I nodded, deeply impressed. “So this is Kassareth...”
“I have to see the city.”
She abandoned all her usual regard for dignity as she bunched her skirt in her hands and skipped across the dusty stones. The rest of us followed her, glad to rejoin the world of bright skies and green growing things. I stretched out my arms to feel the touch of soft, dew-dappled leaves on my skin.
We found a break in the choking forest canopy, and that's where the excitement began to wear off, reminding us how exhausted we were. Our new vantage point treated us to a full view of the landscape. We stood near the bottom of a shallow, rolling valley, with a small lake almost lapping at our feet. More of the dense purple-green woods climbed up both sides of the valley, showing a complete absence of buildings. No city had ever stood here. Even after this long, something would've remained.
In our moment of silence, Zayara ‒ pale, haggard and hungry ‒ began to munch contentedly at the leaves around us.
The woman swallowed her disappointment. “No matter. We have no idea how big this land is. We'll climb up the side and get our bearings.”
Slowly, downtrodden and footsore, we began the gentle ascent up the hill through a whole mess of plants and flowers I didn't recognise. I watched Zayara snack on more strange fruits and berries as we went. Yazizi made a bowl out of her skirt and collected at least one specimen of each, sniffing them with exacting care before judging them worthy.
“Anything here could be poisonous,” I pointed out to her.
Staring defiance at me, she popped a bright silver berry into her mouth. “I've been starving before. I'd rather eat poison.”
She didn't keel over on the spot. Only time would tell.
At the top of the rise was a clear, rocky ridge where we could see for miles in every direction. The mountains behind us rose starkly into the sky like broken teeth. From there, the land tapered off to a series of rolling hills and dales, overgrown beyond recognition. The plants were so thick, Kassareth could be near here and we'd never know it.
Sir Erroll pulled out his compass and began to mutter dark aspersions on it and all its kind. “Useless contraption!” He shook it, but the needle stayed fixed in one direction. “It won't point at anything but the mountains.” He glanced up at the vast fields of lush, undisturbed vegetation around him, brows knitted into a worried frown. “I don't know how well we'll be able to navigate. Even the stars could be strange here.”
“If we are beyond their help,” said the woman, “then one direction is as good as another. Kassareth is here somewhere. There's enough fruit here to keep us until we find it.”
Nobody contested her logic. First, though, we had to rest. We stretched out atop that ridge and napped for a few hours while the sweltering sun began to dip towards the horizon. I even gave in and nibbled some of Yazizi's forage. The fruits were strange, with flavours from lovely and sweet, to lip-puckeringly sour, to bitter as an old spinster. It made for a decent enough snack if you knew which ones to avoid.
It wasn't quite a meal, though. Not by itself. All I could think about was big chunks of meat roasted over an open flame. So far we hadn't seen hide nor hair of any animals. In fact, come to think of it, there was no sound of anything moving. Nothing but the wind. I turned over a nearby rock and found it lifeless underneath, not even ants or earthworms.
I swallowed a mouthful of saliva and forgot all about food.
The temperature became much more tolerable as the sun went down, and with our furs to hand, I figured we could weather the nights without much trouble. I was safe. Which meant I was free to think about the squire and Racha and Calum and all the other fears and doubts hovering in the pit of my stomach.
Dangerous activity, thinking. That was the worst part about being sober. Thinking, and being unable to stop.
We set off again, down into the next valley.
I could hardly believe it, but the vegetation got thicker still. I went out in front to clear a path with my sword. It could cut stone without complaint; wood and vines didn't present much of a challenge. We made good time after that, and slashed our way through and up the next ridge.
The reality of where we were was beginning to work its way into my mind. We were part of the very few ‒ perhaps the only ‒ people to have made it this far since the Brass Men abandoned the place. Racha had been right. It was a storybook moment. Too strange to be real.
The sun had gone almost completely when Yazizi stopped us. She took my shoulder and pointed off into the bushes. “What's that?”
We stopped and waded in, clearing some of the plant life to show us what she'd found. It was a carved pillar, a squat spiral cone like a sharply-pointed snail's shell, overgrown and mostly buried in the dirt. Another one lay on its side several feet away. I spotted two more up ahead, another two behind us, and I could guess that more would be waiting in both directions.
“I think they're road markers,” I said. “This could be their equivalent of the Port Road.”
The woman ran her fingers along the top of the marker. The smile on her face was happy, hopeful, and determined all at once, and it made me want to be right. “Roads lead to places, usually interesting ones. Let's go.”
I followed her through the equally-overgrown path between the markers, along a road as dead as the civilisation which had built it.
Twilight came and went, and when it got too dark, we made camp as best we could. We ate more of Yazizi's forage, and by some miracle none of us got sick. We managed to get some of the moist wood burning thanks to my flask of naphtha. I took the first watch, while everyone else laid down under our furs and struggled to sleep in this country of strange smells and silence.
My imagination preyed on me for hours. The sheer lack of noise made me remember the stories of a curse, and I wished we'd asked about that. Not that I was surprised. The woman believed so hard, she'd brush off any idea of a threat we couldn't do anything about.
I sat with the bronze sword bared across my knees and my bone-white fingers clenched around its grip. I didn't return it to its scabbard until Yazizi woke up to take second watch, and I laid down with said scabbard as my pillow.
Again, I struggled to sleep.
No amount of tossing and turning could get my mind to settle down. It ran in the same circles over and over again, second-guessing, thinking about all the missed opportunities. The things I could've done to change the way things turned out. The same names and faces flashed through my brain until I wanted to scream.
Faro. Racha. Yazizi. Calum. Aemedd. Descard. Ioanna.
“If you roll around once more,” hissed Yazizi, cradling her new crossbow, “I will put a bolt through you.”
I turned to look at her. The fire had burned low, dawn was still a few hours away, and I could just see her outline against the starless sky. She'd rolled up her sleeve to expose her shimmering bronze bracer to the night.
“How are you holding up?” I asked gently, determined to be nice.
“Oh, perfect. My life has been getting steadily better over the past few years. Have you not noticed?”
“Mm.” I propped my head up on one hand. “I'm sorry for the way things have gone. I miss him too.”
Eyes flared, hard as flint. “Don't. Don't you dare.”
“Why do you think I can't sleep? Don't you think I hated leaving them behind just as much as you? All you can do for Faro right now is carry on and stay alive.”
Silently she turned and threw another log on the fire. It crackled to life as she watched, ignoring me. I shouldn't have pushed her any further but, drunk on lack of sleep, my mouth ran away with me.
“I know what it's like to be left alone. You get used to it after a while, even from Faro.”
That was the straw that broke the camel's back.
She jerked to her feet like a string puppet yanked off a shelf and shoved the crossbow into my face. Her finger quivered against the trigger. No one ‒ not Sir Erroll, not even Penn Saldette ‒ had ever looked at me with
quite so much twisted loathing as this young slip of a girl.
“You think you know what I've gone through?” she spat at me. Her words were pure acid, and they hit hard. “You think because you took a lashing once, that makes us the same? We are not equals, Karl Byren. I was stolen from my homeland. I was raped more times than you can count. I was put in chains and collared like a dog. I was whipped day by day when I refused to act the part of a silent, submissive thing. When you can say that of yourself, Sergeant, I may start giving a damn about what you think.”
She swept away from me and stalked into the forest, abandoning her watch. I didn't follow her.
Devastated in a few terse sentences. Saints help me. I buried my head in my hands and wished to high Heaven that I had something stiff to drink.
I was still awake when Yazizi came to rouse Sir Erroll for his turn at watch. She lay down, but I couldn't say whether she slept at all.
Exhaustion overcame me at last.
I woke again when the first rays of the sun peeked over the horizon. I shook off the aftereffects a dream I couldn't remember, and took care to avoid Yazizi while we broke camp. We drank dew from the large, basin-shaped leaves of an odd blue shrub, and then we were off again. Following the road in the hope that we'd find something at the end.
About two hours before midday, we came to a place where the road intersected a small creek. Two fallen markers stood in the middle of the water, suggesting the stream was a later addition. We didn't waste any time tasting the clean water, filling our skins, and washing ourselves thoroughly for the first time in weeks. It was the most welcome of small comforts. After wandering under the mountains for so long, we left black trails in the water where grime and rock dust sloughed off of skin and clothing.
We'd just about cleaned up when Sir Erroll made an observation. There weren't any fish in the stream. Nothing lived in it except reeds. The land was still devoid of any animate life.
Suddenly the water was more disturbing than refreshing. We put our wet clothes back on, found the next set of markers, and pressed on in a hurry.
“There is something very wrong with this place,” said the knight. He didn't elaborate.
The road continued for miles, through an endless barrage of tough brush. A brief windstorm rolled through, and we had to take shelter among the trees or be blown down. It couldn't have lasted more than ten minutes. When it left, the air was clear, crisp and fresh, free of the usual closeness ‒ and for the first time we could see all the way to the northern horizon. Or, according to our compass, the southern one.
On top of that horizon stood a mountain range at least as tall as the Catsclaws, snow-capped and vast, leaving the Brass Men's country as a single massive valley caught between two grey stone armies.
It was an oddly gloomy sight. Perhaps part of me had hoped there would be some kind of civilisation out there, some far-flung people with whom we could barter for a ship back to the Kingdom. The idea of going back through the tunnels made me break out in a cold sweat.
Then we hit the top of the next rise, and saw Kassareth spread out below us in all its forgotten splendour.
There could be no mistaking it. It was a sea of overgrown ruins, a battleground between green-purple plant life and great mounds of rubble, as large as Kingsport and Farrowhale combined. Age and rain had worn it down until all the usual intricate reliefs were gone. Creepers choked every possible surface. Many of the ancient buildings didn't have so much as a wall left standing, broken to the very foundations. Here and there you could still make out the ever-present stains where the bronze cladding used to be.
The damage seemed to grow less further towards the horizon, until my eyes came to the one building which time had refused to touch. A square stepped pyramid of massive proportions, taller than the keep at Winter Court, set into the very heart of the city. Eight great staircases were set at regular intervals, all several hundred steps high, all leading to a gazebo at the top which probably gave access to the bowels of the thing.
It was the last, greatest monument to what had once been.
“We're here,” I said.
The moment was strangely joyless. We'd found Kassareth, only the cost had been too high. The only real friend I'd made on this expedition was gone.
The woman had no such reservations. She practically vibrated in place, waving us onward. “Come on! We could be there before nightfall!”
We followed the road down while the sun sank to meet the horizon. It was a sweltering afternoon, and the sweatbox haze returned in force. The whole world went honey-gold as we emerged into the streets of Kassareth.
It was a long, lonely walk through the living dead city. The plants became thinner, gnarlier, more spread-out. Even the wind avoided this part of the ruins. The only sound came from our own weary footsteps.
The road became a road again, an arrow-straight line aimed at the very heart of Kassareth. Other roads fanned out from it in great rings wrapped around the city's focal point. At a wild guess, though, I figured they wouldn't look like rings at all from above. They'd be spirals, all converging on that lumping great pile of masonry in the middle.
The once lush plantlife yellowed and died around us. The grass between the stones grew shorter and shorter, then vanished altogether. The stagnant air weighed on our shoulders with real pressure. Still no hint of a breeze, although the heat of the day began to bleed away as the sun burned low.
A growing sense of loneliness had been infecting me from the first step we took into Kassareth, but it was strongest by far at the base of the pyramid. Three people walked beside me, and we hadn't talked, hadn't smiled, hadn't so much as looked at each other. There wasn't a single thing holding us together but this quest. We hadn't become friends, or lovers in any true sense of the word. After all this time, we didn't really know each other. The walls never really came down.
Wordlessly, we put down some fruit and leaves for Zayara and prepared ourselves for the climb. Now that we were close enough, I could tell that the greenish, granite steps were slanted to one side, as if part of the pyramid had sunk over time. That couldn't be, though. The thing stood ruler-straight above the landscape. Aemedd of Leora couldn't have drawn a more perfect shape.
Then I realised they weren't proper steps at all, not like we would build. They coiled around the pyramid in a broken, gently ascending helix.
There must've been hundreds of steps. My legs ached more and more with each one. We slogged up, and up, and reached the little gazebo without any kind of fanfare.
The faintest groan sounded from behind the flimsy dried-grass curtains which hung down between the pillars. It was the least threatening sound I'd ever heard, so pathetic I didn't even think of going for a weapon. The voice that produced it wasn't in any shape to be hurting anyone.
As I stepped through the curtain, it made another noise.
“You came.” I heard the words and understood them, though I couldn't say how. The voice was gentle, and patient, and old. “I have been waiting for you, my friends. Welcome home.”
The four of us stared at the gaunt figure welcoming us to Kassareth. He lay curled into a ball on a small cot, all skin and bones, his back turned. Shivering. I rolled him over toward us. He coughed, in a way that said he was alive, but wouldn't be for much longer.
Despite his contorted posture, I could tell he was over six feet tall, and hairless from head to toe. Not a single tuft of anything grew on him. His skin was grey and wrinkled like old leather, and his half-lidded eyes were pure black. No whites in them.
I'd once seen a man in the streets of Corbile, a foreigner from across the Aranic, who had a caged monkey he exhibited for a small fee. It had looked at me with eyes like buttons, and they'd contained a strange, unexpected hint of intelligence. For all the world, this man's eyes reminded me of the monkey. Something not quite human.
It looked like the man had built himself a house here. The curtains kept out the sun and the rain, the cot gave him a place to sleep, and some crude shelv
es were lined with wooden bowls of water, berries, herbs and ointments. Crude, yet almost fanatically organised. Trellises hung from the ceiling to grow fruit vines. There were knives and axes of chipped flint arranged in neat rows on a leaf mat.
The fellow himself was stark naked except for a primitive leather pouch on his hip, and around his neck, an amulet of purest bronze. A blank medallion on a chain. His lips pulled back into a smile, showing rows of blackened and missing teeth. He made a weak gesture toward his shelves and croaked, “Please, make yourselves comfortable. Drink. You must be thirsty.”
The woman took one of the bowls and held it up to the man's lips. He sucked at it until water dribbled down his chin. Then she took a bowl for herself, and sipped politely in accordance to the laws of etiquette.
“Thank you,” she said. “We weren't expecting hospitality in this part of the world.”
She shot a glance at the rest of us, and we followed her lead. The water made me tingle all the way down in a sweet, fiery kind of way, and I stiffened in surprise. It tasted like alcohol. The rest of my bowl didn't last ten seconds.
The knight, too, found it to his liking. The empty bowl trembled in his hands as he whispered, “What in the name of all that's holy are you?”
“If I have a name, I no longer know it. All I can remember is living in these ruins, watching them crumble under the teeth of time.”
“Then let us speak plainly,” the woman said. “Are you a descendant of the people known as the Brass Men?”
“Observant of you. I suppose you could call me that. I am the last.”
“And the reason we can understand you‒”
“Is not important. The Armaments, as you call them, are capable of many things.” He spasmed, all his muscles tensing at once. “I expected someone would unite them again. But I expected it a long time ago.”
“What matters is that we're here now, yes?”
“True.” He coughed again. “Understand that I am old. Too old. I have been guarding this place for... I don't know how many centuries. Now that you are here, the bonds which have kept me alive are coming undone.” His fingers wrapped around the shining bronze circle. It seemed more intense somehow than the other pieces, like the same power concentrated into a much smaller space. His face twisted into a rictus of supreme effort, and sweat beaded on his forehead. “Please, turn back. Leave. There is nothing here you want. What you might unleash will bring only suffering.”
Written in Blood Page 44