The Scholast in the Low Waters Kingdom

by Max Gladstone

  The rest scattered, some sprinting into doors that closed and locked behind them, others retreating down East Gate Road, shedding weapons and armor to gain speed. The cavalry charged after. Bel Ming, elder sister of Mei who first met the Scholast in Crimson Square, was the last left fleeing the charge down East Gate Road. A thrown spear took her through the back of the skull as the last of the cavalry cleared the breached gate. She died instantly, and their hooves broke her.

  Ko drums syncopated. Atop the eastern wall, two kneeling soldiers cut heavy ropes, and a great stone slab swept down to close the eastern gate. Counterweighted locks slammed into place, and retreat was no longer an option for the White Star cavalry. At about this time the lead cavalryman, lance still wet with Bel Ming’s blood, must have seen the barricade that capped East Gate Road, and the soldiers crouched at its summit. Then an arrow took him in the neck.

  All along the avenue rooftops our soldiers and volunteers, heretofore concealed, stood, nocked arrow to bow, drew, and, at the ko drum’s change, loosed. Arrows found chinks in the armor of those mounts that were not horses. More often they found patches of human flesh. Lances tumbled to cobblestones and were crushed by plunging hooves. Some of the cavalry wheeled to escape down side streets, but all the avenues broad enough to admit a steed were blocked with rubble. Again came the ko drum’s triple-beat, and again arrows flew and missiles fell.

  In the watchtower the Princess kept her view, as the sacred song commands. The Scholast, too, watched, though our tea pourers claim she lacked the Princess’s relish in the carnage.

  “They’re surrendering,” the Princess said after many deaths. “You’ve done it. You make war difficult indeed.”

  “But not without cost,” Jane replied. “I will apologize to Bel Mei and Costain Zhang in person for their siblings’ deaths.”

  After the loss of their cavalry, the White Stars offered a bitter day’s fight for the outer wall, with grappling hooks and ladders and siege towers, all repulsed. Meanwhile we gathered up the captive cavalry. Their mounts we corralled in Garden Square, for they were too large and carnivorous to stable with our own horses. Their lances we distributed throughout our army. Their persons we took to the dungeons, save for their commander, who, when the fighting ceased at sunset, we brought under guard to the throne room, to present his formal surrender amid cheers and japes and celebration.

  He was a deathly pale man of broad shoulders and jutting jaw, patches of silver in his dark hair, a cavalryman’s rolling gait. We remarked on his eyes, which lacked epicanthic folds. He knelt before the high seats.

  “I am Colonel Rathland,” he said. “I offer my surrender, and that of my men.”

  So remarkable was his appearance, and so strange his accent, that most of us did not notice the sudden tension in the Scholast’s shoulders when she saw Rathland, or the sharp drawn line her lips became, or the glance she and the cavalryman shared: accusation in her eyes, apology in his.

  The General noticed. He said nothing, though, at first.

  * * *

  The next day’s attack was desultory, confined to conventional siege weapons and attempted scaling of the walls. From the watchtower, the White Star forces seemed much depleted.

  “They will not attack,” the General said, lowering his spyglass. “Not with so few troops. They wish to starve us out. But we can outlast them.”

  Jane took the spyglass from his hand without asking, raised it, and scanned the line. “Long sieges are not in the White Stars’ nature. They cannot trust the paths through which they traveled to reach your city—they may close at any moment. They seize advantage quickly.”

  “Then perhaps this is a rear-guard action, then, to cover their retreat. Their main assault has failed. We should mount a sortie to strike the stragglers from behind, and capture more of their weapons. If we follow them into their own lands, we could seize their territory for our own.” The cavalry lances had done good service against siege towers in the morning’s fighting. “Perhaps even one of those bugs that whine through the air. What weapons! Without you to advise them, our enemies will be defenseless.”

  The Princess watched Jane watch the opposing army.

  “You would go to them, wouldn’t you,” the Princess said. “You would help our enemies against us, if we struck them.”

  “The teacher calls us to love all equally.” Jane handed the spyglass to the Princess Martial. “They are tunneling.”

  * * *

  “Impossible,” said the high diviner when Jane raised the issue in counsel chambers later. “Beneath the soil there is a sheet of rock, and beneath that rock lies deepsteel. Who could tunnel through that?”

  “There are spaces beneath the deepsteel. Your own diviners’ well descends into that darkness.”

  “Do not speak of secrets you do not understand.”

  “I speak of no sacred paths. The White Stars have sensors and probes. They have found other doors to the space beneath the deepsteel.”

  “The prayer mirrors would warn us.”

  “Not if these men can hide from the prayer mirrors.”

  “You suggest blasphemy.”

  “No. I suggest that there are deeper mysteries in the minds of your gods than you have yet touched upon. If I might examine these mirrors—or descend into the pit myself—”

  “You would bring curses and disfavor on us all.”

  “Do not speak to her in that tone of voice,” the Princess Martial said, and rose from her chair.

  The high diviner fell silent, but there was much scorn in the look he directed against the Scholast.

  This, too, the General noted.

  “You have made no friends today,” the Princess Martial said that night, when she paid the Scholast the courtesy of a visit to her chamber. Jane, who had spent the rest of the day in the sub-basements of the castle with her ear pressed to deepsteel, was annotating a diagram of the castle walls. Outside, in the night, White Star fires burned. There were fewer of fires than there had been before. “The General believes you fear we will raid their camp and seize their weapons for ourselves. The high diviner believes you made up this tunneling story to scare us into allowing you down the well. I tried to calm them, but they are angry.”

  “I am not here to make friends,” she said. “And I do not lie.”

  “No,” the Princess said, and her voice was soft. “Lies are particular, suited to the situation. Like art.” Jane made a line on the diagram. The Princess Martial placed a hand on her shoulder, and she stopped drawing. “You follow a harsh teaching. You say you practice universal love—but love is not by nature universal. It lives in particular things. In the curve of a neck. In a scar behind the ear. In the high clear voice with which a woman commands ko drums. In her refusal to bend to fools’ demands.”

  “That depends on the fool,” the Scholast said, and she turned from her work.

  At this point the Princess ordered her attendants into the hall, and closed the door behind them.

  Hours later, night watchmen say they saw Jane descend winding stairs from her tower room, clad in a simple night robe, staff in one hand, lantern in the other. The dungeon keeper conducted her to a damp stone cell, admitted her, and locked the door behind. She, the keeper, retreated out of sight, but not out of hearing, so we have a record of the conversation, though we must supply some visual details from our own imaginations.

  “I thought you might come.” From this we know Colonel Rathland was not sleeping when Jane entered. Perhaps he was nervous, or patient. “My rooms are a bit bare for receiving guests.”

  “What happened, John?”

  He sighed, and sat up on his slat-board bed. “After you left, the White Stars sent their own ambassador. Simple offer. If we joined them, sent a division or two, they’d give us a share of the spoils. In return, no more raids. So here I am.”

  “We could have given you—”

  “What? The secrets you promised, but always kept back for yourselves?”

  “We held nothin
g back. There’s so much we don’t know yet—we don’t even know why everything broke, why the titans fell. That’s why we have to learn—not run around breaking every window we can find.”

  “They don’t even have windows on this rock. So much sand, and no glass.”

  “We saved your kingdom. We gave you peace. I gave you peace.”

  “And then you left, taking our knowledge with you, and we knew you’d be always out there, ready to aid our enemies. All for your universal love, which drives you to betray your friends.”

  “If my friends try to kill people, then yes.”

  “War isn’t just murder. It’s how cities grow into states, how order comes from chaos. I read the histories your people sent. I drew my own conclusions.”

  “War is not just murder,” she said, “but it is murder.”

  “Well, I don’t guess you came to talk ethics.”

  “I’m here to give you a chance. Tell me about the tunnels.”

  “Or what? Thumbscrews? The rack? Do they remember waterboarding here?”

  “I’m sure they can figure out the details.”

  “What a way to treat your friends.”

  She said a short word in an unfamiliar tongue, then, “Goodbye,” and left the cell.

  She was halfway up the winding stair when she met the General coming down.

  The General did not move to let her pass. He held the Merchant Bergam’s translucent weapon, pointed at Jane’s stomach. She turned, but behind her and the jail-keeper there were soldiers, one of whom bore a captured cavalry lance.

  “Set down the staff,” the General said. Jane did.

  “I know about your conversation with that bastard in the cell,” he continued. “You are an idealist and a serial traitor. You want to keep us from growing strong, and steal our secrets, and leave.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Jane said.

  “I ride out tomorrow to smash their rear guard, seize their stockpiles, and make our army the fiercest in the world. And once I’m done, I’ll wring from you every answer you’ve held back, until you have no more to teach us." He motioned with the weapon. "I have tested this device. I assure you I know how it works. So, let us return downstairs.”

  * * *

  Remembering the weapons and tools concealed about Merchant Bergam’s person, they removed the Scholast’s clothing before they threw her into the oubliette.

  She paced the small circumference of her cell. The stone was too smooth to climb. Those who watched her through the slit in the trapdoor noticed her listening to the walls. If her ears were sharp, she may have heard the forces massing in the palace square above: cavalry and infantry, bowmen and pikemen. Dawn had revealed a smaller besieging force than had been camped on the surrounding plane at nightfall. Proof, the General told us, of their withdrawal. We must strike while we still can.

  A girl came to bring the Scholast lunch. As she lowered bread and water by a rope into the cell, Jane shouted up: “Find the Princess Martial! An attack is coming! They’re waiting for you to ride out—then they’ll spring the trap!”

  When the girl did not answer, Jane leapt to grab the rope, but the girl let go of the other end. Jane fell to the stone, spilling water on the dirty ground.

  “Tell her. You’re all in danger. They’ll come out of the walls.”

  “The General has marched already,” the girl said, then closed the trapdoor.

  A long dark silence passed. Seated in the black, nibbling on a crust of bread, with no clock save the beating of her heart and the slowing rhythm of her breath, with no occupation for her eyes save the invention of form in hollow darkness, Jane must have listened.

  She would have heard the alarm, even that far down, and the screams, the running feet. Certainly she heard the clash of steel, at the last, and a dying gurgle overhead.

  Lantern-light lanced into her eyes through the opened trapdoor. She stared up at a human silhouette, blinked stupidly. A thick rope ladder thudded to the dust beside her.

  “Climb,” the Princess Martial said. “We don’t have long.”

  She had brought the Scholast’s robe and staff. Her own armor was splattered with blood, and there was more blood upon her sword.

  “They came from the walls,” the Princess explained as she and the Scholast ran down a subterranean corridor. “I held the throne room, but they’re all through the castle now. A girl, a servant, came to me weeping. She said the prisoner told her to warn me, but she hadn’t, because she didn’t believe. That’s how I learned what had happened.” They ran past White Star bodies in the hall, wearing helmets, desert camouflage, and chitinous armor. All bore the tracks of the Princess Martial’s blade.

  “Did you think I had left you?”

  “The guards claimed you did, in the dead of night,” the Princess said as they ran. “The General said he argued with you while I slept, that you called us bloodthirsty savages.”

  “And you believed him.”

  “I had no proof otherwise. When I woke up, you were gone.”

  They were attacked, then, and fought a bloody retreat into the throne room, where they barred the doors. Flurries of ministers of Left and Right swirled through the chamber, robes tumbling as they waved their arms in futile circles. House Guards piled furniture in front of doors that splintered beneath battering ram blows. As Jane and the Princess Martial forced their way past panicked bureaucrats, the main doors gave, and White Star soldiers stormed up the furniture barricades to meet defenders steel to steel.

  The Princess Martial ran three steps to help before she realized Jane had not followed her. The Scholast paced around the edge of the diviners’ well, staring down into the black.

  “Jane!”

  “Your sword won’t help. There are too many of them. We need what’s down here.” She scribed strange symbols with her finger on the well’s inner rim. Light trailed her fingertip.

  “The diviners use a pulley to go down that well. Takes them a day to reach the bottom.”

  Jane finished her circle, and stepped up onto the well’s rim. “We can do it faster. Come on. I need you.”

  The defenders fell back, and now the west doors broke open too.

  “Now, dammit! What good’s this friendship of yours if you don’t trust me? Take my hand.”

  She did.

  They jumped together.

  * * *

  Now our chronicle touches on the sacred. We would not dare transcribe mysteries of faith in these scant pages, but our mandate requires we record the tale complete. Caught between faith and duty, we offer this caution: a single witness testifies to these events. The diviners claim each petitioner finds her own meaning in the well, each dreamer his own dream. As such, the Princess Martial’s description of her descent and what she found there cannot be taken as a betrayal of the secrets of faith—she saw but one piece of the entire.

  They fell fast, much faster than a stone would have fallen, and smoothly too. They did not tumble. Wind did not whip their hair or robes.

  Just when the Princess thought they might fall forever, her boots settled against a slick, dry surface, softly, as if a great gentle hand had placed her there, for all the immense speed of their descent.

  The Princess turned in circles with her blade drawn. Vague outlines of chairs and platforms and vertical surfaces suggested that she stood in a room much larger than the circumference of the well, a room of thrones and prayer mirrors. She could see, though there were no lanterns here, and the shadows were strange, like those a bonfire casts on trees.

  She realized then that the chamber was lit from below.

  She looked down through the transparent floor, and down, and deeper down again.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. Her voice sounded small to her.

  “Those are the first words of the wise,” the Scholast said.

  “I see stars, beneath us.”

  “Yes.” The Scholast scraped at the floor with her staff.

  “But the stars are—not normal."


  "No."

  "There is a darkness at their heart, ringed with light. I do not understand.”

  “This is what my order knows: beneath your world lies a hungry shadow. The shadow eats dust, of which there is a great deal here. But the shadow spins, too, so it can only eat dust at its top and bottom, for reasons that would take too long to explain. As dust approaches the shadow, it gets closer together, and speeds up. Speed and nearness create heat, so a fountain of fire rises from each of that void’s poles.”

  “That is the Spike. That—fountain of fire.”

  “The Spike is what you call it, yes, the part of it that shines in your sky some nights. The whole is longer, brighter, more dangerous than the tip you see. It boils matter into possibility. Your world was built to harvest that fire, and put it to use.”

  “My world?”

  “The lattice you see there, the thin silver lines in the dark. Most of it is too far away to see.”

  The Princess Martial judged the lattice, and compared it to what she knew of geography. “How big?”

  “Very.” The Scholast scraped faster. “The whole’s much larger than your habitat. Now, your orbit’s shifted since the Crash, so you’re not harvesting much power, but there should be enough for what I have in mind.”

  Jane struck the ground with her staff, and spoke in a tongue the Princess Martial did not recognize.

  Nothing happened.

  Screams filtered a long way down from the throne room above.

  Jane spoke again, different words.

  The answer, when it came, deafened. Prayer mirrors, larger than any the Princess had ever seen, flared with cold blue light all around.

  A red box took shape in the air before the Princess, as if made of fireflies.

  “The gods want to meet you,” Jane said. “I am not part of this place, and they must know I have your approval for what I wish to do.”

  The Princess placed her hand within the box. She felt a gentle flutter against her skin, and the box turned green.