The Mountain of Kept Memory

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Would you, indeed?”

  “Gulien, the other Garamanaji princes are the real threat,” Oressa put in. “They really are. Prince Gajdosik can’t take his people back to Tamarist. He really can’t,” she added earnestly, at the skeptical tilt of her brother’s head.

  “Well,” Gulien said to Gajdosik, “next time, when you find yourself pressed over-hard by your enemies, could you possibly just ask for sanctuary? As you have discovered, it’s not comfortable for any of us, being forced to beg the Kieba’s aid or pardon.”

  Gajdosik bowed his head silently.

  “About the three thousand others who’ve landed in the north,” Oressa said brightly.

  “Yes,” Gulien said grimly, glaring at Gajdosik. “I’d heard about that. Three thousand, is it? That’s more than I’d have expected.”

  “But it’s not too many, honestly, Gulien! Only you’d better let me send for them. We can use them, especially considering Prince Gajdosik’s brothers. Unless the Kieba does something about them, which I suppose she might, but I don’t think we’d better count on her help.”

  “I would be most grateful if you would offer all my people sanctuary,” Prince Gajdosik repeated.

  That humble tone didn’t suit him at all, Oressa decided. When she sounded meek and docile, she was just trying to get her own way. She was afraid it wasn’t like that for Gajdosik. She hated to hear him like that, so she said sharply, reminding him as well as Gulien, “All those men are mine! Unless you want to explain to the Kieba why they’re not? Because I don’t plan to.” She lifted her eyebrows, staring at her brother, trying to look confident. “Three thousand definitely isn’t too many if there’s more trouble from Tamaristan princes, or even if there isn’t! They’ll be an asset to Carastind. I’m sure they will. The moment I get a chance, I’m going to send Laasat—or somebody—” She hoped Laasat and young Tamresk were all right, but went on. “Somebody to tell them all what’s happened and that they’re mine now and that they’d better come down to Caras again, this time peacefully.”

  “Indeed,” Prince Gajdosik said, still with that quiet, deferential manner. He glanced at Gulien. “If Your Highness will permit, I would also suggest that one or more of your Carastindin officers go as well. To prevent misunderstandings between our peoples.”

  “Oh, is that what you suggest?”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” Oressa said firmly. She wished Gulien would be nicer, and she wished Gajdosik would stop deferring to Gulien that way, which was ridiculous, because of course Gajdosik ought to be deferential and respectful and everything because he had lost, after all. But she still hated it.

  Though, if Gulien decided to view things one way, then any men under her authority really did belong to him, because he was king—almost king, and that might change in a year, yes, but for now she was just his sister, which could be very awkward, if there was any argument. Much better if there wasn’t any argument from anybody, especially not Gulien himself. So Oressa said, assuming her most confident manner, “Gulien, Caras may have been peaceful and calm when you left, but I think you could really use three thousand Tamaristan soldiers who never owed any loyalty to our father. Don’t you?”

  “My men will obey you,” Prince Gajdosik said to Gulien. “They will be loyal to Her Highness. Give them a place in your country and in your service, please, Your Highness, whatever disposition you make of me.”

  Oressa didn’t wait to see what response her brother would make. She snapped, “Prince Gajdosik, your people are going to need you more than ever! You know they never expected you to surrender them to anybody, so you’d better be prepared to handle that!”

  Gajdosik didn’t answer, but Oressa nodded as though she was satisfied and said to Gulien, “Well? You said we were permitted to leave, and obviously there’s a great deal to do. So can we leave now?”

  “Yes,” said Gulien. He glanced at her and ran a distracted hand through his hair. “Nearly. The Kieba does want to speak to you both first, I believe.”

  Oressa found herself trading a wary glance with Gajdosik. It occurred to her how strange it was that Gajdosik had somehow become something like her ally in this, above even Gulien. These shared days within the Kieba’s mountain . . . Oressa had been frightened every moment. She longed to get back to the outside world. She longed to go home. But somehow the thought of leaving this place and stepping back into her expected role of Carastind’s princess and Gulien’s sister . . . Somehow that thought was not altogether a pleasant one, either. She didn’t understand that.

  And she was worried about Gajdosik. He hadn’t flinched at the Kieba’s summons, but the tension of his shoulders and the set of his jaw made it obvious to Oressa that he was afraid. She didn’t blame him. She was frightened, too, of whatever last-moment warning or threat or punishment the Kieba might have in mind. And she was angry. The anger and the fear were on Gajdosik’s behalf, she realized, not on her own. Which was ridiculous, because he might not be exactly an enemy anymore, but he was hardly a friend.

  Oressa took a deep breath and put all those feelings away, deliberately smoothing her expression into a calm, attentive mask. Meek, she told herself. Meek and polite and accommodating. She’d worn that mask all her life. How hard could it be to wear it now?

  Gajdosik, she saw, had now put on a quiet, attentive expression of his own. He asked no questions, didn’t even look at either Oressa or Gulien, but only opened a hand in a silent acceptance of Gulien’s authority.

  CHAPTER 16

  Gulien knew just where he was within the mountain, exactly where the Kieba now stood, and precisely which way he must lead the others in order to go to her. He knew which doorways were simple doorways and which might permit a man to step right across half a mile of solid rock or carry him from the top to the bottom of the mountain.

  All this surety was reassuring in a way. In another way, of course, it was thoroughly disturbing.

  Gulien did not know what the Kieba would do if he instead guided his sister and the Tamaristan prince toward the outside world. That, his unwelcome memory didn’t tell him. He could guess that she wouldn’t permit any such cowardly retreat, but he didn’t know. He was almost grateful for that ignorance—no, he was grateful for it. It made him feel more himself, for he could hardly fail to realize that all his assurance with the geometry of the mountain came from foreign memory. From what the kephalos called his secondary identity, a frightening phrase as he began to understand what it meant. He understood now, at least a little, about memory and identity and the way the former informed the latter. He understood it too well. Better than he wished. Not as thoroughly as he feared he would be compelled to discover.

  He had lived in this mountain once. Only it hadn’t been him, of course, though he remembered it. Or . . . he didn’t remember it, not really, except in his knowledge of the mountain’s architecture and in scattered bits and flashes that came like bubbles of light around the edges of his own proper memory.

  He knew to whom those disturbing flashes of light belonged. They belonged to that other man. Manian Sinai, whom the kephalos insisted was his secondary identity. A fraught phrase, considering that the kephalos seemed to consider Gulien’s own identity hardly more justifiably his own than that of this other long-dead man.

  It was made of memory, this mountain. Crystallized memory. Gulien knew that, or remembered it. Part of him remembered it, indistinctly. He remembered Manian Sinai’s life, but vaguely and in fragments, somewhat in the way he remembered his own earliest childhood.

  Then he’d found the key to memory . . . That, he remembered very well, though with greater understanding now. He’d been twelve, and Oressa not quite eight, and she’d found the way through the secret panel into the hidden crawlspace of the highest attics, and he had followed. And then, crawling back out, he had put his knee down hard on that fragment of dark gray crystal, smooth and almost greasy to the touch, that at the time he hadn’t recognized. He’d only known that he’d liked it. He remembered t
hat. He’d liked the way it felt in his hand, and had never guessed the pebble he’d eventually had carved into a Madalin falcon and strung on a gold chain was actually a fragment of memory. Not even when it had brought him strange, vivid dreams of lands he didn’t know, of gods whose names he didn’t recognize, of a voice that murmured in his ear and told him stories of the long-vanished past.

  So all that time Gulien had held a tiny splinter of the Kieba’s power. And his father had never known, nor had Gulien himself ever guessed, until desperation brought him to the Kieba’s mountain and the kephalos said, Your key is accepted.

  At the time he had only found that convenient. Now he knew that the kephalos had also found it convenient. Though even now he did not know exactly what might arise from that happenstance.

  If it had actually been happenstance, a Madalin chancing to find a fragment of crystallized memory. Though Gulien hardly saw how that moment in the crawlspace could have been orchestrated by the kephalos or anyone else.

  The crystal had been so small, of course, and it just hadn’t ever struck him as looking like any obvious kind of artifact. But it had been potent enough to wake his predisposition, especially when he took up other artifacts such as Eirankan’s Key; that seemed inarguable. He was hardly able to tell, even yet, whether that had been on balance a good thing or a bad. Though he was glad he was the one who had taken up the bit of crystal and not Oressa. That he and not his sister had been the one to wear Eirankan’s Key until his father discovered how to wake it and took it back and used it in turn to wake the Capture.

  Yes, better it had been him. Gulien could all too easily imagine how his sister would feel, finding herself subject to the incomprehensible machinations of the kephalos. He glanced down at Oressa affectionately. She would have hated it far more than he.

  He didn’t need to take his sister or the Tamaristan prince far, not in terms of the number of steps required, just along a short hallway and down three steps and into a kind of glass-roofed atrium through which poured the honey-gold light of midmorning. In another way, that short journey encompassed two-thirds of the width of the mountain and brought them from a chamber very near the summit about halfway down its height. Of course, neither of them knew that. Gulien could not fail to know it.

  As they came into the atrium, Oressa tipped her face up to the light. Gulien smiled at her. His little sister had taken no harm of her sojourn within the Kieba’s mountain. She wanted real sunlight and the hot wind against her face. Soon she would have those things. In that assurance, he could almost forget the way he had himself been snared into the Kieba’s purpose.

  Gulien stood aside to let Oressa go before him into a plain, stark room that was entirely empty. She looked around in evident unease, but the walls were ordinary walls of red sandstone, not soapy gray crystal, which she must find encouraging. Or, well, perhaps she didn’t realize; but at least Gulien found this room reassuring. And there weren’t any crystalline chairs, for which he was even more grateful.

  Almost better than the lack of crystal was the wide window set into the far wall, which let them see out into the empty sky and over the drylands that stretched away to the horizon. Gulien looked out, trying to see his men and the Tamaristan company, wishing to assure himself that everything out there was calm and that no disaster would be waiting at the foot of the mountain. But the angle was wrong, and he could see nothing but the empty drylands.

  “Well, there’s a sight,” said Oressa, going to the window and pressing her hands against it. “Soon we’ll be out there, right, Gulien? The Kieba’s going to let us all go and not imprison anyone in a lightless cell for a hundred years. Isn’t that right?”

  Despite himself, Gulien laughed. “Oh, you’ve heard that story too?”

  His sister smiled back, though there was a shadow behind her smile. But before she could answer or Gulien could reassure her, the Kieba was suddenly present.

  She hadn’t been, and then she was.

  Gulien found that despite the suddenness of her arrival, he wasn’t surprised by it. Prince Gajdosik stepped back, however, and Oressa flinched violently and then pretended she hadn’t. Gulien put a reassuring hand on her back, and she leaned against him gratefully.

  Gulien thought the Kieba looked calm, though reserved. Forbidding, maybe. But not angry. Not frightening. Not really frightening. He nodded to her in polite acknowledgment.

  The Kieba returned Gulien’s nod and then considered Gajdosik. He bowed his head and stood very still, waiting.

  But the Kieba only said, “I am concerned about your brothers. About the artifacts they may have gathered into their hands. I am aware now that your brother Maranajdis makes use of Shakanatu’s Throne. This troubles me, but not urgently, so long as he stays on the other side of the Narrow Sea. I am more concerned that your other brother, Bherijda, may have taken an artifact called Tonkaïan’s Resolve into his hand. I am glad to have warning of the possibility, and as you have brought this warning to me, I forgive your trespass.”

  Prince Gajdosik let out a slow breath and bowed, without speaking.

  The Kieba nodded graciously. She went on. “But even so, I have no time now for such matters. At this moment I am compelled to devote my attention to Elaru and the surrounding area. When I am able, however, I will see to removing all such fragments of gods’ tools from your brothers’ keeping. I should have little difficulty doing so, if they have only what I have thus far surmised they hold. I shall hope they hold nothing else.”

  “I am glad to know it, Keppa,” Prince Gajdosik said in a low voice. “And I hope your surmise is correct. Yet Bherijda has trained as a magister. He would not—I do not believe he would have come to Carastind save that he hopes, as did my—as did Djerkest Manajarist—to take for his own the power of—of the mountain. Yet plainly any such attempt must fail in the face of your strength, Keppa.”

  “Yes.” Then the Kieba was silent, her expression blank and abstracted.

  “Does Bherijda Garamanaj possess a key?” inquired the kephalos, making Gulien twitch. “Has Bherijda Garamanaj established a position or a secondary identity?”

  “This I do not know,” Prince Gajdosik admitted.

  “Does he possess a fragment of crystal?” asked Gulien, putting the matter in terms he thought more likely to be understood. “Or possibly it might seem like black glass.”

  Gajdosik considered this. “I believe he must surely possess a piece of black glass, such as the magisters of Tamarist use to make their far-sight mirrors. These are used to capture images and memories.”

  “Such an item might possibly constitute a key,” said the Kieba. Her expression did not change at first, but after a pause she frowned faintly, as though discovering that this possibility displeased her.

  Gajdosik moved forward half a step and said, a faint urgency coming into his tone, “Bherijda is my enemy and the enemy of my people.”

  The Kieba looked at him blankly, but Gulien understood his prudence. He said quietly, “The Kieba is hardly likely to mistake one Garamanaji prince for another. You challenged her, but you acknowledge you have been defeated—you do acknowledge that, do you not?”

  “I can hardly do otherwise,” the Tamaristan prince said, rather dryly.

  “Then so long as you don’t again make yourself her enemy, you need have no fear. Not of the Kieba.” Gulien gave the Tamaristan prince a stern look.

  “Gulien,” Oressa said, and hit him on the arm. “Stop it.”

  The Kieba, ignoring this exchange, said thoughtfully, “If Bherijda has had a key for any length of time, it will certainly have infused itself into his blood and flesh, as yours has done, Gulien.”

  Oressa said, “Wait, wait! Into his blood?”

  “The living crystal does sometimes show such an inclination. Such is the nature of keys,” the Kieba said indifferently. “That is one reason among many that mortal men should leave such artifacts to me.” Her gaze sharpened. “Gulien Madalin, though I am pleased to have recovered Eirankan’s Ke
y, I expect you to recover for me Parianasaku’s Capture. I require you should do so. I urgently require this.”

  “Yes,” agreed Gulien. “Of course, Kieba. I’m ashamed I allowed my father to pass off a lesser artifact in its stead. I won’t permit that a second time, I promise you.” He was determined that he wouldn’t, though he knew it would require him to go through with the formal coronation and depose his father once and for all. The thought appalled him, but . . . not so much as it might have done a day ago.

  Oressa said, “Yes, but, Gulien! Living crystal? In your blood?” She stared at Gulien and then at the Kieba. “What will that do to him? What is it doing to him?”

  “This establishes the necessary predisposition,” agreed the Kieba, still without much apparent interest, and went on, speaking to Gulien. “Parianasaku’s Capture may appear as a medallion or a disk, a mirror or a rod. It might appear as a jewel or a set of jewels. It will be fairly small. It will have lines of crystal through it.”

  “Oh yes, good, something small with lines through it!” said Oressa. “That will certainly narrow it down. Will that get into Gulien’s blood?”

  The Kieba shrugged, a tiny not-quite-human gesture. “Perhaps. It is, after all, attuned to the Madalin bloodline. But this is unimportant. Your brother’s predisposition is already firmly established.” She said to Gulien, seeming to dismiss Oressa completely, “Recover this artifact for me, Gulien Madalin. I am certain you understand the necessity.”

  “Yes,” Gulien agreed, and rubbed his forehead, trying not to remember anything too strange about Parianasaku’s artifact. He had a crashing headache, but surely that was only natural and did not presage anything more. Or anything stranger, or less tolerable. His sister was peering at him anxiously, and he patted her shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said, this hardly seeming the time or place to explain anything complicated or difficult. Especially as he himself still knew hardly anything.