The Garden of Stones

by Mark T. Barnes

  Kasraman bowed his head to his father, smiled at Belamandris and the others. “Welcome to…whatever this place was called.”

  “This is a great deal to take in,” Corajidin admitted as he craned his neck to look upward. “This is not something our Ancestors made, is it?”

  “I doubt it.” Kasraman smiled. “Neither our Ancestors nor the Seethe. We’ve started to identify some of what we’ve found, though nothing we can use yet.”

  “Anything you can identify as being Sedefke’s work?” Corajidin asked impatiently.

  “Some of what we’ve found is written in High Avān, the court language of the Awakened Empire. It’s what the Sēq arcanum—the Fayaadahat—is written in. Some of it is Seethe, which will take more time to translate. There are other writings here that will take even more time. Languages I don’t even recognize…”

  “We think this”—Wolfram pointed to a set of intertwined crystal spirals, dull rainbow colors trapped within the frosted quartz—“may be a Torque Spindle, though there appear to be pieces missing.”

  “And I suspect something we’re retrieving at the moment may be a Destiny Engine,” Kasraman said, with something very near to awe in his voice. “Whether it’ll work or not, we’ve no idea yet.”

  “So…nothing useful, then?” Corajidin did not bother to mask the sourness of his tone.

  “Rahn-Corajidin, there are whole sections of the city hidden behind esoteric wards we suspect may be millennia old,” Brede replied. “They’re very sophisticated and unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”

  “Break them down!” Corajidin growled. “You do not hide anything like that unless it is valuable.”

  “We lost almost fifty of the Fenlings already, when they accidentally tripped one of the wards. Then another ten or so of the bound-caste menials.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They…aged,” Kasraman said hesitantly, as if he was not sure he was using the correct word. “From the sounds they made as they died, it seemed agonizing. We’ve not wasted any more lives on such a certain outcome.”

  “Do you have any good news?” Corajidin struggled to keep his tone even. Kasraman and Brede looked away, embarrassed.

  With a snarl, Corajidin turned from them and made his way out. The others followed him, halting abruptly as he stopped short. Corajidin raked Kasraman, Wolfram, and Brede with his gaze.

  “Keep searching,” he growled through clenched teeth. “I do not care what you need to do, or how many lives it takes, but find me something to make this worthwhile.”

  “Father—” Kasraman began, only to be cut short.

  “I’m dying!” Corajidin shouted. “I need answers, not excuses!”

  “If Sedefke’s works aren’t here, we’ll need to look for other options.” Kasraman prodded at the long grass with his toe.

  Corajidin looked at his son. “Such as?”

  “If we can’t find Sedefke’s original work.” Wolfram rested his hand on the hilt of his knife. Made of old horn, it was blackened with dried blood that had seeped in each groove and crevice. Corajidin did not care to wonder whose. The witch’s voice was sepulchral. “Then we rip the knowledge from the soul of another Awakened rahn. One who has the unbroken memories of all his Ancestors, all the way back to the first Awakening.”

  Corajidin smiled at his witch. “Ariskander it is, then.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Love dies by steps. The footfalls of fear, resentment, anger, and spite kill love, little by little. It withers. It tarnishes. It passes away, poisoned, ill, and wounded beyond all power to heal.”—Nashari fe Dar-ya, houreh and poet of the Sussain of Mediin, 7th Year of the Shadow Empire

  Day 312 of the 495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation

  It was late afternoon. The streets of the Barouq, a seaside district of Amnon where many scholars, freethinkers, and veterans had chosen to live, were vibrant with color and movement. The smell of roast kid, hot honeyed bread, grilled barramundi, peppers, lemon, and garlic drifted on the slight breeze. Long-haired, tall-eared cats lazed in the sun, indolent in the forums and the fruited courtyards. Alabaster fountains burbled. Cockatoos screeched. Accents from a handful of nations beyond Shrīan’s borders echoed in the winding streets. There were dusky-eyed, brown-skinned Tanisians in their vividly colored jackets and long kilts, their singsong voices rich and quick. Ygranians laughing easily despite the heat, perspiring in their high-collared doublets and turned-down boots. Olive-skinned, short-haired Imreans pontificating in educated tones in austere tunics edged with geometric designs. Even a few morose-looking Angoths, long hair braided, the men’s faces obscured by dropping mustaches and full beards, were scattered among the crowd. They stood, belligerent, militant, suspicious in their iron-studded leather and shirts of polished mail.

  Small factions from the Hundred Families eyed each other across sun-drenched streets. Those loyal to the Great House of Näsarat boasted the blue-and-gold phoenix of their masters as they loitered in dappled shade. Erebus loyalists with their red-and-black rampant stallion drank quickly, laughed loudly, and fondled the hilts of their swords and knives.

  Indris turned from the fretwork screens of his sheltered balcony. The residence had been a gift from Far-ad-din many years ago, though Indris had lived in it infrequently over the years. It was a meandering labyrinth of rooms, corridors, and stairs overlooking a quiet garden courtyard few people even knew existed. He loved the old building with its high domed ceilings, its floors of polished wood and glazed mosaic tiles. Indris used only half the residence for himself. The rest of the rambling building had been made available as a score of well-appointed suites and a salon for the Torchlight Society of explorers, inventors, and adventurers.

  It was good to be among friends. Seated at a long table that had been stripped from a half-sunken Atrean war-galley, Hayden Goode finished cleaning his long-barreled storm-rifle, a rare and precious relic of the Awakened Empire. They were sought after by nahdi and professional adventurers, though disdained by the warrior and upper castes of the Avān for their difficulty to repair. The Human drover-turned-adventurer sat, compact in his deerskins. Age had made his face gaunt, and his cheeks were sunken aside his long nose. His weathered skin had the look of craquelure on tanned leather against his salt-streaked mustache. He took Indris’s storm-pistol from its holster and began to work on it. He was careful, aware of how difficult the weapon would be to replace.

  Sassomon-Omen stood motionless on the balcony overlooking the secluded garden. Three large cats rubbed themselves against his legs; the purring creatures were drawn to strong currents of disentropy. The Wraith Knight’s mannequin body was made of fitted pieces of lacquered wood. The master crafters of Mediin had fashioned the replica body in intricate detail, down to each knuckle on its carved hands and the slivers of tinted glass approximating fingernails. Sunlight picked out the bright gold and bronze of pins and screws, gears, balls, and sockets. Green-blue radiance flickered through the fine cracks in Omen’s narrow chest and bronze ribs, the telltale glow of his jade Wraithjar. Only his face remained unworked, a head-shaped block sans hair, with shallow depressions where his eyes would have been.

  Though he was happy his friends were there, Indris only half listened to what was being said. His mind was on his encounter with the compelling woman from last night, their mutual seduction and abandonment, his mixed feelings of guilt and relief. It had been more than a year since he had sought the comfort of another. The memories, the sensations, of last night were bittersweet.

  A shape overhead occluded the sun. Indris looked through the screen to see the bronze-chased hull of another Seethe skyjammer flying out to sea. Rendered in the shape of a bird like most Seethe vessels, the skyjammer’s hull and broad wings were built of lovingly polished blue-gray wood. In the wings and wedge-shaped tail sat silver and crystal Tempest Wheels. Light flickered and sparked from the rotating platters. There was a faint humming growl as the skyjammer passed by. Disentropy Spools rotated beneath each w
ing where the silver dumbbells released threads of light like fine silk, which unraveled into the air behind the skyjammer in a pallid cloud.

  Indris looked out across the Marble Sea to where the remnants of sunken buildings, ruins of marble and translucent crystal, stood their lonely vigil in shallow waters and atop tall hills now turned islands. There was a sense of longing in watching the sea eagles circle the shattered crystal towers of the ancient city of Nashrandi. Or Tan-li-Arhen of the Rainbow Spires. From the deck of a skyjammer, he had seen the bleached lines of roads and the blurred outlines of buildings beneath the water. It was this pallid discoloration that gave the sea its name.

  “Swap you a song for your thoughts?” Shar sidled up next to him on the couch, where the Seethe war-chanter tuned her sonesette. The afternoon light accentuated the sheen along her straight nose and the yellow of her whiteless eyes. Seemed to deepen the shadows of scutes around her eyes and forehead.

  “What benefit in staying?” Indris mused. “There’s nothing here anymore.”

  Shar looked up from her tuning. She followed his gaze toward the skyjammer. “Do you mean them or us?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “Leaving places with you is something I’ve become used to.”

  “‘And they left their land drowned in their tears, for those far distant shores bereft of fears,’” Omen intoned, his flutelike voice resonant. “I hear them, you know. The whispers of those who linger on the rim of the Well of Souls. Some are frightened. They want to stay but do not know how…”

  “I imagine they’ll find their way,” Hayden interjected, scrutinizing the revolving ammunition cylinder of Indris’s storm-pistol. “You know, talk of ghosts and the undead, Nomads as you Avān are inclined to call them, ain’t something all folks is comfortable with.”

  “Death has surrounded us for years, friend Hayden,” Omen replied. “I met mine centuries ago yet decided I had not experienced all there was in the world. My people may call me and others like me heretics, yet they cling to life as dearly as I. One day, such a choice will come to you.”

  “Oh no!” Hayden laughed. “Burn my body and throw my ashes into a strong wind. I don’t figure on anything using my dead flesh as no puppet!”

  “When I die,” Shar said dreamily, “my spirit will return to the winds, where it will fly above the torments of the world. Perhaps your ashes will fly with me for a time?”

  For reasons of their own, Omen and Hayden had chosen lives of adventure away from their homes. Shar was different. The Rayn-ma troupe, her extended family, had been all but wiped out in various mercenary battles. Indris and Shar had tried to find word of Rayn-ma survivors for years without success. While Shar had never complained, Indris wondered not for the first time whether he was being fair to his friend.

  “Shar, you’re a rich woman now.” Shar’s eyes narrowed to golden slits. “You could try to find your family’s Sky Realm. With your reputation, any of the Sky Realms would—”

  “One day perhaps, but not today. If this is about guilt…”

  “For such can be the burden of the moral, spiritual man,” Omen offered philosophically. “Riddled with guilt and nettled by regret, Indris has never been comfortable with losing his friends. His instinct is to say yes, when he should say no.”

  “So we’re going to leave Amnon, neh?” Shar strummed her sonesette. “Where are we going?”

  “I was thinking of Ankha.” He knew better than to argue with her. It was as useful as asking a storm to stop. “Or Faroza. Tanjipé, maybe? Anywhere but here. We came too close this time.”

  “No arguments from me.” Hayden put his rifle down and picked up several scrolls that lay curled on the table. “We’ve got offers of paid work from your ghost friends in the Sussain, from nahdi companies in Ygran and Tanis. There’s even an expedition off north, to the Spines.”

  “The Dragons? Let’s not. I was thinking of something more relaxed.” Indris wrinkled his nose. “We’ve more than enough money, so why not enjoy ourselves?”

  “The Floating Palaces of Masripur,” Shar suggested wickedly. Masripur, a Tanisian city on the northern shores of the Marble Sea, was known for its libertine sensibilities. Almost anything could be bought there if the price was right. It was one of the most popular cities for nahdi. The caste-merchants of Masripur who profited from war were some of the wealthiest people in southeastern Īa.

  “What about Ariskander?” Shar asked.

  “What about him?” Indris replied. “He’ll be busy enough trying to maintain order in Amnon without me adding to his troubles.”

  Shar caught her bottom lip between sharp teeth, white against the blue of her lips. “And Far-ad-din?”

  “We’ve done all we can for Far-ad-din. He invited us here to scout the Rōmarq and report what we found. He knows as much as we do about the tomb robbers in the wetlands.”

  “Far-ad-din is more than our employer!” She poked him in the ribs with a calloused finger. Indris yelped with the sharp pain. “Serves you right! If that was all he was, we’d have run rather than fight for him at Amber Lake.”

  “For the love of…” Indris’s eyes widened in surprise as the others looked in his direction. “What? My father-in-law needed our help. We helped. I owed Far-ad-din at least as much.”

  “Because he helped raise you as a child, or because you married his daughter and she—”

  Indris felt an old pain at the mention of Anj-el-din. Her fate felt like one of the ancient questions his Sēq Masters posed their students to unearth the secrets of the past. Who was Anj-el-din and where did she go? He fought down the melancholy he knew would settle on him if left alone. “A little of both, I suppose. We fought to give Far-ad-din a chance to survive. If he’d bothered to escape when I advised him to, things would’ve been much simpler.”

  “You should at least find somebody else to tell what you found.” Omen reached down to gently remove a cat that had started to scratch at his wooden leg. “Treasure hunters in the Rōmarq? Far-ad-din tried very hard to dissuade the smuggling of relics. Who knows what kinds of unpleasantness have been dragged from the swamp?”

  “If you’d have come with us, maybe you’d know?” Indris offered reasonably.

  “All that water and mud…” Omen fluted, tones low. “The damp might have settled in my legs. Could have caused rot. Highly inconvenient.”

  “Face it, Omen. Like me, you hate the idea of the place.” Hayden tapped his fingers on the table. “I reckon no person whole and right in the head would set foot there. Shar’s right, though. Them treasure hunters could be bad business. From time to time, I listen to your talk about them ancient places. You said yourself no good would come of people playing with what the Time Masters or the Seethe—or even the Avān, at the height of their power—left lying about.”

  Indris walked to where Omen stood in the balcony doorway. The garden below was quiet. An elderly man reclined in the sun, his back to an apple blossom tree. His head lolled forward, open palm upward in his lap, the book he had been reading facedown on the lush grass. Purple-and-gold lotus flowers emerged from the banks of a muddy pond fed by the overflow of a small fountain. They seemed too vivid, their colors brilliant in the striated light that speared through alabaster screens on the wall above. Sacred to the Seethe, it was the petals of the lotus flower for which their great Petal Empire had been named. Cats prowled and played with each other or batted large paws at the distraction of carp in the deep pond. They turned triangular faces in his direction, eyes half-closed in pleasure, tails raised in greeting. Everywhere he went…cats. The sensitive animals sensed Indris’s presence in the ripple of his Disentropic Stain. Cats were more attuned to the creative forces of disentropy than most animals. It was as if they could actually sense the warmth of the creative nimbus that flowed across all living things.

  “Many believe Far-ad-din was a traitor,” Indris said softly as he stared out over the garden. I’m going to miss this place, he thought. Anj and I made some good memories here…
“But Corajidin had him removed for his own purposes. He risked a lot to get his hands on whatever it is he’s searching for in the Rōmarq.”

  “I remember too well our people’s fascination with the Rōmarq,” Omen intoned. “It has long been a lure for those seeking out the works of those older, or wiser, than themselves. Yet always it led to suffering. It is not a wholesome place—those brackish waters, its flooded cities, its memories of sunlight and laughter. No, the Rōmarq clings to its secrets, as dearly as people have sought to unearth them.”

  “We’ve done what was asked of us and more,” Indris murmured. “Now it’s time to move on.”

  Despite their resentment of the Seethe, neither the Avān nor the Humans were ignorant to the inventiveness of their former masters or those who had come before them. Avān history spoke of three great empires: the Haiyt Empire of the Time Masters—the Rōm as they were known—who romantics said had ruled Īa for ten thousand years; the Petal Empire of the Seethe, which had lasted for a more believable four thousand years; and the empire of the Avān, ruled by its frighteningly powerful Awakened Emperors, which had lasted a mere millennium before the Humans tore it down. The one thing all three empires had in common was the Rōmarq.

  Yet it was Fiandahariat, one of the reputed homes of the great Avān mystic, Sedefke, that Indris feared had been discovered. In all their years, the Sēq had never found it. Never had the chance to cleanse it of temptation to others. So it remained a potential vault of Haiyt Empire and early Awakened Empire history. Relics. Texts. Weapons. There was no way of knowing what was there, though Indris and Shar had reported to Far-ad-din the hive of activity the ruins had become.

  Indris saw the disappointment on Shar’s sharp features, in the way she seemed to throttle the neck of her sonesette. He hoped it was not his throat she was imagining.

  “Shar, Amnon has been occupied. Even though Ariskander is benign, others aren’t. Believe me when I say any people who can leave will be safer elsewhere.” Indris forced a smile. He pointed a finger to the southwest. “The Rōmarq is only a few kilometers in that direction. Do you really think, with Far-ad-din gone, Corajidin will pass up a chance to dig up what he can, as quickly as he can? There are others better equipped to deal with what’s going on here. We have to trust that Ariskander and Vashne will do the right thing.”