by Ben Galley
‘And here I was expecting to have to fight my way out of a Cult of Sesh dungeon,’ she said.
‘We prefer Church of Sesh, Empress, and we would rather be an ally than an enemy,’ Yaridin said, wearing that thin sisters’ smile. Cold and empty, but a smile nonetheless.
‘Will you let us help you achieve what you want?’ asked Liria, staring deep into Nilith’s emerald eyes, searching them eagerly.
It took the empress some time to answer, her gaze locked on the sisters’. ‘I will,’ Nilith said at last.
‘But the gods, Caltro. The flood…’ Pointy reminded me, deep in the recesses of my mind as if he feared the sisters would hear him even within my skull. Perhaps he was right; Liria turned to look at me, beckoning as Yaridin led Nilith along the walkway. A series of zigzags in and out of the earthen walls brought us to a set of stairs leading to a long, drawn out platform. Suspended by a series of golden chains, it thrust out into space, almost to the centre of the great pit that was the Cathedral On Its Head. The sheer breadth of space between the flimsy wooden cladding of the platform and the glowing depths dizzied me, and I had fallen from the tip of the greatest spire known to humanity.
‘Farazar will fucking love this,’ Nilith said, adopting a weary smile. ‘What now?’ she asked.
For once, the sisters held their tongues and simply gestured to the empty platform. Nilith took a step forward, realised I hadn’t moved, and waved a hand for me to follow. I wanted to gulp. I stayed where I was, unable to help craning my neck to peer over the edges of the walkway, like a morbid urge to run your finger along the knife, just to test its edge…
‘Caltro.’ Nilith beckoned to me again, and I did as I was told.
I followed closely behind her, nervous, and unavoidably mindful of the last royal I had teetered on the edge of a great height with.
Nilith strode out before me, as if this was the very least of the challenges she had faced in the Arc’s deserts. I wondered if they would make my tribulations as pale as sun-bleached papyrus. I had no choice but to join her at the strict, bare edge of the platform, where we leaned over to feel the cold draughts of air swirling up the jumbled tiers of Katra Rassan.
Before we had realised their presence, Liria and Yaridin called out from behind us as one. I almost tumbled over in shock.
‘Presenting the new ruler absolute of the Arctian Empire, Empress Nilith Rikehar Renala!’
The roar that filled the Cathedral was so thunderous I half expected the rafters and sunlight to come crashing down. Swathes of ghosts fell to their knees, like fields of corn bending before the oncoming storm. Those wearing breastplates or bearing shields beat their swords against their metal, giving an avid heartbeat to the massed crowds of dead. As they swayed and bellowed, they became one great beast, hungry for action.
‘Finally, we shall have our freedom! Sesh be praised!’ the sisters chorused, their words echoing around the chamber and bringing the voices to deafening levels.
I watched as Nilith raised her hands to the crowds, drinking in their praise and cheers like a warlord atop a conquered castle. I watched her wide eyes flit about the masses, watching them bow and punch the air with their fists. Perhaps not the victorious moment she had imagined, deep beneath the earth with the fanatics of the Cult, but she had earned it.
As the roaring continued unabated, Liria and Yaridin led us back to the shadow of the walkway.
‘Tomorrow, Nilith, you will stand at the Grand Nyxwell. The Church will make sure of it!’ said the sisters, shouting over the noise.
‘The last stores of Nyxwater are being prepared to refill the well.’
‘Chamberlain Rebene has already been informed of your return.’
‘The Chamber of the Code stands with you.’
‘As do the shade soldiers Sisine put upon the streets.’
‘And the brothers and sisters of the Cult are at your disposal.’
Nilith bowed her head.
‘For now, you may rest,’ added Yaridin. Ghosts appeared unbidden from a nearby archway of sandstone, red as their robes. ‘Our brothers and sisters will lead the way.’
As the ghosts gathered about her, Nilith cast me a look over her shoulder. ‘Maybe it’s time to stop running,’ she called to me, with a grim nod. No sooner had the ghosts appeared than they vanished into the warren of Katra Rassan, and I was left alone with the sisters, one hovering at each of my shoulders.
‘I would listen to her, brother,’ breathed Liria, standing so close her cold vapour mingled with mine.
‘Three times you have run from us now.’
‘We would find it hard to accept a fourth.’
‘What was I supposed to do? You bargained with me like a pawn when you wanted the Sanctuary open. Where is my half-coin?’ I asked, not moving, not turning, just staring at some grimy spot on the iron railings under my glowing hand.
The words had barely escaped my mouth before I found it dangling beside my cheek, on a clean chain of silver and copper thread. The faint lanterns about us gave it a greenish hue. I snatched it away, praying for the metal not to burn me, but all I felt was its faint weight, and the dull cold sitting in my palm. Relief flowed through me like a breeze.
‘So what now?’ I asked them, turning to challenge their blank expressions. ‘What do you need of me?’
Liria looked somewhat offended. ‘Nothing. You are free to do as you wish, Caltro, as any of our brothers and sisters are. You may leave Araxes if you please. We will even have a ship prepared.’
Now there were some enchanting words I had longed to hear.
‘However, we hope you will stay. Join us at the Grand Nyxwell. Be a part of our… revolution,’ said Yaridin, words soft and sticky like cold honey.
‘Stand with us and the empress tomorrow, and watch justice come to the City of Countless Souls.’
I looked between them. The pieces had been swept from the board. Only they and the empress remained. For all intents and purposes, they had finally won. Royal backing. No challengers. Freedom in sight. And yet I couldn’t help but rack my brains to figure their angle, their cut, their play.
I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder. ‘You convinced Nilith easily enough. But I have no stake in the Arc. My fight’s over now. I’d quite like to go home.’
‘You promised, Caltro.’
‘You would not stand with your brothers and sisters?’ Liria stated, making it sound accusatory. Once again, she spoke my thoughts before I could. ‘Do you not trust us?’
‘It’s not that I don’t trust you—’
‘We have given the empress what she wants. What the city wants.’ Yaridin stepped closer, eyes narrow, appearing hurt. ‘Have we not given you the same kindness? Given you justice?’ She tapped the half-coin in my palm. ‘Your freedom?’
‘You have, but—’ I daren’t even think of the gods’ warnings, in case the sisters saw into my mind.
Liria spoke in my ear. ‘We would make you a king amongst the dead, Caltro Basalt.’
That stumped me. ‘I… what do you mean, a king?’
‘A king? You? Really?’ Pointy piped up. I covered his face with my hand. ‘Lies.’
‘We told you before, Caltro. A new era is coming, and its dawn is tomorrow.’ Liria smiled. ‘If you must be shown, then we will show you. Perhaps once you see, you will finally trust us, and stand with your brothers and sisters at the Nyxwell.’
Before I knew it, the Enlightened Sisters were guiding me along the walkway unusually forcibly. Their mail jingled furiously with their hurried pace. They marched me to a lift, one with thick cogs intruding on every wall, and with the shuffling of some levers, the cogs began to turn, dropping down into a black shaft.
Not a word was said during our jittering descent. Pointy was quiet for the most part, despite several overbearing coughing noises and muttered warnings about rabbit holes. I busied myself thumbing the face of my half-coin, trying and failing to feel the ridges of a glyph that was not my name. If I ever made it out of the Cult’s s
hadow, I would carve Caltro across it.
When the archway of a corridor rose up to greet us, a yank of the lever stopped us dead, and we began to wind through knotted stairwells and halls propped up by thick, cubic pillars.
Beyond and below those halls, we came to an iron-plated door adorned with glyphs I had never seen before. This door had no locks, but simply weight and heavy bars to keep it closed. The sisters pressed their hands against twin lines of glyphs, and the bars began to recede of their own accord. I got the feeling this wasn’t going to be the most bizarre portion of the day.
Old hinges whined as the room beyond was revealed. From what I could see, the room was a bare box of polished stone tiles. I felt a draught of heat against my vapours, as if the trapped air was desperate to escape. The tails of my borrowed robe billowed.
‘We must leave your sword here,’ said Yaridin, fingers already around Pointy’s handle. Though I flinched away, she relieved me of him and hung him from two pins in the wall.
‘Why?’ My nervousness was growing.
‘Come,’ Liria said, her hand pressed into the small of my back. The word ‘cell’ flitted through my mind. I cursed myself for not being my usual charming self. I blamed my nightmare.
The only feature in the room was a circular stone construction, the height of my waist. Radiant coals lay atop it, trapped beneath a slab of seamless granite and yet somehow still burning. A dusting of black sand had been cast across the slab. The whole lump of stone looked half forge, half altar.
‘The age of the living is over, Caltro,’ said the sisters in unison. ‘The age of the dead is beginning.’
The door had swung closed. I couldn’t feel the soulblade in my mind any more. Black smoke began to eke from the coals, dripping down the side of the altar-forge.
Liria spoke alone, voice rising in pitch as though she were being squeezed. ‘Nilith’s ascent to the throne is just the spark to a flame that will change this world once more.’
Now Yaridin. ‘We will usher in a new peace. A new empire. One united under the master who gave us our half-lives.’
Black sand began to pour out of unseen holes in the granite slab, swirling in breezes I couldn’t feel. The smoke began to rise, filling the air about us. The coals flared once, spitting flame, and then darkened to a ruby glow. For the first time since being dead, I felt a warmth in me, and not one of a scorching sun.
‘Prepare yourself, Caltro.’
‘It is not every day you meet a god.’
How I fought not to correct them. Instead, I stared into the pile of sand before me, writhing as though worms duelled beneath the black grains.
Just as I was about to ask what this mystical pile was, the sand built itself into a tower, a crude model of the Cloudpiercer. Before it reached the tip, the sand fell apart.
If a snake could speak, and was choking as it breathed, it would sound like the voice that filled the silence. ‘Caltro Basssssalt,’ it said, its hissing echoing through the smoke.
‘Sesh, I presume. We have met before,’ I replied, wishing I could see the look on the sisters’ faces.
A grinning wolf appeared in the sand, rolling back and forth across the granite slab as if it shook its head at me. ‘You doubt me,’ came a great exhale. The wolf collapsed into itself, and two robed and hooded sisters rose from the sand instead. Where their eyes should be, the sand glowed hot, as if lava flowed within it. ‘Doubt my children.’
‘I do,’ I said. I felt my lips quivering, as if Sesh were trying to drag the words out of me.
The sand became restless, thrashing back and forth, drawing faces I didn’t recognise. ‘Liessss, you’ve been told. Countlesss lies.’
‘I’ve been told so many that every word is starting to sound like a lie at the moment. Enough. I was brought here to be shown the truth. Let’s see it.’
I heard the sisters’ slight gasp at my bluntness to their living, breathing, smouldering deity. Waves ran across the sand pile, crackling with sparks.
‘Backbone. Excellent. Sssomething many of my children lack. But they were correct. You will do well amongssst us. Give me your hand, thief.’
Black sand reached up, belching smoke as a palm and fingers formed. I wrinkled my lip. Self-preservation might have been my religion, but curiosity had always been my ruler. It was too late to change that now. The final question of the flood had to be answered.
I thrust out my hand, and the god of chaos took it willingly. Black grit swarmed over my blue vapours like the tentacles of an octopus, drawing me down and to my knees.
Sunlight flooded the smog-filled room. I stumbled onto my knees, feeling the dry warmth of stone beneath me. White sand scattered around my glowing toes, unhurried and playful. I blinked in the brightness, making out a plaza of stone stretching out into the distance, where tall spires were wrapped in smoke and lacked detail. Shadows swung across the bleached stone, tracing the shapes of dark claws. I raised my head to see tusks towering above me. Where they breached the earth, I saw a queenlike figure standing upon a dais, and she was translucent and turquoise in the sun’s glare, raising a half-moon of copper to an endless crowd of dead.
As I staggered to my feet, feeling the world slip beneath me, I called out, hearing nothing but an echo amongst the buildings. In a blink, the queen had turned to me. Her hand reached over the dust and stone to take mine, and I felt the sun’s light grow brighter.
I stood with her upon the dais of marble, and looked out over the faceless multitudes. Outlines, they were, and nothing more, sketches of flowing blue, but they raised their hands to me all the same, and cheered with undrawn mouths. I felt the weight of metal on my forehead, and saw the glint of gold at the corner of my eyes. Lifting my gaze, I saw the queen with a crown upon her head, taller than a spear.
Again, I heard the voices of the dead, watched the crowd prostrate themselves before me. I looked over them, a lord in an empire that wasn’t my own. And as I looked beyond the glow of the crowds, where the sun turned the flagstones to light, I saw the bodies filling every inch of stone across the plaza, and the lone red star hanging in the pale sky.
Heat seared my hand, wrenching me from the sunlight and back to the smoggy room. The altar-forge before me was still belching smoke.
‘Ssstand with usss, ssssaviour.’
The sand writhed back and forth, forming the mandibles of an insect, then the pointy ears of a jackal, before collapsing. To the breath of a prolonged whisper, the sand drained away into the granite slab, and the lava-glow of the coals faded.
I looked up to find Liria and Yaridin standing over me. With a scuffing of sand, I got to my feet and brushed my robes free. They spoke in turn, voices almost singsong.
‘Our secrets have been laid bare, Caltro.’
‘Your decision?’
‘Stand with your brothers and sisters? Reap the rewards of the new era?’
‘Or fade back to Krass? Forgotten?’
I shifted towards the doorway and they trailed me, waiting, watching me like a wolf watches a rabbit hole. They must have assumed me dazed, or humbled.
The door was shut behind me and the bars retreated back into the stone arch at their own idle pace. Keeping my silence, I took Pointy from the wall and slid him back into my rags.
‘Caltro?’
‘Thank you for showing me the truth,’ I whispered, facing away from the ghosts that hovered behind me. ‘Tomorrow, Sisters.’
‘Tomorrow, brother.’
And there I left the sisters, alone in the dark, tiled corridor. I left them there to stare at each other, and share a smile between themselves.
Yaridin sighed as she watched the locksmith disappear around a corner. She sounded weary. ‘Do you think he trusts us now, Sister?’
Liria did nothing so perceptible as nod. ‘If anything is true of Caltro Basalt, it is that he is incapable of making decisions for himself. He is a magpie hungry for silver, and we have just shown him gold. He will join us, if only for the convenience.’
&nbs
p; ‘And if not…’ Yaridin mused. With the clink and thud of chainmail and steel-plated boots, Danib lumbered into view, his new greatsword Pereceph leaning casually against his shoulder as if it were no more dangerous or heavy than an umbrella. The vapour snaking from between the plates of the shade’s battle-armour had a heavy mix of white amongst the blue. One arm hung limply, and he seemed to list towards his left side. The duel with Etane had cost him.
‘Caltro’s is not the only soulblade in the city,’ said Yaridin.
‘Then we proceed.’
Yaridin extended a hand, and Liria took it, vapours entwining. ‘Indeed we do, Sister.’
‘Let us take the city, Brother Danib.’
Danib growled like a storm on the horizon.
Chapter 24
A Night of a Thousand Knives
Dunewyrms, though fearsome, are supposedly poor imitations of their ancestors. The nomads still trade tales of dunedragons, creatures so large they could swallow entire caravans in one ravenous gulp. These beasts had hides like mountain slopes, could spit fire, and the beating of their wings was known to blow sandstorms across the plains. Even today, many nomads believe that storms come from the last dragons beating their wings. How confident are we in our learning and the reach of our Empire, that we can know with absolute certainty these are merely stories, and that wild and ancient powers don’t still lurk on the borders of our knowledge?
From ‘The Youth of Man’ by Esper Drak
Chamberlain Rebene picked a crumb from the corner of his eye while he tested the limits of his lungs. Once he’d crammed as much breath as he could into his ribcage, Rebene let his head loll against the back of his chair, and exhaled.
As the air left him, he deflated into his cushions, sagging like a squeezed wineskin. It felt as if the weeks of collar-tugging and sweating, of heart palpitations, of yelling and screaming – both at him and by him – were, for now, behind him. There might have been a Nyx drought, a smoking Cloudpiercer, and a city on the verge of collapse, but they were tomorrow’s problems. At that moment, tomorrow was a year away.
