The Garden of Stones

by Mark T. Barnes

  When they were out of earshot, Shar elbowed Indris in the ribs. “When I said be nice, that wasn’t the nice I meant.”

  “There’s no pleasing you, do you know that?”

  They joined the entourage as the wagon rolled away. The wagon was escorted by the squad of ten white-armored Feyassin, faces obscured by war-masks polished to mirror brightness, their ornate shields bright with reflected light. Indris, Shar, and Ekko walked behind the wagon in silence.

  As they left the expensive Upper Precinct of the Old Town, the buildings closed in. The high walls of terrace houses, with their latticed balconies and tall, dimly lit windows, became silhouettes against the brightness of the moon. The streets narrowed. Ilhen lamps were replaced by flickering oil lanterns. There were fewer pedestrians. No kherife. From the corner of his eye, Indris noted furtive shapes in the darkness of laneways and alleys. The battlewagon rattled loudly in the narrow space.

  Indris felt a palpable relief when they left those close confines. The narrow road cut through the gentle hills of parkland. The scent of native violets, jasmine, and flax lily filled Indris’s nose. Fig trees formed a long double row of irregular columns on either side of the street. Fruit bats screeched, raucous as they tussled in the branches of apricot and plum trees. Possums stared as the wagon and its guard trundled past, their saucer eyes reflecting the light like beacons.

  He looked to the north, where the lantern mist of the Mercantile Precinct hung like a haze over shallow-domed roofs and spires. Set on a jagged outcropping of rock, the large rotunda of Tyr-Jahavān swelled above its surrounding buildings.

  They had reached a crossroads, flooded with lantern light, when Indris noticed the silence.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “We can survive ambition, provided it is exercised in the open. It is the hidden knife, the heart of stone set on secret, on treasonous intent, which makes victims of us. The sly whispers of betrayal echo in the streets and the alleyways. In the wine and coffeehouse. In the chambers of the powerful. These whispers come as a friend: they speak in tones we know and trust. In tones we admire, for they often wear the face of something eminently reasonable. Such whispers foul the soul of a people. They are the rot which undoes us all.”—from Honor and Loyalty, by Erebus fa Mahador, Knight-Lieutenant of the Petal Guard

  Day 314 of the 495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation

  Mari had been troubled when Indris, Ekko, and the Seethe woman had been added to the Asrahn’s entourage. She knew Ekko by reputation. The colonel of the Näsarat Lion Guard was a renowned warrior and a cunning commander. His service to Ariskander had been peerless.

  The Feyassin’s voices were soft as they escorted the Asrahn’s carriage, though their eyes were intent on their surroundings. It gave Mari a chance to assess the unexpected additions.

  The sonesette on her back declared the Seethe woman a war-chanter, yet she carried herself like any other hard-bitten trouper. It was hard to tell with the Seethe what one was dealing with. The Seethe had a philosophy that artistic expression was at once the source, journey, and destination of all life’s paths. Mari had seen simple potters become the deadliest of assassins. Even Seethe children portrayed characters in the war-plays. Legend had it all players in Seethe troupes heard the voice of their trickster spirit carried on the wind, no matter what their age.

  To her eyes Indris looked more like an Avān of the old blood, though it was not possible. There had been no old bloods since the fall of the Awakened Empire, save the rare Sēq Masters who had overcome their mortality. She wondered who his father might have been, though she doubted he had been Shrīanese Avān. The cut of Indris’s cloth was fine, though worn with use. His long, hooded over-robe with its wide embroidered sleeves was the dark brown of a daimahjin. The mercenary warrior-mages tended to advertise themselves, more for the safety of others than for themselves. They were greatly sought after by those who did not want to use the more restricted services of the Sēq, Nilvedic, or Zienni Scholars. Changeling was slung across his back, and he walked with the cat-footed confidence of a warrior-poet.

  Indris presented a problem. Had her father planned to face a daimahjin when he ambushed the Asrahn’s entourage? Was this something the cagey old Vashne had taken into account? Mari’s mind had spun. How did one kill a daimahjin? She remembered something about salt-forged steel and an Entropic Scar? It was not her field of expertise, though she knew they were not invincible. The Scholar Wars had shown the world that scholars could die on the point of a sword like anybody else. True, most of the scholars and witches had killed each other. The ordinary folk had risen up against the survivors afterward, as the sheep awoke to discover their shepherds could bleed.

  As a warrior-poet of the Feyassin, Mariam was sworn to defend the Asrahn above all other oaths and obligations. And though her service had started as a ruse, it seemed now all her choices might lead to betrayal. Of the Asrahn who had given her a life and a future of her own; her House, which had given her a past as well as the promise of a future of their making; or the vocation that now defined her.

  She was a loyal soldier. But what was she loyal to? Should she warn Chela now, perhaps give the Feyassin the time to prepare for what was to come? To warn her friends would place her family in danger. Whether she spoke or not, Mari felt the end of the life she had come to love draw closer with every step.

  There was a hollowness in her stomach as the battlewagon passed the tall gates of the Iron Street Park. Moths thumped hollowly against the time-yellowed glass of the gate lanterns. The weathered sandstone arch was streaked with bird droppings and the stain of centuries of rain. As she walked beside the wagon, Mari tried to penetrate the gloom that had cuddled up, fleecy and black, to fill the cracks and hollows between tree trunks.

  Ahead, the well-lit crossroads where Iron Street met the Park Lane Stair came ever closer. During the day it was a popular meeting place, under the passive gaze of the statues of winged Seethe that stood at each of the four corners of the plaza. Under moonlight, the granite paving took on a blue-green tint. It seemed somehow haunted in the nocturnal silence. A place where the despised spirits of Nomads might roam to plague the living. The lanterns, which hung by heavy iron chains from the hands of the Seethe statues, flickered fitfully as if they, too, found what lurked beyond the light to be a cause for unease.

  It was now or never. Mari felt disconnected, as if a passenger in her own body, as she approached Chelapa. Chela had been a good friend over the years. A dedicated, honest women who genuinely loved the Asrahn. Who doted on her children. Who had almost died in defense of the Asrahn’s beloved wife, Afareen.

  “Knight-Colonel?” Mari bowed her head. Friends in private, formal in public.

  “Mariamejeh?” Chela turned her masked face in Mari’s direction.

  Good-bye, my friend. You deserve better. “Permission to check the rear?” Mari felt as if her tongue would freeze over the lie. “I think we’re being followed.”

  Chela nodded. “Take Mehran with you.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Take Mehran with you, Knight-Major.” Her tone brooked no argument. “We never walk alone, remember?”

  Mari cursed to herself. She fell back to tap Mehran, the youngest of the Feyassin, on his armored shoulder. “With me,” she muttered sourly.

  The younger warrior-poet shrugged. Neither Vashne nor Ariskander nor Chela expected anybody to be bold enough to assault an armored battlewagon protected by Feyassin. It would be less trouble for people so inclined to take their own lives. The outcome was almost as assured.

  The two slowed their pace. With each step the battlewagon, along with its escort, drew farther away. Mari and Mehran stood isolated between pools of lantern light. The night was seasonably warm. She removed her war-mask and pulled down the hood of her armored robe. Ran her fingers through her hair. Sweat beaded her scalp. Mehran removed his war-mask to reveal a thin, sunburned face beneath a shock of ginger hair. Mehran grinned with the kind of openness only the very you
ng, or those who had never been seriously hurt, can muster.

  “What are we doing, Knight-Major?” Mehran looked around, deceptively casual.

  “Waiting.” She did not have to do this.

  “For—”

  Mari’s hand was a blur. Even though her attack was blindingly fast, Mehran was a Feyassin. He saw her movement. Curved back at the waist to avoid the blow. His forearm rose in defense.

  Too late. Mari struck his temple with the edge of her palm. There was a sickening crunch. Mari grabbed hold as Mehran toppled. She gently lowered the young man to the long grass with its tiny pink flowers. She felt for his pulse at the neck, smiled to feel the rhythmic throb through her fingertips. It would have been easy to kill the young man, but there were lines Mari was unwilling to cross.

  She stood over the unconscious Feyassin, weighed down by guilt. There was no help for it now. She had already disabled Mehran. Her initial plan was to absent herself from the battle long enough for her father to do what he must. She chewed her lip, wincing at the physical pain of her own conscience. A sense of overwhelming panic rose in her, choking her. She clenched her fists to stop her hands from trembling.

  Thinking about treachery was not the same as doing it. When the abstract became real, everything changed. Yet whichever way she stepped on this path, somebody would be betrayed. The choice was whether it was her family or herself and what she had come to believe in.

  Mari looked to where her fellow Feyassin were vanishing into the dark between pools of lamplight. They were not so very far away. Perhaps there was time to atone for the wrong she had done, and to prevent a wrong about to be.

  The daughter of the House of Erebus wasted no time. On silent feet, she loped after the battlewagon and its escort. No matter what the outcome tonight, she had doomed herself. Perhaps she could save others.

  Mari could see the entourage clearly when the first arrows whined from the darkness. The shafts were long, tipped with the serill heads used by the Seethe. The same drake-glass that had littered the ground at Amber Lake.

  The Feyassin raised shields and drew their weapons the moment they heard the telltale whine of arrows.

  Indris chanted a few short words.

  The arrows never found their targets. They shuddered meters from the Feyassin, hung in midair for a heartbeat, then tumbled downward harmlessly. The chime of serill striking against the ground was beautiful.

  A full fifty warriors, Seethe by their clothing, erupted from the darkness. They carried the slender-bladed swords and elegant spears typical of Seethe troupers, but their armor was mismatched and ill fitting, though each warrior wore the brightly colored wings sigil of Far-ad-din’s Great House.

  Mari watched as the two groups of warriors met. The Feyassin, though outnumbered, felled their enemies as if reaping wheat. The ground was soon littered with the dead. Or those too wounded to fight. Mari’s chest swelled with pride at what the Feyassin achieved. Part of her wished she was with them, to fight against improbable odds. To defend the Asrahn, as was her duty unto death. To know that, should she fall, her Ancestors would be there to welcome her to the Well of Souls.

  Ekko stood before the door of the battlewagon. The blade of his khopesh flashed, sparked, belled. Wove a glittering net of steel against which the blades of his enemies clattered uselessly. Beside him, the Seethe war-chanter fought with graceful abandon. She ducked, wove, struck, spun. Slew. Her sword, like drops of rain caught in a long blade of blue glass, wove intricate, mesmerizing patterns in the air.

  Indris drew Changeling. She flared with brilliant mother-of-pearl radiance. Mari held her breath as he fought. There was no wasted movement. No…effort. It seemed as if he barely paid attention. His blade was everywhere it needed to be. Wherever it fell it took life. Indris seemed to take no pleasure in what he was doing. If anything, he looked sad.

  Part of her should hope he was killed. Everything she had been taught told her to hate him on principle. But like Ariskander, Indris had proven to be other than she had been taught to expect. She had come to know this man. Had shared herself with him, though she had not known who he was. As he fought, Mari realized now what Indris had meant when he had said it would have been a shame had they been forced to fight in the Hamesaad. As she watched, Mari thought she might have been able to hold her own against Indris on her very best day. She doubted she could have survived on any other.

  There was one among the assassins who stood out. Belam! The Widowmaker fought with fluid grace. Serpentine, supple, indomitable. Where his sword fell, a mist of blood followed. He snuffed lives like candles.

  Belam severed the head of a Feyassin. Mari was certain it was Chela. As the body fell, he sped to the front of the wagon. Blood dripped from his sword and armor. It drenched his Seethe robe and spattered the visor of his helm. Her brother launched himself over one of his fallen comrades, his sword curving toward Indris’s neck. Indris swayed backward and parried the next blow in a flare of silver-gray light. Changeling crooned, a haunting, almost taunting sound. Blades belled as they came together. The flurry of activity almost too fast to see. Belam leaped over Indris’s vicious cut. Her brother spun, leg high, to take Indris in the jaw. The daimahjin gave ground. Kicks. Cuts. Swords windmilled as the two men ranged light-footed amid the dead and dying.

  “Indris, no!” Mari yelled as Indris drew in close. He elbowed her brother under the chin, then struck him in the temple with Changeling’s Dragon-head pommel. Belam reeled. Indris did not turn, but he must have heard Mari’s cry. Rather than the lethal stroke that she knew should have come, Indris hammered his fist into Belam’s helmed face. Her brother teetered on the edge of the stairs, then fell backward.

  The battlewagon rocked as Vashne, Ariskander, Daniush, and Hamejin escaped. Another flight of arrows from the concealing darkness. Indris muttered a word. The wooden shafts of the arrows flashed red, then turned to a fine cloud of ash, which drifted to the earth. The serill arrowheads spun unguided through the air to ring against paved ground and the armored wagon.

  Indris placed himself between the tree line and Ariskander and Vashne and his sons. They had drawn their blades to stand side by side. Ekko and the Seethe woman joined them. Ariskander dashed forward, blade little more than a blur in his veteran’s hands. Vashne moved forward to stand by Ariskander, Daniush, and Hamejin, closing ranks. Though their inexperience showed, along with their tension, the two young men gave a good accounting of themselves until they were pushed back and back and back toward the battlewagon.

  Mari padded forward, filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. The attackers had encircled Vashne and the others. With deliberate steps they moved forward, a new warrior coming to the fore as the defenders cut the previous one down. Soon enough, Vashne and the others found their backs to the battlewagon, their Feyassin protectors dead, though Indris remained between them and the bloodied warriors, who now paused, uncertain.

  “Move yourself, warrior-mage,” Belam snarled as he mounted the steps. He had sheathed his sword, though his hand was cupped around the hilt. His voice was sepulchral where it echoed from within the tinted glass helm.

  “You may as well go back to your masters and tell them you’ve failed,” Indris warned. “I can’t allow you to murder anybody else.”

  “Allow?” Belam glided forward. “Dragon-Eyed Indris. I’m underwhelmed. My brother predicted you would kill me in a fight—I’ll be glad to prove him wrong.”

  Indris cocked his head to one side. Mari saw him smile, a sad expression on his handsome face. The breeze tugged at the curls that fell across his brow. “I’d expect a great many people fear you, neh?”

  Belam shrugged. “Their fear is short-lived.” Mari observed him widen his stance, right foot forward. His left heel turned inward to spiral more energy into his draw. Many opponents had died without ever seeing his blade coming. A blur of motion. A flash. A cut so precise there was little by way of pain, with only a stunned moment to contemplate the surety of their death.

 
“Is there any way we’re going to take our separate ways without this ending in bloodshed?” Indris asked.

  “At least you’ve the chance to fight for your life.”

  The other attackers had gathered on the edge of the lantern light as they watched and listened. There were ten of them, most wounded in one way or another. Another figure came from the tree line, carrying a red-sheathed amenesqa, which he handed to Belam. Her brother surrendered his Seethe weapon, affixing Tragedy to his belt.

  Indris jerked his chin at the man’s companions. “Do we abide by sende? Will you give me your word your followers won’t involve themselves, or harm my companions if I win?”

  “Stop!” Mari yelled to her brother. She did not care who heard her. Mari had little doubt Indris would kill her brother unless this was stopped now. “You don’t—”

  “I’m an honorable man, and sende is an honorable tradition.” Belam’s head turned in her direction, though she could not see his expression under his helmet. “Though I think your friends are doomed.”

  “There’s an old saying by a Seethe battle-dramatist of the Petal Empire,” Indris offered. “She said, ‘It is almost a certainty that, when a person is most sure, they are often most mistaken. Such arrogance as fueled by self-interest, without wisdom, consideration, or restraint, ensures nothing except misery.’ Please reconsider.”

  Mari noted the change in her brother’s balance. She waited. Knew what was to come.

  “May you know the peace of your Ancestors’ love,” Belam said.

  Indris shot forward. Mari had never seen anybody move so quickly in her life.

  Belam’s sword had not quite cleared its sheath when Indris gestured. Tragedy flew clear of the sheath and spun away into the darkness. Indris dropped his shin across Belam’s extended leg. There was a pronounced crack as the leg broke. Belam started to buckle. Hand a blur, Indris punched Changeling through Belam’s sword arm. The glowing blade shone through Belam’s skin as if it were on fire. Belam’s cry of pain rang across the park. Was echoed in the shocked yells of his friends.