“It’s better that you never know,” Lana responded. “Rest assured, it is nothing that goes against the Moral.”
Drékin paced, thinking. He couldn’t show his suspicion. Thirty years in power made it easy.
“You are my friend before anything else,” he declared seriously. “You need my help, and I will give it, hoping that you won’t betray my confidence.”
He hugged the priestess.
“I will find a robe for each of you. I am so happy to see you again, Lana,” he said, before leaving the room.
Waiting behind the door until the strangers started talking again, he locked it noiselessly. Then he sent his servants away for one thing or another, before leaving the house himself, heading straight for the Holy City.
He had waited too long for this moment. Always putting it off for another day. For it was, according to Eurydis’s teachings, a monstrous crime he was about to commit.
The book had to be destroyed. The book, Maz Achem’s journal, returned to the priests a century before, could upend all of the world’s religions.
“I don’t know if this was a good idea,” Rey said as they waited in the priest’s study. “We should have stuck to the original plan and gone straight to the Temple’s archives.”
“Access to the Holy City is guarded,” Grigán reminded him. “You saw it yourself.”
“The outer wall is covered with cracks, chips, and ivy! Even a child could sneak into the gardens and walk around unnoticed.”
“I disagree,” Lana said. “Ith is pacifist, but that doesn’t mean her guards are incompetent.”
The conversation died, as no new arguments could be made. The heirs waited patiently, roaming the large room and admiring the numerous paintings, rugs, and sculptures that represented a diverse set of stories from the goddess’s mythology. Corenn paused in front of a large collection of religious texts.
That’s when doubt crept into her mind. A horrible doubt. She should have known.
“Lana, what authority manages the archives of the Grand Temple?” she asked.
“The Emaz of Treasure, traditionally,” Lana responded. “Emaz Drékin, actually.”
Corenn exchanged a look with Grigán, and the warrior ran to the door, to see if their fears had come to fruition.
“It’s locked,” he said gravely. “We’re locked in.”
His gaze swept across the room, looking for an escape, but the rare windows were too small for all but Léti. He turned to the door and tested its sturdiness by kicking it twice. The wood was young and had a metal frame. Even with Bowbaq’s help, breaking it would take time.
“Reyan, do you have an idea how to open it?” Lana asked, an idea forming in her head.
“And why would I have one, me more than any other, I ask you?” the actor said, feigning surprise. “Do I have such a bad reputation? Do you think, maybe, that all Loreliens spend their youth picking locks?”
The Maz didn’t respond, ashamed to have vexed her friend. She had been clumsy and desperate, and had turned to him for help with the hope that he could pull her out of this mess as he had done before.
Bowbaq and Grigán looked for something to ram the door, while Yan discussed with Corenn using magic to get out. Rey simply pouted.
Finally, he announced, “It happens to be true that I have a skeleton key that might be of some use now, but I don’t want you to think it’s my custom to break locks. I took the object from my cousin’s murdered corpse.”
Putting action to his words, the actor pulled out a small, complicated key that he jiggled in the lock. The mechanism resisted briefly, and then they all heard a liberating click.
To apologize, Lana gave Rey a deeply grateful smile, which the actor couldn’t resist. He gave up pouting and returned to normal—confident, cynical, seductive.
Grigán pushed the door open and jumped into the hallway, blade at the ready to confront any guard. Seeing an empty passage, he signaled to the others to follow him.
“We have to leave this place as quickly as possible,” he ordered, as they started walking. “If it’s not too late. We might be surrounded already.”
“Emaz Drékin wouldn’t hand us over,” Lana objected, trying to keep up with the warrior.
“Emaz Drékin wasn’t supposed to lock us in a room either,” Grigán countered. “Where do you think he is right now, if he isn’t rounding up the guards? Maybe even the Züu?”
“He went to find the book,” Corenn said in a flat voice. “He’s the only one who has had access to it for the past nearly thirty years. He knows its contents. He figured out that we were looking for it.”
Grigán slowed down as the Mother spoke, then stopped, perplexed. If Corenn was right, they needed to change their plans.
“That’s impossible!” Lana persisted. “Why would he hide it from me for all those years? Why keep it secret?”
“Your answers are in your ancestor’s journal, friend Lana,” Bowbaq declared wisely.
The Maz looked at the ground for a few moments. Grigán looked impatient, but Corenn signaled for him to stop pacing.
When Lana woke from her reverie, her eyes were full of tears. Though she knew a Maz shouldn’t pity herself, she found herself doing so again.
“Eurydis has watched over us from the beginning of this quest,” Lana said, in a voice she wished sounded more confident. “The goddess wants us to see it through, and that’s what we will do, despite this betrayal. The seven of us, against the world . . .”
The heirs listened to the Maz, disturbed by such frankness, and by the new wave of tears they could see rising to her eyes. The priestess was fearful by nature. From now on, she would know to trust only her traveling companions, those whom, just a few dékades earlier, she had thought of as a lively bunch of madmen.
“We have to find the journal before Drékin does,” she said, clearing away her tears. “Grigán, clear our path please. My feet follow yours from now on.”
The warrior obeyed without a word. He wasn’t insensitive to the fact that the Maz had been betrayed by her mentor, but they had lost a lot of time. Too much.
Drékin wore only a frayed robe and heavy clogs, and when the northern wind blew, it chilled him to his bones. The Emaz wasn’t worried about his frail, tired body, though. His greater concern was the persistent feeling that he was being followed, and he cast his eyes over his shoulder frequently. Several times, he thought he saw shadows disappear behind him.
He couldn’t say if it had started when he left his home, or when he had entered the Holy City, but the feeling hung on him. The two Temple officers guarding the Tolerance Gate should have stopped anyone shadowing him. Tonight was strange, though. Normally the guards liked to accompany him on his trips to the Holy City, only too happy to assist an Emaz, but tonight there were none. Why had the guards not caught up to him after finding replacements for their gate? Why had their conversation stopped so abruptly once he was out of sight?
Drékin wasn’t so bold as to turn around and ask after the guards. No one was following him. The shadows slipping behind him didn’t exist. The guards were at their stations and alive; his imagination was getting the better of him.
The only thing that mattered was the book. The cursed journal that destiny had placed in his hands. The book he had dreamed of destroying thousands of times, without ever finishing the task.
Today he would do it. What did knowledge and tolerance matter if these virtues disturbed peace? How could Eurydis’s teachings protect something that would challenge their very foundation?
Drékin started to run, something he hadn’t done since he was a child. Running, to escape the shadows, death, his responsibilities as Emaz. Lana shouldn’t have to bear such a heavy burden. No one could bear it. And the journal’s secrets could never, never fall into the wrong hands.
Still running, the Emaz crossed through the Theology Academy’s orchard. He passed Aliandra’s temple, skirted the rainbow headstones, before reaching the Treasury buildings and, finally, the
House of Ancient Archives.
Only then did he stop to catch his breath. He no longer saw the shadows, but he was certain they were there. His own echoing steps couldn’t have made so much noise alone . . . a group must have followed him the whole way.
But now, he saw no trace.
Panicked, Drékin rushed over the small bridge to the archives, covering the twenty yards as fast as he could. He threw himself at the door and frantically unlocked it, often glancing back at the bridge. Finally, he scampered into the building and closed the door behind him.
Still, he didn’t rest. Breathless, blood pounding in his temples, he lit a candle and held it high to light a wide stairwell covered in dust and debris. At the bottom, he walked across a large, deserted room to reach a hallway.
The shadows still seemed to be hunting him, though the old priest imagined that they might have done so every time he came down here. Every time he had tried to destroy the journal. Every time he had abandoned the task in his cowardice.
“This time, I will do it!” he shouted to the darkness.
Even the sound of his own weak voice scared him as it echoed in the empty rooms. He trembled as he opened the last door, the one leading to the hidden archives, to the dangerous writings, born in the hands of priests whose convictions had grown apart from the Moral of Eurydis.
Drékin scrambled behind a column, squatted, and opened a trapdoor. Climbing down into the cave brought his fear to its peak, but he had no choice. He let himself slide down the ladder, sweating from the effort and a feeling of dread. There was no need for him to search through the piles of journals and papers piled haphazardly in the room—the journal was in the same place as always, where he put it back every time.
He grabbed the book and its blasphemous pages in one hand and held out his candle in the other, bringing the two objects closer. As paper edged toward flame he hesitated, and reconsidered. The shadows danced around him, closing in. The demons in the dark tormenting his conscience.
Drékin slipped the book into his robe and left the cave. The shadows followed, encircling him. He told himself he was going mad, that they were only illusions that would disappear when he took the time to calm down, but time was something he no longer had.
He walked back through the halls, across the large room, and climbed up the stairs, though not as fast as before. He was moving slower than a youth would walk, but he felt the need to run, to flee and leave this cursed place from which he had just stolen a powerful treasure.
He unlocked the door and stepped outside. The light of day blinded him, and he stumbled toward the bridge as if in a dream. There, more shadows emerged from the sun’s light. It was Lana and her friends, running toward him with their weapons drawn. They seemed to be yelling something to him.
Watch out?
Drékin stopped in the middle of the bridge and turned around slowly. A dozen novices, dressed like so many others in Ith, approached him—with the slow saunter of predators.
They carried daggers as thin as needles, and their eyes reflected the shadows that still danced around him, impatient to take his soul.
Grigán realized that they wouldn’t reach Drékin before the Züu did. He slowed, dropped his sword, and notched an arrow.
“Move!” he yelled at his companions.
Without stopping, the heirs separated enough to give the warrior a shot. They heard a whistling by their ears, and the first Zü fell to the ground. Then, almost instantly, two more whistles and two more felled assassins. Now Drékin himself was in Grigán’s way, blocking the Züu.
“What an idiot!” the warrior said as he abandoned his bow and started running again.
Out in front of his companions, Bowbaq saw the Emaz stand on the ledge of the bridge spanning the Alt. Not in haste, not trying to escape his attackers. Like he was waiting.
The high priest pulled an object from his robe and stared at it, fascinated, right up to the moment when ten hati stabbed through his body, sowing their poison in his veins.
Drékin briefly shuddered, then fell into the river’s lively currents, bringing Maz Achem’s journal, and the heirs’ hopes, down with him.
Lana stumbled, shocked as she watched a pack of Züu attack her mentor. Corenn ran to her side and helped her stand. The best thing for them now was to flee; the heirs had nothing else to hold them in the Holy City.
Grigán ordered the retreat, and Yan, Bowbaq, and Rey immediately obeyed, aware of how uneven their odds were against a dozen assassins—but Léti stayed her course.
The older warrior swore and ran back to his bow, realizing he wouldn’t have enough arrows. He nocked one and struck down the killer closest to the young woman. How many more were there? Ten? Twelve? More?
Yan and Rey turned around to help Léti, and Bowbaq followed. Grigán kept firing with the energy of the hopeless and trapped. The Züu seemed unconcerned by their losses, and even the injured ones continued to advance, pushed by their fanatical devotion to Zuïa and an endless rage.
This is how I shall die, the warrior thought. In Ith, two against one, without ever knowing what happened on Ji.
Out of arrows, he abandoned his useless bow and rushed headlong to meet the Züu. The odds were not with them—five more or less inexperienced heirs running heedlessly toward a band of fanatic assassins—but they were resolute in their charge. Léti, out in front, looked impressive with her rapier and black leather. Yan, behind her, brandished his broadsword, which he had never used. After them came Bowbaq, the nonviolent, and Rey, who was better with his words than with a sword.
Léti took a sharp turn and ran along the river’s banks, ignoring the two killers who detached from the other six survivors to follow her. Bowbaq threw his mace at a Zü as soon as he was close enough, to crack the assassin’s skull with a dry thwack. Yan stopped abruptly and stayed motionless, waiting for the killers to come toward him.
Grigán turned to help Léti, and two more killers followed him. The warrior saw that the others wouldn’t reach Léti, so he turned to face his own pursuers.
Rey and the giant stopped next to Yan, and watched the last three fanatics close the gap between them.
One of them convulsed and let out a painful scream. An instant later, he stabbed both of his accomplices with his hati. The two men collapsed, confusion flashing across their eyes. The stronger one found the energy to reach out and stab his attacker. As he did so, Yan lost consciousness, crying out in pain.
Léti finally found what she was looking for, and jumped into the river. The current was strong, and the water came up to her chest, so she struggled to reach her goal: Emaz Drékin’s body, held in place by a submerged tree root.
The two assassins following dove in after her and did their best to gain on her, but their ample robes slowed their progress. Breathless, trying to control her disgust, Léti pulled the journal from Drékin’s dead, clasping fingers. She hurried to the other side of the river and climbed out.
Grigán had seen the entire thing, but couldn’t intervene. His attackers were trying to surround him, and only his remarkable speed saved him. Firm footing, he told himself, repeating his own lessons for Léti. Against two men armed with daggers, he would normally have the upper hand, but a single scratch from a hati would be enough to defeat him.
Rey rushed to his aid, skewering one of the killers in the back, cold-bloodedly. Grigán didn’t let the opportunity slip away, and he attacked the second Zü, who was surprised to lose his companion. The surprise was sufficient, and the warrior’s final struggle was to pull his curved blade out of the man’s body.
Léti ran along her side of the river, stabbing at the Züu who pursued her and preventing them from getting over the bank. But the men quickly realized that they needed to separate. Indecisive, the young woman chose one and stabbed him with her rapier, crying out.
The other Zü removed his wet robe and walked toward her, with a cat’s quick, careful movements. Léti faced him, gripping her sword’s wet handle, her eyes full of tears.
>
A crossbow bolt suddenly appeared through the killer’s forehead, and he tumbled forward. Léti let him fall to her feet, looking for the person who had saved her.
Corenn was on the other side of the river, still holding the weapon and unable to believe what she had just done. She wasn’t even sure she knew how it worked; she had never killed anyone before.
Léti grabbed the journal. A small, wet volume, with thick parchment brimming out of a leather cover hardened with age.
To the Memory of Men. Maz A. d’Algonde.
The young woman delicately opened it and read the first few lines, thanking Yan for having taught her to read. With a fluttering heart, she noticed that the ink had been partially erased by the water. She hoped that the most important parts were intact.
What we survived on the island of Ji, and elsewhere, will forever be the greatest disruption to ever threaten humanity . . . and it still threatens us, because this story is not finished. Others will carry our curse. To those, I say: Caution! Your responsibility is the heaviest anyone has ever borne, because your choices and your actions will affect generations of lives.
I have no ambition to write a new Book of the Wise One. However, this text represents much more than my own memories. It is a tale of eternal warning.
BOOK VII: TO THE MEMORY OF MEN
What we survived on the island of Ji, and elsewhere, will forever be the greatest disruption to ever threaten humanity . . . and it still threatens us, because this story is not finished. Others will carry our curse. To those, I say: Caution! Your responsibility is the heaviest anyone has ever borne, because your choices and your actions will affect generations of lives.
I have no ambition to write a new Book of the Wise One. However, this text represents much more than my own memories. It is a tale of eternal warning.
Against all logic, I will start my tale with its conclusion, the one that justifiably terrifies all of the Grand Temple’s Emaz. A number of them have reproached me for sowing trouble; even more accuse me of madness and profanity. I am only an apostate, having lost my title and responsibilities. A pariah of the Holy City. Even as my faith and love for Eurydis have never been stronger.
Shadow of the Ancients Page 18
