The Mountain of Kept Memory

by Rachel Neumeier

  Then she went on, much more quietly. “They hardly eat and they sleep on hard boards and . . . and, you know, I don’t want to think about it.” She glared at Gajdosik. “She didn’t want to go there. If you asked anybody at home, they’d say my father didn’t want her to go there either. They’d say he tried to persuade her to stay and she wouldn’t. But they don’t know.” She lowered her voice even more. “Where people could hear him, he said she should stay. He said, ‘Poor Ledah, she feels the weight of the world so keenly.’ Then when they were alone he told her, ‘You’ve given me one son and that’s all you’ve got in you; one heir is all very well, but prudence counsels a second lest disaster robs me of the first.’ He said, ‘Girls are valuable coin; possessing merely a single daughter too stringently limits my options.’ He told her, ‘A penitential attitude is becoming in a woman. I think you need to retire from the world, either you or that girl-brat you’ve given me.’” She stopped again.

  “He said that in front of you?” Gajdosik sounded not only startled, but frankly horrified.

  “He didn’t know I was there. I was afraid of him already. I didn’t understand exactly what he meant—I was only little—but I knew he’d just as soon have me out from underfoot until he was ready to sell me to some Illiana prince or Markand lordling.” She glared at Gajdosik. “Or, worst of all, a Tamaristan prince.”

  Gajdosik spread a hand, yielding the point. “I would not have you believe my father was unkind to my mother.”

  “He kept her in a cage!”

  “This is a very luxurious cage, with many woman servants and every fine thing. He would have been ashamed to speak to her as you say your father spoke to your mother. Had he seen fit to set her aside, he would have settled gifts on her that she might have returned to her family in honor. He would never have forced her into a . . . penitential house of remembrance and grief such as you describe.”

  Oressa shrugged angrily. “Well, I wish my father had just sent my mother back to her family. She died, you know. In that convent. When I was seven. They didn’t tell me, but I heard . . . I heard things. Even then they didn’t bring her back to inter her near her kin. Her family had been important, but they’d met reverses and by then my father didn’t care if he offended them. He told Baramis it wasn’t worth the bother and expense of a state funeral just to bring my mother back to Caras for internment. She wasn’t worth the bother! That’s what he said. And you know what?” Oressa gave Gajdosik a sideways smile. “That was actually funny, in a way. Because then his new queen died, too, and so my father didn’t get a spare son after all, nor any more daughters, and he still had to pay for a big funeral. Wasn’t that funny?”

  “Not very funny, no.”

  Oressa, not really listening, went on. “Gulien—Gulien knows about our father, but not really. Anyway, it’s different for him. He’s male and our father’s heir, so of course it’s different. But he doesn’t understand the way Father says just what he wants people to hear. People always lie, you know.” She heard her own voice: bright and hard and brittle, but she didn’t stop. “They say one thing to one person and something else to another person, but they lie all the time. Father’s very good at that. He gets people to do what he wants. He says things and people believe him. You have to watch what he does to know what’s true. Gulien knows that—but he’s so honest himself, he doesn’t really know it.” She was distantly surprised that she had told Gajdosik those things—she’d never told anybody those things.

  Maybe she told Gajdosik because he’d never known her father. Or because, buried within the Kieba’s mountain, they were so far away from the real world that she could believe secrets would dissolve into the stone and be left behind. Or just because he listened to her. She didn’t believe he could really understand, though. She shrugged and made herself smile. “So it’s true I need to go home, to help Gulien hold the throne if our father tries to take it back. But it’s also true I am a little bit afraid of getting back, in case . . .” She shrugged again. “Though I suppose the Kieba won’t permit my father to reclaim the throne really, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

  Gajdosik said nothing for a long moment. Then he met Oressa’s eyes and said, “Your brother is fortunate in his sister. You will speak with the Keppa and return in triumph to Caras, and your city will rejoice.”

  Oressa found herself blushing. “Well, it’s nice to think so.” She couldn’t believe she had said all that about her mother, about her father. She’d never told anyone all that.

  Gajdosik might have seen this sudden uncertainty. He offered carefully, as though in exchange, “The queen’s cage seemed the way of the world to me when I was a child. It seemed a place of safety and warmth. Later, when I was taken from the cage and not allowed to return to my mother, I saw that gilded bars could be cruel.”

  “You were taken away and not allowed to see your mother? Even though she was right there? How old were you?” Oressa had known about the gilded cage, but not about this part. That seemed even worse than having your mother sent away.

  “I spoke with her through the mesh sometimes. I was twelve. In Tamarist, that is the age at which a prince becomes a man. It is . . . it is a shock, to leave the women’s cage and come out into the world. Heirs used to be caged until they succeeded their fathers; did you know? All their lives until they succeeded to the throne.”

  Unlike her brother, Oressa had never studied history. She shook her head, trying to imagine this. “A prince would be kept in a cage until he was . . . twenty or thirty or forty, or even older if his father lived a long time? That doesn’t seem like it would work very well.”

  “It worked rather badly,” Gajdosik conceded. “Thus now princes are taken into the world when they are twelve. It is a difficult time for a boy. Exciting, but . . . lonely.” Looking up, he gave her a sudden wary look, as though half expecting her to mock this sentiment.

  Mockery was the last thing Oressa could imagine feeling. She suspected “lonely” was a severe understatement. At least she’d always had Gulien. All her life. When princes were rivals and expected their father to murder all but one of them, when girls were kept in gilded cages and their brothers had to leave their sisters and mothers behind . . . that was terrible.

  The lights dimmed, and Laasat and the other soldier, Tamresk, came back. Oressa was almost glad. She didn’t want to feel sorry for Gajdosik and for all his imagined brothers and sisters, and his mother, who lost each of her sons when he turned twelve.

  Tamresk stacked the clean bowls and spoons on the table, which vanished. Fortunately the lights didn’t go all the way out—forgotten gods, that would be horrible, trapped in the dark under the mountain. Tarod’s stories about lightless cells in the stone came forcibly to mind again. But this wasn’t so bad. They made pallets out of the cushions. The Tamaristans put theirs together in a row, and Oressa laid out hers over on the other side of the pool. She wondered what Gulien would say if he knew where she was spending this night. At least, she could imagine all too vividly what he would say.

  She wished the Kieba would come. Though she was worried about Gajdosik. How ironic, to be worried about Gajdosik. He should have stayed on the other side of the Narrow Sea where he belonged, and then none of them would have anything to worry about . . . except his terrible brother Maranajdis would have killed him; she could hardly imagine the enmity that must lie between them. And his poor sisters, trapped in the women’s cage. At least they were safe, but that did not seem enough to make up for their imprisonment. . . . Oressa drifted to sleep without knowing it, and if dreams of gilded cages or terrible spiders or grim, frightening kings troubled her sleep, she did not remember them.

  She woke when the Kieba came.

  The light brightened. That happened first. Oressa woke because of the light and sat up sharply, staring. The Kieba flicked suddenly into place outside the cell, between one instant and the next, and then Oressa stared in earnest.

  The Kieba looked much older than Oressa had expected, and s
he wasn’t at all beautiful, though to be fair Gulien had never said she was: Oressa had just assumed a woman who had once been a goddess must be beautiful. But the Kieba was too thin and fine-drawn for beauty. Her skin was pulled too tight over her bones, which were too sharp and angular and somehow just wrong. Her hands were too long, her fingers too bony. There was something wrong about the way she moved, too: Every gesture she made was too quick, too abrupt. She didn’t look at all like a normal woman, but she certainly didn’t look like any goddess Oressa had ever imagined.

  “Keppa,” Gajdosik said. His voice was steady and clear. He had risen to his feet.

  The Kieba turned her head and took one step toward him, a strange, sharp movement, and Oressa saw how Gajdosik hesitated just the tiniest instant before he stepped forward to face her, and she knew he was afraid. She didn’t blame him for that at all. She was afraid too. She had thought she would be able to explain things, maybe argue for clemency for the Tamaristans as well as her brother, but the Kieba was different from anything she had expected. She wanted to say that she had Parianasaku’s artifact and would be happy to return it, but now she was afraid to draw this terrifying woman’s attention.

  “Prince Gajdosik!” the Kieba said. There was a terrifying cold violence in her voice that made Oressa flinch.

  Gajdosik did not flinch. He said, “Keppa. If I may—”

  “How dare you?” said the Kieba. She moved sharply, aggressively, one step and then another, almost more like Gulien’s spider-golem than a woman. She demanded, “Do you understand what it is you tried to do? Do you even remotely comprehend what it is you actually did?”

  “Keppa,” Gajdosik said again. “Forgive my stupidity—”

  The Kieba lifted her hand and brought it down, as though to strike him, though she stood much too far away and on the other side of the glass wall. But there was a crack, and Gajdosik staggered, a thin, livid line like the cut of a whip appearing on his face. He lifted a hand, breath hissing out, stunned, and took the next blow across his arm and the back of his hand. Blood welled from the cut.

  “Kieba!” Oressa cried, starting forward. Laasat and the Tamaristan soldier also rushed toward their prince.

  “No!” Gajdosik said, not loudly, but with such intensity that everyone stopped. He said, in Tamaj, with that same awful intensity, “Laasat! Keep the princess clear of it!” Then he shielded his face with his arms and simply stood without moving while the Kieba beat him.

  The Kieba’s invisible whip cut like the worst kind of whip, the kind made of wire. It slashed through Gajdosik’s shirt and left deep, narrow gashes across his back and shoulders and arms. Blood ran down and dripped on the floor and actually spattered into the air when the whip struck, which was awful. Oressa tried to put herself between Gajdosik and the Kieba, but Laasat caught her arm and held her back. The young soldier also tried to get to his prince, but Laasat seized his wrist, too, and then shook him when he struggled, until the young man yielded—he was weeping, Oressa saw. Laasat was not, but his hard, set expression was worse than tears.

  Gajdosik had bowed forward under the Kieba’s punishment. He was still on his feet somehow. Oressa wished he would fall. She thought maybe the Kieba would stop if he fell. But maybe she wouldn’t; maybe she would beat him until he died. Oressa knew people could die of whipping. He was not screaming, but the thin, harsh sounds he made at each blow were terrible. Laasat flinched as each blow fell, but then Oressa realized she was doing the same thing. She was weeping too, and she hadn’t at first realized that, either. She pretended to sag against Laasat and then suddenly jerked free of his hold and darted forward.

  She didn’t know what she meant to do. She had no idea what she meant to do or say, but she held her hands out toward the Kieba, pleading, “Stop, stop!” Her voice broke, and she gasped against a sob and cried, “Kieba, it’s wrong—” And the Kieba’s vicious, invisible whip slashed across the palms of both her hands. Though Gajdosik had taken each blow nearly in silence, Oressa was too shocked to do the same. She cried out, a sharp, high scream that echoed and reechoed between the walls of stone and glass.

  The Kieba stopped, staring at her.

  Oressa hunched forward over her injured hands. Blood ran through her finger and dripped to the floor. She felt faint with shock and pain.

  “Oressa Madalin,” said the flat, inexpressive voice of the kephalos, like it was answering a question or making a statement. “She possesses no apparent predisposition. However, she is affiliated with ancillary Gulien Madalin, who has entered memory and established a secondary identity. Though she holds no key of her own, she currently possesses Eirankan’s Key.”

  There was no sign that the Kieba heard any of this. She made an inarticulate sound of rage, raising her hand to strike again. Oressa flinched and gasped a wordless protest, but the kephalos said, “Cease.” And again, in the same blank, empty tone, “Cease.”

  And the Kieba flung up a hand in a violent, unreadable gesture, whirled, took a step away from the cell, and vanished.

  “Gods dead and forgotten!” Laasat said, and leaped forward to support Gajdosik, who collapsed slowly to his hands and knees.

  Oressa also let herself sag to the floor. She cradled her injured hands in front of her, gasping. She felt dizzy and sick and her vision seemed to come and go, but worse were the awful, pain-filled sounds behind her. She ought to think about what had just happened, think about how to approach the Kieba next time she appeared—if she appeared—but she felt blank and stupid. Her palms hurt. Nothing had ever hurt her like this. The welts were awful, white along the edges, seeping blood in the middle. She could hardly bear to look at the wounds. But Gajdosik had been hurt much worse. She could not imagine what his men could do for him, with nothing but cold water to work with. She thought he was probably going to die. Whatever he had done or tried to do—and yes, true, Oressa could not exactly pretend Gajdosik had been an innocent man—but still, it seemed terrible that he should die now and that the Kieba of Carastind should have deliberately tortured him to death.

  The young soldier, Tamresk Kerenn, touched Oressa’s shoulder, and she jumped and flinched and then realized he’d said her name, only she hadn’t heard him. He was very pale. He said in strongly accented Esse, “Your Highness, you must let me . . . I will fix your hands a little. And the—the prince will see you. He will not—he insists he must speak with you.”

  He would refuse to rest until he did, Oressa understood from the soldier’s tone. She did not want to see Gajdosik at all, not now, not like this. She swallowed and nodded.

  “You stopped the Keppa,” added the soldier. “Thank you.”

  “The kephalos stopped her,” Oressa said, and realized from her own blank tone that she might still be in shock herself. She let Tamresk help her to her feet, let him guide her toward the pool. The water was shockingly cold against her wounds, first stinging ferociously and then numbing the worst of the pain. After a moment, feeling less like she might faint, Oressa managed to sit up straight and then to stand. The welts were not bleeding any longer, and she had begun to understand the limits of the pain and believe that she could stand it. She still couldn’t bear to look at her palms, though, and held them away from her skirts, afraid of the touch of even the softest cloth.

  Gajdosik had suffered far worse. He was lying facedown across a pallet of cushions. Laasat, sitting beside him, looked almost as blank and stunned as Oressa felt. He had draped the ruins of the prince’s shirt across more cushions to hide the worst of Gajdosik’s injuries. Oressa was grateful for that. She didn’t want to see what had been done to him. She dropped to her knees so he would not have to try to look up at her and focused on his face. He was ashen, the whip cut shocking across his face, his startling blue eyes brilliant with pain and resolve. He whispered, “Oressa, good,” and tried to push himself up, but she and Laasat both said, “Don’t!” in the same sharp tone, and he stopped. He said, his voice gritty with pain, “Your Highness.”

  Oressa blinked a
t the formality. Then she straightened her shoulders and answered, “Your Highness.” Then she said, which she hadn’t meant to, “You shouldn’t say anything important until you’re better—”

  Prince Gajdosik shook his head, a tiny gesture that nevertheless made his breath catch. He shut his eyes, but only for a second. He whispered, “Can’t wait.” And then, in a stronger tone, “Princess Oressa. Your Highness. I have three thousand men. On ships. Meant for half that. Not enough water, not enough . . . They’ll have to come into harbor. In the north.”

  “Up by our border with Estenda, yes,” Oressa said, to spare him the need to explain. “Up near Addas. I know.”

  “Yes,” whispered Gajdosik. He should stop trying to talk to her; Oressa could hardly stand to watch him. But then, gathering his strength, he said much more clearly, “I doubt I’ll leave this place. But you might. I know . . . I know we have been enemies. But you have to take my men into your hand. They can’t go home. Maranajdis would kill them all. But if they stay on this side of the Narrow Sea, your brother will destroy them. Or Bherijda will, and that would—that would be worse.” He stopped, shut his eyes, drew a breath, began again. “Your brother will need those men. You have to make him see—” He stopped, a shudder taking him. His face whitened, and he set his jaw hard against making a sound.

  “Don’t talk,” Oressa said quickly. “Please, don’t. Look, I’ll do both parts. You’ll say, ‘Gulien will need men even more than your father would have, not only soldiers to strengthen Carastind but also men who can’t possibly be your father’s partisans, men who depend on him for everything and owe loyalty to no one else.’ And I’ll say, ‘Yes, that’s true, but the people of Carastind will hate them, and if Gulien makes foreigners the heart of his palace guard nobody will trust them but him and nobody will trust him, either, and it will be even worse.’ And then you’ll say, ‘Your brother can find some way to show your people that he doesn’t favor his new foreign soldiers too much. He can choose officers from his own people. He must have some people he trusts.’ I’ll say, ‘But the ordinary people will still despise them,’ and you’ll say, ‘They’ll all marry Carastindin girls and become Carastindin themselves, and they can pay taxes at twice the common rate for two generations to show how grateful they are for the chance, and everybody else in Caras can pay a tenth less taxes, and then they’ll be happy enough to make room for any number of Tamaristan soldiers, won’t they?’ And then I’ll say, ‘Well, yes, that’s true. That would probably work.’” Oressa lifted her eyebrows expectantly.