by JM Guillen
(—a single night of fire and darkness. Yet the bards of the time trembled, unable to sing of that night. When the bloodstorms reigned—)
They caroled the triumph of overcoming cruel, tyrannical treatment, of the smug satisfaction of knowing they were right and being able to prove—
(Itezeh came then, Dragonqueen of Dhire Lith, she of the brooding young. She offered a fell bargain for the people of Eld Calyptia. She would save their city from the Shroud, aye, but her progeny would ever—)
They crooned a bitter lamentation for those left behind, for the ignorance and the cowardice of those too blind to grasp the power, the greatness she offered on a bronzed platter.
I slowed to a trot.
The walls narrowed in on me as if clutching their prize, desperate not to lose me, but I noticed a slight up-tilt to the rock under my feet. I grinned triumphantly before I even realized why.
Up was good. Up was air and sunlight.
I broke into a run. Faster and faster I sped past the reaching shadows, no longer looking for side passages or gloom-hidden doors. This tunnel was my way out.
Or so I maintained until I came to the doors at the end.
“Oh.” I stared.
These hadn’t been seen in a mortal age.
The doors were gigantic, seeming to more than fill the entire tunnel-mouth. The wood was stained so dark with time and polish that I almost took it for soot-covered stone. Looming up out of the darkness, the figures carved into the doors reached for me. Clawed hands grasped. Bared teeth grimaced and snapped. Tongues of flame leapt and danced in the light of my flickering lantern.
I took one startled step back but halted once the figures resolved themselves.
Then I peered forward again.
Warm recognition blossomed in my heart.
I knew this story.
I crept closer, and one hand rose to touch the relief sculptures, tracing their shapes with just the barest tips of my fingers. Vines and leaves engulfed hand-sized rounded humps, the leaf-shaded huts of the Einholt, the last home of the Du’anni, my forebears. My fingers traced their shapes, pressing into the tiny grooves of the thatched roo—
(—none can say. In the end, these were the first people, those chosen by the Archons to stand against—)
It was from the Du’vetica. The door was a scene from a favorite figment story.
Above the figures rose the speaking sun, its mouth giving forth unknowable truths. It obviously represented the radiant figures that spoke to the Du’anni through wind and leaf, petal and light.
(—on the nature of the Shroud and what the people must do.)
Further on, a great bear with bent, gangled limbs rent the very air. It was flanked by an emaciated, mad wolf and a great, bloodthirsty boar, each terrifying and unnatural. Above them, the razor-winged raven flew. The enormous bird slashed at an overly tall man with wicked talons.
“The Sorrows.” I whispered the words. “The beasts beyond the bounds.” I grinned like a child at the images, remembering every Reclamation story I had ever heard.
Over all of them stood the robust form of a man holding flames in his bare hands. I knew it was meant to be silver flame.
Aeldred the Drae himself.
I gaped at the graven work. Here in this place of bitter shadows stood a grandiose testament to one of the founding stories of my culture.
What was it doing here?
I shook my head in disbelief. My foremothers would have killed to so much as glimpse such a magnificent, sacred icon.
And here it stood, barring my path.
“Life’s a tangle, I suppose.” I sighed, raised my eyes skyward, and wrapped my hand around the thick door handle. I pulled hard.
The door flew open, and I hastily stumbled back so as not to hit my face with my own fist. I stepped to the side and leaned around the door, peering into an enormous cavern.
Naturally, the lantern chose that instant to fail.
14
“Perfect.” I sighed. For an instant, my light-adjusted eyes saw nothing but darkness.
Again.
Eventually though, I began to make out vaguely lit shapes in the dim. Some light filtered into the cavern, but its source remained blocked from me.
I set the lantern down, fumbling to make certain it would prevent the door from closing. If this were another obstructed path, I’d be forced to return to the water that bore me here. I wasn’t about to lose my way out.
Cautious, I stepped within.
The smooth-walled chamber was vast. It also gaped open to unfathomable depths after a few paces. Fortunately another, albeit fainter, line of light marked the crest of that precipice.
A soft, sourceless light shone in the depths of the room.
“Oh!” My eyes widened and a hand came to my mouth. For a long moment, I gaped.
This was impossible.
Straight ahead of me stood a magnificent creation involving vast plates of lapis lazuli, each bigger than my outstretched arm, hovering near each other like a barricade of streaked blue and gold. Complex structures of erryxwood and an ever-changing, silvery substance revolved around each other in complex patterns.
This had to be a bound. It was the only thing that fit. I goggled at the marvel before me. It was beautiful. Awe-inspiring. Superbly—
“YsAaaBel DaRtANge.” The voice was warbling and strange. “AeTNE NuMOiN. DAs TroOOooooi-il.”
“Ugh.” The words of the message remained the same, but now they sounded bent and broken, something had turned them sour and bitter. It gnawed at my nerves, accompanied by a whine like invisible summer midges.
I shook my head to rid myself of the sound, but it persisted. I frowned as I turned my head away.
To either side of the platform where I stood, ramps glided down in gently arcing spirals. Fantastic glyphs had been wrought into the shale in precise strokes. My eyes followed the ramps down. They ended at an alcove nestled against the opposite wall, all but hidden in the gloom. The shadowy shapes there suggested plush chairs and large tables covered with shining implements, scrolls, and—
“Books?” I couldn’t help but smile.
My feet carried me down one of the ramps before I could question my idea. Books have answers. I knew it to be true, had proved it to myself time and again. Perhaps one of the scrolls held a map. It was a weak excuse, I knew. Still I allowed my feet to carry me down.
As I walked, the glyphs that sprawled over the pathway grumbled a sullen orange glow. They glared from the stone, petulantly giving off just enough light for me to see that I traipsed next to sheer drop.
Bookshelves lined the walls of my destination, delineating the walls and hallways of a library. I collapsed onto the worn cushions of a couch that circled the large, stained worktable and just stared at all the tomes.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to run down the book-lined hall while my fingers touched the spines of each and every one. I wanted to laugh out loud.
In the meantime, my fingers plucked one of the shining instruments from the table and toyed with it, turning it over and over. When I actually looked at what I held, I recoiled, dropping it with a horrified gasp.
Dried blood had crusted over the large pinchers like rusty tears.
(—the woman screamed, agony at the center of her. Her blood would call the Arachniis, and it would swim through worlds to find the bound, to gnaw away at it—)
My gaze flicked back to the table to find it covered with sharp instruments covered in dried blood, vials of noxious-looking substances, and many books and scrolls. A small, open box contained leather restraints, which I supposed were used to hold hapless folke who found themselves here at the mercy of the Brethren.
“Not my taste in a library,” I softly mused.
Several stacked books lay still opened, one upon another, as if someone had been doing hurried research.
I glanced at the nearest. The tome had been bound in something unlike any leather I had ever seen. It was smooth to the touch, somehow wick
ed.
It whispered.
“I could take just one with me.” I smiled at the thought. I did need to start a new library after all. The title of the book was embossed upon the front, an elegant script in delicate gold leaf: The Liber Noctiis.
“The book of night?” That wasn’t quite right. I thought the words were in Riogiin, but “night” was “noctre” in that tongue.
Odd. I flipped the book open to a page. Thankfully it was far more comprehensible:
Upon the Creation of Wealth
Although a minor rite, the creation of wealth is one of the first things I learned from my master, so I would always be able to provide for myself during my studies. He spent over a month preparing me, teaching me what materia to use and the siguls I needed.
After slicing the proper sequence of siguls in my forehead, we took pure sand, squarely from the beach near Downings.
He had me weigh it, making certain of exactly how much we had: fifteen and one-half pounds.
My master thought we should take far less, but as I knew that the more sand we had, the more wealth we could create. I insisted upon carrying more and more. I was so happy imagining what I would do with all that money.
Fate has a sense of irony.
Before this time, my master had told me that I’d reached the age to know a woman. He told me that matters of flesh between a man and a woman were often powerful practices within the art, and that I would have to learn. He bid me be cautious however, as the heart itself must be overcome.
I believed I understood until he brought Rosa to our home. Once I saw her, the first woman in over two years, I must admit that my heart went to her.
As it turned out, my master’s offer to her was simple. Remain with us and teach me what I needed to know about a woman, and she would be fed and clothed.
This she did, and within six moons I had come to love her, as all youths who find their first lover.
Yet, after gathering the sand, he told me that I must make a choice. I would have to choose between the art and my mortal heart.
I stood strongly and told him I would choose the art over any other thing of this world.
What a fool I was!
That I was right is a condemnation of my soul.
The pure sand had sat in buckets of rarified water outside the workroom for a solid week. Upon the day of casting, the sand was poured into a cauldron, along with several potente oils and my own secretly saved ejaculate.
When I stepped into the workroom on the appointed day, there before me was my Rosa, strapped to a table.
I tried to pay her no heed, even as her eyes sang to me, begged me.
“Here, then, is your choice,” my master intoned, his words seeming like summer’s thunder. “In order to complete this rite, you need fifteen and a half pounds of flesh, an equal amount to the sand you so wanted. The flesh must have no bone nor gristle. It must come from Rosa, as that is her true purpose here.”
Rosa! Rosa, whose sweet lips had given me nights of pleasure, whose soft moans were a chorus to my soul!
My master saw my heart and leaned in closely, whispering so that I might barely hear, “Or you may take your leave, Malac. You may take her and go and never learn what lies beyond.”
The moments seemed to stretch, as if the very world held its breath.
When I picked up the knife, it must have weighed over a tonne.
She begged me, told me she would do anything I wished, that she was sorry she had failed me.
I could barely see through my teary eyes, could barely hold the knife with trembling fingers as I approached the table. I set about my task grimly.
Rosa had always complained about her figure, although I found her beautiful. Ignorant in the matters of the body, I thought perhaps, if I took small sections here and there, I could take something not precious.
I started with a ragged cut along the underside of her soft stomach.
Rosa’s entrails slid from the cut, a bubble of blood on her lips. She shook, quivering in an unnatural way I have never seen since.
Yet I continued in my work.
We then cooked the flesh and entrails for eighteen hours. At the end of that time, the sand had transformed to silver.
My master told me how proud he was, that he had been certain I would take flesh from her leg or arms so that she might live.
The thought never occurred to me. To this day, I hear her weeping.
I cannot forget this soon enoug—
“No!” The words on the page felt like a physical break in my mind.
(—write with flesh, they write with blood, they write with the screams of the lost. The Liber Noctiis, an abortion of a book written with the mad cacophony of entire worlds—)
I pushed the tome away, sickened.
To clear my mind, I gazed at the bound itself, entranced by the stately movement of the components. The lapis lazuli slabs rotated ever so slowly.
Those should send flashes of gold reflecting around the room. The thought flicked idly through my head as I tried to recover my aplomb.
The idea simply felt right, as if there were more to it than just ambience. As if it was necessary. But there’s no sun down here to reflect. I considered what angles would be required for the slabs to reflect the vague light available. Perhaps if there were mirrors to bank the light… I snorted. Duffer, I berated myself. It can’t have been fashioned that way. No mirror would be large enough, not for this scant light.
Still. It was right somehow. I knew it.
The beveled shapes of the lapis lazuli had been engraved ever so slightly, I noted.
“Those should shine,” I grumbled.
I peered closer. It just seemed off balance. Were there pieces missing?
Perhaps. I shook my head.
I was wasting my time. I had to get moving. I had to leave, to find my way out, back to the city proper, to Captain Argent. Mayhap his tinkerman could do something about this collar, but I’d never know if I didn’t beat feet.
And yet, I didn’t.
Instead, I wandered around the table toward the edge of the alcove and continued to watch the bound.
The erryxwood configurations were fascinating. A large varietal of the buttery smooth wood tumbled about like bumbles in the spring. The wooden pieces bore all manner of nameless shapes and patterns. They bobbed over and around themselves in a mad, coruscating prance that contained only some logic.
I stepped closer, brow furrowed as I searched for the pattern. I watched a piece the size of my palm as it nearly collided with another.
(—hear then the singing of the stars. not with ears, but it is a sound nevertheless. It is a paean of beauty and light and movement, endless circular movement, each star cinched to the others, leading, following, and swirling in a pattern too vast to compre—)
“You shouldn’t be on that course.” The erryxwood piece I spoke to belonged a man-height above, where it should dove-tail with a polished piece of lapis.
I knew these things. I knew them as I knew my own name.
My hand reached out to nudge the errant shape into place, but my skin tingled with the nearness of the bound. The tiny hairs on my arm stood at attention, and my spine ran with hen prickles.
(—drift along these connections. The Archons understood how all things were wefted together and so the bounds all touch one another, crafted together with great strands of power. These filaments—)
I shook my head, focusing on the slender piece of erryxwood as it spun over a lapis plate.
If I just nudge it… My hand moved in imitation of the act before the thought had come to completion.
I stood, but before I had even taken a single step, a swift blow swept my legs out from under me.
I landed on my hip on the hard stone floor.
A voice hissed in my ear, “Do not move.”
Cold metal pricked at my throat.
15
I froze in place, horrified.
How had they slipped up on me? Had I been
so caught by the bound that—?
“Smart thing you are,” a woman’s voice crooned.
I rolled my eyes to her face. Light-brown hair hung down in loose coils like bumble-nectar flowing from the comb. Her generous mouth sneered down at me under a white silk bandage drawn tightly over her eyes.
The blade she held to my throat was large and sharp, and her knuckles turned white where they gripped the thick handle. Her face tilted up.
She spoke to someone outside of my line of sight. “Shall I slice her open for you to examine, High Rector?” Reverence threaded her hiss like a ribbon.
She clenched my hair in a tight fist, and the sudden pain made my eyes tear. Then she yanked my head back to bare my throat to the wan light.
I blinked as her elbow rose into my view.
As she bent over me, prepared to slice my throat, anger flared in my heart. The ring burned on my hand.
No.
It was a bad idea, and I knew it. The second legacy was powerful. What would that burst of fury do to the bound? Would I damn the city to save my skin?
My fingers scrabbled on the dusty rock floor, and my thoughts raced. Was there a book that had fallen to the ground within my reach? Perhaps I could somehow summon one of the erryxwood shapes to my hand? I still felt—
“No!” A man bellowed as a hand swept out of nowhere and struck the woman full in the face, knocking her away from me. The knife she’d held clattered somewhere out of view.
“You really are a pathetic fool, Riza.” The speaker loomed over the cowering woman, a lanky shape in dark robes.
I flipped myself over, hoping to scramble away before either noticed I was moving. Then large foot slammed into the middle of my back and pinned me to the floor. I groaned, my joy at being still alive somewhat muted.
The man growled at the woman as she folded herself into a tiny bundle on her knees.
“The witch is required for what is to come.” He paused to gesture, if I read his weight shift aright. “Killing her means we cannot use her blood!” (—for the Arachniis. It gnaws at the root of the bound, deep within the folds of the world—)