A quartet of female guards in Berabesq armour followed behind. Like those of Keliesh and his troops, the bronze of their breastplates had been carved with intricate designs, though theirs depicted flowers and vines rising up from desert sands, the leaves guided towards the heavens by gentle hands.
‘Gardeners,’ I whispered to Torian after they had passed us by.
She gave me a look that said, I don’t care. This is stupid. You’re stupid, and we’re all going to die. I happen to be intimately familiar with that particular look as Reichis gives it to me all the time.
After interminable shuffling and trudging, the vizier and his attendants finally reached the end of the corridor and made a right turn.
‘You smell anyone else nearby?’ I asked Reichis.
He chittered something at Ishak, who snuffled at the floor before yipping something back.
‘This whole place is practically deserted except for the prayer rooms. The other skinbags are still packed in there.’
When I translated this for Torian she rubbed at her jaw. ‘Why in all the hells aren’t more of the guards circulating the corridors? Berabesq has as many spies as Darome does. They must’ve known we would send someone to—’
‘That’s precisely what they’ve been counting on,’ Nephenia interrupted. Her arms were laden with the Arcanists’ books she’d stolen from Shujan’s room. There was a desperate urgency in her voice even though she spoke in that eerily quiet Argosi whisper of hers. ‘You were right, Kellen. This whole thing has been a set-up.’
It was nice to know I got things right once in a while, even if I had no idea why or how.
Torian led us down to the next flight of stairs before we stopped to give Shujan the chance to catch his breath. He leaned a hand against the golden wall.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
He couldn’t seem to get the words out. I am so weak, Kellen. It’s as if I have never grown from being a babe at all, but have merely been … stretched.
His hand slipped and I had to catch him in my arms to keep him from falling down the stairs.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Torian asked.
‘He’s sick,’ Nephenia said. She’d opened up one of the books she’d taken from his room to a page depicting exquisitely-drawn outlines of the human form. Surrounding each one were layers of concentric scrawls of Berabesq writing, and buried among those a half-dozen sigils Nephenia and I both recognised. ‘I think the Arcanists have been using a mixture of sand and blood magic to make Shujan appear to mature,’ she said, tracing a finger along the rows of symbols. ‘It’s not natural, though. His body can’t sustain it.’
I leaned closer to try to make sense of the intricate markings. ‘So all these miracles he’s displaying, the way he’s grown so quickly … it’s all been weakening his physical body and making him sick.’
Ishak sniffed at the boy’s feet before barking something at Reichis.
‘The kid ain’t sick,’ the squirrel cat informed me. ‘He’s dying.’
I translated, first silently for Shujan, then, after he nodded, for the others. Torian shook her head. ‘This makes no sense. What good is a dying god to the Berabesq leadership? For hundreds of years the six religious sects running this country have been waiting for their six-faced deity to finally arrive and reveal his true aspect once and for all.’
‘And then what?’ Nephenia asked. ‘One sect turns out to be right, the others misguided? Generations of family traditions go up in smoke the moment the six faiths collapse into only one. People would unite, sure, but with a lingering reluctance.’ She turned to me. ‘What if the Arcanists never wanted a real god in the first place?’
My gaze went to Shujan, who stared back at me in confusion. For all the philosophy and wisdom his teachers had imparted to him, for all the miracles the Arcanists had inscribed upon his flesh, this was something his innocence couldn’t fathom. ‘A god murdered by his people’s enemies before he can reveal the answer his followers have been waiting centuries to hear would unite them in a new holy cause. Vengeance.’
I do not understand, he said silently to me. Am I a fraud then?
Right sentiment, wrong word. I quieted my thoughts to keep the true one from him.
Shujan pushed away from me and spread his arms. In the dim light of the stairwell he began to glow like a star, as the ceiling above us started to dance with images of the inner workings of plants, of animals, of the raw elements of life itself. Is this not a miracle, Kellen? he asked. Is it merely a trick?
‘What the hells is he doing?’ Torian whispered furiously. ‘Trying to bring the temple guards down on us?’
‘Give me a second,’ I said. I turned to Reichis. ‘Can you do some reconnaissance and make sure nobody’s on our tail without being seen?’
He snorted, then gave a shake of his fur, changing its colour to once again match the gold of the walls all around us. Without a word he scampered up the stairs and back into the corridor.
Shujan reached out a hand and touched my right shoulder. I felt a warmth that steadily took away the ache of one of the bruises Torian had given me.
I can heal the sick and wounded. Is this not a miracle?
He took his hand away. The pain was still gone, but I’ve been injured enough times to know the difference between a wound that’s healed versus one that’s just been numbed.
‘I don’t know,’ I said to him, the longing in his voice making me want to find some way to reassure him of something I myself was now sure wasn’t true. ‘Maybe divinity isn’t just about power or knowledge.’
‘Rumours of a god wouldn’t be enough for the thousands of viziers who lead the six sects of believers,’ Nephenia said.
Shujan spoke aloud, though he struggled from the effort. ‘When I first appeared in the spire, the viziers questioned the meaning of my arrival. Over the months that followed, however, I grew so unnaturally quickly that they deemed this the first miracle prophesied in all six of the codices: a child would arrive who had not been born, who would grow to a man in his first year.’
Shujan stared down at his emaciated, gangly arms. ‘Am I merely a doll made from too little cloth?’
I was still trying to come up with something reassuring to say when my attention was drawn elsewhere – to the book Nephenia still held in her hands. It was newer than the other books I’d seen, the pages still crisp, the paper not yellowed by time. But it was the unusual mix of Berabesq script and Jan’Tep sigils, drawn in a flowing, elegant hand, that had caught my eyes. I doubt I’d ever have recognised them were I not still holding a small stack of thirteen painted cards in my pocket. I’d kept them with me all this time, not with any purpose in mind, but simply as a memento of my mother.
Ancestors, I swore silently. She’d been their prisoner for weeks after Ke’heops had sent her to spy on the Berabesq. She would have known not only the secrets of Jan’Tep magic, but of the shadowblack banding he’d brought back with him from the ruins of the Ebony Abbey.
‘Kellen?’ Nephenia asked, looking up at me. ‘What’s wrong?’
The discordant clanging of a distant bell coming from one of the floors above us took me by surprise, making my heart skip a beat. Soon the chimes were picked up by other bells, spreading throughout the spire like wildfire. Shouts began to echo down from the corridors.
A skittering along the floor above us was followed by Reichis racing down the stairs. ‘The guards are being released from the prayer rooms and those crazy guys in the black and gold robes are makin’ weird signs in the air.’
‘The Arcanists must’ve discovered Shujan’s gone,’ Nephenia said, after Ishak had translated for her. ‘We need to get moving before—’
A gleam caught my eye, drawing my gaze to Shujan who was staring down in horror as the blackened inscriptions carved into his flesh began to writhe and pulse beneath the thin fabric of his robes. Though he made no sound himself, I could hear chanting coming from inside the cavern of his chest. He clawed at the front of his robes
, revealing shadowblack words that were rewriting themselves before our eyes. ‘The Arcanists are near! I can feel them altering my destiny, reshaping me into … Kellen, run!’
Before any of us could make a move, his hands rose up of their own accord. The air between us shimmered and shook as though the very laws of physics were beginning to crumble around him. A hurricane appeared out of nowhere, buffeting us around the confines of the stairwell. Reichis and Ishak went flying. Nephenia reached for them only to be picked up by one of the winds herself and slammed into the wall so hard I could’ve sworn I heard something crack.
Torian grabbed hold of one of the bannisters with her right hand and used the other to keep me steady. ‘Kellen,’ she shouted. ‘The Arcanists are forcing Shujan to kill us! You’ve got to use the scourge!’
I stared down at the desiccated length of rope wrapped around my arm, then at Shujan standing there before me, unmoved by the raging winds, his very nature being altered by the Arcanists even as he cried out, ‘The marshal is right. I can feel all the possibilities of my future collapsing in on themselves. Kellen, you must strangle me with the scourge before I become the god of their design!’
Torian was saying something else, but I couldn’t hear her above the roar of the chanting carried aloft by the impossible winds surrounding us. I began to unwrap the scourge from my arm, then stopped.
Destiny, I thought. The predestined path set for us by others. The elimination of both free will and … chance.
I reached into my pocket for the baojara dice. If I tried to throw the tiny wooden cubes into the storm they’d just be picked up by the wind and my intuition told me that would negate any power they might have over Shujan. As luck would have it though, the paltry Jan’Tep spells I’m capable of casting – unimpressive as they are by the standards of my people – just happen to involve breath magic.
I bent my fingers into a set of somatic shapes so simple even first-year initiates scoff when asked to demonstrate them by their teachers. The esoteric geometries I conjured in my mind were equally straightforward. As to the syllables I needed to invoke? The only problem there was that hurricanes make it a little tricky to perfectly project specific sounds. I had to shout the words at the top of my lungs three times before I even began to feel the band around my forearm sparking. ‘Elas’shep’shi!’ I screamed a fourth and final time. I tossed the dice in the air and willed them to resist the winds and roll of their own volition.
They flew so fast from my hands that I feared the spell had failed, but then I watched them begin to spin effortlessly in the air, their motion governed not by the Arcanists’ storm but by the simple chaos of random probability. For just an instant we all watched them tumble over each other. A moment later the winds buffeting us disappeared and the baojara dice fell to the floor.
‘You rolled a six,’ Reichis said, fur sticking straight out as he shuffled unsteadily towards them. ‘Is that lucky?’
‘I don’t know that it matters,’ I replied. ‘But the dice seem to have released Shujan from the Arcanists’ hold.’
‘For now,’ Nephenia said. Ishak was licking and nuzzling her hand. ‘We need to get him away from here before they can try again.’
Torian was staring at the boy, whose youthful features were now twisted into a mask of such misery that his suffering commanded sympathy even from the usually cold-hearted marshal. ‘It’s all been a ruse,’ she said quietly. ‘A trick to get us to destroy the evidence of the Arcanists’ deception once they were done using him as their puppet. He’s not God. He’s not even an enemy. He’s just …’
Shujan was so weak he could barely stand now. I had to pick him up in my arms to keep him from collapsing to the floor. His eyes, brimming with a boy’s tears, stared up at mine. There is a word there, in your mind, but you’re trying to hide it from me. It’s all right, Kellen. You can say it.
I knelt down to retrieve the dice. I’m sorry, my friend.
‘He’s a patsy,’ I said aloud as I began to carry him down the stairs. ‘And this whole thing is a con game.’
We managed to get out of the spire before either the guards caught up to us or the Arcanists could try their hand at taking control of Shujan again. Torian took the lead, guiding us back to the tunnel that ran beneath Makhan’s walls to the ruins beneath the streets of Mebab. Even in the near perfect darkness, her steps were quick and sure. Maybe there really was something to this ‘marshal’s magic’ of hers.
‘What now?’ she asked when we reached the sloping passage that would lead up to the little shop door and out to the street. The journey through the tunnels had given her time to armour herself in her usual cynicism. ‘If your big plan was to ride to the Seven Sands in hopes that your little friend and my twelve-year-old queen could somehow hold back the tide of war, I can’t see how we’ll ever make it. This whole city is swarming with soldiers and viziers and who knows how many Faithful. We’ll never reach the border.’
Would Shujan even survive that long? The only way out of this mess was to engineer some kind of peace treaty between him and Queen Ginevra. Berabesq is a theocracy, and under their laws the rule of the viziers exists only as interpretation of the will of their six-faced god. The Arcanists had gone to all the trouble of convincing their people that God now walked among them, which meant Shujan’s word was law.
So long as we could stop anyone from murdering him first.
‘We can’t get to the Seven Sands without help,’ I agreed. ‘We need horses, supplies and probably a few distractions along the way.’
‘And just who’s going to supply them for us?’ Torian asked.
Nephenia and I couldn’t help but share a smile as I picked Shujan up in my arms once again and began to carry him up the slope while she pulled various charms and traps from her coat to help us escape whatever awaited us outside. ‘Some folks who probably aren’t going to take a shining to you, marshal.’
55
The Stand-Off
Ferius’s voice bellowed loud enough to make the cavernous chamber of the travellers’ saloon shake. ‘I’m the one took an arrow in the back, and that means nobody kills this girl less’n it’s me doin’ the killin’.’
Her display of arta valar would’ve been more impressive had she been able to stand on her own two feet without both her mother and father holding her up. Torian’s own swagger was remarkable to behold, given she was surrounded by nearly a hundred Argosi wielding just about every weapon imaginable and a few I’d never seen before and had no idea how they worked. I mean, sure, you can strangle someone with a silk scarf, I guess, but the way the Path of Emerald Steps brandished it managed to look a lot more frightening than I’d’ve thought possible.
‘How about the lot of you get in a nice line and I’ll kick your arses one at a time?’ Torian asked.
Reichis, who adores a good show of bloodlust almost as much as the taste of butter biscuits, leaped from my shoulder to hers. ‘Yeah, you Argosi scumbags. Come and get it!’
‘Have you forgotten that a couple of hours ago you were the one who wanted to kill her?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, but …’ The squirrel cat got that faintly sheepish look on his fuzzy face that he gets when he realises he’s embarrassed himself. He jumped back onto my shoulder and muttered, ‘Just thought it sounded cool is all.’
The stocky woman who called herself the Path of Floating Lilies came forward, each hand holding a trio of what looked like flattened steel flowers, balanced for throwing and with a sharpened point at the tip of each petal. ‘The Daroman has made a most generous offer, one I am eager to accept.’
‘Back off,’ I warned.
Her eyes never left Torian’s. ‘She attacked the Path of the Wild Daisy. I will not let that go unanswered.’
‘Aw,’ Ferius said. ‘Never knew how much you cared, Lily. Especially seein’ as how you’ve wanted to kill me so many times.’
How did these people ever get a reputation as pacifist philosophers?
‘You demanded that we g
ive your teysan leave to end the threat of the god,’ the Path of Emerald Steps noted. The small, black-haired woman gestured to where said god lay slumped in a chair at one of the tables, barely able to keep his eyes open. The further we’d got from the temple, the weaker his condition had become. ‘Instead the Path of Endless Stars has brought the abomination here, adding yet another discordance to our decks.’
‘You seem awful quick to want to condemn an innocent,’ I said, hands at my powder holsters. ‘Whatever happened to “The Way of the Argosi is the Way of Water”?’
Lily snorted. ‘The Path of the Wild Daisy still spouts such nonsense to her teysani?’ She turned to Ferius. ‘Who knew you were such a traditionalist?’
‘Must be old age,’ she replied.
‘Then perhaps you should heed time’s warnings and let the rest of us correct your failures.’
She tried to take another step closer to Torian, but Nephenia got in her way, hands in the pockets of her coat, not yet revealing what charms she would draw should the situation get any further out of hand. Ishak loped to her side, snarling a warning to anyone who was considering making a move against his partner.
‘You’d risk your life for this marshal?’ Lily asked her. ‘What is she to you?’
‘Not much,’ Neph replied. ‘I can’t stand her, as a matter of fact, but Kellen thinks she can help and that’s good enough for me. Besides –’ she took a step closer to the Path of Floating Lilies, ignoring the blades in the other woman’s hands – ‘I don’t think I’d be taking much of a risk at all.’
A man could fall in love with Nephenia seven times a day if he wasn’t careful.
‘All this arta valar is startin’ to stink up the place,’ Ferius muttered. ‘Kid, do me a favour and put a stop to this nonsense?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ I replied. I took in a deep breath. ‘The marshal’s with me,’ I bellowed.
No one seemed to be listening – or lowering their weapons.
I flipped open my powder holsters and took out two pinches larger than I could afford, tossed them into the air and cast a variation of my spell. ‘Cara’juru,’ I intoned.
Spellslinger 6: Crownbreaker Page 31