Cartomancy

by Michael A. Stackpole

  The Prince raised his chin defiantly. “And if I do not?”

  I pointed at the blank wall behind his throne. “Paint yourself a pretty epitaph. It will be the only chance you’ll be remembered after the jaws of Grija snap you up.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  17th day, Month of the Dragon, Year of the Rat

  10th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

  163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

  737th year since the Cataclysm

  Ixyll

  To Ciras and Borosan the evidence seemed clear: their journey into the heart of Ixyll had brought them very close to the point where the great battle between the Empress’ forces and the Turasynd must have taken place. How they knew neither could say exactly, but they both agreed with their conclusion.

  And their agreement, while satisfying on one level, left neither of them entirely happy.

  Ciras felt a sense of dislocation. He turned to Borosan as they rode up a track along one of the foothills of a jagged line of mountains. “It feels as if everything is just a little bit off. I look at it and it seems to shift.”

  The inventor nodded. “It’s akin to looking through a pane of glass. It’s refraction; everything shifts a bit.”

  “But we aren’t looking through glass.”

  “You’re right.” Borosan frowned and, despite his fatigue and the reddish dust on his face, he looked almost childlike as he concentrated. “I think the magic here is ingrained so deeply that it bleeds up, like heat from the rocks. We’ve seen heat mirages of water, and I think the magic here affects our senses the same way. It doesn’t stop us from seeing things, just from seeing them immediately.”

  Ciras nodded, not quite certain he understood, but he had a glimmering of what his companion was saying. The swordsman pointed to a rock that he thought looked like a hooded monk in a robe. “Quickly, tell me what you see.”

  Borosan looked, then shrugged. “A man in a cloak, huddled against the wind.”

  “Close enough.” Ciras glanced again at the stone and a shiver ran down his spine. It had changed shape, twisting slightly, hunching its shoulders more. It did not move as he watched it, and he tried to convince himself he had not studied it closely enough the first time. But he knew that was wrong—his training had made him a keen observer, and his time with Borosan had only enhanced those skills.

  Borosan smiled. “Of course, if magic is working here that way, I could have said it looked like the Lady of Jet and Jade, and you would have heard that it looked like whatever you thought it was. Or you might have thought it looked like something else, and my telling you what it looked like to me might have changed what you thought it looked like.”

  Ciras held a hand up. “Enough. My head is on fire.” He hunched his shoulders for a moment, hoping just saying that would not make it come true.

  Borosan smiled, but did not laugh. “I do have one worry here, and it’s not that our perceptions are being changed constantly. With so much magic here, I don’t wonder that it should be easy to use. I wonder if it becomes unconsciously simple to use.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  Borosan sighed, then turned and pulled one of the round mousers from a saddlebag. He held it out to Ciras. “Please, I know you don’t like my gyanrigot, but hold it.”

  Frowning, the Tirati warrior accepted the skull-sized ball. “Now what?”

  “Stroke it. Pretend it has fur.”

  Ciras raised an eyebrow. “Is it time for us to get out of the sun? We can find shade.”

  “Just stroke it.”

  Ciras pulled a glove off with his teeth, then stroked the bare metal shell with his fingertips. He stared, then did it again. “It feels like fur.”

  “I know.”

  Then the mouser purred.

  Ciras tossed it back to Borosan and wiped both of his hands on his thighs. “What did you do to it?”

  “I didn’t do anything to it.” Borosan returned it to the saddlebag. “I have been thinking about it, however, even dreaming about it. I think of it as a mouser since that’s what I built it to do. Out here, I think just thinking about something may manipulate the wild magic and make things come true.”

  Ciras frowned. “That makes no sense.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Borosan shrugged. “If you are a Mystic, you access magic and use it to make yourself a better warrior. What you are able to do is governed by your discipline and skills, but you can’t control all the magic, so some of it bleeds into the surroundings. The reason you can’t control it, however, is because you’ve been trained to be a swordsman, not a magician.”

  Ciras said nothing for a moment, then nodded. “And you would say that magic can be controlled because you, with gyanri, are able to construct devices that channel captured magic into specific ends.”

  “Exactly. And we know that magic can be controlled because we have someone like Kaerinus who can use it to heal.”

  “And we have stories of the vanyesh who did other things with it.”

  “Not just them, Ciras. We know the Viruk can use magic. Even Rekarafi could use it. He helped heal Tyressa.”

  “But they are not human. You look around us and see what the vanyesh helped cause.”

  The inventor frowned. “Do we know that they did?”

  “The stories make it all clear.”

  “Sure, but who wrote those stories?” Borosan reined back at the top of the hill. “The history says that aside from Kaerinus, no one returned from the battle. Given the nature of the Cataclysm, that’s no surprise. And yet, we have stories of the Sleeping Empress.”

  “So you’re saying we don’t know the truth because the only folks who could have told the truth died here?”

  “True—and look at the only evidence we have about the vanyesh. Kaerinus has let himself be imprisoned for ages, but he heals people. He’s hardly the monster the vanyesh were made out to be. Sure, the stories say he returned feebleminded, but how feebleminded can he be if he’s able to use magic to heal?”

  Ciras sighed heavily. “You make me think troubling things, Master Gryst.” He really didn’t want to have to think about the vanyesh being anything other than monsters. He still had the vision of one striking his master from behind, and that fit his idea of a villain. But by the same token, he’d also had visions of the same vanyesh killing a lot of very skilled Turasynd.

  He gave his horse a touch of the spur and Borosan rode up beside him. “Master Gryst, what you say about the people who wrote the stories is true, but I would counter that the stories are based on the actions of Prince Nelesquin and his vanyesh before the Cataclysm. They would have required some basis in fact if they were not to be dismissed when they were first related.”

  “I agree.” Borosan smiled. “Perhaps, however, Nelesquin’s vanyesh were not the only vanyesh. Maybe others came out, fearing the Cataclysm, and tried to contain it.”

  Ciras snorted. “They didn’t do a very good job.”

  Borosan laughed. “Then again, they might have contained enough of it that all life was not destroyed.”

  “I don’t like arguing with you. You riposte too well.”

  The inventor smiled broadly, then bowed his head. “I shall take that as you meant it, not as it sounded.”

  Ciras screwed his eyes shut as that comment ricocheted through his mind and would have said something in return, but when he opened his eyes again he spotted a dark opening at the base of a sheer mountain cliff. He would have sworn that it had not been there moments before, but the trail down the hill had also seemed not quite so straight, and another hill seemed to have shrunk enough to reveal the opening.

  “Do you see that?”

  Borosan nodded slowly. “We shouldn’t go anywhere near it.”

  “It might be another grave complex.” Ciras settled his hand on the hilt of the vanyesh blade. “Every part of me screams that we should not go there.”

  “And for some reason that’s not enough to make you ride away?”

/>   The swordsman glanced at his companion. “Given the nature of how this opening was revealed to us, do you think we could get away if we wanted to?”

  Borosan nodded slowly. “Anything powerful enough to hide or reveal that hole probably could have opened this hill and swallowed us alive.”

  “I think we were meant to come here.” Ciras pointed down the hill. “In there, I believe we’ll learn what killed the giant and resealed the tomb.”

  “And why they left you that sword?”

  “Probably.” Ciras shivered. And if they intend I use it to finish the killing of my master, they will learn they have made a very bad choice.

  It took them less time to reach the opening than Ciras had calculated, and it appeared to have grown during their journey. Somewhat narrow, the arched opening soared to a height of thirty feet. Just inside it, far enough to be hidden in shadows, stood two guardian figures, but any attempt to identify them failed.

  The figures each stood twenty feet tall and, while quite humanoid in shape, lacked any definition. They had been shaped of mud that had hardened, and as Ciras rode past it was easy to pick out places where cracks had been patched. Artistically, they were not much more sophisticated than a child’s snowman, and they lacked any discernible features.

  Riding between them, Ciras kept his hand on the vanyesh sword’s hilt. Borosan kept pace with him, his expression fluctuating between wonder and suspicion.

  “What is it, Borosan?”

  “Those statues were made of thaumston mud. Just one would be worth a fortune in Moriande.”

  “Comforting to know.”

  They rode forward another twenty yards, having gotten halfway into the tunnel. The reflected light pouring in through the opening revealed another opening further on, but they got little chance to study it as the light from outside began to shrink. In the moments before they were plunged into utter darkness, Ciras turned to watch the entrance iris shut.

  “What now, Master Dejote?”

  “We keep riding. Don’t look back.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I believe the guardians are following us.”

  Sitting as tall as he could in the saddle, Ciras gently spurred his mount forward. They rode for another dozen yards, the clopping of horse’s hooves echoing through the tunnel. Ciras strained to hear any sound of the guardian statues behind them, but he discerned nothing. So huge, and so silent. In an instant he knew what had killed the giant, why the monk-stone had shifted, and why he felt they’d been watched.

  Up ahead, a series of torches ignited with a blue flame—the blue of the gyanrigot lamps he’d seen in Opaslynoti. Figures shambled forward, bearing the torches high in one hand, knuckling the ground with the other every four or five steps. As they grew closer and Ciras got a good look at them, he resisted the urge to order them out of his way.

  The creatures had once been men—wildmen, the human stock that the Viruk had used as slaves. Shorter than True Men, with narrow chests and foreshortened limbs, they had almost enough body hair to be considered a pelt. These wore loincloths of leather and their bodies were covered, it appeared, in dust of the same stone used to shape the guardians.

  More remarkably, however, was the fact that their heads were encased entirely in clay helmets, which clearly had been worked to an elaborate degree that seemingly defied their apparent skill levels. The helmets included a full face mask, and while the faces lacked much expression, they clearly had been created to resemble specific individuals. The dozen wildmen wore three different faces among them and though the torches’ blue light did little to reveal color, Ciras detected some differences.

  As the circle of light grew, the wildmen stopped and dropped to their knees. Half the number, those not bearing the torches, shuffled forward, then bowed deeply. They muttered something repeatedly, but Ciras could not catch it.

  He looked at Borosan, but the inventor just shrugged. “It sounds akin to what you said the night you exercised with that sword.”

  That sent a shiver down Ciras’ spine. Despite his unease, he did hazard a glance behind and got another shock.

  The guardians had indeed followed. Each had sunk to one knee and pressed one arm to the ground, while their free hands touched their left breasts. They even bowed their heads, but so tall were they that Ciras could see that the faces had taken on crude definition.

  One of the wildmen stood and approached. “Masters our beg you guests our.”

  The travelers exchanged glances. Ciras nodded. “Tell your masters we would be delighted.”

  The wildman cocked his head like a dog.

  “Let me try.” Borosan smiled. “Tell masters your happy guests us.”

  The wildman bowed sharply, then froze, as did the other three wearing that same face. The quartet then bowed, and the other eight followed a heartbeat later. They rose to their feet and turned as one. The wildman who had been the spokesman waved them forward.

  Ciras looked at Borosan. “Did you have to tell them we were happy?”

  “Do you want them to think we are not?”

  “Good point.” Ciras followed the wildmen slowly, and tried to see through the opening at the tunnel’s far end. Even as they grew closer, the images remained obscured, and it was not until they moved through something as heavy as a curtain, but invisible, that he got a look at their goal.

  As nearly as Ciras could tell, the entire mountain had been hollowed out. Against the walls and working out to the center of the opening, mud dwellings had been constructed in a pattern that, at best, was haphazard. Some clung to walls like birds’ nests and others leaned heavily against their neighbors. Some even rose to three and four stories, with crude ladders leading from one level to another. All around the city, wildmen—men, women, and feral children—swarmed like lice over the buildings.

  The building at the center, however, mocked the dwellings around it. There was no mistaking it for anything less than an Imperial citadel, with its thick walls and tall towers ending in pyramidal roofs. The roofs had even been tiled as Ciras recalled from murals, and representations of the gods lurked at each corner.

  What surprised him about the fortress was that neither mud nor stone had been used to create it. It appeared to have been shaped of swords and spears, shields and armor. There was no mistaking the forms, which fit flawlessly together. All the things we have been hunting—most all of them anyway—are here. He saw weapons of Imperial and Turasynd manufacture. Here and there, motes of light played along sharp edges or over some detailed embossing, then trailed up over a web of filaments that rose to connect the citadel to the mountain surrounding it.

  “Where are we, Borosan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Masters welcome bid.” The wildman spread his arms. “Name Tolwreen.”

  Ciras shot Borosan a sharp glance. “That’s the name of Grija’s Eighth Hell, the one saved for magicians.”

  Borosan nodded slowly. “The one, according to the stories, from which there is no escape.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  19th day, Month of the Dragon, Year of the Rat

  10th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

  163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

  737th year since the Cataclysm

  Thyrenkun, Felarati

  Deseirion

  “Excuse me, did you say something?” Keles looked up from the table. A large sheet of rice paper was weighted with candleholders at the corners and on it Keles had been drafting a map of the new Felarati. He included sketches on separate sheets for other developments that could be overlaid to expand the city.

  The woman to whom he had spoken laid her five-stringed necyl and its bow across her lap and cast her eyes down. She wore a robe of crimson with silver edging. Her crest, embroidered in silver and black on the sleeves and breasts, featured two doves nesting. A silver tie gathered her long black hair.

  “I asked if there was another selection that would please you.”

  “My lady,
forgive me, but I get drawn into the things I am doing. In preparing a map, I can see the way things will be, and I become anxious.” He pointed beyond the table toward the balcony. “You’ve lived all your life here; you see the changes. Imagine this city transformed.”

  She nodded, then smiled slowly. “It shall forever remind me of you.”

  “You’re very kind.” Keles capped his bottle of ink and dried the brush on an ink-stained cloth. Much as Princess Jasai had predicted, Lady Inyr Vnonol had been introduced into his circle of acquaintances just over a week and a half ago and had quickly made demands on his time. She was clearly his to use in any capacity he desired.

  He might have, too, were it not for two things. The first was his conversation with the Princess. It put him on his guard, and when Inyr moved into his circle, she’d been simple to spot as a spy.

  The other thing that made him wary was really a tribute to the Desei Mother of Shadows. Save for her age and maturity, Inyr might as well have been Majiata Phoesel, his ex-fiancée. Inyr’s eyes were a slightly lighter shade of blue, but her hair, height, and form were identical to the woman he’d left behind in Moriande. In choosing her, the Desei thought they had found him the perfect mate. Somehow they had missed the way his relationship with Majiata had ended.

  Or maybe they hadn’t. Inyr Vnonol did have a maturity that Majiata had lacked. Inyr, from the beginning, had been devoted to Keles. She seemed to want nothing more than to bask in his presence, and she evidenced no interest at all in his work. By contrast, Majiata would have been very interested—at least up to the point where she realized that anything he was willing to show her would be of no value to her family.

  Keles turned from his table and smiled at her. “You play beautifully. Whenever I hear the necyl played, I shall be reminded of you.”

  Her head came up and she smiled more fully. “But I understood the necyl is not often played in Nalenyr. Did not one of your princes outlaw it?”

  And with good cause. “He thought it sounded like a cat being gutted. That’s not what he would have thought had he heard you playing it.” He would have thought it sounded like a cat being gutted slowly.