Kandri glanced at the Theater with loathing. Most remnants of the occupation had been summarily destroyed, but not this one. “Her Radiance has something in mind for the Theater,” their captain had said, “She’s kept it sealed and guarded since the start of the war. Totally sealed, you understand? The bones of the dead are still in there, untouched.”
That was the shocking thing: all those bones, the bones of their ancestors, still waiting for the end that was every Chiloto’s due. Kandri tried to imagine them, ghoul-gnawed femurs and skulls, clavicles, ribs, in heaps and piles, bleached after decades in the sun. Why had they not been burned? Were they not taught as children that no ghost could rest easy until his bones received the dignity of fire?
His legs were numb from standing still. He thought of his mother’s parents and brother. Their bones must be in the Theater too. Had they been part of the spectacle? Had Važeks laughed, placed bets, as the ghouls chased them down?
Slurp, hiss, snap. Kandri flinched again. Jeshar, what’s making those sounds?
All at once the mob shifted, murmuring. She is here, she is here. Every head turned westward, and those not bound to duty stations jostled for a view. At the foot of the hill, a podium had been raised. Kandri could barely see it. The crowd was muttering: Yes, someone is climbing a ladder. Yes, yes, it is Her Radiance! She is here with her sons!
“Put out your torches, children. And your lamps. Put out every light.”
It was her voice. Magnified by science or sorcery, it rolled like thunder across the land. Instantly the lights began to vanish. Kandri tried to breathe normally. Like everyone, he felt the dangerous thrill of her presence: the liberator, this destroyer of all enemies, this weapon of the Gods. But more than that, he felt her love—at long last, he truly felt it—washing over him, warm and sweet as rose nectar. A flood of certainties. A home.
The last fires were extinguished; the darkness was complete. Kandri let himself grin; he felt so good it was almost a delirium, like drinking wine with Ariqina, feeling her readiness for him, falling into her arms.
“Chilotos,” said the Prophet, “I have not come here to speak many words. You have already heard me, heeded me: you are my beloved faithful. You know who guides my steps. And you know the ground we have walked together: the past that made us, the road washed in blood. You know how they used us, enslaved us, scraped out our land like a melon rind. Our land and our hearts.”
Was he crying? Was that allowed? Kandri lifted his chin, straightened his back, begged the Gods to let him be the man he should be, just this once.
“You know how they tired of us, and sent us to the slaughter,” said the Prophet. “How they toiled for a world where Chiloto would join Nitani and Birlama, Edys Aqalat and Srel, the dark list of extinguished peoples, the dead forever, all this you know.
“You will take a private oath tonight: to tell your children this story. And you will nurture this pain we share, this burning in your blood and mine, and distill from it your essential selves. Do you hear me? You will make of it not the venom that weakens you but the elixir that makes you indestructible. They fear us, my children. But they will come to fear us more.”
Motion on the platform. The Prophet’s voice came more faintly, and with a hint of irritation. “That’s enough, I’m finished. Help me down, Jihalkra. Bring my pet.”
She is going, the crowd’s whisper announced. Her sons are leading her away. But was it possible, could that truly be all? They were blessed, of course, blessed and grateful. She had made the journey, called them her children; it was enough. But what were her children to do now? Light the lamps? Wait in darkness? Begin the long march home?
No, not yet. Something else was happening. Soldiers were parting the multitude, driving it back, opening a bare, straight strip of land. Right up the hillside it opened, until it reached the Theater itself, a stone’s throw from where Kandri and Mektu stood. Other troops coaxed the throng back from the moat’s edge. Soon, no one remained near the pit’s edge save Kandri and his comrades, the honor guard.
Even by starlight he could see the strip of emptied land, giving him a clear view of the platform in the distance, and a knot of people that must have been the Prophet’s retinue. Farther, beyond the crowd’s distant edge, the plain ran dark and flat all the way to the Coastal Range.
On the hillside, at the center of that emptied strip, something caught Kandri’s eye. Something thin and faint but very long. A glittering scratch. Could it be a line of paint?
“Listen!” someone hissed. In the abrupt silence, Kandri heard it: a rising, churning sound. The roar of voices, many thousands of voices, a throng to rival this one in size. But this new roar came from the mountains, barreling across the plain and up the hill, to crack like a whip against the wall of the Theater of Bones. A roar of triumph and pain and liberation and remembered rage. And as it continued, a light appeared.
It was a great bonfire, kindled in a notch of the mountains. The shape of the notch was vivid against the starry sky, and an excited murmur reached Kandri’s ears: Hunger Cliff! That’s it, where the fire dances! Our Prophet stood right there at the moment of Revelation!
The fire grew tall and red, like a devilish candle. Then—was he seeing things?—it grew a tentacle. A narrow thread, wriggling down the mountainside, following the contours of the land. The roar seemed to follow its progress, as though new voices were leaping up along the path of the flame. Eventually the burning thread detached from the bonfire, no longer a tentacle but a snake. It left the mountains, went slithering over the plain. The roaring grew and grew. The fifty thousand near the Theater held their breath as suddenly boom the snake exploded into a word, a holy word writ in burning oil, and the word was Adradnin, Imperishable Memory, and it lingered there, searing the darkness. But the fire-snake emerged anew and kept crawling, the roar still chasing it, growing; and Kandri’s heart raced; he was laughing; he was scared out of his mind. Something had been loosed, something so vast that he could not glimpse its shape or purpose, but he knew it could annihilate him, sweep him unnoticed from its path.
The fire neared the Prophet’s retinue. And then, as though tapping richer fuel, it simply leaped up the hill: straight up, like a sword stroke. Kandri barely had time to see the trench revealed by fire, and the braided wick of oil-soaked rags thick as a palm tree, before the flame roared past the honor guard, leaped the moat, and vanished down a dark stone tunnel into the Theater.
A full second’s silence. Then the world went mad.
Every arcade belched fire. A volcanic howl rose to heaven, as though the Theater itself were in agony. Kandri was blown off his feet. All around the moat, the Honor Guard was running or crawling from their stations, the heat impossible, the air turning lethal in their lungs. Only when he was fifty yards from the structure did he dare to look up.
The throng was roaring, dancing, possessed.
The whole coliseum had become a torch. The army had filled the Theater with fuel as one might fill a bowl with bread crumbs, but these crumbs burned like hellfire. Hundreds of feet above the wall the flames were climbing, illuminating the multitude and its sustained, feral cry. Kandri looked for Mektu: there he was, two fists in the air, screaming, transported. And Kandri, yes, he was screaming too, he could not ask why or think why, he could not think at all. Someone doused him with water: his sleeve had caught fire and he hadn’t noticed a thing. Laughing, maniacal. They were not themselves any longer. They were so much more than themselves.
“The ghouls!” someone shouted, and Kandri turned and saw them in the flames: hairless, hunchbacked creatures, mouths too large, hands too wide, eyes like greasy pools. They had swarmed the arcades, doomed of course, leaping by threes and fours. Stronger than the men, they writhed and burned upon the spikes, their yowls blending with the roar of the faithful, and they seemed to fight on until the very moment their flesh turned to ash.
Silence. Windlessness. Five travelers crossing the white floor of the sea.
Kandri sways a l
ittle, dazzled by the sun, reeling with memory. That night of collective lunacy, of fire, of oaths unto death. Imperishable Memory. An army driven by a dream. What force could possibly stand in its way?
Then, underfoot: a sudden crackling and crunching. They stop dead. Kandri shields his eyes and looks down.
They are walking on dragonflies, hundreds of thousands strong, black pearl eyes and rainbow wings, desiccated, dead. All of them facing the same direction, which happens to be their own. As if the swarm had set its collective mind on crossing the Yskralem and flown due east, low and purposeful, moving as one. Until strength abandoned them, or the last trace of water in their bodies, or simply their will.
No one speaks. But Kandri, walking beside Eshett, notes that her eyes are bright. Waste of water, he can’t help but think, though not without a certain admiration. If no one were watching, if Mektu were not watching, perhaps he would have touched her hand.
For over a mile, they wade in this river of silver corpses. Then the wind starts to blow, and the insects click and clatter over the salt pan like a curtain of beads.
“You haven’t thought about it much, then?” says Chindilan.
“I try not to,” says Mektu, blinking as he walks. “If I think about it, the dreams come, and that’s never good.”
Talupéké’s eyes are inquisitive, she wants the story, chapter and verse. Eshett looks as though she knows it already, somehow.
“We were drugged, boys, you know that,” says the smith.
“In more ways than one,” Kandri says.
They walk a mile in silence. Their boots shed translucent wings.
“Well, that is the issue,” says the smith. “How many ways? I told you before, what I overheard in the weapons shop. How they added something to our food when it suited them. I don’t worry anymore about the sutsak we drank a year ago. Its purpose was obvious—to make us all maniacs for a night. No, I worry about the drugs we swallowed without tasting anything, without suspecting they were there. The ones that don’t seem to have done a thing to us, yet.”
The sun is close to setting when they catch sight of the next pursuit. This time, there are no riders: just three men afoot, and one camel laden with supplies.
Chindilan whips out the telescope. “Pitfire, it’s Atau!” he says. “I can see his silver earrings, plain as day! Atau and two cronies. We never shook them at all.”
“They must have been guiding the men who attacked you,” says Eshett. “The Tirmassil know the Stolen Sea better than anyone.”
They quicken their pace to a jog. The Tirmassil do the same, drawing no closer but not allowing themselves to slip behind. “What the hell are they thinking?” says Mektu. “If they did bring the Rasanga, they can see how well that went. And back at Atau’s camp, those little shits ran for their lives when they were still eight strong. Now they’re going to try to take us with three?”
“Let’s find out,” says Kandri.
They stop and wait. The Tirmassil carry on for a time, but halt when the distance between them shrinks to half a mile. There they remain, squatting on their heels. Atau raises a hand and makes a sharp chopping gesture.
“You know what that means?” says Eshett. “It means, I’ve come to kill you.”
Kandri takes a turn with the telescope. He recalls the other Tirmassil from Atau’s camp. The one leading the camel has a thick black-and-white beard: very black and very white, like a skunk’s tail grafted to his chin. The other is a lanky bald man with a limp. Atau has his scimitar; the other two carry nail-studded clubs.
“We could walk right over and kill them,” says Kandri. “That camel would be a blessing.”
“I don’t like this,” says Mektu. “Why are they so fucking relaxed?”
Bewildered, the travelers resume their march. “They’re dreaming about a reward from your Prophet,” says Talupéké, “but they’ll never see it. Those runts don’t know how to fight.”
Chindilan takes a last look over his shoulder. “Doesn’t mean they don’t know how to kill,” he says.
All that night and the next, the Tirmassil dog their heels, turning when Kandri’s party turns, pitching camp when they pitch camp. From beneath their own sunshield, they laugh and hurl taunts in the Parthan tongue. Eshett says they are shouting, Food for the worms.
The wind is in their faces, as it has been since Balanjé, and this does nothing to help Kandri’s irritated eyes. But a worse torment is his inability to guess Atau’s game. An ambush seems impossible: the way ahead is clear for miles. Still, to quell their doubts, they veer north several times, adding miles to the journey. The Tirmassil make no effort to drive them south again. They do not seem to care where they go.
Midway through the third night, they find themselves on the edge of a great north-south rift. Before them, the land falls away to depths Kandri cannot gauge by moonlight. Far below, the land once more becomes smooth and flat, but what will it take to get down there? The downward slope, though comprised of the same loose salt-scree, is very steep. When Mektu heaves a rock over the edge, a great mass of earth breaks free and slides into the darkness. Eshett swears and turns her face away.
Kandri himself feels dizzy at the sight. “We can manage this,” he makes himself say, “but for the love of Ang, watch your step. And if you do fall, keep your head uphill and lie flat. If you start rolling, they’ll be nothing left of you at the bottom but a sack of bones.”
“Under ten feet of dirt,” says Chindilan. “Pull out that rope, Kandri, and we’ll pass it around our waists. If one of us stumbles, the others might be able to stop him.”
Mektu removes his headscarf and ties one end to his belt. He offers the other end to Eshett. “Hold this, too,” he says. “I said I’d protect you, and I will.” Eshett looks at him with great unease, but she takes the scarf.
The descent is slow and terrifying. Large masses of salt and earth sheer away with their every footfall, rushing before them like breaking waves. Kandri’s boots are overflowing; the rope snaps and jerks. “At least we’ll be rid of the Tirmassil,” says Mektu. “No camel’s descending this. Not in the dark, anyway.”
“You’re right,” says Kandri. But he thinks: Wouldn’t Atau know about the rift?
Then Eshett screams. Before Kandri can even turn to look, she and Mektu crash against him, and the three are borne together against Talupéké and Chindilan. Kandri stabs his fists into the earth but can find no purchase. They are tangled, choking, gathering speed. He flails over and over. So easy to die. So much unfinished. He sees his parents’ faces; he feels Ariqina naked in his arms.
Then a flash of steel: Chindilan has rolled and swung his axe. Snap: the rope goes taut, tearing at Kandri’s ribs. He can feel himself slowing, and claws at the earth once again.
The smith has done it, buried his axe deep enough to bite. The others too have regained some control. They never stop, but they are riding the wave now rather than being crushed. In a matter of seconds, they are all at the bottom, heaped atop one another, in a cloud of dust that hides the stars. Eshett clings to Mektu, shaking, too frightened to move. His arms are tight about her head.
Eight more miles. Flashes of heat lightning. On the wind, faint curious smells: sulfur, citrus, pitch. Low in the northeast, the twin red stars called Jekka’s Eyes. Three in the morning, the brothers’ aunts used to whisper. When all good boys are asleep. That’s when the Lord of Hell peeks over the world’s rim to search for sinners. The Old Man would chuckle and say he doubted it was much of a search. The aunts would study him and scowl.
At dawn, the weather changes: a cold wind blows up from the south. The night’s chill lingers, bracing and almost bewildering after so many days when the heat burst upon them with the sun. And as the light grows, they see an astonishing sight.
It resembles a broad river, meandering across their path. But this river is stationary and composed of pools, thousands upon thousands of irregular oval pools, each one a brilliant shade of green or turquoise. Some are enormous, others n
o larger than a child’s wading-pool. From several a mist or steam is rising. The pools crowd together with almost no gaps, only diaphanous edges barely visible in the glare. Beyond the river, the land begins immediately to rise. Sharp hills stand on the horizon.
It is a scene of such weird loveliness that for a moment, no one speaks. Then Mektu comes to life. “Is that water?” he asks.
“Sort of,” says Talupéké. The others look at her, bewildered. She frowns, touches her temple. “It’s mud,” she says after a moment, “and salts, spirits, minerals—”
“The biles of the earth,” breaks in Chindilan. “Ang’s grace, I remember! Garatajik talked about this place. He called it the Snakeskin.”
Talupéké looks pleased, as though Chindilan has found a puzzle-piece lost in a corner. “The Snakeskin. That’s right. We’ve reached the very bottom of the Stolen Sea.”
“The part that never quite drained,” says Chindilan. “Garatajik says that there are cracks beneath those pools leading down to the stomach of Urrath—that’s how he speaks of hell—and that evil things bubble up from below. That explains the colors, maybe. What’s certain is, we’ve made good time. Remember your nursery tales, boys? The cold east depths, near the fair East Shore, bring me to harbor and I’ll sail no more. We’re getting close. In short order, we should get a glimpse of the Rim.”
“But how do we cross all those pools?” asks Mektu.
“Carefully,” says Talupéké. “They have skins. Like ice, but made of salt and other things. You can walk on some of them, but others—” She breaks off, rubbing her temples again.
“What, what?” says Mektu. “Are they poisonous, is that what you mean?”
“Worse, I think. Something’s very wrong about this place.” She pauses, looks at them almost guiltily. “But I can’t fucking remember. I was drinking Atau’s wine by then.”
Master Assassins Page 23