A Lady in Crystal

by Toby Bennett

  Chapter 19:

  “At roads end now with no sound of thunder;

  Just the senseless falling of the rain

  Each step seemed another blunder;

  Now I stop to weigh my pain.”

  The journey through the palace sewers was no less dark or foetid than Akna remembered but this time he’d been able to avail himself of a lantern and the noise and light of two travellers was enough to keep back any of the forgotten things that dwelt in the dankness and the filth of the pipes and passages that they crept through. This time, instead of trying to make his way back up into the Asylum, Akna followed the natural curve of the pipes down towards the city and the lake beyond. Neither Ilsar nor Akna noticed the small silver wasp that followed them until they began to climb back to the surface.

  It took the best part of a cycle to clear the Asylum and find an exit outside of the Asylum’s wide walls. Akna hesitated a while before the rusted grating, by now the thin streams of foul water, trickling from the sewerage systems above, were little more than distractions and inconveniences but the cleaner air wafting through the heavy grating made Ilsar recoil at the stench around her.

  “What are we waiting for? Or are you enjoying the atmosphere?”

  “I’m not sure but I think there’s someone out there.”

  Ilsar peered past him into the barely lit darkness, surrounding the outlet. The pipe ran under the road that led to the Downs and the water was being channelled off into one of the canals somewhere below. Old garbage and empty crates adorned the ground that sloped up to the road above them and a sheer drop was on their left. Ilsar struggled to remember what she could of the city outside the Asylum.

  “We must be close to the Shades district?”

  “I think so,” Akna confirmed.

  “That would be the Ghosts' and Old King’s,” Ilsar said, pointing out past the lip of stone to their left to the unlit hill and abandoned buildings beyond that.

  “Yes though with any luck we won’t have to actually get closer than that. I chose this route because the area is relatively uninhabited, we shouldn’t be noticed here.”

  “But you noticed someone out there?”

  “I can’t be sure, there isn’t much light here. I just get the feeling that we are being watched.”

  “You think we should try the tunnels again, just to be safe?”

  “Not unless we have to, we were lucky not to have encountered anything in here.”

  “I’m amazed anything would actually want to live down here.”

  “But given the pickings, I’m sure that you can imagine whatever is in here with us, being mad and hungry. We’d almost be safer in the ghosts than back in the tunnels. By now the fire will have died down and the priests will have had time to summon any number of monsters to hunt us down.”

  “So there’s no going back. No point in hesitation.”

  Akna chuckled at that,

  “You’re right of course, I’m not used to caring whether I survive the risks I take.”

  “I could go first if you like.”

  “No, if they have somehow tracked us here, they may only be looking for me. Just be ready to surprise them with that crossbow, if the need arises.”

  Akna took a grip on the rusted bars and pushed the grating forward, when it didn’t move, he threw his entire weight against the old bars and the whole thing toppled forward in an explosion of damp rust. The metal frame rang and clattered, as it pitched down onto the stones that channelled the water off the side of the hill. Akna cursed silently at the noise and scanned the gloom around him for any sign of the watchers he still instinctively felt around him. He took a few more steps out of the tunnel and was about to signal Ilsar that it was safe to light a lantern when a voice sounded from the road above him.

  “More noise than I would have expected from you,” the familiar voice said, in amused disapproval

  “What do you want Gilash?” Akna no longer doubted that there were watchers around him, he was only alive because it suited the Patriarch of House Asemutt and there could be only one explanation for that. Akna’s hand went to the pouch at his belt where he had put what was left of Takiaza’s soul stone.

  “Shall we play the game and pretend that you don’t know?”

  “If it keeps me alive longer, I’ll play any number of games.”

  “It’s good to see that you are finally putting some value on your life. Why should I want you dead? Especially after you have rendered me such service?”

  Akna had pinpointed the spot where his old master must be standing by now but it seemed that the shadows in that area had coalesced, so as to make it impossible for him to target the speaker. Even if he closed his eyes and tried to use his ears to locate Gilash, Akna found that there was something interfering with his senses. It was rare sorcery that could allow someone to mask themselves so completely and Akan supposed that he should take it as a compliment that his old master rated him highly enough to employ such methods, rather than declaring himself openly. The patriarch must be well guarded, so it said something that he was not prepared to risk an open confrontation with a single man.

  “I could not have imagined that you would have met with such success,” Gilash’s slightly distorted voice seemed to be coming from behind him now, “I could almost call it a final success. Three years late but you accomplished the task I set you. I’d call it perfect but I’ll need to make a lot of repairs, before I can install someone new into the palace.”

  “I’m sure that you are sensitive enough to the veil to know that I had little choice but to act quickly.”

  “I felt it sure enough, I could almost believe your talk of daemons. Almost, but there was something else behind it, though.”

  “I know what you would prefer to believe.”

  “Takiaza is an old soul, by this time his influence beyond the veil must be truly awesome, I don’t need to frighten myself with tales of long gone monsters.”

  “Believe as you like, it doesn’t matter.”

  “I quite agree, whatever ritual Lothar was trying to enact was stopped. The only thing that does matter is that the stone he used to call up such forces is not lost to our Order.”

  “Our Order?”

  “You are still Asemutt, your mission is complete, why would I deny you now?”

  “Because I am maimed and unable to even cross the veil. Because I am the man, who killed the last Cardinal and you would never dirty your own hands.”

  “I could still offer you your life.”

  “Not even that, I know too much. The only reason you stay your hand now is that you are not quite sure that I could have achieved all this alone.”

  “I know you didn’t, you think I could have found you and not known that you were not alone.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Akna caught sight of Ilsar, flush against the sewer exit, peering into the darkness.

  Then you did not observe us long enough to know which of us has the stone or know whether we didn’t hide it somewhere in the sewers.” Akna guessed

  “If you did hide it, you know I’ll find it eventually Why not just tell me now and save us all the trouble?”

  “The moment you put hands on that stone, you’ll kill both of us. Why would I tell you what you want to know?”

  “You of all people can answer that question Akna. You think you could go through a second reckoning? I’d tear out what little Lothar left behind. Even if you won’t believe my promise of life, you should value the opportunity for a quick death.”

  “What if I told you we do not have the stone? For all you know it might have been destroyed.”

  Gilash laughed.

  “Do you know what that stone was? It is no common crystal that can hold a man’s essence intact for so many centuries. Takiaza owned a daemon stone.”

  Akna searched his memory for any mention of such a thing but he found little more than vague allusions.

  “I am not surprised that you know little of such things, those ston
es were gifts given directly to the faithful by the greatest daemon’s. Legend has it that Takiaza’s stone was given by Niskaan himself and that it contained far more than one priest’s soul. It is even whispered that it sustained the old Hierophants for hundreds of years beyond their natural spans. If you claim that you have no knowledge of the stone, I’ll have to make sure of the truth of your statement the only way I can. Take my word, Akna, the best chance you have is to give me what I want.”

  “Death or painful death, not much of a choice.”

  “These are the realities that we all live with. What is your answer?”

  “I’d sooner take a running jump off a cliff.” Akna answered, throwing himself backwards in a roll that took him over the lip of the stone drop off behind him and out into the gaping drop down to the canal below. Only the sound of splashing water told Akna anything of the pool beneath him. The thin trickle resounded off of smooth stones, which he could not yet see and the lights from the houses further down the hill seemed to blur and spin through the tears at the corners of his stinging eyes. There was no way to tell if he was falling towards a few inches of water or a pool that might save his life. If I die go back. He thought at Ilsar as hard as he could, he was not sure if their bond could transfer such a specific message but the assassin was experienced, she would know if he died, the sewer would be her only option. Akna told himself that he had bought her time, then the water hit him with bruising impact and closed over his head, cutting him off from the sound of the wind and the yells of the men on the road above. There was enough water, barely. He hit the stony bottom of the canal hard but the quick current pulled him along the slick channel, before tossing him back up into the chill air.

  Akna turned himself in the stream, as a surge of panic from Ilsar and a blur of movement from above told him that she had replicated his reckless dive. He heard her yelp as a bolt threw her off balance and struggled against the current that threatened to bear him further away from his wounded companion. Ilsar eventually surfaced a few meters away from him but her ominous stillness and the bolt jutting from her shoulder made him fear the worst. Akna knew that he would feel it if Ilsar died, which allowed him to hold onto hope as he thrashed his way towards her and positioned himself to keep her head out of the water. Her breathing was strong and her eyes fluttered briefly as he got his arms around her. Akna felt relief surge through him as the heavy satchel Ilsar had been carrying brushed his leg. He felt beneath him but he could not find the bottom of the canal any more and it took a concerted effort just to keep both their heads above water.

  The waterways of Niskar are twisting and strange, the legends told of ancient devices, which brought forth the water needed to keep the Asylum alive and pumped the dark waters through pipes, running beneath the hill. Some claimed that the deepest pipes drew water from Niskul, a feat of engineering that modern artisans would have struggled to recreate, while others even speculated that the water came from beyond the veil itself. Those of a mind to tell stories, said that once the great bowl that held the waters of Niskul had been a great plain and that it was the waters summoned by the priests which had filled it and caused the annual flooding, so feared by those in the low quarters. The story tellers said that the things living in the waters of Niskul were proof that those waters could have no earthly source and that only strange magics could be their true fountain head. Akna knew that there were many fountains and springs in the Asylum and he would not be surprised if some of the stories were true. Whatever their origins, the waters that flowed from the Asylum were quickly diverted by the canals running through the low districts and channelled away from the vital parts of the city into the older districts that had been long since abandoned, where whatever nightmares the waters carried flourished beyond the light of the city and the temple that spawned them. The Ghosts had once been home to the city's aristocracy, but now the current was dragging them towards a blighted ruin. Akna did not dare stop or even try to slow his progress for fear of pursuit and the Ghosts loomed larger ahead of them. The Ghosts, a place where nightmares and old spirits seemed to thrive and multiply endlessly in the fecund shadows of a history, so bloody that it had been all but wiped from the city’s long memory. If the eternal light of Niskaan’s Asylum cast a shadow, then it was on the Ghosts.

  Once, Niskar’s second highest hill had in fact been its heart, then the priests had thrown down the old aristocracy and left the palaces of kings bloody and hollow but they had not been able to expunge their curse. Niskar did not expand much as a rule but in the rare times when the lower districts were overcrowded and the Asylum was so fat with dreams that they were turning pilgrims away, no lamps were lit on the roads that led towards Crown Hill. So long as they were not disturbed, the ghosts slumbered on and the citizens of Niskar kept their eyes on the glory of the well lit hill of the Asylum and tried to forget that the other hill had ever existed. None were fool enough to try to reclaim what the old kings and princes had made theirs with their resentful sacrifices.

  The old warnings replayed through Akna’s mind as the current carried them down and around the side of the Hill of the Sepulchre, sweeping them beyond the reach of the Asylum’s lights. The current bore them through the edges of the Shades, in the distance he could see the winking lights of the other district that bordered the no-man’s-land of the Ghosts, the ironically named Lords. Those who dwelt on the periphery of the haunted hill and the old palaces, still claimed links to the oldest and most noble families in the city and since the ascension of the priesthood, they had become the poorest and most desperate of the city's inhabitants. Akna did not for a moment believe that he would be beyond Gilash’s reach, surrounded by the wrenches that dwelt on the fringes of the city, so he let the current sweep them on, past the crumbled walls and overgrown pillars and into the shadow of Crown Hill, into the heart of the Ghosts. He could only hope that men with more to lose might hesitate to follow.

  ***

  Gilash was not alone in watching the two fugitives take their wild dive into the darkness. The thing that had once called itself Tara had been close, when the woman had made her escape from the sewer. The priests, packed around the exit, prevented Varkuz from following his quarry over the edge. Gilash in particular gave him pause, the assassin master had been enough of a threat when he had had Lothar to hide behind, Varkuz had little doubt that the Patriarch would overwhelm his new form if he sensed it. It would not be easy for Gilash, of course, Tara was not what she had once been. The meerbus had been easy to shape into something more suited to pursuing those who had wronged him and without the need to make any pretence at humanity, even the child’s flesh had twisted to his rage. Akna could not have guessed that the reason for his easy passage through the subterranean reaches of the Asylum had been in no small part, due to the monster that pursued them. Varkuz had finally assumed a form that would make short work of the assassin, when Gilash had come onto the scene.

  His claws had been inches from Ilsar all the time that the assassin and his master had talked, but Varkuz had sworn not to do harm to her, not directly, she was his after all, there would be time enough to punish her trespasses, when he had torn the assassin to bloody ribbons and regained the crystals that they carried. Venom poured from the foul swollen nodules on the side of his muzzle, while he considered the prospect of catching up with the thieves, who had ruined everything he had worked for. He looked down at the effluent covered claw and then out into the darkness where the priests milled and shouted. He might not have to kill Akna, either, he thought to himself, he’d need a new body soon, something suitable for rebuilding what he’d lost. Sharp teeth flashed in the gloom, it would be sweet to take the last shreds of the assassin’s soul and if the bitch was too ungrateful to be properly loyal to him, there would be sweet irony in making her serve again through the body of her new companion. The priests rushed back onto the road, intent on cutting off the fugitives before they left the Shades. Varkuz had no such worries, as soon as the priests had gone he scampered from th
e sewers and threw himself after his prey. The Shades or the Ghosts, it made little difference where they washed up he would find them and when he did, they would know every inch of the loss that he had been forced to endure.

  Chapter 20:

  “Sheathed in a skin, bound to the flesh,

  Cut to the bone by claws that thresh,

  Cry for a dream; a vision that leapt

  Out from the darkness, where all vision is swept”

  Ilsar came to as their bodies drifted into a soft bank of sand. Long years of neglect had left the original canal choked with debris and soil, the water still cut a quick channel through the barrier but the current invariably deposited its heavier loads in the slower moving shallows. It took Ilsar a while to realise that she had opened her eyes, even living in the City of Night, she had not known such darkness. The water had long since numbed her to any physical sensations and even the shudders that passed through Akna’s exhausted body beneath her did not register on any conscious level. It was the smell which told her she was awake, something subtly more rotten than the odour of the decomposing refuse, littering the soft earthen bank, something that made her blood feel colder than the water around her. She tried to move but her chilled muscles were slow to respond and the wound in her shoulder made grim protest. Ilsar did not know whether it was Akna or the current which had tugged the bolt free but she was sure that she had the cold water to thank for her life, if it had not slowed the bleeding, things might well have been a lot worse.

  Ilsar gritted her teeth and felt about her. Her crossbow was gone but the bag that she had kept the stones in was wedged between her body and Akna’s. At least the stones represented the hope of light. This place smells bad enough, sure you want to see it? A small voice within her asked. Ilsar paid the timid voice little heed, she was used to danger and had never let fear slow her. Something shifted in the pile of debris above her and she tensed, holding onto her next exhalation. As she waited for whatever was stalking her to betray itself again, she reached beneath her to draw forth one of the stones in the bag. If she were quick enough, she might be able to dazzle whatever was out there and buy herself a few seconds. More debris slid into the water, something shifted above her and slightly to the left. Ilsar slowly let out her breath and prepared herself to move, but Akna’s hand locked over her wrist before she could draw the crystal.