The Rose Sea

by S. M. Stirling

  The image flickered and smeared. Amourgin sprinkled a bit more powder on the stone.

  "That won't help much," the faint voice said. "The shodin trails of the magic users are thick tonight The world is crackling with energy trying to find a place to strike."

  Amourgin thought of his earlier encounter with mad ghosts and the walking dead, and decided what Jawain said was probably true.

  Then something else occurred to him.

  "By the way, I met your niece. She's a hellion. She hasn't liked me ever since she found out you gave me Broucher."

  The shadowy face looked surprised "You met Karah?" Then Jawain nodded. "Ah, yes. While she was down selling her horses. No, she wouldn't like the fact that you have Broucher. She tried to buy him off me any number of times." He chuckled. "She is headstrong, I agree. So how did you meet her?"

  Amourgin chuckled ruefully. "We got pressed together."

  Jawain's mouth fell open, and he slapped a hand to his forehead. He was speechless for an instant. Then, "Pressed? Holy sweet Machine, Karah's been pressed?"

  "You certainly weren't this concerned about me," Amourgin noted.

  Jawain apparently missed the intended humor in the law-speaker's tone, for he snapped, "She's a child. Besides, Karah knows nothing about the Reform—she's completely unprepared to go into war—"

  "She'll do fine," Amourgin interrupted. "She's already won a place as second behind me in command of our scout unit."

  Jawain's image flickered and weakened again. "I cannot believe this! I sent one of my nephews along to keep her and my daughter Brunnai out of just this sort of trouble—or has he been pressed as well? Name's Lion Abt."

  "None by that name pressed."

  "Damnall! What was the man thinking? I suppose I'll find out soon enough." Jawain frowned, and his image turned to look at something behind him. When he turned back, he said, "Someone will no doubt be along in a few days to retrieve her. In the meantime, I'm holding you responsible for her safety."

  Then Jawain's image popped like a soap bubble, and Amourgin was left staring at the afterimages of the glowing face.

  "I'm in the army, and he's thrilled," he muttered. "That isn't the response I was hoping for. Meanwhile, my second gets her ass rescued by mamma and pappa."

  Unhappily, he stared up at the moons in the cloudless sky. He'd always been proud to know the Reform needed him. He just wished by the Three it needed him somewhere else.

  Darkist roamed through the tiled marble halls of the royal palazzi, his guards stalking at his sides. He could not rest, nor could he eat, nor could he find pleasure in watching his concubines dance. The night was thick with magic, with spells and counterspells and the taint of intrigue.

  I am too old, he thought, and too weary—and these ancient bones feel the weight of plots upon them,

  That reek of defiled conjury, of witching and hungering after power, came from Admiral Tornsaarin, of course. The Tykissian bitch planned to double-cross him—-just as her ancestors had betrayed the last of the Olmyan emperors, the ones stupid enough to rely on northern mercenaries. Some of those emperors had survived to flee to the southern shore of the Imperial sea.

  Darkist cackled with glee, just thinking about it. She'd planned to move her fleet out a few days early—he'd discovered all about her schemes, before she found and executed his spy. If she'd been really clever, he thought, she would have let the spy live—would have fed her false information. It was, after all, what he was doing. But the Admiral, he determined with some smugness, was not his equal in the arts of plotting and planning. He knew her routes, knew her planned departure time—and his new spy, her perfidious Krevaulti aide, had been so long in the service of her family that she would never think to mistrust him.

  By magic he would control the coming battle. Willek would renege on their agreement, he knew, and would fight to win—and when she did, the magical items he had planted in her midst were spelled to turn against her. The Storm Ruby was in place; the plan was flawless.

  He should have felt lighthearted; he was about to complete a plan centuries in the making—the plan to bring the Northlands back under the power of Tarin Tseld and resurrect the Old Empire.

  And yet, he thought he could feel the meddling of the gods. Outside the temples, he had not felt their touch in centuries, nor had he seen signs of their doings in the world of men in as long. It seemed to him the gods were wakening and taking an interest in the affairs of mortals again. Along the back of his neck, like the steel of an executioners blade, he could feel the unloving kiss of the One of the Thousand Faces.

  The gods were fickle, and their indulgence was uncertain. Darkist would rather have fought his war to regain the Territories without any gods than with the favor of the One of the Thousand Faces, for the affections of the Cold One could be bought… but none could guarantee they would stay bought Once the Yentrors of his line had used the One: once they had been sorcerers strong enough to compel the very gods. That was long ago; when the Old Empire went down in a chaos of civil wars and barbarian invasions, the sacred Theophone was lost. A feathered shaman had stolen it, and concealed it with such cunning that for millennia, Tseldene magicians had sought it in vain.

  With the Theophone, he could have compelled the One—could have compelled those thousand treacherous faces to look to him for orders. As it was, he could only wheedle and bribe and beg the Cold One, and curry favor with sacrifices.

  And if other gods also reached their twisty fingers into Darkist's stew—

  But were the gods truly wakening, truly returning their attention to the intrigues of humankind? Or was this an old mans paranoia on the eve of his greatest triumph?

  He needed to know.

  Darkist reached a decision. He stopped stock-still in the middle of the corridor. "You," he said, and pointed a wavering finger at one of the guards, "fetch my Blossom to the Quiet Room. And you," he commanded another, "get Shaad Shaabin."

  The guards he'd commanded ran off down a side corridor. Darkist watched them go, then hurried toward the Quiet Room himself.

  The guards dared not enter into the sacred spaces of the Quiet Room. They kissed the stone doorposts, but did not pass beyond the small and narrow white door.

  Darkist left them behind. Inside the Quiet Room, he need fear nothing.

  The Quiet Room glowed with the light of its own magic. Darkist thought the light had dimmed over the centuries he'd worshipped in its labyrinthine recesses;—or perhaps his eyes had dimmed with age. The light was bright enough, though, as he walked along the echoing corridor—as bright as it seemed to have been in his distantly remembered first youth.

  The Yentror of Tarin Tseld nodded slightly to the statues of guises of the One of the Thousand Faces which lined the wall. He no longer bowed to kiss the carved stone feet—in fact, he had long considered himself one of them, the living personification of the Cold One. So he greeted them more as a man greeting relatives than as one meeting his gods.

  The old saying ran through his memory: Old men stand up to their gods because they can no longer bend.

  Perhaps, he thought Perhaps that is the real reason I no longer kneel.

  He chuckled softly. Amused by thoughts of the false courage of age, he moved further into the room. It was an ancient place—the most ancient place in all of Tarin Tseld, which was rumored to be the oldest city in the world. The Quiet Room was a grotto. Unknown worshipers at the beginning of time had carved the aspects of the Cold One in living rock, and their feet had worn smooth the grotto trails centuries before Darkist's earliest remembered ancestors were born.

  Down one face of one room of the grotto, fresh water dribbled from a spring. Over uncounted eons, the spring had painted a rainbow of colors down the wall. Darkist sat on the broad carved stone shelf that ran the entire circumference of the long, narrow room and studied the patterns it made. He kept hoping that someday, the minerals would form meaningful patterns, some special message from the One. So far, however, the One had shown rest
raint toward the idea of writing its feelings on stone for posterity.

  Darkist's ancestors built the first parts of the palazzi around the grotto perhaps fifteen thousand years earlier. Those parts of the palazzi felt incredibly ancient to him. But the Quiet Room felt older still. It echoed with the memories of whispers of newborn gods—it was a place rich with the magic of ages.

  This was the one place where he could always feel the presence of the Cold One—his favorite place.

  He leaned against the feet of The Cold One in Anger, and let the hum of the rocks purr through his bones. He closed his eyes, and voices insinuated themselves into his thoughts. He could hear the ghostwails of worshipers long since dust; the rich, deep cadences of massed chants; a single voice singing with the pure ferocity of fire. Dead and dust, all of them, he thought. But I live—and while I live, I rule.

  Shaad Shaabin stepped cautiously into the Quiet Room. Darkist watched as his servant knelt and did proper obeisance to the Cold One in its many forms. The Yentror was pleased.

  Few anymore showed appropriate respect for the sacred ways.

  Shaad Shaabin finally reached Darkist He was taller by half than Darkist, and thin—the child of foreigners Darkist had bought in an earlier time. He was inscrutable and ugly, bred for service. "My master, what would you of me?" Shaad whispered, and gave Darkist the same honor he gave the One.

  "The gods waken. Perhaps you have felt them?" Darkist ran fingers over the cool, smooth curves of the Anger. When Shaad indicated by a gesture that he had not, the Yentror sighed "They creep into my dreams at night, and carve their names in burning omens on the faces of my days. I must find their intentions, for only a fool trusts the interventions of the gods."

  Shaad pressed the palms of his hands together, and touched his fingers to his forehead. The long, narrow hands nearly disappeared under Shaad's deep cowl. "My master wishes to see the future?"

  "Indeed, Shaad. That I wish most of all."

  "Very well."

  Darkist heard the door open again. His lovely Blossom slipped inside, and he smiled. She was the most beautiful of his concubines—her skin copper, her eyes green, her hair black as Shboran anthracite. She moved down the aisles without a moments notice of the gods who towered over her—her eyes were on her Yentror, and her smile was for him. The palazzi was full of magic and forgotten chambers, but there was only one Darkist.

  "Truly you are the fairest flower of Tarin Tseld," Darkist whispered, and the murmurs in the grotto repeated his words in tones of agreement "Come to me, light of my life, and embrace me."

  Blossom did not kneel as Shaad Shaabin had, nor did she acknowledge Shaad's presence in anyway; she was not a servant, but instead was Darkist's favorite pet and as such could be forgiven anything. She kissed the old man and ran her fingers boldly along his body. She was wanton, but delightfully so. Darkist loved her with an old mans passion, and wished again that she had been his when he was a young man. He would, he thought, have used her harder, but he would have enjoyed her more.

  She turned her back on Shaad Shaabin. It was an intentional slight, and one which had always amused the Yentror. Blossom, from the moment she'd been chosen head concubine, had considered herself above all save the lords of the kingdom—and even those she greeted with a saucy wink and a flash of white teeth.

  Exquisite, Darkist thought sadly, as Shaad Shaabin neatly slit her throat.

  Darkist watched the lifeblood spurt from her throat, and watched her sag into Shaad's arms. Her eyes glazed.

  "Place her on the shelf, and we'll begin," the Yentror said.

  As Shaad placed the dying concubine on the shelf of the Quiet Room, and as her blood mingled with the spring water and fed the living stone, the One of the Thousand Faces began to sing. The grotto filled with the deep chords of the earth's voice, rich music informed by madness and bloodlust Blossom could not wholly die in the grotto, of course—there was no escape for the soul in that chamber, not until it achieved eternal communion with the One.

  "Undress her," Darkist said.

  His servant obeyed.

  "Now, cut for me. From there," he indicated the notch below Blossom's breastbone, "to there," pointing to the rounded curve of her belly below her navel.

  Darkist appreciated Shaad for many of his skills, but most of all, he decided, for that one. The man could slice a woman wide open, and never do even the slightest damage to the entrails beneath the skin. When her viscera lay exposed, Darkist stepped forward and prodded around among the loops and coils. He remained conscious of the Cold One's singing as he studied the grey twists of the bowel and the slick, dark mass of liver. The One's song grew dark and foreboding, lacking in triumph and promise. Darkist frowned as he squeezed the bile bag and found it full of stones—always a vile omen. He ran his fingers along the lumpy soulfish, and discovered portents of loss and disaster. Both kidneys and kidneyriders lay in the angle of the betrayer. And both womaneggs were swollen and misshapen and the color of old meat—not smooth and round and pale.

  He checked again. He ran his fingers along each organ, each bit of entrail, his anger growing fiercer with each new portent of despair and failure.

  I gave the Cold One the very best I had. The very best. And this is the thanks I get?

  "No," he snarled He held triumph in his hands. The whole of the world was soon to kneel at his feet—yet the omens spoke of doom for him and his line, and foretold the end of the world as he knew it.

  He would not believe such a thing. He could easier believe Blossom had betrayed him than that the future would turn its back on him.

  He turned to Shaad in annoyance. "This won't do. It won't do at all. I will not accept such nonsense."

  He frowned and studied Blossom, whose body was beginning to dissolve as the One of a Thousand Faces devoured her; expression remained in her eyes to the very end. He turned away at last and glared at Shaad Shaabin.

  "Bring me another concubine."

  Karah pulled the blanket of her bedroll over her head to drown out the steady, puzzling hissing and booming that went on outside her tent. She'd only just fallen asleep when the noise woke her, but once she was awake, it would not let her drift back into oblivion.

  There was a nagging familiarity to the sound…

  And then she placed it. It was the roar of breakers on the beach. But she was miles from beach.

  She knew, suddenly, what that sound meant, and wished with all her heart that she did not. The dead were returning for her. Her eyes flew open. Inside the tent was dark; the night outside was less so, with the moons casting their faint and changeable light.

  I will not stand for another all-night ride with drowned and stinking corpses, she thought.

  As though he'd heard her thought, the blind old man rose through the floor of her tent until he sat, cross-legged and grinning, next to her.

  Karah could see through him. She could, she thought, actually see shapes outside the opening of her tent right through the draped folds of his robe, and through his arms and head. It was somewhat like looking through fog, but there it was.

  Chills spiderwalked over her skin.

  "Fateborn will walk four-legged on the water," the ghostly man said in a high-pitched, sing-song voice. "Fateborn will fly with a hundred blazing wings. Fateborn will dance with the dead, and eat at the table of the gods, will lie with a bastard and bring forth kings."

  She realized she didn't like spirits. Nor prophecies. "Get out of my tent," Karah said. "I don't know anybody named Fateborn, and I don't want to hear anything you have to say."

  The spectral madman stared through her with his glowing white eyes and laughed a chittering laugh. "Fateborn must walk through fire and ice—not burn, not freeze."

  Karah swallowed. "Not something I can help you with," she said. Her voice sounded brave, but her heart felt as if it pounded in her throat.

  He crooked his finger at her.

  "Oh, no," she said and gripped her bedroll. "No, no! I don't want to go back with the de
ad men—"

  The earth beneath her opened up and swallowed her.

  "No!" she yelled. The roar of the ocean filled her ears, and drowned out her voice so even she could not hear it She hung in total darkness. She had the terrible feeling that she was felling, that nothing supported her and that at any instant, she would crash into the unseen, uprushing ground and shatter like glass. The pallid man with his cackled omens was nowhere around her. Nothing was. She could have been the only living creature in the universe.

  Then even sound receded beyond hearing, and the sense of falling passed Now she seemed to float in nothingness, blind and deaf, unable to smell or taste. She tried to move her arms, her legs, tried to touch herself—and found even that impossible. She was uncertain that she had a body.

  Her time in this state seemed infinitely long—and then abruptly it was over. She hurtled at incredible speed out of the darkness into a place of fire and terrible redness. Beneath her, a blazing sea churned and tossed and rolled slow burning waves onto the black banks that held in the fiery liquid. Where she had been surrounded by silence, now noise enveloped her; stentorian, palpable—the weight of it pounded her ears and her gut and made her sick.

  Now she knew she fell, and knew how last, and knew toward what She screamed. She shrieked until her lungs felt they would burst and could not tell she made a sound.

  The noise grew louder, and the light brighter and redder, and the air hotter. She was falling straight into the burning sea. She made swimming motions, tried to angle herself away from the molten lake—it was hopeless.

  She fell endlessly, into the fire and the sulphur stink, and then without warning she was at the surface of the sea and the molten waves swallowed her.

  She thought she would die—of fright, or of the fierce searing pain, or at last of suffocation when she could no longer hold her breath, and the viscous burning fluid filled her mouth and nose. The boiling, blazing stuff burned through her eyes and into her mouth and into her gut; seared her arms and legs; filled her ears and flowed into her skull, leaving nothing but pain as dire and blazing as itself.