“Apparently,” Indris replied.
“Indris”—Shar’s expression was serious—“are you sure this is a good idea? You said the rahns are being treated using the Water of Life. Can’t you leave this with the Sēq to handle?”
“Particularly after all they have done to abuse you, and your trust,” Ekko added.
“No,” Indris replied. “This is as much about answering my own questions as it is about helping the rahns. Probably more so. I saw something, did something, or heard something that some bastard felt was dangerous enough to hide from the world. The Sēq have tried to open that box, and failed spectacularly. I need to do it my way. And I think the time has come.”
Mari finished her wine, then looked up at Shar and Ekko. Both the Seethe and the Tau-se nodded to her unasked question. She leaned across and tugged lightly on Indris’s hair, her face lit by the smile he adored.
“When do we leave?”
“We’ll come with you,” Morne said. He fumbled for his axe, as if meaning to travel then and there. Kyril laughed, and slid the axe farther away.
“Thanks,” Indris replied. “But you and the Immortal Companions can be more effective in service to the rahns. Corajidin has sent some of his force into the Rōmarq to finish what he started in Amnon. Even as Asrahn, he can’t simply send an army to occupy another prefecture. It’s clear he has long-term ambitions that need to be stopped.”
“It will take us bloody ages to get to Beyjan from here,” Kyril said. “Even hugging the coast of the Spectral Strand along Pashrea, navigating the Maw in winter won’t be a picnic. And heading to Selashan and going by river across Shrīan will take too long.”
“There are wind-ships at the skydock here, enough to carry the Immortal Companions with room to spare,” Indris said. “Nobody will prevent you taking them. Leave The Seeker here for the winter. Head straight to Avānweh.” Both men nodded in response, old habits of taking orders from Indris ingrained. “I’ll mindspeak Femensetri to let her know you’re on the way, and that you’ll have Rahn-Vahineh with you.”
“We will?” Morne asked.
“Vahineh needs to get back so the Federationists can form some kind of cohesive leadership in the Teshri. With the Companions back to full strength in Avānweh, you’ll be a force to be reckoned with.”
“By air it’s about a week’s travel,” Kyril said. He frowned. “Unless we are diverted by storms.”
“Unless you get blown off the map, you’ll arrive in plenty of time. Armies don’t move that quickly, and I doubt Corajidin has even the slightest control over the Rōmarq.” Indris recalled what he knew of the marsh-knights, their skill and ferocity. “I can’t imagine he’s having too great a time of it. Besides, he needs the time to learn how to use anything he finds there.”
Indris kissed the two men and wished them fortune, then made his way back to the room he shared with Mari. He was surprised to see Belamandris waiting for him. The two men looked at each other apprehensively, neither certain of who would defeat whom in a conflict. With the adrenaline of battle gone, Indris sensed the greasy stain on nearby disentropy that only came from salt-forged steel. Indris’s glance flicked to the long-knife thrust through Belamandris’s sash, and Tragedy’s elegant curves—while the Widowmaker cocked an eyebrow at Changeling’s dragon-headed hilt.
Belamandris smiled tentatively, and held his hand out.
“Mari said we have to stop the hatred somewhere,” Belamandris said. “She told me everything, and she’s no reason to lie.”
“And your response to everything would be…?”
“That I don’t like most of what I heard,” Belamandris admitted honestly. “But what’s done is done. I’ve seen that you’re an honorable man, and if I ignore the poison of my upbringing, I have to admit I’ve no grievance with you. It’s old anger best left in the grave.”
“I hear you,” Indris muttered. He looked at Belamandris’s hand, extended if not in total friendship, at least not in war. “Are you here to see Mari?”
“I’m here to offer my hand.” Belamandris shook the appendage. “And the sword that comes with it. My sister has been gone for months, part of something our father is doing that may lead us all to ruin. Mari thinks you’re about the only person who can stop it.”
“And you?”
“I’m inclined to agree.”
Indris came forward and took Belamandris’s hand. The grip was hesitant to start, but both men relaxed into the unfamiliar contact. Indris was glad the Widowmaker was coming along—no doubt with Sanojé, though her reputation was dappled at best. With the two Erebus siblings by his side, Indris felt better about facing the unknown.
The door opened and Mari poked her head into the corridor. Her smile was hesitant as she took in the two men. Indris smiled at her, then rested his hand on Belamandris’s shoulder.
“Best get your things together, and say what farewells need to be said. We leave for the Pillars of Sand tonight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Those who were never there when events unfolded perhaps see history through a dimmer lens, flattening the highs and lows into a more accommodating middle ground. History is there to teach us not what we want to learn, but what we need to learn.”
—Kemenchromis, Sēq Magnate and Arch-Scholar (1st Year of the Shrīanese Federation)
Day 64 of the 496th Year of the Shrīanese Federation
One step out of the Drear, and Mari fell to her knees and vomited. She looked down into the pool of bile in the sand in front of her face and wiped her lips with a shaky hand. It was warmer in the Dead Flat than Tamerlan, but far from hot. Sand as fine as silt streamed across the dunes in currents of pale gold. Sunlight deep-etched her shadow in stark contrast.
Indris came to her side and helped Mari to her feet. He held her face between his hands. She wanted to back away from the fire that guttered in his Dragon Eye, and felt that Indris was inside her head, checking that the house of her mind was still on stable ground. The sensation passed quickly. He handed her a flask and she rinsed her mouth, then spat the water into the thirsty desert.
“What was that about?” Mari pointed to her head for emphasis.
“Sorry,” he said. “We need to check to make sure none of you brought any passengers out of the Drear with you.”
“That can happen?”
“Often enough. If not riding the back of somebody, they find ways through naturally forming rifts. Devices like the mockingbirds help, but we need to be careful.”
Mari watched as Indris and Sanojé moved among their small group, checking everybody. The two shared a quiet conversation, and Indris reached into his satchel and gave the Tanisian witch two clockwork spheres, brothers of the one he had activated before taking them all through the Drear. Sanojé looked surprised, then grateful as Indris showed her how to work the mechanism.
Sorrow washed over Mari as she noticed where they were. The sand-cloaked ziggurat nearby was where she had been betrayed by Roshana—to Hayden’s death, and Omen’s destruction. Mari snuck a glance at Belam, who seemed lost in his own memories. He caught her eye but did not cheapen the moment by smiling at her. This was not a place to be remembered with fondness, or pride.
“There she is!” Indris trotted through the sand toward the half-buried shape of the Wanderer. After so long in the desert, the sands were piled high over it. It would take them days to dig her out. Indris and Shar clambered aboard. The two of them inspected the downed galley while Mari sat with Belam, Sanojé, and Ekko.
“The Drear,” Belam said by way of greeting. He looked haunted. “I hate that damned place.”
“Why would you have reason to spend time in a place like that?” Mari asked.
“Father’s ambitions know few bounds, Mari.” Belam let sand run through his fingers. “We found part of the old Weavegate network in a hall of the Qadir am Amaranjin, in Avānweh. Father hasn’t taken the place as his own, given it’s the Mahj’s palace, but he’s not been shy about using it when he needs to.
”
Mari was appalled. “Why use the Weavegates?”
“We warned the Asrahn it was unwise.” Sanojé shook her head. “The Weaveway was abandoned for a reason, and we—the witches—told him that to use it would arouse unwanted attention from what dwelled in those depths. Things best left undisturbed.”
“That doesn’t tell me why you used them.”
“Once Father ran out of people to hold as parole against good behavior in Avānweh,” Belam said, “he decided to harvest his hostages from further afield. Where there was a Weavegate, and more of them have survived the ages than I’d ever have thought, we’d use it to stage raids. Each raiding party would take a witch to guide us through, and get us home again in case there was no gate on the other end.”
“Father is taking hostages now?” Mari could not hide her disgust. It went against everything sende stood for, a repudiation of the social codes that held Avān society back from the unbridled savagery and violence that had once defined it. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“There’s no telling him anything.” Belam related to Mari everything that had transpired: Yashamin’s reincarnation, their father’s use of the witches to spy on Narseh and the sayfs, the Sky Lord’s and the Arbiter-Marshall’s open questioning of the events at Avānweh, and how their father managed to get witches into power. “Kasraman is Father’s conscience in these things now, and I fear our half-brother is playing a game of his own.”
“And is several moves ahead,” Sanojé murmured.
Mari listened to the barrage of misdeeds that would stain her family for years, if not generations. Her hearts sank with the dreadful litany, until all she wanted was to ask Belam to stop speaking. She was grateful for the distraction when there came a groaning, and hissing, from the Wanderer.
Sanojé stared in wonder as Indris stood before his buried sky ship. Clouds of sand were blown from it, much faster than the paltry breeze could manage. The Wanderer rose into the air, sand pouring from one angled wing like a cataract. “How is he doing that?” she whispered.
“He’s a scholar,” Belam shrugged.
“But there’s no disentropy here!” Sanojé scrambled to her feet and dashed across the sand to linger in Indris’s shadow, her face lit with a manic grin. Mari, Belam, and Ekko joined her. “He should be like a mute, trying to sing! This isn’t possible!”
Indris stood with his legs planted wide, sunk into the sand past his ankles. Sweat poured down his brow, veins thick as ropes on his neck. His gaze was focused on the Wanderer, his face in a rictus. He raised his palms upward and the Wanderer rose higher. Shar pirouetted in the sand for joy, and clapped her hands.
The last of the fine sand that covered the Wanderer slid away in a cloud, and the galley shuddered in midair. Indris gasped, frowning as the vessel dropped three feet toward the ground, only to stabilize again. He grunted with the effort, body quivering, and the Wanderer dropped slowly toward the ground. At just over a foot, the strain became too much. Indris swore, and fell to his knees as the Wanderer came down on her damaged landing gear. The ship listed somewhat, but seemed whole.
Mari gave Indris some water, where he reclined red-faced and panting in the sand. Shar and Ekko wasted no time in moving their bags aboard. Belam and Sanojé joined them, the witch eyeing Indris all the while.
“What happened to you?” Mari asked quietly. What else can he do that I don’t know about?
“She’s heavier than she looks.” Indris grinned as he fell back into the sand, sucking in deep gulps of air. “I couldn’t hold her and the weight of all the sand any longer.”
“No, I mean to you.” She nudged him with the toe of her boot. “You shouldn’t have been able to do that, Sanojé says. If I understand it correctly, there’s no natural energy here. Do you have so much that you don’t need any from elsewhere?”
“Ha! If only. Even with Changeling’s help I’d have struggled to lift the Wanderer in this place.” His face contorted with loss, and he rested his palm against the broken mind blade. Mari heard the faintest purr. Indris squinted up at her. “I’ve gotten stronger over the months, and learned more about what’s growing in my head.”
What are you becoming, love? “But not strong enough, I take it?”
“Nowhere near it,” Indris muttered. “There had to have been a reason the Sēq stopped teaching the mentalist disciplines. I hope I’ve not opened doors in my head that were best left shut. But for now, we need to get into the air and head east.”
“Do you intend to carry us all the way with your brain?”
Indris rolled to his feet and boarded the Wanderer. In his pack were two jars, filled with radiant water. Where beams of light touched her skin she felt a faint tingling sensation, warm and pleasant. Indris took one of the jars and jumped back to the sand, then made his way beneath the ship. Mari joined him. With deft movements Indris removed a scorched golden rod and replaced it with the jar. He flicked it with a fingernail. “This is the Water of Life, Mari. This jar will power the spools for a few days of flight. When we get off the flat, the spools will recharge normally, with no need for me to burn my brain out.” He called out for Shar to start the Tempest Wheels. They jerked, and stopped. Trembled. Stuttered. Then started to spin, the platters gaining speed.
For a day and a half the Wanderer flew along the Orjini Road that followed the Mar Ejir, Indris looking intently at the rock formations they passed. On several occasions they landed, and he searched the rock face and surrounding desert, only to climb aboard once more and ask Shar to resume their flight.
There was little for Mari to do on the flight save talk, eat, drink, sleep, and get reacquainted with Indris. Or mend fences with Belam. It had been a long time since they had talked as brother and sister. Sanojé came and went, though when she stayed with them she slowly revealed a softer side than Mari had first imagined. She and Belam were solicitous toward each other, taking turns to lay out bedding, to cook, or to make tea.
“You love her,” Mari said on their third morning together. Belam smiled and glanced at Sanojé where she stood by Indris, patiently listening to what he had to say about their search. Whatever it was, it was the province of mystics.
“And you love him,” Belam said. “Father would be so proud of us right now. His golden warrior-poet children, besotted with an Exiled witch and a Näsarat scholar.”
Mari chewed on some bread and cheese, enjoying the simplicity of it all. “I’d rather a lifetime of days like this, than one more minute of the agendas of our family.”
“Even though it was the agendas of our family that sent us here?”
“Well, maybe some agendas aren’t so bad.”
“Do you include Indris’s agendas?” Belam asked. “What’s he looking for?”
“A place, a man, and answers.” Mari kept the rest of what Indris had revealed to herself. I fear all three, Mari, he had said, and fear more what I’m leading you into. It’s why I fixed the Wanderer first, so you and the others could escape, should something happen to me. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been imprisoned for what I know. Or what I don’t. “Indris is a good man, Belam. He knows what he’s doing.”
Belam shrugged, and took Sanojé in his arms when she returned with watered wine and a bowl of sliced cheese, dried apricots, and apple.
Mari gave her brother and his lover some privacy. Indris leaned precariously out over the Wanderer’s phoenix-shaped figurehead and stared downward. There on the sand was a lone man in tattered blacks being stalked by his shadow. He walked with long and seemingly effortless strides across the flats. He did not look up as the Wanderer passed above him.
“Now what kind of man doesn’t look up when a ship flies overhead?” Indris asked.
“A man bored by the sight?”
“We’ve passed him, and other orjini travelers, a few times as we’ve been searching,” Indris said. “The other orjini look up and wave, or shout, wanting to trade. But him? He just walks along, always in this area, and always from nowhere, t
o nowhere, as best I can tell. The only thing that marks this place from any other is what remains of that megalith.”
“How can you walk from nowhere to nowhere?”
“Exactly my point. There’s something out here that we don’t see.”
Indris had Shar land the Wanderer farther westward, far enough away from the man’s course so as not to seem a threat. This time he paid attention, for he stopped, and he waited, and leaned on his staff. Indris glanced at his weapon belt and armor, but left them where they were. He took up his Scholar’s Lantern, slid Changeling’s pommel—now bereft of any blade—though his sash, and turned to his comrades.
“I’ve no idea what waits out there. I’ve been warned that this man—if he’s who I see—is ancient, and has had many names. It’s likely he’s profoundly dangerous. I won’t think any less of you, should you want to stay aboard the Wanderer, but I doubt that’s an option left to me.”
“You’re not taking weapons?” Shar asked pointedly.
“Don’t know that they’ll help much,” Indris said. “I’m here to learn, not fight.”
“We don’t have that qualm.” Mari stepped to Indris’s side and buckled on her armor and weapons. Shar and Ekko did the same. Belam and Sanojé whispered urgently to each other, her hand gestures short and sharp. Belam eventually shrugged, and said, “Looks like we’re with you, too.”
Mari walked at Indris’s side as they crossed the intervening distance to where the man waited patiently, his weathered black robes flapping in the wind. Mari stayed close by Indris, her hand never far from the hilt of her Sûnblade. The others had fanned out, veterans of many wars, taking a wide approach against an uncertain enemy.
Their shadows were long on the ground as they approached. The man stood between two tall standing stones of the megalith, stones canted over time to become a triangular lattice, while some few stood straight and tall. The edges of the stones were worn smooth, and Mari’s attention was diverted by the random shapes of glyphs that formed in the play of light, shadow, empty space, and eroded stone. Whatever had been carved on the stones had worn away, leaving only faint bumps and lines. There was nothing else to mark the place: no walls, no remnants of a city, town, or village. No trees, or wells. It was an arbitrary place to build anything, and as good or bad a place as any for a lone wanderer to wait for strangers.
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