by karlov, matt
— Jeresani the Lesser
The Passing of Herev Gis
The doors were the same all along the corridor: thick slabs of timber, each with an iron ring for a handle. Clade halted before one, counting once more to be sure he had the right room, then knocked.
Her voice sounded distracted. “Who’s there?”
“It’s Clade,” he said, and waited.
The bolt slid back and the door opened. Sera stood within, smiling; but the smile was tentative, not at all like her usual infectious grin. Her hair hung in a mess of curls about her neck. “Hello.”
“Sera,” he said, and the word came out warm and not at all sad, just as he intended. “I was hoping we could talk.”
She nodded and stood aside. “Come in, then.”
The room was a smaller version of his own suite: a narrow cot, a writing desk half the size of his own, a hard chair, a high window. A handful of cut geraniums in a mug graced the corner shelf above a little pile of misshapen wooden blocks. Clade picked one up with a wistful smile. “Are you still playing with these?”
Sera sat cross-legged on the cot, allowing Clade to take the chair. “Keeps me from getting rusty.”
“Was this the one?”
“No, that narrow one on the side.” Something in her face softened at the memory. “My first ever successful binding. You said I bent it like a stalk of wheat.”
“I remember.” You gave it to me with such delight, such pride. Even then, you were sure that one day you would join our ranks. And here you are.
“Oh,” Sera said, her attention caught by the bandage on his left hand. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing, I assure you.” Bannard’s blade had left a clean cut, and the fleshbinders had already begun weaving the muscle tissue back together as best they could for a fellow sorcerer. “I’ll be fine.”
The urn is carried by a man named Arandras, Bannard had told him, and at first Clade had missed the significance. Only when Bannard mentioned a dead wife did he make the connection. The husband of someone he’d killed. The sixth. Tereisa. She had cursed him as she died, calling on gods and demons alike to witness his crime. There’d been no need for such invocations, of course. Azador had been right there.
Somehow, this Arandras had gained possession of the urn. He’d brought it to the Quill and together they had unravelled the mystery of the golems, discovering coordinates to a location somewhere north of Tienette Lake. The Quill were already preparing an expedition that would leave as soon as a precise destination could be determined. But Arandras, it seemed, had never been interested in the golems. Even now, he was searching for the killers of the Quill who had uncovered the urn — searching for Clade himself. Thus does our past reappear, with knives. Tiysus had the truth of it, right enough.
But what mattered were the golems. Clade had already sent a summons to Terrel and begun assembling a party of his own. The sisters, Kalie and Meline. And Sinon. That should be enough to deal with whatever the Quill might bring. When Bannard sent word that the Quill were departing, Clade intended to be ready to follow within the hour.
“I’m sorry for what I said before,” Sera said. “You know. That thing about posturing, and…”
Clade nodded. “It’s fine,” he said; then repeated the words, gentler this time. “It’s fine.”
“You’re going somewhere, aren’t you?”
A scowl rose behind his face, but he held it back. He’d told the others to keep the planned journey to themselves. “What makes you say that?”
“The servants. They’re preparing food, getting horses ready, all the rest of it.” She paused, and for a moment he saw a hint of the old grin. “I didn’t know for sure it was you, though.”
“I didn’t say it was,” Clade said; but he did so with a smile, conceding the point. “It’s just a field trip,” he said, as though it were entirely normal for himself as Overseer to take such a journey. “I’ll be back in a week or two.”
“I see.”
He leaned forward. “Sera. When we spoke yesterday, I asked you a question. But you didn’t answer.”
Sera bent her head as though examining the backs of her hands. “What I would do. If anything were possible.”
“That’s right.”
“If I tell you my answer, will you tell me yours?”
“Well, I…”
She looked up then, her gaze earnest and urgent. “Will you?”
Clade held her eyes for a long moment. The laughing child I recruited is gone at last. Oh, Sera, I’m sorry. He tilted his head. “As you wish.”
When she spoke, her voice was a whisper. “I would reach out and touch your brow. I would take away all your doubts, all your confusion, all your misgivings. I would take your hand and walk with you to Azador’s sanctuary. And there I would say, ‘Here we are. Tell us your will, and we will do it.’”
Clade’s stomach was a stone. “I see.”
“We could change the world, Clade. You, me, all of us. And Azador. We could make it the way it was meant to be.”
“Could we? Or would we just make it the way Azador wanted it?”
“It’s the same thing.”
Clade said nothing. There was nothing to say.
“And you?” Sera said. The words were tight. “What would you do?”
Take you away from here. Leave the Oculus behind. Send Azador back to whatever distant realm it came from. He shook his head. “You already know.”
She exhaled heavily. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I do.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. Her head was bowed again, her hands motionless on her lap. He gazed at her, trying to fix her image in his mind. Do you understand that you are my enemy now? But no, you don’t even realise that this is a war.
“I won’t say anything,” Sera said. “I won’t tell anyone, especially not the Councillor. I promise.”
“I appreciate that,” Clade said. “But I won’t hold you to it.” A life has room for only one absolute. Don’t make that promise yours.
She lifted her head. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” He manufactured a reassuring smile. “I should go. I have some things I need to take care of before I leave.”
“Of course.”
The old woodbinding block still lay in his hand. He stood, concealing it in his sleeve. “Be well, Sera.”
He was halfway out the door when she called out. “Clade,” she said, and he paused, looked back. She rose, took half a step toward him. “I, uh… that is, you…” Her mouth worked, searching for words but failing to find them; then, as he watched, her face closed over and she took a long, unsteady breath. “Does Councillor Estelle know about your journey?”
Good. That’s good. The more she could harden herself against him now, the easier it would be for her later. Farewell, Sera, daughter I never had. May we never cross paths again.
“Not yet,” he said. “But she will soon.”
•
They would visit Isaias in the morning. Arandras fumed at the delay, but there was nothing to be done. Fas had made the decision, and that was that.
He’s probably in Isaias’s shop right now, trying to finagle the map without me. A futile endeavour, or so Arandras hoped. If the shopkeeper was half as helpful to strangers as he was to his dear friend Arandras… well, after a few hours of inane chatter the Quill would find himself back on the street with nothing to show for it. No cause for worry on that front, then.
In any case, once again, there was nothing he could do.
He leaned back in his chair, feeling it creak beneath him, and gazed up at the ceiling of the schoolhouse library. Narvi, Ienn, and the rest were off somewhere making preparations for their journey. The plan, so far as Arandras had been told, was to leave as soon as they had a known destination. They would take horses down the Lissil road, following the river as far as they reasonably could; then, when the roads would serve them no longer, they’d strike out on foot through the hilly, scrubby forests that surrounded the lake and upp
er river.
And if it turned out that the golems were at the bottom of the lake, he supposed they’d all be going for a swim.
Arandras was already set. He’d travelled light from Spyridon; most of what he’d brought was gear for the road which had remained untouched since his arrival, first in his schoolhouse room, and now in the lodging house. With nothing better to do, he’d eventually found his way to the Quill library. It was larger than he’d expected — nothing like the Library in Spyridon, of course, but large enough for a schoolhouse so far from Chogon. Heavy carpets and tapestry-covered walls muted the rustling pages and low murmurs of the Quill, giving the wide room an unexpectedly cosy feeling. But for the feather brooches and ochre and black everywhere he looked, he could almost have felt at home.
He spotted Senisha kneeling beside a half-empty shelf, a set of leather-bound volumes stacked haphazardly by her side. She glanced up at his approach.
“You look lost,” she said, her soft voice settling lightly over the surrounding quiet.
“They’ve got you filling shelves already?”
“Part of the job.” She shrugged. “I’d rather this than go trekking off with the rest of you to the Gatherer knows where.”
Arandras took in the tall, heavy-laden shelves with a glance. “What do you have about golems?”
“Only what Fas and the others have been poring over for days.” She pulled a tan volume from the middle of the stack and handed it to him. “Start with that. There’s a section a third of the way in that will give you the basics. I’ll fetch you more when I’m done.”
Arandras returned to his chair and began to read.
Four books later he leaned back, grimacing as he stretched his cramped shoulders and tried to make sense of what he’d learnt.
The only point on which all accounts agreed was that the golems had been created by the Valdori. Everything else, it seemed, was contested. The golems were soldiers, or workers, or mere curiosities for the rich. The Valdori had made thousands of them, or dozens, or only a handful. The secret to their construction lay in obscure sorcery, or advanced engineering, or the direct intervention of the gods. One particularly fanciful tale held that each golem housed the spirit of a Valdori emperor or empress, men and women so glorious, wise, upright, and so on, that death itself shrank before their majesty. But on the matter of exactly how this miraculous transfer was achieved, the tale remained bashfully silent.
Yet the accounts contained some intriguing claims. The golems could travel underwater. They understood speech, or possibly even thoughts. They could continue to function even after losing a limb. This last assertion Arandras found hard to credit — everyone knew that harm to a bound object disrupted the binding, and the more complex the spell, the greater the likelihood that such disruption would lead to failure. Certainly, it was possible for a binding to artificially strengthen its source object; but surely no golem could survive such catastrophic damage as to have an entire arm or leg torn away.
Of most interest, however, were the descriptions of lords and generals issuing orders to their golems. Arandras pored over the sketchy reports, looking for anything that might help him when the time came to use the golems against Clade. How did one ensure that one’s own order was followed and not discarded in favour of another? But such conflicts did not seem to arise in any of the accounts, and Arandras was left to speculate as to the reason. Perhaps they can only be controlled by the person who made them. No, that doesn’t make sense. Not unless the Valdori were blessed with a peculiar abundance of golem-maker-generals.
There had to be a way. No servant or soldier could function satisfactorily if their instructions could be countermanded by anyone they met. A golem had to have a master.
“Hello, Arandras.” Narvi stood by the seat across from Arandras, fingers tapping nervously on its high back. “Back with us, I see.”
Arandras closed the book. Well, well. Look who it is. “So it would seem.”
“Um.” Narvi glanced behind him, then back at Arandras. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“It’s your library.”
“Yes, of course.” Narvi sat gingerly, hands resting on his thighs. “I… well. About the other day.” He broke off, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry, Arandras. The way Fas treated you, just tossing you out like so much…” A sharp exhalation. “It wasn’t right.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“If it had been up to me… gods, if it was up to me, we’d be finding your mystery letter writer right now.” Narvi leaned forward in entreaty. “You know I’d never cast you off like that, right?”
It was impossible to witness the man’s naked sincerity and remain unmoved. “I know it,” Arandras said. If it was up to you.
A smile broke over Narvi’s face. “Good. That’s good.”
“But Damasus doesn’t like me, and you need to keep him happy.”
Narvi flinched. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”
“Nonetheless.”
“This is still my project, Arandras,” Narvi said. “Nothing’s changed.”
Arandras raised an eyebrow. “Damasus won’t be joining us, then?”
“He will,” Narvi admitted, his face pinched as though he’d just bitten into something sour. “The team will answer to me, and I’ll report to him.”
Yeah, that’s going to work really well. Something of his thought must have shown in his expression, as Narvi pursed his lips and leaned closer.
“You need a friend on this expedition, Arandras,” he said. “Someone who Fas and the rest will listen to. And frankly, I don’t see too many other candidates for the role. So yes, I’m going to keep Fas happy, as you put it, because if I’m not around, you’re not going to get within shouting distance of the golems, no matter what Fas told you.”
Which was probably true. Arandras gave a reluctant nod. “Fair enough.” He wondered if Clade was having to deal with this same nonsense from his people. The Oculus, whoever they were. Bannard had had little to say about them, and in any case Arandras had been far more interested in Clade himself.
Narvi sat back in his seat, stretching out his thick legs with a sigh. “I’ve got the grooms chasing up some extra horses for us right now. They’ll be ready to go as soon as we need them tomorrow. The kitchens will have our supplies ready by then too. We’re about as ready to leave as we can be.”
“Except for the part about not knowing where to go.”
“Not at all. We know exactly where to go.” Narvi laced his fingers behind his head. “Somewhere west between here and the mountains. What could possibly be clearer?”
Arandras leaned his head against the chair’s high back, his thoughts circling back to the Oculus. Of course it would be the same for Clade. Every group succumbed to the same malaise sooner or later. Clade’s would be no exception. Who is he, I wonder, in the eyes of his peers? A leader, like Fas or Narvi? Or just another thoughtless follower?
Narvi closed his eyes, twisting around in his chair. “Gods, just the thought of sleeping rough again makes my back ache.”
The words stirred memories in Arandras of the early days in Chogon: nights spent in the library there, researching the latest find, or in Narvi’s home, Arandras and Tereisa helping to put the baby to sleep as Narvi nodded off at the table. The sight of Narvi and Katriel dozing side by side with identical expressions would give Tereisa the giggles, and she would clamp her hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking, trying not to wake them with her laughter.
I’m sorry also, Narvi, Arandras thought, and that too was true. We were friends, once. But neither of us is who we once were. You are Quill, more now than you ever were back then. And I…
Tereisa’s laughter echoed through his mind, and he grasped after it; but it slipped away, leaving only a hollow silence in its wake.
I have a dead wife to avenge.
•
The box in the cellar was ancient.
Clade had discovered it as a student, hidden away in the dusty archives
at Zeanes. Tall as a man, carved from a single massive piece of black-brown wood, it resembled nothing so much as it did a coffin. Sorcery lay heavy in its grain, and Clade had spent days perched awkwardly before it, tracing out its lines and unravelling its secrets.
The first layer was strong and rigid, like a fine steel mesh twisted through the tight wooden weave. Clade had encountered similar sorcery in other Valdori artefacts: bindings to fortify timber until its strength approached that of marble, others to preserve against rot and fire and decay, all on a level far beyond anything he or his teachers could accomplish. The elegance of it took his breath away. That something could simultaneously be so pragmatic and yet so beautiful seemed an impossible grace, like a gift from the gods themselves.
But there was a second layer, too: supple, flowing, smooth as quicksilver yet soft as down. It took days of probing just to find the structure that held it together, and twice as long again before he was able to understand its function. The binding was a screen, designed to occlude light, muffle sound, and absorb motion. Anyone locked within might shout and thrash and beat on the lid as much as they wished, but none of it would escape the binding. Nor would anything pass inside, save only a small supply of air through some narrow breathing channels in the lid. Whether it had been built originally as a form of punishment, a refuge for the seasick, or even to house a brood of particularly noisy hens was impossible to say.
Clade dubbed it a stillbox.
When he came to Anstice, he requisitioned the stillbox from Zeanes under the pretence of a non-existent research project. He installed it in the cellar, attaching a note with instructions to leave the box undisturbed. When asked, he claimed to be conducting a lengthy experiment into the properties of decaying flesh. After a while, the enquiries ceased, and the box was left to gather dust in the corner of the cellar, empty and unremarked.
It was his hidden die, salted away against the future, the kind he hoped never to have to use. Yet the security it offered — the promise of a clean kill, even of one already bound to Azador — was simply too great to pass up. He’d hated himself for it, at least at first; hated the unspoken truth that if the need arose he would put a fellow Oculus in there, qualms be damned. Its presence in the cellar allowed him to sleep easier at night, and he’d hated that, too.