Peering around, she noticed an area of shadows that weren’t quite as dense as the rest, so she started in that direction. Ashtadukht carefully hugged the amber circle cast by the torch; a single breach could very well mean a messy misstep. This in turn pulled Tirdad along as dependably as though he’d been tethered to her.
“Stay within the light,” he warned, a tinge of concern in his delivery.
“Keep me within it,” she replied as they came upon a brazier. Ashtadukht ran her fingers over the rim, clearing it of dust and revealing the reflective bronze that’d been hidden by centuries of disuse. “Light it,” she said, and pre-emptively turned away.
“Gladly.” Tirdad extended the torch into the brazier, and it gave a dusty rasp before springing to life. Ashtadukht was on the verge of articulating something about finally having a proper damned light when a thread of fire raced from the brazier and into her vision. There, it lit another brazier, which set forth two more threads, which ignited more braziers and more threads and so on and so forth until dozens were alight.
The cavern they revealed was massive enough to challenge the 600-foot dunes they’d passed on their journey through the Lut. Like the chamber above, the architecture closely resembled the ancient site in Fars: rectangular stone arches and pillars with carved beasts as capitals, towering statues depicting square-bearded sentinels, and reliefs covering most of the visible masonry. It had seen better days, sure; it was crumbling. Even so, it might have looked impressive in the company of her brother. Ashtadukht frowned. Might have.
Their descent had deposited them about half-way down to the wide street that spanned the bottom of the cavern and ended at the only unlit brazier: a huge bronze bowl with room enough for her estate and some of the surrounding land. She squinted.
“Is there something moving out there?” she asked. “On the big brazier?” Her eyes hadn’t taken the sudden appearance of light as badly as they could have, but they were nevertheless strained.
Tirdad followed her gaze. “A man,” he said. “Struggling, looks like.”
The cousins looked at one another in shared bafflement before reaching the same conclusion.
“Go!” Ashtadukht shouted, and Tirdad was rushing off before the words left her mouth. She cursed and chased after him, though much slower and forced to stop at one point to empty what little remained in her stomach.
After vomiting, another length of too many stairs, and the stretch of street between the landing and finally reaching the brazier, she was doubled over and struggling to put one leg in front of the other.
“I do not see a way up,” Tirdad said as she approached.
She wheezed and limply waved an arm, sucking in great gulps of air.
“If the fire reaches the fuel he is done for.”
Another limp wave answered, followed by a confusedly pained expression that clearly conveyed the sense of: “What do you expect me to do about it? I’m coughing my guts up and gasping for breath, here.”
“Exciting, isn’t it?” rang a familiar chord.
Still wheezing, Ashtadukht cast in its direction, and not far above, perched on an intact bridge, sat Farrobay. He stared straight at her and winked.
“What kind of game are you playing?” growled Tirdad.
“A game?” gasped Farrobay. “This is a matter of life and death! The brazier could go up in flames any minute now, and that poor man with it.” He laughed shrilly and flapped his arms. “Really gets your blood going, doesn’t it?”
Ashtadukht sneered and gestured shakily at one of the pillars surrounding the centre brazier. “Climb up,” she managed.
Tirdad looked at it doubtfully but nodded and ran over, removing his tunic as he did. When he reached the pillar, he swung his tunic around and used it to begin shimmying up.
“It’s a gift. A gift from me to you,” explained Farrobay, swinging his legs energetically. “The star-reckoner who called you here—the real Farrobay. Thought you’d like him.” He leaned forward. “You’ve thought about it, haven’t you? Him plowing you. I mean, you thought about me, but this is his form.”
“Shut up!” rasped Ashtadukht.
“Be nice, now. Appreciate it. Appreciate all of this. That stupid div found its spoon because of me. That pitiful old star-reckoner called to you because of it. And here I have him nicely packaged in spectacle. Look around!” He spread his arms and grinned wildly. “This is no doubt the grandest adventure!”
“Why?” she asked. “What do you get out of this?”
He leaned forward and simpered. “You, my love. Maybe not tonight. But eventually. I know you, Ashta. More than this cousin of yours. More than anyone. I. Know. You. And now you know that I know. I have watched you since you first saved the phylactery belonging to one of my kind.
“So enjoy,” the div went on. “I know you will, and I love you all the more for it. I’ll be waiting. Oh, and the big one doesn’t light. Why would I burn my gift?”
He gave her a patient, hungry grin before vanishing in a puff of smoke and leaving behind a lingering, “Silly you.”
Ashtadukht groaned and lay completely flat. She was too exhausted to really think about the things the div had said, only bothering to confirm that she did not like them.
A smoky fulmination suddenly enveloped her and condensed into the div, one hand impossibly tight around her throat, the other between her thighs, which furiously fought against him. She tried to call out, but she couldn’t so much as wheeze he’d clamped down so hard.
“Nearly forgot,” he whispered into her ear. “A warning. Waray? Sired by the Bloody Club.” He pecked the side of her head, offered that same patient grin, then disappeared.
Ashtadukht coughed violently, flinching at the sting each cough spurred in her throat. She groaned and, suppressing the urge to curl into a ball, craned to look at the pillar. Tirdad was nowhere to be seen. She rolled onto her back and chanced a swallow; it smarted, and she had a hard time convincing her throat to listen at all.
“Tirdad,” she hoarsely called. She stared at the ceiling, or where she imagined a ceiling might be. The glow of the braziers wasn’t strong enough to disperse the depths above. She figured the larger one would have accomplished as much—and that it’d once housed one of the three Great Fires of antiquity, which still burned to this day.
“Tirdad,” she called again, her throat still ardently against it. Ashtadukht idly wondered whether it would have vouchsafed the legendary fire of priests, Adur Farnbag; warriors, Adur Gushnasp; or farmers and herdsmen, Adur Burzen-Mehr. Her mind had a habit of distracting her when the pain wasn’t unbearably bad.
Thump.
The noise roused her into movement, belligerent muscles be damned. She rolled to her belly, tucked her knees to her chest and shot up straight in movements exaggerated by fatigue. “Oh.”
What she hoped was the real Farrobay also rose with some difficulty. “Greetings,” he said without fully straightening his back. One hand rubbed the small of it like so many whose bodies had seen better years. She could empathize despite their age disparity.
“Farrobay?” she asked.
“In the flesh. What is left of me anyway.”
Tirdad dropped down beside him. “What is going on here?”
“Exactly what that div described, the rascal. To think I was so utterly overcome after all this time.” Farrobay shook his head.
Ashtadukht grimaced. “About some of the things he said . . .”
Farrobay waved it away. “Never mind that. The div was just trying to stir up trouble. It has departed, so put your mind at ease.” He said that, but Ashtadukht swore she saw suspicion in his eyes—that and she wasn’t all that convinced he could actually tell whether the div had left since he’d somehow been duped to begin with.
“Now that you are here,” he began with the sort of tone a person assumes when they know they’re asking something unreasonable, “why not finish what you came for?”
“What?” Tirdad knotted his brow. “We just saved yo
ur life. She is in no condition to—”
“Tirdad,” Ashtadukht interrupted with a raised palm. “That’s not necessary.”
“But—”
“I’ll be fine. I’ve been summoned, and that’s that. A star-reckoner doesn’t shirk responsibility.”
Farrobay nodded approvingly. “The job is not a demanding one anyway. I just required someone with an open mind.”
“Oh?” asked Ashtadukht, lowering herself to the ground once more to give her legs a rest.
“The div—the one I summoned you to deal with—uses a spoon as a phylactery. My family has been tasked with safeguarding that phylactery for generations. The rest is complicated, but the gist of it is that we made a deal in exchange for information that leads to the destruction of its fellow divs.”
“I’m not sure where I come in,” said Ashtadukht while massaging her calves. Tirdad handed her a waterskin, which she gladly accepted.
“We have generally been able to keep the body away from the phylactery. There is a peculiar separation: the body is driven to obtain it at all costs, but endangers the phylactery in doing so. Most of the div’s consciousness is actually in the spoon by now.”
“So you need me because most star-reckoners wouldn’t agree with collaborating with divs,” Ashtadukht reasoned. “Where’s this div now?”
“Farther in. Something is interfering with my ability to sense its presence, but only partially. I can lead you. Dealing with it is your charge, however. I really am too old for this.”
Ashtadukht extended a hand to Tirdad and he pulled her to her feet. “A generous offer,” she said. “And unexpected from a fellow star-reckoner.”
Farrobay shrugged, recognizing the implication in her dubious tone. “Matters were complicated. And your friend here is right. You did me a service, whether or not that div meant to immolate me. Who knows how long I would have toiled up there, hog-tied and humiliated.”
She stepped aside and motioned for him to pass. “Lead on.”
“Can we trust him?” Tirdad whispered after the star-reckoner had started down the wide street.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “And at this point I don’t think I care.”
“Probably dark corridors ahead,” Tirdad conspired. “One wrong step could end in a terrible accident for the fellow.” He offered her a soft smile that told her the joke would quickly turn serious if the old man tried anything untoward. He also seemed apprehensive, and she figured he was doing all he could to prevent himself from commenting on her well-being. She found his hesitation endearing: caring but not troubling her with it.
They followed the ancient star-reckoner through catacombs that twisted and curled in on themselves, wound over and under earlier sections in a maddening attempt at mirroring a heap of swiving snakes, and generally made a person wonder why someone would go through all this trouble for some old bones. Ossuaries were typically kept out of sight, but this was well beyond what Ashtadukht considered acceptable.
Her body was beyond complaining now; it had come to accept the fact that there would be no respite. She moved like a zombie, dragging her toes with each step. She listlessly bit into a dried date.
“Are we close?” she asked. She’d decided some ways back—which wasn’t really all that far behind geographically, considering the looping passages—that someone else would have to keep track of where they’d been. Every niche filled with bones was just another niche filled with bones as far as she was concerned.
“Feels like it,” Farrobay replied. “Although it has felt like it for some time now.”
“Do we even know where we are?”
“A temple complex belonging to our ancestors, far as I can tell. Happened upon it in my travels as a youngster and decided it would be a suitable hermitage if I grew old enough to need one. Never thought I would need one,” Farrobay explained, grinning back at her as he did. “Old men and their hermitages, eh? Mainly came here to conceal that spoon, though.”
Ashtadukht sighed, lumbering along as he indulged himself. As a rule, she generally made time for and treasured the tales of old men. Tales, like words, had power. Too many words and the power becomes diluted, which is why stories fall second to words. But trace amounts of power remain in the warp and weft of even a poorly-loomed tale: in the lessons of experience, the grains of truth, and what so enthralled her as a child, the imaginative undertakings.
Just now, however, she was hoping he might be cut off by a cave-in or stubbed toe.
She tore off another hunk of date, and its cloying sweetness had her chewing like a goat gnawing rubber. Ashtadukht normally favoured dates; they were tasty, which is hard to come by where food on the road is concerned. But her lingering nausea did not currently agree. Nevertheless, she needed something in her stomach if she planned to press onward. Or backward. Or sideward. The div hadn’t been lying about these catacombs being tricky. She’d never been able to find her bearings to begin with, much less lose them.
When Farrobay finally got around to answering her more immediate question of where they were, it wasn’t because he had the slightest, most remote idea beyond “catacombs in the Lut” but due to being face-to-face with the beast.
“Here we are,” he said, casually and without worry.
The div was pretty run-of-the-mill as far as divs were concerned: shaggy ash-colored hair, gnarly teeth, stocky build, a stench you could spoil salt with. It was hunched over to fit in the chamber it’d backed into and clutching a spoon to its bosom. It snarled.
The thing about your run-of-the-mill div is that, being limited to the more base functions, they have all that rancor channelled into being downright vicious. Higher-functioning divs spread it out a bit. Some are pricks; some play pranks; some corrupt; some join the government.
So when a div such as this one snarls, you take heed. Being a star-reckoner, Ashtadukht knew this very well. She stopped dead in her tracks. “Tirdad,” she whispered, a white-knuckled grip on her sleeve. “Move closer to me. As slowly as you possibly can. Don’t look at the div. The floor. Look at the floor.”
He inched over as requested, and she positioned herself behind him.
“Good,” she said, while searching through his pack as delicately as if it were full of broken glass. She applied teeth to her bottom lip and buried her arm farther, not entirely certain what everything she handled actually was.
The div snarled. She heard it shift in the heap of bones it’d backed into. It should have attacked by now. And since when do basic divs have phylacteries? They wouldn’t even know what a phylactery was. She pulled out a pinecone, knotted her brow at it, and dove back in.
Something smooth brushed her palm, and she investigated by running her fingers along its contours. The handle led to . . . a concave end. She gripped it and gently extracted it from the bottom of the sack, so to avoid spilling the other contents in doing so.
“Okay,” she muttered. “I’ve a spoon.” Ashtadukht checked the object in her hands and nodded mentally. She did indeed have a spoon. She took a look around. Farrobay had absconded. At least he’d kept his word. She appreciated that. Star-reckoners did not like other star-reckoners peering critically over their shoulders, and she was no exception.
“What now?” asked Tirdad. “Are you going to talk to it?”
“No.”
He was quiet for a moment, then, “Really?”
“Really. You’ll move away, revealing me to the div. No threatening movements either. I’ll brandish the spoon, hopefully drawing its attention. Bring it low as fast as possible or it’ll rip us both to pieces.” She took a deep breath. “Go on.”
Tirdad gradually revealed the div to her. It was watching from behind a column, which did nothing to conceal its bulky frame.
When he was far enough away, she presented the spoon. She held it out like a rattlesnake, having second thoughts about the entire affair. Encounters like these usually played out according to well-laid plans and with the support of star-reckoning. Or with mercenar
ies armed for bear. She had a spoon and her cousin.
“Can’t even tell when you’ve been fooled,” Ashtadukht boasted insultingly. She gave the spoon a shake. “I’ve the real spoon!”
The div focused its bulging eyes on her spoon, then the spoon against its bosom, then hers. It snarled and rushed out into the chamber. Even hunched as it was it moved with speed that belied its bulk. Ashtadukht scrambled into the corridor they’d entered from.
Another snarl threatened to snap at her heels when it was truncated by a meaty schlurp and the thump of something large hitting the earth. She cast over her shoulder to glimpse the creature lying face down, and only then decided she should stop fleeing for her life.
Ashtadukht returned to the fallen div as Tirdad was working his sword free of its skull, which was clinging intransigently up to the hilt. “Thanks,” she said.
“Yeah,” he grunted.
“Good to have you around.”
“Likewise,” he said with a grunt, the sword now half removed. “Bold move with the spoon. Risky, too.”
She prodded the div with her boot. “Had to improvise. And, well, risk sort of comes with the territory.”
“I suppose it does.” Tirdad tugged the last of the blade free and cleaned it on the div’s coat. “This one really reeks.”
Meanwhile, Ashtadukht swiped the spoon from the div’s hand and gave it a once over. For such an important phylactery, it was fairly common-looking as far as utensils go. No embellishments at all. The div wasn’t quite so stupid for falling for her ruse, then.
“Howdy.” The greeting came from everywhere, and with a distinctive drawl.
“Uh.” Ashtadukht looked around.
“Don’t start talking to yourself, you hear. Might make your friend there think you’re off your rocker. I’m the spoon—err, the div he killed. Can only chat when you’re holding me.”
“Uh,” Ashtadukht thought. She gave the body another prod. “This div?”
“Sure as rain. I feel you, though. It’s rich stuff. Figured all those fools storing phylacteries in animals were downright dim. Humans don’t kill spoons. Just ain’t a thing they do.”
A Star-Reckoner's Lot (A Star-Reckoner's Legacy Book 1) Page 13