The Core

by Peter V. Brett

  Briar shoved off and jumped in, no less nimble even without Ashia’s training. She’d been teaching him sharusahk and he took to it quickly, but it was astounding how much the night had taught the boy.

  He took the oars and began to pull, falling into an easy rhythm that sent them gliding smoothly through the water. Ashia knew there were no demons swimming beneath the morning sun, but still she cast a wary eye over the side, praising Everam that Briar kept the shoreline in sight.

  “Is it far?” she asked. Above them, the monastery loomed atop the cliff, but they were far enough off and close enough to shore that the small craft would be difficult to spot.

  Briar shook his head. “Almost there. Gonna get our feet wet the rest of the way.”

  Ashia looked at him curiously but did not let her face betray the fear in her heart as Briar dropped an anchor in deep water.

  “This way.” Briar leapt from the boat into the water, and Ashia’s breath caught. Did he expect them to swim all the way to shore?

  But Briar did not sink as he struck the water. It splashed around his ankles, but he remained standing.

  “What magic is this?” Ashia asked.

  “Ent magic,” Briar said. “Nowhere to dock in close to the cave. Tenders built crannogs to get to deep water. Know where to step, you can walk from here to shore. If not…” He took his spear and thrust it into the water just a few inches from where he stood, sinking the shaft—taller than he was—all the way into the water. “Step only where I step.”

  Ashia nodded, keeping her breathing steady and letting fear pass over her as she pulled off her boots and followed after Briar. The water was cold, but there was firm footing beneath, a stone pathway hidden under the dark liquid. Briar moved quickly along and she kept pace, watching closely to mirror his steps precisely. A single misstep could send her plunging into the water with Kaji on her back.

  It was a twisting route meant to send pursuers into the water, but Briar did not hesitate in his steps, and the cliff approached rapidly. There was no shore to speak of, just sheer rock, jagged with patches of dirt and scrub. Briar leapt, catching a snag with his fingertips and hauling himself up into a shadowed crevasse.

  Ashia followed and saw that the crevasse was deeper than it appeared from the water. Inside they made a steep climb into darkness. It might have been a natural formation but for the soft glow of protective wards cut into the tunnel walls.

  She caught up to Briar at the rear of the tunnel, blocked by a heavy, warded stone. Briar put his back to it and heaved. Even with his considerable strength it was slow to move. Ashia lent her arms to the task, shifting the stone away. It opened into a larger cave, raw and natural, with no wards on the rock face.

  They moved the heavy stone back into place, and Ashia had to admit it fit the cave wall so perfectly she might never have known it was not a natural formation.

  It was daytime, but the dark tunnel made her wary. She slipped the glass shafts of her short spears from Kaji’s pack, extending the blades with flicks of her wrists. She began to sing the Song of Waning, searching in Everam’s light for alagai as Briar led the way upward.

  —

  “Breakfast, khaffit!” Hasik cried, opening the door with a slam.

  Abban jolted, slamming his face on the hard bench as Hasik strode into the room, tray in hand.

  “Where is Dawn?” Abban shook sleep from his head, pushing to sit up.

  Hasik threw something that struck Abban’s chest with a wet smack. He caught it instinctively, looking down to see a bloodied scalp, the locks of gray-streaked hair unmistakable.

  Dawn’s.

  Abban cast the thing to the ground in horror, and Hasik threw back his head, roaring with laughter.

  “Your chin friend did not cling to life as desperately as you, khaffit,” Hasik said. “I found her hanging from the ceiling beam in her cell.”

  Abban looked sadly at the scalp. Everam, giver of life and light, I have never been your most faithful servant, but neither am I an alagai like this one. Give me the power of life and death over him, even for an instant, and I will never again be such a fool as to let him live.

  But if Everam were listening, He gave no sign. “Come, khaffit,” Hasik beckoned. “Your breakfast will get cold.”

  “I am surprised you brought the scalp yourself.” Abban tried to sound nonchalant as his stomach churned. “The Hasik I know would have sent her daughter in with it.”

  “I think I will leave her daughter be, for now,” Hasik said.

  Abban raised an eyebrow. “Growing soft?”

  Hasik chuckled, pulling his small hammer from his belt. “Of course not. I simply think you should return to bearing your own punishment for a time.”

  Abban felt his face go cold. “Eunuch Ka. If you spare me I will…”

  “Now you beg and bargain again!” Hasik laughed. “Oh, khaffit, how I have missed this! Whatever flicker of emotion you had for the chin woman, it was not worth offering bribes for!”

  Abban swallowed. The words bit hard, but he could not deny the truth of them. He fancied himself better than Hasik, but was he truly?

  Hasik lifted the hammer. “So, khaffit. What can you offer me, in exchange for your thumb?”

  “I…” Abban hesitated. What indeed? He had nothing, trapped in this tiny cell. His fortune was with Jamere in Krasia, with Shamavah in the Hollow. And even if he could access it, what in Ala might appease this man, who only truly felt alive while Abban screamed.

  “Come, khaffit, you must play the game.” Hasik grabbed Abban’s wrist, pinning it to the table with an iron grip as the little hammer twirled in his fingers.

  “Please!” Abban squealed. His feet, his legs, he could endure. But what was he without his hands? “If…you spare my hands, I will tell you the location of the Deliverer’s electrum mine.”

  Hasik looked up. “You lie.”

  Abban shook his head. “I was the one who first brought knowledge of the sacred metal to Ahmann, Hasik. The mine is remote, with limited guards. Your Eunuchs could take the place easily, and hold its canyon indefinitely with a small number of warriors.”

  Hasik sat up, putting the hammer back on the table. Abban felt a burst of hope. Electrum weapons could make the Eunuchs a dominant force in the wetlands. “How far?”

  “Perhaps a fortnight of riding.” Abban shrugged as if the journey were inconsequential.

  Hasik spat. “Too far to easily trust the truth of your words. Too far to send warriors on the promises of a khaffit desperate to keep his fingers.”

  “Kill me, if I am lying.”

  Hasik eased again. “That is new.”

  “This is not some honeyed dissembling, Hasik,” Abban said. “If I cannot buy my way from torture with chin slaves, then I will do it in precious metal.”

  Hasik studied Abban, tapping the hammer lightly against his jaw. He tilted his head as if listening to an invisible advisor. At last he stood, his breakfast of steamed shellfish forgotten. “Bring the khaffit’s chair!”

  “I can draw a map—” Abban was cut off as Hasik hauled him up and shoved him into the wheeled chair. Something in the warrior’s eyes frightened him even more than the hammer.

  “Where are we—” This time his words were cut off as Hasik cuffed him on the back of the head.

  “Silence,” the warrior growled. “There is another way to test the truth of your words.”

  Abban wondered if he’d made a terrible mistake, but knew better than to continue his protests. He was wheeled out of the cell and through the halls to a guarded door. There, they abandoned the chair, Hasik throwing Abban over his shoulder like a sack of grain. The door opened into a stair that looked like a pit to the abyss, descending deep into the catacombs beneath the monastery.

  At last they reached the bottom, where a heavy door was guarded by a number of Eunuchs. They stood sharply to attention as Hasik and Abban entered the chamber, and readied spears as they pulled open the door as if expecting all the abyss to spew forth. />
  The guards looked at Abban warily, but they said nothing as Hasik carried him through. On the far side, dim light from the guard chamber showed man-made supports and flooring giving way to natural tunnel formations. There had been wards on the supports and floor, but they were broken and scuffed. Then the guards closed the door behind them, and they were left in darkness.

  “Hasik,” Abban began.

  “I’ve heard enough of your words these past months, khaffit.” The gem on Hasik’s turban glowed softly, granting him sight in the dark, but Abban was swallowed by the black, able to see no more than his captor’s dimly lit face. “Now it is time for you to listen.”

  “I’m listening,” he said, when the silence went on too long for him to bear.

  “Not to me.” Hasik dropped Abban heavily to the hard stone floor. “To the true master here.”

  “And that is?” Abban asked.

  In response, a light ward flared to life on the chamber ceiling. Abban squinted in the glare, seeing there was another figure standing right in front of them.

  He was even more afraid when he realized it was himself. “Everam preserve us!”

  Not a true reflection—this Abban was fit, pacing the room on two feet. It was what Abban might have been, if he hadn’t fallen from the Maze walls.

  Not-Abban circled, looking at him like a cat eyeing a mouse. Abban began to shake, feeling himself break into sweat. He lifted a hand to draw a ward in the air.

  Hasik slapped the hand down. “Do that again, khaffit, and I will cut off your arm. The master has no need of your body. Only your mind.”

  “Master?” Abban looked up, seeing another demon blur into sight, silhouetted in the shadowy chamber.

  “Alagai Ka.” Hasik dropped to his knees, putting his forehead to the floor as the demon stepped into the light.

  The demon was small, shorter even than Abban, with spindly arms and legs and a torso that looked like coal-black leather pulled tight over a skeleton. Its huge, conical head was ringed above its giant black eyes by a crown of vestigial horns.

  The knobbed flesh of the demon’s cranium pulsed.

  Not-Abban shifted, melting away like a water reflection after a stone was cast in the pool. It re-formed a moment later as Hasik—or as Hasik imagined himself before the cutting. The not-Hasik was naked, manhood swinging between his legs like a child’s arm.

  “I don’t think you have it quite right,” Abban noted. “Hasik’s limp spear was far less impressive when my wives and daughters held him down and cut it from him.”

  Hasik glared at him, but as Abban expected, he did not dare rise unbidden.

  “You speak boldly, khaffit,” not-Hasik said, mimicking the real Hasik’s voice and mannerisms with eerie perfection.

  “What does it matter?” Abban laughed, surprised to find his fear and panic fading. This was not a battle that required his body, only his wits. He looked at not-Hasik, speaking as if to the genuine article. “If I am here, Hasik, it is because your master has need of me, and my fate is no longer in your hands.”

  “Do not be so sure, khaffit,” not-Hasik growled. “You may be returned to my care when the master is done with you.”

  “May,” Abban noted.

  “If he does not consume your mind in the flesh after he has stolen your thoughts,” not-Hasik agreed with a smile.

  Abban shrugged. “It does not matter anymore, Hasik. You may dream of being master, but we both know you have never been more than a dog. I saw it in sharaj with the drillmasters and Khevat. Nightfather Jesan. Ahmann. When there’s a larger cock in the room, you’ve no ambition past sating your own lusts.”

  “You lie, khaffit!” Not-Hasik thrust his chin at him, but Abban did not flinch. “I am loyal to Alagai Ka, and will be rewarded.”

  Abban met his gaze. “Rewarded with what? Bottom feeders and pig? Me to torture? A new spear between your legs? You have always lacked imagination, Hasik.”

  The real article would have struck him for such words, but the mimic rippled again, turning back into not-Abban. “What would Mother say, to hear you antagonizing the customer before the bargaining begins?”

  “You obviously know very little about my mother,” Abban said.

  The mimic demon rippled again, taking the form of Abban’s aged mother, Omara. Unlike not-Hasik and not-Abban, this illusion was perfect, down to the wrinkles about her eyes and the perfume she favored.

  “Be proud, my son. You are worth more than any Sharum dog.” When she spoke, it was with Omara’s voice, her gestures. Her inflection.

  But Omara was a thousand miles away, and Abban had made sure Hasik had never been near the woman. How could the demon mimic her so perfectly?

  And then he felt it, the demon’s will, tingling through his mind. He wasn’t here to be questioned with words. The interrogation had already begun.

  But now that he sensed the demon’s will, the outside world fell away as he focused inward. He followed the demon into his memories, visions from his past that were so vivid he felt he was living them all over again. Being pulled from Omara’s arms and thrust into sharaj. The beating Hasik had given him that day, and in the days that followed. The humiliation. The pain.

  These the demon seemed to drink like couzi, giving off the mental equivalent of a contented sigh.

  It was an unspeakable violation, and Abban shoved at the alagai’s will, trying to drive it from his mind.

  Alagai Ka barely noticed, slapping his clumsy resistance aside as easily as Hasik did his return blows when they were children.

  Again the demon plunged him into memory, this time of the fall from the wall that left him with legs shattered on the floor of the Maze. The humiliations that followed, as his body failed him, and he failed his only friend time and again, forcing Ahmann to choose between friendship and duty until he could do it no longer.

  What could have been, if Abban had not fallen? Might Ahmann be at his side even now? If he had never returned to the bazaar, never given the Par’chin the map…

  Suddenly the swirling will seemed to stiffen in his mind, beginning to coalesce as the demon focused sharply on these memories, pulling so hard at Abban’s recollections that he felt dizzied. His body twitched spasmodically as the alagai drew forth every scent and sound, every texture from his memories of the Par’chin.

  Abban knew then this meeting was about more than just the electrum mine. It was about something infinitely more dangerous—for him, and all Ala.

  The demon wanted to know about Ahmann. It wanted to know about the Par’chin. And somewhere in his soul—if there was such a thing—Abban knew that he must not allow it, even if it meant his own life.

  The thought freed him as he gathered his will. Abban loved his wives and children, loved his wealth and comforts, but none of it more than his own life. If he was willing to sacrifice that on the bargaining table, then there was no reason to fight with less than everything he had.

  In that moment, he understood Ahmann and the Par’chin in a way he never had before.

  Oh, my friends, how I have wronged you. You were right all along.

  And with that last thought, Abban threw his will against the alien presence in his mind.

  The demon was not prepared for his renewed assault. It thought him weak, cowed. Abban burst through its defenses, jarring it from his memories. Then, slowly, he began to force the demon’s will from his body.

  The creature looked at him in surprise. Not the mimic, still wearing Omara’s form, but the alagai prince itself. It tilted its head and regarded him with those huge eyes, puzzled as if an ant should presume to step upon him.

  Abban saw himself reflected in those giant black eyes, body shaking, drool running from his mouth, but none of that mattered. Only the demon, and its will.

  What do you want? his mind demanded, and suddenly he was following the creature as it withdrew into itself.

  In its alien mind he saw her, Alagai’ting Ka, the Mother of Demons. He heard her lowing, smelled the hormones in
the moist, hot air. Eggs were spilling from her, and soon, queens. Queens that would feed in a frenzy after hatching, growing rapidly in size and power.

  They needed humans, close at hand, in numbers, to sate their needs.

  Like thousands of fools trapped in a monastery.

  All of the walled cities. They were not safeholds. They were larders.

  The demon struck back, and Abban realized he had become distracted by the new knowledge. He was ejected from its mind, but the battle was not over. There, in the space between them, their wills wrestled for advantage.

  Abban understood his adversary now. Like a mark in the bazaar, he read the demon’s desires. And when you knew what the customer wanted—needed—it was a simple thing to reel them in and make the sale.

  The demon struggled, no simple mark. It knew his weaknesses as well, and its will was enormous.

  But Abban relished a tough sale.

  The struggle wore on, and Abban found himself losing ground. The demon’s will matched him move for move. Abban had nothing to lose, but the demon had everything to gain. More, it had skill at mental combat, the rules of which Abban was only just beginning to grasp. Slowly, inexorably, the demon dominated the space between them, forcing Abban’s will back into his body.

  It did not even need to defeat him. If Abban allowed it the slightest opening, the demon would signal Hasik or the mimic to choke Abban unconscious, and then work its will on his insensate mind.

  But then Abban heard a familiar song, and he realized that neither did he need to defeat the demon, only hold the creature in place a few moments more.

  —

  Ashia kept her voice steady, cloaking them in the Song of Waning as she, Briar, and Kaji crept up on Alagai Ka.

  Enkido had taught detachment in battle, the emotional distance that allowed warriors to keep their minds outside a battle to study it from all angles. Ashia could approach a quake of rock demons with cool confidence.

  But this was Alagai Ka, father of demons, who had stood against Kaji himself. What was her pitiful singing, her short spears, against a foe such as that?

  Nonetheless she continued to creep slowly forward, spears at the ready, while the demon had its attention focused on Abban. Hasik remained on his hands and knees. The old woman—whoever she was—stood limply, like a puppet with its strings cut.