“Could you not just…” Ekko waggled his fingers in what was no doubt meant to be an esoteric gesture. Shar laughed while Hayden shook his head, a grin on his weathered face.
“Not an option,” Indris said. “Not here, Ekko. I’ll use the ahmsah to sense what’s out here, but I’ll only use it to weave disentropy if I’ve no other choice. We’ll have to rely on Hayden’s eyes and your nose and ears to follow our targets, I’m afraid.”
He looked out across the dappled patchwork of the Rōmarq, senses heightened as they always were here. The Rōmarq was flooded with the disentropy produced by all living things. Yet it was inconsistent. In some areas disentropy flowed with natural harmony, a vibrant corona that flowed around everything. There were other places where it spiked, like myriad geysers spouting energy into the air. In others, vortices spanned, shimmering gray-black whirlwinds of power. Wherever the disentropy flowed, it felt tainted, wrong.
People often forgot the Rōmarq had not always been a marsh. It had been a lush, fertile, beautiful land before Näsarat fa Amaranjin—the first mahjirahn—had sunk most of the Seethe nation of See-an-way beneath the Marble Sea. The Rōmarq was the lowlands nearby. While it had not sunk completely, it had been forever changed as the waters washed away most of what had been built there. For almost a century, the Avān had avoided it as uninhabitable, letting nature take hold over what older cultures had wrought. Yet in time the Avān, like the Seethe before them and the Rōm before them, had ultimately been drawn there by the abundant energies that made all manner of arcane science possible.
The barriers between the natural and supernatural worlds were weaker here. The Rōmarq had become a place conflicted, twisted, by the clash of impacted laws of existence. If Indris’s teachers were correct, it was the tampering of older cultures that had made it so.
At their height the Rōm had made the Weaveway, the anchored web of paths that crossed the ahmtesh, so a person could step from one place and arrive at the next, crossing between points in heartbeats. In time the Rōm had taught the Elemental Masters how to use the Weaveway. It had proved to be the beginning of the end.
In his last writings, during the great decline of the Rōm, Irth discussed the presence of slumbering, antediluvian beings long thought extinct, woken by the eddies of those who explored the fluid infinity of the ahmtesh. As these being had woken, stirred from their ancient places over the centuries, the depths of the ahmtesh had darkened like a hand stirring the sediment in a pond. The old saturnine shadows had called out to those of similar mind. Filled the holes in their hearts with dark dreams. Some, those of power and imagination and influence, had answered the call. The shadows had lengthened. More people had become Lost in the myriad pathways of dark desires, the promises of dreams to be fulfilled. Now those depths were the Drear: a place where one forgot all the good things about oneself and saw only the dark, bitter, melancholy that pooled in the most hidden depths of the soul. And the Rōmarq reeked of it.
Such knowledge weighed on Indris as he and the others waded across the river and climbed the shallow west bank. The grasses close to the river were shorter, softer than the razor-grass found farther in. As they progressed farther into the marsh, the trees around them grew more fragile. The foliage was not as thick, and the bark hung like peeling skin. Underfoot the ground was spongy, damp. Each of them walked in Hayden’s footsteps. First Ekko, whose whiskers twitched almost constantly. Then Indris, followed by Shar, with Omen last in line.
Night settled more firmly around them as the moon straddled the horizon. Up ahead the lantern light from Thufan’s group stopped. Hayden settled on his haunches to wait. Within a few minutes the orange haze of a campfire could be seen. Shortly after, the sounds of a viola and a kahi flute rose into the night sky in a rendition of a country reel.
“This near where you saw your king last?” the drover asked Ekko quietly. The sounds of the marshlands made it almost unnecessary to whisper. The kyok…kyok…kyok call of night herons rang clearly on the air. Giant rodents, kin to the Fenlings before they had been changed, scampered through the reeds and underbrush. The dry cough of a marsh devil came from nearby, as well as the high-pitched screech of the giant bats that haunted the Rōmarq.
“No, Hayden Goode,” Ekko replied. “We are further east and too far south.”
“Don’t worry.” Hayden’s eyes scanned the darkness about them. “We’ll find this uncle of yours and bring him back, safer than sleeping.”
“Can you be so sure?”
“I am if Indris is, and he wouldn’t have set foot in here if he didn’t think the job could get done.” Hayden rose to his feet to address the others. “Looks like we’re here for the night.”
Indris nodded. “No fires, so we eat cold. I’ll take first watch—”
“No need, Indris,” Omen fluted. “We Nomads need no sleep, and night makes as little difference to us as day. Why do you not all rest until morning?”
“Thanks, Omen. Much obliged.” Hayden touched his forelock, then started to unpack his bedroll. The others followed suit. Each took food from their baggage to share. Hard bread, dried fruit, cheese, cold meat. The portions were small, to Ekko’s obvious disappointment.
With his back to a fallen log, Indris allowed the symphony of the night to flow over him. Through slowly blinking, ever-heavier eyes he watched Omen, a pale statue against the stars. The eternal champion was little more than a silhouette.
Before he had died of a terrible wasting illness, Sassomon-Omen had been a celebrated philosopher and painter. Of course he had also been a warrior, though a duelist rather than a man of war. It had been considered admirable for somebody to be hamane. The High Avān word was subtle in its meaning, incorporating elements of being accomplished, determined, and learned. Another part meant classic. In truth there was no word outside of High Avān for what it was to be hamane. Other than perhaps to say true.
Like all Nomads, time had distanced Omen from his mortality. From what it meant to be alive, with all its virtues of sensation and taste, or pleasure or pain, of the moments that reminded mortals they were alive. One day Omen would lose what was left of his connection to the world around him. Indris already saw the signs. On that day a brilliant, beautiful mind would lose what little connected it with the modern world. Omen’s mind would forget why it had gone on as long as it had, what it meant to live. On that day he would simply stop, his soul locked in isolated contemplation.
On that day the world would be a poorer place. Yet it was not today, and for now, Omen’s presence gave Indris comfort enough to sleep in peace.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Too often our morality is based upon a multitude of factors of circumstance, rather than the singular factor of principle. How then can morality be consistent, how can it be a guide, if that which decides it is forever in flux?”—Sassomon-Omen, philosopher and artist to the Sussain, 27th Year of the Shrīanese Federation
Day 321 of the 495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation
Mari’s eyes lingered on Indris as he walked away. If things went awry, it might be the last time she ever saw him. She shrugged to herself in an attempt to lighten the ache in her chest.
“He’ll return, girl,” Femensetri opined. “Always does. He’s a hard one to kill, and, believe me, there’ve been plenty who’ve tried.”
Nehrun tried to rise from his chair and was once more set back down by Roshana’s firm grip on his wrist. “Try it again and I’ll break it. We’re not done with you, Nehrun.”
“You’re my sister!” he hissed. “I’m in command in Father’s absence. Let me go!”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’ll not sit here and be interrogated in front of her!” Nehrun thrust his chin in Mari’s direction. The muscles along his jaw clenched. “This is family business.”
Mari stretched out one leg under the table. She ground her booted toe into Nehrun’s groin. The Näsarat prince grunted in pain. “You made it my business when you became involved with my fath
er. Let’s not forget you waylaying me in the Astujarte. Or have you forgotten that little bump in the road?”
Rosha shook her head with disappointment.
Nehrun held his hands up in a gesture of self-defense. “The Great Houses of Näsarat and Erebus have been at war for—”
“Keep your tongue behind your teeth unless you’re answering my questions, boy.” Femensetri sipped at her drink, then spat it over the side with a grimace. Mari smiled. Femensetri took Nehrun’s drink, sipped, seemed content since she kept it. “And before you bleat about how you demand this, that, or the other, understand you’re in no position to demand a thing. You know me, know my reputation?”
Nehrun nodded nervously. Mari was sure she heard him swallow convulsively, even from across the table.
“Then you know I’ll kill you where you sit and there’s bugger all you, or anybody else, can do about it?” Again Nehrun nodded. “Then talk, boy, and hope you tell me enough that’s useful so I don’t find a reason to scorch the flesh from your bones. The best you can hope for now is incarceration.”
His voice faltered at first, as he choked on a combination of pride, guilt, and fear. He spoke of his years of disagreements with his father, whose progressive Federationist attitudes were in stark contrast to Nehrun’s Imperialism. How his reading of Corajidin’s insights in Our Destiny Made Manifest had changed Nehrun’s perceptions of both the Avān and Shrīan. Mari detected an undercurrent of resentment in Nehrun when he admitted he was the child of a monarch who had never actually been intended to be the rahn-elect of the Great House of Näsarat. She was surprised to learn it was Delaram, Indris’s mother, who had been rahn-elect until she had taken her place with the Sēq Order of Scholars. Ariskander had been chosen after his brilliant elder sister had made herself unavailable.
Nehrun had traveled in different orbits than the rest of his family. Through his friends from university, as well as the various clubs and associations of the privileged he belonged to, Nehrun fell into the company of like-minded women and men. And into the habits of gambling, drinking, smoking, and courtesans. In the parlors of wealthy political reformists and half-baked philosophers, the high-minded discussed how a world could be remade over snifters of mulberry brandy kissed by clouds of pipe smoke.
“I didn’t know it was Yashamin who was buying information…at first,” Nehrun said, his gaze distant. Rosha’s glare was sharp as a chisel, her hand trembling around the hilt of her long-knife. “Though I hated Corajidin, still do, I couldn’t disagree with his perspective. Father’s insistence on protecting Far-ad-din and his nest of freethinkers and foreigners in Amnon was…misguided. Far-ad-din needed to be removed from power, or else the Seethe were going to be in a position to rebuild an empire of their own.”
“You were lied to, boy,” Femensetri countered. “Many of us argued against coming to Amnon in force, yet Corajidin had bought the vote and neither the Asrahn nor the Speaker for the People could do much to fight it.”
“Be that as it may, my father had outlived Shrīan’s need for him,” Nehrun insisted. “Though we were enemies, Corajidin and I agreed on where we thought Shrīan needed to change. That the Teshri could be manipulated showed us how weak it is. We need a single monarch to govern Shrīan, and it’s possible it could’ve been me. After all, aren’t the Näsarat, the Great House of the Phoenix, descended from the blood of emperors? The Empress-in-Shadows in Mediin is herself a Näsarat.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Rosha breathed. “Do you mean to say you thought you’d be Mahj?”
“One day. Why not?” Nehrun shrugged.
“Because you’re the weaker son of greater sires, Nehrun,” Femensetri growled. “Did you know what Corajidin had planned for your father?”
“Not the extent of it!” he said, panicked by Femensetri’s grim tone. He looked across at Mari. “My arrangement was for Father to be killed in battle. It didn’t happen. I needed to improvise to get what I wanted. I’d no idea he’d abduct Father, or do…what he’s doing.”
“And after Corajidin became Asrahn?” Rosha whispered.
Nehrun looked at his sister, his smile cold. “I’d be the new Rahn-Näsarat, with a bold new vision. But whatever Corajidin is doing, he’ll have to do it without me. I doubt it will be me wearing the Phoenix Crown now.”
Mari cantered her giant mountain-hart through the open gates of the villa to find her father and brother standing in lantern light outside the stables. Mari rode up to them, smiling as she dismounted. Thankfully she had had the foresight to take saddlebags with her, which held an old tunic, breeches, and the leather-wrapped length of a wooden practice sword. Her father eyed her suspiciously as one of the stable hands took her mount away.
“I did not realize you had left the villa.” Her father’s tone was suspicious. “Where have you been, and why did you not tell me you where you were going?”
“I’ve been training, if you must know,” Mari lied with good cheer, to mask the hammer in her chest. “Since I lost my post with the Feyassin, I need to find other people to train with.”
“Why not train with me or the Anlūki?” Belam asked as he checked the saddle girth on his hart. “I’d be happy to fence with you.”
“So you should be.” Mari threw her arm around her brother’s wide shoulders, then mussed his golden hair. “You might learn a thing or two.”
“Oh ho!” Belam gave chase as Mari dashed away. She leaped over potted shrubs, dashed around the edge of the fountain, and ducked under harts, which stamped their split-toed hooves. She and her brother laughed all the while, even after he tackled her, which sent them both headlong into the grass. She wrestled Belam to the ground in a headlock, pushed him aside, sped away.
“Enough, you two!” Corajidin clapped his hands, grin wide. The years fell away from his face when he smiled. Mari had not seen her father look so relaxed in months. “Belam has somewhere to be, and I cannot have him put in hospital by his younger sister.”
“Thanks for the confidence.” Belam smiled wryly. He pointed at Mari. “Your day will come!”
“If only we could both live so long.” She gave her saddlebags to a porter. “Where are you off to, Belam? Want company? I can help.”
“Not this time.”
Her father and Belam excused themselves to exchange a few words. Thufan and some of his ruffians waited nearby. Corajidin hugged Belam, then headed inside. Thufan smiled at Mari through his customary cloud of pipe smoke, a grotesque contortion of wrinkles on his hollowed cheeks and thin lips.
“Belam?” Mari caught her brother by arm.
“Later, Mari,” he murmured.
“Amre yaha, big brother,” she called out as he walked his hart to where Thufan and the others swung into their saddles. It was something they used to say often to each other. Not so much anymore. It seemed their lives had taken such different directions of late. Belam stopped, then looked over his shoulder with a surprised smile.
“Who doesn’t?” He gave her a friendly smile, then was gone along with Thufan and his men.
With Thufan gone and her father occupied, now was the perfect time to seek Armal out. It took her almost half an hour, but she eventually found him in the villa’s library. It was a tall, three-tiered chamber, golden with lamplight. Bookcases lined the walls, their doors paned in stained glass. Ivory scroll cases, like a honeycomb, held ancient maps and scraps of knowledge. There was also a collection of more recent printed material, coarse reed paper pressed between thick card covers layered in velvet or coated with lacquer.
Armal overfilled a large leather chair, his wide, plain face creased by a slight frown. Mari smiled. When he read his lips moved. One blunt finger traced the words on the page, as if he deliberately searched out each one as some kind of wonder. She entered on quiet feet. Armal caught her movement, looked up from what he was reading, face flushed.
“Pah-Mariam,” he murmured, bashful as a boy.
“What are you reading?” Mari came across to join him. She
would have to have been a fool to not see his infatuation. It happened. People desired her, or admired her, which sometimes led to an affair that rarely, if ever, ended well for either of them. It had been her experience that people loved the thought of her rather than the reality. Perhaps love was too strong a word. It rarely got beyond lust before feelings withered on the vine. Not so with Indris, who was secure enough to see her for all of what she was and was not.
“I enjoy the library, Pah-Mariam,” he said in his quiet voice. “If that’s not a problem.”
“Problem?” Mari laughed. “Why? Books are to be enjoyed.”
“I never used to read much before…”
“Before Maladûr gaol?”
He closed his eyes for a moment in what appeared to be genuine pain. “It’s an old palace, you know? Stuck out there in the Marble Sea, surrounded by water. It’s filled with cracked old statues, vandalized paintings, and hundreds of rooms. Very rarely did we see anything new, and we had a lot of time on our hands.”
“I take it there were books there?”
“Few were complete,” he said ruefully. “Even so, I learned what I could. It was humbling to know how wrong my life had been, living solely for my father’s good opinion.”
“Ah, yes. We all seek the approval of our parents. At least for a little while. It’s a trap I think we are both ensnared in.”
He read to her from the book in his hands.
Though the moments passed me by,
along with dreams I thought I’d lost,
I wondered where my heart had gone,
your forlorn child of future past
Mari looked at him in wonder and finished the passage from memory.
Scars no memories forget,
The Garden of Stones Page 25