“Instinct,” Caleb said, letting Marul punch him. “She came for me and I just . . . it was not meant to happen this way.”
Marul spat in his face. “Always your life above others! A knife wound for you is but a scratch to a human. You could have let her stab you!”
“I know,” Caleb said, letting her spit dribble down his face. “I know.”
“We need to move,” said Grug. “I have pushed the spores higher, but they are falling again. I may have given us a few minutes, that’s all.”
“Rana,” Marul said, rubbing her bloodshot eyes. “My Little Plum. Why did you come for me?” She stared at Caleb, and her murderous gaze slowly shifted to Daniel. He shivered and looked away.
They descended again, as quickly as before, and said little. In the silence, Rana’s scream lingered in Daniel’s mind. Every time he blinked, he saw the look on her face as she flew out over the edge. Marul suddenly stopped. She turned to Daniel and said, “You’re supposed to sustain worlds, and you couldn’t even save one life?”
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said. “If I could have, I would have saved her.”
“Mistress,” Grug said, “we have to go. The fungus is coming!”
Marul shoved a finger into Daniel’s chest. “You just stood there. Did you know she was planning to stab him? Did she tell you last night? I know you saw her pick up the knife.”
“No. No, I swear.”
“Liar!”
“Mistress! Come!”
“I’ll tell you why the Lamed Vav hide,” Marul said. “It’s because they’re all cowards! Every one!”
Daniel hung his head, thinking, And what secrets did you hide from Rana?
Marul resumed her flight down the stairs, mumbling curses. Down they went, step after black step. Three times he caught himself looking ahead for Rana, only to recall with a pang of dread that she was gone.
Grug led them down, wary of the approaching cloud, when at last they reached the bottom of Kipod’s Stair. Daniel thought they would see Rana’s broken body here, but there was only a flat obsidian floor. It reflected the flickering torchlight, but curiously not their bodies. No crumpled mess lay here, thank God. Daniel sighed. Perhaps Rana was still alive.
“No blood!” Marul said. “So where has she gone?”
“I told them our king approaches,” Grug said. “They may have . . . cleaned the space.”
“Is she alive, Grug,” Marul said, “or not?”
“We will find out soon enough.”
Despite Gram raising him rigorously Jewish, Daniel wasn’t religious. He saw too much misery in the world to put his faith in a “just” God. But he prayed for Rana anyway. It seemed like the right thing to do.
The fungal cloud dropped into the torchlight above their heads, rapidly descending. Grug shouted, “Hurry!” He beckoned them through an immense doorway and into a vaulted antechamber. He recited five words in a syllabic tongue that Daniel understood.
“The dead make no music.”
Two mammoth stone doors began swinging closed, grinding as they moved. The fungal cloud hit the first landing, bounced, and rushed for them. The doors banged shut with a great clamor, but not before a trickle of dust slipped through the crack. The golden flecks twinkled as they approached, as fast as a running man. Grug leaned forward and sang a deep note, a sound like a chanting monk, when the cloud flew back against the wall and dropped like a pile of cigarette ash. At last, it was still.
They breathed a sigh of relief, and Daniel took in this huge antechamber. On the opposite side of the vaulted space was an enormous arched door, framed with translucent emerald blocks. The arch surrounded a dark void. The torchlight penetrated but a few feet in before dying. Grug entered the darkness, and they followed.
The air reeked of spoiled meat and dead animals and other foul things. As they walked the torch revealed blurred shapes in the dark. Things scuffed, scraped, and skittered like rats. Daniel felt a sudden urge to run. Whatever lay hidden in this cavern was not meant for human eyes. He steeled himself as they walked ever deeper into the dark.
The reek intensified as the torch revealed a swarm of shriveled faces, huddled together. Taut skin stretched over large skulls. Long, scarce teeth glistened with saliva. Yellow eyes peered from deep sockets. Wisps of white hair protruded from scabrous heads. Hands rested on sword hilts or on a brother’s shoulder. Knuckles gnarled like ancient trees. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them amassed in the dark like rats.
One stepped forward. A geometric bronze emblem was pinned into to the leathered skin of his chest. It flashed in the torchlight. A crown of blood-red rubies adorned his head, winking maliciously in the firelight. He lifted a golden chalice, its smooth luster alien to this fetid place. He fell to one knee, bowed his head, and offered the chalice to Caleb.
Caleb took it, and black, syrupy liquid spilled from its rim. “My children,” Caleb shouted, the delayed echo announcing the great distance to the unseen chamber walls. “Let my companions see you in your full glory.”
Mutters of assent arose in the darkness. High in a distant wall, a sconce flashed to life. Then another was lit, and another, a circle of illumination, growing. The space grew bright, and Daniel shielded his eyes. The cavern was huge! A stone ceiling hundreds of feet high arced over their heads. The far walls were so distant they were fuzzy with haze.
“Behold,” Caleb said, “The Mikulalim.”
Ten thousand corpse-men thronged in serried ranks, filling the cavern. They overflowed into giant tunnels and wide avenues that led into darker places. Even more corpse-men crowded on tall bridges that spanned the avenues, leaned from a thousand terraced windows, or stood on gilded balconies. Caleb raised his chalice.
The entire throng—every last creature—took to one knee, a sound like a clap of thunder. Caleb drank heartily, and the black liquid dribbled from his lips. He lifted the chalice again, and they bowed their heads low.
The crowned one lifted his head and said, “Welcome to Yarrow, my lord. Our city is yours. Our blood is your blood.”
Caleb’s skin glowed, as if a candle burned inside him. He licked his lips. “Not as powerful as human blood, but a welcome meal, Havig.”
“You drink the sacrifice of thousands, my lord.”
“And what a good sacrifice it is. Havig, my friend, you look frail. Have you been eating?” Caleb chuckled, and the many thousands of corpse-men erupted in laughter. It was a wretched sound, like a million crows cawing. And when their laughter abated, and the air grew still, Daniel said to Havig, “Where is Rana? Have you seen the girl called Rana?”
“Yes,” Havig said. “We have.”
——
Her scream was the only thing in the whole world. Then it had stopped, everything had stopped—all but her heart, which hammered like chisel on stone.
Am I alive? she thought. Or is this the netherworld? She lay on her back. It didn’t seem to be broken. Breathe. Breathe.
Except for her fear, she felt little pain. Perhaps the pain would come. She slowly opened her eyes. A dozen corpse faces stared down at her, a circle around her head, like the constellations of Mazzaroth belting the night sky. Their eyes glowed as if candles burned within. Their presence should have frightened her, but she felt oddly calmed by their silent breathing. The chiseling of her heart slowed by degrees.
“I am Yig,” one said, his voice like hide being stripped from flesh. “You are safe.”
Yig’s face came into focus. He looked much like Grug, but Yig’s cheekbones were higher. A relation, perhaps?
“As a friend of the king,” Yig said, “you are welcome in Yarrow.” The others nodded and mumbled their agreement.
“King Jallifex?” she said, her voice hoarse from screaming.
“No, not that engorged human. I speak of our lord, King Ashmedai.”
“Oh, you mean Caleb.”
Yig shook his head. “In his presence, you must call him, ‘My Lord.’”
They helped her sit up. “Never.” She thought
it best not to reveal how she’d just tried to kill their “lord.” She rubbed her temples. “What happened?”
“Grug broke your fall with his voice. The sound knocked you unconscious. We brought you here to let you rest.”
She felt sick as she remembered the hideous moment of freefall. While falling she’d had a vision. She was older—it was years from now—and her sister Liu was weeping at Rana’s empty grave. The vision had been more horrific than her impending oblivion.
I almost let my sister grow up alone, she thought. I abandoned her, without thinking. But by some miracle, Goddess be praised, she had survived. Because of Grug, no less. Rana decided to rethink her hatred of the Cursed Man. “Where are the others? The people I was with?”
“The king and his companions have arrived in Yarrow. They are heading to the Lev as we speak. Mistress, drink this.” He offered her a stone cup. A dark liquid sloshed inside.
“What is it?”
“A wine fermented from the fungus that grows in these caves.”
“The same fungus that grows on Kipod’s Stair?”
“You know the greyel?”
“Not by name. I thought it eats you from the inside out?”
“It does. But fermented, the greyel is medicine. Like all things, its nature is manifold.”
She stared into the cup. If they’d wanted to kill her, she wouldn’t be here. Plus it was rude to refuse a drink from those who’d given her succor. She took a sip. It was as bitter as kak root, but she felt her spirits lift. She took another sip as they watched.
Her head began to clear, and she examined her surroundings. She sat on a stone plinth in a circular chamber. The walls were black granite, with veins of obsidian and calcite. Torches burned in the four corners of the room. The orange-yellow light darted haphazardly about the room’s odd angles, like furtive sparrows. Arching doors led off into other chambers.
“If you’re well enough to walk, mistress,” Yig said, “we’ll escort you to the Lev. The king will meet us there.”
“Does he know I’m alive?”
“He requested your presence as soon as you were able.”
“I see,” she said. Doubtful she would escape these caves without a map. Besides, Marul was still with Caleb. She had to return to them, rescue Marul, and take her home.
Yig gestured toward the door. “Our lord awaits.”
She frowned, wiped dust from her tunic. “Let’s go see your lord.”
They entered a tunnel wider than the broadest streets of Azru. The two walked ahead, while the other Mikulalim followed a few paces behind. Torches along the walls blinkered to life with spell-laden whispers as they moved. From high, recessed windows shivered furtive shapes of Mikulalim peering down at them. The walls echoed the steely sounds of their desolation.
They walked through a labyrinth of crooked avenues. Stone stairs led into strange corners, buttresses bent at vulgar angles, and steep walls leaned oppressively over all. Distantly, a flute was piping some maddening, indefinite tune. She shivered and remembered the legends of the Black Chasm, of the Cursed One’s dreadful bacchanals, whose music drove men to madness.
“What is this place?” she said.
“This is Yarrow, mistress. Our city.”
“A city? How many of you live down here?”
“A hundred thousand Mikulalim, give or take.”
More than twice the population of Azru. She shook her head in awe. “I’ve lived in Azru my entire life without knowing another city sits just under my own.” What else, she wondered, was so close that she could not see it? She drank in the city with thirsty eyes, afraid to miss the littlest details.
Ornate stone bridges arced across the streets, doorways appeared in unexpected places, and corners met at unnecessary angles. At first the city seemed haphazard, random, but she began to sense a subtle artistry in it, a purposeful disjointedness. “My father taught me to set stones in a predetermined order, to know your destination before you begin. I hadn’t realized that I could embrace chaos and still craft something marvelous.”
“All things are born from chaos,” said Yig.
“I don’t see any joints or seams. Your stonework is incredible. How did you mortise the blocks so well?”
“There are no mortises. There are no seams.”
“But that would mean—”
“Yarrow was not built like the cities in the sun, with stone piled upon stone. It was built by taking stone away.”
“You excavated Yarrow?” She let loose a little yelp. She’d always assumed that art was crafted by combining simple forms to build complexity. “I’ve freed statues from marble and chiseled the Crypt of Umer out of the side of the DanBaer. But an entire city, loosed from stone? It’s beyond words.” Ideas for projects unfurled spectacularly in her mind.
The frenzied piping grew louder as they stepped into an enormous cavern. Rana stopped, struck by the gargantuan size of the space. Azru’s tallest towers could fit inside this cavern with ease. Stalactites, wider than King Jallifex’s palace, reached from ceiling to ground in obese columns. Strata of beige, magenta, amber and emerald marked the eons of their formation. These stalactites had been hollowed out, made into homes. Thousands of Mikulalim peered from many windows, parapets, and golden bridges, their glowing eyes affixed on her as she walked.
Torches and fire pits burned everywhere, making the gold and feldspar in the distant rock walls flicker like stars. Yig walked toward the largest of the stalactites, a colossal formation hundreds of paces wide. Perhaps a trick of the firelight, its surface looked soft and wet and seemed to throb with the grotesque music.
Though she searched, she could not find the source of that demented piping. A thousand eyes peered down at her, searching, hungry.
“Why are they staring at us?” she said.
“They stare at you, mistress.”
“Me?” She slowed her pace and felt herself blush. “Why?”
“Because we are creatures of sound. We know a thousand languages, but music is our mother tongue. In you, we see ourselves reflected.”
She stared at Yig’s leathered face. “I’m not like you.”
“No, not a Mikulal. But music animates your bones. We know who you are, Rana. Forgive me, but it’s an honor just to walk with you.”
So the Mikulalim know of me too? she thought. But why do they know of me? Was it because she could sing better than their demented flutist? King Jallifex had a hundred psaltists in his palace that could perform better than that madman. Did these Mikulalim revere those musicians as well?
They passed under a low-spanning bridge, and a crowd of Mikulalim leaned over its alabaster railings to watch them pass. “And what am I,” she said, “that you know of me, when before today, I knew nothing of you?”
“You are not like the mass of humankind, Rana, who toil without purpose or mission. Your energies are directed. Your thoughts sublime.”
Was he speaking of her art, her creations? “But how have you heard of me? I’ve never left Azru until yesterday.”
“When you sing, Rana, the whole Cosmos listens. You are Gu.”
Gu? Was this a term of respect, or something else? The masses were staring at her. She fixed her eyes on the granite path. It was thickly veined with gold, and they walked upon it as if it were common sand. How strange these people were who treaded upon gold!
They reached the base of the monstrous stalactite, and the mad piping exuded from its every orifice. “This is the Lev,” Yig said. “The Heart of Yarrow.”
The piping was not music so much as madness, a flurry of notes hurled at the abyss to stave it off. But its attempts were futile, as all attempts were.
A large doorway into the stalactite lay between two golden plinths. Their smooth surfaces reflected the firelight, playing devilish tricks with her eyes. She grew sleepy, watching the flames. Yig picked up a cedar branch from a stone bucket, lit it with magic, and they entered.
The air was rank with death and decay as they wended up th
e twisting stairwells. They trudged across honeycombed rooms decorated with leather tapestries and bone furniture. And Rana saw female Mikulalim within these rooms. Their bodies were as lean as the males, their breasts small and sagging. Long white hair flowed down their backs like drifts of sand. Some tied their hair into braids. They wore gold necklaces, hematite rings. From their large ears dangled amethyst gems. Like the men, their eyes flickered with subtle flames. But in the women these cold fires hinted of some unutterable desolation. She did not see any Mikulal children.
The piping grew louder as they ascended, and so did the pounding of her heart. What would Caleb do to her when she returned to him? She fought against her desire to run. She had to see Marul again, to free her of this dreadful place.
They entered a spacious chamber bedecked with gold. A raucous banquet was in progress, and many Mikulalim crowded the space. Five men played bone flutes, the source of that demented piping. Upon a checkered floor, tiled with blood jasper and smooth hematite, male and female Mikulalim danced sickening jigs.
The far side of the room lay open to the stalactite city, a great open-aired window, and a hot breeze blew in from the cavern. Giant tapestries on the wall fluttered in the steady gusts.
Her heart skipped when she saw Marul, Daniel, and Grug sitting at a long banquet table. Mikulalim pried them with dried meats and cups of wine. Only Grug indulged. At the center of this banquet table, on an immense golden throne, sat Caleb. His cheeks were stained with animal grease as he laughed and pointed at the twisting dancers.
“My lord,” Yig announced, his voice almost buried under the music. “I present to you the Gu, as you requested.”
Caleb abruptly stood, raised his hand. The piping stopped. The dancers froze in mid-jig. Everyone turned to Rana, and her face grew hot.
“’Who is that,’” Caleb said, “‘who, without death, goes through the kingdom of the dead?’”
“Hello again,” Rana said.
“My Little Plum!” Marul shouted. She leaped from her seat, ran around the table, and embraced Rana. “Blessed Mollai!”
They hugged, and Rana didn’t want to let go. Daniel, smiling, came over to welcome her back. He took her hand, squeezed it. “I’m happy you’re all right. You scared us pretty good.”
King of Shards Page 14
