Trail of Pyres

by L. James Rice

  “Intent and time of prayer?”

  “My father’s sister is ill, direly so. A second mother to me. I will pray to the Sect of Gabor until my tears flow no more.” She borrowed the latter from a young man she’d overheard and prayed this priestess didn’t ask for details on the sect. Meliu had no idea who or what the Sect of Gabor was.

  The gold crown disappeared. “May the Hokandite answer all your prayers.”

  Meliu aimed for a meek smile, sucked a solemn breath, and strode through the gates. Once inside, the view surprised her: Thousands of strides of open ground, but it was obvious it had not always been so. Foundations lay level with the dirt where buildings once stood.

  No time to dawdle. Gawking attracts eyes. She followed the street straight a couple hundred paces then took an angled left where the street split in five directions. It was several hundred strides before foundations bore buildings, and in the distance the Temple of the Virgin Moon dominated her view. Seventy-two pillars stretched across the massive structure’s face, but it was a single story. Unlike the Tower of Markuun, the temple was painted with artistic grace, with muted earth-tone hues, following the natural lines of the building’s stone.

  Foot traffic increased, but she kept her head up while meeting as few eyes as possible. A youthful adherent in white robes greeted her at the temple’s polished ebony doors, a boy of maybe sixteen.

  “To which ears do you whisper, this day?”

  She smiled, sure to stay at ease. “The Sect of Gabon.”

  “Would you like an escort?”

  Shit! If she said no and went the wrong way, it’d look peculiar. “I appreciate your kindness. It has been years.”

  The boy turned, leading them straight down the main hall forty paces before turning left. They passed a dozen long halls, each lined with statues to either side, and she couldn’t put a name to anything she saw. People were sparse, as expected, but a variety of folks were here to pray, robed in silk to sack cloth. Several stood beside statues, whispering in their stone ears, but most were prostrate on the ground, the wealthy on prayer rugs. One man so deep in prayer he snored his faith. Thirty more paces a right, another left, then her guide turned with a flourish of his arms.

  Marble statues lined either side of the hall depicting people, animals, monsters, and demonic hybridizations. Men with feathers, women with horns, a thing which might be a slug with arms, a lion with a snake’s tongue… The hall was filled with visions heretical to the Pantheon of Sol, and she couldn’t put a name to one, not even the ones who kept their humanity.

  “I’ll… I’ll need a few moments to collect myself. Thank you.” She nodded with a hint of bend to her spine, a gesture of respect but not servitude.

  “May the Hokandite answer your prayers.”

  She kept a view of the boy until she knew he disappeared from view, then chose a statue at random. A homely man with an intense stare, he wore a headdress which fanned like a peacock’s tail, and sported a beard groomed into three forks that stretched to his chest. He was naked but for a sash stretching from his shoulder to cover his manhood.

  She stared into his rounded eyes, white granite where pupils should be.

  “The Magister of Gabon, a peculiar choice for a pretty young lady.”

  The voice startled Meliu so, that she damned near spoke in Silone, and caught her words at the last. “I can’t say why.” She turned to face a Hidreng in his forties. Not a priest, neither, judging by his colorful silks; bright yellow and red on black. “His eyes captured me.”

  “He is wise in the way of shadows, those which weight a mortal’s soul. Do you bear such burdens?”

  She wanted to laugh: A Darkness beyond shadow. “My only shadow is my dear aunt’s malady.”

  The man nodded, a sage gravity pulling his lips to a pout. “Is she a woman who carries the dead weight of her past?”

  “Well, I could hardly say for sure. All I’ve known in my life is a lovely woman without a harsh word for anyone… except her husband now and again.”

  “My own guilts may drag me to an early grave; I whisper to him every week.”

  Meliu nodded. “Forgiveness can be a powerful thing.”

  The man’s lips curled into a dark smile. ‘There’s no forgiving the things I’ve done, I pray only so the Hokandite might understand my choices. May I?” He gestured to the Magister.

  She side stepped in an instant, blushing because she’d been blocking the man. “So sorry! Don’t let me intrude.” She scuttled further away as he put foot to stone to climb, his hand clutching the statue’s shoulder, to raise his lips to a stone ear.

  Curiosity burned her, but she resisted the temptation to listen in, and instead stared at other members of the Sect of Gabon. A man with a spear, his cheeks chiseled with indented rivers where tears would run if stone could cry. A joyous woman holding a swaddled babe in her arms; Meliu wondered if a person might whisper in the baby’s ear too. Praying into either would be a heresy for her, but did she care any more? Another was a man taller than the rest and he held a sword of iron instead of stone clutched in his hands. The carving was more intricate than most, with mail links of armor layered over a gambeson. This statue reminded her more of a Silone than a Hidreng; with his height and cheekbones, he was more akin to a Choerkin than any man she’d seen in the streets of Bdein.

  “The Champion of Gabon might be a wiser choice for your prayers.”

  This bastard Hidreng was light on his feet. She turned with a grin. “Did the Magister answer your prayers?”

  “Never and always. May the faith of your prayers bring an answer.” He bowed just a little, his eyes pinned on her. It took a moment to register that he expected a name.

  “Inis, of the Librec River”

  “Inis. A name as beautiful as the river’s waters.” He leaned, taking her hand for a kiss. “Loduma, of Ar-Bdein.”

  He turned and departed, his footfalls and silks as quick and silent as when he’d arrived.

  Ar-Bdein, to take the city’s name meant something, but the “Ar” prefix she didn’t understand. It hinted of power and danger. She turned to the statue. “Champion of Gabor, eh?” She climbed the steps carved in the pedestal and stretched to the tips of her toes to whisper gibberish in its ear.

  Satisfied with the duration of her false prayer she eased back to the floor and lay with her face buried in her arms. The priests would deem her a devout soul indeed, prostrate until the sun went down. But to answer her real prayers, she needed shadows and the night.

  28

  Bruised Conversation

  You, in your jester’s cap,

  stabbed in your back,

  screaming hate into the laughter of your chamber of echoes.

  You were never more funny than when dying.

  —Tomes of the Touched

  The torture never came, least not as Ivin expected. Priests arrived every morning and dusk, stood him in the middle of the chamber, and took a cane to him. They struck his shoulders and the back of his legs, his buttocks and lower back, until he collapsed or the striker’s arm wore out.

  They never asked a question. They arrived, caned him, and departed. They didn’t care what he might know, all they cared was that he lay sprawled, blackened and aching.

  After the tenth day of beating, they unlocked his shackles and struck him half a dozen extra blows while laughing. One spoke in broken Silone: “Do us favors and attack the morrow, so we kill you and be done.” The voice was deep, but each was just a priest in a brown leather mask: All the same.

  If his muscles weren’t so stiff, he might’ve taken them up on the offer right then. He rolled to his back as the door slammed and its lock ground. He found it pathetic they didn’t bother to put a guard on the door. How unworthy have I become? His body throbbed, and he stared at the black ceiling in the dim light of dawn; plain stone covered in dirt-clouded cobwebs.

  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the world was bright with sun, and his aches blunted with rest. He
still hurt like the hells, and every move brought a fresh edge to the agony as he stretched stiffened muscles, but he’d grown more used to such suffering than he would’ve expected.

  Ivin rose to his knees, rubbed his freed wrists and ankles. A copper tray of food with a bowl of water sat by the door. He trundled to what passed for breakfast and sat with a grunt. There was no telling what he ate; it was neither as bad as he might’ve imagined, nor worse than a clod of dirt his brothers talked him into biting as a child. Not as chalky, at least. Meat, but meat of what? Whatever it was, it quelled the growl in his stomach and kept him alive.

  He grabbed the bowl of stale water and tossed the empty platter to the ground, stalked to the window and sipped. Looking at the water would be a mistake; he swallowed despite a fuzzy something on his tongue. His eyes stayed on the outside, a fine enough morning with light breezes even high in this tower. He turned his shoulders and found he’d slip through, scrape his chest and shoulders maybe, but such minor scuffs wouldn’t matter once he hit the stone cobbles, or bounced off the roof below first.

  If Meris jumped, instead of being thrown, from the First Tower of Herald’s Watch, he had a greater appreciation for the desperation she must’ve felt. When he sat chained in the middle of this chamber, taking the leap felt as a piece of common sense: Why suffer another day? Once gazing from the precipice, vertigo tugging at his intestines, it became nonsense. Staying alive was an urge hard to resist.

  He turned, his eyes drawn to the platter, its polished face lit by the rising sun. He tilted his head back to drink and reflected light from the tray illuminated a spot on the ceiling. Through the cobwebs and dust he’d never noticed it before: A hole in the stone leading to a trapdoor.

  A chance at freedom.

  He laughed at his own foolishness and raised his cup to salute the Touched. “Note the laughter.” He waggled his finger at an empty stool, but there was no ghost to take his dictation.

  This door was a false hope, like so many hopes: The hope for love, the hope of growing to manhood with a mother, the hope of peace between clan and Church. Still, it was something, and as he sat crouched and stared, the fantasy refused to die.

  “All right then, what if I could reach you, you bastard?” The door didn’t answer, he was happy for that. Whatever madness creeping over him hadn’t taken control of his wits yet.

  He glanced about the room: A pisspot and a stool, not much to work with. He stretched, his knees and shoulders aching to straighten, and he groaned. “As a guess, I’d say my jumping’s on par with Meris about now. But, she killed herself just fine.” He stared at his feet and chuckled. “If that’s all you got for inspiration, you’re in serious horse shit.”

  He grabbed the four-legged stool and climbed atop its wobbly top, stretching for the door. He flipped his chamber pot, stood on it, and strained with the stool in hand. Its breeze stirred the cobwebs and tapped stone once when he stretched enough to lose his balance and tumble to the floor. He’d been close enough to fuel his fool’s hope, and the bucket cracked as he remounted. Ivin glared at the fissure running through its middle. “Go on, I dare you.” He waited several flickers, but the thing didn’t have the courage to break.

  He jumped—or hopped, more like—and the bucket twisted from beneath him. Ivin crashed to the floor in a huddled bundle of groans and curses he didn’t understand himself.

  A flare or two later he kicked the bucket, and it rolled over to stare at the stool by his side. If he had two stools, he’d have a chance. Three legs can stand as well as four, damned near. All I have to do is break one leg. Balance the bucket on the three-legged stool, and I’ll reach that damned door. “My wits aren’t gone yet, by gods.”

  He rolled to his knees and crawled to the stool. “Sorry about this.” He slammed the stool into the ground. Nothing but noise; the stool defied him. Five, six, seven times he slammed the damned thing and all he had to show for it were scratches and dents in its seat. He stood with stool in hand and strolled to a wall, wound up, roared, and let fly.

  It crashed into the wall, clattering to pieces while leaving him with the single leg he’d desired. Unfortunate that the rest lay in a shattered heap. He stared at the parts and pieces. “Maybe I can fashion some tiny stilts.”

  “Who the hells are you talking to?”

  He recognized Meliu’s feminine tones, but they were an impossibility. His mind had broken, without a doubt. “To myself and the winds. I’d speak to the stool, but I murdered it.”

  “They’ve beaten the senses out of you.”

  “How else could I be talking to you?”

  “I could be a sneak of a gal whose mother loved drink more than her father’s profits.”

  He heard the rattle of the lock and a moment later hinges squeaked. Were they back to cane him again so soon? He turned, his head spinning as Meliu stepped into his cell wearing a black linen dress. He suspected his mind of playing tricks, but talking to a chair was a far holler from seeing pretty girls he knew were hundreds of horizons away. He figured she must be here, delusions would never smell so nice. “How the hells?” And after she locked the door: “What the hells?”

  “I can unlock it again, you mooncalf.” She planted a hand on her hip. “You are the worst guarded prisoner I’ve ever heard of, I’d swear they aren’t much worried about keeping you.”

  He leaned his back to the wall and slid to a seat. “You might be right. They figured out I don’t know a damned thing of use.”

  She sauntered to the middle of the room. “So, uh, what the hells were you doing? That stool mouth off or something?”

  “I was going to use a leg to flip open a trap door.” He pointed to the ceiling.

  That brought a smirk. “Uhuh. You realize you’re at the top of a tower, right? And if you got it open, how were you going to climb out?”

  “I figured I’d kill the Tek priests and stack their bodies for a ladder, so you know.” She giggled, a lilting sound that reminded him why he liked her despite her barbs. “You just here to make my escape miserable, or are you gonna help?”

  “I’m still deciding. You look like you’re in one piece.”

  “Because they pounded me into a smaller but still singular piece.”

  “Able to run?”

  “Stumble and trot count?”

  She tossed auburn hair. “We’ll be moving slow when we move, but it’d be nice to move quick in a pinch. My prayers will help some.”

  Her touch spread the warmth of her prayers through his body, soothing aches and pains, giving him confidence to stretch both shoulders, but agony seized him as he brought them above his head. He chuckled instead of screaming and dropped both arms to his sides.

  “Don’t be foolish,” she said. “I’m a lousy healer. Life heals you proper, but some of what you feel is Light.”

  The power of prayer mystified him. “Light heals?”

  “No, but the will of Erginle within the Light can lend confidence, a strength to endure, but it can fool us into doing too much.”

  The experience of healing prayer wasn’t new, he’d suffered several broken bones over the years on Herald’s Watch, but in her prayers there was something different. A heightened sense of being, of standing taller, a subtle superiority to everything around you. “I like it.”

  “Don’t get used to it, I don’t plan on making touching Choerkin a habit.”

  “Don’t like what you feel?” His tone was flirtatious as the heavens. Why the hells did I say that? Humiliating.

  He yelped as she squeezed his aching bicep. “I’ll pass that off as the Light taking your tongue, this time.”

  He grunted as the pain from her grip faded. A foreboding sensation tingled in the depths of her prayerful healing; hidden, it was like the nervous breath before the goose pimples came. He passed it off as her peevishness over the flirtation. “So, how’re you going to get me out of here?”

  “I’m not, not right away, anyhow. But I won’t let them ruin my healing neither. Think I’d just
take you for a stroll? Once you reach the keep, they guard every exit that ain’t suicide.”

  “Hadn’t given it a thought… but now you mention it, it’d be nice if you could fly me out that window.”

  “I could give you a shove, flying is up to you.”

  “What’s the better plan, then?”

  “I make them think you’ve gone. In a few days, when they’ve given up the search, we walk straight out the front door.”

  He didn’t have a clue in the heavens or hells how she intended to make him disappear, but it sounded more promising than a shove. “If you can’t fly, I suppose it’ll have to do.”

  She strode to stand beneath the trapdoor. “First, let’s see what we got up top. Give me a lift.”

  On a normal day the girl would’ve been a feather, but when her foot hit the stirrup of his hands his knees quaked as he boosted her. She banged on something, and when he looked up, he regretted it as dust settled in his eyes. He squinted and coughed, and a flicker later the door flipped up and clattered. He closed his eyes and tried not to breathe.

  “Higher.”

  “The hells, you say.” But he gave her a lift until her weight disappeared. He took a couple steps back before opening his eyes to the shimmering dustfall.

  Meliu’s head reappeared in a sunlit hole, then she dropped a knotted rope. “You’ve got rope?”

  “Quit yappin’ and climb.”

  Lifting the girl hurt, climbing was bruise burning agony. With her grip helping to hoist him over the top, he flopped on sun-warmed stone to stare at the afternoon sky. In an ordinary time and place, it would’ve been a beautiful day. “How much rope have you got?”

  “Enough to reach the ground from most windows.”

  “Thought you said we’re walking out the front door?”

  “We are. One gate in, one gate out.” She pulled a dagger from her pack and sawed at the thick rope.

  “What the hells’re you doing?”