Beneath Ceaseless Skies #165

by Therese Arkenberg

  “But perhaps you could lose a little more?” he said hopefully, with a tiny sweet smile.

  “We’ll see,” Semira promised. She had lost more than time this past year. It would be a treat to find some of it again. She could trade away sleep—yesterday she’d had all the sleep she could stomach.

  Once again to trading. Perhaps traveling with a wizard so long was making her think like one. But trade was the essence of sorcery—and sorcerous places, like Zandar.

  “For one last glimpse of home,” she said, “you gave it up forever.”

  To her surprise, Houriven laughed. And his laughter was like flying to the music: rich, clear, utterly free. “I’m afraid the old ‘Polis isn’t home to me anymore. Here in Simrandu, it’s all of us together, and it’s beautiful, and it fits me better than anything else I’ve ever known. Here in exile—this is home to me, now.”

  They rounded each other with short quick steps, nearly skipping, then circled back in reverse. It gave Semira time to muse, to chase the thought nagging her. A quiet portion of the music, at which Houriven gathered her close, gave her the chance to voice it. “But isn’t your true home always the one Zandar bars you from? If it’s here... how did you return?”

  Houriven smiled. Then he was smiling less and less. He opened his mouth to say something, as soon as the words would come to him.

  Except before they did, Aniver was at her side. “Semira. It’s time.”

  * * *

  They joined Melviater in a small round chamber in the lower reaches of the grand house. Tiles on the floor made a circle cut by the arms of a compass cross. She knelt at the edge of the circle with a black lacquered tray beside her. On it was a bowl of sweet-scented incense and a knife.

  Aniver strode past Semira when she hesitated in the doorway. She followed with a deep breath, noticing him take one of his own.

  “I must warn you,” Melviater said. “I have never done anything quite like this before.”

  “What a coincidence.” Aniver sat at the center of the circle. “Neither have I.”

  She chuckled. Semira’s mouth was too dry to speak, and in a moment of absurdity, she hoped this wouldn’t lead them to assume she had prior experience with... whatever this was.

  “Are you joining, then?” Melivater asked her. Semira nodded.

  “You can start by putting on one of these.” Melviater tossed her a mass of saffron-colored cloth which turned out to be a full pleated smock like the one she was wearing. “No sense ruining your nice clothes.”

  Aniver began to roll back the cuffs of his shirt. He watched Melviater fan the incense smoke and adjust the placement of the knife. Semira, stomach churning, drew the smock over her head.

  Aniver gestured for her to sit beside him. The gesture was less commanding—he had no power to command her, regardless—than nervous, shy. He wanted her here for this. She knelt over the circle’s border, hoping that her placement wouldn’t mar the spell.

  Melviater seemed unbothered by it. “Are you both ready, then?”

  “Yes,” Aniver said, very steadily. Semira echoed him.

  “Good.” Her gaze flickered between them, bright and hard as the blade she reached for. She said to Semira, “Hold him.”

  Semira did, hesitantly at first. With a faint smile, he settled back against her. His head rested on her chest, and she combed back a lock of dark hair that sweat had pasted to his brow. He lay almost in her lap, holding out his bare wrists to Melviater’s knife.

  “So we go,” the sorceress murmured, and began to cut.

  * * *

  At first Aniver wondered by what sacrifice, what diminution of the soul, Melviater was guiding him. But it very quickly became clear that no true guidance was possible in this cold, chaotic vortex. Nor was it necessary—it took no skill or knowledge to find the Kingdom of the Dead.

  Bodily sensation lingered, a faint awareness of weakness and pain. It changed not so much in intensity as in quality while he fell: pain grew bittersweet, weakness icy. Sight vanished; he couldn’t even see darkness, if there were darkness here.

  And then it surrounded him. Relief, in his diminished state, felt as strong as his weakness, and his weakness was nearly as overpowering as his fear as he saw the roots of Her Tenebrous Throne.

  He grasped the roots, not with hands he no longer had at the ends of dripping, emptied wrists, but with power. Power that came from the soul, which was all he had left of himself anyway.

  The small gray four-toed feet resting on the Throne tapped against the shadows. He wondered if one would kick him away. When it didn’t happen, optimism, of a pale sort, enabled him to look up. The Throne’s arms ended in snarling heads, or barbaric weapons, or else only the shape of an unreal substance weathered by unimaginable forces, and on those arms rested slender gray limbs bearing delicate four-fingered hands. Above those... looking past Her face for the time being, Aniver stared at the spires that topped the Tenebrous Throne. The structure seemed organic, not in the sense of being alive but in the fact that it couldn’t possibly have been constructed. It had grown or perhaps formed around the shape of the Queen, who sat here at the edge of Her kingdom.

  Kahzakutri. He’d spoken the name often enough back in the living world where it was inauspicious; nothing more terrible could happen here, but now he hesitated to voice it out of respect.

  Except that for a tattered soul with no mouth left, to imagine a name was good as to express it aloud.

  “Yes,” She said—did She have some sort of body, flesh to cloak Her mind in, or had She been thinking at all Herself before now? “And you are Aniver of Nurathaipolis-That-Was, come to discuss that very matter with me. Cities lost to Time. To my Time, you suspect.

  “I know everything the dead know,” She continued, in a voice high and clear but so dry it hurt to hear. It might have deafened living ears. Aniver’s ears were not living anymore. His knowledge was Her own.

  Was there any point in dialogue then?

  The question was his, but She shifted on Her Throne with a hum as if of amusement. “The problem is, in seeking the return of your Cities, you mean to appeal to my generosity. I have none.”

  He was speaking to the Ultimate Queen; he was in Her very presence. The fact struck him but did not seem to affect him—after all, meeting Her here seemed the most natural thing in the world. Also, he no longer seemed capable of awe or terror or surprise. These things were washed out of him. The Throne, he could see now, rested on the icy bank of the River Unmaking and perhaps was formed of its ice as well: not clear, black, or white, only absence—of light, of darkness too. Aniver would have felt an absence also, if She had not been speaking to him.

  So that was the point of dialogue. To make him real enough to be capable of it. Recursive, but still more logical than he had any right to expect in the Kingdom of the Dead.

  And he replied to Kahzakutri: “Why not?”

  Speaking took a surge of power, falling through the bits of him which were not hands but which dared to grip the Tenebrous Throne. The words themselves were struck upon by luck or instinct. Yet why not? Why should she not be generous?

  “And, if not generosity, Majesty—” he continued with the burst of inspiration— “what of justice? Is it right that five cities should, through accident, be wiped from the face of the earth too soon?”

  “Many die young.”

  “This was not death, Your Majesty.” She of all beings must have known that. Aniver gathered his courage and faced Her, although he was no longer sure his fading form had a face. “It was, at best, a parody—one that should concern you, trespassing as it does on your domain.”

  “My domain is everywhere. It includes even would-be trespassers.” She smiled down at him. “It is unavoidable, in any case, that the Polean Cities should fall into decay. What difference do a few centuries make?”

  She seemed genuinely curious. Genuinely ignorant, he thought with desperate hope. There were things She did not understand—gaps in Her omniscience, and perhaps H
er omnipotence, too.

  He reached for another argument. “You speak of what is inevitable, what is natural. But for us, Your Majesty, what happened to our cities was anything but natural... In exile, we are like the dead still living.”

  That rhetorical flourish was a mistake, he realized as She laughed. “I’ve never seen such lively corpses as the ones dancing in Simrandu.”

  “But not all of us.” She’d seen the dancers through his eyes; She knew his inner experience. He drew Her attention to it. “After all, Your Majesty, the spell I use to be here is fueled by something.”

  “Oh?” Her hollow, cold gaze settled on him, peering deep. Past the surface—he didn’t know the nature of Melviater’s sacrifice, and so She couldn’t either—and past the simple surrender to fate’s gravity that had brought him here in the simplest sense. To the mooring line wrapped tight around what was not Aniver’s flesh and was too dead to be his soul: the sorcerous construct that met Melviater’s work halfway, that made this a meeting only and not his final journey. That made this an argument, not a surrender.

  Kahzakutri touched the tether, and a jolt of terror shot through him at the thought that She might sever it. But She wouldn’t, or couldn’t. “Ah,” She said and released it, examination complete.

  “Grief,” She said.

  “More than that, Majesty.”

  “Fear. Anger. Confusion—and frustration at your confusion.” Her lips twitched like worms. “Helplessness. So much helplessness—it took a subtle touch to turn that into power.”

  He wasn’t sure how to acknowledge a compliment from the Queen of the Dead. But he had Her interest once again. “That’s what I felt—the mark left on my soul—after awakening to find Nurathaipolis lost.”

  “And you’ve been storing it up all this time?”

  “I never intended to use it.” But he had spent so much else on his journey... it was the last essence of any power he had left. “Is that not like death, Your Majesty?”

  She tipped her head, ravenlike, about to peck.

  “I’ve faced death since—danger, and fear so strong I felt certain doom must follow... The similarity is striking.”

  In Arisbat, he and Semira had discovered the old legend: that facing death, the terror and awe and deep-cutting grief of it, was the source of the power that turned Kahzakutri from a mortal woman into the Queen.

  It was not dying itself that had transformed Her. Death could only make a being lesser. And everything living could die. The magic stemmed from knowledge—

  “You’re not dead,” he said—or his soul exclaimed; there was no difference.

  “I’m sorry?” She asked almost archly.

  “You transcended at the moment of dying—not after death. Though you may rule the dead, Your Majesty, you’re not one of them.”

  “What difference does it make?” She was not indifferent—She was curious. More proof of his dawning realization.

  “Because the dead care for nothing; are concerned for nothing. Being indifferent, they are not generous. But you aren’t showing indifference—ennui, certainly, but not indifference.”

  “Are you about to accuse me of—”

  “The dead wouldn’t ask so many questions.” Aniver’s very essence grinned. “You’re a dying woman, Kahzakutri. And I know—”

  The dead did not become angry. The dying did, quite easily.

  He should have considered that.

  She rose from the Tenebrous Throne and kicked him back.

  “You go too far, Aniver of Nurathaipolis-That-Was. No surprise, I’m sure—you do it often enough. But never before like this.”

  He didn’t cower. It would have been wise to, but he was too transfixed to move.

  “You will get out of my sight,” She said. “There is plenty of obnoxiousness among the dead without you adding to it. And I believe I’ll be spared your presence in the future. Because surely you, so clever, know what becomes of wizards when they go too far.”

  The tether binding him tightened. A faint shock traveled down it, from such a great distance that feeling it at all testified to the extreme sensation at its far end. Melviater. She wasn’t pulling Aniver back, though, at least not on her own—she felt him being forced away.

  Kahzakutri’s deafening voice followed him even as She expelled him from Her kingdom.

  “You throw your magic into this stupid quest. You fuel that magic with everything you have. Already you’ve given things you never planned to give—the most precious fragments of yourself. And you are not made of infinite fragments. The dead that come to me are only the unused remnants of souls.

  “If you come again, come to me by walking West. You’ll need yourself in person as well as your shade. You’ll need it all. And when you’re through, when you’ve done your utmost to bring Nurathaipolis back—and when you’ve paid the cost of it—I don’t think there’s a bit of you that won’t have been used up, Aniver.

  “It will unmake you as surely as if you swam in my river. I may perpetually be dying, but you will forever be even more nothing than the dead.” She laughed—but in the echo of Her laughter was a sigh.

  Or so Aniver thought. Perhaps he was listening too closely. But Kahzakutri’s threat, or warning, grew ever fainter, and then his soul—what was left of it—touched against Melviater’s with a snap. The tether had drawn him home, where he really was dying.

  * * *

  Semira couldn’t tell if he was breathing anymore.

  For the past half-hour Aniver’s chest had risen ever more shallowly, and when she touched his face and neck the skin was cold. Melviater looked up from wrapping bandages around his slashed wrists. No blood soaked through the cloth; there wasn’t enough left.

  They knelt over Semira’s bloodstained smock skirts, in absolute stillness. Then Aniver’s heels knocked against the floor. As the tremor passed through him, his mouth gaped for air.

  Melviater leapt forward, grasped Semira’s hand and pressed it to Aniver’s chest. Something passed through the two of them to him, and Aniver’s white skin flushed at the point of contact. For her own part, Semira felt drained.

  “I’m sorry,” Melviater said. “He needs more blood, and I’ve already given him as much as I can spare.”

  She was also paler than she ought to be, a stained-ivory shade instead of her usual healthier glow. The shadows beneath her eyes, in contrast, were inky.

  Anvier gasped for another breath and won it, a deep breath that pushed to the bottom of his chest. He was still clammy, but feeling warmer. Semira leaned close and whispered his name. No sign if he heard her.

  Melviater rose, calling hoarsely for her attendants. They came in from where they had waited in the hall, and together they carried Aniver upstairs to his room.

  One woman hung back, offering her arm to Melviater. Semira took Melviater’s other arm—partly to lend support, and partly for the comfort of a human touch. Without Aniver, she felt shaken and frighteningly lonely.

  She thought of Houriven but knew she’d have no time for that this night. A pity.

  “You should get some rest,” Melviater said, following her thoughts. “And take care.”

  “Thank you, I will. If someone could send me a bowl of oxblood tea—”

  “Not that.” Melviater waved a frail hand. “Not just that. Ah, Graces and shades, but I’m tired. Never—” she addressed her attendant, but perhaps Semira, too—”I will never again involve myself in these matters. Let the Polean Cities rot. They’re only stones. How are we to salvage anything if we expend ourselves... just as I have,” she finished ruefully.

  Semira didn’t know her well enough to tell if she meant what she said or was only relieving her nerves theatrically. Either would be understandable.

  “He can only do this for so long.” Melviater pinned Semira with a stare, and this she meant absolutely. “And after that? Will he expect you to go on in his stead, when he falters?”

  “I already have,” Semira said. “In Arisbat.”

  The
words hung between them.

  “Do not think we are untested.” Semira could not have explained further, and perhaps Melviater could not have understood.

  At last Melviater said, “May the gods help you,” although wizards were not known for their reverence of the gods. Leaning heavily on her attendant, she departed.

  As soon as Semira made it to her room in the palace, she collapsed into bed. The very emptiness of her sleep was worse than nightmares. What Aniver had endured must have been even worse. Perhaps he would tell her someday, if she asked. If he ever woke to be asked about it. If the Queen was not jealous and his exhausted frame too weak. If he didn’t carry those secrets back to their source.

  * * *

  She went to his room as dawn grayed Simrandu’s hills. She knew he wouldn’t be awake yet—he’d taken a longer journey than the sun had this past night. But when he did awaken, she wanted to be near him.

  She wasn’t the only one. An older man, pale and a little stocky, sat beside the bed. As she drew near, Semira saw his fine fingers pleating the coverlet draping Aniver’s body.

  The attendants last night had undressed Aniver, bathed him, and left a tall carafe of water on the side table. There was also a small vial, no doubt from Simrandu’s physician.

  “How is he?” she asked the stranger.

  He didn’t startle, though she hadn’t thought he’d noticed her entrance. “Feverish.” He nodded to the vial. “Two drops in a full glass of water, when he wakes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m Endreidon.”

  “Semira.”

  They shook hands, and he stood. “You needn’t go,” she said.

  “No, it’s all right. I’m sure he’d rather see you, if—when—he wakes.”