The Mountain of Kept Memory

by Rachel Neumeier

  “My defense is so far largely unsuccessful,” it told him. Images whirled around Gulien, images of Elaru and, in the other room, of the drylands around the Kieba’s mountain. He glimpsed a woman and several children hiding in the main house, several men in the nearest granary, others in one of the barns. Prince Bherijda stood high up on a wagon, the scorpion banner flying above him, watching everything with wide, excited eyes like a child watching a puppet show. A medallion at his throat instantly caught Gulien’s eye. He knew, without knowing whose memory it was, that this was Tonkaïan’s Resolve, at least a fragment of it, and far more dangerous than the fire.

  Half a dozen black-clad magisters crowded around Bherijda’s wagon, each holding a short, fat crystalline rod in one hand and a round black disk in the other. Two of the magisters knelt in the wagon, their heads down and their eyes closed. Blood dripped between their fingers where they held their rods.

  To one side, a small company of Carastindin soldiers held their horses under tight control. They neither joined the destruction nor moved to prevent it. At their head, Osir Madalin, armed and armored like his soldiers, had not even drawn his sword. His hand rested on its hilt, but he merely watched, without expression, as the scorpion soldiers deliberately shot at the frantic goats in their pasture, clouds of white smoke from their arquebuses joining the black smoke from the burning buildings. Gulien knew that lack of expression. He knew his father was furious. But whether he was angry with Bherijda or the Kieba or these circumstances, Gulien could not guess. His father must have Parianasaku’s Capture with him, but Gulien could not see anything that might be the artifact.

  Several men broke suddenly from the barn and ran toward the main house. Soldiers came after them, but one of the Kieba’s falcons suddenly darted out of the smoke, metallic feathers blazing in the sunlight, talons flashing, faster and more agile and far more dangerous than any natural falcon, and the soldiers fell back. The farmers reached the house after all, and the falcon flung itself through the choking air, circling the house.

  “The falcon is the only defense they have?” Gulien snapped at the kephalos.

  “I am attempting to deploy adequate defensive measures,” stated the kephalos. “I am prevented.”

  “Prevented!” said Gulien. He braced himself with his hands on the back of the chair, furious and sick.

  “I am now receiving contradictory instructions. Two claimants other than you are striving for mastery.”

  “You can’t let Bherijda claim any kind of position!”

  “I am not to permit mastery to anyone other than the Kieba or you. I am aware that allowing these other claimants access would vitiate my primary purpose. I am attempting to prevent these claimants. Thus far Bherijda Garamanaj is not among the claimants.”

  The two magisters in the wagon, Gulien realized. They were trying right now to master the kephalos. They couldn’t—he was certain they couldn’t. Only he wasn’t that certain, and what if they did?

  The falcon flashed through the farmyard, too swift to shoot, too dangerous to ignore. It circled the wagon where the magisters worked, but apparently couldn’t attack them. But it could attack the soldiers, and did: anyone with a torch, anyone who tried to approach the house. It cried out, too sharp and fierce for a real falcon; it wasn’t a falcon’s voice, but an inhuman voice with words in it—curses, in fact. Men shied from it, and Gulien thought they really had given up trying to enter or burn the house. At least for the moment.

  But the golem’s fierce defense wouldn’t matter if either of those Tamaristan magisters mastered the kephalos. The black-clad magisters were an island of stillness amid the frenzy of the fire.

  His father had done nothing at all to prevent the razing of the farm, but now he suddenly reined his horse across the path of scorpion soldiers who began to set fire arrows to their bows so they could fire the house. He stared their leader down. Gulien held his breath, but the Tamaristans gave way, glowering, and turned back to burn the pasture grasses instead and shoot the cows. His father, appearing entirely unmoved, turned to speak to one of his officers. Below, the scorpion banner flew against a sky hazed with smoke, and the magisters stood in a little circle with their crystalline rods clenched in their bloody hands.

  “The enemy has breached the outer perimeter,” the kephalos said tonelessly.

  Gulien flinched and looked around. Bherijda’s men were going to cross the wall and come up the mountain now, he realized. Bherijda himself, with Tonkaïan’s Resolve. And his father would be with him, with Parianasaku’s Capture. And each of those magisters had something, some fragment of crystal—one kind of key or another. For all he knew, one of those magisters or Prince Bherijda himself might have just as strong a predisposition as Gulien himself.

  The kephalos hadn’t stopped them. It couldn’t stop them. His father would probably know just how to find and open the door into the Tomb of the Gods. Of course he would know. He knew more than that if he had learned to read the knowledge held in the interstices of Parianasaku’s Capture. He would know the architecture of the mountain and the coded paths of the gods and more than likely how to step through the interstices between one place and another, which Gulien himself only barely remembered. He slapped his hand hard against the smooth, cool wall of the crystalline chamber and ordered fiercely, “Blank the walls! Don’t show me anything!”

  Immediately, all the images vanished. That made it easier for Gulien to think, easier to collect himself and reach for the calm he needed to work with the kephalos directly. He asked, striving for that calm, “If I take the mastery, if I can do it right now, I can stop them doing it, can’t I? That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Gulien,” said the kephalos, perfectly unmoved. “If you take the superior position, you will be able to deny it to other claimants. This is what you must do.”

  “But you’re preventing the Kieba from returning her attention to this mountain. Without her protection, if I can’t master you, then you can’t prevent my identity from being subsumed within the span of kept memory.”

  “An accurate summation.”

  Gulien shut his eyes and took a breath. He was afraid. But if he was sure of one thing, it was that he had better not have a divided mind or heart when he tried to master the kephalos. And if he was certain of another, it was that he dared not allow Bherijda or his father to seize mastery of the kephalos or destroy the Kieba. What was left of the Kieba. The images of Elaru, the memories of a hundred thousand terrible plagues, rose up within him, and he shuddered.

  “All right,” Gulien whispered. He said again, out loud, “All right.” He took a slow breath. Another. Calm. Calm. Stone-calm, mountain-calm, calm as though he’d turned himself into stone, into far-sight crystal, with eyes that saw everything and cared for nothing.

  He knew he couldn’t reach that kind of calm, the Kieba’s calm. But he tried. Rubbing his wrists, breathing deeply, he started toward the terrible crystal chair that would carry him into the cold mind of the kephalos.

  Two Tamaristan magisters appeared in the chamber, one and then the other, and although Gulien leaped toward the chair, one of the magisters lifted up his rod of metal and crystal, a sharp, aggressive movement, and Gulien was hurled to the side. He tried to catch himself with his arms against the crystalline wall, but had too little time even for that and found himself on his knees besides the Kieba’s dais, shaking his head, struggling to regain his balance and get back to his feet. But one of the magisters had already hurried across the room and now stood running his hands over the back and arms of the chair, his expression rapt and intent, and the other, his expression triumphant, stood over the dais and the Kieba’s abandoned golem body.

  Then Prince Bherijda appeared, and after him, three soldiers, and Gulien’s father last of all. Then it was too late to do anything. Gulien, on his feet, his hand flat against the wall for balance, ignored the soldiers with their drawn swords. He paid no attention to Prince Bherijda, either. He could not take his attention from
his father.

  For half a heartbeat he thought Osir was dismayed to find him here in the heart of the mountain. Then indifference closed over his father’s face. The king raised his eyebrows, sardonic and unmoved and utterly in command of himself. Straightening and dropping his hands to his sides, Gulien faced his father’s cool regard without a word.

  “Well, here she is after all!” said Prince Bherijda, staring at the body on the dais. “The famous Kieba! She doesn’t look very dangerous, does she? And what a surprise!” he added, with a malicious sideways glance at Osir. “His Highness Prince Gulien, here with the Kieba in her very mountain! You do seem to have some difficulty ruling your son. You should have left him to my people after all, it seems.”

  King Osir ignored him. He said to Gulien, in a tone suggesting mild surprise, “You left Caras? In whose hands?”

  “You left Caras,” Gulien snapped. “In the hands of his men.” He indicated Bherijda with a contemptuous jerk of his head. “To what end? To come here and destroy the Kieba? Believe me, the Kieba is all that stands between the world and the lingering plagues—”

  “My son, enough,” Osir said with finality. At his tone, one of his soldiers came forward a warning step, clearly prepared to silence Gulien by force if necessary. Taking a hard breath, Gulien stopped and stood still, trying to calm himself. It was impossible, but he hoped at least for a reasonable pretense. The kephalos had not yet spoken to any of these people, so far as he knew, and as soon as he realized this he resolved not to mention the kephalos at all, though he couldn’t see how keeping this silence could actually help.

  Prince Bherijda said in an unctuous tone, quite obviously enjoying this situation, “A disloyal son should be put to death, my father always said.”

  “He would have known, certainly,” Osir returned. “I, however, think that is not necessary and may prove inadvisable. My son is potentially valuable in any number of ways.” Then, as Bherijda began to answer, he turned and gazed at him with an air of polite incredulity, lifting an eyebrow.

  Prince Bherijda closed his mouth, staring at Osir in impotent fury. The fury made sense, but Gulien didn’t understand the impotence, except that while the magisters belonged to Bherijda, somehow all of the soldiers who had come to this place were Carastindin. He didn’t understand how his father had managed this, but he was becoming sure Bherijda hadn’t done it that way on purpose. Gulien wished, suddenly and intensely, that Oressa were here. His sister might be safer where she was—she almost certainly was safer where she was, especially if she had found Gajdosik’s people—but if she had been here, she would probably have thought of a way to pit their father against Bherijda and snatch some clever victory out of the resulting confusion.

  Bherijda turned his back to King Osir and Gulien, a contemptuous gesture, but Gulien thought it was also a stupid thing for him to do. Maybe Bherijda thought he knew what Osir would do, but Gulien had no idea. He hoped his father would suddenly draw his sword and stab the Tamaristan prince. Osir wore a sword, exactly the kind of weapon a king should carry, with pearls on the scabbard and a big star ruby set in silver on the hilt. But he showed, unfortunately, no inclination to draw it.

  Prince Bherijda gestured to his magisters, an impatient gesture. “Well? I don’t think we wish to wait for her to wake up!”

  The two men glanced at the Kieba’s uninhabited body and then at each other. Then the younger of them swallowed, stepped toward the chair, and seated himself, moving slowly and deliberately. He set his hands over the ends of the arms of the chair, and the needles must have pierced his hands and wrists, for a thin rivulet of blood began to make its way slowly across the crystal, drops falling on the featureless floor. The young magister’s eyelids fluttered shut, and his body sagged in the chair. But his hands didn’t relax their hold. Gulien watched him closely, almost imagining he could follow the dizzying flicker of multiplying vision and scattering awareness as the connection between the magister and the kephalos strengthened.

  Bherijda and the other magister watched, too. Bherijda’s expression was avid, but the tension in the other magister’s face betrayed a deep unease. The magister was an older man with graying hair and lines deeply engraved around his mouth. He said suddenly to Gulien, “You have tried this?”

  Gulien was almost as surprised as if a golem had spoken. He realized he had barely thought of the magisters as real people; he had almost thought of them as though they were golems belonging to Bherijda. Now he saw that the older man was afraid but determined, that he might have some idea what mastering the kephalos entailed and it frightened him. Gulien was almost sorry for the man, except he’d come here, after all, to attack the Kieba.

  Prince Bherijda was staring at Gulien, too, intent on whatever answer he might make. Everyone was staring at him. After a tiny pause, he said, “I tried. I failed.”

  Plainly surprised, the magister said, “But you are still yourself. You haven’t lost yourself in the crystal.”

  “The Kieba protected me,” Gulien told him. “Who here will protect you?”

  The magister began to answer, but then broke off as the younger magister in the chair suddenly gasped, his hands spasming and his back arching. He brought his head forward away from the back of the chair, but then slammed it back again, hard. The dull thump of the impact was unpleasant. The older magister leaped forward, eyes wide with alarm, to cushion his fellow’s head with his hands.

  “Well, there’s another lost,” said Bherijda, sounding mildly disgusted.

  “Our protocols can’t have been correct,” the magister answered in a strained tone. “We’ve missed some important facet of the mastery protocols. Or we simply do not have the experience, or a sufficient predisposition, or . . .” He shook his head in baffled distress. His younger colleague was limp now, and quiet. Not dead, exactly. Or maybe he was, although his body still breathed. Gulien studied the body in some dismay, fairly certain that would have happened to him if he had tried to master the kephalos without the Kieba to protect him. It was worse, somehow, looking at a man who had only just now lost himself to the kephalos than merely experiencing it secondhand, through the mirror of old memory. It was strange to be almost grateful that her enemies had arrived and stopped him from risking that fate.

  “Ah,” Prince Bherijda said to Osir. “I see now that you were correct. Your son may indeed be of some use!” He turned to Gulien. “You have a predisposition, do you not? Excellent! Then you must certainly try again to master the Kieba’s power. Perhaps this time you may succeed. Think of that! More likely you will elucidate some greater part of the mastery protocols as you fail, but then every failure teaches us how to go further. So you see, we are all grateful for your presence after all.”

  Gulien lifted his eyebrows, an expression he had borrowed, he realized, from his father. He said, consciously trying for his father’s tone of cool contempt, “Or if I come too near actual mastery, you’ll cut my throat. It’s a clever plan, I suppose, if you’re confident you can recognize the crucial moment.”

  “Oh, I can recognize it,” Bherijda said with assurance. His sly gaze slid to Osir’s face. “But naturally I would not cut your throat. Because the Kieba will doubtless wake to protect you. That would do as well—indeed, it would be best of all.” He curled a hand around the artifact he wore on the chain around his neck and smiled. It was an ugly smile.

  Osir, his eyes narrowing, actually appeared to be considering Bherijda’s proposal. Fearing that his father might actually agree to this plan, Gulien said quickly and emphatically, “It won’t work. She knows you’re here—she’s undoubtedly preparing to destroy you herself—”

  “I believe that is unlikely,” murmured his father.

  “Or if she won’t face you, she certainly won’t for my sake!”

  Osir did not shift his gaze from Gulien’s face. “My son, why did you defy me and come to this place if not to ally yourself with the Kieba and against me? Why are you here in the heart of the Kieba’s mountain, except that you h
ave made yourself my enemy?”

  “If you hadn’t made yourself the Kieba’s enemy, it wouldn’t have come to this!”

  “Treacherous whelp,” said Bherijda, smiling. “I think—”

  Osir gave him a mild, incredulous look, and Bherijda closed his mouth with a snap, stiffening in offense.

  The older magister took the crystal rod away from his unconscious colleague and held it out to Gulien.

  Gulien stared at him. To think he had felt sorry for the man only a moment before. He was appalled at the magister’s callousness and his own cowardice, and at his father’s betrayal, and at the whole situation. He wanted to back away, but all too obviously there was nowhere to retreat. The magister continued to hold the rod out as though he expected Gulien to yield and reach for it, and finally, after one more glance at his father, Gulien did—and threw it down, hard, against the edge of the dais. The magister, breath catching, leaped after the rod, but not fast enough.

  But the rod, though it chimed like a dozen separate bells when it struck, did not break. It rebounded without the least sign of damage and rolled across the floor, the light catching and glittering from its needles.

  Prince Bherijda, his mouth tight, stepped up and slapped Gulien across the face, hard, and tried to do it again. But one of the soldiers, scowling, forcefully blocked the prince’s second blow, shoving Bherijda back a step.

  In that moment, when everyone was distracted, King Osir, who had been watching all of this with an air of patient indifference, abruptly drew his sword with polished, smooth speed and brought it slashing down right through the neck of the Kieba’s untenanted body. The head rolled away from the body, bloodless, the cut surface glistening like metallic clay, and fell off the dais. The ruby in the sword’s hilt blazed, the star in its heart rising up, burning and huge, spinning in place, its rays raking through the air, reflected over and over in the crystalline walls that surrounded them.