by Mike Shel
“You know nothing of what lies beyond the throne, then?” her father asked, still a funny shade of pale from the effects of the burned man’s touch.
Bocca sat down on the ground and put his head in his hands. “No,” he muttered. “No one does. Even the Second Sight can’t penetrate that place.”
“Well,” said Auric to the group, sheathing his Djao blade. “We’re on our own. Time we took a look at this special place, eh?”
It felt wrong. Agnes pursed her lips, ready to say so out loud, but something stopped her. Everything about what they were doing felt wrong. Their charge was to kill a great god of the pantheon. It would be so much easier if she had the broken sorcerer’s apparent atheism, or if she could somehow surrender to her duty, even embrace it, as it seemed her father had. Qeelb’s next words made her wonder if the man had read her mind.
“Yes, Sir Auric! Let’s get on with our blasphemous pursuit!”
That summoned Bocca from his morose withdrawal. “A pox on you and your pursuit!” He stood, turning back to the tunnel from which they had emerged, back to the weavers and their endless tapestry. His last words echoed about the cave as his form disappeared into the darkness of the corridor. “If I see you again, may it be my death!”
Auric directed his Syraeic companions to check their gear and ready for whatever lay ahead. Agnes did as instructed, though there was little she carried save for her weapon, rations, and waterskin. She checked the buckles and straps of her leather armor, cuirass, greaves, vambraces, and pauldron, made adjustments as needed. Then she checked Chalca’s as well.
“I’ve worn all of this before, Agnes,” he said, like a boy bristling at his mother’s intrusive fussing.
“If I had a copper piece for every actor I saw on stage swinging his wooden sword like a club and wearing his costume armor incorrectly,” she said, tightening a strap on a leather vambrace, “I could retire to a manor home on my own island. Shut up and let me take care of you.”
Chalca submitted to her worried attentions. As she inspected his gear, she saw her father in conversation with Sira and Qeelb from the corner of her eye, the broken sorcerer distracted, straining his neck to look around the petrified Videna and her throne. Agnes patted Chalca on the back and walked over to them, catching the last bit of what Sira was saying.
“…so I see no reason why I shouldn’t call Belu’s blessing down on our endeavor. Timilis has broken faith with Hanifax. Our contract with the god is null and void, in my opinion.”
It surprised Agnes that Sira, who seemed so pious and proper and endlessly cheerful, would make so radical a statement. But it rang true. Wasn’t he the author of the turmoil in Boudun, the unrest they witnessed everywhere they went? She and the rest of them hadn’t embraced this endeavor just on the mad queen’s command. Timilis and the chaos his clergy fomented had to be stopped. She thought on that: she was part of an effort to kill a living god and bring down his church. Who was mad? The queen who ordered the insanity, or those who agreed to carry it out?
Agnes gave into her urge and marched toward the Videna and her throne, imagining the eyes of the golden toad mask atop the stony figure following her movements. Behind was another tapestry covering the wall, this one deep green in color with a pattern of frogs in gold thread. A carpet of frogs, she thought. The bottom of the tapestry stirred, suggesting a space beyond it. Agnes pulled the cloth aside.
Torches on the walls lit the roughly egg-shaped space, which had been hewn from the rock of the mountain, roughly thirty feet wide and twenty deep. Its stone floor was polished to a sheen that showed off the grain of the rock in the dancing torchlight. At the center of the chamber was a marble table, masterfully carved with motifs of the swamp: crawling vines, insects, serpents, and the ever-present toads. Green priestly vestments embroidered with golden thread lay on the table, along with a pair of snow-white silk gloves. Several tapestries in shades of green and brown with gold woven into the thread were hung on the walls, and the scent of floral perfume tried but failed to mask a fetid stink like marsh water. Agnes’s father, at her shoulder now, startled her with words in her ear.
“You shouldn’t be taking steps forward on your own, Agnes,” he said, parental disapproval in his whisper. “It’s a rule every first-form Syraeic novice knows.”
He was right, of course, which only made her angrier. She gave him a curt nod and took a step back. She held out a hand as if to say, Of course. You first, Sir Auric. He grimaced at the gesture, which she already regretted, but he answered her mock invitation by stepping into the space cautiously. Agnes followed, the rest of their companions coming behind them.
Her father went first to the stone table and casually inspected the vestments draped there. “Presumably the Videna’s,” he said, letting an embroidered sleeve drop back on the marble.
“No obvious exit here,” Kennah observed, looking behind a deep brown tapestry covered with gold-thread fireflies. “Nothing here. Rough rock, bearing miner’s marks—ancient ones, but I think the place was excavated with man-made tools.”
“Check the rest of the tapestries,” Auric commanded. “In pairs. Employ appropriate caution, please.” Agnes’s father was joined by Sira, Qeelb went to Chalca, whose curiosity had already got the better of him, and Kennah walked over to Agnes, who went down on a knee, inspecting the army of swamp creatures parading the carved marble.
“See anything interesting?” asked the bearded man, towering over her.
Interesting wasn’t the right word. What she saw was amazingly lifelike, as though the marble was really formed of petrified swamp creatures, like the Videna and her throne outside. She ran a finger along a sinuous serpent winding in and out of a cluster of vines, each scale separate and distinct. The detail disturbed her, as did the way the amphibians, insects, and snakes crowded in: they swarmed the altar—for that was what the marble table seemed to her—they swarmed it with a sickening fecundity. She stroked the head of a fat, warty toad and rubbed her fingers together as if to dispel a slimy feel she only imagined.
“This is disgusting,” she said, standing up and wiping both hands on her trousers.
“Never known you to be squeamish, Peregrine,” said Kennah. “Nature is nature.”
“That’s just it, you dolt,” she said, giving him a bit of a shove. “It feels un-natural. Like they’re all being called here by something. Like—”
“Flies on a corpse,” Kennah said, frowning, staring now at the carving. “Yes, I see what you mean.” He felt the smooth surface of the altar top with the palm of his hand, stopping abruptly when his pinky grazed the hem of the priest’s vestments. He moved the priestly garment aside, staring down at the altar top.
Agnes saw it, too: fine scratches in the otherwise polished surface. She crouched down and touched them with her own fingers; feeling them; they were nothing more than careless imperfections to a casual eye, but she looked closer. Torchlight flickered. The marks practically leapt out at her.
“Old Busker,” she muttered.
“What?” Kennah nudged her aside to look more closely, and after a moment said, “I’ll be damned if you aren’t right.”
Agnes spoke the words aloud: “Eya quiata tedigi cordu dei.”
Without hesitation, Kennah translated: “For I have touched the heart of God.”
“Belu save us!”
The cry came from Chalca, who stood across the chamber with Qeelb, inspecting whatever they’d discovered behind a rich green tapestry. Kennah went to them first and Agnes followed, sparing the top of the altar another glance as she walked away from it, watching the marks in its surface quickly vanish. Her father got to the actor and sorcerer first and whistled. It was an exceptionally rare thing for Auric Manteo to whistle in wonder. As Agnes arrived, Qeelb reached up and yanked down the tapestry, revealing the source of her father’s admiration.
It was a glorious sculpture of metal rods, gears, an
d strangely shaped pieces; gold, nickel, silver, copper, platinum, and bronze, embedded with dozens of tiny polished gemstones. The focal point of the piece was a foggy sphere of glass the size of an apple, mounted in six finger-like bronze clasps. The rock of the wall seemed to crowd in on the artwork, covering its edges, as though the lovely work, individual pieces delicate, had started sinking in mud that had in the end hardened.
“How did the artisan achieve this effect?” asked Sira, touching a knot of stone that impinged on a trio of intersecting gears. “It’s as though the rock grew over it.”
That was a more apt description, Agnes decided. She peered at the larger pieces, mostly gears decorated with fine gems. She searched for marks, etchings in the metal like those they had found on the altar. But she could only see her own reflection in their polished faces.
“Check the remaining tapestries,” said her father, leaving the fantastic conglomeration. “Let’s make sure there aren’t any other means of egress from this place. We need to move deeper into the caves.”
Agnes tore herself away with reluctance and joined the others peeking behind the remaining tapestries. Nothing but dull rock faces hidden by the others. Qeelb and Chalca both stayed with their find, inspecting it further.
“There’s a smell of sorcery about it,” Qeelb said after several minutes, “though I can’t discern the specific schools. An amalgam of several, I think. The sour stink of divination dominates, though.” He reached out and touched a jeweled golden gear, then yanked his hand back as though it were hot to the touch. “And necromancy.”
“Feel that,” said Chalca, holding a palm out before the thing. Agnes followed suit. A small breeze played at her hand.
“It’s a doorway,” she whispered. “It must be some sort of door.”
“Vanic shit!” Kennah exclaimed. “I think you’ve sussed it, Peregrine!”
Behind them, from the altar, came what sounded like wind chimes. Agnes turned and saw Sira standing there, holding an iron ring from which dangled six rods of different metals, different lengths, about half the width of a pinky. “I found this in one of the vestment gloves,” said the priest.
Auric reached out to accept Sira’s discovery. He looked at the rods briefly, then over at the cluster of metal and jewels on the wall.
A giddy flutter teased Agnes’s heart, the excitement of discovery. “The six rods correspond to the six types of metals in the sculpture. Right?”
Auric named them. “Gold, silver, bronze, copper, platinum, and nickel. Yes. With odd notches in them.”
“A puzzle? Or are they simple keys?” wondered Agnes.
Auric tossed the ring and its rods to Qeelb, who caught them and inspected each with his fingertips, one at a time. “Abjuration magic,” he said after a moment. “Some kind of keys, I’d wager. Though they look more like—”
“A thief’s set of lockpicks,” interrupted Chalca, taking the ring from Qeelb.
Auric nodded. “This is the sort of thing a versatilis should manage. Do you think you’re up to it, lad?”
Chalca looked back at the sculpture imbedded in the stone. He rubbed his hands together and smiled. “It reminds me of the contraptions backstage at some of the more prosperous theaters, for changing scenery and trappings. I see spots where these tools might fit—holes in the gears and gaps in the metal. Let me give this a try.”
“Sir Auric,” Kennah said, objecting. “It might be trapped. Are we sure this is something Chalca should be doing?”
Agnes sensed Kennah’s concern, the kind of concern one expressed for a Syraeic companion. It pleased her to see that his attitude toward the actor may have shifted. Did it have something to do with the scene outside the caves of the sin eaters? Then she found herself also worrying if Chalca could detect a trap like a true versatilis. Before Auric could answer Kennah’s question, Chalca responded.
“Your concern for my safety is touching, dear,” he said in his gentle tenor. “But I’ve had to disarm…uh, impediments before. The aristocracy are really quite paranoid about their belongings sometimes.”
A small smile appeared from Kennah’s beard. “Bloody thief.”
“When one is in the theater, one must practice all manner of arts in order to survive, Sir Kennah,” Chalca answered, returning the swordsman’s smile. “Now bugger off. Everyone except Qeelb. I can’t work with you lot looking over my shoulder.”
Shooed away, Agnes remembered the Busker words etched in the altar and got her father’s attention, walking him over to their find. He crouched down and felt the words with the tips of his fingers, as she had.
“Any idea what it means?” asked Agnes. Her father shook his head.
“A number of the cults refer to touching the heart of their god through higher sacraments,” offered Sira, who had joined them. “I don’t know of anything in Pember’s liturgy to that effect, though I’m no expert.”
“And here,” she heard Chalca say, followed by the sounds of metallic clicks, chimes, and the whirring of gears. Agnes turned to see dozens of the individual pieces of the sculpture move as one, out from the wall, so that they formed an oddly shaped panel. A few small bits of rock broke away and fell to the floor. She hurried over for a closer look.
The movement of the pieces, far more intricate than any device or contraption she had ever seen, had created a hollow in the sculpture about the size of a cabbage, revealing more gears and rods and strangely shaped pieces. She peered into the space that was created, and her heart leapt.
“I can see through now, to the other side!” she said, fighting to contain her excitement. “There’s another lit space beyond.”
“What did you do, Chalca?” asked her father, peering into the cavity with Agnes.
“Well, where to begin was a conundrum. It seemed foolish to just start fiddling with the tools in random holes. I ran through the tools and saw that there were five larger gears, made of gold, platinum, silver, nickel, and copper. Each of those gears had holes and gaps where I might tease the mechanism within. But before I began, I thought about the bronze pick. That’s when I realized that of the five it’s the only alloy, it’s not a basic metal.”
“Clever lad,” said Auric. “Go on.”
“Well, all of these gemstones set in the gears and rods. Which of them isn’t a gem?”
Agnes looked at the foggy glass orb. It stared back at her, as though scrutinizing her. Qeelb tapped on it at the center.
“There was a hole in the glass,” said the sorcerer, picking up the narrative. “It was hidden by a simple spell, so I didn’t notice it at first. I removed the enchantment. The hole fit the bronze rod perfectly. He inserted it, and when he turned it like a key…well, you see the result.”
Kennah shifted Agnes aside to look in the hollow. “Well, do we find a way to tear through the metal that remains? I don’t know if we can make an opening large enough for us to fit through.”
Agnes brought her palm down on Kennah’s back, the affectionate slap echoing across the chamber. “You great oaf!” she laughed. “There are five picks left! Surely there’s a way to get the rest of this cluster of metal out of our way.”
Kennah frowned and tugged at his beard.
“Well, lad,” said Auric to Chalca, holding a hand out to the stone-embedded metal, “have at it.”
Agnes and the rest backed away again so as not to crowd Chalca and Qeelb. She watched with growing anticipation as he worked the copper tool in the gaps of the corresponding gear, his delicate movements a perfect match of any Syraeic versatilis picking a lock. Finally, a reverberating click rewarded his labor. Dozens of metal pieces around the copper gear splayed out from the wall like the petals of a flower, spreading and reconfiguring. In seconds, the lower quarter of the sculpture had spilled out onto the floor, forming what looked like four segmented table legs. Agnes crouched down to peer into the larger hollow that was created. She felt a
thrill.
“Yes! Definitely a chamber beyond!” She got up and dusted herself off as Chalca began working the nickel pick as he had the copper, in one of the holes in the nickel gear. Very soon he found an insertion point surrounded by four tiny rubies that elicited the tell-tale click. With a jerk, the clouded glass orb emerged from the wall, held in what looked like a six-fingered mechanical arm. Agnes couldn’t shake the sensation that it was staring at them.
“Well, that’s disconcerting,” said Chalca.
Qeelb examined the orb, feeling it with the tips of his fingers, his movements slow, sensual. “Divination,” he said at last. “For a certainty.”
Agnes’s father put the back of his hand to his mouth and grew pale, as though he was about to be sick. “What is it, Pa—Sir Auric?” asked Agnes, catching herself.
He hesitated, but spoke, keeping his hand against his lips. “I don’t know why, but I’m reminded of the Besh Relic.”
Agnes’s heart went cold.
“Besh Relic?” asked Qeelb.
Agnes explained. “It was a Djao artifact that caused a plague at the Citadel last year. It’s how my father came to slay the thing that called itself the Aching God. He was sent to the Barrowlands to return the relic to where it was found.” She turned to her father, concerned by his obvious dismay, and allowed herself the endearment. “How do you mean, Papa?”
He answered, his eyes still fixed on the glass sphere. “The Aching God saw through the relic; it’s how that being struck people down. Part of the containment spells the League sorcerers employed essentially blinded it—the relic, I mean.”
Agnes’s mind flashed back to the Golden Egg and her role in seeing it constructed.
“A scrying device of some kind?” asked Qeelb, still looking at the glass sphere. “Possibly. But for whom?”
“Timilis?” whispered Sira. Agnes’s stomach did a flip.
