“It’s a blessing to go to the earth so young?” It confused her. Mira naturally thought that doing well meant the reward of pleasant things, not dying.
Genel interrupted Mira’s next movement, and took her face in her hands. “Yes. You must understand. We protect a very important knowledge. To do so means we must be willing to do anything necessary to keep it safe. And that will mean doing things that seem wrong to you. But in the service of our oath,” she said, commanding Mira’s attention, “nothing is wrong. And so when our life is done, we go unblemished.”
Mira looked back, understanding dawning in her young mind. “But accountability is when you have eighteen cycles. Does everybody die then?”
“If they are Far, they do,” Genel said.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen. I will go into my next life in but a few months.”
Mira began to cry. “I don’t want you to go. Please. Can you stay? I will be very good. I won’t beat up on any of the boys anymore.”
Genel smiled. “As long as you don’t really hurt them.” Then she wore her serious face, her teaching face. “Mira, this is who we are. You will have many mothers in your life. And they’ll all love you and take care of you. And then one day, you’ll do the same for a child. Many, in fact. And then you can tell her it’s okay to beat up on the boys.”
Mira didn’t smile. “I don’t want to. I just want you to stay. I don’t want any more mothers. One is enough. Just until I’m old enough to be by myself.”
Her mother held her close, and hugged her. And rocked her. “One day, you may even have a child of your own, Mira. It’s such a blessing when that happens. Especially for you, because you belong to an important family for our people. And when that child comes, you’ll be happy to know that there’ll be Far to take care of the child when you’re gone. Just as I am doing for you.”
Mira shook her head. “But then the only way she’ll ever know me is because someone else told her my name. And we’ll never be able to sing the Soliel songs or Run the Light as you and I do, because I’ll be gone before she is old enough to do those things.”
The woman who called herself her mother tried to hug her again. But Mira didn’t want her hugs right now. She didn’t want to love Genel anymore, because she was going to die and give her to another mother. And she couldn’t understand why this was a blessing. So she ran. Ran out the door and into the city and moved as fast and long as her small body would allow her.
Why do I have to be a Far? she thought. Just train and learn and fight and … die. What if I just want to be a mother and keep being one?
* * *
The memory receded, leaving her unsettled. For a Far there was life and love and duty, and these were all supposed to mean the same thing. And included caring for another woman’s child at some point. But she had left her city, and made peace with her own brief, childless life.
Until her sister died.
Vendanj rode beside her, watching the horizon. “Does it remind you?”
Mira had shared the Sheason’s company for too long to be surprised at his ability to guess her inner thoughts. They’d shared parts of each other’s past over the last few years. “Yes.”
“Remembrance isn’t always cheerful.” He paused, letting those words linger. “But it’s a good test for what may come.”
Mira stared back, nothing to say.
“It’s harder, though,” Vendanj added, “when new feelings stir inside.”
It would be pointless to deny her feelings for Tahn. “It has no bearing on what I must do, or why I came,” she said.
Vendanj showed a wan smile. “I know. But be careful that in spending so much time with me, you don’t become too much like me. Your future may be short, but it’s worth living. Don’t let anything, even a Sheason, ruin that for you.”
She looked back at him for a long moment, then offered a crooked smile. “You say that now.…”
Under the weight of the Scar sun, they shared between them a rare laugh, low and even and mild. She had the thought that it might likewise be rare that laughter was heard by anyone in this place.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Stonemount
What I find interesting is that the Stonemounts didn’t seem to prepare to leave. Things you’d expect they would take still lay about their homes.
—From the first commissioned expedition to Stonemount
The chasm reminded Tahn of a box canyon near Jedgwick Ridge in the Hollows. Except this passage felt … constructed. It stretched into the rock until its walls seemed to meet. Birds had managed to build nests high up the sheer facings, using small imperfections to gain purchase. The walls rose more than a hundred strides. Beyond them, the sky appeared as a river seen from high above. The sensation of peering up and seeming to look down caused Tahn to swoon in his saddle.
He steadied himself, and noticed figures carved into the stone on either side of the canyon, one showing a man, the other a woman, both with tightly shut lips.
“Come on,” Sutter scolded. “We’re wasting time.” His friend pushed his horse into a gallop down the chasm.
They rode for some time before the narrow canyon came to an end. The shadows of evening were falling fast, casting the gorge into darkness. When the rock at last gave way, it was as though the mountain before them had been hollowed out. In the belly of a great depression lay a city, stretching a league wide. In a great circle, sheer cliffs rose around the basin, the whole thing looking like a vast crater. From where he stood, Tahn could see no other entrance, no chasms like the one they’d just traversed.
The westering sun caused a sharp line of light and shadow to fall across the city, leaving its western half in darkness. But nowhere could Tahn see the flicker of a lamp.
The city definitely seemed abandoned.
No smell of cooking fires or livestock. No voices. No dogs barking. Nothing. An unsettling quiet held over the city. Outer buildings were covered in creeping vines that had covered their timbers. Deeper into the city, smooth white walls rose in lonely majesty as though seeking the light that fled the sky. But even these showed cracks and fissures. This city’s protection—the great cliffs—had also become its tomb.
“Look at this place,” Sutter said in wonder. “It must be a thousand years old, two thousand. I’ve never heard Ogea mention it in his stories.”
Maybe some places are left to the dead.
“Come on.”
The soft loam in the chasm ended, letting them into a shallow gully that dipped to a natural spring before rising again to the city plain. Along the crater wall in both directions, forming an outer band, lay a cemetery like a circle of defense. Or warning, Tahn thought.
They rode around grave markers and stone tombs erected like small bathhouses. The line of shadow falling across the city seemed to move out of the crater, leaving them in deep shadow. They moved slowly over long-untended grass that bristled in their passage. The peculiar smell of old earth and leaning stones accompanied the fragrances of night-blooming flowers that seemed to grow only where bodies were gathered in death.
The sound of crickets began to whir, arythmically at first, but soon in a common pulse.
Then above it, Tahn heard a scratching.
He froze in the deepening shadow of a stone mausoleum, raising his finger to his lips to warn Sutter not to speak.
The scratching came again, like bare, winter tree limbs blown by the wind, scrabbling against one another or scraping the side of a barn. No wind blew. Tahn nocked an arrow and Sutter slowly drew his sword. Tahn eased forward and peered around the corner of the stone monument. Through the dark night he squinted.
It came again, stealing his breath. Hunched over a grave, a shadowy figure examined the writing on a marker. It gently touched the ground there, its long, thin fingers moving easily into the earth as it seemed to ponder.
A mourner?
It raised an arm against the night and then plunged it deep into the earth. The ground moved
only slightly as the shape cast its arm back and forth as though searching, feeling, digging toward something. It stopped, perhaps having found the object of its desire. The figure’s cowl slid directly over the place in the grave bed, and it lowered its head so close to the ground that it might have inhaled the dust of it.
There it remained still for a moment.
The form huddled but fifty strides from them, and Tahn feared that even a breath would reveal them.
Suddenly, the figure raised both arms to the sky. Its long, thin fingers curled into knotted fists that shook in defiance as it tilted back its head and screamed an airy hiss. Tahn’s skin rose in chill bumps, and his muscles weakened. His fingers and toes began to tingle and his temples pound with the beat of his own heart.
Tahn held perfectly still, waiting, worrying the creature would turn and discover him.
Finally, the thing stood and rushed north, vanishing behind a forest of grave markers. Tahn relaxed in his saddle, resting his head against his horse’s neck.
Reflexively, Tahn then traced the familiar pattern of the scar on his left hand. The hammer. The shape calmed him, and slowly his breathing came under control. He remained silent for several moments, shaking off Sutter’s questioning gaze. The light had completely drained from the sky, showing a bright tapestry of stars on a sable backdrop that ended in a wide circle where the cliffs rose against the night.
“Something,” he said, when it felt safe to speak. “I don’t know what. It was digging at the graves.” He didn’t explain that the being hadn’t needed to remove the dirt to put its arm freely into solid earth.
“My kind of something,” Sutter said, a bit nervous.
Tahn pulled an arrow to half draw, then he led them through the cemetery to the low wall on the other side, and into the city.
The first buildings they encountered were houses—most of them single-story structures. Near the walls rested a few produce baskets and water barrels, blown by winds and chewed in the mouths of rats.
Further on, the buildings rose two, three, four stories, blocking more starlight and blurring the edges of the buildings in deep shadow.
Tahn pointed to a towering building on their left. “Let’s bed down.”
They rode directly in. Ceilings rose the height of two men, rough chunks of stone fallen from the walls, the lonely smell of dust blanketing everything. Bits of glass lay strewn near the windows. A few paintings dressed the walls, appearing to have become sepia-colored from endless days of exposure. And a handful of tables and chairs littered the floor in jumbled masses, broken and marred.
After tethering the horses in an adjacent room, Tahn headed for an inner wall. There, he swept the rubble aside with his boot and sat with his back against the firm rock. Sutter sat beside him, laying his sword across his legs and exhaling tiredly.
“Is this the adventure you wanted?” Tahn asked.
Sutter emitted a single, low chuckle, and was fast asleep, leaving Tahn with the darkness. How much more comfortable he would have been knowing Mira watched nearby. He fingered the outlines of the sticks stuffed in his cloak, and wondered if the others had reached Recityv yet, wondered if they had escaped the dark clouds at North Face.
His mind turned, raced, with the images and events just since leaving the Sedagin. He huddled against the wall, staring through the empty, darkened window at the abandoned streets. So many unfamiliar things swam in his mind and in his eyes, he soon had no power to discern if he were awake or asleep, dreaming.
* * *
His legs dragged over the harsh terrain, carving shallow furrows in the dusty trail. The height of the sun put it near the meridian. Its heat fell like the yoke of a peddler’s pack on his shoulders. No wind stirred. Around him was the patient smell of aging sage and earth left baking under a cruel sun. The horizon wavered with heat, blurring the dips and rises in the land.
Tahn stumbled, catching himself with his hands on the hot ground. He allowed himself to kneel and rest, raising weary, half-shut eyes to the glare of light from a pale blue sky. The firmament appeared washed and bleached and absent of clouds.
And there he stood, learning to shoot his bow out over a precipice from a man whose face he couldn’t see.…
* * *
The dream ended, and Tahn awoke in the darkness beside his friend.
“My last hell,” he muttered, and knew he would get no sleep that night.
He left Sutter sleeping and ambled through the first story of the building in search of a window facing east. Around the corner, a stair rose through shadows into the upper levels. Gossamer threads hung between the posts supporting the dust-covered stair rail. Tahn warily climbed through successive stories—the stairs ending after six flights and letting him out onto the roof.
Under a veil of starlight, he could see the beauty of the hidden city. Its surface rose and fell across rooftops and streets silhouetted against the outer cliff.
He faced east and started to recite the names of stars. He knew them like friends, friends met of necessity each morning. He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t rise to see them. It was a quiet, peaceful time. Voices left the silence alone. His thoughts could run outward without interpretation, without resistance.
He remembered sitting on the front stoop with Balatin and Wendra and trying to describe how far the sky went, the speculation soon becoming so preposterous and cumbersome that they all laughed and turned their attention to the light-flies and songs. But there were moments, Tahn thought, when that furthest point could almost be understood, almost glimpsed. He braced himself against a breeze sweeping in from the tops of the cliffs and thought of dawn.
He shut his eyes, and imagined again the image of the sun, elegantly slow as it rose into the eastern sky, the gradual strengthening of the light an unassuming, wakeful promise.
After a moment, he opened his eyes and saw the strengthening light at the eastern rim of the cliff. A wave of relief stole over him. He nodded a greeting toward the dawn and descended the stair the way he’d come.
As Tahn reentered the room, Nails woke. “Find anything good to eat?” he said, with a sour morning smile.
Tahn laughed in spite of himself. “Let’s get moving. I don’t think we can spend more than a half day trying to find this codex. We need to get to Recityv.”
In the watery light of predawn, they stepped into the street. Their mounts’ hooves clopped loud against the hard stone and morning silences.
“Hello, gentleman,” a voice greeted, as they cleared the door.
Sutter pulled his sword in a clumsy movement, his eyes trying to fix on the owner of the voice.
Tahn nocked an arrow and made a full draw, bending at the waist and swinging his bow in a full circle. He could see no one.
“Those aren’t necessary.” A man stepped from between two of the buildings. “May I ask what brings you to Stonemount?”
The fellow wore brushed leather breeches and tunic, with an embroidered belt done in scarlet colors of varying hue. Gold rickrack graced the collar and cuffs of his loose white shirt. A tricorne hat, likewise garnished with gold thread, sat at an angle on his head. His cloak—really more of a cape—was bright red, and gave the impression that the man cared more for fashion than warmth. And at his hip he wore a rounded blade in a jewel-encrusted sheath.
“Come now,” the man insisted, “cease your careful scrutiny of my sword and answer my question.” He spoke with a merry expression on his face, as though the things he said were of no consequence at all, things charming and lightly conversational.
“I know you crossed the Lesule on the Ophal’re’Donn bridge. So, you’re not men of the valley or you’d never have set foot upon it. And I don’t take you for trophy hunters, because you brought no cart.” All the while the man’s face remained jolly, unconcerned.
Tahn relaxed his draw and dropped his aim to the ground. He started to speak when Sutter chimed in. “We’re adventurers.”
“On our way to Recityv. We’re just pa
ssing through,” Tahn amended.
“But a grand place to pass through,” Sutter added with thick irony.
The stranger seemed to like Sutter’s response better. “Grand, indeed,” he echoed.
Sutter removed a waterskin from his horse and took a draught from the skin, then offered the stranger a pull.
“No, my young friend. But thank you all the same.”
Sutter corked the skin and refastened it to his saddle.
Tahn put away his arrow. “May we ask what business brings you here?”
“I’m an archivist and historian, good fellow,” the stranger replied with enthusiasm. “Where else should I be?”
“In a school or library?” Sutter retorted.
The other’s waxen smile dipped, but only for a moment. “Fah, no. This is my school.” He pointed to the ground. “This is the place to find what matters.”
“Not for us. We’re on our way through,” Tahn repeated.
“Well,” the man exclaimed in a calm but commanding voice, “there is but one passage out of Stonemount besides the one you entered by. And energetic as you are, you’re not likely to find it alone.” His smile returned. “Come with me, and all your better deeds I’ll add to my histories. Then away you’ll go to continue your adventure. I’m known as Sevilla Daul. What may I call you?”
Sutter sheathed his sword. “I’m Dulin. This is Renn,” Sutter lied.
Sevilla bowed, and started to amble up the street.
The light strengthened on the eastern rim of the cliffs that encircled the city, bathing the walls and immense towers in bluish hues. In the dawn of another day, the city felt safe, protected.
“A marvel of engineering,” Sevilla was saying. “Everything you see was sculpted, erected, and fashioned by the hands of the Stonemounts. An industrious people, gifted as few in the raising of stone to art.” He scanned the city with appreciative eyes.
Smaller buildings at the edge of the city had given way to towering structures that rose near the city’s center. The sun was now striking the immense gables and beautiful archways that joined the high buildings hundreds of strides up. In the distance they looked like flags unfurled from parapets into these man-made canyons of stone. Despite the wear of time and cracks creeping into the walls, the symmetry mesmerized him.
The Unremembered Page 26
