The Undines. The whispering lake. Somber remembered a Truth from the dark creatures in the depths of Karu. An Adversary would be born, and he alone would be able to defeat He Who Vanquishes.
Somber didn’t know who or when, or even how he could fall. Humans were laughably weak, and his brethren were powerless to stop him.
But a Truth wasn’t conditional, and Somber needed to prepare for his coming Adversary . . . the only one, for all eternity, who would have even a chance of defeating him.
He worked on the task with a savage joy. Saat no longer needed to advise him. Somber was nearly full grown, and understood the stakes perfectly. Of his own initiative, he searched for their enemies’ spirits.
His shadow flew over the mountains, towns, rivers, and plains, faster than thought. Touching and exploring thousands of minds. Crossing kingdoms, listening, spying, rummaging through it all for seven spirits out of millions.
He knew them well, having seen them several times already. One of them could be the Adversary. Somber doubted it, but it was beyond his power to verify.
It took a while to find them, a few diversions. Almost a milliday passed.
Their enemies had traveled a great distance since their last contact. Somber briefly flew over them, immobile and invisible in the skies. Seven riders, mortal, and with no power to speak of. These seven were the greatest threat to the diarchs’ reign.
The god searched their minds, scowling. One of them was particularly repulsive, completely devoted to his sister, the insipid goddess Eurydis. Somber rejoiced to think that her cult would soon be annihilated. He would burn all her temples, exterminate her followers, torture her Maz. It would be a shining proof of his superiority.
The mortals were too weak to even detect his presence, and he found what he wanted easily. Then he felt a moment’s hesitation. The situation required him to ask his friend’s advice.
The hundreds of leagues separating them were no problem. After a century together, Somber reached out to Saat’s mind easily, and his friend shared his most intimate thoughts. He was ready to talk, he had always been ready.
They have almost reached their destination, Somber said, without introduction.
The god was taciturn, for good reason. Saat and he always understood each other.
Do they know where we are?
No.
Good. I will warn our men in Ith.
For the High Diarch, the moment was over, but Somber didn’t break contact.
Is something bothering you, my friend? Saat asked
Why don’t I just kill them now? the god responded, brooding like a child.
Can you do it without materializing? Saat asked hopefully.
Somber thought, checking his power and the distance from his body.
No. I would have to sleep for a long time after.
So, we will wait. If one of them is the Adversary, he could defeat you and conquer us. Remember the Broken Castle.
The Adversary could already be dead, the god countered. Without ever having seen me.
In a few days, that will be a fact. Unlike them, we have all the time in the world, my friend. Endless time.
Somber took a last look at the riders and returned to his body, thousands of miles distant. The camp resonated with slaves working against the mountain, and prayers sung in his honor.
I am He Who Vanquishes, he repeated to himself. He Who Vanquishes. He Who Vanquishes. He Who Vanquishes.
It took the heirs only three days of travel from Pont to reach the royal city of Lermian. At dusk on the Day of the Earth, they camped outside of the city of artists. The festival drumbeats echoed throughout the night, cruelly reminding them of their friends in the troupe. They had left with the promise of a future meeting, and no confidence they could keep it.
Riding without rest, they were about to cross into the Grand Empire, sneaking past the border under the shadow of night. The two southernmost provinces in Goran and Lorelia were mostly, as of yet, unaffected by the pending war between their kingdoms. The heirs avoided passing through the larger cities and spent their nights sleeping under the stars. They had to be cautious. In times like these, tempers flared easily and any stranger could be seen as an invader.
Day after day, Corenn learned as much as she could from travelers venturing south. Trying to separate the truth from the endless set of preposterous rumors, it turned out that the Grand Empire was indeed having problems along its border in the Warrior’s Vale, and that they had no plans for Lorelia. The merchant kingdom was waiting only for an official request from the Goranese emperor to send reinforcements and rise to the Upper Kingdoms’ collective defense. But each kingdom suspected treachery from the other, so they continued to amass troops at their borders, waiting for something to happen.
All eyes were on the north, so the heirs easily entered Ithare territory on the third day of the dékade of the Earth, seven days after leaving Pont. Nearly two dékades had passed since their foray into the Deep Tower.
The nights between days of exhausting riding always seemed to be too short. The heirs were tired and sore, but, finally, they were close to their destination.
When Grigán gave the signal to halt that night, he did so with relief on his face. As they had done on all the other nights, they ate dinner quickly and went to bed early, saving their energy to reach Ith as soon as possible.
None slept well that night. The next day, they would discover if their efforts would lead to any reward. Would Maz Achem’s journal hold any vital information, or would it reduce their hope to nothing?
Ith was an open city, which meant that anyone could enter without paying taxes or being inspected at the gates. This worked out well for the heirs, who were always worried about being noticed. Their aim was to reach the Holy City, though, and gaining access to the religious neighborhoods would be quite the task indeed.
As Lana couldn’t help Grigán form a plan, the warrior had no other choice than to wait and see for himself before improvising an approach, something he hated to do. With pounding hearts and tense bodies, they covered the short distance remaining to Ithare’s capital, two moons after Yan had first heard mention of the heirs.
Lana seemed to come alive as they approached her childhood home in the bright sun. Each ruin, landmark, and neighborhood reminded her of a personal memory or historic anecdote: there King Li’ut gave a speech, here she would come to walk, over there had been the last battle of the Ithare Empire.
The heirs listened attentively to the Maz, invigorated by her expressiveness, which was such a contrast to her typical reticence. Rey was the most tenacious with his questions, punctuating Lana’s tales with gently mocking commentary and making his friends laugh every time.
Corenn lost herself contemplating the Alt’s vibrant waters, the high Curtain Mountains—dressed in white, gray, and ocher—cutting through the blue sky, the Holy City’s domes, an undulating plain like a rug set out in front of Mount Fleuri. And hundreds of pilgrims who had walked calmly to the capital searching for miracles, spirituality, and peace. If the situation were different, Corenn would have found the day to be marvelous. The heirs had not come to Ith to find serenity, though. Indeed, they could only be disappointed, or shocked like their ancestors had been, 118 years earlier, when they returned from Ji.
Soon they were at the city’s gates, simple travelers among hundreds of others who came to pay homage to their cult. There were a large number of Eurydians wearing masks and robes adorned with the goddess’s protective symbols. The other cults had their followers as well: Ivie-the-Night, Mishra with the head of a bear, Wug, Eeti, Dona, Sad-Odrel, the Serpale twins, Brassisse, Aliandra of the Sun, and dozens more that the heirs didn’t recognize, not counting the pilgrims who showed no sign of their cult, and whose beliefs were hidden.
“There,” Grigán pointed scornfully. “Valipondes.”
They all turned toward the group of four riders who kept their distance. They wore leather lace–trimmed green shirts with long golden necklaces
tied in complex knots. One of them carried a cage holding three copper-toned margolins. The crowd avoided these characters, making a wide detour around them.
“How can you tolerate the Valipondes,” Grigán said, turning to Lana. “Demonist child murderers, banished from all other kingdoms!”
“The Holy City is open to everyone,” the Maz responded, with a hint of regret. “The king makes sure that they stay harmless. But, outside of human sacrifices, everyone is free to make their offerings as they wish . . . the law doesn’t prevent animal sacrifice.”
“What!” Bowbaq said angrily, jumping off his horse and giving the men in green a dark look.
Yan put his hand on Bowbaq’s shoulder, hoping to calm him down. The giant looked back and forth between the demonists and the young man, not understanding why Yan held him back. Suddenly, the cage’s door broke off, allowing the rodents to flee and causing a ripple of turmoil in the crowd.
Their owner swore in an unknown language, and swore even louder when his companions started to yell at him. Bowbaq thanked Yan with a big smile, and Yan responded with a wink. Opening the cage with magic had been easy, and Yan hardly felt the languor from his spell.
Yan’s spell hadn’t been enough to satisfy Bowbaq, though. He used his erjak powers on one of their horses, whose rider’s hands were busy insulting his peers. The scared beast reared back, throwing the Valipondes pilgrim to the ground under a rain of laughter from the crowd. Bowbaq walked away with a satisfied expression, ignoring Corenn’s wrathful glare.
Carried away by a surge of pilgrims, they soon came to the city’s gates, which, while open, were still narrow. Lana guided them to a nearby enclosure.
“It’s forbidden to ride into the Holy City,” she explained. “Even in the lower city, riders are somewhat looked down upon. Ith’s streets are older than Romine’s, and have never been repaved. The king does his best to conserve the vestiges of the old empire. I always thought these enclosures were a good idea.”
“I thought the city was led by the Emaz?” Léti said, surprised.
“The Emaz validate the king’s decisions. Sometimes they propose laws, but power always resides in the bearer of Li’ut’s crown. The great priests hardly concern themselves with commercial treaties or other dull tasks, and the king doesn’t interfere with Temple business. It works quite well this way,” Lana explained with conviction.
Corenn sighed doubtfully, thinking of the supposed integrity of the Emaz and the actual extent of power given to the king of such a small kingdom. But it wasn’t her job to relieve Lana of her illusions. The priestess had plenty of time to learn the twisted ways of mankind, or at least she would have plenty of time, should they ever reestablish a normal life.
They left their horses at a stable, along with a few coins, and headed up the busy street. Lana confidently guided them, having spent her whole life in the city.
“You’re taking us to the Holy City, right?” Grigán verified, suddenly struck by a sense of foreboding.
“I think it’s best we buy some masks first,” the Maz explained. “Without those, we have no chance of entering.”
“And where do you plan on buying a mask where no one recognizes you?”
Lana stopped, lowered her eyes, and blushed before confessing, “I hadn’t thought of that. I was going to take you to my parents’ supplier.”
The warrior turned around, walked a few steps, and took a deep breath. He always had to think of everything. For everyone. They were but seven fugitives, but by traveling together the risk multiplied by twenty.
“We could still go there,” he said as he approached Lana, forcing himself to sound calm. “You just can’t enter, that’s all.”
Lana felt completely foolish. As they started walking, she realized that being in Ith had made her lose all sense of caution. The Holy City, her clean, winding streets at the base of Mount Fleuri, the shaded squares, the colorful gardens, the bridges spanning the Alt . . . And yet, it was also the place where the Züu had tried to kill her. She had to remember why the heirs had made this voyage, and that danger followed them.
She looked at the crowd, searching the eyes behind the polite masks. Was there a killer among them? Several, maybe? Had the heirs already been seen? Were they being followed?
“This crowd is far too calm for my taste,” Rey said, gazing thoughtfully at the passersby. “In Lorelia, half as many people make twice as much noise.”
“Faith is unmoving,” Lana recited, trying to forget her dread. “But don’t trust appearances, Reyan . . . as the prayers end, Ith will seem much livelier.”
They arrived at the shop of the mask maker, a profession exclusive to Ithare, and Corenn and Rey took care of buying classic masks for each member of the group. The faces on the masks were expressionless and sexless, with a rough finish. Grigán complained that his obstructed his vision, and Bowbaq said his was too small.
“Either way, Bowbaq and I are easily recognized,” the warrior said as he removed the mask. “And I refuse to change my clothes.”
“Me too,” said Léti, who had grown attached to her outfit.
Nonetheless, the warrior agreed to wear the novice’s robe that Rey had filched from the Züu, and Léti did the same with Lana’s own robe. Seeing a group of strangers changing in the middle of the street shocked none of the passersby, who must have seen an endless stream of eccentricities in the strange city.
The heirs themselves saw a few bizarre sights as they approached the Eurydian corner of the city, one anonymous procession among many. Lana successively pointed out the famous Lurian singers, a family of Thébian Donors, an inn run by a “priestess” of Dona, and the bridge where, long before, a lookout spotted the coming army of undead Goranese.
She cried out and averted her eyes when they found a man hanging on a side street. The man had apparently killed himself, but this hardly lessened their shock.
“It’s been more than two days,” Grigán commented. “What kind of city lets someone hang and rot from their balcony for two days?”
“Detach him, Grigán, please,” Corenn asked.
The warrior checked to make sure they were alone, then cut the rope with one blow from his curved blade. The body fell to the ground, and Grigán led the group away.
“He was a Brassisse,” Lana explained. “They think that you keep your physical appearance for all eternity when you die. Many commit suicide as they age.”
“But the guards don’t do anything?” Yan said, surprised. “Why do they just leave them there?”
“They probably hadn’t found him yet,” the Maz explained. “The officers already have a lot to deal with, with the Valipondes, the K’luriens, and the Yooses. And there are so few of them; the Temple has less than two hundred men to guard the Holy City. The king has a few more, maybe three hundred and fifty, but they watch over the entire kingdom.”
“Five hundred men for the entire kingdom,” Grigán commented, shaking his head. “With my horsemen, I could have taken the city in . . .”
His face darkened and he left his sentence unfinished. The memory of his Ramgrith cavalry brought back other, more bitter memories best left alone.
“Goran protects us,” Lana asserted. “Whoever attacks the Holy City must first defeat the Grand Empire. And that day has never come,” she said, hoping she was right.
Emaz Drékin felt old and weak. His faith in Eurydis was intact, but serving the goddess had lost some of its joy from his first years as an initiate. Reaching the Temple’s highest levels, he had discovered the Grand Temple’s influence in the world, political, economic, or simply human.
At first, this too had inspired him. Now it only left him with the bitter taste of power’s tortuous path. Rather than a great priest, he saw himself as an able manager. Certainly, he had contributed to the Temple’s blossoming growth, but not to the goddess’s.
With these thoughts, he set out to finish his chores, dékade after dékade, cloistering himself with the most boring and monotonous tasks to ato
ne for his sins. Until today.
“Your Excellence?” one of the novices on his service asked. “A few visitors are asking to be seen. One of them says she knows you; she wouldn’t give me her name.”
“Let them enter, my child,” the Emaz responded, happy to have an unexpected diversion.
His joy turned into surprise when a disparate group of seven entered his study without a word. One was a giant with a monkey on his shoulder—hardly the type of people he typically spoke to. Then his surprise turned to joy when one of the strangers took off her mask.
“Lana! You’re alive,” he said, his voice full of emotion. “Oh, you’re alive!”
Despite his obvious joy, the two priests maintained a respectful distance. He saw tears in her eyes, saying more than words ever could.
“I can’t believe it,” the old man continued. “Why did you leave Mestèbe? Why leave us in the dark for so long?”
“It’s a long story, Your Excellence, and time is not on our side. I can’t tell you much, anyhow, to protect you. You shouldn’t even have seen me.”
The Emaz’s face darkened, and he took a step back, looking at his old student’s companions. Who were they, and what did they want? It couldn’t be . . .
“We need your help to get into the heart of the Holy City,” Lana said, imploring Drékin. “It’s the only reason I came here. And the only request I have of you.”
Drékin shuddered. He was convinced now. They were looking for the book. These strangers wanted the book.
“You’re a Maz,” he said, buying time to think. “You don’t need me to get in.”
“I can’t reveal myself,” Lana explained. “It would be too dangerous.”
“And what are your intentions?” he dared to ask. “What will you do once you get in?”
Shadow of the Ancients Page 17
