The Pillars of Sand

by Mark T. Barnes

  Corajidin was reminded of the ritual on Sycamore Hill, where the Weaver had somehow managed to place Yashamin’s soul in Mēdēya’s body. He glanced across the room at his wife and shuddered at his memories of what had happened to her. Another bargain with the Drear that came with a bitter twist. And I want these people to help Narseh! What will they do to her? Erebus, deliver me! The sooner I am freed from the Drear and their Emissary, the better.

  “Kasraman? Wolfram? Can you and the other witches make this thing talk?” Corajidin pointed at Kimiya. “It hales from the Rōmarq, and by its own admission has the memories of its kind that have come before—”

  “What one knows, all know,” Kimiya said.

  “Then you will know what I am looking for when I ask it of you.” Corajidin wrapped the folds of his over-robe around him like armor as he approached her. She glared at him through the filthy length of her fringe, baring her teeth in a low hiss as he came within arm’s reach. “There are secrets in the Rōmarq I would have. Knowledge and weapons. Power. Things locked in the sediment of ages, lost to the Avān.”

  “Yes.”

  “Things lost to the Avān,” Corajidin said, leaning closer to Kimiya, “but not to you. The Sēq and their Black Archives are beyond me at the moment, but you … you are not.”

  “You would trade favors with me, oh drowsy rahn?” Kimiya’s body seemed to thrum with excitement. She flicked a glance at the Emissary. “Have you not learned that we who are servants of the old ways can be capricious? Often demanding, even cruel?”

  “If you give me what I want, then I will give you and your people what you need. But you will need to deal with me in good faith.”

  “And you presume to know—”

  “Bodies,” Corajidin said flatly. “I will give you bodies. Leaders of enterprise, merchant sayfs … people of influence. But we must work together for a time.”

  And Kimiya stopped fighting against her bonds. Her only movements were a nod and a grotesque smile.

  “You’ll turn the nation against us when they learn what you’ve done.” Belamandris’s tone was condemning.

  “We will survive as we have always survived,” Corajidin replied. He kissed the top of Mēdēya’s head where she leaned against his chest. She felt warm in the circle of his arms. The observatory at Erebesq was a cold and cheerless place, of dark veined marble, glossy black floor tiles. Of polished metal wheels, gears and levers for the telescope, and sliding panels of the roof dome. Corajidin looked up at the sky. There were no stars, only the blue-green patina of the moon streaked with white.

  “So, Father. Are you really going to do it?” Kasraman poured thick coffee into silver cups and handed them to his family and those closest to them. Corajidin had gnawed on his displeasure when Sanojé had joined them, but it was worth it to have Belamandris’s company, sour as it was. Wolfram stood alone in the middle of the floor, halfway between Corajidin and Kasraman. His big knuckled hands rested on the huge canted tube of the telescope. The old witch bent to peer into the eyepiece, though what revelations he expected to find in the cloudy sky were beyond Corajidin.

  Am I really going to do it? Corajidin had been asking himself the same question in the hours since he had dismissed his counselors. He regretted speaking so hastily, but the Emissary’s presence was a constant reminder of how far he had come using her treatment. There was no recovery from his illness, of that he was certain. The Emissary had loaned Corajidin every second of his life since the Battle of Amnon, and he had mortgaged his future to her without thought for the ramifications. I am the servant of destiny, and I make my own fate. I am Asrahn. I am my people’s keeper. Yet having desire and destiny travel the same road did not make all decisions the right ones. As Wolfram was fond of saying, the future was a pond whose banks we can’t see. When we start throwing stones, we’ve no idea where the ripples will go, how long they will take, or what they may swamp on their way to their destination.

  Belamandris sat hip to hip with his Tanisian lover: she who had brought Nomads into Corajidin’s life with her Chepherundi Box, and the liches inside them! Were it not for her, Corajidin would never have looked to the Nomads for answers. He would have left Yashamin as a memory, grieving her as was right and proper. And the Emissary! With her traveling show of gifts and temptations, so like the Seethe cirqs and carnivals that wandered the world, dazzling the unwary with things they should know better than to offer. Dealing with the Seethe—ageless, virtually deathless, and world weary—was like a child accepting rum from adults lost to drink. The elders should know better, yet were so steeped in their own misery, and oblivious to its consequences, that they simply did not care anymore. The Emissary’s gifts had left Corajidin intoxicated at first. Now he was sobering. He suspected his sobriety may be too little, too late. The damage was done, however, the ripples spreading out, and only more, larger, ripples might set things right again.

  Corajidin surveyed his extended family, including Sanojé, for Belamandris would have it no other way. Another thing Belamandris had in common with Mariam: loving unwisely. He took comfort in the knowledge that Indris was dead and gone, the Sēq retired from the field, and there were few who stood in the way now.

  “Father?” Kasraman asked, waiting for an answer while Corajidin’s mind had wandered.

  Am I going to do it? Corajidin thought again.

  “I do not know,” Corajidin answered. He hugged Mēdēya, pretending for a moment she was the original he adored and not the replacement he doubted. “There is much to be said for the use of the march-puppeteers and as much to be said against.”

  “More to be said against,” Belamandris murmured.

  “He speaks truly, Asrahn,” Sanojé said. “We’ve seen malegangers in Tanis, and experienced firsthand the havoc they cause. They’re unpredictable, uncontrollable, and untrustworthy.”

  “But have you ever made a bargain with them?” Kasraman asked. “Offered them something they want, to pique their enlightened self-interest?”

  “No,” the beautiful little Tanisian admitted. “We’ve not. Nor did it occur to us such a thing was possible. They and the Fenling are not creatures we’d deal with by choice.”

  “You traffic with Nomads, and your Ancestors turn themselves into liches.” Kasraman smiled condescendingly. “Consider the irony.”

  “You revere your Ancestors,” Sanojé replied. “Your rahns hold them in their minds and traffic with them daily. We both cling to the ones we’ve loved.”

  “We choose our own paths, it’s true,” Kasraman agreed. “And what if we’ve run out of choices? Or good choices at least. What then?”

  “Do we need to act so quickly?” Wolfram asked. The old man stretched and rubbed his back. “Belamandris was correct in that we’ve fallen for our own story regarding Manté and the Iron League. There’s nothing driving us to haste. My Asrahn, you’ve been in power for a short time and still have almost five years of your current term to unite the country. I counsel a more cautious path, less prone to unwitting disaster.”

  “But we are driven to haste,” Corajidin said. “The College of Artificers has said that they can get the Torque Spindles working. This knowledge will not be kept secret for long. Once the Iron League discovers that we can make large armies in a short time frame, they will fix their attention, and their very large military force, on us…”

  The others stayed silent, letting the thought sink in. Corajidin took advantage of their silence and continued, “The Iron League are aware the Imperialist faction will unify Shrīan for military and economic conquest. It has never been a secret. The Mercantile Guild, the Banker’s House, and the other consortiums of the middle-castes will rally behind the chance to expand their interests, flooding foreign markets with Shrīanese goods and procuring inexpensive labor to make more. It will give their political agendas a practical focus. With the threat of both military and trade wars looming, we will find that time is something we do not have.”

  “You can control the merchants and b
ankers, Father,” Belamandris said.

  “Can I?” Corajidin mused. “The Upper House of the Teshri is run by the Great Houses, but the Lower House is controlled by the Hundred Families, most of whom have grown fat on the gold they earn from trade and taxes.” And my bribes, the bastards! “The State and Crown are the tip of the tree. But the roots dig deep in dirty earth and are much harder to find, let alone remove.”

  As much as he hated to admit it, the marsh-puppeteers offered him an elegant solution, and one not easily traced back to the Great House of Erebus.

  “But all this aside,” Corajidin said gently, “the Emissary demands action. And I need to save Rahn-Narseh if I’m to have an Imperialist ally in the Upper House of the Teshri. Which means for now we must unite Shrīan under a common cause, to achieve our goals.”

  “And to leverage from what we’ve already started with the abductions,” Kasraman added.

  “And those goals would be what, Father?” Belamandris did not look up when he spoke.

  “To take the next step in unifying the Avān.” Corajidin spoke the words but felt like the Emissary lurked at the back of his tongue. “There cannot be two Mahjs over one people. We will use the marsh-puppeteers to silence dissent and to destroy our enemies. In return for bodies, they will locate the most powerful weapons in the Rōmarq for us.

  “When the marsh-puppeteers have served their purpose, I will use the weapons they helped me find, and the witches we freed from the Mahsojhin, to destroy the puppeteers once and for all. Then we invade Pashrea and destroy the last of the Sēq power base.”

  “And that’s all?” Belamandris mocked.

  “Then I become the next Mahj, and lead the Avān across the world in conquest.”

  The words did not taste as sweet as he had thought they would.

  Corajidin swayed as he walked the empty corridors of his qadir. The skirts of his sleeping gown and over-robe swept the rugs behind him with a gentle shushing sound that soothed him. His slippered feet were silent, and the only other noises were the occasional footfalls of the guards and the faint crack of ice as it formed on the windows. He cradled a golden bowl in one hand. Dark wine sloshed over the brim with every step. The neck of a vintage bottle of ruby lotus wine was clutched in the other. Corajidin emptied his bowl and clumsily filled another.

  “You don’t need the other rahns, my love,” Mēdēya had said as she had straddled him, his fingers lost in the masses of her hair as he drowned in her gaze and inhaled her panting breath. Riding him to crescendo, she had leaned in, urgent and remorseless in her passion. “No Mahj shares power! End them all, and rule alone as you were destined to.”

  In the shallow hours of the morning, her words echoed in his head yet. He could not look at his own reflection in the windows for fear he would tell himself, in the quiet, prideful places of his mind, that she was right.

  Corajidin meandered in the near dark, a ghost among his own memories. Some good, most shaded with the darkness of his father, Basyrandin, and the powers he and Corajidin’s mother had trafficked with when they thought Corajidin was asleep. What was it the Emissary had said? My predecessors have had a long and mutually beneficial relationship with your house, Corajidin. Such as your mother, the Dowager-Asrahn … we know you of old. And have done well by you.

  He found himself in Mariam’s old bedchamber. It was large and cold, the fires unlit. The big wooden bed with its ornate head, carved with the seahorse and stallion of her mother’s Family, as well as his own, was made as if she would tumble into it at any time. He touched the empty weapon and armor racks. Ran his fingers across the gilt leather spines of her old books. On impulse he took one down from the shelf and flicked through pages of sketches she had done when but a teenager, before she had become willful like her mother.

  Corajidin smiled at the memory. From wine came truth: Farha of the Dahrain had been a formidable woman, a woman who refused to tolerate Corajidin’s antics. It was something he had treasured in her as much as it had frustrated him, and it was something that first Mariam, and now Belamandris, had inherited.

  What have I done to you, my daughter? Of all the places in the world, how could I have sent you to Tamerlan?

  “What are you doing, Father?” Belamandris asked from the doorway. Corajidin turned, almost tripping on his over-robe. Wine spilled on his clothes and spattered the rugs. Belamandris was fully dressed, armed and armored. A fur-clad Sanojé stood by his side.

  “Where are you going at this time of night?” Corajidin articulated with inebriated pride. He carefully placed Mariam’s book of sketches back on the shelf, happy it took only three attempts. “You should be in your beds. Your separate beds.”

  “Father, you long stopped commenting on whom I slept with, be it women, men, or any combination of the two. Might I suggest that your silence on this matter will be more appreciated than whatever drunken insult you’re about to spew at me?”

  Corajidin staggered forward, arms wide, but stopped at the chill in his son’s posture. “What happened between us? We were close, you and I.”

  “That’s a conversation for a later, more sober time. What are you doing in Mariam’s room?”

  “Regretting, mostly.” He took a deep breath to steady himself. “I have done wrong by Mariam. So very wrong. Had I the chance to amend the past then, perhaps, I might have exercised the strength a father should on behalf of his children.”

  Belamandris and Sanojé shared a look. He whispered something to her. They kissed, and she dashed off. Belamandris looked his father up and down, eyes narrow with suspicion. “Do you mean that, Father? Would you try to undo some of the wrong you’ve done?”

  “Of course!”

  In a swift move, Belamandris took Corajidin in his arms and hugged him. Corajidin felt his face grow warm, and tears formed in his eyes. He buried his face in the fur lining of his son’s over-robe, wiping the tears away, but others soon followed. Belamandris turned his head and whispered into Corajidin’s ear.

  “Then I’ll tell her as much when I bring her back from Tamerlan, and our grandmother’s idea of hospitality.”

  With those words he was gone, a fleet shape that flickered between pools of light and shadow down the corridor.

  Corajidin staggered back to sit on Mariam’s bed. His son had forgiven him! His daughter would be saved.

  Because he had done what the Emissary, and destiny, demanded of him.

  Finishing the bottle of wine in one draft, Corajidin lay back on the bed. He pulled a fur over himself against the chill. Curled into a ball around his empty wine bowl, he at last allowed sleep to take him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Truth, like beauty, changes from person to person.”

  —Karisa of the Ijalian, troubadour and poet to Rahn-Näsarat fe Roshana (496th Year of the Shrīanese Federation)

  Day 60 of the 496th Year of the Shrīanese Federation

  At the end of another tiring day, Indris returned to the Black Archives.

  Inside, the Herald waited, its mirrored mask showing Indris a distorted reflection of himself. The Herald followed Indris through the central archive, and along the changing route of stairs to the vaults. On his way up, Indris collected scrolls and some journals, bound in soft black leather, that had showed promise. The formal grimoires had proven to be a disappointment: Sedefke had covered his arcane tracks well, with few hints at Awakening in what remained of his work.

  The biggest disappointment was the lack of any reference to the mental disciplines of the Mah-Psésahen. The high mental teachings were not even alluded to, let alone found, in any of the Master’s collected works. It was as if the practice had never existed. Similarly, references to the Dream Key, something Taqrit had questioned Indris on at Avānweh, were scarce. Some historical works described it as a physical artifact, others a person, and two books discussed it as a thought process that accessed layers of dreams that could be used as weapons, or to alter the fabric of space and time. The reasons for the existence of the Dream Key had
been heavily redacted, in some cases to the point where whole chapters had been excised from the books. The one thing all the sages agreed on was that the Dream Key was a legacy of the Dragons, a shared academic stance that gave Indris not the slightest bit of comfort.

  “Is it safe for me to open this vault?” Indris asked the Herald as they returned to the uppermost floor.

  “No harm will come to you.”

  Indris chuckled. “That wasn’t what I asked.”

  “Yet it is my answer all the same.”

  “You said I learned things I wasn’t supposed to know … or know yet. I don’t need the Possibility Tree to figure that my memories were tampered with because of what I discovered. If somebody is going to stamp around in my head again because of what I’m doing here, I might just save myself the time.”

  The Herald shook its masked face, reflections swimming, sending myriad points of light dancing. “You were sent to the Spines because somebody else found a reference to you going, and acted precipitously. So rather than finding it for yourself when it was time for you to do so, you caused effects to happen sooner than they should. This is different. You are learning these things now, at this moment, because it is you that have chosen to do so.”

  “You’re not talking about prophecy, are you?” Indris barely kept the derision from his voice.

  “There is no such thing. There is only observation and extrapolation.”

  “Like the Probability Tree.”

  “If you like.” Indris caught the broad brush of condescension in the Herald’s voice. The Herald picked up the glass jug of water Indris had brought with him, and the old silver drinking bowl. Holding the jug high, the Herald poured water into the bowl. “This is how you see the passage of time. A stream that flows from one point to the next.”

  “You sound like Cennoväl in his lectures on comparative philosophy and causality,” Indris said. “He said the much the same thing. I take it there is another way of perceiving time?”