His face tightened as he spoke. “In that campaign, your Cataclysm was born—and had I known what would have resulted in years hence, I would have counseled my father to show mercy to the pirates. Whatever they could take in raids would be a small price to pay for the preservation of his Empire.”
Nirati caressed his cheek. “You could not have known the future, beloved.”
“Perhaps not, for men’s hearts can be as black as Gol’dun and we have no way of knowing.” He glanced down and snorted a laugh, rocking back slightly. “Back then, I was young and had many a companion I counted as good friends—men I would trust with my life; and not just men. As we went into Dreonath, a Viruk named Rekarafi was at my right hand, and Virisken Soshir was at my left. A few of those who would join me in the vanyesh were there as well. Some meant to win glory, but for many others the glory was in serving.”
She smiled despite recognizing the name of the Viruk who had attacked her brother, and kissed Nelesquin’s shoulder. “Serving with you should have been glory enough for any.”
“You’re right, of course, but many could not see the wisdom in that.” He frowned for a moment. “Back then, the provinces you now call the Nine were just provinces. You didn’t think of yourself as Naleni or Morythian; you were just of the Empire. You might owe your allegiance to a Naleni noble, but that was just a geographical descriptor, not any sense of nationality. In fact, generals and administrators often bore a title from one place, but served in another, which made it difficult for anyone to gather enough power to rival the Emperor.”
He smiled at remembering. “My father had two types of wives—just like the Emperors before him. Wives of blood were the daughters of nobles whom he married in formal ceremonies. Their children would be princes and princesses, and he could designate any of them to be his heirs. I was third from the throne when I went to fight pirates, and I shall admit I had hopes of moving up were we successful.
“His other wives were wives of pleasure. They, too, might be the daughters of nobles, but more often were highly trained courtesans who were gifted to the Emperor to curry favor. Their children, if there were any, were bastards who drew titles from their mothers, or earned them through merit. Despite their illegitimacy, however, they were treated equally at court with the rest of us, and many were the schools that vied to have them join up for training.”
Nelesquin’s smile split his black beard. “We had adventures in the Empire, but facing the pirates, that was to be the grandest of all. And so off we went, getting our feet wet with water and blood. While our fleet landed an army in the north, I took three companies in from the east. Rekarafi knew a way into the pirate stronghold and while their eyes were on the roads from the north, we attacked. We chased them down through that warren and I harvested Dosaarch’s head myself. I presented it to my father and he made me Crown Prince.”
“A position you certainly deserved, Highness.”
Nelesquin took her right hand in his and kissed her palm. “You flatter me, for you do not know how much I’ve lied in this recital.”
“I think you were far too modest.” She smiled. “If you were Crown Prince, why did your father not send you out to deal with the Turasynd threat?”
“There were many reasons, complicated reasons.” Nelesquin sighed. “My father was very good at paying attention to details—more suited to the bureaucracy than leading the country. The pirates threatened how smoothly his Empire ran; they did not threaten the Empire. The Turasynd did both, and while my father scrambled to keep the Empire running, he didn’t have enough perspective to see how to deal with the threat.
“And then there was politics to contend with.” His voice shrank. “I shall not deceive you, Nirati; I played at politics. My position was not assured, so I took steps to solidify it. My friend, Virisken Soshir, was rewarded with the leadership of my father’s bodyguard. I courted other factions and became initiated in the ways of the vanyesh. This frightened some nobles, and they conspired to turn my father against me. When he most needed my counsel, I was not permitted to see him. He made no decision when one was sorely needed. He dithered and Cyrsa, one of his pleasure wives, murdered him and usurped his throne.”
“Then she sundered the empire and headed off into the wilderness to face the Turasynd.”
“Exactly.” Nelesquin’s lips pressed tightly together, then he looked away. A tear glistened on his left cheek. “I joined her, bringing all those who felt loyalty to me. She’d humored me by making me Prince of Erumvirine. She mocked me. She gave me and the vanyesh an impossible task, then betrayed us, and we were defeated. And we had to be, since her usurpation would never have withstood my return.”
“You sought the best for the Empire, my love.” Nirati reached up and brushed the tear away with a finger. She brought that finger to her mouth and tasted the tear. “I know that you do what is best now as well.”
“There are wrongs that must be made right. I have waited a long time for that.”
She listened to him, but only distantly. While he spoke sweetly, she tasted bitterness in his tear and knew he had not told her everything. She did not imagine he was lying to her. While she had no doubt he was capable of deception, she also knew he would not willingly deceive her.
By the same token, what he had told her did not easily reconcile with the stories she’d grown up hearing. The vanyesh were evil and, therefore, their leader must have been evil. Empress Cyrsa was a heroine for saving the Empire. While she was willing to accept that there might be more than one point of view, and that those who survived the Cataclysm had a vested interest in casting the status quo as legitimate, it seemed that truth lay closer to what she had learned as a child.
She had no difficulty in imagining a prince choosing to patronize those bards who sang tales that vilified Nelesquin. If Nelesquin were correct, had he returned, their claim to power would have evaporated. Just as what her grandfather drew on maps determined how the world was seen, couldn’t history likewise be shaped?
Her brothers had enjoyed the tales of Amenis Dukao, one of the soldiers who had ventured to the west with the Empress. The stories of his adventures had been labeled as fiction, though many of the observations in them, especially about the Wastes, were deemed accurate by those who had traveled to such places. What if the stories were true, and just deemed fiction to render them impotent?
And what if I choose not to remember dying so I can rob death of its potency? A shiver shook her. Kunjiqui had always been her paradise, a perfect place conjured of dreams that had been a sanctuary when she was a girl. Her grandfather had somehow made it real to provide her a retreat from something horrible in life. And after my death have I accepted this place as a heaven to which I am entitled?
Nelesquin reached out and gently took her chin in his hand. “What is it, beloved? You shivered.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Tell me.”
She looked up into his eyes and saw them brimming with compassion. “I have died, and I cannot remember why or how.”
He nodded slowly. “I have died as well, and I do recall the circumstances. Be comforted that you do not.”
“Yes, my lord.”
He lifted her chin. “I have been remiss. There is a task I’ve meant to perform, but I have neglected it. I beg of you forgiveness and permission to act.”
Nirati frowned, puzzled. “To do what, my lord?”
“To do for you what I have been doing for myself.” He gestured with his left hand, closed it, then opened his fist. A beautiful green butterfly with wings edged in black flapped peacefully there.
Nirati smiled. “Oh, my lord, it’s lovely.”
“And it shall serve you well.” He raised it to his mouth, whispered something she could not hear, then launched it skyward. The insect fluttered about for a moment, then began a lazy, meandering flight toward the north.
“What is it doing?”
“I have been devoting myself to righting the wrong that destroyed the Empire. No
w I’ve just set about righting the wrong of your death.” He bent his head and kissed her. With his lips brushing hers, he added, “The person who killed you will soon find himself dead.”
Nirati kissed him back, softly and fleetingly. The idea of violence being done in her name bothered her, but slaying the person who killed her did seem just. “It will be quick?”
“From one perspective, yes.” Nelesquin pulled back and smiled. “From his, probably not.”
She considered for a moment, then nodded. “Thank you, my lord.”
“It is my pleasure.” He stood and pulled her to her feet. “Come, my love, I shall show you the grand cabin we shall share as we sail north. This ship shall take us home and allow me to reclaim the throne that has long been meant to be mine.”
Chapter Forty-five
7th day, Planting Season, Year of the Rat
10th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court
163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty
737th year since the Cataclysm
Maicana-netlyan, Caxyan
Had it not been for his facility with languages, Jorim would have spent the rest of his life on the floor of the Witch-King’s home, staring at the silver-white slab. As that thought came to him, he smiled, because what he had learned might guarantee he did. I’ll be here eternally if this does not work.
Cencopitzul helped as he could. While sympathetic to Jorim’s plight, he did not enjoy languages. He politely listened to Jorim’s discoveries—and having to explain his conclusions helped Jorim immeasurably. He would have been angry that he was not getting more help from Cencopitzul, but one discovery provided a reason why that might have been impossible.
Jorim had looked up from the slab and its shifting scripts. “You made a comment about time not always flowing in one direction here.”
The Witch-King had nodded. “I relive days—the boring ones, alas. When something interesting happens, I enjoy it, but then I fall back into a cycle of tedious days. It has occurred to me that when I focus, I am able to counteract the effects of timeshifting, and when I am bored I surrender to it.”
Jorim nodded, then pointed at the slab. “I think this is the source of the timeshifting.”
“What do you mean?”
The Naleni cartographer pointed to a pile of skins on which he had written words in charcoal. “We’ve been watching the sigils change over the face of the slab, and we have assumed that the characters are shifting their shape. I think there is another solution. We’ve identified five different scripts, and there are two others we can’t identify.”
Cencopitzul nodded. “The Viruk variant and the Writhings.”
“Right. Now the same message appears to be written in each language, and covers the slab entirely. While the words appear randomly in time, they always show in the same spot on the slab.”
“Exactly. The same phrase is repeated endlessly and the phrases revealed themselves at different times.”
“I’ve figured something else out.” Jorim stretched. “The slab has eight surface layers: one for each language and a blank one. We see portions of each surface at different times—a Viruk word, then Imperial, then a blank. We see all the layers at the same time, but only little pieces of them.”
The vanyesh had stopped to consider that. “It’s conceivable that could happen, but the power and control it would have required is almost unbelievable. It’s certainly beyond the ability of a man to do it.”
“But not a god, right?”
“I would not presume to define a god’s power.” The Witch-King shrugged. “I think your analysis is sound, however. The magic would also explain the timeshifting problems.”
Jorim had painstakingly written down and checked the messages. They’d managed to identify five scripts: Imperial, Viruk, Soth, Amentzutl, and an Imperial variant that the vanyesh said had been used by the sorcerers for recording magic formulae. Jorim could only translate the Imperial and Amentzutl, and Cencopitzul agreed that the vanyesh message matched.
In Imperial, the phrase consisted of two lines and six words: Open in out/Closed out in. The formulation marked it as an old Imperial puzzle and the format had survived to Jorim’s childhood. In fact, every child over the age of five knew the answer was door.
That realization left Jorim little better off than before. “It could mean the obvious, or have many meanings.”
The Witch-King had sliced a green fruit in half, revealing a large seed and a fragrant orange flesh that dripped with sweet juice. “Assuming for a moment that you are Tetcomchoa and you decided to leave something here for yourself, would you want to make the solution simple, or complex and incredibly idiosyncratic?”
“Both, probably.” Jorim had taken a bite of the fruit, then licked juice from his hand. “We both know this was a riddle because we’ve seen that style of thing in the Nine. Do the Amentzutl have that same riddling tradition?”
“Not in that format. Their riddles are usually six lines or twelve, and they usually have two answers.”
“So, Tetcomchoa leaves this message here, knowing he’s going to found an empire and someday he will return to the world through the person of someone born in the Nine, who will come here and discover he’s left a riddle.” Jorim winced. “That’s assuming an awful lot.”
“What if a god only knows that things will work, but not how or when or even why?”
“You mean just trust that door is the key and not worry about anything else?”
Cencopitzul lifted his chin and sucked juice off his lower lip. “Is that what you meant yourself to think?”
“You’re not much help.”
“Forgive me. I think door is the portal to the solution. It’s simple enough to reach, but unlocking the truth of it is going to be more difficult. That might be something that only Tetcomchoa’s reincarnation can manage.”
Jorim had almost dismissed that comment as glib persiflage, but something in it started resonating. Perhaps only he could work the solution to the problem the slab presented. Not knowing exactly how to define that problem made things more difficult, but Jorim did know that hidden within or beneath the slab lay something he was meant to have. I have to get in there.
This realization took him back to the puzzle again. He analyzed it, then watched the slab, and finally saw something he’d not seen before. He caught it in the Amentzutl script, and in the Soth. Both languages dealt with pictograms that remained very graphic and recognizable. The Imperial script, like the Viruk, also dealt with pictograms, but they had become highly stylized and no longer looked like the words they represented.
Both the Soth and Amentzutl scripts could be read from right to left, or left to right. Scribes usually recorded things from left to right, but architects and those decorating buildings would swap the facing of letters so they could have inscriptions that were symmetrical. The meaning would not change, and could easily be deciphered if you read toward the mouths of the people and animals represented. The conversation is face to face, yours and theirs.
The Soth and Amentzutl scripts changed directions, but the phrases remained in their places on the slab. This meant there had not been eight faces, with one blank, but ten. The repetition of the phrases in those two languages had to be significant, so Jorim played the riddle forward and backward in his mind, and hit upon a solution.
Cencopitzul looked down at him. “I think what you’re going to attempt is possible, but only if you are correct in your thinking. If you are not, it will kill you.”
“Better be correct, then.” Jorim stretched himself out on the slab. He’d removed all of his clothing. The stone chilled him, but he couldn’t feel the writing change against his back. That was just as well, as his flesh was crawling anyway.
The Witch-King gave him a formal bow. “I hope you know your own mind. Or both of them.” He straightened up, then smiled. “I shall leave you to this.”
“Thank you. You’ll know if it works.”
Jorim closed his eyes, shifted his shoulders, an
d got comfortable. He reached with his mind and sought the slab. He had tried to identify it through the mai before, but it had eluded definition. Until he had considered the puzzle more deeply, his problem with the slab made no sense because it was as difficult to define as a living creature.
And that’s not because it’s living, but because it is matched to someone who is living.
In running the riddle forward and backward, he turned it into a circle. The door was closed to the outside, which meant only something within could open it. Once opened, the door would admit something from the outside. That thing then would become the key inside and able to open the door. This meant that the key within and without were identical, and their merging would be what unlocked the puzzle.
Setting himself, he touched the mai, then, as he had done with Nauana, he projected his own essence into the slab.
Agony wracked him, spasming every muscle tight. His back bowed and his body convulsed. Sparks exploded in front of his eyes and blood flowed in his mouth from where he’d bitten his tongue. He wanted to panic, he wanted to flee, but he hung on. He pushed his essence harder, armoring it with the mai, and punched it past the initial resistance.
His sense of self pushed in quickly, then hit another barrier. This time his blood turned to acid in his veins. His brain felt as if it was boiling and his eyes were set to burst. Images of what he’d done to the Mozoyan tortured him. He felt as if he were burning and freezing at the same time; as if only arcs of pain bound his body together.
He pushed himself past that, then almost lost control. What had been himself, what he had seen as one solid shaft of white light piercing the slab, fractured into a rainbow of selves. Each ray shot off and hit something else, then each of those rays thickened and brightened. They plunged back at all angles, converging at one point, and when they collided, they exploded in a blinding burst of light.