Part 24 (1/2)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.
”Let them know fear, they who have wronged me. Let them wail. Let them gnash their teeth and pull upon their hair and beg and kneel in the mud of their tears. I have no mercy for those who have, with malice, destroyed that which I love.”-Act 3, Scene 1, of The Phoenix, the Horse, and the Bee, by Calajine, Shranese playwright, 471st Year of the Shranese Federation Day 324 of the 495th Year of the Shranese Federation Indris's mood was dark as he and his remaining friends vaulted the low, ruined wall of an abandoned scholar's villa. With the ahmsah he could see the bunched knots and coils of disentropy that had been woven into every stone, tile, and beam. It was a s.h.i.+ning web of mother-of-pearl light, pulsing like the heartbeat of a. Whoever had built this place had intended it to last. Despite the millennia, the old villa remained almost intact. It was hidden like many of the ruins in this part of the Rmarq by stands of magnolia and cypress, honeysuckle vines run rampant, thousands of the tiny white flowers bobbing in the gentle midday breeze.
Shooting Thufan had been necessary, he told himself. Indris had been sorely tempted to put a bolt between Belamandris's eyes, though he knew Mari would never forgive him for it. Belamandris would need to stop now to tend to his fellow scoundrel, since the Fenlings would otherwise eat the man where he lay, alive or dead. His disentropy trap had been a necessary risk, for neither he nor his friends could run much longer. They needed rest. It had taken the better part of the morning to make their way through the bands of Fenling hunters and warriors who searched for them.
On their way to where he thought they would be safe, Indris had taken the time to scout Fiandahariat as best he could. He had led his friends through a narrow canyon of weathered black towers, their once-gla.s.sy surfaces cracked like windows struck by stones. Gardens had long gone to seed. The fountains were silent. Bridges had collapsed, along with stairs, lofty walls, and forbidding spires. Ca.n.a.ls had overflowed to turn streets paved with polished white-and-gray stones into bleached streams of brackish water.
They had been forced to avoid some parts of the ruins simply because there were too many people. Mercenary swashbucklers and freebooters, stripped to vests or bare chested in the heat, stood guard. Fenlings labored under the watchful eye of overseers. Yet it was a different type of soldier who guarded the entrances to a plaza deep in the city that held the Star Clock. These guardians had the appearance of hard-eyed veterans. Though they wore no livery, Indris had no doubt they served the Erebus.
They had left the ruins with a better idea of where Ariskander was held. It was only then Indris had led them to the one place he hoped his use of the ahmsah would not be noticed. A refuge held together because of it.
Indris and Shar had used this place when they were in the Rmarq, gathering intelligence for Far-ad-din. Given the horrific surges of disentropy in and around Fiandahariat, Indris had felt comfortable in setting up a Discretion Charm to further hide the old building from notice. Whoever looked at the sprawling house simply paid it no more notice than they would the trees that surrounded it. He had tapped the charm into a vein of disentropy, and it would last for centuries.
Inside the scholar's villa, Indris and the others rested for a while. They silently shared food, sipped from their water bottles, sat hunched in their own thoughts while they shot sidelong glances at Indris.
”This silence is awkward, so one of you may as well say it.” Indris stood by a vine-wreathed window, his eyes narrowed against the brightness outside.
”Amonindris, what do you expect us to say?” Ekko asked guiltily. Hayden sat alone in the corner, head against the wall, eyes closed. ”That we are sorry for going after the casque? That we wonder whether we can accomplish what we came for? Let us face the fact we are here to rescue Rahn-Ariskander, with too few-”
”And why do you think we're fewer in numbers?” Shar's fine features were made sharper by the quality of the light, all flat planes and acute angles. She rubbed at the end of one elongated ear, scratched and b.l.o.o.d.y. ”Because you two faruqen uryati wouldn't leave well enough alone-”
”Beggin' your pardon there, but-”
”But nothing, Hayden!” Shar's skin and eyes were luminescent with anger. ”You were told not to go after Thufan and you did. You and Ekko brought this down on us when you brought the Spirit Casque back! Omen would be with us now if it wasn't for you.”
”For the love of the Ancestors, peace!” Indris turned from the window in frustration. ”No, we're not many, but we never were. Yes, we'll miss Omen's sword when it comes time to get our hands b.l.o.o.d.y. I did what needed to be done. We're all of us together in this moment, so there's no point in wondering what if. Let's focus on what we do now.”
”There're surely a lot of them out there, Indris,” Hayden said quietly.
”It's not the many we fight,” Shar pointed out. ”Rather the few we can't avoid.”
”She's right.” Indris nodded. ”I didn't come here to go on a killing spree. Rest up while you can. We leave before dawn tomorrow. Shar?” He gestured for his friend to follow him as he left the sitting room. She fell into step as they crossed the leaf-and-weed-strewn courtyard. Green-and-black lotus flowers grew tall from the mud, surrounded by bees droning in the thick, lazy summer air. Shar plucked a green lotus blossom, then popped a petal into her mouth.
The doors to the laboratory were closed but gave to some insistent shoving. Residual charms inside the room recognized the presence of an ahmsah adept. Small ilhen lamps, like formations of candle flames in bronze urns, glowed a clean yellow-white. The interior walls reminded Indris of a beehive: hundreds of hexagonal cells, all covered with dust, most of which at one time would have held a casket, bottle, box, book, or scroll case. Everything that could be carried out had been taken, presumably by the previous owner. Only one thing of value remained, which Indris was sure would have been painful to part with.
In the center of the laboratory, a jagged mirror of polished quartz was set in a large, rough-edged pillar. Indris looked at it with trepidation. The surface of the mirror was irregular, transparent in some places, striated with cracks and streaks of dappled gray-white. No sooner had Indris thought he was looking at a reflection, than it blurred away like a fish under the brightly reflecting surface of a pond.
”Do you remember how to use a Seer's Mirror?” Shar asked nervously.
”I've not used one in a while.”
”You told me once there were dangers...”
”I've no intention of becoming Lost in the Drear.” The name sent an unwelcome chill down his spine. The thought of encountering one of the Lost-ancient and heretical scholars and others who had succ.u.mbed to the false promises of the Drear in return for profound power-unsettled him. What if he were faced with one of his old friends? Femensetri had mentioned some of his cla.s.smates had been Lost, the most powerful and promising Sq Knights of their generation. ”Most of the time we don't like what we see when we look in the mirror.”
Indris dragged a chair before the mirror. He leaned back, relaxed as much as he could. Each inhalation brought happiness, power, control, and strength. Each exhalation discharged anger, sorrow, and doubt. For ten breaths he cleansed his mind until, hypersensitive, he could feel his Disentropic Stain tingle along his nerves. It heated his skin. His mind blossomed like a flower.
He opened his eyes and focused on the mirror. Clouds of scratched white scudded across the gla.s.s. Behind them, the light tried to s.h.i.+ne through, like the sun on an overcast day. He saw himself, a prideful man with too much blood on his hands and not enough love in his hearts, seated, weak and frail, on a rickety throne made of straw. He had the hands of a murderer and the eyes of a madman, one burning with fire, the other fish-belly white. His skin was scaled, and Dragon's wings rose from his shoulders. Blood was ingrained beneath his fingertips, and the pits of his eyes flickered crimson. The room around him was wan. The ilhen lamps little more than pathetic sparks shedding nimbus light, the color of rancid honey. Flies buzzed and c.o.c.kroaches scuttled and spiders made their webs on him as he sat, utterly alone and friendless. Such was the Drear.
”h.e.l.lo, Amonindris,” the mirror said with leaden melancholy.
”h.e.l.lo, mirror,” Indris replied whimsically.
”Is it pleasant, seeing the man you are?” the mirror asked.
”You're an omen, a little hint with feet of clay, of what may be, not what is.”
”I'm exactly what is, Amonindris. I'm the truth, without embellishment or deception. I'm he who hides his face from the world, gnawing on the old bones of ambition and fear in the dark hours of the night, where I hope those I love will neither see, nor hear.”
”Indeed. You're a truth I hold dear. If I forget you, I forget what sits there in the muck and mire of my soul.”
The image in the mirror smiled his snaggle-toothed smile, gums gray with disease. ”There's no escape, Amonindris, from what you carry inside you.”
”Maybe. Only time will tell.”
”You've no desire to contest with me? To struggle and perhaps be victorious, to shed what you hate most about yourself? You know it is a fight you will need to win one day.”
Or to lose? To become the dark thing he despised? Such had been the fate of greater, wiser people than himself. ”There'll come another time when you and I will meet, of that I've no doubt. But it's not today.”
Through force of will Indris pushed his mind forward, into the soul-destroying rot of the Drear. The mirror showed a sky of sorts, with ground after a fas.h.i.+on, fused by a horizon of roiling murk, like a dust storm. The geometries were wrong, with everything curved or twisted into what his mind told him were impossible shapes. The light was diffuse, s.h.i.+ning from facets in the firmament. He forged through the clinging black weeds. Around him the trees were little more than silhouettes, paper cutouts set against a harsh monochrome sky. Beneath him the world was a shallow marsh, the waters littered with the sleeping faces of those who had lost themselves in the Drear to hopelessness and fear.
Images, of places and people, blurred. Indris clung to a calm acceptance that, yes, while he was not a perfect man, he was more than the extreme truth the mirror would have him be. Voices called out to him, beckoning, pleading, or promising. He remained steadfast, mantled in the love he knew from family and friends, the joy of his fondest memories and the quiet of a resolute soul. He looked neither left nor right, neither up nor down. He saw only the task ahead of him.
It took less than a minute before the mists in the mirror peeled away. Indris saw a makes.h.i.+ft camp amid older construction. A score of feathered-fabric tents, surrounded by earthworks and quickly reinforced stone walls.
At the center of the camp was a command tent of muted yellow-brown, laced together with black leather. Banners embroidered with Far-ad-din's crest of multicolored wings thrust into the ground, snapping in a fierce breeze Indris could not feel.
Standing outside the tent was a tall, slender, seemingly ageless man. His ascetic's face was porcelain smooth and fair under waist-length plumage of pale yellow streaked with crimson. His eyes were amethyst, as pale as the last hint of color on the horizon on a summer's eve. He wore a flowing robe of gold-and-white silk under a serill cuira.s.s and hauberk. The sockets of his eyes were dappled with scutes the same dark blue as his lips. His ears were pale, hardened to lengths of horn that swept back from his head. Another Seethe, a teenager, sat on a folding chair, polis.h.i.+ng a large, round s.h.i.+eld.
”h.e.l.lo, Far-ad-din,” Indris said clearly.
”Indris?” The Seethe's face showed his surprise.
”Where are you?”
”The ruins of Mnemon. I have heard from my sources all is not well in my city. Where are you?”
”Outside the ruins of Fiandahariat.” Indris explained what he knew of Corajidin's actions. Far-ad-din drew in a shuddering breath. Indris could see the muscles of Far-ad-din's jaw where they clenched and unclenched.
”We need you in Amnon,” Indris said quietly. ”We must provide an alternative to Corajidin's plans for Shran. I fear what the country may become without strong people to oppose him. He needs to be stopped.”
”Stopped?” Far-ad-din turned to look elsewhere, though at what Indris could not tell. ”What was once See-an-way is now sunk beneath the waters because the Avn wanted my people stopped. You may not know, but there was a city there all of gla.s.s. n.o.body carried weapons there. We called it Arem-yr-Juel, the Valley of the Lilies. Lotus flowers of every color grew there, and people would come to simply sit in the breeze and smell the perfume.”
”I-”