Vault Of Heaven 01 - The Unremembered

by Orullian, Peter

  At the door he slammed through and shouted her name. A scholarly looking gentleman in a dark brown tunic bearing the league’s emblem came right up.

  “Calm yourself, my friend. We have sick people here. Tell me the name of your friend or family and we’ll see what we can do.” The fellow smiled paternally.

  Vendanj hated the obtrusiveness and grabbed the man by the arms. “My wife’s name is Illenia. I’m told she was brought here. Please, I must see her. Is she here?”

  The man then spied the three-ring sigil Vendanj wore, and his countenance visibly changed. He asked to be unhanded and then called to a standing guard, who came forward with his palm on the hilt of his blade. Vendanj let the healer go and implored them to tell him where his wife lay.

  “Please, she is with child. I need to see her!” Panic seized him afresh. He thought he would scream soon and keep screaming.

  Shortly, three more guards came to reinforce the first. They did not snarl or curse, but simply barred him from two shadowed hallways that led to several doors and private rooms. The healer then took Vendanj gently by the hand and patted his knuckles.

  “You are probably a fine man. And I understand your worry. These fellows will accompany us, and we’ll take you to see your wife. They are a necessary precaution in these troubled times. That seems most reasonable, doesn’t it?” He smiled his patronizing smile again.

  Vendanj nodded.

  The four sentries went first, directed by the healer down the left hall and through the third door. Vendanj came after, still fettered to the healer, who held his hand in a tight embrace. He thought the gentleman may have thought this a supportive gesture, but Vendanj was going to need his hands free soon, and the grip of this other began to irritate him.

  But it all faded when he entered and saw Illenia lying in a bed of white linens. Her face had been heavily bruised and her arms were completely bandaged. Still, the noise of their entry brought her eyes open, and when she saw him a pained smile rose on her purpled lips. “You came,” she said. “You came.”

  Vendanj tore free and rushed to her side. “Dear Sky, Illenia, what happened?” He wanted to caress her face to comfort her, but the bruising advised against it. Instead, he put his hand on her stomach, as he had grown accustomed to doing, and stroked slowly.

  She could speak only in the barest of voices, and then just a few words at a time, but she managed, “Quiet came. They had Velle with them.” She swallowed. “The guard failed. Didn’t know what to do. League”—her eyes darted to the men behind him—“ran. The people started to fall, Vendanj. Fall.” A tear coursed across a yellowed bruise at her temple.

  He could see how the memory upset her. “Don’t talk. You’re going to be all right.”

  “Had to do something. I went to the gate. Called the Will.” Her voice cracked, and she squinted against some pain.

  “I think this is not helping her,” the healer said. “She needs rest. This whole affair has been most … unbelievable. We need to assess. And she’s taken serious—”

  Vendanj silenced him with a stare. The guards moved closer to him. Their presence angered him all the more. He didn’t need them; Illenia didn’t need them anymore, either. Vendanj could care for her now.

  “Wasn’t enough,” Illenia said. “Too many. I’m sorry, Ven. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have gone. The baby. But no one could stop them.…” She ceased to talk, crying openly now, her tears silent and hot and painful, he knew, in more ways than one.

  “Leave us,” Vendanj said. “Thank you for everything you’ve done. But we don’t need your assistance any longer. I will care for my wife now. If we owe you anything, I will pay when I’m done. Please allow us some privacy.” He looked at them each, being sure they understood that he meant all of them.

  None moved.

  And then the healer came forward. “Sheason. These are troubled times. I am a man committed to healing the sick. And I will continue to watch over your wife. I hope you’ll have confidence in me, as I’ve taken her to my care while you’ve been away.” The indictment in his voice was gentle but clear. “But there are two things that are certain, and not easy for you to hear, which is why my colleagues are present.” He indicated the league guard.

  Vendanj stood, knowing what the man would say, and preparing himself for whatever course he must take. The leaguemen drew their weapons. Behind him, he heard Illenia whisper, “No.” But he couldn’t see her eyes to know whom she addressed. Didn’t matter. For Vendanj there was only one acceptable course: He would heal his wife, ensure the safety of his unborn child, and they would find a new home beyond the Nation of Vohnce, far from the sight of the League.

  The healer looked up passively. “Your wife, sick as she is, did nevertheless violate the law. When she is well, there must be a trial on it. And despite your grief, Sheason, you must entrust her care to me. You will not be allowed to call upon whatever arcane rituals you practice. And I will tell you true, I believe they hold more danger for her besides. The best thing for you is to go home and get some rest. It would seem you’ve been on the move for quite some time.”

  Vendanj stared into the man’s bespectacled eyes. “There is no man or army that is going to stand between me and my family, leagueman. I am grateful for your ministrations thus far. But that is over. What I do with and for my wife now has nothing to do with you.”

  Then it all unraveled so quickly.

  “No,” Illenia cried again.

  This time, Vendanj heard the message in her voice. And so, apparently, did the league healer. Something was wrong with the baby. As he bustled past Vendanj, he called, “Get him out of here!” In an instant, the four guards grabbed Vendanj by the arms and legs and began to force him from the room.

  An anguished cry rose from his wife’s bruised lips. “Please, no. Vendanj. Vendanj.” She could not cry loudly, but he heard her husky call and fought for all he was worth to free himself, or at least his hands so he could call the Will and escape the dirty grips of these leaguemen. But he couldn’t muster enough strength to outman four guardsmen.

  Vendanj thrashed, kicking and yelling for assistance, for someone to take pity on him. He could save his wife and baby, if he could get free. “Help me! No. Illenia! Illenia!”

  As he was dragged from the room, he caught one last look at his wife. Her bruised, tear-streaked face; her eyes shut tight against pain and grief; one bandaged arm raised toward him.

  He fought and fought until his strength failed him. Screamed until his voice sounded like stalks brushing each other in the wind. And then he was struck on the head and all fell to blackness.

  * * *

  Illenia died.

  Their child died.

  As Vendanj looked up into the bitter skies over the Scar, he thought again, as he had countless times, that if he’d had the experience he had now, if he’d have been willing to call the Will in those few moments … he could have healed his wife, and saved their child.

  They were a fool’s thoughts.

  In that time he’d strictly followed the path of the order—never rendering the Will to harm another man in anger or frustration or fear. It was a path most Sheason still followed. Not Vendanj; not anymore, and not since the day his observance of the principle had cost him so much.

  Vendanj shook his head. No good could come of reliving the past. The choices today and tomorrow were all that mattered anymore. He had learned that at a dear price. Others did not see it so clearly. But where matters of import lay, with the threat of the Quiet, and the choices ahead for himself and some few others whose lives were now bound for good or ill to the outcome of Restoration and all that would follow … in these matters, Vendanj would make them see. Not simply because of the scars of his past, but because someone must, else the value of a man’s wounds would be as nothing.

  And for Vendanj, it would never be so.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Stonemount

  The chasm reminded Tahn of a box canyon near Jedgwick Ridge in the H
ollows. Except this passage felt constructed. Ahead, it stretched into the rock until its walls seemed to meet. Some birds had managed to build nests high up the sheer facings, using small imperfections to gain purchase. The walls rose up more than a hundred strides. Beyond them, the sky appeared as a river seen from high above. The sensation of peering up and seeming to look down caused Tahn to swoon in his saddle.

  He steadied himself and noticed figures carved into the stone on either side of the canyon, one showing a man, the other a woman, both with tightly shut lips. It struck Tahn as very odd, and was more than a little unnerving.

  “Come on,” Sutter scolded. “We’re wasting time.” His friend pushed his horse into a gallop down the chasm.

  Tahn stared after Nails, who raced into the riven stone. Something gnawed at him, and he clutched again at the sticks concealed within his cloak, assuring himself they were still there. Then he followed.

  The chasm ran deeper than Tahn had thought possible. On each side of them the walls continued to grow up to impossible heights, though the chasm itself never varied in width. He no longer felt queasy looking up, the ribbon of sky receding to a thin blue line as the walls rose out of sight.

  Soft loam accepted the hard iron of Jole’s tread, muting the sounds of their passage. Suddenly, Tahn remembered the chiseled figures with tight-shut lips and had a thought. He stopped and turned. Sutter stopped beside him.

  Tahn raised his hands to the sides of his mouth to project his voice, and called, “Hello.”

  The word rose on the hard, sheer faces of the narrow chasm. A long, deep echo jounced against its surface, then another, the second hardly diminished from the first. Soon, a chorus of voices repeated the word, rising in a voluminous rush like the running of water over a falls. The syllables echoed, and the word itself became lost, replaced by a sound like that of a throng. The din found a strange forcefulness of its own, interrupting thought and forcing confusion into Tahn’s mind.

  When the sound finally echoed away, Sutter leaned close and whispered, “A fine discovery, Woodchuck, but even I don’t want to try that a second time.”

  They rode for some time before the narrow canyon came to an end. The shadows of evening were falling fast, casting the gorge into darkness. Only careful attention kept them from riding into the walls.

  When the rock at last gave way, it was as though the mountain before them had been hollowed out. In the belly of a great depression lay a city, stretching a league wide. In a great circle, sheer cliffs rose around the vast basin, in some places higher than others, the whole thing looking like a vast crater. From where he stood, Tahn could see no other entrance, no chasms like the one they’d just traversed.

  The westering sun caused a sharp line of light and shadow to fall across the city, leaving its western half in darkness. But nowhere could he see the flicker of a lamp.

  The city seemed to be abandoned.

  Tahn expected to smell cooking fires, livestock. He thought to hear men’s voices as they retired to a mug of bitter or their women. Nothing. No dog barked, no recalcitrant child protested his bedtime. An unsettling quiet held over the city. Outer buildings were covered in creeping vines that had gained purchase on their timbers. Deeper into the town, smooth white walls rose in lonely majesty as though seeking the light that fled the sky. But even these showed cracks and fissures. This city’s protection—the great cliffs—had also become its tomb.

  “Look at this place,” Sutter said in wonder. “It must be a thousand years old, two thousand. I’ve never heard Ogea mention such a place in his stories.”

  Maybe some places are left to the dead.

  “Come on!”

  The soft loam in the chasm ended, letting them into a shallow gully that dipped to a natural spring before rising again to the plain of the city proper. They watered the horses and tied them out of sight in a grove of ash before climbing to take a look at the city itself.

  At the edge of a copse of aspen began a cemetery. It extended several hundred strides to a low stone gate, and ran along the perimeter of the crater like an outer circle of defense. Or warning, Tahn thought.

  They stepped over markers set squarely on the ground and walked around stone tombs erected like small bathhouses. The line of shadow falling across the city seemed to move faster as the day came to a close. In only moments, Tahn watched that line of darkness move up the eastern cliff. The sense that the sun had opted to climb from this monstrous hole in the ground would not let Tahn alone. He and Sutter found themselves picking their way more slowly across the graves. Untended grass bristled around their feet, the peculiar smell of uneven earth and leaning stones accompanying the fragrances of night-blooming flowers that seemed to grow only where bodies were gathered in death.

  The stridulant sound of crickets began to whir, arrythmically at first, but soon in a common pulse.

  Then above it, Tahn heard a scratching.

  He froze in the deepening shadow of a stone mausoleum, raising his finger to his lips to warn Sutter not to speak.

  Sutter furrowed his brow and prepared to ask something. Tahn put a hand to Nails’s mouth before his silence could be broken.

  The scratching came again, like bare winter tree limbs blown by the wind, scrabbling against one another or scraping the side of a barn. No wind blew. And the sound came as though with human intention. Tahn nocked an arrow and Sutter slowly drew his sword. Ducking low, Tahn peered around the corner of the stone monument. Through the dark night he squinted, searching for the source of the sound.

  It came again, stealing his breath. Tahn blinked sweat from his eyes, his mind fevered with images of charred earth and running rock. Through the night he saw movement. Hunched over a grave, a shadowy figure examined the writing on a marker. It gently touched the ground there, its long, thin fingers moving easily into the earth as it seemed to ponder.

  A mourner?

  It raised an arm against the night and then plunged it deep into the earth. The ground moved only slightly as the shape cast its arm back and forth as though searching, feeling, digging toward something. It stopped, perhaps having found the object of its desire, and pulled its arm out. The figure’s cowl slid directly over the hole in the grave, and it lowered its head so close to the ground that it might have inhaled the dust of it.

  There it remained still for a moment.

  The form huddled but twenty strides from them, and Tahn feared that even a breath would reveal them.

  Suddenly, the black figure raised both arms to the sky. Its long, thin fingers curled into knotted fists that shook in defiance as it tilted back its head and screamed in an airy hiss. Tahn’s skin immediately rose in chill bumps, and his muscles weakened. His fingers and toes began to tingle and his temples pound with the beat of his own heart. He wanted to retreat back from sight, but his legs failed him. Should he move, he would surely stumble and alert the figure to his presence.

  Tahn held still and waited. The tension grew interminable, and he knew that at any moment the creature would whirl around and put its knotted fist into his chest as easily as it had into the hardened earth.

  Finally, the thing stood, rushing from the grave to the north. In a moment, it vanished behind a forest of grave markers. Tahn collapsed against the cool stone of the mausoleum, and pressed his face against it. Sutter whispered a question that Tahn did not hear for the rushing of blood in his own ears.

  Reflexively, he traced the familiar pattern of the scar on his left hand. The shape calmed him, and slowly his breathing came under control. He remained silent for several minutes, shaking off Sutter’s questioning gaze. By the time he felt it safe to speak, the light had completely drained from the sky, showing a bright tapestry of stars on a sable backdrop that ended in a wide circle where the cliffs rose against the night.

  “Something,” he said. “I don’t know what, digging in the earth of graves.” He didn’t explain that the being hadn’t needed to remove the dirt to pass its arm freely through solid earth.

 
“You should have let me see it,” Sutter said, ire just under his concern.

  “If you’d moved, it would have come.”

  “Let it,” Sutter boasted. “We took down that tracker on our own.”

  Tahn touched the poultice still wrapped about his neck. But rather than explain that he feared this creature more than he had the tracker, he simply nodded. “Next time.” He peered around the corner of the low stone gravehouse and searched carefully for any movement. Nothing. Holding an arrow half drawn, Tahn led them through the cemetery to the low retaining wall separating the earth of the dead from the abandoned city.

  The first buildings they encountered were houses, most of them single-story structures. Near the walls rested a few produce baskets and water barrels, blown by winds and chewed in the mouths of rats and whatever life now occupied the dead city.

  Under the cover of darkness, Tahn skulked slowly, Sutter at his side. Each gaping window, opened door, and alleyway brought him to a stop, where he expected a face or arm to sweep out of the shadows. Sutter huffed air out his nose in exasperation, but Tahn did not rush. Farther on, the buildings rose two, three, four stories, blocking more starlight and blurring the edges of the buildings in deep shadow.

  “There is no point to this,” Tahn whispered. “Let’s bed down for the night, and leave at first light.”

  “As long as we find one of these grand old houses to sleep in,” Sutter said. “I’ll be the lord of the manor.”

  Tahn shook his head. “Let’s get the horses.”

  After retrieving their mounts, they returned to the same street. Tahn pointed to a towering building on their left. Dim light showed a series of windows empty of glass or shutters. Nor did it have a door, the wood apparently gone to termites or rot.

  Tahn crept inside, trying not to let his heels fall and make too much noise. Sutter stepped more noisily, but paused to produce a candle from his pack and light it. The room looked like a cavern: ceilings the height of two men, rough chunks of stone fallen from the walls, the lonely smell of dust blanketing everything. Bits of glass lay strewn near the windows. A few paintings dressed the walls, appearing to have become sepia-colored from endless days. And a handful of broken tables and chairs littered the floor in jumbled masses, broken and marred.