A finger tapped Arko’s shoulder. Wat, who had heard the whole exchange, leaned over to whisper, “The new Protector is still feeling threatened in his position. He takes every word as a slight.”
“Good,” Arko said, sipping his wine. “He should.” The room went quiet and for a moment all eyes were on Arko. He shrugged and took another drink.
When the next plate landed, the great brazier burning dimly, he realized the night had passed into day—the cycle was done. Before departing, the eunuchs served walnuts and fresh dates, raw honeycombs stacked on bright-green leaves, hard cakes of emmer and dried apricots mixed with red berries Arko had never seen before, small and tart. It was time for him to stand, to address the grandees of the feast, to show his strength to the men and women who would be his subjects. He motioned to rise, but when the doors opened, he paused, waiting for the final course to be served. The priestesses who had begun the meal carried in the final offering. The women arrived once more in long lines, this time their robes black as night. A cold evening wind flooded the Cenotaph. The same bright-eyed priestess he had noticed before placed another collar on his neck, this one woven with smoke grass, the marble-white flowers blooming in the late night air.
Arko smelled the smoke flower. The Elden Hunt. How long had it been? And now he was an old man, and all his mistakes still lay on his shoulders. But it did not have to be that way. This was another beginning, another rite of passage into a new and different life. He was the First Ray of the Sun, the right hand of the emperor. As good as emperor, in a world without a center. Time to stand, time to speak. He was going to address the drought, make them see their ceremony as the excess it was. This would be the first of many addresses, the seed of something larger. Arko moved the cup to his lips, but it was empty and he dropped it. He motioned to retrieve the cup, but faltered.
Darkness obscured his vision and he fell to the ground.
When Arko regained his sight and his wits, his head was spinning and Wat was gesturing to a servant, urging him to bring water. The boy set two cups on the table, then retreated. The music was gone, the girl had wandered out into the streets, and the murmur of the crowd had vanished. The room was cold, and a night wind whistled through the open doors. Arko saw the great table, the chairs, and a scattering of garlands, but no generals or priests, no Saad, no one but Wat and the servants of the Ray.
“What happened?” he asked, but his adviser’s shaking head and disapproving glances told Arko all he needed to know. “How long was I out?” the Ray asked.
“Long enough for the wellborn and wealthy to lose patience.” Wat tapped the table with a wrinkled finger, his eyes downcast. “Long enough to offend the men and women of our city.”
Arko stood up and sipped the water.
The drink was cold and it made his skin prickle. He felt sobriety return to him. There would be no speech, no opportunity to show his strength. Arko masked his disappointment with a hard cough and a grim smile. He stood straight and walked to the door. He kept his chin up as he exited, but his fingers were trembling.
39
“The San,” said Ott. “They’ve lit fire to the desert scrub.”
Sarra saw an orange glow against the black horizon, columns of gray-black smoke swirling in the air. She’d spent days tracing the old road and all she had found was an ashy corridor and a few abandoned towers. She still did not know what to think about the burnt-out chambers she had found below the first tower. Robbers might have lit the fires, but she doubted that was the case. The road concealed something of importance, she felt it, but she did not yet know its nature. So she continued onward, following the map, searching for the symbol at the end of the road, hoping it would lead to some discovery that would justify the journey.
As morning turned to afternoon, the burning desert scrub blocked out the sun, making it difficult to tell where they were going or how much daylight was left. They searched for landmarks, trying to stick to the old road, but they kept getting lost, taking a wrong turn at an old creek bed, a crack in the earth they mistook for a rut. They pushed on, but the trail grew fainter with each step. When the last traces of the path disappeared, they dismounted. The soldiers cleared rocks and pushed away tumbled boulders, but it was no use—the Amaran Road was lost.
Sarra forced the Harkans to reverse course, to scour their tracks, to see if the path branched or turned, if they had missed a fork or overlooked a trail. Hours passed, the light faded, but they found no trace of the road. The Harkans looked to Sarra, and she told them to halt their search while she considered her next move.
She turned to Ott for advice and found him sitting on a rock. He was bent over, back arched, head pressed awkwardly close to a hand-inked drawing. He turned as she approached, his face wrenched into an unfamiliar look—confusion, she guessed.
“What is it, Ott?”
“The map’s last symbol, House of Stars, there is no precise way to locate it—no landmarks aside from the cliffs and the trail. We know the cliffs’ location, but—”
“The cliffs are as big as the Shambles, it is the road we need.” Sarra had not meant to cut him short, but the revelation was unsettling. This was quickly becoming a pointless endeavor. She could not be caught wandering through the scrub when Barca swept the territory, or worse yet the San. If she were captured, the Mother Priestess of Desouk would fetch a considerable ransom, but Noll would likely be killed. If Ott were captured they would gut him on the spot. The outlanders feared the deformed and would likely think him cursed. She had no desire to leave, but Sarra knew she had little choice if she wanted her priests’ heads to remain intact.
“They are close,” a soldier interrupted, calling to them across the plain. “Those calls…” He paused and Sarra heard a faint whistling. “The outlanders approach, we should—”
“Go. I know,” Sarra said. “Time to leave the Shambles.” She glanced once more at the parchment in Ott’s good hand. The map showed a steep ridge, a place called the Harkan Cliff—a rock wall that had, since the kingdom’s birth, protected Harkana from a northern attack. The slopes above were too steep to scale and the lands beyond too rough to traverse. Her husband had once called this place the end of the world—the end of Harkana, at least. According to the map, the last symbol lay at the base of the cliff, but as Ott had noted, there was no clear indication of where the symbol stood along the cliff—no monument or marker, except the Amaran Road. And Sarra had lost the trail.
Even in this desolate place, the Soleri had gone to great pains to conceal their road.
Ott glanced at the map, his face again cluttered by uncertainty.
“Noll, I’m trying to decipher your notes, what is this?”
The boy’s attention was elsewhere, his eyes distant, but his head jerked around when he heard his name. He glanced at the spot Ott had indicated. “The last symbol. I thought it read House of Stones, House of Stars.”
“Yes, you explained,” Ott said.
“I know, but my translation was incomplete. In Desouk, we worked from a charcoal impression. At this spot,” he pointed, “the rubbing was not made with the proper pressure so I could not tell if the marks alongside the inscription were symbols or just cracks in the ceiling. I am now certain the additional marks were symbols. The second set of symbols adds to the meaning of the first, an annotation. The complete phrase reads: House of Stones, House of Stars. Through darkened stone, Mithra’s light will shine.”
“It could mean anything, any light, any stone,” said Sarra as she motioned to the soldiers, her hand gesturing to the west, toward the setting sun, indicating the direction of Desouk. Her shoulders sagged. “We are out of time. I was willing to risk lives when we had the trail, but without the road, without a path forward, I cannot proceed.”
Ott scratched his head. “Wars aren’t tidy things, Mother. It could be years before the way is clear, maybe longer—are you certain we should leave?”
“The San approach from the west, the Harkan Cliff stands in our path—what
more certainty do you require? We have no options, no way forward, no path to the last marker. At the moment we are fortunate to have an escape route, but if we linger we will lose that as well. A bit of poetry is not sufficient cause for us to proceed. We must go.”
So they went, faster than before, riding hard, unencumbered by the need to search for trails or artifacts. They rode toward Desouk, Sarra’s heart heavy with regret. The Harkans were loud, they drank, happy to be rid of this desolate place, eager to return to the safety of the larger army. War was near and the soldiers knew the Shambles was no place to be stranded when Barca’s riders arrived.
As the caravan prepared for the long ride, Dasche ordered a brief pause to feed the horses. He gathered his men and rode to a crop of dry grass. Sarra led her mount to a low ridge, her horse beating its tail, swatting flies while she studied the cliff.
Stars peeked through the murky sky; the cliffs below were nearly black. Sarra crossed her arms and gazed at the rocky precipice. This was not her first defeat, not the first time she had gone looking for the grain and come back empty-handed. She would continue her search, but the map and its last symbol would remain a mystery, for now.
She turned to go, but Noll’s horse blocked Sarra’s path. The boy pointed to the cliff. Sarra turned and saw it then, shining on the mountain, a confection of light and shadow. Through darkened stone, Mithra’s light will shine. She had mistaken the lights, at first, for low-hanging stars, but quickly realized that the flickering did not come from the stars above but from below the horizon—like a reflection cast upon the cliff. The amber lights pulsed like coals stoked within a fire, shimmering for a hot moment before vanishing.
This was it. Sarra ordered the men to ride. Their grumbles were loud, louder than before. The soldiers looked to Dasche for direction and the man wavered. He stared at the cliff, then his eyes darted toward the setting sun, toward Harkana. Sensing the men’s hesitation, Sarra swatted her mount and rode out. Ott and Noll followed, but no one else. No matter. She was so close now, so close to discovering the last symbol. She rode hard and though the glow faded, she kept her eyes fixed upon the cliff, her gaze never wavering. It was not long before she heard the knock of heavy hooves, one horse, then another, as the Harkans followed.
As they drew closer to the cliff, she saw the flickering lights resolve into a curious arrangement of niches in the stone: a ladder carved into the cliff face. She ordered Dasche to climb and he did so, his footman Taig following, the others waiting at the base of the cliff, protecting the horses.
“There’s a passage,” Dasche shouted when he reached the ledge.
“I want to see it,” Sarra said, and so she climbed, her fingers and feet navigating the tiny niches, scaling the rocky cliff. Head pressed to the stones she saw now that the inner face of each toehold was made from a smoothly polished stone. The rock was translucent, and unlike anything she had ever seen. Sarra guessed the shimmering surface was angled to catch the sun’s last rays. The footholds would glow for a moment each day, then vanish.
The light had nearly died when she reached the ledge; darkness was upon them and they lit torches. The fire, brighter than the failing sunlight, illuminated an opening in the cliff where moments earlier she had seen nothing more than cracked rock. For an instant it appeared as if the passage was just another trick of the light, but Dasche sent his footman forward and the boy disappeared between the rough stones. The ancient builders were said to possess exceptional skill; perhaps they possessed long-forgotten techniques—tricks that could make an entryway appear as if it were just another fold in the ridge. Sarra waited for Ott to scale the cliff, the soldiers half carrying him up the precipice. When he stood once more at her side, she slipped through the curious opening—not an arch or a passage, but a breach, a wound, she thought, as she slid between the carefully hewn stones.
Inside, by the glow of Dasche’s torch, she found an arcade. Dense carvings covered the walls, inscriptions similar to those she had seen in the map chamber. The columned hall opened onto a round-shaped room with a vast dome. Crumbling frescoes covered every column and alcove: a jungle, a forest, a panorama depicting wild beasts of unimaginable shapes—tiny exotic birds, gray-winged kites, a horned panther, the eld. Sarra pressed onward, she was close, she could feel it. There was something here—but what?
In a far alcove, Ott found a spiraling stair. They stumbled down the sand-covered winders, Dasche’s torch extinguishing as cool air whistled from the stair’s depths. Sarra reached the chamber floor in complete darkness, her hand clinging to the rail. Dasche dripped oil on the smoldering torch head, making the flame burst back to life. The room came alive with the crackle of fire. The spiraling stair had deposited Sarra and her party at the center of a round space, a disk encircled by arched openings. Sarra gazed through one after another of the arches. Darkness, nothing but darkness. She glanced from arch to arch. Which opening led forward? Which way should they go?
At the far side, through a distant archway, she saw a faint yellowy light. Sarra stepped toward the light and motioned for the others to follow. They passed room after room, a bridge between, a pit below. Cobwebs filled the passages and the bridge’s wood planks crumbled as she dashed across the narrow channels. One chamber folded into the next, each passage wider than the last. Arrows littered the floor; tables sat overturned atop smashed urns and dented shields. Through archways she glimpsed towers and walls, a city beneath the mountain. Sarra urged the men onward, her heart quick, her breath short.
They drove through a small chamber, then a larger anteroom, another and then another, a long series of rooms that led to progressively larger ones, each one growing in size and grandeur. Gone were the tight corridors and narrow bridges; they were inside a palace. Flower-topped columns flaked in gold formed glistening archways. Alabaster slabs adorned the floor and everywhere there was gold, in the walls and in the columns, in the ceiling and floor—an opulence she had seen only in the Waset, in the Golden Hall, and the temple of Mithra at Solus. Here there was furniture left intact, tapestries and urns. The air was cool and moist, a light wind brushed her face. The sun had nearly set, but there was light ahead, the same illumination she had seen in the archway—a dim light leading her forward. This is it. The map leads here. As the light grew more intense, as Sarra’s eyes adjusted and the walls of the chamber became visible, she saw the same dark soot she had found in the underground passage. The fire must have been more intense here. The damage was hideous; the stones were wrinkled and warped.
Passing beneath a crumbled arch and out into a grand chamber, soaring in height, with a light reflected through long tunnels in the encircling rock—Sarra entered the final chamber. A grand solar, a throne room. Buried within the Empyreal Domain, in the forbidden palace of the gods themselves, there was said to be a chamber of pure light, the grand solar of the god-emperor. Could this be its twin? Was this the hidden palace of the Soleri, the place where they sheltered in times of war? No living man, save for the Ray, had seen the solar, but the room matched the descriptions she had read in the repository. The throne of the god-emperor. A place that only the ancient Soleri could have crafted, its dome so tall and thin that no craftsmen, save the gods of old, would have dared attempt such a structure. So smooth were the walls, so glorious was the height of the structure that Sarra imagined herself standing within a space made from nothing but the sun’s light. A chamber of rays.
In an instant, everything was light and they could see what remained in the chamber.
Ott gasped and the soldiers stepped back, mouths gaping. Only Sarra stood calmly, her face a mask of tranquility. “It’s them,” Taig blurted out, staring at the still, silent figures in the room. “It’s them, just as the old words described.”
Every child in the empire was told: Before time was the Soleri, and after time the Soleri will be. The phrase referred to a story about the Soleri’s creation and destruction—a myth that linked the two events. The story described the birth of the Soleri—how, after
the gods plummeted from Atum, they forged earthly bodies from the same elements as the stars, the same grains that made the rock beneath their feet. They were made from things so primitive, so pristine, that the Soleri could not die, they could only revert to the elements from which they were made—that once the Soleri perished they would become the stones, the stars, the fabric of the world.
Truly this was the House of Stones and Stars.
In the middle of the room stood a ring of glistening statues, figures contorted in grotesque postures, figures that stood as if cowering from some unseen force—fire, she guessed, but what fire could kill a god? The room was burnt black; soot covered the floor. A flame as hot as the sun had scorched this room, as if Mithra Himself had reached out and filled the chamber with His searing light. The statues—which seemed not like statues at all, but like living beings frozen in place—were obsidian in appearance, like the black, glossy stone that came from a volcano—glistening like stars, hard like stones.
This was death. The end. Twelve figures crouched in a circle, arms raised, burnt black, scorched till their forms became rock—twelve monoliths poised in their death throes.
“The Soleri,” Ott said.
Noll gawked.
The Harkans stood silent.
Sarra circled the ashy ring, her heart pounding like a child, like someone who still believed in myths—in things she could not see. She took deep breaths, in and out, her lungs cold with agitation, her skin wet with perspiration, tingling with excitement and confusion. She felt that burning, the feeling she sometimes experienced when she came upon a great idea, a revelation like the one she’d had with Ott below the Desouk Repository when she learned that the sun would not dim.
Soleri Page 27
