Part 22 (1/2)
The giant rat-woman squeaked a command to her warriors, who bolted toward the windmill. Shouts came from inside. The sound of blows. Soon, the Fenlings exited carrying the bound bodies of the four other men Thufan had brought with him. Others carried the supplies, as well as the box that Indris presumed contained the Angothic Spirit Casque.
Thufan lit a lantern, then he and Belamandris joined the Fenlings as they walked back into the night. Indris and the others waited for several more minutes. They listened intently for anything, even the slightest sound that would indicate the Fenlings were on their way back. Finally, satisfied they had gone, Indris turned to his friends.
”Don't we need to be following Thufan?” Hayden asked. ”We can't be saving your missing king if we don't know for certain where he is.” The drover rose, Ekko at his side. The enormous lion-man glared into the night.
”You've something to say, Ekko?” Indris asked pointedly.
”Merely relis.h.i.+ng the chance to encounter the Fenlings again, Amonindris,” Ekko rumbled. His claws extended from his large hands, then slid back. ”Many of my brothers died at their hands. Eaten, no doubt. Their bones lost, spirits unable to return to the earth. A b.l.o.o.d.y price needs to be paid in the names of those who cannot act for themselves.”
”We don't need to follow, my friend.” Indris knew where Thufan was going. The black star stones. A city of polished black. Millennia ago it would have boasted tall, elegant spires. Megaliths of stone smoother than anything made since. Domes of spun black steel, fine as lace and filled with panes of tinted diamond that cast intricate patterns on the floor as the sun and moon pa.s.sed overhead. There were few such places in the world.
”Amonindris?” Ekko asked.
”'Ticktock the clock might stop,'” Omen quoted, ”'the Masters mastered, the gears gone awry. Yet far and away, 'pon seas of night, furnaces burn so fierce and bright. Alone, they sit and stare and curse, forever asking how and why.' For they knew, those ancient ones, we are all made of stars. What they did not know was why we burned out so quickly.”
”What in the-” Hayden shook his head in disbelief.
”Indris knows where we are going,” Omen concluded. ”Is that not so, my learned friend?”
”Only one place I know of, according to legend, had what was called the Star Clock.” Indris breathed out through clenched teeth. His suspicions as to what the Erebus had found were sadly confirmed. ”That's where they're keeping Ariskander.”
”Where is that, Amonindris?” Ekko said as he rose to his feet.
”We're going to Fiandahariat. The last known city of the Time Masters.”
”So we let Thufan go, along with the Spirit Casque?” Shar looked Indris in the eye. ”You're sure?”
”I am sorry, Amonindris.” Ekko's voice seethed with barely restrained carnage. ”But I have serious misgivings about this.”
”I'm curious as to why we'd not destroy anything made by an Angothic Witch,” Hayden demanded.
”What exactly is this Spirit Casque?” Ekko asked.
”A prison for souls,” Omen answered Ekko with his usual flatness. ”It is a helmet, or mask, which contains a wraith matrix-”
”Excuse me?”
”A web of witchfire, sometimes smelted with gold if there's not enough witchfire ore,” Indris finished. ”It's similar to the Wraithjar Omen inhabits, though unlike Wraithjars, Spirit Casques cause terrible pain to the soul and the soul can't leave of its own volition.”
”Who'd invent such a thing?” Hayden asked with horror.
”The Angothics...hence the name,” Omen said matter-of-factly. ”Though they were inspired by the Avn. During the middle period of the Awakened Empire, Sepulchre Mirrors were used to imprison criminals thought too dangerous to allow to die.”
”But if they died...” Hayden trailed off, confused.
”They could be brought back.” Indris's voice was calm, quiet, as if resigned to an awful fact. ”Or, in the case of the most powerful Ilhennim, they could find their own way back to life, or exist as Nomads. Sepulchre Mirrors were a painless punishment reserved for the worst criminals. They would be stopped from pa.s.sing into the Well of Souls, from ever being reborn, or from ever walking a again.”
”That ain't right,” Hayden growled.
”What Corajidin is preparing to do to Ariskander is worse!” Indris urged. ”They'll kill Ariskander...then imprison his soul for so long as the Spirit Casque lasts. Ariskander will be in agony forever. His heirs would never Awaken. The acc.u.mulated knowledge of his Ancestors would be lost, his link in that chain broken. And there are ways of torturing a soul so Ariskander will tell them anything his captors want to know.”
”It sounds like a very personal type of punishment, Amonindris,” Ekko rumbled. ”What would drive a person to such malice?”
”In generations past, my Ancestor Anmoqan caught and imprisoned Erebus fa Zaliir in a Sepulchre Mirror for his crimes against the empire. The Great House of Erebus was relegated to the status of a family, from which it took centuries to recover. It's one in a long line of wrongs, or rights, our Great Houses have done to each other. The animosity just goes on, generation after generation.”
”Retrieving this Spirit Casque should be no complex matter.” Ekko checked his weapons. ”Amonindris, Rahn-Ariskander is my liege. Please allow me the honor of leading this exercise to prevent this vile artifact from ever being used.”
”You want a partner for this dance?” Hayden drawled. ”'Tween the two-”
”No heroics, no chances, no mistakes.” Indris stopped him short. ”You're both fine warriors, but against twenty Fenlings? You've no chance. Worse, I've seen Belamandris fight.”
”You defeated him,” Ekko reminded Indris.
”Because he saw what he wanted to see, not what I really was. Belamandris was proud, but he won't make the same mistake again. He's one of the best swordsmen I've ever seen, Ekko. Make no mistake, there'd be but one outcome if you faced him. I'll not lose you to vengeance.”
The others reluctantly nodded their a.s.sent.
”North?” Shar asked. Indris nodded, and the sharp-featured Seethe slipped into the darkness on silent feet. Indris followed her, with Omen walking stork-like in his wake.
They had been moving at a quick trot for more than half an hour when Indris turned over his shoulder to check on the others. Omen was still behind him, yet Ekko and Hayden seemed to have fallen farther back. He called out to Shar and Omen to stop until the others could catch up.
Minutes pa.s.sed, with no sign of either. The moon had set a little over a half hour before. The brilliant light of the Ancestor's Shroud bathed everything in a faint sepia glow.
”What do you think has happened to them?” Shar asked. She perched on the edge of a broken tree stump, her pointed chin at rest on her knees, her long arms wrapped around her s.h.i.+ns. The dark-blue scutes around her hairline and fingernails were mottled shadows against the faint luminescence of her skin. The shadows of her elongated ears reminded Indris of horns.
”I've not a clue,” Indris muttered. Frogs and crickets sang to one another. Bats screeched. The reeds and gra.s.ses hummed, harmonica-like in the night breeze.
”Perhaps the ancient rifleman was in need of rest?” Omen said. The Wraith Knight had simply stopped, one foot in front of the other, arms akimbo in a frozen parody of movement. It happened more frequently than it used to.
”Let's hope so. If they don't get here soon, we'll need to go back along the trail till we find them.”
”It has been a good plan thus far, Indris,” Omen offered. ”n.o.body we care about has died. A most auspicious sign, would you not agree?”
”It makes a nice change, Omen, thank you,” Indris said sourly. Shar laughed. ”We've certainly done worse in our time.”
”Always liked your plans,” Omen continued blithely. ”Plans within wheels within spirals within circles making our enemies dizzy. Dizzy. Busy. Bees. The droning of the bees like the murmurs of the Ancestors, where everybody floats and-”
”They come,” Shar said flatly. Her hand drifted to her sword hilt. She drew the weapon. The gla.s.s rippled faintly with blue-white radiance, the surface of a pond in a sun shower. ”Quickly and not alone.”
Indris scowled, hand on the b.u.t.t of his storm-pistol. Changeling vibrated softly in her sheath. A few moments later, Indris saw two figures pelting along the trail.
”Amonindris,” Ekko said. Indris saw the Tau-se's quiver was almost empty of its gold-fletched arrows. The bolt loops on Hayden's belt were likewise missing more ammunition than Indris remembered. Ekko dropped a head-size wooden box on the ground.
Indris felt slightly nauseous. Tainted disentropy flared from the box in waves, oily and...wrong.
”Sherde!” Indris rubbed his forehead at the sudden, sharp pain that blossomed there. ”What did you two do?”