The Pillars of Sand

by Mark T. Barnes

  Save one. It was an ornate, throne-like chair of fused witchfire and jade, kirion and serill. Its complex designs and round glyphs were made in silver, and gold as bright as if it had been minted this morning. The chair sat within a fretwork gazebo that flickered with a tracery of light, a baroque crown suspended from its apex. Corajidin staggered forward, eyes wide. Breath refused to enter his lungs save through conscious effort.

  “Father?” Kasraman asked uncertainly. Corajidin heard his son’s footsteps as he approached. He smiled at Wolfram’s sudden intake of breath.

  “Sedefke left his work in many places.” Corajidin wanted to sit on the chair now, but restrained his ardor, difficult as it was. He turned to Kimiya, who looked about the room with indifference. What wonders your people must have seen, disgusting and malformed as you are, now washed up on the shores of a time that does not want you. I do not want you. But you have proven your worth, and I will wring from you all that you are before I destroy you and yours. He stood, giddy with excitement, and said, “Kimiya and her marsh-puppeteers led us here in good faith. My son, my friends, let us look back when we have unified our nation under one voice, and remember that it started here. With us. With the power of a vanished empire we will see restored to glory.

  “And with this. The Havoc Chair, with which I will exterminate any who stand in my way.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Because I do not travel the same road as you does not mean I am lost.”

  —from The Dark Roads of Enlightenment, by Yattoweh, Sēq Magnate, teacher, and houreh (231st Year of the Awakened Empire)

  Day 61 of the 496th Year of the Shrīanese Federation

  Indris’s left eye blazed, and the glyphs on his Scholar’s Lantern shimmered with disentropy. His protective wards changed color through the spectrum as they were burned away, fractal prisms and planes of force fading under the repetitive impact of the Sea Witches’ hexes. He spared a glance for Mari as she hurtled toward the Dowager-Asrahn, but could not join her lest the witches change their focus and level their arcane attentions on Mari.

  He burned one witch to ash, leaving nothing but a smoking cloud that roiled on the water. The remaining two witches panicked, tried to join their hexes in concert, only to have their own wards race through the rainbow, and fail. Startled, they looked beyond Indris. The witches wore expressions of betrayal as they were sliced down by a rapid-fire series of superheated spinning disks that cut them to pieces.

  Indris spun to see a hooded Sēq stride through the melee, her wards battered into the red. Anj pulled her hood back, and grinned. Her octopus-pommelled sword dripped blood, which stained the brine at her feet. The other combatants kept their distance, leaving the two in the eye of the storm.

  “What are you doing here, Anj?” Indris asked. Suspicion rose in him. How did you know where I was?

  “Zadjinn and the Dhar Gsenni sent me,” she replied, flicking the mess from her blade with a twist of her wrist. “Fancy meeting you here in Tamerlan.”

  “Fancy that indeed,” he murmured. The serill blade of his Scholar’s Lantern burned carnelian with her falsehood. He decided to test her. To know, rather than suspect. “So is you being here Dhar Gsenni mischief, or did you come here to find me?”

  “If I’d known you were here, I’d have joined you earlier.”

  The lantern shone pale amber. She was being partially honest.

  “I’m glad you’re here, though. Our talk is long overdue.”

  “Have you been here long? And now isn’t a great time to talk.”

  “Just arrived.” Again, the carnelian fire of her lie.

  Anj frowned at Indris’s lantern, her smile faltering. “I’ve not seen that before. What is it?”

  Months of uncertainly rose in Indris. The oily tint to Anj’s Disentropic Stain. Her dealings with the Dhar Gsenni. Her absences. The little things that were so like somebody playing the role of Anj, rather than Anj herself. It was time I faced the truth of her…

  He fanned the lantern into brightness. The light from his Scholar’s Lantern laved her, revealing what she had become, from behind what she was.

  “No!” Anj yelled. Sapphire eyes, storm-cloud hair, and the face of the woman he had adored vanished. Her cassock shredded in the glare, to reveal the ruin of the Seethe woman beneath: her blackened lips, shadow-vein skin, and the festered carbuncle on her brow.

  “Oh…” Indris could not say her name. His tears flowed. He relinquished control, and her illusion surrounded her like clouds obscuring moon. Though resistance rose in Indris, Changeling was resolute: The blade thrummed with the need to kill. The weapon burst the banks of Indris’s self control, swamping him with both fury and power. “No!” Indris reined himself in after two steps forward. His legs trembled as he fought a compulsion much stronger than Rosha’s Jahirojin against the Erebus. Changeling was a psédari: To fight her was, for Indris, to fight part of his own mind.

  “It wasn’t meant to be this way,” Anj said. She walked forward, palms at her sides, oblivious to the din of combat around her. “I was going to tell you … going to show you—”

  “Don’t,” Indris sobbed. He pointed Changeling at her heart. “Just stay away. For the love you once bore me, don’t come closer.”

  “I still love you, Indris,” she replied. She halved the distance. A figure detached itself from the melee, and bounded forward. Ekko swung his khopesh at her, and Anj backhanded the giant Tau-se into the ground. He hit the stone hard and lay very still, bleeding from his mouth, eyes rolled back. “I’ll always love you. And my Masters want to meet you. They’ve plans for you, husband. Plans for us both.”

  “Your Masters in the Drear? I’ve seen them. What was it that made you abandon your self for whatever it is you’ve become?”

  “My search for you!” She pounded her chest with her fist. “Always, and everything, for you! The beautiful champion who held the secrets of my heart. And when my strength failed, when I was almost dead, the Drear came to my aid like no others. Not even Zadjinn and the Dhar Gsenni realized what they’d done when they sent me into that world, though they, too, desired contact with the Drear. But they had no true concept of them.

  “And those powers want you, love.” She rested one hand on the hilt of her sword; the other was held out in invitation. “They’ve watched you for a long time. They’ve the answers the Sēq won’t give you. I’m but one of their Emissaries, sent to speak their word.”

  Indris spared a glance to where Morne, Kyril, Belam, Sanojé, and the other warriors set upon the sea monster. Mari had sagged into the water, barely floating in the churn. Indris stepped toward Mari, but the Emissary interposed herself.

  “I’m your wife, Indris. Not her. If your little Human needs to die for you to learn this lesson, then so be it. The poison I gave Jhem to use will take care of her soon enough.”

  Indris looked at the Emissary, and his hearts broke over again. Though the Emissary wore his lost wife’s face, she and he no longer shared a world. Inoqua had been an empire of madness and whim, of enlightenment through the suffering of oneself, and others. Of stripping away layers of sanity, flesh, and soul to discover the elusive meaning of existence. These were the beings that slumbered in the Drear. These were the things that had made the Drear what it was, when the Weavegates had stirred their eons-old slumber.

  “Better dead,” Indris whispered, “than the servant of such things.”

  “Truly?” the Emissary asked. “We were trained to be objective. My Masters aren’t evil. Their motivations may be incomprehensible to you, but that does not make them evil. Any more than you are evil for destroying an insect that walks across your food. It is just that your motivations and perceptions happen to be different, your remove higher.”

  “I’ll not go with you.”

  “You will, one way or another.”

  She drew her sword and struck at Indris. Changeling parried with a growl. Back and forth Indris and the Emissary fought. Indris tried to circle toward Mari, who ba
rely had her head above water. The Emissary countered. Nadir had come to his senses and drew closer, his face stony with hatred.

  Husband and wife cut into each other, though neither took the killing blow when it was offered. When Nadir joined the fray, Indris was hard-pressed to fight them both. His wounds took their toll, slowing his responses, and he was wounded more in turn. Changeling flooded him with power, and Indris saw his wounds fade, felt his muscles revived.

  Belam came to Mari’s side and dragged her from the water. Nadir, furious, ran to intercept.

  “Let me go!” Indris pleaded as their blades slammed together. “Mari needs my help!”

  “She needs to die!” The Emissary’s voice was chill. “You’ll forget her soon enough.”

  “No. I won’t.”

  The Emissary cried in anger and brought the flat of her blade down in a powerful overhand swing.

  Indris parried. Changeling shrieked, a sound unlike anything Indris had ever heard. The sound of fracturing metal filled Indris’s ears. Lightning crashed in his mind, and thunder rolled through his body. Changeling shattered into slivers. The force it released lifted Indris from his feet and flung him backwards. Dumbfounded, Indris lay on his back.

  He groaned, tried to control his weak and trembling limbs, as the Emissary teetered forward on unsteady feet. Her own blade was shorn off at the hilt. She leaned down and grabbed Indris by the ankle, crooning something discordant, a canto within the cadence and phrasing of a hex. The air bubbled as the Emissary opened a passage into the Drear.

  Changeling’s cry of pain reverberated through Indris’s body. His limbs were palsied. Through a twitching eye he watched Belam try to drag his armored sister through the water. The energy Indris had given her would be all but gone. On the verge of an ahm-stroke, as one side of his body faded to numbness, Indris held on to his last coherent thought: Mari needs me!

  Conscious thought aside, Indris reached out with the part of his mind that had been sheltered from the backlash of Changeling’s destruction. He grasped one of Changeling’s broken shards. With what strength was left in him, Indris hurled the shard at the Emissary with his mind.

  It pierced her chest deeply. Red flowered and spread. The Emissary staggered. Coughed blood. Drew the long metal shard from her chest as she crashed to the ground.

  Her illusion vanished, and there was only the Fallen Seethe woman. No part of the Anj he remembered remained to be seen. She smiled, lips bloody, her arm outstretched to take his hand.

  A tentacle curled around her, lifted her high, and drew her to the water as the monster fled beneath the waves.

  Indris’s eyes closed as he fell into the tumult of his mind.

  He rode the whirlwind through brilliant blue skies that spiraled around him. Fragments of a broken mirror spun around him: some he was able to catch, and he placed them back where he thought they belonged. He saw himself and his missing pieces: his left eye burned like the sun, the skin about it scaled. His head was crowned by clouds and sunlight, while his feet stood firm and deep as the mountains. Oceans washed against him, and rivers poured down him, but there were so many pieces missing, and some of the pieces of the mirror showed no reflection at all, and all the while there was the ticking metronome of the world’s passing…

  A voice at the edge of hearing, sibilant and draconic, gently cried his name, and soothed the pain, and the fear, and helped with gentle hands to turn Indris away from the mirror so that he could see—

  Indris shot bolt upright, and regretted it. It felt as if his brain sloshed around inside his skull. The world spun around him, and he clutched the sheets for traction.

  “You’re awake,” Shar exclaimed.

  “If you say so. Mari? I need to see—”

  “She’s fine.” Shar set her sonesette down and came to Indris’s side. After checking his temperature, and listening to the clamor of his hearts, Shar went to a side table and carefully poured some tea. She handed it to Indris and stared him down until he drank the foul brew. “The surgeon has been hard at work since you’ve been absent from us. Mari was touch and go there for a while, but she’s up and about now. She’s only been away from your side long enough to grab a few hours’ rest here and there. You just missed her.”

  “How long?”

  “Three days.”

  “That long? Balls!” Memories of the battle asserted themselves. “How’s Ekko?” And how many other lives were lost for this rock in the middle of nowhere? “How are you?”

  “Awww, you care.” Shar grinned. “I’m well, scratches and bruises mostly. Nothing time and what passes for lotus wine in this place won’t fix. Ekko’s wounds were more serious than he made out. The Emissary almost made an end of him, but the surgeon said he’ll recover.”

  “I’m glad. I’d not expected this to be our reunion.”

  Shar leaned in to kiss him. “Better this than all the worse things it could have been. I can’t begin to understand what you’ve been through, Indris, but I’m glad you’re here. My next question is, where to next?”

  “Does there have to be a where to?”

  “There’s always a where to.” Shar gently butted Indris’s shoulder with her head. “There are worse people to be a rolling stone with. We Seethe are performers, people of the winds and the open spaces. The sedentary life doesn’t suit us.”

  “Well, you’re going to love what’s next.”

  Shar clapped her hands in delight, skin and eyes lit with humor. “Do tell!”

  “Let’s go get Mari and Ekko first. This is best said once.”

  Indris took up his armor and stopped when he saw Changeling’s hilt, a broken sliver of blade all that remained of her graceful form. There was a bag beside the hilt, at which Indris raised an eyebrow. Shar explained they were the shards of Changeling that they found and collected. She hugged Indris, resting her chin on his shoulder. “In case you can remake her.”

  “I don’t know how, Shar.” Indris swallowed against the loss. Changeling’s hilt crooned, almost too softly to be heard, her need for comfort a finger that stirred the waters of Indris’s mind. He took the dragon-headed hilt and slipped it through his sash. Even this much of the weapon gave him comfort. Indris took up his Scholar’s Lantern, and felt a diminished yet familiar sensation as energy was channeled into him. It’s not the same, but it will have to do for now. Indris kissed Shar on the brow. “Thank you. Let’s find our friends.”

  After a short walk, they found Ekko where he limped along on his way to the Hearthall. Indris hugged his friend, and laughed at Ekko’s blank-faced refusal of Indris’s offer of support. An Avān or a Human with such a wound would be bedridden for the better part of a week. The Tau-se were tempered of sterner stuff. Mari they found as she came down the stairs. Her eyes were red from crying.

  “What do you need me to do?” Indris asked kindly as Mari joined them.

  Mari sniffed, gave a brittle laugh, and wiped the remainder of her tears away with her thumbs. She leaned into Indris and wrapped her arms around him. “For now? Hold me. What’s done is done, and now Belam needs to decide for himself what to do.”

  “What happened?”

  “We talked frankly about Father, Kasra, ourselves.” Mari’s breath felt warm against Indris’s neck, and there came the dampness of fresh tears. But her voice was steady, a comforting vibration against his skin. “I told him some facts that he didn’t want to hear. About how Nadir and Ravenet ambushed us. About how I tried not to kill her, but she gave me little choice. Even about some of what Nadir did, here in Tamerlan.”

  Indris stiffened, and Mari looked up with a genuine smile. She touched his lips with her finger. She said, “No! Nothing like that, though he tried to rekindle emotions only he felt. Truth is, I caused him more hurt than he ever caused me.”

  “You’ll not be alone.” Indris tilted her chin up to kiss her. “Belam knows the truth?”

  Mari nodded. “About Amnon. About Avānweh, and how I feel about you.”

  “How we feel
about each other, you mean,” Indris said. “You’re the only adventure I care about, Mari. We’ve only one life, and I intend on living it with you.”

  Mari grabbed Indris’s head in both her hands and kissed him soundly. When she released his lips, she rested her brow on his and said, “That’s exactly what I need.”

  “I hate to intrude on your moment,” Shar said, her grin wicked, “but Indris, weren’t you going to reveal to us something of such stupendous importance, I’m likely to bed the first person I see in my excitement?”

  Indris opened his mouth to retort but saw Shar’s smile, and thought better of it. “Let’s find somewhere quiet.”

  As they passed through the Hearthall, they piled platters high with steaming slivers of seafood, spiced vegetables, dips, rice, and warm flatbread. A couple of jugs of water and wine were added. They were greeted warmly by the warriors there, many who were bandaged and taking their ease in front of the roaring fires, most well into their drink. Morne and Kyril danced to a lively reel on the fiddle, pipes, and drum, while the captains clapped and stamped their feet.

  Indris and his friends found a quiet dining room and sat down to a meal interspersed with inane chatter, bawdy jokes, and shared song. It seemed to Indris the first time in too long that he had laughed, or that he inhabited a moment without the Sēq looking on. The company of people he loved helped fill the awkward void that was not quite an emptiness of Changeling: He still felt her, in the roots of his mind. As the food disappeared, and the drink was replenished, Indris related to his friends what he knew of the rahns’ plight, and what he had agreed to do to help them.

  “So it all comes back to the Pillars of Sand?” Mari asked. She stretched her long legs out atop Indris’s, and crossed them at the ankle. He held one of her hands, taking comfort from the warmth. “Not just the rahns, but even your own ancestry. And these new talents of yours.” She leaned forward and tapped him on the brow.