City of Blades

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “That’s it, huh?” says Mulaghesh.

  “That’s it,” says Signe.

  “Did you ever go in there?”

  Signe shakes her head. “We came near it, looked at it, but…we never stepped off the stairs. It was too wrong. One boy was bold enough to shout to it, to call the old man out—we ran away, terrified, and the boy came down later, saying he saw nothing. Do you really think this is the place Choudhry was talking about?”

  “I guess.”

  “And…are you going in there?”

  Mulaghesh stares at the dome. She can feel it: there is a mind in there, something watching her in the darkness. She imagines a soft sigh from the depths of the dome, a gentle exhalation.

  “I am,” she says. “I don’t like it, but I am. Are you?”

  Signe pauses. Then she shakes her head and says, “Not my ship, not my rats.”

  “That must be a Dreyling turn of phrase, because that doesn’t make a damn bit of sense to me.”

  “I am saying this is your mission, General, not mine. I’ll be more than happy to keep watch.”

  Mulaghesh walks through the gate. “Fair enough. I don’t blame you.” She stands before the entry to the dome, rifling held ready. “If I don’t come out in thirty minutes,” she says, “throw a grenade in.”

  “What?” says Signe, startled. “And kill you?”

  “If I’m not out in thirty minutes, then it’s likely I’m already dead,” she says. “And I don’t intend to let this damned place live longer than me.” Then she raises her rifling, stoops down low, and steps into the shadows.

  ***

  There’s a moment of darkness. Then shafts of light filter through the gloom above. She realizes she’s seeing the moonlight shining through the gaps in all the thousands of blades hammered together above, but the color of the light is wrong: it’s dull and yellowed, like it’s shining from the wrong sky. She remembers how things looked during the Battle of Bulikov, when the Divinity appeared and forced its reality onto the city, changing the very sky: this is much the same, she finds—not true light but a crude approximation of it. It is as if the sky above this dome is different from the one she just left.

  The light curls, coils, churns above her head. Then she takes a breath and realizes the dome is full of smoke.

  The acrid tang unravels in her lungs and she’s overtaken with violent coughing. It’s a reek of a sort that she’s never smelled before, something oily and woody and putrefied. She blinks tears from her eyes, which are slowly adjusting to the darkness.

  The floor of the dome is made of shields hammered flat, just like the blades that form the roof. Across the gloom, at the very end of the dome—she finds herself wondering, How big is this place?—she sees there is a human form sitting beside what looks like a pale, silvery shrub.

  He’s real, thinks Mulaghesh, though she finds it hard to believe it. He’s really real.

  The man is masked in shadow, but he appears to be holding an ornate pipe, long and white like a piece of coral. The pipe curls up from his crossed legs and over his shoulders and around to his mouth, winding around his neck like a noose. She watches as the shadowy figure sucks at it. The bowl in his lap flares a soft orange. Then he exhales an absolute thundercloud of roiling, reeking smoke.

  “I take it you’re the man atop the Tooth,” Mulaghesh calls to him.

  If this means anything he doesn’t show it. He just takes another huge draw from his pipe, leans back, and sends a stream of smoke up to the ceiling.

  Yet this time his face happens to catch one of the rays of light.

  She freezes, and thinks: Holy hells. He’s a corpse.

  She watches as he lowers his head, the ray of light sliding across his features. His skin is gnarled and papery, covered with splotches of discolorations like mold blooming in the walls of an old house. His eyes are wide and white and blind, and his eye sockets and cheeks are so sunken and hollow it’s like he hasn’t eaten in…Well. Maybe ever. He is dressed in wraps of thin, wispy rags, and he seems incapable of completely shutting his mouth, so his narrow, blackened teeth are always visible, like the grin of a corpse.

  Mulaghesh tightens her grip on her rifling. He doesn’t exactly look like a physical powerhouse, but he must be Divine, which means appearances can be deceiving.

  She takes a step forward. “Who are you?”

  He stares ahead blindly. The only sign that he heard is the slightest twitch of his head. Then a voice rattles up from his skinny chest, a voice like rocks and gravel being washed ashore.

  “I,” he says slowly, “am not a who.” Each word he speaks makes a fog of coiling smoke.

  “Okay,” says Mulaghesh slowly. “Then…what are you?”

  “I am memory,” says the man. He sucks at his pipe and exhales again.

  “What do you mean, you’re memory?”

  “I mean,” he says, “I am that which remembers.”

  “Okay. So you just…remember things?”

  He sucks his pipe but doesn’t bother to answer.

  “What kind of things?”

  “My memory encompasses,” he says, “all the things that I remember.”

  Mulaghesh frowns. His circular answers suggest a lack of basic human intelligence, or maybe she’s not asking the right questions. “How…How did you come to be here?”

  There’s a pause. Then he smacks his lips and says in a measured chant, “I am the 374th memory vessel of the Empress of Graves, Maiden of Steel, Devourer of Children, Queen of Grief, She Who Clove the Earth in Twain. Upon this spot I took the place of the 373rd vessel, broke a leaf from the Tree of Memory, and inhaled all the knowledge of what the Great Mother had promised. Within me is the memory of all who have been lost, sacrificed, cut down. I contain villages, armies, generations. I remember the slain and the dead, the victorious and the defeated. I am memory.”

  Mulaghesh glances at the silvery little shrub beside him. “Tree of Memory?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does that mean? What is the Tree of Memory?”

  Again he begins to chant: “In honor of Her people swearing fealty to Her, the Great Mother stabbed a single arrow into the stone, and it flowered and became a great tree, a tree whose roots lie under all the stones of this land.” He gestures to the tiny, silvery shrub with one gnarled hand. “The tree is fed by the blood of the people, by their conflict and their sacrifice, and the memory of all that they have done flows through its vessels—and into me,” he says, smoke blooming from his lips, “into this thing I am, this creature of flesh and bone. I am the final vessel of all these memories. I am the pool fed by the many mountain streams.”

  Mulaghesh looks over his bony wrists, his painfully thin ankles. “How…How long have you been here?”

  He cocks his head, like he has to think about it. “I have, in my time here, borne witness to ninety-six winters.”

  “How is that possible?” asks Mulaghesh softly.

  “I am memory,” he says. Smoke curls up around his head like a ghastly crown. “I need nothing. All I must do is remember. Which I do.”

  “But this is all…miraculous, isn’t it?” asks Mulaghesh. “Isn’t Voortya dead?”

  Silence. Then: “The Great Mother is gone from this world. This I remember.”

  “Then how are you still here?”

  A pause, as if he’s accessing some hidden part of himself. “Pass from this world,” he says finally, “and your agreements will still exist. Your contracts and oaths and debts will carry on. Promises were made. And some of those promises are being kept. I am here to remember the dead. When those oaths are fulfilled, I shall fade also.” He shudders a bit. “I will finally pass on, out of this room, into the light. Into the light…Into the air of the world I once knew…” He closes his eyes.

  Mulaghesh suppresses a shiver. Enough of this. “There was a woman who came before me,” she says. “She asked about a ritual. I think it was a ritual to cross over to the afterlife, to the…to the City of Blades. Is t
his so?”

  “I remember this.”

  “I need to know what you told her.”

  A gray, dry tongue wriggles up from the depths of his mouth and runs over his tiny, discolored teeth. Mulaghesh nearly gags in disgust.

  “What did you tell her?” she asks. “How can I get to the City of Blades?”

  He reaches over to the tree, and pinches off one thin, silvery leaf. He places it in the bowl of his pipe, and takes a drag—yet then he freezes, as if an idea has struck him. His blank white eyes widen, and he turns to look at her—the first time she feels he’s actually looked at her yet, focusing on her with all of his energy.

  He stares at her, then softly says, “I…I remember you.”

  “You what?”

  “I remember you,” he says. He takes another puff from the pipe, and this seems to fuel his memory. “Young and bright and filled with cold anger. I remember you. You swept across the land like a screaming storm. In one hand you carried fury and in the other you carried slaughter.”

  Mulaghesh’s skin goes cold. “What are you talking about?”

  “War incarnate,” he whispers. “Battle made flesh. This is how I remember you. This is how I remember you as you shed blood in the lands east of here. That blood took a long journey to reach the taproots of the silver tree….But when it did, you bloomed in my mind like the brightest of stars. How the Great Mother would have loved to have an arrow such as you in her quiver. What a prize you would have been.”

  Mulaghesh fights the urge to retch. The idea of this thing—she can’t think of it as a man, by any means—knowing what she did during the Yellow March, and approving of it, is utterly revolting to her. “Shut your mouth! I didn’t ask about that!”

  He sucks on his pipe and watches her with a strangely critical gaze. “You wish to find the City of Blades,” he says. “I remember this. Why?”

  “To follow the woman who came here before.”

  He shakes his head. “No. No, that is not so. I have watched your journey from the west countries. I remember your coming; I remember how you battled your way to me. You have shed blood upon my mountains, upon my country. And when you did, I glimpsed your secret heart.” He shuts his eyes. “I remember…I remember…” His eyes snap back open. “You wish to find the Victorious Army there, upon the white shores of the City of Blades. You mean to find them, and stop them, halt their final war.”

  Mulaghesh does not speak.

  “Why?” he asks. His tone is that of someone politely puzzled.

  “Wh-Why?” says Mulaghesh. “Why would I want to stop an army from destroying the world? That’s your question?”

  “You speak,” he says, “as if they were an aberration. A violation. As if warfare was a passing phenomenon.”

  “I know I don’t want it on my damned doorstep!”

  He shakes his head. “But this is wrong. Warfare is light. Warfare and conflict are the energies with which this world functions. To claim otherwise is to claim your very veins are not filled with blood, to claim that your heart is still and silent. You knew this once. Once in the hills of this country you understood that to wage war was to be alive, to shed blood was to bask in the light of the sun. Why would you forget this? Why would you fight them and not join them?”

  “Join them?” says Mulaghesh, appalled. “Join the very soldiers who enslaved my people?”

  “Do you not enslave people now?” asks the man. “Chains are forged of many strange metals. Poverty is one. Fear, another. Ritual and custom are yet more. All actions are forms of slavery, methods of forcing people to do what they deeply wish not to do. Has not your nation conditioned this world to accept its subservience? When you wear your uniform and walk through these lands, do the people here not feel a terrified urge to bend their knees and bow their heads?”

  “We didn’t leave any fucking mass graves in our wake!” snarls Mulaghesh. “We didn’t torment and slaughter and brutalize people to get what we needed!”

  “Are you so sure? You burned down homes in the night, and families perished in the flames. I remember. And now you look back, full of guilt, and say, ‘It was war, and I was wrong.’ ” He leans forward, his ancient face burning with intensity. “But this is a lie. You saw light. And now, when you have returned to the darkness, you wish to convince yourself the light was never there at all. Yet it remains. You cannot erase what is written upon the hearts of humanity. Even if the Great Mother had never walked among us, you would still know this.”

  Mulaghesh feels tears spilling down her cheeks. “Times,” she says furiously, “have changed. I have changed. Soldiers no longer devote their lives to slaughter and conquest.”

  “You are wrong,” says the man. His voice is low and resonant. The metal walls of the dome, all the knives and swords and spears, all seem to vibrate with each of his words. “Your rulers and their propaganda have sold you this watered-down conceit of war, of a warrior yoked to the whims of civilization. Yet for all their self-professed civility, your rulers will gladly spend a soldier’s life to better aid their posturing, to keep the cost of a crude good low. They will send the children of others off to die and only think upon it later to grandly and loudly memorialize them, lauding their great sacrifice. Civilization is but the adoption of this cowardly method of murder.”

  The smoke is so thick about her it’s hard for her to see him. “Only a savage would think of peace that way!”

  “No. It is the truth. And you know it. You were so much more honest when you slaughtered your own.”

  Mulaghesh freezes. The smoke hangs still in the air. The old man slowly blinks his blank white eyes, and sucks at his pipe.

  “What did you say?” whispers Mulaghesh.

  “You know what I said,” says the man calmly. “Once those under your command did not wish to obey. And when that happened, you did what was necess—”

  The rifling is on her shoulder and she’s striding forward, leaping through the smoke. The old man doesn’t grunt or make a sound as the muzzle of the rifling strikes his forehead, pushing him back against the wall of knives.

  Mulaghesh leans close. “Keep talking,” she whispers. “Keep talking to me, old man, and we’ll see if I can spill the waters of your memory clean out of your fucking head.”

  “You see what you are now,” he says serenely. “You see where your instincts lead you. Why do you deny what you are?”

  “Tell me the damned ritual! Tell me how to get to the City of Blades!”

  “The ritual? Why, you know it. You know the Window to the White Shores.”

  “But that won’t let me cross over!”

  “But you know the missing element that will augment it,” says the old man. “You’ve spilled so much of it in your time, and it flows through your own veins—the blood of a killer. What else?”

  Mulaghesh pushes slightly harder on his head. “What do you mean? And if you speak another riddle then I swear, you will fucking regret it.”

  “You saw a statue, once,” hisses the man. “A statue of the Great Mother, seated before a wide cauldron. Were you to fill this cauldron with seawater and the blood of a killer, enough blood to fill a goat’s bladder, and then perform the Window to the White Shores at the base of the cauldron, then you would be able to pass through—through the sea, through the world, and into the lands of the dead.”

  Mulaghesh thinks back. She remembers that when she saw the City of Blades it was in the yard of statues, before the giant white statue of Voortya…and at her feet was what looked like a giant bathtub.

  “The living essence of a life of death,” she says, “used to push a living person into the land of the dead.” She takes a step back, releasing him. “Ironic.”

  The old man blinks his wide, blind eyes. “You think you are invading. You think you are assaulting enemy grounds. But you are not. You are going home. This life beyond death is one you deserve.”

  “Fuck you,” says Mulaghesh. “Tell me about the swords, the sentinels’ swords. Someone’s
found them and learned how to make them—who?”

  “This I do not know,” he says quietly. “I do not know these things.”

  “Someone’s been on this island robbing your damned sacred graves! They must have come to you!”

  “I do not remember them,” says the man. “I do not have these memories.”

  “Someone fucking resurrected Saint Zhurgut! Don’t tell me you don’t know who was behind that!”

  “I remember those who have shed blood,” says the man. “I remember the dead. I remember the battle, the victors, the defeated. I remember what matters. All else is trivia.”

  “Someone is trying to bring about the Night of the Sea of Swords! How is it going to happen? How does it work?”

  “Work? As if it were some device, some machine? What you describe is inevitable. Ask why the stars dance in the sky, ask why water flows downhill. Ask the mechanics behind that.” He lowers his eyelids. “She promised it will happen. And thus, it will happen. This is the way of the world.”

  “I’ll kill you, damn it!” cries Mulaghesh, raising the rifle. “I’ll do it if you don’t answer me!”

  “If I could die,” says the man, “I would let you. I do not fear death. But you are in my world, and this place will not allow me to die.”

  “I bet I can hurt you th—”

  He shakes his head. “You think you have forced the truth from me. But you are wrong—I wish for you to see the City of Blades again, for you will see truth there. Truth about the world, and your secret heart. Now go—and see.” He opens his mouth wide, and a hot cloud of acrid smoke comes pouring out. It’s so much that Mulaghesh has to stumble out, covering her eyes with the crook of her arm. She spies a hint of flickering moonlight, goes reeling toward it, and takes a deep grateful breath when she finds herself in clear air.