Authors: Michael A Stackpole
“Could be.” Keles smoothed dust on the floor and drew a diagram of the small entryway
and the burial chamber. He ended it with a flat line where the stone had closed the
archway. “This is where we are. My grandfather once commented that he hoped the
Prince would ennoble the family; that way we would not have to be buried ‘outside.’ In
Imperial times, this kind of chamber was an antechamber to a nobles’ mausoleum. Loyal
retainers and brave vassals would be buried out here, while the nobles would be buried in
the larger chamber. It’s not a common practice now, save with princes and some other
families, but was the rule then.”
He glanced back into the shadows. “Now Rekarafi says we’ve been moved, and Borosan
agrees, but I don’t. I think there is a huge burial chamber beyond that limestone slab.” He
drew the chamber in the dust and erased enough of the line at the arch to make it very
thin.
Moraven and Ciras twitched. Rekarafi barked out a harsh laugh. “We moved, Keles.”
“You’re wrong, Rekarafi.” He pointed back toward the entryway. “Did you forget the
flashing light that brought us here? I think whoever or whatever shined that light is beyond
that slab. The storm probably loosened it. It was designed to keep grave robbers out. I’m
sure of it. We get through that slab and we’re in. It’s probably no more than a yard thick,
and limestone can be chopped through.”
The Keru nodded. “It can be, but we have no quarrying tools.”
Keles’ heart sank. “Borosan, how about your
gyanrigot
?”
The inventor shook his head. “With the storm on top of us, I cannot predict what they will
do. But I doubt I have enough
thaumston
to let them burrow through even if the storm
does go away.”
The Viruk clawed his way up the wall and regained his feet. “Do not touch me, anyone.
Not if you want to live.” He looked at Keles with burning eyes. “A yard you say?”
“Standard for that sort of thing in an Imperial mausoleum.”
The Viruk nodded, then shambled across the burial chamber to the tall archway. The air
warmed at his passing as if he were burning with invisible flames. His flesh’s red glow
illuminated the limestone slab as his fingers crawled up it. He pressed his palms flat
against the stone about ten feet above the floor. His voice, still hollow, rose and fell
rhythmically in words both sibilant and powerful.
The light from beneath his palms shifted from red to yellow, brightening to white, then
returning to its bloody hue. Each hand’s light pulsed in unison at first and played through
little spiderwebs of cracks in the stone’s surface. Those lines grew larger as the glowing
fell out of synch. Red energy traced them, only to be chased out by gold. The white light
flashed, then sank from view. Pulse after pulse pummeled the rock and sent a humming
through the air, causing the horses to shift restlessly.
Bits and pieces of stone began to crumble. Pebbles bounced from the Viruk’s head and
shoulders. Limestone dust greyed his hair. Larger pieces clipped him in the shoulders and
ricocheted off his arms. The cascade of clattering gravel muted the first loud crack, but
deep fissures appeared in the rock. A large, dagger-shaped piece shifted down, then
began to twist. It caught for a second, then more stone came to pieces and it began to
tumble.
“Rekarafi,
move
!”
The large stone hunk, easily as tall as Keles himself, fell forward and smashed into the
marble floor. It would have crushed the Viruk, but he’d pushed off and sent himself flying
backward. He slid across the floor, trailing limestone dust. Two bigger pieces of limestone
fell in the other direction, leaving a ragged hole nine feet in diameter at a man-height from
the floor.
Keles ran to Rekarafi but refrained from touching him. The glow had died, but his breath
still rasped. “How are you? What can I do?”
The Viruk eased himself back against the wall. “You can do nothing but let me rest for a
moment.”
Keles looked at the opening in the rock. “What did you do?”
“The reverse of what I did back there.”
“The crystals? You did that? How? You’re a warrior.”
Rekarafi coughed. “A warrior is what I am, but not what I have always been.”
“But what you did is magic, and only female Viruk use magic.” Keles frowned. “Sorry, I
actually know nothing about the Viruk—nothing more than you have told me. Will you
explain?”
“More fully, another time.” He slowly began to roll to his feet. “Suffice it to say, not
being
permitted
to do something does not mean one lacks the
ability
to do it.”
Borosan pulled another light from a saddlebag and handed it to Tyressa. He then looked
at his magic detection device, smacked it once against his leg, and shrugged. “Whatever
you did, Rekarafi, the sand is all black now. It’s broken.”
The Viruk dusted himself off. “You will make something better. Come, let us see what
Keles has found for us.”
Tyressa nodded toward the two swordsmen. “Will they be safe?”
“From all but the ghosts, Keru.” Rekarafi bent his arms and slowly pressed his elbows
back until something cracked in the area of his spine. “They have nothing to fear. Come.”
The four of them approached the hole, and Keles found his stomach roiling. He had felt
certain the chamber was there, and as he looked into it, he found it laid out much as he
had sketched in the dust. It was as if the wild magic had given him the ability to see the
chamber and record it faithfully without ever having visited it. His grandfather would be
certain this was nonsense, but he saw the evidence in the glow of the blue lights.
Tyressa entered first, then Keles. Borosan and the
gyanrigot
followed him, then the Viruk hauled himself through last. He paused in the hole, much as he had crouched in the
entryway, sniffing. “Long sealed, long inhabited.”
“Inhabited?” Borosan raised his lantern and let the light shine throughout the room.
“Nothing living in here that I can see.”
“I did not
see,
either.” He tapped his nose. “So frail, Men.”
Keles frowned as he looked around. The chamber not only had burial spots excavated
from the walls, but standing sepulchres had been arranged in rows. They all had been
carved of limestone, and several had effigies of the warriors within raised on them. The
warriors stood out starkly, full-bodied but white as bone.
Then one of them moved. Keles leaped back, smacking up against Rekarafi’s feet. “A
ghost!”
The Viruk shook his head.
Pale as ivory and the size of a child, the creature came up into a seated position and
wrapped skeletally slender arms around bony knees. The head seemed too large for the
body, with the eye sockets overlarge and the heavy cheekbones slanted sharply down. Its
two normally placed eyes matched the size of the third set high in its forehead. Above and
below the two usual eyes were smaller ones, these of a golden color with a pinpoint black
pupil—a contrast to the larger eyes, which appeared black save where gold sparks
exploded in them.
Keles shivered.
Seven eyes, the future spies. Spy Gloon eyes, one surely dies.
The rhyme was one every child knew and accompanied stories of heroes who ventured into dark
places to encounter Soth Gloons. The Soth, who had been highly valued by the Viruk
Empire, went through life stages, and Gloon was the last and least common—at least as
far as men knew. Their extra eyes were said to permit them a vision of the future, and to
meet one was the harbinger of disaster.
“A Viruk here? This was unseen.”
Rekarafi eased himself down from the hole. “Your eyes are too small to behold a Viruk’s
future.”
“The Viruk have no futures to behold.” The Gloon shook its head and closed the central
eye. “You are in good company with these Men. Their futures are empty as well. In fact,
death touches one of them right
now
.”
Keles opened his mouth to protest, but pain exploded in the center of his mind.
Nirati?
Nirati, no!
He felt himself falling and tried to clutch at anything to stop his fall. But nothing did, and the world crashed closed around him.
7th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat
9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court
163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty
737th year since the Cataclysm
Nemehyan, Caxyan
Jorim looked down on the city below and felt queasy. It was not just the Mozoyan flesh
he’d eaten, or all the other things that went with it. The Amentzutl had put on a fine feast
with soups and stews alternating with roasted strips of meat. The fleet had provided rice
and other basics which, to the Amentzutl, were as miraculous as the horses and chariots.
Even at the top of his pyramid, Jorim could hear sounds of singing and merrymaking as
the sun began to peek up over the eastern horizon.
Anaeda Gryst looked toward the dawn. “Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.”
“It’s not the sky or the weather I’m worried about. It’s not even being thought a god that
worries me.”
“No?” Anaeda smiled easily. “I think it would concern me. I merely accept responsibility for
a fleet, but you have it for all these people.”
“I am
not
a god.”
“How do you know?” Iesol knelt at the top of the pyramid about a dozen feet to Jorim’s left.
“There are those who suppose that if one can reach
jaedunto,
perhaps there is a goal
above that—divinity.”
“Your idea invalidates your question. I’ve not reached
jaedunto,
so divinity would be
beyond me.”
“I would beg to differ, Master Anturasi.” The minister pressed his hands to his thighs and
spoke softly. “As the Master says, ‘There is no destination that cannot be found at the end
of multiple paths.’ My idea merely described one way people think divinity is accessible.
They are likely wrong. What you have told us suggests that divinity
is
something you can realize.”
Jorim frowned. “I do not follow.”
“It is simple, Master. Tetcomchoa, the first time around, sailed west and, you suspect,
might have been Taichun—he who was Urmyr’s Master. If you accept that Tetcomchoa
was a god here, and a man in the Empire, then the path from god to man is open.”
“But that does not mean the reverse is true. Nor does it mean that, because we accepted
him as a man, he somehow divested himself of his divinity.”
Iesol smiled. “But this would suggest that just because we have accepted you as a man
you are not precluded from having always been a god.”
Jorim held a hand up. “I don’t mind semantic games, but not now. I’ve had far too little
sleep and things are running riot in my head.”
Anaeda crouched at his right. “I don’t believe Iesol was playing a game. You don’t want to
accept the possibility that you are a god, or that you could become one. I understand this
and even applaud your humility. The fact is, however, that these people do believe you
are a god. They are also of the opinion that this Mozoloa is rising in the west. As the
legends are explained to me, it is Mozoloa who each night inhales the sun and exhales
the stars. Each night you send a serpent that squeezes him so hard that eventually he
releases the sun and it rises again.”
“We know that is not true.”
“It doesn’t matter what we know, Jorim. The point is simply this. For these people,
Tetcomchoa is the god who makes all life possible. Tetcomchoa is core to their reality the
same way the Nine Gods are to ours. Your problem is that they see you as
Tetcomchoa
and
they expect you to lead them to where they can defeat Mozoloa.”
Jorim sighed. “That is out of the question. We can’t lead them to the Nine Principalities.
Not only do they not have the means to get there, but they would be an invading force. For
all I know they’d identify Prince Cyron as Neletzatl and make war on my home.”
“Curious.”
The cartographer glanced at Iesol. “What?”
“It cannot have passed your notice that Neletzatl and Nelesquin have similar sounding
names.”
Anaeda glanced up. “The Prince lost with Empress Cyrsa?”
“The Prince who was her rival, yes. There are stories—seldom heard, and almost never in
the Nine—that parallel those of the Sleeping Empress. Nelesquin is said to sleep as well,
but uneasily in his grave. It has been said he will return, but not as a help.”
“Return to the Nine?”
“To what he once knew as the Empire—what he once thought he would rule.” Iesol
nodded. “If he has come back, perhaps the time for Taichun’s return is at hand as well.”
Jorim frowned. “And who else will return? No, don’t answer that, Iesol, I was being
dramatic.” The cartographer groaned. “I don’t believe I am Tetcomchoa. Still, every
previous
centenco
has produced difficulties, and they match points in our history. Could it be that they are right? Is some threat rising to the west? Face it, between here and
Moriande there is a lot of west, and most of it wet.”
Jorim stared down at the shadows surrounding the pyramid’s base. “If we accept
that
centenco
has validity, then we know a threat exists. The Amentzutl know there is a threat, but the people back home do not.”
“Can you communicate it to your grandfather?”