Soleri

by Michael Johnston

  60

  “I’m fine,” Ott spat blood as he spoke. At his side, Saad lay facedown on the stones, his chest unmoving, his body still. The priests who had acted as assassins were all dead, having drunk the poison they vowed to consume. Ott and Sarra were alone in the throne room of the Soleri. It was the second such chamber she had seen and it was no less glorious than the first.

  She sat with her back to his, supporting her son. Through her robe she felt the steady beating of his heart, the expanding and contracting of his lungs. Her son was alive. That was all she needed to know. So she sat there in the dust and ash, taking in the great throne room of the Soleri.

  “It must have been glorious,” Ott said, breaking the stillness.

  Through centuries of dust and cobwebs she saw the empty throne, the unlit braziers, the many flower-topped columns, the empty pits where water had once splashed in pools. She saw the curious symbols of the forgotten script, the empty cups, the vacant chairs, the cracked pews. In the depths of the chamber, barely visible, she saw the vacant cages in the menagerie, the mats where men once kneeled and the drums that were once played to entertain the emperor. Burnt murals ornamented the walls, their once ornate patterns now charred and indecipherable. Above the walls sat arched ceilings, exquisitely curving vaults illuminated by jeweled mosaics, a wondrous filigree of palm and lotus motifs set in stones of agate and sapphire.

  Sarra spoke, her voice hushed. “This”—she indicated the burnt throne—“has stood here for centuries, unseen and unknown. Doesn’t it make you wonder?”

  “About?”

  “How we got here. The map, that journey through the Shambles, and the bodies we found beneath the mountain. How did we do this? How did we unearth what no one else could find?”

  “You think someone helped us?” Ott asked. He too was whispering. The sight of the chamber was likely just too much to absorb. Too much splendor covered in too much dust and ash. The calamity of the thing made one want to whisper.

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  “It makes some sense.”

  Sarra grunted.

  “Who? The priest from the Wyrre, Noll?”

  “It’s just a hunch. He was the one who sent the first translations, the letters that led us to the grain silo and the chamber with the carvings. He found the map on the ceiling, and he translated it. And when we were in the Shambles, he was the one who pointed out the lights on the cliff, when I was ready to go home.”

  Ott was still looking at the chamber, sighing as if it at all were one big mystery, which it was. “Curious.”

  “It is curious—isn’t it?” she echoed, her eyes settling on the Amber Throne. “When this is done—when we’ve hidden what happened here and I’ve taken my place in the Antechamber of the Ray—we will need to learn more about the dead boy, Nollin Odine. There is a mystery there. I’m certain of it.”

  61

  The morning after the duel in the Chathair, Kepi woke with Dagrun at her side, his chest rising and falling, gray covers swaddling their naked bodies. She slipped from beneath his arm and sat at the edge of her bed, listening to the distant call of the kite. The floor was cold on her feet, the room dark, and the shutters drawn, leaving only cracks of light at the window’s edges. She stepped toward the light, padded across the floor, noticed Dagrun’s sword was gone, but gave no care. The servants were always coming and going, moving and removing clothes or furniture. That morning a servant had delivered a crock of amber and a platter topped with ripe blackberries. Half-asleep, she had seen Dagrun drink amber, then slip back beneath the wool covers.

  Now Kepi swung open the shutters, but the light was too bright. She closed the wooden flaps, but not fully. The remaining light illuminated a gray patch of floor, her clothes and Dagrun’s tangled in a pile, left where they had tossed them the day before. Spilled amber had turned his tunic a ruddy brown. She stuck her toe in the syrupy spill.

  Dagrun groaned in his sleep.

  Kepi closed the shutters and slipped once more beneath the covers, the lambswool scratching her limbs, making her itch, but not unpleasantly. Dagrun embraced her from behind, the heat of him warming her skin as he wrapped his arms around her slender waist. Then he rolled her to her back and kissed her neck.

  He raised her hips and took her until she cried out, gasping, little sounds of mixed pain and pleasure escaping her lips. With a groan, he finished and they lay again together, shoulder to shoulder in the darkness, hearts beating in the satisfied quiet.

  Afterward, alone, naked in the darkness, Dagrun drank and ate, and they talked of the war and the warlords that were gathered not far away. At times they were quiet, neither one of them speaking.

  “What is it?” she asked, sensing some hesitation on his part.

  “There is news from Solus.” A messenger had arrived the night before. The long-delayed messages had at last come through. Her father was made Ray, but his tenure was short. Dagrun described the light on the mountain, the banquet in the Cenotaph, the trial by fire, and Arko’s passing. He told her what he knew.

  Kepi listened. She waited, her smile flat, eyes distant. She showed no grief, though her heart held more than she could bear. She hoped her father was at peace. More than any man, the king of Harkana had longed for, but not found, peace in his life. Perhaps, she hoped, if he could not find solace in this world he might find it in another.

  “I don’t know what to say … I thought he was dead. I…”

  “It helps to talk,” he murmured, still groggy. “Tell me something about him.”

  “He was a hunter,” she said, thinking, welcoming the distraction. “More than anything he loved to hunt. There is a place in Harkana, the Shambles, where all things are old, where even the rocks are shattered and the trees are broken. It is a morbid place, but my father loved it and I never knew why, never understood why he went there, why he hid from his duty and now he is gone, dead, and I will never know what made him love that place, why he hunted amidst the ruins of his father’s army, the crumbling towers and burrowing caves.”

  “We can go there together,” Dagrun said, rubbing his forehead, looking pale, his eyes bloodshot.

  “No.” Kepi wrapped the wool around her. She had mourned her father’s passing once and did not have the heart to do it again. His arms enveloped her and she lay there, trying not to think about the past.

  The room was quiet, and the hall outside was quiet too, the pacing of the guard absent. Then—footsteps rang in the corridor, a cry, a thud, and the sound of something heavy dragging across the floor. The door was flung open. Kepi startled, drawing the covers around her naked body.

  More commotion, footsteps, and Dagrun was off her. The door lurched closed. What’s happening? From her place on the bed, Kepi saw only darkness. She heard someone, a man’s voice—no, a boy’s—telling Dagrun to leave her alone, let her be. “You … you took her!” said the voice, and Kepi knew it was Seth. Seth had come in and seen them together. “Get away from her, you brute!”

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” Dagrun answered. “Get out of here, boy.”

  Then banging sounds, bodies moving in the darkness. Kepi twisted left and right, throwing the blanket off, trying to find her clothes, her sword. “No!” she screamed, fumbling in the darkness. “Seth—no!”

  Dagrun, naked, scrambled toward his discarded clothes to look for a weapon, for something, but he was moving strangely, awkwardly—something was wrong with him. Where was Seth? Where was Dagrun’s sword? Then she knew that Seth had gotten hold of it somehow, that a servant had come into the room and stolen the king’s blade for him.

  In the darkness, Dagrun turned and caught the boy’s wrist with both hands, held Seth’s sword hand away from his body until the boy cried out. The blade clattered out of his hands and slid across the smooth stones of the floor, and Dagrun went scrambling after it, hoping to get there first, but the king did not move with his usual speed. He stumbled and fell to the floor, his hand resting just short of the grip. That
was when Seth took out the dagger from his belt, raised it above his head, and plunged it into the smooth skin of Dagrun’s back.

  Kepi screamed.

  Blood poured from Dagrun’s wound, great buckets of blood that spread out across the floor. Dagrun crawled a few inches, his arms reaching back painfully to try to touch the wound, but his strength was failing, he was falling, gurgling sounds coming from his throat, the wet sounds of sucking breath and blood in his lungs. “Kepi,” he said, “Kepi…”

  Seth rushed toward her, dagger in hand, angry, confused, his eyes darting. “Are you okay, Kepi? He’ll never hurt you again—”

  But the moment he reached her, she began to beat Seth with her fists, catching him in the face, in the gut. “You stupid boy!” she cried. “I was willing. I was his wife.”

  Then, she saw in Dagrun’s cup a wisp of red, a dark coil that wound like a serpent’s tail through the pale amber. When Seth slipped into the room to take the sword he must have also poisoned the amber. That’s why Dagrun was so pale, why his eyes were bloodshot and he had not moved with his usual speed. Seth had poisoned him. Surely the king would have otherwise bested the boy.

  Seth was no warrior.

  Even in the dark, with surprise on his side, Seth would not have defeated Dagrun. He had cheated. He had procured a poison and poured it into the king’s cup. He must have made it himself, or perhaps the physician made it for him. There were many who did not accept Dagrun’s reign, the king had said so himself. Seth had said so. Now those men had aided Seth, and the boy from Harkana had stolen her husband.

  “The servants are revolting. They are taking over the caer. We should go!” Seth sputtered, but Kepi was no longer listening.

  She fell to the floor, naked still, sobbing, her body still charged with the electricity of their sex. She crawled to her husband and covered his body with her own. “Don’t leave me,” she said, petting Dagrun’s hair, his face. His skin was white, the poison making him look strange. His eyes were wide open, staring. He was already gone.

  She collapsed next to her dead husband, Seth howling her name—and then she turned on him, the one she’d thought she’d loved, the boy who was now a murderer. “What have you done?” she wailed.

  “I came to save you. I thought he—” Seth took a shuddering breath. “Kepi, I—”

  “I’m not yours to save, Seth!” She turned on him, her eyes flashing hatred. “You couldn’t have left when I gave you the chance? I told you it was all over, I set you free to go home to your family, and this is how you repay me?”

  She stepped toward him, her hands clenched into fists, but he still held the bloody dagger in his hands. Instead, she went to the chest and, at last, found her sword, advancing on him with fury in her eyes. “You won’t kill me,” he said. “Kepi, it’s me, it’s Seth—don’t you remember? You love me!”

  “I don’t love you. I told you that in the yard. I told you, but you wouldn’t listen!”

  Shouts rang through the door. Soldiers approached. She heard a scuffle, raised voices, and swords meeting armor. Dagrun’s soldiers were here and were fighting the men who had aided Seth. The conflict reached a fearsome crescendo, coming closer. Seth took a step back, his eyes always on the tip of her blade. He was reaching out to push it away when he backed up to the doorway, right into the guards who were coming into the room, staring with horror at the dead king lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, the boy holding the bloody dagger, the queen defending herself with her own sword.

  They took hold of the boy roughly. “I didn’t kill him!” Seth lied.

  “My lady?” said the captain of the guard, looking at the queen.

  “It was him,” she said. “He killed the king of the Ferens.”

  “No! It was her, it was her!” Seth cried, but the men were already dragging him away.

  Even as he tried to put the blame on her, she knew why he had done it. You thought Dagrun Finner was no different from Roghan Frith. Two brutes, two Ferens. You were wrong, Seth.

  The soldiers went to their fallen king, checking to see if his heart still beat, but Kepi knew the truth already, that her husband was dead. The floor was slick with his blood—it would never be clean again, no matter how often it was scrubbed.

  The morning light was still coming in the windows. A moon ago she had been a girl still, a king’s daughter of Harkana, thinking only of her own wants, plotting her escape from Harkana with Seth, wishing Dagrun dead. It had all happened—Dagrun was dead, and she and Seth had escaped Harkana. Not the way they had intended, but it had happened nonetheless.

  Kepi fetched the sparring clothes that Dagrun had made for her. She dressed, not caring that the soldiers watched her every move, that she was still smeared with Dagrun’s blood, like a sacrifice made to the gods. She was a widow, again. Her father was dead. She must be doomed to unhappiness. Whenever she found even a little bit of peace, a tiny sliver of joy, it would always be taken from her. She knew that now.

  There was a commotion in the corridor outside. In the muffled distance, she heard men shouting, stomping in the hall. When the next wave of soldiers arrived, they were not Dagrun’s men. They did not wear the silvery tree of Feren upon their chests. Instead, they were dressed in the clothes of servants, of stable boys and slaves. Thirty or more of them crowded into the room, wielding dirks and other small arms, ones that could be hidden beneath a cloak or a tunic. Dagrun’s soldiers let go of Seth. They engaged the traitors. The king’s men held the mob at bay, cutting and stabbing, piling up bodies before them, but for each servant or slave who fell, four more arrived to fill his place. The traitors were standing shoulder to shoulder, their sweaty arms and bony shoulders jostling one another, pushing and shoving, trying to get their hands on the soldiers. Most wore nothing more than loincloths or homespun tunics. They were not soldiers; they had no training and no real weapons. Some fought with bits of broken pottery, or stones, bare hands or household items, anything that was sharp: a knife, a shovel, an adze.

  There are too many of them and not enough of our own men, Kepi thought as she retreated across the room. The king’s soldiers would soon be overwhelmed. The turncoats were coming for Kepi. She was Dagrun’s wife and queen. They wanted her dead, just as they had wanted her husband dead. “False king!” they cried. “False queen!” they shouted even louder, their voices filling up the small chamber, echoing in her ears, driving her mad.

  When Seth saw that they were coming for the queen, he threw himself between Kepi and the traitors, but they pushed him aside, knocking him to the ground as if he were one of Dagrun’s own men. Seth cried out. “Stop!” he said, shock on his face, terror too. He begged for mercy as they clobbered him with stones and shards of metal, trampling him as they came for the queen, their feet wet with his blood.

  Kepi stood by her husband’s body, but the angry mob tore her away from him, pummeling her with rock-filled sacks and wooden spoons. They threw her to the ground. The men loosened their breeches, their intentions clear, their faces screwed into menacing snarls. She would not die quickly, or mercifully. They meant to have some fun with her, but before they could get about it, more of Dagrun’s soldiers charged into the king’s chamber, pushing back the traitorous crowd and pulling Kepi to her feet. They made a wall with their bodies.

  “We can’t hold them,” cried one of the soldiers.

  “Go to the Chathair,” said another. “The king’s sworn men hold the throne room. You’ll be safe—” A slender knife pierced the soldier’s throat, cutting short his words, dropping him to the ground.

  Kepi ran, into the corridor, stumbling over bodies, making her way toward the throne room, but the hallway was already filling up with the traitors.

  Through open arches, all around the caer she saw slaves and stable boys gathering in the corridors and on the walls. The traitors had men at all of the doors, and turncoat soldiers guarding the Chime Gate. Dagrun had said there were a few traitors in his midst, but he had not grasped the true size of the rebel
lion. There was nothing but traitors in the caer. Is there anyone left to help me? The common folk and the slaves, the soldiers and the cooks, all of them had banded together. In Feren, a monarch cannot rule without the kite. She knew that, and Dagrun knew that too.

  She rounded a corner, her bare feet skidding on the stones. There were more guards, more of Dagrun’s loyal men lying on the floor, their skin pale, eyes red. There was no sign of conflict, no blood. “Help!” she cried, hoping desperately that someone would hear her. The caer held thousands of soldiers, but it seemed that all of them were unconscious or fighting for the turncoats. Maybe I am alone. In a moment she’d know the truth. The Chathair was just around the corner.

  She stumbled into the great throne room, ready for the worst, prepared to find herself alone with an angry horde, but instead, men from both sides were gathering their supporters. Dagrun’s soldiers formed ranks. They ushered her into their midst, surrounding her with their shields. Dagrun’s loyal warlords, Ferris Mawr and Deccan Falkirk, stood at her side. Ferris shouted orders as the traitors scrambled for weapons, pilfering swords from Dagrun’s fallen soldiers.

  A tall, gray-haired man in blue and green clan stripes stood at the center of the unruly mob. Gallach, she guessed. This must be the traitor. Seth had mentioned him once or twice. He had victory written all over his face. The traitors vastly outnumbered the king’s men. And everywhere there were soldiers lying on the floor, their skin looking sickly and cold—just like Dagrun’s. The sight of it made her realize what had happened. The traitors had poisoned Dagrun’s loyal soldiers. The scullery girls and the cooks, all of them must have been a part of this revolt. They had poisoned the amber and the bread, everything the soldiers ate. Hundreds were unconscious, drugged or dead—she didn’t know.

  The traitors had taken what weapons they could find and were gathering into a mob, ready to advance. I’ll make my stand here. It was as good a place as any to die. At least I have a blade. Kepi would die like her father, with iron in her fist, fighting until the very end. Three years ago, in Feren, after her first marriage, she had escaped what seemed like certain death, she had evaded Roghan’s cruelty and the cell his men had kept her locked in for a year, but this time there was no escape. There was no one left to come to her aid, no husband and no father. Just as well, thought Kepi. I don’t want to be saved by anyone—I want to fight.