She gave a cursory and arrogant nod to our Deserter captors—it was odd but still comforting in a way to see these giants exhibiting behavior that wasn’t completely alien to our own. Apparently there would always be castes and hierarchies, even among demons, demigods, or monsters.
Our captors bowed low, maintained the deferential pose for several beats, and then rose again. One of them exchanged a few words with the slender female, and she seemed to be looking us over as she listened. Then she strode past the warriors. Every Deserter bowed as she moved past, and it was clear they afforded her a great deal of respect.
The Deserter with the spine stopped alongside our wagon, and I shivered as she slowly turned her head—even eyeless, it was clear the giant was examining us.
From behind me, I heard Mulldoos say, “Think the bitch will understand Old Anjurian, scribbler?”
I didn’t turn around as I whispered, “I don’t know. The slave did, somewhat, though the language has diverged from what I studied. Why?”
Mulldoos said, “Well go on and tell that massive ugly devil we’re an exploring party from the mighty Syldoon plaguing Empire. Diplomats. Envoys. Representatives. However you want to plaguing put it. Make it real plaguing clear that fucking with us is a real bad idea.”
“Is that wise? Maybe . . . maybe we should . . .”
The Deserter continued scanning us, looking over each prisoner in turn, head cocked slightly to the side, exhaling deeply every time she finished taking in one and moving on to the next.
Mulldoos almost shouted. “Just plaguing do it, ink stain. Right quick. Don’t like the look of this bitch one bit.”
I conveyed the lieutenant’s sentiments, minus the profanity and unveiled threat.
She turned and regarded me, and my words practically turned to dust in my mouth as she cocked her head to the side. Though shorter than the males, she still towered over all of us. Her lips peeled back in what could have either been a sneer or a smile or a snarl. Then she slowly raised both arms above her head, cocked at the elbows.
Mulldoos yelled, “Did you plaguing tell her, Arki?”
I nodded slowly as in a dream, watching in terror as she grasped the spine in both hands, feeling a mystical draft rolling over me, lifting the hairs all over my body.
“Well tell her again, you skinny prick!” Mulldoos rasped. “Tell her whatever she’s about to plaguing do is a real bad plaguing—”
But the moment ended. The charge of whatever esoteric thing she had worked was gone.
The Deserter released the spine, turned her head to Mulldoos, and said in halting Syldoonian. “This one understands you well enough, white worm. The Matriarch said deliver alive. She said nothing about you having your tongue. Easy enough to pluck it out by the roots.”
Mulldoos somehow went paler than usual, but he leaned forward, pulling the chains taut, before saying, “You just crawl in this wagon and try it, you behemoth bitch.”
The Deserter grinned, predatory, and gave a clicking chuckle of sorts before moving down the line to the next wagon.
Mulldoos fell back against the side of the wagon and slammed the heel of his hand into the floorboards several times.
The Deserter went through the same motions at the wagon behind us, examining, then grasping the spine.
Vendurro leaned over and said to me, “Well, at least you won’t have to struggle none trying to figure out how to tell them to go fuck themselves in Old Anjurian, eh? Mulldoos can do it just fine in perfectly good Syldoonian.”
When the Deserter finished approaching each wagon in turn and examining everyone inside, she walked to the front of the procession once more. The human slaves got the rooters moving again, and the wagons continued rolling over the well-paved road that led directly into the dome.
The tangy sting of vinegar grew more powerful as we moved towards the oscillating and scintillating surface of the dome. Only we weren’t clasped hand-to-hand to Captain Killcoin or protected by Bloodsounder at all.
But the Deserters and human slaves walked forward nonchalantly, clearly not worried about madness or death. The first of them parted the warping, gently curved veil, disappearing from view entirely.
The rooters at the front of the wagon moved through as if the veil dome weren’t there at all.
As we approached, I didn’t feel the tug that I had when we crossed the Godveil—I felt nothing at all. At least until the wagon moved me into the pulsing weft and weave itself. Then it was if my mind were being cast about in a tempest, twisted, torn, consciousness stretched. I saw thousands of flashes of human memories, each a separate current flowing against the rest— powerful, awful, in danger of pulling me under and swallowing me completely. There were sensations I recognized as they washed over me—sounds of animals growling; splashing water and children crying; cries of joy and fury; the scent of lemongrass; the feeling of an embrace; the pleasure and bite of pain as a blister popped and tore; the shock of icy river water up to my thighs; the howling of wind that precedes a hellish storm; the smell of rooter dung, piled high.
There was also a rush of some other alien sensations that were so overwhelming and beyond the scope of anything I’d ever experienced, I nearly vomited.
It felt like an eternity of being churned in the eddy, and then we were suddenly through, though it was clear we had only physically traveled a few feet.
I shook my head, trying to clear it, feeling nauseous and faint and hot, as if struck by sickness. It seemed to pass quickly, and then I saw what was inside the dome, a few hundred yards away . . .
A wondrous, massive, and completely alien city that could only serve as sanctuary for the Deserters.
Roxtiniak.
We continued rumbling towards it and the first thing that stood out was that while the city was walled—with much higher walls than any human settlement—there was no dry or wet moat. The road led to a simple but massive gate, open wide, and a gatehouse, but no drawbridge or portcullis, and no flanking towers nearby, no hoardings or battlements, no siege engines on top of wide towers along the walls, no arrow loops in the few towers that did break up the wall. In short, none of the defensive constructions or developments that would have marked any human city of this size.
But of course, with a mystical dome preventing approach, all that was rendered irrelevant—had the Deserter with the spine not examined us and somehow marked us as able to pass through, I was certain we would all be dead. As we rolled towards the open gate, I wondered why there were any walls at all.
I looked over at Mulldoos, who was scowling, of course, but appraising as well. But he shared his thoughts with no one. With a wrenching sadness, I realized I’d never hear him and Hewspear banter over how they would broach a city’s defenses again. No bristly arguments about possibly tunneling under the veil surrounding the city or capturing a she-devil to breach its defenses, or any other method they might weigh and discard.
We rolled between the stone walls and while there was nothing there as marvelous or sublimely horrible as the warping dome, Roxtiniak itself was nearly as overwhelming. Simply the scale and size of things, all built to accommodate the giant inhabitants. I felt like a very small child again, overcome with awe and fear and wonder.
The buildings ahead were never square or perfectly round or symmetrical, but curving in odd shapes, and resembled the terraced farm we’d seen. Each level had a flat roof that was covered in undulating grass, with every upper story always smaller than the one immediately below, which gave the effect of the structures being carved out of a hill rather than built solely of stone and wood and stucco.
The rooters pulled our wagons into an expansive plaza directly on the other side of the wall that was bordered by neat rows of purple moss columns, though all empty and devoid of spikes. While they weren’t so crowded as to provide a true wailing, there was a low lament as the breeze blew through the holes.
There were Deserters milling about everywhere in the plaza, some on large stone benches, but the majority s
tanding or walking. Most wore flowing robes with sleeves so long and billowy they nearly trailed to the ground, and odd sashes and strips of cloth and rectangular cloaks and a hundred other accoutrements that were obviously designed to add flourish or “texture” to the clothing, having no functional purpose at all, and looking like they would only catch on things and prove problematic.
Not surprisingly, given the horns, none of the Deserters were wearing hoods, hats, or cowls of any kind. And the backs of the gowns, robes, and free-flowing tunics were open halfway down the back, I presumed to show off the dual and triple “manes,” and the myriad ribbons, bells, and assorted doodads that were worked into them, or how they crisscrossed each other.
All of them had similar designs on their skin, as if they were inscribed somehow by brand or knife or chisel, scarred and marked forever.
I mentioned as much to Vendurro. He ran his hand over the inked noose at his neck and muttered, “Kind of makes our efforts look sort of amateurish, don’t it?”
There were only a few Deserters armored like our captors, and every single one of them turned in our direction and adopted the postures of those who would be staring if they had eyes.
It seemed obvious they either had never seen so many human captives at once before, or had heard that we were all armed and had killed some of their own. They turned to each other and had hushed, guttural exchanges, and one female pointed.
But the most noteworthy thing wasn’t the presence of so many more Deserters milling about, the excessive cut of their cloth, or their behavior as they gawked at us as we rode past, but the colors. Or lack of. I’d noticed it before, but now with so many Deserters, the effect was striking. While it was hard to tell the caste or class from the style of clothing, one thing they all had in common was that their garb was undyed. Belts, robes, trousers, cloaks— one and all, they were the natural hue of the material, pale grey, cream, bone, tan, and devoid of the slightest hint of any dyes.
The Anjurians had favored earth tones, and muted colors on the whole, but the Deserters made their fashion seem garish and gaudy in comparison.
While the clothing had many folds, and studs, and strange physical flourishes, it was clear that, not having eyes, they had no cause to appeal to that sense at all. The Deserters were completely washed out.
And that’s when I noticed the same of the architecture—while many buildings had discs near the doors that were like mosaics of some kind, they were done only in tiny grey tiles or stones arranged in what might have been a pattern of some kind, but didn’t cohere to form any kind of image. And while the surfaces of the buildings had hundreds of small grottos, alcoves, carvings, or other peculiar projections I assumed were ornamental, they were utterly devoid of color as well. Unlike a human city, there were no painted facades or murals, no doors of different hues. The buildings were remarkable because of the sheer scale, and how asymmetrical everything was, especially compared to any human construction—but there was no effort made to distinguish, enhance, or distract with color. Most of the buildings were terraced, and some had huge bulbous towers, oddly angled promenades, and a hundred other things that made them unusual compared to human dwellings, but it was difficult to take that in, with all of the colors bleached out entirely. Or never added in the first place at least.
It was like seeing an alien otherworld.
A few soldiers around me gave voice to similar thoughts, commenting quietly as we rumbled down a broad avenue away from the plaza. One looked at a terraced building we rolled past. “Just keeps getting queerer and queerer, don’t it?”
Vendurro replied, “Looks like it was built by plaguing ghosts. Giant ghosts.”
The only flashes of color were small rows of mossy columns here or there, lining the avenues or glimpsed through the arched openings of walls, though the moss was so dusky purple as to be almost black, and were a result only of nature’s artistry rather than something chosen by Deserter botanists on account of their color, which they must not have been able to see anyway.
As we rumbled down another large avenue, gawked at by countless sightless Deserters, I noticed that was another oddity—the moss columns we encountered out in the wild were present in several manicured gardens or perfectly orchestrated rows as well, their translucent spikes shimmering in the sun.
I gawked in turn, looking at the severe faces of the Deserters, the stern and somewhat bewildering facades of the buildings. Vendurro said, “Plague me, but for not having eyes of any kind, they sure do stare a lot.”
Benk nodded. “Makes my skin crawl, it does. Plaguing bastards.”
Several soldiers mumbled agreement, and Mulldoos said, “Spend less time yapping, you sorry sons of whores, and more time marking things. The number of streets, landmarks, any barracks you see. We’re going to get out of this plaguing city, fighting or sneaking, and we got to know where to go. You hear me?”
Benk lifted his head from his knees and laughed. “You saw that dome, Lieutenant. Like the Godveil, it were. Ain’t no getting out on our own, unless they decide to let us out, even if we painted ourselves a path right back to the gate.”
Mulldoos gave him the one-eye glare and balled his hands into fists. “Give me lip one more time, you little fuck, go on and do it. And the second we get unhooked from the wagon here, I’m going to beat you senseless. You hear me, Benk?”
No one challenged Mulldoos before Rusejenna struck him down, especially when he was glowering and working himself into a lather. Even Azmorgon might have thought better of it. But Benk returned the stare, long and hard, and everyone in the wagon watched to see if the lippy soldier was about to grow bold enough to challenge that threat, now that it was less likely that Mulldoos could actually carry it out.
Finally, Benk said, “Aye, Lieutenant. Marking the city. Right.” Then he turned and spit out the side of the wagon before looking at the large oblong granary we passed.
Even more than their control of the Memoridons, or their system of recognizing and rewarding talent over heredity, or their cunning or viciousness, the thing that had ensured the Syldoon triumphs over the centuries was their discipline and devotion to the brothers in their own Towers. And just now, that was all we had to sustain us. If that failed, we were well and truly doomed.
I leaned back against the wood as we jostled over the cobblestones, trying to force myself to breathe and not succumb to panic or despair.
We made our slow trek through the streets, and everywhere it was the same. The Deserters that were out already stopped to take us in, the same way humans might if a menagerie of exotic animals were on parade, and word preceded us, as some of the groups were large indeed.
But as different as their physicality and fashions were, they still had shops, and traded, and haggled over the price of a bolt of (undyed) cloth or a tray of strange meats on a corner. They were disturbingly human in that respect.
Beyond the pronounced asymmetrical and terraced aspects of most of their architecture, and the lack of color, the other thing that stood out was that, like their clothing, the surface of almost every Deserter building was textured in some way, without a smooth surface to be seen. There were indentations and alcoves, ribbed paneling and exotic stucco relief, filigree of stone and metal, holed surfaces that seemed perfect for nesting birds, and a thousand other features designed to add variety and appeal to tactical senses as much as visual ones, which was odd, considering the Deserters couldn’t see them or possibly reach most of the surfaces.
And while there were fewer rows of harvested mossy columns this far into the city, so the low lament was faint and barely audible, there was another noise that sounded like metal chimes of some sort, but with a whirring or humming that accompanied it. As the thoroughfare curved, I saw the source—there were square stone columns periodically lining the street, and they had open sections carved into them where some bronze objects hung. I strained to make them out as we rode past—they looked like spheres composed of strips, with narrower bands inside, and narrower st
ill inside those, and all of them spun when the breeze blew through the obelisk, causing them to hum and whirr and chime.
We crossed another broad avenue, and I looked in both directions. The left was much as the rest of the city—gray or white, marked by unusual-looking buildings and monochrome Deserters. But to the right, far down at the end of the avenue, there was an explosion of color—bright, brassy, lurid even, and the size of the buildings made it clear they housed humans.
I wished Bulto were around, as I wanted to ask someone what that meant. But after the blow he had received already today, he probably wouldn’t have been overly inclined to dole out information even if he had been nearby.
We moved on, the street far more winding than anything in Sunwrack or even Alespell. While the Syldoon capital was the height of order, and Baron Brune’s city was haphazard and confusing, the roads generally ran straight. Here, they meandered and curved for reasons that had little to do with geography or any other easily discernible reason.
But I saw a massive building in the middle of the city several blocks ahead, rising above the two- and three-story buildings we passed. I caught glimpses of it at first, and as we got closer, it was easy to pick out.
Looking up, I noticed for the first time that the Veildome wasn’t complete—there was actually a large hole in the center that made it possible to see the sky above.
With the rooters rocking side to side as they pulled our wagon train along, I heard a noise that continued growing louder. At first, it sounded like fast-flowing water, which was strange, as I hadn’t seen any rivers near this city, and I doubted there was one running through the middle of it.
Chains of the Heretic Page 19