by David Hair
They greeted her words with stony silence. He’d seen something like this coming, though he’d not really seen the depths of her bitterness until now.
If things had turned out as she’d hoped, she’d have been no different from Sertain and the rest.
‘Well, why don’t you just rukk off and join Malevorn?’ he offered, in his most reasonable voice. ‘He’s everything you seem to admire: a ruthless villain with a mountainous ego. I’m sure you’d get on famously.’
‘I’m with you because there’s no other choice – none at all,’ she spat. ‘But that doesn’t mean I think you’ll triumph. You asked once whether I’d rather choose a random village? The answer is yes, only I’d select a legion camp: I’d rather kill nine in ten, knowing at least that the remaining survivors were trained to kill.’
All right, she really is the Queen of Evil . . . Or maybe she’s just a desperate old woman in desperate times . . .
‘That won’t be happening,’ he said calmly. ‘Never suggest it again.’
‘You’re an idealistic fool.’
‘No. I learned more about how to fight here in this monastery than in six years at the Arcanum, and the same with the gnosis. So why don’t you show a little faith?’
She snorted. ‘Don’t you know one of my many titles is “The Faithless One”?’ But she looked away, her face more thoughtful than angry.
‘Doesn’t mean you have to live up to it.’ He looked at Ramita, who caught and squeezed his hand briefly. It calmed him like nothing else could have.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and see the Master.’
*
Explaining to Master Puravai what had happened in Teshwallabad took a long time, and Alaron’s voice was hoarse by the time he’d told it all: Hanook’s true lineage, Ramita’s betrothal arrangement with the young Mughal Tariq, and then the horrors of that night when Huriya and Malevorn attacked. He left out nothing: the bloodbath in Hanook’s manor, the underground flight to the Mughal’s Dome, and the loss of Nasatya and the Scytale. When he paused to recover, Ramita filled in the details, telling him about Mughal Tariq, and the nature of the Dome.
Puravai took some time to grieve over Hanook: in their youth they had been the closest of friends; though they had not met in years, the loss clearly hurt deeply.
Then it was time to outline their plan and beg Puravai’s permission to implement it. Alaron explained everything that he had discovered and worked out about the Scytale before losing it.
Finally, he said, ‘I have the crucial details of almost forty of your monks here. Remember? I researched their details when I still had the Scytale, trying to formulate the recipe that would give them the gnosis. At the time it was just an exercise, to try and understand the process better. Now it is a lifeline!
‘Master, it is the dream of every mage – probably of every person in Yuros – to be made an Ascendant. They have stronger gnosis than even the pure-bloods.’ He paused, worried the Master would think that power was all he cared about. ‘I wouldn’t offer this to someone I didn’t think would use it well. You and your monks are the best people I have met, in Yuros or Antiopia.’ He looked at Ramita, who smiled her encouragement as the old man remained silent, and said beseechingly, ‘I know this is in part selfish. We must regain the Scytale – and Nasatya – from Malevorn and Huriya, and we can’t do it alone. But it’s far more than that. Even without that, I would still wish you to accept this gift.’
The room fell silent. Alaron realised he was holding his breath and released it slowly. Yash was fidgeting, barely able to contain himself from falling to his knees and begging the Master to allow him at least to try. Corinea’s face was unreadable, and her mere presence made Alaron increasingly uneasy. He dreaded her opening her mouth.
‘We Zains are sworn to peace,’ Puravai said finally, his voice pitched as if he were speaking to someone unseen. ‘We are permitted to defend ourselves, and others also. We step away from the world to understand it better, but we remain a part of it. Yet the principles of moksha are clear: we can only detach ourselves from this world having made peace with it.’
He took a sip of water and fell silent, as if listening for a god to reply.
‘Power . . . absolute power . . . is a venom that poisons the soul,’ he said eventually. ‘To hold life and death in one’s hands, unconstrained . . . Who can deal with that and still keep their soul intact?’
He closed his eyes, though his lips continued to move in silent debate.
Alaron looked at Ramita, his heart beginning to sink. He’s going to refuse?
Then his heart went to his mouth as a cool female voice cut across the silence.
‘I rather think you’re overstating the matter, Master Zain,’ Corinea said, her voice dry. ‘Even an Ascendant mage doesn’t have ultimate power. There are already dozens of other Ascendants, hundreds of pure-bloods, and tens of thousands of less powerful magi – and several thousand Souldrinkers too, so they say. And there are millions upon millions of ordinary people. Even an Ascendant is only one fish in a turbulent ocean. I should know: I am one. Do you think I could walk into a city and demand the throne? I’d end up dead, or ruling a cemetery. Dominion over others requires more than just personal might. The world is vast, and it will pull down any tyrant eventually.’
Puravai turned to face her while Alaron and Ramita held their breath.
‘Yet your “Blessed Three Hundred” conquered an empire,’ Puravai replied, his face intent.
‘And now look at them,’ Corinea replied. ‘Divided, tearing themselves apart, their dissipated bloodlines spreading across the lands while their secrets fall into the hands of their enemies. Kingdoms rise and fall. Sometimes it’s swift, other times it’s with a slow toppling, but it all ends in dust.’
‘So you say that I should let my charges lose their souls to power, for in the end it won’t matter? I believe it will: it will matter very much. Our lives are a quest for oneness. By allowing this to happen, I will be allowing these young men who have put their souls in my charge to damn themselves.’
‘Don’t be so pompous! You’re giving them a little gnosis, not the keys of Pallas! The gnosis is only one form of power in this world, and it ranks far below many: like legitimate kingship, or religious supremacy. Though by your terms maybe it is the ultimate test: can they stick to their vows in the face of real evil, not just the slow insanity of staring at brick walls until their eyesight goes? I’ve read your books, Zain: your guru talks about testing the soul, but you just hide away – that’s not overcoming a test, that’s sidestepping it. If you think your charges can handle some real tests, then you should be begging us for this opportunity, not whining about it.’
Alaron stared at her. Well, that’s rich, coming from you . . . It was also most of the things he’d have said if he had the courage to do so. He turned back to look at Puravai, dreading what he might see.
The old Master chuckled wryly. ‘Why, Mistress Lily, you’re what we call an Early Rationalist. It is a view we respect. But even you must agree that there is an eternal aspect to who and what we are. Your gnosis is based upon it: the soul. Even you magi cannot say what occurs when soul and body finally part. Antonin Meiros himself has agreed that the teachings of Zain are as rational and lucid as any religion.’
‘That’s a low hurdle,’ Corinea drawled.
Alaron’s heart went to his mouth at the jest, but Puravai only chuckled. The old Master leaned forward, licking his lips, and when Corinea mirrored the monk’s posture, Alaron realised that the argument had been effectively removed from his hands.
‘Er . . . I think that the danger we face is rather more tangible than philosophical,’ he pointed out.
Puravai was still looking at Corinea. ‘All matters are governed by philosophy. The decision to kill one ant or ten thousand men is the same moral choice.’
‘But the scale cannot be ignored,’ Corinea scoffed. ‘Otherwise we’d be hanging men for treading on beetles.’
�
�The teachings of Zain are clear on this point,’ Puravai replied, and launched into a diatribe on ethics of the sort that Alaron had slumbered through many times at the Arcanum.
Leaving the room felt like ceding power, but the debate had already left them both behind. Alaron looked at Yash, who shrugged, and indicated that he would come too. Corinea lifted her chin with the faintest air of dismissal. He bit his lip, then bowed also. ‘I too will trust in your wisdom, Master Puravai.’
They walked in silence back to their quarters. He appreciated why Ramita had taken him out: anything he said would have sounded childish. Better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt, his father liked to say.
They wished Yash goodnight, then paused in the lounge. Alone.
‘What will be will be,’ Ramita said quietly.
‘I don’t trust her,’ Alaron said.
‘Nor I, but in this she wants the same as us.’ She squeezed his fingers in her small, tough hands. ‘I’ve finished weaning Dasra,’ she added, a little sadly.
‘You need to thank the Omali Goddess of Weaning,’ he replied cheekily. ‘I presume there is one?’
‘At least three.’ Ramita plucked at the rakhi-string on his wrist. ‘Thank you for standing by me, bhaiya. I don’t know if I could do this alone.’
‘I know I couldn’t,’ he replied, feeling his heart quicken. Kore’s Blood, I need to kiss her . . .
She started to say something, but he didn’t want to hear it, in case it was ‘goodnight’. Two steps. That’s all it would take. Before he could talk himself out of it he moved, bent, and kissed her small mouth. For a moment she was frozen, and he was scared that he’d made an awful mistake, then she seized him, went up on tiptoes and mashed her lips to his. Her small but full body pressed against his lean chest, the thin cotton they wore the merest of barriers. His mouth never leaving hers, he lifted her and seated her on the table, tasting her spice and salt, breathing her breath, while his heart hammered and his skin felt as if it was catching alight.
How long the kiss went on he couldn’t tell, for he was living only from one slow moment to the next, his fingers stroking her neck and her bound-up hair, feeling the shape of her spine under the thin kameez, while his tongue tasted hers. He poured all his need for her, for her reassurance and comfort and affection and trust, into that kiss, even as he marvelled to be so close, to touch her skin, to breathe in her unique scents, to finally, openly, hold her as if he would never let her go.
‘Bhaiya,’ she whispered at last, ‘it isn’t good for brother and sister to be like this.’
He felt a sudden, crushing sense of loss. She tied that rakhi string on me to prevent this very thing . . . Was it even him she’d been kissing, in her mind, or someone else: her dead husband, perhaps, the mighty Antonin Meiros? Or the childhood sweetheart, Kazim? Who was he, a mere trader’s son, and a ferang at that, compared to such memories?
He tried to swallow his disappointment, whispering, ‘I’m sorry, I—’
She put a finger to his lips to silence him, then seized his right wrist and snapped the rakhi string.
‘Now,’ she whispered, ‘I think we were kissing, yes?’
*
The door opened, and then the shutters, while Ramita struggled to work out where she was, tangled in blissfully clean, fresh-smelling sheets, naked and alone. She blinked at the sudden sunlight carving up the shadows as a female voice coughed and said in an arch voice, ‘I’m rather surprised to find you on your own in here.’
Ramita pulled the sheets up and looked around, seeking the nightshirt she’d cast off in the night. Her blood had been pumping madly and she was too hot to sleep; she’d been tossing and turning for hours, too many thoughts galloping through her brain. ‘What time is it?’
‘Mid-morning,’ Corinea replied, adding with a sniff, ‘The young are so fragile. A little lost sleep and they can barely cope.’
Ramita forced herself to concentrate on the here and now. ‘You are finished talking already?’
‘It was an excellent debate,’ Corinea said with some relish. ‘It has been far too long since I’ve had the pleasure. I love a good argument. A shame it didn’t lead to another type of bout, but he’s taken one of those stupid chastity vows.’
Ramita pulled on her nightshirt, trying not to think about ancient monks and sorceresses lying together, though her heart was singing this morning and any kind of love felt like a good thing.
How she’d pulled herself away, she had no idea. She’d not had such an evening since she’d first fallen in love with Kazim on the rooftop of the family house, kissing passionately under the stars, and all the while dreading the sound of Father or Mother’s footsteps. Somehow she’d remained a virgin despite the temptation – she’d been too scared of the consequences of weakness, and of the shame succumbing to the man she adored would bring. But last night, holding Al’Rhon – my cuddly Goat – had been a true torment, because nowadays she knew exactly what she was missing. Desire had almost overwhelmed her as she recalled how good lovemaking could be – as it had been with her husband, despite the age difference.
She had kept her senses enough to remind herself that a dutiful Lakh girl does not lay with a man outside of wedlock. That, and only that, held her back from the consummation she so badly wanted.
Alaron had not pressed the point, and she’d liked that, too. Her bhaiya . . . no, no, not brother, not any more! . . . had been a gentleman, in his foreign Rondian way. He’d kept his hands in seemly places and his private parts to himself, and that had felt right. The kiss had been enough, for now; there was no shame, nothing for either of them to be embarrassed of in the cold light of day – only a warm glow, and a longing to see him again.
Then she remembered why they’d been alone in the first place: others were deciding their fate – and the fate of her stolen son.
‘So?’ she asked Corinea in a hollow voice.
The old sorceress slowly smiled. ‘The choice will be made by each potential candidate in turn.’ She posed like a dancer taking applause. ‘You may thank me as you see fit.’
6
The Valley of Tombs
Hunting for Ghosts
There is an intriguing thought that underpins the gnosis – that if everybody has a soul, and that soul dwells for a time in the aether before passing on to another place – then every person who ever lived, lives still! In particular, the quest to find and commune with the soul of Corineus has consumed many a life, and goes on even today in some religious orders.
BROTHER ZEBASTIEN, KORE SCHOLAR, 787
Valley of Tombs, Gatioch, on the continent of Antiopia
Shawwal (Octen) 929
16th month of the Moontide
Stark shafts of light cut the valley into geometric patterns of sand and shadow as the westering sun painted the cratered face of the moon in pale pinks and sullen crimson. Malevorn Andevarion climbed to the crest of a giant edifice in the Valley of Tombs, a memorial to a dead empire spread out at his feet.
Even he, a native of Pallas, couldn’t help shivering in awe at the sight. He’d never thought to see anything to rival the famed Imperial Bastion in Pallas, but this place, even abandoned and falling into decay, took the breath away. Huriya, using Sabele’s stolen memories, had told him the history of Gatioch, a kingdom to rival Kesh before the coming
of the Amteh faith. The Valley of Tombs was where their kings and queens, princes and princesses and lords of high state had been buried. The gigantic monuments housed deeply buried tombs, all richly adorned with the half-beast, half-man gods of the Gatti. Giant men with cobra heads, the details crumbling but still discernible, stood eternally on guard.
‘Most were plundered long ago,’ Huriya had told him. ‘But there are still tombs to be found, supposedly crammed with grave goods.’
The Souldrinker pack that haunted these wastelands was smaller than Huriya’s had been, but that still gave them an extra fifty much-needed fighters, mostly men of Gatioch, with tangled facial and body tattoos depicting the old gods. The Amteh might have thought they’d quashed the old religions, but such gods had only gone into hiding; they were still worshipped by many of the nomadic tribes of the deserts.
Distant movement drove the memories from his mind. Riders were filing into the valley a mile away.
Adamus has taken the bait . . . He took a deep breath and kindled his wards, making sure there was nothing to show that he was anything other than alone. He hoped the arriving riders couldn’t sense that the tombs below were crawling with Dokken.
He was standing beside an old altar on a dais some fifty feet above an open space in the heart of the valley, between two huge statues of alligator-headed men. He loosed his scimitar and sent his senses questing outwards.
If I were in charge, I’d have men in the air above, hidden by Illusion . . .
Adamus Crozier had been deeply suspicious when Malevorn had finally managed to contact him, and reeling him in had been a delicate negotiation. He’d not at first been inclined to believe Malevorn’s story, that he’d managed to escape from the Souldrinker pack he’d been captured by and hadn’t been able to call for help until he’d created a relay-stave. It was only when he told Adamus that he had news of the Scytale that he’d managed to lure the clergyman here.
There were five riders approaching openly, riding khurnes, the new intelligent construct-beast: horned horses based on a mythic Lantric creature. His link to Huriya revealed four other Inquisitors on foot, two on either flank, creeping stealthily through the ruins. That left two unaccounted for, assuming Adamus had brought a full Fist of ten Inquisitors. It was months since Malevorn had been taken, and they might have suffered further losses, but he couldn’t afford to make such assumptions. I know we’ve got the local Dokken onside now, but even with the whole pack, this could go badly wrong. He straightened his back. So I have to make sure it goes right.
