Trail of Pyres

by L. James Rice

  Kinesee didn’t understand everything they spoke of, no one had bothered to explain the whole Shadows of Man thing to her as they tiptoed around her tears. But she knew enough to know it sounded bad. “Why would he do such a thing?”

  Meliu smiled at her, then passed her gaze over everyone in the tent. “You can burn it, hide it, or let me translate it for answers. Whatever decision you make, I don’t want the weight of its burden on my soul.”

  Polus groaned and threw his hands up. “I’d be satisfied with the whiskey, no burnin’ needed, mmm.”

  Roplin rubbed his eyes then stared at the book sitting so peaceful on the table. “If a soul disagrees with what I say, speak. You should translate these prophecies for us, and I beseech honesty.”

  Meliu broke the stretch of silence. “Once I understand the codes and patterns, everyone will be able to check the words.”

  Ivin said, “You and the book are both welcome to travel to Sin Medor with me.”

  She bowed then pulled her robes up over her head to reveal a shabby Hidreng dress. She dropped her holy habit in a bundle on the seat of a chair. “I think we’ll get along much better this second time around.”

  “You’ve no idea why this book remained so important to him?”

  “No. I swear on it.”

  Roplin said, “We’re agreed then. We’d best start spreading word of the Hidreng missionaries and the draw to see who leaves by boat. Lady Ravinrin, would you and your boys see to the latter? We should all meet back here this evening to finalize our intentions.”

  It all felt so wrong, they’d just got done running from one enemy. Not that this foreign patch of rock was home. And she was losing her hero, again. But it didn’t feel as wrong as the next words she heard, but she realized she needed to get used to them.

  “Come along, Kinesee Mikjehemlut.” He smiled. The words hurt, but he’d meant no harm. She’d always forgive her hero anyhow.

  13

  Conversations with History

  The withering gaze, the blinding haze,

  Your eyes, your Eyes,

  so full of other people’s lies.

  They once sparkled, purity clear, cloudy now

  to those still can see. In Your Eyes,

  the reflection you behold,

  a glowing truth in the lies you’ve been told.

  But lies have eyes, and lies have wings,

  and sometime always they come home to roost.

  –Tomes of the Touched

  “Do you know my sister well?”

  Glimdrem exhaled, unsure how to answer and nervous over the conversation’s direction. Since departing the island of Mevelensa he’d been privy to one conversation with Limereu, but now they were alone, except for an oarsman. “She is a brilliant woman.”

  “An answer which says little.” He followed her gaze into the passing forest of golden oaks, their leaves rustling black shadows lit by the moon, as the skiff glided upstream. Lights flickered in the heights of the canopy, homes two hundred feet above the underbrush.

  “The Chancellor…”

  “I understand, we Edan are rigid.”

  Glimdrem coughed. This woman differed from every Edan he’d ever met. “That’s an observation your people don’t make. Or admit.”

  She laughed. “Perhaps I haven’t been returned long enough to appreciate myself.” She stretched her hand over the edge of the boat, slender fingers trailing in the rippling current which carried the boat upstream, then reaching into the river where the waters flowed natural. She glanced back to the Edan steersman and his oar. “Or it’s because I’m still awed by those things you find common. What do you call this?”

  Glimdrem gazed at the shimmering waters that outlined the boat, the ripples carrying the hull against the stream’s natural current. “It isn’t so common as you think, our journey is important. Our pilot is a current-tamer.”

  She nodded with a smile he could only call graceful. The curve of her lips mesmerized him, and he wondered why Edan didn’t smile more often. She caught his stare. “You think this trip is worthwhile?”

  He stifled a laugh as he decided how honest to be. Her smile offered little room for obfuscation, but their conversation had danced around the Oxeum Codex without saying the name and he wouldn’t be the first. “For me? It’s as historic as, well, speaking to you.”

  “Or the Vale of Resting Winds.”

  “You remember nothing of the Father Wood?”

  Her head cocked but the smile never faded. “Maybe I do, but I don’t think so. What little memory I have is jumbled, Motu Ensa and my sister are the two points of clarity. What do you hope to find in the Archangel’s study?”

  “Answers. Did you know Uvin called the term Archangel a mistranslation?”

  “Answers to what? My sister’s people searched his chambers.”

  Glimdrem grinned at her slipping his bait, but the boat veered before he answered. They drifted toward shore and a floating dock.

  The current-tamer said, “We’re here.”

  Glimdrem said, “I know what the Chancellor searched for, she didn’t find it.”

  The woman pondered his words until the skiff touched dock and the oarsman tied them off. “You aren’t after the same thing?”

  He stepped onto the dock and offered his hand without thinking. The gesture offended most Edan, but to his surprise she grasped his palm. She stood beside him, a finger taller, but it didn’t feel like she looked down upon him. “No, I’m not.”

  An Edan strode the dock’s length, an aura of soft white light enveloping his being. Glimdrem didn’t see a weapon on him, but he was a warrior, it was obvious by the way his feet struck the boards of the dock, more severe than the glide of most Edan.

  “The Chancellor sent word of your arrival. If you’d follow me, please.”

  They walked in silence to stand before a Golden Oak that towered from a hillock. Instead of climbing, their guide took them to a door set into a mortared stone frame. Many trees had root cellars at their base for storage, but they entered to find a furnished home with an array of cabinets and tables and chairs, a fine desk crafted by a lifeshaper of exceeding skill. Each piece was luxurious, fashioned from Golden or Moon Oak, and the seats padded in fine silks.

  Sunstones lit the room, the jewels set in lamps and candelabra around the room, giving shadows few places to hide. The detail which caught Glimdrem’s eye were the shelves, tidy and dust free, and devoid of books where a thousand might be stored.

  He turned to the guard. “Did the Chancellor take the books?” The man’s stern gaze didn’t betray a blink.

  Limereu stepped between them. “You heard the man.”

  “The shelves were empty when we arrived. There’s no record of the twenty-fifth keeping a collection.”

  Glimdrem grunted and meandered to a desk. It was no wonder the Chancellor allowed him this trip, the place was near empty. He sat at Uvin’s desk, figuring the dead man wouldn’t mind, and opened a drawer. Empty. “Is there record of him having anything?” The second drawer revealed an eye-widening surprise.

  A globe of metal, six fingers in diameter, and from its glossy black protruded a spike of crystal. He placed it on the desk, its base flat, so that the unbreakable icicle pointed straight to the ceiling.

  Limereu asked, “What is it?”

  “The unsolvable puzzle, except it’s solved. It’s a classic experiment demonstrating the peculiar interaction between Ikoruv and Latcu.” She met his gaze, but only blinked. “Ikoruv is harder than steel, and less brittle, an Elemental metal. Latcu, as its name suggests, is unbreakable. You can’t even use one piece to carve another.”

  “Like diamonds can. Memories sit on the edge of my mind… do go on.”

  “If you melt the Ikoruv and set a piece of Latcu inside the molten mass, like what we have on the desk, the Latcu will work its way from the metal. Even if you use a bead and put it in the middle of the metal, it will force its way out in a matter of days.”

  “And this
has been sitting here since before Uvin’s death?”

  Glimdrem grinned, it was fun knowing things an Edan did not. “It gets better. No known forge is capable of heating Latcu to its melting point, but we have artifacts from the God Wars, weapons with blades crafted from it.”

  “Armors?”

  “None known. But, a few of the rarest and most deadly weapons use both Ikoruv and Latcu, together. The Mystic Smiths of the Edan have been seeking the answer since the Great Forgetting.”

  Her disarming smile returned. “And Uvin figured it out.”

  “So it seems. The khopesh he had in the Vale of Resting Winds, he claimed to have reforged the materials together. Of course, it didn’t work out so well.”

  “My sister didn’t leave this here by chance.”

  “Nothing your sister does is by chance, from my experience.”

  “Why leave this here for you?”

  Glimdrem ran his finger along the smooth round of the Latcu needle and pondered how easy its point would break skin. “Did your sister tell you where I was before returning to the Eleris? Before the Resting Winds?”

  “No.”

  “I was on Sutan, a brutal, uncivilized continent. Where the chancellor believed the Archangel found his book.”

  “She mentioned the Oxeum Codex.”

  He smiled, a small victory to get her to say the name first. “She believed I could find the ruins of Oxeum, but Uvin told me, apologized in fact, because it doesn’t exist any more.”

  “A blind fish hunting a unicorn.”

  Glimdrem couldn’t resist a laugh at the reference to a Trelelunin children’s story, it was a famous saying among his people, but nothing he expected from an Edan. “How’d you remember such a trivial phrase?” She shrugged, and he continued. “Without doubt, they will give this novelty to the smiths for study, but it’s here to remind me that without the codex, we’re no closer to duplicating the man’s achievement.”

  “Is it so important?”

  “Yes.” He stood and wandered to a shelf with a line of small statues, several he’d wager were from Sutan. A three-headed man with horns lifeshaped from ebony, a woman with eight breasts carved from green jade, and a dagger fashioned from blue obsidian. “I will dance where the Edan fear to play their music. And for me, finding the codex is personal. The hunt took a decade of my life and was an end for so many others.”

  She joined him in gazing at the Archangel’s collection, her finger tracing the sloping back of a crouching tiger carved from an ivory tusk. “A spectacular piece, the details of its fur and teeth.”

  “A mammoth tusk from Molo, I suspect—” His breath stopped and he stared. It sat on the highest seat of a corner shelf: A monkey carved from yellow jade streaked with oranges and greens and whites, its body contorted into a fighting pose, with a spear in one hand and a khopesh in the other. Its mouth stretched wide in a scream, razor tipped incisors threatening to bite, but what made his tongue dry was its missing eyes. Two empty sockets where gems must belong. Temple of the Blind Monkey.

  Limereu raised a brow, following his gaze. “What is it?”

  Glimdrem corrected his expression and smiled. “I think this ugly little thing wants to bite me.”

  “He is a sour looking fellow.”

  “It reminds me of a larger statue we saw on Sutan, where a friend died.” It was dangerous to lie to an Edan, but he was confident he pulled it off. The simian warrior posed on a platform, with a backdrop of a steppe pyramid similar to many he’d seen covered by jungle, and if hollow, it’d have space to conceal a book.

  “Tragic memories, I’m certain. I am sorry.”

  He turned to her, his face solemn to hide the smile inside. “It’s a funny thing, before the ritual at the Vale, I feel like Uvin was on the verge of telling me something. Revealing something about Sutan and the codex, but time ran short.”

  “Another tragedy.”

  There was a sincerity in her words that pinched his guilt for the lie he was about to tell. “Life is full of tragedies, but we won’t find Uvin’s secret here. All the man left behind was trinkets and oddities.”

  14

  Snores are Life

  A doom woven into the Loom,

  the Sire’s desire Forgotten,

  the wire spun for the Begotten.

  A sense of the dense,

  sensitivity without density nor Dignity.

  The Indignant flame,

  the loudest cry for truth is the Liar.

  –Tomes of the Touched

  Kinesee awoke as she did every night since Papa died, sweating and terrified of Shadows who wanted her body and soul, but at least tonight she didn’t scream and her cheeks were dry. She stared into abject dark beneath her blanket, heard Alu’s little snort snore, and she released a contented sigh.

  Alive, we’re alive, nothing here to take us.

  She drew her cover to her chest and blinked, dim light from lanterns outside giving her enough light to see sis huddled in a ball on the floor, her stick-sword by her side. Tengkur slept too, in a patch of straw in the middle of a haphazard fence that kept the goat in place, at least when she was being polite. She didn’t fool herself into thinking the goat couldn’t shove or jump its way out anytime and get both of them in trouble.

  Kinesee shut her eyes tight, she needed to sleep. All the older folks she’d ever known told her so. Her eyes fluttered open, clutching the pearl resting attached to the chain around her neck, and she battled the urge to rub her treasure for light and comfort. Her hero was far away, anyhow.

  He’d sailed days ago, kissing her on the forehead and promising his return. She didn’t doubt her hero. Couldn’t doubt him. But still she fought tears as the man held forth their greatpa’s sword, his parting gift for Alu. Solineus blunted her sister’s thrill when he said, “It’s yours, but Maro decides when you practice with live steel, you hear? He holds it for you until he deems you worthy.”

  That’d gone over as well as a pig tumbling over a waterfall, but Alu gripped the sword tight, a tear in her eye, and vowed to obey his wishes, and to listen to Maro’s every word. The sword was too plain to be a longstanding Mikjehemlut heirloom, so the official story was that it’d been a relative’s favorite practice blade.

  By the time Solineus sailed for the Eleris with that awful, pretty Trelunin woman, Kinesee was no longer Kinesee Koest, she was a Mikjehemlut. She had worked hard a whole night just to say it right, but the mouthful of a name came with perks. Lady Tedeu fed them the finest foods available and adorned both sisters in frilled dresses and silver jewelry speckled with tiny stones, but still, none were as precious as her oblong pearl.

  They slept in his tent, but the Ravinrin moved it to sit next to the Lady Tedeu’s, up the coast and northeast of the Choerkin. They wouldn’t be here much longer anyhow, rumor spoke of them sailing from here within days. Boats reminded her of Papa and her family, and of fleeing the island, clenching her gut with sorrow and fear.

  She cast her blanket aside with a huff and stood. Papa always told her she needed to grow up, to act her age, and those who told her to sleep didn’t seem to mind breaking the needing sleep rule… If I’m to act grown up, by golly, getting up in the middle of the night might just be the first step to maturity. She accepted her logic with a smirk and slipped to the tent’s flap, peaking through the fold to find Gurt, a Ravinrin guard, drowsing on a stool.

  She eased into the chilly night, a hint of fog to her breath, and she stared at the stars. She pulled her cloak tight and wandered, promising to herself not to go far. A short walk, enough to sweep her head of thoughts of home, no more.

  The quiet of night was so different from the day. The last couple of days had been full of noises, people fleeing to ships, some swapping their old gods for new, while those remaining behind argued over morals and heavens and hells. Night, the hush beneath the stars was how life used to be, how it should be. Not how it was.

  She huddled in the shadows of a wagon, wiping tears she couldn’t explain.
She was thankful, at least, there was no one to see her childish weakness.

  Soft voices to the west, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. She took several deep breaths, drying her eyes as three people rounded a corner nearby.

  “We welcome all new faithful in the Hokandite. We promise, you and your—” His speech carried a Hidreng accent, and he stopped talking the moment he saw her. Their clothes were ordinary enough, but Kinesee had seen folks she figured were Tek priests dressed common before.

  The three smiled as they passed and she smiled back. She refused to blame anyone for taking the Hidreng offer, if given a choice between the gods and bringing her papa and kin back to life, she wouldn’t hesitate a flicker. Keeping family safe should be priority, no matter the spiritual cost.

  She watched their backs fade into the dark, and as they passed a hanging lantern she startled. A shadow lunged from nowhere. She stifled a scream, thinking it was Shadow of Man, but steel flashed and one man dropped to his knees, then collapsed to his back. Another hunched then dropped while the third spun to run back toward her.

  The man lurched, falling face first in the dirt, his feet entangled? The attacker leaped on the man’s back, plunging a blade with both hands, and the tackled man’s struggling arms went limp.

  Kinesee stared, unable to move. Three lives ended without a single shout. The night was as quiet as it had been, but silence wasn’t the proof of peace she’d thought.

  The killer stood, throwing black hair over a shoulder, and froze. Kinesee couldn’t see the person’s eyes or face, but she knew she’d been spotted before the murderer took a first step her way.

  Kinesee bolted.

  But the hells if she would die in silence like them other folks. She screamed.

  Footfalls came from behind.

  She didn’t look back for Shadows giving chase, she wouldn’t look back now. She heard voices answering her screams, but in the dark punctured by scattered lanterns there was no one to run to. The feet were close. Something struck the back of her legs and bounced away as she jumped, and she screamed louder.