The Mountain of Kept Memory

by Rachel Neumeier

  Gulien cleared his throat, raised his chin, and said to Paulin, smoothly, he hoped, “Can you tell me how many Tamaristan magisters remain in the palace? In Caras, or anywhere nearby, for that matter. Do please assure me that Bherijda himself is out of the city.”

  Paulin began, “Indeed—” But Kedmes, shoving forward, demanded abruptly, “Did His Majesty free you? I don’t believe it! Where is the princess?”

  Gulien raised his eyebrows in assumed astonishment at this interruption. “Well, who else do you imagine could have?” Then he added, deliberately borrowing his father’s flattest tone, “Oressa is exactly where she is supposed to be.” He raised a finger, interrupting the other man’s attempt to break in a second time. “Forgive me, Kedmes, but we have matters of greater urgency to address.” Turning back to Lord Paulin, he asked, “My lord, you were saying?”

  Kedmes glowered, but Lord Paulin smiled and said smoothly, “Your Highness, indeed, I was about to assure you that, as you hoped, Prince Bherijda departed the city with His Majesty.”

  “Good, good. And did Prince Bherijda take all of his magisters away with him?”

  “Unfortunately not, Your Highness. At least four remain, in their . . . workshop. They have established themselves in the dungeons. One is not entirely certain what courses of action they may be pursuing, but one fears it may be difficult to come at them there. One fears that is precisely why they chose that location.”

  “I see,” Gulien said, trying to sound thoughtful rather than worried or confounded. He couldn’t restrain himself from looking at Gajdosik.

  “Your Highness, allow me suggest once more that you free me,” Gajdosik said. “Or—” He hesitated, and Gulien saw him reconsider what he would say. He did not glance at Lord Paulin, but he went on urgently. “Or leave me chained if you don’t trust me; that’s well enough. But allow me to advise you. You know I am Bherijda’s enemy. I will help you throw down my brother’s people.”

  “Your Highness—” began Lord Paulin.

  “His Majesty—” said Kedmes at the same time, and they both stopped. Kedmes glared at Lord Paulin but had to give way. Paulin turned to Gulien and said firmly, “Your Highness, I think we have had enough of Tamaristan princes! I must advise against trading an alliance with one Tamaristan prince for another!”

  “I cannot dispute your wisdom, Paulin, and yet Prince Gajdosik’s advice has been useful to me, and will be again, I believe.” Inspiration struck, and Gulien said to Kedmes, “Strike the chain, but leave the manacle.” Then he said to Gajdosik, “Let the manacle you wear be a reminder to you, Your Highness, that you remain my prisoner and in my hands. But deal faithfully and honestly with me, and I swear I will deal generously with you and all your people.”

  “I agree,” Gajdosik said instantly. “I give you my word, Your Highness.” He turned to Lord Paulin. “You must also be aware, my lord, that Bherijda is my enemy, and I, his.”

  “I trust his word,” Gulien put in, and waited, trying not to show his anxiety, to see what everyone would do. Ultimately, Kedmes was not important. Paulin was the key. And he had already made his decision. He must have done. That was why he had come up here to find Gulien, hard on the heels of Osir Madalin’s departure from the palace. But asking him to take Gajdosik’s word was something else again; Gulien knew that, too. He didn’t think Paulin would change his mind now. But on the other hand, he had said perfectly plainly that a swift-footed man might still carry word to the king.

  For a moment Gulien thought it might go either way. But then Paulin nodded abruptly and said to one of his men, “Well, you heard His Highness! Strike the Tamaristan prince’s chain. Kedmes will show you where to find tools, or if you have to, go down to the smithy for a chisel or whatever. I’m sure you needn’t put Kedmes or any of His Majesty’s other servants to the trouble.”

  Gulien nodded as though he’d been perfectly confident all along that Paulin would yield. He asked, “Have those magisters any fragments of artifacts, do you know, and what do they have?”

  “Unfortunately, Your Highness, I fear we have no idea.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter, as we will have to contrive regardless,” Gulien declared. He was pleased to hear how confident his own voice sounded. “Whom can we rely on? Beriad?”

  “His Majesty took the majority of the palace guard with him, of course, Your Highness, including Beriad. As he doubtless discussed with you, Your Highness, he left Erren in command of the remaining guard and the militia.”

  “Yes, of course.” Erren, naturally. Gulien suspected that was going to be a problem. He said out loud, “I shall have to see Erren, of course. Immediately. Who else do we have?”

  Erren was a problem. Gulien, remembering Oressa’s opinion of him, was not surprised. He’d had one of Paulin’s men bring Erren up to the tower, since this apartment was clearly as secure a place as any to lay plans and gather what paltry assets he could muster. But Erren clearly didn’t believe the king had left Gulien to rule in his place, just as Kedmes hadn’t believed it. Well, and Gulien knew perfectly well that Lord Paulin didn’t believe it either.

  Paulin had his men, and another lord, Beroen, offered men as well. But against the thousand or more scorpion soldiers left in Caras, Gulien knew he needed Erren’s guardsmen as well. And he needed all of his people to take not only his orders, but Gajdosik’s, and that was a sticking point for the whole lot of them.

  And all the while he could feel time pressing at his back—he had no idea what the Kieba was facing, no idea where Oressa was, no idea what he could do about any of that.

  So he lost his temper.

  “I tell you all,” he nearly shouted, “if I can’t find guardsmen or militia to do this job, then I’ll find shopkeepers and farmers, do you hear? The people of Camian’s Way, shall we say! Their courage I don’t doubt, nor their determination, nor their willingness to work with whatever they have to hand! If we’d thrown up barricades like theirs all through the approaches out of the harbor, Bherijda wouldn’t have had everything his own way! Nor before that would we have needed the Kieba’s help to give Gajdosik a fight! Our people are not cowards, and if they haven’t swords, they’ll use chair legs and butcher knives! With your help or without, we will drive Bherijda’s murdering bastards back into the Narrow Sea! And if they haven’t time to board their ships in their rush to get away, then let them drown!”

  There was a stark pause. Then Lord Paulin ducked his head. “Forgive us, Your Highness. Of course you are correct. What are your orders?” And Erren, looking hunted, muttered that of course he hadn’t meant, that is, naturally he would—

  “Very well!” Gulien snapped. “Prince Gajdosik, your advice?”

  Gajdosik inclined his head. “My brother’s magisters must be our priority,” he said, his quiet tone obviously a deliberate counterpoint to Gulien’s fury. “We must break their power at once, a problem complicated by our lack of information about what artifacts they may currently hold. The actual garrison Bherijda left in Caras is not so important, though it is of course strategically desirable to recover control of the harbor, the city gates, and the main approaches to the palace. However, I—we—you can induce Bherijda’s soldiers to surrender at your leisure, after the magisters have been brought down.”

  There was another little silence. Then one of Erren’s men, a grizzled older man, said, speaking to Gulien and carefully ignoring Gajdosik, “They’ve set themselves up in the dungeons, Your Highness, which that’d be a good place for them, you might say, as His Majesty hadn’t been using them for much else lately, only it’s hard to come at ’em there, and worth every man we have if we try, even leaving aside those scorpion bastards, which important as they aren’t.” The guardsman gave Gajdosik a wary glance. “If they get started burning and murdering in the city, Your Highness, I don’t know how we can stop ’em.”

  Gulien said to Gajdosik, “Well?”

  “Powder,” said Gajdosik immediately. “All you have left. Set charges directly over the magiste
r’s position. Your dungeons will make a fitting grave for them.”

  The same guardsman said heatedly, “That’d destroy half the palace! What’s left of the palace!”

  Gajdosik raised his voice slightly. “Time is our tightest constraint in this battle. You daren’t act against my brother’s men while his magisters may wield old magic against you, but the moment they’re gone, it won’t matter that Bherijda’s garrison outnumbers our men—your men—three to one. Your palace is a necessary casualty. Tip it over on the board and press for the win.”

  The guardsman began, “This isn’t a game—”

  “Enough!” Gulien snapped, and the guardsman stopped. Gulien said more quietly, “Prince Gajdosik is correct in every particular. We will proceed exactly as he suggests. Dry powder, as much as we have. Who here knows exactly where those magisters are? All right, Mikke, find Magistra Lara; if anyone can help fix the best place to put the powder, she can.” He hoped the man would be able to find Magistra Lara; the scholar-mathematician was surely the perfect person to bring down the palace neatly just where they wanted it to fall. Gulien went on. “I’m sure we all agree that if we must blow up half the palace, it would be better to blow up the correct half.”

  Everyone stared at Gulien, not moving immediately. Then Lord Paulin cleared his throat, clapped his hands together, and declared, “It’s a good plan, Your Highness. It will work. My people will see to clearing our folk out of the palace.” He looked around meaningfully, and his men scattered, suddenly industrious, followed quickly by everyone else.

  “It is a good plan,” Lord Paulin said to Gulien more quietly, not quite looking at Gajdosik.

  Gulien rubbed his forehead. “It should be quick and decisive, at least. And I doubt Bherijda’s people will have prepared for it. Several tons of stone dropped on their heads ought to discommode anyone, no matter what artifacts they may hold.” He gave Prince Gajdosik a slight nod. “It’s a good idea. I think it will work.”

  Gajdosik inclined his head. “I think it will. Though I don’t know what Her Highness will say when she sees what I’ve done to your palace this time.”

  Gulien stared at him, then laughed. “Oh, I know exactly what Oressa will say!”

  When she returned. Gulien wished he dared send a man after her. But he wasn’t even certain she’d gone north; if she’d had a better idea, or what she considered a better idea, who knew what she would do or where she might go? If she was out in Caras, no one would find her.

  Surely she was not up on the rooftops of the palace. Surely not. He had better send a man or two to look for her, quietly. Because the guardsman had been right about that much, at least: When they set the powder off, half the remaining palace was going to come down.

  This proved, in the event, not to be quite true. In the event, the whole palace fell. Or nearly.

  They set the powder up all through the ground floor of the east wing of the palace, above the upper dungeons, which was where the Tamaristan magisters had set up their workroom. It took all night, which made Gulien nervous, but men could do only as much as they could do.

  “They’ve got all these strange things,” volunteered one of the kitchen girls, who had been brave enough to take a breakfast tray of meat pastries and amaranth cakes down to the magisters in order to ensure they knew for certain where the Tamaristan magisters actually were. “A thing shaped just like a cone of sugar, but three times the size and made of black glass, a piece of gray crystal shaped like a great beetle, and this strange thing”—she sketched it with her hands—“like a birdcage of gold wire, only just little, like this, and all filled up with a spiderweb, but that’s gold too, only it’s got a little red stone in the middle.”

  Even Gajdosik shrugged and spread his hands, wincing a little as he remembered his splinted fingers, but appearing to have no more idea than anyone else what any of the things might be. Gulien started to shrug and then blinked and shook his head, golden webs tangling in his memory. “Oh,” he said. “Oh. Yrïenku’s Net. We don’t want them using that. No, we don’t.” He blinked again, rubbing his eyes, just as glad for once that the half-glimpsed memories refused to come clear. “That’s in the upper dungeon too?”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed the girl anxiously. “I don’t know what might be lower down ’cause I didn’t go look, sir, seeing as I hadn’t any reason to poke about. But the magisters were all in the upper dungeons, sir, like as four black crows.”

  “Good,” Gulien told her. “Perfect. We’ll drop the whole east wing on top of them.” He and all his people were gathered in the kitchens, that being as far from the east wing as they could get without putting themselves in the way of the scorpion soldiers left in the palace. He looked at Gajdosik. “That’s perfect, isn’t it?”

  “Your Highness, I think it is,” Gajdosik answered formally.

  “Then—” Gulien opened a hand.

  Gajdosik turned briskly to their allies, to all appearances with the same confidence he might have had in his own men. “Mikke, Teras, let us be certain the stairway door up from the dungeons is barred, yes? It would be as well to make quite sure. Baris, Periane, this would be the time to distract Bherijda’s men, as we discussed. Ready? Excellent, off you go. Tand, if you would begin your count for the upper fuses? You will light them exactly on the count of one hundred, yes? Run!” Then he took a lighted taper from the fire, inclined his head, and offered it to Gulien. “On a count of one hundred fifty, I believe? It is your palace, after all, Your Highness.”

  The palace came down beautifully, in the end. At first there was only a muffled thump, some shattering glass, and a surprisingly small puff of gray smoke at the windows on the first floor. Gulien, watching from a prudent distance, far across the courtyard, with Gajdosik and Lord Paulin and Erren and a handful of others, thought the whole scheme had failed.

  Then there was a louder thump, and a grinding, crashing groan of stone against stone, and the second floor slowly collapsed into the first. And then the third floor collapsed inward as well. And then all the outer walls began to lean inward, gently at first so that Gulien thought he might be imagining the tilt, but then more dramatically until there was no doubt of it. Then the nearest wall swayed over a bit more and toppled, disappearing into the rising cloud of smoke and red dust, and then the whole inner wall of the north wing fell in, and in the end Gulien found, watching the dust swirl and settle, that he was quite, quite certain that Yrïenku’s Net was not going to be a problem in the future, and his heart lifted even though he still had no clear memory of what it did or was or had been.

  “If only Bherijda himself had been down there,” Gajdosik muttered, and coughed. Soot streaked his face, all their faces, as the cloud of smoke and dust rolled across their position.

  “One thing at a time,” Gulien muttered back.

  “Sir—” The kitchen girl’s voice was urgent. “Sir—”

  Gulien looked around, blinking, and then followed the direction of the girl’s pointing hand, up into the billowing smoke that now obscured half the sky. Then he braced himself and flung up his arm just in time to receive a falcon that fell like a bolt of lightning out of the sky to light on his wrist.

  This falcon could never have been mistaken for a natural bird. It flew like a bird and its talons pricked Gulien’s skin like those of a real falcon, but its feathers seemed to have been spun out of steel and glass and it glared at Gulien out of eyes made of smoky gray crystal.

  “How can you send so obvious a golem here?” Gulien demanded. “You said, you said plainly you could not—”

  “Gulien Madalin,” it said in the toneless voice of the kephalos. “Parianasaku’s Capture has left Caras. Osir Madalin still holds it. Even now he brings it to the Kieba’s mountain. Bherijda Garamanaj holds a fragment of Tonkaïan’s Resolve. He brings this also to the Kieba’s mountain. The Kieba is in peril. Your affiliation is to the Kieba. The Kieba requires you now. The mountain of kept memory requires its Kieba. You must establish your aspect and raise your positi
on. Time is of the essence. You recall the place where Berakalan’s door opens. Go there. I will open Berakalan’s door from within the Tomb of the Gods, that you may come at once to the mountain.”

  Gulien stared wordlessly into the falcon’s crystalline eyes. Its feathers ruffled in the hot wind, steel and silver and glass. The smoke and grit in the air dimmed its shine but could not make it appear like any natural bird. It did not speak again, but waited, with a patience as unnatural as its metallic feathers, for him to answer.

  Looking up, Gulien found himself first meeting Prince Gajdosik’s intense gaze, then glancing away at the little knot of his people gathered there.

  “You can’t leave Caras now!” protested Lord Paulin. “Your father’s already left Caras. If you go too, then . . .” He spread his pudgy hands, letting the rest of his objection stand unspoken.

  He hardly needed to complete his protest. Gulien knew he was right. A good few of Bherijda’s scorpion soldiers must still be out there in the city somewhere, and for all he knew, yet another Garamanaji prince was just waiting for his chance. Prince Gajdosik’s three thousand men were all too likely to march down from the north. They might arrive in an hour or a day, with or without having met Oressa, and then what? Or if they didn’t, then Caras would fragment all on its own; Gulien could imagine it clearly. Lord Paulin would have his ideas about what to do, Lord Beroen quite different ideas. Magister Lorren would probably be dying to uncover the buried dungeons and get his hands on any surviving artifacts—luckily that would probably be impossible—and dead gods knew, if Magister Baramis hadn’t accompanied Gulien’s father in the first place, he would insist on going after him.

  Gulien scrubbed his free hand over his face. Then he straightened, dropped his hand to his side, and looked directly into Prince Gajdosik’s face.

  “You must go, of course,” the Tamaristan prince said flatly.

  Everyone started to speak at once. Gulien put up a forbidding hand, and they all stopped, even Lord Paulin.