The Skull Throne

by Peter V. Brett

  We must not become demons in order to fight them. The Par’chin’s words echoed in his mind.

  Nie take me, he thought, before I betray my true friend again.

  He slipped the spear into its harness on his back, pulled the hood of his Cloak of Unsight over his head, and reached into the pouch at his waist.

  The demon was weakening. Arlen could feel it. While he could Draw upon the power of Anoch Sun, the mind was cut off by the forbidding, and its reserves were fast emptying. Still, it was proving his match. He had needed to cut power to the wards that kept it from touching his skin in order to maintain the choke hold, and the bones and skin of its scrawny neck had hardened into what felt like diamond. He was hurting his hands as much as the demon.

  But I can breathe, he thought. It can’t.

  The demon’s mouth opened in a silent scream, baring black gums and dozens of needle teeth. The jaws stretched impossibly, bringing the teeth closer and closer to his face. He could taste the foul reek of its rancid breath. Its spittle struck his cheek, and he retched.

  But then a fist struck the jaws, shattering teeth and knocking them away from him. He looked over, expecting to see Jardir, but it was Renna who stood there, as bright with magic as he had ever seen her. Her face was set with hard determination, and her aura shone with strength.

  He felt tears welling in his eyes and wanted to speak, but it was all he could do to keep his hold as she hammered the demon again and again.

  Then, suddenly, Jardir appeared behind the demon, whipping the silver chain Arlen had spent countless hours warding over its head. Before it could catch a breath, Arlen let go his hold, and Jardir pulled the chain tight, its wards flaring.

  The demon shook violently, attempting to dissipate, but that power was robbed from it now. It shrank back to its former slender size, hoping to find some slack, but Jardir kept the chain tight, and when the demon seemed unable to shrink farther, Arlen slipped a warded padlock into the links, snapping it shut.

  All three of them hammered at it now, Jardir twisting with the smooth efficiency of sharukin as he caught each of the demon’s limbs in twists of the silver chain like he was tying a hog at the Solstice festival. It fell to one knee, then face-first on the ground. After a moment it ceased to struggle, and its aura went flat. Arlen snapped another lock two links looser about its throat and undid the first, letting the unconscious creature draw a shallow breath.

  They had fought too hard to let it die now.

  Only then did he turn his attention to the rest of the room, stone shattered and parts of the ceiling collapsed in the struggle. There was no sign of the mimic apart from a few blackened stains on the rock.

  In the doorway, battle still raged. Shanvah, quiver empty and spear broken, held her shield on one arm and her father’s on the other, using both to hold back the tide of demons pressing at the door. Her feet had put cracks in the sandstone floor as she held against the press.

  Shanjat stood a pace back, holding his crank bow. Shanvah shifted, opening a gap in her shields, and Shanjat quickly fired through. She closed the gap immediately as he pulled the heavy bowstring back with two fingers and snapped a new bolt in place, then opened another in a different place for him to fire again.

  Before Arlen or Jardir could react, Renna burst into mist and shot across the room. He gaped as she passed the two warriors blocking the door as easily as a strong wind, and he could hear the sounds of battle on the far side. The press eased, giving Shanvah and Shanjat a moment to catch their breath.

  Then the whole chamber shook as Renna collapsed the tunnel. Heavy stones began to shake loose from the ceiling, sand pouring down at an alarming rate as the whole chamber groaned.

  “Time to go,” Arlen said.

  “Kaji—” Jardir began.

  “—will be buried forever on the spot where his heirs defeated the most powerful alagai the surface has seen in millennia,” Arlen finished for him.

  Jardir nodded. “Shanjat! Shanvah! Clear the path for our escape!”

  The two warriors stepped back from the door. Shanvah tossed her father back his shield and the two of them ran for the hidden escape tunnel.

  Renna materialized at Arlen’s side. It took her a bit longer than it did him, but she was already faster than he had been in the first months he had experimented with dissipation.

  He wanted to ask her about the new power, to tell her how proud he was, how great his love, but there was no time, and he trusted it was written on his aura for her to see.

  “Skate ahead and ready the horses,” he told her. “Need to be miles from here before sunrise.”

  Renna smiled and gave a wink, then collapsed into mist once more.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE CHIN REBELLION

  333 AR AUTUMN

  Inevera woke to a buzzing in her ear. Never a deep sleeper, and even in less troubling times, she drifted on its bare edge in recent days and came awake swiftly.

  The vibration came from one of her earrings, gifts given to her most trusted servants and advisors, a way to contact her, and a way to spy. Ahmann’s had been silent since he fell, the mountain where he had fought the Par’chin far out of range. She wore it still, praying to Everam each dawn that this would be the day it sounded again, signaling his return.

  But it was not her husband’s ring that sounded now. Inevera slid a finger along the cartilage of her ear, counting down until she felt the hum. The eighth. No sacred number for the khaffit.

  She twisted the ball dangling from the ring until it clicked, changing the alignment of the wards in circumference around the two hemispheres that housed the bit of demon bone. With the link open, she spoke, knowing her words resonated in its twin.

  “It is not yet dawn, khaffit,” she said quietly. “This had better be important or I’ll have your—”

  “While I do love the artistry of your threats, Damajah, I’m afraid we have no time for them, if you wish to have my news before it reaches the ears of the Damaji.”

  Abban’s words were as flip as ever, but his clipped tone left no doubt that his news would put her fragile rule to the test at a time when Krasia could ill afford further instability.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “I am surrounded by your lovely bodyguards outside, and cannot speak freely,” the khaffit said, “and this news is best discussed in person. Invite me in, please.”

  Invite him in. To her private pillow chamber. The one she shared with the Deliverer himself. The khaffit invited death with the very suggestion. Simply entering this wing of the palace carried a hundred sentences far worse, if he should be seen. Was he mad?

  No. Abban was many things, but mad was not one of them. If he was here, it was only because he was certain the news could not wait, and was more valuable than his life should he delay. Her fingers gave a quick dance, and a shadow flitted across the room. A moment later, Ashia returned with the khaffit.

  “Speak,” Inevera said.

  Abban glanced at Ashia, hovering disapprovingly at his side. He looked back at Inevera and inclined his head slightly toward the door.

  “You forfeited your life the moment you walked through that door, khaffit,” Inevera said. “If you do not pay me its worth in the next few seconds, Ashia will collect it.”

  Abban paled, the usual smug demeanor fallen from his face. Inevera could see the sudden fear that washed over his aura. It was not a mask.

  “Speak,” she said again. “Ashia guards my sleep. There is nothing I do not trust her with.”

  “The chin are in rebellion,” Abban said.

  It took a moment for the words to register. Rebellion? From the greenlanders?

  “Impossible,” she said. “Unthinkable. The chin of Fort Rizon broke like slate to the hammer when our armies came, and the villages gave up without a fight. They would not dare oppose us.”

  “Slate may break easily,” Abban said, “but it leaves behind a thousand shards that may cut those who do not take care.”

  Ineve
ra felt her stomach twist. She breathed, finding her center. “What has happened?”

  “The sharaji in seven of the chin villages are ablaze,” Abban said. “All at once, at the sounding of the horns ending alagai’sharak, while all the warriors and eldest nie’Sharum were afield.”

  “The children?” Inevera asked. The eldest nie’Sharum, boys of twelve or more, acted as spotters and signal runners for the Watchers in alagai’sharak, but the younger boys, ranging from seven to eleven, should have been asleep in their barracks.

  “Taken before the fires were set,” Abban said. “Krasian children as well as chin. The dama watching over them were brutally killed.”

  Inevera’s jaw tightened. It all came to the children. Taking them for Hannu Pash had been the hardest demand the Krasians placed upon the chin after they surrendered and placed their foreheads on the ground before the dama.

  For their children, the chin would fight. She wondered how long they had been meeting in secret, planning this. More insidious was the matter of the Krasian children, young enough to have their wills broken. Raised as chin, they would make valuable spies for the greenlanders.

  Seven fires. Seven villages. Not a fraction of the hundreds of villages throughout Everam’s Bounty, but a significant number. A sacred number. It could not be coincidence.

  “Which tribes were struck?” she asked, already guessing the answer.

  “Shunjin, Halvas, Khanjin, Jama, Anjha, Bajin, and Sharach,” Abban said. “The seven smallest. Those that would be stung most deeply by the loss of a sharaj and class of nie’Sharum.”

  Inevera was not surprised. Their enemies had studied them well.

  “Have you caught the men responsible?” Inevera asked.

  Abban shook his head. “They are not mine to catch, Damajah. And the Sharum are still fighting the fires, lest they spread. The culprits are vanished into the darkness.”

  A darkness they feared before our armies came, Inevera thought. We taught them to stand tall in the night, and they use it against us.

  “You say the fires still burn,” Inevera said. “How is it you have this information so quickly? Before the Damaji who rule those villages, or the Andrah himself?”

  Abban smiled and gave a shrug. “I have contacts in every village in Everam’s Bounty, Damajah, and pay well for news that can bring me profit.”

  “Profit?” Inevera asked.

  “There is always profit to be found in chaos, Damajah.” Abban glanced at Ashia. “Even if one must buy back one’s life first.”

  Inevera gave a wave, and Ashia withdrew, vanishing again into the shadows. She did not leave the room, but after a moment even Inevera lost track of her.

  “How long until the Damaji hear of this?” Inevera asked.

  Abban shrugged. “An hour, at most. Likely less. There will be blood, Damajah. Rivers of it, when they fail to find the guilty parties.”

  “What makes you so certain they will fail?” Inevera asked, though she did not disagree.

  “Six months and more since we conquered them, Damajah, and the local dama do not so much as speak the chin language, much less understand their ways,” Abban said. “Instead we force our language on them, our ways.”

  “The ways of the Evejah,” Inevera said. “Everam’s ways.”

  “Kaji’s ways,” Abban said. “Interpreted by corrupt Damaji to their own ends over the centuries.”

  Inevera pressed her lips together. She had listened in many times as Abban whispered blasphemy into her husband’s ear, and in truth she often agreed with his words, but it was a different thing to ignore words she was never supposed to have heard than to ignore them spoken to her face.

  “Have a care with your blasphemy, khaffit,” she said. “I know your value, but I will not be so tolerant as my husband.”

  Abban smiled, giving a shallow bow. “My apologies, Damajah.” There was no hint of the fear that had taken his aura a few moments earlier. Inevera would indeed tolerate much from Abban. More and more she understood the insidious nature of the khaffit. So long as he was loyal, she would overlook most anything.

  And Abban knew it.

  “Your husband and I went to a village called Baha kad’Everam when we were nie’Sharum, Damajah.”

  Inevera had heard of the khaffit village. The pottery master Dravazi had lived there, and many of his works adorned her palace. “The Bowl of Everam lost contact with the Desert Spear many years ago. Taken by demons, I believe.”

  Abban nodded. “Clay demons, to be precise. They infest the place. Would have killed me, if not for Ahmann. They nearly killed the Par’chin years later, when I sent him there on an errand.”

  “Why are you telling me this, khaffit?” Inevera kept her serene exterior, but she was paying close attention. Abban couldn’t know that her dice had told her the Par’chin was as likely the Deliverer as her husband. Her own mother was the only person she had trusted with the information, though Ahmann had later guessed it with the aid of his crownsight.

  The fact that both would-be Deliverers had visited some obscure, distant village in connection with Abban was too great a coincidence to ignore. Everam’s hand was in it. She would have to learn everything there was to know about the place.

  Not for the first time, she wondered at Everam’s plan for Abban. The dice had been vexing vague on the subject.

  “Fascinating creatures, the clay demons,” Abban said. A touch of fear rippled across his aura. “They blend, you see. Their armor is the exact texture and color of Baha’s adobe. You can stare right at one—on the steps, clinging to the walls, peeking from the rooftops—and not see it until it moves.”

  “The hora see things the eyes cannot,” Inevera said.

  Abban nodded. “Inevera, I pray it so. For the greenlanders in Everam’s Bounty outnumber us six to one. They are the adobe, and the chin who seek to strike terror in our hearts with these attacks are clay demons. The dama will not see them until they move again, and shame will force them to look for others to punish, that they might save face.”

  “A move that will only deepen the wedge and strengthen the chin resolve,” Inevera mused.

  “If we do not step carefully, these attacks will worsen,” Abban said. “Seek and kill the true culprits, but every greenlander we harm beyond those who held the torches will be a martyr to their cause.”

  —They are aided from the north.—

  Inevera sat vexed on her bed of pillows beside the Andrah as the Damaji angrily strode into the throne room. Her sons and nephew already waited below them as the other men were granted entry.

  She spent close to an hour casting after Abban was dismissed and the runners sent, but that was the only useful bit of information to be gleaned about the rebels.

  —They are aided from the north.—

  It was easy to assume that meant the Hollow tribe. They stood to gain the most from something like this, especially if the Par’chin had survived. But it was seldom wise to assume more than the dice told. The rebels could as easily be supplied and funded by any of the Northland dukes. Euchor of Miln, perhaps, or Rhinebeck of Angiers. Even Lakton, mostly to the east, was north of Everam’s Bounty, and they had already been warned by Leesha Paper that they would be the next Krasia would conquer. Would Duke Reecherd and his dockmasters be fool enough to provoke the attack?

  No. It was the Hollow. It had to be, hadn’t it? Or was she letting her hatred of Leesha Paper color her judgment? It would be just like the Northern whore to smile to their faces and light fires behind their backs, and Inevera would welcome the excuse to kill the witch and Ahmann’s child growing in her belly.

  There were times she hated the dice. They had ever been vague hints and riddles, even to Inevera, who was more gifted in their reading than any dama’ting in three thousand years. The more important the question, the more the answer would shift the course of the future, the more the dice grew opaque. She had cast thrice daily, seeking her husband’s fate, but the bones told her nothing more than they had in the
mountain valley where Ahmann fell, and even that was more than they would tell of the rebels.

  Perhaps Everam’s plan required the chin rebellion, or a civil war in Krasia, and knowledge of how to stem them before the time was right would run counter to inevera. Or perhaps she had displeased Him, and Everam had chosen another to speak through.

  Perhaps the Northern whore’s child is inevera, as well. The thought nauseated her. She was almost thankful when the Damaji began to shout, drawing her thoughts back into the present.

  “I have said from the beginning that we were too gentle pacifying the chin,” Damaji Qezan groused. “We let them bend when they should have been broken.”

  “I agree,” Damaji Ichach said, as if to remind Inevera how bad things had gotten. If Qezan and Ichach were agreeing, the sun might as well rise in the west.

  Of the Andrah’s court, the dice had been more forthcoming. Ashan she could control, for now. Her sons would look at the rebellion not as a crisis, but as a chance to find glory in its defeat. The Damaji, however, were old men grown to comfort in Everam’s Bounty’s largesse. The danger to their new holdings terrified them more than the children of Nie.

  “We should burn the villages where the attacks took place to the ground,” Damaji Enkaji said. “Hang the butchered bodies of every man, woman, and child from the trees and let the alagai feast on them.”

  “Simple words, Damaji, when it was not your lands attacked,” Damaji Chusen said. The attack against the Shunjin had taken place in his tribe’s new capital.

  “The chin would not dare attack Mehnding lands,” Enkaji boasted, and Inevera wondered at that. The rebels had avoided the lands of the five most powerful tribes—Kaji, Majah, Mehnding, Krevakh, and Nanji—but if they were being aided by the north this was only the beginning.

  “Food is scarce enough after the alagai burned the fields on Waning,” Ashan said. “We cannot burn more fields—or butcher those who tend them—if we wish to see the spring.”

  “What is to stop the chin from burning fields next?” Semmel of the Anjha asked. “Even the great tribes do not have men to protect the land from its very inhabitants.”