The ground changed as they came closer to the ruins Kimiya guided them to. Cut stone made dappled shapes beneath creeks that had long ago formed new banks. Columns draped in dark ivy and tenacious creepers leaned, forming complex shadows below. Closer they came until the fragments of walls stood out like broken molars, and then ruined domes, tall walls, and canted towers were the norm amid thick trees that had long ago asserted their dominance. Tahj-Shaheh piloted the skiff in a smooth circle until she found a wide courtyard, trees draped with ropey vines pushing up between the flagging. Birdcalls, hisses, spits, and the yowls of marsh devils echoed across the deserted town, with other deeper and more phlegmatic noises that turned Corajidin’s spine cold. The air smelled of wet leaves and mulch, of mold and mildewed stone. And there, the coppery hint of freshly spilled blood.
People emerged from the shadows of the surrounding trees: the villagers from Fandra who had been given to the marsh-puppeteers. They stood silently, mud and blood streaked, clothes shredded from their nocturnal forays. One, somewhere between an older boy and a young man, stepped forward. He opened his mouth and clattered something at Kimiya, who responded in kind with sounds no Avān throat was designed to make.
Kimiya turned to Corajidin and said, “My clan have cleared away the interlopers. Fenling and some harpies, and an old nāga warrior that had taken up residence in the tower. It was for the best you did not happen upon her unawares.”
“We could’ve dealt with it,” an Anlūki lieutenant asserted.
“If you like,” Kimiya said with a tiny smile. “The way is clear, Corajidin. It is as safe as we can make it.”
“Not exactly a ringing endorsement,” Nix muttered.
Surrounded by the Anlūki, Corajidin and his inner circle followed Kimiya through the long shadows and blinding light of the ruin. The marble had lost its gleam, and the edges of the sandstone had turned to porous curves, grass sprouting in sparse, dry tufts like an old man’s hair. There was water everywhere, though it seemed to not bother Kimiya or her clan in the slightest as they splashed through.
The place felt old: from the size of the trees and the overgrown gardens, to the ancient architecture that nature had overcome. Walls and towers remained, along with stairs that had at one point led to places the inhabitants had found pedestrian, places Corajidin ached to know more about. Kasraman, Wolfram, and Elonie wandered with their eyes wide, trying to see and hear everything about them. The Soul Trader’s presence was seen in periphery, where it glided above, silent, watchful, and waiting. They sense death. Are drawn to it. Worship it. Corajidin’s skin crawled with a lurking menace, something watchful that resented the presence of others in its territory.
A serpentine shape, topped with a man’s armored torso, arms, and head, shot from a wide crack in a nearby wall. It rapidly looped its coils around a warrior, who could not bring his sword to bear. With small blades in each hand, the monster cut the warrior’s throat, turning his screams to gargles.
Cobra quick, the nāga lunged forward to bite another Anlūki on the face. It took another warrior in its embrace, whipped its body back, and hurled the woman into the trees, where the sound of snapping branches and breaking bones were indistinguishable. The bitten warrior took a step forward and convulsed, spewing a torrent of blood and bile.
Bow strings snapped. Arrows buzzed, chimed, clattered. The nāga’s tail rattled as it drummed the wet stone. Splashes rose like diamonds, incongruously beautiful. The remaining Anlūki moved forward in pairs, leaving two archers behind. Kasraman, Wolfram, and Elonie spread out and began to chant their hexes, Elonie’s Aspect taking form around her while Kasraman and Wolfram exercised more control. Kimiya snapped out a sharp warning against the use of witchcraft. The witches, wide-eyed and blood high, struggled with their instincts to unleash their powers. Corajidin snapped his own order, and though it took longer than he liked, the witches let their incantations fade.
The nāga’s torso and tail were streaked with blood, much of which was its own. Two more of the Anlūki were down, twitching, exposed skin marked with inflamed bite marks. Nix dodged in and out of the fight, his knives almost as fast as the nāga’s, and Tahj-Shaheh fought with the fluid, rocking motion of one who spent her time on heaving decks. There came the rattle of other nāga from left and right, and the moist rasp of scales against stone.
“What are you doing?” Corajidin glared at Kimiya and her clan.
“Watching your warriors ‘deal with it,’ ” came her response.
“If I die, our agreement dies with me!”
A murderous look flashed over Kimiya’s face. She opened her mouth and clattered something incomprehensible to Corajidin, but the others clearly understood it. As one they surged forward, lightly bouncing from foot to foot as they approached the nāga. When they drew close, they divided into three groups, one staying as the other two disappeared into the ruins.
A feeling of power surged through Corajidin, the unfettered Disentropy of the world around him. It flowed through his boots and infused him. He felt warm, his skin tingled, and he felt the hair on his body vibrate. A vitality he had not felt in years infused him, mending some of the tatters of his flawed Awakening. He drew his heavy shamshir and leaped forward, mouth open in an incoherent battle cry, fired by the lusts of his cannibal Ancestors. Joining the fray, he hacked with more enthusiasm than skill, often in the way of his own guard. But it did not matter! Nothing mattered, save the savage joy of the strength that coursed through him. His weapon was used more like a cleaver than a sword, and he became a butcher, not a duelist.
Blood flowed, metal belled, voices screamed, sweat blossomed, and all the while he was carried above it all, filled with the power of the ages. He could not be killed. Kimiya and her clan tore at the nāga with tooth and nail. One of them, arm broken and dangling but seemingly undaunted, continued to bite and rend. An Anlūki sidestepped into Corajidin’s path, and Corajidin cut him down. He was only vaguely aware of the man’s look of betrayal as the body spiraled away, fountaining blood. There was no way the nāga could defeat the man who would be Mahj!
Corajidin raised his blade to strike the head from the monster. Watched it come closer. Felt his blade fall, seemingly of its own volition.
But the nāga was not where it was supposed to be.
And his parry missed…
And he could not scramble away…
And the nāga latched on to his throat…
And as the fangs pierced his skin, it felt as if his veins were being filled with acid.
And he tumbled, howling at the indignity, into twilight. His last sight was of Kasraman, and the look of satisfaction in his glacial eyes.
Then the tremors started. His head collided with the stone over and over, his body arching like a bow, and twilight became night.
Corajidin’s head pounded. His neck hurt. It felt as if there were leather bands around his chest when he breathed.
He recalled the look in his son’s eyes. Kasraman would be happy if I died out here … Feyd said that this place drove witches mad.
With a groan, Corajidin clawed his way to a sitting position. He opened his eyes carefully to find Wolfram leaning against a nearby wall, his staff clutched in his folded arms. Elonie came forward to help Corajidin sit. Kimiya crouched close by, her face, neck, chest, and hands spattered with gore. The mud and blood that caked her exposed skin was like a second layer of clothing, seemingly suiting her better than what she had worn.
“You survived,” Kimiya said bluntly. “Rare. Your soldiers were less fortunate.”
“How many survived?” Corajidin asked. His voice was a weak rasp, his throat burning.
“We’ve four from ten left alive,” Wolfram said tiredly. “And of those, one probably won’t survive the night. Nix and Tahj-Shaheh were wounded, but will survive. And two of the townsfolk … Dear Goat Of The Wood, the marsh-puppeteers tore the nāga apart.”
“They ate it,” Elonie said quietly, placing a bowl of tea in Corajidin’s hands. “Then
when one of their own fell, the puppeteer inside burst out like the body it was in was just an overripe fruit. They ate that body, too, and the puppeteer swam away.”
“A new host will be found,” Kimiya said absently, licking at the caked blood on her hands. “Such is the way of things.”
Corajidin sipped the tea. It tasted worse than it smelled, but soothed his throat and took some of the tightness from his chest so he could breathe easier. Wolfram gazed at Corajidin speculatively.
Motion from the corner of his eye, and Kasraman entered the clearing with two of the puppeteer-bonded townsfolk. He looked at Corajidin. His smile took moments longer than it should have to appear. “Father! You’re awake. We wondered whether you’d return to us.”
“Your concern is touching.” Corajidin rose to his feet, shrugging off the ill effects of his poisoning. Pins and needles of energy trickled into his body, righting the wrongs. My Unity with Erebus Prefecture was never like this! Corajidin was reminded of Wolfram’s comments about the volumes of the Emissary’s potion he had been drinking, but this was a different sensation entirely. Something more natural, and sustaining, than the potion had ever been. Corajidin smiled at Kimiya, and took in the ruin in a gesture. “Show us what we came here for, if you would be so kind.”
The gangrel woman bounded to her feet and trotted off. Silence fell as they moved through the ruins, the local inhabitants aware now that a greater predator had arrived. Kimiya wound her way through tumbled walls held together with vines, beneath arches that looked fit to crumble should the wind change, and across flagstones shattered by time. Corajidin spied a stubby tower ahead with its verdigris bronze dome almost hidden among the ivy’s avarice. They made their way closer until Corajidin stood in a yard long gone to seed. Wasp nests bulged like boils on the mossy walls of the yard, the openings large enough for Corajidin to have fit his thumb in, and he was glad the insects were hibernating for the winter. The grass reached Corajidin’s thighs, the stalks bent with their own weight. The tower was four stories tall, with plain windows and simple architecture. Walls were covered in tourmaline-colored tiles, either a bright blue, vivid green, or pink depending on where the light struck. There was a path of sorts leading to where a door long turned to rust hung skewed on broken hinges.
Too excited to wait, Corajidin crossed the threshold. The rusted doors snagged at his over-robe, and he tore the garment in his need to press on. Kasraman, Wolfram, and Elonie were close behind, while Nix and Tahj-Shaheh followed at a less-than-enthusiastic pace. Kimiya ambled along, face inclined to the sun, humming to herself, the Soul Trader an elongated smear at her side. The doors screeched as the Anlūki prized them open. There was muffled swearing, then a loud clang that caused everybody to jump as one of the doors fell to the stone floor. Corajidin tersely ordered the soldiers to guard the piece. The last thing he needed was for them to break something useful.
Nix took the lead, as he sought out myriad dangers that might surprise the unwary. On a few occasions he was forced to seek help from one or more of the witches to dismantle a trap.
Corajidin imagined what the place would have looked like when Sedefke lived here. Rotten pieces of wood and scraps of canvas were evidence of art. Other detritus may have been tables and chairs, ceramic pots and other ornaments on shelves that had collapsed with time. Each floor presented the riddles of history, yet there was nothing of value, and Corajidin soon found his jaw clenching with frustration. Kimiya remained silent, her lips quirking in a smile Corajidin was tempted to slap off.
“Where are these treasures you promised me?” Corajidin’s voice was low and menacing. “All I see are scraps!”
“I told you I would bring you to where Sedefke worked,” Kimiya replied without even a semblance of fear. “I did not promise you that others had not come here before.”
“Sweet Erebus!” Corajidin shouted. “Have there been others? What was here?”
“There have been others, and what was here has always been here.”
“Treasure hunters came, and failed?” Kasraman asked.
“They came and died.”
Everybody stopped moving.
Kimiya picked her way up a rubble-strewn stair. Corajidin looked with a new perspective: The time-bleached wood could have been bone; the cracked bowl, a skull. Other debris: teeth, or decaying weapons, or clothes left to rot around their unfortunate owners.
“I’ve found all the traps thus far, Asrahn,” Nix said quickly. “Any physical trap would be sprung only once, though mystic ones might be triggered more often. I feel confident we’re safe as we can be.”
Corajidin nodded toward the stairs, and both Nix and Elonie trod as best they could in Kimiya’s footsteps. The others followed cautiously; Tahj-Shaheh grumbled profanities at every crack, snap, and clatter.
The exploration party searched all the floors to find nothing. At the top of the stair there was a door, bright and new, though the walls around it were melted to a glassy smoothness, and part of the wall opposite missing as if punched out by a giant fiery fist.
“No guesses for what this trap is,” Nix said with a giggle. He looked about, carefully removing what debris remained around the door: blackened bones, most snapped off jaggedly from the force of what had hit them. Smelted ingots of metal that might have been weapons. But little else. He crouched, looking at the complex mosaic. There was a combination of colors, words, and geometric shapes. The Soul Trader floated by the little man, bent almost double in apparent interest. Or anticipation. “How long do you think this place has stood?”
The other witches and the ex-pirate glanced about, before Kasraman said, “At a guess, more than a thousand years. The architecture is certainly of a style that fits the period.”
Nix nodded, and pointed to the remains he moved aside. “I think there are ten to fifteen different lots of remains here, best I can tell. Not to mention what we saw on the stairs, or what got blown out the wall.”
“Fascinating,” Tahj-Shaheh drawled. “But I think I speak for all of us when I say: So what?”
“The so what is that if this were an obvious trap, somebody would’ve worked it out by now. So we need to think less obviously, and more like the person who laid it in the first place.”
“Sedefke?” Kasraman asked, his tone intrigued.
“Seems to be a safe enough bet,” Nix replied. “But let’s move back, to avoid doing something obvious like setting the trap off, and blowing ourselves to ashes.”
Corajidin remained where he was as the others debated what they knew of Sedefke. Corajidin had studied the man’s work his entire adult life, knowing the man to be at once scholar and soldier, explorer and inventor, teacher and student. A man of opposites, who sought the strength in the culmination of opposing forces, to make a balanced and stronger whole: a man who had forged and tempered himself through everything he could experience. When all was said and done, Sedefke was a man who made history. Who handcrafted the future. Who shaped the ways of monarchs for time immemorial.
He would only want the worthy to inherit his legacy.
And the most worthy were those Sedefke had trained and illuminated: scholars, the Mahjs, and the rahns of the Avān people. Only those whom Īa had accepted would be fit enough to use such legacies as Sedefke had provided. Only those who had been Awakened to mysteries greater than themselves, as Sedefke had. His weapons were meant to defend, as well as attack, and what was a rahn if not the defender of his land, and people?
If I am the agent of destiny, the Thrice Awakened, surely I cannot die here, or now?
Corajidin took a step forward. The Soul Trader flowed to his side like anthropomorphic steam. Elonie saw Corajidin, and rushed to stop him. In that infinitesimal moment, Kasraman threw up a defensive ward around himself and screamed for the others to get down.
It was not so much fire as it was incredible heat that boiled around him. It was invisible at first, then flared with brilliant white, tinged with palest blue. Elonie did not have the time to scream befo
re she puffed into ash. The Soul Trader became visible for a bare moment, a negative thing where pallor was black and shadow white. It was a skeletal old man in rotting cloth with long gray hair, ruined nails, and lips pulled back from receding gums. It held an ornate annulus in its bony hands, a cat’s cradle of light like a spinning funnel at its center. What remained of Elonie, the mnemonic analogy of her soul, saw the annulus and opened her mouth in a shriek as she was sucked into the rotating vortex. The Soul Trader bared its chipped teeth at Corajidin, annulus held in his direction, and Corajidin trembled in fear.
Sweet Erebus, no!
The heat licked at the walls, cracked them, caused them to expand outward as if taking a deep breath. Kasraman’s hasty wards flared through the spectrum as layer after layer burned away.
Corajidin felt the heat. Knew the pain: indeed, almost passed out from it. Yet it flowed into him, and through him, and was grounded by him. Screaming with the agony, he expected to see his skin peel back and his bones blacken—
He remained unharmed. He slapped his hand against the door.
It opened with a gentle click.
The heat stopped.
The Soul Trader faded to a blur and drifted back, indistinguishable from the walls around it.
Ilhen lanterns in the room glowed softly and illuminated the mosaic on the inside of the dome: the story of how the Avān were created on Castavān, the semimythical isle of their beginnings, far across the Eastron Divide. Under the reflected light of the dome, Corajidin saw myriad books in age-defying crystal, mechanisms, schematics in hanging sheets of glass, and devices that he could barely comprehend.
The Pillars of Sand Page 24