The Mountain of Kept Memory

by Rachel Neumeier

  After what seemed a long time but was probably only a few minutes, it came, picking its way carefully through the Hall of Remembrance because it was too big to fit easily between the statues. Gulien stared up at it—and up. It was huge. It was splendid. He had not expected such splendor, and found himself breathless with awe. Truly it was a thing of the gods.

  The golem was, as he had expected, a little like a giant spider. At least, it had many legs, like a spider, except the golem had twelve legs instead of eight, and some of the legs had gripping claws that were almost like hands. And it had slender little arms in the front with real hands, too, though its fingers were longer and more slender than human fingers, and seemed to be jointed oddly.

  The golem was about eight feet tall and at least that big around, but its head rose up on a slender jointed neck, much higher than its body, strange and elegant. It had clusters of black crystal eyes all around its head so it could see in all directions at once and delicate antennae on which more crystals bobbed and swayed.

  Despite its size, the golem moved with a neat, precise, abrupt motion that was almost dainty. It looked like it was made out of steel, only its body and legs were covered with slender needles of glass so fine that it might have looked like coarse fur, except for the way the spines glittered. After it reached Berakalan’s statue and stopped, Gulien touched the tip of a spine very carefully, then shook a drop of blood from his finger because they were even sharper than they looked.

  The golem was perfect. He thought if this golem stalked toward even the bravest soldiers, they would break and flee in terror. Besides, the Tamaristans would know immediately that something like this had to belong to the Kieba. That alone should terrify them.

  He asked, “Can I ride on top of that golem?”

  “Yes,” said the kephalos. “That is expected. The back of the golem will provide a safe position for you under most anticipated conditions of the modern battlefield. Simply instruct it as to your intentions and desires. It is partially autonomous, though largely containing my own awareness.”

  Without waiting to be instructed, the golem tipped a bit to the side, canting a long leg to provide a step, its spines all rippling to the right and left so, Gulien realized, he wouldn’t be shredded on the way up. He climbed up, careful of the spines. The metal beside the golem’s neck was smooth, and there was a good place to sit if you tucked your legs up. Gulien eased himself down to his knees, then grabbed a handy spike as the golem heaved and straightened.

  He stared out at the Hall of Remembrance. Sitting up on top of the golem wasn’t like sitting on a horse. It was so much taller, and it didn’t feel exactly alive underneath him the way a horse would have. He felt, sitting here, perfectly stable and unreachable. He took a deep breath, put a hand on the golem’s neck to steady himself, and said, “Let us proceed at once through Berakalan’s door and to Caras!”

  The golem lowered its round head on its long neck, and Gulien ducked his head, and the golem carried him through Berakalan’s door and out into the hot drylands. Distance and brilliant light and a hot wind smelling of the sea and the distant city with charcoal streaks of smoke above it. Behind them, when Gulien looked, there was no trace of the god’s door. “Kephalos!” he said, alarmed. “Are you here?”

  “Yes, Gulien Madalin,” said the flat, dry, familiar, reassuring voice of the kephalos, not sounding any longer as though it surrounded him, but seeming to speak from the head of the golem.

  Gulien took a deep, relieved breath, trying to pretend he had never been frightened. “Let us move quickly toward the city,” he commanded.

  The golem immediately strode forward, its many legs going tock, tock, tock against the sandy ground in a fast rippling motion. It moved faster and much more smoothly than a horse. Riding the moving golem, Gulien decided, was like a cross between riding a huge bull and riding a boulder: It felt alive and massive and dangerous. It was splendid. He said impulsively, “That stone up ahead, the one with the smaller rock on top of it, attack that stone as though it were an enemy soldier!”

  The golem’s head swiveled, and one of its legs twitched. Three glass spines flashed through the air, glittering, and struck the boulder—and exploded, each with a sharp crack like a dry branch breaking, only louder. The stone shattered. Shards of rock flew in all directions—Gulien bit back an exclamation and ducked, covering his head with his arms, but he was laughing, too. The golem was perfect.

  CHAPTER 3

  Oressa stood on the highest peak of the palace roof and stared out over Caras, toward the harbor. She couldn’t see the harbor even from this height, but she could see black smoke billowing into the sky. There was a great deal of smoke. Somewhere, something important was on fire. Ships, maybe, which would be good, as long as they were Tamaristan ships. Or the dyers’ guildhouse, which was near the harbor—that would be bad. A guildhouse on fire would mean the Tamaristans had gotten right into Caras.

  The defenders should have been able to use the cannons mounted at the harbor to keep enemy ships out, but though she had heard some explosions from that direction earlier, she couldn’t hear any cannons firing now. She could hear the sharper sounds of arquebuses way to the south, so she knew there must be fighting near the southern gate, but none of the deeper voices of cannons. She tried to think of good reasons the Carastindin defenders might have decided not to use the cannons, but everything she came up with seemed unlikely. Maybe that smoke meant the docks themselves were burning. Oressa thought if she’d been defending the harbor and found herself for some reason unable to use the cannon, she would have burned the docks.

  Of course, if she’d been in charge of the Tamaristan attack and the docks were fired, she’d have at least one ship prepared to run straight against the stone quay. It would be worth sacrificing a ship to establish a bridgehead at the harbor. She wished she could see. She could hear well enough: All the shouts and cries and screams seemed to rise to her high perch. But the distant clamor told her nothing. It rose and fell and seemed at first nearer and then farther away.

  Oressa wasn’t supposed to be on the roof, of course. She was supposed to be in her rooms, waiting obediently for the eventual summons that would tell her whether it was still her father who controlled the palace and the city, or whether it was Prince Gajdosik, or maybe somebody else. She felt much safer on the roof. She stood behind the carved statue of an old god, a god with feathered wings. Gulien would have known his name. Oressa only knew she was grateful for his wings, which stretched out behind him, curving inward at the tips to enclose the peak of the roof. Sheltered by the god’s wings, she was safer than if she’d stood on a balcony with a sturdy railing. She leaned her elbows on the carved feathers and stared out toward the smoke.

  It was only getting up beside the god that was a little tricky. And getting down, of course. But Oressa was barefoot, so she wouldn’t slip. She had her slippers in a pouch at her hip, along with a skirt, the one of crushed green and gold silk that never showed extra wrinkles because it was supposed to look like that. She’d braided her hair and wound the braid around her head, but she had a comb and a long strand of pearls in her pouch, too. She had everything necessary to turn herself back into a dignified princess. She could climb back down the roof and into the palace through any number of windows, and then all she would need was a minute or so of privacy. But Oressa thought she might spend the whole night on the roof instead. It wouldn’t matter, because her father was already as angry as he could possibly get. She had told him about Gulien. At dawn, when the Tamaristan soldiers had come into sight of the city, she had finally told him.

  “Oressa,” her father had said, his voice flat, when she’d found him in the green map room with his war advisers. He didn’t glare at her. He wasn’t interested enough in her to bother glaring. “I have no time for you now. Go back to your room.”

  Oressa had ignored this. “You’ve noticed Gulien’s missing,” she’d started.

  “Your brother seems to have gone south to face the Tam
aristan army.”

  Oressa had abruptly found that she was blindingly furious. Their father thought Gulien might have gone south and died or been captured, and not only had he not sent someone to tell her—she wouldn’t have expected that—but he didn’t even seem to care. She’d said, unable for once to keep the fury out of her voice, “He didn’t go south! Do you think he’s so stupid? He went east to the Kieba’s mountain. He told me to tell you.”

  There had been a short pause, during which Oressa’s father really looked at her for the first time since she’d come into the room. “You stupid girl,” he’d said at last. “Why did you not tell me at once?” His tone, still flat, had hidden anger under the indifference.

  Oressa knew all about the king’s anger. She’d smothered hers immediately, lowering her eyes in case some of her rage might still show, and answered as docilely as though she never had a thought of her own in her head and always did exactly as she was told. “But he said I should wait until the Tamaristan army arrived at the gates of the city.”

  Magister Baramis began, “If Gulien—”

  An army officer said at the same time, “If the Kieba—”

  Suddenly everybody was talking at once. Somebody shouted, and somebody else shouted back, and her father actually raised his voice to shout over them both. Since nobody was looking at her, Oressa had fled, quickly, before anybody could think of her again.

  That was when she’d climbed up onto the palace roof. The roof was the safest place she knew, especially the highest peak, where only the pigeons came. Maybe she would stay here, tucked up between the god’s wings, all night. Tomorrow, too. Although she hadn’t brought up any food or even a flask of water, so she supposed she’d have to sneak back into her room at some point. But she didn’t want to leave the roof. It was the first time she’d felt safe since Gulien had left, and wasn’t that ridiculous, because of course she wasn’t safe at all. But then, she hadn’t been safe when Gulien had been with her either. Her brother couldn’t protect her. Nobody could protect anybody, not really. She knew that.

  Even so, she felt safe here with the god, stone though he was. She didn’t want to venture back into the palace until she had to.

  She looked out across the city again, trying to judge whether there was more smoke now, or maybe a little less. The smoke billowed upward in huge black clouds and then spread out to darken the whole sky. It wasn’t at all like the haze from cooking fires that rose above the city during a normal day.

  Gulien had been gone for two full days and now most of another day, and she didn’t see how he could bring help back for at least two or three more days. If he brought help at all, it was going to be too late, unless the Kieba sent stinging wasps to paralyze the Tamaristans or something of that kind. Maybe she would. If she did, she had better do it soon, because Oressa thought there was real doubt about who might hold the city and the palace when dusk fell: her father, or Gajdosik, or the Kieba, or possibly fire—the city was mostly whitewashed plaster and red stone and hard-baked tiles, but there was plenty of wood in the palace. She could imagine her father burning the palace himself, just for spite, if he thought a Tamaristan prince was going to take it. And here she was on the highest roof. She tried not to imagine that.

  There seemed less noise out in the city now. For a moment Oressa thought that the fighting might have stopped, that the city’s defenders might have thrown back the Tamaristan soldiers. But she gradually realized that this was only a lull. It was nearly dusk; maybe the Tamaristan commander meant to wait for morning to press his attack. She could see barricades in the nearer streets: overturned carts and wagons and stones from walls the defenders had thrown down. She could see that all kinds of people had come out to join the defenders: not only properly armed militia, but also ordinary people with broom handles and axes. The Tamaristan commander might well be reluctant to press ahead into a hostile city at night.

  If she were in charge of the attackers, on the other hand, she wouldn’t let up. She’d wait just long enough so that everybody would think she meant to wait for morning, and then she’d do something instead. She’d want to take the palace if she could. She’d want to cast down the Carastindin king and capture the Carastindin princess and claim a decisive victory before the hostile city and countryside could defeat her limited forces. How would she—

  An enormous crashing sound roared through the dusk, and a brilliant, burning light smashed across the palace. It was as though all the cannons in the world had fired at once, as though all the gods had come back to life to hurl simultaneous lightning bolts at the city. Oressa reeled and would have fallen, only she grabbed the winged god’s legs and clung. She thought at first that it was only sound and light, but then she staggered again and realized that the roof really had lifted under her feet and then plunged down again—not a huge movement, but wholly unexpected. Tiles cracked and shattered under her feet, and the god swayed—he actually swayed; Oressa was certain of it—and she set her teeth against a cry of shocked terror and let go of him, leaping back in case he should topple from the roof and sweep her down with him. She was furious—terrified, but furious, too. Gajdosik had ruined her safe place for her, and she was blazingly angry.

  The roof steadied under her feet after that one sharp rise and fall. Oressa crouched low, one hand gripping the god’s wingtip and the other flat against the tiles, trying to decide whether to scramble for a window or to stay where she was. One of her feet was bleeding: She had cut it on a broken tile, and not only did the cut hurt, but she knew the blood might make her slip when she tried to move. The shouting below intensified, and the clash of weapons echoed around her. She couldn’t see what was happening, but she thought maybe the Tamaristans had somehow blown a hole right through the palace walls.

  There would be no safety in the palace and probably less out in the city. But the tiles under her feet shuddered again, and she knew she had better get down at least to a wider, flatter part of the roof. She took a deep breath. Then she turned and let herself skid in a controlled fall down to the carved dogs at the edge of the high roof. She caught herself there—it wasn’t hard, except that she’d also cut her other foot now. She wished she dared put on her slippers, but cut feet were better than losing her footing, especially for this next part, where she had to swing over the edge of the upper roof and climb down the sheer wall to the next level. From there she could go lots of different ways, or simply tuck herself up amid the carved monsters that stood along the edge of the lower roof and wait to see what happened—

  The world crashed around her, and the roof heaved up and dropped abruptly out from under her. Oressa clung, gasping, to the stone forequarters of a snarling mastiff. She jammed her arm into its mouth, clinging hard as the palace shuddered and swayed. Broken tiles fell around her. One struck her a glancing blow, bruising her shoulder and back. She cried out in terror as the blow nearly knocked her off the wall. Her grip on the mastiff’s jaw saved her, her arm jammed tightly enough that the carved fangs cut her, but even when she lost her foothold and swung for a moment dizzyingly free, she kept that hold until she swung back again. The statue of the winged god plunged past her, huge and silent, so close she could have reached out and touched it, and smashed right through the roof below.

  Oressa found she was weeping with rage and fear. She rubbed her other arm fiercely across her face to clear her eyes. Her shoulder ached and her back hurt; she couldn’t tell whether the tile had cut her or only bruised. But she couldn’t stay where she was. She scrambled down again, faster now because it was obvious that she had to get off the roofs before the whole palace was torn down around her.

  She was still above the lower roofs; she had to get down that far at least, avoiding the hole where the god had fallen. The ground was two stories below that. She knew a window must be over to the right, somewhere below her. She had lost track of exactly where it was, but if she could find it, that window would let her into a tower room meant for important guests. She couldn’t remember whether an
ybody was staying in that room now and didn’t care.

  The shouting below her, already loud, intensified again, and she swung herself sideways to a god with the arms and hands of a man and the flat head of a snake. She swung a leg over his shoulders and clung with her knees. Her braid had come undone. She shook her head impatiently to get her hair out of her eyes, then scrubbed her free hand across her eyes and tried to see what was happening.

  Then she almost wished she hadn’t, because there were men on the roof below her, and she saw at once that they weren’t Carastindin soldiers: They were Tamaristan. She guessed they’d been crossing the roof to break in against the defenders from an unexpected direction, and even though this surely meant that nobody was going to blow up more of the palace, which was good, it also meant they’d spotted her, which wasn’t good at all. Especially because of course they didn’t know who she was, and they all had bows, except one with an arquebus. In a moment they would shoot her, and even though Oressa had finally spotted the window she wanted, and even though it was open, she knew she couldn’t possibly reach it before a dozen arrows feathered her like a pigeon. At this range, even the arquebusier wasn’t likely to miss, and that was worse. She saw, almost as though it were really happening, a brief, vivid image of an arquebus ball smashing her skull and her own headless, arrow-pierced body following the winged god’s plunge.

  She screamed down at them, without even thinking about it, “I’m Oressa Madalin! I’m Osir’s daughter!” which, after she took half a second to think, still seemed like a good idea because they didn’t shoot her after all. So she caught a carved bit above her, got a foot on the upraised hand of the snake-headed god, and flung herself for the window. She didn’t remember her bruises or cuts until she tumbled through the window and scrambled to her feet, and even then there wasn’t time to do anything about them. She actually had the pouch with her slippers and skirt, for a wonder: The pouch still hung on her belt, only there wasn’t time to get her slippers out and put them on, but if she didn’t, she was going to leave a blood trail—she bolted for the door, scrabbling at her pouch at the same time.