City of Bones

by Martha Wells

  "But who are 'they'?" Elen asked.

  "The people of the West?" Khat said, remembering the fragments he had read of Riathen's copy.

  "The Inhabitants of the West," Arad corrected. "The distinction is important. It never calls them people." He unfolded the text, idly running his fingers over the delicate pages. "It speaks of destruction, of men and women seized and taken away through these Western Doors, of fire ..."

  "The formation of the Waste, perhaps?" Sagai said.

  "I believe so." Arad shrugged. "But it speaks of it in such a cryptic fashion, with so many double meanings and such deliberate obfuscation, that it has taken me a great deal of time to extract even that much sense out of it. That some pages are partly illegible doesn't help either."

  "Does it speak of arcane engines?" Elen asked urgently. "Of how to build them?"

  Sagai looked up and caught Khat's eye. It was what they had been saying to each other all along. Arad was right; the block's resemblance to the Miracle was no coincidence. What exactly does Riathen think this arcane engine will do, once he puts it together? Khat wondered. The Master Warder had told Elen he meant to unlock the secrets of the Ancients' magic with these relics, and Khat, though he was all for rediscovering the past, found himself wondering if some of those secrets should be unlocked.

  "Something of the sort," Arad answered. "But I've only just scratched the surface of that section. The actual history of the events seems far more important." He picked up the coin-shaped plaque with the winged figure. "But I learned enough to know that this seems to be a part of some greater-I don't know if engine would be the proper word..."

  Khat stretched out on the floor, propping himself up on one elbow. "That crystal plaque in the engraving fits into one of the shapes on the anteroom wall of the Tersalten Flat Remnant," he told him. "Does it say that?"

  "No." Arad looked incredulous. "Truly? Robelin's theory that the Remnants housed arcane engines . . . This is the first real support."

  Khat nodded, smiling faintly at the scholar's growing excitement.

  "Why, before this is over you could discover more evidence that would conclusively prove it!" Arad finished.

  Khat looked away, brought back abruptly to reality again. If he proved Robelin's theory, there was no chance of his taking the credit for it as far as the Academia was concerned. Any scholarly documentation of the discovery would excise his part in it completely. He saw Elen watching him curiously, and avoided her eyes.

  Arad hadn't noticed. He was saying thoughtfully, "This is fascinating. The text mentions the Remnants a great deal..."

  "It does?" Sagai looked even more intrigued, if that was possible. "But in the other existent texts, the Remnants are mentioned only in passing, if at all," he said.

  Arad smiled faintly. "Yes, this is the text scholars have hoped to find for decades, praying that it existed somewhere other than their imaginations. It may provide a clue as to why the Remnants were built." He looked seriously at Sagai. "Think of it. The Waste rock was rising, the seas had drained, the cities were dying. In the mountains that became the krismen Enclave a group of Mages must have already begun their great experiment, to create a people who could survive what our world was in the process of becoming. Yet other Mages devoted what must have been a great expenditure of their power, and a great toll in human life, to build the Remnants. Why?" He glanced down at the book again. "One fact I have been able to discern is that the presence of these 'doors of the sky' was how they chose the locations of the Remnants." He shook his head. "It's still a mystery. But when I finish my translation and present it to the other Scholars ..."

  "Wait," Khat said, sitting bolt upright. He had heard something, from the passage that led to the outside door. He stood and went to the archway. Behind him he heard Sagai whisper, "Just in case, fold the book back up and put this ..."

  Khat remembered the louvers. He looked up, taking a step back, just as the first dark form dropped through.

  Someone shouted, and Khat fell back against the wall, bracing himself. One man hit the stone floor not two feet from him, taking the twenty-foot drop easily. They were dressed in black and indigo to meld with the shadows, veiled and featureless. The nearest recovered and came at him all in one smooth motion. But Khat had already drawn his knife, and only excellent reflexes saved the intruder from a messy disembowelment. The man flung up an arm to shield his eyes against the return stroke, and Khat stepped in close for a kill. Then something smashed him down from behind.

  For an instant he was stunned, pinned to the floor by something heavy. The stone felt gritty against his cheek, and his head hurt. He could see Elen had her painrod out and was backed against the far wall. She had used the Ancient weapon; one of the invaders was huddled on the floor in front of her. Somehow she had ended up with the book, and was hugging the folded text tightly to her chest. Arad had been knocked back against the opposite wall, and Sagai stood in front of him, two of their opponents at bay. Khat wondered why nobody was moving, then thought it was probably because someone was bracing a knee on his back and holding a knife to the big vein in his neck, just below the scar where the bonetaker had almost killed him.

  Shiskan son Karadon said, "You know what we want."

  The floor was hard, and she was heavy. It was the first time he had heard her voice. It was soft and husky. She sounded entirely calm. Probably does this every day, Khat thought. There was a scraping sound off to his left; then he saw the man he had cut standing, hugging a bloody arm.

  Elen looked at Sagai, and he said evenly, "Give it to them, Elen."

  He hadn't put any undue emphasis on the word "it," but Khat understood. The winged relic lay in the dust against the wall near Elen, gleaming faintly in the lamplight; the secret cubby was safely shut with the big ugly block inside. It depended on how long Shiskan and the others had been crouched on the roof, listening.

  Shiskan said, "Ardan, get the book."

  The veiled man confronting Elen took a step toward her, and suddenly she moved, her painrod missing him by a hairsbreadth as he leapt out of reach.

  Elen stepped back. Shiskan cursed under her breath at the near miss. Still shoved back against the wall, Arad-edelk looked up at Sagai worriedly, and Sagai watched Elen, who might have been a statue frozen motionless in marble.

  Not loud enough to be heard by the others, Khat said to Shiskan, "Can you move your knee?" It was pressing into his back in a particularly painful place; it was also in the optimum position to keep him from breaking her hold and rolling over, if he didn't mind the chance of her cutting his throat.

  Softly, she answered, "Afraid not."

  Worried, Sagai said, "Elen ..."

  Khat wondered where in hell the Academia's vigils were. This commotion should draw them, if anything could. He wondered what Elen would do.

  The moment of decision came without warning. Alive again, Elen lifted the book. She said, "Let him go first."

  Khat couldn't believe that she was going to do it; he would've bet anything that she wouldn't. "Elen, don't give it to them."

  Shiskan nudged him reprovingly. "Let her alone, and all this can be over in a few moments."

  That's what I'm afraid of, he thought. A distraction, please, Sagai. . . There were five of them to worry about: one facing Elen, one still incapacitated by her painrod, two watching Sagai and Arad, and the one he had wounded, who was leaning against the wall and panting. And that was without Shiskan son Karadon, which was discounting quite a bit. He could see Sagai's eyes shift from the two men confronting him to Shiskan and back. To anyone else he might have looked nervous, but Khat knew his partner was thinking. Arad hadn't moved, except to look up at Sagai once. He was watching everything, not without fear but nowhere close to panic. He could probably be counted on to do something in a moment of crisis, even if it wasn't something terribly effective.

  One of the men watching Sagai shifted, coming dangerously near the edge of the incomplete mural, and Khat said, "Tell your friend to get his big fee
t away from those tiles."

  Shiskan said, "Lyan, careful."

  The man glanced down and moved a step away.

  To Elen, Shiskan said, "Give us the book, and I'll let him go."

  "Let him go first," Elen insisted stubbornly.

  "I can't, he'll kill me," Shiskan pointed out reasonably.

  "You're going to confuse each other," Khat told her.

  "Hush," she said. Her voice hardened as she spoke to Elen again. "Give us the book."

  "Elen, please, you must," Sagai said, taking a step toward her with his hands open. The next instant he was locked in a struggle with the man nearest him. Arad was moving, flinging himself forward to trip the other.

  Shiskan moved, shifting her weight and balance, and the knife point came away from his neck. Before she could realize her mistake Khat caught her wrist and pushed himself up, dumping her off him. The one he had wounded earlier made an awkward attempt to rush him, and Khat stepped out of his path and tripped him. The man sprawled helplessly, and Shiskan was gaining her feet again. Khat grabbed his knife from where it had fallen, and looked up to see another dark form coming down through the louver.

  Sagai shouted, "Run!" and everyone seemed to bolt for a different doorway at once.

  Khat saw Elen vanish down the hall toward the outer door and darted after her. She still had the book, and the pursuit would concentrate on her. He hoped Sagai or Arad would remember to get the winged relic, and he hoped more that Shiskan and the others would not bother to chase them.

  One of their pursuers had followed Elen already. Khat overtook him at the outer doorway, spun him around, and smashed him into the wall. Knowing the others were right behind him, he leapt down the steps without pausing to finish him off.

  He caught up with Elen midway across the square and dragged her toward one of the arches leading off from it. The night air was hot and heavy, stagnant in his lungs. He stopped in the shelter of a roofed arbor, looking back at the darkened square. It was empty and suspiciously quiet.

  "Did the others get out?" she asked, her voice a breathless whisper.

  "I think so; it's that book they're after."

  "I know that." She was still clutching it tightly to her chest. "What are we going to do?"

  Khat heard a careless step on the arbor roof above them, and whispered, "Run."

  They ran down the narrow court, emerged into an almost equally narrow garden, crossed it into another sheltered colonnade. He was glad again for her night sight, even if it was a Warder trick; she avoided potted flowers and low pools and found steps that would have left him staggering at this pace. At the end of the colonnade he stopped her again to listen, and she whispered, "I meant, when you followed me out here, didn't you have some sort of plan of action?"

  Somewhere back the way they had come he could hear shouting. Shiskan's people would hardly need to shout; it was probably the Academia's vigils, finally awake to the notion that something odd was happening. "Didn't you have a plan of action when you ran out here?" he asked her.

  "I see your point."

  "They shouldn't have been able to take that drop from the ceiling without breaking legs; is flying another Warder talent you forgot to mention?"

  "There are Disciplines, mental exercises, that allow the human body to overcome pain, to be physically stronger for a short time. Riathen said Constans was always very good at Disciplines."

  "Very good" is something of an understatement, Khat thought. He wanted to work his way to the outer wall, where once over it they would have the whole city to hide in. His worst fear was of getting cornered down one of these blind courts. He tugged her sleeve and led the way down the colonnade, at a slower pace so he could hear their pursuers.

  "I know," Elen whispered suddenly. "Why don't we leave the book somewhere, toss it through someone's window, then lead them away from it?"

  Khat had considered that, but it didn't alter the fact that if they were caught with the book or without it, they were dead. And once he had his hands on a relic, he didn't like to let go until it was absolutely necessary. Especially a relic like this.

  He started to answer her, but she halted abruptly and he stumbled into her instead. Before he could protest he saw the darkness just in front of them move. Something was there, shapeless but alarmingly solid, as if a piece of one of the dark walls had stepped forward to challenge them. Elen grabbed his arm, and together they backed away, instinctively slowly, though Khat couldn't have said where the conviction that quick motion would antagonize it came from.

  It passed out from under the colonnade and into the moonlight, and for an instant lines of dim red light shot through it, revealing something vaguely human-shaped, but with a rounded crest spread out behind its head and an oddly formed body. The hackles on the back of Khat's neck itched.

  It hovered, as if uncertain. "I don't think it knows we're here," Elen whispered, almost soundlessly.

  Suddenly it moved like lightning, darting first away from them, and then directly toward them, coming so close the smothering cold of it forced Khat back a step.

  It stopped, then drifted toward them again, slowly and deliberately.

  "It knows we're here now," Khat said grimly, pulling Elen back with him.

  It was moving them toward the dark opening to a court. Khat tried to step past it, and it moved quicker than thought, blocking escape and herding them again toward the court. Because it can trap us in there, Khat thought, desperate.

  "Is it a ghost?" Elen said. "Like the one at Radu's house?"

  "I was hoping you knew."

  "My education didn't cover this area. It's getting stronger, or something. Can you feel it?"

  He could. The air was turning chill around them, forcing them back under the arch of the entrance to the court. It acted like a ghost, it felt like a ghost, it would probably kill them like a ghost, but he had never heard of a ghost you could see as a blot of darkness. They were only visible if they stirred dust or knocked things over. Maybe everyone who ever saw one like this is dead, Khat thought, which was a theory they might be about to prove.

  They were trapped. The court was small, with high windowless buildings to either side and a wall behind.

  Abruptly the chill in the air was gone, and the thing seemed to be swirling about, caught in some internal struggle. Then it shrank in on itself until only a point of red light remained.

  And Aristai Constans was standing behind it, blocking the exit from the court.

  Elen took a deep breath, muttered, "Oh, no."

  Constans gestured, and the last of the red ghost light winked out. He came toward them unhurriedly, and said, "Well, I think we know what I'm here for."

  Khat was moving forward, no real plan in mind except to distract him so Elen could perhaps run out past him. The next moment he was on the ground, the breath knocked out of his lungs, his legs numb and unable to move.

  Constans said, "Stay out of this for a moment, Khat, if you can."

  "Leave him alone," Elen said. She held out one hand, eyes narrowed in concentration. The air between them seemed to thicken, shadows taking substance, growing heavy with the presence of power. Constans stepped through it, and the delicate structure was swept away, scattered like straw in a sandstorm. He said, "I haven't time for games, Elen. Give me the book. Riathen was a fool to let it out of his keeping. Don't add to his foolishness by opposing me."

  He thinks it's Riathen's copy, Khat thought, startled, then tried not to think at all.

  Elen shook her head, wisely not sparing breath to answer or correct his mistake. She flexed her hand, trying something else, something that made the air around them grow brighter, brought out the muted color in the tiles in the court's pavement, then turned them gray with its intensity. Khat wanted badly to look away but didn't dare. The feeling was coming back into his legs, and he cautiously levered himself up off the pavement a little. It hadn't hurt as much as being hit with a painrod, but he was willing to rank it high on the list of the most frightening thi
ngs that had ever happened to him. He remembered the lictor Constans had killed so easily out at the Remnant and supposed he should feel lucky.

  Elen's face looked terrible in the unnatural light, pale as death and tense with pain. No wonder she hated to use her power, and never did anything but small simples that often as not refused to work.

  Constans stopped, regarding her thoughtfully. He took another step toward them, this with more effort, but said, "I see Riathen's teaching hasn't improved with time. You didn't even realize Shiskan and the others were on the roof, Elen. Is your skill at soul-reading still so poor?" Abruptly Elen's wall of light was scattered, caught in some invisible wind that trapped it in a miniature dust devil and sent it swirling away into the night sky.

  There was lamplight from behind the wall suddenly, and someone shouted, "Look, over there!"

  Constans swore and started forward.

  Elen was faster. She flung the delicate text up and back, over her head and over the wall and down to whoever had shouted.

  Elen fell back, and Khat managed to catch her, dragging her out of Constans's reach, but they were both still trapped against the wall. Suddenly a large group of vigils, air guns ready, appeared in a blaze of lamplight at the end of the court. Constans flung himself to the right, at the steep wall of the house, scaling it as if it were a ladder. Khat heard the crack of pellets striking stone and slumped back to the ground, pulling Elen down with him. The firing stopped abruptly, and he risked a look.

  Constans had vanished. The vigils filled the little court, pointing and shouting directions to each other, lamps swinging.

  Elen sat up, holding her head in both hands as if it hurt too much to move. She was breathing hard and trembling. "Are you all right?" Khat asked her, trying to see if she had been hit.

  "I think so." She rubbed her eyes. "Where's the book?"

  A rifle barrel came down between them suddenly, lamplight glinting off the chased silver arabesques along it, and Khat looked up at a grim-faced man with a subcaptain's chain of office. "Your friend won't get far," the vigil said. "Tell us who he is."