by Martha Wells
Except that it had shown her the Waste as it was now, today, not with the shallow seas of the Ancients or lakes of fire from the Survivor Time. And it had left her with the strong conviction that whatever Riathen was doing here, it was very dangerous indeed.
Elen had been afraid of that before, afraid that the Survivor text told how to build some powerful arcane engine whose power he meant to keep to himself, or at least to confine to the Warders in his household. The truth is far worse than that, she thought. I know that; I just don't know how I know.
Her vision gradually cleared, but just as she started to straighten she felt something travel through the stone under her fingers, as if the whole Remnant had trembled. She jerked her hand back, rubbing her uninjured skin, then turned to the empty square of doorway that led to the ramp.
Going for help was impossible. I have to see what's happening up there, Elen thought. Whether they killed her for it or not.
Her steps gained strength as she climbed the ramp, as if the blood moving through her veins was washing away the last traces of the asphodel. Looking up, she could see the dim sunlight reflected through the antechamber from the open well chamber, but she could hear nothing, not even muted conversation. She reached the top and paused in the doorway of the antechamber.
The sun filled the open bowl-shaped well chamber with harsh light, and Elen squinted against it, straining to see until her eyes adjusted. The floor had been swept free of sand, or at least the area of open pavement between the door of the antechamber and the heavy stone rim of the cistern was clear of it. Instead of being filled with dust, the grooves that had been carved into the stone floor now glittered with some silver substance that flowed like water. She could see the pattern the grooves formed clearly now: they crossed back and forth between this end of the cistern and the antechamber's door, forming a large square outline composed of overlapping triangles. In the center the pavement was smooth, and Riathen knelt there, motionless and silent, facing away from her toward the cistern.
Elen had no sense of his presence at all now; he might have been a statue dressed in robes.
The sun's sparkle on the water and the myriad reflections of the silvery substance made the air glow. It must be quicksilver, Elen realized. Stacked against the corner of the antechamber were several thick-bodied ceramic jugs. She remembered how the seams of the travel packs had been strained and supposed that was what Riathen had carried in them. She didn't need to speculate on why; quicksilver had long been identified as an essential element to the Ancients' arcane constructions.
Something else lay near the jugs. Atop Riathen's folded mantle was the coin-sized relic with the winged figure.
Elen glanced at the door, assuring herself that Riathen was still motionless, then crossed the antechamber in a few silent steps and picked up the little relic. It was warm to her touch, a warmth that seem to flow through her hand, up her arm, and twine right around her consciousness. It was all of a piece with the gradually awakening Remnant; it hardly startled her.
There was power here, contained within the vessel of the well chamber. She shuddered involuntarily with a rush of fear and delight that confused her. Building in the walls, chasing up and down the lines of quicksilver on the floor, humming in the light reflected off the water. The air was thick and heavy with it. A glance at the back wall of the antechamber showed her the crystal plaque was in its place. It was amazing to her that she and Khat and the others had once stood unaffected in this room and examined the text and confronted Aristai Constans.
Elen tucked the little relic away inside her mantle, in the same pocket where she had hidden the knife taken from the packs. What good either object would do her, she had no idea. She moved forward through the waiting silence of the antechamber to the doorway, and stopped there. She sensed Seul's presence just before he caught her arm. He had been standing to one side of the doorway, out of her line of sight. Annoyed, she freed her arm with a twist, and when he reached for her again she met his eyes and pushed at him with her power.
Something in her knew to gather strength from the growing force in the chamber, and Seul stumbled back, astonished. Riathen twisted around. That surprised Elen almost as much as her resistance had surprised Seul; she had thought Riathen in some deep trance.
Riathen's expression was stern. For a moment it seemed as if he didn't recognize her. Elen said, "Don't do this." She still wasn't certain why she had to stop him, but she knew she must.
Riathen tried to assume his old manner, kind and reassuring, but under it she too clearly saw his impatience. "Elen, you are still confused. You don't know-"
"No more games." Elen stepped forward.
Seul muttered, "Careful," but she was cautious of the quicksilver-filled grooves, and her foot came down on firm pavement. She saw Riathen was holding a small mirror, and the experience gained in her recent apprenticeship told her it was well-polished mythenin. It must be part of the working, but she had no idea how. The power gathered here was like a wall before her; moving into it was like pushing her way into a bale of cotton.
Elen said, "I may not understand what you're trying to do here, but I know the consequences will be terrible."
His eyes hardened. "You child, you know nothing. I am turning this Remnant into a source of arcane power that all Warders will learn to tap. That was its purpose; that was why the Ancients constructed it. I'm doing nothing more than using it the way it was meant to be used."
His anger wasn't any easier to face than his condescension. Not pleasant to discover she had been wrong about him all this time, that he treated her like a child not because she was inferior to the other Warders but because that was the way he wanted her. She would save her hurt for later, if there was time. "I know you're playing with forces you don't understand. Yes, the Remnant is coming alive, but something very wrong is happening here, and all you can see is an increase in your power."
"I see an end to madness, I see an end to destroying our own kind. Isn't that worth the risk?"
In a way he was right, it was working. The things he had done here had certainly increased her power, her soul-reading, her Sight, everything. But the one thing all her new abilities told her was that the danger was as acute as a knife to the throat. "You don't know enough to increase our power. You're like a fool playing with a loaded rifle." She caught herself. This was hardly the way to talk him out of anything. She needed cool reason, and all she had was anger. She tried again, keeping a tighter grip on her temper. "Please wait. Can't you hear the Remnant's voice yet? It's warning us that something else is about to happen, something you don't intend-"
Seul said, "Yes." His voice was thick, as if forced out of him against his will. "Yes, Riathen, there's something you don't know..."
Elen felt a sense of pressure building, and rubbed her temples, distracted. Concentrating on Riathen and the growing power in the well chamber, she hadn't been listening to the Remnant, but now... She realized Seul had stopped speaking, and that Riathen was staring past her into the antechamber. She turned.
Standing there, framed in the doorway, was the Heir. She was dressed in desert robes, a full mantle thrown back over her shoulders. Behind her were three Imperial lictors armed with air rifles and another man whose face was completely obscured with heavy veils. Looking at him, Elen felt a tremor travel through the Remnant, felt that sense of invasion, of revulsion.
The Heir smiled. "I see we're in time."
***
The sun was high overhead when Khat paused within a half mile of the Remnant. He had traveled mostly on the top level of the Waste to gain time and had stopped only to make a meal out of the pulpy interior of a young jumtree, knowing he would travel faster when he wasn't short on water.
He sat on his heels in the shelter of a crag now, and could see nothing different about the Remnant. It rose up out of the empty vista, the sun striking a golden glow off the steeply slanted stone walls. Still, he knew he wasn't alone out here.
Since Khat had neared t
he Remnant's vicinity the wind had been bringing him the stink of unwashed human flesh-pirates. Probably the same band that had attacked them the first time, its loyalty purchased by Kythen Seul with food and painrods and who knew what else. He had also heard a steamwagon. None of which told him the best way to approach the Remnant, which was what he was trying to decide on now.
A distant crack startled him. It was a man-made sound, probably an air gun's pellet striking stone. A second crack told him the direction. It was towards the west. Where the trade road runs nearest the Remnant, Khat thought grimly. He made for the closest sinkhole and scrambled down it to the midlevel, working his way closer to the sound.
After a short time he could hear shouts, sounds of fighting, echoing oddly up the partially enclosed passages of the midlevel. He was under excellent cover here, but damn it, he wanted to see what was happening. He found a chimney he could climb up; there was light but no direct sun falling down it from the top level, a good sign that there was an outcrop near it that would afford some cover.
Khat climbed up the narrow, rocky passage, the sounds of distant battle growing closer with every hand- and foothold. The chimney broke through the top level amid a tumble of weirdly shaped boulders, the remains of some Survivor Time eruption. Khat scrambled up and worked his way around, belly flat to the dusty stone, until he had a view looking down toward the Ancient-made canyon where the trade road split the Waste.
There was a steamwagon on the road, under attack by a band of maybe as many as forty pirates. The tattered figures were swarming like ants; it was hard to get an accurate estimate of their number. White-robed Imperial lictors were firing down into the mass of pirates; some had leapt off the wagon to take them in hand-to-hand combat. The back platform had been overwhelmed and boarded, but as Khat watched, two pirates fell away, shot by the riflemen atop the wagon's housing. The pirates might not know it yet, but they were all done for. From here Khat could see three more courier wagons rattling up the trade road at full steam.
Khat eased back away from his vantage point and started over the top level toward the Remnant. If the pirates were supposed to be guarding it for Seul they were doing a terrible job. This was really the best distraction he could have hoped for. Get in, get Elen, and get out, he reminded himself. Let Constans deal with Riathen and Seul.
The rolling waves of rock stretched out to meet the base of the Remnant, and nothing moved anywhere. Still, Khat approached from an angle, out of direct view of the door, making for the south side. He crossed the base quickly and flattened himself up against the wall, then edged to the corner for a quick look. The door slab was up and two Imperial lictors stood before it, arguing, one pointing back toward the trade road.
Khat pulled back, cursing under his breath. They weren't Constans's men, or there would be a Warder or two along. They had to be the Heir's lictors, and there might be more inside. Then a low voice not two feet away said, "I didn't think you could stay away from this."
Khat spun away from the wall, just managing to bite back an exclamation. It was Constans, of course. He had recognized the voice even as he moved.
Constans's dark mantle was covered with dust; he had obviously been walking the Waste, though not as far as Khat had. The three steamwagons Khat had seen arriving in the distance probably belonged to the mad Warder. He must have left them and taken the shorter overland route to the Remnant. "Do be quiet," Constans told him, glancing around the corner to see if the lictors had heard. "They aren't deaf."
You were distracted, Khat told himself, trying to conquer his irritation. Never mind that a city dweller that big, Warder or not, just shouldn't be allowed to sneak up on anybody so silently. "Why aren't you back there killing pirates?" Khat whispered.
"My quarry is here."
Cautiously Khat came back to the wall. Constans said, "There's not much time. Riathen has already done something foolish."
"Is Elen in there?" Khat asked.
"Yes."
The two lictors suddenly came into view, but they weren't after intruders. They were walking away from the west wall, heading determinedly toward the trade road. No doubt who put that idea in their heads, Khat thought. Constans slipped around the corner, and Khat followed him.
***
The Heir stepped further into the well chamber, circling around the quicksilver-filled channels in the stone, smiling at Riathen. Her lictors followed her, spreading out to cover the others with their rifles. The veiled man stayed where he was, motionless, in the doorway of the antechamber.
Elen didn't move. The veiled man was not ten feet away from her, and she could see the hot air seeming to bend and curve around him. She didn't know if she was seeing this with her eyes or with some facility of the mind, awakened by the power in the Remnant. His robes dragged the floor, and his sleeves covered his hands. There was nothing of his body visible, and she had the terrible feeling she knew who this was. Or what it was.
The Heir's attention was all for Riathen. She said, "You must be surprised to see me. But I had more of an interest in your relics than I pretended."
The Master Warder hadn't moved. He was cautiously watching the Heir, but his eyes showed more impatience at the interruption than fear or shock. He said, "I admit to surprise, but now at least I understand Seul's recent desire to spend so much of his time at the palace."
"Ah, yes." The Heir smiled at Seul. "Go on, then, Kythen. You were about to betray me. Or, I should say, to finish betraying me. I assume you ordered the pirates to attack my men, so you could complete this little ceremony without my presence."
"Something's wrong here," Seul said. He glanced uncertainly at Riathen, then back to the Heir. "The Remnant is filling with power, but there's a sense of danger-"
"You can hear it!" Elen interrupted. "You've heard it all this time, and you're still going on with this? You're madder than Constans."
The Heir sighed. She gestured to the nearest lictor. "Get rid of her."
He made to lift the rifle. Elen pointed at him, feeling the power surge up out of the stone and travel through her body like water through fountain pipes, felt it concentrate in the fragile bones of her hand. At the last instant she managed to direct it away from the lictor's body and toward the delicate mechanism of the rifle.
The rifle's air reservoir burst, and the firing mechanism exploded, spraying metal shards across the chamber. The lictor cried out, dropping the rifle and stumbling backwards, but he was obviously unhurt. The Heir stared, shocked out of her complacency.
Riathen chuckled. To the Heir he said, "Elen has always had a soft heart. Don't imagine I will be so generous."
"If Seul can hear it, you can hear it," Elen whispered.
Riathen looked up at her, and there was regret in his eyes. "Yes, it's been a delicate game we've played the past few days. And you the only one with nothing to hide. As usual."
"Riathen." Seul was watching the veiled man. "Do you know what this creature is? Can you control it?"
The Master Warder studied the unmoving figure. "No, I've never seen its like before, but from my reading of the text I can make an informed guess. This was one part of your deception you managed to keep from me, but I can't see that it matters. With the power of the Remnant, we should be able to control it, and any others of its kind. If they still exist after all these years ..."
"You can't see that it matters?" Elen shouted. Riathen must have been blinded by power. "I saw it kill a man. I know it's killed others. And the Remnant said .. ." She couldn't put it into words. "It's too dangerous to meddle with."
Riathen didn't seem to hear her. He said again, "With the power of the Remnant at this level, there should be no difficulty."
The Heir was watching in astonishment and growing anger. Her other lictors had backed away in fear, and made no attempt to shoot. She turned to the veiled figure and shouted, "They'll destroy you! Stop them!"
It did nothing.
Elen couldn't catch her breath. The sense of danger was so intense it made
her heart pound and her head ache. The harsh light in the well chamber was changing, becoming something of almost solid consistency. She didn't think the Heir and the lictors could see it; they were watching her and Riathen. She said, "Riathen, please, you say you hear the Remnant but you aren't listening! What are you trying to do?"
Riathen glanced up, squinting into the harsh light. The sun seemed to fill the sky. "This will seal the power you now feel into the Remnant forever, accessible by all Warders. This is what the Ancients intended it for." He adjusted the position of the mirror minutely, and the sunlight struck it full on.
The lictors hadn't bothered to close the Remnant's door slab, and no other guards barred the way. Constans disappeared inside without even bothering to look around, but Khat paused in the doorway. The central chamber was empty, but against the wall were the remains of a fire and some scattered supplies and packs. Constans had veered away at once toward the pit. Khat hesitated, then saw what had attracted the Warder's attention.
Their big ugly block had been placed in the hollow square compartment in the center of the pit. Khat went to the edge, looking down at it. He didn't see anything strange or arcane about it. Constans stepped down, stooped as if he meant to run his fingers over the block's surface, then changed his mind abruptly. Stepping back up near Khat, he said mildly, "I believe we're already too late."
"What. . . ?" Khat looked up, but Constans was already halfway across the chamber to the ramp.
Khat swore and bolted after him.
***
The sunlight struck the mythenin mirror in Riathen's hands, and was reflected dazzlingly around the chamber. Elen turned her face away from the glare, and the sudden cessation of the terrible pressure caught her by surprise. She stumbled to the cistern and steadied herself on its rim. The first thing she noticed was that the voice of the Remnant was gone, leaving behind it a curious sense of emptiness. The second was that the light in the chamber had changed drastically. The sunlight was softer, as if it was screened through gauze. She looked up, and blinked.