by Mike Shel
“The sculpture has been here thousands of years, embedded in rock,” said Kennah, skeptical.
“The god didn’t have to make it to use it, Sir Kennah,” Qeelb responded, performing a few weird gestures over the orb. “But I don’t see how that prevents us from proceeding. Which pick do we try next?”
Auric, his face still pale, agreed. Silver, gold, then platinum, Chalca’s dexterous manipulations each yielding ever more extravagant displays of metal pieces peeling away from the wall, bits of rock crumbling and falling to the floor. With the platinum tool the remaining rods, gears, and assorted bits folded away to reveal an opening to the next chamber. The sculpture itself was now completely detached from the wall: a roughly oval table, balanced delicately on eight pointed legs, four to a side, the glass orb mounted on its arm at the center, staring up at the ceiling now.
“Balls of the war god!” marveled Kennah with a boyish grin. “That was quite a production, eh?”
Agnes’s father walked to one side of the opening created by the sculpture’s absence, which was about seven feet wide and five feet high. He peered cautiously at the space beyond. Agnes followed his gaze. A fading idol stared back at them: an anthropomorphic frog, crouching, about four feet tall, standing on bowed, spindly legs, its mouth agape, and a great lolling tongue hanging down to its waist. After sparing her a glance, her father bent down, lifted a foot over the lip of the opening and stepped through.
“There’re ten or more of them,” he said.
The question ten or more what? was on the tip of her tongue when from behind them came the sound of whirring gears and the clicking of metal against metal. Agnes turned, reaching reflexively for her rapier. The orb of the sculpture was now looking directly at them, and a cluster of long segmented arms, each tipped with a shimmering blade, sprouted from the thing’s curved back.
Chalca stood frozen before it. Mechanical arms flashed out, slicing the actor’s flesh in half a dozen places, blood spilling from awful wounds. Kennah lurched forward and knocked Chalca aside to safety, his own weapon drawn, hacking at the thing’s appendages, doing his best to ward off its razor-sharp claws. It looked like a nightmare arachnid now, prancing about on its eight legs, swinging its numerous bladed limbs, each functioning with seeming independence, seeking weakness in its opponent. Kennah parried and attacked with a fury but was soon bleeding from a dozen small cuts in his exposed flesh.
Agnes leapt into the fray with her rapier drawn as Sira rushed to Chalca, who had collapsed to the ground, a bleeding mess. Half of the thing’s weaponized arms turned to face Agnes, and she found all her energy and focus was required to parry its sinister thrusts and slices. She felt flashes of hot pain as a gleaming claw opened the back of her sword-wielding hand, while another grazed her cheek. She looked for an opening but couldn’t find it. Even if I could, she thought frantically, what would I strike at?
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Qeelb begin a series of complex gestures, along with words of tongue-twisting Middle Djao: he readied some powerful spell to contain this metal beast! But the arm holding the glass orb turned toward the broken sorcerer, and a bright beam flashed from it, emitting a sound like crackling fire. Qeelb cried out as he staggered backwards, his sorcerous motions arrested, his hands shooting up to cover his eyes.
Agnes’s father joined the fray, bringing Szaa’da’shaela around with a great swing. Agnes expected the Djao blade to cut through the beast’s appendages as though they were daisy stems, but instead there was a symphony of screeching metal on metal and a shower of sparks. Each of the affected limbs returned to the fight. The bladed appendages were divided into three clusters now to face Kennah, Auric, Agnes.
Now that she was no longer parrying half of the intricate construct’s attacks, some of Agnes’s desperation receded, and she could see herself making a counterattack. But where? It wasn’t a flesh-and-blood creature, with vital organs to pierce. Then her eyes settled on the glass orb. There! The instant she had a clear shot, she swung at the sphere, but caught the end of the mechanical arm that held it instead. Agnes cursed, but the construct’s reaction was telling: the arm grasping the orb arched back, moving out of reach of her rapier.
“Father! Kennah!” she shouted. “The orb! Blind the fucker!”
As if choreographed in advance, the sword-wielding trio took up positions around the metal beast, drawing its lethal appendages in three different directions. It was her father who got behind it, and with a risky swing, opening himself to a flurry of slices at the pectorals of his hardened leather cuirass, he struck the foggy orb. As the rune-etched blade connected with the glass, it exploded in a blast of white shards.
Agnes jerked back and shielded her eyes as bits of tiny glass slivers bit into her face and hands. Kennah also managed to guard his eyes. Auric was not so lucky—he stumbled back with a curse, free hand reaching up to his eyes. Agnes resisted the urge to run to him. The metal beast crouched, swinging madly with its sightless bladed tentacles. She parried a few wild swipes of its keen knives. Even Szaa’da’shaela couldn’t severe those appendages, she realized. She scanned the thing’s body, an amalgam of metals: gears, rods, wheels, spools, pistons, jewels. Did it have a heart? A vulnerable spot she could skewer?
She spied a knot of interlocked gears peeking from beneath two plates of copper on the beast’s back, just a few inches away from its sprouting bladed appendages and now-eyeless arm. She parried several more blind slashes, the metallic chime of ting ting ting sounding in her ears as her rapier clashed with the creature’s knives. Her heart pounding, she spied her opening. She held her breath and let instinct guide the thrust: her rapier flew through the waving metal limbs, and with uncanny precision, the tip of her blade sank into the narrow gap between copper plates. There was an unholy squeal of metal and something powerful grabbed hold of her blade, yanked it from her grasp and deeper into the slit. The beast’s knives parted skin on the left side of her neck as she leapt away from the thing, her sword stuck fast in the beast’s back. The steel of the blade bent and curled, chewed up in the mechanical guardian’s sorcerously fueled gears. It shuddered, and a stink of burning oil filled the air, smoke escaping from the shuddering beast.
“Vanic’s balls, Peregrine!” shouted Kennah, joy in his deep baritone, broad white smile beaming through his thick black beard. “You fucked it up good!”
The construct flailed. Agnes, a hand on her neck to staunch the flow of blood, had to duck so that a flurry of the bladed appendages didn’t take off her head. Finally, with one last mighty shudder, a cacophony of grinding gears and twisting metal, the beast collapsed onto its belly with a loud crash and was still.
Agnes’s father laughed in triumph, face bloody from shards of glass. Agnes felt her smile stretch so wide she feared her face would break. She reached to pull her ruined rapier from the beast’s back, only the pommel and three inches of blade showing, but it was stuck fast. “Since you don’t know how to use it, Kennah, looks like I’ll need to borrow your sword!” she chided, looking up at her Syraeic brother standing on the other side of the wrecked hulk lying between them.
Kennah’s smile was gone. It was at that moment Agnes noticed the pulsing stream of blood coursing from the deep slash across his neck. He reached up to the mortal wound, red-stained fingers quivering.
“Always thought you were a fine swordsman, Peregrine,” he managed to say before collapsing to the ground.
35
Kingdom of the Toad
Chalca sat propped up against the wall, eyes closed, deathly pale from blood loss, but alive, thanks to Sira’s devout ministrations. The priest tended to Agnes now, a gentle hand laid on the gashes on the side of her neck and the back of her right hand. There was a tingling warmth as divine power mended her flesh, but inside, Agnes was numb. She sat next to Kennah’s body. He lay on his back, lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling of the Videna’s sanctum, lips parted slightly, as though he might s
peak.
She had lost comrades before, of course. In the Busker ruins she had explored as part of a Syraeic expedition; Ruben on the road to Daurhim, though it seemed a thousand years ago. But this man’s death felt different to her somehow, though she couldn’t suss out why. She absently combed his shaggy black beard with the fingers of her left hand, only peripherally aware of the hum of Sira’s healing prayers. It was only when they stopped that her mind returned to the chamber, from wandering in the memories of the brief time she had known Kennah.
“Sir Kennah,” she said aloud, correcting herself.
Sira patted her cheek, a gesture that felt condescending and brought a frown to her face. “We’ll bury him at the Citadel when we return,” said her father, whom Sira tended next. He had suffered a number of superficial cuts from the metal beast, but the shards of glass from the exploded orb had wreaked the most damage, peppering his face with tiny crystal daggers. “He was a fine Syraeic, Agnes. And a good man.”
“He was a boy,” she said, angry. “He was a boy still, in many ways. All men are, in my opinion.” Her father looked at her strangely, but she ignored him, closing Kennah’s eyes with a sweep of her now-healed sword hand, a pink scar across the skin. She stood up and walked to Qeelb, who sat with his head in his hands near the opening created by the construct. Her fingers went to the other fresh scar on her neck. It was more than two inches long and had bled copiously, staining her cuirass and the shirt she wore beneath it. It was lucky chance the beast’s blade hadn’t hit her carotid, as it had Kennah’s. It might be her lying there dead instead.
Instead. The word echoed in her mind. Kennah had saved her back in Boudun, took a knife that was meant for her, wielded by Timilis’s braided highway warden. Was the construct’s blade that spilled Kennah’s lifeblood meant for her neck as well? Had it slain him instead? Why did his death feel like a sacrifice, a price paid for her own survival? She couldn’t say where the thought came from, but it was tenacious. It felt like ugly truth.
“How are you, Qeelb?” she asked the broken sorcerer, who nursed his head in his hands still.
“Shaken,” he said hoarsely. “And made less useful to our endeavor, I fear.” He looked up at her then and she recoiled. His eye sockets were empty, what was left of their contents dried on his cheeks. She made to fetch Sira, but Qeelb put a staying hand on her vambraced forearm. “There’s nothing to be done, Agnes, nothing to heal. The construct’s sorcery melted my eyes.”
“The pain—”
“Is but a weak shadow of what the Azkayans did to me. I can bear it. While I am not entirely useless, I can be of no assistance in a fight. For this I apologize.” He laughed then and spoke more quietly. “Did not the severed head in the basement of your Citadel say I would never lay eyes on it again?”
Agnes felt tears sting, looking at the ruin of the man before her. He looked so tired, weary in body and soul. Grizzled, unshaven face, now more the unkempt beginnings of a beard than mere stubble, gaunt flesh, the shattered opal in his forehead, his liquified eyes. He took this newest agony with a casual air, as though it was a small thing. Agnes wondered at what those eyes must have seen in their time.
“How fare the others?” he asked, as though his own woe wasn’t worth further discussion.
“Kennah is dead, Chalca lives, though I think he is too frail from loss of blood to go on.”
“You cannot wait,” the sorcerer said, empty sockets staring off into space. “I feel as though precious grains tumble down an hourglass.”
Agnes sensed it, too. An urgency. She squeezed the man’s shoulder and went to her father, healed and with Sira as she tended again to Chalca. She apprised Auric of Qeelb’s gruesome handicap and shared their sense of urgency. Her father nodded, then touched the hilt of Szaa’da’shaela, nodded again.
“The blade concurs,” he said, as though it didn’t sound slightly mad. “Let’s at least see what waits for us in the chamber beyond.”
Agnes accompanied her father through the opening and faced the idol. The hues on its stone visage had flaked and faded so that she could hardly name the colors that once painted it. She made out the thing’s pupils, looking as one to the right. She followed their gaze to a wide hall heading deeper into the mountain, cut from the rock. There were several more idols, some crumbling, some toppled over. Her father’s comment before the battle about there being ten or more of them made sense now.
“Do we go on, then?” Agnes asked her father. “You and I alone?”
He paused, as if considering her question. Then she realized that he and the sword were conversing, his hand gripping the pommel. She looked down at the sheathed weapon with wary regard. “What’s it saying?”
“That we should bring Sira along,” he answered, turning back toward the Videna’s holy sanctum. “Sira! Make our comrades comfortable and then join us. We must be about our duty.” The priest looked up from Chalca, worry on her face.
“Don’t mind me,” said Chalca weakly, a slight smile on his lips. “Though I’ve just been diced like a tomato, Sister Sira is a fine healer. I’ll be well in time. Maybe I’ll join you later. In the meantime, take this.” He held out his short sword, drooping in his grasp.
Agnes’s heart swelled at his smile and she went to retrieve the proffered blade. “Good, then,” she said, bending over to kiss him on the top of his head. “Try not to get in any trouble while I’m away, brother. Sing some songs for Qeelb, keep a strong heart.”
Sira gave her a lopsided grin, though Agnes could see the strain in the priest’s visage as she joined her and Auric in the newfound chamber. Her father stood facing the statue-lined corridor, hands on his hips. Whether lost in thought or speaking with the Djao blade, she didn’t know. He shook his head at last and spoke.
“Let’s make our way, then,” he said. And the three of them started down corridor, frog idols watching them with their ancient, faded eyes.
The hall narrowed after seventy feet and the idols grew sparser. Fiery torches in wall sconces, lit by the gods knew whom, illuminated the way. Sagging white cobwebs draped the statues and rough walls like ghostly tapestries. The stink of the swamp grew stronger, a squalid odor that had no more place in a high mountain cave than did these toad effigies. Agnes put the back of her newly scarred hand to her nostrils to spare herself the stench, if only for a moment.
“Why frogs?” she asked aloud.
“Indeed,” said her father. “Seems a far cry from the comely Pember of festivals and painters and stage plays. Whether male or female, always represented as beautiful. Do you understand this aspect of the god, Sira?”
“Very little,” she answered as they passed another faded idol to their right, its eyes straining in the direction they walked. “It seems as though it was borrowed from an obscure Sea Lord cult, from around the Urwyd Swamplands. A godling called Pegwir. The toad was sacred to the cult, a special avatar of the god. He was the patron of sea witches, who were known to spout abstruse prophecy.”
“Are you saying divinities borrow guises from one another?” asked Agnes, a little surprised by the notion.
“Well, the cults certainly do. They adapt older beliefs and integrate them with the new,” Sira responded, looking thoughtful. “Not everything is perfectly inspired by the divine. The priesthoods are always doing more than a little guessing at the will of their patrons. We trust that our faith and devotion make us right more often than not. If we find we’re mistaken, we repent and make amends. If it seems important. If it’s become a part of the canon, well, tradition can be durable, especially in the churches.”
“So, the gods are inscrutable?”
“Not inscrutable,” she answered. “But more opaque in their communication with us than the clergy is wont to admit. I recall a passage from Saint Alewa’s Second Epistle to the Petitioners: ‘For now we listen with ears imperfect; we see with eyes clouded by mortal concern. But one day, beyond the V
eil, all shall be made plain. Until then, may the gods guide thy steps.’”
“And this accounts for the dubious utility of divination as a guide,” said Auric. “Whatever its source, it still passes through flawed human beings. I know not who lights the path for us, but I think the Videna’s prophetic verse was about as useful to our purpose as these sightless statues of Pember the Far-Seeing.”
Agnes stopped as something nudged at her mind—words spoken to her in the bowels of the Citadel by her godmother’s severed head: Take special notice of the idols of Pember the Far-Seeing. She turned to face a statue on the left wall, decapitated, its head resting at its feet. Her father and Sira stopped with her as she inspected the idol, examining the barely discernable pigments, admiring the skill of the long-dead artisans who had crafted it unknown centuries ago. Though she tried, she could find nothing that seemed worthy of special notice.
“What is it, Agnes?”
Agnes barely caught herself from sharing that Lenda had instructed her to pay close attention to these idols. “A hunch,” she said at last, lamely. But her father seemed satisfied, and they resumed their trek.
After a hundred feet the corridor widened again until it intersected with another domed cavern, the ceiling a dangling forest of stalactites. A veritable army of the toad-idols crowded in, not just against the walls, but across the center of the cave, facing every direction. Those they had passed in the tunnel were uniform in size. These varied wildly. Agnes couldn’t walk with her arms outstretched without touching a statue with both hands.
“Belu protect us,” said Sira. “Where to now?”
Agnes looked at the priest, who was scanning the walls of the cavern. There were countless tunnels heading off from the cave, each like the other. A wave of fatigue washed over her, contemplating trying one way, following a winding tunnel until it petered out, sinking deeper into the mountain, only to turn back around to retrace their steps to this cave and try another. She would be an old woman before they found where they were going.