by Shel, Mike
“This feels like a dream,” she said softly, and started after the others. Her father kept close to her; she could sense his concern. Then she detected it: the vibration of the Djao sword, Szaa’da’shaela—it trembled in its scabbard.
“Papa,” she said as they made their way through the pilgrims, forgetting her own prohibition against the endearment, “is the sword speaking to you now?”
“No, child,” he answered, removing his hand from her back and shifting away so that she could no longer feel the blade quake. But Agnes thought she heard a low hum, coming from the sword itself, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
Each member of the party, save their Candle, was interrogated by the chief priest before being allowed to enter the bricked cavern. What is your name? What do you seek? Who is your patron? Have you unburdened your soul? Do you carry any holy relics on your person? Agnes’s answers were like the rest of her party, maintaining the fiction they had concocted: that they were deputed by the Syraeic League to inquire as to the organization’s future after last year’s devastation. For all their supposed prescience, the cleric didn’t appear to doubt her story. Agnes had not heard the last question when it was asked of the others, as the priest whispered it into their ears. When it was her turn, the chief priest looked at her long and hard, a cloud of uncertainty briefly crossing his or her brow. At last the cleric bent down and spoke in her ear.
“Do you swear, Agnes Manteo, by the roots of the mountain and the dome of the sky, and by all good gods witnessing your passage, that you will not cause the shedding of human blood while you are in these most sacred caves?”
Agnes hesitated, not knowing why. This earned her a sharp look from the chief priest. A murmur of breath touched her other ear—a lurking Bocca—of course you do.
Finally, she spoke the words. “I swear it.”
“You may enter, Agnes Manteo,” the tall priest said, looking down his or her nose. “And may Enlightenment find you open and willing.”
Agnes passed through the archway, under the suspended teeth of the portcullis, and entered a cavern lit by dozens of lamps hung from iron hooks fixed in the rocky walls. The little flames cast shadows about the otherworldly place, the cloying scent of incense everywhere. Looking down on them from niches and ledges in the walls were hundreds of skeletons and mummified bodies, posed as if alive, many of them wearing a variety of clothing suggesting different eras, professions, and stations held in life. Some seemed to mock the living below with their broad, toothy grins. Two mummified figures, clad in gray robes like those of the priests outside, held a dark banner between them. Woven in the cloth in silvery thread was a phrase in an old Busker dialect. It took Agnes a few minutes to do the translation: Behold the Future of Us, Everyone. Nearby on a shelf of rock sat a neat row of skulls. Agnes imagined them laughing.
The other pilgrims who had entered before them stood in their respective groups, accompanied by their own Candles, in quiet, excited conversation with one another or examining the morbid observers ensconced in the walls above. Kassam the Azkayan was on one knee, speaking to his son and pointing at one mummified form after another. The boy, his face serious, nodded and said a few words to his father.
Her own father was the last to join them, a hand on the hilt of his Djao sword, his eyes full of worry. Agnes was about to take him aside, to ask him what troubled him, but Bocca clapped his hands for their attention. It echoed about the cavern like birds flitting from branch to branch in a tree. Bocca held up Agnes’s hand that still grasped the black thread ball tightly.
“This, my friends, is our key.” He snatched the ball from her, and she stifled her protest, though it was as if he was stealing something precious and hard-won from her. “This will determine how deep we will penetrate. But first we must walk the Way of Worry.” He began unspooling the thread, then stepped up to Sira and wound it around her right wrist several times, then did the same with Chalca, Kennah, Qeelb, her father, and finally herself, so that they were each connected by a single strand. “It is an easy thing to get lost on the way,” he said, holding the undiminished spool in his hand. “The thread will bind you together.”
“How’s this supposed to keep us together?” asked Kennah, holding up his wrist wrapped with thread. “One good tug will snap it.”
Bocca looked up at the big man, smiled, and sawed at a length of the thread with a knife that appeared in his hand. The blade failed to cut the strand. “This is the Thread of Years, Sir Kennah,” their Candle said. “Duly blessed and ensorcelled. You can’t sever it or even take it from your wrists if you wished to. Those pilgrims who failed to catch a ball of it will go no further than this cavern, receiving dull divinations from these sour underpriests. We walk the Way of Worry, there.” He pointed to a tunnel penetrating the cavern wall about fifty feet to the west. Wispy curls of white smoke escaped from its shadows, like beckoning fingers.
“Because Agnes caught a ball of thread, we’re going to see this Videna?” asked Kennah.
“Oh, there’s no guarantee,” Bocca replied, serious now. “You’ll need to navigate the caves to reach her—and it is a her, make no mistake. Some of you may not succeed. And some may wish they hadn’t.”
“We’re not paying you for agitating riddles, sir,” her father growled, snatching the partially unraveled black ball of thread from Bocca. “What must we do now, and what purpose does this token serve?”
Agnes looked at the ball of thread her father held. She felt a possessiveness, a desire to have it back in her hand. But she bit her lip and resisted the urge to nab it from her father’s grip.
Bocca gave her father an ingratiating smile and put a hand to his heart. “Forgive me, Sir Auric, but I’m not permitted to tell you what lies along the way. It’s part of the sacrament that you should enter unawares. In truth, my using the thread to bind you together as I have is stretching the rules as it is, though any Candle worth his salt would do it for his charges. Walk into the tunnel. And guard yourselves.”
“I had to pledge not to shed human blood here,” said Chalca, worrying the pommel of his sheathed sword. “Will we have to defend ourselves?”
“Only from the truth,” he answered, then held up his hands in sardonic apology to Auric.
Tightness built in Agnes’s chest, fear or anticipation or both, she wasn’t sure. All she knew for certain was that she couldn’t stand in that place any longer, being scrutinized by the dead perched everywhere around her. “Fuck it!” she shouted, drawing the attention of her companions and not a few pilgrims. “Sira, it seems Bocca has put you in our lead, but if you don’t mind, we can turn ourselves round and I’ll serve as our vanguard. Any objections?”
“Agnes,” said her father, and she could hear a mix of worry and disapproval in his tone.
Agnes’s ire rose, but she bit her tongue, pausing before she spoke. “Sira or I must lead,” she said, holding up her thread-bound wrist. “Bocca saw to that. Better a trained swordswoman at our lead, don’t you think, Sir Auric?”
Her father tried briefly to unwind the thread from his wrist, but it was soon apparent it was a hopeless tangle. He put a hand on Szaa’da’shaela’s pommel and started to say something, then seemed to think better of it. “Very well,” he said, voice deliberately calm. “Lead the way, Agnes. On your guard, as he said.”
Sira glanced at the tunnel, then to Agnes’s father, then to Agnes, her face somber. She held up her free hand and spoke. “Belu’s blessings on us all, then. Whatever lies ahead, may our merciful Blue Mother watch over our endeavor.”
“Amen!” said Bocca, emphatic.
The tunnel was narrow, requiring them to enter in single file. It had been cut into the rock and polished to a startling shine, but still bore the marks of tools left by miners. Agnes asked Bocca about using their glowrods, but their Candle told her they wouldn’t be necessary. The light was dim, from wherever it came, but it was enough to na
vigate the hall. The tendrils of smoke—more of the sickly-sweet incense—grew thicker. Before long she could no longer see the floor of the tunnel. The shimmering white cloud of the stuff hovered around her ankles for a time, then came up to her waist.
“I don’t like this,” she said softly to herself.
“You aren’t meant to like it,” she heard Bocca say from behind her. “The way is winding, but the surface is flat and free of physical obstacles. Worry not.”
It made her think on what the man had said before. “Is this the Way of Worry?” she asked.
“It might be,” he replied.
It was at that moment she felt lightheaded and stopped. She closed her eyes and put her free hand against the wall of the tunnel to steady herself, feeling the polished grooves left by whomever had dug this corridor from the rock, however many centuries ago. She could smell the sweat of those laborers, toiling in darkness, sensed their despair. They would die here; they knew it. Her fingers inched along the surface. It was as though she touched their names: Cono, Dessi, Moltu. Dead twenty centuries. Had they looked down on her in the entry cavern? Did she glean contempt or pity from those eyeless sockets, staring at her from their ancient niches?
The desperation, it was as though she drowned in it. She cried out, pushed herself against the rough-hewn wall now, both palms on the cold stone. “Papa!”
No answer. The entire tunnel was filled with the mist of incense smoke now. She checked her thread-bound wrist with her free hand—the thread was gone. Her companions were gone. She was alone. She was alone in this place. She turned, slammed her back against the wall, put a hand to her heart, the other feeling brick behind her.
“I’d rather get hold o’ you and them dugs, sister,” said a sweaty voice in her ear.
“Dugs,” said another.
The alley. The near-rape. The two men were pressing against her, breath stinking of kyfe-laced tobacco. She reached for her rapier, sheathed at her side.
“You promised, Agnes,” said the tall one, roughly kneading her breast, as though she no longer wore her hardened leather cuirass. “You promised you wouldn’t shed no human blood here. Dip my wick, I will. Won’t stop me this time.”
Agnes tried to bring a knee up into a groin, but meaty hands restrained her leg. “She’s a strong one, she is,” said the other man. “But she can’t cut my dick off here. Not in here.”
Illusion, she thought. This is a hallucination. It isn’t real.
“Real enough,” said the tall one, pushing his body against her. She was trapped, smothered. She struggled to breathe.
Fear, she heard the voice of her preceptor tell her, a thousand years ago, a thousand miles away, in the practice yard of the Citadel. Fear is a natural thing when confronted with some of the horrors you’ll see—if you make it clear of my practice yard, that is. Fear is natural, and fear is fuel. It’s fuel for flight, yes, the animal impulse to flee, of self-preservation. But it can also fuel fight. Know the difference, my young, eager novitiate. Know when it’s time to fight and know when it’s time to flee.
Agnes steadied her mind, willed her fear to transform to anger; it pushed away the hungry, probing hands, the stinking breath, the stupid lust and desire to dominate. Her assailants were nothing more than smoke, dissipating, mingling with the incense that filled the air.
Her heart still pounding, she took in deep, slow breaths to calm it, willing its furor to leave her as the apparitions had. A rush of bravado filled her heart. “Well, that was easy enough,” she said to the mist.
“Oh, not that easy,” came the voice of her godmother.
Agnes swung around and found a headless body standing there, flesh ripped and bloody where a head should be, Syraeic cuirass torn, brutalized, and spattered with gore. One hand gripped a disembodied head by its short hair, holding it forth like a horrific lantern. The other hand reached out and grabbed Agnes by the wrist roughly, jerking her from her perch against the wall.
“Come,” said Lenda’s head, swinging back and forth as they walked down the smoky corridor. “No time to waste here.”
“I killed that man,” said Agnes, stumbling as she struggled to match the relentless pace of Lenda’s headless body.
“Who?”
“The butcher. Back in the alley. In Boudun.”
“You mean the rapist? Good.”
“He was ensorcelled. It was an enchantment placed on him. It wasn’t his fault.”
“Said every rapist since the dawn of time,” she retorted. “Don’t mourn that prickless bastard, Agnes darling. Sorcery can’t make us act against our nature any more than liquor can. It only plays on urges and impulses that lurk beneath.”
There was a cynicism in her voice, a toxin. So unlike her sweet, glorious Aunt Lenda, Syraeic swordswoman, role model. “You never spoke this way to me in life, Auntie.”
“Had no need to, did I? Your mother and father kept you safe, until you could keep yourself safe. Believe me when I say the world would be a far better place if half the men in it were dealt with thusly.”
“Dead, or emasculated?” Agnes asked, feeling a kind of giddy madness threatening to bubble up in her.
“Equally viable options.”
Agnes lost her footing as the tunnel took a sudden turn and descended. Lenda’s hand steadied her. “Where are the others?”
“On their own paths,” Lenda answered.
“Are you really here, or do I hallucinate you as well?” asked Agnes.
Lenda’s body stopped abruptly and Agnes collided with it. Her godmother turned and slapped Agnes across the face with her free hand. With the other, she thrust her head forward so that their noses touched. “Stop asking stupid questions, girl.”
They walked for what seemed hours, the path taking unexpected twists and turns, ascending for a while, then descending, the smoky incense obscuring all but the way directly in front of them. She saw hinted threats in the fumes, never clear enough to name, but lurking with menace. After a long while in silence, but with the sting of Lenda’s slap on her cheek pulsing still, Agnes spoke again.
“Why do they call this the Way of Worry? And why are you here now?”
“The incense contains a drug, an ancient alchemical formula, augmented by sorcery. It elicits existential fears. All very meaningful and symbolic in such a place. And I’m here to guide you, because you never would have made it on your own.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to,” said Lenda’s head, bobbing in front of them, voice filled with impatience. “Being alone, Agnes. There are far worse fates, and more permanent ones. When my mother died and left me alone, I walked from Leatham to Boudun, presented myself at the steps of the Citadel. Alone every inch of the way. I made some friends of the other assistants, then met your father, who showed me how to use a sword. I didn’t stay alone forever. I had friends, lovers along the way. But I died alone. We all do, Agnes. One way or another, we die alone.”
“Abandoned.” The word escaped Agnes’s lips and hung in the air.
“Sometimes,” Lenda answered, gentler this time. “But often it’s just the absence of others fallen into their own solitude. People get lost in the self. It’s what happened to your mother and your father, after Tomas was killed. They should have sought out one another. But when we get lost in ourselves, we forget one another. It’s the human condition, Agnes. We lose each other because we choose ourselves.”
“I…I don’t—”
“Understand,” Lenda interrupted. “No. You’re too young to understand. Too alive. It’s the sort of wisdom usually reserved for the dead.”
“This feels important. It feels like something I should understand, Aunt Lenda.”
“Yes. You or your father. One of you must understand. Because the fate of the world rests on a sacrifice of self.”
And then Agnes was alone again, stan
ding in another domed cavern alight with phosphorescent lichen clinging to its walls. Dozens of tunnels met in this place. From one emerged her father, stumbling in with Szaa’da’shaela drawn. From another came Qeelb, covered in cobwebs that he frantically pulled from his face and hands. Kennah, Chalca, and finally Sira arrived, everyone looking shaken and dazed, as though abruptly woken from nightmares.
Agnes looked for traces of the thread that had bound them together. There were red creases on her wrist, she could see them on Sira’s and Chalca’s as well, but the strands were all gone.
Chalca held his head in his hands, reeling from whatever he had just experienced with an exclamation of, “The fuck…” Kennah closed his eyes, tried to take long, slow breaths. Sira pinched the bridge of her nose and began muttering a litany that Agnes found familiar but couldn’t name.
Her father looked at Agnes, relief in his eyes. He sheathed the Djao blade. “Agnes,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for wha—”
Bocca clapped his hands in the domed cave. He stood by one of the numberless tunnels. “Huzzah and salutations! All of you made it here in one piece, more or less—eh, Sir Auric?” The look her father gave the man threatened murder. Bocca seemed not to notice or care. “Excellent! Well, let’s be on our way, then! We’re nearly there.”
Their Candle turned down the tunnel and disappeared into the darkness. Her father, standing next to her now, put a hand on Agnes’s cheek. “Who struck you, daughter?” he asked.
“No one,” she answered. “I was alone.”
32
Raiment of God
The stairs carved into the stone were made for legs longer than hers. Agnes took them with caution, one after another, descending deeper into the mountain. She was in the middle of the pack now, with her father directly ahead, Kennah behind her. Betwixt two knights of the realm, she thought wryly. You are safe, little girl.
They arrived in a rectangular space, excavated by sorcery according to Qeelb. It was bare, save for a form of decoration or writing etched into the walls. Agnes examined a bit of the carving closest to her, but it bore no resemblance to any Busker script she had seen before, nor did it look like anything she knew of the Djao. It had a wandering, fluid feel, making it hard to tell where one symbol ended and another began.