The Sleeping God

by Violette Malan

  Cullen, who somehow managed still to smell of mountain thyme, moved suddenly to her right.

  “Disha tells me the banner does not fly from Mercenary House.”

  With an effort Dhulyn kept relaxed and still. She could not risk loosening her false bonds. “Let her tell us when it does.”

  “And if it should not?”

  “There’s no turning back now,” Dhulyn said.

  “But, Wolfshead-”

  “My Brothers will reach us,” she said.

  “And if they do not?”

  “Then we will kill the Green Shadow ourselves.”

  “Or die in the attempt.”

  “Or die in the attempt,” she agreed, with a careful shrug. “It is all that is required of us.”

  The sound of breaking glass took Parno on the run past Alkoryn’s deserted map room. He’d already been on his way up to shut and bar the only second-story windows that gave on the outside world, but as it was, he’d almost been too late. Sword ready in his hand, he cut with one downward motion through the hand that groped on the windowsill, wincing as the blade clanged on the stone. There went a carefully honed edge. He used the fist that was holding the hilt to push the man-screaming at the loss of his fingers-off the ladder he was standing on and took only another second to shove the ladder away from the wall as Sharan Owlclaw ran into the room behind him.

  “Get those shutters,” he called, jerking his head toward the other window as he closed the ones in front of him and threw up the first of the three solid iron bars that fit horizontally across, locking the iron-reinforced shutters tight. He glanced over, saw that Sharan had her shutters closed, and felt along the baseboard for the vertical rods he knew would be there, sliding them through the bars and locking them with sharp turns before going to help Sharan.

  “They’ve backed off downstairs,” she said. “Shall I watch here?”

  Parno nodded, his breath a harsh rasp in his throat, and headed back down the stairs. Now that this first assault had been repulsed, he was free to think about Dhulyn, knowing she would continue to the Dome, signal or no signal. He’d known her going off on her own was a cyantrine sniffer’s dream. He hoped he would be able to tell her so.

  The first person he saw when he reached the outer courtyard was Tek-aKet. The Tarkin had a streak of dirt on his face and blood on the point of his sword.

  There was silence from the street outside, when Parno would have expected the shouts of the troops and the sounds of running feet. It reminded him of that day in early spring, when he and Dhulyn had found the crowd watching the Finder’s home burn down with the children inside.

  “It’s so quiet,” Tek-aKet said, coming up to Parno as he entered the courtyard. “Everyone is so quiet.”

  Parno knew who “everyone” was to the Tarkin. “We’re killers, Tek,” is what he answered. “We’re trained to be quiet.” Though that didn’t account for the silence outside the gate.

  “Parno,” the Tarkin said. “If we delay much longer, they’ll be in the Dome without us.”

  “I know, Tek, I know. Just a few minutes more.”

  Parno’s searching eyes froze on the spot where the plum tree in its pot had shed some late blossoms over Fanryn, still sitting with Thionan in her arms. Alkoryn, his sword in one hand, stood over them.

  “Lionsmane.” Tek’s voice brought Parno around with a jerk.

  “Sorry,” he said. He sheathed his own blade and went to Alkoryn. “Time for everyone to get into the tunnels.”

  “Not everyone,” Alkoryn croaked. “I will not leave my House.” At Tek-aKet’s protesting noise, Alkoryn raised his hand and glanced behind him at the Brothers under the plum tree. “They will not move, and how could I leave them? Besides,” the old man shrugged. “If Lok-iKol’s men find the place empty, they will look for the tunnels. Barlen and Noshun will stay, Sharan has asked to remain also, that the rest of you may escape.”

  “This is the second time people will die in order for me to escape.” Tek’s voice was calm, level. “I don’t like it.”

  “Your time will come another day,” Alkoryn said, turning away.

  “In Battle or in Death,” Parno said, knowing from the Senior Brother’s tone that it would be useless to argue. This was the end the old man sought. He hugged his Brother to him with one arm, kissed an oblivious Fanryn on the forehead, and touched Thionan’s hot cheek.

  “We’re to the tunnels, then. Any who do not stay, send them after us.” He clapped for the attention of the Brothers in the courtyard and signaled to those who’d been assigned to go with him. The rest he would leave in Alkoryn’s hands.

  Twenty

  HE GOES SWIFTLY to the corner of the Library where the books and shelves make a great wall and begins to pull at the volumes, his hands going unerringly to one special section and pulling enough books and scrolls out of the way to make a tunnel in the wall, a tunnel he can enter only on his hands and knees. He encounters no shelves as he goes, just book after book, scroll after scroll, as tightly packed as unripe seeds in a flower head that lift away and disappear as he moves them out of his way. He tunnels for what seems like days, and he begins to fear that he cannot Find his way out again, even though the books and scrolls he removes go on disappearing as he pulls them free of the wall in front of him as the tunnel he crawls through gets smaller and smaller until he is reaching almost at his arm’s length to move the final small scroll aside so that he can see the Carnelian Throne and the man sitting on it with his eye patch not quite covering the steady green luminescence of the left eye.

  The wall begins snapping back into place.

  Gundaron pushed away Mar’s bowl forcefully enough for the water it held to slop out onto the tabletop, and released the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He’d Found what he was looking for, no doubt there. Give Parno Lionsmane a reason not to kill him. Give them all a reason to trust him, to want him. Gun could almost hear his mother’s voice “For the Caids’ sake, Gundy, make yourself useful.”

  It had taken him the better part of the night to think what to do, but he hoped that this would be useful enough.

  “Gun?”

  More water slopped on the table as Gun jerked upright and spun around. Mar stood with her hand on the back of his chair, dark brown brows drawn down into a vee over her eyes. He blinked. How could he have forgotten she was there?

  “What did you Find?”

  Gun stopped short of answering her as a fair-haired Mercenary Brother he didn’t know appeared in the doorway behind her.

  “The Tarkina wants you,” the Brother said. “Quickly.”

  Gun tossed the water on the floor and handed the bowl to Mar, ushering her out of the room in the Brother’s wake.

  They found Zelianora Tarkina placing packets of dried food into her travel bags, the nurse Denobea tying young Zak-eZak into his sling, and Bet-oTeb dressed and ready, her long dagger in its sheath at her side. The two Personal Guards the Tarkin had left behind were waiting, arms crossed, just inside the entrance to the sleeping chamber.

  The Tarkina glanced up but kept packing. “The House is under attack,” she said. “We’re to follow Parno Lionsmane into the tunnels.”

  “We’re not safe enough here?” Even as she asked, Mar went to her own bags and began to restow her bowl and pick up her writing tools.

  Zelianora tied the last loose thong on her pack and hefted it, nodding, before answering. “If Tek and Lionsmane succeed,” she said, “we can return to the Dome.” Her hands stilled. “And if they fail, we will need to leave here in any case. I prefer to be prepared.”

  Gun took his lower lip between his teeth. “Mar, can you pack for us both? I’ve got to speak to Parno Lionsmane.”

  The fair-haired Mercenary Brother shook his head. “He’ll have started-”

  Gun didn’t wait to hear more. He ducked under the arm of the man at the doorway and dashed off in the direction of the deeper tunnels. There were only four of these tunnels in this section of the caves, and onl
y one that led in the direction of the Dome. Logically-

  Gun ran headlong into the chest of a large, hard Mercenary. Prevented from ducking around him, Gun strained to look over the Brother’s shoulder. Was that a glimmer of light he could see?

  “Lionsmane,” he called. “Listen! You need the throne room. He’s… it’s in the throne room.”

  The light stopped moving.

  “Let him come.”

  The Mercenary holding him let go and Gun dashed down the tunnel toward the light.

  Telian-Han hesitated at the door, raised his hand to knock, and lowered it again. Though many of the doors in this wing had bolts on the inside (and some even locks that would work from the outside), to Telian’s knowledge the man he still privately thought of as the Tarkin, Tek-aKet Culebro, had never used them-at least not here in the private wing of the Carnelian Dome. A well-run Household doesn’t need locks, Tek-aKet used to say. A closed door is as good as a bolt to an honorable person. Since Lok-iKol had come, however, the bolts at least were almost always used. And some said the locks, too, though Telian pushed that thought away almost as soon as he had it.

  What all this meant for him was that if you knocked, the person on the inside had to stop what he was doing, and come to let you in. Or not.

  Telian’s hands formed fists at his sides. There had been lots of changes since the night Lok-iKol had come, but it was the more recent ones that were especially worrying. At first, when they’d heard the noise of feet pounding and steel clashing, Tel and some of the other pages in his dormitory had wanted to rush into the passages and find out what was going on. But the Steward of Keys had sent senior pages to keep all the younger ones in their rooms and dormitories. The next morning Keys had called them all into the big kitchen where the chief cook and his assistants, the kitchen help, the household staff-cleaners for the most part-and the pages had been asked to gather. Tel had missed the Keys’ first few words-something about a transfer of power that hadn’t sounded too scary-he’d been too interested in the kitchen to pay attention. He’d been here before, but always on an errand, and the noble staff weren’t encouraged to loiter down here.

  “Each will remain in his or her own post,” Keys had said, nothing in his voice showing that he’d drunk three bottles of the Tarkin’s best jeresh the night before and must have had a splitting headache because of it. “You’ll find men with Tenebro badges,” here he’d tapped his chest on the left side, “in the public rooms and at cross corridors in the Dome. Be ready to explain who you are and what your errand-and as I said,” here Keys had looked ’round at all the staff, junior and senior, “this is nothing to worry us; it’s just while they get to know us.”

  One of the Tarkina’s lady pages, tall, dark-haired Rab-iRab Culebro was bold enough to interrupt and ask about her mistress, but Keys had told her to stay in the Tarkina’s suite with her fellows and await orders.

  “Your families may send for some of you,” Keys had said, though everyone knew that wasn’t likely to happen, at least not until they all saw how things were going to fall. No one wanted to risk offending the new Tarkin by appearing to remove their support along with their family members. Tel, for one, had been hoping no one came for him. Minor son of a Holding, a position in the Carnelian Dome was the best thing that could have happened to him.

  He’d been so excited, he saw now, looking back on a morning that was only a week ago, though it felt like a month. All he knew was he was a lot more than a week older. He hadn’t admitted to himself, possibly hadn’t realized, how much he’d been hoping that some miracle would happen, and Tek-aKet Tarkin would come back. After the last few days, a return to minding his father’s almond groves and vineyards under his older sister’s supervision didn’t seem like such a bad thing. Locked doors were not the only changes for the worse in the Dome.

  He took a deep breath and knocked, waited, standing with his back straight, elbows in as he’d been taught, straining to hear any command, any footsteps nearing the door, and finally hearing only the bolts being pushed back. He took two more slow breaths before pushing the door lightly aside with his fingers and entering the room.

  Lok-iKol was sitting as usual in the armchair by the open window, the papers and documents on the worktable against the far wall untouched and gathering dust. He allowed no attendance, not even from his own people.

  “My lord Tarkin,” Tel said, and waited to be acknowledged.

  “Speak,” the man by the window said in his heavy voice.

  “The Lord Dal-eDal has returned, and brings with him a prisoner.”

  Tel gasped with pain as Lok-iKol was suddenly beside him, holding his upper arm in a grip that stopped Tel’s breath.

  “Where?” The man’s breath was like rotting fish and Tel did his very best not to turn away.

  “City gates, my lord.” Tel spoke through clenched teeth, unable to keep himself from squirming in an instinctive attempt to pull free. The man holding him took no notice whatsoever.

  “The throne room,” the man said, dropping Tel’s arm and turning away. “When they come, tell them the throne room.”

  “Yes, Lord.” Tel blinked back tears and sucked in air as circulation restored itself to his lower arm and hand. Lok-iKol turned away, no longer paying him the least attention, so Tel just turned and ran from the room.

  Maybe he would send a message to his father, after all, and beg to come home.

  The part of him that was Lok-iKol squirmed and would have turned aside, preferring not to enter the throne room. But he ignored it. He needed to know for certain whether this woman was a Seer. He needed to know whether she had already Seen the Lens. Then he could deal with her as he’d dealt with all the others.

  And then he would only have to wait for the last piece to arrive and he would be whole again, in the first shape he’d known, in the shape that, perhaps, might be the key to freeing him from any shape. Whole, he would be safe, for without the Seer, there could be no Lens. And without the Lens, the Sleeping God would never awaken.

  He saw the men who waited in the throne room, but he didn’t speak. They talked too much, these shapers. He sat on the throne.

  As they rode along the narrow streets immediately inside the city wall, heading for the wider avenues that surrounded the precincts of the Dome itself, Dhulyn had to stop herself from taking off the hood. It was not the lack of sight that disturbed her, but the way her skin crawled and the hairs stood up on her arms. There was something wrong. She’d expected what Parno called city noise to disorient her, to mask the little telltales of scent and sound she’d been using to keep track of her group, and stay aware of her surroundings.

  So where was it, then, the city noise?

  These were, more or less, the same streets she’d been through not that long ago, and she wasn’t hearing what she should, nor smelling what she should either.

  It was much too quiet for early morning. In this part of Gotterang there should have been-there had been when she’d come through with Parno and Mar-people hawking their wares, the squeaking un-greased wheels of hand- and donkey carts, children running and playing, chanting their games, and the buzz of conversations, the tiptap of hundreds of footsteps, the hum of hundreds of pairs of lungs pushing air in and out. But the noises were few enough that Dhulyn could detect and identify them almost as easily as she did the people who were with her. A woman wearing stale perfume scurried by on the right with what smelled like a basket of radishes, fresh from the ground with the earth still on them. Dhulyn’s stomach growled, and she realized that there was no smell of foods cooking, but only the smell of burning, faint but noticeable. Not so faint was the smell of filth-clearly the night soil had not been picked up in days.

  “Turning left in a few paces,” murmured Karlyn, with a light touch on her left leg.

  As they turned, the breeze brought the unmistakable odor of a decomposing body. Her companions were singularly silent, though Dhulyn knew they must have noticed the stench. Better not ask, she told hersel
f.

  Closer to the Dome, the streets smelled marginally cleaner. but there were even fewer sounds of people. At one point Dhulyn heard rapid hoofbeats in the distance, but they came no nearer.

  Bloodbone’s muscles bunched and relaxed in a new way, and Dhulyn sensed that they had started up the incline that was the road to the Carnelian Dome. The Dome itself had originally been a fortress on the edge of the escarpment that overlooked the Talgus River, but as Imrion had grown, and the Tarkins had settled on Gotterang as its capital, they had all added to the original structure. Rather than building outward, however, when each subsequent Tarkin had needed more space, they had built up so that the Carnelian Dome was, in fact, layer upon layer of buildings, from the lowest ancient kitchens, to the highest lookout towers. The outer wall was almost as thick as the city walls, and built in the time of Jorelau Tarkin, that most paranoid of leaders.

  Their hoofbeats made an entirely different kind of echo when they reached the open plaza of the Tarkin’s Square. Another touch on her thigh told her they were stopping-but at a point she judged well back from the gates themselves.

  “The gates are open,” Dal said. He kept his voice pitched low and soft, so that it would not carry over, but his shock was evident. Dhulyn understood. The outer gates of the Carnelian Dome stood open only when the Carnelian Guard was parading in the square, and her ears told her that other than themselves, the square was empty.

  “It’s only the pass door,” Karlyn said. “Whatever may be the explanation for this, we cannot turn back now.”

  “In a tale,” Dhulyn said, “those words would be the signal for an attack.”