Normally, Csorwe would just nod and look attentive, but she was still struggling for her footing, trying to work out how to place Oranna in the constellation of Sethennai’s concerns.
“And you think she’s got the Reliquary,” she said. “Or she knows where it is. Or something.”
“Hmm,” said Sethennai, settling back on the lower bunk. “I don’t know about that. I’d be surprised if she’s got it outright. I imagine she’s persuaded herself she has a lead.”
Seeing that Sethennai was planning to rest, Csorwe scrambled up into the top bunk and laid her head on her backpack.
“But I do want to see what’s made her think that,” he said. “I’ve been looking for the Reliquary since before you were born. Unless she found something in the library of the House of Silence after all…”
Even after all these years, Csorwe knew little more about the Reliquary of Pentravesse than what she had seen in her original vision. It was an eight-sided rosewood box. It was as ancient as it was valuable. And she thought Pentravesse was a person rather than a place, but that was just a hunch.
Csorwe had never been naturally curious, and the House of Silence had always been pretty clear about what you deserved if you poked your nose into things you didn’t understand. But she couldn’t help wondering what it was he wanted badly enough to swallow his pride and go running after Oranna. Even if he liked her, or had liked her, or at any rate if something close to liking had once existed between them, he wasn’t someone you could summon at will.
She gazed up at the crisscrossed timbers of the cabin ceiling, trying to think up a sidelong way to get round to it. “Who was he, sir?” she said, eventually. “Pentravesse, I mean.”
“Ah,” said Sethennai. She couldn’t see him, but he sounded reassuringly warm and drowsy. He had the knack for making himself comfortable almost immediately, even if he had been running and scheming all night. “Pentravesse. The Master of Devices. Yes.”
Csorwe should have known what she was getting into. She pulled the blanket over herself and listened.
“Pentravesse was born over three thousand years ago, in Ormary, a country which no longer exists. His origins are not recorded. But he went on to become the greatest magician—the greatest inventor—perhaps the greatest genius who has ever lived.
“Before Pentravesse, you understand, magic was nothing more than prayer. Magicians were prophets, bound to their divinities, mad and sick with their power. They could heal and harm and call down visions, channelling the power directly through their own flesh and bone, but they were limited by the strength of their own bodies and minds.
“Pentravesse was the first to learn how to drain off the power of a patron divinity into the physical realm, to ground and trap it in mundane matter, to order one’s workings with control sigils. The development of the mazeship, the alchemical engine, half of modern medicine—all rest on his discoveries. His patron was a goddess of the old order, demanding tribute, fealty, and sacrifice. But I think she too must have had an eye to the future.
“Pentravesse was just like any other mage in one respect, of course. Mortal flesh can only bear so much. Divine power is a wonderful thing, but it is also a poison. When Pentravesse realised he was dying, it’s said, he devised a plan. All his knowledge, his unfinished work, his plans, schemes, predictions, secrets, inspirations—all were preserved and contained within the Reliquary.
“Nobody knows exactly what it contains. Most of the scholarship is rather unimaginative. Blueprints for apocalyptic weapons, the formula for eternal life. I like to think he might have been more thoughtful than that. Whoever discovers it will solve one of the greatest puzzles of history. But more than that. Pentravesse changed his world, and all worlds, forever. Whoever claims the Reliquary will inherit that legacy. Imagine, Csorwe, what I could do with that knowledge.”
Csorwe had to admit to herself that she had always assumed Sethennai knew everything about magic already. A sleepy vision came to her of Sethennai dressed all in gold, accepting back his crown as Chancellor of all the world. If she had been wide awake she would have rejected this as childish and embarrassing, but in her current state, she could luxuriate in it. In this vision, Oranna and Olthaaros Charossa were long defeated, and Sethennai had the Reliquary in his hands. Csorwe was beside him, watching over him, his most reliable agent. He was Pentravesse’s heir, and she was the one person in the world whom he truly trusted.
In time, the soft rumble of Sethennai’s voice mingled with the creaking of the timbers, the muted sound of the wind, the distant chime of Gate-song, and lulled her into a half-sleep.
Despite being woken in the middle of the night, despite her lingering lotus hangover, despite the fact that Sethennai was at his most mysterious—she was beginning to feel contented. Sethennai had forgiven her mistake with the letter. He thought that she was worth bringing along, that she would actually be useful.
She tried to forget that Oranna might be waiting for them at the end of the journey. She might, or she might not. And either way, whatever Oranna meant by all this, Sethennai would be there to take Csorwe’s side. It was ridiculous to worry that Oranna would somehow drag her back to the House of Silence. Sethennai would never let that happen.
4
The Withered City
CSORWE DOZED THROUGH THE rest of the journey, and stumbled through the refuelling station after Sethennai, still half asleep. The next time she really felt awake, she was sitting in the hired cutter, picking at a steamed bun Sethennai had bought her in the station canteen. Sethennai was at the wheel of the cutter, concentrating on navigation. At first they joined the traffic leaving the station, a great river of ships that split and split and thinned out as vessels moved off toward the Gates that would take them closer to Oshaar, Kasmansitr, Qarsazh, Tarasen. Sethennai broke away as soon as he could do so discreetly, wheeling off in a wide arc, down and around beneath the station. They passed through a narrow and flickering Gate, which spat them out in a part of the Maze that was all jagged needle-spires, stabbing upward in unforgiving ridges. There were no other ships to be seen. Csorwe wriggled down in the cutter, drawing her arms up into the sleeves of her winter tunic.
It was impossible to tell the time in the Maze. When fragments of the sky were visible, they shifted constantly from golden false-dawn to blue false-noon to violet false-dusk, and sometimes to shades of crimson or sea-green never seen in the sky of a living world. By Csorwe’s estimation, they travelled for a day and a half, pausing occasionally to eat more steamed buns, which were increasingly unappetising the colder they became.
They were already far from the usual routes. They passed through several Gates, but never saw another ship or another living soul.
By now Csorwe could usually gauge Sethennai’s mood from his posture. As they approached their journey’s end, he started to sit up straighter, not tense but focused.
Csorwe was almost used to Gate-travel by now, but passing from the Maze into Echentyr was more of a shock than usual: from grey jumbled stone and cold clear wind into a dry stillness. It was just warm enough to be uncomfortable, and the air tasted grimy. Below them the landscape stretched away, flat and yellow-grey, blurred and buried in haze. In the distance were structures that could have been towers, wrapped up in clouds of dust.
Something was wrong with the sky. One moment there was a clear expanse of faded grey—the next it bloomed with fresh spikes and promontories of stone. Pillars the size of mountains speared suddenly through the heavens, then flickered away. All this happened in silence, as if they were nothing more than clouds coming and going.
“This is why they call it a dead zone,” said Sethennai, taking the little ship hastily down toward a plateau just below the Gate. “It’s not safe to be in the air. We’ll be all right on the ground if we keep moving.”
They landed and Csorwe hopped out of the cutter, swinging her backpack onto her shoulders. This was the first time Sethennai had ever taken her out on one of his expeditions, and she was dete
rmined that he wouldn’t regret it. If they found Oranna, she was going to be completely professional.
They climbed down from the plateau. From horizon to horizon, the plain seemed to be littered with fallen columns or pillars. The dust in the air made it difficult to make out detail, so they were close to the ground before Csorwe realised what she was actually seeing. Not columns, but the corpses of colossal trees. Thousands of them, fallen in ranks as though flicked down by a single blow, fanning out from a point of impact far ahead.
Csorwe feared it would be slow going, clambering over the dead trees, but as they reached the ground she saw how big they really were. Each trunk was wider than she was tall, and the spaces between them were like city streets. The trees and the gaps alike were thick with dust, the colour of old paper. Csorwe reached out to touch the nearest tree and found her hand sinking to the wrist in dust. Their footprints were equally deep.
They moved out from the plateau. At first, Csorwe jumped every time a shadow fell suddenly across her path, but it was only the strange formations moving and disappearing in the sky.
“It looks like the Maze up there,” she said. The newest formation was a vast spiral complex, like an ammonite seen in a broken mirror.
“It is,” he said. “The living world decays and the bones of the Maze come through. The Maze grows out of dead worlds the way mushrooms grow out of tree stumps. In a thousand years or so this place will be entirely eaten up.”
They used to talk about the eaten worlds back at the House of Silence. She hadn’t entirely understood what that had meant. The eaten worlds and the decline of all things … she strode on ahead, shaking her head as if she could physically dislodge the thought.
Up ahead, crossing her path as it wound between two colossal trunks, was a single trail of footsteps, and a row of wheel ruts. Csorwe nudged Sethennai’s arm and pointed.
“Look! Do you think it’s Oranna? Could she have come this way?”
Sethennai nodded, looking down at her with something very much like pride.
“She must be heading towards the city,” he said. “It’s not as though there’s anywhere else to go.”
Csorwe followed Sethennai along the trail, still gloating over his pride like a hot drink on a cold day. She was so busy nursing the feeling that she almost walked straight into the first skeleton.
You might have taken it for another fallen tree. Like them, it was massive, thickly coated in grey-brown dust, lying inert as if discarded where it fell. But then you saw the individual ribs, curving up in an unbroken palisade. You saw the whole helix, looped over and under the wreckage of the forest: the dry bones of a gigantic snake.
Csorwe shrank back against the nearest tree trunk, stricken by the sight of the huge fleshless head. She could have comfortably curled up inside one of its eye sockets. Each one of its teeth was several times larger than her sword.
“Don’t worry,” said Sethennai. “They can’t hurt you.”
“Are there more of them?” said Csorwe.
“Many more,” he said. “All dead.” He sounded almost sorry about it, which was such a rarity that Csorwe forgot her fear immediately. “This won’t be the last one you see. But they’ve been dead for centuries. They’re no harm to you.”
Sethennai was already moving on. Csorwe couldn’t help looking back as they passed the enormous skull, wondering how this creature had looked in life, how it had moved, what kind of prey it must have eaten.
Soon after that they came to a wall. Dust was heaped up against the smooth flanks of the masonry, but above the level of the dust the wall was carved in every direction with friezes: trees and serpents and rivers, wound together as though the stone itself had melted and flowed into shape.
“The city of Echentyr proper,” said Sethennai.
There was a huge round opening in the wall, which must once have held a door. Beyond it, and above the wall, Csorwe spotted the same towers she had seen from the air. They were unlike any building she had seen before. They had a strange undulating quality, tapering in and out, branching like corals. It was eerie to stand before a city as silent as this. There was no sign that anybody had ever entered or left, except for the single trail of Oranna’s footprints winding in through the empty doorway.
“I suspected as much,” said Sethennai, striding into the city.
Beyond the walls, the streets were as wide and deep as river gorges, and they were crisscrossed everywhere Csorwe looked by the bones of serpents. They must have died here in their thousands.
“There were snakes even in the city?” said Csorwe. She had been imagining that the wall existed to keep the serpents out.
“This was their city,” said Sethennai. “They weren’t monsters, Csorwe. The serpents of Echentyr were scholars, philosophers, scientists, poets. In its heyday their city was a beacon.”
He led Csorwe on through the streets. At times, the bones were piled so thickly that they had to climb in between the ribs. Csorwe had once seen a frigate being built in the shipyard of Grey Hook, and some of these ribs were not much smaller than the ship’s timbers.
Eventually the footsteps crossed a sort of round open plaza, heaped with skeletons. They were lucky to have Oranna’s trail or it would have been difficult to chart a course through the labyrinth of ribs.
This must have been a busy part of the city, Csorwe thought. A market square, maybe. All the philosophers and scientists must have sent their servants out for food occasionally. And then they had all died. Had it been slow? Had they known what was coming?
“What happened to them all?” she said. She remembered something he had said about a magical cataclysm, but she had no idea what that might mean. “Who killed them?”
“A goddess,” said Sethennai. He looked pensive, distracted perhaps by the prospect of an encounter with Oranna, but after a moment he gestured to a dais in the middle of the plaza. Csorwe had been focused on finding their way, and hadn’t spotted it. On the dais stood a colossal statue of a hooded snake. The sculptor had picked out every one of its scales, like individual petals. It didn’t look like any snake Csorwe had seen in life. It had three pairs of eyes set into its head like a row of jewels, and another four pairs worked into the hood, and all down the great ornate body were more eyes. Huge dead stone eyes, staring unblinking at nothing for centuries …
“This was how they imagined their goddess to look,” said Sethennai. “Iriskavaal the Thousand-Eyed.”
“They were killed by their own goddess,” said Csorwe. It wasn’t so hard to believe. The Unspoken One chose its own sacrifices, after all.
“Yes,” said Sethennai, “the serpents were loyal to her for many centuries. By all accounts they loved her. They fought and died for her and their mages drew on her power for their workings.” He paused beside a smaller skeleton. The skull only came up to Csorwe’s shoulder.
“Iriskavaal had made enemies, as the powerful always do. In the end some of the Echentyri lost faith, and they betrayed her.”
Csorwe shivered. It seemed like a mistake to talk about these things in front of the statue. It was too easy to imagine those eyes moving.
“Iriskavaal’s throne was shattered into shards,” said Sethennai. “Her earthly mansion was laid waste. Her shrines were desecrated. The gods do not die as we die, Csorwe, but they can be reduced, and they can suffer.”
Looking up at the statue he made a kind of half gesture, raising his hand toward his face. Csorwe did this occasionally when she began to make the Sign of Sealed Lips, forgetting that she no longer owed the Unspoken One any kind of salute.
“Iriskavaal’s suffering was such that she turned from the world,” said Sethennai. “Her last act was to curse Echentyr in its entirety. She destroyed all life in this world with a single word. All their temples. All their universities. All that knowledge gone for nothing.”
He ran a hand over the lower jaw of the small serpent’s skull, brushing away the dust to expose an expanse of bone.
“They paid for their tr
eachery in full,” he said.
Csorwe had never seen him melancholy before. She wasn’t sure whether he was sorry for the Echentyri or their goddess, or just for the universities. The air was thicker and dustier and warmer inside the city, but she began to feel cold.
“Come on, sir,” she said, taking an unspeakable liberty by touching his sleeve. “The trail.”
If there was one thing Csorwe had learned it was that you could eventually get used to anything. After a couple of hours in the ruined city, she was no longer surprised by the dust or the bones or the gigantic scale of the place. Even the statues of Iriskavaal lost their power to shock. Even the growth and decay of mountains in the sky no longer bothered her.
They followed the trail up a spiral walkway toward the doors of an enormous round building. Even through the dust, Csorwe could see that its walls had been decorated with more friezes: serpents in crowns and headdresses, serpents pulling trestles, a ceremonial skin-shedding, battles and triumphs. This world had contained a whole history. She began to understand why Sethennai had been so quiet.
“Some people never change,” he said, leading Csorwe through another empty circular doorway. “Of course she’s here. This was the Royal Library of Echentyr.”
Inside, dozens of crescent galleries rose in tiers over a central concourse that could have swallowed an entire neighbourhood in Grey Hook. The Royal Library was as grand and dead as the rest of the city. There seemed to be no books left on the shelves, and Csorwe assumed they had gone to ash along with everything else in Echentyr.
They crossed the concourse. Occasionally a light rain of dust cascaded from the ceiling, making Csorwe jump. She felt like a mouse crossing a field, always aware that a hawk might be somewhere overhead.
“We’ll be all right,” said Sethennai. To Csorwe’s surprise, he made no effort to keep his voice down, and it echoed in the vaults above. Maybe he wasn’t interested in taking Oranna unawares. “This place has stood long enough.”
They reached the shelves on the far side of the concourse. She saw now that they weren’t all empty: most were crammed with narrow clay cylinders, mounted on spindles. They were closely inscribed with a script she didn’t recognise, so different from Oshaarun or Tlaanthothei or Qarsazhi that she wouldn’t have guessed it was writing if she hadn’t been told this was a library.
The Unspoken Name Page 6
