The Root

by Na'amen Tilahun

  “Lil, come forward.”

  Lil moved slowly until she was standing next to Mayer and not coincidentally blocking the sight of what he would do from the other Holders. He met her eyes and the fevered glow in his nearly made her step back.

  “Pay attention.” His voice was sharp, sullen.

  Lil nodded and watched as Mayer reached forward and deliberately cut his finger on the rough bark of the tree. With his bleeding fingertip, Mayer placed blood in three different small hollows in the wood. They immediately lit up with words: TRAVEL, HIDDEN, SACRIFICE. Lil knew Mayer could see the words as well as she could, though he would have no idea what they meant.

  She did. It was as in the binding of Arel and Jagi. She was now somehow able to read Babel, where she had not been even a day before. What had changed? She opened her mouth to tell her Holder.

  “Holder Mayer—”

  “Silence,” he snapped. She narrowed her eyes but nodded. “Now move back and let them all see.”

  Lil did as he directed but did not take her eyes from the glowing sigils, could not in fact. From the gasps and growls around her as others caught sight of it, they could not stop looking either. Slowly the world in peripheral vision faded into a sea of red, the three words pulsing in the middle of it all. They were everything, nothing else mattered, not those around them, not the constant anger and tears behind her eyes. Only the words.

  Until slowly they faded from sight and they were all somewhere else.

  The new place was a shock to Lil’s senses. There was no place in Zebub where the air did not hold the faint smell of life, of biology, of meat. There was not a place that did not buzz with power and where the colors of some House were not painted in ownership. She had doubted there was any place in all of Corpiliu that was free of these things.

  Yet here she stood in a black-walled room lined with silver boxes that looked like bookshelves and yet were not. They went on much farther than she could see, even with the strings of wires crisscrossing the high ceiling with hanging balls of light. She could smell nothing but herself and the others around her and an odd sharpness that made her nose burn. There was no thrum and threat of constant surveillance or power in the room, no overwhelming fear.

  No wonder the Ruling Courts had no love for the Ossuary.

  It drove home how desperate the Courts were. She glanced around and saw that the others were nervously looking about, having similar realizations. Before either of the others could recover and wrest leadership of this mission from her Holder, she stepped up to one of the shelves. They resembled silver metal bookcases but each shelf held only a single block of solid metal, all with the same small round depression in their center.

  The Babel from before lit up to her again, SACRIFICE, and by instinct she pressed two fingers into the small hole and endured a shock of pain. The smell of blood filled the air as she pulled her fingers back. Blood continued to pool in the depression but none spilled, even as it reached the rim. Another word appeared in the darkness of her mind, burning with a cold light. It curled around and around itself, making it almost impossible to read, but she wrestled it, struggled to hold it still so she could finally grasp its meaning.

  OPEN, shades of meaning, open for help, open for aid, open for truth, the word tested her own worthiness as she studied its subtlety. She felt her mind bend under its regard and sweat gather on her brow.

  On the verge of breaking completely, she felt the pressure of the word give way, just a little at first and then fading like morning mist.

  A loud click echoed through her and she was back in the room, aware of her body again. She looked down and saw every shelf trembling, all the locks clicking open in unison. They were drawers.

  “Well done,” said Holder Mayer.

  Lil turned toward him and saw his eyes were calculating and shrewd. He studied her, his mouth still before turning toward the others.

  “Each of these drawers contains valuable information, but the only things we are interested in now is any mention or representation or weapon against the creeping dark. Anything at all that pertains to what it is, where it comes from, and how to defeat it. I have been promised by the Ruling Courts that if we discover the answer to this we will be allowed time on our own to research personal pursuits.”

  Lil did not need to see his face to read that lie.

  RAZEL

  Holder Mayer smiled as if he believed what he was saying. The only thing that stopped the Ruling Courts from destroying the Athenaeums was that threat that they might unite and unleash as much hell as possible. Although none were sure if the Athenaeums could actually be destroyed. The Athenaeums here and in other cities were the only things that challenged the Antes’ complete and utter control of Corpiliu. They hated them but it would cost too much to attack. And the Athenaeums could not risk an open confrontation either.

  Antes feared death more than ’dants, faced with the loss of a thousand years or more rather than the couple hundred.

  They would never allow them the time to research and perhaps obtain more power.

  Razel would have laughed if she weren’t still holding her stomach together from their journey. If they did discover a way to defeat this creeping dark, they would all have targets on their heads. Once the common ’dants learned the Athenaeums were the reason everyone was safe? Revolutionaries would use them as figureheads and the Ruling Courts would see them as a more credible threat.

  Holder Mayer had to know this. No one who’d found a way to be Holder as long as he had was stupid. Which meant he must have some plan to survive.

  “Every one of us will be searched when we leave here in the evening and anyone found trying to smuggle something out will be executed,” he continued.

  Razel smiled. She and Riana had expected no less.

  They nodded at one another and then separated as planned. Razel moved to a far shelf where none could see her and opened a drawer to find a random assortment of wood piled inside it. Only as she pulled one out did she realize they were carvings; the drawer was filled with wooden sculpture. She looked at the one she held, a woman writhing against a huge split tree trunk. Something crawled over the carved figure’s thighs and wrapped around her waist. It looked like a serpent but something in the form was rough, with edges burred. The figure’s head was thrown back and her mouth open in ecstasy and pain. Razel rubbed her hands over the form but quickly grew bored when she stumbled upon no secret.

  “Holder Krezida, Haydn. I believe this drawer is more your speed.” She held up the statue she had uncovered and both of them rushed over.

  “Yes, this is from the era right before recorded history.” Haydn took it from her hand without even a thank you.

  “Or possibly later in the same style, do you see the way the wood is worked? The burring of the edges of pieces did not get popular until over 170 years afterward.”

  “True, it wasn’t as popular, but the technique likely existed.”

  Razel moved on to another drawer, leaving them to a pointless argument. The next was filled with jewels, both those worked into jewelry and uncut specimens still attached to gray stone. She reached out for one of the pieces, a choker made of overlapping rubies sliced so thin they were translucent. As soon as she touched it a horrible spasm shot up her arm and she cried out in pain. The progression of the feeling stopped as soon as she released the necklace, but the tingling aftermath remained. Her skin felt like it was moving without her consent, her fingertips like ice, numb and insensitive. She was glad she had not grabbed with her torc; who knew the reaction that would have resulted.

  “What happened?”

  To Razel’s surprise it was not Mayer or Riana asking but Liliana, with the other two gathered behind her. Haydn and Krezida had not even looked over, still pawing through their treasure of wooden statuettes.

  “I touched a necklace and something shot up my arm.”

  “Can I see?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I may be able to tell what’s w
rong with you and if there will be any other effects.”

  Razel studied the girl in front of her. Mayer was shooting his Holder-Apprentice an odd look from behind her back. He obviously had expected the girl to defer to him. The fact that she hadn’t was something he did not know how to deal with, which interested Razel and convinced her to hold out her arm.

  Liliana took the arm gently, so gently Razel could barely feel it. Liliana traced her finger over the arm, making some sort of shape and then watching closely. Finally she released it and looked up at Razel.

  “It’s burned clean some of your nerves, but it should be only temporary.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  Liliana sighed. “You know how when skin is new after an injury it’s sensitive to everything, things you could handle before suddenly feel odd and disturbing?”

  “Yes.” Scars and new skin were things that Razel knew very well; not a week went by when she did not acquire a new injury.

  “Our whole bodies are like that, we build up resistance. Yours has been burned away on this arm. It should return in less than an hour. Until then I would try not to touch anything with it.”

  Razel looked back at the drawer, curious.

  “Why would someone invent that?”

  Holder Mayer answered. “I imagine it was for some of the Antes who have issues with armor-like skin or sensitivity, to allow them to feel again for at least a limited time.”

  Razel nodded. That made some sense, but if it was only useful for Antes, why was it here? In a place Antes could supposedly never come?

  Everyone went back to the drawers they had been ransacking and Razel closed the drawer of jewelry, marking it with the red stickers they had brought for just that purpose. They meant that Mayer or Liliana had to go through and identify the contents. She moved on to another drawer, allowing her sensitive arm to hang loose and move freely. It still ached, but if she tensed none of her muscles it was dull and manageable.

  The next drawer was filled with odd gray/blue paper. She pulled on the edge of one cautiously with her torc. Her silver fingers closed around a corner and she realized that they were folded numerous times. When she yanked the edge free and part of a diagram met her eyes, she could not help smiling in delight. These she understood. Pulling out the one she’d grabbed, she lay it out flat on the ground so she could study it with one hand.

  The lines had words next to them that were smudged out of existence or unintelligible to her, but the lines and shapes made perfect sense. It took her only seconds to realize they were plans on how to build some kind of weapon, a combination of gun and bomb, a gun that launched small bombs? She smiled and focused on committing the shape of it to memory.

  MAYER

  He stuck close to Lil as she moved past Razel.

  “That was well done, Apprentice.”

  She turned to face him and nodded. “Thank you, Holder.”

  “Where did you learn to read her injury in such a way?”

  “The Book of Numbers by Queen Jezebel.”

  “Ah, an excellent resource. However, that text requires parchment for its enchantments.”

  Liliana nodded. “Yes, since I was in a hurry I combined it with the hands-on techniques detailed in Hougan Orin’s journals.”

  “Ah.” He studied her expression. The Liliana of a week ago would not have felt confident in mixing two distinct branches of workings on the fly. The loss of her parents and the responsibility of her sibs had changed her. He nodded at her to go on her way and she nodded back before moving off to examine another drawer.

  “She is skilled.”

  He had noticed Krezida moving up behind him. She spent so much of her time mixing potions, paints, chemicals, and herbs that she always had a strong scent about her. She had not come within touching distance and so he had not given her the satisfaction of reaction.

  “It is why she is my Apprentice.”

  “Hmm . . . I wonder.” She turned her body so they were side by side, both watching his Apprentice looking through a waist-high drawer. “She is the one who unlocked the drawers. She does you credit.”

  Mayer merely nodded, waiting for the next attack.

  “How much credit can she do you though, without doing herself more?”

  Mayer took in a deep breath and smiled.

  “Your plans are obvious, Krezida. Old Jadzia would be ashamed of you.” The Holder before her, now there had been a formidable and smart personality. Able to twist you in knots almost before you’d spoken.

  Krezida reached out and Mayer turned to face her, hand in the air in front of him.

  Her fingers stopped two inches away from his face and he stopped his fingers in the middle of the final protection sigil. He could smell whatever was mixed into the jade green paint that coated her nails and fingers up to the first knuckle. It smelled sweet and yeasty, as if a bakery were sharing space with a candy shop. Her normally blonde hair had been dyed a bright green to match. Her warm sand-colored skin was lined with age, a thin sheen of shining powder covering her face. Her eyes were mismatched, one black and one yellow.

  She narrowed those eyes at him before smiling. “Relax, Mayer, I’m only joking with you. We are allies. As allies we should trust one another.”

  “Trust is earned, not simply given.”

  Krezida let her hand fall to her side. “True enough. I start with honest advice. Watch your Apprentice. She has the care of her sibs now, she will betray you easily for them. You have held your place longer than any Holder, but I would worry for it if I were you.”

  Before he could respond, Krezida marched off to rejoin her Apprentice. He watched his own Apprentice a while longer before moving on himself.

  LIL

  Lil was exhausted. She did not know how long they had spent going through the drawers, but her fingers ached from gripping and her back from bending. She had found a lot of interesting things, things that created more questions, but nothing she could connect with the creeping dark. The good news was there were yet aisles and aisles of drawers to search through; it was also the bad news. They did not have the years it would take to catalog everything in the Ossuary.

  They at least seemed to be getting close to understanding the categorization system of the shelves.

  Every case was grouped along relationship lines, like with like. The brace of drawers Razel first encountered had all been serpent themed. The statuettes featured serpents, the drawers above were filled with texts on serpents and medical designs based on serpent movement and anatomy, while the lower drawer was filled with plans for poisonous weapons.

  They had little idea what they were looking for, but Lil assumed they needed older documents, because if there was knowledge of this dark it was something that had been erased with time. Therein lay the problem. Even the most recent records were ridiculously old by Zebub standards. The language was so archaic that Mayer and Lil could barely understand it. Krezida and Riana were running into similar problems; they could interpret the art and mechanics they found, but without the context of the times most of their theories remained exactly that. Though of course none were speaking to each other about what they had learned beyond stating they’d run across nothing referencing the dark.

  At the end of the day, Mayer gathered them together in the center of the Ossuary where they had arrived and instructed them to look up. The same symbols that had been on the tree were carved on the ceiling directly above them. Mayer whispered the words in the repetitive chant and Lil joined in. They continued until, like before, all they could see was red and the writhing shapes of the words.

  They were suddenly back in the forest, dizzy and not alone.

  An Ante rolled back and forth in front of them, a thin wheel of flesh covered in eyes, each one closing as they approached the ground and opening again as they rose back into the air. Lil wondered what its field of vision must be to experience. The thought of it alone made her dizzy.

  She used her hand to shield her head from the free
zing mist of rain that had sprung up while they were in the Ossuary. The courtyard was as active as it had been that morning. One of the Hives being built was making excellent progress, already half as high as the others, although she could not see the material because of the layers of scaffolding around it.

  Mayer turned to Lil.

  “Did you remove anything from the Ossuary?”

  “No, Holder,” she answered truthfully.

  Her Holder turned to each other person in turn and asked them the same question. After they had all answered in the negative, he turned to lead them away from the nausea-inducing grove. The Ante followed.

  “Is it going to search us?” Haydn asked in what he believed to be a whisper, while glancing behind them. Krezida shushed him, but not before Mayer seized on it as a way to show up his fellow Holder.

  “But he already has. Lil, would you care to explain to this child?”

  The tone of his voice was pleasant enough but there was steel underneath. He did not expect Lil to let him down.

  “Killi’ila is of the bloodline Ophde and as such can see through many things, including deception. When Holder Mayer asked us if we had removed anything from the Ossuary, Killi’ila would have seen through any lie and I assume killed us on the spot.”

  She looked to Killi’ila for its reaction. The eyes focused in her direction simply grew heavy-lidded in something like agreement.

  “Oh,” was Haydn’s only response, but the look he shot her and Mayer was black and angry. Only a few days ago it would have cowed her terribly, but she had no time for any of that now. She met his gaze levelly and let no expression cross her face until he finally looked away. As they reached the center of the courtyard, Killi’ila stopped and its voice rang out from somewhere in the vicinity of the lower inside rim of the body. It rang through the night, running in tone from soprano to bass in the course of speaking.