The Dark Remains

by Mark Anthony

  “Of course, I should have known,” Melia murmured.

  The woman in gray misunderstood this answer. “Do not trouble yourself that you did not know, mistress. Yet I think soon many in this city shall know Her, and when they do they shall follow Her. For She went into the flames that we might all be transformed.”

  Melia’s gaze grew sharp. “Transformed? Into what?”

  “Why, into ourselves.”

  With that, the woman held her child close to her breast and moved down the street, her gray garb fading into the cool dimness. They were not ghosts. However, as Durge had learned these last few weeks, one did not need to see ghosts to be haunted. He wondered if he would ever see Embarr again.

  A heavy breath escaped him, and he was belatedly glad that the others seemed not to hear it, their attention on Melia. The lady continued down the street, Falken beside her, and while sorrow still veiled her, it seemed a faint smile touched the corners of her mouth.

  “It’s Tira,” Aryn whispered, eyes shining. “She really is a goddess.”

  Lirith nodded. “I had wondered if this might come to pass, if a mystery cult might form around her. Only I had not believed it could happen so swiftly. Do you see how Melia’s mood has lightened? Gods have been slain, but here is a new goddess born.”

  Durge did not understand the first thing concerning the workings of gods and goddesses. If he could not heat a substance in a crucible, or drop it in a vial of acid in order to observe its properties, then it was beyond him. All the same, Lirith’s words heartened him for a reason he could not name.

  The House of Nine Fountains was situated on the east side of the city, not far from the wall of the Third Circle, on a slight prominence that afforded a view of the sea.

  Falken had said the Fourth Circle was inhabited by the merchant class of Tarras, and to a great degree the hostel reflected that. It was large and comfortably appointed, if not particularly luxurious. The walls were white and clean but mostly unadorned, and the mosaics that covered the floors were simple in design but pleasing to the eye. The hostel was a square building of several stories, built around a roofless courtyard in the center. In the courtyard were a number of bubbling fountains from which the hostel evidently took its name.

  The hostel was run by a woman named Vil, her black hair streaked with gray but her face still smooth and lovely. This surprised Durge, for in the Dominions it was not usual for a woman to own a business, except if it were a brewery—for the making of beer was women’s work. However, this was a strange land, and its customs were bound to be just as strange.

  Besides, Vil seemed to run a prosperous and efficient establishment. In fact, the more Durge thought about it, the more it made sense. Would he not rather stay in a house kept by a woman than a man? This might explain the poor state of inns and taverns in Embarr. Perhaps some of the peculiar customs in this city were not so bad.

  While most of the guests at the hostel appeared to be merchants visiting from one of the cities near Tarras, it was clear from the rooms Vil led them to that, from time to time, the hostel also accommodated more important—or at least wealthier—guests. The floors were covered with blue tile. Large windows opened onto the courtyard below, and sheer curtains billowed in the breeze.

  The sound of water reached Durge’s ears; it was coming from a bronze basin set into a marble stand. A small pipe protruded from the wall, and water bubbled from it into the basin. Yet the basin seemed never to overflow. Durge moved to it.

  “But where does the water come from?” he muttered. “And where does it go?”

  Falken laughed. “Behold the magic of plumbing, my friend.”

  Durge shook his head. Plumbing? He had never heard of this particular magic before. But then, to his eyes it looked more like the art of an engineer than the craft of a wizard. Even as he looked, he saw a small hole near the rim of the basin through which water drained. There must be a pipe to take water out of the building even as there was one to bring it in.

  “Is it to your liking, mistress?” said the proprietress of the hostel.

  Melia moved to the window and drew in a deep breath. “It’s wonderful, Madam Vil.”

  Falken handed the proprietress several coins. She bowed and departed.

  There were three sleeping rooms off the main sitting area, one for Melia, one for Aryn and Lirith, and one for the men. There was also, Durge discovered, a room that contained a tub for bathing with more of the ingenious plumbing to bring water to it, and even a kind of chamberpot that cleansed and emptied itself with water from a small cistern above. Durge had never seen such a thing before, and he tipped the cistern into the pot and watched the water drain away several times until Melia clucked her tongue and told him not to waste water, that it came many miles from the mountains to the north. After this, Durge sat and tried to imagine a way in which fresh water could be brought over many leagues from mountains to a city by the sea.

  “So, we’re here,” Falken said. “Now what?”

  The bard was eating olives from a bowl brought by a servant, and Lirith and Aryn sat near a window, sharing an orange. Durge had eaten olives before, and he had once tasted an orange in the Dominions, but these things were rare there, delicacies to be savored by nobles. Yet he had seen common folk hawking them on the streets on their way to the hostel.

  Melia sat in a chair, a fluffy black kitten curled up on her lap. Durge didn’t know where the kitten had come from; he supposed it lived at the hostel and had simply wandered into their rooms. It looked uncannily like the kitten that had journeyed with them to Perridon earlier that year, but Durge knew that was impossible. That cat would have nearly reached its full size in the intervening months.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Melia said. “I really don’t know.”

  These words stunned Durge. They had journeyed to Tarras at Melia’s behest; he had simply assumed that, once here, she would have a plan for how she would solve the mystery of the murdered god. Or gods, as the matter now stood. However, she gazed out a window, absently petting the kitten. He saw Aryn and Lirith exchange glances; clearly the two were as shocked as he.

  To his further astonishment, Durge found himself standing. But this silence was useless; someone had to take action. “We must use logic to find the murderer.”

  Falken let out a snort. “This is a city full of gods we’re talking about, Durge, not one of your alchemical potions. Believe me, logic doesn’t apply.”

  Durge would not accept that; logic always applied. The gods were mysterious and powerful, yes. But while they were much more than human, there were still rules they had to abide by, as evidenced by the machinations for followers and status that Melia and Falken had described.

  He cleared his throat. “Melia, will you tell me of the gods Ondo and Geb?”

  “What does it matter? They are gone now.”

  Durge did his best to speak gently, although he did not know if he succeeded in the attempt. “It does matter, my lady. If we could come to know these gods, then we might understand why it was that someone would wish to harm them. From what I have been able to observe, it seems both Ondo and Geb were minor deities.”

  Now Melia looked up, eyes blazing. “That doesn’t mean they deserved to be slain!”

  Durge winced. Melia’s face was nearly as ashen as the woman in gray they had encountered earlier. But the damage was already done; there was no point in stopping. This was a puzzle, and Durge was good at puzzles. There had to be a pattern here—he had only to find it.

  “I did not mean to imply that the death of these gods is of no importance, my lady. On the contrary, that one might slay a god is deeply troubling, for it suggests a murderer with both great power and cruelty. What I meant to ask was simply this: Why was it these two particular gods who were slain?”

  Falken looked up. “You mean you think Ondo and Geb were chosen for a reason?”

  Durge shrugged. “A killer must choose his victim somehow, must he not?”

  “It doesn’t
make sense,” Aryn said. “It must take abilities we can’t even imagine to slay a god. If you’re that powerful, why not start with one of the most important, like Vathris or Jorus?”

  The young woman stood before the window now, her good arm folded over the withered one. She had changed into a lighter gown of blue fabric, and Durge could see a soft radiance through the material, as well as the curves of a slender figure. He averted his eyes—but not quite as hastily as proper decorum might have required.

  Aryn tapped her cheek. “I suppose I can imagine why Ondo might be a target; he did control the goldsmiths in the city, and it sounds as if the gods covet gold as much as people do. But what use would there be in killing Geb? I can’t imagine many people would miss him, except for the thieves and beggars who worshiped him. And I doubt those groups have much standing in this city.”

  Like a sharp sword, it pierced him. “But that’s it, my lady. You’ve put the arrow in the eye of the target.”

  Aryn’s blue eyes went wide. “I have?”

  “As you said, my lady, few in the city will miss the Rat God. Present company excepted, of course,” he added quickly, as ire ignited in Melia’s eyes. “And from what Orsith told us in the temple of Mandu, Ondo was not particularly well loved by the other temples.”

  Melia glared at him. “What are you getting at, Durge?”

  “I see it now,” Lirith said. “If you attacked one of the most popular gods, then certainly all the other gods would band together to hunt you down, no matter how afraid they were. But if it’s the least-loved gods who are slain, the despised and the envied, then what is there to unite the gods? The killer need not fear a hunt. Which means—”

  Lirith’s words ended in a gasp, and Durge gave a grim nod.

  “There is nothing to keep the murderer from killing again,” he finished.

  Now Melia rose, her small hands clenched into fists. The kitten jumped to the floor with a yowl of protest. “No, the gods would not be so callous. This is madness!”

  Falken laid a hand on her shoulder. “Is it, Melia?”

  Slowly she sank back into her chair. A sigh escaped her.

  “Forgive me, Durge,” she said quietly. “It’s just that you spoke a truth I did not wish to hear. I suppose in a way I knew it myself. I do love all my brothers and sisters, but even I must admit their love for one another is not so universal. You are right—there are those who are likely not filled with sorrow at the news of Ondo’s demise. Or Geb’s.”

  The kitten settled again on her lap, and she stroked its fur with slender fingers.

  “But this leaves us exactly where we started,” Aryn said. “What do we do now?”

  Melia looked up, and Falken raised his head, his gaze expectant. Both Aryn and Lirith were silent. All at once Durge realized that everyone was looking at him. A jolt of fear coursed through him—followed by a peculiarly warm sensation.

  “We must find out who stands to gain the most from the deaths of Ondo and Geb,” he said. “If we do that, then logic dictates we will have found the murderer.”

  “And then what do we do?” Melia murmured.

  But that was a question to which Durge had no answer.

  “Come on,” Falken said, his gruff voice breaking the silence. “We have work to do.”

  39.

  Lirith walked through the Fourth Circle of Tarras and tried not to feel that this was the place she had been searching for all her life.

  You are being foolish, sister. You no more belong in Tarras than you do in ancient Malachor. It is merely that it reminds you of Corantha, that is all.

  Certainly the Free Cities had much in common with Tarras. So many things—white sun on white walls, the yellow, perfumed blooms of lindara vines, the songs of women as they carried their burdens from market—reminded her of the streets of Corantha, but without … those things she would not care to dwell upon.

  And if you think Tarras lacks for brothels, sister, then think again. There are decadences bought and sold in the light of day in this city that even in Corantha are hidden in the fastness of night, if they can be found there at all.

  It was true, but even that thought could not weigh down the sensation that buoyed her heart. Every large city she knew of—yes, even cold, craggy Barrsunder in Embarr—had its equivalent of the Street of Scarves.

  All the same, it was only the Street of Scarves in Corantha that held pain for her—the street on which she had found herself at the age of eleven, a lost and desperate child, her parents murdered before her eyes by thieves. But her mother had always wanted to see a great city, and her father had never denied his beloved anything. They had packed the wagon, had journeyed from their little home in the green hills of southern Toloria. And after that first night in the city, when the family made a wrong turn down a shadowed street and moonlight glinted off cold steel, Lirith never saw any of them again.

  The parents were left to bleed and die in the gutter, but everything was for sale in the Free Cities, and the child had been more valuable to the thieves alive. Screaming, they had taken her … and had sold her to Gulthas.

  There had been no ravens on the Street of Scarves as on the card she had drawn from the deck of Sareth’s grandmother, but all the same it had been like a battlefield from which she could not escape. Except in the end she had escaped it, and nothing would ever make her go back there. For years Gulthas had paid her less than he charged her for her keep, making sure she could never save enough money to buy her freedom from servitude.

  However, he never knew of the coins she earned working magic tricks in the street and which she kept hidden in a hole in the wall. On her twentieth birthday she had presented him with a sack of gold which held exactly the price the city laws decreed for the servitude of one woman. Gulthas had exploded in rage, but she had been ready for that, and she had fled Corantha to the north—to freedom and her future.

  And what of the old woman’s card, sister? Did she not say that you could never escape your fate?

  Lirith could not think of that now. She bought a small packet of sugared lindara petals from a vendor and let them melt on her tongue as she made her way down a lane lined with tall sunleaf trees.

  She was searching for the guild house of the goldsmiths, and she had to be getting close. According to a traveling merchant she had spoken to at the hostel, the guild house was located on the Street of Flames. So far Lirith had found a Street of Smoke, a Street of Torches, and a Street of Many Colors. This last had nothing to do with flames, but she had liked the name so had walked down that lane anyway. Banners had hung above every doorway and were strung over the street, each one of a different hue, bedazzling her eyes. It was the street occupied by the city’s cloth dyers.

  The others had their tasks as well—and Lirith had been grateful for Durge’s display of good, solid, Embarran logic at the hostel. The death of a god was a completely incomprehensible thing, but treating it as if it were something mundane and usual, something that could be studied and understood, had removed the sense of paralysis that had bound them all. Maybe there was no point to it—maybe they would never truly understand the mystery at work here—but at least now it felt like they were doing something about it.

  So while Lirith had been charged with seeking out the guild of the goldsmiths, Durge was to accompany Aryn back to the narrower and more crowded streets of the Fifth Circle in order to speak to the priests of the god Geb. Lirith had thought it interesting that the Rat God’s temple was not in the Second Circle with the other holy houses, but rather in the district inhabited by the downtrodden folk who followed him. Perhaps Durge had been onto something; it was not likely many of the gods cared for Geb. It was his and Aryn’s mission to discover if the priests of Geb knew any reason why another might want their god destroyed. Lirith was to do the same with the goldsmiths.

  In turn, Melia and Falken had ascended toward the center of the city to request an audience with the emperor. It was not likely they would be granted entry, given Orsith’s words
earlier, but Melia had insisted.

  Ephesian cannot refuse us, she had said. Not now that a second god has been murdered. Is this how he wishes to begin the dynasty of his name, with such chaos in the city?

  All of them had stared at Melia as she spoke those words. Her cheeks had glowed hotly, and her eyes had seemed too bright, like beads of spun glass.

  At last Falken had laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. Melia, it’s the nineteenth Ephesian in the dynasty we’re going to see, not the first.

  For a moment the small woman had gone rigid, her eyes staring but seeming not to see. Then she had frowned at Falken.

  I know that, she had snapped. Do you think I’m an idiot?

  Before anyone could say anything more, she had sailed through the door of their room. Falken had followed after her, but not before casting a worried look back at Lirith. Melia’s spells seemed to be increasing in frequency. But what did they mean? Why was Melia getting so caught up in the web of the past?

  And what about you, sister? Why can you not stop thinking of Corantha, and of dancing for Gulthas?

  The air was warm, and sweat beaded on her brow. Even her summer gown, tailored as it was for the cooler climes of the Dominions, was heavy and hot here. She wished she was dressed as those around her, in bright, loose, flowing fabric. She settled for unlacing her bodice partway; in the Dominions this might have been improper, but in Tarras she doubted anyone would notice.

  She almost passed through the Street of Flames without knowing it. Her throat had grown dry, and she was thinking of trying to find a vendor who sold iced wine. However, the lane she walked down was unusually empty, and its only decorations were dark cloths that draped the tops of marble columns at either end of the street.

  Just as she was leaving the street, a breeze—sharp with the scent of the ocean—rushed down the lane, momentarily lifting one of the black cloths and revealing what lay beneath: a curving, coiling shape carved of stone, gilded with gleaming gold.