A Crown for Cold Silver

by Alex Marshall

  Even so, exploring the temple nourished Sullen in a fashion he couldn’t quite articulate. The world of the people who had dwelled in this place was obscure despite their every possession being laid out for his inspection, and long after Grandfather had relieved him on watch he would lie sleepless on the dusty street, contemplating the use of some gargantuan mechanical device or the symbolism in a lifelike painting of a weeping salmon. Grandfather seemed put off by the abandoned lives, which was why Sullen so looked forward to the old man’s increasingly long midafternoon naps.

  Today Sullen’s wanderings took him farther and farther from their campsite in an orderly park where the great grey lawns and pregnant, pale orchards appeared carefully manicured, nary a weed sprouting in a single monochromatic flowerbed. Strolling for an hour, he turned down another nondescript boulevard, one he and Grandfather had not heretofore explored. He knew they had not come this way, for the faintly phosphorescent dust that coated every inch of the Temple of the Black Vigil here lay undisturbed by footprints. Even before he gained the intersection, he was somehow aware that this new road terminated in a great wall just a block or two down the way…

  Huh. Striding out into the middle of the road, he sized up the dead end. The buildings on either side were the same austerely shaped white rowhouses that lined most every road in the temple, but instead of a wall this road ran straight into a high archway, and beyond the archway lay a Gate. Or maybe instead of ending at the Gate, this was where the road began—it was all a matter of perspective.

  Sullen knew the oily pool of black mud that filled the carven-walled courtyard on the far side of the arch was a Gate because he had seen its twin, once, when he was but an unnamed pup. As he had dragged Grandfather home from the battle that had claimed his legs, they had passed within a mile or two of the Flintland Gate, a deeper patch of darkness on the horizon. The war had started because the Jackal Tribe had abducted and sacrificed several Horned Wolves, feeding them to that yawning mouth in the earth that they called the Ravenous God. Six nights later, when he was safely home in his bed, the devils had waited until he made the mistake of dreaming and then hauled him back to the Gate, carrying him as far as a plinth erected near its edge before he awoke. Horned Wolves weren’t crazy savages who believed that if you died in a dream you died for real, but Sullen knew from the songs that devils could hurt you in your sleep, if they found a way past the charms hanging at your door and windows. For nine subsequent nights he had dreamt of the Gate, and each night the devils carried him closer and closer to the trembling lip of the abyss.

  Then, on the tenth night, just before he fell asleep, he asked the devils not to take him back there. As a token of his earnestness, he had picked open the scabs he had acquired protecting Grandfather from a snow lion their first night in the wilds, and drifted off as the devils settled in to feed on his dripping arms. That night he dreamt of flight, but not the Gate, nor did he ever dream of it again. Strange, he hadn’t remebered that in years, even after what had happened with Hoartrap on the plains…

  Now he stood before a second Gate, and saw that his long-buried visions had shown true, for this portal in the earth perfectly mirrored that which he had dreamt as a boy who had never left the Frozen Savannahs. And here, in the wasted land of Emeritus, where only a Horned Wolf and his grandfather had dared to venture down many a lonely century, came all the devils he had not glimpsed since entering the temple.

  Wide awake and unmolested by a witch as Sullen was, the devils materialized just the same, emerging not from the Gate but the puffs of dust rising beneath his battered boots. Up they rose, spiraling around him, the whisper of scale and fur tickling his skin and the muscles and bone beneath, and then they wheeled high into the air, winged toad and finned serpent, insectoid rodent and dog-legged crustacean, and a hundred thousand other flittering, slithering horrors. The devils came together into a squirming tornado that stretched from the dusty cobblestones high into the air.

  “Aw, man,” he said, not really having a lot of hope for his prospects here. Grandfather was wrong about some stuff, Grandfather was wrong about a lot of stuff, even, but he’d been right about one thing: Don’t go wander off and get yourself killed in this dump while I take a nap. Sorry, Fa.

  The cyclone of devils contracted further, coalesced, the awfulness of their individual parts forming an even less wholesome whole: a humanoid figure twice as tall as the surrounding buildings towered above Sullen, its pendulous breasts, featureless face, and extended fingers all writhing with unending movement as it bent down for him.

  “Don’t do it!” he shouted, holding up his open palms to the nightmarish giant. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

  As soon as he said it he recognized this was a pretty silly thing to tell a titanic, devil-spawned monster, and right enough, it didn’t give the entity pause. A palm half as tall as Sullen slammed into his side, fingers as wide as his legs closing around him. The ground fell away from him and the true expanse of the temple came into sight as he was lifted several stories into the air, the Gate now but a small pool beside the giant’s foot… not that he was paying much attention to the cityscape laid out beneath him. No, his focus was on the enormous face the hand held him up to, a blank oval as richly dark as the Gate itself.

  As he watched, queasy from the unique experience of being lifted so high so quickly, the abyssal darkness of the face spread down the wriggling, patchwork neck. It radiated down the chest and out across the shoulders, the individual devils going rigid as the blackness seeped over and through them. The devils comprising the hand that held him became agitated as the darkness began to seep down that arm, beaks and barbs desperately prodding against him. It was as though the devils were desperate to avoid the creeping darkness and sought to crawl over or through him to escape it, but were trapped, swimming in circles around the man they grasped. Were they a captive of something greater, just as he was?

  “I’ll… do something,” he said, speaking to himself, to the devils who bound him, and to the enormous black face. The Faceless Mistress, obviously, she to whom this temple was erected, the god of the lost people of Emeritus. One of them, anyway.

  “What will you do?” Sullen hadn’t really expected an answer, but as his ears popped and he heard his own voice pose the question, a distant constellation bloomed in the greasy depths of the giant’s face. Even as these lights faded back into darkness came another question, and another flare of remote stars. “What do you offer?”

  What did he have? It already had his person, if it wanted it, and he wasn’t foolish enough to think a god would desire what few possessions he owned. Grandfather? A low thought, that one, and Sullen frowned to think that moments before he went to his ancestors he had considered selling out his most beloved kin, if only for a moment. What would Old Black or Rakehell do, if they were in such a pinch?

  “Don’t have much,” he said, not really scared so much as… awed, maybe? Awed, sure, but not so awed he couldn’t think or speak. It was like dreaming, that way. “Whatever you want, I guess.”

  Sullen wasn’t any better versed in the ways of gods than he was in the motivations of devils, but as soon as he said it he figured that was a fairly stupid offer to make. This time, though, it seemed he might’ve blundered into saying the right thing, because the encroaching blackness paused at the wrist of the arm that held him and the devils holding him all went still. The gargantuan head moved closer and closer to Sullen, and, eyes or no in its light-swallowing surface, he knew he was being sized up by the Faceless Mistress.

  Then, a distant twinkle of light in the heart of the void. It flickered, expanded, crackled with energy. Exploded outward, to the very edge of the blackness, so close Sullen could feel the heat… and then it contracted again, sucking the warmth back in with it, so fast and so cold that beads of sweat froze half-birthed from his pores. An ebon mountain filled his vision, though like the god’s voice he couldn’t tell if it was really there, or appearing only in his suddenly aching skull.


  The dark mountain was hollow as a drinking horn, and brimming with people. It reminded him of nothing so much as one of the dire ant mounds back home, swarming with bizarre life. And as he watched, flaming oil bubbled up from the depths, cascading through tunnels and melting the inner walls of the mountain, incinerating all of the teeming residents, and vomiting from the top in a great spume of ash and smoke. A city even greater than this temple, populated by an incalculable number of folk, obliterated absolutely.

  “Nah, not doing that,” said Sullen. “Can’t. Won’t, even if I could. I’m a Horned Wolf, not a witch nor devil.”

  “No,” said the winking stars. “Zosia will. Unless you thwart her.”

  Zosia. Though it took a moment to sink in, Sullen recognized the name. His uncle’s old boss from the first time Craven had sought his fortune on the Star, according to some of the songs they’d heard along the road. His uncle’s bride, according to others, who’d died before Sullen was born. An utterly ruthless, diabolically clever, and intensely dangerous woman, according to all, a Queen of Samoth whom not even death could stop from sowing madness and sorrow, a phantom returned from the bowels of the grave to savage all of the Star.

  “All right,” said Sullen. “Preventing that kind of thing seems best. There’s kids there, and such. Where is she?”

  “You shall meet her once you have found your uncle,” said the god. “Under the snapping of Cobalt banners, in the Crimson Empire.”

  “Oh,” said Sullen. “Thanks.”

  A ring of stars flickered once, like a mouth of light smiling in the depths, and the face filled his entire world as it came in to swallow him whole. He closed his eyes, but instead of oblivion received a gentle kiss. Her lips were small and warm as those of Stoutest, before the girl had earned her name and stopped having anything to do with him. Stoutest was the only woman to have ever kissed him, and so he never had cause to doubt her counsel that one should always keep their eyes locked on their partner’s when receiving such affection. Opening his eyes, he stared into the vastness of the god, and kissed her back. He felt it all the way down in his treasure, like the one time Stoutest had put her hand down there and made him feel nine kinds of heavens, followed by twelve kinds of embarrassment. This was nine thousand kinds of heavens, with none of the surprise or shame after.

  And then his stomach dropped along with the rest of him as the devils holding him broke away from her black wrist, fading into the air as he fell. He landed a moment later on a steeply canted rooftop, the wind knocked out of him, and above him the Faceless Mistress went rigid. He heard the cracking of ice just before a glacier crumbled free of a fjord, and then, with slowness as impossible as the rest of her, she broke apart. The arm that had held him clipped the edge of the roof as it fell, sending splintered tiles flying into the air, but the bulk of her tipped back, crushing the building on the far side of the street. An eruption of dust and debris blanketed the temple for miles, and when it lifted nothing remained of the Faceless Mistress but another decimated statue. Sullen stared down at the wreckage and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. It left a dark smear.

  “By all the ancestors and the unborn, what happened to you?” said Grandfather when Sullen moseyed back into the park. It was the first time he could recall the old man genuinely seeming concerned for his safety, and the novelty made him feel worse rather than better. The last thing he wanted was to worry Grandfather. “Speak, boy, are you well?”

  “I’m fine, Fa,” he said, giving himself a once-over to make sure he hadn’t hurt himself climbing down from the building. No visible damage, so how could Grandfather tell something had happened? “You heard the… ruckus?”

  “The ruckus?” Grandfather put a hand to his mouth, kept gawping at Sullen. “What in all the… did you stir up a devil king, laddie? Find that Hoartrap again? What happened?”

  “I found out where Uncle is,” said Sullen, hoping that would distract Grandfather. It didn’t. Better to get it said and over with, then. How would one of his ancestors have told the tale, once they’d had an adventure like that? With lots of sharp words and deft rhymes, probably, but Sullen’s strength was in recollecting songs, not creating them. Let someone else tell it smarter, if they thought it worth a verse at all. “And, uh… I met a god. Or a goddess, I guess?”

  “Oh,” said Grandfather, relaxing on his pillar as though that settled the matter. A pause. “Was she nice?”

  CHAPTER

  25

  Told you he wasn’t a scout.” Maroto sneered at Purna, imitating the girl’s snippy tone.

  “I wasn’t the one who let him go,” she said, booting the stained wood of their cell door. It didn’t budge. “Durrr, he’s got a Khymsari haircut, so he must be Khymsari.”

  “It’s a pretty terrible hairdo,” said Maroto. “I couldn’t see anyone but a cultist doing that to themselves on purpose. Lying little shit.”

  “Well, now what?” Purna turned away from the front of the sparse room to face Maroto. Even in the dimness he could see that her face was at the apex of its puffiness, lips split, cheeks bruised, one eye nearly swollen shut. The Imperials had really done a number on her before she’d gone down, but then Maroto supposed he must look even worse. He certainly felt worse—it wasn’t a competition, mind, but she clearly felt well enough to stand and pace the cramped cell and kick at things, whereas Maroto had no intention of rising from the hay-strewn floor anytime soon. “We just wait here for them to execute us?”

  “Nah,” said Maroto. “They’ll definitely torture us first, get any information they can. Me, they’ll probably try and use to get Zosia to open the castle—that’ll mean more torture, public-like, where she can watch from the ramparts. Witch, we got your Villain down here—open the gate or we’ll cut him open!”

  “Then what?”

  “Then they gut me, because there’s no way she’s stupid enough to trust ’em—she opens the castle we’re all dead, instead of just me.”

  “No, I mean, then what do we do, you and I, if they’ll just torture us anyway—move on the guards when they come for us, or try to lure them in sooner? You look rough enough I could probably call them in now, say you’ve croaked and are stinking up the place. Then we snap their necks, steal their uniforms, and sneak out to rescue the others.”

  “Great plan,” Maroto said dryly. “Assuming you even broke a neck properly, which I doubt, and we got out of here, which are longer odds yet, what better plan than risk it all to bust out those worthless scumdogs who couldn’t even be bothered to fight back when the Imperials ambushed us? We might’ve stood a chance, they hadn’t just let themselves be taken.”

  “What do you expect, we were all asleep! Except you, Sir I’ll Take First Watch.” Purna punctuated this with a withering look down at her mentor. “And maybe if we hadn’t swung on them we could’ve avoided the whole thing, lied or bribed our way out, ever think of that?”

  “Been thinking of little else,” said Maroto, choosing not to remind the brat that she’d been the one to throw that fatal first punch when the Imperials had roused them—he’d been glad she had at the time, because then the Crimson soldiers had started coming at him, and that meant he could fight back without risking his oath… for all the good it had done them.

  “If we’d played it cool you and I would probably be locked up with Diggelby and the others, if nothing else. Wherever they are I imagine the accommodations are swankier than a tavern’s closet.”

  “That where we are?” Maroto blinked into the dimness of the musty chamber. What daylight filtered its way into the cell came from above, the thatch or whatever comprised the roof in need of repair. Maybe they weren’t so doomed after all…

  “Yep, a real shitkicker establishment, too, judging by the stuffed fish mounted on the walls. Just how long were you out? I figured you were faking it so they wouldn’t interrogate you right away.”

  “Yeah, they call that method acting—learned it from some rough-and-tumble Usban players I ran with for a wh
ile. A dozen of the troupe’s been hanged over the years for getting too committed to their roles. They’re not bandits or killers, but if they’re playing bandits or killers, well—”

  “Rambling, Maroto.”

  “Listen: help me up, let’s see if I can boost you to the ceiling. Maybe we can go up and out. They got the command stationed in here?”

  “No, it looked like the important people were working from a temple a few blocks away. The others branched off there, but you and me got dumped in here.” Purna was staring at the back wall as though she could see through the timbers and clay. “The tavern’s a garrison, I guess you’d call it. Soldiers everywhere.”

  “Huh.” Maroto’s good ear couldn’t pick up much. “Quiet enough now.”

  “There was a big to-do a few minutes ago, Snoroto. Sounded like they cleared out in a hurry.”

  “Doesn’t get better than that,” said Maroto, taking her extended hand and hauling himself upright. Not to his feet, even, just enough so he was sitting leaned against the rear wall, but even that development caused supernovas to explode in his vision and a volcano to erupt up his throat. Getting coldcocked never got easier; if anything, it seemed to be getting worse the older he got. Woof. Well, if nothing else he hadn’t lost his knack for puking on himself.