“Rül, you said his snoring sounded familiar. What if that’s because it was? Back at Yëlisha’s, you bumped into him while he was snoring at a table, right? You really didn’t get a look at the guy back there?”
Rül shook his head and said, “Sorry, sà, can’t say that I did. But Thosha’s days away from here: why would someone like him make the trip all the way to Ïsriba?”
“I don’t know,” confessed Kalas. “More taverns?”
“Nice!” Pava laughed as Nashmur and the queen-regent’s muscle led them through a new series of corridors and up various flights of stone stairs. The torches seemed brighter the higher they ascended, the air less dank: they were still within the dungeons, though, still prisoners, and the modest improvements to the environment failed to erase that fact.
When they reached what must have been the highest level of the dungeons—or the lowest level of the castle proper, Nashmur led them to a room billowing with floral-scented steam.
“What’s that smell?” marveled Zhalera, taking—and holding—deep breaths of the much improved fragrance.
“Shadow lily, mostly,” said Falthwën with an absent-minded manner.
“He’s right,” said Nashmur. “It’s—”
“—it’s used to induce a mildly compliant state in anyone who breathes its vapors for any significant amount of time,” Falthwën interrupted. For a moment, Zhalera held her breath.
“Uh, yeah, that’s true, but I was going to say it’s pretty effective at erasing the…less flowery odors from the dungeon. Can’t have such an…earthy aroma in the presence of the Queen.
“Anyway, there’s a change of clothes for each of you on the bench inside. You can leave your old clothes on the floor. The Queen’s guards will be outside the door should you…need anything. There’s something I have to take care of right now, but I’ll return within an hour.”
“We should be nice and ‘compliant’ by then, right?” scoffed Zhalera, who’d since placed a hand over her mouth and nose.
“Ladies, gentlemen,” the commander nodded as he disappeared around a corner. The other two guards who’d been trailing him remained, appeared to stare at—or through—the walls. Despite their seeming indifference, Kalas suspected neither would hesitate should he or another attempt anything outside the scope of Nashmur’s instruction.
“Zhalera? Pava?” offered Falthwën with a light pat on the shoulder and a sweeping gesture toward the chamber’s interior. The girls descended into the room’s warm moisture with tentative steps. As Rül and Kalas followed after them, the latter sensed an instruction to refocus race across his thoughts.
‘Refocus?’ How? he wondered. On what?
On the other side of the threshold, he retrieved a bundle of clothing—and a towel—from a low bench before selecting one of several stalls that lined the back walls of the steamy space. He chose the alcove next to Zhalera (who’d wrapped herself in a towel), shed his filthy clothes, and wrapped his own towel around his waist before he plopped down on the hewn stone seat. With a heavy, exasperated sigh, his nakedness a reified expression of his present state of mind, he closed his eyes, breathed in the hypnotic mist and tried to ignore the anxious thoughts reeling inside his head.
Refocus, he remembered.
Had Falthwën made that suggestion? No one else came to mind as he opened his eyes and stared straight ahead.
On what? he repeated to himself. He glanced at Falthwën, a few stalls down. He’d taken his seat and, having filled his lungs with the sweet-smelling air, closed his eyes. Sputtering torches lined the walls, and in their inconsistent light Kalas caught occasional twists of something gleaming from the old man’s direction.
Like what he did beneath the Sanctuary, he noted.
He turned toward Zhalera, started when confronted with her tawny gaze. She’d been watching him for a while, he supposed, her forearm draped across the shoulder-height partition and her chin nestled atop her forearm. She’d piled her hair in loose, twin buns and regarded him with a curious look.
“Is this where you’d thought we’d be?” she said without much emotion.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. After a while, she continued, “I mean, we should be back in Lohwàlar, living out our lives, right?
In a few years, we’d…I’d take over for Father at the smithy, you’d maintain the Pump—something that let you spend a lot of time outdoors, anyway! I just never thought we’d be…here.”
“No, I don’t think I would have placed us here, in these circumstances, either,” Kalas agreed with a yawn.
Refocus!
“What was that?”
“I didn’t say anything,” said Zhalera as she raised her head and looked around.
“No, not you: I…I don’t want to fall asleep. I thought—”
Refocus!
“Refocus?” mumbled Pava as she opened her eyes. “What?”
“So you’re hearing that, too?” said Kalas. “Falthwën?”
The cleric’s eyes remained closed, but with a subtle smile he breathed, “Not me, my child, but it does seem like a sensible course of action, yes?”
“Refocus on what?” Kalas wondered aloud.
“Our thoughts are on the queen-regent: on her designs for us. So long as they remain there, these vapors accomplish their intended purpose. If you—all of you—could be anywhere, could be doing anything, where—what—would it be?”
No one answered the cleric’s question, but Kalas’ thoughts shifted toward home. In his mind’s eye, he could see himself standing before the zhàrudzh that had killed his father; in his hand he held Shosafin’s sword, and with a fearsome cry that echoed across the heavens, he charged and—
No: what’s already happened…has already happened…
He shook his head, let the vision dissolve in a floral haze before he thought about the artifact buried in the Empty Sea.
Why that thing?!
The rocks hiding the object from view had been cleared away—perhaps they’d never fallen. He ran a hand across the symbols, and in his new thought he understood their purpose. The door slid inward without incident, into “pockets” designed for such a purpose.
The interior door acquired a subtle glowing outline before it split apart and gushed uncolored light that obscured anything beyond its threshold.
“No, that’s not where I want to be!” he insisted. “I want…”
Kalas closed his eyes this time and saw Zhalera, some years older—not quite a couple of Sevens, maybe—with the faintest shock of sterling sprouting from the deep black that framed the rest of her forehead. She looked up from her task, set down her four-pound (less a few grains) hammer, and approached him with an impish smile. He thought he heard laughter. A child’s laughter, maybe: the kind that arises from untainted joy. Zhalera wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him toward the curve of her mouth, and—
“C’mon, Kalas! Time to get dressed!” Zhalera prodded him.
“What? I—is Nashmur back?” he stammered as he stood and toweled dry.
“Sorry that took…a little longer than I thought,” said the commander as Kalas covered himself with the ill-fitting robe. “I see you’re all changed—most of you, at least!”
“I, uh, must have dozed off,” the boy muttered as he thrust an arm through a sleeve that was too long.
“It happens,” Nashmur said. “Come, this way. The Queen is waiting.”
2.
“Where do you think that steam comes from?” said Rül as they ascended through the castle’s various levels. Each seemed more elegant than the last as the quality and quantity of its furnishings—and the number of guardsmen—increased.
“It’s piped in from hot springs far beneath the ground. Volcanic activity, I’m told, though no one now seems to know much about it.”
“A volcano? Like the Ildurguli Taruún?” Pava wondered.
“The what?”
“The Death-bringing Mountain at the far no
rth of the Ilvurkanzhime,” supplied Falthwën. You haven’t felt its rumblings of late?”
“No, I can’t say that I have. I spend most of my time in ivambar. Nowadays I don’t have much reason to travel any farther west.”
“Probably different plates,” the cleric said to himself.
“Different what?”
Falthwën smiled. “No matter. I suspect the Ildurguli will erupt in the not-too-distant future. If—when—it does, not even Ïsriba will escape unscathed.”
“Unscathed? How do you mean?”
“It gets cold here in the winter, yes? It’ll get colder. And the summers won’t be as warm nor as long. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to anticipate the necessary adjustments to Ïsriba’s economy—its society as a whole. Get ready for when the time comes.”
“How do you know all this? What makes you so sure?” said Nashmur as he stopped and turned, narrowed his eyes as he regarded the curious old man.
Falthwën smiled. “I didn’t mean to cause you any undue alarm: the not-too-distant future could be tens, maybe hundreds of Sevens from now. Anyway, you said the queen is waiting, yes?”
The commander nodded, though his eyes acquired a suspicious gleam as he maintained his silent appraisal of the cleric. “You’re not wrong. Just a few more levels and we’ll—”
As he resumed his initial direction, he turned a corner and collided with someone wrapped in loose, somewhat ragged clothes. The figure stopped, said nothing as Nashmur offered an apology; instead, he peered at everyone through his tattered black hood, fixed his jaundiced gaze on Kalas, and seemed to vanish around another corner.
“What was that?” the boy asked as cold sweat beaded on his skin. Some half-remembered thought ran its fingers along the cusp of conscious recall, then retreated toward less accessible places in his mind. He shivered.
“One of the Queen’s new servants,” Nashmur allowed, though his change in demeanor indicated that he, too, sensed something unwholesome about the man.
After three more flights of marbled stairs, accented with pale yellow metal sporting a greenish tinge, the commander brought them to one end of a long hallway lined with dangerous-looking soldiers. Entire walls had been overlaid with that green gold, and flakes of the stuff glittered like miniature stars as suns-light cascaded through skylights of smoked quartz camework high above. Toward the center of the passage, in the middle of a vast rotunda stood a golden statue with an indomitable expression. Perhaps twelve feet tall, the daunting figure held an enormous sword in one armored fist; a giant bird-of-prey, wings spread, clutched the other.
“Ulobir’s tomb,” said Nashmur. “Commissioned by his son and successor, Ulobir II.”
“Looks like someone you wouldn’t want to mess with,” acknowledged Rül as they circled the monument to Ïsriba’s first king.
“It’s not solid…gold? whatever that metal is, is it? Why is it green?” Zhalera wondered.
“Not solid, no: it’s chiseled stone overlaid with an alloy of gold and…nickel? silver? Some other metal, anyway.”
“It’s really…pretty.”
“‘Pretty?’” the commander laughed. “Somehow I don’t think that’s the adjective Ulobir would have preferred, but I have to agree.”
At the end of the corridor, Nashmur stopped everyone in front of twin doors, roughly fifteen feet tall and covered with the same gold as the statue. Each rested on hinges as large as a man. Fourteen guards lined either side of seven broad, basalt stairs polished to a deep, mirror-like finish. Kalas couldn’t avoid the forced sense of smallness impressed upon him by the architecture.
The commander ascended the stairs, nodded toward the guards standing in front of these imperious slabs of gilded wood and banded steel. He held up a finger before he turned and addressed the party: “No one of your…standing gets an audience with the Queen. Not a pleasant one, at least. Say nothing until she makes a specific request; at such a time, answer her directly. Tell the truth.
“Master Kalas: since Ilbardhën entrusted you, specifically, with his sword, the Queen will assume he’s entrusted you with information as well. Keeping your secrets from me is one thing: keeping them from her, however, is entirely another.”
Nashmur knelt, placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and whispered, “You trusted me with his sword. Perhaps we can avoid what’s sure to be an inquisition if you’ll also trust me with his intentions?”
Kalas replied, “I really don’t know where he is or what he’s up to. Not specifically…”
“Specifically?”
“I just know he’s looking for someone. Someone named Marugan.”
The commander stood, his eyes wide. All the color drained from his face as he wheeled around and gestured for the guards to open the doors to the Poyïsriba court.
He knows that name! Kalas observed. And he’s afraid of it…
3.
With stiff steps, Nashmur preceded everyone into the throne room: a cavernous space half as long as the hall through which they’d come and twice as high. Its polished walls had a subtle inward slope and terminated in a vault-like configuration overhead. Its apex boasted similar stretches of tinted mineral quartz. Curtains actuated by a complex-looking assortment of cords and pulleys kept most skylights shrouded from view; indeed, only a thin ribbon of light reached the sparkling floor, created a narrow pathway toward a lofty block of stone at the far end of the chamber—the room’s sole furnishing.
Not just a block of stone: a throne, Kalas realized.
Several armored soldiers stood guard along each tiered step: each stared straight ahead, as though nothing registered within their field of view. As he’d assumed with the other guards, Kalas figured they probably saw or sensed everything taking place within this vast space, its every corner and crevice. Each held a gleaming halberd, heel planted and sharp-looking blade facing the entrance. Looped around each man’s hips hung an ornamental scabbard cut from green leather and adorned with emeralds and diamonds fixed within settings of that ever-present Poyïsriba gold; each scabbard held an ornately-hilted sword.
Some distance from the bottom-most step, the commander stopped and knelt. The others followed his example.
For a protracted moment, nothing—no one—made a sound. The line of light wavered as a cloud or something drifted through the sky.
“Rise.”
Commander Nashmur stood. So did everyone else. The soldiers held their positions until the same voice—mature, rich, and unmistakably feminine—bade them depart. It echoed across the throne room’s walls, each half-repetition underscoring the severity of the queen-regent’s commands. Without a word, each disappeared within the shadows, performing a part of a well-practiced routine.
“Commander…Nashmur, I’m told. You’ve recovered intelligence regarding that traitor to the crown Shosafin?”
It wasn’t a question. Not really. Even Kalas caught the queen-regent’s uncomfortable subtext. The Poyïsriba throne sat beneath a column of filtered light: a broad point along the thin ray that bisected the darkness.
“Hish, my Queen,” said the commander as he held out Shosafin’s sword: one hand on its hilt, the other supporting its scabbard.
“These travelers were his companions. For a time, at least. Here: I present Ilbar—that is, Shosafin’s sword.”
The queen-regent stood, the train of her robe billowing in her wake. Unnumbered beads of crystal sparkled along the sleeves and bodice of her ice-white gown. Around her slender neck she wore a stole of contrasting black fur, rough and stringy. As she descended from her dais, each faceted work caught fire as it passed through that singular unobstructed beam.
She approached Nashmur, who knelt again, and made a cursory examination of the sword he held aloft. Her cream-colored skin appeared to be flawless in the room’s curious light. Her hair, the same color as her gown, had been tied back in perfect symmetry, almost invisible beneath a crown of ornate, golden wings decked with diamonds and emeralds. She ran her delicate-looking fingers across the leng
th of the weapon’s sheath: her dark eyes, framed by high, chiseled cheekbones, flowed over its surfaces without betraying any hint of emotion.
She’s breath-taking, Kalas admitted to himself, but there’s something cold about her.
“It’s his,” she nodded, satisfied at last with its provenance, and something behind her eyes seemed to flicker. “You retrieved it from these people?”
“From the boy, my Queen,” said the commander, still kneeling with his head bowed.
“From the boy…Tell me, child: your name?”
“Kalas. Uh, Queen Ësfàyami,” he stammered. A cruel smile touched the corners of her mouth.
“Tell me, young Kalas: who are these with you?”
He provided everyone’s name as the queen-regent glided from person to person. When he’d finished, she took the sword from Nashmur, drew it, and instructed the commander to stand. With a few adept flicks, she played its edge within the light and brought its tip to bear against Kalas’ throat.
“Shosafin. Where is he?”
Too surprised to move, to think, to do anything other than stand where he was, he didn’t flinch: caught within her withering gaze, her dark irises naught but a faint halo around her fathomless pupils, he just returned her stare.
“I don’t know,” he heard himself whisper.
“You don’t know?” she spat in her disbelief.
“I don’t! I—we—none of us has seen him in weeks!”
Ësfàyami held him a moment longer, then returned Shosafin’s sword to its sheath.
“Very well,” she said, apparently satisfied for the moment. “What do you know of his plans? His goals?”
“All I know is he’s looking for—someone.”
Nashmur flinched just before Kalas almost said Marugan.
Something at the edge of perception made him hesitate.
“Who?”
“He calls himself Marugan,” Kalas wilted.
In a flash, the sword was at his throat again, closer, this time, and he winced as he felt it prick his skin.
“What did you say?!” she demanded, her tone a mix of disbelief and rage.
Beneath the Vault of Stars Page 33
