by Ashley Capes
Perhaps Father would have some ideas too.
And she needed his wisdom, for she could not even begin to guess why Ecsoli warriors would steal the sap and the very trees from the earth, if it wasn’t to create more Sap-Born? Nor could she imagine what alternatives existed. But there was no way that other uses for the sap would be welcome ones.
40. Ain
The Great Maw spread before them beneath the bright sun, a dark abyss with no bottom.
Or so it seemed from where Ain stood at its edge.
The depths were impossible to fathom, light did not penetrate far enough. It illuminated the sheer sides of the crater only ‒ pale stone streaked with orange. In places, it seemed a crack in the earth’s crust would reveal a way down, but he had yet to follow any of the faint paths to check. At the very limits of his vision, there seemed to be odd patterns on the walls, but it may have been no more than a trick of the light.
“This may not be enough.” Wayrn dumped a pack at his feet with a grunt; half the size of him, it was bursting with rope.
“There are some faint trails here.” Ain knelt, placing his hands against the stony ground, the heat filling his palm. All the paths were faint; few people ever travelled to the Maw. Some of those who had visited had their paths come to an end here, in a sparkling mess over the blackness. Stronger were the echo of hooves and boots from their back trail, where people travelling from the Cloud to the west bypassed the Maw. Where Ain knelt now, the paths remained faint, like gentle heart-beats, just the occasional thump, almost too soft to detect.
He closed his eyes.
Somewhere... across the Maw, was there a path heading down? It was so faint! “We need to get closer to the other side.”
“Right.” Wayrn hauled the rope onto his shoulder and Ain collected their water.
The thump of the possible trail grew slightly stronger when they reached one of the deeper cracks in the earth. Once they unloaded, Ain again crouched and placed a hand on the desert floor. There was a path, but it didn’t seem reliable – had only a handful of travellers ever used it? Four people? Three? Less? Just how far did it reach? What if it ended halfway down, a dead end? He sighed. “There’s a trail but I cannot say how deep it goes, someone has climbed here but so very few.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Wayrn said. “I’ll prepare the stakes.”
He nodded. “Let me try again.”
Once more he closed his eyes and focused on the faint rhythm of the path, someone had been here. Boots, hands slapping against rock to grip protrusions, climbed down, but the path grew so faint too swiftly... if only he could somehow reinvigorate it, make it stronger. Short of having a few score people climb down before him, that was hardly likely.
Unless...
What if he sent a pulse along it, like when driving off the darklings? Sands, it was worth a try. Ain gripped the trail; like holding smoke, his fingers closed over nothing. Yet when he instead tried to cradle the path, it was easier to get a sense of its length and direction. It meant he wouldn’t be able to snap it like a piece of rope, but the pulse would still have to come from him somehow.
And the only thing likely to travel along something so faint, something like smoke, would have to be air, surely? Would it even work? It had to be worth attempting. He took a deep breath and exhaled – gently, slowly – and the ripples it created travelled along the path, shuddering down, down, deeper than before. There was even the sense that it travelled further. Success! He took another breath and exhaled again, a little harder... and the path disintegrated.
Ain cursed.
The path had completely vanished – it was as if no-one had ever set foot within the Maw.
“Sands.” Ain rose. “I lost it.”
Wayrn looked up from where he was tying coils of rope together. “Did you sense anything more?”
“Just that it goes deeper than I first thought. It might be what we need.”
“Then we try it,” Wayrn said, testing the strength of the knots.
“Are they strong enough to hold?” Ain asked after watching Wayrn a moment.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“We’re carrying a bit of extra weight, with the water and rope, aren’t we?”
Wayrn nodded. “Not enough to make a difference.” He grinned. “Unless you’re planning to take it all down there with you?”
Ain laughed. It eased some of the tension. He put on the gloves Wayrn handed him and then accepted a hammer and pouch of steel spikes. “Keep them handy,” he said. “We might have to tie off and start again. Hard to know what the face of the crater will be like between here and the bottom.”
And with that, Ain’s tension returned.
But there was no choice. He had to try. The Cloud was under threat. Silaj and Jali were under threat. And the sooner he put a stop to the Plague-Men, the sooner he could convince Raila to let him search for Jedda and Majid.
“Ready?” he asked Wayrn.
The man beat the heavy steel stakes he’d wedged into the earth a few more times, then a reserve stake, and hooked the hammer to his belt. Next, he looped several coils of rope around his torso. “Ready. Let me lead – just follow and we’ll reach the bottom in no time.”
Wayrn gripped the rope first, then braced himself on the edge of the crater, stepping down as he leant back, soon standing against the cliff face. “Give me a couple of body lengths,” he said, then started down in earnest, moving with his usual grace and confidence.
“Sands protect me,” Ain said before he followed.
The first passage of the climb did not trouble him. The rock face was sheer but easy enough to navigate. He only lost his footing once, but kept himself steady. Fragments of rock fell beneath him, one glancing off Wayrn. The man looked up, concern on his face but it changed to relief when he saw Ain.
“Sorry.”
“No problem,” Wayrn said. “Just take an extra moment to check each foothold down here, it gets a little worse.”
When Ain reached more uneven footing, he slowed. His hands were already starting to ache, but he clenched his jaw and kept moving ‒ one foot at a time, testing the weight, holding firm when movement from below shifted the rope. He soon fell into a rhythm. It was slow-going and sweat poured from his face, streaming down his back, but when he looked up, the top of the Maw was high above.
“How much rope do we have?” he called down to Wayrn.
“A goodly amount but I can’t get a feel for how much further we have to go.”
“What if we run out?” Ain asked.
“We use the pegs, one at a time.”
“That sounds like it will take forever,” Ain said.
“Better than falling the rest of the way to the bottom.”
“Hard to argue with that.”
They climbed down, further into the shadows where footholds were harder to discern, until Wayrn called up. “There’s an opening here!”
“Like a cave?”
“Yes... with bolts driven into the walls too.” He paused. “Hold tight, I’m going inside.”
Ain braced himself against the wobbling from Wayrn’s movements, then resumed his descent when Wayrn called up again. At the opening, Wayrn pulled Ain into a dark tunnel, one that was tall enough to stand comfortably within. Ain flexed his hands, shaking out the tightness. “What is this?”
“I think I know. Let me check.” Wayrn seemed to be fumbling in his pack – he withdrew a lantern, which he lit and raised to the walls, its warm glow revealing the unmistakeable hint of tool marks.
“Someone dug this.”
“I believe so. And look here,” Wayrn said, shifting the lantern to the floor and extending it over the edge. Heavy bolts of steel had been driven into the crater below the opening. “I believe there was once a platform here. If it circled the crater or zigzagged, we may have missed the other bolts.”
“This speaks of something organised... yet the path was faint, barely used.”
Wayrn shrugged. “But it
was created for someone to use. I wonder too, was the platform destroyed? Or did the wood simply wear away over time?”
Ain ran a hand over one of the bolts. “And if they were destroyed it can only be for two reasons. To protect something valuable... or to prevent people risking their lives by coming here.”
“I’d agree with that but add a third option.”
“Something worse?”
“Yes. Perhaps it was done to prevent something or someone returning to the surface.”
“Wonderful,” Ain said. “But we have to find out.” He took the lamp and started down the passage. It led to a curving set of steps, eventually spiralling sharply. He started counting and it wasn’t until five hundred that the floor evened out again.
The sensation of moving air brushed against his face when he started forward again, and their footfalls echoed. It seemed a vast opening. Darkness lay across everything beyond a few feet but high above rested a circle of light – the opening of the Maw. “We made it,” he said.
Wayrn joined him in looking up. “I wish we had a second light.”
Ain started across the largely even floor, pausing when he caught a glimpse of something at the edge of their light. He veered toward it; human bones spread across the floor. One of those who had leapt down to their death?
Ahead, a dark shape rose up from the floor. When he reached it, Ain lifted the light as high as he could. A wall of neat brickwork, twice his own height. Nearby, a narrow opening waited. “There has to be something here,” he said. “Why else build this at the bottom of the Great Maw?”
“Let’s see what’s inside, then.”
The aperture eventually led to a smaller open area lined with tiered seating; they’d entered an auditorium. The seating rose up at least a storey high, but it stood empty. And it was the centre of the performance space that Ain approached at a half-run, Wayrn close behind.
A large, circular pattern of stones lay in the ground; it seemed to be in the image of an altar struck by sunlight on one side – only the pattern was incomplete. Two stones were missing. “It’s a travel-stone,” he said.
“Like the one you used on Mount Celnos?” Wayrn asked.
Ain knelt and slid one stone across to an empty space, then returned it. “Yes. Only this one is already arranged, as if it would take you to this very location.”
“Two pieces missing, two Stones of Shali.”
Ain tapped one side of the altar – the side cast in shadow. “These stones seem to be onyx, obsidian and simple dark river stones perhaps.” He slid his hand to the sheath of sunlight. “And here, jasper, quartz and more plain white stones of no particular value.”
“And so the two missing pieces are Shali’s Stones, presumably.”
“Maybe... but where are they now?”
Wayrn wiped at the thick layer of dust. “It does not seem that anyone has been here for quite a long time. If someone took the stones, why aren’t they using them? Surely word would have reached someone. Rumours if nothing else.”
“Assuming this travel-stone truly did hold Shali’s Stones.”
“It appears likely, doesn’t it? Or possible, at the least.”
“It does.” He stared into the dark beyond the limit of the lantern. “But what’s our next step?”
“Finish our search,” Wayrn said. “This place might have more secrets to give up yet.”
41. Ain
Ain finished his circuit of half the crater’s bottom, navigating the space well enough. His eyes had long-since adjusted to the dim light and the one hand he let trail along the wall revealed no openings. He did find several more piles of bones, mostly human but some animal, before rejoining Wayrn and the lantern at their entry point. “Anything?” Ain asked.
“Yes, but I don’t know what to make of it,” he said. “When you see it, I think you’ll agree that it seems someone was trying to carve a piece for the travel-stone.”
Ain quickened his step after Wayrn, who soon slowed, head turning.
“Have you lost it?”
“No, it’s around here somewhere... there.” Wayrn angled away from the crater wall to a clump of bones. Unlike the others, this one was not in pieces, but rather a full skeleton in the barest remnants of clothing. A crumbling chisel remained gripped in its hand and nearby, a shard of dark rock shaped like a missing piece from the travel-stone, tool marks rough beneath his hands when Ain lifted it.
“I think you’re right.”
Wayrn gestured to the smaller clump that represented the fellow’s pack. “No white stone here, however.”
“But that might be all we need,” Ain said. Was it worth trying the stone? The dead man before them had deemed it a worthwhile pursuit to spend his last moments on. Was he the one whose path Ain had accidently dissolved?
“Assuming it works, and that the travel-stone takes us somewhere useful.”
He tapped the stone against his palm. “True.”
“Well, if you want to try we have something white. It might not be stone, but it can be carved.” Wayrn gestured to the bones of the fallen man.
Ain exhaled as he lifted a forearm, finger and knuckle bones falling free. It was not so long in the past that he’d been forced to use someone’s bones in a manner lacking reverence. Yet the day in Anaskar’s Sea Shrine with its Great Bell seemed half an age ago now. “He’ll have to forgive us, but I think you are right.”
He took the chisel and led Wayrn back to the travel-stone, where the man aligned the dark fragment with the gap. It fit; not perfectly but well enough. “You’re up next,” Wayrn said.
Ain put the chisel against the piece of bone and took the pommel of his belt knife for a hammer, breaking the bone, which was quite brittle. Then he started carving a smaller piece, working his way down toward something that would fit in the remaining empty space in the pattern. It took some time, but when he was finally ready, his hands covered in bone dust, Ain held the piece over the white section.
“Still too broad.”
“Just shave off a little more,” Wayrn said.
Ain paused after he set the chisel to the rectangular piece of bone.
“What’s wrong?” Wayrn asked.
“If this works, what are we opening?”
Wayrn spread his hands. “Something no-one has seen in a long time. Something that may help us.”
“Or take us so far from the Cloud that we cannot help it.”
“True. But only if the travel-stone linked to this one somehow closes once we arrive. Is that likely?”
Ain shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve used so few.”
“We have to continue down this path, we’ve already taken a risk in coming here. We have to believe that Elder Raila and the others can protect the Cloud without us for a while.” He placed a hand on the travel-stone. “The longer we wait here or if we turn back now, without knowing what lies beyond this... haven’t we wasted everyone’s time?”
“You are right. But I still fear.”
“Only a lesser man would not worry for his wife and child,” Wayrn said, his tone softening.
Ain gave a smile in response. “Then let’s see what lies beyond.”
He took the chisel and shaved the long edge down a little more, then set the piece of bone in place, a soft ‘click’ following.
Then he stood and waited for the light... only none came, not even a whisper of the faintest glow. Ain frowned, ducking back down to make sure both pieces were firmly arranged. “Perhaps they must be certain stones? Perhaps the Shali Stones themselves?”
Wayrn pursed his lips, studying the pattern. “What if we switch the tiles?”
“For something else? If we climb back up, we could find some pale stone around the edges of the Maw.”
“No, these two. Place the dark stone in the beam of light and the bone in the shadow.”
Ain removed the stone. “You think this will work?”
“Just a guess, really.”
He completed the switch, letting the bone
clink into position. As his hand left the piece, light began to stir beneath the travel-stone. Ain rose, shielding his eyes against the growing light – which quickly reached a blazing peak.
Ain turned his back on the light. Wayrn was collecting their packs. “Do you have everything?”
“I think so.”
“Right. Into the light we go.”
42. Seto
Seto woke to darkness, the scent of steel close.
Very close.
He did not move his head; instead, he spoke. “You are a poor assassin if you are here to kill me and have taken the trouble to wake me first. Can you not at least have been professional?”
“Do you think so?” A woman’s voice answered from the dark and a warm breeze moved the curtains enough to let moonlight reveal her form – slender, young probably. Her first kill perhaps? He caught no hint of a Broann accent either... something closer to home. Ecsoli, more likely.
“Yes.”
Still she made no move to deal the killing blow, instead keeping the chill of steel against his throat. “Perhaps my orders are not to kill.”
“A messenger, then?”
“My mistress is losing her patience. It seems you already ignored one warning.”
Seto’s heart skipped a beat. “Tell me, messenger, has she been enjoying Mila’s body?”
A moment of silence, followed by a hiss. “Listen well, King Seto. Chelona may feel somewhat indebted to you and your House but that has limits, and you have exceeded them by sending Argeon to the harbour. There is a price.”
“Such as?”
The steel was removed, and the young woman slipped back to the balcony as he rose to a half-sitting position. “Your throne.”
“What?”
“I believe you heard me, Your Majesty,” she said with a snicker. “A few days hence, a successor will come. You will cede your throne to him.”
“No-one will accept this,” he said.
“They will accept it or die by her hand.”