The Thousand Names

by Django Wexler

  Janus gave a tight smile. “I have a fairly good idea what’s down there, Captain. But if you’re worried about my safety, you may accompany me. Is that acceptable?”

  It wasn’t, by Marcus’ lights, but he couldn’t back down now. He accepted a musket from the sergeant, checked that it was loaded, and picked up one of the oil lamps from the altar. In passing, he said to Fitz, “If we’re not back in an hour, go and get two companies and tear this place apart.”

  Fitz nodded almost imperceptibly. Marcus tucked the weapon under one arm, set the lamp on the lip of the gap, and dropped into darkness. As Janus had said, it wasn’t far, and when he stood from his crouch his eyes were only a foot below the floor of the shrine. Janus handed down the flickering lamp, which illuminated the contours of the underground space, and Marcus was reassured to see that it was more of a basement than a cave. There was a small circular space opening onto the mouth of a corridor, which extended beyond the range of the lamplight.

  Janus landed nimbly beside him, raising a puff of ancient dust. Marcus handed him the lamp, to leave his own hands free to hold the musket.

  “I doubt you’ll be needing that,” Janus said.

  “I hope not,” Marcus said. He was having visions of an underground sanctum, packed with knife-wielding fanatics eager to defend their sacred temples to the death. One musket ball would not be much help, in that case, but the loaded weapon still gave him some comfort.

  “As you like.” Janus raised the lamp, peered down the corridor, then set off with a confident step. Marcus fell in behind him.

  It was a longer walk than he’d anticipated. The faint glow filtering down from the entrance was soon lost to sight behind a gentle curve, and only the narrow circle of lamplight was visible. Ancient stone unrolled in front of them and vanished behind. The air smelled dry, dusty, and dead.

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what you expect to find,” Marcus said, to break the silence.

  “When I first arrived,” Janus said, “I told you that I thought Orlanko had some reason to be interested in Khandar. That he’s sent his people here looking for something.”

  Marcus had almost forgotten that conversation. He nodded hesitantly. “What about it? You think it’s here?”

  “I wasn’t certain until we found the tunnel,” Janus said. “But now . . . yes.”

  “What could be down here that’s so important?”

  Janus stopped, setting the lamp to swinging on its handle. Their shadows danced against the walls.

  “You were raised in the Free Church, were you not, Captain?” he said.

  Marcus nodded. “Though I was never what you might call religious. I mean—”

  Janus held up a hand to stop him. “Did you ever hear the story of the Demon King?”

  That rang a very distant bell, but Marcus couldn’t bring it to mind. He shook his head.

  “It’s part of the apocrypha of the early Church,” Janus said. “The story goes that back in the days of Saint Ligamenti, during the Holy Wars, there was a sorcerer in the east who had carved himself out a kingdom. He called himself the Demon King, or at least that is the only way he’s referred to in surviving records. He used his magic to break every army sent against him, and kept all the surrounding lands in terror. Eventually, the other kings asked the Church to intervene, and the Pontifex of the Black led a Holy War against him.”

  “I think I remember,” Marcus said, poking through ancient, musty memories of sitting beside his parents in a splintery wooden pew. “The evil king was defeated, but he escaped the Black Priests, and fled with all his treasures across the ocean. That’s where the Demon Sea gets its name.” He stopped. “You’re not serious.”

  Janus only smiled.

  “But . . .” Marcus groped for words. “That was a thousand years ago. And, anyway, it’s just a fairy tale! Like Gregor and the hundred bandits, or Hugh and the giant.”

  “There’s often more truth in fairy tales than you might think,” Janus said. “Not the literal truth, of course. But they represent a sort of folk memory, which at the root sometimes refers to real events. When added to historical evidence . . .” He shrugged. “As to whether there was a Demon King, I couldn’t say. But the Pontifex of the Black did lead a Holy War in the east in the third century, and there are too many stories of his enemies sailing off over the southern horizon for it to be mere coincidence.”

  “That doesn’t mean they came here. Khandar was only discovered two hundred years ago!”

  “Two hundred and twenty-four,” Janus corrected. “But that’s the whole point, really. Cultural studies from those first few expeditions found little coincidences they couldn’t explain between the Khandarai culture and ours. Bits of language, symbols—” He caught Marcus’ look and shrugged. “Most scholars dismiss the idea, but I’ve reviewed the evidence for myself. Someone from the continent was here long before Captain Vahkerson ‘discovered’ the place.”

  “So that’s what you think the Last Duke is looking for? Some kind of . . . of treasure?” It sounded like the plot of a bad penny opera—some vast storeroom of ancient loot, dug up by the intrepid hero while he rescued his true love. What does that make me? The comic sidekick?

  “In a way.” Janus started walking again, and Marcus hurried to catch up. “If you’re expecting a mountain of gold, however, you may be disappointed.”

  “Then what’s down here?”

  “You’ll see. Ah.” Ahead, the lamplight showed a wooden door set into the rock. “This should be it. We’re right underneath the very top of the sacred hill now. Above us is the Temple of the Heavens United.”

  That was the largest and most impressive of the hill’s monuments, a huge sandstone palace covered in grotesque, weathered statues representing hundreds of gods. Marcus had even been inside once, accompanying the prince. There hadn’t been much to look at except for more statues and hundreds of supplicating Khandarai, though the sheer size of the pillared hall had been impressive.

  “They cut this underneath the temple?”

  “It’s more likely that they built the temple on top of it.” Janus took hold of the ring on the door and gave it a tug. Slowly, groaning with the rust of centuries, it swung outward, revealing a dark space beyond.

  Marcus was about to propose a bit of caution, but before he could speak Janus rushed eagerly inside. With his musket ready to hand, Marcus followed. In the light of the oil lamp, the chamber was revealed to be a rough, eight-sided space, with a domed ceiling and crude stone walls. There were no furnishings of any kind, and no decorations. Marcus could see nothing to distinguish this place from the corridor they’d come through to get here. He looked questioningly at Janus.

  The colonel stood frozen in the center of the room, his face as slack as if he’d been slapped. His lips worked soundlessly.

  “Sir?” Marcus prompted, after a moment.

  “It’s not here.”

  “What’s not here? What are we looking for?”

  “It’s not here!” Janus’ voice rose from a whisper to a shout. He spun on his heel and ran back to the corridor. Marcus hurried after him.

  He’d gotten a glimpse, in the flickering lamplight, of his superior’s face. So far in their association, Marcus had never seen the colonel lose his temper. He’d started to wonder, in fact, if the man was even capable of anger. Now that question was answered. Janus’ delicate features had been twisted into an almost unrecognizable snarl, and his great gray eyes seemed to glow from within with an awful light.

  Marcus was out of breath by the time they pounded down the tunnel and reached the little shrine. He called out to the soldiers above to help them up, but before anyone could move the colonel caught the lip of the hole on a jump and hauled himself up. Argot hurriedly leaned down and extended a hand to Marcus, who handed the musket up and levered himself out of the hole, panting.

  “What have you done with them?”

  Janus’ voice was cold and precise again, but there was a dangerous edge to
it that Marcus had never heard before, not even in battle. He raised his head and saw the colonel confronting the ancient priestess, who was held from the sides by two nervous-looking soldiers.

  “Taken it beyond your reach,” the old woman said, her head raised in defiance. “Raschem.”

  There was a frozen, silent moment. Janus’ hands tightened into fists, and he turned to the younger priestess, who cowered as best she could in the grip of her captors.

  “Tell me where you have taken the Thousand Names,” he snapped.

  The woman babbled something, her Khandarai too fast for Marcus to parse. It was apparently not what Janus wanted, however, because he stepped closer to her and growled, “Tell me, or—”

  “Leave her be,” said the old woman. “She knows nothing.”

  “And you do?”

  “Only that Mother will not be found by the likes of you.”

  Janus pressed his lips together. Then, speaking in Vordanai for the first time since he’d left the tunnel, he said, “Sergeant Argot, give me your knife, please.”

  The soldiers, unable to follow the Khandarai, had watched this exchange with increasing puzzlement. Now Argot started and said, “My knife?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.” Janus’ eyes never left the old woman.

  Argot glanced at Marcus, but the colonel’s voice cracked like a whip.

  “Now, Sergeant.”

  “Yessir!”

  Argot drew a big skinning knife from a sheath at his belt, reversed it, and handed it to Janus. The colonel took it, hefted it thoughtfully, and looked at the old woman.

  “Do what you like,” the priestess said. “It will not avail you.”

  Marcus had finally caught his breath.

  “Sir,” he said. When that drew no response, he added, “Janus.”

  Janus blinked, then looked at Marcus. “Yes, Captain?”

  “I just—” Marcus realized he had no idea what he wanted to say, except that he would rather not watch his commanding officer slice an old woman to ribbons. “I don’t think she knows, sir. Look at her.”

  There was a long pause.

  “No,” Janus said quietly. “I suppose not. If she did, they would not have left her behind.” He flipped the knife around deftly and handed it back to Argot. “Still, she may know something useful. Take them back to the Palace, both of them. The prince has people who specialize in this sort of thing.”

  Marcus swallowed. But an order was an order. And even if he’d wanted to object, the colonel was already stalking toward the door.

  WINTER

  The big square in front of the barracks of the Heavenly Guard dwarfed the handful of blue-uniformed soldiers drilling in it. It had been built to allow the entire troop to parade at once, back in the days when the Guard had been an actual fighting formation instead of a sinecure for idiot sons of important families and worn-down servants. Sitting on the stone steps leading up from the packed-dirt field to the barracks building, Winter could see a half dozen companies going through their drills, but they filled barely a quarter of the space. It felt oddly disrespectful, like doing jumping jacks in a temple.

  The Seventh Company was out there with the rest, going through the Manual of Arms and some standard evolutions. Winter would just as soon have let them rest, after everything they’d been through, but Graff had insisted that maintaining at least a bit of daily drill was important to morale. On reflection, Winter could see the point of this; the exercises were a touchstone, and they kept the soldiers from dwelling on those they had lost.

  Winter had assigned Bobby to lead the drills today, partly so she herself could sit in the shade but mostly so she could keep an eye on the corporal. To all outward appearances, Bobby had recovered completely from the wound that she—it still felt odd to think of Bobby as “she,” even in the privacy of her own skull—had suffered in the charge against the Auxiliaries at Turalin. Close observation, however, revealed that something had changed. She didn’t seem to be in pain or short of breath, but she would occasionally stare distractedly into space until some sound from the men returned her attention to the here and now.

  “Is something wrong with her?”

  Winter looked up at the sound of Feor’s voice. The Khandarai girl had changed into a fresh wrap and wound a long white cloth around her broken arm, keeping it pinned at her side. Her hair, dark and straight, was tied in a simple tail.

  “Be careful what you say, even in Khandarai.” Winter glanced around, but just now the two of them were alone on the steps, and none of the Vordanai on the field were close enough to overhear.

  “My apologies,” Feor said. “You were staring at the corporal. Is something wrong?”

  “I’m not sure,” Winter said. “He seems okay, but he’s acting a bit . . . oddly.”

  “I am not surprised. Obv-scar-iot should have been bound to one of the sahl-irusk, someone trained to it from girlhood. I did not know if it would accept . . . him.” Feor sat down next to Winter on the sun-warmed stone, balancing carefully with her good arm. “Naath are unpredictable things. Mother would say that they have a temper.”

  “Is it . . . are they living things, then?”

  “Not as you and I are alive, perhaps, but yes, in their own way.”

  “If they have tempers, do they think?”

  Feor shook her head. “Think, no. They have desires. Not quite as a human has desires, but more in the manner a tree desires water and will push a taproot through flagstones to get it. It is a part of their basic nature.” She sighed. “Or so we believe. Mother says that we used to understand them better. Much has been lost to time.”

  Winter’s eyes continued to follow Bobby. She leaned back against the step behind her. “I still can hardly believe I’m having this conversation.”

  “Why?”

  Winter glanced at Feor, wondering if that had been a joke, but the girl’s face was entirely serious. She took a couple of moments to compose her reply.

  “If I told anyone in Vordan what you did that day,” she said eventually, “they wouldn’t believe a word of it.” Actually, she privately thought they would believe it, if she told them it had happened to a friend of a friend of hers in Khandar. People seemed to be willing to swallow any story provided it was thirdhand and a long way off. “They—we, I suppose I should say—don’t believe in . . . sorcery, or demons, or whatever you want to call it.”

  “A naath is not a demon,” Feor said patiently.

  “Regardless.” Winter felt a little defensive. “I didn’t think most Khandarai believed in naathem, either.”

  “They might not expect to see one,” Feor said, “but that is not the same as believing they do not exist. After all, it is the same with the gods.” She frowned. “But I do not understand. I thought your holy book spoke of these things. Your Black Priests dedicate their lives to rooting them out. How, then, can you not believe in them?”

  Winter thought about starting with the fact that the Priests of the Black had been out of business for a good hundred years now, but decided to start with something more basic. “Do you know the story of Karis the Savior?”

  “No. Your Captain Vahkerson gave me a copy of the Wisdoms, but my Vordanai is not yet up to the task.” Feor had taken to learning Vordanai with the same quiet determination with which she approached everything, and the sight of her face screwed up in earnest concentration always made Winter grin.

  “The story goes,” Winter began, adopting the language of half-remembered sermons from her childhood and parsing it inexpertly into Khandarai, “that there was once a time when men were so evil, so prone to consorting with demons and practicing sorcery, that the Lord Almighty decided to destroy them. He sent a great monster, the Beast of Judgment, to scourge mankind from the world. As the destruction began, God heard many prayers to halt it, but the hearts of all of those who begged for mercy were tainted, and He turned a deaf ear. When He heard Karis’ prayer, though, He found his heart was pure, and the Lord agreed to give mankind a chance. Karis wal
ked up to the Beast without fear and banished it with a word. He said that the Lord had spared humanity, but only temporarily, unless men could be persuaded to change their ways. The people who listened to him went on to found the Elysian Church, and as you say, they dedicated themselves to hunting down demons and sorcerers.”

  Feor, somewhat to Winter’s surprise, seemed genuinely interested. “But you said they don’t believe in those things.”

  “Karis lived more than a thousand years ago. This is the Year of His Grace twelve hundred and eight, so it’s been that long since God agreed to spare mankind.” A thought occurred to her. “Maybe the Black Priests got the job done and wiped out all the demons. In any case, by a couple of hundred years ago they were more in the business of putting heretics on trial and interfering in politics. A bit like your Redeemers, really.”

  “Not so awful, I hope,” Feor murmured.

  “I wouldn’t know. The King of Vordan got fed up with it and threw them out. Ever since, there’s been the Sworn Church, ruled from Elysium, and the Free Churches, which don’t have to swear fealty to anyone. Vordan is a Free Church country. Maybe they take all the sorcery in the Wisdoms seriously up in Murnsk or Borel, but in Vordan . . .” She shook her head. “Our priest explained to me that it was all a metaphor. The demons stood for the evil that men do to one another, and what the Wisdoms really meant was that we should all be nice to each other.” Winter glanced sidelong at Feor. “I thought there was something fishy about that at the time.”

  “What are ‘Borel’ and ‘Murnsk’?”

  “Other kingdoms,” Winter said, aware of her acutely limited knowledge. “Well, Murnsk is an empire, I think. There’s the Six Cities League, too, and . . .”

  She trailed off. Feor was staring out at the drilling troops, but her eyes were sparkling with unshed tears.

  “I will need to learn these things, I suppose,” the girl said dully, “if I am to live there.”

  “Live there?” Winter said, confused. “I thought you wanted to find your Mother here in Ashe-Katarion.”

  “She would not have me,” Feor said, very quietly. “Not now. I have bound my naath to a raschem. This is heresy.”