Kali, the youngest of the disgraced, was slopping around in the wet shite of the nearby spinrex pen. She arranged the buckets and rags for the workwomen tomorrow; she could rest only when the task had been completed. Kali dropped her bucket and gasped as the invisible snake of scent wove around her. She was assaulted by images. She thought of fresh air, green life, a woman’s smile, and the happy cry of a newborn. At once, the dull, eternal ache of the scars in her groin faded.
As soon as she had recovered her senses, she bolted past the roped-in square, forgetting to tie up the complicated mesh that kept the beasts inside. The less reckless voice in her head said she would be dead on the morrow when it was discovered the beasts had escaped. However, Kali cared not, for the scent, the perfume, drove her and warmed her with a sensuous heat. She’d never experienced lust or bliss, so she could not accurately explain her body’s flush—but she wanted more. She wanted the source of this heat. Something must be baking, or cooking, she felt, although nothing the culinarians created from leathery meat and spinrex curds possessed such piquancy. The Arhadians’ sweetest dessert was a bitter sap collected from the cacti found in the hidden oases. Smoke billowed up ahead, veiling the moon and creating an omen of doom. She didn’t care. She had no sense. She wanted only to chase and capture the aroma. Tents flew past her. A glow was visible near the chieftain’s tent, and it called to her. It had drawn others as well, for a large crowd had formed and now stood murmuring.
It was all so strange and amazing to Kali. Women, girls, and young boys had gathered here by the hundreds; surely, all of the tribe was present. Where were the warriors? Where was the chieftain? Suddenly, the memory of his sneering, painted face stirred her from her spell. The chieftain had been the one to cut and sew her womanhood when she refused to marry his eldest son. If you will not be with the greatest, you will be with no man, he’d decreed, and the shadows of her assaulters had pinned her as he went to fetch his knife and needle. She would never forget his face or his voice, which was how it was she recognized his scream. Kali pushed through the ring of watchers; doing so took most of her strength, as they seemed immovable and bespelled. The cinnamon sweetness tried to seduce her mind away from her body again, but she waved her hand in front of her face and puffed to cast out the slightly burned, acrid smell. Magik, she realized with a jolt of wonder.
As she shoved herself toward the chieftain’s tent, her wonderment exploded into awe, floating as high as the flames of the moon-tickling golden pyre into which shivering, naked men were now throwing themselves. The men screamed for a speck as the flames kissed them and the spell cast on their minds waned, slightly—yet each one of them remained in the flames to wail and die. What was this? She reeled. Her mind was tugged back and forth between reason and delirium, madness and glee. She could see no tents, only the massive fire. All of the warriors’ lodgings had been leveled, their scraps and bone struts brought to build the pyre. She saw one entranced warrior—a horrible man, who often slapped her for sport—lugging a sack of his favorite trophies and leathers toward the flames of judgment. He took out his glories and, one by one, threw them into the outdoor furnace. Finally, he stepped in himself, and the screaming began. The chieftain was nowhere to be seen. He must already have lunged to his death; Kali was disappointed that she’d missed his end. Still, dozens of atrophied shadows twisted in the fire, a fire so high and bright it could not possibly be a natural phenomenon. A sorcerer’s fire.
No, a sorceress’s. For there she stood: a woman as bright as the flames. She glittered and beguiled; she looked crafted of raw amber and beauty. She could not be real. And yet, the evidence of her magik was real as could be.
The sorceress turned to Kali. She gazed at the wounded, tormented workwoman with a warmth and a pity that said she understood every punch, every slap, every glob of spit to her face. As though in a dream, Kali wandered and stood before her. Behind the golden sorceress stood a shadow of man whose devotion to the sorceress was as clear to see as his stone-carved rugged self. A rock, Kali thought. He was a living black rock. In a sling, he held something that resembled a cracked and glimmering stone Kali had once seen. Kali glanced back and forth between the sorceress and the man of rock.
“Are you real?” she asked, and reached out to touch the glittering woman; her skin felt ridged, scaled. When the sorceress smiled, Kali noticed the yellow slits of her gaze, the darting forked tongue, and the large white fangs next to her canines. Kali pulled back her hand as if she’d touched a snake.
“I am,” the sorceress answered, her Arhadic exotically accented but perfectly spoken.
“What have you done to my people?”
The sorceress touched Kali’s cheek as if reassuring a confused child. “My dear desert flower. I have freed them. I have broken the chains of man. I shall break them all if I can. I shall take you to a new future—a future where warriors do not punish to please. A future where girls are given loftier duties. A future where boys and girls will decide which roles and freedoms they wish to pursue.” She hissed in pleasure. Kali tried to step back, but the woman held her with the intensity of her stare. “You resisted most of my spell. You are strong. You are already unbroken. What is your name?”
“Kali.”
“Kali.” The golden woman’s stare flashed, and Kali was free of all magik—she spun and gawked, now fully herself again. “I am Lilehum. Look around you. Look and see the glory we shall build together.”
Kali looked. Was this glory or horror? She saw women of all ages studying the flames into which their fathers and husbands had dived. They wore squinting expressions of flint and vengeance. She saw young men, not yet warriors, witnessing the cost of arrogance. A few were weeping—behavior unheard of for a boy. Other stronger lads had surrendered their spears and hearts to the sorceress. These were the men of tomorrow, these sons who watched the sins of their fathers burn while holding onto their mothers. Kali spotted young girls gazing bravely into the flames or up at the moon, now thinking of things beyond their small world. Although all were under the influence of the sorceress’s spice and magik, their feelings were based in truth.
Lilehum—that’s what the sorceress had called herself. The name from fireside memory now echoed in Kali’s head, from a tale told to warn young girls of the dangers of corruption. Lilehum came the mnemonic beat again. A pale Arhadian princess who had been stolen by the sinful King of Eod…Kali turned back to the sorceress and laughed and cried with the wickedest joy.
PART II
X
DEFYING DEATH
I
The men were whispering when Aadore woke. It was their conversation that had stirred her from a deep sleep. Opening her eyes to the gray milk of dawn, she looked at the three gents gathered in chairs around the table. Little Ian slept on, though he reached for her warmth, and Aadore was careful not to disturb him. Gently, she pried his tiny hands off herself and left him in the hollow where her body had lain. On her tiptoes, she crept over to the others.
“An escape?” she asked; she was certain that was what she’d heard.
“I think we can get at least as far as the market and the Iron Wall,” declared Curtis.
“The whole city is in ruins; it took us days to reach my apartment,” she said.
“Not the whole city,” replied Curtis. “Certain roads beneath us remain traversable; that’s how I came this far.”
His explanation made little sense to Aadore. “The Undercomb?” she said. “It might have weathered the Storm of Frostfire, as that took place above ground. But this chaos came from below. I imagine the Undercomb would have suffered the worst devastation. How would we even enter it, assuming it hasn’t collapsed?”
Sean looked excited as he spoke up—he had a bit of color today, she noticed. “Father worked for a time as a city custodian, remember? Back before his time with the Els. He used to tell us all about the Undercomb, though it seems you were too bored to pay him any mind.”
“I was.”
“Well, you s
hould have listened, Sister. If you had, you would know that between the Undercomb and the streets of the Iron City is an area that contains access points, tunnels, and passages for city servants. Rumor has it that the Broker’s men used them, too. In one of his stories, Father mentioned he could feel the walls hum when he placed his hand against them. The whole sublevel is reinforced with feliron, just like the Iron Wall. You can’t break magik that old and securely woven into the ground, not wholly. Not even with an earthquake spitting fire from below.”
Now Aadore began to share his enthusiasm. “You’re saying it’s possible that this sublevel survived? That we could use it for transit?”
“Aye,” said Curtis. “That’s what I’m saying. Furthermore, what your brother heard about its use is true. The Broker’s men—whatever has become of them—used the same passages as Menos’s prized civil and political servants. Such passages are restricted at every entry, sealed by unpleasant wards to deter lock picking...Or the ravenous dead.”
Aadore thought of the key she possessed, which to her knowledge would not be suitable for this task, even though its purpose was similar. However, she guessed from the smiling faces around the table that the men knew something she did not. “Political servants…Second Courier to the Third Chair…Curtis, you bastard, you have a key?”
“I do,” replied Curtis.
Aadore stood straight as an iron rod, and commanded the men as if they were her vassals. “Let’s not waste the light, then. We’re leaving the Iron City.”
II
All good plans encountered a few hitches, Aadore knew, and their escape from Menos was no exception. Curtis had taken the sublevel across the city, popping in and out of it like a rabbit in a warzone running between holes. What Curtis hadn’t mentioned was that the city sublevel could be accessed only through tunnels or arcades that were already underground. The sublevel could not be accessed directly from the street, and many of the paths leading to the Undercomb had collapsed or been flooded with filth. As the city continued to collapse, these tunnels and the access points within them would become ever more unreachable.
Even finding such places was a terrible chore. In the three days since Menos’s doom, more buildings had sunk into the ashy mire, streets had crumbled into the rents left by the earthquake—leaving chasms that could not be crossed—and pipes spraying putrid juices had turned what was left of the city into a bog. Although many of the fires appeared finally to have settled, the abundance of wet smoke had only swelled. With every dash they made, the cold, sour air of Menos slithered deeper into their throats. Doom ruled the city with a billowing hand, spreading the kind of fog that made ships wreck themselves upon rocks. Indeed, Aadore was reminded of sunken ships many times as she slogged through water and peered at the cement and metal wreckage that poked up in the mist like broken vessels and masts. It was day, although it didn’t seem so as the land was steeped in grayness. Their eyes of little use, the survivors relied on their ears to hear the chattering hordes and their noses to smell the farty rotting dead. Curtis had been lucky to make it as far as he had, Aadore realized.
But the four met with far more frustration and dead ends than Curtis had on his earlier journey. Hourglasses of patient skulking through the gray gloom led them to two different roads to the Undercomb, but each was blocked with rubble, water, and hordes of the unliving. Legions of the dead were out today. Many must have been born just last night. What worried the travelers was that a select few seemed faster, more agile today.
If the dead had been bumbling kittens yesterday, some had since learned how to balance on their rotten legs and use their bony claws. A particularly dangerous, seemingly sentient unliving usually led each pack now—a creature that could turn its neck quickly and walk nearly with the grace of a man, and that would hiss when Aadore and her companions made noises in the fog. How fast and aware would the dead be tomorrow? wondered the survivors. Or the day after next? What would their odds be against this horde? The dead were the real citizens of Menos now for the living had gone extinct. All that day, they heard neither another living scream nor a scuffle in the afterlife of their civilization.
Little Ian, beatifically calm and soothing himself by gumming a ring of rubber pulled from a jar cap, became their talisman. Whenever their wills threatened to tremble, they looked to the suckling, sleeping child carried under Skar’s great arm, and drew from him a draught of peace. Another small miracle Skar noticed, was that when smelled up close, the child somehow retained the powdery perfume of an infant. It made the ever-growing, spoiled reek of Menos less nauseating. Secretly, Ian’s scent reminded Skar of his own infant children. In silence, he battled the memories of the screams of the wife and infants he had not been able to save from the home that had become his family’s crematorium.
You’ll not suffer a fate like theirs, he promised Ian.
Curtis quickly moved them around a burned railing and down a wide concrete staircase. As they descended, the darkness consumed them, and they fumbled for a moment. Curtis assured them this was the way, and so, hands linked, ears alert, they negotiated their way to the bottom in safety. There, they found themselves in a hollow space that pattered and dripped with haunting songs. They moved ahead, finding a reason for the strange tune when their feet splashed into water. There had been a flood here. They waded on, cold ripples shivering their knees, and waited for their senses to make something out of the swirling nothingness of their environment.
Folds of darkness warped into straight, bold lines: square pillars, running in rows to nowhere. Gleaming, curved shadows outlined entrances to tunnels that branched out from the tall, square chamber. Humped, unmoving heaps were strewn about the chamber; they could have been anything. Then Aadore noticed the soggy newspapers and bobbing trash—a glittering pinwheel toy floated up against her legs—and she guessed this had once been a marketplace. They heard water coursing in from elsewhere, a slow and constant stream like a brook. They would have to hurry: that brook would soon turn this shopping arcade into a lake.
“Which way?” asked Sean.
Curtis considered their choices, and tried to squint clues from the dark. Finally, he threw up his hands. “I don’t know. We’re in a commercial square. Beverly’s Court, I believe. There should be an exit somewhere along one of the walls, but I don’t know where. We shall have to feel the walls.”
“A light would be helpful,” whispered Aadore.
The men moved into the dark, leaving her wish unanswered. Aadore waded after their shapes and caught up with Curtis after a moment. Without asking, he took her hand. She felt neither shocked nor displeased by the feel of his warm, strong fingers interlaced with hers.
“You’re cold,” he said.
“You’re not,” she replied.
In the dark, they could not see each other blush. Aadore envisioned her companion as she had last seen him in Menos’s funereal ambiance. He was quite pale, almost as white as a Northman, and he possessed the broad-painted features of those folk. His untamed beard had shone with the same soft animal texture as his thick head of hair; his hirsuteness, his wide-shouldered body built for exertion, or another aspect of him—his deep brown eyes, perhaps, or his seeming loyalty—evoked in Aadore the impression of a loyal hunting dog. At some point in their race for survival, Curtis had lost his jacket. But, apocalypse notwithstanding, Curtis had kept up his gentlemanly aspirations along with his suspenders. She even caught a hint of his sandalwood cologne; he must have doused himself in it before racing off to keep the date they’d yet to have.
Even if it weren’t true, the thought made Aadore smile. She was certain if she were to lean in and sniff her companion, not the sandalwood fragrance but a thousand olfactory offences would cause her nose to crinkle. Nonetheless, she was grateful for the phantoms playing tricks with her, grateful for Curtis’s touch. What would we be to each other if the world hadn’t ended? she wondered. Would this old maid and creaking valet have led blissfully mundane lives together? She squeezed his hand. H
e squeezed hers in return. They continued searching the dark together, and their grip did not falter.
Their slow search became lulling in its monotony: splish, splash, fumble, and then pray that the glimmer up ahead is not a threading of water against brick but instead the shine of metal. For a time, their hopes were continually dashed, but eventually they saw a lighter shade of gloom up ahead. As they splashed nearer, shadows twisted and revealed an obstruction: tiles, wires, and stones had fallen down, along with an iron rafter. The rafter slanted up out of the rubble like a lazily planted flag; they would have to walk under it. The tear in the ceiling let in a sickly light, and finally they could glimpse one another’s waxen, weary faces: five ghastly shades of white, with Curtis the palest. As they crept under the obstacle, the slight illumination revealed many shadows standing motionless at the fringe of the gloom beyond the heap. The four stopped, abruptly aware of their splashing. They were seasoned survivors now, and knew what these shadows were even before the figures shuffled about and emitted chilling gurgles. As the companions retreated behind the beam-and-rubble embankment, Sean caught a glimmer from a rectangle in the distance, a shape he was certain was a door.
The four held a whispered council on how to proceed.
“I saw a door,” said Sean.
“What did it look like? Be specific,” asked Curtis.
“Tall. Metal. I’ll have to take another peek.”
Sean hobbled through the mire, picked an inconspicuous spot, and peered ahead. He stared and stared, squeezing his eyes, ears, and mind until a headache formed—but the pain helped to sharpen his perception. He counted eight wandering dead. Beyond, on the far wall stood a door. It was metal, with small sparkling bits that might be bolts surrounding its frame. He could discern no handle. Returning to the others, he told them what he’d seen.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 38
