‘Well?’ he said eventually. ‘Are we going in or just staring?’
She shivered all over, seeming to come back to herself. ‘Enter then, morsel – and be welcome to my home.’
‘I thought the city beneath Salvation was your home?’
‘When I was driven from my first. No more questions – enter.’
He’d thought it would be dark inside, but something grew there, a bulbous moss that filled the space with an eerie silver glow like moonlight. And it was beautiful, not at all the rough cave he’d expected. The rock of the walls had been carved everywhere, twisting patterns of vines and flower after flower faced with crystal that made them glitter blue and red and purple. Who would have guessed that Rii liked flowers? But then there’d been none in the frozen north.
Rii shuffled to the far end of the chamber, and after pausing for a while to gawp he followed. This must be her bedroom, to judge by the long bar hanging high above, scored with a hundred claw marks. There was a wardrobe too – or at least he thought that’s what it was, though it was the size of his old home in the Moon Forest. Rii pressed one of her long claws against some hidden latch and its door swung open.
There was armour inside, silver-chased and huge. ‘This is what you came for?’ he asked.
She reached in to pull out the first piece, a curved disc she pressed against her chest. ‘Wilt thou aid me?’
He found leather straps hanging from the sides of the metal, scaled like no leather he’d ever seen and undecayed after all these years. The armour she already bore, seemingly fused to her skin, had matching rings where the buckles could fasten. After the breastplate came silver netting to hang over her wings and a complex of pieces to fit round her face and neck. There were even two leather hoods to drape over her ears.
When he was done she looked dazzling and terrifyingly martial, and still one whole suit of armour like hers remained in the wardrobe.
They both stared at it in silence. The question was obvious; but then so was the answer, and he was afraid to hear it. A boy didn’t need to invite grief into his life, especially someone else’s.
‘Bachur’s husband took thy place in the time long past. It was he who armoured me.’ She paused a moment before adding, ‘It was he who armoured my mate.’
And then there was a question he could ask, one he’d asked before only to get the brush-off, but he thought maybe she and he were closer now. ‘Why did you surrender to the Servants then, when you’d lost everything? I know you was waiting for Yron to come back, but a thousand years is an awful long time to wait alone.’
‘But I was not alone. I have not been alone for a single year of all those thousand.’
He darted a quick look around the chamber, wondering if a dozen more Riis were going to leap out at him, and she yipped her laugh.
‘Place thy hand upon my belly, morsel, and thou wilt understand.’ She lifted her wing and tipped herself sideways, until her breast was exposed. It was encased in armour now, but he slipped his mutilated fingers between the join of two plates and settled them against the matted hair.
The next instant he snatched them away again. There’d been movement against them, wriggling like worms beneath her skin. Or – no, he knew that feeling of life below the surface. He’d once felt it when he touched Drut. ‘You’re pregnant!’ he said. ‘But how, if your bloke’s been gone all this time?’
‘My children have slept inside me for the moon to rise upon their wakening. I first felt them quicken when I battled accursed Bachur on the day of my master’s death, and I knew then that their lives were more precious by far than my freedom. Dost thou not know it too? Is thy son not worth more to thee than all the world’s wealth? When Yron arose they stirred afresh, and then thou camest, and I knew that the day of their birth approached at last.’
He looked to her for permission and then reached out to touch her again. The life inside her didn’t startle him now and he left his hand there as he felt it shift beneath her skin. Soon he sensed something more: the flutter of small hearts. Many more than one. ‘How many kids you got in there?’ he asked.
‘Twenty-eight, my master’s number.’
‘Twenty-eight? And I thought I had it rough with one! So when’s the happy occasion? It’s not … it’s not now, is it?’
‘My children are not yet fully grown nor are they ready for the world. I will keep them inside me yet awhile, safe from the fight that is to come, for my master’s life is threatened and his need calleth to me. Thou hast armoured me for war, morsel, and now we go to fight it.’
Eric clutched his son tighter against him, so tight the babe whimpered and nuzzled against his wrist, searching for another meal of blood. ‘What about him? You can’t take him into a fight – it ain’t right.’
‘I will guard him as I have guarded thee – as I guard all my master’s servants. I shall be a mother to thy son, and thou wilt be a father to my children, and together we will serve the moon and aid his rising.’
40
They tried the rune on Dinesh first. When Olufemi told him she was ready, Krish asked the boy if he wanted to be free. Dinesh only smiled and said he’d do whatever Krish wanted, just please don’t take the bliss away from him. So Krish nodded at Olufemi and walked away as she inked the mark into the slave’s flesh. This would be better than bliss – it must be.
When he returned an hour late, Dinesh was still smiling and Krish felt angry disappointment. But Olufemi smiled too.
‘It worked?’ Krish asked her.
‘See for yourself.’
Dinesh turned his wide brown eyes on Krish. The rune was on his cheek, a complex black shape beneath his left eye that warped as he spoke. ‘I feel …’ he said. ‘I feel …’
‘Happy?’ Krish asked. That had been part of the magic Olufemi tried to weave: to remove the terrible addiction of bliss without taking away all the contentment that went with it.
The boy shook his head. ‘No. It’s … Not, not, not happy. But not sad. I feel … There’s so much in my head. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know how to think all these thoughts.’
‘I gave him bliss after I put the rune on him,’ Olufemi said. ‘A triple dose. Before, it would have left him lying on his back smiling at the sun. But now – well, you can see.’
‘Do you understand what’s happening here?’ Krish asked. It had never been clear before how much the slave really knew about the world, or cared.
Dinesh nodded, his eyes still wide but no longer distracted: focused in a way they’d never been before. ‘There’s a war coming. You want us to fight.’
‘Yes. I need you to fight, or we’ll all die. Do you think you can do that?’ Dae Hyo’s angry words echoed in his head, but what choice did he have? He was as much a slave as Dinesh, in his own way: imprisoned by a destiny he hadn’t chosen.
‘I think so,’ Dinesh said. ‘If you want me to fight, then I want to fight. But … I don’t know how.’
‘We’ll teach you,’ Krish said. It would be weeks yet before the Ashane army could reach them. There’d be time to do more than put a spear in the slaves’ hands and teach them which end was pointed. ‘And the defences,’ he said to Olufemi. ‘Are they nearly ready?’
‘Almost. I’ve found assistance, but before that there’s – there’s something you need to see.’
Krish followed her inside Turnabout, the great library where the remnants of Olufemi’s family had made their home. The building was unique: it was entirely without mirrors. Olufemi told him it was thought the light would damage the thousands of ancient books inside. Instead, the library had been constructed on great rotating discs of rock, turned every evening by slaves.
Krish knew why Olufemi’s family had chosen to stay here. However much they might nod and do as he commanded, he felt their hating eyes on him and Olufemi whenever they walked past. These people would never serve him in their hearts and only here, where the worm men wouldn’t come, could they be safe.
There were a dozen of Olufemi’s cousins in the fir
st room he came to, helping to mix the ink that would be used to tattoo the slaves. But at the back of the room was a far paler face.
‘Dae Hyo!’ Krish said, glad despite himself. He hadn’t seen the warrior since their argument. He’d been afraid Dae Hyo had fled Mirror Town entirely.
‘Dae Krish.’ The warrior smiled. But the smile was too wide and the eyes above it too glassy.
‘Is he drunk?’ Krish asked Olufemi.
‘The fool’s taken bliss.’
‘And who gave it to him?’ Krish asked, furious. ‘He’s not a slave!’
‘Bliss is for anyone who wants it. Among our people, if someone wishes to leave the responsibilities of freedom behind, it’s allowed. Their house loses a mage and Mirror Town gains a slave. We understand that freedom is harder than slavery.’
‘I’m happy now.’ Dae Hyo’s speech was slurred and a thin trickle of drool was seeping from one corner of his mouth. ‘I thought I was happy before, but I didn’t know what happiness was. This is happiness. This is …’ He waved his hand, his eyes tracking the movement as if they found it fascinating.
‘You have to cure him,’ Krish told Olufemi.
‘He doesn’t need curing, not yet. He’s only taken the drug for a few days. If he stops now he’ll have a fever and head pain like he’s never known, and then he’ll be well again.’
Krish looked at Dae Hyo, still smiling as he watched the movements of his own hand. ‘But now he knows what it feels like, he’ll use it again. He can’t even stop drinking. How can he stop taking bliss?’
‘Perhaps he’ll find the strength,’ Olufemi said, but they both knew he couldn’t.
‘No. We need to help him. Can you do what you did for the slaves, make it so that bliss won’t work on him any more?’
‘I can give him the same rune as the slaves,’ Olufemi said, carefully expressionless. ‘Is that really what you want?’
‘No! Not the same – not so that he has to be loyal to me. I don’t want that. I just want him to be himself again.’
The mage looked at the warrior, lost in his private happiness, then shook her head and turned to Krish. ‘And are you sure that’s what he wants?’
‘I don’t care. It’s what he needs. Can you do it?’
‘I imagine so.’
‘Good.’ Krish turned away from Dae Hyo, unable to bear his mindlessly joyful expression. ‘Good. Now you told me you’d found some more mages. Do you mean real mages – people who can work the runes?’
Olufemi took Krish to one of the great mansions, the red-tiled, crenelated structure he’d learned long ago was the home of the Bakari family. ‘I thought the Bakaris were all musicians,’ he said to her.
‘And mathematicians, and scientists,’ she agreed as they approached the twin sculptures that flanked the entrance, huge lizards like long-legged versions of the Rah crocodiles. ‘But also many melancholics, some lunatics – all the afflictions of the mind that may be found are found in the Bakari family. The Chukwus say it runs in their blood, which is probably true. The Bakaris bed cousin with cousin and think nothing of it.’
‘But we want mages – not musicians or lunatics.’
‘There are no more mages. For centuries the runes have been dead and my people no longer believed they could be woken. No one studied the runes for their power except Yemesi and I – but as I told you before, some found another use for them. Many among the Bakari sought the peace that came with their contemplation. They can’t devise new runes as I’ve been doing but, as I once did, they’ve learned how to hold the shape of them in their minds, to drive out all other thoughts. They can’t make new runes, but they can use the ones I make. Come, let me show you.’
She led him through the narrow corridors of the mansion. Shards of broken mirrors crunched beneath their heels until they came to an inner courtyard, open to the sun and with a withered apple tree, brown-leafed and sad in its middle. Two dozen men and women sat round it, each of them studying a sheet of parchment scribed with a different rune. Some turned to watch as they entered, but others only rocked in place or stared fixedly at nothing. One stern-faced woman tended a younger man, gently mopping the drool from his slack mouth.
‘Them?’ Krish whispered to Olufemi. ‘Really?’
‘Perhaps the emptiness of their minds is a gift, to leave room for the runes. Let me show you. Begin!’
Magic took place out of sight, in a hidden place only its user knew. Very quickly, though, Krish saw its effects. The wilting tree in the courtyard’s centre creaked as its twisted limbs straightened. Buds began to swell and open on the newly vital branches and soon there was the lively green of new leaves and sweet-smelling white flowers dropping petals to float in the air.
Olufemi smiled. ‘I took the rune I devised before and divided it between them. And made its effect less, of course – we don’t want an orchard growing here.’
‘And they can do more?’ Krish asked. ‘They can work the runic defences you’ve rebuilt.’
‘I believe so. We’ll have to teach them the new runes of course, but once they know them – yes, they have the skill.’
He looked over them again. There was a low humming sound in the room and he realised it was coming from one of the mages, a list of meaningless words repeated over and over. Several of them were weeping.
‘If they do do this for me,’ he said, ‘they’ll pay the price – or their families will. Do they even know what it is they’ll be doing, or what it might cost?’
‘Don’t ask the question when you don’t want to hear the answer. You’ve made my people your tools – at least have the courage to use them.’
Sang Ki should have been happy. A visit to Mirror Town had been among his few ambitions before this whole enterprise began. And here he was, wandering among buildings that were the stuff of legend to any student of history. To his left was the monumental structure he knew must be Turnabout, resting on its giant, improbable discs. And near the horizon he could see the tall, glass tower in which Baderinwa, the founder of Mirror Town, had spent years of madness after magic fled the world.
But wherever he chose to go, three Seonu warriors trailed behind him, because his mother didn’t trust him enough to walk free. And he knew that this distrust was entirely justified.
After so many years of believing himself to be in control, it was strange to be utterly at her mercy. His mother held all the power here – or all the power that the elusive Krishanjit would allow her. Sang Ki had yet to see the boy he’d been pursuing for so long. He felt a curious mixture of apprehension and anticipation at the meeting.
That was easier to think about than his mother lying to him his whole life. Sang Ki had often believed himself a disappointment to her, never felt that she respected him, but he saw now that he’d never for one moment truly doubted her love. And yet … she’d allowed him to believe that he was one thing, when he was the exact opposite. She might love him, but it seemed she loved her god more. And what was that kind of second-best love really worth?
He’d chewed it over and over, the idea that Krishanjit was his god too and this his side in the battle, but he remained unable to swallow it. The only image he could summon when he wrestled with the dilemma was of Little Cousin’s face as he’d died. It had been too quick for much pain, but when Sang Ki pictured him now, he saw a flash of disappointment before the man’s spirit fled. There was so much of the world still to see, so many books to read and secrets to ferret out. Little Cousin had been denied them all by Sang Ki’s mother – and on behalf of these people.
‘They’re getting ready for war,’ the burnt woman said.
She was right: many of the broad and dusty squares of the city had been turned into training grounds, the dark-skinned mages swinging weapons they clearly had little idea how to handle. Just today a flood of slaves had joined them, each bearing a black tattoo his mother claimed was a rune to free them from the slavery of bliss. Despite all he’d seen, Sang Ki found it hard to credit the power of such magic.
‘They know what force is riding to face them,’ he said to the burnt woman. ‘They know they’re outnumbered a hundred to one and out-armed too. If this is the best they can muster, I fear we’ve been forced to align ourselves with the losing side.’
‘They have magic,’ she pointed out.
‘Perhaps, but can any power compensate for such a ramshackle and ill-trained force?’
Glass crunched beneath their feet as they walked and the burnt woman frowned. It wrinkled the scars on her face into something even more hideous. ‘It looks like there’s been a war here already. This Krishanjit’s spent more time fighting his own than fighting the enemy.’
‘Such is the nature of rule – even, I imagine, for a god. It is seldom uncontested, and one has to admire his cleverness at least in playing that particular card. To force the mages to his side so absolutely: it was something of a masterstroke. And in that same act, to make any resentment of it a lethally bad idea. I must say …’
He trailed off, realising that the burnt woman was no longer listening to him. They’d reached the widest square yet, surrounded by marble-walled mansions and ringed with red-leafed trees of a variety he’d never seen before. It was what stood in the centre of the square that had caught the burnt woman’s attention: a dozen or so tall pillars. But no – it wasn’t the pillars she was looking at, it was the figure standing on the pinnacle of the nearest.
‘The famous stylites of Mirror Town,’ Sang Ki told her. ‘The mages from time to time like to perch up there in the hope that inspiration will come to them, or so I’ve read.’
‘But that one isn’t a mage,’ she said.
And nor, Sang Ki realised, was the man approaching them across the square. They were both Ashane, and one of them at least he recognised.
He wondered if he should bow as Krishanjit drew nearer but it would have seemed dishonest – and besides, the man didn’t have the bearing of a king. He was barely even a man, still with the gawky awkwardness of a boy about him and the hollow-chested, scrawny look of the goatherd he’d been not so very long ago.
The Hunter's Kind: Book II of The Hollow Gods Page 44
