The Garden of Stones

by Mark T. Barnes

  Shar’s expression became fierce. “So it all comes to nothing? You have to let Ariskander know about the tomb raiders in the Rōmarq. At least let him finish what we started.”

  “I reckon Shar’s right, Indris.” Hayden nodded. “Seems we ought to tell more folks what we’ve seen.”

  “It is the proper thing to do,” Omen said. “Otherwise, what point in anything we have done?”

  “Fine. I’ll tell Ariskander.” Indris surrendered to the moral compasses of his friends, as he so often did. “Can we leave then?”

  “You know I’m right,” Shar said. She skipped forward to kiss him on the cheek. “Why not listen to me in the first place? It’ll save you time and trouble in the long run.”

  “So you’re fond of reminding me.”

  The Torchlight Society brought those of like mind, those who sought knowledge for its beauty, its lessons, and its legacies, together. More than a score of attendees stood in earnest discussion or sat at their ease on well-upholstered chairs in the salon set apart from Indris’s private chambers. The long sails of ceiling fans slowly swept back and forth, cooling the air. Scrolls, sandwiched between sheets of glass, hung from the ceiling by chains. Each of the scrolls was inscribed with writing or illustrations. Some of the inventions were easily identifiable: the Disentropy Spool, a cylinder capped with mushroomlike domes of clockwork gears and cogs; the ghostly net of the Wind Loom, a sail woven from air; the broad, shallow bowl of the Scholar’s Chariot; the Entanglement Bowl that allowed people to speak to each other from across vast distances; the steel frame and glass panes of the Seer’s Window. There was even an illustration of a Havoc Chair, one of Sedefke’s inventions from his militant years. It was rumored Indris’s mother had once owned a copy of The Awakened Soul, Sedefke’s treatise on how he had guided the first Avān monarchs and scholars in their understanding and mastery of Awakening. If his mother had owned the book, Indris had never seen it. It would be worth many times its weight in gold and gems.

  Indris turned at the sound of a rough-edged laugh. Femensetri stood beside Gulenn, the graying inventor and artist. Almost two decades ago, Gulenn had invented the Portrait Glass used to permanently store images of people and things in wafers of serill—the drake-fired glass of the Seethe. Beside Gulenn was his latest project, a version of the Portrait Glass that could show moving pictures. Indris had marveled at the clitter-clatter of the exposed mechanism and the spinning barrel of crystal wafers that projected the flickering image of Gulenn’s young son, at play in a garden, on the wall.

  The images reminded Indris of happier times in his life when he had thought, wrongly, that he had escaped the clutches of turmoil. Though life had been hard, had been dangerous, he had not cared. To come home to the smile on the face of the woman he loved had helped wash away the regret of the time spent apart. The times when he was knee-deep in the mire, the blood of friends and enemies indistinguishable on his hands. Life had not been perfect, it never was, though it had been good for a long time. Both he and Anj had defied their Sēq Masters when they’d married. Had fallen in love, contrary to instructions. The masters had warned Indris no good would come of it, had said it would end in heartbreak at the very least. As his thoughts turned to his nameless lover from last night, guilt rose anew. He fought it down. Anj had been gone long enough for him to know she would never be coming back.

  “We truly live in an age of invention.” Indris blinked, snapped from his reverie. Ziaire stood in the doorway, magnificent in her layers of pearlescent white and ivory silk. She bestowed a dazzling smile upon Shar, who grinned in response. “I trust I’m not intruding?”

  “Of course not.” Indris offered the lady a chair. Femensetri caught Indris’s eye, lifted her chin by way of hello. Indris sketched a bow to his former teacher. Both Shar and Ziaire viewed the exchange with wry grins.

  “It must have been pleasant for you to see Femensetri after so long.” Ziaire carefully adjusted the folds of her kilt. “She speaks of you often, mostly kindly. I feel as if I know you intimately.”

  “Ten years is a long time to hold a grudge.” Indris shrugged. The idea of the famous nemhoureh knowing him intimately was somehow daunting.

  “Indris, she’s not the woman you knew. You’re no longer her pupil.”

  “Please.” Indris held his hand up. “That chapter of my life is long closed. If I’m very fortunate, I’ll be able to leave Amnon without picking at old wounds. Let’s leave the scars as they are, neh?”

  “As you will.” Ziaire leaned back as a servant put down an iron pot, steam streaming from the spout. The pots were followed by glazed clay cups, the glaze rippling with hints of blue and green. They reminded Indris of wavelets on the beach, advancing and retreating. The refreshing smell of apple tea assailed his nostrils.

  Without a word, Femensetri seated herself beside Ziaire, the two women as different from each other as the black and white they wore. The Scholar Marshal poured tea for herself. With a faint smile, Shar poured for Indris, Ziaire, and herself. The four of them gave their attention to their drinks. Indris felt the warmth of it in his belly, trickling out to infuse his limbs. With the scented steam of the tea in his nostrils, he was filled with a sense of comfortable well-being.

  “What is Nehrun playing at?” Femensetri eyed Indris over the lip of her cup, the mindstone a black-faceted nothing in her brow. “Why, in all the names of the Ancestors, did he throw his support behind Corajidin? Idiot!”

  “Why not ask him?” Indris gibed.

  “You should know these things,” Femensetri countered. Indris snorted by way of response.

  Femensetri pointed her finger at Indris in a semiserious warning. “Quiet, you. Doesn’t the cockerel realize the dangerous waters he’s trying to swim? He needs to use the brains his parents gave him. I’m already ruing the day he becomes the Rahn-Näsarat. Stupid boy has no appreciation of what he’s inheriting. I’ve seen his like for thousands of years. It’ll end in tears, one way or another, unless he smartens up.”

  “I noticed he was not too keen on volunteering to search the Rōmarq for Far-ad-din.” Ziaire grinned wickedly over the lip of her cup.

  Indris frowned. The Rōmarq wetlands were home to many unclean things. When the floods had come and Seethe cities had been sluiced clean, not everything had been killed that should have been. Legend had it one of the Torque Mills—the factories the Seethe had used to create new life from the strands of old—had fallen into the marshes, twisting, merging, changing anything that came nearby. “There were a lot of Fenlings on the west bank of the Anqorat during the battle. Far-ad-din knew he was defeated—his escape into the marshes was a calculated risk. We didn’t expect anybody to be in a hurry to go after him.”

  “Only somebody very desperate would retreat from a battlefield into a tribe of Fenlings,” Ziaire mused. “I’m at a loss to understand why Nehrun would side with Corajidin, though.”

  “Because he’s an ambitious little turd,” Femensetri muttered.

  “Only tragedy can come of Far-ad-din’s leaving.” Shar rubbed one of the feathers braided into her quills, then cast it away to banish the ill omen in her words. “Much in Amnon will wither without a tender hand to nurture it.”

  “No doubt that’s the point.” Femensetri scratched herself. “I’ve tried scrying the Rōmarq to find him, but there are so many disentropic eddies, surges, and sinks out there it’s impossible to see anything. It’s a cursed stew of raw energy.”

  “Shar’s right. Sorrow will come from Far-ad-din’s absence, though Ariskander is the only logical choice to govern in the interim.” Ziaire caught Indris’s gaze, her eyes large green pools. “Both Ariskander and the Asrahn need men of your talents.”

  “The Asrahn and the Sēq benefited from my service for a long time,” Indris replied. “Yet when I was captured by the enemies of our people—the one time the government or the Order could’ve shown gratitude for my former services, the one time I needed their help—I was abandoned to the slave pits of Soroch
el for almost two years. Forgive me if my cup doesn’t brim with cooperation. One good thing to come out of that was meeting Shar. Her friendship and loyalty are two things in this world I never question. The other was to measure out my trust in nobles, bureaucrats, and my former teachers in small amounts.”

  “You’ll allow your personal feelings to cloud your duty to your people, after Vashne pardoned you?” Femensetri’s tone was sour. “I trained you better, boy.”

  “Tried slavery, have you?” Indris rolled his cup in his hands, intent on the way the dregs of tea swirled against the glaze. Being a knight of the Sēq Order of Scholars had not been an easy life. There had been light, laughter, and pleasure in service. But as the years wore on it became filled with pain, with horror. Revolts to be started and wars to be stopped. Murders in the dark. The deaths of enemies and too many friends. There were mornings in Sorochel when he had been sorry he had lived through the night. He remembered the acid burn of salt-forged shackles, unable to think clearly, to free himself. When he had escaped, the memories of what had come after still plagued him. He raised his head to look at Femensetri. “Until you have, you don’t know what you’re saying. Besides, there are other reasons I don’t want to linger here.”

  “Your wife?” Ziaire’s expression was flooded with sympathy. “Did you ever discover what…I’m sorry, Indris. Wasn’t there anything you found admirable in serving your country?”

  “I’ve given up on finding improbable solutions to impossible problems made by other people.” Indris shook his head. “The Asrahn and the Teshri brought war to the doorstep of innocent people. Ariskander tried to stop it, and for that I applaud him. But perhaps those who govern Shrīan need to learn to deal with consequences.”

  “Indris!” Femensetri grasped his wrist. “Perhaps you’ve the right to—”

  “Perhaps?” Indris jerked his arm from Femensetri’s grip and stood.

  “Please!” Ziaire implored them both. “This is much bigger than—”

  “It’s always bigger than the people who suffer, isn’t it?” He held his hands up as he backed away. “So many people, it all becomes abstract, this accounting of lives. But I remember the faces, the names, of people who suffered. There was always somebody to miss them. Somebody who loved them. All the people I…Ladies, I suddenly find myself remembering something that needs doing. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, though you’ll excuse me for not seeing you out?”

  Indris tried to walk as calmly as he could from the salon so no one would see the cracks appear in the mask he wore over his sorrow.

  Indris turned as Femensetri joined him in the high-ceilinged chamber he had once shared with Anj-el-din. Far-ad-din had been generous in giving them the large building, though it had been Anj who had really made it theirs. Or hers, if Indris was honest. He had spent so much time either saying farewell or saying hello, he had felt at times like a stranger. As if where Anj and he lived was more a house than a home.

  He stood before a series of Portrait Glasses. There was a layer of dust on them, which he gently wiped away with the corner of his over-robe. Most of the portraits captured frozen moments of Anj: Anj laughing, her teeth a band of white against her dark-blue lips; Anj hiding playfully behind the mass of her quills, fine and soft as silk, as unruly as the storm it always reminded him of; Anj sitting in repose, intent as an eagle as she stared out a window; Anj dancing, her elegance apparent even in the stillness of the portrait. There were few portraits of them together and fewer still of him alone. Those there were showed him in profile or turning away from whoever had tried to capture his image. Anj had once said, in pride or passion or her summer-storm fury, that he was always turning away. Always looking at the next horizon or the next trouble he would risk his life to fix.

  Anj was, had been, a Sēq Scholar. It had been easier for her to let go and embrace an ordinary world for love.

  “It was early in the morning when I came home,” he began without looking up. “It was raining, and I remember thinking how nice it would be to hold her. I’d been in Sorochel for…Anyway, I wanted to tell her I’d not be leaving her again. I thought I heard her singing on the balcony. I looked everywhere, lit the lamps, yet there was nobody there. Just echoes and dust.”

  “Indris, she’s been gone more than two years now.”

  “I won’t cry for yesterday, Femensetri.” Indris picked up his favorite portrait of Anj. She had never really liked it, yet Indris had always found the image to be the truest of her. It was of Anj writing in a journal, long legs stretched out in what he swore were stained breeches and her favorite pair of boots with split toes. Her lip was caught between improbably white teeth. A lock of quills wrapped around her finger. She had been the most captivating woman he had ever met. “She’s gone, like too many others, and I know there’s no bringing her back.”

  “Then why torture yourself?” The Stormbringer leaned against the wall, her mindstone pulsing darkness like a heartbeat. “You knew—”

  “Don’t,” he warned. “Just…don’t.”

  “Is this why you think you have to leave Amnon?” Femensetri gestured about the room with her crook. The scythe blade at its top flared with a brilliant, almost too-bright opalescence, herding and folding the shadows into little more than fine lines. “There are no Nomads here to torment you, Indris.”

  “Other than the ones I bring with me, you mean?” He cleared his throat before he spoke again. “She was the reason—”

  “You turned your back on everybody who depended on you?” Whatever kindnesses she may have been inclined toward were pared away by the angles of her voice.

  “Leave it be!” he snapped. “Anj depended on me. Far-ad-din depended on me to make his only daughter happy, to share a future of our choosing. I’ve paid my debts as best I can. And let’s not start on who turned their backs on whom, shall we?”

  “You didn’t kill her, Indris.” Femensetri sighed. She pinched her straight nose between her thumb and forefinger, eyes closed. “She is…I mean to say she chose her path, as we all do. Nobody made her—”

  “Look for me?” Indris glared at Femensetri from beneath lowered brows. “Is that what you were going to say to me? That I made her come looking for me? That I was the cause of her destruction, because if I’d been here, or doing what you wanted me to do, none of it would have happened?”

  “Would it have?” She leaned forward on her crook, opal eyes bright. “When you disappeared she went looking for the man she loved. You are the pebble that caused the ripples of her actions.”

  Indris felt as if he had been slapped. “I can’t believe—”

  “Believe what you will. You always do.” Femensetri turned and strode toward the open door. She paused when she reached the threshold. Looked over her shoulder at her former pupil. “One day you’ll realize you’re not the only person responsible for their own actions, Indris. You talked before of consequences? Perhaps you need to think on all the good you did, rather than what a person did out of love for you, as tragic as the outcome may have been.”

  “Is she really dead, Femensetri?” Feelings of guilt from last night clawed their way to the surface. “She was never found.”

  “Yours is but a little sorrow, when all’s said and done.” Femensetri looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Though I love you as much as pity you for the pain you feel, much worse has happened in the world and gone unsung. As for whether she’s dead or not, she’s not here. Does it really matter then what her fate, if it be that the two of you were to part?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Today’s necessity may well prove to be tomorrow’s catastrophe.”—Mattis Sendri, Imrean ambassador from the Iron League, 388th Year of the Shrīanese Federation

  Day 313 of the 495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation

  “Far-ad-din’s absence has become something of a liability. Many of those loyal to him, those who helped keep Amnon running, are leaving. If it continues, Amnon will become little more than a barracks for our army.�
�� Asrahn-Vashne stood with his back to the room in the Hai-Ardin. Mari did not need to see his face. She could read the tension in his shoulders, his back. Daniush, Hamejin, and Vahineh, the Asrahn’s heirs, stood quietly near their father. From behind her war-mask, Mari caught them staring at Indris, who stood quietly in his faded blacks and browns.

  Ariskander and Nehrun stood together. They are like night and day, she thought. It was clear Ariskander had not slept. Some of his hair had worked its way clear of his high ponytail. He had doffed his hooded over-robe, and his blue jacket with its embroidered golden phoenix was rumpled. Beside him, Nehrun looked impeccable. Pretty, rather than handsome. Manicured within an inch of his life, the man fairly gleamed.

  The Asrahn seemed absorbed by the subtle colors of the Fire Garden. Red, orange, yellow, and white flowering reeds grew in beds of colored pebbles and white sand. There was no scent to the garden. The beauty came from the humming of the breeze through tall dry grasses as well as the illusion of the conflagration of the waving flowers.

  “It’s unfortunate, Vashne, but what else can we do?” Ariskander’s voice was hoarse with fatigue. “Femensetri has tried scrying the Rōmarq, without success. I sent Ekko and half my Lion Guard across the Anqorat in pursuit of Far-ad-din three nights ago. I’m hesitant to suggest you ask Corajidin to help. If his people find Far-ad-din, I’ve no faith the man will be returned alive.”

  “What about you, Nehrun?” Vashne asked. “Care to go into the Rōmarq again?”