by Stephen Deas
Liang let the mockery pass her by. ‘She’s poison, lady. You asked me what I would do if I were the Arbiter. I’d put her and her dragon down in a heartbeat. I would have done it long ago. I would certainly have done it before we left the eyrie. They’re both too dangerous. You told me yourself – see how she chooses who lives and who dies.’
‘But the rider knows the truth and has no reason to lie.’
‘I know the truth, lady. Baros Tsen T’Varr knows the truth. Mai’Choiro has already confessed that he gave the orders. Shonda told him to do it. He’s the one who burned Dhar Thosis.’
Red Lin Feyn went to the edge of the river, crouched in the water and drank from it. The Elemental Man, Liang saw, had already done the same while they were repairing the golem. His robes were wet. When Lin Feyn came back, she said, ‘I believe you, Chay-Liang, but you would not make a good Arbiter. Shonda is guilty, you say? My heart says yes but I must stand before the Crown of the Sea Lords and say so to all of them, and some will crow with glee and others will howl with outrage, and what is said will depend on who has been paid and how much and by whom. It will be easy to blame Baros Tsen T’Varr – and blame him I do – and no one will blink an eye. The dragon burned Dhar Thosis. The dragon is his. He is responsible and also bankrupt. But to hold the lord of Vespinarr to account, with all his riches? He wasn’t even there. His kwen was a prisoner. He’d already lost his t’varr – his own brother. Baros Tsen was surely his enemy, not his ally. Mai’Choiro claims coercion.’
‘But . . .’
Lin Feyn squeezed Liang’s shoulder. ‘I must, if I can, have all those who were responsible alive to speak. That is why we are here on the trail of Baros Tsen T’Varr. He and Shrin Chrias Kwen, who as yet eludes my killers, they are the ones who matter the most. Without them, perhaps I am acting on a whim. Perhaps I am a poor Arbiter. Perhaps I have been bought and paid for by the lords of Cashax, who will crow when Shonda falls. Or, worse, what if Shonda is guilty but did not conspire alone? I have my suspicions there. The killers will trust my word and carry out my verdict, but I must do better than that. To bring down a sea lord, there must be no questioning of my judgement. Our authority is absolute. Our dispassion and rigour must be the same. Thus I need your dragon-slave to speak the truth, and I will bargain with her if I have to and promise her whatever she wants to convince her to give me what I need, for what I need is more important. She is an unbranded slave who obeyed her master, and that cannot be a crime. The deed is the crime of the master. When a sword stabs you, do you blame the steel or the hand that held it?’ She pursed her lips.
‘You’re going to let her live? Dear Xibaiya, are you mad?’ Liang put a hand to her mouth as soon as the words came out. ‘Lady, forgive—’
But Lin Feyn had doubled up with laughter. ‘This is why I have you with me, Chay-Liang!’ She took a moment to compose herself. ‘No. A city has burned, a sea lord hanged from his own palace, and she knew her master meant her to stop . . .’ She glanced at the Elemental Man still standing by the river and leaned in to Liang, her voice now a fierce whisper. ‘But in the midst of this a skin-shifter of the Konsidar steals away the man most clearly responsible? My killers try to hide things from me? These things strike to the heart of what we are.’
She sighed and walked on back to the gondola. The golem was waiting inside, silent and infinitely patient. As Lin Feyn passed it, she ran a hand over its glass. ‘This one was Ferring Syfa once. I knew him. He was an old man even when I first came to the Dralamut but he taught me a great deal before he died.’ She patted the golem. ‘Lungs, wasn’t it, old man? Gave out on you in the end. Slowly filled with fluid. The coughing got worse and worse. Ah, we tried to keep him a while, to make him comfortable, but there’s no cure for age. I suppose you must have drowned in your sleep one night, was that it?’
The golem didn’t move, didn’t speak.
‘Do you remember, golem, who you were?’
‘No.’
‘None of them do. I suppose it’s a mercy but I missed him. I was young and the world had just become so very big.’ She glanced at Liang with a moment of longing in her eyes. ‘Could your alchemist have saved him, I wonder. He’s saved you twice now.’ She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket, crumpled up and covered in Belli’s writing. ‘This is yours. It told me what to do.’
The gondola lifted them slowly out of the valley. Liang watched the mountains sprout up from behind one another. She moved so she could look to the north and to the heart of the Konsidar. She’d seen it so many times but only from afar, only the edges of it. Towers of stone capped with snow. Deep dark valleys filled with trees, the ground buried beneath their leaves. Streaks of dark rock amid waterfalls of green vines. They flew over a valley where a deep red streak of acer trees ripped through the green, a rune carved into the forest like a livid scar on wrinkled green skin. Another valley and another sigil in the same dark red leaves. The mountains grew taller and the valleys deeper and the forest thicker and wilder. They drifted above more sigils etched among the trees, mostly the reds of acers but now and then the black leaves of some tree Liang didn’t know, and once there were lines of scars and pale bare rock. They were too regular to have grown that way on their own. They had been made.
‘They’re like the writing on the pillar.’
‘Yes.’ She hadn’t even noticed the Elemental Man come to stand beside her. ‘It is the language of the half-gods whose war brought the Splintering and broke the world apart. It is the language of the moon. These ones are signs. Some are warnings. Some are directions. Some . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Some of them only the skin-shifters know.’
Liang had questions. So many questions of gods and half-gods and times long ago and why any of that mattered here and now and what it had to do with dragons and the death of Dhar Thosis. But the killer was what he was, sworn to keep such secrets dark and undisturbed, and so even if he knew them they would stay his and his alone. She looked at him for a moment. ‘You understand why we put the golem back together, don’t you? Instead of simply asking for a new one?’ Then the glasship rose over a ridge and Liang saw what lay on the other side and all her questions melted into one.
‘Fire and earth! What is that?’
Surrounded by cliffs and the sheer sides of the mountains, the ground fell away into a monstrous chasm, a hole a mile wide and ten miles long and deeper by far. As the glasship drifted past the ridge and out over the abyss, Liang couldn’t see to the bottom.
‘This? This is the secret of the Konsidar?’
The killer shook his head. ‘This? No, enchantress, this is merely the way in.’
The glasship sank into the chasm. Waterfalls spilled down its sides, dissolving into mist. On every ledge and in every cranny, trees and vines clung to the stone. Ferns gripped even the slightest crack, and where the rock was so smooth and sheer that no root would take hold, long streamers of moss clung to it instead.
‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ The killer was mocking her, she thought, but when she shook her head he tapped her shoulder and pointed down. As the walls of the abyss drew slowly closer, she saw an arch of stone reach from one side to the other, and further down were others, dozens of them until they vanished into the darkness.
Lin Feyn was dressing as the Arbiter again. ‘Gird yourself, killer. The guardians of Xibaiya await and I may have to be rude.’
‘It’s like the Queverra,’ Liang whispered.
‘Yes.’ The killer drew away. ‘But the Queverra is dead. Its gates to Xibaiya are marked and warded and those who enter do not come out. Here, Chay-Liang, it is otherwise.’
39
Best Not to Ask
The stone bridge went on for what felt like for ever and Tuuran didn’t like it one little bit. It reminded him of a giant tree root made of rock – rounded and arching through empty space and uneven and slippery, smooth as glass in places – and there was no kindness to it, no forgiveness. Twice it caught him out and he slipped and barely regained his balance before a short s
harp slide over the edge into oblivion. Further down, all he could see was lots of blackness and a handful of pinprick lights that just might have been fires, or maybe stars looking back at him from the other side of the world, or possibly they were his mind playing tricks on him.
He’d given up thinking about the way back, and so far he’d only found one way down. Crazy must have gone this way. If Tuuran went far enough, he’d find him. When he did, he’d think about what happened next. Though there was a good chance it would start with him giving Crazy a good solid punch in the face.
The bridge took him to a series of terraces linked by steep steps. In places the terraces were as wide as a field, in others so narrow that he had to ease his way along sideways, trying not to peer down at his toes and the endless chasm underneath. ‘Crazy Mad!’ he bellowed when he’d been making his way along them for an hour. It felt good to break the silence. He was fiercely hungry and close to exhaustion and the terraces just went on and on. ‘You hear me, Crazy? When I catch up with you, you’re going to get a right thumping, I can tell you.’ There wasn’t any answer. After a bit he took to singing to himself just to make the emptiness go away.
The terraces dumped him onto another arch back across the chasm. He looked up and rather wished he hadn’t, crossed over anyway and found yet more steps carved into the cliff, winding on down. There were sparks on the side of the chasm here, distant little windows of firelight. Proper fires, not torches, and they got him wondering what sort of people lived in this darkness, what they could possibly find to burn and whether they had any food he could have.
A spike of fear hit him then – that he’d made a mistake, that his strength wouldn’t be enough to climb to the top again, that he’d never get out and he’d die here alone, so far from everything he knew that his legion ancestors wouldn’t ever find him. He crushed it quickly. Adamantine Men didn’t know fear. Adamantine Men faced dragons and spat in their eyes. And as for his legion ancestors? They were Adamantine Men too, the spirits of the hundred thousand gone before, and they knew their duty. Leave no one behind. They’d find him wherever he died. They’d upend the underworld if they had to.
They would too. He felt a bit better, thinking that.
He went on because he was stubborn, because turning back meant he’d been wrong, and Adamantine Men were never wrong – or if they were they didn’t live to be shamed by it. He counted the steps this time so his legs would have something to think about on their way back. Somewhere over six hundred he gave up. By the time they brought him to the next ledge, he reckoned it must have been pushing a thousand.
Another bloody stone arch. He could hardly see his hand in front of his face now. He passed the remains of a few old fires. Charred fragments of wood. Men had come here, not in the last few days but not all that long ago.
Wood? Where did they get the wood?
He passed a pair of pillars sunk into the face of the cliff. White stone like the ones he’d encountered before. Thing was, he’d seen writing like this back in the Pinnacles in the places where the Silver King had worked his magics, and the white stone there was the same as in the eyrie and now here, and a pillar was just a pillar but two pillars started to look like an archway or a gateway, and the Pinnacles had had archways lining the walls everywhere. Riddled with the things, and all blank and just for decoration and not leading anywhere except in the stories people whispered when sometimes one of them suddenly changed and there was another world on the other side and you could walk right through into a different land, except no one ever came back because as soon as you crossed through the arch snapped closed behind you.
Stupid stories. These pillars didn’t lead anywhere either.
‘Crazy?’ He meant to shout but he couldn’t bring himself to, and then he told himself how stupid that was, and it made him angry because it meant he was afraid, and that wasn’t supposed to happen, not ever. ‘Crazy? Crazy Mad? Berren! Skyrie! Whoever you are! You in here?’ This time he roared it as loud as he could, then stood and clutched his axe too tightly as he listened to the echoes. He tried to slow his racing heart with some long deep breaths but apparently it wasn’t feeling in a slowing mood.
‘Flame on this.’ He turned his back on the pillars and walked away, fighting the urge to jump, to get it over with, to get to the bottom and be done with it. He had to pinch himself to remember that he couldn’t just do that and then get up again.
Keep it together. Cursed place is getting to you.
And then suddenly there wasn’t an abyss beside him and he was at the bottom. He took a few deep breaths, let his head spin a bit until it sorted itself out and then wandered about to be sure there wasn’t some hidden crack leading even deeper. All he found was a flat sandy floor with a shallow river running through it and no sign of any great rift on to the very heart of the world. He knelt by the river and tasted the water, found it pure and clean and filled his belly with it. Better. Then he looked for footprints in the sand because if Crazy Mad had come this way then he must have left some, and it wasn’t as if there was any wind or rain to hide them again, and Flame but Crazy was going to get a thumping for dragging him all this way . . .
When he traced his own steps back to the side of the abyss, he found what he was looking for. Prints. One pair of boots. They might have been Crazy’s or they might not, but Tuuran couldn’t think of a better idea. In the near dark at the bottom of the Queverra he followed the tracks on his hands and knees, crawling from one footprint to the next. It was grindingly slow and probably made him look utterly stupid but it took him to a cave. A bigger cave than the others and this one didn’t have just two pillars outside it but six, four like the ones he’d seen before and two much larger. He swore and wondered what to do, because Crazy Mad had gone in there but Crazy was, well, crazy and mad, and his own not-so-crazy guts were twisting in knots at the thought of following even if they couldn’t tell him why. He called out again: ‘Crazy?’ No answer. He wasn’t surprised. Hadn’t had one yet.
But there really wasn’t anything else. Not after he’d come all this way.
‘Crazy Mad, I’m going to carve some new holes in you for this.’ He got up, muttering to himself, and took two steps towards the cave.
‘I wouldn’t, if I were you,’ called a voice in the dark behind him. Crazy.
‘You son of a turd!’ Tuuran turned and squinted and peered and then spotted the shape of a shadow in the gloom and strode towards it, still not sure whether he was going to hug Crazy or hit him or possibly both. And it was him, even if there was something different about him. Something different in his face. When he reached the little man, he settled on pushing him. Hard. ‘You! You left me! In the middle of a gang of slavers! You turned one man to ash and scared off a dragon and then you just left! You git! And then this! You drag me all the way down here?’ He pointed up to the narrow slit of light miles above them. Relief had the better of him, wagging his tongue. ‘Do you have any idea what a royal pain in the arse it’s going to be to get back up?’ He shoved Crazy again and then grabbed him, crushed him. ‘I tell you, I intend to make you pay for this for the rest of your whole bloody life! Bastard!’
He stepped back and took and deep breath and let out a sigh, and that was when he realised that he and Crazy weren’t alone. He jumped back and grabbed his axe but Crazy held out a soothing hand. ‘Calm, big man. They’re not here to hurt us. These are my friends.’ He laughed but there was strain in it. Something off. ‘You didn’t have to follow me down here, you know.’
‘Oh, so you leave me with slavers and go gallivanting off to make some new friends on your own, eh? Were you planning on coming back out at some point to see about rescuing your other friend – you know, the one who’s been at your side for the last however many years it’s been? Why’d you come down here anyway?’
Crazy Mad’s face screwed up. ‘Don’t know really. Looking for something. Looking for someone.’
‘Looks like you found several someones.’
‘Not
me. Whatever it was the one-eyed warlock put into Skyrie before Vallas Kuy did what he did to both of us.’
Tuuran snorted uneasily at that because it made no sense to him and never had. Crazy Mad had his name for a reason, and he’d got it before his eyes had started turning silver now and then and the odd occasion when he’d disintegrated people. Oh, and stopped time that once. That too. ‘Well then, did you find who you were looking for?’
‘No.’
‘Not your one-eyed warlock himself, was it? You didn’t think he’d be down here, did you?’
Crazy jerked as though stung. Then he frowned. ‘I think it was looking for itself.’ He said this as though they were back in a tavern in Deephaven and Tuuran had asked him whether he wanted his ale pale or dark. As though the answer was so obvious it amazed him that Tuuran felt the need to ask.
‘I find a mirror works pretty well for that.’ Tuuran took a deep breath, let it out slowly, took another one and found he still hadn’t the first idea what to do with himself. He’d come all this way to find Crazy. Well, he’d done that. And now? ‘I’m just a simple soldier, Crazy. You know what? I don’t have the first clue what you’re talking about.’
Crazy clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Long way down though, isn’t it? You hungry? You must be. Want to eat before we start on the way up?’
‘What? We’re going back up now? Great Flame, tell me there was something here to make it worth it!’ Although now that he mentioned it, yes, Tuuran was very hungry indeed and yes, he would very much like to eat something because eating was a simple thing he could understand.
‘Food first, big man.’ And for a while, as they walked along the bottom of the abyss with white-painted men creeping in circles around them and gated caves to Xibaiya and the realm of the dead passing on either side, Crazy Mad talked like he usually did, and Tuuran talked too, and life was almost normal again.
40
No Escape, Not Even for You
