The Garden of Stones

by Mark T. Barnes

  “Excuse me?” Nehrun sounded genuinely shocked. “I’ve barely had the time to bathe and change from my last foray across the river. I lost twelve men to the Ancestor-cursed Fenling as it is. Ten more may not survive their wounds. Besides, I think you’re better served by me being in the city, where the decisions are made.”

  To Mari he sounded like a petulant fourteen-year-old rather than the petulant forty-year-old she knew him to be. A man who had betrayed his own father for the promise of power.

  “Harden up, Nehrun,” Vashne said, shaking his head. “You’re supposed to be one of our future leaders. The least you could do is act like it.”

  Nehrun almost vibrated with rage, but he kept his mouth shut under Vashne’s hard gaze, as well he should.

  The search for Far-ad-din had not gone well. Many search parties had gone out, with fewer than half returning. Eager for news, Vashne had ordered Mari and a squad of Feyassin to wait for Nehrun when he returned from his search of the Rōmarq. Nehrun had been prickly when he had reined in on his giant armored hart, his refined features smeared with sweat, dirt, and blood. His sister, Roshana, looked tired in her mud-streaked armor. Her quiver hung empty from her saddle, and her arms were covered in blood to the elbow. A mud-spattered bandage was bound around one thigh. Mari had given Nehrun enough time to wash and change, then escorted the surly rahn-elect to where his father and the Asrahn waited.

  As she had walked the sullen Nehrun through the Hai-Ardin, Mari took the time to appreciate the subtlety of the Seethe minds that had made it. The Seethe saw beauty in everything. Even war was an art to them, a performance in elegance and passion, in destruction and bloodlust. They had passed through an atrium where storm falcons perched on jagged outcroppings of green stone. In the center of the atrium stood six statues of Seethe elders, back to back, their broad wings touching so they resembled an ornate column. Their sharp features were avian—strong sharp noses, high angled cheekbones, pointed chins, and tilted eyes. If she was honest, there was little in the Avān that resembled their makers physically. The Avān looked almost identical to the Humans. No, the Seethe influence was mental. Behavioral.

  Like their makers, the Avān were drawn to the thrill of hunting, of killing. In their early years, the Avān tribes had been cannibals. It had been considered a great honor to kill and eat an enemy. To have the revered dead be remembered in the living. Though times and behaviors had changed, the Avān had not strayed far from their violent origins.

  The Seethe had made the Avān a warrior people. Their warrior people. The first Avān were made in Torque Spindles from parts of Humans, parts of Seethe, and parts of who knew what else. The Spindles wove the life force and the very flesh itself of different creatures, or other living things, into new life of the Seethe’s own devising. The Avān were not the first life made in the Torque Spindles, though they were the finest. The Avān were the ones the Seethe raised above all others as the enforcers of their Petal Empire. At first it had been as armendi—peacekeepers—to ensure the age-old feuds between Humans and the Seethe were settled peacefully. Over time, the Seethe monarchs cared less what the Avān did in their name, or what the Humans thought about it. Finally, while the Seethe chewed on the narcotic petals of their sacred lotus flowers, the Avān turned their sights on conquest.

  When the Avān toppled the Petal Empire, they destroyed every Torque Mill they could find in retribution. At once an intellectual and a spiritual people, the Seethe could forget wrongs. Such things became abstract over time, little more than topics for debate. Neither Humans nor the Avān were so inclined. They held grudges. Embraced them, relished and reveled in them until age had made a willing cage of past hatreds. It was why the counselors of the Teshri had not needed to search their souls long before they agreed to take their war to Far-ad-din.

  Mari had been paying more attention to the crystalline beauty of the Hai-Ardin than Nehrun’s incessant whining. So it had come as an even greater surprise to see a man she did not think to see again: her mystery lover. Her breath had caught, girlish and unexpected, at the sight of him. A deeper thrill had come when she had heard his name spoken: Näsarat fa Amonindris. Dragon-Eyed Indris. She knew part of her should feel shame at the thought she had given herself to a child of the Näsarat, but she could not. She had not seen him since their night together, had not known how to find him. Now, with only five meters between them, it might as well have been an ocean. She wanted to take her war-mask off, to reveal her presence, to evoke a reaction in him. Instead she maintained her composure, watched him from the corner of her eye.

  To think, she and he were supposed to have killed each other in the Hamesaad! The thought of fighting a daimahjin both thrilled and terrified her. Yet to fight Dragon-Eyed Indris? Even were he to defeat her, Mari’s name would be sung for centuries.

  “It has been four days since Far-ad-din disappeared.” Vashne’s footsteps hissed across the red-and-white sands. His hands were clasped behind his back. “Of the ten search parties we sent, six have not returned.”

  “Apologies, Vashne. We’ve done what we can.” Nehrun’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat to continue with more confidence. “The wetlands are thick with the Fenlings. They’re clustered in packs—”

  “Tribes,” Indris murmured as he examined his thumbnail. “The Fenlings hunt and fight in tribes, led by rival shamans. Not in packs.”

  “Packs of Fenlings,” Nehrun continued belligerently. “It’s like no place I’ve ever seen. We were outnumbered and forced to flee.”

  “Did you see any sign of Far-ad-din?” Ariskander asked patiently.

  “None.” Nehrun took a deep breath. “Have the others reported any sign of him?”

  You’re hoping not, aren’t you, Nehrun? Mari thought. You want to ingratiate yourself with my father even further. If you only knew the fate of Corajidin’s tools when he has no further use for them. Yet Mari could not bring herself to have any sympathy for Nehrun. The man had made his own bed. Possibly next to his grave.

  Vashne gave Nehrun a searching look before he settled the weight of his gaze on Indris. “Explain to me what you were doing in Amnon.”

  “I’d rather discuss that in private, Asrahn, if you don’t mind.”

  “This is not the time to be coy, Indris.”

  “As you like, though the fewer ears that hear this, the better. My comrades and I were brought here to help Far-ad-din discover who’d been trafficking in proscribed relics from the Rōmarq,” Indris admitted. “Far-ad-din had already arrested some of the key merchants dealing the relics and was about to arrest the suppliers, though we wanted to know more about what they were doing. He was obeying the law as the Teshri set it down: to actively traffic in proscribed relics is a capital offense. Far-ad-din was protecting your interests, Asrahn, not flouting them.”

  “Far-ad-din hinted to me something of the kind, though I was surprised he never told me more,” Ariskander mused. “I suspect some of his communications were intercepted, to prevent too many questions being asked. Far-ad-din was afraid of what others might unearth out there, as well as what the monsters of the wetlands might do with what they could lay their hands on.”

  “With good reason.” Indris nodded. “He was also concerned with the consequences of what might happen to him if the criminals thought they’d been found.”

  “I take it you’re aware of what lives in the wetlands?” Daniush asked.

  “Some of it, yes. I don’t think anybody knows everything there is to know about the Rōmarq.”

  “It seems to be as dangerous as people say.”

  “Part of that is our fault,” Indris said. “After the Haiyt Empire of the Time Masters ended, the Seethe settled in the Rōmarq and made some of their largest Torque Mills there. When the first Mahj of the Awakened Empire sank the center of Seethe civilization beneath the Marble Sea, the Torque Mills weren’t all destroyed. They went on working with nobody to monitor them.”

  “What happened?” Hamejin’s eyes were wide with curio
sity.

  “Reedwives, malegangers, dholes, and their ilk were created over the centuries. The Rōmarq, once a pinnacle of civilization, became one of the most dangerous places on Īa.”

  “What about wyverns?” Daniush sounded so much like his father it took Mari a moment to realize where the question had come from. “Or butterfly-drakes? Or those little wolf-bear creatures I see people keeping as pets?

  “They’re natural.” Indris smiled. “The animal you’re referring to is known as a marsh devil. They don’t make great pets. Even generations out of the wild they’re about one missed meal from turning feral.”

  “What are the Fenlings?” Vahineh asked, her long face solemn. Belam was right, Mari thought. The princess did look a little like a shoe. “Why are they so much of a problem?”

  Mari edged closer. Erebus Prefecture was almost free from the presence of such monsters. Indris took a worn journal from his satchel. He flicked through the pages until he found what he sought. The scholar handed the journal to Vahineh, who showed it to her brothers.

  “Those are my notes and drawings concerning the Fenlings. The Fenlings were made in the Torque Mills, after the Avān, the Tau-se, and others. The last great living sculpture of the Seethe. The Sēq Scholars have no knowledge of why they were made, only the certainty the Fenlings should’ve been destroyed.” Mari felt a slight sense of apprehension even thinking about them. “From what we understand, the Fenlings were a mix of the Avān and giant, tool-using rats. Totally amoral. They’re indiscriminate in what they kill. They’ll drag their enemies from the battlefield to be eaten, often alive. They eat their own. They reproduce prodigiously. They’re disease carriers, though they don’t suffer from what they infect others with. They don’t make anything of their own, rather, they steal what they need and change it as best they can for their own uses. They have shamans, more akin to witches than they are to scholars. Their arcanum is wild, unfettered, rather than disciplined. The concepts of honor, love, or affection seem alien to them, though there’s much we don’t know or understand. Had the Fenlings better organization, the Sēq have little doubt the rat-folk would make a formidable army.”

  “Are there many Fenlings?” Vahineh asked gingerly.

  “More than us.” Indris shrugged. “They’ve a superstitious dread of the Seethe. I think the only reason they’ve been contained so long is because of Far-ad-din and his Flying Hunt.”

  “Flying Hunt?” Vahineh looked up from Indris’s book.

  “Seethe wyvern-riders,” Indris offered. “They’d fly out into the Rōmarq and take retribution on any Fenling tribe that raided any of Far-ad-din’s vassals. Sayf-Siamak of the Family Bey, along with his marsh warriors, was equally as…convincing.”

  “Indris?” Hamejin blurted. “Is that weapon you carry the one they call Changeling? And your pistol? I’ve never seen one fired.”

  Mari looked at the prince with some surprise, as did his father and siblings. Hamejin was in his midtwenties, yet he was acting like a boy in the presence of the renowned scholar and adventurer. Mari turned her gaze upon the weapon sheathed across Indris’s back. There had been stories of Indris and Changeling. Until she had seen what he was capable of on Amber Lake, she had dismissed them as fancy. No longer.

  Indris reached up to rest the fingertips of one hand on Changeling’s hilt. Mari heard a gentle murmur, almost a purr, come from the weapon. Her black kirion—star steel—scabbard was mottled with an oily sheen, red or blue depending on the angle of the light. She resembled an amenesqa, slightly more than a meter in length, with a long hilt that could be used either one or two handed. From her pommel to the tip of her blade she had a gently recurved shape, like an elongated, flattened s. The hilt was scaled, leading to an ornate Dragon’s-head pommel with amber eyes facing out along the line of the hilt. The Dragon’s head made the already serpentine weapon look even more dangerous. Her eyes dropped to the storm-pistol in its tooled leather holster. It was a rare and expensive relic of the Awakened Empire, suited to a scholar’s hand or a collector’s shelf. The weapons were notoriously hard to maintain, with the techniques known only to a few.

  Indris politely took his journal from Vahineh’s hands. “I’m certain the Asrahn has more pressing questions for me.”

  “Indeed he does.” Vashne’s voice was tinged with impatience. “Was there a reason you made me send my Feyassin to bring you here?”

  “Displays of control can be quite tedious.” If Indris was surprised at the suddenness of the Asrahn’s question, Mari could not see it. “Was there a reason you bothered to send them?”

  “How dare you? I gave you your life!” Vashne’s voice cracked across the room. His three children, as well as Nehrun, paled. Ariskander pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. Indris raised his eyebrows, clearly unimpressed with the outburst. “I am the Asrahn, and I deserve your respect.”

  “And I’m a scholar, Asrahn. My life was neither yours to give nor to take. I do respect you and am grateful for your mercy, though need I remind you I bow before none except the Sēq Masters or the Mahj in Mediin?”

  Before she knew what she had done, Mari found herself halfway to where Indris stood. How dare he? Her hand had curled into a fist. Strength flowed from ankles, through calves, thighs, hips, and torso, into her arms, and—

  Indris’s left eye burned. From light brown to red, to yellow-flecked orange as if the eye were filled with flame. A circle of characters in an unknown language, limned in fire, flared around his pupil for a moment. Light haloed him, a mother-of-pearl shine that plunged the rest of him into silhouette. Fear lanced her. Made her pause for the slightest moment. A heartbeat. Then she continued forward, gratified to see Indris’s eyes widen ever so slightly in surprise.

  “Fall back!” Knight-Colonel Chelapa cracked in her parade-ground voice. Mari stopped where she was, balanced on the balls of her feet, a coiled spring. “Return to your position, Feyassin! Now!”

  Mari bowed to her Asrahn, then to her commanding officer before she retreated to her post. Her mouth was dry. Not because of the fear. Fear was healthy, natural, something to be embraced so it could be accepted rather than ruin her. Her surprise came from the sense of outrage she had felt at Indris’s dismissal of the Asrahn. It was the same instinct that had seen her defend the Asrahn at the Battle of Amber Lake. It was a Feyassin’s instinct, rather than a conspirator’s.

  Vashne eyed Mari with irritation, though it was Ariskander he spoke to. “You should know one of your Lion Guard was found in the city this afternoon.”

  “What did it say?” Nehrun choked out too quickly.

  “Knight-Colonel Ekko was badly wounded.” Mari’s voice echoed from behind her war-mask.

  Ariskander closed his eyes. “I take it Far-ad-din was not with him? Will Ekko survive his wounds?”

  “No, he was alone. I believe he’ll recover,” Mari added. “Were he an Avān, or a Human, I’d have my doubts. But a Tau-se?” She shrugged. Mari had seen Tau-se soldiers fight on with the most horrific of wounds, then walk from battle as if being pierced by four or five arrows was the most common thing in the world. “Ekko was determined to reach here with news. He’s asked to speak with you or Indris.” Though not Nehrun, she thought to herself.

  “I’ll speak with it. But how can it be trusted?” Nehrun said incredulously. “We’ve no idea what happened out there, or why it returned without completing its mission!”

  “The Tau-se don’t lie.” Indris snorted. “It’s not in them. Ekko will have a good reason why he returned without Far-ad-din.”

  “If Ekko has news”—Vashne was intent—“I would hear it.”

  “Our efforts here aren’t a total loss, Vashne.” Ariskander smiled. He talked briefly about the relief efforts he had brokered with local businesses and those of the upper castes who remained, Seethe, Avān, and Human. The people appeared to be content to wait—satisfied Vashne, through Ariskander, was a man of his word. “That said, there are other issues we need to deal with.
Each day we’re getting reports of faction fighting between the Great Houses and Hundred Families. We need to start sending people home, Vashne, before they take their personal wars to the streets and innocents get hurt.”

  Yet it was not only the factions causing trouble. Roadrangers threatened merchant traffic along the roads near Amnon. There had been encounters with the Fenlings close to the army camps outside the city walls. Personnel and supplies had gone missing. Tales of reedwife sightings had caused a panic among some of the soldiery. There was even report of a maleganger—a marsh-puppeteer—that had scuttled onto the chest of a soldier in an attempt to throttle her in her sleep. Luckily it had been destroyed before it could kill the woman and make her body a vicious puppet whose sole purpose would have been to sow discord. Being so close to the Rōmarq had made real some of what had, only weeks ago, been stories for some.

  “Let’s use the Erebus to cleanse the Rōmarq of monsters so close to the city,” Nehrun said, eyes narrowed in thought. “You never know, they may find some sign of Far-ad-din we’ve missed—”

  Ariskander shook his head to silence his son. “Corajidin has his own agenda. Who knows what he’ll do once he’s been given leave to send his people into the wetlands? We’d never know who was accounted for or not.”

  “But—”

  “Nehrun, leave it be!” Ariskander’s jaw clenched in irritation. “There’s enough for us to do without policing the Erebus. The longer we stay here, the longer our own prefecture is leaderless.”

  “Would it be easier for you, my friend, if I gave Amnon to Corajidin for the time being?” Vashne asked quietly.

  From the corner of her eye, Mari watched Nehrun’s reaction. Where he should have been shocked at Vashne’s suggestion there was a sly glee in the man’s eyes, hastily masked.

  “That’s the only choice?” Indris asked. “I would’ve thought almost anybody would’ve been more suitable to govern Amnon than Corajidin.”