It’s important, thinks Spar.
“NO!” Rasce drives the dragon-tooth blade into his own thigh.
And then he’s flung forward, as though a volcano of pure willpower has erupted beneath the New City—
The flame in the Tallowman’s skull flickers and bends as some unseen wind breathes on it. A new impulse fills the Tallowman. It wants to go down. Down and down.
So it goes, leaving the maker and the scribe behind. The cellars under Mandel & Company are a labyrinth of pipes and valves, holding vats and deep-storage vaults girded with dampening rods and containment wards. The Tallowman slips by them all, sniffing its way to the oldest, deepest part of the fortress.
Down.
It leaves the hiss and hum of industry behind, the rumble of the trains and the complaints of the roaring furnaces in the high-pressure athanors. A stray moment of sympathy crosses the Tallowman’s mind, a thought of kinship between itself and the caged infernos in those furnaces. They’re both things of flame, and would delight in running rampant across the city, consuming all those lovely breakable flammable things – oh, imagine the screaming! – but they’re both chained in houses built by the alchemists. Both yoked to useful tasks. It moves on. Stainless steel and orichalcum wiring give way to grey stone blocks mortared with blood.
Down. Down.
And oh – what is this? The Tallowman enters into a large underground chamber. The only light here is from the candle-flame inside, and the fiery light dances over flagstones carved with runnels, over walls with depictions of mass sacrifice at the knife-tentacles of hideous formless horrors, over an altar of onyx.
Over two great lumps of iron that rest here in this tomb. Both deformed, half-melted and half-congealed, neither bell nor icon. The Tallowman’s flickering gaze passes over the pair of junked effigies without pausing. The flame flickers again, compelling it onwards.
Silently it moves through this unholy place, through this temple to forgotten gods, until at last it comes to the brink of a dark well. A tunnel of black stone, dug long, long ago.
The Tallowman leans over the edge, staring down into the darkness.
And it is not only the flickering of the candle that makes those shadows move.
“The tunnel exists!” crows Rasce. He imagines Baston and the rest climbing up that tunnel, bearing guns and bombs. Revenge for Vyr! Great-Uncle’s commands achieved!
Spar doesn’t respond, but Rasce senses their shared awareness unspool, their prolapsed soul unravelling as it retreats across the city. For an instant, he feels Guerdon as Spar must, streets like veins, his mind slithering down Heinreil’s tunnel to brush against something dark and deep.
And then he falls back into his body, and is met with pain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
They fall into a simple routine on board Myri’s little boat. Cari does all the work, and Myri concentrates on staying alive.
To be fair to the sorceress, she does one other thing, and it’s key to their chances of making the voyage to Khebesh. Each morning, Myri binds wind and wave, commanding them to carry Tymneas swiftly over the ocean. It’s the easiest sailing Cari’s ever done.
Myri claims that the spells are easy, too. The gods have already fucked up the aether here with discordant miracles, Kraken and the Lord of Waters clashing over command of the seas, so it’s trivial for her to take the tatters of reality and weave them into a new spell. But Cari can see the strain on her face, the way she braces herself against forces that Cari cannot feel. She watches Myri measure out her remaining drug vials like Spar used to space out his alkahest shots. They split the boat between them, an unspoken border zone running amidships. Cari spends most of her time aft, Myri forward.
Sometimes, a strong gust whipping off the Firesea tears through Myri’s spells, and Cari has to scramble to trim the sails to match, but for much of the journey there’s time to kill.
Or not kill. The sorceress may be quite far down Cari’s list of enemies, but she’s on there – and a lot of the names above her have been scratched off. But it’s not the time. Get within sight of Khebesh, then their little private Armistice ends.
Cari’s not much for conversation, but maybe talking will take her mind off the gnawing hunger in her belly. Her attempts to figure out the aethergraph have yielded nothing but frustration. She’d hoped, somehow, that the machine would work like her amulet and let her thoughts reach Spar all the way across the world, but so far the contraption’s proved unresponsive. She has to fight the urge to throw the damn thing overboard.
And maybe talking will stop Myri from staring at her like she’s something dangerous, something venomous. The sorceress is the dangerous one here, right? Far from Guerdon, far from Spar, Cari’s got nothing.
“What’s Khebesh like?” Cari asks.
“When I first went there, I thought it was the most marvellous city in the world. It was only later that I realised it’s a hermitage. Tranquil, deliberate, all things carefully balanced.” She glances at Cari. “You’ll hate it.”
Cari shrugs. “As long as they help Spar, doesn’t matter. Where’d you come from? Before Khebesh, I mean.”
Myri rubs her tattooed wrist. Little crackling bolts of aetheric energy dance around her hand. She flings them out over the railing like snot, the magic dissipating over the wide ocean. Then she begins to speak, her voice a painful whisper that’s often lost in the wind and the creaking of the sails…
She was born in the forests of Varinth, and it was whispered she burned her way out of her mother’s womb with words of fire, nursed by a boar-spirit from the dark of the wood. A wild talent – a twist of mind and soul that gives a natural ability for sorcery. They called her a witch, too, and apprenticed her to the priestesses who wove effigies of green branches for the boar god.
In those days, the tribes warred with the Empire of Haith, and Myri made her first kill at the age of six. Men of Haith marched on the forest villages in orderly columns, living and dead soldiers advancing in lockstep, indistinguishable until the blasts of sorcery struck them. The flesh withered and the living bones collapsed, but the dead kept on walking.
The boar god died a hundred times, brought down by massed artillery fire. Each time a new saint or avatar emerged from the thorn forest, the men of Haith would kill it again. They burned the temples, toppled the effigies and spilled the offerings in the mud.
The tribe surrendered. The warriors exchanged swords for saws and axes; Haith’s shipyards were hungry for timber. The surviving priestesses fled into the dark, where no man could follow. But they left Myri behind, and the dead men captured her.
Cari drops a fishing line into the water. They’re nearly out of food, and while Myri hardly eats, Cari’s belly is pressing against her spine, and it’s making her irritable.
“If you want to play who had the shittiest childhood, I’m game.”
“Oh, please. I know all about your past, remember? I was with Heinreil when he found out who you were, Carillon Thay. You were sent to live with your aunt. Your childhood was scraped knees and picnics and farmyard animals.”
“My aunt tried to murder me.”
“Because you were bred to be the Herald of the Black Iron Gods and bring doom upon the world? Because you were spawned from a Raveller summoned up by your mad grandfather? Or because she had to spend time with you?” Myri rolls her eyes. “And I don’t want to play, as you put it. The circumstances of my childhood were harsh, but there’s no point complaining to anyone. My past doesn’t define me. I choose my own future.”
Her story’s interrupted by a fit of coughing so intense that Cari crosses the demarcation line to help Myri breathe. After a few moment’s retching over the side, the sorceress continues.
All things have a place in the orderly Empire of Haith, even wild girls from the wood. They sent her to a Bureau school for sorcerers in the mountains north of Paravos, where they shaped her talent, taught her rote incantations from musty grimoires. Her classmates an unlikely mix: children like he
rself, the others from poor families hoping for advancement, criminals judged to have enough wit to attempt thaumaturgy, the desperate or god-touched, who had nowhere else to go. There were other schools, she learned, where sorcery was treated as an academic discipline, a prerequisite to the high science of necromancy, but the Empire of Haith also needed disposable war-sorcerers. Spellcasters to let off a few big blasts before the aetheric feedback ruined them. Even in Myri’s youth, such practices were seen as crude and old-fashioned – alchemical weapons promised more destructive power, and did not require any souls to be torn asunder in the process. But the Empire of Haith changes very, very slowly; if military protocol called for each cohort to have a combat sorcerer attached, then combat sorcerers they shall have.
But they would not have Myri. She learned all they had to teach her, honed her natural talents for sorcery – then escaped.
Cari’s attention is distracted when she hooks a big snapper on her fishing line. Myri keeps talking while Cari wrestles with the fish. Something about wandering the lands around Paravos, sometimes alone, sometimes with criminals or godbands or mercenaries. Something about angst and fireballs. The other woman’s casual power irritates Cari – if she could throw spells like that, she wouldn’t have ended up in a tin can playing sidekick to fingerless Artolo Dragonshit. She imagines what she could do with a sorcerous talent like Myri’s. Imagines zapping Aunt Silva with a blasting spell. Imagines stealing blue jade from the Eyeless with Adro, using the same invisibility spell Twelve Suns used.
Imagines countering Ongent’s paralysis spell, and saving Spar from falling.
That’s what she wants, that sort of controlled power. Call it Saint Aleena’s paradox. The sweet spot is enough to stop other people fucking with her, enough to hurt those that deserve hurting, but not so much that people look to her for salvation.
The fish thrashes on the hook, pulling hard against the line. Cari’s forearms strain to hold on.
Once, back in Guerdon, they thought there might be a way for Cari to command the Ravellers and control the power of the Black Iron Gods, and the thought had filled her with a cold horror unlike anything she’d felt before. The thought of being responsible for everything terrified her. Her immediate reactions: run away. Failing that, give it all to Spar. Let the clever people like Spar, like Eladora, figure it all out.
The line goes slack, suddenly. The bastard got away.
“I asked about Khebesh,” says Cari, sullenly.
“I’m telling you about Khebesh.”
“No, you’re not. You’re rambling about fucking mercenaries in the Pultish Waste. Get on with it.”
“Khebesh won’t make sense unless you understand.”
Every act of sorcery is a risk. No matter how talented the sorcerer, no matter how prepared, there’s always a risk. Eventually, the dice turn against them, and the spell turns on the sorcerer. Sorcerers are thieves and gamblers, stealing little fragments of the power of the gods and betting they can ride out the storm that follows in the wake of blasphemy.
The Khebeshi sorcerer who found Myri, though, claimed to have a foolproof system. A way to use sorcery that was a sure thing. He didn’t try to force her. Didn’t abduct her. Didn’t threaten her. He just walked into the mercenary camp in the middle of the Pultish, strolling past sentries and wards like they weren’t there, and offered her knowledge.
She sailed with him for Khebesh the next day.
All the maps place Khebesh along the southern coast of the Firesea, but that’s like trying to mix cartography with poetry. The city is where it needs to be; where magic rhymes with reality. They saw the spires from afar, flashing like silver spearheads in the summer sun. They passed through the Nine Perilous Gates that are the only way through the fabled Ghost Walls, and at each gate Myri overcame some challenge, solved some riddle, proved her worth, until at last she came to the spiritual oasis of Khebesh, where the chaos of the outer worlds, both mortal and divine, cannot trouble the tranquillity of the school.
In Khebesh, there were no gods, and there were no nations. Myri was not a Varinthian barbarian nor a prisoner of Haith; neither an initiate of the priesthood of the boar god nor a war-sorcerer of the Empire. There are only students in Khebesh—
“So who cleans the toilets?”
“What?”
“Who cleans the toilets?” repeats Cari. “Look, I was the Saint of the New City, right? I know fucking plumbing from the inside. Blame Spar. I don’t know what it says about the man that he had the presence of mind to imagine a remarkably intricate and functional sewage system while dying, but yeah, I’ve had more toilet-centred divine visions than I ever wanted. Even in the New City, miraculously conjured and all, someone has to clean the shitter. You’re telling me about some equally magical fortress of academia – gods, it sounds like Eladora’s wet dream – but I’m asking you, who cleans the toilets there?” Cari shrugs. “I’m trying to get a handle on who I’ll be dealing with.”
“There were servants.” Myri frowns. “I didn’t pay much attention. I was busy learning.”
For there was much to learn there, in the city of sorcerers, and Myri drank knowledge like pure water. For uncounted centuries, the sages of Khebesh have gathered arcane lore from across the world. They depart the city cloaked as pilgrims, as beggars, as adventurers, as hedge-sorcerers, hiding their true nature as masters. They wander the world, observing and learning, never interceding – for the sorcerers of Khebesh understand that the outside world is broken, like a clay pot that has been shattered. Every act of sorcery risks widening the cracks, so every spell must be carefully considered. Every word of power weighed out, coins from a miser’s purse. No magic may be used unnecessarily; anything that can be done by mundane means should be done by mundane means, no matter how arduous. Myri studied the works of past sorcerers who summoned demons and challenged gods, but she was not permitted to conjure the feeblest werelight when there was a candle to be used instead.
The method to glue the broken pot of reality back together has yet to be found, so it is the custom in Khebesh to record every spell cast, every miracle observed in a great tome that each sorcerer bears with them at all times. When a pilgrim returns to Khebesh after long, lonely years away, their book is added to the great archive.
One day, the masters of Khebesh predict, a Mind shall arise of such profound complexity, an intellect beyond the comprehension of anything save itself. That Mind shall encompass all the knowledge in the archive, and all the wounds of the world, and all shall be renewed. The Mind shall—
“Was that you?” asks Cari.
“What?” Myri chokes, coughs so hard she spits out something black and shrivelled. “What do you mean?”
“The Mind they talked about. I mean, you’re a shit-hot sorcerer, and they went looking for you.”
“Am I the prophesied one who’ll restore the world to balance? No, Carillon Thay, we’re not all chosen by destiny. I’m good, but I’m not some fabled arch-mage. It’s just a philosophic theory, not a mystic prophecy.” Myri wipes her lips. “My tale was not unusual. The pilgrims look for talent. Khebesh gathers the best minds to itself. They look for keen intellects, and souls that have not been corrupted by divinity.” Myri nods at the book, wrapped in its oilskin. “They’d never let something like you through the Gates, normally. You’d endanger their precious equilibrium.”
Cari scowls and throws the fishing line out again.
“Anyway,” says Myri, “it’s all bullshit. Their theories are bullshit. Take the two of us, for example. All the spells I’ve worked in my whole life, all of it – they’re nothing compared to the chaos you unleashed as a Saint. I lit a few candles, but you set the world on fire.”
Cari doesn’t answer, but her shoulders hunch. I didn’t, she wants to argue, it was the gods. Shapes are visible in the water. More big fish. Come on, one of you, bite. For all her divine connections and mystical experiences, she can’t even command a fucking fish to bite. Her wrists ache where Vorz bled her.
“Tymneas, right?”
Myri’s eyes widen in surprise. “How do you know that name?”
“You told me.” Cari slaps the side of the boat. “You named this boat after him, and said he was an inspiration of yours.”
“He’d left Khebesh long before I arrived, but I found some of his grimoires in the library. He was a pilgrim sorcerer, a wanderer. He often travelled to Ilbarin. Further, sometimes. I took Tymneas’ grimoire with me when I confronted the masters, but they wouldn’t listen.”
“So you told the guys we’re going to beg a favour from to shove their whole philosophy up their arse. What happened then?”
Myri left without winning her staff. Instead, she inscribed sigils on her living flesh, a map of her own soul. A declaration that the rest of the world could shatter and burn, but she would remain true to herself. She would not hide behind the Ghost Walls, nor give up her talent for sorcery. Five years after she entered Khebesh by the Perilous Gate, she left by the same route. She fled in the night, wrapped in a warding-cloak. The masters are not vengeful or cruel, but neither do they tolerate the theft of their secrets. If they caught her, they would take her back to Khebesh and never permit her to leave again. She travelled, never lingering anywhere for long for fear of meeting a disguised pilgrim-sorcerer.
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