“But we can’t just sail off and leave the Nilstone with Arunis!” said Thasha.
“I very much hope that you will not have to,” said Olik. “We have already begun a house-to-house search of the Lower City. It is a daunting task: Masalym’s army is small, and the panic caused by the nuhzat has led to desertions. Nonetheless, if Arunis remains in the Lower City, we will find him.”
“We’ll help you, Sire,” said Pazel.
“Don’t be a fool,” said Chadfallow. “You heard what Hercol said about the terror at the port. Our faces would only add to the chaos, and make it that much easier for Arunis to know we were coming.”
“The doctor is quite correct,” said Olik. “But once we have Arunis cornered it will be another matter. I would welcome your help if it comes to a fight.”
“It will come to a fight,” said Hercol, “now or later. But Sire: both search and fight could be more easily won if I had Ildraquin. You must question Vadu again. I told you how I raced ahead of his men before we were imprisoned, and placed the sword just inside the magic wall. But this morning it is gone, and as you know, there is a jagged hole in the wall.”
“Vadu makes no secret of having carved that hole with his own blade,” said Olik. “He is proud of the deed.”
“As well he should be, if he has plucked Ildraquin through the wounded wall,” said Hercol. “I saw no sign of it about the stateroom, or in any of the cabins. Felthrup never saw the sword at all, and though he spoke with Ensyl and another ixchel woman, I saw neither them nor any of their people. Whatever the truth, I must regain Ildraquin, for it was entrusted to me by Maisa, rightful Empress of Arqual.”
“And yet it was forged here, in Dafvni-Under-the-Earth,” said the prince. “Yet another sign that the sundering of our two worlds is nearing its end.”
“Why would Ildraquin make the search any easier?” asked Thasha.
“The sword will make it effortless,” said Hercol, “so long as Arunis keeps Fulbreech at his side. I never managed to wound the mage, but I did cut Fulbreech on his chin. And here is something I have never told you, Thasha: Ildraquin leads me, like a compass needle, toward any foe whose blood it has drawn.”
“Ah,” said the prince, “then it is a seeking sword as well. I did not know any were left, after the burning of the Ibon forge. We must find it, clearly.”
“And pray that Arunis has kept Fulbreech at his side,” said Chadfallow. “What a shame that you did not at least nick the sorcerer’s little finger, Hercol.”
Pazel thought of the fight on the lower gun deck, how he had set Arunis free by attacking him, and felt himself burning with shame. All of this because of me. People may die because of me.
Suddenly he realized that they were nearing a waterfall: its deep thunder had in fact been growing for some time. Olik spread the curtains and whistled once. The carriage rumbled to a halt.
They climbed out, and Pazel saw that they had reached the base of yet another cliff. It was narrower than the others, and only some eighty feet high. The Mai poured down in a torrent just beside them. A gust of wind bathed them in cool, delicious spray.
The cascade fell into a lake edged with chiseled stone and surrounded by gnarled fir trees; to their left the Mai flowed out of the lake to continue its winding descent to the sea. Pazel’s heart skipped a beat when he saw a dlomic boy no taller than his knee fling himself into the churning water. Then he thought: The boy can swim, of course he can, and saw that the lake was full of boys, and girls too, and that none of them feared the river in the least.
But when they saw the humans the children began to scream.
“No time for a swim, Mr. Pathkendle,” said Olik. “This way, if you please.”
The street entered a tunnel in the cliff wall, heavily guarded and sealed with an iron gate. But the prince was marching toward the pool, and now Pazel saw that a narrow walkway ran between it and the cliff, very close to the waterfall itself. One of the guards ran ahead of Olik and unlocked a small door set into the cliff.
The guard opened the door and held it wide. “Plenty of lift today, Sire.”
Olik nodded and led them (mastiffs and humans alike) into the passage. It was short, and not as dark as Pazel expected, for there were light-shafts cut into the stone. At the end of the passage were two round steel platforms, each about the size of a small patio. These platforms were attached to the passage wall at two points by thick beams that vanished into slots, and before each was a large metal wheel mounted on the stone. The prince stepped quickly onto one of these, and beckoned his companions to do the same. When they had all crowded onto the platform, Olik nodded to the waiting guard. The man spun the wheel, and a clattering and jangling of chains began somewhere above. Pazel looked up: a straight shaft rose through the stone, cut to the exact shape of the platform.
“Mind the dogs’ feet, Thasha,” said the prince, and then the platform began to rise.
“Water, again,” said Hercol.
“Of course,” said the prince. “Ratchets, pulleys, a wheel behind the falls. Most citizens use the tunnel; these lifts are for royalty and other invalids.”
The ascent was rapid; before Pazel knew it daylight struck him full in the face. The platform was rising straight out of the ground. When their feet cleared the top of the shaft it stopped with a clang.
“Welcome to the Upper City,” said the prince.
Under the bright sun Pazel felt himself shiver with awe. They were in a gazebo-like structure at the center of a grand plaza, built around a curve in the Mai. Slender trees with feathery crowns swayed in the wind. Beds of white and purple flowers surrounded them, bees and hummingbirds competing for their nectar.
Beyond the gardens, the Upper City spread before them like a box of jewels. Pazel had never seen Maj Hill, the famous Etherhorde district where Thasha grew up, but he wondered if even its fabulous wealth could compare. Every building here was tall, with slender windows that glittered like sugar frosting and spires that reached for the sky. There were four- and even five-story mansions, with great marble columns and imposing gates. There were soaring crystal temples, and bridges over the surging Mai, and other bridges that leaped from one building to the next. Right at their feet began a splendid boulevard, paved with ceramic tiles of a deep russet-red. Straight through the Upper City it ran, like a carpet-and ended, some three miles from where they stood, at a breathtaking building. It was a pyramid, but flat at the summit, as though the apex had been cut away with a knife. Except for the long rows of windows at various levels, the whole building appeared to be made of brass. The side that faced the sun was nearly blinding.
“Masalym Palace,” said Prince Olik, “where I hoped you would be received with dignity by the Issar. Very little, alas, has gone as I hoped. But that may change today.”
Another set of carriages awaited them at the edge of the gardens. A crowd stood about them: wealthy dlomu with servants and children in tow, watching the lift with frank curiosity. But already a strange reaction was spreading among the watchers. At first sight of the humans’ pale skin (and Thasha’s golden hair) they were turning away, and soon all of them were rushing from the plaza. Pazel saw one or two begin to glance back and check themselves, as if to preserve the appearance of having seen nothing at all.
“They are even more fearful than those below,” said Chadfallow.
“They are better educated, after a fashion,” said the prince. “They know what it means to be associated with anything to which the Ravens might object. And they know full well that my power in Masalym is a fleeting thing, no matter how I work to help them while it lasts.”
“The pyramid is raised!” said Hercol suddenly. Pazel looked again. It was true: the huge building rested on low, thick columns of stone.
“Family tradition,” said Olik. “ ‘Your kings are not bound to earth like other men,’ we tell our subjects. ‘The winds pass under us; we are creatures of the sky.’ Even our country homes are raised a little off the ground. It makes for cold f
loors.”
They boarded the carriages, and soon they were moving down the red road at a fast clip, the dogs pulling eagerly, the mansions flashing by.
“Sire,” said Thasha, “suppose you track down Arunis-what then? Do you think that you can defeat him?”
“You know full well what a terrible opponent he is,” said the prince, “and yet we do stand a chance. He may be more vulnerable now than ever, for until he masters the Stone it will be more weight than weapon. And though he has great powers of his own, he is still reliant on that human body of his-that mortal shell. He will not be able to defy the warriors of Masalym, and all the enemies he has made on the Chathrand-and his newest enemy, Vadu, bearer of a Plazic Blade.”
“Fashioned from the bone of an eguar,” said Hercol, looking at Pazel and Thasha. “You were right.”
“So you guessed, did you?” said Olik. “Ah, but then you, Pazel, have confronted an eguar in the flesh. I doubt, however, that you can have imagined anything so terrible as what actually befell us. We reached for power, and attained it; but that power has been a curse. Should we recover from it-and that is not certain at all-it will be as a chastened country, wounded and poor, and certainly no longer an Empire.”
“Did the eguar themselves curse you, Sire?” asked Chadfallow.
“In a sense,” said Olik. “As you know they live for thousands of years, and when death finally approaches they make a last pilgrimage, to one of the deep and terrible Grave-Pits of their ancestors. In such pits they end their lives, so that their flesh may decay atop the bones of past generations. They shed their skins in these places as well, once every five or six centuries. If anything these are acts of kindness on the monsters’ part, for the remains of an eguar, steeped in poison and black magic, are as dangerous as the living beast.
“There were many Grave-Pits in the youth of Alifros, but today we know of just one: deep in the hills of central Chaldryl, forty days from the coast. Despite its remoteness there were some who made the journey and explored the pit, for the place fairly reeked of ancient magic, and the lure of power was great.”
He looked out at the bright mansions, the stately trees. “I was your age, Pazel and Thasha, when my father remarked over breakfast that certain alchemists in a far corner of the Empire had devised a method for carving eguar bones into tools. I said, ‘How interesting, Father,’ and wished that he would hurry and carve the cake. I was an eager youth: in those days no shadow lay upon my heart.
“But the rumor proved true. Already the alchemists had placed seven eguar blades at the feet of the Emperor. He kept one, and gave the rest to his generals. At first they seemed mere curiosities, but later something woke in the blades, and they began to whisper: Let me in, let me into your soul and I will perfect it. That at least is how the Emperor recounted the sensation to my father, on his deathbed.
“The blades gave our generals power in battle such as had not been seen since the time of the Fell Princes. But that taste of power awoke an insatiable hunger in the blade-keepers. The Emperor demanded further weapons, darker tools. Of course he was not all-powerful, then. The Great Assembly of the Dlomu opposed him, as did the Council of Bali Adro Mages. Even his own family sensed the danger, and urged him to stop. But he did not stop. Instead he found secret partners, criminal partners, with the riches and the will to work in the shadows. I mean the Ravens, of course.”
Pazel sat back with a sigh. “The Ravens. Is that how they came to power?”
Olik nodded. “They were all but defeated, after sending Arunis away to seek the Nilstone. But they rose to the Emperor’s task. More blades were delivered, more power seized, and soon our lust for power swept all cautions aside. The Grave-Pit was quarried out. The bones and teeth of the eguar were carried by the ton to the War Forges, where the foulest blades of all were smithed. Plazic Blades, we called them: conquering blades. They made us invincible, for a time. Our armies spread over neighboring lands in a flood. Platazcra, Infinite Conquest, became both our motto and our aim.
“Is it any wonder that we failed to notice how we ourselves were being conquered? The Ravens, and above all Macadra, had become indispensable to the Crown. Little by little they came out into the light. Murder by stealthy murder, they removed those who stood in their way.”
“But that is not the worst of it,” said Ibjen. “Sire, you must tell them about human beings.”
“Yes,” said Hercol, “I should like to know what part we played in this tale.”
“A great one, as it happens,” said Olik. “The human mind-plague was only beginning, in tiny outbreaks we chose to ignore. But no humans, Nemmocians, atrungs or selk were ever trusted with Plazic Blades. Only dlomu. And because dlomic hands alone grasped the power, it was easy, and tempting, to push the races further apart. We were the mighty, the feared. They were leaner and shabbier, and their famished eyes made it hard to enjoy our plunder.
“Because humans were the most numerous, they made us the most uneasy. We began to live apart, more and more, and to restrict humans to the labor we disdained: the hard labor, that is. We compelled them to build our ships, forge our armor, march behind us as vassals in our war-trains. It was not long before this servitude decayed into outright slavery.”
“So we were slaves before we were animals,” said Chadfallow. “Is that what our would-be killers meant by the Old Sins?”
“They go by that name, yes,” said the prince. “Slavery, and later the denial of the plague. For all this time the tol-chenni affliction was spreading: a blighted village here, a swirl of panic there. And we dlomu, drunk on conquest as we were, could not make ourselves pay attention.
“But human beings did, of course. The first uprisings were on the borders of the slave-lands, and they were brutally repressed-townships razed, prisoners driven over cliffs at spear-point. And still we were afraid. We imagined that all humans wished us death, even those who swore their loyalty. This terror was magnified by new losses on the battlefield. The Plazic Blades had begun to disintegrate, to rot away. Their owners became irrationally suspicious, accusing one another of tricks, curses, theft. They slew one another over the blades, one man coveting another’s, especially if it seemed less corrupted. A few even fell to our enemies: the commander of the Karyskans who attacked your ship had a Plazic Knife. I expect he used it to strengthen his men.”
“How many were there, the keepers of these blades?” asked Pazel.
“A few hundred in all the Empire,” said Olik. “Some were minor figures, like Counselor Vadu. Others really did walk the earth like Gods-mad Gods, blinded and diseased. They could not rest. They bled the Imperial coffers dry. The War Forges blazed day and night; some were consumed by their own flames or exploded, and whole regions of Bali Adro were laid waste.
“Then, very suddenly it seemed, we woke to find our slaves stolen from us. It took but three decades for the plague to destroy every human mind in Bali Adro. And without them our Empire was crippled. The Blades gave us the power to destroy, not to build or nurture. Without human labor, we were titans of straw. We could not even feed ourselves.
“We lashed out. Karysk and Nemmoc remained to be conquered, as did some mountain regions, like the interior of this great peninsula. Enemies surrounded us, we thought, and if they were not killed, we would be. In growing delirium, our generals drove their armies to superhuman feats: marching them six hundred miles in as many days-only to see them collapse on the eve of battle, victims of a starvation the magic had disguised. Such blindness! All our worst wounds have been self-inflicted. The armada may destroy the realm of Karysk, but it will do nothing to save Bali Adro from itself.”
“You sound as though you’ve lost all hope,” said Thasha.
“Do I?” said Olik. “Then I must beg your pardon. I have not lost hope. Perhaps that is because I did not have to witness all these horrors unfolding. Ten years after that breakfast with my father I sailed into the Nelluroq on my doomed expedition, and the time-shift robbed me of eight decades. When I left B
ali Adro I was still a thoughtless young man. The Platazcra was well under way, but our fortunes had not yet turned. I had a son of nine years and had wearied of raising him-and of his mother, truth be told. I thought a year or two away might help me tolerate them better. And though troubled by the Empire’s wars, I still accepted the verdict of my elders, who gave the name of Glory to all that murder, greed and gobbling.
“When I returned, our nation’s back was broken. Human beings were almost extinct; the other races were scattered; woken animals were no more to be seen. Laughter was cruel, poets mad or silent, temples were converted to armories and barracks, schools to prisons, and the old world, my world, was a thing forgotten. That was despair, Lady Thasha, and I barely survived it. Yet from that blackest pit strange gifts have come to me. Like Mr. Bolutu, I am a window on a vanished world, a spokesman of sorts for Alifros-that-was. When I accepted that bitter truth, I found my life’s purpose. I became a Spider Teller, and in time a chasmamancer, and there has been more joy in the fellowship of those impoverished wizards than ever I knew in palace or keep. I fell in love with learning, and out of love with the family cult. I met Ramachni, and his wisdom strengthened me in my resolve. ‘You are a fine mage, Olik,’ he said at our last meeting, ‘but you are also a warrior. You will fight less often with your hands than with your mind and heart, but you will fight ceaselessly, I think. A wiser path for all Alifros-that shall be what you fight for. That, and the extinction of madness and greed.’ Thus he spoke, and thus it has proved to this day.”
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