He reached down to touch the first page, peeled it back, then the next, then the one after that. “But this is not possible—it is blank! Every page!”
“You see what you see, Leoman. Close the Book, give it to the Toblakai, now.”
The giant edged forward and crouched down, his massive, bloodstained hands accepting the Book. He did not hesitate.
A warm light bathed his face as he stared down at the first page. She saw tears fill his eyes and run crooked tracks down his scarred cheeks.
“Such beauty,” she whispered to him. “And beauty makes you weep. Do you know why you feel such sorrow? No, not yet. One day…Close the Book, Toblakai.
“Heboric—”
“No.”
Leoman slid a dagger free, but was stilled by Felisin’s hand.
“No,” the ex-priest repeated. “My touch—”
“Aye,” she said. “Your touch.”
“No.”
“You were tested before, Heboric, and you failed. Oh, how you failed. You fear you will fail again—”
“I do not, Felisin,” Heboric’s tone was sharp, certain. “That least of all. I shall not be part of this ritual, nor shall I risk laying hands on that cursed Book.”
“What matter if he opens the Book?” the Toblakai growled. “He’s as blind as an enkar’al. Let me kill him, Sha’ik Reborn. Let his blood seal this ritual.”
“Do it.”
The Toblakai moved in a blur, the wooden sword almost unseen as it slashed for Heboric’s head. Had it struck it would have shattered the old man’s skull, spraying bits of it for ten paces or more. Instead, Heboric’s hands flared, one the hue of dried blood, the other bestial and fur-backed. They shot up to intercept the swing, each closing on one of the giant’s wrists—and stopping the swing dead. The wooden sword flew out of the Toblakai’s hands, vanishing into the darkness beyond the Book’s pale glow.
The giant grunted in pain.
Heboric released the Toblakai’s wrists, grasped the giant by his neck and belt, then, in a surge, threw him out into the darkness. There was a thud as he struck and the clay trembled beneath their feet.
Heboric staggered back, his face twisted in shock, and the blazing rage that entwined his hands winked out.
“We could see, then,” Felisin told him. “Your hands. You were never forsaken, Heboric, no matter what the priests may have believed when they did what they did. You were simply being prepared.”
The old man fell to his knees.
“And so a man’s faith is born anew. Know this: Fener would never risk investing you and you alone, Heboric Light Touch. Think on that, and be at ease…”
Out in the darkness, the Toblakai groaned.
Felisin rose to her feet. “I shall have the Book now, Leoman. Come the dawn.” Felisin, surrendering herself yet again. Remade. Reborn. Is this the last time? Oh no, it most certainly is not.
With dawn an hour away, Icarium led the others to the edge of the warren. Hitching the stock of his crossbow on one hip, Fiddler handed Crokus the lantern, then glanced over at Mappo.
The Trell shrugged. “The barrier is opaque—nothing of what lies beyond is visible.”
“They know nothing of what is to come,” Iskaral Pust whispered. “An eternal flare of pain, but shall I waste words in an effort to prepare them? No, not at all, never. Words are too precious to be wasted, hence my coy silence while they hesitate in a fit of immobile ignorance.”
Fiddler gestured with the crossbow. “You go first, Pust.”
The High Priest gaped. “Me?” he squealed. “Are you mad?” He ducked his head. “They are deceived again, even that gnarled excuse for a soldier—oh, this is too easy!”
Hissing, Crokus stepped forward, raising the lantern high, then strode through the barrier, vanishing from the others. Icarium immediately followed.
With a growl, Fiddler gestured Iskaral Pust forward.
As the two disappeared, Mappo swung to Apsalar and her father. “You two have been through once before,” he said. “The warren’s aura clings to you both.”
Rellock nodded. “The false trail. We had to make sure of the D’ivers and Soletaken.”
The Trell swung his gaze to Apsalar. “What warren is this?”
“I don’t know. It has indeed been torn apart. There is little hope of determining its nature given the state it’s now in. And my memories tell me nothing of such a warren so destroyed.”
Mappo sighed, rolling his shoulders to ease the tension binding his muscles. “Ah, well, why assume that the Elder Warrens we know of—Tellann, Omtose Phellack, Kurald Galain—are the only ones that existed?”
The barrier was marked by a change in air pressure. Mappo swallowed and felt his ears pop. He blinked, his senses struggling to manage the flood that rushed upon them. The Trell stood with the others in a forest of towering trees, a mix of spruce, cedar and redwood all thickly braided in moss. Blue-tinged sunlight filtered down. The air smelled of decaying vegetation and insects buzzed. The scene’s ethereal beauty descended on Mappo like a cooling balm.
“Don’t know what I was expecting,” Fiddler muttered, “but it wasn’t this.”
A large dolomite boulder, taller than Icarium, rose from the mulch directly ahead. Sunlight bathed it in pale green, lifting into view the shadows of grooves, pits and other shapes carved into its surface.
“The sun never moves,” Apsalar said beside the Trell. “The light is ever at that angle, the only angle that raises those carvings to our eyes.”
The base and sides of the boulder were a mass of hand and paw prints, every one the color of blood.
The Path of Hands. Mappo turned to Iskaral Pust. “More of your deceit, High Priest?”
“A lone boulder in a forest? Free of lichen and moss, bleached by another world’s harsh sun? The Trell is dense beyond belief, but listen to this!” He offered Mappo a wide smile. “Absolutely not! How could I move such an edifice? And look at those ancient carvings, those pits and whorls, how could such things be faked?”
Icarium had walked up to stand before the boulder. He followed the wending track of one of the grooves. “No, these are real enough. Yet they are Tellann, the kind you would find at a site sacred to the T’lan Imass—the boulder typically surmounting a hilltop on a tundra or plain. I would not expect, of course, that the D’ivers and Soletaken could be aware of such an incongruity—”
“Of course not!” Iskaral burst out, then he frowned at the Jhag. “Why do you stop?”
“How could I otherwise? You interrupted me—”
“A lie! But no, I must stuff my outrage into a bag, a bag such as the curious sack the Trell carries—such a curious sack, that! Is there another fragment trapped within it? The possibility is…possible. A likely likelihood, indeed, a certain certainty! I need but turn this ingenuous smile on the Jhag to show my benign patience at his foul insult, for I am a bigger man than he, oh yes. All his airs, his posturing, his poorly disguised asides—hark!” Iskaral Pust spun around, squinted into the forest beyond the boulder.
“Do you hear something, High Priest?” Icarium asked calmly.
“Hear, here?” Pust scowled. “Why ask me that?”
Mappo asked Apsalar, “How far into this wood have you gone?”
She shook her head. Not far.
“I’ll take point,” Fiddler said. “Straight ahead, I take it, past this rock?”
There were no alternative suggestions.
They set off, Fiddler ranging ahead, crossbow readied at hip-level, a Moranth quarrel set in the groove. Icarium followed, his bow still strapped on his back, sword sheathed. Pust, Apsalar and her father were next, with Crokus a few paces ahead of Mappo, who was the column’s rearguard.
Mappo could not be sure of matching the Jhag’s speed in responding to a threat, so he removed the bone mace from his sack. Do I in truth carry a fragment of this warren within this tattered ruck? How fare my hapless victims, then? Perhaps I have sent them to paradise—a thought to ease my conscie
nce…
The Trell had traveled old forests before and this one was little different. The sounds of birds were few and far between, and apart from insects and the trees and plants themselves, there was no other indication of life. It would be easy enough to lose grip on imagination’s reins in such a place, if one were so inclined, to fashion a brooding presence from the primeval atmosphere. A place to ravel dark legends, to make us no more than children shivering to fraught tales…bah, what nonsense! The only brooding thing here is me.
The roots were thick underfoot, a latticework revealing itself here and there through the humus, spreading out to bridge the gap between every tree. The air grew cooler as they journeyed on, abandoning its rich smells, and it eventually became apparent that the trees were thinning out, the spaces between them stretching from a few paces to half a dozen, then a dozen. Yet still the knotted roots remained thickly woven on the ground—too many to be explained by the forest itself. The sight of them triggered hints of a vaguely disturbing memory in Mappo, yet he could not track it down.
They could now see five hundred paces ahead, a vista of sentinel boles and damp air tinted blue under the strange sun’s spectral light. Nothing moved. No one spoke, and the only sound was their breathing, the rustle of clothing and armor, and the tread of their feet on the endless mat of entwined tree roots.
An hour later they reached the outer edge of the forest. Beyond it lay a dark, rolling plain.
Fiddler drew the company to a halt. “Any thoughts on this?” he asked, staring out over the bare, undulating landscape that lay ahead.
The ground before them was a solid weave, a riotous twisting of serpentine roots that stretched off into the distance.
Icarium crouched and laid a hand on one thick, coiled span of wood. He closed his eyes, then nodded. The Jhag straightened. “The Azath,” he said.
“Tremorlor,” Fiddler muttered.
“I have never seen an Azath manifest itself in this way,” Mappo said. No, not an Azath, but I have seen staves of wood…
“I have,” Crokus said. “In Darujhistan. The Azath House there grew from the ground, like the stump of a tree. I saw it with my own eyes. It rose to contain a Jaghut’s Finnest.”
Mappo studied the youth for a long moment, then he turned to the Jhag. “What else did you sense, Icarium?”
“Resistance. Pain. The Azath is under siege. This fragmented warren seeks to pull free of the House’s grip. And now, an added threat…”
“The Soletaken and D’ivers.”
“Tremorlor is…aware…of those who seek it.”
Iskaral Pust cackled, then ducked at a glare from Crokus.
“Including us, I take it,” Fiddler said.
Icarium nodded. “Aye.”
“And it means to defend itself,” the Trell said.
“If it can.”
Mappo scratched his jaw. The responses of a living entity.
“We should stop here,” Fiddler said. “Get some sleep—”
“Oh no, you mustn’t!” Iskaral Pust said. “Urgency!”
“Whatever lies ahead,” the sapper growled, “can wait. If we’re not rested—”
“I agree with Fiddler,” Icarium said. “A few hours…”
The camp was haphazard, bedrolls set out in silence, a scant meal shared. Mappo watched the others settling down until only he and Rellock remained awake. The Trell joined the old man as he prepared his own bedding.
Mappo spoke in a low voice, “Why did you obey Iskaral’s commands, Rellock? To draw your daughter to this place…into these circumstances…”
The fisherman grimaced, visibly struggling toward a reply. “I was gifted, sir, with this here arm. Our lives were spared—”
“As you said before, and you were delivered to Iskaral. To a fortress in a desert. Where you were made to draw your only child into danger…I am sorry if I offend, Rellock. I seek only to understand.”
“She ain’t what she was. Not my little girl. No.” He hesitated, hands twitching where they rested on the bedroll. “No,” he repeated, “what’s done is done, and there’s no going back.” He looked up. “Got to make the best of how things are. My girl knows things…” He glanced away, eyes narrowing as he stared at something only he could see. “Terrible things. But, well, there’s a child still there—I can see it. All that she knows…Well—” he fixed Mappo with a glare—“knowing ain’t enough. It ain’t enough.” He scowled, then shook his head and looked away. “I can’t explain—”
“I am following you so far.”
With a sigh, Rellock resumed, “She needs reasons. Reasons for everything. It’s my feeling, anyway. I’m her father, and I say she’s got more learning to do. It’s no different from being out on the water—you learn no place safe. Not real learning. No place safe, Trell.” Shaking himself, he rose. “Now you gone and made my head ache.”
“Forgive me,” Mappo said.
“If I’m lucky, she might do that for me one day.”
The Trell watched him finish laying out the bedroll. Mappo rose and headed to where he’d left his sack. “We learn no place safe.” Whatever sea god looks down on you, old man, must surely fix an eye on his lost child now.
Muffled in his bedrolls, unable to sleep, Mappo heard movement behind him, then Icarium’s low voice.
“Best get back to sleep, lass.”
The Trell heard wry amusement in her reply. “We’re much alike, you and I.”
“How so?” Icarium asked.
She sighed. “We each have our protectors—neither of whom is capable of protecting us. Especially not from ourselves. So they’re dragged along, helpless, ever watchful, but so very helpless.”
Icarium’s reply was measured and toneless. “Mappo is a companion to me, a friend. Rellock is your father. I understand his notion of protection—what else is a father to do? But it is a different thing, Mappo and me.”
“Is it now?”
Mappo held his breath, ready to rise, to close this conversation now—
Apsalar continued after a moment. “Perhaps you are right, Icarium. We are less alike than it first seemed. Tell me, what will you do with your memories once you find them?”
The Trell’s silent relief was but momentary. Yet now he did not struggle with an urge to intervene; rather, he held himself very still, waiting to hear the reply to a question he had never dared ask Icarium.
“Your question…startles me, Apsalar. What do you do with yours?”
“They are not mine—most of them, anyway. I have a handful of images from my life as a fishergirl. Bargaining in a market for twine. Holding my father’s hand over a cairn where cut flowers lay scattered on the weathered stones, a feel of lichen where once I touched skin. Loss, bewilderment—I must have been very young.
“Other memories belong to a wax witch, an old woman who sought to protect me during Cotillion’s possession. She’d lost a husband, children, all sacrificed to Imperial glory. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that bitterness would overwhelm all else within such a woman? But not so. Helpless to protect her loved ones, her instincts—so long bottled up—embraced me instead. And do so to this day, Icarium…”
“An extraordinary gift, lass…”
“Indeed. Finally, my last set of borrowed memories—the most confusing of all. An assassin’s. Once mortal, then Ascendant. Assassins bow to the altar of efficiency, Icarium, and efficiency is brutal. It sacrifices mortal lives without a second thought, all for whatever is perceived as the greater need. At least it was so in the case of Dancer, who did not kill for coin, but for a cause that was less self-aggrandizing than you might think. In his mind, he was a man who fixed things. He viewed himself as honorable. A man of integrity, was Dancer. But efficiency is a cold-blooded master. And there’s a final irony. A part of him, in defiance of his need to seek vengeance upon Laseen, actually…sympathizes. After all, she bowed to what she perceived as a greater need—one of Empire—and chose to sacrifice two men she called friends to answer that need.”
“Within you, then, is chaos.”
“Aye, Icarium. Such are memories in full flood. We are not simple creatures. You dream that with memories will come knowledge, and from knowledge, understanding. But for every answer you find, a thousand new questions arise. All that we were has led us to where we are, but tells us little of where we’re going. Memories are a weight you can never shrug off.”
A stubborn tone was evident as Icarium muttered, “A burden I would accept nonetheless.”
“Let me offer some advice. Do not say that to Mappo, unless you wish to further break his heart.”
The Trell’s blood was a thunder coursing through him, his chest aching with a breath held overlong.
“I do not understand,” Icarium said quietly after a time, “but I would never do that, lass.”
Mappo let the air loose, slowly, struggling to control himself. He felt tears run crooked tracks from the corners of his eyes.
“I do not understand.” This time, the words were a whisper.
“Yet you wish to.”
There was no reply to that. A minute passed, then there came to Mappo sounds of movement. “Here, Icarium,” Apsalar said, “dry those eyes. Jhag never weep.”
Sleep eluded Mappo and, he suspected, there were others among the group for whom rest offered no surcease from tortured thoughts. Only Iskaral Pust seemed at ease, if his groaning snores were any indication.
Before long, Mappo heard the sounds of movement once again, and Icarium spoke in a calm, measured voice. “It is time.”
They broke camp swiftly. Mappo was still drawing the ties of his sack when Fiddler set out, a soldier approaching a battlefield, cautious yet determined. The High Priest of Shadow bounded after him. As Icarium prepared to follow, Mappo reached out and gripped the Jhag’s arm.
“My friend, Azath Houses seek to imprison all who posses power—do you fathom what you risk?”
Icarium smiled. “Not just me, Mappo. You ever underestimate yourself, what you have become after all these centuries. We must trust in the Azath understanding that we mean no harm, if we intend to continue onward.”
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