Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne 02 - The Providence of Fire:

by Brian Staveley

  “Watch out for the stairs,” Pyrre called after her cheerfully.

  Triste returned sooner than Kaden expected, tears dry, one hand hugging herself around the waist, the other holding a sword. Kaden remembered impressive weapons from his childhood—jewel-crusted ceremonial swords; the long, wide blades of the Aedolians; businesslike sabers carried by the palace guard—but nothing like this. This sword was made from steel so clear it might not have been steel at all but some sliver of winter sky hammered into a perfect shallow arc, then polished to a silent gloss. It was right.

  “What,” Valyn asked, turning from the darkness beyond the window as Triste’s too-large boots scuffed the stone, “is that?”

  “Sweet ’Shael, Val,” Laith said. He and Talal had returned to the front chamber after checking the whole floor. “I think you’re a good Wing leader and all, but it worries me when you don’t recognize a sword.”

  Valyn ignored the flier. “Where did you find it?” he asked, crossing to Triste.

  She waved a vague hand toward the hallway. “In one of the rooms. It was covered up with rubble, but I saw the glint off it. It looks new. Is it one of ours?”

  Valyn shook his head grimly.

  “So we’re not the only ones flying around the ass end of nowhere,” Laith observed. The words were casual, but Kaden noticed that the flier drifted away from the open doorway, eyes flitting to the shadows in the corners.

  Valyn put a hand in front of Kaden, drawing him away from the sword, as though even unwielded the weapon could cut, could kill.

  “Annick,” he said, “back on the window. Gwenna and Talal, when we’re finished here, I want another sweep of this floor.”

  “They just swept the floor,” the demolitions master observed.

  “Sweep it again,” Valyn said, “eyes out for rigged falls and double binds.”

  “What about bad men hiding in the corners?” Laith asked.

  Valyn ignored him.

  None of it meant anything to Kaden, and after a moment he turned back to the sword. “Does that style of blade look familiar?” He asked. There might be a clue in the provenance of the sword, but he didn’t know enough about weapons to say.

  “I’ve seen things similar,” Valyn replied, frowning. “Some of the Manjari use a single-sided blade.”

  “It’s not Manjari,” Pyrre said. She hadn’t moved, but she had stopped sharpening.

  “Maybe something from somewhere in Menkiddoc?” Talal suggested. “We know practically nothing about the entire continent.”

  “We’re in the Bone Mountains,” Valyn pointed out. “Menkiddoc is thousands of miles to the south.”

  “It’s not from Menkiddoc,” Pyrre added.

  “Anthera is close,” Kaden pointed out.

  “Antherans like broadblades,” Valyn replied, shaking his head curtly. “And clubs, for some inexplicable reason.”

  “It is not Antheran.” This time, however, it was not Pyrre who spoke.

  Kaden turned to find Tan in front of the kenta, a robed shadow against the darker shadows beyond, the naczal glinting in his right hand. For all his size, the monk moved silently, and none of them had heard him as he reentered the room. He stepped forward. “It is Csestriim.”

  For what seemed like a long time a tight, cold silence filled the room.

  “I guess you didn’t die on the other side of the gate,” Gwenna observed finally.

  “No,” Tan replied. “I did not.”

  “Want to tell us what you found?”

  “No. I do not. Where did you find the blade?”

  Valyn gestured down the hall as Kaden tried to put the pieces together in his mind.

  Tan had said earlier that the script above the door was human, but ancient. This was a human building, a human city, but the Csestriim had created the kenta, created one here, in the center of a city filled with bones. The sword looked new, but then, so did Tan’s naczal. It could be thousands of years old, one of the weapons used when . . .

  “The Csestriim killed them,” Kaden said slowly. “They opened a gate right here in the middle of the city, bypassing the walls, bypassing all the defenses.” His thought leapt outside of itself, into the emotionless minds of the attackers. Through the beshra’an it was all so clear, so rational.

  “They came through, probably at night, killing the children first because the children were humanity’s best weapon against them. They started here, at the top. . . .” The memory of the small skeletons on the stairs flared up in his mind. “Or some of them did,” he amended. “The Csestriim set the trap first, then drove the children down, stabbing them as they fled, cutting them down on the stairs or in the hallways, then doubling back to kill those who had hidden behind doors or under beds.” He slipped from the mind of the hunters into the fear of the hunted. “Most of the children would have been too terrified to do anything, but even those who tried to escape . . .” He gestured helplessly. “Where would they go? We’re halfway up the cliff.” He glanced to the window, living the screaming, the slaughter. “Some would have jumped,” he said, his heart hammering at the thought. “It was hopeless, but some would have jumped anyway.”

  Trembling with the borrowed terror of children millennia dead, he slipped out of the beshra’an to find half a dozen pairs of eyes fixed upon him.

  “What is this place?” Talal asked finally, gazing about the room.

  “I told you earlier,” Tan replied. “It is Assare.”

  Valyn shook his head. “Why haven’t we heard of it?”

  “Rivers have changed their course since people last drew breath here.”

  “Why is it here?” Kaden asked. He tried to dredge up what little he’d overheard about urban development during his childhood in the Dawn Palace. “There’s no port, no road.”

  “That was the point,” Tan replied, seating himself cross-legged beside the sword. The monk considered it for several heartbeats, but made no move to reach out. Kaden waited for him to continue, but after a moment the monk closed his eyes.

  Laith stared at Tan, looked over to Kaden, then back again before spreading his hands. “That’s the end of the story? Csestriim came. They killed everyone. Dropped a sword . . . time for a nice rest?”

  If the gibe bothered Tan, he didn’t show it. His eyes remained closed. His chest rose and fell in even, steady breaths.

  To Kaden’s surprise, it was Triste who broke the silence.

  “Assare,” she said, the word leaving her tongue with a slightly different lilt than Tan had given it. She, too, had sunk to the floor beside the blade, her eyes wide in the lamplight, as though staring at a vision none of them could see. “ ‘Refuge.’ ”

  “More leina training?” Pyrre asked.

  Triste didn’t respond, didn’t even glance over at the woman. “Assare,” she said again. Then, “Ni kokhomelunen, tandria. Na sviata, laema. Na kiena-ekkodomidrion, aksh.”

  Tan’s eyes slammed silently open. His body didn’t so much as twitch, but there was something different about it, something . . . Kaden searched for the right word. Wary. Ready.

  Triste just stared at the blade, those perfect eyes wide and abstracted. She didn’t seem to realize she had spoken.

  “Where,” Tan said finally, “did you hear that?”

  Triste shuddered, then turned to the monk. “I don’t . . . probably at the temple, as part of my studies.”

  “What does it mean?” Kaden asked. Something about the phrase had set Tan on edge, and he wasn’t accustomed to seeing the older monk on edge.

  “No,” Tan said, ignoring Kaden’s question. “You didn’t learn it in a temple. Not any temple still standing.”

  “She knew the language down below,” Valyn pointed out.

  “She read the words down below,” Tan corrected him, rising smoothly to his feet. “It was unlikely, but possible. There are plenty of scholars who read Csestriim texts.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Valyn pressed.

  “She didn’t read this. She pulled it
from memory.”

  Laith shrugged. “Good for her. Jaw-dropping beauty and a brain to go with it.”

  “Where,” Tan pressed, eyes boring into the girl, “did you come across that phrase?”

  She shook her head. “Probably in a book.”

  “It is not in the books.”

  “This is all very dramatic,” Pyrre interjected from her post by the window, “but I could probably get more invested in the drama if I knew what the secret words meant.”

  Triste bit her lip. “In growing . . .” she began uncertainly. “In a flooding black . . .” She grimaced, shook her head in frustration, then started once more, this time shifting into the somber cadence of prayer or invocation: “A light in the gathering darkness. A roof for the weary. A forge for the blade of vengeance.”

  7

  The blessing of the pilgrims felt more like a death sentence than a celebration.

  For one thing, Lehav had practically marched Adare to the Temple of Light, allowing only brief stops at the stalls along the Godsway for her to buy a small pack, a change of clothes, some dried fruit and salted meat, and, of course, the golden robes of one of Intarra’s pilgrims. It was all part of her plan, but she had expected more freedom in executing the design, less scrutiny, the chance to pause and go over each step before taking it. Instead, she felt as though she had fallen into the Chute all over again, swept along by a force beyond her control, a force that, if she faltered once, would kill her.

  Not that Lehav had been rough or ill-mannered. After his first threat, he had contented himself with small talk during their long, muddy trek to the Temple of Light, asking the sort of questions Adare had prepared for, while she responded with answers she had rehearsed a hundred times over. Her name was Dorellin. She was the daughter of a prosperous merchant. The blindfold? A consequence of the river blindness that had struck a year earlier. Yes, she could see, but her sight was failing month by month. At first it was only the sun that pained her, but more recently she had to shield her eyes from fires, even candles. No, her parents didn’t know where she was. They insisted she was foolish, but Adare had faith in the goddess, was certain that if she made the pilgrimage to Olon, to Intarra’s most sacred shrine, the Lady of Light would restore her sight. No, she hadn’t fully considered the difficulties of the journey. Yes, she was prepared to walk for weeks. No, she hadn’t planned farther than Olon itself, had no idea whether or not she would return to Annur, had thought no further than this one terrifying act of devotion.

  The soldier only nodded at each response, but she caught him looking at her from time to time, judging her answers, weighing them. She wasn’t sure if she wished she could see more of his expression through the blindfold, or less. It was a relief when they finally arrived in the massive square before the Temple of Light.

  The temple itself was one of the wonders of the empire—a huge, glittering structure, more glass than stone, like a great cut gem set into the earth beside the Godsway, panes flashing in the midmorning light. The Godsway itself stretched out to the east and west, wide enough that fifty horsemen could ride abreast without brushing the shops and stalls to the north or south, the avenue cleaving the city like a sword stroke. Both the temple and the Godsway, however, shrank to insignificance beneath Intarra’s Spear. Even a mile distant, it loomed overhead, a terrible, impossible splinter. The priests of Intarra had tried to build their temple outside of its shadow, but nothing in Annur was beyond that shadow, and Adare found herself staring at it, trying to make sense of the scale. It was hard to appreciate the Spear’s height from inside the Dawn Palace, but standing in the center of the Godsway, gazing up at the tower’s top, she felt dizzy, as though she might lose her footing and fall upward into the open sky. With an effort, she looked down, finding the flagstones, then over at Lehav, who was studying her intently.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Adare said, extending a hand.

  “Thank the goddess instead.”

  Adare nodded piously. “No doubt it was Intarra herself who sent you. I will be forever grateful, Lehav.”

  He didn’t smile or take her hand. “You speak as though we were parting ways.”

  “No,” she replied, hastily shaking her head. “We will be sharing the path together.” She gestured to the pilgrims thronging in front of the temple. “I hope to come to know you much better in the days to come.”

  “And I,” he replied, narrowing his eyes in a way that made her shiver, “will hope to know you better as well. Dorellin.”

  Hundreds had gathered for the long trek, some young and alone, carrying no more than a light pack over the shoulder, some in families of four or eight, wagons piled high with rickety wooden furniture and food, crates full of clothing, everything necessary to start a new life in Olon, hundreds of miles to the south. Farmers had tethered pigs to their carts, filled cages with squawking ducks, yoked teams of two or four water buffalo to haul the whole mess. Lean dogs threaded through the crowd, sniffing and growling, snapping at one another, ignoring the calls and commands of their owners in the chaos. The group—those leaving and those come to bid them farewell—had snarled traffic on the Godsway for hundreds of paces east and west, blocking porters and horses alike.

  And this happens every week, Adare thought to herself.

  Uinian’s death had occasioned the largest migration inside the empire in decades, and yet, though she’d been following the reports, she hadn’t really understood the numbers until she approached the assembled crowd. The gathering was intended as a celebration, a joyous valediction for those following their faith to a fertile land beyond persecution. It was intended as a bold gesture of defiance, and yet, even through the thick cloth of her blindfold, Adare saw desperation everywhere: in the men joking too loudly, the neighbors slapping shoulders too often and too vigorously, the couples trying to drown their fear and foreboding in mindless, jocular patter.

  “When you’re freezing your nuts up here next winter, I’ll be lazing by Lake Sia,” a young man called over the noise, while immediately to his right a youth that could have been his brother buried his face in an old man’s shoulder, body shuddering with sobs. Not everyone could make the trip, of course: the old or infirm, those too poor to start over in a strange new city, or too frightened. In an hour or so, just after the priest’s blessing, parents would leave their grown children, brothers would bid sisters farewell, friends of two score years would part.

  It was a sobering spectacle. One old man cursed at his horse when the beast refused the halter, struck it across the nose, then buried his tear-filled face in his hands. Two young children, a pale-faced, saucer-eyed boy and girl, stood silently in the midst of the chaos, holding hands tightly, obviously torn between excitement and fear. Olon wasn’t that far. Merchant caravans could make the trip in a few weeks, canal boats even more quickly, and yet these people were not merchants, not canal captains. Most would never set foot in the capital again.

  Because of me, Adare thought, feeling awed and sick at the same time.

  Uinian’s disgrace had seemed like a perfect opportunity to geld the Church of Intarra, to seize back the rights and allowances so foolishly granted hundreds of years earlier by Santun III, to recapture decades of lost revenue, and perhaps most importantly, to cripple the power of the Sons of Flame. With il Tornja’s backing, she had moved quickly, drafting up the Accords of Union over the course of two days and two sleepless nights, then shoving them through the various ministries.

  On the surface it looked like a fair deal, even a magnanimous one on the part of the Unhewn Throne; after all, the Chief Priest of Intarra had murdered the Emperor—or so everyone believed. The Accords offered a gracious reconciliation between Intarra’s faithful and the larger empire of which they were a part, including a seemingly massive gift to the Church, ten thousand golden suns, “to greater glorify the goddess and her servants.” Il Tornja, in his role as regent, had placed the golden amice on the stooped shoulders of the new Chief Priest himself.

&n
bsp; It was all a sham, of course. To be sure, ten thousand suns would widen the eyes of most merchants, but the figure was less than a rounding error for the Ministry of Finance, a meager pittance compared with the amount the throne would claw back every year by reinstating taxation on Church rents and tithes. The glorification of the main temple on the Godsway was only a distraction from the forced shuttering of the smaller temples spread throughout the city. And the Imperial Blessing, that newly instituted ritual in which the Emperor would give his formal sanction to the Chief Priest, required the priest to kneel in supplication before the entire court. The rankest scribe in the Dawn Palace saw the Accords for what they were, but then, Adare hadn’t written the measures to mollify the throne’s scribes; if she could convince the common folk of Annur, the petty merchants and laborers, the fishermen and farmers, that the Unhewn Throne continued to support the Church of Intarra, then she could have her triumph while avoiding a backlash from those eager to scream religious persecution.

  It almost worked. The new Chief Priest, Cherrel, third of that name, was a weak, watery-eyed, bookish man. Devout, but utterly lacking in the sort of political savvy and ambition that had made Uinian so dangerous. He had caviled momentarily at one or two of Adare’s demands before caving utterly, obviously relieved that his Church was not to be scrubbed from the streets. According to the observers Adare had placed inside the temple, Cherrel counseled his flock on personal purity and political obedience, counsel they may well have heeded had Adare herself not overreached.

  The problem, as always, was the Church’s private army. As long as the Chief Priest, any Chief Priest, was permitted to keep thousands of men—soldiers both well trained and well paid—under arms within the borders of the empire, within the borders of the ’Kent-kissing capital, all the genuflection in the world wouldn’t lead to true submission. The Sons of Flame needed to be disbanded, and so Adare had drafted the edict disbanding them, allowing only one hundred for “the immediate protection of the temple and the greater glory of Intarra.” It had seemed a prudent step, a necessary step, and yet she had not considered the consequences.