What happened to her? She looks different.
The sphinx still displayed the urge to attack, though there was something else. She growled but bowed low and backed away.
“Aleta?” Letty asked.
As if prompted by something unseen, the sphinx turned and raced to the ravine before leaping and flapping across. She bounded to the stairs and disappeared.
“What the hell was that about?” Letty asked, loosening her grip on the Argument.
She heard a caw and looked up at the obelisk. Her bird had alighted at the pinnacle and was looking at the temple entrance.
Letty shrieked in fright as Aleta reappeared from the temple door.
“How?” Letty stammered, looking back to where the sphinx had been a moment ago.
Aleta looked like herself again.
There are two. Letty realized. I was attacked by the second, who I hadn’t met before.
“My sister was starving,” Aleta said, looking longingly off towards the forest.
Letty cringed, realizing how close she had come to a violent end at the claws of a hungry sphinx.
There was a slight gust of wind, and Letty heard a faint flapping sound. It wasn’t the bird, who still sat placid. Letty saw the edge of a piece of parchment flapping against the back of one of the columns.
Letty approached, but stopped as Aleta made an aggressive move towards the temple door. Letty stepped back and looked at the sphinx, who was now eying her dangerously.
Now she’s acting more like a sphinx. Am I going to hear the riddle? I need to get a look at the paper, it might be important.
Letty moved carefully towards the column, keeping her focus on the sphinx.
She reached for the parchment and gave it a slight tug. It stuck.
She edged forward, but this time Aleta growled and lunged.
Letty dashed to the far side of the column and saw the parchment was held in place by a dagger. In a rush, she ripped it away and bolted back towards the ravine.
Aleta followed for a few paces, growled, and then returned to mount one of a pair of plinths that flanked the entrance.
Letty stood tense and ready to run, but when Aleta let her head rest on a lazy paw, she knew the danger had passed. She looked at the parchment, which now had a large tear running through it.
“Acolyte—heed this warning. Typha is a man-eater. Brother Aelinga has just learned this lesson, and most brutally. Wait in the hall for me to return before attempting to enter the Serapeum. If you must enter, don’t forget to clear any Axiom nearby, not only your own. I should be back from the Abbey shortly,” Letty raised a brow as she finished reading aloud.
I know Aleta isn’t afraid of eating goblins, if she’s anything like her sister. And what’s this about clearing Axioms?
Confused, Letty put the parchment in her pocket.
Letty stepped forward. As if sensing her presence, Aleta’s head shot up and her posture tensed.
“Do you have a question for me, Aleta?” Letty asked.
Aleta grinned. “How can one enter so armed?”
“That doesn’t sound like a riddle. Aren’t you supposed to ask me a trick question about aging or holes in buckets?”
Aleta was silent.
Maybe it is a riddle.
Letty stared at the old message again, but nothing jumped out at her.
How can one enter so armed?
Letty felt for her backpack, but realized that she had either lost it or taken it off long ago.
I don’t have that pistol on me. Maybe she means the Argument. Is that what the message is referring to? An Axiom?
Letty approached the obelisk and set her Argument down on the ground. She didn’t like leaving it and now felt unarmed.
Scowling, she carefully returned to Aleta, watchful for any aggression. Aleta sat up and bared her teeth.
No? I was sure that was it.
“I’m unarmed, Aleta. That’s what you meant, right? How can one enter…” frustrated, Letty trailed off and read the message again.
‘Clear any Axiom nearby, not only your own.’
Letty looked around.
I don’t see anything else. Wait…
Letty walked behind the columns and looked on the ground.
Sitting behind a column, not far from where she had grabbed the parchment, was a small purple orb.
That’s it. She can sense it nearby and assumes that I’m armed with it. Thank God for this message; I would never have known.
She read the last sentence again. ‘I should be back from the Abbey shortly.’ He never came back, or someone would have taken this down.
Letty looked up at Aleta. “Did you eat someone from the Abbey? Maybe a few centuries ago,” Letty asked, dreading the answer.
Aleta was silent.
Letty looked back to the purple orb. What to do with this piece of Counter-Argument? Maybe if I— she reached out with a foot and tapped the orb.
A heavy and lingering jolt shot through her on contact with the orb. Despite the pain, her tap had knocked the orb a few feet further from Aleta.
Letty took deep a breath and let the pain wash over her until it finally subsided.
Is it far enough now? Letty glanced at the sphinx. Probably not.
She took a deep breath and kicked the orb toward the ravine. It rolled heavily towards the gap and silently plummeted in.
Letty felt like she had kicked an electrified block of steel. She stumbled back into a column, and slipped to the ground. Her leg was numb. “There! Are you happy now?”
Letty groaned, hopped back onto one foot, and carefully put pressure on her leg. Irritated, she limped towards the entrance. “And I bet there’s nothing in here but a mountain of hairballs.”
Aleta looked at her quizzically and spoke, “How can one enter so armed?”
“One can’t! And one is not!” Letty yelled, storming past Aleta’s plinth.
She isn’t going to pounce, is she?
Letty clenched her teeth as she passed.
Nothing happened.
Once inside, she stopped in her tracks.
Well, maybe that explains where the purple orb came from.
The wide entry way was lined with piles of bones and brutox husks. Ancient weapons and armor lay in haphazard piles. There were also two distinct nests made with what looked like cat fur and the softer linings salvaged off the collection of armor.
It’s their bedroom.
Looking closer, Letty saw chew marks on countless bones. There were also a few skulls that didn’t look human. They were elongated and malformed at the jaw.
Ryle.
Grateful that she wouldn’t be joining the pile anytime soon, Letty continued, pausing to glance at a message written in pictographs on the wall above the door.
She was grateful for the burning sconces evenly spaced on the walls.
I wonder who keeps them lit? Or have they been burning forever?
She entered a wide and spacious chamber. The tables and tall rows of shelves had a look of ancient design, though not for any fault in their make, but for the simplicity of their shape. As her eyes adjusted to the space, Letty realized she was in a library.
I don’t have the time to go through all this.
She approached a stone table covered with scrolls and wooden scroll containers. She stopped at one and saw more of the same pictographs.
Scrolls instead of books, and they’re all full of hieroglyphics.
She approached another and saw several symbols from math classes that were a few grades ahead of her.
I think that’s Greek.
She walked to another table and saw more of the same.
No! All of it’s in other languages!
She paused as something caught her attention.
A book!
The odd book in a roomful of scrolls seemed important.
She rushed to the other table and carefully picked up the lone book, which, despite looking familiar in a room full of scrolls, also looked to be
many centuries old. The cover featured a shining Infiniteye above a few words.
Vivere per hoc signum.
“Latin!” Letty yelled in frustration.
She nearly threw the book across the room.
“All this for nothing!”
She took a breath, kept herself from kicking the table, and then opened the book.
Latin on every page.
She paused at an illustration. It featured a character holding the Infiniteye up to her eye. The next page featured a detailed drawing of what it was like to have the Argument inside one’s mind.
It would have been nice to have this, in English, when I had to do it.
Letty read the title of that section. Argentum Conspectu.
She turned ahead in the book and saw illustrations of the orbs, and of characters wielding blades of light, along with other confusing diagrams.
This book is important. This is what I needed to find!
Letty took the book, which was heavier than she expected, and rushed to the exit.
She stopped in her tracks as Aleta blocked the way.
“Step aside, Aleta,” Letty commanded.
Aleta shook her head and pointed at the symbols above the doorway. “Take learning, leave the words.”
Letty nearly rushed past, but stopped herself and looked down at the pile of bones, husks, and abandoned weapons.
Chapter 11
Chimerax
Akri, the giant raven, perched atop a window cornice on the Weaver’s Spire, listening to the tinkle of silverware floating on the air.
Damn this city and its spires.
Akri ruffled his feathers and cawed, before hopping down to a rail that rung the tower. His large black eyes blinked as he stared down onto the City in the Sea, a gleaming ryle capitol, nestled in a pocket between the scapes of Pansubprimus and Euboia.
Countless slender towers and turrets jutted from the murk, each supported by pole-thin buttresses, and all sheathed in glittering onyx sheets. These jagged peaks cast serrated shadows over those skulking in the washes and lanes below. The wicked height of the spires pressed down on the spirits of the creatures beneath, while those who had schemed and climbed found them quite the contrary. To those ryle, who, in the culmination of their decades, made residence in the high, thin air, these spires were their own intangible, undeniable greatness.
To Akri, the towers were unsightly hazards one moment, and a convenient selection of perches the next.
These ryle, Akri thought, they speak to and fro, and sit to meals, but friendship is a foreign word. One trembles and thinks, “See me.” And when one ryle truly looks at his brother, it is with a shark’s eyes, and beneath thoughts of betrayal.
Akri shuffled on his rail, towards the sounds of dining, and took a swift peek around a corner to the nearby cafe. It was still too busy, and he pulled back. In minutes they would begin closing for the evening, and he would have a chance to alight between the still laden tables and take his pick of mussel soups and racks of split-shell pill-bugs the size of his skull. The ryle never split the shells far enough; they always left the choicest meat. Akri preferred to eat up here, and not scramble with the murk-dwellers for garbage.
His black eye rounded the bend once more and spied the cafe.
Only one couple left.
Two ryle, a male and a female, sat at a shaded table near the rail. Each took careful bites and sips, wary of making a mess on their tentacles. Their hands moved to place the flatware precisely so. Words passed. These concerned a world of peers and fiefdoms built by a merchant lord, now bloated and beyond. Though plans of violence and maneuvering swirled and formed and dispersed between the two, their eyes were ever concerned with each other. One saw weakness in the tilt of a spoon placed just shy of ninety degrees. The other spotted a speck of shellfish clinging to the underside of a tentacle. In these minor signs of weakness, the conversant ryle hedged for and against alliance, supposing imagined futures where this ally would be a foe. “Is this ryle a worthy ally?” begs the question, “Is this ryle a worthy foe?”
Their meal truncated by a feathered thrall, the ryle ended their analysis with a common phrase of parting, “To one day kill you,” “And you.” These words rang with a respect that moved the thrall to look up and away from the table.
In this moment, Akri, with practiced speed, rounded the corner with his long neck. He snatched a half-eaten pair of pill-bugs, and was back around the corner before the thrall returned to his table. While there was far more food lying around, further in the cafe, Akri was grateful for the easy scoop of two pill-bugs, and lucky he didn’t have to fend off the thrall with his powerful wings. He recalled brutox doormen chasing him once. One had leaped onto his back, as he swooped away, and battered his skull halfway across the city.
I was never a ryle, no matter what they say.
He hadn’t killed the brutox, but tossed him off over a canal, and endured a throbbing headache for days.
His feathers standing on end at the memory, Akri hopped further away on the rail before he felt alone. He split the shells and gorged on the fine meat before croaking out a thunderous caw and stretching his wings.
A burst of ultraviolet light pulsed through the city. Akri leaned over the edge and watched.
The Maelstrom is up to something.
He saw a massive, shooting tentacle whip around a spire.
They’re out hunting again. Someone’s been bad.
The tentacle craned upwards.
Hmm.
The tentacle barreled towards him at blinding speed.
I see.
Akri hopped off the Weaver’s Spire and tucked his wings tightly for a dive. The tentacle snapped at him, but missed, and slammed into the side of the spire.
Akri looked up and watched it arc around to continue the chase.
What did I do now?
Akri swooped low, beneath and between the dozens of bridges connecting the spires, hoping to force the tentacle into an untenable knot.
What do I do? What do I do?
Akri twisted and turned, occasionally colliding with pedestrians foolish enough to be on the bridges.
“Sorry!” he croaked, beating his wings at thunderous speed.
Maybe I’ll fly out to Degoskirke and roost in the Guilt for a while. It was closed off the last time I was there—but those wheel-locks of theirs…
Akri cawed in fright as a second, then third tentacle appeared.
He dropped at the last moment, coaxing the new pursuers to slam into each other.
Akri flapped as hard as he could, refusing to look back, though he heard the tentacles crashing into buildings and ripping bridges apart not far behind.
Just keep flapping!
He spotted another pair of tentacles wrapped around a ryle female.
They’re rounding up everybody today. She doesn’t have wings though!
She was struggling to tear the tentacles to pieces with her Counter. He was certain that they would subdue her.
Those tentacles are maelstrom spawn, and the purple blade is loath to hurt its own.
Akri cawed and banked hard towards the ryle. He dived and corkscrewed between the tentacles she was fighting.
Come on! Tie yourselves up, you stupid things!
He heard a crash and a sickly smacking and breaking. Akri saw the tentacles had bound into a disgusting mess.
He flew up to the ryle, who was cleaving a final tentacle in half. Akri eyed her grip and stance. Her blade had a touch of rusty red and substance to it.
She’s trained in the forms and has mastered the hone.
He eyed the cleaved tentacle.
Otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to do that.
Akri tried to speak but found himself too flustered. His beady eyes darted around, searching for more pursuers. It was quiet, at least for the moment.
“Caw!” Akri sputtered, “I mean, why are they after us?”
She looked up from the severed stump. “Oh, not you! They’re taking
me in with you? I’ve kept the city’s library for decades; what the hell do you do? Eat brutox for lunch?”
“Ocaw—asionally!” He spat. “We might make it across the sea to the—”
Akri paused. His black eyes rolled upward as a ragged white beak, connected to a massive tendril, loomed silently over them. It inspected them. At least a dozen other tentacles slithered up on all sides.
“They really are serious,” she said, staring.
“To hell with this, climb on!”
“Don’t be stupid!” she replied. “There is no escape.”
Akri cawed and flapped, hoping to take off, but was held fast by a sudden rush of tentacles.
The ryle sighed and let herself be taken.
The tentacles pulled backwards to their source with speed, through the city.
“They’re reeling us in to that shiny pond of theirs,” she said.
Akri felt the whiplash of his many dives and twists between the bridges being reversed on him.
The Maelstrom, little more than a shimmering pool of undulating purple vapor, was hidden beneath a gargantuan structure of cavernous ribs, linked by green glass panes. The pool was surrounded by a dozen ranks of seats, and, opposite the entry way, sat the white beak, silently presiding over the pool.
The tentacles and beak receded to their places. The many tentacles, now only a hundred feet long, floated, like swaying trees, over the pool. One held Akri in place, while the ryle was allowed to stand.
The beak snapped, and a purple blob coalesced in the air above the Maelstrom. The Archealexolix, a frighteningly tall, green-skinned ryle woman, and her subservient Lixovore, appeared from recessed coves. They took their places around the pool and raised their arms towards the undulating blob, which bulged and grew.
“Caaaw—hell! What did I do to deserve this? I’m just a raven!”
The beak bent towards him for just a moment, and then it snapped. Thrown by the tentacle, Akri slammed into the blob and sunk beneath its surface.
Akri saw the woman fall in moments later, and then, something else crashed into the blob from above. Akri could barely see in the inky soup, but he did see the third figure as it came to a rest nearby. It looked like a red stone.
Akri felt a sudden pulling and then ceased to be.
The Ryle of Zentule Page 23