Immortal Architects
Page 36
The water grew louder. Falls. The only light came from those creatures that bore lights: beams from eyes and screens, motes that danced between antlers. The congregation. That’s what it was.
“I shouldn’t be here,” Edmund said, but he couldn’t convince even himself, and nothing else heard him. It was getting harder and harder to keep from shaking.
They pushed him. The lights blurred, green replaced with ember-orange: lights like those of Marat. Rock bit into his knees, scraped the palms of his hands. He wore gloves for a reason. He’d be hurt if he didn’t. The falls thundered in his ears.
This was bad. Why had he done this? He shouldn’t be doing this.
He picked himself back up, brushing off his pants–
–and came face-to-face with Shokat Anoushak al-Khalid.
His knees wouldn’t hold him. He toppled back down, stumbled away, heart racing, clutching his fists tightly to keep himself from reaching out. Real. She was real. Seeing was enough.
His back struck a pillar. No further.
The Immortal loomed from a great outcropping of cracked and mottled granite, burned smooth: a commanding figure, seven feet high, clad in bright riding tunic and tall feathered crown. Gold ornaments in the shape of strange beasts twined around her neck, seeming to shift and melt into each other. Flowered trim glittered at wrists and hem. A sword and quiver hung from her belt. The regalia of a Scythian warrior-queen.
Dark paint marked eyes that glittered like emeralds. Eyes that were emeralds, and maybe always had been. No wax. No pretenses. Stone through and through. She emerged from the rock like a ship’s figurehead, one with it, her hands and feet sunk into it. A waterfall tumbled from a broken cavern wall behind her, cascading over fallen boulders and flowing around her outcropping and away, carried by grooved channels.
Edmund couldn’t form words.
She spoke for him.
Scythian. A language two thousand years dead. The only way to learn it in the modern age was to study the works the Immortal herself had penned. No other texts survived.
She studied him a moment, dispassionately.
He blinked. How could she not remember? She’d spoken to him, before her death. She’d called him, personally, by title. She knew who he was. What he was.
The carved figure before him remained silent and unmoving, as only a statue could. Shokat Anoushak. Alive. Alive, for the third time. What did that do to a person?
He tried to keep his voice even.
That was all. She sounded as though she’d misplaced a cup of tea.
Edmund pushed himself back to his feet, slowly. She didn’t remember him. She really didn’t remember him. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
She chuckled. It was a low, rehearsed sound.
Oh. Oh, boy.
What had the water said? Shattered fragments made one. The difference between spoken words and those on a page or a monument. His own magic relied upon spoken language: asking and receiving, oral contracts, an understanding that didn’t always go both ways. What Shokat Anoushak was saying was…
Edmund swallowed, dizzy again, trying to comprehend the sweep of history. She predated so much of what he took for granted. Most everyone was literate, now. Had her language even possessed a written form during her lifetime?
Had she invented it?
He glanced over his shoulder at the tunnel from which he’d come. The cult remained there, watching, lit by their own bodies. A steady stream of water trickled around his feet. Why were they still here in Toronto? Why not finish what she started?
he said.
She gazed at him a moment. She hadn’t taken one step from the stone: he was beginning to wonder if she could.
She smiled.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Edmund stared at her. He hadn’t heard that right. He couldn’t have. He’d probably lost something in translation – all he knew of Scythian was what he’d read, and there were probably any number of inaccuracies in his understanding.
This was Shokat Anoushak. This was the woman who had, for all intents and purposes, put an end to civilization as they knew it. No warning. No ultimatum. Mexico City hadn’t known they were a target until they sank beneath the lake. The rest of the world had no time to prepare for what was coming.
And now she didn’t “agree” with what she herself had done?
he repeated, feeling like an idiot but unable to articulate any better response.
Edmund shook his head.
His words died in his throat. Panic clawed at his stomach, worming up his ribcage, and he clasped his hands together behind his back before they could start shaking. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Oh, hell.
Oh, hell.
Shokat Anoushak continued, relentless, remorseless. The emeralds of her eyes glittered beneath the gold leaf of her crown, sunken deep into the stone. If she noticed his discomfort, she didn’t remark upon it. Or didn’t care.
Edmund couldn’t breathe. It felt like the cavern was collapsing in on him. It felt like he had to run – but there was nowhere to go, and his legs wouldn’t carry him.
He couldn’t find his pocket watch.
She turned her head, finally releasing him from her gaze. Her voice softened.
Shock jolted him from terror.
The stone.
She couldn’t move from the stone.
They hadn’t finished her. The cult. They hadn’t finished her, on purpose, before they revived her – created her – whatever bringing back a being who could exist again and again in different iterations might be called. They weren’t stupid: they’d hedged their bets, and trapped the Immortal within her own form.
Edmund looked back at them, once more. They were still watching, dark shapes crowded in the mouth of the tunnel, glimmering where the light from Shokat Anoushak’s prison struck metal or scale. The light.
He looked up. Glowing motes hovered near the cavern ceiling. Yellow-orange, like those of Marat. Shokat Anoushak’s own interrogators.
They wanted knowledge without
the risk.
If anyone deserved this, it was her. She’d killed more people than anyone in history. She’d kicked history off its course, and normality along with it. No one knew if the fracture zones would ever recover. Nothing would be the same again.
But… if what she said was true… if the one before him now had to be told of the devastation secondhand…
She chuckled.
He swallowed. His hands grew clammy again: once more, he forced himself to quash the urge to run. Either she didn’t know, or didn’t care. He didn’t know which was worse. The original Shokat Anoushak must be long dead. How could she still think of herself as one being? Could there be more than one of her at once?
What would happen to him?
Edmund tried to get hold of himself. One thing at a time. The cult. He had to focus on the cult. He had his answers. He should leave, and leave now.
But… when would he get another chance?
He’d already seen others imprisoned. He’d done it himself. He’d never expected to find Shokat Anoushak – if it was her, truly her – in this kind of position. Willing to talk. Willing to answer questions.
If this one wasn’t mad, what might she be able to tell him?
* * *
Istvan had made a terrible mistake.
Kyra was flagging, and flagging badly. She favored her arm constantly now, hunched to one side. She moved more and more slowly. She weaved as she walked. She’d been shot just yesterday. She shouldn’t have been allowed on the field at all.
She struggled on, but even Grace Wu was starting to look concerned.
Istvan should have sent them both away. He should have gone alone. He couldn’t be trusted with operations like this: he wasn’t a leader anywhere but the surgical theater, and even there he had his critics.
If Lucy’s army fell to Harbor, it would be his fault.
If Edmund had come, they wouldn’t have these problems. If Edmund had come, they would have done things right. If Edmund had come…
“Kyra,” Istvan said, “does it feel as though I’m pressuring you?”
She wiped at her visor as snow whirled around them, a sudden flurry that had struck as they crossed the last highway. They couldn’t see more than five feet ahead. “What?”
“Pressuring you,” he repeated. “You don’t have to do this. We can take you back. I don’t want to force you to do anything you don’t want to do – you’re in no condition.”
“We’re already in a snowstorm,” she said.
“We can go back,” he repeated.
She gave him a reproachful look. “You can if you want.”
“Here,” called Grace from up ahead. She waved an arm, her outline barely visible. “I think I found it!”
Kyra followed the older Conduit’s trail. Istvan followed Kyra. He had to stay close to make sure the pain didn’t become overwhelming, and he wished he weren’t so grateful for it. It was impossible to lose her.
Near Grace Wu, the road simply ended, mid-lane. A steep incline vanished down into the fog. Boulders, pieces of concrete, and the twisted wreckage of cars lay scattered about, softened by snow. A rushing hiss came from somewhere beyond sight, like falling water. Istvan couldn’t make out the river, if there was one.
“Yeah,” said Kyra. She wiped at her nose. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“How are we doing this?” asked Grace, kneeling down on the edge and running a hand across the broken roadway. “Slide down and hope for an opening?” She scooped up a handful of pebbles and let them trickle between her fingers. “I could try moving some rock, if we need a little more precision, but I’ll have to get a good look at what’s there, first. I’m good, kid, but I’m not you.”
Kyra stood there, staring down at the pit. The jumble of her presence – discordant responses, first one feeling and then another, subtleties crowding over one another – offered little elaboration beyond fear. Nerves. A sense of unease, self-doubt, and exhaustion that was wholly to be expected.
This was where she’d escaped, after all. Perhaps the first use of her power. Istvan imagined that he would feel the same, were he to return to the Italian Alps.
“I could go see if there’s a way in,” he offered.
Grace set down and unzipped the bag she carried, drawing out a long metal coil. “You wouldn’t know what to look for.”
Istvan propped a thumb in his belt. “A hole, I should think.”
“And then what, if there isn’t one? You’ll tell me ‘there’s rocks’?” Grace shook her head. “No good, Doc. I’ll handle this.”
Kyra mumbled something.
Grace picked up the coil like a lasso. “What?”
“Don’t touch the water,” Kyra repeated. She kept staring at the pit. “I dunno if it can see you, ’cause it’s the river, but don’t touch it.”
“Er…” said Istvan. He glanced at Grace. They had both dealt with Shokat Anoushak’s magic during the Wizard War, but neither one of them were trained in these matters. That would have been Edmund’s job. Bloody Edmund. No wonder those people at the Twelfth Hour were so insistent on learning magic themselves: there wasn’t always a wizard around to help them. Wizards couldn’t be counted on.
A wizard had done all this in the first place.
Grace shrugged: she was, presumably, already used to things watching her that oughtn’t be capable. Like walls. “No water. Got it.”
She tossed the coil. It unraveled into the wind, unfurling small projections along its length and flattening itself like a ribbon before it side-slipped downwards: an odd, very long sort of kite. Grace connected its other end to her gauntlet and gazed at a spot just above it intently.
“It’s like one of those jungle snakes,” said Kyra.
Grace nodded, gaze never leaving that one small spot. “Bingo.”
Kyra set her own bag down, then leaned against it wearily, cradling her bandaged arm. She closed her eyes. “Cool.”
Istvan knelt beside her. She still didn’t seem able to move her fingers, and all this jostling about wouldn’t help it. She shouldn’t have been here. Oh, he’d made a mistake. No crusade was worth disfigurement and paralysis.
Nothing he did was ever “cool.”
“Dr Czernin?” said Kyra.
“Hm?”
“Can you… do the thing?”
He sighed. He took hold of her arm, directly over the bullet wound, and did his best to draw off all the pain he could. It wouldn’t help heal it. He never should have let it happen. It was sweet, all the same.
After a few moments, Grace nodded to herself. She reeled in her coil-kite, rolled it up, and put it back in the bag. “OK. You two. You want the good news or the bad news?”
“I like good news,” said Kyra.
“That’s too bad, because I got both.”
Kyra made a face. “Oh.”
Grace flashed a smile. “Good news: we have an entrance point! Bad news: it’s underwater. The river’s running right down into it. Here’s our options.” She held up one finger, and then another. “Go for a swim, or rip the roof off. We could also look for another way in, but we have maybe a half-hour before Harbor makes landfall and breaks all the Doc’s tin soldiers. Which will it be?”
Istvan thought of their surroundings torn up and whirled into a great funnel like he’d seen in Tornado Alley. Kyra could do that, it was true. But in her condition?
Then again, a swim would be little better…
“What if there’s others?” Kyra asked.
Grace zipped her bag shut. “Other what?”
“Prisoners. Shattered people.” The younger Conduit peered over the edge again. “I can’t choose what gets ripped up, Ms Wu. It all goes.”
Grace sat back. “You know, if you’d stayed put–”
“I’m not an experiment, Ms Wu.”
Istvan raised his eyebrows. Well, now. “Par
don?”
Grace rolled her eyes. “We had a disagreement. I’m over it.” She stood, dusting off her gauntlets. “Look, Kyra, it’d be nice to have more than two options, but we’re out of time. If there’s other prisoners, you’ll just have to be careful. And that sucks, I know, but having no flexibility sucks. If you’re a hammer, we have a hammer. Unless you want to swim. Which, I’m fine with that, but your doctor might have other ideas.”
Kyra pointed at Istvan. “Send him.”
Grace opened her mouth, then shut it again. She eyed Istvan speculatively.
Istvan stepped back. Him? Alone? The entire cult was probably down there. What if he lost himself? The others would be left entirely in the open, and he might not come back. He’d already carved his way through one stronghold blasted into the rock. “Er, Kyra, I don’t think–”
“Just go look,” she said. “You don’t gotta fight anything.”
Don’t have to fight. Right. Yes. He could do that. Scouting. Not so often underground, or into a hive of cultists, but… he’d done it.
“You’ll be OK,” said Kyra. “You’re invincible.”
Istvan felt ill. Through the rock. He’d have to go through the rock. What if there were other prisoners? How were they supposed to get them out without Edmund?
“I’ll be quick,” he said.
Grace tossed him a lax salute.
Istvan closed his eyes, turned his face away – and dove into the pit. Don’t touch the water, for it had eyes. Rock was better. He could pass through rock instead. It was no trouble at all. Like swimming in particularly thick molasses. He could do this.
He struck gravel.
It felt as though he’d fallen into liquid sandpaper. It scraped at his throat, his lungs. No light. The damp mustiness of earth. He couldn’t tell which way was down, or if he were moving at all. He had no heart to beat, or breath to catch, and the tiny scrabblings of worms were too faint for his ears; even the waterfall, wherever it was, had fallen silent. He tried to orient by Grace Wu’s fading presence: her worry, her irritation. Kyra was much more difficult to locate.
The rock poured into him, blinding, choking.