“I’m gettin’ there. It’s almost off, I think.”
The Custodian looming over Lavery suddenly straightened itself. Its limbs and neck went rigid, and a burst of prismatic light surged into the sky from its skull.
It took two swings of my ebon blade to lop the head off and send it rolling across the beady ground. Its waterfall of light — along with the other Custodian’s — vanished.
I stood hunched over, huffing and puffing. Lavery crawled to the dismembered head and took it in his hands, inspecting it.
“That sword of yours,” he said, “sharp as hell. You just cut through solid gems in two swings.”
“Took us bloody thirty,” Orell said, marching over from the second, also headless Custodian. “Everyone all right?”
A cursory glanced revealed six bodies, all upright or at least sitting. So we had the whole crew alive, if not well. The boars, on the other hand…
“Looks like its neck’s broken,” I said, kneeling beside the tusked animal. Three others were roaming about the violet haze, mindlessly. Another two lay on their sides. Breathless.
“Here,” Lysa said, offering me the burlap sack containing the book. My rather unfortunate departure from the saddle of my boar had caused to slide off my shoulder and skid across the ground. “Figured you might want this.”
“Wardens’ll be coming soon,” Mamus said, sliding his sword back in its sheathe. His helmet was dented. “Best get a move on.”
“I’d hoped to find a cart here,” I said. “You know… something to follow, tell us where to go.”
“I say straight this way,” Mamus said. “Bastard Custodians were protectin’ something here, if ya ask me. Probably got a whiff of us, sent the horses towin’ the cart hightailin’ it outta here, galloping to wherever it is condemned conjurers go.”
Well. Straight ahead sounded as good as any plan.
Orell had a look around, then nodded. “Astul, Lysa, Mamus… may you fuck Lady Luck so hard she gives you tiny babes of fortune.”
That was an interesting way of saying good luck. And one that made me chuckle, although I think the laughter was part giddiness at still being alive.
Lysa sneaked up behind me and yanked my second sword from its scabbard. “I could have used this, you know.” She went to tuck the blade into her own scabbard, but soon realized she was wearing a dress without a belt.
Lavery grinned. “Here. Have mine. I won’t be needin’ it.” He unlooped his belt and tossed it to Lysa’s feet.
She bent down, picked it up uneasily and frowned at Lavery.
“Belt’s no use strapped around a dead man,” Orell said. “Reaper man comes calling to us all, Miss Lysa. Don’t be sad about death.”
She held a deep breath in her chest and fastened the belt around her waist, rearranging the scabbard so it lay against her hip. “You’ve already died once. It shouldn’t happen again. It’s not right.”
Orell flashed a big, goofy smile, yellow-stained teeth and red gums and all. “See there, that’s the best part. Already been through it once. Now I’ll just float around in the sky, right? I’ll find a Preen one of these days, don’t you worry.”
“The rebellion will sing songs about your bravery,” she said.
Orell coughed a raspy laugh. “To hell with songs. You just remember me, all right? Now off with you. Go find and rescue yourself some conjurers and help the rebellion put their boot on the throat of Arken.”
Sometimes I forgot Lysa was only twenty years old. Her selflessness, care for others, and bullheaded opinion that doing the right thing was always worth it spoke of an older, more mature woman.
But on occasion she showed her youthful ignorance. And this was one such occasion. She had grown up in a world where if your name was heard on the tongue of a bard and in the lyric of a ballad, you’d done something grand — not necessarily good, but grand — in your life. People in Mizridahl think that’s how legends are remembered: in songs. And in the cold faces of statues.
But as Lysa would soon learn, memories are best stored within. They’re personal treasures, and treasures aren’t meant to be shared with the world. And for Lysa, it was better that way. She’d not want to hear or even talk about what transpired in this violet wonderworld today. After all, she didn’t handle death very well.
“Go,” Orell urged, waving us on. “We can’t trick Wardens forever.”
I slapped him and Lavery and Krik on the chest, then rounded up the wandering boars. A few moments later, the crew of six had been split into two crews of three, and Lysa, Mamus, and I rode deeper into the Fringe.
Soon, the air became sticky and sweet — something you could taste simply by licking your lips. It seemed to drip down your face and your arms, clinging to the hairs on your neck. Being outfitted in a suit of steel armor probably didn’t help matters.
After a while, we came to the edge of the world. A hyperbole, sure, but put a foot where we stood and you’d think the same.
Our boars came to a stop at a cliff whose sheer face dropped perilously eighty feet below. There, all the way down, a violet mist snaked low across the ground, like fog across a lake. Except with one minor difference: in place of water there was an ocean of gems.
Colorful, jutting veins that stretched and stretched and stretched. On and on, till the violet horizon swallowed up your eyes and all that you could see.
Picks struck the crystallized formations in harmony, one tremendous clink. Perfect synchronization. The army of slaves was so vast and plentiful they looked like sloppy shadows hovering over the protuberances of gems, clinking away.
“That,” Lysa said, pointing, “looks like a wall.”
“Big wall,” Mamus said.
I squinted in that direction. “That’s a wall, all right. Hmm. Question is, what’s behind it?”
The faint outline of what we assumed was a wall wasn’t in the gem fields, but rather positioned atop a cliff, several hundred feet away. In normal conditions, in a normal world, its features would have been easily visible. But this was Fragment Zero, and the thick violet quagmire made identifying things rather difficult.
So, naturally — because we valued our lives so much — we turned our boars, pointed their tusks at the wall, and clicked our heels.
It took approximately fifteen seconds to confirm that this wall was indeed a wall, and about another ten seconds to confirm we weren’t alone.
“Er,” I said, tugging on the reins. “That… that looks like a rather large group of, uh—”
“Soldiers?” Mamus ventured.
“It’s an army,” Lysa said. “A huge army.”
“I’d say enormous. Immense. Behemothic. But to each her own.”
Thousands. Easily thousands. And that only counted for those we could actually see. How many were inside?
We watched in silence as the mob of bodies shuffled forward, through the gate and inside the whitewashed walls. There seemed to be no end to their numbers. Every fifty that entered would bring another fifty in from the horizon.
They were arranged in rows of four, identical quadruplets in the same charcoal-gray iron armor, helmets with the visors up, swords on their hips.
“Move!” crowed a gruff voice. And again, this time the order coming louder and sounding nearer. “Move!”
“Astul,” Lysa said, “I think he’s talking to us.”
“What’d you get,” the masculine voice shouted, “a Preen without any fockin’ ears?”
A glance to my left revealed a horse trotting our way, its rider wearing a crossguard helmet with mail strung to the rim.
“Where are you coming from?” he asked, pulling up next to us. “Which fragment?”
“Er, One?” Mamus blurted out, toeing the line between statement and question.
“Get your asses in there, go!”
We had two options. Listen to this apparent commander and likely get ourselves in the sort of trouble we’d greatly regret, or make a run for it and get ourselves in the sort of trouble that’d
have Lysa and Mamus sundered and myself a new permanent home in Amortis.
Both options were shit, but number one seemed like the better choice.
And so we followed orders and rode toward the mysterious army shambling inside the mysterious walls.
An ogreish-looking motherfucker received us, cracking a whip against my pauldron. “Off your asses, now! Get in line.”
Like a proper obedient solder, I got off my boar and moved toward the line. A hand shoved me from behind into the forward-moving troops, causing me to lose my balance and fall awkwardly into the plated shoulder of a squat soldier. He grabbed my arm and helped me back to my feet, tapping the back of my helmet as if we were good friends simply by association.
Disoriented and utterly confused, I spun around, hoping to see Lysa and Mamus standing behind me. And, well… they were behind me, but about fifteen feet behind me.
The line moved forward again, and the soldiers at my rear shuffled ahead, elbowing and nudging me along.
“Get off me!” I snapped, squirming against their advances, twisting between iron arms and hands and legs, being pushed toward the open gate like a helpless victim beneath the blitz of a stampede.
Lysa, I thought, helplessly watching as her bulging eyes swung one way and the other, her bewilderment turning to fear.
I lowered and drove my shoulder through the crowd, separating two soldiers and darting between them. With momentum on my side, I slammed into another few men, pushing them back.
Lysa turned sideways. She edged herself into a small gap between a couple hefty soldiers.
“Give me your hand,” I said.
Throwing one foot back as an anchor, I withstood the oncoming push from the mob, letting the men and women flow around me like water. Soon as I had my hand around Lysa’s wrist, I yanked her as hard as I could, probably nearly popping her shoulder right out of its socket.
I heard her grunt, then her helmet slammed into mine. I flicked open my visor to see Mamus being swept past us, his rotundness carrying him too quickly down the river of bodies.
Thankfully there was a rock in that river that tripped the big man up. The rock was my foot, which I kicked out and jabbed into Mamus’ ankles. He crumpled to the ground, but managed to right himself before being trampled by iron greaves.
I half-expected the whip-wielding taskmaster to come over and beat the shit out of us, but he must’ve been busy.
“Just keep moving,” I said. “We’ll figure a way out of this once we have an idea of what’s going on.” I leaned into the ear of a soldier in front of me. “What’s this all about? They never told us; just said we’re shippin’ off to Fragment Zero.”
“Dunno. Reckon they found a way to break through, though.”
“Who?”
If there was a reply to my question, I couldn’t hear it. Thanks to a vociferous announcement that came from within the walls.
“Remove your helmets and continue into the holding chamber. There should no more than a finger’s-length gap between you and the soldier ahead of you.”
There were mumbles amongst the soldiers.
“Hope it don’t hurt,” one said.
“Probably like blinking your eyes,” another suggested.
“That quick, ya think?”
“Don’t know. Wonder if we can come back after crossin’ over.”
“O’ course we can.”
“Why would you want to? Maybe you’ve been dead too long, but living realm is a whole lot cheerier, I remember.”
Huh. These lads sure talked like a bunch of dead people readying themselves to return to the world of the living.
“Goodness,” Lysa said, her head tilting upward till the back of her helmet touched her shoulders. “That’s bigger than any castle I’ve ever seen.”
Up until now, whatever reclusive being or thing or structure lay within the walls had been obscured by the curtain of whitewashed stone. But as we inched toward the open portcullis, the enormity of buttresses carved from amethysts revealed themselves. Another few inches and translucent sapphire stairs stretched up to an oval mouth leading into a vast fortress molded with jaspers and fire opals and topazes and a rainbow of other gems.
Inside we went, funneled into a spacious room where amethyst banisters on either side forced us into tighter rows. There were iron doors along the walls, all closed. Ahead, against the far wall, was a single door, probably twenty feet tall and just as wide.
It swung open and out came several Custodians, each hauling a limp body over their shoulders. Unlike those we’d encountered on the way here, these colorful bastards wore no thin layer of flesh, only a framework of gems.
An order was given from an authoritative-looking man off to the side of the banisters. “Send group six down.”
“Six is still recuperating, sir. Seven is available.”
“Then give me group seven.”
A Custodian passed us. As it turned toward one of the closed doors, I caught a glimpse of the face slumped over its shoulder.
My throat tightened when I saw those eyes, that nose, those cheeks.
I would have never guessed I’d see Sybil Tath again.
Chapter 19
Relying on expectations is a lot like spending a long summer night in a brothel with a fat purse of coins around your neck. You get fucked a lot, and when you open your eyes you wonder for a moment just where you went wrong in life.
I’d learned a long time ago to treat expectations with distant regard, never getting too close or comfortable around them. Still, I’d firmly expected to go another forty years or so in the living realm, and spend eternity in Amortis, without ever again laying eyes on one Sybil Tath.
Having that expectation unravel before my eyes made my current predicament all the worse.
“We need to haul ass out of here before the next group comes down,” I told Lysa and Mamus.
“It’s like they’re performing a ritual or something in there,” Lysa said.
“Yeah, and I don’t want to be a part of it. Because you’ll notice ain’t nobody coming back out.” With a subtle tilt of my head toward the door that closed behind numerous Custodians carrying away unconscious conjurers, I suggested it’d be prudent to follow them.
“There’s” — Lysa stood on her tiptoes, counting silently — “six guards, it looks like. They’ll notice if someone jumps out of line.”
Mamus snapped his chunky fingers. “I got it. I’ll pull a distraction for ya.”
“It’ll have to be a good one,” I said. “We need all twelve eyes focused on you.”
Mamus made a fist. “I’ll start clobberin’ the hell out these pasty-looking farts. You do your business, eh?”
“We’ll meet again, Mamus, my man,” I said, slapping his breastplate.
“I’m sure we will.” He nodded at Lysa, gave a little huff and a puff, then threw his head back and let out a war cry.
He charged toward the back of the line, muscular arms shoving men aside. Once he was far enough away, he yanked the helmet off a soldier, blooded his nose with a heavy punch, then rampaged through another.
Before long, all you could see from our vantage point was a madman with bits of braided hair dangling out from his steel cap, fists a flying.
“Goddammit!” shouted a guard, running into the mayhem, cracking his whip. “Move the fuck outta the way!”
Mamus’ warpath drew both guards posted at the chamber doors, and another two posted at the halfway point of the line, where Lysa and I stood.
I gave a yank at Lysa’s wrist and turned myself sideways, slipping through the crowd. We climbed over the banister, onto the small raised platform, then beelined it to the door.
Two snaps of a whip later and Mamus roared.
“I’ll give ya a fookin’ whip, you beady-eyed little bastard!”
He had all six guards on him now and thousands of soldiers looking on. The soldiers, despite apparently pledging loyalty to Arken, did nothing to assist. That made me wonder if maybe — just
maybe — Arken’s dominance over Amortis and the army he commanded was driven less by some godly occult business and more by fear. Godly occult business is difficult to challenge, but fear? That can be remedied.
I opened the door and quickly closed it soon as Lysa and I were safely inside.
I brushed my knuckles across the gritty stone walls. “Beauty on the outside, stone on the inside.”
“I expected ruby floors,” Lysa said. “Or amethyst. Or… um, well, I don’t know all the colors, actually. I’ll need to read about them someday.”
I chuckled. “Of course you will.”
We were in a hallway, wide enough for another to join us shoulder to shoulder. Candelabra hung from the ceiling, suspended by iron chains, wicks arranged in circles of ten, each of them hissing.
Above us, the ceiling croaked.
“We need to find stairs,” I said. “Let’s go.”
With a hand wrapped around my hilt, I jogged down the hallway. My eyes were fixed on the walls; you can’t always hear movement in dimly lit rooms, but you can see the movement of shadows.
About thirty seconds later, the wall to our right fell away, revealing an enormous stone staircase. Probably forty feet wide, which made little sense given the doors we’d seen so far only allowed for single-file movement.
Lysa and I looked at one another, then nodded. And we were off, up one stair, then two, then three, then… still three.
We each had a foot on stair number four, but the banging of a door idled us.
“Footsteps,” Lysa whispered.
She was right.
“C’mon, c’mon!” I said, slapping her elbow. We raced back down the steps. Going back the way we came wasn’t an option, so we went right, deeper into the hallway, until I was confident the shadows concealed us well enough. Then we crouched, and we waited.
Didn’t have to wait long. Took about ten seconds before a trail of Custodians queued up in the hallway, their backs facing us. There were eight of the prismatic fucks, and each of them had a conjurer — or what I assumed was a conjurer — over their shoulder.
These conjurers looked alive, if barely. And one of them, then two of them, then all eight, seemed to narrow their eyes and turn their chins into the gemmed shoulders of the captors.
An Assassin's Blade: The Complete Trilogy Page 85