what the empress would want.”

  Focas nodded. “The princesses,” he agreed. “We must see if they can be rescued, if they are indeed trapped down there, although we must hope they are not. If their stewards have any wits about them at all, which I doubt, they would have fled to a safe place.”

  “No one can flee God’s wrath,” said Antonia sternly. “There are those who have done what they ought not.” She gestured toward the hazy landscape below. “Thus are they rewarded with chastisement and death.”

  Focas rubbed his forehead, looking anxious.

  Pietro hefted his spear. “No use waiting.”

  They started down the road, which was utterly deserted although the day wasn’t far gone. It was difficult to measure the hours because the cloud cover never lifted and the light had a sameness to it that made noon seem like twilight and morning no different than afternoon. Ash squeaked under their feet. Pebbles rolled and crackled, and more than once Focas or Pietro slipped and, swearing, caught themselves before they fell. Fortunately, the mule was a sure-footed creature, stolid and companionable and not particularly stubborn.

  As they descended, the light changed and deepened to a queer yellow fog that painted their skin the color of parchment. The hollows of their eyes darkened until the two soldiers looked like walking corpses as they strode along. Down and down they walked, as into the Pit. The world had emptied. They saw no one and no thing. Even the grass had withered into dry stalks. Now and again they crossed a stream running down from the circling heights, but a sour taste choked the water although they forced it down anyway. It sat heavily in parched stomachs. Antonia felt sick. Her head pounded and her throat burned. Each breath scraped as she wheezed along.

  In time twilight faded to night. They set up camp off the road but not so far that they would lose sight of it and thus find themselves lost in the morning. The mule ate its lean dinner; they had only two days of grain left and certainly there was little enough to graze. They had bread and cheese and wine for themselves. The soldiers took turns on guard duty. She slept on her cloak under a canvas lean-to. She did not mind the hardship, although her old bones ached and her head never stopped hurting.

  At dawn Pietro hissed. “Focas! Rouse you! Do you hear that?”

  She rose and came to stand beside them, fingering the amulet at her chest.

  She heard the jingle, too, and touched each man on the elbow. “Stand you as still as mice when the owl swoops. Say nothing.”

  They, too, wore amulets, as did the mule. She had woven them with her own hands out of wolfsbane and turnsole, and still nursed blisters on her palms and fingers.

  The procession emerged out of the haze: a line of sobbing, hacking, coughing men and women coffled in a line and guarded by a crew of men who in another life might have been soldiers as honorable as the ones who stood on either side of her. The soldiers wore cloth tied over mouths and noses to protect themselves from the air. The prisoners had nothing but the rags on their backs. A few were naked. As they shuffled past, she counted them: eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four. Over one hundred in all, a remnant.

  Although their guards were alert, looking from side to side and pointing here and there into the gloom, they marked no watchers, even those standing in plain sight a stone’s throw off the road. As the last man, a brawny, swaggering fellow, faded from sight, Pietro let out a great sigh that was more of a hoarse choke, and touched his chest where the amulet lay.

  “Lord be praised,” he said.

  Focas choked down a hysterical laugh. “Didn’t you recognize him? That was Sergeant Hatto there walking last of all. Do you think those were slaves they were herding away?”

  “Slaves now, whatever they were before.” Pietro knelt, touched his hand to the dead earth, and kissed his fingers. “I pray you, Your Excellency, let us go swiftly.”

  “This land is a charnel house,” said Focas. “I can smell it.”

  They walked again that day, and the stench of sulfur got worse. Antonia’s headache got worse. Her eyes wept from the burning. In time, they saw off to either side glowing cracks spewing ghastly yellow smoke. It was as though the Earth itself was breaking apart. Once Pietro almost fainted when the wind caught him full on with a streamer of air off one of the fumaroles, but he staggered forward gasping and vomiting until he was out of danger. After that they were careful to keep cloth tied tightly across mouth and nose.

  They walked as though in a tunnel, since they could see no great distance to any side. The haze clouded everything, making the world seem by one measure very small indeed and by another like a vast unknowable wasteland that could never be crossed but only suffered. Trudging on in this way they missed the crossroads where they might turn aside to Tivura and came at the end of the second day to the walls of Darre. In all that time they had seen not a single living creature except that one sad procession. No birds flew; no sheep blatted; no goats disturbed their rest, seeking scraps to eat. The mule was not faring well, but it had a strong sense of self-preservation and refused to fall behind. Even so, Antonia walked rather than rode for fear it might buckle and toss her to the ground. If she broke a leg, she, too, would be trapped in this purgatory.

  That was what it was, of course. She recognized it as they saw the gaping gates rise out of the fog in front of them and beheld the tumbled ruins of the fairest and most magnificent city humankind had ever built. Had they unwittingly crossed through a stone crown into the world where galla roamed? Had Anne’s magic brought down the destruction? Or had the Lost Ones returned with plague and fire to defeat their ancient enemies?

  “We’ll go to the palace, camp there tonight, and after take the road to Tivura.”

  “I don’t like to go into the city,” said Focas as Pietro stroked his beard. “It scares me. I don’t mind saying so. It scares me.”

  “None will see us. I think the city deserted in any case.”

  Pietro hesitated. Even after all this time he did not trust her; he did not look to her as a servant ought to obey his master. Still, in the end he turned to Focas and said, bre
ath whistling as he spoke, “The empress. She would want it, would she not?”

  The empress. They were all Adelheid’s faithful soldiers, every one of them.

  Fuming, she followed them into the empty city. Twice, they saw dogs slink away around corners, tails tucked tight and heads down. Of dead folk there were none, but human bones they saw aplenty scattered across avenues and the open squares. Fallen apartment blocks and tumbled columns lay like dead beasts in the rubble. Each entryway was a dark mouth; each was silent. Wind swirled dust up from the streets to blend with the haze. Once, from far away, they heard a shout. Their footfalls scraped ominously, echoing off the walls. But they saw no one.

  “How many days since that wind blasted us?” Focas whispered as they reached the paved ramp that led up to the two palaces built atop the central hill. “This happened then, don’t you think? The storm brought destruction with it. I could smell it in the air, like it was diseased.”

  Pietro scratched his nose, then sneezed. “I wish we’d stayed with the empress. No telling if she lives, or is dead.”

  Close by, a dog growled, and both soldiers whirled, raising their spears, to be greeted by a heavier silence.

  “Come,” said Antonia. “It will be dark soon. Let’s find shelter.”

  They made their way up the ramp past broken-down wagons abandoned in haste and in one case with the remains of a horse scattered around the traces where dogs had ripped it apart. Focas counted swords, and had reached the astounding total of fifty-five before they reached the top.

  “Who would throw down their good iron swords like that?” he muttered to Pietro. The two men stood a stone’s throw away from Antonia, but she overheard them nevertheless.

  “Dead men. We’ll be dead, too, if we don’t get out of here. This is a fool’s errand.”

  “Hush!”

  From the top of the ramp they surveyed the city. Nothing moved but for a tumbling scrap, hard to say what it was but probably a bit of cloth, rolling down a distant avenue. The fog obscured even the towering walls and distant gates. Of church towers, she saw none. Perhaps they had all fallen. Off to the west in the hills bordering the sea, streaks of fire that marked red flowing rivers pierced the sullen haze despite the distance.

  Surely even the Pit smelled sweeter and nourished more life!

  Surely not. This was the Enemy’s handiwork.

  “Come,” she said.

  They ventured into the broad courtyard that fronted the twin palaces. The imperial palace had burned. It still stank of charred wood, a sharp scent overlying the reek of brimstone and decay. The skopos’ palace had many more sections built entirely of stone, and these had survived with less damage.

  “I had thought to examine the regnant’s schola and library,” said Antonia thoughtfully as they stood in the courtyard that separated the two palaces. “But it appears too dangerous to walk there.”

  She advanced nevertheless into an alcove where a sooty face peered at her out of the stone: a woman’s visage wreathed with snakes that were also her hair. A viscous green puddle had collected in the basin below her open mouth, once a fountain where travelers might splash water on dusty faces before entering the great hall to meet the regnant. The mule strained toward the water. Pietro hauled it back.

  “Perhaps there is something left in the barracks, if the rats haven’t eaten it all up,” said Antonia. “Go carefully, see what you can find. Seek grain and water for the beast, and provisions for ourselves. Also, a place to shelter for one night.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. I’ll go, and Focas will stay and attend you.”

  “Nay, best you go together. I will attempt the skopos’ palace and meet you here by this fountain.”

  “If there are dogs, or madmen …?”

  She nodded. “Do as I command.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  Impertinent man! She crossed under the shadow of a vast arch and found, in the usual niche, a brace of lanterns that, amazingly, had not been tampered with, together with flint and scraps of linen. These she carried as she walked quietly along the old familiar corridors. It was utterly silent. In here, she could not even hear the wind. Now and again she glimpsed withered gardens through open windows and doors. The fountains, of course, had all stopped running. Dust scraped under her feet.

  She almost did not recognize the double doors that led into the audience chamber. The gold leaf that had once covered the relief carved into those doors had been pried off and taken away by thieves or by faithful servants. Who could know? One door sat askew, having lost two hinges. She did not touch it but tugged on the other, which opened with a groan into the empty hall.

  Her footfalls echoed softly as she walked. The ceiling arched high above, dimly perceived. The mural washed across the far wall, depicting the Translatus of the blessed Daisan, had splintered with a thousand cracks, and the Earth beneath his feet had vanished into a pile of fragments on the floor. Up on the dais, the skopos’ chair was broken into pieces and all the gems pried out. A single amethyst had been left behind, dropped in haste, no doubt. She picked it up, turned it, but there wasn’t light enough to catch the glints within. Still, in a pinch, it might serve her. She tucked it into the pocket sewn into her sleeve, then pushed past the curtain at the far right and came into the private sanctum of the skopos.

  A room, whitewashed, with paintings of noble saints gracing the ceiling. There was a single table, a battered chest whose lock had been broken, and a shattered ceramic bowl at the foot of the bare pallet where, once, the skopos had rested. Anne had not scorned luxury, but neither had she coveted it.

  The thieves had skipped over the single locked cupboard, sealed with an amulet. She studied it, careful not to touch its knot in any way: wolfsbane, which was poison to the skin, for invisibility, lavender for chastity and thereby to keep locks unbroken, and thistle for strength. Cunningly woven, certainly, but she recognized the pattern as one she had taught to certain of Anne’s clerics. A brief murmured spell, a douse of oil over the dry herbs from the lamp’s reservoir, and she snapped flint, got a spark, and set a scrap of linen burning. The amulet flared so brightly that she stepped back in surprise, shading her eyes. After so many days under a veiled sky, she had forgotten how brilliant light could be. The amulet vanished in a swirl of ash.

  She used the point of her knife to cut the binding rope off the latch. Steam hissed along the blade and it glowed white hot, then spat sparks. The latch fell free, and the right side cabinet door swung open, moaning like the wail of the damned.

  Anne had cared little for earthly things. This truth was never more in evidence than now. Anne had abandoned everything in her desire to destroy the Lost Ones. Everything.

  She had left behind the holy vestments, the golden cup, although not the staff of her office. But there were other treasures as well: wrapped in a layer of greased leather and under that cushioned in lambskin was an ancient, degraded spear which Antonia recognized as the Holy Lance of St. Perpetua, once carried by Emperor Henry into battle. Henry would never have left such a holy relic behind; its protection was worth more than a thousand soldiers. But Henry, after all, had been ensorcelled; he hadn’t needed or wanted such things; hadn’t noticed they were missing, because the daimone had obeyed only what commands its master gave it, disregarding the rest.

  He had even disregarded the most potent symbol of imperial power, which was bundled up so casually in plain linen that anyone might be excused for believing it was nothing important. How Anne had come to possess it Antonia did not know, but when she unwrapped it, she knew she had gained something important indeed:

  Emperor Taillefer’s seven-pointed golden crown, adorned with seven jewels—the crown of stars.

  2

  THEY reached the villa Tivura two days later, having lost their way twice because it was so difficult to navigate in the haze. The mule trudged on without complaint, but it was clearly ill; gunk wept from its eyes, and its breathing, like that of its human masters, was labored. Each
breath she took scraped in Antonia’s chest. If they did not leave the plain of Dar soon, they would all succumb to the foul air.

  “Is this the right stream?” Pietro asked for the fourth time, breaking off to cough again. He hacked incessantly.

  “We are on the right road. It rises.” Speaking hurt, so Antonia spoke little.

  The mule tugged at its reins, trying to get to the water. Focas knelt at the bank and scooped up water, tasting it. He spat it out, then wiped his lips. “Not as bad as before. It might be safe to let the poor beast drink. It doesn’t taste of rotten eggs like it did downstream. It isn’t warm.”

  The two soldiers looked at her. She nodded. “Let it drink, then, but not too much. I’ll go ahead.”

  “Your Excellency!”

  “I do not fear bandits.”

  “You should, Your Excellency!” exclaimed Focas. “Dogs, too. We had to beat off that pack last night. They smelled us.”

  She hesitated. She hated showing fear, but in truth the dogs had been starving and therefore dangerous. At last she settled down on the ground and waited while the mule drank and Pietro washed his hands and face in the streaming water. It seemed clear. Although the constant rain of dust out of the air had certainly fouled it, it didn’t stink the way it had down by its confluence with the Greater Tivur, whose course led through Darre and thence south through rolling hills to the sea.

  Those hills were on fire. At intervals the haze lightened, and since they were moving slowly upslope as they walked northeast, she caught glimpses of the red rim of fire that scorched the western horizon at all hours, easiest to see at night, of course, but visible during the daytime as well.

  Her legs ached and her hip shot through with pain as she rose, but she closed her lips tightly as they moved on. In a hundred paces more the famous lady columns ghosted out of the fog: stone columns carved into the shapes of dour women, escorting them into the garden of the long-dead emperor who had built the most beautiful paradise known on Earth, so it was said. Some called it a replica in stone of the garden that grew at the entrance to the Chamber of Light, but Antonia knew better. The Dariyan emperors had scorned the truth. They had worshiped idols and demons. Therefore, everything they had built, while sturdy, was irrevocably tainted by the kiss of the Enemy.