Chasm of Fire

by Michael Wallace

  Three weeks ago I rode south with a corps of mounted dragoons to see if the people living north of the Cheksapa are resisting, and if the coal-burning towns in the interior will be threatened. I was surprised to discover that the Scoti had stopped raiding, for the most part, and that several tribes in the hill country have joined them. They are well armed, and preparing a move north.

  I spent several days scouting the enemy flank before we were tricked into fighting a hot skirmish with Scoti horsemen, during which I lost twenty-seven dragoons, and more than forty horses. My surviving dragoons rode north with all haste, where we came across several Scoti outriders on the wilderness road, scouting our lands, even as we were scouting theirs. I killed the ones I found, but can only assume there are others who remained undetected.

  The barbarian scouts were carrying maps—some of them detailed—of the fortifications in Dalph and along the river. In addition, two of the men carried Basdeenian matchlocks. I can only assume they are receiving help from Basdeen.

  Keep a vigilant eye on the Basdeenians in and around the city.

  Carbón couldn’t help but give Grosst a sharp look. He’d been caught off guard, and was a little too obvious in what must be suspicion in his expression, and he was fortunate that the Basdeenian engineer had apparently grown bored while he read, and turned her gaze across the Rift while she gnawed absentmindedly at her left thumb.

  He looked back to de Armas’s letter and continued to read.

  Torre’s watchtowers are strong, and won’t easily be overthrown if the enemy somehow reaches Dalph, comes up the river, and marches the Quintana Way, but I don’t have to tell you that we’re vulnerable. Now, more than ever, with the Great Span permanently moored.

  I have ample warning of this invasion, and strength enough to resist for a spell, but if the enemy marches north with several thousand Scoti and their barbarian allies, we’ll be hard-pressed. And being short of troops, there will be little opportunity to land a counterblow, let alone drive them from the Cheksapa and back to the north country where they belong.

  I need those five hundred men you took from me. And I need fifteen hundred more to spare. I don’t care how you raise them, or what you have to say to the others and to the Luminoso to get them to agree, but I must have them. Send the new recruits to an assembly point at a barracks next to the first Torre watchtower on the Quintana Way.

  Lord Andrés de Armas.

  The pages following were written in a variety of different hands. There were two maps of encampments along the Cheksapa, purporting to show destroyed and occupied villages as reported by survivors moving north. There was another map with information about the battle that had driven de Armas’s dragoons north, and a sheet of paper listing the names of the dead soldiers: nineteen men from the dumbre with their single names, seven from the Thousand, and one from a well-known family in the Forty.

  It would be easy enough to verify the identities of most of the men—indeed, he recognized the name of a dead man who’d once worked on the railway atop the plateau—although he supposed that de Armas could be pretending that the men were dead, while hiding them in Dalph or in some outlying watch post.

  And yet the sum of it provided powerful evidence that de Armas was telling the truth, or at least some version of it. And if so, Carbón knew that the man must have his troops.

  Grosst and Anderos were studying him with open curiosity. He had no intention of sharing the contents of the letter with them. Not before he’d given the matter a good deal of thought and consulted with Iliana, as well.

  Anderos may or may not be too maimed from battle to march, but most of his fellow ex-soldiers would be rejoining the army. Men in the watch, men in the mines, men working for the engineers to repair the Great Span. Any ex-soldier the army would take.

  Where would the other fifteen hundred come from? The same work crews, most likely. And the watch, he supposed. The upper and lower watch, now officially combined under Captain Plata, had swelled in numbers to nearly three hundred and fifty. It was the best source of trained men available in the city, and while they couldn’t completely gut the force that kept the city safe from threats from the lower terraces, it was inevitable that a fair number of watchmen would be marching with the army.

  But who would fill the roles of those left behind? Take so many men from the city and both the mines and the urgently needed bridge work would suffer. The obvious source of labor was Basdeen, but that presented its own problem, didn’t it? He thought back to Lord de Armas’s warning.

  Keep a vigilant eye on the Basdeenians in and around the city.

  Chapter Three

  Naila and Thiego each carried an artifact with them into the stone chamber. The first artifact was the sounder glove that Naila wore, which weighed heavily on her hand, so unlike the strange, flexible material of the other glove she sometimes used. That other glove had torn gates from their hinges and crushed the life out of an old man, yet felt as light as cotton on her skin. The second artifact was Thiego’s mentabacus, a horseshoe-shaped device with glowing blue tips.

  If they didn’t reveal the room’s secrets, Naila swore that she’d return with a work crew carrying picks, sledgehammers, and chisels. The sanctity of the temple be damned; she’d tear this place apart if she had to.

  She’d been in and out of the temple several times before her rightful ascension to the position of Master of Whispers, the most powerful figure in the Luminoso, and dozens of times since, but had only taken note of this small vault a few weeks ago. The temple was a warren of rooms, passageways, sleeping quarters, underground vaults, and dusty repositories of books deemed too arcane for the main library. Most of it was boring, irrelevant. Let the geometers and archivists study the moldy old tomes; Naila had more important work to do.

  On the surface, there was nothing unusual about this particular room except for the reliefs carved into the stone. They showed the purported wonders of the Elders: flying contraptions, machines capable of digging away the mountainside, cone-shaped buildings belching smoke, carriages that ran without horses, devices that took raw ingredients in one side and magically delivered food from the other, and numerous other magical objects that could not easily be interpreted.

  Why someone would have spent so much time carving the stones in such an inconsequential room had never occurred to her before. It was only when she examined a detailed map of the temple that she had realized there must be something more than met the eye. It was time to find out what.

  She ordered Thiego to close the wooden door, which creaked as he obeyed. She turned up the gaslight, and its flame chased away the shadows that had been dancing across the walls.

  “What is the best way to go about this?” she asked.

  Thiego fiddled with the mentabacus with one hand, while he held Naila’s map of the temple in the other, studying it intently. “Start by sounding the wall to your left. Pick a position roughly in the middle of the wall. Doesn’t have to be exact.”

  She rubbed the hard lump on the palm of the glove until it began to warm, then flattened the gloved hand against the wall and pressed the knob against the stone as he’d instructed. A sound emerged from the glove, like a small gong, rung and then instantly silenced. A few moments passed and then there was a faint echoing sound, followed by a third, even more distant chime.

  “3.2 seconds,” Thiego said. “5.75 on the second echo.”

  “How can you . . .? Oh.”

  He had pressed the horseshoe-shaped mentabacus against his forehead, and the tips were glowing a brighter blue, as if lit from within by a cool, non-burning flame. His pupils were dilated, and his breathing was heavy and regular, like a man who was asleep, although he seemed fully lucid.

  “The wall is seventy-eight and a half inches thick,” he said. “The wall on the far side of the corridor opposite is another seven feet two inches wide.”

  “And is there a chamber?”

  “We don’t know that yet, only the wall dimensions.”

&n
bsp; Naila took the map out of his hand. “Seventy-eight and a half inches? Why so thick? It’s not even divisible by twelve—the length of a single cut stone on the temple walls.”

  Thiego lowered the mentabacus and blinked. He drew in a breath and let it out through his nose. “Maybe the temple builders were less than precise in their techniques.”

  “If they had devices like this,” she said, holding up her gloved hand, “then you’d expect their measurements to be accurate. Unless you have no idea how to read the blasted thing.”

  “I know how to read it,” he said testily. “Listen, we have no idea who built the temple. Could have happened during the collapse. Or maybe it was built precisely, but time took its toll. Foundations settle, earthquakes shift mountains. Or maybe the chamber was carved out later.”

  “None of that matters,” she said, growing impatient. “Is there a vault? An empty space?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Well what are we waiting for? Let’s make another sounding.”

  He didn’t make a move. “My head is hot. Feels like I have a fever. I need to cool down first.”

  “Well, hurry up. I don’t like waiting.”

  “I’ll take exactly as much time as I need.”

  Naila didn’t care for his tone, nor his posture, for that matter. Thiego was changing, letting authority swell him. Steps she’d taken to buy his loyalty earlier, when everything was chaos and where every night she slept in a different, hidden part of the temple, expecting her enemies to break down the doors and blaspheme the sanctuary to get to her, now seemed hasty. She wished she could take them back. Let him be a mere geometer; she didn’t need a rival master in the Luminoso.

  “You went into the mine this morning?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “It was just as Iliana Diamante said. There was writing on the wall.”

  “Stop making me pry it out of you. What kind of writing, what did it say?”

  “I have no idea. I wrote it down, gave Carbón’s chancellor a copy, and—”

  “You gave her a copy! Why the devil would you do that?”

  “To buy her cooperation, of course. Anyway, it won’t do her any good. I can’t even read it yet—she’s certainly not going to get anywhere deciphering the text.” Thiego gave her an insolent look, as if to dare her to interrupt again, then continued. “As soon as I’m finished with this business, I’m going to the libraries to see what I can do about translating. For now, I have no idea what it’s about.”

  She had the distinct impression that he was hiding something, and wished she had the artifact Salvatore had used to pry secrets from the former Lord Torre’s skull before Naila was forced to kill the old man. Unfortunately, that device had gone missing when Salvatore was killed by the artifact burning its way out of the mines. Perhaps it had melted in the fire, but for all she knew, Thiego had it in his possession.

  “Is it another warning?” she asked. “Is there a second artifact down there, ready to spawn witherers and come burning its way out of the mines?”

  “Not likely,” he said. “All right, I’m ready. Make the second sounding.”

  Naila rubbed her thumb back and forth over the knob at her palm until the glove warmed, then placed her hand against the wall and pushed. The glove chimed again. There was a longer delay this time, then a second, fainter chime. A third chime sounded, and she was starting to say something when it went off again. And then again. In all, it rang in a series of echoes seven or eight times, sometimes seeming to stutter, before it finally stopped.

  “What does that mean?” she asked. “Multiple chambers? Multiple surfaces?”

  “Quiet.”

  Thiego wore a look of intense concentration, even puzzlement. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Whatever he was calculating, the mentabacus was taxing his mental abilities. Maybe overly much. Maybe it would knock him unconscious like it had the urchin girl who had discovered the device in the first place, and then unwisely tried to use it instead of handing it over to Thiego.

  If it cooked the man’s brain, all the better. Naila could install someone more pliant in Thiego’s place, like Kara Rubio, Thiego’s fellow geometer.

  That first, desperate night, when Salvatore was dead, the Espejo brothers had failed to take the walls, and Lord de Armas was cowardly disavowing involvement in the plot to bring order to Quintana, Naila had fled to the temple and made a desperate gambit. She’d declared herself the Master of Whispers and ordered her fellow cabalists to stand by her side and throw off attempts to violate the prerogatives of the Luminoso.

  She’d half expected the real Master of Whispers to appear, declare her a blasphemer, and have her killed. That had not happened; there had apparently been no such person. All the same, the cabalists were restless, unaccustomed to dealing directly with the Master of Whispers. They’d pressed her to organize, to prove herself their leader, and in desperation she cast around for someone to take Salvatore’s vacant position.

  That person was Thiego.

  “But nobody is to breathe a word of this until I say so,” she had ordered Thiego and the other cabalists who’d revealed themselves. “Our enemies will try to bring down any who lift themselves up. For now, it is a secret only to be whispered among ourselves.”

  She didn’t know if Thiego had let spill his secret, or if it had been someone else, but whispers in the streets and markets made it clear that the uninitiated knew that someone had taken the position. And if the commoners of the Thousand and Forty knew, then the Quinta lords themselves had surely caught wind.

  As for Naila, she didn’t yet dare to operate in the open. When she did leave the temple, it was quietly, invisibly. She skulked through the upper terraces, even descended on occasion into the dumbre. There were still missing cabalists, yet to be identified and brought back into the fold. Otherwise, she might not have dared leave the protective walls of this sanctuary. What were the hidden cabalists waiting for, some sign? For Naila to show her strength before they declared their support?

  One thing she did not do was try to regain her old position on the Torre estate. Let her husband fumble his way trying to hold onto what his father and grandfather had skillfully managed—Daniel could die from the bloody flux and she wouldn’t shed a tear. However, she did miss her daughters on occasion, and rued the way they were being raised. Someday, she swore, she’d get them back and cleanse every foolish, overly timid thought put into their heads.

  But even the girls were not her principal concern at the moment. That worry was proving to be Thiego. He’d learned something or decided something, or perhaps was merely swelling with arrogance under his new title.

  She cast a glance as he stared at the wall, sweat running in rivulets down his face and the mentabacus still held to his skull. Maybe she’d made a mistake. Or maybe he was not so much a rival as a valued lieutenant who needed a firm hand to be brought into line. By the Elders, she could use someone strong by her side.

  At last he lowered the mentabacus and wiped at his face with his sleeve to clear away the perspiration. While Naila waited impatiently, he turned toward her with his eyes gradually clearing. The glowing blue tips of the artifact took their time fading, and so did the former geometer take his time in giving her an answer to her questions.

  “There’s a vault behind there, all right. Maybe fifteen feet across, irregular dimensions. It contains objects of some kind.”

  “What kind of objects?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Random devices, or something more specific, like weapons?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. All I have is a mental image of shadows, and that’s fading as the numbers run out of my head.”

  “How many are there?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  Naila sneered. “Do you know anything?”

  “I know that there’s no door into the vault. No entrance on either side.”

  “We’ll m
ake one.”

  Thiego shook his head. “There’s something against the walls. I believe it’s designed to stop someone from tunneling their way in.”

  “Stop being so vague. How would it stop us? Would it catch fire and asphyxiate us? Run us through with booby-trapped spears? What?”

  “Maybe all of the above. Maybe bring down the whole temple around us.”

  “You don’t know, do you?” she said. “Maybe we’ll get past it easily. Maybe you’re inventing it altogether.”

  “It was designed by men and women of the Third Plenty. You can be sure of that much. How would you like to tunnel through the roadbed of the Great Span? Do you think that’s possible?”

  She was fairly sure he was lying, that he didn’t want her to enter, and was inventing this nonsense about secret barriers and lethal traps.

  “Start looking for a solution, instead of obstacles as to why it can’t be done.”

  “To what end?” Thiego asked, his tone blunt. “What would you possibly do with the objects inside that you can’t do with the massive repository already in the Holy Vault?”

  “A repository that you have been blocking me from gaining free access to.”

  “I haven’t actually denied you anything, only asked for reasons.”

  “Sometimes I don’t know the reason until I have the artifact in my hand,” Naila said.

  “Then maybe you don’t need it after all.”

  “How dare you question me? You’d be nothing without me. Who are you to tell me what I can or can’t take for my own?”

  “Who am I?” Thiego stared. “Oh, maybe you’ve forgotten. I’m the Guardian of Secrets, remember? It’s my duty to guard. That’s who I am. That’s what I do.”

  She gritted her teeth at his sarcastic tone, all the angrier because she was the one who’d put him into that place. A seemingly safe choice to name him a fellow Luminoso master, that decision had come back as a curse, spoken from her own lips.