The Scarab Path sota-5

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  'Must we?' queried the man. 'I tire of it all.'

  'We shall tell her,' said the woman with the comb, firmly. 'Child, I am Lirielle Denethetra, Lady of the Amber Moon, Speaker of Peace, Whose Word Brings Low the Great.' She intoned the litany of her titles with profound meaning, shrouding each with the shadows of a history that Che could never know of. 'Open your mind, little one.'

  'I … don't know how.' Che said awkwardly. 'I am no magician.' She was aware of Thalric close by her, Accius further away, sword still in hand. When she thought of them, she felt embarrassed by their disbelief, but in the presence of the Masters she found she thought of them less and less.

  'It is open as a window,' said the man.

  'Then we shall tell you of the cataclysm and doom that came to Khanaphes, and that lies over her still,' said Lirielle Denethetra. 'The tale begins before even we ourselves remember, many thousands of years before the founding of our city, or any city.'

  Colours began to rise in Che's mind, swirling and dancing, accumulating into hazy images, viewed as through warped glass. She saw a landscape unrecognizable, green and forested. She saw great plains where beetles grazed between the spires of soaring anthills. She saw no walls, no evidence of the hand of man. She saw other beasts, monstrous things with hair, horrible to behold, that she had never seen the like of in all her waking life.

  The voice of Elysiath continued in her mind, saying: 'Such was the world before even we had arisen to walk in it. So stood the world when the Pact was made and the Art was born, but the world was new formed, and not set in its ways.'

  'There was a great catastrophe, in the spring of time,' Lirielle's voice now took over. 'We have peered back, and divined as best we could, yet know not the cause. Perhaps there was no other cause, save for the mysterious slow workings of the earth, which moved and fell, and made the lands we know today.' The images in Che's mind blurred and shifted. She had a sense of a great sliding and slumping, a shuddering that seemed to rend apart the entire world. She saw whole lands fall into the sea, then the sea roll back to steal even more of the earth. She saw plains riven in two, the higher broken from the lower by a great sheer cliff. Is that the Lowlands I see? The Commonweal and the Barrier Ridge?

  'And the people were sore afraid,' Elysiath told her. 'Small wonder that only those tribes who might truly influence the world must step forth to take mastery of it. Mere crafting and making would not suffice, in order to live through those terrible times. So we would come into our estate, and so, later, would come the others in their distant lands. Still, none were so great as we.'

  'All long ago and before even our time, and it was long before we came to understand it,' added the unnamed man. 'But it was to dominate our world nonetheless. This is later, though, much later.' There was a city now being built, Che saw in her mind. The people were stocky and brown, like her. At first there was merely a small town on the banks of a river, the dense forest surrounding it being cut back for farmland. Then she saw stone walls raised. There were suggestions of battles with the denizens of the forest, and those of the plains beyond. She saw her kinfolk victorious, and saw great figures standing at their head, pale and slow but mighty in their sorcery. 'These come from my great-grandfather, these scenes — before my own time. Your people had not yet gone east to serve the Moths. There is no Pathis, no Solarno. The Spider-kinden live in caves and fight each other for scraps.'

  Too much, too much, thought Che, but they were merciless in imparting their knowledge, and she was sure that, for every word said, ten thousand remained silent. She was being given only the gloss, a thin veneer of a deep history that she sensed yawning like an abyss at her feet.

  'We raised the first walls,' Elysiath said proudly. 'We first placed stone upon stone. We were the first of all the kinden of the world to know civilization.' Even as she spoke, so the city of Khanaphes took shape. But on what river? The marshes of the estuary segued into lush forest. The fields were green and bountiful beyond the dreams of the farmers Che had seen along the Jamail. Beyond the forests extended vast plains of grassland where the Khanaphir drove back the nomad tribes, to install their own horses and goats and aphids, to build their further towns. Did they move the city because of some horror? How could this be? They did not hear her questions, seeming absorbed in their own histories. 'So we grew great and greater,' Elysiath Neptellian affirmed. 'So the centuries passed by, of majesty and expansion. So our teachers walked the paths of the world, and we brought many kinden the benefits of our just rule. So we made colonies elsewhere, even as far east as the Land of the Lake. In that way we met others who had assumed the mantle of rulers, and we received their tribute and taught them much, for they had much to learn. We were attaining our full grandeur, the very heights of our power.'

  'And yet all was not well,' said Lirielle sadly, and Che felt a cold wind of grief and loss wash over her. 'For, even as our power grew, the land itself was betraying us. That ancient sundering was still at work. Decade to decade, century to century, the land gave back less. The forests succumbed not to the axe but to time, the grasslands withered, rivers dried. The patterns of wind and weather had been broken all those ages before, and the land was still changing to catch up. Our greatest sorcerers looked into the past and the future and saw that, despite all we had built, our land would grow only drier and drier, until the plains became a barren desert littered with the skulls of our cities, until the forests had retreated back to the sheltered Alim, until only the loyal river Jamail traced a trail of green through the barren land.' Che saw it all evolve in her mind, the encroaching desolation. She saw the desert rise from the heart of the plains like a devouring monster. And what did the Lowlands look like, once? Was it once green, as well? And will it, too, become a desert?

  'We spent many decades in debate over what might be done,' came the man's voice again. 'We put off the inevitable. Our dominion declined, became less and less, the borders shrinking until only our sacred city remained of it. We would not believe that all we had built must come to an end. It was bitter for us.' And Che felt the bitterness: his words resounded with it. 'We, who had been masters of the earth, were yet become victims of time. As the land became drier, we could not bear to remain. Our skins cracked under the sun, so we became things of the night, and then of the earth's depths. We knew we could no longer remain amongst our subjects.'

  'Yet we would not abandon them.' Elysiath said. 'So we had them build this place, where we would sleep, and from which we could still work our magics: our great ritual that has been nine hundred years in the making and may last a thousand more for all we know. And we selected those that bore a trace of our blood, or those that were most open to us, and made them our chief servants, and their children, and their children's children, so that they would be able to preserve our ways, and not fall into evil. Even then, our servants were gradually drifting from away us, falling into the error that has now claimed almost all of their kind. Which is why we have some interest, little child, in you.'

  'Me?' Che started. She felt Thalric move beside her, and realized that, for him, her voice was the only one to have spoken out loud. The rest — that incredible history — had been played out in her head alone. It is best that way. 'But I'm not of your blood, or the Ministers' blood, whatever you mean.'

  Elysiath eyed her pityingly. 'Of course you are not. Do not make the mistake of our servants, who believe it is merely a bloodline that we value. No, it is the ability to hear our call, to hear the old ways. You are of more use to us than all the Ministers this last century has seen. You alone have been purified of the taint of recent years.'

  She saw understanding of a sort in Thalric's face. I'm Inapt, yes. So what? But she did know what. It did not just mean she could no longer use a crossbow or turn a key in a lock. It meant that she saw the world differently. Her mind could stretch to different shapes.

  'We called to you — as we call to all those with ears to hear. Some of them come to us as we lie dreaming. Few indeed pass our tests.'<
br />
  A dark thought occurred to Che. 'Kadro,' she murmured, 'the Fly-kinden from Collegium, he went missing.'

  'He was curious.' The man at Elysiath's shoulder nodded. 'He had begun to understand. So we called to him. We even met him at the pyramid's summit. Sometimes, when we awake, we miss the sky, even though it is only the stars of a cool night that we can endure.'

  'He failed the tests,' stated Garmoth Atennar flatly, 'and his companion took her own life rather than attempt them.'

  A shock of anger went through Che, and she took an involuntary step towards the armoured giant, though minuscule in the face of him. 'You killed them!'

  'We?' He looked down on her with faint derision. 'We who have the power of life and death, and whose inescapable rule stretches from horizon to horizon?' She met his eyes then, but his stern face beat her down. There was no admission, in that expression, of any kinship or shared humanity. He was the Master, she a servant, the divisions of the world from before the revolution. She wanted to shout and rage at him, but that reaction would have been as incomprehensible to Garmoth Atennar as the Masters' history would be to Thalric. A Fly and a Beetle were dead, two scholars of the College and, to the immortal Masters, it was as though they had been no more than a beetle, a fly, crushed unknowingly underfoot.

  'And me?' she asked.

  'You have passed our tests,' Elysiath said. 'You have heard our call. From your distant home you sought us out, and now that challenge is behind you, and you stand before us as a supplicant. Now reveal what you would have of us.'

  Che stared at them, and she was distantly aware of Thalric's murmur, 'Be very, very careful what you ask.' It was a needless warning. 'I was sent here by my uncle,' she said. 'As an ambassador.'

  Elysiath laughed again. It was a beautiful sound, but cold as winter. 'You may have believed that once,' she said. 'Do you still?'

  'I …' Che stopped, feeling the world around her totter. Do I? No, Stenwold sent me. There was … I had reasons to investigate an Inapt Beetle city …There is a perfectly rational explanation for my being here. But she found that she did not believe it, not standing before them now. And you, Achaeos, you lured me here, to this place. You have pulled my strings all the way, as well as tormenting my nights.

  Achaeos, since you died you've not been the man I knew.

  'I had a guide, to lead me here,' she confessed slowly. 'I … am haunted.'

  'We see him,' Lirielle said. 'He stands at your shoulder. Have you come this far to be rid of him?'

  To be rid of him? Her breath caught in her throat. This final confirmation that what afflicted her was more than just a madness crawling inside her brain sent a shock through her. More than that was her instinctive recoil from the offer. But it's Achaeos … She saw his lost, loved face again in her mind. My poor Achaeos. I can't just discard him like a cape. But then she thought of the ghost, not the man: that lurking, looming grey stain with its continuous demands.

  'How?' she asked.

  'We need only lend it a little strength,' Lirielle explained. 'It is too weak to exist apart from you now, therefore it leans on you like a sick man. We shall help it to stand alone, then it will be about its business and you shall be rid of it.'

  'But what if I am its business?' Che demanded.

  Lirielle's expression suggested that this entire conversation was now boring her. She went back to combing her hair.

  Che could feel the ghost hovering close, invisible to her but still present. She recalled the Marsh, suddenly: its dragging her towards the Mantis icon, and its shrieking denunciation of the Marsh people, how they had let the old ways lapse so far. Power: it was looking for magic, and why else if not to free itself? She should have considered more that he might want to be free from her, as much as she wanted to be free from him.

  She did want to be free from him.

  'Please,' she said, 'do it.'

  'Che …' Thalric was reaching out, but she shook him off.

  'Do it,' she said again, grasping her courage with both hands.

  Elysiath sighed. 'You are so impatient, with your mayfly lives,' she said. 'See, it is being accomplished even while you demand it.'

  She waved one languid hand, and all eyes followed the gesture.

  There was something boiling and building in the air, grey and formless, writhing and knotting. Motes of substance seemed to be drawn to it, flocking through the dim air. It turned and twisted like a worm, as flecks of dusty powder fell into its substance. Slowly it was growing a form, evolving from a blur into something that had limbs, a head, the shape of a man.

  'Is there …?' Thalric was squinting, as if trying to make out something he could not quite see. In another place, Che was sure, any number of ghosts would pass him by, but here, where the darkness was layered with centuries, one on top of another in an unbroken chain, the magic was getting even to him.

  She thought she saw bones and organs as the apparition formed. It was still colourless, washed-out, still a shadow, a mere reflection in a dark glass. She found that she now feared to set eyes on him. What would he look like after a year in the void? Would it be Achaeos living she saw, or Achaeos dead?

  Thalric made a choking sound, and she knew he must now see it, or see something. His lips drew back in a grimace, his hands spreading open to fight. Behind him the Vekken stood expressionless and she could not know what he saw.

  'Is that …?' Thalric said. 'What am I seeing? Isn't that …?'

  'Yes,' she confirmed, and looked back at the ghost, which was near complete, now — and discovered that it was not.

  They had lent it enough of their strength, like a thimble filled from the ocean, for it to become recognizable, and more of it was being filled out even as she watched. She now recognized the tall, lean frame, and those sharp features that were, in their cold arrogance, a match for the Masters themselves. He did not wear the slave's garb they had dressed him in to die, but instead his arming jacket, its green and gold bleached grey. The sleeves were slit up to his elbows to give play to the spines of his arms. Even the sword-and-circle brooch that he had cast aside now glinted from his breast again.

  'Tisamon,' Che gasped. 'But … no! This is the wrong one. This isn't him!'

  'Little child, what you see is all the ghost there is. No other clings to you,' the man beside Elysiath declared, plainly amused. 'Are you so particular?'

  'But …' she protested, and the Mantis's haughty features turned to regard her. 'I don't understand.'

  'We see in your past a great convergence of ritual,' the man continued, sounding bored again. 'A magical nexus to which you and he were linked. When he died, you were touching him in some way.'

  'But where is Achaeos?' she asked, but she already knew the answer. Gone. Gone beyond, and utterly. Whilst this vicious, martial creature had clung on within her mind, her lover had been like a candle flame suddenly snuffed. The dream-Achaeos had told her, You do this to yourself. She had used his memory as a rod and imagined that it was his hand that beat her with it.

  'Oh.' She sat down suddenly. The spectral Mantis was staring at them, each one in turn. His eyes lingered long enough on Thalric to make the man tense.

  'What do you seek, spirit?' Elysiath asked him. 'What holds you here still?'

  Tisamon's pale lips moved, the words seeming to come from a great distance. Where is my daughter?

  'Go seek her,' Elysiath said without interest. 'She is no concern of ours.'

  Where is she? demanded the Mantis's bleak, far-off voice.

  'You are parted from the Beetle-kinden,' the man told him. 'If you cannot scent your child, free as you are now, then you shall never find her.'

  Tisamon's greyed eyes flashed briefly. Che thought it was resentment, but then she read it as triumph.

  She is among the Dragonflies, the Mantis stated. Far north and west of here.

  'Go seek her,' Elysiath said again. 'We give you leave.'

  Che thought of Tynisa, her near-sister, and daughter of this dead man. She thought of
what directions Tynisa's life might turn under this ghost's influence, how it had already turned when he was alive. 'Tisamon,' she protested. 'No …'

  The angular features stared down at her. Stenwold's niece, he identified her, as though he had not been riding inside her mind these many months. She needs me. With that, he was stalking away, growing less distinct with distance. She thought she detected half-glimpsed shapes about him, the shadows of a shadow, that were those of briars and thorns.

  She looked up at the Masters, whose kinden she realized she must know, from fragmentary legends, folk tales, ancient fictions. She had assumed she would feel hollow with the ghost's departure, whosoever's it had been. She also thought she would feel relieved. In truth she felt neither.

  'What now?' she asked them. 'What will you do with us?' She stood up again, and this time Thalric stood alongside her, with fingers spread, and the Vekken too. Sword clutched tight in his hand, the Ant was staring at the armoured slopes of Garmoth Atennar.

  'They are less than chaff to us,' said Elysiath, 'but you are the grain. In our dreams we have called and, when you came, we awoke for you. For you alone we have broken our long sojourn. We have much to offer you. We give you a chance to share in the rule of the Masters of Khanaphes.'

  Che swallowed, feeling very keenly the ancient weight of the dark halls about her and, even more so, the ageless power of the Masters themselves, who were older even than the stones of their living tomb. There are things here I would never learn in all my days spent at the Great College, she thought. There are things that even Moths could not teach me …

  'Your rule?' Thalric interrupted sharply, though his voice shook. 'What rule is that? What do you rule, save this hole in the ground?'

  'Though our dominion has diminished, do not think we no longer rule our beloved city,' Elysiath reproached him. 'Though we no longer walk its streets, do not think our dreams no longer guide our Ministers. Do not assume we have taken no pains to keep our people on the true path.'