The Scarab Path sota-5

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  His words washed over her, and she swayed under their impact. They were madness and yet, revealed to her by the Masters of Khanaphes, she knew that they must be the truth. Here was a magic a thousand years in the making, and accumulating still, and of such power that the Moth-kinden themselves could not have dreamt of it.

  'The rain has washed the Scorpions away?' Thalric's voice broke in on them, an outsider intruding. 'I understand nothing of this.' The Masters' expressions clearly told him: Of course you don't.' Tell me one thing,' he went on, and they looked at him without interest as he asked, 'What will you and your people do when the Empire gets here?'

  'Your Empire does not interest us,' said Lirielle. 'Mere children and their toys.'

  'But you seem to have realized now what those toys can do,' Thalric insisted. 'A pack of barbarians with a little artillery has nearly destroyed your city. The Empire-'

  'We can see your Empire in your mind,' Elysiath silenced him at once, 'like a child's chalk drawing of power. They will come, you assume, and seek to command Khanaphes, to make it part of your dominion.' She stretched expansively. 'It would be tiresome to have to destroy your Empire, and distracting. I imagine, therefore, that we will allow you to bring your governors and your soldiers, and thus pretend that Khanaphes is yours.' She smiled at that, at last a real expression, sharp-edged and aimed directly at him. 'But how long do you believe your Empire will last?'

  He stared at her blankly and she continued, 'I am nine times older than your Empire, O savage, and I shall still be young when your kinden have become the playthings of some other children. Your Empire will decay and die in due course. Only we are eternal.'

  Thalric opened his mouth, but no words came out.

  'But enough of such trifles,' Elysiath said. 'Let us instead talk of you.' She was looking at Che. In fact they were all looking at her.

  'Me?' Che stared.

  'You who have answered our summons,' the woman said. 'You who have been gifted, by chance, with such an open power. You have been separated from the tawdry heritage of your own people. You have been made special.'

  'I …'

  'Why did you come here, really?' Elysiath asked her.

  'I was sent …' She stuttered into silence, feeling the lie burn on her tongue. 'I was not happy in Collegium. I wanted to discover what has happened to me.'

  'And so you heard our call,' the Master told her. 'And you followed your destiny all the way to Khanaphes.'

  'But what do you want? Why would you call me?'

  'You can see how remiss our servants have been here, and yet you ask that?' Elysiath smiled. 'The old blood that rules our city has grown thin and weak. We should have anticipated that. They hear our commands but faintly. They are only a shadow of their ancestors. We would appoint you as our priestess, instruct you in the ways of our power. We would set you above our other servants, as one who can hear us clearly, and is therefore most dear to us.' The expression she turned on Che was almost maternal. 'You shall become First Minister of our city.'

  'Che …' she heard Thalric's warning tone, but she shrugged him off.

  'Why?' she asked. 'Why would I?' She expected them to recoil from the insolence of the question, to inform her that serving them was reward enough in itself. She was ready for that.

  'Because you are a true scholar,' said Elysiath, 'one who seeks knowledge always. And nowhere will you find such understanding as we have, we who have lived out, in person, the ages that are your kind's ancient history. We can give you knowledge that even the Moths have forgotten, and that, even if they possessed it, they would not share. We can tell you the names of all the kinden in the world. We can reveal to you why it is that the Mantids of the Lowlands hate the Spiders so, though even they have let themselves forget it. We can teach you where the Art came from, and how to truly master it.' Her fond look deepened. 'But more than that, little child, where else have you to go? You are in a world that has no place for you, save here. You are no longer one of your people, no longer a creature of your home. You are adrift in a land that cannot understand you. You cannot even understand yourself. We shall explain everything. We shall give you a place here. You shall be honoured, become the messenger of the Masters to their servants.'

  Che tried to refuse them, but the words came reluctantly to her mind and she could not force them out. It was their sympathy that struck her to the heart, the understanding that they had promised. They knew what she had gone through, and she felt tears in her eyes. Where else but here would she ever find real acceptance? Better a servant of the Masters than a lonely outcast forever moving on.

  'Yes,' she said, her voice choking.

  Elysiath's approval warmed her. 'You know what you must do,' she said, 'to be ours, and to enter into our grace.' At her side Jeherian held out something small, and Che stepped forward, reached up and took it. In her hand rested a curved blade of sharpened copper: a razor.

  Kneeling down, she took a fistful of her hair, bringing the razor up to it. Of course she knew what she must do, what the Khanaphir had done since time immemorial in order to demonstrate their servitude.

  'Che!' Thalric spoke urgently. 'Don't do this.' She could sense the attention of the Masters focused on her like a pressure guiding her hand. The blade, keener than copper should rightly be, severed the first few strands.

  'Che, you heard them,' Thalric persisted. 'They don't care about you. They don't care about anyone in Khanaphes, or anyone in the world. Listen to me, Che, this is insane. You can't want to stay down here in the slime and the dark.'

  She just gazed at him, and already felt him as a memory, receding into her past. 'I'm sorry,' she said, not sure who she was sorry for, or why.

  'They killed your man Kadro, and that woman his assistant,' Thalric went on. He was fighting to get out the words as though the air itself was smothering him. 'And they don't care. People like us, the Apt kinden, we're just beasts to them, nothing but insects.'

  'I know,' she replied sadly, 'but what are we, if not that?' She moved the razor more decisively, severing a handful of her locks, took hold of some more.

  'Che, I like your hair. Don't cut it off,' Thalric implored her.

  She looked for him again, finding that he was hard to focus on. Even his name seemed strange in her mind.

  'Che, please,' he went on, 'listen to me. You know that I care for you. Ever since we first met, there was something about you.' He laughed desperately. 'I'll admit we got off to a poor start, but you can't say I don't have some claim on you. Please, Che, stay with me.'

  She shook her head, astonished by his temerity. 'With you?' she said incredulously, the memories drawn back to the surface of her mind whether she wanted them or not. 'Thalric, when the Masters tested me, do you know what they made me live through? What they chose as the most terrible memory I must relive? It was the interrogation room in Myna. That was the worst moment in my life, and they made me watch you torturing me, over and over.'

  'What do you think,' he replied through gritted teeth, 'they made me see?'

  '…What?' She felt as though something deep within her had exploded, yet so far away that she had only heard the hollow knock of it, that the main force of it was still travelling towards her.

  'What do you think was the moment in my life they took me back to, if not that? The one moment of them all that I would take back if I could. Not your bastard sister and her father destroying me in Helleron. Not killing my own mentor for some Rekef General's whim. Not my own kind turning on me outside Collegium. Not that bitch Felise Mienn with her blade held at my throat, or being strung up in Armour Square, ready for execution. Not my pain at all, but yours. They used their Art, or whatever, to make me hurt you, in my head, and I could not endure it. It would have destroyed me if you had not broken their hold.'

  The breath whooshed out of her, and she felt the razor slip from her hand. It left a shallow cut on her thigh as it bounced from her leg, and then clacked onto the oily floor.

  'Help me,' she whispere
d, and Thalric took her hand, pulled her up towards him and held her tightly. She sensed Accius moving forward, until he stood beside Thalric, and belatedly she realized that this was because the Masters were now frowning at them.

  She hugged Thalric briefly and then turned to them, and their glowering expressions. The awesome disappointment and disapproval she saw there nearly dried up the words in her mouth. She finally got out, 'I thank you for your offer, your generous offer, but I am not the person you take me for. I am not fit to serve you, surely. We must return to the city. I have friends there.'

  Elysiath regarded her sourly, almost petulantly, and Che wondered whether she was the first person to ever refuse the Masters something they wanted. 'Return?' the woman said drily. 'Return to Khanaphes Above?'

  'We must, all three of us,' Che said, with more strength. 'I'm sorry.'

  The Masters exchanged looks from the corners of their eyes. 'Perhaps you are right,' Elysiath said. 'You are not fit to serve us, if that is what you believe.'

  'You have heard entirely too much of our secret histories,' added Lirielle, but Elysiath actually interrupted and spoke over her: 'These two with you, the savages, were doomed from the moment they stepped into our resting place, but you, you had a chance to become something greater than you are. Yet you have turned your back on that chance. You were born amongst the slave races, and now you shall die amongst them. Think only how you could have been more.'

  Thalric tensed, hand poised to sting, and she saw Accius bring his sword up. Elysiath laughed, as the Jamail might have laughed when it destroyed the Scorpions. 'Your weapons are nothing here,' she told them patiently. 'Though our dominion may have shrunk from the height of its greatness, you are within it now, for we still rule these halls.' The great pressure of their collective minds hung over the three intruders. Che saw Thalric's hand shake, his Art trapped within it. Accius's face was shiny with sweat, his sword motionless.

  'You are not the first to come and steal our secrets,' Elysiath said, raising a hand. 'Nor shall you be the last to pay the price for it.'

  'Secrets?'

  Che started at the voice, for it belonged to the Vekken beside them.

  'Our knowledge is our treasure, and no thieves shall take it outside these halls.' Jeherian told him.

  'You have kept no secrets here.' Accius's expression suggested that the worst had befallen him, and he was meeting it joyously. 'Slay me and you set your seal on nothing. You cannot keep us from knowing.'

  'What nonsense,' Elysiath said scornfully, but Accius grinned, teeth gleaming brightly in his dark face.

  'My brother is at large in the city already. Not you nor all your servants shall catch him. And what I know, he knows.'

  A dead silence fell between them, the great Masters regarding the defiant Ant-kinden with what Che realized was dawning puzzlement. At last it was Jeherian's expression that changed, sagging with bitter weariness.

  'The old Art,' he acknowledged. 'The old Art of the savages. It has been far too long and we have forgotten too much, how they were in each other's minds, the folk of the Alim and the Aleth.' Che saw realization ripple through them all, stripping away their majesty and leaving a sad bewilderment behind. She found that, despite their malevolence and their vast power, she still felt sorry for them in some strange way — atavisms that remembered only ruling a world that had long passed them by.

  'What could we say?' she said. 'Who would believe us anyway? We will return to the sun, and say nothing. There would be no profit for us in being dubbed liars or madmen. We leave you to your rest. Do not think ill of us.'

  The Masters of Khanaphes regarded them stonily for a long moment, until Jeherian nodded minutely and said, 'Go.'

  Che would remember for ever the sight of them as she glanced back one last time: beautiful by an alien aesthetic, huge and commanding and gleaming in that bluish light. The immortal Slug-kinden, the Masters of Khanaphes.

  She led the way back. Thalric tried to at first, but he went off course over and over, leading them in circles through the maze of halls by the light of Accius's quisitor's lamp. The true path to the light was clear only to Che and, once they had finally accepted that, she led them confidently until they found the corpses.

  There were four of them there, three close by and one at a distance. Che had not quite identified them when Thalric knelt down beside the middle one of the three. She heard him take a long breath, and only then recognized the corpse as Osgan's.

  'Oh,' she said. 'I'm sorry, Thalric. Really I am.'

  'I left him behind,' Thalric said. 'He was in pain, but I left him behind.'

  'We should go,' Accius said shortly, still very anxious. Thalric looked up at him balefully and Che recalled how it was only because Accius had been abducting her that Thalric had abandoned Osgan to his fate.

  'No fighting, no disagreement,' she ordered them flatly. 'We leave here at once, or the Masters may change their minds. Thalric, I'm sorry, but we should spend no more time here than necessary.'

  'You're right, of course,' he said, standing up. She took his hand and led them on, past the final corpse, that was twisted, both face and body, into an attitude of unbearable horror.

  The thought she had, crossing into the next hall, was, We must be close now. There is his armour on the throne. She thought that until she saw the head lift, and the dead eyes of Garmoth Atennar stared out at her. Even then the others did not see, not until she flinched back against them, dragging them round to watch the colossal metal-clad form stand up, sword in hand.

  'Garmoth Atennar,' she declared. 'Lord of the Fourth House, whose Bounty Exceeds all Expectations, Greatest of Warriors.' She could remember every word of it. 'We are leaving your realm.'

  'I know of your words with my peers,' he boomed. 'Even as our slaves have diminished, so has the foolishness of the Masters grown. Not mine, though, and I care not if you have a hundred listeners. They shall know first-hand the fate that awaits trespassers into these halls.'

  The might of his mind oppressed them, but Che found it weaker now that he was alone. She could shrug it off with ease, ward it off from the others, thinking: Is this magic? Am I a magician now?

  Garmoth Atennar took one great stride forward. His sword dropped towards her ponderously and Thalric pushed her out of its path. His stingshot struck shards from the Master's Mantis-crafted armour. Garmoth changed his grip on the sword and swung it in a scything blow towards him, but Thalric took flight briefly and avoided it, leading the sword point upwards. Accius darted in and rammed his sword into the huge man's knee.

  Che expected Garmoth's armour to fend off the blow easily, but the Mantis plate crumpled at once, cracking like fire-warmed paper. With a grating roar, Garmoth collapsed to his knees, and Accius slit his throat, stepping back to avoid the huge body as it toppled to the floor in a cacophony of metal.

  In the echoes of that crash, that seemed to go on and on, Che waited for repercussions, but the other Masters made no further appearance. Perhaps they slept already. Perhaps they were as heedless of their fellow as they had been of their servants.

  'Rusted through,' Thalric observed. She blinked at him, realized he meant the armour. 'Look,' he pointed, 'the backplate is cracked without a blow being struck. This was no good place to store armour.' He laid a hand on one of the massive pauldrons, and half of it came away without effort.

  'Greatest of warriors,' she whispered. Was he genuinely so, in his day? Or did he rely merely on the awe he was held in to win his battles for him? What have we slain here today? She felt they should move the body to the pedestal where he had lain for so long, but the three of them could not have managed it, even with Accius's strength.

  Forty-Five

  He had awoken several times, but retained only a sketchy memory of each occasion: aware that he was in the infirmary of the Scriptora, and that she was beside him. When he moved, he felt as if every bone and joint had been under the hammer. Amnon, the First Soldier of Khanaphes, opened his eyes.

  T
hey had not given up on him, he saw, for this was one of the little rooms reserved for Ministers or people of importance. His soldiers, most of whom had suffered worse than he, would be tended in the communal infirmaries of their barracks, or in converted storerooms. There would be more than enough work today to keep all Khanaphes's cutters and salvers busy.

  He remembered, in fits and starts, that the city still stood, that the Scorpions had been washed away, that he had held the bridge just long enough. He squeezed the hand that he found in his, startling his companion from her doze as she sat beside the bed.

  'Hello, Praeda.'

  She looked haggard and he guessed she had not slept much these last few days. She bit her lip, watching him, and he levered himself up to a sitting position, determinedly ignoring all the complaints of his body. 'Don't tell me I look as bad as that,' he chided.

  'I am so angry with you,' she said tightly. Her grip on his hand became painful. 'I can't believe just how angry I am.'

  'You have every right to be.'

  'Don't be reasonable about it now!' she snapped. 'You have no right to be reasonable now, after what you did. You were going to die, you and those other idiots. You were going to stay behind and die. What … What sort of a way is that for anyone to behave?'

  'It is what the First Soldier of Khanaphes does, if it is needed,' said Amnon calmly. 'It is what the Chosen of the Marsh people does. For Totho and Meyr, I cannot say why they did it, and perhaps they cannot either. How long have I slept?'

  'It's now evening of the day after the battle.'

  'And what do the healers say about me?'

  'Damn the healers. I stitched your wounds myself,' she informed him. 'We know our medicine in Collegium.'

  'So what do you say about me?'

  'That you're a cursed fool. And you got off lightly. I saw your armour after they'd cut it off you. It looked like someone had thrown it off a cliff and then put it into an industrial grinder. They should have taken you out of it in pieces.'

  'You sound disappointed,' he noted.