The Scarab Path sota-5

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  'Now,' he said.

  The interrogation room was filled with the sound of engines, the hiss of the the steam boiler below and the whine and rumble of the tools above her. She could barely hear one word in three of the careful conversation that Thalric was holding with the engineer, Aagen. It was some convoluted piece of Wasp politics involving the governor and the Butterfly-kinden Grief in Chains. She strained her ears to catch it. Any information would be useful.

  Hold on-

  Thalric had finished, telling Aagen, 'Now dispatch it straight,' and the engineer left them swiftly. She felt the straps taut about her wrists and ankles. No, wait a moment… The mechanical drills and blades vibrated on their arms, spread above her like the limbs of a spider. Thalric had gone over to the levers and was regarding them cautiously. She realized that he was not artificer enough to know how to turn the device off.

  'The one at the end!' she shouted out to him. 'The red band!'

  He turned to regard her — Haven't I been here before? — and there was a slight smile on his face. His hand found another lever and pulled it, in a brutal, brief motion, and the tool assembly dropped three feet until it hovered right above her.

  'Thalric!' she yelled. His tongue touched his lips, wetting them, as he regarded her, eyes flicking to the tool assembly, spoiled for choice. When they rested on her again they were blank white, like milk.

  'The interrogator is in an admirable position amongst all trades,' he said to her, one hand coming to touch her cheek lightly. 'There are so very many tools he may employ, and no restraints on him whatsoever. So long as he can turn out his goods, meaning information, he is very much left to his own devices.' His hands found the collar of her tunic and, in a single savage motion, he ripped it down the front all the way to the waist.

  This is wrong — Wrong, of course it's wrong — I've been here before. This is the room in Myna …

  She was feeling a bizarre doubling in her mind, of image over image. Thalric, with his blank Moth eyes, was trailing his hand across her breasts, whilst the other reached up for some tool of torture. Part of her was reacting with fear and revulsion, terrified of the pain and shame, but on another level she was watching everything as though from behind a pane of glass — or some clever Spider mirror that served as a window from one side. But this isn't the way it happened the first time. This isn't the way it happened last time.

  First time? Last time?

  How many times?

  'Now,' said Thalric …

  The interrogation room was filled with the sound of engines, the hiss of the steam boiler below and the whine and rumble of the tools above her. Wasn't I just here …? She could barely hear one word in three of the careful conversation that Thalric was having with the engineer, Aagen. But Aagen just left … It was some convoluted piece of Wasp politics involving the governor and the Butterfly-kinden Grief in Chains. She strained her ears to catch it. Any information would be useful.

  Thalric had finished, telling Aagen, 'Now, dispatch it straight,' and the engineer left them swiftly. There was something wrong with Thalric's face. It was pallid, greying, changing. He was slighter than she remembered.

  She felt the straps taut about her wrists and ankles. The mechanical drills and blades vibrated on their arms, spread above her like the limbs of a spider. Thalric had gone to the levers and was regarding them cautiously. She realized that he was not artificer enough to know how to turn the device off. And neither am I for that matter. So why do I say:

  'The one at the end!' she shouted out to him. 'The red band!'

  He turned to regard her, and his face rent her more than the knives could ever do: the pointed, grey-skinned visage of a Moth she had once known. His hand found another lever and pulled it, in a brutal, brief motion, and the tool assembly dropped three feet until it hovered right above her.

  'The true interrogator,' he informed her, 'can extend a moment into a lifetime. He can stretch time as easily as flesh, denying the subject any chance of escape …'

  'Achaeos?' Wrong, all wrong. I know it's wrong. I've been here before, and before that, and before that, and …

  He reached up for the tools and she felt cracks all around her, her mind fragmenting into lens after distorting lens, one beyond the other, reaching further and further out. She stared up at the machinery above her. I don't know how this works. I don't remember how it works. I only remember that I once remembered.

  And Achaeos could never know.

  I dreamt this. This is my dream, one of many. What did he say?

  What did he say in my dream?

  That I was doing this to myself …

  That I was …

  That I was using him to torture myself.

  That I was …

  She opened her eyes.

  From the steady lamps of that remembered cell in Myna to the dancing bluish flames of the tombs beneath Khanaphes: Che blinked, aware that she was lying awkwardly on one arm, and for a moment unsure where she was. She registered some cool, damp place where the stone beneath her was gluey with slime.

  Now she remembered, the pieces falling into her head out of order: the Wasps, the halls, the carvings, the sarcophagi.

  The Masters of Khanaphes.

  She sat up suddenly, becoming aware of her surroundings. The vaulted halls seemed to lean in on her, each alcove hosting its own stone memorial.

  Thalric …? But he was there. They all were. Strewn around her were three bodies, not dead but not sleeping either. Their eyes were open but unseeing, and they twitched and kicked in the grip of whatever memory or thought was tormenting them. Thalric kept pulling his hands in as though avoiding something, his expression racked and unrecognizable. The other Wasp's fingers flexed over and over as though he was in the midst of loosing his sting. Accius of Vek had an expression only of concentration, moving not at all save for the shivers that pulsed through his muscles. And what is he here for? What is his part in all this?

  She reached a hand out to Thalric, hoping he might wake, but his skin crawled under her touch. I must have been like this but a moment ago, with my mind sent back to the rack in Myna. What horrors would a Rekef spymaster's memory hold? Felice's children? Surely he relives his murder of her children.

  She belatedly became aware that she was being watched, that the three twitching bodies were not her only company. Then she remembered, and her heart skipped and lurched as she looked round.

  She was there, looking as though she had been standing there for hours, waiting for Che to wake — and as though she could stand there for a hundred years if need be. There was a patience about her that would wear down stone. Elysiath Neptellian, Lady of the Bright Water, She whose Word Breaks all Bonds, Princess of the Thousand, the risen denizen of her own tomb. Her gravity and presence made Che feel as though she should kneel, that the mere existence of this woman was sufficient to make a slave of her. She fought off the feeling angrily, and noticed the faintest movement of the woman's mouth. It was not a smile, for a smile on that face would have been fearsome, but perhaps an iota of approval.

  Che hauled herself to her feet, still barely reaching above the woman's waist, then realized that Elysiath Neptellian was not alone. Another gigantic figure had emerged from the gloom, and now walked ponderously to stand at her shoulder. He was a thick-waisted man with a fleshy face that spoke of all manner of terrible deeds, and no guilt at all. A second woman now sat on her own plinth, combing her hair in slow, careful strokes, while ignoring Che utterly. Their hair was magnificent, waves of blue-black that gleamed in the undersea light. Both the women wore it down to the waist, cascading in slow ripples down their backs and, like the men, they were clad in little more than a few folds of cloth. Had they been Beetle-kinden, they would have been fat, had they been any other kinden they would have been grotesque, but they carried their bodies with an absolute assurance, without admitting the possibility of ugliness or awkwardness or shame. They were beautiful, all three, and it was something that partook of their bodies and
those cruel faces, but that went far beyond. They were royalty, by their very nature, and Che was the lowest of commoners.

  She heard steps behind her, quiet but slow, and the apparition she saw, when she turned, sent her two stumbling steps away from it, almost falling over Thalric. His name surfaced in her mind irresistibly: Garmoth Atennar, Lord of the Fourth House, whose Bounty Exceeds all Expectations, Greatest of Warriors, had woken. He had donned the mail that had sat waiting on his throne through the ages. Armour plates of gleaming green-black and gold slid one over the other, boasting the meticulous craftsmanship of decades. The dark clasp of the open helm framed the pale features of a dead king. He stared down at her with a distant amusement, as she herself might have looked at some small animal meandering lost through the rooms of her home.

  She tried to speak, but her voice betrayed her, cracking to a mere whisper in the face of them. She finally forced it out, hearing her words tremble. 'You are the Masters of Khanaphes.'

  'We are some,' said Elysiath. 'Those that have awoken.' The man's hand rested on her shoulder, while the other woman continued to comb her hair, oblivious. 'You are not one of our slaves, though.' Her eyes regarded Che with arch humour. 'Some few are summoned to us, through some trace of old blood that they carry, or else through their own misplaced curiosity, but you have been called from far places.'

  'I … did not come because I was called,' Che got out.

  'That is what many believe.'

  There was a sudden gasp from Thalric, lying at her feet, in reaction to some particular stab of torment in his mind. 'What is happening to them?' Che asked. 'What are you doing to them?'

  'Testing them.' Garmoth Atennar's voice rang deep and hollow as the halls they stood in. 'A test which they shall doubtless fail, as so many do. A test which you have passed, for which you may give thanks and rejoice.'

  Che glanced back towards him. In his colossal mail, he was even more frightening and less approachable than the others. There was a sword girded at his belt that must have stood eight feet from point to pommel. 'Please,' she said, crouching by Thalric, 'he will go mad.'

  'It is likely,' said Elysiath indifferently. 'Soon it will be certain. That is what awaits those who fail.'

  'Will you not …?' Che's voice trailed off. Of course they will not. Why should they? We are as the smallest insects to them.

  'We will not stir ourselves to release them from their bonds,' Elysiath told her. 'We will not prevent you from doing so, if you can.'

  'Me?' Che demanded, astonishment lending her courage. 'What can I do?'

  The huge woman made a face. 'Well, then, perhaps you can do nothing.'

  'This is … magic.' Despite everything it was still hard to say it. 'This is something I know nothing about. There's nothing I can do for them!'

  Elysiath glanced at the man by her shoulder, who was looking bored. 'No doubt it is as you say,' she said dismissively.

  'But …' Che looked down at Thalric, locked into his own bespoke nightmare. 'I can't …' Something inside her was telling her to look, though. Achaeos, help me now, she thought, reaching out. And then: You've ridden me all the way here from Khanaphes. I went up the pyramid because you were there. I've taken you everywhere you wanted, until I looked like a madwoman. Come on, now!

  She felt the presence then, the ghostly half-sense of another being that had plagued her since the war. What do you want? she asked it. Just to torment me? Did I escape the nightmare only because I carry my own around with me?

  You torture yourself with me. Not her words, but his, remembered from her dream. She twisted uncomfortably.

  Help me now, she told him. If you could ever help me, help me now.

  She sensed his reaction, his violent disagreement. This man is an enemy!

  He is a Wasp, not an enemy, she insisted, but she knew he must surely resent Thalric for the feelings she had discovered towards the man. All at once, and spurred by that thought, her patience vanished.

  To the pits with you, then. In her mind she did not now see the grey-skinned man that she had loved, just the brooding, bitter, shouting stain on the air that seemed to be all that was left of him. The better parts, the parts that had held her affection, were clearly gone to his grave.

  There was a net about Thalric, and she caught hold of it and tore it asunder. Afterwards she could find no words, no language, to account for what she had done. She had simply done it, taken the magic and tugged until it snapped.

  It must have been very weak, she thought, But then these victims are Apt, and the weakest of magics can bind the mind that does not credit it. It was weak enough that I could claw my way out from the inside.

  Thalric gasped, kicked out, hands flailing at the sticky ground.

  'Calm,' she told him. 'It's Che, Thalric. I'm with you.'

  He recoiled from her a moment, and she thought that he had gone mad indeed. Then he clutched at her arm and something of his own character returned to his face.

  'Che …' he began, seeking out her face.

  'Thalric!' a voice cried out in utter fury. Che looked to see the other Wasp, Marger, up on his knees, his face twisted in fear and rage. 'Thalric!' he screamed again, throwing one arm towards the two of them, palm outwards. He was too far to restrain, and Thalric just stared at him, still half-numb.

  There was a flash of metal, swift enough for Che to think it must be some new form of magic, and Marger's hand was gone, the wrist a moment late in spraying them with his blood. Marger let out a hoarse, horrified yell, eyes bulging as he brought the stump close to them, unable to accept what he was seeing. Then Accius struck a second time, running him cleanly through the throat and then whipping the blade free.

  All three of them, Che thought hollowly. I woke up all three.

  She reached for her sword, forgetting that the last blade she had held had been the Vekken's own, which he must have reclaimed by long habit the moment he awoke. The Antkinden was not focused on either her or Thalric, but staring past them, at the Masters — the towering shapes of Elysiath and her two companions. Following his gaze, Thalric looked back also, and Che found it incredible that neither man had even noticed the metal bulk of Garmoth Atennar, who had been right before their eyes, the body of Marger almost at his feet. They stand so still, like statues indeed, she thought. And I see better in these dark places and …

  And I am Inapt now, and so I am of their world.

  Thalric swore softly, so she knew that he could see them, the risen Masters. 'What …?' he got out hoarsely.

  'Words spoken in these halls leave long echoes,' said Elysiath. 'You do not believe in us, O savage. We are long dead, so you say, if we ever existed.'

  'You can't be the Masters,' Thalric sounded dazed.

  'Who else are they going to be?' Che demanded.

  'But it's impossible, not without half the city knowing that you have — what? — some underground colony here, where you eat what? And drink what? And keep your numbers up over — how long has it been since the Masters were supposed to have ruled Khanaphes?' He was shaking his head wildly in disbelief.

  'We still rule,' boomed Garmoth Atennar, and Thalric and the Ant whirled round, separating him from the gloom for the first time as more than just statuary.

  'Dead,' stammered Thalric. 'The Masters are dead.' Che put her arms around him, but he continued, 'How long since the Masters were supposed to have walked the streets above?'

  'This shall be nine years,' said the man beside Elysiath, 'and forty years. And nine hundred years.'

  Che felt Thalric twist in her arms, struggling to his knees. 'Then it cannot be. To have a colony, unseen, unknown, for generation after generation beneath their feet, not even if just the Ministers knew.'

  They were smiling now, all of them. Elysiath Neptellian even laughed. It was a resonant, inhuman sound that reminded Che of the stone bells the Moth-kinden sometimes used in their rituals.

  'Speak not to us, O savage, of your generations. We are the Masters of Khanaphes, and we have alw
ays been so. When we turned away from the sun to seek our rest down here, it was these eyes that looked back one last time, and no other's.'

  Thalric stared at her dumbly, plainly not prepared to take up the argument against such invincible assurance, but Che spoke up, as politely as a young student petitioning some great College scholar. 'You can't be nine hundred years old?'

  'I am older, and I am not so old, by my kinden's reckoning.' The perfect mouth curved more sharply. 'There is none left living now who raised the first stones of Khanaphes and taught the Beetle-kinden to think, but those were active times, so we could not sleep then so long as we have since. Still, I remember when I walked our dominion as a queen, and they cast flowers before my feet and turned their faces from me, lest their gaze sully my beauty.'

  'Madness,' whispered Thalric, but tears had sprung into Che's eyes at the mere tone of the woman's voice, the ancient longings and memories it contained.

  'Still he does not believe. Like all savages, they have minds able to clutch only small pieces of the world held close, blind to the greater whole,' said the man at Elysiath's shoulder. 'But she believes. She has comprehended our glorious city, and seen how there is a missing piece at its heart. She knows now that the missing piece is before her.'

  'Yes,' Che breathed. Despite the magnitude of what had been said, she found no doubt remaining within herself at all. Khanaphes had been a city that did not make sense. Only by the addition of some such presence as this could it be made whole. 'But how?' she asked. 'How has it come to this end?'

  'This is no end,' Garmoth Atennar rumbled from behind her. 'We merely wait and sleep. We shall arise once more, when our city is ready.'

  The absolute certainty in his voice struck a false chord in Che. For the first time she doubted them: not their belief in themselves, but the extent of what they knew. 'I don't understand,' she said. 'Help me understand.'

  She thought they would not respond, but the woman who had been combing her hair stood up, stretching luxuriously. 'We shall tell her.'