by Rabia Gale
I hadn’t even known that cloaks could make such a Taurin-cursed noise.
“I’ll go calm her down.” Flutter swoops for the steps going up to the top of the wall. I try not to notice how her feet don’t touch the ground.
“I’ll see whether she’s spotted a desert mouse or an invading army.” I head for the gates facing away from Tau Marai, opening to the rest of the world.
Screech had seen neither mouse nor army. I stand in front of the open gates, arms crossed, flanked by recently-woken eerie men, and watch the one man on the mule ride up. It takes him a long time. The cobble crunchers jeering and waving dart guns at him from the rocks probably don’t help.
Nor does the line of heavily-muscled eerie men with their blue hair and pierced skin and over-large grins.
To his credit, the rider doesn’t turn tail and run, nor does he scream and faint. Screech is down to a low throbbing moan, and that too fades away. Soon the only noise is the soft clop of the mule’s hooves and the eerie men panting from the heat.
Water food water blood gift water back to Highwind… The familiar litany of our problems repeats itself in my head. The fort’s one working well won’t supply us for much longer. We’ll have to dig another and if we don’t find water soon, we’ll have to go out to the nearest oasis for it.
Assuming it still exists. The desert’s changed since I was last here.
I drag my mind back to the present and the slender man dismounting in front of me. A faded man—faded clothes, hair of indeterminate color, average features, mid-brown skin. Hard to tell his age, besides “still young”.
Doesn’t look or move like a warrior. No weapons visible on him, though the loose clothing might conceal some. Ink stains on his hand. A scholar?
He faces me, and his eyes, though mild, show wit and intelligence. He bows his head. “Kato Vorsok.” He’s not at all surprised to see me.
I jerk my head down in response, stopping the cringe in time. No more anonymity for me. Too many people know me by face in Taurin’s lands.
I feel a cool draught at my back, and the man’s gaze flickers over my shoulder for an instant.
Flutter.
“I’m Daral Askari from Jalinoor.” He speaks the common tongue of the itauri. It rolls off his tongue in fluid syllables.
The same speech is sludge-like in my own mouth. “The university, you mean.” It’s strange to be speaking it after hiding myself in Highwind for all these years.
“Is it so obvious?” He looks at his soft hands and smudged fingers. “Yes, from the university.”
“It’s a long way for a scholar. Why are you here?”
He looks up, raises an eyebrow. “I was summoned.”
“Summoned?”
“Yes. By Sera of the Farusi clan.” He doesn’t say your wife, but it hangs in the air anyway.
“Sera’s dead,” I say, brutally, shaping each word like a blade, letting it hurt on the way out.
“I am sorry.” He seems sincere, at least.
“Don’t be.” The pain is better than the emptiness. Anything is better than this emptiness. “This was all Sera’s plan and I was not part of it. I came to it late and I know nothing of her scheme, save that it was to break open Tau Marai.”
“It failed, then.”
I want to clench both my fists, but I have only one hand to do it with. Tension builds inside me and my spiders swarm in agitation. I’m not under physical attack, though I feel like it. They don’t know what to do, and they have little power to do it with.
Flutter puts a hand on my arm, her touch cool on my heated skin.
“Yes, it did. And good thing, too. Why did Sera summon you?”
“She sent out a bataur. To everyone. The judges of Jalinoor, the Tols of Sau Veria and the Raams of the Bakken. She used her seal as judge of the Ferusi to summon all here to Kaal Baran on this day. She said that we would find Tau Marai cracked open like a turtle shell and its insides ready for the plundering or the burning.”
“And you’re the first?” I look behind the man’s shoulder, as if the Tols on their rough ponies and the Raams on their bejeweled elephants were coming up behind him. But the road is empty.
“I’m the only one.” He says no more, but I can well imagine the reaction to Sera’s bataur. The presumed-dead wife of the disgraced Champion, claiming victory over Tau Marai? Who could blame them for thinking it a hoax or the ranting of a mad woman?
I could. She was one of their own, and she’d sent a bataur. They should’ve come. According to our laws and customs, they should’ve come!
“Pity,” I say, finally. “We could’ve used the food they brought. One small scholar shouldn’t stretch our resources that much, though.”
“And one mule,” Daral puts in, stroking the animal’s nose. “And he’s not for the eating, either.” He directs this at the eerie men, who look obviously hungry.
I remember the blood gift. I should take them out hunting. I am very tired again.
“This is Flutter,” I say, half-turning. “She’ll look after you if I’m not around.” Flutter looks grey and grainy, cobwebby. The darkness of her eyes and pale curve of her finger nails don’t inspire confidence.
To his credit, Daral doesn’t look fazed by the Highwind contingent. Perhaps he expects all foreigners to look strange. He puts his hands together at his chest and bows, as if to a great woman.
“She’ll understand what you say,” I go on. “She—” I start to say is eilendi, but stop. That’s Flutter’s story, not mine. “She’ll understand.”
And then Flutter’s eyes flicker to hexagonal facets. Sigils flash blue in her wings, and she swoops for Daral, claws outstretched.
“Gash, Bound!” I lunge for Flutter, but she goes through my arm and side in a splash of heat. My hand grasps empty air. The two eerie men leap, faster than a blink, till they’re standing right in front of Daral, pushing him back with their bodies.
Daral’s already on the ground—he moved fast and I think, Not just a scholar. Gash and Bound flick out their whips, but Flutter turns shadow-thin, slips in between the seeking tongues. All I see is her cloak, billowing back, bleeding smoke and blue, and I grab again, futilely.
For a moment, I touch substance, cool in my hand.
The next, she’s flown apart, and there’s nothing there.
The eerie men’s eyes widen as they rear back from their strike, trying not to hit me. Daral’s face from behind their legs is narrow-eyed and thin-lipped.
Flutter’s gone.
The evening shadows lie long over Kaal Baran, barring the sun-gilded courtyard in stripes of grey. An out-of-tune, oddly-enunciated chorus of the Greater Invocation rises thinly into the air—eerie men and cobble crunchers co-opted to try to bring Flutter back.
Daral watched, bemused, as I set up the musical interlude, but didn’t ask me why Highwind creatures chant itauri prayers.
My own voice is ragged from the blasphemy. I’m not on speaking terms with Taurin, but I won’t hesitate to use his prayers to get Flutter back.
A knot of cloaks scatter as I approach. I halt them with, “Where’s Cloud?”
They stare at me, unblinking, and I sigh. My names for them are not the same as their own. They identify each other by smell.
Well, I don’t have as good of a nose. I peer at all the faces, skipping over Screech, who’s twitching alarmingly. Taurin knows she’s likely to fall apart at a single glance from me.
“Cloud,” I beckon, and the cloak slowly drifts forward. “Did you find her?”
She looks at me as if she has no idea what I’m talking about. I try not to grind my teeth. Talking to Cloud is like speaking to quicksand—you can pour all your words in but nothing comes out.
I wonder how Sera—lightning-quick, lightning-bright Sera—put up with it.
And then I block the thought, as if slamming a door upon it.
Sera’s dead. Flutter might not be. And I need Flutter, or else I’m going to either abandon these Highwind creatures or s
trangle them one by one.
Finally, Cloud speaks. “She Who Remembers.” She stops.
I wait.
“Can’t find her.” Cloud starts to float away.
“Hold! Do you mean she’s dead?”
Cloud looks at me as if I were the dim-witted one. “I can’t reach her. She’s spread too far.”
I watch her and the other cloaks leave, and gnaw my bottom lip. The Highwind creatures are nocturnal, but I’ve been making them take day shifts. We all sleep the heat of the afternoon away, but our nights are full of rustling and movement.
Finally I call to Gash at the gates. “Close ’em now.”
A moment later gates on both sides of the fort grind across stone and crash shut.
The chorus dies away, and I don’t say anything. Eerie men and cobble crunchers form groups all over the courtyard, squishing metal cans and snarfing down their contents. They’re loud, they eat messily, behave boorishly, push and shove each other, and make what are obviously low jokes in accents I can barely understand.
In the dark, it’s easy to forget that eerie men are blue-blooded and silver-pierced, and cobble crunchers rat-faced and about as tall as my knee.
They sound like every other army I’ve ever known. A strange homesickness stirs within me. A longing to sit at a camp fire with my men.
No, these aren’t my men. I don’t know what I am now—not Kato the Chosen, but not Kato the Forsaken either. Someone in between those two.
Instead I stay by the gates and soon the nightly noises start up again.
A pinpricking along the edge of my hearing. Tiny sounds that tap dance across my nerves.
Scritch scratch… scuttle…
They’re back.
Once again, like I have for the past five nights, I set a watch for our nocturnal visitors. Anything that’s eluded cloaks and eerie men so thoroughly is not something I want running around the fort.
Could those things be after it?
It’s no use sitting and stewing. I have to go into the chamber and check.
I walk soft-footed through tiled corridors, lit only by dim starlight creeping through empty square windows. My ears strain for sounds that I’m being followed.
Nothing.
I enter an empty room and head toward a narrow recess. The scent of countless dry decades rises around me as I press a carved flower, one of many that dot the stone.
Part of the wall swings open without a sound, revealing narrow steps curving down into darkness. The silence where there should be some noise, some grinding of machinery, is like an itch I cannot reach.
Get moving, Kato.
I tread carefully down the spiral, running my hand over the rough-textured wall. A cold blue glow emanates from small squares set at intervals along the stairs. It barely lights my way, and I’m aware of a great column of space above my head. Small creatures rustle in the darkness, but the noise is comforting.
I won’t be comfortable for long.
A few moments later, a thought sneaks into my mind. This is a waste of time. There’s nothing here. My footsteps slow, my body strains toward the way back.
I force myself downward. My limbs are heavy, my feet leaden. There’s a fog in my head.
Most people never make it this far.
One step at a time, Kato.
My skin prickles. My right arm twitches, the sensitive skin at the stump of my wrist itches madly. A mad-hornet buzzing fills my ears.
I grit my teeth. Crap. Even my teeth hurt.
I push through, always moving, but never getting anywhere, straining against that invisible barrier. Whip-lashes of pain score my cheeks and arms and chest.
And then they’re gone. The resistance, the pain, the stairs. I pitch and stagger, catch my footing.
My skin is clammy with sweat, and the hairs on the back of my neck are rising.
The chamber is vast and bubble-like, with walls of creamy opalescence providing just enough light to see the pedestal rising from the floor in the center.
Suspended above the pedestal is the angel key.
A vast shadowy silence hangs above everything, a silence that I can only describe as holy. A silence that may have preceded the battle-songs of a host of angels, a silence that waits for the command of Taurin himself.
I force myself toward the pedestal. It feels like a mile away, though my eyes measure the distance as barely ten paces. There are shapes in the cool dimness; I catch glimpses of a curve of cheek, a glint of eyes, a sharp edge, a mass of darkness caught in mid-writhe. Statues and scenes of wars between angels and demons from when the world was raw and young, and men just insects caught in battles we had no business witnessing. This was from even before the Shivering and the Dark Masters.
The demons in this tableau make the Dark Masters look like village bullies.
The key is both fluid and crystalline, and effortlessly complex. I have no name for the shape of this artifact from those long ago times. Such a small thing, yet full of powers unknown. The last and only other time I’d been down here, I had left it well alone.
But not now. With Highwind creatures crawling all over Kaal Baran, mysterious visitors in the night, and Flutter gone, the angel key is no longer safe from discovery.
I stretch out my profane hand over the pedestal. The silence shifts, as if someone breathed in. My chest tightens.
I know this. It’s happened before.
“No!” I grind out between clenched teeth. My voice is harsh, swallowed up by the stillness. I throw my head back and howl to the shadows above. “No! I will not submit. Not again!”
I snatch at the key, half-expecting to be zapped to ashes at the sacrilege. It bites into the palm of my hand. Cold sinks its fangs into my flesh.
My arm’s going numb.
I stagger back from the pedestal and shout to those half-seen images of angels and demons. “I’m through, you hear? I’m done with this Chosen business.” Nine hells, my head’s pounding and my vision’s blurring. I blunder toward the barrier, push my way through. There’s a buzzing in my ears and pinpricks all over my skin as I break free.
It matches the angry boiling within me.
Curse it all. I’d seen the look on those serene not-alive statues.
They’d been amused.
But at least I have the key.
I snap awake from a light sleep, and look straight into a torch. “Get that away from me!” My voice is sleep-roughened and I blink away tears. My cheeks are hot from the flame.
The torch retreats, but its light flickers on the teeth and piercings of an eerie man.
Not the best thing to wake up to.
“What is it?” Is Flutter back?
“The crunchers caught something.”
I recognize the voice, and the face. Malicious and hating, looking at me from behind Leap’s prone body. What’s his name again? “Grip.”
The eerie man slants his head in a nod. I’d fallen asleep against a wall, and I lever myself up, one-handed. My head’s swimming from exhaustion. Tears and flames dance in my vision.
Grip muscles in, closer, as if to help me. Expressions flit across his face. I can almost hear him thinking. Human… slow, weak, stupid… tired… I could…
I straighten and bop him on the head, a whack with the back of my hand. He flinches away, making himself even smaller. I’m taller than he is and I’m still the leader of the pack.
“Don’t wave that torch in anyone’s face like that again, idiot.”
Grip ducks his head in acknowledgment, but he’s not fooling me. He’s not cowed, merely retreating for now.
I follow him, noting that his shirt is mere rags. These eerie men don’t understand how merciless the desert sun is. I add Procure adequate clothing to my list of things to do, right next to Be a hero.
We pass a bunch of eerie men talking together in their deep growl. I catch the words “Here’s Ironhand” and find myself clenching my left hand again. I’ve taken to wearing my sword on the right—it feels uncomfortable
and out-of-balance there. I haven’t unsheathed it since… since that day… and it feels empty and dead to me, nothing more than a piece of long metal with a pointed end.
Leap grins at me. There’s a white stripe of a bandage across his face, but no hostility. He falls into place behind my shoulder as I cross the courtyard.
For some eerie men, thumping them is the way to earn their respect.
We go inside the fort, light skittering over its pale stone and mosaic floors. Ghosts brush against my mind.
Sun sparking on the walls… Sera, head tipped back in awe… “Kato, this place is wonderful!”… images of sea monsters and sky creatures… the clatter of feet and the dragging of stores…
And then we’re through a doorway. It used to have doors, brass-coated wood, covered with intricate designs that Sera spent hours sketching. Her army kicked the doors down before Flutter and I arrived through the portal. I can still see the gouges in the stone.
The beauty of this place held no meaning for her then, only its power.
Just the way she viewed me at the end. I force back the guilt and the black anger that rises behind it. I’d grieved three years for her. I won’t give her power over me any longer.
Inside the chamber is a knot of cobble crunchers, several of them sitting on something that bucks and heaves, with many more on their stomachs beside it, each gripping a limb.
The cobble cruncher on top of the heap greets me. “Eh, tall’un!” Its name is something unpronounceable, spoken as if through a mouthful of gravel.
I call it Kunj, because that’s the only syllable I can catch.
And it’s the only cobble cruncher I recognize, because for some reason, it wears a tiny red top hat and a fake silk flower on its shirt.
“Book and bound!” Kunj grins at me. His head bobs as his ride bucks under him. More cobble crunchers throw themselves on the pile.
“Look what I found,” translates Leap, grinning. He makes no move to help the crunchers.
“What is it?” I crouch down by the crunchers, and think I see the flash of a carapace, a bunch of waving stick-like legs.
