“You came in here on your own?” Cesylle scowled. “If that’s your weapon, well, I hate to tell you this, but you’ll never get out of here alive.”
“Are the Seers in that room with the big bright crystal?”
Cesylle nodded.
“Good. Last time they went in there, they were busy for a long time. If we don’t get out now, we won’t get out at all.”
As they fled the chamber, Cesylle choked, too distraught to look back again at that old, suspended prisoner, for it was clear that no one could help him. But as he followed Warney, a whisper followed him. “Bring the whole thing down. Bring the whole thing down.”
They made their way back through the twists and turns until Warney paused, panting, and seized Cesylle’s bandaged arm. As Cesylle whimpered, Warney pointed toward the silver slit of an open doorway.
“That’s the mawrn-crystal room. We can’t go in there.”
“It’s the only place I haven’t looked for my eye,” Warney growled.
The chill was so fierce that they stopped and leaned into each other for a moment. Cesylle had a sudden, almost irresistible itch to flee. In the room beyond, the crystal that Malefyk Xa had shown him had turned to a pillar of cold blue fire, sparkling and hissing. As it did, a strange and dissonant chorus of voices moaned inside the light.
The Seers … they’re in the fire.
Warney seized Cesylle’s chin and turned it. “Look.”
In the strobing light, he saw again that strange, branching, metal tree—dark and spiked as an iron coatrack—in the middle of the room. And he stood paralyzed as his mind slowly pieced more impossible details together.
Caught on its hooks by the backs of their necks, the Seers’ bodies hung suspended. Their faces were downturned, their eyes white and sightless. Their long arms were limp; the fingers of their mismatched hands were lifeless, like long-dead spiders dangling in dusty webs.
“Are they … dead?”
“No,” said Cesylle. “They’re empty.”
This suspended confounding questions in the room. They listened to the crackle and spark from the adjoining chamber, then glanced back toward the crystal’s silvery spray.
“So that’s the nasty secret,” Warney whispered. “Panner Xa’s hand. I’d seen it before. Seen it chopped right off a drunken miner at Mawrnash.”
“Stolen bodies.” Cesylle’s resistance collapsed. The rumors in the revelhouse had been true. “When pieces wear out, they steal replacements.”
“That’s why they hate sunlight. I heard the tallest one say so. Gotta keep them costumes cold when they’re not bein’ worn. Else they’ll rot.” Warney glanced toward the Seers’ crystal chamber. “Don’t want to know what that shiny rock is for. Nothin’ good, I expect.”
“Don’t ask me to explain it, but I think they’re getting stronger. Mawrn … it’s like Essence to beastmen.”
“If we go in there, can they see us? I mean, without their costumes?”
“The crystal shows them what any mawrn can see. Anywhere. They’re probably scanning the whole Expanse. We should get out while they’re distracted. And fast.”
“Only one way out,” muttered Warney. He pointed to the jittery light.
“That’s how you got in? Through the moon window? No wonder you’re famous.” Cesylle backed away from the bright door. “We’ll never make it.”
“You wanna stay here forever like that poor old upside-down fellow? Look, they can’t touch us when they’re out of their bodies, right?”
Cesylle thought of the blue ghost that had hovered in Pretor Xa’s empty place. “I don’t think so. But they won’t be out of them for long.”
Warney reached into his pocket and pulled out another sparkstick. Then his eye went wide as a shrillow’s egg. “Oh,” he said, amazed by whatever thought was congealing in his head.
The Seers’ deathly costumes burned quickly.
And as they crumbled into ash and ember, a cloud of black smoke filled the room.
Warney and Cesylle watched, cowering just outside the entrance to the Seers’ crystal chamber. And it was all they could do to stay still as the blaze of the crystal’s fire in the next room faded, and six streams of shining, shapeless mist came writhing into the antechamber.
The phantoms circled the smoldering iron tower, seeking some way into the burning bodies. Warney thought he could feel the vibrations of their voiceless screams, and he shuddered.
One of the burning costumes lurched out from the cluster. As it did, its blackening feet gave way, and it fell to its knees, which exploded, and then the whole body toppled and smashed against the floor.
From its shattering hand, a small orb came rolling across the floor, stopping right at Warney’s toe.
“Imagine that,” he said, snatching the sphere from the floor and rubbing it against his cloak. He shoved the eye back into its socket, then he seized Cesylle and dragged him toward the crystal chamber.
In spite of the inferno behind him, Cesylle felt a sudden thrill. He and Warney had dealt the Seers a serious blow and discovered their weakness at the same time. A strange giddiness filled him. These manipulators were not so invincible after all. He heard himself laugh out loud, a cackle of half-mad zeal. But his delight faded when he looked up and saw the fanged window closing around a star-shaped patch of moonlit sky.
“No problem,” said Warney, fixing Cesylle with a crazed look, his glass eye staring upward. “I’m the One-Eyed Bandit.” And with that, he raised the fisher-spring and fired it at the skylight.
The forked spear flew through the closing mouth and caught.
Warney flicked the recoil trigger and locked an arm around Cesylle’s waist.
“Wait,” said Cesylle. He broke free and dove to the crystal. He seized the marrowwood box that rested on the small golden pillar beneath the floating mawrn stone and then hurried back to take hold of Warney’s leg as the old man ascended on the retracting line.
They clambered out between the closing teeth just as the fog-shrouded rooftop sealed and the fisher-spring mechanism splintered, cut in half.
Together they slid down the Keep’s sloped, glassy roof as if it were ice melting beneath them and skidded to the edge, grateful for the mist that concealed them from archers in the surrounding towers. The Keep shuddered beneath them.
A bright light lit up the sky, and they looked back up the incline.
Five blue ghosts rose from the rooftop into the sky, pulsing strangely, gracefully, like jellyfish ascending through dark water. The translucent umbrellas of crystal dust made sounds like dissonant bells, glassy ribbons trailing and stroking the air.
In Cesylle’s mind the chant continued.
Bring the whole thing down. Bring the whole thing down.
Sensing that the other Seers were gone, Pretor Xa dragged his frail ghost up from the floor and drifted back through the corridors of the Keep.
He felt something like an ache, something like cold—there were no words for what he felt, save those related to a body. How he hated bodies.
They reminded him of his own, cast off so many ages ago. He had not chosen that form, and thus he despised it. Some great mystery had forced him into being a part of a larger design. But Pretor Xa did not want to be part of anything. He wanted to consume and own all. To be sovereign. And yet he could make nothing except by rearranging, reassembling what that mystery provided.
So he trembled now, jealous, willfully bodiless, and miserable. One desire eventually rose up through the turmoil. Gleaming and simple, it gave him purpose.
I want to find my servant. And I want to find him alive.
Pretor Xa had sculpted Ryllion from a young and zealous soldier into something of his own design—something that reminded him of himself many ages ago.
If I find him alive, perhaps I can still use him. But if I find him dead …
An idea flickered, a rush of sparks in the blue gown of his floating ghost.
He drifted out through the Keep’s wall, wound thro
ugh the streets. Mistaken for glints of morning sunlight, for glimmers on the water, he reached the mainland and became a shimmer in the trees.
14
RAIDERS OF RAAK’S CASKET
o one but Ryp ben Fray heard the first tremor that pulsed through the hard, dry ground of the Jentan School. Lying on a stone bed in his candlelit cell, he watched the feathers of his extravagant, wall-pinned collection twitch slightly without wind to stir them. Perhaps Deathweed had come at last to shatter Jenta’s foundations. Perhaps the inevitable uprising from Wildflower Isle had reached the mainland.
Ryp rose and pressed his hand to the featureless outer wall of his chamber—the room in which he had studied and slept for centuries. Stone rippled as easily as a breeze-blown bedsheet on a clothesline, pliable from years of obedience to his touch. Rings like ripples spread from his fingertips. A window opened to the hush before dawn. He held the onvora feather out into the air, and it fluttered on a faint breeze as if eager to rise.
Acolytes in their gauzy grey robes patrolled what sections of the wall remained, lost in their thoughts, having long given up any expectation of visitors or disturbances. Submerged in their Skull Chambers like clams in their shells, the Aerial brooded and stewed. So many fruitless searches. A familiar shape marked a window in a lighted room across the yard, also watching. The day will come when my brother will go out too, like a puff of smoke. Poor fool.
He listened for another rumble, but all he could hear was the sough of the Mystery Sea to the south. On the coast, overcoat herons would be spreading the inky fabric of their wings, drifting along the shoreline in this, the world’s waking hour.
The freedom to fly. To cut the cords that bind us.
What if he leapt from the Epiphany Tower and found himself adrift, awake and without any help for himself? What if pain awaited him, with no source of comfort? Out of habit, he batted away doubt’s whispers. He had stopped heeding questions long ago.
There will be a certain satisfaction in being free from the temptation to try and fail again. History is an endless chain of failures. If I feel anything at all, I’ll feel contentment. No decisions to be made. Nothing to regret. All will be determined. I’ll have no choice but to accept what comes. Any and all responsibility will fall on whatever cruel power is behind these horrible games. Let that power accept my surrender as an ultimatum. No more chasing the illusion of meaning.
He heard his acolyte’s footfall behind him. “Tenderly.”
“Master.” The girl, clad in an ankle-length robe, set a tallow candle on the new sill beside him. At once Ryp knocked it out the window with his elbow. Learn that, acolyte. Do what you’ve been told, and it comes to nothing.
Tenderly tucked her yellow hair behind her ear and went on with her errands. She smelled like clereus blooms opening in gratitude during a desert rain shower. As if there was any sense in gratitude.
Spreading a clean sheet over Ryp’s stone bed, Tenderly said, “Master, your breathing. You should close the window.”
For a moment longer the mage held the onvora feather out the window, letting the warm wind ruffle and bend its firm fibers. “Did you feel a strange quake just now?”
“Not at all,” she said. “What is the feather, master? Onvora? Did Scharr bring it to you?”
“Yes.” He loved them all—the glasswing’s crystalline sheen, the peacock’s size and pride, the pone’s delicacy, and the skycutter’s curve. And he hated that he loved them, just as he hated the desire that gripped him when Tenderly came to the room. Even more, he hated his regrets, hated his restraint, hated any suggestion that there was a right or a wrong. She would learn hard lessons in this life. What did it matter if he gave her one of them?
“I will leave the window open,” he sighed. “My brother’s up to something. We must watch him.” He glanced at the moonlit shadow cast by the chimneyhouse smokestack, then turned toward the bell tower. “The bell-hammer’s late again.”
“Master?”
“The dawn arrives without a bell. Since our volunteer disappeared, so many tasks are done improperly.”
The acolyte flinched. “Some say he wasn’t well treated.”
“We took in that hunched old beggar and gave him shelter.” Ryp saw her ears redden as she took up the broom to sweep. “Best blunt your barbs, child. Most your age never see the inside of the School.” He waited. Still there was no bell. “You’ve been wise to wean yourself from any desires, save for an escape into oblivion, the great sigh of death.”
The girl slumped down on the edge of the bed.
“I know, Tenderly. The world is burdensome. We’ll help you slip out of it. It’ll feel as good as casting off your robe.” He clenched his teeth, hating himself, and hating himself for hating himself.
“Why did your brother return?”
“Scharr found no end to his ridiculous questions. All pursuits led to nothing. He’s back, empty-handed.”
“Except for the onvora feather. Which is beautiful, no matter what you say.”
Ryp fashioned a retort, but the morning bell suddenly pealed. “Too loud!” he shouted.
“Never mind,” said Tenderly. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Maybe you should work on your wings. To calm your temper.”
Ryp wanted to carve out a fistful of stone and throw it at the girl. Instead, he walked to the corner and untied the cord around a bundle of rods and canvas. After unfolding the roll, he spread the wings and fitted together the rods of their frame. “Perhaps it’s time to put the feathers on my wings. Scharr has completed my collection.”
“What did your brother do to deserve banishment?”
Ryp laughed softly. “He tells everyone we cast him out. In truth, he rejected our order. He’d prefer to make himself a myth—a man who carries secrets, unbound to any house or authority.”
“But why come back?”
“He wants to see the scrolls of Tammos Raak. Just the latest curiosity to distract him from the emptiness. He hopes he’ll find something there to help King Cal-raven establish New Abascar up north.”
“Why bother with Abascar?”
“Cal-raven adores him. Adoration is a powerful thing. Cal-raven is moved by a foolish children’s story about the Keeper, and my brother can use that to his advantage. By setting up a kingdom in the shadow of the Forbidding Wall, he’ll dwell on the border between all he does and does not know. He’ll have resources—armies, even. He’ll go over the Forbidding Wall and try to learn the truth about the curse that Tammos Raak fled. Then he’ll set himself up as revealer of that truth to Cal-raven and the world. He’ll shape stories that will shape future cultures across the Expanse to his liking. Stories and histories—they’re just tools in his grand manipulation.”
“So you mean to refuse him access to Raak’s Casket?”
“He’ll have to steal them.” Ryp lay down and rested his head on the stone pillow. “It will be interesting to see him try. Try and fail.”
The acolyte was silent at the window, searching night’s last shadows.
“It’s a burden, isn’t it? Knowing that great secrets may be just out of reach.” Ryp ben Fray pressed his hand to his chest. “You feel it here. A maddening desire to know what isn’t yours to know. Imagine carrying that ache for hundreds of years. Now ask yourself which is worse—not knowing the secrets in the casket or learning that there is nothing inside the casket at all but ashes and dust? Either conclusion will lead to madness. We must waste our time with comforting distractions or death. Come. Lie down with me. I’ll take your mind off your despair.”
The alarm bell—with its weight, its metal, its worldly harshness—shocked him as if the hammer had struck his skull. The acolyte rushed to the window.
“What do you see? My brother, where is he?”
“He’s still at the window.”
“It cannot be.” He joined her there. Stars shone fiercely in the storm-scrubbed sky. The air seemed charged with conspiracy. “That’s not Scharr ben Fray. It’s a statue. Rebellio
us as ever, my brother.” Ryp spit two teeth into his hand, then shoved them back into their places. “Where is he then?” Drawing his heavy cloak around his shoulders, he trudged wearily to the door.
As he did, the floor shuddered under their feet.
“Did you feel that?” Tenderly gasped.
They both heard a thunderclap in the distance. Such strange thunder—it seemed to emanate from underground, far, far away.
Ryp frowned. “Another trick.”
They moved up the stairs slowly and then onto the curve of wall that stretched out from his Skull Chamber. Ryp cocked his head to one side, holding up his hand to demand silence.
Again there was the roll of some distant, powerful drum.
“That,” he whispered, “is a sound I haven’t heard in almost three hundred years.” His voice deepened to a growl through clenched teeth. “And I was certain I’d never hear it again.”
“Are we being attacked?”
“It isn’t an army.” Ryp gazed out toward the horizon. “Oh, he’s going to enjoy his surprise. But it will lead to nothing.”
“What do we do?”
“Watch the chimneyhouse,” he said. “And stay close to me.” He reached out, seized Tenderly’s shoulder, and drew her body hard against his, seizing the excuse to steal her warmth. “You’re a lucky girl, Tenderly. We’re about to witness something no one’s seen in almost three hundred years. And it may be the last thing we see.”
Against early morning’s azure sky, the chimneyhouse looked like a fat, melting candle in the center of the yard, its east side faintly detailed by the dawn.
At another distant boom Tenderly tried to pull away.
“The creature that approaches,” Ryp sighed, his doubts erased, “has been eating and sleeping in seclusion for generations. During those years its armored shell has thickened. Its muscles, which it flexes in its sleep, have grown strong. The ancients thought that it flew, for it leaps in strides as long as a man can walk in a day.”