“You are the one they call Corajidin,” came a rasping voice from the shadows at the end of the room. Corajidin’s hearts jumped. His head snapped around and he squinted into the gloom. There was a shape there, standing with its pale hands wrapped around the bars of its cage. Mouth dry, Corajidin prowled toward it, treading as lightly as he could. His caution was met by a humorless laugh, almost like a wheeze. “I see you, little king with blinded eyes, ears deaf to the voice of the world. I see you, the twice-Awakened, now slumbering and broken.”
Closer now, Corajidin saw it was a woman, with hair hanging in a mat about her face. Her long, intricately buckled robe was stained with mud and dirty water. Her delicate hands were streaked with filth. The steel bars of her cage groaned as she throttled them.
Corajidin stopped well out of arm’s reach. “Who are you?”
“My name is as long as the world I have known, made longer by the minds I have eaten, and longer again by the deeds I have done. For such is the way of names, where words have meaning.” The hands pulled apart the tangled weave of her hair to reveal a face Corajidin knew. He took a step back. “But I was, and contain within the mirrors of my mind, the woman you knew as Delfineh fa Jhem fe Kimiya. That name will do as well as any.”
Tempted as he was to step forward, he stayed rooted to the spot, almost wilting in the miasma of her breath. She smells like a dead thing, dragged from a swamp! Are these the wages of witches, then? What would my son unleash on the world?
Turning on his heels, he fled the room as fast as dignity would allow him. Kimiya’s malignant laughter gave speed to his exit.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Education teaches us how to think, intelligence how to question, and our morality what to do with what we know. Be wary then of the educated, intelligent, and amoral person, for they will know only that they can do a thing, not whether they should.”
—from The Foundation of Learning, by Yattoweh, Sēq Magnate, teacher, and houreh (2230th Year of the Petal Empire)
Day 57 of the 496th Year of the Shrīanese Federation
Indris perched on the balcony of his room, huddled in his over-robe as he listened to the layered vocals, jangle of sonesettes, and the throaty hum of kahi flutes that rose from the Black Quill at the mouth of the valley. Amarqa-in-the-Snows huddled beneath a freshly laid mantle of white. Overhead, the nebulous arm of the Ancestor’s Shroud stretched out as if to sweep them jealously into its folds. The Ancestor’s Eye blazed brightest of all, its brilliant sapphire flickering as it looked upon Īa. Soon, the clouded blue-green marble of Eln would rise, brightening the night further.
Like all such moments, part of its beauty came from its transience. Indris’s breathing stuttered at the memory of Hayden and Omen, now gone like so many others who had been in his life. It was Shar and Ekko who dominated his thoughts, and their journey southward to find Mari. Of his friends, Mari’s was the face Indris craved the most. Mari, with the smile that made his head feel light. Of her, too, there was no sign. Too many people in his life were gone, leaving only silence in their place.
There was only one who had returned. Anj’s presence was as much a mystery as Mari’s disappearance: his new love vanished, the former within arm’s reach. Anj presented questions Indris did not want to ask. His instincts told him the answers were something he was unprepared for and could never forget. Yet his long-missing wife supposedly had answers that the Sēq had been unable to find. Was he prepared to pay Anj’s price for her help? And what had Anj become? The impression that she was but a memory painted over an unpalatable present strengthened with each meeting.
The present was filled with many uncertainties. The Sēq, once so solid in their foundations of the past, were on unsteady ground, facing a difficult future. The Order had fallen back on its strengths: the power of its collective intellect, stored knowledge, and arcane wisdom. Indris gazed into the night. With a sky free of the effects of both sun and moon, the disentropic tides were smoother than at any other time. He gingerly opened himself to the ahmsah for a passive search. The star-freckled night was seared with a web of vivid colors, tumbling geometries, and formulae that undulated like flying carpets across the sky: roving metaphysical patrols to bolster the fixed positions of the multiple layers of wards. Analogies soared there: birds wreathed in flame, hollow-eyed specters, armored phantoms, and a flying hunt of fey knights in gem-bright armor on horses that galloped across the sky. Since the arrival of the rahns, the Sēq had called upon their best war formulists to ensure Amarqa was the safest place in the world. Indris closed himself to the ahmsah, blinking slowly until his eyes readjusted to the natural darkness of night.
Indris went into his rooms to get his weapons, then swore to himself. Old habits … Changeling was not there. She had not been there since the Sēq Masters had taken her away from him in Avānweh. Changeling was a prisoner, kept as insurance against his departure from Amarqa-in-the-Snows before the Sēq were done with him. Not for the first time his rage boiled. Fire played behind his eye, and even without using the ahmsah, Indris could see the swirling shadows of his Disentropic Stain flicker about his clenched fists. Energy flared, snapping like a lightning storm in the murky clouds around his hand. Changeling was his! A Sēq’s psédari was as much a part of him as—
His own mind.
Indris breathed in heated air. His skin tightened as it dried. The rug at his feet, as well as the edges of the fur on his bed, started to smolder. Soon the heat would reach the point where everything in the room caught fire. Indris forced himself to calm down. He took deep, even breaths, each one slightly longer and cooler than the last, until the air once more had the bite of autumn’s chill.
Indris wrapped his arms around his chest until his hearts slowed. Changeling had been a constant in his life for years, and to have her gone was more distressing than he expected. I didn’t intend to fight my way into, or out of, anywhere tonight. But I’ll have you back, old friend.
There came a knock at his door. Before he had the chance to draw breath to answer, Femensetri barged in amid a swirl of tattered black, like a crow sheltering from a storm. She stamped her booted feet, heedless of the mud and clumps of snow she left on the rugs. Indris’s old teacher pulled her hood down and eyed him darkly.
“You’ve got what you want, boy,” she said. “But don’t feel too proud of holding the Sēq to ransom. It’s something neither I nor the Suret are likely to forget.”
“Ironic, given how many promises you make that are forgotten as soon as they become inconvenient.”
“Watch your tone!”
Indris walked straight to the door Femensetri had left open. He gestured down the corridor. “After you.”
Femensetri’s jaw writhed as she clenched her teeth, then stamped out of the room as quickly as she had entered. Indris released a slow breath, glad she had not tested him on his resolve. Their confrontation at Rosha’s suites had left him with a pounding headache and the sour taste of fear in his mouth for the better part of the following day. Seeing Femensetri, one of the most experienced—and most dangerous—scholars, in her wrath was something Indris could pretend to be unafraid of, but the reality was quite the opposite.
Until they had wrung what they wanted from him, the secrets of his missing years and any message or knowledge of hallowed Sedefke, Indris knew he was safe. Once that happened, he was expendable, if not an actual liability. Best he learned what he could now.
Femensetri led Indris along ancient paths, over bridges that crossed streams narrowed with ice, and up winding, wind-blasted stairs. All the while Indris’s eyes were fixed on the cold glow shining through the windows of the Black Archives.
Taking a switchback path up the cliffs, Femensetri paused before a massive door made of hundreds of pieces of aged wood, like a huge puzzle box. Characters in square Maladhoring glyphs were etched there, flowing across some of the wooden pieces, only to appear elsewhere on the door in disjointed and nonsensical sentences. Blackened steel statues flanked the doors:
baroque armored knights on the back of powerful reticulated steel horses, with long horns emerging from the horses’ heads. Crouched amid the horses were massive wolves with ridges of steel fur running in a long trail of razor-sharp spikes from brow to tail tip. Metallic foxes, squirrels, and crows were hidden among the roots and trunks of the trees that flanked the doors to the Black Archives.
There came the squeal of tortured metal as the statues turned to face Indris and Femensetri. One of the armored horses stamped a hoof, striking sparks.
Merciful Ancestors! Indris thought. “I don’t remember Nomads being here.”
“There was never the need until recently,” Femensetri said. “But now the Sēq are no longer sacrosanct, and we need to protect what is ours against any who’d foolishly try to take it.” Femensetri pulled a large glass key from the folds of her over-robe. She inserted the key and started touching the wooden pieces of the door, freezing words in place, making sense of some of the sentence fragments. Indris watched but Femensetri moved so that he could see little of the message itself.
With a final set of gestures, Femensetri finished the code and the door collapsed into the floor like so many toy blocks. Warm air rushed out and Femensetri pointed inside the Black Archives.
“You’ve been here before as a student, but always escorted,” she said. “This time you’re on your own. The Suret will meet the letter of your demand by giving you access. They’ll not approve anybody giving you any help.”
“Then how am I supposed to learn anything? I’m doing this for you!”
“Don’t take me for the fool, Indris,” she murmured. “The Suret accepts that you have questions and are willing to meet you halfway. This is a great honor. Don’t make light of it. Crowns have fallen, alongside the heads they were perched on, for what’s kept here. You may take nothing with you save that which you can remember, and that which is yours. Do you accept the terms?”
“I do,” Indris said firmly. “For what it’s worth, thank you.”
She said nothing as she walked away.
Indris passed through the Black Archives. The geometries of the place tried to direct him away from the center. He passed through levels of hexagonal libraries, the walls honeycombed with niches for scrolls, books, and relics. The faceted ilhen stalactites sprouted from the ceilings. The air was scented with lacquered wood, dry wool, and the leather and paper of thousands of ancient volumes. Doors led off to other libraries dedicated to cultures both living and dead. As much as he desired to stay, he passed wide-eyed through vast chambers where the Sēq had collected the lore of Afternoon People Races: the Avān, the Humans, the Tau-se, the Fenling, and the Y’arrow-te-yi. There were also volumes on the Bamboo People, animals raised to sentience by the Earth Masters: the Iku, the vulpine Katsé, the ursoid Asash, the lupine Marou, and others. Yet greater still were those libraries dedicated to the Dawn Races: the Seethe, the Dragons, the Herū, the Feyhe, and before them all, the Rōm.
Making his way along well-remembered paths, Indris paused at a keyhole door no different than dozens he had passed. The stained-glass panels glowed with an inner radiance. Crook-shaped handles gleamed. He inhaled the beeswax scent that clung to the wood and felt the warmth from the door on his face. Opening his dhyna, Indris saw the lettering that burned like liquid fire in the depths of the glass: a spiraling message that flowed from pane to pane. From each set of squared glyphs, filaments of power arced out to form changing shapes in a web that was anchored to knotted points of disentropy—another circuit of alarms and traps. The Sēq Masters guarded their secrets jealously.
The words were in Maladhoring, the high language of the Elemental Master mystics. He read the words aloud as they twisted in the glass.
“Verisis aré on aula, ilé laryn on naō un sarastum on damanas.” Learn from the past, to inform the present and define the future.
The words faded away and the doors opened silently. Indris stepped inside and the doors closed behind him. He stood in a hollow tower that extended twenty floors above and another twenty floors below where he stood. Each floor in the hexagonal tower was marked out by inward-facing balconies, linked by an elaborate network of staircases and walkways. The stairs and walkways moved in time with the sonorous metronome of a device he could not see, changing the paths to different parts of the tower every few minutes. He did not know whether to laugh, cry, or both. There were thousands, handfuls of thousands, of books, scrolls, boxes, and chests. Some of the niches on the honeycombed walls were taller than he was, and most were closed behind fretwork serill doors. There was a crackle of pent-up disentropy, so much so that his skin prickled with it.
How am I supposed to find anything in here? What was it Femensetri had said? Look, listen, and feel.
Indris stepped onto the moving stair and allowed it to ferry him around the tower. Conscious of time and the repercussions of failure, Indris jogged along the stairs, trying to gain his bearings from the names of those who had authored the many volumes. An indexing system slowly became apparent. As a test, he started to predict what types of material would be present as the stairs and walkways cycled around him: There were the dialectics of Kayet Al Tham and Robaddin of the Hoje. Farther around and up, various editions of the Nilvedic Maxims. A wall of volumes bound in black leather contained the works of the greatest minds of the Sēq.
At the seventh level moving upward, the stairs became fixed, leading up to the next tier. Indris stared awestruck at the ornate sculpture that hung from the ceiling—an inverted quartz tree with a canopy of glowing colored ilhen leaves. The walls on these levels were covered in tall hexagonal doors that reminded Indris of the vaults he had seen in Banker’s House. These, however, were of swirling colored serill, not steel. Each vault had a nameplate in Maladhoring, including one for each of the Eight: Saroyyin and Taqrit. Majadis, Demandai, Lilay, and Ravashem. One for Anj-el-din, and one for himself. There were others, names he recognized and ones unknown to him. None of the vaults had locks, handles, or any obvious means of opening them. Under the ahmsah, Indris’s senses were assailed by a complex set of formulae that fell like rain in long lines of fusing characters. Words appeared and disappeared every other second. He turned away, feeling the faint tug of vertigo.
Indris leaned out to inspect the tree more closely. Clusters of leaves were colored with tinted veins running along the branches, and down what he saw were twelve faceted trunks sprouted from innumerable roots that covered and vanished into the ceiling. It was all engraved with pictograms he could barely see, let alone decipher. Of the twelve trunks, six remained lit, the canopy bright with scores of shining leaves. Reaching out farther, Indris saw the leaves had names carved on them.
Thousands of names joined over the years by blood and the friendships and hatreds that came with it. This was the record of the twelve Great Houses of the Avān—though only six survived. The ruby and black trunk, with its polished blood leaves, showed him the long line of the Great House of Erebus. Beside it, the amethyst of the Selassin, the citrine of the Bey, and the milky quartz of the Sûn. The emerald of the Kadarin, and the colorless leaves of the Great House of Alif that they had destroyed. The Chepherundi, the Damjah, the Aj-Tanēs, and the Ilmalan, all of whom had retreated to Tanis and lost their Unity with Īa, their Awakened rahns a memory. And the Khal-alēt, who vanished into history along with the last remnants of the Time Masters.
But shining most brightly of all, its trunk and branches in glorious sapphire, was the First House: the Great House of Näsarat.
Other names were there, leaves blown from different trees to settle in the foliage. The names of the Hundred Families, the luminaries of the consortiums, and Exalted Names risen for a single generation, to fall back into obscurity on the death of a legend. Indris swore at the extent of it. Thousands of names from across history tied together to produce names he knew as well as his own. Some names and ancestral lines were connected by radiant filaments of gold, specific merging of bloodlines throughout the millennia…
It may have been a history of the greatest and most influential of the Avān, but it was far more specific. Indris had heard rumors of the Genealogy Tree and now could not refute them: This sculpture tracked the ancestry of the Eight, or as Femensetri had also referred to it, the Dionfar, or the Great Labor. Each name had the day the person was born and the day they died, if they had passed on to the Well of Souls. He found Ariskander, the tree already reflecting his life and death, and his sister, Indris’s mother, Delaram. And her only child—
It was not Indris’s name written there. He fought for breath. Etched in precise characters was the name Näsarat fa Kahrain. Born in Mediin in the summer of 461 … and dead before the season was out. He traced the line of the Näsarats back, then again. Yet nowhere in all the arranged marriages and selective breeding across Houses and Families and Exalted Names was Näsarat fa Amon-Indris to be found. Other names were there he did not expect. They were also the products of the Great Labor though not fostered by the Sēq: Erebus fa Kasraman and Nix of the Malahdi. Other members of the Shrīanese upper-castes. Bensaharēn, Neva, and Yago. Mari’s and Belamandris’s names were there, as well as Nehrun, Roshana, and Tajaddin. The Näsarat and the Erebus, as ever living in each other’s orbits. The other Houses had been pruned from the Great Labor generations ago.
The Pillars of Sand Page 10
