“Sounds like a real charmer.”
“Yes. Far from the surveillance and laws of society, not sure if you will live or die…Who knows what you will become?”
Mulaghesh does not tell Signe this is a sensation she knows all too well.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” says Signe. “But this place…It brings it all back.”
“All of us need confessions sometimes.”
Signe glances over her shoulder. “What makes you say this is a confession?”
“The same thing that makes me think I know why you wear scarves.”
Signe is silent for a few paces. Then she says, “He took an interest in me. I knew he would. Blond hair…it’s very rare on the Continent, you see.”
“I get it.”
“He told me that if I wanted to eat again, ever again…I would need to come to him at night. He’d set up something like a throne, behind one of the arches. We would be alone there. I would do as he told me. I agreed, and he was pleased.
“Before I went, I visited an old sparring ground here on the island, and in the earth there I found an arrowhead. And I sharpened it, and sharpened it, until it could cut flesh. I tested it on the back of my wrist. And then I hid it in my mouth.
“He was no fool. He made me strip bare before he took me into his privacy. Made me do it before everyone. I didn’t care; Dreylings don’t really care about things like that. We don’t have such arcane ideas of how the human body should be seen. But he never looked into my mouth.
“He took me behind a tall, flat stone. And then he tried to take me. Tried to pin me down. And as he readied himself, I spit the arrowhead out into my hand…and then I rammed it into his eye.”
She pauses, perhaps awaiting something, as if she expects Mulaghesh to gasp. When she doesn’t, Signe continues. “It was a foolish thing to do. I should have jammed it into his throat. He started screaming, shrieking in pain, flailing about. It was not a fatal blow. So I got up, and I took a nearby stone…and I hit him on the head. I hit him, and I kept hitting him. I kept hitting him until I could no longer recognize him at all.
“Then I went out. Cleaned myself up. Clothed myself. I went to our rations. I told the other children to come near. And then we ate—sparingly—in silence.”
They walk on. The peak is a few hundred feet above them now, the sea a distant, undulating darkness.
“I thought the elders would kill me when they finally returned. I’d killed a boy of serious standing. And I’d done it in cold blood, carefully preparing for it. But they didn’t. They were…impressed. I’d defeated someone larger and meaner than myself. It didn’t matter that I’d done it through deception—to Voortyashtanis, a victory is a victory, and to win through cunning is no small thing. So…they made me a full member of the tribe.” She uses one finger to pull down the neck of her shirt, revealing the elaborate, delicate, soft yellow tattoo there. It’s beautiful, really, artful and strange. “And from then on, when I spoke, they listened. It was a curious thing.” She pulls the collar back up. “But I still hated what I’d done. I still hated everything I’d gone through. And I hated, later, that I’d become like…him.”
“Him who?”
“My father. Who else? He’s killed more people than anyone, I think, except perhaps the Kaj and Voortya herself.”
Mulaghesh knows that, statistically, this is unlikely: odds are she and Biswal are responsible for many more deaths than Sigrud je Harkvaldsson could ever aspire to.
“I thought I was better than him,” says Signe. “More…I don’t know. Evolved.”
“People don’t get to choose what the world makes of them,” says Mulaghesh.
“And that is what you think this is? The world made him, made us? Or is there some cruelty in us that pushes us into such situations?”
“You aren’t born this way. None of us are. We’re made this way, over time. But we might be able to unmake some of what was done to us, if we try.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I have to,” says Mulaghesh.
There’s a bird cry somewhere out in the darkness. Signe shivers. They plod on.
“I don’t remember what my father looked like,” says Mulaghesh. “I thought I’d never forget it, once. We only had each other in the world. Then one night I ran away from home and joined the army. Off to serve my country and find my fortune. It seemed such a fun idea at the time, such a lark. Such a childish thought. When I first landed on Continental shores I wrote him a letter explaining what I’d done and why I did it and what I expected to happen. A bunch of naïve shit, probably. My life seemed like a storybook at the time. I don’t know if he ever got it.
“After the war was over I went home and I knocked on the door. I remember waiting in front of it, our red front door. It was so strange to see, it hadn’t changed a bit since I was a kid. I had changed, but the door had stayed the same. But then a stranger answered it, a woman. She said she’d been living there for over a year. The previous owner had died some time ago. She didn’t even know where he was buried. I still don’t know.”
They walk on for a moment longer in silence. Then Mulaghesh stops. Signe walks on a few steps, then pauses to look back at her.
“Hundreds would kill to be where you are, Signe Harkvaldsson,” says Mulaghesh. “And more still would kill to have what you have now that your father has returned: a chance to undo a wrong done to you long ago. Such things are rare. I suggest you treasure them.”
“Perhaps I should. Perhaps you’re right. Shall we continue?”
“No.”
“No? Why no?”
“Because the tracks I’ve been following have split off from the main stairs.” Mulaghesh points west, where a stone trail runs through the twisted trees. “That way.”
“What tracks? What do you mean?”
“I mean someone’s been here before us. Recently, too. I can see their boot imprint in the soil here and there.” She points at the ground. “It’s a modern shoe type, nothing that the Voortyashtanis would have used. It’s been consistent all the way up here. When you didn’t step on it and mar the prints, at least.”
“You think…maybe Choudhry?”
“Maybe.” She sniffs. “Let’s take a look, eh?”
* * *
—
The path is not stone like the staircase, but a rambling dirt trail that winds underneath the crooked trees. Evening is fading into night, and both of them are forced to resort to pulling out torches, which turn the woods into a shifting, spectral nightscape.
Mulaghesh carefully follows the footprints, gingerly taking each next step. “They’re old. Months old, perhaps longer. Someone came here a lot.”
“Perhaps the tribes are still bringing their children here for their rite of passage.”
“Maybe. If so, they brought a damned wheelbarrow.” She points at a tire tread running through the soft earth.
“That seems…unlikely,” says Signe. “I thi…Oh, my word.”
“What?” Mulaghesh looks up, and sees Signe is shining her torch ahead, its beam falling on…something.
It’s some sort of tomb or crypt—a tall, arching structure built directly into the cliff behind it, with a set of white stairs leading up to a stone door—or what would have been a door, were it not completely destroyed. Chunks of rubble are scattered on the dais before the door.
Mulaghesh walks up and shines her light over the structure before her. It’s an elegant, beautiful construction, pale and delicate in the rippling shafts of moonlight, and covered with engravings: whales, fish, swords, porpoises, and endless waves. “I’m guessing they came here for this. But what in hells is it?”
“A burial chamber, I’m guessing. We found a few like this in the silt at the bottom of the bay, but they were much smaller—little more than a box.” She walks up to the broken door and shin
es her light in. “Yes—it’s the same. Come look.”
Mulaghesh joins her. The interior of the tomb is much smaller than she expected, considerably smaller than the ornate stone dais before it. It’s about four feet by five feet, and it’s almost completely barren except for a small plinth in the center.
“No place for a body,” says Signe. “Just a weapon—a sword.”
“Maybe they didn’t bury bodies. Their souls were bound up in their blades, weren’t they? Why bother with the corpse when you have that? So you just stowed the sword away for safekeeping…”
“Until you needed it,” says Signe. “Then you made a sacrifice. Someone picked it up, and then…” She shudders.
“Maybe the Teeth of the World are a memorial, like you said,” says Mulaghesh. “A place to store the weapons and souls of their most revered saints. Only now…someone’s gone graverobbing.” She shines her light back out at the woods. “So maybe this is how someone got their hands on a functional Voortyashtani sword.”
“Maybe that was the one your culprit tried to send to you?”
“Maybe. Or maybe they found more.”
“That’s not comforting.”
Mulaghesh walks back out and examines the dais, looking for a name, a carving of a face, anything to identify the owner of the sword that might have been in that tomb. But beyond the ornamentation there are few identifying marks. “Someone so famous, perhaps,” she says aloud, “you didn’t even need to put their name on their grave. I guess this isn’t the tomb Choudhry was looking for back in the city?”
Signe exits the tomb, looking pale and shaken. “The tomb that held all the Voortyashtani warriors, ever? No, I presume not. It’d be a bit cramped in there.” She shivers. “I don’t especially want to search the rest of the Tooth to see if someone broke into any more tombs.”
“I don’t, either. Come on. Take me to the summit.”
* * *
—
The journey up begins to wear on Mulaghesh, but she wonders if it’s the path itself that’s the culprit: the farther they walk up the wet, gleaming cobblestones, the taller the trees seem, and the darker the air.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” says Signe.
“No, but it feels familiar. There were places kind of like this in Bulikov,” says Mulaghesh. “Places that were here, but…not here, at the same time. Like scars, I guess.”
“Scars in what?” asks Signe.
“In reality.”
Finally they come to the top. Massive trees crowd around the summit as if to create a wall, and a wide, perfectly round stone arch marks the end of the steps. Beyond it is some kind of structure.
Mulaghesh slows to a stop as it comes into view. It is like a dome—a broad, brown, curving structure nearly thirty or forty feet wide. But it is made entirely out of beaten and smelted-down blades: sword blades and axe blades, knives, scythes, the tips of spears and arrows, all mashed together and layered on top of one another until they form a brown, rusted tangle of sharp edges. The entryway to the dome is lined with sword blades, all pointed in like teeth in the maw of some great beast. It is the single most hostile thing Mulaghesh has ever seen in her life.
“That’s it, huh?” says Mulaghesh.
“That’s it,” says Signe.
“Did you ever go in there?”
Signe shakes her head. “We came near it, looked at it, but…we never stepped off the stairs. It was too wrong. One boy was bold enough to shout to it, to call the old man out—we ran away, terrified, and the boy came down later, saying he saw nothing. Do you really think this is the place Choudhry was talking about?”
“I guess.”
“And…are you going in there?”
Mulaghesh stares at the dome. She can feel it: there is a mind in there, something watching her in the darkness. She imagines a soft sigh from the depths of the dome, a gentle exhalation.
“I am,” she says. “I don’t like it, but I am. Are you?”
Signe pauses. Then she shakes her head and says, “Not my ship, not my rats.”
“That must be a Dreyling turn of phrase, because that doesn’t make a damn bit of sense to me.”
“I am saying this is your mission, General, not mine. I’ll be more than happy to keep watch.”
Mulaghesh walks through the gate. “Fair enough. I don’t blame you.” She stands before the entry to the dome, rifling held ready. “If I don’t come out in thirty minutes,” she says, “throw a grenade in.”
“What?” says Signe, startled. “And kill you?”
“If I’m not out in thirty minutes, then it’s likely I’m already dead,” she says. “And I don’t intend to let this damned place live longer than me.” Then she raises her rifling, stoops down low, and steps into the shadows.
* * *
—
There’s a moment of darkness. Then shafts of light filter through the gloom above. She realizes she’s seeing the moonlight shining through the gaps in all the thousands of blades hammered together above, but the color of the light is wrong: it’s dull and yellowed, like it’s shining from the wrong sky. She remembers how things looked during the Battle of Bulikov, when the Divinity appeared and forced its reality onto the city, changing the very sky: this is much the same, she finds—not true light but a crude approximation of it. It is as if the sky above this dome is different from the one she just left.
The light curls, coils, churns above her head. Then she takes a breath and realizes the dome is full of smoke.
The acrid tang unravels in her lungs and she’s overtaken with violent coughing. It’s a reek of a sort that she’s never smelled before, something oily and woody and putrefied. She blinks tears from her eyes, which are slowly adjusting to the darkness.
The floor of the dome is made of shields hammered flat, just like the blades that form the roof. Across the gloom, at the very end of the dome—she finds herself wondering, How big is this place?—she sees there is a human form sitting beside what looks like a pale, silvery shrub.
He’s real, thinks Mulaghesh, though she finds it hard to believe it. He’s really real.
The man is masked in shadow, but he appears to be holding an ornate pipe, long and white like a piece of coral. The pipe curls up from his crossed legs and over his shoulders and around to his mouth, winding around his neck like a noose. She watches as the shadowy figure sucks at it. The bowl in his lap flares a soft orange. Then he exhales an absolute thundercloud of roiling, reeking smoke.
“I take it you’re the man atop the Tooth,” Mulaghesh calls to him.
If this means anything he doesn’t show it. He just takes another huge draw from his pipe, leans back, and sends a stream of smoke up to the ceiling.
Yet this time his face happens to catch one of the rays of light.
She freezes, and thinks: Holy hells. He’s a corpse.
She watches as he lowers his head, the ray of light sliding across his features. His skin is gnarled and papery, covered with splotches of discolorations like mold blooming in the walls of an old house. His eyes are wide and white and blind, and his eye sockets and cheeks are so sunken and hollow it’s like he hasn’t eaten in…Well. Maybe ever. He is dressed in wraps of thin, wispy rags, and he seems incapable of completely shutting his mouth, so his narrow, blackened teeth are always visible, like the grin of a corpse.
Mulaghesh tightens her grip on her rifling. He doesn’t exactly look like a physical powerhouse, but he must be Divine, which means appearances can be deceiving.
She takes a step forward. “Who are you?”
He stares ahead blindly. The only sign that he heard is the slightest twitch of his head. Then a voice rattles up from his skinny chest, a voice like rocks and gravel being washed ashore.
“I,” he says slowly, “am not a who.” Each word he speaks makes a fog of coiling smoke.
“Okay
,” says Mulaghesh slowly. “Then…what are you?”
“I am memory,” says the man. He sucks at his pipe and exhales again.
“What do you mean, you’re memory?”
“I mean,” he says, “I am that which remembers.”
“Okay. So you just…remember things?”
He sucks his pipe but doesn’t bother to answer.
“What kind of things?”
“My memory encompasses,” he says, “all the things that I remember.”
Mulaghesh frowns. His circular answers suggest a lack of basic human intelligence, or maybe she’s not asking the right questions. “How…How did you come to be here?”
There’s a pause. Then he smacks his lips and says in a measured chant, “I am the 374th memory vessel of the Empress of Graves, Maiden of Steel, Devourer of Children, Queen of Grief, She Who Clove the Earth in Twain. Upon this spot I took the place of the 373rd vessel, broke a leaf from the Tree of Memory, and inhaled all the knowledge of what the Great Mother had promised. Within me is the memory of all who have been lost, sacrificed, cut down. I contain villages, armies, generations. I remember the slain and the dead, the victorious and the defeated. I am memory.”
Mulaghesh glances at the silvery little shrub beside him. “Tree of Memory?”
“Yes.”
“What does that mean? What is the Tree of Memory?”
Again he begins to chant: “In honor of Her people swearing fealty to Her, the Great Mother stabbed a single arrow into the stone, and it flowered and became a great tree, a tree whose roots lie under all the stones of this land.” He gestures to the tiny, silvery shrub with one gnarled hand. “The tree is fed by the blood of the people, by their conflict and their sacrifice, and the memory of all that they have done flows through its vessels—and into me,” he says, smoke blooming from his lips, “into this thing I am, this creature of flesh and bone. I am the final vessel of all these memories. I am the pool fed by the many mountain streams.”
Mulaghesh looks over his bony wrists, his painfully thin ankles. “How…How long have you been here?”
The Divine Cities Trilogy: City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles, With an Excerpt From Foundryside Page 84